Author Archives: forthrightradio

Henry Giroux: Expanding Democracy or “Unified Reich?”

We were especially grateful and delighted to interview Henry Giroux in this last minute conversation, because he generously agreed to join us with mere hours notice beforehand, when our originally scheduled guest had to postpone due to illness.

Author and public intellectual, Henry Giroux, is Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy and Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest at McMaster University. He has written more than 65 books since his first book, Ideology, Culture and the Process of Schooling, was published in 1981. He has always been generous with us with his time over the years, as he published books such as Zombie Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism; Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories, and the Culture of Cruelty; The Violence of Organized Forgetting: Thinking Beyond America’s Disimagination Machine; Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of Spectacle; America at War with Itself; American Nightmare: The Challenge of US Authoritarianism; and The Terror of the Unforeseen.

He last joined us when his book, INSURRECTIONS: EDUCATION IN AN AGE OF COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS, was published by Bloomsbury Press in January, 2023.

Bloomsbury will be re-releasing in updated form two of his earliest books: Theory and Resistance in Education, originally published in 1988, and Teachers as Intellectuals from 1983. We began our conversation by congratulating him about this.

Articles pertinent to this conversation can be accessed here:

The neoliberal university faces a crisis: This generation could change everything https://www.salon.com/2024/06/08/the-neoliberal-university-faces-rebellion-this-generation-could-change-everything/

Mainstream Media Obscure the Threat Posed by Trump’s Authoritarianism https://www.laprogressive.com/law-and-justice/disimagination-machines

Poisoning the American Mind: Student Protests Against the War on Gaza in the Age of the New McCarthyism https://www.laprogressive.com/progressive-issues/poisoning-the-american-mind

Silence Is Dangerous in the Current Age of Rising Fascism in the US https://truthout.org/articles/silence-is-dangerous-in-the-current-age-of-rising-fascism-in-the-us

Assassins of Memory: Lessons from the Attacks on Biden’s Forgetfulness https://www.laprogressive.com/election-reform-campaigns/assassins-of-memory

Trump told donors he will crush pro-Palestinian protests, deport demonstrators https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/27/trump-israel-gaza-policy-donors/

Ruth Ben-Ghiat Discusses Project 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnjdKuQAuq8&t=5s

Heather Cox Richardson’s Politics Chat: June 11, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EvFEjedw-8

Elaine McMillion Sheldon: KING COAL & Josh Margolin: THELMA

This is our final Radio Goes to the Movies series before the 2024 Mendocino Film Festival, in which we feature two films that are screening today in the Matheson. First we speak with Elaine McMillion Sheldon about her film, KING COAL, and in the 2nd segment, we speak with Josh Margolin about his film, THELMA, which begins at 25:16.

You might think, oh I don’t want to see a film about coal, but this is a very artistic, lyrical tapestry of a place and people. KING COAL meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped, and the myths it has created. This is a spectacularly beautiful and deeply moving immersion into Central Appalachia, where coal is not just a resource, but a way of life.While deeply situated in the communities under the reign of King Coal, where Elaine McMillion Sheldon has lived and worked her entire life, the film transcends time and place, emphasizing the ways in which all are connected through an immersive mosaic of belonging, ritual, myth, and imagination. Emerging from the long shadows of the coal mines, KING COAL untangles the pain from the beauty, and illuminates the innately human capacity for change.We spoke with her via Skype on May 28th, 2024.

Inspired by a real-life experience of director Josh Margolin’s own grandmother, THELMA puts a clever spin on movies like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, shining the spotlight on an elderly grandmother as an unlikely action hero. With infectious humor, Margolin employs the familiar tropes of the action genre in hilarious, age-appropriate ways to tackle aging with agency. In the first leading film role of her 70-year career, Squibb portrays the strong-willed Thelma with grit and determination, demonstrating that she is more than capable of taking care of business — despite what her daughter Gail (Parker Posey), son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg), or grandson Danny might believe.

