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This Obama Official Is Going to Bat for Hillary in Nevada

by JuanHarkins94 Posted on February 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Labor unions are going to help push Hillary Clinton to the nomination—at least that’s the prediction of the nation’s top labor regulator. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez made the claim in Las Vegas Thursday afternoon, while stopping by Nevada’s AFSCME headquarters to stump for Clinton.

Perez was quick to caution that he was appearing in his personal capacity, not as a cabinet official. But he made no apologies for urging labor’s troops to come out and caucus on Saturday for the former Secretary of State, and not Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

“The union members I know, they’re all about results,” he told Mother Jones, explaining why he was sure Clinton would win union voters this weekend. “Not only what you say, but what you’ve done.”

While Perez acknowledged that Clinton’s national union endorsements won’t guarantee support from the rank-and-file (“I’ve spent a lot of time with union members and they’re not reflexive do-what-my-boss-tells-me”), he dismissed the idea that there’s a substantial divide between union leaders and grassroots members who might prefer Sanders, pointing to exit polls from Iowa that showed Clinton winning union households 52-41 percent.

While Perez noted that he had “profound respect for Sen. Sanders” during his speech, while talking with Mother Jones he sounded annoyed by the tone of Sanders’ attacks on Clinton. “I must confess, as a proud progressive who has the scars to show for it—someone who was the subject of roughly 20 Wall Street Journal op-eds against him for my nomination—the notion that you’re either for Bernie or you’re for the establishment, I find that inaccurate, to be charitable,” he said. “Frankly a disservice to people like Dolores Huerta, people like Luis Gutierrez, people like Sherrod Brown. And frankly, President Obama.”

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This Obama Official Is Going to Bat for Hillary in Nevada

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The Price Is Right for Bernie Sanders in Nevada

by DianDossett269 Posted on February 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Price Is Right is one of the most overtly capitalist shows on TV, a prolonged infomercial that rewards contestants for their knowledge of the prices of various name-brand consumer goods. But Marco Antonio Regil, the former longtime host of the show’s Mexican counterpart Atínale Al Precio, is doing all he can to support Bernie Sanders, a socialist who rails against capitalist greed at every opportunity.

On Wednesday, Regil stopped by a small Sanders phone-banking operation to reach Spanish-speaking voters in Las Vegas. The phone bank was as much a photo-op for the media as it was a full-scale get-out-the-vote drive. Volunteers barely outnumbered reporters—hailing from the New York Times, NPR, CNN, and others—who piled into the house of Jackie Ramos, an enthusiastic Sanders supporter. While volunteers worked through their call sheets, state communications director Emilia Pablo teased them before Regil’s arrival. “I know the ladies are waiting for him,” she said of the handsome TV star, who has also hosted Spanish-language versions of Family Feud and Dancing With the Stars and the Miss Mexico pageant .

When Regil arrived, he huddled for photos with the fangirl volunteers, and then offered a brief speech detailing why Sanders was his candidate of choice. He described his childhood in Tijuana, when he revered the middle class in the United States that he saw lacking in Latin America. “The class divides in Latin America were one of the saddest thing I grew up experiencing,” he said. But that’s slipping away, he said, hence the need for Sanders. “I know what happens when income inequality and the classes start dividing, and the gap becomes so big: Poor people start struggling, they cannot survive, and they start getting violent. They start mugging other people.”

But he was quick to caution that the socialism that Sanders offers isn’t the same as the Latin America version put forward by politicians like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. “He calls it Democratic socialism,” he said. “I don’t like using that word, I prefer using conscious capitalism.”

“And I want Elizabeth Warren to be vice president,” he shouted to the reporters who followed him out.

On Saturday, Nevadans will pick their candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in the state’s caucuses. In the surprisingly tight race, the Latino vote will be critical. Latinos make up 27.8 percent of the state’s population, despite the Hillary Clinton campaign’s attempts to downplay expectations for the state by describing it as dominated by white voters, who have tended to support Sanders.

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The Price Is Right for Bernie Sanders in Nevada

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Sorry, Hillary Clinton, Nevada Is Actually a Diverse State

by TheoHowes665163 Posted on February 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Stinging from its lopsided defeat in New Hampshire and bracing for a tougher-than-expected primary fight against Bernie Sanders, the Hillary Clinton campaign has sought to lower expectations for the next contest, this Saturday’s Nevada caucuses. To do so, the campaign has been subtly pushing a curious line: Don’t read too much into the results of the Nevada caucuses because the state is disproportionately white, just like New Hampshire and Iowa.

