 This is The Humanist Report with Mike Figueredo. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you, through Patreon and Paypal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanist report or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to The Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Figueredo and I hope you're all having a fantastic week. This is episode 217 and it is Friday, November 7th and we have got quite a bit to talk about on today's program, namely the Bernie Blackout. But before we get to that, as usual, I want to thank all of our newest Patreon, Paypal, and YouTube members who signed up to support the show this week. And that includes Anna Valencia, Audio Guy, Ben Rose, David Earnhardt, Dermazell Chiasmata, Deborah Grossbach, Gray Peterson, Jason Cole, Jeffrey Hyde, Jonathan Crisp, Jay Schwindelbeck, Ken O'Dowd, Lauren S., Richard Paradis, and Tossin' Object 2. So thank you so much to all of these kind individuals. If you'd also like to support the Independent Progressive Media Revolution, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com forward slash humanist report or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. So this week, on a jam-packed show, we'll talk about the Bernie Blackout in the mainstream media and their attempt to completely erase him from the 2020 race. Matt Bevin loses in Kentucky, Amazon takes on a socialist superstar in Seattle, billionaires cry about the wealth tax, literally. Elizabeth Warren proposes a plan to finance Medicare for All, Dave Rubin shares his high-level ideas with Tucker Carlson, Joe Biden demonstrates why he's the absolute worst, Ben Shapiro proves why he's clueless about the issue of healthcare, Fox News responds to a Bernie Sanders and Ilhan Omar rally with the usual attack, climate change will cause mass human suffering so that's certainly something that we can look forward to, and a new justice Democrats-like organization called Matriarch launches that is the progressive answer to Emily's list. And finally on the program, we'll close the show by talking to 2020 congressional contender from New Jersey, Russ Ciricione about his race against incumbent Democrat Frank Palone. So that's what we've got on the agenda for today's program, hopefully you guys will enjoy the show. Let's go ahead and dive right in. The mainstream media has made it crystal clear that they do not like Bernie Sanders and they want to defeat Bernie Sanders. Now what are they doing to try to defeat Bernie Sanders? Well they're just pretending like he doesn't exist and the ways that they are ignoring him are so conspicuous, so brazen that their agenda is crystal clear. They are trying to erase Bernie Sanders from the 2020 race. And throughout the course of this video I'm hopefully going to demonstrate to you that this is pretty painfully obvious. Now in case you don't know for those of you who only watch the mainstream media, Bernie Sanders is in fact surging currently contrary to popular belief. When you look at real clear politics pulling averages, he's on the rise and nearly closed the gap between him and Elizabeth Warren. He also surpasses all other candidates when it comes to voter enthusiasm with 52% of his supporters extremely excited to vote for him and 61% definitely voting for him. A new Monmouth poll found that he's far ahead of Biden and Warren when it comes to youth voters and also a new Reuters-Ipsos poll found that voters view him as the best candidate on healthcare, the economy and jobs, immigration and the environment. So make no mistake about it, the Bernie Sanders surge is real, but you wouldn't know about that if you watched the mainstream media. Because what they're choosing to talk about is the surge of Pete Buttigieg, who on average is polling at 7%. So he's in fourth place. Now there's been a couple of recent polls that show him doing well in early primary states, but overall there's been endless coverage of Pete Buttigieg praising him with comparisons to Obama on CNN and MSNBC and they also are praising Warren because they're trying to pitch her as the go-to alternative for progressives during the Democratic Party primary because of course they don't want Bernie Sanders to win because he's the worst in their view. And when it comes to Pete Buttigieg, the reason why the media is trying to prop him up is because he's their backup plan in the likely event that Joe Biden does fail. Now the reason why this matters, the reason why them ignoring Bernie Sanders matters is because this has a real substantial impact on the state of the race. So if you read any social science research on the mainstream media and the effect that they have, they have agenda-setting powers. They have the ability to raise the salience of particular issues in your mind that they think is more important and on top of that they have the ability to unilaterally pick and choose winners and losers in elections simply by covering them a lot or not covering them. Donald Trump is president largely because the media gave him $2 billion with a B of free advertising and even if that coverage was negative just the mere fact that they talked about him so much made it seem as if he was a legitimate candidate and a legitimate contender when he was a clown. Not to be taken seriously but since the media covered him because they prioritized their ratings over the country, well that's the situation that we're currently in largely due to the mainstream media. Now Bernie Sanders is someone who they're trying to defeat by ignoring him because if they don't talk about Bernie Sanders then psychologically speaking individuals who don't hear as much about Bernie Sanders from the mainstream media will just automatically assume that Bernie Sanders isn't a real contender. When he very much is in fact a contender and when he's surging that's when they should be theoretically talking about him the most if they were actually fair and balanced. But by ignoring Bernie Sanders and trying to erase him from this entire election cycle they are misinforming their viewers and there are various examples and by the time we're done with this video you're going to see that there's no way that this is coincidental it's not coincidental. So journalist Ryan Grimm points out how CNN cited a poll from New Hampshire where the results are flipped. So if you look at the poll on the right side of the screen it shows that Warren is at 21% and Sanders is at 18% but in actuality it's Warren who's the one that's at 18% and Sanders who's at 21% in other words he's beating her but that's not the way that they presented that information and presumably they have issued zero corrections thus far. Now on top of that Ryan Grimm tweeted CNN has five articles up about its new New Hampshire poll that shows Sanders in front yet none of the five say that in the headline. For example Buttigieg in fourth but a strong fourth another example of a headline this is a historically unprecedented New Hampshire mess early state primary voters much more undecided than voters nationally. On top of that there's this one a disappointing poll for Biden and the most charitable out of all of these Sanders and Warren sit at top in New Hampshire but there's no clear front runner. Now let me remind you these are all headlines that are citing a poll that found out that Bernie Sanders was in fact in first place but that's not all because on top of that Twitter user JB3 points out CNN's headline from the same poll where Bernie is three points ahead of Warren includes a banner that says no clear leader. No clear leader when he clearly is in the lead. Now on top of that journalists Ken Klippenstein points out that this New York Times notification completely ignores the existence of Bernie Sanders. It says Elizabeth Warren is leading a tight Iowa caucus race according to our new poll while Pete Buttigieg is surging and Joe Biden is fading. They completely left out Bernie Sanders. Now when you look at that actual poll you'll see that Bernie Sanders is in second place. No mention of a Sanders surge or the fact that he's in second place. They reference Elizabeth Warren Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden make no mention of Bernie Sanders whatsoever. Now CNN reported on that poll with a lower third that talks about how Biden and Buttigieg are in striking distance of Warren but no mention of Bernie Sanders. On top of that this tweet from Lorraine who shares a screenshot from MSNBC completely excludes Bernie Sanders from their list of presidential contenders even though they included Michael Bennett and Marianne Williamson who are both polling at 0.5 and 0.4% respectively. No mention of Bernie there and Lorraine also brings attention to this CNN lower third where it reads Warren outpaces Biden in third quarter fundraising. Now as you can see Bernie came in first and he also outpaced Biden. No mention of Bernie Sanders in that lower third and let's not forget about the Washington Post because as Dr. James Zogli pointed out on Twitter the Washington Post reported on a poll where it finds that voters say Bernie best understands the problems of ordinary people. But in spite of that the headline reads quote as Warren and Buttigieg rise the Democratic presidential race is competitive and fluid a Washington Post ABC news poll finds again Bernie was at the top of all three questions while Buttigieg was in fourth yet he's in the headline about this poll so you get the point those are just a few examples but if I wanted to I could go on and on and on and on about all of the instances where a corporate owned news outlet is very conspicuously trying to erase Bernie Sanders by not mentioning that he even is running for president anymore none of this is coincidental none of it this is a concerted effort by corporate owned news outlets to erase Bernie Sanders because he's a threat and they don't like him do you honestly believe that these journalists in corporate media are not aware of the influence that they have do you think that they don't know about the agenda setting powers and their ability to pick winners and losers simply by either ignoring a candidate completely or over covering them they know about this social science research they're aware of that they're smart people so this is all intentional you can say maybe a couple mistakes here and there that's understandable but we're seeing time and again them try to erase Bernie Sanders from the conversation and they're doing this at a time when he's surging which is when there would be potentially more momentum for him because the reason why they keep telling you about the Buddha judge surge is because they want you to get behind Buddha judge if you see that he's the candidate with all the momentum now then maybe you should back him if you truly want to beat Donald Trump because what a lot of voters do and perhaps even unintentionally is they just kind of gravitate towards the candidate who they think has the best chance at winning I don't know why people do that but if you're just kind of a casual political observer oftentimes you do this media knows this and that's why they're trying to ignore Bernie Sanders so you don't even think he's an option now thankfully Bernie Sanders team namely David Serota has spoken out about this and they've called out what is obviously a Bernie blackout and even in the coverage of the Bernie blackout the tone that journalists use to describe it pretty much prove the point they don't like Bernie Sanders take this article from the hill for example written by Jonathan Eastley and Max Greenwood quote senator Bernie Sanders presidential campaign is accusing the media of ignoring his quote unquote surge in the polls that quotation there is pretty telling as the Vermont independent looks to stage a comeback Sanders has jumped in new surveys of New Hampshire with the latest CNN University of New Hampshire poll finding him with the lead in the granite state which he won with 60% of the vote in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary Sanders has also seen a small bump in some national polls and surveys of Iowa although he does not lead anywhere else now keep in mind these are two very key primary states that are the reason why they're citing Pete Buttigieg as surging because he's doing well in these early primary states so far according to some polls they go on the Sanders campaign is fuming at the media alleging the political press is playing favorites particularly with senator Elizabeth Warren and South Bend Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg who for weeks have won headlines about how their campaigns are rising in the stretch run to Iowa Sanders speechwriter David Serota whose daily newsletter is a reflection of the campaign's thinking collected examples of alleged media bias and polling misrepresentations in his latest issue underscored by a headline from the satirical news website The Onion about how Sanders had plummeted two points up in a new poll in the last week a wave of polls has emerged showing a genuine full-on Bernie surge but you might not know that if you tune into cable tv or read the headlines from the national press corps Serota Road in fact you might not even know Bernie is running for president and that is intentional these media elites know they're smart people they know that if they truly want to defeat Bernie Sanders what is more effective than smearing him it's to just ignore him pretend like he doesn't exist now we know that this is true because Fox News actually talks about Bernie Sanders pretty frequently now 100% of their coverage of Bernie Sanders is negative but Fox News viewers according to one recent survey are more likely to support Bernie Sanders than MSNBC voters so it goes to show you that ignoring a candidate is more powerful than smearing them non-stop they're aware of this they know what they're doing this is not a coincidence the Bernie blackout is real and the corporate media is trying to do whatever they possibly can to put their finger on the scale for anyone but Bernie Sanders. Buttigieg is the alternative to Biden in the event he loses and Warren is someone who they're trying to shove down our throats as the alternative to Bernie Sanders for progressives they want you to think there's one option if you're progressive it's Elizabeth Warren not Bernie Sanders but that's not true but the sad news for them is that in spite of what they're doing to tip the scales against Bernie he still might win because when he had zero national name recognition in 2016 he still overcame what a 60 point deficit nationally so it's possible that we can still win but in the events there was this scenario where the media actually gave non-stop funding coverage to Bernie Sanders there would be no doubt in my mind he would lead by like 10 points in the polls because the media has a lot of influence and when you are someone with more than a million volunteers you've raised more money than anyone else running for president taking small grassroots dollar donations when you have an entire movement behind you that's powerful if they reported on that in a fair and objective way I mean it'd be no competition Bernie would be the front runner but that's not the world that we live in and if we want him to win then we have to fight and they're not going to change they're still going to continue to ignore Bernie Sanders regardless I mean he could pull 20 points ahead of Joe Biden that doesn't matter they're always going to ignore Bernie Sanders and write him off and never give him the credit that he deserves because he's a threat so why would they these are mostly wealthy privileged people who realize that Bernie Sanders policies would affect them the most they don't want a wealth tax they don't want their taxes to go up so they're trying to crush the individual out of self-interest who would best represent the American people and that's a sad fact of reality and it's why I would encourage everyone to read this book by Noam Chomsky Manufacturing Consent because everything he said in here is a hundred percent accurate I'll leave that there so after waging a class war on the working class for decades and lobbying the federal government to shift the tax burden away from them and onto the working class all of a sudden the rich are wondering why they're getting so much pushback why we're talking about a wealth tax why they're being demonized and discriminated against by the working class now if it's not obvious to them by now it's never going to be obvious because we're sick of it we are sick of rich people we're sick of them shifting the tax burden onto us we're sick of them having it all so we're at a time where income inequality is at an all-time high where wealth inequality persists when people can't even afford to put food on the table and we have a bunch of whiny billionaires crying especially now that we're talking nationally about a wealth tax and I find it absolutely enjoyable because whenever a billionaire cries that makes me very happy it warms my heart now I want to talk about Leon Cooperman who is a multi-billionaire hedge fund manager who has been especially vocal and outspoken about the wealth tax and he's so mad about the prospect of wealth tax that he penned an angry open letter to Elizabeth Warren after she dared to suggest that billionaires like him should pitch in a little bit more and in an interview on CNBC he explained why the wealth tax is a very bad idea take a look well I don't need Elizabeth Warren or the government giving away my money just tell me what you think the max in tax rate should be stop talking about 2% where you were basically misrepresenting the facts it's 2% of wealth just think about this if Jeff Bezos is wealth is tied up all in Amazon stock he's going to be forced every year to sell 2% of his stock regardless of what the outlook is for the company that's just wrong it's wrong it's going to lead to inappropriate actions in the economy that are counterproductive you're not the only one by the way you're not the only one who makes that point in fact I was going through Twitter this morning before you know in preparation for our interview and and Mark Cuban the other day said a very similar thing wonders about the impact on the stock and other liquidity markets if people like you other billionaires maybe Bezos or whoever is forced to sell stock for example to raise cash to deal with a wealth tax well I don't have the problem of concentrated wealth I'm very diversified my problem is I think what she's recommending was suggesting is just morally wrong so let me get this straight you don't want the government giving away your wealth that you earned but if they're giving it away who are they giving it away to and for what health care education so in other words you don't want the money that you've made by being a greedy hedge fund manager to be taken from you and given to poor people for health care and education but yet you call a wealth tax morally wrong you're not the one with the moral superiority here buddy you're the one in the wrong you are the one in the wrong now he tries to reason with us a little bit and he does this by defending Jeff Bezos he says think about this if Jeff Bezos's wealth is tied up in amazon stock he's going to be forced every year to sell two percent of his stock okay then great is that supposed to be a negative Jeff Bezos is the richest human being on the planet he can afford that he can afford that but you see the way that this individual comes off and I think makes him even more insufferable is he tries to pitch himself as a reasonable non-partisan person and maybe he is non-partisan he probably only cares about one thing his wealth but he doesn't like Elizabeth Warren he doesn't want anyone who's even moderately progressive to win but he also doesn't like Donald Trump and no it's not the fascism that he doesn't like about Donald Trump he doesn't like that Donald Trump isn't presidential enough and is too mean so he reacted to the state of affairs the possible choice between you know Elizabeth Warren and Donald Trump and it literally brought him to tears not kidding I mean I think it's kind of obvious people can not only see the emotion on your face but hear it in your voice when you talk about this Lee why I care that's it that is so pathetic wow life must be so hard for him I'm so sorry like maybe we are being too hard on billionaires so let me try to reason with him he tried to reason with us let me try to reason with him okay you don't want the wealth tax fine I'll give you one of two options either we impose a wealth tax on the rich or we eat the rich which one would you prefer because those salty tears would be delicious with your flesh so pick one because like you can only hoard your wealth for so long before the working class before the peasants take to the streets with pitchforks and come after you directly so which one do you want you've been waging this class warfare your class has been the ones that initiated this class warfare we didn't choose to start this you did so now we're just responding and we're asking very reasonably so I think to pitch in so you can help us out just a little bit but that's too much so um billionaires are absolutely insufferable and there was a reference to Mark Cuban in that first clip and I forgot to throw in a fuck you to him as well but I don't want to be too hard on Mark Cuban on you know Leon Cooperman because there's another billionaire that I want to talk about Bill Gates excuse me and he's someone who even though he doesn't like Donald Trump well he also isn't too keen on the idea of a wealth tax as well and he didn't rule out possibly going chud in order to protect his own wealth okay so let me make it complicated for you you have been a polite we say public about your misgivings about our current president if Elizabeth Warren were the other candidate what would you do you know I I'm not going to you know make political declarations but I do think no matter what policy somebody has in mind a professional approach is even as much as I disagree with some of the policy things that are out there I do think a professional approach to the office whoever I decide would have the more professional approach in the current situation probably will weigh is the thing that I'll weigh the most and you know I hope the more professional candidate is an electable candidate but what do you think of this larger idea that underneath all of this you hear people who say there shouldn't be billionaires in society that if you really understand what this wealth tax is about in fact one of our authors at the New York Times describes it almost as a cigarette tax with the ultimate goal of there being less of it um you know maybe I'm just too biased to think that if you create a company that's super valuable that at least some part of that uh you should be able to have a little bit for consumption and and hopefully the balance to do philanthropic things so he was very obviously tap dancing around that question but by not answering the question he gave you an answer inadvertently he would consider voting Donald Trump he would not rule out voting for Donald Trump and going full chud in order to protect his wealth unbelievable and people like to say that Bill Gates is one of the good billionaires I hope that this dispels that myth once and for all there are no good billionaires if you are a billionaire if you are greedy enough to get that much wealth you are inherently a bad person period billionaires should not exist and yes we should confiscate that wealth and if you're against wealth confiscation then you should be speaking out against a particular type of wealth confiscation that affects the poor and working class it's called civil asset forfeiture so if a police officer pulls you over it sees that you have a lot of cash and things that maybe that will be used for something illegal they can just take that money from you so we already have confiscation in this country and I don't hear the anti-confuscation people speaking out against civil asset forfeiture so if we can have that go on uncontroversially then it's time we get real we need to take their wealth and really it's a misnomer to say that that's their wealth because you can't earn a million dollars that's not your wealth you stole that by exploiting the labor of your workers that's what you did so really by taking it back we're just getting something that you stole from your workers period now to really uh demonstrate how greedy he is of course he said that billionaire should exist that's a shocker he also went on to talk about how much he's willing to give away because he's he's so charitable you know he's known for his philanthropic endeavors endeavors