This edition ends with excerpts from Congressman Jamie Raskin’s (D-MD) New York Times piece from Nay 29, 2024 headlined, How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/opinion/alito-thomas-recuse-trump-jan-6.html

The Supreme Court Is Going Off the Rails. It’s About to Get So Much Worse. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/supreme-court-going-off-the-rails-amicus-end-of-term-june.html

Yael Bridge THE BIG SCARY “S” WORD & Lois Lipman FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO

This edition of Radio Goes to the Movies features two films that are screening at the Mendocino Film Festival, THE BIG SCARY ‘S’ WORD and FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO.

In our first segment, we spoke with Yael Bridge, who produced the award winning, Left on Purpose, and Saving Capitalism, starring former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, which was nominated for an Emmy Award in Business and Economics. She was also the director of productions at Inequality Media, making viral videos that tackle complex political issues and gained over 100 million views in 2016. She lives in Oakland, where she works as a filmmaker and film educator. Her film, THE BIG SCARY ‘S’ WORD, which she directed and produced is screening on Sunday June 2nd, at the Matheson.

In our second segment, we spoke with Lois Lipman about her film, FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO, which tells the story that the blockbuster film, Oppenheimer, leaves out – about the nuclear victims of the first nuclear detonation in history, who lived in the villages around the Trinity test site. They were not warned, evacuated, nor informed after the explosion of any danger, much less protected from the fallout. The interview with Lois begins at 27:30.

For many years Lois Lipman researched, developed, and field produced films for 60 Minutes worldwide —from India, Gaza, Guantanamo Bay to Paris and Saint Petersburg. Her films won numerous awards including an Emmy and a Peabody. Til Death Do Us Part: Dowry Deaths in India won Best Documentary of the Year from American Women in Television and Radio, and lead to the first arrests and convictions for this crime against women in India.
After Lois left 60 Minutes, she worked internationally for the BBC, Channel 4 – UK, and PBS. After teaching at the University of Maryland, Lois returned to her home in New Mexico, where she committed to making FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO, a film that exposes the injustices suffered, and continuing to be suffered, for almost 8 decades by New Mexican Downwinders. It screens on Sunday, June 2, at 10:30a.m. at The Coast Cinemas.

Special thanks to Paul Pino for permission to include his anthem, “It Ain’t Over Til We Win,” from FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO.

Mike Johnson Urged to Advance Bipartisan Bill For Nuclear Test Victims https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-johnson-nuclear-test-victims_n_66462dcee4b098d9bd48f148

Maureen Gosling: The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane/ Sabrine Keane & Kate Dumke: Preconceived

It’s the merry month of May, and that means it’s time for our “Radio Goes to the Movies” editions of Forthright Radio. For the past 16 years, we have devoted our programs in the month before the Mendocino Film Festival to featuring interviews with filmmakers whose films are screening the first week in June at the Festival. Today, we feature two interviews. Our first is with Maureen Gosling about her wonderful film, THE 9 LIVES OF BARBARA DANE.

Maureen Gosling, director and editor of THE 9 LIVES OF BARBARA DANE – the folk, blues and jazz singer, international social justice activist and recording star, wife, mother of three, feminist, record producer, unwavering maverick and general good troublemaker on the road when she was 90 years old. She is turning 97 on Sunday, May 12th! THE 9 LIVES OF BARBARA DANE is an underground history of a singer-agitator, whose unbending principles guide her through notoriety, obscurity, and finally, music legend.

In concert with son Jesse Cahn

In the second segment, an interview with Sabrine Keane and Kate Dumke, directors of the documentary, PRECONCEIVED, which investigates the question: Where does someone turn these days when facing an unplanned pregnancy? It’s an insightful look into the rise of crisis pregnancy centers proliferating across the United States, and explores the complex role of deception, finances, faith, and privacy…

Barbara Dane’s songs, which end this edition, Working People’s Blues and Resistance Hymn, are included courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recording, with special thanks to Will Griffin for permission to do so.

