Ep 8: ICUP Report

0:00:34

Welcome to left on red where a gen x mom and gay millennial do socialism. We've got left wing views on news you can use. My name is Scott. I'm Susan. It's a really beautiful spring day. I hope it's a nice day where you are. Yeah. Or whenever you're listening to this, I hope it's a perennial fairly perfect day. Thanks to global warming and the loss of winter in the United States.

0:00:58

So we have lots to talk about today, not to be too New York focused, but a little bit on the New York State budget. Yeah. And I think because there's a lot of lessons in the New York State budget that are applicable to anyone doing any form of politics in the United States right now. So as we're recording this podcast, it's a few days before the state budget is technically due. It's probably going to be a little bit late this year. And there's a number of different, like, high priority issues that are currently being debated. For those of you who don't know, the way the state budget works is the governor has an incredible amount of control over it. And negotiates between the two legislative houses here in New York, the state senate and the state assembly. And The three of them kind of just have their leadership and their staff kind of go together. They used to call it three men in a room. Now it's two women and one in the world. We're very we're very woke now. Yeah. New York. And they kind of negotiate the final details of the final budget. It.

0:01:59

The major issues that are kind of being discussed right now, I would say, like, more broadly, we could just easily say healthcare, housing, climate, criminal justice. Right? But specific to New York, they are bail reform. So the governor is trying to not just roll back reforms that made it easier for people to get out of jail, but changing the fundamentals of the law to make it far, far easier for judges to jail people. For arrests, again, not convictions.

0:02:30

When we talk about housing in New York State, a lot of progressive of course, the democratic socialist of America helping lead this charge to pass good cause evictions, which would prevent landlords from evicting people unless they had a actual good cause, a violation of their lease agreement. In climate, there's a variety of things, but course, we're very proud to be talking about the Build Public Renewables Act, which is another Democratic socialist of America led charge. To expand the state's capacity to build an own renewable energy generation. I mean, we're not gonna talk about that at length I know one of the things that the governor wanted was to allow for affordable housing to be built in the suburbs. And that's not something that either the house the houses of the New York state legislature want because the suburban reps don't want that in their districts. That's something that, you know, Kathy Hockel's got an idea that maybe we don't hate but it's something that's very hard to implement because of sort of the nature of the districts. Right? Like representatives from individual districts will probably get skewered by these, like, bedroom communities that wanna maintain single family homes in their district. And, like, somebody who rides in New Jersey transit, I see that they have this sort of like dense housing around transit to allow people who can no longer afford to live in city centers, but work there to commute in from, like, various parts of New Jersey. So New Jersey seems to have it and their suburbs have not fallen into, like, crime ridden disarrays. But here in New York, I think there's much stronger of a a view that, like, our bedroom communities have to be protected.

0:04:04

I used to live in Ossining. Which actually does have a lot of mixed housing. And it was a working class city, a remains a working class city. It's now like a Latinx city. And but, like, you know, they it was a place where they had sort of multi unit housing. But a lot of these communities, Westchester, and like Long Island, they really resist this. But, you know, that's not something that I'm not particularly an expert in, so I'm not gonna comment too much on that. It is something that I'm like, you know, the governor's pushing it. It's a really hard sell. Yeah. I feel like I actually really wanna get into that. Okay. What's do it. Okay. But I wanna, you know, just making sure we're doing the full fair examination of the whole budget.

0:04:47

There's other issues including education, such as Cuny and SUNY. Oh, yeah. That's so much to talk about there. Yeah. And the governor wanted to raise tuition at our public university here in New York. And folks are obviously trying to make that tuition free as it used to be many years ago. In terms of healthcare, there is this just very long term push to increase wages for home care workers and direct support professionals for people with disabilities. The governor's really, really been giving us a very hard time for Obviously, when we talk about tax policy, that's the major campaign that did democratic socialist of America.

0:05:23

We've been running this year, which is called tax the rich. And just a desperate, desperate attempt to finally get the state, to seriously tax the very very increasing number of bill millionaires and billionaires that live here so that we actually have money to fund all of these priorities that we're talking about. Oh, the MTA. So Kathy Hockel wants to raise the MTA single ride from two seventy five to three dollars, a single, first single ride, and to pass about half a million dollars billion dollars, excuse me, of costs of the MTAs operational budgets to New York to New York City, which is like one of those Jedi mind tricks that Governors like to do because they're like, oh, this serves New York City, but the MT is a state based agency. Like, what are you what are you doing, lady? All of the money that is generated in New York City becomes tax revenue for the entire state. Obviously, it's like an economic engine for all of New York. In fact, all of the region.

