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- [00:00]
Ralph Nader
Jaw and Q Ward.
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Lee Drutman
The Q in the QR code goes
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Chris Townsend
by the name of Q Ward.
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Lee Drutman
The voice you just heard is the
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Ralph Nader
R in the QR code.
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Lee Drutman
He goes by the name Ramses Ja
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Ralph Nader
every Monday through Thursday at 6am Be
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Lee Drutman
sure to join us next time as we share our news with our voice from our perspective.
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Chris Townsend
And until then, peace.
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Lee Drutman
Peace.
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Ralph Nader
Hi, this is Gloria Steinem, and you're listening to 90.7 FM, KPFK Los Angeles.
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David Feldman
112,000 watts of progressive Free Speech Radio.
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Lee Drutman
This is Ben Cohen, the ice cream guy, and you're listening to my hero, Ralph Nader. The Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
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Ralph Nader
Stand up. Stand up. You've been sitting way too long.
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Steve Scrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host, David Feldman. Hello, David.
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Lee Drutman
Hello, Steve.
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Steve Scrovan
And of course, as always, our producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
- [00:56]
David Feldman
Hello, Steve.
- [00:58]
Steve Scrovan
And it's not a Ralph Nader Radio Hour without the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
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Ralph Nader
Hello, everybody.
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Steve Scrovan
We have a great program today. The 30th convention of the AFL CIO is set for June 7th to the 10th in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The AFL CIO represents about two thirds of the US organized workforce, and according to our first guest, Chris Townsend, very few active union members even know this convention is happening. What does this say about the AFL CIO's relevance to working Americans? Chris Townsend has been a union member and a labor leader for nearly 50 years. We'll speak to him about the decline of the labor movement and what needs to be done to revive it. In the second half of the show, we jump back into the gerrymandering wars. For this, we turn to Lee Drutmann, senior fellow in the political reform program at New America, where he focuses on electoral reform, Congress, and Democratic health. Redistricting is a hot topic right now following the Supreme Court's recent Decision in Louisiana vs Calais. State legislatures across the country are pitching new electoral maps and several primary races have been thrown into chaos. Critics of this wave of partisan redistricting have called it an existential crisis. Malik Dropman argues that gerrymandering is as American as apple pie and drone attacks. We'll speak to him about the myth of fair electoral districts, the voting system we actually live with, and the potential of proportional representation. And to close out the show, Ralph has a number of news items he'd like to draw your attention to. As always, somewhere in the middle. We'll check in with our intrepid corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber. But first, what's going on with the union movement and what can be done to revive it.
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David Feldman
Hannah Chris Townsend has been a union member and labor leader for more than 45 years. He was most recently the Amalgamated Transit Union International Union organizing director. Previously he was an international representative and political action director for the United Electrical Workers Union and he has held local positions in both the SEIU and ufcw. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Chris Townsend, thank you.
- [03:12]
Ralph Nader
Listeners should know you're going to get a narrative that almost never comes over radio and TV in the USA on the state of organized labor, unorganized labor and what needs to be done about it from Chris Townsend. I grew up Chris, at the peak of the labor movement, at the peak it had 34% of all workers were in unions. There was a national radio program paid for and run by unions called the Voice of Labor that had a program every week with huge people volume of listeners. It was a go to program. At that time the unions all had print newspapers. They had a lot of pictures of the heads of the union like the coal miners union, but they at least had a communication mechanism and some of the better unions like United Electrical Workers used it for education mobilization, raising expectation levels and demands by the rank and file. Now we're going to get into the dismal state of organized labor. I mentioned they reached a peak of over 33% and now they're down to 10%. Only one out of ten workers in America belongs to a union. The majority of those union workers are represented by the AFL CIO. The FL CIO on 16th street and Headquarters just a couple football field distance from the White House has become a tale tail of the Democratic Party. I know that from experience. We tried successfully to get them to back a real invigorated Labor Day a couple of years ago where it focused on workers events, connection with citizen groups all over the country focused on a compact for the American workers. Really exciting. But as is their practice, they passed it by the Democratic National Committee which said no, they couldn't control what would be said at these local meetings on Labor Day around the country. So that was another bit of evidence that this is not an independent labor movement. Now you have hammered that home again and again and you had an article in April and it was called if the AFL CIO had a convention, would anybody notice? Well, they are having their every three year convention in Minneapolis June 7th to June 10th. What do you think is going to happen and not happen?
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Chris Townsend
Yeah, the AFL CIO convention in Minneapolis is almost upon us. I conducted the start of my article, Ralph was I conducted a straw poll of my own. And at the time I wrote the article, I had spoken to 30 people. By now, I've spoken to more than twice that many. And virtually nobody even knows that there's a convention coming. And that didn't surprise me, really, because there's been no advertising. There's no nothing remarkable happening. There's no plans being promulgated, at least that I can discover. And this is part and parcel of the existing federation leadership. And recall for listeners the existing leadership of the AFL CIO beyond Liz Schuler and Fred Redmond. And the actual staff is really the consists of the heads of the larger unions and a few smaller in the federation executive council itself. The AFL does represent probably 65% of all unionized workers in the United States. And in any case, you know, this convention is deliberately kept secret. It's what I describe as sort of a hideout strategy. It enables the leadership to not have to discuss or take positions that for them are difficult, such as what is the labor movement going to do to confront the rampant lawlessness and criminality of the Trump regime? What is the labor movement going to do to address the rampaging inflation that is eating up living standards? There's no wage policy, there's no bargaining policy of the federation. What are they going to do to address the ongoing national health care crisis and disaster which is far from being solved? Obamacare at best, a band Aid? And what are they doing about the crisis of unorganized. As you point out, the density of union membership continues to sink. And I think that this gathering comes and the very distinct impression that I'm given as a close observer for decades now is that the leadership wants to sort of convene it, hurry it up and get out of town and move on. And this is what I refer to as the hideout strategy. It's like they want to wait for Trump to go by and attack somebody else or big business.
