Get ready for an outstanding entertainment program, The Jimmy Doors show.

Hey, this is Jimmy. Who's this? It's grandpa. Oh, hey, Bradford, how's it going?

Phone man, not bad. Brad, how are you? I'm doing all right. I got a 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 gonna give me an example. Well, for one, there's this most recent stimulus package, what the government sent in cash to people to help keep them afloat.

Sounds all right to me.

Corporations are getting billions in bailout money, bread during all of this. But Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi think that everyday working Americans only need 600 dollars.

We want. Six hundred dollars. You gotta be kidding me. I am not. What the fuck ridiculous, I know, Brad, that's like that's like one dinner out. What the hell people going to do with six hundred dollars? Hell, I tip people six hundred dollars for. 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 two thousand dollars.

And that's interesting. If I remember the finances of my salad days correctly, the difference between six hundred two thousand 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 right side of that. He had. Oh, man, that is rich. Democrats must be the most useless bags of shit I've ever seen, a bad year to fuck up to make Donald Trump look good.

Yeah, well put, Brad. Well put. You can't go Republican though, those guys image, but it's I just can't do nothing. Well, you can vote third party, Brad.

Well, libertarian and I've had Vince Vaughn 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? Jane. I do like that idea. But that name and I don't know many People's Party, it succinctly describes a movement, though, has got to be catch your net.

How about the Bulldogs? Yeah, the Bulldogs.

It's a political party, Brad, not a minor league baseball team. I mean, the big ass truck party. Yes, you know, like a big ass truck. He, uh.

I know I'm just spit balling here, phone man, to be honest with you, I haven't renamed a political party a long time. I'm out of practice.

Can we count on your support moving forward, Brad? Sure, why not? 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.

You may want to look into that, you get me squarely on board, you definitely get Clooney. All right, fine, man. It's been real. Merry Christmas and happy New Year to you and all your angriest listeners by Brad Pitt.

My name is Jimmy Dawg Bulldog's big asteroid. Establishment are like yourself and bull bullshit they can't afford to miss.

Golf, the medium speeds and jumps the medium and them head on the chin to show.

Everybody, welcome to this week's Gibi d'Or show. Let's get to the joke before we get to the jokes. Hey, Steve Manoukian 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, six hundred dollars 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 rest 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. Her story, Joe Biden said he's following Andrew Cuomo sexual harassment story closely and promises not to appoint him attorney general unless the charges can be proven.

Who see that? The 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 Dot. 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 dots up overnight by Nas. 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. Cornel 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 Grossman, 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 Dorje Show.

David Axelrod is calling me. Hello. Hello, Jamie. David Axelrod used to the fabled exiled Political Process podcast.

I'm also co-host of a new episodic series of spoken word broadcasts called Bushier with right where former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich and I share our favorite ribald stories and literally bust your tie.

I bust your gut with you. Blagojevich, right? I mean, you really do have a lot of projects going on at once.

David, you know that, right? Yes, Jimmy, podcasts are a great resource, and they can be any great 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? Yes. What? As you know, my long and distinguished career as a high stakes political operative has afforded me, David Axelrod, 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 X Files?

Two hundred and twenty one. David Axelrod, Jack's files. No one is safe when the axe comes down. And guess who face the axe this week, Jimmy? Her name is Alexandria Okasha. Cortez and her initials AOC are literally synonymous with powerful progressive passion. Aha. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She sat down before the ax and spoke of her journey, the divides in the Democratic Party and country and more, much more. And one day perhaps Jimmy Dorje will take a seat before the acts as well would say to Jim Rudaw, Oh, I'd love that.

Have me on any time, David. I'd love it. OK, but if you come on the show, you can't get all mad about Medicare for all, OK, I've got a bladder the size of a hamster's. Don't get too worked up our spirits.

My daddy was like, what else did you and Aoki 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 is in April.

But he did four times, they go on for Mr. Potter is President George Bailey. By the way, it's cultural references like to keep Democrats from losing 10 House seats instead of only nine.

That's just a glimpse of what you'll get when you come before the axe on the Xfire.

