Jimmy Dore Show - 20201224_TJDS_20201225_XmasPodcast

All Episodes

Previous Next

Dec. 24, 2020 - Jimmy Dore Show

01:26:58

20201224_TJDS_20201225_XmasPodcast

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Get ready for an outstanding entertainment program.
	The Jimmy Dore Show.
	Hey, this is Jimmy.
	Who's this?
	This is Brad Pitt.
	Oh, hey, Brad Pitt.
	How's it going, phone man?
	Not bad, Brad.
	How are you?
	I'm doing all right.
	Figured I'd call up and see what you're mad about these days.
	Well, there's quite a lot to be mad about if you're paying, if you are paying attention, Brad.
	I assure you that I am not.
	But go on, give me an example.
	Well, for one, there's this most recent stimulus package.
	What, the government sending cash to people to help keep them afloat?
	Sounds all right to me.
	Corporations are getting billions in bailout money, Brad, during all of this.
	But Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi think that everyday working Americans only need $600.
	Wait, what?
	Mm-hmm.
	$600?
	You gotta be kidding me.
	I am not.
	What the fuck?
	That's ridiculous.
	I know, Brad.
	That's like, that's like one dinner out.
	What the hell are people going to do with $600?
	Hell, I've tipped people $600 before.
	That's very generous of you.
	Well, I'm a generous man.
	I like to look out for people.
	And you know what's crazy?
	Donald Trump now wants to give us $2,000.
	That's interesting.
	If I remember the finances of my salad days correctly, the difference between $600 and $2,000 is the difference between making rent and not making rent.
	That is correct.
	And they do know that people are getting evicted out of their homes, right?
	Yes, they do know that.
	Well, that's just about the most fucked up thing I've ever heard.
	Yeah, no doubt.
	No doubt, sir.
	And Donald Trump, he's on the making rent side of that.
	Yeah.
	Oh, man, that is rich.
	These Democrats must be the most useless bags of shit I've ever seen.
	How bad do you have to fuck up to make Donald Trump look good?
	Yeah, well put, Brad.
	Well put.
	You can't go Republican either, though.
	Those guys are major buttheads.
	I guess you can't do nothing.
	Well, you can vote third party, Brad.
	What, Libertarian?
	Nah, man.
	I've had Vince Vaughan try to sell me on that.
	Sounds like a bunch of bullshit.
	No, no, no, Brad.
	The People's Party.
	What if I told you there was a movement of people trying to create a third party that actually cares about the things Democrats pretend to care about?
	Hmm.
	I do like that idea.
	But that name, man, I don't know.
	People's Party?
	It succinctly describes the movement, though.
	Nah, man, it's got to be catchier than that.
	How about the Bulldogs?
	Yeah.
	Bulldogs.
	It's a political party, Brad, not a minor league baseball team.
	All right.
	The big-ass truck party.
	You know, like a big-ass truck?
	Uh-huh.
	All right.
	I don't know.
	I'm just spitballing here, phone man.
	To be honest with you, I haven't renamed a political party in a long time.
	I'm out of practice.
	Can we count on your support moving forward, Brad?
	Ah, sure.
	Why not?
	Well, hold on.
	Is there anything in your party platform about banging other dudes' wives?
	Like, as a protected right?
	I don't believe so.
	No.
	Well, you may want to look into that.
	You get me squarely on board, and you definitely get cluny.
	All right, phone man, it's been real.
	Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and all your angry-ass listeners.
	Bye, Brad Pitt.
	My name is Jimmy Doer, Bulldogs, big-ass truck.
	Establishment media sets of August fighting.
	So good luck the bullshit we can't afford.
	Watch and see as the jackdogs and jumps the medium and hit some head-on.
	It's the Jimmy Door show.
	Everybody, welcome to this week's Jimmy Door show.
	Let's get to the joke before we get to the jokes.
	Hey, Steve Minushin announced that if Trump signs the latest relief bill, Americans might get their stimulus checks by next week, just in time to hand them over to their creditors the week after that.
	Hey, $600 barely covers a pauper's funeral.
	Sign up for Amazon Prime today.
	A lot of people don't like that bill because it's got a lot of pork.
	But I'm sure a lot of Americans on ventilators will arrest easily now that illegally streaming Adam Sandler's latest movie is a felony.
	Hey, a former aide just came out with charges that she suffered years of sexual harassment from Governor Andrew Cuomo.
	When reached for comment, Cuomo denied the charges and said he plans on killing the story faster than he killed senior citizens.
	True story.
	Joe Biden said he's following Andrew Cuomo's sexual harassment story closely and promises not to appoint him attorney general unless the charges can be proven.
	See that?
	It's a switcheroo.
	Who says Dems never learned anything from 2016?
	Now they're only pushing a Pied Piper cabinet.
	Come on.
	According to the Pentagon, thousands of military personnel and their families around the country are in need of food assistance.
	Biden says he's got a plan to solve this problem in his first 100 days by invading the Sandwich Islands.
	Hey, a market called Pink Doc.
	That's right.
	A market called Pink Dot, famous for its vast delivery network, is now offering robotic deliveries in West Hollywood, California.
	The last time I got a delivery in West Hollywood, I got pink docks all over my nards.
	If you know what I'm talking about.
	Hey, so what's coming up on today's show?
	Well, we're very happy to have one of the great moral thinkers of our time with us, Dr. Cornell West.
	And he's going to tell us why we need to force the vote for Medicare for All now.
	And we speak to modern economics educator Steve Grumbine, and he tells us what money it is and how the economy actually works.
	Plus phone calls from Joe Biden, David Axelrod, Chuck Schumer, Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey, Jeb Bush, and Brad Pitt.
	Plus a lot lot more.
	That's today on the Jimmy Dore Show.
	Hey, David Axelrod is calling me.
	Hello.
	Hello, Jimmy.
	David Axelrod.
	Host of the fabled Ash Files Political Process Podcast.
	I'm also co-host of a new episodic series of spoken word broadcasts called Bust Your Gut with Rod.
	Where former Illinois Governor Rod Blago Blagoyevich and I share our favorite ribbed stories and literally bust your gut.
	Bust your gut with who?
	Lagoyevich.
	Ryan LaGroia.
	Ha ha ha ha.
	Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
	laughs
	You really do have a lot of projects going on at once, David.
	You know that, right?
	Yes, Jimmy.
	Podcasts are a great resource, aren't they?
	A convenient, integrated way to manage personal consumption preferences across multiple source platforms and playback devices.
	Well, that's interesting.
	Is it just me or are you getting horny right now?
	Jesus.
	What?
	As you know, my long and distinguished career as a high-stakes political operative has afforded me, David Axerod, a lifetime of compelling stories.
	As a podcast producer, I am motivated by my wish to express a personal passion while cultivating a community of social network influencers transfixed by my mesmerizing charisma.
	That's great.
	Hey, how many people actually listen to the axe files?
	220.
	On David Axerod's axe files, no one is safe when the axe comes down.
	And guess who faced the axe this week, Jimmy?
	Her name is Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez.
	And her initials, AOC, are literally synonymous with powerful progressive passion.
	Uh-huh.
	Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
	She sat down before the acts and spoke of her journey, the divides in the Democratic Party and country, and more, much more.
	And one day, perhaps, Jimmy Dore will take his sheep before the acts as well.
	What say you, Jamie Dore?
	Oh, I'd love that.
	Have me on anytime, David.
	I'd love it.
	Okay, but if you come on the show, you can't get all mad about Medicare for all.
	Okay, I've got a bladder the size of a hamster.
	If I get too worked up, I'll spritz my tidy wife.
	And what else did you and AOC talk about, David?
	The stark difference in leadership between Joe Biden and Donald Trump when it comes to observing our most hallowed holiday traditions.
	What happened?
	During a recent press conference, President-elect Biden wished everyone a happy Easter at least four times.
	But Easter's in April.
	But he did it four times.
	It's like going from Mr. Potter as president to George Bailey.
	By the way, a tip cultural reference is like peace that keep Democrats from losing 10 house seats instead of only nine.
	And that's just a glimpse of what you'll get when you come before the axe on the axe file.
	Yeah, I'd love to come before the axe.
	I would.
	Until then, I hope your audience will join myself and the fabulous Paul Bergalo for my holiday special.
	It's an axe who rod Christmas, Charlie Rose.
	The always controversial and enigmatic Charlie Rose comes out of semi-retirement to discuss politics and repeatedly walking out of his office bathroom with no pants on.
	We'll share heartwarming stories of Christmas.