As I explained last week, Nevada should be a firewall state for Clinton, and that’s how the Clinton campaign long painted it. But last Tuesday, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon tried to dash those impressions during an appearance on MSNBC. As recounted by BuzzFeed‘s Ruby Cramer, Fallon tried to suggest that Sanders had an edge in the caucuses thanks to the makeup of the state.

“There’s an important Hispanic element to the Democratic caucus in Nevada,” Fallon said. “But it’s still a state that is 80 percent white voters. You have a caucus-style format, and he’ll have the momentum coming out of New Hampshire presumably, so there’s a lot of reasons he should do well.”

Campaign manager Robby Mook, who ran Clinton’s 2008 campaign in the state, made a similar argument the next day when talking with congressional Democrats:

Is Nevada as lacking in diversity as Iowa and New Hampshire? Not even close. It’s actually one of the more diverse states in the country. The population is 9 percent African American, just a few points below the national average of 13 percent. It’s also 9 percent Asian American or Pacific Islander, above the national 5.6 percent average. And Nevada boasts a far larger Latino population than the country writ large: 27.8 percent, versus 17.4 percent nationally.

Where does the Clinton campaign come up with the idea that Nevada is so overwhelming white? It all comes down to the difficult terminology of race and ethnicity. Technically, the state is 76 percent white, but that’s because most people who identify as Latino or Hispanic are included in that category. Separate them out, and the state is just 51.5 percent non-Hispanic white.

Compare that to Iowa and New Hampshire, which are, respectively, 87 percent and 91 percent non-Hispanic white.

It’s possible that Nevada’s minority populations won’t show up to caucus in large numbers. But that doesn’t seem too likely, at least based on the 2008 caucuses, when 35 percent of caucus voters were racial or ethnic minorities, according to exit polls. The state’s minority population has only grown since 2008, so there’s little reason to expect the caucus-going population to look that much whiter than in 2008.

With Sanders having captured the momentum after his big New Hampshire win, Clinton really may have a more difficult time in Nevada than she anticipated. But she can’t blame it on demographics.

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Sorry, Hillary Clinton, Nevada Is Actually a Diverse State

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Hillary Clinton’s Leftward Shift on Climate Change

by Raymund7885 Posted on February 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in The New Republic and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In July, the climate grassroots group 350 Action asked Hillary Clinton at a campaign stop in New Hampshire for her position on banning fossil fuel development on public lands. Clinton gave what she deemed a “responsible answer” that she wouldn’t accept a ban until we get “the alternatives in place.” I asked her campaign chair John Podesta the same question in October, and he only suggested a willingness to use “policy levers” to affect fossil fuel production.

Now, Clinton is ready to take a more definitive stand on limiting fossil fuel extraction on federal lands—which has emerged as a top priority for climate organizers after their victory against the Keystone XL pipeline. Griffin Sinclair-Wingate, a 350 Action organizer, approached Clinton after the New Hampshire debate on Thursday night and asked her, “Would you ban extraction on public lands?”

“Yeah, that’s a done deal,” Clinton said, as though her position were obvious. Afterward, she told another 350 activist that she agrees with “where the president is moving. No future extraction.” Adam Greenberg asked her in a third video on Friday while campaigning in New Hampshire, “Would you end all oil, coal, and gas leases on federal lands?” Clinton said, “I want to impose a moratorium…because there are legal issues you have to go through, you know all of that, but I would support a moratorium.”

Clinton doesn’t appear to be endorsing anything too radical, or so far beyond what President Barack Obama has already started. In order for the United States to deliver on its promises in the Paris climate agreement, the next administration will have to take additional steps to limit the demand and supply of fossil fuels, even if the agreement itself was vague on the details. Scientists and activists insist that any meaningful curb on climate change must keep coal, oil, and gas reserves in the ground. One encouraging sign was the president’s recent announcement to impose a three-year moratorium on leasing public lands for coal development, allowing the Department of Interior time to reform how it leases lands for extraction.

Clinton’s comments only show that she supports that moratorium, and that she might support expanding it to oil and gas leases. Yet her position still represents a tectonic shift in the Democratic Party on policies that were once a long-shot wish of climate activists.

