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The Rick Smith Show 10-15-2026 · The Rick Smith Show

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It's time for the Rick Smith show.
0:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, here is the voice of the working class, Rick Smith.
0:17
[SPEAKER_05]: And welcome, brothers, sisters working class heroes.
0:21
[SPEAKER_05]: This is the Rick Smith show.
0:23
[SPEAKER_05]: Thanks so much for being here.
0:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Today on the big program, lots to get to, lots to talk about something, something truly historic happened in Guthersville, Alabama.
0:38
[SPEAKER_05]: And Guthersville, Alabama, on October 6th, Senator Tommy Tubberville,
0:45
[SPEAKER_05]: Had a thought a thought a real one one that you I guess nobody was more surprised that he thought came into his head than then then Tommy Seriously, this is one of those things we're going here's Tommy Tupperville
1:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It will come down drastically.
1:07
[SPEAKER_01]: What, 80's, right now, it should be down.
1:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why.
1:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not an expert in the energy sector of how they, we get the gas and diesel prices down or what it takes so long to come down.
1:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But I know one thing, when all goes up, it goes up immediately at the gas and diesel pump, but when it comes down to come down very slow.
1:27
[SPEAKER_01]: The President Trump is working hard at that.
1:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, we're gonna hard at that.
1:31
[SPEAKER_05]: But here's the thing.
1:34
[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, you know, it'll come down, but what it does, you know, he goes, it'll come down.
1:40
[SPEAKER_05]: It will come down drastically.
1:43
[SPEAKER_05]: Oil is what, 80s, hi, hi 80s right now.
1:47
[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm like, oil is what?
1:51
[SPEAKER_05]: you are on the Senate Agriculture Committee.
1:53
[SPEAKER_05]: You're not some smuck who should know this stuff.
1:56
[SPEAKER_05]: You're your farmers in your state, or burn and diesel like it's free, and you're guessing at the price of oil, like a guy on a game show who didn't read the card.
2:07
[SPEAKER_05]: And then it should be down.
2:09
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know why, and you can hear it somewhere in the back of that empty head.
2:16
[SPEAKER_05]: A little light is kind of coming on.
2:18
[SPEAKER_05]: and Tommy's just as confused as everyone else by a light in his head.
2:23
[SPEAKER_05]: And then the honesty kicks in.
2:26
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm not an expert in the energy sector.
2:28
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, no kidding.
2:30
[SPEAKER_05]: Nobody confuses you with an expert on anything.
2:33
[SPEAKER_05]: You are a reasonable football coach, but other than that, nowhere near, reasonable.
2:39
[SPEAKER_05]: And then it happens, like a blindfold of Guy Throne a dart at a barn who accidentally hit the bull's eye.
2:46
[SPEAKER_05]: He says, when oil goes up, it goes up immediately at the gas and diesel pump.
2:50
[SPEAKER_05]: When it comes down, it comes down very slow.
2:54
[SPEAKER_05]: And Tommy, that's it.
2:55
[SPEAKER_05]: That's the question.
2:57
[SPEAKER_05]: Economists do have a name for that phenomenon.
3:00
[SPEAKER_05]: They call it rockets and feathers.
3:02
[SPEAKER_05]: Prices shoot up like rockets.
3:04
[SPEAKER_05]: Float down like a forest gum feather.
3:07
[SPEAKER_05]: The St. Louis Fed figured gas prices could take about six months to drift
3:15
[SPEAKER_05]: So you were so close.
3:17
[SPEAKER_05]: You were an inch from the end zone and hitting the right thing.
3:21
[SPEAKER_05]: All you had to do is ask, who's making money off the feather?
3:26
[SPEAKER_05]: That's it.
3:27
[SPEAKER_05]: And here's the answer you never got to.
3:29
[SPEAKER_05]: When crude spikes, the refiner's in the big fuel cellars, they raise prices that day, that minute, the second the news hits.
3:37
[SPEAKER_05]: and when crew drops, well, they take their sweet old time because they got us used to paying at the pub.
3:43
[SPEAKER_05]: And every penny that doesn't come back to us, but we pay and it's their pure profit.
3:50
[SPEAKER_05]: So every truck driver, every farmer in Alabama, every mom filling up the minivan, we all pay for the slow ride down.
3:59
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's a nice little, little redistribution of wealth from money from your and my pocket to a handful at the very top.
4:07
[SPEAKER_05]: But just as Tommy got close to something true, his brain kind of grabbed back this during, you know, President Trump is working really hard because that's the default.
4:16
[SPEAKER_05]: And just like that, the light was extinguished and so close.
4:21
[SPEAKER_05]: But here's the deal.
4:23
[SPEAKER_05]: Tommy, you stumbled on probably the best question you've had your entire career.
4:27
[SPEAKER_05]: And I would ask, maybe ask it on purpose.
4:31
[SPEAKER_05]: I know you're going to be the governor of Alabama, which the dumbest guy, I don't know how that happens.
4:39
[SPEAKER_05]: But maybe while you still have time in the U.S. Senate, I don't know, get refineries to come in and testify under oath and ask them, who pockets the difference?
4:49
[SPEAKER_05]: When the rocket ship goes up and prices skyrocket, we all freak out at the pump and get
5:02
[SPEAKER_05]: offer a drop in the bucket, the prices aren't going to come down.
5:06
[SPEAKER_05]: Who benefits from it?
5:08
[SPEAKER_05]: That's the question.
5:11
[SPEAKER_05]: To who's benefit?
5:14
[SPEAKER_05]: And we all know who's benefit.
5:17
[SPEAKER_05]: It's the same people that are whispering in Tommy's ear.
5:19
[SPEAKER_05]: And this is why I found his, his epiphany, his question, his moment to be so, so compelling.
5:28
[SPEAKER_05]: because it's not that they don't know, it's, they want you to know that they don't know.
5:34
[SPEAKER_05]: And he stumbled on it, he was so close.
5:36
[SPEAKER_05]: It was like for a second, you know, it's like he got the talking point wrong.
5:43
[SPEAKER_05]: And then realized, oh, this is what I'm not supposed to say.
5:48
[SPEAKER_05]: This is the hot stove, I'm not supposed to touch.
5:51
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm not supposed to get the American people angry at the people who are profiting off of this system and Trump who made this system worse.
5:59
[SPEAKER_05]: No, no, we're gonna say, Trump's working really hard because it's those Democrats are socialists.
6:06
[SPEAKER_05]: It's the immigrants, I guess.
6:09
[SPEAKER_05]: And this is where you, you and me, we got more 20 days until election time.
6:14
[SPEAKER_05]: We got some, just a couple of days
6:18
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe this is something we take with us into the voting booth.
6:22
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe it's something we remember because I don't know that we've got enough people in representative bodies to ask the right questions.
6:32
[SPEAKER_05]: And that is how do we get a fair shake as the working class of this country?
6:37
[SPEAKER_05]: The people who actually pay the bills, the people who actually do the work, who earn the profit, but never seem to be able to put a buck in their pocket.
6:47
[SPEAKER_05]: Why don't we have enough people asking those simple questions?
6:51
[SPEAKER_05]: And maybe when you go to vote, maybe vote for somebody who will.
6:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I know, might be a socialist.
6:57
[SPEAKER_05]: Want to hear your thoughts?
6:58
[SPEAKER_05]: Rick and the Rick Smith show.com right back.
7:04
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Inter.
7:08
[SPEAKER_02]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1979.
7:11
[SPEAKER_05]: That was the day that the National March on Washington for lesbian and gay rights took place in Washington, D.C.
7:19
[SPEAKER_05]: of marchers ranged from his few as 75,000 to as many as 200,000.
