← Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
The Fight Against Money Corrupting Politics
00:32:10
This week on Economic Update, Professor Wolff delivers updates on Bernie-endorsed Independent U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner in Maine, the latest Gallup poll showing that 68% Americans are pro-union, more than 97% of park workers at...
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Welcome friends to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program that devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. Before jumping into today's programs very quickly, three announcements of events I think you will find worthwhile and interesting. The first one reminds you of a book launch for an important new book on the prospects of and the risks of fascism in the United States. It will take place in New York City on September 24th at 6pm at the Francis Kite Club, East Village, no. 40 Avenue C. There will be some of the authors whose work is collected in this book at the hosting of the publisher or books. You can find out details by going to our website democracyatwork and click on the banner there. A little time is left to register for the second item. A course, a short course sponsored by the Left Educational Project of the Left Forum, Working together with Democracy at Work. It's a short course called Critically Understanding Capitalism and begins on September 1st 15th. Four weeks, four sessions online, taught by professors Clara Matei, University of Tulsa, Shahram Azer, Bucknell University of Pennsylvania and myself. It's a university level course, condensed, short, trying to give you a critical understanding of capitalism. I urge you to think about participating. Find out more www.LeftForum.org LEP for Left Educational Project and the third, and probably the biggest event is a public event on October 9th at John Jay College of the City University of New York, a program entitled It's Time. It's Time and Where Do We Go From Here now that It's Time? And featured will be several speakers Cornel West, Chris Hedges, Laura Flanders and myself. And I really think that this is an important moment in our history, before our November elections and in the face of an unprecedented government taking unprecedented steps in unprecedented directions. I urge you to think about joining October 9, John Jay College in New York City. Okay. Today's program will cover a number of topics. An independent political movement in Maine, the latest Gallup poll about unions, what the workers at Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon and national Parks are doing about a union and finally, a commentary on the deportation activities of ICE and Mr. Trump. So let's jump right in. I really think these are an important set of topics about the times we are living through together right now. An independent candidate has surfaced running for the Senate seat of Susan Collins, a Republican in Maine. He's an oyster fisherman by the name of Graham Platner. He's independent, he's progressive. He has been endorsed by Bernie Sanders. He has been endorsed Also in an indirect way by another independent, although running in the Democratic Party, if I have my information correctly, Troy Jackson. Now, it is interesting for me.
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And.
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I think for you to see what this means. This is now Bernie Sanders endorsing a non Democrat, an independent. What we're watching here is the slow but steady emergence of a new left wing political formation here in the United States. It's one that was until recently mostly about the Democratic Party, left with some independence for sure, but the movement is more and more in that direction, a kind of slow but steady, inch by inch coming together of left wing independence with left wing members of the Democratic Party. You can see it in the victory in the primary election of Zoran Mamdani in New York City, who is still the number one candidate ahead in all the polls and seeming to survive the monetary onslaught of, of both the wealthy in New York City and Mr. Trump, their trusty ally. Whatever else they may say, I think there's another lurking issue here that is even more important for the politics of the United States because the emerging left, independent and Democratic and working more and more together, is that there's an issue emerging that differentiates them from everybody else in the Democratic and Republican parties. I'm going to call this, by what it ought to be called, the peace issue, which is returning to become a powerful political identifier of who's who and who deserves whose vote. You know, Mr. Trump tried to get a hold of that peace vote by endlessly promising when he ran for mayor, he'd bring that war in Ukraine to an end in a day or a week. And likewise, the horror of what's going on in Gaza and end all the wars. And he loved to say he ended nothing. Ukraine is roaring ahead, Gaza worse than ever. And as we've seen in recent weeks, the American government shooting a boat a thousand miles away but near Venezuela indicates we got more war, not less. Well, what about a peace candidate? What about who says we're really not for war? We're not going to support the Europeans. They want to go to war against Russia, let them go. Don't give them the weapons, don't give them the money. You're the peace candidate. And we need that money here, don't we? And we need the support for what we need in this country. And we don't need war. And the European people, who all the polls show don't want a war either in Ukraine, they want peace. Only the leaders of the old European countries, the ones scoffed at by Mr. Trump, assembled