Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Mini Show #49: Tim Scott, Stock Ban, Union Busting, Third Parties, & More!

Episode Date: August 6, 2022

Krystal and Saagar look at Tim Scott possibly running, stock ban in Congress, Newsmax coverage, liberal economist's forecast, workers fighting back, & the case for third parties!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0E005CD6DBFF6D47 Max Alvarez: https://therealnews.com/James Li: https://www.youtube.com/c/5149withJamesLi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You can surmise as to why. However, the book accidentally, according to the publisher, has a line in it where it specifically says that the book lays out his vision for a presidential bid to be launched in 2022. Now, Scott is pleading innocent, saying he had no idea about the line. He has no idea how the line even got into the book. And again, this is Scott's third book. The first was in 2018. The second one was actually in 2020 called Opportunity Knocks, How Hard work, community, and business can improve lives and poverty. This one is more of his life story. Now, look, I'll just tell you the truth, or the facts, which is in the past, almost every person who is running for president,

Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, many others, have written books and so-called life stories, so-called memoirs, ahead of launching a presidential bid. He says that's not what's happening here. He has no idea how the text got into the book. I mean, look, I think he's kind of crazy because how does this line end up in your book without at least not approval necessarily, but maybe that was the way he pitched it to them.

And these things go through a hell of a lot of scrutiny. It made it all the way to the copyright page. I mean, maybe that's the way he pitched it to the publisher privately and then they put it in so-called accidentally, but now he's claiming otherwise. There's still a lot of explanation as to how exactly this would even happen.

Very weird how this happened. Yeah, it was super weird. Like, I really genuinely want to know how you end up with this because maybe the book was scheduled for a later release and he moved it up for some reason. And so it was supposed to be in if it was going to be the later release when he would be launching this theoretical campaign. The other question I had for you, Sagar, is that how has he sort of like positioned himself with regards to Trump? Where does he fall on the spectrum? How has he sort of carved down a niche? He got endorsed by Trump, got endorsed by Trump for his reelection. So obviously that matters. He's kind of an interesting guy. I mean, he's like a bit of it more of a happy warrior,

very much still like the free market, Jack Kemp kind of capitalism school, but squared the Trump years pretty well. I mean, he's ultimately a guy who got criminal justice reform done. He had a pretty good relationship with them. He also has always been one of those guys who his happy demeanor, and this is more about him as a politician, has let him rise above some of the more nasty GOP wars or like culture fights. So he articulates things in a way that's very palatable, I think, to a lot of GOP voters, which I think is kind of interesting. And he probably has more crossover. But I think Trump people are skeptical of him just because he doesn't actually support a lot of the stuff I'm talking about here in Washington. But voters in particular, I mean, look, he's pretty popular in the state of South Carolina and he did get the Trump endorsement. I think Trump sees the power

of Tim Scott. Now, do I think he would in a primary? No, I don't think so whatsoever for many of the reasons that I just described. But, you know, as a politician, he's not bad. Well, I was just looking and he apparently not that long ago was hinting that he could be Trump's running mate. Yes, that's right. I saw that too. He could be the new vice presidential pick. And Lord knows the Republicans are not afraid also of dabbling in their own identity politics. Of course not.

They like to do that as well. I mean, in terms of him backing any of the fundamental tenets of supposed Trumpism back from 2016, this guy is a very doctrinaire, like free market, libertarian. That's how he came into politics. Old school, standard issue, conservative type. He definitely doesn't carry any of the original idea of what Trumpism might be, but it also doesn't matter at all anymore at this point. I wonder if he would be willing to debase himself to the extent that would be required, though. I mean, you would have to go all in on like all the stop the steal stuff. Like that's all the Trumpism is at this point. So I don't know if he'd be willing to toe the line as

hard as Mike Pence did for as long as he did. I don't think he could do it either. Yeah. But look, I mean, here's what Lyndon Johnson, I think, famously said. He's like, yeah, it's a terrible job. But, you know, it's like a one in six chance of becoming president. So, you know, Trump's eight. He would be like 80 years old if this were something that had materialized. It's not terrible odds. I'm speaking in grim terms, but, you know, that's just simply the truth. So who knows how it'll work out?

Funny nonetheless. Yes, very funny and interesting revolution there. So guys, we have mentioned a few times that Democrats are once again floating a stock trading ban for members, their spouses, and their top aides. With the idea being this would be fairly far-reaching, both in terms of who it would impact, but also they would ban them from trading stocks or even holding stocks. Something that I think would be wonderful. However, there is a lot of reason to be skeptical that any of this will actually come to fruition and is anything more than a sort of campaign political messaging tool. New York Post is out with a newer article pouring a lot of cold water on this idea. They say Congress will not self-regulate their trades, Washington insiders say. Let me read you the lead to this piece.

