May 30 – The Controversial DNC Chair and the “Dump Debbie” Movement; 2 Million Pregnant American Women at Risk From Zika; The Filmmaker of Gasland on the Shale Revolution and the Revolution Against Fracking

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the irony that just as the Republicans are uniting around Donald Trump, divisions among Democrats appear to be widening with one of the main points of friction between the Clinton and Sanders campaign being the head of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Named the best political writer in Florida, Adam Smith, the Political Editor of the Tampa Bay Times joins us to provide a local angle on the polarizing Florida Congresswoman who, as Chair of the DNC will preside over the Democratic convention in Philadelphia where instead of brotherly love, there is likely to be an eruption of booing the minute Debbie Wasserman Schultz gavels the convention to order. As pressure builds among grassroots Democrats to “dump Debbie”, we examine whether the efforts by Bernie Sanders and others to support Schultz’s primary challenger will cost the controversial congresswoman her seat.

Part 2

Then we get an update on the political impasse over funding to prevent the spread of the Zika epidemic that has struck Central and South America and is moving north into the southern United States. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies joins us to discuss the delay in funding that could put about 2 million pregnant American women at risk and why raiding the fund for Ebola and offering $622 million instead of the $1.9 billion requested will end up being penny wise and pound foolish since the cost of prevention will be a fraction of the costs of a spreading epidemic.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with the Oscar-nominated filmmaker Josh Fox, who helped spark the anti-fracking movement with his film GASLAND. He joins us to discuss his final film in the GASLAND trilogy “How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change” which opens in LA on June 3 and airs nationally on HBO on June 27. We discuss what the oil and gas industry calls the shale oil and gas revolution as well as the other revolution involving millions of people around the world organizing against “fracking”.