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2013 Program Archive
May 16 - "The Real Scandal at the IRS"; Exposing the Real Face of the Tea Party; Phony Scandal Versus Urgent Issues
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We begin with President Obama on the defensive about minor officials in the IRS targeting “Tea Party” and other “Patriot” groups. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and columnist with the Los Angeles Times Michael Hiltzik joins us to discuss his article in the LA Times “The Real IRS Scandal” and whether it is more of a case of the IRS doing too little as opposed to too much, in going after flagrantly political groups applying for tax exemption in the name of “social welfare”. |
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Then with the Tea Party claiming political victimhood, we analyze the real nature of the Tea Party movement with Chris Parker, the author of a new book “Change They Can’t Believe in: The Tea Party and Reactionary Politics in America”. We discuss his thoroughly researched study of the Tea Party that presents itself as a new revolutionary phenomenon when in fact it is the old reactionary right re-packaged as a grassroots movement. With its funding from billionaires, it is much more the heir to the Know Nothing Party, The Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society than to those who inspired the American Revolution. |
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Then finally, with phony scandal overwhelming important substance, we will look further into the recent breaching of the threshold of 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, and speak with Michael Mann, the co-founder of the award-winning science website RealClimate.org who shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. We discuss the need for aggressive leadership to slap down the deniers and take urgent action to save the planet before we pass the point of no return. |
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May 15 - The Real Questions About Benghazi; Breast Cancer Treatment and Elective Surgery; The Radical Shift Underway in the Global Oil Market
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We begin with an analysis of what the real questions should be in regards to what happened in Benghazi on September 11 last year, as opposed to the trumped up partisan circus that has been largely generated by Fox News since then. A former CIA veteran, Melvin Goodman, the author of “National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism” joins us to discuss the facts behind the fiction as outlined in his article at Counterpunch “The Real Benghazi Scandal”. |
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Then we examine the issues raised about women’s health and breast cancer treatment that have followed actress Angelina Jolie’s New York Times op-ed where she revealed she undertook a prophylactic double mastectomy to avoid a genetic likelihood she would contract the disease that kills close to 40,000 women in America each year. Dr. Susan Wood a former FDA Commissioner for Women’s Health and Executive Director of the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services joins us to discuss the connection between breast cancer surgery and breast implants. |
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Then finally we discuss the radical shift underway as the U.S. changes from the world’s leading importer of oil to a net exporter, overtaking Russia as the world’s biggest gas producer by 2015. One of the most quoted analysts on energy issues, Fadel Gheit, Senior Vice President for Oil and Gas Research at Oppenheimer and Company joins us to explain the reshaping of the world’s energy markets and the shift in the global power balance outlined in a new report by the International Energy Agency. |
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May 14 - When Government Lies Are Not Uncovered, We End Up With Disasters Like Iraq; The Film that Exposed the Epidemic of Rape in the Military; Mixed Signals from Republicans on Immigration Reform
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We begin with a veteran investigative reporter specializing in national security issues, James Bamford, the author of “The Shadow Factory: Inside the Ultra-Secret NSA, from 9/11 to Spying on America”. We discuss the DOJ’s snooping on the AP and the implications it has for journalists trying to uncover government secrets and how, more often than not, when government lies are not uncovered, we end up with disasters like Iraq. |
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Then we speak with the Academy Award nominated director of “The Invisible War”, Kirby Dick, about how his documentary, as an example of advocacy journalism, has had a profound effect on uncovering the epidemic of sexual assault in the military, revelations that just last week were vindicated by a Pentagon report that estimates 26,000 sex crimes took place last year in the armed forces, a number that is likely to much lower than the actual number of assaults because so few are reported because of fear of retaliation where the victim often is blamed. |
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Then finally, we look into Republican attempts at immigration reform that are driven by their fear that demographics will make them a permanent minority party unless they can appeal to the fast-growing Latino constituency. Molly Worthen, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina, who had an article in Sunday’s New York Times, “Love Thy Stranger as Thyself”, joins us to discuss how the Christian right is trying to embrace immigration reform within a Party in which a majority of Republicans stigmatize Latinos as being a burden; taking jobs, housing and healthcare from white Americans. |
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May 13 - Is the DOJ's Snooping on the AP an Attack on Freedom of the Press?; The President Tries to Slap Down Benghazi; Did the IRS Target the Tea Party?
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We look into the breaking story that the Justice Department secretly collected two months of telephone records of reporters and editors at the Associated Press. Ben Wizner, the Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project joins us to examine charges made in a letter the AP sent to the Attorney General expressing their outrage. |
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Then we assess the two stories in the news that the Republicans and Fox News have seized on and amplified, inviting further Congressional hearings by the Republican Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa. A former Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence, Wayne White, a friend and colleague of the slain American Ambassador to Libya, joins us to discuss the President’s remarks at today’s White House press conference with the British Prime Minister where Obama castigated Republicans for dishonoring those who died at Benghazi by turning it into “a political circus”. Having called it “a sideshow”, we discuss the President’s effort to dismiss the trumped up cover-up story that the Republicans are trying to keep alive to apparently damage Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. |
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Then finally, with talk of impeaching Obama and charges of political thuggery in the air, we look into the other major trumped up scandal that is brewing over an effort by mid-level IRS employees to deal with the flood of 501c-4 tax-exempt applications from largely Republican front groups claiming to be involved in “social welfare” that have been unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. Ellen Aprill, a professor of tax law at Loyola Law School, along with Brian Galle, a professor of tax law at Boston College of Law, join us to discuss whether the IRS’s apology for flagging tax-exempt applications from groups using the words “tea party” or “patriot” that was more extensive than the IRS Commissioner Douglas Schulman first reported to Congress, will dampen Tea Party threats to sue the IRS. |
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May 12 - An Anthropologist Who Uncovered Genocide in Guatemala; The Highest Level of CO2 in 3.6 Million Years; The Broken Liberal Narrative and How to Fix It
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We begin with justice delayed since the 1980’s until last Friday, with an 80 year sentence given to Guatemalan General Rios Montt for genocide. Cultural anthropologist Victoria Sanford, who has spent the past 20 years uncovering evidence of genocide in Guatemala, joins us to discuss the fight for justice for the Mayan people, 200,000 of whom were slaughtered by a military, who along with an entrenched oligarchy, still rule this cruel and corrupt narco-state. |
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Then we look into the alarming findings from the Scripps Oceanographic Institute’s Observatory on Hawaii’s Mauna Loa that now measure CO2 in the atmosphere at 400 parts per million, the highest the earth has seen in 3.6 million years. Dr Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists joins us to discuss the significance of this finding of the rapid rise of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is further evidence, as if we needed it, of global warming, climate change and rising sea levels on an endangered planet. |
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Then finally we speak with Dr Amitai Etzioni, professor of International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Communitarian Studies at George Washington University. We discuss his latest article at The Atlantic, “The Liberal Narrative is Broken, and Only Populism Can Fix It” and the fact that for every one liberal in America there are two conservatives, and that current ideas liberals have about changing that uncomfortable political equation are delusional. |
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