Former British resident Binyam Mohamed is being released from Guantanamo today and returning to the UK. His case is controversial because he alleges that he was tortured while in CIA custody, and a British court says that classified documents support his claim. BBC Security Correspondent Rob Watson joins John with a look at Mohamed’s story, and what it says about how the Obama Administration is handling detainees and the alleged abuses of the Bush Administration.
Congress has finally passed the stimulus, but it’s hardly smooth sailing from here. Now federal bureaucracies must adapt to get the money out the door and fast. Neil King Jr., Washington reporter for the Wall Street Journal, joins The Takeaway with a look at the challenges the stimulus presents to the Energy Department and other federal agencies.
In a new program the U.S. military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who could become citizens in as little as six months in exchange for three to four years of service. It’s the first time since the Vietnam War that enlistment in the armed forces will be possible for temporary immigrants. Julia Preston, national immigration correspondent for The New York Times, joins The Takeaway to explain the program and the reaction it's getting.
There was more upheaval in the formation of President Obama's cabinet yesterday when New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, a Republican, withdrew his nomination to be commerce secretary. The Senator cited "irresolvable conflicts" on the stimulus and the census as reasons for his withdrawal. Josh Rogers, reporter for New Hampshire Public Radio, analyzes this latest glitch in the President's efforts to be bipartisan.
It’s still not clear if 19-year-old singer Chris Brown will face charges for allegedly assaulting and threatening his girlfriend, pop star Rihanna. But the incident provides an occasion to talk about the distressing fact that physical violence between teenaged romantic partners is at an all time high. New York Times Op-ed columnist Charles Blow joins The Takeaway with a look at the data.
Newspapers are in crisis. More and more readers are migrating to the web, even as revenue from online ads plummets. Suggestions for how the industry can stay alive abound, but so far they're just that--suggestions. Jeff Jarvis, a professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism who writes about media at the Buzzmachine blog, joins The Takeaway to share his ideas for how newspapers must evolve to survive.
"If you try to charge for content, you gain a lot of costs. You have to market, number one. Number two, you shut yourself off from the world of search and that is suicidal." — CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis on the importance of free online content for newspapers
All week we've been asking you how you would like to see the money in the stimulus bill spent, and you've come up with some great suggestions. Now that we know where the money is going to go, Takeaway Correspondent Andrea Bernstein will tell some of our listeners if their stimulus dreams will come true.
ShovelWatch is a joint project of the non-profit investigative outfit ProPublica, the morning news program The Takeaway and WNYC, New York's flagship public radio station. With investigative reporting, interactive features and help from you, we're tracking the stimulus bill dollars from Congress to your community.
Follow the dollars online and tell us how the stimulus plan is playing out in your community. We're sharing your stories online and on air, and we'll continue the investigation with your help.
A panel of three federal judges has ruled that California is not providing its prison population with adequate health care and ordered the state to reduce its prison population by up to a third. The state says it will appeal. Anti-prison advocates Rose Braz, Campaign Director of Critical Resistance, and Marc Mauer, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project, join The Takeaway with a look at this case and how the economic crisis could impact criminal justice around the country.
Newspapers are struggling to find a workable business model as readers migrate on-line, but one entrepreneur thinks paper and ink still have a place. Joshua Karp joins The Takeaway to explain his start-up, a twice-daily free print newspaper called The Printed Blog.
Senate Democrats advanced the $800 billion plus stimulus bill yesterday, but just three Republicans voted for the bill in a procedural vote, and no additional Republican support is expected in the final vote today. Even though they don't support the bill, Republican Senators pushed for many changes in it. Takeaway Correspondent Andrea Bernstein and Susanna Capelouto, News Director of Georgia Public Broadcasting, join Todd and Katherine to talk through why that might be.
Follow the dollars online and tell us how the stimulus plan is playing out in your community. We're sharing your stories online and on air, and we'll continue the investigation with your help.
President Obama gave his first prime time press conference last night. He used the chance to push hard for his economic stimulus plan. Many of us were glued to our television screens, but April Ryan, the White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio networks, was actually there. She joins us from Washington.
In Obama's prepared opening remarks, he addressed the economic crisis and pushed for the stimulus bill.
Today Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will announce how the second half of the $700 billion Congress approved to bailout troubled banks will be spent. The Bush Administration's implementation of the so-called “Troubled Asset Relief Program,” or TARP, got plenty of criticism. Will Obama and his crew do better? Lizzie O'Leary, Washington-based reporter for Bloomberg News, and Tom McCool, Director of the Center for Economics at the Government Accountability Office, join Todd and Katherine to look at how TARP may be different the second time around.
"What they want to do is essentially provide a government guarantee against loss, but an incentive for private investors to do well on the upside if these assets turn around and start performing." — Bloomberg reporter Lizzie O'Leary on the use of TARP funds
The United States is far from the only nation to develop a plan to get its economy back on track. In fact, at least 33 other countries have done the same. Justin Fox, business and economics columnist for Time Magazine, joins Katherine and Todd to look at how some other nations are approaching this thorny problem and what we might be able to learn from them.
To understand the economic crisis you need to understand numbers. But it can be difficult to think critically about the statistics used by politicians and journalists, especially when you're panicked about your job and your 401K. To take a step back from the hysteria surrounding financial facts and figures, Katherine and Todd talk to Andrew Dilnot, co-author of the book The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and in Life.
As a result of the wave of job losses, we are about to hit a milestone in gender roles in that women will soon hold more payroll jobs than men. Catherine Rampell, who writes about economics at the New York Times, is here to talk about what this shift will mean in the lives of American families.
It was a rough week for President Obama. He lost the candidates he had nominated for two important jobs in his administration and didn't achieve the bipartisan consensus he wanted on the stimulus bill. Takeaway Correspondent Andrea Bernstein and Todd Zwillich, Reporter for Capitol News Connection, join Adaora and John to take a look back at the second full week of the Obama presidency.
There's no bridge to nowhere or teapot museum in the economic stimulus package, but that doesn't mean that it's free of earmarks, pet projects, or favors to special interests. As part of the ShovelWatch joint project of the non-profit investigative journalism organization ProPublica, The Takeaway and WNYC Radio, ProPublica's Michael Grabell and WNYC's Matthew Schuerman join us to take a look at some examples of stimulus funds that are being allocated according to local, not national, priorities.
ShovelWatching: We're asking you, Takeaway listeners and readers, to help us report on the stimulus dollars as they travel from Washington, D.C., to your neighborhood. Tell us how the stimulus plan is playing out in your community and we'll share your stories online and on air, and we'll continue the investigation with your help.
Yesterday President Obama announced that companies receiving federal bailout money must cap their executives no more than $500,000 a year. Is a pay limit helping the economy? Or is it simply a PR move? Compensation experts Nell Minow, editor and co-founder of The Corporate Library, and Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, join Adaora and John to debate the merits of the measure.
Wall Street executives are getting plenty of criticism for handing out $18 billion in bonuses to themselves last year. But maybe there's a way to put bonuses to good use—by paying them to regulators who help keep the system in check. Andrew Ross Sorkin, chief mergers and acquisitions reporter for the New York Times, joins Adaora and Alvin Hall to talk about the idea of rewarding watchdogs with cold, hard cash.
The economic spending bill now being debated in the Senate would pour hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy. But it wouldn’t do anything to help the transit system in St. Louis, which is in a crisis so grave that it may be forced to sell off many of its buses. The Takeaway's Andrea Bernstein and Les Sterman, executive director of East-West Gateway Council of Governments, a regional transportation organization based in St. Louis, talk about the stimulus plan and the public transportation crisis.
