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- [00:00]
Timothy Whitehouse
This is KPFK 90.7 Los Angeles, 98.7 Santa Barbara, 93.7 San Diego, and 99.5 Ridgecrest, China Lake.
- [00:23]
Steve Skrovan
Hi, I'm Jim Hightower, and I'm hoping that you will tune in to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour, because it will turn you radioactive.
- [00:31]
Toby Heaps
Stand up.
- [00:32]
Ralph Nader
Stand up.
- [00:33]
Toby Heaps
You've been sitting way too long.
- [00:40]
Steve Skrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovan, along with my co host, David Feldman. Hello, David. Hello, Steve. And our producer, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
- [00:49]
Ralph Nader
Hello, Steve.
- [00:51]
Steve Skrovan
And the man of the hour. You know who that is. Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
- [00:55]
Ralph Nader
Hello, everybody.
- [00:57]
Steve Skrovan
Elon Musk is long gone from his short, yet incredibly destructive stint dismantling congressionally approved government agencies. According to Business Insider, Musk's Doge team fired close to 217,000 public employees in the name of efficiency. Our first guest, Timothy Whitehouse, calls this not efficiency, but vandalism. Mr. Whitehouse is executive Director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or peer, and he will be outlining in detail how the Trump administration is busting the unions, eliminating any oversight over the executive branch, and stripping agencies that protect workers. He warns that all of these acts, along with Trump's attack on science, not only devastate the country's ability to protect human health and the environment, but are also harbingers of totalitarianism. Then we'll turn our attention toward a more positive word. That word is cooperative. A cooperative is an organization owned by members who use the co op's products or services. For instance, in many communities, you may have encountered a cooperative grocery store. But simply put, a cooperative is a business that's owned by its consumers. History is full of co ops that have filled in where companies or governments have failed or bailed. That's because corporations focus on profit maximization and shareholder value, while cooperatives emphasize community benefit. Your standard corporation is essentially a top down authoritarian institution, while co op is run democratically by its members. The United nations declared 2025 the International Year of Cooperatives. And the summer issue of Corporate Knights magazine highlights the cooperative economy at work. Our second guest today, Corporate Knights editor in Chief Toby Heaps, will join us to discuss the magazine's latest issue, entitled Pulling how the Cooperative Economy Is Rising to the Challenge of Our Time. As always, somewhere in between, we will check in with our ever vigilant corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber. But let's begin today with our first guest, who says it's time to fight for workers rights and the rights of federal employees. David Timothy Whitehouse is executive director of.
- [03:10]
Timothy Whitehouse
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
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Steve Skrovan
Prior to joining pier, he was a.
- [03:15]
Timothy Whitehouse
Senior attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency.
- [03:18]
Steve Skrovan
And was head of the Law and Policy program at the North American Commission.
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Timothy Whitehouse
For Environmental Cooperation in Montreal.
- [03:26]
Steve Skrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
- [03:28]
Timothy Whitehouse
Timothy Whitehouse, it's good to be here. Thank you.
- [03:31]
Ralph Nader
Welcome indeed. Tim, our listeners may not be aware of how extraordinary your organization is. Can you tell us about the origins of peer and how it extended itself beyond the employees of the forest service?
- [03:45]
Timothy Whitehouse
Sure. Pier got started in 1992. It was an offshoot of a person who was working in Latin America on clear cutting forests as part of the Peace Corps. And in Latin America, he was working with the governments to tell them how bad clear cutting was of forests. And he was subsequently hired into the US Forest Service after his Peace Corps stint, where he was basically ordered to create biological opinions that said, clear cutting wasn't bad for the forests. And that was exactly the opposite of what he was doing abroad. And that concerned him. So he started a network of Forest Service employees trying to get better ethical management of the forest. This was in the 1980s, when forest issues were huge. And from that he received such a need from other federal employees and other agencies that he started an organization that morphed into Peer, which was founded as a nonprofit in 1992. And since then, Ralph, as you say, we've worked with all different type of employees. And at the federal level, the state level, the local level, we've worked with wastewater treatment operators, dump operators. We've worked with scientists and epa. We've worked with scientists at noaa. Anyone that comes to us with either a whistleblowing concern or a concern about wrongdoing in the government that affects the environment, public health, or natural resources, we're there to try and provide them assistance and guide them in how they can report that wrongdoing and how we can bring that wrongdoing into the public domain.
- [05:21]
Ralph Nader
And what does PEER stand for? P E E R. Because people may want to contact your website, which you should give right now, and we'll repeat it later. And they actually want to loosen some of their dead CDs and make contributions which are deductible. What's PEER stand for?
- [05:37]
Timothy Whitehouse
PEER is Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Our website is www.peer.org.
- [05:48]
Ralph Nader
Well, PEER, to me is a really great breakthrough because we've dealt with civil servants probably more than any other citizen group. One of the reasons we've done that is because they are the source of information. As the old saying goes, the conscientious ones who are being suppressed and censored. And one agency after another often sent us materials and plain envelopes. And we followed up on that. And, and then we built the whole concept of whistleblowing rights. And federal employees have a lot of whistleblowing rights and remedies if they speak up to expose corruption, fraud, wrongdoing, self enrichment, which is rampant now in the tyrant Trump's dictatorial regime. And we even went so far, Tim, as writing a law review article with my colleague Ed Levin on government lawyers and how they have an independent professional responsibility to object if the politicians who head their agencies tell them to throw a case that they filed, say, against a toxic coal company. And with that background, I want you to describe what Donald Trump and his Trumpsters are doing to the federal civil service, which is only recently has been publicized by the bestselling author Michael Lewis and his colleagues in a best selling book called what Is Government? And a lot of the interviews of valiant civil servants who provide very crucial service to the American people, often unsung, what is happening to them now. So characterize as you do in your wonderful newsletter, what is happening under Trump at supersonic destructive speed on the civil service. And then we'll get down to the different agencies like the IRS and epa.
