Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders
Bernard "Bernie" Sandersis an American politician, serving as the junior United States Senator from Vermont since 2007. Sanders is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history. He has always caucused with the Democratic Party, which has entitled him to committee assignments and at times given Democrats a majority. Sanders became the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee in January 2015; he had previously served for two years as chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. He publicly identified...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth8 September 1941
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
The billionaires and their super PACs increasingly control the American political process. This is not democracy. This is not what brave Americans fought and died to defend. This is oligarchy. This is government of the few, by the few and for the few. We must overturn Citizen United and move to public funding of elections.
I think it's important that members of the United States Senate spend time not just on Capitol Hill but making contact with ordinary people and engaging them in the political process.
What we are doing in this campaign [2016], it just blows my mind every day because I see it clearly, we`re taking on not only Wall Street and economic establishment, we`re taking on the political establishment.
What does a political revolution look like? It means that 80 percent of the people vote in national elections, not 40 percent. It means that billionaires can't make unlimited campaign contributions and buy and sell politicians. It means that the U.S. government represents the needs of all the people, not just the 1 percent and their lobbyists.
This is what oligarchy looks like: Today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The top one-hundredth of 1 percent makes more than 40 percent of all campaign contributions. The billionaire class owns the political system and reaps the benefits from it.
Are we prepared to take on the enormous political power of the billionaire class or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?
We need a growing middle class, not one that has been disappearing for 40 years. We need a vibrant one person-one vote democracy, not one which is dominated by billionaire campaign contributors. It's time for a political revolution. It's time to make our government work for all of us, and not just the 1%.
In my view, a corporation is not a person. A corporation does not have First Amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign.
I understand what a normal political speech is. You get up there, tell a few jokes, you have the flags behind you, and you speak for 10 or 15 minutes in broad generalities.
I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns.
Ben Carson and I don`t have much in common politically. But the fact is when you have kids getting involved in the political process, doing their best to elect the candidates of their choice, that`s what the American democracy is about.
The only way change happens is when people become more significantly involved in the political process.
Everyone can have health care. Everyone can earn a living wage. We can educate all our kids - well.But none of that happens unless there's a political revolution. And it's not going to happen unless we deal with corporate control of the media.
[Hillary] Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be. Yes, we could get rid of Assad tomorrow, but that would create another political vacuum that would benefit ISIS.