They say amid renewed chatter about the importance of cracking down on legislator stock trades, high ranking staffers tell the Post the likelihood Congress will actually regulate itself is so low it is laughable. Quote, you are not getting members of Congress to self-regulate the money they can or can't make, a D.C. insider told the Post. Why would they do something that does not benefit them? On Thursday, a report broke in Punchbowl News that Democratic House members plan next month to introduce a bill that would crack down on stock trades by legislators and their family members. But senior staffers were quick to suggest the report had more to do with getting a positive headline, less to do with actually enacting serious reform. Quote, it is all performative.

It is not going anywhere. Hard to disagree with that analysis of the state of play here. The issue is going to be timing because that's exactly what they point to, which is that if they need this mansion cinema thing or so this mansion Schumer thing to go through, it's going to be that's a lot of time that both on the floor and also what the House of Representatives has to do in reaction. Right now, Pelosi's not even here in the country. So is she going to come back? Also, what about the recess? And then after recess, people need a nice long one because they want to run for re-election. So are they just introducing this to introduce it, or are they actually going to do it? And that's where I would also bet on the cynicism, which they can just blame timing, be like, oh, Republicans blocked this,

this, and this, and didn't end up going through. Everybody wants the headlines on these things, but nobody actually wants them to follow through. And that's always it's the death knell. Yeah, that's the death knell. That was the death knell in the Senate. Whenever we had all these Senate proposals, those didn't end up going anywhere. Same thing here. Yeah, it really is a tragedy. Yeah. I mean, you could definitely see a situation where they pass it through the House. Yes. So House Democrats are able to say we did this and we voted for and we pass it through the House. Yes. So House Democrats are able to say, we did this and we voted for and we passed it through here.

And then the Senate is bogged down in reconciliation. And so, ah, Senate just didn't have the time to take it up. Darn. Next time. Put us back in power. Vote for Democrats again and we'll get this through. Yeah. So, yeah, you should probably partake in this. The cynical analysis, unfortunately, far too often is the correct analysis, especially on matters that involve the bank accounts of members of Congress.

100%. All right. We've got some North Korea-level propaganda coming at you from Newsmax vis-a-vis President Trump. So just a little bit of the background and I'll play you the clip. As we've been covering and as you've probably seen, Trump has gone all in with Live Golf. This is the Saudi family's attempt to reputation launder, and they've been throwing millions and millions of dollars at top PGA golfers to get them to defect and come over and play also for Live Golf. Trump hosted a big tournament at one of his facilities in Bedminster, New Jersey. And this was how one Newsmax host

reacted to Trump and his golf prowess. You know, you look at Joe Biden struggling so hard. You see Donald Trump on the first tee yesterday. Tee often just hit a stripe right down the middle. I mean, I'm always fascinated by the aspects of soft power in politics. And, you know, Americans have to see this. Joe Biden's struggling every day. He's hanging out with a bunch of losers. And Donald Trump is out playing golf, looking more presidential than the current president. Now, I remember a time when Republicans and right wing media figures would trash Obama for playing golf.

But now golf is presidential. He was more presidential than Biden. I just don't really get what's going on over there. I've never understood the whole Newsmax project. Yeah, it's just really pathetic and gross. I also just question, does this stuff really work for the audience? That's the one where I'm like, okay, Newsmax ratings, definitely down. They went all in on Stop the Steal, but then because of, you know, lawsuits and more, they were forced to retract some of that.

And they're not allowed to air some of the most outrageous Stop the Steal conspiracy theories. So now, like, what is the point of Newsmax that you can't get over at Fox? And even people who love Trump, like, does this stuff really work? It's cringe when CNN does it. It's cringe. Remember on Biden's inaug inauguration it was like biden's arms surrounding the con i was like what is yeah exactly it's like north korean shit in terms of their propaganda i just choose to believe that anybody who is even a fan of a

politician even anybody watches that is like this is ridiculous this is gross yeah yeah what is the market for just like i don't get it blat Blatant, grotesque levels of shameless propaganda. I don't know. These networks seem to think that there's quite a big audience. Yeah. Yeah. So you think it's going to work. You know, anything he does, we're going to say it's amazing that he's powerful as presidential. Look at Joe Biden stumbling around and President Trump out there on the golf course, so presidential. I don't know. They seem to find an audience for it, but it is pretty silly for anyone watching this with an objective view. Yeah, absolutely. So Nobel laureate and New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman has weighed in multiple times actually at this point about how strong the economy is under Joe Biden. And he's been talking up a, quote, Biden boom,