- [07:43]
Timothy Whitehouse
Yeah, and that's a good way to describe it. Supersonic. We knew things were going to be really bad, but they are much worse than bad because there's no check and no balance on this president's madness. And some of the people and institutions we would, had hoped would stand up a little bit are collapsing one by one. And so things I tell people that read the newspapers and stay up to date on what's going on, that things are much worse than you're reading, things are much worse than you're hearing. So there is in the beginning an effort to vandalize the government that quickly morphed, as you said, into supersonic speed, into completely destroying the government and bringing under the folds and under the wishes of Trump and, and his binions around him and those that are controlling him. You know, when the probationary employees were fired en masse early in the Trump administration, these are employees that were on probation, usually for a year or two, new employees or people that had moved into new positions, they were fired en masse for no reason whatsoever, contrary to every single civil service law and common sense, you know, that one could imagine. And we thought there would be a remedy for those people. And we were flooded with calls from all over the country, people that worked maintenance in national parks, people that tended dogs at Denali National Forest, people that were stranded in the middle of the country that were fired. Top scientists at different agencies suddenly fired with no notice. And from those early actions, things have only gotten worse. We are seeing sort of a mass scale effort to mold the government as quickly as possible into the wishes of those rulers that seek to gain access, capital and money to what government possesses. So it's a horrible situation. You know, there's slight cause for hope, there is some pushback, but people really need to get up and fight for what they believe in right now.
- [09:47]
Ralph Nader
Well, just to dig deeper, the New York Times headlined kissed on Tuesday, September 2nd. The title quote, President's orders strip 445,000 US workers of their union rights just by an executive order, which of course is being challenged by the federal employee unions. I think one of them has filed 12 suits against Trump. But what they're doing is putting these illegal executive orders breaking union contracts into effect. So for example, if a union contract provides family leave benefit or other benefits, as of August last month, it's been suspended and they have to basically operate under union busting situations. The protections that the union contracts with the federal government are by dictator Trump's executive orders.
- [10:40]
Timothy Whitehouse
Yeah, it's astounding where we are as a country. If you think about under President Obama, anytime he issued an executive order, it was attacked by the right wing and Republicans. How can a president be so lawless as to issue an executive order that doesn't have the rule of law? And now we have a president who is issuing executive orders to overturn decades of law, to overturn Supreme Court decisions. Whether people want to admit it or not, that's what these executive orders are doing. And as you mentioned, to union bust. And so what does that mean for the average worker? You know, I'll give you a concrete examples we're working with. So normally under a collective bargaining situation where there is a union, if there's an adverse action against an employee, the first step is to go to the union and there's some sort of negotiation process that the union can be involved in as part of the collective bargaining. Well, all of that's thrown out and many employees now have to go straight to the Office of Special Counsel or the Merit System Protection Board. Well, in both of those agencies, which are obscure to most Americans, they're very important for protecting workers rights and providing oversight over the president. Well, the OSC is now in disarray and the person that's supposed to head it is a Trump acolyte that is a 30 year old Andrew Tate supporter. And the MSPB, the merit system Protection Board has a backlog of well over 10,000 cases now that all these illegal firings are going on. And it has no quorum right now in the board. So this administration is extremely smart. Bust the unions, make sure there's no oversight over the executive branch and the agencies that are supposed to provide for some level of protection for workers, disassemble them or make them into Trump facing organizations that impose his will on the workers. So it's a horrible situation. It's a situation that's more akin to what one would see in a totalitarian state. I tell people that that's where we're headed and, and for the workers. I know a lot of these cases are going to the courts. It will take a long time to sort things out. And unfortunately we have a Supreme Court that so far has largely sided with the President. So we need to get up and fight for workers rights and fight for federal employees.
- [12:59]
Ralph Nader
We're talking with Tim Whitehouse, executive director of peer. Tim, give some real examples of how the American people are going to be harmed by all this. Whether it's the irs, whether it's the Centers for Disease Control, whether it's the Environmental Protection Agency, whether it's the Food and Drug Administration. You know, a whole variety things that, you know, people take for granted.
- [13:23]
Timothy Whitehouse
You know, we're starting to see them in our public lands agencies. You know, our parks have always been supported across the board by conservative and Republicans. You know, those are under threat to be downsized and taken over by private commercial interests. That is a real threat. That's a stated goal. But more importantly in our public health agencies, you know, we are seeing, as you all know and as the press is starting to report a complete demolition of the center for Disease Control and we're seeing cancellations of grants across the board to universities that graduate researchers are relying on. I mean, our foreign enemies could not have devised a better way to sort of grind our system to a halt. And that's what's happening in terms of, you know, some of the day to day issues we deal with. You know, a huge one is data quality, data control. You know, one of the most amazing things that has happened in this administration is the first people to enter government were usually young people from DOGE and had an affiliation with Elon Musk, who walked into a lot of these agencies and started downloading data that in a normal situation would have been a crime. There is a reason why government Data is protected, why it's silo and why it's not widely shared, even among different agencies or with the public and listeners.
- [14:45]
Ralph Nader
This data often includes your own personal records they're trying to seize, Social Security records that pertain to you and millions of other people. IRS records that pertain to you and millions of other people.
- [14:59]
Timothy Whitehouse
So that's one of the great untold stories that's sort of on the periphery of this, but across agencies that's happened. Personal data has been stored in the cloud, downloaded into laptops, left the agencies. And also, you know, I am really concerned that a lot of this data is proprietary information that companies may have with the government that is, you know, no one knows who's downloading that and where it's being stored and who's taking it and how it will be used for private commercial use. But I think that is a serious concern that we need to look at and really need to have a reckoning with. And a reckoning with why the courts allowed this to happen because there have been lawsuits to try and stop it. So we're seeing a lot of that. You know, even at epa, the Environmental Protection Agency, you know, the chemical companies made it their wish in Project 2025 to make sure that EPA did not have any real independent scientific authority or ability to conduct research. And they made that very clear. And so what's happened at epa, for example, and it hasn't made the headlines the way the center for Disease Control problems, but they've come in and they've eradicated the independent Office of Scientific Research at epa. They've fired or laid off many of the people and they've moved those scientists into other offices. And many of those scientists will have policy related names. So what they're doing is driving out the ability of agencies to conduct independent science that could be used to set health and human safety goals or standards.
