We’ll examine 50 years of the so-called “war on poverty” – how it succeeded, and what caused it to fail. And, California’s new law allowing transgender students equal access to services in public schools is now under attack from conservative groups – we’ll find out what’s at stake. Plus, a new California regulation finally phases out the use of harmful flame retardant chemicals in furniture. …

John Nichols and Robert McChesney co-founded the organization Free Press, which has led the battle against media consolidation. Aside from co-founding Free Press, Nichols and McChesney have a long history of collaboration and have written many books together including It’s the Media, Stupid!. Their latest collaboration is called Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Campaign is Destroying America.

Uprising host, Sonali Kolhatkar interview Nichols and McChesney about their book.

Watch a video of the interview here: http://youtu.be/IENH29cd_cU

This conversation follows from an earlier one, which can be seen here.

Bipasha Shom recorded this interview.

Surprising nearly everyone, LA County Sheriff Lee Baca announced on Tuesday morning that he would be retiring from the Sheriff’s department after more than 40 years. Baca who has been LA County Sheriff for the last 15 years will step down at the end of January. Although he denied resigning because of pressure from federal prosecutors, critics felt that it was a direct result of intense scrutiny from the FBI, Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union which found his tenure to be riddled with rampant abuse and misconduct.

Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar spoke with award winning investigative journalist Matthew Fleischer about the resignation and the on-going investigations into inmate abuses in LA County Jails.

Watch a video of the interview here: http://youtu.be/nFnhkzH0iNg

Bipasha Shom recorded this interview.

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Uprising’s guest expert Arun Gupta, Independent Journalist and regular contributor to the Guardian, In These Times, The Progressive, and Truthout, and co-founder of the Occupied Wall Street Journal and the Indypendent , analyzes today’s news headlines:

New Jersey governor Chris Christie is holding a press conference a day after revelations that his staff deliberately created a traffic nightmare for a city whose …

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Surprising nearly everyone, LA County Sheriff Lee Baca announced on Tuesday morning that he would be retiring from the Sheriff’s department after more than 40 years.

Baca who has been LA County Sheriff for the last 15 years will step down at the end of January. Although he denied resigning because of pressure from federal prosecutors, critics felt that it was …

Read more

• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

John Nichols and Robert McChesney co-founded the organization Free Press, which has led the battle against media consolidation.

John Nichols is the Washington DC correspondent for the Nation Magazine, a contributing writer for the Progressive and In These Times, and associate editor of the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. He has written a number of books including Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the …

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“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” — Malcolm X
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We’ll speak with journalist Matthew Fleischer about LA County Sherriff Lee Baca’s surprise resignation announcement and the on-going investigations into LA County jails. And, media reform activists, scholars, and authors Robert McChesney and John Nichols join me in studio once more to discuss money in elections, and what they call “Dollarocracy.” …

With the NSA tracking our every phone call, text and email message, ordinary people are struggling to find ways to fight back. A group called the Tenth Amendment Center may have found the NSA’s achilles heel. Realizing that the security agency must rely on State municipal services like water and electricity to carry out their surveillance work, the group hopes to dismantle the spy agency by helping individual states pass laws that restrict NSA data centers’ access to these services.

Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar recently spoke with Michael Boldin, Executive Director of the Tenth Amendment Center about this new effort.

Watch a video of the interview here: http://youtu.be/s19MECcDKB8

Bipasha Shom recorded this interview.

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Uprising’s guest expert Rahul Mahajan, sociologist and news analyst and author of Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond, analyzes today’s news headlines:

An extension of jobless benefits for long-term unemployed Americans just passed a procedural vote in the US Senate. With a vote of 60-37, mostly along party lines the Senate yesterday cleared the way for a vote to …

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