Democracy? In the USA? Yes, Ending Corporate Personhood.
Have you ever wondered about the legal fiction of corporate personhood? You are hardly alone. There’s a movement rapidly gaining steam to amend the Constitution to do away with this tremendous power now given to corporate entities at the expense of …
Occupy the School of the Americas
It’s known as a school for assassins and military coups. Though it was supposed to be shut down years ago, instead they just changed the name to Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. The Defense Dept argues it’s just a few bad apples b…
The SuperCommittee: What To Expect
Democrats and Republicans kicked the can down the street with the idea that the secretive supercommittee would make the hard choices on deficit cutting instead of them. In this example of bipartisanship, it appears the interests of average citizens may…
Is OWS Shifting the Center Back to the Center?
Since the center has shifted so far to the right in recent years, what used to be the center in American politics is now seen as left. The New America Foundation’s Michael Lind wonders if the popularity of Occupy Wall Street may indicate a real change …
Agent Orange at 50
The first military use of Agent Orange was in 1961. There’s a new book out, called Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam. In this segment, author Fred Wilcox discusses what he’s discovered in thirty years of researching the subje…
9 Years Later: Questions in the Death of Paul Wellstone
It was October 25. 2002 that a freak accident took the lives of Senator Paul Wellstone and five others. Wellstone, of course, was the biggest thorn in the side of the White House’s planned war on Iraq. The guest on this show is Jim Fetzer who has thoro…
Feminism Now
It’s been part of American culture since the sixties. On this show we look into how feminism has evolved, with author Anna David, whose new book Falling for Me is experiencing brisk sales.
We know what it was back then, but what does feminism me…
Young People In Wall Street or On Wall Street: Look to Parenting
The first guest, Toni Nagy, says “everyone who works for Wall Street has mommy and daddy issues.” The Salon and Huffington Post columnist looks to how we parent the curent generation as a major factor if we want more young citizens who are not just con…
New History Book on What America’s Left Has Accomplished
While the left has very few electoral victories, author Michael Kazin argues it has very effectively changed the nation. The author of A Godly Hero: William Jennings Bryan talks about what’s gone right and wrong with America’s left, and ideas fo…
How Occupy Wall St. is Consistent with American History
It’s been there since the very beginning of America: the struggle between ordinary people for economic democracy and the creditor class which fears and tamps down that democracy. In this hour, William Hogeland, author of two books: Declaration, and The…
The Best Among Us: Chris Hedges on Occupy Wall Street
Outspoken author of The Death of the Liberal Class, veteran journalist Chris Hedges says those young people at Occupy Wall Street are the real patriots, the real conservatives putting fears aside to take on what he calls “the criminal class.” On this s…
Whistleblowers Protect the Public. Who’s Protecting the Whistleblowers?
Truth-telling in the face of powerful and fierce resistance; it’s part of our American identity. From Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle to unnecessarily vulnerable personnel carriers in Iraq, the average citizen depends on those brave enough to tell th…
UN Vote On Palestine: Pros and Cons
Some say the fact that Hamas is against it means the proposed United Nations vote on recognizing Palestine as a state means it’s probablya good idea. On the other hand, many observers see it as a power play by Mahmoud Abbas. To analyze what’s at stake …
Crossroads for Nuclear Power Now?
Fukushima. The NRC trying to ram through a 20 year extension for Seabrook. Entergy fighting Vermont’s legal power over the Vernon plant. Huge public relations campaigns to sell us on “safe clean nuclear.” Presidential candidates talking about…
Ten Years After 9/11: The State of Our Freedoms
Aside from the nearly 3,000 lives lost, what lasting damage has been done to our cherished traditional American liberties? On the first segment, Burt’s guest is Marjorie Cohn, immediate past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She specifies reason…
Liberals and Ron Paul. Really?
Some progressives disenchanted with President Obama may be looking seriously at Republican Ron Paul. On this show, Alternet Washington Bureau Chief Adele Stan does just that: she takes a deeper look at who Ron Paul is and the actual positions he …
Perry: More Than The Usual Pandering to the Religious Right
How different from the usual flock of Republican presidential wannabes is front-runner Texas Governor Rick Perry? All candidates since Reagan have sought the support of the Christian Right, but there is evidence suggesting he, and Micelle Bachmann, are…
New MLK Memorial: The Man Was Not The Myth
The mainstream media have been so wary of Martin Luther King’s true message that when Glenn Beck claims to have inherited his mantle, millions actually believe him. Burt’s guest on this show, Huffington Post’s RJ Eskow takes a look at the real bra…
Tea Party Dances on FDR’s Grave; He Lives Yet
The Tea/Republican Party has been laregly successful in their spin that FDR failed. But beliefs once again do not match reality. Here two Roosevelt scholars, Drs. David Woolner and Thomas Ferguson, discuss the real truth about the New Deal and it…
Is George Wallace Reincarnated into The Koch Brothers?
In 2009, the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity pushed a movement to re-instate segregation in Wake County North Carolina through a school board election. There’s a new video about the effort and AfP is threatening to sue the producers. On the fir…
Railroaded: How We Got to Modern Corporate America
The Tea Party these days looks with fondness to the 19th century as a time of rugged invidualism and unemcumbered free markets. As with so many mythic images, reality is exceedingly different. Like corporate personhood? Thank the railroads. Ever notice…
Debt Ceiling Debate Unnecessary: Galbraith
Even though the debt ceiling has been raised many times without flourish, the Republicans, with the support of the Obama White House, have effectively sucked the oxygen away from actual issues of economic security. On this show, economist James K. Galb…
The Necessity of Confronting the Powert of the Financial Industry
Raymond Learsy is author of Oil and Finance: The Epic Corrpution 2006-2010 , and is a Reagan Republican who writes in the Huffington Post of the absolute necessity of a government which will serve small banks and their customers, instead of our new and…
Cause of the Recession is The Way Out/What’s With All The Drone Wars?
In the first half hour, Democratic political strategist Rpbert Creamer says the cause of the destruction of the middle class also points to the best way out of the current Great Recession. And on the second half, investigative journalist Rick Rosoff sh…
America’s Civil War: An Avoidable Failure
America Aflame is a major new interpretation of the civil war era. In this interview with author David Goldfield, light is shed into important dark corners, such as the tragic role played by evangelicalsm on both sides, why a post-war belief in sc…
Would Our Founders Recognize Today’s Independence?
Many Americans see our freedom to choose as consumers as what independence is all about. But recovering corporate CEO and Huffington Post columnist Richarde Eskow on this show shines a light on how far we’ve veered from wha the founders envisioned as t…
US and Israel vs. the Gaza Flotilla
Last year, Israel got a self-inflicted black eye by assaulting the flotilla of humanitarian aid meant for Gaza, killing 9, including one American. This year, Israel, clearly in concert with the US State Department, found other ways to stop the new flot…
Centrality of Sexuality for the Populist Right
Michelle Goldberg, author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, and The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World certainly knows her stuff. On this show, the columnist for The Daily Beast talks about what she’ know…
A Phony Withdrawal from Afghanistan?
The president has ordered a partial withdrawal of combat troops from Vietnam Afghanistan. Of course popular sentiment figures into the decision, but what does it really mean for US presence in the region? Newseek/Daily Beast columnist Michael Tomasky o…
Greece Crisis Examined/The Edge of Imperialism: Uncontacted Tribes
Greece is in crisis. Economist Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, looks at the causes and potential solutions. And on the second half, Christina Chauvenet, of Survival International, looks at what’s happenin…