An hour with Thomas Frank

how did the democrats come to abandon working people the middle class of this country and a related point why is that they fail to respond to what is the greatest issue of our time as the democratic party kicks off its national convention this week at our present journalist and historian thomas frank i'm j mcintyre thomas frank is a best selling author of several books including what's the matter with kansas where he criticizes the republican party and social conservatism in his latest work listen liberal what ever happened to the party of the people fight turns his attention to the democratic party and how it has failed the middle class frankly the native of kansas city and a graduate of the university of kansas he spoke out lawrence's liberty hall fun june fifteenth two thousand fifteen five thirty five on the life of a five years and forty years ago i came to a show here at all being daniel you remember who was a state right

seattle area i come here to see a nineteen eighty five days it was it was a run wesley run with this video that might have that they might have anticipated it but i just for the life they cannot i cannot remember with less that's what thirty years so it's the back that i wrote about cool things like music and art and wanting the cutting edge at an ally right about politics and it's a you know it's a it's a degraded form writing about politics but it's what our nation's values and so you know it we hear you want it might it across this is the only way that i write about politics now i don't know that i wrote that i wrote a book about conservatives here in kansas a couple years ago and i spent a lot of time writing about conservatives and about in particular about the way that the republican party the ropes

in a working class people with all these you know different varieties of fake populous of that there so fantastic in inventing and tobago i mean we're basically watching the rise of the greatest fake populist of all time i got a serious upgrade donald trump right this guy's like a huey long minus the compassion and so as soon as we watch this take place i want to talk about something that i mentioned that well there's a whole chapter about it in out what's a matter with kansas but i didn't really go into it in detail back then it was the us that a good helping of the blame for the right wing backlash that we're living with but a good helping the blame for this house to go to democrats that the degree to which republicans have won these people over is the same degree to which democrats have abandoned their efforts

and so that's why i think this is the year to ask what ever happened to the party of the people i mean that question in two important ways first of all how did the democrats come to abandon working people the middle class of this country and a related point why is that they fail to respond to what is the greatest issue of our time and what would you i mean would you thank you that's exactly right president obama said it himself right is the defining challenge of our time and he's right when he says that and what he says is the defining challenge of our time that is a sweeping statement but you think about it for more than a few seconds and you realize it is anywhere near sweeping and not pay inequality i don't like this word because it seems it makes it seem very technical it makes it seem like it's it's

just an economic problem we consult with the twist of the knobs back in dc or something like that but it's not it's greater than that inequality is the whole gigantic question of how we are going to live together and it's not adequate word for it but what is it means the shorthand that we've chosen so let's use it was at the inequality is the word that we use what would describe all things that have gone to make the lives of the rich so much more delicious year on year for the last three decades ever since ferris bueller came out even before their hearts and also at the same time for all the different things that are gonna make the lives of working people so wretched and so precarious inequality is visible in the rising cost of healthcare in college and that turn your cell phones off in that in the cell phones that that interrupt her

inequality is visible and that the coronation of wall street and the slow lighting of so much of the rest of the country you catch a glimpse of inequality every time you hear about somebody that had declared bankruptcy goes whether kids got sick when you read about the lobbying industry that runs washington dc these days will be a requirement i guess it's like in the constitution are something that are candidates either have to be billionaires favorites or billionaires themselves inequality is about the way speculators or even criminals got a helping hand from uncle sam on vietnam vet down the street from you lost his house inequality is the reason that some people find such incredible significance in the you know ceiling heights of an entrance for here or the harp content of a beer or other people people are never going to believe in anything again inequality

is a euphemism for the appalachians occasion of our world and anne i know what that is the republicans who are you have the primary responsibility for this plutocracy that we live in now i know that i've written many books on this these are the guys that launched our nation on this long year of tax cutting in wage suppressing and they made a religion on the market and they fought so ferociously to open our politics to the influence of money at every level and you know that story here in kansas but listen just blaming the republicans one more time and turning the old tv set that msnbc vote is not good enough not longer because the things that i'm describing all are you know they represent a failure of the democratic party as well ok i think about defending the great middle class society it's a cliche but that's who they were there to the democratic was part it

