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Harold Meyerson comments on Trump’s attack of Amazon, the prospect of a Trump re-election, the new model for unions after the Janus v. AFSCME case. His new article, “What Now for Unions,” is out now at Prospect.org.
Also, we ask Amy Wilentz whether Ivanka should be indicted — she describes the “grotesque abuse of power” that is the Trump kleptocracy.
Lastly, Katha Pollitt says, it’s time to “get real about Russiagate.”
3/29/18
Read HERE
Jon Wiener: Ivanka is connected pretty directly to events at the center of the Russiagate investigations. Where do you think the strongest case could be made that she committed a crime?
Amy Wilentz: Possibly it’s the cover-up from the meeting on Air Force One after that fabled meeting in Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer. On Air Force One, the Trump team, including the president and Jared Kushner and Ivanka, crafted a message to the media saying that the Trump Tower meeting was largely about Russian adoptions and had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. Of course, we subsequently learned it was all about a promise of dirt on Hillary from the Russians.
TheNation.com 3/23/18
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John Nichols reports on breaking news from Wisconsin: a victory for voting rights — in a special election that had been blocked by Gov. Scott Walker.
Plus: Chris Hayes talks about Trump, crime, and his new book, “A Colony in a Nation,” out now in paperback from W. W. Norton & Company.
Also today is the 10th anniversary of “Men Explain Things To Me.” We hear the backstory from the author, Rebecca Solnit.
3/22/18
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After years of getting beaten in state legislative races, the Democrats have a new energy and a new wave of candidates—especially after last year’s stunning victories in Virginia. Joan Walsh reports.
Plus: Should Ivanka be indicted? She’s been part of some of the Trump administration’s conspiracies to obstruct justice, including the decision to fire James Comey as FBI director. Amy Wilentz reviews the evidence and considers the arguments.
Also: Anna Deavere Smith talks about the school-to-prison pipeline—that’s the subject of her one-woman show, called Notes from the Field, which dramatizes the real-life accounts of students, parents, teachers and administrators caught in a system where young people of color who live in poverty get pushed out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. It’s playing on HBO through the end of March.
3-22-18
A complaint about the Jasper Johns show at the Broad Museum in LA: they hung his gorgeous “Summer,” part of his “Seasons” series of 1985-86, all wrong.
Johns’s paintings of the Eighties displayed “a new engagement with death, one that deepened amid the first awful years of the AIDS epidemic.” . . .
continued at the New York Review: HERE
3/21/18
Everybody’s heard of the My Lai massacre — March 16, 1968, 50 years ago today — but not many know about the man who stopped it: Hugh Thompson, an Army helicopter pilot. When he arrived, American soldiers had already killed 504 Vietnamese civilians (that’s the Vietnamese count; the U.S. Army said 347). They were going to kill more, but they didn’t — because of what Thompson did. . . .
. . . continued at LATimes.com HERE
3/16/2018
Read HERE
Jon Wiener: There’s a familiar Republican argument against the idea of the common good: It’s my responsibility to do what’s best for me and my family. It’s your responsibility to take care of yourself. If you have problems, health problems or job problems or family problems, that’s too bad—but it’s not my problem. The state should not force me to pay for your problems. You should take responsibility for yourself. I think you’ve probably heard this argument.
Robert Reich: I’ve heard it for a very long time. It’s absurd. . .
TheNation.com 3/16/2018
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Why is there no Trump Tower in Moscow? David Corn talks about Trump, Putin and his new book, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.”
Plus: Is Disneyland really the happiest place on earth? Peter Dreier says, “no, not for the workers.” Dreier, Professor of Political Science at Occidental College, was also part of the research team that produced an Economic Roundtable report, “Working for the Mouse: A Survey of Disneyland Employees,” released February, 2018.
Also: March 16 marks the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre; we talk with Hugh Thompson, the pilot who stopped the killing fifty years ago. 3/15/2018
Listen HERE
Robert Reich says it’s time to turn away from the unbridled greed and selfishness of the Age of Trump and restore the ideal of the common good. Reich was Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor; his new book is ‘The Common Good.’
Also: Katha Pollitt takes up the central arguments of those on the left who are Russiagate skeptics, who say that focusing on Russian interference in the election means neglecting more important things, and that, so far, nothing proves that Trump and Putin colluded in the election campaign.
Plus: March 16 is the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre. We have an interview with the man who stopped the My Lai massacre, American helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson.
The Nation Podcast, 3/14/2018
Listen HERE
“For Donald Trump, crime is not a problem to be solved; it is a weapon to be wielded”—against people of color and immigrants: Chris Hayes talks about how Trump has transformed this long-standing weapon of the right. His book “A Colony in a Nation” is out now in paperback, with a new afterword. Chris is an editor-at-large of The Nation.
Plus: Gary Younge explains how the Parkland kids are changing the fight for gun control. He knows a lot about kids and guns—he wrote the award-winning book “Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives.”
And Michael Walzer argues that a foreign policy for the left has to begin with internationalism, and with the choice of comrades. His new book is “A Foreign Policy for the Left.” He wrote about “A Solidarity of Leftists” for The Nation. 3/8/18
Talking about politics, thinking about the Left.
The podcast “Living in the USA” is the online version of “Living in the USA” at KPFK radio, hosted by Jon Wiener and broadcast live Fridays at 4pm at 90.7FM in LA, also streaming live at www.kpfk.org
New episodes posted every Friday afternoon, at livingintheusapod.com and Apple Podcasts.