Articles in Category: BradCast

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2015 Progressive Honor Roll: 'BradCast' 12/31/2015

Guest: John Nichols of The Nation

Guest Hosted by Nicole Sandler

By Nicole Sandler on 12/31/2015 10:04am PT

On today's BradCast, your faithful guest host decided to end the year on a positive note.

It's actually a year-end tradition that I'm joined by John Nichols of The Nation to discuss their annual Progressive Honor Roll. With so much to be negative about, it's important that we celebrate our progressive heroes.

And with that, it's a wrap. I wish you a happy, healthy, prosperous and democratic new year. And now, I'm going to get married. See you next year.

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Article Categories: (Uncategorized), BradCast

War on Women & Absurd News in 2015: 'BradCast' 12/30/2015

Guests: She's History's Amy Simon; WBAI's Julianna Forlano

Guest Hosted by Nicole Sandler

By Nicole Sandler on 12/30/2015 1:04pm PT

On today's penultimate BradCast of 2015, guest host Nicole Sandler of Radio or Not is joined by Cultural HERstorian Amy Simon of She's History for a look at women’s issues this year, including the ever-present war on women. Comedian Julianna Forlano brings the fun and some of the more absurd news stories of the year, and joins in for a game of 2015 Notable Quotables.
But first, a bit of news during the slowest news cycle of the year-- a shocker out of PA, where charges have been filed against Bill Cosby, and another one drops out of the GOP primary race!

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Article Categories: Media Reform, Election 2016, BradCast

2015 - The Year in Guns: 'BradCast' 12/29/2015

Guest: Cliff Schecter, gun control advocate

Guest Hosted by Nicole Sandler

By Nicole Sandler on 12/29/2015 1:06pm PT

On today's BradCast, guest host Nicole Sandler continues her year-end look back at the year almost ended.

Today, Nicole is joined by Cliff Schecter who discussed the insanity that is this nation's obsession with guns. He also painted an optimistic picture of the possibility of beginning to change our gun culture in 2016. We'll see.

Also today: Brad and Desi return to bring us the Green News Report's year in review, and Nicole has a quick correction about something she got wrong yesterday. (It doesn't happen often, but when it does, she likes to correct the record quickly.)

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Article Categories: (Uncategorized), Ohio, Cuyahoga County, Green News, Climate change, BradCast, Loretta Lynch

Media Fail 2015: 'BradCast' 12/28/2015

Guest: Joel Silberman, media & messaging trainer & strategist

Guest Hosted by Nicole Sandler

By Nicole Sandler on 12/28/2015 3:26pm PT

On today's BradCast, guest host Nicole Sandler begins her year-end review of the year almost gone by.

Nicole's guest is media & messaging trainer and strategist Joel Silberman who helped Nicole recap the big Media stories of the year. For Joel, the biggest one was the "death of facts".

Enjoy!...

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Article Categories: CNN, Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, Media Reform, BradCast, Larry Wilmore, Meet the Press

Our 'Very Special BradCast Holiday Special!'

A 'BradCast' holiday tradition featuring The BradCast Radio Theatre Players in some of our favorite performances from the 1930s and 40s!

Wholesome fun for the whole family!!! (Except for the Commies and Canadians!!!)

By Brad Friedman on 12/24/2015 2:00pm PT

Yes, it's time once again to toss a log on the fire, call in the kids, and curl up to the radio hearth for some good old-fashioned, old-tyme radio fun (with a very BradCast twist!)

Return with us to yesteryear in our Very Special (And Somewhat Subversive) BradCast Holiday Special!! Featuring The BradCast Radio Theatre Players in some of our earliest broadcasts from the 1930s and 40s! Featuring The Mighty Adventures of Buzz Edsel, a few giant Jupiterians, some dastardly Canadians, and even a visit from a jolly old fellow in a red suit with a whole bag of life-saving coal!

It's fun for the whole family and a swell reminder of what it was like back in the days when The BradCast was still a corporate-sponsored radio program relying on the goodwill of Henry Ford and the fine folks at the Ford Motor Company (of Dearborn, Michigan)!

