Beneath The Surface with Suzi Weissman

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Jack Rasmus joins us to comment on Fed Chief Ben Bernanke’s speech today. Another large stimulus is needed but can’t get through Congress, so all hope was pinned on Bernanke’s actions from the Fed. But how much can monetary policy do about the slowing economy? What about the nearly 2 trillion in cash being hoarded by banks and businesses who are not investing in Main Street, but are engaging in speculative trades that raise the question about a secret, non-shadow or shadow-shadow banking industry? Jack will also talk to us about the growing problem with unemployment and the crash in new home sales and what it all portends.

Laura Maggi, reporter from the New Orleans Times Picayune joins us for this fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. She is part of the team of reporters from The Times-Picayune, PBS Frontline, and ProPublica who have examined the NOLA Police Department leaders' authorizing the shooting of looters. A documentary drawn from that work aired this week on PBS’s Frontline. The story was also done by The Nation. Five years later we're still struggling to get the facts straight and to figure out what they say about race, disaster and differing views of human nature. African Americans are justifiably embittered about their demonization by the media and the government. The widely told but false initial version, based on rumors and racism, portrayed an absence of authority, anarchy and violence that called for an armed and ruthless imposition of authority. NOLA PD and Blackwater mercenaries shot at citizens with little fear of repercussion. While the focus was on young men of color as the peril, police and white vigilantes went on a murder spree that was glossed over at the time. Laura Maggi has been on the story and fills us in.

Greg Mitchell, who does The Nation’s Friday Daybook comments on Katrina’s fifth anniversary and whether it was a natural or unnatural disaster, plus his take on the Tea Party and the rise of ‘know-nothings’ – and its implications for our body politic.

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Katrina vanden Heuvel discusses the state of our literally crumbling nation. While deficit hawks and obstinate Republicans dominate the discourse in Washington, roads disintegrate, jobs and services disappear, and the lights are literally going out in cash-strapped cities across America. Yesterday's editorial on TheNation.com says that with this kind of "downsized politics," good proposals to revive the economy are "left foundering," and Americans are left with no relief in sight.

Michael Hudson joins us to make sense of the economic news coming out of the Eurozone. Economists in the mainstream are celebrating as Germany posts its biggest growth in 2 decades, but the picture remains dire throughout the rest of the continent. Far from responding to the "medicine" of austerity, Europe seems to be sliding even further, with serious implications for the world economy.

Harold Meyerson joins us to talk about "Why the GOP really wants to alter the 14th Amendment." By pushing to revoke the citizenship of the children of undocumented immigrants, Myerson says the Republicans are trying to "preserve their political prospects as a white folks' party in an increasingly multicolored land" - by, ironically, undoing one of the greatest historical achievements of the Republican Party. We'll discuss the political perils and prospects of a nation in the throes of crisis.

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We begin with Max Fraad Wolff, who reports on the dismal job numbers released today, numbers he warns carry significant danger signs for the economy. He says we are missing 8.5 million jobs and this is no time to slash public spending unless the government intends to provoke instability.

Next, we talk to Professor Kieran Allen in Dublin about Ireland as a case study in what happens when deficit hawks and austerity measures rule the day. Allen, author of the recent book "Ireland's Economic Crash," recounts how its miracle economy was turned into a disaster zone, as bank bailouts combined with wage cuts and reductions in public services resulted in a downward spiral of gloom and doom.

Then, Rick Wolff joins us for more on how not to recover. We'll ask him about the class nature of deficit reduction, also known as austerity, and how governments from Europe to America are drinking the austerity Kool-Aid, despite the object lesson from Ireland.

Finally, we turn from the economic doldrums, and end on a couple of victories. Jackie Goldberg joins us to talk about the significance of Wednesday's decision by Judge Vaughn Walker that overturned Proposition 8, as well as the assault on the 14th Amendment and equal protections under the law. And Horace Small from the Union of Minority Neighborhoods joins us to report on the victory in Massachusetts, as reform of the notorious CORI act was signed into law.

