Economic Update: Real Economic Journalism

Summary

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Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff

Episode: Real Economic Journalism
Date: February 17, 2017

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Episode Overview

This episode of Economic Update, hosted by Richard D. Wolff, focuses on the importance of "real economic journalism" and critically examines several urgent economic and political developments in the U.S. and internationally. Professor Wolff dissects tax policy and corporate power, the Trump administration’s orientation toward business and education, and the consequences for ordinary Americans. In the second half, journalist Bob Henley joins the show, offering first-hand insights into investigative journalism’s role in exposing government and corporate accountability, the scapegoating of immigrants, union activism, and housing policy solutions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Stock Market’s Response to Trump’s Election

(00:00–04:40)

• Wolff notes that the stock market has performed well since Trump’s election, breaking significant milestones like the 20,000 mark on the Dow Jones.
• He attributes this to expectations of deregulation and tax cuts for corporations, not to improvements for the general public:

  “For the people who run this economy ... they see good news ... a Trump government ... to deregulate American business ... and to lower taxes on American business basically across the board.” (03:12, Wolff)

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2. Switzerland’s Corporate Tax Referendum: Lessons for the U.S.

(04:40–15:30)

• Explains Switzerland’s system where cantons compete by lowering corporate taxes to attract business—leading to a “race to the bottom” also mirrored in the U.S.
• European pressure forced Switzerland to propose equalizing taxes, but the government softened the blow by lowering all business taxes—sparking a public referendum.
• 59% of Swiss voters rejected this, prioritizing public services and fair taxation.
• Key insight: Direct democracy enables citizens to block tax policies they see as unfair, a mechanism missing in U.S. governance.

  “The Swiss showed that a population given a chance to vote on what goes on can actually figure it out really quite well and act accordingly.” (14:43, Wolff)

• Wolff connects this to Trump’s plan to cut corporate taxes in the U.S. with no referendum or popular input.

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3. Income Inequality & the Lives of Billionaires

(15:30–20:40)

• Wolff describes billionaire Stephen Schwarzman’s lavish 70th birthday party—an example of the gulf between America’s financial elite and the general public.
• Quotes from Schwarzman’s social circle and former Yale president Richard Levin showcase the normalization of billionaire extravagance and philanthropy as PR:

  “‘The world is an uncertain place ... So it’s nice to have an evening where everybody’s happy, harmonious and upbeat.’” (19:32, unnamed billionaire via Wolff)

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4. DeVos’s Education Policy: Public vs. Private

(20:40–27:25)

• Wolff evaluates Betsy DeVos’s appointment to oversee U.S. public education, discussing new research by Christopher and Sarah Lubienski:
  Public School Advantage: Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools
• Findings: Public schools, especially in math, outperform private (incl. charter) schools, even when controlling for demographics.

  “There it is, friends. Betsy DeVos ... is committed to building expanding private charter schools who do less well for students than the public schools.” (23:30, Wolff)

• Argues competitive pressure pushes private schools to market over substance, while public schools integrate best practices by necessity, challenging the notion that free market competition ensures better education outcomes.

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5. Investigative Journalism in a Changing Media Landscape

(29:30–34:25)

• Wolff introduces Bob Henley, lauding him as a rare investigative reporter.
• Henley recounts direct clashes with powerful figures like Sean Spicer, illustrating media suppression and the danger of challenging establishment narratives:

  “...called him up and was hit with ... a shower of epithets and obscenities and my lack of qualifications to be a reporter.” (33:13, Henley)

• Discusses the orchestrated PR behind political appointments (e.g., Andrew Puzder), showing how special interests create deceptive public support via “Astroturf” campaigns.
• Notable quote on media complicity:

  “As Les Moonves had said at one point ... ‘Donald Trump may be terrible for America, but he’s great for the stockholders.’” (34:02, Henley)

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6. The Real Impact of Immigrants and Crime

(38:07–41:31)

• Henley shares his reporting on immigration and crime, challenging Trump’s scapegoating of immigrants.
• Cites New York City’s experience: As immigration increased, homicide rates fell drastically (over 2,200 in 1990 to 330 in 2016).

  “Over half a million undocumented immigrants came into parts of New York City ... stabilized neighborhoods and transformed them.” (39:06, Henley)

• Quantitative evidence shows immigrants help revitalize communities and reduce crime, contradicting political rhetoric.

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7. Unions, Immigrants, and Construction Safety

(42:34–46:47)

• Henley reports that NYC construction and firefighters` unions have begun allying with immigrant workers, pushing for universal training and workplace safety rather than deportation.

  “What I’ve noticed ... the building trade started to come to understand that the undocumented immigrants ... are not their enemies, they’re their potential allies.” (42:37, Henley)

• Describes tragedies from unsafe workplaces, often affecting undocumented immigrants, and the coalition’s successful lobbying for improved standards.

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8. Unions, Social Movements & Youth Employment

(46:47–51:50)

• Wolff and Henley discuss the urgent need for unions to expand their mission to champion broader social goods, like youth employment.
• Suggest that such leadership would not only aid youth but would help unions’ public image and political prospects.

  “One of the things that unions need to do is be about full youth employment.” (50:10, Henley)

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9. Climate, Indigenous Rights & Labor

(52:39–53:14)

• Briefly, the conversation references Pope Francis’s support for indigenous rights and protection of sacred land, positioning global labor and social justice movements as allied causes.

