BILL MOYERS:
Welcome. Trade, money and politics are our
issues this week and my guest is the outspoken
journalist who runs the iconic Harper’s
Magazine, which for 164 years now has thrown
open its pages to some of the most ferociously
independent voices in American letters, from
Mark Twain, Jack London and Herman Melville
to William Styron, Joyce Carol Oates and David
Foster Wallace.
 
As the president and publisher of Harper’s
for the last 31 years, John R. “Rick”
MacArthur has been as ferocious a champion
of democracy and journalism as any of those
illustrious bylines that have appeared in
its pages. I’ve never known him to pull
his punches, whether he’s writing in Harper’s,
or in his newspaper columns, or in such books
as “The Selling of ‘Free Trade,’”
an exposé of bipartisan collusion to enact
NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and
this one, “The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy
in America.” MacArthur’s fierce arrows
of outrage are aimed at both political parties,
but recently he’s been especially incensed
by Democrats for abandoning their progressive
roots to serve Wall Street, K Street, and
crony capitalists.
 
Rick MacArthur, welcome.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Thank you for having me, Bill.
BILL MOYERS:
You have opposed these so-called free trade
agreements for as long as I have known you.
Why isn't anyone listening?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Well, because the big money doesn't want them
to listen. And the editorial pages of most
American newspapers are pro-"free trade”
quote-unquote. They don't know, or they don't
pay attention to what the costs are. Obama
himself, in the 2008 campaign, said that NAFTA,
North American Free Trade Agreement, had cost
the country a million jobs.
But in order to understand what's happening,
you got to go to these cities that are being
hollowed out and destroyed, like Fostoria,
Ohio. I did a big piece about three years
ago, for a foreign newspaper, because nobody
wants to read it here, about the closure and
the moving of the Autolite spark plug plant
to Mexicali, Mexico. These--
BILL MOYERS:
From Fostoria.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
From Fostoria, Ohio.
BILL MOYERS:
By the way, it was in Ohio that Obama, during
the campaign of 2008, made one speech in which
he claimed that NAFTA had cost a million jobs,
50,000 of them in Ohio.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Right. He did it to hurt Hilary Clinton. Because
he wanted to hang NAFTA on the Clintons, on
the Clinton couple.
BILL MOYERS:
Because President Clinton, Bill Clinton--
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Bill Clinton.
BILL MOYERS:
--had sponsored it with the Republicans in
1993.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Because he made a tactical political decision
that it would be a great thing to move the
Democratic Party to the center, I would call
it move it to the right, on matters concerning
the working class. The working class today,
thanks to what Bill Clinton did on NAFTA,
is now becoming, I would call it, the lower
class. And--
BILL MOYERS:
So you went to this town
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
I went to this town more recently--
BILL MOYERS:
Why did you pick Fostoria?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Well, because Larry Bossidy, who was the CEO
of AlliedSignal, which owned Autolite in those
days--
BILL MOYERS:
Autolite makes spark plugs.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Autolite makes spark plugs. I actually have
a spark plug that I took from the plant here.
It's one of the last ones made there. And
Bossidy said, famously, in a debate on CNN
that, he held up a spark plug and said--
LARRY BOSSIDY on CNN: The NAFTA Debate, December
1996:
Right now, you can’t sell these in Mexico
because there’s a 15 percent tariff. If
we can, if this NAFTA’s passed and that
tariff is removed, we’ll make these in Fostoria,
Ohio. We won’t have 1,100 jobs, we’ll
have more jobs.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
And of course in 2007, the factory was moved
to Mexicali under the ownership of Honeywell
Corporation, which had merged with AlliedSignal.
And Barack Obama was soon seen after that
with Dave Cote, the chairman of Honeywell,
promoting his business stimulus program. Barack
Obama is not going to say to Dave Cote, what
are you shutting down the Autolite spark plug
plant for? Why are you putting Allyson Murray
and Peggy Gillig and Jerry Faeth, these are
people I interviewed who were production line
workers, who raised their families and sent
their kids to school. Jerry Faeth is a particular
favorite of mine, because he got two of his
daughters through college paying most of their
tuition as an auto worker.
