December 15 - Possible Blowback from an Amateurish CIA Operation: An Update from an Insurance Insider on Obamacare; No Fix on Loopholes that Allow Billionaires to Buy our Elections

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with an AP investigation into the disappearance of an American in Iran who we now learn was working for an amateurish off-the-books CIA operation. A veteran CIA operations officer who served in Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, Robert Baer joins us to shed light on the fate of Robert Levinson a former DEA and FBI agent who went missing on a “business trip” in 2007 on Kish Island, an Iranian resort on the Persian Gulf, where it turns out he was working undercover on a rogue CIA mission.

Part 2

Then we get an update on the Affordable Care Act in the final weeks before the January 1^st deadline when the most important consumer protections in Obamacare go into effect. Wendell Potter, a former insurance company insider who was the chief corporate spokesman for CIGNA and Humana and now is a senior analyst on healthcare at the Center for Public Integrity, joins us to discuss his new book “Obamacare: What’s in It for Me?  What Everyone Needs to Know About the Affordable Care Act”.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Jessica Levinson, a Professor at Loyola Law School who focuses on election law, campaign finance and ethics. She joins us to discuss her article at Reuters “Thanks to Congressional Inaction, Seeking Clarity from the IRS Is No Joke” and the failure of the Congress and the IRS to close loopholes that allow tax exempt vehicles such as 501C-4’s that are supposed to be used for social welfare, to be a conduit for billionaires to flood our politics with unlimited money, without attribution, to buy our elections in the name of charity.