As the suspense grows and grassroots organizers get ready to head to Philly on July 25th, there’s been a considerable amount of speculation that Bernie Sanders is planning something major for the Democratic National Convention..
Mainstream media outlets have all but abandoned Bernie Sanders as a potential Democratic nominee for president in 2016, but are they right to dismiss him so soon? Our investigation says no — here’s why.
First, there seems to be a few conflicting but hope-inspiring reports from people close to the Sanders campaign that the seasoned politician has more than just a couple cards up his sleeve. While perusing a heavily trafficked Bernie Sanders Facebook group, I came upon the following post:
Despite Hillary Clinton being dubbed the “presumptive nominee” (a title the Associated Press came up with, and which the mainstream media then took and ran with), she did not actually win the 2383 delegates she needs yet, since superdelegates don’t vote until July 25th. But another major factor is the fact that California ballots have still not finished being counted. As of right now, both San Francisco and Los Angeles have flipped from Hillary to Bernie since the CA primary ended on June 7th. What’s most important, however, is not how Bernie Sanders could flip superdelegates either before or at the convention in July, but what Sanders might do as a plan B. Or a plan C. Or a plan D. Or a plan E (and yes there may actually be a plan E!).
Click ‘Next’ below to explore five ways Bernie Sanders could still run successfully as a presidential candidate:
In what some are calling convenient timing, a top suspect in a bribery case involving Clinton Foundation donors and the former United Nations General Assembly President has suddenly died of asphyxiation from a barbell
John Ashe, 61, was pumping iron in his Westchester, New York home when authorities say he dropped a barbell on his own throat, crushing his larynx, according to the local medical examiner, reports CNN. The autopsy report will take around 16 weeks to complete.
This report comes as a shock to many, including the U.S. government who believes Ashe to have been complicit in accepting and facilitating more than $1.3 million in bribes from Chinese billionaire business magnate Ng Lap Seng, a major Clinton Foundation donor. Ashe was awaiting trial and was set to testify on his role in the scandal soon.
Ashe was amid plea negotiations, according to a letter sent to U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick last month from Ashe’s lawyer, Jeremy Schneider, which raises suspicion on whether or not his death is in fact an accident or a murder conducted on behalf of associated parties.
Ashe was accused last year by United States federal authorities of turning his powerful UN position into a “platform for profit” along with Francis Lorenzo, the ambassador to the UN for the Dominican Republic, who’s been accused of helping Ng pay bribes to Ashe and others political figures in the Caribbean.
This event comes just two months after RT America ran a story outing Clinton Foundation donors who have shown up in the Panama Papers document leak:
“A new report by McClatchy, one of more than 100 journalism outlets with access to the leaked documents, reveals a number of Clinton donors and associates used Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, “global provider for legal and trust services,” for their offshore accounting.”
Ng Lan Seng, currently incarcerated in the U.S. on charges of bribery in the John Ashe case, has close ties to the Clinton family and the Democratic National Committee, not only being a major donor to the Clinton Foundation in recent times but also pleading guilty to a felony for illegal contributions to the DNC in a Democratic fund-raising scandal towards the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency and the beginning of Al Gore’s presidential campaign. In 1998, a Senate committee reported Ng, of Macau, China, sent $1.1 million to Little Rock, Arkansas restaurateur, Yah Lin, who in turn contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee for years on Ng’s behalf. Ng’s relationship with the Clintons is well documented as he had visited the White House 10 times from 1994 to 1996 and had his photograph taken with President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, as seen in the attached photo from ABC News. Ng was also, according to court papers, served in July 2014 with a subpoena to appear Sept. 17, 2014 in connection with an unrelated investigation, but never showed up.
USA Today reports on Ng’s recent incarceration,
At a bail hearing Saturday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Richenthal described Yin, a U.S. citizen, as Ng’s right-hand man in his U.S. operations, someone who played a key role in transmitting funds.
The prosecutor said Yin spoke to law enforcement after his Saturday arrest, admitting he transmitted money on Ng’s behalf to pay people to do unlawful things, though Yin interrupted the prosecutor, saying: “That is not true,” according to a hearing transcript.
Federal Defender Sabrina Shroff, representing Yin, said at the hearing that her client, educated in the United States with family here, may have served as Ng’s “mouthpiece” but the cash and the investments were not Yin’s.
