 When Donald Trump sends his people to Washington, he's not sending the best. He's sending people that have lots of problems. And they're bringing those problems to us. They're bringing debt, stupidity, bigotry, and violence. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You Sad Pathetic Humps. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman. DavidFeldmanshow.com. Well, it's Inauguration Day. I can't think of a more important person to speak to than Howie Klein, the founder and treasurer of the Blue America Pack, which raises money for progressive candidates all around America. And he's been a good friend of this show. He also writes the Danwith Tyranny blog, which everybody should go to. He is the person I want to speak to on Inauguration Day. Coming up, Howie Klein, stay with us. Welcome to The Guardian. Please stay with us. We're David Feldman. at www.wisdavidmamshow.com. And visit my website where there's plenty of information. Please share this episode. Copy and paste the link to this episode and share it with all your friends. On Facebook, Twitter, stumble upon, dig, reddit, whatever social media you're using, visit me over at davidfeldenshow.com. There's a contact button there. If you click on it and you have something you want to tell me, ask me or suggest, I will respond. Now back to the show. Well today America bids a fond farewell to Barack Obama and our more than 200 year old grand experiment of self government. We are really screwed. Eight years ago our nation was on the brink of economic collapse with a vast majority of Americans praying that Barack Obama had what it takes to step in and fix the mess he inherited from his predecessor. Eight years later Americans are now saying the same prayers for Mike Pence because in about a month he will be inheriting what President Trump has wrought. Oh my God, well it's going to be America's finest moment, I promise you. We are much wiser, we are much better organized as long as we stay focused on the important stuff. Don't pay attention to the shiny baubles, don't get distracted. Donald Trump announced that he wants to see more military parades, more military music, more marchings. This is a distraction. That's not what you need to be worried about. You need to focus, you need to cut out the noise. Don't pay attention to the alt-right. Don't listen to AM talk radio or Fox News. Don't get worked up at the stupidity. All that does is feed your rage and rage is an narcotic. It feels good to be enraged. There are 535 members of Congress. Ralph Nader, I do a radio show with Ralph Nader, and he always says this, there are 535 members of Congress. That's where you need to focus. That's what unites us and that's what divides us. It's the temple, it's our government, it's the temple of democracy and it's sacred. It's what the people who benefit the most, the oligarchs, the kleptocrats, the people who have all the money, the richest 1%, they do not want you to focus on the 535 members of Congress because that's where the action is. That's where the game is. That's where change is made. That's where you can take on the richest 1%. The richest 1% is terrified that we're going to rise up. That's why they spend so much money on K Street. That's why they're constantly giving money to our politicians because they're afraid that we're going to organize and unite around one idea and that one idea is where the 99% and our country has been stolen from us and that the American dream is over, which it is. The American dream is over. Stop dreaming. Wake up. We need work. We need dignity and we need to have our lives back. Don't get angry. Don't fight on Twitter. Don't fight on Facebook. Focus on the 535 members of Congress because that is the constant in American history. You're being told that we're a divided nation, that we're being segmented and sliced and diced by the Internet and you'll hear about the long tail of the comet. Everybody now has their own specific interests and there are a thousand television channels and if you're interested in fishing, you can find your own subset of fishermen and only focus on that and that there's no single monolithic media but there is. It's Washington D.C. It's the 535 members of Congress. You know how they say they're not making any more real estate? Well, they're not making any more congressional seats. There are 535 people serving in the Senate and the House of Representatives because we have 50 states. Two senators from each state, that's 100 and then we split up 435 congressional seats every 10 years after the census and spread those 435 congressional seats around the country based on population distribution. They're not making any more congressmen or congresswomen. There are a million new blogs every second. There are two million new news organizations sprouting up but we still only have 535 congressmen. Focus on that. Who has them? Who has their attention? How are they voting? What are they being told? We are rising up. I'm very heartened by these town hall meetings that are being interrupted by people who don't want their Obamacare taken away from them. Focus on Washington D.C. I'm old enough to remember that when Ronald Reagan B came president, the head of CBS News, I think his name was Van Gordon Sotter or Sotter Van Gordon. Van Gordon Sotter, you married Jerry Brown's sister who became treasurer of California. He said as president of CBS News, we're no longer going to follow Washington D.C. The real story is in the heartland. He was carrying Ronald Reagan's water by doing that. When CBS News stopped focusing on congress, there was a time, ask your parents, there was a time when you turn on Walter Cronkite and there would be filmed here. He would play you clips from armed services committee hearings. They paid attention to Washington D.C. When Reagan became president, Reagan declared war on Washington D.C., the news organizations followed suit. They said, you know what, we're not going to even cover Washington D.C. But what was really going on was under Reagan, he wasn't destroying Washington D.C. The budget was doubling. Washington was growing and becoming more powerful, but it was housed by corporatists. He was installing corporatists and convincing everybody not to pay attention to Washington D.C. And that's what's been going on for the past 40 years. Nobody follows Washington D.C. You got to pay attention to what's happening in the hallowed halls of Congress because the Koch brothers are exon-mobile. They're paying attention. That's where the game is. They want you watching football. They want you binge viewing house of cards because if you're concerned about a fictitious president, you won't pay attention to the president who's feeding you fiction, Donald Trump, who takes office today. Well, focus on Congress. Focus on Congress. They don't teach civics anymore. They don't teach us how a bill becomes law anymore because they want us to be compliant. They want us to acquiesce. They don't want us to understand how to pull the levers of power in Congress because the richest 1% wants it all for themselves. There's a great story coming out today about Marla Maples, the second wife of Donald Trump. Donald Trump's first wife was Ivana Trump. He couldn't have sex with her anymore because he is not attracted to women who have had babies. This is according to Liz Smith, the columnist for the New York Daily News, that Ivana, the mother of Eric Don Jr. and Ivanka, Ivana Trump, the Czech model, was cheated on by Marla Maples because Donald Trump told Ivana that he can't have sex with a woman who's just had a baby. And then when he was losing his hair, according to a deposition during the divorce trial, Ivana recommended a hair transplant surgeon who did a scalp reduction that