[regional_school] Important Teachout Interview

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Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 09:35:15 -0400

Yves Talks With Zephyr Teachout, Challenger to Cuomo in New York Democratic
Primary
<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/yves-talks-zephyr-teachout-challenger-cuomo-new-york-democratic-primary.html>Posted
on August 25, 2014
<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/yves-talks-zephyr-teachout-challenger-cuomo-new-york-democratic-primary.html>
by Yves Smith <http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/author/yves-smith>

Zephyr Teachout, with her running mate Tim Wu, is running against
Democratic party fixture, the State governor Andrew Cuomo, and his
lieutenant governor nominee Kathy Hochul. A corruption scandal has dented
Cuomo’s ratings <http://maristpoll.marist.edu/tag/andrew-cuomo/>,
transforming the Teachout/Wu challenge from quixotic to distantly
plausible. You can read Lambert’s interview of Wu, who is famed as a net
neutrality advocate, here
<http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/lambert-talks-with-tim-wu.html>.

Teachout is a Fordham assistant law professor and was digital director of
the 2004 Dean campaign. I met her in 2011 near Zuccotti Park when Occupy
Wall Street was out in force and she co-founded A New Way Forward, an
initiative to break up major banks. Teachout is an old-fashioned liberal
who favors restrictions on monopoly/oligopoly power, progressive taxation,
supporting unions as a way to improve labor bargaining power, and strong
social safety nets.

YVES SMITH: Zephyr hi, this is Yves Smith. I’m sorry for being a couple of
minutes late.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT: You are exactly who I was waiting for. How are you!

YVES: Just fine. You sound a little throaty. It sounds like you have had a
big day, or you are having lots of big days.

TEACHOUT: Oh my goodness. The last three weeks have been extraordinary, but
the last 3 days are just completely game-changing. One day one, we get on
pages A17 and A20 of the New York Times. Now one is a story about us, very
positive, and the other is an editorial. And I can’t think of an editorial
like this. It’s not an endorsement. It’s, “Here is a new candidate. Andrew
Cuomo, you should debate her.” With really glowing comments on it. So it’s
this unprecedented moment. And then yesterday we got 612 new donors, and
then today we got the PEF endorsement. So, things are changing fast.

YVES: That’s fantastic. The debate would make a huge difference, so let’s…
it’s intriguing that the Times is supporting you, even if in an indirect
way. This is one of the things I wanted to discuss with you. We’ve talked
about the long odds of your candidacy, although they appear to be changing.
But the usual sort of cynical response is, “Oh, all this is going to mean
is that Cuomo moves his position to the left.”

TEACHOUT: We’ll wait and see, but right now what we are talking about is a
Democratic primary in a year of upsets. Just look at what happened in
Hawaii this past week. Brat and Cantor we talk about all the time. But a
Democratic primary in a year of upsets, in which we are talking about half
a million, maybe 750,000 people voting. So, it is very different in this
sense. Because what those people, the high information people, are going to
have to see something really credible from Andrew Cuomo to believe that he
is seriously moving to the left, because he is not somebody who has held to
his promises before. Particularly promises related to money and politics,
or redistricting, or fighting for a Democratic Senate.

So, look. He has $35 million. I don’t have $35 million. He has decades of
name recognition; I don’t have that. But things are moving extremely fast
and changing extremely fast, and there’s a sense that something fundamental
has changed in this race. And it is not just getting the editorial. It is
the Times saying this is a serious candidate. And I think that’s a signal
that a lot of people were looking for. This is a signal that we have a race
here.

YVES: Yes, yes. Now, I’m sort of curious about the background here, how
this all came about. The Working Families Party had recruited you, and then
they turn around and endorse Cuomo. What was that about?

