March 17 - Israel's Close Election; A Stark Comparison of Income Inequality; A Flamboyant Young Republican Congressman Flames Out

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with today’s elections in Israel that are far from conclusive since the real politics begin after the election with coalition building among the small and fractious parties that could take days before there is a clear winner. A veteran Israeli politician who was a leader in the Labor Party and the One Israel Party and was Speaker of the Knesset from 1999 to 2003, Avraham Burg, joins us to discuss the neck-and-neck results between Prime Minister Netanyahu and his main challenger Yitzhak Herzog of the center-left Zionist Union and the last minute racist warning by Netanyahu that his rule was threatened by Arab voters.   

Part 2

Then we examine a new report by Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is the lead author of 20 annual “Executive Excess” reports. She joins us to discuss her finding that new figures from the New York State Comptroller reveal that Wall Street banks handed out bonuses last year that are double the earnings of all Americans who work full time at the federal minimum wage. Her report is analyzed in Tuesday’s New York Times by Justin Wolfers, a senior economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who supports the report’s stark comparison of income inequality.

Part 3

Then finally we look into today’s resignation of a rising star in the Republican Party who was until recently the youngest member of Congress, Representative Aaron Schock of Illinois. Already under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, he has been the subject of recent press scrutiny about his flamboyant lifestyle and the redecoration of his congressional office in the style of the PBS British drama “Downton Abbey”. Michael Slaughter, a retired English Professor in Peoria, Illinois, who recently wrote a letter of complaint about his Congressman Aaron Schock that was published in the Peoria Journal Star, joins us.