So I think that this is an opportunity for us as as a country to look back and
say, is this partisanship serving us?
I would posit to you, that it's not.
And so while some would say that there were reluctant folks working in
Congress in the last two years.
I would actually say that, that was the basis for the productivity for
some incredible achievements that made a difference for
the American people in the last two years.
>> And we still don't agree on getting rid of the filibuster.
>> That's correct.
>> Thank you.
>> Well, you just watched two of your least favorite people in the Senate give
each other hi-fives over their legislative filibuster over maintaining
the legislative filibuster.
Which makes it nearly impossible to pass legislation,
that would materially benefit the lives of ordinary Americans.
Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin were at the World Economic Forum.
Hi-fiving each other over the fact that, that legislative filibuster
is something that they have viciously protected in the Senate.
Now, if you're wondering why Sinema and Manchin are even in attendance,
I can give you the details.
More than 600 CEOs will be in town including Wall Street executives
such as JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon,
David Solomon from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley's James Gorman.
Senator Chris Coons a democrat from Delaware and
Georgia Governor Brian Kemper, also in attendance.
So is weirdly FBI Director Christopher Wray.
So he's there, and in addition to that there are 51 heads of state from around
the world attending the World Economic Forum.
Where essentially the world's elite conspire on how to essentially keep
neoliberalism alive and well, I can give you more details on that in just a moment.
But Emma, I saw this story after you tweeted about it and
it's just infuriating how much senate democrats like,
well Sinemas no longer identifying as a democrat.
But you get the point she was elected as a democrat.
But to see her and Joe Manchin basically rubbing our faces
that they served as obstructionist to Joe Biden's agenda is pretty gross.
>> Absolutely, and I mean the filibuster is an anti democratic principle and
the fact that she and mansion side by side are getting
applause from that crowd is not shocking.
Because elites, capitalists are terrified of direct
democracy because the house has a lot of problems, right?
I mean with Nancy Pelosi, she's no longer the leader of the democrats, but
for her entire tenure,
she did what she could to stamp out more progressive legislation for sure.
But at the very least you don't need a 60 vote threshold for that.
You just need a majority.
And what Sinema and Manchin are doing at this forum is auditioning for
corporate donations for power players in that room.
And essentially saying without us, you might actually have the American people
deciding on things and that won't be very good for you.
So it's not entirely shocking to me that Christopher Wray is there given corporate
America's fealty to and friendliness with the intelligence community.
And also just the fact that both of them are there at the same time.
They are the most important soldiers for corporations and
for wealthy people within the Democratic caucus, more largely.
Because they have made promises that they are going to ensure, that despite
the fact that the Senate in and of itself is an incredibly undemocratic institution.
I mean, when it was 50, 50 split,
the Democratic 50 represented 40 million more Americans than the Republican 50.
They wanna add an extra layer of undemocracy on top of it, meaning you need
60 votes to get almost anything done except for budgetary things in the Senate.
And so what they serve is corporate America.
And they make it abundantly clear at with their attendance and
with their rhetoric at this conference.
>> Yeah, I mean, it is incredible because just to go back and
provide a little more context and help the audience understand the level of disdain
people like us have for the Joe Manchin's and Kirsten Sinemas in the Senate.
They are the ones who succeeded in defeating key provisions in the build
back better agenda provision that would have allowed for
Medicare to negotiate pharmaceutical drug prices.
That would have brought the costs associated with Medicare down and
who funds Medicare us, the US taxpayer who gets price gouged on pharmaceutical drugs,
Medicare recipients.
And these goons are the ones, who again served as the obstructionists to those
key provisions funding for childcare, which this country so desperately needs.
So many women have not been able to re enter the job market because of
the fact that childcare is astronomical in this country right now.
There are all sorts of things included in that build back better agenda which were
effectively stripped out.
Thanks to Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema.
I do wanna also talk a little bit about what the theme of the World Economic Forum
was this year.
They're very concerned about the tight labor market, gee, I wonder why Emma,
why would they be concerned about a tight labor market?
Meaning, less workers are willing to take the garbage wages and
the terrible working conditions that some of these companies
are basically forcing upon their labor force, right?
So it gives these workers a little more leverage in a tight labor market.
They hate it and they wanna squash it.
Really curious to hear your thoughts on that.
>> I mean, this is what you hear constantly from business news people,
I don't know, CEOs, fortune 500 company folks.
They are terrified of the, as you say, tight labor market,
which essentially means that right now workers have more leverage
than is comfortable for these folks.
And that's why you have Sinema, imagine saying, hey, everything's gonna be okay.
A lot of stuff isn't gonna get passed because we promise you that
we're gonna hold the line on your behalf.
But they also understand, I mean,
a lot of what inflation has been over the past year, which abated a lot recently.
