Full Program

Part 1

As Americans sit down for their traditional Thanksgiving meal, we begin with the working poor who comprise most of the people on food stamps and they have just had their meager allotment cut by the Republican Congress. So we will look into the issues of hunger, food policy and the growing ranks of the working poor who do not make a living wage and have to depend on food stamps and food banks. Rebecca Smith, the Deputy Director of the National Employment Law Project joins us to discuss the two biggest employers of the working poor McDonalds and Walmart, who are attracting protest on this Thanksgiving and the following day of frenzied consumption, known as Black Friday.

Part 2

Then we speak with Lucio Guerrero, the Vice President of Communications for Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger relief organization and fourth largest charity. We discuss the growing demand at food banks since the recent cut, with more to come, in food stamps, and the work that Feeding America does in feeding 37 million Americans each year, including 14 million children and 3 million seniors.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Josh Sewell, the Senior Policy Analyst at Tax Payers for Common Sense about the nation’s agriculture policy that has Congress increasing subsidies for agribusiness while cutting food stamps for the poor and hungry. Since corn was a gift from the native Americans to the pilgrims on that first Thanksgiving, we look into how much our agriculture has been distorted since then with 60% of crop insurance going to growing corn, making this now largely inedible crop the largest recipient of farm subsidies, at a cost to taxpayers of $85 billion in less than 20 years.

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an analysis of a possible strategic shift in the Middle East away from Saudi Arabia as the prospects of normalizing relations with Iran improve. Andrew Scott Cooper, the author of “Oil Kings: How the U.S., Iran, and Saudi Arabia Changed the Balance of Power in the Middle East”, joins us to discuss the unusual alliance of Saudi Arabia and Israel both expressing alarm at America’s role in the recent P5+1 deal with Iran.

Part 2

Then we get an assessment of how the new agreement is being received in Iran and speak with Mehdi Semati who is a professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University and the author of “Media, Culture, and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State”. We discuss how the hardliners are dealing with the rapprochement and how the younger generation, who do not remember the Shah or the hostage crisis, see their country’s role in the world.

Part 3

Then finally we look into a new vision for the Catholic Church offered by Pope Francis in a just-released document that criticizes unbridled global capitalism which he calls the “globalization of indifference”. Internationally acclaimed author and theologian Matthew Fox, who was expelled from the Church by the previous Pope Benedict, joins us to discuss the Pope’s call for reforms in the church to make it more compassionate towards the poor as he castigates the “new idolatry of money”.