“He doesn’t know what Mr. Seng is doing with the money at the end of the day,” Shroff said.
Ng’s arrest occurred in September of 2015 and spurred the investigation into John Ashe when authorities discovered Ng had, according to Manhattan federal court papers, smuggled over $4.5 million into the United States over several years with the excuse that he had used the money for gambling and buying paintings from art dealers. According to the New York District Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI, Ng and Yin were previously arrested on September 19, 2015, based on a separate complaint alleging that Ng agreed to make false statements to Customs and Border Protection officers about the true purpose of the cash that Ng and Yin had brought into the U.S. from China since 2013.
Brexit is more than just a statement of financial independence, it’s a message to the richest people of the world.
Opponents of the British exit from the European Union, such as billionaire George Soros, warned that it would result in catastrophe for Britain’s people. Turns out, it really was a catastrophe for him.
Yesterday, 15 of Great Britain’s wealthiest citizens just had around $5.5 billion dollars vanish from their bank accounts as the definitive departure from the European Union occurred after a lengthy and deeply troubled discussion about financial sovereignty. The richest man in the UK, Gerald Grosvenor, was hit the worst with a loss of over a billion dollars in assets, reports Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Others who were hit almost equally as hard were real estate magnate Charles Cadogan, Philip Green (owner of Topshop, a women’s clothing company), and money man Bruno Schroder of Schroders Plc. But the destruction didn’t end there.
According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, the world’s 400 richest people lost about $127.4 billion yesterday. Zero Hedge reports,
“Global equity markets reeled from the news that British voters elected to leave the European Union. The billionaires lost 3.2 percent of their total net worth, bringing the combined sum to $3.9 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The biggest decline belonged to Europe’s richest person, Amancio Ortega, who lost more than $6 billion, while nine others dropped more than $1 billion, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the wealthiest person in the U.K.”
It’s obvious that the voters of the United Kingdom were well aware of the outcome from leaving the European Union and aren’t that unhappy about it — aside from the billionaires.
Once again, MSNBC pretends that Bernie Sanders is done with his campaign, twisting what he said out of context in order to spread disinformation and urge him to concede (Hint: he’s not conceding before July 25th).
If you didn’t think a “reputable” news source like MSNBC could stoop to the level of Fox News this year, you’re naive.
This entire presidential election season has been riddled with a media blackout against Bernie Sanders of unprecedented proportion, blowing the minds of millennials and re-igniting the call to revolution by Baby Boomers and Generation Xers who believe in his message that crony capitalism and an eroding middle class has got to stop. Between ridiculously large super PACs and a hidden agenda predetermined since at least early 2015, when superdelegates were polled to the tune of almost 100% of them pledging for Hillary Clinton before the race even started, it’s obvious that the mainstream media has been bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign.
That’s why, when asked if he would vote for Hillary Clinton in November to defeat Trump and Bernie Sanders gave a hypothetical “yes” to the newscasters at MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning, I was not shocked to see the channel immediately post “BREAKING NEWS — SANDERS: ‘YES’ I’LL VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON” at the bottom of the screen. This is the sort of sound bite they’ve been foaming at the mouth for since long before the California primary and, in their minds, they finally got it.
What did he actually say? In the video below, you can see he was clearly talking about voting for her to beat Donald Trump, not because he wants her as president. He clearly goes on to explain his stance in detail, even saying,
“My job is to fight for the strongest possible platform in the Democratic convention and, as we speak, in St. Louis that is going on right now. And that means a platform that represents working people, that stands up to Big Money interests. I don’t want to parse words. What I am trying to do right now is to make sure that the Democratic Party becomes a party that represents working people, not Wall Street, that is prepared to have an agenda speaks to the need of creating millions of jobs, raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour, dealing with climate change, dealing with pay equity.”
And even after saying this, they STILL pressured him for an answer to whether or not he would be officially conceding. He answered in his well-recognized firm and asserted political stance with,
“Why would I want to do that when I want to fight to make sure we have the best platform that we possibly can, that we win the most delegates that we can. The goal of our campaign was to transform this nation.”