Articles pertinent to these interviews:

Texas man asks court for permission to investigate former partner’s out-of-state abortion https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2024/05/03/texas-man-asks-court-for-permission-to-investigate-former-partners-out-of-state-abortion/

Dallas church opens pregnancy center with abortion resources https://www.dallasnews.com/business/health-care/2024/04/29/dallas-church-opens-pregnancy-center-with-abortion-resources/

Study Links Abortion Restrictions and Intimate Partner Homicide https://www.commondreams.org/news/abortion-bans-kill-women?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=73db0d213b-Top+News%3A+Wed.+5%2F8%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-3b949b3e19-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Jade Sasser CLIMATE ANXIETY AND THE KID QUESTION and Mark Rank THE RANDOM FACTOR

This edition of Forthright Radio features two university professors whose books were published this month by the University of CA Press.

First, we hear from University of California Riverside’s Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies Professor, Jade Sasser, about her latest book, CLIMATE ANXIETY AND THE KID QUESTION: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future. Her award-winning 2018 book, On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the Era of Climate Change, analyzed the shifting role of environmentalists in shaping activism and international policy advocacy focused on population, reproductive rights, and reproductive justice. In CLIMATE ANXIETY AND THE KID QUESTION, she investigates the impacts of climate change, racial injustice, and other existential threats, on reproductive decisions.


In our second half, we welcome back George Washington University’s Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare, Mark Rank, whose book THE RANDOM FACTOR: How Chance and Luck Profoundly Shape Our Lives and the World Around Us, was published just this week. His research and teaching have focused on poverty, social welfare, economic inequality, and social policy.

Articles pertinent to this edition:

H.R.957 – Protecting Moms and Babies Against Climate Change Act 117th Congress (2021-2022)
H.R. 3302: Protecting Moms and Babies Against Climate Change Act 118th Congress https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/hr3302/summary

‘Children won’t be able to survive’: inter-American court to hear from climate victims https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/inter-american-court-climate-hearing-hear-from-victims-barbados

‘I am starting to panic about my child’s future’: climate scientists wary of starting families https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/10/climate-scientists-starting-families-children

The Far Right’s Campaign to Explode the Population https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/28/natalism-conference-austin-00150338

‘The Pressure Is Working’: Biden Weighs Climate Emergency Declaration https://www.commondreams.org/news/climate-change-national-emergency?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=b6968bca63-Top+News%3A+Thu.+4%2F18%2F24+w%2F+fundraiser&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-b6968bca63-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Pediatricians say climate conversations should be part of any doctor’s visit https://grist.org/health/pediatricians-advised-talk-patients-parents-climate-change/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=weekly

GOP State AGs Ask EPA to ‘Eviscerate’ Crucial Environmental Justice Tool https://www.commondreams.org/news/gop-epa-title-vi?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=4bdd8521e2-Top+News%3A+Wed.+4%2F17%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-37878a46b5-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Sterilization Procedures Have Surged Among Young People Following “Dobbs” https://truthout.org/articles/sterilization-procedures-have-surged-among-young-people-post-dobbs/?utm_source=feedotter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=FO-04-15-2024&utm_content=httpstruthoutorgarticlessterilizationprocedureshavesurgedamongyoungpeoplepostdobbs&utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=e9461d45e9-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2024_04_15_08_50&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-e9461d45e9-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

‘I felt like a freak because I didn’t want children’ https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c72pnllv8nko

‘Catastrophic’: Biden Admin Approves Largest Offshore Oil Export Terminal https://www.commondreams.org/news/biden-offshore-oil-terminal?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=1180bb9681-Top+News%3A+Mon.+4%2F15%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-37878a46b5-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Guest column: Global warming presents more danger than guns https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/guest_columnists/guest-column-global-warming-presents-more-danger-than-guns/article_7f6d09de-f770-11ee-8032-1f184cd657b2.html

Cecil Williams, reverend who turned a church into a safe haven, dies aged 94 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/23/reverend-cecil-williams-san-francisco-california-dies-aged-94

‘A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose’: can Allan Lichtman predict the 2024 election? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/26/allan-lichtman-prediction-presidential-election

