Podcasts about whowhatwhy

Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army officer, professor, and author, argues that American foreign and military policy must adapt to a radically changed and morally pragmatic world. Read More: https://whowhatwhy.org/podcast/stop-the-world-so-america-can-get-on Image Caption: The fall of Saigon, April 30, 1975 (inset). Americans and Afghan refugees leaving aboard a US Air Force C-17 Globemaster III at Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), Afghanistan, August 24, 2021. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Secretary of Defense PDF and © U.S. Air Force/ZUMA Press Wire Service/ZUMAPRESS.com

Suzi Brantley, 4th generation Charlottean, goes in-depth with her experiences with IVF/IUI and why single motherhood was a good option for her. Listen in to learn all the Who/What/Why involved in fertility testing as well as some of the highs and lows she endured throughout her process into parenthood. Suzi's favorite baby product is the Owlet Smart Sock. Looking for a Virtual Doula to create a custom birthing experience and guide you through your journey to parenthood in the United States? Contact Heidi at www.mydoulaheidi.com For additional free birth education resources and to purchase Heidi's book, Birth Story: Pregnancy Guidebook + Journal, visit www.birthstory.com. Want to share your thoughts on the episode? Leave a review and send a message directly to Heidi on Instagram.

Suzi Brantley goes in-depth with her experiences with IVF/IUI and why single motherhood was a good option for her. Listen in to learn all the Who/What/Why involved in fertility testing as well as some of the highs and lows she endured throughout her process into parenthood. Suzi's favorite baby product is the Owlet Smart Sock. Looking for a Virtual Doula to create a custom birthing experience and guide you through your journey to parenthood in the United States? Contact Heidi at www.mydoulaheidi.com For additional free birth education resources and to purchase Heidi's book, Birth Story: Pregnancy Guidebook + Journal, visit www.birthstory.com. Want to share your thoughts on the episode? Leave a review and send a message directly to Heidi on Instagram.

On this edition of Parallax Views, on May 13th, 2021 the New York Times published a tantalizing report by journalists Adam Goldman and Mark Mazzetti. "Activists and Ex-Spy Said to Have Plotted to Discredit Trump ‘Enemies’ in Government", read the eye-catching headline that promised to add yet another scandalous chapter to the already scandal-ridden story of the Trump Presidency. Following the attention-grabbing headline, Goldman & Mazzetti, through documents and interviews, details a "campaign" by pro-Trump elements to discredit government officials perceived as potentially disloyal to the modus operandi of President Trump in the early years of his Presidency. Brining to mind Richard Nixon's "dirty tricks" and the tradition of what in D.C. slang has come to be known as political "ratf*cking, said campaign included a "planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster" and "secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks". According to Goldman & Mazzetti's reporting the plot involved former British spy Richard Seddon, controversial private security contractor Erik Prince of Blackwater infamy (and, for what it's worth, the younger brother of Trump's Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos), and operatives of Project Veritas, a right-wing conservative activist group founded by James O'Keefe and previously known for its operations against Planned Parenthood, ACORN, and others. In regards specifically to the sting operation against Gen. McMaster, which involved what in intelligence circles is known as a "honey trap", the NYT story mentioned another player in this cast of character: Barbara Ledeen. A former GOP Senate Judiciary Committee staffer, Ledeen admits to at least a minor role in the plot against McMaster in the NYT report. However, she is only mentioned rather briefly in the article itself. Investigative journalist Russ Baker, author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years and CEO/Editor-in-Chief of the news outlet WhoWhatWhy, joined me to discuss his recent article, co-authored with Matt Harvey, detailing how there may be another angle to explore in this story after taking a closer look at who Barbara Ledeen is and the circles she travels in. As Baker explains, Ledeen is the wife of one Michael Ledeen. Michael Ledeen, for the uninitiated is "a historian, campaign adviser, and freelance intelligence operative, who served as a consultant to the National Security Council and departments of State and Defense under Republican administrations" who figures into such political intrigues as the Iran/Contra affair and the Niger yellowcake forgeries that played a role in launching the Bush administration war on Iraq on the basis of that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). Michael Ledeen is part of a milieu that has come to be known as the Neoconservatives. The neocons reached the apex of their political influence during the Presidency of George W. Bush and took hawkish positions on Iraq, Iran, and other countries in the Middle East even prior to 9/11. Prominent elements of the movement included the Project for a New American Century think tank and long-time D.C. mainstays like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Elliot Abrams among others.  In our conversation, Baker notes the complexity of this story and why the Ledeen connection matters. Chiefly, Baker points out the the Ledeens are heavily associated collaborators of Gen. Mike Flynn, who was fired from a prominent position under President Obama only to return to prominence under President Donald Trump. However, Flynn's return proved short-lived and he was ultimately replaced by Gen. H.R. McMaster. Additionally, Baker discusses the issue of neoconservatism and its relation to Israel and Netanyahu's Likud Party. Specifically, neoconservatives take an approach of strong, hardline support to Israel. In fact, for some neocons, this support is so hardline that it has led to right-wing admonishments of generally Israel-friendly Presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama for being perceived as not sufficiently supportive of Israel. McMaster, Baker, argues may, despite not having a particularly radical stance on Israel, be seen in this regard by some neocons. Baker is quick to point out in our conversation that this discussion of neoconservatism and pro-Likud politics should not be used to support anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Instead he believes we should examined how the foreign policy ideas of neocons like the Ledeen and their relationship to Flynn may figure into the contour of a broader story about why politically right-wing elements in Washington, D.C. would seek to craft a sting operation against Gen. H.R. McMaster. And moreover how this plot against McMaster by alleged 'Anti-Deep State' elements may instead actually represent feuding factions of the deep state (by which, Russ points out, we mean the entrenched bureaucracy in D.C. rather than the lunatic fringe conspiracy theories of QAnon and its ilk). All that and more on this edition of Parallax Views!

If you appreciate Parallax Views and the work of J.G. Michael please consider supporting the show through Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/parallaxviews On this edition of Parallax Views, Edward Girardet, one of the leading journalists on issues related to Afghanistan and humanitarian crises, joins us to discuss his article at Global-Geneva and WhoWhatWhy.Org entitled "Afghanistan: The Abandonment of a Nation". We discuss a number of issues related to the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan slated for May 1, 2021. Additionally we discuss a number of Edward's experiences in Afghanistan and how a possibility for peace in Afghanistan remains within reach. (Further notes forthcoming)

Ashley Beilstein, coach at OrangeTheory Fitness (OTF) Dunwoody stopped by to discuss the Who/What/Why of OTF and the need for group fitness, exercise intensity, safety with exercise and much more (1:40-31:40). Afterward Lauren and Jake discuss their experience in group fitness, injury prevention, and the need for good coaching and accountability (32:00-49:45).OTF Dunwoody Location | https://www.orangetheory.com/en-us/locations/georgia/dunwoody/2480-jett-ferry-road/

Today’s S.O.L. Story is inspired by what happened in the gym yesterday, and the story continues… Who? What? Why? 1. Who are you asking? Are they qualified to give you her/his opinion? 2. What are you asking? Be specific. What feedback are you looking for? 3. Why are you asking? Others’ opinions of you are not your business, unless you ask for it. Seriously, why are you asking? AND CAN YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH? Start with whom you're asking. AND... Make sure that YOU are at the top of your list. Start by asking these questions first, then ASK. But please, make sure they can see your vision first. Got it?  Please grab your SACRED S.O.L. D.A.T.E. JOURNAL (Daily Action To Engage yourself.) TODAY’S SACRED S.O.L. STEP: Where in your life have you been receiving feedback and advice from someone who is unqualified to give it? STOP. Where in your life would asking for some feedback be a wise thing to do? START. ASK. Thank you for being here, and allowing me to Sip On Life with you. Request a FREE copy of my best-selling book, Date Yourself Well — The Best-Selling 12 Engagements Of Becoming The Great Lover Of Your Life (all you'll pay for is shipping.) www.dateyourselfwell.com  I’m going to be inviting listeners onto the program. If you have a story you'd like to share — a song to sing (but not a Poor Me Story) — send me an email at: drshannon@doctorshannon.com and put SHARE MY STORY in the subject line. If you've received value from the podcast, please let me know. I'd LOVE to hear from you — please email me at: drshannon@doctorshannon.com AND PLEASE TELL YOUR BESTIES AND INVITE THEM TO SIP ON LIFE WITH US. FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM @doctorshannon! See you there... And learn about an incredible opportunity for a select sacred group of 25 women who are ready and willing to RISE UP AND BE THE WOMAN. If you’ve been feeling like you’re stuck, overwhelmed, or perhaps you still feel like you’re drowning, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be more than happy to schedule a Discovery Call with you to see if Healing Life Coaching is a good fit for you. Email me at drshannon@doctorshannon.com Come over to the WOMEN SIPPING ON LIFE S.O.L. MOVEMENT Closed FB Group and Join the MOVEMENT: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WSOLMovement/ By the way, if you haven't already listened/downloaded my new song (EPISODE 291), you can also listen to it here: letsnottalkaboutex.com, and cast your vote for your favorite version.  Visit WomenSippingOnLife.com for more free resources, including my CHECKLIST FOR CHANGE, Engagement Checklist + Evaluation Rating, Six Sacred S.O.L. DATE Secrets…and a FREE copy of my best-selling book, Date Yourself Well. You can also check out my Dr. Shannon Facebook Page for more daily S.O.L. TRAINING. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Please invite your best girlfriends to come and join our S.O.L. PARTY. xo Dr. Shannon. Inspiring minds that want to grow and hearts that want to know, so you can love you, your life, and your life’s work well. ONE SIP AT A TIME. A special thanks to the following souls for helping me launch our WOMEN SIPPING ON LIFE podcast… Intro/Outro done by UNI V. SOL  Outro music by Jay Man: Mind Over Matter (www.ourmusicbox.com)  Podcast cover design and web site done by: Pablo Aguilar (www.webdesigncreator.com) Podcast cover photo by Kate Montague of KM Captured (www.kmcaptured.com) 

