Sanders: Gorsuch must get 60 votes – and Trump is a ‘fraud’
Sen. Bernie Sanders lays down the red line on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday said that President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, should not win confirmation unless he can muster 60 votes.
“This is a major, major nomination. It should require 60 votes and a very serious debate,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” echoing the statements of Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democratic colleagues.
“Obama’s nominations required 60 votes. So should Trump’s,” Sanders added.
“What this Supreme Court decision is about is whether or not we continue Citizens United and allow billionaires to buy elections. It’s whether or not we continue Roe v. Wade and allow a woman to control her own body,” he argued.
And speaking of billionaires, Sanders called out Trump for…:
falling short of commitments to middle-class voters, pointing to his Cabinet and senior advisers’ ties to Wall Street.
“This guy is a fraud,” Sanders told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday.
“This guy ran for president of the United States saying, ‘I, Donald Trump, I’m going to take on Wall Street — these guys are getting away with murder.’ Then suddenly, he appoints all these billionaires,” Sanders said.
Trump selected Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs trader and hedge fund manager, as his treasury secretary nominee; Wilbur Ross, a billionaire former banker, to lead the Commerce Department; and Gary Cohn, a top Goldman Sachs executive, to lead his National Economic Council.
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Copyright 2017 Liberaland
By: dave-dr-gonzo
David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.
* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.
12 responses to Sanders: Gorsuch must get 60 votes – and Trump is a ‘fraud’
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mea_mark February 6th, 2017 at 09:09
Simply put, the tRumpites got taRumpYed … they are clueless and they got out BSed by tRump’s ego.
Robert M. Snyder February 6th, 2017 at 15:57
Bernie shouldn’t be so hard on Trump, because when it comes to one of Bernie’s signature issues, NAFTA, they are basically in agreement.
Bernie Sanders vehemently opposed NAFTA (and Hillary Clinton refused to defend it) because American voters were convinced that NAFTA has been bad for American workers. But what about Mexican workers and the Mexican economy?
Mexico originally signed on to NAFTA because they thought it would benefit their economy. Has NAFTA actually been good for Mexico?
Some would say no.
http://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/imce-images/nafta-decimated-mexican-agriculture.jpg
But if NAFTA is truly bad for Mexico and also bad for America, then nobody should blame Trump for wanting to renegotiate it. Especially not Bernie Sanders. He should be thanking Trump for sharing his concerns about NAFTA.
But hasn’t NAFTA created a lot of jobs for Mexicans? What is NAFTA is renegotiated to favor American jobs at the expense of Mexican jobs? Isn’t that what Bernie was concerned about? American jobs?
Imagine a documentary showing thousands of Mexican workers streaming out of Mexican factories when they are laid off due to changes in NAFTA. Of course Trump would get all of the blame for this. But what if Bernie had been elected? Wouldn’t he have renegotiated NAFTA to protect American jobs? And wouldn’t that have put Mexican jobs in jeopardy?
Bernie will never have to face a stark choice between protecting American jobs and protecting Mexican jobs. But there is no way that anyone can make that decision without someone losing their job. Not unless you believe that free trade actually creates more jobs. But if that is the case, then why were Bernie, Hillary, Donald, and the majority of the American electorate opposed to free trade deals such as NAFTA and TPP?
If free trade does NOT create more jobs than it eliminates, then any president would have to decide whether to favor American jobs or Mexican jobs. And if they favor American jobs, they are putting Mexicans out of work. Wall or no wall, if you believe that there are only so many jobs to go around, then it’s a zero-sum game. Either Americans get more jobs, or Mexicans get more jobs. Moving Mexicans to America and granting them citizenship doesn’t create more jobs.
So if Bernie is in favor of immigration but opposed to NAFTA because there are not enough jobs for Americans, how does he propose to find jobs for recent immigrants?
I don’t have the answers. I don’t know whether NAFTA is a net positive or a net negative for America or for Mexico. I’m just asking people to do the math. If free trade does not create additional jobs, then it’s a zero-sum game. Whether we ship jobs to Mexico, or ship Mexicans to America and employ them here, we’ve still got a job shortage. But if free trade DOES create additional jobs, then why are Bernie, Hillary, Donald, and most voters so strongly opposed to NAFTA and TPP?
What am I missing here?
mea_mark February 6th, 2017 at 16:57
The answer is to quit focusing so much energy on jobs and more energy on basic income. Give people enough money to survive on and let them be entrepreneurial. Job creation for people through corporations is how the rich get richer and the poor stay poor. It is time to change the way we do things as a species. We don’t need the labor like we used to. We have machines now. It is time for us to exercise our creativity and learn how to live in balance with nature. Conquering nature is what we have been doing and in so doing we have been destroying our environment. Our whole focus on how to live is out of date. We are evolving and it is time we start acting like it.
Robert M. Snyder February 6th, 2017 at 18:02
“Give people enough money to survive on and let them be entrepreneurial.”
If they’re going to be entrepreneurial, then presumably they will be developing new products that they will need to sell. In this context, what is the effect of eliminating trade agreements and erecting trade barriers?
I started a software company in 1995 and sold a productivity tool to database developers. Only one person in our town bought the product. Only about 3 percent of our sales were in our home state. A lot of our sales went to customers in CA, WA, NY, and TX. Our products were also carried by distributors in Germany, England, and Australia.
If we were only allowed to sell to people in our home town or our home state, we could not have survived. If we were only allowed to sell to US customers, our total sales would have been reduced by perhaps 20 percent.