Yeah, I'd love to go before the axe. I would. Until then, I hope your audience will join myself in the fabulous Paul Begala for my holiday special. It's an actual rad Christmas. Charlie Rose, the always controversial and adding magic. Charlie Rose comes out of semiretirement to discuss politics and repeatedly walking out of his office bathroom with no pants on. We'll share a heartwarming story of Christmas. And if you're lucky, Paul might even whip up a fresh batch of my favorite holiday treat, Big Island.

You and your very special lady have a holly, jolly Christmas. Hey, Charlie, hit me with another big going to. Boucle and 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. Cornel West. Dr. West.

It's a pleasure, my brother. You know, I salute you, man. You straight out of Chicago that you got a jump start in life.

And I applaud your artistry, man. As a comic, you put a smile on Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce Faith, and then you are a force 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 you think is an artist. You're able to acknowledge your allegiance is actually to the truth. And justice is not an allegiance to a party that makes all the difference in the world, that frees you up and frees you up.

Richard Pryor was a free man. Lenny Bruce Fremont's Maberly free. Jimmy Dorje free. I feel that way. I appreciate you saying that I've actually 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.

But no, that's very important with George Carlin, man. You know, we never forget that, brother. Yeah, never. Never.

Me neither. Me neither. He 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 when we've got to have enough courage and humility, not in the spirit of self-righteousness, but humility to say that particular candidate you tell my brother Biden his one positive virtue was he was better than a neo fascist gangster named Trump. Now that the gangster is 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 the administration of the establishment, the Democratic Party, because we know it's tied to Wall Street, we know it's tied to militarism.

We know 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, the Republican Party. And 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. But enough to have been highlighting year after year after year. And I salute you for it. I really do. It just means, you know, you can't be misconstrued, misunderstood attacks, character assassination and so forth. May I say join the club? You know, it hit me decades after a decade. 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've got a different kind of freedom country.

America needs more free brothers and sisters of all colors. And it's often been the artists who have 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 capitalism and imperial foreign policy in place, I'm talking about that high 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.

To 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, 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 attempt to run out the money changers. But little then. No, no, they aren't Pontius Pilate Peyro or they're paying homage to Pontius Pilot. Jesus was crucified because he ran out the money train.

What would the temple? It was the largest edifice this side of Rome. It was a bank. They had police on the one side. For us, it has to do with Wall Street, White House, Pentagon, Hollywood, Harvard, Yale University, Chicago, all of the elite institutions that accommodate themselves to an unjust status quo. Now, there's individuals inside of those institutions because he know a Christian, you always recognize every human being made 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 cites, Jesus understood that. Yes, advantage of the vulnerable, 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 a.

So that that that is what I. It's crazy, I never thought as a comedian, our whole thing is we've always ripped on politicians. They're 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 and if not the world in the middle of a crisis, I'm yelling my hair, my hair is on fire.

So I'm yelling like it is. And people think that's rude. People call you sexist and you're you rage filled rants and all. You're all this stuff. And how am I doing that? I met the people who are denying us health care. That's who I'm raging at. Is that wrong?

Exactly. No, no, no. But you remember that line. Twenty four in Plato's Apology. When Plato writes about Socrates, he says, party you are each atsi. A fearless speech, frank speech. Unintimidated speech, plane speech in the face of the powerful, he says, that's the cause of my unpopularity and of course, equities for debt. He has condemned to death, drank Himmler, but Aristophanes is one of the great creators of the comic genre.

Always cutting against the grain and critiques of war, critiques of patriarchal power, critiques of economic elite. That's the role of free people who engage in fearless speech. And often it is the artist and often it's the comic artist. It just is just the fact that like Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, look at Mark Twain's critique of Imperial and 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 Moms Mabley yet.

Right? Right. We haven't got the moms yet. She was a great comic artist and her critique was devastating. Even though the black bourgeoisie moms, maybe because she knew the black middle class could accommodate itself to establishment and not have the kind of compassion for poor black and poor working class as they moved into the upper 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 and what their daily struggles are or why they're angry? When will intellectuals stop talking about the working class and condescending ways that make leftist politics repulsive to them?

