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Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.



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The Resistance Starts Now!

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SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris




SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018



SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018




SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018




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SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017




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2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

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THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.


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Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

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"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.





Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.


JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

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Romney-Ryan: The GOP's Ticket to Slashing The Nation's Social Safety Net

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Posted Aug. 22, 2012

Interview with Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, conducted by Scott Harris

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When presumed Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney announced his pick of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate on Aug. 11, much of the media coverage focused on the choice as a possible catalyst that could move the country toward a substantive national debate on the future of Medicare and other social safety net programs. As House Budget chairman, Ryan was the architect of a 2011 budget plan that would have made dramatic cuts to funding for education, Head Start, aid to college students and other vital social programs, while simultaneously providing ever larger tax cuts to the nation’s wealthiest citizens. But perhaps Ryan’s best-known signature policy proposal was to end the Medicare program as the nation has known it since its establishment in 1965. Under Ryan’s plan, Medicare would move to a voucher program, offering seniors a limited amount of money to shop for private health insurance, while shifting the burden of thousands of dollars of additional health care costs onto the elderly the program serves. Under the current Medicare system, the government directly pays doctors, hospitals and other health care providers.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, columnist and author. He assesses the view that Mitt Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan as his running mate could provoke a substantive national debate on the future of Medicare and austerity economics in this year’s presidential election campaign.

DEAN BAKER: Well, these are views I think most people consider pretty extreme. In the past, Rep. Ryan has been very vocal in calling for privatizing Social Security. He, in his budget, he calls for replacing Medicare with a voucher program for people under age 55, and basically for dismantling the federal government. I'm kind of surprised this hasn't gotten more attention, because right in his budget, these are projections that the Congressional Budget Office made based on Rep. Ryan's instructions, and they show that if you pull out health care spending and Social Security, the rest of the budget is supposed to fall to about 4.5 percent GDP by 2040, and 3.75 percent by 2050. Well, that includes military spending, which is currently about 4 percent GDP. So basically by 2040, the rest of the federal government - the Park Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the Education Department – everything we think of as the federal government is pretty much supposed to disappear under that proposal. I assume he doesn't mean that, but that's what he wrote down. These are extreme views, and you know, again Gov. Romney isn't necessarily tied to everything that Rep. Ryan puts on the table.

On the other hand, it was his choice to pick. It's sort of like if you picked a hero from the Iraq War and then you said, well, you really disagreed with the war, then it' would be kind of a strange thing to do.

BETWEEN THE LINES: What do you make of some of the hemming and hawing Mitt Romney's been doing about the proposals that have come from Rep. Ryan in recent years regarding Medicare and privatization of Social Security? He seems one day to embrace those prescriptions for the economy and the very next day, he'll reverse himself – I guess not unfamiliar for the way Romney acts in terms of the politics that he practices.

DEAN BAKER: Well, these are clearly unpopular positions. I mean, you know, I'm not a political scientist, but I do read polls like anyone else. And you know, Social Security enjoys huge approval across the political spectrum – Republicans, conservatives, people who identify themselves as tea party members, 70 to 80 percent support Social Security, don't want to see it cut. Same thing with Medicare, a hair lower, but again, just about the exact same thing.

So, when you throw those things on the table and you say, "OK, well do you stand behind them? You're running for president I won't think you want to be associated with them. On the other hand, there are clearly very conservative supporters of Gov. Romney, who are big contributors to the campaign, and I suspect those people would very like to see Social Security and Medicare privatized.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Dean Baker, tell us specifically what the Ryan plan and what you know of Romney and his plans for his presidency should he win. What would these two do to our current Medicare system?

DEAN BAKER: Rep. Ryan's budget – it's a little peculiar because he says, "We're going to repeal President Obama's healthcare plan." So you get rid of that, so that means we'll get rid of those cuts, also some benefits – you know, so that "doughnut" hole was filled in under the Medicare plan and there's no co-pay for preventive care under the Affordable Care Act, so I think he's getting rid of that. I mean, if you're repealing the Affordable Care Act outright, then presumably it means that. But he's also getting of the cost controls. But then he says, we are going to save the same $716 billion, but he doesn't specify at all how.

Now, Gov. Romney's been asked about that, and someone pointed out to me, because I didn't realize this. They just put up a blog post up this weekend: "Well, that's not my plan. I'm not going to have any cuts, or at least I'm not proposing cuts to Medicare over the next decade." So it seems to be a difference between Rep. Ryan's plan and what Gov. Romney's at least saying at the moment.

Now in both cases, they are talking about beginning their voucher program, what they like to call premium support beginning in 2022 and 2023 – I think they might move it out a year – and under that system, people would get a voucher, which they could buy in principle a Medicare equivalent policy. Whether that would be sufficient to afford to cover the cost of a Medicare equivalent policy remains to be seen because again, the research. And there's been a lot to date – we have private insurers operating within Medicare under the Medicare Advantage program now and prior to that, in the Gingrich Congress, the Medicare+Choice system. The experience with that has been it's raised costs, it doesn't lower costs, so one would be skeptical I think whether those vouchers would be sufficient to cover a Medicare equivalent plan.

BETWEEN THE LINES: So, when it comes to getting these facts before the American people, before the election, what kind of job has the media done in terms of separating fact from fiction in terms of what these two parties, these two candidates are offering?

DEAN BAKER: I think they're (unintelligible) they've been almost useless. They seem to think it's their job to simply report what candidates say and just give you a kind of "he said, she said." Well, President Obama said "x" and Gov. Romney said "y" and then they go home and go see their kids, or whatever, have a drink, whatever it is they do. And I just find that kind of incredible, because people reading the paper, even people are trying to be informed readers. They don't have time to go looking up, you know, Gov. Romney's says his plan does "x". Obama says that's not true. Well, the typical person coming after a day of work, they don't have time to go and look up which is true. And just telling them one said "x", the other said "y" when they can't both be true – that's really not doing a service.

I mean, these people, at least the people at the New York Times, National Public Radio, they get paid decent salaries, this is their job. And frankly, I think they should be fired if all they do is a "he said, she said." You could get a high school kid paying the minimum wage to do that. You don't need a skilled reporter to just put down what Gov. Romney says when he goes out a gives a talk, and then what President Obama said.

Visit the the Center for Economic and Policy Research for information and analysis on the debate over Medicare at CEPR.net.

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