The news has been all Sarah Palin, and it’s mostly about her family, her experience or her hawkish ignorance. Patriotism and military prowess define national security in our headline news, rather than economic stability. Charlie Gibson didn’t ask Sarah and the View didn’t ask McCain how strong a country can be if its citizens’ financial security is under attack, immigrant workers are being jailed and repressed, and all around the financial system is crumbling.
We begin tonight’s Beneath The Surface with Tom Hayden. He says that the McCain/Palin foreign policy is a mortal threat to America, from the same neoconservatives who brought us Iraq wrapped in lies. And Tom has just reviewed Woodward’s new book revealing secret extra-judicial killings in Iraq. McCain and Palin promise more of the same – they profess patriotism and military prowess but their policies would risk more dangerous wars, further isolate the US and weaken the already crumbling economy with a higher deficit, lower dollar, fewer jobs and reductions in Social Security, Medicare and Education. We’ll ask Tom what he thinks the Obama-Biden campaign should do and what alternative they offer.
Wall Street tumbled more than 500 points today, as did European and Asian markets. We continue our coverage of the US economic financial collapse and it has been a stunning weekend. Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy, Bank of America buys/takes over ailing Merrill Lynch, WAMU looks for Government assurance, GM and Ford get Federal cash and as Max Wolff, one of our guests tonight says, “I can’t satirize this decision pattern,†while our other guest Jack Rasmus shows how statistics are trying to hide the declining economy and jobless "epic" recession. Both our guests believe there is more bad news to come as the underlying structural problems and insolvency of the US economy spread to the rest of the world. You won’t want to miss this.
And finally on tonight’s Beneath The Surface, Matt Gonzalez remembers Peter Camejo, who died this weekend.
Read More for info on tonight's guests:
1. Tom Hayden is a former State Senator and legislator, the Nation Institute’s Carey McWilliams Fellow, and an active leader for more than four decades in the student, anti-war and civil rights movements. From Port Huron to Chicago to California, Hayden’s impact on American politics has been and is still huge. He writes regularly for The Nation and the Huffington Post, and is the author of 13 books, the most recent including Ending the War in Iraq [2007] and Writing for a Democratic Society: the Tom Hayden Reader [2008].
2. Max Fraad Wolff is an economist and free lance researcher/writer. His work regularly appears in the Asia Times, The Prudent Bear and many other international outlets. His work can also been seen regularly on his site, http://www.GlobalMacroScope.com, and The Huffington Post. Based in NYC, Max does contract research on international financial risks and opportunities while teaching in the New School University's Graduate Program in International Affairs.
3. Jack Rasmus currently teaches Economics and Politics at St. Marys College in California. He is the author of the 2006 book, The War At Home: The Corporate Offensive from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, and the forthcoming The Trillion Dollar Income Shift. He has written for Against The Current, Critique, and ZNet.
4. Matt Gonzalez is a former President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (as the only Green Party member) and is running on Ralph Nader's Independent ticket as a vice presidential candidate. He is best known for having led the effort to implement Instant Run-off Voting, also known as Rank Choice Voting, in San Francisco, where it has been successfully implemented to obtain a majority outcome without the need for costly run-off elections. Additionally, Gonzalez fought to create a minimum wage in San Francisco which includes a mechanism for yearly cost of living adjustments.