- [16:35]
Ralph Nader
Yeah, let's get down to that, listeners. The Centers for Disease Control is not perfect. It's had its problem, but its mission is to protect you from epidemics, from pandemics, or when they occur, to be able to recommend safeguards, supplies, medicines, in other words, to be ready. And you know what COVID 19 did, especially because we weren't ready when it came over from China. It killed over a million Americans and sickened tens of millions of others and probably took about 20 million lives around the world. When you're talking about EPA, it relates to the air you're breathing right now, the drinking water, the safety of the soil where the food is grown, and it deals with pesticides, herbicides, cadmium, lead in the water, all kinds of particulates in the air. These are the police on the corporate crime beat and they're being shredded, fired, repressed, ordered to shut up and they're wrecking our scientific initiatives and programs that have been without peer around the world. So give us an idea of what peer is doing here. Lay it out. You're a real fighting organization.
- [17:52]
Timothy Whitehouse
Yeah, we are fighting. We're very small, so we work with the federal employees that come to us. We've seen a 20 fold increase from a across the government that have come to us for legal assistance. And so these can be whistleblowers, anonymous activists, you know, and so we are working to provide them with legal representation. You know, we are one of the few groups in the country that provides pro bono legal representation to government employees who have an environmental, public health or natural resource issue. So, you know, a lot of what we're doing is confidential right now because we are representing these clients in different forums. But the stories are horrific and Brayson and we knew that things were going to be bad. We did not know they were going to be this bad and accelerate at this sonic speed because what we've seen is there's no check on this President's power in Congress or at the Supreme Court. So the types of stuff that we're seeing, you know, I mentioned one is the data breaches which are unparalleled probably in human history. Where that data is ending up, I don't know, it will not be used for good purposes. The second thing we're seeing is scientists across the board being fired, being demoted, being transferred into non scientific positions. One of the dictatorial instincts is to get rid of anything that provides an independent challenge or an independent oversight or independent viewpoints from that of the dictator. So the scientific inquiry is being destroyed across the government where particularly we here are particularly working very hard at the Environmental Protection Agency on those issues, but as well as other agencies. And then we're just seeing a complete gutting and wholesale wreckage across any program in the federal government that is designed to enforce laws that may impinge upon sort of corporate interests or the interests of the families running this government. So the time to stigmatize federal workers is over. It's time to start rallying for unions, for federal workers and what they do and to support the idea that government plays an important role and that government must be as non political as possible. The civil service, our country will be much better for it. We're headed down a very dangerous path.
- [20:14]
Ralph Nader
What is it you'd like listeners to do for peers programs? What kind of information do you want from them? What would you like in terms of their supporting this wonderful institution of yours?
- [20:26]
Timothy Whitehouse
Yeah. Thank you, Ralph. We are a very small organization. You know, we need all the support we can get, either financial support. We need people to give us feedback on our work. We need public employees to come to us and feel comfortable speaking to us about what's going on. And so all of that type of support is critical. Being able to speak to community groups on podcasts like this, on radio stations, being able to speak in deep red parts of the country, in deep blue parts of the country, and getting PEER out of its comfort zone, we welcome that. Meaning, you know, people that don't see the world like we do and, you know, we have a story to tell and we're going to tell it.
- [21:07]
Ralph Nader
Well, on that note, we have to conclude. We've been talking with Tim Hojnos, executive director of peer, and Tim, any last thoughts that you want to share with our listeners? And please give the website again.
- [21:18]
Timothy Whitehouse
Yes, our website is www.peer.org. you know, for federal employees, we tell them now is the time to act, but be very smart about it and how you do it. And for those of us that work with us, you know, they are trying to grind us down. And we tell people, continue the fight. This is the most important fight, certainly of my life and many lives around us.
- [21:42]
Ralph Nader
Thank you very much, Tim. Good luck to you. Good stamina, and may you be supported at an exponential rate.
- [21:50]
Timothy Whitehouse
Thank you, Ralph. I appreciate that.
- [21:52]
Steve Skrovan
We've been speaking with Timothy Whitehouse. We will link to his work at peer@ralphnaderradiohour.com up next, 2025 is officially the International Year of Cooperatives. When we come back, we're going to tell you what that means for the world economy. But let's take a short break and find out what's happening in the wonderful world of corporate crime with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber.
- [22:13]
Toby Heaps
From the National Press building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate crime reporter.
- [22:16]
Steve Skrovan
Morning minute for Friday, September 12, 2025.
- [22:19]
Toby Heaps
I'm Russell Mokhiber. Jeffrey Epstein's crimes have been exhaustively documented, and elements of JP Morgan's relationship with Epstein have become public via legal proceedings in the United States and Britain. But the full story of how America's leading lender enabled the century's most notorious sexual predator has not been told. Then last week, the New York Times published an article titled How JP Morgan enabled the crimes of Jefferson Jeffrey Epstein. Among the findings, J.P. morgan officials for more than a decade were anxious about Epstein's prolific wire transfers and cash withdrawals and warned senior management about his suspicious activities. But on at least four occasions over five years, the bank's leaders overrode those objections and continued to serve Epstein.
- [23:09]
Steve Skrovan
For the Corporate Crime Reporter, I'm Russell Mulcyver. Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman and Hannah and Ralph Someone once said it's easier to envision the end of the world than it is to envision the end of capitalism. Could member owned co ops be an alternate vision of our economic future? DAVID Toby Heaps is the CEO and co founder of Corporate Knights and editor in chief of Corporate Nights magazine. He spearheaded the first global ranking of the world's 100 most sustainable corporations in.
