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The Rick Smith Show 8-17-2026 · The Rick Smith Show

0:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It's time for the Rick Smith show.
0:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, here is the voice of the working class, Rick Smith.
0:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And welcome, brothers, sisters working class heroes.
0:16
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the Rick Smith Show.
0:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much for being here.
0:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Today on the big program, I'm lost to get too lots to talk about.
0:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Tuesday, Trump had a truth, social post that caught my attention.
0:27
[SPEAKER_02]: He truth, rich people and companies are pouring out a dumb-o-cratt-run blue-states at levels never seen before.
0:35
[SPEAKER_02]: If this trend continues, these states will become the ghettos of the future.
0:41
[SPEAKER_02]: No people, no money, no hope, make America great again.
0:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And it plays into that frame that we have to have rich people.
0:49
[SPEAKER_02]: We couldn't survive without dumb.
0:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And understand, Trump's post is a perfect accidental confession of the entire racket.
0:58
[SPEAKER_02]: We've let rich people in big corporations accumulate so much power and wealth that they can threaten entire states, like hostage takers, and then call it economic development.
1:11
[SPEAKER_02]: The results really not prosperity, it's Robin Hood in reverse, with working people getting robbed at every turn so that the wealthy can collect another mansion, tax break, stock
1:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And understand, this is what trickled down economics was always about.
1:31
[SPEAKER_02]: They told us if we fed the top enough, if we gave them enough, some crumbs would fall for what the rest of us.
1:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And instead, the crumbs got vacuumed up by the same people who already stole the pie.
1:43
[SPEAKER_02]: corporate america pit states against each other in a race to the bottom and every time that happens we lose workers lose public schools gets squeezed transit gets cut hospitals get underfunded and the commons gets sold off to the lowest bidder
2:00
[SPEAKER_02]: We've seen this movie over and over and over again.
2:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the same politicians who helped gut those services tell workers to smile because jobs are coming.
2:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, jobs with fewer protections, lower pay and no power.
2:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's be honest.
2:16
[SPEAKER_02]: When a corporation leaves a state, the CEO is not the one getting crushed.
2:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the warehouse worker.
2:22
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the bus driver, the teacher, the nurse, the janitor.
2:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the people who actually make the wealth, create the wealth, and keep this society running.
2:33
[SPEAKER_02]: The executives, they just cash out.
2:35
[SPEAKER_02]: The investors, they pocket their winnings, and they move on.
2:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And the rest of us, we're left paying the bill for their blackmail.
2:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think we should be listening to Trump for once on this front, not because he's offering a solution, not, but because he's admitted that the structure,
2:57
[SPEAKER_02]: If billionaires can drain communities dry, then why can't communities demand their money back?
3:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I say we tax the rich, we tax corporations, we end buybacks, we stop privatization schemes, we fund public education, we fund public transit, we fund public housing, we fund public health, like our lives depend on it.
3:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Because guess what, kind of does.
3:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And understand, we have done this before.
3:27
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not new.
3:29
[SPEAKER_02]: When people think about the fabulous of the Great America, they usually think about the fabulous fifties.
3:34
[SPEAKER_02]: When we did all that stuff.
3:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Working people don't need another corporate welfare scheme dressed up as growth.
3:42
[SPEAKER_02]: We need leverage, we need unions, we need public investment.
3:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And we need to stop letting the wealthy hold the rest of us hostage and then calling it freedom.
3:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It's simple because we've done this before.
3:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You raise wages by strengthening collective bargaining, by giving unions the power to negotiate.
4:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And those profits that end up in the investor class and the CEO and the wealth class pocket go into workers' pockets.
4:12
[SPEAKER_02]: But here's the beautiful part about this whole system.
4:15
[SPEAKER_02]: When workers have more money, there's more economic activity, which means rich people can still be rich.
4:22
[SPEAKER_02]: but they have to work for it.
4:24
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the different part of this.
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And we do need to go back to it.
4:27
[SPEAKER_02]: We need to dig up Eisenhower and get a top, a marginal tax rate that's sufficiently high enough to do the things that we need to do.
4:35
[SPEAKER_02]: We need it in a state of tax.
4:37
[SPEAKER_02]: We need a wealth tax.
4:39
[SPEAKER_02]: We need to ban stock buybacks.
4:42
[SPEAKER_02]: We need to be doing a lot of this stuff that understand we have done before.
4:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And in fact, we did it to make America great.
4:53
[SPEAKER_02]: What we're being force fed, what we're being sold, what we're being jammed on our throats.
4:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, that's not making us great.
5:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And Trump's threat, that, oh, here's just gonna be standing around.
5:06
[SPEAKER_02]: If there are no rich people to do things for you, you'll just be standing around.
5:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Ah, sorry, it's working people who create the wealth.
5:16
[SPEAKER_02]: that the wealthy extract.
5:18
[SPEAKER_02]: It's pretty simple.
5:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Want to hear your thoughts?
5:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Rick and the Rick Smith show.com.
5:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Break that.
5:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
5:30
[SPEAKER_02]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1892.
5:34
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the day that Lithuanian born anarchist, Alexander Burkeman, attempted to shoot steel magnate Andrew Carnegie's second-in-command Henry Clay Frick.
5:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Burkeman wanted to avenge the homestead steel massacre in which nine workers were killed.
5:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Burkeman's lover and a goldman wrote in her autobiography, Frick is the responsible factor in this crime.
5:57
[SPEAKER_02]: She went on to write that Burkeman had told her, I will kill Frick, and of course, I shall be condemned to death.
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I will die proudly in the assurance that I gave my life for the people, but I will die by my own hand.
6:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Never, will I permit our enemies to kill us.
6:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Alexander Berkman went to Frick's office on July 21st, posing as a New York City hiring agency representative.
6:21
[SPEAKER_02]: When Berkman was told Frick could not see him, he left.
6:24
[SPEAKER_02]: He returned two days later.
6:25
[SPEAKER_02]: He burst into Frick's office and fired two shots at Frick's head.
6:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Several of Frick's associates were able to wrestle him to the ground.
6:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Still, Berkman managed to take out the sharpened steel file he was carrying and stabbed Frick twice.
6:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Despite all of this, Frick did not die.
6:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Burkeman was in jail for two months awaiting trial.
6:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Alexander Burkeman was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 27 years in prison.
6:50
[SPEAKER_02]: He served 14 years of his term before being released.
6:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Burkeman wrote an account of his prison years titled, Prison Memoirs of Anarchist.
6:59
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1917, he and Emma Goldman were arrested and found guilty of violating the espionage act.
7:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And both were imprisoned for two years.
7:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Labor history in two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith Show.
7:16
[SPEAKER_02]: For more information, go to laborhistoryintube.com, like us on Facebook, and follow us on the Twitter's at Labor History in two.
7:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So on Tuesday Donald Trump took to the truth social, because of course everything on the truth social, absolute truth, or So so they would like you to believe, but Trump bloviated on the truth social that rich people and companies are pouring out of Demo crats Demo crat run blue states at levels never seen before
8:04
[SPEAKER_02]: If this trend continues, the president says these states will become the ghettos of the future.
8:10
[SPEAKER_02]: No people, no money, no hope, make it hard for a great, again.
8:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been saying for a while.
8:21
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what they're going to do.
8:24
[SPEAKER_02]: We've given them so much and what he's saying out loud is we've given rich people all the money and now they're going to hold communities and states hostage and what they've done with massive tax breaks for corporations, cutting taxes on rich people and shifting responsibilities to the folks who can
8:45
[SPEAKER_02]: and the good folks over at the Institute for on-taxation and economic policy have a new report out.
8:52
[SPEAKER_02]: The changing landscape of state tax rights is what they've got.
8:56
[SPEAKER_02]: You can check that out over at itep.org and I've got Sarah Austin here to share some thoughts on this.
9:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Really isn't groundbreaking, but it is something that you go, yeah, we know.
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: She's seen your analysts there at itep.
9:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, itep.org, Sarah.
9:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for looking at time for us.
9:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, of course, I have to do be here.
9:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So you got Trump saying, look, rich people have all this money.
9:16
[SPEAKER_02]: They got all this power, these big corporations.
9:17
[SPEAKER_02]: We've given all these tax breaks to all this stuff too.
9:20
[SPEAKER_02]: We've given them everything they want.
9:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And well, because we want some of it back.
9:25
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's deadly, the claim is they're all going to leave.
9:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're all going to be standing around looking at each other with no jobs and no hope and and nothing to do.
9:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I have some news for the president.
9:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the data on this certainly doesn't back that up.
9:45
[SPEAKER_03]: There's some really great researchers that have really looked into this issue of when states increase taxes or rich people move.
9:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reality is that wealthy people make money in their communities because they're deeply connected there.
9:59
[SPEAKER_03]: They're connected to their families, they're connected with their business connections, and
10:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not that simple just to move to another state and still be able to retain all of that wealth creating networks.
10:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So what we have seen with the research is that this isn't true and we've seen more states this year kind of step up with this in place, like understanding that we haven't seen this huge exitist of millionaires in states like Minnesota and states like Massachusetts that have taken on
10:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Take it on power and actually put in place good progressive tax policies to help fund things that help working people.
10:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And with that as a foundation, we've seen states like Maine, Hawaii, Washington, Rhode Island that just this year passed new initiatives that will tax high income people.
10:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, to make sure that they have the resources they need to make sure that we're going to all thrive in our communities, not just the people that already have the money.
10:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, because we, we need good schools, we need good roads, we need good infrastructure.
11:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is the weird part of this, uh, these people made their money off the backs of the infrastructure that we built to allow them to profit.
11:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And now, if, if you're to believe the president,
11:10
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're to believe Donald Trump, the CEO president, the business president, now that we've given them everything that they could want, now they're going to, like, like, children are going to take their ball and go somewhere else.
11:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And I got to tell you, I got to wonder how that's going to work out because the examples that they gave were ones that, you know, I guess true values leaving Chicago, which is what would, would began this process.
11:34
[SPEAKER_02]: There are a company that was
11:37
[SPEAKER_02]: and they're looking for something to salvage their business in my view, which means tax breaks.
11:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure coming from the state of Indiana, because that's what these these states do, they give away tax base, so that the rich and these big companies come there and it never seems to work out.
11:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It never seems to work out the way they say it will.
11:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
12:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, we also saw that in Wisconsin, the Foxconn promising to do a bunch of investment and then being like, whoops, money's not there.
12:08
[SPEAKER_03]: After already getting a bunch of tax breaks.
12:10
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is the story that repeats and repeats and it never kind of materializes and not only
12:20
[SPEAKER_03]: The investment that states want to see, but also the job creation that they want to see and at the qualities that people deserve to get a good paycheck and benefits.
12:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And there's often not accountability and these kinds of tax expenditures.
12:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know that.
12:37
[SPEAKER_03]: When you continue to push the same button and get the same result, it makes you start to wonder, is there another way to do this?
12:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to get the results.
12:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of them, you're a report that you guys just came out with a changing landscape of state tax rates.
12:51
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of states are lowering their income tax, the lowering their taxes on.
12:54
[SPEAKER_02]: On well thing, they've been doing this for a long time.
12:57
[SPEAKER_02]: On the strategy, the bigger the neighbor economic development strategy is, you know, cut taxes, give them huge tax breaks, land abatements, energy, whatever.
13:06
[SPEAKER_02]: give away the baby, the bath water, the faucet, all of that, and the hopes that corporate America will come and suck your community dry, and then abandon you when they have all the resources they can get out of you.
13:17
[SPEAKER_02]: What have you found that one stage of do this, when they lower their income tax rates, when they lower their corporate tax rates, what have they usually end up going after?
13:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't think just end up redistributing this and end up on the backs of the working people.
13:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
13:33
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a few things that we found.
13:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the study that you're talking about that I helped to polish is really looking at just tax rates of like looking at the difference between income tax rates for both corporations and individuals, the top rate that affects the most profitable and wealthiest of those versus what has happened with the sales tax, which is on consumption and disproportionately affects.
13:57
[SPEAKER_03]: low income households working families, people that are living more paycheck to paycheck and spending a lot more of their money on the goods that are taxed with the sales tax.
14:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And looking back to 1990, the personal income tax rate in the median state has fallen by about 25% from 6% to about four and a half.
14:18
[SPEAKER_03]: The corporate rate has similarly fallen at a similar pace and we've seen the sales tax increase from five to six percent.
14:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So again, that's the swap from relying on higher tax rates to from people who are most well positioned to pay them to higher tax rates on the people who are least able to pay them.
14:40
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is kind of how the tax code has shaken up over the past few years, but we know that taxes are how we pay for things, they aren't just a means to an end.
14:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And we have seen, you know, states that end up in court suits, although over their education systems, because they aren't providing services that are cost-stutually required to be provided to their citizens and making sure that all kids have good educations.
15:03
[SPEAKER_03]: And they aren't providing enough medical care and other types of things that we see as human rights and basic needs.
15:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is really unfortunate because in the same time, we've also seen the rich grow incredibly richer.
15:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And since we have lowered those rates rather than maintain them, states have lost out on being able to capitalize on that increased revenue that should be there if it's rates
15:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, that would have avoided needing to raise sales taxes and cut other types of programs that people need.
15:38
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I've been arguing for, you know, my, my entire working life and probably a little bit before you go back to the Reagan era.
15:43
[SPEAKER_02]: We've been moving towards this, uh, this, this policy of massive redistribution of wealth, uh, from from the working people of this country, uh, upward.
15:52
[SPEAKER_02]: That trickle down thing.
15:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Did it ever work?
15:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, was there ever a moment you go, hey, trickle down is really doing great.
15:59
[SPEAKER_02]: We at the bottom we're getting the good stuff.
16:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that ever happened?
16:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Because what I see is we keep making our wealth class wealthier.
16:07
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got more billionaires than we've ever had in this country and they're wealthier than they've ever been.
16:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet we keep paying especially for working people, higher taxes on fees and on sales tax and on all these other little nuisance things where
16:23
[SPEAKER_02]: We just kind of hid where the money was coming from.
16:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the the biggest kind of studies in my lifetime has been all of the research that came out of the expanded federal child tax credit that provided real income to working families to help them support, you know, the cost of raising children in this day on age and that significantly cut child poverty.
16:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It had real results helping working people actually
16:52
[SPEAKER_03]: be able to save, to be able to plan ahead, and to be able to have some economic security in ways that we just have never seen happen from tax cuts at the top.
17:02
[SPEAKER_03]: As far as I know, there isn't like good research that shows that these cuts at the top are anyway kind of benefiting people in ranks below them, and instead we're seeing an exponential kind of blow up a wealth at the top
17:21
[SPEAKER_03]: and ways that we haven't seen since 1920s.
17:23
[SPEAKER_02]: No, look, not too long ago, I played a clip of Virginia Fox on the Congresswoman from North Carolina saying, and every situation, and we know this beyond the reason, beyond fact that when we cut taxes, it raises revenue, and it grows the economy, and the reality is, as the person that she was talking to responded, then if that were the case, if we cut taxes to zero, the economy would be booming,
17:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reality is, well, no revenue would be coming in, but that belief structure, that core ideological belief that cutting taxes always grows the economy and brings in more revenue to government to be able to do the things that we need to do that seems to be like some kind of blind faith religious belief structure that well doesn't quite fit reality doesn't
18:12
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I mean, we've seen this at the federal level with both trenches of Trump tax codes.
18:16
[SPEAKER_03]: There's claims that this is going to somehow spur the economy.
18:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And we all have more revenue than we had before and yet the national debt continues to grow.
18:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And we've also seen other states like Kentucky and like other of like these,
18:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry, Kansas, and other states that have deeply cut their income taxes in the last decade or so.
18:37
[SPEAKER_03]: With similar claims that revenues are going to hold and we're still going to be able to pay for all the things we have before.
18:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And yet, year after year, the legislature is coming back to make even more, you know, destructive decisions in their budget to do less for their communities at large at the expense of giving more tax breaks to the wealthy.
18:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do you think that that seems to be the only club in the bag for, for, for, I'm going to, I'm going to say Republicans first, but there are some, some tax cut Democrats, some corporate Democrats too, this is somewhat bipartisan.
19:10
[SPEAKER_02]: But for me, it's mostly Republicans pushing this, this ideology that, you know, the only tool in the bag, the only tool in the economic development bag is cutting taxes because that's all corporate America cares about the more we can give them, the better.
19:24
[SPEAKER_02]: and not really paying all that much attention to the fact that when we give this revenue away, we underfund our schools, we underfund transit, we underfund public services, and we at the bottom, we working folks, we had to take it on the chin where, you know, some investor or some, you know, billionaire, they're the ones walking away fat and happy.
19:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I can't, you know, get in people's heads.
19:50
[SPEAKER_03]: But I have seen a number, I've been in front of a couple of tax cases, I've seen these conversations play out.
19:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think you would mention earlier that there's like this fictitious or like almost religious belief that, you know, that
20:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Somehow, these tax cuts are going to spur the economy, and maybe the data doesn't show it, but we know it to be true, and some jobs are better than no jobs.
20:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It's always just like some kind of, like, oh, but there's a grain in there that you should look forward to without the ability to zoom out and see, like, what is the choice actually being made here?
20:27
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a little grain or a nugget or a hope.
20:30
[SPEAKER_03]: versus something that we know actually people need and a broad swath of the population needs not just a particular investor.
20:37
[SPEAKER_02]: My favorite response to the, you know, trickle dot economics isn't working and hasn't worked is that we haven't done it enough.
20:45
[SPEAKER_02]: We haven't given enough to the wealthy, we haven't given enough to corporations.
20:49
[SPEAKER_02]: We haven't gone far enough with, you know, name the bad policy that continues to fail.
20:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the reason that it's failed, Sarah, is that we just haven't done it enough.
20:58
[SPEAKER_02]: If we just did a little more, if we just made our billionaires a little richer, you know, something might fall out of their pocket that we could fight over.
21:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the other way to look at that is that these people are already in fat and really rich.
21:12
[SPEAKER_03]: They are not constrained in what they are able to do with their money.
21:16
[SPEAKER_03]: If something looks like an investment to them, they're going to make the investment.
21:19
[SPEAKER_03]: If it doesn't, they're not.
21:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Like that is kind of how the economy is supposed to work from.
21:24
[SPEAKER_03]: this like three market idea, and wealthy people are best positioned to actually play that out with their lives.
21:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And the people who are actually cash strapped are working people.
21:37
[SPEAKER_03]: They are the ones that an additional kind of benefit from the government, whether that's...
21:43
[SPEAKER_03]: food assistance, whether that is kind of health care that, you know, health care for all something that would be amazing and incredibly economically powerful for our nation at large, is constantly just kind of pushed on to the back burner and favor of this idea that somehow making rich people a little bit richer is going to change their analysis on how they're going to play with their money.
22:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So now that you guys have this report and I think the report let me ask you when you started this did you kind of know where it was going to end up even before you started because there's a lot of these reports that you know I read through and I go I don't know that you really needed to do this because we already knew what the conclusion was going to be.
22:23
[SPEAKER_02]: because we can see that the economy is doing really well for some and harming others and we see the redistribution of wealth that has happened that's gone from working people to creating the largest billionaire class in history.
22:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you saw when you did this and you did this work when you looked back at you go yeah we kind of already knew this and and then I guess the question is is how do we fix all the damage that's been done?
22:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean bad policy got us here can good policy
22:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Like me, do you believe it's going to take some kind of economic calamity, some kind of disaster before we get our heads out of our well, you know, there.
23:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, this project actually started with me creating a database of all the state tax rates back to 1900 so it definitely was like a data collection project to begin and then started the work of the data analysis and I mean it's obvious to me like I've worked in tax policy for over a decade now and like understand that there's been a huge shift in thinking on on taxes where there there's more and more people from both parties that are kind of
23:37
[SPEAKER_03]: open to this idea that cutting taxes is the way forward unfortunately.
23:42
[SPEAKER_03]: So kind of being able to like actually see states stacked up to each other and how they have shifted over time is something that is I think new to this kind of area of research.
23:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And the question like how do we get our way out of this?
23:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I think they're
24:00
[SPEAKER_03]: There is some exciting things on the horizon.
24:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's really cool that Minnesota and Washington state of Massachusetts a few years ago, kind of passed these taxes on investment income, on capital gains, on high earners.
24:19
[SPEAKER_03]: And then this year, we saw four more states kind of come forward, including Washington, kind of expanding their approach.
24:27
[SPEAKER_03]: to go ahead and let's do it, let's tax people making a million dollars or more at a higher rate.
24:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think states finally, after being bashed over the head with a political process, saying, like, don't do this.
24:41
[SPEAKER_03]: This is suicide.
24:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Finally, we have seen states go out and do it and people pay their taxes and they raise revenues that is meaningful to the state and the state can make investments that matter and other states see that and they're like wait a minute, the sky didn't fall, we can do this too.
24:59
[SPEAKER_03]: So that is my big hope in this and you know the federal government is you know a bit of a
25:05
[SPEAKER_03]: a whole different can of worms, and there's a reason I work in state policy, but at the state level, you know, there is this laboratory of democracy where they can look over the fence and see what's really happening on the ground, whenever states are making these decisions.
25:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's also very obvious whenever you see states like North Carolina that has like cut and cut, both their personal and corporate income taxes, worsening services for people on the ground and increasing their sales tax rate.
25:32
[SPEAKER_03]: maybe not a model for a state that wants to be investing and working family.
25:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think something has kind of shifted in the last few years.
25:41
[SPEAKER_03]: It has helped to dislodge these ideas that, you know, raising revenue progressively is something that is viable for state budgets.
25:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, look, I'm not against the idea of cutting taxes.
25:51
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just a matter on who.
25:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Do I think that the people who work for a living should keep more money in their pockets so they can go into the marketplace and spend more and create more economic activity so that our billionaires have to work for their money?
26:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
26:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Do I think just giving the billionaires the money without having to work for it?
26:09
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I know that they talk about working people as welfare queens sometimes.
26:14
[SPEAKER_02]: But man, we got a lot of billionaire welfare queens.
26:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people with a lot of money out there that have companies that pay workers way too little and really rely on community services and benefits to help fill the gaps and these are also services that have been made worse over time, particularly by, you know, Republican administrations to make it even harder for these folks that.
26:47
[SPEAKER_03]: We know we're working and for wages that are not enough to get by, blitz throw a bunch of paperwork hurdles in the way, just for fun, to make it even harder for these people to get their basic needs met.
27:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And all at a greater cost to taxpayers, whether it's through, you know, getting a bunch of, like, what do you call those?
27:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Not consultants, but like, contractor companies to like come in and administer these things poorly so we can save money that way.
27:15
[SPEAKER_03]: or, you know, other ways that kind of screw workers as well to like just make it harder for them to get what should be theirs.
27:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm right there with you.
27:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope folks will check out the report over at iTEP.org, the Institute on taxation and economic policy.
27:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It's titled the changing landscape of state tax rates.
27:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I know good exciting Friday night reading.
27:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope folks will dig right into that, but Sarah Austin, I appreciate you taking time for me.
27:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, Rick.
27:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Good seeing you.
27:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear your thoughts email me Rick at the ricksmithshow.com are the wealthy leaving are they fleeing blue states and if we were to raise taxes on big corporations Would they go but they go broke?
27:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear your thoughts Rick at the ricksmithshow.com right back
28:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
28:03
[SPEAKER_02]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1913.
28:06
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the day 9,000 copper miners in the Kowino region of Upper Peninsula, Michigan, went out on strike.
28:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Organized by the Western Federation of Miners, the strike raged on for over eight months, witnessing devastating tragedy in a Christmas day fire and ending in bitter defeat.
28:23
[SPEAKER_02]: The strike was waged over basic issues like the eight-hour day, higher wages, mind, safety,
28:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But strikers were also fed up with the company's paternalism and intrusion into their personal lives.
28:35
[SPEAKER_02]: They also worried for their jobs with the introduction of labor-saving machinery.
28:39
[SPEAKER_02]: The Western Federation of Miners succeeded early on in shutting down the mines.
28:44
[SPEAKER_02]: But the copper barrens wouldn't budge.
28:46
[SPEAKER_02]: By August, many mines reopened with scab labor.
28:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Later that month, deputies shot two strikers dead and wounded to others as they returned home from attempting to collect strike benefits.
28:58
[SPEAKER_02]: The incident became known as the Seaberville Massacre, striking minors were absolutely devastated when on Christmas Day, 73 mostly children were trampled the death during a Christmas party and benefit at the Italian Hall in Calumette.
29:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Witnesses remembered seeing a man with a citizen's alliance button just moments before someone yelled fire that caused
29:19
[SPEAKER_02]: the Stampede.
29:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Soon after the Italian Hall of Disaster, Western Federation of Minor President Charles Moyer was shot by a citizen's alliance mob, then loaded bleeding onto a train bound for Chicago.
29:31
[SPEAKER_02]: By April, the union was broke, the strike was broken, and the miners resolved to return to work.
29:37
[SPEAKER_02]: bosses would only rehire strikers once they had turned in their union cards.
29:41
[SPEAKER_02]: The copper mines in the region would finally be organized some 30 years later, in a campaign led by mine mill during the years 1939 to 1943.
29:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Labor history in two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smithsia for more information go to laborhistoryintu.com.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Some presidents are known as Uplifting Orators.
30:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Our president, president, however, is known for Petylant Putdowns.
30:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Periodically Trump discovers a new pejority that he considers clever, so he wears it out, attacking his endless list of enemies.
30:17
[SPEAKER_00]: His current favorite is lunatic, hurling the slurred women reporters, most foreign leaders, all Democrats, protesters, and, well, everyone who offends him.
30:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But if he wants some real lunatics to be little, why not that managerie he's appointed to top government positions?
30:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Such as Brendan Carr, Trump's FCC attack dog who keeps yapping that he's gonna abolish in PR.
30:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Failing at that, Carr has now gone from silly to ridiculous, pushing a phantasmagoric scheme that truly is lunacy.
30:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes from some Elon Musk Prodigy's who apparently noticed that our planet gets dark as nightfalls.
30:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yureka, they exclaimed, we need to light the night.
31:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they say to eliminate all city streets and rural roads.
31:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Make crops grow faster and stuff like that.
31:10
[SPEAKER_00]: But how to generate the light?
31:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Easy, the geniuses explained.
31:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Mirrors.
31:15
[SPEAKER_00]: They won't government support to deploy a global network of orbiting space mirrors that could reflect sunlight onto Earth's rotating dark areas.
31:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Lots of mirrors.
31:26
[SPEAKER_00]: These schemers proposed to put 50,000 in our skies by 2030, with each of the largest ones shining as bright as 100 full moons.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing could go wrong with that, right?
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: The dazzle, car didn't ask.
31:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, with no public input, he just rubber stamped and initial launch of this novel technology.
31:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Blanley is sharing us that, quote, harms are unlikely to occur.
31:50
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jim Heiter saying, to oppose this lunacy, connect with the American
32:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So the video clip of Steve Scalice has been making its rounds about how you know, you know, you need an ID to get out of plane.
32:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You need an ID to get pasta from all of garden and look, um, I gotta tell you the fact that you need an ID to get pasta from all of garden should be one of those consumer things you go.
32:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm just not gonna do it.
32:31
[SPEAKER_02]: But understand.
32:33
[SPEAKER_02]: huge difference, huge, massive difference between your choice to go get pasta from from the garden and your your access to the ballot box.
32:46
[SPEAKER_02]: World's different, but, but they got us trained thinking that, well you know, you know, you're gonna hotel room, you need no idea, but, but you know, vote, you know, you don't, you
32:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You do, just not every single time.
33:00
[SPEAKER_02]: You do need to be identified.
33:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It is the law already, but here to share some thoughts on maybe just how crazy all of these conspiracy theories have gotten and all the justifications that we keep hearing from the Trump folks and from the voter ID folks.
33:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I've asked Pamela Smith to come share some thoughts.
33:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Pamela is the CEO and president of Verified Voting.
33:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You can check out their website at VerifiedVoting.org.
33:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Pamela, thanks for looking time for us.
33:27
[SPEAKER_04]: thank for having me so let us start with school is you got to have an idea to get more pasta Pamela so yeah more pasta voting same same thing exactly no actually the best response that we've heard so far is we don't have a constitutionally protected right to never ending breadsticks
33:50
[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, we can look out for our linguine and guard our jokey and monitor our manicaddy, but it has nothing to do with voting.
33:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And look, I like the breadsticks, you know, but I got to tell you, if someone said you got to dig into your pocket and show me your ID, I got to tell you I'm not for a bunch of reasons, the fact that you have to, they do, they're expecting that is hysterical.
34:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And I got to tell you, I would really love to see the reaction now of people like me going, no, that's not happening.
34:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And what they do, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean.
34:26
[SPEAKER_04]: You can make decisions as a consumer of products.
34:29
[SPEAKER_04]: Honestly, lots of people are worried about their pocket books these days, and they may not be even going out to eat.
34:35
[SPEAKER_04]: So they can have all the positive, they want their home, and they don't have to show an ID.
34:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Excellent.
34:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Similarly, you should be able to vote at your kitchen table and send that in.
34:44
[SPEAKER_04]: And once you've identified yourself the first time, that should be enough.
34:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And in most states, it really is.
34:51
[SPEAKER_04]: The rules vary quite a bit from one state to another as to,
34:55
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, what kind of proof that you are who you say you are is required, but universally you require some proof when you're registered.
35:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Once you've registered, you know, then they can use the data they have on file and your signature that they have on file as well as other signatures like with the DMV database and, you know, other kinds of databases to check the signature on your vote by mail ballot when it comes in and that's another safeguard that happens really every time and I think a lot of people are not aware of that.
35:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's talk about that.
35:31
[SPEAKER_02]: The mail-in ballot seems to be the source spot.
35:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember before the 2024 election and before the 2020 election, I remember saying, look, you know, what's going to happen is especially, you know, as we were in the pandemic, election night, you know, one side's going to have a huge lead.
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you finish counting all of the votes,
35:50
[SPEAKER_02]: it's going to be decided and it played out in 2020 exactly is everyone knew it was going to and the messengers on the other side knew it was going to, but their message was they stole the election from us.
36:01
[SPEAKER_02]: We won Tuesday night and by them counting the votes, you know, they cheated us and there's widespread.
36:07
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, the number of emails and people going, we have the data.
36:11
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got the receipts.
36:12
[SPEAKER_02]: There was widespread voter fraud with all of these
36:18
[SPEAKER_02]: That's probably the closest to a paper trail we've got, no?
36:22
[SPEAKER_04]: It is a paper trail and one of the things we've advocated for over the years is to vote on paper right and there's a very good reason for that.
36:31
[SPEAKER_04]: First of all paper ballots are simple and straightforward and voters understand how to use them.
36:38
[SPEAKER_04]: As you're filling out the ballot, you're checking it as you go, making sure it says what you want it to.
36:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Once it's submitted and the votes are counted by machines, by computers, then they can use that physical paper ballot that you checked to confirm that the machines were working the way they're supposed to and that the count is right.
36:58
[SPEAKER_04]: So paper ballots are a very good purpose.
37:00
[SPEAKER_04]: Whether you're using it for a vote by mail ballot or whether you're voting in person, you still need to check it and election officials use those ballots to check that the count was correct.
37:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So it is a safeguarded very important.
37:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Probably the most important one of them.
37:14
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I don't know if you saw the big speech that just happened not too long ago, wide spread, wide spread, you know, systematic voter fraud, you know, the rig, the elections were rigged, the Chinese hacked in, you know, I have all this information, how much of that is, is there any reality, is there even a kernel of reality and, and that is it, is it possible?
37:36
[SPEAKER_02]: that, you know, someone was in their fiddle with the numbers, you know, I know years ago they were talking about, you know, the black box and all of that stuff.
37:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it possible to rig the machines?
37:47
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the things that has changed over the years is that we're not using paperless voting machines any longer, except in one state, Louisiana, but they're working on getting paper.
