Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen

By Burt CohenSociety & CultureNewsPolitics
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Keeping Democracy Alive with Burt Cohen episodes

  • Tax The Rich to Boost the Economy
    For decades the majority of Americans, Democrats and Republicans have supported taxing the rich but politicians in both parties have turned a deaf ear. But the grudging acceptance that everyone but the richest pays their taxes may be ending. On this show Morris Pearl and Erica Payne, both of Patriotic Millionaires, showcase their new book Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer. Lower taxes do not mean more jobs. Politicians of both parties spend too much of their time with their donors. But they explain how all of us, the wealthy too, stand to gain from finally taxing the wealthiest. With your help, we may be nearing a tipping point
    1 hr
  • How Measuring Education Fails
    If it can’t be seen, it can’t be measured, and it doesn’t count. But a lot of the best results of public education can’t be seen. Quantifying was put there to assure command and control from the top down bureaucrats but truly some of the best results come from democratizing schools. Welcoming input from those who best know what they’re doing. On this show author Josh Beach discusses his new books: Can We Measure What Matters Most, Why Educational Accountability Metrics Lower Student Learning and Demoralize Teachers, and The Myths of Measurement and Meritocracy Why Accountability Metrics in Higher Education are Unfair and Increase Inequality. He says for the best education, teachers need flexibility. It’s another case where more democracy yields better decisions.
    1 hr
  • Pervasive Yet Invisible Whie Christian Privilege Pervasive Yet Invisible White Christian Privilege
    It’s been normalized. Americans who are neither Christian nor white may not necessarily feel open discrimination, but privilege underlies everyday life. The starting point is not neutral, as we’d prefer to believe. On this show Dr. Kyati Y Joshi talks about her new book White Christian Privilege. Many examples include looking at what is and is not sacred. The right way to pray. Diversity but not equity among faiths. And today’s ugly battles in public school board meetings expose the understanding that public education is there to create a certain kind of citizen. The “melting pot” myth privileges one culture but Dr. Joshi prescribes a social justice approach.
    58 min
  • Making the World Safe for Plutocracy: The History of American Policing
    It was called the Gilded Age. In the late 19th and early 20th century, there was extreme wealth and everybody else (remind you of another time?). Wall Street bankers back then were getting robbed, someone had to protect them. In his new book Rogues Gallery: The Birth of Modern Policing and Organized Crime in Gilded Age New York, Author John Oller describes the not-too-subtle interrogation methods, how the intent of police was to keep crime out of wealthy neighborhoods, and how the poorer minorities were targeted by police. The roots of where we are today are there.
    1 hr
  • Republican Goal: End Public Education, End Democracy
    It’s not about education reform; Republicans like Florida’s DeSantis and others are actually out to end public education. On this show, New Republic editor Kathryn Joyce looks behind such appealing phrases as Parents Bill of Rights to reveal a long broad attack on democracy itself through right wing conquest of schools. Vouchers, school choice, public funding of religious schools: they’re all part of dismantling this foundation of our republic. But they may fail.
    1 hr
  • The Prescience And Vision of Rosa Luxemburg. Who?
    Precapitalist indigenous cultures have a lot to offer us today for a better, greener future. And socialism is not how its pictured. Neglected by the Great Men study of history, Rosa Luxemburg, a 4′ 11″ disabled young woman from what’s now Poland,  grew to lead the socialist movement in Europe until she was murdered in 1919. Her vision requires real democracy and development of the full and free individual. As Luxemburg scholar Peter Hudis reveals, much of her brave vision is more applicable than ever in this world so threatened by climate crisis.
    59 min
  • For Inspiration Today: Fannie Lou Hamer In the Early 60s
    When she came onto the civil rights stage, the men assumed she’d sing, not speak. But Fannie Lou Hamer was a force. As author Kate Clifford Larson tells the amazing story in her new book Walk With Me, she stood up to elitism in the civil rights movement. Unlike the men leaders, she was an uneducated genius, whose unique activism was community based which gave new power to the movement. Her speech at the 1964 Democratic national convention was so powerful President Johnson called a “news conference” to interrupt TV coverage. Growing up in the cotton fields, beaten and raped in jail, her influence goes on, winning many of today’s defining battles.
    1 hr
  • From Heroes to Targets: Medical Workers Under Attack
    It’s not like displaying a large red cross protects doctors from attack anymore. Yesterday’s Covid heroes are today vilified by some. Across the globe, health care workers have become routinely targeted. For example in Myanmar, since it is not an official “armed conflict,” the ruling junta targets doctors and medical care givers: because they might be helping a “terrorist,” which could really be anybody. In his new book Perilous Medicine, The Struggle to Protect Health Care from The Violence of War, author Leonard Rubinstein, professor and director of the Program on Human Rights and Health in Conflict, reveals how medical workers got to be specifically targeted. He says criminalization of health care does not work and that public opinion does matter–even to the Taliban. And Americans are hardly powerless; we did stop arming Saudis attacking Yemeni hospitals.
    1 hr
  • The Harmful Naivete of A Foreign Policy of Violence
    With violence so deeply embedded into America’s foreign policy, it’s become invisible. But who does it harm more; us of them? On this show global religion teacher and author Kelly Denton-Borhaug says it is time to grow up and face reality in the mirror. Though we may not ourselves participate, the violence still shapes us all. That includes domestic structural violence we don’t see. And in assuming “freedom isn’t free,” that it requires purchase by blood, we reject America’s founding tenets. We can’t afford to look away anymore.
    59 min
  • Even When It Loses, the Pentagon Wins
    They’re doing it again. Remember the Peace Dividend after Vietnam? Right, it never happened. Now with another war finally ended, here we are again. On this show, retired USAF Lieutenant Colonel William Astore says the amount of money shoveled to the military is so inconceivable, it’s too big to question. Words like “full spectrum dominance” may make the sale but the reality is the just-ended War on Terror served to amplify terror. And this rhetoric of a new Cold War. The truth is America is weakening itself, Astore says patriotism requires a return of the old Questioning Authority.
    1 hr

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