Today on The BradCast, as voters finally head to the caucuses to cast the very first votes of the 2016 Presidential election year, we examine how the mainstream corporate media have decided for themselves which candidates are and are not acceptable for American voters.

Jim Naureckas of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting joins us to discuss the marginalization of Bernie Sanders and his very popular policies by mainstream corporate media outlets such as the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Somehow, despite more than 30 years as an elected official, Sanders, according to the Times over the weekend, is an "outsider" representing the "fringe" of the Democratic Party base. He does not, as the Tribune recently warned, represent the "broad, sensible center." Ya know, exactly the way Donald Trump is a fringe outsider threatening the "broad, sensible center" of the Republican Party because, as we all know by now, everything is always "fair and balanced" in Mainstream Corporate Media World.

"Much of the corporate media are really trying to maintain the idea that there are acceptable candidates within the circle of acceptable ideas, and candidates who are beyond the pale, who decent voters should turn their back on," Naureckas tells me. "They should listen to the New York Times and vote for one of the approved candidates."

Those "approved candidates," Naureckas wryly explains, are the ones who are "part of the club." Never mind that, unlike Trump's extremist positions, Sanders' policy positions are actually wildly popular --- not just among Democrats, but among the American electorate as a whole. Nonetheless, if follow mainstream print media, the long-serving Vermont Senator is an "outsider" offering "fringe" policies that are far beyond what is acceptable to the "sensible center."

"The way that corporate media use the word 'center' is not the way that ordinary people use it. You'd think that it means the policies that are embraced by a majority of the people are 'centrist' policies. That's not what they mean in the media. They mean policies that are embraced by the establishment. And that can be policies that are quite unpopular --- like cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit is a 'centrist' idea that is wildly unpopular. It's really kind of a shell game on the part of the media to try to present these ideas, that have very little popular support, as the ideas of the 'middle'."

Also on today's program: The DNC appears to be ready to finally add more debates to the schedule, including a new one this week in advance of next Tuesday's New Hampshire primary; Former CIA head and four-star general David Petraeus will face no more penalties (and not a single day in jail) for leaking tons of highly classified information to his mistress/biographer. (Take that, Edward Snowden!); And the very not conservative Donald Trump makes a faux pas while pretending to be an evangelical Christian in Iowa...

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Today on The BradCast, our All-American, Super-Smart, Most-Patriotic-Ever Panel of Geniuses try and make sense of whatever the hell happened last night in Iowa during the GOP Debate on Fox "News", as front-running boycotter Donald Trump's bizarre, competing "fundraiser for veterans" happened at the exact same time just down the street.

Joining me today for that not-so-simple task is Heather Digby Parton of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog ("Trump plays the networks off each other masterfully."); John Amato, creator and publisher of the great Crooks and Liars blog ("Trump showed that he'd stand up to Ailes. Nobody in the GOP does that."); and, of course, our own Desi Doyen.

We also try to make sense of the neck-and-neck, anybody's-call, jump ball of a Democratic race between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, as Iowa prepares for its first-in-the-nation caucuses on both sides of the aisle on Monday.

Become instantly smarter --- and enjoy more than a few laughs --- by listening to today's program. Enjoy!

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On today's BradCast: We explain that new Microsoft app set to be used at the Iowa Caucuses and get the latest from Oregon following the arrest of the militant leaders (and the shooting death of one of them) at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. [Audio link to complete show is posted below...]

First up, independent investigative journalist Arun Gupta, who has been in Burns, Oregon over the past week covering the "Patriot Movement" standoff for Raw Story, joins us with the latest. He is dubious about the FBI's explanation for the killing of one of the leaders of the occupation; explains how the Rightwing protesters are "essentially wanting to overthrow the U.S. Government"; and how the treatment of the armed demonstrators differed from the treatment of Occupy Wall Street protesters, which he had also covered.