The sad part is that any loyal fans of the news station tuning in without their volume up wouldn’t have heard Sanders go on to explain how, right now, the importance should be on turning the Democratic Party in a party that actually represents the people.
What’s worse is that the newscasters asked if he thought the “disunity” within the party would put Hillary at a disadvantage against Donald Trump in the general election. The REAL ISSUE here is within the Senator’s answer to the question, an issue they really don’t seem to care much about,
“You talk about ‘disunity’, I’m talking about involving the American people in the political process and wanting to have a government and a party that represents all of us. When you have disunity, what we’re talking about is kids can’t afford to go to college, or leaving college $50,000 in debt, people dying because they don’t get to a doctor when they should. Talk about disunity is the fact that we have 47 million people living in poverty.”
WATCH: Get the context for Bernie’s conversation about fixing the DNC, restoring the middle class, and the negative effects of corporate globalization in the video below:
The newscasters have a hard time moving on from Bernie’s answer, and that’s because they don’t want to talk about what he’s talking about. All they care about is ratings, and that’s because they make more money than the average working class American. This attitude from the mainstream media makes Bernie’s very presence only that much more defiant and strengthens his platform. They are giving him a medium in which to reach a very large audience, something they’ve barely done over the course of the 2016 primary season.
Lars Beniger
Lars is a freelance journalist, part-time activist, copywriter and technical writer residing in the Manhattan, New York area. For 7 years, Lars has reported on current events, political spars, technology and environmental issues.
The 2016 American presidential election will boil down to one simple question:
Who do we want to be as Americans?
The language used by the leading presidential candidates reveals that both candidates want to appeal to what it means to be American – though this may mean different things for each of them.
On Tuesday, presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton said:
Making Donald Trump our president would undo much of the progress we’ve made and put our economy at risk and beyond that, this election will say something about who we are as a people.
What often distinguishes their rhetoric is that Trump talks more about non-American groups and “who they are,” which has the potential to create sharp divides and even animosity between “us” and “them.”
For example, Trump said in a speech attacking Hillary:
Under her plan, we would admit hundreds of thousands of refugees from the most dangerous countries on Earth – with no way to screen who they are or what they believe.
As a social psychologist, I study how leaders communicate about identity. My colleague, Michelle Bligh, and I analyzed the rhetoric of 20th-century American presidents and found that charismatic presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan followed a clear and compelling pattern of communication that distinguished them from less charismatic presidents. Charismatic presidents painted a vivid picture of American identity in their speeches.
The power of identity
Why is talking about American identity so powerful?
Group memberships, like being American, tap into our basic human need to feel like we belong. Groups can reduce our uncertainties about ourselves, and provide us with identity or a script of “who I am.” Group identity can have a profound influence on how we think, feel and act, and we are susceptible to influence from other fellow group members.
We take cues about what being American entails from our leaders. That means that if a leader is able to redefine what it means to be American, he or she is able to influence how you think, feel and act.
For example, in a speech earlier this month, Hillary Clinton said:
And I believe with all my heart that America is an exceptional country … We are not a country that cowers behind walls. We lead with purpose, and we prevail.
Politicians adjust their language to send a message about “who we are” as a group and “what it means” to be a group member. In many cases, they articulate an appealing vision of the future and try to align “who we are” with their vision.
This technique is called “social identity framing.” When done right, it can profoundly influence people and help leaders gain support for their visions.
Using ‘we’ language
A key marker of using identity to captivate an audience is the use of “we” language. This language includes words like “we,“ “us” and “our.” It also references the group (“American”), the people in the group (“Democrats” “Republicans”) and a general emphasis on the collective (“nation”) in communication.
One of the best examples of “we” language is in President Obama’s remarks at the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches in 2015. President Obama’s speech helps clearly define how he sees “who we are” as Americans and “what it means” to be American.
My research shows that leaders who use high levels of “we” language are seen as more persuasive, effective, charismatic, representative of the group, likable and trustworthy than leaders who don’t. This language also provokes more positive emotions about the leader’s vision, and increases support for the vision and confidence that the group can make the vision into a reality.
Who will Americans be in 2016?
Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump express “who we are” and “what we should stand for” and “where we are going” as Americans, while simultaneously projecting themselves as an embodiment of their own version of American identity.
Each candidate communicates a very different version of what it means to be American. People will likely vote for the candidate that most closely typifies the version of American identity that resonates with them.
The election will reflect who we believe we are as Americans. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
This requires projecting an American identity that is broad and inclusive enough to appeal to our diverse political and demographic population. This is not an easy task.
As we head to the polls in November, we are not just voting for a leader’s personal characteristics and qualifications. We are voting for a vision of what it means to be an American.
The election will determine who we are as Americans for years to come.
Having outlasted all his opponents, Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton is closing in on locking up the Democratic nomination.
Clinton and Trump may have won primaries, but are they really representative of what the American people want? In fact, as we will show, it is John Kasich and Bernie Sanders who are first in the nation’s esteem. Trump and Clinton come last.
So how has it come to this? The media has played a big role, of course, but that Trump versus Clinton will almost surely be the choice this November is the result of the totally absurd method of election used in the primaries: majority voting.
This is a strong statement. But as mathematicians who have spent the last dozen years studying voting systems, we are going to show you why it’s justified and how this problem can be fixed.
The problem with majority voting
With majority voting (MV), voters tick the name of one candidate, at most, and the numbers of ticks determine the winner and the order of finish. It’s a system that is used across the U.S. (and in many other nations) to elect presidents as well as senators, representatives and governors.
But it has often failed to elect the candidate preferred by the majority.
In 2000, for example, George W. Bush was elected president because of Ralph Nader’s candidacy. In the contested state of Florida, Bush had 2,912,790 votes, Al Gore 2,912,253 (a mere 537 fewer) and Nader 97,488. There is little doubt that the large majority of those who voted for Nader, and so preferred him to the others, much preferred Gore to Bush. Had they been able to express this preference, Gore would have been elected with 291 Electoral College votes to Bush’s 246. Similar dysfunctions have also occurred in France.
Imagine how different the U.S. and the world might be today if Gore had won.
The 2016 primaries
A quick glance at the U.S. presidential primaries and caucuses held on or before March 1 shows that when Trump was the “winner,” he typically garnered some 40 percent of the votes. However, nothing in that result factors in the opinions of the 60 percent of voters who cast ballots for someone else.
Eight of the many GOP presidential contenders. Jim Young/Reuters
As Trump is a particularly divisive candidate, it is safe to suppose that most – or at least many – of them strongly opposed him. The media, however, focused on the person who got the largest number of votes – which means Trump. On the Democratic side of the ledger, the media similarly poured its attention on Hillary Clinton, ignoring Bernie Sanders until widespread enthusiastic support forced a change.
The source of the problem
An election is nothing but an invented device that measures the electorate’s support of the candidates, ranks them according to their support and declares the winner to be the first in the ranking.
The fact is that majority voting does this very badly.
With MV, voters cannot express their opinions on all candidates. Instead, each voter is limited to backing just one candidate, to the exclusion of all others in the running.
Bush defeated Gore because Nader voters were unable to weigh in on the other two. Moreover, as we argue further on, majority voting can go wrong even when there are just two candidates.
The point is that it is essential for voters to be able to express the nuances of their opinions.
MJ asks voters to express their opinions much more accurately than simply voting for one candidate. The ballot offers a spectrum of choices and charges voters with a solemn task:
To be the President of the United States of America, having taken into account all relevant considerations, I judge that this candidate as president would be a: Great President | Good President | Average President | Poor President | Terrible President
To see exactly how MJ ranks the candidates, let’s look at specific numbers.
We were lucky to find on the web that the above question was actually posed in a March Pew Research Center poll of 1,787 registered voters of all political stripes. (It should be noted that neither the respondents nor the pollsters were aware that the answers could be the basis for a method of election.) The Pew poll also included the option of answering “Never Heard Of” which here is interpreted as worse than “Terrible” since it amounts to the voter saying the candidate doesn’t exist.
As is clear in the table below, people’s opinions are much more detailed than can be expressed with majority voting. Note in particular the relatively high percentages of voters who believe Clinton and especially Trump would make terrible presidents (Pew reports that Trump’s “Terrible” score increased by 6 percent since January.)
Using majority judgment to calculate the ranked order of the candidates from these evaluations or grades is straightforward. Start from each end of the spectrum and add percentages until a majority of voters’ opinions are included.