BILL MOYERS:
Working--
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
--as an auto worker--
BILL MOYERS:
Auto worker, right.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
--because he was making enough money. These
people are being wiped out. The statistics
that you hear about, where the country is
economically, don't reflect the devastation
to these individuals. But the Democratic Party's
not interested in those people. They don't
contribute to campaigns.
BILL MOYERS:
How does our political class get away with
ignoring those realities?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Well, again, to some extent, I blame the media.
They don't report on it. But in the larger
political scheme, the Democratic Party, it
is split. There are still a few democrats
who care about the working lower class. Barack
Obama, Bill Clinton see it in their political
interest to ally themselves with Wall Street.
Wall Street, because they can raise money
from Wall Street. Wall Street loves "free
trade," quote-unquote, because it equals cheap
labor. All these trade agreements, and NAFTA
in particular, are investment agreements that
make it safer for American corporations to
set up shop in cheap labor locales. Wall Street
thinks that's great. It's great for the shareholders.
And it's great for the corporations. The profits
go up. So as long as the cash keeps coming
to both parties from those interested parties,
short of a revolution, short of an uprising
among the working poor, you're not going to
see any change.
BILL MOYERS:
In 2008, Obama, he used NAFTA against Hilary
Clinton, as you said, because Bill Clinton
had sponsored it in 1993. And he promised
that he would reform NAFTA.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Right.
BILL MOYERS:
Has he?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
No. As soon as he got into office, he announced,
we really don't need to reform NAFTA. We'll
find other ways to help people who've been
hurt by NAFTA, which they, and of course,
they've done nothing. In fact, he's pushed
more free trade deals, Korea, Colombia, et
cetera, you know, he keeps pushing, and now,
the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership, which
will make things even worse.
BILL MOYERS:
Yeah. You say if he wins the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, he'll be giving away big chunks
of our remaining manufacturing base to Japan
and Vietnam and other Pacific Rim countries.
Why does he want to do that?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Because he's the fundraiser in chief. And
again, this goes back to Bill Clinton. Because
Obama's really just imitating Bill Clinton.
Clinton made an alliance with the Daley machine
in Chicago, which Obama, he's inherited that
alliance with the two Daley brothers. The
people who were thriving are the people in
power. Rahm Emanuel is now mayor of Chicago.
Bill Daley and Rahm Emanuel were the chief
lobbyists for passing NAFTA under Clinton.
They're the ones who rounded up the votes.
They're the ones who made the deals with the
recalcitrant Democrats and Republicans who
didn't want to vote for it. These people are
in the saddle. They succeeded each other as--
BILL MOYERS:
They're Democrats, too.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Democrats. But Daley succeeded Rahm Emanuel
as Obama's chief of staff. These are the people
Obama talks to all the time. And they're saying,
free trade, great. We don't know about factories
closing. But it's a great way to raise money.
BILL MOYERS:
Senator Mitch McConnell, who will soon be
the Senate majority leader, said that new
trade agreements are one of his top priorities.
Are we about to see some bipartisan cooperation
between the Republicans in the Senate and
Obama in the White House on passing this new
trade agreement?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Absolutely. They've already announced that
they're going to try to work together. And
if history is repeated, you will see fast
track passed.
BILL MOYERS:
Which means…
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Which means you give the president, you give
the executive branch, the authority to negotiate
the trade agreement in secret. That's what
Congress gives away, which I think is unconstitutional.
Because the Senate is supposed to advise and
consent, right? But so far, nobody has challenged
it on constitutional grounds. You give fast
track authority to the president. They negotiate
the deal. At the end of it, a gigantic bill,
very complex, because I've read the NAFTA
agreement, it's very complex language. You
give it to Congress. And you say, okay, vote
for it, yes or no, up or down.
No amendments allowed, no amendments allowed.
And so that's when the heavy lobbying starts.