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Timothy Whitehouse
2005 and in 2007 coined the term clean capitalism.
- [23:52]
Steve Skrovan
Toby has been published in the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and the Globe.
- [23:56]
Timothy Whitehouse
And Mail and is a regular guest speaker on cbc.
- [24:00]
Steve Skrovan
Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Toby Heaps, thanks, David.
- [24:06]
Ralph Nader
Yeah, well, listeners, there's really nobody like Toby Heaps that I know of in the world. I mean, he has refined with his colleagues measurements of how well corporations are doing, not just profit, but how they're doing in terms of renewable energy, in terms of a whole series of good behaviors. And that's not easy. And he's done a lot of that refinement, the yardsticks, so to speak, for Canadian companies and corporate knights, which is spelled K N I G H T S comes out quarterly and it is distributed free inside the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post for those of you who are on the Outlook. And the summer issue caught my attention in particular because it has a long segment called the Next Economy, how cooperatives are stepping into the spotlight to solve our most pressing challenges. And co ops, you know, defined simply are businesses owned by the consumer, like a food co op on corner of Main and Elm Street. And they are the alternative structure to the stock held multinational type corporations. And people are going to be stunned by this figure. Canada actually brought attention to credit unions to the United States. One of the aspects of our book in 1993 called Canada First, Canadians came down to their neighbors in New Hampshire and showed them how to start a credit union. Well, now credit unions are technically co ops and now according to the National Credit Union administration, there are 142 million people in this country who belong to credit Unions, federally insured credit unions as of 2024. You heard it right. I could hardly believe it. 142 million. Now, maybe a lot of these people don't realize they belong to a co op, which is what we're going to discuss very shortly. Because the principal obstacle to co ops is the inadequate engagement of consumers to know about the huge benefits to control the local economy from multinational corporations, absentee who are pulling strings in ways that are very damaging and basically to assume the purchasing power of the consumer. So you're going to hear a lot about existing co ops in food, housing, renewable energy and banking from Toby Heaps. And in the introduction to this section in Corporate Nights, they say some 12% of the world's people today belongs to a co op. And the numbers are growing according to the International Cooperative alliance that represents co ops the world over. And it said in an era of rising wealth disparity, autocracy and geopolitical instability, the values at the root of the cooperative model, democratic, community based, fundamentally decent, which seem to be in short supply and high demand, end quote. United nations declared 2025 the International Year of Cooperatives, highlighting the potential of cooperatives to help deliver on its largely unfulfilled sustainable development goals as the clock ticks down to 2030, end quote. So let's get started, Toby, with what we're talking about here. I think this program is going to be a real eye opener for people. CorporateNights.com I first want to ask you what possessed you to make a major segment of your summer edition on cooperatives and just to bring it down to the United States? In addition to credit unions, the Associated Press is a cooperative, Best Western Hotels is a cooperative. Ocean Spray are all cooperatives. And there are others as well. Smaller food retail cooperatives are spreading, especially in the St. Paul, Minnesota area. So go ahead, Toby, and try to start with the food because that comes down to people's reality easier.
- [28:20]
Toby Heaps
Sure. And those are great examples, Ralph, you know, like Ocean Spray, Associated Press also, the Green Bay packers is owned by is a co op owned by 500,000 fans. And just to concisely summarize why we've made the focus on the co op clean energy economy. Pope Francis said both people on the planet are crying out. And if we're looking for a vehicle that can really answer that cry, there's no better vehicle than a cooperative. Clean energy, sustainable economy. And food is really kind of at the heart of it. When you think what people spend money on, the biggest items in the budget are food, housing, and energy and food is so personal for people. It's right at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy. And most of our economies are controlled by a small number of grocers that provide us with the majority of our calories, often price gouging and operating in oligopoly fashion, making food, which is essential, much more expensive than it needs to be. And often with supply chains that don't encourage local producers to be able to thrive and get on board at scale. And so in Canada we have one company called Loblaws, which through its various chains, provides half of the calories that Canadians consume. And they have been found to be in collusion with other grocery stores at fixing the price of bread. They did a settlement and gave free coupons to people. And a couple of years ago, there was a movement afoot to have a steal from Loblaws day just to show how angry people are with the price gouging. Meanwhile, there are cooperative grocery stores in some countries, like in Switzerland, you have two of them, Migros and Co Op, that provide 80% of the calories for the Swiss people. And Migros is a really interesting example. It's Co Op, it's owned by the Swiss people, and all Swiss citizens are eligible to become members. In the 1970s, they leaned into the political movement to give women the right to vote, who remarkably, did not have the right to vote in Switzerland until 1971 and were a really pivotal corporate business force to enable the momentum to. To pass and for women in Switzerland to have the right to vote.
- [30:20]
Ralph Nader
Might interject here, Toby, that Migros has a daily newspaper in Switzerland and it has adult education classes. As more than just a food retailer, it's done a lot to help quality of living in Switzerland. It's spelled Amazon. Mary I G R O S. For those of you who want to follow up on it, go ahead.
- [30:42]
Toby Heaps
Yeah, they do a lot of things outside just providing food and nourishment. Swiss people. When I go to Switzerland, I go to Migros. Good, great prices, good layout. You wouldn't know that it's necessarily a different ownership structure, but the prices are lower and the country is better off and they have more sovereignty over supporting Swiss producers, which, you know, make really high quality ingredients, whether it's chocolate or whatever, pastries, but they do a really good job and they show that it can operate at scale. And I think in the Co op movement, the biggest bugaboo holding it back in North America, that is people's perception that it's not a significant force. And it, it is Already a significant force in many cases. We're not familiar that the company might be a co op such as Associated Press or Ocean Spray. But in the United States alone, the turnover of co op Enterprises sales in 2023 was $324 billion US and so it's a significant part of the economy already and we see it growing quickly, much more quickly than it was previously. In other parts of the world, different policies have been put in place to enable the co ops to have similar growth trajectories as companies that are under other ownership structures.
