An Egregious Invasion Of Privacy. Steve Williamson

The group discusses the far-reaching implications of the decision if the opinion holds. They agree that, since Alito based his opinion on 16th century law and dismisses a woman’s right to privacy regarding reproductive decisions, it could have a domino effect on a host of other privacy-related issues such as same-sex marriage.

They also lay out a number of ways for people to get

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Keeping Perspective: Looking To The Past And To The Future. As Democratic Perspective celebrates 11 years of programming, Steve Williamson and Gary LaMaster, two of the show’s founders, offer a retrospective of the past 11 years.

Steve explains how the series came about and who was originally involved. He notes that the show first aired with Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick as our guest in April of 2011. Since then, we have conducted interviews with a great variety of experts such as economist Dean Baker, as well as a host of professors and authors such as Noam Chomsky, Michael Austin and Nancy MacLean. There has been an array of political candidates and elected officials like Senator Mark Kelly, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Congressman Tom O’Halleran, in addition to activists, lobbyists, and local community officials.

And even though our group of contributors and sponsors has changed over the years as some drifted away and others passed on, the goal of Democratic Perspective is, and always will be, to get at the truth.

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Issues Over Ideology. Steve Williamson and Karen McClelland welcome Jeanne Casteen, teacher, school board member, and director of the Secular Coalition of Arizona. She is running for the LD2 Senate seat in the Arizona legislature with hopes of reducing the level of crazy at the state capitol.

As Casteen says, “I’ve been going down to the capitol and testifying as an educator for well over a decade now. And the level of decorum at this point is essentially nonexistent. It’s really kind of a very fringe climate there.”

The reason is that Republicans have controlled the legislature and the governor’s office for more than a decade. Despite narrow majorities in each house (31-29 in the House and 16-14 in the Senate), Republicans have essentially ignored both Democrats and the general public. The GOP majority controls what bills can be heard and often passes ideologically extreme bills without debate.

That could change by flipping just one seat in each of the houses, which will force legislators from both parties to negotiate and vote on issues that benefit all Arizonans. That’s why we encourage listeners to help Democratic candidates like Casteen in all of the state’s competitive districts.

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The Arizona GOP’s Long-Running Plan To Privatize Education. Karen McClelland and Steve Williamson welcome Nicky Indicavitch, Statewide Outreach Director of Save Our Schools Arizona and a self-described angry mother, to discuss why Arizona ranks dead last in per pupil funding.

“I have kids in Arizona public schools, so it’s personal for me,” says Indicavitch. She explains Save Our Schools began in 2017 after the Arizona State Legislature voted for a major expansion of vouchers for private schools. “We recognized early on in those days that that bill was going to be extremely dangerous for our public schools here in Arizona. So, we referred it. We gathered signatures to send it to the ballot in the ‘No on 305’ campaign and we won that initiative. We stopped the voucher expansion.” But, knowing that the Republican-controlled legislature was not done with its attack on public education, the Save Our Schools group stayed together.

Indicavitch describes the group’s mission is to protect our schools noting, “It’s hard to track what these lawmakers are doing. They’re not open about the process of passing bills. They’re not transparent about the deals being made. We’ve seen a number of budgets pass in the middle of the night down at the capitol with no citizen input on those. And so, one of the things we’ve worked really hard at is making sure parents and teachers that are concerned about these issues have a place to go and a resource to better understand the impact of these.”

She goes on to say that this lack of transparency is

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Russia’s Invasion Of Ukraine. The History And Unseen Consequences. Steve Williamson and Karen McClelland welcome Andrew Bacevich to the show. Bacevich is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University as well as co-founder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He argues that to understand the invasion of Ukraine, you must consider the historical context in which the U.S. exploited Russia economically following the collapse of the Soviet Union. And, despite telling Russia that we would not expand NATO eastward, successive American administrations did it anyway. He believes that led to bitterness and a sense of betrayal.

Now Ukraine, as an innocent party,

In addition, the Russian people are suffering under the most horrific sanctions imposed on any nation in memory, he says. When asked how we end those sanctions and deal with Russia once the war ends, Bacevich explains, “The primary question is who’s going to be in charge. If it’s Putin, then it’s going to become ten times more difficult to figure out a way to bring Russia in from the cold. If it’s not Putin, if it’s somebody who we can deal with, then I think that makes the problem orders of magnitude easier.”

