"absolute, unspoken war between corporate interests and the American people,". That is just not true. Maybe some corps, but to paint them all like that is ridiculous.

The only way you will control corporations is to control more branches of government so you can enact legislations. Threatening people's employers is just stupid.

Ben and Jerrys and Tom's of Maine's are waging an absolute, unspoken war on the American people.

pickles, corporate relish, corporate mustard. Then I wore my corporate flip flops and some corporate shorts out for the evening.

And considering they made an ice cream for Benie, they clearly aren't part of the equation.

This has to do with Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, GE, Citi, Bank of America, etc.

That corporations are not waging an absolute, unspoken war on the American people, yes, some are, but not all. So the demonetization of corporations is wrong. As far as the tiny fraction, I think you have grossly overestimated that.

Ben and Jerry's has 500+ employees and annual sales of 132 million.

Walmart alone has 2.2 million employees and annual sales of 485 billion. Alice Walton has made over 36 Billion from Walmart even though she isn't even an employee.

I wonder if there could possibly be more corporations out there that are good that you seem to be overlooking.

Shouldn't take too long to find enough to offset Walmart.

I'll help. I know someone who works for New Belgium Brewing. That's a good company. But still only a few hundred employees.

I going to make a cup of tea and let the cat in. I'll see what you come up with when I'm done.

Come on now, the corporate world is funneling vast amounts of money away from normal people to create unprecedented levels of profit for a small number at the top. Either we can fight back against that, or we can spend the rest of our lives watching those same corporations gain more and more political power as they lobby and fund politicians to change laws in their favor. It's already happened all over America, and its getting worse by the month. It's time to step up and accept these companies are not our friends.

nt

Ship jobs overseas.
Wages flat.
For profit health insurance.
etc. etc. etc.

All corporations? - no, just most of them...

that doesn't know what absolute truth means.
"Absolute truth is something that is true at all times and in all places. It is something that is always true no matter what the circumstances."
"All corporations? - no, just most of them..."

words don't have meaning in your world?. Maybe that's an absolute truth.

corporate donations bernie sanders

https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=Career&cid=n00000528

Here is the rest of the donors:

Alphabet Inc $361,286 $361,286 $0
University of California $303,690 $303,690 $0
Microsoft Corp $170,559 $170,559 $0
US Postal Service $139,760 $139,760 $0
Apple Inc $131,802 $131,802 $0
US Dept of Veterans Affairs $124,201 $124,201 $0
Kaiser Permanente $122,251 $122,251 $0
IBM Corp $107,145 $107,145 $0
Amazon.com $106,037 $106,037 $0
Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union $105,350 $350 $105,000
US Navy $103,285 $103,285 $0
Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $102,895 $49,895 $53,000
Teamsters Union $101,847 $8,847 $93,000
National Education Assn $100,124 $19,124 $81,000
Moveon.org $98,560 $77,193 $21,367
Boeing Co $97,208 $97,208 $0
State of California $92,805 $92,805 $0
United Auto Workers $83,333 $4,433 $78,900
US Air Force $81,897 $81,897 $0
Intel Corp $81,572 $81,572 $0

is bogus, as was pointed out many times. Interesting.

...who the major contributors are - i.e. from which corporations and industries they work in.

For instance, in the 2016 Dem Presidential campaign, we have:

Sanders: Major employee Industry contributors:
1 Democratic/Liberal $17,386,060
2 Education $5,489,439
3 Retired $3,766,406
4 Health Professionals $2,171,775
5 Misc Business $2,009,425
6 Civil Servants/Public Officials $1,911,699
7 Electronics Mfg & Equip $1,897,716
8 Lawyers/Law Firms $1,855,528
9 Business Services $1,352,205
10 TV/Movies/Music $1,244,676

Clinton:
1 Securities & Investment $84,873,357
2 Retired $68,811,162
3 Lawyers/Law Firms $39,546,759
4 Education $23,998,719
5 TV/Movies/Music $23,627,663
6 Democratic/Liberal $22,009,174
7 Non-Profit Institutions $19,040,651
8 Women's Issues $18,333,264
9 Building Trade Unions $17,376,564
10 Printing & Publishing $17,131,721

From OpenSecrets...

context changes to support one politician, but it's disregarded when inconvenient for another. Individuals donate -- that's the point. Just because one politician is from a state with 600,000 people, and one from a state with 30,000,000 people explains that bogus schtick that was used to insinuate corruption--very insincere and out out of context excuses.