- [31:47]
Ralph Nader
Also, you know, in the US the Berkeley co op, before it shut down, unfortunately, for example, banned cigarette sales. It was one of the first food retailers to ban cigarette sales. Why? Because its members wanted it. The consumers who went in the store, they wanted it. So you can determine what you're being sold because you're owner of the business, especially if you take an active role as owners of the business, attend the meetings and develop the policies.
- [32:15]
Toby Heaps
Yeah, and we're seeing that in Canada too, where some of the big grocery stores, the corporate grocery stores, are trying to have a made in Canada approach and support local producers. Whereas the co op movement has been doing this from the get go, not just putting it on the shelves, but there are many examples of co op grocery stores that have grown to become bigger, that provide seed financing and grants to help local producers kind of get their businesses up and running and be able to supply food that it's made locally for people to enjoy and to nourish the local economy. So there's huge potential for us to look to examples like Switzerland and take our dilapidated, relatively, you know, not super profitable, even though they're price gouging, partially because it's so large and inefficient at grocery supermarket model and turn it upside down into co ops and replace them with co ops that are just better and more responsive and more affordable.
- [33:04]
Ralph Nader
Why is it that 45% of all the co ops in Canada are in Quebec?
- [33:08]
Toby Heaps
Well, Quebec has a really supportive policy structure and I think it stems from the finance. What gets funded gets done. And in Quebec, the largest financial institution is not some big bank that's owned by shareholders, but it's Desjardins, which is founded by alphonse Desjardins over 100 years ago. A journalist who saw a need for farmers to have access to capital and to be able to band together and started up this little co op that's now a multi billion dollar institution that owns State Farm in the United States and all sorts of other sprawling businesses. But it's fundamentally run as a co op. And the co op model, as listeners will know is at the heart of it, is a one member, one vote. So even if you're a trillionaire or billionaire, you get the same number of votes as somebody else who might not have any net worth on the balance sheet, but just one member, one vote for at least 51% of the shares of the co op.
- [34:00]
Ralph Nader
Let's go to housing, where the article in Corporate Knight says at a time when even basic housing has become alarmingly unattainable for many, cooperative housing is making a comeback. Describe that.
- [34:12]
Toby Heaps
Yeah, in a lot of markets, particularly in North America, developers have kind of overtaken the sort of modus operandi of housing and the models that they have. There's a lot of fat and a lot of middlemen that have made housing really expensive to build and get up and running. And so the response, the effect has been like 99% of the people you know in a city like Toronto cannot afford to buy a home without help from their parents in a nice neighborhood. So you have only 1% of the people being able to buy a home. So now you have people coming together in cooperative structures due to shared housing, and you have different co ops coming together to start to build family friendly neighborhoods that get concessionary financing, low cost financing from the government, and preferential access to public lands, of which there are a lot in almost every city in North America that aren't currently done on a preferential basis where they're provided to the co op developments. There's no kind of color for that. We're starting to see that pick up with the access to land and finance, which is really kind of two obvious ingredients you need to make housing work. And we already have the models. It's just about feeding them money and giving them land.
- [35:16]
Ralph Nader
You have in the article an intriguing comment by Lindsey Harris, the executive director of Propolis Housing Co Op in Canada. She says, quote, the real benefit of cooperative housing is that it becomes permanently affordable. And quote, explain that.
- [35:32]
Toby Heaps
Well, there's a lot of housing. Sometimes affordable housing has become an Orwellian term where they define it as market price or 10% below market price. The market price might be 70% of someone's median income that they need to sustain it, which is it's obviously not affordable. But there's a lot of affordable homes where the first certain number of units that have to be affordable and then they can be sold off and they just go into the market. And so after five years or 10 years. The homes that were affordable just go into the regular market economy and, and are no longer affordable. Whereas the co op structure can keep it within the co op structure and keep it affordable for the long haul. It prevents, you know, it does have a depreciative effect on in some cases, depending on the model, it's a pure co op model on people being able to use their house as a sort of investment nest egg to build up wealth. But at the same time it provides possibility for people to have meaningful communities and shelter, nice places that their families can grow and thrive. So there is, there is a trade off there between treating your home as an investment commodity versus a, a place to raise your family.
- [36:32]
Ralph Nader
You point out that about half of the 1.2 million co op apartments in the United States are based in New York City. And when they were established they really demonstrated the corporate landlord model. But to the extent that it is now having problems, it's because there's just a lack of sufficient involvement by the tenants. The whole spirit of success for cooperatives, there's got to be engagement by the consumers who own the business. And I can't emphasize that enough. Once that hurdle is overcome, the cooperative model will spread much more quickly. Moving to the energy, you say something that really caught my attention. Your writer Victoria Fook said energy. What Canada can learn from co op power in the rural United States. Well, you know, for years there is a farmer co op model. They actually owned oil wells, refineries and gas stations. And there's still some of that in the agricultural areas in the United States stemming from their creation back in the 1920s. But you have a different example to give.
- [37:41]
Toby Heaps
Yeah, I mean, well, it's interesting just looking at, you know, you mentioned the United States. Over 40% of the land of the United States that is electrified was done with rural electrification co ops, a lot of that starting under FDR with part of the New Deal. And when we look around places like Germany or Canada where there's been successful deployment of scale clean energy UK as well in many cases there are co op or co op type models. And if you just have a big corporate model putting in huge wind farms where most of the people that live nearby that are going to be using the energy, that are exposed to the energy are not getting any economic upside. You can get a lot of NIMBYism, not in my backyard. And the number one thing holding back deployment of clean energy now is the permitting time. And so if you can get people onside with the co op model because they have Upside, and they're not opposing it. It can help substantially to reduce the objections and to reduce the permitting time. And by far, by far, by far that is the huge, hugest limitation right now in deploying the clean energy. And so there are many examples of these clean energy co ops, particularly in Germany. It's the main future for how they build out. And we're seeing many corporate wind farms and solar farms running into delays. And they don't have the democratic support of people to be able to push back when we see things that are going on with what the current president is doing and stopping various projects that are just owned by companies, big corporations.