and whatnot okay this is going to prove to you once and for all what a greedy piece of shit Bill Gates is you know I've paid over 10 billion in taxes I paid more than anyone in taxes uh but I you know I'm glad to have you know if I'd had to pay 20 billion it's fine uh but you know when you say I should pay a hundred billion okay then I'm starting to do a little math about uh what I have left over sorry I'm just kidding uh uh what a funny joke look he brags about the fact that he paid 10 billion in taxes great he tried to make it seem as if he's reasonable because he'd even be willing to pay 20 billion but when you start talking about 100 billion then you're really talking about bleeding him dry I mean come on let's be reasonable here if we take 100 billion from Bill Gates what's going to be left for him well I'll tell you he's worth an estimated 106 billion in net worth so even if we took 100 billion dollars from Bill Gates he would still be a multi-billionaire with double the wealth of the first billionaire dickhead we heard from at the beginning of the segment and Adam Best summed it up perfectly he says in this tweet even if someone was asking Bill Gates to pay 100 billion in taxes and nobody is he would still have more money left over than Oprah and Richard Branson combined in reality his rate would either be 3% or 8% the billionaire pity party is pathetic now Warrens wealth tax did tick up to 6% to fund Medicare for all but regardless think about this let's put this into a perspective for everyone out of every single one of your paychecks you pay a payroll tax in some states you pay a payroll tax to your state government right if you own a house you pay property taxes to a local government every time you go to the store you pay a sales tax on items that you purchase so you pay all of your taxes but when we ask billionaires to chip in 6 to 8 cents this is what happens they throw temper tantrums and become unraveled and the elephant in the room is that these billionaires don't realize that if Elizabeth Warren is the nominee um that's better for them than if Bernie were the nominee because Bernie Sanders is going to be harder on the rich and the billionaire class than Elizabeth Warren would be so in the event Bernie Sanders were the nominee could you imagine the reaction they would be begging for an Elizabeth Warren nomination because Bernie Sanders is that much harder on them because that's what's warranted if you have one billion dollars less than both Leon Cooperman and Bill Gates have that is a sum of money that is so large you will never be able to spend it in one lifetime in 10 lifetimes because once you've purchased three or four mansions what you've purchased you know your dream car and a private jet and a yacht what do you do you're never going to be able to spend that money so what we're talking about here is extreme extreme wealth this level of wealth that people like Bill Gates have is unsustainable because in a capitalist system money equals power and when you have that much money you have a lot of power so what we need to do is tax the hell out of billionaires like Bill Gates and Leon Cooperman and if they cry good because that means that we're just doing what we need to do to deliver public goods and services to the people in this country who need it the most the working class and the middle class so uh cry me a river I absolutely have no sympathy for them keep crying because it's only making us hate you even more you greedy pieces of human trash if you lose it sends a really bad message just sends a bad and they will build it up here's the story if you win they're going to make it like ho hum and if you lose they're going to say Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world this was the greatest you can't let that happen to me Tuesday night was absolutely brutal for Republicans across the country because as you all know Kentucky Governor and Trump bootlicker Matt Bevin lost his race to Democrat Andy Bashir and on top of that socialist from Virginia Lee Carter won his re-election campaign Rasheen Aldridge Jr who was the first fight for 15 worker to go on strike in St. Louis won a seat in Missouri State Assembly and Julie Brisbane known for the viral photo of her flipping off Trump's motorcade also won a local race that she ran in so overall it was a really great night although I will say there was one race that so far it seems as if the results are pretty devastating but we'll get to that in a separate segment for now I want to go to the victory speech from Andy Bashir who not only thanked teachers for his victory but he also gave a shout out to unions tonight I want to say thank you to our union families that helped make this election happen so that was great now this race in Kentucky was incredibly crucial because it kind of gives us a sense of what to expect in 2020 and if Matt Bevin was vulnerable then that also could indicate that Mitch McConnell may also be vulnerable too so that is going to be certainly a behemoth to take down but this is a really good indication that that's the case now one of my favorite aspects about this story is that Matt Bevin tried to win by tying Andy Bashir to Bernie Sanders and fear mongering about socialism um but unfortunately for him obviously that didn't work out too well hi this is Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin today Sunday Bernie Sanders crazy Bernie is gonna be here in Kentucky he's here protesting business he's protesting those who create jobs and opportunity he thinks that everything should be free somehow the job creators should be punished and the people who do or don't work to varying degrees should get everything for free doesn't work that way anytime someone gets something for free someone else is paying for it in this race in 2019 here in Kentucky you also have people on both sides of this equation Andy Bashir who's in line with Bernie Sanders they share the same party the same ideology they share the same values on many fronts they're both strongly pro-abortion they both strongly believe your second amendment rights should be restricted they strongly believe that you are people who should be punished if somehow you're out there uh pursuing the American Dream these are the kind of things that we want to reject here in Kentucky not only with crazy Bernie but with Andy Bashir this fall in November this is an opportunity for you to choose not only in 2019 but again in 2020 the American Dream is a real thing oven buying for the people really works if we the people take it seriously exercise your right to vote get out there and let your voice be heard if you want to side with Andy Bashir and Bernie Sanders that's your prerogative but if you believe that America and Kentucky deserve better than that I ask for your vote November the 5th it feels so good to watch that knowing that he lost and this tells me that the tide is turning because fear mongering about socialism it no longer works it doesn't even work in Kentucky that's a really good sign that we are witnessing a paradigm shift finally now my favorite line was that he says Sanders and Andy Bashir believe people should be punished if somehow you're out there pursuing the American Dream now he's clearly grasping but if you think about that what does that even mean like what are you referring to because Bernie Sanders is trying to bring back the American Dream because in case you haven't been paying attention the American Dream is dead the American Dream meant that you have economic mobility and you can give your children a better life than what you had but to him I'm assuming that the American Dream means that you know if you reign in large multinational corporations and you expect the elite class to pay their fair share in taxes then you're against the American Dream and you're just being overly punitive well look this is why you lost Matt because you don't understand the needs of working class people and on top of that he was the least popular governor in the United States because obviously he wore his contempt for working people on his sleeve but in spite of how horrible he was it's still genuinely shocking that a republican lost in the deep red state of Kentucky but since losing he refused to concede and since the margin of victory is fairly thin if Bevin ends up contesting the results of this this could be a situation where the race is decided by the state legislature according to the senate president so I mean this is a sore loser that we're looking at he lost because he ran a bad campaign and was a bad governor give up concede step aside your fear mongering about socialism didn't work your fear mongering about the democratic party even in a deep red state didn't work and guess what since we successfully came after you were coming for Mitch McConnell Mitch McConnell is absolutely destructive and any president who is elected will not be able to get their agenda through if Mitch McConnell remains in power because if he stays in that seat he's going to be the senate majority leader for republicans um or senate minority leader either way if he's in leadership we know he's a very effective leader and he rightfully called himself the grim reaper of socialist policy it's true but it's not just socialist policy he's basically killing everything and stacking the judiciary so he's got to go so if you want to support an opponent of Mitch McConnell who can actually win who is progressive then Stephen Cox is your answer i interviewed him i brought him on the show and he's a phenomenal candidate support him if you have the means to do so phone bank for him canvass for him but either way you know this is a good sign of what's to come and mitch we're coming for you next buddy i want to take some time to talk about city councilwoman shama sawan of seattle's third district because this is an individual who is so crucial to the labor movement and she is one of if not the most effective local politicians in america because she has managed to accomplish what bernie sanders says he wants to do albeit at a local level so bernie sanders talks about wanting to be the organizer in chief well she's replicated that strategy at the local level she has rallied the grassroots in seattle to take on big business and guess what she's really effective she led the charge for a $15 an hour minimum wage and now cities across the country are following her lead because she pushed seattle to do that she's also fighting for a local green new deal on top of that she's fighting for public municipal broadband this is someone who is incredibly effective and since she's so effective she has become a target of big business like amazon now i want to share and now this video with you because she explains the situation and this video is more concise and kind of gives you a really big breakdown than what i can give you so watch this and then we will explain the results of her election that took place on november 5th this is part of gentrification central we're standing in the middle of amazon campus right in front of the amazon spheres otherwise colloquially known in our in my city as jeff bezos's balls jeff bezos and his fellow billionaires have gone to war in this city and in this year's city council elections they are attempting to straight up buy their candidates and do a hostile corporate takeover of city hall seattle is a test lab if they do this in seattle they're going to come after other cities seattle is many ways a microcosm of what's happening in metropolitan areas throughout the nation and the national political situation in general it is an extremely wealthy city one of the wealthiest cities in the history of humanity and yet we have the nation's most regressive tax system and in the same period that construction has boomed and has made untold millions for property management corporations the venture capitalists the big banks more billionaires and billionaires have been created in that same period we are seeing devastating inequality and explosion in the homelessness crisis and affordable housing that is at such severe shortage that even the middle class is experiencing an epidemic of economic evictions and that is why you know what happens in seattle matters to working people and those of us who want social justice in every city throughout the nation movements led by working people ordinary people who are struggling to survive in our cities where inequality is growing rapidly the wall street journal the financial times all the political pundits that represent the interests of the billionaire class they say oh well aren't you against jobs aren't socialists against jobs and i think it's important for us to point out that we refuse to accept a system where the only terms on which some of us get decent jobs is on terms of allowing every city in every world to be a race to the bottom for most of us refusing to accept this race to the bottom is critical the lessons of the $15 minimum wage show that actually it's the opposite of what the wall street journal will tell you it's when working people get organized collectively develop a political analysis and start writing back build movements to win victories that are rested from the hands of the billionaires not out of their kind hearts not given to us out of their kind heart that's when we are able to win progressive victories like wage increases like rent control not just in one city but in city after city it's because the confidence that we gain from winning in one city it goes into other cities and other cities and yet other cities now it's not just amazon i need you to understand what's been happening in seattle whenever she proposes a policy and starts pushing for something that's when big business starts spending big money and they are pretty brazen about that so of course we saw what amazon did once the seattle city council passed a head tax in order to stop homelessness they got the city council to backtrack and on top of that she proposes public municipal broadband comcast and century links start pouring money in she proposes rent control then realtors pour thousands of dollars into the city to stop that she proposes a local green new deal puget sound energy spends thousands to defeat it the reason why they're spending so much time energy and money trying to stop her agenda is because they know that she poses a real threat because when you have the people behind you you can actually accomplish really amazing things and she's evidence that that is in fact the case so she's someone who's incredibly important right she may be in seattle but she is proving that bernie's organizer and chief strategy is absolutely viable so if we want things like medicare for all even if we don't get money out of politics even if we don't defeat capitalism we can still do that so long as we have individuals on the ground fighting for it because like any good politician like any organizer you know that real change comes from the bottom up not the top down so she is using the grassroots to push through an agenda that the people of seattle desperately want and need so companies like amazon they're not just spending a lot of money to defeat any initiative she's fighting for they spent a lot of money trying to defeat her as the now this video explain and unfortunately for them it seems like they might actually get what they want because as oan higgins of common dreams reports socialist counselor shama sawan one of the company's top targets told the guardian that her race had been uphill and that the power of a massive corporation like amazon stacked against her campaign had been difficult to overcome we have run a historic grassroots campaign with working people community members rejecting amazon and billionaires attempts to buy this election and that doesn't mean we're going to win every battle against the billionaires said so want what matters is the political clarity that the billionaires are not on our side and that this is going to be a struggle seattle is still waiting for the final results in the race washington has a mail-in voting system that makes final counts unavailable for days after voting but as of wednesday it looked likely that sawan and fellow socialist sean scott were headed for defeat against amazon backed candidates like egan orion and alex peterson respectively neither scott nor sawan had conceded at press time now at the time i'm recording this video it still doesn't look good but it's not over yet and as sarah jaffe a journalist points out let's remember that mail-in voting in washington state means shama sawan's race is not over yes she's trailing yes it's because of amazon money and frankly because some comfortable liberals find her too radical but let's not write her off yet so it's not over until it's over but the reason why i'm talking about this is because this is an incredibly important race if she's able to defeat amazon in spite of all of the money that they're spending to defeat her and her agenda that really demonstrates how powerful labor and organized grassroots movements are and it will reflect what we're able to accomplish at the national level so we all have a vested interest in making sure that she is successful let me just say something in the event she loses we don't know that that's going to be the case but if she actually does lose to the corporate shill that was running against her then this is not the end of shama sawan by no means um this is a defeat in one battle but rather than trying to defeat councilwoman sawan amazon's going to have to defeat representative sawan or senator sawan because she's not going anywhere so this is an incredibly important race that i want you to pay close attention to and i tried to bring shama on my show last week unfortunately um she had a budget meeting that ran over so that didn't pan out well but i do want to bring her on in the future because i think she is such a fantastic resource for just telling us what we need to do to affect change but i will encourage you to watch an interview that she did with michael brooks because she breaks it down you know what's at stake and how you can win against large multinational corporations that are trying to defeat you and shout out to michael brooks by the way who actually put me in contact with her team um because i followed shama's career now for quite some time and she really is the real deal so if you haven't heard about her then um change that and understand that real change is possible because this individual in one city has proven that that's the case it's certainly not easy to affect change but she demonstrated that it's possible and she basically showed us what you need to do to make that change happen you rally the people and she understands that and anyone who's a true leader who understands what we need to do to accomplish change in this country understands that as well so as many of you know Elizabeth Warren just released a financing plan for medicare frail and what she manages to do is devise a plan that would fully fund medicare frail within 10 years while not raising taxes on the middle and working class now i'll just write off the bad state the obvious this is very clearly a direct response to her critics in the democratic party primary who have been pressing her to explain how she's going to pay for medicare frail and at the last debate she obviously didn't want to directly say she would raise taxes on lower and middle class earners in order to pay for medicare frail so this is what she uh came up with now while i can say that i appreciate the fact that she is reaffirming her commitment to medicare frail because this is real single payer right this is a diet version of medicare frail you know it is a little bit frustrating because in some ways this does undermine what we've been fighting for in medicare frail for purposes of political expediency so i want to talk about the policy as well as the politics because unfortunately more often than not politics does influence the policy and in this instance politics is having a relatively negative impact arguably on the policy itself so let me remind you what happened when Kamala Harris back when she was one of the front runners was being criticized for her position of wanting to eliminate private insurance well she capitulated right she came out with her own medicare for all diet version which actually keeps private insurance companies intact and what she essentially proposed was a public option where private insurance can still cover essential care and there's no ban on duplicative coverage and really the entire plan that she proposed it undermined why we want medicare frail because we care more about the delivery of health care and in order to make sure that the goal is the delivery of good robust comprehensive health care we have to decommodify health care we have to get the private insurance out of it but she didn't do that now what she wanted to do was have her cake and eat it too right she wanted to get the critics off of her back and you know qualifiers about what would potentially happen if she got rid of private insurance but she also wanted to make it clear to progressives that she's with us right that she supports medicare for all but unfortunately for her she got none of what she wanted to accomplish because at that next democratic primary debate as you'll remember well the centrists were just treating her as if she supported medicare for all but simultaneously she let down progressives by introducing what is effectively a public or private option and now we're at a point where her campaign is essentially on the ropes because neither centrists or progressives take her seriously so the reason why i'm talking about Kamala Harris is because there's a really important lesson here the lesson is sometimes when you try to appease everyone you end up appeasing no one and that's exactly what happened to Kamala Harris so Elizabeth Warren is kind of facing a similar situation where she needs to confirm that she does support real single-payer medicare for all but at the same time she wants to quell criticisms from the center and make it seem as if she's serious and she has a way to pay for medicare for all but rather than planting her feet in the ground you know and standing strong and actually explaining her position and educating people like Bernie did she tried to craft a plan to fully fund medicare for all while not actually raising taxes on the middle class now to her credit she actually does manage to accomplish this and she did find a way to finance medicare for all in its entirety and i'm not inherently against a plan that wouldn't raise taxes on the middle class if the system is actually sustainable and has longevity but as always you know the devil is in the details so let's look at the details here so first of all she correctly states that overall health care costs would in fact decrease under a medicare for all system and that the total increase in federal spending will mostly be offset by savings in administrative costs and by redirecting money that we're already spending on health care federally you know for chip the affordable care act and whatnot that in and of itself will bring down the total increase that we need for federal spending in order to fully fund medicare for all and she estimates that 20.5 trillion will be what we need to raise federal spending by in order to actually pay for medicare for all so the question is where does that additional 20.5 trillion come from if you're bernie sanders you know on his proposal he has no specific way to pay for it but he attaches various options as to how we might be able to finance it but he explains most of this money will come from a small payroll tax if you make less than $29,000 per year you're not going to see that payroll tax but if you make more than that then yes you will see a small payroll tax and as your income increases so too will that payroll tax but disproportionately the rich will be financing the system and bernie always explains that even if you're paying more in taxes you're going to be paying less overall when it comes to health care costs because he's eliminating your monthly health insurance premium you're not going to be paying for co-pays and deductibles so it's really important that we explain the details here but elizabeth waran she argues that you don't need to raise taxes on the middle class by one penny to finance medicare for all that's a direct quote so she had the chance to explain her position explain what medicare for all does as we all understand it we increase taxes but cut costs overall right people will net save money so you know she was faced with a similar situation as kamala was and she chose to not plant her feet in the ground but the way that she