welcome to on contact today we're going to discuss why joe biden is not f.d.r. with a historian and author paul st we look back at the thirty's in the new deal and how they happen they happen because it was under on the left there was dissent in the streets right before the social security. and the langer and probably the to see progressive lynch in measured far from perfect in the excuse much of the minority black population from their coverage is now and should not romanticize the new deal that they were breakthrough pieces of legislation for much of the working class population old age pensions in this legalization were going to be black and martin the year before those happened there was there was a. gigantic longshoremen strike all across the western us there was

a general strike led by trask use teamsters in the twin cities there was a national exile strike there were hunger marx's from coast to coast and every major city in this country had a resurgent left. in the in the twin cities it was often syndicalist i.w.w. and transfused in chicago and detroit it was communist probably the dominant in this it was communist party i had issues with the communist party but also a lot of great organized. don't be fooled by joe biden he knows his infrastructure and education bills have as much chance of becoming law as the $15.00 minimum wage or the $2000.00 stimulus checks he promised as a candidate he knows his american jobs plan will never create as he says millions of good paying jobs jobs americans can raise their families on any more than nafta

which he supported would. as was also promised create millions of good paying jobs his montra of buy american is worthless he knows the vast majority of our consumer electronics apparel furniture and industrial supplies are made in china by workers who on an average of one or $2.00 an hour and lack unions and basic labor rights he knows his call to lower deductibles and prescription drug costs in the affordable care act will never be permitted by the corporations that profit from health care he knows the corporate donors that fund the democratic party will ensure their lobbyists will continue to write the laws that guarantee they pay little or no taxes he knows that corporate subsidies and tax incentives he proposes as a solution to a lemonade the crime crisis or deal with it will do nothing to hold all in gas

fracking shut down coal fired plants or hole the construction of new pipelines for gas fired power plants his promises of reform have no more weight than those peddled by bill clinton and barack obama who biden slavish lee served and who also promised social equality while betraying working men and women joining me to discuss the biden administration and its continuity with the democratic and republican administrations that preceded it is history professor and author paul street so paul i know you like i have been stunned at the response by liberals and progressives endowing biden with a kind of radical agenda that's just not there explain to me what this is about and why it's happening. well some of what it's about is brandon. nothing new you may recall when alabama was elected in 2008 there were all kinds of. frankly absurd

and naledge he said f.d.r. and the new deal being made i came to new york to sell my book barack obama in the future of american politics and just received all kinds of pushback from progressive not just from liberals who wanted very badly to believe that this was a new deal moment this is kind of a rip current. name. christopher hitchens once described the essence of american politics is the minute the elation the populism by elisa's and i don't know where does populism here but fake progressivism in the claim that their own are all these things happening or that might happen that really aren't happening and aren't going to happen and they're certainly not the kinds of things you knew deal progressivism that one would have any reason to expect from biden and the basis of his very long term political career in washington d.c.

they used to call this guy the senator from master card he rolled back bankruptcy protections he backed corporate price fixing as a senator he helped coca-cola white antitrust prosecution he was a champion of the north american free trade agreement health championed financial deregulation in the 1990 s. and got behind the. so-called welfare reform in other words the elimination of family basic family cash assistance for very poor families and and i could go on and it's it's it's all rather silly but it's part of the sales job right and if it did made to some extent also expressed a desire on the part of certain commentators and others for something like that we are after all in in a period of just absurd. income and wealth inequality which is intimately related back to. rampid insecurity and and the problems of eco

side and excessive corporate control and look arche and all those things so perhaps are some wishful thinking involved in all of this is well. let's talk about his address to the nation because he acknowledges that social inequality he acknowledges the climate crisis and then you have a response nicholas kristoff in the new york times jonathan alter and others but let's look as i know you have let's look at that speech itself because there are in fact are some very disturbing i think trends within that speech or especially in terms of foreign policy but let's let's go through the talk well you know i'm going to a couple times and one thing that really unless you're out of. was the embrace of the notion of competitiveness american competitiveness in an american competition also jobs but i mean i actually wrote down america is rising in no he said maybe to