And most times, at least in the past with
PNTR, that's permanent normal trade relations
with China, and NAFTA, the big money wins.
And this is what's going to happen again with
TPP if people don't stop it before it gets
to the fast track stage. And I guarantee you,
this is a way to send more jobs, particularly
to Vietnam and Malaysia. What's happening
now is that labor rates are going up slightly
in China. This panics the corporations. They
want other places to go. Vietnam's an even
cheaper labor platform than China. And so
it's cheap labor coupled with really minimal
environmental protection. You can do just
about anything you want to.
BILL MOYERS:
I brought two headlines from the same day's
edition of the “Washington Post.” One
says, "Obama, looking to mend fences with
Congress, is reaching out. To Democrats. " The
other one, in the same edition of the Washington
Post, says, "Obama says he willing to defy
Democrats on his support of Trans-Pacific
Partnership." What do you make of that?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Well, it's the typical Obama. You know, during
the big, it goes back. Early in his political
career, there was a big fight in Chicago in
2006. The city council voted to pass a big
box minimum wage bill, $13 an hour. They said
there's no factory work left, thanks to NAFTA
and PNTR. So if Wal-Mart wants to move into
Chicago, we're going to force them to pay
a living wage.
And they came up with $13 an hour, with benefits,
some kind of health benefits. Mayor Daley
vetoed the bill. Because he didn't want to
offend his friends in business in Chicago.
He was also, I think, personally offended
that democracy had broken out in the City
Council. You know, it's like the Soviet Union
in Chicago, 49 Democrats, 1 Republican.
And so they passed the law. He vetoes it.
And there's a big fight to try to override
his veto. What do you think Obama does when
he's a State Senator and then a Senate candidate,
U.S. Senate candidate, then Senator, he kept
absolutely mum on it. He didn't say a word.
And nobody asked him to say anything. Because
they didn't want to compromise him with Mayor
Daley. They didn't want to get him in trouble
with Daley and force him to make a choice.
Same thing happened at the get go in first
two years of administration. That was the
time to raise the minimum wage. He had a big
majority in both houses. People were panicked.
It would’ve put more money in the hands
of desperate people who had lost a lot of
income.
He didn't propose an increase in the minimum
wage in 2009 and 2010, not again in 2011 or
2012, when his own caucus was pushing for
one. He had no interest in raising the minimum
wage at that point. Because it didn't conform
with his fundraising and his pro-business,
pro-Wall Street goals.
BILL MOYERS:
President Obama appointed a new trade representative,
Michael Froman, who's a disciple of Robert
Rubin who's the Wall Street insider who pushed
for free trade and deregulation when he was
Bill Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury and
then went back to Wall Street and cashed in
big from deregulation and is, today, Robert
Rubin, a big influence in the Hillary Clinton
camp. What does that tell you?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Well, what it tells me is they view Obama's
presidency as a success. In other words, Wall
Street thinks Obama's done right by them.
And if they could get Hilary Clinton in, things
will stay right.
BILL MOYERS:
That was a bold cover story you had recently:
"Stop Hillary."
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Yeah, well, we were, it was our effort to
force a debate. And we did. I'm actually quite
pleased with the outcome that all our competitors
were then forced to do cover stories and commentaries
on other candidates who might come into the
race: Elizabeth Warren, Jim Webb has already
announced an exploratory committee, Bernie
Sanders, I wish that Sherrod Brown from Ohio
would run. There are a lot of people who would
make good candidates, but they're intimidated
by the Clinton fundraising machine.
BILL MOYERS:
But would she raise a big tent for a lot of
Democrats to get under and reverse the Republican
wave of the midterm elections?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
There's absolutely no room, there's no tent
that can hold the working class, the poor,
the lower class that I'm talking about, and
the Steven Rattners of Wall Street, who go
around saying, oh, don't you love us? We're
social liberals. We're for civil rights. We're
for all the rights that you care about. We're
for tolerance, and so on and so forth.
But what they're not for is worker rights.
