Vox has the article Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders want to use the tax code to weaken Wall Street.

In 2008, candidate Barack Obama’s tax policies sought to achieve the normal ends of Democratic tax policy: Fund the basic operations of the federal government, give more money to the poor and middle class, and take more money from the rich. That is, for the most part, what we expect Democratic tax plans to do.

But the tax plans Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have unveiled are more radical than that. Yes, they raise money to fund government operations, and sure, they redistribute wealth a bit. But their real aim is far more ambitious: They want to change the way the economy actually works.

They may think they have a pretty radical article, but I have a slightly different view. Here is my comment that I posted on the article:

Give some coverage to the idea that paying down the debt may be unnecessary and destructive to the economy. Ever hear of Modern Money Theory? Do you know who Sanders’ appointment to chief economist for the minority on the Senate Budget Committee, Stephanie Kelton, is?

There may be bigger things coming than you can dream of.

Change From Within has this very interesting post Interrupting Bernie: Exposing the White Supremacy of the American Left. [The link to the article has been corrected.]

Because here’s the thing – what’s powerful about these interruptions from Black women is less how it has changed the tone of the Democratic campaigns and more about what they have exposed in the White left.

The words of the post are powerful, and I will let you read them.

The service that this article performed that drew my attention to it was the video below on YouTube.

You may never see this on corporate media, and you won’t see this much on the internet. Seeing the video is substantially different from reading brief summaries by the white, corporate press on what happened during the interruption.

I am hoping that many of my readers will have the intellectual curiosity to want to see this for themselves.

Another powerful part of the original article is the display of this poster with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words.

These are hard words to read, but the test for the white liberals amongst us is to be able to listen to them without getting defensive. Listening is not necessarily agreeing.

Politicus USA has the article Obama Leaves Republicans Reeling After Standing Firm On GOP Death To America Comparison.

The President isn’t backing off of his comments because the Iran deal is a matter of war and peace. Republicans are trying to sink the deal without bothering to read it because they support more war in the Middle East.

The Republican behavior in response to the Iran deal has been the definition of extremism.

President Obama has put up with this behavior from Republicans all through his presidency. The President already knows that he is going to get zero Republican support, so he has nothing to lose by telling the truth about the motives behind their opposition.

I agree with the President on the need to accept this deal he has made with Iran and several other countries,

I hope his similar backing of TPP, which I strongly oppose, doesn’t ruin what credibility he has left. He seems to be as sure about TPP as he is about the Iran deal. I am just as sure that he is wrong about TPP and right about Iran. The trouble is that our disagreement over TPP makes it hard to explain how I can trust him on the Iran deal. The one thing that is constant is that Republicans are for TPP and against the Iran deal. Perhaps that is why I am so sure I am right on both issues.

If you missed the live feed of this terrific event, you missed seeing a turning point in Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

If you were paying attention to the Sturbridge For Bernie Sanders page, you would have had the link to the event.

You can go to the Bernie Sanders web site to see the recording of the event.

Bernie Sanders has finally started to focus on bringing us all together, and he has appointed a spokeswoman who can help him deliver that message.

Or you can watch the whole thing by starting the video above. As I write this blog post, the start of the festivities begins at about 35:30 into the video. I don’t know if they will later edit out the wait at the beginning.

I have recently run across accusations that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator. Many comments to The Hill article Protesters shut down Bernie Sanders rally made the accusation.

These accusations, which I had not heard before, led me to do a little research. I found the Media Matters article Beck falsely accuses Soros of Nazi collaboration on Kristallnacht anniversary.

In Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire – a book cited by Beck during today’s program — Michael T. Kaufman detailed Soros’s reaction during the interview, as well as Soros’ actions in Nazi-occupied Hungary:

While he was living with Baumbach as Sandor Kiss, an event occurred that more than a half a century later would become the basis of charges that George Soros, the international financier and billionaire, had somehow collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of his homeland and had exploited his fellow Jews. The issue was raised in a bizarre television profile and interview of Soros aired on the CBS television program 60 Minutes in December of 1998. In the segment, Steve Kroft, the interviewer, noted with prosecutorial gusto that George’s father had “bribed a government official to swear that you were his godson,” and added that this survival strategy “carried a heavy price tag.” For, he continued, “as hundreds of thousands of Jews were being shipped off to the Nazi death camps, a thirteen-year-old George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his rounds, confiscating property from the Jews.” Visibly dumbfounded by the line of questioning, Soros could only manage to say that he had no role in the seizure of property and was merely a spectator. To underscore Kroft’s point, film footage showed masses of Hungarian Jews being led away at gunpoint.

This is what actually happened. Shortly after George went to live with Baumbach, the man was assigned to take inventory on the vast estate of Mor Kornfeld, an extremely wealthy aristocrat of Jewish origin. The Kornfeld family had the wealth, wisdom, and connections to be able to leave some of its belongings behind in exchange for permission to make their way to Lisbon. Baumbach was ordered to go to the Kornfeld estate and inventory the artworks, furnishings, and other property. Rather than leave his “godson” behind in Budapest for three days, he took the boy with him. As Baumbach itemized the material, George walked around the grounds and spent time with Kornfeld’s staff. It was his first visit to such a mansion, and the first time he rode a horse. He collaborated with no one and he paid attention to what he understood to be his primary responsibility: making sure that no one doubted that he was Sandor Kiss. Among his practical concerns was to make sure that no one saw him pee. [Page 37]

I also found the Snopes commentary on snopes.com > Urban Legends > Politics > George Soros, Nazi collaborator to be interesting reading for some back and forth on the topic.