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Ralph Nader
Well, it could be an occasion for throwing down the gauntlet to the war criminal and domestic criminal. Donald Trump, corrupt, abuser of labor, anti worker, broke the contracts between the federal government and the government employees union in the first weeks of his regime last year. And he's an abuser of women, he's a liar, a thief, a crook. The most corrupt presidency in American history, hands down. Giving out contracts in return for this and cutting deals and cryptocurrency and enriching his family and himself. So this is a perfect opportunity. He's like the Democrats before him, frozen the federal minimum wage at $7 in a quarter. Over the years the FL CIO has been for a higher minimum wage, but no muscle. Even when the Democrats controlled Congress, no muscle to get it through. It's been frozen since 2009. 2009, $7.25 an hour. Imagine some states have bypassed and raised it like California, Connecticut, et cetera. But by and large, I don't know any progressive issue that the FL CIO is not really authentically and to the limit pushing for. They certainly aren't pushing to reverse the notorious anti labor law, the Taft Hartley act of 1946, the most anti union law in the entire western world. Tell our listeners about that one.
- [09:30]
Chris Townsend
Yeah, the Taft Hartley Act. Well, first of all, Ralph, you'd be spot on with your analysis of what the AFL is not doing. And again, that dovetails with what I describe as the hideout strategy, you know, to have that convention with as little fanfare as possible in skedaddle. But in terms of the issues and Taft Hartley, it remains a linchpin of the assault on organized labor. It's the origination point of the so called right to work laws that permeate more than half of our states. It's also, it provides, you know, incredible flexibility by whatever administration to involve itself and stop strikes. It limits what we can do with strikes. It has tremendous impact on our ability to organize. And this is the linchpin. I mean the labor movement finds itself, I would submit, with the leadership disinterested in going out and organizing the unorganized. But even for those who do, and there are some, the laws, Taft Hartley primary among them, provide such a minefield that we have to run through that our ability to organize on any scale for decades has been stopped. And therefore we are condemned to sort of a perpetual shrinking size, resources and whatnot. And it's actually dovetail for listeners an awful lot. Might help for folks to figure out how or why this is happening is that the labor movement is systematically being converted from trade union fighting organizations, membership driven fighting organizations, to harmless, not for profit organizations. And this is sort of today's administrative layer of trade union leader that don't see anything wrong with that. But that doesn't help anyone in the shop, in the office, in the workplace. And it doesn't help anyone looking to the labor movement for something better, better treatment, better wages, better benefits, better conditions, better health and safety in the workplace. It does nothing on that front.
- [11:22]
Ralph Nader
Well, you write of 70 years. This has been going on for a long time, this decline, quote, 70 years of drift, decline, membership Loss destruction of most accepted union standards in the industries and loss of most loyalty from or influence among the broad masses of working people. End quote. Now there are some bright lights. There are some efforts to organize Amazon warehouses and Starbucks stores around the country. The polls show that unions have a favorability rating of almost 65% of the people. That's at a high point. And a lot of white collar workers, including health care, big hospital employees are supporting efforts. But still overall the number of union members has been declining. And of course with the onset of Silicon Valley, vigorously anti union and the spread of AI which carries forth the anti union displacement dogma on steroids. It doesn't look good in terms of the future. So what do you think should be done here? Are you in favor of launching it with a massive picketing of the FL CIO headquarters in Washington by workers?
- [12:41]
Chris Townsend
Well, I'm going to answer your question. You raise very key points, Ralph, and I'll answer with a bit of an anecdote which I think illustrates all of the problem, which is listeners wouldn't know this, but I played a key role in the launch of the Starbucks organizing, which is a long story otherwise. I started an organizing school when I was at ATU and we were the incubator, so to speak, for that thing. Richard Bensinger, a legendary organizer, was the key technician of that campaign and a young woman, Jazz Brisack, was the lead barista in that. And that's become a historic if it ended. Today, the Starbucks organizing has exceeded the wildest second place in terms of its reach. Not necessarily in the total number of workers, but in its geographic range, over 700 stores having won NLRP elections. Well, that being said, I have contacted and spoken to high level people in organizing departments and international and national union presidents over five years now, offering to explain to them how it is this small group of people moved what turned into this fantastic successful campaign. Successful in the sense that we launched it and we got a contagion effect amongst a very eager demographic of workers who want organization. So I've made that plea. With the exception of my union ue not a single other union has agreed for me to provide a one hour free free zoom briefing on how we did that. Only with an eye towards them, first of all, learning more about it and perhaps adopting or experimenting with some of the things that we did. One might think that this labor movement in its given decline would possess amongst its leadership some degree of curiosity about some remarkable successful campaigns such as Starbucks. And my conclusion is there is next to no curiosity and I think today's condition of the labor movement and frankly are almost negligible. New organizing proves that. And I don't know how, absent real pressure on some of these unions, how that can be remedied. It's remarkable to me. I've never seen this. Even in darker times or equally dark times under Reagan and whatnot, there were still amongst many of the unions a curiosity. They would look for ways to try something new, push forward, take a different route. I don't see any of it today.
