Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am a freaking moron.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
How does somebody who has a physics professor on as
the most frequent guest multiply fifty by ninety nine and
come up with approximately five hundred instead of approximately five thousand.
How stupid am I today? I can't I've been eating.
I've been eating an immense amount of chocolate all day
(00:25):
because Julie, the chocolate therapist from Littleton was here and
brought a bunch of stuff. And I've been eating chocolate
and drinking chocolate almost every break during the show. And
you would think that would make me smarter, But somehow
I'm a moron. So to all of you who said Ross,
it's more like five thousand, not like five hundred. Math
(00:47):
is hard, You're right, and I'm an idiot. I apologize,
all right. I'm very pleased to welcome Mark Mixed back
to the show. Mark is the president of the National
Right to Work Committee. And just one little bit of
context for listeners, and then we'll have Mark talk about
(01:10):
this in more detail. I might have surprised some people
a week or two ago when I was talking about,
you know, the people who I thought were the I
don't know, worst sounds a little bit harsh, but I'll
just stick with it.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
The worst nominees by Donald Trump, who.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
By the way, has lots of excellent nominees for lots
of positions, and then a few who were deservedly controversial.
You and I was saying, well, who are the two worst?
And you might have thought that I would have included
Pete Hegseth in the worst.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
You might have thought that I would include Telsey Gabbard
in the two worst, but I didn't. To me, the
two worst are Robert F. Kennedy and a person and
you never heard of who may well be the next
Secretary of Labor of the United States.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Mark Mix joins us to talk about this person. Hi, Mark,
welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Good to be with you, and Ross. Don't worry about
the math thing. I when you said fifty times ninety nine,
I've thought, well that she's close to five hundred. So anyway,
I'm with you, man, I'm with you. I'm with you.
And I eat a lot of chocolate too, so maybe
that's it. But anyway, you're right, You're right, there is. Look,
every president should get his nominees, and we probably you know,
should give him a little bit of slack. But when
(02:34):
it comes to this particular nominee, and you're right, she
is very He's not well known. She was a one
term congressman from Oregon who lost her election. She was
one of three Republicans that co sponsored a bill that
would wipe out all the right to work laws in
the country. So we have an obligation at the National
Right to Work Committee to probably raise attention to this nomination,
(02:56):
and we do oppose it. We think the senators that
are going to be in commit tomorrow ought to give
her a pretty good grilling and when she gets to
the floor, those senators ought to vote against this nomination.
So in her name and that's where we are. Her name,
Lori Chavez, Lori Chavez.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Dreamer is her name, right, And this is the thing.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Lots of Democrats are going to vote for her because
this person, other than having had an R by her
name when she was in Congress, is the kind of
person that Joe Biden would have picked to be Secretary
of Labor.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I mean, she loves unions and they love her.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah. Indeed, when Randy Weingarten, the president of the American
Federation Teachers, comes out and says this is the right
person for the job. One wonders where this pick came from.
Elizabeth Warren has says she's a great nominee. Or Bernie
Sanders has been excited about it, and he's looking forward
to having her appear before the committee tomorrow. So I
think her cohort of support is probably going to be
(03:56):
a pretty big group of Democrats. There will be Republicans
that are going to support her back Job Hawley from
Missouri and Mark Wayne Mullen from Colorado or excuse me,
from Oklahoma, not Colorado, are extremely excited about the nomination
and they're going to favorite they're on the committee that
will will grill her tomorrow, or maybe not grill her.
They may not thrill her, but we have a few
friends that will. Ran Paul from Kentucky is indicated he
(04:18):
will not support her because she does not support right
to work, and he's a big supporter of right to work,
not only in Kentucky but also at the national level
as well. So there's lots of questions about her. She
wants to unionize all government employees by federal FIAT across
the country. That's a really radical position. I mean, a
lot of states are trying to limit the power of
(04:38):
the government unions in their state. In fact, I think
your governor has indicated he's not comfortable with some of
the things that Democrats have pushed in Denver expanding union
power over government. So this is a controversial nominee and
one that deserves to get a significant amount of questions
tomorrow in the hearing.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt about that.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I will note Mark Wayne Mullin is and I'm not
saying this as an insult, just.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
As an observation.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Mark Mark Wayne Mullen is one of Donald Trump's biggest
allies and cheerleaders in the Senate, and I think they're
actually personal friends. And so Mark Wayne Mullin will go
along with probably anything Donald Trump wants for his for
the whole presidency. Uh and who and Josh and Josh
Hawley is is the worst Republican in the Senate.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So so let's let's.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Just back away for a moment from uh LORI Chavs
Dreamer and I think most listeners know what we're talking
about here, But it's such an important issue to me
and an even more important issue to you, right to work.