37:58
[SPEAKER_04]: But all the other states have that physical record that you can check, and that's a really important factor.
38:04
[SPEAKER_04]: It means that even if somebody did get into this system and convert something, change something, modify something, you still have,
38:14
[SPEAKER_04]: that documentary evidence of the intent of the voter.
38:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So you still have a way to prove the correct outcome, even if something went wrong.
38:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And it doesn't have to be somebody tampered with it.
38:26
[SPEAKER_04]: It could be something, what wrong with the system where it was programmed incorrectly this time around or some other bug?
38:33
[SPEAKER_04]: It could be equipment breaks down, but having that paper means that you still have a way to prove the right outcome.
38:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But are there other instances where the votes were flipped, where everyone went to vote for this guy?
38:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And no, no, some magic happened, some computer mysterious kind of stuff, some little man in the box said, No, we've decided better we're flipping those votes.
38:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Because look, I don't want to be on the wrong side of this.
38:57
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's actually happening, we should know, but I think we've kind of investigated this, haven't we?
39:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's a big difference between the possibility of something happening and the actuality of it happening.
39:13
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, election interference, none of what was stated in the recent speech, none of the documents issued showed interference beyond anything we already knew.
39:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was accessing certain kinds of infrastructure like voter registration systems.
39:31
[SPEAKER_04]: But no evidence exists of voting systems having changed votes or outcomes having been flipped
39:40
[SPEAKER_04]: such methods.
39:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And I want to say this, I think it's really important.
39:44
[SPEAKER_04]: Software does fail, right?
39:47
[SPEAKER_04]: And no voting system is unhackable.
39:50
[SPEAKER_04]: No system, no computer system is completely unhackable or fun-free.
39:55
[SPEAKER_04]: The real test is how how you catch it.
39:58
[SPEAKER_04]: um you know are you auditing are you checking is there a way to recount is the system overall resilient to the kinds of attacks that could occur or the kinds of errors that could occur and that I think is where people are not focusing enough on and you're looking into what's the possibility but rather what's the actuality in terms of how we check.
40:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
40:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, anything is possible.
40:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
40:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there could be a little man in the box that we don't know about, you know, we could be living a virtual, you know, a Sims game that some, some drug guy is, and we're all just part of, I mean, we could, there's a lot of possibilities, but is there, is there are there any facts, because I keep getting this, this, this,
40:38
[SPEAKER_02]: the same frame.
40:40
[SPEAKER_02]: We know there are facts.
40:42
[SPEAKER_02]: We have the receipts that we know they cheated.
40:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And and I haven't seen it.
40:47
[SPEAKER_02]: If you show it to me, I might believe, but I haven't seen it.
40:52
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, there's actual evidence of errors that have occurred.
40:56
[SPEAKER_04]: There was a recent election.
40:58
[SPEAKER_04]: in Pennsylvania.
40:59
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a judicial retention election, right?
41:02
[SPEAKER_04]: You're voting whether we're going to keep these judges and there were several possibilities.
41:07
[SPEAKER_04]: You could choose yes to the first judge and no to the second one or vice versa or yes to both or no to both.
41:14
[SPEAKER_04]: And in the testing process, they happens with a re-election system before it goes out into the polling places.
41:21
[SPEAKER_04]: They didn't test for all of those variables.
41:24
[SPEAKER_04]: They tested for some of them.
41:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, yes, and no, no.
41:27
[SPEAKER_04]: I think, but not the switch possibility.
41:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And shortly after voting commenced on that morning, some voters noticed that what they were seeing in the printout was not the same as what they were choosing.
41:42
[SPEAKER_04]: And because that was a, you know, voters noticed it right away.
41:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Once they noticed it, the election jurisdiction was able to quickly respond, know what to do, what to tell voters and how to resolve it.
41:55
[SPEAKER_04]: That kind of thing can happen and an audit can find errors and mistakes.
41:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And years ago in Florida, there was a not very good audit that nonetheless ended up over turning three elections because something had gone wrong in the programming.
42:10
[SPEAKER_04]: So, so is there enough people about, so they knew.
42:13
[SPEAKER_02]: So is there enough of that that goes on to let lead us to believe all of our elections are rigged and that the federal government needs to take over because you don't look, we're inundated with all of this stuff and one of my favorite bits are, do you know there are more, more voters on the roles than actual voters.
42:30
[SPEAKER_02]: They're dead people on the roles, Pamela.
42:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And you go, yeah, maybe they're on the roles, but did they actually get out of the grave and vote?
42:37
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the question and the answer is
42:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I guess there was no, a journalist asked me a few years back, she said, there was a question of somebody who had sent in their mail ballot and then had passed away before election day.
42:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And the question was whether that ballot should be counted.
42:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Honestly, I feel like this 80-plus year old should have had their last vote counted, but the rule in that state was clear.
43:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It won't count if he passed away before election day, even if he failed it before.
43:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So,
43:07
[SPEAKER_04]: Those things don't happen, people are not moving from the grave.
43:10
[SPEAKER_02]: but I do love how they take that kernel, that one little thing and then it becomes this massive conspiracy theory that people are walking through graveyard, signing people up to vote.
43:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, part of the other thing is that I hear a lot as you know, you know, all of these left groups, they're out there harvesting ballots and doing all of this stuff.
43:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And you go, well, if that is happening, that there are crimes of people doing nefarious things, people go to jail for doing that stuff,
43:40
[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't think we've over turn our entire election system, do we?
43:44
[SPEAKER_04]: No, we don't, and I think it's important to know that facts should not be confused with gut feelings.
43:51
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes, you know, it's hard for people who are all kind of talking to themselves to each other, to feel like maybe somebody didn't like your candidate, and that's a voted a different way, and that it's not because something went wrong with the system.
44:06
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the things we encourage people to do is to be part of the system, sign up to be a pull worker, and you can learn how the safeguards are implemented in real time, how the full system works as you go through training, and that's just a really valuable thing.
44:22
[SPEAKER_04]: Not only do you feel better about being part of your democracy when you do it, but election officials always need more pull workers, so definitely sign up to do it.
44:33
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, no, that's not the American way.
44:36
[SPEAKER_02]: The American way is just to complain about it.
44:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that's why we're just going to argue over because, you know, again, I have a friend who keeps telling me that in Bethpage, New York, that was a truck driver who was driving ballots all around and, you know, they're all these ballots and you go, yeah, but did people put their name on them where they actually cast and the answer was no, they weren't and it does show kind of a bit of an ignorance of how the system works and maybe your solution would
45:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I think it's important to know about some of the safeguards that exist and but the thing is that people mostly interact with elections you know once every few years sometimes every two years more often it's every four years and so they can't be expected to know all the variations and rules that exist out there and all the ways that it works.
