Trump’s Attack on Bears Ears Could Alter the Course of American Land Conservation
Wednesday, December 06, 2017
By Kristin Miller, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
In July, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke re-evaluated the national monuments created by the Obama administration. That interim report pegged Bear Ears National Monument in Utah as a sure bet for alteration. The monument as designated by Obama encompasses more than 2,000 square miles long argued over by environmentalists, Native tribes and energy, ranching and development interests. Read more…
The Constitution Gave Us a Tool for Taking Down a Dangerous President
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
By Kristin Miller | Op-Ed
Almost 10 years ago Bill Moyers Journal hosted a freewheeling discussion about impeachment with conservative scholar (and Clinton impeachment article author) Bruce Fein and journalist John Nichols of The Nation. The impetus was a newly released poll that showed some 45 percent of Americans favored starting the impeachment process for President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Read more…
Politics From the Pulpit
Thursday, November 30, 2017
By Susannah Jacob | News Analysis
Tucked inside the enormous House tax proposal is a provision that would roll back a 63-year-old ban on tax-exempt organizations — including churches — from making explicit political endorsements. In 1954, then-Sen. Lyndon Baines Johnson proposed the amendment to section 501(c)(3) of the federal tax code after a brutal campaign during which a tax-exempt group ran advertisements labeling him a communist. Read more…
The Trump-Russia Story Is Coming Together. Here’s How to Make Sense of It
Tuesday, Novemeber 28, 2017
By Bill Moyers | Interview
The news is coming so fast and furious, from so many sources and in so many fragments, that it takes more than a scorecard to keep up with the Trump-Russia connection. It takes a timeline — a “map,” if you will, of where events and names and dates and deeds converge into a story that makes sense of the incredible scandal of the 2016 election and now of the Trump Administration. Read more…
We Supported Their Dictators, Led the Failed “War on Drugs” and Now Deny Them Refuge
Saturday, November 25, 2017
By Victoria Sanford, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
President Donald Trump has tied his executive order giving Congress six months to “fix” DACA to constructing a wall between the US and Mexico as well as a rapid and massive deportation of unaccompanied children and families entering the US without a visa.Read more…
There Is More to the Story of Trump’s Latest Unqualified Judicial Nominee
Friday, November 17, 2017
By Gail Ablow, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
One of Trump’s latest judicial nominees, Brett Talley, has caught the public spotlight for good reason. But the glare of his inexperience is obscuring an even more troubling story about what is at stake in Alabama’s Middle District, where there are currently two vacancies on the bench. Read more…
Moyers and McKibben: Time Is Running Out for the Planet
Saturday, November 11, 2017
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Interview
For 30 years now climate change has been Bill McKibben’s beat, and his latest book, Radio Free Vermont, turns to humor for inspiration as runners go to bottled water for sustenance, and has readers laughing all the way to the finish line. In this interview, McKibben discusses the book and the present political moment.Read more…
Trump Kills CFPB Arbitration Rule: The Little Guy Loses Again
Friday, November 3, 2017
By Gail Ablow, Moyers & Company | Report
President Trump signed a congressional resolution Wednesday that allows financial institutions to block customers (that’s us) from filing class-action lawsuits. In doing so, he grabbed back a tool we were given in July by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that would have helped us fight banks or credit card companies or mortgage lenders and others if they rip us off. Read more…
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the Urgency of Fighting Against the Racist Right-Wing
Monday, October 30, 2017
By Gail Ablow, Moyers & Company | Interview
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is an assistant professor at the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. After Taylor called Donald Trump “a racist, sexist megalomaniac” at a commencement speech earlier this year, she received several deaths threats, leading her to cancel a number of public-speaking events. Read more…
New Investigative Website Fights Rich and Powerful “Who Call the Shots”
Sunday, October 29, 2017
By Gail Ablow, Moyers & Company | Report
Amanda Weaver is inspiring new politicians from the grass roots of greater Chicago by nurturing, supporting and connecting them with a wider network of allies. As executive director of Reclaim Chicago, a political organization, Weaver encourages everyday people in the neighborhoods and suburbs of the city to run for office. Read more…
New Investigative Website Fights Rich and Powerful “Who Call the Shots”
Saturday, October 28, 2017
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Interview
Wendell Potter returns to journalism. Today, he launches a new organization for investigative reporting called Tarbell — a watchdog we’ll wager can bite as well as bark. He’s named it for — well, that’s what you will find out from this conversation between Potter and our senior writer, Michael Winship. Read more…
One Nation, In Sickness and in Health
Monday, October 23, 2017
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
It’s a given that our health care system, one-sixth of our nation’s economy, is a nightmare. And that despite my encomiums of praise for the medical profession stated above, there also are stinkers out there quick to abuse the system and make a big fast buck, especially in the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries. Read more…
Road Kill: Side-Swiping the Environmental Protection Act
Friday, October 20, 2017
By Gail Ablow, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
A senate appropriations subcommittee, led by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) will resist the Trump administration’s efforts to slash spending for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department this week. Last summer, Murkowski warned the White House that there was no chance her panel would agree to cut the EPA’s $8 billion budget by almost a third. But the budget isn’t the only thing that’s endangered. The administration is leading a campaign to toss out a growing list of rules and regulations that protect our environment and the all plants and animals that are trying to thrive alongside us. Read more …
Michelle Alexander and Paul Butler Talking About “Chokehold: Policing Black Men”
Saturday, October 21, 2017
By Staff, Moyers & Company
Earlier this month at the Brooklyn Museum, scholar and MSNBC legal analyst Paul Butler joined Michelle Alexander, civil rights lawyer and author of The New Jim Crow, for a conversation about his latest book, Chokehold: Policing Black Men. As a former federal prosecutor, Butler uses his firsthand experience to demonstrate how the legal system is structured to target and criminalize black men. Read more…
White Nationalism and Christian Right Unite at Values Voter Summit
Friday, October 20, 2017
By Adele M. Stan, Moyers & Company
As the first sitting president to take the podium at Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit, President Trump may have offered history a footnote with his Oct. 13 speech, but by the following day his remarks were all but forgotten, as Steve Bannon’s stemwinder, a steaming stew of vitriol, splashed across mainstream media. On the Sunday shows, Bannon was the focus. Read more…
How the Nazis Used Jim Crow Laws as the Model for Their Race Laws
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company
Scholars and historians have argued for years about whether the US’s own regime of racial oppression in any way inspired the Nazis. In this interview, author James Whitman discusses the meticulous record of a meeting of top lawyers in Nazi Germany, which revealed a deep interest in American race policies. Read more…
A Conversation About American Racism with Ibram X. Kendi
Thursday, October 12, 2017
By Christina Greer, Moyers & Company
The judges’ citation for the winner of the National Book Award for nonfiction, Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning, is both unstinting in its praise and a challenge to readers. Kendi lets no American, past or present, off the hook: “Somebody who challenges discrimination, that has an effect, somebody who maintains it, that has an effect, and somebody who does nothing has an effect.” Read more…
The Psychological Ripple Effects of Mass Shootings
Sunday, October 08, 2017
By Karin Kamp, Moyers & Company | Interview
The latest mass shooting in America — the largest in modern history — has us once again questioning the role of guns in our society and our willingness to allow weapons and ammunition to proliferate throughout. Read more…
Vulture Capitalists Circle Above Puerto Rico Prey
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Interview
Puerto Rico is devastated. Two hurricanes plunged the island into darkness and despair. Crops perish in the fields. The landscape of ruined buildings and towns resemble Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on it. Over 3 million people are desperate for food, water, electricity and shelter. Read more…
Calling Out the Kobach Commission for What It Is
Friday, September 29, 2017
By Emma Olsen Sharkey, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
In the coverage that followed the recent meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity, the media focused on the testimony of John Lott Jr., a gun researcher who argued that the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco’s background check system should be used to check voter eligibility. Read more…
The Americans With Disabilities Act Is Under Threat
Monday, September 25, 2017
By Kristin Miller, Moyers & Company | Report
The optics were bad enough when disabled Americans were being dragged out of capital buildings as they protested potential loss of benefits in the first two iterations of Republican health care bills. For the protestors it was all about Medicaid. The Senate bill did away with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion which would drop millions of low-income Americans from the rolls. Read more…
Why We Need a Universal Basic Income
Saturday, September 23, 2017
By Keri Leigh Merritt, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
As Labor Day approached this year, I awaited the lip service of Republicans praising “job creators” and business owners. I knew full well there was no chance they’d honor the common laborer — the people who feed, house, and transport them; the workers who keep their cities clean and their towns sanitary; the men and women who have raised their children and taken care of their aging and dying parents. Read more…
Can Trump Pardon Himself and His Children?
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
By Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Presidential pardon power is vast, but not limitless. As the Department of Justice makes crystal clear, the presidential pardon power does not extend to crimes that violate the laws of any of the 50 states. Read more…
The Trump Administration Will Always Side With Corporations Over Labor
Sunday, September 17, 2017
By Sharon Block, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
It’s no secret that the Trump administration is corporation-friendly to a fault. For all the talk of the underserved coal miners and workers whose jobs have been stolen by free trade agreements or China, the Oval Office has not been a friendly — or even safe — place for workers in the past eight months. Read more…
Will Trump’s Enduring Legacy Be a Right-Wing Judiciary?
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
By Susannah Jacob, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Michael Brennan’s nomination was one of the latest in Trump’s spree to fill as many open judicial seats as quickly as possible with young judges who fit a far-right, conservative mold. Many of these are lifetime appointments. When Trump entered office, he inherited over 100 judicial vacancies. Read more…
Climate Scientist Katharine Hayhoe on the National Climate Assessment
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
By Theresa Riley, Moyers & Company | Interview
On Monday, Aug. 7, before North Korea, and before Charlottesville, you might recall that The New York Times published an article entitled “Scientists Fear Trump Will Dismiss Blunt Climate Report” that kicked up a storm of press coverage. The draft report on the state of science relating to climate change and its physical impacts is part of the National Climate Assessment (NCA), which is congressionally mandated every four years. Read more…
White Supremacy in the Age of Trump
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
By Keri Leigh Merritt, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Since before the election, poor white voters largely have been blamed for the rise of Donald Trump. Although their complicity in his election is clear and well established, they’re continually targeted as if their actions are the primary reason Trump won. But in fact, higher-earning, college-educated whites supported him at even greater rates. Read more…
Three Trump Speeches and the Death of a Nation
Sunday, August 06, 2017
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Watching Trump last week during what were, arguably, the worst of many horrible days of this presidency, was to see pure, rampaging id. Aggressive, needy, without logic or reason, Trump continues to rule with ignorance and incoherence, seemingly oblivious to the havoc he causes or maybe just thoroughly enjoying it. Read more…
The Latest Sneaky Attempt to Increase Corporate Political Power
Thursday, August 03, 2017
By John Light, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
“If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring,” John Oliver said in 2014 of the tireless efforts of telecomm monopolists to get rid of net neutrality. It’s a tried and true strategy of the wealthy and their legislative allies, and, while Donald Trump’s destructive antics continue to hold America’s attention with the same unyielding grip he uses on foreign dignitaries’ hands, there are a lot of boring things ambling through Congress with corporate favors crammed deep inside. Read more…
We Are Radicals at Heart — Don’t Forget It
Tuesday, July 04, 2017
By Harvey J. Kaye, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
History may seem an extravagance in the face of our immediate crises and confrontations. But we must embrace our radical history by enhancing freedom, equality and democracy — not diminishing them. Read more…
NRA Issues Call for White Supremacy and Armed Insurrection
Saturday, July 1, 2017
By Billy Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Take a look at the newest add from the National Rifle Association and ask yourself if they can go any lower. Ponder this flagrant call for violence, this insidious advocacy of hate delivered with a sneer, this threat of civil war, this despicable use of propaganda to arouse rebellion against the rule of law and the ideals of democracy. Read more…
Dark Money Turns Elections Into Trench Warfare
Saturday, June 24, 2017
By Susannah Jacob, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Tuesday night, 55-year-old Republican candidate Karen Handel defeated 30-year-old Democratic hopeful Jon Ossoff and secured the seat in Georgia’s 6th District in the most expensive congressional race in US history. The $28 million raised by the candidates drew national attention, but the contest was also viewed as an early test of each political party’s strength since Trump’s election. Read more…
Dark Money Turns Elections Into Trench Warfare
Friday, June 23, 2017
By Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
In 1920 journalist Walter Lippmann wrote in Liberty and the News, of World War I, “[n]obody, for example, saw this war. Neither the men in the trenches nor the commanding general. The men saw their trenches, their billets, sometimes they saw an enemy trench, but nobody, unless it be the aviators, saw a battle.” Dark money in our elections leads to similar myopia where the public can’t tell what’s really going on as they are asked to do their civic duty and cast their ballots. Read more…
Red Alert: The First Amendment Is in Danger
Monday, June 05, 2017
By Bernard Weisberger, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Having already banned nosy reporters from news corporations that he doesn’t like, branded their employers as enemies of the nation and expressed a wish to departed FBI Director James Comey that those in the White House who leak his secrets should be jailed, why should there be any doubt that Trump would, if he could, clap behind bars reporters whom, in his own cockeyed vision, he saw as hostile? Read more…
Six Things Trump’s FCC Chairman Doesn’t Want You to Know About Net Neutrality
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
By Timothy Karr, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Under its Trump-annointed chairman, Ajit Pai, the Federal Communications Commission decided this month to revisit its net neutrality ruling. The agency has reopened a docket for public comments on Pai’s proposal to undermine the safeguards needed to protect people from having their internet service providers block, throttle or de-prioritize the online content they want to see. Read more…
The Other Special Prosecutor We Need
Monday, May 29, 2017
By Arn Pearson, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
It’s been one revelation after the other these days about President Trump’s attempts to shut down the FBI’s Russiagate investigation. Turn on the news and you’re bound to hear comparisons to Nixon’s Watergate scandal and phrases like “obstruction of justice,” “intimidating a witness” and “cover-up” being hotly debated. Read more…
As Trump Ignores Climate Change, Seas Threaten to Swallow Alaskan Villages
Saturday, May 27, 2017
By John Light, Moyers & Company | Report
Even as the Trump administration struggles to determine how fully to lean into its climate denial — Should the US remain in the Paris Agreement? Should it sign an international declaration that mentions climate change? — Americans in the Arctic are facing the disruptive effects of three record-breakingly warm years following decades of rising temperatures, rising seas and melting permafrost.Read more…
Are EPA Scientists in Trump’s Crosshairs?
