November 3 - The Chief Salesman of the Iraq War Dies; Big Sugar Versus Big High Fructose Corn Syrup; House Republicans Slip Bank Deregulation Into the Popular Highway Bill

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the death of Ahmed Chalabi, the chief salesman of the Iraq war who all along was an agent of the Iranian government while enthusiastically embraced by the Bush Administration and the neocons as Iraq’s Nelson Mandela even though he had been convicted of defrauding a Jordanian bank out of $300 million. A veteran CIA officer who knew Chalabi well, Robert Baer, joins us to discuss how Chalabi and the neocons sabotaged an early coup attempt by Iraqi generals against Saddam Hussein and his sons that Baer was involved in which would have avoided the very war in Iraq that the neocons were determined to make happen.

Part 2

Then we look into the battle between big sugar and big  high fructose corn syrup which has now renamed itself corn sugar, leading to the showdown in Federal Court that began today. The President of the corporate watchdog Eat Drink Politics, Michele Simon, a public health lawyer specializing in legal strategies to counter corporate tactics and author of “Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back”, joins us. We will discuss how refined sugar is replacing high fructose corn syrup as a ubiquitous food additive even though both contribute to the epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Wallace Turbeville, a Senior Fellow at Demos, who was an investment banker at Goldman, Sachs & Co before joining Better Markets where he proposed rules and authored studies to implement the Dodd-Frank Act. We will examine efforts by House Republicans to undermine Dodd-Frank and weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by slipping bank deregulation into the popular Highway Bill, as well as a host of other ideological riders that will be attached to the budget in appropriations killing important new rules at the Labor Department, the S.E.C. and the F.C.C.