- [38:58]
Ralph Nader
Let's not sugarcoat this too much. The rural electrics have often favored the nuclear power industry. That has long stopped because there hasn't been any nuclear power plants coming into operation except the couple in Georgia, huge cost overruns and huge years of delay. But once the management of co ops and they become really big gets underway and the consumer owners don't assert their fundamental authority, you can start seeing that the giant co op model begins to mimic the corporate model in the same industry. So this could be happening in banking. So let's go to banking where your writer says, quote, for financial cooperatives, AKA credit unions, reaching young people is a challenge and a huge opportunity. But just generally comment on the scene in the financial services area.
- [39:54]
Toby Heaps
Sure. I mean the financial services. Most people are really frustrated with their banks. They're not necessarily running to the credit unions, but they're frustrated with their banks. And we saw back in 2011 when bank of America introduced monthly fees for the bank cards, 40,000 people fled the bank of America out of rage for being charged for something they weren't being being charged for. It's the little credit unions. There are many of them and as you said, there's over 100 million people in the United States that are members of them. They don't do necessarily their primary banking with them. And we do see in cases where the credit unions get huge, like in Canada and Quebec, Desjardins is huge. And there are some sort of criticisms around it becoming corporatized and not necessarily responsive to the members. It's a challenge of growth. You know, small is beautiful. When a co op gets huge, retaining its ideals can be challenging. And we see in cases where that is happening more frequently, there often is. It's better communication. There's a higher turnout for votes on the board and more interactions with the members than just voting on the board. And some of the most effective membership organizations, probably the Most effective membership organization in the United States is the arp, the association of Retired People. They have amazing communication and input and providing valued services, saving their members money, giving them political power, helping them live a better life in their retirement. And so I think there's a lot we can learn big co op movements can learn from. Big membership movements have been successful, particularly like the American Retired People's association in Canada. Really interesting example. Our largest co op was Mountain Equipment Co. OP. It had 3.2 million members. And they borrowed some money not from a credit union, but from a big bank before the pandemic to expand real estate. And when pandemic hit, they got some cash calls and they had a little bit of what appeared to be some unsightly things happening on their board of directors. And they ended up selling out the co op to a private equity company in the United States and taking out the biggest co OP in Canada, 3.2 million members. That used to be a political force for nature policies and for environmental policies. And so there is this, this potential even for huge co ops with millions of members if they run into financial issues and the board of directors doesn't have enough oversight for them to be swallowed up by private equity shops. So it's not a panacea. Co ops that you just sort of have the model, you press go. It really requires sustained everyday engagement in a meaningful way from the members. And if that's present, then they can grow and thrive and retain a lot of their great futures. But if it's not, then it can just become a bit of a hollow operating principle.
- [42:22]
Ralph Nader
We're talking with Toby Heaps, the founder and publisher of Corporate Nights, a quarterly magazine. It really is irresistible in terms of its design and groundbreaking stories. For example, in the summer issue that's current right now, Toby has selected the best 50 companies in Canada who are pouring 56.4% of their capital spending into sustainable investments, compared to just 8.7% for average Canadian companies. So you see the yardstick he's using here, selecting the 50 companies who are pouring over 50% of their capital into sustainable investments. It's very hard work, very meticulous work. Some companies object when they're left off the list. And corporate nice is always innovating in that process. Let me ask you, Toby, if people listening to this program say, gee, this is an amazing. I didn't know anything about this. How do I start a food co op? How do I start a renewable energy co op in my community? How would you advise them?
- [43:27]
Toby Heaps
Well, I would encourage them to go to corporatenights.com for sure to read the co op section. There's a lot of stories of inspiration there. And then if you're in the United States where many of your listeners are, the National Co Op Federation of the United States is an amazing resource for how to start up co ops in all different sectors. And they're really good at, you know, they have people resourced to help with these types of things. So I would encourage getting resources from them so you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you can tweak it to your own needs. Getting a few people together that are passionate, you want to. It's easier to do it when you're not by yourself. Some people that the solution is for, for everybody and then just go for.
- [43:59]
Ralph Nader
It, you know, looking for the longer run. Toby, our schools don't teach about co ops. I mean, I can confidently say just about everybody listening to this program, including people on this program, didn't hear about co ops in elementary school or high school or college or graduate school. In fact, the model is always the corporate model, Junior Achievement, which is set up by corporate interests in our schools. Of course, this talks about the corporate model, shareholders who are powerless and management and goes through the whole fiction and corporate shareholder democracy. So you have all the people coming out of our educational system, public or private, who don't learn about co ops. And last time I checked, there was only one law school that even had a course on consumer co ops. It's all the corporate model that's taught at Harvard, Yale, Berkeley and Chicago, et cetera. And that school, not surprisingly, was University of Wisconsin Law School that had a course on cooperatives because there is a leading tradition of different kinds of co ops in Wisconsin coming from immigrants from the Scandinavian countries, principally. What's the situation in Canada educationally?