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10. Housing Crisis: Zombie Homes & Public Solutions

(53:16–55:44)

• Henley proposes solutions for the U.S. housing crisis: Immediate municipal takeover of abandoned “zombie” homes, a federal Works Progress-style housing program employing youth, and prioritizing public need over banking profits.

  “Empower municipalities to take possession of all homes that no one’s lived in for at least a year. Then create a Works Progress Administration [for housing]...” (54:32, Henley)

• Wolff sums up:

  “A public program not subordinated to private profit could solve employment problems, housing problems, deterioration of property value problems—all at the same time. Right. If you needed a critique of private capitalism, there it is.” (55:44, Wolff)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The corporations love this. This is a bidding war for them whose end result is lower taxes on business for all multinational corporations as they decide where to locate...” (06:45, Wolff)
• “No man should die because he wants to feed his family. There’s a breakthrough happening here that’s very good news for progressive politics.” (45:30, Henley)
• "Immigration is a nation builder, not a destroyer. That's my experience. That's what I've seen.” (41:10, Henley)
• "One of the things that unions need to do is be about full youth employment.” (50:10, Henley)

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Selected Timestamps

• 00:00–04:40: Stock market’s post-Trump rally and who benefits
• 04:40–15:30: Switzerland’s tax referendum and implications for U.S.
• 15:30–20:40: Schwarzman’s billionaire birthday and American inequality
• 20:40–27:25: Betsy DeVos, public/private education, and new research
• 29:30–34:25: Bob Henley on investigative journalism and media suppression
• 38:07–41:31: Immigration, crime, and NYC’s transformation
• 42:34–46:47: Immigrants, unions, and construction safety in NYC
• 46:47–51:50: Union activism, public perception, and youth employment
• 53:16–55:44: Housing crisis and the promise of public solutions

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Tone & Style

Both Wolff and Henley blend critical analysis with anecdotal reporting and occasional wry humor, maintaining an accessible, conversational, yet uncompromisingly critical tone toward structural inequality, corporate power, and mainstream media failures.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode provides a rigorous, critical window into how economic policies—from tax law to education to labor and housing—impact everyday Americans and how empowered citizens and real journalism can make a meaningful difference. Wolff and Henley argue for democratic accountability, robust public programs, and a reinvigorated labor movement to push back against corporate domination and elite privilege.

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Transcript

[Richard Wolff]

Sam. Saint gonna change. Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives, our jobs, our incomes, our debts, those of our children and those looming down the road and not that far into the distance. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I've been a professor of economics all my adult life, and currently I teach at the New School University in New York City. Well, I want to jump into today's program, but I realize I have to take my hat off if I were wearing one in sad recognition that Mr. Puzder, the ostensible next labor secretary in our government, has withdrawn in this last week. And later in the program, we'll come back and talk a little bit about why that is and what it might mean. I also want to begin by making a comment that several of you have asked me. Is it correct that the stock market has done well since Mr. Trump's election? The answer is unequivocally, yes, it has. It has done very nicely. I wouldn't say it has soared, but it has done really quite well. It broke the 20,000 mark, which was considered significant on the Dow Jones in Washington and in New York City, too. So it tells us something. And what it tells us, I believe, is the yes, there might be all kinds of drama and chaos in Washington with the transition of the government. Yes, there might be all kinds of people around the country suffering, angry, upset, bewildered, and a whole host of other adjectives I could come up with. But for the people who run this economy, the big businesses, the corporate executives, they see good news, and the rich people who invest in them likewise, and here's what they a Trump government that is going to have to work things out with the Republican majority in both houses. And the one, maybe the two things they most agree on is to deregulate American business, that is, make it freer for them to make money and to lower the taxes on American business basically across the board, even if a few are raised, others will be lowered to offset it. And so that's why the businesses and the investors are happy, even if many of you listening are not. And that tells you a lot about who this economy serves and who this government serves and who it does not. So let me turn then to the segments I've prepared for this week's economic update. I want to begin by acknowledging a remarkable thing that happened this last week in Switzerland. Why would I be talking to you about Switzerland? Well, as I tell you the story, you'll see that it applies to the United States, too, in a remarkable Way. So here's what happened in Switzerland. Switzerland is a federal country. That is, it has cantons, things we would hear called states or regions. Cantons are the subdivisions of the state of the government of Switzerland. And the cantons have been busy doing what political authorities all over the capitalist world are busy doing most of the time, and that is trying to get corporations to come to wherever they are. And the way they do that is to lower taxes on them. They get the incentive going. That is, the companies are told here, come to Switzerland rather than be in Belgium or Italy or Britain or. Or anywhere in the world, because we will tax you less. Yes, Switzerland has a federal tax that covers the whole country, but it also allows the cantons, like our states here in the United States, to have their own level of taxation. And many of the cantons in Switzerland have basically reduced taxes on foreign corporations that come in to establish a factory or an office there to virtually nothing, so that these companies only have to pay the federal tax. And here comes the good news. The federal tax in Switzerland, 7.8%. And that, friends, is less than you pay on your income. Way less. So corporations have been coming. Guess what? The other governments in Europe aren't pleased by this.

[Bob Henley]

Why?

