Transcript: Sen. Bernie Sanders; On Privacy, NSA, Progressives, Public Banking, Whistleblowers, Decentralizing...

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I interviewed Senator Bernie Sanders on July 9th. 

Thanks to Don Caldarazzo   for doing the transcript.

 

Rob Kall:   And welcome to the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, WNJC 1360 AM out of Washington Township, reaching metro Philly and South Jersey.  My guest tonight is Senator Bernie Sanders.  Are you there?

 

Bernie Sanders:   I am right here.

 

Rob Kall:   Oh great.  Thanks so much for being on the show.   I really appreciate it.  Oh, I've got a long list of stuff I want to talk to you about.  I wanted to start with your Progressive campaign.  I just got an email about it today, and that sounds pretty exciting.  I'm going to post the description on opednews.com  (here)  but can you talk a little bit more about it?  And who are you trying to reach?  And how is it different from reaching out to Democrats?

 

Bernie Sanders:   Well it's very different, because there are a lot of people; my guess is the vast majority of the American people are disillusioned with both political parties.  I think they perceive the Republican Party now having become a Right wing extremist party.  And while the Democratic party in my view in every sense is much stronger and more responsive to the needs of ordinary people, I think many people perceive that the Democrats have become much too Conservative, and are too dependent on Corporate money, and [have] too much sympathy for big money interests, and are not standing up for working families. 

 

So I think there are a lot of people out there who are not Democrats and are not Republicans.  They're in the Middle Class.  These are people who are working longer hours for lower wages.  They're seeing their family income going down.  They can't afford to send they're kids to college, they're struggling with healthcare, and they're asking themselves, "How does it happen that the only people in this economy who are doing well are the very, very wealthy, and large, multinational corporations?"  Those are the people I'm trying tot talk to.

 

Rob Kall:   Awesome.  That's certainly my readership, because, the readers at Opednews, I would say 85% of them, are no longer very happy with Democrats, even though they're way Left of Democrats.  This is a great thing that you're starting, I think.