Friday, May 26, 2017
By Ben Adler, Moyers & Company | Report
Anyone worried that the Trump administration will politicize or interfere with sound scientific research heard a warning shot earlier this month, when nine members of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 18-person Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC) suddenly learned that they would not be offered a second three-year term.Read more…
In the Age of Trump, Democracy Reform Is Key
Thursday, May 18, 2017
By Adam Eichen, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
On the surface, it looked like another indication of the backlash against Trump. Approximately 80 people gathered in the pouring rain near Philadelphia’s City Hall Saturday, marking the first day of the March on Harrisburg. Unless we act now, our democracy, the fundamental lifeblood of our political system, may no longer exist. Read more…
How Media Consolidation Threatens Democracy: 857 Channels (and Nothing On)
Monday, May 15, 2017
By John Light, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Trump’s Federal Communications Commission plans to continue a decades-long, lobbyist-backed effort to allow media consolidation, helping corporate bottom lines but hurting independent journalism. Read more…
Donald Trump Is Attempting a Coup — We Must Have a Special Prosecutor
Thursday, May 11, 2017
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
So Donald Trump fired James Comey because the FBI director mistreated Hillary Clinton last summer over her use of private emails. Stop laughing. Trump takes us for chumps. The Republic is nothing to him but a crap game. And he loads the dice. Read more…
The US’s Health Is in the Hands of GOP Frat BoysThe US’s Health Is in the Hands of GOP Frat Boys
Monday, May 08, 2017
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Republicans were willing to vote for a lousy, misbegotten piece of legislation just so they could get the first round of tax cuts for the rich and to make it look as if they had accomplished something. Read more…
New Study Documents Wall Street and Telecoms’ Impressive Control of Congress
Thursday, May 04, 2017
By John Light, Moyers & Company | Report
Back in 2006, Democrat Ed Markey, then a congressman and now a senator from Massachusetts, introduced an amendment to protect net neutrality, the dull name for the important idea that all internet traffic be treated equally by internet service providers. This legislation, it turned out, was a cash cow for Congress. Read more…
Photos: Hundreds of Thousands Mobilize for Climate Justice
Monday, May 01, 2017
By John Light and Jessica R. Calderón, Moyers & Company | Photo Essay
On Trump’s hundredth day in office, some 200,000 protesters marched from the Capitol building to the White House to express their concerns about climate change, the environment and climate justice. The marchers surrounded his new home in an attempt to make their displeasure known. Read more…
One Hundred Days of Deconstruction: Part 3
Thurdsay, April 27, 2017
By Steven Harper, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Trump promised to be a transformational leader. It wasn’t an idle threat. He has assembled an unprecedented governmental wrecking crew. This is the third installment on Trump’s unique combination of kleptocracy and kakistocracy that is reshaping America in ways that most of voters won’t like. Read more…
One Hundred Days of Deconstruction: Part 2
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
By Steven Harper, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Beware of the enemy within. With respect to the US government, the ultimate inside job is well underway. Through key Cabinet appointments, Trump is gutting federal agencies that have improved citizens’ daily lives in ways that most Americans will no longer take for granted. Read more…
One Hundred Days of Deconstruction: Part 1
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
By Steven Harper, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Two months into Trump’s presidency, historian Douglas Brinkley said it would be “the most failed 100 days of any president.” David Gergen, a seasoned adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, agreed. But they’re using a traditional scorecard. With the help of Trump Party senators and loyalists, Steve Bannon and his boss are remaking the US. Read more…
The Waters of Trump’s Washington Are Dark and Deep
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
On Friday, the White House announced that it would no longer make public the logs of who visits the White House. The Obama administration had a policy, with a few exceptions, of keeping such records open and available. But Donald Trump and his gang don’t want you to know with whom they’re doing business. Read more…
Ask Yourself: Will Donald Trump Ever Become President?
Sunday, April 16, 2017
By Robin Claremont, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
After Trump unleashed missiles on a Syrian airfield, members of Washington’s national security establishment and elite pundits swooned. They stood smartly at attention and saluted the commander-in-chief for sending a message to the world, although exactly what the message meant remains far from clear. Read more…
The Surprising Truth Behind Tax Day: Where Your Taxes Go
Saturday, April 15, 2017
By Robin Claremont, Moyers & Company | Report
What if tax day was something we could be proud of as members of a democracy? Would you feel differently about paying taxes if you knew they were going to support public services that you, your family and your community rely on — such as public safety, roads and bridges, schools, health care, social services and national parks? Read more…
The Rich Line Up at the White House ATM
Wednesday, April 05, 2017
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Some of the latest hooey uttered by White House press secretary Sean Spicer — the man from whom a seemingly bottomless wellspring of hooey flows — was his pronouncement the other day that having so many fabulously wealthy men and women working in the White House is a good and wondrous thing. Read more…
Trump and the GOP in Sickness and Ill Health
Thursday, March 30, 2017
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The day after Republicans pulled the plug on Trumpcare (or was it Ryancare?), the front-page headline of the tabloid New York Post asked: “Is There a Doctor in the House?” None were in sight, but there were plenty of quacks wielding butcher knives instead of scalpels as they turned the body politic into a bloody mess and left it gasping for life on the floor of the House. Read more…
The Deep State 2.0
Sunday, March 12, 2017
By Mike Lofgren, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
The prospect of four years of Donald J. Trump’s nonstop rants about imaginary conspiracies against his daughter, wholesale slander against the judicial branch and attacks on the press as enemies of the people has caused some Americans to slip into a comforting form of denial. He will be a blip in our history, they say, because our formal institutions, and the American people, will ultimately prevail against a rogue disruptor. Read more…
Our President Is Up to No Good
Friday, March 10, 2017
By Bill Moyers and Henry A. Giroux, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
As the Global TV Network Chair Professor in McMaster’s English and Cultural Studies Department, Henry A. Giroux has kept a keen eye on American culture and the growth of authoritarian politics in general. After reading Trump’s latest twitter rants, these remarks more pertinent than ever. Read more…
CPAC Dispatch: How Donald Trump Killed Movement Conservatism
Monday, February 27, 2017
By Adele Stan, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Movement conservatism is dead, and Donald Trump killed it. How else to explain the spectacle that is the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference? Now that the “alt-right,” personified by Stephen Bannon, is in the White House, conservative leaders are trying to assess the correct place for it within the greater movement. Read more…
The GOP Plan to Prevent a Repeat of Obama’s Climate Action
Thursday, 9 February 2017
By John Light, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, attracted some attention last week for his opposition to a Supreme Court precedent that undergirds many of the regulations put forth by federal agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Communications Commission. Read more…
Scott Pruitt Will Make America Great Again — for Polluters
Wednesday, 1 February 2017
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video
In this video essay, Bill Moyers takes on President Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has a track record of putting the business interests of the energy sector before the environmental and health interests of the public. Read more…
Dare for Democracy: Three Essential Steps
Sunday, 18 December 2016
By Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Many Americans remain in shock and outrage, unable to grasp how a man who told bald-faced lies, who ridiculed and defamed others, and who boasted of sexual assault could yet ascend to the presidency of the United States. Read more…
Hillary Clinton’s Inaugural Address
Saturday, 10 December 2016
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Imagine that a day or two before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Hillary Clinton, as the candidate who received the greatest number of votes — and after a period of personal reflection and evaluation — addresses the nation. Read more…
Climate Action Is Up to the Rest of Us Now
Saturday, 3 December 2016
By Emily Schwartz Greco, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Responsible Americans can’t give up on shrinking the nation’s carbon footprint while a climate denialist and his fellow travelers have their way with the federal government. And while it’s true that market forces will probably help continue to reduce the nation’s carbon footprint, there’s still a lot of work to be done if Trump makes good on his plans to abandon our climate commitments. Read more…
A Progressive Agenda for Renegotiating NAFTA
Thursday, 24 November 2016
By Timothy A Wise, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump pledged to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, or withdraw the United States from the pact. Although no one at Trump Tower so far has asked me for advice (and I’m not waiting by my phone for a call), I know a little bit about this subject: Eight years ago I helped convene a panel of experts to make recommendations to another president who promised to rewrite NAFTA. Read more…
Weathering the Trump Climate
Sunday, 20 November 2016
By Emily Schwartz Greco, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Yes, there are reasons to fear an impending environmental disaster: Donald Trump has spent much of his campaign claiming the mantle of climate-change-denier-in-chief, and his vice-presidential running mate isn’t much better. Read more…
What Trump Means for the Economy
Sunday, 13 November 2016
By Simon Johnson, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
We must brace ourselves for some serious economic changes in America. For the first time since 2006, the Republicans control the presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives. There is almost no limit on executive authority in this situation and the primary constraint on legislation is the extent to which Donald Trump and congressional Republicans disagree. Read more…
Will Trump Target Both Documented and Undocumented Immigrants?
Friday, 11 November 2016
By Emily Schwartz Greco, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
President-elect Donald Trump’s fixation with immigration suggests that he may have aspirations beyond deporting as many as 11 million undocumented US residents, building a wall along the southern border and barring Muslims from entering the country. Read more…
The Nasty Fallout From Noth Carolina’s Powerful Hog Industry
Wednesday, 09 November 2016
By Karin Kamp, Moyers & Company | Report
A recent editorial in The New York Times on the problem of hog waste in North Carolina nicely illustrates the ugly, long-term consequences of unchecked money in politics. In eastern North Carolina, the Times editorial board writes, “giant pools of bright pink sludge” dot the landscape. They are waste lagoons, places where industrial farms in North Carolina dump billions of gallons of (weak stomach warning) untreated pig urine and feces. North Carolina is home to 8.9 million hogs, making it the second largest pork producer in the nation. Read more…
A Certain Victory for Campaign Finance Reform Looms in Missouri
Sunday, 06 November 2016
By Jo Mannies, Moyers & Company | Report
Campaign finance reformers appear set to celebrate a big win Tuesday in Missouri, where voters are expected to approve a proposed constitutional amendment that would, among other things, reinstate campaign-donation limits in a state that, this year alone, has seen more than $120 million poured into campaigns by writers of six- and seven-figure checks. Read more…
Trickle-Up Democracy: State and Local Ballots Give Voters a Say
Wednesday, 3 November 2016
By Frances Moore Lappé and Adam Eichen, Moyers & Company | Report
Even in a presidential campaign where both candidates are speaking out against the influence of big money in politics, it’s easy to be cynical about the prospects for reform. The failure of Congress to take even baby steps in the right direction is enough to dishearten even the most idealistic among us. Read more…
Environmentalists Want Your Help Building a Climate Congress
Monday, 31 October 2016
By Kathy Kiely, Moyers & Company | Report
A group of California activists are building a tool to raise voter awareness about where candidates stand on climate change and they’re focusing their attention not on the White House, but on the institution at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue that’s been most resistant to respond to the problem. Read more…
Long-Standing Economic Issues Cloud the Future of Both Parties
Monday, 24 October 2016
By Sean Posey, Moyers and Company | News Analysis
As the seemingly endless election season ramped up in early 2015, it appeared certain to the punditocracy that we were headed for a rather predictable election year: Hillary Clinton all but wore the mantle of presumptive nominee, and Jeb Bush or perhaps Marco Rubio looked to be the next nominee in the mold of Mitt Romney. Instead, a precedent- and expectation-shattering year left the entire nation struggling to make sense of it. Read more…
The Real Reason to Worry About Immigrant Voting
Friday, 21 October 2016
By Emily Schwartz Greco, Moyers & Company | Report
While Donald Trump blathers on about a rigged election — a theory downplayed by a wide range of experts and his own running mate — and urges vigilance against hordes of undocumented people casting imaginary ballots, one real problem with this year’s electoral process is the opposite of the dire scenarios the GOP nominee is conjuring up. Read more…
The $1 Billion Election No One Is Noticing
Tuesday, 18 October 2016
By John Light, Moyers & Company | Report
Multimillionaire John Brunner is a victim of money in politics. In 2012, he spent millions to win the Republican nomination for US Senate in Missouri and was defeated, in part because Democrats, in the words of Sen. Claire McCaskill, the incumbent who was up for re-election that year, “spent more money for Todd Akin in the last two weeks of the primary than he spent on his whole primary campaign.” Read more…
Trump’s Threat to the First Amendment
Friday, 14 October 2016
By Kathy Kiely, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Could Donald Trump blow a hole in the First Amendment? Journalists and freedom of the press experts are sufficiently concerned about the prospect that they held a panel, broadcast on C-SPAN, to consider the question on Wednesday night at the National Press Club in Washington. Read more…
Clinton Makes Some Sense on Energy Policy; Trump Makes None
Tuesday, 11 October 2016
By Emily Schwartz Greco, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
As the most Jerry Springer-esque presidential debate on record wound down, the conversation swerved from questions like “did Donald Trump sexually assault a TV journalist or just brag about it on his way to a soap opera shoot” to energy policy, a realm most moderators avoid. Read more…
Boots on the Ground for Public Schools
Monday, 10 October 2016
By Sarah Jaffe, Moyers & Company | Report
The shoulder on Highway 9D between Garrison and Cold Spring, New York, is nearly nonexistent in places, and if you attempt to walk side-by-side your pant leg will get covered in burrs. I learned this last Wednesday, when I joined some 20 marchers on their way from New York City to Albany in pursuit of education funding promised a decade earlier. Read more…
Black Lives Matter Cofounder Alicia Garza on the Global Movement for Black Lives
Wednesday, 05 October 2016
By Karin Kamp, Moyers & Company | Interview
In this email exchange, Garza talks about the challenges facing the movement, Donald Trump’s recent outreach to black voters and how people of all races can best support the goals of Black Lives Matter. But first, she responds to the latest deadly police shootings of black men. Read more…
Doing What the Feds Won’t on Corporate Political Disclosure
Tuesday, 04 October 2016
By Kathy Kiely, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
The Securities and Exchange Commission won’t do it; Congress is emphatically against the idea. But if you think it’s impossible to get corporations to draw back the curtain on their political contributions in the post-Citizens United era, don’t tell Bruce Freed. Read more…
Standing Firm at Standing Rock: Why the Struggle Is Bigger Than One Pipeline
Friday, 30 September 2016
By Sarah Jaffe, Moyers & Company | Report
The echoes of historic struggles are reminders that the fight for water is just a part of the fight for an entire way of life. The grassroots organizing that brought the camp together has helped tribal governments look past the structures imposed on them by the process of colonization. Read more…
The Tracks of John Boehner’s Tears
Wednesday, 28 September 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
There are a few certainties in this world: fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, John Boehner’s gotta cry. Remember how a year ago — just a year ago — the former speaker of the House wept when Pope Francis addressed a joint session of Congress? And then only a couple of days later announced he was stepping down as speaker? Read more…
Will the Biggest Generation Seize the Day November 8?
Saturday, 24 September 2016
By Panyin Conduah, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
To say the 2016 presidential election is full of surprises is an understatement, but the biggest surprise yet could be who turns out to be the kingmaker. In a race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump that’s so close even Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine is refusing to forecast the outcome, the deciding votes could be in the hands of millennials. Read more…
Trump’s Not-So-Great Game of Setting Expectations
Thursday, 22 Septemeber 2016
By Todd Gitlin, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Trump’s game is crystal clear. He’s going way beyond Bush’s 2000 conventional exercise in expectation-lowering. What you’ll see and hear isn’t about his performance; it’s about the moderators’: He aims to pre-insulate himself from serious questioning. Read more…
Breaking the Climate Procrastination Habit
Wednesday, 21 September 2016
By Emily Schwartz Greco, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
President Barack Obama calls climate change the greatest “threat to future generations.” To do something about it, he raised fuel-efficiency standards, launched his currently stalled Clean Power Plan, and tucked $90 billion in clean energy spending into the 2009 stimulus package. Read more…
Election 2016: There’s No Debate
Tuesday, 20 September 2016
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Let’s call the whole thing off. Not the election, although if we only had a magic reset button we could pretend this sorry spectacle never happened and start all over. Read more…
Guess Who’s Winning the Argument on Trade?
Sunday, 18 September 2016
By Kathy Kiely, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
When Thea Lee began what would turn out to be a career of working on trade issues, 25 years ago at the Economic Policy Institute, she was a bit of an outcast in her profession. Times have changed. Read more…
Fact-Checking in the Age of Trump
Friday, 16 September 2016
By Alicia Shepard, Moyers & Company | Report
Glenn Kessler was going to take the night off from The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” blog and just watch Donald Trump’s long-awaited immigration speech in Phoenix on August 31. Read more…
The Normalization of the Deplorables
Thursday, 15 September 2016
By Todd Gitlin, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Trump’s outrages are so frequent that the mob atmosphere at his rallies is evidently no longer terribly “newsworthy.” While Benghazi and emails remain part of everyday reporting over the months, journalists don’t remind us of Trump’s earlier incitements. Read more…
The Feeble False Modesty of Chris Wallace
Tuesday, 13 September 2016
By Todd Gitlin, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Toward the goal of helping viewers and listeners evaluate the abilities of the candidates, one principle should be simple: It’s better for the moderator to dispute one false claim than none; better two than one; better three than two. Read more…
A Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Bill?
