View Full Version : Bill Moyers & Company
MUSICMANN
10-03-2012, 03:43 PM
Left minded bullshit, still blaming Bush and the Right on everything.
Left minded bullshit, still blaming Bush and the Right on everything.
Because they ARE to blame for everything, dumbass!
MUSICMANN
10-03-2012, 03:53 PM
Because they ARE to blame for everything, dumbass!
Like i've told you before. You are way below my intellect and pay grade. Run away and go fuck yourself.
Pay grade?? Yeah, like that KKKoch Brothers funded call center you're posting from pays you a 6 figure salary :biggrin:
Your desperation is shining through, Mulletmanncoulter. Hell, you're approaching the irrationality level of that BlacKKKwater douche who showed up here for a couple of weeks and then disappeared again. Or 4morequeers, even (since Brie raised his ghost up with the spam email thread earlier)
BigBadBrian
10-05-2012, 07:25 AM
I hardly ever get the chance to watch Bill O'Reilly, but on one show I did recently, he called Bill Moyers out and challenged him to a debate....O'Reilly taking the issues of Romney/Ryan and Moyers would defend Obama/Biden. Moyers chickened out. The debate was supposed to be a paid event for charity. Why won't your boy play ball, FORD? Any sane ideas?
jhale667
10-05-2012, 12:54 PM
You are way below my intellect and pay grade.
Judging from your nonsensical hate-filled hack posts of late, the average dead tree sloth is above your intellect (and probably your pay grade, too). Get the fuck over yourself.
I hardly ever get the chance to watch Bill O'Reilly, but on one show I did recently, he called Bill Moyers out and challenged him to a debate....O'Reilly taking the issues of Romney/Ryan and Moyers would defend Obama/Biden. Moyers chickened out. The debate was supposed to be a paid event for charity. Why won't your boy play ball, FORD? Any sane ideas?
I would imagine Moyers probably didn't want to lend any credibility to somebody from FAUX Noize, since they have ruined his profession. Now Jon Stewart, on the other hand, makes fun of FAUX's dumbassery on a nightly basis, so he's going to debate O'Reilly.
Nitro Express
10-14-2012, 07:29 PM
Left minded bullshit, still blaming Bush and the Right on everything.
Bush was bad and did a huge amount of damage to the country but when the lefties came into power they proved to be just as militant and just as corrupt. Trying to tell some of the people on the left their side is full of corruption and useless is the same as taking the evidence that Joseph Smith mistranslated some Eygptian papyruses to a mormon and trying to convince them the founder of their church was a fraud. The evidence is there. It's been there for 100 years but you still can't bust years and years of brainwashing with facts.
When people have so much mentally invested in a cause they just refuse to see the facts. It's not political ideology, it's political religion. It's very frustrating. What we need to be saying is all sides are corrupt and we the people have been duped and sold a lot of shit over the years. Partisan bickering only helps the crooks. Maybe there is hope. The Fed got audited because some people on both sides worked together. Most of the smucks could care less about us. 95% of the politicians don't care about us. That's the truth.
What's Behind The Presidential Campaign Messages?
The Election Is Over. Now What??
Hurricanes, Capitalism & Democracy
LoungeMachine
11-16-2012, 06:10 PM
Like i've told you before. You are way below my intellect and pay grade. Run away and go fuck yourself.
:lmao:
Said one of the dumbest tools to ever post here....
Now let's be fair about this....
He's not dumb, he's just anally retarded! :biggrin:
ELVIS
11-16-2012, 09:00 PM
Because they ARE to blame for everything, dumbass!
That's fucking stupid, dude...
Hardrock69
11-17-2012, 04:21 AM
I just saw Hurricanes, Capitalists and Democracy tonight when flipping through channels.
Good thing when you have experts on campaign finance demonstrating step-by-step how to take campaign donations and hide them so you can do whatever you want with the money.
Legally.
Stuff like that needs to be exposed.
Satan
12-08-2012, 01:57 AM
Full Show: Big Media’s Power Play
December 7, 2012
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled a majority of American media. Now that number is six. And Big Media may get even bigger, thanks to the FCC’s consideration of ending a rule preventing companies from owning a newspaper and radio and TV stations in the same city. Such a move — which they’ve tried in 2003 and 2007 as well –would give these massive media companies free rein to devour more of the competition, control the public message, and also limit diversity across the media landscape. Bernie Sanders, one of several Senators who have written FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski asking him to suspend the plan, discusses with Bill why Big Media is a threat to democracy, and what citizens can do to fight back.
Also on the show, Bill is joined by former Republican Congressman Mickey Edwards, a founding father of modern conservative politics who now fears the movement has abandoned its principles. Edwards explains why both political parties require radical change, and shares his perspective on Grover Norquist and anti-tax pledges. “It’s not conservatism, not rational, not adult,” Edwards tells Bill. ” It’s a 12-year-old’s kind of thinking.” Edwards chaired the Republican Policy Committee, was a founding trustee of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and served as National Chairman of the American Conservative Union.
Finally, in an original essay, Bill Moyers says there’s more to Norquist’s anti-tax pledge than ideology or principle.
Full Show: Fiscal Cliffs and Fiscal Realities
December 14, 2012
When it comes to America’s economic health, all anyone seems to talk about is the “fiscal cliff,” and the perils of our inevitable plunge. But media’s favorite metaphor is distracting us from actual and crucial fiscal realities......