tried to appease critics and really also appease people who support medicare for all is a lot more clever it's a lot more strategic than kamala because what elizabeth waran actually proposes is real single-payer medicare for all unlike kamala harris and elizabeth waran is essentially supporting bernie's bill which does in fact get rid of private insurance which does matter and she manages to finance it in its entirety but how does she do that well there's a number of ways many ways that i think are actually fully feasible uh she wants to crack down on tax evasion and fraud that alone will produce an extra 2.3 trillion in revenue with a financial transaction tax on wall street and fees on big banks that engage in risky behavior along with changes in the tax code to make sure that corporations actually pay their fair share a minimum tax on foreign earnings on large multinational corporations of 35 percent by increasing her wealth tax from two to six cents by taxing capital gains now here's what i really like she wants to cut defense spending in part by eliminating the overseas contingency operation fund now on top of that she wants to do immigration reform which will net an additional 400 billion dollars over 10 years in federal revenue according to the congressional budget office and last but certainly not least perhaps most important as she puts it she's going to pay for this by asking employers to pay a little less than what they are already projected to pay for health care we can get almost halfway to where we need to go to cover the cost of my medicare for all plan by doing this now when you add all of those things together she goes into great detail in her plan you get roughly 20.5 trillion dollars overall but there's a couple of things that i don't understand why she included so immigration reform in and of itself is incredibly important but you need to decouple that from medicare for all because what you're doing is you're essentially telling us that in order to get medicare for all past we have to take on two monumental political battles which will be very difficult and if you really want that extra 400 billion in revenue all you've got to do is tick up that wall tax by another percentage point and you make up for it so i don't necessarily think that this is the smartest way in that regard although Pramila Jayapal did reach out to Warren's team for clarification about this specific point and Warren did say that immigration reform is just one option and that really what she's proposing is a menu of things we can do to in fact fully fund medicare for all without raising taxes on the middle class so you can definitely make the case that we do need to decouple bigger issues like immigration reform from medicare for all so that way we're not trying to take on too many things at once because that's just you're making it a lot more difficult you're putting up an unnecessary political barrier we do need to do immigration reform but we need to tackle that separately and not try to do that while we're fighting for medicare for all because then we're gonna have to make the case for medicare for all and immigration reform and argue about the details with regard to medicare for all and immigration reform and it just gets too messy but because she's only saying this is an option I think that's important and overall this isn't my biggest issue what I do take issue with is the fact that over and over and over again in her plan she describes medicare for all as a long-term goal and to proponents of medicare for all this is not something that we view as a long-term goal this is a short-term goal this is a short-term goal that we want passed in january of 2021 and fully implemented no later than 2025 but ideally in 2023 so when you say over and over again that this is a long-term goal I don't know what that means and I don't really know how to take that but given her history of being wishy-washy on the issue of medicare for all I can't not see this as another red flag will you fight for this in the short term well I mean probably not because you're saying explicitly over and over again that this is a long-term goal now on top of that another thing that concerns me with this funding plan is what she's essentially proposing to make up for most of what she needs to get to that 20.5 trillion dollar mark is a head tax and what that ends up doing is jeopardizing the long-term sustainability of medicare for all with the head tax that ultimately is regressive in its implementation and in an op-ed for jackabin matt brunig of the people's policy project explains the issues with the head tax what Warren is proposing here in ordinary fiscal language is a medicare head tax this is a departure from the normal medicare payroll tax proposals the distributive difference between them is that the medicare payroll tax charges a specific percentage of each worker's earnings while the medicare head tax charges a specific dollar amount per worker to illustrate the difference I have the following two graphs the first one shows the difference in terms of employer side taxes paid by worker earnings level under the 8% employer side payroll tax the employer tax is paid for a worker earning $15,000 per year is 1200 while the employer tax is paid for a worker earning 200,000 per year is 16,000 under the 9,500 employer side head tax the employer tax is paid is 9,500 for both workers the second graph is the same as the first except the vertical axis is done as percent of earnings rather than dollar amounts in this graph the 9,500 head tax is equal to 63% of the earnings of the worker making $15,000 per year but only equal to 5% of the earnings of the worker making 200,000 per year for the employer side payroll tax it is 8% for everyone needless to say the medicare payroll tax is far superior to the medicare head tax distributively speaking specifically the medicare head tax charges middle and low income earners massively more than the medicare payroll tax does so what she's proposing here is a regressive tax and she's doing this also she can argue that she's not raising taxes on middle and low income earners but the problem with this is it's akin to a flat tax right the way that republicans and libertarians pitch a flat tax is they say it's preferable because it's more simplistic right everyone pays the same rate no matter how much money you make but the problem with that is you know if you're paying hypothetically speaking 12% of your income if you're a minimum wage worker 12% of your income is a lot more burdensome than 12% of a multi millionaires income so a progressive tax rate is preferable because as your income rises so too should the percentage of taxes that you pay because you can afford it so what she's doing here she's proposing a regressive tax that at the end of the day it's essentially begging to be gamed and what she's saying here is that if you are a company that doesn't have employees but you just have a bunch of independent contractors you're exempt if you are a smaller company with less than 50 employees you're also exempt but if the Affordable Care Act taught us anything it's that these companies are going to do whatever they can to skirt taxes so companies like uber and lyft they're just automatically exempt they're not paying into medicare for all on top of that if you are a small company and you are getting ready to hire your 51st employee well rather than just hiring them as an employee you're going to make them contract independently with you it's just a system that is opening itself up to exploitation what did the Affordable Care Act mandate it said any company who has more than 50 workers who has full-time workers must offer healthcare so what did companies do well a lot of people were just demoted to part-time positions and a lot of these full-time positions essentially were done away with now for me as someone who worked at walmart i know firsthand that these companies like walmart they're very strict about the hours you work because in order to be legally compliant they have to make sure that you don't veer into full-time because they don't want to offer you health care so even if we went a minute over hour a lot of time we would be in trouble like three write-ups and you're fired that's it so i remember having to literally just leave projects in the middle of an aisle to rush to clock out to make sure that it didn't go over my time that's what happened because they didn't want to offer me health care they didn't want me to start getting into full-time so what do they do they just kept me at part-time and that's another issue that matt brunig brings up here aside from it just being regressive and a regressive way to fund medicare for all all just because you want to be able to say i'm not raising taxes in the middle and working class well what you're doing is you're setting up a system that actually jeopardizes the long-term health of our medicare for all system because you have to make sure that medicare for all is fully funded otherwise it's not gonna work and in the event we don't fully fund medicare for all what's gonna happen well that will lead to dissatisfaction which will lead to cries for privatization and maybe we start offering skimpier benefits since it's not fully funded maybe we start out with dental and vision but then we start to chip away and privatize those portions of medicare for all and that brunig explains very specifically how companies will game the system and they will game it he writes separate from the distributive problems of warren's head tax the two exclusions also make the proposal clearly unworkable and easily gamed all companies have to do to avoid rather large head tax charges is spin off workers into independent contractor status or spin them off into firms with less than 50 employees that they can then contract with for services once some employers start doing this the average medicare employer contribution will have to go up to keep revenue stable which will push even more employers to restructure their labor into independent contracting or outsourcing to small firms and at that point the death spiral is off to the races the genius of the payroll tax of course is that it is unable to be evaded like this every dollar of labor income even independent contractor income is charged the same no restructuring can save you from it so i mean this is why the details are so important this is why we need politicians to do more than just affirm and reaffirm support for medicare for all if you establish a system that is implemented in a way that allows it to be gamed that allows for exploitation well then you underfunded which then leads to republicans and corporate democrats pointing to the failure of government run system and uh they start to chip away at it and look here's the thing about medicare for all even if we pass bernie's version as it is it's still going to be undermined right if people love it and they see the benefits of medicare for all and we get it there's still going to be this concerted effort to chip away at it you know to kind of nibble around the edges and opt for more and more privatization so that's going to be an inevitable fact of reality that we're going to have to deal with unless we get rid of capitalism but that's not something that is a short-term goal that's actually feasible so we have to work within the confines of the system that we have and acknowledge that we need to design a system that is foolproof that can't be exploited that can't be easily gamed that anyone who undermines it in a very direct way they're going to have to explain to their constituents what they're doing why they're undermining this very popular medicare for all system so while i can admire the fact that elizabeth warren isn't wavering on medicare for all and she's reconfirming her commitment to it the details matter how we implement this it matters now on top of that here's how she may be undermining the fight for medicare because now she actually did to her credit come up with a way even if it may be regressive to fully fund medicare for all without raising taxes on the middle and working class so now what's going to happen well people are going to point to bernie and they're going to say bernie elizabeth warren found a way to fully fund medicare for all without raising taxes on the middle and working class why aren't you doing this so then that will devolve into a conversation about you know the benefits of a payroll tax versus a head tax and at that point we're just putting people to sleep i mean it's hard enough to convey the simple fact to people that overall health care costs go down in spite of the payroll tax but now we're muddying the waters even more also elizabeth warren can appease her critics who are just going to move the goalpost anyway so i mean there's a reason why she's being criticized for this in spite of her reaffirming her support for medicare for all and there's a reason why the man who wrote the damn bill himself had to come out and explain why this may not be the best idea bernie sanders said the function of health care is to provide health care to all people not to make a hundred billion in profits for the insurance companies and the drug companies so elizabeth warren and i agree on that we do disagree on how you fund it i think the approach that i have in fact will be much more progressive in terms of protecting the financial well-being of middle income families sanders told abc news he thinks warren's plan could have a very negative impact on creating jobs because of the funds it would draw from employers warren's plan calls for nearly nine trillion from employers who would pay the government a slightly smaller percentage of what they currently pay to supply their employees with health insurance warren's plan calls it an employer medicare contribution quote i think that that would probably have a very negative impact on creating those jobs or providing wages increased wages and benefits for those workers sanders told abc news so i think we have a better way which is a 7.5 percent payroll tax which is far more i think progressive because it'll not impact employers of low wage workers but hit significantly employers of upper income people so that's what i'm looking for and an advocate for medicare for all that assures me that bernie sanders really will fight for medicare for all because unlike elizabeth warren he's explaining the details of his plan what elizabeth warren is doing is she's trying to appease critics who will never be appeased who are never going to be on board with her version of medicare for all even if it's fully funded joe biden has already come out to criticize this plan and the way she's funding it saying that what she's doing here is mathematical gymnastics so i need someone who's going to firmly plant his or her feet in the ground and not waver but elizabeth warren here even if she's confirming to us that it is single pair that she's fighting for this is a sign of weakness and in her own plan again let me reiterate here she mentioned that this is a long-term goal multiple times so i'm arguing about the details of her plan but that's if we accept that she's even going to fight for it timothy higginbotham in a piece for jack been titled elizabeth warren is jeopardizing our fight for medicare for all he concisely explained why bernie sanders really is the only person we can trust on this issue quote in refusing to take the bait on the bogus how do we pay for a question sanders remains focused on the real obstacles to victory he takes every opportunity given to him to straightforwardly explain how medicare for all will benefit americans unlike warren who rarely mentions it in her stump speech while pointing his finger straight at those who have financial and power based interests in defeating his plan but simply sanders is correct that winning medicare for all requires a political revolution not wonky payfors with him in the white house we have a fighting chance with warren we shouldn't hold our breath and that is exactly it if you are on the progressive left i said this once i'll say it again this isn't even debatable bernie sanders is the best option he's the most trustworthy and reliable in health care and we know this because he has said the same thing with regards to medicare for all in single pair for 40 plus years he's never wavered on it so if you want medicare for all bernie sanders is our sure bet and let me explain something elizabeth warren did not release this plan for proponents of medicare for all she didn't release this for you and i she released this for her critics to get them off of her back but rather than trying to pander to people who are never going to be on your side rather than trying to assuage the fears of people who like to purport that any and all tax increases are always bad no matter what you know she could have just said let me explain to you why even if we raise taxes that's an easier way to finance medicare for all it's more secure but it's also still going to save people money overall but rather than educating people she chose to not do that she pander to the taxes are bad no matter what crowd and i think that in the end that's bad so i don't really have anything else to say about this i'm going to leave you with a message from fdr or a warning from fdr rather who warned us about people who are making this argument the exact argument that elizabeth warren is now making and let me warn the nation against the smooth evasion that says of course we believe in social security we believe in work for the unemployed we believe in saving homes cross our hearts and hope to die so even though it seems like most people have already discounted joe biden and i'll admit it seems like he's not going to win let me remind you all that we should never underestimate our opponents and i say that because he's still the frontrunner if you look at real clear politics pulling averages he still is in the lead and what you kind of see is there's a type of zigzagging effect that's happening he's going up he's going down so a lot of people will look at joe biden's pulling numbers and they'll say okay he's going down again good we can kind of count him out although he's remaining relatively stable overall if you kind of zoom back and look at the overall big picture whereas elizabeth warren is currently on a downward trajectory and bernie sanders is rising but starting to kind of stabilize at around 17 to 18 percent on average so joe biden is still a threat and i'm not going to make a prediction i don't think he is best positioned to win but should we count him out absolutely not and if he were to win i don't have to convince you guys you already know that he would be a disaster why well we have another example why he would be a disaster so he signed the no fossil fuel money pledge violated that the day after he attended cnn's climate change town hall he went to a private fundraiser with a fossil fuel executive and now guess what he's doing um he is taking unlimited sums of dark money through a super PAC that he created after his third quarter of fundraising was dismal so the situation with joe biden is just it's lose lose lose if he's the nominee i think donald trump gets another four years in spite of what polls say now because hillary clinton was also polling about the same as joe biden is at this point in time in the 2016 election in 2015 she was still doing great but you know as time went on and as she spoke more people got sick of her and i think that people are starting to see that joe biden also is in the real deal so i want to play a clip that was released by the sunrise movement which i think is an organization one of the organizations that's just doing the most to hold politicians accountable when it comes to climate change so they asked him why should we trust you if you are now taking super PAC money why should we believe that you're taking the issue of climate change seriously if we're not going to be able to trace the dark money you're taking his response here um is just i don't even know how to explain it just watch the arrogance is just off the charts look at my record child he called that person who asked him a very legitimate question a child wow and on top of that she cited his record when he said that because he's boasted about his record before um but she cited it a rock war and she went on i don't know what else she said but then he said no that's just not true like joe biden is slowly but surely transforming into donald trump he comes up with these bold grand trumpian lies he denies reality i mean we should just all collectively see as those participating in the democratic party primary what a disaster joe biden would be but nonetheless he sits at the top of the race he's still in first place now one thing that uh you know came to mind when i watched this is he needs to answer the question right like we can't rely on activists to you know bring a camera to these events and ambush them we actually need a media who's going to do its job and hold these politicians feed to the fire next time joe biden is on cnn they need to ask him how can we trust that you're going to fight for any of the policies you say you're going to fight for if you're doing all of these private fundraisers if you're now having a super PAC out in the open i mean these are questions that should be asked and we shouldn't have to rely on organizers to ask these questions at events we should have a media that actually does its job and is adversarial and is going to broadcast his answer to these questions very important questions to an audience of millions but we don't get that so people who watch the mainstream media they don't necessarily see how bad joe biden is maybe they see the gaffes here and there maybe they see his poor debate performances maybe they know about his poor fundraising but the fact remains that unless the media starts doing its job then these instances were you know active activists ambush politicians it's just not going to be enough like this video needs to be shared far and wide and if you're on twitter i would advise you to retweet that tweet from the sunrise movement but again it's not enough like this individual poses a threat an existential threat to us because if he's the nominee donald trump gets another four years most likely in spite of what polls say now now you can argue with me and say that the polls are more important than my opinion fine but i would i would say you know give it time give it time because the same thing happened with hillary clinton and this election isn't just about donald trump right this is about the judiciary donald trump has appointed so many federal judges that now about one in four federal judges are donald trump appointees he has remade the judiciary for years to come and if he gets a second term he most likely gets a minimum of one more supreme court appointment which means that that would be a six to three conservative split on the court so we have to understand that we're fucking playing with fire if we nominate joe biden and look i don't think he's going to win but i'm not going to count him out i'm not going to underestimate my opponent because he's still polling at number one there are still enough centrists and older people voting in the democratic party primary to where he could be propelled to victory in the same way that hillary clinton was so if you are a young person you need to get out and vote for bernie sanders and not only that if you truly believe in this movement we've got to put in the time we've got to put in the effort i know we're tired i know that we're working multiple jobs i know that we're going to school but even if we can commit to 10 to 20 phone calls for bernie each week um and even if we can't do that if we could set up recurring donations for five dollars per month that can make a difference like i don't want us to kick ourselves and look back at this moment this opportunity that we have now where we had a second chance to elect bernie and say we didn't do everything in our power at least if we lose we'll go down knowing that we tried we tried our hardest so i just ask for you to do that you know to really think am i doing enough to defeat joe biden and get bernie sanders elected um because it's important bernie sanders truly is our best bet against donald trump and if he's the nominee even though i think that nobody really is a sure bet bernie is our best chance against donald trump and joe biden you know aside from buddha judge i just can't imagine a worse scenario where donald trump would cruise to re-election if it were joe biden or p buddha judge we've got to stop them we've got to defeat them all right so i know that i am super