Monday, 12 September 2016
By Kathy Kelly, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
It’s far from the kind of sweeping change that backers of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United want. And it’s a long way from public financing for congressional elections. But supporters of Rep. Paul Gosar’s Stop Foreign Donations Affecting Our Elections Act are billing a new campaign finance reform measure as an important sign that Democrats and Republicans can find ways to work together. Read more…
Greasing the Outstretched Palms of the Candidates
Sunday, 11 September 2016
By Michael Winship | News Analysis
The recipe could not be simpler. Mix cynicism with greed, quickly stir and voila! American politics and government served up on a platter to the highest bidder. Read more…
Drugs and Privilege: Big Business, Congress and the EpiPen
Thursday, 01 September 2016
By Michael Winship | News Analysis
Cash and carry has become nothing more than standard operating procedure in politics and government, and it’s wrecking the republic. The whole system is rotten to the core, corrupted by big business and special interests from the seventh son to the seventh son. Read more…
How Billionaire Trump Is Missing Greener Pastures
Wednesday, 31 August 2016
By Emily Schwartz Greco | News Analysis
Considering how much he brags about his business acumen, shouldn’t Donald Trump do a better job of keeping up with economic trends? The “great” America he pines for preceded the advent of today’s globalized information age and the automation that rendered steelmaking a largely worker-free endeavor.Read more…
Trump and His Trumpeting Media
Monday, 29 August 2016
By Todd Gitlin | News Analysis
Insurgent US nativism is flourishing today in no small part because it is encouraged by a national co-production in which two forces converge, intertwine, scratch each others’ backs and otherwise prove mutually indispensable: 1.) Donald Trump and 2.) electronic media, on- and offline. Read more…
Is Trump-Bashing Good for the Media?
Thursday, 25 August 2016
By Neal Gabler | News Analysis
Just about everyone now concedes that the media have it in for Donald Trump. A survey of eight major news organs during the primaries, conducted by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy — one I cited in a previous post — showed that the press grew increasingly hostile to Trump, peaking at 61 percent negative to 39 percent positive at the end of the primary season. Read more…
Trickle-Down Election Economics: How Big Money Can Affect Small Races
Wednesday, 24 August 2016
By Sarah Jaffe | Report
At a press event in Kingston, New York, a Hudson Valley community about 90 miles north of Manhattan, the local Democratic congressional candidate, Zephyr Teachout, earlier this month called for a debate. But not with her Republican opponent, John Faso. Read more…
Enhancing Turnout: A Primary Concern
Tuesday, 23 August 2016
By Allegra Chapman | Report
American democracy has been on a roll. Over the past few weeks, courts across the country have affirmed that we are better when everyone participates and each voter’s voice is heard. Read more…
Donald Trump Must Release His Tax Returns
Friday, 12 August 2016
By Michael Winship | Op-Ed
First things first, Donald Trump: Release. Your. Tax. Returns. Read more…
What the Democratic Party Could Learn From Its Overseas Footsoldiers
Monday, 08 August 2016
By Adam Eichen and Bob Vallier | Op-Ed
The approximately 8 million American expats make up a voting bloc nearly double that of Washington state, the 13th most populous state in the nation. Were they to constitute a state, they would have about 14 electoral votes. Read more…
How the GOP’s Cynical Election Strategy Is Imploding
Friday, 05 August 2016
By David Daley | Op-Ed
As Donald Trump enmeshed himself in a bitter fight with the parents of an American Muslim military hero — and Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and John McCain looked to put distance between themselves and their party’s presidential nominee — there’s actually worse news for Republicans. Read more…
Patriot Games, From Watergate to Email Hacks
Friday, 29 July 2016
By Mike Lofgren | Op-Ed
There has been a break-in at the Democratic National Committee. Documents were stolen with the apparent intention of manipulating the results of a presidential election. Read more…
Convention Dissent: There’s Less Than Meets the Eye
Thursday, 28 July 2016
By Eric Alterman | Op-Ed
On a night of inspiring speeches and calls for unity, a media desperate for a “Democratic disarray” narrative upon which to hang their quote-stringing, I mean reporting, jumped on the recalcitrant Bernie Bros meme and wouldn’t let it go. Read more…
Elizabeth Warren Names Trump’s Racism for What It Is: A Political Weapon
Wednesday, 27 July 2016
By Ian Haney López | News Analysis
The attention on Day One of the Democratic Convention was on healing rifts in the party, but the most significant moment may have slipped under the radar, in the framing of the arguments against Donald Trump. There, something truly new happened, and no one is yet paying attention. Read more…
Will Bernie Sanders’ Political Movement Have Life Beyond the DNC?
Tuesday, 26 July 2016
By John Light | Report
Along with the Democratic party officials, delegates, lobbyists and members of the media who flocked to Philadelphia this weekend came tens of thousands of activists — a number that will likely continue to grow during the four days of the party’s presidential nominating convention, officially kicking off Monday night with speeches from first lady Michelle Obama and former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. Read more…
Donald Trump’s Dark and Scary Night
Saturday, 23 July 2016
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship | News Analysis
The GOP’s new big dog blew the whistle Thursday night for nearly an hour and a half and it was loud and shrill enough to reach the ears of every angry, resentful, disaffected white American. The tone was divisive, dark, dystopian and grim. Read more…
What’s on Display in Cleveland? The Republican Id
Thursday, 21 July 2016
By Eric Alterman | News Analysis
What is on display at the RNC in Cleveland is the Republican id. We always suspected it would look something like this. But even though it reared its ugly head on occasion on Fox News or in Congress — on the lips of some right-wing preacher or billionaire hedge-fund manager. Read more…
I Don’t Know Much, but I Know Why Black Lives Matter
Monday, 18 July 2016
By Michael Winship | Opinion
Philando Castile and I share birthdays in July. This year, I celebrated mine with friends and family. But Castile’s friends and family are mourning his death, killed by a police officer in the St. Paul, Minnesota, suburbs after he was pulled over for a broken taillight. Read more…
Is What’s Good for Facebook Not so Good for Democracy?
Saturday, 16 July 2016
By Sarah Jaffe | News Analysis
Around the country, thousands have returned to the streets again to protest the deaths of black people at the hands of the police. One of those deaths, the shooting of 32-year-old Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, was broadcast on Facebook Live by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, spurring the outrage that prompted people around the country to act. Read more…
The Icelandic Pirate Party and the Search for a New Democracy
Thursday, 14 July 2016
By Gabriel Dunsmith and Adam Eichen | News Analysis
Inside a modernist warehouse alongside the ocean in Reykjavík, Iceland’s capital city, four men sit around a table discussing the country’s drug policies. A skull-and-crossbones flag adorns the wall and a cheap blow-up sword hangs over one door frame. Though they aren’t wearing eyepatches or hunting for treasure, these Icelanders call themselves Pirates, and they are drafting policy for a new, insurgent political party, the Pirate Party. Read more…
How the Media Overthrew Party Politics
Tuesday, 12 July 2016
By Neal Gabler | Op-Ed
No matter how this presidential election turns out, it is crystal clear we are in the midst of a political revolution — and the media are a primary reason why. Never before has there been a major-party candidate created almost wholly by the media, full-blown and virtually outside the boundaries of the traditional parties’ apparatuses. Read more…
Following Horrific Violence, Something More Is Required of Us
Monday, 11 July 2016
By Michelle Alexander, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
This nation was founded on the idea that some lives don’t matter. Freedom and justice for some, not all. That’s the foundation. Yes, progress has been made in some respects, but it hasn’t come easy. There’s an unfinished revolution waiting to be won. Read more…
For the Senate, Transparency Is a Slow Process
Sunday, 10 July 2016
By Kathy Kiely, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Last week, the books closed on the second quarter of fundraising for this year’s congressional candidates. On July 15, the latest campaign-finance reports are due at the Federal Election Commission, giving the latest update on the money behind some of the people who want to represent us. Read more…
The Democrats Ignore the 500-Pound Lobbyist in the Room
Thursday, 08 July 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
In all of the 35 single-spaced pages of the Democratic Party’s platform draft, there is just one mention of lobbying. One. Oh, it says some fine uplifting things about voters lacking a proper voice in government, about money and politics and the need to overturn Citizens United and Buckley v. Valeo, two of the Supreme Court decisions that unleashed a deluge of dollars into our electoral system. Read more…
Missing the Biggest Story About Trump’s Twitter Images
Wednesday, O6 July 2016
By Todd Gitlin, Moyers & Company | Opinion
Over the holiday weekend, major media rightly piled on about Donald Trump’s recent recycling of neo-Nazi imagery — in particular his Hillary-hating blast featuring a six-point star affixed onto a heap of $100 bills. As both The New York Times and The Washington Post prominently reported, Trump cut and pasted neo-Nazi images from the internet when he unleashed the latest round of his Twitter barrage at Hillary Clinton as “most corrupt candidate ever.” Read more…
Dark Money: How You Can See More of It, Thanks to the FCC
Sunday, 03 July 2016
By Kathy Kiely, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
While the Federal Election Commission may be hopelessly gridlocked along partisan lines when it comes to campaign-finance regulation, another arm of the government is providing journalists and citizen watchdogs with an important new tool for understanding who is trying to influence the election and how much is being spent to do so. Read more…
The Donald Trump Story You’re Not Hearing About
Friday, 24 June 2016
By Todd Gitlin, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
While there are some financial subjects on which the media has dared to grill the billionaire — George Stephanopoulos got Trump to deliver a “no” when he asked about his refusal to release his recent tax returns — there has been remarkably little interest shown in some of Trump’s less-than-savory connections. Read more…
Trump, His Virus and the Dark Age of Unreason
Friday, 17 June 2016
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
There’s a virus infecting our politics and right now it’s flourishing with a scarlet heat. It feeds on fear, paranoia and bigotry. All that was required for it to spread was a timely opportunity — and an opportunist with no scruples. Read more…
The “Truth” According to Trump
Thursday, 16 June 2016
By Todd Gitlin, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
After the weekend’s carnage in Orlando, Donald Trump didn’t wait long before launching yet another guided missile full of insinuation. He didn’t exactly say that the massacre was the doing of an unreconstructed Mau-Mau descendant born in Kenya. Trump is craftier than that. Read more…
Did the Corporate Press Take Down Bernie Sanders?
Wednesday, 15 June 2016
By Neal Gabler, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Last week, even before Hillary Clinton’s primary victory in California assured her the Democratic presidential nomination, the Associated Press had already declared her the presumptive nominee. Bernie Sanders and his supporters were sore, and they had a right to be. Read more…
Debbie Wasserman Schultz Has a Change of Heart, but Too Little, Too Late
Wednesday, 08 June 2016
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Return with us now to the saga of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the soul of the Democratic Party. First, a quick recap: Rep. Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), chair of the Democratic National Committee, also has been an advocate for the payday loan industry. Read more…
How Not to Interview Mitch McConnell
Tuesday, 07 June 2016
By Todd Gitlin, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
While McConnell plays the long game of persuading America that the Republican view of the world is reasonable, Charlie Rose on June 1 responded with his own master game: softball. His delivery is smooth, his windups lengthy and dotted with theatrical pauses. He plays host, not interlocutor.Read more…
Is the Media Recalculating How It Covers Trump?
Friday, 03 June 2016
By Todd Gitlin, Moyers & Company | Report
It may well be that some reporters feeling chagrined that a candidate so indifferent to fact and impervious to correction (“thousands of Muslims” in New Jersey cheered on 9/11, “There is no drought” in California; it would be tedious to go on) has fared so well in the Republican campaign and in polls. Read more…
All the Presumptive Nominee’s Men
Friday, 27 May 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
If for some reason you aren’t already appalled by the specter of a con artist occupying the Oval Office, a man who would lie about what he had for breakfast, look to those with whom he has chosen to surround himself. Start with political dirty trickster and sleaze merchant Roger Stone. Read more…
Elites vs. Too Much Democracy: Andrew Sullivan’s Afraid of Popular Self-Government
Wednesday, 25 May 2016
By Mike Lofgren, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
British expatriate writer Andrew Sullivan recently returned to the public eye with a piece that has aroused considerable comment, some of it reasonably on point, and some bloviatingly incoherent. Read more…
Why Hating the Media Could Make the Difference in November
Tuesday, 24 May 2016
By Neal Gabler, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
As the political pundits keep reminding us, this might be called the “hate” election. Both major parties’ presumptive nominees, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have historically high net unfavorable ratings — so high that voters are said to be casting their ballots against a candidate rather than in favor of one. The question seems to be: Whom do you hate less? Read more…
Democrats Can’t Unite Unless Wasserman Schultz Goes
Monday, 23 May 2016
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Unless she steps down now, the Democratic convention will be dominated by someone who represents everything that has gone wrong with the party and Washington. Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be bringing the gavel down on progressive hopes of returning the party to its legacy. Read more…
Why Trump Can Lie and No One Seems to Care
Monday, 16 May 2016
By Neal Gabler, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
In an ordinary political season, perhaps Trump would be under fire for his habitual untruths, like the one that Ted Cruz’s father might have been involved with Lee Harvey Oswald. This time around, though, neither the media nor the public — least of all his supporters — seem to care. Read more…
The Ghosts of 1968 Haunt the Election of 2016
Sunday, 15 May 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Watching the mad, mad, mad, mad world that is the 2016 presidential campaign, I was trying to remember a presidential campaign that was as jaw-dropping, at least in my lifetime, and easily settled on 1968. Read more…
The Media Myth of the Working-Class Reagan Democrats
Monday, 9 May 2016
By Neal Gabler, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, we are likely to get all sorts of mainstream media analysis about how his narrow pathway to Election Day victory runs through white working-class America, the way Ronald Reagan’s did, while the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, must corral young people, minorities and the well-educated. Read more…
Eddie Glaude Jr. on the US Racial “Value Gap”
Thursday, 5 May 2016
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Audio Interview
I’m holding in my hand what has been called “one of the most daring books of the 21st century,” a “book for the ages,” “bracing,” “unrelenting.” The title is Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, and it breathes with prophetic fire. Read more…
The Mainstream Media’s Big Disconnect: Why They Don’t Get Middle America
Tuesday, 26 April 2016
By Neal Gabler, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
To their everlasting discredit, most of the MSM Big Feet, which is what the late journalist Richard Ben Cramer labeled the self-important, pontificating political reporters and pundits who dominate our press, got it all wrong about Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Read more…
“Eye in the Sky” Screenwriter Guy Hibbert: Drone Warfare and the Kill Chain
Monday, 25 April 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
One key element of the “Rumsfeld Doctrine” of warfare has survived and exponentially grown: drone warfare — small, unmanned aircraft sent into the air for surveillance and combat, delivering payloads allegedly aimed at terrorists and other enemies but all too often deadly to civilians. Read more…
This Election’s Teaching Our Kids Bad Habits
Friday, 22 April 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
As this grim electoral season cycles on, I sometimes think we’re all living in Ghostbusters II, with that river of ugly pink slime coursing underneath our feet, violently reacting to our collective negativity and hate and making them worse. Read more…
Bill Moyers: Campaign Finance Reform — It’s Not Just Liberals Anymore
Thursday, 21 April 2016
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Audio Interview
When I first met Richard Painter some months ago, I thought he must be the loneliest man in the Republican Party. He’s a conservative, and, of course, I’m not. But he believes, as I do, that there’s too much money in politics. Read more…
Panama Papers Offer More Evidence That Free Trade Isn’t Really Free
Thursday, 14 April 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney pushed for, and President Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton consummated, the Panama free trade agreement — an early investment in corporate support and further evidence that both parties are too often in league as agents of corporate interests. Read more…
Why the National Enquirer’s Hot Air Is Filling the Mainstream Media’s Balloon
Tuesday, 04 April 2016
By Neal Gabler, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
“Hot Air” — that was The Huffington Post homepage headline last Sunday on the National Enquirer’s exclusive that GOP presidential aspirant Ted Cruz allegedly had five affairs. Read more…
A Bird, a Plane? No, It’s Superdelegates!
