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The Rick Smith Show 7-21-2026 · The Rick Smith Show

0:00
[SPEAKER_05]: It's time for the Rick Smith show.
0:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, here is the voice of a working class, Rick Smith.
0:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And welcome, brothers, sisters working class heroes, this is the Rick Smith show, that's so much for being here.
0:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Today on the big program, lots to get to, lots to talk about, I was scrolling through some streaming services over the weekend, to have board, stumbled on the movie Trumbo.
0:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And I figured, you know, it's a period piece about Hollywood, don't school politics, something I could have watched while doing email and stuff, and instead it hit me like a brick that it wasn't just a movie about history, it was really a cautionary tale for the moment.
0:49
[SPEAKER_03]: and watching Dalton Trumbo and other writers drag before committees branded as traders because this was the whoack, the house on American activities committee era of the 50s and they were quietly erased from the industry.
1:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I gotta tell you, I kept thinking, this is what happens when fear becomes policy.
1:11
[SPEAKER_03]: You didn't have to be a hardcore revolutionary then to get crushed.
1:15
[SPEAKER_03]: You just had to be a little inconvenient to the powerful.
1:19
[SPEAKER_03]: and the blacklist didn't only silence the trombos of the world and the people who were were communist, they were all people who had any ideas that were outside of what was acceptable.
1:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And once that communist label for anyone who challenged corporate power or war supported unions or civil rights or the peace movement, they all got shoved onto the suspect list.
1:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And somewhere between the scenes, I realized this feels a lot like what we're going to be going through the names may have changed radical left enemy of the people trader foreign agent, but the logic's the same.
2:01
[SPEAKER_03]: The film's government inquisitors, and today's red-skier rhetoric do both the same thing pretty well.
2:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell ordinary people that their real enemies are their neighbors, their coworkers, their fellow citizens.
2:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Not the folks actually hoarding power and wealth.
2:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And what really stuck with me is how quick, how quick that fear moves sideways.
2:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And in the movie, the studios, neighbors, even friends, starting policing each other, rat and on each other, deciding who's safe, who's radioactive.
2:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the part that I gotta tell you starting to feel close to home.
2:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Once that kind of suspicion starts to take root, every organizing effort, every union drive, every protest, every demand for a fair election,
2:47
[SPEAKER_03]: It can be rebranded as being disloyal or dangerous.
2:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So I gotta tell you, tripping over this movie wasn't just a random clip for me.
2:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Kind of a wake-up call, kind of like a comic wake-up call.
2:58
[SPEAKER_03]: The tools are different.
3:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Algorithms, social media pylons, smear campaigns, but the goal, the goal looks awful similar.
3:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Make people too scared to speak to nervous to stand together.
3:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And you win.
3:15
[SPEAKER_03]: If Trimbo taught me anything, it's that antidote to the red scare is not silence.
3:21
[SPEAKER_03]: It's solidarity, stubborn courage, and the refusal to let anyone turning questioning power into a crime.
3:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, it may be remember, just how big of dirt bags John Wayne and Ronald Reagan actually were.
3:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Because their activities were to undermine the will of working people.
3:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And somehow we put them, we put them up on a pedestal.
3:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Very, very strange stuff.
3:48
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you have the chance, I highly suggest check out the movie Trumbo.
3:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a little history lesson entertaining, but I gotta tell you, scary, scary stuff.
4:01
[SPEAKER_03]: When you hear your thoughts, we're gonna get the ricksmithshow.com and take quick break, right back with John Logan.
4:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Back after this.
4:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Inter.
4:14
[SPEAKER_03]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1899.
4:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the day New York City News Boys went on strike.
4:22
[SPEAKER_03]: A newspaper article noted, The News Boys Union has decided the tie up the world and the journal.
4:29
[SPEAKER_03]: They have struck for better rates on the evening editions of these papers, and their demands have been refused.
4:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Therefore, beginning with the first appearance of the red-headed extras this noon, the boys are going to refuse to sell.
4:43
[SPEAKER_03]: On-voys have been going up and down the line, passing the word.
4:47
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't sell no more world or journal, or you get your face punched in, see?
4:52
[SPEAKER_03]: The main issue of the strike was that the papers had sold for more money during the Spanish American War, as people were clamoring for news of the conflict, but as the war ended, the boom dried up.
5:03
[SPEAKER_03]: The news boys had paid more for the papers.
5:05
[SPEAKER_03]: but could not make the money back from their readers.
5:08
[SPEAKER_03]: The article quoted one of the striking news boys saying, they put the prices to six paps for a dime when the war began.
5:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Dan, when the war quit, and there wasn't no such sale for the paps, and we wanted to get them to for a set again, but they wouldn't.
5:22
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what we're going on strike for now.
5:25
[SPEAKER_03]: The cops is all busy, and we can do any scab news boys that show his face without police interference.
5:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We're here for our rights, and we will die defend against them.
5:35
[SPEAKER_03]: At the rates they give us now, we can't make any four cents on 10-page.
5:40
[SPEAKER_03]: The Pulitzer-owned world and the Hurst-owned journal did not reduce prices after the war.
5:46
[SPEAKER_03]: But in the end, the newspaper's management did agree to buy back any unsolved copy, and thus the strike ended on August 2, marking a small step forward.
5:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Labor History in two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith Show.
6:02
[SPEAKER_03]: For more information, go to laborhistoryinter.com, like us on Facebook, and follow us on the Twitters at Labor History in two.
6:13
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome back to the Rick Smith Show.
6:15
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, here is Rick Smith.
6:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So, I gotta tell you, you know, look, the red scare to point out is coming, my email box has been full of people.
6:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, are you coming or look, the moneyed people, sending me stuff like, obviously there's a movie out.
6:37
[SPEAKER_03]: The communist Chinese have weaponized U.S. institutions against Americans, come see our movie.
6:43
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's a quick, man, quick, almost,
6:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Almost like they had some insider information about where Trump was going with this and how they were gonna point at China and they're gonna point at communism Look no fan of China no fan of communism, but
7:01
[SPEAKER_03]: kind of kind of predictable in a weird way.
