Border Patrol out-of-control law enforcement agency

The Green Monster

How the Border Patrol became America’s most out-of-control law enforcement agency.

By GARRETT M. GRAFF

But the Border Patrol has also become one of the nation’s deadliest law enforcement agencies over that same period, involved in more fatal shootings—at least 46—since 2004 than perhaps any other such agency. (As this summer’s events in Ferguson, Missouri, showed, definitive statistics on fatal law enforcement shootings are notoriously difficult to collect.) An internal report last year that the agency tried to keep secret accused its agents of shooting their weapons not out of fear for their lives but instead out of “frustration.”

As one senior DHS official told me, “The agency has created a culture that says, ‘If you throw a rock at me, you’re going to get shot.’”

Corruption and excessive force have also skyrocketed along with the massive hiring surge. In fact, between 2005 and 2012, nearly one CBP officer was arrested for misconduct every single day—part of a pattern that Ronald Hosko, former assistant director of the FBI’s criminal investigation division, calls “shocking.” During Obama’s first term, the sheer number of allegations was so glaring that, according to two CBP officials, DHS under Secretary Janet Napolitano ordered Customs and Border Protection to change its definition of corruption to downplay to Congress the breadth of the problem.

Yet the agency’s response has been paralyzed by bureaucratic turf battles and the broken Senate confirmation process, which left CBP without a Senate-confirmed leader for five years. Now, just as he rebuilt police departments in Buffalo and Seattle, Gil Kerlikowske’s new job is to bring order and discipline to a force so long lacking leadership, and to weed out what he calls “bad apples” like Manzanares who should have never been hired in the first place—a problem, CBP officials admitted during an internal meeting this past spring, that might take a generation to fix.

This article, tracing the rapid growth of the Border Patrol since 9/11 and the host of problems that spawned, is based on more than 50 interviews—including nearly all of the seven men who have headed CBP in the past decade and all three former DHS secretaries—as well as officials at the White House, Justice Department and Congress. I also reviewed thousands of pages of documents, including inspector general investigations, CBP performance reports and budgets. What emerges is the largely overlooked story behind the story of the perennial border crises, in which the best intentions and worst impulses of the Bush administration met the laissez-faire management and political cynicism of the Obama administration. The result? A massive agency—freshly militarized by billions of dollars of weapons and technology and thousands of poorly vetted gun-carrying personnel hired in the panicky years after 9/11—was left adrift as violence and corruption in its ranks rose dramatically.

CBP officials in Washington refer to the Border Patrol, somewhat endearingly, somewhat ruefully, as the Green Monster, a name derived from the patrol’s proud historic tradition of dark green uniforms.
This is the story of how the Green Monster came alive.

Then and Now | The U.S. Border Patrol has ballooned since its founding in 1924. At left, agents in Texas round up a group of immigrants in 1948. At right, agents in 2006. | Left: Harry Pennington/Keystone Features/Getty Images; right: Charles Ommanney/Getty Images

CHAPTER I: THE POOR STEPCHILD
The irony of New York’s Statue of Liberty is that the Emma Lazarus poem inscribed on its base at its dedication in 1886, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” marked almost precisely the moment the nation’s borders began to close to new immigrants—especially the tired, the poor and the huddled masses.

That same decade, Congress passed the first comprehensive immigration act, expanding earlier limits on Chinese and other Asian immigrants to include bans on “lunatics, idiots, convicts, those liable to become public charges, and those suffering from contagious diseases.” In 1891, the United States began to deport those who entered the country illegally. By the 1920s, Congress created the first force to patrol the country’s 7,500 miles of unguarded borders with Canada and Mexico. When the Border Patrol got up and running in 1924, its first agents were transfers from the Mounted Guard of Chinese Inspectors, who had enforced the Chinese exclusion acts in the U.S. West. Much of their early patrolling was done on horseback in the rough terrain of the Arizona deserts and Texas scrub, making them the closest thing to cowboys in the U.S. government.

The Border Patrol: A Brief History

1882: Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act to keep out Chinese laborers thought to be taking American jobs. The law begins decades of legislation regulating immigration to the United States.

1891: The first Office of Immigration is established, as part of the Treasury Department. The agency, which formalizes the immigration process, is actually meant to encourage more Western European immigration to the United States.

1904: The first informal border patrols begin to police the Mexican border. In 1915, Congress formally creates the Mounted Guards to prevent immigrants from crossing the border illegally.

1924: The Border Patrol is founded, housed within the Labor Department. Its 450 inspectors are initially charged with guarding the Canadian and Mexican borders, and later the Gulf of Mexico and Florida.

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt consolidates the Bureau of Immigration and Bureau of Naturalization into the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The agency shifts its focus to law enforcement and is moved, in 1940, to the Justice Department.

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt combined the Border Patrol and the Bureau of Citizenship into what came to be known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and on the eve of World War II, it became part of the Justice Department, where it would remain for six decades—always understaffed, increasingly neglected and largely forgotten in the government bureaucracy.

For its first quarter-century, most of the agency’s staff and resources were expended securing the longer northern border with Canada, and it was only in 1954, long before political correctness hit the government, that Operation Wetback marked the Border Patrol’s first large-scale deportations of illegal Mexican immigrants. Periodic INS crackdowns and raids over the coming decades followed, but the country never really took illegal immigration seriously until the 1990s, when Mexican border enforcement became a political lightning rod.

Only twice before 2001, in fact, did the Border Patrol make concerted efforts to “secure” the border—and both were localized initiatives rather than national strategies. As late as the beginning of the Clinton administration, the Border Patrol had just 4,000 agents, though steady growth spurred in part by popular border crackdowns in El Paso and San Diego brought it to 9,000 agents by 2001.

It was clear that still wasn’t anywhere close to enough. In 2000, the peak year of illegal immigration, the Border Patrol apprehended 1.6 million people crossing the border. “And a large part of what was coming through wasn’t even getting apprehended,” recalls David Aguilar, who later became chief of the Bush-era Border Patrol and prior to that led its Tucson sector. “There was a lack of intestinal fortitude to address the border. We were being overrun.”

Near the top of the Border Patrol’s list of complaints was the policy known internally as “CARP,” the Catch-And-Release Policy. By the end of the Clinton administration, 80 percent of people who were caught and released with a notice to appear at a deportation hearing never showed up in court. But despite millions of border crossings, the Border Patrol had the financing in 2001 for just 60 detainees a day across the entire country. “They could turn themselves in and have a high confidence that they wouldn’t be returned to their home countries,” recalls Michael Chertoff, who would go on to become President George W. Bush’s second secretary of Homeland Security.

Mostly agents just asked border violators for their names and then did a cursory background check before returning them to Mexico or releasing them into the United States. Sometimes they ran fingerprints, sometimes they didn’t. In June 1999, agents captured one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, a rapist and serial killer named Ángel Maturino Reséndiz, aka “The Railway Killer,” and unknowingly released him back into Mexico, whereupon Reséndiz promptly sneaked back into the United States and murdered four more people before being apprehended by Texas Rangers.

As the 9/11 Commission dryly noted in its report on the terrorist attacks, “In the decade before September 11, 2001, border security—encompassing travel, entry, and immigration—was not seen as a national security matter.”

That changed quickly after the 9/11 attacks.

Tom Ridge, the Pennsylvania governor soon installed as Bush’s homeland security czar, singled out airport and border security as top priorities.

He had good reason to seek improvement.

“Within the INS structure, they were the poor stepchild. That was how most of INS viewed them at every level,” recalls Robert Bonner, who was Bush’s commissioner of Customs and in 2003 became the first head of CBP. “They weren’t appreciated and weren’t viewed with respect, and that created this defensiveness and insularity within the Border Patrol.”

Besides, CBP simply didn’t have anywhere close to the manpower, system or resources needed to police the border adequately—never mind secure the detainees it did catch. Richard Falkenrath, Ridge’s policy adviser in the White House, recommended in December 2001 that the United States create a single unified border agency—but that proposal collapsed when nearly every Cabinet secretary involved vetoed it. As White House chief of staff Andy Card later told Bush, “Tom tried to sell his plan to them and the response was classic Washington: ‘Don’t take anything away from us, just give us more money.’”