failed, hence the crazy quaff that he's got going on. And he was so angry that he came home and raped her. He raped Ivana. He raped Ivanka's mother, Eric and Donald. That is in a deposition that Ivana gave during their divorce. And then she retracted it sort of. I recommend David Johnson's book on this. You can look this up. Donald Trump raped Ivanka's mother. He raped Eric Trump's mother. He raped Donald Trump Jr.'s mother, according to a deposition given by Ivana Trump during their divorce that she later kind of sort of took back. You can look it up. And I think it's wonderful that Ivanka and Eric and Donald Jr. can find it in their hearts to forgive their father for raping their mother. Then he married Marla Maples. And the big story coming out is that Marla Maples wants to get her hair done and make up for the inauguration. She's going to be there today along with Tiffany, the daughter that she had with Donald. She called her favorite hairstylist and makeup artist who charged about $300 an hour. Then Marla said, well, you know, why don't you do it for me for free? I don't want to pay you, but I'll give you exposure. I'll tell everybody who did my hair and makeup. And that's better for you than paying you for services rendered. God bless the makeup artists and the hairdresser. They told Marla Maples to shove it where the sun don't shine. And I'm not talking about Seattle. And it's so telling about these people, the Trump people. We've all worked for monsters like this. They're not just at a touch. It's not so much that they're not aware of what people need to live. They don't care. Marla Maples does not care that somebody who applies makeup does your hair. She does not care. She doesn't care that you'd need food. You need to pay your rent. You need to pay childcare. It's not that they're oblivious. They are dead inside. And they do not care about anybody else but themselves. And these are the barbarians at the gate today. They are taking over Washington, DC. Never before in my lifetime have we been inundated by as large a tsunami of craven kleptocrats. They are just coming in to take what they believe they're entitled to because they see two types of people winners and losers. That's how Donald Trump was raised. There are two types of people. Fred Trump instilled this in his children. You either win or you lose. And if you lose, you deserve to lose. And that's why Donald Trump's older brother died of alcoholism because he didn't fit the mold for Fred Trump. Donald's older brother wanted to be a pilot. He didn't want to go into the real estate business and he drank himself to death because he was perceived as weak by Fred Trump. He had a child with, I believe, cerebral palsy who needed money. It's in David K. Johnson's book and I really recommend it. Basically Fred Sr. died and Fred Jr., the alcoholic son who died before Fred Sr., they sued because all the money in the will was pretty much left to Donald and they felt that was unfair. And the child with cerebral palsy needed medical care and Donald was so pissed off that he sued for his share of the will that he cut him off. He stopped paying for his nephew's medical care because the nephew had sued. The nephew has cerebral palsy. So if you don't think he's going to cut your social security and your Medicare and your Medicaid and your Obamacare, this is a guy who cuts his own nephew's health care. The kid has cerebral palsy and Donald Trump doesn't like the fact that he sued for his share of the will. Could you do that? Could you cut off a nephew who had cerebral palsy when you had plenty of money? This is what we're in for. So there are some people in the 1% who do get it. It takes a couple of generations for them to understand our plight, the plight of the 99%. One of the worst human beings ever to live was John D. Rockefeller. But his great grandchildren, the Rockefeller family, they're the 23rd richest family in the United States. They have a fortune of about $11 billion. Their fortune was made from Standard Oil, which has been broken up and then reassembled as Exxon Mobil. If you want to know where Standard Oil went after Ida Tarble and the progressives broke it up, it got scattered to the wind through antitrust legislation, but it got back together again as basically Exxon Mobil. And the Rockefeller fortune, which is about $11 billion, a lot of that is in Exxon Mobil stock until this year. The Rockefeller family has decided to divest itself of all its holdings in Exxon Mobil. They're giving up the stock in the company that gave them their fortune. And it's all because of global warming. We talked about this last week on the show, but it's important to stay focused on this because Exxon Mobil is pretty much running the show or they're going to be running the State Department with Rex Tillerson, Rex Spillerson as Secretary of State. According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Inside Climate News Consortium, it's an investigative group that's run by the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. This is not fake news. This is real journalism. They have uncovered evidence that Exxon Mobil, since the 70s, had research done by the top climatologists that showed increasing carbon dioxide and pumping it into the earth's atmosphere would raise average global temperatures by as much as five degrees Fahrenheit. There is now evidence that Exxon Mobil in the 70s knew that they were raising the earth's temperature by five degrees. That's a lot. They hid that evidence that Exxon Mobil conspired to not only hide that evidence, but to lobby George W. Bush's administration, to hire scientists over at NASA to hire scientists to dispute climate change research. The UN has an intergovernmental panel on climate change. Exxon Mobil pressured the Bush administration to hire scientists who would say things like, the jury is still out on man-made climate change. Exxon Mobil, one of the largest corporations in the world. They're their own nation. They are now under investigation by two state attorney generals, just the same way the tobacco industry was sued for suppressing evidence. The tobacco industry knew that cigarettes caused cancer, and they just killed the evidence. They ended up getting sued by the consortium of state attorney generals, and they lost. It looks like there are attorney generals who want to do the same thing to Exxon Mobil. Unfortunately, Donald Trump has filled his cabinet with people who want to protect Exxon Mobil. His new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, wrote a letter in 2016 urging one of those attorney generals to stop with that investigation into Exxon Mobil. Rick Perry wants to be head of the Department of Energy, one of the dumbest people on the planet. He took the job. He was testifying yesterday before the Senate. He, as you remember, energy was one of the three cabinet positions he wanted to eliminate, but he couldn't remember it in the 2012 debate. That was his oops moment. He issued an apology under testimony yesterday. He said, after being briefed on so many of the vital functions of the Department of Energy, I regret recommending its elimination. So he took the job over at Department of Energy. He has to be confirmed, but didn't know what it was. He thought it was to be the ambassador of oil around the world. Well, turns out Department of Energy, you're supposed to protect our nuclear weapons. He didn't know that. Yeah. The worst cabinet ever assembled. I don't know how to pronounce Stephen Mnuchin. Is it Mnuchin? Mnuchin, he's the Secretary of Treasury. His new wife, his fiance, is a British actress who has lied about her past. She is a actress who wrote an autobiography claiming that she helped these African villages, and she was exposed as