Sunday, 03 April 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Last week, our suggestion that Hillary Clinton call for the resignations of her pals Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz got a big response. But a few people misunderstood what we were saying. Read more…
Donald Trump Triggers a Media Civil War
Tuesday, 29 March 2016
By Neal Gabler, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
If Donald Trump didn’t constitute, in this year’s favorite word, an existential threat to American democracy, the contortions into which he has thrown the Republican Party, as they simultaneously try to thwart him while espousing his basic policies, would be hilarious. Read more…
Time for These Two Democrats to Go
Wednesday, 23 March 2016
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
There are two Democrats whose resignation from office right now would do their party and country a service. Their disappearance might also help Hillary Clinton convince skeptical Democrats that her nomination, if it happens, is about the future, and not about resurrecting and ratifying the worst aspects of the first Clinton reign when she and her husband rarely met a donor to whom they wouldn’t try to auction a sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom. Read more…
The GOP Elites Have Themselves to Blame
Wednesday, 16 March 2016
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
From their “Dark Money” bagman Karl Rove to their philosophical guru David Brooks, the GOP elites are in a tizzy over saving the Republican Party from Donald Trump and the other intruders, extremists who have fallen in behind Trump as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But who will save the party from the elites? Read more…
When the Poetry of Campaigning Becomes a Cheesy, Dirty Limerick
Friday, 04 March 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
If, as the saying goes, campaigning is poetry and governing is prose, this year’s GOP presidential race has degenerated into a cheesy, dirty limerick. There’s Donald Trump insulting the size of Marco Rubio’s mouth and ears, and Rubio making fun of Trump’s spray tan and small hands. Read more…
Does Mitch McConnell Really Give a Damn About the Supreme Court?
Friday, 26 February 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Tailoring his positions to adjust to the shifting seasons, what sets Mitch McConnell apart is that his motives aren’t really ideological but so baldly about holding onto personal power. His opposition to Obama’s naming of a Scalia replacement puts him in solid with far-right Republicans. Read more…
ExxonMobil – More than Fifty Proud Years of Melting Glaciers!
Friday, 19 February 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
From the Department of “Time Makes Ancient Good Uncouth” comes this historical oddity, a double page advertisement from the February 2, 1962, issue of LIFE magazine extolling the wonders of Humble Oil and Refining, the company now known as ExxonMobil, proudly boasting that “Each Day Humble Supplies Enough Energy to Melt 7 Million Tons of Glacier!” Read more…
The Kochs Are Ghostwriting the United States’ Story
Wednesday, 10 February 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Gather round for the word of the day: metanarrative. Definitions vary but let’s say it’s one big narrative that connects the meaning of events to a belief thought to be an essential truth, the storytelling equivalent of the unified field theory in physics. Read more…
Naomi Klein: Climate Change “Not Just About Things Getting Hotter”
Thursday, 04 February 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Interview
In a wide-ranging conversation, the journalist and climate activist spoke a great deal about that recent climate agreement in Paris, and more widely about her life and work, politics, the continuing right-wing denial of global warming, and the climate justice movement. Read more…
Let’s Ask Obama to Give This Speech Next
Friday, 29 January 2016
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Despite President Obama’s own apostasy, he has spoken eloquently over the years against the present campaign-finance system. Unfortunately, he has done nothing about it. He’s gone AWOL in our biggest battle for democracy. It’s time for him to make federal contractors disclose their political spending. Read more…
Money Men Say, “Voters Move Over, It’s Not Your Election!”
Monday, 25 January 2016
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Here’s the real value of all that campaign cash and lobbying largesse: underwriting a willingness among legislators and government officials to bend the rules, slip in the necessary loopholes and look the other way when it comes time for the rich to hide their fortunes. Read more…
Tell the Truth About Bernie’s Health Care Stand
Friday, 15 January 2016
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The Clinton campaign just made a serious mistake. They sent Hillary and Bill Clinton’s daughter Chelsea out on behalf of her mother to bash Sen. Bernie Sanders on the issue of health care. Unfortunately, Chelsea Clinton misrepresented Senator Sanders’ position. Read more…
GOP Tickles the Dragon’s Tail
Thursday, 14 January 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
After years of tickling the dragon’s tail, flirting with the demagoguery of the right wing in the US, and egging on a growing rage within a core constituency of disaffected, working class white Americans, the dragon has started to breathe fire, and the flames have spread in all directions. The result is the maddening success of raving nativist Donald Trump and to a lesser extent, Senator Ted Cruz. Read more…
With the New Year, the American Parade of Politics and Prejudice Marches On
Sunday, 10 January 2016
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Philadelphia, Cradle of Liberty and City of Brotherly Love, was anything but on New Year’s Day. Visiting with family, we’d all decided to meet up at the annual Mummers’ Parade. Read more…
Undercovered in 2015: The Link Between Deportation and Incarceration, and More
Tuesday, 29 December 2015
By Bill Moyers.com Staff and Contributors, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Around this time every year, BillMoyers.com asks reporters, editors and bloggers which key story they feel the mainstream media failed to cover adequately over the last 12 months. This is the first installment of a two-part series. Read more…
The Christmas Day That Peace Broke Out
Friday, 25 December 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
You would scarcely know it here in the United States, but since last year, the British, French, Germans and others of our western allies have been commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I, a conflict of extreme foolishness and colossal consequences, like almost every other. Read more…
The Plutocrats Are Winning. Don’t Let Them!
Wednesday, 23 December 2015
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The plutocrats are selling off of the Republic, piece by piece. The vast inequality they are creating is a death sentence for government by consent of the people. This is the fight of our lives and how it ends is up to us. Read more…
Bad News for Democracy Is Great News for TV Profits
Monday, 21 December 2015
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
The networks have grasped Donald Trump to their collective bosom like the winner of one of those misogynistic, televised beauty pageants he owns. Each pronouncement from the Sultan of Slur is treated as epic, no matter how deeply insulting, bigoted or just plain ridiculous. Read more…
Lurking Within That Ominous, Omnibus Spending Bill
Monday, 21 December 2015
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
There is an unwritten rule in Congress that before you do even a little for the working class you must do a lot for the donor class. So while the $1.1 trillion – yes, that’s a “t” – budget bill now winding its way to passage contains some tax breaks for low-income workers, in reality, it’s a bonanza for Big Business. Read more…
In Congress, Christmas Is a Time of Giving – and Receiving
Sunday, 13 December 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
I was planning to write a festive poem to Congress as they approach their merry holiday recess but couldn’t come up with a rhyme for “dysfunctional.” Read more…
The GOP on the Eve of Destruction
Sunday, 06 December 2015
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
For reasons hard to fathom, the Republicans seem to have made up their minds: they will divide, degrade and secede from the Union. They will do so with bullying, lies and manipulation, a willingness to say anything, no matter how daft or wrong. Read more…
“Spotlight” Celebrates Heroes of Investigative Reporting – and Democracy
Sunday, 29 November 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Film Review
Long before I ever set foot in an actual, working newsroom, I was a sucker for movies and TV shows about journalism and reporters: the snappy dialogue, the nose for a scoop, the determination to get at the truth and expose the bad guys. Read more…
The Disconnect Between Benjamin Netanyahu and Reality
Friday, 13 November 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Netanyahu is part of a bigger problem, ginning up fear and paranoia among the Israeli population to solidify his support, much as he did this past March during the nation’s elections. Because it works so well for him, this disconnect between Netanyahu and reality is commonplace. Read More…
When the Rich Took Over Our Neighborhood
Thursday, 05 November 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The Chinese restaurant across the street from me – one of the last, reasonably priced joints in the neighborhood – closed last weekend. Their lease was up for renewal and the rent increased from $5,000 a month to $25,000. Read More…
The Night the Candidates Were Speechless
Thursday, 29 October 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The convergence of Tuesday night’s broadcast interruption during the first game of the World Series – caused by an electronics failure and power outage – and Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate brings to mind one of the most memorable TV snafus in history. Read More…
The Paradox of Paul Ryan: Why the Tea Party’s Right to Be Wary
Wednesday, 28 October 2015
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Only in a world where Cosmopolitan magazine can declare the Kardashians “America’s First Family” and the multi-billionaire loose cannon Donald Trump is perceived by millions as the potential steward of our nuclear arsenal could about-to-be Speaker of the House Paul Ryan be savaged as insufficiently right-wing. Read more…
What One Historian Wishes Bernie Sanders Said About Being a Socialist
Friday, 16 October 2015
By Bernard Weisberger, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Social democracy simply means is a system that leaves room for small enterprises and individual liberty but also recognizes the fact that we’re all part of a larger community, and what hurts any one group of us eventually hurts us all. Read more…
The Trade Creature Walks Among Us!
Thursday, 08 October 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Die, monster, die! Every time you think that beast called the Trans-Pacific Partnership – TPP for short – is finished, it comes back like a bad penny; or in this case, trillions and trillions and trillions of bad pennies. Read more…
Who’s the Guy in the White Suit Next to All Those Billionaires?
Friday, 02 October 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
If you were taking a close look at and giving a careful listen to some of those surrounding Pope Francis during his visit here in New York last week, you could practically hear joints pop and muscles groan as the superwealthy contorted themselves to thread the needle and purchase their way into the pontiff’s good graces. Read more…
The Pope Smokes Out Congress on Climate Change
Wednesday, 23 September 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The funniest line of the last few days came from Arizona’s Republican Congressman Paul Gosar. Resentful that Pope Francis might blaspheme the sacred chamber of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body with some inconvenient truth about global warming, Gosar announced he would boycott the Holy Father’s visit to Capitol Hill. Read more…
Congress Is a Confederacy of Dunces
Thursday, 17 September 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Already we’re deep into September and Congress has reconvened in Washington, prompting many commentators to compare its return after summer’s recess to that of fresh-faced students coming back to school, sharpening their pencils, ready to learn, be cooperative and prepared for something new. Read more…
For Immigrants – and All of Us – a Time to Fight
Tuesday, 15 September 2015
By Bernard A. Weisberger, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
It has so far annoyed but not really surprised me that Donald Trump, despite being an obnoxious bully, has defied expectations with a steady rise in the public opinion polls. It may be that his buffoonery and megalomania are simply more attractive to some early voters than rival candidates, with their solemn professions that what pushes them into the grind of campaigning is their dedication to promoting the public welfare. Read more…
The August Day Mark Twain Met Donald Trump
Thursday, 10 September 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Vandals and Mark Twain. The two ideas tangoed in my head and naturally danced me over to Donald Trump. We were having a quiet weekend’s interlude in upstate New York but even there it was impossible to ignore the cacophony of Trump’s verbal vandalism and braying pitch to nativism and bigotry. Such jingoism was just the kind of ideological humbuggery Mark Twain loved to puncture. Yet he would agree with Trump’s – and our – disgust for the current, disheveled and inert state of our governance. Read more…
Congress’ Cat Burglars Are Pulling a Fast One on TPP
Tuesday, 23 June 2015
By Bill Moyers and Bernard A. Weisberger, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
“With cat-like tread upon our foes we steal.” So boasted Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance as they decided to try a little burglary for a change. And “steal” is the appropriate word. It’s hardly a surprise that Republican congressional leaders and their cadre of Democratic allies spurred on by Barack Obama are resorting to a bagful of parliamentary tricks to put the Trans-Pacific Partnership on a “take it or leave it but you can’t change it” fast-track to enactment by Tuesday. Read more…
Turn Left on Main Street
Thursday, 04 June 2015
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The progressive agenda isn’t “left wing.” The progressive agenda is the US story – from ending slavery to ending segregation to establishing a woman’s right to vote to Social Security, the right to organize, and the fight for fair pay and against income inequality. Strip those from our history and you might as well contract the US out to the Chamber of Commerce.
Bill Moyers: The Challenge of Journalism Is to Survive in the Pressure Cooker of Plutocracy
Friday, 29 May 2015
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The following remarks were made by Bill Moyers at the presentation of the Helen Bernstein Book Awards for Excellence in Journalism. The ceremony took place at the New York Public Library on May 26, 2015. Read More…
Populism 2015: Construction Crew for Democracy
Monday, 04 May 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
To the blare of sounding brass and booming drums, some 800 activists and community organizers from around the country recently converged on Washington, DC. We are living, breathing proof, they announced, that if we can’t get change from our representatives in the capital, we’ll bring it to them, and work to make them hear what must be done. Read More…
New Report: Big Banks Require Tellers to Use Predatory Practices
Monday, 13 April 2015
By Katie Rose Quandt, Moyers & Company | Report
Front-line workers at our nation’s big banks – tellers, loan interviewers and customer service representatives – are required by their employers to exploit customers, according to a revealing report out today from the Center for Popular Democracy. Read More…
Israelis and Republicans Teach Each Other Politics
Tuesday, 24 March 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
For a long time now, American political consultants have benefited from a lucrative sideline, selling their alleged expertise to politicians in Israel. (It was Democratic strategist James Carville who, after working on a campaign for former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, joked that the key to victory in Israel was who won “that all-important Jewish vote.”) Read More…
Albert Maysles, RIP
Tuesday, 10 March 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
A word about documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, who died last week. He was, as New Yorker film journalist and essayist Richard Brody aptly wrote, “one of the crucial artists of modern documentary filmmaking — or, simply, one of the most important filmmakers of the past half-century.” Read More…
Netanyahu Speaks, Money Talks
Thursday, 05 March 2015
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Netanyahu gets the best of both of Adelson’s worlds – his powerful propaganda machine in Israel and his campaign cash here in the United States. Combined, they allow Netanyahu to usurp American foreign policy as he manipulates an obliging US Congress enamored of Adelson’s millions, pushing it further to the right on Israel and the Middle East. Read More…
“A Red Letter Day” at the FCC – Net Neutrality Wins
Sunday, 01 March 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Report
There was snow in Washington, DC, Thursday morning, which always throws the federal capital into tailspins. So the marching band that the media reform group Free Press had hired to throw a parade for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler canceled, the wimps. Nevertheless, a small, hearty group of activists braved the flurries and slippery streets to gather outside the FCC before the day’s historic meeting. They were there to thank Wheeler and celebrate the imminent passage of new rules to protect Net neutrality and preserve a free and open Internet. Read More…
The Awesome Life of a US Congressman
Tuesday, 24 February 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Like one of the characters from “Downton Abbey,” Aaron Schock has made quite a climb, from public servant downstairs to pampered upstairs aristocrat. Meanwhile, when he’s not jetting to and fro, raising and spending cash, perhaps Congressman Aaron Schock can dream up new ways of raking in money — and spending it — as he sits in his ornate new office. What next? Read More…
Your Turn: Aging in America
Saturday, 21 February 2015
By Karin Kamp, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Is the US in a good position to care for aging people? Hundreds of people shared the financial, personal and moral dilemmas they are currently facing in caring for an aging family member or in making decisions about their own futures. Read More…
The Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree, Brutality’s Never Far Away
Friday, 06 February 2015
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
It was hard to get back to sleep the night we heard the news of the Jordanian pilot’s horrendous end. ISIS be damned! I thought. But with the next breath I could only think that our own barbarians did not have to wait at any gate. Read More…
The Super-Rich Can’t Hide From the Rest of Us
Tuesday, 03 February 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The rich getting ready to run away from the mess they’ve helped create. But instead of holding off the barbarians at the gates, they are the barbarians. Take your ill-gotten gains behind the walls of your Fortress of Solitude, you ubermensches, and pull up the drawbridge behind you. Read More…
Dispatch From Sundance: “How to Change the World”
Saturday, 31 January 2015
By Tom Roston, Moyers & Company | Interview
A ragged band of Canadians took a fishing boat into the frigid waters of the North Pacific Ocean in 1971 to try to stop a nuclear weapons test on the island of Amchitka. With that action, they started the environmental group Greenpeace and, in addition to saving many a whale, revolutionized political activism and advocacy journalism. Read More…
Not So Fast, Net Neutrality
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Over the last few months, things have been looking good for keeping the Internet open to everyone. A little too good, as far as Congress is concerned, which is why members and the corporate lobbyists who write them hefty checks have launched a last-ditch legislative effort to scuttle net neutrality. Read More…
Why Campaign Finance Reform Is the First Issue That We Must Address
Sunday, 25 January 2015
By Katie Rose Quandt, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
President Obama punctuated his State of the Union with a repeated refrain: “Surely we can agree.” With that mantra, he reminded us of our basic, universally shared values, foremost among them the inherent worth of every American life and the importance of giving all citizens a chance to succeed. Read More…
The Spectacle of Illiteracy and the Crisis of Democracy
Saturday, 24 January 2015
By Henry A. Giroux, Moyers & Company | Book Excerpt
C. Wright Mills argued 50 years ago that one important measure of the demise of vibrant democracy and the corresponding impoverishment of political life can be found in the increasing inability of a society to translate private troubles to broader public issues. Read More…
In SOTU, President Punts on Income Inequality
Thursday, 22 January 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Much of the buildup to President Obama’s State of the Union address made it sound as if he was going to read chapter and verse from French economist Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the 21st Century – you know, last year’s 700-plus page best seller, the one that was unexpectedly all the rage as it argued that vast economic inequality is as much about wealth (what’s owned) as it is about income (what’s earned). That one. Read More…
Simon Johnson: GOP and Wall Street Say to Hell With Protecting the Public!
