{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/is-it-bad-enough-yet", "Is It Bad Enough Yet?", "2014-12-14", "2014", "2014-12", "Independent", "House", "VT", "Bernard Sanders", "S000033", "www.sanders.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Is It Bad Enough Yet?\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t By:\u00a0 Mark Bittman \n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\tSunday, December 14, 2014\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\tThe police killing unarmed civilians. Horrifying income inequality. Rotting infrastructure and an unsafe \u201csafety net.\u201d An inability to respond to climate, public health and environmental threats. A food system that causes disease. An occasionally dysfunctional and even cruel government. A sizable segment of the population excluded from work and subject to near-random incarceration.\r\nYou get it: This is the United States, which, with the incoming Congress, might actually get worse.\r\nThis in part explains why we\u2019re seeing spontaneous protests nationwide, protests that, in their scale, racial diversity, anger and largely nonviolent nature, are unusual if not unique. I was in four cities recently \u2014 New York, Washington, Berkeley and Oakland \u2014 and there were actions every night in each of them. Meanwhile, workerswalked off the job\u00a0in 190 cities on Dec. 4.\r\nThe root of the anger is inequality, about which statistics are mind-boggling: From 2009 to 2012 (that\u2019s the most recent data), some 95 percent of new income has gone to the top 1 percent; the Walton family (owners of Walmart) have\u00a0as much wealth\u00a0as the bottom 42 percent of the country\u2019s people combined; and \u201cincome mobility\u201d now describes\u00a0how the rich get richer while the poor ... actually get poorer.\r\nContinue reading here.", 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://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/is-it-bad-enough-yet"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8675530552864075, "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"}