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This week on Uprising

* Should the Auto Industry be Nationalized?
* Black Agenda Report on “Corporate Economist Lies”
* ACORN Proposes Working Solution for Foreclosure Crisis
* Empire Notes on the Mumbai Attacks
* Conversation with Noam Chomsky on his 80th Birthday

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Should the Auto Industry be Nationalized?

CEOs from the Big Three Detroit-based automakers once again returned to Washington to beg for a bailout. Representing General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler, the CEOs argued for up to $34 billion dollars in federal loans to avoid bankruptcy. Prior to this second round of hearings the Big Three submitted detailed plans on Tuesday outlining how they would go about using the funds if they were granted. Public opinion on the possibility of an auto bailout has reversed since the CEOs last visited Congress two weeks ago. At that time, one survey found 55% supporting federal aid for the auto industry. A more recent CNN/Opinion survey taken earlier this week found that 61% of Americans now oppose an auto bailout. The political debate over the auto bailout has been far more contentious than the 700 billion dollar Wall Street package. With the U.S. economy in recession, and a 34 year record breaking unemployment figure last month, bankruptcy for the Big Three could mean a loss of three million, mostly union jobs in related industries.

GUEST: Robert Weissman, editor of Multinational Monitor and the director of Essential Action.

For more information, visit www.multinationalmonitor.org.

Black Agenda Report about “Corporate Economist Lies”

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is about “Corporate Economist Lies.”

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

ACORN Proposes Working Solution for Foreclosure Crisis

With Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson still refusing to bailout homeowners directly, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair has offered details of her new proposal for saving homes. She recommends payments for delinquent borrowers be reduced to fit their income, and that the government reimburse up to 50% of the bank’s losses if those borrowers ended up defaulting after all. The Bair plan would cost $25 billion dollars, which she says would have to come out of the $700 billion bailout approved recently by lawmakers. Over a million homes went into foreclosure in the second quarter of 2008, and two million more Americans are expected to lose their homes in the next two years. In response the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, has called for a minimum 90 day moratorium on home foreclosures accompanied by a structural changes to modify loans and help people stay in their homes. The fact that the FDIC chair and ACORN have similar views on how to tackle the home foreclosure problem, highlights the degree of denial of this crisis among Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and other members of the Bush Administration, especially given how significant the housing foreclosure crisis is within the framework of the entire national economic crisis.

GUEST: Austin King, National Director of ACORN’s Financial Justice Center

For more information, visit www.acorn.org, or call 1-866-67-ACORN.

Empire Notes on the Mumbai Attacks

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is about the Mumbai attacks.

GUEST: Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade.

Visit www.empirenotes.org for more information.

Chomsky Turns 80

We spend the rest of the hour with the internationally renowned American linguist, author, political commentator, and philosopher Noam Chomsky, whose 80th birthday is on Sunday December 7th.

Noam Chomsky is a professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is known in the academic and scientific community as the father of modern linguistics. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as an anarchist-leaning political dissident, and libertarian socialist intellectual. Beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War Chomsky established himself as a prominent critic of US foreign and domestic policy. In 1969 he published a collection of essays called American Power and the New Mandarins, which put him on the political map.

His far-reaching criticisms of US foreign policy and his questioning of the legitimacy of US power have resulted in him being almost completely shunned by the American mainstream media in the United States – yet Chomsky is frequently sought out for his views by mainstream publications and news outlets worldwide.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.” — Noam Chomsky