Wednesday, 21 January 2015
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Interview
Since December, Congress has twice passed measures to weaken regulations in the Dodd-Frank financial law that are intended to reduce the risk of another financial meltdown. In the last election cycle, Wall Street banks and financial interests spent over $1.2 billion on lobbying and campaign contribution. Read More…
“Je Suis Charlie” – but Not in My Backyard
Sunday, 18 January 2015
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
There’s no question how remarkable it was seeing all those world leaders marching at the front of the line during last Sunday’s massive rally in Paris, a sight so reminiscent of the gathering of international statesmen that in November 1963 solemnly walked behind the caisson carrying the body of President John F. Kennedy. Among them back then: French President Charles de Gaulle and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Read More…
The Children’s Climate Crusade
Monday, 05 January 2015
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
A new legal framework for the crusade against global warming is called atmospheric trust litigation. It takes the fate of the Earth into the courts, arguing that the planet’s atmosphere are the responsibility of government, held in its trust to insure the survival of all generations to come. It’s the strategy being used by Bill’s recent guest, Kelsey Juliana, a co-plaintiff in a major lawsuit spearheaded by Our Children’s Trust. Read More…
Ursula Le Guin’s Viral Video: “We Will Need Writers Who Can Remember Freedom”
Monday, 29 December 2014
By Staff, Moyers & Company | Video
In accepting the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at this year’s National Book Awards, eminent sci-fi writer Ursula Le Guin made a knock-out speech about the power of capitalism, literature and imagination. Read More…
Native Americans Confront History of Dispossession
Friday, 26 December 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
This week, Bill speaks with Robert A. Williams Jr., a professor specializing in American Indian law, about how deals such as the one with Rio Tinto are a part of American Indian’s tragic history of dispossession. Read More…
It’s a Wonderful Life, Comrade
Wednesday, 24 December 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
A number of years ago, I was telling a longtime city dweller friend of mine yet another story about the small, upstate New York town in which I grew up. Simultaneously baffled and captivated, he said, “I think you were born and raised in Bedford Falls,” the fictional burg at the center of Frank Capra’s classic Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. Read More…
The New Robber Barons
Tuesday, 23 December 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
What happened in Washington over the past several days sounds strikingly familiar to the First Gilded Age more than a century ago, when senators and representatives were owned by Wall Street and big business. Read More…
Democrats Bow Down to Wall Street
Thursday, 18 December 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
John R. MacArthur of Harper’s Magazine says that Republicans and Democrats alike are abandoning the republic in pursuit of big bucks. Read More…
20 Key Findings From the Senate Report on CIA Torture
Thursday, 11 December 2014
By Staff, Moyers & Company | Report
After months of wrangling with intelligence officials, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a summary of its 6,700-page report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs under President George W. Bush. Read More…
The United States of Ferguson
Tuesday, 09 December 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
In the wake of decisions by grand juries in both Missouri and New York’s Staten Island not to indict white police officers in the deaths of unarmed African-Americans, this week we present an encore broadcast of Bill’s conversation earlier this year with journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. Read More…
Khalil Muhammad on Facing Our Racial Past
Friday, 05 December 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Bill and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, head of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and author of The Condemnation of Blackness, discuss the importance of confronting the contradictions of America’s past to better understand the present. Read More…
The Long, Dark Shadows of Plutocracy
Tuesday, 02 December 2014
By Bill Moyers, 0 Comments | Video Interview
This week Bill points to the changing skyline of Manhattan as the physical embodiment of how money and power impact the lives and neighborhoods of every day people. Soaring towers being built at the south end of Central Park, climbing higher than ever with apartments selling from $30 million to $90 million, are beginning to block the light on the park below. Read More…
How Public Power Can Defeat Plutocrats
Tuesday, 25 November 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Government has become a clearinghouse for corporations and plutocrats with deep pockets to buy the politicians who grease the wheels for lucrative contracts and easy regulation. It’s all pay for play, and look the other way. Read More…
Dividing the Spoils
Friday, 21 November 2014
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Gifts to politicians that were once called graft or bribes are called contributions. The Supreme Court has granted corporations the rights our founders reserved for people, and told those corporations they can give just about anything they want to elect politicians favorable to their interests. Read More…
Molly Crabapple Illustrates How Mike Brown’s Death Shed Light on Police Brutality
Thursday, 20 November 2014
By Charina Nadura, Moyers & Company | Video
Three months have passed since Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, and this week the community there is nervously awaiting the grand jury’s decision whether to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson. On Monday, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and issued an executive order to activate the National Guard to act as a backup to police in case protests get out of control. Read More…
How Running for Governor Is Like Selling a Vacuum
Thursday, 20 November 2014
By Karin Kamp, Moyers & Company | Video
Zephyr Teachout ran against New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary earlier this year, on a populist platform. While she lost, she received more than a third of the vote and carried almost half of the state’s 62 counties. Read More…
The Bare Knuckle Fight Against Money in Politics
Tuesday, 18 November 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
On this week’s show, Bill talks with Activist and Campaign Finance Reform Advocate Lawrence Lessig and Professor Zephyr Teachout about their experiences and the hard-fought lessons learned about the state of American democracy. Read More…
“Dude Needs a Vacation,” A Net Neutrality Update
Tuesday, 18 November 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
A week has passed since President Obama surprised everyone with a strong statement in support of Net neutrality, declaring that the Internet should be available to everyone – a public utility like telephone service or electricity. In those seven days, opposition from the telecom and cable companies and their supporters in Congress has countered the initial, intense burst of enthusiasm from the media reform community. Read More…
Facing Down Corporate Election Greed
Tuesday, 11 November 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
In the small city of Richmond, California, a slate of progressive candidates faced off against a challenge from pro-business candidates backed to the tune of more than $3 million by the energy giant Chevron. Read More…
President Obama Tells FCC: Reclassifying the Internet Is “Essential”
Tuesday, 11 November 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Report
On Monday, the White House released a statement from President Obama in support of Net neutrality, his strongest and most direct since the 2008 election campaign. “An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life,” he began. Read More…
Corporate Triumphs, Progressive Victories and the Roadmap for a Democratic Revival
Thursday, 06 November 2014
By Peter Dreier, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
while Democrat candidates were going down to defeat, liberals and progressive won some impressive but little-publicized victories on important issues especially in red and purple states, suggesting that voters are not as conservative as the pundits are pontificating. Read More…
Bernie Sanders on Breaking Big Money’s Grip on Elections
Monday, 03 November 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s independent senator, is angry about what he sees as big money’s wholesale purchase of political power. It’s a grave threat, he believes, not only to our electoral process but to democracy itself. Read More…
Chevron’s “Company Town” Fights Back: An Interview with Gayle McLaughlin
Friday, 31 October 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Interview
One of the most interesting and significant elections in the country is happening not at the state or federal level but in the small city of Richmond, California, population just over 100,000. What makes Richmond such a big deal is the enormous influence of Chevron. Read More…
Here’s Something Your State Can Do to Fight Corporate Money in Politics
Thursday, 30 October 2014
By Staff, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Nation Action is the political action blog at The Nation magazine website. The editors post initiatives that their readers can get involved with if they want to become more active on a particular issue. This week, the editors pointed to a campaign that RootsAction, Free Speech for America and The Nation are working on to make corporate campaign donations public information. Read More…
Unbelievable GOP Statements on Voter Suppression
Wednesday, 29 October 2014
By Karin Kamp, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
You would think that making it easier for citizens to vote would be something for everyone in a democracy to celebrate. But the shocking remarks by these six government officials – some of whom will be on the November ballot – tell a different story. Read More…
Don’t Let Them Silence You: Vote, Dammit
Monday, 27 October 2014
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Our country’s oldest and longest struggle has been to enlarge democracy by making it possible for more and more people to be treated equally at the polls. The right to participate in choosing our representatives – to vote – is the very right that inflamed the American colonies and marched us toward revolution and independence. Read More…
The Fight – and the Right – to Vote
Monday, 27 October 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
The Lone Star state’s voter ID law is part of a nationwide effort to suppress the vote, nurtured by the right’s desire to hold onto power, as demographic changes are altering the electoral landscape. In the last four years, close to half the states in the US have passed laws restricting the right to vote, the most fundamental principle of democracy. Read More…
Marilynne Robinson on Freedom of Thought
Wednesday, 22 October 2014
By Marilynne Robinson, Moyers & Company | Book Excerpt
Over the years of writing and teaching, I have tried to free myself of constraints I felt, limits to the range of exploration I could make, to the kind of intuition I could credit. Read More…
Ebola Fearmongering: The Right’s New Dog Whistle
Tuesday, 21 October 2014
By Ian Haney López, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
While the chance of a significant domestic Ebola outbreak remains virtually nil, the round-the-clock media frenzy is nevertheless contributing to surging anxiety. So too is the rhetoric coming from the right. Read More…
Keeping Faith in Democracy
Monday, 20 October 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
On this week’s show, Bill talks with author Marilynne Robinson about her fervent belief in the power of grace and faith and her devotion to democracy, which she fears “we are gravely in danger of losing.” Read More…
How Does Your State Rank on Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
Sunday, 12 October 2014
By John Light, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently released a breakdown of who in the US contributes the most to global warming – by state, by sector and even by individual business. Read More…
Restoring a United States That Has Lost Its Way
Friday, 10 October 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Bob Herbert tells the stories of the brave, hard-working men and women he met who have been battered by the economic downturn. He found a US in which jobs have disappeared, infrastructure is falling apart and the “virtuous cycle” of well-paid workers spending their wages to power the economy has been broken by greed. Read More…
Warsaw Has Lots of Apples – and Candles
Friday, 10 October 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Moscow has banned the importing of fruits and vegetables to Russia, in retaliation for the West’s sanctions against the country. So Poles are being urged to eat apples and then eat some more. It’s their patriotic duty. Read More…
How the Politics of Immigration Is Driving Mass Deportation
Friday, 10 October 2014
By Ian Haney López, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Deportations reached another record high last year. This is a striking development in light of the fact that illegal immigration and Border Patrol apprehensions have been falling for over a decade. Read More…
Are Tiny Houses a Viable Affordable Housing Solution?
Thursday, 09 October 2014
By John Light and Neha Tara Mehta, Moyers & Company | Video Report
Last month’s well attended climate march in New York City showed that we are finally recognizing the harmful effects of our fossil-fuel driven economy on the planet. Some Americans looking to shrink their carbon footprint are doing so by shrinking their homes. Read More…
The United States’ New War in the Middle East
Tuesday, 30 September 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
As Congress skipped town and avoided a vote on war, President Obama announced this week that the US was taking the lead in bombing jihadists in Iraq and Syria, opening what is being widely interpreted as another long and costly American military campaign in the Middle East. Read More…
“What’s Possible,” a New Film for World Leaders on the Urgency of Global Warming
Friday, 26 September 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Report
More than 120 world leaders – including President Barack Obama – kicked off a one-day United Nations’ summit on climate change in New York City by viewing What’s Possible, a short film on the urgency of global warming. Read More…
Climate Change: The Next Generation
Thursday, 25 September 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Kelsey Juliana, an 18-year-old activist, is fighting climate change in the courts and walking across the country to spread the word on global warming. Read More…
The Joys of Abolishing Debt
Tuesday, 23 September 2014
By Astra Taylor, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
For the last two years I have worked as a volunteer debt abolisher for Rolling Jubilee, which just announced the the abolition of nearly $4 million of student debt. It’s a nice addition to the nearly $15 million of medical debt we have erased since November 2012 when the campaign launched. Read More…
Climate Change You Can Believe In
Climate change deniers persist in telling us it just ain’t so, like the tobacco industry claiming for decade after decade that nicotine wasn’t addictive or that cigarettes couldn’t kill you. Read More…
Elizabeth Warren on Fighting Back Against Wall St. Giants
Politicians Show Their Gratitude Where It Count$
Wednesday, 03 September 2014
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart, a poet wrote, and as this year’s summer winds toward its end and elections approach, gratitude is indeed what our politicians have flowing from that space where their hearts should be. Read More…
The Humanity of Michael Brown
Ferguson Is About Net Neutrality, Too
Thursday, 21 August 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The tragedy and ensuing crisis in Ferguson, Missouri, have shown the ability of social media to get the story told. David Carr wrote in The New York Times that, “Twitter has become an early warning service for news organizations, a way to see into stories even when they don’t have significant reporting assets on the ground. And in a situation hostile to traditional reporting, the crowdsourced, phone-enabled network of information that Twitter provides has proved invaluable.” Read More…
Remembering Robin Williams
Justice Ginsburg Wants “Equal Dignity” for Women in Court Decisions
Don’t Be Fooled: Banks Still Too Big to Fail
Wednesday, 06 August 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Last Thursday’s report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on whether or not large financial institutions were still perceived as “too big to fail.” But with just a little time to digest the GAO’s findings, much of the response has shifted to, “Not so fast.” Read More…
Why “Can’t Make Ends Meet” Trumps “Poverty”
Wednesday, 30 July 2014
By Karin Kamp, Moyers & Company | Interview
This week, the Center for Community Change (CCC) released new research that details the way low-income Americans think and talk about living on the edge. It found that the language being used by policymakers and others to describe them is turning off the very people it is supposed to help. Read More…
It’s Not Just Low Pay Stressing Out Part-Time Workers
Tuesday, 29 July 2014
By Neha Tara Mehta, Moyers & Company | Report
Besides struggling to make ends meet because of low wages, millions of part-time workers in America also face uncertainty over when they will be called in to work. Irregular schedules and last-minute notice make it hard for these workers to find other work, go to school and make arrangements for child care or caring for aging parents. Read More…
Deep in the Tell-Tale Heart of the Texas GOP
Wednesday, 23 July 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the official 2014 platform of the Republican Party of Texas, 40 pages of unrestrained, right-wing bluster against you name it – women, minorities, immigrants, Muslims, gays, Obamacare, the Internal Revenue Service, red light cameras, the EPA, the World Bank, vaccinations — well, you get the picture. Read More…
The Crusade Against Reproductive Rights
Wednesday, 19 July 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | News Analysis and Video
Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark decision establishing a woman’s right to an abortion, was issued 41 years ago. Despite consistent public opinion to the contrary, conservatives and the religious right have patiently and relentlessly campaigned against it for decades. And recently, their efforts are finding some success. Read More…
Richard D. Wolff: Capitalism’s Deeper Problem
Thursday, 17 July 2014
By Richard D Wolff, Moyers & Company | News Analysis and Video
Recent press reports refer to troubling price increases for such assets as real estate, government bonds, companies targeted for acquisition and artwork. A New York Times front-page headline read “The Everything Boom, or Maybe the Everything Bubble.” Yet while asset prices soar, the production of goods and services, employment and workers’ incomes are not recovering and resuming growth. Instead, Western Europe, North America and Japan are stuck in a longer, deeper crisis than almost anyone expected. Read More…
No One Expects a Monty Python Fourth of July
Rising Voices for a New Economy
Wednesday, 09 July 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Essay
In a world where income inequality is squeezing the middle class to the point of oblivion and those with the biggest bank accounts have the loudest voices, two of the nation’s best organizers have decided to turn tradition on its head and join forces. Read More…
Joseph Stiglitz: No, Spiraling Inequality Isn’t Inevitable
Bill Moyers and Jim Hightower on Grassroots Growing Against Greed
Monday, 07 July 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Today, we pay tribute to the champions of grassroots action fighting against the moneyed interests trying to buy and control government. One of their most articulate spokesmen is writer and commentator Jim Hightower who travels the country preaching the gospel of populism. A former congressional aide and two-term agriculture commissioner of his native Texas, he is the author of several books and edits a newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown. Read More…
How DC’s Political Intelligence Biz Made Fat Cats Fatter
Tuesday, 01 July 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Looking over the last few weeks of news, if you would seek a single headline that sums up the Hulk-like grip in which corporate America holds the US Congress, this might be it: “Eric Cantor’s Loss a Blow to Wall Street.” So wrote The Wall Street Journal, that Pravda of the One Percent, on the day after House Majority Leader Cantor lost his Virginia GOP primary to tea party upstart David Brat. Read More…
Andrew Bacevich: Chaos in Iraq
Sunday, 29 June 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
While armchair warriors in Washington cry “back to Iraq,” former combat veteran and military historian Andrew Bacevich says no way. Read More…
Bill Moyers: The Folly of Attacking Iraq
Thursday, 26 June 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Essay
Should we really be listening to Washington’s “armchair warriors” who were wrong before, during and after the Iraq war — and never admitted their wrongdoing? Bill has some ideas. Read More…
Pundits and Partisans Are Up to Old Tricks in Iraq
Sunday, 22 June 2014
By Eric Alterman, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
In a column entitled “Bush’s toxic legacy in Iraq,” terrorism expert Peter Bergen writes about the origins of ISIS, “the brutal insurgent/terrorist group formerly known as al Qaeda in Iraq.” Bergen notes that, “One of George W. Bush’s most toxic legacies is the introduction of al Qaeda into Iraq, which is the ISIS mother ship. If this wasn’t so tragic it would be supremely ironic, because before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, top Bush officials were insisting that there was an al Qaeda-Iraq axis of evil. Read More…
Financial Reform Rising
Thursday, 19 June 2014
By Simon Johnson, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
The story so far on financial reform is not a pleasant one. Fortunately and perhaps surprisingly, in part through the efforts of a growing number of people – including Anat Admati and Sheila Bair, recently interviewed on Moyers & Company – there is now some movement in the right direction. Read More…
Iraq Is Coming Apart at the Seams – Here’s Our Essential Reader
Thursday, 19 June 2014
By Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company | Report
After American troops were withdrawn at the end of 2011, our media’s coverage of the ongoing conflict in Iraq dwindled to almost nothing. But suddenly the country is back in the headlines as a violent militant group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) wages a fierce military campaign across Iraq, overrunning several major cities, including Mosul and Tikrit — Saddam Hussein’s birthplace. Confused about what’s going on? Wondering how the situation became so grim? We’ll try to answer some of the most pressing questions below, with links to in-depth reports for those who want more information. Read More…
Bill Moyers: Too Big to Fail and Getting Bigger
Wall Street’s Secret Weapon: Congress
Monday, 16 June 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Essay
Why haven’t any big bankers been prosecuted for their role in the housing crisis that led to the Great Recession? These finance executives took part in “scandals that violate the most basic ethical norms,” as the head of the IMF Christine Lagarde put it last month, including illegal foreclosures, money laundering and the fixing of interest rate benchmarks. In fact, banking CEOs not only avoided prosecution but got average pay rises of 10 percent last year, taking home, on average, $13 million in compensation. Read More…
Bill Moyers | Joseph Stiglitz: How Tax Reform Can Save the Middle Class
Thursday, 12 June 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
In part two of his interview, economist Joseph E. Stiglitz says corporate tax abuse has helped make America unequal and undemocratic. But the Nobel Prize-winner has a plan to change that. Read More…
Seven Key Takeaways From Eric Cantor’s Shocking Defeat
Thursday, 12 June 2014
By Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
No incumbent majority leader had lost a seat in Congress since 1899, when the post was first created. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) broke that streak last night. He’s announced that he’ll step down from leadership within weeks. Read More…
Shots Fired. Madness in Progress.
