April 18 – The Undemocratic Senate; The Understaffed OSHA and the 4,500 Workplace Deaths Per Year; A Report on How the U.S. Sought Revenge Through Torture

On By nusrat_82ght6

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Full Program

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Part 1

We begin with the tyranny of the minority in the U.S. Senate who yesterday acted on behalf of a vocal minority, the NRA, that represents one percent of the population, thwarting the will of 90% of Americans. Joining us is Alec McGillis, who writes for The New Republic where he has an article “Did Our Founders’ Lack of Foresight Doom Gun Control? The Tyranny of Small States in the Undemocratic Senate”.

 

 alec macgillis

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Part 2

Then we look into the massive deadly explosion in Texas at a fertilizer plant that was last inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration 28 years ago in 1985 when they found five serious violations and fined West Fertilizer $30. Keith Wrightson, the Worker Safety & Health Advocate at Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division joins us to discuss the understaffed OSHA whose measly budget of $558 million oversees the workplace deaths of 4,500 Americans per year while hundreds of billions more is spent combating terrorists who since 9/11 have killed 238 Americans, an average of 24 per year.

 

keith wrightson

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Part 3

 Then finally we examine the new report, “The Task Force on Detainee Treatment” by the bi-partisan Constitution Project that calls upon the nation to avoid the mistake of seeking revenge through human rights violations, as was done after 9/11. Mark Danner, who was a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker and is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and the author of “Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror”, joins us.  mark danner