Christie 2016

Christie 2016: 'Vote For Me Or I'll Punch You Right In Your Stupid Face'

By PAUL WALDMAN

HOW WILL TALKING LIKE AN EXTRA FROM GOODFELLAS PLAY IN IOWA?

All politicians have to deal with hecklers from time to time, and most try to handle it by being polite but firm, using the moments before security reaches the person and hustles them out to say something like: "This is America, and everyone has the right to speak their minds. So you've had your say, and now it's my turn." It allows the politician to show the crowd that he's unflappable and patient, but not intimidated. That is, unless you're Chris Christie, in which case every heckler is an opportunity to show that you're something else: a tough guy who don't take guff from nobody. To wit, this video from Wednesday, taken by a Democratic tracker:

My favorite part is how Christie keeps calling him "buddy" (reminded me of this). Now try to imagine what would happen if Barack Obama shouted "Sit down and shut up!" at a citizen. Or almost any other prominent politician, for that matter; commentators would immediately start questioning his mental health. But even though it's been a while, shouting at people was how Chris Christie became a national figure talked about as a potential presidential candidate in the first place. Most of the incidents happened at town meetings early in his first term. Somebody would ask Christie a critical question, and he would unload a heap of condescension, contempt, and sometimes outright anger on them, in a way you don't often see from politicians who all want to be thought of as friendly people. Conservatives were thrilled to see a Republican who would stick it to people they don't like, whether it was some punk kid or a teacher questioning Christie's education policies, they sent the YouTube links to each other with glee, and a star was born.

If you stand up at a town meeting and ask him an impertinent question about something like the state budget, he'll shout you down

So what separates Christie from someone like Representative Don Young of Alaska, who has a strong case to win biggest jerk in Congress, a title for which there is no shortage of competition? The key lies in who find themselves targets of Christie's outbursts. Don Young grabs, threatens, or insults pretty much anybody who gets in his way. But Christie usually has some kind of substantive policy disagreement with the person he's lashing out at. Most of us would think that's not nearly enough justification for behavior that looks a lot like simple bullying (particularly given the power imbalance between Christie and whoever he's yelling at), but it does allow him to claim that he's not just an asshole, he's an asshole with purpose. If you stand up at a town meeting and ask him an impertinent question about something like the state budget, he'll shout you down (to the cheers of his supporters).

Here are a few ways to explain this pattern of behavior:

This is a calculated way of showing that he's a Tough Guy, which Christie knows Republicans love

This is just who Christie is, and if nobody was around he'd still be picking fights with people

Both 1 and 2

I lean toward number 3. It isn't just play-acting, because Christie obviously gets sincerely pissed off when he's challenged by people he thinks are beneath him. At the same time, he's a smart enough politician to know that the cameras are on, and there's some benefit to reinforcing the persona he has created.

But you know where you don't get too many chances to show what a tough guy you are? Iowa. Campaigning for the caucuses is an interminable process of trooping from living room to senior center to VFW hall, meeting people in small groups, looking them in the eye and asking them for their votes. Christie is a pretty good retail politician, so it isn't that he can't perform in those settings. But being tough just isn't part of that show, and if the biggest part of Christie's appeal is that he can talk like an extra from Goodfellas when somebody challenges him, he isn't going to get very far.

Really send them to JAIL!!!

Prosecutors Suspect Repeat Offenses on Wall Street

By BEN PROTESS and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

It would be the Wall Street equivalent of a parole violation: Just two years after avoiding prosecution for a variety of crimes, some of the world’s biggest banks are suspected of having broken their promises to behave.

A mixture of new issues and lingering problems could violate earlier settlements that imposed new practices and fines on the banks but stopped short of criminal charges, according to lawyers briefed on the cases. Prosecutors are exploring whether to strengthen the earlier deals, the lawyers said, or scrap them altogether and force the banks to plead guilty to a crime.

That effort, unfolding separately from a number of well-known investigations into Wall Street, has ensnared several giant banks and consulting firms that until now were thought to be in the clear.

Prosecutors in Washington and Manhattan have reopened an investigation into Standard Chartered, the big British bank that reached a settlement in 2012 over accusations that it transferred billions of dollars for Iran and other nations blacklisted by the United States, according to the lawyers briefed on the cases. The prosecutors are questioning whether Standard Chartered, which has a large operation in New York, failed to disclose the extent of its wrongdoing to the government, imperiling the bank’s earlier settlement.

New York State’s banking regulator is also taking a fresh look at old cases, reopening a 2013 settlement with the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ over accusations that the bank’s New York branch did business with Iran, according to the lawyers who were not authorized to speak publicly.
The regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, the lawyers said, is negotiating a new settlement deal with the bank that, if it goes through, would involve a penalty larger than the $250 million it paid last year. Mr. Lawsky suspects that the bank initially played down the scope of its wrongdoing.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the influential consulting firm that advised the Japanese bank on that case, is also under investigation, according to the lawyers briefed on the matter. The Manhattan district attorney’s office is examining whether the firm watered down a report about the bank’s dealings with Iran before it was sent to government investigators.

Those developments, not previously reported, are part of a broader revisiting of settlements with some of the world’s biggest banks, an effort that has focused on foreign banks but could eventually spread to American institutions.

As reported earlier by The New York Times, prosecutors are also threatening to tear up deals with banks like Barclays and UBS that were accused of manipulating interest rates, pointing to evidence that the same banks also manipulated foreign currencies, a violation of the interest rate settlements. The prosecutors and banks have agreed to extend probationary periods that would have otherwise expired this year.

The reopening of these cases represents a shift for the government, the first acknowledgment that prosecutors are coming to terms with the limitations of how they punish bank misdeeds. Typically, when banks have repeatedly run afoul of the law, they have returned to business as usual with little or no additional penalty — a stark contrast to how prosecutors mete out justice for the average criminal.

When punishing banks, prosecutors have favored so-called deferred-prosecution agreements, which suspend charges in exchange for the bank’s paying a fine and promising to behave. Several giant banks have reached multiple deferred or nonprosecution agreements in a short span, fueling concerns that the deals amount to little more than a slap on the wrist and enable a pattern of Wall Street recidivism.

Even now that prosecutors are examining repeat offenses on Wall Street, they are likely to seek punishments more symbolic than sweeping. Top executives are not expected to land in prison, nor are any problem banks in jeopardy of shutting down.

Still, fearing a certain fallout from the new round of scrutiny, banks have bolstered their legal teams. Standard Chartered, for instance, has retained one of the most lauded litigators in the country, Theodore V. Wells Jr., to work on the reopened sanctions case, according to the lawyers briefed on the matter.

The decision to revisit the cases also draws attention to consulting firms that helped shape the original settlements. When determining the extent of wrongdoing at a bank, the government often relies on assessments from consultants that are handpicked and paid by the same bank.

The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi case demonstrated the potential pitfalls of that approach. When Mr. Lawsky made his initial $250 million settlement with the bank last year, the punishment was based partly on an outside consultant’s estimate of the illegal dealings. But the New York State regulator has since uncovered emails indicating that the consultant, PricewaterhouseCoopers, watered down the report under pressure from the bank, according to regulatory records.

In August, Mr. Lawsky imposed a $25 million penalty on PricewaterhouseCoopers, which said at the time that the report was “detailed” and “disclosed the relevant facts.”

After that settlement, people briefed on the matter said, prosecutors at the Manhattan district attorney’s office opened an investigation into the work that PricewaterhouseCoopers did for the Japanese bank, a previously unreported development. Already, the prosecutors have requested the consulting firm’s records in the case.

The investigations, the people said, also unearthed emails showing that PricewaterhouseCoopers changed the report not only at the suggestion of the bank, but also at the behest of lawyers working on the bank’s behalf. Like many banks caught in the government’s cross hairs, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi turned to Sullivan & Cromwell, an elite law firm as woven into the fabric of Wall Street as the banks it represents. Sullivan & Cromwell also represented Standard Chartered in the bank’s 2012 settlement with the Justice Department in Washington and the district attorney’s office in Manhattan.

More recently, the government has grown skeptical of the argument that some banks are simply too big to charge, an argument that Sullivan & Cromwell often employs for its clients. That argument was tested in a recent case against BNP Paribas, the giant French bank accused of processing billions of dollars for Sudan and Iran.

