3:07pm in a McDonald's after the Bernie Sanders speech.
Relatives all over the place.
Yesterday I showed up at the Hillary soiree at Munster Steel and there was my second cousin, the Math teacher turned quality control inspector. He wears a white hardhat. I hardly know him but we look kinda similar and when we shook hands… yikes.
“You have my hands,” I almost told him… but then again there’s this dark family secret that I really don’t have time to go into right now. I’m stuck in a McDonald’s in Lafayette, Indiana, waiting for some photos to upload. It's taking forever. The guy at the next table is on the phone talking about who should pay for a broken sink in an apartment. Then nosy reporter in me wants to ask him more questions: do you rehab apartments and you messed up an install? Do you rent an apartment and somehow you busted a sink and now you're arguing with your landlord? Do you make sinks and this one's faulty? There's a story everywhere, even in a McDonald's in Lafayette, Indiana, on a rainy day after a Bernie Sanders speech.
Yesterday I showed up at the Hillary soiree at Munster Steel and there was my second cousin, the Math teacher turned quality control inspector. He wears a white hardhat. I hardly know him but we look kinda similar and when we shook hands… yikes.
“You have my hands,” I almost told him… but then again there’s this dark family secret that I really don’t have time to go into right now. I’m stuck in a McDonald’s in Lafayette, Indiana, waiting for some photos to upload. It's taking forever. The guy at the next table is on the phone talking about who should pay for a broken sink in an apartment. Then nosy reporter in me wants to ask him more questions: do you rehab apartments and you messed up an install? Do you rent an apartment and somehow you busted a sink and now you're arguing with your landlord? Do you make sinks and this one's faulty? There's a story everywhere, even in a McDonald's in Lafayette, Indiana, on a rainy day after a Bernie Sanders speech.
Relatives all over the place.
Yesterday I showed up at the Hillary soiree at Munster Steel and there was my second cousin, the Math teacher turned quality control inspector. He wears a white hardhat. I hardly know him but we look kinda similar and when we shook hands… yikes.
“You have my hands,” I almost told him… but then again there’s this dark family secret that I really don’t have time to go into right now. I’m stuck in a McDonald’s in Lafayette, Indiana, waiting for some photos to upload. It's taking forever. The guy at the next table is on the phone talking about who should pay for a broken sink in an apartment. Then nosy reporter in me wants to ask him more questions: do you rehab apartments and you messed up an install? Do you rent an apartment and somehow you busted a sink and now you're arguing with your landlord? Do you make sinks and this one's faulty? There's a story everywhere, even in a McDonald's in Lafayette, Indiana, on a rainy day after a Bernie Sanders speech.
At the Bernie rally this afternoon, I ran into Alexis’s sister, the captain of the Purdue W. Lafayette police force. It's always cool to see this little Mexican gal from the Region directing big white farm boys what to do at large university events. You see it at football games and you see it when presidential candidates come to town.
Turns out Captain Carol (Vazquez) Baunach and the rest of the Purdue force had 48 hours to bring the whole thing together. Secret service was everywhere, including a dog that sniffed my backpacks for a little too long. After going to college in Los Angeles and Berkeley, I’ll always get just a little bit paranoid when there’s cops going through my things and dogs sniffing my belongings. It’s been years... but the paranoia dies hard.
Bernie spoke for an hour and then some. I asked the guy from the Wall Street Journal if he always spoke for that long, and he said that last night Bernie got criticized for not talking long enough.
“You know, people speculating that he was giving up. So maybe he sent a message with a long speech today.”
It got hot in the Cordova Wellness and Athletics Center. Students jumping up and down every time Bernie said stuff like
Free tuition
Political revolution
Healthcare for all
Down with Wall Street
You can review my notes below for more. Now, as I upload Bernie's speech so the three or four of you can listen, I gotta decide whether to go north or south on I-65. If I go north, I can be home in two hours. If I go south, I might just make Trump’s big rally at the state fairgrounds in Indy. It’ll be two hours before I park and make it to the media entrance. It’s raining like hell outside. Nothing I’d like better than to stand in the rain with two backpacks pulling on my spine and a nosy German Shepherd sniffing my increasingly stale crotch.
