Moyers & Company

- Season 2

(2013)

Paul Krugman on our need to create jobs.

Our last stand to fight the filibuster and save democracy.

Public support and political hate behind the modern abortion rights debate.

In the fight against terrorism, the American military's escalating drone program has become the face of our foreign policy in Pakistan, Yemen and parts of Africa. And while the use of un-manned drones indeed protects American soldiers, the growing number of casualties -- which include civilians as well as suspected terrorists -- has prompted a United Nations investigation into both the legality and the deadly toll of these strikes.

Why America's Internet access is slow, expensive... and unfair.

Is it too late to save Democracy from Big Money? Fighting for our future.

Even as President Obama's talking points champion the middle class and condemn how our economy caters to the very rich, the truth behind modern American capitalism is a story of continued inequality and hardship. Even a modest increase in the minimum wage -- as suggested by the president -- faces opposition from those who apparently pledge allegiance first and foremost to America's wealthy and powerful.

The onslaught of creationism and the challenges of free thinking in America.

Avarice, Banks, and Capitalism: The ABCs of Economic Inequality.

Fifty years after a landmark decision to give the poor their day in court, they still can't afford justice.

Dr. King's other dream: economic justice.

Writer Sherman Alexie describes living outside tribal lines.

How to protect our children from the environment's toxic trespassers.

What the Boston bombings and drone attacks have in common, and how secrecy leads to abuse of government power.

Newtown parents and a legendary folk singer lift their voices to end gun violence.

Organized people successfully fighting organized money.

The politics of science, and its threat to America's children.

Tim DeChristopher tells why he spent nearly two years in prison in the name of environmental justice.

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Two decades in the making, the intimate story of two American families struggling to find their place in the new economy.

How do we protect our privacy when Big Government and Big Business morph into Big Brother?

Following up on a 2012 report, this update includes new examples of corporate influence on state legislation and lawmakers, the growing public protest against ALEC's big business-serving agenda, and internal tactics ALEC is instituting to further shroud its actions and intentions.

Bill Moyers and Rep. John Lewis revisit the 1963 March on Washington. How did it transform America?

Forget Republican Red or Democratic Blue. The power color in Washington is the cool green of cash.

What keeps American outcry over economic inequality so muted? Weapons of mass distraction.

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Robert Reich on Inequality for All.

Saving the Earth from Ourselves

In a rare television interview, environmental legend and writer Wendell Berry leaves his Kentucky farm for an inspiring conversation with veteran journalist Bill Moyers.

This week, the Supreme Court began its new term and justices heard arguments in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. The case has been billed as the successor to the court?s Citizens United decision in 2010 that gave corporations, unions, and the wealthy the opportunity to pour vast and often anonymous amounts of cash into political campaigns. The new case challenges caps on how much individual donors can give to candidates and political parties and could raise the amount to more than $3.25 million.Bill Moyers talks with Yale Law School election and ...

After a 16-day shutdown, there?s finally a deal to raise the debt limit and reopen the government. But the can?s just been kicked down the road ? another Congressional confrontation over spending cuts, entitlement programs and possible default will take place within a few months. Nonetheless, Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator of the Financial Times believes that no matter the rhetoric and flamethrowing, the debt ceiling has to be raised because the alternatives are ?simply, unimaginably horrible.?Wolf -- who has been described as ?the premier financial and ...

Historian Peter Dreier talks about outraged citizens fighting corruption and financial columnist Gretchen Morgenson on why JPMorgan may be getting off easily. Continue reading

Guest host Phil Donahue examines the deadly civil war in Syria and the consequences of another American intervention in the Middle East.

The collision of sports and politics.

Between them, doctors Jill Stein and Margaret Flowers have been arrested nine times. In the face of injustice and government by the one percent, rather than look the other way and stick to practicing medicine they chose a different approach.At first they took separate paths. Margaret Flowers fought for single payer health insurance. She works for the organization Physicians for a National Health Program and is a contributor to PopularResistance.org, a website advocating nonviolent direct action against injustice. Jill Stein advocated for campaign finance reform in her...

In his book Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, author and scholar Henry Giroux connects the dots, threading together ideas and experiences to prove his theory that our current system is informed by a ?machinery of social and civil death? that chills ?any vestige of a robust democracy.?Giroux explains that such a machine turns people into zombies ? ?people who are basically so caught up with surviving that they become like the walking dead ? they lose their sense of agency, they lose their homes, they lose their jobs.? What?s more, Giroux ...

Cultural historian and scholar Richard Slotkin has spent his adult life studying the violence that has swirled through American history and taken root deep in our culture. He has written an acclaimed trilogy on the myth of the frontier that has shaped our nation's imagination. In Regeneration through Violence, The Fatal Environment, Gunfighter Nation, and other works of history and fiction, he tracks how everything from literature, movies and television to society and politics has been influenced by this violent past ̶ including the gun culture that continues to ...

There are more African Americans under correctional control today ̶ in prison or jail, on probation or parole ̶ than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. According to The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group dedicated to changing how we think about crime and punishment, "More than 60 percent of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their thirties, one in every ten is in prison or jail on any given day." Because of the 40-year war on drugs and get tough sentencing policies, the American prison population...

You may remember how in the ?90?s the Clinton Administration talked us into NAFTA ? the North American Free Trade Agreement -- with the promise of jobs and cheaper goods. According to economist Dean Baker, in the end, NAFTA wound up helping corporations and didn't do much for American workers. In fact, there are economists who say that in the United States, NAFTA cost nearly a million jobs. Now, there?s another trade deal in the works that?s even bigger ? ?NAFTA on steroids? as some describe it. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a coalition of North and South American ...

The money and power behind this week?s election results confirm what everybody knows: democracy is under siege. We, the People, don?t control our leaders; moneyed interests get their way. Corporations are free to buy politicians, judges, and elections with virtually unlimited cash, and big media conglomerates reap billions from political advertising. We idealize the notion of political equality in the voting booth but eviscerate it in practice, caught in the clutches of a ?money-and-media complex? not unlike the vast ?military-industrial complex? President Eisenhower ...

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In just a few months, Pope Francis, the first in history to take the name of the patron saint of the poor, has proven to be one of the most outspoken pontiffs in recent history, especially when it comes to income inequality. He has criticized the "widening gap between those who have more and those who must be content with the crumbs." And in his recent "apostolic exhortation" on "the economy of exclusion and inequality," he said: "The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an ...

STATE OF CONFLICT: NORTH CAROLINA offers a documentary report from the state that votes both blue and red and sometimes purple (Romney carried it by a whisker in 2012, Obama by an eyelash in 2008). Now, however, Republicans hold the Governor's mansion and both houses of the legislature, and they are steering North Carolina far to the right: slashing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, providing vouchers to private schools, cutting unemployment benefits, refusing to expand Medicaid, and rolling back electoral reforms, including voting rights. At the heart of this ...