0:06:18

I feel like it's really irresponsible to talk about the MTA without, you know, for the governor to try and talk about the MTA anything regarding funding for that without kind of acknowledging how critical it is to the entire United States Northeast. Yeah. So fix the MTA. The MTA service hasn't gotten a lot better since the pandemic in large part because it's always been the slush fund historically. Other priorities for the governor and because they don't wanna spend money. Because they don't wanna raise money from taxes on the wealthy to then spend it on the MTA. But that's I feel like, hopefully, a summary of the issues. And the reason I wanted to talk about, like, more of the housing stuff that you brought up is I feel like it's like a really good short summary of everything that's going on.

0:07:04

I've been seeing a lot of people going up to Albany, the New York State Capital in the last couple of weeks. And it's always sort of shocking to me to see literally thousands and thousands of New Yorkers probably more New Yorkers in the month of March have gone up to Albany or taken some form of action with their legislators or with the governor, then the margin of voters that got Kathy Hockel, her victory in New York. We love to be me to Cathyoka. No. No. But but following the year, probably more New Yorkers have taken some action on the budget. In order to demand anyone of these, like, progressive left policies. And it boggles my mind that so many people in unprecedented numbers are making these demands. And the governor and her allies in Albany are just kind of like shrugging their shoulders.

0:07:55

Like, I'm trying to wrap my mind around how, you know, kinda hate Democrats. Democrats suck. But it's still they find new ways to prove that to us every day. I'm trying to wrap my mind around how Democrats and Albany seem to be able to ignore literally every single working class New Yorker on their hands and knees begging them to do something. And Why does that happen? Well, one, obviously, there's a lot of millionaires and billionaires that pay the bills for all of those campaigns. Kind of the Oakland knows who brought us her bread. She knows who gave her hundreds of millions of dollars well, tens of millions of dollars for her political campaign and made her governor But two, I really feel like the suburbs are incredibly important key of this.

0:08:37

I feel like the people in Albany don't give a shit about people who live in New York City, people who live in any of the urban centers in the state, they only seem to care about people in the suburbs. That's actually, like, area of research. And a lot of research has been done on the Democratic Party's shift towards suburbs. Like, there was a book that came out a couple years ago that looked at the shift towards suburban Bostonites. There's a focus of, like, Massachusetts Democrats. I think it was called, don't blame us. I don't remember who wrote it, but we'll we'll figure that out. And yeah, so there's been this, like, there was that famous quote about, like, every voter that we lose in, like, a working class part of Pennsylvania will pick up in the suburbs of Philly, Right? Is that that's, like, a quote, attributed to maybe, like, the Clinton campaign, the two thousand sixteen failed Clinton presidential campaign.

0:09:28

But there's definitely this idea that serving voters are where it's at. They're affluent. They're conservative. Physically, they tend to have, like, more progressive social value. So they're not like, you know, necessarily traditional old guard when it comes to culture. And that they're homeowners. So therefore, they're like invested in our state. So they can take that sort of, you know, stock holders approach towards democracy. Right? They're kinda like stakeholders. And that they're, you know, suburbs are increasingly diverse. Right? We know that that's true and that they have more democratic voters than they did in the past.

0:10:04

But, you know, definitely Andrew Cuomo has always been a guy who answered to Westchester. Right? And he's made that totally clear. I think that Westchester people, Long Island people, I even called them. Right? In some of the relays we've done for PPRA, they want a lot of the same things we do. Here's the thing. A lot of them, their kids are gonna go live in New York City because as much as you love your your home that costs more in property taxes every month than I pay in rent here in Queens. You know, a lot of the young people moved to the city. I read somewhere that Gen Z is moving towards big expensive cities like New York City much more as the millennials are moving out. And I'm not gonna talk about Gen X because I don't speak for my my age cohort. We've always been real bad. But yeah. And and I think that there's that idea that they've got the money, they're they can fund us, but it's it's it's a mistake, right, to see us as being divided in that way. Yeah.