Well, being part of it is a complicated issue. The main problem is in the United States is such an anti intellectual culture and subject to opt to be an intellectual. I mean, you're going to be full of a lot of anxieties and even self-doubt to 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 elite TISM that reinforce an arrogance and a heartedness and a condescension toward ordinary people.

But that's a sign of their insecurity. That's the sign of their own anxiety. OK, see, you say to mean if you're if you're insecure about yourself, you don't need to go around, put another foot down. Right. You know what to make. That's true for white supremacist alpha 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 insecure about yourself, give up your toxic masculinity if you're insecure about yourself.

So it is what intellectuals, intellectuals create their little internal world to reinforce each other and therefore become tied into that context and 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 thirty seven years, so I'm reminded all the time I moved from Harvard through the prisons. I'm dealing with some magnificent human beings in both context.

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 in decent housing and not enough jobs with a living wage and not enough access to health care, which ought to be a fundamental right. And I'm not the lip service of neo liberal Democratic Party, but all I'm talking about, health care is a right. Do they really mean it? That becomes a challenge, but it's what 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. So 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 the indifference here. Rabbi Heschel taught us what indifference to evil is more evil than evil itself. Because in indifference, the 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 accommodating to a status quo. That's a different kind of thing, it reinforces the illusion that somehow you are such a force for good. No, we don't want Similac, we don't want copy's, we want the real thing. This the Askwith Simpson moment, you remember. Yes. There's nothing like the real thing.

Very real. And lots and lots of real thing, baby.

And nothing like things out. And Margaret.

Wow.

That's 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 to vote happening. And so there is a there is a forced the vote dog 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 in that progressive was EOC.

So she didn't know that. I didn't know a little bit more about what happened.

Yeah, so she will we're going to cover in a second, but she got shafted out of her committee of the Red Sea 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 was 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 had what 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 is now like real progressives, like members of the squad.

There's like seven or 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 his spot on that committee, that's how she did it.

Kathleen Rice. Kathleen Rice. So that's OK.

Yeah. Kathleen Rice got her spot.

So now so what we're telling people to do is go to force the vote dog and sign our petition. And that's so the idea is very simple. The is they they have the power to hold their vote for Nancy Pelosi as speaker until she agrees to bring Medicare for all. For some people, there's a lot of things people say it won't pass. I want to see people vote against health care 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 twenty, twenty two and then we take then we get America. 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. No, we demand the right to vote is Marianne Williamson says an 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 a number of progressive brothers or 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 neo liberal elite in the party, then they can't hold on to their progressive sensibilities, their progressive policies.

If they're too progressive, then the neo liberals 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 injustice. 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.

The vast majority of our fellow citizens support a 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 we're part of a lunatic fringe. It's just that big pharmaceutical companies, 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.

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 pile of 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 look 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 who we know.

Just by example is by example. You know, we're the kind of creatures, we're human beings that we would all rather see sermons than hear sermons, which means that we have to exemplify what we talking about. You know, we could act like we are so critical all we want in the abstract. But if we don't come through with our bodies, with our energies, with our clout, without whatever gravitas we have, without authority, then people know we're just talking.

And so, you know, you as an artist give you all this things. Example myself as a writer, I give an example. This is where this is. 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 book. Coming together, lifting their voices, you know, I come from a people, black people, I ask them is what?

Lift every voice and I lift every echo. Most of our politicians are EKOS. Tied to big money, most of them tied to the flow of cash, most concerned about the next election, most concerned about recognition now. No, no, those are the echoes we talk 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 Cerebus.

They find your echo to Dinah Washington. You say find your voice, girl, because I got my voice and there I got a voice. So it isn't like you find your voice. It's like your fingerprint is all yours is going to go with you in 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 the 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 right at the center of it. And that's corporate power, that big money. And it reinforces an arrogance and a heartedness and a condescension thinking that they can say and do look up, Brother Biden, talk to the civil rights.

Oh, my God. He's talking to them like Dick Kilgallen. Like somehow they just have to kowtow and be deferential to him. And they sit there and took it and they took it. Wait a minute. They took it. Can you imagine? John Coltrane is great. I lifted my voice to talk about love, Supreme Court justice of the form of love in public. And you sit there and take that is the tone. It's the way in which you go about something, let alone the content.

