Ep 217: It’s All North Carolina—The Fight for 15 and The Campaign For A Progressive U.S. Senator

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It’s those zombie voices again. The ones who rise up from the dead, or from a hidden policy corner, to start the drumbeat of fear about “debt” and “deficits”, all in order to block progress for the people.

There is no debt or deficit crisis. We have plenty of money in the richest nation in human history—and we should be spending big right now, especially with interest rates at rock-bottom lows. So, today is your antidote of information to combat the claim of a debt crisis (by the way, I wrote a book about this topic a decade ago—you can download it for free).

Shervin Aazami, a progressive activist, is running for the Democratic nomination for the 30th Congressional District in California. He’s challenging a long-time corporate Democrat, Brad Sherman, who, among other horrendous positions, voted for both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and opposed the Obama Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. Shervin joins me for a chat about his campaign.

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 218: There Is No Debt Crisis; Taking Down A California Corporate Democrat

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I’ve spent a lot of time on the crisis facing workers around the world who before the pandemic even hit us faced some pretty dire economic realities. Tomorrow, a high-level group will convene, virtually naturally, to talk about creating an international social fund to assist lower income countries to come out of the year-long pandemic economic shutdown. Cathy Feingold, director of the AFL-CIO’s international affairs department and deputy president of the International Trade Union Confederation, which represents 200 million unionized workers worldwide, gives us the scoop.

 

Rick Larsen has been a useless member of Congress. You can’t find a single initiative that he championed in the 20 years he’s represented the 2nd Congressional District in Washington. His best claim to fame might be that there isn’t a corporate dollar he hasn’t been willing to pocket, from defense contractors to health care companies to big tech companies like Amazon and Google to planet polluters like big oil companies. Jason Call, a longtime progressive activist, is taking on Larsen in the Democratic primary for the seat in 2022. He joins me to talk about the campaign to, as he says, “rein in the undue influence of giant corporations and directly challenge their power.”

 

 

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 219: A Social Fund For The Planet’s Poor; Challenging A Corporate Mouthpiece

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I have discussed a number of times the union organizing campaign at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. So, as the ballot counting is now underway, I thought today we could add two aspects to the conversation, while we await the final results which could take a number of days.

First, people don’t really know how the hell the ballot count happens, what’s the process, what does it look like so I thought it would be worth checking that out a bit. And, then, second what happens if the union wins? That second one is a doozy—because the fight just begins even after a union victory: the road to getting a first contract is torturous because a company like Amazon will fight tooth and nail to obstruct, delay and undercut the union at every turn, all in an effort to frustrate workers who want to see tangible results from their vote.

We all need to know that, if the union wins, everyone supporting this campaign needs to keep the mobilization going after the final ballot is counted. So, to wrestle with these thoughts, our friend Dave Mertz is back. Dave is a vice president at the Retail, Wholesale and Department Stores Union and he joined me for a chat from Bessemer, Alabama which took place late at night after he finished meeting with the core organizing committee members.

So, why is Yemen a place that even a top United Nations official calls “hell on earth.” Consider: Yemen is a country of 30 million people, 81 percent of whom make less than $5.50 a day and are facing a historic deadly famine; a place where, in 2021, 2.3 million children will face malnutrition, and 40 percent of households have poor to borderline access to food; a nation in which 20.5 million people, two thirds of the entire country, are without safe water and almost as many are without adequate health care, leaving millions at the mercy of cholera and, of course, COVID-19. Add to that a vicious war—fueled by U.S. arms and aid to Saudi Arabia—that has displaced millions of people from their homes, making every aspect of what I just recounted even worse. Scott Paul, who is a lead humanitarian policy expert with Oxfam America, lays out the crisis in Yemen, and whether a small ray of hope beckons.

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 220: Inside The Amazon Union Vote Count!; Yemen Is “Hell On Earth”

Bernie Sanders rocked the nation and triggered a political revolution. He talks exclusively to Jonathan Tasini about his journey, Trump, the Democratic Party, fighting the corrupt system, and the next wave of the revolution.

Episode 1: Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!

Nina Turner had a lot to say to the throngs of people who she spoke to over the past year as a main surrogate for Bernie Sanders. And when she said it, she said it with passion and inspiration. In her chat with the podcast, she brought that same energy to a wide range of topics, from Bernie's campaign, the Democratic Party, the political revolution and what the future holds for her as a leader of the progressive movement. We also hear from a leading anti-Trump conservative, Tara Setmayer. And we end with our regular segment, the Robber Barons, featuring the Waltons of Wal-Mart.