"There's a lot of anger out there around this," Gupta tells me. "There's a lot of anger about land management issues, about a lack of economic development, and there's a lot of extreme Rightwing groups --- many of them pretty racist, white supremacists --- that can take advantage of this. So I don't think we have seen the end of this."

Then, late news on the "debate debates" on both the Republican and Democratic sides of the aisle --- with veterans groups hitting Donald Trump for hiding behind them while pulling out of Thursday's Fox "News" debate and Bernie Sanders playing hardball over the addition of new debates on the Dem side.

Next, while we've been working on this story for a while, it seems that everyone today has noticed that Microsoft has created a free app --- two of them, actually --- for the Democratic and Republican parties to use to help tally votes in the first-in-the-nation caucuses in Iowa next Monday.

Now that the Sanders camp has become "suspicious of Microsoft's influence in the Iowa Caucus," as MSNBC reports it, a lot of folks have begun freaking out about the matter. "You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free," a Sanders spokesman is quoted as saying, even as both the Sanders and Clinton campaigns have created their own apps for tracking local results at caucus sites next week.

I explain what the Microsoft apps do and don't do --- for each of the parties --- and if they, or you, should be concerned about it...no matter which candidate that you may or may not support in either of the parties holding caucuses next week in the Hawkeye State.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on Florida mayors calling out Marco Rubio for his climate change denial, an update on Flint and America's poor bearing the brunt of toxic pollution in the U.S., a win for coal miners in the fight against black lung disease, and much more in another busy BradCast today!...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Democratic Presidential candidates focus on climate and clean energy in Iowa; Florida mayors ask Florida Senator and Presidential Candidate Marco Rubio to stop ignoring climate change; Flint, MI residents stuck with corroded pipes and contaminated water, for now; It's not just Flint --- poor Americans bear the brunt of the most toxic pollution; PLUS: Score one for coal miners in the fight against black lung disease... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): ‘It was us or nobody': Meet the heroic professor who helped uncover the Flint lead water crisis; U.S. Senate begins hearings on comprehensive bipartisan energy bill; 3 more arrests in Oregon Standoff; Canada delays two pipeline projects; Air regulator sues California gas utility over historic methane leak; Ohio town also has high lead contamination in their water; Saudi Arabia keeps pumping oil despite financial and political risks... PLUS: Canadian scientists warn of pesticide risk to bees... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, we are live from KPFK/Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles with attorney, author, longtime BRAD BLOG legal analyst, Vietnam vet and now Senior Advisor to Veterans for Bernie, Ernest A. Canning.

First up, Canning updates us on California's statewide "Overturn Citizens United" initiative known as Prop 49. The 2014 "advisory measure" was removed from the ballot incorrectly by the state Supreme Court, which has now admitted as much. But the question remains how and if it will now be placed before voters during the 2016 general election. He explains the latest legal move by the state legislature on this front, and why Prop 49 matters to both California and the nation.

Then, it's Ernie on Bernie! What the 74-year old "democratic socialist" from Vermont stands for, why Canning, who has been writing about Sanders at LA Progressive of late, believes Sanders' policies are important to veterans, and a few thoughts on the old "electability" argument already being used (by Republicans and Democrats) against Sanders.

Plus: Listener calls on all of the above!

Also on today's busy show: A few updates on the news of last night's arrests of 8 leaders of the armed militia standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon and the killing of one of its spokesmen; New news on this week's GOP debate on Fox "News" (which Trump now says he will boycott); The possibility of an added Democratic debate next week in New Hampshire; And, finally, the latest Green News Report with Desi Doyen...

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On today's BradCast, with the first Presidential caucuses and primaries of 2016 now just days away and the first mass voter suppression trial of the year now underway (in North Carolina), we look at a number of recommendations to improve our voting system. But is it too late to make much of a difference for 2016?

First up, some breaking news on the possibility of an added Democratic debate after the Iowa caucuses and before the New Hampshire primary, and some thoughts on the human cost of Climate Change-fueled extreme weather (over just the past month) versus Islamic terror attacks in the U.S. in the 15 years since 9/11.