However, there are limits to how far Clinton is willing to go. Pressed on her position regarding hydraulic fracturing, a controversial drilling process to extract gas and oil more commonly known as fracking, Clinton wouldn’t call for an outright ban, unlike her opponent Bernie Sanders. She pointed out, accurately, that the president also doesn’t have much control over drilling on private lands, where much of the development occurs. “What the government does have the ability to do is to impose very strict regulations on the chemicals that are used,” Clinton said. “I don’t want to mislead you and say, ‘Oh, I can ban it,’ that is just not accurate.”

Sanders may have something to do with Clinton’s change of tune. He proposed a bill to ban fossil fuel development on public lands in December, and there’s evidence his strong climate proposals gave him an advantage in Iowa—enough to get him to a virtual tie.

If Clinton is serious about imposing strict limits—and I’m not fully convinced these off-hand comments show she is—that would mean she and Sanders agree on many of the climate movement’s top priorities.

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Hillary Clinton’s Leftward Shift on Climate Change

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Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger: It’s Personal. Very Personal.

by DarinRRZscwoob Posted on February 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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At Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate, one of the most heated exchanges concerned an unlikely topic: Henry Kissinger. During a stretch focused on foreign policy, Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont, jabbed at former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for having cited Kissinger, who was Richard Nixon’s secretary of state, as a fan of her stint at Foggy Bottom.

“I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country,” Sanders huffed, adding, “I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger.” He referred to the secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam war as a Kissinger-orchestrated move that eventually led to genocide in that country. “So count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger,” Sanders roared. Clinton defended her association with Kissinger by replying, “I listen to a wide variety of voices that have expertise in various areas.” She cast her interactions with Kissinger as motivated by her desire to obtain any information that might be useful to craft policy. “People we may disagree with on a number of things may have some insight, may have some relationships that are important for the president to understand in order to best protect the United States,” she said.

What Clinton did not mention was that her bond with Kissinger was personal as well as professional, for she and her husband have for years regularly spent their winter holidays with Kissinger and his wife Nancy at the beachfront villa of fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, who died in 2014, and his wife Annette in the Dominican Republic.

This campaign tussle over Kissinger began a week earlier, at a previous debate, when Clinton, looking to boost her résumé, said, “I was very flattered when Henry Kissinger said I ran the State Department better than anybody had run it in a long time. So I have an idea about what it’s going to take to make our government work more efficiently.” A few days later, Bill Clinton, while campaigning for his wife in New Hampshire, told a crowd of her supporters, “Henry Kissinger, of all people, said she ran the State Department better and got more out of the personnel at the State Department than any secretary of state in decades, and it’s true.” His audience of Democrats clapped loudly in response.

It was odd that the Clintons, locked in a fierce fight to win Democratic votes, would name-check a fellow who for decades has been criticized—and even derided as a war criminal—by liberals. Bill and Hillary Clinton themselves opposed the Vietnam War that Nixon and Kissinger inherited and continued. Hillary Clinton was a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Nixon, and one of the articles of impeachment drafted by the staff (but which was not approved) cited Nixon for covering up his secret bombing of Cambodia. In the years since then, information has emerged showing that Kissinger’s underhanded and covert diplomacy led to brutal massacres around the globe, including in Chile, Argentina, East Timor, and Bangladesh.

With all this history, it was curious that in 2014, Clinton wrote a fawning review of Kissinger’s latest book and observed, “America, he reminds us, succeeds by standing up for our values, not shirking them, and leads by engaging peoples and societies, the sources of legitimacy, not governments alone.” In that article, she called Kissinger, who had been a practitioner of a bloody foreign-policy realpolitik, “surprisingly idealistic.”

This Clinton love-fest with Kissinger is not new. And it is not simply a product of professional courtesy or solidarity among former secretaries of state, who comprise, after all, a small club. There is also a strong social connection between the Clintons and the Kissingers. They pal around together. On June 3, 2013, Hillary Clinton presented an award to de la Renta, a good friend who for years had provided her dresses and fashion advice, and then the two of them hopped over to a 90th birthday party for Kissinger. In fact, the schedule of the award ceremony had been shifted to allow Clinton and de la Renta to make it to the Kissinger bash. (Secretary of State John Kerry also attended the party.) The Kissingers and the de la Rentas were longtime buddies. Kissinger wrote one of his recent books while staying at de la Rentas’ mansion in the Dominican Republic and dedicated the book to the fashion designer and his wife.