At a meeting in Washington this year, a lawyer from Sullivan & Cromwell cautioned prosecutors about the potential fallout from BNP pleading guilty to a crime, according to people briefed on the meeting. To illustrate the concern, the lawyer presented prosecutors with a fake newspaper article reporting that a huge bank had pleaded guilty for the first time in decades. The hypothetical report detailed what regulatory problems could befall the bank if prosecutors did not lower their demands for a fine and take precautions when extracting a plea.

Weeks later, after lowering the fine to $8.9 billion, the prosecutors forced the bank to plead guilty. Far from reporting a crisis, BNP’s chief executive that day noted that the bank “will once again post solid results this quarter.”

Not every bank will have to plead guilty in future cases. Prosecutors still see benefits from deferred-prosecution agreements, which can require banks to install independent monitors and more broadly overhaul their practices than in the event of a guilty plea.

Lawmakers and other critics, however, contend that the agreements can lack teeth, begetting a pattern of misbehavior.

Since 2001, at least eight big banks have committed further offenses after receiving an initial deferred-prosecution agreement, according to data assembled by Brandon L. Garrett, a University of Virginialaw school professor and author of the book, “Too Big to Jail: How Prosecutors Compromise With Corporations.”

UBS has reached three deferred or nonprosecution agreements since 2009. On Tuesday, the Swiss bank said it had reached an agreement with the Justice Department to extend by another year a two-year nonprosecution agreement that was scheduled to expire in December.
The cycle of misbehavior is difficult to break.

Regulators and prosecutors blame a culture that prioritizes profit over compliance. And as banks have grown larger, and more international, illegality can stop in one unit of a bank even as it flourishes in another.

Standard Chartered is at risk of becoming Exhibit A of corporate backsliding. The Justice Department’s criminal division in Washington and the district attorney’s office in Manhattan, which settled with Standard Chartered in 2012 over its business dealings with Iran, are exploring whether the bank repeatedly violated that deferred-prosecution agreement.

The bank, which declined to comment for this article, previously said it was “cooperating with all relevant ongoing reviews, requests for information and investigations.”

The prosecutors, Leslie R. Caldwell in Washington and Cyrus R. Vance Jr. in Manhattan, have not decided whether to take additional action against the bank. But as an initial step, lawyers briefed on the matter said, they are expected to extend the length of the deferred-prosecution agreement, which would have otherwise expired in December. In an August regulatory filing, the bank acknowledged that the agreement “is likely to be extended.”

The prosecutors are questioning whether the bank underestimated the amount of its improper dealings with Iran, according to the lawyers briefed on the matter. In the course of an investigation into another bank, the lawyers said, evidence emerged that Standard Chartered had processed other transactions that it did not relay to the government. And because the 2012 settlement agreement applied only to transactions that had “already been disclosed,” the discovery of additional illegal transactions could scuttle the deal.

The prosecutors also took notice of Mr. Lawsky’s recent decision to file his second case against Standard Chartered in two years, faulting the bank for breakdowns in a computer system that was supposed to catch suspicious transactions. In August, Mr. Lawsky fined the bank $300 million for the lingering compliance woes, a penalty that came in addition to the $340 million the bank paid Mr. Lawsky’s agency in 2012.

It didn’t take long for concerns to arise. Just weeks after the bank settled in late 2012, its chairman appeared to violate a provision of the deal that forbade Standard Chartered executives from issuing “any public statement contradicting the acceptance of responsibility.”

In a conference call, the chairman referred to the illicit transactions as “clerical errors” — comments he later retracted.

As suspected, Airstrikes not doing much...

Airstrikes against Islamic State do not seen to have affected flow of fighters to Syria

By Greg Miller 

 

More than 1,000 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month, a rate that has so far been unchanged by airstrikes against the Islamic State and efforts by other countries to stem the flow of departures, according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

The magnitude of the ongoing migration suggests that the U.S.-led air campaign has neither deterred significant numbers of militants from traveling to the region nor triggered such outrage that even more are flocking to the fight because of American intervention.

“The flow of fighters making their way to Syria remains constant, so the overall number continues to rise,” a U.S. intelligence official said. U.S. officials cautioned, however, that there is a lag in the intelligence being examined by the CIA and other spy agencies, meaning it could be weeks before a change becomes apparent.

The trend line established over the past year would mean that the total number of foreign fighters in Syria exceeds 16,000, and the pace eclipses that of any comparable conflict in recent decades, including the 1980s war in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have attributed the flows to a range of factors, including the sophisticated recruiting campaigns orchestrated by groups in Syria such as the Islamic State and the relative ease with which militants from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe can make their way to that country.

American officials stressed that the stability of the flow is not seen as a measure of the effectiveness of an air campaign that expanded beyond Iraq and into Syria late last month. The latest estimatesindicate that strikes in Syria alone have killed about 460 members of the Islamic State — the group that has beheaded two American journalists and two British aid workers — as well as about 60 fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate.

The United States and its allies have carried out more than 600 strikes so far in Syria and Iraq, bombings aimed primarily at slowing the Islamic State’s advances and allowing the Iraqi military and moderate opposition forces in Syria to regroup. Rear Adm. John Kirby, spokesman for the Pentagon, said this week that the strikes are “disrupting” the Islamic State’s operations but acknowledged that any major offensive against the group “may still be a ways off.”

Experts said the foreign fighter population is likely to grow significantly larger as the three-year-old conflict drags on.

“I don’t think 15,000 really scratches the surface yet,” said Andrew Liepman, a counterterrorism expert at Rand Corp. who formerly was the deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Since the start of the U.S.-led air campaign, analysts have sought to track whether the bombings would discourage would-be fighters or serve as a rallying cry for Islamists. Liepman said the steady numbers could mean that neither has occurred or, more likely, that both have happened to degrees that offset one another.

He and others cautioned, however, that there are significant gaps in U.S. intelligence on the conflict in Syria, making it difficult to have a clear understanding of the scale and composition of the swelling population of foreign fighters.

The vast majority of those militants have come from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Tunisia has sent more fighters to Syria than any other nation.

More than 2,000 fighters have come from countries in Europe, carrying passports that would enable them to travel relatively freely in Western countries.

Many went to fight the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and may pose no security threat beyond that country’s civil war. But security officials have expressed mounting concern over more recent arrivals who have fought with the Islamic State or al-Nusra, which has a cell near Aleppo that was established to plot attacks against Western nations.

Britain, France, Germany and other European nations have taken increasingly aggressive measures over the past year to stem the flow of fighters to Syria, seizing passports, passing new antiterrorism measures and targeting suspects with stepped-up surveillance and arrests. U.S. officials have said that about 130 Americans have traveled to Syria or tried to do so.

Most militants entering Syria have done so through Turkey, a country that has recently sought to tighten control over its borders and root out Islamist networks that serve as pipelines for fighter.

U.S. officials said it could be too soon to see clear indications that such measures are working.

“The Europeans and other allies are taking steps upstream to stem the flow of their citizens to Syria, while at the downstream end, the Turks are taking action to keep their borders from being exploited by jihadists,” the U.S. intelligence official said. “It could take some time for the dampening effect of these measures to start showing up in the foreign-fighter intelligence estimates.”

Although U.S. officials have not made public estimates of the rate at which foreign fighters are flowing into Syria, they have provided totals that trace a clear trajectory. The 15,000 figure cited by the White House last month was up sharply from an estimate of 12,000 in July and 7,000 in March.

The air campaign “has probably discouraged some people and encouraged others,” Liepman said.

GOP brand 'sucks'

Rand Paul: GOP brand 'sucks'

By Alexander Bolton

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) acknowledged Wednesday a problem that many Republicans admit only privately: their party brand “sucks.”  

The weakness, Paul added, is particularly serious when it comes to appealing to black voters.

“Remember Domino’s Pizza? They admitted, ‘Hey, our pizza crust sucks.’ The Republican Party brand sucks and so people don’t want to be a Republican and for 80 years, African-Americans have had nothing to do with Republicans,” he said.

“Why? Because of a perception,” he said. “The problem is the perception is that no one in the Republican Party cares.”

Paul made his remarks at a GOP field office in Sherwood Forest, a predominantly middle-class African-American neighborhood.

For some time, he has been trying to shift perceptions by repeatedly speaking to African-American audiences and touting his proposals to reform the criminal justice program and rebuild blighted inner city neighborhoods.

