Tag: Bernie_Sanders

Nevada Democratic Caucus 2016

Seth Anderson0 comment

Trains Has Moved
Trains Has Moved

If you’d noticed, there have been a lot of headlines about how Hillary Clinton has nearly won the nomination, and yet…

The final figures are in from the Nevada caucus, with the last unassigned delegate going to Hillary Clinton.

With the delegate–who came from the state’s fourth Congressional district–pledged to Clinton, the final Nevada tally sits at 20 delegates for Clinton and 15 for Bernie Sanders, according to figures released by campaign the Clinton campaign.

The Nevada results put the race’s overall delegate count thus far at for 52 Clinton and 51 for Sanders.

(click here to continue reading Final Nevada count: Clinton 20, Sanders 15 – POLITICO.)

That’s a pretty large lead, no? Especially since several of those delegates in Iowa were determined by coin flips…

The New York Times hasn’t updated their results page as of this writing, but the reported vote counts are pretty close, by my estimation.

Nevada Democratic Caucuas 2016 02 23 at 9 57 24 AM

Nevada Democratic Caucus 2016-02-23 at 9.57.24 AM 

The only real concern for the Bernie Sanders campaign should be the party hacks who have superdelegate status. 

But the often overlooked delegate count in the Democratic primary shows Mr. Sanders slipping significantly behind Hillary Clinton in the race for the nomination, and the odds of his overtaking her growing increasingly remote.

Mrs. Clinton has 502 delegates to Mr. Sanders’s 70; 2,383 are needed to win the nomination. These numbers include delegates won in state contests and superdelegates, who can support any candidate. She is likely to win a delegate jackpot from the overwhelmingly black and Hispanic areas in the Southern-dominated Super Tuesday primaries on March 1, when 11 states will vote and about 880 delegates will be awarded.

…

Mrs. Clinton already has a huge lead over Mr. Sanders in support from superdelegates — elected officials and party elders who each count toward the magic number of 2,383. But superdelegates could switch candidates if Mr. Sanders is the overwhelming choice of regular voters.

 

(click here to continue reading Delegate Count Leaving Bernie Sanders With Steep Climb – The New York Times.)

Superdelegates are a thumb on the scale of democracy, usually supporting the establishment’s candidates at the expense of insurgents. But, since there are no real enforceable rules about how superdelegates vote, the will of the people could, in theory, prevail. Whether party hacks will support a Democratic Socialist over a Clinton’s cash remains to be seen.

Senator Bernie Sanders proposes to ax fossil-fuel subsidies

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Department of Energy and Climate Change
Department of Energy and Climate Change, Britain

Good for Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the few Senators who actually cares about the average citizen, and our planet…

Bernie Sanders used to be Congressman-at-large from Vermont. Now he’s Vermont’s junior Senator. In so many ways, however, he’s the nation’s Senator-at-large, showing the way when so many others in Congress have lost theirs.

While a good chunk of Congress, including a majority of the freshman class in the House, are climate-change deniers, Sanders has no illusions about where we need to be headed. That’s why he introduced the 10 Million Solar Rooftops bill last June. That bill, now with seven co-sponsors, was approved for a vote by the full Senate in December. It’s also why he introduced legislation to end oil and coal subsidies last year. That bill got just 35 votes in the Senate. But he vowed Tuesday not to give up.

“We’ve got to end all of the tax breaks for the oil companies and coal companies and I’m going to introduce legislation to do just that,” Sanders told demonstrators clad in black-and-white striped referee shirts who rallied to “blow the whistle” on members of Congress and Big Oil. Ending tax breaks and subsidies for oil and gas companies would reduce the deficit by more than $40 billion over the next 10 years. Sanders’ legislation will end those tax breaks and tens of billions of dollars in other special subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.

…

Besides ignoring Sen. Sanders’s bill last year, and Obama’s budget proposal, Congress refused to go along with the proposal of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who wanted to cut some $2 billion in subsidies solely from the five big dogs in the oil business: BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and Conoco Phillips.

Together over the past decade, those five have together put $1 trillion on their bottom lines. And yet some of them have had years in which they not only paid zero income taxes, they actually got rebates. Exxon Mobil paid $39 million in taxes on the $9.9 billion in U.S. profits it made for 2009-2010. Its effective tax rate? 0.4 percent. Outrageous, but perfectly legal.
Sanders told the 350.org crowd, “One of the absurdities that goes on right here in Washington, D.C., is that Congress keeps voting not for the interest of our children, not in the interest of our future, but for the profits of the huge oil and coal companies.”

There’s a good reason for this outcome. In 2011 alone, oil and gas companies spent more than $100 million lobbying Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics reports. Since 1990, they have collectively passed out $238.7 million to candidates and parties, three-fourths of it to Republicans. Exxon Mobil alone contributed $872,694 to candidates in 2010-2011. Sitting members of Congress received $12 million in contributions from oil and gas interests from July 2009 through July 2011, according to the non-partisan research group Maplight.

(click here to continue reading Daily Kos: Bernie Sanders proposes to ax fossil-fuel subsidies and add 10 million sun-powered rooftops.)

Standard Oil Co of Ind
Standard Oil Co of Indiana

Outrageous, really, that our tax dollars go to line the pockets of oil industry executives…