7:04
[SPEAKER_03]: But here to share some thoughts on, well, the big speech, but more importantly, we're in a moment where the labor movement is seeing kind of an approval that we haven't seen in my lifetime is this how they take down a growing labor movement?
7:19
[SPEAKER_03]: That's why I've asked my good friend John Logan to come share some thoughts.
7:22
[SPEAKER_03]: John's a professor and the director of labor studies and employment studies there at San Francisco State University.
7:28
[SPEAKER_03]: John, thanks for taking time for us.
7:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi Rick, glad to be on.
7:31
[SPEAKER_03]: So look, I'm sure you saw the speech.
7:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I got a wonder, you know, let's start here.
7:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Any initial gut reactions?
7:40
[SPEAKER_03]: What'd you walk away with from that?
7:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, that's the saddest, you know, potentially sort of a scary thing because we really don't know how far this administration would be prepared to go in terms of, you know,
7:58
[SPEAKER_01]: these sort of like labels to go after its enemies.
8:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And your enemies are broadly defined.
8:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in some ways you're describing it quite rightly as a potential red scare to point O.
8:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in the first red scare, which 1919, 1920, under Woodrow Wilson, but you'll under his attorney general Palmer.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They had these things called the Palmer raids.
8:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And they went after thousands of communist socialist anarchists and trade unionists and they were arrested.
8:35
[SPEAKER_01]: They were often deported without due process.
8:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And you had a devastating impact on parts of the labor movement.
8:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You particularly are in organizations like the...
8:47
[SPEAKER_01]: IWW, the industrial workers of the world, but also the union of Russian workers, other and more mainstream labor organizations as well.
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So, as again, these people were arrested, charged with very serious charges, no due process,
9:05
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, no warrants, no trial, no proper trials, and then deported.
9:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, we see a lot of the same thing, you know, potentially happening today.
9:15
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know how big it's going to get, but you know, we were talking before we went on the air.
9:21
[SPEAKER_01]: about the charges against, I think, they're called the Minneapolis 15 people who were involved in the anti-Is protests in Minneapolis.
9:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And several of those people are first and foremost their union activists.
9:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You're very much involved in their local unions in Minneapolis, a variety of different unions, some from service sector unions and some actually from building
9:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But they were the people who had this sort of know-how and the energy and, you know, that this sort of, you know, drive to organize a lot of the anti-Is protests, anti-Is actions in Minneapolis.
10:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And now,
10:10
[SPEAKER_01]: other being charged with these very serious conspiracy charges, you know, we don't know what's going to happen, but you've seen obviously in other places in the country and taxes, you know, people have given very long jail sentences for participating in anti-Is protests.
10:28
[SPEAKER_01]: But as you said, I mean, this is, you know,
10:32
[SPEAKER_01]: people who are protesting against ice enforcement rates, that's one thing.
10:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, we don't know how broadly the Trump administration is prepared to take this.
10:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And everything that Trump sort of says and many of the things that he's done, you know, would give you a cause for concern because it doesn't really seem that he has any limits.
10:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, things like the rule of law,
10:59
[SPEAKER_01]: They mean nothing to him.
11:00
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's all just about me, me and what can I get away with?
11:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and how does this?
11:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think, you know, as we know, Trump is not doing well in the polls, you know, mid-terms are approaching, you know, it appears to be getting more desperate and sort of more desperate he becomes, I think, you know, potentially sort of more dangerous period we're entering.
11:23
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, as you pointed out with the 15 in Minneapolis and to be a lot of this stuff, you can tie back to, look back to the past.
11:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the House on American Activities Committee during the 50s, because just, as I said at the beginning, I tripped over the movie Trumbo, which was about that period where there are blacklisting, anyone who they could put the communist think on.
11:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And Tifa seems to be the new,
11:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
11:52
[SPEAKER_03]: At least I thought it was, we're just bringing back communism.
11:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Now we're going to come up with everybody into that now.
11:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you said, I mean, Communists, I mean, these labels don't really mean anything for people on the rights and the far right and very deliberately so, you know, they want to label, you know, anyone who is, you know, against what the Trump administration is doing and anyone who opposes the, the soft clamp down and the escalating authoritarianism is a communist to, you know, and they rise, you they can label you.
12:25
[SPEAKER_01]: some kind of other that justify these sort of extreme actions.
12:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you said, you are comes at both interesting time, but also a dangerous time for the labor movement.
12:40
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of the labor movement, we know that there's some, you know, some hopeful things we can look at.
12:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Union approval ratings for the last few years have been at record highs.
12:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in the 70 percent, you know, the American public approve of unions.
12:57
[SPEAKER_01]: A clear majority of people say the decline of unions has hurt American workers.
13:04
[SPEAKER_01]: A clear majority of Americans say they would join unions if they had a free and fair choice to do so.
13:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And not only do we have 70% approval ratings, but the last time we had that level was in 1965.
13:21
[SPEAKER_01]: At that time, private sector unions represented a third, almost a third of the American workforce.
13:28
[SPEAKER_01]: today as we know they represent less than 6%.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's even more remarkable that they have your record high approval ratings despite their organizational weakness.
13:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Your and what it shows is that there are many people and we see it.
13:46
[SPEAKER_01]: We've talked about this many times, but it's still there.
13:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We see it particularly amongst young workers, young workers, you know, overwhelmingly work and what I would call young workplaces, you know, they work at places like Starbucks and Trader Joe's.
14:02
[SPEAKER_01]: and Apple retail stores, and REI, and young workplaces are overwhelmingly non-union.
14:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you amongst young workers, you have incredibly high rates of union approval, but very low rates of union membership, but not you because of where they work.
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, these are the kinds of workers, we see it amongst buries this, we see it amongst, you know, what's the other, you know, people who work in like, you know, galleries, non-profits, you know, all sorts of things, you know, where it's predominantly young workers.
14:39
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the people who are currently trying to organize trying to farm unions.
14:43
[SPEAKER_01]: they work in overwhelmingly non-union sectors.
14:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So all of that is hopeful and of course the Trump administration, the right-wing ideologues, not just Trump himself as we've spoken about before, when it comes to unions, when it comes to most things, he's all over the place.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't have a coherent ideology.