“We’re also fighting 40 years of us doing a crappy job, of Republicans not trying at all for 40 years, so it’s a lot of overcoming,” he said. “You got to show up, you got to have something to say and really we just have to emphasize that we’re trying to do something different.”

Paul has sponsored six bills that seem especially relevant to concerns within the African-American community about issues such as the criminal justice system.

One of those bills is the Redeem Act, which would help juveniles with criminal records get jobs and avoid reoffending. It is co-sponsored by Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), the Senate’s only black Democrat.

Another bill sponsored by Paul would give federal judges greater flexibility in sentencing. A third would eliminate the disparity between punishments for cocaine- and crack-related crimes.

“We look at incarceration and we see a disproportionate number of people of color in jail and then when we see statistics on drug use, it seems to be about equal among all the different races,” he said. “Blacks and Hispanics seem to populate our jails more.”

Paul said the country “went too far in the war on drugs.”

He cited a report in Rolling Stone about a nurse who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for illegally buying 60 pills of Lortab, a mild painkiller.

He talked about a friend’s brother who sold marijuana plants in college years ago and still can’t vote in Kentucky.

Paul argued that Republican proposals to give more support to charter schools would give kids in poor inner-city neighborhoods more educational options. He also talked about the promise of remote learning through the Internet.

The Kentuckian has made outreach to black voters a top priority. He met with civil rights leaders in Ferguson, Missouri, earlier this month. The town became a symbol of national racial tensions this summer after a white police officer shot an unarmed black teenager, sparking riots.

Texas’ campaign finance regulator is set to shine a light on secret spending in state elections.

Will Texas Stamp Out Dark Money?

By David Saleh Rauf

The Texas Ethics Commission in a unanimous vote Wednesday approved a new regulation to require politically active nonprofits to start disclosing donors if they spend more than 25 percent of their annual budget on politicking.

The measure takes aim squarely at so-called dark money groups that are allowed under federal rules to play in the political arena without having to disclose where their money comes from.

“In Texas, where there are no limitations on contributions or no limitation on expenditures, disclosure is the only protection the public has,” said commission Chairman Jim Clancy, who was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry.

The move marks the first-ever regulation of dark money in Texas. Several other states — including California, New York and Utah — have put in place measures of their own to bring secret campaign cash out of the shadows.

But the Texas regulation comes just months before the Legislature convenes, teeing up a new fight on the issue after Perry vetoed a dark money disclosure bill last year.

Anonymous campaign cash from politically active nonprofits that don’t disclose the identity of donors represents a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into Texas elections, according to state data.

Yet the issue has been thrust to the forefront of campaign finance reform in Texas more than four years after the U.S. Supreme Court gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools.

It’s also become a political lightning rod: Conservative lawmakers and activists have taken to criticizing the commission as overstepping its authority for diving into the topic.

“The Texas Ethics Commission has moved forward with unconstitutional rules,” said Michael Quinn Sullivan, who heads the nonprofit Empower Texans, the biggest-spending dark-money group in the state.

Even before Wednesday’s hearing, the commission was put on notice last week by one newly elected member of the state senate and five Republican nominees to the upper chamber, who wrote to oppose the regulation. Their message: Back off and leave the issue for the Legislature to handle.

Commissioners addressed some of the public criticism, saying that they are simply following guidance from the Legislature to require disclosure on political contributions.

“We are not dreaming up things to make policy,” said Commissioner Paul Hobby, who will take over as the commission’s new chairman. “We are being urged for all good reasons to make some policy in this area.”

At the heart of the commission’s new regulation is an attempt to determine when a nonprofit’s political activity crosses the line to qualify it as a bona fide political action committee that is required under state law to disclose donors.

Under the rule, a nonprofit would have to start disclosing donors if 25 percent or more of its expenditures can be classified as politically motivated. It also would require disclosure if political contributions account for more than 25 percent of the group’s total contributions in a calendar year.

Spending machine

Dark Money: Still a Republican Game

by Peter Olsen-Phillips

Massive checks from billionaires like Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg and James Simons have fueled a Democratic outside spending machine that has helped to keep vulnerable candidates in contention across the country. Third-party spending on behalf of Democrats has kept pace with conservative dollars by and large, but Republicans still dominate at least one facet of the outside money equation: A Sunlight analysis of dark money — from politically active groups that don’t disclose their donors — finds that the practice still has a decidedly Republican bent.

Longstanding organizations like the National Rifle Association and newcomers like the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition have opened their coffers to intervene in elections; sometimes in contests across the country, sometimes in a single race. Overall, Republican-leaning dark money groups have spent $94.6 million, while Democratic-leaning groups have spent $28.4 million. Some $1.9 million in expenditures could not be classified.

The most prolific of the spenders, by our tally, is the US Chamber of Commerce. A trade association and perennial heavyweight on K Street and the campaign trail, almost all of the Chamber’s $31 million in reported spending has supported Republicans or opposed Democrats.

Just behind the Chamber is Crossroads GPS, which has poured in $23 million to softening vulnerable Democratic candidates, $8.6 million of which has been poured into the nail-biter Colorado Senate race. Crossroads GPS is part of the network of organizations that Republican insiders Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, currently the Republican nominee for Senate in Virginia, founded in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010.

While Crossroads GPS has an affiliated super PAC that discloses its donors (American Crossroads), the nonprofit arm has fought to keep its donor list quiet. It won an important victory in December of last year when FEC commissioners deadlocked on a decision to investigate the group’s political activity.

As the Center for Public Integrity and others have noted, Democrats are not bystanders in the dark money game. The League of Conservation Voters reported some $9.5 million in independent expenditures this year — good for the highest total of any liberal group — while the union-backed Patriot Majority USA has spent around $8.5 million.

Regardless of which side of the aisle it comes from, the stream of anonymous money is generally flowing toward a handful of tight Senate elections — particularly Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa and North Carolina.

Nonprofit dark money operations generally are 501(c)4 social welfare organizations or 501(c)6 trade associations. Internal Revenue Service rules bar social welfare organizations from being organized primarily to influence electoral politics, though they may still legally spend millions of dollars directly advocating for or against federal candidates in the form of independent expenditures.

When they spend money advocating for or against a federal candidate, these organizations must file a disclosure with the FEC, with some summary information including the type of expenditure (often TV ads), how much was spent and which candidate is targeted. Unfortunately, we know these reports cover only a fraction of the total sum these groups are pumping in to elections.

As Sunlight has reported in the past, politically active nonprofits frequently run “issue advertisements” that skirt the FEC’s definition of express advocacy and go unreported to the FEC.

This covert spending comes to light in the days immediately preceding an election, however, which is partly why we see the large jump in September, as non-filers switch over to directly advocating for candidates — since they will have to report their spending regardless.

The Sunlight Foundation advocates for the DISCLOSE Act which would provide greater transparency of the donors behind nonprofits’ political money.

Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders: Stand Up to Corporations Like Chevron

Earlier this month, Senator Bernie Sanders spoke at a town hall meeting in Richmond, California, about the many problems confronting America, including big money in politics following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. After an hour-long speech, he had the crowd of around 500 on their feet giving the independent senator from Vermont a standing ovation.

Sanders encouraged the crowd to fight against Chevron to ensure other corporations will not “roll over every community in America.”

“You’re seeing right here, in this small city, unlimited sums of money from one of the largest corporations in America, who says, ‘How dare you ordinary people – working class people, people of color, young people – how dare you think you have the right to run your city government? Who do you think you are? We’re gonna teach you a lesson, we’re gonna tell you who owns this community,  who controls this community,’ and that’s what this fight is about here in Richmond,” he said.

Sen. Sanders, a long-time advocate of America’s middle class, also detailed his own progressive agenda, touching on themes including the country’s “starvation” federal minimum wage and “crumbling” infrastructure, as well as the the Supreme Court’s “worst decision” and what he believes is the “greatest crisis happening in America.”

Sen. Sanders concluded his speech with this nugget: “Change does not take place easily. Anyone who’s read history understands that before real change takes place, people struggle. They go to jail. They die for that change.”

We’ve transcribed Sen. Sanders speech below and for more, watch the preview of his conversation with Bill this week.

