There is no justice, and I want you to hear this clearly, when the top one-tenth of 1 percent – not 1 percent, the top one-tenth of 1 percent – today in America owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.
Further, police officers must be trained to understand that lethal force is the last response, not, as is too often the case, the first response.
Let’s be very clear. Corporate media is not “objective”; they are not the “referees” trying to provide “all sides of the story.” Corporate media are profit-making entities owned and controlled by the ruling class and some of the wealthiest people in the country. And, like all private corporations, they have an agenda.
Today in America, more than 2 million people are in jail, disproportionately black, Latino, and Native American. That is a greater number of inmates than in any other country on earth – including China, which has a population four times greater than ours and an authoritarian government that does not tolerate dissent.
Not one word about income inequality, climate change, Citizens United or student debt. That’s why the Rs are so out of touch.
52 percent of all new income generated is going to the top 1 percent.
Change will not take place without political participation.
As mayor of Burlington, I helped establish two sister-city programs. One was with the town of Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua.
As is the Vermont way, our trips were pretty low-key. No entourage. No advance people. No communications director. No security. Just Phil and me flying in coach, renting cars, and showing up for meetings – trying to get a sense of the potential support that might exist.
The wealthiest 400 Americans now earn, on average, $345 million a year, and they pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent.
Fahrenheit warmer by the end of this century. This is catastrophic. It will mean more drought, more famine, more rising sea level, more floods, more ocean acidification, more extreme weather disturbances, more disease, and more human suffering. We must not, we cannot, and we will not allow that to happen.
I can today LEGALLY walk into a gun show, uh, pass the background check, and buy a dozen guns, walk out and sell them to criminal elements, who will use them for bad things.
And it is a public health issue, forcing sick individuals into public spaces where they risk spreading disease.
The very existence of a rapidly expanding billionaire class in the United States is a manifestation of an unjust system that promotes massive income and wealth inequality.
In this unprecedented moment in American history, there is no more time for tinkering around the edges. It is time to reject “conventional wisdom” and “incrementalism.” It is time to fundamentally rethink our adherence to the system of unfettered capitalism, and to address the unspeakable harm that system is doing to us all.
What is the goal of the system? Should an entire layer of corporate bureaucracy called “insurance companies” – which employ hundreds of thousands of people who have absolutely nothing to do with the actual provision of health care – be allowed to continue determining policies and priorities with the sole purpose of maximizing profits?
If a nation is morally judged by how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us, our health care system fails miserably.
As circumstances grew increasingly desperate for the Democrats, I proposed a “radical idea.” I wanted “the world’s greatest deliberative body” to actually start deliberating. I wanted Senate Democrats to bring to the floor legislation that addressed the needs of working families, and force Republicans to vote for or against these very important and very popular initiatives.
The American people were sick and tired of endless “negotiations.” They were sick and tired of politicians hiding behind closed doors. They wanted the Senate to vote on legislation to improve their lives. At the very least, they had a right to know where their senators stood on the issues. But Senate leaders preferred to do nothing rather than “divide” their caucus by exposing the pro-corporate stances of a handful of their Democratic colleagues.
Is it really too much, in the twenty-first century, in the wealthiest country on earth, to begin creating an economy in which people actually have some power over what they do for forty hours or more a week?
The only way to get it is by breaking the shackles of the old thinking that says there is no alternative to unfettered capitalism. We’ve got to upend the lie we’ve been told for decades, the one that says: This is how the system works. This is how globalization works. This is how capitalism works. This is how employers and employees will always relate to each other. There’s nothing you can do about it. So just shut up and get back to work.