{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=7862BFFF-C9BD-4431-8FDB-514F508BD657", "News August 8", "2013-08-08", "2013", "2013-08", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "News August 8\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tThursday, August 8, 2013\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tSenator Sanders\r\nUSPS Sen. Bernie Sanders Wednesday came out in support of Postal Service unions that oppose legislation likely to end Saturday mail, significantly slow delivery, close processing plants and eliminate door-to-door deliveries.\u00a0 A bill by Sens. Tom Carper and Tom Coburn was called \u201c\u2018a serious threat\u2019 to the Postal Service in a joint letter signed by leaders of four labor organizations. Sanders questioned why the Carper-Coburn proposal retreats from most of the items agreed upon last year by 62 senators. \u201cWe also wonder what\u2019s to gain from this backpedalling,\u201d the Brattleboro Reformer said in an editorial. LINK\r\nDomestic Surveillance When the House recently considered an amendment that would have dismantled the NSA\u2019s bulk phone records collection program, the White House swiftly condemned the measure. But only five years ago, Sen. Barack Obama was part of a group of legislators that supported substantial changes to NSA surveillance programs. The 2007 measure Obama surrported is also similar to current proposals introduced by Rep. John Conyers and Sen. Sanders, according to a Probublica report in The Atlantic and Salon online and in the Philadelphia Daily News. LINK, LINK\r\nMedicare for All\u00a0 Public Citizen sponsored a congressional briefing and press conference with last Wednesday Sen. Sanders and Reps. Conyers, Mark Takano and Keith Ellison to advocate single-payer health insurance for all Americans. President Obama should meet with progressives before negotiating on policy issues when Congress gets back from its August break, Pearl Korn wrote for The Huffington Post that.\u00a0LINK\r\nVA Cybersecurity The Veterans Affairs Department has done little over the last two months to satisfy House lawmakers' concerns about the security of the data of more than 20 million veterans. The House committee's frustration with VA's answers boiled over at a July 12 briefing with House and Senate committee staff members. A spokesman for the Senate committee said aides to Sens. Sanders and Richard Burr are concerned about the issue, Federal News Radio on WTOP-AM in Washington, D.C., reported. LINK, AUDIO\r\nVote \u201cThink it doesn\u2019t matter? Sanders gained his first election victory, as mayor of Burlington, by 10 votes,\u201d Steve Costello wrote in a Rutland Herald op-ed on good citizenship. LINK\r\nCampaign Finance\u00a0Sen. Patrick Leahy's Green Mountain PAC raised $197,000 in donations over six months, 70 percent of which came from interest groups. Unlike Sen. Sanders, Leahy has not eschewed corporate PAC donations, according to Paul Heintz of Seven Days.\u00a0LINK \r\nWorld\r\nObama Cancels Putin Meeting\u00a0President Barack Obama canceled a planned meeting in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid mounting anger over Russia's decision to grant National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden temporary asylum, The Washington Post reported. The president said he was \"disappointed\" in Russia's decision to allow Snowden to stay in the country.\u00a0LINK\r\nAl-Qaeda Plot Foiled\u00a0Yemeni authorities told CNN Wednesday that an al-Qaeda plot to attack oil pipelines, ports, and gas facilities was foiled by government forces. News of the plan comes days after the United States evacuated embassies in the area, citing alarming terrorist threats.\u00a0LINK\r\nNational\r\nHill Health Care It started out a political \u201cgotcha\u201d \u2014 an amendment to President Obama\u2019s health care law requiring members of Congress and staffers to get the same coverage offered to uninsured Americans. Wednesday, the administration tossed it back in the lap of Congress. Proposed rules say lawmakers\u2019 offices should individually decide whether staffers are subject to a health law provision that would require them to switch their insurance from the federal plan to new coverage coming next year under Obama\u2019s overhaul. The proposal does clarify that the government will continue to pay its standard share of premiums, but questions remain about retiree coverage and definitions of residency, The Associated Press reported.