[Richard Wolff]

Because. Because this is the famous race to the bottom. If the canton in Switzerland pulls away a company in your country by offering lower taxes, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be politicians in your country who say that the way to cope with this is to make the tax in our country even lower than what they have in Switzerland to keep our companies here, which they do. And. And that, of course, stimulates the canton in Switzerland to lower it again. And so we have a kind of leapfrogging in which every political authority tries to outdo the other one by bringing corporations in at ever lower taxes. Of course, the corporations love this. This is a bidding war for them whose end result is lower taxes on business for all multinational corporations as they decide where to locate and where to relocate. The Europeans, under pressure from the mass of their people, don't like this. What do I mean, the mass of people? Well, figure it out with me. If, over time, competition among political authorities, states, whole governments, one against the other, lowers the taxes, then the amount of money coming in to the governments, step by step, is being reduced. What do those governments do as their revenue from taxing corporations is driven down by this absurd competition among political authorities? Well, they do one of two things or both. They raise taxes on individuals to make up for what they're not getting from corporations or they cut public services because they can't afford them anymore since they can't tax corporations. So the mass of people suffer either rising personal taxes or lower government services or both. And the European, because they have massive trade unions that are not in such terrible decline as here, they have powerful socialist, communist, green and other left wing parties, they can make their pressure felt. So the Europeans said to the Swiss, you can't do this anymore and if you continue, we will begin to discriminate against you. And you don't want that because Switzerland is a small landlocked country in Europe and depends on its relationships with the rest of Europe to an enormous extent. So what did the Swiss do? Being good capitalists as they have so long been, they decided, okay, we are going to require that foreign companies coming into Switzerland pay the same taxes as our domestic companies. In other words, we won't allow this bidding to bring them in by undoing what the every other part of Europe is trying to do with taxing corporations. But to soften the blow, the Swiss government said, the blow on these multinationals who are going to have to pay the same tax everybody else does in Switzerland, who's a business, they're going to lower the business taxes on everybody, domestic as well as foreign. So as the foreign have to adjust to the domestic, the domestic is being brought down, so, so it's not so difficult for them. That was the plan of the Swiss government, that was the federal decision. But under Swiss law, now here's where it becomes relevant to America. Under Swiss law, if 50,000 Swiss citizens sign a petition that they don't like a law that they don't want something, it has to go to a referendum where all Swiss people can vote on it. And that's what happened. More than 50,000 signed it real fast. And it was put to a referendum and that was held last. Do the Swiss people want to see taxes on all business come down as the way to soften the blow for those multinationals who no longer get away with murder by not paying proper taxes? 59% of the people of Switzerland said, no way is this going to happen. So the plan is dead. And who mobilized for this? The trade unions, the left wing political parties, the consumer groups, just exactly who you would guess. And they made the argument crystal clear to lower taxes for all businesses, domestic and foreign to make life easier for the foreign, means that the Swiss government will have less money than before and therefore will either tax us as individuals more to make up the money or cut the public services to Swiss citizens. And we, the Swiss citizens will not accept it, so it's dead. Why am I telling you this? Because the Swiss showed that a population given a chance to vote on what goes on can, can actually figure it out really quite well and act accordingly. No, that's only half of it. The reason I'm telling you the story is it's the same here. Mr. Trump, for example, proposes to tax corporations that bring goods in from Mexico and China in order to persuade them to pressure them to relocate their productions so that they don't have factories in Mexico and China, etc. But bring them back to the United States. And he threatens to tax them if they don't. Well, they yell and scream. So Mr. Trump came up with a solution. He already did this in the campaign and now he's moving on it as president. He's going to lower taxes on all corporations in America. He's actually proposed to reduce it from the current level statutory level of 3, 35% to 15%. No small potatoes here. And that would cut the amount of revenue that the United States government gets from corporate taxes by a very large sum. In other words, to coax corporations to bring production back here, which they may or may not do. What is going to happen in any case is a massive reduction of, of corporate income tax, corporate profits tax, which the Republicans in the Congress have already signed off on. They want that too, because those are the people who fund the Republican Party. So we're doing exactly what Switzerland has done with this difference. There is no procedure for people to sign a petition. There is no procedure for the petition to force a referendum where the American people could choose whether they like this or not. We don't have that. The Swiss had it and used it. We don't have it, so we can't use it. And that's what we're going to see unless a massive social movement blocks it. Cut government tax on corporation is coming. And that will either force us as individuals to pay more or to see more reductions in federal support for the public services we rely on. The Swiss are teaching us a lesson. The only question is, will we learn? Let me turn to another update. This one is more fun, so I'm going to enjoy it with you. I want to introduce you, if you don't already know him, to Stephen Schwartzman. Stephen Schwarzman is a very important man. He is a billionaire. That already puts him in, in a very special group. He is a billionaire friend of Donald Trump. That's an even more special group. And he has been named by Donald Trump to be the chair of something called the Strategic and Policy Forum, which is going to be advising Mr. Trump. So this is a very important billionaire. He is also very famous for, for being head of the Blackstone Group, one of the most important financial powerhouses in New York and Washington, DC. But I'm not talking about him because he's an important man in the Trump administration, although he is. I'm talking about what came across the wire this last week. Something I don't want you to miss, and that is Mr. Schwarzman turned 70 years of age last week and he had a party. And I want to tell you about his party because his birthday parties are famous. His 60th, 10 years ago, was famous, and his 70th, he had tried clearly to make it more famous 10 years ago, before the capitalist system crashed. In 2008, his elaborate party was public. It took place in the Armory in New York City, an immense building used for what the word armory implies. It was serenaded by Patti LaBelle and Rod Stewart. The cavernous Park Avenue Armory was decorated in spectacular form. This year, things were a bit quieter. The party took place in his gated home in South Florida, in an area that has come to be called the American Riviera. So here we go. I want you to understand how the other people, the other side lives, those people whose hearts are bleeding for the American middle class, who want to do something for the working man and woman when they're not busy helping you here is what they are doing. I'm now going to describe the beach house in Florida. For the 70th birthday last week, the singer was Gwen Stefani. Between her sets, there were trapeze acts that included Olympic athletes. There were camels, two of them in the sand, a gondolier on the pool and a giant birthday cake in the shape of a Chinese temple. I'm describing the report from Bloomberg News, so the source here is impeccable. Everyone sang Happy Birthday at midnight. It was a memorable affair. The production was overseen by Schwarzman's wife, Christine Hearst. Schwartzman. I assume you all know who Hearst and the family is. The event was designed by the famous firm Van Wyk and Van Wick, whose clients have included Madonna, Calvin Klein and David Koch of the Koch brothers. For his 70th birthday, they share designers. Isn't it charming? Representing Donald Trump at the party were his daughter Ivanka and son in law Jared Kushner. Also present were incoming cabinet members Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross and Elaine Chao. The CEO of Barclays Bank, Jess Staley. The CEO of Citigroup, Michael Corbat investment titans, Henry Kravis, David Rubenstein. I'm going to stop. All the rich, all the powerful, all, all the connected were there. But nothing summarizes the distance between them and us as the comments that were made by another attendant at the party, Richard Levin, the former president of Yale University. And here is what he said, and I'm sure it had no connection with the fact that, that Mr. Schwarzman has given huge amounts of money to Yale University when Mr. Levin was there. I'm sure this is not connected. Here's what Mr. Levin the party was a warm and wonderful reflection of Steve's generous support. His friends take pleasure in the good work that he is doing for children, institutions, global harmony. Wow. Wow. One other person had a comment. The world is an uncertain place, comma, a lot of people are unhappy with a lot of other people. There are a lot of things that people are upset about, said a leading billionaire investor. And here it comes, folks. So it's nice to have an evening where everybody's happy, harmonious and upbeat. The billionaires amongst us are happy, harmonious and upbeat. Maybe the fact that you aren't has something to do with the fact that when it comes to billionaires, you aren't either. One of the people that has entered the cabinet of Mr. Trump is Betsy DeVos. She is a champion of private education, particularly Christian education, to which she has devoted many years of her life and many millions of her billionaire family's money. And so I was struck that we're about to hand over the oversight of our education public education system to a person who doesn't believe in public education and wants instead to move to private education. And nothing would be better than to see how the research done by educators does or does not support what Mr. Trump decided to do with education by nominating Betsy DeVos. I've mentioned this before, but I'm going to go into a bit more detail now because she has taken this position and has this power. So I want to tell you about a book that was recently written by two specialists in this field. The names are Christopher and Sarah Lubienski. L U B I E N S K I they are both professors of education at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Urbana, Illinois. The title of their book is called the Public School Advantage Semicolon. Why Public Schools Outperform Private Schools. Yes, you heard it right. This recent book just out by leading advocates of studying education to which they have devoted their lives as professors of education at a leading university in the United States. They focused on math Education. And they focused on an enormous research that surveyed what is going on in 13,000 public, private and charter schools across the United States. And they used information gathered from nationwide standardized tests administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