was that was their traditional mission back and i once upon a time democratic party leaders would have taken one look at what's going on with our country right now we've known immediately what to do these are guys that had a lot of things wrong with these guys of franklin roosevelt harry truman lyndon johnson john f kennedy oh yeah they did a lot of things wrong but one thing they were really really really good at doing was protecting the middle class society that's what these guys were all about shared prosperity was the democratic party's highest in defending this middle class world as something they'd never tired of talking about boasting about an odd it's true that to this day democrats are still leak out the politicians that pledge to raise the minimum wage the taxes on the rich but when it comes to tackling that defining challenge of our time however many of our modern democratic leaders falter yeah they know they know that inequality is rampant and inequality

is awful and they pride great big years ago but they can't find the conviction for the imagination to do what is necessary to reverse it and instead they offer the same high minded policy platitudes they've been offering since the days of ferris bueller they tell us right they tell us there's nothing anybody can do about that technology or globalization right these are the forces of god right hand of the almighty reaching down to intervene in human affairs globalization and so the democrat promises charter schools and more job training and help shovel out the student loans right i'll do that knowing that folks we got nothing no let's start with the issue of the wall street bailouts back in two thousand and nine two thousand eighty thousand i think is still the great sort of historical inflection point of this young century that we're living in this is the moment when our country could

easily have changed course in fact we elected him and we thought that's exactly what were doing right hope change but the leaders chose not to think about what was like back then in two thousand a president obama was elected on a massive wave of hope and then proceeded to continue the policies of the bush administration at least as regards wall street essentially unchanged for couple years none of the big banks that put into receivership none of the bailouts got on wound know elite bankers were ever prosecuted and so obama and the democrats refuse to change course when every sign was telling them that they should term what would've been good policy for the country to try to do something about the wall street banks what it would have been overwhelmingly popular

to try to affect the country fully expected him to turn and i was in the country it including the wall street bankers themselves so ashen faced a game that meeting in the white house they knew that they were being taken to the woodshed we knew it was going to write it would have then lastly it would have been fully within the democrats' power to steer the country in a different direction back then everybody was expecting them to do it the president was elected to do if it would've been helpful for the economy to do it there was on this issue there was no conflict between pragmatism and idealism the idealistic thing was also the practical thing and a helpful thing and the popular thing and still they chose not to do it i know that democrats are the good guys and are you truncated political system are the good guys around the less bad guys but it's what folks it's not a coincidence that you give and what they did with the wall street banks it's not a coincidence that all the economic

gains of the recovery presided over by a democratic president that all the economic gains of the recovery went to the already wealthy and this is not aggression say not only because sinister republicans have thwarted the writers liberal well look i live in dc i know how republicans plan to get a really good at it they're dedicated obstructionist they've made a philosophy of this but what we've got here is a straight democratic failure brock obama played this issue the way he did because that's how he wanted to play it we need to get our heads around that fact i call this a democratic failure but you know the right word for jesus's of the trail and the history of this the trail goes back a long way so when i was a kid growing up in kansas city the you read the newspapers

and the democratic party was forever you know grappling with its identity these different factions in the party fighting with one another over you know who the democrats were and what they stood for this went on all through the nineteen seventies in the nineteen eighties and into the nineteen nineties and they fought with one another like cats and dogs but there's always one thing that they agreed upon and that was that the democrats all these different factions agreed on one thing disagreed on all sorts of other things they agreed on this that the democrats had to turn away from the legacy of the new deal with its fixation on working class people had land and the man who brought closure to this long but a democratic civil war of course was president bill clinton who brought a new kind of democratic administration to washington if we want to understand what is happening as to us today with a middle class a decline in inequality growing and wages going nowhere all these things that we would understand in equality this is the period that we have to look back to this

as a pure that we have to understand ok so bill clinton comes to washington and rather than paying homage to this river politics of franklin roosevelt as all the proceeding democrats used to serve ritualistically do kind of the opposite he did these sort of singular favors four of roosevelt's old enemies for the banks the radio networks the power companies the boss is basically he'd be regulated wall street twice at regulate wall street wasn't just one or two things it was it was measure after measure if it was a whole series of things that he undertook of his administration he insured they're derivative securities would be traded without any kind of supervision it be regulated radio and telecoms and basically put an end to the federal welfare system and other thing that he did that a lot of people don't know about that i discovered the ring knows about this one is a nineteen eighty seven he he had a he arrived at a secret deal with newt gingrich then the speaker of the house to private eye social