a liar, that everything she said about those African villages wasn't true. She even got the countries wrong. Stephen Mnuchin has no experience in government, but Donald says he's going to drain the swamp. And what is Steve's background? He came from Goldman Sachs, just like everybody else who runs the Department of Treasury. He comes from Goldman Sachs, where his father was a senior partner. This is the worst of the worst. He evicted the OctoMOM. He owned a company called OneWest. It used to be IndieMac, and after the financial crisis, he and some bankers bought OneWest, and they aggressively foreclosed on homeowners like the OctoMOM, Nadia Denise Suleiman. He evicted the OctoMOM. He's accused of foreclosing on a 90-year-old homeowner because she mistakenly underpaid her bill by 27 cents. There are hundreds of thousands of victims of aggressive foreclosures executed, and I do mean executed, by OneWest under the leadership of Steve Mnuchin, who Donald Trump wants to be Secretary of the Treasury. I mentioned earlier Jeff Sessions. He's going to be our Attorney General. He is one of the most conservative members of the U.S. Senate. It was for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, which put our country into debt. He was for the invasion of Iraq, which put our country into further debt, introduced an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. He was against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. He has opposed every single one of President Obama's nominees for the Supreme Court. He was nominated to be a judge under Ronald Reagan, but was rejected by the Senate for his long history of racist remarks, saying that, for example, he was disappointed in the Ku Klux Klan when he discovered some of them smoke marijuana. It's a funny line. When you appoint Andrew Puzder to head labor, you're spitting in the face of the working class. He is the CEO of Hardee's and Carl's Junior. He is against the minimum wage, obviously if you're running Hardee's and Carl's Junior, against overtime pay, against the Affordable Care Act, critical of paid sick leave. And here's my favorite quote. He said that our company, he means Hardee's and Carl's Junior, should really move towards more automation, get more and more robots to make burgers, because quote, they're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip and fall or an age, sex or race discrimination case. That is who Donald Trump wants to be Secretary of Labor. That's who he wants in charge of protecting labor. We'll talk about Dr. Tom Price over at Health and Human Services and his inside trading with Howie Klein. He's our guest today, Howie has written about that. It should not shock you. This country is controlled by a handful of families. They are coming to Washington to get more. Betsy DeVos, is that how it's pronounced? She's going to be our Education Secretary out of Michigan. She's an heir to the Amway fortune. Her brother is Eric Prince, the founder of Blackwater. Remember Blackwater? That's who her brother is. We're going to stay on this. We're not giving up. This is going to be our finest moment. Howie Klein is on our show today and we're going to tell you what to do. And what you need to do is you need to stay focused. You need to know who the bad people are. And the bad people are the richest one percent. Exxon Mobil is destroying our planet. They're robbing us of jobs. They're poisoning our water and they're killing us. Stay focused on who is getting richer, not rich, who is getting richer with the Republicans in charge of our economy, our Supreme Court, our White House, and our Congress. And then take action. Peacefully focus on the 535 members of Congress and make sure they don't return to office in 2019. We'll be back with Howie Klein. You're listening to the David Feldman Show, the Inauguration episode. All I'm asking you today is to visit davidfeldmanshow.com. Please, if you learned anything today, if you found anything interesting, copy and paste the link to this episode and share it with all your friends. There's a lot of information in this episode. I'm asking you to copy and paste the link, put it in email to all your friends, post it on Facebook, post it on Twitter, post it on StumbleUpon, post it on Dig, Reddit, whatever social media you are using. Please spread this episode as far as you possibly can. Go to davidfeldmanshow.com for more information. Let's get back to the show. Joining us from Los Angeles is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America Pack. He also writes the Down with Tyranny blog, which is a must read every day of the week. Howie Klein, how are you Howie Klein? I'm fine, thank you. I just came back from a long vacation in Bangkok and I will tell you that I wrote the Down with Tyranny blog every day when I was in Bangkok as well. So, meanwhile, here in the United States, we have, I was going to make a Bangkok pun, but I'm not going to do it. I'm good. I'm not going to do it. So, yes, Mr. Trump becomes president today. Today is inauguration day. I am anxious, I'm nervous, but I also believe it's America's opportunity for it to be America's finest moment. You helped organize the resistance. There are about 73 Democratic Congress people not showing up today to the inauguration. Tell me about this. It was actually the first week in December. It was an idea that started with Luis Gutierrez, the Democratic Congressman from Chicago. He came up with the idea of just not going and he explained it in a YouTube video that's been watched by over a million people. And then a few other people, a few other Congress people decided that they agreed with him and that they were going to do the same thing, at which point I decided that Blue America, to encourage this, would start an act blue page. So, an act blue page is an opportunity to donate, whether it's a dollar or a thousand dollars, to a candidate to their reelection committee. So, the idea was that anyone who decided that they and announced that they would not go to Trump's inauguration would be on this list and they would get a stream of contributions. And when we started out, our goal was a thousand dollars. And I think there were six or seven or eight people. And now, as you said, there are 73 and we're up to about 12,000 dollars. You raise money specifically for progressive candidates. Well, that's a very good way of putting it because that is what we do. And this was very embarrassing because it started out, I mean Gutierrez is very progressive. And all of the people who started out as the ones who are boycotting Trump were all very progressive. And then suddenly, other non-progressive Democrats started jumping in. And at first, I didn't really mind that much and I included them and I kind of felt a little bit funny about putting in some of these conservative Democrats on the page and seeing money go to them. And then the head of the Blue Dogs joined in, this guy Kurt Schrader and some really, really slimy corrupt Democrats who we would never want to raise money for like Alcy Hastings in Florida and a bunch of terrible New Dems and other Blue Dogs. And that started getting really hairy for me and a little frightening because the last thing I want to do is to have people come on a Blue America page and think they're donating to a progressive when they're actually giving money to the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. So I'm going to interrupt you. Let me interrupt you for one second, please, sir, because you haven't been on for a while and we have a lot of new listeners. So I just want to go over the nomenclature for a second. What does nomenclature mean? No, I don't want to use terms that even I might be dubious about. So very quickly define progressive define Blue Dog