Conflict of Interest

We assess the calamity of Biden.

Monique Priestly is a first term member of the Vermont House of Representatives and secured passage of data privacy bill 139-0. Then the lobbying started. Google, Facebook. All the big ones. Then the small ones. Then the big trade associations like the National Retail federation and others with names that sound like they care about consumers like the state Privacy and Security Coalition. Vermont Governor Phil Scott vetoed the bill this month. But Priestly will not back down. My favorite question was: Who is more dangerous to Americans? Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos?

Priestly says - and she is right - that there is no reason for Big Tech and advertisers and data brokers across the country to have unfettered access to our personal information. And there is certainly no reason for them to be selling it to each other so they can profit off our information and sell more stuff. 

Oh - the answer to the most dangerous man in America question? Stay tuned for my talk with Monique Priestly, suddenly the most dangerous person in the country to the Big Tech scam.

What is with the spasm of corporate layoffs. It is happening everywhere from John Deere to Facebook. And those layoffs often come with buybacks of stock by the company followed by an uptick in the stock price. What’s going on?  Author and labor activist Les Leopold explains the growing corporate strategy of layoffs and stock buybacks to juice the stock price and pad their wallets with bonuses. Why does this happen? Why do we allow it? And what should we do about it?

Les's book, Wall Street's War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do, available now.

The former governor, presidential candidate and Democratic National Committee Chair shares his latest views on Trump’s conviction (Dean is from NYC), his flirtation with running for governor and his optimism about the state he would never leave.

Long-time Democratic media consultant and message guru Tom Cosgrove talks about shared experience and how we can come back to a Democracy. Cosgrove is the guy who suggested that Barack Obama speak at the 2004 Democratic convention. So he has some cred.

When your seatmate who is also your son on the flight to Washington DC has some views about the Democrats and Joe Biden. And it is not a pretty sight for the president. The under 40 crowd has lost the post World War II thread.

Author and Activist David Bollier explains The Commons, a different kind of economic system that values people over profits and puts cooperative action at the center of society instead of companies or the government. Bollier explains the concept of “enclosures’’ and the misunderstanding of the famous essay “Failure of the Commons.’’ Far from a fringe movement, The Commons is here to stay.

Author and activist Ward Wilson believes we can eliminate nuclear weapons and not because he is a woo woo liberal. Wilson has talked to the Generals, the diplomats and former presidents of countries. His experience led him to believe that worldwide elimination is possible because the weapons are not “useful’’ and because a nuclear mistake is more and more likely to happen. His central thesis is that since the development of the atomic bomb, a hazy and lazy argument has grown up around the weapons that make it difficult to think clearly about how to deal with them. The result: Wilson’s latest book -  “It is Possible: A Future without Nuclear Weapons.’’ It is endorsed by not one, not two, but seven Nobel Laureates and at least two former four-star generals, one of whom commanded the nuclear arsenal. The nuclear weapons historian Richard Rhodes calls Wilson’s work a “stunning breakthrough work’’ that gives us a way out from under what John Kennedy called the nuclear sword of Damacles. 

Martin Sherwin, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and the author of the great book about Robert J. Oppenheimer called Wilson’s book: “Arguably the most important contribution to the debate over the efficacy of nuclear deterrence ever written.”

And the mayor of Nagazaki, Japan said: ““Ward Wilson’s book assures us that our vision of a “world without nuclear weapons” is not only possible but the only rational way to protect humanity and the planet from another Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

With recommendations like that, I wanted to know how someone could have broken through the fog and the paralysis in the country around nuclear weapons policy. 

I’ve known Wilson for 35 years. He has been working on this book his whole adult life. And the historians, generals and heads of state are saying he is on to something big. Join us as we take it on.

In 2015, Wales (a country) passed a law called the Future Generations Act. And they made Sophie Howe the first Commissioner for Future generations in the World. Her job - make sure all government agencies consider the interest of future generations in everything they do. Doesn’t government always do that? Turns out the answer is No. Howe joined me for a conversation on a visit to Vermont to explain how the Welsh are doing things right - or at least better. When the Welsh government wants to build a new highway, they have to get the approval of the commissioner for Future generations. Howe didn’t have the power to veto anything. But she used the bully pulpit to force the highway agency to bring more facts to the table. The result? No highway and more government spending on bikeways and pedestrian priorities. Howe’s visit to Vermont was sponsored by a small group of UVM professors and activists uniting around the issue of well being, of forcing government agencies to consider the actual well being of the people before they act. Sounds easy, or revolutionary. Let’s listen to Sophie Howe explain it.

No event I can think of has defined America since World War 2 than the assasination of President John F. Kennedy. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was murdered while riding in an open car in the streets of Dallas Texas while on political visit there. You know the story so well. Lee harvey Oswald was arrested and accised of the crime. Oswald was then shot and killed while in the hands of police by shadowy underworld figure Jack Ruby.

A commission appointed by Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson issued a report that Oswald was the lone gunman, able to fire two shots hitting Kennedy at long range with a sniper rifle. And for 60 years, millions of Americans then and now do not believe the Warren Commission conclusion. 

My guest, Jefferson Morley, is the nation’s top expert on the assassination. He casts doubt on the entire saga, from the Warren Commission investigation, to the murky and scandalous role of the CIA. The agency told the Warren commission it knew little about Oswald before the killing. Turns out that was a lie; that the CIA was in fact monitoring Oswald for weeks before the assassination. And records and memos to prove that are contained in CIA files, only recently declassified at the order of President Biden.

Morley is an author of several books and a newsletter and podcast called JFK Facts, which explores the never ending questions around the case.

As Morley says, incredibly - No one has ever been charged with a crime for the assassination. We dont know who did it. I made sure to ask Morley who he thinks killed Kennedy.

Join us.