In a vivid example of how the Supreme Court has let big corporations buy elections, Chevron is spending at least $3 million on a municipal election in Richmond, California. Sen. Bernie Sanders entered the fray on Thursday. In Oakland earlier Thursday he spoke at a rally or nurses demanding that hospitals to a better job dealing with the Ebola virus. Dramatic spikes in the prices for generic drugs prompted Sanders and Rep. Elijah Cummins to ask the Obama administration to act.  

Democracy for Sale Sanders stepped into the battle in Richmond, California. A huge crowd of more than 500 people turned out to hear him a town meeting in the city where the oil giant is pouring money contests that pit anti-Chevron candidates for mayor and city council against a slate of candidates backed by the owner of a giant petroleum refinery in the Bay Area city. “Chevron is trying to buy the Richmond City Hall. We can’t let them get away with it,” Sanders said. “This is not what democracy is supposed to be about.” One of Chevron’s prime targets is the current mayor, Gayle McLaughlin, an oil company critic who is running for a seat on the city council. Chevron is able to spend millions of dollars to try to displace McLaughlin and her allies on the city council with company-friendly candidates because of a 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, which voided laws against corporate campaign spending that had been on the books for decades.

Machinists Union Convention Speaking at a labor union convention in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Sanders said the future of American democracy is at stake. “We are not living in a democracy when 60 percent of Americans are not voting, while billionaires like the Koch brothers are spending hundreds of millions to buy the United States Senate. That's called oligarchy, not democracy,” Sanders said. The billionaires Charles and David Koch and other wealthy individuals are pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into this fall’s campaigns by taking advantage of a disastrous 2010 Supreme Court ruling and subsequent court decisions that gutted federal and state laws limiting campaign spending.

Wealth Gap Global wealth inequality has increased since the recession that began in 2007, according to a report Monday from Credit Suisse. The Swiss bank said the world’s richest 1 percent owned 48.2 percent of all global wealth in 2014. That share is up from 44.7 percent in 2007, according to the report. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent of the world’s population owns less than 1 percent of all global wealth.  The gap between rich and the rest of us is almost back to the level it was at in 2000, when the wealthiest 1 percent accounted for 48.7 percent of wealth. The report estimated that in 2013 some $12.9 trillion was added to the stock of personal wealth. 

Drug Prices Sanders and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings on Thursday called on the Obama administration to address “staggering increases” in generic drug prices. “The federal government must act immediately and aggressively to address the increasing costs of these drugs,” Sanders and Cummings wrote in a letterto Sylvia Burwell, the Department of Health and Human Services secretary. Prices for many generic drugs used to treat everything from common medical conditions to life-threatening illnesses have “recently risen at alarming rates,” the lawmakers wrote. The issue has touched a nerve among consumers. More than 1,500 people have written to Sanders and Cummings about their personal experiences with drug price increases. To read the letter to Secretary Burwell, click here. To read personal stories, click here. To tell your story, click here. 

War in the Mideast Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sanders said Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Mideast nations must become more involved in the battle to defeat the Islamic State terrorist group in Iraq and Syria. Syria has the fourth largest military budget in the world and an army of more than 200,000 soldiers, at least seven times greater that the ISIS forces. “This is a battle for the soul of Islam and must be won by non-extremist Muslim nations,” he said. “It cannot be won if the war is portrayed in the Middle East as U.S. vs. ISIS, West vs. East and Christianity vs. Islam. Watch

Ebola in America President Barack Obama raised the possibility on Thursday that he might appoint an “Ebola czar” to manage the government’s response to the deadly virus as anxiety grew over the air travel of an infected nurse. Nurses demanding Ebola safety and training were joined by Sanders at a rally in Oakland, California, on Thursday. He supported their call for every hospital in the country to be prepared in the case of an outbreak. "You deserve protection," Sanders said, "not only for yourself, of course, but so that you can do your job," 

VA Doctors Sanders and Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert A. McDonald met on Monday with medical students at the University of Vermont and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. It was part of a recruiting drive to bring more doctors, nurses and other health care professionals into the VA. Legislation that Sanders shepherded through Congress in July includes $5 billion for the VA to recruit more health care professionals to care for the rapidly-growing number of veterans. “We need more doctors and we need more nurses,” Sanders said. “We put $5 billion in place to make sure we can attract some of the best and brightest to serve our veterans.”