Category Archives: economics

Rodents of Unusual Size

Quinn Costello, editor & co-producer of the documentary, RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE, share his thoughts & experiences in creating this joyful exploration of the “Giant Swamp Rats Are Literally Eating Louisiana”.

Hard headed Louisiana fisherman Thomas Gonzales doesn’t know what will hit him next. After decades of hurricanes and oil spills he faces a new threat – hordes of monstrous 20 pound swamp rats. Known as “nutria”, these invasive South American rodents breed faster than the roving squads of hunters can control them. And with their orange teeth and voracious appetite they are eating up the coastal wetlands that protects Thomas and his town of Delacroix Island from hurricanes. But the people who have lived here for generations are not the type of folks who will give up without a fight. Thomas and a pack of lively bounty hunters are hellbent on saving Louisiana before it dissolves beneath their feet. It is man vs. rodent. May the best mammal win.

Award winning non-fiction filmmakers Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer have traveled to many corners of the world in search of unique stories highlighting the important environmental, scientific and cultural issues of contemporary society. With the success of documentary projects as varied as PLAGUES & PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA, THE NEW ENVIRONMENTALISTS and EVERYDAY SUNSHINE: THE STORY OF FISHBONE they have gone on to screen their work at SXSW and Tribeca along with national TV broadcasts on PBS and the Sundance Channel. Along the way they have continued to pursue other sub-cultural documentary subjects, including: rogue economists, lucha libre wrestlers, ganja-preneurs and evangelical Christian surfers.
The filmmakers of RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE grew up in different parts of the country, but a passion for the swamp sealed their pact. Cajun Reeboks were donned and the journey began in search of the notorious “nutria rat”. Four years after first setting sail for Louisiana they emerged from the bayou covered in mosquito bites and an unwavering love for a place at the “End of the World” that is bursting with joy.

One person’s pest is another person’s pet.

Native to South America, nuria were introduced to the Bayou to be farmed for fur production during the Great Depression. Some escaped, and with no natural predators, they out-populated the native muskrats. Their numbers were kept somewhat in check until the anti-fur movement of the 1980s wiped out the fur market.

The population soon sky-rocketed to more than 25 million, literally eating the wetlands & causing tremendous environmental destruction. The state of Louisiana instituted the Nutria Control Program, which pays $5/tail.

Righteous Furs, a collective of fashion designers, prides themselves in utilizing nutria pelts. Their motto is “Save Our Wetlands. Wear more nutria.”

Efforts to create a nutria cuisine have been less successful.

Burned: Are Trees the New Coal?

BURNED: ARE TREES THE NEW COAL? tells the little-known story of the accelerating destruction of our forests for fuel, and probes the policy loopholes, huge subsidies, and blatant green-washing of the burgeoning biomass power industry.

A dedicated group of forest activists, ecologists, carbon scientists, and concerned citizens fight to establish the enormous value of our forests, protect their communities, debunk this false solution to climate change, and alter energy policy both in the US and abroad. The directors/producers of BURNED, Alan Dater & Lisa Merton say, “It’s not too late.”

Alan Dater has decades long experience in many different aspects of film making, working on such films as “Johnny Cash! The Man, His World, His Music”; Emmy Award winning TV medical series, as well as National Geographic Specials. He moved to Vermont in the 1970s, where he started Marlboro Productions.

Lisa Merton joined him in 1989. Together, she & Alan have co-directed/produced such films as HOME TO TIBET, about a Tibetan refugee’s return to his homeland, and TAKING ROOT: THE VISION OF WANGARI MAATHAI, founder of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya, & the first environmentalist, as well as African woman, to win the Nobel Peace Prize. It won numerous international awards. Since 1996, Lisa has been a member of New Day Films, a documentary film collective.

How spending billions on subsidizing an efficient coal-burning power station to burn wood is actually WORSE for the planet than before. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4255010/Idiocy-replacing-coal-power-stations-burning-wood.html)

Jamie Redford – Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution

In this edition of Radio Goes to the Movies film maker, Jamie Redford, discusses his film, Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution. It will be opening the BZN International Film Festival on June 7 in the Crawford Theater at the Emerson Center for Arts & Culture at 7pm, and he will be attending.

Jamie Redford embarks on a colorful personal journey into the dawn of the clean energy era as it creates jobs, turns profits, and makes communities stronger and healthier across the US. Unlikely entrepreneurs in communities from Georgetown, TX to Buffalo, NY reveal pioneering clean energy solutions while James’ discovery of how clean energy works, and what it means at a personal level, becomes the audiences’ discovery too.

