Latest / The Rick Smith Show / The Rick Smith Show 7-17-2026

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The Rick Smith Show 7-17-2026 · The Rick Smith Show

0:00
[SPEAKER_03]: It's time for the Rick Smith show.
0:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, here is the voice of a working class, Rick Smith.
0:13
[SPEAKER_03]: And welcome, brothers, sisters working class heroes.
0:17
[SPEAKER_03]: This is the Rex Mithio.
0:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks so much for being here today on the big program.
0:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Lots to get to, lots to talk about.
0:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Donald Trump was in my neck of the woods yesterday.
0:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I found his way into Carl L. Petzelvania for a big spiel.
0:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And I got to tell you, the speech should serve as a red flag warning that Washington is quietly building the architecture for a long global war while pretending it's just an innovation in job creation.
0:48
[SPEAKER_03]: That's all.
0:49
[SPEAKER_03]: He told Defense Executives an investor as the U.S. must supercharge weapons production because, well, wars in Iran, he started, and Ukraine and potential conflict with China have dangerously drained our stockpile.
1:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Then he pressured them to expand manufacturing capacity under the banner of national security.
1:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Now look I'm gonna be the first one to tell you.
1:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm all in on national security.
1:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm I I the Teddy Roosevelt You know walk softly and carry a big stick.
1:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm I'm there on the big stick side But it's the walk softly part that I think is there to not someone like Donald Trump this scares me
1:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Because at the same time they're talking about wrapping up production, the White House is pushing a 1.5 trillion dollar Pentagon budget and invoking the Defense Production Act to reshape the entire industrial base of this country around the idea of building faster bigger arms outputs and locking in well years of war driven spending and planning.
1:56
[SPEAKER_03]: This is your kid's future, they're planning right now.
1:59
[SPEAKER_03]: This is not a short term emergency response.
2:03
[SPEAKER_03]: This is a structural pivot towards permanent war readiness.
2:08
[SPEAKER_03]: I would argue permanent war.
2:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And on the ground, we're seeing kind of a parallel build out.
2:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know where you're at, but where I'm out, there are countless new logistics centers in where how shells going up across this area.
2:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm told across the country, many of them either have empty or entirely empty, waiting for, oh, I don't know, whatever.
2:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever comes next, whatever dis, whatever surge in production we can find.
2:38
[SPEAKER_03]: these facilities along with the summits call to go faster and think bolder on weapons looks less like neutral economic development and more like the skeletons of a future war economy and that future war economies decide designed to to be filled overnight with with with munitions and components and military tech uh and you know because hey we've got new frontiers we got new places to bomb
3:09
[SPEAKER_03]: and Trump selling this as peace through strength.
3:12
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, war is peace, remember?
3:15
[SPEAKER_03]: But the practical outcome is they're gonna hollow out the civilian economy.
3:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Corporate welfare is gonna be spread across the defense giants.
3:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And a landscape of empty boxes ready to become factories for World War III will be our reality.
3:37
[SPEAKER_03]: He has stumbled us into what could be World War 3.
3:42
[SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't care about the human cost, he doesn't care about workers, he doesn't care about the war production economy, that's coming, he doesn't care about any of that.
3:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So tonight, when the speech goes on, anything that isn't talking about how he's getting us out of Iran, anything is just a distraction.
4:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And we're going to hear an awful lot about rigged elections and get your bingo card because rigged I'm saying rigged or rigged election is going to be the number one thing he says.
4:11
[SPEAKER_03]: But voter frauds going to be up there in election integrity, we're going to hear all of this stuff fake news and a lot of believe me, trust me, and I got to tell you, Donald Trump is the last, the very last person, very last person I trust.
4:28
[SPEAKER_03]: want to hear your thoughts.
4:29
[SPEAKER_03]: You mail me a rick at the ricksmithshow.com.
4:31
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think?
4:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you witnessing the same things I am being built up around us?
4:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Right back, Citroen.
4:48
[SPEAKER_03]: On this day in Labor History, and we are going all the way back to the year 1381.
4:54
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the day John Ball, the leader of the peasants revolt in England, was executed.
5:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Due to the plague, the Black Death, in 1348, many peasants had died.
5:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Land was plentiful, and Laborers were scarce.
5:07
[SPEAKER_03]: The authorities responded with emergency legislation.
5:10
[SPEAKER_03]: The ordinance of laborers in 1349 and the statute of laborers in 1351.
5:16
[SPEAKER_03]: These laws fixed wages at pre-played levels and punished employers trying to outbid their competitors.
5:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Local lords had the right to prevent serfs from leaving their manners.
5:27
[SPEAKER_03]: To raise money for the ongoing hundred years war with France, Parliament levied a new tax on every person over the age of 14.
5:35
[SPEAKER_03]: This was especially unpopular among the peasant class.
5:39
[SPEAKER_03]: the church sided with the wealthy landowners.
5:41
[SPEAKER_03]: As a result, some priests rebelled against the church's hierarchy.
5:45
[SPEAKER_03]: John Ball was one of these rebels, and for his rebellion, he was imprisoned at Maid Stone Castle.
5:51
[SPEAKER_03]: The initial outbreak of the peasants revolt occurred in 1380, the people rose up against the new tax.
5:57
[SPEAKER_03]: One tax collector was beaten and driven from the village of Faba.
6:01
[SPEAKER_03]: The chief justice sent to calm the peasants suffered a similar faith, word spread, and uprisings occurred throughout England.
6:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Rebels in Kent besieged Maidstone Castle and freed John Ball.
6:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Troops were dispatched around the country to suppress the revolt.
6:15
[SPEAKER_03]: John Ball was hung, drawn in quartered in the marketplace, as an example to any other potential rebels.
6:21
[SPEAKER_03]: The peasants' revolt was crushed, but Parliament gave up trying to control peasant wages and stopped collecting the poll tags.
6:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Many peasants were now considered free man, no longer owned by landowners.
6:33
[SPEAKER_03]: All of these things helped to end the feudal system.
6:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Labor history and two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith Show.
6:41
[SPEAKER_03]: For more information, go to laborhistoryinter.com.
6:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So again, get your Vingo cards out for the big speech.
7:01
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what to call it, just a speech to the nation that Trump's gonna ramble on.
7:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And look, I don't really think he knows what he's gonna say yet, but there's been some reporting that pushes us in one direction or another.
7:10
[SPEAKER_03]: My favorite, I gotta be honest, my favorite is that the Georgia elections were so bad.
7:16
[SPEAKER_03]: They were so, and now we're not gonna know which country did all of this interfering, because remember all of the all Russia hoax and all the hoaxes of the other side,
7:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, but evidently, I'm being told that Trump is going to take the position that Hershel Walker won the Senate election from a couple of years back and and there's there's scuddle that maybe Donald Trump is going to be able because he's now Lord and Savior.
7:41
[SPEAKER_03]: He's going to be able to install Hershel Walker as the Senator to Georgia.
7:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and that's why I've asked Rebecca Carrotters to come share some thoughts with us Rebecca is the President and CEO of Fair the Fair Elections Center You can check out their website at fairelectionscenter.org Rebecca, thanks for the good time for us
8:02
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much for having me.