WBAI Correspondent Celeste Katz Marston sits in for host Jeff Simmons to discuss her new e-book, "Is This Any Way to Vote? Vulnerable Voting Machines and the Mysterious Industry Behind Them." Her guests include e-book co-author Gabriella Novello of WhoWhatWhy, Tammy Patrick of Democracy Fund, and Marilyn Marks of the Coalition for Good Governance. Tune in for a great discussion with the experts as we talk about voting and supporting our democracy during a world-changing pandemic and beyond. Original air date: October 15, 2020.

The simple and quaint past way of voting is over. It’s a brave new world and the authors of the new WhoWhatWhy e-book help us understand it. Read More: https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/10/02/is-this-any-way-to-vote-2/

Gabriella Novello, WhoWhatWhy’s election integrity reporter, discusses what it’s like to cover efforts to protect the right to vote during a pandemic. Read More: https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/05/19/from-the-front-lines-of-the-fight-for-fair-elections/

Show #760   Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are in the world, welcome to EV News Daily for Sunday 26th April 2020. It’s Martyn Lee here and I go through every EV story so you don't have to.   VW FACTORY IN CHINA PRODUCING AN ESUV "In China, according to a number of media sources, VW has begun the production of prototypes presented last year as an electric SUV concept called ID. Roomzz. The seven-seater is apparently first set for launch on the Chinese market in 2021, presumably as VW ID.6." reports Electrive: "The plant in Anting is operated in cooperation with joint venture partner SAIC and is the first plant from the German carmaking giant in China that is entirely focussed on electric cars. According to information available, series production was scheduled to start in October 2020. It seems the model will initially be available only with four-wheel drive, the power ratings are 225 and 300 kW. As battery options are mentioned the 77 kWh (the largest option available in ID.3) and the maximum configuration with 111 kWh."   https://www.electrive.com/2020/04/27/vw-factory-in-china-producing-an-esuv/   NISSAN DEALERS TO LOAN VEHICLES TO NHS WORKERS FOR FREE DURING CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC "Nissan dealers will loan more than 100 free cars to NHS workers in need of mobility during the Coronavirus pandemic." sayas AM Online: "The vehicles are those typically used as demonstrators or courtesy cars.  The vehicles will include complimentary insurance and roadside assistance. Only fuel or charging costs will need to be covered by the recipient.  Nissan has previously announced that key workers, including NHS employees, driving Nissan vehicles can access roadside assistance services free of charge, regardless of vehicle age or warranty coverage, to help them stay mobile during the coronavirus lockdown."   https://www.am-online.com/news/manufacturer/2020/04/22/nissan-dealers-to-loan-vehicles-to-nhs-workers-for-free-during-coronavirus-pandemic   NORWAY AND THE A-HA MOMENT THAT MADE ELECTRIC CARS THE ANSWER "Last month, in an economy hit by the coronavirus crisis, fully electric cars accounted for just under 60% of Norway’s new car market, and plug-in hybrids just over 15% — meaning three in four of all new cars sold were either wholly or partly electric. It still has some way to go, but the country looks on course to meet a government target — set in 2016, with full cross-party parliamentary support — of phasing out the sale of all new fossil-fuel based cars and light commercial vehicles by 2025." according to WhoWhatWhy.org:   https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/04/22/norway-and-the-a-ha-moment-that-made-electric-cars-the-answer/   Audi e-tron reaches 10,000 units registered in Norway after just a little over one year, is now in the top 10 best selling EVs of all time (Nissan Leaf still ahead with over 60k). Then it's the eGolf, BMW i3, Model S, Kia Soul, Model 3, Model X and Renault Zoe.   QUESTION OF THE WEEK   LEE BROWN “I have to sit on the fence with this one. Our first EV is a 30kWh Leaf which was purchased used and for the small commutes the right prices compared to buying new. But we have an eNiro on order as our second EV which should arrive within the next few months. We had to go new for this as there’s not much second hand for that price range that’ll do almost 300 miles with a 7 year warranty”   JOHN FRUHWIRTH To answer this week's question, I have always bought used vehicles. I did the same with my Tesla. Being a cheapskate, I had always wanted to avoid the steep depreciation associated with buying a new vehicle. All I ever wanted from a vehicle was economy, reliability and functionality. That's why I had been driving mini vans. That was the case until I was soon to turn 70, felt my mortality and learned about Tesla. So, I decided that, at this time in my life, I would get the best car I could get for $100k (some cheapskate, eh?). I bought my dream car, a 2016 Red Tesla Model S P90D. By the time I got it, it was 2 years old and $65k cheaper than when it was new. It is now technologically obsolete but I don't care. It is everything I could want.   JOHN HARCOMBE IN GLASGOW NEW of course, as everyone loves that new smell. That is if you can afford new. Education is main thing with EV- Goggle- Tesla Incentives Shows all ev manufactures incentives of buying EV weather staff threw salary sacrifice and free charging, or company savings of total cost of ownership which the bean counters love.   RAJEEV NARAYAN I bought my two EVs new because, as you alluded to recently, we often buy cars with our hearts and not our heads. That being said the best value for money is probably a used lightly used EV . A lightly used Tesla or even a Chevy Bolt could be a very good deal. I might be cautious with an older Nissan Leaf given what I have heard about their air cooled batteries and degradation.   DAVID GUERRIERO I currently drive a 2012 Audi A5 convertible, bought used with low miles. LOVE IT!  Will they ever build a convertible EV?  I buy my cars lightly used. My next car will be an EV or high ev miles PHEV.  I can not afford to buy a brand new car/EV that I like. My EV will be used unless I hit the lottery!   UNDERSTAND THIS  Used car for sure. We always pay cash for cars and the price must not exceed 2% of our net worth. In 2 or 3 years we can buy new...for now used only. Even then we may not, as the value of a 3 to 5 years old car is so much better than new :)   MICHAEL ARBER I'm soon to retire so I am expecting to do less that 5,000 miles a year.  In which case there is no way I can justify a new electric car as, the cost saving will never cover the high cost over a ICE.  The most sensible would be a high mileage used recent model.  Perhaps a recent battery lease Zoe then buy the battery (as I understand you can now do).  Any thoughts?     QUESTION OF THE WEEK   What car have you driven in your lifetime you would love to be able to convert to EV?   I want to say a heartfelt thank you to the 235 patrons of this podcast whose generosity means I get to keep making this show, which aims to entertain and inform thousands of listeners every day about a brighter future. By no means do you have to check out Patreon but if it’s something you’ve been thinking about, by all means look at patreon.com/evnewsdaily   [mention for Premium Partners]   You can listen to all 759 previous episodes of this this for free, where you get your podcasts from, plus the blog https://www.evnewsdaily.com/ – remember to subscribe, which means you don’t have to think about downloading the show each day, plus you get it first and free and automatically.   It would mean a lot if you could take 2mins to leave a quick review on whichever platform you download the podcast.   And if you have an Amazon Echo, download our Alexa Skill, search for EV News Daily and add it as a flash briefing.   Come and say hi on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter just search EV News Daily, have a wonderful day, I’ll catch you tomorrow and remember…there’s no such thing as a self-charging hybrid.     PHIL ROBERTS / ELECTRIC FUTURE (PREMIUM PARTNER) BRAD CROSBY (PREMIUM PARTNER) AVID TECHNOLOGY (PREMIUM PARTNER) BRIGHTSMITHGROUP.COM – FOR CLEANTECH TALENT (PREMIUM PARTNER) NEW! 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Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative journalist, author of best selling book 'FAMILY OF SECRETS: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government & the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years.' He has written for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. He has also served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review. Baker received a 2005 Deadline Club award for his exclusive reporting on George W. Bush’s military record. He is the founder of the nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news site WhoWhatWhy.org.