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Ralph Nader
Well, part of it is the union leaders are part of the oligarchy or plutocracy themselves. Explain that.
- [15:15]
Chris Townsend
Well, yes, and I, folks who know me will know that I'm prone to repeat what I'm going to say here, which is folks have to realize that the labor movement in the United States is, by world historical all time standards, it's the most financially wealthy labor movement in the history of the universe in terms of the business union model that we have is very, very good, very, very keen at collecting dues, collecting savings, shepherding them, buying buildings, having investments, many hundreds of billions of dollars in the coffers of the various unions. But of course the spending priorities of what these organizations are then going to do to spend that money, one of the primary things that they do is inflate the salaries of the upper leadership. And I'll say it, we had a Rubicon crossed here recently that even I thought was a little bit astonishing. I mean, Chris Townsend has an astonished look on his face these days. That's something. Our electrician Jim in the IBEW for the first time now pays its president over $1 million a year. We've seen salaries in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for high national international union leaders. Yes, we've seen that pathology for decades. I've never seen a million dollars a year union president and I don't know the exact circumstances, but I beg her that there's nobody doing electrical work out in the field who's making a million dollars a year.
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Ralph Nader
Well, you belong to one of the most progressive honest labor unions for years, United Electrical Workers. And they have a tradition where the head of the union doesn't make any more than the top electrician makes in the rank and file.
- [16:59]
Chris Townsend
Yeah, correct. It's in the constitution of ue. It actually says that of the three titled officers, none can earn more than a member would earn out in the field. Now of course, UE is a very diverse union. Seven different sectors of industrial sectors represented by the UE membership. So it's Today, I'm going to venture a guess. I want to say that the UE3 officers earn, I think it's about $75,000 a year. They work 100 hours a week. They no longer have a pension. We had to give up the pension, couldn't afford the pension thanks to all the legislative attacks on pensions. So it's a very modest salary. You know, they have a health care plan, but it's no easy skate. And of course they would have thousands of members in UAE that earn more in salary than the officers themselves. So that's the way it should be. And I'll say for folks that that used to be a much more common happening that you would have these unions realizing that if you allowed your leadership salaries to become so infl. So remote and far away from where your members were. It was a lot of things. It was not only going to be a political problem, but it also is a problem in terms of internal democratic functioning. I mean a worker, an ordinary worker. I gave the IBEW example. Let's continue with that. That's Liz Schuller, the head of the AFL cio. That's also her union. Just for full attribution, but what is a rank and file electrician to do out there if they decide they want to run for president when you're running against a millionaire every year this guy is again and again benighted as a millionaire just with his salary. How are you going to mount a campaign? If you make 80,000, maybe you hit 100,000. I mean, it's undemocratic on its face just as far as that goes.
- [18:45]
Ralph Nader
But I want to read you a quote. The evidence shows that the collapse of the organized labor movement is not due to the existence of new problems which defy solution such as hostile legislation or automation, but because of certain inherent policies and weaknesses of the movement itself. End quote. That was spoken in 1962, Chris Townsend, by the General Council of the United Electrical Workers Union, 1962. Can you explain that in today's conditions and terms with NAFTA and AI and all that?
- [19:25]
Chris Townsend
Yeah, UE has never been a member of the afl. It was a CIO affiliate and then it was driven out during the incredible repression of the McCarthy period and has been an independent union ever since. But once the AFL CIO came together, which any sober observer would conclude quickly that it was a surrender of the formerly militant CIO elements back to a very state and conservative afl. And I think the evidence is that, you know, the 70 plus years of history since then has borne that out. Well, seven years into the existence of the AFL CIO, Frank Donner, legendary general counsel of UE, kind of took stock for a speech at a UE convention in 1962. I was one year old when that happened. And he said, let's examine this, let's take ue, a very thoughtful union, a very detailed union. Let's examine what the seven year balance sheet is. And it was already failed at that point so far as being measured against its stated goals of why it came together and was formed in 1955 in the first place. And I think you can continue that legacy of failure and inaction all the way up to today. You mentioned AI and the trade policies trump all of these attacks falling on workers not only through political channels but every day in the workplace. Because if, even if you're lucky enough to have a union, your employer is spending a great deal of time and money trying to figure out how to get rid of you and how to speed you up and how to chisel you in every imaginable way. So the AFL just, it's just not up to the task. It cannot even, and will not even identify what the challenges are, let alone take the time to deal with them. And I encourage folks as a way to prove this. Don't take Chris Townsend or Ralph Nader's view on this. Go to the AFL CIO website. I think it's afl cio.org it'll come up in any search that you do. You click on little page they have for their convention and it will say convention agenda. And the convention agenda will come up and it's about 14 sentences long. There's no thoughtful debate going to happen here. There's no discussion of any of these significant issues. It's a big staff meeting and a lot of social. That's what.
- [21:42]
Ralph Nader
Well, you know, Chris Townsend, before we continue, tell people how they can get your two articles which are loaded with information.