Satan
01-05-2013, 04:06 PM
Full Show: What We Can Learn from Lincoln
December 21, 2012
Tony Kushner, who wrote the screenplay for Lincoln, talks about America’s 16th president and “the history lesson of politics.”
Satan
01-05-2013, 04:07 PM
Full Show: Rewriting the Story of America
December 28, 2012
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot DĂ*az straddles two cultures while telling the story of America’s past and future.
Satan
01-05-2013, 04:11 PM
Full Show: Ending the Silence on Climate Change
January 4, 2013
Climate change communication expert Anthony Leiserowitz explains why climate change gets the silent treatment, and what we should do about it.
Full Show: Paul Krugman on Why Jobs Come First
January 11, 2013
The New York Times columnist explains why our top priority should be getting America back to work – if only Washington would stop throwing distractions in the way.
Full Show: Fighting for Filibuster Reform
January 18, 2013
Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, joins Bill to make the case for common-sense reform that would bring the Senate back to serving democracy.
Satan
01-25-2013, 09:17 PM
Full Show: Foul Play in the Senate, and Today’s Abortion Debate
January 25, 2013
Bill explores Senate favoritism for the world’s largest biotech firm, and takes a deeper look at modern abortion rights activism.
Full Show: Are Drones Destroying our Democracy?
February 1, 2013
Bill explores the moral and legal implications of using drones to target our enemies. Also, Matt Taibbi on big bank privileges.
Full Show: Who’s Widening America’s Digital Divide?
February 8, 2013
Internet scholar Susan Crawford explains how media conglomerates put profit ahead of the public interest, and author Nick Turse shares what we never knew about the Vietnam War.
Full Show: The Fight to Keep Democracy Alive
February 15, 2013
Exploring the virus of money in our politics, and how we need to combat it.
Full Show: Taming Capitalism Run Wild
February 22, 2013
Economist Richard Wolff and Restaurant Worker Advocate Saru Jayaraman talk about battling rampant capitalism, and fighting for economic justice.
Nitro Express
02-23-2013, 02:21 AM
We understand the problems and we know how to fix them. The problem is we don't have people in power in Washington DC who want to fix the problems. They don't work for us, they work for the corporations and banks. The corporations and banks have no problems right now. Some of them are making record profits and of course they pay no taxes as well. Their only problem would be losing their political whores in the White House and Congress and then having the government audit, regulate, arrest, and break up the monopolies that have formed.
If no political solution happens, the lid will blow off of the kettle and it will boil over. There will be a very hard landing and lots of people will get hurt from it and not just financially.
Full Show: Fighting Creeping Creationism
March 1, 2013
Zack Kopplin on fighting the onslaught of creationism and Susan Jacoby on the challenges of free thinking in America.
Full Show: What Has Capitalism Done for Us Lately?
March 22, 2013
Sheila Bair, the longtime Republican who served as chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the fiscal meltdown five years ago, joins Bill to talk about American banks’ continuing risky and manipulative practices, their seeming immunity from prosecution, and growing anger from Congress and the public.
Also on the show, Richard Wolff, whose smart, blunt talk about the crisis of capitalism on his first Moyers & Company appearance was so compelling and provocative, we asked him to return. This time, the economics expert answers questions sent in by our viewers, diving further into economic inequality, the limitations of industry regulation, and the widening gap between a booming stock market and a population that increasingly lives in poverty.
Nitro Express
03-23-2013, 05:51 PM
I have noticed there is a trend of anti-capatilism stories showing up in the media. Capitalism is the free market. When corporations pay almost no taxes and take all the money and own the politicians that is not capitalism it's fascism and what we are in is fascism. Capitalism created the highest standard of living in world history. The problem is people can't take the affluence. They get lazy and dumb and expect everything to be given to them. It therefore becomes easier for the control freaks to take things over because nobody is watching the store. This is the stage we are in now. Now what is being sold is big brother will take care of you. Of course Big Brother is the corporations who are in the process of stealing everything. Oh they will take care of you alright.
Dr. Love
03-23-2013, 06:26 PM
What's the point of blame without accountability? I'd rather see the same level of effort put into fixing the problems that goes into casting blame for the problems.
Nitro Express
03-23-2013, 06:32 PM
Every time I see that ass in your posts I crack up. Everyone is to blame. Everyone. Everyone got greedy, lazy, reckless, and all that. Most people complain and some even buy the T-Shirt or bumper sticker. A very small percentage of people actually do anything to solve a problem. Ask most people who their senators and congressmen are. You would be amazed at how many people who seem politically active can't even answer that. Those are the people with the power. They are the people who actually can change things if enough people demand change by calling them and writing letters. How can you do that if you don't know their names and who they are?
Ask most people who their senators and congressmen are. You would be amazed at how many people who seem politically active can't even answer that.
Or maybe they're just too embarrassed to admit it?
Seriously, if you lived in one of those "natural rape" guys district, would you want to admit he was your congressman?
Hell, my two Senators are probably better than average, by the standards of the current fucked up Senate, but that's a pretty low bar. I'm still kind of embarrassed by both of them, because they have betrayed their constituents more than once.
As for my congressman, he's new (as is the district) so I'm really not sure what he's done yet - good or bad.
