Unlike Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders Never Says, 'When I Become President, I Will Answer Your Question'

One attribute shared by Ronald Reagan and Barrack Obama is the ability to communicate a message. While their messages differ politically, the speeches of both two-term presidents seem to hit the core of what voters were looking for during their respective eras. When a person is straightforward and forthright in their words, even a xenophobic and nativist New York billionaire can reach the hearts and minds of his constituency. After so long of being forced to hear vapid talking points and carefully crafted political rhetoric, Americans yearn for honesty and clarity in leadership.

This is why Hillary Clinton's style of communication is not only vague, but lends itself to criticism. A Washington Post article titled "Hilary Clinton's ridiculous hedge on Keystone XL" quotes the former Secretary of State's answer to a simple question about her stance on the pipeline:


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders_b_7893228.html

Hillary Clinton's popularity hits a new low as voters say they don't trust her OR Trump and that NEITHER care about people like them


A majority, 57 percent, say she's untrustworthy isn't concerned about people like them, 52 percent.
Just four in 10 Americans have a positive opinion of her, down from a high of 61 percent in February of 2013
Voters don't like Clinton, but they don't think GOP front-runner Donald Trump is trustworthy or down-to-earth, either
They would rather have the former first lady reign the White House again than see the real estate mogul move in


Hillary Clinton's favorability is at a new low as voters increasingly say she can't be trusted and doesn't care about people like them.

But they don't think the GOP's front-runner for president Donald Trump is trustworthy or down-to-earth, either, and would rather have the former first lady reign the White House again than see the real estate mogul move in.

Clinton would handily beat Trump in a head-to-head match-up as would Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Vice President Joe Biden, who has not said whether he's running or not in 2016.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3180104/Hillary-Clinton-s-popularity-hits-new-low-voters-say-don-t-trust-Trump.html#ixzz3hTv3gP4w

Conservative Think Tank: 10 Countries With Universal Health Care Have Freer Economies Than The U.S.

Many American conservatives oppose universal health insurance because they see it as fundamentally antithetical to a free society. “If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price,” wrote a guest editorialist in the ]Wall Street Journal in 2009. But according to the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, ten nations freer than the United States have achieved universal health coverage. It turns out that the right kind of health reform could cover more Americans while increasing economic freedom.

Today, Heritage published its 2015 Index of Economic Freedom, an annual look at economic liberty around the world. The United States stayed put at #12, just below Ireland, Mauritius, and Denmark.

What’s striking about the list is that of the eleven countries ahead of the U.S. in economic freedom, ten have achieved universal coverage. Many Americans on both the right on the left subscribe to the myth that the U.S. has a free-market health care system. It doesn’t. U.S. government entities spend more per-capita on health care than all but two other countries in the world.




Tellingly, on the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, both Switzerland (#5) and Singapore (#2) rank far higher than the U.S. on overall economic freedom. Both countries serve as models for my health reform plan, Transcending Obamacare, which would adapt features of the Swiss and Singaporean health care systems to liberate U.S. health care from onerous regulations and wasteful spending. We’ve modeled the plan as reducing federal spending by $10.5 trillion over 30 years, while increasing the number of people with health insurance by 12 million.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/01/27/conservative-think-tank-10-countries-with-universal-health-care-are-economically-freer-than-the-u-s/

General Electric
From 2008 to 2013, while GE made over $33.9 billion in United States profits, it received a total tax refund of more than $2.9 billion from the Internal Revenue Service.

Boeing
From 2008 to 2013, while Boeing made over $26.4 billion in U.S. profits, it received a total tax refund of $401 million from the IRS. Boeing’s effective U.S. corporate income tax rate over this six-year period was -2 percent.

Verizon
From 2008 to 2013, while Verizon made over $42.4 billion in U.S. profits, it received a total tax refund of $732 million from the IRS.