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On tonight’s program we begin with the internal Israeli reaction to the deadly assault on the flotilla headed for Gaza last Monday. Yoav Peled joins us in Tel Aviv, and we’ll ask him if the attack has raised Israeli public discussion on the wisdom of Israel’s embargo on Gaza, the Netanyahu government’s refusal to allow an independent inquiry, and the increasing and intensifying isolation of Israel in world opinion, Even the Israeli Mossad chief warned this week that Israel is gradually being transformed from an asset to a burden for the Americans. We’ll ask Yoav what he sees from Tel Aviv and what may be ahead.

We then turn to Marcy Winograd who is in the final days of her run against Jane Harmon to represent the 36th District in Congress. Winograd is increasingly under attack: A hard-hitting new TV spot from Harman's campaign features a series of hot-button images of Osama bin Laden and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and suggests Marcy Winograd would decimate the U.S. defense department, attacks her positions on the existence of the State of Israel and more. We’ll hear from Marcy on these issues.

And finally on tonight’s program we talk to Michael Deibert who has just returned from Colombia, where the election to choose a successor to President Álvaro Uribe is taking place amid escalating and horrendous violence as former paramilitary groups have transformed into major, violent drug cartels that are now joining forces with the FARC rebel group. Reporting from the Bajo Cauca mountainous region of Central Colombia, Deibert writes that for much of the last year, groups of warring drug traffickers have battled for control of this strategically important area and continue to wage a scorched-earth battle to determine dominance over the smuggling of narcotics, weapons and people along the river Uribe.

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Welcome to BTS on this Memorial Day Weekend eve. For listeners in or near Arizona, I can't think of a better way to spend Memorial Day Weekend than joining the protests against the onerous Arizona law signed by Governor Brewster, SB1070, that declares open season on people of color, sets the clock back on a generation of civil rights gains, mandates racial profiling, jeopardizes public safety and creates a wedge between law enforcement and ethnic communities. You can call it the Papers Please Immigration Law or you can call it the American version of South Africa's Pass laws -- or Germany's Nuremburg Laws. The march in Phoenix on Saturday, boosted by both the AFL-CIO and SEIU is predicted to attract at least 50,000 from all over the country, and some estimates are far higher. For more information on the National Day of Action against SB1070, check out http://www.altoarizona.com.

On our program tonight we begin with the ongoing ecological catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon/BP (Transocean/ Halliburton) oil spill. For the first time in history, oil is pouring into the deep currents of a semi-enclosed sea, poisoning the water and depriving it of oxygen so that entire classes of marine species are at risk of annihilation. It is as if an underwater neutron bomb has struck the Gulf of Mexico, causing little apparent damage on the surface but destroying the living creatures below. Michael Klare writes in The Nation that while poor oversight and faulty equipment may have played a critical role in BP’s catastrophe in the Gulf, the ultimate source of the disaster is big oil’s compulsive drive to compensate for the decline in its conventional oil reserves by seeking supplies in inherently hazardous areas, no matter the risk. The oil spewing in the gulf may be one of the great ecological disasters of human history, but Klare sees it as prelude to a time of ever increasing reliance on problematic, hard-to-reach energy sources, a danger zone that risks the fate of the planet. He joins us to explain.

We'll end our show tonight with a treat, a special edition from the vault of the Pacifica Archives paying tribute to the war dead on this Memorial Day, including a stirring collection of testimony from the first Winter Soldier Hearings in 1971.

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Nomi Prins joins us to dissect the Senate Financial Reform Bill passed yesterday. Nomi thinks the bill is far from “sweeping.” She says it doesn’t’ deter the reckless financial engineering, investing, and inflation of values upon which leveraged funds thrive, and won't protect us from economic chaos. We’ll ask her whether the financial sector is a clear and present danger to all of us, whether the real worry behind ‘Too Big to Fail’ is about ‘too big to bail’ as Max Wolff put it – and what this bill does to protect ordinary workers and consumers. We’ll also ask Nomi what reforms we need.

Marielena Hincapié, Executive Director of the National Immigration Law Center joins us to talk about the Class Action Law Suit her organization along with a coalition of civil rights groups filed challenging Arizona’s SB 1070 -- which declares open season on people of color, sets the clock back on a generation of civil rights gains, mandates racial profiling, jeopardizes public safety and creates a wedge between law enforcement and ethnic communities The extreme law, the coalition charged, invites the racial profiling of people of color, violates the First Amendment and interferes with federal law.