for which he's apparently received, rightly I would say, a lot of mockery. So he's defending himself online and just making it way, way worse. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. He says, since I get lots of mockery for having talked about a Biden boom, I thought I'd share a chart. And it's a chart of jobs added under Biden versus under Trump. And then he says,

the problem may be that the Biden economy boomed too much, feeding inflation, and that it now needs to cool off, which might involve a recession, but hasn't yet. He's got to get that in there too to make sure he's on board

with the talking points that there is no recession yet. And then he goes on to add this caveat. And, yes, I know there are all kinds of issues about different starting points, the role of federal policy, et cetera. But the basic fact is that so far the Biden economy has added 9 million jobs. So it has been a jobs boom, whatever else you might say. That's probably the most honest part of it. I don't think anyone is denied.

Yes, coming out of COVID when you had the economy shut down, there was going to be a jobs boom, no doubt about it. And it is true that we're in this really weird economic moment where you have low unemployment, but you have high inflation. So you have real wages getting cut and slashed every week, week, week, week, week, and all these weird supply shortages. And, I mean, you know, we cover all the economic issues on this show all the time. But the part of it I also find quite extraordinary here, Sagar, behind the idea, aside from the idea that the Biden economy boomed too much, and that's the problem, is that now you have to have a recession. That's the way to deal with it. I mean, this is really, this mindset, it's sort of sociopathic mindset from Larry Summers, from Jerome Powell, who's the

head of the Fed, from Krugman. You hear people on the Wall Street networks talking routinely about how we have to get wages down, how we have to essentially risk triggering a recession, that that's the most important goal, which is just grotesque. And as we've discussed before, the tools that they're using with Fed policy to potentially spark this – I mean not potentially, to spark this recession and to hurt all of you, these are not even effective tools to deal with the underlying causes of inflation. I think that's the biggest one to me, which is that it doesn't work. Like what is the point, which is that why even admitting in this framework, and Krugman has embarrassed himself because he's also been one of the people who's like trying to redefine recession. This stuff drives me crazy.

It all is just about cope from the administration, the whole boom too much. They can never just admit the underlying structure of the economy is bad. It's not working. Let's figure out not only why, but how to fix it. Instead, they try and focus and argue backwards to redefine the narrative and then not do anything on the front end. So this is all just propaganda wars about the past.

I don't think anybody cares, honestly. I mean, sure, to the limited extent of like what it means that we should do in the future. But anyway, I think it's totally ridiculous. Yeah, it's just another window into the gross policy view and choices and level of propaganda coming from economic elites who have a lot of influence in this country. I mean, the Fed has so much power, totally undemocratic. You know, we've been told and persuaded over a lot of years that we basically just have to leave it up to them and they know better than we do. And we really shouldn't have any say in it at all. No, like, you know, there's no sort of popular movements around trying to influence. Well, I shouldn't say that, but there's been an effort to persuade Americans not to have popular will around what happens with the Fed, even though

it is the most powerful factor in our economy ultimately. And so you have things like this, where it's just gaslighting. I mean, people know what their lives are like. They know that they're reading an article about how moms are having to police how much shampoo their kids use and, you know, cutting back on fresh fruits and vegetables, really unable to afford it anymore. People are making these choices in real time. They know what is going on in their lives. And I can promise you that it does not feel like the Biden economy, quote, boomed too much. Yep, exactly. People know they're smart enough to figure this out. Booming too much, tell that to the people who've been, it's been over a year. It's not like gas wasn't already

high before Russia invaded Ukraine. We've had port problems for 16, 17 months. So yeah, boom too much. Okay. Thanks. Hi, I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm the editor-in-chief of the Real News Network, Okay.S. to vote to unionize. Seven out of the 10 workers who voted in the election voted in favor of unionizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 540. Doug Doherty, who was the president of the UFCW at the time, called it the vote heard round the world. Quote, this victory could open the floodgates of pent-up worker frustration at the abusive treatment, low pay, and lousy benefits at Walmart, Doherty said after the election. Workers at the Jacksonville store and the labor