Life as a (fake) campaign reporter… not all that it’s cracked up to be.
Yesterday I showed up at the Hillary soiree at Munster Steel and there was my second cousin, the Math teacher turned quality control inspector. He wears a white hardhat. I hardly know him but we look kinda similar and when we shook hands… yikes.
“You have my hands,” I almost told him… but then again there’s this dark family secret that I really don’t have time to go into right now. I’m stuck in a McDonald’s in Lafayette, Indiana, waiting for some photos to upload. It's taking forever. The guy at the next table is on the phone talking about who should pay for a broken sink in an apartment. Then nosy reporter in me wants to ask him more questions: do you rehab apartments and you messed up an install? Do you rent an apartment and somehow you busted a sink and now you're arguing with your landlord? Do you make sinks and this one's faulty? There's a story everywhere, even in a McDonald's in Lafayette, Indiana, on a rainy day after a Bernie Sanders speech.
At the Bernie rally this afternoon, I ran into Alexis’s sister, the captain of the Purdue W. Lafayette police force. It's always cool to see this little Mexican gal from the Region directing big white farm boys what to do at large university events. You see it at football games and you see it when presidential candidates come to town.
Turns out Captain Carol (Vazquez) Baunach and the rest of the Purdue force had 48 hours to bring the whole thing together. Secret service was everywhere, including a dog that sniffed my backpacks for a little too long. After going to college in Los Angeles and Berkeley, I’ll always get just a little bit paranoid when there’s cops going through my things and dogs sniffing my belongings. It’s been years... but the paranoia dies hard.
Bernie spoke for an hour and then some. I asked the guy from the Wall Street Journal if he always spoke for that long, and he said that last night Bernie got criticized for not talking long enough.
“You know, people speculating that he was giving up. So maybe he sent a message with a long speech today.”
It got hot in the Cordova Wellness and Athletics Center. Students jumping up and down every time Bernie said stuff like
Free tuition
Political revolution
Healthcare for all
Down with Wall Street
You can review my notes below for more. Now, as I upload Bernie's speech so the three or four of you can listen, I gotta decide whether to go north or south on I-65. If I go north, I can be home in two hours. If I go south, I might just make Trump’s big rally at the state fairgrounds in Indy. It’ll be two hours before I park and make it to the media entrance. It’s raining like hell outside. Nothing I’d like better than to stand in the rain with two backpacks pulling on my spine and a nosy German Shepherd sniffing my increasingly stale crotch.
Life as a (fake) campaign reporter… not all that it’s cracked up to be.
11:50am EST on the Purdue West Lafayette campus. Bernie Sanders rally.
Finished the radio show and drove like hell a couple hours down I-65 to the Cordova Complex on Jischke Drive. There's a ton of students here. One's talking right now from Dubuque, Iowa. The student before talked about a "political revolution." This is an entirely different atmosphere from yesterday at Munster Steel in Hammond for the Hillary speech. That was closed. This is open.
Since I'm gonna have to multi-task to take pictures, record a little video, record audio... and keep a blog, maybe I'll try taking notes live on this blog through Bernie's speech. It's worth a try.
"Money is very, very powerful," the student says. "We have broken the record for contributions to a political campaign in our nation's history. We give what we can."
There's media from everywhere. I'm stuffed between dozens of video cameras and operators and dozens of photographers and their gear. We're on a hastily-built scaffold a few feet above the crowd of kids. That's the best way I can describe them. A crowd of kids.
One thing to note: whereas yesterday the Ironworkers led the charge to promote Hillary, I notice a lotta Steelworkers tee-shirts. As a matter of fact, it looks as if the only adults in the crowd are gruffy-looking steelworkers and a few professors. The rest is a crowd of kids, mostly college students, although some look like they're in high school or even younger.