...and responding to your post.

isn't corrupt is not from Open Secrets.

Individuals donate--bigger states with more industry explains it. Taking things out of context to malign someone and then insisting everything be in context for another is hypocritical.

Just stating facts - I did not offer any commentary.

was bogus, which was obvious but was allowed to run rampant without any pushback on the underlying falsities behind it.

As far as I know, nobody on DU is currently discussing Wall Street...

to implied impure donations from "sectors" of industries, which was to support a one-sided smear.

going to win either Democratic or GE, so much less likely to get the money thrown behind them. One of the reasons Sanders has so few corporation is not because of his ethics or belief, but others have a higher support number.

knowing more people and doing the work necessary to meet and greet more people.

alternative facts conversation we have. I am surely trying to figure out how to call out, point out, educate, on facts without getting in trouble. This has been challenging. Help.

Can't even say much more, but yeah.

I especially like how you draw distinctions lacking any relevant difference to better rationalize holding two standards for the same action.

Sacred cows can shape our bias even more creatively than they often already are...

The Whitehouse, the Senate and the House. Sure Trump lied, but the message was one for the middle class.

Then Comey and the Russians and voter suppression, on top of that there is gerrymandering.
http://election.princeton.edu/2015/12/08/the-net-effect-of-gerrymandering-in-nine-states-exceeds-that-of-population-clustering-in-all-50-states/
http://billmoyers.com/story/real-way-2016-election-rigged/
Interesting stuff.

Not so for the Senate and the House. you may be in denial, but Hillary lost a boat load of millennials due to her connections to wall street, her support for fracking, her lack of support to stop the Dakota pipeline, and her late entry into single payor and $15 minimum wage. These may not be what you consider important, but they were the driving force for millions of millennials. You may also believe we can win without millennials, independents, and progressives, but you would be wrong.

1st off, you are saying that the Democrats failed to reach people even though we reached more people. Ya, I get the electoral college, but to say that we didn't reach people when we did reach more is wrong. It was a geographic issue that did us in and not that we did not reach more people.
2nd off, you are saying that we have to have more voters, way more voters to win.
3rd off, the possibility that we lost millennial votes because of someone using language that was populist but not factual is very large.
4th. Gerrymandering.

Sure we reached a hell of a lot of people, but along the way we lost a hell of a lot of people.
I am not a millennial, yet I realize the importance of their commitment and energy that could take this party from losers to winners.
The same holds true for independents. We need them all !
The never ending criticism of Bernie Sanders for pointing out the obvious problems within the democratic party is useless to the future success of the party. If we can't accept criticism, make changes, and realize past errors, we are truly lost. Bernie may or may not be right 100% of the time but he comes from a place of true intent to win the house, the senate and the White House back from the insanity that we now endure.
As to your 3rd point - I was not implying that millennials voted for Trump, not at all, but they did not vote for Hillary for the previous mentioned reasons.
There is work to do to win where we need to and can win. My point is, we can not do it without including those who many here would like to dismiss.

who tell us repeatedly that the Democratic party is the problem and we need to reach out to trump voters, that is the path of loosing for a long, long time. I mean really? Pelosi=bad,, Trump voter= good???????????????????????

I would only point out that some of the Trump voters were reacting to the possibility of the change from the norm. The norm being the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. They could be turned, now that they realize Trump was not the way to change.

Let's try it a little more simply..

'Democratic party is the problem' - No, we have lots of problems, ranging from crooked districting, evil opponents who will lie and cheat to win, and an electorate who don't understand politics and don't really care about it. The way our party operates however is A problem and one of the few that we actually have the means to do something about. We've been losing elections at all levels for a while now, and a substantial part of the reason is our own failings. Sure we could pretend otherwise and just whine about fraud and lying GOP and all the rest, but the truth is that the right aimed to sweep up power from the bottom up, and they've been very successful at it. Either we react to that and start building a real strategy to win that power back, or we'll keep losing.