Episode 2: Nina! Nina! Nina!

Bedwetters, this is for you. A day before the election, Jonathan speaks to Celinda Lake, long-time national Democratic pollster, and together they sift through the polling data and the real trends. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield—yup, Ben & Jerry, with Ben having ice cream in hand—talk about their experience supporting Bernie Sanders. We wrap up with our Robber Barons segment with a look at the corruption at Wells Fargo.

Episode 3: Bedwetters and Ice Cream Lovers Unite!

Because we need to celebrate in these dark political days, give a listen to how YOU, and thousands of people like you, helped kill (hopefully, forever), the dastardly Trans Pacific Partnership. After a short primer on so-called "free trade", Jonathan speaks with two key people who organized the opposition, Lori Wallach, the director of Global Trade Watch, and Larry Cohen, the new board chair of Our Revolution, the organization carrying forward the Bernie Sanders movement. To wrap up the podcast, this week's Robber Baron segment focuses on Apple.

Episode 4: The TPP is Dead!

Jonathan goes digging into the world of the global sweatshop, talking with global workers rights advocate Shawna Bader-Blau on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Bangladesh factory fire that killed 110 garment workers and injured thousands more. We also talk Just Transition--how workers and communities will be looked after as we transition from a carbon based energy system--with Jonathan's good mate from Australia, union leader Tony Maher, a global advocate for climate change action who represents miners and energy workers. And our Robber Baron of the week is the CEO of a greedy drug company that hiked prices by hundreds of dollars on a life-saving device.

Episode 5: Burning People, Burning Planet: Capitalism Ain't Pretty

Episode 47: It's not going to happen tomorrow or even next year. But, the day when insurance companies are no longer bankrupting people every single day because of outrageous premiums is drawing closer. Today, Bernie Sanders will unveil a "Medicare For All" bill that rockets the conversation about universal health care to a new level. And he won't be standing alone: more than a dozen Democratic Senators have endorsed the bill, with the pressure building on others to do the same. Jonathan talks with a policy expert who has been on the front lines of the single-payer, "Medicare for All" battle going back to the 1990s when Rep. John Conyers laid down a comprehensive proposal that now has 117 cosponsors in the House. We also talk to a minister who is pushing single-payer at the grassroots in North Carolina. Our Robber Baron of the week is the price-gouging airline industry.

Episode 47: Real Health Care Takes A Big Step Forward

Episode 54: Just about every piece of clothing you put on is made with blood, sweat and tears of exploited labor. Jonathan revisits the April 2013 murder of 1,138 garment workers in Bangladesh with his two guests, two women global labor leaders: Christy Hoffman, the deputy secretary of the 20-million member UNI and Nazma Akter, who began working in a garment factory when she was 11 years old. We hear from Bernie Sanders who continues to bring the message of the political revolution to every corner of the country. Our Robber Barons of the week are a pair of Johns from greedy Big Pharma.

Episode 54: Stopping Murderers From Putting A Shirt On Your Back; Bernie In The House!

Episode 61: Even Paul Ryan, the odious Speaker of the House, is in the electoral crosshairs and has a good shot at losing in the 2018 midterm elections. The man who is up to the task is Randy Bryce, better known in the Twitterverse as @ironstache. Randy joins Jonathan for a talk about politics, his campaign and the people he is seeking to give a voice in Wisconsin's First Congressional District. Looked at your paycheck recently? There is a decent chance the boss has stolen some money from you because billions are stolen from workers every year—as Jonathan explains with the help of Marni Von Wilpert of the Economic Policy Institute. Our Robber Baron is Bob Iger of Disney.

Episode 61: IronStache! The Man Who Will Take Down Paul Ryan; The Billions Stolen From Workers Pay

Episode 68: We love this description of the people burrowing deep inside government agencies to screw the people: political termites. And it comes courtesy of investigative journalist David Cay Johnston who returns to the podcast to discuss with Jonathan his new book, "It's Even Worse Than You Think: What The Trump Administration Is Doing To America". Jonathan also chats with two union organizers—Sal Rosselli and Clem Papazian--who have helped tame hospital giant Kaiser Permanente in an organizing campaign that has lessons for labor. Lastly, Jonathan gives a preview of the upcoming release of CEO-to-worker pay ratios, which will shine a light on the greed in the executives suites.

