Between The Lines - Sam Pizzigati: Why Candidates of Both Parties Largely Avoided Debate on Rising Economic Inequality in the 2014 Campaign (Week Ending Nov. 21, 2014)

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!

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.

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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.

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.

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Why Candidates of Both Parties Avoided Debate on Rising Economic Inequality in 2014 Campaign

Posted Nov. 12, 2014

Interview with Sam Pizzigati, veteran labor journalist and Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, conducted by Scott Harris

The results of the 2014 midterm election were decidedly bad news for Democratic Party candidates from coast to coast. Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate, gaining at least seven seats, expanded their majority in the House of Representatives by 12 seats and won more governor’s mansions and state legislatures. The few bright spots for progressive activists were seen in statewide and local referendums. Voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota all approved ballot questions boosting the minimum wage. Colorado and North Dakota defeated so called “personhood” measures restricting reproductive rights. Colorado and Oregon voters approved ballots mandating the labeling of GMO foods. Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C. favored legalizing marijuana. And ballot measures banning natural gas fracking won eight ballots at the city and county level.

Pundits and political operatives pointed to a number of factors present in the 2014 election that explained the dismal showing of Democrats. Primary among them was the lowest voter turnout in more than 70 years, with only 36.4 percent of eligible voters going to the polls. Also on that list was the historic poor showing for the party in power at the White House – and the record-breaking flood of unlimited and unaccountable corporate money spent on election campaigns, a direct result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United and McCutcheon rulings. Then there were new voter suppression laws enforced in almost two dozen GOP-controlled states, making it more difficult for millions of Democratic leaning voters to cast ballots.

But while the buckets of covert corporate cash and new obstacles confronting voters certainly played a role, Sam Pizzigati, a veteran labor journalist and Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, says that one reason that the vast majority of voters failed to participate in 2014 was that candidates from both parties largely failed to address one of the most important issues facing American families: growing income inequality. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Sam Pizzigati, who explains why he believes both major parties avoid discussion of this critical economic issue.

SAM PIZZIGATI: Back in 1982, the richest one-hundredth of one percent of America – that's people who today are making over $20 million a year – but back in 1982, this small .01 percent of America, the richest .01 percent accounted for less than 10 percent of all federal political campaign contributions. And in the 2012 elections, they accounted for over 40 percent. And in this last week's election, I'm sure the figure is even higher. We don't have the final statistic on that yet. So, in other words, the share of campaign contributions that's come from the super-rich has more than quadrupled over the past 30 years.

And so, I don't think there should be any surprise why we have the sorts of politics that we do.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Sam, review for our listeners, if you would, some of the statistics that come out of credible sources that speak to rising economic equality in the United States, and certainly in comparison to many other countries around the world.

SAM PIZZIGATI: Let's start with one of those comparisons to another country. Let's look at France, which is a developed nation. And if you add up all the wealth in France and you divide it by the number of adults and you do the same thing in the United States, you get figures that are very close. So in France, the average wealth per adult – and again, we're taking the total wealth and dividing it by the number of adults. In France, that comes to $317,000 of wealth per adult. In the United States, it's a little bit more; it's $348,000 of wealth per adult.

But that figure in the United States is incredibly distorted by the amount of wealth at the top. So, if you look instead at average wealth, if you look at median wealth – and remember, median wealth means if you take everybody, all the adults and you look for the point in that distribution where half the adults make more and the other half make less – that's the median household wealth. In other words, that's the wealth of a typical person. In France, the wealth of the typical person last year was $141,000. In the United States, the wealth of the typical person was $53,000. In other words, almost $90,000 less. And you can look at that $90,000 difference between the median and the average household wealth as our inequality penalty.

That's the penalty that we as Americans suffer for living in a country where wealth is concentrated at the top. In other words, we have a total wealth comparable to France, but their wealth is much more equally divided than our wealth.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Would you review for our listeners, some of the prescriptions to reverse our rising economic inequality in this country. What are the policies that you would say are basic to really addressing and reversing economic inequality.

SAM PIZZIGATI: Well, there are some old staples. The tax system, of course, is a prime weapon. I think we need to make our tax system much more progressive than it is. We need to raise rates on our very highest incomes; we need to move back to the rates that we had back in the 1950s under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was, as you may remember was a Republican, but a Republican concerned about inequality. So taxes is one major area.

But I think we also need to do something about what people working on inequality in Britain call "predistribution." That is, how the market distributes rewards for the work we do. And right now, those rewards for the work Americans are doing are getting snared by a very small group of executives – people at the top of our corporations.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Given the fact that President Obama in the past has identified economic inequality as one of the major issues confronting this country, it is a bit mysterious why he nor many of his candidates around the country who were running for the House or Senate engaged in a discussion of these issues that may well have garnered them more votes, more interest and more turnout at the polls on Nov. 4th.

SAM PIZZIGATI: In fact, Scott, the exit polls that were done on Election Day last week, in those election exit polls, 64 percent of people who came out to vote said they believe America's economy favors the wealthy. That was the question, does (the economy favor) the wealthy or not? Sixty-four percent said that the economy favors the wealthy. So clearly, there's a huge public sentiment out there that wants to see candidates take on the concentration of income and wealth in the United States.

And as you just noted, candidates didn't do that. And again, I think the major reason for that is that Democratic candidates try to get their votes from average working people, but they get their money for their campaigns – the bulk of the money – from people at the top of our economy. And for those people, they don't want their candidates talking about issues surrounding the distribution of income and wealth.

Sam Pizzigati is an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies and author of the book, "The Rich Don't Always Win." Visit Pizzigati’s weekly newsletter “Too Much,” at TooMuchOnline.org.