The herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations Whose Mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The kohlberg foundation. Barbara g. Fleischman. And by our sole corporate sponsor, mutual of america, designing customized individual and Group Retirement products. Thats why were your retirement company. Welcome. Trade, money and politics are our issues this week, and my guest is the outspoken journalist who runs the iconic harpers magazine, which for 164 years now has thrown open its pages to some of the most ferociously independent voices in american letters, from mark twain, jack london and Herman Melville to william styron, Joyce Carol Oates and david foster wallace. As the president and publisher of harpers for the last 31 years,john r. Rick macarthur has been as ferocious a champion of democracy and journalism as any of those illustrious bylines that have appeared in its pages. Ive never known him to pull his punches, whether hes writing in harpers, or in his newspaper columns, or in such books as the selling of free trade, an expose of bipartisan collusion to enact nafta, the north American Free trade agreement, and this one, the outrageous barriers to democracy in america. Macarthurs fierce arrows of outrage are aimed at both political parties, but recently hes been especially incensed by democrats for abandoning their progressive roots to serve wall street, k street, and crony capitalists. Rick macarthur, welcome. Thank you for having me, bill. You have opposed these socalled free trade agreements for as long as i have known you. Why isnt anyone listening . Well, because the big money doesnt want them to listen and the editorial pages of most american newspapers are profree trade, quote, unquote. They dont know or they dont Pay Attention to what the costs are. Obama himself, in the 2008 campaign, said that nafta, north American Free trade agreement, had cost the country a million jobs. But in order to understand whats happening, youve got to go to these cities that are being hollowed out and destroyed, like fostoria, ohio. I did a big piece about three years ago for a foreign newspaper, because nobody wants to read it here, about the closure and the moving of the autolite spark plug plant to mexicali, mexico. From fostoria. From fostoria, ohio. By the way, it was in ohio that obama, during the campaign of 2008, made one speech in which he claimed that nafta had cost a million jobs, 50,000 of them in ohio. Right. He did it to hurt Hillary Clinton because he wanted to hang nafta on the clintons, on the clinton couple. Because president clinton, bill clinton bill clinton. Had sponsored it with the republicans in 1993. Because he made a tactical political decision that it would be a great thing to move the Democratic Party to the center i would call it move it to the right on matters concerning the working class. The working class today, thanks to what bill clinton did on nafta, is now becoming, i would call it, the lower class. So you went to this town. I went to this town more recently. Why did you pick fostoria . Well, because larry bossidy, who was the ceo of alliedsignal which owned autolite in those days autolite makes spark plugs. Autolite makes spark plugs. I actually have a spark plug that i took from the plant here. Its one of the last ones made there. And bossidy said famously in a debate on cnn that he held up a spark plug and said right now you cant sell these in mexico because theres a 15 tariff. If we can, if this naftas passed and that tariff is removed, well make these in fostoria, ohio. We wont have 1,100 jobs. Well have more jobs. And, of course, in 2007 the factory was moved to mexicali under the ownership of honeywell corporation, which had merged with alliedsignal. And barack obama was soon seen after that with dave cote, the chairman of honeywell, promoting his Business Stimulus program. Barack obama is not going to say to dave cote what are you shutting down the autolite spark plug plant for . Why are you putting Allyson Murray and peggy gillig and jerry faeth these are people i interviewed who were production line workers, who raised their families and sent their kids to school. Jerry faeth is a particular favorite of mine because he got two of his daughters through college paying most of their tuition as an auto worker. Working as an auto worker. Auto worker, right, because he was making enough money. These people are being wiped out. The statistics that you hear about where the country is economically dont reflect the devastation to these individuals. But the Democratic Partys not interested in those people. They dont contribute to campaigns. How does our Political Class get away with ignoring those realities . Well, again, to some extent, i blame the media. They dont report on it. But, in the larger political scheme, the Democratic Party, it is split. Theres still a few democrats who care about the working lower class. Barack obama, bill clinton see it in their political interest to ally themselves with wall street because they can raise money from wall street. Wall street loves free trade, quote unquote, because it equals cheap labor. All these trade agreements, and nafta in particular, are investment agreements that make it safer for american corporations to set up shop in cheap labor locales. Wall street thinks thats great. Its great for the shareholders and its great for the corporations. The profits go up. So as long as the cash keeps coming to both parties from those interested parties, short of a revolution, short of an uprising among the working poor youre not