Bernie Sanders Gives A Barn-Burning Speech In Mitch McConnell’s Backyard
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Reprinted with permission from Alternet.
After a roaring start in Portland, Maine, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) continued his multi-state unity tour with Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez in Louisville, Kentucky on Tuesday.
Sanders expanded on his familiar message of wealth inequality and corporate greed by offering a plan to “make sure that coal miners who are retired get the health care and the pensions that they were promised.”
“We are working on legislation which would protect the pensions of some 90,000 coal miners who, if we do not act, will see those pensions savagely cut,” Sanders told the audience on Day 2 of his “Come Together and Fight Back” tour.
The bipartisan Miners Protection Act, introduced in July 2015, has 26 co-sponsors, nine of whom are Republicans. Those co-sponsors do not include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who favors alternative legislation.
“Senator McConnell, work with us, protect the retirees who are coal miners,” demanded Sanders. “You don’t need a PhD in economics to know that it is immoral and bad economics to support legislation that would throw hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians off of the health care that they have [and] would do serious damage to the economy here.”
During the Democratic primary, Sanders lost Kentucky by just half a percentage point. Nearly six months later, Trump swept the state, which he won with 62.5 percent of the vote.
“Donald Trump ran for president and he said, ‘Well, Kentucky; well, America, I’m a different type of Republican, I’m going to stand with the working class of this country,'” Sanders reminded the crowd. “Good speech; unfortunately, he wasn’t telling the truth.”
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Bearding the lion in his own den. How dare 9 Republicans have the audacity to work with Democrats in finding a livable solution to a problem of McConnell’s own creation? Don’t they realize loyalty to the party means more than delivering on promises to the voters?
It’s unfathomable to me that people in Kentucky can consistently vote Republican when Mitch McConnell is the leader of the Senate and does everything he can seem to think of to pass legislation that is damaging to the lives of the people living in Kentucky. How ignorant of realty do Kentucky voters have to be to continue to vote Republican election after election given the fact that 6 of the counties in America that are the most poverty stricken and financially depressed are in Kentucky, and it’s been that way for years; just how mind bogglingly stupid can American voters be??
And I guess the same can be said about the people in West Virginia, the state which 24/7 Wall Street has identified as the #1 most miserable state in America to live every year for at least the past 5 plus years.
Ah, if only we could have headlines about people that aren’t useless grifters.
Trump didn’t tell the truth ? ????
Unless he’s burning
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Noooo, tell me it isn’t true. trump lied. wow!! My non trusting nature of this liar has me wondering how valid that chemical attack was and if Assad actually ordered it. Look how quiet all is on the Eastern front now!! China is sorteeing, though!!