You might also want to read the WikiPedia article on George Soros.

Soros was 13 years old in March 1944 when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary.[20] When Jewish children were barred from attending school by the Nazis, Soros and the other schoolchildren were made to report to the Jewish Council, which had been established during the occupation. Soros later described this time to writer Michael Lewis:

The Jewish Council asked the little kids to hand out the deportation notices. I was told to go to the Jewish Council. And there I was given these small slips of paper…. It said report to the rabbi seminary at 9 a.m…. And I was given this list of names. I took this piece of paper to my father. He instantly recognized it. This was a list of Hungarian Jewish lawyers. He said, “You deliver the slips of paper and tell the people that if they report they will be deported.”[21]

Soros did not return to that job, but instead went into hiding the next day. Later that year, at age 14, Soros lived with and posed as the godson of an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture. The official was at one point ordered to inventory the remaining contents of the estate of a wealthy Jewish family that had fled the country; rather than leave the young Soros alone in the city, the official brought him along.[22] The next year, 1945, Soros survived the Battle of Budapest, in which Soviet and German forces fought house to house through the city.

KIRO TV has the article Activists disrupt rally featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders.

I don’t know if these protesters are sincere or have been paid by the oligarchs to shut Bernie Sanders down. If they are sincere, then they have demonstrated the technique that the oligarchs can adopt if they haven’t figured it out already.

Bernie Sanders can fight the protesters and lose, or he can give in to the protesters and lose.

That shows you the extent of my imagination. I hope that Bernie Sanders and his other grass-roots supporters have more imagination than I have.

How about the readers of this blog? Do you have a solution that will let Bernie Sanders show that he truly does care about people’s legitimate concerns? Can Bernie Sanders come up with democratic ways of handling this, and not resort to the heavy handed, anti-democratic expedients that most other candidates might be tempted to use, particularly Republicans.

I sure would like to know how this event turned out.

For references of what might be going on, see WikiPedia’s article Brooks Brothers riot.

Hundreds of “paid GOP crusaders” descended upon South Florida to protest the state’s recounts, with at least half a dozen of the demonstrators at Miami-Dade paid by George W. Bush’s recount committee. Several of these protesters were identified as Republican staffers and a number later went on to jobs in the Bush administration.

The “Brooks Brothers” name reinforces the allegation that the protesters, in corporate attire, sporting “Hermès ties” were astroturfing, as opposed to local citizens concerned about counting practices.

There is a TV movie called Recount.

Here is the trailer to the movie.

We can’t let them take away this candidate from us, too. Bernie Sanders is a much bigger threat to the oligarchs than Al Gore ever was. Some serious investigative work needs to be done on who these protesters really are.

The ones at the Netroots Convention (see my previous post O’Malley and Sanders Heckled At Netroots Nation Convention) were nationally known and no mystery. I don’t doubt their sincerety.

Well here is another one of those miserable letters from the Democratic National Committee that makes you wonder whose side they are on.

Here is my response to the email.

Each of the major Democrats running for president will be there to talk about their plan to keep moving America forward.

Does the party have a plan to move America forward, or is it going to insist on hamstringing the candidates by preventing them from debating until October?

The Republicans will have a great time with the two months you are giving them to implant their ideas in the publics’ minds.

Then you are going to let the Democratic candidates try to change people’s minds back. It always works better to keep the voters you have than it is to win them back after you have lost them.

If there is anyone in the Democratic party leadership that does not know this deep in their bones, they ought not be leading the Party.

It would serve you right, and I would go along with Bernie, if he forms a third party after being elected President.

Here is how you sign the petition to complain We Need More Democratic Debates. This is a perfect test of Bernie Sanders’ grass roots.

I received another one of those maddening emails from Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

So who decided the brilliant strategy of not holding a Democratic Presidential Debate for two more months? To add insult to injury, you will exclude from your debates any candidate that participates in a debate not sanctioned by you.

One would think that some democratic “Leaders”, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, are not really interested in winning the White House.

Certainly, we aren’t going to send money to support the sabotage of our own party.

Save the money you would give to the party, and spend it on the candidates you actually want to be elected. Bernie Sanders is a very deserving recipient.

Bloomberg News has the article Bernie Sanders Takes on Clinton Welfare Legacy as He Woos Iowa Unions.

In an(sic) phone interview Thursday with Bloomberg, the Democratic presidential candidate said that history will not look kindly on the 1996 overhaul of the New Deal anti-poverty program, which then-President Bill Clinton enacted over the objections of many liberal Democrats, including Sanders, who was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives at the time. Sanders’ chief rival for the Democratic nomination, front-runner Hillary Clinton, wrote in her 2003 book, Living History, that she supported the bill, despite some concerns, because she “felt, on balance, that this was a historic opportunity to change a system oriented toward dependence to one that encouraged independence.”
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In his own book in 1997, Sanders called the bill “the grand slam of scapegoating legislation…” Now a U.S. senator from Vermont, he doubled down on that assessment in his interview with Bloomberg. “I think that history will suggest that that legislation has not worked terribly well,” he said, arguing that too many politicians would rather target the poor than poverty.

How could the Clintons be so shortsighted to put life-time limits on welfare while the economy was booming, and give not a hint of thought as to what people would do in an economic downturn, let alone a crash?

There were many of us Democrats at the time, including Bernie Sanders, who were shouting this message at the Clintons as best we could, yet they would not listen.

Many of the same advisers that advised Bill Clinton on this issue are still advising Hillary Clinton. This is one of those issues that she still refuses to accept the responsibility for the damage it has done.