Episode 68: Exposing The Political Termites At Work; Mental Clinicians Beat Back Kaiser

Ep. 70: ISIS poses virtually no threat to you in your home. The same can’t be said for Amazon. Amazon really is an economic terrorist. That's what Jonathan spends most of the podcast this week digging into—after laying out the picture of the sorry spectacle of cities and states begging Amazon to locate its new headquarters in one of their communities, Jonathan turns to economic and tax experts who explain the fraudulent claims Amazon repeatedly makes about what a great job creator the company is and, then, how Amazon engages in relentless tax dodging. Jonathan also checks in with Tom Guild, a progressive Democrat running for Congress in conservative Oklahoma's 5th District. Our Robber Baron of the week, appropriately, is Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos.

Episode 70: Forget ISIS. Amazon Is The (Economic) Terrorist To Fear

All those flag-waving politicians love their military folks—until it’s time to screw them every which way once they take off the uniform, especially when it comes to funding the Veterans Administration. I look into the attack on the VA by the free-market fanatics in a conversation with union policy expert Jacque Simon. I also chat with legal expert Najah Farley about how the horrendous Supreme Court decision this past week, which puts workers out on their own when it comes to taking on unlawful and unethical corporate behavior, will especially hurt the #MeToo movement. In a follow-up from last week’s episode, I also discuss with Darryl Blackwell, a worker on the hog processing line at Farmer Johns Smithfield, the brutal conditions he faces and how things will get worse if the Department of Agriculture allows big corporations to speed up the hog assembly line. Our Robber Barons of the week are the heads of the Wall Street buyout firms Bain, KKR and Vornado.

Ep 83: Right-Wing Assault on the VA; Supreme Court Attacks #MeToo; Meatpacker Talks Ugly Hog Speedup

Ep. 92: Republican Steve King is a racist, a despicable politician who fans the flames of hatred and division aiming mainly at immigrants. So, I welcomed to the show J.D. Scholten, the progressive Democrat who is aiming to take this guy down in November in the race for Iowa’s 4th Congressional district. Kimberly Ellis comes back to the show to talk about her new effort looking to be, as she says, an “incubator for the next generation of political disrupters”. Our Robber Baron of the week is the CEO of Tronc who sacked scores of New York Daily News journalists.

Ep 92: UnBought & UnBossed Debut; Progressive Works To Dump One Of The Worst Republicans in Congress

Episode 97: As Labor Day looms on the horizon, I ring up Larry Mishel, distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, to talk about his new study looking at CEO greed. Not a shock, but if you are wondering where that pay increase went, it’s probably in the CEO’s bank account. A logical conversation after digging into CEO greed is this: how do you fight inequality? The answer is, and has always been, more unions, as I’ve emphasized during many episodes. That’s great rhetoric—but Suresh Naidu has the actual data proving that this has been true going back many decades, before government statistics began tracking the connection between union strength and an equal society. He joins me to talk about his path-breaking work. Our Robber Baron of the week is the CEO of Prime Healthcare.

Episode 97: CEOs Pocket YOUR Money; It’s A Fact: More Unions, Less Inequality

Episode 99: Anonymous did, in fact, do us a great favor—but probably not in the way he or she (most likely a “he”) thinks. I ruminate a bit on the point I have made for a long time—Anonymous simply showed us that Donald Trump and the Republican Party, as a whole, are one and the same. 

I, then, turn to a discussion with American Federation of Teachers leader Jay Rehak about his union’s efforts to use its large pension fund holdings to undercut the private prison industry’s role in tearing children from their families under the immoral Trump immigration policies. 

And, finally, I converse with Anastasia Christman from the National Employment Law Project about the hard conditions facing bank workers. 

Our Robber Baron of the week is the CEO of General Dynamics.

Episode 99: Anonymous Tells Unintended Truths; Cutting Off The Prison Industry; Bank Workers Woes

Episode 107: If you are shaking off the cobwebs from way too much surfing, watching and texting about every bit of Election Day trivia, then, you are an elections junkie. So, buckle up: I’ve got a great episode to keep that addiction fed. Listen again to Beto O’Rourke talk about the campaign as he rode in his car around Texas. Hear from Katie Hill, a progressive almost certainly about to become a new member of Congress from California. Abdul El-Sayed comes back on the show to give his perspective about lessons progressives can learn from his own race for governor in Michigan and the broader outcomes. National pollster and general wise soul Celinda Lake is back to wrap up the analysis. And, lastly, I have a list of 5 things to be happy about from Election Day!

Episode 107: Election Day Musings—Hear Beto, Katie, Abdul and Celinda!