Since I'm gonna have to multi-task to take pictures, record a little video, record audio... and keep a blog, maybe I'll try taking notes live on this blog through Bernie's speech. It's worth a try.
"Money is very, very powerful," the student says. "We have broken the record for contributions to a political campaign in our nation's history. We give what we can."
There's media from everywhere. I'm stuffed between dozens of video cameras and operators and dozens of photographers and their gear. We're on a hastily-built scaffold a few feet above the crowd of kids. That's the best way I can describe them. A crowd of kids.
One thing to note: whereas yesterday the Ironworkers led the charge to promote Hillary, I notice a lotta Steelworkers tee-shirts. As a matter of fact, it looks as if the only adults in the crowd are gruffy-looking steelworkers and a few professors. The rest is a crowd of kids, mostly college students, although some look like they're in high school or even younger.
Live notes on Bernie's speech
“Our campaign is appealing to not just Democrats, but to Independents all over this country and even some Republicans.”
Bernie saying that he has the best chance against Donald Trump – “We are overwhelmingly winning the independent vote. We are in this campaign to win and become the Democratic nominee.”
Lots of chanting in-between Bernie comments.
“Together we have enormous power, not just wealthy campaign contributors.”
“It is a rigged economy. This is not stuff that you’ll see on television. That’s because the people who own the media don’t really want to talk about this.”
“The top 1/10th of one percent now owns almost as much as the bottom 90%.”
“One family owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of the American people. This one family pays its employees at Wal-Mart wages that are so low that many are on food stamps and welfare…. You are paying taxes to subsidize the employees of the wealthiest family in America.”
“I say this to the Walton family - Get off of welfare. Pay workers a living wage.”
“In Indiana, over 330,000 of kids are living in poverty, over 21% of all children here. 16,000 public school students were homeless in 2012-13.”
Bernie’s now going to the manufacturing theme that Hillary and Trump are trumpeting.
"Why do we wanna pay workers here in Indiana 20-25 bucks an hour when we can move to Mexico? companies say.
"Since 1994, Indiana has lost 113,000 good-paying jobs. Caterpillar… Delta Faucet… and in February, Carrier announced that it would be shutting down plants throwing 2100 workers on the street and moved to Monterrey, Mexico. This is a company that made more than seven billion dollars last year and pays its CEO 14-million dollars.
"This is the type of corporate behavior that has to end."
"One of the differences between Secretary Clinton and myself – she has voted for almost all of these trade agreements. I have opposed them."
"This campaign is listening to young people. Here’s what young people are telling me. I grew up in a family that didn’t have a lot of money…. American dream. Yet today the younger generation stands a chance to have a lower standard of living than your parents. Together, we are not going to allow the American dream to die."
Bernie saying that he has the best chance against Donald Trump – “We are overwhelmingly winning the independent vote. We are in this campaign to win and become the Democratic nominee.”
Lots of chanting in-between Bernie comments.
“Together we have enormous power, not just wealthy campaign contributors.”
“It is a rigged economy. This is not stuff that you’ll see on television. That’s because the people who own the media don’t really want to talk about this.”
“The top 1/10th of one percent now owns almost as much as the bottom 90%.”
“One family owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of the American people. This one family pays its employees at Wal-Mart wages that are so low that many are on food stamps and welfare…. You are paying taxes to subsidize the employees of the wealthiest family in America.”
“I say this to the Walton family - Get off of welfare. Pay workers a living wage.”
“In Indiana, over 330,000 of kids are living in poverty, over 21% of all children here. 16,000 public school students were homeless in 2012-13.”
Bernie’s now going to the manufacturing theme that Hillary and Trump are trumpeting.
"Why do we wanna pay workers here in Indiana 20-25 bucks an hour when we can move to Mexico? companies say.