late to the party and talking about this but i will never miss an opportunity to dunk on dav rubin because he is a sellout he is a conservative hack and most importantly he is a dangerous dangerous fraud so i want to talk about his recent appearance on tucker crawlsson show on fox news where he gave his theory as to why he thinks california is having an issue with fires it's because of woke people and identity politics take a look yes the problem right now is that everything everything from academia to public utilities to politics everything that goes woke that that buys into this ridiculous progressive ideology that cares about what contractors are lgbt or how many black firemen we have or white this or asian that everything that goes that road eventually breaks down it is not sure how freedom is supposed to operate what is supposed to happen tucker imagine if your house was on fire would you care what the public utility or what the fire company what contractor they brought in what what gender or sexuality or any of those things he or she was i mean it's just absolutely ridiculous care nobody cares and i truly believe that he knows that we're not actually like this in fact i know that he knows the left isn't actually like this who would actually think that like do you honestly believe that anyone on the left is so unreasonable that in order to have the fire department put out a fire they're going to say you know what i need that crew to be 50 women and 50 black like if it's not multiracial uh multiple genders we don't have at least one gay or trans person on that crew i don't want them to come put out the fire like who believes that this is what woke people as you call it are about my brain is still in recovery mode from taking in so many high level important ideas like it's absurd and the problem is that he is creating these caricatures of the left that are so cartoonishly absurd that he's discrediting himself like i mean if you want to attack your opponents you have to confine that criticism within the realm of reality like if i started saying you shouldn't be a republican because they're all into bestiality and they practice bestiality i would discredit myself because people would realize that that's obviously not true and i'm not a serious person so i mean just in terms of helping yourself and wanting people to take you seriously don't you think he would at least know and have the self-awareness to tone it down at least a little bit so he doesn't seem like a complete dipshit no and what's really funny to me is Dave Rubin is one of the loudest people who always denounces identity politics but the reason why he has a lot of money the reason why he has influence in the conservative movement is specifically because of identity politics why because he is a gay conservative and as Dennis Prager put it he is incredibly useful to the right wing movement because what fox news does and what conservatives generally speaking do is they like to denounce black issues like black lives matter and gay rights and trans rights issues but they don't want to seem overtly bigoted so what they do is they'll bring on a black person to attack black lives matter they'll bring on a gay person to denounce gay rights and say maybe you know they have gone a little bit too far extreme take my word because i'm gay so that's what Dave Rubin is he's a useful idiot to the right and he doesn't even care he's shameless because to him this is all about the money look i think that you can see that this is very obviously a grift like he's one of the most transparent grifters in the world but you think that he'd at least have some level of shame right where you think maybe i'm making a little bit too much of a fool out of myself but for whatever reason that shame meter in his head it hasn't gone off yet and he just seemingly does not care he has absolutely no problem throwing his community under the bus at the behest of the right so you know when the right argues that christian bakers should be able to discriminate against gay couples Dave Rubin is there to tell you you know what find another baker when his friends on the right like Ben Shapiro literally deny his humanity to his face and tell him that they don't think same sex marriages are legitimate and even should be recognized legally he's there to tell you that you know this is what tolerance looks like and it's really the left who's intolerant i mean this is why i feel like Dave Rubin is the most loathsome sellout because what he does is deeply dangerous because he exploits his identity as a gay man to minimize and legitimize homophobia on the right rather than fighting against it he is allowing them to continue on with their homophobic ways and he assures them that there's nothing wrong with that because he's gay and he's giving you permission on behalf of all gay people and that's deeply deeply troubling think about the position that he's in he is a very wealthy gay person who lives in los angeles so he's not going to be you know living in alabama anytime soon he's not looking at the violence against trans women issue he just is going to pontificate about things he doesn't know anything about but most importantly give right wing hacks permission to be homophobic by legitimizing it it's absolutely insane right and i just i don't know how he sleeps with himself at night like any gay political commentator myself included we are very well aware of the fact that if we wanted to be millionaires we could probably easily do that and get invited on fox news every other night just by attacking our own community and by shifting to the right and having you know a political awakening but davreuben doesn't have integrity and you know i actually want to sleep at night and i'm not doing this because you know i know that political commentary is my ticket to become a billionaire fuck no i'm doing this because i deeply care about the issues but you could just see the difference between me and any other gay political commentator davreuben he he doesn't do this because he cares about the issues he's doing this because he cares about the money and currently at this time when the overton window is shifted to the right when the right has essentially taken over the the internet he knows that it's more expedient for his career if he aligns with people like ben shapiro and jordan peterson and as a gay person he's especially useful if you're just another straight person then you really have to bring something unique to the table if you want to make it in conservative politics but as a gay person he is uniquely positioned to really legitimize homophobia in a way that others can't so that's why he is a rising star in the conservative movement and it's disgusting it's it's loathsome like honestly davreuben is a disgusting morally reprehensible morally bankrupt human being and anytime i have the opportunity to call him out as a gay man myself not to overly invoke that identity i feel like it's my responsibility to condemn him because he's absolutely disgusting he enables homophobia and no needless to say he does not speak for gay people not any of us he's a horrible person and he should not be taken seriously and if you didn't already know that if that wasn't already self-evident to you then um do better that's all i'll say do better so while he was on the stump from matt bevin in kentucky with donald trump senate majority leader mr mcconnell bragged about what the republican party has been able to accomplish with donald trump as president specifically with respect to the federal judiciary and i don't care if you are on the left the center left the center it doesn't matter this is something that should be of great importance to all of us because this has implications that are lasting right even if we're able to successfully defeat donald trump in 2020 well the way that he has remade the judiciary that will have a lasting impact for decades to come so this is what mr mcconnell said and keep in mind that what he's saying is accurate well thank you mr president for making america great again and matt bevin is making kentucky great again thanks to your help tonight and working together we're changing the federal courts forever nobody's done more to change the court system in the history of our country than donald trump and mr president we're going to keep on doing it my motto is leave no vacancy behind now keep in mind that what he's referring to are federal judges with lifetime appointments so that means that even if we are successful at getting rid of donald trump in 2020 well his legacy will persist through the federal judiciary and i don't think that people really recognize the scope of this and like how many judges donald trump has appointed looking at this bar chart from pure research as of july of 2018 donald trump appointed double the amount of federal appeals court judges as obama clinton and bush at the same point in tenure now as of september of 2019 he's confirmed a total of 150 judges again all of which will serve lifetime appointments and he's been so effective at remaking the federal judiciary that now one in four judges one in four federal appeals court judges have been appointed by donald j trump think about that these are judges who are far-right extremists likely recommended to donald trump by the federal society they advocate for textualism which means that their interpretation of the constitution is more rigid it's more antiquated so in short what that means for you and i when it comes to civil rights civil liberties when it comes to large multinational corporations they're going to rule against us they're going to rule in favor of large multinational corporations they're going to chip away at our civil rights and civil liberties so this is potentially devastating i need you to think about this even if we get a bernie sanders presidency if bernie sanders is elected and we get the best case scenario well let's say bernie sanders passes medicare for all trumps lackeys now in the federal courts all of which that he appointed throughout the country they can easily chip away at medicare for all if we actually are successful at getting that passed if they don't just outright overturn it now we got a taste of this with the affordable care act because if you'll recall when the aca was initially passed that medicaid expansion was mandatory states had to accept it although the supreme court upheld the aca overall they struck down that mandate right so now states can choose to opt out of the medicaid expansion so they can do things like that to undermine medicare for all and that's if they don't just outright strike it down again these are far right extremists they don't care about the people they don't care about objectively interpreting the constitution they care about making sure that oligarchy reigns supreme in america so um this is something that people need to be talking about and paying attention to because the implications of this are broad and this is devastating now i want to play a clip of uh msnbc from chris haze he interviewed senator jeff murkley and he talks through the implications of this but also he explains how republicans have been so successful at stacking the courts they have changed the rules in terms of how these nominees happen there used to be the system called the blue slip process which sort of granted to home state senators a kind of veto particularly district court nominees that's gone now it existed under obama and under democratic rule mcconnell's gotten rid of it what are the implications of that well it's being left in place on circuit on district but not on circuit i'm sorry yes right and but what they did is they changed the number of hours for deliberation from 30 hours to two hours so they can just put through so many judges so quickly taking away any ability to create real opposition so mcconnell is looking at the fact that between his partnership with trump they've put through about a hundred district judges and a quarter of the active appeal judges which have far more decision-making ability than the supreme court because the supreme court takes just a limited number of cases so they are reshaping the judiciary and they're doing it for the powerful the whole federal society approach is let's supersize the first amendment so the powerful can spend hundreds of millions of dollars and take control of the government buying for the privileged and powerful this is the exact evisceration of the we the people vision of our constitution that's what mcconnell is doing that's what trump is doing it's not for ordinary americans it's for the rich and powerful and we have to find a way to stop them and that's going to be the elections next year so i agree with most of what jeff merckley says um it's on point although i disagree with his solution defeating donald trump that's not enough because again you defeat donald trump while his legacy will persist in the form of a federal judiciary i mean it is these lifetime appointments that he put on the courts they're not just going to vanish if he loses office that's not the way that this works so you actually do need a real solution now there is thankfully a solution and the only solution that i've heard thus far that seems plausible is from fahren cousins of ring of fire and when he talked about this he floated term limits for all federal judges it doesn't matter which court they're on if you are a federal judge you no longer serve a lifetime appointment we limit that now how long you want to make that that's debatable but what matters is that they are not lifetime appointments and this issue is so important that it really should be a 2020 issue like a top 2020 issue and if you care about getting money out of politics you should also advocate simultaneously for term limits for all federal judges because this really is important if we truly want real structural reform in this country so the only way that we can undo this is to pass term limits for all federal judges otherwise whatever we pass it can easily be undermined by one of trump's goons on these federal courts and think about this we're already undergoing a Lochner era when it comes to the supreme court like let me remind you that the Lochner era was when the supreme court was so extreme that they were striking down any and all social and economic reforms which is why we started to talk about court packing plans to begin with because FDR was getting tired of this Lochner court who was striking down everything so he threatened them with the court packing plan well we're already beyond that conversation like we are in a Lochner era now but it's not just the supreme court that we have to focus on it's all of the federal courts because again what Donald Trump has done is he's been so effective at appointing all of these judges mostly due to the help of Mitch McConnell that now his legacy will last for decades these are lifetime appointments they will be dictating US law and interpreting the Constitution for decades to come for most of our lives so if this isn't of the utmost concern to you then you need to raise the salience of this issue fast more people need to be talking about this because for Donald Trump to have appointed 25% of all federal appeals court judges that is devastating anything we want again not to sound redundant but anything we want passed Medicare for all a green new deal a federal minimum wage increase this can all be undone by these far-right federal society judges that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are appointing now you'd think that you know the opposition party Democrats would be sounding the alarm but i mean Chuck Schumer is part of the problem he basically fast tracked a lot of judges in 2018 so Democrats can get back to campaigning but if you're not going to fight for us then you're giving people less of a reason to support you so the situation it's just all around it's devastating because we have the situation where you know Republicans are incredibly effective and the opposition Democrats are incredibly ineffectual and it's led to the current situation it's unsustainable their rulings cannot be the law of the land for the next 20 or 30 years because i mean if you truly want to save the planet if you want to ameliorate a lot of these crises that plague the american population you know health care student loan debt you've got to get rid of them so i mean i don't know what else to say the outlook is grim unless we do something about this unless we actually start talking seriously about term limits for all federal judges so we all knew that this was coming we knew that Donald Trump would be withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and now that process has officially started as of this week now the problem with the Paris climate accord is that it wasn't substantial in and of itself but what little progress we've made Donald Trump's administration is now officially undoing now this news comes at a time when scientists released a report about climate change that is absolutely chilling so as kyla mandel of huffpost reports more than 11 000 scientists from 153 countries have declared a climate emergency warning in a new report that untold human suffering is unavoidable without drastic action the climate crisis reaches an emergency level according to the study when business as usual the current action being taken or not by society corporations and governments is not enough to match the scale of what's needed to address the situation in order to avoid a hot house earth where runaway temperature increases beget further warming the scientists call for immediate action to overhaul the way we live from agriculture to education rather than piecemeal solutions we need transformative change in the way society functions and interacts with nature william rippell a professor at organ state university's college of forestry told huffposts in an email rippell one of the study's authors called for a holistic solution that also addresses social justice issues and honors the diversity of humans around the world the study which is published in the journal bioscience by researchers from the university of sydney organ state university the university of capetown and tufts university and supported by thousands of other scientists signatories does not mince words it opens by stating scientists have a moral obligation to clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat and to tell it like it is we declare it continues clearly and unequivocally that planet earth is facing a climate emergency so ask yourself this question after hearing about that study from 11 000 different scientists in 153 countries have you heard the mainstream media talk about this at all has cnn msnbc made a reference to it has fox news even talked about it even if they are denigrating it i mean this is chilling you have 11 000 scientists saying if we don't take drastic action we will witness untold human suffering and there's crickets i mean i i just i don't know what to say about that i don't know what to say there's no sense of urgency generally speaking and the situation is urgent it requires all hands on deck it requires constant attention it requires innovation we need to talk about this so it's a more salient issue among the american population but we get a study like this and there's nothing that in and of itself is chilling just you know disaggregating the details of the report just the reaction or lack thereof is a problem so i mean i don't know how to put this but the situation is incredibly grim now what these scientists are explicitly calling for is adaptation and mitigation we need to tackle both of these things simultaneously because we need to not just stop the temperature from increasing but we need to acknowledge that climate change is a reality it's here and we're going to have to live with it so empowering ourselves with the capability to adapt it really is important if we want to survive if we don't want this to crush us more so than it already is and one thing that's fantastic about the green new deal is it does just that it takes into account the need for mitigation and adaptation simultaneously because if we're going to live with climate change and we will we need to acknowledge that there will be an increase in diseases which will require medicare for all mass migration will require housing for all investing in clean renewable technology will require a federal jobs guarantee so all of these things are needed in order to meet the full scale of the climate crisis however the problem is that the green new deal generally speaking is criticized because people think that all of these things like medicare for all jobs guarantee talking about social justice they're not germane to the green new deal like if we're going to talk about climate change let's just talk about climate change but as the scientists in this report are saying no you need to have a holistic approach to climate change because this isn't just about stopping the temperature from rising right this is about allowing us to live with climate change because it's happening it's a reality so we need to acknowledge what's going to happen we have to try to anticipate the political ramifications and the social issues that will emerge as a result of climate change and what happens and we've got to adapt so i see a lot of people saying well the green new deal it's just doomed to fail because there's a bunch of poison pills in it that make it a lot more difficult to pass but i need people to understand the green new deal is not one policy right the green new deal is simply a template that commits to meeting the needs of climate change mitigation and adaptation simultaneously so i've seen some progressive people express skepticism with the green new deal because individuals who are corporate democrats like Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar they also support the green new deal but i need you to understand that that doesn't really mean anything the green new deal is a blank slate what you need to do is fill it in with the policies that you need and it's not like you can't pass it alone and just focus on the mitigation aspect because the new deal going back to that that wasn't just one policy like it wasn't a law we didn't just pass the new deal act and everything from the new deal was suddenly law that's not the way that that worked and that's not the way that the green new deal is going to work it's a package of policies that you pass individually right it's a series of reforms that as a whole will amount to what is known as the green new deal which will give us the power to not just potentially stop further climate catastrophe but arm ourselves with the capability to adapt to what will be inevitable in 50 to 100 years which is climate change that is potentially going to have a runaway effect and get worse so it's a blank slate and candidates like Bernie Sanders have done a phenomenal job at filling in the green new deal and what means to them again it's essentially a wish list of things needed to address the scale of the climate crisis that's it so if you know Amy Klobuchar comes out and endorses the green new deal that doesn't necessarily mean that it's a centrist policy it just means that she acknowledges that essentially it's a shell right now of reforms and we are simply acknowledging that this resolution which the green new deal is a resolution it's not a bill it's saying let's all agree at a minimum that we need to implement reforms that meet the scale of the climate crisis right you can commit to that but it doesn't mean much right now what really matters are the policies so that's why what Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are doing is they are making it as wide-reaching as broad as possible because if we're serious about actually surviving climate change then we can't just limit what we do when it comes to climate change legislation like we have to really think about this as broadly as possible as scientists are saying we need a holistic approach now on top of that we need to invest in new technology now i'm not too educated and well versed in carbon capture and you know actually taking CO2 out of the atmosphere but we need to do things that stop that right because we're continuing to pump all this CO2 to the atmosphere that's an issue so we need to do what we can to make sure we try to remove CO2 as much as we possibly can you know the one thing that comes to mind is planting a shit ton of trees and thankfully there's youtubers currently who are trying to plant 20 million trees i don't know how feasible that is but that is something that is important now the problem with that is trees eventually die and then they release