That's what we're talking about. You see, once once you get adjusted to that way of being in the world, you just open to the highest bidder. You just for sale, and we live in a society with everything for sale. Everybody is for sale and that reinforces depression, that reinforces people's sense of paralysis and powerlessness. And we say now, are we just coming off the largest protest move, the demonstration in the history of the country this summer, people raising their voices, we to keep that momentum going when the doors going to do it in his Chicago like comic, powerful, visionary smile.

I'm going to do it in my chicot, my chocolate city orientation in orbit. And we are in this together.

My brother force the vote dog go to force the vote dog. And we also we want you to go there, sign our petition, pass it around. It's to make sure 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 that. This is. But this is the most important time right now that they have.

And if we don't get this Medicare for all vote, it might not be till twenty, twenty five 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. Cornel West has signed on. Justin Jackson aside on. There's lots of people signing on, in fact, Movement for a People's Party if you're joining the advisory council right now, moving forward.

Oh, my dear brother, Nick Brown. Indeed, indeed, indeed. I'm blessed to be on that advisory council. We've got to break the back of his two party duopoly, both of them tied to Wall Street, both of them tied to big money, both from the Pentagon militarism. Look at how both parties vote for the military budget. Hmm. I think Brother Brown is calling for 10 percent. That's very important. Barbara Lee is concerned about it.

But see that those are still just voices in the wilderness, voices in the wilderness. And as you know, doing that, you know, I'm just a little small part of the legacy of Martin Luther King Junior with the King Junior. Talk about the ways in which militarism, racism of any kind, racism of any kind against black folk, brown folk, against Jews, against Catholics, against Arabs, against Palestinians, against Ethiopians, Guatemalans, racism of any kind of poverty.

Thank God for William Barbara. Thank God for such that your hair is in the poor people's campaign and then militarism with materialism, which is a spiritual condition. No problem in 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 it all for sucking the energy out of democracy.

And that's my tradition, and I'm going to be faithful until death in that tradition, just like you're going to be faithful, until death do the legacy of the great comic artist.

And and we're just joining forces to get people some Medicare for all and.

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 by 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, it 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 Berdy 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 a go fuck yourself, as usual.

So here's your point about FDR is very important or both, 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 Eataly, Philip Randolph, that make me do it? We didn't have forces strong enough to break the back of Jim Crow. So we go from nineteen thirty two all the way up until nineteen forty four or five. Lou was still locked into Jim Crow as he was 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 is tragedy's second time deeper tragedy. So what I'm saying is Americans have been tolerating health care and justice for for a hundred 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? Hmm, well, I think part of it is we can never underestimate the power of these pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. If you saw what happened to brother Barack Obama, you know, he punted on second down, spinless no backbone at all coming in, talking all this talk about everybody's going to have access to health care and he and Rahm Emanuel. And other than that, as part of your Chicago connection, 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 Heritage Foundation Republican model that Mitt 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 assets, as is the case now, and still tied to employment rather than being citizens. So here again, we had a major opportunity, missed opportunity, and yet they still break dancing as if that was some great, magnificent progressive legislation.

I say get off the symbolic crack. I please. I was born at night, but not last night. We have a love for poor people. We're following Jesus into the temple. Ran out of money changers. DISCLOSE that, Grete. 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 Bush tax cuts permanent. He made sure the bankers got their bonuses while he kicked five point one 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 and all the presidents combined since 1890.

People have no idea that this was his record or 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. Yes, brother. Bush dropped 45 drones on Folke and those the war crimes brother Obama dropped five hundred and sixty three drones on folks, including innocent folk like Bush. Those are war crimes with a Nobel Prize in peace, OK? 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. What these people are terrorists, class terrorists to you don't do that if you have your concern with rule of law, you see. But of course, we have to acknowledge now, you know, brother Barack Obama is 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 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 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 US 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. In my Bible tells me he or she is greatest among you would 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 is willing to tell the truth. Where 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, somehow we can go on and on.

Girls got here. Those are the ones who are great. Not the 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 said, I stand between you and the pitchforks. That's what he told 13 head of Wall Street in March of 2000. 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 bell, especially on the chocolate side, get caught with drugs. They're going straight to jail. You see that? So he reinforced the words. It's no accident. You've 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, dawg. That's why it's important for you to keep raising your voice. If you got shout shout, you got to sing a song. Ashford and Simpson sing a little acid and you've 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.

