Fiscal Policy Archives - KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show

In the current American version of capitalism, all of us are “thingified:” our only value being as digits on the way to corporate profits. This reflects a core bias in the system toward serving the very richest. But it doesn’t The post Wealth Supremacy is On Autopilot: That’s Not the Only Option appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Sure there’s the $750 billion Pentagon budget for FY 2020. But real military spending is nearly twice that. There are many opaque agencies which are secretive in their use of other taxpayer money, according to our guest William Hartung Director The post Boondoggle, Inc: Military Industrial Complex on Autopilot appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

The hugely successful Broadway does a service: igniting the relevance of history to today. Of course it is largely fiction. As  author and historian William Hogeland tells it, Hamilton saw his job as just making America a good investment. He The post Hamilton Against Democracy, Struggle Still Unresolved appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

With near consensus from both sides of the aisle, congress just rubber-stamped a nearly three quarters of a trillion dollar spending plan for defense contractors. There is no limit on what we will spend on weapons, according to today’s guest The post Sky’s The Limit for Military Waste: $717 Billion ’19 Budget appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Do they really intend to destroy the economy and serve the short-term greed of billionaires, or do they just mouth simplistic phrases and really not know what they are doing? We deon’;t really know. The Bannon/Trump Administration is taking aim The post Malice or Mere Incompetence? Trump vs Dodd-Frank appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

The right to organize is a basic human right. So says MIT professor and co-director of the Institute for Work and Employment Tom Kochan. In the face of decades of assaults against workers rights, this election year holds realistic hope The post Labor Day 2016: Taking Power appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

It’s the year of the anti-establishment candidates: in both parties. Jim Rubens is certainly the underdog against incumbent Kelly Ayotte, a Washington favorite. While Rubens is no liberal, he does take on issues such as the power of money in The post Republican Senate Candidate Takes On Establishment appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Q: When is a donation not a donation? A: When it’s an investment. It is a rare super wealthy philanthropist who gives without need of great public recognition? From feudal times, it has been in the interests of the baronial The post Philanthrocapitalism: Charity as a False Front appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

American exceptionalism is a reality in terms of locking up almost 5 times as many citizens as all other advanced industrialized democracies. Over the last 40 years, the incarceration rate has skyrocketed by nearly 400 percent. How did we get The post How Did We Get To Be Incarceration Nation? appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Tremendous wealth is being sheltered from taxation. The rules for the rest of us apparently don’t apply to the super rich of the world. But think about how that now-hidden wealth might help millions throughout the world. This is the The post The Panama Papers: Big Silver Lining appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Between 1945 and the Reagan era, Americans understood that work benefited all and when productivity when up, all stakeholders shared in the rewards. Of course that all changed. But in his new book “Shaping the Future of Work: What Future The post The Future of Work: We Can Make It better appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

From the point of view of foreign policy and pentagon insiders, the candidate with the most realistic platform to ensure our national security is Bernie Sanders. Guest Robert English, former Pentagon insider and expert on Russia and the USSR, explains The post Foreign Policy/Defense Analyst: Bernie is the Foreign Policy Realist of 2016 appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

He’s a leading contender, surging in the polls but the Democratic Party is wielding a real war on Bernie Sanders. According to Princeton history professor Matt Karp, it’s without precedent. Bernie Sanders is clearly carrying on FDR and LBJ Democratic The post Unprecedented: Democratic Party War on Bernie Sanders appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

No question, FDR was our greatest Democratic president. Though we have, at least for the moment, gone beyond the recession of 2008, perhaps we’ve merely swept the problem under the rug, along with opportunities for real economic security. On this The post A New New Deal: How Possible? appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

When the combined power of the Troika–European Central Bank, European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund–puts the squeeze of austerity on places like Spain and Portugal, a lot of people feel severe economic pain. But in the Iberian countries, they The post Can Democracy Emerge Against the Tyranny of the Troika? appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Chuck Collins, founder of Wealth for the Common Good and senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies talks about the new report on the top .01 percent and the impact on our democracy. They are not job creators as The post Billionaire Bonanza: Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

For decades police have gotten away with murder. Thanks to cell phones, today they’re getting caught. And they are fighting back, actually threatening such people as Quentin Tarantino. On the first half, guest Travis Morales of Rise Up October and The post Fighting Police Terror/TPP Revealed: Destroying Democracy appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

While the left has had very few actual electoral victories, author Michael Kazin argues it has very effectively changed the nation. The author of “A Godly Hero: William Jennings Bryan,” talks about his new book “American Dreamers.” What’s gone right The post The Many Accomplishments of America’s Left/Populist Tradition appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

You may have thought our schools, at least the better ones, successfully tackled the problem of institutional racism. But in this surprising new study, well-established assumptions based on style of clothes, culture, and, really, skin color serve to keep down The post Racial Inequality Actually Thrives in Good Schools appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

There are a lot of similarities and differences: They are both men over 65 but England’s Jeremy Corbyn is a traditional Labourite leftist while Bernie Sanders is an all-American left-leaning Democratic populist. But both campaigns earned their descriptions as political The post Sanders and Corbyn: A Gathering Wave? appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Started under Reagan in 1983, the drive to put public education in the hands of for-profit interests has greatly weakened education, done real harm to thousands of kids, and weakened our real national security. Today’s guest is John Kuhn who The post The Dumbing Down is Working appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

We’ve all seen the results of economics imposed from the top down. Sometimes it works well, other times we’ve seen communities devastated as a result of this process. But in Cincinnati, there’s an idea taken largely from success in the The post Economic Democracy: Working In Cincinnati appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.

Uniting traditional left and right, legislators from all 50 states endorsed a message to the federal government: let us make our own laws on marijuana. Sponsor of the NCSL resolution NH Rep Renny Cushing talks about how and why states The post States to Feds re/Weed: Bug Off appeared first on KDA Keeping Democracy Alive Podcast & Radio Show.