8:03
[SPEAKER_03]: So what do you think?
8:04
[SPEAKER_03]: We're going to.
8:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Herschel Walker is no longer going to be the ambassador to the Bahamas, which I got to be honest.
8:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Did not know we had an ambassador to the Bahamas, but good on Herschel.
8:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Good vacation spot.
8:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Good payback.
8:16
[SPEAKER_03]: But what do you think?
8:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think he's going to be able to ease him in?
8:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Because well, the elections were all rigged in George except for Trump.
8:24
[SPEAKER_03]: But all rigged.
8:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, to be honest, I don't know that the Bahamas know that the U.S.
8:30
[SPEAKER_04]: Ambassador to the Bahamas is Herschel Walker.
8:32
[SPEAKER_04]: So breaking news, here's the thing.
8:36
[SPEAKER_04]: At the point that we're talking about Herschel Walker, then we have lost the plot.
8:41
[SPEAKER_04]: The bottom line is no one who is serious in Georgia, on the Republican side, believes anything that Trump is saying.
8:51
[SPEAKER_04]: And we know that Republicans who hold the statewide offices in Georgia have repeatedly said that the 2020 elections were free or fair and work accurate in the state of Georgia.
9:04
[SPEAKER_04]: So at this point, Trump is grasping at straws.
9:08
[SPEAKER_04]: This simply doesn't make sense.
9:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I look forward on Thursday to hearing.
9:12
[SPEAKER_04]: what compelling evidence, what so caught evidence at the president says that he has, but I will preview until your audience that the Emperor has no clothes.
9:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, look for me.
9:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And I got to tell you for me, if he talks about election fraud and all this stuff, if he talks about any of his other grievances, if he talks about anything other than laying out what's going on with Iran, it's all a distraction.
9:40
[SPEAKER_03]: it's all hey you know follow the laser pointer it's all it's all bread and circus because the real issue right now is he's gotten us into a war and he has no clue how to get us out of he has no idea what the with the mission was he has no idea what victory was supposed to be and again another idiotic war started by another republican president with no
10:00
[SPEAKER_03]: exit ramp or exit strategy and again more destruction to keep us fighting amongst each other so we're not paying attention to what you just said.
10:09
[SPEAKER_03]: The Emperor's butt naked.
10:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's unfortunate because none of us want to see that.
10:17
[SPEAKER_03]: No, and this is where the frustration for me comes into all this because, you know, I made fun of the fact that, you know, there are people online saying that the hercial walker is going to be put in again, it's more of that kind of smoke that they want to create so that we're not seeing, we're seeing through the fog.
10:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And one, I'm like, you know, who would believe such a ridiculous thing, but two, there are people who do and how do you reach those people and explain to them that look, the are of last several elections have been the most scrutinized in the history of this country, if there is the kind of fraud that he's talking about, it's kind of them doing it.
10:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, here's the thing.
10:57
[SPEAKER_04]: We have what is, what used to be, at least, the most powerful position in the world, the president of the United States of America.
11:05
[SPEAKER_04]: The president is using his bully pulpit to continue to petal lies about our election system.
11:12
[SPEAKER_04]: I know for some people is not polite to say the president is lying, but I am telling you as a national voting rights expert that the president is not being truthful.
11:22
[SPEAKER_04]: In fact, he is telling lies.
11:24
[SPEAKER_04]: And that is what is the threat to our election system.
11:28
[SPEAKER_04]: Anytime you have the president saying all sorts about rages things about our election system.
11:33
[SPEAKER_04]: Here's the thing, we just celebrated 250 years in this country.
11:37
[SPEAKER_04]: And we have managed through civil war, the world wars, the global pandemics, through all sorts of emergencies in this country to carry out elections.
11:47
[SPEAKER_04]: and actually properly install those who have been deleted.
11:51
[SPEAKER_04]: So why all of a sudden, at year 244, all of a sudden we can't figure out how to run elections, it's simply not the case.
12:00
[SPEAKER_04]: The president really wants to hand pick who gets to vote in our country.
12:05
[SPEAKER_04]: because the president understands that many of his policies, many of the things that he is doing, is not popular with American people.
12:13
[SPEAKER_04]: And at Fair Elections Center, it is not our job to tell people how to vote, but it is our job to defend, expand, facilitate voting rights in this country.
12:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's talk about that for a minute because if this is about voting, if this is about past election grievances, if it is what's being reported and I have no doubt that this is all about his grievance.
12:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, if it is all about his grievance, we have no idea how long or how far or how deep into the rabbit hole this all goes or what bizarre accusations then come out.
12:44
[SPEAKER_03]: but you know the save act is going to be front and foremost in fact he refused to sign the housing bill which could have been a legacy making bill for him something that he could have actually and we could have all been proud of him for he chose not to sign and allow it to become law without him which is good or it's a step in the right direction but all because he didn't get this save act.
13:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Walk me through what that is and why this seems so important and as some
13:14
[SPEAKER_04]: So the same act, according to the president, the president is claim that it makes sure that those who are actually U.S. citizens are able to vote.
13:27
[SPEAKER_04]: Guess what?
13:29
[SPEAKER_04]: US citizens are the ones who are voting.
13:31
[SPEAKER_04]: According to the Constitution, it is up to the states to make sure that they are setting up the rules of eligibility to make sure that those who are registering to vote in respective states are duly registered in our eligible.
13:45
[SPEAKER_04]: and guess what, the states have been doing an incredible job for the last 250 years.
13:50
[SPEAKER_04]: And so for the president to say, oh, well, this is about identification.
13:55
[SPEAKER_04]: No, it's more than that.
13:56
[SPEAKER_04]: This isn't just a voter ID law.
13:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And I know there are many people who think, oh, well, just show your ID and everything's fine.
14:03
[SPEAKER_04]: No, this goes further than that.
14:05
[SPEAKER_04]: This says that you have to have your
14:09
[SPEAKER_04]: you have to have proof of citizenship.
14:11
[SPEAKER_04]: Those original documents when you are born in this country or the documents when you're naturalized in this country or even a passport.
14:20
[SPEAKER_04]: And tens of millions of Americans do not have readily access to these particular documents.
14:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And certified, certified it.
14:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And because I went and I checked mine, I have my birth certificate.
14:30
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't have the one with the raised seal.
14:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to have to go and try and figure out how to find it, but I don't have one currently with a raised seal.
14:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is that if I'm reading this right, that's the only birth certificate they're going to accept is one that has that raised seal certification out of correct?
14:49
[SPEAKER_04]: And not only that, so my paternal grandfather was born in Oklahoma.
14:53
[SPEAKER_04]: My last name is Carothers.
14:55
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I didn't even know this.
14:57
[SPEAKER_04]: I spelled Carothers, C-A-R-U-T-H-E-R-S. One R at the beginning.
15:02
[SPEAKER_04]: My grandfather was born C-A-R-R-U-T-H-E-R-S.
15:06
[SPEAKER_04]: When he moved north to Nebraska and he registered with the Civil Service, they arbitrarily dropped one of the R's.
15:14
[SPEAKER_04]: Here's the thing for the rest of this like, both state and federal government knew who he was.
15:19
[SPEAKER_04]: He paid taxes.
