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GRITtv: April 18, 2011

"What's at stake is whether assaults on working people will prevail," says Ellen Bravo, who fought with the Family Values @ Work Consortium to get paid sick leave for Milwaukee's workers only to see it banned in the state legislature--and the ban broadened to include the entire state. Meanwhile, to heighten the already tense situation in that state, Sarah Palin was there this weekend to speak to a Tea Party crowd. Laura spoke with Ellen via Skype from Milwaukee on the continuing importance of Wisconsin's place in the fight for workers' rights, and why she thinks that Wisconsinites, anyway, have a clear plan for success--as the third recall petition for a Republican State Senator is filed. On April 15, thousands of miles away from Bahrain, protests took place in Washington D.C. going from the Saudi Embassy to the White House, and finally ending in Central Park as thousands of Muslims and sympathetic Americans from around the world attended to show their support of the "forgotten oppressed." "Justice requires that we learn the lessons from these past disasters," says Tracie Washington of the Louisiana Justice Institute. And Antonia Juhasz, author most recently of Black Tide: The Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill, points out that nothing that we saw happen in the Gulf has been addressed, and clearly we have learned nothing from the disaster that occurred a year ago this week. Antonia joins Laura in studio, and Tracie by phone from New Orleans, to discuss what lessons need to be learned, what Gulf activists and advocates are doing to fight back, and why the US government is still subsidizing oil and gas drilling. Finally, it's tax day, and as corporations dodge paying, everyday folks moan and groan as they pony up cash. But Laura reminds us that taxes can be a mechanism for creating a more equitable society as well. Distributed by Tubemogul.

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GRITtv: The F Word: Demonizing Taxes, Heightening Inequality

Today is Tax Day in the US, and that's almost universally greeted with groans and complaints. That tax word's been so effectively demonized that it may be there's no coming back. Is it time for a new word? Some research by Duke University's Dan Ariely suggests it might be. Distributed by Tubemogul.

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GRITtv: The F Word: Looking Closer at Joseph Stack

Joseph Stack -- remember him? He's the guy who crashed his plane into an Internal Revenue Service building in Austin last week. Fifty-three years old, a Vietnam veteran, Stack killed one IRS manager, Vernon Hunter, and wounded 13 more before killing himself, but you'd be forgiven for forgetting his name, because he largely fell out of the news in the days afterward. That's not so say there hasn't been howling. When Stack's daughter told ABC's Good Morning America that she considered her father a hero there was outrage, and reasonably so. Facebook fan pages praising Stack have shown up with links to right-wing, so-called patriot groups and at the CPAC conservative organizing meeting in DC more than one GOP member referred sympathetically to Stack's anti-government views ... Most of what Stack has to say's not mad. Or incoherent. Does is justify killing? Not at all, but should the extreme right be the only ones responding? I'd say not. Stack's was a lone act -- and let's hope it stays that way, but - as after 9-11- asking why is again worth doing... We have choices about how to respond. Denial's only one of them. -- Laura Flanders

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