recently in the Oval Office, where they looked like children visiting. Only those leaders whose careers depend on it don't want to be shown up for having made one of the great political mistakes in modern times. But we need a peace candidate who won't make war over Taiwan and won't make war to support genocide in Gaza. Come on, that would be a popular candidate, wouldn't it? And bring the money home and bring the soldiers home and don't kill anymore. Powerful to an emerging left. A powerful argument. My next update is to bring to your attention the Gallup polls because they teach us a very, very important, important lesson. The most recent Gallup poll, a few weeks old as I speak to you, showed that support for labor unions among Americans is now at 68%. In other words, two out of three Americans when polled favor labor unions, believe they are an important American institution that should be supported by all of us. Okay? Back in the 1930s to 1936, to be precise, the same poll had 71%, just a little more of Americans. But the 1930s was the great period of unionization. Millions of Americans joined unions in the 1930s who had never joined them before, who came from families where nobody was a member of a union ever. So high point of the labor mobilization in this country of unionization, 71% support. Here we are 68%. The support is almost the same. But we don't have a unionization movement sweeping the country. Not yet. But with these kinds of numbers, we could. We should be aware that something is missing. Not the support for unions. That's stronger than we needed it to be at 68%. What's missing is the organizing drive, the movement to take advantage of, of the people's beliefs which are with us on this subject, by the way, I stress that because the same is true for left wing politics. The point of view is very high. The organization of that point of view is what's lacking. A shout out to the National Park Service workers at the Yosemite park and the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. They have reacted to cutting back in the national parks part of Elon Musk and Donald Trump's Department of government efficiency. 600 workers at the parks, including park rangers, researchers, educators, fee collectors and first responders, among others, will now be represented by the union. 97% voted for the National Federation of Federal Employees. U.S. secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum kept the parks open with all the fewer people hired there. He laid off the lowest level workers and he had scientists doing their jobs, which included cleaning park toilets. This is called efficiency in the make believe world of Washington, D.C. years of efforts to unionize the park workers had failed. Now they succeeded overnight. The workers told to quit were told to go find jobs in the private sector, which is part of what this is all about. Fire people in the public sector and drive them to accept lower wages in the private sector, bringing private sector wages down. Don't be fooled. Finally, A comment on ICE has deported fewer workers from America since Mr. Trump became president. Then the Department of Government Efficiency fired from the federal government. So if you're thinking that deportation by getting rid of those low paid immigrant workers is opening up jobs for Americans, wrong. Whatever jobs got opened up by throwing away half a million immigrants in the last six months is more than offset by all the Americans now jobless because the federal government has cut them out and lead to scientists cleaning the toilets. We're at the end of today's first half, but I want to urge you to stay with us while we interview Trent Lang. He's head of a movement in California to take money out of politics, an issue all of us face and an issue behind everything we've talked about today. So stay with us. We'll be right back with Trent Lang. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition, linen covered hardcover version of Understanding Capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hardcover and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to us@infodemocracyatwork.info and put in the subject line limited edition. We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy signed copy of Understanding Capitalism in its hardback. And thank you again for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's economic update. I am very glad to bring to our microphones and to our cameras Trent Lang. He is a executive director of the California Clean Money Campaign. He's well known as the leader of a successful legislative campaign, actually several of them, for electoral transparency and financing transparency laws, including the California Disclose act and the Ballot Disclose act. He now leads. And it's coming to a head. As I understand it, the campaign and The Coalition for SB 42 Senate Bill I assume is what SB stands for. 42, the California Fair Elections act to legalize public financing of campaigns. So first of all, thank you, Trent, for joining us.
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Thank you very much for having me. I'm thrilled to be on your show.
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All right, so let's begin with the big question that everybody has something to say about sooner or later, which is the so called problem of money in US Politics. If we had time, of course, we talk about money in politics everywhere. The United States is not unique in this problem, but it's a big problem because it's a country with a lot of money and a lot of politics. So tell me, what is the reason that you spend all your time and energy fighting to get money out of politics? What's the point? What's the goal that motivates you?