going to see any change. In 2008, obama, he used nafta against Hillary Clinton, as you said, because bill clinton had sponsored it in 1993, and he promised that he would reform nafta. Right. Has he . No. As soon as he got into office, he announced, we really dont need to reform nafta. Well find other ways to help people whove been hurt by nafta, and of course theyve done nothing. In fact, hes pushed more free trade deals, korea, colombia, et cetera, you know, he keeps pushing. And now the transpacific trade partnership, which will make things even worse. Yeah. You say if he wins the Transpacific Partnership, hell be giving away big chunks of our remaining Manufacturing Base to japan and vietnam and other pacific rim countries. Why does he want to do that . Because hes the fundraiser in chief. And again, this goes back to bill clinton because obamas really just imitating bill clinton. Clinton made an alliance with the daley machine in chicago, which obama inherited that alliance with the two daley brothers. The people who were thriving are the people in power. Rahm emanuel is now mayor of chicago. Bill daley and rahm emanuel were the chief lobbyists for passing nafta under clinton. Theyre the ones who rounded up the votes. Theyre the ones who made the deals with the recalcitrant democrats and republicans who didnt want to vote for it. These people are in the saddle. They succeeded each other as theyre democrats, too. Democrats. But daley succeeded rahm emanuel as obamas chief of staff. These are the people obama talks to all the time, and theyre saying, free trade great. We dont know about factories closing, but its a great way to raise money. Senator mitch mcconnell, who will soon be the Senate Majority leader, said that new trade agreements are one of his top priorities. Are we about to see some bipartisan cooperation between the republicans in the senate and obama in the white house on passing this new trade agreement . Absolutely. Theyve already announced that theyre going to try to work together. And if history is repeated, you will see fast track passed. Which means . Which means you give the president , you give the executive branch, the authority to negotiate the trade agreement in secret. Thats what Congress Gives away which i think is unconstitutional because the senate is supposed to advise and consent, right . But, so far, nobody has challenged it on constitutional grounds. You give Fast Track Authority to the president. They negotiate the deal. At the end of it, a gigantic bill, very complex because ive read the nafta agreement, very complex language. You give it to congress, and you say, okay, vote for it, yes or no up or down, no amendments allowed. And so thats when the heavy lobbying starts. And most times, at least in the past with pntr, thats permanent normal trade relations with china, and nafta, the big money wins. And this is whats going to happen again with tpp if people dont stop it before it gets to the fast track stage. And i guarantee you this is a way to send more jobs particularly to vietnam and malaysia. Whats happening now is that labor rates are going up slightly in china. This panics the corporations. They want other places to go. Vietnams an even cheaper labor platform than china and so its cheap labor coupled with really minimal environmental protection. You can do just about anything you want to. I brought two headlines from the same days edition of the washington post. One says obama looking to mend fences with congress is reaching out to democrats. The other one, in the same edition of the washington post, says obama says he willing to defy democrats on his support of Transpacific Partnership. What do you make of that . Well, its the typical obama. Well, its the typical obama. You know during the big it goes back. Early in his political career, there was a big fight in chicago in 2006. The city Council Voted to pass a big box minimum wage bill, 13 an hour. They said theres no factory work left, thanks to nafta and pntr, so if walmart wants to move into chicago, were going to force them to pay a living wage. And they came up with 13 an hour, with benefits some kind of health benefits. Mayor daley vetoed the bill because he didnt want to offend his friends in business in chicago. He was also, i think, personally offended that democracy had broken out in the city council. You know, its like the soviet union in chicago, 49 democrats, 1 republican. And so they passed the law. He vetoes it. And theres a big fight to try to override his veto. What do you think obama does when hes a state senator and then a senate candidate, u. S. Senate candidate, then senator . He kept absolutely mum on it. He didnt say a word. And nobody asked him to say anything because they didnt want to compromise him with mayor daley. They didnt want to get him in trouble with daley and force him to make a choice. Same thing happened at the getgo in the first two years of administration. That was the time to raise the minimum wage. He had a big majority in both houses. People were panicked. It wouldve put more money in the hands of desperate people who had lost a lot of income. He didnt propose an increase in the minimum wage in 2009 and 2010, not again in 2011 or 2012, when his own caucus was pushing for one. He had no interest in raising the minimum wage at that point because it didnt conform with his fundraising and his probusiness, prowall street goals. President obama appointed a new trade representative, michael froman, whos a disciple of robert rubin whos the wall street insider who pushed for free trade and deregulation