security needed this to get all the negotiations in private is all out in the open it read about it people have written about this gingrich has given interviews about it it really happens in a series of meetings they create how they were going to do what they're going to bring in a private accounts into the social security system all that sort of thing they agreed on what it would look like a predawn a timetable to do it and clinton even took the first step in getting the ball rolling on this if you look at his state of the union address in nineteen ninety eight he says we need to save social security first which was his code phrase for privatizing and you know how this ended knew what happened the next day the monica lewinsky scandal broke no seatbelts the end of its model is be saved social security is kind of a hero if you think of the tsunami in addition to me to

be a bellwether for the next big area exactly put her on the twenty so it's so like bill clinton's an interesting guy all sorts of ways but one of the things he had this strategy when he was running for the presidency he had this strategy is a candidate or he would go out of his way to insult or distance themself from some traditional our democratic constituency like labor or minorities and thus assure the public that he was his own man right there is there's no reasoning behind it could do whatever it wanted to these people because remember the phrase they have nowhere else to go but that was a great phrase of the clinton era he could say when everyone gets the most famous example was jesse jackson so clinton arranged to insult jackson to his face before the cameras of the nation our listeners called a sister souljah moment and what's what's curious about all this

is that eventually this sort of weird campaign tactic of insulting your supporters this campaign tactic became for clinton a full blown philosophy of governance right body slamming the very people that had just got you elected great example here is the north american free trade agreement or nafta which remember was negotiated by george bush sr and bush couldn't get into congress does congress of course at the time was controlled by that's right democrats of the old school and they were opposed to organized labor was opposed to they've fought it all the time and that he couldn't get through it to the democrats do that and that was bill clinton was you know an assist from his buddy rahm emanuel mayor of chicago but when clinton got nafta passed rammed it through congress think about this he wasn't just an insult his

friends an organized labor as he had done with jesse jackson he was just insulting these guys he was amazing in their ruin and you know he was assisting in the destruction of their economic power he was doing his part to undermine his own party's greatest ally to assure that henceforth in any kind of dispute between management and labor management would always have the upper hand regardless of what the dispute is about his management team now always say remove the plant to mexico they can make that threat now it's credible and they do it all the time they used a wheel this threat out in any kind of confrontation with with labor and what they actually do is actually of follow through on it from time to time so but in passing nafta clinton made the problems of working people materially worse and that is fascinating in all sorts of ways the first of the big trade deals as a whole series of them all through the

current administration to continue to the bush administration and there's one on the burner right now you know the at the transpacific partnership but what's fascinating about an afternoon what the many things especially about it is that it is as close to a straight up class issue as we ever see in this country and it gives us an idea of who are moderate democratic party means to please objects on the one hand who is in favor of nafta its professionals and the wealthy and who's opposed to professionals people with advanced degrees and wealthy people opposed to it are going to be blue collar workers people's people with a high school diploma so up professionals were no doubt you know we're very much impress to learn the two hundred and eighty three economists had signed a statement saying that the treaty would you boost employment in america economic growth increased exports all that stuff paradoxically or rye clear everyone put it the

protections of the un lettered blue collar workers are the ones that actually turned out to be true they were closer in their predictions what actually came to pass the more the rosy scenarios of those economists and a rhodes scholar who sat in the oval office now another interesting thing about nafta is that clinton has fans clinton's supporters concede myers regard this as his finest hour with the phrase that would always use of nafta was his finest hour as you stood up to organized labor was a brave act and there is all the sort of the praise from bill clinton from democrats for nafta and there is a sort of version of this abuse was writing listen liberal it i didn't use any district republican hated literature about clinton stayed away from that stuff and i focused and read only the bees were admiring books about bill clinton and brought obama and that's what i think and one of his books came out in nineteen ninety six as a biography of bill clinton written by a journalist martin walker and he said you know clinton has done a few things

wrong but that these failings were used to quote his failings were in the end balanced and even outweighed by his part in finally sinking the untenable old consensus of the new deal and the crafting of a new one and this is this is a big liar but bill clinton is the man that thinks he's a great president and what's great about them that he killed the new deal consensus that's his admirers speaking and he said the new consensus of actual who are the heroes of this new consensus what does this new consensus was it consists well the senate democratic thinkers who are used to fight like cats and our devising the party to abandon workers in the new deal these guys have the answer what democrats had to embrace they said was the emerging post industrial knowledge economy and the people that democrats need to identify with or the winners in this new economic order the highly

