Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an assessment of why the Democratic National Committee headed by Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz apparently buried the Democratic presidential debates to make them non-events instead of an opportunity to offer up an alternative to the hateful and divisive vision the Republican candidates are offering the country in their debates that are generating many times more audiences with record ratings. A Democratic strategist who served as a Special Assistant to the President for Public Liaison in the White House, Mike Lux, a partner at Democracy Partners and the co-founder and CEO of Progressive Strategies joins us. We discuss his article at The Huffington Post “What are Democrats to Do?” and the brain-dead petty politics of the DNC tipping the scale for Hillary to hurt Bernie Sanders, that ends up hurting the Democratic Party and American democracy.   

Part 2

Then, with the recent arrest of the poster boy for greed who jacked up the price of a 62 year old life-saving drug by 5,500%, we look into why drug prices in the U.S. are higher than anywhere else in the world and speak with Arthur Caplan. A Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU’s Langone Medical Center’s Department of Population Health, he joins us to discuss whether jailing one nasty little twerp is a distraction from the fact that the cost of the top brand-name drugs in the U.S. jumped 127% between 2008 and 2014 while they stayed the same in the UK where they pay three times less than we do, along with Brazil where drugs cost six times less and India where they cost 16 times less than we pay.

Part 3

Then finally we go to the U.K. to speak with Andrew Jennings, an investigative journalist who was the only reporter in the world banned from FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s press conferences. We discuss Sepp Blatter’s 8 year ban from soccer and whether FIFA itself should be banned as well as Andrew Jennings’ latest book “The Dirty Game: The Reporter Who Brought Down Sepp Blatter”. 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the arrest today of the poster boy for Wall Street greed and speak with Michael Lewis, the author of “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” and “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” which is now a movie starring Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling. We will discuss the growing capture of our politics by Wall Street and its increasing grip on our economy and discuss its amoral and sociopathic culture documented in “The Big Short” where the heroes win at the expense of destroying the lives of millions of their fellow Americans.

Part 2

Then we speak with Manuel Roig-Franzia a writer for The Washington Post who along with the Post’s investigative reporter Scott Higham wrote a recent article “The Drug-smuggling case that brought anguish to Marco Rubio’s family” which we discuss along with looking into what happened to the $15 million in cash that the DEA estimates Rubio’s drug-dealing brother in law had at his disposal that was never accounted for.

Part 3

Then as the yapping dogs of war among the Republican presidential candidates reach a crescendo as pundits clamor for American boots on the ground to fight the Islamic State, we will look into why our so-called allies in the region are dragging their feet. Peter Van Buren, a 24-year veteran Foreign Service Officer who after writing the book “We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People”, was stripped of his security clearance and diplomatic credentials by the State Department, joins us. We will discuss his article at The Nation “Washington to Whomever: Please Fight the Islamic State for Us” and the Obama Administration continued insistence that its coalition of Gulf States, the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shia will do the job even though it is abundantly clear that they won’t fight America’s war.  

Part 4

Then finally we speak with Amy Dillard, a Professor of Law at the University of Baltimore School of Law who served on a Baltimore commission to examine the in-custody death of a police prisoner. We will discuss the mistrial in the case against William Potter, one of the six officers charged in connection to Freddie Gray’s death in police custody, and assess the mood in Baltimore and how the trials might proceed.