15:04
[SPEAKER_01]: But there are many people in the Trump administration who are viciously anti-union and who are right-wing ideologues who want to destroy the labor movement, maybe want to co-op the part of it, but you know, destroy a large part of it, weaken it.
15:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, they have seen what's happened in the last few years.
15:26
[SPEAKER_01]: They did not want you to open up an opportunity for the labor movement.
15:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So, if you can create this sort of climate of fear, which obviously the speeches intended to do, and the actions of the Trump administration around this,
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: if you can create an environment in which people are worried about the consequences for them personally individually and collectively, if they become then it's very difficult obviously to have
15:59
[SPEAKER_01]: union organizing successes in that environment.
16:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll just so just mention one example in the last couple of weeks I've been going up to Sanoma County just north of the Bay Area.
16:14
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the vineyards, they're essentially the production workers in the factory, they're trying to organize with the teamsters and one of the teamsters locals and North Bay jobs with justice is involved in this and there's a very vicious anti-union campaign which of course both come to expect.
16:35
[SPEAKER_01]: But the vineyard owners,
16:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Previously, before the Union campaign started, we're supposedly very good when it came to ICE.
16:44
[SPEAKER_01]: They said, you know, if we hear any rumors whatsoever of isotativity in the vicinity, we're locking the gates, we're not allowing anyone in.
16:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, we're trying to keep you as safe as possible.
16:59
[SPEAKER_01]: As soon as the Union campaign started, they started all of these wild rumors trying to tell oh, the workers oh yeah, iceberg here, iceberg and the parking lot, you know, you have to be careful because you're very vulnerable.
17:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're clearly sort of weaponizing these issues and, you know, exploiting this climate of fear to try to stop the Union campaign.
17:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I see this.
17:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I see this this whole you know this red scare that's coming yeah I see this is a huge part of that now I don't think it was and as you pointed out I think Trump's all over the place I do believe to his core his anti-union he will work with unions when he needs to get the preferences to use exploitable folks that you could take advantage of but I see this as as an opportunity for the union busters to be able to to get onto his coat tails
17:54
[SPEAKER_03]: to be able to use this to scare people.
17:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Because look, union approval ratings are rising because people are struggling.
18:02
[SPEAKER_03]: People are having a hard time putting food on the table, keeping gas in the tank, thinking about a future let alone a prosperous one.
18:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And the one tool that can help them is joining informing a union.
18:14
[SPEAKER_03]: So yes, for to for me, and you could help me here for this for me is how they crush that by doing what they did to those writers and those people back in the 50s, you put that think on them, they're going to run.
18:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and you know, I think you know, you touched on a very important point there.
18:44
[SPEAKER_01]: If they're still optimistic about having a better future and creating a better future for themselves, and I would say the primary means that we do this, you know, the most effective anti-poverty program this country has ever had is unions and collective bargaining.
19:03
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they do offer working people the possibility that there is a better future out there for them, for their kids,
19:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Trump exploits this sort of hopelessness and, you know, the lack of, you know, people who's, you know, just giving up hope on any kind of better future.
19:26
[SPEAKER_01]: He's very, very good at that, you know, and I think that's what's happened in a lot of the communities in which Trump, you know, has been able to get.
19:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, support from places where Republicans might not even, you know, generally get so stronger support.
19:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I always sort of say, and you know, I understand that people would say, well, you know, depression, era today, very different.
19:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I agree with that, you know, the economy's very different, what's the thing's very different?
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: The thing is, you're during the depression, if you read the histories of the depression and the third season in New Deal, there was still a lot of hope amongst, you know, most working people, they thought if only we can get through this better times, lie ahead.
20:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, part of the process of creating those better times was forming the unions and mass production industries and steel and auto and rubber, you know, then you're unions like the US up here in the steel workers and on and on and on and on today.
20:29
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, there's a lot of people I think, especially in so deindustrialized communities who don't have that sense that a better future lies ahead.
20:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And Trump exploits that.
20:41
[SPEAKER_01]: He's very good at exploiting that feeling of hopelessness.
20:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And he comes in and says, you know, only I, I'm the only one, you know, who has the answers to your problems.
20:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And the problem is
20:59
[SPEAKER_01]: the other, you know, yeah.
21:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think, you know, that unions are a threat for a variety of reasons, I mean, because, you know, if you, you know, unions are not perfect, but if you're concerned about rising authoritarianism, if you're concerned about, you know, threat of like, you know, so potential,
21:21
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, if you want to call it fascism, fascism in this country, unions are one of the few movements that have the ability to offer some resistance to that and they offer people hope that a better future is still possible and therefore they don't turn to the right wing demagogues who scapegoat this group and that group and you know, and so forth.
21:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I think that the two things are very much tied and, you know, as you said, that using this sort of idea that, you know, that the threat is these sort of communists in our midst and that's a label that can apply to anyone but can certainly apply to people who are trying to organize against the sort of like, you know, mega corporate interests who bank
22:13
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there's definitely a very real danger that we'll see, you know, more and more I think of oppression going after people, you know, undergrowns of them being this of enemy within communist whatever, but an actual fact what they're trying to do is, you know, get a lot of people to
22:42
[SPEAKER_01]: you know that you have the right to farm a union with your co-workers.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You have the right to collectively bargain in the workplace.
22:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But yes, you know, it's a very dangerous moment for the labor movement because in some ways, you know, so I've now finished on this, you know, we're back at a position where we were almost 100, you know, 100 plus years ago in terms of union density.
23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: But back then, the labor movement, you know, had a sort of in some ways a sort of firmer foundation, you know, was mostly based on the trades, you know, the still crafts, and you know, they were unions that were used to surviving.
23:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't really the federal government.
23:22
[SPEAKER_01]: They had to worry about, but, you know, hostile courts,
23:25
[SPEAKER_01]: that they had to worry of.
23:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, you know, in some ways, it's a little bit more fragile.
23:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's all these hopeful signs like we were saying to, you know, before, but the labor movement itself, you know, is underlying basis is, I think, sort of, like, in some ways more vulnerable to the kind of repression that we could see over, you know, hopefully not, but hopefully we see resistance, you know, but, you know,
23:52
[SPEAKER_01]: it is actually vulnerable to those kinds of attacks and again, you know, Trump and his colonies and the right wing people around him, the anti-union people around him, know that that is the case.
24:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and you're seeing organizing in places that you wouldn't have seen before, which is why my concern for this is this, this sends a chilling effect across the organizing that has happened and a perfect example is out in your, your, your neck of the woods, uh, it was the palm beach golf course, you look, yeah, he's on there, yeah, exactly, he's on for unionized.
24:25
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the most exclusive golf clubs in the country, and you'll I mentioned the Venyard workers, you know, who are organizing, but also the caddies, it's a really interesting story, you know, they were independent contractors, they liked that really arrangement, they were doing well.
24:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the company they worked for are negotiated with was bought over by private equity.
24:48
[SPEAKER_01]: They were turned into subcontracted employees paid 20 bucks in our plus tips.
24:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but they knew they have a very strong work culture and a very so strong sense of community amongst the caddies.
25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: There are many of them being there for.
25:03
[SPEAKER_01]: your 15, 20, 25 years.
25:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Then they were being exploited and they immediately contacted the California Labor Federation who put them in contact with the local United here, local 19, which already represented food service workers at Palm Beach and they had a blocked election victory.
25:27
[SPEAKER_01]: and they were even able to enlist support from some of the CEOs and the rich guys that they work for caddies for and it's interesting because some of these CEOs who, you know, I mean, they were businesses are probably vehemently anti-use, but when they know the caddies, they were on the caddies side and they said, you know, good for you, stand up for your rights to not sweat these guys, it's right you.
25:53
[SPEAKER_01]: they were even able to use some of the emails and texts that they got, you know, from the CEO's.
25:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mentioned you before, we come on.
26:02
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the caddy said explicitly said, you know, this was one of the two proudest achievements in his life.
26:10
[SPEAKER_01]: His other proudest achievement was the bat that blew his band that he plays in, was voted best blew his band in Monterey County.
26:22
[SPEAKER_01]: in the union campaign of the caddies.
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And he also said, if you'd asked me a year ago, would I ever be involved in a union campaign?
26:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Would I ever be a union member?
26:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Said, not in your life, you're crazy.
26:34
[SPEAKER_01]: That will never happen.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think more and more, you know, we are sort of seeing these groups of workers.
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: that you never imagined that they would have to unionize, but you're recognizing that the only way that they can get, you know, their notion of just treatment at the workplace is to act collectively with their co-workers to farm unions and then engage in collective bargaining.
27:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So if they were given a free and fair choice, you'll, and we talked about this a minute ago, this is why the right wing is so scared about the labor movement.
27:10
[SPEAKER_01]: They know that there are tens of millions of workers out there, and every legitimate survey shows this.
27:18
[SPEAKER_01]: If people were given a free and fair choice, they would be joining unions and draws.
27:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely not.
27:24
[SPEAKER_03]: It would be like the 1930s and 1940s all over again.
27:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is the message right there.
27:30
[SPEAKER_03]: if they had that chance.
27:32
[SPEAKER_03]: John, I appreciate the time and that's a political discussion for tomorrow of how we get into getting that opportunity.
27:38
[SPEAKER_03]: But John Logan, I appreciate the time as always, great stuff, my friend.
27:43
[SPEAKER_01]: No, thank you, Rick.
27:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Our good friend, John Logan.
27:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Want to hear your thoughts?
27:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Email me, Rick at therixmithshow.com.
27:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you see it?
27:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you see what's coming?
27:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to hear your thoughts back after this.
28:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History Into.
28:05
[SPEAKER_03]: The year was 1934.
28:06
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the day that came to be known as Bloody Friday.
28:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Minneapolis teamsters had been on strike for three days in their third strike of the year.
28:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Trucking bosses had reneged on their May settlement.
28:19
[SPEAKER_03]: They refused to recognize union organization of inside workers.
28:23
[SPEAKER_03]: In the period between strikes, the union had documented hundreds of cases of discrimination.
28:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, 7,000 teamsters effectively shut down trucking throughout the city.
28:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Local 574 leaders established a daily strike bulletin.
28:37
[SPEAKER_03]: The organizer, as it was called, would serve to guide strikers to victory.
28:42
[SPEAKER_03]: In his book, Revolutionary Teamsters, historian Brian Palmer notes that the first few days of the strike had been quiet.
28:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Then, on this day, police attempted to break the picket lines by running what seemed to be a lone scab truck through the lines.
28:57
[SPEAKER_03]: It was later discovered the truck was moving no merchandise, but was used to draw strikers into a confrontation.
29:05
[SPEAKER_03]: When flying tickets moved to stop the truck, they were ambushed.
29:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Police opened fire on armed picketers and then sprayed those who attempted to escape with buckshot.
29:15
[SPEAKER_03]: At least 48 were wounded, striker Harry Ness and unemployed council supporter John Beller were killed.
29:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Palmer notes that Ness had been shot point blank in the chest.
29:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Doctors pulled 38 slugs from his body.
29:29
[SPEAKER_03]: His deathbed injunction repeated word of mouth among the strikers, tell the boys not to fail me now.
29:36
[SPEAKER_03]: More than 40,000 turned out to pay their respects to the world war one veteran and father of four.
29:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Palmer adds that, bloody Friday had lasted a matter of minutes, but its meaning would leave a mark on the very fabric of Minneapolis's socio-economic relations, labor history and too brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smithsia for more information go to laborhistoryintu.com.
30:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But that might explain why John Deers, top executive bosses, have imposed and astonishingly stupid policy on America's farmers.
30:15
[SPEAKER_00]: For years, they've decreed that while a farmer technically owns a tractor or other John Deer product,
30:21
[SPEAKER_00]: The owner is prohibited from making any repairs when the machinery breaks down, stalls, out, etc.
30:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, the owner's must call an authorized deer dealer to fix what most farmers could handle by themselves.
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: The monopolistic profiteur refuses to make its repair manuals available to customers or local repair shops, so, gotcha.