Episode 111: I circle back on the bad deal made by politicians in New York and Virginia with Amazon, honing in specifically on the vicious anti-unionism Amazon pursues—and, despite the hallucinating by the NYC mayor that somehow bringing Amazon to NYC will magically turn it into a fuzzy pro union company, I talk with Dave Mertz of the RWDSU about the global path littered with Amazon’s attacks against unions and against workers. Dean Baker, frequent guest and senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, talks with me about the real profit centers for corporations—control over patents and copyrights, all of which adds up to one trillion dollars more in corporate profits, and hits on the average person’s wallet. Lastly, racism is a little talked-about aspect of the GOP tax cut robbery last year—Meg Wiehe, the deputy director of the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, talks with me about her recent excellent report called, “Race, Wealth and Taxes: How the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Supercharges the Racial Wealth Divide”.
 
-- Jonathan Tasini
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Ep 111: Amazon Attacks Workers; Patents & Copyrights=Corp Big Bucks; The GOP Racist Tax Cuts

Episode 120: In case you hadn’t heard…Bernie Sanders has entered the race for the 2020 presidential Democratic nomination. I devote the entire podcast this week to a re-airing of my in-depth conversation with Bernie just before the 2016 general election—what he had to say then is still quite relevant today. Enjoy!

Episode 120: Bernie Talks

Episode 126: Yesterday was Equal Pay Day—not a celebratory day but a time, again, to raise a stink that there is still a significant pay gap between men and women in our country: on average in 2018, women were paid 22.6 percent less than men. I talk more about gender pay discrimination with economist Elise Gould. I, then, speak with Jacque Simon, policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, about the relatively under-the-radar full-scale Trump attack on the rights of federal workers and their unions. To wrap up the show, I welcome back J.D. Scholten who came oh so close to defeating the racist Steve King in Iowa’s 4th Congressional district. J.D. has continued to travel the state, focusing on the issue of poverty.

Episode 126: Equal Pay For Women…Long Way To Go; Government Workers Under Attack; J.D. Scholten

Episode 136: It seems so simple—post offices are everywhere, often literally on Main Streets in towns all across the country. Everyone knows where the post office is. So, why not turn post offices into hubs of financial transactions for people, from pay check cashing, which could be a first step, and then on to remittances of money to families around the globe and even installing Postal Service ATMs? You can boil down this down to a simple question: who would you rather give your business to, Citibank or the Post Office? I take up this idea with Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, and Ohio Representative Marcy Kaptur. Then, Catherine Feingold, director of the AFL-CIO’s International Department, is back to dig into a new global treaty to combat violence and harassment at work.

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 136: Dump Citibank For The Post Office; Stopping Violence & Harassment At Work

Episode 140: I like the ring of The Stop Wall Street Looting Act, don’t you? True, it’s part of the business model of the joint, especially the private equity pirates. The Act is, in fact, aimed squarely at the private equity industry, who have stripped and destroyed hundreds of companies. I’ll talk about the Act with the national expert on the industry, Eileen Appelbaum, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. 

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When you are sitting on your airplane ready to take off, you’ve probably seen those LSG Sky Chefs catering trucks driving up to service your plane with the sumptuous menu of crackers and peanuts. Thousands of those catering workers are low paid, and have to pay for expensive ,mediocre health insurance—and they are preparing for a possible strike to get some justice on the job. I’ll be speaking with one of the workers on today’s program. 

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Lastly, you may have heard a minimum wage bill passed the House which would hike the minimum wage to $15 by 2025. Judy Conti, the government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, chats with me about the bill—and what happens next.

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Ep 140: Stopping Wall Street Looting; Airline Workers Demand Fair Pay; The Minimum Wage Bill Passes

Episode 148: 

Take your shirt off. Or your pants. Almost certainly those garments and others were made in a faraway country, by people making pennies who work in horrendous conditions. I think we all know that when we are told to think about it—but we don’t think about it on a daily basis. I talk with Sonia Mistry of the Solidarity Center about the squalid, dangerous conditions in Bangladesh faced by garment workers—and a fire that recently made thousands homeless. 

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Then, I enter into the land of “anti-deferral accounting”—that just rolls off the lips, right? Well, it might not be the most user-friendly lingo but it could add up to a trillion and a half more dollars to shore up Social Security—coming from the pockets of the richest of the richest. Steve Wamhoff, the director of federal tax policy at the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, explains it all.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 148: Bangladesh Garment Workers Horrors Redux; Closing The Capital Gains Highway Robbery

Episode 151:

I would never have said it before today but it turns out health insurance companies aren’t the most evil players in the healthcare industry. Don’t freak out—health insurance companies are bad, and they are bankrupting millions of people, and the country. But it turns out even worse than the health insurers are some big mega private equity vultures who are gobbling up big pieces of medical services and socking millions of people with surprise medical bills—and I’m going to go in depth on this story, which is not being covered anywhere else, with Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and one of the great experts on private equity. 