the CO2 that you know they're holding in so that's another story for another day but what matters is that we take action that is absolutely one drastic and two comprehensive and three holistic we've got to make sure that we're thinking of everything trying to anticipate consequences that we don't even know about yet because we have no idea what types of apocalyptic scenarios will come to fruition with runaway climate change so we've got to try to arm ourselves with as much as we possibly can healthcare education jobs guarantee to make sure that we survive that's what this is about so you can say that um i don't think that the green new deal should include medicare for all that's fine you can say that i don't believe the green new deal should have any reference to social justice at all even though communities of color will be impacted the most that's fine we disagree but understand these are not things that are inextricably linked to the green new deal they are associated with the green new deal and they come as part of a package of reforms that together would amount to a green new deal but we need to make sure that we get the details of this right the green new deal is a resolution and what matters is the policy that is going into the green new deal um so far bernie sanders has the most robust comprehensive plan to take action and that's why i'm with bernie sanders because it's not a guarantee that bernie sanders gets elected and saves us but you know his form of reform would give us a fighting chance and that's all that we can hope for at this point in time bernie sanders recently held a rally with ilhan omar in minneapolis minnesota and she made a really powerful case for bernie sanders but during the course of her stump speech fox news took issue with one portion now they're going to fear monger about what she says and they're going to trot out an all too familiar argument that they've made hundreds of times against the left particularly bernie sanders and aoc i'm sure you can predict what that is before you even hear them speak nonetheless here it is i am great what kind of world is she thinking about when i hear her i just say oh brother anyway um you know they were talking about uh i bernie sanders was talking about imperialism right he's talking about imperialism so you realize his socialist heart isn't really in sweden or denmark it's in the old soviet block in cuba we love him as an adorable cranky muppet but his ideas are kind of destructive and when you accuse anybody of like ah you don't love america um when they are talking about america as some kind of western imperialistic mess there's a valid point to be made there and that you can't wait to see america fundamentally changed well i would say that the real western imperious were the french and the british who really screwed up the entire map if you look at the middle east they're the ones that drew those lines that we're now defending come on british way to take it to the british seriously we were in an imperialist nation in the commercial break i can't wait to hear any thoughts on this uh i mean people are right now in venezuela buying gas with cigarettes it's ridiculous and this is why people laugh at him as eventually being the mainstream candidate when you throw around that western impute like it's never gonna happen and her saying it's never been further away than my in my lifetime or whatever refugee to congress she's but they did have a big crowd we just happened yeah well i just you know it's funny to me isn't trump the one who says america first and trying to get us out of everything and so well i know that we're talking about imperialism data and so it seems to me like trump is saying hey you know what i don't like this nation building stuff i don't like the idea we get involved as a world's policeman huh this sounds like the left-wing version of trump talking point interesting so you're saying that they're actually for trump 2020 well i'm saying yours you guys are sitting uh oh this is so outrageous in fact it sounds like you're a guy i think they're point right so it is evident to me that fox news is getting incredibly lazy before they used to take a little bit more time to like finesse their anti-burning arguments but now they just go straight to the cuba venezuela arguments i mean do they honestly believe that this is effective like they stopped making the venezuela argument for a while because i think they realized that they were using it so much it was becoming a meme and the left was really making fun of them but you know they're back to their same little tricks so let's get to what they say so when it comes to ilhan ohmar greg gutfield says when i hear her i say oh brother now they all burst out into laughter and what he was referring to what essentially he did there was a dog whistle to conspiracy theorists who believe that ilhan ohmar married her brother to get to the united states now there is zero evidence for this theory nonetheless it's something that has persisted on the right i believe that this is something that was started by lora lumar i'm not a hundred percent sure about that so don't quote me but there's no basis in reality for it right and they don't want to address the substance of what she's saying so they resort to a smear that is completely and utterly baseless now greg gutfield goes on to say bernie socialist heart isn't really in sweden or denmark it's in the old soviet bloc and cuba okay he literally provided zero evidence and not even an argument really to back up that claim what is it about what ilhan ohmar said there links bernie sanders to cuba like you didn't use anything to make that jump if you really want to argue against your opponent you need to argue based on substance based on the merit of their claims and trying to the straw man but fox news all they do is straw man and then of course greg gutfield went on to say that it's a valid point to accuse someone of not loving america if we critique western imperialism so if we don't in other words condone 100 of what our government does the actions that they take abroad in the middle east and north africa then we're not patriotic would you say the same thing about people in north korea the way that they idolize kim jong un as if he is a demigod don't you think that that's weird so why can't you be introspective and realize that maybe us never questioning our own government's actions is a little culty kind of like it's culty in north korea why is it culty in north korea but not culty in the united states like i don't get it like americans by and large on fox news they don't have any self-awareness whatsoever and most americans they'll just recite the pledge of allegiance not even think about it not even think this seems weird this seems like indoctrination and fox news helps to perpetuate that like on the left we really are about challenging authority actually questioning our structures our political organizations but what greg gutfield inadvertently is saying is look you should just be a sheep otherwise we're going to say that you don't love america okay that's not a very persuasive argument but um proceed to make it so you look like a fucking fool now they then move on to what we all knew was coming the part where they stopped trying to even make any sort of an argument whatsoever and they just scream the following so of course they trotted out the good old venezuela argument but ask yourself how did they go from talking about us imperialism to venezuela like they completely change the subject and try to shoehorn venezuela into the discussion uh in a way that just didn't really make sense well it's because these people are political hacks and they are intellectual lightweights because they don't know how to do anything but cite the same talking points and common themes on fox news that they always cite like they're so predictable at this point that i can predict what they're going to say before they open their fucking mouths like they're going to play all the fox news greatest hits they're going to talk about socialism and communism and venezuela and cuba and if the conversation is about climate change then they're going to call a democrat hypocrites for you know flying in airplanes they are predictable and all they do is straw man us but as they continue to straw man us and take us out of context and just smear individuals like aoc and ilhan omore and bernie sanders without actually providing a persuasive argument to counter what we're saying they are making themselves look like fools but thankfully one williams as usual was the sole voice of reason on this panel and what i love was that he came up with a counter argument that was so profound that he actually got gregg gutt fell to concede who's a hack by the way that that criticism was actually pretty fair so the argument was look if you are going to accept and embrace really what donald trump is saying about america first and ending regime change wars why is it that when a democrat or someone on the left makes a similar argument but is actually sticking to it who believes what they're saying why are they kooky when we talk about ending us imperialism and meddling in foreign elections why is it kooky only when we say it but when donald trump says it it's perfectly sound it's perfectly reasonable well there's an easy answer for that it's because you guys are fucking hacks over at fox news and because that was such a good point uh gregg gutt felt he couldn't he couldn't respond like you can't respond to that because it's true now getting to us imperialism and why this is something that is so incredibly important and why every single american should be against us imperialism is because if you're not then that says a lot about your character the united states has used its international hegemony to overthrow democratically elected governments all throughout the world notably in iran and chili and we've done this so we can install puppet dictators who will grant us unfettered access to their natural resources we've toppled regimes and countries that didn't attack us we've turned countries into failed states we illegally conduct drone strikes in multiple countries that end up killing more civilians than not we have hundreds of military bases throughout the world and on top of that we use our influence to prop up human rights abusers like Saudi Arabia we act as an obstacle to ending apartheid in israel return a blind eye as india escalates tensions with pakistan both countries by the way our nuclear powers so when we're talking about us imperialism and the need to end it we're referring to all of that moral atrocities that are being committed by our government paid for with our tax dollars and this entire us imperialism that's being waged right now is being driven by a bloodthirsty military industrial complex that isonhower warned us about but as uh richard wolf put it even he couldn't have predicted just how powerful it would become one day so what we have done in this country is we prioritize the profits of weapons manufacturers over the lives of human beings in other countries so when we talk about us imperialism we're not just talking about ending regime change wars we're not just talking about bringing the american troops home we're talking about stopping everything that we are doing to destabilize the planet that's what we're talking about it's a moral necessity because if you care about human life if you genuinely believe that human rights are a thing and that they should be respected then think for yourself greg and fox news and viewers of fox news but of course that's too much to ask because these are individuals who are not actually interested in political dialogue these are people who are paid to lie these are paid propagandists and they're doing exactly what they are paid to do but that's just shameless because rather than fear mongering about ending us imperialism if they were actually a real news outlet who challenged power and didn't just act as one of many stenographers to power then they would actually be educating people about why we need to end us imperialism because objectively speaking it's morally bad it is not cost-efficient of the military industrial complex and weapons manufacturers don't actually create very many jobs and it's something that we need to acknowledge like if Russia was doing this if China was waging a war in our backyard we would be very concerned and rightfully so so we need to have a little bit of self-awareness and realize that if we wouldn't want another country to do what we're doing maybe we should stop doing what citizens in other countries view as a net negative that destabilizes the entire world so i mean i don't know what else to say about this i'm not sure you know um that i expected anything different from this i already knew that once Ilhan Omar stumped for bernie sanders fox news was going to say something about something that you said and of course i was correct i just expected i guess at least a little bit more substantive argument but it's fox news so you know they're they're getting dumber with time it seems but keep it up because you're only helping us make the case against you well elizabeth warren released her medicare for all financing plan and political commentators are weighing in i also released a video about it but our friend ben chipiro also decided to give his take on it and what i love about this clip that i'm going to show you is he's going to react to something that he clearly knows nothing about and he's going to talk about numbers as if he's never seen them before because healthcare spending in the u.s it's astronomical right compared to other countries but the way that he talks about this it's as if he's never actually looked up how much we're already spending on healthcare so it's evident he doesn't know much about u.s healthcare policy in spite of that he's still going to pontificate about a subject that he knows nothing about and proceed to make a complete and utter fool of himself um and i'll admit this was thoroughly enjoyable again her medicare for all plan is just a perfect window into the the bizarre mind of elizabeth warren according to reason.com reason magazine her plans to finance medicare for all at a total price tag of nearly 52 trillion dollars including about 20 trillion dollars of new government spending an estimate that is probably low she keeps saying that she's not going to increase middle-class taxes but that's obviously false for example the the chief trick that she plays when she proposes medicare for all is that she says that the the employee-based insurance program so your employer pays in and then you pay in your employer pays in maybe eight percent you pay in maybe seven percent and that pays for your healthcare she's just going to take all of that and turn that into a tax that goes to the federal government that's called the tax now people may say well it doesn't come out of my bottom line well it does because see here's the thing your employer-based healthcare insurance is actually good medicare not nearly as good so she's just converting private expenditures into a tax and then not calling it a tax but she refers to it as an employer medicare contribution oh it's voluntary now sure that that that is in fact a tax obviously that was basically um his head when he saw that 52 trillion cost but you know something that he is conveniently leaving out is that the cost with medicare for all at 52 trillion that takes into account total healthcare spending which includes federal state individual private but um what he doesn't tell you is that actually not doing medicare for all would cost more it would cost more money so medicare for all is actually cheaper in terms of reducing total healthcare spending but before i say that i'll also just add that i also have my issues with the way that elizabeth warren funds medicare for all i prefer a payroll tax as opposed to her regressive head tax without being said though to say that 52 trillion is a type of shocking statistic or he didn't say it but i mean it was evident in you know with the tone in his voice that this was somehow shocking it goes to show you that he doesn't know what he's talking about so i'm going to be extra kind to bench a bureau here and i'm going to argue with statistics that he can't possibly disagree with we're going to cite a conservative coke funded mercata center study to demonstrate how much we really are paying for healthcare in this country so i want to show you this graph from the brilliant andria witty of connect the dot usa.com who shows you just how much we are projected to spend over the next 10 years this is according to an estimate by the mercata center that is 59.7 trillion overall if you look at the total on that left bar it's almost 60 trillion so this estimate that elizabeth warn came up with is actually low but to the right of that you can see that moving to medicare for all single pair will actually reduce overall spending by about two trillion dollars so when we saw all of these headlines about how a coke funded study found that medicare for all actually saves two trillion dollars overall this is what we're looking at overall health spending will be reduced now there's a number of reasons why this will be the case but a huge share of savings comes from the elimination of administrative costs but you know that's kind of besides the point what i want you to look at is federal spending which is the yellow portion of these bars so the federal government is already projected to spend trillions of dollars over the next 10 years on healthcare so regardless if we do medicare for all or not we will be spending trillions of dollars on healthcare now if we pass medicare for all what actually changes is the amount of federal spending versus state private and individual spending so while federal spending increases state and local and individual and private spending decreases under a medicare for all system while overall total healthcare savings also comes down now you can argue about how long it will take for some of these savings to take effect there's debate about that and that's reasonable but what isn't reasonable is for people like Ben Shapiro to not explain that 52 trillion is less in total healthcare spending than if we actually keep the status quo so i'm going to make a prediction over the next week or so since Elizabeth Warren did cite 52.5 trillion as total healthcare spending a lot of mainstream news outlets will basically cite that as the cost for medicare for all without telling you that not doing medicare for all would cost more if we're looking at total healthcare spending because again even if we increase federal spending overall healthcare costs come down because that administrative savings it really is important because if you are a hospital and you only have to build one entity the federal government that's a lot easier right you don't have to have legal departments and individuals that you hire just to do paperwork to file you know these these different claims and whatnot for private insurance you don't have to do any of that with single payer so you save a lot of money alone just by doing medicare for all and doing away with those administrative costs so you're going to hear people say 52.5 trillion but please acknowledge that what that refers to is total healthcare spending over the next 10 years and that is less with medicare for all than if we maintained the status quo now getting back to Ben Shapiro's argument here he also left us with another gem your employer based healthcare insurance is actually good medicare not nearly as good you're wrong i mean how out of touch do you have to be to make a statement like that you may get good uh health insurance through your employer but the problem with that is when you link your health insurance to your employer your ability to maintain said health insurance will be contingent on your employment with that company so that's an inherently unstable system and it could leave people vulnerable if they have a job change and you could lose your insurance on a whim if your employer decides that they want to go with a different provider so this takes the healthcare choices out of your hands because you are restricted to what your employer wants you're restricted to the network that they want you to have so it's not better and when it comes to medicare it's largely cited as the most popular social program for a reason but here's the thing what Ben Shapiro isn't telling you is that before we expand medicare to everyone we are first going to improve it i mean there's a reason why the slogan that you'll see on the posters in medicare for all protests is love it improve it medicare for all because before we expand that we have to improve it because there's a lot of loopholes that exist in current medicare which require people to get supplemental coverage through private insurers that gouge them so what we're trying to do is close all of those loopholes and expand coverage so that way when we actually do roll out medicare for all and expand it to everyone it will be comprehensive it will actually be sustainable but ben Shapiro of course i don't even know what type of healthcare reform he's in favor of he'd probably say well we just need you know more of the private market and less government which is incredibly stupid and i don't want to straw man him but i'm assuming if he is a conservative that's what he'd opt for right a more neoliberal approach to healthcare reform because that is something that conservatives and corporate democrats have in agreement but the problem with a private insurance-based healthcare system is you are incentivizing people being ripped off right if you don't take that profit motive out of the equation if you don't decommodify healthcare then you're not prioritizing the delivery of healthcare you're prioritizing profits which is why we are in the current predicament where we're at right now where millions of people are uninsured and millions more are underinsured they have insurance but they don't realize that it's actually shitty insurance and unfortunately under the Affordable Care Act premiums are continuing to increase because it actually isn't too affordable after all what is affordable is pretty subjective so what matters is making sure that every single person regardless of their income has access to real healthcare and not just access to insurance access to healthcare meaning it's free at the point of service and if they want to see a doctor they just call their doctor make an appointment and show them their Medicare card that's it but Ben Shapiro what he argues for is always going to be what's best for the private sector what's best for multinational corporations right so it doesn't even matter even if objectively speaking a policy like Medicare for all is better to him big government is inherently bad so even if we shouldn't theoretically from a moral standpoint even have a healthcare system that depends on the private sector it doesn't matter what actually delivers the best public policy because he takes a default position of government bad but unfortunately for him that just automatically means that if you don't want government big government will then be replaced by big business so pick your poison it's one or the other i'd rather opt for big government because at least we can elect who is in control of our government to a degree right we may have an oligarchy we may have special interests drowning out our voices in elections but i don't get to elect who's on the board of etna or on the board of blue cross blue shield but ben Shapiro he's a hack so in the event the republican party came out in favor of medicare for all he would suddenly change his tune because that's what he does he's playing on a team team republican team conservatives and he's going to rep their position no matter what and no matter what it is by popular demand i have decided to bring back the voice message segment so a couple of years ago we used to do this on a weekly basis where i would listen to some of your voice messages and respond accordingly although this time i am choosing to limit it to patreon patrons because first of all that is going to make it so i'm not as overwhelmed and i don't receive dozens of messages every single week so that filter is necessary and on top of that i genuinely want to hear from people who support the show the most because i think that you are the most engaged with politics if you can support the show but nonetheless we could open this up in the future to more people but for now this is just going to be an extra patreon perk where if you are a patreon patron of the humanist report you could submit a voicemail