Background Briefing: January 18, 2023
A Call to the World’s Billionaires at Davos to End the Age of Extreme Wealth by Starting to Pay Taxes
We begin with the latest alarming report from Oxfam released as the Davos World Economic Forum of billionaires gets underway which finds the richest 1% of the world’s people amassed two thirds of the new wealth created in the last two years. Joining us is Morris Pearl, who serves as Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of 200 high-net-worth Americans who are committed to building a more prosperous, stable, and inclusive nation. He is the co-author of Tax the Rich!: How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer and a signatory of a letter to Davos attendees by the Patriotic Millionaires, “End the age of extreme wealth. Tax the ultra rich.”
Germany on the Spot For Vacillating Over Sending Arms to Ukraine
Then we examine why Germany’s Chancellor Scholz is still vacillating over sending arms to Ukraine even after Ukraine’s president shamed him in a speech at Davos crying out for urgent action saying, “The time the free world uses to think is used by the terrorist state to kill.” Joining us is Thomas Berger, Professor of International Relations at Boston University who specializes in German politics, International Relations and Comparative Government in East Asia and Political Culture. He is the author of War Guilt and World Politics After World War IIand we discuss the upcoming meeting Friday of 50 defense ministers with the the Ukraine Contact Group chaired by US Defense Secretary Austin at which Germany’s new defense minister will be put in the spot.
Why Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk on the Right and Many on the Left Are Apologists For Putin
Then finally we look into why prominent figures on the Right like Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk are apologists for Putin as well as many on the Left who excuse Putin’s barbarity because of NATO expansion eastward and speak with David Satter, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who has been one of the world’s leading commentators on Russian affairs for more than four decades. He was the Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times from 1976 to 1982 and has written several books about Russia including Age of Delirium: The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union and The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin. In December, 2013, he was expelled from Russia where he had been accredited as a Radio Liberty correspondent becoming the first U.S. journalist to be barred from Russia since the Cold War. We discuss his articles at The Wall Street Journal, “Putin Wants Ukraine Back in the U.S.S.R.” and “Are We Willing to See Russia as It Really Is?”