Reaching well beyond a great story of technology and innovation, Happening explores issues of human resilience, social justice, embracing the future, and finding hope for our survival.

On June 8, at 10a.m. in the Hager Auditorium of the Museum of the Rockies, he’ll be joining area luminaries in a discussion, Designing for a Clean Energy Revolution in Montana: Design & Construction Experts on the Leading Edge.

Lindsay Schack of Love Schack Architecture is one of the first certified designers in Montana for the Passive House Institute US. She is a licensed architect in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, an adjunct instructor at MSU’s School of Architecture and founding board member of Passive House Rocky Mountains.
Lindsey Love of Love Schack Architecture is an expert in natural materials and construction methods. She built her own hybrid straw bale home in Teton Valley, Idaho and strives to coordinate healthy, holistic design in high performance building assemblies.
Kyle MacVean of Harvest Solar is proud to get up and work for the sun every day. He’s worked in the solar industry for over 10 years and lived in an off-grid, straw-bale house for six years—an experience which has taught him to never take energy for granted.
Susan Bilo serves on the Montana Renewable Energy Association’s Board of Directors and heads Green Compass Sustainability Consulting where she teaches and advocates for natural resource conservation, energy and water efficiency, electric vehicles, and solar-powered net zero energy buildings.
Jaya Mukhopadhyay, Ph.D., LEED AP, teaches courses on Environmental Control Systems at the Montana State University School of Architecture and has over 15 years experience in building energy modeling, energy codes, and assessment of commercial and residential energy performance.

Kevin Kamps: Beyond Nuclear

Seven years to the day, after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daichi plant in Japan, on March 11, 2011, French President, Emmanuel Macron, visited India to seal a deal to sell what at least 2 international groups are calling, “untested, expensive and technically troubled French EPR reactors”.

We speak with Kevin Kamps, a staff member of one of those groups, Beyond Nuclear (http://www.beyondnuclear.org/). We update the national and international situation regarding all things nuclear.

What about the sailors of the USS Ronald Reagan, who were exposed to radiation while engaged in Operation Tomodachi, the humanitarian relief effort responding to the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster? Some of the 4500 sailors have already died. Many more are suffering from radiation specific illnesses. What happened to them, and the lawsuits survivors have brought in the United States against reactor owner/operator, TEPCO? How about Trump administration revisions to the Nuclear Posture Review, expanding first use of nukes, or efforts to prioritize reviving and expanding nuclear power generation in the United States, not to mention efforts by Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, to sell Westinghouse nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia? What about the unsolved – and many believe unsolvable – problem of safe disposal of ensuing radioactive waste products?

Kevin Kamps is a longtime leading opponent of government and industry efforts to dump nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. He is an expert about the risks of radioactive waste generation and storage at reactor sites, as well as transportation through communities across our country. In addition, he focuses on eliminating federal subsidies for new reactors and reprocessing facilities. Kevin Kamps has traveled to Chernobyl in the Ukraine. He founded a Michigan chapter of the international Chernobyl Children’s Project, which brings child victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to the United States for medical help. He has addressed communities in the US & overseas, as well as governmental forums & federal, state and local government agencies.

Rows of trash bags containing radioactive waste from the Fukushima nuclear disaster now litter the area. (courtesy beyondnuclear.org)

Some of the articles cited in today’s interview can be found here:

7 Years on, Sailors Exposed to Fukushima Radiation Seek Their Day in Court https://www.thenation.com/article/seven-years-on-sailors-exposed-to-fukushima-radiation-seek-their-day-in-court/

Injustice At Sea: the Irradiated Sailors of the USS Reagan https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/07/injustice-at-sea-the-irradiated-sailors-of-the-uss-reagan/

Japan Plans to Expose Its People and 2020 Tokyo Olympians to Fukushima Radiation http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41280-japan-plans-to-expose-its-people-and-2020-tokyo-olympians-to-fukushima-radiation

A Tale of Two Vogtles: Georgia Reactors are Nuclear’s Last Stand, and the End of the Road https://www.nirs.org/a-tale-of-two-vogtles/

Trump Administration Rushing Bailout for Nuclear and Coal Market Rules Could Reshape U.S. Energy Policy, Block Renewables https://www.nirs.org/trumps-dirtyenergy-bailout-really/

Pentagon to Allow Nuclear Responses to Non-Nuclear Attacks http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43460-pentagon-to-allow-nuclear-responses-to-non-nuclear-attacks

The Race to Win Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear Reactor Bid Raises Fears of Proliferation https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/24314/the-race-to-win-saudi-arabia-s-nuclear-reactor-bid-raises-fears-of-proliferation

