October 2 – It’s Even Worse Than the Two Washington Insiders First Warned; Averting the Catastrophic Self-Inflicted Wound of Default; Drugs are Cheaper, Purer and More Plentiful as Seizures Increase

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with two Washington insiders who wrote the New York Times bestseller “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism”. Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann were among the first to expose the capture of the Republican Party by extremists and we discuss the threat to the constitution posed by Tea Party radicals who want nothing short of unconditional surrender by Barack Obama of his presidency.

Part 2

Then we speak with Dr. Jacob Hacker, the Director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University and the co-author of “Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer – and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class”. We discuss what the business community can do to lean on Republican lawmakers to avert the catastrophic self-inflicted wound of a default that would permanently undermine America’s unique advantage as a haven for global capital.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the latest report on the failed war on drugs published this week in the British Medical Journal. The lead author Daniel Werb, the co-founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, who released the study, joins us to discuss the evidence that drugs have become cheaper, more pure and potent and much more plentiful in the last two decades despite an increase in drug seizures around the world.