- [45:15]
Toby Heaps
So the University of Saskatchewan, they also the Saskatchewan Rough Riders, the main football team there, is owned by a co op. But the University of Saskatchewan has an amazing co op program and part of that comes out of the CCF and the Canadian Commonwealth Party Federation that was founded out of there with Tommy Douglas that pioneered the first public health care in North America. And the co op economy there is super strong. And they have great resources at the University of Saskatchewan. Amazing faculty, good institutes. There's a lot of good work done, models for people that want to go deeper into the cooperative economy there. But the point you're making about shareholders, that's taught in business schools. The shareholder primacy model is really one of the things that kind of inspired us to look at co ops. And I can't underline enough. If you care about a sustainable economy that works for people and planet. The operating model is not just the clean economy, the environmentally friendly, it's the cooperatively run economy. And if you spend a lot of time, you'll get to that conclusion. But that's what it will take to scale the solutions that we need in a way that people will be able to buy into. And when we look at companies that have actually done huge turnarounds on the energy file, from oil or coal to wind, that have been successful, or from refining oil to biofuels, in every case, not a single case have they been controlled by powerless shareholders. In every case, they've had a significant shareholder, whether it's co op, family, state owned, that had the courage to make a call and not just go along like a sheep with the rest of the economy. And so if we want to be making the pivots to the economy that we need, that we want, we're going to need ownership structures that are aligned with that. And the shareholder primacy model has proven itself incapable of doing that. And so I think business schools increasingly need to be focusing on making sure students understand these models and I think media as well. We're trying to do our bit and you're doing your bit. And you've done formative things in the United States obviously to help this movement flourish. But we see corporations like McCormick, biggest spice company in the world. This is one of the coolest stories, not in the issue, but they looked at their supply chain and they get spices from all over the world, huge spice company, you know, Frank's Hot Sauce Clubhouse, they own all those things and they wanted to figure out a way to help the growers of the spices and have more direct relationships, more resilient supply chains. So what they did is they partnered with the National Cooperative association of the United States and they provided seed capital and trained the actual pickers of the spices to set up their own co ops and then sell directly to McCormick. And now they have around the world 40,000 people that are earning a living wage, in many cases double or triple fair trade wages, providing spices, vanilla, pepper, cinnamon, that we put on our food to nourish and make it better. But it shows how shareholder driven company, even if it can adopt cooperative principles in their supply chain. And so it doesn't necessarily have to be black and white, but we definitely need different ownership structures if we want people to be buying and benefiting from the transition that the economy is undergoing.
- [47:55]
Ralph Nader
Interesting. Listeners. I first met Toby Heaps when he's a student at McGill University. I was invited to give a speech there. I was accompanied by our formidable young organizer, Jason Kufuri. And I've never stopped watching Toby Heaps organize, recruit, speak out and have an extremely optimistic view of widely perceived yardsticks for business improvement. So they can be ranked and people can react accordingly in terms of who they want to do business with. I understand that even the United Arab Emirates has passed a cooperative law and there's going to be an international cooperative conference in Doha pretty soon. Can you describe that? Sure.
- [48:39]
Toby Heaps
It's really interesting. A lot of innovation happening in the United Arab Emirates on a number of fronts. In this case, they passed the law. One of the futures of the law is they allow co ops to be listed on stock exchanges and make that easy for them to have access to growth capital so that they can have access to the same kind of oxygen that other businesses have access to. And they still retain the 51% of shares being held on a one member, one boat basis. So they're still cooperatively controlled and they've experienced pretty good growth, like 8% growth in the co op sector since they passed the act and got intentional about it. But it's interesting to see this movement. It really flourishes in areas that have particular identities. Like you see in Quebec, that has a distinct identity of Quebec or in the, in the Basque region in Spain co ops are a huge part of the economy, different parts of Italy. And I think what we're seeing now is a little bit of deglobalization. People are looking back and, and wanting to get back in touch with their own roots and, and not just be part of some amorphous globe. And so the co ops are, it's nice to see what's going on over there in the United Arab Emirates and in Doha they'll be having the UN World Social Development Summit. And this year, as you said, the UN has declared this year 2025 the year of co ops because of the fundamental potential and role they're already playing. But potential they have to transform and replace our current economy that revolves around corporate Greek to serve to something better that serves human need and also recognizes the need for climate speed.
- [50:01]
Ralph Nader
And American listeners should know they can get a lot of advice and information from the National Cooperative bank in Washington D.C. last I heard they had a special unit to help very hands on low income communities form co ops in the United States. So take advantage of that. The business press just pretty much ignores the National Cooperative Bank. There haven't been many stories about it. It doesn't toot its horn as much perhaps as it should, but it's still there and you should take advantage of it. Toby, let's move to Steve and David because I'm sure they've got some interesting questions for you.
- [50:40]
Steve Skrovan
Toby, I'm a big sports fan and I know a lot of major sports teams hold up their cities for stadiums or they threaten to move. And I was, I'm very intrigued about the Green Bay packers who are obviously in this tiny town in Wisconsin only because they are a co op. So can you explain to me and the listeners how the Green Bay packers work as a co op and how they can compete with all of these other more traditional shareholder owned companies or single owner companies?
- [51:11]
Toby Heaps
Well, what's kind of interesting with the the co op model is it's not the almighty buck that makes that decides everything. And so the members of the Green bay packers, the 500, 000 members, they live around where they are and they don't want the team to go away. And so even if they could, you know, have a payday on it, that's not their primary consideration. The primary consideration is the football team they love and they wanted to stay where it is. And so that's why it's there and probably not going anywhere. And it's not for sale. It's a part of their community, part of their fabric. And so that's kind of what I love about the co op model is the world is kind of boring if the almighty buck decides everything. It's too predictable. And it's great to have an NFL team right there in this rural area. You know, it doesn't have to be a megacity. You see other big cities where co ops are ruling the roost as well. I think the most prominent one in the European football scene, so that's soccer as we call it, is in Real Madrid, which is also member owned. And they're a huge team in Madrid and it thrives and does well and they produce good players, they pay the salaries for the players. But on the big decisions, they don't always have to defer to the almighty buck. They obviously have to make more money than they bring in, but they don't have to make the most money. They can make enough and then decide make decisions on other human factors. And so it's wonderful to see the Green Bay Packers. I'd love to see them bring home a Super Bowl. It's a great model and it'd be nice to see More teams go this way as well.
