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8/26/19: [to play, you may need to click on the “play in new window” link.]
We “rethink the week” with Valerie Endress, Professor of Political Communication at Rhode Island College; Dean Spiliotes, Professor and Civic Scholar at Southern NH University; and Mark Fernald, attorney and former gubernatorial candidate in New Hampshire.
We discuss Pres. Trump’s disruptive effect on the G7 meeting in Biarritz. He tried to get the other leaders to invite Russia back into the group. He advocates for the G7 to purchase more US-made products, even though his tariffs are icing out those countries’ own economies. Moreover, in the face of horrific fires burning down huge portions of the Amazon forest (aka the “world’s lungs”), he downplayed the importance of climate change as a concern that world leaders should address.
Of course, we also talk about the US presidential race. Is Joe Biden too much of a corporatist? (After all, most corporations are registered in his state of Delaware, because the laws there are the most friendly to corporate interests.) Does Warren (like Bernie) sound too revolutionary? Might she scare away independent and centrist voters by pointing out to what extent it is the actions of large corporations which cause economic and other harm to workers, consumers, people whose jobs are fleeing overseas and those people who have never been trained to perform work that will be valued in the so-called “new economy”?
Or is it all just a matter of how one presents her policy proposals: you won’t win by demonizing corporations but you might be successful if you simply offer to “help them” to understand that their profit-maximizing policies are hurting the planet and its people?