educated professionals who populated our innovative knowledge industries wanting by professionals a big issue you know you got your traditional professionals like lawyers doctors engineers architects that's reason but you also have now an enormous professional economy up there people like a map ph he's right derivative securities in a biochemist and make prescription drugs that i think you know if you go back to the nineteen fifties professionals as a social class as a cohort were almost entirely republican they're one of the most republican groups in america up by the nineteen nineties it completely change sides and one of the most democratic groups in america and that's where they are today democrats and that's that conversely that's who the democrats are they're a party of the highly educated professional class they have other constituencies of course they talk about it all the time in their magazine's minorities women the young these are the other members of what they like to call the coalition of the

ascendant but professionals are always the ones who'd come first for the democratic party is that these are the ones whose technocratic outlook always tends to prevail and it's always their tastes and their manners that aren't celebrated by liberal newspapers and you know what i mean when i say that it is artisanal everything it is the particular professional way of looking at the world that is taken for granted by liberals as being obviously true so what i'm saying is it professionals dominate liberalism in the democratic party in the same way the ivy leaguers dominate the obama campaign and if you read a lot of democratic party literature which it did they have all these flattering phrases for their favorite demographic all these you know wonderful sort of the terms of endearment that call these high achieving professionals the wired workers will inherit the future they're a learning class that truly gets the power of education and i have to say here on learning the

house but you love that i think some people are in the working class but other people are they learning class states like this it's also they're supposed to be and you know that's when you are literally for a creative class that naturally rebels against fitness and conformity there an innovation class they just can't stop coming up with some new stuff right and democratic leaders themselves are of course drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of this very same group so it's not a coincidence that both bill clinton and brought obama and for that matter hillary clinton worked plucked from obscurity by prestigious universities the thing about bill clinton's life stories are fascinating our life story or archetype a life story of our time is a kitten hearts hot springs arkansas he goes off to georgetown university he becomes a rhodes scholar yale law school

and the doors the world open up for him to brag about its very similar why stories of the time that these people spend at these very fancy schools or what define them as individuals anything about their cabinet choices or their other inner circle of advisors as all these up you successful professionals whose worth was determined by their achievements of college her arthritis of the washington post for example which is a great believer in the law politics and i'm describing the washington post has always writing the stories you're marveling at brock obama's inner circle of advisers and they're incredible you know academic credentials that you know the incredible brain power that is represented in his inner circle as not just that they wanted ideally schools because it's like harvard is like every single one of them with with a few exceptions i'm sorry it's more like it's like fifty percent of them so that the help is not as though they want their event the president of harvard a former president harvard larry

summers you know running the economy for us and the first two years of his administration so let me summarize what i'm saying here they the democrats have invented this kind of what would you say denatured up marxism where this class are the heroes of history these are the people that standard that the tea looks right the dialectic of history this is at the professional class triumphant right so that's their theory of history that's also the democratic party's number one constituency and it's the group that the democratic leaders themselves are always drawn from okay so what i'm describing is a class party but it's not the working class and this shift of allegiance from this or traditional working class middle class to professionals this shift is what explains so much that is frustrating about our modern day democrats this is what explains to go back to the question that i started with this is what explains this vexing

question of brock obama and the wall street banks was go back to that why did the obama team failed to do what needed to be done to wall street banks why did they declared that wall street executives are gonna be held today different legal standard than ordinary criminals and they did say that the man who said had to resign immediately but he said why did this administration choose wall street over average people again and again and again in every time there was a decision to be made that we might benefit like middle class homeowners or wall street every time there is a decision he made eight they went in that direction always chose wall street y because for the achievement conscious people who fill the obama administration's investment bankers are more then friends these people are classmates these people are their peers right the two groups are the same so you know people in the administration and wall street

people go back and forth through that revolving door that one day there at citibank the next day though the secretary of the treasury are there running whatever you know they go back and forth with this revolving door your first year obama's press secretary and now you're at a hedge fund somewhere there is no difference between the two groups the democrats of the kind of describing of the leadership fact of democrats look at a wall street and they say this isn't history that is filled with people all subtle minds and sophisticated jargon of the law that jargon and his extraordinary innovative this right there plucking wealth from thin air right that's wall street those are exactly the sort of creative individuals the democratic party theory tells us we must honor and respect right they're making these financial instruments that are so admirably tax and by doing so was writing this book

i was the guys i talked to is a was a bank regulator back in the eighties and he had a hand in the sunoco prosecuting a great number of snl executives during that last last big financial meltdown and he says he was telling me that in his data bank regulators when they would see a new financial complexity they would say aha zero and that fraud they're up to something unfair when the obama people say financial complexity or they say sophistication they allow that staff writer its financial markets science as one member of the administration said that when he was explaining why they couldn't prosecute these visits financial rocket science manage complexity nobody understands that but still creative that is exactly the same for big pharma you know this right so in everyday dove you can't import generic pharmaceutical giant