7:25
[SPEAKER_05]: The year of the march was significant.
7:27
[SPEAKER_05]: It marked the 10th anniversary of the police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village.
7:34
[SPEAKER_05]: When police raided Stonewall, it sparked a series of protests that helped launch the modern LGBT rights movement.
7:42
[SPEAKER_05]: 10 years later, gay and lesbian Americans still faced significant employment and legal discrimination.
7:48
[SPEAKER_05]: Many also faced violence.
7:50
[SPEAKER_05]: The published program for the event included a tribute to Harvey Milk, the openly gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who had been assassinated a year earlier.
8:00
[SPEAKER_05]: lyrics to the song Harvey Milk's Body was written to the tune of John Brown's Body.
8:05
[SPEAKER_05]: The program also included an article urging March participants to lobby Capitol Hill for justice.
8:12
[SPEAKER_05]: A sample letter to Congress was printed as a template.
8:15
[SPEAKER_05]: It noted that many lesbian and gay men faced unjust discrimination in employment and called for change.
8:22
[SPEAKER_05]: The March organizers issued five demands.
8:25
[SPEAKER_05]: The second demand was that President Carter issue an order banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in the federal government, the military, and federally-contracted private employment.
8:36
[SPEAKER_05]: The program included a list of organizations that supported the march.
8:40
[SPEAKER_05]: Not many labor unions endorsed, with a few notable exceptions, such as the Actors' Equity Association, three AFSME locals and one American Federation of Teachers Local, more demonstrations in Washington, DC followed, a March held in 1993 drew crowds estimated at 1 million, a powerful gathering for the movement to end LGBT discrimination.
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the Rick Smith Show.
9:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, here is Rick Smith.
9:11
[SPEAKER_05]: So I go back to 300,000, 300,000.
9:22
[SPEAKER_05]: metric tons of of diesel fuel from Russia and and again I double-checked again it is about a half a day maybe it smids more maybe an hour more a day of our consumption and for that we basically sold our soul to Russia
9:38
[SPEAKER_05]: We've basically stuck it to all of our allies who we've punished over the years for dealing with Russia and oh, by the way, I gotta think that Vlad is laughing all the way to the bank because now we're giving him a little bit more if they have it, I mean, that's the other part.
9:53
[SPEAKER_05]: We don't even know if they have it, they can deliver it because their refineries are, yeah, they've been kind of hit.
9:59
[SPEAKER_05]: And oh, by the way, there's China in the wings it's gotta be just snickering going, yeah, you Americans keep doing the dumbest stuff.
10:08
[SPEAKER_05]: share some thoughts on maybe how all of this mess applies.
10:11
[SPEAKER_05]: I've asked our good friend Emily Dalyberia to come share some thoughts with us.
10:14
[SPEAKER_05]: She's a co-founder over at Horizon Advisory can check out their website Horizon Advisory.org.
10:20
[SPEAKER_05]: China is their focus.
10:23
[SPEAKER_05]: One of their policy ideologies.
10:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Emily, thanks for the good time for us.
10:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you for having me.
10:30
[SPEAKER_05]: So everything goes back to China.
10:31
[SPEAKER_05]: So I'm looking at this deal.
10:33
[SPEAKER_05]: Let's just start with the open-ended question.
10:35
[SPEAKER_05]: And not even before we get into it, this is a good deal bad deal if it's stupid or even dumber than that.
10:42
[SPEAKER_05]: How's China looking at this?
10:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, things are going great for China.
10:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Is the problem.
10:50
[SPEAKER_03]: We've made very clear that we do not have a ton of leverage.
10:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And we don't have a ton of leverage.
10:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And in that context, we are willing to sacrifice what we've put forward is like our great powers, strategic ambitions in the world, which include competing with China and Russia.
11:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And now what we're signaling to the world is that we're going to make concessions on that front.
11:17
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to try to make deals with China and Russia because we need their help.
11:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's not an ideal message to be sending to our greatest adversaries.
11:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, as Mr. Art of the Deal was rolling out this latest bed deal.
11:31
[SPEAKER_05]: I kept going, you know, because I keep thinking this for you've got me thinking in this frame that, you know, all of this is just benefiting China and ultimately the more we can see the more we, the more desperate we become because of these bad adventures and the money were just spending like crazy.
11:55
[SPEAKER_05]: stimulus money that we've spent that who knows where it's gone, it's just making us weaker and more dependent and I just, man, I'm struggling.
12:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I think like I look at everything with two main premises.
12:11
[SPEAKER_03]: One is we're in a zero sum competition on China.
12:14
[SPEAKER_03]: A win for China is a loss for us and vice versa.
12:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And second, if we're going to actually compete with China and try to fight them back from the efforts to control the world, it's going to come at a huge cost, right?
12:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, we're going to have to cut off our dependence on them to start making things at home to like eat the like actual literal cost of a world where China isn't, you know, sending cheap goods into America.
12:40
[SPEAKER_03]: That means that every dollar we spend on anything that's not China.
12:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And every step more dependent on Beijing that we become, that's putting us farther down the path of losing and losing is a really, really bad thing.
12:54
[SPEAKER_05]: And the other weird thing is, I remember, I remember campaign Trump in 2015, 2016.
13:00
[SPEAKER_05]: Every other word that seemed to come out of his mouth was what?
13:04
[SPEAKER_05]: China.
13:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, that's even how this administration started.
13:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's what's like the most frustrating thing is the first month and we talked about this the first months of this administration It was like we're going to have intense tariffs on China.
13:18
[SPEAKER_03]: We are going to build a trade barrier between us and them, which is what American
13:23
[SPEAKER_03]: needs and or needed to do in order to win?
13:27
[SPEAKER_05]: No, and I was saying that all wrong.
13:29
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to look.
13:29
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't agree with this administration on much, but maybe releasing us from the dependence and the grips of China and cheap goods and undoing some of the horrible things that have been done in the past.
13:41
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe that's a step in the right direction.
13:43
[SPEAKER_05]: I was hope I was
13:45
[SPEAKER_05]: naively naively I was kind of on the hopes that you know, maybe Trump is the guy who can get us out of permanent permanent normal trade relations.
13:53
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe Trump is the guy that's gonna go, no WTO, you gotta go through them out.
13:58
[SPEAKER_05]: You gotta do some more or move, remove us from it if you don't.
14:02
[SPEAKER_05]: I thought he could have been that guy, but
14:04
[SPEAKER_05]: No, I mean, it's all been grift.
14:07
[SPEAKER_05]: It's all been, you know, self-promotion.
14:10
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's all been ego.
14:12
[SPEAKER_05]: And his, you know, you can go back to every president and they've got a doctrine.
14:16
[SPEAKER_05]: The Trump doctrine seems to be, I have no morals or no core beliefs.
14:22
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just, however, I feel today and the policies or whatever whims come into my little pea brand.
14:35
[SPEAKER_03]: It's more expensive to produce in America.
14:38
[SPEAKER_03]: We have less deterrent against our biggest adversaries.
14:46
[SPEAKER_03]: The American population is not willing to get in another contest when we're already like in mesh in one that's losing and that's hurting our ways of life.
14:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And China can see all of this and is ready to take advantage of it.
14:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That's really bad.
15:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Like there aren't dueovers.
15:04
[SPEAKER_05]: No, you're absolutely worth a lot of time.
15:06
[SPEAKER_05]: We are not ready for any type of conflict.
15:08
[SPEAKER_05]: We are not ready for any type of sacrifice.
15:12
[SPEAKER_05]: Trump sold us on the idea that we could have Utopia.
15:15
[SPEAKER_05]: And we could still have our cheap stuff.
15:16
[SPEAKER_05]: And it was going to be all great.
