Month: October 2019

Will Consumers Boycott GM, Chrysler and Toyota?

We begin with the decision by General Motors, Fiat-Chrysler and Toyota and a number of other auto-makers to side with the Trump Administration against California in rolling back auto-emission and fuel efficiency standards which will lead to more pollution, more money wasted at the pump and a step backwards in tackling the greatest threat the planet faces, global warming. Cara Horowitz, the Co-Executive Director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law whose research focuses on California and federal climate policy and who has testified to the California legislature on climate policy, joins us. We discuss how back in July Honda, Ford, Volkswagen and BMW sided with California agreeing to follow more stringent standards in line with the original Obama-era rules under the decades-old Clean Air Act. But given Trump’s obsession with undoing everything Obama achieved, and his denial of global warming, along with Trump’s war on California and his closeness to the fossil fuel industry which is the power behind the scene pushing for this move, today’s move is sad but not surprising. However there is the real and growing prospect of a consumer boycott against the car companies who rolled over for Trump with outrage being expressed on social media. And since the overwhelming majority of Americans are concerned about the environment and climate change, not to mention the obvious that no one likes air pollution and paying more at the pump, when contemplating buying a new car, a lot of consumers might well reward the socially-responsible manufactures over the craven companies who caved in to Trump.

Boeing Executives Try To Defend Their Doomed 737 Max Airplane

Then on the anniversary of the first crash of a Boeing 737 Max, we look into today’s brutal questioning of the CEO of Boeing by U.S. Senators in which executives admitted that the company made mistakes in developing and testing its troubled airplane which has been grounded worldwide since two crashes killed 346 people. Jeff Wise, a science journalist specializing in aviation who I spoke with back in March when everything he stated and predicted back then has since been proven true, joins us to discuss how this Rube Goldberg flying coffin may never be allowed back in the air in spite of the fact Boeing keeps making more of them every day and has run out of space to park them.

The Harsh Realities of Our Sociopathic Economy

Then finally Emily Guendelsberger, a journalist and author of the new book, just out, “On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane”, joins us to discuss how after her newspaper closed, she took three low-wage jobs at an Amazon warehouse in Kentucky, a call center in North Carolina, and a McDonald’s in San Francisco. We discuss the harsh realities of our sociopathic economy in her journey into the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce.