Labor

Talk Nation Radio: Ahmet Tonak on a 2500% increase in worker exploitation

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E. Ahmet Tonak is the author and editor of several books including Measuring the Wealth of Nations: The Political Economy of National Accounts (with Anwar Shaikh), Turkey in Transition: New Perspectives (edited with Irvin Schick) and Marxism and Classes (edited with Sungur Savran and Kurtar Tanyılmaz). Trained as a mechanical engineer at Istanbul Technical University, he earned a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research. Tonak taught for many years read more

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Charlottesville’s Past That Isn’t Even

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Here in Charlottesville, Virginia, I like to point out that the rallies of racists are mostly imported from out of state. It’s tempting to relax comfortably on that assertion, and to reflect on how our great lord and master Thomas Jefferson owned people with more reluctance and inner turmoil than Barack Obama bombing a foreign country or Donald Trump mouthing kind or coherent phrases from a teleprompter.

Reality is a little more troubling. Jefferson was a vicious and heartless profiteer and read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Joshua Holland and Bryce Covert on How People in Denmark Get Happy and Why Dads Should Stay Home

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Joshua Holland is a fellow with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute and a contributor to The Nation who focuses on the intersection of money in politics and inequality. He is also the host of Politics and Reality Radio. Before joining The Investigative Fund, he wrote for Moyers & Company and was a senior writer and editor at Alternet. He also authored The Fifteen Biggest read more

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Talk Nation Radio: George Lakey on Viking Economics

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-george-lakey-on-viking-economics

George Lakey recently retired from Swarthmore College where he was Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change and managed the Global Nonviolent Action Database research project. His first arrest was for a civil rights sit-in. He has served as an unarmed bodyguard for human rights defenders in Sri Lanka. Lakey read more

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Born on Home Plate

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Remember the satirical “Billionaires for Bush” protesters? Around this time in 2008 I asked them to become Oligarchs for Obama, and they refused. But I predict Tycoons for Trump will be born this month. Inequality, like war and climate destruction, has its face now.

Chuck Collins’ book, Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good, presents the problem of inequality as well as any I’ve read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Salt Rebellion in U.S. Colonies and Sailing Food from Maine to Boston

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-salt-rebellion-in-us-colonies-and-sailing-food-from-maine-to-boston

Why sail food from Maine to Boston, and what do salt and the British colonies in North America have in common with Gandhi’s India?

Rivera Sun is the author of The Dandelion Insurrection, Billionaire Buddha, and Steam Drills, Treadmills, and Shooting Stars, the cohost of Occupy Radio, and the cofounder of the Love-In-Action Network. read more

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Peace Work Because of You

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A note from David Swanson:

You may have seen this article I wrote recently on ongoing U.S. use of depleted uranium weapons. It’s on dozens of websites, including my own WarIsACrime, but also Al Jazeera, Truthout, Counterpunch, FireDogLake, OpEdNews, Washington’s Blog, Z, and many others.

Guess what I got paid, in total, from all of those outlets? —–>>>

But I can pay the bills and keep working for peace if you help read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Kevin Zeese on Activist Media, TPP, Climate, Wars

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Kevin Zeese (at right in image) is an organizer at http://PopularResistance.org We discuss activist journalism, stopping the Trans-Pacific Partnership, saving the climate, and ending the wars.

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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Pacifica stations can also download from AudioPort.

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We Won't Forget Wisconsin

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A new film called Wisconsin Rising is screening around the country, the subject, of course, being the activism surrounding the mass occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol in 2011.  I recommend attending a planned screening or setting up a new one, and discussing the film collectively upon its conclusion.  For all the flaws in Wisconsin’s activism in 2011 and since, other states haven’t even come close — most have a great deal to learn.