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Then, I’m kicking back into gear with regular segments with great progressives running for office. Today, I chat with Rachel Ventura who is running in the Democratic primary in Illinois’ 11th Congressional district against a corporate Democrat who is awash in Wall Street and real estate dollars.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 151: Private Equity Vultures Are Running A Multi-Billion Dollar Medical Billing Scam

Episode 179:

There is no way to downplay the risks to U.S. frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic—and I’ve dug into that in the past month or so, in our various segments talking about workers in health care, postal service, hog and poultry processing, airlines, rail, and subways. It’s dangerous and frightening—and it’s exponentially more terrifying when you look at the global threat to workers.

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Think about what tens of millions of workers in poorer countries, with far fewer resources, are facing. The images coming out of Africa, Asia and South America showing huge migrations of workers are mind-boggling—how do you even wrap your mind around how to achieve social distancing at bus depots in India, crammed with huge crowds of migrants, who are desperately trying to get home because they have nowhere to go as industries have shut down in the pandemic. Or, consider Haiti, the poorest country in this hemisphere—close your eyes and think of garment workers who pack into tap-taps (those are public minibus transports) to ride to factories that are teeming with people, that on a good day, are dangerous, risky places to work—and, then, arriving at a factory to find that the employer is forcing workers to sign a piece of paper that says if the worker gets sick that worker is legally responsible for their illness. Shawna Bader-Blau, executive director of the Solidarity Center, joins me to paint the global picture.

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And, then, courtesy of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH), it’s the Dirty Dozen of the Corona Pandemic, and a few other dishonorable mentions—companies like Amazon and Tyson Foods who, surprise, put profits over the safety and health of workers, along with big corporate lobbyists who work hard to block paid sick leave. I chat with Peter Dooley, a National COSH leading workplace safety and health expert, about the Dirty Dozen, and we also discuss a model framework for how to make sure workers stay safe in the pandemic.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 179: Global Workers Face COVI-19 Rampage With Little Defense; The Corona “Dirty Dozen”

Episode 182:

Calling people “gig” workers is a subtle trap. “Gig” can sound anywhere from upbeat to just a mundane description. The truth is the “gig” economy is just another way of exploiting people and it’s a dream for all capitalists to have a pool of workers who can be used and abused at the beckon call of a supply chain or a big tech company, at the lowest cost possible. And not a surprise—lots of gig workers are at great risk during the pandemic. I explore the lives of “gig” workers in a conversation with Bama Athreya, an economic policy fellow at the Open Society Foundation and a veteran social movement activist.

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The pandemic has put domestic workers at risk. Think of it logically: you can be locked down in a home with your client, essentially enslaved, with nowhere to go and no social distancing space. You could easily be trapped in a home, forced to stay inside because of a curfew, without personal protection equipment. Elizabeth Tang, the General Secretary of the International Domestic Workers Federation, joins me from her perch in Hong Kong to talk about the pandemic threats facing domestic workers.


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My rant of the week is simple: we need to nationalize all payrolls. It’s breathtaking how badly the elected leaders of the country are handling the economic fallout of the pandemic, not to mention the medical crisis—it’s a bi-partisan catastrophe, with the worst human in the Senate, the wealthy Mitch McConnell, showing no rush to stop the implosion of millions of peoples’ lives, while Nancy Pelosi refuses to entertain Pramila Jayapal’s fantastic proposal to pay every unemployed person up to $90,000 on an annual basis while the pandemic rages.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 182: Nationalize Payrolls Now; Gig Work Is Exploitation; Domestic Workers In The Pandemic

Episode 185:

The big news—it’s the first regularly scheduled Working Life TV Show!!! View the show now and sign up at:

www.youtube.com/WorkingLifeWithJonathanTasini  

But, all our audio podcast listeners will still be able to hear the show in the long-time format.

