Interview with Al Franken, April 28th, 2006
The Riverview Café- Brattleboro, VT
By Brattlerouser
Brattlerouser: What I just wanted to ask how is the tour going, what’s behind it, and how things are going at Air America Radio?
Al Franken: The tour is going great and that’s what all the tours seem to do. We have somewhere in the nation about 80 affiliates. So, the tour serves a number of purposes. One of which is to visit our affiliates and build excitement in each town. But a bigger purpose is for us to get outside of where we are (Al’s show is located in Minnesota). We did the first couple years of the show in NYC, Washington, and especially with the kind of political show that we do you’re tend to be Washington centered. Especially with this Congress and this administration, which is just runned by these conservative Republicans, you find that you can get very discouraged really fast and going around the country, you see that progressives are doing things all over. Especially on things like… there’s 200 Mayors throughout the country have signed on to abide by the Kyoto Accord (a treaty signed by many nations to reduce their CO2 levels by a certain amount by 20??). Among the stupidest things that President Bush has said… and that’s a very high bar by the way (laughter) is that if we abide by Kyoto it would ruin our economy and of course the opposite is true. We’re seeing in the cities that we have visited that are amount he 200 that everywhere good things are happening. First of all they’re spending a lot less money on energy…
Al lost his train of thought as a reporter from VPR got up from the table to get her cup of coffee & notepad, (laughter). Al continues…
So in other words I kind of lost my train because the public radio person left in the middle of what I was saying (laughter).
*VPR reporter: And you thought we were so well behaved!*
Al Franken: I did! I thought ‘Boy I’m in Brattleboro, Vermont this is going to be the nicest group of people (laughter)… anyway, so the tour’s going great!
Brattlerouser: Awesome. So what is the most exciting thing about coming to Vermont in terms of the show…
Al Franken: Well we have incredible guests today. We have Bernie Sanders, Howard Dean, Pat Leahy… we’re going to marry a couple too. We have the Vermont Freedom to Marry and what we’re doing is, I’m not going to tell you who were marrying but we’re doing it.
Brattlerouser: Is Dan DeWalt going to be on today?
Al Franken: Yes he is. And I’m interested in that, I’m just not necessarily for impeaching the President… yet.
*Cross talk*
… I’m glad it’s a state (Laughter)! Obviously with the people you’ve had representing the state and people like Bernie and Leahy and Howard it’s just… Thank God, you know? So I feel like I’m in friendly country but you know, I love going to areas that are real ‘red areas’ like Fresno, CA, or Reno, NV, especially that because our listeners there just love us. There like, you know, safety lines to keep them from drowning.
Brattlerouser: So I know that you’re in the heart of the impeachment movement of Vermont. Around Brattleboro, it passed in Newfane, it passed in Brattleboro, and it passed in Dummerston, Marlboro, and Putney all the towns around here… Rockingham, it will be brought up in the Vermont State legislature now. There’s a section 306 of the Rutland Resolution (sorry folks if I butchered explaining the Rutland Resolution. I was just saying anything that came to my head) which I think goes into the Jefferson Manual saying a state legislature can ask their representatives to raise awareness and start an investigation.
Al Franken: Right. I think the House legislature does it. It has to start impeachment.
Brattlerouser: Yeah.
Al Franken: Who knew about that? I didn’t know about that!
Brattlerouser: I know that the Illinois and California legislatures are now bringing it up and the Vermont leg. Is trying to squeeze it in before they adjourn in late May/early June.
Al Franken: Well, I feel two ways about this. It shouldn’t be easy to impeach a President. Are these resolutions about to impeach him or to start the impeachment proceedings?
Brattlerouser: I think to start the impeachment proceedings.
Al Franken: Yeah, I guess those are two different things and I can see how that could make people nervous because it’s very very very serious to impeach a guy. There should be high crimes and misdemeanors and of course to what Clinton did, there’s no question that what we think Bush has done is a high crime and misdemeanor. I think there’s really no question that this guy lied to us and mislead us into war. The question is though, he didn’t lie to us under oath. So, I’m just a little uncomfortable with it. I mean this is very serious stuff that he did; lying us into war is probably the serious thing that you can get. So, why I feel every which way about it.
Person at table asked, “What about domestic spying?”
Al Franken: Well that also, that could be very well be something. You know, because of this Republican Congress, there’s no way they’re going to investigate it. They just won’t allow it. Now on the other hand, he sort of did… some members of Congress he did alert them and inform them to some degree, not to the degree that I think conforms to the law. I think he is supposed to inform every member of the committee…
Cross talk
… We absolutely have know idea what he’s doing because this Congress won’t do the proper oversight. So, this is being enforced by the fact that this Republican Congress has been acting like a rubber stamp and won’t do their job. So this forces the citizens’ hands. It’s just that I feel two ways about this. I definitely have strong feelings that this President lied to get us into this war has probably broken the law and that Congress should be doing it’s job, investigating both the warrant less wiretaps, it should have been doing its job investigating torture and essentially getting rid of habeas corpus (Franken laughs). You know, if Congress had been doing its job there would be no question to this. And I’m not talking about doing the job of starting the impeachment proceedings. I’m talking about doing the job of looking in to all these. You know, the Senate was supposed to look into the White House Administration of whether or not they manipulated intelligence, which was clear that they did, and they didn’t do that. So what’s a citizen to do, other than to demand this? So, I’m very very sympathetic with it. it just causes me to worry that every time a President becomes unpopular that impeachment proceedings will start and it shouldn’t be about unpopularity it should be about him breaking the law. But I think there’s a very strong argument that this guy has broken the law because Congress won’t do the job and it leaves us very little recourse.