Randy Fertel WINGING IT: Improv’s Power & Peril in the Time of Trump

Randy Fertel is a writer and philanthropist dedicated to the arts, education, New Orleans, and the environment. His philanthropy includes as the President of the Fertel Foundation supporting a number of causes, including The New Orleans Edible Schoolyard, Artist Corps New Orleans, YAYA (that’s Young Artists, Young Aspirations), and The Ridenhour Prizes, which recognize and encourage those who persevere in acts of truth-telling that protect the public interest, promote social justice or illuminate a more just vision of society.

The prizes memorialize the spirit of Ron Ridenhour, the Vietnam veteran who wrote a letter to Congress and the Pentagon in 1969 describing the horrific events at My Lai, the infamous massacre of the Vietnam War, bringing the scandal to the attention of the American public and the world. Ridenhour went on to become an investigative journalist, and his extraordinary life and career exemplified the fearless truth-telling which the eponymous prizes now recognize. The 2024 recipients are Emma  Pildes and Tia Lessin for their documentary film, The Janes; Congressman Jamie Raskin received The Courage Prize; and The Truth Telling Prize went to Dawn Wooten, the nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center Immigration Facility in Georgia, who filed a whistleblower complaint in September 2020 after being demoted for raising concerns about inadequate medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic and non-consensual gynecological procedures performed on women in detention. Her claims have been verified by a Senate subcommittee, ICE records, and independent medical experts. If it were not for her disclosures, women in immigrant detention would still be at risk of undergoing unnecessary, non-consensual surgeries there. However, Ms. Wooten, a single mother of five, faces ongoing retaliation.


Additionally, The Fertel Foundation organized Dutch Dialogues. South Louisiana, like the Netherlands, must adapt to the threats inherent to living in a subsiding delta. The Dutch Dialogues workshops brought together Dutch engineers, urban designers, landscape architects, city planners and soils/hydrology experts together with their Louisiana counterparts to explore whether Dutch approaches to water management, landscape architecture, flood protection and urban design were relevant to New Orleans as it recovered from Hurricane Katrina.


But More pertinent to this edition of Forthright Radio are his Improv Conferences NOLA, inspired by his life-long fascination with improvisation.
Randy Fertel’s earlier books include, A Taste for Chaos: The Art of Literary Improvisation  and The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir. His most recent book is WINGING IT: IMPROV’S POWER AND PERIL IN THE TIME OF TRUMP, just published by Spring Publications.

We spoke with him via Skype on April 9, 2024.

Articles & videos pertinent to this interview:

Inventing Improv: A Chicago Stories Special Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQLIS1ZeNgw

‘The machine did it coldly’: Israel used AI to identify 37,000 Hamas targets https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

What War by A.I. Actually Looks Like https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/opinion/war-ai-israel-gaza-ukraine.html

Daniel Kahneman, Who Plumbed the Psychology of Economics, Dies at 90 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/business/daniel-kahneman-dead.html

Blender/ The Spanish Inquisition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKcuVQ8dA7c

Stephanie Dray BECOMING MADAM SECRETARY

We steer clear of works of fiction – not only do we want our conversations to be based in facts, but it’s a hassle to dance around spoilers. Maybe like me you vaguely know that Frances Perkins is an important person in Women’s History, mostly because she was the first female to serve in the United States Cabinet, and like me, you have a blurry visual in your mind of an unsmiling, rather severe older woman who had something to do with the New Deal and the Depression. Maybe you never wondered why Franklin Roosevelt appointed her as his Secretary of Labor, or what made her so effective in identifying social injustices and doing things to rectify them.