Satan
03-30-2013, 01:31 AM
Full Show: And Justice for Some
March 29, 2013
Fifty years after a landmark decision to give the poor their day in court, Bill explores why they still can’t afford justice — with insight from Bryan Stevenson, Martin Clancy and Tim O’Brien.
Full Show: MLK’s Dream of Economic Justice
April 5, 2013
Martin Luther King, Jr., who died 45 years ago this month, had long known that racial equality was inextricably linked to economic equity — fairness for all, including working people and the poor. In the last year of his life, Dr. King announced the Poor People’s Campaign to demand an “Economic Bill of Rights” for all Americans, regardless of color. But nearly a half-century later, that dream is still a dream deferred. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch and author and theologian James Cone join Bill to discuss Dr. King’s vision of economic justice, and why so little has changed for America’s most oppressed.
Warham
04-06-2013, 07:37 AM
Bill Moyers also recently said the Pledge of Allegiance is a lie.
Go move to Iran, Bill.
Bill Moyers also recently said the Pledge of Allegiance is a lie.
Go move to Iran, Bill.
Did you watch the entire show to get the context of what he was saying?
Might want to do that, before accepting the 10 second soundbite you heard on FAUX Noize.
The sad fact is that "liberty and justice for all" IS a lie.
And it will remain so, as long as money and corruption control the system. :(
Warham
04-06-2013, 10:22 PM
Did you watch the entire show to get the context of what he was saying?
Might want to do that, before accepting the 10 second soundbite you heard on FAUX Noize.
The sad fact is that "liberty and justice for all" IS a lie.
And it will remain so, as long as money and corruption control the system. :(
10 seconds is enough.
"Liberty and justice for all" is something that we should aspire to, despite our imperfections. The flaw is not in the principle, but by our execution of that principle.
I would think a guy like Bill Moyers would be smart enough to understand that.. He should be proud of what we've accomplished in the last 100 years, but he has his head up his ass.
10 seconds is enough.
"Liberty and justice for all" is something that we should aspire to, despite our imperfections. The flaw is not in the principle, but by our execution of that principle.
I would think a guy like Bill Moyers would be smart enough to understand that.. He should be proud of what we've accomplished in the last 100 years, but he has his head up his ass.
Bill Moyers was actually there when some of those great things were accomplished. He worked for JFK and LBJ.
Unfortunately, all that greatness stopped about 32 years ago. :(
Warham
04-06-2013, 11:41 PM
Bill Moyers was actually there when some of those great things were accomplished. He worked for JFK and LBJ.
Unfortunately, all that greatness stopped about 32 years ago. :(
Exactly 32 years ago. Why that date exactly? What was so great about the late 70s?
Exactly 32 years ago. Why that date exactly? What was so great about the late 70s?
The late 70's weren't perfect..... Jimmy Carter was left to clean up the mess created by the BCE with Nixon & Ford (no relation) and the financial aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate. But he moved forward with energy polices which would have completely ended this country's dependence on fossil fuels by 2000, had they not been reversed by the BCE the day they got back in the White House.
We also would have had more of a peaceful world. Jimmy was able to get Israel and Egypt to the table. Another 4 years, and he might have done the same with some other players in the region. Instead of arming both sides of a decade long war between Iraq and Iran like the BCE did.
April 12, 2013
The unprecedented level of economic inequality in America is undeniable. In an extended essay, Bill shares examples of the striking extremes of wealth and poverty across the country, including a video report on California’s Silicon Valley. There, Facebook, Google, and Apple are minting millionaires, while the area’s homeless — who’ve grown 20 percent in the last two years — are living in tent cities at their virtual doorsteps. “A petty, narcissistic, pridefully ignorant politics has come to dominate and paralyze our government,” says Bill, “while millions of people keep falling through the gaping hole that has turned us into the United States of Inequality.”
Later, Bill is joined by writer Sherman Alexie. Born on a Native American reservation, Alexie has been navigating the cultural boundaries of American culture in lauded poetry, novels, short stories, screenplays, even stand-up comedy for over two decades. Alexie shares his irreverent perspective on contemporary American life, and discusses the challenges of living in two different cultures at the same time, especially when one has so much dominance over the other. “I know a lot more about being white than you know about being Indian,” Alexie tells Bill.
Full Show: The Toxic Assault on Our Children
April 19, 2013
Biologist, mother and activist Sandra Steingraber joins Bill to explain why she was willing to go to jail — and did — for blocking access to the construction of a storage and transportation facility involved in the controversial process of fracking. Steingraber has become internationally known for building awareness about toxins she says are threatening our children’s health by contaminating our air, water and food, and talks to Bill about how we must take action stop these “toxic trespassers.”
With government captured by the very industries it’s supposed to regulate, Steingraber has lost patience with politicians and corporations, and says we need to work together now to prevent destruction to the environment.
Also on the show, Bill presents the short documentary “Dance of the Honey Bee.” Narrated by Bill McKibben, the film takes a look at the determined, beautiful, and vital role honey bees play in preserving life, as well as the threats bees face from a rapidly changing landscape.
Full Show: Trading Democracy for ‘National Security’
April 26, 2013
The violent Boston rampage triggered a local and federal response that, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald, adds a new dimension to troubling questions about government secrecy, overreach, and what we sacrifice in the name of national security. Greenwald joins Bill to peel back layers that reveal what the Boston bombings and drone attacks have in common, and how secrecy leads to abuse of government power.