On this edition of Parallax Views, while concerns about the global pandemic known as the coronavirus continue to mount in the United States, many folks are being hit by symptoms of another entirely different condition sweeping the nation. Namely, election fever. The surprise comeback of former Vice President Joe Biden in the Democratic Party Primaries proved to be a dark day for progressive activists, specifically supporters of Bernie Sanders.. As we race toward the General Election in November that will pit the Democratic nominee against sitting President Donald Trump, the heat has been turned up a notch on the Democratic Party Primary race. Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Michale Bloomberg, and, now, Elizabeth Warren have dropped out of the running leaving us with a match-up between the centrist moderate Joe Biden and the progressive Bernie Sanders. Joining us later on this edition of the program to discuss the aftermath of Super Tuesday and where progressive movement and the left need to go from here is Eric Draitser of Counterpunch Radio. But first... The 2000 Presidential Election, which pitted Republican George W. Bush against Democrat Al Gore, the latter fresh from a run as Vice President under Bill Clinton, was marred by controversy by the time it ended. For a brief period it appeared to many, including the news media, that Gore would win the election. However, reporting on Al Gore’s victory in Florida, where George W’s brother Jeb Bush was serving as Governor, suddenly proved incorrect at the 11th hour. Controversy arose when it was found that Votomatic machine punch card ballots appeared to have left sizable number of voters unaccounted for. Republicans claimed that this was because said voters were not sophisticated enough to use the Votomatic machien properly. Meanwhile, Democrats demanded recounts. The debacle eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court when it was decided that Bush would be declared the winner of the Presidential race. Nonetheless, public figures ranging from progressive radio host Thom Hartmann to famed attorney Vincent Bugliosi would go on to dissect the controversies and challenge Bush’s victory after the fact. In 2018, noted true crime author and investigative journalist Stephen Singular sought to tell the story of his investigation into the matter by way of his book Stolen Future: The Untold Story of the 2000 Election. Singular was knee-deep in the story as it was happening, but only now. thanks to fellow journalist Russ Baker’s WhoWhatWhy media outlet, has he been able to tell the tale. And I must say its a tale straight out of a crime noir thriller. Regardless your take on the 2000 Presidential Election, Stephen Singular’s Stolen Future raises troubling questions about the state of election integrity in the United States. Whether one believes the result of the 2000 Presidential Election was due to malfeasance or the potential incompetence of the companies behind the Votomatic machines that haunted said election, Singular’s reporting, in my view, should make us all consider the age old question of whether or not money belongs in politics. Should something as important as a Presidential Election be left in the hands of the private interests who create our voting machines? Stephen Singular joins us to recount his personal investigation of the Bush vs. Gore debacle and the issue of "hanging chads" as told in his book, Stolen Future: The Untold Story of the 2000 Election.Then... Eric Draitser of Counterpunch Radio returns to the program to share his commentary on the aftermath of of Super Tuesday, Joe Biden's big comeback, and what it means for not only the Bernie Sanders campaign but the progressive/left movement in America as a whole. SUPPORT PARALLAX VIEWSON PATREON! FORBONUS CONTENTANDARCHIVED EPISODES!

Author Russell Warren "Russ" Baker is a publisher and investigative journalist. "Controversial. Credible. Courageous.", Baker is the Editor-in-Chief and Founder of the nonprofit news organization WhoWhatWhy.com. Native of Venice, CA, Russ has a BA in Political Science from UCLA and an MA from Columbia School of Journalism. He is a former contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review. In his 25+ year career, Baker has written for a variety of publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Esquire, Vanity Fair, and The Village Voice. “He seemed unimpressed with conventional wisdom, quickly spotted and dismissed spin, and wasn’t intimidated by the powers-that-be.” - Bill Moyers Baker is the author of the 2008 book Family of Secrets, which raises "uncomfortable questions" about members of the Bush Family and their careers and relationships outside of politics, and presents evidence of connections between President George H.W. Bush and individuals involved with the Watergate scandal and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/iantrottier/support

By now, we’ve all seen the pictures and footage of Australia-on-fire. In many ways it’s equivalent to those Rover pictures of Mars. They make us sit up and take notice, but we have no real feel for what it’s like and how life can survive, or even if it can. For that we can only appreciate firsthand accounts of what may very well be the first great climate apocalypse of the 21st century. Some of you may have read Judith Crispin’s harrowing account of the fires in a recent story in WhoWhatWhy. Now amidst the fire and devastation, it is an honor to talk with Judith Crispin My WhoWhatWhy conversation with Judith Crispin: 

Today’s S.O.L. Story is inspired by what happened in the gym yesterday, and the story continues… Who? What? Why? 1. Who are you asking? Are they qualified to give you her/his opinion? 2. What are you asking? Be specific. What feedback are you looking for? 3. Why are you asking? Others’ opinions of you are not your business, unless you ask for it. Seriously, why are you asking? AND CAN YOU HANDLE THE TRUTH? Start with whom you're asking. AND... Make sure that YOU are at the top of your list. Start by asking these questions first, then ASK. But please, make sure they can see your vision first. Got it?  Please grab your SACRED S.O.L. D.A.T.E. JOURNAL (Daily Action To Engage yourself.) TODAY’S SACRED S.O.L. STEP: Where in your life have you been receiving feedback and advice from someone who is unqualified to give it? STOP. Where in your life would asking for some feedback be a wise thing to do? START. ASK. Thank you for being here, and allowing me to sip on life with you. FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM @doctorshannon! See you there... Go to YOU BE THE WOMAN NOW to learn more about our next 4-Week YOU BE THE WOMAN Program. Apply today.  And learn about an incredible opportunity for a select sacred group of 25 women who are ready and willing to RISE UP AND BE THE WOMAN. If you’ve been feeling like you’re stuck, overwhelmed, or perhaps you still feel like you’re drowning, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d be more than happy to schedule a Discovery Call with you to see if Healing Life Coaching is a good fit for you. Email me at drshannon@doctorshannon.com Come over to the WOMEN SIPPING ON LIFE S.O.L. MOVEMENT Closed FB Group and Join the MOVEMENT: https://www.facebook.com/groups/WSOLMovement/ By the way, if you haven't already listened/downloaded my new song (EPISODE 291), you can also listen to it here: letsnottalkaboutex.com, and cast your vote for your favorite version.  Visit WomenSippingOnLife.com for more free resources, including my CHECKLIST FOR CHANGE, Engagement Checklist + Evaluation Rating, Six Sacred S.O.L. DATE Secrets…and a FREE copy of my best-selling book, Date Yourself Well. You can also check out my Dr. Shannon Facebook Page for more daily S.O.L. TRAINING. I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. Please invite your best girlfriends to come and join our S.O.L. PARTY. xo Dr. Shannon. Inspiring minds that want to grow and hearts that want to know, so you can love you, your life, and your life’s work well. ONE SIP AT A TIME. A special thanks to the following souls for helping me launch our WOMEN SIPPING ON LIFE podcast… Intro/Outro done by UNI V. SOL  Outro music by Jay Man: Mind Over Matter (www.ourmusicbox.com)  Podcast cover design and web site done by: Pablo Aguilar (www.webdesigncreator.com) Podcast cover photo by Kate Montague of KM Captured (www.kmcaptured.com) 

Upon the death of Paul Krassner this week, we are sharing part of a conversation WhoWhatWhy podcaster Jeff Schechtman had with him back in 2009.