"Since 1994, Indiana has lost 113,000 good-paying jobs. Caterpillar… Delta Faucet… and in February, Carrier announced that it would be shutting down plants throwing 2100 workers on the street and moved to Monterrey, Mexico. This is a company that made more than seven billion dollars last year and pays its CEO 14-million dollars.
"This is the type of corporate behavior that has to end."
"One of the differences between Secretary Clinton and myself – she has voted for almost all of these trade agreements. I have opposed them."
"This campaign is listening to young people. Here’s what young people are telling me. I grew up in a family that didn’t have a lot of money…. American dream. Yet today the younger generation stands a chance to have a lower standard of living than your parents. Together, we are not going to allow the American dream to die."
12:48pm. Bernie still talking. More notes on the "political revolution."
"Making colleges tuition-free is a common sense idea… It’s revolutionary. Children in the 4th or 6th grade, for these kids, an idea of getting a college education is about as possible as going to the moon.
"If a young person does his or her schoolwork well, that child shall be able to get a college education… That is revolutionary."
"With Wall Street doing phenomenally well, we should impose a tax on Wall Street speculation. This would bring in more than enough money to make colleges tuition-free and reduce debt…. The only problem is Wall Street does not think it’s a great idea. I think it’s a great idea… telling the billionaire class they cannot have it all."
"Another example of a rigged economy… Goldman Sachs. Here are the facts, not pleasant. Sachs reaches an agreement with the US govt to pay 5 billion dollars in a settlement. The reason?... They were engaging in massive fraud. Not just Goldman Sachs."
"The revolving door is when you have people from Wall Street and corporate America and work for government and go back to Wall Street. Two Goldman Sachs secretaries of the treasury."
Secretary Clinton has received more than 15-million dollars from Wall Street and received $235,000 for speeches from Wall Street.
"Get picked up in Indiana for smoking marijuana, criminal record for the rest of your life. But if you’re a criminal on Wall Street… you get an increase in compensation."
"Most important point. Change takes place when we are prepared to stand up and fight for that change. Most serious crisis is when the establishment, when the Congress and media tell you that you are stuck with the status quo and there is nothing that you can do about it."
"This campaign is telling the establishment – sorry, you are wrong, we are going to change the status quo…. People are looking around – why is it that we have a grotesque level of income inequality."
"Is America supposed to be a country with a proliferation of millionaires and billionairs yet we have so many kids living in poverty."
Real change. There is going to be a a political revolution in Indiana.
"If a young person does his or her schoolwork well, that child shall be able to get a college education… That is revolutionary."
"With Wall Street doing phenomenally well, we should impose a tax on Wall Street speculation. This would bring in more than enough money to make colleges tuition-free and reduce debt…. The only problem is Wall Street does not think it’s a great idea. I think it’s a great idea… telling the billionaire class they cannot have it all."
"Another example of a rigged economy… Goldman Sachs. Here are the facts, not pleasant. Sachs reaches an agreement with the US govt to pay 5 billion dollars in a settlement. The reason?... They were engaging in massive fraud. Not just Goldman Sachs."
"The revolving door is when you have people from Wall Street and corporate America and work for government and go back to Wall Street. Two Goldman Sachs secretaries of the treasury."
Secretary Clinton has received more than 15-million dollars from Wall Street and received $235,000 for speeches from Wall Street.
"Get picked up in Indiana for smoking marijuana, criminal record for the rest of your life. But if you’re a criminal on Wall Street… you get an increase in compensation."
"Most important point. Change takes place when we are prepared to stand up and fight for that change. Most serious crisis is when the establishment, when the Congress and media tell you that you are stuck with the status quo and there is nothing that you can do about it."
"This campaign is telling the establishment – sorry, you are wrong, we are going to change the status quo…. People are looking around – why is it that we have a grotesque level of income inequality."
"Is America supposed to be a country with a proliferation of millionaires and billionairs yet we have so many kids living in poverty."
Real change. There is going to be a a political revolution in Indiana.
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