Pete Dominick Wants to Help
Comic, political commentator and radio show host Pete Dominick stopped in to talk with Ron Bennington about what’s wrong in America, and he had a lot to say. We thought we’d share some of his insightful ideas for how to start fixing our problems. Here are a few of the policy ideas Pete shared while on the show.
My main theory on politics, and I want to write a book about this, but I’ve only got one page worth of ideas. It’s simple. What we believe, politically, is what we have experienced in our lives. The anecdote rules. So whatever you think about black folks, or rich folks; whatever you think about illegal immigrants or Muslims; it’s what you’ve experienced, a) it’s what you’ve heard secondhand or in an email, b) it’s all the anecdote. What we need to do is take a step back, and be a little more responsible, be a little more intelligent, and say listen, I have heard this, or I saw that, but what does the data say about that? What do studies show about that. Most people are informed by their life’s experience.
Pete Dominick On the Occupy Movement:
I am not a journalist, and I’m not unbiased. But my form of protest comes out on the air every day. I’m fully supportive of most of the message of the Occupy movement. It means all of us. The system is broken for 99% of us, and these are the things that we think can fix it. Income inequality is what it’s about. It’s about the system being rigged for the people at the top.
The bottom line now, is there have been more stories in the last two months about economic inequality on page one of newspapers. Awareness. This movement has created such a sense of awareness for people. Because we weren’t talking about this, we were talking about fucking deficits. Really? Unemployment is like twenty million people and we’re talking about deficits? The people at the top are doing better than they’ve ever done and we’re talking about deficits? No, let’s talk about jobs. And now we’re starting to have these conversations about economic inequality. People on the right hate that word. Nobody’s arguing that everybody should have the same amount of money. We’re saying you should have a chance to do well.
Pete Dominick On the Taxation System in America:
I’d like to see the rich pay a lot more money. I’d like to see a progressive income tax that doesn’t end at 36%. If you’re making a billion dollars I think you should pay a huge… income taxes for the top used to be 90% under Eisenhower, they were 70% under JFK. They were really high under Reagan, that’s when it all changed. And that’s when people started really hating government, under Reagan because he said government is the enemy.
Pete Dominick On Campaign Finance:
The system is really broken and unless you change the system it doesn’t matter who the president is or who is in congress. Beginning with campaign finance. We criticize congress all the time for a million great reasons but the bottom line is, if you gotta raise millions of dollars just to get elected, the only way to do it is to take it from certain industries. You almost can’t blame them. If you don’t get the money out of politics, then Congress is always going to be making laws and getting rid of laws and regulations that benefit industries that aren’t in the public interest.
Pete Dominick on Capitalism and Greed:
When you combine globalization with capitalism that’s exactly what happens. When it became affordable to ship cars overseas, we would be losing jobs in America. As our standard of living goes down a bit, India and China and Brazil’s goes up a lot. I think that we should realize that we are 5 % of the world’s population and we use 25% of the world’s energy resources. We should realize, you know what? Fuck you, you’re not going to have a giant house. You’re going to have a small house, but everyone’s going to have their own bedroom, it’s gonna have air conditioning, broadband…it’s going to be totally pimped out…but it won’t be huuuuuge. You might not have a Lexus but you’ll have a Honda. Life will always be awesome in America if we can lower this idea of “I’m going to have so much bigger all of the time. I’m never going to be happy until I have this size house and this kind of car.” When you go to Scandinavia and you look at Denmark and Sweden and Norway, they have a higher standard of happiness.
I think we have become what our type of capitalism creates. We have become a species of human beings that only cares about doing better, every day, financially– as if that is what creates happiness. You’re only going to be happy when you look like this, and you have this…but then you get those things and you’re [still] miserable.
Pete Dominick On American’s Unwillingness to Sacrifice:
This country used to be a completely different place. The idea was that everybody did something to win World War 2. And now.. only 1 % of Americans have any form of sacrifice for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which are insane wars, which are wastes of money. If a man’s life is lost, in Afghanistan or Iraq, he has been sacrificed. He has not been fighting for our freedom– all that is bullshit. Hopefully he got something out of it. Hopefully it was worth it for him and his family. But 1% of Americans.
So not only do we not sacrifice for the guys who are fighting, but we don’t even acknowledge that they’re fighting. We don’t talk about it. We look away. I went down to Walter Reed. I met four guys at Walter Reed. You know how many legs they had? 1 leg. Four guys, one fucking leg. And you know what? Americans don’t give a shit. If they gave a shit, they’d be out in the streets screaming.
Sacrifice..we can’t even give up a penny to save the entire planet. We won’t give up anything because somehow it’s going to damage our lifestyle. Which again, is a spiritual problem– it’s a way of thinking– it’s the idea that oh, my life is going to be shitty if I have to take a high speed train to work and I can’t drive myself. My life is going to be shitty if I’ve got to charge my car up and I can’t just go on a 9 hour trip. My life is going to be shitty if I have to give up a little of my benefits package so somebody else can have their kid see a doctor.
Pete Dominick on On Capitalism and Corporatism:
Every company has an investment in their stock and every CEO gets paid through their stock. So it’s about raising your share. The insurance industry for example– the insurance industry only makes money when they don’t pay out claims. It’s absolutely insane to have every single industry in the world be privatized and for profit. Now we’re privatizing the prison industry, meaning they are going to make money when people are in prison, so why would we ever consider decreasing sentencing, if the longer a guys in that bed at my prison, the more money my company is making. The profit motive is detrimental to many industries.
I’m not anticapitalist, I’m anti what it has become and what it has made us. I’m so for the idea of a guy working hard….and succeeding big. I’m not for it if he’s putting profit before people. I’m not for making millions of dollars because you can pollute a lake.
Pete Dominick on Why It’s More Expensive to Buy American:
People will have you believe that the reason Wal-mart does business in China is because the taxes are lower. But anybody that knows anything about business and economics knows that, I think this is true, the highest cost of doing business is labor. And if we’re not willing to work for cents on a dollar, to make a t-shirt, to make a table, then they’re going to ship those jobs overseas. And if we’re not willing to put a tariff on those things when they come back in– if we’re not willing to say we’re not going to buy your shit as long as you don’t have regulations that are somewhere near ours– and what I mean buy that is, you can’t shit in a lake. I know you can in China, but in America you can’t. It’s a lot cheaper to make something when you’re allowed to shit in a lake as a byproduct of it.
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You can hear the conversation in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio. Don’t have SiriusXM yet? Click here to sign up for a free trial.
You can hear Pete on SiriusXM POTUS 124 from 3pm to 6pm daily, and also on CNN several times a week.
