 This is The Humanist Report with Mike Vigoreto. The Humanist Report podcast is funded by viewers like you, through Patreon and PayPal. To support the show, visit patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or become a member at humanistreport.com. Now enjoy the show. Welcome to The Humanist Report podcast. My name is Mike Vigoreto and this is episode 312 of the program. This is a very spooky edition of The Humanist Report because it is the lead up to Halloween or not really a lead up, like we haven't really been doing anything to celebrate Halloween, but it's a spookier episode than usual because I mean, it'll make you more sad and doomer after watching it. I guess I'm not sure I'm trying to make something out of it, but happy Halloween is what I'm trying to say. Before we get into it, I do want to take some time to thank all of the folks who make the show possible, all of our newest Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members, all of which either signed up for the very first time to support us this week or increased the monthly pledge that they were already giving us and that includes the great Bruce Allen Ross, Dino Kosti, Hussain Ouzin, Jane Conlon, Jean Eidelman and S.I. Thank you so much to all of these kind souls. If you'd also like to support the show, you can do so by going to humanistreport.com slash support, patreon.com forward slash humanistreport or by clicking join underneath any one of our YouTube videos. You can get access to most of our videos before they go up live. And of course, anyone who signs up to support the show, I will be thanking them at the start of each episode. So we've got a great show for you today. We'll talk about the Build Back Better Act and why progressive lawmakers absolutely must reject it. Joe Biden has broken his promise to student debt holders, but he does get credit where it's due when it comes to net neutrality because he's making net neutrality advocate, Jessica Rosenwurzel, the permanent chair of the FCC. Also on this episode, Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema were confronted again in public over climate change. India Walton talks about woke language and the left's marketing problem. Elon Musk whines about the prospect of his taxes going up just a little bit. Charlie Kirk learns about how psychotic his fans are. The Facebook papers confirm that Facebook is indeed a bad company, shocking. And finally, we'll talk to 2022 congressional candidate Stephanie Gallardo. And that's what we've got on the agenda for today's episode. Let's go ahead and get right to it. Hopefully you enjoy what I have in store for you. So I want to give you another update to the Build Back Better Act. It's kind of difficult to gauge where this legislation is at with any sort of specificity because it's always changing. There's things that are on the chopping block and then taken off of the chopping block. But long story short, it's been watered down drastically and now it's like a husk of what it previously was. Let me remind you, we went from six trillion to 3.5 trillion and now it looks like we're landing between 1.5 and 1.8 trillion. And it's not just that a lot of things we're taking out of the bill, but the things that are still included have been scaled back drastically and the timeline with which these things are funded has been reduced. So I'm going to tell you what I would do if I were a progressive lawmaker as it relates to this legislation. But first, I do want to kind of look at what is and isn't out. So we'll first look at what's on the chopping block. Keep in mind, this is all subject to change, but NBC News reports that Free Community College is also on the chopping block. The plan originally would have included two years of Free Community College, which would have cost the government $109 billion, expanded Medicare coverage, that would include dental, vision, and hearing benefits, an effort that had been championed by Senator Bernie Sanders, the Clean Electricity Performance Program, which would pay electric utility companies that switch from fossil fuels to renewable or clean energy resources and find those that don't. The measure is opposed by Senator Joe Manchin, but Biden said Thursday he's still hopeful it will be included. Tax rate hikes on corporations and top income earners, which are opposed by Senator Kyrsten Sinema. The White House has looked for other ways to tax businesses and the wealthy and continue to insist any deal will include some new revenues for the government. Now when it comes to the Medicaid expansion being out, that's not so straightforward because Bernie Sanders is saying very clearly, no, that's not happening. He tweeted out, the expansion of Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision is one of the most popular and important provisions in the entire reconciliation bill. It's what the American people want, it's not coming out. Now what I'm assuming is that Bernie Sanders made that tweet after he saw the same political headline that we all saw, which stated that Democrats were considering ditching the Medicare expansion along with the paid family leave provision of the Build Back Better Act. So right at that point, I think that Bernie Sanders tried to send a clear message with this tweet to get ahead of the narrative before it kind of takes off and that everyone just expects that Medicaid and the Medicaid expansion was removed. Now part of me thinks that the Biden administration kind of leaked that out just to kind of do a quick temperature check to see how progressives will react and maybe assuming that that was the case as well, Bernie Sanders decided to quickly shut that down. So that's up in the air. So what's in it though? You know, we heard about all of these great things that were removed. Well, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post, he's been following this very closely and he put together a loose estimate assuming that these are the things still in the build, but he's expecting the last two things to be removed. So he's thinking that it's going to cost about $1.8 trillion overall, depending on if immigration makes the cut and paid family leave. It's probably going to be included, but in a very scaled back version, we'll talk about that later on, but he says it's going to include $550 billion for climate related investments. We don't know what yet. Universal pre-K and childcare, a one year expansion of the early childhood tax credit, elder care, housing investments, the Medicaid expansion and other stuff that may or may not be on the chopping block. So just to remind you, it's not guaranteed that all of that is in the bill. This is what Jeff Stein thinks based on what he has been seeing. And he's been following this very closely out of everyone in DC. I trust Jeff Stein the most. If he says that this is likely to be included, then he probably has the most up to date and accurate assessment of the bill. So, I mean, you see a lot of the numbers, a lot smaller than they were. So what's in the bill? If everything's been scaled back and the timeline has been reduced, what's left? Well, NBC News breaks it down for us. So if it's the case that paid family leave remains, it will be cut from 12 weeks to four weeks. Qualifying reasons for the annual benefit would include recovering from a serious illness, caring for a seriously ill family member, or caring for a new child. The White House said the program will provide workers up to $4,000 a month with a minimum of two thirds with average weekly wages replaced, rising to 80% for the lowest wage workers. Universal pre-K for three and four year olds, that's still in. The federal government would pay for the entirety of the program for the first three years. And then some of the costs would shift to the States. Now I'm assuming that this was in lieu of them funding it fully for 10 years. So it's scaled back, but it seems, for the most part, more intact than other things. For those using Medicare, $800 vouchers to help cover annual dental costs, the original proposal would have expanded Medicare coverage to include dental care, funding for childcare centers to offset the cost for families and reinforce the industry's workforce, made up mostly of women of color, increases Pell Grants for low income college students. The Pell Grant program is the primary college financial aid program for students in need, helping more than 6.7 million of them last year. The proposal would increase the current maximum of $6,495 in assistance a year by $500. So this is in lieu of just free community college, unspecified climate change funding, including tax credits for green technology, a boost to the Affordable Care Act, subsidies for those using the federal system to buy insurance, making it more affordable, and a public option for individuals who can't get Medicaid in their state. Now to be clear on that last public option point there, that's not a public option for everyone. The only people who would qualify for said public option would be the ones who live in a Republican controlled state where their governor refused to accept the Medicaid expansion, which is part of the Affordable Care Act. So if that's the case, they would now be offered a public option if this does indeed go through. Now that Medicaid provision is really tricky because Bernie Sanders is saying that's not coming out, but here it seems as if it looks like maybe there's some middle ground where there's this attempt to remove it, but also simultaneously appease people like Bernie Sanders by offering a voucher, an annual voucher for dental of $800. I mean, that's basically not gonna cover much other than a cleaning and maybe a minor procedure. This is really, really bad. I mean, we're looking at crumbs now. Again, this has all been scaled back drastically, less spending on each of these programs that remain in the bill at this point, but also timelines that have been reduced. Remember, we were looking at funding these things for 10 years and now it's all funded for a less amount of time and there's less spending. Now, the reason why this has been scaled back so much is pretty obvious when you listen to Joe Biden. It's because he is extremely weak and he is coutiling to every single demand that Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are making. So here's some of his comments as stated by HuffBost reporter Igor Bobik. So Biden confirmed paid leave was scaled down, but still in the bill. He then called it a reach to assume that Medicare will be expanded, saying specifically that Manchin and Sinema opposed it and saying Joe's not a bad guy, he's a friend. So he's kind of contradicting what Bernie Sanders said and he's complimenting Joe Manchin. I think we know what he's trying to do here. This is embarrassingly pathetic. And when he commented on Sinema's opposition to corporate tax hikes, he said, I don't think we'll be able to get, look, in the United States Senate, when you have 50 Democrats, everyone is president. I mean, imagine saying something like this as the president. Imagine being this fucking weak. Also, he confirmed that, yes, Pell grants are going to be boosted by $500 instead of opting for just full on community college, which would be easier. That's not means tested, it's universal. So yeah, it's obvious who's running the show here. It's not Joe Biden. He is no longer the president. It's Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. And not only is he bending over backwards to appease them, he's complimenting them as they water down his agenda. It's embarrassing. So Biden absolutely here is now the person to blame. We can point the finger at Manchin, all we want and Kyrsten Sinema. But as the president, you have a lot of leverage. You have your bully pulpit. You have more bargaining power, but Biden is letting them just pick it apart as much as they want. Now, let me remind you that Manchin and Sinema already dictated the terms of Joe Biden's infrastructure proposal. And when it comes to the Build Back Better Act, now he's letting them do the same thing. So he's not forcing them to make any concessions seemingly, right? Because progressives already conceded a lot. They came down from $6 trillion to $3.5 trillion and they're coming down even further. But now they're just saying, we want this out. We want that out. Throwing their weight around and Biden is just sitting there and taking it. Like the little weakling that he is. What an embarrassment. This is the guy who ran for president and said, no, no, no, listen, I'm such a dealmaker. I don't think he used the word dealmaker, but he's basically, he claimed that he'd get things done and be effective as a president because he would bring together not just both warring wings of the Democratic Party. He'd get Republicans on board. That hasn't happened. And it's because you're weak, Joe Biden. You're absolutely weak. And if I were him, I would be so embarrassed here. So the question is, what do I do now? If I'm a progressive lawmaker and I see that the president is now letting Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema water down this bill, what do I do? Well, if I'm Pramila Jayapal, I get together everyone from the Congressional Progressive Caucus and we all put out a joint statement saying, this is not acceptable. It's a non-starter. We're not gonna support it. We are going to blow up everything if things continue to go down this route. Now there's an article by Andrew Perez from The Daily Poster. And he makes a really great point about why this strategy is important and necessary. Because the bill is getting watered down so much in the first place because the Democratic Party leadership is expecting progressives to fold. And Andrew Perez argues, the only way to change those expectations and to actually wield power is for CBC members to pledge to vote no on a hollowed out shell and finally make their demands clear. If they don't, they'll likely get rolled and no barrage of tweets or press releases or email blasts will hide that avoidable outcome. So that's where we're at. If they don't hold strong now, they'll never be taken seriously. The reason why Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sonoma get everything that they want is because Joe Biden and Democrats, they don't believe that they're bluffing. They really expect them to vote no if they don't get what they want. So if progressives build up that same expectation, then they will have more bargaining power. And if need be, they should vote it down. That's where we're at. If they cave on this, then in future negotiations, their desires, they're not going to be taken seriously because they know that at the end of the day, they'll huff and puff, but they're going to back down. Now, there's one other thing that progressives can do, right? So if you just accept this $1.8 trillion Build Back Better Act that's been gutted by Manchin and Sonoma, you look weak. But there's more things that you can do, more ways to extract concessions out of Biden. So you can tell Biden, listen, right now I'm a no vote on this. I will not support something like this, but there is one thing that you can do to get me on board. If you want me to support this embarrassingly weak $1.8 trillion Build Back Better Act that I'd be embarrassed to brag about to my constituents with, I wanna see you cancel $50,000 in student loan debt first. Cancel $50,000 in student loan debt and maybe you have my vote, maybe. But if you don't do that, if I don't get anything else, I can't support this because this is crumbs. And now democratic party leadership, corporate Democrats are gonna use this as a justification to not do more big things in the future assuming they even retain power, which at this point, if this gets passed, it's not really going to meaningfully impact people's lives. So if they actually say, look, we've got to make a concrete difference on people's lives, cancel $50,000 in student loan debt, sign an executive order, do that unilaterally and then we'll talk about supporting this weakened version of the Build Back Better Act. I think they might be able to get Biden to either actually cancel some of it or maybe force Manchin and Cinema to do a little bit more play hard ball with Manchin and Cinema. But Biden isn't really considering what progressives want because I think as Andrew Perez said, everyone's just kind of expecting them to go along with whatever. Now, I do wanna show you why this is so far a loss for progressives because there's an MSNBC reporter who is kind of explaining how Manchin and Cinema have been running the show and he's basically giddy talking about how, yeah, they got everything that they wanted. Are you surprised that this human infrastructure bill looks nothing like what we thought it would? Other than universal pre-K, everything that was initially proposed is either cut down or cut out. Yeah, highlights the power of two senators in a 50-50 Senate staff. I mean, Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have completely controlled this process from beginning to the end. They have stayed pretty steady in their beliefs. They've not wavered. There's really no negotiating in the sense that there's no convincing them that their views are wrong, right? I mean, they are where they are and the entire Democratic Party has to come to them which has been frustrating for progressives. I will say though, it's amazing. We wrote this in Pudge Bowl News this morning, but if you think about it, Democrats have been saying for years, rich people should get their taxes hiked. They should undo the Trump tax cuts. Now, we're about to go into a, about to pass a bill here in Congress, rich people, merely rich people, not billionaires, are gonna come out fine. They're not gonna see a capital gains hike. They're not gonna see an individual rate hike and the corporate tax is gonna stay the same. So yes, billionaires are gonna see their taxes go up. People make more than $100 million, three consecutive years, but I wanna add one fine point to that. It's impossible to overstate the difficulty of writing a tax like this in one week. Ron Wyden's been working on it for years. We've still not seen legislative text from him on this proposal. You are talking about a brand new tax on a class of earner that has never been done before and is there trying to do over the course of a couple days, it's absolutely wild. Yeah, so that's basically where we're at. It's not a good look for progressives. It's certainly not a good look for Joe Biden. At this point, what I think we should all do is shift the pressure off of a mansion in cinema and on to Joe Biden because he's the president of the United States, the buck stops with him and he's letting these other people run the show and he knows that they're running the show and that's embarrassing, it's pathetically weak, but yet he's allowing it. So the time is now for progressives to start directing their fire at Joe Biden. I think they've been effective at taking shots at mansion and cinema, but at the end of the day, it's Joe Biden who has the final say, so I think that progressive lawmakers need to shoot this down if when we see it, it actually looks as hollowed out as reports are saying and they also need to take aim at Biden. They need to call out Biden for being the weakling that he is. I think that a progressive lawmakers actually told Biden how weak he was to his face and confronted him about his unwillingness to challenge his own party. I mean, this is someone who's pretty braggadocious. Biden is Trumpian in a lot of ways, perhaps that'll have an effect on him. Maybe he'll say, oh, I'm not weak, I'm tough, but who knows, right? At this point in time, I don't like what I'm seeing and if I'm a leftist lawmaker, there's no way I'd support this. It's just, it's not enough. So I'd tank everything if I had my say, but we'll see what progressive lawmakers do. What they do going forward is really, really important. About a week or two ago, I'm sure that you've seen the headlines about how the Biden administration was trying to find a way to quietly restart the student loan repayment program that was put on hold because of the global pandemic. That is still very much going on, just to remind everyone. And by now, I'm sure that those of you who hold a student loan debt have already gotten the emails about how repayments will be restarting really soon. Come the end of January in 2022. And so this is a really, really embarrassing missed opportunity and on top of that, it's Joe Biden going back on one of his campaign promises. The easy response and the best thing