#1647 How to Eliminate Homelessness While Maintaining Our Humanity
Air Date: 8-6-2024
After the recent Supreme Court ruling that allowed governments to constitutionally purge unhoused people from public spaces, we are getting an immediate lesson in the difference between addressing systemic problems with solutions and using the police to clean up after governments that failed to act.
Read more#1643 Extremism Comes in Many Forms: SCOTUS goes hard-right, Project 2025 in the spotlight, and Christian Nationalism unmasked in Assassination Nation
Air Date: 7-20-2024
Extremism comes in many forms and we live in an era in which way too many of them are on display simultaneously, but it's not coincidence. The far right has been working toward an extremist Supreme Court for decades. Christian Nationalists have similarly been trying to impose their rigid view of far-right Christianity on the rest of us for a very long time. The far-right Heritage Foundation now deems this to be the time to attempt to radicalize the federal bureaucracy, and far-right calls for political violence and lax gun laws resulted in an environment where no one was really all that surprised about the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
Read more#1460 The Growing Threat of Minority Rule (Throwback)
Original Air Date: 12–11-2021
Today we take a look at the many structures of American government that tilt to favor minority rule and conservatism which, in our case, is one and the same. Some structures like the Senate and the filibuster were intentionally designed to give extra weight to the minority while others like gerrymandering and the influence of large-dollar political donors were, well, I suppose they were designed for about the same reason but just in a different way.
Read more#1636 The Supreme Court Is In Bad Shape. Like, Really Bad. And SCOTUS Is Going To Take Us All Down With Them
Air Date: 6-14-2024
We're in the middle of Supreme Court opinion season, which is not going well for non-extreme conservatives in the country, at the same time as scandal, corruption, and justices Thomas and Alito's refusal to recuse in the face of clear bias are reaching a modern peak.
Read more#1634 Abortion as the Tip of the Iceberg: the fight for privacy, bodily autonomy, and functional democracy are the path forward after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade
Air Date: 6-7-2024
Banning abortion is wildly unpopular and also one of the primary motivators for the group most strongly supporting the Republican Party and Donald Trump, the Christian Right, which has transformed both the party and politicians into extremists made in their own image, threatening the lives and health of millions and sacrificing democracy in the process.
Read more#1603 Clarence Thomas and the Highest Court in the Land with the Lowest Standards of Ethics
Air Date: 1-13-2024
The Supreme Court began to lose its legitimacy in the eyes of many when President Obama wasn't allowed to fill the open seat left by the death of Antonin Scalia but, in truth, the scandal and manipulation of the nation's highest court go back much, much farther than that. However, in a bygone age, scandal was handled much differently than today, putting our current state of dysfunction and hyper-partisanship into sharp focus.
Read more#1593 Beyond Neoliberalism: Dreaming a new economic system into being
Air Date: 11-14-2023
The Supreme Court turned the table on average, working people back in the 70s when they empowered wealthy individuals and corporations to have an outsized role in our politics. Now we're trapped in the reality that shift in power created and are dreaming of a better way to manage our economic and political systems for the benefit of all people.
Read more#1507 Installing Loyalists: The Multi-Pronged Destruction of Our Democracy Already in Progress (Throwback)
Original Air Date: 8–16-2022
Today, we take a look at the strategies underway to systematically dismantle democracy in the United States including installing Big-Lie™ believers in elected and poll-working positions, preventing state-level Supreme Courts from holding GOP-dominated state legislators to the state constitutions, and wiping out tens of thousands of career civil servants from the federal government to be replaced by right-wing extremists loyal to the Republican Party.
Read more#1571 Understanding what we lost with the repeal of affirmative action
Air Date: 7–11-2023
Today, we take a look at the history and unceremonious end of affirmative action for college admissions that were an attempt to correct the compounded impact of hundreds of years of systemic racism.
Read more#1539 Stolen Children is Stolen History, Heritage, and Culture (Indian Child Welfare Act)
Air Date: 1–25-2023
Today, we take a look at the long, global history of invading peoples stealing the children of native families to be acculturated into the population of the invading force. Reasons can range from a tactic of war and an intention to commit genocide, usually based on an ideology of racial superiority, to concerns over shifting national demographics, simple economic dispossession, or all of the above. We end with a discussion of ICWA, the Indian Child Welfare Act, which is currently being challenged in the US Supreme Court to the detriment of native children and sovereignty.
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