The White House signaled on Friday that Social Security will be preserved in President Obama's new budget.  Sen. Bernie Sanders welcomed that "good news." The case for slashing 220,000 Postal Service jobs was undercut by financial data that Sanders obtained from the Postal Service itself on Monday. In another cautionary report, climate scientists on Tuesday announced that last month was the 4^th warmest January on record in the United States.

Postal Service 

At a time when the U.S. Postal Service is considering deep cutbacks, an internal watchdog told Sanders on Monday that the mail service's retiree health care fund already has a big funding cushion. The $5 billion a year that Congress ordered the Postal Service to put in the fund has been cited by Postal Service managers as a major reason to cut 220,000 jobs and close 3,700 post offices and 252 mail processing plants. In a letter to Sanders, however, Postal Service Inspector General David C. Williams said the $326 billion fund already "significantly exceeded" what the federal government and top corporations have socked away for retiree health care.

Oil Pipeline 

The State Department failed to adequately weigh concerns about the route of an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas and should strengthen its oversight of contractors, but an audit found no conflict of interest. The report released on Thursday was requested by Sanders. "The more we learn, the less merit there is to this project," he said. "For those of us who are concerned about the consequences of global warming and the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the idea of producing oil that emits 82 percent more carbon pollution than conventional oil is indefensible."

Saving Democracy 

"Big Money has been able to get away with murder right here in Washington, D.C. Government has been working for the very wealthy rather than ordinary people and a lot of that has to do with our campaign finance laws. Billionaires without disclosure, corporations without disclosure are able to put huge amounts of money into campaigns," Sanders told radio host Leslie Marshall on Thursday.  The radio interview was about his proposal to amend the Constitution to overturn a Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that allowed unlimited and undisclosed spending by corporations to influence political campaigns. Listen to Bernie on The Leslie Marshall Show.