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COMMENTARY ROBERT REICH WITH LEE McGOWAN PoliticsGirl: The Corruption is Endless: A Conversation with Robert Reich PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fka86bK78ss Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Broadly speaking ... I agree with almost everything that Robert Reich does. Increasingly, however, I feel the need for people like Robert Reich ... and indeed myself ... to get substantially more involved and effective in a 'pushback' on Trump's leadership behavior. These are not normal times ... and I see Donald Trump and his inner circle as a 'clear and present danger' to both the United States and likely also the world. We should not forget that the people who created the mayhem on Capital Hill on January 6th 2020 were all 'pardoned' by Donald Trump. The social damage these people could do in a violent confrontation would not be inconsequential. For me ... Donald Trump is bad news. Frankly, I am scared stiff ... and feel helpless because hardly anyone seems to 'get it' that Trump is evil and is only 'in it' for himself and his immediate family. Meanwhile ... geopolitics have been changing rapidly in the last 20 years. Most Americans ignore the big world trends ... including nost of America's leadership classes. I think this will prove to be a fatal mistake for America's (the US's ... ) future. In many ... in fact most ... of the ways a national society needs to be evaluated ... China is on track to be way more powerful in most of the ways that matter than the United States. Born in the UK in 1940, I have a visceral view of recent history. In 1939, Britain under the political leadership of Winston Churchill stood alone agains the Nazi onslought and by 1945 the allies had won. The allies did not all benefit in the same way. Britain was on the winning side and in many ways lost everything! The United States was also on the winning side and realized an economic bonanza mainly at the expense of Britain. Fast forward 80 years to this year's VE Day remembrance ... the remembrance in the UK has been very different from the remembrance in the USA. In fact on one high profile program in the United States, the hosts seemed to think the Second World War started with Pearl Harbor! Needless to say I was disgusted! The VE Day parades in London recent;y have been impressive and thought provoking. All the countries that fought alongside the British in WWII were represented in the parade. I was also pleased to see a recognition of Ukraine in the London parade ... hopefully those that have died in defense of democracy will not have died in vain. Peter Burgess
The Corruption is Endless: Lee McGowan in conversation with Robert Reich PoliticsGirl May 13, 2025 327K subscribers ... 41,277 views ... 3.4K likes PoliticsGirl Podcast As today’s guest, Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor, wrote in his substack “Brace yourselves. The economy is heading into very bad weather.” That while prices and unemployment are going up. Everything else is going down. This is, of course, the polar opposite of what President Trump campaigned on, and exactly we, the president’s opposition said he would do. If anything good is going to emerge from this nightmare, it’s going to take the majority of us uniting to collectively demand it. That we can’t just be AGAINST this hideous, lawless, authoritarian version of America, where our President is a corrupt grifter surrounded by other grifters, we have to be FOR something better. That perhaps the silver lining of this horror will be the coalitions being built to fight the regime finding common ground on which to build something that finally works for all of us. As always, if you find worth in what we do, please consider SUBSCRIBING to PoliticsGirl Premium. You’ll get this podcast ad free and it, and the the rants delivered directly to your inbox so even if we’re shut out of social media, you’ll still get access to the most highly researched, factual information available. Independent media needs your support now more than ever. Go to https://www.politicsgirl.com/premium and subscribe today!! Thank you so much! Guest social: https://robertreich.org/ Substack: http://robertreich.substack.com Inequality Media LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/inequalitymedia Twitter: @RBReich @InequalityMedia All show links here!: https://linktr.ee/politicsgirl This episode is sponsored by… https://calm.com/politicsgirl https://SundaysforDogs.com/politicsgirl code: PoliticsGirl https://rocketmoney.com/politicsgirl code: PoliticsGirl https://oneskin.co code: PoliticsGirl https://honeylove.com/politicsgirl Transcript 0:00 what tariffs really do for him is they give him what they give him bargaining leverage trump they make him more powerful they allow Trump to make even more deals and they get foreign governments and foreigners to buy his memecoin [Music] hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast i'm your host Lee McGowan let's get into it as today's guest Robert Rich wrote in his Substack 'Brace yourselves the economy is heading into very bad weather.' That while prices and unemployment are heading up everything else is heading down which is of course the polar opposite of what this president campaigned on and exactly what we the president's opposition said he would do so today we're going to talk to Professor Rich Dartmouth Oxford and Yale grad who teaches public policy at UC Berkeley and is a senior fellow at the 1:00 Bloom Center for Developing Economies professor Rich served in three national