May 1 - Should We Believe The FCC Chairman on Net Neutrality; Tinkering With the Machinery of Death; Will Working Americans Have a Greater Voice in Their Government?

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the head of the FCC’s pushback at the annual meeting of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association where Chairman Wheeler warned the telecom and cable giants that the lack of competition in their industry was hurting consumers and that the FCC intended to write tough new rules to enforce net neutrality. Timothy Karr, the Senior Director of Strategy for Free Press joins us to discuss the widespread skepticism that instead of reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers as the courts have urged the FCC to do, Wheeler and the FCC intend to kill net neutrality by allowing cable and telecom monopolies to charge content providers payola for preferential treatment on the pipes they control into the home.

Part 2

Then we examine the possibility that national and international outrage over the botched execution in Oklahoma will lead a majority of Americans and the Supreme Court to rethink the wisdom and morality of capitol punishment. Randall Coyne, who teaches criminal law, capital punishment and constitutional law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, joins us. He has represented condemned prisoners in California, Oklahoma and Texas and was trial counsel on the defense team in the United States versus Timothy McVeigh and we discuss how much longer the U.S. can stand alone amongst advanced democracies tinkering with the machinery of death.

Part 3

Then finally on this May Day which workers around the world except in the United States celebrate, we speak with Thomas Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston who is a contributing editor to The Nation. We discuss the looming issue of income equality that is gaining traction in this election year with the new book by Thomas Piketty “Capital in the Twenty-first Century” a runaway best-seller, and assess the likelihood that working Americans will have a greater voice in their government that is largely responsive to the 1% in our money-driven political system.