Transcript of Senator Bernie Sanders’s Remarks at a Town Meeting on October, 16, 2014, in Richmond, California. Organized by the Richmond Progressive Alliance.

Senator Bernie Sanders: Whoa. In case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people here. Thank you all very, very much for coming out. And Gayle, thank you for that introduction. And I am here to be as supportive as I can for this ticket that’s going to bring people together, that is going to give Chevron a lesson that they have never, ever got.

So with your help on election night, you’re going to have Tom, and Gayle and Jovanka and Eduardo in office to do the right things for this community. Now, I came here tonight for a couple of reasons. First, as Gayle mentioned, I was a former mayor. I served for eight years. We have two-year terms in Burlington. And in that capacity of taking on then the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the railroad, the state, the utilities, the restaurants, the entire Chamber of Commerce, everybody else, we took them all on. And here are some of the lessons that I learned which I think you know very, very well.

Back then, there was a great deal of political alienation. I think it’s worse today. Profound anger and disgust. But this is what happened. And I’m sure that it’s happening. In this turnout tonight tells me it’s happening in Richmond. I ran for office on a plank which said, you know, I am not here to represent the big money interests. I am here to represent the middle class, and working families, and low income people in my community. And we had a plank. And we laid it out.

And the members of the city council — I had two supporters on the city council at the time, 11 against me. And at the first meeting, first meeting we had, the majority took away my one appointee. I had to serve my entire first year, the mayor in Burlington is entitled to a city attorney, treasurer, a whole bunch of appointees. They refused to allow me to have my appointees. So I had to run my first year with the group of folks who were loyal to the guy I had beaten in a very contentious election. 

Try that.

Do you know what happened? Because we kept faith with the people, because we did what we promised we would do, two years later we doubled voter turnout. Doubled voter turnout. And low income people, and working class people, middle class people came out in huge numbers. And in my races, I was able to beat Democrats, Republicans, Democrats and Republicans.

And at the end, they combined around one candidate. Beat him also. All right? Which always — I never forget that when you’re honest, when you’re willing to fight for working families, when you’re willing to stand up to the powers that be and you keep your word, people will stand with you. And that’s what’s going to happen here in Richmond.

The other reason that I am here is not just to applaud Gayle and all of those who have worked with Gayle for their creative solutions to serious problems. I love municipal government. I’ll tell you why. Because at the end of the day, establishing community, bringing people together, creating a sense of place where people feel good about each other, that’s the best that we can do. And that’s what you could do at the local level.

And I have been very impressed by everything that I’ve heard about what Gayle and her team has done in trying to improve life for people in Richmond. So I’m really happy to be here and be supportive of that. But the second reason I am here, and I think Jovanka made this point, is that we are facing an enormous crisis in this country.

By a five to four vote, the Supreme Court made what I think will go down in history as one of the worst decisions ever made by a Supreme Court in American history. And the result of that decision was to give the Koch brothers, Chevron and the billionaire class and all of corporate America the opportunity to spend unlimited, unlimited sums of money in races for the White House, for the US Senate, the US House, governors’ chairs and even municipal elections like here in Richmond, even school board elections around the country. Apparently for these guys, owning and controlling our economy is not enough. They now want to own and control the government.

And we are not going to allow them to do that. Not in Richmond, not anywhere. Now, when you talk about money in politics, the difficulty is trying to explain to ordinary people how much money these guys have. Because it’s really unimaginable. You know, most people think about $100, $1,000, $10,000. Just give you one example. The Koch brothers are the second wealthiest family in America. 

They are worth something like $85 billion. In one year alone, in the last year, their wealth increased by $12 billion. Now, they are extreme right wing ideologues who increased their wealth in one year by 12 billion. When Obama and Romney ran for president in 2012, both of them spent a little bit more than a billion dollars on their campaign. For the Koch brothers, a billion dollars is like $20 for ordinary Americans. In one year, $12 billion increase in wealth. $85 billion. They could spend $5 billion. It would have no impact on — essential impact — on what they’re worth. So for them, the only question, and it’s hard for people to understand this. The only question is: When does too much become counterproductive?

It is not a question of, how much? It’s just, when too much? Because they have literally unlimited sums of money. Now, let me tell you what else these guys want to do. Citizens United was, as I think we all understand, a horrendous decision. That’s not enough for them. And you all have got to understand them.

Back in 1980, and I want to get this in a little bit, David Koch, one of the brothers, ran for vice president of the United States on the Libertarian Party. And he helped fund that effort. And they had a party platform that he helped to write. And one of the important provisions in that platform which is now coming into effect unless we stop them is to say, and I quote, this is from his 1980 campaign. “We urge the repeal of federal campaign finance laws and the immediate abolition of the despotic Federal Election Commission.” That position is now the position of the leadership of the National Republican Party.

What does that mean in English? Right now, they can spend as much as they want through independent expenditures. Those ads you see on television. Tell somebody to do this, and all that stuff, that’s an independent expenditure. They have to go to a super PAC to fund, ‘Vote yes. Vote for this person or that person.’ This is where they want to go. This is where the Republican Party today wants to go. They want the day when all campaign finance law is repealed so that the Koch brothers could stand in front of a group like this — well, not quite like this. But have their candidates and say, “You want to run for governor of California? I’ve got a $100 million check for you. There’s your speech writer. There’s your media consultant. You work directly for me.”

So they want another 100 employees in the US Senate, another 435 in the House, and a big one in the White House. That is their vision of what democracy is about. And on the other side of the equation, they have another vision. Most of us learn that what democracy is about is one person, one vote. And in Vermont, we have what we call town meetings in March. And people come out. Whole town comes out. People argue about the road budget, and the school budget, and this, that and the other thing. Everybody has one vote.

What they are now trying to do, the Republican governors and legislatures around this country because they are cowards and they cannot defend their political point of view, is suppress the vote. You would think that somebody who believed in what they stood for — and I’m going to tell you in a moment exactly what they stand for. You would believe that they would have the guts to go out and try to convince people. “This is what I believe. This is what my opponent believes. Vote for me.” That’s called democracy. But they’re cowards. And they hide behind their money. And what they are trying to do right now in many, many states is make it difficult for seniors, for low income people, for people of color, for young people to participate in the political process. They are cowards. Shame on them.

Now, before I get into the thrust of my remarks, I want to do something that is done too rarely and the corporate media does not cover. We can all be appalled that billionaires are spending huge sums of money. I think that’s on the surface detrimental to democracy and not what this country is supposed to be about. But it is important to understand why is the Koch family spending — we don’t know exactly because a lot of this money is undisclosed — but we’re guessing three, four, five hundred million dollars on this election alone. What do they stand for? What do they want? I’m going to tell you what they want.

I told you a moment ago that David Koch ran for vice president in 1980. I am going to read some, just some of his platform. And you will be stunned by what I read. But to the very best of my knowledge, while this platform was written 34 years ago, their views have not changed. And they got think tanks all over this country. You name the issue. Tom was talking about veterans’ issues. They got a Koch brothers veterans organization. You talk about health care. They got a health care organization. They got a tax organization. They got an education organization. They are on television every night.

This is what the Koch brothers’ platform was in 1980, a platform which has not changed. “We favor –” this is a quote. Exact quotes. “We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.” You all are aware that the Republican House of Representatives last year voted to end Medicare as we know it, to transform it into a voucher system. Which means that if you are old and sick, you’re 75, you come down with cancer, their vision for your health care is a check for $8,000 to go to any private insurance company you want. You are 75, you got cancer, and you got a check for $8,000. Tell me how many days that’s going to keep you in the hospital.

That’s right. Maybe hours. Not days. That’s their vision. Medicaid. Huge cuts in Medicaid for low income people. But that is not enough. The vision of the Koch brothers is to end Medicare and Medicaid and other public health programs entirely. Next point.

And I quote: “We favor –” this is a quote. “We favor the repeal of the fraudulent, virtually bankrupt and increasingly oppressive Social Security system.” Now, many of us — and I know people in this room work with me, work with your senator Barbara Boxer, and others to say, “We are not going to cut Social Security.” There was a proposal called the so-called chained CPI which would have cut cost of living increases. And we put together senior groups, and veterans groups, and women’s groups, and the trade union movement, people with disabilities. We brought everybody together, formed a caucus in the Congress, and we beat them back. But Koch brothers are now talking about cutting Social Security. They want to eliminate Social Security.