It doesn't matter if you're gay or black or
an impoverished white former factory worker.
You all have worker rights in common. That's
the commonality. Citizens' rights, I would
say also, but worker rights. They never talk
about worker rights. They just talk about
cultural liberalism. That's what they're interested
in.
BILL MOYERS:
Here's a quote from Steven Rattner, whom you
mentioned. It has to do with the Obama nomination
of Antonio Weiss, prominent investment banker
who worked on the auto industry bailout during
Obama's first term, as Steven Rattner did.
This whole thing, this opposition by Elizabeth
Warren and others to Antonio Weiss, “is
part of a much broader narrative of the fight
for the soul of the Democratic Party and whether
so-called progressives are going to capture
that or whether more mainstream Democrats,
who are equally progressive in their own way,
are going to retain it." He said if the Weiss
nomination goes down, “it will be a long
time before anyone else with Wall Street experience
volunteers for this kind of job."
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Boy, what a threat. Wouldn't that be a great
thing, if those people from Wall Street stopped
volunteering? They don't want to stop volunteering.
But that is the central problem in the Democratic
Party today. Rattner speaks for a faction,
a minority of people but a majority of money.
The other people that I'm referring to, I
hope it's Elizabeth Warren or that she hangs
in there, and people like Jim Webb are speaking
for the majority. But the majority has much
less money than this small minority of so-called
social liberals on Wall Street.
BILL MOYERS:
Elizabeth Warren, Senator Warren, made a speech
this week in which she said that the fight
is much more than about this nominee for the
Treasury Department.
SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN on December 9, 2014:
Democratic administrations have filled an
enormous number of senior economic policy
positions with people who have close ties
to Wall Street. Starting with Robert Rubin,
a former Citigroup CEO, three of the last
four Treasury secretaries under Democratic
presidents have had Citigroup affiliations
before or after their Treasury service […] Weiss
defenders are all in, loudly defending the
revolving door and telling America how lucky
we are that Wall Street is willing to run
the economy and the government. In fact, Weiss
supporters even defend the golden parachutes
like the $20 million payment that Weiss will
receive from Lazard to take this government
job. Why? They say it is an important tool
in making sure Wall Street executives will
continue to be willing to run government policy
making.
BILL MOYERS:
She's really hitting at the very thing you
have been writing about, talking about, and
advocating. But nothing is going to change--
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
But--
BILL MOYERS:
--as you yourself have said and written--
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Yeah--
BILL MOYERS:
--unless the grip of the moneyed interest
on our parties and on democracy is broken?
How can you fight that much power? That--
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Well--
BILL MOYERS:
--much money?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
You have to run primary campaigns, cheap primary
campaigns against incumbents, like the Tea
Party, in the Democratic Party, like the Tea
Party does against incumbent Republicans.
You got to actually take political action
and present candidates with an alternative
point of view. But you also have to go to
Fostoria and then come back and tell me and
tell your colleagues, that their town is falling
apart, they can't send their kids to school
anymore. They've got to work in a fast-food
place. Do you know that today there are more
part-time workers than there were before the
recession, before the great recession?
I think it's about seven million part-time
workers. Median household income has dropped
about $5,000 in the last five or six years.
Where are the economists getting their information?
You really have to look at the human cost.
There's a social element to this that somehow
doesn't get talked about. We talk about incomes
dropping, income disparity. We don't talk
about the demoralization of the American lower
and middle class. It's demoralizing to lose
your job. It's demoralizing to feel like there's
no future, that you can't pay to send your
kids to college.
Things have gotten really bad in the country.
There is no relief for these people who have
lost their jobs. The deindustrialization of
the country continues rapidly.
And every time one of these factories closes,
another town drops a couple of notches sociologically.
It gets poorer, you can't fund the Little
League, you can't fund the public schools,
you can't fund local community colleges, nobody's
got work, nobody's got any hope. It gets worse
and worse and worse. You can't just keep farming
the laborer, the jobs out to Vietnam and China
and expect things to get better at any point.