Stephanie Dray, explained what compelled her to tell Frances Perkins story – that so many of the things we take for granted today: weekends, food and fire safety regulations, unemployment insurance, social security and so much more. Her deep research has resulted in her latest book, BECOMING MADAM SECRETARY, just out from Berkley Books. Her earlier books, many of which were NYT bestsellers, include THE WOMEN OF CHATEAU LAFAYETTE, MY DEAR HAMILTON, AMERICA’S FIRST DAUGHTER, and THE NILE TRILOGY. In BECOMING MADAM SECRETARY she uncovers the forgotten history of the intellectually brilliant, politically pragmatic and physically courageous woman, who remains the longest serving cabinet member in US History, Frances Perkins.


We spoke with Stephanie Dray via Skype on the Vernal Equinox of 2024.

Long before she became part of New York or the federal governments, Frances Perkins was a “radical” activist to investigate and reform the most lethal aspects of corporate capitalism., as when she worked aas the Director of the NY Consumers’ League in 1909.
Just before the signing of the Social Security Act, Frances Perkins had been informed that her husband had escaped from the mental hospital in which he had been confined. Immediately after the signing, she had to rush to New York to try to find him for his own safety.
Not only has she been honored as a national hero with this stamp, but the Episcopal Church celebrates her as a saint in their liturgy on May 13th.

When Women Lost the Vote https://www.amrevmuseum.org/virtualexhibits/when-women-lost-the-vote-a-revolutionary-story

How Trump Ends Social Security https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-trump-ends-social-security-4bb

Trump Wants to Destroy Social Security, But Biden Plan Would Improve and Expand It https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/biden-vs-trump-on-social-security?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=fc4122f9bf-Top+News%3A+Mon.+3%2F18%2F2024&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-37878a46b5-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Adam Shatz THE REBEL’S CLINIC: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon

Adam Shatz‘s latest book, The Rebel’s Clinic: the Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, examines the intersections of the African diaspora in the Caribbean Islands, WWII France and it’s aftermath, and the inevitable violence that colonialism creates and requires to maintain itself. He is the US editor of The London Review of Books and a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and other publications. He is also a visiting professor at Bard College and the host of the podcast “Myself with Others.”  He is the author of two earlier books: Prophets Outcast: A Century of Dissident Jewish Writing about Zionism and Israel and Writers and Missionaries: Essays on the Radical Imagination.

Perhaps like me, you were aware of Frantz Fanon. You saw his books, particularly THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, in the bookshelves of people your respected, but you didn’t really know too much about him.

Frantz Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1925. He was educated to identify as a French man, and as he wrote in his book, BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASK, it was a shock to serve in WWII, be wounded, receive a medal and still be seen as an African, an object of fear. He studied in Lyon, France, and became a psychiatrist in the post-war intellectual ferment of existentialism and the rise of decolonization movements.

He was a playwright, a practicing psychiatrist, the author of numerous articles in scientific journals, a teacher, a diplomat, a journalist, the editor of an anti-colonial newspaper, the author of three books, and a major Pan-Africanist and internationalist, who became a political militant as France efforts to suppress the Algerian independence movement became more violent and vicious. But unlike most militants, he had the training and intellectual capacity to analyze and articulate the processes internal to the individual and external to the culture that lead to the point of violence, and whether violence can be justified or even dis-intoxicating.

Like Ernesto “Che” Guevara–another revolutionary who valued the poetic and was a committed internationalist, doctor, soldier, teacher, and theorist–Fanon’s life has much to inform our understanding of where we find ourselves in struggle today.

Thanks to David Rovics for permission to post his song, “As the Bombs Rain Down” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQbx5zPxGAk&list=OLAK5uy_lNIlbd6R0lC4TICKXq2ylk9-CrjXHDcc4

The World May Be Entering a Much Bloodier Era https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/opinion/international-world/coups-climate-change-africa-sahel.html

Dossier no. 26: Frantz Fanon: The brightness of metal https://mronline.org/2020/03/04/dossier-no-26-frantz-fanon-the-brightness-of-metal/

Marc-William Palen PAX ECONOMICA: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World

As cruel wars rage across three continents and civilian casualties soar, it is easy to forget, or perhaps never to have known, that people have been analyzing the causes of war and organizing and working for peace for a very long time. These days, the term FREE TRADE is associated with right wing free marketers and multi-national corporate globalization, but this was not the story in the 19th century. Beginning in the 1840s, left-wing globalists became the leaders of the transnational peace and anti-imperialist movements of their times.

