 You're talking about lifting 100 million Americans out of poverty into the middle class through the progressive agenda. OK, what how bad an investor and a capitalist do you have to be to not make money off that? How that was supercharged the greatest consumer economy the world has ever known.  Well, let me talk about not just the progressive ideas, but how to put those progressive ideas into action. We have seen a lot of action during, I think, during the Biden administration. And even, you know, this week they're talking about this new deal they struck to –  For decades, for the first time, they've been trying to negotiate pharmaceutical prices for Medicare. They've done it. They got it done, at least for the first 10 very popular drugs. But as I described in my introduction, you know, after it became clear that Biden was going to be the Democratic nominee, Bernie Sanders and a progressive group came together with Team Biden for these working groups in several of these policy areas that you have just stepped through.  to sort of help move the Biden campaign and the administration to the left. And it seems to me that those working coalitions have borne great outcomes in the Biden administration for progressives. It seems to me that working together...  Finding a way to come together has, you know, has yielded great success as opposed to just, you know, separating ourselves, protesting, et cetera. Where does PDA sit on that broad spectrum of progressive politics?  Yes. What I would say is that the Biden administration represents a very important historic break, very much informed by the political logic of what you just described by political. I mean, this negotiation between the Sanders wing of the party and the centrist wing of the party. And they made a very historic break with the orthodoxy of what people call economic neoliberalism, which has been the prevailing organizing of our economic life and social life in the United States since Ronald Reagan's presidency.  And you saw, first of all, Trump. Trump, by the way, Donald Trump, I hate to say this, contributed minorly to this along with breaking trade policy. Well, the Biden administration and their negotiations and trade policy have been even better and continue with that break. But the more significant break, because don't forget, Trump was no break, really. When you just have a slight break on one wing of it, it's not the kind of break that happened. Where was the big break was on the utilization of fiscal policy.  through the large packages that were passed by Congress and signed by the White House in the first two years of the Biden term. This, again, returns to the use of fiscal policy much more so than Obama did. Obama reverted right back to neoliberal orthodoxy in his administration.  And that's not – let me know just for accuracy that these – many of these policies that were passed that you said by Congress were passed by Democrats and often only Democrats.  Yes. And love him or hate him, love or hate the Democratic Party. They're the ones who got these things pushed through. Not a you know, there was there was some work in coalition with some Republicans, but it was Joe Biden and the Democrats. And I think they need to get the credit due for it there. So proceed. Yes, absolutely. In fact, one of the most important speeches, I imagine, is going to be given at Progressive Central by Representative Jim McGovern while it's complete.  completely phony disclaim of the Republican Party to be the party of the working class. And McGovern is a perfect person to give that. His life's work has been all about being a Democrat fighting for the working class. But, yes, so this break occurred. Now, here's the thing. The relationship of the progressive wing of the party to the ticket and then to what, you know, you can call the mainstream of the party. I'll go even this far as to say this. Coming into the 2020 cycle,  I was arguing as the head of PDA that you had three different groups vying for political power in the country at that point. The progressives, who actually address the issues and concerns of the American people. On the left, on the right, you had the MAGA people. And in the middle, you had the neoliberal consensus from the Romney wing of the Republican Party through the Clinton wing. Okay, that neoliberal  to make that less of a sharp break with the progressives. You're absolutely correct in your analysis, in my opinion. Now, though, I do think, and this is where the progressives, I think progressives cannot be dogmatic in this manner. They have to convince and conjole and persuade.  a Harris-Waltz administration and their team of economic advisors, that the way forward is to go further and look at those four big-ticket items and also look at programs that address – and this is a very tough one electorally. And this is where progressives do have to have a backbone, even for themselves, because we know that lifting up the middle class, those four big-ticket items, those being addressed, traditionally have been a winning hand in American democratic small-D politics.  