America's Democrats

There are two tax systems, one for the rich, and one for the rest of us.

Donald Trump is certainly a figure of unique notoriety, but his manipulation of tax law is simply one window into the way the wealthy avoid paying their fair share. This week, we look at what his case can teach us about the 1 percent more broadly—and at one solution that might make American taxation more equitable.

David Cay Johnston has spent years reporting on Donald Trump’s business practices, and on the inequities of the U.S. tax code. He says reporting from the New York Times on Trump’s taxes offers greater proof of two tax systems, separate and unequal. 

Economist Emmanuel Saez studies wealth and income inequality around the world. His book argues that the American economy isn’t working for half of the nation and makes the case for a tax system that is truly progressive.

The Corporatization of Pet Care: Animal Cruelty?

For many people, the animals they adopt and love become more like family members than pets. We have deep relationships, with cats, dogs, parrots, goats, horses, and other fellow critters – who at least pretend to love us back, providing comfort and joy all around.

Sadly though, life for all of us animals is a spin around the wheel of fortune, so illness and injuries happen. That’s why one of the most valued members of every community are the staffers in our local veterinarian's office.

"A Catastrophic Event in Food." With Amb. Cindy McCain

Cindy McCain is the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture which leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security. She is the widow of former Arizona senator and 2008 Republican nominee for President, John McCain. In 2020 she endorsed Joe Biden for president. She has a long history with helping people in need. From 1988 to 1995, she founded and operated a nonprofit organization, the American Voluntary Medical Team, which organized trips by medical personnel to disaster-stricken or war-torn third-world areas.

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.

Republicans have been so effective at smearing so-called “government-run” healthcare as expensive and wasteful that they have obscured just how much the current, private healthcare industry gouges Americans on everything from pharmaceutical drugs to routine care. This week, we’re re-airing two interviews with experts who say healthcare can be safer and more affordable if corporations got out of our collective pockets. 

If hospitals would spend a little more money paying their own employees, instead of outsourcing for the cheapest support workers, they would save money by cutting down on costly hospital infections. That’s the analysis from health professor Dan Zuberi.

Steve Knievel is an advocate for Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program, focusing on expanding affordable access to medicines. They say that to help stop Big Pharma’s price gouging in the U.S., Congress must listen to the American public, ignore the pharmaceutical industry’s high-paid lobbyists and finally pass legislation granting Medicare the authority to negotiate drug prices.

The Sad Whine of Supreme Court Right

Ralph Waldo Emerson told about a guest who came to dinner and spent the entire evening prattling about his own integrity: “The louder he talked of his honor,” Emerson wrote: “the faster we counted our spoons.”

Today, America has not one, but six guests in our national home babbling about their integrity. They are the six extremist Republican judges who now control our Supreme Court, and it’s a bit unsettling to hear them go on and on, almost frantically pleading with us to believe in their judicial impartiality.

The View From Europe with NPR's Sylvia Poggioli

Sylvia Poggioli is senior European correspondent for NPR's International Desk. She covers Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli has reported on the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies.

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.

Many of the policy decisions that affect workers’ lives seem arcane and abstract, and are not the hot-button news items that other issues inevitably become. Today we look at two different spheres of policy that have serious, immediate effects on the lives of American workers. 

Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein explains how the current antitrust revival has the potential to prevent similar failures and advance unionization at Amazon and other giant corporations.

Communications Workers of America’s Dan Mauer says trade policy under NAFTA benefits multinational corporations at the expense of American workers and calls for a new framework that puts workers’ rights first.

Democrats, please Be Democrats!

I think we can now say the obvious: The Republican Party has gone bull goose bonkers. Its leaders have turned the once-proud GOP brand into an unprincipled gaggle of corporate profiteers, hatemongers, and screwball conspiracy theorists. They’re so far out that the Hubble Telescope can’t find them!

But where is my Democratic Party? Here’s a transformative opportunity to forge a solid political coalition – a multi-racial, urban-rural, farm-labor alliance based on fundamental principles and programs of fairness and opportunity for all.

Rolling Back Rights. With CNN's Ron Brownstein

Ron Brownstein is one of the sharpest analysts of American politics. He is a Senior CNN Political Analyst and a Senior Editor for The Atlantic. He's been reporting and writing about the radical rollback of rights in Red states.

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.

The rich have organized themselves into a powerful lobby.