that I've seen after reading these headlines comes from Ayanna Presley who writes, student debt cancellation is a racial, economic and intergenerational issue. It is good economic policy that will change the lives of millions of families. POTUS can and must cancel student debt. Now, saying he can cancel student debt as president, it seems obvious, but what she's saying there is really important because Joe Biden has actually disputed that he has the legal authority to forgive any amount of student loan debt, which is bizarre to me considering that Donald Trump forgave billions of dollars in student loan debt. Oh, and also Biden has already forgiven student loan debt. So it doesn't make sense to say that he doesn't have the legal authority to do this. And it's really a cop out. So he ran on canceling $10,000 of student loan debt. It's a measly amount that's not going to meaningfully impact people's lives if they're burdened by student loan debt. But it's something will every single debt holder say, I'll take that over nothing. Yeah, of course, because right now people are struggling. Right. But he is now saying rather than using my pen to unilaterally cancel student loan debt, it needs to be done legislatively. He started to say immediately after he was sworn in. And if you say you're going to cancel student loan debt, you need to fulfill that promise, not just because it's morally right, but because I mean, if you want young people to vote for you in 2024, you have to deliver. Otherwise they're going to stay home. But it gets worse because not only is Joe Biden abandoning his promise to cancel even a measly $10,000, but he's also wavering on helping people who are at risk of defaulting on their student loan debt. As Alex Salmon of the American Prospect explains in a really insightful thread on Twitter, all 7.3 million student loan borrowers in default are now eligible to escape default thanks actually to Trump. All the Biden administration would need to do is waive the paperwork requirement, but Biden has signaled he's still undecided about doing this. Biden has disappointed profoundly on student debt forgiveness, kicking his unequivocal authority to cancel $10,000 to Congress while commissioning a Department of Education memo on the ability to cancel $50,000 that has been MIA for six months and counting. Biden shirking his authority to help borrowers has become a reality for fresh-rated activists and borrowers, but refusing to take 7.3 million people out of default over an administrative procedure with explicitly provisional power would be an Austrian shock. It's also terrifying politically. Biden has abandoned clear pledges on student debt and bailed on tuition-free community college. Dems need youth turnout to have any shot in 2022 and 2024, and they've chosen to give up on things young people care about most. Getting 7.3 million people out of default would take the poorest and most vulnerable student loan borrowers out of wage, social security, and earned income tax credit garnishment. It would give them access to billions in rightfully owed anti-poverty money. Biden could have taken 7.3 million student loan borrowers out of default on his first day without spending a cent. That would have made billions of dollars of anti-poverty program money available to these low-income, largely non-white borrowers. He still hasn't. And that's what makes this so unbelievably infuriating, because Joe Biden is an Austrian, right? So whatever he does legislatively, any bill he signs, he wants to make sure that it's not deficit spending. He wants to make sure it's paid for, right? But when it comes to student loan debt, you wouldn't be able to cancel almost all of it without requiring any new spending, because 92% of student loan debt is held by the federal government. So this is a win-win. It's a win on a policy standpoint, and it's a win politically, because this would be extremely popular. But now he won't even cancel a measly 10,000, and he's wavering on helping the most vulnerable student loan debt holders. It's baffling as a political strategy. I mean, if you want to win in 2022 and 2024, you have to show people that you've delivered, especially young people, who you need to win. But if they stay home, Democrats are screwed. And if Democrats lose power, then any small opportunity we have at taking any meaningful action to address the climate crisis, it's over. And it's already probably a foregone conclusion. I'm sure that Democrats will get wiped out in 2022, because Republicans are going to gerrymander their way to victory. They already don't have to win very much to retake control of at least one branch of government. But Democrats are making their job that much easier by doing fuck all to help normal people. And the Senate majority leader is saying you have the ability, you have the authority as president to cancel $50,000. He has the authority, to be clear, to cancel all of it. But the Senate majority leader, who's no progressive, is saying cancel 50,000. And Joe Biden won't even meet him halfway. It's just, it's truly ridiculous. If Joe Biden is expecting progressives to vote for that $1.8 trillion bill, assuming that that's what it's going to be, if not less. What progressives should do is they should say, look, I'm not supporting that. But maybe you can change my mind a little bit. Maybe I'll think about it if, before that bill is put up to a vote, you use your pen to unilaterally cancel $50,000 of student loan debt. I mean, that's the only way he's going to even consider it. Because at this point, he's just, he's made it clear this isn't a priority for him. Democrats have made it clear that getting young people to consistently come out and vote for them is not a priority. It's almost like they don't want power. They don't care about the climate crisis. They don't care about Republicans taking control. They just, they couldn't care less. And that's really, that's frustrating, right? Joe Biden is incredibly weak. He has betrayed a lot of promises and where he's done well at withdrawal from Afghanistan. That's good. But you need people to feel a change. The early childhood tax credit, that was a really good thing. But you have to keep delivering when people are suffering. Otherwise they're going to forget come election time. So we shouldn't have to be begging and pleading with Democrats like Joe Manchin who claimed that he'd be the next FDR, which was laughable, to just offer more than the bare minimum for once. But here we are. And now that we're shitting on Joe Biden, I've got to show you this video of him coughing into his hand and then shaking other people's hands. I mean, it's another reason to be disgusted with Joe Biden. And to me, that is almost as disgusting as his refusal to help the 42.9 million student loan holders. But maybe I'm biased because I'm one of them. But at a minimum, you should help the 7.3 million student loan holders who are at risk of default because they are the most vulnerable. But now it's up in the air when that's something that you should just expect from someone who claimed that he wanted to help people. He claimed that he'd meet the moment on the campaign trail. But I mean, of course, that was all talk. So I mean, what the Democratic Party is doing with Joe Manchin at the head of it is they're heading straight off of a cliff. And you know, it's something that can be avoided. You can still make that shift rapidly to stop catastrophe, but it seems like they're not willing to do it. So I mean, here we are. It's infuriating. But you know, things continue to get worse in this country because we don't have a government that works for the people. It works for large multinational corporations. And the one party who claims that they care about working people, at least they pay lip service to the needs of working Americans, they have a moment to actually affect change and they are fucking it up. Well, it happened once again, both Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sonoma were confronted in public by their constituents. And this is really important even if they don't necessarily budge whenever an activist approaches them. I do still think that it's important to showcase this because direct pressure is, I think, the best form of activism when you are in the ear of a politician and you directly make your case to them and put pressure on them. Now, before I show you the first video which is of Joe Manchin being confronted by a climate activist, I want to give you a little bit of context because there are five climate activists who have been on a hunger strike outside of the White House now for days, urging the Democratic Party to take action on a climate change and not allow people like Joe Manchin to water down the Build Back Better Act. So what you're going to see is one of these climate activists who is on a hunger strike. They had an opportunity to confront Joe Manchin and as you're going to see, he kind of engages with them. He tries to placate them and set up an appointment which, you know, they expect him to not get back to them. But take a look at what happens here. I don't find my legislation up, Joe Manchin. I... Joe Manchin in the United States of America does not... We have been trying to reach you for months and months because you are standing against everything I need to follow the liberal futures. I have dreams. Young people here have dreams. You can't see me. You're more than welcome. The United States is not possible. Massive climate action this fall. It is too late. This is one of our last chances. Joe Manchin, I'm talking to you right now. We can't get an un-meeting. We've been calling. We're trying to get a meeting. We're more than welcome to. I want to live. So watching that was incredibly disheartening, but yet, I mean, his response was predictable. He had no concern for the future that he is depriving this young person of, and he constantly just tried to reiterate, look, call my office, we'll set up a meeting. They knew that he was just trying to get them off of his back. He had no interest in actually engaging further with this individual. It's just when you're put on the spot and there are cameras in your face, you want to try to find some way to make the yelling and the pressure stop. But they know that they had that limited window of opportunity. And once it's gone, it's never coming back. He's not going to meet with them. So, you know, that person said, I'm going to grow up in a catastrophic climate emergency if you continue to block the civilian climate core. And really, they made a strong case for their own survival and to see Joe Manchin not really care. Again, not surprising in the slightest, they said, I have dreams. Young people have dreams. I want to live. Young people want to live. And, you know, he tried to deflect and bring up the emissions of Asia. We're not in Asia. We can't control what governments in Asia do. We can control what our government, that's supposed to be representing us, does. And what makes this entire situation even more disheartening is when you consider the fact that Democratic Party loyalists, more centrist neoliberal figures like Sally Albright, was actually making fun of these young people going on strike over climate change. I mean, it's easy for you to say that when you're going to be able to live, hopefully, if you're lucky, a lengthy life and die of old age. But people now who are growing up, zoomers and millennials, we're going to die because of climate change. And if we're lucky enough to survive and become as old as you are, then I mean, what are we going to be witnessing? Climate apocalypse, wars over water, increasing fascism due to the refugee crises that climate change is going to inevitably cause. It's just, I have no time for these people who are dismissing these climate activists. Now, I know what you're thinking, that what Joe Manchin did there, that was really, it was cold. He was overly dismissive. He obviously tried to placate them and he was seemingly distant. But that is actually preferable when you juxtapose that interaction with this interaction that we're going to see when Kirsten Sinema was approached in an airport while she was having a conversation with Tim Scott. And she was much, much worse when it comes to her response or lack thereof. When you're talking with corporate donors about the package, how many times do you need with constituents? How many times have you met with constituents and negotiating bills about this? I think it's part of the course. But while I'm cheating with my family, they're constituents. I can have them meet you next week. Every single year in Arizona it's getting hotter and hotter. We're breaking records. There's either no one seat or it's the longest way. People are suffering. Your constituents are suffering. What are you going to do about climate change? Next week in Glasgow could be the last chance. Please answer me, Senator. My family, my house, from Tucson, we're constituents. That man at the end that thanked Tim Scott, that really, I don't know what it was about that, but it triggered me. It's bleak shit, right? It made me go even more doomer. I mean, Tim Scott is a Republican politician. He's a corporatist. What are you thanking him for? Standing up to Democrats when it comes to this manufactured culture war that the Republican Party is propagating this because they're trying to distract you from the real issues. It's just awful. But I mean, getting to the real subject here, Kirsten Sinema, she refused to even acknowledge that person. It was making a pretty compelling case as to why maybe you should have a conversation with us because it's really easy to get a hold of you if we donated lots of money to your campaign. But Kirsten Sinema didn't even acknowledge her existence. And the only time when Kirsten Sinema did acknowledge her, she said, don't touch me. You can see that she didn't touch Kirsten Sinema in that video. That was obvious. But I think maybe her arm or her hand brushed up against Kirsten Sinema and immediately Kirsten Sinema just recoils. She doesn't want any peasant germs on her. The fact that they're breathing her airspace is offensive to her. I mean, Kirsten Sinema is just one of the worst. And what this person is saying isn't controversial. Hey, meet with us. In the same way you meet with corporate lobbyists and your donors, maybe have a conversation with your constituents. That person is a constituent of Kirsten Sinema. And she said, you know, I want to make sure that we do something about climate change. Your constituents are suffering. What we're going to do about climate change next week in Glasgow could be the last chance that we have. And, you know, the only response that we get from Kirsten Sinema with regard to the substance aside from her saying, don't touch me is sorry about that. But she says this to Tim Scott. It's just, it's awful. And since we're talking about Kirsten Sinema and her being confronted in public, I've got to give you an update. That's going to make you feel even worse about this situation because we're talking about the Kirsten Sinema in the same room, protesters at ASU. Well, it turns out the situation has gotten worse but not for Kirsten Sinema for the protesters who dared to ask her to help them, which is what she was elected to do after they got her elected. Caroline Vakil of the Hill reports police from Arizona State University where cinema teachers are recommending that four people involved in the incident receive misdemeanor charges the Arizona Republic reported. Adam Wolf, a spokesperson for the University's police told the Hill in a statement that the ASU Police Department has completed its investigation and submitted charges to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. So because they dared to ask Kirsten Sinema questions persistently, but this is a lawmaker because they dared to ask her questions, now there's this recommendation of charges. Now Kirsten Sinema hated this. She put out a statement basically trying to make it seem as if her students were victimized when that's clearly not the case. But if Kirsten Sinema had even a shred of decency in her she would come out and denounce this and say listen, I understand that emotions are high, there's a lot at stake and I don't approve of what these protesters did following me into the bathroom was too much I don't appreciate that but I don't want them to be prosecuted. That's the least that she can do if she were a half decent person. But we know she's not going to do that because she wants any peasant who dare challenge her publicly to go away if they have to be jailed, so be it. This is truly the worst of the worst. So between Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin substantively, they're both horrible, they're equally culpable in killing this agenda that the Democratic Party was united in getting through. But now they've watered it down and they're still being smug and elitist as they do it. But Kirsten Sinema somehow just finds a way to go above and beyond in her cruelty and doesn't even try to placate the person who's trying to have a conversation with her. I mean what Joe Manchin does, it's not enough but to even attempt to converse with someone. That shows that you at least have the bare minimum recognition of that person's humanity but Kirsten Sinema won't even go that far. So I mean I assume that these public confrontations are going to continue to happen so long as they're necessary because when you cut off the line of communication between you and your constituents, they're going to have to find alternative ways of reaching you and this is one of them and guess what? It's effective, it gets your attention so they're going to keep resorting to this so long as you keep ignoring them. For the first time in a long time we have some really encouraging news as it relates to the issue of net neutrality. Folks who want a free and open internet we lost during the Trump years. Ajit Pai and his FTC repealed net neutrality and unfortunately a federal judge upheld that repeal. Now we got a small victory when a judge struck down the provision and his repeal that allowed states or stopped states rather from enacting their own net neutrality laws. So when you have really large popular states like California and New York enact their own net neutrality laws, it kind of throws a wrench in the telecom's plans to section off portions of the internet and sell it for more money. But now it seems like the pendulum is swinging in the opposite direction because Joe Biden is naming a strong net neutrality advocate the permanent FCC chair. Of course I'm talking about Jessica Rosenmorsel. So as McKenna Kelly of The Verge explains, President Joe Biden named Acting Federal Communications Commissioner chair Jessica Rosenmorsel to officially head the agency on Tuesday propping her up as the administration's leader to tackle broadband expansion and net neutrality. Biden also nominated progressive Gigi Sohn as the third Democrat for the bench. Both Rosenmorsel and Sohn broadly support the reinstitution of net neutrality. Sohn who founded the left leaning tech nonprofit Public Knowledge previously advised former chair Tom Wheeler during the initial net neutrality fight. At a May Verge event Sohn suggested that the FCC regulate broadband even further under new net neutrality rules urging the agency to enforce new pricing principles and make it even easier for states and localities to build out their own broadband networks to compete with larger providers. As Rosenmorsel and Sohn's nomination progress, Republicans will likely use future confirmation hearings to cast doubt on the administration's plans to reimplement net neutrality since the Trump FCC under chairman G. Pi's leadership rolled back the rules in 2017. Conservatives have argued that rulemaking never led to any nightmare scenarios previously predicted by Democrats and progressives. These include ISPs like AT&T and Verizon blocking certain lanes of traffic for consumers. Now that last paragraph is really important because Republicans, even if you know Democrats take a lot of money from the telecoms, Republicans are very clearly taking the side. They don't support net neutrality. In fact back in 2017, Ted Cruz even wrote an op-ed calling for the FCC to block states from implementing their own net neutrality rules. So now they're trying to say, well look you still have a free and open Internet? We all do. So why do we need to redo these rules? But it's interesting because Comcast AT&T, they spent millions of dollars lobbying to repeal