Serving poor communities more difficult because of the level, I mean, as we all know, the richer you are, the more highly you're likely to vote. But again, addressing those entrenched pockets of poverty, which I think we can do, especially in a positive economic context, we can do it. By the way, the hardest time might be  Just sort of where you're floating sort of in anxiety about the direction of the economy. But when you have a positive economy or a very negative, then people really fear falling into poverty. They're open to addressing poverty. But, again, lifting up those Americans. Don't forget, every other prosperous industrialized technological society in the world, and there are about 20 of them,  that are sort of on the same plane of wealth and technology as the United States, all of which, by the way, were our Cold War allies. That's a nice historic note, right? So they're Australia, New Zealand, East Asia, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Western Europe, and Canada. All of those countries, right?  endemic poverty, which means only the United States has a latent group of about 100 million people who can be lifted up by very understood mechanisms into the middle class. And when that happens, that is an economic boom. Think about it. It would be incredible to achieve it, but it is more difficult politically. Well, you say you need to push the Harris-Walz ticket in that direction. Do you  Do you need to push them in that direction? No, we don't. Waltz, I think we can see there's the appetite there. But I do think it's always just to be prepared with very courteous, as it were, persuasion and argument and put forward our case. Right now, I don't think there's any reason on domestic policy to view the incoming ticket  with any kind of sense that we can't achieve these things, potentially, or at least make more progress in their direction in a real way in the next few years. Yeah, I mean, it seems to me in the next few years that if the Harris-Walls ticket is elected, that there are opportunities here that, sure.  You know, we played a couple of times on this show. I don't have time to play it now. But AOC talking about, and this was back when Biden was running against Trump, talking about how, sure, she doesn't agree with all of Biden's policies, but she would rather organize against Joe Biden than organize against Donald Trump, that they actually have a chance to do so, to move a Biden administration or now a Harris administration, whereas Trump.  Trump, you're not going to move. Can I interject an important point here from my point of view? Here's the thing. The Harris-Waltz presidency...  failing to address especially those four big ticket items, child care, higher education costs, housing, housing, housing, probably the biggest one at this hour in American political consciousness, and health care, that, I'm sorry, it's going to not be a successful administration. We're at that hour in our economic and social history. Those things have to be addressed. A pathway to, quote, unquote, the American dream has to be reopened.  And an administration that achieves it will be a success. And that's part of the persuasion. Yeah. Listen, my point, though, is that coming together to make that persuasion, to make that case rather than traditionally, Alan, as you know, as well as I do.  Progressives, folks on the left, have been at each other's throats. But we have seen lessons, it seems to me, recently, leftist coalitions coming together in France, in Mexico, that you can actually accomplish a hell of a lot. And again, Sanders and Biden back in 2016, that you can actually accomplish something when you come together to do it rather than eating ourselves alive, which has been, I think, the case on the progressive left recently.  for too many years. And let me agree to it as much as I will be willing to do in this interview because it started out as I tried to push against caricatures left. That is one, though, Brad, I confess, sadly, has some legitimacy. We're not humorless. We're not really – there's no way en masse that the progressives are the Stalinist thought police like they think we are. I'm Joe Rogan and Bill Maher and stuff like that. That's way over-exaggerated. Yep.  But the left-wing fighting, we have to get over, and that's on our plate. And the other big thing about the left is that these things are unachievable. They're unachievable for fiscal reasons. Well, they're not unachievable for fiscal reasons. They exist in almost all of those other countries. And you look at the – not the aggregate wealth indices. There's unbelievable aggregate wealth in the United States of America. And household balance sheets are larger, meaning they have more wealth capacity and effectively more assets.  than they do in those other countries, maybe exceptions, Switzerland, Norway. But, you know, it's because they have oil and whatever the legal banking system the Swiss get away with, right? So the United States is potentially much wealthier. But if you look at social welfare indices, right, taking out the aggregate wealth components of those indices, so everything else, you know, how human beings are actually prospering or not in our society, the United States, these are at the bottom.  