	And if you're lucky, Paul might even whip up a fresh batch of my favorite holiday treat, Bagala Nag.
	May you and your very special lady have a highly jolly Christmas.
	Hey, Charlie, hit me with another Bagala Nag, won't you?
	Jesus.
	Bogalinag.
	We have a special guest today.
	It is an honor to have our next guest with us.
	He was with us at Occupy.
	He was with us against the wars.
	He was with us at Standing Rock.
	He was with us at Ferguson.
	He was with us in Charlottesville.
	And he is with us for the fight to force the vote for Medicare for all.
	He's one of the great moral thinkers of our time.
	Please welcome Dr. Cornell West.
	Dr. West, it's a pleasure.
	My brother, you know, I salute you, man.
	You straight out of Chicago.
	That means you got a jumpstart in life.
	And I applaud your artistry, man.
	As a comic, you're putting a smile on Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce's face.
	And then you were forced for good, telling the truth, keeping the pressure on not just the politicians, but the establishment.
	This concentrated power in the Democratic Party or any other party.
	But it's in the name of the people, man.
	See, the thing as an artist, you're able to acknowledge your allegiance is actually to the truth and justice.
	It's not an allegiance to a party.
	That makes all the difference in the world.
	That frees you up, man.
	Frees you up.
	Richard Pryor was a free man.
	Lenny Bruce, free.
	Mom's Mabley, free.
	Jimmy Dore, free.
	I feel that way.
	I appreciate you saying that.
	I've tried to use comedy to forward progressive ideas my whole life.
	I was told not to do it by every agent, manager, and club owner I ever worked for, and it paid off.
	It worked.
	I got, you know, I was able to create space for other people to do the same thing because I succeeded.
	I got a couple of Comedy Central specials, and one was an hour, and it got a lot of attention.
	So I'm glad.
	And so thank you for recognizing that.
	No, that's very important.
	With George Carlin, man, you know, we never forget that, brother.
	Yeah.
	Never.
	Me neither.
	Me neither.
	He inspired me my whole life.
	So we just elected a president, a Delaware Dixiecrat who wrote the 1994 crime bill that created a racist mass incarceration state.
	A man who loudly supported the Iraq war, who co-authored the Patriot Act, who fought against struggling families facing bankruptcy, who was vice president when Wall Street banks were being bailed out, but families were being thrown into the streets.
	Our upcoming president is a champion of the Imperial and the neoliberal projects.
	How do we keep people awake in this era?
	Well, we've got to have enough courage and humility, not in the spirit of self-righteousness, but a humility to say that particular candidate, you're talking about Brother Biden, his one positive virtue was he was better than a neo-fascist gangster named Trump.
	Now that the gangster's on his way out, we have to be just as vigilant in terms of accountability, answerability, responsibility when it comes to Biden and Harris, when it comes to administration of the establishment of the Democratic Party, because we know it's tied to Wall Street.
	We know it's tied to militarism.
	We know that it doesn't want to hit mass incarceration.
	We know it doesn't want to hit the situation, the plight and predicament of working people, so that Wall Street is still very much in the driver's seat of the Democratic Party, just as it was very much in the driver's seat of the Republican Party.
	We're looking for what do ordinary people, everyday people, working people of all colors, all genders, all sexual orientation, all regions, what will we have?
	And that's the fundamental question, brother.
	And that's what you have been highlighting year after year after year.
	And I salute you for it, man.
	I really do.
	It just means, you know, you're going to be misconstrued, misunderstood, attacked, character assassination, and so forth.
	I mean, I say join the club.
	You know, they've been coming at me for decades after decades.
	You got a smile on your face.
	I got a smile on my face because when you're fighting for something bigger than just the next party election or the Next position in the establishment, then you got a different kind of freedom, man, different kind of freedom.
	America needs more free brothers and sisters of all colors.
	And it's often been the artists who've been the vanguard in that regard, the musicians and the comic artists.
	But we need free folk across the board if this democratic project is going to sustain itself, given the very ugly, not just neoliberal, but predatory capitalists and imperial foreign policy in place.
	I'm talking about that high, thick form of militarism that comes out of the Pentagon.
	And I don't care what color the head of the Pentagon is.
	We're talking about moral issues.
	For me, as a revolutionary Christian, we're talking about spiritual issues.
	Human beings being sacred, no matter what country, no matter what color, no matter what gender and sexual orientation they are.
	You know, you talk about being a revolutionary Christian.
	I've always wondered why isn't every Christian a socialist?
	Well, I tell you, most Christians don't want to follow Jesus into that temple and run out the money changers, brother.
	No, no, no, they're on Pontius Pilate's payroll, or they're paying homage to Pontius Pilent.
	You see, Jesus was crucified because he ran out the money chains.
	What was the temple?
	It was the largest edifice this side of Rome.
	It was a bank that had police on the one side.
	For us, it has to do with Wall Street, White House, Pentagon, Hollywood, Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, all of the elite institutions that accommodate themselves to an unjust status quo.
	Now, there's individuals inside of those institutions.
	Because, see, you know, as a Christian, you always recognize every human being is made in the image of God, and therefore they can choose to go another way.
	You can be a member of the elite and choose to be in solidarity with everyday people.
	You know, you can be a white brother and choose to be in solidarity with the black freedom movement.
	I can be a male straight.
	I choose to be in solidarity with my precious trans folk.
	Those are moral and spiritual choices people make.
	But generally speaking, the dominant tendency of an establishment when it comes to elite sites, Jesus understood that.
	Yes.
	They take advantage of the vulnerable.
	They exploit those who they can exploit and then get mad when you try to make them accountable as if it's your fault.
	You say, hey, we just pursuing the truth and seeking justice.
	Hey.
	So that is what I've been.
	It's crazy.
	I never thought as a comedian, our whole thing is we've always ripped on politicians.
	They're like the punching bag.
	And first, all of a sudden, right now, it's not allowed anymore.
	I'm getting all this hate and grief, not because I'm yelling at waitresses or bus drivers, but because I'm yelling at politicians, the most powerful people in the country, if not the world, in the middle of a crisis, I'm yelling.
	My hair is on fire, so I'm yelling like it is.
	And people think that's rude.
	People call you sexist and you have rage-filled rants and all this stuff.
	And who am I doing that?
	I'm at the people who are denying us health care.
	That's who I'm raging at.
	Is that wrong?
	Exactly.
	No, no, no, brother.
	You remember that line 24A in Plato's Apology when Plato writes about Socrates.
	He says, parahesia, P-A-R-R-E-H-E-S-I-A, fearless speech, frank speech, unintimidated speech, plain speech in the face of the powerful.
	He says, that's the cause of my unpopularity.
	Now, of course, Socrates was convicted for death.
	Yes.
	He condemned the death and drank the hemlock.
	But Aristophanes, one of the great, you know, creators of the comic genre, right?
	Always cutting against the grain.
	Critiques of war, critiques of patriarchal power, critiques of economic elites.
	That's the role of free people who engage in fearless speech.
	And often it is the artist, and often it's the comic artists.
	It's just the fact that like Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, look at Mark Twain's critique of imperialism.
	Look at Mark Twain's critique of capitalism.
	He was the greatest comic writer in the history of the American empire.
	And we haven't got the mom's Mayly yet.
	Right, right.
	We haven't got the mom's Mabli yet.
	She was a great comic artist, and her critique was devastating.
	Even of the black bourgeoisie, mom's maybe had a critique of because she knew the black middle class could accommodate itself to establishments and not have the kind of compassion for poor black and poor working class as they moved into the upper echelons of the society.
	So it's just truth in general, is like that, brother.
	So how do you explain intellectuals and self-styled intellectuals who always talk about the working class and the poor, but who don't know how working people talk and what their daily struggles are or why they're angry?
	When will intellectuals stop talking about the working class in condescending ways that make leftist politics repulsive to them?
	Well, I mean, part of it is a complicated issue.
	I mean, the problem is the United States is such an anti-intellectual culture.
	And so to opt to be an intellectual means you're going to be full of a lot of anxieties and even self-doubts of how you fit in.
	And so the question becomes then, in order to deal with those anxieties, a lot of intellectuals create little silos that reinforce an elitism, that reinforce an arrogance and a haughtiness and a condescension toward ordinary people.
	But that's a sign of their insecurity.
	That's a sign of their own anxiety.
	Okay.
	You see what I mean?
	If you're secure about yourself, you don't need to go around putting other folk down.
	Right.
	You know what I mean?
	That's true for white supremacists, true for male supremacists, right?