Then, on to our conversation with Myrna Peréz of the Brennan Center for Justice's Democracy Program to discuss her new report: Election Integrity: A Pro-Voter Agenda. The paper offers six important areas --- from voter registration to polling access to vote casting and counting --- where the U.S. system can and must improve its integrity without sacrificing security or access to the voting booth.

"It is possible to protect election integrity without disenfranchising eligible voters," Peréz writes in her report about the solutions she and the Brennan Center offer. "All target fraud risks as they actually exist. None will unduly disenfranchise those who have the right to vote."

As she explains to me today: "We are having is a very contested moment in time where the right to vote is being challenged in a way that we haven't seen in decades. We are seeing politicians trying to manipulate the rules of the game such that some people can participate and some people can't. And we have that butting up against states that have very restrictive budgets, and may not actually have the money or resources to make reforms that would even save money long-term, because they require an initial investment. That, coupled with infrastructure problems --- like we have been registering voters in a really out-of-date way for too long, and we haven't updated our voting machines --- are all colliding to produce a period of worry, where when voters step into the polls on Election Day in November, they're not going to be getting the best customer service for their tax dollars. And that they're not going to be voting in a way that's consistent with what the greatest democracy in the world should be doing."

"We tried to look at where there were opportunities to improve what we're doing, and actually study and address some of the concerns that folks are having," Peréz says. "And do it in a way that is sensible and thoughtful and common sense, in terms of making sure that the cure isn't worse than the disease. And make sure that we're not disenfranchising more people than we're trying to prevent from perpetuating fraud."

We discuss, among many things in our detailed conversation, the real threats to election integrity --- not "voter fraud" by individuals at the polling place, as vote suppressors on the Right would like you to believe, but far more often, and in a much larger way, by political and election insiders. "We need to make sure that our politicians, who are using our resources and our taxpayer dollars, are fixing a problem that is real and addressing it in the most cost-effective and efficient way."

Finally on today's show, a few words and memories in regard to the recent tragic loss of Wisconsin's John Washburn, an integral member of the U.S. Election Integrity community and a reliable and important source over the past decade to me here at BradBlog.com and on the radio, on e-voting in general and, in particular, on some of the nightmarish elections disasters in the Badger State over recent years. John was a great proponent of transparency, open government, proper testing of electronic voting systems and, frankly, one helluva guy. As noted in my more detailed In Memoriam on today's program, John's loss, at the age of 53, is a particularly tragic and costly one for the cause of democracy and free and fair elections in Wisconsin as well as the rest of the nation. We send our thoughts and best wishes to his family, including his wife and three children. His institutional knowledge, good humor and wit will be greatly missed in 2016 and beyond, but his good fight will continue.

(John's guest blog contributions to The BRAD BLOG are here. You can sort through some of his other contributions to our stories and radio programs over the years here. And much more documentation of his work on EI matters and more is still available at his personal website right here. UPDATE: John's family has requested remembrances be posted on this tribute page.)

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On today's BradCast, we do our best to keep you warm and dry --- and perhaps even provide a smile or two while we're at it --- as the monster snow storm socks the East Coast.

We cover a lot of ground today's show: From the reasons for 'Snowzilla' and the cost of low oil prices; to Obama's victory in court today for his Clean Power Plan; to new signs that the GOP is utterly broken (but why Dems should still be careful what they wish for!); to our latest American Islamophobia Update; to new evidence that Open Carry laws are ridiculous; to some very smart listener mail about Dems and health care; and a number of the absolutely craziest effin' things we've ever heard (with apologies to Stephen Colbert).

You'll have to tune in to find out what today's graphic (above) is all about. But it is, no doubt, one of the craziest effin' things I've ever heard.

Enjoy...and stay warm, dry and safe out there!

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On today's BradCast, live from the KPFK/Pacifica Radio studios in Los Angeles...