Sunday, 01 June 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
This is the way it goes, because this is the way it always goes. First, another horrific spree of violence and mass murder as we saw just last Friday in Santa Barbara, California, fueled by irrational fury, much of it perpetrated with guns obtained legally in the hands of someone who should never have been allowed one. Read More…
Memorial Day: For Vets, Too Many Delays and Not Enough Parades
How Bill Clinton’s Welfare “Reform” Created a System Rife With Racial Biases
David Suzuki: Time to Get Real on Climate Change
Elizabeth Warren’s Campaign to Tackle Student Debt and the Privatization of Education
Sunday, 11 May 2014
By Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company | Interview
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) introduced a bill addressing two of her top legislative priorities: The crushing burden of student debt and tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest Americans to shell out a smaller share of their incomes than do many of those in the middle class. The measure would allow people who took out student loans at a higher rate than they could get today to refinance their debt the same way one might refinance a home mortgage. It would also give people with high-interest private loans to roll them over into the Federal Direct Loan program. Read More…
A Primer: Just What Is Net Neutrality, and Why All the Fuss?
Wednesday, 07 May 2014
By Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company
So far, the internet has remained mostly free without explicit neutrality regulations. But some ISPs want to charge a premium to provide content providers a fast-lane on the electronic highway. This has many worried that change could spell the end of an open, fair internet. Read More…
Is Net Neutrality Dead?
Don’t Let Net Neutrality Become Another Broken Promise
Five Videos Worth Watching From the Senate Dark Money Hearing
Fast Food Pulls a Fast One
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company
Bad enough that the empty calories of many a fast-food meal have all the nutritional value of a fingernail paring. Even worse, the vast profits this industry pulls in are lining the pockets of its CEOs while many of those who work in the kitchens and behind the counters are struggling to eke out a living and can’t afford a decent meal, much less a fast one. Read More…
Government Is Now a Protection Racket for the 1%
Paul Krugman: What the 1% Don’t Want You to Know
Sunday, 20 April 2014
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Report
Economist Paul Krugman explains how the United States is becoming an oligarchy – the very system our founders revolted against. Read More…
Comcast, Time Warner and Congress: Perfect Together
Thursday, 10 April 2014
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
As the US Senate holds its first hearing on the proposed Comcast-Time Warner deal – a $45 billion transaction that will affect millions of consumers and further pad some already well-lined pockets – it’s useful to get a look at how our elected officials have benefitted from the largesse of the two companies with an urge to merge. Read More…
Obamacare Is Widening the Gap Between “Red” and “Blue” America
Tuesday, 08 April 2014 10:54
By Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
The fact that the citizens of “red” and “blue” states live in what are essentially two countries with very different governments has largely flown under the radar, but it may become the defining story of our time. Read More…
All Work and No Pay
Envy and Jealousy? Gag Me With a Silver Spoon
Home Depot tycoon Ken Langone said that he hopes populist sentiment is “not working, because if you go back to 1933, with different words, this is what Hitler was saying in Germany. You don’t survive as a society if you encourage and thrive on envy or jealousy.” But this envy and jealousy meme wont’ disappear any time soon. Read More…
What You Need to Know About Dark Money
By Karin Kamp, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Tuesday, 25 March 2014
If you look up “dark money” in Merriam-Webster, you won’t find a definition, but as of this week, their online unabridged dictionary includes a word that tells a big part of its story — “super PAC.” It’s defined in part as “an independent PAC [political action committee] that can accept unlimited contributions from individuals and organizations (such as corporations and labor unions) and spend unlimited amounts in support of a candidate.” It’s a fitting reminder that four years after Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that opened the floodgates of campaign cash, dark money may be here to stay. Read More…
Who’s Buying our Midterm Elections?
Rachel LaForest and Madeline Janis on Fighting for Fairness
Wednesday, 19 March 2014 10:48
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Economic equality advocates Rachel LaForest, executive director of Right to the City, and Madeline Janis, co-founder and national policy director of Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, discuss with Bill how social action can change both policy and lives. Janis led the fight for a living wage in Los Angeles; LaForest fights for fair and affordable housing across the country. Read More…
No Escaping Dragnet Nation
Remembering Tony Benn
Our Chat with Edward Snowden’s Legal Counsel
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News
Wednesday, 11 March 2014
On Monday, via teleconference, whistleblower Edward Snowden addressed a crowd at SXSW, the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. Speaking from Russia, it was Snowden’s first public address to people in the United States since he fled the country last June and the revelation that he possessed thousands of secret documents obtained while a subcontractor with the National Security Agency (NSA). Read More…
Ian Haney López on the Dog Whistle Politics of Race
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Thursday, 06 March 2014
What do Cadillac-driving “welfare queens,” a “food stamp president” and the “lazy, dependent and entitled” 47 percent tell us about post-racial America? They’re all examples of a type of coded racism that this week’s guest, Ian Haney López, writes about in his new book, Dog Whistle Politics. Read More…
How the Gun Lobby Became a Threat to Public Safety
By Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Wednesday, 05 March 2014
Just a generation ago, the NRA was a nonpartisan and relatively non-ideological organization that advocated for responsible and safe gun ownership in addition to defending gun rights. But in its 20 years under the leadership of chief executive Wayne LaPierre the organization has become another cog in the broader conservative advocacy machine. Read More…
Liberals Face a Hard Day’s Knight?
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Thursday, 27 February 2014
That’s a pretty pathetic knight up there on the cover of the March issue of Harper’s Magazine. Battered and defeated, his shield in pieces, he’s slumped and saddled backwards on a Democratic donkey that has a distinctly woeful — or bored, maybe — countenance. It’s the magazine’s sardonic way of illustrating a powerful throwing down of the gauntlet by political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr. He has challenged the nation’s progressives with an article in the magazine provocatively titled “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals.” Read More…
Adolph Reed Jr.: The Surrender of America’s Liberals
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Thursday, 27 February 2014
In a Web-exclusive interview, political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. talks with Bill Moyers about his new article in the March issue of Harper’s Magazine – a challenge to America’s progressives provocatively titled, “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals.” Read More…
A Free and Open Internet: The Latest from the Frontlines
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Friday, 21 February 2014
Wednesday’s announcement by Chairman Tom Wheeler that the FCC would write new rules to insure open access to the Internet generally was seen by consumers as a step in the right direction. But media reform advocates were concerned that it didn’t go far enough. Read More…
David Simon on Our Rigged Political System
Why the First Issue Is Money in Politics
Lawrence Lessig’s March to End Corruption
On the Money: What a Tangled Web We Weave
By Gail Ablow, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Sunday, 16 February 2014
Campaign websites in 2014 aren’t always what they seem -> Deceptive political ads are not new to hardball campaigns, but Time Magazine’s Denver Nicks reports that the National Republican Congressional Committee is mastering fakery on a new frontier — the Internet. The RCC bought hundreds of Web addresses in the names of Democrats running for office and, at last count, had designed 16 fake campaign websites. If people don’t read the fine print they might, unknowingly, donate to the NRCC while they think they are supporting a Democrat. Read More…
Bill McKibben to Obama: Say No to Big Oil
Advice to Plutocrat Perkins: Time to Shut Up!
The Keystone XL Pipeline’s “Accidental Activists”
Facing the Truth in China
By Gail Pellett, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Sunday, 19 January 2014
The blogosphere reporting news from China is abuzz this week with the story of the former Red Guard – now in her 60s – apologizing for her behavior and expressing remorse for what occurred at her elite Beijing high school during the first months of the Cultural Revolution. Read More…
Door Closes to Open Internet, But All May Not Be Lost
North Carolina: Battleground State
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Report
Thursday, 09 January 2014
First it was Wisconsin. Now it’s North Carolina that is redefining the term “battleground state.” On one side: a right-wing government enacting laws that are changing the face of the state. On the other: citizen protesters who are fighting back against what they fear is a radical takeover. This crucible of conflict reflects how the battle for control of American politics is likely to be fought for the foreseeable future: not in Washington, DC, but state by state. Read More…
Four Surefire Tips for Following the Money in Your State
By Andy Kroll, Moyers & Company | Report
Sunday, 05 January 2014
As the “dark money” reporter for Mother Jones, it’s my job to shine as much light on this cash bonanza as I can. I do this using every tool and trick at my disposal: databases, experts, plugged-in sources and good old-fashioned door knocking. Here are four easy-to-use tips for following the money in your state — and throwing some sunlight on the mega-donors trying to sway your elections. Read More…
Campaign Cash Rules Drown in the Bathtub
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Tuesday, 24 December 2013
[Grover] Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform, is infamous for his expressed desire to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” And even though the new budget deal takes a feeble swipe at sequestration and the indiscriminate slashing of government funds, his wish may be coming true. Read more…
Michelle Alexander on Bill Moyers: Locked Out of the American Dream
Gunpowder and Blood on Their Cold, Dead Hands
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Tuesday, 17 December 2013
This grim anniversary of the Newtown, Conn., killings, with 28 dead, reminded us of that moment back in 2000 when Charlton Heston made his defiant boast at the NRA convention that gun control advocates would have to pry his rifle from his “cold, dead hands.” You would have thought he had returned to that fantasy world of Hollywood where, in a previous incarnation, he portrayed those famous Indian killers Andrew Jackson and Buffalo Bill Cody, whose Wild West, as Cody marketed it, still courses through the bloodstream of American mythology. Read More…
Richard Slotkin on Guns and Violence
Bill Moyers on the NRA: “The Armed Bully of American Politics”
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Sunday, 15 December 2013
Bill discusses the work of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which has just released a moving video urging people to speak out against firearms violence. Read More…
Bill Moyers | The Great American Class War: Plutocracy vs. Democracy
By Bill Moyers, TomDispatch | Speech Excerpt
Thursday, 12 December 2013
I met Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in 1987 when I was creating a series for public television called In Search of the Constitution, celebrating the bicentennial of our founding document. By then, he had served on the court longer than any of his colleagues and had written close to 500 majority opinions, many of them addressing fundamental questions of equality, voting rights, school segregation, and — in New York Times v. Sullivan in particular — the defense of a free press. Read More…
Henry A. Giroux | The Spectacle of Illiteracy and the Crisis of Democracy
Henry Giroux on the “School to Prison Pipeline”
Bill Moyers | Henry Giroux: Zombie Politics and Casino Capitalism
With Today’s Nuclear Option, the Senate Inches Closer to Democracy
Following the Ninth
How a Shadowy Network of Corporate Front Groups Distorts the Marketplace of Ideas
November Days of Drums
How Big Money and Big Media Undermine Democracy
Rip-off: High Out-of-Pocket Social Costs are a Stealth Tax on the Middle Class and the Poor
Real-Life Hunger Is No Game
Freedom of Speech in the Digital Age
America’s Drone Wars
By Staff, Moyers & Company | Video Report
Thursday, 07 November 2013
The use of drones has intensified under President Obama’s leadership as the number of troops on the ground in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas has been scaled back. But the drones often kill innocent civilians, including children. That is the subject of Robert Greenwald’s new documentary, Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars. Here, we look at clips from the film, which shares testimony, stories and alarming news on the fatal impact of our drone strategy. Read More…
Dark Money’s New Frontier: State Judicial Elections
Bill Moyers: Yves Smith and Dean Baker on Secrets in Trade
Bill Moyers: Obamacare – The Right Wing’s Alamo
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video
Monday, 04 November 2013
As Republican members of Congress demand apologies and administration officials dutifully offer up mea culpas for the botched Obamacare rollout, Bill wonders, wouldn’t it be fair to expect just a morsel of apology from the right as well? Read More…
Hurricane Sandy One Year Later: Lessons Learned and Unlearned
The Great American Ripoff: The High Cost of Low Taxes
An Oasis in a Food Desert
Why JPMorgan May Be Getting Off Easy
Peter Dreier on a New Generation of Activists
Historian Peter Dreier shares why he’s optimistic about America’s future, including dynamic grass-roots initiatives around the country and, believe it or not, the radical politics of Dr. Seuss. Read more…
Politicians’ Extortion Racket?
By Karin Kamp, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Thursday, 24 October 2013
There are two sides to the story of special interest money in Washington, according to an op-ed today in The New York Times by Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution. While the traditional narrative is that politicians are corrupted by wealthy interests, Schweizer says we may be getting it wrong. Read More…
Will Every State Eventually Expand Medicaid?