0:10:57

I also feel like all of those things you said about the suburbs seem to be so appealing to Democrats. They also seem to just take urban voters for granted. We definitely Kathy Hockel did. Like, I didn't see any Kathy Hockel signs in New York City, but I saw a lot of Lee's elder. And, like, what the heck? Just turn out the Democratic voters, so stop taking urban voters for granted. Because we won't turn out if you don't make give us a compelling reason to why we should vote for you in the general. Yeah. And also, like, I you said something at the very end about, like, the division between voters, urban voters, urban Democrats, and suburban Democrats aren't exactly always so far apart in Kathy Hockel's election against Lee Zelvin.

0:11:38

So it was our last general election for governor. Kathy Hockel did, like, unprecedentedly badly, almost lost. And the New York State congressional races were a complete and total shit show, we literally lost the house for Democrats in the United States. The one of the poorest states in the nation somehow had the most right word shift. And like where everyone's like trying to figure out why. I feel like the answer is very clear. Some people pointed at the Democratic Party chair and how bad he is, but he's not really that powerful and he's not that influential. It's governor Hockel and the policies of Democrats.

0:12:17

That alienated voters in the cities, right, who actually want all of these things we just talked about, want the government to spend more money want more funding for healthcare, want free cooney, want the MTA to actually work and not see fares raised, but see the rich pay their fair share. Want taxes on the rich. That's what will motivate and turn out New York City voters. They did not turn out for Kathy Hockel. They didn't like her budget. They didn't feel motivated by her. And then when we talk about those Democratic voters in the suburbs, they didn't turn out either.

0:12:49

This master plan that Kathy Hockel and her billionaire brain trust have, where they think they're gonna, like, inspire all these suburban voters to vote for her because they didn't raise taxes on the rich, which by the way wouldn't include suburban voters. We're really talking about millionaires and billionaires, not you know, your average Long Island Italian family was the house. These suburban voters weren't drawn to that because they too want a functional state that provides for the needs that we talked about. They too want to see taxes on the rich. We talked about like home care There's home care facilities in the suburbs. People with disabilities live in the suburbs and need care, and those people that work for them need good wages in order to do that work. All of the priorities that we talked about. There's tenants, there's renters in the suburbs. Good cause is a suburban policy. Right? All of these different, like, progressive priorities appeal to Democrats across the state, across the country. Instead of turning them out, Kathy Hockel is trying to, like, I don't know, appreciate it. She alienates them. Yeah. She alienates them. In the same way that you alienates voters in New York City, and I feel like I feel like I'm taking crazy pills watching it happen in the budget. Watching leadership in New York State do these terrible things in pursuit chasing after this, like, imaginary voter. But since we're talking about the suburbs, that's like a great segue into, in my opinion, this article that we saw in The Wall Street Journal And I guess, I'll be honest, I didn't see the article in The Wall Street Journal.

0:14:22

I saw a sweet shot. I saw a sweet shot on Twitter of a graph that featured in the article. And the headline of the article was, like, Americans are moving away from traditional American routes. Like community, Community, like, community. Yeah. What were the values? Religion community involvement, family, something else the Was recreation too? Or Something like that. Yeah. So the it was this chart of all of these, like, six different American values. Religion, community involvement, family, two other things, and then money. And it tracked whether or not people believed strongly in these values over time.

0:15:05

And in two thousand and nineteen, so this is actually not too long of a period of study. In two thousand nineteen, everyone seemed really positive on, like, family, community involvement, and religion. And then in twenty twenty, All of those cratered except for community involvement, which shot up. People seem to feel some level of, oh my god, this terrible thing is happening in the United States. I feel like I should be involved. And then in twenty twenty one and up till now, it completely and utterly cratered. The only thing that went up as a value consistently over those three years was money. Okay. So much to unpack here.