“We support repeal of all law which impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws.” Do you know what that means? Right now — and I think Gayle was talking about this a moment ago — everybody in this room understands that a seven and a quarter federal minimum wage is a starvation wage. And we got to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. There is — we brought forth a bill in the Senate. Didn’t go as far as I would like it to go. It was for $10.10 an hour, which would have lifted over 25 million Americans, given them a pay raise. People who needed it the most. The moms trying to get by on $9.00 an hour, $9.50 an hour. It would have been good help. We could get virtually no Republican support for that.

The Koch brothers’ view is, of course you don’t want to raise the minimum wage. You want to eliminate the concept of the minimum wage. So that in high unemployment areas if you have workers fighting for a few jobs, ‘They’re going to say, I’ve got a job. It pays four bucks an hour. You don’t want it? I got 10 other people who want it.’ They want to eliminate all federal health and safety laws to protect workers on the job. That’s their vision for America.

Quote — listen to this. “We support the complete separation of education and state. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals.” Do you know what that means in English? The end of public education. So if you are a wealthy person, no problem. You’re going to send your kids to a good private school. But if you are a working class person, you’re a low income person, what are your kids going to have? Nothing. They want to end all federal aid for higher education. Pell grants. They want to end the ability of states to run state colleges and state universities.

“We support the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.” In other words, their idea of freedom is that a corporation, maybe an Exxon, can dump its crap into the air, get kids sick, pollute our water, pollute our land. And that’s called freedom. And you don’t want to interfere with the freedom of those corporations to destroy our air, land and water, do you? You don’t want to have legislation to protect the health of our kids. That’s their view.

Quote — and there are many, many others equally shocking. Here’s one that really gives you the totality of where they are coming from. “We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and ‘aid to the poor’ programs. All these government programs are privacy-invading, paternalistic, demeaning and inefficient. The proper source of help for such persons is the voluntary efforts of private groups and individuals.” Now, you know what that means? That means unemployment compensation gone, Head Start gone, food stamps gone. You name the federal program. Meals on Wheels gone. And their vision is that you will have a few rich people. And if you’re really nice to them, they may throw you — are you hungry? Well, they may throw you some crumbs or maybe not. But they will control what goes on.

And you’re seeing that — you’re seeing a little of that right here in this small city. Unlimited sums of money from one of the largest corporations in America who says, how dare you ordinary people, working class people, people of color, young people — how dare you think you have a right to run your city government? Who do you think you are? We’re going to teach you a lesson. We’re going to tell you who owns this community, who controls this community.

And that’s what this fight is about here in Richmond. And you damn well better win that fight. Because whether you know it or not — whether you know it or not, I think Gayle said it, the eyes of the country are on you. And if Chevron can roll over you, they’ll roll over — they and their buddies will roll over every community in America. If you can stand up and beat them with all of their money, you’re going to give hope to people all over America that we can control our destinies.

Now, what I want to do for a moment is deal with a subject that is terribly important that we don’t talk about enough. If you would ask me what the great crisis facing America is, the answer is that we don’t discuss the great crises facing America. That’s the great crisis. So what I want to do for a moment — what I want to do for a moment — is do what you don’t see on TV. Just not on TV. You don’t see it in the papers very often. That is I want to tell you in my view fact by fact what in fact is going on in the United States of America. And then I want to tell you what I believe we have to do to turn this country around.

Now, we all know that there are a lot of angry people out there. Some of them are slightly misguided and work within the tea party. And they are very angry, but unfortunately they are angry at the wrong people for the wrong reasons. And we’ve got to help them get their thinking together. And there are other people in the Occupy movement who are angry at the right people for the right reasons. But there are a lot of people who are angry. And you know what? The American people should be angry. And I’m going to tell you why they should be angry. And some of them understand it intellectually, but everybody understands it emotionally.

I want you to think about what’s gone on in this country for the last 30, 40 years. And what’s gone on is we have seen an explosion of technology. These little things, space age technology, robotics. You know, unbelievable technology. And what’s the result of technology? What technology does is make every worker far more productive than he or she used to be. So if I give you a tool and you are producing 30 percent more than somebody did 10 years ago, what you might logically think is you’re going to be making 30 percent more money or maybe, maybe you’ll be working 30 percent fewer hours.

And on that — so let me tell you a funny story on that one, all right? Settle in. This may go on for a while here. When I was a young man in college, this is true. For the young people, you think I’m not telling you the truth, but this is true. They taught courses about what Americans should do with all of the leisure time that they would have as a result of exploding technology. And you’re laughing. In fact, now the courses they teach is how you can survive in a stressed out family when mom and dad are working three jobs. And that is of course the reality of America today.

So people are asking themselves. They’re saying, with all of this new technology, with all of this new productivity, with all of this great global economy, and all these trade agreements, how come I am working longer hours for lower wages? How come when I am 55 years of age, I am suddenly getting laid off because I was making too much money and am replaced by a 20-year-old young person? 

How is that happening?

So listen up. And these are the facts that are impacting the reality of the middle class today. Since 1999, the typical — that middle class family, right in the middle of the economy, half the people above, half the people below — that family has seen its income go down by almost $5,000 after adjusting for inflation. Incredibly, that same family right in the middle of the economy earned almost $500 less last year than it did 25 years ago. So people are saying, what’s going on? I’m working hard. My wife is working hard. We’re working longer hours. And we are worse off as a family than we were 25 years ago.

Typical that — again, that median worker right in the middle. That male worker made $780 less last year than he did 41 years ago adjusted for inflation. That typical woman worker earned $1,300 less last year than she did in 2007. In other words, the working class of this country is on the move. The problem is we’re moving in the wrong direction. We’re moving down rather than up.

Now, the president gets on the TV and he makes an important point. And it’s a point not to be dismissed. The Republicans dismiss it. And he says correctly, think about where we were six years ago. You think we’re not creating enough jobs today? That’s true. No debate. Six years ago, we were losing 700,000 jobs a month. Six years ago, the financial system of this country and the world was on the verge of collapse. Put your credit card into an ATM, no money might come out. Talk about deficits? We ran up a $1.4 trillion deficit under Bush’s last year. So have we made progress? Yes. Have we made anywhere near the kind of progress we need to address the economic problems facing working people? Absolutely not.

Now, when you talk to people — and every poll, no matter what the poll is, who does it, the result is always the same. They say to people, okay, what is the most important issue on your mind? And what people say is: jobs and the economy. Now, you may have read in the paper that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment– official unemployment is 5.9 percent. If you include those people who have given up looking for work and those people who are working part time where they want to work full time, do you know what real unemployment in America is? It’s close to 12 percent. Do you know — do you know what youth unemployment is today? It is 20 percent.

Do you know — everybody here has heard a lot about Ferguson, Missouri. And we heard about the tragedy of an unarmed black man shot to death. That is a tragedy. But what they forgot to tell you is that African-American youth unemployment in this country is over 30 percent in this country today. And you want to know why people are anxious, why they are upset, why they are stressed out?

Half of the families in this country have less than $10,000 in the bank. So you’re getting old. You’re thinking about retirement. How the hell do you retire with less than $10,000 in the bank? You are in a divorce, you are in an automobile injury, you’re a job loss away from financial disaster.

When we talk about what’s happening in the middle class today, it’s important to understand– and again, young people may think I’m not telling the truth. But to the young people, I would say “There was once a time in America where you could walk into a department store and you could actually buy products made in the United States of America, not China.” And by and large, those jobs paid good wages.

Since 2001 in this country, we have lost 60,000 factories. Sixty thousand factories and millions of decent-paying jobs largely because of a disastrous set of trade policies that said to corporate America, ‘Go to China, go to Mexico, go to Vietnam, and you can bring your products back into this country tariff free.’ And I believe — and having voted against all of those trade agreements, I believe– I believe that if corporate America wants us to buy their products, they damn well should make those products right here in America.

Now, in one sentence, a long sentence, but in one sentence, we can see the transformation of the American economy. Thirty years ago, the largest private sector employer in America was General Motors. Strong union, the UAW. Decent wages. Strong health care benefits. Pension benefits. Today, the largest private sector employer in America is?