	You and I know, you know, we tell the brothers, you don't need to put his sisters down if you're really secure about yourself.
	Give up your toxic masculinity if you're really secure about yourself.
	Well, so it is with intellectuals.
	Intellectuals create their little internal world to reinforce each other and therefore become tied into that context and they'll become multi-contextual and connect with others and recognize, hey, there's a whole lot of wisdom outside of the academy.
	Yes.
	There's a whole lot of insight, a whole lot of courage.
	I've been blessed to teach in prisons for 37 years.
	So I'm reminded all the time.
	If I move from Harvard to the prisons, I'm dealing with some magnificent human beings in both contexts.
	But one context is tied to the establishment and its dominant orientation.
	And the other context is dealing with the massive suffering of poverty and decrepit schools and indecent housing and not enough jobs with a living wage and don't enough assets to health care, which ought to be a fundamental right.
	And I'm not talking about the lip service of neoliberal Democratic Party folk.
	All of them talk about health care as a right.
	Do they really mean it?
	That becomes a challenge.
	But I'm trying to generate a little bit of sympathy for the intellectuals because you see in America, Americans love, we love intelligence because it generates big cash.
	But we don't like intellect because intellect raises questions about the basic assumptions of a system.
	It doesn't just try to fit in the system.
	Intelligence is tied to success, making it in the system.
	Intellect, sitting back, raises issues about the system and says, wait a minute, there's an Injustice here.
	There's a deep unfairness here.
	There's a willful ignorance here.
	There is a callousness here.
	There's an indifference here.
	Rabbi Heschel taught us what?
	Indifference, the evil is more evil than evil itself.
	Because indifference to evil creates a whole way of being, a whole way of looking at the world.
	So you actually don't ever get a chance to see the degree to which you are accommodating to a status quo.
	That's a different kind of thing.
	It reinforces the illusion that somehow you such a force for good.
	No, we don't want simulacra.
	We don't want copies.
	We want the real thing.
	This is an Ashwood Simpson moment.
	You remember Ashwood Simpson?
	Yes.
	Nothing like the real thing.
	Give me something real.
	And nothing like the real thing, baby.
	Baby.
	Ain't nothing like the real thing.
	Ain't nothing like the real thing.
	Don't tell me.
	Oh, that's Tammy and Marvin.
	Hey.
	Hey.
	Wow, that was fun.
	That brings me back.
	So we're talking about you and I are joining forces with some other people.
	We're trying to get this force the vote happening.
	And so there is a forcethevote.org right now.
	And so what's happening, and it's all brought to even more of a head today because we found out today that Nancy Pelosi did another shifty move and screwed a progressive out of her seat on a committee.
	And that progressive was AOC.
	So she, yeah.
	I didn't know that.
	I didn't know that.
	Tell me a little bit more about what happened, man.
	Yeah, so she's going to cover in a second, but she got shafted out of her committee of the ENC committee.
	And that Nancy Pelosi did her slate of candidates.
	She left one spot open for New York, and that was her signal to go.
	And so who got that?
	The blue dog Democrat got it.
	The one who threatened not to vote for her got it.
	What's her name?
	Rice?
	The person's name, Rice, who got it?
	And yes.
	So it's in my next.
	I have it loaded into the show coming up next.
	So she got shafted off that committee she was on.
	And so now if before the argument was that we have, well, we're trying to get committee seats.
	Well, now you don't even get them because you played nice and the person who played hardball got your seat.
	So now there's no reason.
	So what we're proposing is that the progressives in Congress, there's now like real progressives, like members of the squad.
	There's like seven, eight of them.
	That's all we need to stop Nancy Pelosi from becoming speaker again.
	And so they should demand that Nancy Pelosi agree to a Medicare for all vote in the middle of a deadly pandemic before we give our vote to her.
	And if she doesn't do that, then someone else is going to become speaker.
	That's how you play hardball.
	That's how that's how the person who just got AOC's spot on that committee, that's how she did it.
	Kathleen Rice.
	Kathleen Rice.
	So that's yeah.
	Kathleen Rice got her spot.
	So now, so what we're telling people to do is go to force the vote.org and sign our petition.
	And that's the, so the idea is very simple.
	The simplest they could, they have the power to hold their vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker until she agrees to bring Medicare for all.
	But some people, there's a lot of things.
	People say it won't pass.
	I want to see people vote against healthcare in the middle of a deadly pandemic and a depression.
	I want to see Democrats do that because they're not going to do that.
	And if they do that, then we run on it in 2022 and then we take, then we get Medicare.
	So the whole point they keep saying is that it's never the right time for a vote for Medicare for all.
	Is it Dr. West?
	Is there some magical time in the future?
	They don't know when, when it's coming, but it's never coming.
	It never is going to come.
	How it happens is you create space for it to happen by forcing politicians' hand.
	Isn't that what you do?
	Oh, that's how you put that pressure on her, brother.
	We demand the right to vote, as Sister Marianne Williamson says, and absolutely right.
	That demanding that right means you're bringing tremendous power and pressure to bear to keep politicians accountable.
	But what happens is that you can imagine, you know, a number of our progressive brothers and sisters of all colors who are in the Democratic Party recognize that they're between a rock and a hard place.
	Because if they have allegiance to the corporate wing of the party, if they have allegiance to the neoliberal elites in the party, then they can't hold on to their progressive sensibilities, their progressive policies.
	If they're too progressive, then the neoliberals and the establishment Democratic Party come down on them and push them further to the margins.
	And we're simply saying we come along and say we are free of our allegiance to the Democratic Party establishment.
	We're free of our allegiance to Nancy Pelosi.
	We can speak the truth.
	We can bear witness to a justice.
	And most importantly, we can make sure that our fellow citizens across the board, in fact, have a recognition of their humanity and decency by having access to health care.
	Vast majority of our fellow citizens support it.
	Majority of Republicans even support Medicare for all.
	Yes.
	So this is not some kind of subversive operation that we're trying to promote as if we're part of a lunatic fringe.
	It's just that big pharmaceutical companies, those big insurance companies, they've got a stranglehold.
	In the same way, corporate power has a stranglehold on the flow of public policy.
	And that needs to be disclosed.
	That needs to be revealed.
	And that's one of the roles that we have, brother.
	And I don't want you to ever get discouraged.
	I'm not going to get discouraged bringing this power and pressure to bear.
	Sometimes it has a chance of a snowball in hell.
	We do it because it's right.
	We do it because it's just.
	We do it because we have a caring concern for the vulnerable folk.
	And sometimes it looks like we're going to win.
	We do it.
	We win, but we don't stop.
	We remain as vigilant after our victory as before, because we got a long way to go before we get a chance to affirm the dignity of our fellow citizens, especially poor and working class citizens, no matter what color, no matter what state agenda.
	So I AOC advocated for causing a ruckus and making people uncomfortable inside the Democratic Party.
	That's what she said.
	And how do we make people more comfortable with making politicians uncomfortable?
	Because a lot of people are uncomfortable doing that.
	What do we do?
	That's a good question.
	We know it just by example.
	It's by example.
	You know, we're the kind of creatures, we human beings, that we would all rather see sermons than hear sermons, which means that we have to exemplify what we're talking about.
	You know, we could act like we're so critical all we want in the abstract.
	But if we don't come through with our bodies, with our energies, with our clout, with our whatever gravitas we have with our authority, then people know we're just talking.
	And so, you know, you as an artist, give you all.
	This is an example.
	Myself as a writer, I give an example.
	This is where I want to go, and this is what I'm willing to put on the line.
	And it's by examples.
	Now, of course, it's not isolated individuals.
	That's what movements are all about.
	When we have a whole wave of folk coming together, lifting their voices.
	You know, I come from a people, black people.
	Our anthem is what?
	Lift every voice.
	It's not lift every echo.
	Most of our politicians are echoes.
	Most of them are tied to big money.
	Most of them tied to the flow of cash.
	Most of them are concerned about their next election.
	Most of them are concerned about recognition.
	No, no, no.
	Those are the echoes.
	We're talking about voices.
	Democracies are predicated on voices.
	That's what jazz is all about.
	You find your voice.
	You never heard Charlie Parker tell anybody to find your echo.
	You never heard Sarah Vaughn say, find your echo.
	to Dinah Washington.
	She said, find your voice, girl.
	Because I got my voice.
	And Sarah got a voice.
	So it is in life.
	You find your voice.
	It's like your fingerprint.
	It's all yours.
	It's going to go with you when the worms get your body.
	But when you alive, lift your voice out of courage and compassion such that you can bring pressure to bear on status quo.
