November 14 – Insider Traders in Congress; Jordan’s King Urges Assad to Step Down; How the GOP Became the Party of the 1%

Full Program LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM   Part 1 We begin with the shocking revelations uncovered by “60 Minutes” that members of Congress enjoy a unique privilege exempting them from insider trading laws which they use to make millions from stocks trades that would land an ordinary citizen or a Wall Street banker in jail. The Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy Lisa Graves joins us to explain this legalized larceny and whether the Stock Act that has languished in Congress could be revived by citizen outrage Part 2 Then we discuss the mounting pressure from the Arab League and Jordan’s King Abdullah on the Assad regime to step down and stop murdering the Syrian people. Bassam Haddad, the Director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University joins us to discuss whether the increasingly isolated Assad clan will respond to outside pressure or whether an armed rebellion is the only way to remove them. Part 3 Then finally, we talk about how the GOP became the party of the rich, the title of a special report in the latest edition of Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson, who joins us to explain how the party of Lincoln became the party of the Koch Brothers.  And how Grover Norquist, the den mother of young conservative activists, who has been described as “Liberace with a wife”, became the most powerful lobbyist in Washington responsible for the greatest transfer of wealth in history from poor and middle class Americans to the top one percent.   MUSIC: Modest Mouse – Beach Side Property; Syrian Protesters – Bashar Must Go; Built to Spill – Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss; Shabazz Palaces – Yeah You     60 minutes bashar Bassam Haddad Debt Grover Norquist Koch Brothers Lisa Graves Syria taxes tim dickinson More posts