[Bob Henley]

And.

[Richard Wolff]

In other words, they are the specialists. What did they find? Well, the title of their book already tells you, but there's more to it than simply discovering that when it comes to math education, and by extension, they believe this applies to education in general, public schools do better for their students that than private schools and charter schools. To be careful. In their research, they took account of the fact that it's a different demographic. One kind of kid tends to go to a public school, whereas different kinds of kids tend to go to charter and private schools. So they only were very careful to compare students who were similar in the two schools, to compare groups of students who came from families with roughly the same income, who came from families with roughly the same ethnic breakdown, etc. Etc. Even adjusting for all of that. So they were really comparing similar young people from similar families. When they went to public school, they did better than when they went to private and charter schools. There it is, friends. Betsy DeVos nominated and now gotten the job from the Congress, from the Senate that supported her, is committed to building expanding private charter schools who do less well for students than the public schools. I could spend a lot of time talking about that, but I'm not going to. I'd rather explore, as do the professors, Lubienski, why this might be. How do you explain this? They are good professors, good researchers. When they've done their statistical examination, which takes up much of the book, they don't hesitate to offer the best they can by way of explaining the results that their research uncovered. And their explanation goes like. Public schools do not have to compete with one another for students. Public schools are organized by neighborhood. If you live in such and such a place, your children go to that public school that services that neighborhood. If you are a private school, you are competing to pull students away from the public school and. And away from other private schools. And ditto for charter schools. And that means that these schools are looking to win over the parents. And so they pander to whatever is in the minds of the parents about what it is that's going to teach young people their children in a way that will get them into college, get them good jobs and all the rest. They're shaped not by the universe of what's effective teaching, but whatever is in the culture right now about the right school to go to the one with more computers than the other one, the one with you. Figure it out. The competition among private schools means they don't pay attention to any of the latest research about teaching because it's not what sells teachers, parents to bring their kids in. And that for them, that autonomy, that freedom of the private school to do whatever it wants to get parents to come in and pay rather than be subjected to the research that's coming down that all public schools are learning and following because they must. This for them is the core reason why it happens. And as an economist, I find it so interesting. A public system does better than a private, competitive capitalist system in providing education. And therein lies a lesson that not only shows why Trump and DeVos are the wrong people in the wrong time going in the wrong direction, but it tells something about, about capitalism and competition as well. We've come to the end of the first half of Economic Update for today. Please stay with me. After a short interlude, we will be right back with the second half and with an interview about things going on in American life today and in the economy that I think you will find very, very interesting. Stay with us. We'll be right back.