15:21
[SPEAKER_04]: They knew where the fine number they knew he was who he was, right?
15:24
[SPEAKER_04]: But according to the say back, if it becomes law, people like my grandfather would have a hard time actually proving that they are who they are and that their documentary proof of citizenship.
15:36
[SPEAKER_04]: So his birth certificate didn't match his later identification.
15:42
[SPEAKER_04]: and his later pieces of ID from the government.
15:45
[SPEAKER_04]: And so according to the say back, he would not be eligible to register to vote.
15:49
[SPEAKER_04]: There are many people in this country, which similar stories of having misspelled names, miss match names.
15:55
[SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't mean that we don't know who they are, because after all, the IRS figures out who we are.
16:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, they're sure they know.
16:02
[SPEAKER_03]: No, and they're
16:03
[SPEAKER_03]: This really came apparent to me, you know, not too long ago.
16:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I was at the DMV because I had to do some work there and the woman in front of me was in front of me for a very long time and I'm nosy.
16:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I kind of listened in.
16:16
[SPEAKER_03]: She had been married several different times in several different states and divorced in different states and there was this whole trail of of her moving around.
16:24
[SPEAKER_03]: She had a valid driver's license.
16:26
[SPEAKER_03]: But she couldn't get the real ID because here in Pennsylvania, we're now being forced to get the real ID.
16:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, George W. Bush, and they couldn't, she literally could not get the documents that she needed to prove one divorce over one marriage over.
16:42
[SPEAKER_03]: It was really a paperwork nightmare, but she's like, you have, you have my license.
16:47
[SPEAKER_03]: You've given me this license.
16:49
[SPEAKER_03]: All I want is that little yellow thing on it, and they couldn't do it.
16:53
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so one of my aunts who worked for for a local government, the city of Pasadena and California, she was a day to fly because she needed to get a real ID.
17:06
[SPEAKER_04]: She was struggling with getting a real ID because it turns out there was a missbellion or birth certificate that she didn't notice.
17:12
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it took a while, it took months to be able to sort through that.
17:16
[SPEAKER_04]: And so this is very real.
17:17
[SPEAKER_04]: Unless again, she actually worked in government.
17:20
[SPEAKER_04]: So they knew who she was.
17:22
[SPEAKER_04]: She paid taxes.
17:23
[SPEAKER_04]: They knew they know who she is.
17:25
[SPEAKER_04]: And so it is is ridiculous to add these added burdens because what happens with each added burden.
17:33
[SPEAKER_04]: you're creating more friction in the system and at each point where you make it harder and harder for people to exercise their rights, that means less people are going to keep pushing through to exercise their rights.
17:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And at the point, I mean, look, you know, I remember Mike Turzai, he was the speaker of the house here in Pennsylvania, when Romney was running for president, and they had just passed voter ID here, and the famous clip from him was, you know, voter ID
17:59
[SPEAKER_03]: So we can get Governor Romney elected president and he was very clear and very straightforward about it that was their goal and their goal was and they were very open and honest about it because here in Pennsylvania Tom Corbett when he was running for governor said the quiet part outside if we can keep the vote down in Philadelphia we can win any election
18:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And that really is, if we can keep the black people from voting, we're going to do just fine.
18:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's to me what this voter ID was all about.
18:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I guess the question that I have as an old white guy is this not just veiled racism again.
18:35
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not veiled because when you couple that with what happened with a collet decision, we see the gutting of the Boding Rights Act.
18:42
[SPEAKER_04]: When you start to layer all these additional things, when you see that the postal service is now saying, they can't guarantee whether or not they'll deliver your mail in time.
18:51
[SPEAKER_04]: When you see this president say, oh, I'm going to withhold funding from particular states.
18:56
[SPEAKER_04]: unless you turn over your voting roles.
18:58
[SPEAKER_04]: When you see the push within DHS to use the saved system to verify voters, even to verify data against the voter roles, even though we know that data that's used across various federal agencies,
19:14
[SPEAKER_04]: now being used for the purposes of verifying voter roles.
19:17
[SPEAKER_04]: We know that's not accurate.
19:18
[SPEAKER_04]: We know there's going to be mistakes being made.
19:21
[SPEAKER_04]: I want people to understand this, your right to vote is a first amendment right.
19:27
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's something that's supposed to be sacred about the Bill of Rights, and especially our first amendment rights.
19:35
[SPEAKER_04]: And I would tell different people, even if you don't like how people like me vote.
19:40
[SPEAKER_04]: Even if you don't like how black people vote, if you don't like how women vote, if you don't like how people of color vote, guess what?
19:47
[SPEAKER_04]: you don't want to set the precedent of a president attacking and stripping away your bill of rights because guess what?
19:55
[SPEAKER_04]: I guarantee you that there are some rights in those first hands that are rights that you care a whole hell of a lot about.
20:01
[SPEAKER_03]: No, absolutely.
20:03
[SPEAKER_03]: I know a lot of my friends are the second, the second ones they're important one.
20:07
[SPEAKER_03]: They don't seem to give a lot of concern about the first one.
20:10
[SPEAKER_03]: I lost the second one without the first one again and they believe they've got the second one so we'll get the first one.
20:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So let me ask you because you know again this this does trickle down I also see it not just as a race issue, but as a poor person this year.
20:25
[SPEAKER_03]: There are a lot of broke white people too There are a lot of white people.
20:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I grew up a poor white kid I know that voting is very difficult in poor areas and Unfortunately a lot of those areas are minority areas, but there are a lot of broke white people in poor areas too
20:39
[SPEAKER_04]: Those are a lot of strong counties.
20:41
[SPEAKER_04]: A lot of the areas where Trump has won.
20:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is there would be extremely hurt.
20:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is where my concern about this, this election in particular, because they're being hurt right now.
20:52
[SPEAKER_03]: They're struggling right now.
20:53
[SPEAKER_03]: The promises that they were made haven't come true.
20:57
[SPEAKER_03]: The economic utopia that they were promised hasn't come true.
21:00
[SPEAKER_03]: The gas prices.
21:01
[SPEAKER_03]: While they're still, they're hurting from that.
21:04
[SPEAKER_03]: it seems to me that this is one of those another opportunity to not only sequester your vote, but their vote is well.
21:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that a fair assessment or do you see maybe a little differently?
21:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So I just poured up a famous quote from Linda President, Linda Baines Johnson, and can I read it for your viewers?
21:25
[SPEAKER_04]: If you can convince the lowest white man, he's better than the best colored
21:33
[SPEAKER_04]: He'll give him somebody to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you.
21:39
[SPEAKER_04]: So I would say that, you know, there's something that I saw social media today from a comedian that said being racist is a way for poor people to cosplay as elites.
21:52
[SPEAKER_03]: That that says it all.
21:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It does.
21:54
[SPEAKER_03]: No, look, a couple of years ago, back in 2015, we did a civil rights tour as part of the show.
22:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And we went through Durham, North Carolina, it's a historic stackville plantation.
22:05
[SPEAKER_03]: And the woman who gave us an amazing tour, if you have a chance, if you're through Durham by all means, visit the historic stackville plantation.
22:13
[SPEAKER_03]: But the woman walked us through, you know, where are the quarters for the slaves were?
22:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, she was, you know, proud of them, you know, how well they were built and how cool they were.
22:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, just how well the slaves are treated, you know, and went through all of this and said across the fence there, you see those ramshack on shacks, the white people who lived in there who went hungry, who didn't get health care, who didn't get any type of education or opportunity.
22:36
[SPEAKER_03]: They still thought they were better than the people living in these quarters.
22:39
[SPEAKER_03]: They were both bad.
22:40
[SPEAKER_03]: They were both horribly treated.
22:42
[SPEAKER_03]: They were both exploited, both abused, but to your point, they still thought they were better.
22:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And that is a very, very twisted world view in my opinion.
22:52
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's the grievances.
22:54
[SPEAKER_04]: I know there's a lot of people who've tried to clean it up and whitewash it, if you will, saying, oh, there's economic grievance, and that's why people have voted the way they did.
23:04
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's understand that this particular president has used dog whistles from the moment and even before the moment he had now said he was running for president and we saw that he turned these dog whistles this this racism into action.
23:18
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's one thing to be big at it is one thing to be prejudice, but when you add the power component and now it becomes racism, we see that this president is actually bringing back racism, I mean, it's always been the undercurrent in this country, but he's actually making policy.
23:34
[SPEAKER_04]: based upon racism and based upon racist outcomes.
23:39
[SPEAKER_04]: And so people will have to take a step back and view this in the totality of what this presidency is.
23:46
[SPEAKER_04]: The other disturbing thing is this president keeps telling people is going to to white evangelicals and he's telling them if you vote this fall, this will be the last time you'll ever have to vote again.
23:59
[SPEAKER_04]: And I want people to take that seriously.
24:02
[SPEAKER_04]: what the president is trying to tell us, what the president in fact, if I even try, but what the president is actually telling us is that he is hell bent on tinkering and manipulating and doing negative things within our voting system in order to make sure that he keeps power and that elections will be the way he wants elections to be.
24:24
[SPEAKER_04]: But there is hope.
24:26
[SPEAKER_04]: Hit me with it.
24:27
[SPEAKER_04]: This is what I need people to do.
24:29
[SPEAKER_04]: This is what I said last time I think
24:32
[SPEAKER_04]: I need you the double check your voter registration.
24:35
[SPEAKER_04]: Make sure it's still current.
24:37
[SPEAKER_04]: Make sure it's still active.
24:39
[SPEAKER_04]: I need you to tell your family and friends to do the same thing.
24:43
[SPEAKER_04]: Regardless of what state you live in, if you have early voting, whether it's early voting in person, whether it's fault by mail or I'm Pennsylvania.
24:52
[SPEAKER_04]: It is absentee voting in person that you can do early because of what acts 77.
24:59
[SPEAKER_04]: Because of that, make sure as soon as you are able to vote that you vote, we are 114 days from midterm, from the midterm election.
25:11
[SPEAKER_04]: In September, many states start their early voting period.
25:16
[SPEAKER_04]: I need you to double check your voter registration.
25:20
[SPEAKER_04]: confirm that it is accurate because some states, you, there's a cutoff of updating your registration and still being eligible to vote for the midterms.
25:31
[SPEAKER_04]: So double check that and then make sure as soon as you're able to vote that you vote.
25:36
[SPEAKER_04]: We need as many people as possible who want this American experiment to work as many people as possible who actually want to make democracy work.
25:46
[SPEAKER_04]: Not saying it's perfect, we need to make it better.
25:48
[SPEAKER_04]: But I need you to turn out to vote.
25:52
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the only way you're going to be able to defeat what we're seeing a president that is trying to create a chilling effect on the right to vote in this country.
26:01
[SPEAKER_03]: A good place to get more information for election center.
26:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Where can people go to get more information to make sure that their registration is?
26:08
[SPEAKER_03]: It's one thing to say, go do it.
26:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there a place where folks should be going to go and do it?
26:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Or is this something you got to go march down to the election office to do?
26:16
[SPEAKER_04]: So you could go on our website, and you'll see that we have state by state guides.
26:21
[SPEAKER_04]: You'll see that there's a graphic, it has maps on it, click in your state, and you'll see everything you need to know for basic information to learn what the rules are in your particular state.
26:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's how you... That's question I got for you, bingo card.
26:37
[SPEAKER_03]: What's your bingo card?
26:39
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the word?
26:39
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the word he's gonna hit the most?
26:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And what do you think the surprising word will be on the bingo card?
26:44
[SPEAKER_03]: What's the winner?
26:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I know a legal accountability is gonna be their rigged is gonna be on their frauds gonna be their vulnerability voting machines are gonna be all this stuff rigged a lot We're gonna hear a lot of rigged.
26:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm gonna go with rigged as my most used word, but you're thought
27:02
[SPEAKER_04]: So if we were telling people for the polymarket rig to be your word, but I like it for the Bingo card.
27:08
[SPEAKER_04]: I think he's going to talk about former President Obama.
27:11
[SPEAKER_04]: And somehow he's going to say President Obama did all these things.
27:15
[SPEAKER_04]: But here's the thing, one final plea for your audience.
27:20
[SPEAKER_04]: When you go to Fair Elections Center.org, click on the donate button.
27:24
[SPEAKER_04]: We're doing litigation.
27:25
[SPEAKER_04]: We're already preparing litigation for 28th and make sure that you have the right to vote.
27:30
[SPEAKER_03]: There you go.
27:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Rebecca, I appreciate the time.
27:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Always great talk when the I hope you'll come back and talk to us again.
27:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe after this, this, whatever this is, any time.
27:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks so much for back and career.
27:41
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a president and CEO of the Fair Elections Center.
27:44
[SPEAKER_03]: You can check out their website fairelectionscenter.org.
27:47
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll get links out on social media.
27:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Want to hear your thoughts?
27:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Concerned about it, you worried.
27:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you checking your registration?
27:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Want to hear it, Rick at thewixsmithshow.com.
27:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Right back, stick around.
28:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm Rick Smith, and this is Labor History in 2.
28:03
[SPEAKER_03]: On this day in Labor History, the year was 1959.
28:07
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the day half a million steel workers walked off the job in a historic 116-day strike in defense of work rules.
28:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It was the largest industry-wide strike.
28:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It was also the last.
28:20
[SPEAKER_03]: The strike affected 12 steel companies and shut down more than 85 percent of steel production.
28:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Mill owners refused to grant wage increases unless the union agreed to changes in the contract.
28:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Specifically,
28:32
[SPEAKER_03]: They were looking to eliminate Section 2B titled Local Working Conditions.
28:37
[SPEAKER_03]: The boss is one of the ability to change the number of workers assigned to any given task.
28:43
[SPEAKER_03]: They also wanted to introduce new machinery and rules that would reduce labor hours and cut the workforce.
28:49
[SPEAKER_03]: United Steelworker members understood this as an assault on workplace safety and a move to break the union.
28:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Mill bosses hoped that a long strike would provoke the membership to abandon their union.
29:01
[SPEAKER_03]: But according to Jack Metzker, author of Striking Steel, members had grown used to walk out every three years and planned accordingly.