net neutrality so for whatever reason they really wanted it passed and then a wrench was thrown in their plans as I stated at the beginning of this video where you have California and New York huge markets institute their own net neutrality rules. So the reason why they wanted to preempt states from passing their own net neutrality laws and why that was part of the Ajit Pies 2017 repeal was because you need uniformity. If you're going to break up the Internet and sell it, you know sell an entertainment package, a social media package you want to make sure you could sell it to everyone in the United States and ideally California New York where there are the most people. So the debate was never over. It's kind of been sitting in limbo and we don't even know the outcome of the investigation into fraud committed at the behest of ISP providers during the comment period for Ajit Pies repeal of net neutrality. If you'll remember, there were fake comments submitted using people's identity saying I don't support net neutrality. I support a free and open Internet. Therefore I want to repeal net neutrality and I support Ajit Pies free and open Internet. It was Orwellian. It was Doublespeak and there were my viewers who commented and said look my identity is being used to submit comments at the behest of Verizon when I support net neutrality. I don't support what they're doing. So Republicans are going to use this disingenuous argument but what matters is the make up of the FCC. And the only thing that Republicans can do at this point is they can try to delay delay delay. They're going to fight this confirmation. I think that the telecom industry is going to be lobbying hard against Gigi Sohn and Jessica Rosenwarsle. But I think that the worst that they can do is delay their confirmations into 2022 to kind of make the new net neutrality rules that are bound to come up just take a little bit longer. Maybe we could just push it down the line and see what happens in 2022 if Republicans retake control of the house if you know we have more seats in the Senate to vote away their confirmation. I don't know what they want to do but they want to fight this and it's nice because knowing that this battle is ahead you have Jessica Rosenwarsle and Gigi Sohn saying we support net neutrality and yes we want to not only reinstate net neutrality but when it comes to Gigi Sohn she wants local governments to be able to create their own broadband networks which I mean if this happened nationwide the issue would be solved permanently because if we no longer have to rely exclusively on these monopolies like Comcast or Verizon for our internet then it doesn't matter what they do they can sell these factioned off portions of the internet to us for more money but if we have our own publicly owned broadband in our town then who cares what Comcast does now the reason why they haven't reinstated net neutrality yet is because the FCC has effectively been deadlocked since Biden took office so currently there are two Republicans and there's only two Democrats on the FCC there's Jeffrey Sparks and Jessica Rosenwarsle but together they can't create their own net neutrality rules because if they do then it's a 2-2 vote it's not going to pass but now with Biden naming a word that gives them the majority and they now are free to do what they want to do and what they've been broadcasting that they want to do green state net neutrality and what's nice is that Biden is more involved in this process than Trump was so Trump's FCC with the jeep pie I mean a jeep pie was kind of this actor who did what he wanted he had a lot of authority Trump was indifferent to the process there were tweets that he made that led me to believe that he had no idea what net neutrality was more involved he wants net neutrality reinstated in fact back in July he signed an executive order calling on the FCC to restore the Obama era net neutrality rules which both Jeffrey Sparks and Jessica Rosenwarsle supported and they were glad that he did this they praised his executive order so good on Biden for doing that he gets credit where it's due my only gripe is that I don't know why he waited until October to make the acting FCC chair the permanent FCC chair and to fill that open seat and give Democrats on the FCC the majority so that way they can reinstate net neutrality but either way he's doing the right thing he's appointing the right people for the job who actually care about a real free and open internet and who aren't gonna do what Comcast and Verizon and AT&T want them to do and you love to see it look this is a win that net neutrality advocates haven't gotten in a really long time so to see things swing back in our direction even if this is only a temporary victory I think that what a GPI did in 2017 being so brazen at disregarding what the people clearly didn't want him to do I think that he hurt what the telecoms want long term right because had he not been so brazen at disregarding what we want people wouldn't have even contemplated the need for local municipal broadband that wouldn't be a thing we're talking about it now because people are desperate for alternatives because they want the internet to remain the way that it is free and open and so you know long term it's nice to have people like Gigi who see this trajectory what we want is to make it easier to have our own public broadband in our own towns and that would be the permanent solution to this issue so this is really really good news if you've been following this issue for years now and I know that many of my viewers have been this is finally looking good for us and sure things may change in 2024 it could swing back in the opposite direction with a new Republican president who appoints a different FCC chair but for now it's looking great and I think that's cause for celebration I think that most of my viewers know that critical race theory isn't actually a real issue this is a culture war issue that was manufactured by Republican Party operatives to distract you from the real issues facing society and being a GOP operative funded by GOP donors himself Charlie Kirk has been going on what he calls a critical racism tour where essentially he says critical race theory bad so that's the context now individuals they can show up they can hear him speak and other people speak can also ask questions to Charlie Kirk and one individual asked him a question that I think caught him off guard and Charlie Kirk got to see firsthand how insane his base of support is when this person asks a very disturbing thing you ready? you're brave you're brave for what you say and the fact that you've seen up there and say it and I appreciate it I think we all appreciate it actually because there's not a lot of people who have the balls to do it but I want to ask you something a little bit out of the ordinary so prepare yourself at this point we're living under a corporate and medical fascism this is tyranny when do we get to use the guns no and I'm not that's not a joke I'm not saying it like that I mean literally where's the line how many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people so no hold on stop hold on now I'm going to denounce that and tell you why because you're playing into all their plans and they're trying to make you do this that's okay just hear me out you started with a compliment so at least give me a little bit they are trying to provoke you and everyone here they are trying to make you do something that will be violent that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties the likes of which we have never seen we are close to have hold on we are close to have momentum to be able to get this country back on a trajectory using the peaceful means that we have at us so to answer your question and I just think it's overly blunt we have to be the ones that do not play into the violent aims and ambitions of the other side they fear let me say this very clearly holding the line with self-control and discipline taking over school board meetings they are the ones that are willing to use federal force against us and I know that people get fired up we are living under fascism we are living under this tyranny but if you think for a second that they are not wanting you to all of a sudden get that next level where they are going to say okay we need patriarch 2.0 if you think that Waco is bad wait till you see what they want to do next what I'm saying is that there is a gradual balance right now at our current time where we must exhaust every single peaceful mean possible yikes now I have to give a credit to Charlie Kirk for explicitly denouncing that if somebody is proposing violence and you have a really large platform I think it's incumbent on you to unequivocally condemn the prospect of violence so I actually give Charlie Kirk credit for handling that in the best way that he as a right winger could he framed it in a way that was appealing to right wingers don't buy into this liberal narrative they want you to do violence but nonetheless he denounced violence and he does get credit for that I think that that is important to point out and we'll talk about though that even though he's denouncing violence the rhetoric that he uses is so bombastic and explosive and incorrect if you take people like Charlie Kirk seriously then the logical conclusion of what they're telling you is violence because if you're saying that democracy no longer is a meaningful way to affect political change of course people are going to resort to undemocratic ways of expressing or trying to affect change now one thing that that guy said which shows that right wingers don't really understand their own world view is that you know at this point and medical fascism this is tyranny now I'm assuming that this person is against socialism I'm assuming this person votes Republican so why would you as a capitalist who votes for Republican capitalists be angry about corporate control I mean this is your ideology this is what Republicans very deliberately try to do when they institute their neoliberal world view and Democrats do it as well but Republicans crank it up to the highest level possible so why would you complain about corporate control of American politics but still vote for these dumbass politicians and listen to people like Charlie Kirk who say capitalism good it doesn't make sense to me he also talks about medical fascism and I'm assuming he's referencing vaccine mandates but I mean have we just switched from non-medical fascism to fascism in 2021 when the Biden administration instituted vaccine mandates through OSHA because since the founding of the fucking country vaccine mandates have been a thing George Washington supported vaccine mandates if you wanted to send your children to public schools in most states they had to be vaccinated and show proof of vaccination so for him to just all of a sudden be angered at medical fascism and all of a sudden we have to take up arms right now it just shows you how irrational these people are and the rhetoric espoused by far right individuals like Charlie Kirk it's not helping because people like this they need to be fact checked right they need to be educated because their views which are incorrect are leading them to the conclusion that violence might be good maybe the guns that we've been collecting for years should be used against politicians that we don't like but let me explain this to you as frustrated as you may be with the political environment left or the right you don't want to live in a political environment where politicians are regularly killed talk to people in developing countries about this talk to people in newly democratized regimes like Tunisia for example you don't want this to happen I promise you because if you think that the political climate is incredibly divisive and dysfunction now we'll wait until politicians start killing each other or people kill politicians you don't want that so this is why you have to inject some sanity into the conversation so I appreciate that Charlie Kirk tried to bring down the temperature and said look violence is not the answer we should do what we want to do peacefully you know I still have to criticize him because he is responsible for this rhetoric he works people into a frenzy so even if he is not explicitly advocating for violence he is part of the problem so in a now deleted tweet he boasted about how his organization sent over 80 buses to the capital on January 6th why would you fund this Charlie Kirk unless you wanted them to protest democracy itself and he did this after he told people that the election was stolen so if you tell people that democracy has been killed by the democratic party who cheated and you send 80 plus buses so they can protest democracy based on a lie you're kind of whipping them into this frenzy and they're going to logically at some point deduce that violence isn't just inevitable but maybe it's necessary to get what we want since democracy was taken away from us but the big lie isn't the only misinformation that he spread even though he peddled that quite a bit and hard as the Guardian explains further Kirk served before January 6th as an Arizona point person for the stop the steal the group led by Ali Alexander which was subpoenaed for documents and testimony by the House Select Committee investigating the capital insurrection and Trump's efforts to overturn the election results on the 6th of November Kirk helped lead a stop the steal rally in Phoenix that was one of numerous such events hosted by Trump allies that day protesting Biden's win and spreading falsehoods about fraud as the Center for Media and Democracy first reported on another disinformation front Kirk's groups have been busy this year promoting falsehoods on campuses and social media about vaccine mandates efforts that the groups have used to raise funds and which have sparked criticism from health experts. Kirk wrote false text messages charging that Biden has sent goons door to door to make you take a COVID-19 vaccine as the Washington Post first reported further a Kirk nonprofit ran alarmist and erroneous Facebook ads which were seen millions of times stating that the government has no right to force you to inject yourself with an experimental vaccine and warning that in response to advice about shots lock your doors kids so I mean we have to be a little bit nuanced here while I commend him for unequivocally denouncing the prospect of violence and discouraging violence when it's brought up I mean you kind of do bear some blame for encouraging this in the first place people can come to the conclusion that violence is something that they should do if you tell them implicitly it doesn't have to be explicit and so again when you tell people that the big government is coming to vaccinate you and Democrats are now stealing elections it's not a surprise when they realize wait a second if all of this is true if all of this that you're telling me is true then why aren't we killing these people why aren't we taking up arms and doing a Civil War 2.0 so I mean it's one thing to denounce violence which Charlie Kirk did do and should always do but another thing is making sure that you tone down the rhetoric and stop lying to people stop spreading lies and misinformation about the 2020 election it wasn't stolen stop fear mongering about vaccines and vaccine mandates it is a medical miracle that we have an effective vaccine this quickly and you're taking what is a positive thing and you're spinning it as a negative because that suits your agenda and that helps you fundraise for the Republican party and for your organizations it's incredibly nefarious I feel like Charlie Kirk is smart enough to know what he's doing he has to know that his rhetoric is leading to this right so I mean Republican ideologues like Charlie Kirk Ben Shapiro if they genuinely believe that violence is not the answer great but it's time to educate the people who follow them and respect them they're not going to listen to me they're going to listen to people like you because they trust you and if they believe your lies then odds are when you tell them you know what maybe we were wrong about the 2020 election being stolen maybe we were wrong about vaccines they listen to you at least most would so you know on one hand good for Charlie Kirk because you should denounce violence but on another hand shame on Charlie Kirk for being one of the main individuals who is a large influence on the Republican party base and whipping them into a frenzy to want to do violence in the first place in an interview with New York Magazine mayoral candidate in Buffalo New York India Walton was talking about various things related to the state of her race along with leftist politics more generally speaking in the US and what she said is really important I think that the way that she words things makes her really important in the broader leftist movement I think that she has real potential here to go the distance because she says things in a way that makes it really easily digestible for people who aren't usually open to a leftist message so she was talking about woke politics and how she herself surprisingly she doesn't really consider herself to be that woke at least publicly so here's what she said and I'll tell you why this resonated with me she says I'm not that woke Walton said with a smile I've learned a lot over the last year but I also believe in meeting people where they are if you're a member of DSA or ultra progressive your friends are going to tend to have the same political leaning she said so we use certain terminology when we speak with one another which is not resonant with average working class folks anyone who uses the word defund you can never make it sound like a positive thing because you haven't taken the time to explain what that actually means right it doesn't mean we're going to rid ourselves of the entire police force Walton invoked her experience as a nurse medical professionals have language they use with each other but that is not how they might talk to a patient we have industry language and we have lay language a lot of language that we use in progressive circles is industry language and we have to begin using more lay language and being a lot more patient with people when they don't understand it so I think that's a really great point and what she's talking about here is what I think Michael Brooks was getting at in his book against the dark web because he had a similar constructive critique of the left and that we can be too insular we can be a little bit too sensorious and almost come off as if we're bullying people at times and it may come from a place of concern for the environment and the country but politics is about marketing and if you're not marketing your ideas well then you're losing and there are things that the left does that are good I think Medicare for all we've won on that front thoroughly so now it's just a matter of enacting the policy that we've convinced Americans is the best policy or one of the best policies as it relates to healthcare reform but you know one thing when it comes to defund the police for example I do have to defend the activists who coined the slogan defund the police because this wasn't necessarily something that was focused group tested it just kind of emerged organically and it stuck it stuck and sure a lot of us know that it means reallocating resources away from the police department and into public health and mental health but people just think oh well that means you want to get rid of the police and that is us failing to effectively communicate the message and I you know I think that her criticism here is important and it matters it's important that we're introspective I try to be introspective and I acknowledge that I fail at communicating the leftist message sometimes I mean if you tune in you probably like what I have to say but if you don't agree with me I'm probably gonna turn you off I mean when it comes to anti-vaxxers for example I have no patience it's to the point where I'm less trying to educate and I'm just ranting because I feel really frustrated with the situation because why don't you see it from my perspective look at all of the evidence but I mean evidence doesn't always work sometimes you have to use emotions sometimes you have to frame it in certain way LGBTQ plus issues that's another thing I mean this is something that I care deeply about so when people don't see it the way that I see it I feel like I have no patience and it's certainly something that I'm working on