andy kroll
FSTV Newswire 7/7/11: Unemployment and Race
Jobs -- and how to create more of them -- has become the primary talking point for politicians from local city halls to the White House. This comes amid recent figures that showed weaker than expected job growth and a persistently high unemployment rate of 9.7 percent nationwide. But Andy Kroll says that we can't talk about unemployment without also talking about race. He is a reporter for Mother Jones magazine and an associate editor at TomDispatch.com. He joins us via Skype from Washington, DC.
Email this pageGRITtv: The F Word: Better Uses for Bankers' Billions
What could be done with $20 billion? A whole lot of Wall Street bankers are about to find out. $20 billion's what the New York Comptroller's office says the Street's bonuses bounced back to in 2009 -- up 17 percent from the year of the crash. According to the latest data the average bonus was $123,850 at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase, all of which taxpayers bailed out. Their bonuses this year were almost a third bigger than last year. It gives a whole new meaning to "failing up" as six million Americans -- or one in fifty -- face life with food stamps as their only income (for more on that, see yesterday's GRITtv) and a national average of six applicants show up for every job. It boggles the mind to think of how that $20 billion could be spent. Our friends at Mother Jones aren't boggled; they've put together a nifty list of suggestions for alternative spending. Want a bonus for the country, not the country-club? 1. You could pay the salaries of more than 390,000 public school teachers across the country. 2. You could close nearly all of California's gaping budget hole. 3. You could almost cover unemployment-fund shortfalls, now nearing $25 billion, in 25 different states. 4. You could more than double the amount of Pell Grant funding given to students from low-income backgrounds who might not attend college otherwise. 5. You could increase the budget of the Small Business Administration by more than 35 times. Thanks to Mother Jones for the list. I'll add a sixth--you could fund all the independent media in the country just about for ever.... Fancy making your own suggestions? Send them here: Laura@grittv.org. The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.
GRITtv: Tues. Feb. 23 2010
The Olympics have seen more than their share of controversy this year, from the death of a Georgian luger early on to the ongoing debate about policing, spending and co-opting Native land for sports. But many people still love the games, and tune in to watch sports that get forgotten the other three years--or to see dream teams put together to compete for gold. To talk about the good, the bad, and the corporate at the Vancouver games, we're joined by two veteran sports journalists, Ann Liguori of WFAN and Robert Lipsyte, PBS contributor and former New York Times contributor. And of course, we couldn't talk sports without touching on the media's ongoing fascination with Tiger Woods... You've seen them: the signs that pop up everywhere, with just a phone number and a seemingly-unbelievable promise. "We Buy Houses" "Make $45 an Hour." They're becoming even more common during this recession, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund has found, and they made this video in Baltimore with Robert Strupp, director of research and policy at the Community Law Center. President Obama revealed his health care plan this week, and activists across the country are gearing up to push to actually pass health care reform. In this video from Ramblin' Man Films, we check in with protesters in Los Angeles outside of Anthem Blue Cross's office, angered by a 39% rate hike by the insurer. Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God and Patience with God, has had enough of claims that America is now in a "post-racial" era; if that's true, he asks, why does so much of the opposition to Obama's actions seem to have a nasty undertone? Last week, while Esther Armah held down the fort here at GRITtv, Laura was in Santa Fe meeting with activists. Of course, she took a camera with her, and captured this interview with Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water and one time Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly. We've also got the trailer for the documentary film FLOW, which Barlow also appeared in. Jose Alcoff was in Honduras recently, and contributed this exclusive report recapping the turmoil, and checking in with the social movements there about what's happening next. Finally, Laura and Mother Jones magazine have some suggestions for what we could do with the bankers' $20 billion.