- [52:29]
Ralph Nader
It has other benefits. For example, the Buffalo Bill's owners are worth about five, six billion dollars. But they wanted a new stadium a couple years ago and they basically shook down the governor and the legislature in Albany for a huge subsidy, over a billion dollars and all kinds of expenses paid because they threatened to go to another city. Well, you'll never see that out of Green Bay. And so the model has multiple benefits, not just in terms of community ownership and stability, but as you might expect, Toby, a while back, the National Football League banned any future models for NFL teams like the Green Bay packers because they know it undermines the extortion and the twistifications that occur pitting one city against another. We've been speaking with Toby Heaps, the founder and publisher of the quarterly engrossing magazine Corporate Nights out of Canada. One last question, Toby. When this issue came out, what kind of response was there by the mainstream press? And were you asked to speak on the media about it? Were you invited to make speeches or. The writers of these articles were invited. One of the raps on the cooperative movement is it appears to be dull, it isn't exciting, it doesn't have crazed people like Elon Musk, etc. What kind of response is there?
- [53:59]
Toby Heaps
We had some outreach from some of the major co ops in Canada. We're going to be doing a ranking in our fall issue of the top 10 co ops along the main metrics that we look at. And when that comes out, I think you need more stories being told. You have to use TikTok and the different multimedia channels. And we need to get a little bit more playful with the campaigns and how we talk about it because most people don't even know co ops exist. Even though it's $300 billion a year in the United States. They have really limited idea that it exists and that it holds the seeds of a system that could really serve, serve us much better. And so the more we can figure out ways to talk about it and talk about it in playful, more fun ways, more joyful ways, ways that aren't as predictable, I think that's the key to getting traction.
- [54:39]
Ralph Nader
Remember listeners, it all starts with community, neighborhood organizing. It all starts with local economies reasserting themselves owned by the people in the local economies as consumers. And they work very well with small business entrepreneur type businesses as well. It's been my experience looking at around the country, there's not that kind of antagonism and the idea of displacing giant corporations operations at the Local level with co ops is a real important way of not just relying on regulation which corporations have learned to game, or antitrust action, but actually displacing the market controlled by franchise one sided agreements, e.g. burger King or McDonald's, etc. With locally owned co ops. So there's a lot to think about and I hope the listeners will follow up with the consumer cooperative bank and by reading Corporate Nights and going to the website Corporate Nights A n I g h t s.com Any last comments? Toby?
- [55:47]
Toby Heaps
I would say, anybody, please, you know, next time that you're opening up a bank account or looking to buy something, try and find it from a credit union or a co op. And if you're buying spices, you can know that it's probably coming from a cormic and probably was picked by a cooperative grower. If you are what you eat, you know, it shouldn't be a huge leap.
- [56:05]
Ralph Nader
We're speaking with Toby Heaps, spelled H E A P S, the founder and publisher of Corporate Knights. And Toby, we hope to have a continuing conversation here about the potential and spread of a cooperative economy. Thank you very much.
- [56:20]
Toby Heaps
Thank you, Ralph.
- [56:22]
Steve Skrovan
That's our show. I want to thank our guests again, Timothy Whitehouse and Toby Heats. For those of you listening on the radio, we're going to cut out now, but for you podcast listeners.
- [56:40]
Timothy Whitehouse
This is.
- [56:41]
Steve Skrovan
John Crumshow with a special Politics or.
- [56:43]
Timothy Whitehouse
Pedagogy education report on kpfk. You hear more than a sound bite. That's education. That's our mission. We're on the line again with Alex Kennock. She's a mystery writer who is also an attorney.
- [56:54]
Toby Heaps
Welcome back to Politics or Pedagogy.
- [56:56]
Alex Kennock
Thank you for having me.
- [56:57]
Timothy Whitehouse
You and I were talking before we started recording about the important change that has taken place as far as the drugs that are being used right now. Yeah.
- [57:07]
Alex Kennock
One of the things that I wanted to focus on in my book Burn this Night is the meth crisis. And in the last 10 years or so, the consistency of meth has just become purer and a lot more lethal and dangerous. It's something that I saw a lot as a prosecutor, people coming into court. And you started recognizing the symptoms of it and you start to see a lot of long term and permanent brain damage from people who have only been using for a short period of time. And then in my personal life, there's someone who I know very well who essentially destroyed their brain with methamphetamine. So it was a topic that doesn't necessarily get talked about enough. I think in the media probably because meth is tends to be less fatal than some other drugs like fentanyl. But it's a story that I wanted to tell. So in my book I have a recurring character whose brain essentially deteriorates as he comes into different chapters and how you can kind of see that progress, which is a character who's again, inspired by someone who I know very well and also just from people who I saw coming into the court system over the years. But it's definitely a tragic situation and Los Angeles in particular has been very affected.
- [58:29]
Toby Heaps
What is it that you as a.
- [58:31]
Timothy Whitehouse
Prosecutor would look for in terms of trying to put a stop to this?
- [58:36]
Alex Kennock
Well, I think on the federal side there's a lot of emphasis, or at least there was when I was a federal prosecutor on kind of going after higher level drug dealers and, you know, doing larger drug busts. I think on the, on the local side, it's really an area where it's important for compassion to come into prosecution. You have people who are often out of their minds when they commit certain crimes. And there's, you know, it's very important that treatment is factored in and that you look at the whole person and ways to help them rather than just thinking about things in kind of a punitive framework.
- [59:17]
Timothy Whitehouse
On that note, Alex Kenna, I want to thank you very much for joining us on Politics or Pedagogy.
- [59:22]
Alex Kennock
Thank you for having me.
- [59:23]
Steve Skrovan
This is John Crumshow with a special.
- [59:25]
Toby Heaps
Politics or Pedagogy education report.
- [59:28]
Steve Skrovan
Please make Your contribution at 818-985-5735 or.
- [59:33]
Timothy Whitehouse
Pledge online at kpfk.org Coming up this.
- [59:37]
Steve Skrovan
Week on LA TheatreWorks, on the floor of a Florida cigar factory, a Leo Tolstoy novel is read out loud to the immigrant workers. He covered her face and shoulders with kisses, inciting passions and jealousies.
- [59:53]
Alex Kennock
With each new chapter, Jimmy Smilacies with.
- [59:56]
Steve Skrovan
Each new chapter, Jimmy Smith stars in Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz. Next time on LA TheatreWorks. That's this Sunday evening from 10pm.