The wealthiest Americans like to imagine the current economic system as a meritocracy, where their status is the inevitable result of hard work and virtue. This week, we talk to two experts about how, in fact, the rich have rigged the tax code and economic policy to secure the economic order and prevent it from ever changing. 

Professor Isaac Martin has studied one particular economic trend in American history and tells us about that, and the topic of his book “The Rich People’s Movements.”

In 2010, Erica Payne organized some of the richest Americans to demand higher taxes on millionaires like themselves.  Her recent book offers an insider’s view of how the wealthy have rigged the tax code in their favor and offers a blueprint to unrig it.

Supreme Thieves in Robes of “Justice”

As we know, “government ethics” can be a very slippery concept.

That’s why We The People have insisted that every public official – from congress critters to dog catchers – swear to abide by some minimum standard of proper behavior. Not that all will honor it, but a code of ethics provides a measure of legal action against those who are grabbers and grifters.

"The Constitution is Trash." with Elie Mystal

Elie Mystal is The Nation Magazine’s Justice Correspondent. He's a frequent guest on MSNBC commenting on the intersection between the legal and the political. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he gave up Big Law to fight for justice.

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.

Republicans often tout simple spending cuts as markers of economic responsibility. But that sort of superficial belt-tightening often proves to be far more reckless in the long run. This week, we revisit interviews with two economists about the myths—and dangers—of austerity politics. 

Mark Blyth is a professor of international economy at Brown University, and he succinctly explains what’s wrong with austerity as a cure for an ailing economy: “Tighter belts,” he says, “only work if we all wear the same pants.”

Economist Simon Johnson warns that irresponsible austerity methods proposed by Republicans could throw the world into a financial catastrophe. And, he says, it would be the private sector that really suffers.

What’s Up with This Crazy Trucker Protest?

The recent traffic-clogging protests by truck drivers in the US and Canada are about drivers being angry over COVID-19 vaccine mandates – right?

Uh… no. That’s the line being put out by right-wing extremists trying to use the legitimate gripes of truckers for their own political gain. The extremists are nuts… not the truckers.

What's Next for Putin's War

Twenty-six days into Putin's War in Ukraine, can anything be done to stop the carnage and stop Putin? What are the likely next steps, diplomatically and militarily? What are the risks of a wider war, of a nuclear war? To provide some context, Bill has arranged to talk again with the two experts on foreign affairs who gave us their first assessment of the situation in Ukraine three weeks ago. A lot has changed. . Steven Pifer was our Ambassador to Ukraine in the last two years of the Clinton Administration and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State with responsibilities for Russia and Ukraine in the first four years of the George W. Bush Administration. He is currently a Fellow at Stanford University and the Brookings Institution. Joining him is Joe Cirincione, a Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He previously served for over 12 years as the President of the Ploughshares Fund, a foundation focused on nuclear nonproliferation and conflict resolution. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.

Building state-level progressivism.

In continuing our effort to examine power at the state and local level, we look at two case studies: The state senates in Colorado and Kansas, and how progressive agendas were devised and executed in each. 

Former Colorado state senator Jessie Ulibarri talks about building progressive power in statehouses.

Then-Kansas state senate minority leader Anthony Hensley tells us about a bipartisan effort to roll back a statewide tax cut from five years prior. 

Now, Robots are Coming for White-Collar Jobs

In CorporateSpeak, there are no “job cuts.” Instead, firings are blandly referred to as “employment adjustments.”

Now, though, corporate wordsmiths will need a whole new thesaurus of euphemisms, for masses of job cuts are coming for employees in the higher echelons of the corporate structure. Don’t look now, but an unanticipated result of the ongoing pandemic is that it has given cover for CEOs to speed up the adoption of highly-advanced RPAs (Robotic Process Automation) to replace employees once assumed to be immune from displacement.

Why Did Putin Wait?

John Bolton had unimpeachable Republican and Conservative credentials. Until he went to work for Donald Trump as his National Security Advisor. It did not go well as he detailed in his book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir. Bolton and Bill discuss the current situation in Ukraine and Trump's attitudes toward Russia, Ukraine and Vladimir Putin.

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.

Fighting back against the Plutocrats.

With Russia in the news lately, a lot has been said about the power wielded by that country’s plutocrats. This week, we look back at the overwhelming influence a few wealthy billionaires have over the American government—and at the ways Americans are ready to fight back.

Former Democratic Lieutenant Governor of Illinois Sheila Simon explains how her state was taken over by a Republican governor operating not on ideology but on helping his business buddies make more money.

