Money-Driven Politics in an Age of Global Tumult w/ Thomas Ferguson/Railroad Workers, Corporate Power, and Congress w/ Jack Rasmus

On this edition of Parallax Views, Dr. Thomas Ferguson, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston and author of Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, returns to discuss the current social/economic/political situations in the U.S. and place it within the context of growing tumult across the globe. Among the issues discussed in this conversation:

- Disruption and the world economy; energy crises, inflation, growing economic pressures on people; strikes in the U.K., the recent far-right coup attempt in Germany, and the downfall of Peru's President Pedro Castillo (who attempted to dissolve the Peruvian Congress)

- Oil and gas prices

- The Georgia runoff election that saw Democrat Raphael Warnock vs. Republican Herschel Walker

- Incremental change in the balance of political power

- Matt Taibbi, Elon Musk, and the Twitter Files

- Is the global pandemic really over? Biden, student debt, and the pandemic

- Railroad workers and sick leave pay

- Nancy Pelosi, corporate Democrats, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the Squad, Bernie Sanders, and progressives

- Biden, the National Labor Relations Board, and the broader state of American labor

- Crypto, the FTX scandal, Sam Bankman-Fried, dark money, the politicians who received donations from SBF, and deregulation

- How a deep recession could lead to Donald Trump's comeback; Trump's survival is dependent on the economy 

- Employment and unemployment

- The problem Democrats face leading up to 2024; the Democratic Party as a "Headless Horseman" right now

- Could the railroad strike issue come back to haunt Democrats?

- The polarizations of social blocs in America

- Rural areas and U.S. elections

- The American upper middle classes and Jan 6th

- The midterms were very close; the shift was minute

- Policy errors in addressing the pandemic

- Interests rates are up and U.S. debt costs are rising

- The multipolar world and the dangers of escalation; U.S. vs. China and de-escalation; the Ukraine/Russia War

- The Golden Rule: he makes the money makes the rules

- And much, much more!

 

In this second segment of the show, Dr. Jack Rasmus, author of The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump, returns to discuss his analysis of the bipartisan shutdown by the Biden administration and Congress of a potential railroad workers strike.

Among the topics covered in this conversation

- Previous times that Congress has intervened to break a strike: the Railway Labor Act in 1926 and the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947; government working on behalf of corporate interests; corporate power's attack on labor in the 1920s and after WWII; the history of rail strikes leading up to the 1920s

- How the labor movement has been tied down by a legal web designed to prevent strategic strikes from occurring

- Government intervention, bargaining power, the freezing of negotiations

- The issue of paid sick leave and the issue of scheduling; paid leave and the disciplining of labor; labor shortages and wage costs

- Nancy Pelosi, the 90 day "cooling off" period, unions, the AFL-CIO, and anti-labor legislation

- The corporate wing of the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders, The Squad, and progressives; left-liberals as constantly being slapped down and outmaneuvered by the corporate wing of the Democratic Party; the Democratic Leadership Council and the takeover of the Democratic Party; thinking in class terms rather than political terms

- Pelosi's legislative trick, anti-strike legislation, and the proposed sick leave legislation that had no chance of passing through the sent

- The 24% wage increase over 5 years for rail workers and the effect of inflation over the last 3 years

- Republicans, Democrats, and the labor movement

- The media, propaganda, and the economy; oil companies, price gouging, gas prices, sanctions on Russia, and inflation; the job market, full-time jobs, and part-time jobs; the ideological apparatus of the ruling class

- Neoliberalism, grassroots resistance, and the need for a workers party