The history of American democracy, to say the least, has been checkered. Our nation was founded at a time when people of African descent were held in bondage. After slavery was abolished, they were forced to endure legal discrimination for another 100 years.
Unemployment insurance, abolishing child labor, the 40-hour work week, collective bargaining, strong banking regulations, deposit insurance, and job programs that put millions of people to work were all described, in one way or another, as 'socialist.' Yet, these programs have become the fabric of our nation and the foundation of the middle class.
What being a socialist means is... that you hold out... a vision of society where poverty is absolutely unnecessary, where international relations are not based on greed... but on cooperation... where human beings can own the means of production and work together rather than having to work as semi-slaves to other people who can hire and fire.
We all remember the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst oil spill in U.S. history. What is less well known is that BP is claiming a 9.9 billion tax deduction on the money they had to spend cleaning up their own mess and paying for damages they caused. That is absurd.
Each and every year, the United States loses an estimated $100 billion a year in tax revenues due to offshore tax abuses by the wealthy and large corporations.
Today the biggest problem in caring for those with AIDS is no longer mainly a medical or scientific problem. The crisis is access to affordable drugs.
Ted Kennedy will go down in history as one of the giants of the U.S. Senate and one the most accomplished legislators in American history.
The bottom line is that when Senator Inhofe says, 'Global warming is a hoax,' he is just dead wrong, according to the vast majority of climate scientists.
The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis.
Nowadays you don't need to be a senator or a CEO or a celebrity to have a voice in the media, and if you happen to be a senator, a CEO or a celebrity, you have a thousand people each with their own respective audiences to hold you accountable.
We still have people in the active duty, and if people are feeling ill, if they're experiencing various symptoms and they're still in the active duty, they're less likely to come forward because that could result in their medical discharge.
I certainly did not know what the word 'socialism' meant growing up, because I was brought up in a very nonpolitical family. My brother was somewhat active, but my parents were not.
Progressive activists are angry that a Medicare-for-all single-payer approach was totally ignored during the health care debate.
Clinton understands that climate change is real, is caused by human activity and is one of the great environmental crises facing our planet. She knows that we must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and move aggressively to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
Coal and oil lobbyists added fossil fuels to a bill aimed at helping American manufacturers, so they too could claim 'manufacturing' tax deductions.
When we talk about the healthcare crisis in America we've got to also be talking about the dental crisis and how to address it.
At the insistence of the Bush administration, Congress in 2006 passed legislation that required the Postal Service to prefund, over a 10-year period, 75 years of future retiree health benefits.
Here is what the practical impact of Citizens United means. What Citizens United means is that corporations call hundreds of millions of dollars into television ads, radio ads, and other forms of advertising to defeat those candidates who stand up and take them on.
When I ran for the Senate the first time, I ran against the wealthiest guy in the state of Vermont. He spent a lot on advertising - very ugly stuff. He kept attacking me as a liberal. He didn't use the word 'socialist' at all because everybody in the state knows that I am that.
As a single-payer advocate, I believe that at the end of the day, if a state goes forward and passed an effective single-payer program, it will demonstrate that you can provide quality health care to every man, woman and child in a more cost-effective way.