Democrat and define New Dem. Okay, so this this thought will go backwards. The New Dem coalition and the and the Blue Dogs make up what's called the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. So these are generally conservative Democrats. They, you know, the Blue Dogs will tend to be socially conservative as well as fiscally conservative. So they may be anti choice, they may be anti gay, they may be anti immigrant. They're basically very Republican in most ways. But for one reason or another, they they call themselves Democrats and those of the Blue Dogs. The New Dems tend to be generally speaking, but not not always, but generally speaking, they're more moderate socially. So they tend to be pro choice. They're not all pro choice, but they mostly are and pro gay, etc. So on the social issues, they're just like normal Democrats. But on the fiscal issues, they're they're just as, you know, oriented towards Wall Street. And they tend to be more, you know, more like Republicans in that way. So they'll be, you know, when if you if you define corruption as meaning that they take money from corporate interests, who's and then sit on committees that make decisions about those corporate interests, that progressive won't do that. Excuse me, that's what that's what the New Dems do. They they all try to get on the House Financial Services Committee so that they can take money from the banks and other Wall Street entities. And then they work with the Republicans against things like Dodd-Frank, a terrible bunch. So that's that's what they are. Now a progressive, on the other hand, is someone who is, you know, what used to be called a liberal. And they will be people who are, you know, pro choice and and in favor of all the social policies. And they will be and they will be looking to advance the legitimate interests of working class Americans. That that's what a progressive is and does. And that's very different from what the the New Dems and the Blue Dogs do, who are more likely to be advancing the interests of, you know, maybe the professional class rather than working class. That that's that's that's that I see as a key difference between progressives and more either moderate or conservative Democrats. And so my listeners know, because again, we have some new new listeners, a lot of new listeners, quite frankly. Oh, good. Yes. Hi, everybody. Hi, everybody. So how he climbed you started off in the music industry and you I don't want to say you made a fortune, but you have more money than any human being deserves. And you did it in the record industry. You ran reprise records, I believe, right? For Warner Brothers and you discovered I had my own little I started a little independent label in San Francisco from scratch called 415 records. We did well. Sony bought it. And then I got hired by Sire and I ran Sire records as the general manager for quite a long time. That's the label that has it had all it was the big punk rock label with bands like the Ramones and the Colton and the Pesh mode and the Smiths. So and and on top of that, we had Madonna. So it's lots and lots of punk rock bands plus Madonna. Right. And then when reprise and then and Sire is part of Warner Brothers. So when Warner Brothers was going to resuscitate reprise records, and they were looking for a president, they decided that I would be the president. And that was fine with me. And the vast fortune that you're talking about, which doesn't really exist, was was when I became the president of reprise, they they pay their their top people very well. So I made a good salary. And then you got interested in something even sleazier than the record industry politics. And you always been interested in politics. And in fact, I was the freshman class president in college and I was always involved with politics. And my grandfather, who is sort of my mentor in that way, was a socialist and he taught me well. And you founded and you are the treasure of the Blue America pack, which specifically raises money, gives money to progressive candidates around the country. And you wield a lot of power. When I met Keith Allison, he knew I've dropped your name a couple of times this past in 2016, as I was traveling. And you are respected. And because you dole out a lot of money, you are feared. And anyway, so I hated you can say it. And I know that you and your friend Steve Israel talked about me as well. He ran away from me. He's someone who really hates me. Now, Steve Israel, who was the chairman of the D triple C, the D triple C. That's D C C C the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he oversaw the loss of dozens and dozens and dozens of Democratic seats and gave the Republicans these vast majorities in Congress. And is the cause of a lot of problems. Steve Israel was the head of that and very influential before and after he was the head of it running that show. And he's he's awful. He was a blue dog himself from all island and very much I know very much hates me. And I know that you did see him at one of these events and asked him about me. And he ran away. I was like Danny Aiello and Godfather two sneaking up behind Frankie five angels to Garrett and I said, how he client says hello. And then he knew to run away from he survived. I was wondering if he screamed before he ran. He boy, he yes. So one of the things I want to talk to you about is the resistance. Since you brought up Steve Israel. Yes. Today, the organization I mentioned the the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. One of the keystones of the Democrat of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party is an organization called Third Way, which I suspect some of your listeners already know about. And today is Third Way announced that they had hired Steve Israel, who's no longer a congressman. He's out of Congress. And they hired him to do messaging to win back something or other. You know, just to do things that he's already proven he can't do. Right. When? Yes. Third Way is kind of like the Clinton, Tony Blair wing of the Democratic Party, right? Yeah, part of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. And I assume there are no more progressives in the Republican Party. If you found a Republican who was a progressive where that used to be the where the progressives were located, you would give money to that Republican, right? But they're just aren't there. There were there are a couple here and there. The last year, you know, and it's a relative thing. You know, there are a couple who are relatively progressive. There are there are none that are actually progressive. It's almost never that you'll find when there's a match up between even a bad Democrat and a good Republican that the that the Republican will be better than the Democrat. It almost never happens. The only time I can remember it happening when I was when I've been active with Blue America was in Michigan in the Grand Rapids area where Justin Amash, who's kind of a libertarian leaning Republican, was up against this very, very, very conservative, bigoted Democrat named Steve Pesta. And and Amash is definitely on on no matter how you you you measure it, Amash is a better a better choice than Pesta. We didn't we didn't raise money for Amash. But on my blog, I told people if I if I lived in in Grand Rapids, I would be voting for Amash rather than for Pesta. And that's really, really rare when a Democrat can be so bad that that a Republican beats him. I mean, they're both, for example, anti-choice. But but Pesta was so much more anti-choice than Amash that the anti-choice organization in Michigan actually endorsed Pesta the Democrat over Amash the Republican. I mean, that just gives you an idea about how bad this guy was. He he had he was