Taking John Kasich as an example, 5 percent believe he is “Great,” 5+28=33 percent that he is “Good” or better, and 33+39=72 percent (a majority) that he is “Average” or better. Looked at from the other end, 9 percent “Never Heard” of him, 9+7=16 percent believe he is “Terrible” or worse, 16+13=29 percent that he is “Poor” or worse, and 29+39= 68 percent (a majority) that he is “Average” or worse.
Both calculations end on majorities for “Average,” so Kasich’s majority-grade is “Average President.” (Mathematically, the calculations from both directions for a given candidate will always reach majorities at the same grade.)
Similarly calculated, Sanders, Clinton and Cruz all have the same majority-grade, “Average President.” Trump’s is “Poor President,” ranking him last.
To determine the MJ ranking among the four who all are rated “Average,” two more calculations are necessary.
The first looks at the percentage of voters who rate a candidate more highly than his or her majority-grade, the second at the percentage who rate the candidate lower than his or her majority-grade. This delivers a number called the “gauge.” Think of it as a scale where in some cases the majority grade leans more heavily toward a higher ranking and in others more heavily toward a lower ranking.
In Kasich’s case, 5+28=33 percent evaluated him higher than “Average,” and 13+7+9=29 percent rated him below “Average.” Because the larger share is on the positive side, his gauge is +33 percent. For Sanders, 36 percent evaluated him above and 39 percent below his majority-grade. With the larger share on the negative side, his gauge is -39 percent.
A candidate is ranked above another when his or her majority-grade is better or, if both have the same majority-grade, according to their gauges (see below). This rule is the logical result of majorities deciding on candidates’ grades instead of the usual rule that ranks candidates by the numbers of votes they get.
When voters are able to express their evaluations of every candidate – the good and the bad – the results are turned upside-down from those with majority voting.
According to majority judgment, the front-runners in the collective opinion are actually Kasich and Sanders. Clinton and Trump are the trailers. From this perspective the dominant media gave far too much attention to the true trailers and far too little to the true leaders.
Tellingly, MJ also shows society’s relatively low esteem for politicians. All five candidates are evaluated as “Average” presidents or worse, and none as “Good” presidents or better.
Majority voting’s failure with two candidates
But, you may object, how can majority voting on just two candidates go wrong? This seems to go against everything you learned since grade school where you raised your hand for or against a classroom choice.
The reason MV can go wrong even with only two candidates is because it does not obtain sufficient information about a voter’s intensity of support.
Take, as an example, the choice between Clinton and Trump, whose evaluations in the Pew poll are given in the first table above.
Lining up their grades from highest to lowest, every one of Clinton’s is either above or the same as Trump’s. Eleven percent, for example, believe Clinton would make a “Great” president to 10 percent for Trump. Trump’s percentages lead Clinton’s only for the Terrible’s and Never Heard Of’s. Given these opinions, in other words, it’s clear that any decent voting method must rank Clinton above Trump.
However, majority voting could fail to do so.
To see why, suppose the “ballots” of the Pew poll were in a pile. Each could be looked at separately. Some would rate Clinton “Average” and Trump “Poor,” some would rate her “Good” and him “Great,” others would assign them any of the 36 possible couples of grades. We can, therefore, find the percentage of occurrence of every couple of grades assigned to Trump and Clinton.
We do not have access to the Pew poll “ballots.” However, one could come up with many different scenarios where the individual ballot percentages are in exact agreement with the overall grades each received in the first table.
Among the various scenarios possible, we have chosen one that could, in theory, be the true one. Indeed, you can check for yourself that it does assign the candidates the grades each received: reading from left to right, Clinton, for example, had 10+12=22 percent “Good,” 16+4=20 percent “Average,” and so on; and the same holds for Trump.
So what does this hypothetical distribution of the ballots concerning the two tell us?
The first column on the left says 10 percent of the voters rated Clinton “Good” and Trump “Great.” In a majority vote they would go for Trump. And moving to the tenth column, 4 percent rated Clinton “Poor” and Trump “Terrible.” In a majority vote this group would opt for Clinton. And so on.
If you add up the votes in each of these 11 columns, Trump receives the votes of the people whose opinions are reflected in four columns: 10+16+12+15=53 percent; Clinton is backed by the voters with the opinions of columns with 33 percent support; and 14 percent are undecided. Even if the undecided all voted for Clinton, Trump would carry the day.