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Everything in our political system comes down to the problem of money in politics. Who gets elected, who can even run for office, who they have to listen to. And therefore the decisions that that are made are all about.
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Having enough money.
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To run for campaigns. Big money, wealthy interest billionaires increasingly, year after year, spending as much as they can to get their candidates elected, force them and keep them in line, ensure that good candidates that the public would really support and that would work, stand up for regular people and not billionaires don't have a chance to compete. That's why we have to address, and they often do this in secret with dark money organizations that use misleading tactics to get people elected. Everything, every single decision that is made in our government falls prey to that, which is why we have to address big money in politics, secret money in politics, to get us out of this hole that we're in.
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Good. Let me follow up by asking you. At least for some of us, the money influencing politics happens in a variety of ways. One of them is giving donations to whoever you like. And the richer you are, of course, the more you can give. The second one is to funding an army of lobbyists, which we have learned are the people that spend full time in Washington or in any of the 50 state capitals, or for that matter in many city halls across the country. And of course, if you have the money to provide for a lobbyist and a budget for that lobbyist to use, that's another way of shaping the political. And the third one is what used to be called think tanks, in which the money from funds something that then floods the public airwaves with what's good for their point of view. So, you know, if they're businesses whose profits depend on it, they have learned to Use a portion of their profits to keep the profits flowing. And is this bill that you're working on, will it constrain all three of those ways of doing it or. Or only some of them?
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This bill, SB 42, the California Fair Elections act, attacks the first problem, which in many ways is the biggest and most important root of the problems. All those are very important issues, but they're all driven by the fact that people who are elected were elected with big money in the first place and weren't elected with the support of grassroots supporters. SB42 would allow public finance. It would put a measure, the California Fair Elections act, on the November 2020 ballot to repeal California's current ban on public financing of campaigns. California charter cities are allowed to. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley have very good matching fund systems like in New York that Mamdani just used to get elected. So it attacks that part, allowing good candidates the opportunity to run with public financing. Empower small donors so that their voice can matter and we can get elected good, strong legislators in the case of foreign Affair Elections act, and also city council members and boards of supervisors, because that all matters too, of course. And then when you have that, then you can also approach the problems of overspending in the lobbying domains and to a lesser extent, the think tank issue. California Clean Money Campaign works on all those issues, has worked on lobbying reform. But SB42 is the real route of ensuring that regular voters have a chance to elect candidates that were not bought with big money donations.
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Could I ask you, just for the benefit of our audience, if your bill passes, what would be the arrangement? Would all the money that a campaign puts into effect be the public money, or would they be able to also get private money? Would it be a choice? Exactly. How will that work? If you could just briefly explain it.
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SB42 won't actually put any system into place that'll make it possible for systems to come in place in all parts of California. Then it'll be the choices of the cities, the counties, and the state. Which kind? There are three major different kinds of public financing. There are small donor matching fund systems like in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, that give six to one matches on small dollar donations. Candidates can still raise private money, though. They have to agree to expenditure limits. So they're limited in how much they can actually raise, but it boosts small donors. That's what Mamdani used. In New York City, there are also democracy voucher systems. Seattle just reaffirmed their democracy dollar system where each resident gets four $25 vouchers to give to the qualified candidate of their choice. So every voter has the ability to elect candidates and candidates don't need to raise money from big money. And then there's the third system, our full public financing systems, like in states like Connecticut, Maine and Arizona and places like Albuquerque, where candidates get all of their money from the public financing system after they've qualified. They have to show that they really are a qualified candidate and then they don't raise any money. So there are these three different options. It'll be the choices of the voters in the different jurisdictions in California which one they choose. But all three empower voters, as we've seen in each of those different places.
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I'm struck by your mentioning these other states. Would you happen to know what it looks like across the United States? In other words, where has there been progress made on limiting the money in the ways you've described one way or another, and where there's been no effort at all?
