Show Details for November 26th, 2006

Tonight’s show — Michele Wucker on immigration and Jonathan Landay on Cheney and Lebanon

Michele Wucker joins The Monitor’s co-host Pokey Anderson, in an interview recorded during her recent visit to Houston. She delves into the complex issues of immigration. Michele is co-director of the Immigrant Voting Project and director of the Program on Citizenship & Security. She is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York City.

She specializes in immigration and assimilation, transnational political processes, the politics of culture, Latin America and the Caribbean, and international finance and debt crisis

She is the author of LOCKOUT: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right, published by Public Affairs press in May 2006, and of Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola.

Michele lectures frequently at leading universities and policy on the subjects of immigration, cross-cultural conflict and conciliation, and Latin American politics. She has written for many U.S. and Latin American publications including The American Prospect, Newsday, The New York Daily News, The New York Times Book Review, Tikkun, The Washington Post, and others.

Born in 1969 in Kansas City (Missouri), Michele grew up in Texas and Wisconsin and now lives in New York City. Michele holds a degree in French and policy studies from Rice University in Houston and a Master of International Affairs and Certificate in Latin American Studies at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs.

BOOK:
LOCKOUT: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right

HER WEBSITE:
http://wucker.com/material/writings.htm

Journalist Jonathan Landay on Cheney, Iraq and other news



Jonathan Landay is a regular guest at the Monitor. He and The Monitor’s Mark Bebawi will talk about recent news developments regarding Iraq, Cheney, and more.Jonathan S. Landay, national security and intelligence correspondent, has written about foreign affairs and U.S. defense, intelligence and foreign policies for 15 years. From 1985-94, he covered South Asia and the Balkans for United Press International and then the Christian Science Monitor. He moved to Washington in December 1994 to cover defense and foreign affairs for the Christian Science Monitor and joined Knight Ridder in October 1999. He speaks frequently on national security matters, particularly the Balkans. In 2005, he was part of a team that won a National Headliners Award for “How the Bush Administration Went to War in Iraq.” He also won a 2005 Award of Distinction from the Medill School of Journalism for “Iraqi exiles fed exaggerated tips to news media.”

HIS WEBSITE:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/jonathan_s_landay

ARTICLES:
“White House denies Cheney endorsed water boarding”
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers
Oct. 27, 2006
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/jonathan_s_landay/15867370.htm

“Cheney confirms that detainees were subjected to water-boarding”
By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers
October 25, 2006
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/jonathan_s_landay/15847918.htm

Show Details for November 19th, 2006

Missing Votes, War Profiteers

Jonathan Simon on 3 million votes gone astray


Jonathan Simon joins The Monitor’s co-host Pokey Anderson today to tell us about his study of exit polls, just released.  In the study, “Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006,” he and co-author Bruce O’Dell compare the November 2006 election national exit polls with the official vote tallies.  They find a 3 million vote discrepancy in the expected votes for Congress.  They will soon be releasing a similar study of votes for Senate.

Using exit polls that Simon and O’Dell found to be representative, they write that “the Democrats’ 2006 total House vote margin was 11.5%, or nearly 4% greater than the 7.6% reported vote count margin. This represents nearly a three million vote discrepancy between the validated exit poll results and the reported vote tally for the US House of Representatives.”

Simon says the mainstream media is staying away from this story.

Simon is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law, is a member of the Bar of Massachusetts. As a result of his prior experience as a political survey research analyst for Peter D. Hart Research Associates in Washington, he became an early advocate for an exit poll-based
electoral “burglar alarm” system, independent of media and corporate control, to detect computerized vote shifting in Election 2004. He was able to capture and analyze critical official exit poll data briefly posted on the web prior to its election-night disappearance, data which served as an initial basis for questioning the validity of Election 2004.

Jonathan Simon is a co-founder of the Election Defense Alliance  — www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org — a national coordinating body for citizen electoral integrity groups and individuals. He is also a member of Alliance for Democracy — www.thealliancefordemocracy.org .

STUDY:
Landslide Denied: Exit Polls vs. Vote Count 2006
Under-sampling of Democrats in the House Exit Poll
and the Corruption of the Official Vote Count
by Jonathan Simon, JD, and Bruce O’Dell
Election Defense Alliance
November 2006
http://electiondefensealliance.org/landslide_denied_exit_polls_vs_vote_count_2006

RELATED ARTICLE:
Stopping H.R. 550 Because We Can’t Compromise on Democracy
by Nancy Tobi and Paul Lehto
OpEd News
November 18, 2006
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_nancy_to_061118_stopping_h_r__550_be.htm

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald on “Iraq for Sale”

Robert Greenwald is a producer, director and political activist. The Monitor’s co-host Mark Bebawi will talk with him about his newest film, “IRAQ FOR SALE: The War Profiteers,” the story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war.