0:15:45

But first of all, I think it's clear that capitalism really hurts our ability to care for each other. And the way that that sort of informed itself was the way that the pandemic laid bare to sort of how inhumane capitalism really is. But another thing too is that I part of I kind of blame this on the whole Republican strategy of using the pandemic to really divide people. Right? So, like, pitting parents against teachers, that's what happened in, like, the Virginia and New Jersey governor's races. The whole critical race theory thing. Remember how I we talked about how no one talks critical race there anymore. Right? Like, that was the big boogeyman of a couple years ago, but that was also like this idea that teachers do not know what's best for our children. We know what's best for our children and we need to control teachers. Right? As if teachers are not like, educated professionals who fit, like, standards and and learn things. Right? I just know that they don't know that they're, like, under power of this, like, evil woke agenda -- Right. Exactly. -- convert our children. Right. So they have a not only are they, like, ill formed, but they're also, like, to have a political agenda that might that kind of like rivals to satanic panic fears in the nineteen eighties.

0:17:08

And so it's like during the pandemic, I know that you were doing this. I was doing this. I was making phone calls for, like, a Zoran mom Donnie's campaign. And one of the first things do because we can do door to door knocking was that we would call people and ask them, oh, hey. So how how are you doing? Do you need food? Do you need medicine? Like, what kinds of ways can our campaign help you?

0:17:32

So the first thing that we did as a campaign was not ask for votes or sell a candidate or a particular set of policies, but reach out to people in their shared humanity. And people were really touched even if they didn't mean anything. And so people would like cry and they were because everyone was so alienated and, like, those Zoom parties just were not cutting it. Right? Mhmm. And so having that, like, personal connection. Usually, when you do phone making, you got a lot of people just hanging up and cursing you out.

0:17:56

But this time, people were, like, happy to hear somebody was spending time trying to help others. And so many people got together and helped others. Right? All this volunteerism happened, lots of mutual aid, like food banks, like it was really beautiful. People usually cried when I phone banked them just because they're I was calling them for a political cause. Also, because your voice was just so beautiful. No. I would say, negative, cry. They're like, oh, please don't talk to me about a candidate.

0:18:22

But, yeah, there was this, like, outpouring of not just like support, but like this desire to be part of something that everyone seemed to recognize something terrible was happening. There was a lot of pain and suffering. Happening to their family members and their friends, and they wanted to do something. And then all of that, like, very quickly went away. Like, there's happened. Yeah. But obviously, I wanna blame capitalism always. You know, there's that that meme of, like, these two women in bed together, and she was like, something really I'm just feeling really down and depressed lately. I don't know what it is. It's probably the moon cycle and then it shows the moon in the bedroom. It's capitalism. And that's how I feel sometimes. Or there was another really good one that's in Spanish and it's just like, this guy throwing a card down on the table. It's against capitalism. But, yeah, it's true. I'm sorry.

0:19:16

I feel like all of those values that we saw. One of them was like having kids. Literally, the economy, the way everything is set up, They want it to make it harder for us to spend time with our families. They want it to make harder for us for us to have children and be able to afford them and, like, you know, have a good time praising them, harder for us to be more involved in our community. The only thing people seem to be able to care about is money, not because people are, like, selfish and greedy and they wanna make a ton of money, but because that's the way you have to live in this country. Right.

0:19:50

I mean, people, you know, on one hand, I have to sympathize people who think that accumulating money is the way that they'll reach happiness because it comes from a place of deep insecurity. Oh, yeah. Right? If, like, you know that people who, like, have, like, generational wealth. They don't care about money. Because they don't have to worry about starving ever. Like, they have, like, trust funds or, you know, portfolios and assets, that kind of thing. Right. And it must be must be nice Like, what we want in our socialism is that everyone has that kind of security, not because you've got individual wealth that you, like, monopolize or, like, keep within your family, but because you know, the state or whatever we set up, make sure that none of us starve or have our basic needs fail to be met because we value that.

0:20:33

Yeah. I because I feel like it's a great way to put it. I value money a lot. I think about it like five times a day. Right? And not because I wanna be rich, because of all those things that you said. Right. Because you're scared. If I didn't have to worry about paying rent. If I didn't have to worry about whether or not I can, like, afford my phone bill and my energy bill, and all of the things that I have to pay for every month sort of I felt more secure about it. I felt like my housing was secure and what I'm doing at my job is actually more for like other things and other needs, but my basic needs would be met, I would think about money so much less.