and that I have to work on because I have a large platform so of course if I'm not an effective communicator at all times then I'm kind of failing the left and there are broader implications for that so what she's saying here is really important for all of us because the way that we talk with others who aren't in our circles that really is going to determine how successful we are long-term with our movement so when she talks about this wokeness and how she's not very woke one thing that really comes to mind as it relates to me in my perspective is LGBTQ plus issues I mean for me I've been struggling with this and it's because it's really frustrating that people don't see it the way that I see it because I feel like we just had this argument about gay rights 10 years ago and now we're having basically the same conversation about trans rights and the people who supported gay rights aren't getting it when it comes to trans rights and to me I find that so infuriating because people hate trans people for the same reason why they hate gay people if you are born there's a set of expectations that are ascribed to you right if you're a man if you're a cis man you are expected to act masculine behave a certain way do certain things and date women have children with women not be attracted to men and date men so you're violating these norms and because you did this society doesn't like that you're not in that box the society tries to put you in so there's discrimination right there's this idea that oh well you just want to be gay so you can get attention or you are a predator you know you're preying on straight men in bathrooms and I mean we're having the same conversation again with trans people I mean these trans people are predators these trans people are trying to turn our kids trans when it's the same thing I mean trans people are discriminated against because they violate societal norms you have a gender ascribed to you before you even know who you are so you know to violate that gender norm that you were given at birth society doesn't like it and it doesn't matter that we just had this conversation ten fucking years ago you already see that I'm frustrated and we're having it again people forget because it clicks for someone if they know a gay person but a lot of people just don't know trans people or have trans family members so you have to try to educate them in a way that makes them see it that you know where you make it click for them as the gay issue clicks for them if it clicks for them at all and part of the problem is that the right has gotten a lot more savvy in the way that they propagate these culture war issues so they'll take an issue like trans issue and they'll link it to wokeness so if you support LGBTQ plus rights well you're woke and this is one thing that has always been frustrating for me so when I first launched the channel I was talking to somebody who was transgender it was a congressional candidate and one of the comments really stood out to me it said man you know she has great politics but I hope that she's not an SJW and I don't know why you would automatically assume that a trans person who's just a normal working class trans person is like hypersensitive snowflake it doesn't make sense to me right and I realized that this is the result of the right wing kind of taking all LGBTQ plus issues even feminism black issues and linking it to wokeness so you know to me it's obvious but to other people leftists and liberals when I feel like it should be obvious to them but they don't see it that's where there's this disconnect where I begin to get really flustered and frustrated so like with the Dave Chappelle thing a lot of people who are leftists who are usually predisposed to support trans rights for whatever reason they're missing the mark on this one they just don't get it and part of it is because when you have really influential culture figures like Dave Chappelle who they like and admire say something you kind of just tend to side with that person we're a tribalistic society so we have to acknowledge that this is something that's working against us and Republican operatives and their framing is working against us and we have to accept all of that realize that we're human beings and we're going to get frustrated and try to come up with ways to counter that and I think that the way that we do that is to try to put ourselves out there and you know try to disarm them rather than thinking that we're woke snowflakes try to be self-deprecating try to make jokes this is how I won over a lot of my family members when I came out as gay but again you know this is a really strategic conversation that I think that people with platforms mostly should be having but I mean if you have a pretty big social group of friends and you know you have these debates I think you also too have to work on the way that you communicate with people your framing and it's tough because I feel like just accepting LGBTQ plus people trans rights this is all just it's a given it's common sense but it's not common sense for somebody who has never met a gay person it's just not they don't get it they don't understand it they don't know what goes through the mind of someone who's trans they don't get it so they're just by default going to be against us so we have to try to find ways to win them over and if they think that we're part of some woke mob who's going to cancel them because the question that might be a little bit too spicy then that's working against us and it's a really complex thing but what India Walton is saying here is we have to try to do a better job be more effective at communicating because you know it's hard to do the right they are as stupid and you know nefarious as they may be you've got to hand it to them they are effective communicators watch fox news and I'll think man this segment is awful who would buy this shit this is low IQ idiocracy level bullshit but it resonates with people so we have to find ways and that doesn't mean that like we sacrifice our principles but I think that the way that we frame things the narratives that we build the way that we communicate that's something that we always have to be trying to improve upon and this is something I've been thinking about you know since Bernie Sanders lost in 2020 so I think that what India Walton is doing here and what Michael Brooks called for was for us to just try to meet people where they are more right the frustration is inevitable when we're talking about things that are really important high stakes issues climate change lgbtq plus rights these are things that are important it affects people's lives in a very very concrete way so you know as much as we try to reach out to people who don't get it I wish that there was also some level of empathy for us who you know they feel like they know that we're passionate but at the same time they try to see it where we're coming from you know it's frustrating because as leftists we're always the ones who have to do the brunt of the work we're always the ones who have to reach out to everyone else there's no expectation that they're going to be sympathetic towards what we support you know it's frustrating but this is you know if you're on the right side of history and you genuinely are a believer in the things that you espouse then this is an effort that's worth putting in so I'm kind of rambling at this point but long story short I really like what India Walton is saying here because I think that things like this will make her less scary to people who are pretty defensive when they hear the word socialism or they hear about socialist ideas she could be the next Bernie Sanders and she has leader written all over her and I think that she knows how to effectively communicate things that she supports so I really respect that and if she's a better communicator than me or you or other leftist content creators I think it's important that we try to boost her up because we need that we need people who sometimes they have charisma they frame things in a way that makes it click other times they just know what makes right wingers tick and we need that so we're all kind of trying to do our report and from time to time we're going to have to acknowledge that we have to be introspective and that constructive criticism is important so yeah I think that what she says here it's important it's always good to look within and see what could I be doing differently how could I be more effective and I'm glad that she also views this in that way too fun fact Elon Musk is actually the most insufferable cringe worthy wannabe edge lord on the planet oh and he also happens to be the richest human being currently and also the richest man to ever have lived in the history of humanity with an estimated net worth of 229.6 billion dollars and guess what his wealth continues to grow he just increased his wealth by nearly 42 billion dollars in a single day after rental car company Hertz ordered 100 thousand Teslas and he's on track to be the world's first trillionaire and let me repeat that trillionaire with a T not billionaire trillionaire one person so not only is this level of wealth immoral because he made all of this money on the backs of exploited Tesla workers it's also immoral because in a late stage capitalist society where wealth equals power this much power this much money that you have it gives you so much power that you actually pose a legitimate threat to democracy and that's not hyperbole in fact the 2014 Princeton University study found that when it comes to policy outcomes average Americans don't get what they want codified into law but when you look at the interests of elites and the business class well everything that they want actually does end up becoming law and that's because in a capitalist society money equals power and you see that in action so what we have to do at a minimum is introduce a wealth tax to make sure that we don't have billionaires this many billionaires we have to make sure that people don't have that much wealth otherwise they're gonna have more power they're gonna have a disproportionate say over what happens in our so-called democracy so we need a wealth tax and we need a tax on unrealized capital gains now the Democratic party to their credit is considering raising taxes on just some of the country's richest people and if this were to go through it wouldn't be the end all be all I think that they would still be incredibly rich people like Elon Musk would still be the world's richest person but it'd be something but he's against even these measly attempts to rein in his wealth a little bit but before I tell you what he said I want to talk about the bill introduced by Ron Wyden so as Jeff Stein Andrew Van Damme and Tony Rahm of the Washington Post explain Senate Democrats this week are preparing to propose a new tax increase that would raise billions of dollars from a handful of the richest Americans attempting to create perhaps the most narrowly focused tax policy in post-war history Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden said Monday he will in a matter of days release a tax on billionaires that economists and tax experts project could raise more than half of its revenue from just 10 people including Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos Bezos is the owner of the Washington Post we'll talk about that in a second estimates very widely on exactly how much money the plan would bring into federal coffers in part because no such idea has ever been put into effect while Democrats have increasingly eyed the plan as a way to win the support of Senator Kyrsten Sinema as expressed opposition to increasing the corporate tax rate some legal scholars have warned it could get struck down by the Supreme Court and while negotiations are rapidly evolving Democrats are considering swapping the billionaire tax for a separate 3% surtax on millionaires earning more than $5 million per year according to two people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal negotiations details remain very much in flux now the reason why these billionaires are paying such low effective tax rates is because most of their money is kept in stocks right so when you have all of your money all of your wealth in stocks and that's not taxed and you have no capital gains tax well that money is going to continue to grow and grow I mean when you have that much money you don't have to do anything your money makes money and so that needs to be taxed that's insane that that's not being taxed but that's not what's happened so you know they are able to continue to get exponentially wealthier and meanwhile the tax burden is shifted to the working class and that's just unacceptable now when it comes to this threat to democracy posed by billionaires I think that the Washington Post article it inadvertently put it best I trust Jeff Stein and his reporting but I mean the Washington Post is an outlet that is owned by Jeff Bezos this is supposed to be a check on government authority it's supposed to be something that is a check on power that includes billionaires so I don't know the extent to which Jeff Bezos has editorial control over Washington Post writers I'd assume he has not much contact with them but I mean if you're a Washington Post writer and you know that your boss is very very powerful are you going to maybe at least think twice about publicly writing something where you're critical of your boss yeah I think so so in order to have a functioning democracy you need a free press but when billionaires get so powerful and have so much wealth that they start buying up media outlets start having an outsize same over what politicians do and don't do that's a really huge issue now when it comes to this plan proposed by Ron Wyden where they tax unrealized capital what would be the impact to these billionaires well it's relatively insignificant so as you can see the 10 billionaires who this would impact the most wouldn't take that much of a hit overall to their net worth so Elon Musk would lose about 50 billion dollars so he'd still be the world's richest man Jeff Bezos would lose 44 billion Bill Gates would lose 19 billion Mark Zuckerberg would lose 29 billion Warren Buffett 25 billion Jim Walton of the Walton family who has the Walmart chain 12 billion so I mean they'd still be massively, massively wealthy but for someone like Elon Musk he'd no longer be worth over 229.6 billion he would have a net worth of 179.6 billion I mean I don't know how he'd make it after that but that's what we're talking about here chump change to these individuals it's a hit to their wealth one that will not be felt because even if you had 10 billion dollars that is such an inconceivable amount of money that even if you tried really hard you're not gonna be able to spend that in your lifetime even if you were lucky enough to live to be a thousand you're not gonna spend 10 billion dollars so for someone to go from a net worth of 229.6 billion to 179.6 billion it's nothing it is absolutely nothing and to just show you how disgustingly rich these folks are so when you compare these 10 billion to I think the next 700 billion well they'd be paying about as much as these 10 billion I mean that goes to show you how rich people like Elon Musk and Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos are now Elon Musk responded to someone on Twitter who shared a prompt for bootlickers to use if they do want to call lawmakers at the behest of American oligarchs and tell them to not raise their taxes I don't know who would want to do that but this person shared a prompt apparently they care about billionaire wealth that they don't have and will never have but Elon Musk responded to this and quoted Margaret Thatcher saying eventually they run out of other people's money and then they come for you okay well let's be overly charitable to Elon Musk here when we shouldn't be but let's be overly charitable and assume one that money is in and two that there really was a point where you run out of money after taxing people like Elon Musk so much well given how much wealth he has I think it's going to take a very very very very long time until we run out of money so go for it most of us won't be alive to see it that's how much wealth these people have so for him to have the audacity to whine after being the richest person in the world being on track to become the world's first trillionaire I mean this is when you get people calling for revolutions this is when the peasants break out their pitchforks because if you're that fucking greedy to where you don't even want a small tax I mean this is a relatively small tax and if you think that 50 billion of his wealth is too much how much are you getting taken out of your paychecks a lot of money before you even see your paycheck lots of taxes are removed so if we take out a comparatively equal amount from workers then I think that these dipshits can handle the cut to their wealth it's fine and I'm of the belief that taxes don't fund spending so I subscribe to modern monetary theory and I don't believe that we have to tax billionaires to find ways to deliver social goods to people I think that taxing billionaires is a social necessity if we want to live in a functioning democracy because again if you let people like this get that much wealth become a trillionaire I mean he gets everything he wants not just materially speaking but from a political standpoint every politician is going to want to listen to the trillionaire who can easily bankroll their campaign every organization every non-profit is going to want to listen to the trillionaire and if they believe that he might help their cause every charity is going to be disincentivized in speaking negatively of Elon musk if he might be able to help them out it's just it's not something that a healthy society would allow so you have to not just increase their taxes and tax unrealized capital gains but you have to tax these billionaires out of existence until we no longer have billionaires the taxes haven't been increased enough so for him to complain about this I say the taxes just got ten feet higher alright so I'm not sure how many of you have heard about the facebook papers but essentially the facebook papers is thousands and thousands of pages of internal company documents that multiple news outlets are currently picking through to confirm what we kind of already knew about facebook that they are a terrible profit driven company that is turning boomers into racist conspiracy theorists and nothing here is that shocking to me but it does give us some more insight into how the algorithm causes brain rot in a lot of people and I think that's interesting because I've seen first hand the way that facebook really manipulates people and individuals who I've known for years who have always been apolitical never really taken a stand either way they've become radicalized they believe conspiracy theories that are batshit fucking insane and these are people who I really respected people who you know I got along with because we have similar views when they did express their beliefs people who are atheists people who are former workers who I've kept in contact with and it's sad to see that but it very clearly is the impact of facebook's algorithm so CNN reporter Donio Sullivan explained one document that laid out the way that facebook employees they conducted a test to kind of see the impact their algorithm had on someone who wasn't overtly political so they created a fake account and they tried to see how quickly the algorithm would recommend extremist content what happens with the algorithm isn't gonna surprise you but the speed with which this person gets recommended radical content that's really what's horrifying because the implications of this it's truly it's nauseating but nonetheless I'll let you watch the video and then we'll talk about it and look at some more revelations from the facebook papers when we come back in 2019 facebook ran an experiment to find out it created a fake account for a 41 year old mom living in north carolina they called her carol smith carol started off by liking a few popular conservative facebook pages like fox news donald trump and milania trump but quickly facebook began dragging her down a rabbit hole of misinformation after only two days two days facebook recommended carol follow a qanon page and a few days later it suggested she follow another this experiment was never meant to be made public but details about it were included in documents leaked by facebook whistleblower