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June 10 - Time to Tread on the Insurrectionists; Senator Collins Helps the Trucking Lobby Exploit and Exhaust Truckers; Wall Street Buys Members of the Congressional Black Caucus
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We begin with the shootings in Las Vegas on Sunday and the 74th school shooting since Sandy Hook in Oregon on Tuesday, and speak with Joshua Horwitz, the Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. We look into the NRA slogan that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun”, and how the NRA’s reckless and dangerous backing of conceal-carry laws backfired in Las Vegas, where a citizen with a conceal-carry permit was killed trying to stop a bad guy with a gun. We also discuss Joshua Horwitz’s article at The Huffington Post “In Wake of Las Vegas Killings, It’s Time to Tread on Insurrectionists”.
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Then, we examine the alarming statistics of 317,000 trucks involved in crashes in the U.S. in 2012 that left 3,921 killed and 104,000 injured, and look into efforts by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, to undo recent reforms meant to curb trucker fatigue that appears to be the cause of the crash of the Wal-Mart 18 wheeler that severely injured Tracy Morgan and killed his fellow comedian Jimmy Mack. Henry Jasny, Vice President and General Counsel of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety joins us to discuss how the powerful trucking lobby, the American Trucking Association, exploits and exhausts truckers and endangers motorists and passengers on America’s highways by buying the political clout in Washington to operate their “sweatshops on wheels.” |
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Then finally we speak with Marcus Stanley, the Political Director of Americans for Financial Reform, about the way the Wall Street banking lobby has bought off members of the Congressional Black Caucus to give their bills the stamp of left wing social justice approval while they attempt to roll back key provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act to regulate derivatives. We also look into the irony that while Democrats are running against the Koch brother in this year’s election, a number of House Democrats are carrying out the Koch brothers’ deregulation agenda of Wall Street in exchange for campaign funds from Wall Street. |
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June 9 - Obama's Move to Ease Student Debt; The Pakistani Taliban's New Front in Karachi; The Wal-Mart Driver who Crashed after No Sleep for 24 Hours
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We begin with President Obama’s announcement Monday to help ease student loan debt with an executive order that expands Obama’s “Pay as You Earn” program.Jennifer Wang, who was at the White House signing, joins us. She is the Policy and Advocacy Manager at Young Invincibles. We discuss how many of the indentured generation will get relief from this executive action and examine Senator Elizabeth Warren’s bill that Obama endorsed, which allows student borrowers to refinance. |
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Then we speak with Rafia Zakaria, a columnist with Dawn, Pakistan’s largest English-language newspaper, about the brazen Taliban attack on the VIP section of Karachi’s international airport and her article at Al Jazeera, “Taliban’s Rise in Karachi Must Be Stopped”. We discuss the escalating series of Taliban attacks in the huge port city and Prime Minister Sharif’s stalled peace talks with the Taliban, as well as his efforts to attract foreign investment that is likely to be hurt by this latest terrorist attack. |
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Then finally we look into the crash of a Wal-Mart 18 wheeler truck driven by a company driver who dozed off and rear-ended a limo full of comedians, killing “Jimmy Mack” and severely injuring Tracy Morgan. The driver told police he had not slept for 24 hours.Liza Featherstone, a New York City-based journalist and author of “Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart” joins us to assess whether this incident is another example of Wal-Mart’s exploitative attitude towards employees who they prefer to call associates in lieu of the fact that they don’t pay a lot of their workers a living wage or cover healthcare, forcing many of them onto public assistance. |
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June 8 - The U.S. and Iran Meet to Jump-Start Negotiations; The "Coronation" of Egypt's General Sisi; Billionaire Bullion Buying our Politics
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We begin with an analysis of the face-to-face talks between the U.S. and Iran starting on Monday in Geneva, meant to jump-start the broader negotiations on a nuclear deal that appears doubtful will be reached before the July 20 deadline. Nader Hashemi, the Director of the Center For Middle East Studies at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver joins us to discuss the urgency to get a deal done before spoilers on both sides weigh in, which is particularly likely if the talks are extended for another six months.
