Do higher taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals drive down investment and cost us jobs?  Not at all, according to Karen Kraut of United for a Fair Economy in this wide-ranging discussion with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick.  In fact, higher taxes keep surplus wealth out of the finance casino and puts it to work in the real economy.  The conversation is specific to Oregon where the modest tax increases on the rich and on comporations will be up for voter approval in January.  Kraut also recommends this website relating to Oregon.

 Is the Healthcare bill now being debated in Congress a step in the right, or in the wrong, direction?  In this piece by long-time health professional Carol Miller, read here by Tom Becker, it's another corporate bailout that will make real reform more difficult to achieve.  The article is "We Need Health Care, Not Insurance: What Real Health Reform Looks Like," and it appeared in CounterPunch.

 Is PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) a useful concept  for thinking about how people deal with a society saturated in violence?   What is gained by using it to treat soldiers suffering from the results of battle mayhem?  Can it be extended  to understand women in abusive relationships, or children growing up in a police state?  Two mental health professionals discuss the history of the concept, its usefulness and its limits -- the Old Mole's  Jan Haaken and  Rebecca Hyman, a student of  trauma  theory.   

Do higher taxes make for fewer jobs -- or more?  Is Congress debating real healthcare reform -- or just another corporate bailout?  Is PTSD a good way to think about how people are  affected by violence?   This show takes on these questions, with host Tom Becker, Old Mole regulars  Bill Resnick and Jan Haaken, and guests Karen Kraut and Rebecca Hyman.