With the police and protester clashes in Ferguson, Missouri, as a backdrop, Sen. Bernie Sanders announced on Wednesday that he will introduce legislation to address the national crisis of black youth unemployment.  It was reported on Wednesday that an entire city in the South Pacific is being rebuilt on higher ground because global warming is raising sea levels. Sanders has proposed a tax on carbon, an idea explored in a documentary video launched on Wednesday. And Sanders joined thousands of Vermonters at Friday’s funeral for former Sen. Jim Jeffords, who died on Monday at age 80. Jeffords was a champion for the environment, education and disability rights, the issue that prompted the lifelong moderate Republican to leave the party. 

Jobs Crisis Black youth unemployment in the St. Louis area is near 50 percent. In a letter to Senate colleagues, Sanders called for a thorough federal investigation of the Aug. 9 death of an unarmed black teenager who was shot by a police officer in the St. Louis suburb. “We also must recognize, however, that there is an economic crisis facing our nation’s youth, particularly young African-Americans,” Sanders said. Nationwide, the youth unemployment rate today is more than 20 percent and African-American youth unemployment is nearly 35 percent.  The legislation would provide $5.5 billion in immediate funding to states and localities to employ 1 million young Americans between the ages of 16 and 24. 

Police Tactics “When you see the kind of force that’s been used in Ferguson, it really does make it appear that the police department there is an occupying army in a hostile territory and that is absolutely not what we want to see in the United States,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said on Monday. “We’ve got to rethink a lot of this heavy equipment that police departments around the country are utilizing.” The senator was interviewed on MSNBC about the police response to protests in the St. Louis suburb since Aug. 9, when an unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, was shot to death by a white police officer. Watch

Global Warming Sanders has called for a tax on carbon emissions which cause global warming, according to a new documentary – “Carbon” – by Leonardo DiCaprio and Thom Hartmann.  “Sen. Boxer and I have introduced legislation to do just that. We are going to do it in a way that impacts fewer than 3,000 of the most significant fossil-fuel polluters in the country,” Sanders said. “The reason we do it is that people should not have the freedom – quote, unquote – to destroy the planet. They cannot continue to be able to do that with impunity,” he added. The documentary came out Wednesday. Reuters reported on the same day that a town in the Solomon Islands is relocating to escape the rising Pacific Ocean. The project is the first time that a provincial capital with all its services and facilities is being moved because it is imperiled by rising seas caused by the changing climate. Watch “Carbon”, Read more from Politico, Read more from Reuters

Gentleman Jim Sen. Jim Jeffords died on Monday at age 80. “He was a very decent, low-key, down-to-earth person. Vermonters understood that Jim loved the state and our way of life. It always seemed to me that he was more comfortable with Vermonters at home than with the powerful mucky-mucks in Washington,” Sanders wrote in a remembrance for Time magazine.   Jeffords was a strong advocate for education, disability rights, the environment and the arts. He drew national attention when he quit the Republican Party in 2001, became an Independent, and gave control of the Senate to the Democrats. “A lifelong moderate Republican, Jim often said he felt it wasn’t he who left the Republican Party, but rather the Party that left him as it moved sharply to the right. Jim’s decision to bolt the Republicans was an enormously difficult one for him personally and politically. It was an act of extraordinary courage – one very much respected by most Vermonters.”