and i may listen to it on the show and respond so this week we have a message from brian aka pydus leiker who's going to ask us about a potential running mate for bernie sanders hey mike i just wanted to get an idea of your thoughts of from illa jaya paul potentially being bernie's vp canada i know that she's been a huge advocate for medicare for all someone to argue that her plan is much more progressive as she's offering a two-year plan as opposed to bernie sanders four-year plan but beyond that she advocated for the minimum wage being raised to $15 an hour in seattle and she endorsed him in 2016 so what are your thoughts on primal ajaya paul because i know that she doesn't get a lot of attention uh with comparison to some of the other progressive activists and government officials out there thanks thank you so much for the message brian yeah that's really a great question and primal ajaya paul who was someone who i've had at the top of my list for quite some time but unfortunately there's one issue that would limit her from being the vp or president um she was born in india so you cannot assume the office of the presidency if you were not born in the united states um so that's an issue and i really don't like this i think that that law or that part of the constitution is antiquated i think that we should update it because being american doesn't just mean that you're born in the u.s it means that you are an american you're here you're living here you're part of society you contribute to the economy and you can't argue that someone like primal ajaya paul doesn't contribute to american society so i think that that's something that should be updated although i will say that that provision to the u.s constitution did prevent Arnold Schwarzenegger from becoming president because he did want to run but he couldn't because he's not a natural born citizen and the sad thing is that he probably would win because in america we just worship anyone who's a celebrity i mean donald trump is president so um we do need to change that especially you know if we want to elect more progressives because a lot of people who are progressive who are in power currently are immigrants and i think that's something that should be celebrated so you know if it weren't for that i would definitely opt for someone like primal ajaya paul but um in terms of who i would want to be bernie's vp my number one choice will always be nina turner because what i'm looking at is someone who can carry the torch after bernie's gone nina turner is not only passionate not only does does she align with bernie standers politically but she's someone who is young right there's longevity there she could have a long career in politics so nina turner really is my best bet and i never really thought that that was realistic because she was only a state senator so bernie sanders may want to not pick her because he doesn't want to be criticized that he's choosing someone who doesn't have that much political experience but we're at a state in american politics where we have a reality television show star as our president who has zero political experience whatsoever we have the mayor of a small city in indiana people to judge what the media declares a top tier candidate even though on average he's pulling at seven percent so i say pick nina turner like she is great she'd fire up the base and she absolutely is someone who unquestionably would carry on the torch so it's gonna be nina turner for me overall but um to brian's point about pramila jaya paul being very progressive he's right so her bill even though it is intended to be a companion piece to bernie's medicare for all bill her bill is better than bernie sanders bill i will admit that as a member of the brotherhood of the bernard her bill's better she also wrote the damn bill and it's better now the reason why there's a couple of reasons but the main reason why i like her bill better is because it has a two-year rollout as opposed to bernie's four-year rollout now this is something that i would hope bernie would change upon you know um passing the bill hopefully he'd make his bill align with jaya paul's but the reason why his bill has the four year uh as opposed to a two-year transition is because for whatever reason he allowed kirsten jillibrand to write that portion of the bill and i'm assuming he did this so that way she would support it but i mean if she's not going to support it then she's going to be criticized so we shouldn't be allowing them to write bills for us if they don't actually have our interests in mind right so i don't like that and i really hope that bernie sanders would change that and the reason why i think that we need to opt for two years as opposed to four years and you could even make the case that one year is sufficient but the reason why is because first of all this is a crisis right we need to get health care to people as quickly as possible but there's also you know a reason as to why we need to roll it out faster we saw how public support for the affordable care act was undermined so during that four year period one republicans could rally against it fear monger about it and um make it more difficult to protect because we already know that once it's passed and people get medicare for all they'd love it but we just need them to get that like we need to put it in their hands so they want to keep it um so that's one argument on top of that during that four-year transition period if you pass medicare for all as it is and we have that duplicative ban we're essentially getting rid of private insurance so if these private insurance companies know that they've got four years left to live what's gonna happen well their investors are probably going to bail and move on to the next money-making venture they may close down earlier than expected and not stay in business for the remaining four years or three years and what's gonna happen if that is the case well people would temporarily lose their health insurance now of course it's good because they're getting medicare so this is a short-term issue but nonetheless it's an issue that would create a more rocky rollout for medicare for all that isn't necessary so that's why if i see bernie sanders as president i'm going to push him to fight for a two-year rollout as opposed to a four-year rollout now look i'll take either one i'll take the four-year rollout hell i'll take elizabeth warren's version of medicare for all where she funds it with a regressive tax like that's not ideal right we'd push her if she actually fought for it which i don't think she would but if she did we'd push her to change it but it's just a matter of getting politicians to align with what we want and what is the best policy so at the end of the day um brian's question is great pramila jaya paul would otherwise be a fantastic vp choice because she wrote the dam bill too and it's a phenomenal comprehensive medicare for all bill that i absolutely adore um but unfortunately she wouldn't be able to uh be the president which is super disappointing because she is fantastic but um i think nina turner would be a solid choice to carry on the torch and you know what not even a solid choice like the best option to be vp so i'll admit that i do to a degree enjoy the horse race aspect of the democratic party primary process but i do think this question of who is the worst democrat running it is something that we should consider because we only have a finite amount of resources and time and we have to make sure that we defeat the worst of the worst so at the beginning of the primary process i pretty much declared joe biden to be the worst because i mean there's a lot of reasons as to why he really is the worst but as time has kind of gone on i've realized that people to judge is also really bad because not only is he being propped up by the media but the things that he says about medicare for all they're actually landing like he i think single-handedly to an extent is driving down support for medicare for all because since he's been attacking medicare for all well medicare for all has gone down in the polls and a public option has increased in terms of public support for it so these are people who we need to target if they are the worst because we have to make sure that the primary is as left as it can possibly be and there's a lot of centrists that i love in this race but really when it comes down to who's the worst there's two options joe biden and pete buddha judge and i've gone back and forth and ultimately i think i've probably landed permanently on joe biden but i outsourced this thinking to my patreon patrons because i wanted to know what you guys thought about who's the worst and i asked and you guys answered in large numbers so by a total of 48 votes patrons of the human support believe that joe biden is the worst of all the 2020 democrats and in second but a strong second is pete buddha judge with 22 votes amy klobuchar comes in third with 12 votes and then john delaney in fourth with seven votes kamala harris in fifth with five votes so you kind of see all of the centrists you know unsurprisingly being targeted by the humanist reports audience as the worst of the 2020 race now we have kori boker with one vote bernie sanders with zero votes unsurprisingly tulsi gabard with two votes andrew yang with four votes beto orork who has since dropped out with three votes elizabeth warn with two votes hulion castrow with zero votes billionaire tom steyer with two votes marianne williamson with one vote and michael bennett with zero votes not necessarily because he's not a goon but i think because he's such a non-antity like he said something the other day that proves how unserious he is so he said rather than looking at free college what i'm really looking at is uh free preschool now obviously we should do both that's the obvious answer why can't we have both but i mean preschoolers can't vote so if you want to win an election well political expediency dictates that you should go after people who will be casting votes there's lots of college age people who will be voting to say that you don't care about them and you care more about preschoolers when preschoolers don't have i mean it's a little tone deaf right but nonetheless uh i agree with basically the top five here this makes a lot of sense but ultimately it seems like people are relatively conflicted between joe biden and pete buddha judge but um the comments kind of shed light on some of the patrons thinking here so marie isabel says pete is pretty horrendous but i'm going with biden who is a more obvious wrong choice for this country i believe that either candidate will lose in a general election but biden with his mental decline and backwards attitudes couldn't be further from representing who we are as a country marx's curveballer with a fantastic point here says mayor pete get ready america because every four years the mainstream media will be trying to ram this guy down our throats as a serious candidate who represents democratic values and has brought appeal in midwestern states seeing him explain the reasons why a public option would be financially disastrous only to then come out a few months later with the exact opposite talking points on medicare frol was disturbing to say the least in all honesty i think the south bend police department scandal will be his unraveling however he'll still end up on msnbc or cnn as an overpaid corporate shill spouting off nonsensical talking points about the munichie or his emphasis on undefinable values side note buddha judge is the worst candidate of 2019 and munichie is the worst word of 2019 thanks for everything pete hunter louise jelph says Amy klobuchar smugness makes john delaney blush at least she has the momentum from bill marz endorsement 1.8 percent whoa k smith says biden is the worst at the moment he should retire from public life tom steyer is also awful he used dirty tricks to develop his email list then bought his way into the race and onto the debate stage his only idea is we must be trump we never need another billionaire president are you listening michael bloomberg bordin says beto was my pick the ratio of hype to substance is so wildly off there's no table tall enough for him to stand on to reach the presidency christian lasalle says it was a tough decision between cloud butchar and mayor pete but i went with pete since he is probably the most effective in arguing against medicare frol his constant unchallenged lies about medicare frol make him especially dangerous and if by some insane twist of fate he actually wins the nomination he would get destroyed by trump in the general yes so these are all really fantastic points and christian lasalle is actually the person who brought the slate article to my attention that demonstrates how support for medicare frol has declined while support for a public option has increased and that's largely due to uh the lying of pete but a judge so you know there's no question pete but a judge and joe biden polling wise they're the biggest threats it's still joe biden who sits at the top of the field but they're still both very nefarious and they both must be defeated so i think that you know i'm going to declare this for the most part a draw um no i can't declare a draw actually because joe biden got the most votes so joe biden is the worst of the worst but i still think that pete but a judge is someone who we have to look out for him because even though he's not doing too well polling like i think he's sitting at seven percent on average the media is really trying to prop him up like they just ran a segment on cnn where they basically likened him to obama and he's basically the second coming of obama is what i took away from that segment it's just embarrassing like this is a manufactured candidate who wouldn't have a leg to stand on if he wasn't being propped up entirely by the media which is so frustrating because it demonstrates how powerful the media is they can pick and choose uh winners and losers it's why you know i display this book because um it's true they manufacture consent they are more you know subservient to power than um state run governments and authoritarian regimes but that is like i'm getting on a tangent joe biden's the worst that's the takeaway um yeah let me know your comments down below if you're not a participant in this poll who you believe is the worst and also i'd like some more poll ideas because i do want to continue with this trend um i think that it's it's fun and uh i want to bring this back i think that more interactivity with the audience is not just fun but it's it's better it makes for a better podcast if i'm getting the input of people who watch it and support us the most so i'll leave that there so it's obviously the case that women make up more than 50 at least 50 of the population yet less than a quarter of them serve in congress and the reason why this is the case is because there are a lot more barriers that exist that prohibit women from running and even if they do run it's more difficult for them to get elected so what we have is a new justice democrats like organization that is designed to help women get elected so we can finally maybe inch closer towards parity in congress so with me to talk about a new organization called matriarch is its founders nimiki const and javanka beckles so thank you both so much for coming on the program uh thanks for the invitation it's pleasure thank you mike nice to see you again nice to see you again as well so tell us a little bit about yourself so i'm sure that my audience is familiar with nimiki const so um we're going to start with javanka and then we'll head over to nimiki and get a quick update javanka tell us about yourself and your affiliation with the organization uh well let's see i am a long time activist i've lived in the city of richmond for a long time and decided to uh decided that i could make a difference by by running for office so i ran for office in 2008 uh let me just back it up a little bit i'm i work for the county as a children's mental health specialist and working with children and families i see firsthand the challenges that families have uh and and you know in working to increase the quality of life for the families that i work with i realized that there was something lacking and what was lacking was policy uh and so i decided to run for office uh to be able to make a difference and create the kinds of policies that would help my family specifically the families that i work with interest county the majority being people of color so i ran for office in 2008 uh loss by slim margin one in 2010 was re-elected in 2014 i ran for assembly because again city policy is one thing and and that's a good thing because we can do so much at the local level uh but i realized that all that that there were policies that we couldn't implement at the local level we needed some state policies and so i ran for state office state assembly uh in 2018 uh we lost by i would say small margin but it was a grassroots effort it was very little money and it was at that time that i realized how difficult it really is to run for a higher office working full-time i work full-time and it was very difficult for me to take off and you know like my opponent who was independently wealthy uh and it really was a challenge so when we started talking about it and we keep contacting me and other women uh i thought this was a great idea because as working women we uh particularly women of color we really need uh the boost and the support and the sisterhood that that we are uh building here yeah how about you Namiki what have you been up to since we last talked to you i was like she just she just covered it hey everyone uh well you know um i did run for office this year as as much of us who are involved in matriarch have i would say about uh 50 of our advisory group um of over three dozen women is made up of women who have run for office been in office uh or currently in office and one thing that just became very clear as i got to know so many of these women over the past few years in the progressive movement is there are obstacles that are just not laid out in a serious way uh when you go to these trainings to run for office so you're a woman and if you've been interested in running for office there are maybe a thousand different trainings out there and one of the first things that they do uh is say okay open up your rolodex and you're gonna call every single person you know and we want you to raise money that might work for for some people maybe it'll work up to a month but the most part you know unless you are independently wealthy or of of means or have access to wealth it is extremely hard to raise the amount of money you need to have a a functioning campaign um that can last you know several months i ran in a special election if i if that special election had gone maybe one more month i wouldn't have a home and i'm being completely honest um most people have to balance jobs you know maybe they are single parents maybe there's a two-parent household and and the other uh parent has to take on or the partner has to take on uh the extra burden there's child care costs there's rental costs there's debt and a couple years ago when donald trump was elected we saw a record number of women being called to run for office and they stepped up courageously and did so but very quickly we saw the infrastructure was not there to support uh everyday women in running because it's not just that it's hard to raise the money uh the organizations the institutions that are out there right now um for the most part are not recognizing their candidacy as as quote viable that's the word that they use for endorsement or support until they've raised like a hundred fifty two hundred sometimes three hundred thousand dollars and if you're not independently wealthy i mean it's even a struggle a real struggle to get to fifty thousand dollars and the press won't pay attention to you also if you haven't raised a certain amount of money so if you want to crowdsource maybe you're not famous maybe you're a community activist maybe you're a nurse you're a teacher a mom i mean there's so many different professions obviously that don't get recognized so uh we wanted to fill that gap um so for the last you know several months i've been working with this this incredible crew of women to come up with ways where we can help solve a lot of the the infrastructure issues that women face when they're running for office but specifically for uh congress for right now and i really like that when i first learned about matriarch my thought was finally because this is a working class version of emily's list essentially where it helps working women anti-establishment people who don't have that financial backing uh get elected to congress and there's already enough barriers if you choose to run like political science studies show that women generally speaking in comparison with men they don't feel as if they're qualified which is untrue and thankfully it seems like we're kind of breaking away from that stigma after the 2018 election when so many women across the country are running but when you decide to run it is incredibly difficult it is self-sacrifice and you need these types of organizations to back you up of course you can't do it alone but it's a lot more difficult so what this organization to me seems like is a justice democrats type of organization where we're saying look we're taking on the establishment and we're addressing the specific barriers that exist that prohibit women from actually being electorally viable and successful and we absolutely need that because this descriptive representation is incredibly important like i cited the statistic about less than a quarter of women being in congress but when you um when you actually look at women of color it's 8.7 percent which is abysmal we need these voices in congress we need their perspectives in congress and there is this difference between descriptive and substantive representation but more often than not descriptive representation just getting people in congress that are representative of you know the public demographically speaking it leads to a substantive representation real change so that's why this organization is so important so i wanted to ask you Jovanca in terms of what the short term goal is for 2020 and 2022 um how many women thus far because you guys just launched have basically answered the call because you can nominate a woman to run um do you guys know just preliminary um results as to what the response is because i find this incredibly fascinating and exciting so what's the response been well it's my understanding from the you know the uh coordination that the collaboration that we're currently undergoing there it's been a really um high number of women who are responding uh either via through social media directly through us and so i feel like that's really exciting that that women are feeling that okay finally there's an organization that's really there to help us as working women um that you know grassroots candidates working people non-p mentioned earlier all nurses and teachers and you know myself as a as a mental health specialist but we have so many professional women that are are are in the trenches every single day and and what better voice to represent us right as working people than than us uh so i know that there has been i don't have the numbers uh in front of me but i know that we've had overwhelming responses to to the call sort of a for action um maybe normally you might be able to to fill that in in terms of the the actual numbers um i don't have the number as as of the moment but i say that it's it's coming in i mean every single time we check the monitor it's like oh another one just came in and what's incredible to see is the the number of women who've been nominated by several people sometimes into the dozens from across the country but especially from their communities um it doesn't mean that it's exclusive it just i you know we know that that community support is super important but it's it's so amazing to see um people around the country looking at races that may not you know be even close to them but they're very curious about what happens in texas what happens when he goes blue where virginia goes blue and they're investing in a national partnership a progressive coalition and and we're we're excited to be able to help facilitate that you know i was going to say that i really see that you know we have a we have a movement uh and then we have some some amazing i think super women that that are leading the way thus far and in ill hand and and you know alexandra and and women are seeing