April 7 – Will Rand Paul Run for President on Principle or Pragmatism?; “Rand Paul Would Be the Worst President on Civil Rights Since the 1800’s”; Obama Heads to Jamaica Where Austerity Is Worse than Greece’s

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with freshman Senator Rand Paul’s entry into the 2016 Republican presidential primary race under the banner ”Defeat the Washington Machine. Unleash the American Dream”. A former Senior Policy Adviser to Rand Paul’s father Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign, Bruce Fein, joins us. We discuss the extent to which the Kentucky senator will campaign on principle or moderate his message to appeal to Republican primary voters who may not be ready for the legalization of pot, cutting the Pentagon’s budget, and downsizing the American empire.

Part 2

Then we speak with Ian Millhiser, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and the Editor of ThinkProgress Justice. He is the author of the new book “Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted” and we discuss his article at Think Progress “Rand Paul Would Be the Worst President on Civil Rights Since the 1800’s”.

Part 3

Then finally, as President Obama heads to Jamaica for a meeting with the Caribbean Community CARICOM leaders, before going on to Panama for the Summit of the America’s, we look into how the third year of an IMF-backed plan has Jamaica running the most austere budget in the world, worse than Greece’s, to the point where the tiny island nation’s interest payments on its debt is over 8% of GDP. Jake Johnston the author of a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “Partners in Austerity: Jamaica, the United States and the International Monetary Fund”, joins us.