	And this is just one way of doing it.
	Here we have to bring pressure even on our progressive brothers and sisters.
	We want to get them to see that even though we know they represent the best of a Democratic party, that party itself has a certain rot at the center of it.
	And that's corporate power, that's big money, and it reinforces an arrogance and a haughtiness and a condescension thinking that they can say and do.
	Look how Brother Biden talked to the civil rights leaders.
	Oh, my God.
	Did you hear that?
	God.
	He's talking to them like they're children, like somehow they just have to cow tow and be deferential to him.
	And they sat there and took it.
	And they took it.
	Wait a minute.
	They took it.
	Can you imagine John Cole Trans turned over his grave?
	I lifted my voice to talk about love supreme, justice of the form of love in public.
	And you sit there and take that?
	It's the tone.
	It's the way in which you go about something, let alone the content.
	And that's what we're talking about.
	You see, once you get adjusted to that way of being in the world, you just open to the highest bidding.
	You're just for sale.
	And we live in a society in which everything's for sale, everybody's for sale, and that reinforces depression, that reinforces people's sense of paralysis and powerlessness.
	And we say, no, uh-uh, we just coming off the largest protest move of demonstration in the history of the country this summer.
	People were raising their voices.
	We're going to keep that momentum going.
	Brother Door is going to do it in his Chicago-like, comic, powerful, visionary smile.
	I'm going to do it in my Chicago, my chocolate side city orientation here at Harvard.
	And we are in this together, my brother.
	Force the vote.org.
	Go to force the vote.org.
	And we also, we want you to go there, sign our petition, pass it around.
	It's to make that to let these people know how much power they actually have because they have a lot of power right now.
	They have a lot of leverage.
	And this isn't the only time that they're going to have it.
	But this is the most important time right now that they have it.
	And if we don't get this Medicare for all vote, it might not be till 2025 before we even get another chance.
	So there's never a wrong time to do the right thing.
	And now is the time in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
	There's never a better time to have a Medicare for All vote.
	Don't listen to people gaslight you saying that this is a bad time.
	We have to wait or I'm not the right or the right people aren't pushing it.
	Well, here's now Dr. Cornell West has signed on.
	Justin Jackson is signed on.
	There's lots of people signing on.
	In fact, Movement for a People's Party is you're joining the Advisory Council, right?
	Moving forward.
	My dear brother, Nick Brown.
	Indeed, indeed, indeed.
	I'm blessed to be on that advisory counter.
	We've got to break the back of this two-party duopoly.
	Both of them tied to Wall Street.
	Both of them tied to big money.
	Both of them tied to Pentagon militarism.
	Look at how both parties vote for the military budget.
	Now, think, you know, Brother Bernie's calling for 10%.
	That's very important.
	Barbara Lee is concerned about it.
	But see, those are still just voices in the wilderness.
	Voices in the wilderness.
	And as you know, Brother Door, that, you know, I'm just a little small part of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
	What did Martin Luther King Jr. talk about?
	The ways in which militarism, racism of any kind, racism of any kind against black folk, against brown folk, against Jews, against Catholics, against Arabs, against Palestinians, against Ethiopians, against Watermelons, racism of any kind, poverty.
	Thank God for William Barber.
	Thank God for Sister Theora Harris and the Poor People's Campaign.
	And then militarism, then materialism, which is a spiritual condition, though, brother.
	And this, as an artist, you understand the role of the spirit.
	You see, once materialism sets in, so many human beings are willing to do anything for carrots, anything for money, anything for inclusion, anything for a pat on the back.
	So Martin Luther King Jr. understood all four of those sucking the energies out of democracy.
	And that's my tradition.
	And I'm going to be faithful unto death to that tradition, brother.
	Just like you're going to be faithful unto death to the legacy of the great comic artist, man.
	And we're just joining forces to get people some Medicare for all.
	Absolutely.
	And if not now, when?
	If not here, where?
	If not, me, who?
	And so that's what we're doing.
	We're doing everything we can.
	We're trying to raise pressure.
	You know, politicians don't do anything unless they're pushed.
	Politicians don't do anything that's hard unless you push them.
	And I'm encouraging all the other independent media progressives to rake them over the coals and make them afraid of you, not know that they can count on your protection.
	They need to be afraid of you, just like FDR said, who was the greatest progressive president ever, said, hey, you got to make me do it.
	I agree with you, but you got to make me do it.
	So we got to make them do it.
	So we got to make them afraid not to do it.
	We can't pretend politicians are not our friends.
	I cannot stress this enough.
	Politicians are not our friends.
	When Bernie says that Joe Biden is his good friend, that is not true.
	Joe Biden will throw Bernie under a bus in a second.
	He does it every five seconds.
	And right now, he's denying him the Department of Labor spot, right?
	Bernie was pushing for the Department of Labor spot, but sources say that Bernie is willing to settle for it.
	Go fuck yourself as usual.
	So here we go.
	Your point about FDR is very important, brother, because as you know, he himself and all of his progressiveness refused to break the back of Jim Crow in the South, the American apartheid system in the South.
	Why?
	He told A. Phillip Randolph that.
	Make me do it.
	We didn't have forces strong enough to break the back of Jim Crow.
	So we go from 1932 all the way up until 1944, five.
	What?
	Steel locked into Jim Crow as he's also generating some progressive legislation on other fronts.
	Can you imagine Medicare for all having to wait decade after decade the way black people had to wait to break the back of Jim Crow because we didn't have enough people who made politicians do it?
	What a parallel.
	Yes.
	I mean, America.
	First time is tragedy, second time, deeper tragedy.
	So what I'm saying is Americans have been tolerating health care and justice for 100 years now.
	Have Americans been in a prison by an indefensible health care system for so long that they can't even imagine Being free, is that a problem?
	Well, I think part of it is, though, man, we can never underestimate the power of these pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies.
	You saw what happened to Brother Barack Obama.
	You know, he punted on second down, spineless, no backbone.
	They're all coming in, talking all this talk about everybody's gonna have access to health care.
	And he and Rom Emmanuel and others, now that's part of your Chicago connection.
	That's the other side of Chicago that they just caved in so quickly because they wanted something.
	And what did they do?
	They adopted the Heritage Foundation Republican model that Romney had already established in Massachusetts.
	They cast it on a national level.
	They did, in fact, allow for 20 million, no doubt.
	That became a bigger market for the pharmaceutical companies, for the private insurance companies, and millions still had no asset, as is the case now, and still tied to employment rather than being citizens.
	So, here again, Woody had a major opportunity, missed opportunity.
	And here they still break dancing as if that was some great, magnificent, progressive legislation.
	I say, get off the symbolic crackpipe, please.
	We were born at night, but not last night.
	We have a love for poor people.
	We're following Jesus into the temple.
	Run out those money changers.
	Disclose that greed.
	Lay bare that indifference.
	That's what we do as brothers and sisters who are concerned about working people.
	Now, you talked about Barack Obama and the promise that wasn't met of Barack Obama.
	And people don't even know what his record was.
	People don't know that he made the banks bigger.
	They wanted him to break them up.
	That he made the Bush tax cuts permanent.
	He made sure the bankers got their bonuses while he kicked 5.1 million families out of their homes during a similar economic downturn.
	He opened the Arctic to drilling twice.
	He built those cages that those immigrants were put in.
	He'd gas immigrants at the border.
	He deported more Hispanics than all the presidents combined since 1890.
	People have no idea that this was his record.
	And he took us from two wars to seven.
	And they did Libya and he dropped more bombs.
	And they ran out of, you know, Barack Obama dropped more bombs than George Bush.
	So I could go on and on like this all day long, but now his vice president is in charge, Dr. West.
	Now, how do we keep the left from going back to sleep and not being awake for all the crimes that we know are coming?
	And he's going to start at least one or two more wars.
	And we should add, of course, those drones, old man.
	Yes.
	Brother Bush dropped 45 drones on folk, and those were war crimes.
	Brother Obama dropped 563 drones on folk, including innocent folk like Bush.
	Those are war crimes.
	With a Nobel Prize in peace, okay.
	Those are war crimes.
	Same is true at AFRICOM and Africa, an expansion of that, and the assassination of American citizens without due trial.
	I mean, Republicans, libertarians, you don't kill people you have political disagreements with.
	I disagree with the Klan.
	I don't believe in going out killing the Klan because I have state power.
	Well, these people are terrorists.
	Klan's terrorists, too.
	You don't do that if you're concerned with the rule of law, you see.
	But, of course, we have to acknowledge now.
