Your Call 040809 Why Do Recessions Bring People Back to Public Libraries?

What makes a good library? On the next Your Call we'll continue our series on Commons, by discussing what can transform a run-of-the-mill library into a multi-generational classroom, cultural center, job training site and neighborhood club house. Library card requests increased 27 percent in the last half of 2008 in San Francisco, 33% in Boston. Kern County Public library is checking out nearly 20% more books. By nearly every measure, as the economy has gone from worse to frightening, Americans are going back to the stacks. What do you want when you get there? Send us an email at feedback@yourcallradio.org or join us live at 11 am. What works about your neighborhood branch? It's Your Call with Sandip Roy and you.

Guests:
Anne Wintroub in San Francisco
Director of Communications and Advocacy for the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library

Dr. Ken Haycock, FCCT
Director of the School of Library and Information Science at San Jose State University, the largest accredited library and information science program in the world. He is a member of the council of The American Library Association and past president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education.

Click to Listen: Why Do Recessions Bring People Back to Public Libraries?

Your Call 040709 How should we understand Hamas?

How should we understand Hamas? On the next Your Call, we'll have a conversation with Paul McGeough, former executive editor of Australia's Sydney Morning Herald and the author of Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas. Paul McGeough argues that Israel's attempt to assassinate Hamas' leader Khalid Mishal has had a significant impact on Palestinian politics. You can join the conversation by email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. How did Hamas rise to power? It's Your Call, Rose Aguilar and you.

Guest:
Paul McGeough, former executive editor of Australia's Sydney Morning Herald and author of Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas.

Click to Listen: How should we understand Hamas?

Your Call 040609 What's the status of the SEC?

What's the status of the Securities and Exchange Commission? On the next Your Call, we'll have a conversation about the SEC's role in the financial crisis. The agency has been criticized for lapses in oversight, costing investors billions of dollars. So what does it take to overhaul this agency? And who is Mary Schapiro, the new SEC chairperson? You can join the conversation by email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. What role does the SEC play in regulating the financial market? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Donald C. Langevoort, Thomas Aquinas Reynolds Professor of Law; Co-Director, Joint Degree in Law and Business Administration at Georgetown University

Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, executive director of The Bard Center; Jerome Levy Professor of Economics at Bard College

Click to Listen: What's the status of the SEC?

Your Call 040309 Media Roundtable

On the next Your Call it's our Friday media roundtable, where we bring in reporters from the mainstream, alternative and international press to discuss the week in American media. This week President Obama joined the leaders of the 20 largest national economies to hammer out an agreement on the global financial crisis. Secretary of State Clinton was in Afghanistan cajoling neighbors and partners to join a renewed American diplomatic and military commitment to the country. Benjamin Netanyahu became Prime Minster of Israel again. Send us an email at feedback@yourcallradio.org or call 866-798-8255. We'll discuss the coverage of all this with Tim Redmond of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Glenn Greenwald, independent filmmaker just back from Afghanistan. Where did you see the best reporting this week and where did it fall short? It's Your Call with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Tim Redmond in San Francisco
Managing Editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian

Robert Greenwald
Director and producer of documentary and feature films and founder of Brave New Films. Greenwald was either producer, director or both for:
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteer
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
And the "The Un Trilogy":
Unprecedented: The 2000 Election
Uncovered: The War on Iraq
Unconstitutional: The War on Our Civil Liberties
Greenwald also directed Olivia Newton-John in Xanadu in 1980 and was awarded the 2002 Producer of the Year Award by the American Film Institute.

Click to Listen: Media Roundtable

Your Call 040209 What's the state of civil liberties in the U.S.?

What's the state of civil liberties in the U.S.? On the next Your Call we talk with Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and Bruce Fein, author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy. Fein was one of the most prominent conservative critics of the former Bush administration and Wolf's book makes a chilling comparison between the rise of the Third Reich and America today. What do we mean when we say "civil liberties"? How are they distinct from human rights? How do democracies weaken over time, and how are they brought back from the brink? It's Your Call with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Bruce Fein in Virginia
Fein was one of the most prominent conservative critics of the former Bush administration. He was appointed by President Reagan to be an associate deputy attorney general from 1981 to 1982. He was the general counsel to the Federal Communications Commission and minority research director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran. He recently served on the American Bar Association's Task Force on Presidential signing statements. Fein called for the impeachment of former U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney and writes regular columns for The Washington Times and Slate devoted to legal and international affairs. He is author, most recently of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy.