that yes i'm an ordinary woman i can do this i know what the issues are shouldn't i be in a position to be able to create the kinds of policies to help us uh through these issues and that help us to have a place at the table a seat at the table um so this is this is really exciting and and i'm really so honored to be able to be a part of this amazing movement yet to me this feels like a paradigm shift where before women were essentially shut out from politics unless they were wealthy right if you if you're wealthy you can do pretty much anything but if you're a working class woman who we want to represent us the most because there are mostly normal working class people in this country then you know we need you to run but there's so many obstacles that make it so difficult so this it does feel like a paradigm shift in terms of more women getting involved and just uh you know women really becoming the face of the progressive movement i mean you you stated that ilhan omar um we have uh rishita to leave uh aoc i mean premilla jaya paul there's so many women who are now the face of the move of the movement and now i think that that really sends a message to ordinary women who are just working women that you know i can do this as well because there are other role model models who are leading the charge so i think that this is really nice to see like so many people rally around this one cause from different demographics and it's about damn time so i wanted to ask you because this is a pack so i want you to just distinguish between a pack and a super pack just so there's no confusion to mickey can you settle this for us because i saw a couple of tweets at the beginning when i when i kind of i put out a tweet in support of maitrak and you know one of the first things i saw was oh this is a pack um explain what this is yeah so i'm not an elections attorney so please try to come in okay but i'm a disclaimer disclaimer but that's okay i'll click on it or probably want me to be an elections attorney um so you know there there are not a lot of ways that groups can come together and facilitate assistance to candidates and that's just based on the legal structure that we live in um i think we've made the case very clear as to why it's important to have organizations out there that can help candidates out i know from my experience it was extremely hard running when you know nobody thought we had a chance um had to raise a certain amount of money and thank god for shows like yours mic because you believed in us and that really your your viewers helped to get us to that level of where we needed to raise money but not every candidate has access to mic um i was very grateful to and so it's important to have organizations out there that can help at critical stages so a pack versus a super pack a super pack is you know some billionaire can dump in his life savings and basically buy ads on tv and you know and it's we saw joe biden is going to be a billionaire maybe a few billionaires are going to be doing that for joe biden in his presidential race so that you know joe biden has limited campaign contributions that he can take as a presidential candidate they're still extremely high but they're limited and so he's he's been unable to raise the the amount of money he needs uh to be viable so you know maybe a few of his donors that have a lot of money and had maxed out can now put it into a super pack and make up the difference and buy pro joe biden ads or maybe attack ads on other people so that's the facility of the super pack it's also put corporate money in there if you want to a pack is is very limited um the money you can receive is up to five thousand dollars and give is five thousand dollars a split into primary cycle versus general so we want to be able to invest in candidates at a critical point where um you know they need it when when no one wants to give the money or attention but we know we believe in them we see their path whether it's to victory or to changing things on the ground in their community to be in you know because candidates can can serve a lot of of purposes right they can be running to make a statement they can be running uh you know thinking maybe they don't have a chance this time but the next time they will because much of this country has not been invested in by progressives or democrats for for 25 years or they could be running because they have a real path to victory and so we want to invest in a candidate uh that we believe in and um and all for other resources i mean jivanca is one of our extraordinary women in our sisterhood that is opening up their time and energy and just supporting and having the backs of these candidates and so we don't have our slate of candidates yet but once we do we're based on contributions of course we're going to be offering assistance in so many different ways and that's something a super PAC doesn't do uh that you know hopefully down the line we'll be doing other educational you know trainings but uh 2020 is underway so we're we're just trying to get as much done in this short period of time that we can to help candidates out that might be facing primaries earlier rather than later yeah i hope that answers the question no that's that does that totally answers the question the takeaway for viewers essentially is that this is not a dark money group like this is a grassroots organization and i'm going to put a link on the screen and really highly encourage you to donate because these organizations like even though we all hate money in politics you know the problem is that it's a necessity if we do want to win and if you want to empower matriarch to empower grassroots women then they do need that money and so even if you can chip in a dollar you know at a minimum or you know find out a way to support it you know otherwise that really does matter it is important this is basically a nationwide movement i don't view matriarch as like just one component one thing like i view them as a microcosm of a bigger issue as one part of our whole movement you know this labor movement the women's rights movement this is all just one collection we're all in this together basically is what i'm trying to say in a convoluted way so they need money so if you could donate anything to them that would be incredibly incredibly helpful because these organizations they really need a boost of money especially at the beginning like justice democrats they had TYT and secular talk to really help boost their name so we need to do this for matriarch because this is important this is a cause that really matters and if we want to make sure that we up our chances of winning elections across the country then we need as many organizations as possible and this is an organization that is needed that's much overdue and they need your help so i wanted to ask you guys this is kind of a generic question but i do think it's important because a lot of people they just kind of feel as if they're overly cynical i can kind of you know uh sympathize with that viewpoint and if you're a woman in this country you kind of see the trajectory that we're on right you know women's rights issues kind of is put on the back burner we have donald trump in president who's incredibly misogynistic so if you're a working woman um what is your message to them and why do you think that they should run for congress in spite of what they might think personally well because our women's issues are you know is intersectional right we we you know we are black we are queer we are immigrants we are mothers sisters right it's a you know our issues uh uh are intersectional and no matter you know where we come from what our background maybe even our passion as long as we have the as long as we have the passion uh and support because there's no way i could have even ran a successful assembly race without so much support without the grassroots um passion that comes along with that and knocking on door so no matter you know what where you come from uh as long as you recognize that problem is that there is injustice particularly as women and women of color you know we experience injustice every single day and so we recognize that we see it firsthand we look at it in the eye uh and so knowing that knowing what these solutions are policy creating the kinds of policies we are not getting the policies that we need uh for men and we're not getting it from white men and so we have to look to each other right for those uh for that for the change that we we want to create so i say it is a scary thing our lives change when we run for office and and having to do it full time is really what helps it helps us to be successful um but you know but but do it and go for it and and you will not be alone and that's what's so powerful and and and beautiful about this organization is that we are a sisterhood we we recognize the challenges uh and we we've got your back you know the message is that you're worthy like what i try to tell people is that you are qualified to run for congress if you care about political issues because think about some of the people who are serving like we have Louis Gomert as a sitting member of congress if he can do it anyone can do it you are qualified so i like to use that as an example to put it into perspective because we need you like representation is so crucial Javanka made such a good point about the policies that are being passed because there's a 2014 Princeton University study by Dr. Gilan's and Paige that i like to cite that you know when it comes to policy outcomes average citizens they have zero impact it's statistically insignificant but elites and special interests they actually do have a substantial impact so we're getting policies passed that benefit rich people and rich people disproportionately are white dudes so if you want to change that we have to start changing the structures and that means we increase representation for women it's absolutely crucial so um Namiki any lasting thoughts that you want to leave us with and i want to give you both the opportunity to make the last pitch to donate because this is incredibly important this is a grassroots movement and money is needed in order to get these types of organizations off the ground because that money it's not just going to matriarch what what you do is you train candidates you help them you give them money and this really helps like justice democrats was incredibly instrumental in electing aoc and we want lots of aocs we want to broaden the squad so what about us absolutely we need more people to get in power in congress and represent us and like we see how aoc and ilhan omar for example are doing such a great job nationally speaking so if we broaden that i mean think of the change that we we really could accomplish so namiki what's the last pitch that you want to make and any lasting words from both of you yeah just some lasting words in terms of um the electability factor you know there there has been a movement over the last you know 70 years but really the last you know 40 years in particular to elect women to reach parity in congress so that means is a little bit no so we have equal representation in congress and we've had a couple of really great years in which one of which was 2018 where record number of women were elected and and you know there was one i think in 1992 and then in 2006 but one thing to keep in mind there is that um yes record number of women ran because they were fed up with the system they were fed up with republicans who had really betrayed the country whether it was uh you know bush senior or it was republicans during the war in iraq and of course you know in 2018 it was post trump but we have to think beyond those moments beyond the like critical mass horrible republican policies we have to think what does it mean to build an infrastructure so we reach parity and i think what's unique about matriarch is we have a platform that is intersectional it's a platform based on economic justice the green new deal taking no corporate money and and supporting candidates that don't take corporate money um looking at reproductive rights as reproductive justice issues uh criminal justice reform and all of the the progressive movement issues in in the in the best form possible um with the root of no corporate money because we think that you know if you take corporate money um it'll it trickles up from there and then it's that old parable about a a frog being boiled in a in a pot and of course you know that so if we're electing and looking for women who come from working backgrounds and can relate to these issues personally first hand then they have that special connection with their communities they know the issues that their communities face they take those issues that they face first hand or or closely into congress and then as we see with the squad and vermila jaya paul and barbara lee i mean there's so many women throughout history who have been elected and and defied the obstacles that took that energy into congress now imagine equal representation with women like that we think they're more electable we think that they just you know they need infrastructure support they need uh other women and other men of course like yourself having their backs but they need that support the way that the centrists support their their millionaires and billionaires we got to do the same thing for our movement and i think the ecosystem is is growing and we're just another piece of that so please if you can chip in some bucks as as mike said it's supporting everything from our incredible team that's going to be providing resources to candidates whether it's mentorship from our board of advisory or uh trainings or you know we have some fun things in store that i don't want to i don't want to unveil yet and of course you know financial assistance is important as well so thank you yeah any last thing words from you javanka i just say thank you well uh well said namakey um just you know that it takes all of us right and and and all it takes is just a little bit of either our time or our resources and you know the sum of that um is is really you know what would what's going to help um help this movement and so any little bit of of money any build any little bit of any of your resources um we would appreciate uh because we're only going to continue to get the kinds of policies that uh that increase the wealth of the elite class um if we keep electing white men so in order for us to have the policies that really benefits us all we need women who understand the struggles and the challenges that we face so thank you for for having us on the show and and those and those of you who are viewing thank you for supporting this organization we can't do it without you and the women that are running definitely can't do it without you so without you so thank you in advance for all the support that you bring in and thank you both for coming on to mickey const javanka beckles um the website is matriaricpac.com let me just make my pitch for you all because i think that it's important that i always try to put this in a perspective for people when you donate this is kind of like an investment like you're putting in money into an organization that will later essentially pay you back like i always use the and i people criticize me because i use this example every time but it's really important to me so ilhan omar she's not my representative she lives you know in a different state but she introduced a bill that would cancel all student loan debt that's pretty important to me personally right so when we donate to these candidates even if they are not our representatives that still is beneficial so by donating to matriarch you are donating to an organization that is going to help push the envelope further in terms of um getting representation for women and getting policies passed that impact every single person namely working people and working women so thank you both for coming on and making the case i'm incredibly excited we will be following and i'm i'm looking forward to the candidate list thank you all right thank you so much Mike my name is russ serencioni this video is not for the establishment i'm a progressive democrat running for congress as a working class american i waited tables to put myself through college now i'm a public servant and as a government housing attorney i fight for what i believe in two years ago my son was born my life was changed forever i promised him that i would do whatever it takes to build a better future but our future is at stake by 2035 new jersey homes will be underwater we'll lose billions in property value heat waves drought mass extinctions tornadoes the climate crisis is here the way forward is to invest in our future we can create millions of high-paying jobs to usher in a modern age of renewable technology rebuild our infrastructure and create the greatest middle-class america has ever seen with the green new deal i believe americans should have the right to breathe clean air drink pure water and to enjoy a healthy environment most americans live paycheck to paycheck we work longer hours but our wages stay the same the cost of health care keeps rising but covers less millions of people have no health insurance and every year people die because they can't afford it that's why i support medicare for all because it will save money and save lives running for congress wasn't in my plan when our representatives said no to the green new deal and no to medicare for all that's when i knew now is the time to fight politicians that take big money from oil and gas lobbyists will never solve the climate crisis politicians that take big money from health insurance and pharma lobbies will never give us medicare for all we win when we elect people that reject big money that's why i've pledged to take no fossil fuel corporate pack or lobbyist money to stay true to working class americans we must eliminate corruption in politics and we won't stop there we can have opportunity for all with free public college and student loan debt cancellation and we can have a federal jobs guarantee with a living wage we can invest in our families with universal child's care and paid family leave new jersey deserves a leader who puts our working class families first my name is russ serencioni and i'm fighting for justice together we'll create an america that works for all of us hello everyone i'm here with russ serencioni running in new jersey's sixth congressional district against frank polon an infamous corporate democrat who is known as the enforcer for nancy polosi and he's here to tell us why frank polon's got to go and why he would actually be a voice of change in the democratic party russ thank you so much for coming on the program it's my pleasure mike thanks for having me i love your show so this is really surreal for me being here that's awesome thank you so much that means so much well look i've been following your campaign for a while and i am thoroughly impressed you pretty much check all of the boxes you say medicare for all but you specify single payer medicare for all no type of you know compromise medicare choice medicare for all who wanted it's medicare for all single payer you're talking about the green who deals student loan debt cancellation and you are someone who you've kind of been in the trenches fighting for quite some time you're a government housing attorney so you're fighting against basically landlords who are taking advantage of tenants and now you're running for congress so what made you want to run well a lot of things but most importantly in february when the green new deal was announced as the house resolution you know for most of for most of our generation we're very concerned with the climate crisis and the green new deal really gives us hope we can get we can clean up our environment and transition to renewable energy because that's what we have to do based on the ulan reports and as soon as it came out my representative said things like it's not politically possible it's not technologically possible and in my mind that is the most absurd statement i've ever heard because we have the technology and also we have the uh we have the research and development and works that we could fully go a hundred percent renewable by 2030 we could do it as soon as possible and what when he said that it just became very frustrating for me because i have a two-year-old son and my son's future is shaped by how we deal with the climate crisis today his his life in 10 years is going to be is directly related by what we do today if we can't end the fossil fuel age and switch and clean up our environment i i just don't want him to be uh faced with dystopia so at the time frank polon said no to the green new deal he became one of the biggest threats to my family and then uh the the final nail in the coffin really in june a fossil fuel company tried to put a pipeline through our township in new jersey and olbridge a fracked gas a natural gas pipeline that would cut through jersey provide no economic benefit and go to the raritan bay disrupt the wildlife they tried to put it within a few miles of my house and that was the final straw the fossil fuel company came after my family came after my son's the air that my son breathes threatened him with asthma threatened him with lung conditions and at that very moment i decided that there's nothing that can stop me from doing everything i can to switch to renewable energy to fight for the green new deal to fight for my son's future and that's really the main reason i'm in this because uh my son's everything to me and my wife you know uh also i'm really upset with how corrupt politics is you know how the big money dominates everything in our elections uh you know the the billionaires uh really influence our election so much that we become an oligarchy right where our congress only responds to the donors and a popular opinion has very little effect on what actually it's done in congress so that's really upsetting to me because you know as you mentioned i'm a government attorney so i fight for housing justice we have ethical rules of loyalty to the state agency that we work for i want to bring these ethical rules of loyalty to the people in new jersey sixth district and in our entire congress so that's what i'll be fighting for as well anti-corruption provisions um and we'll be calling out every single politician that does take money from the billionaires and the corporate packs in the lobbyist so we take no corporate cash because we can only control what i do right now and in the future hopefully we'll see a corruption free government yeah well thankfully candidates like you you're really trying to set a new standard for the way that you run campaigns and even if you disadvantage yourself in a sense by not taking that corporate pack money you really demonstrate to people that you're going to remain principled you're not going to sell out you're not going to accept money from fossil fuel industries that have a financial interest in ruining the planet ruining you know your own hometown so i think it's really important and one thing that i noticed about you is you really do put this strong emphasis on getting money out of politics which is something that we need to talk more about i mean we're always focused on the issues but the root cause to pretty much everything like all the issues is the commodification of the electoral process like money and politics it's making every other issue that much more difficult to have some type of political solution because everyone takes money from the industry so they're too afraid to stand up to that industry and even if you're not necessarily corrupted by an industry in congress you know that they can oppose you by being rolling a future opponent so nobody's brave enough to really stand up so it's really important that candidates such as yourself run for congress and that's what you're doing so i wanted you to talk a little bit about your experience fighting for tenant rights because you shared a couple of really interesting anecdotes on your website about what you went through and who you represented and i found it absolutely not just fascinating but really wild because it just really goes to show you how important tenant rights are and why we really need to be talking i think more clearly about housing for all so can you share a couple of personal stories so i spent a lot of time i i spent a lot of time in housing court and you know when tenants tenants homes are on the line uh that's it's just a psychologically damaging thing to tenants and i you know i've seen a lot of tenants being frustrated and like usually when somebody has a problem with their housing it's