And I don't know that everybody listening to the show
knows what right to work means, So can you please
(05:50):
describe that?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, thank you, Right, Sometimes I get too deep in this,
but yeah, look, it's real simple. We believe that every
worker should have the right to join a union if
they choose to do so. They should be able to
participate with unions as they see fit. But no one
should be compelled as a condition of employment to pay
union dueser fees to get or keep a job. That's
really the simplicity of the right to work. Now, Colorado
(06:13):
has kind of a unique issue that you can be
in the union and then you have to vote to
have forced union as the force payment of dues apply.
They have what's called the Labor Peace ACCT. But Democrats
are very interested in repealing that bill at the state
level right now the other legislative session. So real simple stuff. Look,
if you want to pay, go ahead. If you don't,
you can't be fired. That's literally the extent of the
(06:34):
right to work protections that exist in twenty six states today.
Ross As we're on the phone.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Right, so I agree with ninety percent of what you said.
I will just or actually so I'll just add one
little caveat. I do not believe government workers should have
the right to collective lee bargain, period and neither did FDR.
By the way, FDR was against the unionization. It wasn't
(07:02):
exactly against unionization of government workers, but he was against
the ability of government workers to collectively bargain.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And so am I yeah, correct, absolutely correct. And if
I let you believe that I was slipping on that
issue out, now that's really important. I mean, no, you're
exactly right. The idea that they can join unions is
perfectly fine. But when you mandate that this private organization
sits across the table from the people they elect and
negotiate the terms and conditions of employment for government employee,
(07:29):
and what that has done to New York, California, New Jersey, Illinois.
I mean, the state after state who has basically given
union officials as power over the government workers has basically
come to fiscal almost fiscal extinction because of the problems
that it creates. So the idea that a private organization
can sit down and negotiate terms and conditions for government
(07:49):
employees is wrong. Franklin Roosevelt was right about it. You're
right about it, and I want you to know. I'm
right about that too.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, So I'm sure you've used the metaphorm many times
than I have as well. But you know, when you've
got a government union, they're they're going to negotiate with
So they're government workers and they're going to negotiate with
other government workers over how much they're going to get
paid by the American taxpayer. And the metaphor is it's
it's two wolves and a sheep negotiating over what's for dinner, right, Yeah,
(08:19):
and the taxpayer is the taxpayer is the sheep? All right,
There's one other thing I want to ask you about, Mark,
And for those just joining, we're talking with Mark Mixed
from the National Right to Work Committee about the truly
terrible Trump nomination of Lori Chavez Darriimer to be Labor Secretary.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
She's she's somebody you would have expected Joe Biden to nominee.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Talk a little bit about independent contractor arrangements and and
how big they are in the economy, what that really means,
and what the risk is to them potentially with this
Labor secretary nominee.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Yeah, you're you're on top of this issue, and thank
you for that. You're the independent contractor are probably the
most degree right now. And Lori chav As Dreamer, the
part of the bill that proactive she sponsored, wanted three
Republicans to do so not only repealed the right to
work laws, but it changed the definition of employment of
an independent contractor to an employee. And the only reason
(09:15):
to do that, well, obviously the Left has lots of
reasons to do it, but the main reason is you
can't unionize independent contractors, but you can unionize employees. So
there's a whole new field of potential union dues by
simply changing the definition of these gig workers that really
are a fairly substantial part of the economy. I mean,
there are a lot of people that love what they do.
(09:36):
Maybe they're doing it on the weekend. They're driving luber
lift cars. They're photographers, they're musicians. You know, they're people
that are doing things as hobbies or to supplement their
second job, or it is the second job, or their incomes.
And this would be a radical change. The Department of
Labor's already done it. Lori Chavs Dreamer is going to
be in charge of that definition and enforcement of that,
(09:58):
and she is a co sponsored the bill that actually
supports this change that gives union officials more power over
independent contractors. So it's a big deal. And there's literally
millions of independent contractors, gig employees, if you will, that
are outraged about this and they're making their voices heard
on this nomination as well.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, I think we will likely end up with we
might end up with more Democrats support than Republican support.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
For this nominee. Well, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
There are also plenty of Democrats who are just voting
no on every nominee except for Marco Rubio. Mark Mixed
is President and National Right to Work Committee.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
What's the website?
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Mark, Yeah, NRTWC dot org, National Rights Work Committee dot org.
You can find out about legislation in your state in
Denver and Colorado, or you can figure out what we're
doing back in Washington, DC, and particularly information about this nomination. Mark.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Thanks for your time. As always, we'll have you back,
Thank you, appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
All right, you two fifty times fifty times ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Give me the answer there, it's around five hundre.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I meant to take it fight
I am a freaking moron.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
How does somebody who has a physics professor on as
the most frequent guest multiply fifty by ninety nine and
come up with approximately five hundred instead of approximately five thousand.
