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Tavis Smiley And Bernie Sanders: The Interview

The Article: Senator Bernie Sanders Interviewed By Tavis Smiley in PBS.

The Text: Tavis: Bernie Sanders is the longest serving Independent in U.S. Congressional history now in his third term in the Senate from Vermont after 16 years in the House. In addition to his seat on the Senate Budget Committee, he is also the new Chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee. He joins us tonight from Washington. Senator, it’s always good to have you back on this program, sir. Thanks for your time.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Great to be with you, Tavis.

Tavis: Let me start with where we are now. We are caught between the president’s inauguration day speech and his State of the Union address. I want to cover both in just a second and so much more while I’ve got you tonight. But let me start with the inauguration speech. It’s the first time that you and I have had a chance to talk in person. I was in your state a few weeks ago and spoke in Burlington, as you know, but we didn’t get a chance to talk that day.

So let me just start by asking your thoughts about the inauguration speech. The media story on the speech was that it was a very liberal, very progressive, view that the president expressed for what he wanted to get done in the next four years. As, again, the longest serving Independent, how did you hear that speech?

Sanders: Well, you know, the phraseology of liberal, we have to ask ourselves exactly what that means. Was it a real tribute to the struggle of gay people in this country? Absolutely. First time gay issues were ever mentioned in an inaugural. Was it important that he mentioned global warming and the fact that global warming is the major planetary crisis this world faces? That was extremely important.

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Al Gore On The Corruption Of American Democracy

The Article: Gore: Democracy in America has been ‘functionally corrupted’ in CNN Global Public Square.

The Text: Fareed speaks with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore about democracy in the United States and why he thinks the campaign finance system needs an overhaul.

You feel as though a combination of special interests and money have essentially completely corrupted democracy in America.

Functionally corrupted it, yes. You know, we’re told that corporations are people, that money is speech and that might makes right. And we know all of [these] things are contrary to what the United States of America is all about. But because our elected representatives now have to spend most of their time begging rich people to give them money, begging corporations and special interests to give them money, they spend more time worry about the effect of their actions, votes and speeches on these big donors, some of them anonymous, than the time they should be spending thinking about how to serve the interests of the publics they represent.

And you were in the Senate. So when you are raising all that money, when – it’s gotten much worse since you were there – those people are expecting certain lines and regulatory codes, lines in the tax code, correct? They’re not paying $50,000 to have breakfast with a congressman because of his personality.

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Will The American Economy Still See Red In 2013?

The Article: America’s economy: Looking Better in The Economist.

The Text: WHEN Barack Obama was sworn in four years ago, the economic figures were terrifying. A financial crisis and a savage recession were in full swing, and house foreclosures were soaring. The day of his inauguration, panic about the banks sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 300 points. At the start of his second term, by contrast, the Dow hit a five-year high, while a widely followed index of investor fear called the VIX reached a near-six-year low (see table).

The change in mood is understandable. The financial crisis and recession ended more than three years ago. The housing market is firmly on the mend. Employment is growing. The euro zone, though feeble, is no longer about to collapse. And the threat of home-grown crisis appeared to recede when Republicans in the House forbore to use the threat of default to extract spending cuts. On January 18th they said they would raise the Treasury’s statutory ceiling until May 18th; previously, the Treasury had expected to run out of borrowing authority as early as mid-February.

On average, the economy performs less well in a president’s second term than in his first (see chart). That pattern probably does not apply to Mr Obama. Since his first term was so difficult, the next, by rights, ought to be better.

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The 21st Century Untouchables

The Article: Crime and No Punishment by Dennis Kelleher in The Huffington Post.

The Text: PBS’s Frontline had a terrific show last night called the “Untouchables” and was another report on the fact that not one single Wall Street bank or executive has been criminally prosecuted for any conduct related to the largest financial collapse since the Great Crash of 1929. Watch the show here.

While that’s bad enough, what’s worse is watching the most senior so-called law enforcement officials in our country offer one pathetic excuse after another for why they have so grossly failed to do their job. To non-lawyers or non-professionals, these excuses may seem reasonable or plausible, but frankly none of them withstand the simplest scrutiny. That is why none of those senior officials will subject themselves to a public debate or “unfriendly” audience where real questions — and follow-up questions — are asked and they aren’t allowed to spin or squirm their way out of answering.

The show’s exclusive focus was on criminal prosecution, but the track record of the SEC is even worse in some ways. The SEC pretends to enforce the law on Wall Street with puny slap-on-the-wrist fines (that the biggest banks get to pay with shareholders money and insurance policies) that misleads the public into believing that the SEC is doing their job, while signaling to Wall Street that they have nothing to worry about. Indeed, the SEC has given Wall Street a road map to avoid future liability for their senior executives. As we have detailed, “SEC Enforcement Has Incentivized, Rewarded and Guaranteed More Wall Street Crime.”

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Why The Justice System Targeted Aaron Swartz

The Article: Why Did the Justice System Target Aaron Swartz by Steven Hsieh in Rolling Stone.

The Text: Hundreds of mourners filled the Great Hall at New York’s Cooper Union on January 19th to honor the life of Aaron Swartz, the Internet activist who took his own life earlier this month at age 26.

Swartz was well-known in technology circles for helping develop the RSS web feed format and the popular site Reddit, among other accomplishments. At the time of his death, he was facing 13 felony charges and up to 50 years in prison: Prosecutors had accused him of using MIT’s network to download too many scholarly articles from an academic database called JSTOR.

Swartz’s friends and family have said they believe he was driven to his death by a justice system that hounded him needlessly over an alleged crime with no real victims. “[He was] forced by the government to spend every fiber of his being on this damnable, senseless trial,” his partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman said at the memorial, “with no guarantee that he could exonerate himself at the end of it.”

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