This shows that majority voting can give a very wrong result: a triumphant victory for Trump when Clinton’s grades are consistently above his!
A bird’s-eye view
Voting has been the subject of intense mathematical research since 1950, when the economist Kenneth Arrow published his famous “impossibility theorem,” one of the two major contributions for which he was awarded the 1972 Nobel Prize.
Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794) was a French philosopher and mathematician.
This theorem showed that if voters have to rank candidates – to say, in other words, who comes first, second and so forth – there will inevitably be one of two major potential failures. Either there may be no clear winner at all, the so-called “Condorcet paradox” occurs, or what has come to be called the “Arrow paradox” may occur.
The Arrow paradox is familiar to Americans because of what happened in the 2000 election. Bush beat Gore because Nader was in the running. Had Nader not run, Gore would have won. Surely, it is absurd for the choice between two candidates to depend on whether or not some minor candidate is on the ballot!
Majority judgment resolves the conundrum of Arrow’s theorem: neither the Condorcet nor the Arrow paradox can occur. It does so because voters are asked for more accurate information, to evaluate candidates rather than to rank them.
MJ’s rules, based on the majority principle, meet the basic democratic goals of voting systems. With it:
Voters are able to express themselves more fully, so the results depend on much more information than a single vote.
The process of voting has proven to be natural, easy and quick: we all know about grading from school (as the Pew poll implicitly realized).
Candidates with similar political profiles can run without impinging on each other’s chances: a voter can give high (or low) evaluations to all.
The candidate who is evaluated best by the majority wins.
MJ is the most difficult system to manipulate: blocs of voters who exaggerate the grades they give beyond their true opinions can only have a limited influence on the results.
By asking more of voters, by showing more respect for their opinions, participation is encouraged. Even a voter who evaluates all candidates identically (e.g., all are “Terrible”) has an effect on the outcome.
Final grades – majority-grades – enable candidates and the public to understand where each stands in the eyes of the electorate.
If the majority decides that no candidate is judged an “Average President” or better, the results of the election may be rescinded, and a new slate of candidates demanded.
It should come as no surprise that in answer to a recent Pew poll’s question “Do you think the primaries have been a good way of determining who the best qualified nominees are or not?” only 35 percent of respondents said yes.
Democracies everywhere are suffering. Voters protest. Citizens don’t vote. Support for the political extremes are increasing. One of the underlying causes, we argue, is majority voting as it is now practiced, and its influence on the media.
Misled by the results of primaries and polls, the media concentrates its attention on candidates who seem to be the leaders, but who are often far from being deemed acceptable by a majority of the electorate. Majority judgment would correct these failings.
Romanian hacker Guccifer 2.0 shared another generous excerpt from their treasure trove of stolen government server documents on Thursday.
Last week, a free and anonymous WordPress blog set up by someone calling themselves Guccifer 2.0 was widely shared on social media purporting to contain documents the hacker stole from the Democratic National Convention and Hillary Clinton. While that blog post only contained a little less than 10 documents, today the hacker shared yet another much larger load of documents, including some regarding The Clinton Foundation, and gave an interview to VICE magazine’s technology division Motherboard.
This release, Guccifer 2.0 says, is making good on his promise from a week ago, but it is still unclear as to whether it proves any criminal wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton or the DNC. However, it does show some major donors (presumably Super PAC donors) including Steven Spielberg, Bill Maher, Chelsea Handler and others, along with a list of Hillary’s speeches (no transcripts, unfortunately).
Despite the hacker claiming to be Romanian and hating “being attributed to Russia,” an official from the DNC, Motherboard reports, said in an emailed statement,
“our experts are confident in their assessment that the Russian government hackers were the actors responsible for the breach detected in April, and we believe that the subsequent release and the claims around it may be a part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians.”
All of the files contained in the zip file, now being widely spread online, are dated in April of 2016, so it does correlate at least to the time frame of the suspected hack of the DNC earlier this year.
“We are just waiting,” says Lisa, a 19-year-old college student, the anxiety palpable in her voice. Lisa is a U.S. citizen, born and raised in South Texas. Her parents and older brother, however, are undocumented.
