Working Life Podcast

Episode 20: The numbers and the passion show it: undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom have lived in the country for over a decade, are part of the fabric of communities everywhere. Jonathan speaks with one expert, Lisa Christensen Gee of the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy, who tallied up the billions of dollars undocumented immigrants contribute to every local economy. Jonathan also chats with a friend from the Bernie Sanders campaign trail, Cesar Vargas, a national leader for immigrant rights who is not only a bar-admitted lawyer but lives his activist and professional life with undocumented status himself. And we wrap up crowning Paul Ryan and his gang Robber Barons of the week for their putrid proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which will make millions of people sicker and cause people to die because they can't afford health care coverage.

Episode 19: Forget the election for chair of the Democratic National Committee. The most astonishing part of the debate at the recent DNC big meeting in Atlanta was…there was no real debate. Or, when there was, it wasn't to be honest about the crisis in the party. Nope—it was to defeat a move to ban corporate money from the party. Woohoo! So, to hell with that: Jonathan speaks with three people—the founder of the #DemEnter movement; a Bernicrat who is now a Democratic state party chair after running a campaign against the insiders; and, we welcome back Nina Turner to give her take on the DNC meeting and the future. Our Robber Barons of the week hail from the media industry.

Episode 18: Democrats will know this Saturday who is tapped as head of the party. But, will the party figure out what's wrong with its pitch to voters? Jonathan talks with linguistics guru George Lakoff, who a decade ago began pushing the party to understand how voters' brains really work. Jonathan also talks to Christine Quinn, yet another high-profile former supporter of Hillary Clinton who has just endorsed Keith Ellison. And after a crushing loss by unions trying to organize Boeing's plant in South Carolina, we anoint the company's CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, our Robber Baron of the week.

Episode 17: Here's what the political class offers the people as health care options: the Republican "who cares if you die as long as the free market lives" versus saving the Affordable Care Act which delivers huge new profits to the corrupt insurance industry. Seriously? So, it's a good time for us to go in-depth on the only real, moral and economically sane solution: single-payer, "Medicare for All". Jonathan devotes the whole podcast to a conversation with one of the nation's long-time leading experts on single-payer. And sticking to the theme, our Robber Barons segment shines a light on the enormous pay of the CEOs of the medical industrial complex.

Episode 16: Consider this crazy number: 150 million people around the globe are migrants, moving here and there, either looking for work or avoiding political violence or both. Jonathan explores this astounding fact with an expert in Africa and an advocate in the U.S. Our Robber Barons segment pegs Chevron, tax avoider and poisoner of the Amazon.

Episode 15: Because of his greed and a never-ending thirst to grab for even more money, Donald Trump has been violating the Constitution—breaking the law—every moment since he got the keys to the Oval Office. Jonathan speaks with two lawyers who are part of two significant efforts with the potential—admittedly, with many political and legal obstacles to overcome--to force Trump from office. But, on the merits, this is a bi-partisan no-brainer. Seriously. We close with Goldman Sachs' alum Gary Cohn taking home this week's Robber Barons crown.

Episode 14: In about one month, a new chair of the Democratic National Committee will be chosen. Jonathan speaks with yet another candidate, New Hampshire state chair Raymond Buckley who has had some pretty tough things to say about the DNC. But, just as a recent podcast reported on progressive sweeps in California party politics, Jonathan is even more interested in local organizing so he wanders down to Florida to chat with Stacey Patel, a Bernicrat who rode her new-found political activism all the way to winning the post of Democratic party chair of Brevard County. We wrap up by tagging some banking CEOs as the Robber Barons of the week.

Episode 13: Just two days before an ignorant person gets the keys to the Oval Office, and wraps his tiny fingers around the nuclear button, Jonathan goes in-depth with an expert on Trump: Michael D'Antonio, author of "The Truth About Trump" gets into the real story, the one the incompetent transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”) don't seem to get. Michael explicitly tells us, from his deep research, that Trump is a very cruel person who is "happy to do the worst to the little guy," enjoys menacing people, and tended to fail at any business that required paying attention to details over a long period of time. Join Jonathan and Michael for a serious discussion. Our Robber Barons segment highlights a damning Oxfam report that tells us a startling fact: Eight men now have wealth equal to the wealth of 3.6 billion people on the planet.

Episode 12: Yes, taking over the Democratic Party is far from a mirage. Over the course of two days, the political revolution showed it has bite and balls: Berniecrats, and other progressives, won more than 600 seats—over 50 percent of the seats in play--in elections to fill slots for the California Democratic Party state committee. Jonathan was on the ground in the state, and he brings eye-witness reporting from the elections and conversations with Berniecrats who helped sweep all the seats in San Luis Obispo—and you will hear the secrets to organizing that make these victories doable in other states. Wrapping it up: the regular Robber Barons segment sticks it to the corrupt health sickness industry (we don't call it "health care" around here).

Episode 11: That's the sum total of the guy who will soon occupy the Oval Office, and have his finger on the nuclear button. To honor this, Jonathan spends the entire podcast chatting with David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer-prize winning, investigative *real* journalist (as opposed to the incompetent transcribers of press releases who can't do their own homework) who knows the real Trump and wrote "The Making of Donald Trump." Join a serious discussion laying out the truth about Trump. Hot tip: the consensus between Jonathan and David--Trump only cares about two things, money and whether he can unbutton a woman's blouse. And, of course, we have our Robber Barons segment.