take on the move again and then of course visa v. who else china and so this embrace of competition which is really the embrace of the core anarky and insecurity of capitalism competition means insecurity in the lives of our of most american in the most global people but everything when you're speaking the language of competition and competitiveness which to me is also following marx's analysis the language of anarchy and chaos you are sort of saying that everything's going to be supported the profit be subordinated to profit rates and to international imperial competition in reality politics and that means that all the other things that you purport to be for rolling back inequality union creasing labor rights and social justice and all that are probably going to go by

we sigh because it's all about making america great again when you think about it you wouldn't use that language they'd be afraid of a know how different is america is rising a new america is ready to take off again it's just a sort of a more sophisticated neo liberal democratic way yes they are and make america great again and it's how different is it in of and in fact in some ways on the foreign policy level it's actually more aggressive and more imperial sounding than the trump who was no isolationist there's a there's a bit of a myth a mythology about that but but but. you know for whatever reasons have a kind of. less imperial take particularly on russia. and yeah some of that language was a it was heard certain facilities. what's your response to the people who are trumpeting biden as the new f.d.r. people like crist of alternate others i'm just kind of amazed by it and i don't i'm

not surprised by it it's just sort of stunningly inappropriate i mean f.d.r. got to the point by them by the mid thirty's when he was going for reelection that he would repeatedly say he would denounce the economic royalists you know it's it's right that it was in m.p. he cleaned up in 1036 with the 2nd election in part because he did it because that's how americans felt and he and he actually said i i welcome their hatred i welcome the hatred of the economically of course he was from the economic theory starves you just heard of why he could get away with it as much as it biden said to manhattan donors and 29 t. who said i have no interest in demonizing millionaires and billionaires i don't think you're the problem and nothing will fundamentally change when i'm elected president no one standard of living. will ever change f.d.r. to some extent they have pushed some very real public sector job creating

interventions in the economy the c.c.c. the public works administration the tennessee valley authority i don't want to exaggerate how much of that there really well but there was some of that i regularly use parks that were built by the c.c.c. and you know in the upper midwest it's really neat there's no there's no actual job creating direct public sector infrastructure building in bines agenda that i can see it's all this infrastructure plan if it gets through the course is going to be watered down by joe manchin the republicans. does not involve direct you know public public job. even in his in his speech claiming to be sort of progressive his only talking about bringing tax progressivity back to the era of george w. bush he wants i think what 40 percent tax on the upper income brackets george w. bush before reagan it was in the 70s it tapped the top tax bracket and under

f.d.r. when during world war 2 was in the 90th percentile nothing remotely close to that probably the most remarkable thing that came out of the new deal from my perspective in a previous lifetime i was a labor historian and was really critical piece of legislation called the national labor relations act wegner in many ways it was the magna carta of the emerging industrial workers mass production industrial union movement and i didn't hear one reference maybe i missed it to this to a bill that would essentially release the lies union were going on and of it's been passed by the house the pro act. and then he's been passed by the senate i mean if he was really if we were talking about joe biden as being on a mission of the new you know that would have been highlighted front and center in his age. and you know it has problems in the senate but he doesn't have to if he

would go and or jadick lee and aggressively after filibuster the filibuster has to go he hides behind these archaic. 18th century senate rules in this ridiculous body the upper chamber of the u.s. congress where wyoming has as many representatives as california even though wyoming has less than 600000 people california has almost 400000000 people it's an open rejection of the core democratic principle one person one vote and anyone who is serious about moving forward on a progressive agenda in a new deal kind of way is anything like jonathan alter and nick kristoff of the new york i'm want to thank you as he be going after the filibuster he be pushing for washington d.c. statehood quite frankly if i was in the white house had been raising the issue of the apportionment of the senate was absolutely ridiculous he would be doing

something that f.d.r. did f.d.r. real did the threat of expanding the supreme court that is how the regular act was well ultimately ruled constitutional in 1937 the magna carta of the labor movement and all and by him here has had some rhetoric about a standing supreme court which you know is it's certainly to the right of american public opinion to $63.00 majority supermajority right wing supreme court in a majority progressive nations preposterous and you should be expanded he recently just appointed a blue ribbon commission to you know do a study of nadya's sometime we ought to. expanded this current me sort of know fascistic far right supreme court which has to be positioned to invalidate roe v wade so i mean these are the kinds of things a real progress there would do it not the other thing they leave out and good and if they want it they don't seem to be capable of saying one to say is that it isn't

just about who the president needs it isn't just about who's sitting in the white house it's who's sitting in the streets and sitting on the shop floor engaging in that we're going to come back about paul we're going to come what we're going to come back exactly that point when we come back we'll continue our conversation about the proposed reforms of the biden ministration with history professor and author paul street. there so much going on in the world don't you think when's the last time you had a real bird's eye view of. something you more than just hours of pickering getting 30 minutes i'll take you alone.

