center for economic and policy research

"They are goading people into feeling like their country has been stolen from them," says FAIR's Peter Hart of Glenn Beck and other right-wing media personalities with what he terms a "conspiratorial worldview." It's not just using violent metaphors, in other words, it's creating a paranoid mindset that something dangerous is happening to the U.S. that can appeal to those already inclined toward paranoid thinking, like Jared Loughner. Peter joins us in studio to discuss the media narratives of the last few days following the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tuscon this week, from the fantasies of Glenn Beck to the mainstream idea that the left somehow has an equivalent to Beck and Limbaugh. The term "McCarthyism" has been tossed around a lot lately, with the Right's refrain of "socialism!" and "Marxism!" at every move Obama makes. But McCarthyism had very real victims back in the 1950s, and Miriam Moskowitz was one of those victims. She served two years in federal prison for Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice after being investigated along with Harry Gold, whose testimony was later used to convict Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. GRITtv's Danya Abt and cinematographer Zac Halberd visited Moskowitz, now in her 90s, and discussed her story and her new book, Phantom Spies, Phantom Justice - Or How I Survived McCarthyism. We've reported this week on how little has changed since the Haiti earthquake one year ago today. The cholera epidemic is on the rise, a million people are living in tent cities and the Haitian government is in complete paralysis. We continue to follow the situation in Haiti, but how about a little positive news? We have a clip from the new film Haiti's Heroes, created by Haiti's only film school, Ciné Institute. Finally, a lot of people have talked this week about violent political rhetoric bringing the U.S. to a fever pitch, but there's something else keeping people on edge: that's economic catastrophe and despair. Laura wonders when we're going to talk about the destructive effects of having nothing. Distributed by Tubemogul.

The Tea Party congresspeople are surging into Washington, bringing to their new majority calls not only to overturn health care reform but to ban earmarks and to generally stall major legislation on the Democrats' agenda. ; Meanwhile, there seems to be little coming out from Obama and most of the Democrats on what is exactly on their agenda for the next two years.So what are they thinking? David Corn of Mother Jones doesn't quite know either, but he joins us via Skype from D.C. anyway to give us his thoughts on Tea Party politicians, the earmark process, and other issues from inside the Beltway.Deficits, deficits, deficits. That's all we hear about lately. But in case Dean Baker's explanation of the deficit problem this week was just a little too complicated, he and his colleagues at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have created this video, via xtranormal, to break it down to really simple terms: it's the healthcare.The times are difficult and the challenges are great. But a sober analysis of our predicament suggests that there are accomplishments to be celebrated and lessons to be learned from the intense period of history we have just lived through that can inform a comeback strategy. As important as developing such a strategy will be upholding the commitments that have always nurtured the progressive spirit: to resist despair, to press on in times of uncertainty and to take risks to make a path forward.So wrote Gara LaMarche and Deepak Bhargava in The Nation, right before the election, laying out a strategy for progressive success in the wake of Republican likely victories. Now that we know what the political landscape looks like, we asked Gara to join us in studio to give us some ideas of what we can do to fight a reenergized, organized right. Finally, the New York Times is willing to call out torture--after the British government decides to pay out large sums to former Guantanamo detainees. Laura has some thoughts.

"Poverty is a one-day event, we get a report released and we're going to talk about poverty, but every day we hear what the stock market does," says Dean Baker, GRITtv economics correspondent. The problem with that kind of coverage, Baker notes, is that "many more people will experience poverty than will strike it rich in the stock market." Millions of Americans experience poverty not as a one-day affair, but as a constant, grinding force in their lives. Baker joins us via Skype to talk about Elizabeth Warren's sort-of-appointment, the whining of the rich over tax increases, and Bill Clinton's comments about the recession's end, among other things. The divide in the U.S. right now often looks as much like a split between cities and rural areas as it does between "red" states and "blue" states, and cities continue to suffer under budget crunches as well as the ongoing decline of industry. So what would pioneering author and urban activist Jane Jacobs have said about it all? What about Robert Moses, credited with shaping the modern American city? We speak with Roberta Gratz, author of the book The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, and John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, about what can be done to rebuild American cities so that they are strong and work for everyone. Finally, Anne Elizabeth Moore brings us an update on the situation in Cambodia, where over 200,000 garment workers, mostly young women, have walked off the job in protest of their tiny wages and working conditions.

Guest host Esther Armah is joined by Rosalind McLymont and and Akiba Solomon to  discuss Black History Month and Raina Kelley's Newsweek piece, The Nation's piece on the media-lobbying complex, and Ishmael Reed's New York Times op-ed about the film Precious. In the Kurdish region of Iraq, the people faced horrendous atrocities under Saddam Hussein, including in some villages the murder of nearly all men and boys. The Kurdish women, however, have been rebuilding and redefining their roles. A film by Mary Ann Smothers Bruni looks at three women who are working to strengthen their region and their nation. "No one could've seen this coming." We heard that line over and over again as the economy crumbled around our ears. Yet many people DID see it coming, and Dean Baker was one of them. Co-Director of the Center for Economic And Policy Research, blogger at Beat the Press, and author of a new book, False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy, Baker is in studio to explain the causes of the crisis, the reasons the stimulus wasn't big enough, and why Ben Bernanke should've been fired, not reconfirmed. Yesterday, we aired the first part of activist and author Herb Boyd's recent trip to Haiti. Here is part 2 of "Haiti's Cri de Coeur" or "Cry from the Heart." Thanks to Free Speech TV for the video. Finally, in a video from Street Films, we take a bike ride to work with Mayor Mike McGinn of Seattle.