when he was bill clintons secretary of the treasury and then went back to wall street and cashed in big from deregulation and is today, robert rubin, a big influence in the Hillary Clinton camp. What does that tell you . Well, what it tells me is they view obamas presidency as a success. In other words, wall street thinks obamas done right by them. And if they could get Hillary Clinton in, things will stay right. That was a bold cover story you had recently, stop hillary. Yeah well, it was our effort to force a debate. And we did. Im actually quite pleased with the outcome, that all our competitors were then forced to do cover stories and commentaries on other candidates who might come into the race Elizabeth Warren, jim webb has already announced an exploratory committee, bernie sanders. I wish that Sherrod Brown from ohio would run. There are a lot of people who would make good candidates, but theyre intimidated by the clinton fundraising machine. Would she raise a big tent for a lot of democrats to get under and reverse the republican wave of the midterm elections . Theres absolutely no room theres no tent that can hold the working class, the poor, the lower class that im talking about and the Steven Rattners of wall street, who go around saying, oh, dont you love us . Were social liberals. Were for civil rights. Were for all the rights that you care about. Were for tolerance and so on and so forth. But what theyre not for is Worker Rights. It doesnt matter if youre gay or black or an impoverished white former factory worker. You all have Worker Rights in common. Thats the commonality. Citizens rights, i would say also, but Worker Rights. They never talk about Worker Rights. They just talk about cultural liberalism. Thats what theyre interested in. Heres a quote from Steven Rattner, whom you mentioned. It has to do with the obama nomination of Antonio Weiss, prominent investment banker who worked on the Auto Industry bailout during obamas first term, as Steven Rattner did. This whole thing, this opposition by Elizabeth Warren and others to Antonio Weiss is part of a much broader narrative of the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party, and whether socalled progressives are going to capture that or whether more mainstream democrats, who are equally progressive in their own way, are going to retain it. He said if the weiss nomination goes down, it will be a long time before anyone else with wall street experience volunteers for this kind of job. Boy, what a threat. Wouldnt that be a great thing, if those people from wall street stopped volunteering . They dont want to stop volunteering. But that is the central problem in the Democratic Party today. Rattner speaks for a faction, a minority of people but a majority of money. The other people that im referring to, i hope its Elizabeth Warren or that she hangs in there and people like jim webb, are speaking for the majority. But the majority has much less money than this small minority of socalled social liberals on wall street. Elizabeth warren, senator warren, made a speech this week in which she said that the fight is much more than about this nominee for the treasury department. Democratic administrations have filled an enormous number of senior Economic Policy positions with people who have close ties to wall street. Starting with robert rubin, a former citigroup ceo, three of the last four treasury secretaries under democratic president s have had citigroup affiliations before or after their treasury service. Weiss defenders are all in, loudly defending the revolving door and telling america how lucky we are that wall street is willing to run the economy and the government. In fact, weiss supporters even defend the golden parachutes like the 20 million payment that weiss will receive from lazard to take this government job. Why . They say it is an important tool in making sure that wall street executives will continue to be willing to run government policy making. Shes really hitting at the very thing you have been writing about, talking about, and advocating. But nothing is going to change, as you yourself have said and written, unless the grip of the moneyed interest on our parties and on democracy is broken . How can you fight that much power, that much money . You have to run primary campaigns, cheap primary campaigns against incumbents, like the tea party, in the Democratic Party, like the tea party does against incumbent republicans. Youve got to actually take Political Action and present candidates with an alternative point of view. But you also have to go to fostoria and then come back and tell me and tell your colleagues that their town is falling apart, they cant send their kids to school anymore, theyve got to work in a fast food place. Do you know that today there are more parttime workers than there were before the recession, before the Great Recession . I think its about 7 million parttime workers. Median Household Income has dropped about 5,000 in the last five or six years. Where are the economists getting their information . You really have to look at the human cost. Theres a social element to this that somehow doesnt get talked about. We talk about incomes dropping, income disparity. We dont talk about the demoralization of the american lower and middle class. Its demoralizing to lose your job. Its demoralizing to feel like theres no future, that you cant pay to send your kids to college. Things have gotten really bad in the country. There is no relief for these people who have lost their jobs. The deindustrialization of the country continues