	You know, Brother Barack Obama, he's brilliant.
	He's poised.
	He's got a magnificent wife and magnificent kids.
	And as the highest-level exemplar of black success in a white supremacist society, it was hard to criticize him.
	That's why I was consistent because I know black folk.
	You know, I know black people who are saintly.
	I know black folk who are gangsters.
	We're human beings like everybody else.
	And from a moral and spiritual point of view, I'm just trying to tell the truth.
	So a lot of black folk didn't want to say a word because he represents black success.
	And it is to be president of the U.S. Empire is the highest level of black success ever experienced in the country by anybody.
	But I'm not about your success.
	I'm about greatness.
	If my Bible tells me he or she is greatest among you will be your servant.
	My Bible tells me he or she who aspires to the highest level of moral and spiritual excellence will be he or she who's willing to tell the truth the way you've been trying to do.
	Bear witness to justice the way Martin and Malcolm and Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker and John Coltrane and Curtis Mayfield and Nina Samone.
	We can go on and on.
	Gil Scott Heron, those are the ones who are great.
	Not the successful ones.
	You can use your success for greatness.
	That's different.
	But if you're successful and then accommodate to militarism, can't say a word about poverty, don't hit mass incarceration, side with Wall Street, the meeting where he says, I stand between you and the pitchforks.
	That's what he told 13 Ed of Wall Street in March of 2009.
	I stand between you and the pitchforks.
	I want you to know I am with you.
	I will protect you.
	How many Wall Street executives went to jail?
	Not one.
	But let a poor, a working class brother and sister, especially on the chocolate side, get caught with drugs.
	They're going straight to jail.
	You see, so he reinforced the worst.
	It's no accident.
	You got a Black Lives Matter movement under a black president, black attorney general, and black Homeland Security Cabinet Secretary.
	All that black formal power didn't translate into enhancing the lives of precious black folk on the street on the block.
	That's why we put pressure on politicians, Brother Door.
	That's why it's important for you to keep raising your voice.
	If you got shout, shout.
	You got to sing a song, a little Ashman Simpson, sing a little Asher and Simpson.
	If you got to crack your beautiful jokes that you do, crack those jokes.
	Use whatever gifts you have to make sure you are focusing on the least of these.
	Well, I really appreciate your support.
	I appreciate your eloquence and your moral leadership.
	It's amazing.
	I'm really honored to have you on.
	I want to remind everybody: we're joining forces with a movement for a people's party.
	We are forcethevote.org.
	So if you go right there, force the vote.org, there it is.
	Go to force the vote.org, sign the petition.
	There's going to be more people coming out, letting you know that they're on board for this.
	More people that you know, more people that are in the spotlight, more leaders and activists are going to be coming out, joining with Cornell, joining with me, joining with Nick Brana, Justin Jackson.
	We're all coming together to push this right now because there's a moment right now that could happen.
	And if in the middle of a deadly pandemic, this is the time for a Medicare fall vote.
	And in fact, all we're doing is pressuring the people who ran on getting this to do it.
	And they can do it right now.
	So I really think this can happen.
	I really do.
	This is how you create moments.
	And you think this, I mean, you've seen way more than I have.
	You think this could happen, right?
	Oh, there's no doubt about it.
	And you see, the thing about history is so mysterious.
	It's so unpredictable.
	You never know what's going to be the catalyst.
	Who would have thought that it'd be brother Floyd?
	Be the catalyst for that kind of magnificent response here and around the world.
	You never know.
	You just keep fighting.
	You keep bearing witness and you keep being true to the best of who you are.
	Keep your integrity and love at the center Of it, and then boom, it takes off in an unprecedented way.
	Well, let's fingers crossed.
	I want to say thanks again for coming on.
	This has been great.
	You're welcome on the show anytime, and I look forward to working for you to try to give people some health care.
	Dr. Cornell West, thank you so much for your time.
	It's been fantastic.
	Salute you, my brother.
	Salute you, my brother.
	Thank you.
	Oh, it's Master of the Senate, Chuck Schumer's on the phone.
	Hello.
	Happy holidays to you, my good man.
	This is a momentous occasion I share with you today, Jimmy.
	I hereby demand you addendum my moniker from Master of the Senate to Master of Relief.
	Wow, Master of Relief.
	Wow.
	Yes, for I have achieved what many naysayers called unthinkable, unimaginable, and fucking stupid.
	The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 on you're going to love it, young man.
	I don't know, Senator.
	It sounds like a lot of crap to me.
	But Ilhan Omar gave me a well done.
	Yeah, I saw that.
	I don't care.
	So you hate women now, too, huh?
	I just think the whole thing's crap.
	Oh, my lord.
	Have you even read all 6,000 pages of it?
	Have you, Chuck?
	Fuck no, it either is ill hand.
	Isn't that what interns are for?
	Mine are really good at summarizing terribly thought-out garbage because they used to work at CAA.
	You only gave Congress a few hours to read it before voting on it, didn't you?
	I know.
	It was a Christmas miracle.
	Nancy Mitch and I spent days making the bestest holiday package ever.
	It's a reminder that when we work together and perceive her and sacrifice for one another, nothing, nothing is beyond our capacity as a nation.
	The same resilience and innovation and fortitude that saw our country through its darkest hour has emerged once again.
	And now, if I may, I would like to present to you, the American people, this check for $600.
	What the fuck?
	I know, right?
	For your listeners, I'd like to point out that I'm holding up one of those giant novelty size checks they used on lottery shows and whatnot.
	Wow, Chuck.
	Wow.
	Tell me about it.
	Like Speaker Pelosi said, this $600 check is significant.
	Check this out.
	It's going to blow your mind, Jimmy.
	Did you know $600 equals 60,000 pennies?
	Literally.
	Imagine 60,000 pennies.
	I can't.
	It's like trying to imagine the vastness of space.
	What's beyond the solar system or even beyond our galaxy?
	We all know there are other galaxies, but other galaxies within galaxies, within other galaxies?
	That's big.
	Do universes exist within universes?
	Are they side by side?
	Does time slow down when a thousand pennies are next to three or even four thousand pennies?
	How many pennies are there in a nickel or even a dime?
	Are we a universe parallel to others?
	The answer is unknown.
	What kind of impact do you think it'll have?
	The whole thing seems structured for corporations and rich people.
	Oh, don't be stupid.
	It's for racehorses, too.
	I love animals, Jimmy.
	What do you think would happen to all those innocent horses if they were just left out to pasture?
	Nobody hopping on them, hitting them with sticks, and running them around in circles and arenas full of screaming people.
	You want them to get lazy and fat?
	You want them hanging around with other horses that might be bad influences and turn them on to drugs and rock and roll?
	I never thought of it that way, Chuck.
	That's because you're a small thinker, Jimmy.
	Don't forget we're a big tent party, and parties shouldn't include people who don't make enough to pay taxes at the expense of those who refuse to pay taxes.
	It's just not fair.
	But what the hell are people going to do with $600 when they're jobless and dead and facing eviction, Chuck?
	We strongly urge people to really think hard about this windfall and use it wisely and responsibly.
	This money is designed to tide you over until you can find a third job.
	Already have a third job?
	Great.
	Then why not look upon this Christmas miracle as your medical bridge liquidity?
	Medical bridge liquidity, Chuck?
	Instead of getting that dental bridge, you can now go out and buy a blender to liquefy your food.
	That sounds great.
	Do you have any final advice on how to use your miracle money?
	Just don't spend it on fireworks and whiskey like last time.
	Read page 3020.
	It's now a felony.
	Thanks for talking with me, Jimmy.
	Anything else before my servants massage my feet and rub me down with olive oil?
	Yeah, can you tell Nancy to hold a vote for Medicare for all?
	Yes, right after we set up a base on Mars, I promise.
	Space Force.
	Hey, you know, we no longer have an Amazon link because we're not doing that.
	We're not playing that game.
	But here's another great way you can help support the show: you become a premium member.
	We give you a couple of hours of premium bonus content every week, and it's a great way to help support the show.
	You can do it by going to JimmyDoorCompany.com, clicking on join premium.
	It's the most affordable premium program in the business, and it's a great way to help put your thumb back in the eye of the bastards.
	Thanks for everybody who was already a premium member.
	And if you haven't, you're missing out.
	We give you lots of bonus content.
	Thanks for your support.
	I love the holiday season because I always get festive messages left on my answering machine.
	First up is Liam Nisa.
	Jimmy, go see my new action thriller, Retribution.
	It's about a devoted father forced by extraordinary circumstances to save his family against a psychotic madman.