Don't miss our award-wanting holiday tradition in the making!...And Merry Christmas, world!

• COMPLETE SPECIAL...

• Or, if you prefer to listen to just one segment at a time...

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Since we are no longer sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, we must rely on you dear readers and listeners, to help us continue doing all that we do here at The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast! If you can toss in a year-end donation for our stocking, it would be greatly appreciated!...

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Article Categories: BRAD BLOG, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, KPFK, Coal, Canada, Solar energy, BradCast

'Change Happens Slowly Until it Happens Quickly': 'BradCast' 12/23/2015

GUEST: Dr. Joe Romm on the historic U.N. Paris Agreement and beyond

PLUS: KY's new GOP Guv disenfranchises 140,000; Trump supporter arrested with bomb...

By Brad Friedman on 12/23/2015 5:41pm PT

On today's BradCast, we've got both good news and bad at year's end.

First up, Kentucky's new 'Tea Party' Republican Governor Matt Bevin revokes the restoration of voting rights for 140,000 former felons as instituted by the former Democratic Governor. That, after the dubious and completely unverified results of the state's November gubernatorial contest. Yes, as we've noted for well over a decade now, elections matter! Bevin also did away with the previous governor's increase to the minimum wage for state workers, while he was at it.

Also today, quick news on the Trump supporter (a middle-aged white guy) arrested with a bomb after threatening to kill Muslims at a mosque in California more than two weeks ago. Also, a quick word on the record number of sign-ups this year at Healthcare.gov for new and renewed health insurance policies thanks to the Affordable Care Act ("ObamaCare").

Then, I'm joined by Dr. Joe Romm, editor of Climate Progress and former Asst. Sec. of Energy in the Bill Clinton Administration, after his return from Paris where the UN struck its historic agreement just over one week ago to curb greenhouse gasses that cause global warming.

As usual, Romm offers extremely informed and helpful insight, including his explanation for how the UN talks began earlier this month with the challenging goal of an agreement that would keep global temps from rising any higher than 2 degrees Centigrade, but surprisingly ended with an landmark pact that included the aspirational goal of 1.5C.

"It became clear from just looking at the science that there's nothing safe about 2 degrees Centigrade," he explains. "What we've learned in the last 18 months, with the instability in the West Antarctic ice sheet, and all the extreme weather events that we're already seeing, and the brutal droughts we're seeing in this country and elsewhere, that we're already at dangerous impacts, and we're only at 1 degree Centigrade of warming. So, I think that reality did set in." He adds: "If you want to limit to 2 degrees Centigrade total warming, the planet's net emissions have to go to zero by the end of the century. So, pretty much every country is going to have to go to zero."

Romm details exactly what that means and echoes remarks from my interview with Dr. Michael Mann last week, where Mann declared that the Paris Agreement signals the "end of the age of fossil fuels."

"We are talking about the end of the fossil-fuel driven Industrial Revolution that began 250 or so years ago," Romm tells me. "And that's why, in some senses, this is such a big deal. Because you literally had every single significant country in the world, large and small, rich and poor, all sign on to this agreement, which recognizes, yeah, the age of fossil fuels is coming to an end."

We cover a number of the steps ahead ("I was describing this as Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope. We have a lot more battles before us.") during our wide-ranging conversation that also includes his complaints about Bill Gates' big new clean tech fund, and his response to the charge by NASA's former chief scientist Dr. James Hansen that the Paris Agreement is a "fraud".

"I think we're certainly at an inflection point," says Romm. "You know, change happens slowly, until it happens quickly. I tend to think we have now entered the phase of much more rapid changed than people expected."

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Insider Lottery Scandal Expands; Trump Embarrasses Americans; More Evidence TPP Threatens U.S. Law: 'BradCast' 12/22/2015

GUEST: Lori Wallach of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch...

By Brad Friedman on 12/22/2015 5:25pm PT

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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Article Categories: California, Election Reform, Iowa, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, Alaska, Election Fraud, Touch-Screen DREs/BMDs, U.S. House, Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senate, Barack Obama, Democrats, Republicans, Michigan, Internet Voting, KPFK, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Natural gas, Oil, Wind energy, Oklahoma, Election 2016, TPP, BradCast, Water

Saturday's 'Secret' Democratic Debate in NH: 'BradCast' 12/21/2015

GUESTS: Journalists David Dayen and Jacki Schechner...