If the Democratic debates told us anything, it’s that some of our would-be leaders don’t see the proverbial forest for the trees.   So many signs indicate that our democracy is not working. The infrastructure of our electoral system is failing, the Supreme Court just Ok’d gerrymandering for political gain, Russians keep interfering in our elections, climate change is an existential threat, kids are afraid to go to school for fear of being shot, China is on the verge of controlling the next generation of our communications, and the global world order that held things together since the end of World War II is tottering.  Our guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast is Larry Diamond, a Princeton professor and author of Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency. A longtime student of democratic processes around the world, he says that nothing short of a radical transformation can save our system. Diamond rejects the notion, put forth last month by our podcast guest, Yale professor Ian Shapiro, that we need to revitalize political parties. He says it’s unrealistic to think we will ever return to the era of party bosses and smoke-filled rooms.  Indeed, he believes that the old standard of simple “majority rule” elections is an antiquated model which is being abandoned by most progressive democracies around the world. In its place, he argues that ranked-choice voting — where voters list multiple candidates in order of preference — can reenergize democracy. Putting our problems in a larger context, Diamond talks about the impact of climate change and global migration, as well as the escalating conflicts with Russia and China — and how any solutions to these problems must involve the US.   If we are to contribute to this effort, we must first put our own house in order, says Diamond. In other words, reforming the American political system is an indispensable first step toward saving the world. 

There are few First Amendment issues more pressing today than how online speech should be governed. It impacts our interpersonal relationships, our views of almost every aspect of society and of course our politics. Now, absent an easy solution, Congress wants to dive in and claim that they actually have a clue. The internet was supposed to set a million voices free...It didn't work out quite that way. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast we talk to David Kaye, a UC Irvine law professor and the United Nations’ leading voice on freedom of expression and human rights. He serves as the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right of freedom of opinion and expression. In our conversation, we examine the balance between free speech and the regulation of the internet and its leading companies, the impact that these companies have on public life, and the question of who should decide whom gets censored. Facebook’s refusal to take down the recent doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) “slurred” speech shows how social media companies have set their own rules and how the rest of us have no clue what those rules are. The goals and standards of these profit-making companies, Kaye says,  are going to be almost impossible to reconcile with the wide variety of international and global rules Kaye expands on the idea that these companies can never have enough people to moderate all their content, and why, contrary to hopes, artificial intelligence is not the answer. While there has been a lot of talk recently about breaking up these companies, Kaye explains that, in fact, they may just need to be “broken down” — by which he means brought even closer to their end-users. He says that, only if there is a sense of a close and common community among users and the companies can speech be self policed.

We keep trying to reform our political system to make it more “democratic.” Grassroots organizations across the world are pushing reforms, trying to bring politics closer to the people. Parties have turned to primaries and local caucuses to select candidates. Ballot initiatives and referenda allow citizens to enact laws directly. Many democracies now use proportional representation, encouraging smaller, more issue-focussed parties, rather than two dominant,“big tent” ones. At the same time, voters keep getting angrier. It appears that popular democracy has paradoxically eroded trust in political systems worldwide. What if we are going in the totally wrong direction? In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, we talk to Ian Shapiro, a professor of political science and the director of the MacMillan Center at Yale University. He is the co-author of Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself. Shapiro argues that the devolving power of political parties — and the evolving power of grassroots — is at the core of the problem. To revive confidence in governance, he says, we must restore power to the core institution of representative democracy: the political party. Shapiro explains that when voters have too much control, it often sets the system up for failure and disappointment. Instead, we should look at political parties as teams that bundle lots of issues and put many programs in front of voters that are not based on single-issue constituencies. Voters need to understand, Shapiro tells Jeff Schechtman, that there is an opportunity-cost to everything, and that we have to approach all issues with moderation.   Comparing the political process to “last best offer arbitration,” he explains why moderation is even more important than compromise, which often leads to extreme positions as a starting point. In the end, Shapiro shows how and why political parties have gotten weaker — and that many of our problems of governance stem from exactly that.

It seems that every time we experience a “gilded age,” the rich, perhaps worried that the pitchforks will soon be at the gates, increase their giving. According to David Callahan, our guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast and the founder and editor of Inside Philanthropy, political polarization has divided the world of large-scale giving as never before. Each side looks askance at the philanthropists on the other side. For those on the left, the Koch brothers are evil in their giving. For those on the right, George Soros is a symbol of all that is wrong with giving. Callahan, also the author of The Cheating Culture, explains how the billionaire class, which, over the past 40 years has led the charge to shrink the size of government, now seeks to privatize public good. The super-rich aim to mobilize their wealth and their “I alone can fix it” philosophy to determine where dollars are needed in the public sphere. Callahan reminds us that this has led to the delusion that the wealthy, no matter how that wealth is acquired, wield some special powers to determine what’s best. The delusion has been amplified by the current occupant of the White House. All of this, Callahan says, has led to the virtual institutionalization of the wealth gap. What we need now, he argues, is less accumulated wealth dispensed by private individuals, and more redistribution of wealth under public auspices — allowing people to democratically select what goals and values they want to advance.  

Given the ongoing standoff between Congress and the White House, it’s becoming clearer each day that the “tiebreaker” will be the 2020 election. So it’s encouraging to learn that the prospects for voting reform are not as bleak as some stories might lead us to believe. Amid voter apathy and voter suppression efforts, there are leaders and activists in some states and local communities across the country who are successfully working to bring more people to the polls. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast we talk with Joshua Douglas, a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law and an expert on state constitutions and election law procedure. He is also the co-author of an election-law case book and co-editor of Election Law Stories.   Douglas argues that change best happens locality by locality and that, in spite of all the bad news, he is seeing many new efforts at voter expansion. Promising local experiments, mostly in blue states but some bipartisan efforts as well, include felon re-enfranchisement and lowering the voting age. Douglas views voting reform as a two-pronged approach. Herculean efforts are necessary to fight back against the harsh tactics of voter suppression. At the same time, uncompromising resistance has to go hand-in-hand with proactive efforts to extend the franchise. If we are only engaged in the fight against suppression, he says “we are only doing half of what’s possible.” Some examples: lowering the voting age to 16 — coupled with different kinds of civics education —and the availability of modern voting systems that still provide paper back-up. Citing the positive results of automatic and same-day voter registration, he shows why these efforts are increasing turnout. Douglas points out that even in Kentucky and Iowa, two of the states aggressively engaged in voter suppression, some progress is being made. He details some inspiring stories of voting reforms that give hope for the future of democracy in the US.

French Canadian journalist Hugo Meunier specializes in “immersion reporting.” He spent three months working at a Walmart store and offers an insider’s account of the plight of low-paid worker bees who stock the shelves and endure abuse from bargain-hunting shoppers. In this WhoWhatWhy podcast interview, Meunier explains the training and indoctrination he received, as well as the company’s attempts to motivate workers with daily reports on store sales and repeated dangling of a $2,000 annual performance bonus. Employees are required to watch training videos and attend morning meetings that include a ritual Walmart cheer. Meunier offers some amusing stories from his Walmart experience, and details the sinister side of the world’s biggest retailer. For instance, during the peak sales month of December, he and his fellow “associates” saw their hours cut in an effort to improve the corporate bottom line. The workers’ loss of income was especially painful during the holidays. Hugo Meunier’s book, Walmart: Diary of an Associate (Fernwood Publishing), has just been released in English.

Austin Craft, Adam Gowin and Brice Steeb cover our initial post draft thoughts on the 2019 NFL Draft. We play a quick game of "Who? What? Why?" and give you our thoughts on who had the best draft and who had the worst.

The FAA’s decision allowing Boeing to do its own safety assessments — while the company president told President Trump that all was fine with the 737 Max — raises serious questions about the effectiveness of regulatory agencies charged with protecting our health and safety. In another critical public health area, the government has virtually partnered with the pharmaceutical industry to deal with the opioid crisis. It’s a lot like asking the arsonist to help put out the fire he started. According to Jonathan Marks, a bioethicist at the Penn State University, and our guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, this is a troubling and dangerous trend that’s become more pronounced in recent years. He reminds us of how and why the government was so slow to respond to the faulty ignition switches in many GM cars, why exploding gas tanks went unrepaired, why tobacco deaths went unchecked for so long, and why government fails to take climate change seriously. The reason in each case: The government’s regulatory agencies felt the need to work with business in public-private partnerships. This has cost the lives of thousands. Marks says much of this was based on the misguided idea that we needed less conflict between the public and private sectors, and that by working together, more could be accomplished. Marks contends nothing could be further from the truth. He argues that, even in the face of campaign donations and lobbying efforts, conflict between government and corporations needs to be maximized, and that only when companies are profoundly unhappy with the regulators, is it clear that regulators are doing their job. It’s something to think about before getting on a plane, or taking that next prescription.

