EP 800 Business Lobbyists Have Dominated D.C. for Fifty Years: Now It All Makes Sense
We have had nearly fifty years of wage stagnation, unaffordable health care, low social mobility, predatory mortgage practices, and inflamed class and race resentments. That’s the same period in which business lobbyists have overwhelmed the scene in Washington, D.C. with smart, aggressive and targeted approaches to influencing Congressional action. And they have had their way. It’s not the familiar caricature buttonholing of the old days where you wined and dined Congressman X to get Y result. And there’s no better chroniclers of this approach than brothers Brody and Luke Mullins in their riveting book, “The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government.” Even the Dodd-Frank legislation in the wake of the banking fiasco in 2009 and Obamacare are products designed in large part by the businesses they were meant to tame in a regulatory sense. The pushback from consumer and environmental groups melted in the heat of the wads of cash and influence just too big to compete with. Is there some simmering pushback now, finally? We discuss this important topic with Brody Mullins on this podcast.
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It is somewhat dizzying to think about the radical effect this version of the Supreme Court, the Roberts Court, has had on American life. From the curtailing of voting rights to abortion, affirmative action, presidential immunity, regulatory oversight and gun safety measures, this Supreme Court has thought nothing of overturning precedent and, according to many legal scholars, just make stuff up. Sometimes it leans on the concept of originalism, but uses it as a convenience not a fundamental basis for its decisions. Rather than being a Court that simply calls balls and strikes, the majority of jurists are opining in ways that many consider from their political, rather than legal, perspective. Stanford Law Professor Mark Lemley joins us to discuss the far-reaching impacts of their decision-making and attempts to reform a court that has lost the confidence of a vast majority of the American people.
This week’s two podcasts feature women journalists writing about subjects that put them at potential risk as they uncover abuses and actions that most in our society are shielded from. Alice Driver, author of “Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking On America’s Largest Meatpacking Company” lives in Arkansas a state controlled by two dominant businesses: Tyson Foods and Wal-Mart. She has focused her perceptive and poignant pen on the abuses of workers at Tyson Foods plants, a subject that got some attention during the pandemic, but rarely is reported on. With a workforce dominated by immigrants, some with papers, others with fake documents, a past CEO of the company admits that without this labor force the company could not operate. And yet these immigrants, many of whom are just happy to have a job, are left to the many perils that beset one of the most dangerous work environments in the country. Ms. Driver practices immersive journalism as she learns the stories firsthand from the workers themselves. It’s a compelling read and listen.
There is a line, albeit it a bit curvy, from Charlottesville in 2017 to the mayhem at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The passageways from one event to the other may be found on the dark web where anonymous conspirators reinforce each others darkest thoughts about America in 2024. In her book, “Black Pill”, former Vice News and now CNN correspondent, Elle Reeve, takes her book’s title from the popular reference in “The Matrix” and explores the darkest of all the pills which she describes as “a dark but gleeful nihilism: the system is corrupt, and its collapse is inevitable. There is no hope. Times are bad and they’re going to get worse. You swallow the black pill and accept the end is coming.” With that as a backdrop, she explores in the book and with us the line that is crossed when posturing online morphs into taking action in real life. In vivid detail, she describes the ‘characters’ caught up in this frenzy and their ability to capture our politics.
Labor Unions had immense economic and political power in the post WWII era through the early 1970’s. In the 1950’s a third of all private sector workers were members of unions. For a host of reasons that we explore in this podcast, all that changed and for the last 50 years unions have shrunk to about six percent of the private sector labor force. The public sector unions have bumped the overall number to more than 10 percent and have had a trajectory of their own. We focus most particularly in this podcast on the unionization efforts related to private sector workers which seems to be having a moment. Whether that’s because of labor shortages, the’ take this job and shove it’ attitudes as people reassessed their lives in the wake of Covid 19 or the friendly Administration in the White House over the last four years, there has been a change, best exemplified by successful unionization of workers in a VW plant in the South and a 70 percent approval ratings for unions by the general public. We will explore all of these issues and more with Andrew Wolf, assistant professor in the Department of Global Labor and Work at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, on this podcast.