The entire family’s lives may be turned upside down in just a few days.
This month, the Supreme Court will issue a decision in the case of United States v. Texas. The court will decide on whether to uphold two immigration initiatives announced by President Barack Obama in 2014 – Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, also known as DAPA, and the expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA+.
A long legal battle
As many as five million people nationwide are eligible to apply for protection under these programs. However, these actions have been on hold since February 2015, when a federal judge in Texas and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed to hear a challenge from 26 states. They questioned Obama’s authority to use executive actions to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation.
The actual focus of the case is quite mundane: driver’s license fees. The state of Texas has argued that is would suffer significant
financial impact if required to subsidize the cost of licenses to people qualifying for the president’s programs.
On the other hand, the federal government has argued that the president’s actions are a lawful use of “prosecutorial discretion” – that is, the power to influence a deportation case by deciding whether and which charges to pursue. They also argue that the states lack “standing,” or legal capacity, to file the lawsuit.
The impact of these programs is expected to extend beyond the eligible immigrants. More than 10 million people live in a household with at least one DAPA-eligible adult. These are typically “mixed-status” families, which include various combinations of U.S. citizens, permanent legal residents, undocumented immigrants, individuals in legal limbo or in temporary statuses. The majority of children in mixed-status families – an estimated 4.3 million children – are U.S. citizens by birth, like Lisa.
Since 2013, I have been investigating the experiences of mixed-status families to understand how the undocumented legal status of just one person in a household can impact the other members of the family. This includes differences in health care access, educational attainment, economic stability, social mobility and general well-being. People like Lisa are often unable to experience the full rights of citizenship, and live in fear and uncertainty because of their family members’ susceptibility to deportation.
In other words, children who are U.S. citizens are directly impacted by their parents’ undocumented status on a daily basis.
What is deferred action?
Deferred action provides short-term relief from deportation for select individuals. Prior programs, such as the 2012 DACA program, offered some of those who arrived in the U.S. as children (often called “DREAMers”) the ability to apply for two years of deportation deferral. The current executive actions before the Supreme Court expand this program in two ways.
Families attend a legal workshop on immigration in Chicago. REUTERS/Joshua Lott
First, they widen the eligibility criteria to more groups of childhood arrivals. Second, and most notably, they expand the program to parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. These programs do not represent amnesty, do not lead to permanent residency or citizenship and have clearly delineated eligibility criteria and cutoff dates, such as age and date of entry to the U.S. Each case is reviewed individually. Not everyone who is eligible will be approved.
The programs allow some undocumented immigrants to temporarily remain in the country and obtain work permits and a social security number, if they have been here for at least five years and have not committed felonies or repeated misdemeanors. An estimated 70 percent of adults eligible for DAPA have lived in the U.S. for 10 or more years, and one-quarter have lived here for at least 20 years.
In the coming days, three possible scenarios emerge. If the Supreme Court sides with the Obama administration, DAPA and DACA+ will go into effect, and up to five million people will be eligible for temporary relief.
The second possibility is that the court will rule against the Obama administration: measures will remain blocked and the status quo upheld.
The third possibility is a 4-4 tie, which is not an unlikely scenario because of the unusual current makeup of the nation’s highest court following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. In this case, the decisions of the lower courts would remain in place and the initiatives blocked, for now.
A $100 billion difference
Mixed-status households experience high levels of poverty, since undocumented adults are generally forced to find jobs in low-paying, unregulated sectors of the economy. These measures would provide individuals with work authorization for three years, and could raise the average family’s income by 10 percent.
The White House Council on Economic Advisers has conservatively estimated that DAPA and DACA+ would raise the nation’s GDP by 0.5 percent after 10 years. That’s equivalent to an additional US$100 billion in real GDP in today’s dollars, and would cut federal deficits by $30 billion in 10 years. Overall, this would result in an economic boost, increased productivity and a greater tax base, since recipients of deferred action would pay taxes.
Not only does a work permit provide the opportunity for holders to earn money in fields suitable to their skill level, but it protects people from crimes such as wage theft and labor trafficking. It would also allow many recipients to open bank accounts, establish credit and obtain auto or home loans for the first time. The original DACA program, announced in 2012, helped recipients increase participation in the labor force and earn higher wages than they did before.