• NASA and NOAA announce that 2015 is, officially, the hottest year ever recorded on Planet Earth --- beating out the previous global heat record from 2014...by a mile. But, why worry?
• Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder apologizes for poisoning the people of Flint, but not for the tyranny.
• Sarah Palin endorses Donald Trump in Iowa, but is then a no-show, as her son is arrested for domestic violence after punching his girlfriend, holding an AR-15 to his head and threatening to kill himself.
• Several new efforts for disclosure of "dark money" in our political system on the 6th anniversary of the infamous Citizens United decision.
• Oklahoma turning "blue"?
• KS Sec. of State and GOP "voter fraud" fraudster Kris Kobach loses in court again --- so voters win.

Plus: Listener calls on all of the above (and more) and Desi Doyen with the latest (very busy) Green News Report! Enjoy!...

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On today's BradCast...

First up: New polling shows Bernie Sanders surging in NH among Democrats and Gov. John Kasich --- yes, John Kasich --- surging to second place among Republicans in the state...if you believe those sorts of things. At the same time, during the GOP establishment's half-hearted search for an alternative to Cruz/Trump, the Republican Party appears to be plummeting in popularity during the course of the 2016 Primary cycle, even as actual Republican voters seem to be warming up to the idea of Trump as their party's nominee.

Then, a remarkable new study from Oxfam finds that the world's richest "62 people own the same wealth as half the world" (the planet's 3.5 billion poorest!) And, some of those 62 richest-people-on-the-planet --- like the Koch Brothers and the Walmart heirs --- are amongst the biggest spenders when it comes to attempts to buy our political system.

So, what can be done about that last part? Jon Schwarz, Senior Editor at The Intercept, joins me to discuss how, despite "eloquent" comments suggesting otherwise during his State of the Union address last week, President Obama could take executive action immediately, on his own, to help radically reduce the "dark money" in our electoral and political system.

"One thing that Obama absolutely can do, by himself, this afternoon, if he wants to, is sign an executive order placing requirements on federal contractors," Schwarz explains, describing other similar actions that the President has taken in the recent past concerning federal contracting. "He can do it and he's done it in the past. What he could do about money in politics now is issue an executive order saying that federal contractors have to disclose any dark money contributions that they're making."

"If he did that, that would cover about 70 percent of the biggest corporations," Schwarz tells me. "So, it would not force the disclosure of any and all dark money, but it would force disclosure of a great deal of that. And, as I say, he could do that this afternoon."

We discuss some of the reasons Obama has failed to do this, to date, despite his calls for campaign finance reform throughout his career and as recently as last week's SOTU --- even with so many calls from so many quarters to take this action. "Obama likes to say really great-sounding stuff about money in politics --- he's said it his whole Senate career, his whole Presidency --- but he's never done anything. It's really extraordinary."

Finally on today's show, a few words on last night's passing of The Eagle's Glenn Frey and the latest on the outrageous lead poisoning crisis in Flint, MI, caused by the tyranny (literally) of Gov. Rick Snyder (R)...

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Democrats held another 'secret' Presidential Debate over the weekend, but the DNC's effort to hide it from the public, yet again, hasn't kept us from full post-debate coverage and analysis on today's BradCast!

It was a very serious and substantive debate. Therefore, I've asked a couple of comedians to join me and Desi Doyen to help us make sense of it all! Incredibly enough, it is also the last scheduled debate before voters actually go to the polls and caucuses in Iowa and New Hampshire about two weeks from now to cast the very first votes of the 2016 cycle.

So, with all of that in mind, today, unlike on our debate coverage up until now on The BradCast, I've invited actual advocates for each of the two front-runners, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, to have it out and make their best case for their respective candidates.

Joining me on today's raucous, lively and occasionally very funny program...

• In support of Hillary Clinton: actor, comedian and radio broadcaster, the great Hal Sparks, formerly of E's Talk Soup, Showtime's Queer as Folk, currently of Disney XD's Lab Rats and the Hal Sparks Radio Program Mega-Worldwide on WCPT in Chicago!

