Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the first day of the 114^th Congress and look into the election results for the speaker of the House with John Boehner surviving a rebellion from radicals, Tea Party candidates and Libertarians to win reelection to preside over a restive caucus. Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Daily Beast who covers the Congress, joins us to discuss his article at The Daily Beast “Kamikaze Congress Prepares to Strike Boehner” and profile the colorful array of dissident candidates unhappy with the GOP leadership who offered themselves up as alternatives to the incumbent.

Part 2

Then we analyze the factors contributing to the continuing drop in oil prices with West Texas Intermediate Crude falling to $48 a barrel on Tuesday. Andrew Scott Cooper, a contributing columnist to The Guardian’s Tehran Bureau and to Foreign Policy and the author of “The Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran and Saudi Arabia Changed to Balance of Power in the Middle East”, joins us to discuss the role of Saudi Arabia in flooding the global oil market to lower the price which negatively impacts Iran with whom the Saudis are engaged in a proxy war and, coincidentally countries the U.S. is pressuring; Russia and Venezuela as well as Iran.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the Syrian refugee crisis that had led Lebanon to issue visa restrictions since the tiny country of 4 million has already taken in more than 1.6 million refugees from neighboring Syria. Daryl Grisgraber, who leads Refugee International’s research and advocacy related to the Middle East and North Africa, focusing mainly on the Syrian displacement crisis, joins us to discuss the impact the outflow from Syria is having on Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, as well as the recent phenomenon of “ghost ships” full of Syrian refugees heading for Italian shores without crews or anyone manning the bridge.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the latest display of disrespect towards the mayor of New York from members the NYPD at the funeral of a police officer killed in the line of duty. Joe Domanick, an award-winning investigative journalist, author and Associate Director of the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Law joins us to discuss the man caught in the middle between an embattled mayor and angry rank and file, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton, who is profiled in Joe Domanick’s new book “Blue: The Ruin and Redemption of the LAPD” and who had asked his officers to show respect for Mayor de Blasio at Sunday’s funeral of the fallen Officer Wenjian Liu.

Part 2

Then we look into the top priority of the new Republican Congress which is to change the way how the government measures the impacts of tax cuts on federal revenues, thus allowing Republican lawmakers to reward their wealthy backers with tax cuts whose real impact on the federal deficit will be shielded. The author of “We Are Better Than This: How Government Should Spend Our Money”, Edward Kleinbard, a Professor of Law at the University of Southern California and a former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, joins us to discuss the hypocrisy of the deficit hawks and their apparent intention to bankrupt the government in order to destroy social programs, as well as his article in The New York Times "A Republican Ruse to Make Tax Cuts Look Good”.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the reasons behind the rout of a multinational force which fled from a Nigerian army base on the border with Chad and abandoned the civilian residents of the town of Baga in the face of an attack from Boko Harum. Aniedi Okure, the Executive Director of the Africa Faith and Justice Network joins us to discuss the inability of the government of Goodluck Jonathan to address the growing threat from Boko Harum and the Nigerian military’s apparent lack of morale and motivation.