Full Program

Part 1

We begin with S.E.C’s approval of a rule to have American public companies regularly reveal the gap between what they pay their chief executives and the pay of their employees. Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is the lead author of 20 annual “Executive Excess” reports joins us to discuss how, in spite of relentless lobbying from corporate America, this provision from the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act has finally succeeded and will begin to shed light on the growing income gap in America where fifty years ago a CEO was paid 20 times as much as his employees, compared to today where the gap in CEO pay is 300 times as much as what the average employee is paid.

Part 2

Then we hear from the longest serving independent member of Congress in American history, Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running for President of the United States as a Democrat. We discuss the fate of the P5+1 deal with Iran that President Obama defended today in a passionate speech at American University and reflect on tomorrow’s 50^th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has been undermined by the Supreme Court, allowing Republican legislatures to suppress the votes of minorities, as well as getting an update on how the Sanders campaign is doing now that he is in a statistical tie with Hillary Clinton in the latest New Hampshire poll.

Part 3

Then finally we get an analysis of why the Iranians went along with the P5+1 deal and why Israel alone is the only country in the world opposed to it. Abbas Milani, the Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University who taught at Tehran University’s Faculty of Law and Political Science and was also on the board of the University’s Center for International Relations, joins us. We discuss the forces inside Iran who are chaffing under the unpopular and repressive theocratic government and how American business will be left in the dust if the Congress kills the deal.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the growing speculation that Vice President Biden will enter the 2016 Democratic presidential race which is largely being generated by the media following a column by The New York Times’ columnist Maureen Dowd who quoted the late Beau Biden’s dying wish that his father run because “the country would be better off with Biden values”. Jacob Heilbrunn, a Senior Editor at the National Interest and a former senior editor at The New Republic and editorial writer for the Los Angeles Times, joins us to discuss whether Republican Clinton-haters and Democratic Clinton-haters like Maureen Dowd are concocting this story or whether the 72 year old Biden, who would be the oldest candidate to run for the presidency, is actually contemplating challenging Hillary Clinton.

Part 2

Then we look into President Obama’s announcement today, unveiling his Clean Power Plan that he called “the biggest, most important step we have ever taken” in dealing with climate change. Jody Freeman, the founding director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental Law and Policy Program and author of “Global Climate Change and U.S. Law”, joins us to discuss the first national limits to be imposed on power plants that are responsible for 40% of all U.S. global warming emissions. We address the impending blizzard of legal challenges and assess the prospects for a 32% cut by 2030 in carbon emissions from the power sector being implemented under the Clean Air Act.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Duncan Campbell, a veteran British investigative journalist who has been battling his country’s Draconian secrecy laws for decades. He joins us to discuss changes made since the Snowden revelations and his article at The Intercept, “My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers”.