August 17 – The Militarization of America’s Police Forces; Obama on a Tightrope as Critics Pile On; Will Republican Big Bucks Backfire?

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the continuing protests and looting in Ferguson, Missouri in spite of an intervention by the Governor and the deployment of a more community-friendly less militarized State Police force. Elizabeth Beavers, the Legislative Associate for Militarism and Civil Liberties at the Friends Committee on National Legislation joins us to discuss her recent article in the New York Times “Get the Military off Main Street” and the lobbying efforts of she and her colleagues for the past year on Capitol Hill to block the Pentagon’s hand-out of surplus military weapons and hardware to police forces across the country known as the 1033 program that has resulted in the streets of Ferguson looking like a war zone.

Part 2

Then, with President Obama curtailing his vacation to deal with the volatile situations in Ukraine and Iraq, as a joint U.S. and Kurdish military operation to retake the Mosul dam is underway, we will discuss the precarious decision-making situation the president is in with the possibility of the Islamic State retaliating by unleashing a monstrous and catastrophic tidal wave across Iraq that will flood the country and plunge it into darkness.Dr. Stephen Walt, a Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University joins us to discuss his article at Foreign Policy “Double Diss” and the upside and the downside for the president at a time when his foreign policy in not just being criticized by Republicans, but is being second-guessed by one of its architects, the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Darrell West, the Vice President of Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and author of the forthcoming book, “Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust”. He joins us to discuss his recent article in USA Today “Republican Big Bucks Backfire” that suggests much of the massive and unprecedented campaign spending by plutocrats to elect Republicans to do their political bidding might reverse itself and over time go to Democrats, as these conservative donors age and their liberal children inherit their fortunes.