- [21:50]
Chris Townsend
Well, there's actually three now. One is in the newspaper that you're a big booster of, Ralph the Capitol Hill Citizen. There's an article in there by me this particular issue. I was very happy that you guys asked me to submit that article. And it kind of lays out some of this and then there, some of it overlaps with the website that I write for regularly. I'm the labor commentary for a website, Marxism Leninism Today. And if you put in Marxism Leninism Today, it will come up. And I write monthly on some labor question. I'll have something to say after the convention just to sort of tie up the loose ends. But it's a left wing. I'm a left winger. The labor movement. We're the real moving force, frankly, in most of the unions, those that move at all. And I tabulate and chronicle some of these problems. The tragedy here of all this is amongst the labor unions, I find an immense reservoir of desire to fight back, to push back, to be more intelligent in terms of how we select our fights, to certainly maintain political independence from this Democratic Party, which has suffocated us, and on and on I could go. But yet the leadership chooses to take the safe way out, which is to sort of cop out. And, you know, well, we can't do that. We better not do that. And then you end up with this truly remarkable and contemptible moment in time where the leading labor, the only labor federation we have in the United States, chooses at this moment in time to hide in the tall weeds, as maybe they hope Trump goes by and destroys someone else. Maybe we can live through this regime as if that's going to happen, as if Trump is going to leave us alone.
- [23:34]
Ralph Nader
Or.
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Chris Townsend
Or look at these lunatics that are following in Trump's footsteps, as if those folks are going to somehow make their peace with us.
- [23:41]
Ralph Nader
Let's cut to the chase here. Let's talk about union corruption, skeletons in their closet as a major reason why they're not taking on Trump. Because if they start taking on Trump, and you call it the Trumpzilla beast, stomping by and stomping on the unions, if they go after him, he will immediately instruct the Justice Department to investigate them, to indict them, he will turn the Labor Department even more into an antagonist dealing with union pensions. There's a double standard there, with the top union leaders having their own special pensions and paying huge fees to the Wall street banks to invest. And who knows what the retrospective commissions are like. Euphemistically, there's a lot there, and they're terrified, totally terrified. I think that explains the vote and not all of it, but I think that explains the bulk of the passivity of the AFL CIO and a lot of their member unions. Your response?
- [24:46]
Chris Townsend
You're absolutely right. And it's also rooted in, yes, all of these union leaders take the helm at whatever point they get selected. Now, I say selected because if you examine the various unions, including the AFL CIO as the federation of unions, the vast majority of the leadership for decades upon decades hasn't been authentically elected. It has been selected. And in fact, coming out of this convention, secretary treasurer of the AFL Fred Redmond, in his very advanced age, is likely at some point after the convention to retire. And that will enable the executive council in secret to select whoever it is they want to replace him. And this becomes one of the many devices, one of the many undemocratic devices that the incumbent leadership used, not only at the local level, but at the national, international level and of course then in the federation. So what gets selected is not the best and the brightest. It's the maybe most well connected, the most compliant, the most play ball. So we find ourselves today with a leadership that is unfit, unfit to challenge what the mission calls for at this point in time. And I think this convention for me, when I started paying attention to it six months ago, it has played out exactly along those lines. This is an organization led in large measure by unfit elements who are disinterested, not interested, fearful even of launching the kinds of struggles that we must just for our survival.
- [26:22]
Ralph Nader
On that note, thank you very much, Chris Townsend for your indefatigable optimism and drive. Thank you again.
- [26:30]
Chris Townsend
Thank you.
- [26:31]
Steve Scrovan
We've been speaking with Chris Townsend. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com when we come back. We'll dive back into the gerrymandering wars and what it means for true democratic representation. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber.
- [26:46]
Russell Mokhiber
From the National Press building in Washington D.C. this is your corporate crime reporter Morning minute for Friday, May 22, 2026. I'm Russell Mokhiber. Florida based power company Next Era Energy announced that it plans to acquire Virginia's Dominion Energy, citing the growth of AI data centers as the impetus for the move. This absurd proposal to merge two massive well capitalized utilities should be dead on arrival for state and federal regulators, said public citizens. Tyson Slocum Household customers have everything to lose and nothing to gain by allowing two behemoths, Next Era and Dominion, to merge. The claim that the tie up is needed to address data center demand is a false narrative. Slocum said the merger will do nothing to increase generating capacity, let alone desperately needed renewable generating capacity. For the corporate crime reporter, I'm Russell Mukhard.
- [27:45]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph. With the crucial 2026 midterms looming, Blue states and red states have been doing what is called Gerry Maxing. Our next guest is going to tell us what that all means.
- [28:01]
David Feldman
Anna Lee Drutman is a senior fellow in the political reform program at New America where he focuses on electoral reform, Congress and Democratic health. He writes the newsletter under Current Events and co hosts the podcast Politics in Question. And he is the author of the Business of America Is Lobbying and Breaking the Two Party Doom the Case for Multi Party Democracy in America. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Lee Drutman.
- [28:29]
Lee Drutman
Well, it's a pleasure to be with you all.
- [28:32]
Ralph Nader
Welcome indeed. Lee, you immediately responded to the Supreme Court decision a few days ago that basically blew apart what's called the majority minority black districts and completely somersaulted the voters and activated the red state governors and legislatures to right in the middle of the 10 year period break tradition and start passing laws redistricting so that the politicians can pick the voters even more extensively instead of the voters picking the politicians. Can you describe what you have written which is you have the solution to get rid of all this gerrymandering nonsense and all the corruption and bigotry that is involved with it?
- [29:20]
Chris Townsend
Yeah.