Naomi Wolf in NYC
Wolf, an essayist and provocateur, was born in San Francisco. The Beauty Myth, her first book, was an international bestseller and each of her books since then has maintained her place as one of the premier feminist critics of American political culture. She is author most recently of The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot and its sequel, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries. The End of America was adapted into a documentary by the same name. Ms. Wolf joins us from New York.

Click to Listen: What's the state of civil liberties in the U.S.?

Your Call 040109 How will America recover its optimism?

By now, most people know the problems facing us. We can short-hand many with single words: Fiasco; AIG; Empire; Warming; Toxic; Inequality; Debtor. On today's Your Call we're speaking to one of the lonely Cassandras that have been pointing to the iceberg ahead since it first appeared in the distance during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Now that the crash has happened, William Greider has spoken up again to fill the gap and help us imagine a new way forward. William Greider is National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation magazine and author of Come Home, America. When you stop looking at all the ways America has gone wrong and imagine where we can go next, what do you see? How will America find optimism and even pleasure in a world where less is our future? What will replace material gain in the American Dream? When you let yourself dream big, what institutions rise up to replace the mighty military, government and corporate institutions that are failing us now? It's Your Call with Sandip Roy and you.

Guest:
William Greider in San Francisco
National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation magazine. He was the National Affairs Editor at Rolling Stone magazine and the former assistant managing editor at the Washington Post. He is the author of five best sellers including The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. His new book is Come Home, America.

Click to Listen: How will America recover its optimism?

Your Call 033109 Has the economic meltdown made us rethink our needs?

Has the economic meltdown caused us to rethink how much we really need? On the next Your Call, we'll have a conversation about consumption and our ecological footprint. Every year, Americans discard four-fifths of a ton of trash. We generated 251 million tons of trash in 2006 alone. How have we created all this waste? You can join the conversation by phone or by sending us an email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. What steps can we take to help the ecosystem and decrease the demand for stuff we don't need? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guest:
Eric Sanderson, associate director of Wildlife Conservation Society's Living Landscapes Program and co-creator of National Geographic's "Human Footprint"

Click to Listen: Has the economic meltdown made us rethink our needs?

Your Call 033009 What is wealth and who should own it?

What is wealth and who should own it? On the next Your Call, we'll have a conversation with Gar Alperovitz, co-author of Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance. The top 1% of people in the United State own half of wealth of the nation, and 5% own 70%. Do these people who own so much wealth actually deserve it? You can join the conversation by phone or by sending us an email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. How is wealth generated? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guest:
Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland

Click to Listen: What is wealth and who should own it?

Your Call 032709 Media Roundtable

Is there anyway to prevent ideologues from taking over the economy again? On the next Your Call we speak with Larry Elliott, Economics Editor for the Guardian and co-author of The Gods That Failed: How Blind Faith In Markets Has Cost Us Our Future. His book is a survey of the devastation left behind by the economic theorists who laid the foundation for unfettered corporate capitalism: Milton Friedman, Frederic Von Mises and Ayn Rand, whom he calls the New Olympians. With a religious faith in the ability of the market to provide heaven on earth, control of our economy was given over in return for three magic beans. The result was not prosperity but sluggish growth in living standards, a debt explosion, and now a major crisis of international proportions as a vast borrowing bubble starts to deflate. How do we replace the fundamentalists and build a pragmatic, resilient and sustainable economy? It's Your Call with Sandip Roy and you.

Guest:
Larry Elliott in London
Economics Editor of the Guardian and co-author of The Gods That Failed: How Blind Faith In Markets Has Cost Us Our Future with Dan Atkinson.

Click to Listen: Media Roundtable

Your Call 032609 Why do we still eat meat?