45:32
[SPEAKER_04]: We did some research recently about post-election audits.
45:35
[SPEAKER_04]: We wanted to know how people thought about them and how they would think about it, particularly strong kind of audit.
45:41
[SPEAKER_04]: It's called a risk limiting audit.
45:43
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we had focus groups in different key states, swing states actually.
45:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And we asked them, you know, what happens after you vote?
45:51
[SPEAKER_04]: After you cast your ballot, whether you bailed it, whether you voted in person, what happens next?
45:57
[SPEAKER_04]: and they kind of looked around the room and they said, I don't know, I hope somebody checks it, right?
46:04
[SPEAKER_04]: I hope somebody is checking that the counted is correct.
46:08
[SPEAKER_04]: And the good news was, in all of those states, somebody is checking into those states.
46:12
[SPEAKER_04]: They had a particularly strong kind of check.
46:15
[SPEAKER_04]: All the states, you know, all the swing states are doing some kind of checking.
46:19
[SPEAKER_04]: Candidates can challenge if they feel like something was wrong
46:24
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... there is a prescribed challenge period in every state for the election there are recalent rules that can apply if margin was very close you know there there are all these particular safeguards in place that i think people think uh... we just throw a bunch of ballots out there and cross our fingers and hope it works and that's not how it works
46:43
[SPEAKER_02]: No, look, even if you do get miraculously get two ballots and I never have.
46:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I've done mail in ballots before because I had two, but I've never gotten two of them.
46:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I've always gotten one, but if you have two of them, let's say what, walk me through what happens.
46:58
[SPEAKER_02]: If someone were to cast two ballots, I got two of them, some miracle of the election's office sent me two ballots to my name, to my address, for me to cast what would, what would then happen?
47:09
[SPEAKER_02]: If I, if I cast both of them,
47:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, here's what would happen.
47:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Your first ballot, the first one through the gate would be counted.
47:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And then your name would be marked as having voted.
47:23
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you showed up in a polling place to try and vote in person or if you try to send in that second ballot, it would be caught.
47:31
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's a risk to you of trying to vote twice in the same election, right?
47:35
[SPEAKER_04]: That's fraudulent, even if it wasn't your fault that you ended up with two ballads, which would be very unlikely.
47:42
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, another thing to notice that ballots, you might get a ballot in your mailbox that is for somebody who used to live where you live and they don't live there anymore, but they haven't notified the election's office that they vote, right?
47:56
[SPEAKER_04]: You can't forward that.
47:59
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not allowable.
48:01
[SPEAKER_04]: It just, it's ballot mail not affordable.
48:05
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, there are all kinds of key safeguards in place that people know recognize.
48:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't know what's this.
48:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Last conspiracy theory I want to get to.
48:14
[SPEAKER_02]: We got the dead people.
48:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We got the multiple ballots.
48:17
[SPEAKER_02]: We got the little man in the machine.
48:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we got to go after the immigrants.
48:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Because all of these illegals are voting.
48:24
[SPEAKER_02]: They're millions, millions of illegals who are lining up at our polling places to cast ballots.
48:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I look, I don't know who's legal and who isn't to be honest.
48:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't run around asking for papers.
48:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But I gotta think if you're here at an undocumented fashion, you're probably not lining up at a government agency.
48:44
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no, you're not.
48:46
[SPEAKER_04]: It's such high risk.
48:48
[SPEAKER_04]: And there was a case in Texas a few years back, a woman who was not eligible to vote because I believe of a past sentence, right?
49:01
[SPEAKER_04]: She was actually a citizen, but she was not eligible to vote yet.
49:06
[SPEAKER_04]: And, um, and somehow they registered her.
49:10
[SPEAKER_04]: And so she thought it was okay.
49:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Like she even asked, you know, but the rules about that and they said, oh, it's okay.
49:18
[SPEAKER_04]: And she ended up voting and then she was prosecuted.
49:22
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, even for someone who's a citizen, this is a risk.
49:27
[SPEAKER_04]: So someone who's a non-citizen is, you know, just trying to stay out of trouble, trying to do things right, do things by the book.
49:35
[SPEAKER_04]: This recent situation that was found in New Jersey about the software system, having either incorrectly flagged non-citizens as citizens or head.
49:49
[SPEAKER_04]: In any case, not notified that that was flagged when the person was at the DMV.
49:55
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they asked the question, are you a citizen and your answer is no, then that's flagged that your not a citizen.
50:01
[SPEAKER_04]: So you're not trying to register if that.
50:04
[SPEAKER_04]: flag if that isn't filtering those out, then that person might be inadvertently registered as a citizen.
50:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, then what do they?
50:12
[SPEAKER_04]: Does that mean I'm supposed to vote now?
50:15
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, I got this stuff.
50:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's the kind of error that happens I mentioned before.
50:21
[SPEAKER_04]: No system is bug-free, so after we're fails, right?
50:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And the question is, are you auditing for that?
50:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Are you checking that the system is working right?
50:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Whether it's a voting system or whether it's a registration system,
50:34
[SPEAKER_04]: and how quickly can you find it?
50:37
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, so nobody wants to see those kinds of things, but that was not a bunch of people trying to illicitly vote.
50:44
[SPEAKER_04]: That was a case of software doing it wrong.
50:48
[SPEAKER_02]: and i would argue that even in that case those people probably didn't show up to vote and that we would have caught that if they had they done it right i mean they're what about check you would have known you would have been able to go back and cross reference uh who voted and who was i'm sure i'm and we're rounding those people up as we speak right what a present all 0 of them
51:10
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, all through them.
51:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's not the only time something like that happened, but that technology helps us in a lot of ways, but it's not perfect, and we have to correct for it.
51:21
[SPEAKER_02]: But given all of this, all of the conspiracies we've now kind of lumped into one rigged kind of thought, is it enough to,
51:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know make her shall walk her the senator from from Georgia or Dugmasteriano the governor of Pennsylvania after the shellac kings both of them took at the at the polls in 2020 and 2020 or 2024 and 26 Look, I think that whatever the outcome is and especially in those two states you mentioned Those are states that do audits and more robust audits than not
51:57
[SPEAKER_04]: And they have ballots that can be counted by hand if there's any question at all, so voters can rely on those facts, voters should do several things to safeguard their vote, they should check their ballot carefully before they cast it, they should check their registration and you can do that online, go and check, make sure it says what it's supposed to and if not contact your county election official to get it corrected.
52:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And when they go vote, make sure that it says what you want it to say, ask a poll worker if you have any questions, if you're voting by mail, use whatever ballot tracking system is available in your state, because that's the best thing since sliced bread.
52:37
[SPEAKER_04]: You can track the progress of your ballot both ways, and finally, go be a poll worker.
52:43
[SPEAKER_04]: If you can spare the time, it's the most important thing you can do to help safeguard our democracy
52:49
[SPEAKER_02]: excellent excellent stuff Pamela.
52:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate you taking time for us.
52:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Good stuff.
52:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope folks will go to verifiedvoting.org for more information on the work that you guys do.
52:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Pamela Smith.
53:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much.
53:01
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.
53:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear your thoughts.
53:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Any better conspiracy theories?
53:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Anything that makes anything we missed?
53:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to hear your thoughts.
53:10
[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to get the Rick Smith show.com quick break right back to the ground.
53:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Inter.
53:29
[SPEAKER_02]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1877.
53:33
[SPEAKER_02]: That was the day that a mob began an attack on Chinese workers in San Francisco that killed four people.
53:40
[SPEAKER_02]: During the mid-1870s, a depression swept across the nation.
53:44
[SPEAKER_02]: White workers from the East Coast headed west, many to San Francisco hoping to find a job.
53:50
[SPEAKER_02]: skilled Chinese workers who had completed their labor on the Transcontinental Railroad also came to the city.
53:56
[SPEAKER_02]: There, the Chinese laborers found work in trades like cigar making and also open laundries.
54:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Resentment against the Chinese workers grew in the city's white working class.
54:07
[SPEAKER_02]: In the summer of 1877, workers on the East Coast Railroads,
54:11
[SPEAKER_02]: walked off their jobs after their wages were cut repeatedly, a wave of labor militancy washed over the nation.
54:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Historians often refer to that summer as the great upheaval, a time where capital and labor literally battled in the streets.
54:26
[SPEAKER_02]: In San Francisco, the working men's association
54:29
[SPEAKER_02]: a socialist worker's organization called for a rally in front of City Hall.
54:34
[SPEAKER_02]: The meeting began with speeches against the titans of capital, but soon a group of angry workers began to demand speakers, quote, talk about the Chinese.
54:44
[SPEAKER_02]: A mob stormed off to terrorize Chinese residents.
54:47
[SPEAKER_02]: They burned 20 Chinese laundries.
54:49
[SPEAKER_02]: After the violence ended the next day, the anti-Chinese rhetoric continued.
54:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And Irish-born, freight handler by the name of Dennis Kerny, became the vocal leader of the call that the Chinese must go.
55:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And here, into the anti-Chinese cause, came to be known as Kernyism.
55:06
[SPEAKER_02]: The backlash against Chinese workers spread beyond California.
55:10
[SPEAKER_02]: In 1882,
55:18
[SPEAKER_02]: For more information, go to LaborHistoryN2.com.
55:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter at LaborHistoryN2.
55:36
[SPEAKER_02]: So again, lots of, lots of conspiracy theories around elections, and look, Trump's just feeding the fire with, you know, they stole, they stole from me when the reality is, there's, there's no there there.
55:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and the reason I think it's important is I have talked to so many people who have believed to their core that there's all of this nefarious stuff going on.
56:04
[SPEAKER_02]: When the reality is, you wanna talk about real voter fraud and intimidation and all of that, it's coming from the Trumpites.
56:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I knew a guy, years ago, who he would dress up in a suit and drive around in his, his, his, his, his, his in power.
56:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So that people would think he was like a cop, tinted windows, and the idea, he thought in his head
56:31
[SPEAKER_02]: is that, well, you know, people who have got a guilty conscience, they won't show up to vote illegally and you go, there's nobody really, there's nobody doing that.
56:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And for this kind of, really, this kind of all out of salt, it is interesting because there doesn't seem to be any of the things that they're, they're pointing to.
56:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Now my favorite story of all and it's always been there was a guy I was working a line on election day and there's a guy who swore to me that he got like 15 ballots in the mail.
57:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And if he was a dishonest man, he could have filed every one of those 15 and I wish you would have because had you done all 15 if you got them.
57:17
[SPEAKER_02]: You'd be spending a lot of time in jail and I said, but I would like you to bring them back to me.
57:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And oddly enough, I said this to a bunch of people, this guy did, this guy brought back what he thought were balance.
57:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And what they were, they did look fairly official, it is defense.
57:35
[SPEAKER_02]: But what they were were a group saying, hey, fill this form out, you know what I'm going to get a ballot.
57:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And they kept sending them out because of the names kept showing up without, without looking for a ballot.
57:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So they kept sending things out and he thought in his head that he could have voted 15 times.
57:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is where I'm struggling with our corporate controlled media, the right wing media is that they perpetuate this, this nonsense.
58:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, do I want illegals voting?
58:07
[SPEAKER_02]: No, do I want people who you're voting 16 times?
58:10
[SPEAKER_02]: No, but this, what we're seeing now is just about keeping people away from the ballot box.
58:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, Steve Scalese is right.
58:21
[SPEAKER_02]: You probably do need to get an ID corporate policy has got to have an ID to get free pasta.
58:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So just don't buy the pasta.
58:30
[SPEAKER_02]: But in this country, you have a constitutional right.
58:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is a barrier.
58:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, if our government wants to go, you know what, you're right, it's a barrier.
58:40
[SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna, we're gonna help people get over that barrier.
58:42
[SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna pick a multitude of IDs that can be used or we're going to write wingers.
58:49
[SPEAKER_02]: You're gonna love this, a national ID.
58:51
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, conservatives used to be against that, right?
58:55
[SPEAKER_02]: They used to be against federalizing anything, especially elections.
58:59
[SPEAKER_02]: But hey, we're not dealing with honest conservatives here.
59:04
[SPEAKER_02]: we're dealing with power mongers.
59:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But I'm not entirely against the idea of voter ID if it's something that is easily accessible.
59:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I know it's not.
59:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, this is just a way to steal the midterms.
59:17
[SPEAKER_02]: The block people from voting, especially women, people of color, poor people, you know, me as a kid,
59:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, that's where I'm at, but I want to hear your thoughts, send me your facts, send me your 15 mail and ballots.
59:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Rick at therixmithshow.com.
59:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much for being here.
59:35
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you back here next time.
59:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, this has been The Rick Smith Show.
59:57
[SPEAKER_01]: We're working people, come to talk.