BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
NORTON META TAG
24 September 2015
Says Bernie Sanders opposes "requiring all children to have a K-12 education." & Where do Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders stand on the death penalty? 8SEP15
DIRTY POLITICS, the scourge of all political campaigns, resorted to by those who know their political positions aren't worth considering. Here are dirty and fair politics analyzed by +PolitiFact. Want more truth from and about Bernie's positions on the issues? Go to Bernie 2016.
Says Bernie Sanders opposes "requiring all children to have a K-12 education."
— Viral image on Tuesday, September 8th, 2015 in a shareable graphic on the Web
By Louis Jacobson on Monday, September 21st, 2015 at 6:00 p.m.
Democratic
presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during a Capitol Hill news
conference on Sept. 10, 2015. (AP/Susan Walsh)
A reader
forwarded this viral Web image to PolitiFact, comparing Democratic
presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
As the Democratic primary race between former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont heats up,
supporters of each candidate have aggressively gone after the other.
We recently looked at a graphic circulating on social media,
presumably assembled by backers of Sanders, that contrasted the two
candidates’ views on a variety of issues. We found that the descriptions
were Mostly True about the candidates’ stances on the death penalty and Mostly True about their positions on trade policy.
This time we’ll look at a graphic -- this one presumably put together
by Clinton backers -- that compares them on a different set of issues.
Here, we’ll check the line in the graphic that says, "supports
requiring all children to have a K-12 education." The chart says "yes"
for Clinton and "no" for Sanders. (We asked the Clinton campaign if they
wanted to comment, but they declined, saying that they had not produced
the graphic.)
We had no difficulty tracking down the source of this claim, since the chart cites an article in the liberal magazine Mother Jones. Recently, the magazine has published a few articles reviewing Sanders’ early history in politics and activism.
In one, Mother Jones tracked down some of Sanders’ writings from a now-defunct newspaper called the Vermont Freeman. "Some of his rants bordered on libertarian," wrote Mother Jones’ Tim Murphy. In August 1969 in a column titled "Reflections on a Dying Society," Sanders wrote this:
It is obvious that in the name of
"public safety" the State is usurping the rights of free choice in many
domains of life. To get (a Federal Housing Authority) loan, one MUST
build with specified lumber and materials; to drive an automobile, one
MUST have insurance and a car which has no rust going through; to run a
farm and sell milk one MUST have a bulk tank; to drive a motorcycle one
MUST have a helmet, to cite a few examples. The idea that ALL children
MUST attend school until 16 years of age, even if some would rather do
other things, is now treated as as given a fact of life as the sunrise.
Another Mother Jonesarticle pointed to an article from Seven Days,
an alternative weekly in Burlington, Vt., in 1981, shortly after
Sanders was elected mayor of Burlington for the first time. The weekly
recapped Sanders’ political development and his four statewide races as
the nominee of the left-wing Liberty Union Party between 1972 and 1976.
"During his four races for state office
as a Liberty Unionist, Sanders called for public takeover of utilities,
a guaranteed minimum wage, the abolition of compulsory education, and a
radical revision of the nation's tax structure," the 1981 article said.
In other words, the chart pegs Sanders’ current view on compulsory K-12 education to a column he wrote 46 years ago and to campaigns he ran in the early-to-mid 1970s.
That’s pretty weak support. Is there any evidence that Sanders still
has the same stance today? His office declined repeated requests to
supply an answer, but we found some evidence on our own in Sanders’
legislative record in the Senate.
In the previous Congress, Sanders introduced the DIPLOMA Act,
which would have authorized grants for disadvantaged youth. The grants
would be designed to ensure that "youth are ready for school," "are
engaged and achieving in school," and that "students are ready for
postsecondary education at institutions of higher education and 21st
century careers."
He also introduced the Supporting Community Schools Act of 2013,
which would give local educational agencies tools to transform
under-performing schools. The goals of these efforts would be to improve
student achievement, to close achievement gaps between groups of
students, and to increase student attendance and graduation rates.
(Neither measure advanced through committee.)
We couldn’t find any recent comments of Sanders opposing compulsory education. Our ruling
A chart on the Internet said that Sanders does not support "requiring
all children to have a K-12 education." However, it bases this claim on
writings and campaigns from more than 40 years ago, and more recent
legislative evidence indicates that Sanders supports a traditional view
of K-12 education. We rate the claim False.
By Will Cabaniss on Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015 at 10:28 a.m.
This shareable image compares positions between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidates.
An image circulating on Twitter and Reddit claims Democratic
presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have opposing
views on a host of issues, including the death penalty.
According to the image, Sanders opposes the death penalty, but Clinton supports it.
We wanted to see if the two candidates disagree on capital punishment. (See our other checks on the image here.) Sanders and the death penalty
The Vermont senator has been an opponent of the death penalty for his
entire political career. And with one exception, he has voted against
expansions of the death penalty at every turn.
Sanders opposed the Violent Crime Prevention Act of 1991 during his first year in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"All over the industrialized world now, countries are saying, ‘let us
put an end to state murder, let us stop capital punishment’," Sanders
said in a 1991 speech on the House floor. "But here what we’re talking about is more and more capital punishment."
The bill, which included provisions to authorize the death penalty as
appropriate punishment for crimes involving the murder of a law
enforcement officer, terrorism and drug trafficking, never reached the
desk of President George H.W. Bush.
In 1994, however, Sanders voted in favor of the final version of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act,
a bill that expanded the federal death penalty. Sanders had voted for
an amendment to the bill that would have replaced all federal death
sentences with life in prison. Even though the amendment failed, Sanders
still voted for the larger crime bill.
A spokesman for Sanders said he voted for the bill "because it
included the Violence Against Women Act and the ban on certain assault
weapons."
Sanders reiterated his opposition to capital punishment in 2015. "I
just don’t think the state itself, whether it’s the state government or
federal government, should be in the business of killing people," he said on a radio show. Clinton and the death penalty
Clinton’s campaign did not provide her stance on capital punishment.
The last time she publicly addressed capital punishment, which was 15 years ago, Clinton offered support.
In her 2000 run for U.S. Senate, she was quoted by a Washington Post columnist as saying the death penalty had her "unenthusiastic support."
Clinton’s history on the issue, however, is slightly complicated.
As director of the legal aid clinic at the University of Arkansas in
the 1970s, Clinton helped to get the death sentence of a 20-year-old
African-American man sentenced to life in prison. But according to a
timeline of the case compiled by the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news
organization that focuses on criminal justice, Clinton’s views on the
topic changed as her husband’s did.
Bill Clinton, then governor of Arkansas, is described as shifting his
position on the death penalty as part of an effort to present himself
as a centrist "New Democrat" in the 1980s.
Citing Paul Kengor’s 2007 book God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life,
the timeline says that Hillary Clinton " ‘agonized’ over her husband’s
embrace of capital punishment," eventually supporting it.
As first lady, she supported the 1994 crime bill that Sanders opposed.
After her election to U.S. Senate, she co-sponsored a bill that made
it easier for prisoners on death row to appeal for exoneration through
DNA testing.
Clinton hasn’t yet addressed the issue in the 2016 election cycle. Our ruling
The infographic claims Bernie Sanders opposes the death penalty and that Hillary Clinton supports it.
Sanders has opposed the death penalty for at least the last 20 years,
though he did vote for the 1994 crime bill that, among many other
provisions, expanded the number of crimes that could result in death
penalty sentences. While Clinton has helped make it easier to appeal a
death sentence, her most recent documented statements on the
topic expressed tepid support.
Without a clear idea of her most recent stance, we can only assume she still holds that position.
We rate the claim Mostly True.
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