The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Emma hosts Karen Levy, Assistant Professor of Information Sciences at Cornell University, to discuss her recent book Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance. Emma first runs through updates on Zelesnkyy’s congressional address, Senate Republicans obstructing Biden’s funding bill, and Sean Hannity’s admission under oath that he didn’t buy much of the election-denying shenanigans on his OWN SHOW, also touching on Rep Kevin Brady’s speaking out against holding powerful people to account financially. Karen Levy then joins as she dives right into the supposed “trucker shortage” that the US is facing right now, exploring why there are, in fact, many truckers available, they’re just not getting paid enough to continue work in the industry, before stepping back to analyze the impact of four decades of deregulation of the industry, bringing about dropping wages, raising hours, and falling safety levels. Continuing this analysis, Professor Levy walks Emma through the precipitous decline of the role of unions and teamsters in an industry that was previously known for its labor forces, with the government still proclaiming the work as “essential” while refusing to meet the needs of the workers, from wages to infrastructure and more. Next, Emma and Karen discuss the little bit of trucking regulation that the government has actually stood behind, parsing through their surveillance requirements for digital tracking of truckers, walking through its failure to address the root issue it was supposed to address (worker safety) and how it provided an infrastructure for the corporations to ramp up their own surveillance measures, pushing biometric monitoring and predictive analytics that push their workers to abuse stimulants and push their bodies to the limits. Wrapping up, they tackle potential solutions that Professor Levy sees as possible and that actually target the issue at hand by detaching payment and protections from miles driven or hours worked.

And in the Fun Half: Emma talks with Hamish from Taho on cashews and veganism, and Dr. Phill hosts an anti-teacher-union hack to discuss why public school teachers are swindling the US out of billions (that they refuse to spend on themselves)! Then, she’s joined by Matt Binder and Brandon Sutton as they reflect on Sam Bankman-Fried and Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) showering each other in golden thank-yous, and Alex from New York calls in with a few matchups. They also tackle Andrew Callaghan’s killer confrontation with Don Lemon on the fear-mongering motive of the 24-hour news cycle, and Neil deGrasse-Tyson clamors to Elon Musk’s defense. Jay from North Carolina discusses term limits and making a more robust democracy, plus, your calls and IMs!

Check out Karen's book here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691175300/data-driven

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The Majority Report with...

Sam and Emma host Peter Shamshiri, or Law Boy on Twitter, co-host of the 5-4 Podcast, to discuss some of the recent big decisions coming out of the Supreme Court, and what's still left on the docket. Sam and Emma start off by taking another look at some of the reactions to the big Trump indictment prior to his arraignment this afternoon in Miami. They include Alan Dershowitz, who famously didn't doubt the severity of the indictment (he did, days ago), discussing how bad this looks for Trump, and Speaker McCarthy going with the "bathroom doors lock" defense for why Trump would have multiple boxes of classified documents in his bathroom in Mar-A-Lago. Then Peter joins the show to discuss whether he'd go to bat for Trump in Florida since he apparently is still looking for lawyers, but then more seriously dives into the shocking Milligan decision, where Justices Kavanaugh and Roberts sided with the liberals to preserve the Voting Rights Act. Sam, Emma and Peter then discuss the Talevski case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's first majority opinion, that, via a narrow ruling, preserved the structure of Medicaid. They then look to the future as to how the court might view the affirmative action and student debt decisions that are still before them, and if there are any other cases that Peter has his eye on (keep track of Brackeen v. Haaland, a case involving the Indian Child Welfare Act.)

And in the Fun Half, the MR Crew discuss Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani wanting to shove Hunter Biden's laptop up Bill Barr's ass, James Comer DEFINITELY having something from that FBI form him and Chuck Grassley think will indict the "Biden Crime Family", Tulsi Gabbard's big announcement that she's BACK in the military (heading up the PsyOps division, incidentally), the big New Yorker piece about Bari Weiss's OTHER sham venture, plus, your calls & IM's!

Check out the "Against The Web" audiobook by Michael Brooks, narrated by Sam here: https://www.audible.com/pd/Against-the-Web-Audiobook/B0C62G3P38

Check it out at Scribd as well: https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/640237251/Against-the-Web-A-Cosmopolitan-Answer-to-the-New-Right

Follow Peter on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/The_Law_Boy

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The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

