• Guest: Dan Gainor, the T. Boone Pickens Fellow and the Vice President of the Business & Media Institute.


• Guest: Former Ambassador to the UN and Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, the honorable Madeleine Albright. "Memo to the President: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership".


• Guest: Brad Friedman, BradBlog. Vote purges.


• Guest: Christy Harvey, Director of Strategic Communications at the Center for American Progress. "News Under the Radar".

Topics, guests, upcoming events, quotes, links to articles, audio clips, books & bumper music.

Thursday 23 October '08 show

• What is the American dream?
  
• Article: Krugman Follows Well-Worn Path to Nobel Prize: Outspoken Liberal Ideas: Like Gore, IPCC and Carter, NYT columnist shows how Bush-bashing and promotion of the welfare state wins the favor of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. By Jeff Poor, Business & Media Institute.
  
• Clip:
  "We stand for a living wage. Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations. The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living--a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit a reasonable saving for old age.
  
  Hours are excessive if they fail to afford the worker sufficient time to recuperate and return to his work thoroughly refreshed. We hold that the night labor of women and children is abnormal and should be prohibited; we hold that the employment of women over forty-eight hours per week is abnormal and should be prohibited. We hold that the seven-day working week is abnormal, and we hold that one day of rest in seven should be provided by law."
  Theodore Roosevelt. "Social and Industrial Justice", Oyster Bay, New York, c. August, 1912.
  
• Guest: Dan Gainor, the T. Boone Pickens Fellow and the Vice President of the Business & Media Institute. Paul Krugman got the economics Nobel, a prize awarded by a Swedish Bank that was first given to Milton Friedman. Gainor said it was for bashing Bush, but it was for work he did 20 years ago on economic forces to do with trade. He said Krugman advocates a return to the welfare state. Teddy Roosevelt clip, "we stand for a living wage". Did Jefferson think voters should own property? Academia is going out of control, overcharging. People are adults, should work for higher education. He said kids these days take out loans rather than work.
  
• Bumper Music: Livin' Thing, ELO.
  
• "I received in due time your favor of the 12th., requesting my opinion on the proposition to call a convention for amending the constitution of the State. That this should not be perfect cannot be a subject of wonder, when it is considered that ours was not only the first of the American States, but the first nation in the world, at least within the records of history, which peaceably by its wise men, formed on free deliberation, a constitution of government for itself, and deposited it in writing, among their archives, always ready and open to the appeal of every citizen. The other States, who successively formed constitutions for them selves also, had the benefit of our outline, and have made on it, doubtless, successive improvements. One in the very outset, and which has been adopted in every subsequent constitution, was to lay its foundation in the authority of the nation. To our convention no special authority had been delegated by the people to form a permanent constitution, over which their successors in legislation should have no powers of alteration. They had been elected for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, and at a time when the establishment of a new government had not been proposed or contemplated. Although, therefore, they gave to this act the title of a constitution, yet it could be no more than an act of legislation subject, as their other acts were, to alteration by their successors. It has been said, indeed, that the acquiescence of the people supplied the want of original power. But it is a dangerous lesson to say to them "whenever your functionaries exercise unlawful authority over you, if you do not go into actual resistance, it will be deemed acquiescence and confirmation. "How long had we acquiesced under usurpations of the British Parliament? Had that confirmed them in right, arid made our Revolution a wrong? Besides, no authority has yet decided whether. this resistance must be instantaneous; when the right to resist ceases, or whether it has yet ceased? Of the twenty-four States now organized, twenty-three have disapproved our doctrine and example, and have deemed the authority of their people a necessary foundation for a constitution.
  
  Another defect which has been corrected by most of the States is, that the basis of our constitution is in opposition to the principle of equal political rights, refusing to all but freeholders any participation in the natural right of self-government. It is believed, for example, that a very great majority of the militia, on whom the burden of military duty was imposed in the late war, were men unrepresented in the legislation which imposed this burden on them."
  Thomas Jefferson To John Hambden Pleasants, Monticello, April 19, 1824.
  
• Article: Rich-Poor Divide Worst Among Rich Countries, Jim Lobe.
  " The "American Dream" of upward social mobility appears to have emigrated from its birthplace in the United States to northern Europe, according to a major new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the growth of economic equality over the past 20 years. A homeless man in central London sits next to a Gucci shopping bag. The gap between rich and poor has grown in most developed countries over the past 20 years resulting in an increase in child poverty, the OECD - an organisation of 30 leading economies - has said in a report. (AFP/File/Carl de Souza)Of its 30 member states, most of which are also members of the European Union, the United States has the largest gap between its wealthiest and poorest households after Mexico and Turkey, according to the report, "Growing Unequal?", which was released at OECD headquarters in Paris Tuesday."
  
• "Since President Bush has been in office, nearly 6 million Americans have slipped into poverty, median family income for working Americans has declined by more than $2,000, more than 7 million Americans have lost their health insurance, over 4 million have lost their pensions, foreclosures are at an all time high, total consumer debt has more than doubled, and we have a national debt of over $9.7 trillion dollars."
  Senator Bernie Sanders.
  
• Bumper Music: Ghost Chickens in the Sky, Sean Morey.
  
• Article: Unlucky Pigeon Blamed for German Railway Chaos.
  
• Bumper Music: Run for President, Us the Band.
  
• Article: Greenspan says he's 'shocked' by crisis.
  
• Clip:
  "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"
  Claude Rains as Captain Renault in the movie "Casablanca".
  
• Article: Argentina Makes Grab for Pensions Amid Crisis .
  
• Article: Argentina deals blow to markets with pension reform plans.
  
• Thom referenced a squirrel study in when of his books, how if one squirrel's nest was made larger,the squirrel in the area made theirs larger too. The Joneses used to be our neighbors. How TV started to show people living in more up market homes. Americans recalibrated what they needed to keep up with Joneses, and are now in debt.
  
• "Employers do not create jobs" rant.
  
• Article: Letter to President William McKinley from Annie Oakley.
  "Letter to President William McKinley from Annie Oakley, offering the government the services of a company of 50