November 5 - Bush Senior Admits That Cheney Usurped His Son's Presidency; How the Highway Bill Endangers the Public; New York's AG Sues Exxon for Lying About Global Warming

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the new biography of President George H.W. Bush in which George W. Bush’s father made clear he felt his son was badly served by Dick Cheney who he said had “built his own empire” within W’s White House and Donald Rumsfeld who the elder Bush said was an “arrogant fellow”. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served in the highest level of the Bush White House as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, joins us to discuss how Cheney essentially stole W’s presidency out from under him, something that Bush’s father likely always knew but is only now acknowledging, far too late to stop the many of his son’s calamitous mistakes like the invasion of Iraq.

Part 2

Then we examine the contents of the Highway Bill, Paul Ryan’s first achievement as Speaker that gives a gift slipped into the bill of $17 billion in government payments to banks, while chronically underfunding investment in aging and dangerous infrastructure at a time when the cost of borrowing is at an all-time low. Ted Miller, a Safety Economist who is a Senior Research Scientist at the Pacific Institute joins us to discuss the human cost of neglecting infrastructure investment as old bridges, dams and roads go on unrepaired contributing to 14,000 highway deaths a year with $11.4 billion in medical costs.

Part 3

Then finally we look into the sweeping investigation into Exxon Mobil by New York’s Attorney General to determine if the oil giant lied to the public and its investors about the dangers of climate change caused by global warming that consumption of its product contributes to. Jonathan Cannon, a Professor of Environmental Law at the University of Virginia School of Law joins us to discuss how the precedent of tobacco companies lying to the public about the danger their products pose to human health, could be applied to oil companies.