There’s a very good reason why state legislatures don’t actually do anything to benefit average Americans, and its because your legislators aren’t average Americans. A new study has found that only a handful of legislators in all 50 states actually come from working class families. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: There’s a very good reason why legislators don’t actually do anything to benefit average Americans and it’s because legislators aren’t average Americans at all. A new study has found that only a handful of legislators in all 50 states actually come from working class families. You found this story. I was captivated by this. I had no idea it was this bad. But to sum it up, out of 7,400 state legislators, 116 can be described as people who come from a working background, a working class background.
Farron Cousins: Right. And those are people, they describe working class as you were in a factory or you were in manual labor of some kind. Basically your average blue collar American. And what’s funny is that I actually came across this story a day after I had mentioned, you and I had been filming this show. I said, hey, the problem with legislatures is that you don’t have working class people there. And then the very next day I saw this story, I was like, oh my God, that’s, we gotta talk about this because it lays out the numbers beautifully. 1.6% of.
Mike Papantonio: Where did you find? You found this story from a site called News From The States.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: How did you find, I mean, this is incredible. I would’ve never found this story. I never would’ve known that 116 out of 7,400 legislators.
Farron Cousins: Well, I actually get most of my news, I go to Reddit politics. It just aggregates what users find to be important news.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: And it’s a great resource. It’s nonpartisan. It’s whatever the people want to talk about, they talk about. But this one got me because out of all 50 states, 1.6% of these lawmakers are actually from blue collar backgrounds. And, what that does is it limits the number of people that are in these state houses making decisions about your life who have shared life experience. So if you have somebody that’s sitting in the capital of your state, or even the capital in Congress that was born with a silver spoon in their mouth, you know, I’m a politician because my daddy was a politician and his daddy’s daddy was a politician, but his daddy’s daddy was an oil baron. And that’s what it is. And so those people do not know what it’s like to go to the grocery store and have your debit card be declined. They don’t know what it’s like to not drive for a couple days because you can’t afford the gas.
Mike Papantonio: Or you can’t pay for medicine.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. And when you have people with the shared life experience, they take those issues seriously. And this report even confirmed that.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It didn’t just say it, there was a good confirmation. What I thought was interesting is most of the time they can’t afford to even run. Okay. They can’t take four months outta their lives and go run. These, you know, that class of folks that have never lived a life of really working, they can, they come from a different background. They can’t raise money like those other folks can. The working class can’t go out and talk to a corporation, hey, give me money for my campaign. They know the other guy can, because the other guy works for the corporation in some capacity. He delivers for the corporation. There are these natural obstacles. And the other part is some states where you have, where they pay legislators, they only pay 18, $19,000 and somebody may be working in a shop where they’re making 50, $60,000, it’s hard for ’em to say, okay, I’m gonna go run for office right now. There’s a lot of inset obstacles aren’t there?
Farron Cousins:: Oh, absolutely. And one of the reasons I think that you and I have been so effective at what we do, especially talking about these consumer issues, talking about these economic issues, neither you nor I were born into a life of privilege by any stretch of the imagination.
Mike Papantonio: That’s the understatement. I was raised by eight different families growing up, and there was a reason for it.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: And I know you didn’t at all.
Farron Cousins: Right. And so we know what it’s like and those are values that we have carried with us throughout our lives. Yeah. And I think we’re both very comfortable at this point. But we still can talk about these things with passion, because it may have been five years ago, it may have been 40 years ago that we went through these, but those memories are still just as fresh. And so we understand what it’s like for these people and that makes us effective because we care, because we’ve been there. And if you don’t have that, Ed Schultz was another perfect example of that.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, I loved, I used to do a show with Ed and we had so much in common because that’s where he came from.
Farron Cousins: Exactly.
Mike Papantonio: A working class.
Farron Cousins: And nobody else had his passion.
Mike Papantonio: No. Oh, good God. I mean, the show ponies they have up there have no, they don’t have anything in common with working class. They’re almost in an elitist bubble. The same way that some of these politicians are in an elitist bubble.
Farron Cousins: They all are.
Mike Papantonio: And so 1.6% that is a staggering number, Farron. This is a good find. I want to explore this a little bit more because I think it’s essentially part of the big political process that we’re having to suffer through right now. You don’t think these, most, these people go to go to bat for things like school lunches. We need to pay for school lunches. They go to bat for equal wage, for better wages. They go to bat on things like safe work environments because they come from that. They’ve seen it. They’ve been around a dinner table where this stuff’s being talked about. These other folks, this elitist bubble that so often becomes the leaders in our political process, they have nothing in common with that, do they?
Farron Cousins: Nope.
Mike Papantonio: Thanks for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. Make sure you subscribe. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where every week we tell you stories that corporate media simply won’t tell you because their advertisers order ’em not to tell you. And they’re gonna lose advertising dollars if they say something the advertiser doesn’t want. Or their political connections just require that they can’t color outside the lines. They have to color, if you’re Republican, you gotta color within these lines. If you’re Democrat, you gotta color within these lines, and they can’t do anything but that. But as you can tell, we don’t have that problem around here. We’re gonna call balls and strikes whichever side you come from. See you next time.
Farron Cousins: Ring of Fire founder and host of America’s Lawyer, Mike Papantonio has a new book came out this week called, “Suspicious Activity.” Like his other books before it, this book actually deals with real legal cases that Mike Papantonio has handled, but in a fictionalized way. The book follows the character of Nick Deketomis that Papantonio first introduced in his book, “Law and Disorder,” and it carries on the story that began in “Law and Disorder” through “Law and Vengeance,” “Law and Addiction,” “Inhuman Trafficking,” and now “Suspicious Activity.” This book, in particular, deals with the financial institutions that have helped launder money for terrorist organizations, which of course is a topic we have covered extensively here on Ring of Fire. So if you’re a follower of Mike Papantonio’s books, or if this is your first one, you can get your copy of “Suspicious Activity” now. Just go to MikePapantonio.com and place your order. And if you haven’t already, check out Mike’s other books, also available on MikePapantonio.com.
