This Week on Talk Nation Radio, we discuss Coronavirus, corporate greed, and other topics with Dean Baker. Dean Baker is Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which he co-founded in 1999. His areas of research include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social
Top 10 Reasons the U.S. Government Is Blowing This
10. Recognizing that a problem that has grown severe in other countries could grow severe in the United States would require thinking of the United States as existing in the same world, susceptible to the same forces, as everyone else. A willingness to recognize that would have led to earlier action and wiser action more coordinated with the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the United States is supposed to be exceptional.
9. Recognizing that there are crises that can’t be addressed by shooting
Talk Nation Radio: Norman Solomon on Bernie v Biden
Norman Solomon is cofounder and coordinator of RootsAction.org as well as founder and director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy and Made Love, Got War. He has written op-ed pieces for almost every large daily U.S. newspaper
Ban Parades Now
As I proposed before the CPAC meeting and will again now, there is a danger in large gatherings and a precedent of ignoring that danger to great detriment.
The steps China has taken against the coronavirus (rapidly building new hospitals, testing huge numbers of people, quarantining people swiftly and effectively) are clearly things that the U.S. government will never do as long as issuing a press release is seen as preferable.
Plans for St. Patrick’s Day parades and other large gatherings
When a Weapons Show Is Canceled By Coronavirus
Imagine a weapons show canceled because of coronavirus. It may already have happened. It’s certainly imaginable. But now try to imagine a coronavirus show canceled by a bomb threat.
Can you picture a fossil fuel lobbyists’ retreat canceled by coronavirus? Of course you can. It may have happened already. But try to summon up an image of a coronavirus lobbyists’ retreat canceled by wildfires and hurricanes. Can’t do it, can you?
Imagine the NRA telling everyone to work from
Ode to That Thing By Joe Biden
Why why why why why you’re getting nervous man.
Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.
And cornpop was a bad dude and he ran a bunch of bad boys.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men and women are created by the ko you know the you know the thing.
You’re a lying dogfaced pony soldier.
I’m not sedentary I get up and let let let let them go let them go look the reason I’m running is because I’ve been around a long time.
And I said hey
Talk Nation Radio: Matt Hoh on Afghanistan and U.S. Foreign Policy
Matthew Hoh is a member of the advisory boards of Expose Facts, Veterans For Peace, and World BEYOND War. In 2009 he resigned his position with the State Department in Afghanistan in protest of the escalation of the Afghan War by the Obama Administration. He previously had been in Iraq with a State Department
Yet Another Mass Shooter Was a Military Veteran
Thursday yet another mass shooting was committed by a military veteran, this one in Milwaukee. Virtually all military veterans are not mass shooters. Many peace activists are veterans. Many everything under the sun are veterans. But mass shooters are very disproportionately military veterans.
Some mass shooters who are not veterans are acting out a pretense of being in the military and/or are using military weapons. Militarism impacts a society in many ways. But one of them is through the violence
Talk Nation Radio: Enough Blood Shed, End the Arms Trade
Mary-Wynne Ashford is a retired Family Physician, with a specialty in Palliative Care. She was Co-President of the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War for four years, and President of Physicians for Global Survival (Canada) for four years. IPPNW received the Nobel Peace
Bernie Finally Puts a Number on Cutting Military Spending
Bernie Sanders’ campaign has published a fact sheet on how everything he proposes can be paid for. On that fact sheet we find this line in a list of items that collectively will pay for a Green New Deal:
“Reducing defense spending by $1.215 trillion by scaling back military operations on protecting the global oil supply.”
Of course there is an obvious problem or mystery about this number, namely, isn’t it too damn good to be true? The full cost of military spending including