golfing with a friend of mine and referred to his primary opponent, who is a a gay military guy who was an awesome candidate in the primary. And he referred to him as a fudge packer. He used some derogatory terms around the term fudge packer that also did him to me very much. Right, right. The purpose of this show for 2017 is to remove the noise, remove the clutter and preach focus, focus on the 535 members of Congress. And I'm trying to get the listeners to not pay attention to the Kellyanne Conway's don't get angry, turn off AM radio, turn off Fox News, don't fight, focus, get rid of the clutter from your life. And the way to focus to really determine what's important, what you should be paying attention to is Washington D.C. The 535 members of Congress. That's the game. Let me go a little bit bring that down a little bit more. The Senate, there's no chance of the Democrats taking back the Senate. And I'm not speaking metaphorically. I'm speaking factually. The way that the Senate races open up in 2018 make it impossible for the Democrats to take back the Senate. It just can't happen. No matter what Trump does, no matter how horrible the Republicans are, they will still own the Senate. So why don't you go from what you say, 535? Go back down to 435. Because the focus should be on winning back the House. Anything that you do with the Senate is just going to take away from the one achievable goal that has to be put into play to stop Trump. And that is taking back the House representatives. That is possible to do. It's going to take a lot of effort. It's going to take a lot of luck and a funny way to put it. But we're going to count on the fact that Paul Ryan will overreach the Speaker of the House and that the Republicans will go hogwile, which they have been, that Trump will do everything wrong, which he has been. And the people will get so sick, which they are, of Trump, that it'll be an opportunity to take back the House for the Democrats. That's what we should focus on. And I feel really good about it. I'm putting all my time and energy into recruiting progressives to run in some of these seats where the DCCC, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, doesn't even pay attention. Because this is going to be the kind of a cycle where they can win seats. Democrats can win seats in areas where they normally don't win seats. And that's what I'm counting on. And that's what the focus should be on. Right. There's so much noise. And the Trump administration, Steve Bannon, is an evil genius. They are just inundating us with a tsunami of bad that we can't keep track of it all. And I see that. Excuse me. I said, I see that too. I see it exactly the way you just described it. Yeah. And so what they want to do, they're smart enough to know this. Steve Bannon, you know, Breitbart, he and he's from the Navy and he went to Harvard and he knows what he's doing. He wants us to be paralyzed. He wants us to be crippled. And he wants us not to get out of bed. And if we do get out of bed, focus on the wrong thing. Get on Twitter, get on Facebook and fight with a troll and not pay attention to what's really happening. The cronyism and the looting of our treasury and turning our government over to Exxon Mobil. So how we climb, let's focus, let's tell our listeners what to do. And the best way to do that is to focus on who to love and who to hate. And that's among those 435 members of Congress. And the lobbyists, we need to know who the enemies are, who to hate and who to support and who to love. Very quickly you said... Before we go quite there, let me just bring something up so we don't lose it. There are a whole bunch of special elections coming up to fill seats, in some cases, seats where Trump is taking members of Congress out of Congress to serve in his administration, opening up seats. Here in California, in Los Angeles, we have Xavier Becerra, Javier Becerra, who is going to be the next Attorney General of California. He's giving up his house seat. There's going to be a lively race there. So it's important to put as much energy on whatever level you can into some of these 2017 races in preparation for 2018. So that's coming up and that's important. So, for example, here in Los Angeles, we've got a guy from the Assembly who is a young guy, but in the few years that he's been in the Assembly, the California Legislature, he's done an amazing job, like very, very, very spectacular state legislature, legislature. I'd be happy to talk about it, but I have a feeling we probably don't have the time. We do, because this is the podcast version of the show. And I do feel I have to say that I feel proud of myself because I grew up and the people, my parents used to say, what is Ralph Nader telling us to do? And we would do whatever Ralph Nader said. And then when I got married, I married into a family that did the same thing that we had. Ralph Nader would send out these ballots and we would know how to vote. So we didn't have to get bogged down in the minutia and my ex-wife worships you and what does Howie Klein say? Just do what Howie Klein says. So to simplify people's lives, I can assure you that you are a direct descendant of Ralph Nader, whom I host a radio show with for Pacifica. You do what Ralph Nader says to do and you'll be okay. And I assure my listeners that if you do what Howie Klein tells you to do, you will be making the right decision. So name off, tick off some candidates who we should be. We have officially endorsed from Blue American right now. So one of them is running in the special election in California 34, which is a district that has, I don't know, Highland Park, Echo Park, Chinatown, Koreatown, East LA, Boyle Heights, that area of Los Angeles. And his name is Jimmy Gomez. Jimmy's fantastic. I've written extensively about him on my blog. If you want to know the details, you can go to that with tyranny.com and read about Jimmy Gomez. The other one is the guy who was a marine colonel who ran against Darrell Issa. Darrell Issa is an archvillain. This guy, this is the first time he ever ran for any office. And he came within just a handful of votes of beating Darrell Issa, the richest Republican in Congress, the richest man in Congress. And he's decided to run again. I helped talk him into running again. And we're working to get to make sure that in 2018, he displaces Darrell Issa, which we feel he'll be able to do. And that's a race down in Northern San Diego County and Southern Orange County, where those two counties meet. Good district, changing district. And those are the two races that we're actively involved with right now. So again, his name is Doug Applegate, by the way, I didn't mention that. And then here in Los Angeles, Jimmy Gomez, two great candidates. And around the country now, there's, if price becomes head of health and human services, Dr. Price, which is unlikely that that's going to happen. I'm getting the feeling now that, you know, the Democrats can can stop a couple. And I think that price because of his corruption that that was exposed is going to be one of the ones that they stop. So I don't think he's going to make it, but it's in the interesting district. It's a district in the kind of wealthy, white suburbs north of Atlanta. And it's considered a Republican district. It's drawn for Republican. And Hillary, you know, I mean, I don't remember the exact number that Obama lost that district by, but let's just say Obama lost by 20 points. Hillary almost won. She lost by, I don't know, 300 votes or something. I mean, she nearly won that district. And the district is not Trump territory. They don't like him there. It's a very well off district, a very educated district. And they don't go for Trump. So the Democrats haven't picked a