Full Program

Part 1

We begin with today’s rulings from the Supreme Court that will have a profound impact on the survival of labor unions and on undermining the separation of church and state by extending protections limited to churches to private for-profit corporations, making an employer’s religious beliefs more important than an employee’s rights. Elizabeth Wydra, Chief Counsel of the Constitutional Accountability Center joins us to discuss the latter and the implications of this radical ruling by the court’s conservative corporatist majority that expands the powers of “closely-held” corporations like Cargill, Mars and Koch industries, who already account for 52% of private employment and 51% of private-sector output, over their employees.  

Part 2

Then we examine the other Supreme Court ruling against public sector unions that exempts Medicaid-funded home care workers and other workers who are not seen by the conservative corporatist justices as “full-fledged public employees” from joining unions and paying dues. William Gould, a Stanford Law Professor specializing in labor and discrimination law who previously served as Chairman of the National Labor Relations Board joins us to discuss this “nose of the camel” ruling that opens the way for corporations and their representatives on the Supreme Court, to go after the foundation of the court’s “Abood” ruling that allows unions to collect due and thus be viable.

Part 3

Then finally China expert Perry Link, who in banned from China because he was the recipient of the politburo’s leaked “Tiananmen Papers”, joins us from Taiwan to discuss the referendum in Hong Kong that was a protest vote against China’s encroachment on democracy in the former British colony that has a tenuous “one country, two systems” democratic autonomy from the mainland. We also discuss the Chinese president’s recent pledge to India and Myanmar that “China does not subscribe to the notion that a country is bound to seek hegemony when it grows in strength.“                                                 

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting in Paris with top Saudi, Emirati and Jordanian diplomats ahead of a meeting in Saudi Arabia with King Abdullah on Friday. Ramzy Mardini, who served in the Office of the National Security Advisor to the Vice President and on the Iraq desk at the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs joins us to discuss the stunning success of ISIS in Iraq that has deeply unnerved the Jordanian regime that now has the terrorist organization on its borders with Syria and Iraq, which also has the authoritarian Sunni monarchs in the Gulf reconsidering their support for Jihadist radicals and concerned about a possible rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran.

Part 2

Then, as Tea Party Republicans move to shut down the Export-Import Bank that was created early in FDR’s New Deal, we speak with Michael Lind, the co-founder of the New America Foundation and author of “Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States”. We discuss his article at Politico “Why Big Business Fears the Tea Party” and the ideological inconsistency of the populist Right who oppose crony capitalism and the Export-Import bank for subsidizing U.S. manufacturers while supporting agricultural subsidies and the Military Industrial Complex, as well as the hypocrisy of their backers like the Koch brothers who have applied for Ex-Im loans.

Part 3

Then finally Carl Deal joins us. He is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker whose latest film is the new feature documentary “Citizen Koch” opening nationwide Friday. We discuss the latest political scandal in Wisconsin involving Governor Scott Walker who is featured in the film, and the growing influence of dark money in determining our politics as well as the outsized role of the Koch brothers in funding a myriad of fronts and so-called “social welfare” 501C-4 outside political groups that protect the anonymity of billionaire donors.