'BradCast' 12/19/2017 (Guest: Political scientist Spencer Piston of Boston Univ.)
b"House Republicans on Tuesday passed what they thought would be the final version of their massive tax legislation to transfer hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars from the poor and middle class to the wealthy and corporations which are already making record profits. A parliamentary issue in the Senate, however, may require the House to vote on the measure again on Wednesday. But, either way, the bill now looks as if it'll clear both chambers and head to Donald Trump's desk for signing before Christmas. But what happened to all of those Tea Party folks who, back in 2010, under a Democratic President, pretended to be demanding fiscal discipline and an end to deficit spending in Congress? All of those dupes, chumps and suckers -- not to mention the GOPers who scammed them about it all in the first place -- now seem to be cool with adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt via the GOP tax bill. In Congress, Republicans are giddy about their plans to deal with that debt by cutting social programs, like health care to people who need it along with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, in exchange for massive tax cuts to the wealthy and huge increases in spending for the U.S. war-making machine. At the same time, Democrats ought to be eying the fact that the vast majority of voters -- including huge majorities of Trump supporters -- would prefer to see taxes raised, not lowered, on the rich. Political scientist SPENCER PISTON of Boston University, author of the upcoming book 'Class Attitudes in America' joins us today to discuss his recent article at The Nation with Sean McElwee, on how Republican politicians continue to get away with cutting taxes for the rich, despite overwhelming popular opposition to it.\\xa0 Piston explains how tactics are used to confuse the public (which are echoed by the media) and then, when all else fails, and such measures are\\xa0 still wildly unpopular -- as with the current GOP tax scam -- they go ahead and vote for it anyway. It's time, he argues, for Democrats to stop shying away from leveraging resentment of the rich in their politics.\\xa0 Finally, we're joined by Desi Doyen with the latest 'Green News Report', on the cause of the Atlanta airport blackout, the still burning massive winter wildfires in Southern California, Trump's ridiculous new declaration that climate change is no longer a national security threat, and an update on the deadly Amtrak train derailment near Seattle, which could have been avoided...with proper funding from Congress..."