Both Parties Sabotaging Entitlement Programs
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid “have been set up to take the fall for the nation’s deficit,” said Dr. Maya Rockeymoore, president of Washington-based Global Policy Solutions. President Obama “views it as his legacy to rein in entitlement programs while creating this grand bargain” with the Republicans. Those who expected a more progressive Obama in his second term are mistaken. “I think that the president did not make a Freudian slip in his first debate when he said that he and Mitt Romney actually agree on Social Security.”
EPA Chief Used Alias
Lisa Jackson was forced to resign as chief of the Environmental Protection Agency because she conducted some of her public duties under an alias, said famed whistleblower Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, of the NO FEAR Coalition. Jackson was “extremely upset” with the Occupy Movement, which staged demonstrations against “her cowardly behavior” as guardian of the environment. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo believes Jackson used her alias to cloak her role in government spying on movement activists.
End Stop-and-Frisk
“We feel that 2013 has to be a year of rising resistance to stop-and-frisk in the streets and in the courtrooms,” said Carl Dix, a founder of Stop Mass Incarceration Network. “We’re not talking about mending an injustice; we’re talking about ending it.” The capitalist system is incapable of providing a “future for millions and millions of young people growing up in the urban areas of the country,” said Dix. “You can put Black faces in high places, but if it’s the same system that has oppressed and exploited you, it’s not going to change. Revolution is the solution.”
Big Brother Obama Hears All
President Obama has shown himself to be a more aggressive foe of civil liberties than George Bush. “Absolutely, we’ve seen this to be true from the FISA authorization, to the use of drones, and with the NDAA” preventive detention bill, said Samantha Peetros, spokesperson for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Just before New Years, Obama signed a five-year extension of legislation allowing warrantless phone and email surveillance.
Charters Crowding Out Public Schools in Philly
“I think that there is a growing movement among decision makers to shut the door on public education,” said W. Curtis Thomas, a Black state lawmaker from Philadelphia. The city has targeted 60 public schools for closing, while expanding charter schools by 5,000 seats. “The decision to move kids towards these charter schools is really an effort to resegregate a system that was never totally integrated, anyway,” said Rep. Thomas.
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: One hour.
The deaths of the six Latino immigrant workers in the Baltimore bridge collapse encapsulates the injustice inherent in the U.S. capitalist system.
This week, BAR's poet-in-residence discusses his work, we learn why Bill Clinton, the CIA director and Tony Blair recently visited Guyana. First, the Black vote and election year politics in Michigan.
Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of Pan-African News Wire joins to discuss Michigan's Black voters, the Abandon Biden campaign, and the prospects for the swing state in the 2024 presidential election.
BAR Poet-in-Residence, Raymond Nat Turner, joins us from New York City to talk about his work and an upcoming performance with his group, Upsurge New York City.
Gerald Perreira of Organization for the Victory of the People in Guyana joins us to discuss the long running territorial dispute with neighboring Venezuela and the increasing activity of U.S. in the…