Also on the show, political scholars Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann tell Bill that Congress’ failure to make progress on gun control last week — despite support for background checks from 90% of the American public – is symptomatic of a legislative branch reduced to dysfunction, partisan ravings and obstruction.
A year ago, the two — who had strong reputations as non-partisan analysts — decided to speak truth to power with their book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. In it, they argue that congressional gridlock is mostly the fault of right wing radicals within the Republican Party who engage in “policy hostage-taking” to extend their political war against the president. What’s more, Ornstein and Mann say, the mainstream media and media fact-checkers add to the problem by indulging in “false equivalency” — pretending both parties are equally to blame.
Full Show: The Sandy Hook Promise
May 3, 2013
Francine and David Wheeler’s youngest son Ben was one of the 20 children killed in the December 14th attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Their grief has led them to Sandy Hook Promise, a now-nationwide group founded by Newtown friends and neighbors to heal the hurt and find new ways to talk about and campaign against the scourge of gun violence in the United States.
One of their allies is folk singer Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, who joined with the Wheelers and others in a February concert of harmony, resilience and solidarity.
Francine Wheeler and Peter Yarrow discuss with Bill the power of music to create change, and their mission to protect children and adults from gun violence in communities across America. We also see excerpts from the concert, soon to appear on many public television stations. Later, the conversation continues as David Wheeler joins his wife to talk about what can be done and if the gun issue can be addressed in a way that includes diverse viewpoints and bypasses partisan brinkmanship.
Full Show: How People Power Generates Change
May 10, 2013
With our democracy threatened by plutocrats and the politicians in their pockets more than ever, the antidote to organized money is organized people. It takes time and effort, but across the country, grass roots democracy is growing. Individuals are banding together, organizing toward common goals and demanding change – and often delivering it. Bill sits with three organizers leading the way.
Marshall Ganz is a social movement legend who dropped out of Harvard to become a volunteer during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer of 1964. He then joined forces with Cesar Chavez of the United Farmworkers, protecting workers who picked crops for pennies in California’s fields and orchards. Ganz also had a pivotal role organizing students and volunteers for Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential campaign. Now 70, he’s still organizing across the United States and the Middle East, and back at Harvard, teaching students from around the world about what it takes to beat Goliath.
Later on the broadcast, economic equality advocates Rachel LaForest, executive director of Right to the City, and Madeline Janis, co-founder and national policy director of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, discuss with Bill how social action can change both policy and lives. Janis led the fight for a living wage in Los Angeles; LaForest fights for fair and affordable housing across the country.
Full Show: The Toxic Politics of Science
May 13, 2013
Science can be a battleground — witness the politics of climate change, the teaching of evolution, the uncharted terrain of genetic modification and stem cell research, among other contentious issues. But when industries release untested chemicals into our environment — putting profits before public health — our children are the first to suffer. Nowhere is this more troubling than in the ongoing story of lead poisoning.
Bill talks with David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, public health historians who’ve been taking on the chemical industry for years — writing about the hazards of industrial pollution and the neglect of worker safety — despite industry efforts to undermine them. Their latest book, Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children, is the culmination of 20 years of research. Markowitz and Rosner warn that, for young children, there’s no safe level of exposure to this dangerous toxin still lurking in millions of homes.
The authors discuss thwarted efforts to hold the lead industry accountable, failed attempts to find cheap solutions, and the cost to the future of our children. As long as the chemical industry and its powerful lobbies prevail in blocking efforts to reform outdated laws, Markowitz and Rosner say, we will continue to float in a soup of toxins — inhaling, drinking, and absorbing chemicals that we may learn, years later, have put us all in harm’s way.
Also on the show, Bill is joined by the heads of two independent watchdog groups keeping an eye on government as well as on powerful interests seeking to influence it. Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics and OpenSecrets.org, and Danielle Brian, who runs the Project on Government Oversight, talk to Bill about the importance of transparency to our democracy, and their efforts to scrutinize who’s giving money, who’s receiving it, and most importantly, what’s expected in return.
Satan
06-08-2013, 03:31 PM
Full Show: Going to Jail for Justice
May 24, 2013
In December 2008, during the closing weeks of the Bush White House, 27-year-old environmental activist Tim DeChristopher went to protest the auction of gas and oil drilling rights to more than 150,000 acres of publicly-owned Utah wilderness. But instead of yelling slogans or waving a sign, DeChristopher disrupted the proceedings by starting to bid. Given an auction paddle designating him “Bidder 70”, DeChristopher won a dozen land leases worth nearly two million dollars. He was arrested for criminal fraud, found guilty, and sentenced to two years in federal prison — even though the new Obama Administration had since declared the oil and gas auction null and void.
DeChristopher — who was released less than a month ago — joins Bill to talk about the necessity of civil disobedience in the fight for justice, how his jury was ordered to place the strict letter of the law over moral conscience, and the future of the environmental movement. Bidder 70, a new documentary chronicling DeChristopher’s legal battle and activism, opened May 17. DeChristopher is co-founder of the grassroots environmental group Peaceful Uprising.