• In support of Bernie Sanders: comedian, author of Your Country Is Just Not That Into You, host of The Jimmy Dore Show on KPFK and Pacifica Radio, and regular contributor for The Young Turks, the no-less great Jimmy Dore!

• In support of Martin O'Malley: Well, no one. But that doesn't mean we won't talk about him behind his back on today's hilarious, helpful and, hopefully, very insightful edition of The BradCast!

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On today's BradCast: How outrageous new fees imposed on behalf of Nevada's monopoly electricity company and the state's Big Government Republicans have suddenly resulted in thousands of lost jobs, ripped-off consumers, and a mass exodus of solar companies from the state where the industry had previously been booming.

What did GOP Governor Brian Sandoval --- whose top staffers are also lobbyists for the state's NV Energy company --- know and when did he know it? And how much did he personally have to do with his appointees on the state's Public Utilities Commission (PUC) ripping off solar customers by raising rates on them, while lowering the amount of money rooftop solar owners are paid for selling back unused, clean power to the grid?

Lauren Randall, manager of public policy for Sunrun, which describes itself as the largest dedicated residential solar company in the U.S., and a spokesperson for The Alliance for Solar Choice the rooftop solar industry's advocacy group, joins us to explain what just happened in NV and how it has resulted in Sunrun, Solar City and several other rooftop solar companies being forced to shut down entirely in the state. That, after Sandoval had previously offered incentives to encourage private consumers to invest in clean, solar energy.

"It's absolutely outrageous," Randall tells me on today's program. "The easiest way to understand this is it's a 'bait and switch'. Nevada passed incentives to attract residents to go solar, and then after baiting homeowners with incentives, the state switched the rules, penalizing solar homeowners to deliver basically additional profit to NV Energy."

She says there is a "tremendous amount of backlash from both sides of the aisle on this," after "the rules were changed in the middle of the game for over 16,000 customers who went solar to save money on their electricity bills and to move the country away from fossil fuels and on toward more clean energy."

During the interview, she details how her company is now suing the state to force Sandoval to release communications between himself and his staffers, the PUC and NV Energy, as the industry hopes to roll back the devastating new rules which were announced just before Christmas and took effect on the first of the year.

Sandoval's commission, Randall explains, "just presented the most anti-business, anti-solar rules that we've seen, really anywhere in the country. It's been just catastrophic for families in Nevada. What we're seeing now is upwards of a thousand job losses from this."

Randall is hopeful that public outrage may force the PUC to overturn their new rules that have otherwise just killed the solar industry in sunny Nevada. She charges that the effort is a "coordinated campaign" among fossil fuel-based utility companies in a number of states (and could be coming to a state near you!) and asks folks to sign up to help in the fight.

Also on today's busy show: The Koch Brothers empire was built on Nazi money as well as communist Russian money; Martin O'Malley could decide whether Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders wins Iowa; and Desi Doyen joins us for Green News Report coverage of Obama's final State of the Union address...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: GNR Special Coverage: President Obama's final State of the Union Address. What he said about climate and energy. What he didn't say. And the Republican (lack of) Response... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Ted Cruz Pwned by Satellite; Global Warming Could Stave Off Next Ice Age For 100,000 Years; Unprecedented: Simultaneous January Named Storms in the Atlantic and Central Pacific; Duke execs knew of coal ash violations for year; Blown Away: 2015 Hottest Year by Far; Bid To Mine More Coal On US Federal Lands Tests Obama's Green Agenda; Global Mercury Emissions Down 30 Percent As Coal Use Drops... PLUS: Watchdog finds no evidence of bias in EPA Pebble Mine study... and much, MUCH more! ...

On today's BradCast, oil prices crash, Sanders surges in both Iowa and New Hampshire, the GOP tries to find an alternative to Trump, we're joined by the mathematician who says that the George W. Bush "Presidency" was his fault...sort of --- and we discuss why it all still matters today.