Victor Wallis is a professor at the Berklee College of Music and was for 20 years the managing editor of Socialism and Democracy. Several months ago he joined us to talk about the radical intervention he saw as necessary to deal with the threat from climate change. He outlined this in his book Red-Green Revolution. Now Victor Wallis returns to WhoWhatWhy to talk about his broad alternative framework of America, which he lays out in his new work, Democracy Denied. This project began as a series of lectures he was to give in China, to an audience that didn’t understand America. As he worked on it, he realized that many of the ideas he was presenting were also not known by most Americans. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, he talks first about what he sees as the flawed notion of “American exceptionalism:” the supposed moral authority by which we proselytize for freedom while having the highest incarceration rate in the world and increasing levels of inequality. He explains how our moralizing leads to and perpetuates the kind of police state necessary to take on a war on drugs, encourage law and order, and plan for potential rebellion. Wallis talks about US imperialism— 800 bases around the world, the projection of American power directly on to the regimes of other countries, and our constant need to pass judgment on those regimes. This is one of the hallmarks of imperialism, as he sees it. He combines all of this with a sharp critique of the long history of racism in America and shows how it has, from our very beginnings, defined how we see, judge, and sometimes look down upon, people around the world who are not just like us. Wallis provides us with his alternative view of the world in a kind of economic and geopolitical tour de force.

Some have decried the Green New Deal because it touches on numerous areas outside of climate change, including universal health care, a universal basic income, job guarantees and worker rights. The assumption has been that climate change exists in some kind of a vacuum. Mike Berners-Lee, an English researcher, writer on greenhouse gases, professor at Lancaster University, and our guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, argues that the critics have it all wrong — because everything is connected. We cannot even begin to address climate change without also looking at food, biodiversity, income inequality, population, plastics, and more. Berners-Lee says that the challenges facing humanity today are inescapably global and interconnected. It no longer works, he tells Jeff Schechtman, to tackle environmental issues one at a time or to keep science, economics, sociology, politics, and psychology separate from one another. All parts of our complex global system must be addressed simultaneously if we are to have any positive impact. Despite all our individual and collective efforts with alternative energy and conservation, we have not made even the slightest improvement in the global “carbon curve,” Berners-Lee says. Moreover, in a kind of environmental Catch-22, it turns out that greater energy efficiency can sometimes increase carbon output. Nevertheless, Berners-Lee is slightly optimistic that we can solve some of these problems and improve our global quality of life.   After all, he reminds us, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos notwithstanding, it’s very unlikely that we’re going to find another planet to move to anytime soon. As Berners-Lee says, “there is no planet B.”

A headline in the Economist shouted recently that “socialism is storming back.” Certainly, with the wealth gap, declining social mobility, and climate change, it’s easy to see why some are losing faith in a capitalist society. But should the debate really be about capitalism vs. socialism — or is it a question of too much of a good thing that needs rebalancing?. After all, we once couldn’t get enough of the cars, antibiotics, and entertainment technology that capitalism produced in abundance. Today, that very abundance threatens to overwhelm us. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, journalist and Fast Company founder Bill Taylor talks to Jeff Schechtman about the language of our current political debate, and why rebuilding the public square is so essential to the survival of capitalism. Taylor talks about the commodification of just about everything these days, arguing that we have “drifted from a “market economy” to a “market society.” The resulting lack of a common civic life, he says, works against the common good. Schechtman and Taylor examine why it’s so essential for business, and leaders in the “commanding heights” of the economy, to take heed before the social, political, and economic consequences become dire. Rather than getting caught up in the polarized debate of the moment, this is a conversation that looks at the things we can actually do to make a change for the better.

The recent charges of “anti-Semitism” leveled against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have reignited the debate about the power and influence of AIPAC and the Israel lobby. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, we talk with Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. They have been looking at this issue for years and co-authored the book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.   In this week’s conversation, Mearsheimer and Walt examine the efforts of AIPAC, one of the most powerful political lobbies in the United States, and those of other Israeli interest groups. The duo note that even though these groups claim their advocacy is based not on religion but rather on what they characterize as a shared “strategic interest,” any disagreement with them is immediately met with accusations of anti-Semitism. Mearsheimer and Walt talk about the difference between US interests and those promoted by right-wing Israeli elements and their backers. It’s an unfiltered look into one of today’s most controversial issues.

This week, the House Judiciary Committee held its first hearing in over eight years on any kind of gun legislation. In that intervening period, names like Newtown, San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Parkland have been seared into our collective consciousness. However, the hearings this week focused only on HR 8, a piece of legislation that would institute universal background checks. We learn in this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast with Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), the chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, that while this particular legislation may have a chance of becoming law, it seems to be the beginning and the end of what’s possible. In response to questions about legislation banning assault weapons and bump stocks, the congressman feels the chances for passage are slight, at best. Although a lot of gun-control bills may be proposed in the coming year, and there may be public support for many of them, this week’s podcast makes clear that very little beyond background checks can be expected to become law.   Related: What Gun Background Checks Can’t Detect: Stupidity

No matter how unseasonably cold or hot it gets or how powerful the storms are, there will be those who still don’t accept the urgency of climate change. For the rest of us, who believe we humans are destroying life as know it on earth, the group Extinction Rebellion (XR) has a message: We must change our behavior now, or die. In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Rory Varrato, a US spokesperson for the group, explains that XR was formed last fall amid one of the the biggest acts of peaceful civil disobedience in the UK in decades. He notes that, unlike other climate-change activist groups, XR seeks not just to bring attention to the issue but to force action on several non-negotiable demands. At the top of the list, according to Varrato, are: 1) getting government, corporations, and the media to address the emergency of global climate change head-on; 2) bringing about nothing short of net-zero carbon output by 2025; and 3) reorganizing society to include direct democracy, citizen assemblies, and “climate justice.” Varrato takes direct aim at global capitalism as we know it. He lays out a radical agenda that includes a slower, more sustainable way of life for all and a more local approach to even the most complex issues. While acknowledging that there is not always a straight line between policy reform and civil disobedience, he and his colleagues see the latter as a starting point.

Air Date: 1/25/2019 Today we take a look at the past and present of our immigration system to understand the paradigms within which the entire debate takes place Be part of the show! Leave a message at 202-999-3991   Episode Sponsors: Privacy.com/Best| Blinkist.com/Best| Madison-Reed.com+ Promo Code: Left | WearPact.com+ Promo Code: BestoftheLeft Amazon USA| Amazon CA| Amazon UK| Clean Choice Energy Get AD FREE Shows & Bonus Content: Support our show on Patreon! SHOW NOTES Ch. 1: Sanitizing Our Settler-Colonial Past With ‘Nation of Immigrants’ Narratives - Citations Needed (@CitationsPod) - Air Date 1-15-19 “The United States is a nation of immigrants.” It’s a phrase we hear constantly – often said with the best of intentions and, in today’s increasingly cruel environment, meant as a strong rebuke of Donald Trump Ch. 2: Rethinking Migration with Aziz Rana Part 1 - The Dig from @jacobinmag - Air Date 1-8-19 To understand the origins of the immigration politics in general and the criminalization of Mexican immigrants in particular, we must explode these categories, identify their origins, and analyze the history that preceded them. Ch. 3: Greg Grandin on the history and politics of immigration enforcement - @Intercepted w @JeremyScahill - Air Date 1-15-19 Historian Greg Grandin lays out the nativist roots of the U.S. Border Patrol, its connection to CIA dirty wars in Latin America, and nearly 100-years of brutality and impunity. Ch. 4: Migration Expert Jacqueline Bhabha Slams ‘Barbarity’ of Trump Policies - Who What Why - Air Date 9-23-18 Jacqueline Bhabha joins Peter B. Collins for this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast. Bhabha is a professor of health and human rights at the School of Public Health, research director at the FXB Center, and lectures at Harvard Law and the Kennedy School. She is an Ch. 5: Jeh Johnson speaks out on separating immigrant families - Cape Up - Air Date 6-25-18 As the Trump Administration grapples with a crisis of its own making Jeh Johnson, former Secretary of Homeland Security tells us about what happened when he faced separating children from their parents. Ch. 6: How African Americans Fought For & Won Birthright Citizenship 150 Years Before Trump Tried to End It - @DemocracyNow - Air Date 10-31-18 As President Trump claims that he can end birthright citizenship in the United States, we speak with professor Martha Jones about the history of the 14th Amendment Ch. 7: Rethinking Migration with Aziz Rana Part 2 - The Dig from @jacobinmag - Air Date 1-8-19 To understand the origins of the immigration politics in general and the criminalization of Mexican immigrants in particular, we must explode these categories, identify their origins, and analyze the history that preceded them. VOICEMAILS Ch. 8: PostScript on America's policy on socialism and communism - Erin from Philadelphia FINAL COMMENTS Ch. 9: Final comments proposing a compromise between progressives and conservatives MUSIC(Blue Dot Sessions): Opening Theme: Loving Acoustic Instrumental by John Douglas Orr  Cat's Eye - Marble Run (Blue Dot Sessions) Vengeful - Warmbody (Blue Dot Sessions) Insatiable Toad - Origami (Blue Dot Sessions) Minutes - Pacha Faro (Blue Dot Sessions) Homegrown - The Pine Barrens (Blue Dot Sessions) Voicemail Music: Low Key Lost Feeling Electro by Alex Stinnent Closing Music: Upbeat Laid Back Indie Rock by Alex Stinnent   Produced by Jay! Tomlinson Thanks for listening! Visit us at BestOfTheLeft.com Support the show via Patreon Listen on iTunes | Stitcher| Spotify| Alexa Devices| +more Check out the BotL iOS/AndroidApp in the App Stores! Follow at Twitter.com/BestOfTheLeft Like at Facebook.com/BestOfTheLeft Contact me directly at Jay@BestOfTheLeft.com Review the show on iTunesand Stitcher!