By John Light, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Thursday, 24 October 2013
While red state Republicans rail against Obamacare, the question of whether their poor constituents are eventually covered under the law’s Medicaid expansion may ultimately come down to state budget realities. Read More…
Healthcare.gov Debacle: Spare Some Blame for Bush and Clinton
By Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Thursday, 24 October 2013
If the problem-plagued rollout of healthcare.gov is any indication, 25 years of bipartisan efforts to downsize the federal government and turn a broad swath of what was the public sector over to private contractors haven’t yielded the awesome efficiencies the “reinventing government” crowd promised us. What a shocker. Read More….
Bill Moyers: Martin Wolf on the Debt Ceiling Circus
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Monday, 21 October 2013
This week, Congress approved an 11th-hour deal to raise the debt ceiling, which threatened to push the global economy over the edge, but instead of resolving the debt crisis lawmakers simply delayed it. Bill speaks to Financial Times chief economics commentator, Martin Wolf, who says the US debt ceiling is “the legislative equivalent of a nuclear bomb aimed by the US at itself.” Read More…
The Right’s Closed Information Loop May Set Up the Next Shut Down
By Joshua Holland, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Saturday, 19 October 2013
It’s impossible to say whether we’ll face another crisis of governance in three months, when the stopgap budget resolution passed on Wednesday expires, but it’s clear that the 40 or 50 hardcore, tea party-backed members of Congress who precipitated the shutdown want another crack at it. Read More…
Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus – Campaign Cash
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Opinion
Friday, 18 October 2013
If you want to see how grossly money can distort democracy, just go to the state of Virginia, where there are no limits on how big a check can be written for statewide office. Read More…
Ignore the Spin: This Debt Ceiling Crisis Is Not Politics as Usual
By John Light, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Thursday, 10 October 2013
Never before has a minority party linked controversial legislative demands with a threat to shut down the government or imperil the global economy. But House Republicans would have you believe otherwise. Read More…
Bill Moyers: On the Sabotage of Democracy
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video
Tuesday, 08 October 2013
This week’s government shutdown has consequences for all of us, costing an estimated $300 million each day that the government is closed for business. Many Americans have voiced their frustrations with the fallout from the shutdown on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the hash tag #DearCongress. Here, Bill Moyers shares his own thoughts on the shutdown, and the resulting sabotage of democracy.
The IRS Scandal That Wasn’t
In reality, this is a story about how bureaucratic bungling was turned into scandal by right wing politicians desperate to spin gold from straw. But their staged controversy has distracted from a real Washington scandal, our inability to rein in the outrageous amounts of money used by the rich and powerful to secretly broker elections and buy our government.
Pro Football’s Unsportsmanlike Conduct
Of the 31 owners of NFL teams, seventeen – more than half – are billionaires. Many boast of being self-made, in the image of Horatio Alger, but are now ensconced in luxury skyboxes far above the proletarians whose own dreams of glory ride vicariously on the grunts and groans of bulky but agile gladiators only one play away from a career-ending collision with the laws of physics. Read more…
Bill Moyers: Let Us Now Praise Common Sense
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
On this week’s Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers says that the White House, Congress and the punditry of the Beltway may ultimately be grateful to a public that weighed in on a potential military strike in Syria – that the collective common sense of everyday people became a force so powerful it could not be ignored. Read more…
In Los Angeles, Labor Redefines Itself
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Wednesday, 11 September 2013
“It’s time to turn America right side up!” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka exhorted those in attendance at the labor alliance’s quadrennial convention in Los Angeles on Monday. Time, he said in his keynote address, to change the ratio of power, to put the 99 percent in charge rather than let the richest one percent dominate government, politics and society. Read More…
Marshall Ganz on Making Social Movements Matter
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Monday, 19 August 2013
Bill’s guest, veteran activist and organizer Marshall Ganz, joins Bill to discuss the power of social movements to effect meaningful social change. A social movement legend who dropped out of Harvard to volunteer during Mississippi’s Freedom Summer of 1964, Ganz then joined forces with Cesar Chavez of the United Farmworkers, protecting workers who picked crops for pennies in California. Ganz also had a pivotal role organizing students and volunteers for Barack Obama’s historic 2008 presidential campaign. Now 70, he’s still organizing across the United States and the Middle East, and back at Harvard, teaching students from around the world about what it takes to beat Goliath. Read More…
Cash and Congress: The Tie That Binds
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Sunday, 18 August 2013
But despite what you’ve heard, the spirit of bipartisanship in Washington is not dead. Simply look past the vitriol, bombast and gridlock, then listen for the ka-ching of the nearest cash register, made flesh by friendly lobbyists and special interests. Their fat wallets and deep pockets bring together Democrats and Republicans like no one else in a collegial spirit of kumbaya as they dive for dollars in exchange for their votes and influence. Read More…
Our Growing Racial Wealth Gap
By John Light, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
The vast chasm between the richest one percent of Americans and everyone else continues to widen, and researchers have found that when you factor race into the equation, the economic gap is even more pronounced. Read More…
ALECs Attempts to Thwart Obamacare
By Lauren Feeney, Moyers & Company | Interview
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
As part of our ongoing focus on the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, we checked in with health insurance executive turned industry whistleblower Wendell Potter to learn about ALEC’s efforts to influence the health care debate and undermine The Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). Read More…
Taming Capitalism Run Wild
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Monday, 12 August 2013
Modern American capitalism is a story of continued inequality and hardship. Even a modest increase in the minimum wage faces opposition from those who seem to show allegiance first and foremost to America’s wealthy and powerful. Yet some aren’t just wringing their hands about our economic crisis; they’re fighting back. Read More…
Can the Federal Election Commission Be Saved?
By Matea Gold and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Radio Report
Friday, 09 August 2013
Reviews of the effectiveness of Federal Election Commission – mandated by Congress back in 1975 to regulate campaign finance – have never been stellar, but lately the word most commonly used to describe it is “dysfunctional.” Listen to the radio report …
The Wall Street Ties of Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner
By Zaid Jilani, Moyers & Company | Report
Tuesday, 06 August 2013
Larry Summers is under no legal requirement to disclose his most recent payments from corporations until he is officially nominated, and if he’s nominated, he’ll most likely be confirmed. Read more…
The Faces of America’s Hungry
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Interview
Monday, 05 August 2013
Here in the richest country on earth, 50 million of us — one in six Americans — go hungry. More than a third of them are children. Debates on how to address hunger – in both Congress and the media — are filled with tired clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help, living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers. But the documentary A Place at the Table paints a truer picture of America’s poor. Watch the Video …
Ken Cook on Improving the Chemical Safety Improvement Act
By Theresa Riley, Moyers & Company | Interview
Sunday, 04 August 2013
The Chemical Safety Improvement Act, co-sponsored by Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and David Vitter (R-LA), was introduced earlier this year, shortly before Sen. Lautenberg passed away on June 5, 2013. Read More…
“We Can’t Survive on $7.25”
By Lauren Feeney, Moyers & Company | Video
Thursday, 01 August 2013
Fast food workers in seven U.S. cities are walking off the job this week in what organizers say is the largest strike in the industry’s history. The wave of protests began Monday in New York City, where workers earning as little as the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour – in a town where the average rent is over $3,000 a month – demanded $15 per hour and the right to organize. Watch the Video …
The Minimum Wage Doesn’t Apply to Everyone
By John Light, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Tuesday, 30 July 2013
This week marked the four-year anniversary of the last time Congress increased the minimum wage – from $5.15 in 2007 to $7.25 in 2009. Groups demonstrated across the country, demanding increases at both the state and federal level. Read More…
Congress Fiddles While the Western States Burn
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Report
Monday, 29 July 2013
In the weeks and months immediately following 9/11, one of the most touching responses in my neighborhood, not far Ground Zero, was the overwhelming support of police and fire departments from around the country. Read More…
John Lewis Marches On
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video Report
Friday, 26 July 2013
I’m writing to let you know of one of the most important and engaging broadcasts we’ve done in this series. Fifty years ago on August 28, 1963, more than a quarter-million people descended on the nation’s capital in a peaceful petition for “jobs and freedoms” that became the historic March on Washington. Read More…
Mr. President, Have Pity on the Working Man
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Monday, 22 July 2013
And you thought the government didn’t have a jobs program. It does. The problem is that the pay and benefits are lousy, and in many cases the working conditions ain’t so great either. Read More…
Kristi Jacobson and Mariana Chilton on How Hunger Hurts Everyone
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video
Monday, 01 July 2013
Here in the richest country on earth, 50 million of us – one in six Americans – go hungry. More than a third of them are children. And yet Congress can’t pass a Farm Bill because our representatives continue to fight over how many billions to slash from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps. The debate is filled with tired clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help, living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers. Watch the Video …
Guns Lost, Stolen or Strayed
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Saturday, 29 June 2013
Back in January, a month after the Newtown school slayings and just a few days before his second inauguration, Barack Obama announced he would “put everything I’ve got” into the fight against gun violence. Read More…
David Gregory, Glenn Greenwald and the First Amendment
By John Light, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Friday, 28 June 2013
David Gregory ignited further controversy on Meet the Press this weekend when he asked Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who first broke the story of Edward Snowden’s leaked NSA documents, this question: “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” Read More…
Shooting It All in Las Vegas
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Tuesday, 25 June 2013
I’ve just flown back from Vegas, and boy, are my arms tired. And brain boggled. After all these years, it was my first visit, and although I’ve been to Reno and Tahoe and even the casinos of Winnemucca, Nevada – “The Crossroads of the West” – nothing prepared me for the splendor, squalor, sleaze and squander of the ultimate American pleasure dome. Read More…
Denying a Head Start in Washington State
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Thursday, 06 June 2013
To get a sense of just how foolish and shortsighted the $85 billion across-the-board sequester cuts are you don’t have to look any further than Head Start. The federal government’s only pre-K program, Head Start provides comprehensive, high-quality early education and support services to children and their families living in poverty. Read More…
Good Consumers, Bad Citizens
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Thursday, 30 May 2013
A few days ago, I was listening to a radio talk show discussion of the bill passed on May 7 by the New York City Council, requiring some businesses to provide paid sick leave to employees. The first caller was indignant. “This bill is anti-consumer!” he bellowed because, he insisted, it would raise prices. I thought, no, this bill is pro-citizen, helping out people, many of them in extremis – and just when did we stop being citizens and become merely consumers? Read More…
Why Tim DeChristopher Went to Prison for His Protest
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Interview and Video
Saturday, 25 May 2013
Only weeks after his release from prison, climate activist Tim DeChristopher talks about the necessity of civil disobedience in the fight for environmental justice. Read More…
Enabling Greed Makes US Sick
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Co. | News Analysis
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
At the end of a week that reminds us to be ever vigilant about the dangers of government overreaching its authority, whether by the long arm of the IRS or the Justice Department, we should pause to think about another threat — from too much private power obnoxiously intruding into public life. Read More…
Don’t Shoot – Organize!
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Saturday, 11 May 2013
We were struck this week by one response to our broadcast last week on gun violence and the Newtown school killings. Read More…
Sandy Hook Promise: There Will Be Change
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Saturday, 04 May 2013
This week, we spent time with Francine and David Wheeler, parents of six-year-old Ben Wheeler, one of the 20 children and six educators shot and killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Read More…
The Worst Congress Money Can Buy
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
Saturday, 27 April 2013
If you want to see why the public approval rating of Congress is down in the sub-arctic range — an icy 15 percent by last count — all you have to do is take a quick look at how the House and Senate pay worship at the altar of corporations, banks and other special interests at the expense of public aspirations and need. Read More…
Sandra Steingraber’s War on Toxic Trespassers
Biologist, mother and activist Sandra Steingraber joins Bill to talk about the need to build awareness about toxins that contaminate our air, water and food — and threaten our children’s health. Read More…
The Boston Manhunt as a “Political” Event
Columnist Glenn Greenwald describes how, in the wake of the Boston bombings, people formed opinions about the world and government based on little information. Read More…
Dance of the Honey Bee
Bill presents and introduces the short documentary “Dance of the Honey Bee.” Read More…
Sherman Alexie on Living Outside Cultural Borders
Born on a Native American reservation, Sherman Alexie has been navigating the cultural boundaries of American culture in lauded poetry, novels, short stories, screenplays, even stand-up comedy for over two decades. Read More…
Dr. King’s “Two Americas” Truer Now than Ever
You may think you know about Martin Luther King, Jr., but there is much about the man and his message we have conveniently forgotten. He was a prophet, like Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah of old, calling kings and plutocrats to account — speaking truth to power. Read More…
Homeless in High Tech’s Shadow
In California’s Silicon Valley, Facebook, Google and Apple have minted hundreds of new tech millionaires. But not far away, the homeless are building tent cities along a creek in the city of San Jose. Read More…
Economist Richard Wolff Answers Questions
In Bill’s first interview with economist and professor Richard Wolff, he asked viewers to submit questions for Wolff to answer. We received hundreds, some of which the professor tackled on this week’s Moyers & Company. Read More…
Bill Moyers: The Hypocrisy of “Justice for All”
Bill reports on the hypocrisy of “justice for all” in a society where billions are squandered for a war born in fraud while the poor are pushed aside. Turns out true justice — not just the word we recite from the Pledge of Allegiance — is still unaffordable for those who need it most. Read More…
Watergate’s Lessons, Washed Away
How Worker-Owned Companies Work
The Death Penalty’s Fatal Flaws
Robert Reich on Lessons Learned From Watergate
Alex Steffen on Carbon-Zero Cities
Covert Drone Warfare, By the Numbers
Jack Lew, Citigroup and the Ugland Truth
Susan Jacoby on Secularism and Free Thinking
Zack Kopplin on Keeping Creationism Out of Public Classrooms
Saru Jayaraman on Justice for Restaurant Workers
The Revolving Door Spins from Sea to Shining Sea
Richard Wolff on Fighting for Economic Justice and Fair Wages
POGO Sticks It to the SEC
Vietnam and America’s “Wandering Ghosts”
Nick Turse Describes the Real Vietnam War
The Hubris of the Drones
By the standards of slaughter in Vietnam, the deaths caused by drones are hardly a bleep on the consciousness of official Washington. But we have to wonder if each innocent killed — a young boy gathering wood at dawn, unsuspecting of his imminent annihilation; a student who picked up the wrong hitchhikers; that tribal elder arguing against fanatics — doesn’t give rise to second thoughts by those judges who prematurely handed our president the Nobel Prize for Peace. Read More…
Barack Obama, Drone Ranger
Martín Espada’s Poem for Howard Zinn
Martín Espada reads the poem he wrote to honor his good friend, historian and activist Howard Zinn, whom Espada calls “the most decent, most generous human being I have ever known.” Zinn died in January, 2010. The poem is entitled “Castles for the Laborers and Ballgames on the Radio.” Watch the Video …
US Rep. Peter Welch on Amgen’s Sweet Senate Deal
A recent article in The New York Times reported on a cost-control exception provided to Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology firm. Watch the Video …
Foul Play in the Senate
Larry Cohen on Eliminating Silent Filibusters
Corporate Party Favors at the Inaugural Shindig
Paul Krugman Explains the Keys to Our Recovery
Moyers: On Democracy
Corporate Gold on a Fiscal Cliff
In economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s book, End This Depression Now!, there’s a chapter titled “The Second Gilded Age” in which he describes the extraordinary rise in wealth and power of the very rich during this era of unregulated greed. Since Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, the top one percent of Americans have seen their incomes increase by 275 percent. After accounting for inflation, the typical hourly wage for a worker has increased just $1.23. Read more…
The Recent Unpleasantness at FreedomWorks
As Saturday Night Live’s Stefon would say, this Washington tale has everything: accusations hurled and counter-hurled, handguns, multimillion dollar payoffs — just what we need to briefly distract us as the parties play chicken up on Capitol Hill’s fiscal cliff. Read More…
Bill Moyers: Remember the Victims, Reject the Violence
Washington’s Revolving Door: As Old as Lincoln
Washington’s Revolving Door Is Hazardous to Our Health
Bill Moyers: The Truth Behind Grover Norquist’s Pledge
A Look at the Numbers Behind “Obamacare”
When the Supreme Court handed down its decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) last June 28, a handful of conservative governors were quick to declare that their states would opt out of the Medicaid expansion program. Although Obamacare will have a hefty price tag, most of the burden will be carried by the federal government. Read More…
Inside the Invisible World of Domestic Work: An Interview With Ai-jen Poo
Domestic workers – the nannies, housekeepers, and home health aides who care for our young children and elderly parents — have traditionally been excluded from the most basic protections, like minimum wage. Working behind closed doors in private homes, they are vulnerable to abuse and unable to organize. Read More…
ALEC Loses Ground in Election
The United States of ALEC
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video
Monday 3 December 2012
Welcome, to a story that’s been unfolding for more than 30 years but has gone largely untold. That’s the way the central characters wanted it. They were smart and understood something very important: that they might more easily get what they wanted from state capitals than from Washington, DC. So they started putting their money in places like Raleigh, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Phoenix, Arizona; and Madison, Wisconsin. That’s because what happens in our state legislatures directly affects our taxes, schools, roads, the quality of our air and water – even our right to vote. Politicians and lobbyists at the core of this clever enterprise figured out how to pull it off in an organized, camouflaged way — covering their tracks while they put one over on an unsuspecting public. This is the story of how and why it worked. Read More…
Journalist Naomi Klein on Capitalism and Climate Change
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video
Monday 19 November 2012
Climate change and Hurricane Sandy brought Naomi Klein to town, too. You may know her as the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” Readers of two influential magazines to put Naomi Klein high on the list of the 100 leading public thinkers in the world. She is now reporting for a new book and documentary on how climate change can spur political and economic transformation. She also has joined with the environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben in a campaign launched this week called “Do the Math.” Read More…
Embrace the Fiscal Cliff
Watch out for the coming hysteria on the so-called “fiscal cliff.” In the post-election commentary, you will hear numerous voices – definitely on the right but also on the left – arguing that we could not possibly increase taxes this year or next, as this will push our economy back into recession. Do not believe them – this is just the latest disinformation put out by people who agree with Grover Norquist that the real goal of politics should always and everywhere be to reduce taxes and shrink the size of government. Read More…
Barbara Ehrenreich: Kiss Goldman Sachs Goodbye
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I’m waiting for Obama to recognize the existence of widespread poverty – not just the 15 percent who are officially under the poverty line, but the 30 or more percent who barely getting by from week to week. Mr. President, kiss Goldman Sachs goodbye and bail out your real constituency! Read More…
Will the Supreme Court Reaffirm Affirmative Action?