pfizer you have to protect these innovative companies or folks may get at us for silicon tally i need an industry that can do no wrong in democratic eyes and saw a lovable so professional so creative that for this one industry enforcement of our country's anti trust laws has basically been suspended as secretary of state when hillary clinton was secretary say she used to travel the world to proselytize for something she called internet freedom and what she meant by that and she was very open about this many speeches on the subject are on the state department website during their meeting here with some of the juno around the world proselytizing for internet freedom and what she meant by that is that access to certain silicon valley server is write like facebook and google ads are having access to certain silicon valley servers was a basic human right and that is the foreign policy of

your country folks so what does the party of the professional class believe in was it looked like look most import item on the list at number one item on the list is a meritocracy meritocracy that's what they believe in this convention but the successful deserve their words and the people who are on top are up there because they are the best wishes the first commandment of the professional class no decision meritocracy is wrong about a hundred different ways but the the only way we talk about it here is that this is like the worst way possible to take on the problem of inequality apply this is not a doctrine for mitigating inequality this is a way of rationalizing inequality right at that everybody gets what they deserve and what they deserve is defined by how they did in school this is a way

of looking at this you know huge economic morass if were in the middle class coming up our wages never going up and they say well that's just cause you you know you didn't study hard enough lingo to college ready to go to college which was the wrong college or anyone to the right college and study the right subject to study stem subjects five years now you studied stem subjects of course your wages are going down right now it's always a way of taking this is where the big economic problem isn't pushing it back down to the individual it's inequality is not a failure of our economic system that a failure of tissue so the idea that i'm getting at here is that is this there is no solidarity in a meritocracy it's the two ideas are exact opposites play in a professional class leaders the people the top of the administration the people of wall street just amazing respect for one another right for the people at the top but they feel no sympathy for members of their own

professional we offer their own discipline who happen to be lower down in that in the hierarchy think about the white collar workplace of any of you have experience of the white collar workplace when somebody gets fired the other workers don't rally around him or her and say we're going to go on strike or to you know do something about this really confront the boss is never happen it's everybody knows that it's always you know because you've somehow deserted didn't study hard never submit that you screwed up in some way or a good example for my own life i remember this class level of the class and thriving i wound up huge beach but the university of chicago's brand as it was in history and it i have finished up in nineteen ninety four well on the job market and i discovered was surprised there were no tenure track jobs anymore their workers like ten of them for the entire country something like this very very few anymore everybody was being pushed it was unjust history was all humanity is being pushed into being adjuncts you what this is we've of course where lawrence and as noticed as you knew what you were doing you worked your butt off right and you get paid next to nothing is as unbelievable as like what you signed up for

a phd you say to that and this is it is that we all across the humanities and it still goes on to this day it is getting worse and it's you know it's it's it's not just humanities anymore it all across europe ph he's of every description now the people at the top of these disciplines still had and still have a certain amount of power how much sympathy you think they feel for their address for the students the former students who are now twilley was i just you know how much very very very little person that professors here and there but by large these disciplines don't give a damn ok that's meritocracy there is no solidarity in a meritocracy that life doesn't shower its blessings on people who can't make the grade isn't shot reagan justice this is the way things are supposed to be we think and so this story that i'm telling in with some liberal as you can see is in some ways a happy and inspiring one visit us

this is the gradual this is the coming together of money and merit of that recklessness and success says the marriage of finance with political virtue because virtue and righteousness are what being a liberal is all about these days but in another sense the transformation of the democrats has been a disaster think about it this way left parties all over the world were founded in order to advance the fortunes of working people that's why they exist okay but our left party chair in america and one of our two monopoly parties let us never forget our party has chosen of the last thirty years to turn its back on working people's concerns and make itself itself instead into the tribune of you know the enlightened professional class of creative class that makes finding innovative

things like derivatives securities and smartphone apps the working people that the party used to care about the democrats figured had nowhere else to go and the famous clinton era expression folks that have found somewhere else to go by abandoning these people democrats have made it inevitable both feet economic desolation of fast parts of the midwest as well as a populist backlash against liberalism that has been building slowly for decades and twelve years ago i wrote about a boy i saw here i sought out here and today folks it is all over the country it is everywhere the backlash is everywhere you know screaming about it that the industrialized sounds you know chanting it's bizarre and ugly slogans i mean just think about