Everyday we look at unfolding news and events through the lens of politics. Suppose we tried to understand it all instead through the lens of psychology? Suppose we got beyond the zero-sum political construct, and into how we have been and are still being manipulated. What if we realized that President Donald Trump is just a symptom of the deeper crumbling psychological infrastructure of our country? One that makes us so vulnerable to divisive political tactics?   Our guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast is psychologist and attorney, Dr. Bryant Welch. In his book State of Confusion, he argues that these are questions not of politics, but about the health of the American mind. Welch talks to Jeff Schechtman about the long-term impact of today’s sophisticated forms of political manipulation, all of which undercut our ability to seriously deal with modern problems. In an era of change and the onslaught of technology, Welch explains how we are particularly susceptible to paranoia, sexual perplexity, and envy — and how they can easily be used to undermine our ability to function rationally. In Welch’s theories, we can see the root cause of the power of religious groups, and why long-accepted rational scientific ideas are suddenly now under siege. According to Welch, half of Americans today are “suggestive and regressed,” and he says that we are now also suffering from a kind of collective trauma.

President Donald Trump will probably never build one foot of his wall. Still, today there are 650 miles of border wall already dividing the US and Mexico. It’s almost one-third of the entire border. It divides cities, families, private property, and even impacts wildlife and habitats. We journey to the border in this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, as Jeff Schechtman is joined by Ronald Rael, associate professor in the department of architecture at UC Berkeley. According to Rael, the borderlands are like a third nation, combining some of the best of language, food, and culture of the US and Mexico. More profoundly, the existing wall is just as much a place of connectivity as it is of division. Rael explains that the current wall is actually a form of architecture. As such it defines space and in so doing defines places. It keeps people apart, but he details how it also encourages the coming together of people in unique ways. Since we are putting them up, the current walls are structures that are always built on the US side of the border. The result are vast borderlands between the wall and Mexico. With no viable uses, this creates an otherworldliness in the areas that are sequestered behind it.  Rael points out that over the next 25 years, it will cost $49 billion just to maintain the existing structures. He speculates on what else could be built along the border with that money: things like massive solar fields or water treatment plants that would have a far greater and more positive impact on both the US and Mexico.

The recent UN report on climate change indicated that we could be facing existential risks — ever more extreme weather events and rising sea levels — within 20 years. So what is the world to do? Jeff Goodell, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, joins Jeff Schechtman for this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast. Goodell, the author of The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, takes us deep into the grim reality we’re already facing: By century’s end, hundreds of millions of people will be retreating from the world’s shores. From island nations to the world’s major cities, inundated coastal regions will disappear. Bold engineering projects to hold back the water may buy some time, but despite international efforts and tireless research, no permanent solution is in sight. No barriers or walls will protect us in the end from the drowning of the world as we know it. Goodell has stated, “We’ve spent 40 years denying the risks of climate change, thinking that if we can just get everyone to buy a Prius and recycle their plastic, everything will be OK. The message of recent fires and hurricanes is that it will not be OK.” We’re living, according to Goodell, “in a new world now, and we had better get ready.” He reminds us that it’s not too late — if we rethink almost every aspect of how we live in the world.

Two weeks ago Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made a splash when tweeting about what she thought to be $21 trillion in misappropriated Pentagon money that she claimed was enough to pay for Medicare for all. She based her conclusions on misreading a complex article in the Nation, “The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed,” by investigative journalist Dave Lindorff. It’s too bad since her misreading took the focus away from the real story, which revealed the Department of Defense’s (DOD) hugely corrupt budgeting practices. The author of that article, Dave Lindorff, is Jeff Schechtman’s guest in this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast. According to Lindorff, more than 25 years ago, Congress ordered DOD to submit to an independent audit. After decades of stalling, the department finally failed its first ever audit this month. Lindorf shows how they are not just cooking the books, but literally making numbers up and, in so doing, are perpetuating a massive accounting fraud on the American people. Lindorff's investigation reveals not only why the Pentagon failed the audit, but why it resisted for so long. He explains how $21 trillion of Pentagon financial transactions, on both sides of the ledger, between 1998 and 2015 could not be traced, documented, or explained. In this conversation, Lindorff details how the fraud worked to inflate an already huge budget, the accounting tricks being used to fund secret programs, and how clueless Congress and the American people have been about the biggest single line item in the US federal budget. While Ocasio-Cortez got it wrong about the $21 trillion, there is no question that the Pentagon’s accounting fraud diverts many billions of dollars that could be devoted to other national needs.

In light of the recent death of former President George Herbert Walker "Poppy" Bush (1924-2018), CJ was very happy to speak to investigative journalist and author Russ Baker (author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, and head honcho of WhoWhatWhy) about the reality of Poppy Bush, which is quite a contrast to the media hagiography that's been ongoing since his death. Support the Dangerous History Podcast via Patreon CJ's DHP Amazon Wish List Other ways to support the show External Links Russbaker.comRuss Baker on TwitterWhoWhatWhy.orgFamilyofSecrets.comRuss' article about John Hinckley Jr., the attempted assassination of Reagan, and the Bush connectionsCarl Bernstein's 1977 Rolling Stone article about CIA influence over the US mediaCJ's Picks (Amazon Affiliate Links)Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty YearsThe Yankee and Cowboy War by Carl OglesbyThe Usual SuspectsZeligAmerican Made Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Ronald Reagan introduced a range of myths about America’s social safety net, led by his images of “welfare queens” and the implication that most recipients of public aid were African American. President Bill Clinton pledged to “end welfare as we know it,” and over the objections of many progressives, he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in 1996. Our guests in this WhoWhatWhy podcast were centrally involved in the policy debates and political battles that signaled the end of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and reduced the Democratic Party’s focus on America’s poor. Former Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a one-time welfare mother elected to the House in 1992, shares insights and anecdotes, and laments that Clinton’s framing of the issues continues to this day with little change. While she has great affection for President Barack Obama, Woolsey says he never focused much on the poor and the social safety net. Felicia Kornbluh has studied the issues for decades, and offers informed criticism from a feminist perspective. She reveals the collaboration between Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose “Contract with America” allowed Republicans to take control of the House in 1994. She makes a strong case that Clinton’s vision of the “New Democrats” was driven by a desire to attract wealthy and corporate donors to fund his center/right makeover of the party.   Woolsey, who represented a northern California district for 20 years starting in 1993, speaks candidly about raising three children as a single mom and relying on welfare for several years. Kornbluh is associate professor of History and of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Vermont — and co-author of the new book Ensuring Poverty: Welfare Reform in Feminist Perspective. Her co-author is Gwendolyn Mink, who served as an adviser to her mother, Rep. Patsy Mink, who was a forceful opponent of Clinton’s reforms.