Wal-Mart.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Exactly. Low wages. Virtually no benefits. Vehemently anti-union. That in one metaphor is the transformation of the American economy. From a company that made real products, paid real wages, to Wal-Mart.

And by the way, when we talk about Wal-Mart, you should all know, and I’m sure you’ll be happy to know this, that Wal-Mart is owned by the Walton family, which is the wealthiest family in America. They are struggling with about $148 billion, okay? Trying to get by. It’s tough. Tough. But here is the outrage. The outrage is that because Wal-Mart pays wages which are so low, because Wal-Mart does not provide decent health care to its workers, you end up subsidizing Wal-Mart because a significant number of their people go on food stamps, go onto federally funded housing, going onto Medicaid.

So all of us are saying to the Walton family, “You’re the richest family in America. How about paying your workers a living wage? We are tired of your–” now, what’s happening in the country, and this is also just a strange moment. You know, if a tornado goes through a town, you know, and the tornado levels everybody, there’s a certain sense of this is a tragedy. Or a whole town has been hit by a flood, a tsunami, whatever it may be.

But as all of you know, there is something else going on in the economy today. The middle class is disappearing. We have more people living in poverty today than almost any time in American history. But there’s another reality. And the other reality is that the wealthiest people and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. So it’s not like everybody is in the same boat. People on top are doing phenomenally well at exactly the same time as we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. The rich are doing extraordinarily well at the same time as we have seniors struggling whether or not to pay for their prescription drugs or to pay for their food.

In America today, we have more income and wealth inequality than at any time since 1929. And by the way, you all know what happened in 1929. And that’s not an accident. Not an accident. But we have more wealth and income inequality in this country since 1929 and more inequality than any other major country on earth.

You know, we all think about our friends over in the United Kingdom. And they got queens, and dukes, and lords, and whatever the hell they got. No one can figure out. But they got all of these guys. And we say, that’s a really class-oriented country. We have more inequality in terms of wealth and income than they have.

Today in America, the top one percent own 37 percent of the financial wealth of the country. That’s bad. This is worse. The bottom 60 percent own all of 1.7 percent. You all follow that? Okay. In fact, it gets worse. The top one tenth of one percent own over 23 percent of total wealth. Got that? One tenth of one percent own over 23 percent of the wealth in America. The Walton family, our good friends at Wal-Mart, those generous benefactors, they alone own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of the American people. One family.

That’s obscene.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: It is obscene. It is exactly what it is. Now, that’s wealth. Wealth is what you accumulate in your entire life. In terms of income, which is what we made in the last year, since the Wall Street crash which was caused, as I hope everybody here knows, by the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street. Since that time, listen to this. Ninety-five percent of all new income created in America since 2008 has gone to the top one percent. So what that means is that, you know, economists look at growth in the economy. Did the GDP grow by two percent, four percent? Was it really good and six percent? And that’s important. But in a certain sense, it doesn’t make any difference to the average person if all of the new income associated with that growth goes to the top one percent.

So the reality is where we are today — and again, this is an issue that we just don’t talk about — television doesn’t talk about it. Just go out. Each family thinks they are the only family struggling. They are not. That is the vast majority of the American people. So where we are today? People on top doing phenomenally well, everybody else hurting.

In my city, in my state of Vermont yesterday, I believe, two days ago, in one of our larger towns, teachers went out on strike because the school district wanted to cut their health benefits, something that’s happening all over America. Today in America, the top 25 hedge fund managers, and no one quite knows what a hedge fund manager does. But we do know that these 25 guys, and I suspect they are all guys, made more than $24 billion. That is enough to pay the full salaries for 425,000 public school teachers. What about that for national priorities?

Today, corporate profits are at an all-time high, and CEOs earn about 270 times what their employees make, their average employee. Now, many sitting in Washington are going to hear, corporate America. Every — oh God, they are just taxed to the death. They just, it’s unbelievable.

Man in audience: Poor babies.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Right, poor babies. Well, you should know, as I’m sure you do, that one out of four corporations pays nothing in federal income tax. And the wealthy and large corporations avoid paying about 100 billion every single year. You know why? Because– that’s right. Chevron, too. Because they stash their money in tax havens like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda.

Man in audience: Eliminate tax perks!

Sen. Bernie Sanders: All right, so that’s where we are today. Now, what I want to talk about for a moment, and I want to make this as strongly as I can. All of these things that are happening were created by human activities, were created by bad public policy. That’s why we are where we are. Not an accident. This was people — big money interests pushed this agenda.

And when we do that let me give you an example. The American Society of Civil Engineers — it’s a very sexy title. But these guys analyze the state of our infrastructure. And they say we need to put $3 trillion into rebuilding our infrastructure. Now, interestingly enough, $3 trillion is just about what we spent on the war in Iraq, a war we should never have gotten into in the first place. If we are conservative and just take — and I would go further than this. But you take $1 trillion. You can have a profound impact in improving the infrastructure of America. And you can put 13 million Americans back to work at decent wages, which is exactly what we have to do.Let me give you a progressive agenda. And I know Gayle and others are fighting for a progressive local agenda. Let me give you an agenda for Washington. First of all, as I mentioned, real unemployment is 12 percent. Youth unemployment 20 percent. What we need to do is pass legislation that pushes a major federal jobs program which rebuilds our crumbling infrastructure. That is roads, and bridges, and rail systems, and water systems and waste-water pipes. When I was mayor of Burlington, we had to work with the state. And the feds helped to come up with $50 million back in the 1980s for a waste-water plant. Very, very expensive. Gayle, would a little federal money help rebuilding your infrastructure here? 

All right.

And not only do we talk about the economy and jobs. Not only, of course, do we have to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. We have to make sure in this country that equal work gets equal pay, that women do not get paid 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.

And very significantly, again, it’s an issue that is not discussed. Really, you can– raise your hands if anybody here has seen a television program dealing with our trade policy and the impact. Have anyone ever see a program? Now, it is — as I mentioned a moment ago, we’ve lost 60,000 factories in the last 14, 15 years. You think maybe we should be talking about it. But what we have got to do is end these disastrous trade policies.

Corporate America has got to invest back in this country. But obviously a progressive agenda has got to go further than that. We are living in a highly competitive global economy. And if this country is to succeed economically, we have got to have the best educated workforce in the world. And here is a depressing fact. This is a depressing fact. Thirty years ago, this nation led the world in terms of the percentage of our people who graduated college. We were number one. Today, we are number twelve.

Before I came in here, I was talking to a couple of women who I think are here. And one was teaching at a local college. And we were talking about the fact that not so many years ago, I don’t know, 25, 30 years ago, the University of California, one of the great university systems in the world, was tuition free. Some of you may have read that one of the states in Germany became the last state to abolish tuition in Germany. We had the ambassador from Denmark visiting us in Vermont not this summer but the summer before talking about how kids in Denmark go to college, graduate school and medical school. You know how much it costs them?

Nothing.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: That’s right. Zero. So maybe, just maybe if we want to have the kind of economy we need, decent jobs, decent wages, maybe we should learn something from Germany and Denmark and make sure that every young person in this country could go to college regardless of his or her income.

Couple of months ago in Vermont, we had a meeting on student indebtedness. And I talked to a young woman whose crime was that she went to medical school and is now doing an excellent job practicing primary health care in a community health center. She came out of medical school $300,000 in debt.

All right. Right now, we have young people paying five, six, eight percent on their interest rates. We have parents paying even more, again, for the crime of wanting to see their kids get a decent education. During the Wall Street bailout period, I managed to get an amendment passed in the Dodd-Frank financial bill. And the amendment for the first time allowed for an audit of the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

And you know what we learned? This is what we learned. During that crisis period through a revolving loan fund, the Fed lent out $16 trillion to virtually every financial institution in America, central banks all over the world, large corporations at interest rates of zero or one half of one percent.

Now, if you could bail out Wall Street and give them Fed money at one half of one percent, maybe we could do the same for the young people going to college. And while we’re at it, when we talk about young people and when we understand that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. Almost one out of five of our kids lives in poverty.

I want you to think for a moment. You’re a mom, maybe a single mom, and you’re going to work. You’re trying your hardest to bring up your kid well. What happens to the kid when you’re at work? Can you find good quality, affordable childcare? And the answer in Vermont and the answer in California is you can’t.

