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2016 Programs
2016 Program Archive
September 8 - Obama Comes out Fighting for Jobs; A New WPA?; The Real 9/11 Conspiracies
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We begin with an analysis and responses to the just concluded Presidential address to Congress on the issues of jobs and getting Americans back to work. Robert Johnson, the Executive Director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking joins us to assess the content of the speech and the chances of the president’s proposals being implemented. |
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Then Randall Wray, a senior Scholar at the Levy Economics Institute joins us to critique the president’s jobs proposal and argue that a direct job creation program like the WPA would create more demand than extending unemployment and payroll tax cuts while providing the necessary improvements to our decaying infrastructure. |
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Then finally we speak with Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, the co-authors of a new book “The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden”. We discuss the real conspiracies surrounding 9/11 that remain unanswered, obscured by the endless manufactured nonsense propagated by the 9/11 “truthers” that distracts people from the real mistakes, malfeasance and misdeeds of the U.S. Government and the Intelligence community. |
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September 7 - Post-Qaddafi Rifts in North Africa; Joe Stiglitz on the Cost of 9/11; Downward Economic Mobility
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First, we look into the regional consequences of the fall of Qaddafi as looted arms are proliferating south into Niger where Agadez has become a flourishing arms bazaar. We speak with Professor Hamoud Salhi, a specialist on Algeria, where the Algerian government is sheltering members of Qaddafi’s family, and where quite possibly Qaddafi himself is hiding out. |
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Next, we continue with an accounting of the price we paid for 9/11 from Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. He has an article out now “The Price of 9/11” and we calculate the costs of the wars since 9/11 that have exceeded Dr Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes’ earlier conservative calculation of 3 to 5 trillion dollars |
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Then, we look into the state of the American Dream and the shrinking Middle Class and speak with Erin Currier, the Project Manager of the Economic Mobility Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts, who have released a new study that finds nearly one third of Americans who grew up middle class in the 1970s have fallen out of the middle class as adults. |
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September 6 - Texas is Burning; Water For Oil in Canada; The Reverend Billy on 9/11
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We begin with an analysis of the growing number and frequency of weather anomalies, hurricanes followed by a deadly series of wildfires engulfing Texas. Rick Piltz, the Director of Climate Science Watch joins us to assess the causes behind what appears to be a change in climate, a change that the governor of Texas, who interrupted his presidential campaign to deal with the fires, claims is not happening. |
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Then, we look into the tar sands oil pipeline controversy from a Canadian perspective with Cleo Paskal who is a fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs and a consultant to the U.S. Department of Energy, NATO and the OSCE. She is the author of “Global Warring; How Environmental, Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map”. |
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Then, finally we hear from the Reverend Billy, an anti-corporate activist who takes on the role of a revivalist minister with his Church of Earth-al-ujah to preach against consumerism and militarism. We talk about what he has planned in New York for this coming weekend’s tenth anniversary remembrance of 9/11. |
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September 5 - Labor Day Blues; Reviving Labor and Restoring the American Dream
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First, we speak with Les Leopold who directs the Labor Institute and the Public Health Institute and is a strategic consultant to the Blue-Green Alliance which brings together trade unions and environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the United Steel Workers Union.
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Then, to get a sense of where the labor movement stands today in comparison to its strength and percentage of the workforce that was unionized in previous decades, we speak with Leon Fink, who edits the journal “Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas”. We discuss what might revive the labor movement and restore the American Dream, as the current recession deepens and jobs, or the lack of them, become grist for the political mill in the upcoming election year. |
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September 4 - Getting Out of Muslim Lands; Liberating America From Wall Street; Labor Day and Jobs
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We begin with an assessment of U.S. Foreign Policy post-9/11 with Graham Fuller, a former Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA who also served as the CIA’s Kabul Station Chief. Ten years later, more bogged down than ever in Afghanistan, we ask whether we are playing into Al Qaeda’s hands and digging the hole deeper with boots on the ground in Muslim lands. |
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Then, in advance of President Obama’s speech on jobs, we look into the question of how a gridlocked government can create jobs and how the economy can be revived with David Korten the co-chair of the New Economy Working Group. He has a plan to liberate America from Wall Street. |
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Then, finally, on this labor day weekend, labor historian Jefferson Cowie, the author of “Stayin Alive: The 1970’s and the Last Days of the Working Class” joins us to assess the state of labor and how the American dream can be revived in an era of government bashing and lowered expectations. |
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