April 15 - A Nightmare Scenario in Ukraine; The Wrong Enemy in Afghanistan; Who Gets What From Your Tax Dollars?

Full Program

Part 1

With the increasing likelihood of a military conflagration in Ukraine as armed Russian political tourists occupying government buildings clash with Ukrainian riot police, we look into the nightmare scenario of Ukraine’s civilian nuclear power reactors becoming military targets in the event of a Russian invasion. Bennett Ramberg, who was a foreign policy analyst in the State Department’s Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and is the author of “Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons For The Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril” joins us. He did extensive investigations following the Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine and has an article at Project Syndicate, “The Chernobyl Factor in the Ukraine Crisis”.

Part 2

Then we will speak with Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall, about her provocative new book “The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001 – 2014”. Since 2001 she has spent longer than any other Western reporter in Afghanistan and we will discuss some of the explosive revelations in her book that indicate Pakistan, a country that has received close to $30 billion in taxpayer money since 2001, has been America’s real enemy in Afghanistan, largely responsible for the 1,000 NATO troops killed as well as the 2,300 American soldiers who have died in America’s longest war.

Part 3

Then finally with tax day upon us, we will examine how our tax dollars are spent with Jasmine Tucker, a research analyst at the National Priorities Project, where you can get your own personalized tax receipt of where your money goes at nationalpriorities.org  She will break down who get’s what from our tax dollars, with the military at the head of the line with 27 cents of every dollar, followed by 22.7 cents for Medicare and health programs, all the way down to education that gets a measly 2 cents and energy and environment, a mere 1.9 cents.