'BradCast' 3/13/2019 (Guest: Susan Harley of Public Citizen)
On today's 'BradCast': Good news in California, where newly-elected Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on the state-sanctioned killing of 737 individuals on the state's death row, the largest death row in the Western Hemisphere. Newsom described the death penalty as 'discriminatory' and a 'failure' that has resulted in the deaths of innocent people 'wrongly convicted.'\xa0 Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced in a DC court to nearly 7 years in prison for criminal conspiracy fraud and witness tampering. Minutes later, New York State prosecutors announced 16 new indictments against him. Despite the judge explicitly stating that none of the charges against Manafort regarded 'collusion' with Russia, Donald Trump once again lied to the public about that fact. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress are pushing ahead with a number of progressive policy proposals in advance of the 2020 elections. Attorney SUSAN HARLEY, Deputy Director of the Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, explains new legislation introduced by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Congressman Pete DeFazio (D-OR) to levy a miniscule (.01 percent) Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) on every stock market transaction to ease market volatility by curbing the legalized skimming that takes place by high volume computer traders, with the revenue estimated to raise nearly $800 billion in revenue for federal coffers over ten years. Harley discusses how the proposal is ultimately a very progressive tax on the wealthiest that can be used for "rebuilding Main Street on Wall Street's dime." Finally, the recently introduced, wildly popular Green New Deal is already paying off \u2013 freaking out Republicans but also sending them scrambling to respond, after years of denying climate science, with some even taking baby steps conceding that "climate change is real" and "humans contribute"...