A Vision for Progressive Capitalism & Economic Patriotism
27:47 Share

Do you love reading as much as we do? Well, you're in luck because we're launching our first ever Betches Book Club in partnership with Nutella Biscuits because they know the best moments are even sweeter when you share a great snack with your friends. If you're in New York City, come hang out with us IRL at the Betches Book Club.

On October 28th, Aileen, Sammy, and I are hosting a book discussion with author Margot Harrison, where we'll be discussing her brand new novel, The Midnight Club, and snacking on Nutella biscuits. No, I won't be sharing mine because I'm truly obsessed and they're actually my new favorite snack in the world. But don't worry, there's going to be plenty for everyone to share. Head to bit.ly slash book club IRL to grab tickets for you and your friends. That's

bit.ly slash book club IRL for tickets. Grab yours before they sell out.

Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm V Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream, presented by Betches News. Where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. Today, we are joined by California Representative Ro Khanna. Representative Khanna has championed so many progressive causes in the last few years. And today, we're going to focus on his economic philosophy, as well as some changes to the legislative and judicial branch that have bipartisan support among the voters.

I don't know if the politicians like it too much, but we will get into that. Welcome, Representative Khanna, to American Fever Dream. Thank you, guys. Thank you both. You're extraordinary in what you've been doing for connecting with people who don't have a voice in Washington. So I'm really excited. And you made me go viral on TikTok, so I've got to give you a personal thanks. I'm here for you because you're here for us. I've really appreciated watching you on the floor just

hold the line for a lot of the progressive ideals that we hope to see that the, you know, people always say we can't do, but Ro Khanna's like, yeah, we can, we can, and we will. Something I want to ask you about first, you identify as a progressive capitalist and you've called for a new economic patriotism as a governing philosophy, which sounds both exciting and a little spooky to me. Can you explain this to me? Yeah.

Well, it's actually pretty simple. Basically, it is a democratic vision of our economy. Right now, you've got $10 trillion of wealth piled up in my district, Apple, Google, Nvidia, Tesla, and a lot of wealth in New York, in LA. But there's so many parts of this country, black communities, Latino communities, working class, factory towns, rural America that have been excluded.

So progressive capitalism says economic patriotism says, let's bring new jobs, new opportunity, new economic hope and industry to every district in America. And then it says, look, if you want those jobs and if you want that opportunity, you've got to have health care, Medicare for all. You need to have a free vocational education or public education. You need to have child care and you need to have housing. You've got to be able to afford the rent.

And so this is giving people a shot to have economic security in every part of the country on the modern economy. So what does that mean in terms of what is going on with our system now? What kind of changes would actually need to be made in order to effectuate this vision?

So there are two different aspects of it. There's the how do you create jobs and give people a shot at participating in a business? And that means that we've got to get a lot of the tech and AI jobs that are going to be available in every district. So concretely,

I'm getting 40 historically black colleges and universities September 30th and bringing all the tech companies down there to create $5,000 scholarships, credentialing programs, $65,000 jobs. We've got to create these opportunities and more than just Silicon Valley or Seattle or New York.

And we need to have new industry. So I'm going to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and having a bill for modern steel development, which is going to be low carbon footprint, much lower carbon footprint than in China, and also going to reindustrialize a factory town that was hollowed out. And then second aspect of it, other than the job creation, is we need Medicare for all. People shouldn't be going into medical debt. We need child care at $10 a day. I mean, if you have a family, you're paying $10,000, $20,000 just on child care.

We need to have rents capped so they aren't going beyond inflation so people can afford to get a place. And we need to do something on the student loans and getting free public college, free vocational education so people can get an education. And that I call it the whole thing a new economic deal. But the economy just hasn't been working for too many people.

You know, some people are going to listen to that. They're going to be like, who's going to pay for it, Roe, though? How are we going to get the money for this? Do you have any sort of like feedback for folks who are skeptical of our ability to afford such things? Yeah, tax the people in my district. You know, there are plenty of billionaires there. Start there.