all the feelings of. every. experience. and you'll get it on the old. according to josh. mark come along for the wrong. welcome back on contact we continue our conversation about. proposed reforms of abide administration with history professor and author paul street so before the break you mentioned quite correctly that it matters far more who's in the streets and this was true for the new deal and for half the are as well so proclaiming that the biden is going to somehow deliver the new deal is as false as the notion

historically that f.d.r. didn't deliver the new deal without serious kind of pressure sit down strikes in full and find farmers revolve but but lay out that historical period because it shows how progressive legislation actually comes about yeah well so. in his near times he's not as an author actually has this line this is a piece in mid april and jonathan alter a liberal by the obama ologist actually has this line that what we're going to find out if biden you know if if we're really going to get the new deal it altered things that i didn't want to do this suppose a transformative break with neo liberalism of we're going to find if i can do is we can find out if he has inch sector as what he said you know to to bend people's arms in congress because that's how stuff gets done we look back at the thirty's and then in deal and how they happen they happen because it was under on the left

there was dissent in the streets right before the social security and the ragnor act probably the 2 key progressive linchpin measures far from perfect in the excluded much of the minority in black population from their coverage incidentally we should not romanticize the new deal but they were break through pieces of legislation for much of the working class relations old age pensions and that legalization of union organizing and collecting martin the year before those happened there was there was a. gigantic longshoremen strike all across the western coast there was a general strike led by trotsky is teams do in the twin cities there was a national x. style strike there were hunger marches from coast to coast and every major city in this country had a resurgent left. up in the in the twin cities it was often syndicalist item you w

n trotskyist in chicago and detroit it was communist probably the big i mean in tennis it was the communist party out of issues of the communist party but also a lot of great organized and they were on the ground and they were present and when there were issues in a city like chicago and people that are victims because they couldn't pay their rent because it was their jobs and the cops would come in a victim of black women on the south side would say quick go get the reds and people knew where they were and they went and got him and the reds came with loudspeakers and organized mass resistance and this was true all over america and this thunder on the left shows up in the congressional debates. that lead to the passage of a lot of progressive legislation in the mid thirty's if we don't do this then we're going to get revolution and course there's a soviet union at that time and there's fear of revolution elsewhere in the country that there's a global kind of sense of threat of

a laugh and that's not happening that's always been one sort of kind of thing missing you know another piece that's missing historically. is what the late split will kind of us giovanni ribisi called workplace bargain power there were these remarkable capital intensive industries they could be shut down they could be crippled by a static in a body cream machine or in the or in the chicago packing houses in armor or swith plant a bunch of left militant workers could stop the killing and huge whole gigantic and 1000 worker plan would go down the whole continuous flow of production the foundries of the river move plants and or all that kind of ability this capacity to disrupt. capital intensive industry was a really big part and it's in its ability to potentially undo a recovery from the great depression was a big part of what happened in the 1930 stoppages direct actions no and why did

they have since that time a lot of jobs have left its country production has been off shored that kind of capacity doesn't exist that doesn't mean direct action is irrelevant but anyone who is really serious about calling for progressive changes would be this is something even bernie sanders barely did this i so i've seen a number of things on the left and including noam chomsky who have a lot of respect for extensively claiming that bernie sanders was a strong advocate of social movements beneath and beyond electoral politics which we need you know so that what we have uncovered wrote about in the book poor people's movements this continues this isn't just the thirty's this is true in the sixty's it was during the progressive ages during the 1000 century stuff happens when you have social movements to meet in beyond these quadrennial candidates and major party electoral it's very gans's or so to us as the only thing that about