administrations including as Secretary of Labor under President Clinton is the author of 18 books the creator of the Netflix documentary Saving Capitalism and the critically acclaimed film Inequality for All he is also the co-founder of Inequality Media the Economic Policy Institute and the co-founding editor of the American Prospect this is a man who understands what's going on with our economy under this president and isn't afraid to mince words so without further ado please welcome my guest beloved professor economist and lifelong teacher Robert Rich welcome back Professor thank you very much Lee you can call me We know each other you can call me Bob or your excellency either way your excellency I'll just do that i think that's good do you have a meme out there somewhere of yourself dressed as the pope that we could just have everyone has that now no but I'm having a military parade in my honor uh on my birthday yeah well I mean happy birthday to us that's what we do now here in America yeah well thanks for coming i mean honestly obviously we're 2:04 having this ridiculous conversation because our country's in kind of dire straits like we're in this weird moment where we literally put a criminal sociopath in charge of our nation and he has unsurprisingly surrounded himself with incompetent cruel yesmen who seem to have net zero interest in looking out for the American people and I think that listening to you and and appreciating what you've been writing on Substack and putting out on inequality media lately you've been really supportive of the protests and the demonstrations going on around the country but you've acknowledged that at some point we have to move on from what we are against to what we are for so would you mind expanding on that a little bit for me well let me just say Lee and this is something we've talked about before and I've talked about before but the road we were on before Trump if you can remember uh that road was not a great road we in fact there were some real problems the our democracy was already uh being 3:00 inundated with big money from big corporations and from wealthy people and it was getting worse and worse and worse and as a result the typical American was feeling irrelevant uh and a lot of studies were showing that the typical Americans views were not really being addressed by Congress or by state legislators and there was a lot of corruption the real direction was widening inequality creating greater and greater money in the hands of fewer and fewer people resulting in as the Justice Lewis Brandeise once said you can have a you have a choice either huge money in the very few hands or democracy but you can't have both so we have huge money in fewer and fewer hands undermining our democracy making people angry then we had the bailout of Wall Street uh which made people even more furious because millions of people lost their homes as you remember and millions of people lost their savings and not one Wall Street banker was put in jail they were bailed 4:04 out and then came essentially the occupy movement and the Tea Party movement and then came out of those two movements the direct lineal descendants were Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump you know we couldn't stay on that road and when I try to put myself in a in a position of is there a silver lining on this terrible storm I say to myself well maybe Now having seen what tyranny looks like and feels like maybe Americans now will really rally behind democracy and and economic justice is that too much of a polyana view do you think no I don't think it's a polyiana view because part of that view is a phoenix that rises from the ashes part of that view includes the ashes right like you have to destroy something to build something new and 5:01 maybe this man who's taking a wrecking ball to our constitution to our rule of law to the norms that we have taken for granted in the meantime we'll also take a wrecking ball to the things that we were taking for granted in kind of a neoliberal let's just go along to get along way which really made the inequality so wide and so gregarious that it that the regular American understandably whether they were right or left felt left behind like we're basically saying at this moment we can't just go back to the America before Trump because that America was essentially broken anyway and honestly at this point it's gone you know even the good old days of 2024 had as you were saying democracy drowning in big money with the same tiny group of people taking most of our economy's gains and and it doesn't work for most of us i mean you you put out something that was like according to the data you know some some really big political scientists took a look at how our economy was functioning and like over 40 years of lawmakers making laws 6:06 it really seemed like they weren't paying any attention to what the regular people wanted that when you looked back at 40 years of laws those laws were at the demand of wealthy individuals of big corporations of those with the biggest pockets who had the most lobbyists who were bankrolling campaigns which left us regular citizens getting very little of what we actually wanted right so if we were talking about going back it would be we let's go back to putting constitutional guidelines in place let's go back to having a rule of law let's go back to having that kind of thing but no let's not go back to having the very richest make all of our demands it's like there's a reason that 80% of us want a higher minimum wage or 80% of us don't want you know guns in