francis haugen who says the company is not doing enough to crack down on conspiracy theories and online haste and they know that algorithmic based ranking so engagement based ranking keeps you on their sites longer you have long you have longer sessions you show up more often and that makes them funny by week three of the experiment carols feed had become quote a constant flow of misleading and polarizing content according to the facebook employee who is running the account a lot of us spend way too much time on social media and when we try to cut back on those apps companies like facebook will often send us a push notification to lure us back that's exactly what happened during this experiment as well the facebook employee noted how they were traveling for a conference in the second week of running carols account and were checking facebook a little bit less and so facebook began sending push notifications one notification was actually to a facebook post claiming Barack Obama was born in kenya this was in 2019 years after the ludicrous conspiracy theory had been widely debunked what it does is amplify the messages that it knows how to drive engagement and it just turns out we humans get most riled up by lies and hate and all sorts of misinformation after running the experiment for four weeks the facebook employee recommended the platform stop promoting pages that are clearly linked to conspiracy theories like qanon but it still took the company more than a year to ban qanon entirely from its platform doing so only a few weeks before the 2020 election all right so i'm not surprised that that's the way that the algorithm functioned not at all but what struck me was how quickly somebody was recommended extremist content qanon and this was two days after they liked fox news donald trump and milania trump pages so the reason why that's so horrifying is because it shows you how easy it is to get sucked into that far right rabbit hole it shows you why so many people have become radicalized why there's so many more reactionaries now than there were say 10 years ago and you have to extrapolate to really try to figure out how bad this is so assume that somebody is not necessarily political but they've been on this platform for 5 years 10 years and maybe not necessarily like fox news or donald trump but something comes across their timeline that one of their friends shares that is somewhat political maybe they don't view it as political but maybe it's like an anti-welfare meme like i've seen the one of the two refrigerator pictures where one side is a fridge that's full and it says this is the refrigerator of welfare recipients and then the other one is an empty fridge and it says this is the refrigerator working 40 hours a week or something to that effect so imagine if you're just like someone who is apolitical and you like what is seemingly an innocuous thing on facebook well then it sees that you liked this thing so then it recommends you another right leaning thing and then you see how progressively with time you're believing in anti-vax conspiracy theories when you never really had a penchant for conspiratorial thinking and you never really like this it kind of sold you one thing and then another thing and with time you're a psychopath so this is why so many boomers are reactionaries it's because of facebook and as Lawrence Lissig said there it amplifies the messages that we know will drive engagement and so you kind of know why now left-wing content doesn't thrive on the platform it's because we're educating people and when we get you fired up when you feel angry unlike right-wing content you kind of just feel doomer and you want to check out whereas with right-wingers they feel hatred and they want to engage more with the content and consume more content so it goes to show you with the way that this algorithm functions why right-wing content performs so well on the platform this is why so many people in this country are batshit fucking insane it's thanks to facebook and it's not just facebook I'll be clear I don't want to be too reductionist but a lot of the issues a lot of problems plaguing society anti-vax conspiracy theories far right QAnon it's all propagated largely due to the prevalence of facebook now there's more information included in the facebook papers and there's so many revelations that I can possibly get through all of it but there are some things that stood out to me that kind of goes to show you how nefarious this company is and how they knowingly they're aware of the impact that they have on society but they're not taking action necessary to address the negative things that's happening because of them so first of all facebook chose to censor anti-government posts at the behest of the vietnamese government because you know profits over freedom of speech we also learned that apple actually threatened to ban facebook from its store unless they removed human trafficking pages from the platform so they apparently struggled to get human trafficking and human slave trades under control I mean Jesus Christ they were also concerned about a decline in younger users noting that young people see facebook content as boring misleading and negative based so when you have some reason to be hopeful for the future they were testing ways to quote rebalance their news feed after getting reputation of being a platform where political content is quote low quality and trustworthy and divisive and a plan to promote civic health was actually considered by them but it kind of just went nowhere but I mean at least they were thinking about it so credit where it's due kind of now there are two things that I want to read and it relates to covid misinformation specifically vaccine hesitancy and the role that they think they played in January 6th so first this is about vaccines from the verge facebook has taken a lot of criticism for its handling of covid misinformation including from president Biden who accused the platform of killing people by letting anti-vax sentiment run amok but the leaks showed just how chaotic the effort was inside the company one document dated March 2021 shows an employee raising the alarm about how unprepared the platform was vaccine hesitancy in comments is rampant the memo reads our ability to detect vaccine hesitant comments is bad in english and basically nonexistent elsewhere we need policy guidelines specifically aimed at vaccine hesitancy in comments comments are a significant portion of misinformation on facebook says another employee in an eternal comment and are almost always a complete blind spot for us in terms of enforcement and transparency right now the document makes clear that facebook already had a covid 19 lockdown defense project dedicated to the platform dynamics created by the pandemic including a work stream dedicated entirely to vaccine hesitancy that team had also created significant automated flagging systems from misinformation but according to the files those simply weren't being used to downrank anti-vaccine comments as of the march memo there were no plans to develop moderation infrastructure like labeling guidelines and classifier systems to identify anti-vaccine statements in comments so let me try to contextualize this for you because as someone who's a content creator on a different platform i'm also on facebook but as a content creator i have a little bit of insight insight so they struggle to derank anti-vax comments that means that rather than pushing vaccine misinformation if the algorithm detected vaccine misinformation they would derank it so less people would see it and that's what's happening on youtube with leftist news outlets so we myself david dole secular talk anyone who is an online news outlet who talks about news we are deprioritized in the algorithm because we are not authoritative news sources now that doesn't necessarily mean that we are less accurate than other news sites it just means that we're not advertiser friendly to the extent that cnn is for example but the issue with that is even if their algorithm can you know prop up certain entities those entities might be bad actors because now you have fox news who pushes vaccine misinformation that i have to debunk well they're viewed as an authoritative news source so what's interesting is that facebook was basing everything off of the popularity and what would get more engagement so rather than deranking these anti-vax comments they were actually getting bolstered because these comments they drew so much attention and that's truly horrifying because you think through the implications of this this is why so many people are a vaccine hesitant because they see a comment that's at the very top in a response to an article about vaccines and it's it has thousands and thousands of likes and you think well if this person is saying it i don't trust the media so this person who has a thousand likes on their comment must be saying something that you know i don't know about and it could be completely factually incorrect but the fact that it has the most engagement well the algorithm prop that up and so you know it's interesting to see how on youtube i get you know in the algorithm and you know you get recommended john oliver or msnbc after you watch one of my videos but on facebook it's like the worst actors imaginable who's getting propped up by the algorithm and it really shows you the impact that that has because facebook is a toxic hellhole now moving on when it comes to january sixth and the role that they played i found this fascinating here so facebook discussed developing extreme break glass measures to limit misinformation calls to violence and other material that could disrupt the 2020 presidential election but when former president donald trump and his supporters tried to stop successor joe biden from being declared president on january sixth of 2021 facebook employees complained these measures were implemented too late or stymied by technical and bureaucratic hang-ups reports at politico and the new york times outline facebook struggle users delegitimizing the elections internally critics said facebook didn't have a sufficient game plan for harmful non violating narratives that told the line between misinformation and content facebook wants to preserve its free speech and some plans like a change that would have prevented groups from changing their names to terms like stop the steal apparently got held up by technical problems so when i read this i think they realize what the problem is with their algorithm and the way that it promotes misinformation and hate for purposes of profit because you know all of this drives clicks and engagement so they were trying to find ways to grapple with the harm that they knew their algorithm would cause when it comes to the pandemic when it comes to january sixth and every time they tried it was just kind of a lost cause now that's not to say that on a social media website everything is going to be peachy keen of course there's going to be hate there's going to be misinformation but when you have an algorithm that is purely motivated by profit that promotes that misinformation that's where the issue comes in right so it's it's really horrifying to think through how quickly people are radicalized and how facebook is aware of the issues that their website causes on society at large and yet they are incompetent and unwilling to fix these issues it's just look there's easy solution why shouldn't say easy solutions but straightforward solutions that would stop this facebook has to be broken up that's number one and number two what's left of facebook after you break it up it has to be regulated and until this happens until we have legislation that reigns in facebook and the harm that they're causing well i think that as much as we can we should try to stop using the platform now i know it's difficult because some of you have businesses on facebook and i think that leftist content creators and people who share a lot of political content you probably should remain on facebook just to be kind of a counter to the right wing misinformation that's being peddled even if it kind of is a lost cause i mean it's something to counter what's out there but i mean if you can delete your facebook if you don't use it to keep in touch with relatives you really should but i think that you know what we've seen in the facebook papers is that younger people are already off of facebook you know we don't get a lot of views from facebook it's a pretty large page you know if you go to the humanist reports page on facebook but most of it comes from youtube so you know young people already know it's just a matter of convincing boomers to either leave the platform or use it responsibly and you know a lot of people who are using facebook are maybe new to using technology and computers in general so they don't know what to look out for it's overwhelming so this is why they're easily you know duped into these things susceptible to radicalization because they don't know what they're doing they don't know what to look for so it's tough but one thing that i think is sure that everyone can agree on right or left is that facebook's impact on society has been overwhelmingly negative and if facebook just went away and we could somehow erase its existence from our memories society would be better off i mean not all of our problems would be corrected obviously but i mean facebook existing is bad for humanity just i think objectively speaking so i've got a really quick update for you about the build back better act just got this news before i started filming but um the build back better act is now the build back busted act because it is a husk of what it once was it's been watered down into oblivion and now it's honestly embarrassing so this headline really says it all this is from nbc news democrats drop paid family and medical leave from safety net bill and of course joe mansion is the one who recommended it being dropped so democrats are dropping family and medical paid leave from president joe biden's build back better spending package multiple sources confirmed to nbc news as the party feverishly works to narrow down the bill and secure an agreement the move comes after senator joe mansion a key centrist raised objections to including guaranteed paid leave in the social safety net bill its removal deals a blow to democrats who view the proposal as a key component of biden's legislative agenda mansion indicated to reporters that he didn't think the spending measure known as the reconciliation bill should be used to pass a significant policy proposal like paid leave oh and he also struck down the tax on billionaires as well so it's very clear that mansion is getting absolutely everything that he wants so now it's really clear what progressives and congress should do they have to vote this down i want them to know that leftists everywhere we're all watching and we are expecting them to vote this down it is not worth getting this embarrassing piece of shit bill when you're going to be passing this corporate giveaway in the bipartisan infrastructure proposal no this is this is ridiculous it's laughable it's a slap in the face to americans and so no joe biden has clearly failed he gave joe mansion everything that he wanted and now it's time for progressives to shut it all down torpedo everything this bill is busted this bill is garbage i don't have much left to say we did a deep dive analysis earlier in the week and back then i said that progressive should vote it down but now it's it's just not worth it if you vote for this then the democratic party establishment leadership they can get anything they want from you so don't let them have that expectation hold your ground progressives vote this piece of shit bill down it's just it's not worth it and that's all i have to say it's a quick video quick update but man i mean it really pays to be the president here and i'm not talking about joe biden i'm talking about joe mansion who as president has gone everything that he wanted man joe biden is the biggest cuck in america right now well folks strike tober is still going on and guess what it's not ending anytime soon because mcdonald's workers have joined strike tober so as jessica corbett of common dreams explains amid the wave of worker walkouts that supporters are collectively calling strike tober mcdonald's employees and at least 12 us cities took to the streets tuesday to raise concerns about how the fast food giant has handled sexual harassment and to demand a union the mcdonald's in april announced new sexual harassment training standards that all of its restaurants worldwide will be required to meet by january 2022 workers still joined the one day walkout from chicago and detroit to houston and miami charging that the company has not done enough to keep employees safe on the job i'm going on strike because despite years of protests mcdonald's still refuses to take responsibility for the countless women and teenagers who face harassment on the job at its stores across the globe jamilia fairly a mcdonald's employee in florida said in a statement ahead of the walkout no matter what mcdonald says not much has changed for workers like me i do believe that we're in a moment where workers are standing up more for their rights said fairly a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit accusing mcdonald's of systemic sexual harassment i've met others who have experienced sexual harassment we want a union to prevent it from happening the company's statement added that every employee deserves to feel safe and respected when they come to work and sexual harassment and assault have no place in any mcdonald's restaurant tuesday's action also comes after the us equal employment opportunity commission at the end of september sued another mcdonald's franchisee amtcr for subjecting young employees at 22 locations in arizona california and nevada to egregious sexual harassment that included unwanted groping and touching offensive comments and gestures regarding male genitalia on welcome sexual advances sexual ridicule intimidation and insults so i absolutely am glad that they're doing this walkout good for them um it's nice to see this domino effect happening and this is one thing that i was hopeful for right because if you see a lot of workers rising up at various companies you could start to see this domino effect where others feel less intimidated about speaking up themselves i mean we saw the failed effort to unionize an amazon warehouse in besamer alabama but even though that failed there will be a recount even though that failed though other employees at different corporations are also speaking out in favor of a union starbucks is now seeing unionization efforts in their stores it's just it's really nice to see workers finally stand up and say enough is enough and when it comes to mcdonald's and the systemic sexual harassment uh the workers are correct that having a union would give them a bigger voice and it's not going to solve all the issues it's not going to erase the sexual harassment but what that will do is in the event they are experiencing this they have a bigger say they could take this issue to the union and the union will say if you don't fix this we're going on strike we're making demands so it really this shows you the importance of having a union and how workers without a union are always worse off than workers with the union now since we're talking about strike tobram i do want to give you an update on john deere workers and their strike so i just want to share a clip from jordan chariden who interviewed a john deere worker and uh this is really really fascinating and i think that these stories have to be shared long hours weekends uh time away from family missing things uh and frankly for not incredible pay absolutely there's there's departments in there that work 10 11 hour days uh five days a week and then do it at least six or eight on saturday and only because they have to make money somehow they're not making money off their kit plan so they gotta make it off over time and that's how people are surviving but you have to live in this place just to survive i don't think that's the way it's set up i don't think that's the way it's supposed to be thought they cared about our home life they don't care about our home life they care about our work life we're just uh we're just a number to them we're as replaceable as a light bulb so that's my thoughts so folks i mean look here's what i want to say to everyone stand in solidarity with these