because of some of some other economic problem right so like they lose their jobs sometimes and then they can't pay rent so i don't see how i want to see more housing justice in our entire country i want to see broader tenants protections for even especially people in the midwest that have very few tenant protections uh new york city is actually very good with protecting its tenants and my experience is with enforcing the rent stabilization law that's what our agency does we we try to keep a affordable housing stock there's about one and a half million departments that are subject to the law and so i guess a couple of personal stories so we deal with harassment issues when a landlord will harass a tenant and with the particular story that talk about on the website is a landlord was allowing a dog to run free in the hallways and the tenant the tenant was actually you know attacked by the dog like chased into her apartment and she complained about the situation and instead of fixing you know like keeping the dog in the house or in the apartment the landlord just retaliated against the tenant which makes no sense like all he had to do is keep the dog in his home instead of running free in the apartment building and he showed up he knocked up he knocked her door and he showed up right in front of her and he threatened her life he threatened to kill her he actually shoved a pistol in her face and said how dare you uh you know complain about this condition and so what we did we we called the police got involved and we uh we we made sure that the tenant had the proper protections against this landlord uh so yeah so we remedy the situation by um by getting like help there to get restraining orders and also uh you know enforcing the the rent law so we reduced her rent for a while as well because she had to deal with these psychological damages but really what what the entire goal of a housing program in our country should be protecting affordable housing we need to overturn the the draconian rules that are in place now that doesn't allow the federal government to invest in construction of new affordable housing uh and instead of just repairing this really outdated housing stock we have to start investing in affordable housing actually doing the work and building it uh so that's that's what's essential to our platform as well if we want to end homelessness we can we really can and we can do it by building affordable housing for everybody i'm really glad that you shared that because you i think better than most people know about that power imbalance between landlords and tenants and you know we need to make sure that we are empowering people and we're talking about housing for all and i'm so glad that so many candidates running in 2020 are actually bringing up this issue elevating it and bernie sanders thankfully released a phenomenal plan that is a housing for all plan that could potentially end homelessness so it's really nice to really see this issue take front and center in the election and it's so important but i mean it's not it's not the only issue that you're running on you have a pretty robust platform and what's really remarkable to me is that so many candidates running for congress their platforms are more comprehensive than most presidential candidates which is mind-blowing but it kind of just goes to show that like you guys running for congress you care more about policy than most politicians who are just career-minded you know who want to who want to advance their own career so talk about some of the other things that are at the top of your list in terms of what you think you'd be able to to accomplish or what you'd fight for in that first year in the event you're elected so we we went over medicare for all single payer in new jersey we pay the fifth highest in the country for our health insurance it'll see the average new jersey in around three thousand dollars a year you know the green new deal is the top part of our platform because we have to beat the climate crisis like we have enemies at our doorsteps trying to invade and destroy our homes and the anti-corruption provisions which an american anti-corruption act which could be passed through congress and actually end the end the stranglehold of lobbyists i want to i want to end hunger we can end hunger by feeding people i want to create thousands of indoor uh hydroponic uh or aquaponic vertical farms that will produce organic food we have to really rethink our food bill our our farm bill and for new jersey in particular it's about a billion dollar a year industry where the top producers of different fruits and vegetables here uh we have almost a million acres of farmland and um so to me what we really have to do is invest in sustainable organic farming uh our current food bill actually subsidizes corn and cotton and i don't know in the last time anybody cotton was but it does not belong in a food bill you know um we actually do not subsidize organic farming it counts for less than one percent of our farm bill and our and our investments there and we have to change that because you know organic farming is uh pesticide free and to reduce the costs indoor vertical farming essentially allows you to use no pesticides because it's an indoor contained environment and if we construct fees across the country they can be communally owned uh create thousands of community jobs and also we could feed the people who need it the most and we could also provide low cost organic food for everybody so everybody wins um so that's another part of our platform uh there's there's so many things like we have to spend disability rights we have to fight for digital privacy rights uh i believe in regulating cryptocurrencies and clarifying tax issues there um you know and also free public college of course we need that and canceling student loan debt because if we want to be competitive on a world stage we have to have a well educated workforce and to really uh in debt like 50 million americans uh and tie them to this uh like sometimes six-figure student loan debts is is uh is unacceptable to me i mean personally i have student loans as well my wife and i have them and you know uh we're we're really lucky that we that we were able to um we're able to afford like a lot of things of modern life but i just think that it's a drain on the economy and if we unlock that economic potential by forgiving the student loan debt and canceling it fully then we'll have a an insanely uh an insane economic boost in the next few years which pays for itself over a decade yeah that's that's really encouraging to i totally agree with the student loan thing um i have student loan debt that um if it were canceled i can guarantee i would stimulate the economy and i think a lot of millennials would agree with that so it's it's an economic stimulus that we desperately need and just to allow millennials like our generation to have that economic mobility or a start at like just less burden even i mean that in and of itself would be remarkable so you are running against someone who i think is a political behemoth frank pilon he's really one of the worst i think a lot of people know about frank pilon who watch this show but if they don't tell us why you think frank pilon needs to be primaried i i think that you have a lot of things to go off of but like in your mind what's like the top reasons why you think he should be primaried and i love that in your ad you hit him for all the financial contributions that he takes but uh what do you think it is about frank pilon that makes him unable to represent his constituents adequately so uh so honestly in my opinion our election our primary is probably in the top four or five most important uh elections in the country and that's because frank pilon chairs the energy and commerce committee in the house so he's the chairman and a lot of people don't really understand what powers a chairman of a committee has so anyone can introduce a bill to the house floor but then it's assigned to a specific committee with jurisdiction the energy and commerce committee has jurisdiction of about 60 percent of all the legislation that passes through the house of representatives so bills like medicare for all and the green new deal they both wind up in his committee and he has been actively blocking those bills he he had a hearing on health insurance uh in june and did not even bring the medicare for all bill hr 1384 you know the jaya paul proposal he did not even bring that to the hearing he did not bring it to the committee and it's essentially going to be stopped there forever he took one million dollars from the pharmaceutical industry and the health insurance lobbies last cycle alone and they're still funding his elections he will never ever pass medicare for all and he will be the person in power that can effectively stop it even if we have bernie sanders in the white house he can stop medicare for all through his committee he could stop the green new deal from his committee as well he is he has uh actually i think he might have the soldier's jurisdiction over the green new deal bill if we propose one and um he actually has proposed his own uh essentially do nothing plan 100 uh carbon neutral by 2050 which we know will be about 20 years too late and it will allow for natural gas investments to continue for the next 30 years and that's not something that we our planet can take that's not something that that we can compromise on we have to end the investments in fossil fuels uh and he's taken a million dollars over the course of his career from the fossil fuel industry so fundamentally uh because he takes this money and because of his position he will never ever give any votes for the progressive ideals that we want to fight for and replacing him on the energy and commerce committee would be hugely instrumental to passing a progressive platform in 2020 and beyond and i i honestly believe anyone who takes fossil fuel money deserves a primary challenge because they will not regulate the fossil fuel companies the way that we need to in the in the next few years and you know if we really care about uh about these progressive ideals which we really do we have to replace the corporate democrats that will propose in the middle of the ground do nothing uh half ass solutions and so that's really important to our district as well we have many miles like 30 miles of coastline in our district and the climate crisis is going to destroy our homes we literally have houses a few feet from the atlantic ocean from the atlantic ocean we have houses a few feet from from bay areas so rising sea levels is very concerning for the people here and in his recent town hall almost every single person asked him one of two questions will you support medicare for all or will you support the green new deal and his answer was no no no a thousand times blaming it on the republicans blaming it on blaming it on his donors that are going to run run ads against him he called medicare for all socialism he is afraid of the very people that fund his campaign he's afraid of their campaign ads calling him a socialist like for medicare for all they call they called obamacare socialism you know that argument doesn't hold any water when we have 45 000 people in our district alone without health insurance so we're fighting for medicare for the long the green new deal is a two most important issues for our district and we're going to replace them in june 2020 so i'm excited that's great well and i wanted to ask you because you know i feel like anyone who's in that district there's no way that they enjoy putting up with him like this is a fairly blue district like you don't have to put up with someone who is this conservative this right wing quite frankly and everyone in the country they really have a vested interest in seeing you succeed because this is something that doesn't just affect that district that you're living in i mean it certainly affects you the most but i mean if he's a barrier to medicare for all then absolutely we all have to coalesce around your campaign and get him out of office but what i wanted to ask you was what do you think it would take because you're not taking corporate cash and he is so he's going to have that monetary advantage what do you think it would take to make you viable in 2020 because i know you're knocking on a lot of doors but how much do you think you'd have to raise in order to be competitive to be competitive if we raise $150,000 we will definitely be extremely competitive and you know if we if we go up to 300k then i think that we are we're going to win the election because we have we have a district that's pretty pretty white right so it traces the coastal shoreline very narrowly so it's geographically long but we do have urban areas we have very dense urban areas so but we can we can win with really not much money and this is a safe democratic district the cook the cook rating is like plus nine so there's really no reason for our representative to be taking this corporate cash especially because he wins against the republicans every single year in like like almost in five five five figures or six figures ahead in votes so yeah basically we don't need that much money but we we definitely need a little bit we have campaign staff volunteers right now a few paid i am now on part-time at my at my job to dedicate to four at least four days a week plus every weeknight to our campaign so we're hitting the ground running though starting in right after this november 5th election which is just a few days away i kind of feel like every single primary challenger will win hands down if every voter knows about you because i think that the pitch that you're making it makes sense it's going to resonate with people it's just a matter of will people actually know who you are or will they just vote based on name recognition what's the response that you've gotten from constituents because i can't imagine that in a deep blue district like that they're too happy with frank pelone no so they're not every single person that i speak to are very excited about the green new deal how is the jobs program how it's going to save our planet and also Medicare for all makes a lot of sense to most people who have dealt with health health issues so people are very responsive here i think our district pulls extremely well with all of our progressive ideas and i mean this district deserves to be represented by somebody with bold policy platforms that will stand up to the billionaire class and that's what that's what i'm fighting for we have to stand up to those in power and demand equality and justice for everybody in our district there's so many people that work um on the minimum wage here almost a hundred thousand people and that's why i believe in a loving wage a raising them the minimum wage $20 an hour plus indexed to inflation because um if we want to stimulate the economy that's the best way to do it which really interesting i think just yesterday there's been a study on the new york city minimum wage increased to $15 an hour in the restaurant industry and they've they found that it's actually increased employment and increased restaurant spending so it's a boom on the economy if we raise the minimum wage our minimum wage in new jersey is going up to $15 an hour in 2024 but i think that i i don't even think that's enough for that time period and why are we waiting until 2024 which should just be happening now so yeah all of our issues are very popular so but you know challenging incumbent the the establishment people know him very well but i still have conversations with them and a lot of people that are even elected officials have shown like you know like respect they're they're basically like yeah i they respect what we're doing because we deserve a primary we deserve options this is a democracy and the more options the better and so people everywhere have been responding well to our campaign so that's really encouraging to hear let me ask you this because if you're elected we already know that you will be one of the main targets of donald trump of fox news you'll be a member of the squad a new member of the squad round two um you'll be deemed you know a socialist possibly a communist by fox news what do you do to basically push through that noise and still fight for an agenda and on top of that how do you basically push back against internal forces within the democratic party who's going to try to get you to soften your stance on a number of issues so the internal uh in fighting will be very interesting because that's what i'm really worried about like i think that we're going to democrats going to win the presidency i think that democrats going to win the senate and the nth house but i'm really afraid of just the centrist corporate democrats being the ones with the range of power and it's going to be another like obama uh rehash where we don't get much done where we um where we pretty much stall and every single working populist platform is pretty much uh pretty much catapulted into uh you know non-existence really uh i mean we we need to get the the anti-corruption bill reform passed uh that's a very very big priority and i actually intend on uh being very aggressive against republicans uh who i want i want to be firing the first shots against them instead of being always on the defense i think that's very powerful with donald trump against donald trump and republicans because uh we have to put them on the back foot and really make them defend their positions because we have the popular platforms we're calling for good jobs we're calling for unions we're calling for saving the planet we're calling for health care for all what are what are they arguing for health care for less uh like you know that yeah the right to work laws must be abolished we have to abolish those everywhere so i think so i'm going to be one of the biggest anti-corruption democrats calling out even people in our own party who take that money especially when they won't vote for working class reforms like um you know like a higher minimum wage and i'm going to be bringing the fight to republicans too on their doorsteps you know bernie sanders actually recently said that he's going to be holding rallies in uh other you know in other districts with what against whoever uh won't vote for things that we want to get done like you know like the green new deal and i i intend on doing a similar thing go i will rally in somebody else's district uh working people uh and make sure they feel the public pressure also you know i want to help we're going organizing everywhere i don't want to just this this is really about the movement this is not about us this is about our movement here we're building this movement in new jersey because we've been progressives have been really scattered across the state but we're actually really building um building coalitions across the board so that's important to do in our state we're going to start here first and then we're going to keep bringing it nationally and empowering other people to organize i think is the most important thing that we can do because uh you know i believe in leading from behind i believe in um you know i don't i don't want to spotlight i want this to be people's other people's movement and we have to empower each other and and work together everywhere i love that answer because like when i ask that question occasionally to candidates like what i really want to hear is i'm going to fight them like i'm going to fight republicans i'm going to fight democrats i'm going to call them out because like advocating for policies that's incredibly important in and of itself but we need people who are going to get in there and crack schools so i always try to see if i can get that sense from a candidate and the fact that you affirm that it really makes it clear that i mean this isn't even a choice like if people know about you you're winning hands down so i want you to make your pitch because basically this is about name recognition if people know about you in new jersey six congressional district you win i think hands down it's just a matter of getting the name out there and unfortunately you know in fact the reality is you need money to do that so tell us what we can do to help you where we can donate and how we can get involved with your campaign because i think that anyone who's watching this will be convinced and they're gonna want to help you out so what can we do yeah so we have a really good website with all our policies there it's brus for us 2020.com r-u-s-s-f-o-r-u-s-2-0-2-0.com there's a volunteer form there where we we're looking for volunteers across the country we need help online organizing and also you know giving the message out more so definitely sign up there you there's a donate link there we definitely appreciate any contributions because we're grassroots where people funded taking no corporate cash and so about me i have the experience as a legislator as well so we need a legislator we also need a public advocate and so being like a public interest attorney fighting for the common good i've drifted laws in new york actually that have passed that protect tenants from manufactured homes so i have experience as a legislator and we definitely need more like good guy attorneys in congress good good guy lawyers that have the fight that have the back of the people um you know i was a waiter for almost a decade before through college and through law school working 40 hours a week so i've been there on the on the working struggle and the working-class struggle um i've worked alongside you know uh immigrants and other college students and and moms and and and people of all types so that's that's really why i have a fundamental belief the fundamental beliefs that i have here where we need a working-class movement we need unions we need higher minimum wages um and you know uh our our our movement is about continuing the work of the people here we're continuing the work that bernie sanders is doing we're we're linking up with everyone we're building power here and we appreciate any contribution of course but this moment in time is the most important ever because right now our future selves are watching us and we're going to ask ourselves when the amazon was on fire when california was on fire when there were massive hurricanes everywhere what were we doing to stop it to fight it to bring a new movement to clean up our environment and now is the time to be involved it doesn't have to be very very dedicated if you if you can spare a few hours a week every campaign locally could definitely use the help and mike i thank you so much for having me here um and you know like i said our campaign is super important nationally and we need all the help we can get because we're a small team right now we've raised about $15,000 but we're we're we're really um we're only about 10 of the way we where we have to be so um yeah so we're going we're going to win bernie sanders is going to win and the progressive movements are going to win and it might as well be you right now in the next election you know absolutely well look anyone who's watching this knows it's not even a debate you are hands down better than frank polon and i'm confident like with with all of these people i was telling russ before we started that for the first time i actually feel a little bit optimistic just because there's so many great candidates running for congress so like my cynical heart is starting to kind of like you know it's starting to grow a little bit right not too much but a little bit just seeing everyone kind of get involved so let's help russ help us let's get him elected russ siren sione he is someone who can actually change the country russ thank you so much for coming on you're welcome mike thank you for having me and good night everybody well that's it i don't have anything left to uh talk about i've got you know everything off of my chest so we'll go ahead and leave that there as usual i'm gonna thank all of our patreon paypal and youtube members for supporting the show we absolutely cannot do this without your support so thank you all so much for helping us to not just survive but thrive as well you guys are absolutely amazing and shout out to all of our loyal listeners on soundcloud and iTunes you guys are also not to be forgotten thank you for listening um i think i uh i'll leave that there i don't have anything else to say so uh i'm just gonna start rambling as i usually do towards the end of episodes once i exhaust all of my mental space i'm rambling now i'm doing it um but yeah i am done um i'll see you all next week hopefully you guys um we'll have a great weekend take care everyone