The Return of Bill Moyers. (This is what he did on his first day folks!)

First, an interview..

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"Bill Moyers opposes the Citizens United ruling and discusses corporate influence on the government."

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Side note:

About the Amendment to fight the Citizens United ruling...

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(Note: More about the new corporations here. Read about Sen. Sanders' team of economists here and you can watch his interview on The Colbert Report here.)

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The Return of Bill Moyers...


Moyers & Company 101: On Winner Take All Politics from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

From Bill Moyers.com In its premiere episode, Moyers & Company dives into one of the most important and controversial issues of our time: How Washington and Big Business colluded to make the super-rich richer and turn their backs on the rest of us.

Bill’s guests – Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, argue that America’s vast inequality is no accident, but in fact has been politically engineered.

How, in a nation as wealthy as America, can the economy simply stop working for people at large, while super-serving those at the very top? Through exhaustive research and analysis, the political scientists Hacker and Pierson — whom Bill regards as the “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson” of economics — detail important truths behind a 30-year economic assault against the middle class.




For Martin Luther King Day

In this essay, Bill reflects on Martin Luther King Jr.’s dreams for America. Below, revisit Dr. King’s evolving theories of social and economic justice through his speeches, including the one given in Memphis just before his assassination.


Bill Moyers Journal Essay: On Equality from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

AND

Bill Moyers Journal: Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander on Injustice Two talented lawyers who’ve dedicated their careers to fighting inequality, Michelle Alexander and Bryan Stevenson, join Bill Moyers on the Journal to examine justice and injustice in America 42 years after King’s death.

Alexander believes that King would be deeply troubled by the remaining inequality in America. As she tells Bill Moyers, “I think Martin Luther King would be thrilled by some of the individual progress of African Americans, but stunned, absolutely stunned and saddened, by the state of African Americans as a whole today.”

Stevenson adds that to reach King’s dream, America must address the causes of poverty, “I think in America, the opposite of poverty is justice. I think there are structures and systems that have created poverty, and have made that poverty so permanent, that until we think in a more just way about how to deal with poverty in this country, we’re never gonna make the progress that Dr. King envisioned.”

Both believe that America’s policies of mass incarceration continue the cycle of poverty. America is the largest jailer on the planet, with 2.3 million people behind bars. But the policy of mass imprisonment, unique among industrialized nations, disproportionately affects minorities, especially African American men. One in 100 adults in America is behind bars, but one in nine African American men aged 20 to 34 is behind bars. Much of this arises from the “war on drugs.” According to Human Rights Watch, African American adults have been arrested at a rate 2.8 to 5.5 times higher than white adults in every year from 1980 to 2007. Yet, according to government statistics, African Americans and whites have similar rates of illicit drug use and dealing.


Follow Bill Moyers through his website (click here).


Related:

Prisons for profit(PBS): "Corporations are running many Americans prisons, but will they put profits before prisoners?"

From Fareed Zakaria:

The chart below shows the number of prison inmates per capita in the United States compared with other major countries. The incarceration rate in the United States is more than three times that of Iran, six times that of China, and ten times that of Japan. (Source: The Economist via blogs.cfr.org/lindsay)...

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"Another chart on America's prison population from GOOD Magazine showing U.S. incarceration rates per 100,000 over time."