With the news cycle of late nearly engulfed by the questions — and spy games — swirling around “Russiagate,” taking a fresh look at Watergate could be an especially worthwhile endeavor. Luckily, revisiting the rise and fall of President Richard Nixon is exactly what Shane O'Sullivan does for us in his new book, Dirty Tricks: Nixon, Watergate and the CIA. O’Sullivan — Jeff Schechtman’s guest in this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, and an author/filmmaker whose previous work has dug into the Kennedy assassinations — takes us beyond the popular Woodward-and-Bernstein Hollywood scenario, revealing instead the deepest workings of Nixon’s cronies. From the Anna Chennault affair and the Ellsberg break-in to Watergate and the CIA, the author provides new information in a number of areas. O’Sullivan examines what President Lyndon B. Johnson and the CIA knew about then-GOP nominee Nixon’s back channel to Chennault — allegedly used in order to scuttle the Paris peace talks and thereby gain an advantage in the final days before the 1968 election — and why they did nothing about it.  He examines the distinction between what the CIA as an agency may have known, and what individual CIA operatives knew. He probes the deep relationship between Howard Hunt and CIA Director Richard Helms. And he seeks to further understand the role — and the missteps — of James McCord, and his possible role in a possible hidden CIA agenda.

California forests have long been a disaster waiting to happen. Forest density, antiquated forest practices, stressed and dead trees as a result of bug infestation, conflicts between state and federal government, and private property owners wanting to live close to the “wildland-urban interface” are just a few of the problems. In this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast, we talk with longtime California environmental reporter, Julie Cart, about just how bad the problem is and what is being done to prevent more death and destruction. She explains that a full 30 percent of California is forested. Of this total, 60 percent is owned by the federal government, 2 percent by the state of California, and the rest is owned either privately or by local governments. Each has a different approach to dealing with the problem. California has an estimated 129 million dead trees, an acknowledged factor in spreading wildfires, Cart says. The cost for removing a single dead tree is approximately $1,000, and the optics of cutting down trees, even dead ones, in a state with strong environmental rules make remediation even more difficult. The impact of climate change on forest fires involves a deadly feedback loop. So many of the fires are a direct result of extended drought related to climate change. But in torching so many dead trees, a severe fire season of one or two months can release enormous amounts of carbon into the air — more than that emitted by all the cars in California each year — which significantly adds to the buildup of greenhouse gases fueling climate change. Last year's fires cost over $9 billion; this year the toll will be even higher. In both dollars and lives lost. Cart points out that while Cal Fire and the US Forest Service have vast resources, so much of those resources are diverted to firefighting, leaving little time or money to do the necessary work of prevention. Cart suggests that perhaps the real solution is simply to tell people, as they do in Australia, that if they choose to live in certain areas, they cannot expect a fire truck to roll up the driveway during the next disaster. They will have to learn how to fend for themselves.

Every election cycle brings with it one state that comes to represent the zeitgeist of that election. We all remember Florida during the 2000 election. In years past, as Nixon used to say, it was all about Ohio. In 2016, Pennsylvania was the tipping point. This midterm, all eyes were on the Peachtree state, as Georgia came to define not only Democratic energy but the issues of election integrity and voter suppression that were infused with so much political concern in 2018. This is, in part, why WhoWhatWhy made election integrity and Georgia the centerpiece of its coverage of this election. With reporters and videographers on the ground — with more resources deployed than many news organizations two and three times its size — WhoWhatWhy “owned” this issue. But as Russ Baker and Klaus Marre point out in this week's podcast, it was about more than the candidates and the partisan politics. The focus was on how voter suppression impacted real people: citizens who wanted to vote, who took their obligation seriously, who cared and thought deeply about the issues, but were thwarted or unconscionably delayed in the exercise of their franchise. Unlike Russia or Facebook or hacking, these problems were homegrown in Georgia, and only by being there — on the front lines — could WhoWhatWhy do the kind of reporting that our readers and listeners have come to expect. Listen to WhoWhatWhy founder and editor-in-chief Russ Baker and senior editor Klaus Marre talk about what this all means, why voter suppression anywhere matters to all of us, and what WhoWhatWhy's ongoing coverage will look like.

As a regular reader of WhoWhyWhy, you know that we have focused like a laser on election integrity and uncovered story after story about voter suppression in Georgia, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and elsewhere. But important as all of this is, it's only part of the bigger story.   It was Joseph Stalin who said that “it's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes.” The 2000 presidential election was a fantastic example of why that matters. You all remember chads, hanging chads, punch cards, Votomatic machines, and how 540 votes and five Supreme Court justices changed America. What if those hanging chads had not been an accident? What if it wasn't the fault — as was claimed at the time — of incompetent voters who didn't know how to completely punch out a chad? What if the cards themselves had been engineered to fail? In a never-before-told story that reads like a detective novel, investigative journalist Stephen Singular finds himself on the floor of the factory that made the infamous punch cards, in negotiations with 60 Minutes trying to get their help, and being given hundreds of unused punch cards to test as he tries to unravel the first great electoral mystery of the 21st century. In this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast, Singular talks to Jeff Schechtman about his just-published ebook Stolen Future: The Untold Story of the 2000 Election. Singular takes us inside the machines that manufacture the perforated cards, whose precision, down to 1/5,000th of an inch, shaped the fate of the republic. Imagine that the war in Iraq could have been caused by a dull blade in one high-speed perforating machine in one factory, or maybe engendered by foul play. Singular examines how the failure of punch cards not only impacted the 2000 election, but became the reason for states to place orders for hundreds of millions of dollars in new electronic voting systems — made by the very same private companies responsible for the 2000 mishap. He tells Schechtman about ES&S, an Omaha-based company with close Republican ties and far-right roots, that manufactures most of the systems to which we entrust our vote. Singular takes us inside 60 Minutes and their failure to pursue a story that may have been too hot for them to handle. In the best tradition of investigative journalism, Singular's journey goes from working with an old friend to test an idea, to having door after door slammed in his face. It's a story that should add a sober new dimension to the efforts to preserve our democracy next week.

This week feels like the culmination of two years of attacks on journalism — including President Donald Trump's ongoing denunciations of the press as “the enemy of the people,” the bombs sent to CNN along with other targets of Trump's verbal venom, and more revelations about the horrifying murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi, who feared for his life in the months leading up to his killing, spoke about much of this with international journalist Rula Jebreal in one of his last interviews. She is Jeff Schechtman's guest on this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast. Jebreal talks about Khashoggi's views on the Saudi regime of Mohammed bin Salman — views that were, by any objective standard, nuanced and measured. He told Jebreal, in that last interview, that he was not seeking the overthrow of the bin Salman regime, but its reform. Jebreal explains how mournful Khashoggi was that he had tried, in vain, to foster the reformist impulses of the young crown prince.   Khashoggi saw the crown prince as a deeply divided figure: While bin Salman sought to win accolades as a reformer, he also wanted to rule as his grandfather and great-grandfather had — as a tribal leader of unquestioned authority. It was Khashoggi's exposure of bin Salman as a ruler trying to have it both ways that Jebreal thinks most angered him. She says that Khashoggi was murdered “for the crime of having an opinion.”   Jebreal shares with Schechtman what else she learned from Khashoggi, who was her friend. She talks passionately of Khashoggi's views on the Saudi-led, US-supported war in Yemen; the role of journalism in how Americans view the Saudis; and how shocking it is that defense of the Saudi regime is still permissible in polite society.   She tells Schechtman that Khashoggi thought it would probably take a major crisis to change US policy toward Saudi Arabia. What he didn't know was that his murder might be the trigger for that crisis.  

WhoWhatWhy continues to expose voter suppression across the country. With reporters on the ground in Georgia and Florida, and ongoing reports from North Carolina, North Dakota, and other places, readers are getting to witness first hand the impact on minority voters of rejection of absentee ballots, the extremes of “exact match,” the consolidation of polling places, photo ID laws, poor voting machine security, and other methods, all designed to devalue the vote. Our stories, however, are only a first step. We can point out the problems but others have to take the next step and do something about them. That is why groups like the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law are so important. They are fighting the legal battles in court on behalf of disenfranchised voters. Where once the US Justice Department might have stepped in to enforce the right of American citizens to cast their vote, now it has been left to outside lawyers — many working pro bono — to fend off ever more sophisticated voter suppression efforts. In this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast, Jeff Schechtman talks to Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the Voting Rights project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights. In many cases, after courts have intervened in favor of voters' rights, legislatures have come back to tweak their suppression laws in an attempt to place further obstacles in the path of minority voters trying to exercise their franchise.   Still, there have been numerous successes — many of them based on reporters exposing suppression problems and groups like the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights fighting in court for fair elections.