[Unknown Performer]

Johnny, don't leave me. You said you'd love me forever. Honey, believe me, I'll have your heart on a platter. Might you recall we've got a small family f and the family won't like this. The bus journey cats Ooh up dee doo up dee doo the bus journey cats Ooh up dee do what we do. Johnny, you told me you were no fool, you were no chump Then you got cold feet now all you'll be is a speed bump something we call oh, just a small family business.

[Richard Wolff]

And.

[Unknown Performer]

The family won't like this. They'll bust your kneecaps. Ooh up dee doo up de do. They'll bust your kneecaps. That's what they're going to do. Johnny, there's still time together. I know we'd go so far. I'll tell Uncle Rocco to call off the guys with the crowbars. You call it prime, we call it smart Family business and the family is famous.

[Bob Henley]

That's my Sunday tax.

[Richard Wolff]

Welcome back, friends, to the second half of Economic Update. Today I'm welcoming to the microphones a friend who's been on this program before. His name is Bob Henley. So before I introduce you, welcome Bob.

[Bob Henley]

Thanks for having me.

[Richard Wolff]

Bob is an award winning print and broadcast journalist. He is a staff reporter for the chief leader which has been covering the civil service and public unions since 1897. His work frequently appears in Salon Alternate and who, what why? He is also a national political affairs reporter for wbgo, the NPR jazz station in Newark, New Jersey. But he has another qualification, which is why I bring him on the program the way I do. He is one of a vanishing breed. He's an investigative, sorry, journalist or reporter, the kind of person who used to be famous in our culture for tracking down the hard to nail down stories, for going behind the scenes, for asking the difficult questions, people who were romantically portrayed in a whole series of movies as the ones who figured out what we all needed to know when most folks didn't do it. So he's still doing that in a profession that has really less and less space for it. And we're going to come back. So with that introduction, thanks very much, very generous. Okay, we're going to start because all good investigative reporters have delicious gossip, right? So I thought that before we get into the serious stuff, get to the semi serious stuff, you have two stories that you've told me that I want you to tell our audience. One is about Sean Spicer, right, the person who is now the press secretary for President Trump but is actually more famous in the impersonation on Saturday Night Live of his behavior. And the second one is a man whose name will vanish as quickly from the public awareness as it arrived, Andrew Puzder, who was going to be the labor secretary but who withdrew his nomination from consideration this last week. So let's start. Tell us your story about Sean Spicer.

[Bob Henley]

Before Sean Spicer was a national treasure. He was my personal nemesis. Guest Back in 2015, I was working for CBS Money Watch not far from here at West 57 Street. It was a good job. Got to write about the global economy, $45 an hour, of course, no benefits. It was for his subcontractor called Zero Chaos. Always like that to walk past the soundstage of the CBS Evening News knowing that so many of the people were just temporary people working for Zero Chaos. Well, I said to my colleagues there, my editor, as we were in the throes of the campaign, the primary campaign, noticing how Donald Trump and Dr. Carson had really excited a kind of base that was really something that the Republican National Committee had a hard time controlling. And it would appear that the franchise was in trouble. They had tens of millions of dollars on deposit. Meanwhile, these black dark pool money groups had hundreds of millions of dollars available. And it seemed that as a going enterprise, the Republican Party and the RNC was kind of losing control of the brand so we wrote the piece, put it up online. Things seemed to be fine. Got a call at home, and I was told by my editor in Washington, which is where all decisions are made, I guess, about politics from CBS is very upset. You need to try to call Sean Spicer and fix it.

[Richard Wolff]

Why Sean Spicer?

[Bob Henley]

Well, because he was the Republican National Committee press secretary at the time. And so I, of course, being a team player, called him up and was hit with a I will spare your listeners just a shower of epithets and obscenities and my lack of qualifications to be a reporter. And I found myself picking up my own volume. And there's no productive benefit if you continue to if you yell at someone, says, Mr. Spicer, let's adjourn this conversation and let's try to get ourselves calmed down. So I did that, hung up, called him back a few minutes later. He said, I'm done with you. I'm going to be coming for you through CBS Corporate. And then he hung up. Well, needless to say, a couple of hours later, my post was taken down. No retraction, just disappeared. It's also important to know that cbs, like the other networks, very much wanted to be on the right side of the dancing Republicans for those debates that were so lucrative. And of course, within a couple of months, while I wasn't at CBS and I'm now at the chief leader. So that's just one instance of where you can sit. As Aless Moonves had said at one point at a public meeting, Donald Trump may be terrible for America, but he's great for the stockholders. So I felt a little bit of that early on.

[Richard Wolff]

All right, give us your little bit story about Andrew Puzder.

