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

  • Our Need to Connect is Tearing Us Apart
    There’s a basic and universal human need to feel like we belong. In this ever more isolating world of sharply divided news media and working alone, the opportunities to make connections are reduced. So in this need for tribal belonging, we all too often demonize The Other, the people we do not know and often times fear. This is quite dangerous to democracy according to our guest Howard Ross whose new book is Our Search for Belonging: How Our Need to Connect is Tearing Us Apart. There are solutions, ways to build bridges, such as asking what people are afraid of. He says the right demands liberty, the left demands justice and neither one alone enables a democracy to function. Ross also argues that “Now is the best time in history but we act as if it’s the worst.” Much to learn from this podcast.
    1 hr
  • May Day: As American as Apple Pie
    It’s celebrated all over the world, except here in America where it all started. It is clear that for unjust power, history has to be erased–otherwise we might assert our democracy. On this special program, the real history of May Day is explained. It is up to us to learn its key lessons and today demand the rights we have earned.
    1 hr
  • Who Is Trump’s Buddy Emmanuel Macron?
    The mainstream left of Europe has largely collapsed. Their national economies are trapped by the European Union. The eloquent English speaking Emmanuel Macron, president of France for just a year, on his April trip to Washington, displayed a public “bromance” with our own enigmatic president Trump.  And then ripped into his policies when he addressed Congress.  According to our guest Sherle R Schwenninger, who is founding Director of the World Economic Roundtable, a non-profit group that helps investors and policy makers understand changes occurring in the world economy, Macron really is in the mold of Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroder, and Bill Clinton in that they all are neo-liberals favoring capital over labor. Schwenninger also says that Macron’s joining Trump’s missile attack on Syria is indicative of his aim to reassert French neo-colonialism.
    1 hr
  • Bobby Kennedy’s Delta Epiphany
    How did Bobby Kennedy change from the Red Scare helper of Joe McCarthy to the liberal icon? According to a new book,it was visiting desperately poor families in the Mississippi Delta in April of 1967. In her Delta Epiphany: Robert Kennedy in Mississippi author Ellen B Meacham says that the New York senator was shocked that educating children was not a priority and that a great many citizens were shut out of democracy. She also corrects the image that liberalism means one-size-fits-all, top-down solutions. It is a far more complex and nuanced picture than today’s right wing paints. And it works.
    1 hr
  • Little Armenia Leads the World In Stopping Authoritarianism
    It was a successful popular movement for empowerment. And it was a close call: the parliamentary leader tried to declare himself prime minister, Armenians took to the streets in creative, even artistic, civil disobedience on a mass scale. They successfully stopped the slide to authoritarianism. Is this success for democracy replicable? Our guest Anna Ohanyan, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and International Relations (herself raised in Soviet occupied Armenia) explains what happened and what can be learned to bolster democracy everywhere. How did the people do it? Listen in.
    1 hr
  • Tax Day 2018: Billionaires Thank Us!
    It’s the same only worse. Much worse. While the Trump/Ryan tax law won’t really hit until next April, there is no question the beneficiaries are those at the very top of the wealth pyramid. Regular income earners will be subsidizing the super rich at a much greater level. Our guest today explains what it does clearly and succinctly. Josh Hoxie directs the Project on Opportunity and Taxation at the Institute for Policy Studies and is co- editor of Inequality.org. He is the co-author of several reports including his most recent ” Billionaire Bonanza 2017: The Forbes 400 and the Rest Of Us.” The main point is that we have the power to make taxes more fair and better serve the common good.
    1 hr
  • International Hero Bill Richardson and International Threat Trump
    He’s brought back hostages from North Korea, Cuba,Iraq  and Sudan. He was governor of New Mexico, US ambassador the UN. He won my vote for president in 2008. Bill Richardson’s record is exceedingly impressive. On the first half, Governor Richardson talks about Myanmar, North Korea, and what American leadership could and should look like. And on part 2 international journalist Patrick Lawrence uncovers realities hidden under the propaganda of the alleged “gas attack” in Syria.
    1 hr
  • Millions of Jobs Are Disappearing. The Answer? $12,000 for Everyone?!
    How radical can you get? Well, Nixon was on board with the idea in 1971. Entrepreneur and author Andrew Yang’s new book is titled The War on Normal People: The Truth About America’s Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income is Our Future. You think it would cost a lot of money? According to our guest, if we don’t do it our future looks like Mad Max. If we do, the American economy will be much stronger, he says, as demand is greatly stimulated. It’s an old idea whose time has returned, according to Yang who is running for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020.


    1 hr
  • Trump’s Massive Corruption Troubles//April4’68 Plus 50: Action, not Dreams
    Stormy Daniels and the Russia investigation grab all the headlines about Trump, but his flagrant violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution is the best chance to get him removed. “Emoluments?” Our first guest CommonDreams.org journalist Julia Conley explains that the clause is “the nation’s original anti-corruption law.” The new Trump Hotel in Washington is the focus of a powerful lawsuit which is going forward. And on part two, as America notes the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of  Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Dr. Arthur Hilson inspirationally explains that “a dream is for sleeping people,” while King meant for us to take action for economic social and racial justice.
     
    1 hr
  • Saudi Power in Washington: Harming America in the Middle East
    Americans are just beginning to learn about our deadly role for the Saudi war in Yemen. For many decades and many presidents, the Saudi royal family has held great sway in Washington. Today the famine and cholera outbreak in Yemen, one of the poorest countries, worsens quickly as a result of American made bombing and tactical aid to one of the richest nations. The people of Saudi Arabia are subjects not citizens and the new Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sees Iran as a public relations threat to his tenuous and repressive hold on power.Our guest, veteran journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed, of Huffington Post, tells us about the special relations between Trump and the crown prince: “They have the same interior decorator,” Ahmed jokes. Our current short-sighted policy is greatly helping America’s enemies in the region. It’s a war that can not be won. Pressure from concerned Americans is building. Listen in!
     
    1 hr

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