Brattlerouser: I know that if the Democrats do get control of the House & Senate that John Conyers will run the House Judiciary Committee and Pat Leahy will run the Senate Judiciary Committee. Do you think that had it not been the citizen impeachment movement in Vermont and in other states, towns, and cities if it hadn’t been going at the pace that it was do you think there would not be enough momentum to push these proceedings once they have control of the House & Senate?
Al Franken: Assuming they do.
Brattlerouser: Yeah, well obviously that’s true!
Al Franken: Well, you know, I WANT to control the House & Senate and I want it more than impeachment. That’s sort of the least of the reasons why I want it. I want it so we can reverse so much of the damage that’s been done and so that we can do actually oversight into things that we’re contracting, I mean, and oversight into contracting like FEMA, and oversight into all these things. And then we should reverse things like the Bankruptcy Bill, the Tax cuts for the very top, the idea of universal health care for kids RIGHT AWAY! That’s one thing I think we should be for. I’d rather be for that. I’d rather say, ‘We’re for universal health care for children, from day 1 that we go in, rather than saying we’re starting impeachment proceedings. And I understand the very strong constitutional arguments that you can make on impeachment proceedings but that could happen once we take over without our announcing it so strongly. My fear is it will create a backlash and that will create turn out among the right and I just, I mean maybe I’m too cynical, but I REALLY REALLY want to take over one or both of these Houses. So we can start… #1 I want some people power for other things. I think that the war contracting and profiteering has been a disgrace and Congress has completely been a rubber stamp and completely refused to do its job in this regard. Nothing is getting done on health care other than you know, the exact opposite things that we need, like the prescription drug program being implemented the way it is through insurance companies rather than through Medicare. Medicare can’t be allowed to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies. All of these, it’s just one corrupt thing after another. One thing we need to get rid of is tax incentives for companies that outsource jobs to other countries. Companies get tax break for just assembling a factory and then sending it overseas. That’s ridiculous! And we got to get rid of that. So, while I do think there’s a really strong case for impeachment, I kinda think that, that would come if we got our oversight capacity back and that eventually might come but more important are these other things to me.
VPR reporter asks if he’s in Vermont for some other reasons.
Al Franken: Yeah, tomorrow night I’ll be in Burlington to raise money for Bernie.
VPR reporter asks about his plans to run for Senate in 2008.
Al Franken: Well, I’m thinking about that and I’ve been doing a lot of traveling around Minnesota and it’s part of a process I haven’t decided yet. But I’ll decide probably early in 2007.
VPR reporter asks that if he does run, doesn’t that mean he’ll have to tone down his rhetoric.
Al Franken: I’m gonna have to be smart about not swearing and (laughter) I think that this is a different role but also have to be myself. So I don’t think that transition should be very hard. I mean I do 3 hours of radio a day. I manage to get by that without any problems and every once in a while you say something as hyperbole as a tool that you might have to defend through that. In terms of, you know, I’m not going to call Norm Coleman a ‘But Boy” (Norm Coleman in the incumbent Republican Senator of Minnesota) while stumping. He might be a ‘lap-dog’ instead of a ‘but boy’ (laughter), you know what I mean? I have to pick and choose what I say and I think that’s appropriate. I think that when you run for office, I can’t change who I am. But I have to acknowledge the change of what I’m doing and show respect for people who have problems with that. When you’re a comedian you don’t need 50.1% of people to like you only need something like 2% (laughter).
Brattlerouser: OK. I just have one more quick question. What do think about independent media…
Al Franken: They shouldn’t be allowed (laughter)… I anticipated your question (laughter)!
Brattlerouser: But in terms of getting the message, how can we help? What’s the most important thing they could be doing?
Al Franken: I think the most important think they could be doing is to do good journalism and covering the stories that the mainstream media doesn’t cover.
Brattlerouser: What exactly would that be?
Al Franken: I mean local stories, stories of arrangements that have been made by politicians that isn’t going to get covered in the mainstream press, stories about how people are affected by things like, not just outsourcing… I mean people go like ‘OK we live in a global economy there’s going to be outsourcing.’ But if you go into the details of what a factory or what a multinational company got a tax break because they outsourced, you can kinda get people to start realizing the issue or just look a kid or family with a kid that doesn’t have any health care insurance anymore and see what the results are. The results are very often that a kid and his family have to choose between medication for the kid and their mortgage or their food. While the smart kid is doing well in school, won’t get the treatment he needs or the medicine he needs and will slip back and get lost. Just you know, like the little stories. These ARE the stories these are the important stories. These are the stories that show what the results on the ground are and I think take it out of statistics and put it into an individual story. Americans are very empathic people. I really believe they are and I think if they see that there is a family, like a Laotian family I know in Minneapolis. They work both hard. They lost health care support for their daughter and she’s just got a genetic disease and they can’t really give her the medicine she needs an she’s got terrible complications, she’s a very smart girl in school and now she’s falling behind and it’s not American. It’s not right, in fact it’s kinda stupid. That’s not America.
Franken was interrupted and shuffled off to go see other people.
Nuff said.
Now I’d like to hear what all of you thought of Franken’s comments |