candidate yet. And partially because no one knows for sure if price will really become the secretary of health and human services. And now it's looking like he's not going to explain what he explained what he did. And apparently it's legal. What he did. Well, we'll see if it's legal or not, because he didn't just do it once. He did it several times. So what and what, what, what Senator Murray caught him at yesterday, when she questioned him was lying about it. So what he, what he did was basically this, he buys stock in companies at a special price. They'll give him a special price that the public can't get. So he has an opportunity to buy stock very, very inexpensively. Then he goes without telling anyone. He goes into Congress and he will get legislation passed that specifically helps that company and drives up the price of the stock. This, this, it's not legal to do that. You can say, oh, well, this is what really happened or that was what really happened. And that can make it legal. No matter what happens, it's not ethical. No matter how you lie about it, you can't say it's ethical. You can make it sound like it's legal, but it isn't. What he, what he did was, and what the Trump administration did to defend him was they put out a written sheet. So this is available saying that he made no decisions, that all of the decisions were made by a stock broker and he didn't know. So yes, he bought that stock. Yes, he, he, he passed some legislation that drove up the price of that stock, that that was all true, but he didn't know it was a coincidence. They literally said that in writing. Then when Patty Murray questioned him, she said, you, you, you admitted to me when we spoke that you did this without a broker, that you are the one who bought this stock. And he said, no, no, it was a broker, it was a broker. She kept questioning him and he finally admitted, well, yes, I directed the broker. Well, of course, the broker bought the stock. The brokers always buy the stock. You tell the broker what to buy. That's, that's, that of course, we, what he was trying to deceive the American public from the, keep the American public from knowing with deception and what the Trump administration tried to do by trying to say, oh, it was just something that happened, you know, as though it were like a mutual fund or something where you don't even know what's in it. That isn't what happened. He made a deal with this company. They gave him a special price that's not available to the public. He bought the stock. He drove the price up and he made a profit. That's illegal. And whether they can prove that or not, and the guy goes to jail, which I'd love to see. I doubt that that'll happen. But what, what I think will happen is he won't get the, he won't get confirmed because of it. He's a surgeon. Is it, I think he's an orthopedic surgeon. Yeah. Or something like that. So, you know, it's hard to believe that a surgeon would trust anybody else to manage his money. And then Rand Paul came to his defense, who's also a doctor, professional courtesy. I remember finding out, I think his name was Spencer Bacchus. He was like Alabama. Yes, he was on the, he was the chairman of the house financial services committee and he was doing the same kind of thing that I just described. But he had, when the, when the economy was collapsing, Hank Paulson, who was the secretary of treasury under George W Bush, he came in and met with Congress. It was like in September or October of 2008. And they literally said, they literally said, the oxygen has been sucked out of our economy. Congress must save capitalism. Otherwise, we're going to become become prehistoric people. And Spencer Bacchus said, excuse me, I have to, I have to make a quick, I have to make a call and the son of a bitch went out and I guess they were, he shorted the US economy and made money. I mean, and it was legal at the time, right? Well, that's that again, you're not allowed, you're not allowed to use information that isn't publicly available to enrich yourself. So it's certainly unethical and Bacchus soon after with some pressure retired. And they did pass some new laws, but they were gray. It still allows guys like Price to do what they're doing, right? I mean, it's partially, I mean, if what, but no, if it can be proven in court that that Price did what he actually did, if they can prove that and they go after him in a serious way, which they never do, he can go to jail. He broke the law. Good luck having him. Are they going to get rid of him? I don't see that happening. They won't even try. They'll make a deal with him. You know, if it gets serious enough, they make a deal where they say, okay, well, we got you dead to rights, resign. That's what they always do. And that's why Steve Israel isn't in Congress anymore. The guy I was talking about earlier, they caught him doing some sleazy stuff too. And they said, you know, we can put you behind bars, just resign from Congress and we'll let it go. They do that constantly all the time. This is a full on assault on our democracy, what Trump is pulling off. In your in your lifetime, you I have I have never witnessed so many craven incompetent lunatics taking power with the sole goal of feathering their own specific nests that they're coming in. You can define that in two ways, either as a kleptocracy, which is what what Russia is. So a kleptomaniac knows what a kleptocracy is, right? It's based on a word like kleptomaniac, like mean stealing and what you just what you just called it feathering your own nest, or a better word, cacostophras. This is a hard one to pronounce. It's a Greek word, cacostocracy. You know the word? I just learned it. Go ahead. It's incompetent. It's incompetence. It's run by idiots, right? It's getting the worst people in society to run the society. So crooks and and just a low life type of people. I mean, when you look at Bush's cabinet nominations and I don't mean Bush, when you look at Trump's cabinet nominations and the people around him, then his advisors and himself and his family, that is the definition of cacostophras, the cacostophrasy. And who benefits? Spell it out. I hate to use the term. K-A-K-I. So that's the basis. That's the Greek. And then a stocracy, like, you know, like, you know, just like a kleptomaniac. So K-A-K-I S-T-O-C-R-A-C-Y, I guess. I'm not sitting with paper. I'm just doing this in my head. And that's... Many people are, are you still there? Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of the red herrings is Russia. I'm not making a pun. The red herring is Putin, but the real coup d'etat is ExxonMobil. That, and not even Rex Tillerson. We did a show last week about this, how so many ExxonMobil moles have insinuated themselves into the Trump administration. When ExxonMobil does business with the government, they want to deal with... What is it called? What is it? Cacostophrasy. They, they, they are you. I think Kaki, it's kind of like, well, like, it's like Taka, like the poop. They're accustomed, Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, is accustomed to dealing with a cacostocracy because it's easy. They're morons. You can pay them off, make them feel important, and you take their oil. And that's what the global corporatists want America to be because then you can just rake the land. If Trump's cabinet gets in place, which is likely, most of it anyway, and you've got Trump and you've got his, you know, band of hideous advisors, you've, that is the definition of a cacostophrasy. That's who they are. And we focus... I mean, Trump doesn't have the attention span to, to run a government. He's going to have his son would do it and just, you know, read up on this guy. I mean, he's, he's just like, you know, another like spoiled