15:18
[SPEAKER_05]: Gas was going to be a bucket gallon.
15:19
[SPEAKER_05]: Eggs are going to be a bucket dozen.
15:21
[SPEAKER_05]: Everything was going to come down.
15:22
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm rock it down.
15:23
[SPEAKER_05]: In fact, like a spaceship right to the ground, other than knowing that when a rocket comes back to Earth rapidly, that's generally when it crashes.
15:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and there's no, like I think what's, I don't know, I'm just going to go into like doomsday scenarios.
15:40
[SPEAKER_03]: So get me off that path soon.
15:42
[SPEAKER_03]: But I think that the scariest thing about it is that there's not going to be a good way to solve this, right?
15:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Like the only way you actually help, you know, freeing prices down or make things affordable, like bring back American opportunity is by producing things at home, is having an industrial base.
16:02
[SPEAKER_03]: every day that we don't build that back and becomes exponentially more days in order to do so.
16:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And our odds of doing so get a lot worse.
16:13
[SPEAKER_03]: This isn't going to be better if we move in a welfare state direction or if we just reverse the status quo.
16:20
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just moving farther away from a possible solution.
16:24
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, but I just read that I think Pennsylvania is going to get like an enormous sum of money to build more more missiles, so I think there's like a couple of billion dollars of investment that's coming to build missiles, so we're we're we're manufacturing stuff, Emily, you know more more weapons because we're we're blowing stuff up in the Middle East still still, which seems to be like, you know, my kids entire life.
16:48
[SPEAKER_05]: of dropping armaments on places in the Middle East for no real strategic game.
16:55
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, we seem to keep losing every time we do this.
16:59
[SPEAKER_05]: I know, you know, Trump dropped the bunker busters in Iran and I know we're still dropping bombs and doing stuff there, we're losing losing planes.
17:09
[SPEAKER_05]: I guess disaster capitalism is that the theory could that revive our economy?
17:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, don't give me wrong.
17:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Manufacturing, like, defense equipment, defense, like, munitions, what have you?
17:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It's, that's great, right?
17:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, it's worth brilliantly for us in the past.
17:26
[SPEAKER_03]: It does help the industrial base.
17:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, manufacturing is in its own right, a positive.
17:32
[SPEAKER_03]: You might play me for saying that, but I don't like, that is a step in the right direction.
17:36
[SPEAKER_03]: The problem is that right now in America, there is a systemic issue.
17:40
[SPEAKER_03]: in that there aren't the conditions necessary for our broader industrial base to be incentivized and to compete domestically, let alone in the international economy.
17:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So you can send targeted sums to manufacture targeted things, but what we need is like the larger systemic change that it's not the government putting its hand on the wheel and it's oh, it's competitive for us to be producing it out.
18:06
[SPEAKER_05]: Let me ask you this, you know, let's say we did.
18:09
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a stupidly Trump got us into a, we're now escalating and I ran.
18:14
[SPEAKER_05]: And that now becomes a larger conflict where we who knows who knows where it leads, where China then becomes what the US used to be in the past, which is the person who feeds the proxy wars.
18:26
[SPEAKER_05]: We become one of the proxy warriors instead of just feet funneling arms to them.
18:31
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, do we have the manufacturing capacity to keep up?
18:34
[SPEAKER_05]: I know people have said, you know, we got new gears, the build, you know, these missiles or that thing, do we have the manufacturing capacity even?
18:40
[SPEAKER_03]: No.
18:41
[SPEAKER_03]: We can't make anything without China.
18:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I think that's, that's what is like, that's not understood.
18:47
[SPEAKER_03]: We can't make anything.
18:48
[SPEAKER_03]: We can't even make the equipment to make things.
18:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And like that just, it means we don't have any security and we don't have any economic
18:59
[SPEAKER_03]: And if things keep going, the way they are, and China does replace us in a very different way because China's not gonna play the game the same way we did.
19:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Or is nicely frankly, for that matter, if China does replace us, there's no basis on which our economy exists.
19:14
[SPEAKER_05]: Wow, now let's go to this Russia deal, because again, diesel prices, you know, we're 20, two days from the election.
19:24
[SPEAKER_05]: people are complaining, you know, we're now letting in Texas anyway, they're going to have the agricultural fuel run in the big trucks, which means our food prices are going to go up because agricultural fuel is going to go up.
19:36
[SPEAKER_05]: We seem to be making every bad decision that you make when you're drowning.
19:40
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, if someone were to throw a throw us an anchor, I'm sure we would grab onto it right now And I think this Russia deal is part of it because again It maybe this looks stupid and we could again Trump saying there's a ceasefire on an energy You know production being harmed only to have Russia You know blow up a bunch of energy producing sites in Ukraine and neither side of agreeing that they agreed to anything
20:05
[SPEAKER_05]: And then Trump will say, no, I said, I said, and no, we're going, I don't think that we cares what you say at this point, but now we've made this deal with Russia.
20:12
[SPEAKER_05]: Does this, do you see this bringing, I know it's a long way to get to DSC prices coming down here in the next couple of days, weeks, months because of this wonderful deal, even just for a day before the election.
20:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I'm not a Russia expert, but like the basic addition of the question suggests that no.
20:29
[SPEAKER_03]: This is not going to change prices.
20:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you said it, like this is a drop in the bucket of our total domestic consumption, let alone the world.
20:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And that seems unlikely to change things.
20:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, like, there is just this fundamental reality clearly Washington is like wrapping itself in circles around
20:50
[SPEAKER_03]: midterms and energy prices because that's the immediate crisis.
20:55
[SPEAKER_03]: There's going to be a global energy crisis.
20:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you can't look at the basic facts or the basic math, the matter, and not see that.
21:04
[SPEAKER_03]: That was true months ago with the Iran War.
21:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Like,
21:07
[SPEAKER_03]: We have, there's already declining supply and that's not factoring in what happens next year in the year after that considering how much energy infrastructure has been taken out that won't be producing.
21:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
21:19
[SPEAKER_05]: And also the fact that, you know, and this is where I keep telling my red hat friends that, you know, the effects that
21:26
[SPEAKER_05]: The things that Trump is breaking today, we won't feel for years.
21:31
[SPEAKER_05]: The fact that Biden had us in Obama too, Obama had us on a path towards moving towards some renewables, they invested heavily in solar and wind and that stuff, and Biden was doing in battery technology and chip production and all of this stuff that they've kind of kneecapped.
21:48
[SPEAKER_05]: I shouldn't say kind of kneecapped, they have, they've kneecapped, they've
21:51
[SPEAKER_05]: And I keep saying, look, that was supposed to help us kind of just, and it's not gonna replace oil or diesel or gas or any of that, but maybe just cut off some of the massive increases so that we can almost possibly think about maybe keeping up.
22:07
[SPEAKER_05]: That's now done.
22:09
[SPEAKER_05]: So prices no matter what we're gonna go up and now you add in this idiotic, hey, let's go attack Iran who's only card to place since Trump loves cards is the shutdown, the straighter her moves and disrupt the oil flow of this planet.
22:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that.
22:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, here's how I think about it, right?
22:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's the, so,
22:32
[SPEAKER_03]: There's going to be an energy crisis.
22:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Like again, it is going to happen.
22:36
[SPEAKER_03]: We might already be there who knows.
22:38
[SPEAKER_03]: We're at this level right now of, oh no, energy crisis.
22:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Midterms coming up, what do we do?
22:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Who can we make a deal with tomorrow, like payday loan situation?
22:47
[SPEAKER_03]: We should be at this level here, which is, there's not going to be enough supply of energy.
22:53
[SPEAKER_03]: That's going to be the scarce commodity.