30:51
[SPEAKER_00]: The Montana Rancher's tractor had gone to put in hay bathing season.
30:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, set a deer dealer.
30:58
[SPEAKER_00]: The technician is not available.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And no, you can't have access to the dognostic computer to do it yourself.
31:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So he had to wait weeks before deer finally got his tractor running.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: A fairly basic job worth about $600, but they build water $4,000.
31:15
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's called a monopoly fix.
31:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But they messed with the wrong farmer.
31:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Schweitzer, President of the Montana Farmer's Union, mobilized grassroots pressure from five states, forcing federal officials to sue John Deere.
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: This month, deer's aloof executive settle that suit.
31:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, letting its farm customers take charge of the equipment that, hello, they own.
31:39
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jim Heiter saying, Schwitzer points out that this landmark win over the arrogance of deer executives is just one stepping stone to a right to repair law for all products.
31:51
[SPEAKER_00]: To help push this right forward, go to repair.org repair.org.
32:03
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome back to the Rick Smith Show.
32:05
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, here is Rick Smith.
32:07
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, even the speech, the big speech last week was not free of its controversy.
32:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Evidently, one of the teleprompter people now in a little water over potentially, allegedly, potentially, possibly, allegedly, maybe possibly, you know, taking some of the knowledge that he had inside seeing the speech to bet on some one about a hundred grand.
32:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I think, and I got to tell you, anyone surprised any shock whatsoever in any of that.
32:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm surprised it was only a hundred grand, but here to share some thoughts on the big speech and maybe the graphed and all of the nonsense that going around around this administration faster, good friend Sarah Burst, to come share some thoughts.
32:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Sarah is the senior digital editor over there at alternate, you can check out her work alternate.org.
33:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Sarah, thanks for taking time for us.
33:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey Rick how are you?
33:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh good.
33:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I saw this story and you had a great story on this.
33:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm like am I surprised?
33:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Not even a little bit.
33:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, a bit, and this is the tellerprompter operator where is getting the speeches ahead of time and then placing bets based on what Trump would say.
33:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, $100,000, which is a nice work if you can get it, unfortunately, that's inside or trading.
33:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I mean, even I guess the prediction markets, it turns out if you're cheating on that stuff, it's not even like to pay out.
33:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I got to think.
33:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, the question that I have when I read this, I'm going, did Trump get his cut?
33:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And if he did, maybe there's a pardon.
33:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe.
33:54
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a good question.
33:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think, I mean, my question has always been, who and the family has been doing the same kind of thing.
34:04
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I mean, Trump could very easily
34:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I pardon the along with all of the other patterns of everybody else that I know.
34:12
[SPEAKER_03]: But you know what, and there's part of me that goes Trump himself is probably doing it.
34:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Just not under his Donald Trump name.
34:17
[SPEAKER_03]: You maybe he's going to revive what was his name?
34:20
[SPEAKER_03]: John Baron.
34:22
[SPEAKER_03]: John Baron.
34:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Remember John Baron?
34:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe John Baron's role in the dice.
34:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think the big thing is that it's like you said, like it's like a casino where the house always went.
34:32
[SPEAKER_02]: The house doesn't like to pay out.
34:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they have an actual
34:39
[SPEAKER_02]: department that works on, you know, who's making these bets and how is it that they guessed this information and if you win a whole bunch of these, they're going to start investigating that and not every company does this.
34:53
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some international companies that don't care about ethics rules or insider trading and but the ones that the guy was playing on from the teleprompter and some of the ones that just seem to have a lot of insight and information when they're
35:09
[SPEAKER_02]: those are all on the American specific markets that have this kind of these kinds of rules.
35:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, you should have lost one or two oops, but if you went all of them, if you get all 10 on your pool ticket, yeah, you got some insider information, but here's the thing, this is the this, the least concerning of anything having to do with that speech, because I'm not sure if you
35:35
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we're we're doing the McCarthy era.
35:37
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, I watched the movie Trumbo over the weekend Which was about Daniel Trumbo one of the writers that was blacklisted during the first McCarthy era and all of the stuff that went along with that It was just kind of like going Man, this is this is a this is a documentary that we're going to live going forward because I think Trump speech laid it out with the with the game plan is
35:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I don't know how much this is actually going to work.
36:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think they, they've been calling Democrats Socialist for so long that now they're changing it into Communists.
36:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's a weird sort of dynamic where I think you, you kept saying Socialism so much that people were like, well, what is Socialism?
36:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And then people started looking it up and they were like, oh, this doesn't sound
36:28
[SPEAKER_03]: No, this is why they had to go back to the Commie Word because look, I have this conversation over the weekend.
36:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Why I think, this is why I think Trump is a brilliant political master.
36:39
[SPEAKER_03]: He knows how to tear stuff up and burn things down.
36:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I can't clearly can't govern, but understands what gets people motivated and gets people to attack one another because my email box has been full of you, Commie this or that, you go.
36:53
[SPEAKER_03]: But hold on, I thought I was a socialist
36:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's amazing how fast the red hat can flip that switch.
37:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I will give anything in the world for some reporter to ask him or any other Republican to define communism to find socialism.
37:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's the piece of this that I want.
37:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you're just using the word you don't even know what it means.
37:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And at least if you're going to use the word, then let's have a conversation about what it actually means.
37:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
37:21
[SPEAKER_02]: The big problem for me, I think, for Trump is that he's looking, he's trying to reignize this red scare and this communism thing.
37:29
[SPEAKER_02]: The history of that goes back to Russia.
37:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's like, you were, you were reigniting Russia conversations.
37:35
[SPEAKER_02]: What, what are you doing?
37:36
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you doing?
37:37
[SPEAKER_02]: After you basically just said that I can't secure the election because every time I'm done it, I sucked out it.
37:43
[SPEAKER_03]: No, and this is the interesting part because, you know, Thomas Massey's been running around for a while going I don't understand why this is a thing we want all the elections I don't understand election rigging because we want all the elections and I'm going because that's where my mind was and look there's very little there's I'm going to say there's there's probably less than almost nothing that I agree with Thomas Massey on but I agree with this there in power they control the house the Senate and the White House and the Supreme Court
38:11
[SPEAKER_03]: How rigged are they?
38:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And if they are rigged, the winners, we should be looking at maybe.
38:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, this was the self-owned herd round the world.
38:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the biggest stupidest mistake.
38:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know why he made it.
38:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
38:31
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess if this is, my theory was that he was making this speech.
38:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And I thought he was, he was going to say I'm taking over the elections.
38:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, but, you know, he said, I guess we're still sort of waiting for that maybe I was waiting for you to appoint her shall walk or send it or of, of Georgia because that's what the right kept saying that's what the, that's what the little fox heads were running around going, he's going to put her shall walk her and I'm going in what world.
38:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like that was the weird part is like I think a lot of us expected the absolute worst.
38:59
[SPEAKER_02]: We were ready for the worst.
39:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it didn't really happen.
39:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And then what he said, just really didn't make sense.
39:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, I think even his supporters are kind of scratching their heads.
39:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, it just it gives a lot of opportunity to ask the question.
39:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so Republicans shouldn't be in turn to
39:20
[SPEAKER_02]: elections.
39:20
[SPEAKER_02]: That's basically what you're saying is that they create unsecured elections.
39:27
[SPEAKER_03]: But here's the thing that the speech was even scarier than that for me and I know a lot of people, you know, we're saying, oh, it was a dud.
39:33
[SPEAKER_03]: There was nothing there.
39:34
[SPEAKER_03]: For me, I kept hearing DOJ is going to go after.
39:39
[SPEAKER_03]: traders.
39:40
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to have the next Red Scar or the that we're going to see the next Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is my mind immediately as he was speaking I'm thinking about those two people who it was proven they didn't do what they were accused of but still dead we still murdered people in the name of well red scare and I got to tell you that that's a little freaky because I know how I know how people get.
40:04
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a case actually right now going on.
40:07
[SPEAKER_02]: They're doing this with antifa, essentially.
40:11
[SPEAKER_02]: They have declared antifa a terrorist group.
40:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And you want to talk about cell phones.
40:17
[SPEAKER_02]: They kind of screwed themselves in that specific case in Texas where they've got two people that they're claiming are giving, what is it like, giving,
40:28
[SPEAKER_02]: financial or or otherwise so they didn't come for right right right to a terrorist group and And their the problem is is that they're gonna have to prove that there is an actual group
40:41
[SPEAKER_02]: that there is an organization that there's a structure that there's a way to fund it and that there are people in charge at the top and so that is never going to happen because it's just not the case and and it's I mean they're they're going to end up completely screwing themselves in this case, but it's sure going to be fun to watch.
41:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, but you see again, I know a lot of people think, well, you know, they're going to screw themselves.
41:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think they care about that.
41:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't think Trump really knows all that at the end.
41:08
[SPEAKER_03]: It's about continuing that that division to where we're eating each other.
41:13
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, the old J.
41:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Gold quote, I could pay after working class to murder the other half.
41:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And look, he doesn't even have to pay.
41:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Just throws this chum out into the water and immediately we turn at each other's throats.
41:26
[SPEAKER_02]: which is sad, but, you know, again, I'm surprising.
41:30
[SPEAKER_02]: We've seen this with corporate America for how long?
41:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, true, true.
41:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Now they're saying that they're Iowa, for instance.
41:36
[SPEAKER_03]: There are some competitive races in Iowa that were once very red, red races.
41:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, somewhat competitive, is that the, is this because they're cheating?
41:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Or is it because, and as Thomas Massey, and what's that, that bubble headed bleach blooms, name over at Fox, Tommy Lauren,
41:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And she's saying, you control the house, the Senate and the White House, and you've done nothing over the past couple of years.
42:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Or is it that?
42:04
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I think it's kind of all of the above.
42:07
[SPEAKER_02]: There's because the piece of it about the war and high gas prices, the high grocery prices, the economic stuff that we have been talking about for months and months and months that we've said are going to be a big part of this election.
42:18
[SPEAKER_02]: It turns out are actually a big part of this election.
42:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of the major things is that they've got a couple of Republican candidates running for the house in District 1 in District 3, who are kind of, you know, who are just not doing well.
42:34
[SPEAKER_02]: One of them, I can't remember, there's one in the second district as well.
42:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But one of the out of those three districts, one of them is an incumbent.
42:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And she won that seat with like 800 votes.
42:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And so anytime there's a close election, if you're going to have a blue wave of any kind, she's out.
42:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
42:56
[SPEAKER_02]: So the rest of them, you know, like Trump supported some, some other candidate who didn't win in something and now they've got some, you know, carpet bagger that nobody likes who's going up against a really, really popular state representative who's done a lot for, for Western Iowa.
43:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So there are these candidates who have very entrenched relationships and lineage and, you know, that they're very involved versus these other people who are kind of empty shirts and, you know, and again, like when you're in a way, the election, you don't, all you got to do is show up, right?
43:42
[SPEAKER_02]: and you're going to get already like a big chunk of change.
43:45
[SPEAKER_03]: We should have a wave election.
43:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, because you know, I've been reading a lot of reports that, you know, the post office is going to be able to implement some of the things that the Trump wants to do in mail and ballot, you know, restraining people's ability and what's amazing to me is the number of people who reached out to me this weekend.
44:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And kind of said, well, I don't know why there's a problem looking into it, Rick, you know, there's all this problem with the mail and ballot and I'm going, where other than in the Fox news world, where are the problems?
44:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Because we've investigated this.
44:14
[SPEAKER_03]: We've gone through court processes.
44:16
[SPEAKER_03]: The smoke isn't even there.
44:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no.
44:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's...
44:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Particularly in Texas, I saw a couple of videos when I was doing scrolling this weekend of women in Texas who, like, there's this one women bless her heart who had been married a second time, so she was with her first husband for like 18 years and then now she's with her second husband for 12 years, she has to find her marriage license from the first husband.
44:48
[SPEAKER_02]: and her birth certificate to create the paper trail to this name change that she's had already for 12 years to prove her citizenship.
44:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And it is, it is those kind of women who aren't going to get to vote.
45:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And so those are, you know, married women, right?
45:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Like who is, who is more likely
45:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So the women who are not changing their names or the women who have a passport and like to travel internationally or the women who, you know, there are so many categories of people who just don't change their name and haven't changed their names and they've got access to all the stuff they need to vote, that's not necessarily the case for a lot of the Trump voters.
45:36
[SPEAKER_03]: No, look, I was at the DMV not too long ago and there was a woman there trying to get her real ID.
45:41
[SPEAKER_03]: She had a Pennsylvania driver's license, didn't have a real ID.
45:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And evidently, you need a birth certificate.
45:48
[SPEAKER_03]: You need these documents that she didn't have and trying to find, because her name was different, because it was the name thing.
45:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So she had to go through this way through these, because she'd been married a couple of times and there were in different states.
46:04
[SPEAKER_03]: So hunting this stuff down was just like this herkilling and leap, and she's like, screw it.
46:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't need the real idea.
46:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll just drive where I'm going instead of flying.
46:13
[SPEAKER_03]: and she just kind of gave up and that that's the hope on the voting person.
46:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
46:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
46:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And the people who are more likely to give up are going to be the Republicans because Democrats are angry.
46:24
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think once you have the most angry, the most engaged, the most likely to show up people, you know, they're going to be the ones that are fighting for this and the people who are just like, God, this is such a waste of time, you know, they're going to throw their
46:41
[SPEAKER_02]: basically throw out and be like, I'm done with this, but I mean, I just fit the last year trying to get my little cousins birth certificate because both of her parents have passed and it was easier for us to get a death certificate for her mother who died 15 years ago.
46:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And for a dad who died 10 years ago or five years ago, then it was for us to get her birth certificate because she's in college now.
47:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And so her address changes every semester.
47:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So all the documents that she needs to prove, they weren't accepting them because they didn't have the same address on them.
47:17
[SPEAKER_02]: They wouldn't accept her student ID because the student ID didn't have the phone number of the university on it.
47:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It had the university police line on it.
47:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, the amount of people that we have had to go through to be like, can you please, like, do you have a sticker where you could put the number on it?
47:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have like, any, any literally anything, um, you know, changing her address to making sure we change her address in the school system and in the, uh, her bank account so that those two matched and that's actually being sent to the same address, like it's just these things.
47:50
[SPEAKER_03]: You would think in the digital age, this wouldn't need that hard.
47:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, there's a solution, and there's a solution.
47:58
[SPEAKER_03]: We're just going to chip everybody.
48:01
[SPEAKER_03]: There we go.
48:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I mean, they had a chance.
48:04
[SPEAKER_03]: They had the chance with the vaccine.
48:06
[SPEAKER_03]: They couldn't chip everybody.
48:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not opening that channel.
48:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It works.
48:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not doing it.
48:11
[SPEAKER_02]: The important part of it is if you really want to do this, if you want to have some kind of forced voter ID, then let's spend the next 10 years rolling it out, having the federal government help people do it,
48:25
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not against that.
48:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's make this a streamline the system.
48:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's use this to streamline the system.
48:31
[SPEAKER_03]: They make it a little bit easier for people to get their stuff to do.
48:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure.
48:34
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm on board.
48:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And it should be free.
48:36
[SPEAKER_03]: But understand, not the point.
48:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Good governance, not the point, voter suppression, the point.
48:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And the stuff with the post office, there are, um, they're, Mark Elias is on us.
48:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Like he is fighting against this really hard.
48:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So have faith in some of the people on the legal side who are going after some of these obscure rules.
48:56
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I have faith in the people who are fighting the good fight.
48:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I just don't have faith in the people who are sitting on the bench to side and his stuff because a lot of them were putting the, Dumbo put him in there.
49:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, but here's the thing.
49:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you know, all of this stuff we're talking about we're still not talking about Iran and I got to tell you that was the point of the speech last week.
49:17
[SPEAKER_03]: The point was a distraction here here here kittens follow the laser pointer, which we have done due to fleet to push back on the lies in the BS, but we're not talking about that.
49:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And oh, by the way, I guess we're ramping up to potentially go and invade Cuba, maybe, because that's an important national security issue.
49:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So apparently what happens last week is they were the military.
49:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody in the military sources from inside the higher ups, were saying that they're creating different kinds of scenarios for how to take over Cuba.
49:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not something that has been definitively
50:00
[SPEAKER_02]: you know that they've they've decided on it's not something that Trump has specifically said we're going to do this and it's going to happen on this date.
50:07
[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's still very up in the air because they're coming up with every contingency plan that they can come up with for you know this happens than this which is very military of them to do.
50:20
[SPEAKER_02]: But the idea that they're being asked to put these scenarios together is the scary part because it's like you'll have anyone finished
50:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, to be fair, to be fair, you know, I live, you know, not too far from the place where they, this is what they do.
50:35
[SPEAKER_03]: They dream up, you know, how to attack everybody.
50:38
[SPEAKER_03]: They were game everything.
50:39
[SPEAKER_03]: It's, it's part of the, the mission of the, the Army War College is to, you know, to be prepared for everything.
50:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And I get that.
50:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm okay with it to a degree.
50:48
[SPEAKER_03]: So how much of this is just being prepared and how much of this do you think is, you know,
51:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I do think there's something to the idea that he's looking for something because he's lost this or anything and there's no real way for him to save it.
51:10
[SPEAKER_02]: So now, instead of taking his toys and leaving the sandbox, he's going to go again and be like, oh, I'm going to fight every country until I get a win.
51:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Like a good bully, pick on someone down the down the food check.
51:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, like he's basically the big bad wolf going against the pig with the straw house.
51:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like this is not a difficult lift.
51:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you've already pretty much destroyed them by cutting off their oil supply.
51:38
[SPEAKER_03]: So.
51:39
[SPEAKER_03]: No, look, I guess they just bombed all the roads going in and out of their main port.
51:45
[SPEAKER_03]: So basically you've cut off all of their supply lines to their entire civilization.
51:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Which I got to wonder, you got to wonder, you know, how much of that's going to, it's not surprising that Marco Rubio wants to do away with the international card.
52:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Just throwing that out there.
52:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a big thing.
52:04
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think with the international criminal court as the U.S. isn't even a part of it.
52:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
52:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, they might get a thought on their own and speaking of of losses Trump had had basically he's appointed this entire commission of fine arts right they basically kind of better rubber stamp on weren't they with the people who said he could put his name on the Kennedy Center wasn't that part of this.
52:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So those weren't, they had a Kennedy Center board designed that, but this other board, you know, it had, it had people that were architects and experts in all of this, this, you know, this style of building and construction at all the monuments in Washington and he fired all of them and installed his own people as a good data would do.
52:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, and they signed off on whatever he wants what happens last week that was a little bit different is that.
53:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Trump has now decided that they want to expand the property of the fencing around the White House.
53:08
[SPEAKER_02]: So the White House has big huge fence, right?
53:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you remember when Obama was in, they basically were had fence jumpers all the time.
53:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So what they want to do is there's a square across the street from the north side of the White House.
53:23
[SPEAKER_02]: They want to go beyond the square now and put up an even bigger fence.
53:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So people can't even get to be original fence.
53:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, it cuts off that whole part, that whole square, where protests are, and I mean, the guy who's got the veteran stuff with his tent, who has been protesting there like nonstop forever.
53:48
[SPEAKER_02]: They're, and tourists are not going to have any access to it.
53:51
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's really kind of shocking.
53:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And that in that scenario.
53:56
[SPEAKER_02]: The guy who's in charge of it was like, well, you know, I, this is a great opportunity.
54:02
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a great opportunity.
54:04
[SPEAKER_02]: We will come up with the best solution for this, which was his way of saying, no, we're not doing this.
54:10
[SPEAKER_02]: This is stupid, you're literally going to cut off an area of the city where they're, they're, they're home.
54:17
[SPEAKER_02]: They're houses that are used for stuff like dolly Madison's old house is right there on the square.
54:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Really clearly clearly so you don't put a real kind of tag in ice place in there Oh, probably you'll play some cupcakes in there because Dali Madison was cupcakes wrong.
54:34
[SPEAKER_03]: You're when I was a kid put some cupcakes in there Yeah, well we'll see where this goes.
54:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I got Another day another day of stupid.
54:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah Sarah as always appreciate the time My pleasure to have a great us the week everyone was well our good friend Sarah Burris one of your thoughts
54:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Anything, anything at this point?
54:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, seriously, are we, are we tired of winning yet?
55:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I know it's kind of a beat in the dead horse a bit, but are we tired when are your thoughts?
55:07
[SPEAKER_03]: We're at therexmittheshow.com right now.
55:16
[SPEAKER_03]: This day in Labor History, the year was 1971.
55:20
[SPEAKER_03]: It was an historic day for the men and women who delivered the U.S. mail.
55:25
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the day that the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers signed their first ever Union contract.
55:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Although their had been earlier postal unions, they did not have formal bargaining rights.
55:39
[SPEAKER_03]: postal wages were set by Congress.
55:42
[SPEAKER_03]: This meant that the starting wage for postal workers was only $6200 in 1970.
55:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Many of these workers actually qualified for food stamps, frustrated at their low pay and working conditions, postal workers in New York City walked off the job.
55:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Soon, 200,000 of their fellow workers across 30 major cities joined them on the picket lines.
56:05
[SPEAKER_03]: A story in Time magazine described the impact of the work action, writing, quote, the first national postal stoppage in US history, and the largest walkout ever against the federal government, the postal strike almost immediately began to strangle the operation of commerce, impaired government functions, and vastly inconvenience the public.
56:26
[SPEAKER_03]: To end the strike, Congress awarded the workers a 6% raise.
56:30
[SPEAKER_03]: But even more importantly, Congress decided to reorganize the postal service.
56:35
[SPEAKER_03]: The Post Office Department changed its name to the United States Postal Service.
56:39
[SPEAKER_03]: With this reorganization, postal workers won for the first time the right to bargain for better wages, hours, and working conditions.
56:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Their first contract raised the starting wage to $8,488 a year, a more than 30% increase to the pay level before the strike.
57:05
[SPEAKER_03]: For more information, go to LaborHistoryN2.com.
57:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter at LaborHistoryN2.
57:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Now the good thing is, look, there are people out there who are going to be standing up in this moment.
57:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Given Trump's speech, I think the reality is, a lot of people are going to have to find their courage.
57:36
[SPEAKER_03]: what's spying they have, whether it's to vote, to go to protest to speak out, or in moments where they have some authority to actually take a stand.
57:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And I look on Friday, at the New York Times, David Blight, a past president of the organization of American historians.
57:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Basically wrote a column blasting the White House
58:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Because the president's White House domestic policy council evidently published a report that's claiming that the Smithsonian Yeah, they're The rewrite and stuff And and I look at you know the sad reality of of the moment
58:38
[SPEAKER_03]: demonized in every way possible for saying that our history matters and telling it accurately matters.
58:45
[SPEAKER_03]: But the reality is this administration is going to whitewash history.
58:49
[SPEAKER_03]: All the bad stuff we did will get pushed aside and it's going to be, it's going to be this rosy image of what what we were supposed to believe the country stands for.
59:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Instead of what we really are.
59:08
[SPEAKER_03]: we can we can learn from that history so the most important part we don't do it again now again we have an administration that i guess the way it looks hell bent on doing it again and that's where you and i have to come in that's where we have to speak up stand up
59:31
[SPEAKER_03]: and be counted in this moment.
59:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to hear your thoughts.
59:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I up to it, email me, Rick at theRickSmith Show.com.
59:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Miss any portion of the program, podcast.
59:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And as always, thanks so much for being here.
59:40
[SPEAKER_03]: See you back your next time.
59:42
[SPEAKER_04]: You've been listening to The Rick Smith Show.
59:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Email Rick at RickSmithShow.com.
59:54
[SPEAKER_04]: Until next time, this is Ben The Rick Smith Show.
59:57
[SPEAKER_04]: We're working people, come to talk.