rich kid. He, like Trump, he did badly in school and his father bought, bought him places in Ivy League schools. I mean, Trump flunked out of Fordham University, which you probably know is not a pop university. It's not, it's not a place that you should flunk out of. And he flunked out of it. And Trump's father gave a whole lot of money to the University of Pennsylvania, which is a very good school. And they put together some cockamamie program in real estate that didn't exist before. And they put Trump in there at the Wharton School of Business. So he can now claim he went to one of the best business schools in the world, or as he puts it, the best business school in the world. But no one who went there, no, it has any recollection of them ever being there. Sounds like Obama at Columbia. Is that was that case really at Columbia? That's the rap against Obama that nobody, that they don't Wait a second, wasn't he like the, the editor of the Lord's Journal? Well, that was, that was Harvard. He, he, and he, yes. And at Harvard, he spoke out against apartheid and divestiture and all that kind of stuff. But at Columbia, nobody knew he existed. But anyway, Jared, what's his name? Jared, the son of the Lord. Yeah. It was the same thing. His father gave a couple of million dollars to Harvard and they took him in. And his teachers were in high school were in shock because he didn't have the intellectual capacity to go to Harvard and he didn't have the test scores or the grades. But there he was. And the same thing happened in graduate school. Father, you know, put a bunch of money in that's what rich people can do. And that's part of this kind of society that this kind of techist, techistocracy. Yeah, I call him Jared, never took a subway guy. Jared, the never took a subway guy. His worldview is just absolute poison. I don't even want to get into what his father did to his brother and hiring hookers to frame his own brother and then his father ended up in prison. But several years at the hands of Chris Christie. Yeah. And that's his worldview. I mean, he just sees people as intrinsically bad. And he's a not, you know, you don't have to be if you're the term evil genius, you don't need to be a genius if you're evil. If you're evil, you will get to where you need to go as long as good people remain silent. Donald Trump isn't a genius. He's just evil. And what I am trying to do for my own mental health is to remain focused. And there's a Latin expression called quibono. It's in the legal parlance. And it means who benefits, who benefits quibono, quibono. You are going to get a lot of noise this year. You're going to get, you know, my mother, I love her, my sister, I love her. They get worked up. They watch MSNBC and they say, they see Kelly and Conway and they get mad at Jared Kushner and they get, you know, they hate Ivanka. I mean, if you mentioned the name Ivanka to my mother, she, you know, but they are the shiny baubles that, that are being used to distract from who is truly benefiting from this cacamenes to see, what is it? A cacac, the cacostocracy, the cacostocracy. And it's going to think is a cleptocracy that might be easier. Who is benefiting from all of this, this noise? There's they, they want noise. They want us distracted, confused and not knowing where to start, what to look at. I have to confess that I have been overwhelmed by this, but I speak to you. I speak to Ralph Nader. I stay with my New York Times and my economist and, and, and stay focused and I read your blog. Who, who is going to benefit from this? It's a, it's a, it's a funny question because earlier today you and I were talking about a guy on the island who was one of the, one of the biggest although very secretive fundraisers for the extreme right in America. All right, let me set this up. Let me set this up. This is someone else who's much, much less known and yet he was the person who not only gave Trump the most money for his campaign, but gave Trump all of those monsters that worked for him, whether it's Kellyanne or Steve Bannon or David Bossy. He, those are his people. They were there with his employees. He was paying them and he put them together with Trump and this is a guy named Robert Mercer. He is a hedge fund billionaire. He's pretty much recognized as being someone who's clinically insane and he lives in Satoket down the street from where I used to live. And, uh, you know, very, very, very bad dude. I just did a story about him on my blog. You can read all about him and his daughter Rebecca, uh, but they are, they are the people behind the curtain. I mean, you know, you, people want to blame everything on Putin and I don't know if Putin is to blame or not. He might be and it's hard to tell, but if he is, if what they say about Putin is true, he shares responsibility for Trump being in the White House with this guy, Robert Mercer. So I recommend people who are looking to see who's benefiting by Trump's, uh, ascension, uh, keep Robert Mercer in mind and look into who he is and what he's all about. It's pretty scary. So if you go to down with tyranny, you can read about Robert Mercer. I guess his daughter was in the news this week because she's bankrolling the natural history museum, which I was just spending time with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is very pro science and very anti creationist religion and the Mercer family is funding the natural history museum, even though the natural history museum has science behind them, not creationism. Yeah, they, uh, yeah, you know, everybody, I mean, and the Koch brothers who I'm sure all your, all your listeners know who they are, they, they fund the, uh, um, what is it? The, uh, the Metropolitan, I, I, I, I, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I, not just that, that, what is it? What is that that music center? The Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center. Lincoln Center. They fund that as well. I mean, and they fund, I mean, people who are really, really bad also do really good things. Well, it's dirty money. It's indulgences is what it is. It's how the Vatican got built. That the Koch brothers, the weight in the, in the, uh, the way the Vatican built was built. The Pope gave indulgences to horrible people and they, oh, you'll get into heaven. We'll just need a couple of million dollars for this fresco. And that's, these are the indulgences. You know, I like to give marching orders to my listeners and there are two things that, uh, that I do that I, I suggest they do. Uh, one is whenever I go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it's the honor system. You donate what you can pay and I pay a dollar. No, no, I pay a nickel. I loudly proclaim, well, you're taking David Koch's money. Let him pay for this. And then I proudly denounce David Koch and the Koch brothers to the people who are waiting in line. And I, and I say, you don't have to pay. This is the honor system. They've got millions of dollars at this museum. If David, if they're taking David Koch's filthy money that I'm giving a nickel, little do they know that I'm looking for any excuse, not, not to pay. I'm glad to hear that you don't take money out of the till. Oh, can I just tell you something? There's another thing that I want to recommend, but let me do very quickly. So I stay focused. The other thing is I've created some fake Twitter accounts where I pretend to be a Republican and I engage in conversations with other Republicans and I undermine their confidence. So I really recommend doing that is to create a fake identity, represent yourself as a Republican, and then insinuate yourself into their party and then mess with their heads. Those are the two marching orders I want to give you. But I want to tell you