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November 17 - The Revolving Door From Treasury Secretary to Wall Street; The TPP and TAFTA in Trouble; Political Considerations Overwhelming Technical Needs
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We begin with the latest high-level official’s passage through the revolving door as the former Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner trades in public service for private gain joining the Wall Street private equity giant Warburg Pincus. William K. Black, the former litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and author of “The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One” joins us to discuss the unsurprising move from the public to the private sector by the man who made sure that Wall Street was made whole with taxpayer money after they almost destroyed the economy.
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Then we examine the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) that is stalled because of European outrage over NSA spying, much of which has been directed at the European partners in the agreement to find out what their negotiating positions are. The former counselor to the Secretary of Commerce Clyde Prestowitz, joins us to discuss pushback in Congress and from the Europeans as well as his recent article at Foreign Policy “The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Decline of American Hegemony”. |
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Then finally we discuss the uncertain fate of the Affordable Care Act following a vote in the House of 261 to 157 to gut Obamacare that passed with the help of 39 Democratic lawmakers. Dr. Susan Wood, a Professor of Health Policy and the Executive Director of the Jacobs Institute of Women’s Health at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, joins us to discuss how political considerations overwhelmed technical needs in the launching of healthcare.gov and what can be done to put Obamacare back on the rails. |
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November 14 - An Apologetic President, Nervous Democrats and Gleeful Republicans; Assessing the Real Numbers of Dead and Displaced in the Philippines; Inside the Ayatollah's "Democracy"
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We begin with an overview of what went wrong with the launch of Obamacare and how and when it can be fixed with James Morone, a Professor of Political Science at Brown University and author of “Wealthy, Healthy and Fair: The Politics of Health Care for a Good Society and his latest, “The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office”. We discuss the president’s mea culpa over the botched launch of healthcare.gov and the piling on from nervous Democrats and gleeful Republicans. |
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Then we go to the Philippines to speak with Steven Rood, the Asia Foundation’s country representative for the Philippines and regional advisor for Local Governance for an update on the national and local government’s efforts to address the humanitarian crisis in the devastated Leyte province where four million people are in dire need of food and medicine. |
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Then finally, with the Iranian Foreign Minister blaming France and the West for the breakdown of recent talks, and Secretary of State Kerry blaming Iran, we look into the thinking and the nature of a theocratic regime led by a Supreme Leader who has accrued more wealth than Iran gets in annual oil revenues. Iranian/American author Hooman Majd, the author of “The Ayatollah’s Democracy” and a new book “The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran”, joins us. |
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November 13 - The Growing Revolt Against the T.P.P.; Endemic Corruption in the Philippines; Going to Jail for Wearing a Toad Hat?
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We begin with a bi-partisan revolt in the House of Representatives against President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, following the leak of the draft text of a chapter on intellectual property rights published by Wikileaks. Lori Wallach, the Founder and Director of Global Trade Watch, a division of Public Citizen, joins us to discuss Tea Party and progressive opposition to the President’s fast track authority which could torpedo the deal.
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Then we examine the endemic political corruption in the Philippines that is hampering relief efforts while the very politicians from the ruling families who have looted the country for decades, are appearing on TV defending aid response. Michael Buehler, a Professor of Political Science at Northern Illinois University, who does political risk evaluations in the Philippines, joins us to discuss what is likely to happen to the aid that is pouring in from international donors, assuming it reaches those in need because of damage to the already neglected infrastructure. |
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Then finally we speak with the anti-corporatist activist the Reverend Billy who is facing a battery of charges and jail time for a 15 minute musical protest he and his gospel choir staged as a mock-religious revival at a Chase Bank in New York City, last month. They were wearing toad hats to commemorate the Golden Toad, forced into extinction by climate change, and the $2.17 billion with which Chase has financed coal companies involved in mountaintop removal. |
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November 12 - An Update From The Philippines and Climate Change with Global Justice; Gun Toting "Open Carry Texans" Intimidate Mothers; Fallout From "On The Beach" To Fallout From Fukushima
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We begin with the growing humanitarian disasters following the super-storm that tore through the Philippines displacing more than 600,000 people. Joining us from the Philippines to discuss the difficulties of getting relief to those in need is Rosario Guzman, a research associate with the Ibon Foundation which works for climate justice and on environmental, agricultural and economic issues in the Philippines. We will also speak with Ann Peterman, the Executive Director of the Global Justice Ecology Project who is concerned about the vulnerability of countries in the Global South that are suffering from the consequences of global warming caused by the Global North.
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Then we look into the faceoff at a restaurant outside of Dallas where a group of women and children had gathered for the first meeting of a local chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America that was interrupted by a posse of men and women armed with assault rifles who belong to an organization called Open Carry Texas. A member of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America who is afraid to give out her name joins us to discuss her group modeled on Mothers Against Drunk Driving that was formed after the Sandy Hook massacre, and how she was intimidated by the display of force from heavily armed gun right activists. |
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Then finally we speak with Katherine Kramer, the daughter of Stanley Kramer, the legendary producer/director of the Cold War classic “On the Beach”. She and actress/comedian Lily Tomlin are hosting the North American premiere of a new film “Fallout” that explores the mythology and reality of Neville Shute’s “On the Beach” and its relevance today to the continuing fallout from the meltdowns at Fukushima. |
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November 11 - "The Pity of War" - A Veterans Day Special Program of Poetry From WWI and WWII
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Today on Veterans Day we present a special broadcast to commemorate the 100th birthday of Benjamin Britten whose great work the Latin Mass for the dead “War Requiem” was commissioned to consecrate the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral that was destroyed by German bombers in World War II. As result of the destruction and the death of close friends in the war, Britten became a pacifist and his “War Requiem” was inspired by the poems of Wilfred Owen who was killed in World War I, one week before the armistice that ended The Great War, “the war to end wars”, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, a day which was originally called Armistice Day, which today we honor as Veterans Day.
Today’s program is called “The Pity of War” and it was performed last night at the UCLA/Hammer museum in Los Angeles by British stage and screen actress Rosalind Ayers and her husband actor and director Martin Jarvis. They read a selection of poems from World War I and World War II that depict the horror and futility of war, not the jingoistic patriotic verse that accompanied these massive tragedies, the first of which ended in an Armistice ninety five years ago today, an armistice in which historians have observed the seeds of World War II were sown out of the punitive reparations imposed on Germany by the victorious allies, since at the very same spot the armistice was signed, 22 years later, Adolph Hitler staged the signing of France’s surrender to Germany in World War II.
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