workers if there is a chain a restaurant uh if there's a corporation that's seeing worker walkouts and strikes do not cross the picket line support these workers stand in solidarity with these workers don't support them don't buy john deere don't buy mcdonald's for the duration of this walkout that's the bare minimum that we can do but more importantly we do have to get active and we have to petition lawmakers to actually pass legislation like the pro act which would make unionization easier in the united states but either way this is really good um kudos to the mcdonald's workers and also all the workers striking during striked over i hope this is an annual thing and i hope that walkouts and strikes happen more often because we need it so unfortunately i didn't have the opportunity to weigh in on the paternity leave discourse that transpired after tucker crawlson decided to attack peep but a judge for going on paternity leave after having twins um and i do want to weigh in now because more people are weighing in and apparently people have really strong feelings about paternity leave and to me you might not be surprised by this but my view is that it's good i think that taking more time off to enjoy life and the big moments in life is an objectively good thing uh but joe rogan is gonna weigh in and i mean maybe people will be surprised with his take this is someone who's kind of viewed as the average joe ideologically he kind of represents middle america and he's usually pro worker and a lot of blue collar people listen to him so of course he's gonna weigh in with a really pro worker stance on the issue of paternity leave right well no in fact he's gonna sound like the out of touch multi-millionaire that he is an actuality take a look here but here's the thing one of you should do that one of you should take care of the children like this idea that both parents should get maternity and paternity leave at the same time is a little weird i don't think so i don't only because i have a german cousin and they get the shit i mean they get like a full year for the woman and nine months for the husband that's great you want to live in germany because in america you gotta work here's the thing if you have a small business you're the one who loves small businesses imagine if you have an employee no you can't take maternity leave imagine if you have an employee and this is you're like your f***ing CEO of your little company or whatever and they uh wife has a baby and the husband's like i'm taking four months off what the f*** are you talking about so he says the idea that both parents take time off when a child is born is weird and i don't know why that's weird i mean i guess that in the context of american late stage capitalism it's weird because there's this expectation that we work ourselves to death literally and taking time off is just round upon right if you work and work and work and you never have a day off it's gonna be good it speaks to your uh your tenacity as a worker and you're gonna make it except that's not realistic and that's anti-human i think that as human beings we are entitled to enjoy life it's wrong that we're just working ourselves to death at the behest of our capitalist overlords people have a right to just enjoy life why is it so weird that people take time off to celebrate a really important moment in their lives i mean having a child is the most significant moment in many people's lives so why shouldn't they be able to enjoy that if you're a father why shouldn't you be there or be able to be there to help raise that child be there as a support system for the mother or if you're a same-sex couple why can't you both be there to get to know your children it just it's weird that he thinks it's weird he says you know it's great that they have that in germany but in america you gotta work in america you gotta work in other words work yourself to death take no time for enjoyment i mean for joe rogan to say that as a multi-millionaire who gets paid millions of dollars to talk for a living maybe you know it's easy from his perspective to say that because everyday feels like a vacation to him because his work is pretty easy you know in comparison with the average american people they fucking hate their jobs it makes them miserable it makes them hate life they fucking hate their jobs so god forbid they take more time off to enjoy life i just don't get it like this is really a privileged and elitist view that tells me joe rogan really he hasn't worked a normal job in a very long time because people don't like their jobs if you're living a nine to five life or you're working a regular job in fast food or retail i mean you're already miserable so you should be allowed time to just you know follow your passion travel enjoy art take up a fucking hobby just get back smoke weeded and play video games why is this so wrong i just don't get it and he cars out this exception for like ceo's and says well i mean if you're a ceo taking four months off that's that's kind of weird right look i think that that is a weird exception what we're talking about here when we're talking about paternity leave and worker rights more broadly is just normal working class people but i mean if you want to carve out an exception and not allow ceo's and top company executives to take paternity leave okay i mean they get paid 350 times higher than their employees so i'd be fine with carving out exceptions for them and not allowing them to get paternity leave i mean i don't really care what i care about is workers but he's going to explain how you know if you look at this from the perspective of the employer well you can see why they might not support something like paternity leave and i'm questioning what who do you believe should pay for something like that i don't know but if i was an employer and i had a guy who worked for me i had a guy who worked for me who wanted to take three months off because his wife gave birth i'd be like what the fuck are you talking about mike even to support his wife to give birth to support his wife while i pay him for free do you understand that this is kind of most people when this happens if they make enough money the wife will not work and the father will work right and then the wife takes care of the child and this is normal and then the dad provides support when he comes home if you're saying that the man and the woman should both get like three months off this is a new thing i mean it's not new in europe we're not in europe this is better this is america better for a multi-millionaire like you but europe is better for people objectively so people in europe they don't live perfect lives it's not a utopia but they at least have health care they at least have basic rights when it comes to the workplace so it's really easy for someone who gets paid to talk for a living handsomely to say that but it's not the reality for most people americans are overworked and underpaid and they're fucking miserable they hate life and that's not something that anyone is shocked by unless you're as out of touch as joe rogan and he says here you know if you're saying that the man and the woman should both get like three months off this is a new thing again it's not a new thing it's just new to us because we're used to getting fucked over by a government that doesn't care about us but yet here you are shilling for the government when you're supposed to be like anti-establishment and a populace i don't know what he identifies as i don't even know if he's still larping as a leftist but to say that paternity leave is bad i think that's elitist that is inherently anti-worker and look i'll give joe rogan credit it's not as bad as steven crowder who claimed that paternity leave is for pussies i think i mean i'm paraphrasing but it seems like people on the right are really against paternity leave but on the left i mean i don't think it's that controversial except you know some people who are still purporting to be left apparently they do take issue with it i mean this is what jimmy door said in response to people to judge going on paternity leave i don't know if she's on leave like pete booted judge has been in amidst the worst transportation crisis that i can remember but uh you don't really see her around too much well i mean he gave birth it's gonna take him a few months yes because two men can't have a baby i mean it doesn't work that way what is he gonna do push the baby out of his asshole so of course paternity leave is bad because daddy tucker tells me that that's what i should believe i'm a comedian i mean in the media misinformation human centipede tucker crawlson is the head so of course the misinformation flows downward and joe rogan and jimmy door are going to recite the same things that daddy tucker says but i mean as someone who can't stand pete booted judge if you let your hate for pete booted judge which is justifiable lead you to the conclusion that paternity leave is bad then congratulations you're not a serious person paternity leave is good and yes we should have paternity leave this shouldn't be a controversial thing if you are actually pro worker fox news regular and boogaloo boy booster dimmy door has made a really sharp pivot over the course of the last couple of months and if you look at his channel these days i mean it's really clear he's sending his viewers a message don't get the vaccine because maybe there's some things that the establishment isn't telling you he's cherry picking and misrepresenting data when it comes to the efficacy of these vaccines and if you look at the info wars page on rumble it's almost indistinguishable from jimmy door but yet this is someone who still larbs as a leftist while he pushes the far rights misinformation about vaccines interesting right so in this video clip that we're about to watch he is going to take a shot at gnome chomsky and gnome chomsky doesn't really say anything that's controversial yet jimmy door takes issue with a particular thing that chomsky says and he tries to debunk chomsky but yet it's interesting that jimmy door is irrationally outraged at what chomsky says considering jimmy door said basically the same thing six months ago before he began his anti-vax arc so this is all just bizarre to me but take a look and then we'll discuss it when we come back so watch how he gets this wrong we're talking about the global south not wanting the vaccines and watch what he has to say on the left have been concerned that vaccines are not getting too many third world countries however i believe that there also is a great deal of skepticism among those populations where they're saying that they don't want especially in africa i'm just wondering what your thoughts are on there why do you think that there is so much vaccine hesitancy in the global south global south there is overwhelming demand for vaccines overwhelming they're pleading for the west to stop hoarding the vaccines and to let them have them so that they can overcome the terrible effect of non-vaccination that is the overwhelming majority okay so that's his response which is i'm gonna say wrong and why do i say it well here's a headline says what is driving the covid-19 vaccine hesitancy in sub-saharan africa which goes against what he just said he said there is an hesitancy but there is we know there is here's also who wants covid-19 vaccination in five west african countries hesitancy is high and trust is low they're not making it available thomsky why do you think they're not making it available for free to everybody if it's what you say why wouldn't bill gates and all the big vaccine people make this vaccine available i mean right now moderna and fizer they're making bill tens of billions of dollars they can provide this vaccine to everybody why aren't they doing it gnome what is going on why didn't why did bill gates tell oxford to not give away their patent for their why is all this happening chomsky doesn't seem to have a critique of fucking anything except give except repeat shitlib talking points well very few people on in the what would pass for the left now have a critique of this anymore it's it's strange okay lots of issues with that um first is that it's incoherent in particular that last rant that he went on uh but he misquotes chomsky he says that chomsky said there isn't hesitancy when chomsky didn't deny that there is vaccine hesitancy in the global south of course that's the case chomsky just said that in the global south there's overwhelming demand for the vaccine that we're all hoarding in developed countries that's what he said but yet jimmy door took issue with what chomsky said there and he cited an article from the world bank which he very clearly didn't read because if he read just one paragraph he would see that it doesn't debunk what chomsky is saying in fact the vaccine hesitancy that we see in sub-saharan africa which is according to that article that jimmy door shared it's comparable to the vaccine hesitancy that we see in the united states and we're going to read just a couple of paragraphs to show you why this doesn't prove what jimmy door thinks it proves as african countries accelerate the deployment of coven 19 virus vaccines the issue of vaccine hesitancy looms globally there has been a rise in general vaccine hesitancy but especially towards coven 19 vaccines in africa hesitancy must be viewed in the context of significant vaccine shortage hesitancy does not explain fully the low vaccination rates in africa the slow vaccine rollout on the continent is due to supply constraints structural issues and logistical barriers the critical question is how to increase both supply and demand a 2020 africa center for disease control survey in 15 countries found that while 79% of respondents would take a coven 19 vaccine vaccine hesitancy ranged from 4 to 38% in a recent 5 country afro barometer survey 6 out of 10 citizens in benin Liberia Niger Senegal and toga were hesitant to get vaccinated now without even reading those two paragraphs from this article I mean I think it's obvious that anyone who's talking about the global south knows that sub-saharan africa doesn't represent the totality of the global south furthermore african countries are not monolithic as this graph points out because in africa there are varying degrees of vaccine hesitancy but as the article makes very clear even if there's vaccine hesitancy that is a thing it is a problem there's still a high demand for these vaccines and the context is important because in africa they don't have access to these vaccines as we do so even though vaccine hesitancy is an issue in the united states it's decreasing because people can see that their friends and family members are getting the vaccine and they're fine they can see the way in which if you look at hospitals the people who are there are overwhelmingly unvaccinated the people who are dying are unvaccinated so they don't have what we have currently they don't have that first-hand and furthermore they describe why some people in these countries are vaccine hesitant and largely it comes down to a trust or mistrust in their government it comes down to whether or not they have access to social media it comes down to religiosity where some individuals think that prayer is a better solution to COVID-19 than the vaccine is and many people who have access to social media in africa while they're seeing the same conspiracy theories that drives vaccine hesitancy in the states but there's a bigger question here that I've got to ask so let's assume that vaccine hesitancy is higher than this article states let's say that 80% of everyone all throughout africa the entire continent is vaccine hesitant does that mean that we deny them this life-saving vaccine the people who want it shouldn't get it I just don't understand what the implication of stating that there is vaccine hesitancy is in africa for jimidore what does this mean he tries to do a bit of a gotcha to chomsky but the point that he's making I mean I don't even know if jimidore knows the point that he's trying to make but he he asks chomsky a rhetorical question that he eventually answers but still makes it seem as if chomsky is somehow wrong I'm going to read you this I transcribe this because I want to try to make heads or tails of this let's see if you can so we just watched it but this is what he said they're not making it available chomsky why do you think they're not making it available for free to everybody if it's what you say I mean profit chomsky is saying we should make it available jimidore says why wouldn't bill gates and all the big vaccine people make this vaccine available I mean right now Moderna and Pfizer they're making tens of billions of dollars they can provide this vaccine to everybody why aren't they doing it why did bill gates tell oxford to not give away their patent form why is all of this happening chomsky doesn't seem to have a critique of fucking anything except repeat shitlib talking points now to suggest that noam chomsky is repeating shitlib talking points is bizarre because noam chomsky is not a shitlib and he's not a liberal I'm assuming jimidore is a liberal because he voted for a capitalist in 2020 he voted for tulsi gabbert over the socialist so if anyone's the shitlib between you and chomsky you're the shitlib buddy but I mean I'd rather see someone repeat so-called shitlib talking points than right-wing talking points that drive vaccine hesitancy that end up getting people fucking killed jimmy but I mean um the whole point that he's making here you're proving chomsky's point chomsky is saying we need to be able to allow all of these developing countries to have the recipe so they can manufacture their own vaccines it shouldn't be about profit which is the leftist critique it's like it's an anti-capitalist critique so what are you getting at and again I don't think jimidore knows the overall point that he's trying to make I don't believe this is the gotcha that he thinks it is and we know this because back in April jimidore essentially made the same point about needing to give the vaccine to the global south that chomsky made but only now he's taking issue with that I mean I'm not making this up take a look at what jimidore said on April 30th turns out bill gate says no to sharing vaccine formulas with global poor to end the pandemic health advocates blast microsoft billionaire for saying patent protections on life-saving vaccines must remain I thought this guy was a good guy I thought he was one of the good billionaires he's just a guy who wants to help people a person hoarding an obscene amount of money is in favor of hoarding other life-saving resources as well huh shocker I'm noticing a trend that is amazing it's almost like getting that amount of money requires screwing over a lot of people he doesn't care that 300,000 people are getting corona a day in India he cares about the safety of the vaccine yeah he's got his talking points down they pledged to donate rights to their covid vaccine then sold them to pharma so oxford signed an exclusive vaccine deal with AstraZeneca that gave the pharmaceutical giant soul rights and no guarantee of low prices with the less publicized potential for oxford to eventually make millions from the deal other companies working on corona virus vaccines have followed the same line collecting billions in government grants hoarding patents revealing as little as possible about their deals and planning to charge up to $37 a dose for potentially hundreds of millions of shots wow and it was funded by government grants which means all of us which means it should be public property wait I'm confused so are the vaccines life-saving and it's immoral for billionaires to withhold them from the global south so that way they can extract more of a profit from them or are these vaccines bad and scary and dangerous and we should withhold them from the global south because there's vaccine hesitancy in sub-Saharan Africa what's the takeaway I mean this was before jimidore went full anti-vax so you can see that when he read the article he actually made sense it was a good video and the video was titled bill gates denies vaccine to poor countries implying that that's bad and that the vaccine should be widely available to people in the global south as it is to people in the developed world but now all of a sudden going back to his channel well I mean it's clear he doesn't think that your kid should get vaccinated he doesn't think that you should get vaccinated or maybe there's things about the vaccine that the