TEACHOUT: Well, I think most people expected that I would have been
endorsed by the Working Families Party, but I don’t think Andrew Cuomo took
me, before he knew who I was, seriously. My sense is, that the assumption
is, that they just had sort of a stand-in candidate, a fictional person,
not someone who was running for Governor. And so the minute that he learned
that I was a serious person and candidate, he immediately came on extremely
strong with a set of promises and commitments, that seemed like pretty
basic commitments for a Democrat, like fighting for a Democratic Senate, or
the Women’s Equality Act, or Dream Act, fighting for a minimum wage, things
that I think are just foundational, not even visionary. And the Working
Families Party took the moment, accepted the deal, although I will say that
I still got 41% and he got 58%, and for a 3-day campaign where nobody knew
my name 3 days before, I feel pretty good about that 41%.

YVES: In various places you’ve commented about wanting to, the need to take
back the soul of the Democratic Party. I have to say, my readership doesn’t
share that view. They see the Democratic Party as beyond redemption. That
it is just another flavor of corporate party that makes some gestures to
various ethnic groups, in an almost Rovian cynical manner. What is your
response to that?

TEACHOUT: Well, I am talking about FDR. We each pick the traditions that we
draw on, and the tradition that I want to draw on is the tradition that is
strong unions, strong antitrust, total commitment to public education, a
complete commitment to public infrastructure, to public transportation, and
to the public itself, and to the idea of a public. And then build on top of
that, and build a small-business economy, that is a thriving economy that
we can have on top of that. And, to me, that is what I am drawing on, that
deep, powerful tradition. Granted, it has been many decades since Democrats
have fearlessly advocated for that. So, I am not talking about 2 years ago.
I am talking about an older tradition. But, (it’s) certainly where the
people of New York are. I don’t have to convince anybody in New York State
that we should have small class sizes, that we shouldn’t have classes
bigger than 20 kids. All I have to do is convince people in New York State
that they have a viable alternative. Because on policy issues, I am right
down the middle with New Yorkers.

YVES: Well, some of these things are more easy to effect at the state level
than the others. I mean, in terms of antitrust. My understanding is that
even though New York has its own antitrust statutes, that a lot of federal
decisions have pretty much vitiated antitrust. And the Attorney General is
an elected position. We now have this famed rivalry between Schneiderman
and Cuomo. How would you propose to address this…

TEACHOUT: I should be clear. I talk to two sets of people about antitrust:
the people who get really technical really fast, (and) the people who have
never heard about it. And I want to be somewhere in between. Which is when
I talk about antitrust or antimonopoly, I am talking about an ethos, a way
of approaching things. And, as you know, if you want to take on big
business, there is a whole suite of tools you can use. Lending policy,
subsidies, it’s tax breaks, who you are giving tax breaks, who you are not
giving tax breaks to. One of the ways in which big business has become so
concentrated is through tax breaks and subsidies. So part of it is just
pulling back on the support of these really, really powerful companies.
But, in New York, there is a really clear example that I think people can
grab onto, which is what’s happening with Time Warner and Comcast. Because,
there, the Public Service Commission has the authority to review it and is,
in fact, not supposed to allow the merger in New York State if it is not in
the public interest, and the burden is on the big cable companies to prove
that it is. They are not supposed to allow the merger if it is not in the
public interest. Well, it is not in the public interest. A Governor with a
trust-busting ethos, or who wanted to take on the expression of private
power that is taking over our government, a Governor with that perspective
would be very clear in directing the Public Service Commission not to hold
a handful of hearings, but to make sure that Time Warner and Comcast
actually meet their burden, and to be totally open to actually blocking the
deal in New York. And we haven’t got that kind of signal from Andrew Cuomo.
He has really governed for the few, not for the State. And, what’s
happening in the Moreland Commission just highlights that. It is so clear
that his administration, his top aide, is getting in there, interfering
with issuing subpoenas, interfering with the contents of the report,
basically effectively asking for one set of laws for all of us, and other
set of laws for those who are Andrew Cuomo’s donors.