29:09
[SPEAKER_03]: As well, the United Steel Workers had a well-oiled machinery, including an internal welfare system for hardship cases, and also reached out to merchants, banks, charitable agencies, and local and state governments to organize relief.
29:23
[SPEAKER_03]: By the end of August, the Department of Defense stoked anxieties that national security was at risk.
29:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Three months into the strike, Union funds dwindled and strikers felt the pinch.
29:33
[SPEAKER_03]: President Eisenhower involved a tapped heartly injunction hoping to force strikers back to work.
29:39
[SPEAKER_03]: As the Union rose to challenge tapped heartly's constitutionality, solidarity among the mill owners crumbled.
29:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Kaiser Steele broke ranks and settled separately.
29:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Their contract granted wage increases and preserved Section 2B, which set the precedent for the contract that was eventually signed in history.
30:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Here they come again, billionaires wailing the Congress must, act immediately to slash the monthly Social Security checks that middle class and poor retirees count on.
30:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Putocratic elites in their anti-government ideologues periodically erupt in outrage that elderly Americans who've earned retirement benefits are depleting the Social Security trust fund.
30:25
[SPEAKER_00]: So they exclaim, government must cut the payments these old folks are getting.
30:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the government's money, it belongs to the retirees themselves.
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: They've paid monthly payroll taxes into the fund for years on the guarantee that they would later draw benefits out.
30:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe so, Bark Uponents, but the money oil is going dry, so that when they wait to save the program, it's to chop payments owed to beneficiaries.
30:53
[SPEAKER_00]: In three words, that's a lie.
30:56
[SPEAKER_00]: What the super wealthy don't want us to notice is that the social security tax is spectacularly unfair.
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're yearly income is less than $185,000, which includes 95% of us, every penny of your earnings are subject to retirement tax.
31:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're paid a million a year or a billion or even more,
31:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, there's more, instead of being paid wages, most Uber wealthy people draw their annual income from a Wall Street scheme called unrealized capital gains.
31:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Big surprise, those gains are totally exempted from our nation's retirement tax.
31:39
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Jim Hi-Tower saying, so let's make Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and other tax dodging billionaires pay on all of their income, like the rest of us do.
31:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That's only fair.
31:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Then America can increase benefits, so everyone can have a dignified retirement.
31:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's true fairness.
32:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So you know, I love talking to people who are dumb enough to run for political office.
32:13
[SPEAKER_03]: We get candidates coming through here all the time.
32:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And I always ask the same questions, you know, what, what motivates you?
32:18
[SPEAKER_03]: What are you doing?
32:20
[SPEAKER_03]: But my next, my next guest, my next candidate, my next victim, if you will, a single mom from New Jersey who said, hey, you know, Chris Smith's been in Congress an awful long time, needs a challenger, and you got a president who's saying, well, we can't do anything about child care.
32:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe by having, I don't know, a single mom in Congress, we might actually bring that issue up, and maybe someone with a voice other than the president's going to hate, we need to bomb instead of take care of our children.
32:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just throwing that out there as a maybe, and that's why I've had Rachel piece to come share some thoughts with.
32:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Rachel is running in New Jersey's fourth congressional district.
32:55
[SPEAKER_03]: You can check out her website, piece the number fourshore.com, pieceforshore.com.
33:01
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll get links down on social media.
33:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Rachel, thanks for taking time for us.
33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me, and you are the one Smith that I am happy to spend time with.
33:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, you're the only one I can spend time with, because our current Congressman doesn't often come to the Turks to explore.
33:16
[SPEAKER_01]: He is in Virginia.
33:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what I've heard.
33:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
33:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Another one of those absent congresspeople who got other things to do.
33:24
[SPEAKER_03]: No real town halls or any of that, but let's start with you.
33:27
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to start with the premise.
33:30
[SPEAKER_03]: He's bad.
33:31
[SPEAKER_03]: We need good.
33:32
[SPEAKER_03]: we've got a bad tool in there now.
33:34
[SPEAKER_03]: How do we get someone who's going to be a little with sharper, a little bit more effective?
33:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Why?
33:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess the Teddy Kennedy question.
33:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Why?
33:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Why would you do this to yourself?
33:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Why do you want to put yourself in this fish bowl and get the kind of arrows and attacks that are coming?
33:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Tell me why?
33:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great question and I'm asked it every day many times a day because this is what's viewed as an unwindable district.
33:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's kind of just this running joke that like anyone who runs for the seed is a sacrificial lamb because the way that redistricting works in New Jersey, this particular district has most of the red leaning towns in it is considered the redest district.
34:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But for me, it's the district that I was born into that I grew up in that I'm raising my son in and while I had never run for office before and I never had any intentions to run for office, we've seen over the past decade a descent into madness in politics in America.
34:38
[SPEAKER_01]: really of consequence.
34:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But here we're all constantly overwhelmed.
34:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And last year I had found out what was then called HR1 which would eventually become the one big beautiful bill was, you know, in the works.
34:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm a single mom myself and my now five year old he was four at the time.
34:55
[SPEAKER_01]: are both recipients of New Jersey family care, which is what we call Medicaid here in New Jersey.
35:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was my older sibling who's disabled, and so that was a moment for me, where I was like, hmm, this hasn't happened yet, is there a way that I could do something about it.
35:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And that kind of kicked off a whirlwind,
35:12
[SPEAKER_01]: descent into New Jersey politics, where I was doing empty seat town halls for Christmas with local organizing grassroots organizing groups and unions.
35:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I was doing press conferences with other members of the New Jersey congressional delegation, round tables with candidates for governor, like I just kind of threw myself into it and was like, I need to figure out.
35:35
[SPEAKER_01]: how to do something to be helpful to people and you know we ended up organizing myself and many of my neighbors to try and prevent Christmas from voting for the cuts to Medicaid and social security and you know we definitely got his attention our story got picked up in USA today and as
35:57
[SPEAKER_01]: and he then voted for this bill anyway, which is going to impact as many as like 30,000 people in our district alone.
36:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, that's it.
36:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You have stopped representing the people that you're supposed to serve.
36:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm just going to step up to the plate and see if I could do a better job and get enough excitement from people who view politicians as corrupt and out of touch with their lives.
36:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I'm someone who's living this reality every day.
36:21
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I say it all the time we need people who are willing to step forward and change the world by changing their little part of it.
36:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's one of those things that there aren't enough people who look like me in Congress.
36:33
[SPEAKER_03]: There aren't enough people who look like you in Congress.
36:36
[SPEAKER_03]: We got a lot of millionaires and got a lot of people who became millionaires.
36:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd like to see a couple of people who reach in their pockets and there's change not not folded money.
36:46
[SPEAKER_01]: 100% I joked to people all I'm out in the district.
36:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I say, you know, I have to do this thing called my FEC filing where you're supposed to disclose any stocks that you may have because, you know, people are very well aware that a lot of members of Congress take advantage of their positions and are essentially insider treating.
37:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I think corruption across the board is something that may be more than 70% of Americans are very much against.
37:08
[SPEAKER_01]: They want dark money, big money, pack money all that out of politics.
37:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I disclosed credit card debt.
37:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have stocks to disclose because I had to close my 401k during the pandemic.