Laura Flanders discusses the Fisher v. University of Texas affirmative action case with Kimberlé Crenshaw and Luke Harris. Watch the Video …
What’s Wrong With the Stop Special Interest Money Now Act?
Plutocrats Want to Own Your Vote
Across America, this divide between the super-rich and everyone else has become a yawning chasm that studies indicate may stifle jobs and growth for years to come. At no time in modern history has the top one hundredth of one percent owned more of our wealth or paid so low a tax rate. But in neither of the two presidential debates so far has the vastness of this astounding inequality gap been discussed. Read More…
Killing the Kids That Don’t Need to Die
Bill Moyers: Election Expert Richard Hasen on Voter Fraud and Disenfranchisement
Bill Moyers: More Money, Less Democracy
In this essay, Bill examines how the Citizens United decision has candidates campaigning for cash more than votes, and how that money – pouring into TV ads and high-paid political consultants – is creating “a racket, plain and simple.” Read More…
Investigative Journalist Craig Unger on the Continuing Power of Karl Rove
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | News Analysis
Friday 14 September 2012
Bill talks with Craig Unger, author of Boss Rove: Inside Karl Rove’s Secret Kingdom of Power, about Rove’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering to once again affect the outcome of a presidential election.
“Most people thought he was a creature of the Bush family,” Unger tells Bill. “I think he’s a force more powerful than that.” Read More…
Money in Politics: Where Is the Outrage?
The For-Profit College Racket
Bill Moyers | Suppressing Votes By Law
Bill Moyers | Veteran Karl Marlantes on What It’s Like to Go to War
Moyers and Winship: The NRA Has America Living Under the Gun
Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. Firearm violence costs our country as much as $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns than guns. So why do we always act so surprised? Read More…
Moyers: Vandana Shiva on the Problem With Genetically-Modified Seeds
Bill talks to scientist and philosopher Vandana Shiva, who’s become a rock star in the global battle over genetically modified seeds. These seeds — considered “intellectual property” by the big companies who own the patents — are globally marketed to monopolize food production and profits. Opponents challenge the safety of genetically modified seeds, claiming they also harm the environment, are more costly, and leave local farmers deep in debt as well as dependent on suppliers. Shiva, who founded a movement in India to promote native seeds, links genetic tinkering to problems in our ecology, economy, and humanity, and sees this as the latest battleground in the war on Planet Earth. Read More…
Bill Moyers | Financial Expert Sheila Bair on Keeping Banks Honest
Bill talks with financial expert Sheila Bair about the lawlessness of our banking system and the prognosis for meaningful reform. Bair was appointed in 2006 by President George W. Bush to chair the FDIC. During the 2008 meltdown, she argued that in some cases banks were NOT too big to fail — that instead of bailouts, they should be sold off to healthier competitors. Now a senior adviser to the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bair has organized a private group of financial experts including former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, former Senators Bill Bradley and Alan Simpson, and John Reed, once the chairman of Citicorp, to explore ways to prevent the banking industry from scuttling reforms created by the Dodd-Frank Act. Read More…
Banksters Take Us to the Brink
Every day brings more reminders of the terrible unfairness that besets our country, the tragic reversal of fortune experienced by millions who once had good lives and steady jobs, now gone. Read More…
Unions Are in Peril
Moyers: On Democracy
Banksters Take Us to the Brink
Every day brings more reminders of the terrible unfairness that besets our country, the tragic reversal of fortune experienced by millions who once had good lives and steady jobs, now gone. Read More…
Inequality Rises as Union Numbers Decline
Bill Moyers | Messing With Texas Textbooks
Bill Moyers | How Citizen Power Can Save a Library
Bill Moyers | Peter Edelman on Fighting Poverty
The President’s Never-Ending Campaign for Cash
My neighborhood has become a cash machine for the Obama re-election campaign…. I still love where I live, but rents, commercial and residential, have skyrocketed; many of the mom-and-pop stores that gave the area character have moved or been forced out of business. How long we happy few, we remnants of the middle class can hang on is the subject of much debate. In the meantime, we have become prime real-estate for Democratic and progressive fundraising. Read More…
Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein on Dark Money
Campaign Cash: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
On Memorial Day Weekend, America Reckons With Torture
Facing the truth is hard to do, especially the truth about ourselves. So Americans have been sorely pressed to come to terms with the fact that after 9/11 our government began to torture people, and did so in defiance of domestic and international law. Most of us haven’t come to terms with what that meant, or means today, but we must reckon with torture, the torture done in our name, allegedly for our safety. Read More…
A Twenty-One Protest Song Salute
Singer and activist Tom Morello says it’s his job as a musician “to steel the backbone of people on the front lines of social justice struggles, and to put wind in sails of those struggles.” Here’s a list of 21 songs that have done just that – from Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land to Public Enemy’s Fight the Power. Watch the videos.
Tom Morello: Troubadour for Justice
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company | Video
Monday 21 May 2012
Songs of social protest – music and the quest for justice – have long been intertwined, and the troubadours of troubling times – Guthrie, Seeger, Baez, Dylan, and Springsteen among them – have become famous for their dedication to both. Now we can add a name to the ranks of those who lift their voices for social and economic justice: Tom Morello. Morello is the Harvard-educated guitarist who dabbled in politics, then chose rock music to make a difference. He played guitar for the popular band he co-founded – Rage Against the Machine – and then for Audioslave. Rolling Stone chose his album “World Wide Rebel Songs” as one of the best of 2011, and named him one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Watch the video.
Tom Morello Leads the Occupy “Guitarmy” (Video)
An army of guitarists took to the streets of New York City as part of Occupy Wall Street’s May Day resurgence. Led by former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, the ‘guitarmy’ marched peacefully while strumming protest songs including Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land to Morello’s World Wide Rebel Song. The foot soldiers of the guitarmy ranged from seasoned activists and Zuccotti occupiers to high school students at their first protest march. Watch the video …
At a Military Hospital, Warriors Are Not the Only Wounded
The weather’s getting warmer in Afghanistan and the war there is heating up again. That means – as it has meant every year for more than a decade — that the pace will quicken at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. More casualties will be brought to this largest American military hospital outside the United States. The Critical Care Air Transport teams and their C-17 Globemasters will fly in from “downrange,” as they call the Afghan battleground, and the injured will be brought by ambulance bus from nearby Ramstein Air Force Base to the hospital front door. Read More…
Political Ads: America Discovers Columbus
If you live in Columbus, Ohio, my sympathy. Don’t get me wrong. Columbus is a wonderful town – the state capital, birthplace of the late great humorist James Thurber, location of Ohio State University and my brother Tim. But if you’re a television viewer in Columbus you may be wishing about now that you could jump into your set and join the castaways on Survivor. According to the newspaper USA Today, “As the amount of money spent on political persuasion has risen, there are now some places where political ads are more like a steady rain. Here in Columbus, it is pouring.” Read More…
Between Two Worlds – Life on the Border
No writer understands the border culture between Mexico and the United States more intimately than Luis Alberto Urrea, whose life is the stuff of great novels. Son of a Mexican father and Anglo mother, Urrea grew up first in Tijuana and then just across the border in San Diego. Over the years he has produced a series of acclaimed novels, including The Hummingbird’s Daughter, The Devil’s Highway, and his latest, Queen of America — each a rich and revealing account of the people of the borderlands that join and separate our two nations. Read More…
Major Super PACs Spent Big on Deceptive Ads
According to a new report from the Annenberg Public Policy Center, four super PACs spent over half of their advertising budgets on deceptive ads in the Republican presidential primary. Spending estimates from Kantar Media CMAG and research by FactCheck.org reveals that 23.3 million (56.7%) of the 41.1 million dollars was spent on “19 ads containing deceptive or misleading claims.” Read More…
The Best Congress the Banks’ Money Can Buy
Here we go again. Another round of the game we call Congressional Creep. After months of haggling and debate, Congress finally passes reform legislation to fix a serious rupture in the body politic, and the President signs it into law. But the fight’s just begun, because the special interests immediately set out to win back what they lost when the reform became law. Read More…
Why Age and Race Matter in Activism: Five More Points From George Goehl
After Bill’s conversation with community organizer George Goehl, Goehl mentioned he had five things he wished he’d had a chance to say in the interview, including points about overcoming low economic expectations, the value of younger activist leaders, and the perils of not addressing race. So — because there’s no bad time for a good idea — we turned the cameras back on and recorded this web-exclusive video. Read More…
Ai-jen Poo and Sarita Gupta on Workers’ Rights
Bill Moyers talks with Ai-jen Poo and Sarita Gupta about activism dedicated to restoring workers’ rights — rights they say have been stripped away by corporations. Domestic workers in particular, says Poo, are a “huge and growing part of the 99 percent.” Read More…
Scrutinizing the Threat from Iran
In the lead up to war in Iraq, misinformation about weapons of mass destruction went virtually unchallenged by the mainstream media. But three reporters for Knight Ridder newspapers (now McClatchy) were skeptical, and their probing investigation of the Bush administration’s justifications for war eventually proved prescient. Read More…
Sergeant Robert Bales and the Trauma of Repeat Deployments
Does Robert Bales, the army staff sergeant who allegedly killed 17 Afghan civilians on March 11, symbolize a larger problem in our military ranks? In this web-exclusive video, Vietnam veteran and military scholar Andrew Bacevich talks with Bill Moyers about Bales’ accountability, the stress of repeated tours on soldiers, and how war itself “compromises our humanity.” Read More…
Andrew Bacevich on Changing Our Military Mindset
This week, on an all-new Moyers & Company, Bill Moyers and Bacevich explore the futility of “endless” wars, and provide a reality check on the rhetoric of American exceptionalism. Read More…
See video and transcripts from previous programs.
Moyers & Company Programming Note:
Bill Moyers Programming Note: Popular Culture and Political Culture
How does pop culture not only reflect, but influence political culture? On this weekend’s Moyers & Company (check local listings), historian and culture critic Neal Gabler joins Bill to discuss how representations of heroism in movies shape our expectations of a U.S. President, and how our real-world candidates are packaged into superficial, two-dimensional personas designed to appeal to both the electorate and the media.. Check for your local TV schedule here.
Bill Moyers Essay:
Bill Moyers Essay: Capitalism With a Conscience
With help from the government, a very friendly tax code, and their own coffer-powered influence, big American companies have emerged from the recession flush with cash, less burdened by debt, and with a greater share of the country’s income. As a consequence, Angela Blackwell suggests, people with enormous money and influence often don’t feel connected to the rest of us. Read More…
Who Pays for Political Ads?
Great efforts are underway both locally and nationally to keep secret the identities of people and organizations paying for local political advertisements. But Americans can still do something, even when broadcasters shirk their responsibilities. In this essay, Bill Moyers suggests what you can do to bring those names to light. Read More…
The Dangerous Road of Wishful Thinking
Bill Moyers counsels President Obama not to look at America through the rose-colored glasses of people — like Robert Kagan — led by political opportunity and wishful thinking, but by those — like Andrew Bacevich — who see the world as it truly is, and are best poised to make it better. Read More…
To PBS, With (Tough) Love
A PBS spokesperson told The New York Times that the service “is fully committed to independent films and the diversity of content they provide.” That can quickly be demonstrated by reversing a bad decision and returning to a national core time slot the independent documentaries created — often at real financial sacrifice — by the producers and filmmakers whose own passion is to reveal life honestly and to make plain, for all to see, the realities of inequality and injustice in America. Read More…
Bill Moyers: Freedom of and From Religion
The president did something agile and wise the other day. And something quite important to the health of our politics. He reached up and snuffed out what some folks wanted to make into a cosmic battle between good and evil. No, said the president, we’re not going to turn the argument over contraception into Armageddon, this is an honest difference between Americans, and I’ll not see it escalated into a holy war. So instead of the government requiring Catholic hospitals and other faith-based institutions to provide employees with health coverage involving contraceptives, the insurance companies will offer that coverage, and offer it free. Read More…
To read more in the Bill Moyers essay series, click here.
Moyers: Ask Bill
Why Is Our Nation So Divided?
“Why do you think our nation is so divided? Is it because we’re so diverse or is there something else at work here?” Thanks for your question. Read More…
Fighting Back Against Corporate Personhood
Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. When five conservative members of the Supreme Court handed for-profit corporations the right to secretly flood political campaigns with tidal waves of cash on the eve of an election, they moved America closer to outright plutocracy, where political power derived from wealth is devoted to the protection of wealth. It is now official: Just as they have adorned our athletic stadiums and multiple places of public assembly with their logos, corporations can officially put their brand on the government of the United States as well as the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the fifty states. Read More…
Letter From Bill Moyers
You already may have heard that I’d be coming back in January with a new series on the public television station nearest you. But you may not have heard exactly why. It’s not just that I lack retirement skills, as my wife and co-editor, Judith, keeps reminding me. Or that the squeaky rocking chair on the front porch got on my nerves. Read More…
Bill Moyers Launches New Series With Three Shows Probing the Reasons for Financial Inequality in America
Bill Moyers is back on TV – and online. Continuing his long-running conversation with the American public, Moyers returns to television in mid-January with Moyers & Company, a weekly series the veteran journalist says will try to make sense of our tumultuous times, “for myself and hopefully for anyone who wants to keep me company.” Read More…
Bill Moyers: He’s Back, Just as Curious as Ever
That didn’t last long. Just 20 months after retiring his PBS series “Bill Moyers Journal,” Mr. Moyers was back in the studio on a Wednesday morning in December, deep in conversation about moral political psychology with the author Jonathan Haidt. Read More…
“Je Suis Charlie” – but Not in My Backyard
Sunday, 18 January 2015 10:48 By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company | Op-Ed
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