media and the establishment isn't telling you I mean it doesn't matter that most people who are dying from COVID-19 currently are unvaccinated but you know jimidore who's vaccinated himself thinks that others shouldn't do what he did and what makes this all more bizarre is that he's mad at Chomsky saying the point that we shouldn't be denying these vaccines to people in the global south there's a high demand for it I mean when we all had our vaccines people in India were begging us for it as the delta variant ravaged their country so to say that oh there's no demand for it it's so strange of course there's demand for it of course vaccine hesitancy exists but that doesn't mean that we deny the vaccines to everyone in those countries I mean vaccine hesitancy is the thing in the states I'm not vaccine hesitant should I not get the vaccine as well it's just it's such a weird argument but this is what happens when you try to create this narrative he's twisting himself into a pretzel in order to make sure that his new anti-vax viewers get exactly what they want but it's uh it's it's gross it's it's it's misleading it's disgusting it's opportunistic and if jimidore saw this critique which maybe he will I'm sure he would retort by saying well Mike you're a shit lib and you're a big pharma shill and I've seen this a lot from people who purport to be on the left but they're anti-vaxxers the thing is that this is a very stupid argument to make because if I'm a big pharma shill for supporting a vaccine that has been proven to be safe and effective and that has already saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States alone then I guess you're also a big pharma shill if you go to the store and purchase Tylenol when you have a headache I guess that me supporting Medicare for All makes me a big hospital shill because I believe that the government should be the single payer and should be footing the bill for us at these hospitals now of course I support a UK based system where we nationalize hospitals as well but I'm willing to support Medicare for All as a compromise does that make me a big hospital shill doesn't make jimidore a big tech shill for posting on youtube and having a twitter account I mean this is nonsensical it's intellectually sloppy it's stupid this is low IQ shit right and maybe he doesn't have that critique of me but I mean it's just, it's what I've seen and what I'm trying to get at is that jimidore's points about the vaccines is incoherent and it's also inconsistent because to attack rather smear Noam Chomsky over something you yourself said before you went on your anti-vax arc it's a little bit sleazy but this isn't the first time that jimidore has contradicted himself because he actually has a history of saying one thing that's bad and then doing that very same thing that he said was bad himself case in point that's what happens when you have access journalism I don't have access journalism I don't have, I don't even know how to do it it's Tulsi Gabbard hi Tulsi how are you this is what it looks like when you're paid to do access journalism and run interference for politicians abandoning their own platforms and supporters but people are saying oh Tulsi flip flopped on Medicare for All now you seem to be not wanting to outlaw private insurance more like say what works in Australia everybody when I was everybody was really happy with their health care that certainly is still Medicare for All but you still are a firm supporter of Medicare for All I can't wait to see how Ryan Grimm defends this the beauty of it is is that it takes away the right wing talking point it takes the talking point away of hey they're gonna take away your health care they're gonna take away your health care it's illegal for you to get private health insurance and then the government's gonna run in and so that takes away all that because they're not outlawing private health insurance and they have this sweetheart deal of access journalism where they do softball interviews and run interview interference for AOC I'm a surrogate for the Tulsi campaign and I guess that's what this is and I don't ever want to be part of their club there's a lot of people at the Young Turks who do Tucker has the biggest show on the biggest conservative news show in America so I would like I appreciate the opportunity to talk to half the country my mission in this show is to be the antidote of the establishment media not to be accepted by the establishment media I do not want to be accepted by them because if I am I know I'm doing something wrong Jimmy Dure thank you I'm just I'm I bet you any money he's gonna get a job at the New York Times he does this a few more times he'll be their progressive to cover Bernie and shit on him but she will mobilize her followers her 11 million followers which is a lot of people to be snitches and that my friends is Jimmy Dure so look Jimmy we used to be pals and you know I'm sure that if you saw what I had to say you know you would you would be angry but I'm more than willing to have a conversation I promise I won't sneak on Sam Cedar oh no Sam Cedar if you wanted to have a conversation but I mean if you're chasing clicks and views exclusively then you're not trying to get to the bottom of this you're just cherry picking what you want to manufacture a particular narrative and it's paying off I mean you've seen an explosion in channel growth after everyone and you know indie media has kind of been stagnating this is a post election year so things are gonna be slower as people tune out but I mean kudos to you you know I'm glad that your channel is doing well but the question is at what cost and are you actually able to sleep at night knowing that your misinformation and hysteria and fear mongering over the vaccines might lead someone to not get vaccinated and end up dying it's just it's uh it's really gross and I thought that Jimmy Dore was better than this but apparently I misjudged him now did you hear me say that ivermectin has been proven to treat COVID can we talk about it yeah ivermectin yeah sure so if I covered it what they did in mexico city and ivermectin seems to be a drug that not only treats it but it will prevent you from getting it I never said that did I I didn't say anything like that they said they make up a straw man they say I said things I didn't say and I'm gonna show you that and it's about ivermectin Dore commented on ivermectin's effectiveness against COVID-19 no I didn't widespread distribution of ivermectin proves effective in Mexico against COVID-19 this has been suppressed didn't say any of this this is completely made up you saw what I said about COVID-19 out that ivermectin treats this COVID they're making it up this this fact check should be censored so now you know why I have a popular show now you know why I have to go to rumble which I will be doing because journalists and democrats embrace censorship and cheer it on hi folks I'm here with Stephanie Gallardo running in Washington states ninth congressional district and she is here to talk about her incredible campaign Stephanie welcome to the program thank you so much really excited to be here thanks for having me I'm really excited to talk to you your platform is amazing it's incredible it's thorough it's comprehensive I think that any leftist will see it and be incredibly excited basically it's really exciting to see so many people step up and run for congress one thing that I always like to ask candidates just from the jump is what made you want to run for congress because it's grueling it's stressful and it's really I see it as self-sacrifice so what made you kind of say enough is enough I have to get involved directly yeah absolutely so you know great question and it's a question that I feel like is you know I get asked all the time and every single time I answer it it's slightly different but the same you know general understanding is the same so I'm also that's my guy you can bring them on oh okay there they are this is a very pet friendly podcast so oh that's that's really sweet what's their name uh koa she's 19 she's 19 years old wow okay okay that's incredible yeah um okay anyways now I forgot the question oh my gosh what made you want to run for congress yes what made me want to run so okay so just to give folks a little bit of background um I was born and raised here in Seattle Washington but my father originally is from Chile he's a refugee who arrived here um after the coup that happened which is of course was backed by the United States um on my mother's side um we are farm workers immigrant farm workers from Mexico and so I was always raised with this um understanding that we live inherently political lives and my grandfather told me constant stories about what it was like to um to live in you know the prison camps in Chile um when socialism was you know under attack and so I I grew up knowing that in one way or another I wanted to um be able to stand up for my community in the ways that they needed me so um what led me to education was really my family um and that's where I I started to think you know consider what's the next what's the next path for an educator um in the world that we're in right now um I was elected to uh then board of directors for the national education association which is the largest labor union in the country and um I ended up beating uh an incumbent in that race um pretty bad like very bad and I was it was a very proud moment and I you know I say that because it the the vibe of the union at the time is really kind of the vibe that I'm experiencing from the people at this moment all across the nation and so when I was elected to this role I started having conversations with um my congressional members um specifically my opponent Adam Smith and the conversations were troubling they were really troubling and I truly felt that you know it was a meeting that they just had to jump through the hoops and um not really listening to their constituents and first and foremost not listening to educators who were trying to explicitly state you know here are needs and here is what has to happen in order for students especially during COVID to be able to have success um and educators as well and so um the the entire process of meeting with my congress members and trying to lobby for education issues is is sort of what pushed me to consider running for congress um I was not satisfied with the conversations that were happening I was not satisfied to be quite honest with the way that my congress member Adam Smith um treated people in the meeting I just felt like really like the the the what's the word I'm looking for just the condescension right there that's exactly the word I know I know about Adam Smith yeah yeah the condescension and just his entitlement and the way he is like it's very it's well documented and everybody knows about this and I was just very surprised by it because I hadn't had any interactions with him before um so that was really what led me to decide to run for congress was being super dissatisfied with um the way that he participated in this meeting and also the way that he completely did not listen to educators and I truly believe that we need an educator in congress right now yeah yeah absolutely that's a really interesting backstory I'm wondering if you could talk more about um you know your family and their experience for me learning about the coup in Chile with you know um Salvador Allende it was such a huge moment in my mind and it's not like you know I didn't hear about our intervention in Latin America before but something about that really it like set a switch off in me where it really put it into perspective um so could you share a little bit more about that because I think that's really fascinating especially given that you know you you spoke with your you said it was your grandfather who was a prisoner yeah absolutely so um I would say that the Chilean side of my family is the side of my family that raised me they're the ones that are here in Seattle and they arrived here all together um in the year 1976 which was three years after the coup happened and um they arrived here all together um most of them came because of Amnesty International um and were you know directly released from the prison camps and then sent on a plane um to come over here and the thing about you know my grandfather was that not only did he experience violence but when he came to the United States he experienced um like a disassociation from the the new existence that he had in the United States and so there's a lot of trauma that goes back to that time period in my family and at the same time that there's trauma there's also a lot of um like beauty that my family has been able to pass down to me um I was not born in Chile but every time I go home to Chile and back to Chile to visit with my family members it's like a it's like a unification like it's a beautiful beautiful experience to be with them um especially them knowing exactly what happened to my grandfather in 1976 or 1973 and 1976 my grandfather was also a socialist city council member and so he um definitely instilled in our family the um the traditions of socialism and um the understanding that we have to 100% contribute not only to our communities but first and foremost to our families to be able to uplift ourselves and so I feel like that is um the root of why I also decided to run for congress just going back to the question that you um asked earlier my family is truly the root of all of this and I I feel as somebody who is running for congress in inherently violent institutions such as the United States government I have to acknowledge the fact that um it's kind of a conundrum that I'm running right nobody expected when they were intervening in Chile in 1973 that the daughter of a refugee who was a socialist at the time was going to be running for congress in 2022 so to me it's like I almost feel like I have to continue the legacy that my grandfather started and we're planting roots here so that the the entire globe can be able to benefit from the things that were happening in the past I love that story so much um that's just yeah that's that's incredible that's inspirational um and yeah I feel like out of all the countries in Latin America what the United States did to Chile is just awful not only you know besides the coup I mean kind of using it as a neoliberal country to experiment with with you know privatization of social security and whatnot it's just awful so I love that you're kind of you're the descendant of Chileans coming and making a difference and changing it just I love it it's such a great story um one thing that I wanted to ask you about is one of the things with new members of congress I don't know how you can focus because there's a million different things that need fixing in this country if you get in congress what do you do first what do you prioritize because I feel like you know in 2022 maybe things will be a little bit different I don't know if democrats will still hold control of the house of representatives so what do you think your contribution will be what's going to be your focus just kind of like what's your um I guess your projection for your first year in congress if you get there yeah absolutely so the first thing that I feel like I can directly contribute to to help advance it is the green new deal for public schools which is put forth from all Bowman and that's something that I've been researching very deeply I've been in conversation with economists about and um we just held a policy night in my campaign um trying to dig into the nitty gritty of what what it actually um proposes and hopes to hopes to achieve throughout our public school system in the United States and um for me the the number one thing that I can contribute to is education policy and labor policy you know I've been an educator for over a decade um I've been in title one schools I know what it's like to work with young people who um are houseless who don't have somewhere to sleep at the end of the night um but are still working on their homework and trying to get their stuff done so that they can graduate from high school and try to fit into this dream of going to college when the reality is that they could be anything they wanted and we don't always have to go to college right but we're sold this dream that like college is the only way to move forward um so I definitely feel that where I can contribute most is um education and labor policy um the green new deal for public schools is my number one priority for sure um I my opponent Adam Smith has not yet signed on to the green new deal for public schools so that's something that I'm hoping to push him on um in the in the time frame of the campaign but if he doesn't sign on I'll definitely be aggressively pushing that um so that our schools can have a future a literal future that's great I wanted to get your take on the reconciliation negotiations because we just got a preliminary report uh from truth out about what's included what was on the chopping block um and it seems like we went down from 3.5 trillion to 1.5 to 1.75 trillion which is what the Biden administration is proposing which means 1.5 trillion and one of the things on the chopping block was free community college it seems as if that is not going to be included um if you're a lawmaker being an educator what do you do um do you do you vote that down I don't really know um it seems like uh based on what Corey Bush and Jamal Bowman were saying in a CNN interview they're not really going to be on board for that watered down of a bill and I just wanted to get your take you know because one of your main things was kind of cut from this seemingly so what do you do in the situation do you do you say no tank it all uh or do you go with what is there uh what would you do because this is really it's a frustrating situation I'm sure you're you're frustrated to watching everything unfold it's it's infuriating no it's definitely infuriating and um you know being in the district that is right next to one of the main leaders um of the push for the bill back better is Pramila Jayapal right and I have definitely been um questioning some of the decisions that she's made and in a very respectful way I have a lot of respect for um the work that she's done as a progressive in Congress and I would love to sit down with her and ask her a lot of questions about why is this path um the path that she's chosen to take and the path that she's leading the rest of the progressive caucus on um I personally um know that I would not be down for what's going on uh with the negotiations and reconciliation I am absolutely um not okay with um you know putting the number down to 1.9 1.7 whatever the numbers they want to propose um the fact that we even have to go below 3.5 trillion is like totally unacceptable which is why I was really disappointed in um you know what I heard Pramila Jayapal say about uh Joe Biden that he's the you know the negotiator in chief bring the uniter bringing everybody together um I just feel like it's why are we blowing smoke up people's asses like to be quite honest it's just it's not real and um we know what the reality is and there is no unification happening in congress right now and we have to call it out as it is um so I think what I would definitely do um in this situation is I would call upon my community I would call upon the people in my district um they're the ones that can make this happen I'm only one legislator um you know the people who are around us are only one or two legislators and what needs to happen is a mass movement of people um uprising and pushing um so that this uh build back better bill can have the the price tag that we want yeah yeah that's that's well said um one thing that was frustrating about all of this is that progressive lawmakers weren't necessarily getting an equal say uh so Cory Bush and Jamal Bowman they were shut out of talks and so you kind of have one person the leader of the congressional progressive caucus Pramila Jayapal trying to be the advocate I do like that you would be willing to kind of sit down with her and kind of state disagreements because I think that's really important but um what do you think like what would be your biggest criticism of the Democratic Party because currently what it feels like is leftist lawmakers who are a growing caucus in Congress they just don't have an equal say and it always comes down to what do the centrists or I should say the conservative Democrats want and you know I get that the makeup