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Then we look into the “coronation” of General Sisi in Egypt and the climate of fear amongst both the Muslim Brotherhood and the secular liberal opposition as mass sentencing of political prisoners continue and Egypt’s John Stewart steps down from his satirical political TV show under pressure from the military who have enacted a law that outlaws insulting General Sisi. Dr. Sheila Carapico, a Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Richmond and the Former Chair of the Political Science Department at the American University in Cairo joins us to discuss the diminishing influence of the U.S. over political events in Egypt and the broader Middle East. |
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Then finally we speak with Kenneth Vogel, the Chief Investigative Reporter for Politico who tracks the confluence of money, politics and influence over our governance that is becoming increasingly dominated by billionaires. We will discuss the money from plutocrats pouring into the upcoming mid-term elections and the expected avalanche of billionaire bullion expected to swamp the 2016 presidential elections as well as Ken Vogel’s latest book, just out, “Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, one suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp – on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics”. |
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June 6 - Blowback from Syria; A Marine Veteran of Afghanistan on the Shameful Attack on an American POW; Spies and Hackers in the World of Cyber-Espionage
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We begin with a new study that finds there are more foreign fighters in Syria today than the total number of holy warriors who went to Afghanistan during the long war against Soviet occupation. A former senior British Intelligence official Richard Barrett, a director of the Soufan group, a New York-based security consultancy company, and author of the study, joins us to discuss the concerns of blowback in Europe and elsewhere from returning Jihadists back from the Syrian battlefield, as apparently was the recent case in Brussels where an attack on a Jewish museum carried out by a member of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, killed three people.
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Then we be joined by Matthew Hoh a former Marine Corps company commander who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the former Director of the Afghanistan Study Group at the State Department and the Pentagon. We discuss the upcoming ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 6, D Day, where Matthew Ho will be launching a billboard across from the State Department displaying a picture of Daniel Ellsberg with a quote from the Vietnam-era whistleblower urging today’s whistleblowers to come forward to “save a war’s worth of lives”. We also discuss the shameful Republican-orchestrated attacks on an American POW that the Press is dutifully parroting. |
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Then finally we speak with Washington Post columnist and best-selling author David Ignatius, who has covered the Middle East and the CIA for 25 years, about his new book “The Director”. We explore the world of cyber-espionage and the roles of key players like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange who are forcing the CIA to relearn the basics so that the CIA can operate in a new world where security is never guaranteed for long, as advancement in technology constantly levels the playing field. |
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June 4 - The Senate Moves to Undo the Supreme Court's Permission to Buy Elections; The Real Costs of the Snowden NSA Leaks; States and Cities Move Ahead Raising the Mininum Wage
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We begin with the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on a constitutional amendment to nullify recent Supreme Court decisions and restore Congress’ power to regulate campaign finance. Jamie Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law, who testified in favor of the constitutional amendment, joins us to discuss his Senate testimony and the political polarization surrounding the issue of money in politics where in the last four years the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to unlimited and unattributed money in politics that has mostly benefited Republicans.
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Then with the German parliament announcing it will investigate the NSA’s tapping of Chancellor Merkel’s phone, and a recent BBC World Service poll on public opinions in 24 countries that found views of the U.S. have deteriorated sharply among citizens in Spain, Germany and Brazil where extensive U.S. surveillance activity has been exposed, we examine the rising global cost to the United States and to U.S. businesses from the Snowden leaks with Danielle Kehl, a policy analyst at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. We discuss her article at CNN “A Year After Snowden, the Real Costs on NSA Surveillance” and how much U.S. economic interests have been the real casualty while most of the focus has been on the tradeoff between individual privacy and national security. |
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Then finally we speak with Bill Lester, a Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where he researches the impact of minimum wage and living wage policies on urban economic development. We discuss the passage of a new $15 minimum wage law in Seattle, Washington and assess its national impact as more and more cities and states push for a higher minimum wage and demonstrations by fast-food workers intensify while the Federal Government remains paralyzed with its minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour. |
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