Background Briefing: November 30, 2020

On By gram

 

Assessing Biden’s Economic Team and the Challenges They Face

We begin with Biden’s economic team to be announced on Tuesday headed by the new Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen with Cecilia Rouse head of the White House Council of Economic Advisors and Neera Tanden heading up the OMB. Stephanie Kelton, professor of economics and public policy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the founder of the top-rated economics blog New Economic Perspectives who served as chief economist of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee and was an advisor to the Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, joins us. The author of the new book, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy, we assess Biden’s economic team and the challenges facing them with a deadly pandemic out of control which is likely to drag the economy further into recession unless the new president gets the support of the American people to do what is necessary to contain the virus. Meanwhile Trump is sabotaging Biden’s authority as the nation’s leader having convinced up to 40% of the population Biden is not a legitimate president and therefore should not be listened to when it comes to lockdowns or taking vaccines. 

 

Killing Minks Won’t End the Danger of Factory Farms

Then we examine the deadly incubator of pandemics, factory farms, following the culling of 17 million minks in Denmark after mutant coronavirus strains were detected which could hinder the effectiveness of any forthcoming vaccine. Wendy Orent, an Atlanta-based anthropologist and author of Plague: the Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World’s Most Dangerous Disease joins us to discuss her article at The Los Angeles Times, “Want to avoid pandemics? Eliminate factory farming.”  

 

Who Will Clean Up the Wreckage Left By Betsy DeVos?

Then finally we speak with David Halperin, a senior fellow at Republic Report who served on the National Security Council in the Clinton Administration and was counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He joins us to discuss his latest article at Republic Report, “Who Will Lobby Biden to Shield Predatory For-Profit Colleges?” We look into who might be Biden’s Secretary of Education to clean up the wreckage left by Betsy DeVos, with one leading candidate having ties to the for-profit college racket.