Marc-Allen Palen is an historian at the University of Exeter specializing in the intersection of British and American imperialism within the broader history of globalization since 1800. He is co-director of The History and Policy Global Economics and History Forum in London. His commentary has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC, the BBC, and the Conversation, among other international journals. He is the editor of the Imperial & Global Forum. His earlier book is The ‘Conspiracy’ of Free Trade: the Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalization, 1846-1896.

His second book, Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World is published by Princeton University Press. In it, he explores how political economy, gender, humanitarianism, religion and ideology have shaped global imperial expansion. He documents the evolution of thinking about the impact of trade policies with social theories and the connections made not only across the Atlantic, but around the world, linking those policies with war and peace. Hard as it may be to believe these days, by the end of 19th century, an unlikely alliance of liberal radicals, socialist internationalists, feminists, and Christians envisioned free trade as essential for a prosperous and peaceful world order. And they struggled, too, with rampant nationalism, protectionism and geopolitical conflict, as well as exploitation of underdeveloped regions. The more I learned about the actual history, which Dr. Palen documents, the more dismayed I was that this history has been hidden, and the more determined I became to share it.
We spoke with Marc-William Palen on February 20th via Skype.

End fossil-fuel era to address colonial injustices, urges prominent historian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/end-fossil-fuel-era-to-address-colonial-injustices-urges-prominent-historian

Polish farmers dump grain in protest as Ukraine dispute deepens https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/20/polish-farmers-dump-grain-in-protest-as-ukraine-dispute-deepens

Martin Luther King Jr memorial vandalized in Colorado park https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/21/martin-luther-king-jr-memorial-vandalized-denver-colorado-park

Fire Burns Down Mississippi John Hurt Museum https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/22/headlines/fire_burns_down_mississippi_john_hurt_museum

Charles V. Hamilton, an Apostle of ‘Black Power,’ Dies at 94 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/18/us/charles-v-hamilton-dead.html

Michael Graetz THE POWER TO DESTROY: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America

Michael J. Graetz is professor emeritus at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School. He is a leading authority on tax politics and policy, having served in the US Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy and been an expert witness on a variety of tax matters before Congressional Committees.

He has written or co-written many books, including DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS: THE FIGHT OVER TAXING INHERITED WEALTH; THE WOLF AT THE DOOR: THE MENACE OF ECONOMIC INSECURITY AND HOW TO FIGHT IT; and TRUE SECURITY: RETHINKING AMERICAN SOCIAL INSURANCE.

His latest book, is THE POWER TO DESTROY: HOW THE ANTITAX MOVEMENT HIJACKED AMERICA, published by Princeton University Press. We spoke with him via Skype on February 6, 2024.

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Michael Zweig: An Economicst With an Alternative View of the National Debt https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/01/nyregion/long-island-qa-michael-zweig-an-economist-with-an-alternative-view.html?searchResultPosition=1

It Shouldn’t Be a Crime to Disclose Tax Returns https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/24/opinion/thepoint#trump-tax-return-public

Everyone’s Income Taxes Should Be Public https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/opinion/sunday/taxes-public.html

Former Contractor Who Leaked Trump’s Tax Returns Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/29/us/politics/irs-trump-taxes-prison.html

Imagine Getting $840,000 a Year. Not as Your Pay—as a Raise. https://newrepublic.com/article/178570/executive-compensation-rising-congress

How Congress is planning to lift 400,000 kids out of poverty https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/16/24035922/child-tax-credit-wyden-smith-deal

‘A Mockery’: House Passes Tax Bill That Favors Corporations Over Children https://www.commondreams.org/news/corporations-child-tax-credit?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=34e881a33a-Top+News%3A+Thur.+2%2F1%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-f33353396e-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

T.E.A. (Taxed Enough Already?!) by emma’s revolution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGpRN7ZWlp8