Vox Sentences: Bernie Sanders explains democratic socialism

Bernie Sanders' socialism speech; VW is running out of time to fix 480,000 cars; and after 20 years, the FDA approves genetically-modified fish.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

Democratic socialism was inside you the whole time

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

• Bernie Sanders delivered his long-anticipated speech explaining what he means when he calls himself a "democratic socialist" today.

  [Bernie Sanders]

• Spoiler alert: it does not actually involve state ownership of the means of production. Dylan Matthews explains why what Sanders calls socialism can just look like "a hardcore version of the Democratic Party platform."

  [Vox / Dylan Matthews]

• The political angle of the speech is that Sanders wants to take ownership of a term often used to criticize him. His speech focused on FDR — a president who, Sanders argued, got called a socialist when he gave the American people good things.

  [Mother Jones / Tim Murphy]

• The FDR reference is meaningful. It harks back to the last time in American history when liberals and socialists could actually work hand in hand, before Cold War-era fear of communism drove them apart.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

• But focusing on FDR also erases a legitimate radical legacy in American politics. Before Sanders' speech, Eric Foner wrote a Nation column that you could read, in retrospect, as the more radical speech Sanders could have given.

  [The Nation / Eric Foner]

• As is, Sanders is criticized by some real live leftists for his record in Vermont — where he was allegedly the sort of crony capitalist that would turn up as a villain in a Joni Mitchell song.

  [Al Jazeera America / Malcolm Harris]

• Interestingly, Sanders uses Vermont as the reason he could win the presidency. He claims he can build an unusual coalition — a "political revolution" — of both traditionally Democratic voters and traditional nonvoters.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

The VW scandal motors along

Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

• Volkswagen has been meeting with US and California regulators to figure out how to comply with the law, after it was revealed months ago that it had been cheating on diesel emissions tests.

  [New York Times / Jack Ewing and Jab Mouawad]

• The company is expected to announce how it plans to repair or recall the 480,000 noncompliant vehicles tomorrow — bringing it right up to the deadline set by the California Air Resources Board. It's also planned to announce a set of spending cuts.

  [Jalopnik / Jason Torchinsky]

• Volkswagen's options for fixing the cars — a bigger exhaust system, or a chemical-treatment tank — are so expensive that it might just be cheaper to buy back many of the cars en masse.

  [AP / Tom Krisher]

• And that's exactly what regulators in California (as well as Washington) are urging VW to do.

  [Reuters]

• So far, Volkswagen's only action has been to offer owners of the affected cars a $500 gift card, and $500 in free services. 1 in 4 owners of affected cars have taken the offer.

  [Consumerist / Ashlee Keiler]

• But Volkswagen's real PR problem wasn't with consumers, it was with regulators. Its reaction to regulators, one expert says, is a "textbook example of how it should not be done."

  [Wall Street Journal / William Boston and Mike Spector]

SalGMOn

Cindy Ord/Getty Images for NYCWFF

• The FDA has approved the first genetically-modified animal for human consumption in the United States: a slightly larger, faster-growing salmon.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

• (Technically, you could argue that basically all agriculture is the result of some form of "genetic modification," and that the salmon is the first genetically engineered animal to be approved for human consumption.)

  [Oregon Public Broadcasting / Ryan Haas]

• This 2014 article by Brendan Borrell is a great look at the way that AquAdvantage (the technical name of the fish) has been developed, and how the company has fought to get it approved.

  [Bloomberg / Brendan Borrell]

• The company, AquaBounty, first asked for FDA approval of AquAdvantage salmon in … 1993.

  [Smithsonian / Erin Blakemore]

• And even now that it's been approved, it probably won't come to market for several more years.

  [New York Times / Andrew Pollack]

• Once it does, however, the public will be able to tell whether the fish is really "buttery, light, juicy" (as one food writer wrote) or whether, like most foods, a larger salmon is a blander salmon.

  [Vox / Julia Belluz]

MISCELLANEOUS

The media's currently fretting over whether President Obama is sufficiently angry about ISIS, because his ability to act angry is definitely what matters right now. [NYT / Brendan Nyhan]

• Let us now praise Rdio, the now-dying streaming service that preceded and in many ways exceeded Spotify.

  [The Verge / Casey Newton]

• The Koch brothers have a 25 person "competitive intelligence team" tasked with tracking liberal groups' voter turnout efforts — down to picking up private documents the groups leave at conferences.

  [Politico / Kenneth Vogel]

• More than a quarter of the top 100 movies of 2014 didn't have a single woman as a director, writer, editor, producer, or cinematographer.

  [MTV News / Kase Wickman]

• Steve Lochner has kept a food diary for over three years. It shows how he was able to lose over 150 pounds — and why keeping the weight off has been tough.

  [NYT / Albert Sun]

VERBATIM

"In France though, the flag has taken on a more complicated meaning … Many French citizens have come to see waving the 'tricolore' publicly as expressing support for the France’s extreme right, and for their anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and racist policies." [Washington Post / Lucie Kroening]

• "And there was evening, and there was morning — the third day lol. And then some people started thinking God was creating Excellent Content and asked if he wanted to work for Fusion or BuzzFeed or like make a Facebook instant articles for them."

  [Medium / Jessica Misener]

• "This has been the warmest fall quarter in 25 years. And while many people are concerned with global catastrophe — contemplating harrowing images of Greenland melting away and scorched earth in Los Angeles — others are just spinning wildly, like the confused leaves, to figure out what autumn in New York means for their wardrobes."

  [NYT / Miranda Purves]

• "A powerful amphetamine tablet based on the original synthetic drug known as 'fenethylline,' Captagon quickly produces a euphoric intensity in users, allowing Syria's fighters to stay up for days, killing with a numb, reckless abandon."

  [Washington Post / Peter Holley]

• "Against long odds and the angry demands of commerce, McCarthy made movies for grown-ups. But then he joined forces with the smug smirk behind the deplorable, juvenile Grown Ups franchise."

  [AV Club / Nathan Rabin]

WATCH THIS

Shut up about the y-axis. It shouldn’t always start at zero. [YouTube / Johnny Harris and Matt Yglesias]

Vox / Johnny Harris

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