[Bob Henley]

Right. He was, you know, I was working on a story hoping that his nomination would endure at least towards the end of the week. I know it wasn't in the interest of the public, but we do have our own narrow self interest. So we're working up a story on the effort to try to save this nomination, which had some serious impediments. I mean, there was the, the undocumented housekeeper. Well, that's kind of in this crowd, not really something that would hold him back. Then, of course, the domestic violence, and that seemed to get traction with the circulation of the Oprah tape of his ex wife anonymously describing back in the 1990s how he really beat her up quite brutally. And in the process, I was hearing from sources in Washington that all of a sudden these apparent grassroots TV ads were showing up with members of the Fast food chains, Carl Jr. S and Hardee's giving testimonials to Mr. Puzder. Now, you may know that. Testimonials positive about positive. Right. So it looked like this, you know, great grassroots swell of support for him despite the fact that he had, you know, significant labor wage violations that we were well reported on. So I started looking up these groups that were at the end of these ads and, you know, these anonymous Employment Policy Institute type sounding names. And it turned out to be supported by the very industries that were promoting the policies that Mr. Puzder was going to make his tenure very much about. And so we really are seeing now a kind of proliferation. We'll see it now with Judge Gorsuch now, where all of a sudden, in major media markets, there's an ad campaign appearing to be by individuals disinterested, a groundswell of the proletariat wanting to see this man elevated. We saw the same thing with Betsy DeVos. Who's better results than Mr. Buster.

[Richard Wolff]

Right?

[Bob Henley]

Okay.

[Richard Wolff]

Yes. It's a wonderful spectacle of how these things work. All right, let me turn to some of the things you've recently reported on that I think our radio and TV audience would like to hear. Because of Mr. Trump's initiatives in blaming immigrants for a great deal of the difficulties that the United States economy has, and not hesitating to say that a solution to at least some of those difficulties would be found in expelling immigrants and noting, to be fair, that the Obama administration itself was a major deporter of immigrants. I have been struck by the effort of those who support this, not only to suggest that our economic problems have something uniquely to do with immigration, but to see in deporting large numbers of people a solution. This strikes me as an economist, as a classic effort to distract people caught up in an economic system that isn't working, to blame a scapegoat, to blame somebody else, someone else you can be angry at and take out your upset about, even though it has very little to do. And then I noticed that the biggest rationale for doing this is not the economic argument, because in fact, it's a difficult argument to make. So it has become the crime argument that somehow, and you could notice in Mr. Trump's campaign and so forth, this notion that immigrants are criminals or disproportionately criminal, or impose on us as native citizens a criminal element we wouldn't otherwise have. You've done some reporting. Tell us about it.

[Bob Henley]

Well, one of the things is that I was on the campaign trail in Cleveland during the Republican convention. So I did see firsthand the very effective testimonials of real live people whose loved ones were killed by individuals who, who were chronic offenders, who are undocumented and in this country illegally. There are such dozens of cases. And Mr. Trump did a very compelling job to give these families that are still very much in pain an opportunity to platform. I wouldn't deny their pain, but there's a deeper reality. And, you know, you can only tell these stories, not in the aggregate, but let's get particular. I've been covering the city of New York for 30 years now. Cam61. When I first started working as a beat reporter In 1990, there were 2,262 homicides.

[Richard Wolff]

It's a big number to imagine in one year.

[Bob Henley]

In one year, the last year, last year, 330 people were killed.

[Richard Wolff]

That's stunning.

[Bob Henley]

To get a sense of what that means, 2,000 people, imagine 2,000 pairs of shoes. Those are individuals that did not get killed. This is a reduction dramatically of homicides. What was happening during that period of time? Over half a million undocumented immigrants came into parts of New York City that in the 1970s had been laid low by all the exploitative things you talk about about capitalism. Neighborhoods hollowed out, found value, stabilized neighborhoods and transformed them. Now the big challenge is it's become such a successful city. Global capital flying out of places like China is now flooding into New York, displacing those very same homesteaders that turned these communities around. This is a city of immigrants. It's a city of immigrants that has thrived and prospered on an historic level because of those immigrants.

[Richard Wolff]

So you're basically telling us that not only did the immigrant wave coming into New York not cause or worsen crime, it's extremely the opposite. The reality is when you look at the numbers, which is in the end what we have to look at, because otherwise we get lost in the specifics of each horrible situation. When you look at the numbers, immigration, and you've given the clue to it, is a way to reduce the problem of crime because the immigrants have no money, go into the neighborhoods that are the worst, quote, neighborhoods, and bring life and people and community into places that had none of those things, and family.

[Bob Henley]

And family into it, and religious values.

[Richard Wolff]

Irrespective, setting up their storefront jerky.

[Bob Henley]

And what's happened is the consequence. Also. We've seen it even, I mean, peace is breaking out all over. It's a good news story. We have a situation where at the end of the Bloomberg administration, we got up to around 700,000 stop and frisks. This was a policy started under Ray Kelly. The idea was stop and frisk primarily individuals of color. Less than 10% were ever arrested or even got a citation. We've dropped that number, Richard, to 22,000 a year. And the crime continues to go down. Immigration is a nation builder, not a destroyer. That's my experience. That's what I've seen.

[Richard Wolff]

Wow. I mean, it's something really to. It's hard for me to digest. The stop and frisk, just to remind everyone, was a major political issue. It's part of what Mayor de Blasio used to become the mayor of New York. His opposition to it, a program deeply resented by the African American and Hispanic communities here in New York.

[Bob Henley]

Also terribly expensive. Over the period of time of Michael Bloomberg's tenure, the city paid out a billion dollars to settle tort claims for individuals whose civil rights were violated or where a stop and frisk incident caused the police to overreact. So it was also very expensive from the standpoint of taxpayer accountability.

[Richard Wolff]

And. And it didn't work, as you see.

[Bob Henley]

Right, exactly.

[Richard Wolff]

It didn't work. It's amazing, that kind of thing. Okay, you told me an interesting story about immigrants. This time not about crime, but about immigrants and a response by the New York firefighters.

[Bob Henley]

Right. And the construction trades.