As for Trump voters, I couldn't give a rats ass whether they're good, bad or anything else. Each one of them is a vote, and we need as many votes as we can get. If some former Trump voters will vote Democrat without us heavily compromising our principles (and they will, a lot of them voted for Obama), then refusing to engage with them because you want them to feel bad about their Trump vote is just incredible dumb quite frankly. This is another problem with the party of late, we seem to have forgotten we're trying to win votes, not moral superiority contests.

Being involved in the music I deal with a lot of people way younger than me. They are not nor eve will be Trump voters. the problem is they view my party as nearly as bad.

they certainly got all those things they wanted, right? I think they need to rethink their voting patterns. There is no perfect candidate. Ever.

.I'm sorry she looked at the political environment and was realistic. apparently only pie in the sky is good enough for some democrats.

Clinton didn't lead america away from the liberal path....that started years before Bill ran for office. You may have remembered Reagan and the Reagan "democrats" who hated minorities and were happy to spread smears about them.

More damage is being done to electing Democrats from the left than from the right.

We expect the right to lie, steal, etc., what we dont yet know how to deal with are people who CLAIM to be on our side who are anything but.

It is why we will not take back the House or Senate and the country will be destroyed.

folks whose top concerns were Terrorism/Immigration voted for Trump.

A majority of millennials voted for HRC. They aren't a homogeneous group, and not all of them embraced the mischaractizations of HRC's policy that you've listed.

Then the floodgates open.

harm the chances of Democrats, I will be banned if I do.

as long as it is negative you can say anything you want about Bernie because he is not a Democrat - so go for it.

alert on it. If you see a dispute over policy, statements, etc then use your powers of persuasion to change minds.

I have admired Bernie for a long time and supported him in the primary. Sometimes he says something or advocates strategy I disagree with. I agree w the issues he fights for, but I will never agree w any politician 100%. This is something DU needs to get used to. No politicians are sacred cows.

by dividing the vote.

He believes in Americas Democracy just as much as Hillary and all the "good guy team" does.

My Dream Team.

Off the top of my head, the ones that spring to mind are net neutrality, health insurance corporations, and the unwillingness of some employers to pay employees a livable wage. There are many companies that do well by their employees, so I think you are right to say all corporations are not in the same category.

Wait a minute, in the first category I overlooked a big one -- the prices on pharmaceuticals.

Sam

nt

Or congressman quist?

Well, I hope.

The platform is really winning in the real world.

But it's a meme they'll keep pushing until we come to our senses.

...

And people don't write threads about how we need her or her voters

that was in the real world, too.

And hers doesn't?

Wasn't that the whole point?

and the top of the ticket matters very much. Coattails are key in Presidential elections.


All of the candidates that you listed from the special elections dramatically outperformed Hillary in terms of her margin vs. Trump even though all were abandoned by the national party.

They ran with sanders by their side

And what happened with the precious white working class? Still preferred republicans.

Bernie doesn't have a magic wand.....he just has a better message.

Hurt the Democratic brand and irritated the very people who do vote for Dems

Also helps that there was no foreign interference on behalf of opponents of mello and quist

I like that you say Bernie doesn't have a wand, because that's exactly my point. If he could actually help democrats win sits I'd forever support him. But so far everyone Bernie has supported lost, as did some of his policy positions on the ballot even in California

Instead, on April 19, The Wall Street Journal ran a story noting that Mello, a practicing Catholic, is pro-life. The story also falsely claimed that Mello had co-sponsored a bill “requiring women to look at an ultrasound image of their fetus before receiving an abortion.” A similar error was made by The Washington Post, which claimed that Mello had “previously backed a bill requiring ultrasounds for women considering abortions,” and then again the following day by David Nir, political director of Daily Kos, who announced the site was withdrawing its endorsement of Mello—a move applauded by Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, who’d launched a 12-part Twitter storm linking to the WSJ article and accusing Sanders and Perez of kicking off their tour with the message “shame women; we’ll support u anyway.”

..as he had been thinking.

He has donated over $170 million to Democratic races in the past two elections.

He could fund his own campaign, and as a billionaire, would have be taken seriously.

you wouldn't vote for him - cause you know that means you would give your vote to Trump !

Last edited Tue Jul 18, 2017, 01:10 PM - Edit history (1)

Harris, Newsom, Castro, Kennedy, Brown, all much younger, are the reasons voters will move on.

