Week in Review
Last year was the hottest ever recorded in the United States, the government announced on Tuesday. Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce legislation to deal with the global warming crisis in a way, as he put it, that is “aggressive but achievable.” President Obama on Thursday nominated his chief of staff, Jacob L. Lew, to be his new treasury secretary. Citing Lew’s ties to Wall Street, his views on bank deregulation, and his willingness to cut Social Security benefits, Sanders announced that he would vote no when the Senate decides whether to confirm the nomination. “The Soul of America,” a Sanders column about economic justice, was published Wednesday in The Huffington Post. And a Vermont-born congressman who helped change America during the Civil War is getting well-deserved attention because of a new movie, “Lincoln,” which garnered a slew of Academy Award nominations on Thursday.
Global Warming
The annual U.S. temperature last year was 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., announced on Tuesday. The National Weather Service earlier said 2012 was the warmest year on record in Burlington, Vt. Extreme conditions have been commonplace around the world. The New York Times on Friday catalogued examples from Great Britain, which saw drought and deluge last year, to China, where this winter is the coldest in three decades, to Brazil, in the grip of a heat spell, to Australia, where fires fueled by a heat wave are raging, to Pakistan, which was drenched under unexpected flooding in September, to the Middle East, where Jerusalem was blanketed by a rare snow storm on Thursday. “We must take strong action to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and move toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy,” said Sanders, a member of the Senate environment committee.
Read more about the senator’s proposal »
Read more in the Burlington Free Press »
Read more in The New York Times »
The Soul of America
“Despite such terminology as ‘fiscal cliff’ and ‘debt ceiling,’ the great debate taking place in Washington now has relatively little to do with financial issues. It is all about ideology. It is all about economic winners and losers in American society. It is all about the power of Big Money. It is all about the soul of America,” Sanders wrote in a column for The Huffington Post.
Read the column »
Watch the MSNBC interview »
Treasury Secretary
He criticized Lew's role in budget negotiations where the White House agreed to consider changes in Social Security cost-of-living increases and reductions in Medicare benefits. He also voiced concern about Lew’s ties to Wall Street. “I am really tired of the president, and I support the president, continuing to appoint people who come from Wall Street. We need people… who are going to have the guts to stand up to Wall Street,” Sanders said.
Read more »
Watch Thomas Roberts interview Sanders on MSNBC »
Lew’s Ties to Wall Street
Lew was one of the top economic officials in the Clinton administration when Depression-era regulations on Wall Street were undone. Later during the financial crisis in 2008, Lew was an executive at Citigroup, one of the country’s biggest banks, as it nearly imploded. When Lew was nominated two years later to head the White House budget office, there was a revealing exchange at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Budget Committee. Sanders asked Lew if he thought deregulation was a cause of the financial collapse in 2008. Lew did not think so.
Read more in The Washington Post »
Watch the 2010 Budget Committee hearing »
Conflicts at the Fed
With the departure of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Sanders announced on Wednesday that he will reintroduce legislation that would prohibit financial industry executives from sitting on the 12 regional Fed boards of directors. “Jamie Dimon was the poster child for why we need to end the serious conflicts of interest at the Fed, but he was not alone. Two-thirds of the directors at the New York Fed are hand-picked by the same bankers that the Fed is in charge of regulating,” said Sanders, who had called for Dimon’s resignation.
Lincoln and Vermont
The movie “Lincoln” has turned a spotlight on the real-life Rep. Thaddeus Stevens. The Vermont native and steadfast abolitionist helped push through the 13th Amendment to end slavery. As a congressman from Pennsylvania, Stevens also is credited with shepherding the 14th and 15th Amendments through Congress after the Civil War. Tommy Lee Jones, the actor who played Stevens in the movie, on Thursday was nominated for an Academy Award.