Greg Grandin, Professor of history at NYU and author of Fordlandia, recently called Glenn Beck the “Perfect Pitchman for the Tea Party's Deranged Ideas About US History.” In light of the primary win of Tea Partier Rand Paul in Kentucky, we’ll go beneath the surface with Professor Grandin to discuss the ideas behind this nationalist and racist resurgence. Grandin insists there is a coherence to the Tea Party version of history, which he says allows conservative cadres not just to interpret the world but to act in it – and Grandin says, it is all about race.

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On tonight’s program we begin with Dr. Joseph Romm, physicist and climate expert, on his analysis of BP's "Oil Volcano" now spewing about two Exxon Valdez's per week. As Congress begins its investigation and a climate change bill hits the Senate, we'll ask Romm about the ecological and political implications of this disaster.

We then turn to Gary Younge, New York Correspondent for The Guardian who says Britain is bracing for the shocks to come as the new coalition government prepares draconian cuts that could kill the economy. Will the population resist the cuts? Did they vote against the Blair/Brown neoliberal-Labourism or for cuts in their living standards?

Then Marcy Winograd updates us on her important run against Blue Dog Jane Harman in the 36th Congressional District that runs from Venice to San Pedro. She has all the progressive endorsements - will it be enough against Jane Harman's deep pockets?

And finally on tonight’s Beneath The Surface, we talk to three students from the coalition "Our Struggle is Tied With Yours" at Saint Mary's College of California that just staged a week long fast, sleeping in tents outside in the rain -- a call to action demanding the college to live up to its the social justice mission. They won all their demands and their struggle is an example now spreading to other campuses.

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Tonight, Paul Mason, Economics Editor of BBC’s Newsnight joins us for an analysis of Britain’s historic General Election which resulted in a hung parliament and left the David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown to try to cobble together a coalition government, decidedly continental in style and not British.

Savas Michael Matsas reports for us on Greece's General Strike of May 5, which Savas is calling the Greek Volcano, and like Iceland's volcano, this too will impact the entire Eurozone as well as the United States.

Max Fraad Wolff joins us for an analysis of the latest jobs report -- productivity is up, but wages aren't and the unemployment rate is increasing. We'll get his perspective.

And finally, Tom Hayden connects the dots of our multiple crises, environmental, economic, political and military. We'll ask him about the many blowbacks of Obama's drone war in Pakistan, the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the oil deals that have exploded in the BP spill in the Gulf.

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On tonight’s program we begin with Los Angeles Councilman Ed Reyes, who coauthored a proposal for Los Angeles to join the boycott of Arizona after Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed the new anti-immigrant legislation that gives that state its own Nuremburg or Pass Laws that discriminate against immigrants.

We then turn to the continuing economic crisis. The Senate hearings on Goldman Sachs are galvanizing support for financial reform. Danny Schechter says the financial crisis is a crime story – and we should consider jail-outs, not bail-outs. He has a new film, “Plunder” and joins us today.

Then Joshua Kors joins us to talk about his new story showing how the Pentagon is cheating wounded vets. it is in the Nation and he calls it “Disposable Soldiers.” Joshua Kors earned national attention for his work uncovering the veterans benefits scandal – his two part series in the Nation showed how military doctors are purposely misdiagnosing soldiers wounded in Iraq, labeling them mentally ill in order to deny them medical care and disability pay.

We’ll also talk to Paul Mason about the British General Election on May 5.

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On tonight’s program we begin with Jane D’Arista, former staff economist for the Congress, now at U Mass Amherst and author of the two volume history of US monetary policy and financial regulation, The Evolution of U.S. Finance. She recently testified at the Financial Services hearings and joins us to talk about the proposed regulatory reform: is it enough and will it work?

We are then joined in studio by Shem Bitterman, Alan Rosenberg and Steve Zuckerman, writer, actor and director of the currently playing “Influence” at the Skylight Theatre on Vermont. This terrific play from the Katselas Theatre Company is the third in Bitterman’s celebrated Iraq War trilogy, this one about Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. This intelligent, superbly written, directed and acted play is running until May 9 and you shouldn’t miss it.

And finally on tonight’s Beneath The Surface, Al Sandine joins us in studio to talk about his new book, The Taming of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees, a journey into American history that sees the crowd and social protest as the antidote to despair and the soul and center of the country and its progress.