“To me, the biggest concern is that this war is going to lead to a new Cold War centered on a frankly exaggerated Russian threat and therefore distract our attention from concerns that ought to be…that are more important. And I’m in the camp that says the climate crisis probably ranks as number one,” says Bacevich. “We increasingly hear warnings issued by authoritative sources that say that the planet…that nations of the world are not meeting their targets in order to limit the rise in temperatures and suggesting dire consequences that are now just 20, 30 to 40 years into the future. I think that danger is much more serious than any danger posed by Vladimir Putin.”

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No, Inflation Isn’t The Biggest Story Of The Biden Economy. Steve and Karen welcome Dean Baker, one of the nation’s leading economists, and friend of the show Steve Segner to discuss the economy and inflation. When asked whether inflation is permanent or transitory, Baker says though it has lasted longer than expected, in his mind it’s still very much transitory. He says that re-opening from the pandemic has created increased demand and big backlogs in supply throughout a number of sectors. That pushed up prices, not just in the U.S., but in Germany, France and the U.K.

“Is there evidence that it’s coming to an end? To my view,

As for fuel prices, Baker says that the price of oil is a world price. It’s not something that the U.S. can impact alone. He goes on to mention that blaming inflation on Biden is like blaming a governor for people being homeless following a hurricane. Biden is not responsible for the once-in-a-century pandemic. He can only try to deal with its aftermath.

Baker explains that the media has played a really big role

Baker points to a recent poll, saying, “I saw one poll where

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A Modern-Day Form Of Slavery. Steve Williamson and Karen McClelland welcome international human rights attorney Dianne Post to discuss the abuses and disproportionate cost of for-profit private prisons.

Post was first on our show in 2013 to discuss the same

Post is now pursuing a lawsuit involving six plaintiffs against

Thirty states now have private prisons. Yet, according to Post, private prisons have added to our problem of mass incarceration, because they have motivated states to incarcerate more people and give longer sentences.

For those who would like to learn more, Post recommends the following organizations: Abolish Private Prisons, Arizona Justice Alliance, and Just Communities.

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Critical Race Theory As A Political Weapon. Our guest

To begin, let’s be clear that CRT is NOT taught in public high

Hermen explains that she was a school board member when the

When asked her opinion of what all the fuss is about, Isom

McClelland, who is a current member of the Sedona-Oak Creek Governing Board, adds that the idea is to help understand the past. Not to assign blame. She further explains that parents can opt their children out of any subject matter. And all three guests note that parents have access to the subject matter and materials, which are posted electronically.

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Bridging The Political Divide In Arizona. Co-hosts Steve Williamson and Karen McClelland welcome to the show three well-qualified Democratic candidates for the Arizona State Legislature along with their campaign manager, Jay Ruby. The candidates include Mike Fogel, a school board member and retired teacher, who is running for Senate, Cathy Ransom, a single mom and small business owner, who is running for a House seat, and Neil Sinclair, a solar system designer and electric transportation executive, who is also running for a House seat.

Calling themselves the Clean Slate for Democracy, the three candidates point out that by flipping just one Republican seat in the House and one in the Senate would force the two political parties to negotiate with one another for the benefit of all Arizonans. Not just the ideological whims of the Republican Party and its partisan interest groups.

To discover more about the candidates’ views on various issues and to learn how you can help improve Arizona, visit their website at The Clean Slate for Democracy Campaign.

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Assessing Putin’s War. Steve Williamson welcomes Paul Lenze,

Asked about the news coverage of the invasion, Lenze responds, “They’ve done a good job of showing what is happening in various cities. But it’s a war zone, so there are a lot of areas where they cannot go, and so I think there’s a lot that we’re not seeing in western news coverage. But, he says, “it’s more than is being shown in Russia,” noting that Putin’s government is blocking a lot of what’s happening and using propaganda to try to win over Russian support for his efforts. “But right now, it seems that the Russian people are not supporting him. There are thousands that are going out into the streets protesting what Putin has done,” says Lenze. But he adds, “they just announced that if you speak out against the war and what the Russian military is doing, that you could face 15 years in jail.”

Lenze says he would not have predicted the Russian invasion. But he believes that the limited response by numerous American presidents over the last twelve years led Putin to say, “Hmm…let’s see how far I can escalate this.”

Nevertheless, Lenze thinks it was a miscalculation on Putin’s part. “I don’t think Russia will win at all because the United States has led the coalition of NATO forces to supply military aid to the Ukrainian government. There are reports coming out of Ukraine that the Russian troops are demoralized. Many are trying to flee.” Lenze also believes the economic sanctions could have a huge influence. And even though Russia has $630 billion in reserves, they can’t spend that money because the West is going to make it difficult to spend the money in the global market.

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