It's a Very Casual Friday! Since Sam and Emma are out of town, the MR Crew are off. But in the meantime, check out this interview Sam and Emma did with Andrew Seidel, attorney with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, on his recent book American Crusade: How the Supreme Court Is Weaponizing Religious Freedom. Andrew Seidel begins by providing background on the recent rise of a billion-dollar shadow network of Christian Nationalist organizations and judicial allies, with these modern “crusaders” attempting to redefine and pervert the meaning of the US constitutional right to religious freedom, using various realms of the private/public sphere – from bakers to coaches to schools and websites – to litigate the supreme privilege of Christian identity in the US via the courts. Seidel then quickly runs through the major breakthroughs in the Christian Right’s barrage on the US legal system, from the Mojave Memorial Cross case in 2010, and the acknowledgment of the Supreme Court that they would be willing to – at a minimum – participate in this discourse (and opening up the floodgates to countless filing), through the cementing of a conservative majority under Donald J. Trump, alongside the increasing publication of clear collusion and corruption among US Justices. Stepping back, Seidel then works to define the line between belief and action that defines the US conception of religious freedom, the right to act on one’s religious beliefs insofar as they do not infringe on the rights of others, and the pre-21st Century understanding that this, indeed, was the perspective set out by the framers, before tackling the slow perversion of this concept to solely protect the rights of Christians, while other religions – as seen in the Muslim Ban and the evangelizing of Coach Kennedy – are pushed to the side and gaslit. After exploring the state behind SCOTUS’ turn towards Christian supremacy and parsing through the details of RFRA – and whether its 1993 passage foresaw the conservatives’ abuses of it – they wrap up with where the battle against theocratic fascism goes from here.

Check out Andrew's book here: https://andrewlseidel.com/american-crusade/

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The Majority Report with Sam Seder - https://majorityreportradio.com/

Sam and Emma host freelance journalist Alexander Zaitchik to discuss his recent book Owning The Sun: A People's History of Monopoly Medicine From Aspirin To COVID-19 Vaccines, on the development of patent regimes from an attempt to democratize knowledge to a system of corporate and institutional control. Zaitchik begins by walking Sam and Emma back to the inception of intellectual property and patents in Elizabethan England as a tool to constrain the Crown’s power to assign monopoly rights, and why, despite this attempt to democratize the production of knowledge, liberal thinkers of the time (such as John Locke) saw it as dampening the flow of knowledge. After briefly touching on the belief in IP rights as encouraging innovation, despite the transhistorical belief in knowledge as a collective product, and the lack of financial incentives behind almost every technological development before the industrial revolution, Sam, Emma, and Alexander look to the affirmation of patents and IP in the US Constitution as a tool of democratization, as we saw in England, and how that developed into a practice of corporate obstructionism beginning in the Gilded Age. Zaitchik then dives into the Presidency of Andrew Jackson, and his attempt to further “democratize” (his words, not mine) the patent regime by aligning it with physical property rights, thus completely individualizing knowledge under the guise of opening it up. This led to a rise of corporate research labs in the late 1800s, as they figured out how to amass more and more patents for technological and medical developments, keeping them in the hands of a corporate monopoly rather than individual innovators. Next, Alexander jumps to the New Deal era and attempts to rein in the patent regime, as FDR’s Department of Justice pushed a culture of anti-trust regulation, looking back to the Constitution’s statements on patents as a charge to support the diffusion of knowledge, particularly in the wake of WW1’s technological advancements falling into the hands of corporations that would go on to work intimately with Nazis. This brings them to the period from the 40s to the 80s which saw treasury-funded research go into public control, requiring genuine commitment to public interest for any monopoly approval, before neoliberalism took over in the Reagan era, with the passing of the Bayh-Dole act and Reagan’s creation of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals as a tool to fast track the approval of monopolies, really taking ideological court-packing to a new level. They wrap up the interview with an extended discussion on Bill Gates’s philanthropy in the world of global health, his leveraging of incredible financial, institutional, and media power to push his ideology, and how incredibly representative this is of countless issues with medical and technological IP, and the laundering process that is American philanthropy. Sam and Emma also touch on Biden’s falling approval ratings as he clamors to grab onto bad faith footholds, and the live drama that we saw this weekend (at the MR show, of course).

And in the Fun Half: Sam and Emma cover the most ridiculous takes in the wake of Will Smith’s slapping of Chris Rock at the Oscars, some of which are offered up by our very own comments section, and Jimmy Dore realizes that the true victims of the assault are stand-up comedians everywhere. Amy Klobuchar comes at the moral authority of the Supreme Court without going far enough to impact the power they have, Rick Scott offers up his plan to hike up taxes on half of the country and take away their healthcare as McConnell, for some reason, tries to sweep it under the rug, and Lara Logan returns for some classical anti-Semitic conspiracy theory stemming from Darwin. Nick from Pittsburgh discusses nuclear power and private regulation and Kowalski from NE reflects on the live show, plus, your calls and IMs!

Check out Alexander here: https://www.zaitchik.com/

https://www.counterpointpress.com/dd-product/owning-the-sun/