Bernie Sanders: Well you're absolutely right; it's not just
younger people, that's what a lot of people say. When people say, "Look. I am not a terrorist,
and if the government wants to listen in or file my phone calls, that's not a
problem," that makes me very sad. It
really makes me very sad, because it's not what Freedom is about, it's not what
liberty is about. You have the right to
live your life, get on the phone and talk to anybody you want to, say anything
you want to, without fearing that the United Sates government is listening or
filing your phone call. Furthermore, you
have the right to have the confidence that when you go to a website, any
website, you can do that without knowing that where you have gone is in
somebody's file.
And by the way, Rob: this is not just a government
issue. We're focusing appropriately
enough right now on government action.
This is very much an issue that corporate America is involved in as
well. The reality is that we are moving
toward the day (and we are there to some degree already) where every doctor
visit that you make, every prescription drug you get, every time a talk to
lawyer - whatever it may be, virtually every kind of activity that you engage
in is being filed someplace. That
saddens me very, very much; that's not what this country should be about. And the Congress has been way, way, way
behind in terms of legislation - not only to protect the American people from
government snooping and government over-action, but the private sector as well.
Rob Kall: Now, you
talk a lot about Too Big To Fail companies (TBTF). I call my show the Bottom Up Radio Show
because I believe that we're in a transition from a top down to a bottom up
culture and world, and I really -- I've given talks on how we need to have
bottom up economics, which means you don't give any big money to any big
organizations anymore - and we've got to start looking at ways of getting money
from the government to the people, not to the big corporations. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Bernie Sanders: Yeah, I do.
First of all, I think one of the outrages that is currently going on in
the Congress is the degree that we are not focusing on the economic needs of
working families. You know, the papers
tell you every day, "The economy is getting better." Well yeah, it is better than it was in the
midst of the financial collapse, but real unemployment today, Rob, is not 7.6%;
it's over 14%, counting those people who have given up looking for work, and
are working part time when they want to work full time; immediate family income
has gone down by some $5,000 dollars since 1999, millions of people working
longer hours for lower wages, kids leaving school deeply, deeply in debt, youth
unemployment off the charts. So we've
got to start focusing on how we create an economy that works well for all of
the people, not just for the top 1% at a time when we have the most unequal
distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth. Those are what we've got to focus on.
Getting back to your point: what I see just in my
own State of Vermont is there is a lot of focus and attention to issues like
buying local. How do we support local agriculture rather than
agribusiness? Supporting
worker-ownership or employee stock option concepts. So in Vermont you have a number of companies
which are owned [by workers], or at least workers have a significant say in
what the company does and the profits being made from the company.
You're talking about more community health centers
(which are Democratically controlled, by the way) where local people sit on the
boards of primary healthcare centers, thoroughly qualified community health
care centers. You're seeing a lot of
effort to keep money locally. You're
seeing a lot of effort to have people getting involved in the Democratic
process, and making decisions which impact their lives not only politically,
but economically as well. So I agree
with you. I think Vermont may be a leader in trying to decentralize the
economy, and give people power over their economic and political life.
Rob Kall: Have you
looked at public banking? That's a
growing movement advocating for what North Dakota has already done, and what
about 40% of the nations in the world have.
What do you think about that?
Bernie Sanders: I'm strongly supportive of it. North Dakota did it I think in the 1920s, not
quite a new concept there.
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