- [29:20]
Lee Drutman
Well, it's actually surprisingly simple, which is we just move to a system of proportional representation and we'll get into what that means. But the whole issue of gerrymandering is, is really just an outgrowth of this way that we use single winner districts with winner take all votes. It's also what entrenches the two party system in the US which limits the choice of voters. So there's this one weird voting mechanism that we have that most countries have gotten rid of that is an antiquated voting system that preserves the two party system and makes gerrymandering just inevitable. And that's the use of single member districts. Now in a proportional system, you take away the districts and you do this, you do statewide, you can carve up larger states into a few multi member districts and then seats get allocated proportionally by party share. That takes away the entire incentive of gerrymandering. It gives voters everywhere meaningful choices, meaningful votes. And it is just a superior system of representing the pluralism and diversity of our pluralistic and diverse society.
- [30:41]
Ralph Nader
Well, as you say, it also gets rid of this. If you get 49% and your opponent gets 51%, you get nothing. The opponent gets everything. Proportional representation gives value to every vote.
- [30:55]
Lee Drutman
Yes.
- [30:55]
Ralph Nader
So explain how it would work in a state like Connecticut. Small, I think five members of Congress. In a state like California or Texas that has dozens of members, how would it work?
- [31:09]
Lee Drutman
Well, let's start with Connecticut because it's an easier example. Connecticut has five elected representatives. All five are Democrats. Now Democrats are the Majority party in the state, but state is not 100% Democratic. But the way that data is carved up into five districts, Democrats are a majority in all districts. I don't think any of those seats are two party competitive at this point. So voters don't really have a competitive election to vote in. Now if you took away districts in Connecticut and you just made it one statewide district and parties put forward lists, just say, for example, we'll complicate this in a second, but for a simple example, Democrats put forward a list of five candidates, they get 60% of the vote total. Republicans put forward a list of five candidates, they get 40% of the vote total. So Democrats would get three seats, their three most popular candidates. Republicans would get two seats, their two most popular candidates. Now but practically that also might mean that maybe the Green party could run in Connecticut or maybe a progressive Democratic party could run in Connecticut. You know, maybe they wouldn't represent the entire state, but they would get 20% of the vote and maybe a liberal Republican party or a moderate Republican party might run and they might get 20% of the vote. So you would, you would open the party system and every vote would matter. People wouldn't be voting in these elections that are one party dominant. Now a bigger state like California, that's 52 seats right now. That's a lot of seats in a district. And I think generally political scientists say, look, comparatively, and they say the sweet spot is, you know, probably five to eight members per district. That gives you modest proportionality, gives you a diversity of parties, gives voters meaningful choice without overwhelming the ballot with like a thousand candidates or overwhelming the legislature with a thousand parties. So maybe you split California into seven districts between seven and eight members. And then you know the same thing as you have in the five member district in Connecticut. You have a seven member district and there's with seven member district, you could theoretically have seven different parties. Every vote would matter, parties put forth less and you have the whole, whole range of diverse perspectives that can get elected. And then I just think it's important to talk about a state like Louisiana, which was the state that was at issue in the Supreme Court Calais case that eviscerated the voting rights section two. And Louisiana is a six district state and at issue was whether you're going to have two majority black districts or one. Obviously Louisiana is a majority white state, but it's about a third black, third Democrat. And now they've redrawn the maps, the five to one Republican that means there'd be maybe one, one black Democrat. Now, if you got rid of districts in the state of Louisiana and just had one statewide proportional allocation, there's no gerrymandering. The reason that you have gerrymandering is that you have the lines to draw. Connecticut's, I think they have a pretty, pretty reasonable way of drawing lines. It would probably be pretty hard to draw a majority Republican district without doing some violence to communities. But in Louisiana and throughout the south, you know, there is this very active Republican gerrymandering that is taking away a generation of black representation, shutting Democrats out. And they can do it because they can just carve up districts in a way that maximizes Republican support. In Tennessee, there's they already sliced Nashville into a bunch of pieces to eliminate the Democratic seat there. Now they're slicing up Memphis to get rid of the Democratic seat there. This is only possible because of the single member district.
- [34:58]
Ralph Nader
You made this proposal. It didn't get much press in the mainstream press because it was considered a resident of a territory called it ain't gonna Happen. That is, the state legislature in Texas is not gonna have proportional representation, which is clearly going to bring more Democratic House members from Texas. And nor is the legislature in Sacramento going to preside over increasing the number of Republicans that go to the House of Representatives. What's your answer to that Congressional legislation? What's your answer to the defeatism for so many reforms? LEE Dropman it ain't going to happen.
- [35:40]
Lee Drutman
Well, I don't buy the defeatism entirely, so a few things. One is there are a number of states with statewide ballot initiatives. And in Michigan, for example, a group of folks are organizing to potentially run a ballot initiative for proportional representation. Many of the same folks who supported a ballot initiative that brought independent redistricting to Michigan, which a lot of people said, oh, you can't do that. And they did that. And now they're organizing around proportional representation. And I do think that we are in a moment in which the possibility for Democratic reform has just opened up tremendously, I think, in the wake of this Clay decision and also in response to how the Trump administration has just shredded so many of our norms, that there is a sense that we just can't keep doing this. And I've been struck by how many conversations I've had in the last few weeks taking these ideas much more seriously. I published a book in 2020 called Breaking the Two Party Doom the Case for Multi Party Democracy in America, in which I argued that we ought to have proportional representation in multiple parties. And I think there's been steady interest in that proposal. I've, I've done some pieces with the New York Times. I did a quiz where people got to choose which of six parties they would belong to. And that's been one of the greatest hits of New York Times opinion pages. As I've learned over many years, people really like the idea of what would be like if we had more parties. I did a big piece with the New York Times last January mapping out what the proportional representation proposal would look like. Yeah, I think there's been growing mainstream interest in these ideas and I've been hearing from more and more different corners that maybe we ought to move beyond this system of single member districts. Maybe we've outlived the usefulness of our two party system. Certainly more so than any time that I've been advocating this proposal. I really do think that we are in a moment in which big democratic reform is possible.