movement in general had a lot to be excited about at this point. Walmart was the largest private employer in the country, and it still is. With 2.3 million employees worldwide and 1.3 million of those in the U.S., Walmart still beats out Amazon, which has 1.6 million employees worldwide and 1.3 million of those in the U.S., Walmart still beats out Amazon, which has 1.6 million employees worldwide and 1.1 million of them working in the U.S. And like Amazon, Walmart has been notoriously and virulently anti-union from the very beginning, doing everything in its power to dissuade or prevent workers from unionizing. Quote, I have always believed strongly that we don't need unions at Walmart. Sam Walton, founder of the company, famously wrote in his autobiography,

theoretically, I understand the argument that unions try to make, that the associates need someone to represent them, and so on. But historically, as unions have developed in this country, they have mostly just been divisive, end quote. Now, Walmart has been something like labor's white whale for many years. And, you know, with the union victory in Jacksonville, it seemed like the labor movement was finally advancing. Meat cutters at other Walmart locations, including two in Texas and one in Florida, also petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold their own union elections. Then, later that same month, in a move

that the company spokespeople claimed had absolutely nothing to do with the union election. Walmart suddenly announced it was shutting down its family butcher-style meat-cutting operations in 180 stores across six states and would be stocking its meat sections with case-ready beef and pork bought and pre-packaged outside of the stores. Because the election occurred before Walmart's devastating announcement, the company was still bound by the National Labor Relations Act to bargain in good faith with the union. But unsurprisingly, it refused to do so, claiming that the election hadn't been fair. The company continued to delay bargaining and challenge the results of the election until the new pre-packaged meat system was fully implemented at the Jacksonville store

on July 15, 2000. As soon as that happened, in a calculated sleight of hand, Walmart changed its tune and claimed it did not have to bargain with the meat cutters because the changes within the store meant that a meat department bargaining unit was functionally obsolete. After years of legal back and forth, the meat cutters got some back pay and some small concessions from Walmart, but they never got their union. And Walmart, for its part, had succeeded in sending a clear message to its hundreds of thousands of workers about what could happen if they unionize in their stores. It also gave other businesses a very clear lesson on how they could undercut

workers exercising their right to organize and how they could union bust by essentially jumping through the gaping loopholes in U.S. labor law. That, as you no doubt have noticed, is a lesson that a lot of companies are putting into practice right now in their gross, greedy, shitty, and underhanded attempts to squash the burgeoning labor organizing movement in this country. As we've discussed previously here on Breaking Points, Starbucks is undoubtedly leading the way right now as the most blatant example of a company using extreme and almost certainly illegal tactics to delay, demoralize, and destroy the union wave surging

in Starbucks stores throughout the country. Those tactics range from firing pro-union workers for bogus reasons, and they've done that a lot, to punitively understaffing and underscheduling workers at pro-union stores, refusing to recognize or bargain with the union, to going nuclear and outright closing unionized stores, which is illegal if it is done in retaliation for organizing activity. Now, I played a clip for y'all recently of my interview with Nadia Vitek from the College Avenue Starbucks in Ithaca, New York, which was closed in June after workers unionized. After that, Starbucks announced 16 more store closures, including other stores that had already unionized

or that were starting to organize, like the Starbucks in Union Station here in D.C., about 10 minutes from where I am currently sitting, which was just closed last week. But other companies are following suit, and that is a serious problem. In a recent panel interview for The Real News, I spoke with Beck, another worker organizer from the Ithaca Starbucks that was closed, and I also spoke with Gami Ray, a barista and worker organizer at Heine Brothers Coffee in Louisville, Kentucky, whose pro-union store was also abruptly and

suspiciously closed. Listen to Gami describe that experience. At Douglas Loop, the store that I worked at, it was the middle of the day. We had been the most vocal union store we had been the first to like sign our petition. We had our little union stickers up around the store, you know, and I had a lot of support from the community like the community was coming in and being vocal about it. one day at two o'clock as my shift is coming to its end, I see multiple people from headquarters who I had never seen set foot in our store or who it was just not routine to be in our store show up. And they asked me to start doing closing duties after I had just worked an open to two. And as the next shift arrived, they pull us behind the counter, letting us know. Well, before, before the next shift had arrived, they had asked us to help ask customers to leave because we were closing for the meeting.

