Between The Lines - Mattea Kramer, National Priorities Project: Government Shutdown Priorities Upside Down (Week Ending Nov. 1, 2013)

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.

Thank you for donating

If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form.

See our thank you gifts for your donation.

The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

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

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

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

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

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

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

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

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

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

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling

(Car window cling)

Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling!

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.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"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.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Progressive Resources

A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

Share this content:

|

Subscribe to BTL

Podcasts: direct or via iTunes

Subscribe to Program Summaries, Interview Transcripts or Counterpoint via email or RSS feed

If you have other questions regarding subscriptions, feeds or podcasts/mp3s go to our Audio Help page.

Between The Lines Blog

Stay connected to BTL

Learn how to support our efforts!

Tweets by @BTLRadioNews

Government Funding Priorities Upside Down During Shutdown

RealAudio MP3

Posted Oct. 23, 2013

Interview with Mattea Kramer, research director with National Priorities Project, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

The Tea Party-led shutdown of the federal government ended after 16 days, when the Senate and House agreed on a temporary measures to reopen the government and pay the country’s debts. But as Americans try to pick up the pieces, the nation faces another set of congressional deadlines and another government shutdown on Jan. 15 and a new debt ceiling cliffhanger on Feb. 7.

The shutdown focused attention on what Congress considers "essential" versus "non-essential" government services, as employees at the Pentagon kept working while the distribution of infant formula to poor mothers for their babies was put on hold, the shuttering of some Head Start programs, the closure of a National Institutes of Health Clinical Center that treats hundred of patients for cancer and the closure of national parks and monuments, which triggered a loss of income for thousands of nearby small businesses.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Mattea Kramer, research director with the National Priorities Project, who discusses the hardship caused by the priorities chosen during the government shutdown; how the American people can effectively make their voices heard to prevent another similar shutdown in three months; and the possibility of benefit cuts to social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare in the coming Congressional–White House budget negotiations.

MATTEA KRAMER: The official guidance during the shutdown was that essential programs were those that "protected life and property." And that was a term used to include typically, all national security programs. So certainly, the Department of Defense maintained its various military programs during the shutdown; it temporarily had civilian furloughs but those were reversed almost immediately, so the hundreds of thousands of employees of the DoD essentially proceeded apace during the shutdown, and that included some stealth operations overseas to attack terrorist targets in Somalia and some other places, so we saw this traditional definition of national security being considered deeply essential during the shutdown and therefore not being affected therefore by the shutdown. Whereas domestic programs – whether it was nutrition assistance for children, funding for domestic violence shelters, funding for the early childhood education program Head Start, or even cancer care for children at the National Institutes of Health – all of those things were considered "non-essential" during the shutdown. Apparently, our lawmakers did not consider them to "protect life and property." Not only could you argue with that, I think it's deeply troubling for many people to hear that.

BETWEEN THE LINES: During the shutdown there were some demonstrations by federal employees who wanted to go back to work, but it seems there wasn't much other opposition in the street. What can regular Americans do to make sure we don't have a repeat of this in a couple of months?

MATTEA KRAMER: There was not the kind of wide-scale protests that I think many of our peer nations would have seen in a similar situation. It takes a lot to get Americans protesting in the streets, it does. And as we look ahead to these next deadlines, what we as a people can do to prevent another kind of calamity like the one we just came through, we are absolutely powerful. And this is a message that I think sometimes people find hard to believe, but it's true. Our elected officials in Congress pay attention to the calls they get from constituents. Twenty angry people making calls to their elected official can scare the heck out of that representative or senator, because in that office they do a calculation and they know when they hear from a handful of angry people they know there are a lot more out there. So if we actually organized ourselves – or even in a disorganized manner – if we were simply angry enough as a people to call en masse, overwhelmingly, our elected officials and say we will not stand for this anymore. If you continue to run our government this way, we will boot you out of office, boy, would we see a change.

BETWEEN THE LINES: This is speculation, but people were so mad, especially at the tea party members of Congress who held the government hostage in an effort to stop Obamacare, that I wonder if this could have an impact on the 2014 elections, although no doubt it would have a bigger impact if the elections were next month.

MATTEA KRAMER: Yes, I think it could have some impact; I also think you're right that voters do have relatively short memories. It will depend on how the campaigns are run. If voters are reminded that, for instance, it was their elected official who supported a strategy to shut down the government because of Obamacare, I think that that could effectively jog voters' memories. But it won't have the same impact it would if elections were next month as opposed to next year. And the truth is that if elections were next month, we never would have seen that strategy roll out, because elected officials would be too afraid of retribution at the polls.

BETWEEN THE LINES: There have already been tremendous budget cuts, and in the next few months it looks like President Obama is likely to bargain over cuts to Medicare and Social Security. What impact do you think the shutdown and most Americans' response to it will have to these proposed additional cuts?

MATTEA KRAMER: I'm not sure that the shutdown we've just come through will impact the discussion about Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Those programs are being talked about under the term "entitlement reform," and people agree or disagree on whether that's an appropriate term. I'm not sure the shutdown will guide Americans in their thinking about that issue. It is the case that President Obama has signaled some willingness to make changes to those programs in exchange, for instance, to tax reform in which we raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. The Republicans are certainly interested in this idea of entitlement reform and rolling back benefits in these programs in order to reduce long-term federal spending. They are not, however, interested in raising tax rates on the top-earning Americans, so whether there ever could be a deal struck anyhow is unclear, but you're right to say that it is being talked about that perhaps seems more likely than it ever was under George W. Bush.

To see analysis and accompanying interactive visuals, visit the National Priorities Project at nationalpriorities.org.