While 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 forced to vote dog. So if you go right there, force the vote dog there it is going to force the vote dog, 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 as leaders and activists who are going to be coming out, joining with Cornell, joining with me, joining with Nick Bronagh, 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 for all vote and in fact, that we're 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 what this is how you create moments.

And you think this I mean, you've you've seen way more than I have. You think this could happen, right?

Oh, no doubt about it. 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 it would be flowing. Right. The catalyst for that kind of magnificent response to you 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 any time. And I look forward to working for you to try to get people some health care. Dr. Cornel West, thank you so much for your time. It's been fantastic.

I salute you, my brother. I salute you, my brother. Thank you.

Oh, it's master of the Senate. Chuck Schumer is on the phone.

Hello. Happy holidays to you, my good man. This is a momentous occasion I shared with you today, Jimmy, I hereby demand you addendum my moniker from master of the Senate to master of Releasees Feet.

Wow. Master of relief. Wow.

Yes. For I have achieved what many nay sayers called unthinkable, unimaginable and fucking stupid. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of twenty twenty one. On, on, on, on. You're going to love it, young man.

I don't know, Senator. It sounds like a lot of crap to me. But you had war gave me a well done. Yeah, I saw that I don't care. So you hate women now, too?

I just think the whole thing is crap. Oh, my lord, have you even read all 6000 pages of it, have you, Jack? But no one either is. And 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 best this holiday package ever. It's a reminder that when we work together and perceiver 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 six hundred dollars.

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 sized checks they used on lottery shows and whatnot.

Wow, Chuck. Wow. Tell me about it.

Like Speaker Pelosi said, that 600 dollar check is significant. Check this out. It's going to blow your mind. Jimmy, did you know six hundred dollars equals 60000 pennies? Literally. Imagine 60000 pay. 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, two universes exist within universes, are they side by side this time, slow down when a thousand pennies are next to three or even 4000 pennies. How many Bettie's are there in a nickel or even a dime? And are we a universe parallel to others? The answer is unknown.

What kind of impact do you think it will have? The whole thing seems structured for corporations and rich people.

Oh, don't be stupid. It's not a race. Horses 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, in 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, Jack. That's because you're a small thinker, Jimmy. Don't forget, we're a big tent party and party 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 dollars when they're jobless and debt 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 bridgid?

Liquidity's medical breg 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 three thousand and twenty. 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 a Medicare for all?

Yes. Right after we set up a base on Mars. I promise. Space for.

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 is 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 could do it by going to Jimmy Door Company dot com click. It got a premium. It's the most affordable premium program in the business and it's a great way to help put the thumb back in the eye of the bastards, thanks to 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 Neeson.

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 Computer, because this time it takes place in a car and a commuter was on a train. Right now, I'm filming the marksmen. 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, really had it with a shit. Christmas. And beware of hard powder.

Oh, let's see who else is next. Next up is Joe Biden. Merry Christmas, Fred. Yeah, you know, Fred. It's Joe Biden, Kyra, and I and my other son, what's his name? His name's Joe Biden. He very good guy.

Didn't do nothing wrong. Just stop and look, here's the thing I tell you.

So listen up for once fiercely. There's entirely too much focus on the six hundred dollar stimulus checks. There is exciting. Six hundred dollars stimulus cash checks. Good for people. The people, people of Christmas, Mary Party and happy fun. Good cheer. But the jobs for over only starting here at the beginning. Nearly over. Where's my muffin, you fucking Nazi?

Hey, who's next? It's Noam Chomsky. Jimmy, this is Noam Chomsky, we 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. This is a message. Well, I think I might have been seriously, seriously wrong about that. We're all totally fucked. Sorry.

Yeah. Yeah. OK, thanks, jobs.

Anyway, I really don't I don't know where my head was at when I said all that stuff, but I'm totally shattered now and at peace with myself. I found the colors of my chakras and all the nutrition, tasty waves, a cool buzz and I'm fine. Peace out and oh here.