Also on the show, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Gretchen Morgenson tells Bill that, five years after the country’s economic near-collapse, banks are still too big to fail, too big to manage, and too big to trust. Stockholders’ reaffirmation of Jamie Dimon as JP Morgan Chase’s chairman and CEO this week — despite a year of accusations and investigations at the bank — is further evidence, she says, of an unchecked system that continues to covet profits and eschew accountability, putting our economy and democracy at risk. Morgenson also discusses how behemoth companies like Apple manipulate the system and avail themselves of the biggest tax loopholes money and influence can buy.
Satan
06-15-2013, 12:45 PM
Full Show: Big Brother’s Prying Eyes
June 14, 2013
Whatever your take on the recent revelations about government spying on our phone calls and Internet activity, there’s no denying that Big Brother is bigger and less brotherly than we thought. What’s the resulting cost to our privacy — and more so, our democracy? Lawrence Lessig, professor of law and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, discusses the implications of our government’s actions, Edward Snowden’s role in leaking the information, and steps we must take to better protect our privacy.
“Snowden describes agents having the authority to pick and choose who they’re going to be following on the basis of their hunch about what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense. This is the worst of both worlds. We have a technology now that gives them access to everything, but a culture if again it’s true that encourages them to be as wide ranging as they can,” Lessig tells Bill. “The question is — are there protections or controls or counter technologies to make sure that when the government gets access to this information they can’t misuse it in all the ways that, you know, anybody who remembers Nixon believes and fears governments might use?”
Few are as knowledgeable about the impact of the Internet on our public and private lives as Lessig, who argues that government needs to protect American rights with the same determination and technological sophistication it uses to invade our privacy and root out terrorists.
“If we don’t have technical measures in place to protect against misuse, this is just a trove of potential misuse…We’ve got to think about the technology as a protector of liberty too. And the government should be implementing technologies to protect our liberties,” Lessig says. “Because if they don’t, we don’t figure out how to build that protection into the technology, it won’t be there.”
“We should recognize in a world of terrorism the government’s going to be out there trying to protect us. But let’s make sure that they’re using tools or technology that also protects the privacy side of what they should be protecting.”
A former conservative who’s now a liberal, Lessig also knows that the caustic impact of money is another weapon capable of mortally wounding democracy. His recent book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress — and a Plan to Stop It, decries a pervasive “dependence corruption” in our government and politics that should sound a desperate alarm for both the Left and the Right. Here, Lessig outlines a radical approach to the problem that uses big money itself to reform big money-powered corruption.
Full Show: United States of ALEC — A Follow-Up
June 21, 2013
A national consortium of state politicians and powerful corporations, ALEC — the American Legislative Exchange Council — presents itself as a “nonpartisan public-private partnership”. But behind that mantra lies a vast network of corporate lobbying and political action aimed to increase corporate profits at public expense without public knowledge.
In state houses around the country, hundreds of pieces of boilerplate ALEC legislation are proposed or enacted that would, among other things, dilute collective bargaining rights, make it harder for some Americans to vote, and limit corporate liability for harm caused to consumers — each accomplished without the public ever knowing who’s behind it. Using interviews, documents, and field reporting, the episode explores ALEC’s self-serving machine at work, acting in a way one Wisconsin politician describes as “a corporate dating service for lonely legislators and corporate special interests.”
Former health care industry executive Wendell Potter says, “Even though I’d known of [ALEC] for a long time, I was astonished. Just about everything that I knew that the health insurance industry wanted out of any state lawmaker was included in that package of bills.”
Following up on a 2012 report, this update includes new examples of corporate influence on state legislation and lawmakers, the growing public protest against ALEC’s big business-serving agenda, and internal tactics ALEC is instituting to further shroud its actions and intentions.
“United States of ALEC” Executive Producer Tom Casciato says people who saw the first report “might be surprised to learn that, despite more than 40 companies having dropped out of ALEC, the organization is still going very strong.” He adds, “ALEC doesn’t publish a list of its members, so covering will always be hard, but in a democracy it’s a good idea for people to know where their laws originate.”
Full Show: The Faces of America’s Hungry
June 28, 2013
The story of American families facing food insecurity is as frustrating as it is heartbreaking, because the truth is as avoidable as it is tragic. Here in the richest country on earth, 50 million of us — one in six Americans — go hungry. More than a third of them are children. And yet Congress can’t pass a Farm Bill because our representatives continue to fight over how many billions to slash from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. The debate is filled with tired clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help, living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers. But a new documentary, A Place at the Table, paints a truer picture of America’s poor.
“The cost of food insecurity, obesity and malnutrition is way larger than it is to feed kids nutritious food,” Kristi Jacobson, one of the film’s directors and producers, tells Bill. She and Mariana Chilton, director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities, explain to Bill how hunger hits hard at people from every walk of life.
“There’s no opportunity for people who are low-income to really engage in our democracy,” says Chilton. “I think they’re actively shut out.”
Later, Greg Kaufmann — poverty correspondent for The Nation — talks about how the poor have been stereotyped and demonized in an effort to justify huge cuts in food stamps and other crucial programs for low-income Americans.
“People are working and they’re not getting paid enough to feed their families, pay their utilities, pay for their housing, pay for the healthcare… if you’re not paying people enough to pay for the basics, they’re going to need help getting food,” Kaufmann tells Bill. “There are a lot of corporations that want to be involved in the fight against hunger. The best thing they can do is get on board for fair wages.”