US Energy Secretary Rick Perry with Saudi Energy & Industry Minister, Khalid Bin Abdulaziz Al-Falih (courtesy beyondnuclear.org)

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz LOADED: A Disarming History of the 2nd Amendment

LOADED: A DISARMING HISTORY OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT (City Lights Publishing) – is a provocative, timely, and deeply researched history of gun culture, and how it reflects race and power in the United States. Although LOADED is highly topical as we broadcast because of the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, production of this show actually began last November, 2017. And in case you feel overloaded with coverage of the aftermath of this latest massacre, Professor Dunbar-Ortiz’s history of gun culture and the second amendment is very different from the approach taken by the mainstream media or academia. For one thing, it is rooted in her 50+ years of activism. In the 1960s and 1970s, she was active in the anti-Vietnam War Movement and radical left movements, and worked closely with the SDS, the Weather Underground, and the African National Congress. She was also very active in the women’s rights movement, and from 1968–1970 was a leading figure in the radical feminist group, Cell 16. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades, and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. In 1974, she began teaching in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University – Hayward, and she helped found their Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies, where she is now Professor Emerita.

She has published many books and articles, including Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 . Blood on the Border is about what she saw during the Nicaraguan Contra war against the Sandinistas in the 1980s. Her 2014 book, AN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, radically reframes Eurocentric history.

Her 1977 book, The Great Sioux Nation, was the fundamental document at the first international conference on Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, held at the United Nations’ headquarters in Geneva.

We are also thankful to the ever magnificent Roy Zimmerman for permission to include his “SING ALONG SECOND AMENDMENT SONG” after our interview with Professor Dunbar-Ortiz. You can hear more of his pointed, pithy civic lessons here: http://www.royzimmerman.com/

or see him perform the Sing Along 2nd Amendment song here:

The Killing in Killing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gqwzvtUsec

What would Montana’s greatest statesman do? https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/guest_columnists/guest-column-what-would-montanas-greatest-statesman-do/article_9db8f3c4-d8e0-5812-931c-f1f16455486d.html

The anatomy of mass shootings: a legacy of failure https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/10/us-mass-shootings-history

Why the real defenders of the second amendment oppose the NRA https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/17/second-amendment-nra-corey-brettschneider

The Lessons of a School Shooting–in 1853 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/24/first-us-school-shooting-gun-debate-217704

The Teacher who Taught His Students to Challenge the NRA on the Day They Lost 17 of Their Own https://splinternews.com/the-teacher-who-taught-his-students-to-challenge-the-nr-1823355017

The NRA Wasn’t Always A Front For Gun Makers https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-young-nra-history_us_5a907fbee4b03b55731c2169

David Cay Johnston – It’s Even Worse Than You Think

We welcome back Pulitzer Prize Winning investigative journalist and best-selling author, David Cay Johnston. In this interview recorded on January 26, 2018, we discuss his latest books, IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK: WHAT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS DOING TO AMERICA, just out from Simon & Schuster, and THE MAKING OF DONALD TRUMP, published in 2016 by Melville House.

David Cay Johnston digs deep, gets the facts others evade, ignore or fail to look for – much less find – and exposes exactly how the American system is rigged in favor of the 1% of the 1%.

When he was 18 years old the San Jose Mercury recruited him. His investigations over the next four decades appeared in that paper, The New York Times & other national journals. He exposed LAPD political spying and brutality, and he once hunted down a killer, whom the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had failed to catch, resulting in an innocent man winning acquittal at his fifth trial; revealed news blackouts and manipulations that forced a six-station broadcast chain off the air; deconstructed the way foreign agents from South Africa and Taiwan secretly influenced American government policy; misuse of charitable funds at United Way; and explained the economics of former GE chairman Jack Welch’s retirement perks, prompting Welch to relinquish them.
He teaches business regulation, property and tax law at Syracuse University’s law and graduate business schools.

We last had him on Forthright Radio in 2012, when the 3rd book in his trilogy on the American Economy – The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use “Plain English” to Rob You Blind, which focused on monopolies, had just been published.

We also revisit a segment from this 2012 interview with David Cay Johnston, in which he explicitly states that PG&E’s failure to properly maintain & replace power poles would lead to deadly wildfires, a prediction that came all too tragically true in October 2017.

The full interview from 10-31-12 is posted below this interview:

David Cay Johnston – The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use “Plain English” to Rob You Blind

The other two books were – Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich — and Cheat Everybody Else (2004 Investigative Book of the Year award winner), and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill), both of which were New York Times and Wall Street Journal best sellers.

