Episodes
Tuesday Jul 01, 2014
Leid Stories - America's Fukushima Part 6 - 07/01/14
Tuesday Jul 01, 2014
Tuesday Jul 01, 2014
America’s Fukushima: The Largest Ecological Catastrophe In U.S. History
Part 6: Blowing The Whistle On The Hanford Site
Investigative reporter Paul DeRienzo files the sixth installment of a series on an ecological disaster caused by massive contamination from The Hanford Site, a sprawling nuclear-reactor complex on the Columbia River in south-central Washington state.
Today’s guest, attorney Tom Carpenter, executive director of The Hanford Challenge, has represented numerous whistleblowers and workers at nuclear sites across the nation and has devoted decades of his professional life to organizing, litigating and policy oversight in the nuclear field, much of it centering on Hanford.
Carpenter discusses the effects of nuclear production on workforce health and safety and the environment, drawing from his expansive knowledge of the operations of commercial and military nuclear sites in the United States and abroad. He also discusses what industry whistleblowers have revealed about the operation of nuclear facilities in the United States.
Monday Jun 30, 2014
Monday Jun 30, 2014
Six-term Republican incumbent Thad Cochran last Tuesday fended off a serious challenge to his U.S. Senate seat by Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel, who was favored to win. Cochran’s strategy? Go after African American Democrats. Mississippi doesn’t require voters to list a party affiliation when they register, so even when there are party primaries voters of all stripes show up at the polls.
Cochran’s Democrat-assisted win set off a sonic boom across the political spectrum. Republicans see it as political sabotage and subversion, and Democrats see it as nifty way to slow the right-wing anti-Obama momentum in Congress.
Leid Stories, however, sees it altogether differently. Cochran’s win is a continuum of loss in Mississippi, which has been exceptionally defiant against freedom, justice and equality for all.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson is central to our discussion today. Had he harnessed the power of the heavy investment Mississippians had made in him in his presidential runs in 1984 and 1988 (on the strength of movements sparked by stalwart leaders like Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer), Mississippi today would be the epicenter of transformative Black political power in the United States and not just the statistical anomaly as the state with the highest percentage of African American voters just waiting to help somebody win.