the choices that leaves us with this year on the one hand angry right wing intolerance and on the other it equality forever thought there has got to be a better way thank you very much terry thomas frank father of what's the matter with kansas fan listen liberal whatever happened to the party of the people frank spoke june fifteenth two thousand sixteen at lawrence's liberty hall sponsored by the lawrence public library he now takes questions from the audience you're listing to katie our prisons on kansas public radio given the potential and automation has to destroy jobs on a massive scale of the next few years we'll know about this how was i going to play out politically i think we know the answer and we've got one party that is convinced that it's your own downfall is you didn't get you know the right degree or something like that you

go to college or something and at only what we really need is more student loans i love the writer's moore's law that'll solve the problem areas as you get deeper and deeper in debt but when the place i got it she was the university of chicago it now costs and getting off on a tangent that he can stop is by going to the word hero is that it now costs sixty grand a year to go there sixty grand so if your goal for four years as a quarter of a million dollars nobody can afford that you know this is a formula for disaster ok so how can anybody get out and of course where the jobs writing at a worker task rabbit right what what what i mean what is left right will we often see this happening there are jobs they just don't pay very well and they had unemployment is way down but wages aren't going anywhere we can all see what's happening at the house is going to play out politically well we know what's going to happen this year i mean you it's easy to see there's no way

to disguise it would be and hillary you know is is a status quo that was just well so what happens for years from now you're going to have the anger is going to be that much worse the party of the professional classes showing can't do anything about this problem i mean there are things you can do about inequality and there are things you could know it's not this insoluble problem from on high is not god reaching down to destroy the middle class their kids at the visa end up a policy as a political matter and we can change it but all the changes are off the table so for years and now you're going to see a new truck movement and effective if they trump's politics minus trump trump trump is actually you could let it is a new barry sanders you can go they can they can be it can be can begin turn out

well or it can turn out really really really bad and that's that's where we're going i think that it's it's work it's a terrifying situation i am i was not i was not writing stories for a newspaper in chicago and it i get paid better be a journalist and a young teenagers on what the hell with us it a journalist has asked for the money that and now that's gone right and book publishing is the corporately diminishing i have friends or musicians oh jesus i want friends or family farmers are the options the world is coming apart folks and if there is going to be there is going to be some kind of explosions there has to be so okay so if you're willing to shout was was a better why was about the way the kansas popular some folks who as a state legislator in the nineteen century and the nineteenth century when we know

the answer to this is just off the table for us in the nineteenth century did it have political science but if they had if they had they would be people who are political scientists who are experts in third parties cause you had a third parties all the time back then and when the two major parties would refuse to address the issue of the day whether it's inequality and eighty nine he sees a lot of the same things we're seeing now rampant inequality you on a scale it's far beyond what we're seeing today or earlier the slavery question which the two parties would not deal with that when a third party rises up an makes the issue impossible to avoid and you have the republicans in the us eighteen sixties and you have the populists and eighty nine days after populism died down and that that was consistently that was this place that did that put populism on the populist governor to populist senators populist members of congress populist mayors you know right down the list and after populism die down to scare a lot of

people you know they thought this is what robespierre lets or this is you know they're going to come and chop our heads of laughter die down in every state we've had had populism they made its techniques illegal right so the third parties would never happen again that was basically the end of the sort of viable third party thing in this country or we need that fact that we're in a situation now are the two parties are refusing to deal with the big problem before us we have to have some other alternative and i like what bernie sanders did but it's gotten farther ahead yes princeton is about what he had to say about the bank bailout and obama's handling of that and of course the public argument given by the obama administration was that if the banks fail the economy cracked would crash in the middle class and working class would suffer such a very interested to hear what you think that argument is wrong and what you think would've happened if they have that much power that i remember them saying that writers all the confidence yet to keep a

conference there's all sorts of ways to there's all sorts of ways in between crashing the banks and letting them just go about their business and do what they were doing before there's all sorts of other word escalation steps you can take in between those two extremes that they didn't try and you can for example ok so well roosevelt roosevelt administration when things i did i looked up as an earlier book of mine the roosevelt administration did the bank bailouts of inherited the policy from the hoover administration and it was what hoover did it was it was terrible it was a terrible policy they're doing exactly what we did this time around the just gave the banks money and the public was so mad as chronic rampant cronyism the bankers were basically helping themselves to the public you know the treasury is i think roosevelt came in and completely changed the program was for the reconstruction finance corporation and here's out the man in charge of his bailout program with a by the way a populist anger from texas he hated wall street and you know what he did he was feted at a bank visible we don't like the way you manage this bank