The profession of long haul trucking is vital to our nation’s commerce. As a career choice, many of us might think of it as one we would never pick because it can be lonely and unsettling as to a normal home life. Some choose it because they like the open road and others because they are repressing certain needs that a less isolated existence might reveal. The darkest underbelly of the profession has demanded the establishment of a new unit within the FBI. It’s called the Highway Serial Killers Initiative. This special unit has linked 850 killings to long haul truckers. Frank Figliuzzi, who is now retired from the FBI, and its former Assistant Director for Counterintelligence, was stunned to realize that these killings were so pervasive so he set out to understand the subcultures involved in the trucking community, that of its victims, basically female sex workers often dispossessed by their families, and the group of agents in the special FBI unit dedicated to trying to stop this grisly practice. He explains what he discovered and revealed in his book “Long Haul.” His acumen in the art and science of investigations is well on display in this podcast.
There is a disturbing history of a fifty-year plan to hijack voting rights in America. Despite Chief Justice John Roberts’ reputation as an institutionalist trying to steer the Supreme Court in a measured fashion, our guest says he’s not a deliberate incrementalist but rather a patient bulldozer. In his first fourteen years as the nation’s chief jurist he overturned precedents in 21 cases. And while we have recently focused on Supreme Court limits on abortion, gun laws, and affirmative action, perhaps the action taken in 2013, in the Shelby County v. Holder case will have the most long lasting effect. It gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the basis of the flawed notion that racism in America, and particularly in the South, was a thing of the past. This was the culmination of an effort John Roberts began as a young lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department where he contested voting rights cases and the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. David Daley, our guest, and author of the new book “Undemocractic: Inside the Far Right’s 50 Year Plot to Control American Elections” joins us to discuss.
Recently, in Massachusetts, its government leaders discovered that the statewide 9-1-1 emergency system was down. A scramble ensued to handle the crisis. About 7 million people went for almost two hours with no 91-1 service. Unfortunately, such crashes have become more commonplace over the recent years as long needed upgrades to the system have been stalled in Congress. Outages hit eight states this year. Begun in 1968, there are wide disparities in capabilities and funding of the system. While I think it’s fair to say few of us imagine a world where an emergency occurs and 9-1-1 is not available to call. It’s like turning on your faucet and water not coming out. Organizations like National Emergency Number Association(NENA)have been working tirelessly, in the recent period, to get funding for Next Generation 9-1-1 and for the reclassification of 9-1-1 professionals as part of a “public safety occupation”. To explain the complexities and struggles of today’s 9-1-1 system are Brian Fontes, NENA’s chief executive officer, and April Heinze, NENA vice president and chief of 9-1-1 operations.
The process of dying in America has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. The process was often hidden away from family in a hospital setting. Today more than half of deaths are at home surrounded by loved ones. Along with this new American approach comes a range of responsibilities and stresses which can either bring families closer or tear them apart. The primary caregivers may feel that they are ill-equipped for the responsibilities involved or that they are not given adequate support by others. In their book “Dying at Home”, CM Cassady and our guest, Andrea Sankar, explore all of the issues surrounding this process, from having all medical and legal directives in place to burial and bereavement. The hospice and palliative care movements in America are fast growing, though government support for families through things like Family and Medical Leave still leave much to be desired in many parts of America. This podcast and their book are essential tools in dealing with an issue few want to discuss, yet all of us will face.
‘It’s a part of me’ said one student when asked about a possible ban on smartphones in her classroom. While we can all come up with reasons that smartphone use is a distraction and worse in the classroom, who cannot sympathize with that student’s feeling? Given the amount of time we spend on these devices, and how they have become the most utilized part of our digital array of products, we know what she means. And, yet, empirically, the evidence of their negative impact on attention to task and resultant test result declines, school districts are increasingly coming to the realization that the presence of them is no longer manageable in the classroom. The percentage of schools limiting use, in a variety of ways, is 75 percent of the country. It seems to be one of the few issues that finds agreement among liberals and conservatives. To discuss this growing trend, and making a case for it, is Professor Arnold Glass, a psychology professor at Rutgers University and someone who has researched this subject extensively.