rapidly. And every time one of these factories closes another town drops a couple of notches sociologically. It gets poorer. You cant fund the little league. You cant fund the public schools. You cant fund local community colleges. Nobodys got work. Nobodys got any hope. It gets worse and worse and worse. You cant just keep farming the laborer jobs out to vietnam and china and expect things to get better at any point. Hillary clinton was recently quoted as saying, quote, i think our country kind of moves in pendulum swings. We go maybe a little bit too far in one way, and then we swing back. We are most comfortable when we have that balance in the vital center. And we are, i think, in need of getting back to that. What does that say to you . Getting back to that . The vital center has moved so far right that it cant be called the center anymore. You might call it the center right, but its far from anything i would call the center. Hardly had she said that than nbc news and the wall street journal published a poll showing the public trends left on one issue after another raising the minimum wage, spending more for infrastructure helping students pay off their college loans, addressing Climate Change and global warming. I mean, Hillary Clinton, by this account, is to the right of the American Public and particularly of the democratic constituency. Right. But more important for Hillary Clinton, shes not to the right of Steven Rattner or the daley brothers or wall street. Or rahm emanuel. The wall street and the chicago political machine types. Shes very much in harmony with them. So where does a Sherrod Brown, a jim webb, an Elizabeth Warren, get the money to run against people who are backed by the deepest pockets in america . Im glad you asked me that because i was fascinated with the howard dean candidacy. I think howard dean was probably the best hope we had in a long time. But whatever you thought of his politics or his, you know, his demeanor or where he came from, and, remember hes a son of wall street. His meetups, where people would through the internet donate 100, scared the hell out of the democratic and Republican Party establishments. And i think i make a convincing case in the book that they colluded in the iowa primaries to knock him out. 527 committees were formed. We didnt know where the money was coming from, but they were coming from democratic money and republican money to knock out this dissident whod figured out how to beat the system. Lots of 100 contributions could compete with a few 100,000 contributions. So in order to compete, youve got to rally the people and get lots of small donations. And dean did that, and he paid the price. You see, he didnt even last as Democratic NationalCommittee Chairman because rahm emanuel saw him as a threat. They got rid of him as soon as they could. What if its too late to change a system that is so in place, so entrenched, and so wellfunded . Well, theres two things that could happen. You could have revolt. You could have rioting. I guess you could have open revolt in the streets. Or you could have a demoralized, lower twothirds of the American Population that doesnt benefit from the advantages of the top third or the top fifth. And people just get used to it. I mean, up to a point, people get used to these things. They do in other countries where things are even more inegalitarian. We in america have a higher opinion of ourselves than maybe we deserve. Weve always believed that were democrats. Were fundamentally egalitarian. Whether or not theres inequality in society, that theres an egalitarian impulse in america that will always save us. But i see that egalitarian impulse disappearing. I see it either being numbed or actually snuffed out. I take umbrage with the liberal elite in this country that i think has also abandoned the white, black, gay, working class across the board. They just dont care about them anymore. They think, well, were doing all right here in our bubble, and were, you know, not going to threaten our position in society or offend certain people on behalf of people who dont have anything. For there to be a change, the progressive elite, i guess i would call them, have got to say, we dont care what these people say about us anymore. Were breaking with them. Were going to start were going to join the opposition. Lets continue this discussion online. Id be delighted to. Rick macarthur, thank you for being with me. Thank you for having me. At our web site billmoyers. Com, my conversation with Rick Macarthur continues, and you can read more about the Transpacific Partnership and another trade deal that both president obama and members of congress are trying to fast track and fast talk into law. Thats all at billmoyers. Com. Ill see you there, and ill see you here, next time. Announcer dont wait a week to get more moyers. Visit billmoyers. Com for exclusive blogs, essays and video features. Funding is provided by anne gumowitz, encouraging the renewal of democracy. Carnegie corporation of new york, supporting innovations in education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of International Peace and security at carnegie. Org. The ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. The herb alpert foundation, supporting organizations Whose Mission is to promote compassion and creativity in our society. The john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org. Park foundation, dedicated to heightening Public Awareness of critical issues. The kohlberg foundation. Barbara g. Fleischman. 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