Latest Content for Old Mole Variety Hour

Foreclosures.  Unemployment.  Poverty.  At least  a third of the nation ill-housed or un-housed.  What to do?  Chester Hartman has written widely on housing issues, and he talks with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick.  Hartman, an urban planner and author, is Director of Research... Read more

"ISRAEL’s war in Gaza is an act of political insanity. It is the product of a deeply disturbed society, able neither to curb its military arrogance nor calm its profound paranoia. The consequences are likely to be painful for Israel’s long-term prospects."  So argues a lead... Read more

Neo-liberalism has been discredited by the current economic crisis.  What will replace it?   Walden Bello argues that it will be "Global Social Democracy" -- in some ways better than the failed ideas that got us into this mess, but it's still as undemocratic as capitalism h... Read more

Tom Becker hosts the first Old Mole show of 2009.  Topics include The Housing Crisis and how to solve it The War in Gaza Two movies: Slumdog Millionaire and  Wendy and Lucy A new kind of capitalism ahead? Hear the whole show by clicking on the arrow at th... Read more

This program revolves  around the prospects for universal health care in the Obama years and beyond.   Can we have real universal coverage in a profit-driven insurance system?   Why are other nations better at this than the US?   And we hear a review of  Kaye Gibbons' novel... Read more

Hosted by Clayton Morgareidge, this program looks at how the emerging Obama administration is walking the  line between public interest and private profit in two areas: health care and education.  It  features several great drum solos from the jazz world (mostly curtailed i... Read more

Public health is a public good -- so it should be a public responsiblity.  But many other public goods are poorly served by profit-making private interests.  In this commentary, Clayton Morgareidge shows how the debate about a national health care program can, and should, l... Read more

  Reports  of its death have been greatly exaggerated -- Socialism is coming back in full force in Europe, according to an article by Neil Clark in the New Statesman.  Tom Becker reads, and adds  a  caveat by the Old Mole's Bill Resnick. Read more

  How many of the problems with our health care will, and will not, be solved by what's on the table in the national health care debate that will take place in the Obama years?   Paul Gorman of  Physicians for  a National Health Care Program, and a Portland physician, talk... Read more

Kaye Gibbons writes about growing up with (and without)  a mother who is mentally ill in her novel Sights Unseen, reviewed here by Larry Bowlden.  Read more