very close to the bottom or way at the bottom on all those. Think about mass incarceration. Think about violent gun deaths. Think about the level of depression that exists and that is, you know, people take pills for. Think about the wealth inequality. Think about the cost of our health care and the generalized health care outcomes across the board. There's a lot for the society to improve upon. Americans don't want any of that to  Raskin, there was a lot going on, and he's confirmed to try to participate in our program. Good. And we hope he will lead and open the program because I actually have asked Raskin to talk about the American progressives, progressivism, and the country, the American left in the country, to take back this idea of what we want that is good for our country, for a society that we can be proud in.  We cannot allow the right wing to own that. No. And Alan, I got to get out here. It's all very exciting. And all of the pieces that I hope are coming together for you guys in advance of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I do need to ask. I've got really just a minute or so here. A coalition of groups are protesting U.S. cooperation with Israel and its war on Gaza.  They're said to be preparing for what they claim will be 20,000 protesters near the venue, the United Center in Chicago. So, A, is PDA involved with that protest? And, B, I know there's been a lot of worry among Democrats for some time that we might see protests akin to those which turned violent in 1968. Ironically, that was the last time a Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson in that case, had chosen to not run for another term in office.  Do you have concerns about that? What are you hearing about the protests from the various groups and and or seeing on the ground there in Chicago where you now are? Well, I arrived yesterday. It's been rainy since I've been here in the event outside of Rainbow Push. I was going to attend. It was undercut by the rain. So I've been largely doing my work in my friend's house out here in the West Side. And I mean, OK, P.A., of course, supports the ceasefire.  PDA does support right now not sending any more weapons to Israel. And I'm confused by this offensive. Of course, we want Israel and all peoples to be able to defend themselves. But, you know, just throwing in offensive weapons, I'm not quite sure what kind of weapons are offensive to defend themselves. Right now, in this hideous situation.  You know, we take that position. And and of course, I want to self-identify. I want nothing but the welfare of all the people and families of the Middle East to be achieved. This has been a horror show. Yeah, well, this happened since October 7th. And what Hamas did is, of course, a crime against humanity. And my interpretation of Hamas leadership and their understanding of the realities on the ground, they understood what the backlash was going to be.  And I see them as having sacrificed the population of Gaza for their political ends. But Israel's response still to me, I think the United States going forward does have to commit to supporting the international criminal courts and courts of justice. These are largely set up by us. So with all that means for the public, but also when horror like this happens, it's terrible truth that it does create opportunity.  And I think we have to be steadfast in holding to now we must move forward towards a situation where, I mean, look what brought about peace in the former Yugoslavia.  was eventually – and this is not my wish. My heart would wish it didn't have to be. But it is basically mutual deterrence between the two, the Croatians and the Serbians. So we need a Palestinian state, and we need Israel to be able to defend itself and Palestine to be able to defend itself, and then to always push –  Less stick, more carrot towards building prosperity for both societies. And if this is the horror show that produces it, it's what we can produce. We have to try to produce that out of this horror show. So as for demonstrations and everybody, yeah, free speech society, open society, that's where I want to live. So, yeah, people can do what they're going to do. The big demonstrations are organized by answer.  PDA sometimes signs on to their demonstrations, sometimes not. We've been too busy to consider that right now. So it's not a shunning or we're just not. Well, as I said, as we started, everything is coming to short notice here. So we will see what happens next week with those with those protests. And if or how I don't think it's right. Chicago doesn't feel like it's 1968. It just doesn't. It's there will be there will be notable actions. And.  