August 3 - ALEC's Corporate Takeover of American Politics; The Double-dip Recession and Catastrophe in Spain and Italy; The Dispute at South Sudan's Northern Border

Full Program

Part 1

First, we go to New Orleans where ALEC is meeting – that is the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate manufactured front group that is coordinating corporate-friendly legislation for passage in State Houses and the capitol. Lisa Graves, the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy joins us. A blueprint of ALEC’s legislative onslaught of 800 bills was leaked to her, and we will discuss today’s gathering of corporate whores in the prostitution-friendly Big Easy.

Part 2

Then, we examine the darkening clouds of an impending perfect storm of economic calamity, as prominent Wall Streeters predict a double-dip recession and cascading municipal defaults while the bond markets slam Spain and impale Italy. David Ruccio, professor of economics at Notre Dame, joins us to discuss what looks like our Smoot-Hawley moment where, instead of rescuing the economy, the Congress has dug a grave for it.

Part 3

Finally, Lako Tongun joins us. He recently returned from his native home of Southern Sudan, the world’s newest country, where UN peacekeepers have just been killed on the disputed northern border. We will get his analysis of how war can be avoided with the North, which has just ceded one third of its territory to the oil-rich south and is led by a General who has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court.