22:56
[SPEAKER_03]: How do we increase our strengths and energy here and now such that as supply of that goes down, we can be competitive in what people are competing for.
23:06
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh Emily, Emily, Emily, I love you, Emily.
23:09
[SPEAKER_05]: Have you not seen a Trump rally?
23:13
[SPEAKER_03]: But let's go back to the renewable thing.
23:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's stop making fun of me.
23:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Like the renewable thing too though, that's a huge issue and it goes back to the manufacturing question.
23:20
[SPEAKER_03]: China makes 99% of the world's solar energy inputs.
23:25
[SPEAKER_03]: All the way along the value chain, from Polycylicone to modules, two cells, two panels.
23:31
[SPEAKER_03]: The same holds slightly lesser degree, but is like increasingly there for wind, for batteries, for like future renewables like hydrogen.
23:41
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not good.
23:42
[SPEAKER_03]: That means that the energy of tomorrow, we are going to be wholly dependent on China for.
23:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And right now, one of our strengths is that we actually are around to the energy independent.
23:53
[SPEAKER_03]: That's then when we could do something and start trying, that's a way to revive our industrial base.
24:00
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, you tripped over something there.
24:02
[SPEAKER_05]: That I don't think my red hat's heard, and I gotta go back to it because I keep hearing every election, we got a drill baby drill, so we're in an energy independent.
24:11
[SPEAKER_05]: We are, in fact, we're a net exporter of energy, the largest exporter of oil, as I understand it of anyone, we drill baby drill a lot and we we we we we we're pushing for profit.
24:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Oil companies are thrilled happy.
24:27
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, is are we talking some measure of yeah energy independence has to start at home because look I wasn't against the Keystone XL pipeline if you could do one thing for me.
24:38
[SPEAKER_05]: if you could build it to Chicago, let's say, refine it and then, you know, keep it here to where it had to stay here.
24:46
[SPEAKER_05]: I may have been on board, but just to ship it out into the international market and maybe we get some of it back, maybe we don't, just seem kind of dumb for the risk of our entire water supply through to that part of the country.
25:01
[SPEAKER_05]: I just seemed like
25:06
[SPEAKER_03]: energy is a strategic resource.
25:07
[SPEAKER_03]: We should treat it as that.
25:09
[SPEAKER_03]: We should value energy independence, but yes, it should start at home.
25:15
[SPEAKER_03]: But again, like that, that should be true in renewables too.
25:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things we've done in industrial policy that's supposed to support renewable manufacturing is we've still let Chinese companies come in.
25:25
[SPEAKER_03]: This is like a real hobby horse you shouldn't get me on this one.
25:28
[SPEAKER_03]: We've still let Chinese control companies come in and get tax credits and be the ones to build facilities here.
25:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'd say like this is true of the Excel and it's true of any industrial policy that's intended to support renewable energy manufacturing.
25:40
[SPEAKER_03]: all of this should start at home and should help the American economy first.
25:43
[SPEAKER_05]: So let me ask you because Trump's running around saying, I'm bringing all these trillions of dollars in foreign investment in.
25:49
[SPEAKER_05]: Is this something we want?
25:50
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, do we want an Indian company to come build a steel mill that do we want another countries, industries to come in and take over our industries and give them tax credits and build them up?
26:03
[SPEAKER_05]: Is this something we should be cheering?
26:06
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I watch the Trump rallies.
26:08
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, whenever he says, I'm bringing in investment and we're going to have, you know, if he brings in Chinese car manufacturers, let's let's go there.
26:16
[SPEAKER_05]: Let's say he brings in BYD and they say, yeah, we're going to, we're going to build it there.
26:20
[SPEAKER_05]: We're going to hire your workers.
26:23
[SPEAKER_05]: And then they build a plant and they come and they do all of the things that horrible US companies do only to the next level of union busting and poverty wages and all of the
26:36
[SPEAKER_03]: If Chinese automakers come into America, we will not have an auto sector anymore.
26:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And if we don't have an auto sector anymore, our economy is going to shrink.
26:44
[SPEAKER_03]: More than I think is conceivable for anybody in America today.
26:49
[SPEAKER_05]: There you go, that's where we leave it.
26:51
[SPEAKER_05]: Emily, as always, amazing.
26:53
[SPEAKER_05]: Correct.
26:53
[SPEAKER_05]: No, look at it.
26:53
[SPEAKER_05]: The talk.
26:54
[SPEAKER_05]: No, I mean, this is one of the things you do.
26:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, this is where you have to leave it because look, if that's not a shock enough, that if you go, hey, if you touch the hot stuff, they're going to look like a kid, you go, hey, that's hot.
27:06
[SPEAKER_05]: my son had to learn the hard way.
27:07
[SPEAKER_05]: We've got pictures.
27:08
[SPEAKER_05]: He said, hey, that's hot.
27:10
[SPEAKER_05]: Don't touch it.
27:10
[SPEAKER_05]: He's going, I don't believe you.
27:12
[SPEAKER_05]: He puts his head.
27:13
[SPEAKER_05]: He's like, oh, oh, it's hot.
27:14
[SPEAKER_05]: You go, yeah.
27:15
[SPEAKER_05]: Now you wear a sock for a week.
27:18
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe we, maybe we have to wear the sock for a week and then figure it out or maybe we just, we lose the arm.
27:25
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
27:28
[SPEAKER_05]: That is the right response.
27:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Emily, great talk with you.
27:31
[SPEAKER_05]: I appreciate it.
27:32
[SPEAKER_05]: Likewise.
27:33
[SPEAKER_05]: Our good friend Emily Dalyberia.
27:35
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to hear your thoughts.
27:36
[SPEAKER_05]: Make sure you check out their website horizonadvisory.org.
27:39
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to hear your thoughts.
27:41
[SPEAKER_05]: Are you thrilled?
27:42
[SPEAKER_05]: Would you be happy bringing in Chinese investment?
27:44
[SPEAKER_05]: Working for a Chinese company?
27:46
[SPEAKER_05]: We saw what happened out in Ohio.
27:48
[SPEAKER_05]: When they took over that glass manufacturing plant, imagine that across the country.
27:53
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to hear it.
27:53
[SPEAKER_05]: Rick at therixmitshow.com right back.
28:00
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
28:03
[SPEAKER_05]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1976.
28:07
[SPEAKER_05]: That was the day more than 1 million Canadian workers walked off the job in a day of protest.
28:13
[SPEAKER_05]: The Canadian Labor Congress called the General Strike.
28:16
[SPEAKER_05]: Workers down their tools against a three-year wage control plan implemented by then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
28:23
[SPEAKER_05]: Trudeau had actually campaigned against wage controls during the 1974 election.
28:29
[SPEAKER_05]: A year later, the Liberal government introduced the C-73 anti-inflation bill.
28:34
[SPEAKER_05]: It was considered the worst attack on labor since the 1930s when bargaining rights were first legalized.
28:41
[SPEAKER_05]: Trudeau's wage controls suspended collective bargaining rights for all workers and amounted to deep wage cuts.
28:49
[SPEAKER_05]: Public sector workers were hit the hardest, as many hospitals, schools, and municipal workers tethered on the edge of desperation from already low wages made worse.
29:04
[SPEAKER_05]: Forestry, mining, and auto production all completely shut down.
29:09
[SPEAKER_05]: Many towns and cities were 100% on strike even among the non-union workforce.
29:15
[SPEAKER_05]: Say, John in New Brunswick, Sudbury, Ontario, Septial Quebec, and Thompson in Manitoba were all cities where the strike was most successful.
29:25
[SPEAKER_05]: But elsewhere, the strike was uneven.