- [37:55]
Ralph Nader
Well, if the states don't do it and the initiative process doesn't move into the breach, can Congress do it under our Constitution?
- [38:04]
Lee Drutman
Yeah. Article one, section four of the Constitution, the elections clause, gives Congress pretty broad latitude to mandate how members of Congress are elected. Now currently the law, the controlling law, is the 1967 Uniform Congressional District act, which was put in place in the wake of Reynolds v. Sims, one person, one vote, to basically prevent southern states from moving to block voting multi member districts and to ensure equal sized districts. So Congress would just have to update that statute, basically amended and that built on an 1842 law that was the first to mandate single member districts.
- [38:47]
Ralph Nader
Have there been any polls on whether people like proportional representation?
- [38:52]
Lee Drutman
There has been some polling. People like the idea of proportional representation as basic fairness, that people think that parties should get seats in proportion to the share of votes they get. I've done some polling on it a few years ago. I'm hoping to do a little bit more. I think people like the idea of it as fairness. I actually, I just saw an academic paper that came out, but I think that one of the challenges is people don't entirely understand how it works. And, and so it's a challenge to poll people on a concept that they don't know about. But I think more and more people understand it. And from the polling I've seen at a principles base level, people get the idea that proportionality is a form of fairness. And people like fairness makes every vote
- [39:43]
Ralph Nader
count for one thing. Before we go to Steve, I've got to get your opinion on the top two laws. In California, Alaska, Washington State, it goes like this. In the primaries, they're open and the top two vote getters go to November, all the rest lose, including all third parties that don't come close to getting the top two. They don't have a candidate in November. And right now, because there are half dozen primary candidates in the Democratic Party vying for the governorship of California, there is a danger that the top two leading Republican gubernatorial candidates come in in the top two and one of them becomes governor of California. What do you think of that and why hasn't that been challenged constitutionally? Because it eliminates the right of candidates to go to November.
- [40:38]
Lee Drutman
I think there is a challenge from minor parties actually working its way up through the courts to challenge that on behalf of minor parties. But I do agree it does really entrench by having only two candidates. It entrenches the idea that there are only two choices. And it has not been favorable to minor parties in either Washington or California. And on its merits, I've done a lot of the political science on this and the argument that people made in California who were supportive of this reform was that, oh well, it'll force candidates to be more moderate, but it actually hasn't really changed at all who gets elected where they fit on the one dimensional spectrum that we force everybody into. So it hasn't marginally it's increased turnout, but still turnout in primaries is still incredibly low. And it also has often created a general election where voters who are orphaned, who don't see their party's candidate on the ballot, just don't bother to vote in that election. So on balance, I think it's probably a net negative and it just seems sort of like you're not attacking the big issue, which is the single member district in the way it entrenches binary partisan competition and leaves most voters in overwhelmingly safe districts. Yeah.
- [42:05]
Ralph Nader
Anyway, let's go to Steve Lee.
- [42:08]
Steve Scrovan
Tell us about what did the Founders think about all of this? Is there anything in the Constitution or what is it in the Constitution that mandates the system that we have now?
- [42:19]
Lee Drutman
Nothing. Nothing.
- [42:21]
Steve Scrovan
All right, very good.
- [42:22]
Lee Drutman
Thanks for coming to the system. Now, interestingly, I mean, if we want to talk about the Founders, the idea of proportional representation actually is an American idea. The first time you hear about proportional representation in any writings is that states should have proportional representation in the legislature, that larger states should get more seats than smaller states. So proportional representation is mentioned in the debates around the Constitution. It's just for states, not parties. And actually the first formula for proportional representation was invented by Thomas Jefferson. It was for states, not parties. The Later, Belgian guy by the name of Dehant claimed that he had invented it when Belgium became the first country to adopt proportional representation in 1899. But Daniel Webster had a system that actually Congress moved to in 1842 that I think is actually a little bit fairer to smaller parties than the Jefferson system and has to do with divisors and math and probably more than you want to get into here. So they didn't say anything about that. I think if you read Federalist number 10 and the whole Madisonian philosophy of there being multiple different factions counteracting each other, you have an idea of multi party democracy there, that no party should have a majority and coalition should be fluid and shifting. And you know, the thing that the framers worried about was the idea that you would have a two party system. You read John Adams saying that the worst thing that would happen is if our country is divided into two great parties. And they knew what was going to happen is that you'd have a dominant party and a non dominant party. And if the non dominant party felt like it had no chance of getting power, it would just say screw it. And that's what caused the Civil War. Once the south was isolated politically, it said, yeah, screw it, we're going to secede, we're going to give up on this idea. So they understood it. They just thought that they were going to spread out power institutionally, different branches of government, federalism, and they were going to avoid the idea of political parties. They thought that political parties were not so great. But that was in 1787. Once they get into government, Madison saying, oh, actually political parties are really important because they help us organize. And Jefferson and Madison organize a party, Washington and Hamilton organize a party. And that's the origins of the American party system. I think if they had recognized that political parties are actually essential to democratic representation, they would have almost certainly supported a multi party proportional system. But of course that hadn't been invented yet for party representation. And the only system they knew was this single winner majority system that they just sort of blindly imported from their colonial ancestors.