Full Show: Surviving the New American Economy
July 5, 2013
Twenty-two years ago, Bill Moyers started documenting the story of two ordinary families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — families whose breadwinners had lost well-paying factory jobs. Relying on the belief that hard work is the key to a good living and better life, the Stanleys and the Neumanns, like millions of others, went about pursuing the American dream. But as they found other jobs, got re-trained, and worked any time and overtime, they still found themselves on a downward slope, working harder and longer for less pay and fewer benefits, facing devastating challenges and difficult choices.
Bill Moyers revisits his reports on the Stanleys and Neumanns — whose stories Bill updates on the July 9 Frontline report “Two American Families.” He also talks with the authors of two important books about how the changing nature of the economy is affecting everyone: Barbara Miner, a public education advocate who’s been following the decline of her own Milwaukee hometown for nearly 40 years and just published Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City; and author, activist and playwright Barbara Garson, who’s published a number of books about the changing lives of working Americans. Her most recent is Down the Up Escalator: How the 99% Live in the Great Recession.
“The growing [economic] disparity didn’t happen as some sort of natural event, like the rain falling from the sky… it really is the result of policy decisions,” Miner tells Bill.
“Forty years of concentrated efforts have gone to lowering wages, whether it was breaking unions or creating laws that allowed you to make more money overseas than you might have otherwise,” says Garson. “We just have to raise wages — not only for the sake of people getting the low wages, but if we don’t raise wages, we’re well on our way to the next debt crisis.”
The Stanleys and Neumanns were first featured in Minimum Wages: The New Economy in 1990. They were revisited in 1995 in Living on the Edge, and again in the 2000 documentary Surviving the Good Times.
July 12, 2013
Across the world — Greece, Spain, Brazil, Egypt — citizens are turning angrily to their governments to demand economic fair play and equality. But here in America, with few exceptions, the streets and airwaves remain relatively silent. In a country as rich and powerful as America, why is there so little outcry about the ever-increasing, deliberate divide between the very wealthy and everyone else?
Media scholar Marty Kaplan points to a number of forces keeping these issues and affected citizens in the dark — especially our well-fed appetite for media distraction. An award-winning columnist and head of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, Kaplan also talks about the appropriate role of journalists as advocates for truth.
Later on the show, acclaimed historian Gary May puts the recent Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act into historical perspective. A specialist in American political, diplomatic and social history, May’s latest book is Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy.
July 19, 2013
Since the end of slavery in America, no workers have been more exploited than the men and women who bend to the earth in backbreaking labor, picking fruits, vegetables, and tobacco, and getting very little back in terms of wages or respect for their humanity. But their cause has a champion in Baldemar Velásquez. Velásquez was among hundreds of thousands of children who joined their migrant parents working long hours in the fields. Inspired by that early experience, he founded the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in 1967. Velásquez joins Bill to talk about the ongoing David vs. Goliath struggles to ensure fairness for American farmworkers.
Also on the program, author and gun industry analyst Tom Diaz explains how a lethal combination of self-defense laws and concealed carry laws — championed by the NRA and the gun industry — makes us more vulnerable to gun violence. He warns that the genie is out of the bottle and we should be gravely concerned about the unrelenting marketing of guns. Diaz’s latest book is The Last Gun: How Changes in the Gun Industry Are Killing Americans and What It Will Take to Stop It.
July 26, 2013
Bill Moyers and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) meet to share experiences and revelations about the momentous March on Washington both attended 50 years ago.
Their discussion takes them to the spot in front of the Lincoln Memorial where Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, and others famously spoke about freedom and justice, creating critical momentum for both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. While there, Moyers and Lewis attract the attention of schoolchildren, and conduct a spontaneous living history lesson.
The March on Washington is largely remembered for King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The 23-year-old Lewis, newly named to lead the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was the youngest of the featured speakers, but among the most defiant.
Now a 14-term congressman from Georgia, Lewis shares new insight into how the event unfolded — including last-minute conflicts over his own manuscript. He also discusses the continuing challenges to racial and economic equality, and his unwavering dedication to nonviolence and brotherly love as a means toward a more just end — even when facing inevitable violence and brutality.
“To look out and see the best of America convinced me more than anything else that this is the product, this is the work of the movement,” Lewis tells Bill. “Sometimes you have to not just dream about what could be — you get out and push and you pull and you preach. And you create a climate and environment to get those in high places, to get men and women of good will in power to act.”
Threading rarely-seen documentary footage into their conversation, Bill — who was deputy director of the newly-created Peace Corps at the time — also shares his own memories of the day. He concludes with an essay about how the goal of equal rights and opportunities for all Americans — so championed at the March on Washington — continues to elude us.
“But for a few hours that day,” Bill says, “we could imagine what this country might yet become.”
September 6, 2013
With the probability of American intervention, Syria is everywhere in the news. On this week’s Moyers & Company, Phil Donahue, filling in for Bill Moyers, speaks with National Public Radio Middle East correspondent Deborah Amos and historian and Vietnam veteran Andrew Bacevich about the possible repercussions of our actions in the Middle East.
As he has done so often in recent years, Andrew Bacevich is asking the important questions about America’s role in the world and specifically why we should go into Syria. Is a military response justified and if we take action, where does it stop? A graduate of West Point and Vietnam veteran, he served for 23 years in the military before becoming a professor at Boston University. His new book, Breach of Trust, asks whether our reliance on a professional military rather than a citizen’s army has lured us into a morass of endless war — a trap that threatens not only our global reputation but democracy itself.