The Clintons and Kissingers appear to spend a chunk of their quality time together at that de la Renta estate in the Punta Cana resort. Last year, the Associated Press noted that this is where the Clintons take their annual Christmas holiday. And other press reports in the United States and Dominican Republic have pointed out that the Kissingers are often part of the gang the de la Rentas have hosted each year. When Oscar de la Renta died in 2014, the New York Times obituary reported:

At holidays, the de la Rentas filled their house in Punta Cana with relatives and friends, notably Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nancy and Henry Kissinger, and the art historian John Richardson. The family dogs had the run of the compound, and Mr. de la Renta often sang spontaneously after dinner. First-time visitors, seeking him out in the late afternoon, were surprised to find him in the staff quarters, hellbent on winning at dominoes.

In 2012, the Wall Street Journal, in a profile of de la Renta, wrote:

Over Christmas the Kissingers were among the close group who gathered in Punta Cana, including Barbara Walters, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Charlie Rose. “We have two house rules,” says Oscar, laughing. “There can be no conversation of any substance and nothing nice about anyone.”

A travel industry outlet reported that Vogue editor Anna Wintour was part of the crew that year. The Times described the house this way: “Though imposing in the Colonial style, with wide verandas (and its own chapel on the grounds), it also had a relaxed feeling.” Last April, the Weekly Standard noted that the Clintons had spent a week around the previous New Year’s at Punta Canta and that Secret Service protection for the trip had cost $104,000. It was during this vacation that Hillary Clinton reportedly decided to run for president for the second time.

This Clinton-Kissinger-de la Renta gathering seems to occur most years. In 2011, de la Renta, a native of the Dominican Republic, told Vogue that he built this seaside estate so he could host his close friends, and he cited the Kissingers and Clintons as examples. “At Christmas,” he said, “we’re always in the same group.”

The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did Henry Kissinger nor Annette de la Renta.

When awarding herself the Kissinger seal of approval to bolster her standing as a competent diplomat and government official, Hillary Clinton has not referred to the annual hobnobbing at the de la Renta villa. So when Sanders criticized Clinton for playing the Kissinger card—”not my kind of guy,” he declared—whether he realized it or not, he was hitting very close to home.

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Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger: It’s Personal. Very Personal.

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Sanders and Clinton Disagree on Climate. Why Won’t Debate Moderators Ask Them About It?

by VivienMcLendon9 Posted on February 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Slate and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

If human civilization were facing a potentially existential threat, you’d probably want to know about what our leading candidates to run our country thought about it, right?

There was no question on climate change during Thursday night’s PBS-sponsored Democratic debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This, despite the Supreme Court dealing a meaningful, though likely temporary blow to the centerpiece of Obama’s climate policy on Tuesday and a defiant President Obama including a sweeping set of proposals to transition the nation’s transportation sector toward fossil-free sources of energy in his annual budget proposal on Wednesday.

This isn’t the first time moderators have ignored climate change. Back in December, just a few days after world leaders achieved the first-ever global agreement on climate change in Paris, Democratic debate moderators were silent. By my count, moderators have asked substantive questions on climate change in only half of the first six Democratic debates. That’s better than nothing, but given how consequential and urgent the topic is, I expect more.

Apparently, so do voters. In a Quinnipiac poll released on the day of the Iowa caucuses, 11 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers ranked climate change as their top issue, third only to the economy (36 percent) and health care (22 percent). Climate change ranked higher than terrorism, immigration, and gun policy combined. And caucus-goers who listed climate as their main concern broke for Sanders by a whopping 66 to 30 margin, almost certainly making the race there closer.

Perhaps one of the reasons climate doesn’t come up more in the debates is the conventional wisdom that Clinton and Sanders basically agree on the issue. But that’s simply not true. There are substantial differences between the two candidates.

Both agree that climate change is real and not a massive conspiracy between scientists and the government so that nerds can get rich stealing tax dollars. Both want to cut subsidies to fossil fuel companies and shift the country toward renewable energy (though neither to the level scientists say is necessary). At this point, these are basic staples of Democratic Party orthodoxy—and what casual observers already know.