schools and yet it never gets done but but this this is why you see I think there's an opportunity now because because the anti-Trump opposition not just the never Trumpers who are Republicans uh also a 7:04 lot of Democrats a lot of independents beginning to form these extraordinary big coalitions a lot of people demonstrating who have never demonstrated before you know people are are are actually becoming activists and joining with others in their communities and nationally and even internationally you've got you know Canada I mean who thought of Canada as a activist nation canada is is joining the new Canadian prime minister is talking about joining with Europe in a coalition that is put going to put pressure on the United States i don't want to again I don't want to be too positive about what could come out of these ashes but there are green shoots a future that actually maybe suggests that we needed to go through this hell yeah i mean it's quite obvious that that we need something different and new i was listening to Senator Chris Murphy talk recently and he was saying if 8:04 there's one thing Americans can agree on if there's one thing Americans could even be focusing on right now to know where we're at it's the current Republicans budget because he said look Trump can do a million crazy things he is doing a million crazy things we can get lost in all of that but what the Republicans have written down as their priorities gives the game away and it should just be clear to everyone whether you're a Republican a Democrat whether you don't vote whether you're an independent that this budget bill that they have put together is the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the ultra rich in the history of this country right that's right because because we're talking we're talking we're talking about cutting programs i mean Elon Musk obviously started cutting programs that people need i mean veterans and and Medicaid and and cutting the even the administration of social security and and all kinds of other things that people are dependent on food stamps people are dependent on these programs cutting them for what we're cutting them 9:04 in order to We are not doing it they the Republicans are cutting these programs in order to give a huge tax cut another huge tax cut we already had a huge tax cut in the first Trump regime we now have a second huge tax cut coming up that's what they want for the wealthy for big corporations for you know I mean this is this is absurd trump is doing it so blatantly so malignantly so obviously that I think it's going to hopefully uh people are going to rally against all of this this is going to be a big big deal and the thing is that if people don't know this budget bill that's being proposed by the Republicans it'll ultimately end up throwing millions of people off their healthare and cutting things like child nutrition programs again to pay for what Bob is saying tax cuts for the ultra rich because Medicare alone is going to lose over $800 billion which is essentially their whole budget and that is 24% of Americans that are insured through that right and again 10:04 they are proposing trillions of dollars in cuts to services to Americans to justify trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the people who need it the least and they basically have to destroy democracy to do it you know they're just ignoring what the rest of us need let's keep our our eyes peeled for what they are actually going to do and how they are going to justify it and also how they're going to sneak it through that is for example uh Medicaid cuts i believe they're either going to give each state a a block grant and the states have to cut doing the cutting and the states can be the scapegoats for who's doing the cutting on Medicaid because they've got a block gant that doesn't go far enough or the administration and the regime and the Republicans will say to Medicare and Medicaid recipients you've got to work 11:01 were putting a work requirement onto Medicaid and a lot of people will not be able to work because they that's why they're on Medicaid so the Republicans will say and Trump will certainly say well you shouldn't get Medicaid if you don't work for it there's all this subtrafuge that's going to be used so keep your eye on it it is going to be I mean one out of three American children is now dependent on Medicaid huge numbers of elderly people are dependent on Medicaid medicaid is a a very very important program to a gigantic number of Americans yeah especially in a country where our healthcare is so extraordinarily expensive this is why people can't afford their health care it's not because they're not working hard enough or because you know like elderly people can't do it children certainly aren't well if they have their way they'll probably have them in little coal mines in the future but children are not working and I think we have to keep this in mind that this isn't all just Trump right this is on the Republican party in general particularly 12:05 the Republicans in Congress because they could stop all of this right everything that we're seeing everything that's going crazy in the country cannot just be blamed on one man and I don't want it to be just blamed on one man you know the Republicans in Congress could be protecting our constitutional rights right now they could be doing their job of controlling the government purse and making the law they're doing nothing they're doing they're doing absolutely What do they what who do what do they say to themselves when