Some businesses sell products that everybody needs, like milk and bread. These businesses do not need a global marketplace to survive. All of their customers are local.
But many of the entrepreneurs to which you referred are developing products that are only of interest to one person in a thousand. There are a lot of database developers in the world. But there are probably very few in your home town or your home state.
The more products an entrepreneurial business can sell, the more people it can hire. Introducing trade barriers would tend to reduce the sales of these entrepreneurial products, thereby reducing the ability of startups to provide employment.
There may be many negative consequences of trade agreements like NAFTA and TPP. But trade barriers have costs of their own. They limit the potential of entrepreneurs to bring their innovative products to global markets. That does not help to create jobs.
I’m not opposed to renegotiating NAFTA. And maybe the TPP was poorly crafted. But the emerging consensus that trade deals are evil concerns me. I wish that Hillary had opposed Bernie and defended NAFTA. I wish that she had said “Mend it, don’t end it”. But instead, we got a consensus with all three candidates using NAFTA as a scapegoat.
mea_mark February 6th, 2017 at 18:15
Personally I’m for more or less free trade with the caveat that other countries have a minimum wage close to ours or a basic income. It is countries that undercut us by abusing their people that I am not happy with. For developing countries some exceptions can be made but there would have to be a defined path on what their wages and/or basic income would be as the years go by.
Free trade with countries that pay their people starving wages so the rich corporations can get richer has to end.
robert February 6th, 2017 at 23:39
One big promise that the gop backed was NAFTA would create big tax breaks for this country that never developed. Some paid off lobbyists to create big loopholes while other countries found ways to devalue their currency. Just to name 2
In the end everyone made out like a bandit except those who were not in on the wallstreet scheme
As Bernie often points out that the top 1℅ make more then the bottom 90℅
Well how do you suppose it got to that point ?
Answer; start at the top and repeat…
Robert M. Snyder February 7th, 2017 at 01:33
With the benefit of hindsight, what do you think about Bill Clinton’s remarks from Dec 8, 1993?
“In a few moments, I will sign the North American free trade act into law. NAFTA will tear down trade barriers between our three nations. It will create the world’s largest trade zone and create 200,000 jobs in this country by 1995 alone. The environmental and labor side agreements negotiated by our administration will make this agreement a force for social progress as well as economic growth. Already the confidence we’ve displayed by ratifying NAFTA has begun to bear fruit. We are now making real progress toward a worldwide trade agreement so significant that it could make the material gains of NAFTA for our country look small by comparison.”
“Today we have the chance to do what our parents did before us. We have the opportunity to remake the world. For this new era, our national security we now know will be determined as much by our ability to pull down foreign trade barriers as by our ability to breach distant ramparts. Once again, we are leading. And in so doing, we are rediscovering a fundamental truth about ourselves: When we lead, we build security, we build prosperity for our own people.”
http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/speech-3927
robert February 7th, 2017 at 01:45
If you finish your homework you will find more gop signatures on this bill then Democrat.
What happens when not enough signatures are on a bill ?
Bill Clinton did what the majority wanted and had promised would happen and if I remember correctly the wallstreet loopholes were passed during the Reagan administration
Robert M. Snyder February 7th, 2017 at 01:58
Reagan was president from 1980 to 1988. Clinton signed NAFTA in 1993. If there were loopholes, why didn’t Clinton fix them?
But I am not against trade agreements. I am against trade barriers. NAFTA is too big and complex for me to digest. I just don’t know if it has been a net positive or a net negative for the US or for Mexico. But I am convinced that trade barriers are a bad idea, and I kind of wish that Hillary had defended NAFTA (mend it, don’t end it). But she pandered to the Bernie supporters and dropped her previous support for NAFTA and TPP. The net result was that NONE of the candidates (Trump, Clinton, Sanders) supported NAFTA or TPP.
I think we may live to regret this. I think Bill Clinton was on the right track with NAFTA. Trump has said that he wants to renegotiate NAFTA. Maybe it’s time. The agreement is 24 years old. A lot of things have changed. But I sure hope Trump doesn’t erect trade barriers with Mexico. They are one of our biggest trading partners. I suspect that trade barriers would kill jobs on both sides of the border. It’s a lose-lose scenario.
robert February 7th, 2017 at 18:52
Trump doesn’t support NAFTA ?
Now that’s a headline I would like to read !
It’s much worse then Clinton fixing what Reagan did just like Obama trying to fix what gwb did If you don’t have the majority It’s not going to happen As I explained above the gop wanted NAFTA by majority and made it impossible to make this deal short term.
As far as renegotiate goes, think of it this way. If you were making $15 an hour and your boss said We need you to take a $4 pay cut because we made a mistake when you were hired Would you understand ? They are going to laugh in Trump’s face when or if this ever takes place especially when the Mexico wall goes up
Talk about a deal killer
Kick Frenzy February 6th, 2017 at 23:22
I sure do love me some Bernie. :)
He is non-stop.
Presidential election or not, he just hammers away every day.
Hells yeah.
Obewon February 7th, 2017 at 00:05
If the shorthanded court doesn’t get tiny hands nominee Gorsuch, Trump said “Go nuclear!” Repubs will stop at nothing to create their crisis de jour, mandating simple majority Justice ascension. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/22f4317a587ab12efe8ec8d986e8dd39ffff60ef47e684c428db17b75ab67e6f.jpg