YVES: I’m sort of curious. I don’t know if you have any inside baseball as
to why the Department of Justice has gone after him. Because,
unfortunately, that kind of cronyism is business as usual in Washington.
The Australians talk about the tall poppy that gets cut down. But that is
their sentiment, not ours. Do you have any sense as to why he’s been
targeted?

TEACHOUT: I think the wrongdoing is pretty egregious. I’m not going to make
a separate legal judgment here, but on its face, just looking at what we
know, under New York State law, it looks like criminal solicitation of
official misconduct, under federal laws. I think the key here is, you have
got to understand, as a matter of law, that these were deputized Attorneys
General. So this is pretty scandalous behavior. Imagine if Barack Obama
starts telling his Attorneys General to pull back subpoenas when they get
too close to his business associates. That would be a national scandal.
And, so what I see is that there is some pretty egregious use of
governmental power for political ends, and I am delighted that there is
federal prosecution, but that isn’t enough, obviously. A state has to be
able to take care of its own corruption problems as well, and the easiest
way to take care of a serious problem of corruption is to vote the Governor
out.

YVES: Right, right. I wanted to return to your antitrust discussion for a
second, because you were involved with a group, actually founded a group,
that – around the time of Occupy, and in a similar spirit to Occupy –
wanted to curb the power of the banks. What are your ideas on that front?

TEACHOUT: Yes, we actually founded this in 2009, it was called The New Way
Forward. And just this spring, we renamed it the Antitrust League, named
after some people about 100 years ago who were involved in something very
similar, because we had a lot of similar things going on in society at the
same time. So, the basic belief is that there are too few banks and they
have too much power, and their political power is distorting the democratic
process. So, I think you and I may have talked about this before, but it
certainly, I talked to many people about it, one of the best examples of
what is wrong with politics right now, is people want more banks to get
prosecuted. They want more criminal investigation of what the big banks are
doing, instead of criminal investigation of kids smoking pot. And they
desperately want the power of the banking industry to be broken up. If you
propose something like a financial transactions tax, and explain it, it
polls incredibly well. People say, “Yes, that makes sense, banks have to
pay their fair share.” And yet, they are not. So, it is not a matter of
politics. It’s not because the people in the country think, “Ahh, it’s OK
if we only have a few banks, and they can do whatever they want.” No. It’s
that there is a real disconnect between where the public is and where the
laws are, and the old fashioned way of dealing with that disconnect is take
on that power; bust them up.

YVES: But how you proceed, assuming you won, how would you proceed with
that on a practical basis?

TEACHOUT: Yes. So, on a practical basis, what you’d look at, is again, you
lay out a vision, a vision of a small business economy. And you, first,
make sure that we are not subsidizing, whether they are monopolies or
whether they are just overly concentrated power, we are not subsidizing
businesses because of their political friendships, instead of some other
reason. We could save billions of dollars if we just go through and get rid
of all the tax breaks and subsidies that currently flow to cronies of
Andrew Cuomo. That’s step one. Step two is saying, OK, we have some really
important industries here that are under assault, like the book publishing
industry. Amazon is really taking over the book publishing industry in a
lot of ways, and picking and choosing winners and losers in a way that
feels like the railroads of 100 years ago.

YVES: Oh no, I mean, I am very sympathetic to the anti-Amazon argument. As
a writer, I can tell you that advances have collapsed, because publishers
are so squeezed.

TEACHOUT: Right. Yes.

YVES: And you have even more of a power-law payoff than you used to from
writing. The people at the top, who are established, can still cut very
favorable deals or go directly to the public, but how do you incubate new
writers. That’s one of the functions that publishers serve. In particular,
J.K. Rowling got a $2500 advance for her first Harry Potter book. I can’t
imagine J.K. Rowling would have gotten anywhere if she had self-published.

