Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the effort by the campaigns of most of the Republican presidential candidates to take control of future debates away from the RNC and essentially decide on what questions are asked by the media and who gets to ask them. Catherine Rampell, an opinion columnist with the Washington Post joins us to discuss her latest op-ed at the Post “The Republicans are Right. We in the Media do Suck” and how, having learned to dodge difficult questions by accusing the moderators of bias, the candidates are now leveraging their clout with the networks because the debates have generated high ratings, to make sure future moderators don’t practice journalism.  

Part 2

Then we look into the rise of Marco Rubio who is widely seen as the winner of the last debate and speak with the award-winning journalist and author Ann Louise Bardach about her profile of Marco Rubio for Politico Magazine “Prodigal Son: Marco Rubio’s complicated Cuban legacy”. We discuss how in a case similar to the current attack by the RNC on Telemundo, “Team Rubio” used the RNC to go after Univision for a report they did on Marco Rubio’s brother-in-law who was a lieutenant to the chain saw-wielding leader of a powerful Miami drug cartel who Al Pacino’s character in the movie “Scarface” is based on.

Part 3

Then finally, as speculation grows over the cause of the high-altitude breakup of a Russian airliner that crashed into the Sinai desert killing all aboard, we examine the no-man’s-land that Egypt’s Sinai has become and speak with Youssef Ibrahim, a political risk consultant who was a senior Middle East correspondent for The New York Times for 18 years. He joins us to discuss the on-going war between the Egyptian Army and various criminal and jihadist groups in the Sinai, including the self-declared Islamic State which has claimed credit for shooting down the Russian passenger jet. 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the big moment in last night’s Republican presidential debate when Senator Marco Rubio parried Governor Jeb Bush’s attack on his former protégé quoting an editorial in Florida’s Sun Sentinel calling for Rubio’s resignation from the Senate because of his record-low attendance and voting record. Rosemary O’Hara, the editorial page editor of the Sun Sentinel who is a director of the Association of Opinion Journalists and a four-time juror of the Pulitzer Prizes who wrote the editorial “Marco Rubio should resign, not rip us off”, joins us to discuss her state’s aggressively ambitious absentee senator.

Part 2

Then we look into “A Tale of Two Retirements”, a new study from the Center for Effective Government and the Institute for Policy Studies that finds 100 of America’s CEO’s have as much in retirement assets as 41% of American families. The authors of the study, Scott Klinger and Sarah Anderson, joins us to discuss the inequality gap where David Novak, the CEO of YUM Brands has a retirement nest egg of $234 million while hundreds of thousands of YUM employees at Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC have no company retirement assets whatsoever.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Lisa Gilbert, the Director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch who is a contributor to the National Journal’s “Expert Blog” on lobbying and ethics. She joins us to discuss the ideological riders that will be attached to the new budget bill that will not just de-fund Planned Parenthood, but undo EPA protections, stop the SEC from having corporations disclose their political spending, block rules mandating rest periods for truckers and prevent the FCC from enforcing new net neutrality rules, among many other poison pills slipped in unless the public raises it voice to stop these sweetheart backroom dirty deals.