April 15 - California Crackup; Most Americans Favor Defense Cuts; The Latest Excess On Wall Street

Full Program	LISTEN TO FULL PROGRAM
Part 1	We begin with the crisis in California where the governor faces a budget shortfall twice as big as projected due to declining tax revenues. Mark Paul, a former deputy treasurer of the State of California and author of “California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How to Fix it” joins us to discuss why the legislature can’t raise taxes and further deep cuts are being made at the expense of the poor.
Part 2	Then we examine the disconnect between the American public, a majority of whom want to cut the military budget, and the Republican Congress who refuse to cut it even though they signed off to automatic cuts. Steven Kull, a political psychologist and the Director of the Program for Public Consultation and a Senior Researcher at the Center for International Security Studies joins us. He has done a survey that finds three quarters of the respondents favor cutting defense as a way to reduce the deficit, including two thirds of Republicans as well as nine out of ten Democrats.
Part 3	Then finally we speak with Roger Lowenstein, the author of “The End of Wall Street”. He is a veteran financial journalist who wrote for the Wall Street Journal for more than a decade and now writes for the New York Times and Smart Money. We will discuss the latest excess on Wall Street and how the Dodd-Frank reforms meant to rein in derivative trading have been watered down since the crash of 2008.
	Music: Bobby Womack - California Dreaming; My Morning Jacket - Two Halves; Jose Gonzalez - How Low; LCD Soundsystem - New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down