Kevin Spacey Cobb. You don't like your position in life? Well, guess what? I don't care. You think you deserve more than 600 dollars this Christmas? I don't care if 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 what I care. Merry whatever. Assholes. Jesus.

Oh, Lakotas. Herman Cain. I mean, this is terrible time. I think I finally figured out what in the heck happened. They put broccoli on my darn pizza. Berkeley 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 for a time out of government regulation.

Yes, Jeb Bush calls. Hey. Did you hear that that Dr. Fauci guy gave the vaccine to Santa Claus? Santa Claus isn't isn't real, is he?

Oh, 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. Stock all alone in Dad's mansion on Walker's Point with my family, all the servants. So depressing.

I want to be governor again. Back then, people paid attention to me because I had power.

Can I have your power? How about my name?

You used to bump your knee to. Hello. I know you're there because I stole CIA clearance. I almost became president. OK, fine. Whatever. Hello. Hello. Oh, God damn, Noam Chomsky again. This is this is no me again, I've been totally shredding on my string TV with two blistering, totally kick ass quantum bookers, if you feel like it. Come over to my pad and we'll blow hot damn some Van Halen tunes just to have a seat around my amp, you know, and do your do your thing.

That's where all the pussy is later. Is Harrison Ford. Hey, this is Harrison Ford. Hey, Harrison. I'm Carl. This is a message got. I'm calling about something. Yeah, OK. By yeah. He's the co-founder of Real Progress and Action, that's a nonprofit economic education organization.

He is the host of the Macro and Cheese podcast. He is the advocate and educator on modern modern monetary theory.

We are pleased to have him with us at Steve grumbling. Hi, Steve. How are you?

Hey, Jimmy. 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, make everything private. And they've been doing this nonstop since the 60s, 70s. Once Reagan got in office, it went in overdrive, eliminating the concept of public purpose and 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. OK, that's and of course we know and they try to inject a profit motive into everything, into our culture, into every part of our culture, including places like education and health care, where they should not be absolutely absent.

Yes, I remember Barack Obama's big idea with Arne Duncan as his secretary of education. Arne Duncan, by the way, you know how many days he spent in the classroom? Zero. Arne 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 money.

They have it exactly backwards. That's that's called a race to the bottom. So 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 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's that is the going story, right?

Yes, that's the whole. 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 if you're poor, it's because you're lazy. That's the that's the narrative that the right wing neoliberals have thrown for our our children. Is that a word drone? I said drone.

That is that I was I was going to say strewn. And I'm like, what's the past tense? Is the past perfect? It's drone. I knew a guy named Rikki's Drone anyway.

So so we've had economists like Stephanie Kelton on the show explaining to someone who's never heard what modern modern theory theory is before, or can you explain it so somebody 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, 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 Two. If you want to say we won World War Two, 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 percent. The federal government will 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 Pellerin 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 US. And you can tell that what had happened in nineteen seventy two in the US 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, some scarce resource that we can devalue, that we can do all these crazy things with, that we're really gold standard operational ideas. And he had a pie of gold, basically, and you printed so much money against that gold. And when you printed more money against that gold will 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, a gold. Now it's based on the real resources and productive capacity of whatever nation is is running a free floating fiat currency like the United States, like Canada, like the UK, like Australia is just justifying what so fiat currency defined by that means.

It means just by decree. It's the state's money. It's yes, it's state money.

So it means, for instance, that the US 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. So that's scarce is the resources that it can acquire.

OK, so let me put it to you 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 what you normally are supposed to do in a recession is you print money, right, and and then that gets us out of a recession. Correct. Isn't that how you handle a recession?

You know, it's interesting because what the government does is it doesn't print money like it used to you into the old days. They just real the printing press is 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 or and when it taxes, it taxes this money 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 of 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 have 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 affecting your tax, that money out of existence at the top.

And that is how the circuit completes itself.

So people don't. So what people don't understand is when Congress passes a spending bill, let's say they just passed the seven hundred and forty dollars 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 one hundred, seven hundred and forty billion dollars on the military, they don't go and pass a tax to pay for that.

