Tom Becker hosts this program about human costs and human needs in these tough economic times.  How can essential public services be funded in Oregon?  How can immigrant workers be protected from draconian laws enforced by states like Arizona?  And how can home foreclosures be stopped?  Tom takes on the idea that we are becoming a socialist nation.  To hear the whole show, use the arrow at the top of this page.  To hear individual pieces, follow their links below:

1.  Michael Leachman from the Oregon Center for Public Policy talks with Bill Resnick about how to keep the State of Oregon solvent.

2.  Are we all socialists now, as Newsweek imagines?

How can Oregon protect  its neediest citizens as unemployment and home foreclosures increase and tax revenues fall? 

Michael Leachman of the Oregon Center for Public Policy talks with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick about how the state government can prevent drastic cuts in services.

Our Movie Moles, Jan Haaken and Denise Morris, find metaphors for working class life in the drama of wrestling as portrayed in The Wrestler.

Radical scholars of political economy George Caffentzis & Silvia Federici of the Midnight Notes Collective join us live in-studio.  How are the economic crisis and bailouts a response to class struggle?  What does capital hope to achieve with this crisis?  How does the crisis hit people doing care work?  What kinds of resistance will be most effective now? Thirty vital minutes!

Are you one of the estimated 400,000 people unemployed in Oregon who has some extra time on your hands?

People of color and especially immigrants have faced attempts to blame them for the economic crisis and to shift even more of the suffering onto their backs. Well-read Red Frann Michel  exposes these attacks in this commentary.  You can read it and find many links to her sources here. 

There is no way the stimulus package now being negotiated in congress is going to plug the leaks in the rapidly sinking economy.  Economist Michael Perlman explains why in this coversation with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick.