debate

Republicans might have dropped their filibuster and agreed to allow a debate on financial reform, but with the amount of money that Wall Street firms have sunk into both Republicans and Democrats, does it make a difference? And what kind of reform do we really need, anyway? Independent Senator Bernie Sanders joins us via Skype from Washington to tell us what he thinks about financial regulations, too-big-to-fail banks, and transparency at the Federal Reserve. An underwater oil spill the size of Jamaica is spreading across the Gulf of Mexico, headed to ruin not only people's Gulf Coast vacations, but also fishing and the life cycles of many birds, fish, and sea turtles who migrate to the Gulf this time each year to mate. Local fishermen may be out of work completely for a season, and the effects on an already-battered area of the country will spread across the nation. Does the Obama administration still think that opening up more space for offshore drilling is a good idea after this disaster? What will be the far-reaching consequences of this spill, and why does BP get to dictate the news we hear about it? We ask Aaron Viles of the Gulf Restoration Network, in New Orleans, and Alex Matthiessen of Riverkeeper. This past year, the History Channel produced The People Speak, a performance of many of the speeches and letters from American history that made up Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," and we could see that issues we grapple with now have been long-standing struggles for the people of this country. Not least of those struggles is the one with Wall Street, of course, and here we have former GRITtv guest Kathleen Chalfant performing a speech from over 100 years ago, "Wall Street Owns The Country." Finally, the oil spill in the Gulf and the mine explosion in West Virginia recently are just two examples of our ongoing need to put profits before people. Laura has some thoughts.

A year ago, we had a popular new president and the country seemed ready to make some major changes. Now, we've dissolved into anger, infighting, and the most cohesive group in the country at times seems to be the "tea party patriots." What happened to rational thought, reasonable argument, disputes that didn't end in name-calling and learning from those who disagree with us? We ask Susan Jacoby, author of "The Age of American Unreason" and contributor to the Washington Post, and Frank Schaeffer, author of "Crazy for God" and "Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (or Atheism)," to talk about the problems with our politics, our discourse, our religious disputes, and why "moderates" don't get off the hook for this.