September 28 – An Analysis of Trump’s Tax Overhaul; Trump’s Latest Racist Rant; Spain’s Efforts to Shut Down Catalonia’s Referendum

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with Trump’s proposed overhaul of the tax code that White House economic advisor Gary Cohn is insisting will not benefit the wealthy while other experts insist the opposite is true and speak with Bruce Bartlett, who served as a senior policy advisor in the Reagan White House and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy in George H.W. Bush’s Treasury Department. He joins us to discuss his article at The Washington Post “I helped create the GOP tax myth. Trump is wrong. Tax cuts don’t equal growth” and how the Republicans are going to push through a tax bill in the same way they tried to repeal Obamacare by excluding the Democrats, hiding the details and steamrolling the experts and analysts to get tax cuts for the rich passed before the public finds out later that they have to pay for them and that the promises made to benefit middle class and working Americans were yet another lie.

Part 2

Then we examine Trump’s latest racist outburst from the safe confines of his sycophantic softball news outlet “Fox and Friends”, where the president revived his phony fight with the NFL by dog-whistling that the all-white NFL owners are going along with the protests by the mostly black players because they are being intimidated by them, claiming NFL owners are afraid on their players. David Steele, who writes about the NFL for Sporting News as a columnist and is the co-author of Olympic champion Tommie Smith’s autobiography “Silent Gesture”, joins us to discuss Trump’s unmistakably racist inference and cheap exploitation of patriotism when the NFL owners and players are linking arms in a statement of unity as their president does everything he can to encourage division and fan hatred across the United States of America.    

Part 3

Then finally we look into the desperate and perhaps dangerous measures Spain’s conservative government is resorting to in an effort to thwart and frustrate Sunday’s referendum in Catalonia. Becquer Seguin, a professor of Iberian Studies at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of an article at The Nation “Have Spain and Catalonia Reached a Point of No Return?”, joins us to discuss the Madrid government’s deployment of thousands of riot police to Barcelona and threats to fine and jail secessionist politicians while shutting down polling places and arresting those printing ballots.