The unemployment system is in chaos—jammed phone lines, crashing websites. People can’t get the checks they desperately need to pay for simple things like food, utilities and rent. So, I decided to devote the lion’s share of the show to dig into why this happening—and give concrete tips on how to access the system. Do not give up—that’s the message Judy Conti, government affairs director for the National Employment Law Project and I deliver in our conversation (you can see the slides Judy and I are talking about here: https://www.workinglife.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Working-Life-TV-slides.ppt)

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As hundreds of thousands of people are massing in the streets, we are inundated by a slew of corporate commercials and corporate statements from Amazon, News Corp and even from something called the Hedge Fund Association, all falling over to show enlightenment about racism, even embracing the slogan “Black Lives Matter”. But, as I explain in the show, once people win an unwinding of the militarization of communities and the unwinding of policing as it’s been done for decades, that’s only half the battle because the corporate PR bullshit is trying to hide the depths of how the corporate boot remains firmly on the neck of African Americans, and all Americans, but especially people of color.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 185: How Do I Get My Damn Unemployment Check—We Have The Lowdown; Corporate PR Slime

Episode 186:

I pull back the lens a bit on the Black Lives Matter movement to consider how the uprising is touching the consciousness of workers around the globe, especially in Africa. Chris Johnson, the regional director of Africa for the Solidarity Center, joins me in a conversation about the close relationship between racism and economic oppression, and how African workers are linking the BLM movement to their own economic oppression.

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How would you like to have a governor who saved a man five hours before his state-ordered execution? That’s a choice New Hampshire Democrats will have in the September primary to choose their nominee for governor—he is Andru Volinsky who joins me to talk about his long-time civil rights advocacy, not to mention his work on jobs, climate change and taxes.

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Stop the looters! Jail them now…people like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, HCA Healthcare CEO Samuel Hazen and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin—all of whom, as I discuss, are the real big-time looters who are fleecing the country.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 186: Global Workers Hear BLM; The Would-Be Governor Who Stopped A Man’s Execution

Episode 206:

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Three questions post-election are on the menu this week. First, how does Tom Perez, the chair of the DNC, still have a job? Perez has been incompetent for a very long time. He was the choice of the Democratic Party elites back in 2016—a guy who knows zippo about the mechanics of an election. And, voila—the party loses seats in the House, fumbles the chance to take the U.S. Senate, and even worse, fails to take back legislative chambers at the state level. Perez’s failures will echo for years to come.

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Second, Georgia, Georgia, Georgia…these two run-off races will mean the difference between millions of people being able to pay for food or keep their homes, not to mention whether people like Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown, Jeff Merkley and Elizabeth Warren will have real power at the head of important committees or be stuck in the minority for at least two more years and have no chance to fight the Biden Administration over a progressive agenda. So, those two races have to be won by any means necessary.

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Third, I speak with David Lujan, the executive director of the Arizona Center for Economic Progress, about the passage of Proposition 208, which puts in place a 3.5 percent tax on the wealthiest people to fund  higher salaries for teachers, school aides, bus drivers and other folks, not to mention higher spending per student which will mean smaller class sizes. The proposition passed by a margin of more than 116,000 votes, a far bigger margin than Biden’s slim margin of victory in the state. The obvious point: people will get behind ideas that confront class warfare, including support higher taxes for things that improve communities.

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 206: Perez Still Has A Job?; Georgia, Georgia, Georgia; Arizona Hikes Taxes To Fund Schools

Episode 207:

Ideology is in the way of a simple plan to end the pandemic in 30 days. Yes, 30 days: Lock down the country and pay everyone up to an annual wage of $90,000 to stay home. I’m resurrecting the argument I made months ago because the debate about a stimulus is on the agenda again—after Republicans have basically said fuck you to the entire country for months when it comes to aiding the people. My explanation of the plan leads off the episode.

Then, high up on the list of pandemic utter chaos has been the way in which political leaders at the local and state level have mishandled how to safely reopen schools so teachers and kids don’t get sick. To get a sense of the current state of play for teachers, I zero in on Arizona where voters just approved a new tax hike to fund education and, at the same time, the infections are on a steep rise. Joe Thomas, the president of the Arizona Education Association, joins me to talk about the union’s renewed public push to put in place life-saving measures to make sure schools reopen safely.

Lastly, I hope I never get to a day when, rather than be outraged, I just shrug at some mind-boggling, crazy proposal that endangers thousands of workers. Today, I’m incensed. On their way out the door, the grifters in the Trump Administration, having already killed tens of thousands of people by intentionally downplaying the pandemic and botching the response at all levels, now want to sicken even more workers: They are proposing a last-minute rule change to increase line speeds in poultry plants to 175 birds per minute. Marcy Goldstein-Gelb, the co-executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH.), chats with me about this insane idea to make an already dangerous industry, in which thousands of workers have gotten COVID-19 and scores have died, even more perilous. 

