Ralph welcomes Donald Cohen, the founder and executive director of “In the Public Interest” and co-author of the book “The Privatization of Everything” to discuss the many different ways corporatism has corrupted so many of our public goods. Also, constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, joins us to give us his take on the constitutional ramifications of U.S. involvement in the conflict between Russian and Ukraine. Plus, we wish a happy hundredth birthday to legendary journalist, Morton Mintz and say a heartfelt goodbye to the innovative law professor, who created programs to provide legal representation to low-income Americans and devised the concept of Time Banking, Edgar Cahn.
Donald Cohen founder and executive director of In the Public Interest. He is co-author, with Allen Mikaelian, of The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back.
[Public servants] get taken all the time… You’re running a city, it’s a hard job, and someone comes to you and says, “Cheaper, better, faster, no new taxes.” All, of course, which are not true. “And I’ll take this problem off your hands.” That’s appealing… They also exist within this sort of illogical propaganda victory of corporate America: that the market is a better instrument, and that businesses are more efficient and all that. So it’s infected with that belief system as well.
Donald Cohen: co-author of “The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back”
[To folks in government] we say, “Your most important job is to negotiate on our behalf, and if you don’t have the capacity to do that, you need to get it.”
Donald Cohen: co-author of “The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back”
It’s incumbent upon all of us to figure out how to get cities, school boards, states, federal government agencies to understand their job. Understand who they really represent. And figure out how to develop the expertise and the capacity to do it.
Donald Cohen: co-author of “The Privatization of Everything: How the Plunder of Public Goods Transformed America and How We Can Fight Back”
Civil society, it doesn’t really do anything very important. It just raises children, keeps families together, makes neighborhoods vibrant, holds officials accountable, turns out voters for the election, fights for social justice, was responsible for apartheid going down, for the demonstrations to finally getting past separate but equal, and maybe tries to keep the planet sustainable. But nothing of importance to the GDP… The work that really produces the kind of society we want, there’s no value in.
Edgar Cahn: author of “Time Dollars” and “No More Throw-Away People”
There’s no public relations agency for the US Government. No matter how many good things it’s done… All we see is the public relations for business and advertising.
Ralph Nader
Edgar Cahn was the author of Time Dollars and No More Throw-Away People. He founded TimeBanks and was co-founder, with his wife Jean Camper Cahn, of Antioch Law School and National Legal Services , which was the progenitor for the Legal Services Corporation, an independent nonprofit established by Congress in 1974 to provide financial support for civil legal aid to low-income Americans.
Morton Mintz was a Washington Post reporter for nearly 30 years, Morton Mintz investigated corporate misconduct in the tobacco, automotive and pharmaceutical industries. Mintz broke stories about the consequences of using thalidomide and the Dalkon Shield.
Corporatism Is The Problem