So we have got to create an understanding that the most important years of a human being’s life are zero to three. That’s what all the studies tell us. And we need hundreds of thousands of well-educated, well-trained, well-paid child care workers to make sure that our kids get off with a good start in life.

Let me say about a word that is dear to my heart because I’ve worked very, very hard on this. When we talk about what the Koch brothers want, what their vision of America is about, what it is about is a world in which we have repealed virtually every piece of legislation passed since the 1930′s, where a handful of billionaire families control the economy and they will dole it out to people as they choose. And always at the top of the list of programs they want to eliminate is Social Security. And you know why they want to eliminate Social Security? Because Social Security is the most successful federal program in the modern history of America. That’s why they want to eliminate it. So for years now, you turn on the TV, and they have these guys getting up there and saying, well, we need entitlement reform. Have you ever heard that phrase?

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Do you know what they are talking about? When they talk about entitlement reform, they are too cowardly to tell you what they really are talking about. What they are talking about is cuts in Social Security and in Medicare.

And here is the big lie: ‘Well, we’ve got to cut Social Security because it’s going broke. So let me tell you the truth. Social Security isn’t going broke. There’s $2.5 trillion in the trust fund. Not going broke. Social Security could pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 19 years.

And if you want to extend Social Security for decades more, you know what you do? You lift the cap. So that somebody who’s making a million or five million does not continue paying the same into the fund as somebody making 117. Now, some nice things on this issue have been happening. What is happening now is more and more people are saying, not only are we not going to cut Social Security. We’re going to expand Social Security benefits. And that’s the right answer.

This morning in San Francisco, I had the opportunity of meeting with and marching with the United Nurses of America. And what they understand as well as an increasing number of doctors, mostly primary care physicians, is they as nurses, as doctors, cannot do their job under the current dysfunctional health care system.

The Affordable Care Act has done some good things. We got about 10 million more people who have insurance. That’s good. We’ve done away with pre-existing conditions, et cetera. Some good things. But what we have got to recognize and I hope all of you know that today the United States of America is the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right of citizenship.

And I remind you, and I believe this from the bottom of my heart. We have got to move toward a Medicare-for-all single payer system. All of you should know that a health care system designed to maximize profits for the drug companies and the insurance companies is a system which distorts medical and health care needs in this country. We should be spending more on disease prevention. We should make prescription drugs affordable for all of our people. We should greatly expand the number of primary care doctors and nurses that we have so that if anybody gets ill, they walk into a doctor and they get what they need to get better.

Just want to– and you’ve been very patient — I just want to make a few other remarks. I’m on — in addition to being chairman of the veterans committee and as– Tom indicated, we work very, very hard. Did something very unusual in Washington these days. We actually passed legislation. Among other things, we got $5 billion in aid to bring in doctors, nurses and other health care professionals.

But I also sit on both the energy committee and the environmental committee, which is chaired, by the way, by Barbara Boxer, who does a very, very good job. Barbara and I have worked together on many, many issues. And one of the issues we understand because we see the scientists coming before us. We see the best scientists not only in America but all over the world. And what they tell us is climate change is real, climate change is caused significantly by human activity and emission of carbon, climate change in California, Vermont, all over this world is already causing devastating problems, and if we do not get our act together, those problems will only become worse in terms of drought, which you are experiencing, flooding, rising sea levels, extreme weather disturbances, which hit my state a few years ago.

So if we have any concern for our kids and our grandchildren, we have the moral responsibility to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, transform our energy system and move to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. We can do that. We can do that. If this country had the political will to say that we’re going to lead the world, we could do that. And that’s what we got to do.

Now, let me conclude by telling you what my wife tells me. My wife says, “You know, Bernie, whenever you speak, people get totally depressed. I’m going to hand out tranquilizers for suicide prevention efforts.” And she made me end this speech in a different way. And this is what she said. And she’s absolutely right. “You know, change does not take place easily. Anyone who’s read history understands that before real change takes place, people struggle. They go to jail. They die for that change. It doesn’t happen easily.”

And I want to remind everybody because it’s very easy for us to forget. Very easy. As human beings, I guess we just forget very easily about how change comes about. If we were sitting in this room 30 years ago and somebody said, “You know, I think that in 2008, America will overcome its racism, its longstanding racism, and elect an African-American president, and reelect him four years ago,” people would say, “You’re crazy. That can’t happen.” And you know what happened? The American people over — I’m not saying racism doesn’t — is not there. It certainly is. But this country has advanced in a significant way. It was able to elect a person based on his views and not the color of his skin. That is a huge step forward. And we should be very proud of that.

I’ll give you another example. Again, we take these things for granted. Thirty years ago, we’re sitting in this room. You look at the United States Senate. If my memory is correct, there were two members of the United States Senate who were women. Two. Today, the number is 20. And in 15, 20 years, half or more of the Senate will be women.

And what we’re seeing in Richmond — here is the important point. Back in the ’80s when I was mayor of Burlington, I did something extremely radical. We appointed the first woman to the Burlington Police Department. Oh, how radical can you be? And you are laughing. Because now, you know, in Washington with the capital police, I don’t know, 30, 40 percent of the women — of the police are women. We have women generals in the military, and so forth, and so on.

And here is the very good part. Gayle is your mayor today. And what people talk about is what she is doing. It is not a big deal that she’s a woman. And that is where we want to be. We want to vote for people based on their abilities and not on their gender. New Hampshire is across the Connecticut River from me. They have two — their governor is a woman. Their two House members are women. Two senators are women. And you know what’s interesting about it? It’s not a big deal. People argue about how good or bad they are doing. And that’s where we want to be as a country.

I’ll give you another example. When I was growing up, if a kid with disabilities was born, Down syndrome or whatever, it was often the embarrassment and shame in that family. Children with disabilities at a very young age were institutionalized. Kids were hidden. And think how far we have come to embrace people with disabilities. They are part of our community. We love them. We respect them. They are mainstream in our schools. We have come a huge way in embracing people with disabilities, a very significant change.

And last but certainly not least, if we were sitting here not 30 years ago but 10 years ago and somebody here were to say, you know, I think in 10 years, you’re going to have conservative states voting or allowing gay marriage, you would have thought that person was really crazy.

And I will tell you from a personal experience. Vermont was the first state in the country to pass civil unions. Not gay marriage. Civil unions, okay? And I remember that during that period, a lot of hostility and bitterness. No ifs and buts about it. A bunch of years later, Vermont became the first state in the country without a court order to pass gay marriage. Nobody noticed. Not a big deal. And when I talk to young people in my state, I go to a lot of the high schools in my state. I go to some of the conservative areas of the state. And I say to kids, well, I want you to raise your hand if you think that you support gay marriage. And the kids kind of look at you like, duh. Now, their grandparents look at it differently. But, you know, that’s why the Republicans have given up and backed off their homophobia. Because it’s a losing issue.

But again, on all of these issues — the civil rights struggle, how many people died? How many people went to jail? The struggle for women’s rights, women died, went to jail. Male allies stood with them. Disability rights. Gay rights. Nothing happened easily. It never does. And where we are right now is at a unique moment. We should be proud. Sometimes we don’t slap ourselves on the back enough. We should be proud of the very profound changes we have made to make this society a less discriminatory society. Real change. And many of you over your lifetimes were engaged in those struggles in one way or another. But today — that’s right. Give yourself a hand because you did it.

But today, we are engaged in another struggle in an area where we have not made progress and in fact where we have lost ground. And that is the economic struggle. We have lost ground. And the danger right now — and I use these words advisedly. Sometimes people think I’ve overly dramatic, but I am not. I worry very much that if present trends continue, we will see this become an oligarchic form of society and not a democratic form of society.

The Chevrons of the world, the Koch brothers, and the others, they are very religious people. Their religion is greed. And they are prepared to step on anybody and everybody who gets in their way. So my message to all of you is that in this profoundly important moment in America history where the billionaire class wants it all, that for the sake not only of us but more importantly for our kids and our grandchildren — I have seven beautiful grandchildren.

For them, and all of your kids, and your grandchildren, we have got to fight back tooth and nail. We cannot allow them to take over Richmond. We cannot allow them to take over America. And if we do our job, and if we knock on doors, and talk to our neighbors, we are going to beat them. And that’s what we’ve got to do. Thank you all very, very much.