0:21:05

I just wanna say something though. Capitalism existed before. The pandemic, right, made these valleys shut down. And I also I'm trying to think about one of these sort of, like, smaller issues that precipitated this rapid drop. And I think honestly think that everybody, like the media, the right wing, pundits, trying to turn the Black Lives Matter, protest movement into something dangerous, because initially, it was really beautiful and, like, the coverage was, like, oh, look at all these people getting together to, like, to man just this and then all the corporations were like, we're woke now. We love Black Lives Matter. Right? So you could see that this racial justice, like, framework was winning. And the right was like, no no. It's riots. It's dangerous. Right?

0:21:45

So they played into the fears that we naturally get under capitalism. You know, your property, what little property you have is gonna be taken away, what little security you have is gonna be taken away. Look at this pandemic, it's created like desperate monsters, and you have to now be scared. Like, let's make everybody more scared. Where before people were more scared of of a virus and, like, wanted to help others. Now people are, like, gotta keep what's mine. Yeah. Now people are, like, scared of each other. There was, like, totally. Social isolation period because of COVID and everyone wanted to reach out to others and be supportive and loving. And now there's a fake crime panic.

0:22:19

And, you know, it's targeted at a lot of people in the suburbs that you have to be scared of other people. That housing compact you talked about the people in the suburbs are so, so, so viciously opposed to it. And I'm seeing, like, the stuff that they're talking about, the stuff that they're saying, the graphics they're using, and they're just like, we don't wanna become the sixth borough of New York City. We don't want people to move in here. It's this terror of other people. Right. And if you look at, like, how Lee's Eldon did, right, he and the Republicans did, it was always in light of these bedroom communities that not are New York City where people were most afraid of crime because even though they're quite far away from like the urban city centers, I'm just like, you know, we we just looked at that video about or like the the article that millennials not being strong. I was like, no, it's suburban people aren't strong. They're so scared of anything. Yeah. No. There's this incredible fear of other people.

0:23:11

And, you know, final note on this topic. I just news making me think about this one really good quote I saw. And it's like a a stupid quote. And it was in this, like, article about movies. And you might remember or you may have heard hell as other people, that phrase, from this, like, existentialist philosopher of what was that? Or no. No. It's it's like a French guy who were to play. Oh, okay. And it's like hell is other people? We're very literate and culture here. So I thought you would know it. Well, I'm sorry. It's been a while since I was a grad school. But there was Is it not camou or someone? It's one of the it's one of his buddies. Someone And a few years ago, there was a moment where a lot of movies were coming out, and there were very, like, collectivist movies.

0:23:51

I remember midsummer or midsummer. I don't know, like, pronounce that. And the farewell. And there was this article that actually posited hell isn't other people. And I was like, yeah. Because both of those movies, Mitsomar, maybe a bit of a funny example to use here. But both of those movies were just like kind of trying to put forward these ideas of living in community.

0:24:15

The farewell was a much better example of it was What's her name? Aquafina, are problematic. Going back problematic faith. Going back to China. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Faking a wedding -- Yeah. -- for her her dang grandma. Exactly. Faking a wedding for her dang grandma. And she as the, like, youngest person there was, like, so shocked that all of her family members were kind of, like, lying to her grandmother about it. And it was just like kind of like beautiful tale of we don't want her to suffer. We're all really sad that she's dying and we're really sad that she's sick. But we don't want her to know that she's sick. It's our collective duty to make the last few years of her life as joyous as possible. And it was just like a beautiful movie about how human beings have like a duty to each other to be good and kind and moral and loving. And how actually we are our greatest strengths.

0:25:07

If you talk to anybody about the pandemic and the best moments that they had in it, it will always be about their interaction with them. Right. The moments of collective care that were, like, the bright moments of light and, like, A lot of darkness. Yeah. Okay. So we could talk about that forever, but we won't. Yeah. We'll talk about another moment of darkness. It's all of us. Instead, In a hopeful way, because we're part of a collective. The Democratic You're the democrat that through the cracks that shines on everything. No. It's still from Leonard Cohen. That's good. That's good. We're we're quoting today. We're lit up. Not well. Not well.

0:25:46

The IPCC or intergovernmental panel on climate change, which is a international, like, volunteer committee kind of of scientists and government leaders across the world. They're affiliated with the UN. Yeah, convened again to release yet another annual report examining the causes of climate change, the current effects, projections about the future and some some recommendations. As it as it turns out, still bad. Yeah. I don't think we need to tell you all that the outlook right now isn't great. And it turns out we we could have done more, but we didn't. We could have done more, we didn't. It seems to remain true. Emissions continue to rise globally. We're getting close to that two point five degree centigrade that we're really don't wanna too. Yeah.