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Episode 207: Ending the Pandemic in 30 Days; Speeding Up Poultry Processing Lines—Insane!

Episode 211: 

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.” The discerning quick minds among you will know that that’s a snippet of the speech by Michael Douglas’ character, the corporate raider Gordon Gekko, in the 1987 film Wall Street.

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Truth is, Jeff Bezos makes Gekko look like a penny ante small-time crook. And the crooks who control government on behalf of big corporations are in the same Bezos league when it comes to the massive shift in wealth that they engineer—and that’s the theme of this week’s show.

The one enduring fact of any government is the way in which the real powers—corporate and private wealth—push the levers behind the scenes. It’s the Revolving Door between government and Big Money, a door through which all sorts of manipulators and greedy people pass through from government to corporations to pro-corporate lobbying companies. And the story is mixed, as you will hear from Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, who is back on the show to update the picture of whether, and how deeply, corporate interests are dominating and controlling the Biden Administration.

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During this entire pandemic, which is now approaching a full year of horror and destitution for so many, I’ve pointed out in many of the segments we’ve done on frontline workers that the virus has just exposed the sickness we’ve lived with for decades—a sickness which lets a handful of people become filthy rich at the expense of everyone else. You can see that in the poverty-level minimum wage—which means people labor like slaves to make the likes of the Waltons of Walmart billions of dollars in profits. Or the lack of paid sick leave which is a main reason so many people have gotten sick on the job and, then, died because they could not afford to stay home from work when they got sick.

Paul O’Brien, Vice President for Policy and Advocacy at Oxfam America, is back for our annual discussion about global inequality, tied to Oxfam’s new report, “The Inequality Virus”. And the picture is devasting: driven by the economic pandemic-driven collapse, we are witnessing a historic level of inequality across the globe.

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-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 211: What Corp. Interests Are Infiltrating The Biden World; Global Inequality At Record Levels

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How many of you dealt with that chaos when it came to wrestling with the unemployment insurance system last year? Some of the rhetoric we heard was, “well that chaos was just the pandemic crush overwhelming the system”. Yes, that’s true in a very narrow sense—the system collapsed in many places, meaning people who were desperate to get a check to pay rent or for food had to wait months and months for a first check…and lots of people just gave up.

But, here’s the truth, folks—that’s a feature not a bug. So, as enhanced unemployment benefits are about to expire at the end of March but seem likely to be extended in a new stimulus bill, is this chaos going to continue to be as bad as it was a year ago? Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project and a leading national expert on the unemployment insurance system, tells us the status and how we fix the broken system.

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Remember during the presidential campaign when Joe Biden promised not to raise taxes for anyone making less than $400,000? I thought, “well, that’s dumb”. Why should someone making say $250,000—which puts them in the one percent—not pay higher taxes? I figured right then that that line-in-the-sand $400K number was a purely stupid political calculation—let’s not piss off the people in the suburbs who voted for Trump who we want to get.

Really? Why not try a direct populist argument to reach a whole lot of people who are making under $100,000 and get angry about taxes because they have to pay a heavy load but see people making $250,000 paying a relatively small sum? I talk with Matt Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, about taxing people above $400,000, why other well-off people shouldn’t pay higher taxes as well and, bonus, how Netflix is paying less than one percent taxes on a massive revenue boost (hint: legalized corruption!)

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Ep 212: Unemployment Money Chaos Redux?; Clawing Back Dough From The Rich

Episode 213:

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“Bi-partisanship” is an idea that should make everyone sick to their stomach. When someone is out to kill you, or your nation and community, making a deal for the sake of “bi-partisanship” or, its related political spineless copout “compromise”, makes no sense when the end result is injustice and a worsening of our lives. That’s what I start out with today—a topic I also wrote about in my new newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Quick, who said just a couple of days ago: “We believe that $15-an-hour is the minimum that anyone in the U.S. should earn for an hour of labor” and, then, demanded that Congress raise the minimum wage to $15-an-hour. If you said Bernie Sanders, wrong! Though of course he does believe this. It was…wait for this…Amazon.

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That’s a direct result of union and community pressure on Amazon. Thousands of workers are trying to get a union at Amazon’s huge warehouse in Bessemer Alabama. The ballots have just been mailed and we get an update on the organizing campaign from a good friend of the show Dave Mertz, vice president at the Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union, which is seeking to represent the workers.

Since the coup in Myanmar on February 1st, the Myanmar trade union movement is taking a leading role in protest and strike actions against the military and is calling for international solidarity actions. There is a global solidarity day coming up Thursday, February 11th. So, to give everyone an update and what to do to support our sisters and brothers in Myanmar, I’m joined by Brian Finnegan, the Global Worker Rights Coordinator at the International Department of the AFL-CIO.