politics in burnie at the end of the day was really ultimately about. these quadrennial strive against us and you know it's a o.c.n. him say things that sound different every once of it's really you're really in mash in this corporate captive realm of the world i don't think so if you were serious about c.b. coupling it with a call for people in the streets i thought under trond if democrats were serious about getting trump i think would trump deserve mass movements in the street i'm glad the trump is gone it's very important to me that trump is one he's not going the way i think he should have been you should have been forced out i'm mass action and the democrats never called them if they did it's just their job is to keep the one my job has always one of their top jobs is to keep people off the streets and when people occupied all over this country in the fall of 2011 obama made sure to subtly work with democrats in cities coast to coast in for 3

years mansome the occupy wall street which was an actual populist rebellion for a while i want to talk about the consequences so most of this money that biden has proposed will go either to corporations or to the states with just a tiny minuscule amount $1.00 time tax of $400.00 of unemployment benefits which are about to expire a tax credit for children but really just you know the doesn't in any way deal with the structural a fault right on the working class. what are the consequences most of all you've got to run out by the end of the year what are the consequences of that politically well i think there's a very you know they say there's a tendency almost always one thing 34 and roosevelt was an exception. for the

the party out of power to lose the house of representatives that the the party in presidential power usually wins is the mid term elections are rare exception when it doesn't 934 was one because of the total discrediting of the g.o.p. by the great depression and herbert hoover and f.d.r. as pretty sophisticated public relations and promises in the oh and george w. bush because of $911.00 and all the sympathy not in the general energized that typically the other party comes in i would still i would think that that's slated to happen again in a strong possibility also given the fact of the credible job right were gerrymandering of our house districts in entre there is a bill that came out of the house it's an election reforms you know. that targets gerrymandering who's to do them and also the targets of this racist voter republican voter suppression that's going on in the states but it can't get past

the senate until we get past the filibuster and. and. sleepy joe biden and king joe mansion just have certainly powerful mouth of the nation have a voice their opposition to getting rid of the filibuster so will get passed so its chips are going to the rats is the most of the standard democratic party in authentic opposition party demobilization of their own they are opening the door for a lack of oral triumph of the. of the republican party that isn't just my grandfather's republican party sort of white nationalist the neo fascist who has been for a while. this happened in 2010 i mean this is the story of george meant in many ways along with the absurdity of the electoral college the

a stories of george bush is all up to elections to some extent the story of how that's a big part of the stir that the democrats demobilization that raise a big part of trump's initial election from 16 it's a part of the tea party midterms in 22 and i don't i'm not a prognosticator or or an electoral 538 you know i but my sense is that the experts are giving a very strong chance of the g.o.p. uniting in the house and i imagine that could involve some revenge impeachments. you know the the as show deepens you know. and if it could potentially bring a gun republican back. god forbid maybe even trump himself in 24 unless. biden and the dems were to get really serious and to get serious would mean among other things embrace in structural and institutional change and in the policy system itself they're scared to get rid of

the for all of us event of a public forget him and then there are all of us well guess what we don't have we can't move forward without things like re new young life a real federal minimum wage with a real legal ization of union organizing don't be scared you know that i'm going to do this and i might try to go to mindset and see if i was a progressive democrat but i'll do that for a 2nd don't be scared dan jam the stuff through that has majority support in such a way to guarantee that the republicans can't come back this isn't the part of their power that should be our party that needs to be swept into the dustbin of history anyway do it but they won't actually want to they're caught up in a codependent. mutually reinforcing relationship with an increasingly white nationalist neo fascist g.o.p. is a very sick game and is being played on all of us in the rich get richer the poor get

poorer the top one percent had 90 percent of the wealth before troubles even elected god knows what the maldistribution is now after coding i did hear biden say something to the effect that $643.00 rich people became a trillion dollars more wealthy. during how that we can do about that joe. well the democratic party works for goldman sachs and citibank and that's who they work for and that's who biden has always worked for and that is the fundamental structural problem with american politics banks that was history professor and author paul straight on how joe biden is not f.d.r. .

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live from the world headquarters of the r t america our nation's capital this is the. rick sanchez. part of body armor and i want to welcome our viewers from all over the world including those of you watching us right now on the portable t.v. out there is a story that we are following right now that sounds like something. that happens often here in the united states let me show you what we're talking about it's a gunman that has burst into a school and he has started shooting he's injured at least 16 people killed 7 children it sounds like something that will happen in a place i can write or arizona but this shooting you're looking at right there

that's russia.