bailouts

Wall Street is set to award $143 billion--with a B--in bonuses this year, while foreclosures continue unabated (and often undocumented) around the country. Protests are continuing around the country too, though, and Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter notes that when her family couldn't get a regulator to examine her family's foreclosure, "What we went to was a grassroots organization." Desiree joins us, along with Amanda Devecka-Rinear of National People's Action, to fill us in on yesterday's protest on Wall Street, actions around the country, and the process of building a movement to fight Wall Street corruption and help people remain in their homes.

"NATO is losing the war in Afghanistan in every quantifiable way," says Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films, recently returned from a reporting trip to that country. And what's more, he notes, what's clear from the WikiLeaks cables is that the coalition governments are not as deluded as they would like their people to be about the reality on the ground in Afghanistan.Rick joins us in studio to discuss the realities he saw on the ground in Afghanistan, the death of special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, and more.Rick Rowley is just one of the unembedded, independent reporters trying to bring the real story from Afghanistan to the American people. Our friends at Brave New Films also have teams of independent media makers in that country, and this segment takes us inside their dangerous work."In truth, we face the sobering reality that capitalism’s latest crisis — complete with bank failures, corporate bailouts, rising unemployment, and declining wages — has aided the right, not the left. How can we explain the capacity of the right to benefit from and redirect the bitterness and discontent that derives from capitalism’s own failures?" Peter Bratsis wrote a provocative piece for The Indypendent about the Tea Party movement and the crisis on the left--and he joins Laura in studio to discuss it. Are we missing passion and emotional appeals in our quest to be rational?Finally, there's a new blockbuster out just in time for the holidays: Harry Potter and the Bailed-Out Banks. Laura has a synopsis.

Members of Congress talking about shutting the government down until they can extend tax cuts for the wealthy are "in denial, blinded by their greed," says Constance Kaplan, "They're not concerned with us." Connie is a law librarian who's worked for JP Morgan Chase, among other companies, and is a '99er' -- she's been unemployed for over 99 weeks and has thus lost all government unemployment benefits.Connie joins us in studio to discuss the government's inattention to job creation, and Edrie Irvine joins us via Skype--a legal secretary, she is also unemployed and is nearing the expiration on her own benefits. They fill us in on what it's like on the job hunt after over a year, and what unemployed workers are doing to get organized."I guess I missed the part of the book of Genesis where Moses says 'Let my people make $250,000 a year or more,'" jokes Chris Lehmann, author of the new book Rich People Things (from OR Books, also publisher of At The Tea Party). And Harper's columnist Thomas Frank notes, "It's expensive to be a populist these days!"Thomas and Chris join us in studio for a chat about Rich People Things--why it is that the same political rhetoric that used to be used in service of the people, the poor and working classes, is now being used to defend the rights of millionaires not to pay taxes. When the social contract's been shredded, right-wingers talk of "forces of darkness" with straight faces, and Republicans are vowing not to vote on anything until they get to cut taxes for the rich, what can we do?And just in case that wasn't enough to convince you that our government has the wrong interests at heart, just-released Fed documents show money floated not just to too-big-to-fail banks, but too-big-to-fail--phone companies? Foreign banks? Motorcycle companies? Laura has some thoughts on the big float.

"You can't just have homeowners pay for the mess that the banks have made; not just of our finance system, it's becoming clear that they've made a mess of our private property system in this country," says Marcy Wheeler, who's been blogging the House and Senate hearings on the foreclosure crisis at her FireDogLake blog, and joins us via Skype to discuss the situation.And while hearings on Capitol Hill look into what the banks have done to everyday people, the discussion of Bush administration torture and unlawful detention goes on--Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was convicted of one of the 285 counts he was tried for, in a civilian court. Marcy points out that the trial might have gone differently if much of the evidence in the case hadn't been obtained through torture.We need to take control of the new computer networking tools all around us, argues author and thinker Douglas Rushkoff, or else we'll wind up at the mercy of those who do take control. That's part of the argument Rushkoff makes in his new book, Program or Be Programmed, out now from our friends at OR Books.With some basic computer and programming literacy, Rushkoff notes, we can take control of our lives, create value for ourselves, and perhaps let the big institutions that think they control us, from banks to media moguls, just wither away.Finally, one of those big institutions went "public" today--GM stock is back on the stock markets, the bankruptcy and bailouts apparently a success. But not so fast, say some, and Laura has some thoughts about who's really paying the price.