Would I vote Sanders over Trump? Hell ya, I am not a fool like so many in the past. But then, it appears some are not allowed to respond to 2016 questions put to them if defending the democratic Party. I hope this simple response to your question is ok, but I will not be having further conversation.

out of convenience, and then quickly dropped it after a loss.

now you've done it.

I agree with the premise of this essay. There does appear to be a war between corporate interests and the people (note that the essay states "corporate interests" and not "all corporations&quot .
I don't have a business or finance background, so I can only explain it in the simplistic way I see it. Generally speaking, the goal of a corporation is to make money, or "profit". It does this by charging more for the good or service than it costs to produce it. Ways to keep production costs down include limiting the pay and/or benefits of employees, limiting number of employees, using inexpensive materials to produce the item and cutting overhead production costs.
Corporations can move production overseas to avoid paying minimum wage and benefits to employees. They can lobby politicians to remove environmental and safety regulations; these are present to protect workers and the public, but they also raise production costs. The corporation's goals are in direct conflict with those of an individual worker, who wants to make a living wage with adequate benefits, who wants to work in safety and live in a clean, healthy environment.
I think Democrats who are funded by corporations appear less willing to fight for the workers and more apt to do what the corporation asks for. Corporate funding is a lose/lose for Democrats: first, they can't compete with Republicans on this so why try? Second, if they do accept corporate money, they are no different than the Republicans in the eyes of the people.
I respect Bernie in that he didn't accept any corporate money, only individual donations. He did really well with that and used that to attract more individual to his progressive platform.

100 employees.

How can a company that does not make a profit pay its employees?

Another way to make a profit is to have a product or service that people want to buy and is fairly priced.

The company I worked for, Amex, rewarded employees well in salary, benefits, bonuses. For crying out loud 20 years ago they were offering employees health insurance for their pets! They were at the forefront of building diversity into the organization in hiring and in evaluating management performance by how well they incorporated diversity into their teams. They stressed involvement in our local communities and incorporated community projects into their annual manager meetings, one year installing a sprinkler/irrigation system in a community park, another year paying for and assembling back to school backpacks for underprivileged kids in the community.

Yes of course the ultimate aim was to make money but they provided a good living for their employees and they give back to the community. So are they a bad corp? And who decides?

And I certainly don't think every corporation is bad, it sounds like Amex is a wonderful company that treats its employees well. I wish every corporation was as good to its people and its community. I work for a health care organization that I am happy with, in fact I have worked for it for 23+ years.
And yes, a corporation needs to make a profit to pay its obligations (including salaries), I guess I'm just frustrated that some corporations want to make a profit at the expense of their employees, community and the environment. They don't want to give back.

Progressives forward! Old ways be damned. They didn't work!!!!!! The people need economic reform.

Thanks for posting the good news about the donor. Bernie is a consistent voice for single payer, getting corporate money out of politics, a foreign policy focusing on diplomacy, worker's rights, reining in Wall St. and the banks, etc.

He's a Senator. He's busy serving his constituents in Vermont and the rest of the country in the Senate.

He didn't go anywhere. He's still in office. He's running again in 2018. I'm sure he'll win again. In the Senate, he consistently votes with the Democratic Caucus, despite being an independent. He's an asset, and I wouldn't want to lose his voice in the Senate.

So, we already have Bernie. Where's the problem?

WE really don't.

The whole Bernie topic is really getting boring and so non productive.

Face it.. he's NOT the ONLY one who has those ideas.

*yawn*

Americans. Prison Corporations...I can go on and on and agree with Sanders. These corporations don't want to label our foods, test our drinking water, be _regulated_ by OUR Federal government.

Majority of the Republican party will take lobby from and back Corporations instead of the American people.

FWIW Bernie didn't invent progressivism nor is he the only Democrat to fight for these issues. But he is a very good at articulating them and that's a very good thing.

the ongoing resentment towards this man.
So what if he ran against Clinton. It is the way primaries are supposed to go. People of same party fight for the nomination.
Unless they are the President.
It was a hard fought primary.
Bernie lost and Clinton won the nomination.
It's over.

but I don't. Maybe if I was a billionaire, I too would think that I needed Bernie.