America Trends Podcast

Labor unions taught many activist groups how to organize to improve working conditions and how to push back against strong corporations. For the last fifty years or so, union strength has eroded and corporate America has had a stranglehold on the politics of this nation. We’ve seen the results–jobs shipped overseas, inferior quality coming back in return and further environmental degradation. If corporate interests, particularly in the aftermath of the Citizens United decision in 2010, bankroll so much of our politics who is left to stand up and fight for social justice, environmental and health standards? In many cases it’s been left to corporate campaign movements to stop bad practices as whistleblowers, non-profits and non- governmental organizations do battle for what is right. Michael Marx, once a corporate insider, has been fighting the good fight more recently as an internationally respected environmental corporate campaign director and founder of Corporate Ethics International. In his book “Reining in the Bulls: How to Stop Corporate Abuse in an Age of Unbridled Greed,” he lays out the strategies that he employed in taking on companies like Mitsubishi, Home Depot, Walmart and Exxon/Mobil.

About one-fifth of the adult population in America experiences mental illness in any given year, yet less than half of them receive treatment. Often, our approach is to prevent disaster rather than foster positive outcomes for the patient. And media coverage exaggerates the danger involved in dealing with most people who experience serious mental illness, like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, among others. While we closed down many large facilities housing people with mental illness our community-based approaches have been spotty and often lacking a critical component–connecting people dealing with these conditions with others who have similar lived experiences. Hundreds of thousands of individuals with mental illness live in jails and prisons when they would be better served by working with peer respites, stand-alone crisis centers and other innovative efforts now underway in various communities. Our guest, University of Alabama Law professor, Fredrick Vars, is the author of “Through the Fire: How People with Mental Illness are Empowering Each Other.” He speaks from his own experience as one who suffered a hallucinogenic break. It’s an important discussion of a topic often left in the shadows.

I know what you’re thinking, you don’t want one more podcast on AI. However, it’s developing at a breakneck speed, with the full encouragement of the federal government, to move fast and break things. Is it the human race that actually is in peril? Astrophysicists, like Stephen Hawking, have warned us that AI and its onrushing development ‘could spell the end of the human race.’ Now let’s be clear, there are responsible players in the AI space who see the dystopian possibilities and are trying to warn us, but the question is are we listening? Can policymakers put guardrails on this out- of -control technological development unlike any other? Our guest, Peter Solomon, a scientist, author and entrepreneur is trying to get to the younger generation to consider the potential outcomes with his novel, “12 Years to AI Singularity: A Harmonious Future with Artificial Intelligence of War.” It’s up to us. He will provoke you into thinking about this technology in a way that few others have.

It might seem on paper that the world’s democracies, as part of their first act, have done a great job of building mechanisms and approaches to make the whole system work–voting and elections, safeguards for them, and ways to expand the franchise. Yet, particularly in the United States, where money plays such a key role and lobbyists make a living representing special interests, have we done all we could to engage the public in an ongoing effort to plug them in to have a say between elections on a host of issues? Constant polling and town halls with elected officials may make us feel as if we’re being heard, but an objective look would say we’re not really a big part of the lawmaking process. So how do we re-engage in a way that is genuine and that averts the backsliding that we now see in democracies? Our guest, Peter Macleod, and co-author, along with Richard Johnson, of the book, “Democracy’s Second Act: Why Politics Needs the Public,” joins us to discuss.

In a recent decision, The United States Supreme Court struck down limits on coordinated spending between candidates and political parties. While some see this as a win for Republicans, our guest, Brody Mullins, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of “The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took over Big Government,” thinks in contrast to the ascendant position of Super PACS since the Citizens’ United decision back in 2010, where the money and transparency are truly dark, this may prove to be a better, more sunlit, method of campaign finance. He’s assuming in his analysis that Congress has no appetite for true campaign finance reform. It all gets a bit complicated so try to focus on this podcast without distraction.