they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning as they're brushing their teeth i ass I assume they look at themselves in the mirror what do they say to justify being members of Congress being senators by the way I don't want to let the Democrats off the hook here because too many Democrats have been drinking at the same trough in terms of 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fordogs.com/politicsgirl and use the code politicsgirlgirl at checkout for 40% off you know a couple of them have really stood up but many of them have not and they should they need to yeah this is one of the major conflicts I think in the Democratic party right now because we have Democrats who want this kind of progressive big change and what I would call old school or corporate Dems who would just love to go back to kind of this neoliberal America they had 17:02 before where everything was working out well for them and those two groups even in the Democratic party seem really at odds and I think we can see that right now with the crypto thing because there are some Democrats ready to vote to sort of move this crypto thing forward and so let's talk a little bit about about this crypto thing because this Trump crypto what I'm going to call a scam because we now know that Trump's crypto business has already earned his family $2 billion in investment from UAE and like a billion dollars in just cash for transactions just it's a huge I mean it's beyond scam it's a Ponzi scheme that is actually in directly enriching Trump and his family this is not like you know Bill Clinton and the Lincoln bedroom raising money for the Democratic Party now this is actually going into the pockets of the president of the United States and he is using his office and the White House he's having a big dinner for all the major crypto investors in his crypto meme coin he's 18:04 giving them a tour of the White House he's creating more demand for his own crypto coin and a lot of the the major investors are foreign are are are are international investors i mean there is something called the imalments clause in the constitution that says no officer of the government of the United States can take money and gifts from foreign nations well Trump is doing it yeah yeah I mean he did it in the first term with his hotel and now he's just upped the ante where foreign governments can genuinely just pay him through his crypto for their own services but this isn't just it doesn't just stop at crypto and I I want to be really clear with the people the regular people that are investing in Trump's crypto they're making nothing right the coin is a grift that's where the Ponzi scheme comes in ponzi scheme is a scheme where the first investors make a huge amount of money 19:00 and they leave the later investors holding the bag because nobody else wants to get in that's also what we see with the with Trump's crypto and his memecoin i mean uh he's making a lot of money he's already made a lot of money the later investors have actually lost money yeah they've lost a lot of money i mean the entire administration is kind of a you scratch my back I'll scratch yours corruption grift i mean Donald Trump has Pam Bondi who is the AG and supposed to be America's lawyer who is now acting as his lawyer she He's had the US Justice Department drop stop investigations into a 100 big corporations he's blanket pardoning people who are totally guilty of financial crimes he's gutting regulatory agencies he's firing ethics watchd dogs he's hosting as you just said like these giant dinners for donors i think the most recent one is $1.5 million a plate so that's a certain type of person that can go to that dinner they're opening this private club in Washington called the executive branch where you can hobnob with the Trump family and Trump family friends and cabinet members if 20:04 you can pay the half a million dollar entrance fee and it's basically just like a smoky back room of the guilded age except right out in our faces this is the most corrupt administration in American history in terms of everybody giving it money and giving Trump money and Trump family money in order to get what they want it's not just access but they're actually quidd proquo deals going on in the Middle East for example Trump's going to the Middle East and what is he going to do he's talking to Middle East governments you know in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and elsewhere and UAE uh these Middle East governments are backing his own family's businesses his hotels uh his enterprises in those same countries the corruption is endless it's bottomless and I I would like to think that all of this information is going to be coming out and the American public is going to say 'No this is wrong this we 21:05 don't want this government.' And in in the at least in the midterm elections we're going to get the Democrats taking over both houses of Congress but maybe even before that maybe before that we'll get another a third impeachment but this time enough senators to convict yeah well conviction is where we at if you just look at the crypto scam alone that's an impeachable off events i mean there's so many things he's doing but that crypto scam alone is a fullon bribery scandal we have to remember that these billionaires that are out here the guys that will join the executive branch club these foreign billionaires all these people the entire class of people that heads our cabinet and hangs out with Trump they don't care if prices go up they don't care if we have 30 dolls or two dolls or we get five pencils they're