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Yeah, there's I believe over 14 states and a large number of jurisdictions that have public financing systems. The, the strongest systems have been in Arizona, Connecticut and Maine that have the full public funding, clean election systems where candidates get all their funding. New York State recently passed a very strong 8 to 1 small donor matching fund systems like New York systems like the one that Mamdani used to get elected. That's very important. Seattle has, as I mentioned, had this democracy system dollar system. Other places, Denver, Colorado, Albuquerque, there have been a number of cities that have passed public financing systems. Of course there's a whole bunch of states that do not use public financing. Florida had a small public financing system and the leaders there keep trying to completely dismantle it. So it's not everywhere, but in the places that we've seen it, like Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, and just starting in New York, we've seen very positive benefits, especially who can run and get elected despite big money against them.
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Okay, I now want to switch and ask you what we might say is a philosophical question or maybe a grand historical question. But you're in a good position to answer this question or at least to give us how it looks to you. The Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, one of the most famous Supreme Court justices in the history of that institution, was quoted and has been quoted for many, many years as basically saying that unequally distributed wealth is incompatible with democracy. And you know, one could infer from such a statement that he would be one of your biggest supporters. Because one of the ways unequal wealth destroys democracy or prevents democracy is by Pouring money into politics to corrupting money, corrupting politics with money. But here's the question I want to provoke you and your thoughts. Capitalism as a system, our system in this country, at least for the time being, is a system that produces and reproduces unequal wealth. I had to answer questions this last week on a number of radio and television programs where I appeared wanting my opinion about the offer just made by the Tesla Corporation board of directors to give Elon Musk a pay package of $1 trillion. In other words, we live in a system where one of the more successful corporations is going to give the person who's already the richest person on this planet with an estimated wealth of 3 to $400 billion to himself. They're going to give him a trillion more. It makes the argument about inequality of wealth ridiculous. And I picked the example of Elon Musk because, as you know, he threw an unprecedented amount of money, trivial for him, but unprecedented in American history, into the coffers of Donald Trump this last election cycle. So clearly the money of the unequally wealthy is finding its way into our politics. So here comes my question. Is your effort in some way forcing us as Americans at least to confront the fact that we live in an economic system that not only produces unequal distributions of wealth, but thereby corrupts its own politics?
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Yeah, that's an excellent point. Obviously, such incredible obscene inequality is tremendously problem for a tremendous problem for our democracy, especially after Citizens United, which unleashed billionaires and corporations and everybody else that have money like him to spend unlimited amounts of campaigns. It was a little less of a problem before that because they couldn't spend $250 million on campaigns before. But that's why we need public financing of campaigns and other controls and clear disclosure like in the California DISCLOSE act, so people see who's paying political ads so much we have to break that cycle. And I think that's part of the idea. If you allow good, strong candidates to get elected, as we've seen with public financing systems without billionaires, then they, pushed by the people, can stand up for policies that will at least, at the very least make billionaires pay their fair share, which they aren't right now, which right now they can block because of all the money they spend on campaigns. But with public financing like SB42.
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Will.
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Allow, we can ensure that regular voters, candidates that will stand up for regular voters will, will have a chance to run and win and put in policies that correct those issues. What people can do right now to help public financing advance in California is go to the California Clean money campaign's website, www.yesfareelections.org, sign the petition for SB 42, and then get involved so we can ensure that Governor Newsom, the legislature signs it, passes it, and Governor Newsom signs it into law next month.
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I wish we had more time, but I think you've covered and given really good answers to us about why it's worthwhile to do what you have been doing. So that's part of why we brought you on the program. We really want to show people that there is a way of pushing back. It has its limits, but it is something you can do. And we are often asked that question, what can I do? Well, here's one thing you can be supportive of efforts like this one in California to move this process forward. I'm reminded in closing, I was in Paris, France, once when the newspapers were full of a story in which the then leader of France, Sarkozy, had collected an enormous amount of money in his suitcase delivered to him by the CEO of one of France's largest corporations, and they got caught in the process of doing it. It was a wonderful moment in French politics, and it has led to them having a movement to do there what you are doing in California. So thank you very much, Trent Lang, and thank you all for being with us today. And as always, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.