Start with having a tax on massive billionaires that is at least at 25%. Have a tax, a step-up in basis so you're really paying estate tax appropriately. Have the corporate tax be higher at 28%. Make sure that we have a tax on financial speculation, all the financial speculation that takes place on Wall Street.

We should have a minimum tax for overseas earnings. Right now, you're only paying 10 percent there. There are a lot of things we can do on the tax side to raise revenue. And then we shouldn't have a defense budget that's approaching $1 trillion, 56 percent of our spending. So with smart tax policy and a reasonable defense policy, we can pay for the investments the country really needs.

I think something that turns companies off when they hear about or people off when they hear about higher taxes on XYZ thing is that they're just hearing what is going to be taken from me.

rather than hearing that this is actually a mechanism to incentivize people to spend differently so that they can continue to earn money, but in more productive ways that are more pro-social and helpful to more people rather than just to maximizing profits to a smaller number of people.

So can you talk a little bit about internally in Congress, how do you build support for raising taxes on the very, very wealthy and corporations that are paying much lower taxes than many of their employees in many cases, especially when there is so much money in the system trying to prevent that from happening?

Well, Sammy, you nailed it with your last sentence that the challenge, in my view, is that the American people don't think that the rich should pay more tax or that these big corporations should pay more tax. Yeah, they want to make sure that it's going to be well spent, but they understand that an investment in education and child care and health care is

worth spending on. The reason that you can't do it is because all the big money, the lobbyists, the influence of big money in political campaigns, the sense that you can have a billionaire basically finance a candidate to almost become president. I mean, when the Republicans were running on the nomination, they each had their billionaire. It used to be, you know, you had to go pick a campaign manager, pick a team. Now you've got to pick your billionaire to be able to run. And

Obviously, they don't want their taxes going up. But at some point, this country has to realize that you're going to see massive discontent with institutions and we don't have change.

And we're not I celebrate a lot of entrepreneurs, including billionaires. I said, OK, great. You Steve Jobs, you created this brilliant iPhone. You created the Apple computers. Fine. Great. You're helping a lot of people. But you also have done well. And we can tax you so that we can have other people become future Steve Jobs or have other people if they're shot at the American dream. And I don't think that's class warfare. I think that's saying everyone should have a shot in America.

Do you want to stay up to date on the news, but find it stressful and also you don't have any time? We got you. The Morning Announcements is a daily podcast from Betches Media that's here to help you make sense of the chaotic world and its nonstop headlines. I'm Sammy Sage, and I'll fill you in on the biggest news of each day, delivered to you in five minutes with some light, snarky commentary. The Morning Announcements was also the winner of the People's Choice Podcast Award for News and Politics in 2023. So tap the banner to listen to new episodes of The Morning Announcements on Spotify.

Ryan Reynolds here from Intmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited Premium Wireless. I'm going to get 30, 30, I'm going to get 30, I'm going to get 20, 20, 20, I'm going to get 20, 20, I'm going to get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes each detail.

Now you represent Silicon Valley and you just brought up the election. I have a big concern about how AI will be deployed to affect the election. Do you have any thoughts on ways that we can control AI and this manipulation of data and personality so that we don't see the election interference that we're so used to seeing? Well, V, I still haven't seen an AI VBOT. I'm waiting. I

Oh, it's on YouTube as of this morning. As of this morning, there is a AI. You're going to laugh at this, but

As of this morning, there is an AI. They took a video of mine where I'm explaining Agenda 47, manipulated it ever so slightly to make it seem like I was enthusiastically endorsing it and at the same time selling Trump gold coins. So a little ad right next to it. Well, I was just joking around, but it's actually everywhere. Well, look, I think that this stuff needs to be taken down. And I've made this clear to the platforms that some of them, which I represent, that, you know,

Really, we need congressional legislation. We're not going to get that before the election. So there needs to be a clear statement that if you're using AI generated content for political reasons, we shouldn't allow it. Now, years later, maybe we can allow their positive uses if

Let's say we want you speaking fluent Spanish. I don't know if you already do. And there's an AI bot that translates you into Spanish. So there are positive uses of it. But the problem is right now we don't have a regulatory framework and it's going to be used in nefarious ways.