Among its deadly side effects, the war in Syria has created a refugee crisis beyond that country’s borders — a “disgraceful humanitarian calamity” and “the great tragedy of this century,” according to the United Nations. Deborah Amos, a veteran National Public Radio correspondent, joins Donahue for a discussion about the human toll of the Syrian fighting, and the potential impact of millions of displaced people on the region.
Satan
10-11-2013, 07:22 PM
While much of the government continued in shutdown mode this week, the Supreme Court was back in business starting off its new term with a controversial campaign finance case. This week, the court heard arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a case that could have a huge impact on the way money influences our democracy.
McCutcheon challenges aggregate caps on how much individual donors can give to candidates and political parties. The current overall cap stands at $123,200 per donor for a two-year election cycle, but McCutcheon could raise that amount to more than $3.5 million.
This week on Moyers & Company, Bill talks to Yale Law School election and constitutional law professor Heather Gerken who warns that McCutcheon has the potential to kill campaign finance reform, already reeling from the Citizens United decision that gave corporations, unions and the wealthy the opportunity to pour vast and often anonymous amounts of cash into political campaigns.
Gerken tells Bill that if McCutcheon prevails, a small group of wealthy donors will have an immense influence on elections and government policy. “It’s not just a seat at the table on election day. It’s a seat at the table for the next four to six years when they’re governing,” Gerken says.
Bill also speaks with historian Joyce Appleby whose new book, Shores of Knowledge, provides a captivating account of curiosity and how it has shaped our modern world.
Satan
10-19-2013, 02:36 PM
October 18, 2013
After a 16-day shutdown, there’s finally a deal to raise the debt limit and reopen the government. But the can’s just been kicked down the road – another Congressional confrontation over spending cuts, entitlement programs and possible default will take place within a few months. Nonetheless, Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator of the Financial Times, believes that no matter the rhetoric and flamethrowing, the debt ceiling has to be raised because the alternatives are “simply, unimaginably horrible.”
This week on Moyers & Company Wolf, who has been described as “the premier financial and economics writer in the world,” joins Bill Moyers for a discussion of the current crisis in Washington and its potentially lethal impact on the global economy. Wolf views the debt ceiling as the legislative equivalent of a nuclear bomb the US has aimed at itself, but its fallout could spread throughout the global economy.
Bill also speaks with media scholar Sherry Turkle who says that the Internet and social media have changed not only what we do but also who we are. She’s a developmental psychologist who has studied the impact of computers on culture and society. A professor at MIT and director of the university’s Initiative on Technology and Self, Turkle has written several books, including her most recent, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.
October 25, 2013
It’s the largest corporate fine in American history — $13 billion. That’s the amount JPMorgan Chase will reportedly pay to settle civil charges around its alleged manipulation of mortgage securities — a series of shady business deals that five years ago crippled homeowners and helped trigger the meltdown that threatened the world’s economy. And that’s just the tip of a REALLY big iceberg. What does the settlement tell us about the corruption of American capitalism?
This week on Moyers & Company Bill Moyers poses that question to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson, a columnist for The New York Times. Bill also speaks to historian and author Peter Dreier who sees the current political crisis as fraught with possibility for progressives in America — and shares the reasons he continues to be optimistic, including dynamic grass-roots initiatives around the country and, believe it or not, the radical politics of Dr. Seuss.
November 1, 2013
A cornerstone of President Obama’s plan to create more American jobs is a new agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), referred to by some as “NAFTA on steroids.” While negotiations are being carried out in secret and very little about the terms has been leaked, enough is known to worry about its possible effect on trade unions and our copyright and patent laws, not to mention environmental, health and safety regulations.
This week on Moyers & Company, Bill discusses the TPP with two perceptive observers of the global economy. Yves Smith is an expert on investment banking who runs the Naked Capitalism blog, a go-to site for information and insight on the business and ethics of finance. Dean Baker is co-director of the progressive Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.
Also on this week’s broadcast, a preview of Robert Greenwald’s new documentary, Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars. It’s release coincided with a first: victims of deadly drone attacks testified at a special briefing for members of Congress. In this week’s show we feature clips from the film, which shares testimony, stories and alarming news on the fatal impact of our drone strategy.
And a Bill Moyers’ essay on Obamacare’s rocky rollout.
November 8, 2013
The money and power behind this week’s election results confirm what everyone knows: democracy is under siege. Corporations buy elections with virtually unlimited cash and big media conglomerates reap billions from political advertising.
This week on Moyers & Company, Bill talks to John Nichols and Robert McChesney about America’s transformation into a dollarocracy and what we can do to get our political system back on track. Nichols is the Washington correspondent for The Nation and McChesney is a leading professor and scholar of communications and society at the University of Illinois. Their latest book is Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex Is Destroying America.
Also this week, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild Heidi Boghosian joins Bill for a conversation on the illicit surveillance strategies used by the government and corporations to track us all. In her book Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance, she has collected stories of how public and private sector surveillance has turned innocent lives upside down and has been used to suppress journalists, whistleblowers and activists.
clarathecarrot
11-13-2013, 11:41 AM
Something terrible happened to Moyers back in about 1998. I used to respect him but the look in his eyes changed his turnabout was 180 degrees he has the same retoric and take to the letter as Phil Donahue, who's eyes changed back in 1994.
