Senator Sanders

Budget Conference Members of a budget conference committee facing a Dec. 13 deadline are formally set to hold their first meeting next Wednesday. “It is imperative that this new budget helps us create the millions of jobs we desperately need and does not balance the budget on the backs of working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in The Capital Times. LINK

Sanders in the South Columbia, S.C., Birmingham and Atlanta may seem like odd locations for a self-identified socialist senator from Vermont who speaks in a native Brooklyn accent to hold town hall meetings. But Sanders is convinced that an unapologetically social-democratic political message—grounded in calls for economic justice and a redistributive state—can resonate anywhere in the country, even in those Southern states responsible for electing many of the Tea Party representatives in Congress, according to In These Times. LINK

White House '16 "Politically speaking, there has never been, and will never again be, a better time for Sanders to run for president than in 2016," Paul Heintz wrote in Seven Days. "I realize running for president would be a way to shine a spotlight on these issues that are too often in the shadows today," Sen. Sanders said in a recent Playboy magazine interview. "But I am at least 99 percent sure I won’t."LINK

F-35 When the Air Force declares the winner of the F-35 sweepstakes, the contract almost certainly will not go to No. 1-rated Jacksonville, Fla., but to Burlington, Vt., according to a Florida Times-Union report. The Jacksonville, Fla., newspaper called Sen. Patrick Leahy “the ultimate big dog in this fight.” Leahy’s office claimed "he has not been involved in the process, per se,” but he and Sen. Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch support basing the F-35 in their state.

 F-35 Ice-cream entrepreneur Ben Cohen’s “broad-brush swipe” at Vermont leaders for their support of basing F-35s in Burlington was criticized by Thomas Davis in a letter to Seven Days. Davis called Sen. Sanders “the most consistent voice for organized labor and for the rights of working people in the entire Congress." LINK

Playboy Interview According to Breitbart, Sen. Sanders' interview with Playboy magazine reflected the media’s "left-wing bias of the mainstream media and culture industry in general.” LINK

Vermont Republicans Windsor Republican John MacGovern, who unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Sanders last year, emailed friends and supporters to say he would seek the party chairmanship. Chairman Jack Lindley has been hospitalized since last month with a serious, unspecified illness, according to Seven Days. LINK 

World 

Spying on Allies One of the United States’ closest allies, Germany, announced on Wednesday that Chancellor Angela Merkel had angrily called President Obama seeking reassurance that her cellphone was not the target of an American intelligence tap. Washington hastily pledged that the leader of Europe’s most powerful economy was not the target of current surveillance and would not be in the future, but conspicuously said nothing about the past. After a similar furor with France, the call was the second time in 48 hours that the president found himself on the phone with a close European ally to argue that the unceasing revelations of invasive American intelligence gathering should not undermine decades of hard-won trans-Atlantic trust, The New York Times reported. LINK

Kerry Seeks to Reassure Israel on Iran As the United States edges closer to diplomatic talks with Iran on nuclear issues, Secretary of State John Kerry is seeking to reassure Israel that the U.S. will not be too pliant in efforts to gain a compromise, The New York Times reported. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” Mr. Kerry said before a meeting with the Israeli prime minister. LINK

National

Republicans Switch Tactics on Health Care Emboldened by intense public criticism surrounding the rollout of the online insurance exchange, Republicans in Congress are refocusing their efforts from denying funds for the health care law to investigating it. In changing tactics, Republicans hope to tamp down the continuing public criticism of their previously fruitless attack on the Affordable Care Act, one that led to a 16-day government shutdown, by focusing on the problems with the law that they say they have warned the nation about, unheeded, for three years, The New York Timesreported. LINK

 Unease Grows on Health Law The Obama administration on Wednesday said it would establish what amounts to a six-week extension in the time people have to obtain insurance coverage before incurring a penalty, responding to what some have described as a lack of clarity in the law over the deadline. Some Democrats say the flawed rollout of the law could mean bigger changes are needed, The Wall Street Journal reported. LINK

Democratic Senates Seek Extension A white House offensive to shore up support for Obamacare failed Wednesday to prevent a series of high-profile Democratic defections from the party line. Three Democratic senators called for an extension of the March 31 deadline under the Affordable Care Act for most Americans to have health insurance. The three, Mark Pryor, Mark Begich and Mary Landrieu, are up for re-election next year. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who also is running for another tem, made a similar proposal on Tuesday, The New York Daily News reported. LINK

Health Law Fails to Keep Prices Low in Rural Areas As technical failures bedevil the rollout of President Obama’s health care law, evidence is emerging that one of the program’s loftiest goals — to encourage competition among insurers in an effort to keep costs low — is falling short for many rural Americans, according to The New York Times.LINK

Jury Finds BofA Liable for Mortgage Fraud A New York Jury on Wednesday found Bank of America liable for mortgage fraud carried out by its Countrywide Financial unit ahead of the recession, The Wall Street Journal reported. LINK

Most Walmart Associates Make Under $25k Walmart Chief Executive Bill Simon confirmed in a slideshow that most of the company's associates make less than $25,000 per year, Think Progress reported.  LINK

Vermont

Health Care House Minority Leader Don Turner says the technical problems with Vermont’s new health insurance exchange are unacceptable and he wants the Governor to invoke the waiver provision if the system isn’t fully operational by December 1, Vermont Public Radio reported. LIN 

Home Heating Some Vermont officials are worried that the temporary funding that reopened the federal government will leave low-income families in the state without enough help paying their heating bills this winter. The stopgap funding measure known as a continuing resolution funds many federal departments and agencies through Jan. 15, according to the Times Argus. LINK

Food Banks Fret With food donations down 18 percent and federal funding cuts coming Nov. 1, Vermont Foodbank CEO John Sayles says a food aid funding boost passed by Congress in 2009 expires at the end of the month. Households will see benefit cuts ranging from $11 to $36 per month. Meanwhile, a major donor to food banks in New England has discontinued that activity, resulting in a 10 percent drop in donated food, The Associated Press reported. LINK

Panel Urges Prompt Yankee Shutdown In a meeting Wednesday, the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel urged utility regulators to dismantle and decommission the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant as soon as possible, The Associated Press reported. LINK

Drug Abuse Costs There’s no published number for how much the drug trade and drug addiction is costing Vermonters. But looking at 2005 — when the drug problem wasn’t as pronounced — Vermont spent $538,712 on justice, education, health, child and family, mental health, public safety, regulation, prevention and treatment related to alcohol and drug abuse and addiction, according to a study by Columbia University, the Rutland Herald reported. LINK

Made in Vermont To show students what kind of manufacturing happens locally and what jobs might be available to them, officials at Mack Molding opened their doors to high school students in Bennington County this week. Almost 30 students from the Southwest Vermont Career Development Center in Bennington spent Wednesday learning about how Mack makes the F’real Frozen Beverage Blender. Students from Burr and Burton Academy visited Monday and Mack hosted Arlington Memorial High School students Tuesday, the Rutland Herald reported. LINK

Prog Turnover After a dozen years as state chairwoman of the Vermont Progressive Party, Martha Abbott will hand the leadership baton to someone else on Nov. 9 and focus her attention on party fundraising. Emma Mulvaney Stanak of Burlington confirmed that she will seek the party’s top job, the Burlington Free Press reported. LINK