Um, and so they came behind the counter after second shift had gotten there and we're very short with it. Um, they said after much consideration, we are closing the Douglas Loop store effective immediately. Make sure that you have all of your belongings because you won't be able to come back and get anything else. Make sure to leave your key. Here is a packet with all the information about the two options you have, which are severance, leave the company and receive severance or receive a stipend and stay with the company and transfer to one of the other 17 stores, which at the time we had no idea that we were going to have no choice, no deliberation on which store we were going to. I specifically

was transferred to a store 16 minutes away from my house. Douglas Loop is a 15 minute walk. I don't have a car. And a lot of us lived really close to Douglas Loop and we all got transferred, split up to different stores. But yeah, I mean, we were all just stunned. If you're pissed now, I'm just giving you fair warning. You're going to get more pissed by the end of this segment. We're going to do a full segment on this topic at some point in the future, but I think it's important to note now that Starbucks and Heine Brothers Coffee are not the only union-busting companies that have traditionally marketed themselves as progressive. These companies have profited off their images as inclusive, caring, socially conscious businesses that employ LGBTQ workers, workers of color, and so on.

But when those same workers choose to exercise their right to organize. These companies show how progressive they really are. In two episodes of my podcast, Working People, I spoke with former employees of the quote-unquote progressive vegan meat alternative company, No Evil Foods, about the company's union busting. In 2020, the company waged a relentless campaign to thwart workers' efforts to unionize with the UFCW, including holding mandatory captive audience meetings where workers were regularly bombarded and scared with misinformation about unions. Then, last June, after successfully busting up the union drive at their production plant in Asheville, North Carolina, the company's faux-progressive founders suddenly announced that they were closing the plant.

Operations were going to be moved to a co-manufacturing facility in Illinois, and workers who had sacrificed greatly during the pandemic for No Evil Foods were suddenly unemployed and received zero severance pay. And because they did not have a union, workers did not get to bargain over the conditions of that closure or the layoffs. A horrible and eerily similar situation is happening right now at another progressive vegetarian company, which is beloved by a loyal consumer base. Few frozen food brands are as well known in the United States as Amy's Kitchen, a privately owned California-based company that makes organic vegetarian meals that can be found in most frozen food aisles. But when workers at two Amy's production plants in California, in Santa Rosa and San Jose respectively, began to organize and to speak out about their brutal working conditions,

the company's progressive veneer started to crack. In February of this year, for the Real News Network podcast, I spoke with Carmen Anguiano and Mari Cruz Mesa, two workers at the Santa Rosa plant. They described to me hellacious breakneck work speeds to meet absurd production quotas of 25,000 plates of food in one eight-hour shift. They told me about working with torn tendons and chronic pain from repetitive motions and insufficient COVID safety measures. And when workers spoke up about these conditions, they faced hostile responses from management. At the Santa Rosa plant, workers like Carmen and Mari Cruz have been organizing with help from the Teamsters, whereas workers at the San Jose plant had been working to organize with support from the union Unite Here. But last month, the San Jose workers received the devastating news that Amy's was immediately

closing the plant, with the company citing operational costs and supply chain disruptions to justify the closure and the loss of 331 jobs. On behalf of Breaking Points, I reached out to workers there and received this heartbreaking statement from Ruby Luna, a now former machine operator at the Amy's Kitchen plant in San Jose. Quote, my co-workers and I are completely shocked at the closure. We were lied to until the last minute. An hour after we clocked in, we were told our jobs were gone. Amy's claims we are their family, but no one treats their families this way.

We are asking the public to continue boycotting their products until they meet with our union to address our concerns and the devastating impact to our lives. Now, I could keep going, because this shit keeps happening. But let's look at just one more example of this despicable trend. On June 22nd of this year, workers at a Chipotle restaurant in Augusta, Maine made history by becoming the first store in the US to file for a union election with the NLRB. Then, on Tuesday, July 19th, Chipotle announced that it would be permanently closing the Augusta location. As they always do, you may have noticed this trend, spokespeople for the company have denied that the closure is related to union organizing activity, saying that it was instead related to staffing challenges. But workers and their supporters say the drastic move is a clear

act of retaliation and union busting 101. By closing the Augusta store, Jeffrey Neil Young, a lawyer representing the Chipotle workers, told the New York Times, quote, it's signaling to Chipotle workers elsewhere who are involved in or contemplating nascent organizational drives that if you organize, you might be out of a job, end quote. Now, on working people, I recently spoke to Brandy McNeice, a worker organizer at that Augusta Chipotle location and a founding member of Chipotle United. Brandy used to be a manager at Chipotle before taking an office job that she unfortunately lost during the COVID pandemic. After losing that job, she went back to work at Chipotle as a certified staff trainer.

Listen to her describe the experience of walking back into a Chipotle after her time away. So all of my efforts to improve the store overall with the appropriate training were unrealized because it was so understaffed. The other issue when I came back to the store, so I was gone, like I said, for two years. And when I came back in January, it was the intent of helping the crew to get back to where they could be in terms of performance and food safety and staffing. But the first thing that I noticed when I walked back in was just the disrepair that the store had fallen into. It was not clean. Things were broken. Like the equipment was broken. We had a gas leak.