TEACHOUT: That’s such an important point. It’s also affected other writers.
I am going to be very state-focused right here, then. As a New York
Governor, I care about the writers in my state. I care about the book
publishing industry top to bottom: the people who are making the books, the
people who are selling the books, and the people who are writing the books.
And what that would mean, is that, I’m going to say, OK, look, do we need
to pass new laws to make sure Amazon doesn’t continue to operate in this
really feudal, discriminatory way. Because, it’s my job to protect our
vital industries, and I think book publishing is a vital industry in New
York. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, you are certainly an expert
in this area. But I can’t tell you the precise law that you’d pass. I mean,
what we used to have is a lot of laws around pricing that wouldn’t allow a
company like Amazon to have the control over pricing it does.

YVES: I’m just surprised … I’m not current on Amazon’s pricing, but from
what you can see in their economics, they look as if in a lot of businesses
they’ve engaged in classic predatory pricing, pricing below their cost. The
fact that they’ve been allowed to get away with this for so long, I find
very surprising.

TEACHOUT: I do, too. So, this is something that a Governor can push on.
Maybe we need to, I think we probably do, for something like Amazon, is we
need to push for passing new laws. And I think that’s an area where you’d
find… it’s just a forgotten area of law … where you’d find bipartisan
support because people really want book publishing in New York State. So
let’s be a leader on taking on Amazon. Again, I can’t draft the law for
you, but I can tell you that we can find those laws, because this is
traditionally one of the roles of states, is actually deciding, you know,
what kind of economic development do we support, what kind actually
threatens the state’s own integrity.

YVES: Right, right. Now, you also talked about strengthening unions. How do
you see facilitating that on a state level?

TEACHOUT: Well, certainly, a part of it is just a matter of respect and
engagement. I’m thrilled because we got the Public Employees Federation,
the second largest union in the state, endorsed us today. This is a really
big deal. And, I’ll tell you, when I talk to their members, and I’ve talked
to their members for a while, a lot of what they talk about is respect.
Just simply really understanding the value that workers bring. That is
something that Andrew Cuomo has not done, and it is something that I would
do, just as a matter of doing what’s best for our state, for the people in
it. For the patients that our nurses care for, for making sure that our
milk is actually safe because it is actually getting inspected, you know,
all the sort of the basic modes of respect. But then the second level is
really looking at what we can do on a state level to support, to enable the
creation of unions in non-traditional areas, like in the car wash area or
elsewhere, with the changing economy.

YVES: Here in the U.S., the deep anti-union sentiment has been very
carefully inculcated for decades. I’m not telling you anything you don’t
know, but Germany has very powerful unions. It’s not like you can’t have a
very highly competitive economy and strong unions. I’m just astonished at
the lack of willingness to look at other models, but that’s where we’ve
been for a while.

TEACHOUT: We have to open up our imaginations, that’s for sure.

YVES: To switch gears a bit, what would you do to improve inner-city
education?

TEACHOUT: Education has been… You and I have been talking about some things
that you know I care about, but when I am on the campaign trail, what I
talk about the most, and this is such a deep commitment of mine, is
schools. Because Andrew Cuomo has really looted from school funding to pay
for tax breaks. And to pay for tax breaks for bankers and for folks who
don’t need it. And what we see is extraordinary rates of suspension, of
kids not graduating, and huge class sizes, no arts, or if there is art,
there is one art teacher for 1200 kids. I don’t think Andrew Cuomo
understands schools, and I think a lot of the people who are proposing
“school reform” as it is called, it is a perversion of the term reform, are
people who haven’t spent time in a classroom. I used to be a Special Ed
teacher’s aide, in a small classroom with 12 kids, and I will tell you, it
helped that I was in the classroom because every kid got to be paid
attention to as an individual. Children are still children, and they are
not widgets, and no amount of wishing is going to change that. That takes
direct investment in schools, in small class sizes, in arts, in counselors,
and the resources that support those schools. To me, that is
non-negotiable. There are always efforts to find magic bullet around school
some other way, maybe we can test our way into excellence, maybe we can
data-track our way into excellence. But schools are complicated because
kids are complicated, and you have to invest in them.