not thinking about you know that's what we're talking about to doll Donnie but really it comes down to things like what we require to live our health care our food our housing that stuff means nothing to them their wealth insulates them from the cost of living 22:06 that the rest of us deal with daily you know this is the president who said that groceries was an old-fashioned word and does anyone use that word anymore and we're like what planet are we living on so I do hope that more people will start to wake up to this well not only that but I I think that the the billionaires class uh surrounding Trump and and the and the people who Trump really is working for they did get nervous when bond prices started falling cuz they've got you know lots of money in bonds and treasury bills and you know if you look back at American history 50 years ago the very wealthy in this country supported the United States government through their tax payments you know the marginal income tax during the Eisenhower administration the top marginal tax on the very rich was 92% and then even if you figure in all of the deductions and the tax credits it 23:01 was way over 50% and they managed in the Reagan administration and the George W bush administration and then Trump administration to get their taxes lower and lower and lower and they are supporting the government now through buying tea bills through lending money to the government but when those tea bills start going down when those Treasury bills start going down because everybody is losing confidence in Trump's ability to maintain the dollar well then it gets Trump's attention uh that's when he backed off of the of the big tariffs then he that's when he says 'Okay I'm going to have a maybe a 90 we'll have a 90month freeze on the tariffs well slow down a little bit people are getting a little bit a little bit anxious.' Well it's not that people are getting anxious it's his big backers are getting anxious yeah that's what I was going to say it's not the people it's the people that are in his ear that were getting anxious i mean I think the thing is it goes back to your point from the beginning we can either have a concentrated amount of wealth in the hands of a very small group or we can have democracy because big money and 24:06 dark money that are now participating in our democracy are are completely destroying what we have do you think that any of this changes until we get something like Citizens United out of politics because it is money that is clearly the corrosive element here well that's right now I think be I mean one way of getting big money out of politics has been we almost got there and that is you have a public fund that matches the donations of small donors so that anybody running for office including a president has an incentive to give up the big donations to set a cap on big donations and also to prevent those so-called independent groups from providing donations in order to get the small donations matching funds now that's been tried we came very close in the last Congress i think we should keep on trying i think we ultimately are going to have to have 25:02 an amendment to the Constitution or get a a brand new Supreme Court because the Supreme Court that passed Citizens United or that essentially destroyed the whole financing system the public financing system we had before uh that Supreme Court doesn't know or care about corruption it has defined corruption to mean almost nothing this is part of the theme we were talking about before it is isn't it building something better building something new building something better take you know the the phoenix rising from the ashes of what Trump leaves us and creating a a democracy that is really a democracy a democracy that works for all of us a democracy that is an economic democracy as well as a political democracy yeah we should be really clear because when Trump won the first time the richest 100th of 1% of Americans accounted for 40% of all campaign donations by 2024 we all know that one man basically bought 26:04 the election running roughshot over every single government agency that was actually investigating him or might charge him for anything it's totally an unsustainable reality that we're I think starting to feel if not see that we are living in a completely rigged system for the ultra rich and for the establishment and that's not sustainable for the for the majority of us and we have to remember it is the majority of us with all the chaos that's happening around us one of our top priorities should probably be getting our finances under control and one of the best ways we can do that is by using Rocket Money rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions monitor your spending and help lower your bills so you can grow your savings 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And secondly have you tried Honey Love because it doesn't do that and it's not like I was doing an ad for my podcast i was just one girl talking to another girl in the bathroom and I thought I could help the thing is Honey Love uses targeted compression to sculpt and smooth where you want it and to ease off where you don't that means it's super effective as 31:02 shapewear but comfortable to wear all day long because it works with your body not against it i can attest that you will feel and see a difference immediately plus the flexible bon in the sides prevents it from rolling down so you never have to be that poor woman trying to adjust herself plus Honey Love shapewear features lingerie inspired design details so you