- [45:16]
Ralph Nader
Lee, don't some foreign countries have proportional representation?
- [45:20]
Lee Drutman
Most doctors, I mean, very few countries still use the first past the post system. Most advanced democracies, most of Western Europe, all of Latin America, a lot of other countries. So the most common system is proportional representation. It's just the Anglo countries, UK which is having all kinds of challenges. Canada, India as a legacy, the US A few other countries used first past the post. New Zealand moved from first past the post to Proportional representation in the 90s when they declared that first festive post was dysfunctional and they've been doing much better since.
- [46:00]
Ralph Nader
Well, listeners should know that Lee Drummond is not saying that this proportional representation is be all and cure all of our political ills by any means, but it certainly tells voters that if they go out and vote, their vote is going to count. Yes, and it's not going to be wiped out if it's 49% or less.
- [46:20]
Lee Drutman
Exactly.
- [46:20]
Ralph Nader
Let's go to David Lee.
- [46:22]
Hannah Feldman
If California gets 52 members of the House, are you saying that by law they could just make the top 52 vote getters in a statewide election members of the House and then redistribute them based on newly drawn congressional maps?
- [46:41]
Lee Drutman
No, they couldn't do that. Not under current law. Current law, the 1967 Uniform Congressional District act that I referenced earlier requires states to use single member districts. Now if Congress passed a law on proportional representation mandating proportionality, California would have to adapt. Now, I would say that 52 people elected in one district is probably too many. I mean this is. For example, there are some forms of extreme proportional representation. Israel has one electoral district for the entire Knesset, 120 members. They wind up with a bunch of small parties. The Netherlands is even more extreme version. They have 150 members in their legislature and the entire country is one electoral district. And that creates a lot of small parties, although it does allow for an animal rights party in the Dutch legislature. But it does make it harder to form a governing coalition and it's a lot for voters. So I think 52 members in a district is too much. I wouldn't recommend that. As I've said, you know, between five to nine representatives per district. And for California that would probably mean splitting into seven or so smaller districts. And I mean California is a big state and you know, maybe you want to think of those as kind of regional representative teams.
- [48:03]
Ralph Nader
Unfortunately, our time is up. We've been talking with Lee Drotman. Lee, you want to give our listeners slowly your substack contact so they can get in touch with you.
- [48:13]
Lee Drutman
I have a sub stack, it's called Under Current Events. You can just go on sub stack and search for my name or search for Under Current Events and it is completely free. I'm not monetizing it, I'm just writing for the love of writing it and folks can subscribe there and get regular posts from me. Also wrote a book on this called Breaking the Two Party Doom, the Case for Multi Party Democracy in America, which is available at fine bookstores everywhere.
- [48:43]
Ralph Nader
Thank you very much, Lee. All right.
- [48:45]
Lee Drutman
Well, thank you, Ralph. It's good to talk to you.
- [48:48]
Steve Scrovan
We've been speaking with Lee Drutman. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com Stand up.
- [48:54]
Ralph Nader
Stand up.
- [48:56]
Steve Scrovan
So, Ralph, you have some news items you'd like to call attention to? Fire away.
- [49:01]
Ralph Nader
Trump and AIPAC collaborated to pour money into that poor Kentucky district and they defeated the independent minded Thomas Massie, MIT grad, holder of patents, a former community executive in his district for Iran. For the House, he defied Trump on matters such as releasing the Epstein file, the Gaza massacre, the war in Iran and a number of other things. And his opponent was chosen by Trump, a former Seal who didn't have any program. All he said was, was I will be 100% with my president, Donald Trump. He refused to have any debates. But the power of money and fanatic turnout by Trump voters in the primary with a low turnout overall of voters defeated Thomas Massie. Now, he still has seven months to create nightmares for Trump in the House of Representatives, including holding his own hearings on impeachment in a committee room. Like Mike Revell held hearings on the Pentagon Papers. They can't stop that from happening. And he can do a lot of other things, including breaking the grip on no talk of impeachment among the Republicans in Congress. I have one criticism because he is a rigid libertarian. He did not campaign on kitchen table issues. He didn't talk about raising the Kentucky minimum wage of $7 and a quarter for the poor workers in his district. He didn't talk about increasing the frozen Social Security benefits since 1971, frozen for his elderly voters in the district. He didn't talk about changing the tax system. He didn't like about increasing taxes. Even when they were unfair, he would allude to them. But you know what libertarians are like. So basically handicapped himself terribly and just kept saying, I voted with Trump on 90% of the votes in the House. These are the areas I cannot go with him on. And he was quite eloquent in those areas, but they weren't kitchen table issues. So I hope he makes the most of his seven months remaining. One of the problems is a very low turnout in primaries. As we all know, about 105,000 voters turned out and there's about 500,000 eligible voters age 18 and over that district. So the fanatics for Trump obviously turned out more than the supporters, longtime supporters for Thomas Massie. The second thing I wanted to point out is that there was a study In Sweden, that might tickle people's fancy. Apparently, cocaine is polluting waterways. The stuff is dumped in waterways. And these Swedish scientists wanted to see if the salmon who had more cocaine in their system behaved differently from salmon who didn't have cocaine in their system. And they found that the salmon who had cocaine not only swam faster, but swam further in the waterways. Just a tidbit that I catch when I read the newspapers. More seriously, Trump is continuing to want to destroy something