Author: Ben Spielberg
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Bernie Sanders Is Correct: He Polls Better than Hillary Clinton Against the Republicans
PolitiFact just issued a completely incorrect ruling on one of their “fact checks.” Here is the correct ruling on the following statement from Bernie Sanders: PolitiFact called it “false” because they found a few polls in which Clinton does better. Their “fact checking” was grossly negligent, however. While the meaning…
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Voting for Bernie Sanders, Learning from Ta-Nehisi Coates
Several months ago, Black Lives Matter activists targeted Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders with protests. Many of my fellow Sanders supporters thought these protests unfair, in large part, as I explained at the time, because Sanders “has an excellent record on racial justice issues, much better than any other candidate…
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Bernie Sanders-Style Health Care Would Be a Big Win for Low- and Middle-Income Americans
Bernie Sanders just released his new proposal for a single-payer health care system. As former US Labor Secretary Rob Reich notes, Sanders’ plan would be “a huge advance over what we have now.” Reich’s summary: It builds on the strengths of Medicare. Like Medicare, it’s universal — separating health insurance…
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Donald Trump is A Problem, Not The Problem
Last September, Frank Rich wrote an article for New York Magazine entitled “The Importance of Donald Trump: Far from destroying our democracy, he’s exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not. And changing it in the process.” How so? Rich argued that Trump has…
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The Sound Reasoning Behind a $15 Minimum Wage
The New York Times Editorial Board recently endorsed a $15 federal minimum wage. A proposal at the federal level would phase in $15 an hour in small increments over a period of several years and would still, as the Times mentions, set a wage floor in 2020 below what most…
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Why I Reject Lesser-of-Two-Evils-ism
If Hillary Clinton ends up winning the Democratic nomination for president, some Bernie Sanders supporters will vote for her anyway. I can respect that decision. While the differences between Democrats and Republicans are often overstated – to give just two examples (there are many), the same people advise Clinton, Marco…
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Good Policy Is the Goal. Compromise Should Not Be.
Matt Bruenig just wrote an excellent series of posts dismantling a misguided “Consensus Plan for Reducing Poverty and Restoring the American Dream” from the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution. Bruenig’s posts explain why the plan’s emphasis on education, work, and marriage will not accomplish its goals (I’ve made…
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What’s Wrong with the Democratic Party
Two things that happened this week illustrate much of what’s wrong with the Democratic party. First, Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon doubled down on Clinton’s commitment, voiced at the last Democratic debate, to avoid any tax increases at all on the “middle class.” Second, the Service Employees International Union…
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