Episode 10: Jonathan has coined the term The Four Horsemen of the Climate Change Apocalypse. He speaks with a national climate change expert about climate-change deniers Trump, Rex Tillerson, Rick Perry and Scott Pruitt. Keeping up with the race to be chair of the Democratic National Committee, Jonathan speaks with the only woman candidate (so far) Sally Boynton Brown, Executive Director of the Idaho Democratic Party. The podcast wraps up with the Robber Barons of the week: Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.

Episode 9: In the long list of fraudulent claims by "Tiny Hands" Trump is the notion that he would "drain the swamp" in Washington—Jonathan turns to Elizabeth Warren for a brilliant obliteration of that fantasy. Jonathan checks back in on the race for chair of the Democratic National Committee—you'll get to hear from progressive Keith Ellison, the leading candidate for the post. Jonathan also jumps across the pond to chat with Steve Turner, a union leader from the UK and Ireland (okay, our travel budget is still at zero so Steve and Jonathan met up in Washington, D.C.). Wrapping it all up is "Tiny Hands" Trump's choice to head up the Education Department, failed charter school promoter billionaire Betsy Devos who gets crowned as our Robber Baron for the week.

Episode 8: The individual who will occupy the Oval Office is putting in place people in the government who will do unimaginable damage to the country and the planet. Jonathan talks with CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin about the outlook for the U.S. Supreme Court. Jonathan also chats with leading workers' advocate Christine Owens about the danger facing workers and unions from the choice of a business executive who is openly hostile to the minimum wage to be Labor Secretary. We wrap up with our Robber Barons segment, taking a peek at Rex Tillerson, the unhinged future president's choice to be Secretary of State, and Tillerson's role in hiding billions of dollars in Exxon profits overseas out of the reach of the U.S. Treasury.

It's ugly. Is it terminal? Nothing ever is in politics. But, it's bad, bad, bad for the Democrats. This week, Jonathan looks into the fight over who should be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee—and what that choice will say about the vision of the party. We will hear from Donna Brazile, the interim chair of the party who took over just before the convention after Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced out. Jonathan, then, takes up the conversation with Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers and a major player in DNC politics, who, despite being an early, avid supporter of Hillary Clinton is supporting Bernicrat Keith Ellison for chair—she'll spill the beans, exclusively with Working Life, on why. We wrap up with our Robber Barons segment with a focus on the CEO of United Technologies who, in exchange for keeping jobs at the Carrier plant in Indiana, extorted tax cut promises from the deranged man who will soon occupy the Oval Office.

Celebrate! Celebrate! Progressive victories are possible even in these dark days. Meet Heidi Harmon, a Berniecrat, who won her challenge to an incumbent to capture the mayoralty of San Luis Obispo—by 47 votes! Jonathan chats with Heidi about her journey and plans. Dean Baker, progressive economist, joins Jonathan to demystify some ideas—including why we have a trade deficit and how to deal with it. And, with the holiday season upon us, our Robber Baron of the week is the CEO of a garment and apparel corporation who makes millions while exploiting workers.

Jonathan goes digging into the world of the global sweatshop, talking with global workers rights advocate Shawna Bader-Blau on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the Bangladesh factory fire that killed 110 garment workers and injured thousands more. We also talk Just Transition--how workers and communities will be looked after as we transition from a carbon based energy system--with Jonathan's good mate from Australia, union leader Tony Maher, a global advocate for climate change action who represents miners and energy workers. And our Robber Baron of the week is the CEO of a greedy drug company that hiked prices by hundreds of dollars on a life-saving device.

Because we need to celebrate in these dark political days, give a listen to how YOU, and thousands of people like you, helped kill (hopefully, forever), the dastardly Trans Pacific Partnership. After a short primer on so-called "free trade", Jonathan speaks with two key people who organized the opposition, Lori Wallach, the director of Global Trade Watch, and Larry Cohen, the new board chair of Our Revolution, the organization carrying forward the Bernie Sanders movement. To wrap up the podcast, this week's Robber Baron segment focuses on Apple.

Bedwetters, this is for you. A day before the election, Jonathan speaks to Celinda Lake, long-time national Democratic pollster, and together they sift through the polling data and the real trends. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield—yup, Ben & Jerry, with Ben having ice cream in hand—talk about their experience supporting Bernie Sanders. We wrap up with our Robber Barons segment with a look at the corruption at Wells Fargo.

Nina Turner had a lot to say to the throngs of people who she spoke to over the past year as a main surrogate for Bernie Sanders. And when she said it, she said it with passion and inspiration. In her chat with the podcast, she brought that same energy to a wide range of topics, from Bernie's campaign, the Democratic Party, the political revolution and what the future holds for her as a leader of the progressive movement. We also hear from a leading anti-Trump conservative, Tara Setmayer. And we end with our regular segment, the Robber Barons, featuring the Waltons of Wal-Mart.

Bernie Sanders rocked the nation and triggered a political revolution. He talks exclusively to Jonathan Tasini about his journey, Trump, the Democratic Party, fighting the corrupt system, and the next wave of the revolution.