But especially the first half of 2022, I should say, it's 2023 now,
but was corporate price gouging, that's what it was.
And there wasn't really a paper trail to show that, that was the case,
but there were supply chain bottlenecks.
And there was an understanding among these corporations that,
hey, we can gouge, we can do whatever we want.
And the Fed is a one trick pony, all they're gonna be able to do
is raise interest rates and discipline the labor market.
So in the end, it's kind of a win, win for us.
We can make short term profits as inflation goes up and
we can, are created in essence ourselves.
And at the same time have the Fed run by a original Trump appointee that
Biden kept on, continue to raise rates at the expense of workers in this country.
And in the end, who's gonna end up making the money to fold,
the same people that are in that room.
>> And what's so incredible is while they seem to focus all of their
inflation related arguments on labor.
They seem to think labor is the scapegoat here.
What they always fail to mention is how the assets market,
like the stock market housing, all of that has been inflated
by cheap money that was provided by the Federal Reserve.
The same Federal Reserve that is now raising interest rates specifically.
And they're very transparent about this, raising interest rates
to increase unemployment and essentially coerce workers to take what they can get.
Take the bad treatment, take the terrible working conditions,
take the low pay because you've got no other choice.
You have this Federal Reserve interest rate situation that makes
joblessness more of an issue for people.
It makes people more desperate and
willing to take jobs that they otherwise would be unwilling to take.
I also wanna note a few other things about the World Economic Forum this year.
So, the World Economic Forum's global risks report this year says this,
stagflation remains a severe risk for many economies.
Current crises such as the war in Ukraine and lingering impacts of Covid 19,
are still impacting basic inputs including labor, energy, and food.
Continued tightness in the major labor markets may exacerbate wage inflation,
get a load of that wage inflation,
meaning there may need to be a material increase in unemployment.
I mean, they're just so brazen about it, Emma,
increase in unemployment to contain consumer inflation, right?
That's the real problem here, that workers,
by the way, even now with so called wage inflation.
Those wages have not kept up with inflation.
I mean, going back to the 1970s wages have not kept up with inflation.
Americans are producing more, they're more productive than ever,
yet they're getting paid less than ever.
And we're starting to see a little bit of labor militancy as a response to
the treatment they've been dealing with for decades now.
And you have these elites getting together at the World Economic Forum,
try to find ways to squash it.
And that's what's so infuriating about it, that you have self identified democrats
who purport to be representatives of the working class in America,
join in on these antics and join in on a conversation specifically to crush labor.
It is disgusting.
>> Yeah, you hit the nail on the head there because there is a consensus
among economic leads, as you say, capitalists, business owners,
people that are gonna get like Janet Yellen to Jerome Powell.
It doesn't really matter who heads the Fed when they're given the pool that
the both republicans and democrats like Biden, they're looking at.
They all subscribe to a false notion that inflation needs
to be cut curbed by disciplining labor.
But we've seen as you've said,
Anna throughout history that there really is not that connection.
And yet there is still this orthodoxy that there is that connection.
And so the reality is that these mega corporations rely on that fiction
in order to use their leverage against the government to help them discipline labor.
And that's why it's more important than ever that people unionize,
that people understand the value of their labor.
And fortunately we are seeing that the problem is just that in this country,
as compared to other countries, we have such terrible labor laws that
favor corporations and bosses to degree that we don't see in other countries.
And so you can have Amazon, for example, pay fine after fine,
after fine for labor and union busting violations.
But they see it as kind of the cost of doing business to prevent Starbucks is
actually really the egregious example there.
The cost of doing business to tamp down unionization within their mega
corporation.
This is just one of the many problems,
that we have in this country when it comes to labor.
And it's because of the commitment to that fiction as well as laws
that are completely stacked against workers in this country.
>> Absolutely, and I think one of the specific and recent examples was how
Congress was willing to crush the rail workers and prevent them from striking.
And what they were asking for, in order to prevent the strike.
What the workers were asking for, was something so incredibly reasonable.
Please give us a few days off per year without retaliation.
So we can deal with family emergencies and other unforeseen issues we
might have living our lives, something that we all experience, right?
And the fact that they couldn't get something as reasonable as that.
And the fact that Congress weighed in, they put their thumb on the scale
on behalf of the employers here, tells you everything you need to know about our
elected officials and what their real priorities are.
We need to have, and I've said this a billion times before,
I'm gonna say it again.
A well organized outside pressure campaign that can hold elected officials,
namely democrats accountable.
And more importantly, an organized pressure campaign that can compete with
the corporate interest and the corporate money flowing into the campaign coffers of
these elected officials.
So it's something that we're gonna keep talking about,
we're gonna keep exploring more as the days, weeks and months go on.