Their differences, though, are substantial: Sanders’ climate plan is much more comprehensive than Clinton’s and will reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a faster rate. He’s forcefully linked climate change and terrorism. He’s staunchly opposed to continued fossil fuel exploration on public lands and has vowed to ban fracking outright, a stance Clinton doesn’t share. His focus on ridding politics of corporate lobbyists is a swipe against Clinton, whose campaign has taken money from fossil fuel companies. On the flip side, unlike Clinton, Sanders wants to phase out nuclear energy, a position that many scientists and environmentalists increasingly don’t share, given the need to transition toward a zero carbon economy as quickly as possible.

As for Clinton, though her presidential campaign was launched with a historic focus on climate, when she talks about climate change, it often feels like she’s playing catch-up. In recent months, Clinton has shifted her position to be more hawkish on Arctic drilling, the Keystone pipeline and on restricting fossil fuel exploration on public lands, likely in response to pressure from Sanders and voters.

When Sanders won New Hampshire this week, he devoted a big chunk of his victory speech to climate change. When Clinton conceded, she didn’t mention it once. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the New Hampshire winner (Donald Trump) is a climate conspiracy theorist. People often ask me if I feel hopeless about climate. Only when it’s not taken seriously.

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Sanders and Clinton Disagree on Climate. Why Won’t Debate Moderators Ask Them About It?

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Senator Sanders, Why Do You Hate President Obama?

by PhyllisFontenot Posted on February 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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Most of last night’s debate was pretty familiar territory. But toward the end, Hillary Clinton unleashed a brand new attack:

Today Senator Sanders said that President Obama failed the presidential leadership test….In the past he has called him weak. He has called him a disappointment. He wrote a forward for a book that basically argued voters should have buyers’ remorse when it comes to President Obama’s leadership and legacy.

….The kind of criticism that we’ve heard from Senator Sanders about our president I expect from Republicans….What I am concerned about is not disagreement on issues, saying that this is what I would rather do, I don’t agree with the president on that. Calling the president weak, calling him a disappointment, calling several times that he should have a primary opponent when he ran for re-election in 2012, you know, I think that goes further than saying we have our disagreements.

….I understand we can disagree on the path forward. But those kinds of personal assessments and charges are ones that I find particularly troubling.

The problem Sanders has here is that this is a pretty righteous attack. Back in 2011 he really did say, “I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president…who cannot believe how weak he has been, for whatever reason, in negotiating with Republicans and there’s deep disappointment.” And he really did push the idea of a primary challenger to Obama. And he really did write a blurb for Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama let Progressives Down. So there’s not much he can do about this attack except sound offended and insist that everyone has a right to criticize the president.

But will it work? It was actually the only hit last night that struck me as genuinely effective. Obama still has a lot of fans who are probably surprised to hear that Sanders has been so tough on their guy. If Hillary Clinton keeps up this line, it might be pretty damaging.

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Senator Sanders, Why Do You Hate President Obama?

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Clinton’s Surrogates Are Banking on the Gun Issue to Win Over Black Voters

by PalmaShupe Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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After her sound defeat in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, former Sen. Hillary Clinton is looking ahead to the primary in South Carolina, where she hopes her record and rhetoric on gun control will impress black voters and propel her to victory over Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

In a conference call Wednesday, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries joined Hazel Dukes—the former NAACP president and current president of the civil rights group’s New York State Conference—and South Carolina state minority leader J. Todd Rutherford to promote Clinton and to cite the inexperience of her rival. The three criticized Sanders as a newcomer to issues important to black voters, and condemned what they called his inferior record on gun control and criminal-justice reform.

“I’ve watched Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail and seen how he only really started talking about issues concerning African Americans in the past 40 days,” Rutherford said. “Secretary Clinton has talked about these same issues, and advocated for us, for the last 40 years.”

They also slammed Sanders for only recently moving over to the Democratic party, for voting in favor of the infamous 1994 Violent Crimes Bill, and for voting for an amendment that Jeffries claimed would have allowed Charleston shooter Dylann Roof to obtain a handgun before the completion of a background check.