won't just look like a sausage stuck into its casing as we come up on the summer you might want to look into their bestselling superpower shorts they have targeted compression that distinguishes between areas where you want more support and areas where you need less compression honey Love Signature X targets and sculpts your midsection without squeezing out all your natural curves and this superpower Short also has a booty lifter with boost bands in the back of the thigh to give your bum an amazing shape so treat yourself to the most comfortable shapewear on earth and save 20% off statewide at honeylove.com/politicsgirl use our exclusive link to get 20% off at honeylove.com/politicsgirl and after you purchase they ask you how you heard about them please support the show and tell them that we sent you experience 32:04 the new standard of shapewear with Honeylove and to that woman I met in the bathroom I really hope you got some i know you're going to like it we are living in a completely rigged system for the ultra rich and for the establishment and that's not sustainable for the majority of us and we have to remember it is the majority of us and we are living because of all of this everything you said we are living in the most anti-establishment era of politics we've seen in this country maybe in over 150 years that means that we've got to have a real anti-establishment party uh I mean the Democrats are not going to win unless they take on the establishment unless the Democrats say we've got to have high taxes on the very wealthy uh we've got to have a minimum wage that is really a living wage we've got to have universal basic income we've got to have profit sharing we've got to really remake this 33:04 economy so it's not run by big corporations and the rich we've got to have antitrust laws that are being that are going to be enforced we've got to bust up big corporations now again Democrats have not said this any of this uh because they don't want to bite the hands that feed them well if Democrats are not are not going to say this we maybe we need another party it's very hard to start start a third party in this country but we do have to have people who are going to have the courage and backbone and vision to say things like this yeah no we need to elect i think it's I agree with you it's almost impossible to start a working third party in this country but I do think we could take over the Democratic party with people who were genuinely looking out for the Democratic people and the American people because I've I've been in meetings with Democrats where they're like 'Don't mention universal healthcare.' And I'm like 'Why not that's what everyone needs.' If you said 34:00 'We actually need you to not be stuck and trapped in your job or your marriage because of your healthcare we need you not dying on the street because you couldn't afford your diabetes medicine.' And you know like actually most people would be for that don't be afraid of that i've been in meetings with Democrats and Democratic operatives who say 'Uh don't mention labor unions.' What what don't mention labor unions that's why people think they're two sides of the same coin but I do think that there are a number of Democratic leaders right now who don't take corporate money who are out there for the people and those are the people we need to be promoting and we can't be afraid of primarring our own people to say like we need people that are speaking for us we don't need to start a brand new party we need to shake up our own party i think that that I think that's exactly right uh and here again looking for silver linings yes it may be that that this horrible period we're going through this Trump regime maybe is going to force the kind of changes that you and I are talking about yeah and and maybe that's the way it has to be i mean look 35:05 at the tariffs alone okay so we did get the tariffs we didn't get the 90day you know pause that he was necessarily talking about we're going into them now what are your thoughts and I I want to be clear to people i don't think Bob or I would say that tariffs by blanket are a bad thing but arbitrary tariffs with no rhyme or reason that are ridiculous and it's like I'm going to say 145% it's going to be 200% like this kind of random that's a real problem it's crazy i mean number one nobody's going to invest in a factory in the United States without un without without knowing what the future is going to be and Trump keeps change keeps changing the rules uh number two factory jobs and he even Trump even talking about going back to coal mining well factory jobs and coal mining are not great i mean it's not that people love factory jobs they like the money that was associated with the factory jobs they like the money that was associated with working in a mine the only reason that those jobs had good money attached to them is because of 36:04 unions because there were strong unions that gave people bargaining leverage so if you were working for a big corporation or you were working down a mine shaft you knew you had a union behind you that was looking out for your health and safety and also make sure you were you were getting a paycheck uh that was big enough to sustain your family uh but the Trump administration hates unions uh they're trying to bust unions they hate the Labor Department they've made the National Labor Relations Board inoperable they're trying to take away the Occupational Safety and Health Administration uh so why have lousy jobs i mean factory jobs that are lousy jobs don't help anybody the whole point