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WV talks with with political analyst, author and radio host Wilmer Leon about his collection of essays spanning part of the Bush era and both terms of the Obama administration, Politics Another Perspective: Commentary and Analysis on Race, War, Ethics and the American Political Landscape in the Age of Obama.
Also, we air an edited version of our interview with investigative journalist Greg Palast about his book and movie, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. He says the GOP and its billionaire funders have been stealing the votes of millions of Americans.
Wilmer Leon
Why talk about the Age of Obama in the Age of Trump? Well, Leon says that if we are to understand the moment we are in, we must look to the past to discover how we got here. He says we have fallen into a political abyss, pushed not only by the reactionary politics of the GOP, with its Tea Party and Freedom Caucus and now Trumpist base, but also by the inability of the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration to articulate an effective counter-narrative.
Wilmer Leon’s collection of essays Politics Another Perspective: Commentary and Analysis on Race, War, Ethics and the American Political Landscape in the Age of Obama examines four related themes: the challenge to democracy; the role of the US media in shaping the nation’s political persona; the geopolitics of US war making; and race in the United States.
Leon is the host of the radio show “Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon,”on Sirius XM. He is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Greg Palast
Last summer WV spoke with investigative reporter Greg Palast about his just-released movie The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. The film is an entertaining mix of documentary footage and cartoon imagery connecting the dots between predatory capitalism and voter suppression to create what Palast calls an apartheid voting system in America.
After the film was released and after the 2016 election, Palast estimated some 7 million votes were effectively stolen from largely minority and young voters by Crosscheck. Chris Kobach is now heading the president’s commission on so-called “election integrity.” What follows is an edited version of my interview with Palast, which I did in August 2016.