Category: Full Interviews With Our Guests

Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism

March 24, 2014 - Activists, Authors, Full Interviews With Our Guests, Most Recent, Our Podcast

The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America with Law Professor Jody David Armour who is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. He has been a member of the faculty since 1995. Professor Armour’s expertise ranges from personal injury claims to claims about the relationship between racial justice, criminal justice, and the rule of law. Professor Armour studies the intersection of race and legal decision making as well as torts and tort reform movements.

A widely published scholar and popular lecturer, Professor Armour is a Soros Justice Senior Fellow of The Open Society Institute’s Center on Crime, Communities and Culture. He has published articles in Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Southern California Review of Law and Women’s Studies, University of Colorado Law Review and University of Pittsburgh Law Review. His book Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America, (New York University Press, 1997), received the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award. He has just completed a book on the relationship between law, language, morality, politics and the performing arts titled Hearts and Minds in Blame and Punishment. Professor Armour is a regular legal analyst on KABC, KNBC and KCBS News and a sought-after legal expert on a variety of criminal law and social justice issues in a wide range of other media outlets. At the request of the US Department of State and European Embassies, Professor Armour has toured major universities in Europe to speak about social justice as well as Hip Hop culture and the law. His work on the performing arts and law recently culminated in a unique interdisciplinary and multimedia analysis of social justice and linguistics, titled Race, Rap and Redemption, produced by USC alumna J.M. Morris, and featuring performance by Ice Cube, Mayda del Valle, Saul Williams, Lula Washington Dance Theatre, Macy Gray Music Academy Orchestra, and Mailon Rivera.

Prof. Armour earned his A.B. degree in Sociology and Philosophy at Harvard University and his J.D. degree with honors from Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to joining University of Southern California, he was an associate at Morrison & Foerster, Kirkpatrick and Lockhart and taught at Boalt Hall, Indiana University and the University of Pittsburgh.

Professor Armour currently teaches students a diverse array of subjects, including Criminal Law, Torts, and Stereotypes and Prejudice: The Role of the Cognitive Unconscious in the Rule of Law.

Burt Ross Gets Jealous

March 11, 2014 - Full Interviews With Our Guests, Most Recent, Our Podcast, Politicians

Fort Lee Mayor Burt Ross, our greatest American, discovers David’s new hero is Ralph Nader. Also Steve Skrovan the host of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Please subscribe to our show for free on iTunes and Stitcher.

David Feldman Show: Ralph Nader’s Back

March 11, 2014 - Activists, David Feldman Radio Show, Full Interviews With Our Guests, Most Recent, Our Radio Shows

Ralph Nader is our greatest living American. This Saturday at 11:00 a.m. on KPFK we are proud to welcome the Ralph Nader Radio Hour to all our Pacifica Radio affiliates in America, Mexico and Canada. Also on our show Blue America’s PAC’s Howie Klein, Will Ryan and Film Critic Michael Snyder. Please subscribe to this show for free on iTunes and Stitcher.

Capturing Drug Lord El Chapo

February 27, 2014 - Activists, Full Interviews With Our Guests, Most Recent, Our Podcast

Mexico’s Drug Lord El Chapo was captured on Saturday, so the D.E.A.’s Sean Dunagan joins us. Before joining L.E.A.P. Sean was the D.E.A.’s senior intelligence research specialist in Mexico. Eventually his family had to be evacuated from the country as a result of cartel violence while he was stationed there. Sean says, “Chapo Guzmán is a ruthlessly violent criminal, and the Mexican authorities who brought him to justice should be commended. Unfortunately, in the big picture, his arrest will do nothing to keep drugs off of our streets or reduce the level of prohibition-related violence in Mexico, Chicago, or anywhere else. As long as we continue the failed strategy of prohibition, violence and corruption will be hallmarks of the drug trade.” Sean joined LEAP after he realized the war on drugs was only making things worse. A fascinating interview that will make it easier to understand the role America plays in the Mexican drug war.

Also film critic Michael Snyder.

The Truth About Mexico’s Drug War

February 27, 2014 - Activists, Full Interviews With Our Guests, The News From Around The World

Here’e everything you need to know about the capture of El Chapo and Mexico’s war on the drug cartels.

Nader Says Raising Minimum Wage Is Good For Business

February 24, 2014 - Authors, Full Interviews With Our Guests, The News From Around The World, Top Stories, Transcripts

Ralph Nader has been lobbying Walmart for years to voluntarily raise their minimum wage, reminding the corporation that it’s in their best financial interests.

This week we’re seeing that the retail sector is slowly waking up to the sobering reality that when Americans don’t earn enough money they can’t shop. Walmart, America’s largest private sector employer, finally seems to get it. The retail behemoth announced last week it might support President Obama’s efforts to increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10.

Meanwhile The Gap says it is voluntarily raising their minimum wage to $10 an hour.

Ralph Nader has shaped public policy for nearly five decades and has been the single greatest force in progressive politics since Teddy Roosevelt. His new book is Told You So. We talked about why raising the minimum wage is actually good for business:

Listen to original broadcast

David: What role does a higher minimum wage play in higher prices? If Walmart, for example, paid a livable wage to its workers, how much more expensive would all those shoddy items we never needed in the first place actually be?

Ralph: Well, here’s one study that will startle you. And that is, if Walmart took all its workers up to $12 or more an hour, and there’s a million Walmart workers making less than 1968 Walmart workers made adjusted for inflation, it would increase the average Walmart visit by a consumer and what the consumer buys by $0.43, that’s all. These are highly automated companies and that’s assuming Walmart wants to transfer it all to the consumer, not take it out of Mike Duke’s salary and others. Mike Duke, the CEO, makes $11,000 an hour plus benefits, not take it out of other things in the company, other than the workers’ hides. Even if they transfer everything to the consumer, it’s $0.43 a visit. Of course it’s a great stimulus plan too because tens of billions of dollars are rising out of restoration of the minimum wage to 1968 inflation adjusted levels would produce a lot of purchases and that creates jobs.

The CEO of Walmart, Mike Duke, earns $11,000 an hour plus benefits according to Ralph Nader.

David: According to Goldman Sachs, the quintessential champion of the working man, they issued a new report saying American workers’ wages are growing at two percent per year, as you said, the slowest rate since 1965. Is this a new phenomenon where even people like Goldman Sachs are finally acknowledging income disparity? It seems to me as recently as three years ago people on the right, at least, were not admitting to a chasm between the very wealthy and the very poor. We’re now seeing that both sides are acknowledging it.

Ralph: That’s right, that’s the recent effort. We’ve been at this really vigorously now for five years, so we know the pulse as it grows. We’re trying to push the sluggish AFL-CIO, AFL-CIO has helped with getting demonstrators in front of McDonald’s and others, but it’s been really a slow push until about nine months ago when you see a quickening.

And one of the reasons is that the plutocrats are getting worried about reduced consumer expenditures, they’re saying, “Hey, if we don’t raise these minimum wage salaries, we’re not going to get the sales.” Even Walmart is starting to worry about that. And I think, and we’ve met with Walmart reps about two years ago, and I think that they’re about to come out with a support of the minimum wage. Maybe not as high as $10.90, but maybe they’ll support the $10.10 over three years that’s backed by George Miller and Nancy Pelosi, the leading Democrats that happen come from the one city, San Francisco, that has the highest minimum wage in the country which is, I think, about $10.50 per hour.

Ralph Nader has shaped public policy for nearly five decades and has been the single greatest force in progressive politics since Teddy Roosevelt. His new book is Told You So.