Bank of America
Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS in 2010, even though it made $4.4 billion in profits and received a bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department of more than $1.3 trillion

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/top-10-corporate-tax-avoiders

Effects of a Fifteen Dollar an Hour Minimum Wage in the City of Los Angeles

America has lost ground on the intent declared by Congress when the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted in 1938, that workers will receive wages sufficient to maintain “the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being.” The federal minimum wage had the greatest value in 1968. Set at $1.60 an hour, it had a value of $10.51 in 2012 dollars. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 is worth 31 percent less. This wage attrition is part of most people’s every day experience:

◾Three-quarters of the full-time labor force residing in the City of Los Angeles earn less than comparable workers 30 years ago.
◾Wage erosion was greatest for workers in the bottom half of the wage scale. From 1979 to 2011, annual pay dropped 14 percent for workers in the 50th percentile – the median or typical worker, and 26 percent for workers in the 25th percentile – the working poor.
◾The average hourly wage for all workers residing in the City of Los Angeles in 2013 is estimated to be $27.85, yielding estimated annual pay of $58,244 for the average wage and salary worker.
◾Forty-six percent of LA’s wage and salary workers are paid less than $15 an hour. This includes 41 percent of the 1,097,000 full-time employees and 54 percent of the 665,000 part-time employees who live in the City of Los Angeles.




Economic Stimulus

When workers’ households receive additional income, their increased spending stimulates growth in the local economy. Their increased purchases of groceries, clothes, meals out, health care, car repair services, and rental housing stimulates added purchases in the local supply chain. Jobs would be created in the same industries where workers would receive wage increases, including restaurants and retail stores. The increased buying power of workers would make these industries direct beneficiaries of the higher wages they would be paying.

The increased spending translates into added sales for local businesses and their suppliers, as well as added jobs at those businesses and their suppliers, and increased tax revenue for local, state and federal government.


http://economicrt.org/publication/effects-of-a-fifteen-dollar-an-hour-minimum-wage-in-the-city-of-los-angeles/

Here’s Every City in America Getting a $15 Minimum Wage

As New York is set to raise fast food workers' pay

When dozens of New York fast food workers walked off the job in 2013 demanding minimum pay of $15 per hour, their campaign seemed like a longshot. But two years, several nationwide strikes and new rules laws later, a $15 minimum wage is becoming a reality for millions of workers across the United States.

The workers’ campaign, known as Fast Food Forward and backed by the Service Employees International Union, has slowly gained momentum through a series of increasingly large one-day strikes targeting fast food chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King. At first, the effects of the strikes seemed small, with individual restaurant owners conceding to minuscule wage increases for some of their workers. But even as businesspeople were doing their best to ignore the movement, politicians were paying close attention.

Over the last two years, several cities and now the entire state of New York either have or are in the process of enacting a $15 minimum wage for various workers. Here’s a look at the cities that have enacted huge pay increases, and the ones that could still be to come.

http://time.com/3969977/minimum-wage/

Woman charged with killing toddler son, husband

BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP) — A Whatcom County woman accused of killing her husband and toddler son faces two first-degree murder charges.

The Bellingham Herald reports (http://bit.ly/1MmjebK ) that a real estate agent found 43-year-old Erin Lee Jordan injured with a gunshot wound in the shoulder in her home north of Bellingham.

Charging papers show that Erin Jordan confessed to a Whatcom County sheriff's detective that she shot her husband and their child while they slept. Her husband Michael David Jordan and their 1-year-old son Miles were found with gunshot wounds. Deputies believe they had been dead for at least two days before they were found.


http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Woman-charged-with-killing-toddler-son-husband-6401108.php

The union representing San Francisco sheriff’s deputies filed a formal complaint against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, linking the Pier 14 killing of Kathryn Steinle to a March order that barred them from communicating with federal immigration agents, according to documents obtained by The Chronicle.

The murder arrest of a man whom deputies had freed from jail despite a felony record and a history of deportations showed that Mirkarimi’s policy “recklessly compromises the safety of sworn personnel, citizens, and those who merely come to visit the San Francisco area,” the deputies wrote in the grievance.

The San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association called for Mirkarimi to correct his “flawed philosophy” and rescind the March 13 memo prohibiting his staff from giving immigration agents information about detainees — including their citizenship status, their booking and arrest documents, and their release dates.

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/S-F-deputies-union-ties-pier-killing-to-6389935.php