is to give and make sure that the middle class and workingass and poor in this country have pay and a standard of living that is sustainable and continues to rise as people do better and better as the 37:05 economy does better and better as companies do better and better trump is not talking like that he doesn't he's he's talking about what tariffs I mean tariffs are only orthogonally very very indirectly related to all of this what tariffs really do for him is they give him what they give him bargaining leverage trump they make him more powerful they allow Trump to make even more deals and they get foreign governments and foreigners to buy his memecoin i'll lay off on the tariffs if you put Elon Starlink in your you know like it's it's all so corrupt i mean here's the thing that bothers me so much is that like you said people don't love factory jobs or working in a coal mine they like the security that came with the job they like the paycheck that came with the job they like to be able to take care of their family i mean I just watched a coal miner the other day saying the Trump administration just got rid of their screenings for black lung 38:01 oh well that's terrific you know like that's one thing you always get from being a coal miner and coal miners knew that but they knew that if they got black lung and died the government would take care of their family after that was part of the deal i will do this terrible horrible job that will probably kill me but I will have enough money to live by and coal miners actually make quite a lot of money if people don't know they make over $100,000 and then I will die from this job I did but you will take care of my family after it now they're not even going to do that and the thing about the tariffs is it's going to kill our small businesses right like 90% of American small businesses are dependent on imports so these tariffs are killing small businesses right so 80% of US employment comes from small business like businesses that are less than 500 people i'm saying a small business and so we're going to have higher unemployment job losses at the same time that all the prices are going up and I keep thinking like listen we've been told our whole lives as Americans to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps right to work hard to innovate to not take handouts to earn our American dream right and then this American government comes in changes hands and literally 39:06 destroys tens of millions of people's built up by their bootstrap businesses and their livelihoods and I I hope that that would make something's got to give happen people be like 'Wait a second.' Because the Republicans really are in charge of everything so maybe at this point we won't blame the other party for this the Democrats have got to be courageous and they've got to make the case they've got to show what is actually happening why it is helpful for the billionaire class why it is hurtful for average working people you need Democratic candidates for the midterms who are tough and strong and making that case you also need a backbench of Democrats for the 2028 presidential election who are making this case and they ought to be making it right now yeah making it right now republicans are obviously are not going to be making it 40:01 no they don't care at all but I agree the Democrats have to be doing that right now because they have to show themselves in contrast they can't be taking money from the same people they can't be as you said feeding from the same trough you can't beat an oligarchy or a billionaire class with your own oligarchs and billionaires right you have to do it differently so that you can show you're looking out for a different group of people because it's not that billionaires won't benefit under a society that takes care of its workers takes care of its people where people aren't starving on the street they will but they they won't be the only people that benefit and I think that's the way we have to look at it and that this is very very important because the the billionaire class will actually do better with an economy that is more stable where more people feel like they are being treated fairly people have enough money in their pockets to buy all of the things that the billionaire class and their companies their big companies are creating and making well you have a system that for that is very close to the system we had in the first 30 years 41:02 after the Second World War when it was a win-win now we went it wasn't perfect i I'm not saying go back then because uh you know black people and Latino people the civil rights part we need to have adjusted but the financial part and we and women's rights and every but the point is the economy was moving and our politics were moving in a direction that was the right direction until about the late 1970s and then we had this giant giant U-turn because by the 1970s inequality and corporate power were getting out of control and that's when money started to undermine our entire economy that's where that's when you had the beginnings of the hostile takeovers corporations starting to say 'Well the only purpose of a corporation is to make as much money for shareholders as possible we got rid of stakeholder capitalism at that point.' Well here's again we need to rethink this we need to 42:00 go back to stakeholder capitalism uh Donald Trump says 'Oh equity uh you know and inclusion they're terrible ideas.' Well I'm sorry equity and inclusion are pretty good ideas they're very important ideas if we want to save capitalism if we want to save a