We all worked through a gas leak for two weeks, being told that's not what it was until the grill caught fire one day. And the stove top the same way they very much had to um well they kept saying it's because we put it back together wrong but there was three or four times that flames shot out of the stove top too. In the very first part of when I was there, the grill and the stovetop and the rice cooker would intermittently fail. So at one point, we just removed all of the grill items and all of the stovetop items from our online ordering instead of just shutting it down. There were also times where I had to make online orders with ingredients or that called for ingredients that we didn't have

because they didn't get them for us because nobody had been trained on how to make orders correctly. And so we were, in addition to struggling to keep up, we were taking the brunt of all of these failures. And we were asking for help and asking for help. And just everything was falling on deaf ears. begged and begged Chipotle to send them the staff, resources, and training that they needed to keep their jobs and keep their store running at a safe, efficient, and healthy level. When those pleas went unanswered, instead of quitting one by one and leaving their friends to deal with the mess on their own, they took that brave, terrifying step to band together and to do something to improve their working conditions. And Chipotle's response was to close the store. I can only

imagine the fear, anger, anxiety, and disappointment that Brandy and her co-workers must be experiencing throughout all of this. But I want you to listen to her talk about why they are still carrying on the fight. Everybody has a voice. Every single one of us is one of us. And it's not going to change unless we can all say, we're done being treated like this. You know, everybody's like, oh, well, they'll close every Chipotle or they'll close every restaurant or every store. We have proven through the pandemic that that's not true. They won't close us down because everybody needs us. What, is everybody going to start cooking for themselves? Yeah, right. You know, they need us. What, is everybody going to start cooking for themselves? Yeah, right.

You know, they need us. They need service workers. But they should not be allowed to employ service workers and treat them so poorly while they're taking in profits hand over fest. If you've been watching The Art of Class War from the beginning, then you know that this story hits nearly every single topic that we focused on from the beginning. Chronic understaffing, workers deciding to stay, fight, and improve their workplaces instead of leaving, engaging in protected concerted activities like union organizing and walkouts over unsafe conditions, and what appears to be pretty obvious retaliation against workers for engaging in such activity. I want to end this segment by reminding all of us that we can and must do something about these store closures, these firings, and all of the

rampant union busting that companies like Chipotle and Starbucks are engaging in in broad daylight right now. Listen, I need you to get mad about this. Let these companies know what you think about them violating their employees' rights and tag them on social media. Don't let them sweep anything under the rug. Write letters to their head offices and their executives. Sign petitions like the one that Chipotle United is asking people to sign right now. Ask local and national media outlets to cover these stories more. Or, you know, if you were so inclined, you could ask your political representatives why the vast majority of them

haven't said jack shit about any of this. Most importantly, if you are unsure about what to do best to support workers, the answer is always listen to the workers themselves. You heard Ruby Luna call for customers to continue boycotting Amy's Kitchen in her statement. Calling for a boycott is a powerful weapon that workers have but need to use strategically when they think it will be most effective. So, we use it collectively when it's it will be most effective. So we use it collectively when it's called for by the workers. But in the meantime, if you want to withdraw your business and let the company know why, that's your call. As always, the single best thing we can do right now for each other is show up, show solidarity, and stay

committed to these struggles. As Howard Schultz and Starbucks escalate the war on their own workers, workers themselves are ramping up too, with strikes happening in Ithaca, Buffalo, Boston, Minneapolis, and beyond. Go to those picket lines. Show your support. Donate to strike funds and hardship funds for fired workers because they are in dire straits right now. And you have no idea how much it means to show that little bit of solidarity. Labor laws in the U.S. are already so ridiculously stacked in favor of the bosses, but when workers still manage to play by the rules, stick together, and win fair and square, billionaire and millionaire executives flip over the chessboard, close stores, fire workers, and they find whatever BS excuse they need to to deny that it's union

busting. And they will rack up as many unfair labor practice charges as they need to until they bully, intimidate, and crush workers back into submission. That is what they are doing right now. That is what they hope will happen. But businesses don't exist without people and people have rights. And if you want our business, you need to treat people with some goddamn respect. And we as consumers, as taxpayers, as community members and fellow workers are going to show these companies what happens when they don't. Thank you for watching this segment with Breaking Points, and be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, The Real News, with links in the show description. See you for the next edition of The Art of Class War.

Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever. Hey there, my name is James Lee. Welcome to another segment of 5149 on Breaking Points. With the midterm election season in full swing and as we look forward to 2024, I'd like to take a moment today to talk about a topic that inevitably will make its rounds every two to four years. And that topic is third parties. Dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials are announcing a new national political third party called Forward. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, key members write their goal is to, quote, build a new unifying political party for the majority of Americans who want to move past divisiveness and reject extremism. Our next guest co-wrote the op-ed, Andrew Yang,

former Democratic presidential candidate, and Christine Todd Whitman, former EPA administrator and the former Republican governor of New Jersey, both with us now. Okay, Governor, to you first, and I'm going to challenge you guys on this because this so rarely works. So why will your effort work? That CNN clip that we just watched together represents probably the most common corporate media and establishment political attitude towards third parties. They don't work. They play spoiler. We don't need them. But that sentiment is not shared by the majority of Americans. In a recent Gallup poll, only 33% of Americans feel that the Democratic and Republican parties are doing an adequate job of representing the American people.

And 62% of Americans responded that the two major parties are doing such a poor job that a third party is needed. So it's clear, and it has been for a really long time, that Americans want more choice in the electoral process. So why do we keep getting told that we can't have it? Well, the truth is, nobody wants to share power, especially the institutional elites who already hold that power. Not many people remember this, but there was a period in time when there were significant third-party movements looking to fundamentally alter the American political landscape. We all remember the Great Depression, right? The year 1932, unemployment was around 25%. There was a sustained drought in a number of Midwest states, including Oklahoma and Texas. Businesses and families were defaulting on

loans in record numbers, and more than 5,000 banks had failed. And from the ashes of America's most epic economic collapse sprang numerous third-party victories. For example, in California, Upton Sinclair's End Poverty in California movement, EPIC for short, won a majority in the 1934 Democratic gubernatorial primaries, and by 1938, former EPIC leaders had captured the California governorship and a U.S. Senate seat. In North Dakota, the nonpartisan league won the governorship, a U.S. Senate seat, and both congressional seats in 1932 and continued to win other elections throughout the decade. In Minnesota, the Farmer Labor Party captured

the governorship and five House seats. Wisconsin, too, witnessed an electorally powerful progressive party led by the La Follette family. Now, despite all these great successes, we didn't see long-lasting third parties, in large part because the ruling party, which was the Democratic Party throughout most of the 1930s were oftentimes more concerned about defeating insurgent third parties than they were about the Republican Party. So throughout the 1930s, President Roosevelt worked behind the scenes to dramatically weaken third party threats to the Democratic Party by A, co-opting the rhetoric used by third parties, and B, poaching opposition leaders to join his entourage. Citing an article from the Hoover Institute,

in 1937, Philip LaFollette's executive secretary told Daniel Hone, the socialist mayor of Milwaukee, that a national third party would never be launched while Roosevelt was in the saddle because Roosevelt had put so many outstanding liberals on his payroll that any third party movement would lack sufficient leadership. And it worked. By the end of the decade, a resurgent Republican Party ended up wiping out many of the gains made by third parties. Both the Wisconsin Progressive Party and the Minnesota

Farmer Labor Party suffered crushing defeats, losing most of their congressional seats, and Republicans badly defeated both Philip LaFollette and Wisconsin. And here's the telling, quote, the quiet part out loud. Although unhappy about the Republicans gaining 81 seats in the House, eight seats in the Senate, and 13 governorships, the president noted that some good things had occurred. Quote, we have, on the positive side, eliminated Phil LaFollette and the former labor people in the Northwest as a standing third party threat. So yes, even the great FDR put party over country, meaning that he actively worked to preserve the Democratic Party's position of power by working behind the scenes to destroy insurgent third parties, even if it meant losing seats to

Republicans. And in that sense, the relationship between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is simpatico. Each are known quantities and provide for a comfortable and familiar playbook against one another in elections. And I think that's kind of what's going on today. What they desperately do not want is a third party capable of disrupting the two-party duopoly, which is kind of why every recent election has been framed as being existential. If you believe the country is in an existential crisis, which I believe and I think a lot of people share that view, it's certainly what we believe in the Lincoln Project. This idea of a third party is sort of an indulgence.