	It's nothing like any of my previous films like Taken or the Commuter, because this time it takes place in a car.
	And a commuter was on a train.
	Right now I'm filming the marksman.
	I play a marksman named Jim, who was forced by extraordinary circumstances to defend the lives of his family against a psychotic madman.
	After that, I'm only doing credit card commercials because I've really had it with a shit.
	Merry Christmas and beware of hard powder.
	Ah, let's see who else is next.
	Oh, next up is Joe Biden.
	Call me.
	Merry Christmas, fat.
	Yeah, you fat.
	It's Joe Biden.
	Hunter and I and my other son, what's his name?
	His name's Jim Biden.
	Good guy.
	Didn't do nothing wrong, so stop it.
	Look, here's the thing.
	I'll tell you, so listen up for once.
	Fisley, there's entirely too much focus on the $600 seven-shell list checks.
	There is exciting $600.
	Stimulus cares.
	Checks good for people.
	The people.
	People of Christmas Merry Pernie.
	And happy fun, good cheer.
	But the job's far over.
	It's only starting.
	You hear that?
	The beginning's nearly over.
	Where's my muffin, you fucking Nazi?
	Hey, who's next?
	Oh, it's Noam Chomsky.
	Jimmy, this is Noam Chomsky.
	Remember a couple of months ago when I told everyone that once Joe Biden won the election, we could move him to the left.
	Yeah, I remember when you said that.
	I do.
	This is a message.
	Well, I think I might have been seriously, seriously wrong about that.
	We're all totally fucked.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	Thanks, Chomsky.
	Anyway, I really don't.
	I don't know where my head was at when I said all that stuff, but I'm totally centered now and at peace with myself.
	I found the colors of my chakras and all I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and I'm fine.
	Peace out.
	And oh, here, Kevin Spacey called.
	You don't like your position in life.
	Well, guess what?
	I don't care.
	You think you deserve more than $600 this Christmas?
	I don't care.
	You're bored because the only thing left to watch on Netflix are Korean rom-coms.
	I don't care.
	You don't care about me not caring.
	Well, let me tell you something.
	That's when I care.
	Marry whatever assholes.
	Jesus.
	Oh, look who it is.
	Herman Kane.
	Hi.
	This is Herman Kane.
	I think I finally figured out what in the heck happened.
	Somebody put broccoli on my darn pizza.
	Broccoli is not a pizza topping.
	Oh, and I never wore a mask.
	Despite all that, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn't change a darn thing.
	Yeah.
	Just a heads up.
	I'm coming back February 2nd as a zombie out of government regulations.
	Oh, Jeb Bush calls.
	Hey!
	Did you hear that that Dr. Fauci guy gave the vaccine to Santa Claus?
	Santa Claus isn't real, is he?
	Hello?
	He's not even an essential worker, for goodness sake.
	Hello, is anyone there?
	Anyway, come on.
	The last time I called this number, you picked up, but now I get your dumb old answering machine.
	Golly gosh, this really sucks.
	Stuck all alone here in Dad's Mansion on Walker's Point with my family all of servants.
	So depressing.
	I want to be governor again.
	Because back then, people paid attention to me because I had power.
	Can I have your power?
	Ow, I'll bump my knee.
	Now you have to bump your knee, too.
	Hello?
	I know you're there because I still have CIA clearance.
	I almost became a president.
	Okay, fine.
	Whatever.
	Hello?
	Hello.
	Oh, God damn.
	Noam Chomsky again.
	This is No Me again.
	I've been totally shredding on my eight-string TV with two blistering, totally kick-ass quantum humbuckers.
	If you feel like it, come over to my pad and we'll hot jam some Van Halen tunes.
	Just have a seat around my amp, you know, and then do your thing.
	That's where all the pussy is later.
	Jesus.
	Harrison Ford.
	Hey, this is Harrison Ford.
	Hey, Harrison.
	I'm caught.
	This is a message.
	God damn it.
	I'm calling about something.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Bye.
	Yeah.
	He is the co-founder of Real Progress and Action.
	That's a non-profit economic education organization.
	He is the host of the Macro and Cheese podcast.
	He is the advocate and educator on modern monetary theory.
	We are pleased to have him with us.
	It's Steve Grumbine.
	Hi, Steve.
	How are you?
	Hey, Jimmy.
	Thanks.
	Thanks for having me on, man.
	Thank you so much for being here.
	Tell the audience what neoliberalism is and why neoliberalism is a failure.
	Could you do that?
	Absolutely.
	You know, neoliberalism started in the 60s.
	You know, basically, it was a mass push to get rid of the government sector, to get rid of the public space and make everything private.
	And they've been doing this non-stop since the 60s, 70s.
	Once Reagan got in office, it went in overdrive, eliminating the concept of the public purpose, eliminating the concept of public money, eliminating the concept of the public good, and transferring it instead to the private sector, to the capitalists, to the speculators and investor class.
	And largely, it's all about taking public space and eliminating it and turning it into private profit.
	So, yeah, exactly.
	Okay, that's, and of course, we know, so they try to inject a profit motive into everything into our culture, into every part of our culture, including places like education and healthcare where they should not be.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Yes.
	I remember Barack Obama's big idea with Arnie Duncan as his secretary of education.
	Arnie Duncan, by the way, you know how many days he spent in the classroom?
	Zero.
	Arnie Duncan was the head of education, spent zero days in the classroom, and his big idea was race to the top.
	You remember that?
	You had schools compete for education dollars, and the one that did the best on the test got the most money.
	Well, the ones who do the worst are the ones who need the more fucking money.
	They have it exactly backwards.
	That's called a race to the bottom.
	So that's what neoliberalism is in a nutshell.
	It's privatizing every piece of public space, every piece of public good.
	And there's no such thing as anything for the public.
	You have to have a profit motive.
	And if there's a profit motive, that means it's going to be somehow better and Christ-like.
	Jesus Christ likes a profit motive because socialism makes you lazy and that's a sin, right?
	That's just bunk, man.
	Absolutely.
	But that's what they're saying, right?
	That is the going story, right?
	Yes, that's the whole thing.
	So if you see somebody shitting on a poor person On Twitter, and you go to their bio on Twitter, it'll say Christian, because they think if you government shouldn't help you, and if you're poor, it's because you're lazy.
	That's the narrative that the right-wing neoliberals have strown for our Strode.
	Is that a word?
	Strowden.
	I said Stroden.
	Yeah, you did.
	I was going to say Struden, and I'm like, what's the past tense?
	Is the past perfect?
	It's Strowden.
	I knew a guy named Ricky Strode.
	Anyway.
	So we've had economists like Stephanie Kelton on the show.
	Explain to someone who's never heard what modern monetary theory is before.
	Can you explain it so somebody can who doesn't have much economic background, somebody like me, what it is and what it reveals about how our economy actually works?
	So, you know, bottom line is that back in 1972, Richard Nixon removed us from the Bretton Woods Accord.
	And, you know, it's basically a world global gold standard that he removed us from.
	And at that point in time, the people that understood money had, we had years of knowing this before.
	This is how we won World War II.
	If you want to say we won World War II.
	This is how we were able to fire up all the factories, fire up all the war machine, fire up the national attention to making the war machine work.
	And we were able to keep the factories going at 100%.
	The federal government was spend, spend, spend to take care of getting, you know, defeating Nazism, so to speak.
	And, you know, that very nature was forgotten.
	We long since forgotten.
	It wasn't an accident.
	You know, the Mount Pelerin Society and all the right-wingers, you know, the libertarian scourge of Milton Friedman and others, Chicago school, you name it, in a very, very coordinated attack, sought to eliminate this concept of public money.
	And what modern monetary theory does is helps us understand what has fundamentally changed in our finance system, not just our finance system, but really around the world.
	It's everywhere.
	It's not just the U.S. And you can tell that what had happened in 1972 in the U.S. was what happens with pretty much all fiat currencies that are no longer pegged to a commodity.
	All the textbooks, unfortunately, are written in gold standard lingo.
	It's all the neoclassical textbooks.
	So we've been operating as if money is some scarce resource that we can devalue, that we can do all these crazy things with that were really gold standard operational ideas.
	And you had a pie of gold, basically, and you printed so much money against that gold.
	And when you printed more money against that gold, well, naturally, your slices of the pie got smaller and smaller.
	And that was the quote-unquote devaluing of money.
	Well, since that's no longer the case, we no longer have a pie of gold.
	Now it's based on the real resources and productive capacity of whatever nation is running a free-floating fiat currency, like the United States, like Canada, like the UK, like Australia.