29:27
[SPEAKER_05]: Many public sector workers stayed on the job while in cities like Vancouver, pickets successfully shut down bus service and newspaper delivery.
29:36
[SPEAKER_05]: Most hurled at the day of protest as a fierce show of power against a year's worth of wage controls.
29:43
[SPEAKER_05]: But others argued that one day of action was not enough.
29:47
[SPEAKER_05]: To combat the attacks on labor, any general strike would have to keep the country shut down until the program of wage controls
29:55
[SPEAKER_05]: Like what you hear, check out more at LaborHistoryInto.com.
30:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The high-tech profiteers of artificial intelligence are now going nuclear.
30:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Grassroots Americans did not swallow Silicon Valley's opening deceit that AI data centers would be a bonanza for local communities.
30:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the billionaires escalated their land, water, and power grab by assaling the opponents as luttites,
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: People of all political stripes erupted in open rebellion against the self-serving arrogance of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and other toned-f-a-i-i-order crats.
30:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So now comes their PR on slot.
30:49
[SPEAKER_00]: A-i's money powers desperate to control government policy, the media message and public debate, are now dumping untold billions into mass market propaganda, portraying a-i-i somewhere between
31:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Multi-trillion dollar tech July 5th Google, for example, is producing movies and streaming a series of macro dramas, depicting AI as a source of loving comfort and human connection in an alien future.
31:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And gosh, not only do their novellas tell sweet tales of artificial love as though it's real, but Google allows viewers to, quote, interact with the AI characters.
31:29
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jim Heiter saying, Google is my straws of deceit, assure us that the intent of their recent rush of movies about AI is merely to tell the story about this dazzling technology authentically.
31:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Authentic?
31:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I was born at night, but not last night.
31:45
[SPEAKER_00]: A trillion dollar profiteering behemoth, peddling the AI robotic future is hardly to be trusted as an unbiased source.
31:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Google's movies are pure PR propaganda,
31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only profit-taring ski.
32:17
[SPEAKER_05]: And like I loved some of the candidates the conversations that are being had the guy in Michigan I gotta tell you the guy in Michigan the more I hear him talk about the kind of future We want to have in this country the the happier I am in the more I go maybe Democrats you spend more time Listen to the guy in Michigan else I eat about about
32:36
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the economy and what we should be doing.
32:40
[SPEAKER_05]: And again, one of these things that I've been talking about is social security.
32:43
[SPEAKER_05]: I think Republicans are more than happy to let the clock run out and let a quarter of your social security money just be wiped away, because hey, we couldn't figure out a simple one-line piece of legislation, which would be scrapped a cap.
32:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Make everybody pay the same, increase the amount of the things that we tax as income,
33:03
[SPEAKER_05]: so that we can bring more money into social security and make sure that Granny doesn't have to choose between medicine and cat food in here to share some thoughts.
33:11
[SPEAKER_05]: And maybe what that could look like, I've asked our good friend Morris, Pearl to come share some thoughts.
33:15
[SPEAKER_05]: Morris is the chairman of the Patriotic Millionaires.
33:17
[SPEAKER_05]: You can check out their website patrioticmillionaires.org.
33:21
[SPEAKER_05]: Morris, thanks for taking time for us.
33:23
[SPEAKER_04]: great to be in your show where.
33:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
33:25
[SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, I look at social security 2032 they're saying, look, if we do nothing, if we just a lot of nothing to happen about a quarter of social security and people even receiving it now, these aren't future people, people were receiving, they're going to get a haircut of about 23 to 25 percent.
33:43
[SPEAKER_05]: It seemed like there's a simple solution to this.
33:45
[SPEAKER_05]: You got any ideas?
33:47
[SPEAKER_04]: First of all,
33:48
[SPEAKER_04]: That's ridiculous to tell people who've been putting in all their whole lives based on this promise that based on some technical rules, oh, we're going to cut your benefits instead of increasing them.
34:02
[SPEAKER_04]: The United States government issues money.
34:06
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't run out of money.
34:08
[SPEAKER_04]: It's just some accounting fiction that they know, we don't have enough money here in this particular packet to pay your benefits.
34:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And secondly, even with that system, they could just make everyone on social security, pay the same rate.
34:24
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, someone was high income, pays a far lower rate.
34:29
[SPEAKER_04]: in someone who has a normal kind of income, because they only charge you up until a certain cap, 140 some a thousand dollars now, I think.
34:39
[SPEAKER_04]: If you make more than that, you don't pay the full social security tax.
34:44
[SPEAKER_04]: That's ridiculous.
34:46
[SPEAKER_04]: If they can just make everyone pay the same rate of social security taxes, that will solve their problem, even if you accept the fact that they have a
34:57
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, no, I mean, it's one of those things where you go, it seems simple, even a dump truck driver like me could get it.
35:03
[SPEAKER_05]: Why can't we get it through through DC?
35:05
[SPEAKER_05]: How is it this difficult to say, look, you know, I pay on a hundred percent of my earned income.
35:12
[SPEAKER_05]: Why shouldn't everyone?
35:13
[SPEAKER_05]: Because I think, I think,
35:15
[SPEAKER_05]: I think the re-education of what social security is is kind of important.
35:18
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not a retirement plan.
35:20
[SPEAKER_05]: It really was an anti-poverty program.
35:23
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that was also a retirement component because we were supposed to have the three-legged stool.
35:28
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm sure you remember that, Morris.
35:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
35:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Social security had defined benefit pension from your years of work.
35:34
[SPEAKER_05]: and a little bit of savings.
35:35
[SPEAKER_05]: So the whole, everybody had a role in this.
35:37
[SPEAKER_05]: But look, we've destroyed the defined benefit pension for nobody even remembers we had them.
35:43
[SPEAKER_05]: And well, you know, with wages stagnating for 50 years, that savings has been dwindled down.
35:47
[SPEAKER_05]: So we're relying more heavily on social security than ever.
35:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Social security is insurance because you don't know how long you're going to live.
35:58
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't save up enough money in any practical way because you might live to the 80, you might live to the 90, you might live to the 100.
36:06
[SPEAKER_04]: So you can't spend your money because you don't know how long you're gonna need it for.
36:12
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why we need a program like Social Security.
36:17
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, but here we go.
36:18
[SPEAKER_05]: We've got the election coming up and you know, just about 20 days.
36:21
[SPEAKER_05]: I guess it is, you know, we're ticking down to the number of days.
36:25
[SPEAKER_05]: We've got to the election time.
36:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
36:27
[SPEAKER_05]: This is where you make our choices.
36:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Elections have consequences.
36:30
[SPEAKER_05]: On the last election didn't go so well for for people like me.
36:34
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't want Donald Trump.
36:36
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't want with the Republicans brought us.
36:37
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't want the policies that they put in place.
36:40
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't want another $1.9 trillion deficit that got us another nothing.
36:45
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't want a war in Iran.
36:48
[SPEAKER_05]: I didn't want what's come out of this.
36:50
[SPEAKER_05]: This is an opportunity to help fix some of that.
36:53
[SPEAKER_05]: But also not just take us back to the days before Donald Trump, but you know, I would argue the days before Reagan.
37:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Those even the Democrats who tell me, oh, we're gonna undo what Trump did over the last two, four, six, 10 years.
37:11
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not enough.
37:13
[SPEAKER_04]: 10 years ago, before Donald Trump was elected, people were not happy.
37:19
[SPEAKER_04]: That's why they voted for Donald Trump because the Democrats were not doing a good job.
37:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Even 10 years ago,
37:29
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to do better.
37:30
[SPEAKER_04]: We have to move forward.
37:31
[SPEAKER_04]: We can't just say, oh, we're going to restore things to where they were 10 years ago.
37:36
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not enough.
