Month: September 2022

Ron DeSantis’s Politics of Hate is Met By the Politics of Love in Martha’s Vineyard

We begin with the thuggish behavior of the most popular Republican politician other than Donald Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose latest stunt is to fly Venezuelan refugees from Florida to dump them on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts where former President Obama took his summer vacation. A leading culture warrior and practitioner of the politics of hate, DeSantis’s trolling has been met with the politics of love by the residents of Martha’s Vineyard who have shown up in droves donating clothes, food and toys to help the pawns in DeSantis’s cynical game of grandstanding to MAGARepublicans which Governor Abbot of Texas also does having recently dumped busloads of immigrants at the doorstep of Vice President Harris’s Washington residence. Joining us is Michael Binder, professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Florida whose research interests include voter decision-making, direct democracy, American politics and public opinion. He is the faculty director for the Public Opinion Research Laboratory at the University of North Florida and we will discuss the fascistic posturing of DeSantis who is Ivy League educated but aggressively campaigns on anti-intellectualism. 

After a Cut of 25% of Workers in 7 Years, Railway Workers Fight Back to Be Able to See a Doctor

Then we look into the all-night negotiations between the rail companies and railway worker’s unions brokered by Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh that averted a nationwide rail strike which would have cost the country $2 billion a day. Joining us is Rachel Premack,the editorial director at FreightWaves which reports on supply chains, logistics and transportation. She writes the newsletter MODES and her latest article at FreightWaves is “We haven’t completely dodged a ‘disastrous’ rail strike, rail workers say.”

How Railway Strikes in 1916 Brought About the 8 Hour Workday

Then finally we speak with labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein, Distinguished Professor in the Department of History at University of California Santa Barbara, where he directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy. He is the author or editor of 16 books, including a biography of the labor leader Walter Reuther and State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, Achieving Workers’ Rights in the Global Economy, The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business and The Right and Labor in America: Politics, Ideology, and Imagination. We discuss how railway strikes in 1916 brought about the 8 hour workday and why a rail strike might be a good move to invigorate labor and inspire young workers to join unions.