January 5 - What Can Be Done to Regulate Access to Firearms?; The Underlying Dynamics of Income Inequality; "The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of the Shadow Government"

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the executive action on gun safety announced today at the White House with President Obama tearing up as he recalled the massacre of elementary school children at Sandy Hook and the NRA’s grip on Congress that blocked the demand of a majority of Americans that military-style weapons be kept out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. A 30-year law enforcement veteran who served as a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Dr. William Vizzard, Professor Emeritus and Chair of the Division of Criminal Justice at California State University, Sacramento and author of “In the Crossfire: A Political History of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms” joins us to discuss how Obama can get around the Congress to hire more ATF agents to improve federal gun licensing and more FBI personnel to conduct background checks.

Part 2

Then we speak with the co-author of a new study that examines the underlying dynamics of income inequality based on 35 years of data from the Social Security Administration that finds the top quarter of the one percent are pulling away from the rest of us. Fatih Guvenen, a Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota who is currently a visiting professor at Yale University and a research consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, joins us to discuss the issue of income inequality that dominated the annual meeting of the American Economic Association.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Mike Lofgren about his new book “The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government”. He spent 28 years working in Congress, the last 16 as a senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget Committees, and we will discuss the contradictions created by the deep state where the rich are getting richer as the poor get poorer in the land of opportunity, with the country in perpetual war while standing for peace, and while Americans talk of freedom, they are living in the surveillance state.