Why do we still eat meat? On the next Your Call we speak with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food. Each year somewhere on the order of 50 billion animals are killed each year for food. 60% of grain in the U.S. is used to feed cows and sheep and chickens and pigs and goats for slaughter. Fecal run-off spoils the rivers and the great supply chain that mixes beef from across the country and around the world is leading to outbreaks of salmonella and e coli, not to emotion the everyday diseases of meat consumption arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure and cancer. Yet very few Americans are vegetarian and few are convinced to stop eating meat when confronted by this data. Why? It's Your Call with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson in San Francisco
Athor of The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food. He will appear at the VegNews Speaker Series @ Millenium in San Francisco on Tuesday, March 31, from 7-9 PM.

Click to Listen: Why do we still eat meat?

Your Call 032509 What is environmentalist Rachel Carson's legacy?

What is the legacy of environmentalist and author Rachel Carson? On the next Your Call, we have a conversation about the new film A Sense of Wonder, based on the life and work of Rachel Carson who ignited public awareness to the importance of protecting the environment. The chemical industry attacked her book, Silent Spring. How did she challenge the chemical industry? And how did she help spark the environmental movement? You can join us by phone or email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Caroline Cox, research director at Center for Environmental Health

Kaiulani Lee, film and television actress who plays Rachel Carson in the film A Sense of Wonder

Click to Listen: What is environmentalist Rachel Carson's legacy?

Your Call 032409 Is it possible to fix Wall Street?

Is it possible to fix Wall Street? On the next Your Call, we'll have a conversation with David Korten, author of Agenda for a New Economy. He argues that spending trillions of dollars to restore this system to its previous condition is a reckless waste of time and resources. How should we rebuild the economy? You can join us by phone or email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
David Korten, author of Agenda for a New Economy

Click to Listen: Is it possible to fix Wall Street?

Your Call 032309 How is the FCC changing under Obama's administration?

How is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) going to change under the Obama administration? On the next Your Call, we'll have a conversation about the FFC policies during the Bush administration and what the appointment of Julius Genachowski to head the FCC means for Internet freedom and media ownership. You can join us by phone or email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Derek Turn, Research Director at Free Press

Matthew Lasar, a media historian. He writes for his own website, the Lasar Letter on the FCC, and for the tech new site ArsTechnica.

Click to Listen: How is the FCC changing under Obama's administration?

Your Call 032009 Media Roundtable

Where is Iraq six years after the U.S. invasion? On the next Your Call, we'll speak with Iraqis living in the U.S. and Jonathan Steele, a journalist who's covered Iraq. March 19 marks the six-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion. More than a million Iraqis have died, there are four and a half million refugees both inside and outside of Iraq, and the infrastructure has yet to be rebuilt. What does the future look like for Iraq? You can join us by phone or email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. What do Iraqis think of the U.S. plan for their country? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Jonathan Steele, a British journalist and a contributor to The Guardian

Nabil Al Tikriti, associate professor of history at Mary Washington University

Click to Listen: Media Roundtable

Your Call 031909 How do drug companies market medication?

How do drug companies market medication? On the next Your Call, we'll have a conversation with Melody Petersen, author of Our Daily Meds. Every day drug companies subject us to barrage of advertisements. Nearly 65% of Americans are taking prescription drugs. Why are we prescribed so many pills? Join the conversation by email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. How does the FDA regulate drug companies? It's Your Call, with Rose Aguilar, and you.

Guest:
Melody Petersen, author of Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription

Click to Listen: How do drug companies market medication?

Your Call 031809 How is the economic downturn affecting immigrants and immigration reform?

How is the economic downturn affecting immigrants and immigration reform? On the next Your Call we'll talk about how the national conversation shifted as the economy dropped. Local police forces were authorized by the Bush administration to enforce immigration law. Are the first adopters changing their tune as funding dries up? As unemployment rises in California, is pressure growing to deport undocumented competition for scarce jobs? You can send us an email at feedback@yourcallradio.org or join us live at 11 a.m. How do you want immigration reformed? It's Your Call with Sandip Roy and you.

Guests:
Michelle Waslin in Washington
Senior Policy Analyst for the Immigration Policy Center

Shuya Ohno in Washington
Deputy Communications Manager for the National Immigration Forum

Pramila Jayapal in Seattle
Executive Director of One America

Click to Listen: How is the economic downturn affecting immigrants and immigration reform?

Your Call 031709 Who is Arne Duncan?