There will be notable actions, but I don't think as much passion as there is out there. I don't think it's quite broadly at the level of what's going on in the country during the Vietnam War. All right. Well, maybe we will bring you back next week to talk about whether you were right or wrong about that, Alan. I would love to do that anytime. Thank you, sir. Always is a light speaking with you. You can find more on Progressive Central 2024 at Progressive Central 2024 dot com.  And get tickets. Reserve them now. They're going to go fast. They're going to be gone. You need a reservation to get in. Get them now, ProgressiveCentral2024.com. There you go. Also, PDAmerica.org. You can watch all of this on their YouTube channel at PD America, their YouTube channel. You can find Alan Minsky on the site, still known as Twitter, at Alan Minsky, I believe. Alan, a delight speaking with you. Good luck with the conference, and we will talk soon, my friend. Thank you. Great talking with you, Brad. Thank you. Thank you, sir.  Always great progressive geeking out with Ellen. Could have done it for an hour. Yeah, and that whole livestream that they have planned, that's going to be super progressive geeking out. Lots of progressives there. Should be very cool. All right, we've got to take a quick break. We will come back with the progressive Desi Doyen and our latest Green News report. That's straight ahead on the Bradcast. I'm Brad Friedman.  We all need your support to counter the powerful corporate media echo chamber. From Desi Doyen and myself, thank you.  Okay, Betsy Doyen, it's been about 24 hours since the last hurricane spun up thanks to climate change fueled rapid intensification. Have we had any new storms in the past 24 hours? No, not yet, but there's more on deck. Oh, fantastic. As discussed in our latest Green News Report. It took nearly a year to restore power to all residents. Today, the island's electric company faced a major test.  Tropical storm Ernesto slams into Puerto Rico, knocking out its electric grid again. Taxpayers are paying a stiff price to protect high-end coastal communities. Beach restoration projects protect wealthy homeowners at taxpayers' expense. Plus, U.S. Forest Service blocks bottled water company from taking California's mountain spring water. Good.  All of those stories and more straight ahead from brandblog.com. I'm Brad Friedman. And I'm Desi Doyen. Stand by for six minutes of independent green news, politics, analysis, and snarky comment. You know, the biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one eighth of an inch over the next 400 years. And you'll have more.  You'll have more oceanfront property, right? Wrong. You'll have less oceanfront property, you idiot. And it's not one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years. It's one foot over the next 30 years. You'll be dead by then either way. This is your Green News Report. Okay, Dizzy Doyen, don't even get me started on that.  Dumb conversation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who knows better on all of this, yet he let the disgraced former president spout all sorts of stuff and nonsense on their boring two-hour conversation on Twitter. Yeah, we'd play more of their conversation, but as veteran climate advocate Bill McKibben put it, their bizarre claims were, quote, the dumbest climate conversation of all time. And that is saying something. Plus, haven't we all been through enough this year?  Yes, and I just want to add that scientists forecast as much as seven feet of sea level rise before the end of this century, which would eliminate much of Florida. Including Mar-a-Lago? Yes. Sad. What else you got for us today that's not stupid, Des?  Well, hot ocean waters helped power Hurricane Ernesto into a Category 1 hurricane in the Caribbean shortly after it battered Puerto Rico as a tropical storm. Puerto Rico escaped a direct hit from Ernesto, but the storm delivered at least 10 inches of rainfall and significant flooding that overwhelmed infrastructure. Its high winds damaged the island's fragile electric grid.  which is still under repair from catastrophic Hurricane Maria back in 2017. Ernesto on Wednesday knocked out electricity for more than 700,000 customers. President Biden has approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico. Ernesto is now forecast to intensify to a powerful Category 3 storm before striking Bermuda and thereafter spinning out into the open Atlantic.  Interestingly, while July 2024 just broke the record for the warmest month ever recorded globally, the record streak of hot temperatures across the world's oceans appears to have finally eased, according to NOAA this week. Record hot sea surface temperatures cooled off slightly in July, ending the 15-month streak of record warm oceans. But there's still plenty hot, disrupting marine ecosystems and fueling hurricanes and extreme rainfall.  Storms this year have already caused extensive damage along the East Coast, including accelerating beach erosion. And taxpayers are on the hook to pay for the costs of restoring those beaches. Some beach restoration projects are deemed necessary to maintain habitat for threatened species and to protect infrastructure.  