Progressive Democrats are not only fighting to get Donald Trump out of the White House,  but for a new alignment of politics in America that will realize a progressive agenda on everything from jobs and immigration to health care and the climate.

Is Your Job in the Robot Kill Path?

Hunters have come up with euphemisms to make what they do sound… well, less unpleasant. For example, animals aren’t killed, they’re “harvested.”

Corporate America is now adopting this verbal ploy, for CEOs urgently need to soften the image of their constant hunt for ways to kill jobs. Their urgency is that they’re now pushing a huge new surge in cuts – this time targeting college-educated, white-collar professionals.

The Case Against Trump. with fmr US Attorney Barbara McQuade

Can Congress file charges against Trump? Will the Justice Department file charges against Trump? Can a former president even be charged with a crime or even if true, can Trump still just get away with it? To get the answers, Bill talks to Barbara McQuade, an NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst. She is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. 

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.

A look back at Republican tactics.

While Donald Trump dominated the news for much of the last half-decade, Republicans have been tinkering with messaging that obscures just how hostile they are to most Americans’ wants and needs. Today we look back at two instances of this: their attempts to cast theirs as the party of economic equality, and their willingness to use racial and cultural wars and wedge issues to divide the working class.

Labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan thinks Republican “faux populism” is a good sign for Democrats … because we own the issue.

Donald Trump’s anti-Hispanic rhetoric may make no difference. Why? Because the Latino vote is mostly set in states other than Florida and possibly Colorado, says voting analyst Daniel McGraw.

A Rube Goldberg Inflationary Spiral

Last July, several GOP senators combined their 5-watt intellects to charge that inflation was rising because of the “insane tax and spending spree of President Biden and the Democrats.”

Never mind that the “insane” spending is for such sensible, productive, and enormously popular national needs as childcare and jobless benefits, Mitch McConnell’s rabidly partisan flock saw the chance to politicize the public’s legitimate worries about rising prices.

Bill's Take on Biden's State of the Union

Although Biden is not known as a great orator, he gave a great speech Tuesday night.

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.

The threat of Republican gerrymandering on the 2022 Midterms.

With Texas starting their vote process for the 2022 Midterms this week, with one of the most devastatingly gerrymandered maps in the country, we take a look back to how we got here. David Daley is one of the nation's leading authorities on partisan gerrymandering. And he says if Democrats don’t do more to stop it, Republicans will have the power to shape elections for years to come. 

A Phoenix is Rising

Our local newspapers are being merged, purged, shrunk, shut down, and looted by Wall Street profiteers – yet there’s good news. In the towns those media vultures are torching, a phoenix is rising!

Hundreds of determined locals, often led by people of color, are finding new ways to pay for and revive top-quality, local journalism. For example, the Ferndale (CA) Enterprise moved to an old Victorian home, renting upstairs rooms to vacationers to subsidize the paper.

"This Was a Coup."

Congressman Jamie Raskin was inside the Capitol, with family, on January 6th.  On January 5th he had buried his 25-year-old beloved son who had killed himself to escape a crippling depression. On January 12th, Raskin was named Lead Impeachment Manager for the second Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump. That eventful January is the subject of his New York Times Bestseller, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy. In his interview with Bill, he shares his thoughts and emotions about the death of his son, the coup and the inside story of the Impeachment Trial. Plus he hints at just what the January 6th Committee knows about the Trump-organized coup attempt.

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.

The legacy of Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter was an “outsider” who won the Democratic presidential nomination 40 years ago. His former speechwriter, James Fallows, says that an outsider can win the White House if the public feels there is a crisis – but then it becomes very hard to actually govern. He also says that he should be remembered for many things, not the least of which is deregulation, which paved the way for, among other things, microbreweries!

Who was Smedley Darlington Butler, and why is he important?

Many Americans can’t believe that political coups are part of our country’s history – but consider the Wall Street Putsch of 1933.

Ever heard of it? It was a corporate conspiracy to oust Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had just been elected president. With the Great Depression raging and millions of families financially devastated, FDR had launched several economic recovery programs to help people get back on their feet.

Christian Nationalism Linked to The Insurrection.

According to a new and comprehensive investigation, Christian Nationalism was used to "bolster, justify and intensify the January 6 attack on the Capitol." Bill talks to Jack Jenkins, one of the top reporters covering the religion and politics beat. They explain just what Christian Nationalism is, how it was an integral part of the January 6th events and how it is driving GOP politicians.

If you'd like to hear the entire episode, visit BillPressPods.com.