YVES: How do you respond to the enthusiasm for charter schools?

TEACHOUT: Well, charter schools are supposed to be an experiment, they are
not supposed to be a replacement for public education. I don’t mind a few
charters as experiments, but I am troubled by the idea of charters as part
of a multi-faced assault on public education itself, as a true alternative.
But most parents send their kids to charter schools because the public
schools aren’t taken care of. So, instead of turning to another magic
bullet, we’ve got to turn to our basic work, which is respecting teachers,
trusting and funding those schools.

YVES: OK. You and Tim Wu have called for a ban on fracking. I’ve been at
presentations where people who have had experience in places like Canada
claim that you can frack in a way that doesn’t damage aquifers. How do you
respond to people who claim that the problem isn’t fracking per se, but
that the fracking industry is unregulated and tougher regulations might
make it less dangerous.

TEACHOUT: Well, I’d just look at the science, and the science is pretty
clearly in on the extreme dangers of fracking – the toxicity, and also lack
of information we have about all the chemicals that are used. It is
actually inhibiting New York’s economic growth right now, that Gov. Cuomo
hasn’t pushed for a ban. I’m very concerned that, if re-elected, he would
immediately move toward a hydro-fracking experiment, because he has taken
over $1 million in pro-fracking money. So, to me, this is a case of, we
actually have to let the farmers and the people who are our land-owners
rest safe that they are not about to be assaulted by hydro-fracking.

YVES: So, what’s the trade-off? I mean, obviously, you’ve got the criticism
from the farmers. But you also have some pretty distressed counties on the
– I’m just being devil’s advocate here – on the Pennsylvania border here
who are very pro-fracking. So it’s seems as if this is a regional issue,
that some regions feel one way about it, and others feel differently.

TEACHOUT: Actually, I mean, but the southern tier is now a majority
anti-fracking. Opinions have changed. I think a lot of people were first
drawn to it because it sounded like jobs. But, there are other ways to get
jobs, like direct investment in schools, invest in the public
infrastructure, actually trying to build towards a long-term future instead
of the short-term approach of hydro-fracking, I mean, you and I know very
well what short-term economic models can lead to. They are highly fragile,
they can collapse, they are not the direction we should be moving in,
especially after 2008 and we are still experiencing the wreckage after that.

YVES: Right. Now, let’s assume that you and Tim win in the primary. Then,
you are going to face the heat of, that you are both academics, that you
don’t have any administrative experience. How do you respond to that?

TEACHOUT: Well, I was national director of the Sunlight Foundation. I have
served on a lot of boards, as well as done some private sector consulting,
and I am quite confident that the role of a governor is to express a clear
vision, hire great managers, work with them well, respect them. I am quite
ready for that role. I think probably like 1 in 12 or 1 in 10 governors
have not had prior electoral experience. Tim has worked at the FTC and also
in the private sector. One big difference between myself and Gov. Andrew
Cuomo is that you will always know where we stand. Very clear and, in my
view, that is an essential feature of leadership itself.

YVES: I just have one more question. One of the other issues is just that
you and Tim have, one of your strengths as candidates, is that you are from
the outside–

TEACHOUT: Absolutely!

YVES: — and not being part of the old boys’ network, but the flip side is
that you are then going to face a bureaucracy and a legislature. How do you
avoid the Jimmy Carter syndrome? Can you be pristine and still be effective?

TEACHOUT: Look, I know politics really well. I’ve been working in politics
for a long time. So, this may be the first elected office that I have run
for, but it is not certainly the first time that I have engaged in any part
of the political process, so I don’t have any illusions about how easy this
is. But what I see is that clarity and good management and good leadership
are essential.

YVES: OK. That’s really good. Any other final comments?

TEACHOUT: No. It was wonderful. Thank you so much. Let me know when this
goes up.

YVES: Thank you. I certainly will. I appreciate you making the time. And
best of luck.

[regional_school] Important Teachout Interview

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