Easing burdens on families
Under these programs, many men and women will be able to obtain driver’s licenses for the first time, depending on the state in which they live. This ensures every driver is trained, tested, licensed and insured. It also increases their ability to get to work, school or doctor appointments. Additionally, deferred action recipients would have the ability to petition for travel to their home countries for family emergencies, such as illness or funerals.
A student who has benefited from DACA speaks. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
While recipients of deferred action are not eligible for any health care provisions under the Affordable Care Act, some states have offered plans for low-income individuals with this status. With a work permit, many would gain access to employer-based health insurance plans.
In addition, eliminating parents’ susceptibility for deportation can reduce barriers to accessing medical care for their children. Despite eligibility for benefits such as Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Programs, children of undocumented parents access these programs at a lower rate than those with citizen parents.
Young adults are more likely to seek out and be successful with a college education or vocational training if they have deferred action status. While exclusion from federal financial aid still applies, some states offer assistance to these students. A work permit and driver’s license increase their ability to pay for and attend college.
Overall, the benefits of deferred action programs are temporary and only partial. The men, women and children these programs will affect live daily knowing that their ability to remain in the country can be stripped from them at any moment, including by the next president. Nonetheless, deferred action initiatives offer significant benefits to families, and to a nation struggling to find solutions for a growing number of individuals living with the threat of deportation.
Those who will be impacted by the Supreme Court’s decision are optimistic but cautious.
“[I have] mixed feelings. I know my parents and brother would really benefit. But at the same time, we’ve been disappointed before,” Lisa says, referencing the stalled efforts at comprehensive immigration reform in years past.
Bill Maher proved he pretended to be a Bernie Sanders supporter for the past few months when he called Bernie’s brand of socialism ‘Santaism’, saying Hillary won “fair and square”
I don’t watch Bill Maher all that often, mostly because he’s an all out dickhead and that’s funny sometimes but other times he just makes me angry because he’s wrong but smugly acts like he’s right. This was one of those times.
After saying Hillary Clinton won the candidacy “fair and square”, Maher started the last portion of his ‘New Rules’ segment by stating “Even though Bernie didn’t win the nomination, he’s already won the future.” Yet, he went on to say that Bernie Sander’s plan was not socialism but “Santaism”, saying millennials have “gotten a little too used to getting shit for free.”
The problem with all of this, of course, is that Hillary did not officially win the nomination, yet, for starters. But more importantly, it’s not Bernie’s followers that want things for free, it’s Bernie’s plan itself that taxes the wealthy heavily in order to help the poor. It’s not “Santaism”, it’s more like “Robin-Hoodism”, and it actually makes sense, considering most of the developed world is already doing it.
We all know why Maher thinks this: because he’s a multi-millionaire that doesn’t want to share his money.
Watch the segment below:
Lars Beniger
Lars is a freelance journalist, part-time activist, copywriter and technical writer residing in the Manhattan, New York area. For 7 years, Lars has reported on current events, political spars, technology and environmental issues.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, often blamed for ignoring Democrats in historically Republican leaning states and leaving the Democratic Party virtually bankrupt going into the 2016 election cycle, is set to leave her post as head of the DNC.
Her replacement, Brandon Davis, is a union leader for the Service Employees International Union, reports multiple news outlets, including CNN, despite no official announcement being made. Schultz will still be the chairwoman, but Davis will be the official General Election Chief of Staff, which makes him the official leader of the Democratic Party throughout the general election.
After a meeting between presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, the Clinton campaign has made it clear they are listening to the voices of the Sanders campaign who are outraged by Schultz’s actions throughout the 2015-2016 presidential race, and the DNC in general.
Sanders, who spoke through a live televised speech through the medium of The Young Turks on Thursday, explained that he was not conceding and was continuing the fight to change the Democratic party through to the convention on July 25th and beyond. He did not explain whether he would endorse Clinton, despite the change in leadership in the party.
sent $1.1 million to Little Rock, Arkansas restaurateur, Yah Lin, who in turn contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic National Committee for years on Ng’s behalf. Ng’s relationship with the Clintons is well documented as he had visited the White House 10 times from 1994 to 1996 and had his photograph taken with President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, as seen in the attached photo from 