37:37
[SPEAKER_04]: We need bold, new ideas.
37:40
[SPEAKER_04]: We need to actually tax rich people.
37:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Like my book says, we need to tax the rich people.
37:47
[SPEAKER_04]: We need to recognize there's a difference between having eye and gum and being filthy rich.
37:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Plenty of people make money.
37:59
[SPEAKER_04]: but then they pay huge amounts of taxes out of their paycheck every single week.
38:05
[SPEAKER_04]: But then you get the really rich people.
38:08
[SPEAKER_04]: Not the guy playing basketball for the next, the guy who owns the basketball.
38:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.
38:15
[SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't pay any tax at all, because he doesn't have any income.
38:20
[SPEAKER_04]: Somebody like Dolan,
38:22
[SPEAKER_04]: You're a billionaire, what do you need income for?
38:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And if you don't have income, you don't pay income taxes.
38:28
[SPEAKER_04]: We need bold new ideas.
38:30
[SPEAKER_04]: We can't just have more of the same.
38:33
[SPEAKER_04]: it's not enough.
38:34
[SPEAKER_05]: So are they bold new ideas or are they common sense ideas from the past because I keep going back to you know, my grandparents generation, you were in the heart of their work in the lives.
38:43
[SPEAKER_05]: We had a top marginal tax rate of 92 percent.
38:46
[SPEAKER_05]: We had a corporate rate of 56 percent.
38:49
[SPEAKER_05]: Everybody paid, everybody paid more in taxes.
38:52
[SPEAKER_05]: I know the tax, the the tea party people would would disagree with me.
38:56
[SPEAKER_05]: But back when my grandparents were working, the more you earned, the more you paid in taxes because it seemed almost unlimited.
39:02
[SPEAKER_05]: But we had schools that were funded.
39:04
[SPEAKER_05]: We had a health care that was available.
39:07
[SPEAKER_05]: We had, you know, higher education that was affordable.
39:10
[SPEAKER_05]: We had infrastructure.
39:11
[SPEAKER_05]: We were investing in technology to the cutting edge of technology and not creating potential trillionaires off of what we need.
39:19
[SPEAKER_05]: It seems like we've kind of reinvented the guilty age only in a much more supercharged way and forgotten what made really the country great,
39:33
[SPEAKER_04]: And worse, people like Andrew Carnegie actually thought about the country and funded stuff like Carnegie Mellon University, like the Carnegie Libraries, like the Carnegie Foundation, like so many things.
39:47
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, he was greedy and yes, he did a lot of things and got very rich, but he also at least thought about his nation.
39:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, we people getting richer and richer and richer, and all they think about is changing the laws, so they could even richer again.
40:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Our country was founded, founded, we didn't have an income tax, we had a tax on wealth, all done real wealth and basically wealth meant land to back then, and that was the tax most people paid where wealthy was a real estate tax.
40:20
[SPEAKER_04]: They paid a tax and basically all of their wealth
40:25
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, middle-class homeowners still do.
40:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Most of your viewers and listeners, they do pay attacks and most of their wealth because most of their wealth is their houses, but not the really rich people.
40:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Some do like Elon Musk, hardly pay any tax at all.
40:41
[SPEAKER_04]: He might, he does own a house somewhere, but he pays a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of his wealth in taxes.
40:48
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not fair.
40:50
[SPEAKER_04]: It makes the rich richer.
40:51
[SPEAKER_04]: It makes everyone else just have trouble getting by,
40:55
[SPEAKER_05]: But here's the thing, and I think having someone like me say that doesn't kind of carry the weight that someone like you saying it is, like you're we're in very different tax brackets.
41:05
[SPEAKER_05]: So to hear someone with your accumulated wealth, they look tax me more, it makes me go well.
41:11
[SPEAKER_05]: as someone who believes in radical self-interest and I do.
41:14
[SPEAKER_05]: I think most people act not out of benevolence, but out of radical self-interest.
41:18
[SPEAKER_05]: I think Carnegie and that generation understood if they didn't give a little something back, the pitchforks might come out and they who knows what happens.
41:28
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, they did some stuff, they slapped their name on stuff, they wanted a legacy, so that was part of their self-interest.
41:35
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, how does someone like you go, hey, tax me more.
41:37
[SPEAKER_05]: I, you won the game more as you're the guy who, you can do whatever you want, wherever you want, however you want.
41:44
[SPEAKER_05]: Why do you care?
41:45
[SPEAKER_05]: Look, that's the whole point.
41:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I want, I'm not, it's the land's are pissed.
41:52
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not totally altruistic.
41:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm looking for what I think is my self-interest.
41:58
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm voting and working for what I think is best.
42:03
[SPEAKER_04]: And that means having the country for my granddaughter to grow up in, like where I grew up, I don't want to live in a place where the rich people are behind big tall walls with bargoyre fences on top.
42:17
[SPEAKER_04]: I've been to countries like that.
42:19
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not right.
42:20
[SPEAKER_04]: She was even going to vacation anymore.
42:22
[SPEAKER_04]: I want my granddaughter to grow up in the kind of country I did, and that means not having an oligarchy, not having this gross inequality that's making people, frankly, give up on democracy.
42:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not having riots in the streets, like when I was an Athens Greece in 2013, like we had in South Africa during my lifetime, those did not end well for the rich people.
42:52
[SPEAKER_05]: Now, I was visiting your website over at patrioticmillionaires.org.
42:56
[SPEAKER_05]: I hope folks will check that out.
42:57
[SPEAKER_05]: You guys are pushing this money agenda.
43:00
[SPEAKER_05]: And I love the money agenda.
43:02
[SPEAKER_05]: And we get to join team money.
43:04
[SPEAKER_05]: That seems like the most American thing ever.
43:08
[SPEAKER_05]: But I don't think it's what it sounds like, because you guys aren't pushing the greed angle.
43:13
[SPEAKER_05]: Tell me about the money agenda.
43:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Look, we have a couple of pieces.
43:16
[SPEAKER_04]: The first piece is what we call the Working Americans Tax Cut Act, Working Americans Tax Cut Act.
43:23
[SPEAKER_04]: Zero taxes for people that are in less than a living wage.
43:28
[SPEAKER_04]: That's around $45,000 a year for a single person.
43:32
[SPEAKER_04]: Zero federal income taxes, if you are less than that.
43:36
[SPEAKER_04]: That's part one.
43:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Then, to make that,
43:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Revenue neutral for the nasaers, we have extra brackets or people are in seven figures.
43:44
[SPEAKER_04]: So the whole thing's revenue neutral in the working Americans tax cut act.
43:48
[SPEAKER_04]: Send a sponsor by Senator Chris Van Hollen.
43:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, the second piece is called the Equal Tax Act.
43:57
[SPEAKER_04]: What that does is it makes people who have realized capital gains, pay the same tax rates as people who've earned income.
44:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, earned income is tax iteration, we like 10% up to 30 something percent.
44:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Under our law, and currently earned income is tax rates from 10% up to 30 something percent.
44:21
[SPEAKER_04]: And,
44:22
[SPEAKER_04]: realized capital gains, which is how I make some of my money, is taxed at tax rates of zero up until high five figures, 15% up until very high five, six figures, and then only 20% after that.
44:37
[SPEAKER_04]: So even if I do sell my stock and make a huge crop, I still pay a far lower tax rate than anyone who works for living and makes a fraction of that much money.
44:47
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's the equal tax act.
44:52
[SPEAKER_04]: which is hopefully going to be introduced next we couple of weeks is going to have corporations that pay less than a living wage, pay an exercise tax, okay?
45:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you have an employer that employs thousands of people and makes millions of dollars in a revenue, if they pay less than a living wage,
45:14
[SPEAKER_04]: They're going to pay a certain percentage of the difference starting at 10% point to 100% up to 10 years as an exercise tax.
45:22
[SPEAKER_04]: The idea is that the corporations and employee lots of people will within a few years decide it's cheaper to pay their people living wage rather than being extra tax.
45:34
[SPEAKER_04]: The extra tax makes up for the fact that some of these people that don't make enough to live on from their jobs have to get government benefits to live on.
45:42
[SPEAKER_04]: So those are the three pieces that we're working on right now.
45:45
[SPEAKER_05]: And again, this all comes back to the political angle of things.
45:49
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, people say, well, you know, we shouldn't be involved in everything shouldn't be about politics.
45:53
[SPEAKER_05]: Everything is politics.
45:54
[SPEAKER_05]: I go back to my eighth grade civics teacher.
45:57
[SPEAKER_05]: The reality is, is government decides who gets what and we've decided that folks who look a lot like you, get a lot more of them people who are wearing the kind of shoes I wear.
46:06
[SPEAKER_05]: and we we need to do something about that and that's where politics comes in and I was looking at your website and I hope folks will take a look at patriotic millionaires.org to see the candidates that you guys have championed as as money agenda champions.
46:20
[SPEAKER_05]: And I look at the guy in Michigan this al-sayed guy who I like what he says all of the attacks on him being whatever he is by by Rogers and Trump and the clanker.
46:31
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... i gotta tell you i like the way he talks about the economy and the choices that are being made uh... i think democrats need to do a lot more of that kind of messaging yes yes and they're running against him based on the color of his skin and the pronunciation of his name and not out as policies though he was like the chief health officer the health commissioner in michigan and he saw with his own eyes
46:59
[SPEAKER_04]: how they were just taking the money away from the programs, they were helping people.
47:04
[SPEAKER_04]: He was supplying eyeglasses to kids going to school so they could see and do their lessons.
47:12
[SPEAKER_04]: That cost almost nothing, and I guarantee it saved money the long run because we had educated people who get jobs and work and pay taxes for a tiny amount of money.
47:22
[SPEAKER_04]: If you, oh no, we can't use taxpayers money to pay for poor people.
47:28
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know what that's locked them up because it's a cheaper to do that yes.
47:34
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, if it was only true.
47:36
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, no, but I come back to it and look, the reality is we do need more people in the halls of power in our Senate and in our house who understand what it's like to be a working person and and have to have to make it to the end of the week.
47:49
[SPEAKER_05]: And I know you guys have a part of the money agenda champions, my good friend, Richo Jetta in North Carolina, Bob Brooks, your point extra in Ohio, Sam Forestag who's been on this program a couple of times.
48:02
[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot of these folks who are talking about the kind of populist message that I think the red hat class wants Just doesn't know where where it's coming from and look, Trump did one thing well He got working people to go hey, I'm angry about some stuff and he did point in the in a direction
48:22
[SPEAKER_05]: His solutions, his ideas, the things he's done hasn't made any of it better.
48:28
[SPEAKER_05]: That actually made it worse.
48:30
[SPEAKER_05]: But I don't want to go back to pre-Trump.
48:31
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to go back to like we said a moment ago.
48:34
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to go forward to something that's better for my kids.
48:37
[SPEAKER_05]: Me, I'm out of this already.
48:39
[SPEAKER_05]: I want something better for them.
48:41
[SPEAKER_04]: What Trump offered wasn't solving the problems.
48:45
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, I will be your retribution.
48:47
[SPEAKER_04]: That's what he offered them.
48:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's what some people voted for.
48:51
[SPEAKER_04]: That doesn't put food on the table, though, being a retribution.
48:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, in two tariffs on everything, that will be retribution all right.
49:00
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, the purpose of tariffs, the purpose of a tariff is to make prices higher so that corporations can make higher profits.
49:09
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the purpose of a tariff.
49:11
[SPEAKER_04]: And some people are getting very rich because of tariffs.
49:15
[SPEAKER_04]: And that, and because people are paying higher prices, that is making the people who make things in the United States, not the people who make things with their hands, the people who make things sitting at their desks, watching numbers on their computer screens, go up because they don't stock in the companies.
49:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Those people like me are getting richer.
49:34
[SPEAKER_05]: So before I let you go, I've got a guy who's been emailing me for a week's going.
49:37
[SPEAKER_05]: You got to get Morris Pearl on.
49:38
[SPEAKER_05]: You got to get the patriotic millionaires back on the show.
49:41
[SPEAKER_05]: You got to get rich people to say, tax us, we need these things.
49:45
[SPEAKER_05]: So do me a favor.
49:47
[SPEAKER_05]: What's the solution to many of our problems, whether it's social security, whether it's stagnant in the climbing wages, whether it's health care benefits that are going to be robbed from us?
49:56
[SPEAKER_05]: What's the solution in the patriotic millionaires world?
50:00
[SPEAKER_05]: And just in 30 seconds.
50:01
[SPEAKER_05]: What do we do?
50:02
[SPEAKER_05]: What do you want a congress, a president, a political system to do?
50:08
[SPEAKER_04]: The solution is forget about this trickle-down thing.
50:11
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't give money to rich people and think, oh, it's going to trickle-down to everyone else.
50:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Give money to the actual people who don't have enough money.
50:19
[SPEAKER_04]: It's that simple.
50:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Rich people take some of their money in taxes and give it to the people who don't have enough money.
50:27
[SPEAKER_04]: That is the solution.
50:30
[SPEAKER_05]: seems fairly simple.
50:31
[SPEAKER_05]: If only, if only.
50:33
[SPEAKER_05]: But Morris, as always, I appreciate the time.
50:36
[SPEAKER_05]: Great work over there.
50:37
[SPEAKER_05]: I hope folks will check out the money agenda over at patrioticmillionaires.org.
50:42
[SPEAKER_05]: We'll get links out on social media.
50:43
[SPEAKER_05]: How you can join up and become part of team money, which I just find kind of funny.
50:48
[SPEAKER_05]: But Morris, thanks so much for the time.
50:51
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you Rick, great to be in your show.
50:52
[SPEAKER_05]: Good stuff as always.
50:53
[SPEAKER_05]: Wanna hear your thoughts?
50:55
[SPEAKER_05]: Now you get a joint team money?
50:57
[SPEAKER_05]: And what's that gonna mean for you?
50:58
[SPEAKER_05]: What do you want?
50:59
[SPEAKER_05]: What do we want in this political cycle?
51:02
[SPEAKER_05]: I think I think I know decent jobs, opportunity for our kids, good schools, safe neighborhoods, stuff we agree on.
51:11
[SPEAKER_05]: I wanna hear your thoughts.
51:12
[SPEAKER_05]: Rick and the ricksmithshow.com, right back.
51:19
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Inter.
51:23
[SPEAKER_05]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1933.
51:26
[SPEAKER_05]: That was the day that the executive council of the American Federation of Labor decided to call for a boycott of Nazi Germany's goods and services.
51:36
[SPEAKER_05]: Jewish Labor Leaders in the United States let the push for the boycott.
51:40
[SPEAKER_05]: They were alarmed about the news coming from Germany since eight-off Hitler had taken over as Chancellor that January.
51:46
[SPEAKER_05]: The day after the boycott decision, American Federation of Labor President William Green spoke with a reporter saying, we found fresh justification for our action yesterday in today's announcement of Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations and disarmament conference.
52:02
[SPEAKER_05]: In the months that followed the boycott, Jewish Labor Leaders continued to organize.
52:07
[SPEAKER_05]: In 1934, they formed the Jewish Labor Committee, a new organization headquartered in New York, said it.