	So just define what, so fiat currency, define what that means.
	It means just by decree, it's the state's money.
	It's state money.
	So it means, for instance, that the U.S. federal government can print money, but the state of California cannot.
	That's exactly correct.
	So the federal government, when they can print their own money, that's called fiat currency, right?
	Yes.
	I mean, well, all governments create their own currency.
	Now, whether or not it's back to gold, it's still fiat.
	It's just back to a commodity.
	So really, at the end of the day, what modern monetary theory starts with is an understanding of what money is.
	And what money is is basically a tax credit.
	It's a unit of measure, like an inch or a pound, and we can never run out of it.
	That's the bottom line.
	The money is not the scarce thing.
	The thing that's scarce is the resources that it can acquire.
	Okay.
	So let me put it this way.
	So when we go into an economic depression or a recession in a capitalist society, which is, by the way, baked into the economic model of capitalism, that every four to seven years, you're going to have a recession and you're going to inflict economic pain on who?
	Workers, not the investment class, but workers, right?
	So what you're supposed to do in a recession is you print money, right?
	And then that gets us out of a recession, correct?
	Isn't that how you handle the recession?
	You know, it's interesting because what the government does is it doesn't print money like it used to.
	You know, the old days, they just reel the print and presses out.
	Nowadays, what happens, the way it works is the federal government, when Congress authorizes a spending bill, it spends that money into existence.
	It doesn't print money at all.
	In fact, what happens is there's just enough money printed in the economy to handle like ATM transactions and bank transactions.
	It really doesn't happen that way anymore.
	What the Federal Reserve does upon Congress's request is it keystrokes deposits up.
	And when it taxes, it taxes those monies down and it keystrokes those deposits down.
	So when taxes serve as a drain at the bottom of the economy and spending is like a spigot pouring in.
	So there's always a flow, stocks and flows.
	And so in this particular case, the federal government should spend money on the things that it needs to keep the economy up.
	So what has happened, unfortunately, is our federal government has deficits spent on making rich people richer.
	It has made banks fatter and more wealthy.
	It's socialized their losses while making us suffer during these times.
	And so I think one of the big things within a recession is where do you spend that money?
	Where are you going to get the most bang for the buck?
	And if you look at all the platform that folks like Bernie Sanders had put forward in the past, that is the kind of stuff where it's spending directly on the people where the people get to touch that money first.
	And then it has a natural helium effect and you tax that money out of existence at the top.
	And that is how the circuit completes itself.
	So what people don't understand is when Congress passes a spending bill, let's say they just passed a $740 billion spending bill to go fund our military, right?
	Which is 10 times more than, which is, which is more than the next 10 countries combined.
	So when they pass that bill to spend $740 billion on the military, they don't go and pass a tax to pay for that.
	That's the point.
	The point is that the spending that the government does has no relationship to the taxes it takes in, correct?
	Zero.
	Absolutely correct.
	And I think the most frustrating thing about that is the concept of you hear every one of them say taxpayer money, the taxpayer dollar.
	And what it is, it's designed to elevate.
	If you think about who the taxpayer is, it's typically a white fat dude with slimy hair and a jacket.
	You're not thinking of a poor black person.
	You're not thinking of an immigrant, all of which pay taxes, right?
	So this is a game that has been played forever.
	And it was played to perfection with Thatcher and Reagan to talk about there is no such thing as public money.
	There's only taxpayer money.
	And this was a designed ploy.
	And look at how many progressives repeat Reaganisms.
	Think about that.
	How many progressives repeat Thatcherisms?
	Think about that.
	And then you think about how many of us fight about Medicare for all, fight about a Green New Deal, fight about ending student debt, fight about all these things, green energy, a federal job guarantee, expanded Social Security.
	And why?
	Because we believe that dollars are scarce.
	We've been tricked into believing this thing about inflation and hyperinflation and all this nonsense.
	When in reality, the government does it already for our military.
	And it never, it'll do a tax cut just because it's got the hubris.
	It'll do a tax cut when it goes ahead and raises the military up.
	Well, it simultaneously says, how are you going to pay for Medicare for all?
	How are you going to pay for it, Jimmy?
	How are you going to pay for it?
	And this is the trick.
	And this is what we need.
	Every one of the listeners, every one of the people that consider themselves to be progressive, leftists, even conscientious centrists, if such a thing could exist.
	If you guys are out there, remember this.
	Fight for this.
	This is the most important thing.
	So let me just what, correct me if it's, let me make a statement and you tell me if it's right or wrong.
	Sure.
	So the government already practices modern modernary theory, correct?
	Absolutely.
	It's a lens.
	It's happening right now.
	It's happening right.
	So right now, what the government is doing, practicing your theory, meaning that the dollar is not tied to a commodity, meaning it's not tied to gold or anything.
	The dollar, we just print it when the government needs it or does it digitally, electronically, creates money for programs they want to spend it on.
	And they never think of how they're going to pay for it or how much money.
	So in fact, right now, they're spending a lot of money, $5 trillion in the CARES Act.
	And no one asked how you're going to pay for that.
	But here's the difference.
	Here's the difference between how they're doing it today and how they did it in 1932 with FDR.
	And FDR, he had a jobs program.
	He put money into people's pockets.
	He's created Social Security.
	So the working, it was called the demand economy.
	Right now we have, from Reagan on, we have supply-side economy, which is you give money to the people at the top.
	They'll spend so much fucking money.
	It's going to create people's jobs.
	And then that money will trickle down that way.
	The data's in.
	That doesn't work.
	That's just an upward transfer of wealth.
	There is no such thing as trickle-down economics.
	I mean, there is a thing.
	It doesn't work the way they say it does.
	So FDR put money right into the working man's pocket.
	And today, when we have an emergency, a downturn in our economy, a depression, they took that money from the working man's pocket and they put it because nobody can go to work now.
	And so they're taking money out of your pocket at the same time.
	They're taking a, what would Matt Stoller say?
	A money cannon, and they're blowing money at the richest people in the country.
	So they're doing it backwards from what FDR did.
	And you see the result, right?
	14 million people don't have health care.
	90 million people on the brink of being evicted right now.
	Nobody's got any money.
	And they say they don't have any money to give a cash stimulus, right?
	Yeah, it's ridiculous.
	You know, you want to go, if you want to look at how bad this is, go back to the savings and loan crisis in the 80s.
	Right.
	The same cast of characters have been milking the system exactly the way you described the money cannon on the wealthy on Wall Street, you name it.
	They have been doing it and they've been repackaging the same exact people.
	I mean, it is absolutely ridiculous.
	Robert Rubens and the Hank Paulsons and all the other bad actors, these people have been recirculated, the Jamie Diamonds, you name it.
	And they are still doing this stuff.
	They're doing it right now.
	The monies that have been spent into Wall Street to buoy up these banks have been used to literally fatten these people's wallets while people are starving.
	They're unemployed.
	They cannot get out.
	They're going nuts.
	And it's all because these rich, greedy bastards are literally willing to lie to you because you have been tricked and duped into believing that the federal government is like your household budget.
	And so we sit there and fight amongst each other about this nonsense while they're sitting there laughing all the way to the bank.
	So this here right here proves that when they say we don't have money for Medicare or we don't have money for your student loan debt or we don't have money for a jobs program or we don't have money for infrastructure.
	This proves that those are all lies.
	This right here proves that they're a lot because they are willing to print a trillion dollars a day, just give it to the banks, a trillion dollars a day, because they don't want their stock portfolio to go down.
	That's the rich guys' money, right?
	So they want to make sure the stock market is taken care of while the real economy goes to shit.
	They don't care about that.
	But this proves that what you're saying, that anything that we need in this country, we have the money for.
	They're saying we've got it right here.
	So here's what I say.
	Why wouldn't the oligarchs who are doing this right now and turning the United States into a shitty form of even shittier form of Brazil?
	Why wouldn't they go?
	Why wouldn't they be smart enough as FDR and said, hey, we better give them at least some healthcare or we better give people at least jobs.
	We got to give them something.
	Like, why wouldn't they, it's like they act like it's their money.
	Why wouldn't they just go ahead and print another couple trillion for their workers?
	It's about control.
	And when you have everything, how do you, what do you need more?
	How do you measure yourself?
	How do you measure your godlike worth?
	You measure it by the gap between you and the guy below you.
	And so it's all about control.
	It's all about fattening their existence and building up who they are.
	The oligarch power, the mindset of that megalomaniac is just unbearable.
	It's unbelievable.
	And it's one of the most destructive things out there.