of Congress is beneficial to them but how do you change that long-term in your opinion I think it's definitely a approach that has to take in many multifaceted vision so it can't just be electoral politics I can't be the only person elected to try and get this job done and in the same vein we also have to be out on the streets I know people are really afraid to to say that we should have uprisings or that we should you know approach this from a revolutionary point of view but that's exactly what we need right now our country our globe is suffering under capitalism and the Democratic Party that I think that's my biggest complaint about them is that they are card carrying capitalists and they refuse to see our system as the problem instead they're trying to reform the system from within and I understand that I'm a candidate who is running on the Democratic Party ticket but my intention is never to reform the Democratic Party it's to uproot the system as it is and create something on top of it and so I'm really interested to I mean as you just mentioned like I definitely am interested in talking to folks because I do not purport to know everything and to have all the knowledge of what's happening in the midst of negotiations with the progressive caucus and everybody else but they have to understand what it looks like from the outside and they have to know that it's very disappointing the way it looks and so I would love to truly talk with some of the folks at the center of the conversations and tell them how it looks and ask them what's the rationale here and I think that's another criticism I have of the Democratic Party is that we're all guessing about why it is these negotiation decisions we need to know what is that stake why is everything behind closed doors the people need to know what's actually going on and I appreciate Bernie for trying to tell us a little bit more about what's actually in the bill we need to see what's happening behind the scenes and no longer go on behind the scenes sort of thing I totally agree one thing that I wanted to ask you about for me when it comes to the leftist lawmakers members of the squad AOC, Bowman, all of them I think that one of my main critiques of them is that even if I agree with them on the policies when it comes to strategies I think that there does need to be more communication because I do acknowledge that sometimes they're going to do things that are not what most leftists want but maybe they're representing their constituents and I think that just something that's lacking is communication so you kind of you brought this to my mind of thinking about you know how they have to explain it how it looks from the outside so I just want to ask you because I mean you would basically be a member of the squad and be caucusing pretty heavily with them and the congressional progressive caucus if you were elected can you tell me one thing that you like that the squad is doing and one thing that you think they're not doing well or could improve because I think that there's always room for growth and this really is a learning process this is the first time in my lifetime where we've had really vocal leftists who identify as socialists in congress so there's going to be a learning curve and I think that people on the outside have a lot of insight that's useful that they can bring in so I feel like each year the squad is going to get better as Cori Bush comes in and kind of instructs AOC on what it's like from the outside and then as you go in and instruct Cori Bush like I feel like we grow and become better and more powerful so you know what good thing went bad thing in your opinion about the squad one so we'll start with the areas of improvement I think for areas of improvement I would definitely say that things need to be pushed a little bit harder and I would I would absolutely want them to be working with direct action more I really really really loved and you know all the haters who wanted to talk about Cori Bush you know having the the action at the capital steps I thought that was amazing and I haven't seen you haven't seen legislators having actions like that before so the fact that she did that was very very incredible and so I want to see more of that and it did make a difference although it wasn't long term speaking it wasn't the impact that we wanted to have because we're still dealing with the same repercussions of COVID and things like that for housing but definitely more direct action that's the place of improvement I think for the squad in terms of what they're doing well I would say that for me it's really important that the legislators who are in the squad are communicating in the way that they do I know people want to talk about AOC and how she's constantly on you know her social media and you know communicating with people and a lot of people look at it as bad but people are watching people are listening and people are getting closer to the issues because they are broadcasting it in a way that hasn't been accessible before that's definitely something that I hope to do and I definitely want to use any platform that I have to be able to communicate the actual daily ongoing stuff that's happening in congress and outside of congress too what's happening in the streets what's happening in protests what's happening in direct action all of those things so yeah I love that answer I agree with you I feel like with AOC she gets way way more backlash than it's deserved even if I do have criticisms of her but the things that she's doing with social media somehow she's really getting for lack of a better word normie democrats to support her which is important because one of my criticisms of leftists being in that criticism as well and being part of the problem probably as well is that we're kind of a little bit too insular and I feel like we don't reach out to people who don't agree with us but who could be aligned with us liberals people who aren't necessarily socialists or their sock dams or they're just centrist I think that they view us as scary and I kind of want to change that opinion because part of politics unfortunately is marketing and I think that we haven't done a good enough job an issue is the media of course because we're portrayed as the willy man but I think that what she's doing with social media has been really wildly successful so yeah I agree with that and I like that you would be doing that as well I also like that direct action would be something that you prioritize okay so one thing that I want to do is kind of get a sense as to how you would legislate and I want to ask you a hypothetical that's kind of a morally grey question that's kind of tough but I think it's interesting to see how candidates think through these situations because I don't feel like there's any right or wrong answer so let's say that there is a big package coming up for a vote it's a $2 trillion package similar to the one that we're seeing now and your pet project one of the main things that you care about is included in this which would be the Green New Deal for schools so you've been fighting for this you fought hard it's been your go-to issue what you want to bring back to your constituents this is what you promised people who supported your campaign but included in this gigantic package is a poison pill it is it's a corporate tax cut or it's a repeal of the estate tax it's something that you really don't like and overall would be very bad for the country and you fought as hard as you possibly could but it's in there it's up for a vote what do you do in the situation I wouldn't include it in that package to be honest with you I wouldn't include it in the package if it came with something that was going to harm the community in a way that I couldn't prevent or create some sort of care around I would do my best to put it in another package and I think that most of the constituents that are in my community would understand that I was trying to minimize the harm caused against them while also thinking long term about how to bring that package forth with the things that I had been working on such as the Green New Deal for public schools I think a lot about the vote on the dome for Israel and the things that were also included around that package and I honestly I could never do it I could never vote for anything that was co-signing on harm to people I like that because it gives us a lot of insight into the way that you would govern because you're very principled, you stand by your convictions and I think that's really commendable because it's so hard to do in Congress because not everything is a really simplistic straightforward up or down vote on just one policy there's usually a ton of things and one thing that AOC has been really great at explaining is how things get snuck into bills and you don't even have time to read them before you vote on them so it's really important to have people like you who are looking out for that and are willing to catch it and call it out another hypothetical and this is the last one I promise I love hypotheticals I don't know if candidates like them but I think that they're really really important there's the situation where you will bring back your kind of main project the Green New Deal for schools you're looking to get more co-sponsors for it and one co-sponsor who's been a hold out looks like this individual is going to finally get on board but there's a catch maybe he's trying to placate you maybe he's pandering to you and he's considering co-sponsoring your legislation but he also notices that you might be endorsing his primary opponent in the next Democratic Party primary what do you do in this situation because you need him to co-sponsor the bill but at the same time he might be trying to play you he might be trying to get you to not endorse someone who would definitely you know support this bill how do you balance that because it is a balance and act this is going to come up probably time and again we know how the game is played in DC so what do you do in that situation because I would be really conflicted I don't know what I would do I want more progressives in Congress ultimately that's the main goal but at the same time we need to build power we need to actually get movement when it comes to these policies that we're pushing so what would you do because I don't know the answer like it's tough right no that is definitely a tough one well first of all I would I would be able to ask you know the person that I'm endorsing whoever the opponent is what's their timeline for announcing my endorsement and I would hope that what I would be able to achieve is how do I explain this I would be able to kill two birds with one stone and still be able to endorse on a timeline that made sense while still being able to get the part of my packaging and get the support from the House member I think I can do both and also I think there's a lot of angles that can be worked there are plenty of people that have co-signed on to legislation when AOC or Corey Bush or whoever else was endorsing their opponents so there's still opportunity to work together even though they know that I might be endorsing an opponent of theirs I think that's the end of the world and I think honestly the way to go about those things is to just be honest I'm not a person that wants to necessarily play the same game that they play and try to make all these backdoor deals and everything like that I just like to be honest and tell them why I would endorse their their opponent but why their support on my bill is extremely necessary and how no matter even if they get elected or not the next time around they're still both of them are required to be able to advance this legislation yeah yeah great answer because it's difficult there's going to be a lot of sticky situations for you as a lawmaker and you know I feel like members of Congress the Democratic Party they're going to use that against you so I like to kind of get a sense of what someone is going to do before they get to Congress one thing that I think that we know for sure is that if you get elected I mean the second you win your primary there's going to be a tax from Fox News radical Communists gets like I mean you already know and besides that you'll be in for a month you'll see leftist YouTubers already saying oh Stephanie sold us out what life experiences do you think kind of prepared you for this moment because you've got to have at least a little bit of thick skin to be in Congress so what do you think makes you more prepared to deal with what is inevitably going to be just nonstop hate and abuse really I mean it's frustrating it's worse because you're a woman I feel like there's this extra amount of pressure on the female leftists as opposed to Mondair Jones and Jamal Bowman right so what do you think really prepared you in your life for this moment because we know it's leftist lawmakers they're always the boogeyman so talk a little bit through your life experiences and what you think is going to help you dealing with this so let me be clear with everybody I am very sensitive I actually am a very sensitive person and when people say things to me that you know I disagree with or you know hurt my feelings in some way I am very vocal about that and so you know part of me wants to tell folks you know that's a good thing and I actually do believe that that's a good thing because it means that I'm actually a human being with real feelings and emotions that can you know be an empath with the folks that I'm trying to create legislation for and with so you know that's one specific thing but I would say that what prepared me most for this role is my elected role within the National Education Association Labor Union because the labor union is actually the closest thing to the Democratic Party that I've ever seen in my life and working within a labor union system that resembles so closely the Democratic Party has truly taught me how people will manipulate the system to get their own you know things done, how they will harm other people in the process and at the same time I've also been attacked within those systems you know my own labor union often tried to fight back against me when I was trying to bring the reality and speak truth to power in certain situations and I was you know constantly constantly name called I definitely have been called a communist in my own union I've been called all the other things that you could possibly think of but at this point given all the experiences that I've had not only in my union but as an educator I've learned to turn off the comments and just not look at the comments and just do what I need to do and stay in community with the people that actually matter so when folks want to talk their talk about me it's not anything that truly affects me anymore what really affects me and what keeps me or what I feel like makes me sad sometimes is when people in my own circle think I've done something wrong and I learn from it and I reflect and so that's something very different than all these hate or comments and trying to call me a communist so I love that answer because a lot of times I feel like people are when I ask that question I feel like candidates think okay I'm expected to say nothing's gonna bother me I have the thickest skin in the world but everyone's different and we're all human so if you're the most sensitive person ever that doesn't mean that you can't be an effective lawmaker that it'll bog you down I kind of put these two politicians up as opposite sides of extremes Rashida Tlaib is a softie there's this joke that she's always crying and then on the other end you have Ilhan Omar nothing affects her she is incredibly strong-minded but yet they're both lawmakers in different ways they both are great on policy so there's really no right or wrong answer but I think that people they have this expectation that they have to really play up their strength when that's not always gonna be the best answer saying that I'm sensitive is actually really nice and it's humanizing because everyone has their limit nobody's gonna go in there and not be totally moved by some of the things especially with Fox News I mean I've covered some of their attacks on members of the squad and they are gross they're disgusting so I feel like if I were in there I have pretty thick skin I've been doing YouTube for a while so you have to but I mean like if I were in there I would be affected too listening to all of this so yeah I appreciate that answer so we've come to a point in the interview where I feel like anyone who is still watching they've probably been convinced like a minute but for those who are maybe on the fence or those who definitely want to help what can we do do you need donations do you need canvassers help us help you get elected and kind of make your last pitch yeah absolutely so what we need help with right now so we are small but we are a fighting campaign we're leading the campaign and small-dollar donations and of course my opponent has $2,000 and up donations he's leading yeah and he has he's raking in money from corporate interest the military industrial complex and we have over 1,750 individual donors to our campaign so we feel really excited about that but where we need help of course more donations we are trying to build our field program before the primary season begins and we're trying to start getting out knocking on doors and getting folks to help us you know get things on doors and things like that and get yard signs so donations very important I would say the second thing we need is folks who are willing to do phone banking and text banking I'm sure you know what call time is but for folks who don't know what call time is it's tough it's very very tough to sit in a room 8 hours a day calling numbers that you don't know and asking them for money and like trying to sell them your pitch right so it would be really really helpful to have people as part of that process so that it could be a more community process rather than such a transactional process as it is for most candidates so definitely need help with call time and I would say listen I know 100% that I am the candidate that is going to beat Adam Smith this time around here in 2022 we have the support of Sarah Smith who ran in 2018 she is now a friend I'm super excited to have her support in backing and the reality is that my opponent is a person who gets by on this progressive name but he hasn't been doing his progressive job he is a co-signer on lots of legislation but never a champion in legislation and he also is secretly under cover doing the bidding of the military industrial complex and he doesn't often talk about it even though he's the chair of the house armed services committee so it's really important that we boot out this person who just led the $778 billion military budget being passed and it's time we get somebody who is an actual progressive who understands foreign policy who has been very experienced in our district and who has the actual values of the people at heart so I'm really excited to be able to do this campaign and also really excited to be here getting the word out getting the message out and so it's going on well Stephanie thank you so much this has been so much fun we'll definitely be in touch you're a neighbor I'm from Oregon you're from Washington so I feel like I kind of have a stake in Washington because what you all do we kind of follow we're a little bit late but you know we show up eventually so yeah I really appreciate it thank you so much for coming on first thank you well that's everything thank you all so much for tuning in if you've made it this far in the program as usual we're not going to end the show without thanking all of the folks and make this show possible all of our Patreon, PayPal and YouTube members who help us not just to survive but thrive as well I truly appreciate all of you folks thank you all so much I don't think I have any housekeeping things to bring up follow us over at twitch.tv the live streams will resume again at some point it's just trying to work that into my regular schedule and keep the show going and fresh it's a little bit of a challenge for me but I think that I'll find my footing again eventually and restart the Twitch live streams which I thought would happen like a couple of weeks ago but you know it should happens anyways hopefully liked what I had for you today that's it I'm Mike Figueroa this has been The Humanist Report take care everyone I will see you next week in the month of November man time flies