known as the Chemical Board, which is a small agency that alerts people and mobilizes knowledge about chemical spills in the environment, including what could be chemical plant disasters that could wipe out a town or a city. And this Chemical Board somehow has reached the ire of this ignoramus called tyrant, Donald J. Trump, and he wants to erase it. And the nice thing about this story is that the members of the Chemical Board are fighting back, and they've got all the evidence for people to say to Trump, are you crazy? Do you know how many chemical plants are within lethal distance of major cities in places like Texas and Louisiana and elsewhere? Another item in the news was that the destruction of southern Lebanon is continuing at a Gaza level. They're basically completely wiping out villages and agricultural areas in order to control southern Lebanon all the way to the Litany river, which they have had their eye on for a long time. They actually occupied southern Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s for 18 years. Militarily, they want that, and they want the extension of the gas fields off the Lebanese southern coast, the natural gas fields. And they're doing it with US Weapons and with Trump's support. Now, every president I remember has called Lebanon our ally. Lebanon is our ally, says Lyndon Johnson. Lebanon is our ally, says Richard Nixon. And on what are we doing allowing our ally to be destroyed? What are we doing? Ask aipac. Ask the mysterious grip by Netanyahu over Donald J. Trump. Another issue I want to raise is this. The invasion of Ukraine has probably quite a few causes. Putin has used it as a distraction from his dictatorship and the poor state of the Russian economy, to be sure. But let's go back earlier, when Clinton was president and NATO was expanded to include the Eastern European countries, several of them on the border of Russia. Well, that's a sensitive border. In two world wars, it's killed over 50 million Russians. You know, World War I, World War II when it was invaded by the German army. And why did Clinton do this? One reason is he saw a lot of arms sales, that we could convert their weakened military with F16s and all kinds of weapons built by Raytheon and Boeing and other military companies. And he was playing clever, you know, like Clinton does. He outsmarted himself. Well, that appalled the Russians and not only Putin. Clinton was moving to possibly bring Ukraine in to NATO. Remember, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, several countries were formed from the Soviet Union empire, like Belarus and Kazakhstan, and Ukraine was one of them. So look at the consequences. We now have a Ukraine being battered. We now have a Russia being battered by new forms of drones that are going all the way to Moscow. And the death toll of Russian soldiers has reached over 350,000. The death toll of US soldiers in Vietnam exceeded 50,000. This is a massive fatality toll. And you can imagine the injury levels and of course, the Ukrainian toll, which is less than that, is still quite massive as well. The death of Ukrainian soldiers and the civilian injuries. I just want to point this out that once again, corporate profits and corporate influence in Washington play a very consequential role and put a lot of dangerous forces in motion, as we know, with climate violence, with ignoring the effects of contagious diseases, drug companies not interested in those if they come from abroad, and so on and so forth.
- [56:37]
Steve Scrovan
All right, very good. I want to thank our guests again. Chris Townsend, Lee Drutmann. For those of you listening on the radio, that's our show. For you podcast listeners, stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up, featuring Francesco de Santis. With in case you haven't heard, a transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted.
- [56:58]
Hannah Feldman
Subscribe to us on our Ralph Nader Radio Hour YouTube channel and for Ralph's weekly column. It's free@nader.org for more from Russell Mokhyber, it's at corporatecrimereporter.com the American Museum of
- [57:13]
Steve Scrovan
Tort Law has gone virtual. You can visit tortmuseum.org to explore the exhibits, take a virtual tour and and learn about iconic tort cases from history.
- [57:21]
Hannah Feldman
To order your copy of the Capitol Hill Citizen Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight. It's@capitol hillcitizen.com and remember to continue the
- [57:31]
Steve Scrovan
conversation after each show. You can go to the comments section@ralphnaderradiohour.com and post a comment or question on this week's episode.
- [57:39]
Hannah Feldman
The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman, and Matthew Marin. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
- [57:48]
Steve Scrovan
Our theme music Stand Up, Rise up was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.
- [57:54]
Hannah Feldman
Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.
- [57:58]
Ralph Nader
Thank you, everybody. Step up, you ought to step up Rise up, rise up I know you wanna rise up Stand up, you. Step up Rise up.
- [58:42]
Steve Scrovan
Greetings.
- [58:42]
Ralph Nader
I'm Chuck Foster, host of Reggae Central right here on KPFK. Join me Sunday afternoons from 2 to 5 for three hours of the best in ska, rocksteady roots and culture, dub and dance hall. From the foundational Jamaican recordings to the latest international releases. That's Reggae Central, 2 to 5pm Every Sunday right here on KPFK. You're invited to tune in to the QR Code with your hosts, Ramses Jaw and Q Ward.
- [59:16]
Lee Drutman
The Q and the QR Code goes
- [59:18]
Chris Townsend
by the name of Q Ward.
- [59:19]
Lee Drutman
The voice you just heard is the R. In the QR Code, he goes by the name Ramses Ja.
- [59:23]
Ralph Nader
Every Monday through Thursday at 6am Be
- [59:26]
Chris Townsend
sure to join us next time as
- [59:27]
Lee Drutman
we share our news with our voice from our perspective.
- [59:30]
Chris Townsend
And until then, peace.
- [59:31]
Hannah Feldman
Peace.
- [59:33]
Steve Scrovan
Hi, this is V. Neil, and you are listening to KPFK, 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, California.
- [59:51]
Lee Drutman
Hello and welcome to Middle east and Focus. I'm Negwa Ibrahim. On April 3rd of this year, the White House. On April 3rd of this Year, the White House released its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal. The number.