How stupid am I today? I can't I've been eating.
I've been eating an immense amount of chocolate all day
(00:25):
because Julie, the chocolate therapist from Littleton was here and
brought a bunch of stuff. And I've been eating chocolate
and drinking chocolate almost every break during the show. And
you would think that would make me smarter, But somehow
I'm a moron. So to all of you who said Ross,
it's more like five thousand, not like five hundred. Math
(00:47):
is hard, You're right, and I'm an idiot. I apologize,
all right. I'm very pleased to welcome Mark Mixed back
to the show. Mark is the president of the National
Right to Work Committee. And just one little bit of
context for listeners, and then we'll have Mark talk about
(01:10):
this in more detail. I might have surprised some people
a week or two ago when I was talking about,
you know, the people who I thought were the I
don't know, worst sounds a little bit harsh, but I'll
just stick with it.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
The worst nominees by Donald Trump, who.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
By the way, has lots of excellent nominees for lots
of positions, and then a few who were deservedly controversial.
You and I was saying, well, who are the two worst?
And you might have thought that I would have included
Pete Hegseth in the worst.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I didn't.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
You might have thought that I would include Telsey Gabbard
in the two worst, but I didn't. To me, the
two worst are Robert F. Kennedy and a person and
you never heard of who may well be the next
Secretary of Labor of the United States.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Mark Mix joins us to talk about this person. Hi, Mark,
welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Good to be with you, and Ross. Don't worry about
the math thing. I when you said fifty times ninety nine,
I've thought, well that she's close to five hundred. So anyway,
I'm with you, man, I'm with you. I'm with you.
And I eat a lot of chocolate too, so maybe
that's it. But anyway, you're right, You're right, there is. Look,
every president should get his nominees, and we probably you know,
should give him a little bit of slack. But when
(02:34):
it comes to this particular nominee, and you're right, she
is very He's not well known. She was a one
term congressman from Oregon who lost her election. She was
one of three Republicans that co sponsored a bill that
would wipe out all the right to work laws in
the country. So we have an obligation at the National
Right to Work Committee to probably raise attention to this nomination,
(02:56):
and we do oppose it. We think the senators that
are going to be in commit tomorrow ought to give
her a pretty good grilling and when she gets to
the floor, those senators ought to vote against this nomination.
So in her name and that's where we are. Her name,
Lori Chavez, Lori Chavez.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Dreamer is her name, right, And this is the thing.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Lots of Democrats are going to vote for her because
this person, other than having had an R by her
name when she was in Congress, is the kind of
person that Joe Biden would have picked to be Secretary
of Labor.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I mean, she loves unions and they love her.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah. Indeed, when Randy Weingarten, the president of the American
Federation Teachers, comes out and says this is the right
person for the job. One wonders where this pick came from.
Elizabeth Warren has says she's a great nominee. Or Bernie
Sanders has been excited about it, and he's looking forward
to having her appear before the committee tomorrow. So I
think her cohort of support is probably going to be
(03:56):
a pretty big group of Democrats. There will be Republicans
that are going to support her back Job Hawley from
Missouri and Mark Wayne Mullen from Colorado or excuse me,
from Oklahoma, not Colorado, are extremely excited about the nomination
and they're going to favorite they're on the committee that
will will grill her tomorrow, or maybe not grill her.
They may not thrill her, but we have a few
friends that will. Ran Paul from Kentucky is indicated he
(04:18):
will not support her because she does not support right
to work, and he's a big supporter of right to work,
not only in Kentucky but also at the national level
as well. So there's lots of questions about her. She
wants to unionize all government employees by federal FIAT across
the country. That's a really radical position. I mean, a
lot of states are trying to limit the power of
(04:38):
the government unions in their state. In fact, I think
your governor has indicated he's not comfortable with some of
the things that Democrats have pushed in Denver expanding union
power over government. So this is a controversial nominee and
one that deserves to get a significant amount of questions
tomorrow in the hearing.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt about that.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I will note Mark Wayne Mullin is and I'm not
saying this as an insult, just.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
As an observation.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Mark Mark Wayne Mullen is one of Donald Trump's biggest
allies and cheerleaders in the Senate, and I think they're
actually personal friends. And so Mark Wayne Mullin will go
along with probably anything Donald Trump wants for his for
the whole presidency. Uh and who and Josh and Josh
Hawley is is the worst Republican in the Senate.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
So so let's let's.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Just back away for a moment from uh LORI Chavs
Dreamer and I think most listeners know what we're talking
about here, But it's such an important issue to me
and an even more important issue to you, right to work.