By Brad Friedman on 12/21/2015 4:42pm PT

The DNC seems to have wanted their Democratic Presidential Debate in New Hampshire over the weekend to remain a secret. Otherwise, why would have they have scheduled it on the Saturday before Christmas?!

On today's BradCast, we spoil the secret by talking about that and everything else that actually went on during Saturday's debate on ABC between Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley.

Joining me are financial journalist David Dayen of The Fiscal Times, Salon, The Intercept and everywhere else and health care reform advocate and journalist Jacki Schechner, formerly of CNN and CurrentTV.

Among the issues covered in today's post-debate coverage and analysis:

Do voters actually care about last Friday's database breach by the Sanders campaign?
Is the DNC 'in the bag' for Hillary Clinton?
Do Democrats play into GOP/corporate media narratives by spending so much time discussing ISIS and terrorism?
Is there any real daylight between Clinton and Bernie Sanders' positions on gun safety reform?
Does Martin O'Malley bring anything to the contest that Clinton and Sanders don't already have covered?
Why did ABC News spend so much time on Republicans during Saturday's Democratic debate?
Does the math really work for Sanders' plan to provide free college tuition to all public colleges and universities by instituting a tax on Wall Street transactions?
Does the math really work for Sanders' call for a single payer health care system?
Did ABC's Martha Raddatz completely misinform America in her question to Clinton concerning Obamacare?

All of that and much more on today's BradCast, as expertly answered by Dayen and Schechner! Especially helpful to those of you who might have had something else to do on a Saturday night before Christmas...like, I dunno, go see Star Wars!

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NYTimes Fails Again (Again); Sanders v. DNC; Nation Cowers in Fear: 'BradCast' 12/18/2015

Or, if you prefer, 'The Farce Awakens'...

By Brad Friedman on 12/18/2015 5:39pm PT

On today's BradCast, Congress and the President leave D.C. for the holidays, but not before coming together to pass a huge, bi-partisan(!) spending and tax bill.

Peace on Earth? Not quite, but its a start, as Obama noted in his year end press conference today.

In the meantime, another massive reporting failure from the New York Times (once again) creates confusion for the nation following the recent terror attack in San Bernardino, prompting its Public Editor to call for "systematic change" in the way stories are reported at the nation's so-called "paper of record".

The Bernie Sanders campaign files suit against the DNC after being shut out from their own voter database following charges that his campaign inappropriately accessed Hillary Clinton's voter data after a firewall went down on the DNC's server. Sanders' supporters are crying foul against the Democratic Party, just one day before the next 2016 Democratic Presidential Debate (which is, again, being hidden on a Saturday --- this one, just before Christmas --- and on the same weekend the new Star Wars movie opens.)

And finally, the nation continues to cower in fear --- making GOP Presidential candidates very happy, no doubt --- as another entire school district gets shuts down on Friday over something even more absurd than what led to the shutdown of the L.A. school system earlier this week. Are we becoming South Park Nation? That news (and much more) at week's end may suggest as much.

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Article Categories: BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, War On Terror, Virginia, National Security, DNC, Accountability, U.S. House, Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senate, Barack Obama, Democrats, Republicans, Nancy Pelosi, Economy, KPFK, Bernie Sanders, Oil, Paul Ryan, BradCast

Citizen Adelson: GOP's Biggest Single Donor Secretly Buys Nevada's Biggest Newspaper: 'BradCast' 12/17/2015

GUEST: Media Matters' Salvatore Colleluori...

By Brad Friedman on 12/17/2015 5:17pm PT

On today's BradCast, ownership of our nation's media gets more and more rightwing in advance of the 2016 Presidential elections.

First up, in Ohio, a newspaper owner/publisher fires the paper's editor, a 31-year employee, for daring to talk with staffers about an editorial critical of the NRA that the owner/publisher had spiked.

Meanwhile, in Nevada, the state's largest newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is secretly purchased by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the GOP's largest single funder during the 2012 Presidential election cycle. After a week of mystery and lies from Adelson --- and investigative reporting by the journalists who actually work at the paper, who had no idea who they now work for --- the billionaire admits that, yes, it was his family that bought the paper...and a hugely inflated price.

Media Matters' Salvatore Colleluori joins us to explain why Adelson's mysterious purchase of the R-J is so disturbing on a whole bunch of levels. Among them: While the paper was already a right-leaning news outlet, the purchase could result in still more of Adelson's far rightwing political views making it into print in the key swing-state of Nevada in a Presidential election year. Moreover, as we discuss on today's program, the takeover could also serve to help keep coverage of Adelson's own highly suspect business dealings --- from China to The Vegas Strip --- out of the pages of the biggest paper in the state's biggest city all together.

"The other newspapers that he owns have very, very distinct stances that are very much in line with him," Colleluori tells me on today's program. "Owning the biggest newspaper in the state gives him a major mouthpiece going into, not only the 2016 election, but with a big Senate election coming in Nevada, there are going to be a lot of opportunities for him to throw his weight around in the state."

"As the old adage goes," he notes, "If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em."

Also today: Some thoughts on the rightwing talk radio outlet which CNN partnered with for this week's GOP debate, where, as we note in our latest Green News Report, CNN also completely avoided discussion of climate change and the largest world agreement ever struck just days earlier, and how a record warm December in the Midwest and North-East is ending what is now almost certainly going to be the warmest year ever recorded on Planet Earth...

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Be Afraid: Analysis of CNN's Latest GOP Debate: 'BradCast' 12/16/2015

GUESTS: Salon's Heather Digby Parton; TV and radio's Hal Sparks!...

By Brad Friedman on 12/16/2015 4:35pm PT

Once again, it's the smartest post-debate analysis you'll find anywhere on today's BradCast, following last night's fear- and war-mongering "national security" GOP debate in Las Vegas (in which neither climate change, nor guns, two of the actual greatest threats to national security, were even discussed.)

Yes, it's now Trump and Cruz' GOP world. All of the other candidates --- and the entire Republican Party (and maybe even you and me) --- just live in it.

I'm joined for today's coverage by our returning champion, the great Heather Digby Parton of Salon and Digby's Hullabaloo blog. And, for the first time, I'm also joined by actor, comedian and radio broadcaster Hal Sparks, formerly of E's Talk Soup, Showtime's Queer as Folk and currently of Disney XD's Lab Rats and the Hal Sparks Radio Program Mega-Worldwide on WCPT in Chicago!

As our theme song says, we're "tryin' to make some sense of it all," once again on today's program. No easy feat. But we go well beyond the "horse race" in our analysis, as usual, and as the 2016 Republican Presidential candidates (that's the year they're hoping to win the nomination, not the number running...it just seems that way) worked hard on the stage last night at Sheldon Adelson's Venetian Hotel and Casino to be the manliest-man and bombiest-bomber of them all!

Parton and Sparks offer incisive and lively commentary and fact-checking on what has seemingly now become a two-man race for the nomination. And I try to explain why Democrats ought to be very very careful what they wish for. Enjoy!

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Article Categories: CNN, BRAD BLOG Media Appearance, War On Terror, National Security, Democrats, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh, Ben Cardin, Bush Legacy, Chris Christie, KPFK, Donald Trump, Rand Paul, 'Tea Party', Russia, Jeb Bush, Election 2016, Syria, Ted Cruz, BradCast, Carly Fiorina

'Terror' Shuts L.A. School System; NM Secretary of State Sentenced To Jail; How Trump COULD Lose: 'BradCast' 12/15/2015

GUEST: KPFK News Director Ernesto Arce...

By Brad Friedman on 12/15/2015 3:40pm PT

On today's BradCast, we cover the 'credible threat' of terror said to have been received by Los Angeles school officials out here, leading to today's unprecedented, complete shutdown of the second largest school district in the nation.

I'm joined by Ernesto Arce, News Director at our flagship radio station here in Los Angeles, Pacifica Radio's KPFK, for the latest, including the growing belief that the entire matter was little more than a hoax; that there have been more than 150 reports of hate crimes against Muslims here in Southern California since the San Bernardino shootings two weeks ago; and that today's panic suggests, once again, that you don't have to fire a shot or set off a bomb to terrorize Americans.

Also today, the sentencing of the latest Republican Sec. of State --- New Mexico's Dianna Duran --- to be found guilty of election fraud crimes, even as the GOP still pretends that Democrats are committing massive "voter fraud"; I finally figure out a way that Donald Trump could be knocked off his throne and maybe not win the GOP 2016 nomination after all (maybe); And Desi Doyen joins us for special Green News Report coverage of the historic UN climate agreement that was finalized unanimously by almost 200 nations over the weekend in Paris...

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'End of the Age of Fossil Fuels': Dr. Michael E. Mann on Historic U.N. Paris Climate Agreement: 'BradCast' 12/14/2015

Award-winning climate scientist, creator of 'hockey stick graph', discusses landmark COP21 pact, GOP science denial, investigating Exxon, and how climate is now changing weather...

By Brad Friedman on 12/14/2015 5:07pm PT

"It's difficult to understate the significance of this agreement," Dr. Michael E. Mann tells me on today's BradCast. "I think we are witnessing the end of the age of fossil fuels and the beginning of a new age of a clean global energy economy."

Mann, the Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, creator of the infamous "hockey stick graph", and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, was speaking, of course, of the historic U.N. Paris Agreement, where negotiators from some 200 nations unanimously agreed over the weekend to curb the release of greenhouse gases that cause global warming, in hopes of staving off the worst effects of climate change.

The landmark COP21 accord has been some 21 years in the making, if not many more, as explained during today's show. While cautioning that "the devil is in the details" and "reductions that we'll get out of this agreement alone won't be enough to keep us below dangerous levels of warming," Mann says the agreement finally "starts to put us on the path to avoiding dangerous climate change."

But is it too little too late? Is it even possible to keep global temperatures from rising no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, as called for by the agreement (which also asks nations to keep that rise no higher than 1.5C, if possible)? Mann tells me he believes there is still time to avoid the worst consequences of man's behavior and decades of inaction.

"I can give that answer confidently, as a scientist who studies the numbers. Yes, it is absolutely still physically possible," he says. "What is more in question, of course: is it doable? Is it achievable? And that's a matter of political will. That's really the only limitation."

We discuss those political limitations and much more today, including Mann's op-ed in last week's New York Times slamming Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chair of the U.S. House Science Committee, for his "assault on climate science," as well as Smith's published response to that op-ed. "There's not a truthful word in his statement," Mann retorts.

I also ask the professor about former NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen's assertion that the Paris Agreement is a "fraud" because it fails to include a specific global price on the release of carbon into the atmosphere; about the increasing calls for investigation and prosecution of ExxonMobil for obscuring their own scientists' findings about the "potentially catastrophic" effects of global warming as early as 1977; about that satellite data set cited by Republican climate deniers to suggest that global warming has either paused or doesn't exist at all; and a few more of what I characterize as my own "dumb science questions" about the effects of climate change on weather predictions and El Niño.

As usual, Mann pulls no punches in today's exclusive BradCast interview.

Also today: President Obama's update on the continuing military fight against ISIS and new polling news for both Democratic and Republican Presidential candidates (and the Sanders campaigns' decrying of a network news "Bernie Blackout") in advance of the next GOP Presidential debate on Tuesday...

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Don't Blame Donald: How the GOP Can Thank Itself (and the Media) for the Mess We're All In: 'BradCast' 12/11/2015

And how Dems should have been careful what they wished for...

By Brad Friedman on 12/11/2015 4:52pm PT

Today on The BradCast we catch up with a lot of incoming from over the past week (or two) as Republicans officially begin to freak out about the likelihood of Donald Trump becoming their nominee and the possibility (perhaps, their hope) for a contested nominating convention, and as the U.N. climate conference heads into its final hours towards an agreement that might save the planet.

We cover quite a bit of ground on today's show, as you'll hear, so I'll just let you listen and make of it what you will, rather than go into great detail here.