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

It's always scary to hear a Wall Streeter utter the hackneyed phrase, “this time it's different.” And yet today it really is. Especially the economic conditions that make up the operating system for today's world. As markets ride a roller coaster this week, as the political environment is heavily focused on international trade and tariffs on manufactured objects like cars and jeans, the reality is that all of this is yesterday's way of looking at the economy. This, according to Jonathan Haskel, who is a member of the Bank of England's rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (the equivalent of the US Federal Reserve), a professor of economics at Imperial College London, and the director of the school's doctoral program. He has also taught economics at the London Business School, the Tuck School at Dartmouth, and the Stern School of Business at New York University. Haskel explains in this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast that, while people once invested in things that grow (in the agrarian age) or in things that could be made with steel and sweat (in the manufacturing age), today, no matter how hard politicians try and take us back, the investments are made in human capital, in ideas, in imagination, and in zeros and ones. The problem for economists, according to Haskel, is that things like R&D, marketing, design, and software are much harder to measure and value.   The idea, Haskel tells Jeff Schechtman, is that intangible assets are created, distributed, and often valued differently than traditionally manufactured items. “Products you can't touch have a very different set of dynamics in terms of competition and risk and how you value the companies that make them.” Trying to determine the impact of all of this on the economy — when much of what is produced is abstract, symbolic, and speculative — has been difficult, Haskel explains, because so much has eluded traditional description, measurement, and accounting. For example, he laments that we lack the ability to measure a company, even one as big as Microsoft, whose market value a decade ago was $250 billion, while its physical basis — the value of its properties and equipment — was only about one percent of that. Finally, Haskel explains that the “shift to intangible investment” has widespread consequences that affect long-term inequality, infrastructure development, taxation, and other areas. It also leads to what Haskel calls “secular stagnation,” by allowing firms to scale quickly after they emerge, then engulf and overpower competitors, as opposed to enhancing an economy based on the rising tide that lifts all boats. It's clear that we can't watch the current daily gyrations in the stock market without understanding this evolving dynamic. Jonathan Haskel is the author of Capitalism Without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy (Princeton University Press, November 18, 2017).

When we talk about fracking, thoughts usually turn to the environment. But that's only a small part of the story. Fracking is changing the geopolitics of the world. It's creating the illusion of moving America towards energy independence. This is impacting Saudi Arabia and Russia; influencing politics in Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; and, counterintuitively, it may be making the US a loser nation. In this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast, bestselling financial journalist Bethany McLean, the author of The Smartest Guys in the Room (a book about the Enron scandal) talks to Jeff Schechtman about the real consequences of fracking. The discovery of fracking, a way to extract oil and natural gas from shale rock, has turned America into the world's top producer of both. This may upend global politics, destabilize Saudi Arabia, and loosen Russia's stranglehold over Europe. Surprisingly, the outcome may not be so good for America. McLean tells Jeff Schechtman that the fragility of the economics of fracking, along with the disregard for renewables, is what may turn a temporary boom into a long-term bust. She reminds us that while Texas alone may be poised to become the #3 oil producer in the world, the future of oil has more to do with Wall Street than with geology. Because fracking rests on a flimsy financial foundation, its future is far less secure than people realize. The most important ingredient in fracking isn't chemicals, McLean says, but capital. She explains how the financial crash of 10 years ago actually made fracking viable in the first place. However, many on Wall Street are now dialing down their investment in gas and oil in favor of renewables. It appears that a collision is fast approaching between Wall Street and the White House over energy policy.

Thursday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing gave the world a glimpse at the lives of privileged American boys in high school and college in the 1980s. The culture of parties, drinking, and sexual abuse is — to this day — very much a part of fraternity life on colleges and university campuses across America. And while many successful businessmen, lawyers, and politicians consider the day they joined their fraternity to be one of the most important days of their lives, fraternities are often just safe spaces for excessive drinking, class privilege, and sometimes criminal behavior. That's the view of journalist John Hechinger. In this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast, he talks with Jeff Schechtman about what goes on inside today's fraternities. He exposes the sexism, rape, and general sadism among young men happy to pay annual dues of $7,000 or more to be part of these exclusive groups. Hechinger takes a deep dive into the fraternity SAE, which some have said stands for “Sexual Assault Expected.” He recounts stories of women having been raped at SAE parties in Georgia — and explains why such behavior has been tolerated by both administrators and alumni. All in all, he says, the dehumanizing hazing rituals enforced at some fraternities place them among the most anachronistic institutions operating in America. Hechinger is the author of True Gentlemen: The Broken Pledge of America's Fraternities(PublicAffairs, September 26, 2017).

“We don't have an immigration crisis,” contends Harvard professor Jacqueline Bhabha: We have a “hospitality crisis.” Under President Donald Trump, the United States' limit for refugee admissions has reached a record low. Last week, the administration proposed to again sharply reduce the limit for refugee admissions — from an already anemic 45,000 in 2018 to 30,000 in 2019. Under this year's cap, the US is on track to admit only 22,000 refugees, less than half of the projected maximum. Bhabha joins Peter B. Collins for this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast. Bhabha is professor of health and human rights at the School of Public Health, research director at the FXB Center, and lectures at Harvard Law and the Kennedy School. She is an expert on the global refugee crisis. Natural and man-made disasters, such as wars, ethnic cleansing, and famines have displaced millions of people throughout the world, but Bhabha maintains that the international community has the resources to handle the “challenges” that these migrations cause. She points out that migration is “200,000 years old,” a fact of life as long as humans have populated the Earth. The problem, she adds, is not that there are too few resources and too little space to handle migrants; it's that world leaders, including the president of the United States, perceive immigrants as “evils” to be driven back, rather than a new, young potential workforce to be assimilated. The administration's stated goal is to reduce immigration — both illegal and legal — in order to keep out undesirables whom it sees as a threat to national security. The president frequently has cited the violent acts of the infamous MS-13 gang, and isolated incidents of illegal Mexican immigrants committing violent crimes, as grounds for building a wall on the US-Mexico border. At the same time, the president has faced push-back for his “Muslim ban,” an executive order which restricts travel from several Muslim majority countries. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court recently delivered his administration a victory by upholding the ban's constitutionality. The irony is that the migration crisis facing both the US and Europe — exemplified most recently by the Syrian and Libyan refugees — has its origins in policy decisions made by these same Western countries.  As the author of Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age, Bhabha deplores the “barbarity” of family separation under Trump's “zero tolerance” policy. She notes that the US has never signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that its bad record regarding treatment of migrant children precedes the current administration. While also critical of some of President Barack Obama's immigration policies, she says that Trump has further polarized discourse on immigration while criminalizing it in many ways. But the migration crisis is not confined to the Western world, nor is it always just about crossing international borders. Bhabha describes the brutal displacement of Rohingya Muslims by the Buddhist majority in Myanmar. The UN report released on September 18 strongly rebukes Myanmar and its military leaders for acts amounting to ethnic cleansing. Bhabha notes that the UN will be addressing the “final draft[s]” of two global compacts on migration and refugees at the upcoming General Assembly. Both documents attempt to spell out the “universal human rights and fundamental freedoms” that should be accorded to migrants of all kinds. Bhabha's latest book is Can We Solve the Migration Crisis? (Global Futures, May 3, 2018).

A country does not have to be fascist or have a fascist government in order to be riddled with fascist politics. This is the scary premise Jason Stanley argues in his recent book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University, is Jeff Schechtman's guest on this week's WhoWhatWhy podcast. Stanley reminds us that while 63 million Americans voted for President Donald Trump, a man who taps into America's worst impulses, historically there is nothing new about the kind of politics he exploits. The attacks on immigrants, the media, cities, elites, and minorities, and the promise to weed out corruption, are all straight out of the fascist playbook.   Stanley talks to Schechtman about what he believes are the ten pillars of fascist politics: the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, and appeals to the heartland. He explains how fascists have consistently used these elements to sow division and gain power. We are reminded in this conversation that the US is just as susceptible to fascist politics as Europe or anywhere else. Fascism, Stanley explains, is rooted in the struggle for “the national state” — a struggle fueled by a sense of loss for an idyllic past, which all but demands scapegoating of those “responsible” for that loss. It's about, as Stanley puts it, weaponizing nostalgia. Another key to fascism, as detailed by Stanley, is that it almost always wins by means of democratic elections. He points out that Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels observed that the great joke on democracy is that its very freedoms lead to the victory of its worst enemy. As Stanley speculates on the future, his greatest fear is that the US is evolving into a one-party state through a perversion of democracy. He singles out candidates like Brian Kemp in Georgia and Kris Kobach in Kansas, who are stoking fear of “others” to create an anti-democratic backlash — and who are masters of voter suppression of non-white voters. He then explains the path that runs from voter suppression to the public's feeling of hopelessness for democracy, and eventually to the collapse of democracy itself. Stanley's is a cautionary tale, taken straight from today's headlines.