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep213: Bi-Partisanship Kills; Amazon Workers Organize!; Unions Confronting Myanmar Coup

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Right before our eyes, in these very days and at this time of crisis, you can see so clearly this bankrupt system, defended and promoted by greedy CEOs and spineless politicians, but a system people are trying to rebel against and take down. And that’s the picture of two really important fights—the fight to get millions of workers a $15-an-hour minimum wage and the organizing campaign at Amazon.

It’s infuriating to keep reading about these so-called Democrats, and, of course, every single Republican, who oppose raising the federal minimum wage to $15-an-hour? How deeply out of touch are these people who oppose giving people a semi-livable wage to try to survive on? So, in service to my listeners, I’ve given you four—just four!—easy talking points to argue for hiking the immorally low minimum wage.

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Then, I return to the organizing campaign underway at Amazon’s huge warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. There is never enough conversation about organizing Amazon because of its power and how a victory in this campaign will inspire workers at other Amazon warehouses, not to mention labor as a whole. I am joined by Joshua Brewer, a main organizer of the campaign for the Retail Wholesale & Department Store Workers, for the latest on-the-ground intel.

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 214: YOUR Four Talking Points For $15/Hour Minimum Wage; Alabama Is Amazon Unionizing Ground Zero

Episode 215:

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You aren’t going to be surprised by this news: Big Pharma is killing people. All over the world. And the real kicker here is: after you, the taxpayer, gave billions of dollars to Big Pharma companies to come up with a vaccine for COVID-19, Big Pharma is keeping that vaccine from getting into the hands of millions of people in poorer countries—which will come back to hurt every American as well.

Under the World Trade Organization rules, Big PHARMA gets *lengthy* monopoly protections for medicines, tests and the technologies used to produce them. Trump wouldn’t join virtually every other country to grant a waiver for poorer countries to get access to the vaccines so lives could be saved. Next week, Joe Biden has a chance to do the right thing. I discuss this urgent effort with two warriors for progressives: Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who has represented the 9th Congressional district in Illinois for two decades, and Lori Wallach, the director of Global Trade Watch.

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A couple of weeks ago, I did a segment on the military coup in Myanmar and the specific threat faced by union leaders. Opposition to the coup is being led by union leaders who are facing arrest and violence, forcing many to go into hiding. I have new insights on what is happening in Myanmar from Khaing Zar, Treasurer of the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar (CTUM) and the President of the Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar, the manufacturing and garment worker affiliate of the CTUM and the largest garment worker union in Myanmar.

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 215: Big Pharma Wants Poor People To Die; Unions Fighting Myanmar Coup—Redux

Episode 216:

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The number that sticks in my mind today, and has since I heard it, is 40 percent. While over half a million people in the U.S. have died of COVID in one year, while millions of people have become sick, while millions of people have lost their jobs, savings and homes, and many people have been forced to wait in long food lines to get enough to feed their families—while all that was happening, the billionaires—the top 0.05 percent in the country, the Waltons, the Jeff Bezos’ of the world—saw their collective wealth go up 40 percent. Which is one good reason to have a wealth tax.

This week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Pramila Jayapal rolled out an “Ultra Millionaire’s Tax”. The tax would only be on the wealthiest 100,000 households in America, or the top 0.05%, who have a net worth of $50 million, and it would raise $3 trillion over a decade. Since, and I’m just spit balling here, I don’t think my audience falls into the over $50 million-net-worth category, I figured it would be safe to engage the always-brilliant Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, in a conversation about the great benefits of a wealth tax.

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Some good news! Last May, I talked about an effort to raise two trillion dollars for poorer countries to battle the pandemic and the economic collapse. The money, so-called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), can be created by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but the Trump Administration blocked the move—even though it comes at no cost to taxpayers here. But, now, there’s movement: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appears to be in favor of some level of the SDRs, if not the full two trillion now in the newly resurrected bills in the Senate and House. Mark Weisbrot, co-director of CEPR and an expert in international affairs who has been leading the campaign since last year, joins us for an update.

I also have a few thoughts about the video Joe Biden made about the rights of workers to have a union. It’s a good thing—but it also shows how narrow the debate is about true union organizing rights. Check it out—and let me know your thoughts!

-- Jonathan Tasini

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Ep 216: Wealth Tax On The Table; Two Trillion for The Global Poor; Joe Biden and Union Organizing

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