Full Program

Part 1

We begin on this Labor Day with an assessment of what is driving the growing income and opportunity gap in America as our democracy is increasing captured by plutocrats. Chuck Collins, the co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good and the Patriotic Millionaires and author of “Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good” joins us to discuss his new report at The Next System Project “Reversing Inequality: Unleashing the Transformative Potential of an Equitable Economy”. We look into the growing divide that is not so much the result of technological change and globalization but is embedded in our economic and political system since we have reached the point where the top one tenth of one percent own as much as the bottom 90% of U.S. households combined.

Part 2

Then we explore the reasons why union representation in the private sector has shrunk to below 7% compared to 35% in the 1950’s and why it has been attributed to American workers turning away from unions rather that the real cause which is the hidden war against unions by the multi-billion dollar union-busting industry financed by the Koch Brothers and other billionaires.Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist and co-chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California, Berkeley joins us to discuss the judiciary as an arm of the union-busting industry with corporatist judges like Neil Gorsuch now poised to eviscerate public sector unions.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Sam Pizzigati a veteran labor journalist and author of “The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class” who has an article at inequality.org “A Hall Of Fame Turns Shameful”. We  discuss how the portrait of the union-busting President Reagan has been put up in the Labor Department’s Hall of Fame alongside true heroes of labor like Cesar Chavez by Labor Secretary Acosta who was appointed by Trump BECAUSE of his hostility to American workers.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the possibility that a huge chemical plant 20 miles from Houston could explode at any moment and investigate the reasons why explosive and hazardous materials are in suburban areas of Texas and why, after the 2013 explosion of a fertilizer plant in Ward, Texas the requirement of make the public aware of where hazardous materials are stored was rescinded by the now governor of Texas, Greg Abbott whose government has given the owner of the volatile chemical plant Arkema, $8.7 million in taxpayer subsidies. An historian at the University of Houston, Dr. Robert Buzzanco joins us to explain how this industrial corridor along the increasingly vulnerable Gulf coast known and the Chemical Coast or “cancer alley” because of the concentration of oil, gas and chemical plants, came about and the extent to which the lobbying group the American Chemistry Council has bought Texas’s entire Republican congressional representation along with its U.S. Senators and, most of all, Governor Greg Abbott.

Part 2

Then we speak with Michael Barajas, the Civil Rights reporter for the Texas Observer about the disproportionate impact Hurricane Harvey has had and continues to have on the poor and minority communities around Houston and along the Gulf coast. We look into the lack of zoning and regulations that allows dangerous chemical plants in urban and suburban communities and the lobbying power of the oil, gas and chemical industries over the electoral power of minorities in Texas.  

Part 3

Then finally we examine the firing of a group of scholars at the New America Foundation at the behest of Google, a major donor to the foundation that is using its extraordinary monopoly power and political muscle to silence researchers who had the temerity to call Google a monopoly. Jonathan Taplin, the Founder and Director Emeritus of the Innovation Lab at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and author of “Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Cornered Culture and undermined Democracy”, joins us to discuss Google’s growing dominance and his article at The New York Times “Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks”.