{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=AB0F495B-7DA4-440E-A024-0384A4939AEB", "News August 9", "2013-08-09", "2013", "2013-08", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "News August 9\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\tFriday, August 9, 2013\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tSenator Sanders\r\nMilitary Sexual Assaults President Barack Obama hasn\u2019t formally met with senators who\u2019ve made the issue of sexual assault in the military a priority. He hasn\u2019t endorsed any of their proposals and top aides have made no commitment to lawmakers and victims groups. In an op-ed in The Hill, former Clinton White House lawyer Lanny Davis asked why Obama was missing in action on a proposal supported by Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders, Politico reported. \u201cThis purple moment when Paul and Sanders agree on something doesn\u2019t happen very often,\u201d Davis wrote. LINK, LINK\r\nUSPS Sen. Tom Carper has proposed legislation that would allow the post office to eliminate Saturday service in a year and reduce the number of mail-processing centers in two years. The American Postal Workers Union has taken to the airwaves, with an ad urging Congress not to cut employees but to change the way the Postal Service funds retirees\u2019 health care. The union supports a bill sponsored by Sen. Sanders that would end the post office's prefunding requirement, National Public Radio reported on \u201cAll Things Considered.\u201d LINK\r\nVeterans Home An independent report on the Vermont Veterans Home in Bennington called the only state-run nursing home for veterans \u201cfundamentally a good home,\u201d but found \u201cperceived weakness or incompetence\u201d by administrators and cited distrust and a lack of communication with the staff. The home could lose federal Medicare and Medicaid payments on Aug. 26 unless it corrects deficiencies uncovered in a separate inspection by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Administration Secretary Jeb Spaulding told state lawmakers that Sen. Sanders and a representative from CMS met Thursday morning in Montpelier, the Rutland Herald reported. LINK\r\nJeff Bezos\u00a0Political scientists studied Fortune 500 executives to map out where they donated and found that new Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos sits in the middle of the spectrum, according to The Washington Post.\u00a0The Koch brothers are the most conservative. Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were rated the most liberal, although they are still more conservative than Sen. Sanders and, for that matter, President Barack Obama. LINK\r\nIncome Inequality PolitiFact, the newspaper feature that checks the veracity of statements made by politicians and other public officials, recently scrutinized statements made by Sen. Sanders that six out of 10 Americans believe that money and wealth should be more evenly distributed in the United States. Turns out that the percentage holding that view is and has been that high for roughly the last three decades, according to Dave Zweifel, the editor emeritus of the The (Madison, Wis.) Capital Times. LINK\r\nWorld\r\nU.S. Evacuates Pakistani Consulate The United States has evacuated most of its staff from its consulate in Pakistan's second largest city, Lahore, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Islamabad confirmed to CBS News Friday.\"We received information regarding a threat to our consulate in Lahore,\" said Meghan Gregonis. \"As a precautionary measure, we have undertaken a drawdown for all but emergency personnel in Lahore.\" LINK\r\nMore Drone Strikes in Yemen\u00a0American drone strikes killed an additional eight suspected militants in Yemen Thursday, according to Reuters. The latest round of attacks brings the number of drone killings to at least 25 in less than two weeks.\u00a0LINK\r\nNational\r\nObama to Sign Student Loan Bill President Obama was scheduled to sign legislation Friday at the White House that lets undergraduates borrow at a 3.9 percent interest rate for subsidized and unsubsidized loans this year, but each year's loan could be more expensive than the last. Under the deal, interest rates could climb to 8.25 percent for undergraduates and 9.5 percent for graduate students. Parents' rates would top out at 10.5 percent, The Associated Press reported. LINK\r\nNSA Searches Messages to and From Americans\u00a0According to a New York Times report, the National Security Agency is searching the contents of vast amounts of Americans' email and text messages into and out of the country. Aiming to track down people with connections to foreign targets, the agency has been systematically surveilling private data without warrants.\u00a0LINK\r\nWhite House: NSA Monitors 'Very Small Amount' of Web Traffic\u00a0White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Thursday that the National Security Agency examines \"only a very small percentage\" of the world's Internet traffic, The Hill reported.\u00a0LINK\r\nBusinesses Want More Low-Skill Visas As Congress considers an immigration overhaul, an eclectic group of businesses is eager to take advantage of new categories of low-skilled immigrant laborers the legislation would allow. Proposals in both the House and Senate would allow hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to take on a broader set of U.S. jobs, opening a path for more immigrants to work on dairy farms, in meatpacking plants and on golf courses, The Wall Street Journal reported. LINK\r\nFlorida Voters Gov. Rick Scott ordered state officials to resume controversial efforts to remove noncitizens from voting rolls, The New York Times reported. The state previously failed to receive federal clearance for changes to its voting laws, but a June ruling from the Supreme Court has emboldened those seeking to purge voter rolls in the state. Critics argue that removal efforts will disproportionately affect minority voters.\u00a0LINK\r\nCapitol Power Plant\u00a0Just two miles from the White House and blocks from the Capitol building, the Capitol Power Plant remains the largest single source of carbon emissions in the nation's capital, according to The New York Times. This dirty plant exists as a concrete example of the government\u2019s inability to green its own turf.\u00a0LINK\r\nMinority-Owned Small Businesses Get Fewer Gov. Contracts\u00a0Minority-owned small businesses receive fewer federal contracts, according to a Bloomberg study of $98.2 billion worth of small business contracts. Businesses owned by African-Americans won only 7.2 percent of contracts, or $7.1 billion.\u00a0LINK\r\nFannie May Posts $10.2 Billion Profit Fannie Mae, the nation's largest mortgage finance company, will send another big payment of more than $10 billion to the United States Treasury, according to Reuters. Fannie's second-quarter profit nearly doubled, mainly driven by a housing recovery that has lifted home prices.\u00a0LINK\r\nMcConnell Stinks, His Campaign Manager Says Jesse Benton, the manager of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell\u2019s reelection campaign, told a conservative activist in a phone call early this year that he took the job \u201cholding my nose\u201d because it would help Kentucky\u2019s other senator, fellow Republican Rand Paul, in a 2016 presidential run. \u201cBetween you and me, I\u2019m sort of holding my nose for two years because what we\u2019re doing here is going to be a big benefit to Rand in \u201916, so that\u2019s my long vision,\u201d Benton said, according to a recording of the call obtained by The Washington Post. LINK\r\nVermont\r\nWind Power\u00a0Weaknesses in the rural system linking wind turbines to the power grid mean that wind companies are routinely taken offline during heat waves and bad weather, according to The Associated Press. More than $1 billion has been spent on wind turbines in Vermont, northern Maine, and New Hampshire over the past decade. But getting wind energy to market remains a challenge in rural areas.\u00a0LINK\r\nHeroin, Opiate Addictions\u00a0Heroin and opiate abuse remains an epidemic in Chittenden County and around Vermont, the Burlington Free Press reported. A six-person expert panel hosted a \"community conversation\" on the issue this week. Bob Bick, director of mental health and substance abuse services at the HowardCenter, said 832 people are on a waiting list for treatment at his facility.\u00a0LINK", 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=AB0F495B-7DA4-440E-A024-0384A4939AEB"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.7779369372874498, "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"}