And I don't know that everybody listening to the show
knows what right to work means, So can you please
(05:50):
describe that?
Speaker 3 (05:52):
Yeah, thank you, Right, Sometimes I get too deep in this,
but yeah, look, it's real simple. We believe that every
worker should have the right to join a union if
they choose to do so. They should be able to
participate with unions as they see fit. But no one
should be compelled as a condition of employment to pay
union dueser fees to get or keep a job. That's
really the simplicity of the right to work. Now, Colorado
(06:13):
has kind of a unique issue that you can be
in the union and then you have to vote to
have forced union as the force payment of dues apply.
They have what's called the Labor Peace ACCT. But Democrats
are very interested in repealing that bill at the state
level right now the other legislative session. So real simple stuff. Look,
if you want to pay, go ahead. If you don't,
you can't be fired. That's literally the extent of the
(06:34):
right to work protections that exist in twenty six states today.
Ross As we're on the phone.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Right, so I agree with ninety percent of what you said.
I will just or actually so I'll just add one
little caveat. I do not believe government workers should have
the right to collective lee bargain, period and neither did FDR.
By the way, FDR was against the unionization. It wasn't
(07:02):
exactly against unionization of government workers, but he was against
the ability of government workers to collectively bargain.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
And so am I yeah, correct, absolutely correct. And if
I let you believe that I was slipping on that
issue out, now that's really important. I mean, no, you're
exactly right. The idea that they can join unions is
perfectly fine. But when you mandate that this private organization
sits across the table from the people they elect and
negotiate the terms and conditions of employment for government employee,
(07:29):
and what that has done to New York, California, New Jersey, Illinois.
I mean, the state after state who has basically given
union officials as power over the government workers has basically
come to fiscal almost fiscal extinction because of the problems
that it creates. So the idea that a private organization
can sit down and negotiate terms and conditions for government
(07:49):
employees is wrong. Franklin Roosevelt was right about it. You're
right about it, and I want you to know. I'm
right about that too.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, So I'm sure you've used the metaphorm many times
than I have as well. But you know, when you've
got a government union, they're they're going to negotiate with
So they're government workers and they're going to negotiate with
other government workers over how much they're going to get
paid by the American taxpayer. And the metaphor is it's
it's two wolves and a sheep negotiating over what's for dinner, right, Yeah,
(08:19):
and the taxpayer is the taxpayer is the sheep? All right,
There's one other thing I want to ask you about, Mark,
And for those just joining, we're talking with Mark Mixed
from the National Right to Work Committee about the truly
terrible Trump nomination of Lori Chavez Darriimer to be Labor Secretary.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
She's she's somebody you would have expected Joe Biden to nominee.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Talk a little bit about independent contractor arrangements and and
how big they are in the economy, what that really means,
and what the risk is to them potentially with this
Labor secretary nominee.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Yeah, you're you're on top of this issue, and thank
you for that. You're the independent contractor are probably the
most degree right now. And Lori chav As Dreamer, the
part of the bill that proactive she sponsored, wanted three
Republicans to do so not only repealed the right to
work laws, but it changed the definition of employment of
an independent contractor to an employee. And the only reason
(09:15):
to do that, well, obviously the Left has lots of
reasons to do it, but the main reason is you
can't unionize independent contractors, but you can unionize employees. So
there's a whole new field of potential union dues by
simply changing the definition of these gig workers that really
are a fairly substantial part of the economy. I mean,
there are a lot of people that love what they do.
(09:36):
Maybe they're doing it on the weekend. They're driving luber
lift cars. They're photographers, they're musicians. You know, they're people
that are doing things as hobbies or to supplement their
second job, or it is the second job, or their incomes.
And this would be a radical change. The Department of
Labor's already done it. Lori Chavs Dreamer is going to
be in charge of that definition and enforcement of that,
(09:58):
and she is a co sponsored the bill that actually
supports this change that gives union officials more power over
independent contractors. So it's a big deal. And there's literally
millions of independent contractors, gig employees, if you will, that
are outraged about this and they're making their voices heard
on this nomination as well.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, I think we will likely end up with we
might end up with more Democrats support than Republican support.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
For this nominee. Well, we'll see.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
There are also plenty of Democrats who are just voting
no on every nominee except for Marco Rubio. Mark Mixed
is President and National Right to Work Committee.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
What's the website?
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Mark, Yeah, NRTWC dot org, National Rights Work Committee dot org.
You can find out about legislation in your state in
Denver and Colorado, or you can figure out what we're
doing back in Washington, DC, and particularly information about this nomination. Mark.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Thanks for your time. As always, we'll have you back,
Thank you, appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
All right, you two fifty times fifty times ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Give me the answer there, it's around five hundre.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
I meant to take it fight
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