BILL MOYERS:
Hillary Clinton was recently quoted as saying,
quote, "I think our country kind of moves
in pendulum swings. We go maybe a little bit
too far in one way, and then we swing back.
We are most comfortable when we have that
balance in the vital center. And we are, I
think, in need of getting back to that." What
does that say to you?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Getting back to that? The vital center has
moved so far right that it can't be called
the "center" anymore. You might call it the
"center right"-- but it's far from anything
I would call the "center."
BILL MOYERS:
Hardly has she said that, than NBC News and
the Wall Street Journal published a poll showing
the public trends left on one issue after
another; raising the minimum wage, spending
more for infrastructure, helping students
pay off their college loans, addressing climate
change and global warming. I mean, Hillary
Clinton, by this account, is to the right
of the American public, and particularly of
the Democratic constituency.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Right, but more important for Hillary Clinton,
she's not to the right of Steven Rattner or
the Daley brothers--
BILL MOYERS:
The Wall Street--
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
--or Rahm Emanuel. The Wall Street and the
Chicago political machine types. She's very
much in harmony with them.
BILL MOYERS:
So where does a Sherrod Brown, a Jim Webb,
an Elizabeth Warren, get the money to run
against people who are backed by the deepest
pockets in America?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
I'm glad you asked me that because I was fascinated
with the Howard Dean candidacy. I think Howard
Dean was probably the best hope we had in
a long time.
But whatever you thought of his politics or
his, you know, his demeanor, or where he came
from, and remember, he's a son of Wall Street.
His meet-ups, where people would, through
the internet, donate $100, scared the hell
out of the Democratic and Republican Party
establishments.
And I think I make a convincing case in the
book that they colluded in the Iowa primaries
to knock him out. 527 committees were formed,
we didn't know where the money was coming
from, but they were coming from Democratic
money and Republican money to knock out this
dissident who'd figured out how to beat the
system. Lots of $100 contributions could compete
with a few $100,000 contributions.
So in order to compete, you've got to rally
the people and get lots of small donations.
And Dean did that and he paid the price. You
see, he didn't even last as Democratic National
Committee chairman, because Rahm Emanuel saw
him as a threat. They got rid of him as soon
as they could.
BILL MOYERS:
What if it's too late to change a system that
is so in place, so entrenched, and so well-funded?
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Well, there's two things can happen. You could
have revolt, you could have rioting. I guess
you could have open revolt in the streets.
Or you could have a demoralized, lower two-thirds
of the American population that doesn't benefit
from the advantages of the top third or the
top fifth. And people just get used to it.
I mean, up to a point, people get used to
these things. They do in other countries,
where things are even more inegalitarian.
We in America have a higher opinion of ourselves
than maybe we deserve. We've always believed
that we're Democrats, we're fundamentally
egalitarian. Whether or not there's inequality
in society, that there's an egalitarian impulse
in America that will always save us.
But I see that egalitarian impulse disappearing.
I see it either being numbed or actually snuffed
out. I take umbrage with the liberal elite
in this country that I think has also abandoned
the white, black, gay, working class across
the board.
They just don't care about them anymore. They
think, well, we're doing all right here in
our bubble. And we're, you know, we're not
going to threaten our position in society
or offend certain people because on behalf
of people who don't have anything. For there
to be a change, the progressive elite, I guess
I would call them, have got to say, we don't
care what these people say about us anymore.
We're breaking with them. We're going to start,
we're going to join the opposition.
BILL MOYERS:
Let’s continue this discussion online.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
I’ll be delighted to.
BILL MOYERS:
Rick MacArthur, thank you for being with me.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR:
Thank you for having me.
BILL MOYERS:
At our website BillMoyers.com, my conversation
with Rick MacArthur continues, and you can
read more about the Trans-Pacific Partnership
and another trade deal that both President
Obama and members of Congress are trying to
fast track – and fast talk – into law.
That’s all at BillMoyers.com. I’ll see
you there and I’ll see you here, next time.