Greenwald’s films have garnered 25 Emmy nominations, four cable ACE Award nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, the Peabody Award, the Robert Wood Johnson Award, and eight Awards of Excellence from the Film Advisory Board. He was awarded the 2002 Producer of the Year Award by the American Film Institute. Greenwald has received the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Upton Sinclair Award for his political work.

Greenwald is the also director/producer of “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price” (2005), a documentary that uncovers the retail giant’s assault on families and American values and “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” (2004). He also executive produced a trilogy of political documentaries: “Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election” (2002); “Uncovered: The Iraq War” (2003), which Greenwald also directed; and “Unconstitutional” (2004).

Brave New Films, Greenwald’s new media company, is working on telling stories using film that will influence the debates about the most important issues of the day and is currently distributing The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress.

WEBSITES:
IRAQ FOR SALE: The War Profiteers    http://iraqforsale.org
Brave New Films    www.bravenewfilms.org

Show Details for November 12th, 2006

Thank you to everyone who called in during the pledge drive. The Monitor raised over $3300 in two hours!

Details for the 12th:

6:15 pm CST — Rev. Steve Copley on the minimum wage initiatives

Rev. Steve Copley is a member of the Let Justice Roll national steering committee. This is a nonpartisan national coalition of 70 groups working to raise the minimum wage at the state and federal level. Minimum wage hikes won in every state they were on the ballot, winning by a resounding 76 percent in Missouri, 73 percent in Montana, 69 percent in Nevada, 66 percent in Arizona, 56 percent in Ohio and 53 percent in Colorado (as of 11-9-06).

–Congress has taken eight pay raises since 1997, bringing their pay to $165,200, while giving none to minimum wage workers who make just $10,712 a year.
–It takes nearly two workers earning the federal minimum wage to make what one worker made four decades ago.
–Between 1968 and 2005, worker productivity rose 111 percent, but the average hourly wage fell 5 percent, adjusted for inflation—and the minimum wage fell 43 percent. Rising productivity of workers is not reflected in their pay.
– Almost 2 million people make the minimum wage or less, according to the Labor Department.
– The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the real buying power of $10,700, about what a full-time minimum-wage worker makes in a year, before taxes — is the lowest in half a century.

Rev. Copley served as chair of the successful Give Arkansas a Raise Now campaign.

SIGNING OF ARKANSAS LEGISLATION TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE

Rev. Copley is President of the Arkansas Interfaith Conference, and Co-Chair of the Arkansas Conference United Methodist Church Hunger Task Force. He is a past Deputy Chair of the Arkansas Democratic Party and currently a member of the State Committee of the Arkansas Democratic Party. He is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and is currently serving as Senior Pastor of the North Little Rock First United Methodist Church, a congregation of 2000 members. He has a B.A. from the University of Central Arkansas; an M.Div. from Southern Methodist University; and a J.D. from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock School of Law.

WEBSITE:
http://www.letjusticeroll.org

ARTICLE:
“This Time, Ballot Issues Could Rally Liberal Base;
Wage Initiatives Seen As Favoring Democrats”
By Zachary A. Goldfarb and David S. Broder
Washington Post
October 28, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102701634_pf.html

<> ~ 6:40 pm CST — Robert Parry on the nomination of Robert Gates to be Defense Secretary



Robert Parry will look at the departure of Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush’s nomination of Robert Gates to replace him as Defense Secretary.

He has joined us at The Monitor before. Parry is a 27-year veteran of Washington journalism. He left mainstream journalism to start his own news service, Consortium News.

Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. His 1999 book is Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth.’

These articles included the first story about a then-obscure Marine officer named Oliver North; the first account of Nicaraguan contra drug trafficking; and the first stories detailing the White House cover-up of the Iran-contra scandal.

Parry has won numerous awards including the George Polk Award for National Reporting in 1984, the Pultizer Prize finalist for National Reporting in 1985 and was a Emmy finalist for Best Explanatory Work on Breaking News in 1994.

WEBSITE:
www.consortiumnews.com

During the show Mark Bebawi mentioned a link to a Russian report. For text of the Russian report, click here.