Now, that that's the point. The point is that this the spending that the government does has no relationship to the taxes that 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 Reaganism. Think about that. How many progressives repeat Thatcherism. Think about that. And then you think about how many of us fight about Medicare for a fight about a green new deal, a 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 hyper inflation and all this nonsense when in reality the government does it already for our military. And it never will 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 are considered 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 I may make a statement and you tell me if it's right or wrong.

Sure. So the government already practices modern monitory theory, correct?

Absolutely. It's a lens. It's happening right now. It's happening right now. 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 if they don't, they never think of how they're going to pay for it or how much.

So in fact, right now, they're they're spending a lot of money, five trillion dollars in the Carers Act. And no one asked, how are you going to pay for that? And but here's the difference. Here's how here's the difference between how they're doing it today and how they did it in 1932 with. FDR and FDR, he he had a jobs program, he put money into people's pockets, he created Social Security. So the working it was called 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 that the the the the data 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 poor 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 there 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 was dollars 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. So if and you see the result, right, 40 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's it is absolutely ridiculous. Robert Rubin's and the Hank Paulson's and all the other bad actors, these people have been recirculated, the Jamie Dimond's, you name it.

And they are still doing this stuff. They're doing it right now. The moneys that have been spent in the Wall Street to blow 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, ah, 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 there are 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 has 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 that we need in this country, we have the money for. They're saying we've got it right here. So why so here's what I say. Why wouldn't the 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 health care 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 the 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. Then the wars that we hear about it is killed more around the world in pursuit of this concept of this neo feudal serfdom that we're entering into. It is 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 to pull the curtain back, to 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 so is that is that what we're doing here today where we're just so is that how we fight back again? For instance, Joe, Joe Biden is filling his cabinet with people are against these ideas, right? These are 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 did that and trade deficits while the political elite give bailouts to the 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. Is 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 non-stop 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 Lennon 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, so, 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 three percent unionization in the private sector and we only have like 33 percent in the public sector. And the public sector unions are largely stepdown. 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 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 is 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 a 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 are have the ability to pass legislation on one hand. Right. So even if you only give like 33 percent of your brain to that and think about 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 I'm not putting you through Pelosi unless you go ahead and pass Medicare for hey, I'm not you've got to do something.

You've got to make people uncomfortable. Right. You've got to you've got to make people with power as uncomfortable as people who are out of work or 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 or I'm saying we should make the 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 Locana, 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, like they'll commit and 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 health care for people, you will be re-elected. And 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 Neera Tanden in the Center for American Progress. So if you hear someone saying that, oh, they can't stand up to Nancy Pelosi because it would be career suicide, that CAPM a book and think tank, a corporate think tank, that's bullshit.

That's not true about, you know, fuck. Neera Tanden, if I can be so bold, you can. One of the 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 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 of what happens within the 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 back, I think it was the nation last fall after the every progressive voted for for the goddamn surveillance state, the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. He said if it was 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 is revealing. That revealed there is no point. And this reveals that if they are not willing to go against their, quote unquote, leadership, which is in bed with Wall Street in the military industrial complex and the health insurance companies, that 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 denied 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 simpatico 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 Vaughn and Patrick Lovell 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 these 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 percent that if we don't take direct action as people, it doesn't matter what these squads and stuff.

I believe that it's good that they're making some verbal they're putting forward some stuff. 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. I'm putting my faith in us. Right. And that's that's what I think has to happen.

So I agree. We've had, you know, union leaders, we've had activists, we've had Christian, small Xinyu, we've had people who know how to organize. People have written books about how to do this kind of stuff. And I'm I'm with you. I'm like, well, what what is going to be you know, it was the George Floyd murder. That was the the match that lit the fire over the summer. What is going to be the match that I mean, when they kicked 19 million people out of their homes where those fucking people are going to go?

I mean, I live in Los Angeles. When I live in California, it's a super majority Democratic state. We have a Democratic governor means the Democratic Party can do whatever they want. We have people sleeping under every bridge in Los Angeles. And after and after December, it's going to be there. We're going to be sleeping on top of every bridge, too. And this is this is a completely democratic run. The fifth largest economy in the world is California.