[Richard Wolff]

And the construction trades. Tell us about that.

[Bob Henley]

Well, there's no doubt that we know historically the construction trades were very slow to integrate. There was a lot of blood spilled in this country by people, by the white supremacist movement, very resistant to bringing in what we know to be a real pathway to a middle class and middle class lifestyle. To a large degree, construction trade has taken the place of manufacturing in the United States because it's something you can do with your hands, and it's a trade. What I've noticed in the last few years in New York City is that the building trade started to come to understand that the undocumented immigrants that are in the city, that are trying to work in this profession are not their enemies, they're their potential allies. So we see them taking a leaf out of the page of Andy Stern with Justice for Janitors in California, where the SEIU Service of Employees International Union had this breakthrough moment where instead of looking at the janitors that were undocumented and Latino as their enemy, they said, hey, this is the future, and brought about a kind of organization that made the SEIU one of the few unions that really grew dramatically. And as a consequence, I Think President Obama got in the White House as a consequence because the SEIU was critical to his victory. What has happened here in New York City is we, with the increasing boom, I've talked about construction boom, we've had an increase in fatalities primarily of undocumented individuals. We've had 30 men that have been killed in the last two years, hundreds in the last 10 years working at these non union sites where they don't have the same standards in terms of safety nor training. In fact, here in Manhattan, an individual was crushed because he didn't understand English and he was digging a hole and he got so deep that the wall came in and suffocated him. Here, the district attorney prosecuted that case and got a conviction of the company, which was a breakthrough moment. So what's happened now is the construction trades, about 100,000 building trades, carpenters, plumbers and the rest, 25,000 marched on city hall to push for a training program, a mandatory training program that would require anybody working in construction, union or non union, to get the basic skills required to keep themselves safe, their colleagues safe, and the public safe. And what do we see on this stage at that rally? But the Uniformed Fire Officers association, the Uniformed Fire Officers association and the ranking, the brass, okay? And supported by the TWU transit workers, all supporting the notion not of deporting undocumented people, but of training them. That's a transformational moment, you know, that is there's probably many Trump voters within those group of people that were there, but for them, it's almost as one of the individuals said to me, no man should die because he wants to feed his family. There's a breakthrough happening here that's very good news for progressive politics.

[Richard Wolff]

Yeah. Strikes me also as a very hopeful sign that people will see through the scapegoating of immigrants for what it is and realize that if the people at the top had any interest in dealing decently with masses of people, they wouldn't be setting the workers they underpay against the immigrants whom they underpay even more. But they would be coming up with plans, like the firefighters, like the construction workers, to properly integrate. Especially in the history of a country that literally is composed of an endless wave of immigrants.

[Bob Henley]

Right? And the thing too here is that when I asked one of the fire officers, well, why are you here? Is this really your fight? Because unions kind of generally run in their own lane. And he's like, you just have to respond to one of these construction sites and pull out a mangled body. And now you have to deliver this body to the victims families. So these are. And they were actually, they were Catholic priests at this event. So this is really something very much in line with Pope Francis, the idea of the dignity of work that unions really have to stand up for, the universality of that very basic human right.

[Richard Wolff]

Yeah. And speaking of the unions, let me pull you onto a topic that we didn't prepare for, but. Oh, that'll be fun. You know, the unions would be viewed differently in this country if they did that, if they weren't narrowly focused on the bread and butter issues for their members, important as those are. But we're also part of a social movement that people could identify with who were not in that particular trade or not in that particular industry. And this, in a way, is what these folks are doing. They're saying to the larger immigrant community and the larger community as a whole, there's a different way of reacting to immigrants, not by deporting them, which is what our government is doing, but by a radical different way of coping. Well, now, let me ask you a question. This last week, there was an election at the Boeing Corporation in South Carolina. Boeing has moved production from the state of Washington, where it was concentrated, to South Carolina to get away from the unions that are strong in Washington state and are very weak. South Carolina has the lowest percentage of unionized workers in the United States. So Boeing went there. The machinists union tried to organize. They had a vote this last week, and the machinist union was defeated badly. And one of the reasons given was a culture in the broader population that is hostile to unions doesn't see the benefits of unions. Well, in a way, the unions themselves, by not doing more to be in the vanguard of productive and positive change, the way the construction and firefighters were that you've just told us about, if they were more doing that more often, might they not change the larger environment and be able to win them?

[Bob Henley]

Well, there's, I mean, even. And you know, there's a tale of. It's, of course, complicated. In the case of the firefighters, we're still, I'm still doing stories for the chief about racism within the ranks when it comes to the firehouse itself. So I don't want to, you know, the city settled $100 million loss brought by the Vulcan Firefighters Associates and the African American Fraternal organization because of historic and systemic and widespread discrimination. But to your broader point, part of the problem here is that I think that when you see unions and you have individuals getting these huge salaries and you have the legacy of the Corruption surrounding the Teamsters. These things have become a kind of part of the mythopoetic of the culture. So people have to see something very different in their direct experience. And one of the things that unions need to do is be about full youth employment. One of the problems here is that one of the big insecurities that everyone has who's middle aged, whether it be about their children or their grandchildren, is will they find meaningful work, will they find a way to sustain themselves and their family? This is what we all hope for as parents. And I would submit to you that Donald Trump's success in winning the presidency was by flipping 200 counties that weren't racist. They voted for President Obama twice. We talked about these counties before the election. Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio. These are places where there's a real doubt in part of these union households about whether or not their kids and their grandkids will find a place in America to support themselves. And that makes them open to the attacks from the right. The xenophobic notion that somehow it's not deeping, it's not about reaching within, but pushing those who are different. And so what I really think we need to see is unions around the country pushing at the municipal level for full youth employment. Because we have a problem here in this country. We have millions of young people who are not getting that first work experience. We know in New York City here, we've talked about this. Maybe 125,000, 130,000 16 to 22, 23 year olds, not in school, not working. This is the failure of capitalism where capital's failed its basic test in terms of social utility. It's not providing a pathway for young people to be able to get the basic skills that are required to work. And that's something that unions really have to be about.

