Hillary Clinton and Climate Change

Dear Friends,

As this campaign for President has progressed, Secretary Clinton has moved closer to Senator Sanders' long held positions to fight climate change.  She eventually came out against the Keystone XL pipeline, although she said it was a distraction, she eventually came out against Shell drilling in the Arctic, she eventually came out against the Trans Pacific Partnership which among other terrible things is an environmental disaster, she came out eventually against offshore drilling after a long record of support for it, and she has a plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels over time.  I have written about these issues before here and here.

I am happy to see that she has moved closer to Bernie Sanders on these issues, but she is still an Obama "all of the above" in terms of what our energy policy should be.  Bernie Sanders wants to keep the carbon in the ground and truly accelerate our move to alternative renewable energy sources. Bernie Sanders' tweet from last August says a lot about the difference between Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton.

We need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and move to 100 percent renewable energy - and we need to act immediately.

In addition to the sense of urgency expressed by Bernie Sanders compared to Hillary Clinton, fracking is an issue that clearly separates these two candidates.  In fact, Senator Sanders is the only Presidential candidate calling for a ban on fracking.  Hillary Clinton has no recent statements on fracking, but has supported it historically both domestically and internationally.  Clinton entities, particularly their network of charities have taken million of dollars for the oil and gas industry, much of it when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State and promoting fracking abroad.  If you are interested in more on this topic, I commend a couple of articles: the first entitled "Bernie Sanders Will Ban Fracking.  Hillary Clinton 'Sold Fracking to the World'" at Huffpost Politics (here), and the second entitled "There's Only One Presidential Candidate Who Wants to Ban Fracking" at Mother Jones (here).

The only argument for fracking is that it enables the use of natural gas which is cleaner than coal as a bridge from fossil fuels to renewable energy.  Even if you assume that argument to be valid, it is clearly an incremental approach to a problem that requires immediate and bold action.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

Bernie Sanders v. Hillary Clinton and the new media

Dear Friends,

Two articles showed up on my Facebook feed this morning.  The first was from U.S. Uncut (here) entitled, "How Tonight's Bernie Sanders Rally Compared to Hillary Clinton's (PHOTO).  The article used photos of Hillary Clinton's rally in New York City and Bernie Sanders' rally at Michigan State University to demonstrate the relative level of enthusiasm for the candidates.    This picture is from the Sanders rally at Michigan State University.

This picture is from the Clinton rally in New York City.

The article described the Clinton rally as follows:

For most of the attendees, being at the rally was mandatory, while some groups, such as the Carpenters Union, gave attendees “comp time” for the hours they were at the event. Even with such incentives, there were fewer than 1,000 people there.

The other article was from the local New York City affiliate of CBS (here) entitled "Thousands Rally For Hillary Clinton At Post-Super Tuesday Victory Event In New York".  The article quotes the Clinton campaign as saying that there were more than 5,000 people at the rally.  I am always suspect of campaign estimates of the number of people at an event.  A news organization should be able to make its own estimate.

I also search CBS to see what it had to say about Bernie Sanders' rally at Michigan State University.  Apparently CBS did not cover that event.

So how can I figure out what is really going on?  I am sure that the picture of the Clinton rally used in the U.S. Uncut article was designed to show as small a rally as possible.  But even if I believed the Clinton campaign that there were over 5,000 people at her rally, the Breslin Student Events Center at Michigan State University holds 15,000 people and appears to be full.  I have no doubt that the enthusiasm surrounding the Sanders campaign far exceeds the enthusiasm of the Clinton campaign.  I also have no doubt that the news media are for whatever reason downplaying the Sanders campaign and supporting the Clinton campaign.

Despite what most of the pundits are saying Bernie Sanders still has a viable path to the nomination unless the super delegates decide they know better than we the voters do.  The voting in the next two weeks will tell us a lot more about who the Democratic candidate will be.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal