Here at Politics Plus, I believe all of us think quite highly of Robert Reich. He is just so darned good at being right, when the "Reich" on the right consistently gets everything wrong.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/robertreich.org\/post\/132819483625<\/a><\/p>\n His newest book, "SAVING CAPITALISM: For the Many, Not the Few" came out on September 29. This gave him the opportunity to to do a book tour, which he used as an opportunity to get to know voters in red and bright red and dark red states.<\/p>\n I intended to put into practice what I tell my students – that the best way to learn is to talk with people who disagree you. I wanted to learn from red America, and hoped they’d also learn a bit from me (and perhaps also buy my book).<\/em><\/p>\n One of the things he learned talking with conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers was that they agreed with much he had to say. Really. Scout's honor. For instance, though most probably would say they believe in capitalism, they emphatically do NOT believe in "crony capitalism" – big money in politics – just as we don't. Further:<\/p>\n I met with group of small farmers in Missouri who were livid about growth of “factory farms” owned and run by big corporations, that abused land and cattle, damaged the environment, and ultimately harmed consumers.<\/em><\/p>\n Banks?<\/p>\n Whenever I suggested that big Wall Street banks be busted up – “any bank that’s too big to fail is too big, period” – I got loud applause.<\/em><\/p>\n Trade?<\/p>\n Most are also dead-set against the Trans Pacific Partnership. In fact, they’re opposed to trade agreements, including NAFTA, that they believe have made it easier for corporations to outsource American jobs abroad.<\/em><\/p>\n Reich goes on to expand on these points and a couple of others, and to sum it up that "They call themselves Republicans but many of the inhabitants of America’s heartland are populists in the tradition of William Jennings Bryan."<\/p>\n He asked enough pointed questions to get some feel for why so many have rallied to Donald Trump. Hint: It's not immigration.<\/p>\n Please click through to his full article<\/a>. It's not very long and it is very important. <\/p>\n Admittedly, we and the Tea Party remain far, FAR apart on social and cultural issues. But economically – not so much. We economic populists in both parties need to do some coming together on things we really do agree about.<\/p>\n Before it's too late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here at Politics Plus, I believe all of us think quite highly of Robert Reich. He is just so darned good at being right, when the "Reich" on the right consistently gets everything wrong. http:\/\/robertreich.org\/post\/132819483625 His newest book, "SAVING CAPITALISM: For the Many, Not the Few" came out on September 29. This gave him the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":17347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}