Thursday, September 17, 2015

Sanders surges past Hillary among college students

                     
 By Bradford Richardson    
      
Francis Rivera / Getty
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) may be the oldest candidate in the 2016 presidential field, but that isn’t hurting him among the youngest demographic of voters.
 A new poll released by Chegg Media Center on Tuesday finds Sanders the overwhelming favorite on college campuses, drawing 59 percent of the student vote.
Former first lady Hillary Clinton, considered the Democratic favorite going into the election, draws just 18 percent support from the coveted college bloc, while Vice President Biden — who is yet to commit to a presidential run — sits at 14 percent support among university students.
The poll also shows that Clinton and Biden are deadlocked at 29 percent for students’ second choice in the Democratic primary.
Sanders has the highest favorability rating among Democrats at 62 percent, while Clinton is seen as the most unfavorable, with 47 percent of students expressing disapproval of the former secretary of State.
The same poll conducted in late June, about a month after Sanders announced his White House bid, found that students preferred Clinton by a 40 to 26 percent margin.
However, the junior senator from Vermont has steadily increased his lead among university-goers.
In an early August iteration of the poll, Sanders took the lead from Clinton by a 40 to 31 percent margin, and in a poll later that month, he was up 48 to 20 percent, while Clinton has been dogged by an FBI investigation into her use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of State.
Only 6 percent of students identify as socialists, but that has not stopped them from supporting the avowed Democratic socialist.
Students also overwhelmingly say they prefer a “Newcomer/Outsider” candidate, as opposed to a “Washington Insider,” by a 53 to 24 percent margin, suggesting that Sanders, despite serving in Congress for 24 years, has positioned himself as the anti-establishment candidate.
Chegg surveyed 333 college students at two- and four-year universities nationwide from Sept. 7 to Sept. 11. The margin of error is 5 percent.
The Washington Examiner first reported the poll

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Group Pushes For Vote On Texas Secession

    

Group Pushes For Vote On Texas Secession
After last night's big Trumpalooza in Dallas, I'm betting these folks were able to make some progress toward their goal of seeing Texas recognized as an independent nation.
The Texas Nationalist Movement is seeking signatures for a petition to get a non-binding vote onto the Republican primary ballot in March to see if "the state of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation," according to a Tuesday report from the Texas Tribune.
The group, according to the San Antonio television station KSAT, has been around in some form for 20 years. The GOP primary ballot move is the most recent stunt by the fringe group to spark secession. In 2013, the Texas Nationalist Movement staged a rally at the capitol in Austin to make "a stand for liberation."
[...]
The Texas Nationalist Movement wants to obtain 75,000 signatures from registered voters by Dec. 1, the group said when the petition was announced in July.
“The end game for us is to have a binding referendum on Texas independence, much like the people of Scotland had in November of last year,” Patrick Miller, the president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, told the Tribune.
I'm sure they had some sympathetic partners cheering for the idiocy in Dallas last night, so maybe they'll get their signatures after all!

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Elizabeth Warren Calls For Ending The Use Of Credit Checks To Deny People Jobs

more from Adalia Woodbury
Wednesday, September, 16th, 2015, 1:03 pm
This belief goes hand in hand with wide support for a reality show star turned Republican Presidential Candidate. While bluster and breaking the “rules” of politics play a role, conservatives also believe wealthy people are morally superior to people who are not. Therefore when Donald Trump says he’s rich and therefore the best presidential candidate, people buy it.
According to a 2012 survey, by the Society of Human Resources Management, 53% of employers said they don’t do background checks on job candidates, while a whopping 87% said they do check the credit histories of job candidates.
The survey tells us that the companies that sell credit history information successfully pushed the myth that one’s credit history provides more insight into their character than a background check does.
cohen-warren-credit
Bad credit can happen to anyone for a variety of reason that are beyond their control, Certainly pre-Obamacare, a family member’s illness also meant economic collapse for people who weren’t born with multi-million dollar trust funds. The same holds true, when a family’s primary bread winner dies, or a marriage fails.
During the last Republican manufactured recession, millions of Americans went from middle class earners who saw their jobs and the economic stability that went with them disappear. Even if one makes all the “right” choices and works hard, expenses can exceed available financial resources.
When there is a major loss of income or reduction in income, too often, it means people fall behind in paying their bills and that can have a negative effect on their credit scores.
As Senator Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Steve Cohen point out in an op-ed for Time, credit reporting companies pushed the narrative that there is a nexus between credit history and a person’s character.
Credit reporting companies that sell Americans’ personal data to potential employers have pushed the narrative that a credit history somehow provides insight into someone’s character. But, as even a representative from the TransUnion credit bureau admitted, they “don’t have any research to show any statistical correlation between what’s in somebody’s credit report and their job performance.” In fact, research has shown that an individual’s credit has little to no correlation with his or her ability to succeed in the workplace. Credit reports are not a way to screen out bad potential employees; they are just a way to discriminate against people who have fallen on hard times.”
Despite facts, pushing this narrative isn’t hard to do when corporate America is already predisposed to believing that financial status and character go hand in hand.
As if that wasn’t enough, credit score information can be inaccurate and the companies who create that information then sell it to employers are notoriously slow to correct inaccuracies.
In 2013, the Federal Trade Commission reported that as many as 1 in 5 consumers identified at least one error in their credit reports.
The result is discrimination based on a myth and inaccurate information, that effectively shuts people out of the job market. As Senator Warren and Rep. Cohen pointed out in their op-ed, this practice which affects millions of Americans is fundamentally unfair.
For hardworking people struggling to make ends meet, the only way to get back on their feet is to find a good job and earn a paycheck. But even when they are able to sell their homes—often at a loss—or after they are forced to close their business’ doors or find temporary work, that bad credit history continues to haunt them.
And despite the often-desperate effort to find a job, many employers are unfairly shutting the door on applicants with less-than-stellar credit. We should call this what it is: discrimination.
Taken in a broader context, the practice of using credit histories as a factor in hiring further rigs the system against people at the bottom.
It’s a cruel and vicious cycle that Senator Warren and Rep. Cohen want to stop with a law called the Equal Employment for All Act. Make no mistake, this practice further rigs an already unfair system against hardworking and honest Americans who need a job, more than they need an Ayn Rand-style lecture on the culture of work.