It's like you're in the middle of a knife fight and you decide that really your biggest problem is losing weight. It's probably a good idea to lose weight, but there really are more pressing things like getting out of this knife fight alive. And that's just how the real world is. And I think we ought to live in it. That's just how the real world is. And I think we ought to live in it. Kind of, I think, implying those who refuse to buy into a strict Republican or Democrat construct are naive and idealistic, not condescending at all, right? But the thing is, third parties can actually work, which is why establishment elites are quick to dismiss any third party efforts because they know the only reason why it doesn't work is not because it can't work, but because they tell people it doesn't work. Let's just take an example from our neighbor to the north. Canada's electoral map is currently divided into 338 districts, which are called ridings. And the winner of each riding is determined through a first-past-the-post

system, which is the same as we have here in the United States. Basically, the candidate with the most votes in a riding wins that seat and represents the riding in the national legislature. And the party with the most seats usually becomes a ruling party. Same concept here in the US, there are 435 seats in the house. So 218 is required to pass any legislation. The Senate has 100 seats. So 51 is required to form a majority. There is, of course, the filibuster to deal with. But in general, what this means is that in order to make an impact on legislation, a third party doesn't need to win a majority or anywhere close to that. They just need to win enough seats to make it so that no

other party has a majority. And any seat a third party can pick up makes it just that much harder for one of the big parties to get to that magic number of 50% plus one. Now back to the Canadian example. In addition to the two major parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives, they also have two smaller but not insignificant minority parties, the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democratic Party. The Bloc is a regionally based party devoted to Quebec nationalism and the promotion of Quebec sovereignty, and the NDP is a social democratic party that advocates for issues such as LGBTQ rights, international peace, and environmental stewardship. Now, because Canadians have more choice, oftentimes what ends up happening is that the two large parties don't have enough votes to form a majority government and require a coalition with one of the smaller parties, the Bloc or the NDP, to effectively pass legislation. And what ends up happening is that the two smaller parties have leveraged this power to advocate for policies that their constituents care about. For example, over the past several decades, the Bloc Quebecois has successfully fought for the return of the Quebec Skills Training Program, stood up for farmers when

the Quebec agriculture model was threatened by international trade negotiation, and helped increase funding for Quebec's provincial government. Another more recent example, in 2022, the NDP entered into a temporary informal agreement to support the Liberal Party. Mr. Singh, who is the leader of the NDP, said that his party views the agreement as the best way to help people, particularly when it comes to developing a national dental care program for low-income Canadians and a national prescription drug program, and on issues like climate and housing. He said that the NDP will continue to oppose Mr. Trudeau's government when necessary and will be carefully tracking the results of the agreement. If they, the liberals,

fall short on what we've agreed, then the deal doesn't continue, he said. To me, this type of politicking and attempt to influence legislation is a sign of healthy political behavior. What we see in the U.S. is completely different and unhealthy. What we see instead is a coordinated effort between the corporate media and entrenched political elites for the sake of party preservation and the perpetuation of the status quo, gaslighting Americans into thinking third parties are silly, impractical vanity projects. The point I'm trying to make is that if we want to talk about the real world, we can feel the dissatisfaction that people have with the current political structure. We can see through legislation or oftentimes lack thereof that the government is not working for the

majority of Americans. You know, Republicans have this notion that they don't do as well in high turnout elections. And the Democrats, on the other hand, assume that if more people vote, they will vote for them or more accurately against Republicans. So it's no coincidence why the Republican Party spends so much time passing these, limiting choices of candidates on the ballot by kicking off parties like the Green Party. You see, their primary goal has always been to preserve the status quo and to preserve the party. So change necessarily must come from the outside. An example of this change in the last election cycle, candidates from the Rhode Island Progressive Co-op won eight seats in the state legislature and two seats on the city council and has since passed bills that raise the minimum wage to $15 and legalize recreational marijuana with automatic expungement of past convictions. This was just one small

example of a nascent third party movement proving success at the local level. And the Democratic Party definitely feels very threatened by this success in Rhode Island and in this election cycle going so far as standing by a lawmaker who has been charged with sexual assault and perjury and has also backed a former lawmaker who has been arrested several times, all in an effort to oust the uncertain progressives in the state. My point is the number one goal of entrenched legacy parties is not representation, it's self-preservation. It always has been and it always will be. So next time somebody talks about a third party. Just remember, third parties can work and have worked in the past and they can and do deliver real results, which is why both establishment Democrats and Republicans aided by their friends in the corporate media will go scorch earth on third parties because the goal for them isn't more competition or a more vibrant democracy, or better policymaking. The only thing they want is simply more power. That's all from me this time. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion about

third parties. If you'd like this video and looking for more, please head over to my YouTube channel, 5149 with James Lee, where I release videos about topics relating to business, politics, and society. Link will be in the description below. Also, of course, don't forget to subscribe to Breaking Points. And thank you so much for your time today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

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