But CBS News reports on the stark inequality of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars going to temporarily protect high-end beachfront homes, while inland low-income communities are starved for investment and grappling with housing shortages. Professor Andy Coburn of Western Carolina University says beachfront homeowners should pay for those restoration costs. There is inequitable distribution of benefits and costs.  Why are we spending public money to protect somebody's private, risky investments? Why are we doing that? Finally, a big victory for California's parched Angeles National Forest. The LA Times reports that the U.S. Forest Service has denied a permit to the company that sells Arrowhead bottled water and has ordered it to shut down pipelines and infrastructure that the company has used to draw hundreds of millions of gallons every year from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains.  basically for free for nearly a century, which it then bottles and sells for profit. State officials already determined that the company has been unlawfully diverting much of the water without valid water rights. Residents hope the agency's decision will withstand a court battle and that it will end the 10-year fight to stop the company's extraction of water from the public's lands that they say has dramatically reduced creek flows  Good. You're welcome, Arrowhead. Now get lost. For much more on all of these stories and the ones we couldn't get to today, check out our website at greennews.bradblog.com. Find, follow, and share us planet-wide on the Facebooks, Mastodons, and sites still known as Twitter at Green News Report. I'm Brad Friedman. And I'm Desi Doyan. And this has been your Green News Report.  Yes. Beat it, Arrowhead. We don't need you out here in our...  Beautiful forest, stealing our water as they've been doing for decades now, for nothing. Almost a century they have been doing this. They take the water for free. They pay $2,500 a year, and then they get the water for free. $2,000 a year, get the water for free, sell it for a buck a bottle.  Or more. Or more. You know what? They can go back to just taking it out of the crappy New York tap water like so many of those bottled water companies do. Indeed. And, you know, this was all during California's historic drought that has deepened and is basically a mega drought. That they were taking all of that water for $2,000 a year. Yes.  And selling it all over the country. And creating tons of plastic bottle waste. Jerks. See ya. All right. Got to go. My thanks again to Alan Minsky, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, and to Desi Doyen, our producer, and, of course, mostly to you for spending a portion of your day or night with us.  If you missed any portion of today's program or just want to hear it again or share it with friends, families, and enemies, you can do so for free at bradblog.com. No paywall there. Let's help keep it that way by hitting one of them donate buttons, if you don't mind. We could really use your support. Or you can go straight to bradblog.com slash donate to help support what we do and keep us on your public airwaves, at least throughout this election, which, by the way, could go on for a while.  True. That's it. You can drop me an email. I'm Bradcast at Bradblog.com. On Facebook's Mastodons and sites still known as Twitter, I am TheBradblog. And you can follow me, Desi, at Green News Report. Yeah, bother her, not me. I've got to go. We've got to beat it. Thanks again. I'm Brad Friedman. Good luck, world. Just beat it.  Thank you.  You are listening to KODXLP 96.9 Seattle and streaming online at kodxseattle.org. It is 6 a.m. Coming up next, Flashpoints.  Thank you.  From Pacifica Radio in San Francisco, this is Flashpoints. I'm Dennis Bernstein. Today on the show, hundreds of immigrants and their supporters will talk and walk 48 miles from San Jose to San Francisco asking to be seen, recognized, and legalized. We'll talk to our good friend Rene Saucedo about the upcoming walk for civil and human rights.  Also, what does three years of Taliban rule look like on the ground in Afghanistan? It's not pretty, folks. Also, anti-genocide activists blocking the fueling of genocide in Palestine. And that's fueling by the United States government, the current government. All this and more coming up straight ahead on Flashpoints. Stay tuned.  And you're listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. My name is Dennis Bernstein. This is your daily investigative news magazine. We come to you every weekday from 5 to 6 over the Pacifica Radio Network. That's KPFA in the Bay Area. We are happy to have you along today. And we're going to begin right here.  There is going to be members of the Northern California Coalition for Immigration Reform in collaboration with some 20 organizations or pro-immigrant organizations announced hundreds will be walking 48 miles from San Jose to San Francisco on August 17th, 18th, and 19th. They're going to be participating in a caminata or walk for a pathway to citizenship through registry.  Joining us is our good friend Rene Saucedo Almas.