David Cay Johnston – The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use “Plain English” to Rob You Blind

After our most recent interview with Pulitzer Prize winning, New York Times & Wall Street Journal best selling investigative journalist, David Cay Johnston, about his latest books, IT’S WORSE THAN YOU THINK: WHAT THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS DOING TO AMERICA, & THE MAKING OF DONALD TRUMP, in which we aired a segment from this interview originally broadcast on Oct. 31, 2012, we decided to make the full interview available.

In that segment, he explicitly stated that PG&E’s failure to properly maintain & replace power poles would lead to deadly wildfires, a prediction that came all too tragically true in October 2017.

Todd Miller Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, & Homeland Security

Todd Miller has researched and written about border issues for more than 15 years. His work has appeared in the New York Times, TomDispatch, The Nation, Guernica, Al Jazeera English, and Common Dreams, among other places. He has written two books: Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security and the recently released Storming the Wall: Climate Change, Migration, and Homeland Security , both published by City Lights. He is currently at work on another project investigating the extension of the U.S. border regime abroad–to places far away from U.S. territorial boundaries, but well within its political and economic sphere of influence. He is a contributing editor on border and immigration issues for the North American Congress on Latin America Report on the Americas and its column “Border Wars”.

https://cuencalosojos.org/
” Since the 1990s, the restoration project has embedded galvanized wire cages, called gabions, on the banks and beds of washes.

These gabions are filled to the brim with rocks and go as far as 18 feet deep into the ground.

At first glance, they have the striking appearance of an intricate stone wall, a contrast to the border barrier just 100 yards away.

But instead of keeping people out, they were built to be sponges shaped to the contour of the streambed and riverbank, slowing the water and replenishing the soil with life.

Before they were built, rushing water from monsoon storms would take topsoil and leave cutting erosion. Now, there is water year-round.” – Todd Miller, journalist for Edible Baja

Henry Giroux: America At War With Itself

In this interview, we welcome back Henry Giroux, public intellectual, prolific writer, cultural critic, scholar and one of the founding theorists of critical pedagogy. He has spent a lifetime asking & analyzing important, hard, even scary questions such as these, which I quote from his essay, Thinking Dangerously: The Role of Higher Education in Authoritarian Times (http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41058-thinking-dangerously-the-role-of-higher-education-in-authoritarian-times):

“What happens to democracy when the president of the United States labels critical media outlets as ‘enemies of the people,’ and disparages the search for truth with the blanket term ‘fake news’? What happens to democracy, when individuals and groups are demonized on the basis of their religion? What happens to a society, when critical thinking becomes an object of contempt? What happens to a social order ruled by an economics of contempt, that blames the poor for their condition, and subjects them to a culture of shaming? What happens to a polity, when it retreats into private silos, and becomes indifferent to the use of language deployed in the service of a panicked rage — language that stokes anger, but ignores issues that matter? What happens to a social order, when it treats millions of undocumented immigrants as disposable, potential terrorists and “criminals”? What happens to a country, when the presiding principles of its society are violence and ignorance?”
We discuss these and other questions, and it may surprise you to learn that Henry Giroux’s analysis, although clear-sighted in the face of the forces of dystopia, leads to an energized, engaged vision of collective agency and action.

Henry Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest. He is the author of more than 65 books, has published more than 400 papers, in addition to hundreds of chapters in the books of others, as well as many essays and articles in such journals as Truthout, Truthdig, and CounterPunch. His works have been translated into numerous languages.
He is particularly interested in what he calls the war on youth, the corporatization of higher education, the politics of neo-liberalism, the assault on civic literacy and the collapse of public memory, public pedagogy, the educative nature of politics, and the rise of various youth movements across the globe.

His latest book is America at War With Itself, published by City Lights Books. His forthcoming book, The Public in Peril: Trump and the Menace of American Authoritarianism, is to be published in 2018 by Routledge.

Learn more at https://www.henryagiroux.com/

Dean Baker – Sensible Economics

Dean Baker co-founded The Center for Economic and Policy Research in 1999. His areas of research include housing and macroeconomics, intellectual property, Social Security, Medicare and European labor markets. Before that, he worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, and was an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He has also worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, and the OECD’s Trade Union Advisory Council. He is frequently cited in economics reporting in major media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, and NPR. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian Unlimited (UK), the Huffington Post, TruthOut, and his blog, Beat the Press, features commentary on economic reporting.

He is the author of several books, including Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer; Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better Bargain for Working People; The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive; and The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.

“I have suggested that economists who prescribe policies that turn out badly, or who can’t see multitrillion dollar housing bubbles coming whose collapse sinks the economy, ought to pay a price in terms of their careers. Invariably people think I am joking. When they realize I am serious, they think I am crazy or vindictive.” Dean Baker