Background Briefing has a new home at BackgroundBriefing.org.
Please visit and bookmark the new site. You can search show archives here.
2012 Program Archive
June 12 - Middle Class Wealth Wiped Out; Are Republicans Deliberately Crashing the Economy?; Game Over for Sandusky
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with a report just out from the Federal Reserve that finds the recent economic crisis erased two decades of accumulated prosperity from America’s middle class. Mattea Kramer, a research analyst for the National Priorities Project joins us to discuss why, while the middle class’s wealth has been eviscerated, in 2011 the federal government handed a 4.4 billion dollar housing subsidy to the top 1% of Americans. |
 |
|
|
Then we examine whether the Republicans are deliberately crashing the U.S. economy to defeat Obama and the Democrats and help elect Romney and more Republicans. Michael Cohen, a Fellow at the Century Foundation and a columnist at Foreign Policy, where he covers politics and national security, joins us. He has an article in the UK Guardian that is attracting a lot of attention, “Did Republicans Deliberately Crash the US Economy?” |
 |
|
|
Then finally, after a second day of devastating testimony from young victims against the former Penn State football coach, we speak with the co-authors of a new book “Game Over: Jerry Sandusky, Penn State, and the Culture of Silence”. Bill Moushey a former crime reporter with the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and Bob Dvorchak, a veteran sports reporter, join us to explain how the Mother Theresa of Happy Valley was able to avoid prosecution for so long. |
|
| MUSIC: Jose Gonzalez - How Low; Gnarls Barkley - Crazy; Gary Jules - Mad World |
Tags:
June 11 - Make Russia Part of the Solution in Syria; The Architect of the Republican/Romney/Obama Health Plan; Did the Wisconsin Uprising Get Rolled by Electoral Politics?
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with escalating atrocities in Syria where the army and the “shabiha” death squads are poised to exterminate the town of Haffa and have the city of Homs under siege. Henri Barkey, a former member of the U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff on the Middle East joins us to discuss the failed mediation by Kofi Annan whose UN military observers are being denied access to the killing fields and are often shot at by Assad’s forces. |
 |
|
|
Then we speak with Christine Ferguson, the principal author of the Republican healthcare plan that was adopted by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and later by President Obama. She was the Commissioner of the Department of Public Health Services in Massachusetts under Governor Romney and we discuss what will happen if some or all of Obama’s Affordable Care Act is struck down by the Supreme Court. |
 |
|
|
Then finally Andy Kroll, a staff reporter in the Washington DC bureau of “Mother Jones” joins us. He has an article in the Huffington Post and Tom Dispatch “Getting Rolled in Wisconsin: Why Electoral Politics Sold Out the Popular Uprising in the Badger State – and Why it is Not Over”. We discuss why he considers the recall detrimental to a popular uprising and why much of the occupy movement and some progressives consider electoral politics irrelevant. |
 |
| MUSIC: Bright Eyes - The Trees Get Wheeled Away; Blind Alfred Reed - How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live; Stiff Little Fingers - Alternative Ulster |
Tags:
June 10 - House Republicans Gut Funds For Tax Cheating and Derivatives Enforcement; U.S. Divorcing Pakistan; Mexico's Uprising Against the Return of the PRI
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with the latest and most brazen mendacity displayed by House Republicans who in their latest spending bill are gutting money for IRS and SEC enforcement and for the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission, crippling their ability to regulate derivatives and other toxic swaps. William K Black, the former litigation director for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board who put hundreds of crooked bankers in jail after the Savings and Loan disaster of the 1980’s joins us. |
 |
|
|
Then we go to India to get an update on the U.S’s divorce from Pakistan and the Obama Administration’s efforts to woo Pakistan’s arch rival India. Christine Fair joins us. She is a professor in the Center for Peace and Security studies at Georgetown University and is a leading specialist on India and Pakistan, which she visits often and where she speaks the local languages. |
 |
|
|
Then finally in advance of tonight’s Presidential debate in Mexico we speak with Ioan Grillo a correspondent for Reuters in Mexico City where he has covered Mexican politics since 2001 and is the author of “El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency”. We discuss what changes may come if the PRI candidate wins, and how the PRD candidate Lopez Obrador would approach the failed war on drugs. |
 |
| MUSIC: Doom - Gazillion Ear; Nishta Nishta; Cafe Tacuba |
Tags:
June 7 - Why The Unions Failed In Wisconsin; The Impact of Citizens United;The Filmmaker of "Heist: Who Stole The American Dream"
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with an analysis of why the unions failed in Wisconsin with one third of union voters supporting Governor Walker along with nearly half of voters from union households. Les Leopold the Director of the Labor Institute and a strategic consultant to the Blue-Green Alliance of trade unions and environmental organizations joins us to discuss why a lot of working Americans do not support labor at a time of high unemployment and record disparity in wealth and opportunity in America. |
 |
|
|
Then we examine the impact of Citizens United on the Wisconsin vote with a nationally recognized expert on election law and campaign finance regulation. Richard Hasen, the Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine joins us to discuss the unfettered flow of outside money into Wisconsin, and the disparity between the financial clout of corporations and unions. |
 |
|
|
Then finally we speak with the film maker of a new feature documentary “Heist: Who Stole the American Dream”. Francis Causey, an investigative journalist turned citizen activist, was a producer and news editor at CNN, and since 2006 has been making her latest film that goes beyond documentaries such as “Inside Job” and “Too Big To Fail” in providing a long view of what led up to the financial crisis and capture of our economy and politics by the 1%. |
 |
Tags:
June 6 - What is the Democrat's Narrative?; A Run In Spain as Greece Goes Broke; Rebuilding the Dream After Wisconsin
|
|
LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM | |
|
|
We begin with Amatai Etzioni, a former Senior Advisor to the White House and Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at George Washington University. We discuss the implications of the victory of money over grassroots organization in Wisconsin and his article at CNN, “U.S. Economy Heading Straight for the Cliff”. |
 |
|
|
Then we further examine the impact of Wisconsin on the central theme of the Presidential race, the economy, and what likely fallout will come from Europe where Spain is facing a run on its banks and Greece it about to go broke in July. Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center For Economic and Policy Research joins us to analyze the state of the economy in an election year and what external factors might slow or reverse recovery. |
 |
|
|
Then finally former Advisor to the Obama White House and the founding president of “Rebuild the Dream”, Van Jones joins us to offer his analysis of the seven point victory of Governor Walker in Wisconsin and how progressives might recover from this demoralizing defeat. Following a successful Republican divide and conquer strategy largely financed by plutocrats that pitted the shrinking middle class against itself, we discuss Van Jones’s latest book “Rebuild the Dream” and how the 99% can reverse the race to the bottom to reclaim the American dream. |
 |
RSS Latest Radio Programs
Pacifica App