Bernie Sanders wants you to know who hates him: billionaire sociopaths like Andrew Pudzer, Kenneth Lagone ("This is the antichrist!"), Lowell McAdam ("contemptible"), Lloyd Blankfein ("dangerous"); Alan Greenspan; Third Way ("an existential threat"), Bernard Marcus ("the enemy"), and more! (via /r/LateStageCapitalism) Read the rest

Public companies are legally required to disclose their risks to investors, but it's a rare company that incorporates climate change into those mandatory disclosures; under a new presidential campaign platform proposal from Elizabeth Warren (disclosure: I am a donor to both Warren and Sanders's campaigns), the SEC would require public companies to incorporate two kinds of climate risk in their warnings: first, the risks of an out-of-control climate (fires, floods, etc); and second, the risks from the a transition to clean energy (collapsing fossil fuel prices). The idea is to accelerate divestiture from climate-destroying industries like oil and fracking, and to spur investors to favor companies with a plan to mitigate the effects of climate chaos on their operations. Read the rest

Rachel Bitecofer, a political scientist at Christopher Newport University's Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy has developed a US election prediction model that performed very well in the 2018 midterms; she has since refined it based on the results of the election and she says can predict elections a long way off, regardless of who the nominee is. Read the rest

18 of the richest people in America have sent a letter to all the candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, demanding that their election platform include a annual wealth tax on the largest American fortunes, something advocated by economist Thomas Piketty in his blockbuster book Capital in the 21st Century and subsequently integrated into Elizabeth Warren's campaign platform (with Piketty's endorsement). Read the rest

Securing Our Cyber Future, Stanford Cyber Policy Center's new report on election security, depicts a US electoral system whose glaring vulnerabilities are still in place, three years after the chaos of the 2016 elections. Read the rest

Bernie Sanders's latest campaign promise is a proposal to forgive all outstanding US student debt, and raising the $2.2 trillion needed over a decade to make lenders whole by taxing Wall Street speculators with a 0.5% tax on stock trades, a 0.1% fee on bonds, and a 0.005% fee on derivatives. Read the rest

Sheelah Kolhatkar's 10,000 word New Yorker profile of Elizabeth Warren is mostly a "color piece," giving a sense of where Warren is coming from, personally and politically; as such, it's a good read, but mostly redundant if you've already read Warren's (very good) 2018 book This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class; that said there's a couple of key political insights that are very timely for anyone trying to figure out whom to support in the Democratic presidential primary (I am a donor to both Warren's and Sanders's primary campaigns). Read the rest

From June 9-12, Fox News commissioned pollsters Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company (R) to survey 1,001 representative Americans; the poll concluded that if the election were called today, Sanders would beat Trump by 9 points, 49%-40%, as would Biden; Warren would beat him 43%-41%; Harris would beat him 42%-41%; and Buttigieg would beat him 41%-40% -- Sanders has acknowledged that "polls go up and polls go down." (via Naked Capitalism) Read the rest

When Elizabeth Warren proposed a Thomas Piketty-style wealth tax (2% annually on family fortunes over $50m, 1% more on fortunes over $1b), she ballparked the returns at $1.9-2.75t over the first ten years. Read the rest

Joe Biden is really bad at running for president. How bad? Well, in 1988, he repeatedly claimed to have marched for civil rights, and bidensplained that the fight for civil rights was not a "12 point program" -- rather, its goal was to "change attitudes." Read the rest

John Delaney (a finance friendly millionaire) wants to be the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, and he thinks he knows how to win: "Medicare for all may sound good but it's actually not good policy nor is it good politics." It's an idea so unpopular with California Democrats that it attracted a full minute of heartfelt boos when he assayed it last weekend. Read the rest

In her latest detailed policy proposal, would-be 2020 Democratic presidential nominee Elizabeth Warren sets out a Green New Deal for the US military, whose own policy analysts have identified climate change and energy independence as serious risks to US security. Read the rest

Bernie Sanders' latest campaign plank is a suite of agricultural reforms similar to the ones proposed by Elizabeth Warren in March, including a national right-to-repair law for agricultural equipment, antitrust breakups of agribusiness seed, meatpacking and fertilizer monopolies, patent law reform to curb abuses of seed patents, reform of US trade agreements to support "domestic food security", rationalized supply management and a grain and feed reserve, national disaster coverage, relief for family farm bankruptcies, pro-diversity policies for 4H and other agricultural pipelines, incentives for regional co-ops, and a suite of climate change remediation measures. Read the rest

Joe Biden, a colossal asshole, wants to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2020 and in the most on-brand move ever, he's launched his campaign with a fundraiser hosted by the chief lobbyist for Comcast, the most hated company in America. (Image: Ildar Sagdejev, CC-BY-SA) Read the rest

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren is the first 2020 presidential candidate to call for Donald Trump's impeachment as a result of the findings in the redacted Mueller Report released yesterday.

Warren going on the record means every candidate will be put on the spot this weekend regarding impeachment. Things are about to get interesting.

(Photo: Flickr/ElizabethforMA) Read the rest

On Friday morning, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey announced he's running for President. The former mayor of Newark was elected to the Senate in 2013 in a special election to replace the late Senator Frank Lautenberg.

In his video announcement, Booker said, "I believe that we can build a country where no one is forgotten, no one is left behind; where parents can put food on the table; where there are good paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood; where our criminal justice system keeps us safe, instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins; where we see the faces of our leaders on television and feel pride, not shame."

Booker is the fourth Democrat to officially declare their candidacy. Elizabeth Warren has said she'll make an announcement on February 9th; widely expected to be her official entry into the 2020 race.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons) Read the rest