I don't want AI bots saying, "Sammy's saying don't vote for Joe Biden for X, Y, and Z reason." That can be very, very compelling because it could take some of the clips you've said where you're upset with some policy and then have, "Well, this is why we don't want you to vote for Joe Biden." You don't even need a lot of it being AI. It can just be manufactured. We've got to make sure that stuff isn't on these platforms. The challenge is we've got to have that voluntarily enforced

by OpenAI, by Google, by Facebook and X. And we've got to, you know, we've got to continue to put pressure or I think this could make a difference in an election. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's something we've been talking about frequently. Our last episode was even about the concept of manufactured consent and not even that it's necessarily about, you know, pro-Biden explicitly or pro-Trump explicitly, but about there seem to be these operations of broader messaging telling people to boycott voting or that, you

third party candidate is, is viable or that there is much more support for these candidates than is actually organic. Is there anything that's being done to combat that sort of like false reality that's created by fake accounts at scale? We,

We need to get these bots off these platforms and that there should be legislation to that legislation that you need to be able to have some identity to participate because you're right. A lot of the extremism is being driven by bots. By the way, even in Germany, there was a study done that a lot of the ADF, the extreme wing parties, social media was bot driven.

And if we cleared out these social media platforms from bots, I think we'd clean up a lot of the toxicity. But Congress has not stepped in. And look, if you're sitting there as a platform and you've got a company, you're not gonna say, yeah, let's clear out all the bots so we can show that all your followers have declined of people. I mean, it's not a winning business model. Like I was CEO and I presided over the 20% drop of followers.

And so, you know, you need Congress to legislate and you need Congress people, frankly, of the next generation to understand this stuff. I mean, there are all these people who are they've never been on Twitter. They've got, you know, a staff person who does that. They've never posted on Facebook. They've never done a TikTok video.

And so people say, do we need more computer scientists and Congress? I say, no, we just need people who like use this stuff. Like imagine if you were making rules for the road. No one is saying that you have to be the engineer who makes the car. No one is saying you even have to be the driver. But it'd be nice if you actually been on the road. And that's what we're saying on social media. You know, there's so much distrust in politics right now. And something that I admire about you is your ability to

enthusiastically disagree with people while not annihilating their entire platform in existence. What's your advice for folks who are very disappointed in some of President Biden's choices, especially as it comes to the Middle East, but are giving up on the whole administration as a result? Is there some sort of secret to staying engaged and working with people like President Biden, who you often disagree with and have called out, but need to maintain a working relationship with?

Well, I'd say to them, you made an impact. Look, I was one of the 37 Democrats who voted against the offensive aid to Israel. I voted against the ban for UNRWA funding. I have called for the recognition of a Palestinian state. I have criticized the vetoes of the United Nations on ceasefire or recognition of Palestinian state. And all of the voices, particularly the young people who've been out in protest, who've been out calling for a ceasefire, has gotten the president to move.

where he's now giving speeches on a permanent ceasefire. That was the call, where he's now saying, Netanyahu, you need to stop the war. Hamas, you need to stop the war. So we've had an incredible impact on him. Now, people may say he needs to go further.

And that's great, let's continue to mobilize. And should he have done it sooner? Absolutely. But you know what? And AOC, others that made the same point, we wouldn't have this organizing ability if it were Donald Trump. There would be no, okay, let's move him. I know because I was in Congress for four years.

There was not one thing I did that somehow Donald Trump stood up there and said, OK, let me listen to what the progressive Democrats have to say. Joe Biden does. And so what we need to do is continue to organize. And I understand the frustration and, you know, run for Congress, get progressives in Congress, run in 28 and 32. So we get more progressives running this country. But for right now, let's organize and work to get Biden in as good a place as possible.

Absolutely. I think that's where the where the struggle is. And I think that might even be where some of this manufactured extremism comes in that I think probably if you speak to most progressives, they do understand rationally that if Trump were to go into office, the idea of the Palestinians having any sort of protection from an American president at all, that goes away, you know, completely.

that he will not be responsive to any sort of lobbying or anything, or anything other than just probably being paid off. So it's really a very different situation. And we hope that people appreciate how much Biden has actually moved to the left in response to pressure, his work to get student loans canceled. Ultimately, let's say we are able to

push back against Trump again and Biden is able to get into office. There is a huge opportunity, especially if Democrats take both houses of Congress. So there's a bright future that we can imagine ahead to motivate us to win this election.

One thing that you have recently introduced is the political reform resolution that presents a rather comprehensive roadmap to broad political reform in a way that uncorrupts our judicial legislative branches. So can you talk a bit about that program, all the different pieces of it and how we can actually get it done?

I think this is an agenda that can unify progressive Democrats, independents, even many Republicans. And that is, let's make sure that members of Congress aren't becoming lobbyists. You know, there was just a report out yesterday that former members of Congress, people like Mike Rogers in Michigan, are making millions of dollars after being in Congress. That should be banned. I mean, how can you go after you're in Congress and cash out on that? Second, let's make sure members of Congress aren't trading stock.

Let's make sure that members of Congress aren't taking big PAC money and lobbyist money. Let's not have super PACs, at least in Democratic primaries. So get banned at all. And I don't care if you're left, right, whatever your view, you shouldn't have to be able to go to a couple of multi-billionaires and say, fund my campaign to get to Congress.

Let's have term limits, both for members of Congress and senators, but also for Supreme Court justices, 18 years and you're done. Not you get to sit on these courts for 50 years and decide whether women get birth control. I mean, you know, these justices are living in a different era and that's part of the problem.

Do you think we could actually get that across? I mean, that's like one of the things that most excites me, the idea of term limits for Supreme Court justices and a code of ethics for the Supreme Court justices. And I would like to pack the court, but that's me. I understand that we're not going to do that this time and we're not going to promise that. But I think nine is not enough. Nine is not enough. Girls got a dream. You know what I mean? But how much support is there for judicial reform, things like 18-year term limits or anything like that?

There is overwhelming public support for term limits for Supreme Court justices just because it makes common sense. And it would really, I think a reform like that, if you study history like FDR, you know, that will maybe push this court to adopt an ethics code. Maybe it'll push them to care about public sentiment. Right now they're isolated and they have no political pressure.

And we've got to speak out against the court's illegitimate decisions and illegitimate practices with these gifts and the sense of no recusal and embarrass them for practices that clearly are violating the sense of fairness of the American public.

But the great leaders, FDR, Lincoln, the way they got the courts to move was not to treat them as they were in hallowed black rows, but to treat them and call them out for the partisan actors they were, whether it was the Dred Scott decision saying that's un-American or whether it was the Lochner court that kept striking down Democrats.

Roosevelt's protections from workers, they said to the American people, look, this court is hurting you. And we've got to be more vocal, bolder on the court. And I think running, the president running on term limits is saying to the American people, look, this is a court that stripped you of your fundamental rights, reproductive rights. And that's about equality.

I mean, imagine if we were to tell men you don't have a choice about what you do with one of your body parts or things about your body. We would never do that. And yet we're telling women in 2024 that they have got restrictions on that. So this is this is about making it clear that we have fundamental disagreements with this court and we're willing to call them out.

Is that a message you can share with the president, that he should be campaigning heavily on that? I think he's getting there. I think the vice president has been, you know, very, very strong on abortion rights and reproductive rights. But I think we need all of us to do that. And not...

hesitate to say abortion rights, not hesitate to say this is a matter of fundamental equality, not hesitate to say this court is reaching decisions that are illegitimate, that are fundamentally unconstitutional because many of them, some of them are partisan hacks. They literally got there not because they were brilliant jurists, but because they worked on the right campaign for the right president. So

be more direct. You know, we're, we, we tend to, uh, still mask the Supreme court with this kind of wisdom and legitimacy, uh,

that isn't speaking plainly. And I think that the president and the party needs to start calling them out and exposing them. You draw so much of your intelligence from the international implications of what happens here in the United States and the world that you and your parents have lived in before. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about

your parents' experience in India and what worries you about the backsliding democracy we're facing based on the lessons that you may have learned from what they had to go through? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, my grandfather spent four years in jail alongside Gandhi and Nehru as part of India's independence movement, was part of the Congress Party, first Indian parliament.

My parents came here in the 1960s. I was born in Philadelphia in 1976, our bicentenary, but I've always looked to my grandfather for inspiration and fight for justice and equality and pluralism. And there have been unfortunate tendencies in India more recently

to have a ugly Hindu nationalism that has led in certain parts of the country to the demolition of Muslim homes, that has led to laws that expedite citizenship for people other than if you're Muslim, and that are not consistent with the Indian constitution as written by

Ambedkar, who was actually influenced by W.E.B. Du Bois or the Gandhi-Niru ideals. And the good news, though, is that in this recent election with Prime Minister Modi, a lot of people who stood up for pluralism and who stood up for

the Gandhi-Niru tradition actually won. And Modi, yes, he's still prime minister, but it's a very slim majority. And there are people who vote for Modi for economic reasons and other corruption reasons and anti-dynastic reasons. But I think what the lesson out of India after this recent election is people don't like the divisive sectarian appeal to politics.

And so the lesson for us, hopefully, is that we also will stand up against a politics that is there to divide, that is there to make some people who are vulnerable, whether they seem Hispanic immigrants, whether they're women, whether they're gay, whether they're trans, whether they're Chinese students, that we should not be building an America that seeks to divide based on anger against vulnerable populations.

And that's an easy way to be engaged in demagoguery. But that's not who we are. And hopefully the American people will rise up in November and show that.

It feels like that's what so much of this fight is about right now, you know, standing up for, you know, everyone or a very, very small minority. It's our last chance. I mean, that's what it feels like, right? And I'm glad that you, Rep Khanna, were able to talk about the fact that we can disagree with President Biden, but still understand that that is the path towards having a chance in 2028. Because it's either we spend the next four years when we're so close to pushing people in a more progressive direction, have four years where he doesn't have

to worry about reelection and he could be pushed really far to do a bunch of stuff and then leave or have Donald Trump who's going to laugh on our faces and say, good luck. I'm a dictator now and there is no election in 2028. Best wishes to you. So I appreciate your ability to walk that line and to lead us through those difficult waters. Well, I appreciate both of you. You have more followers than almost anyone in Congress. So they're going to take you more seriously than members of Congress saying this. So it's so important that you're out there

uh saying this and and even if you think that uh there's going to be an election in 28 if trump cuts there and of course it's all uh going to be under extreme uh stress and pressure the the reality is that you're going to go 50 years backwards and my point is look we the progressive movement is ascended we know this we know this from how well bernie did how well warren did how progressive uh biden some of his policies have been we know it's ascended and we know now that even in foreign policy there's so much

activism around a more progressive direction. And so you can either have this fight in '28 to say, we want a more progressive platform, we want progressive candidates, we want progressive candidates to House, Senate, presidency in '28, '32, or we can go 50 years backwards, 50 years backwards, and then we could be fighting just to get voting rights and women's rights and reproductive rights and gay rights

I mean, do you want to move forward in this country for the younger generation and build a truly cohesive multiracial democracy? Or do you want to have the same fights that people had in the 50s and 60s?

I want to move this country forward. And that's why we've got to win this election. And we're lucky if it's only 50 years back. They want to go 150 years back. Thank you so much for being in this fight. And it is great to catch up with you. Is there anything else you want? You want to let the people know? No, just thank you to you, Sam and me, and to know how much information

influence you have. I really think that this is going to come down to turnout and young people and you have the finger on the pulse and I'm excited about the future and I'm excited about the future to build movements and also to communicate without having to go on broadcast television and all the costs of that. It's going to change everything and so thank you for being in this fight.

All right. We'll see you on TikTok, Rep Corona. Thank you. Until next time, I'm Vitus Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream. American Fever Dream is hosted by Vitus Spear and Sammy Sage. The show is produced by Rebecca Sous-McCatt, Jorge Moreles-Picot, and Rebecca Steinberg. Editing by Rebecca Sous-McCatt. Social media by Bridget Schwartz. And be sure to follow Betches News on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. Betches.