Government & Politics

Guest Alex Linsker, an organizer with Tax & Conversation, asks "What happens when companies are democratically run?" Tax & Conversation is a cooperatively run tax reform effort which is striving to write an Oregon ballot initiative to reform Oregon's tax structure. Currently there are approximately 400 tax exceptions (loopholes). What would happen if individuals and corporations paid all their taxes without being able to exercise tax exceptions?

If one's best friend or a family member is addicted to drugs, what does one do? You intervene. That is the recourse Scott Silber, national director of National Intervention, suggests we must take to end the addictive behavior of corporate CEOs and other leaders as well as their political allies. Scott has written a book (soon to be released) titled, “True Recovery, Deep Democracy, The 12 Step Guide to Freedom From Addiction to Corporate Power and Money in Politics”

Guest Jaye Cee Whitehead, Asst. Sociology Professor (Pacific University), discusses her views of gay marriage, looking at how the gay movement has come to embrace gay marriage as the signature issue for GLBTQ liberation. The 70s gay liberation movement rejected marriage but changed to embrace it in the 21st century. How and why did this change occur? That is what we discuss.

Rylander, Gillespie, Wood, Landenberger.

Rylander, Gillespie, Wood, Landenberger.

Our guest is political economist Robin Hahnel from the economics department at Portland State University and formerly with American University in Wash DC. What does history show as the solution to the current and continuing economic crisis? Robin explains why the current polices in Europe for austerity are wrong, why they will continue to be wrong in the United States, and how the correct policies would instead be to stimulate the economy in a manner similar to what happened following the Great Depression.

Jon Li interviews Brett Lee, Davis City Council Member.

Isherwood, Fields, Wood.

Guests Nicholas Caleb (government Professor at Concordia University in Portland) and Mike Losier (Media Spokesperson with Portland Action Lab) identify what austerity economic policy is, how it represents attacks on the services and functions of government around the world, how people have responded in Europe and the United States.  Lastly, they discuss efforts in the United States, specifically in Portland, to develop consciousness about austerity as a policy program of the elite and how we,the people, mobilize in opposition.