something about tipping and then I promise I'll shut up. Do you know about anti tipping associations? I doubt you know this. You know everything and I'm amazed that the most brilliant people I know don't know about anti tipping associations at the turn of the week. I love to tip. Okay, indulge me on this because this is going to blow you away. Okay. Okay. You're very generous and you're more generous than you let on and I won't tell our listeners how exactly you met Robert Mercer, but you're very generous. That being said, you'll appreciate this. During the Gilded Age, in the late 19th century, Americans looked down on European royalty. We found them effeminate and weak and they didn't work for a living was all inherited wealth. And a lot of our new though reach that came out of the Gilded Age were sent to Europe for the Grand Tour. And one of the things they brought back to America was tipping. Tipping didn't exist in America until the Gilded Age and Americans were appalled by this because we have this Calvinist Protestant work ethic and the idea of tipping was classist. It suggested an aristocracy. Editorials were written in major newspapers saying tipping has to be banned that it is wrong to tip because it divides the American people and it's arrogant and it's saying to people, I will pay you what I think you're worth. I'll give you an extra gratuity if you do extra work for me and I feel that you're worth it. And they what sprung up in America around the 1880s, 1901 were anti tipping associations and that's around the time my great-grand, my great-grandparents came to America from Eastern Europe and I'm beginning to, beginning to think they heard about the tipping was frowned upon in America and they said, I think my, I think my Jewish relatives came to America not because of the pogroms but to escape the tipping. And I cannot believe that nobody knows this. Nobody knows this. I didn't know it. I've worked in restaurants where I was dependent on tips. I was much younger and tips meant a lot to me. And now in Europe, they don't tip. That we're the big tippers in America and Europe, when you go to Europe, they say don't tip, don't tip, whatever you do, don't tip because they have a social safety net. Okay, so we should hate Robert Mercer before you go and I need you, Howie. This is, we have to keep our listeners focused on the big fights. Tell us. I hate Robert Mercer. Keep in mind, how about like love Jimmy Gomez. Okay. Love Jimmy Gomez and love Bernie, right? Definitely love Bernie. Love Elizabeth Warren. And who do we hate? Republicans and the Democratic, the Democrats who are in the Republican wing of the Democratic party. We should like progressives. We should watch them. I hope everyone is paying some attention to these confirmation hearings and listening to the way Democrats and Republicans examine these witnesses and you can see for yourself who's worthwhile, who deserves a tip and who deserves nothing. Before you go, let me ask you this big question. Is Trump dangerous because we're better as a country? In other words, we didn't know how dangerous Reagan was going to be. We didn't know how dangerous George W. Bush was going to be. Have we wised up this time around? And are we freaking out because now we know? Well, we, when you say we, I mean, I'm going to bet that most of your listeners didn't vote for Trump and you and I certainly didn't vote for Trump. So we knew. I mean, we already knew, but the Democrats, Democrats didn't do didn't, you know, they, they, they, they were in a position where they had a corrupt establishment headed by a monstrosity like Debbie Watson and Schultz who cheated and stole the election on some level and eliminated Bernie Sanders as a contender. You know, there's, there are, you know, it will never know, but there are, there are many, many people who say that Bernie would have wiped Trump out. Yeah. And do we have the numbers yet on who the, the truck, do we have the numbers of the Trump supporters who would have supported Bernie? We don't, it's an unknowable thing because, you know, the argument that the Hillary Clinton people make when you bring that up is Bernie never had the big guns and the giant amounts of money aimed in his direction. So, so they say that any kind of research that you, that you do is irrelevant. And, you know, they, they have a point. You know, I, I happen to think that Bernie would have won, but, but it's not provable. The matter, even in the matter of what you, you know, you can talk to these Trump supporters and they may say, yes, I would have voted for Bernie. Many do. Certainly in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania where, where, where Trump won, that, that, you know, the, the polling shows that Bernie would have won. But the thing is, is that the Clinton people have a point when they say Bernie didn't get attacked the way she, she was attacked. And had Bernie been the candidate, he would have had all that hatred focused on him. And these people wouldn't have voted for him anyway. So it's, it's an unknowable situation. And, and, and I believe, you know, you, I believe that Bernie would have won, but it's not something that is provable. Right. What are you most concerned about in the next two months? What should we be focused on? What should we be watching the Republicans on? Obamacare, obviously will, but Social Security and Medicare. I mean, when I talk about Paul Ryan overreaching, those, I mean, you know, they, they would like to turn back the great society and the New Deal. And they, they've hated all that stuff. I mean, literally, if they could do it, they will get rid of Social Security. They will get rid of Medicare. They will get rid of Medicaid. I mean, that's something to be afraid of. Trump's insane. And he's level to accidentally start a war. I mean, wars very often get started by accident. Everyone knows the story of World War One, which was the, you know, the most horrific war until it's until then that ever happened in the world. And that was a big accident. No one expected that to happen or thought it would happen. There was just one idiot after another idiot making mistakes. And if someone's going to make a mistake, you can count on it being Donald Trump and the, the clowns he has around him, like this guy Flynn, Flynn, whatever his name is. And once, once we rally around the flag, you either with us or against us and then remember 2018, take back the house. That's all that's the only defense we have. That's the only thing we can do is the only way to stop him. Take back the house of representatives in 2018. Okay, Howie Klein is the founder and treasurer of the Blue America pack. He writes down with tyranny. I'm gonna say this again. I grew up. I was told, do what Ralph Nader says, think what Ralph Nader thinks. And that was, that was the right thing to be told. And I'm telling you, do what Howie Klein says. And you'll be back. You're back from Thailand and we need you Howie. Good. Anytime. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for listening. This has been our inauguration episode. I'm just going to ask you to do one thing. Go to DavidFeldenschow.com, copy and paste the link to this episode, put it on Facebook, put it on Twitter, put it on stumble upon, dig, read it, whatever social media you are using. I'm requesting that you spread the link to this episode as far as you possibly can. Copy and paste this link, put an email to your loved ones, post it on Facebook and Twitter, spread the link, spread the information. Go to DavidFeldenschow.com, hit the contact button. If you have any questions or suggestions, I answer all my emails over at DavidFeldenschow.com. Stay strong from the show, Brits Studios in downtown Manhattan. That'll do it for us.