0:26:40

There's this, like, prediction that long term based on everything that's happening right now, the most likely scenario is we hit past two point five degrees, which is, like, kind of just like almost like I don't wanna say doomsday scenario, but very much, like, the worst possible scenario for us. Once we hit that, we it's kind of like, there's no turning back. The earth will enter this, like, continuous, like, feedback loop of greenhouse gas. It may be so hot. Heating into Yeah. And I I think that the prediction was, like, twenty, seventy? Or Yeah. So not too far in the future, although I opposed far enough that we still have a lot we can do about it. And we should. We should not give up hope despite the doom and gloomy findings of this report. Absolutely.

0:27:24

One of the things I wanna talk about though about the report is it's very much like a science first a scientists report where scientists really don't want to recommend actual concrete political action or otherwise. And it always drives me crazy because I think everyone working on this report knows very clearly what needs to be done in order to reduce emissions for like positive future for humanity, but they don't wanna make those recommendations. I don't know if it's because it's controlled by leaders and governments and political powers that prevent them from making those kind of recommendations, or if it's just because they view their role as like impartial scientist. Right. There's a sort of desire to be a political or impart impartial. Right, that you don't you don't take a stand politically. We're just reporting the science. Yeah. Which is like a very liberal view of Paul.

0:28:18

Autics by the Or a liberal view of science as a science exists in a moral or political vacuum. Exactly. Like, you can't not be political. If you are saying climate change is real, that is a political statement. Right. But you're making a statement about human beings are doing this. Human beings can stop this. So there naturally will be through the powers of inference. Right? Which is what scientists love.

0:28:40

A third statement, which that human beings should stop it. Exactly. Or the scientists are saying, I don't know. Maybe you guys want to, like, cook. You know? I like being hot. I'm the only person's room who enjoys being warm.

0:28:52

But even I'm not be excited because everything will be on fire and there won't be enough food. They'll be drought. Right? Yeah. Your kids will be fighting in the water wars. Right. Right. That's why I'm just like, don't get too comfortable kids.

0:29:04

And the opposite is true though because all these Gen Alpha kids always have a water bottle with them. And I'm like, what are you doing? You can't. You can't be so used to moisture. No. They're preparing for the future. That that's they need that water bottle on hand when necessary. This is also why it's troubling. There is a recent study that shows that young millennials and Gen Z are weaker, softer and weaker than they're older generations. I reference that earlier. Yeah. There's a men's health article I shared this morning. So They measured it by grip strength though. Okay. So you want a lot of water in your water bottle. You want very high grip strength. To survive climate policies. But but very important. Other things. Yeah. Yeah.

0:29:48

One of the most frustrating things is, yes, they don't issue those political recommendations even though you're right. They're doing it by, like, inference. But I kind of have to ask if you're Joe Biden or or, you know, you're the person that controls Joe Biden. You're Susan writes. And you're reading this IPCC report. You're reading the articles about it.

0:30:08

How do you rationalize? Doing anything besides banning cars tomorrow. Right. How do you rationalize authorizing more drilling, more fossil fuel infrastructure projects Right? How can you do that at all and not, you know, immediately moving towards a green energy future? Like, how do you live?

0:30:31

I mean, I granted maybe when you're as top as Susan Rice, you don't ever read anything. Right? I once had professor who I won't name because he's famous now and, like, in top leadership at the White House. But he said that the higher up you are The more likely that the information that came in the report is now a bullet. That's all you get. Right? So it's like the low level people are the ones who actually read the ICPP. I I p c c report. Right? I c u p report. And I'm not seeing the people peeing. Yeah. We won't see them peeing opting more moisture. I must be very high up then because I'm not reading a lot. But you that's a great point. Maybe Susan writes is just reading some, like, filtered bullet that's just telling her whatever she wants to hear or whatever Joe Biden wants to hear.

0:31:18

It's insane that Joe Biden just approved yet another oil project up in Alaska. And, you know, I have to pull the card out. And that guy throwing the card down on the table, it's capitalism. It's literally We are dependent on economic growth that is dependent on exploiting as much oil and gas as Right. But the thing is that you could still do capitalism with green and renewable energy. There's an actually you could be a capitalist who wants to put all of your money into all those things and make a profit that's a thing.