system of democratic capitalism yeah because if you want people out there buying your product and working in your stores they have to have enough money to do it if you want them buying new cars and being in part of the market that what you're talking about that era where we had enough money that goes back to the highest tax rate on the very richest and the corporations was around 70% and we were able to build the highways and do all these things that we now don't build anything and we let everything crumble because we don't have enough money and our choice is well charge the people that have enough money to start paying for those things again or let it all crumble around us while a tiny group of people live in absolute excess and that probably is unsustainable and I think we're seeing it now it's totally unsustainable 70% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and and as jobs becomes le become less and less secure more and 43:06 more people find that they cannot meet the just the normal costs of living and many of them are afraid and I don't blame them of course they're afraid but a strong man named Donald Trump is not going to save them you know uh in history people who are afraid sometimes are attracted to so-called strong men who disdain democracy uh but what happens when a strong man gets into office and democracy is destroyed well we know historically what happens you have uh vicious murderers you have terrible wars uh you have horrible depressions you don't want to go down that road and I think people are learning people are are be are beginning to understand this yeah sometimes it it's you have to put your hand on the stove to realize that it really is hot that you can't just be told it you have 44:01 to feel it and I think that might be where we're at i have to tell you you have a documentary coming out about you soon called The Last Class it's coming out just so people know on June 27th because you are facing your last class as a professor at Berkeley you've taught for I think 45 years and I love it because you you're sort of the the movie is kind of you wrestling with the reality of your own aging but your young students inheriting this kind of terribly broken world and I I am of the belief that educators never really retire like you might not be at Berkeley anymore after this but you will always be a teacher and so I really appreciate you coming on the show today and kind of sharing that wisdom with us because it's so important and I really hope people will check out that documentary oh thank you well education and democracy are hand and glove uh you know an educated population is critical for a democracy and they understood this the founders understood this this is the beginnings of public education in the 18th century in the United States a lot of conservatives a lot of right-wingers Trumpers they want to get rid of public education well I'm sorry public 45:04 education is the absolute essence uh of democracy you know ignorance is the handmaidaden of tyranny we can't let education slip we've got to continue to invest in our young people in their education their training their access to knowledge their ability to critically reason it's you can't have a democracy without it no you can't well thank you so much for joining us today i hope people will continue to follow your work because you're just putting such great stuff out there thank you Lee you take care thanks for having me thank you so that was Robert Rich reminding us that what the public wants is not irrelevant that something good can emerge from the ashes of this horrendous regime if we collectively demand it that we can be against this hideous lawless authoritarian version of America where our president is a corrupt grifter surrounded by other grifters while still acknowledging that the country wasn't perfect before that perhaps the coalitions being built to fight this 46:05 regime will find common ground beyond beating Trump that we can potentially create something new something better a nation where we can all thrive not just the select few but to get there we have to know that's where we're going and we have to ask for it and work for it and demand it both from our leaders and from each other i want to thank Bob for joining us today and you for caring enough about this country to be here now go check out the Robert Rich Substack and invest in your own knowledge and education our democracy depends on us being smart enough to know what's going on until next week PG out do you want to get this podcast adree delivered directly to your inbox along with my kitchen rants then please consider becoming a member of Politicsgirl Premium by going to politicsgirl.com and signing up if you're already a premium member of this podcast thank you for your support and if you're not a member please consider becoming a patron of my work mainstream 47:02 news is only giving you a version of billionaire backed propaganda at this point so if you really want real knowledge it's essential to support those of us out here still bringing it to you there's a link to sign up in the bio of this episode but also on politicsgirl.com and as always please like and share this podcast so we can grow our audience the more people who have access to this kind of information the better as always thank you for your time and support politics Girl podcast is written and performed by me Lee McGawan in partnership with the Midas Media Network and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment all rights reserved

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