\r\nVA Backs Benefits in Agent Orange Case The Department of Veterans Affairs has reversed its denial of Agent Orange-related disability benefits for an Air Force veteran who flew on potentially contaminated C-123 aircraft after the Vietnam War, a decision advocates describe as the first of its kind for veterans seeking compensation for postwar exposure to the toxic defoliant. Sens. Richard Burr and Jeff Merkley asked the VA Office of Inspector General to review whether the department was \u201cinappropriately\u201d denying disability compensation to veterans who say they were sickened by postwar contamination, The Washington Post reported. LINK\r\nIndustry Influence Threatens Food Safety\u00a0Analysts cited by Reuters said Wednesday in a report that United States food companies exert \"undue influence\" in vouching for the safety of common food additives.\u00a0LINK\r\nSEC Hunt Winds Down\u00a0 Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement officials have decided not to pursue a key case against Magnetar Capital, a hedge-fund firm instrumental in the lead up to the financial crisis. The dropping of this case \"means the government is almost certain to conclude its crisis-related enforcement efforts without charging any of the hedge funds\" that reaped billions of dollars in profits prior to the Great Recession, according to The Wall Street Journal.\u00a0LINK\r\nOne in 25 Arrested in 2011\u00a0One in 25 Americans was arrested in 2011, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation report cited by The Huffington Post. Groups on the political right and left are engaged in a discussion about over-criminalization in America and some argue that we have too many laws, too broadly enforced.\u00a0LINK\r\nFeds: JPMorgan Also Inflated Aluminum Prices\u00a0Hot off the heels of a damning New York Times report accusing Goldman Sachs of manipulating aluminum market prices, Reuters reported that other major firms including JPMorgan Chase may have engaged in similar conduct. A federal lawsuit against JPMorgan, Glencore Xstrata and Goldman Sachs says that the companies purchased commodity storage facilities to artificially lower supply of aluminum in order to increase prices.\u00a0LINK\r\nVermont\r\nWind Power Vermont\u2019s largest electric utility knew the limits of its Lowell Mountain wind project and that it would be asked to keep electricity generated there off the grid from time to time, the head of New England\u2019s electric grid wrote in a letter to Gov. Peter Shumlin. Gordon van Welie, the president of grid operator ISO New England, was responding to a letter from Shumlin last month in which Shumlin said he felt ISO New England needlessly kept Lowell Mountain power off the grid at a time of high demand, a heat wave July 19, The Associated Press reported. LINK\r\nSolar Power Vermont's largest electric utility is helping three nonprofit groups in the Rutland area go solar. The three organizations will receive $20,000 matching grants to help build solar projects that are part of a broader effort by Green Mountain Power to make Rutland the solar capital of New England. GMP says the grant winners are the Vermont Farmer's Food Center on West Street, Rutland Regional Community Television on Scale Avenue in Howe Center, and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on Hillside Road, AP reported.\r\nSchools Manage Allergies and Asthma Well\u00a0Vermont schools received high marks in their management policies for students with allergies and asthma, according to a new report cited by the Burlington Free Press.\u00a0LINK\r\nWastewater Plant Dumps 500,000 Gallons in River\u00a0Worker error caused a wastewater treatment plant in Essex Junction to dump 500,000 gallons of partially untreated sewage into the Winooski River, AP reported.\u00a0LINK\r\nGoswami to Vermont Press Bureau At the end of this week we will say good-bye to Senior Staff Writer Neal P. Goswami, a Bennington native who has called the Banner his home away from home for the past 7.5 years. Neal has served the bulk of those years skillfully covering the Town of Bennington and the legislature. We wish Neal well in his new endeavor in Montpelier covering the state house for the Vermont Press Bureau, a Bennington Banner editorial said.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=7862BFFF-C9BD-4431-8FDB-514F508BD657"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.5556172002106905, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}