“We know that Hillary Clinton has consistently stood up against the gun lobby, and spoken out against the epidemic of gun violence in the African American community and beyond. The record of Bernie Sanders is very different,” Jeffries said. “He’s twice voted to shield gun manufacturers, who I often refer to as ‘merchants of death;’ he voted to overturn a ban on guns on Amtrak trains; he voted to make it harder to crack down on gun dealers who break the law; he even voted for an amendment that would have allowed, or which allowed, of course, the Charleston shooter to get a gun before his background check is completed.” If you compare Clinton and Sanders on the issue of gun violence and how it affects the black community, Jeffries added, “it’s not even a close call.”

Jeffries, Rutherford, and Dukes answered reporters’ questions about Clinton’s own, arguably dubious, track record on issues that affect black communities—including her “superpredator” comments—with praise of her political experience and her platform for economic justice. But the overarching theme of the call was that Clinton, unlike Sanders—who represents a predominantly white state—has always been a visible presence in the black community.

“It’s good to have new friends, but I would rather have true friends,” Jeffries said.

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Clinton’s Surrogates Are Banking on the Gun Issue to Win Over Black Voters

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Here’s Why Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Say Much About Welfare Reform

by PedroSkalski0 Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Clio Chang and Samuel Adler-Bell want to know why Bernie Sanders hasn’t spent more time blasting the Clinton-era welfare reform law and proposing concrete ways to address poverty:

While Sanders frequently repeats and laments the statistic that one in five American children live in poverty, neither he nor Clinton has put forward a specific plan to address it. And neither spends much time talking about food stamps, housing subsidies, or the Earned Income Tax Credit, all essential programs for the poor.

Liberal pundits have criticized Clinton for defending her husband’s welfare legislation—and for parroting the conservative caricature of welfare beneficiaries as “deadbeats”—but so far, it hasn’t created any serious problems for her campaign. But this, perhaps, is to be expected from a more moderate Democrat. The oversight is arguably a more glaring problem for Sanders, who voted against the welfare bill and harshly condemned it in his 1997 book, but hasn’t made it an issue in the primary. In August, he told Bloomberg, with uncharacteristic restraint, “I think that history will suggest that that legislation has not worked terribly well.”

One reason for this restraint may be simple: perhaps Sanders believes that the best approach to poverty is to enact his broad economic revolution. Once that’s done, poverty will start to decrease.

But there’s another possible reason: maybe welfare reform has turned out not to be an especially big deal. After all, by 1996 the old AFDC program accounted for only about $20 billion in spending, a tiny fraction of total welfare spending—and the difference between AFDC spending and the TANF spending that took its place is even more minuscule. The truth is that it’s barely noticeable compared to increases in social welfare spending during the 90s from changes to CHIP, EITC, the minimum wage, and so forth.

On that score, it’s worth taking a look at social welfare spending more broadly. But what’s the best way? We spend just shy of a trillion dollars a year on social welfare and safety net programs, but that number bounces up and down when the economy goes into recession and more people need help. That tells us more about the economic cycle than it does about anti-poverty programs. Instead, we need to look at spending per person in poverty. This gives us a better idea of how policy has responded to poverty over the past few decades. So here it is:

I chose 150 percent of the poverty level as my metric, but the truth is that it doesn’t matter much. This chart looks pretty much the same whether you show total spending, per capita spending, or spending per family below the poverty level. If you remove Medicaid from the mix, the spending increase isn’t as steep but otherwise looks little different.

There are two obvious takeaways from this. First, overall spending on social welfare programs has increased by 3x since 1980. That’s pretty substantial. Second, if the 1996 welfare reform act had any effect on this steady rise in spending, you’d need a chart the size of my house to make it out. Perhaps Bernie Sanders knows this, and understands that in the great scheme of things, welfare reform just isn’t worth fighting over anymore.

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Here’s Why Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Say Much About Welfare Reform

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Bernie Sanders Wins Democratic New Hampshire Primary

by VernMeza4862675 Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was declared the winner of the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary as soon as polls closed at 8 p.m. EST on Tuesday night. Results are still trickling in at the moment—some polling locations are still open to accommodate people in line at the cutoff time—but it looks like Sanders will likely defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by double digits.

The two have now split the first two states, with Clinton coming out narrowly ahead in Iowa a week ago.

The Clinton campaign was quick to concede, immediately circulating a memo to reporters from campaign manager Robby Mook touting Clinton’s strength in the states voting in March.

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Bernie Sanders Wins Democratic New Hampshire Primary

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