52:13
[SPEAKER_05]: That year, the head of the Jewish Labor Committee, Baruch Charney Valetech, addressed the convention of the American Federation of Labor in San Francisco.
52:21
[SPEAKER_05]: He urged for more union action.
52:24
[SPEAKER_05]: In response, the American Federation of Labor founded the Labor Chast.
52:28
[SPEAKER_05]: The fund was established to aid in refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.
52:33
[SPEAKER_05]: It was also to support public education about the rising threat of fascism.
52:38
[SPEAKER_05]: In 1936, the AFL's Chairman of the Labor Chast
52:41
[SPEAKER_05]: Matthew Wall declared that the events in Germany, quote, concern us as deeply as the cause of labor, and that we shall spare no effort to help the victims of this regime.
52:52
[SPEAKER_05]: That same year, the Jewish Labor Committee organized a world labor athletic carnival in New York, said it.
52:58
[SPEAKER_05]: The aim was to draw attention away from the Olympics that were being held in Nazi Germany.
53:04
[SPEAKER_05]: American Federation of Labor President William Green served as one of the
53:11
[SPEAKER_05]: Labor history in two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smithsia for more information go to laborhistoryintu.com
53:33
[SPEAKER_05]: So again, I think it has more disappointed out.
53:35
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to go back to pre-trop.
53:38
[SPEAKER_05]: I think that's a failure.
53:39
[SPEAKER_05]: I think it's a mistake.
53:40
[SPEAKER_05]: I think the folks who are saying, you know, we just need to undo all the damage that Trump has done missing kind of a point.
53:47
[SPEAKER_05]: And that point is, these things were not great.
53:50
[SPEAKER_05]: Prior, just throwing that out there, because understand, the anger was real.
53:56
[SPEAKER_05]: And it was earned, understand.
53:58
[SPEAKER_05]: Trump didn't create it.
53:59
[SPEAKER_05]: He picked up on it and he pinned it on immigrants and the swamp that he evidently has recreated.
54:09
[SPEAKER_05]: or that was always there and he was always in bed with and you know he's he's figured out where to get we're to point the cat pointer for a good section of the American populist to spend their attention.
54:23
[SPEAKER_05]: What he never really did point out is that the bosses were caching in the entire time.
54:29
[SPEAKER_05]: The wealth class of this country is doing really, really freaking well.
54:34
[SPEAKER_05]: And understand, Democrats just didn't get it.
54:37
[SPEAKER_05]: And look, I've been screaming about that for years.
54:41
[SPEAKER_05]: And Democrats, look, I've been saying for 21 years, I've been doing this job.
54:46
[SPEAKER_05]: That Democrats haven't been great on these issues.
54:50
[SPEAKER_05]: They've been far, far better than the party of the bosses, the GOP, but even so, I'm sorry, going back to 2015, not really a plan that I'm all in on.
55:04
[SPEAKER_05]: because you're just setting ourselves up for the next, the next chaos.
55:09
[SPEAKER_05]: The goal of the Democratic Party right now should be to one own the anger, own the fact that you were complicit in some of it, to an extent, tried to court those same billionaires who have completely flipped and turned on.
55:25
[SPEAKER_05]: And then try and earn back all the trust and the respect of the people who are really and rightfully angry over the policies that you are kind of part of.
55:37
[SPEAKER_05]: understand, these facts are far from memory and haven't been part of things for a while, but going back to some of our bad trade deals that Democrats got on board with because you think of NAFTA.
55:50
[SPEAKER_05]: The one thing when you talk to a working class person, the one thing they point to, they point to NAFTA.
55:57
[SPEAKER_05]: They point to Bill Clinton signing NAFTA.
56:00
[SPEAKER_05]: They talked to him giving permanent normal trade relations to China.
56:04
[SPEAKER_05]: They talk about that decision right there.
56:07
[SPEAKER_05]: A gutting factory towns and screwing up what they believe was their birthright.
56:15
[SPEAKER_05]: Understand, there were Democrats like Clinton who came along.
56:19
[SPEAKER_05]: The entire Republic of Establishment was on board well before Bill Clinton.
56:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Understand, NAFTA was birthed under Ronald Reagan.
56:29
[SPEAKER_05]: It was a Reagan idea.
56:31
[SPEAKER_05]: He was fully negotiated during the George H.W.
56:33
[SPEAKER_05]: Bush years.
56:35
[SPEAKER_05]: It was gonna happen.
56:37
[SPEAKER_05]: That election in 92 for folks who were around.
56:39
[SPEAKER_05]: There was only one guy who was saying maybe not.
56:42
[SPEAKER_05]: And that was the crazy little guy with the big ears who was right on the giant sucking sound.
56:49
[SPEAKER_05]: But both Bush and Clinton were like, yeah, we're just at the future and you know, the future we need trade, but this idea of open borders, sorry, on trade, not, not also we need to stop bailing out Wall Street.
57:07
[SPEAKER_05]: We need to stop bailing up big bankers and big corporations and start bailing up Main Street.
57:14
[SPEAKER_05]: If we're going to fix something that aren't billionaire classes created, maybe there should be some trickle down.
57:22
[SPEAKER_05]: Democrats should be pushing for a much higher minimum wage, not just something that gets, gets a little bit of a bump, but something that changes lives.
57:31
[SPEAKER_05]: We need something better than the Employee Free Choice Act.
57:35
[SPEAKER_05]: The top priority of the Democrats right now should how do we get life more affordable and how you do that as higher wages Give people the ability to fight for better wages hours conditions strength in unions in this country.
57:48
[SPEAKER_05]: That's an idea something we should be doing we should be doing whole full speed ahead and Then we should be talking about real reform to health care.
57:58
[SPEAKER_05]: Look the affordable carac did some good things Also did some things that you know haven't been right
58:04
[SPEAKER_05]: uh... we do need to we need to we need to uncorporatize health care we need to figure out how to make it well something that we all benefit from and that billionaires don't line their pockets with seems like same rational thoughts and you know the reality is is until we undo some of the damage that's been done you know break in era forward uh... the working class anger will remain
58:32
[SPEAKER_05]: And understand, if you do these things, Democrats, if El Said and Michigan and some of the other voices that are out there who are socialist or hate America, if their policies get enacted, even the red hats are gonna benefit.
58:46
[SPEAKER_05]: And you know what, like the ACA, like the ACA, they're gonna go away to second.
58:51
[SPEAKER_05]: This actually helped.
58:53
[SPEAKER_05]: This actually has made my life a little bit better.
58:56
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe maybe we should hold on to it before we chuck it.
59:01
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe.
59:03
[SPEAKER_05]: But we're, again, we're being red-bated.
59:05
[SPEAKER_05]: Socialism scared.
59:07
[SPEAKER_05]: All because while the wealth class knows, once we realize our government should be doing things for all of us, the things collectively we can't do individually.
59:17
[SPEAKER_05]: And there, the ones we're going to have to chip in.
59:20
[SPEAKER_05]: They don't want that.
59:21
[SPEAKER_05]: They don't want us figure in that out.
59:24
[SPEAKER_05]: So the countdown to mid-terms are coming.
59:26
[SPEAKER_05]: I hope you've got a plan to vote.
59:28
[SPEAKER_05]: Want to hear your thoughts?
59:29
[SPEAKER_05]: Rick at therixmithshow.com.
59:31
[SPEAKER_05]: This is any portion of the program.
59:32
[SPEAKER_05]: Grab the podcast.
59:33
[SPEAKER_05]: And as always, thanks so much for being here.
59:36
[SPEAKER_05]: We'll see you back here next time.
59:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Until next time, this has been The Rick Smith Show.
59:57
[SPEAKER_02]: We're working people, come to talk.