Full Transcript From Today’s Video Is Below
Please pardon the typos.
BJ Mendelson: Why doesn’t Congressman Pat Ryan support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United?
Damn good question to ask, right? Well, here’s the thing. Tomorrow, March 24, from 5:30 to 6:30 is going to be one of those call-in town halls that Congressman Pat Ryan does. The phone number to call at 5:30 is 833-980-3644. That’s tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24, at 5:30 p.m.: 833-980-3644 to call into Congressman Pat Ryan’s town hall.
We’ve tried in the past to get people to call in. We had dozens of people call in the last time he did this about South Blooming Grove. And, of course, the congressman’s people did not select any questions concerning South Blooming Grove because—
Ever since the Monroe Gazette has been covering the tight relationship between Joel Stern, Isaac Ekstein, and Pat Ryan, there’s been no comment from Pat Ryan’s office on anything. Anything. The fake election? Nothing. The skipped elections? Nothing. The municipal water infrastructure crisis? Nothing. The hydrogen sulfide problem in the Village of Monroe that’s caused by the Village of South Blooming Grove? Nothing. So we had people call in last time, and they ignored all of us.
But this time, think: if we all call in and we talk about one federal thing, you might actually get an answer. And it’s something that you should probably hear. So again, I’m going to give you the information one more time. Then we’ll be real quick about the constitutional amendment, and then I’m going to shut down.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24, 5:30 to 6:30—if you live in New York’s 18th Congressional District, that’s Congressman Pat Ryan—5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 24, call 833-980-3644 starting at 5:30. Again, it’s 833-980-3644.
When you get through, ask very simply: “Why doesn’t Congressman Pat Ryan support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United?” I know that’s a mouthful, but it’s an important question. That’s the way you want to ask it: why doesn’t he support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United?
Why Citizens United matters to you: if you live, say, in Woodbury, you just saw State Senator Skoufis spend over $20,000 supporting a far-right MAGA bigot named Brandon Calore. He was able to do that, Skoufis, through what was called an independent expenditure committee, which is basically the New York version of a super PAC. Citizens United was the tail end of about 200 years of basically giving liberty rights to corporations. That means treating the corporation as a person, saying that the corporation has a right to speech, and then saying that the corporation has a right to speech in the form of money that it can give to elections.
In 2024, when we saw over $250 million spent by Elon Musk to support President Trump, that’s what Citizens United allowed. Congressman Pat Ryan has talked a whole lot about being a trust-buster and being against the big corporations and how tough he is on them. This is the test of that, because if he does not support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United, you could say he’s full of it. Overturning Citizens United—yes, I know it’s hard to do a constitutional amendment—but it can be done. Remember, this country enacted Prohibition and then quickly repealed it.
We can amend the Constitution, and we can do it faster than anyone thinks. We can do big things. You just have to raise your expectations. We as Americans need to start raising our expectations. So if Congressman Pat Ryan does not support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United, you can say he’s full of it; he’s not going to do anything to curb the corporations.
All of this matters because there will come a time when the current regime is out and MAGA is dead, and it will mutate into some crazed, extremist strain with a new name, I’m sure. There will be a day when everything we’re dealing with now will be in the past, and we will ask ourselves how to make sure this never happens again. There’s a longer answer to that, which is the second Bill of Rights. I don’t have time today to talk about the second Bill of Rights, but I can tell you one item in it: overturning Citizens United. If we can get private money out of our elections, you can take your country back from the rich oligarchs. It’s as simple as that. The oligarchs are the ones that fund the fascists in the first place.
If you want to get big money out of politics—whether it’s in the Village of Woodbury where a state senator spent $20,000 supporting a far-right candidate, or the state level where the big tech companies clearly influence Governor Hochul’s agenda, all the way to the national level where people like Elon Musk spend hundreds of millions—if you want to stop that, you have to overturn Citizens United. More explicitly, you have to get all private money out of public elections. If there were a constitutional amendment, it should say that private money in elections is forbidden; we’ll get there—that’s a longer conversation.
Again, if you live in Pat Ryan’s congressional district, which is New York’s 18th, I’m encouraging you to call and put his feet to the fire. Even though he’s running against, well, nobody knows—probably going to be some crazed MAGA fringe candidate—he’s basically going to run against nobody. It’s important that you still hold people accountable even if nobody’s running against them.
Some will say the big fight is Lawler and we should all focus on Lawler. I hear you—that fight matters, and The Monroe Gazette will be covering what happens in Rockland County with Mike Lawler, because that could determine who controls the House. But that does not mean you let Pat Ryan off the hook. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.
So that’s all I’ve got for today. Again, this is not a real record store, as you can see from my hand blurring—woo—it’s not real. I wish it was. That was a frequently asked question that we got.
If you look at the transcript, there may be typos and errors; it was generated from an AI. If I had the time, I would stop and edit more, but right now I have to finish my book, so I don’t really have time to do that. Please forgive me if there are typos and errors in the transcript. I try to catch the egregious ones, but I don’t catch them all, obviously. I’ll be a little quiet this week because I need to finish the book. If something crazy happens, you will hear from me.