First up, Desi Doyen joins us to discuss the importance of and reasons for the plunging price of oil, which fell below $30/barrel today for the first time since 2003.

Next, new polling out of both Iowa and New Hampshire suggest the potential for very closes races, on both the D and R side of the aisle, this year. Bernie Sanders, who had been trailing Hillary Clinton in IA for months, has now overtaken her there, according to new numbers, and has increased his lead in NH over the woman still described by corporate media as "the Democratic front-runner". On the GOP side of the aisle, Trump retains his lead in NH, while IA tightens and the search for an "establishment" alternative takes a few surprising turns.

Then, speaking of close elections, we're joined by Dr. John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple University to discuss the mother of all close elections, and why he believes his November 22, 2000 NYTimes op-ed helped lead directly to the U.S. Supreme Court stopping the ballot count in the Sunshine State, resulting in their (s)election of George W. Bush.

After I recount (pardon the pun), just some of the chicanery and still-unexplained anomalies that resulted in the exceedingly close tallies reported by Florida in 2000, Paulos, author of the New York Times best-seller, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences and, his latest, A Numerate Life: A Mathematician Explores the Vagaries of Life, His Own and Probably Yours, explains how he still "regrets" his mathematical analysis of the race at the time, which ended up being cited by the courts during the legal battle that eventually stopped the tally of paper ballots in Florida.

(For the record, yes, had Florida counted all of the ballots in the state at the time, as the Times reported on November 12, 2001 --- so you are forgiven, if you didn't notice --- Gore would likely have won the state, "no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent.")

"People talk about the 'Butterfly Effect' in dynamical systems [ed note: as opposed to the Butterflly Ballots in Palm Beach County, FL!], where tiny little initial differences lead to huge disparities down the road. This was, in a sense, a case where I was the little butterfly flapping its wings in South America leading, after many intermediate events, to a hurricane in New Orleans."

"In retrospect, obviously, I wish I hadn't done that," Paulos tells me about his op-ed, published 15 years ago last month, adding: "As a moral tiebreaker, Gore won almost half a million more votes nationwide. At the very least, they should have flipped a coin" and "Oh, yeah, they should have counted the ballots. That's what should have happened."

Finally, speaking of the consequences of elections and actually counting votes to determine the intent of voters, we conclude today's show by discussing how the George W. Bush administration allowed North Korea to obtain the atomic bombs that the rogue nation is once again using to threaten the world. Yes, more fallout from the disastrous Bush Administration, still affecting us today because we failed to count the voters' ballots.

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Today on The BradCast, new polls reveal Bernie Sanders far outpacing Hillary Clinton in head-to-head match-ups against all potential Republican challengers and public sector unions take a beating in the U.S. Supreme Court.

First up today, new pre-election polls from NBC/WSJ and PPP in both Iowa and New Hampshire echo recent national polling suggesting that, contrary to so-called "conventional wisdom", Sanders is more electable against the leading Republican opponents than Clinton is.

Then, constitutional law expert Ian Millhiser joins us to report on today's "brutal" oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case which threatens to gut public sector union funding.

Millhiser, author of the new book, Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, was at the Court for today's hearing, and the news is not encouraging. As he explains, the case challenges the federal government's allowance of "agency fees" charged to non-union members in public sector union shops to help defray the costs of union negotiations. That fee makes sense, since non-union workers must receive the same wages and benefits at such shops as their union colleagues. Non-union workers benefit from those negotiations, he says, since "workers in unionized shops on average receive about 12% more pay than workers in non-unionized shops."

"As a general rule," Millhiser wrote after today's oral argument, "the First Amendment does not permit the government to compel someone to say something they disagree with, and the plaintiffs claim that requiring non-union members to subsidize collective bargaining by a union that they may not agree with essentially rises to the level of compelled speech."

He tells me today that striking down the right to charge these agency fees "creates what's called a 'free rider' problem. If I get something, whether I pay for it or not, a lot of people are going to say 'Well, why would I pay for this when I get it for free?'" That, in turn, threatens the viability of such unions entirely.

