April 28 - The Plantation Mentality of Billionaire Owners of Sports Teams; A Defense Agreement with the Philippines that has Angered China; A Way Around the Cable Monopolies Poised to Kill Net Neutrality

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the gathering storm surrounding the slumlord billionaire owner of the NBA franchise the Los Angeles Clippers, whose poisonous private racism has been exposed in a telephone conversation with his expensive mistress, overnight devaluing the millions Donald Sterling has spent over the years in self-promotion through paid advertizing in the Los Angeles Times for staged banquets headlined by D-list celebrities where he awarded himself honors such as “Humanitarian of the Year”. Ben Carrington, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of “Race, Sport and Politics” joins us to discuss the plantation mentality of billionaire owners of sports teams, some of whom look upon their players as personal chattel.

Part 2

Then we examine the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement between the U.S. and The Philippines signed on the last stop of President Obama’s trip to Asia where he visited four countries involved in disputes with China. Joshua Kurlantzick, a former columnist for Time, correspondent for The American Prospect, writer for Mother Jones and author of “Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World”, joins us to discuss China’s displeasure at Obama’s so-called pivot to Asia that they increasingly see as an attempt to contain China.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Christopher Mitchell, the Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self Reliance about the more than 400 towns and cities across America who have installed or a planning to install fiber broadband municipal networks as an alternative to the telecom and cable monopolies who appear to have captured Obama’s FCC which is poised to end the government’s commitment to net neutrality. We discuss the need to both support municipalities who are building networks to circumvent cable monopolies with high speed broadband that other advanced nations enjoy, at the same time, holding the FCC’s feet to the fire so they don’t sell out the public and abandon net neutrality.