It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown – You’ve Been Strip Mined! – 04.13.16

You’ve Been Strip Mined! That’s how Ellen’s guest Les Leopold describes what has happened to the constructive role of capital, such as investment in research and development, expansion and improvement of services and industries. He calls it “economic strip-mining” in which capital speculators like hedge funds strip the equity of companies, countries and consumers to feed their insatiable desire for short term profits – outcomes be damned. We also introduce the new national project and campaign called “What Wall Street Costs America” – the start of a national conversation revealing the massive extraction of public dollars by Wall Street interests. And Matt Stannard reviews presidential politics and bank reform on the Public Banking Report.

Les Leopold – Is Hillary Clinton Running Away From Political Reality?

Team Hillary should be extremely worried. It’s not just that she has suffered landslide losses in the past five caucus states. It’s that she’s overwhelmingly lost the youth vote of all colors, everywhere, and she’ll never get it back. As this new Wisconsin poll shows: Sanders leads Clinton 49% to 43%. Sanders leads among all African-Americans 51% to 40%. Sanders leads …

Les Leopold – Hillary’s Economic Agenda Sure Looks Like Payback for Wall St Giving Her Huge Piles of Campaign Cash

Billed as a major populist economic address, Hillary Clinton recently put forth her jobs program in Michigan. Wall Street is smiling. Her program fits perfectly within the neoliberal framework as she focuses on how to use public funds and policies to promote private sector gain. There are tax incentives to urge large and small corporations to create more jobs in …

The Gary Null Show – 03.01.16

Les Leopold is the co-founder and executive director of two nonprofit educational organizations: The Labor Institute and the Public Health Institute. He also helped to create the Blue-Green Alliance, and organization that merges labor unions with environmental concerns, such as the Sierra Club. Les’ articles appear in Alternet, Truthout and Huffington Post and Ralph Nader listed Les’s award-winning book, “The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor” on his recommended top 10 read list. His recent book “Runaway Inequality: An Activists Guide to Economic Justice” puts into clear perspective an integral view of understanding the many consequences of the growing inequality gap that has decimating Americans’ lives, the economy and the planet. His website is RunAwayInequality.org

Les Leopold – How America’s Superrich Are Draining the Poor of a Longer Life Span

The American people have a deep sense of fairness. We are angry about the growing pay gap between the top 100 CEOs and the average worker — a gap that has widened from $45 to $1 in 1970, to a staggering $844 to $1 today. (See Runaway Inequality [3]) A new study shows [4] that runaway inequality also is creating a more deadly gap — …