June 12 – Middle Class Wealth Wiped Out; Are Republicans Deliberately Crashing the Economy?; Game Over for Sandusky

We begin with a report just out from the Federal Reserve that finds the recent economic crisis erased two decades of accumulated prosperity from America’s middle class. Mattea Kramer, a research analyst for the National Priorities Project joins us to discuss why, while the middle class’s wealth has been eviscerated, in 2011 the federal government handed a 4.4 billion dollar housing subsidy to the top 1% of Americans.

Then we examine whether the Republicans are deliberately crashing the U.S. economy to defeat Obama and the Democrats and help elect Romney and more Republicans.  Michael Cohen, a Fellow at the Century Foundation and a columnist at Foreign Policy, where he covers politics and national security, joins us. He has an article in the UK Guardian that is attracting a lot of attention, “Did Republicans Deliberately Crash the US Economy?”

Then finally, after a second day of devastating testimony from young victims against the former Penn State football coach, we speak with the co-authors of a new book “Game Over: Jerry Sandusky, Penn State, and the Culture of Silence”. Bill Moushey a former crime reporter with the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and Bob Dvorchak, a veteran sports reporter, join us to explain how the Mother Theresa of Happy Valley was able to avoid prosecution for so long.