	And by turning the power of fiat out there for the wealthy and ignoring the needs of the poor, we have committed one of the most incredibly brutal wars.
	More death has come from fake austerity, fake lies of not having money.
	They have killed more people than any gun shooting that has ever occurred, than the wars that we hear about.
	It has killed more around the world in pursuit of this concept of this neo-feudal serfdom that we're entering into.
	It is a murderous, sick mindset, and we have to eradicate it.
	And I think that that is what MMT allows us to do is to pull the curtain back, see what the bastards have been doing and flip the script and at least educate each other so that we can make demands.
	And if we can't win by the voting booth, we'll win in the streets.
	And so is that what we're doing here today where we're just, so is that how we fight back again?
	For instance, Joe Biden is filling his cabinet with people who are against these ideas, right?
	He's filling his cabinet with right-wing warmongers and Wall Street toadies.
	And so how do we counter all the talk that we're hearing already about debts and trade deficits while the political elite give bailouts to their Wall Street banks and big industries?
	How do we, is this how we do it, just by having this conversation?
	Jimmy, first things first, I want to thank you for having this conversation.
	This is so important to us.
	We've got a pillow shoved over our faces.
	Alternative left media, as you know, we have been censored.
	We've been stifled with algorithms.
	We've been blocked and we've been bickering amongst each other for nonstop for years.
	This is a huge deal.
	And I want to thank you because I believe that lives can be saved by your platform and the things we're doing right here, right now.
	This is that vital.
	So, yes, this is one of the things we can do.
	The other thing is I hate to break out the old Lenin stuff and the old communist stuff, but I am really digging deep in the Russian revolution and starting to look at how things transpired.
	Some of the things that were really critical were the communication paths amongst revolutionaries to really start talking about.
	And when I say revolution, I'm not necessarily talking about guns and pitchforks.
	I'm talking about us communicating, organizing, and getting people ready to do direct action, really take the power back by forcing the discussion, forcing them to see things.
	So the way we force them, and when you say direct action and force them, to put it even in more concrete terms, you're talking about a strike, workers going on strike, that kind of thing.
	I'm talking, well, one of the toughest things about the current environment we're in is that we have only 3% unionization in the private sector, and we only have like 33% in the public sector.
	And the public sector unions are largely stepped on.
	So when you look at this very, very small segment of unionized population, most people don't have that.
	And most people don't have 400 bucks in the bank to survive any kind of a downturn.
	So everybody's clutching their pearls, afraid to lose anything they got, while the tsunami of economic collapse is heading right for us.
	So the idea of a general strike in the typical sense, it may not work the way it would have worked in 1917, but it would work in a different way if we were to do it in strategic sectors, look at things that slow the economy down.
	You've got to realize, unfortunately, because we are in a pandemic and because they've closed things down the way they have, that there is some susceptibility there to things like transportation, getting goods and services about roadways, you name it.
	Different, I mean, you know, I don't want to tip my hand because, you know, I'm not, I'm not going to probably be the guy out there at the front of this.
	I can just be the guy that gives the information.
	But I would love to see people rise up and really find a way to coordinate, strategize, and come up with that right way.
	I do believe unions have to be a part of this.
	They just aren't strong enough on their own right now.
	So I've been calling for progressives in the House to withhold their vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker until she agrees to bring Medicare for all up for a vote because the whole country's for it.
	And this will not only reveal to everyone that Nancy Pelosi and the people in Congress are not on your side, but it will also reveal the fool's errand of voting for progressives inside the Democratic Party.
	What do you think about that?
	Because if they don't do that, what is the point of voting for them?
	You know, it's a tough pill to swallow because they're the ones that have the ability to pass legislation on one hand, right?
	So even if you only give like 33% of your brain to that and think, God, how do we get legislation?
	How do we deal with legislation that's passed?
	There's got to be some inside, at least eyes on the inside.
	But as far as on the outside goes, if you believe that we can vote our way out of this, I really think that you're wrong.
	But, you know, this leaves you with this question of then what?
	And the only thing I know of is what things like what you said.
	We got to become uncomfortable.
	We've got to take actions like, hey, I'm not putting you through Pelosi unless you go ahead and pass Medicare for all.
	Hey, I'm not, you've got to do something.
	You've got to make people uncomfortable, right?
	You've got to make people with power as uncomfortable as people who are out of work are.
	That's right.
	People who don't have health care.
	How about you make them half as uncomfortable as someone who's sick right now, who doesn't have a job and doesn't have health care?
	How about you make Nancy Pelosi?
	I'm saying we should make our people who we can pressure, Steve, are the people who are the closest to us ideologically who are elected.
	People like the squad, people like Roe Conna, people like Bernie Sanders.
	Those are the people we can pressure.
	I don't think I can pressure Mitch McConnell much, but I can pressure them and I can out them.
	And I'm hearing a lot of bullshit excuses like, well, they'll commit, it'll be career suicide if they have to cross Nancy Pelosi.
	It's the exact opposite of that.
	If you're seen fighting Nancy Pelosi for healthcare for people, you'll be re-elected.
	Nancy Pelosi doesn't hire and fire congresspeople.
	The people in your district do.
	And if you're seen fighting against the oligarchs, that's going to get you re-elected.
	So by the way, that's a talking point invented by Niratandon in the Center for American Progress.
	So if you hear someone saying that, oh, they can't stand up to Nancy Pelosi because it'll be career suicide.
	That came from a fucking think tank, a corporate think tank.
	That's bullshit.
	That's not true.
	You know, fuck Nira Tandon, if I can be so bold.
	You can.
	One of the things that I think that you said, though, that the only thing that I would take some exception with at all is you look at the people when they were exposing the big short, okay?
	And you watch as they would lose their job and they would get pushed out.
	Now they're whistleblowers and so forth.
	There is a huge amount of machinery that we don't ever see that's beneath the veneer of the television set.
	And my fear of what happens within the government itself is I see people doing shit that it's why I'll never run for office.
	That's for damn sure.
	And, you know, and I think to myself, how do we make this tiny little squeak of a group function as a majority?
	How do we make them wield their power?
	And you know what?
	I don't know how to do that because honest to God, I don't see them taking those steps at all.
	Do you?
	Have you seen any evidence whatsoever of them doing that?
	No, as Norman Solomon pointed out in The Nation, Mag, I think it was the Nation, last fall, after every progressive voted for the goddamn surveillance state, the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.
	He said, what is the point of voting for progressives if they're just going to vote with the intelligence community in their surveillance state anyway?
	And that's what this was revealing.
	That revealed there is no point.
	And this reveals if they are not willing to go against their quote-unquote leadership, which is in bed with Wall Street and the military industrial complex and the health insurance companies, then why vote for them inside that party?
	I'd rather have six or seven independent congresspeople that now can say we're withholding our vote from Nancy Pelosi until she does what we want.
	Because right now they're making zero demands for their vote.
	Zero.
	And the reason why they're saying that they go, well, if Nancy loses the speakership, it'll go to Republican.
	I'd rather have a Republican deny me Medicare for all than someone pretending to be on my side because I can fight that person.
	Yes, I couldn't agree with you.
	We're Sympatico on this all the way.
	You know, I'm working with some guys that are doing a docu series called The Con, a guy named Eric Vaughan and Patrick Lavelle and Bill Black, who I'm sure you know from the savings and loan crisis.
	And these guys, they have really, really done an incredible amount of work showing all the corruption of Obama, of all of these presidents throughout, you know, obviously up to even Trump.
	And you look and you see every one of these sons of bitches is complacent.
	There's very few people that actually stood up and raised their hand and said, hell no, to any of these things.
	And it's just a revolving door.
	It's still a revolving door to Wall Street.
	I mean, look at who is leading the freaking treasury now.
	Janet Yellen, once again.
	I mean, it's just the revolving door bringing them right back in i have a feeling 100 that if we don't take direct action as people it doesn't matter what these squads and stuff yeah i believe that it's good that they're making some verbal right they're putting forward some stuff i'm i i'm not going to sit there and throw them under the bus i'm just going to say that i'm not putting my faith in them right i'm putting my faith in us right and and that's that's what i think has to happen so uh i agree um we've had you know union
	you you're not supposed to extract something for your vote that's what you're supposed to do don't be bernie sanders extract something for your vote all right steve crumbine i appreciate you coming on any last words yeah please check out our podcast macroandcheese.com and i mean excuse me macro and cheese it's at our our website realprogressives.org and uh we we have a we're coming up on our hundredth episode here soon and it's it's a hundred episodes that teach you this

▲