While many people are going to question why I am most likely only going to post about these 2 candidates, I am choosing to do so because it is looking like these 2 are the only ones that are truly making any headway in there campaigns.
That being said, let us continue to what this post is about. Independent party Senator of Vermont turned Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Foreign Policy:
For the most part he seems to have a good head on his shoulders in this area, though his views on American involvement and support of Obama's use of sanctions against Russia involving the Ukraine are bothersome. Yes, the situation is far from ideal and not going well but it is not the business or right of the US to continue to stick its nose in the business of other countries. The only thing that will truly come of it in the end is making more of an enemy of Russia than the US already has. Putin openly referred to President Obama as a child at the G20, which that in itself does not bode well for the future of US-Russian relations. Moving on, Sanders opposed the war in Iraq and calling the US getting bogged down in Afghanistan "a costly quagmire like Vietnam". He also believes that the fight against the Islamic State should be undertaken by countries like Saudi Arabia, which borders Iraq and has both the financial and military resources to fight the extremist group. To put it simply, the extremists in Muslim culture should be handled by the non extremists in said culture. Which I am inclined to agree with given the fact that a vast majority of the people kill by ISIS and the like are Muslims. America is stretched thin enough after the wars and financial fuckups of the bush administraion and should be focusing on recovering its own losses before trying to take on more tasks that do not directly involve the US to begin with.
Environment:
Sanders has warned against the severe impact of climate change and supports stringent measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Including tougher standards for new vehicles and offering some "politically unorthodox" ideas such as providing money to study carbon sequestration(the capture and long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to either mitigate or defer global warming and avoid dangerous climate change.) in an effort to at least delay global warming and reduce our overall carbon footprint.
Same-Sex Marriage:
Strong supporter of same-sex marriage. Believing that it is the right of all US citizens to have total marriage equality. Not much more really needs to be said here, as there is no reason to argue his stand on it. He supports it, which is a big step for a politician in this day and age to be honest.
Immigration:
He supports Obama's executive action in 2014 shielding millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. That is not actually all that bad a thing if citizenship wasn't almost as difficult to pass as some military training programs. A good chunk of whats on the test is things people born and raised here don't even fucking know about the country in which the reside. In that, he also called for reigning in the guest-worker program that provides many businesses with low-wage immigrant labor as he believes it fuels youth unemployment. Which is pretty accurate.
Healthcare:
Senator Sanders supports a Medicare-for-all single-payer health care system. Which in truth is actually a good idea. Single-payer health care countries have a lower overall tax on healthcare and also have FREE healthcare for all. To help put that into perspective I would like to talk about a recent study done by the World Health Organization that showed that women in the US have twice as many maternal deaths during childbirth(with the healthcare system currently in place) as countries that have single-payer FREE healthcare systems, such as Canada. Just a little food for thought there.
Lastly, we have
Economy:
Sanders supports increasing government spending on creating jobs and rebuilding the infrastructure of this country. He would also raise the federal minimum wage to $10/hour, and has before stated that $15/hour is reasonable. Now, before you start going into an uproar about how that is wrong and unfounded I'm going to try to get you to peer into reality through those narrow minds you've got there and point out that at $8.09/hour(current minimum wage), a single person would have to work upwards of 80 hours a week just merely to survive and pay bills. Realistically, in this day and age with what it costs just to live, $15/hour is actually appropriate as it would be a living wage. And to those complaining about how EMTs and such make that doing more than what some fast food worker does, it should be known that all wages would have to be increased proportionally to the increase in minimum wage. Meaning more money for those of you who make above minimum wage already.
He also proposed breaking up the nation's largest banks, saying the 6 biggest wield too much control over the economy, which is actually quite true if you bother to think about it. Proposing along with this, that we should bar banks' chief executives from serving on the Federal Reserve's 12 regional boards of directors, citing that their membership poses a conflict of interest and threatens to (further) undermine regulation of the financial services industry.
Finally, he adamantly opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Asian nations(the trade deal Obama championed). Asking, "Are you on the side of working people who would suffer as a result of this disastrous trade agreement, and seeing their jobs go to China and Mexico? Or are you on the side of corporate America and pharmaceuticals?" His opposition to the TPP is well-founded.
As a side not in the economy section of my post I want to add the Sanders believes in the decriminalization of marijuana. Which, truthfully, if done correctly would actually benefit the economic situation the country currently finds itself facing in a rather larger than most want to believe way.
My thoughts, in closing, are that honestly out of the candidates with highest potential to win, Bernie Sanders stands most sensible and capable of turning things around for this country. I will consider further write-ups of some other candidates, but at this time I am probably going to focus on posts on world events and other political issues outside of presidential candidate views and policies.
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