The Week in Review
People from across America came to Washington, D.C., 50 years ago for the March on Washington. A student named Bernie Sanders was one of the faces in the crowd. Another anniversary is approaching. It was five years ago next month when Wall Street recklessness and greed caused a financial crisis that resulted in the worst recession since the Great Depression. Sanders on Tuesday addressed the need for Wall Street reforms. Global warming was back in the news with a new report on Monday by UN scientists saying that there is now a 95 percent certainty that human activity is changing the climate.
Watch Bernie on the March on Washington »
A young Bernie Sanders attends a meeting with civil rights activists from the University of Chicago.
March on Washington A 22-year old college student was among the more than 200,000 people who traveled hundreds of miles to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil right leaders. It was Bernie Sanders’ first trip to Washington. "There has been some real progress in breaking down barriers of discrimination and segregation, including the election and re-election of an African-American president. On the other hand, in terms of unemployment, low wages and more wealth disparity, we are worse off than we were in 1963," he said. The formal name of the gathering was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. “Jobs came first, an acknowledgement that the ability to enjoy liberty depends upon having the economic wherewithal to exercise our rights. The organizing manual for the march … spoke of demands that included “dignified jobs at decent wages.” It is a demand as relevant as ever,” E.J. Dionne Jr., wrote in The Washington Post.
Listen to Sanders on The Thom Hartmann Program
Read the column by E.J. Dionne Jr.
Wall Street. In an interview on the Ed Schultz radio program, Sen. Sanders said “If we are ever going to be successful in rebuilding a collapsing middle class, and dealing with poverty, and creating the jobs that we desperately need in this country, you have to deal with Wall St. You just can’t push it aside.” Sanders also told the radio audience that Wall Street banks “write two-thirds of the credit cards in America, half of the mortgages in America, 95 percent of the derivatives in America, and they play a huge role in the oil futures market and their speculation there drives up oil prices that the average driver sees at the gas pump.”
Youth Jobs Work rates for teenagers fell during the recession and have not recovered. “A decade ago, a 16- or 17-year-old boy was twice as likely to have a job as his 70-year-old grandfather,” according a report on Thursday in The Wall Street Journal. “Today, the grandfather is actually more likely to have a job than the boy.” Sanders has introduced legislation that would provide $1.5 billion over two years for states and local communities to help find jobs for more than 400,000 unemployed 16- to 24-year-olds. Currently, the official unemployment rate for that age group is 16.2 percent. Sanders’ legislation passed the Senate in June as a part of the immigration reform bill.
Read The Wall Street Journal article
Read more about Sanders’ youth jobs provision
Solar City Human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades and sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of the century if emissions continue unabated, an international panel of scientists reported on Monday. The draft summary of a United Nations climate report attributed a recent slowdown in the pace of warming to short-term phenomena. In Vermont on Wednesday, Sanders joined Green Mountain Power officials to celebrate an expansion of solar development in Rutland, Vt. The project would put Rutland on a path to generate 10 megawatts of solar power by the end of 2015, making it the highest per-capita of solar reliance of any city in New England. “At a time when it is clear that global warming poses the greatest threat the planet has ever faced, I am very pleased that Green Mountain Power is making great strides in its effort to make Rutland, Vt., the solar capital of New England,” Sanders said. Sanders and Sen. Barbara Boxer recently introduced legislation to tax carbon emissions and invest in clean energy technologies. “It launches the conversation where it should be launched: a punitive tax on the human behavior that is pushing the world’s environment toward calamity,” Angelo Lynn wrote in the Addison County Independent.
