Black Agenda Radio – 6.20.16

This is Black Agenda Radio, the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. Your hosts are Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey, here they are with a weekly hour of African American political thought and action.

– The People’s Organization for Progress, POP, does not hesitate to demonstrate, whether it’s marking the anniversary of the 1967 rebellion in Newark, New Jersey, or protesting President Obama’s attempt to cut Social Security. Recently, POP hit the streets to protest New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive order that sets up a blacklist of companies that have agreed to Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel. Larry Hamm is chairman of POP. He’s also a Bernie Sanders delegate to the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

– The City of Philadelphia is welcoming the Democrats to town, but the welcome mat does not extend to protest marchers. Cheri Honkala is a longtime poor people’s activist, based in Philadelphia.

– The Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, ran the Caribbean country of Haiti with an iron fist when she was Secretary of State. Clinton helped to engineer the rise to the presidency of Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly, who was finally forced out of power by popular demand, this year. Nikolas Barry-Shaw, a Voting Rights Associate with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, says Clinton’s record in Haiti is an embarrassment to her campaign, which would prefer that Haiti not be in the news.

– Gunmen riddled the home of Haitian presidential candidate Dr. Maryse Narcisse, who represents Fanmi Lavalas, the political party of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was overthrown by a U.S.-backed coup in 2004. Aristides’ party has been banned from most elections since then. We spoke with Pierre Labossier, of the Haiti Action Committee. He says the U.S. State Department fought tooth and nail to try to force the Haitian people to accept the results of last year’s rigged elections.

– New federal rules would make it harder for people to get payday loans at usurious interest rates. Matt Stannard is Policy Director of Commonomics USA. He’d like to get rid of payday loans altogether, and providing alternative financing to poor people.

Visit the BlackAgendaReport.com, where you’ll find a new and provocative issue, each Wednesday.

Alternative Visions – Krugman and Neoliberal Economist Attacks on Sanders’ Programs – 03.25.16

Dr. Jack Rasmus explains how his version of a Financial Transaction Tax on stocks, bonds, derivatives, and currencies could raise far more than sufficient revenues to pay for a single payer-national health care program and still leave hundreds of billions to expand social security Medicare and other programs. In the second half of the show, Rasmus shows how a single payer system would save $1.2 trillion a year out of the current health care cost of $3 trillion today. Based on a tax study done in Europe in 2013, Rasmus shows a US financial tax of 5% on stocks & bond trades, a 1% tax on derivatives sold in the US, and 1% on non-government US currency sales raises $3.89 trillion a year, or about twice the revenues needed for a comparative single payer system. Rasmus then reviews and debunks the debates by neoliberal economists like Paul Krugman, and Clinton’s ‘gang of four’ economists, who have been attacking Sanders’ proposals for a financial tax and single payer health care. In the first half of the show, reviewing recent events in the global economy Rasmus addresses the fallout from the European Central Bank’s recent decision to expand its quantitative easing and negative interest rate programs and why they will fail; the growing default risk in the US energy junk bond markets; the preliminary agreements by Russia, Saudi Arabia and others to freeze oil prices; China’s continuing desperate moves to deal with the massive bad corporate debt problem; French retreats on introducing labor market reforms in response to mass demonstrations: the doubling in average prescription drug prices in the US: and why millennials (age 25-34) in the US now earn take home pay today in 2016 less than they did in 1984.

Alternative Visions – Presidential Legacies: the True Records of Reagan and Clinton – 03.04.16

Republican and Democrat presidential candidates sing the praises of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, promising to return to their ‘golden years’ if elected and ‘make America great again’. In today’s show we look at the real record and legacies of Reagan and Clinton: how the 1% got filthier rich under both, how wages and benefits for workers stagnated or fell, how pensions and health care coverage and costs collapsed and rose, how jobs were off shored, reduced by free trade, how part time and temp job creation became rampant, how budget and trade deficits soared, how social security costs were shifted to workers, and other ‘great accomplishments’ were recorded. How Clinton policies were continuation of Reagan’s. How the 1% went from 39% of all income gains to 45% (and today to 97%). The show concludes with some comments on what might happen to the Trump and Clinton nominations and the great uncertainties for the two party system possible this election cycle.