I have featured Mike Figueredo before to share his many spot-on insights and carefully gathered facts. He recently released a record length video compilation, over three hours long (and full of good stuff), a length that many of us can probably only handle on a weekend, except for those set up to listen to his podcasts while commuting.
Hence this part 2 of my video weekend post dedicated to Mike’s “Humanist Report.” To make it easier to handle, I have written up a timeline so you can more easily watch it in parts. The timeline is posted in the “Continue reading…” section below the video:
(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Hillary Clinton and Her Minions Seek Vengeance on America | Episode 110 “)
Timeline, Quotes, and Discussion:
3:30 min: Ending DACA - denying young people their country 14:39 min: Renewed Trickle Down Hist 22:25 min: Hillary & Co’s Blame Book and Smear Campaign incl. a new pro-Hillary propaganda website 49:12 min: “Dem” Party for the privileged 58:29 min: “Dem” and Rep opposition to Medicare for All 1:11:33 min: Amy Vilela to take Nevada back for the people 1:21:24 min: Neoliberals squirming in Medicare for All Town Halls and getting primaried for opposing MfA and the difference from progressive candidates 1:44:50 min: Green Party or New Party? Competing Progressives? Bernie on a Pedestal? 1:55:50 min: Q&A 2:10:54 min: Brand New Congress candidate interview (2:18:11 net neutrality = free speech for the people)
Spiffy Quotes:
Mike Figueredo: “I don’t accept you oligarchs robbing us any longer. You’ve had your cake, and now it’s time for us to redistribute wealth not from bottom to top but top to bottom, because that’s what the economy needs right now. You oligarchs are sitting on millions and millions and, in some cases, billions of dollars, and you are not reinvesting [them] back into the economy when we are having to pay all the taxes that you greedy pigs aren’t paying.”
Mike also points out, as I have been doing, that even if middle class people might possibly pay higher taxes to fund Medicare for All, they will still end up with more money in their pockets, because they will no longer have to pay health insurance premiums and doctor’s fees.
Another conclusion drawn in this video is something I have been explaining on various occasions: A new political party to be joined and helped off the ground by Bernie Sanders is a better approach than his joining the Green Party because the Green Party has a reputation problem, a limited brand, and therefore too little cross-over appeal; and the idea of building something new is more invigorating and more popular with many Berners, anyway, especially among the young who are America’s future. I also agree with Mike to still ally with and/or support the Green Party, as well. It may seem too radical for many mainstream Americans, but it sure can help pushing the envelope. Once we get electoral reform to include ranked-choice or score voting, we may finally get more diversity in politics, and the Green Party would be a great voice in that broadened mix.
We are basically looking at two parallel strategies which do not exclude each other and, in fact, work best together:
- Primary the corrupt, corporatist (=neoliberal) establishment politicians out and take over the “Democratic” Party. (Brand New Congress, Our Revolution, The Justice Democrats, and grassroots efforts — see the bottom of my APC page for these and other links)
- Break up the two-party duopoly (a.k.a. twin party tyranny). And the way to do that is with a new party which actually represents the majority of the American People, something neither the DP nor GOP do. This can be tried with the Green Party, but because of how skeptical so many folks are of it, a new party could have much faster success, especially if formed around the country’s most popular politician, much like Abraham Lincoln was able to break up the party duopoly of his time. See this article for more.
Another good point mentioned in this video: defending the ACA (“Obamacare”) against repeal and pushing for Medicare For All are not mutually exclusive propositions. The ACA and MfA are not Either-Or. The ACA serves us now more or less. And Medicare For All will serve us a lot better. So, don’t just repeal the ACA (or replace it with Trump’s Wealthcare). Replace it with Medicare for All which has a bill in both the House (Conyers’s bill) and the Senate (Sanders’ bill).
Mike’s guest, Ron Placone who often makes the most brilliant remarks on the Jimmy Dore show (which I share here so often), also had some spiffy things to say:
Ron Placone about Donald Trump and establishment politicians: “He never had to work a day in his life for anything. Everything has been handed to him… [People in privilege have blinders on].”
Ron Placone about the faux-left: “They just see Trump as a bad guy, and they are like ‘how are you not just angry at this bad guy?’ Now, look, we don’t disagree that Trump is a bad guy. We disagree on how to handle this, because we don’t want to see the bad guy keep happening again and again. When you have [a system of two ruling parties] that are bought by the same people, then [misery for the people and] a demagogue [are] inevitable. Now we got a demagogue, and if we keep going with the same broken system, you’re gonna get another demagogue every four to eight years. And they’re gonna keep getting worse and keep getting worse.”
Exactly. We Americans have been suffering this decline since the 1970s or 1980s, depending of where you start to count. I have been warning about a point of no return. Let’s not allow it to come to pass. Our rapid replacement by machines and artificial intelligence, combined with the growing refinement of surveillance and mind control, will eventually render us powerless to make change. We need to force change now, before it’s too late. There is no more time for the traditional way to do politics which got us to this bad spot.
To finish, I was glad to hear Mike speak about the need of (or his wish for) more alternative media voices (2:06:43). Now, if only he knew about this blog and mentioned it to his twitter followers or in his videos… There are many of us voices out there who never reach the critical mass of an audience because we have to start from zero social media immersion (say, because we are older and didn’t spend our school years tweeting and facebooking as those things did not exist back then). So, while the millennials get well informed, the older folks form a bloc of political inertia since we are left out of the social media hustle. Maybe the young ’uns should realize this and spread the word about the revolutionary voices that do exist among us, and share us with their older relatives, to bring the whole American people on board of the political revolution. The young folks themselves might like what we have to tell.
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Beanstock's World 
I wish I could get the “young’uns” more on The Revolution Continues blog, too. We “oldsters” still have some good points to make and insights to share. 😉
I don’t know about disregarding the Green Party altogether. The Greens have an international reputation and it’s not all “bad” or doesn’t “cross over” like many on the left seem to think. That myth was started in the 1980s by the DNC when the GPUSA came on the scene in response to Bill Clinton’s neoliberal Third Way Democratic party. The Dems have been smearing the Greens heavily since Ralph Nader’s popular run for president in 2000. I think there’s not a “bad image problem: for the Greens with independent voters, only with party-hardliners of the DNC. Bernie’s brother Larry ran as a Green member of Parliament after all. Why shouldn’t Larry’s younger brother Bernie run as a Green?
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