The film tells a story of one state, read more

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One Day We Will All Strike for More Than One Day

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An international one-day strike by fast-food workers is something new, and also something old.  People without a union are organizing and acting in solidarity.  Others are joining in support of their moral demand for a living wage.  They’re holding rallies.  They’re shutting down restaurants.  They’re using Occupy’s people’s microphone.  They’re targeting the one-percenter CEO of McDonald’s who apparently is paid $9,002 per read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Portland Oregon Supports Its Teachers and Students

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-portland

Portland Oregon is sitting on a budget surplus while overworking and undersupporting its teachers. And it’s not just the teachers who aren’t going to take it anymore.

Eric MacCartney is a member of the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT). He has been teaching for over six years, and now teaches fifth grade at Kelly Elementary, a Title I school in Portland’s Lents neighborhood. Before that he taught read more

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Switzerland Shows U.S. How to Handle CEOs

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In Switzerland a petition from 100,000 people, or about 1.25% of the population, creates a public referendum.  By this means, last March, Swiss voters created strict limits on executive pay.

On November 24, the Swiss will vote on whether to take a further step — limiting executive pay to no more than 12 times the lowest salary in the company. Such a maximum wage policy allows the CEO pay increases, but only if workers get at least a twelfth as much.

A movement in the U.S. is asking: read more

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Blowing the Whistle on the TPP in Harrisonburg VA

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Free Trade Pact or Corporate Coup?

Presentation & Discussion with Author & Activist David Swanson

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the most highly secret trade agreement in the history of the United States.   It is massive in scope, and is being pushed by the U.S. government at the behest of transnational corporations.  It is bad for jobs, bad for democracy, and bad for our national sovereignty.  President Obama is expected to try to “fast-track” read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Gar Alperovitz Points to Worker Ownership as Fix for Broken Democracy

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-gar

Gar Alperovitz discusses his new book, What Then Must We Do: Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution.  Alperovitz points to long-term trends in wealth and income inequality, environmental destruction, civil liberties loss, incarceration rates, and others, to argue that ordinary political change is not enough, that systemic changes in the distribution of power are badly needed.  See http://www.garalperovitz.com

Total run read more

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It's the Ownership

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If you’re like me you’ve read several books that list inspiring examples of worker owned businesses and co-ops, suggesting that expanding on such models might begin to right the wrongs of an incredibly unequal society that is growing even more unequal by the day.

The best such collection I’ve found is in a new book by Gar Alperovitz called What Then Must We Do?  This book also offers a powerful argument that radical change is needed, albeit an argument with some read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Carl Gibson on Shutting Down the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

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https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-carl-gibson

Carl Gibson is currently engaged in a Green Jobs March from Philadelphia to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., as part of a campaign called ShutTheChamber.org.  You can join the march virtually by uploading a photo on their website, or you can join in reality at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce across from the White House at 10 a.m. Friday, May 24th.  read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Here Comes Corporate Nationhood

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And you thought corporate personhood was bad enough!  Lacey Kohlmoos, Senior Field Organizer, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, tells us that the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) will create corporate nationhood by empowering corporations to sue and overrule real nations, as well as incentivizing the offshoring of jobs, hurting food safety, damaging environmental protections, enriching drug companies at the expense of human health, banning some generic read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Richard Wolff on Putting Workers in Charge at Work

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Richard Wolff is a professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of Democracy at Work.  See http://democracyatwork.info

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download or get embed code from Archive or  AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available read more

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Chained CPI Humbug on Maggie's Farm

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Maggie was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The streets of Britain celebrated. Barack watched on CNN. And Barack’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Maggie was as dead as a door-nail.

Hopenchange knew she was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Barack and she were partners, as it were, albeit removed by I don’t know how many years. Barack was her sole executor, her sole administrator, her sole assign, read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Robert Pollin: There Is No Fiscal Crisis

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There is no fiscal crisis. There is an unemployment crisis. And there is a solution: tax the banks. The support for this argument is explained by Robert Pollin, the co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst.  His latest book and papers discussed during the program are here: http://backtofullemployment.org

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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