were firing all of you all the c suite people were replacing it with these other people they go to a city where the banks are obviously fragile they put the banks have a business and they would the federal government our government would start a new bank has happened a number of times there's all sorts of different things that they could do it's measures that you can take in between you know i'm going to just let them off the hook not even prosecutions for obvious fraud and i when i say obviously the call these things where loans for god's sakes was a hit it's the it's like everybody can see what they're doing you know these guys know what they're doing and are not any prosecutions for this nobody gets fired but when they fired the up the ceo of general motors i have no problem doing that but that none of these banks are available now you can't touch those guys have to treat them with kid gloves even in the bailout of detroit that took an investment banker and put him in charge of that you know that that's right that you trust right investment banker so on saying is that there's all these different steps you can take and some of them were even suggested that

our recruitment saying they should put citibank issues breakups citibank as a test case it's the biggest it's the world's most underwater you know citibank is a you know it's a giant money pit were just dumping money into ago in their restructured reorganize you get rid of the management breakable like five different companies are start over again why this happens all the time in our country with smaller banks put into receivership it's not frightening it's it happens all the time i have no idea what we're going to have a very good idea why the obama people were very reluctant to do this and i think it's there are the reasons that i describe because i feel class solidarity with those people there was this and this by the way tons of evidence for it in the book that there is one that just came out in the newspaper the other day that was shocking to me jesse eisinger writing for pro publica and he got all the emails please visit there was as see their sec security exchange commission emails about their up non prosecution of one of the companies i think goldman but i'm not sure you have to look at that jesse's eyes your story but basically

the uk executives at the securities exchange commission a writing back and forth to joe about why they're not prosecuting these guys among themselves the ohio official sec says come on these are good guys and made one mistake one that state's vote seven years later we're still living with that is that if you are serrated knife in many ways are preaching to the choir with this book and your previous books but one of the critiques that you made was that the clinton administration took for granted many of the minority voters that weren't place and how this race factor into your critique this overheated economy ministration as you know what people look back on is this good times because the last few years of the nineties were economically good times and wages went up a for real you know it was the attack the only time really in my entire life i think now osborne sixty five so there are a bunch of goodyear's the sixties but the only time in a lot of people's lives when wages real wages went up year after year ninety seven ninety eight ninety nines seems a good

times but when you go back and look at what clinton actually did dreadful ok so the ninety four crime bill you know this is this is a monstrous piece of work a tiny one detail from that that nobody knows about a minute in they know about the time you can look it up on the internet the stories are still there says ninety four ninety five this year with his beginnings a lot of the newspaper stories are used they're easy to find so i hear it in a crime bill in ninety four was passed and obviously nineteen eighty four and we all know what it did build prisons all over america criminalize a whole bunch of things that you know that basically the intent was to throw all these minor level low level drug users or the president increased the number of federal debt lee's from three to sixty and he did all these things and one of the things that it did was it said okay you're sentencing commission passed away and only crack versus powder cocaine artist sentencing disparity that oh this is not getting into the weeds here but

it there's a chance you guys know this is yeah so so a powder cocaine which is commonly used by members of the professional class was was punished at a certain rate right dose at the sentencing for was was not a certain rate up the penalties for using crack were ten times as great as all of the story was that it was a hundred years but it's outrageous right so for the same amount was treated as or a hundred times greater and that the bill said ok the sentencing commission should weigh on this and whatever they do becomes law our sentencing practices here american citizens information goes off those are steady and the comeback and they say this is a racist an inherently unfair to punish crack at a hundred times the rate of cocaine you know that this is what is filling our presence this is what is causing mass incarceration we hereby apologize okay by that time the republicans were in control congress newt gingrich and the gang and they sit on and

they passed a law of reversing that decision revealed with me so far so the setting emission says this sentencing disparity is abolished congress led by the republican says no we pass a law saying it's it's not it goes back to what was a hundred to one pet because of bill clinton if he had vetoed that this sends a dispiriting would've been abolished you what he did he signed it he signed that he puts his hands on it and signed it is a man that shook the hand of nelson mandela it makes me it makes me like shake think about it i can't stand that it's up the congressional black caucus implored him to veto of the million man march was about that time there were riots in every prison not every pre prisons all over america when it became clear that he was going to sign this he could have vetoed it and solved the problem he signed a few years later the