[Richard Wolff]

You think it could change the position of unions in the United States if they took a kind of leadership position on that question?

[Bob Henley]

Well, to me, it is that where Dr. King would be today. It is the new civil rights movement, because we have a situation now where automation is being introduced. You know, you can bring back manufacturing to the United States, but in point of fact, chances are robots will be doing it. So we have to really have a conversation about the importance and social utility of work for more than just generating capital, for giving life, definition and meaning to people. Right.

[Richard Wolff]

And so if the unions. I want to push you, if the.

[Bob Henley]

Unions did identify themselves with it, I.

[Richard Wolff]

Think they could change. It could change how they are viewed and their social position. Right.

[Bob Henley]

Not looking like they're Just about their own sinecure. And one of the things that they have to be really careful about is Donald Trump has this playbook where he's playing off the building trades. That's the blue collar workforce off of the public unions. This is a playbook that Chris Christie tried to use with some effect. And you'll see it where he had the trade, the construction trades in to sign after the Trans Pacific pipeline, because that's always been a difficult fault line for progressive movement, because guys who do men and women who lay pipe and do that kind of work, they want the work. And they may not be so concerned about, down the line, the implications of global warming. So labor has to resolve those conversations, those frictions that can be exploited from without by capital.

[Richard Wolff]

I wonder whether you noticed that this last week, Pope Francis, whom you mentioned, had a conference in the Vatican devoted to indigenous people and said unmistakably that respect for the water, respect for the sacred burial grounds of indigenous people has to be respected. Unmistakable. Letting everybody know on which side of the Dakota pipeline he stands.

[Bob Henley]

He just has to get rid of the doctrine of Christian discovery.

[Richard Wolff]

That would be a good thing.

[Bob Henley]

Just reverse that. That'd be good.

[Richard Wolff]

Okay, you've done some work on housing. And so as we come to the end of our time together, I wanted you to share with our audience who's interested in the economics of housing, but housing is a phenomena, what your research, as an investigative reporter has told you about the housing crisis. Let me put it to you this way. If you were advising the doctor who has become the head of housing for Mr. Trump, who has, as far as I know, no experience or background in anything having to do with housing other than the fact that he lived in it.

[Bob Henley]

Right.

[Richard Wolff]

What would you advise him?

[Bob Henley]

Well, I first want to say there was one moment in monitoring the hearings where I saw him win. And it had to do with when he was asked about what his experience is. And of course, he did come up through public housing. He did experience housing insecurity, as the professionals say. But he described the frustration as an accomplished physician in treating young people at John Hopkins and returning them to. To substandard conditions. So that was at least some authentic moment where people knew that was true. And compared to the rest of the Trump circuits, give them a shot. Well, first, I would advise that they immediately suspend foreclosure proceedings and that the federal government empower local states and municipalities the power to condemn all zombie homes to immediately forthwith take control of zombie homes and then create zombie homes are homes, and there's Hundreds of thousands of them across the country that are caught up where the banks forced people out of them. But then the banks wouldn't declare the loss because if they actually took possession of it, they'd have to experience the depreciation in value that the manipulation of the market secured. Very nice. Right? So in Cleveland, we had 6,000 zombie homes during the convention, little attention spent to it. 40,000 vacant lots and zombie homes in Philadelphia. So you want to fix American housing and get kids back to work immediately. Empower municipalities to take possession of all homes that no one's lived in for at least a year. Then create a Work Progress administration along the line of Habitat for Humanity, where you empower young people in construction trades to begin rebuilding those homes and provide them to the people that are now paying higher and higher amounts of their disposable income to rent and to those people that are homeless. In other words, can be done in a couple of months.

[Richard Wolff]

A public program not subordinated to private profit could solve employment problems, housing problems, deterioration of property value problems, all at the same time. Right. If you needed a critique of private capitalism, there it is. Bob Hennele, thank you very, very much. Pleasure for being with us. This is why investigative reporting is important. People have the time, the energy, and the interest to get good work done.

[Bob Henley]

Can I get my Twitter handle? I'm at Stuck Nation. Because we surely are. Bob Henley at Stuck Nation.

[Richard Wolff]

There we go. And you can follow Bob's work that way, and he'll be on this program again. Thank you again, Bob.

[Bob Henley]

My pleasure.

[Richard Wolff]

Before we sign off, folks, let me remind you we have two websites, rdwolffwith2f's.com and democracyatwork.info where you can follow us on Facebook, Twitter. Be a partner with us. We want to thank truthout.org, that remarkable independent source of news and analysis that has been a partner with us for a long time. Make use of these websites, friends. They're free, they're available 24 7, and they're a way for you to extend the reach of the kind of work we do here. Thanks again for listening and watching, and I look forward to being with you again next week. Your time now, bab. But after a while gonna be my time My time, babe they ain't gonna change Change, change, change, change, change, change.

[Bob Henley]

Thing gonna change yep.