I believe it is called ownership and indebtedness to creditors and the endless slavery to a contract they signed for money with a domination outline of what they will and won't discuss.
Something, is terribly wrong with Bill..a journalist who at one time was ethically sound.
The ownwership of speech is a owned as the network or media outlet they pulpit from, little or any is ethically sound or based on virtue.
Pick Your Hell My Brother.
Satan
12-15-2013, 12:36 AM
December 13, 2013
As America remembers the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting a year after a lone gunman shot and killed 26 people, including 20 children, Bill speaks with cultural historian and scholar Richard Slotkin about the role of guns and violence in our society. Slotkin is the author of an acclaimed trilogy — including Gunfighter Nation — on the myth of the frontier that has shaped our nation.
In an essay following his conversation with Slotkin, Bill talks about the role of the NRA in the firearms debate and looks at a new public service announcement by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun control organization.
Satan
01-05-2014, 09:06 PM
January 3, 2014
First it was Wisconsin. Now it’s North Carolina that is redefining the term “battleground state.” On one side: a right-wing government enacting laws that are changing the face of the state. On the other: citizen protesters who are fighting back against what they fear is a radical takeover. This crucible of conflict reflects how the battle for control of American politics is likely to be fought for the foreseeable future: not in Washington, DC, but state by state.
This week on Moyers & Company, “State of Conflict: North Carolina” offers a documentary report from a state that votes both blue and red and sometimes purple (Romney carried it by a whisker in 2012, Obama by an eyelash in 2008). Now, however, Republicans hold the governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature and they are steering North Carolina far to the right: slashing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, providing vouchers to private schools, cutting unemployment benefits, refusing to expand Medicaid and rolling back electoral reforms, including voting rights.
At the heart of this conservative onslaught sits a businessman who is so wealthy and powerful that he is frequently described as the state’s own “Koch brother.” Art Pope, whose family fortune was made via a chain of discount stores, has poured tens of millions of dollars into a network of foundations and think tanks that advocate a wide range of conservative causes. Pope is also a major funder of conservative political candidates in the state.
Pope’s most ardent opponent is the Reverend William Barber, head of the state chapter of the NAACP, who says the right-wing state government has produced “an avalanche of extremist policies that threaten health care, that threaten education [and] that threaten the poor.” Barber’s opposition to the legislature as well as the Pope alliance became a catalyst for the protest movement that became known around the country as “Moral Mondays.”
“State of Conflict” is more than a local story. It offers a case study of what may be the direction of American politics for years, perhaps decades, to come.
Bill shares good news on the decades-long fight to protect children from the dangers of lead-based paint. When Bill spoke with public health historians Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner last year, they told him about a pending lawsuit in California demanding the paint industry to cover the cost of eliminating old lead paint from some five million homes.
“State of Conflict” is a collaboration between Okapi Productions, LLC and Schumann Media Center, Inc., headed by Bill Moyers, which supports independent journalism and media programs to advance public understanding of the critical issues facing democracy.
Kristy
01-06-2014, 01:38 PM
November 1, 2013
A cornerstone of President Obama’s plan to create more American jobs is a new agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), referred to by some as “NAFTA on steroids.” While negotiations are being carried out in secret and very little about the terms has been leaked, enough is known to worry about its possible effect on trade unions and our copyright and patent laws, not to mention environmental, health and safety regulations.
So in other words, the Libertardian wet dream.
Satan
01-06-2014, 02:04 PM
Well, actually the North Carolina episode was closer to the Libertardian wet dream (Art Pope is a Randtard, just like his pals Chuck and Davy KKKoch).
The TPP is more of a Hitler/Mussolini wet dream. An absolute corporate takeover of world government.
January 10, 2014
This week on Moyers & Company, Bill begins a new half-hour format with nothing short of the universe itself.
In a multi-part series with the popular astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill explores a variety of topics, including the nature of an expanding, accelerating universe (and how it might end), the difference between “dark energy” and “dark matter,” the concept of God in cosmology and why science matters.
“Science is an enterprise that should be cherished as an activity of the free human mind,” Tyson tells Bill. “Because it transforms who we are, how we live, and it gives us an understanding of our place in the universe.”
Starting in March, Tyson will host a new, updated version of the hit PBS television series Cosmos, which made the late Carl Sagan a household name. This time the new series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, comes courtesy of the National Geographic Channel and Fox TV.
January 17, 2014
A new poll by Pew Research has found that one-third of Americans do not believe in evolution, with Republicans far less likely to believe that humans evolved over time than Democrats. That may be why the teaching of evolution to children continues to be an often temper-flaming debate. In states like Texas, some public school students are opening their biology textbooks to find evolution described as “dogma” and an “unproved theory.”
While astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson believes all individuals have a right to their own beliefs, he’s passionate about what should be taught in science class – science.
“If you have a religious philosophy that is not based in objective realities that you then want to put in the science classroom, then I’m going stand there and say no, ‘I’m not going to allow you in the science classroom,’” Tyson tells Bill.
In the second part of their conversation, Tyson and Bill discuss whether science and religion can ever be reconciled, explore the cosmic enigma known as dark matter and the possibilities of parallel universes. Neil deGrasse Tyson is host of the upcoming series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey premiering Sunday, March 9, 2014 on Fox.
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