welfare reform this is this is a busy picking on the weakest members the most vulnerable members of our society with welfare welfare reform was just real estate another on the mercy of sam brownback wright also bill clinton so that's that's where the senate that i'm sorry i get i get really worked up about that it pisses me off the plane lands millions of americans including tens of thousands those of us from the uk learning class from the harvard of the planes have thought very very hard for equality and solidarity for the one candidate we believe that was pitched to fdr like new deal democrat my simple question to you is why didn't you tell us about the bernie sanders campaign what

finally here come on you know that i'm a journalist allowed to get involved in campaigns real thinkers is helping not allowed to have yard signs or anything i'm like you know i can't give donations and i can't give up i did do an interview with bernie sanders by leo muller it was a salon dot com who's in two thousand forty fifty well whatever i forget that it was a great interview because he talks about should he runs an independent or should he run as a and he was targeting both sides and it was a fascinating fascinating very interesting man i really like him and i like that he wears suits all the time as you obviously think that the problems are size facing are systemic and widespread and so to me it sounds like the same basically the foundations run at this point so foundation the government its constitution and i remember hearing about an interview rick bader ginsburg made a couple years ago where she said that if the country were writing a constitution

today she would recommend that use our constitution and start shooting tall and what gets canada south africa really yeah so my question is woody's you think we need to review the constitution know i don't know i mean they do a regular is it just a matter of interpretation and so many things that it's just a matter of interpretation are going to change the subject and you watch how i get what you're doing to her interpretations some anti trust laws of this country the sherman antitrust act is still on the books we don't enforce it it can reinforce tomorrow at where obama just is not up to congress not the republicans they can instruct his attorney general to go back to the enforcement standards of say nineteen sixty seven and we proved he would go and frankly between unique to your office a hero if he did that if you start taking these guys' on people would love it if the moderators want to do it and so they let they let it go but there's all sorts of examples

like that of things that we are i learned this from a book by a wizard and zephyr teachout yes the river she ran for the governor for congress in your message i should run for congress right now but in addition to these and she wrote an excellent book called corruption in america and it's a history of corruption and i was fascinating as i tried to write a history of corruption once bob the wrecking crew write about a jacket that has a jack ablin often has nothing but but she she goes all the way back to the beginning of the republic and the things she finds her incredible digital lobbying was illegal in many states lobbying was a felony it was in the republican alike you just saw your services to go and get a piece of legislation passed it was illegal but on the supreme court was like yeah i guess i can't be legal it's crazy you can't do that and it was in the constitution of various states lobbying is a felony like the

state of california has all sorts of states all gone or just interpreted differently now so we have a different understanding of what wanting is now i guess is that this is this is the thing about this a lot because every politico magazine so i'm on the email list serve and they have won that comes out every day talking about our lobbyists who got what account who's how they're lobbying for this you know for this fighter plane are just sugary cereal or whatever other and an end you know all that jolly times of the lobbies are having like isis own soda at the bar at such and such it why washington dc the city doesn't have any of the problems that i've been describing is a very prosperous city i'm going to wear this or shut up this country's for the engine of employment are we entering into a new age of

environment that we are folks so this is i remember in nineteen ninety four they cover a bachelor number six has my in my essay and the title is dark age it was my response to the dawning of a banner that this is great thing was happening with this great wonderful thing was happening was it was going to human enlightenment but look at what has happened to us we have a a culture that worships unlikely that worships a professional class it works worships science and big data you know a number cruncher and creativity and then look at the people that that party alexa they're putting off as larry summers is that creativity folks this is the opposite of play this is going in reverse look at what happens the people to go out and get a phd in any of the humanities ok this is what was happening to books in this country to the culture of reading

in this country this is not an age of enlightenment we're going in the other direction and the worship that we eat professor for the creative you know which is always you know what they mean by that it's always just been the ceo right but always what they mean by that is our worship of creativity and of science it's just it's just a tiny little veneer it's a tiny little veneer over the rot over what is happening to us if you've just heard thomas frank author of what's the matter with kansas and listen liberal whatever happened to the party of the people frank spoke june fifteenth two thousand sixteen about lawrence's liberty hall sponsored by the lawrence public library banks do ed rose for audio of this event i'm j mak entire kbr presents is a production of kansas

public radio at the university of kansas