October 31 - Mitigating the Sequester With Bigger Cuts to Come; Why Americans Are Not Aware of The Widening Wealth Gap; The Theology Underpinning the Tea Party

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with talks underway as lawmakers meet to fund the rest of fiscal 2014 through September and look for ways around the sequester to mitigate more deep cuts coming in mid-January. Scott Klinger, the Director of Revenue and Spending Policies at the Center for Effective Government joins us to discuss the effects of cuts so far and the impact of much more to come.

Part 2

Then with billionaire Bill Gross of PIMCO calling on his fellow one percenters to pay more taxes to spur economic growth and help those who use their hands for a living, we examine the growing disparity in wealth in America with Harvard researcher Michael Norton, a professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School who has studied the reasons why most Americans are unaware of how wide the income gap is and when told how more and more of the nation’s wealth is going to the top, rich and poor alike agree it is unfair and un-American, but then disagree on how to address the problem.

Part 3

Then finally we examine the roll of Rafael Cruz, the director of the Purifying Fire Ministry, who recently campaigned with his son Senator Ted Cruz in Iowa. Best-selling author Frank Schaeffer, whose parents Francis and Edith were the founders of what has become the Christian Right, joins us to discuss the Christian reconstruction Dominionist movement which seeks to rule America according to “biblical law” and pastor Cruz’s remarks that Obama is an “outright Marxist” who should be sent “back to Kenya” and his belief that the United States is “a Christian nation formed to honor the word of God”.