How will President Obama change American education policy? On the next Your Call we'll continue our series, the Transition in Realtime, and look at the state of the Department of Education as Margaret Spellings hands over the reins to incoming Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. For the last seven years, Duncan was the chief executive officer of the Chicago Public Schools where he was known as a supporter of charter schools and higher pay for teachers who work in urban schools or who teach math and science. But Chicago schools have ranked very low among urban school districts and critics of No Child Left Behind have severe doubts about Duncan. Will Obama and Duncan give us the school reform we need? It's Your Call with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Pauline Lipman in Chicago
Professor of policy studies at the College of Education at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Her books include High Stakes Education: Inequality, Globalization, and Urban School Reform. She is the founder of Chicago's Teachers for Social Justice.

Andy Rotherham in Washington
Founder of Education Sector, a left-leaning but independent national education policy think tank. Rotherham served as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy (Education) during the Clinton administration, launched the Progressive Policy Institute's 21st Century Schools Project and writes the widely read blog Eduwonk.com.

Alyson Klein in Maryland
Staff writer for Education Week, where she co-authors the Politics K-12 blog and covers Congress & the Dept. of Ed. She covered the presidential election for Ed Week and has interviewed new secretary Duncan.

Click to Listen: Who is Arne Duncan?

Your Call 031609 Will EFCA help the economy?

Will the Employee Free Choice Act help bring the economy back to life? On the next Your Call, we'll discuss the law that would make it easier for unions to organize. The battle over the act is expected to be fierce. The Chamber of Commerce and business groups plan to spend $200 million to defeat the bill, while SEIU is spending $50 million to ensure its passage. If it passes, would you join a union? You can join us by phone or email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. Are unions one of the answers to the economic downturn? It's Your Call with Rose Aguilar.

Guests:
Chris Chafe
Executive director of Change to Win, a coalition created in 2005 of seven unions including the Teamsters, SEIU and the United Farm Workers of America

Jason Oxman in Northern Virginia
Senior Vice President for Industry Affairs at the Consumer Electronics Association, a trade association promoting growth in the consumer electronics industry

Russell Roberts in Fairfax, VA
Professor of Economics and J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of the blog econtalk.org, winner of the 2008 Weblog Award for Best Podcast. His latest book is The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity.

Click to Listen: Will EFCA help the economy?

Your Call 031309 Media Roundtable

On the next Your Call it's our Friday media roundtable where we bring in reporters from the mainstream, alternative and international press to discuss the week in American media. This week Iraqi journalist and shoe thrower Muntadher al-Zaidi was sentenced to three years in prison, Afghan president Hamid Karzai came to Washington and a candidate for a senior position in the state department was derailed by a whispering campaign that was protected by a wall of journalistic silence. We'll be joined by Anand Naidoo, anchor and correspondent for Al-Jazeera English; Glenn Greenwald, staff blogger for Salon.com and Pratap Chatterjee, investigative journalist with Corpwatch. Where did you see the best reporting this week and where did it fall short? It's Your Call with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Anand Naidoo in DC
Anchor and correspondent for Al-Jazeera English

Glenn Greenwald in France
Staff blogger for Salon.com and author of three books, most recently Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics

Pratap Chatterjee in San Francisco
Investigative journalist and managing editor of the global corporate watchdog Corpwatch. His new book Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War. For the last year he has been based in Dubai.

Click to Listen: Media Roundtable

Your Call 031209 What's in it for California?

How does President Obama's housing plan help Bay Area homeowners in trouble? On the next Your Call we'll discuss the $75 billion national effort to forestall foreclosures. Obama's plan stands in stark contrast to the inaction of the Bush Administration to directly help homeowners in favor of the banks, but less than 10% of mortgages in the Bay Area qualify. 40% of foreclosures nationally are here in California. Does the only national program to turn back the tide stop at the Sierra Nevada? You can send us an email anytime to feedback@yourcallradio.org or join us live at 11 am. Did you find a way to save your house? It's Your Call with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
John Eller in San Francisco
Head Organizer & Northern California Campaign Director for ACORN. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families working together for social justice and stronger communities.

Ginna Green in Oakland
Spokesperson for the California office of the Center for Responsible Lending. CRL is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization dedicated to protecting homeownership and family wealth by fighting abusive financial practices.

Click to Listen: What's in it for California?