Suffice to say, we call out not just Republicans for the mess we're all now in --- from the rise of money in politics to to the rise of Trump to the rise of fear and fascism to the rise of global temperatures --- but also the mainstream corporate media. Had they not consistently failed to do their job over the past decade (or two), they might have kept this entire fine mess from happening in the first place.

But why would want to? They are now the biggest winners of all. And the Democrats don't seem to be laughing about it any of it anymore. Enjoy the show.

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'One Person, One Vote'?: 'BradCast' 12/10/2015

GUEST: Author, journalist Ari Berman of The Nation

PLUS: More RW terrorism; More racism from Justice Scalia; U.N. climate conference in Paris turning out much better than expected...

By Brad Friedman on 12/10/2015 5:22pm PT

On today's BradCast, more rightwing domestic terrorism in the U.S., more Scalia race-baiting, another rightwing challenge to minority voting rights heard by SCOTUS, and some potentially good news for the climate out of Paris. [Link to the full program follows below.]

First up today, another 'active shooter' situation plays out as we go to air. And, once again, the terrorist in question appears to be a rightwinger --- at least based on the 'Tea Party' flag on his pickup truck.

Next, we're joined by The Nation's Ari Berman, author of the recently published Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America, to discuss Evenwell v. Abbott, the somewhat astonishing rightwing challenge to minority voting rights heard this week at the U.S. Supreme Court (for some reason).

Despite the "One person, one vote" principal having been seen by most as settled law for about 50 years in the U.S., the Court took up a challenge to that idea brought by the same man who successfully challenged the Voting Rights Act --- which SCOTUS subsequently gutted --- back in 2013. Now comes the idea out of Texas that each state's legislative districts should not be drawn with an approximately equal population in each, as they are now, but rather an equal portion of eligible voters in each Congressional and state house district.

Redrawing maps in this way --- and it would likely need to be done in all 50 states --- would lead not only to chaos, but it have the effect of seriously undercutting minority voting rights, as Berman explains on today's program.

If the plaintiffs in Evenwell are successful, he observes, "many people who are now counted would be excluded, because they are not eligible voters, such as those who are under 18, those who are not U.S. citizens, both documented and undocumented [and] prisoners who have lost the right the vote. All of those people will not be counted [when drawing up legislative maps]. So if you look at the math itself...that will mean that 55% of Latinos, 45% of Asian-Americans, and 30% of African-Americans will not be counted towards representation. And that's why this case is such an attack on minority voting representation."

Few, including Berman, saw such a challenge coming, though perhaps we should have. The case, he tells me, is "brought by the same people that challenged the Voting Rights Act, the same people that challenged affirmative action, and seemingly everything they bring --- particularly this one guy, Ed Blum and his Project on Fair Representation --- everything he brings seems to be heard by this Supreme Court. It's literally like he's sitting around thinking 'What's the next way I can try to attack voting rights? What's the next way I can attack racial equality?' And they keep thinking of more and more creative schemes. And it like they're just going through everything that was done in the 1960s and challenging it --- whether it's the Voting Rights Act or the Fair Housing Act or it's 'One person, one vote'. All of these landmark achievements that have been so successful are now under attack, and this is just the next iteration of this."

After spending months researching for his book, Give Us The Ballot, Berman observes the fight against voting rights today is a continuation of the same fight that has been waged since the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act half a century ago. "There has been a 50 year attempt to try to restrict voting rights. And one of the things that I've noticed is that there's always new ways thought up to try to roll voting rights back. And we've seen a dramatic escalation, I think, of a very old strategy...And they don't seem likely to stop anytime soon."

Berman details how the questions from the Justices at Wednesday's oral arguments to suggest that we are likely looking at another 5 to 4 split decision from the Court...one way or another.

Also today: Justice Antonin Scalia, the Donald Trump of the Supreme Court, offers remarkably offensive comments about African-Americans; Rush Limbaugh's guest host testifies on climate change (sort of) in Ted Cruz' U.S. Senate Science Committee hearing; And the U.N. climate conference in Paris (COP21) comes down to the wire and may be set to produce an even better global agreement than almost anyone had predicted...

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