And we can't take care of our people in this. We can. But because of neoliberalism and every Democrat is a fucking right winger, there is no lefties in the Democratic Party. Anyway, let me I appreciate you spending all this time, but have you noticed that Keynesian economist Paul Krugman that have debated many economists, he said he's moving closer to your position. Right.

You know, let me let me tell you what he's going to do, because this is what all these parasites do that are that are, you know, fake economists. These he's a neo bullshit artist, right? That's what he is. What he's going to do is he's going to act like there's nothing new under the sun. We've always known what MMT said. Well, if that's true, then why the fuck did you do something about it, you lying son of a bitch?

Right. So he's going to act like there's nothing new. And all you got to do is trace out Krugman Spath. He leaves a snail trail wherever he goes of bullshit. And what he does is that he'll sweep the legs of Kelton, Mozilla and Randall Wray and the rest of them. They'll sweep the legs. And then as soon as he starts realizing he looks like a complete and utter idiot and now it's time to be pro deficit spending, then he says, well, you know, we've always known this is dysfunctional finance.

There's nothing new under the sun. Oh, we're not going to talk about that silly money thing. But MMT right here, you have never seen more passionate activists. And that's what's good. We have an opportunity to unite in truth. And if we can, somehow or another, you got to realize if we have a successful revolution someday, right. You've got to replace the government or whatever you have today with something tomorrow. And that's not always a pretty clean mess.

You better have some people that understand how to work this stuff and maybe we can find a better way to do it in the future. But right here, right now, MMT is and we need to start making it for the people.

Man, I just want to, Cokie, show this graphic one more time, please. I just want people to realize what you're saying is true. So when when the government tells you they can't afford your health care, when government says they can't afford education or a jobs program or an infrastructure program, when they or they can't afford to give you the vaccine for free, whatever, they tell you that that's a lie because of modern monetary theory. And they're practicing it every day, but they're only practicing it for Wall Street in the rich.

And what we're saying is they need to practice it for everybody. And so don't listen. Don't matter. And especially especially your progressive politicians, don't fucking take a bullshit answer like we can't fight for you or we can't get this stuff or we don't. That's not true, that they they have the power right now to deny their vote to Nancy Pelosi. It's up to Nancy Pelosi whether she wants to be speaker, because that's the way they're supposed to run the game.

That's how this is politics 101. Don't let anybody tell 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 Crumbing, I appreciate you coming on. Any last words?

Yeah. Please check out our podcast, Macaron, Cheese, Dotcom and excuse me, macaroni cheese. It's at our website, Real Progressive's Dog. And we have we're coming up on our 100th episode here soon. And it's one hundred episodes that teach you the stuff from the experts in the field. And, you know, we've worked really, really hard to try and be a value add to the movement. So hopefully people will take a listen, get to know us.

And, you know, hopefully we can talk to you and have you on a show sometime.

There's anything I can offer to your show. I would love to come on, but maybe get someone smarter.

But thank you very much for having me on, Steve. Grumbling Thank you, everybody. Check out his podcast, Macaroni and Cheese, Macaroni and Cheese. All right. Thank you, Steve.

And we'll see. We'll have you on sooner sooner rather than later. Thank you, sir.

Hi, this is Jimmy. Who's this? Judy, it's Vince Vaughn. Oh, hi. How are you doing? I'm freezing. What why? Where are you, buddy? I, I oh, know I'm stranded, I'm lost, I.

OK, OK, slow down, tell me what happened.

What else lives in Woods. Bigfoot dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs are extinct vids. Yeah I know, but all of them.

How can we be so sure. Is that not the very arrogance of man.

Hey, you know, there's a lot more to that phone call. We don't have time in today's podcast. How do you hear the entire phone call? You got to become a premium member. Go to Jimmy Dorje, comedy dot com, sign up.

It's the most affordable premium program in the business. Don't, don't, don't, don't freak out. Don't freak.

Today's show was written by Ron Picone Mark Van Landward, Steph Zambrano, Jim Earl, Mike McCray and Roger Rittenhouse. All the voices performed today by the one in the only the inevitable Mike McCrae, who can be found at Mike McRae Dotcom. That's it for this week. You'll be the best you can be and I'll keep being me. No, no, don't, don't, don't, don't bring right now. No, go.