Millhiser goes on to say: "It was pretty clear today that there were five votes that are ready to strike down these agency fee agreements --- and that's going to be not great for the future of many public sector unions."

We also discuss how an adverse decision for the public unions here may also potentially be used by the Right to go after private unions as well. "What we've seen from conservative movement attorneys over the last seven or eight years is an extraordinary entrepreneurship. They've been really, really clever in coming up with creative news ways to try to convince courts to implement their policy preferences," he says.

Citing both that point and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's new call for nine, incredibly radical (and regressive) amendments to the U.S. Constitution (which Millhiser describes as the new Republican governor's "plan to repeal the 20th century"), I ask why it is that Democrats and progressives don't show similar "entrepreneurship" in pushing forward their own agenda.

In response, Millhiser defends Dems and progressives by noting a peculiarity about this particular moment in history: "I think conservatives right now increasingly believe that the last 80 years of American history are illegitimate. They believe that our society has started to go off the rails and we have to fundamentally rethink what our government does. Democrats are now in the unfamiliar position of being the nation's conservative party. I don't mean in the sense that they are now to the right of the Republicans. I mean 'conservative' in the sense that Democrats are conservative in the sense that it wants to preserve the gains that we already have."

The result is that Dems are put on the defensive, instead of pushing new, progressive programs forward, as I argue in return, leaving voters less than clear about what it is Democrats hope to do when and if they are elected to office.

Finally, we offer a short goodbye to David Bowie and receive late breaking word from the the U.S. Supreme Court concerning imprisoned former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL)'s final appeal for a new trial...Neither of those news items are encouraging either, unfortunately.

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On today's very busy BradCast...

• A top-ranking lottery official was recently convicted of gaming the main lottery computer's random number generator for years and the investigation is now expanding to several other states. But, of course, while the Lottery Association's top security official got away with it for some six years, you needn't be worried at all about election insiders gaming computer results tabulators, right?

• Speaking of which...Half the country's voters would be embarrassed to have Donald Trump as President, though not many Republicans, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. That same poll also finds Bernie Sanders walloping Trump in a head-to-head match-up by nearly twice the margin that Hillary Clinton would beat the embarrassing GOP front-runner.

• A ruling by the WTO just succeeded in forcing the U.S. to scrap its extremely popular Country of Origin Labeling [COOL] requirements for beef and pork, even though President Obama recently told us that "no trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws." We're joined by Lori Wallach, Director and Founder of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch for details on that and on how the incident should serve as a chilling warning about the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. That pact has yet to be approved by Congress, where it faces opposition from both Democrats and Republicans.

Wallach explains how the U.S. was slammed with a $1 billion/year sanction from the WTO, based on complaints about COOL from Canada and Mexico. "Within a week of the sanctions being authorized, Congress slipped into that huge omnibus bill the revocation of the Country of Origin meat labels --- including ground beef, which is particularly horrifying. So the WTO has gotten rid of one of our most popular consumer labeling policies," Wallach tells me. But, she goes on to explain, the mechanisms for forcing the U.S. to change our own consumer trade and safety laws are even more disturbing in the TPP, which she describes as "considerably worse."

"The TPP is privately enforceable by individual foreign companies and investors, through the very controversial Investor to State Dispute Settlement system," she describes. "And that lets any individual company drag a sovereign nation that signed that agreement --- away from its own courts, outside of its own laws --- in front of a foreign tribunal of three private sector lawyers, who the TPP would empower to order the signatory government to pay unlimited sumsof taxpayer money for any policy, government action, or inaction that the investor believes violated its new privileges as a foreign investor and would undermine its expected future profits."

• Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us as temperatures rise to record levels in parts of the country --- in the 70s in some places in Pennsylvania, for example --- on Christmas Eve! But why worry? That and much much more in our latest, chocked-full-o'-news Green News Report today.

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