37:21
[SPEAKER_01]: When I was laid off, seven months pregnant.
37:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I have lived the same struggles as most people.
37:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that none of this is.
37:28
[SPEAKER_01]: just theoretical or words on a paper to me, it impacts my daily life, it impacts the lives of the people that I'm hoping to represent.
37:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that that resonates with people and they're like, wow, there's someone who gets it and who actually cares about me.
37:40
[SPEAKER_03]: No, I mean, look, the reality is there are a lot of single mothers in this country.
37:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So some of them went to vote and maybe voted on their interests because we got a president who came out and said it.
37:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I got to tell you, I was I was a bit shocked.
37:51
[SPEAKER_03]: All that he was as blunt as it was saying.
37:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't.
37:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I was a little shocked that he, because normally he doesn't decide to, you know, just blur that out all the other stuff.
38:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, but we can't do anything to help with child care.
38:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It kind of shows the misogynistic view because, you know, most men don't have to have that problem.
38:12
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems interesting, but bombs, not children.
38:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I guess you weren't surprised.
38:18
[SPEAKER_03]: We're there.
38:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't because as a single mom and a small business owner who's just been figuring out this patchwork lack of a system that we truly have for families in America, for years now I've been paying attention to organizations on the ground who are advocating for change to make structural improvements because this isn't a woman's issue.
38:40
[SPEAKER_01]: This is an economic issue.
38:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Women are leaving the workforce in droves and it's because you're faced with one of two things.
38:47
[SPEAKER_01]: either both parents and a two family house have to work but the majority of the second salary goes to child care or one parent stays home and does the child care uncompensated and the family struggles because you can't really seem to survive on a single parent parent income in America and as a single parent I can definitely attest to that.
39:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I found out recently one in five American families are led by a single mom, but today in the House of Representatives there are no mothers single mothers of children under the age of six.
39:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So if we want to look at that first critical three years before anyone gets into preschool and for some families it's four years depending on if you have three K or four K.
39:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You need someone who's recently lived at knows that it's impossible to navigate and that families are paying what's essentially like college tuition To get care for their children for the first three to four years of their lives.
39:36
[SPEAKER_01]: That is a structural deficit And the fact that it's framed as women's issues is misogynistic because women are still by a large considered the default parents I've been asked by sitting members.
39:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, what are you going to do about child care?
39:49
[SPEAKER_01]: That shouldn't be your first question to me.
39:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Your first question to me should be what are the policies that you're standing on
39:54
[SPEAKER_01]: How's your fundraising going?
39:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Are there any ways that I can be helpful towards you to help you step into power?
40:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a whole lot of organizations say, we want working people, we want to get big dark money out of politics.
40:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And when someone steps up to do that, who's from outside of the establishment, you don't actually encounter support to that extent.
40:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you get pushed down.
40:12
[SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, I, my wife and I were very fortunate.
40:15
[SPEAKER_03]: We were able to do what is now not the norm on that it's have one income me working her staying home raising our children.
40:23
[SPEAKER_03]: She did an incredible job and we were very fortunate for it.
40:26
[SPEAKER_03]: But it was the fact that I had a union job.
40:29
[SPEAKER_03]: that gave us excellent wages, excellent benefits, and I work 70 hours a week every week.
40:35
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was like I was working two jobs, but we were able to manage.
40:39
[SPEAKER_03]: The sad reality is as you said two incomes, it's now three and we're heading towards almost four because the distribution of wealth in this country is so skewed to the very wealthy.
40:50
[SPEAKER_03]: We've got two classes in this country.
40:52
[SPEAKER_03]: There's the people who have more wealth than any of us can imagine and those of us who were just scraping
40:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So from your perspective, look, I'm a big union guy because I was fortunate enough to have a strong union contract that compensated my labor gave us the opportunity of really living what was that that 50s American dream.
41:10
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, from your labor perspective, you know, how do we recreate some of those policies that gave me the chance to do these things?
41:19
[SPEAKER_03]: How do we move that down the road to help folks?
41:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe I don't know, live that American drink.
41:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
41:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know, none of this is like a simple fix.
41:28
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a lot of structural barriers to making life work for people in America.
41:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is why I said, all right, if I'm doing this, I have to go straight for federal because I cannot from, you know, the local level address the fact that health care is unacceptable in our country and not accessible to many people.
41:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't address issues with access to higher education.
41:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I can address the housing crisis.
41:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I can address the climate crisis.
41:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't address the child care crisis.
41:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we have crisis upon crisis upon crisis in this country.
41:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And our priorities, or at least our governing bodies priorities, are totally out of whack.
42:03
[SPEAKER_01]: They are so focused on starting more overseas than the war machine and subsidies are going the wrong places.
42:10
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no world in which we should still be subsidizing or bolstering coal and oil jobs.
42:17
[SPEAKER_01]: We could do the same thing with clean energy.
42:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Those would be good.
42:21
[SPEAKER_01]: union paying labor jobs, right?
42:23
[SPEAKER_01]: But we also need to think about, like, how are we spending the tax dollars that are collected?
42:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if you can spend money to send aid to countries where they have healthcare for everyone, the focus should be on making sure we have healthcare for everyone.
42:36
[SPEAKER_01]: If we can spend money bombing children overseas, why couldn't we instead allocate that money to supporting children here in America?
42:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And my premise of my campaign is listen.
42:47
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to consider what a living wage actually is.
42:50
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the proposals in Congress right now are, you know, $17 an hour would be the new federal minimum wage because it's stagnant to 7 something right now, which is unbelievable and mind-boggling knowing can live on that.
43:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I'm like, you know, we would really need to make it more like 25 for people to be able to just get by and I think unions have always led the way in championing workers rights and I would like to see that translate to the rest of the population, you know most Americans are so.
43:18
[SPEAKER_01]: busy and overwhelmed and struggling financially that even if they were to be able to strike some wouldn't choose to because they would be like unable to feed their families if they had to go out of work for a week or two.
43:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know that there's been legislation that like after two weeks of striking union workers should be able to get short-term unemployment.
43:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that makes good sense.
43:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that, you know, some of the concerns that people have with a living wage, right, where they'll say, well, small business owners wouldn't be able to, you know, close that gap.
43:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, maybe if there were government subsidies going towards.
43:54
[SPEAKER_01]: helping close the gap for small businesses rather than two things that really very few Americans are supportive of.
44:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we made corporations pay their fair share of taxes and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes, there have been entire books written about how that could end
44:12
[SPEAKER_01]: child poverty and child hunger.
44:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we learned that from the pandemic.
44:17
[SPEAKER_03]: We learned that from the pandemic.
44:18
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we gave people money and that money helped them feed their children.
44:22
[SPEAKER_03]: That money helped put food on the table.
44:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Keep a roof over there.
44:25
[SPEAKER_03]: We know how to do this.
44:26
[SPEAKER_03]: This is that the distribution of wealth in this country is so badly skewed.
44:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Yesterday on the program, we talked about the average wealth of the country.
44:34
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, we're number two in the world and average wealth when you take the amount of wealth that we have and divide it by all of the people.
44:41
[SPEAKER_03]: We're number two in the world with something like $690,000 per person, but when you hit that median number, it's about 69 grand.
44:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's telling, and we're like 29, 28th in the world in that.
44:55
[SPEAKER_03]: So you go hold on a second.
44:56
[SPEAKER_03]: There seems to be some kind of mechanism that's skewing this towards, you know, a couple of people having a whole lot of money in the rest of us.
45:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, maybe not so much, and this is where I come back to the tax code.
45:08
[SPEAKER_03]: We need either dig up Dwight David Eisenhower and go back to that tax code or figure something else out on how we redistribute wealth to reward work in this country again so that people won't want to work and two when they do, they actually do get ahead.
45:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I think that if people felt like their work was made a difference for them, that in and of itself would be the incentive.
45:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Most people don't want to hand out.
45:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And as someone who's on Medicaid, I understand the stigma that people face for accepting support.
45:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want people to remember that many people on Medicaid are working in paying taxes, so they are not just getting hand out their paying into those services.
45:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And I really just think we need to see an expansion
45:51
[SPEAKER_01]: programs that benefit Americans with American taxpayer dollars.
45:55
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're collecting our taxes, we need to feel the tangible differences in our lives and our lives are getting better.
46:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that health care health care not war.
46:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, 100% health care is how I got into this fight because a lot of people don't know this, but 80 years ago this summer it was the world health organization.
46:17
[SPEAKER_01]: They got together in New York City and our attorney general presided over their meeting when they developed the constitution for the World Health Organization in which all of the developed nations agreed that health care was a human right.
46:29
[SPEAKER_01]: We are the only ones who did not then follow through on that promise.
46:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've now pulled out of organizations that are trying to make sure people stay healthy and we have a one side of the political spectrum that speaks the right way they say make America healthy again, but they do the opposite they defund the limited programs that we have while saying that they
46:52
[SPEAKER_03]: support how it just not if it makes any sense you brought up the maha people which to me point rubber Kennedy junior I got imagine as a mother you know I got imagine you're inundated with the you know you're feeding your baby the wrong stuff because you know there's there's this chemical in there I'm sure you've heard this line there's something in there that's in you paint thinner and it's in your baby formula
47:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And they're playing on praying on your not understanding science or chemistry or any of that this stuff has got to hit home view Because I'll tell you our FK junior when my oldest daughter was born got me You know, there was tomorrow saw on all the vaccines and I ran to our pediatrician and said hey, what do you think of this?
47:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And my pediatrician said he's a quack.
47:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't listen.
47:34
[SPEAKER_03]: This isn't in the vaccine
47:36
[SPEAKER_03]: and I'm like, but he said, yeah, he's crazy.
47:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And you know, 24 years and 25 years ago, I realized he's crazy.
47:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Why is he the head of health and human?
47:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I have no idea.
47:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there are a whole lot of people that have been put into positions that they are not qualified for, and when people say to me like, well, what makes you qualified to run for Congress and like first and foremost, the bars on the floor, we have the former head of the WWE leading the education department like these are not assignments at this point of experts to agencies and the point of the House of Representatives is not for people to be experts in.
48:13
[SPEAKER_01]: the law.
48:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It is to be a representative body of the country and people from all different backgrounds and life experiences and careers come in and they bring their expertise together so that the population doesn't feel like their representatives are totally out of touch with their lives.
48:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And there will probably not have to be right.
48:30
[SPEAKER_01]: The gerontocracy is something that frustrates the living hack out of so many people and the fact that I was negative 12 when the man I'm running against what's elected.
48:40
[SPEAKER_01]: it's just it's unacceptable.
48:41
[SPEAKER_01]: It'd be one thing if he was doing great stuff for people to this day and he was evolving his stances on things as he got more information but he's still probably displaced photographs with Reagan in his office and points to trickle down economics as working when we have decades worth of studies that say that it doesn't that when you put taxes on corporations and billionaires they're going to hoard that well they're going to start doing stock buybacks they're going to give their CEOs higher salaries and it's never going to get down to the people.
49:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm tired of this trickle down narrative and
49:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you don't follow any of the things that we just said, if you've never heard the term trickle down economics, you know that when you go to the gas pump right now, you're handing them a $50 bill and it doesn't fill the tank.
49:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Before this current presidency, I could fill my tank for $35.
49:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, things were just getting worse and worse and worse for people and you cannot, the definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing.
49:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So, what I'm begging of people in my district is, hey, you have had this guy for 45 years,
49:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Give peace to trans.
49:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to I'm going here strictly because I want to help people in my life better.
49:43
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
49:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I also wanted to do this.
49:44
[SPEAKER_03]: No, that's awesome.
49:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
49:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I glad you went on the age rant.
49:48
[SPEAKER_03]: But I said to bring your rage because the house is where the rage and the passion of the people are and I listen to you and I go, there's some rage and passion there that I think I think America could use in in the the halls of power right now because we're outraged about all the wrong
50:05
[SPEAKER_03]: I keep talking about I want good outrage I want people to be outraged when when a worker gets their wages stolen when a worker gets hurt when a mother can't find child care put food on the table I want us to read about the right things not just there's some there's some trans kid playing a sport and I'm gonna lose my mind.
50:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, I mean, these are narratives that happen really frequently here in my district.
50:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I just saw someone who's in the state legislative body.
50:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I forget if he's in the assembly center or going on and on about late stage abortions and trans kids and they're affirming health care.
50:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just sat down and was like,
50:43
[SPEAKER_01]: looking at the studies and the data, and it's so insane, they are just picking these issues that impact the smallest percentage of the population.
50:52
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, there's like one percent of dilettigen puridages that happen in the third trimester, and it's because of a medical issue at that point.
51:00
[SPEAKER_01]: if a man has never carried a pregnancy, he would, he wouldn't be able to understand that you don't go through eight, nine months of pregnancy and carrying this baby just to like, all of a sudden, decide the end, never mind.
51:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to do this.
51:13
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it's the matter thing.
51:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I actually know people who believed that when my wife and I were racing to the hospital and, you know, the baby was, our kids were coming that the doctor looked up to add us on the
51:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Are we, are we bringing it or are we, we're going to, we're going to, we get to think of pieces and there are people.
51:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's so, I believe because the people who are in need of those medical services, they're already going through a trauma, they wanted that child.
51:40
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're in the last trimester, you're not only heartbroken, but now you're being put in a position where legislators are intervening in a decision that should be between you and your doctor and that.
51:50
[SPEAKER_01]: kills people.
51:51
[SPEAKER_01]: People have died and it's disproportionately black women because they're not taken as seriously and we have bias baked into our healthcare system sadly.
51:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But between that and a Fermi healthcare for trans kids, first of all, there's a whole lot of misinformation around that too.
52:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I was speaking to someone in the district and he was under the impression that they were cutting off children's genitals in the local public school.
52:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And that you have to what school in the morning?
52:15
[SPEAKER_03]: The boy came home a girl.
52:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, sir, we have underfunded public schools and we're getting cuts to health care services in the schools through Medicaid for children and disabilities.
52:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And what world is every school somehow in serving a surgical suite?
52:30
[SPEAKER_01]: What are we talking about?
52:32
[SPEAKER_01]: This doesn't, this isn't even logical.
52:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And instead of focusing on the one in three people who are struggling to afforded the doctor in America,
52:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy.
52:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all fake.
52:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all false.
52:46
[SPEAKER_01]: They're redirecting their anger at the wrong stuff.
52:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm with you.
52:48
[SPEAKER_03]: So last bit last 30 seconds.
52:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Why Rachel piece?
52:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Why you?
52:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Why now?
52:54
[SPEAKER_03]: What's what's the reason that you're it?
52:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I'd keep telling people, you know, give peace a chance.
53:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I am a local.
53:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I am someone who didn't actually want to run for office.
53:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that that is important for people to start looking for is that someone who's dressed after, you know, ego and their political ambition and having that title in that power.
53:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Or is it someone who's like, I want to be a servant, I want to go and help my neighbors.
53:21
[SPEAKER_01]: which is exactly what I'm doing because let me tell you as a single mom and a small business owner and a domestic violence survivor and someone who's deep in credit card debt.
53:29
[SPEAKER_01]: None of this is convenient or easy or something that is beneficial to me.
53:34
[SPEAKER_01]: This is something that I am doing because I care deeply about people.
53:37
[SPEAKER_01]: and I wouldn't be able to do it if it was not for all of my neighbors who were coming together and getting behind this campaign.
53:43
[SPEAKER_01]: These people offering child care to me off of our volunteer form so that I can do this.
53:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Like our campaign we are creating the village that everyone wants and is missing in contemporary society.
53:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So
53:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm feeling that you want, you know, for someone who genuinely cares about you.
53:59
[SPEAKER_03]: The website piece for sure dot com piece, the number for sure dot com will get links out on social media.
54:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Rachel, good on you.
54:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I wish you the best.
54:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And I hope you'll come back and talk with us again down the road.
54:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
54:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for the lively conversation.
54:13
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so much.
54:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Want to hear your thoughts email me Rick at the ricksmithshow.com.
54:18
[SPEAKER_03]: What do you think?
54:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to hear it.
54:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Rick at the
54:40
[SPEAKER_03]: This day in labor history, the year was 1931.
54:44
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the day that Ralph Gray was attacked for trying to organize black farmers.
54:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Gray was born to a large African-American family in Alabama.
54:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Living in the Jim Crow South, he became a tenant farmer.
54:57
[SPEAKER_03]: He joined the Communist Party.
54:59
[SPEAKER_03]: At the time, communist labor organizers were often more open to black membership and leadership than were other white dominated labor organizations.
55:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Along with his brother Tommy, Ralph helped to found the croppers and farm workers union in Talapuza County, Alabama.
55:16
[SPEAKER_03]: They set to work organizing black sharecroppers.
55:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Then, several of the local landlords stopped providing food and money to their workers.
55:26
[SPEAKER_03]: They did this in an effort to force the black workers to labor on building a new saw mill.
55:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Angry Sharecroppers joined the new union in protest.
55:35
[SPEAKER_03]: The union demanded more autonomy for the tenant farmers.
55:39
[SPEAKER_03]: They also demanded a longer school day and a public school bus for their children.
55:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Alarmed by this organizing, the sheriff, Kyle Young, let a posse to break up a union meeting.
55:50
[SPEAKER_03]: They beat and terrorized the union members.
55:53
[SPEAKER_03]: The vigilantes then went to Tommy Gray's house, where they fractured his wife's skull.
55:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Ralph Gray chased them off with a shotgun, but the next night on July 16th, the union met again.
56:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Gray and others arm themselves to protect the meeting.
56:09
[SPEAKER_03]: gotten fire was exchanged.
56:10
[SPEAKER_03]: The sheriff shot Ralph Gray while he lay on the ground already wounded.
56:15
[SPEAKER_03]: The mob of vigilantes then burned Gray's house to the ground.
56:19
[SPEAKER_03]: They placed Gray's mutilated corpse on the courthouse steps as a warning to any others who dare to stand up for the rights of black workers.
56:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Labor history and two brought to you by the Illinois Labor History Society and the Rick Smith Show.
56:33
[SPEAKER_03]: For more information, go to laborhistoryintube.com.
56:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You're listening to the Riggs Metshow.
56:42
[SPEAKER_02]: We're working people, come to talk.
56:49
[SPEAKER_03]: The big speech, the focus from what I'm being told is it's going to be all about election integrity.
56:56
[SPEAKER_03]: As we talked about, I'm going to go with Rebecca Carrotters.
57:00
[SPEAKER_03]: The reality is, I don't think her short walker is going to be the senator from Georgia.
57:05
[SPEAKER_03]: But the fact that that's even
57:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyone's even talking about the possibility that that could remotely happen.
57:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Show you how ludicrous this speech is going to be.
57:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And in my view, unless it's all focused on how we're ending this this beginning of World War III, because I'm told
57:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, from people who are a little more concerned about this than even I am that this You're starting to see the countries lining up what could be the next world war, and I got to be honest Don't know how many of our allies are gonna be on our side, and you know what else we're not gonna hear Anything that Rachel piece was talking about any of the the help for single mothers any of the health care any of the education any of that because we need guns
57:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Never mind butter or education or sugar issues, never mind any of that.
57:52
[SPEAKER_03]: We need war production.
57:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Because he's now a wartime president.
57:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess he's always wanted to be.
57:59
[SPEAKER_03]: So as you get your bingo card out, do you think health care is going to be on there?
58:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think child care is going to be on there?
58:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Do you think anything that's going to affect your life is going to be in that speech?
58:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be all grievance.
58:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Poor woe is me.
58:12
[SPEAKER_03]: The fake news is rigged with the economy.
58:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Believe me, the fake news is rigged the elections.
58:18
[SPEAKER_03]: There's voter fraud everywhere.
58:19
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no voter integrity.
58:21
[SPEAKER_03]: The states are lying.
58:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Except he won.
58:25
[SPEAKER_03]: So figure that nonsense out.
58:28
[SPEAKER_03]: And look, I'm saying rigged or rigged economy is gonna be the number one word out of his mouth.
58:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I've got some friends who are saying, no, no, it's gonna be believe me because he needs to restore trust.
58:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, like I said, there's other crazy stuff in there, the total disaster, I'm told, could be, so I'm not sure where you're putting your bets on all of this.
58:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Or if you're even gonna bother to watch, because I got to be honest, I don't know that it's worth in the best thing that we could possibly do, is not even watch what he says.
58:56
[SPEAKER_03]: and just respond to the fact that he's not getting us out of his war, maybe take the time that we're not watching him blather on, maybe take that time to talk to a neighbor about the fact that we are ramping up a war economy because he's starting World War 3, maybe that's where we should be starting.
59:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Or maybe, you know, tell somebody who believes that the election was rigged, going, yeah, it's amazing how Kamala Harris is in the White House, or that Democrats control the house in the Senate.
59:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I want to hear your thoughts, Rick at therixmithshow.com.
59:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Thanks so much for being here.
59:36
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll see you back here next time.
59:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You've been listening to the Rick Smith show.
59:46
[SPEAKER_02]: email wreck at wreck at ricksmithshow.com.
59:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Until next time, this has been The RickSmithshow.
59:57
[SPEAKER_02]: We're working people, come to talk.