Episode 192: NAFTA Horrors in Mexico; Shaking Up The Florida Democratic Party; Bezos Dissembles

By the time you are tuning into the show, Jeff Bezos, one of the great scars on the economic landscape, will have finished his song-and-dance testimony before Congress, during a hearing that mostly focuses on the massive anti-competitive power of the big tech firms like Amazon and Google. But, long before today, Jeff Bezos has always been the poster child for the CEO who doesn’t give a shit about workers and only cares about a single thing: how to become even richer than he is. The man is a scar on humanity. My observations about Bezos leads off the show.   Then, Congress passed NAFTA 2.0 earlier this year. I’ll just say right away—the first NAFTA was an abomination, the newer one was just horrendous—and we also have to be clear that, with or without these so-called free trade deals, capitalism marches on and abuses people, as we saw in last week’s episode when I talked about the enslavement of the Uyghurs in China on behalf of the global supply chain of big brands and big companies. A big piece of NAFTA 2.0 was all about improving the lot of workers in Mexico, especially their right to join independent unions. And that ain’t happening. I dig into this with Lori Wallach, the director of Global Trade Watch.   Florida. When it comes to politics, you need not say much more than “Florida” to get peoples’ temperature up—no pun intended here since it’s also now the center of the COVID pandemic thanks to the state’s completely moronic governor. But, Florida also points up a longer term challenge to be quite conscious of—it has one of the worst state Democratic parties in the country. I talk about the state’s politics with Bob Lynch, a first-time candidate, who is running for the state house partly to be a catalyst for reform of the party’s electoral strategy.   Don’t forget to sign up for The Show! Please become a financial supporter of the podcast here so we can continue to bring you unique content . In today's Working Life Podcast: Ep 192: NAFTA Horrors in Mexico; Shaking Up The Florida Democratic Party; Bezos Dissembles Episode 192: By the time you are tuning into the show, Jeff Bezos, one of the great scars on the economic landscape, will have finished his song-and-dance testimony before Congress, during a hearing that mostly focuses on the massive anti-competitive power of the big tech firms like Amazon and Google. But, long before today, Jeff Bezos has always been the poster child for the CEO who doesn’t give a shit about workers and only cares about a single thing: how to become even richer than he is. The man is a scar on humanity. My observations about Bezos leads off the show. Then, Congress passed NAFTA 2.0 earlier this year. I’ll just say right away—the first NAFTA was an abomination, the newer one was just horrendous—and we also have to be clear that, with or without these so-called free trade deals, capitalism marches on and abuses people, as we saw in last week’s episode when I talked about the enslavement of the Uyghurs in China on behalf of the global supply chain of big brands and big companies. A big piece of NAFTA 2.0 was all about improving the lot of workers in Mexico, especially their right to join independent unions. And that ain’t happening. I dig into this with Lori Wallach, the director of Global Trade Watch. Florida. When it comes to politics, you need not say much more than “Florida” to get peoples’ temperature up—no pun intended here since it’s also now the center of the COVID pandemic thanks to the state’s completely moronic governor. But, Florida also points up a longer term challenge to be quite conscious of—it has one of the worst state Democratic parties in the country. I talk about the state’s politics with Bob Lynch, a first-time candidate, who is running for the state house partly to be a catalyst for reform of the party’s electoral strategy. Subscribe to the show! -- Jonathan Tasini Follow me on Twitter @jonathantasini Sign up for The Working Life Podcast at: www.workinglife.org Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.tasini.3 LISTEN NOW Support the Working Life Podcast on DONATE NOW

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