0:31:48

Is that it's not just capitalism. It's that carbon lock and I'll never stop talking about. Is that, oh, we've already invested money in this. And as a result, we have to continue making money this way. Right? There's all these this existing infrastructure. There's there's the cars. Right? We'll talk about cars later.

0:32:03

Another episode. But, yeah, there's all these reasons why in order to continue making money, we have to continue with the way we've done things and continue to do things. Rather than being, like, you know, an early investor. Why not venture capitalists for green energy? Like, they could do that? Well, there are. Yeah. But they're not dominant. Right? There is Well, because of all this, like, you know, the mindset is burn it all up first. And it's also just not as profitable.

0:32:25

What we need right now isn't a market that over this long period of time begins to shift towards renewable energy. We need a public interest government to just step in and say we're switching to renewable energy tomorrow. We're getting off fossil fuels next year. Right. The this is never going to be profitable. It's going to pay off dividends in human interest. Reference can take decades. Right?

0:32:51

And the thing is that, like, this is what Carbon Larkin says, is that elections happen every two years, every four years. The Republicans are gonna come in and say, remember how the Democrats ruined the economy. We're gonna go back to gasoline. And that's why, like, when you look at social survey data about young people. Some of them were just like, oh, it's democracy really so great. Right? Because if you've got like a strong say is not accountable to, like, political opposition. You can just say, no, we're moving all. Not that anyone's doing it. Right? But we're moving to a fully carbon free economy tomorrow? Well, if we had a real democracy, according to the will of the people, in the United States, we'd have enacted a Green New Deal already. If we had a real democracy here in New York, we would have the build public renewables act in all its full glory. But we're We're working on it. We're very close to passing the build public renewables act here in New York. Maybe by the time you listen to this episode, it has already passed fingers crossed and prayers is up.

0:33:47

But, yes, that is ultimately the goal of an organization, like the Democratic Associates of America, is we're we're looking at this stuff with clear eyes. We're understanding, you know, the the dark and scary correct analysis that things are currently bad. We're understanding why they're bad. It's profitable. The richest and most powerful people in the world have expressed interest in continuing to make them worse. And we also see the solution, which is mass and mass and mass numbers of working class people through whatever levers of power they have, through their workplaces, at the union through the means of production that they use every day, rising up and saying no. We don't see this profit. We don't want to make a profit. We want to live. We want to have good lives. We wanna leave a good earth for our children and their children. And saying, yeah, fuck these capitalist exploitative bastards in these companies, we're going to change the world. Howard Bauchner: Right.

0:34:48

So going back to our second segment we had about how community was on the decline. When you organize other people, then it's the opposite. Right? You see how important community is. You engage with your community. And not to take up too much time, but we've been doing some tax rich canvases in my community, Hojax Tites, Stelionis, and and I and other DSA members. And this morning, somebody stopped me on my way over here and wanted to talk about, like, tax rich and, like, other elected because we canvassed him. We we organized him on the street a couple of Sundays ago.

0:35:21

And, you know, just walking around our community. I recognize faces. People say, hello, because Even the simple act of just stopping and talking about tax or rich makes us more connected. And it's it's fantastic. So if you haven't done it, you should try it. You should try it. I know so many people in my neighborhood just walking around just because they've seen me canvassing or firing or tabling for whatever random cause. And these people got a little bit more involved because of me. So politically, it was really great. But, socially, it's just so wonderful that my I feel so much more connected to the people around me, and I can tell that they feel a little bit more part of it too. And it's always just so lovely to see.

0:36:00

If you want to be a part of the community, you know what you have to do. First, you have to rate and subscribe us. And then you have to go online and Google join DSA, the Democratic Associates of America. You can shoot us an email at left on red n y c at gmail dot com, but join DSA, I'm guarantee your local chapter is doing something cool and exciting. And yeah, we are so excited to use again. Find us on Instagram. Find us on Twitter. Left on red is reported live at left on red studio's international and beautiful historic Astoria Queens, the most filmed neighborhood. In all of New York City. It's hosted by Susan Kang and Scott Carolidis. It's produced with original music by me Noitichi, and Giuliano Miara manages our comms. Thanks for listening, solidarity forever.