DecodeDC

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140: What's behind the split in the Democratic Party? May 19, 2016

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Dick Durbin is a four-term senator and the Democratic whip, whose job is to keep the party together. So what does he make of the fact that the GOP has its presidential nominee while the Democrats are still fractured? ”It’s a split that can help us,” he says. This week on the podcast, we speak with the senator about the biggest lesson he’s learned from the 2016 campaign so far.

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139: Big Sugar's Secret Playbook May 12, 2016

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Quick, what do these things have in common: Cocoa Pebbles and Winston cigarettes? One answer might be that Fred Flintstone is their biggest fan. Another might be that they’re highly addictive.
And that’s not the only thing they share. When former dentist Cristin Kearns was told at a conference that sugary sweet tea was a healthy choice, she went searching for evidence that the sugar industry was trying to spin the science. What she found was a strategy to push products and influence policymakers borrowed straight from the playbook of Big Tobacco.
In this episode, we follow up on an investigation by Duke University’s Ways & Means podcast into the way the sugar industry has borrowed from Big Tobacco in responding to threats from regulators.
Find their podcast here: http://www.waysandmeansshow.org/episode-blog/2016/3/15/sugar-fix

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138: The Trump Effect May 05, 2016

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And then there was one. Following the Indiana primary earlier this week, Ted Cruz made the inevitable but shocking decision to suspended his presidential campaign. Less than 24-hours later, John Kasich followed suit. That makes real estate developer and reality tv star Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee.
But the one remaining candidate for the GOP has divided the Republican party in two. This week on the podcast, we ask supporters on both sides what’s next for the GOP? On one side is Matt Lewis, a conservative commentator and senior contributor for The Daily Caller. On the other is South Carolina Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster, one of Trump’s earliest and most outspoken supporters.

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Bonus: Conversation with Norman Mineta Apr 29, 2016

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In 1942, Norman Mineta and his family were forced from their home in San Jose, California and into an internment camp in Wyoming. The Minetas were among tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans subjected to internment in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor
Mineta left the camp in 1945 and went on to become the first non-white mayor of San Jose. Then, as a congressman from California, he sponsored legislation that paved the way for reparations for thousands of Japanese-Americans. And as George W. Bush's Secretary of Transport, he oversaw the FAA's response to 9/11 from a bunker under the White House.
DecodeDC host Jimmy Williams interviewed Norman Mineta for episode 137: The Supreme Court's Loaded Gun. Enjoy the great stories that didn't make it into that episode.

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137: The Supreme Court's Loaded Gun Apr 28, 2016

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More than 70 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision often regarded as one of the worst in its long history.
In Korematsu v. United States, the court validated putting American citizens in internment camps during wartime, based on their race or ethnicity. The decision came in the wake of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which came after the Pearl Harbor attack and granted the U.S. military the power to ban tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry from areas deemed critical to domestic security.
The court has never overturned the Korematsu decision, and as the 2016 presidential election approaches, the debate over the case has new life. Some candidates have called for banning groups of people from the U.S. based on their religion, or for targeted surveillance. On the latest DecodeDC podcast, we ask if these suggestions for blanket policies based on religion or national origin—like the Japanese internment camps upheld in Korematsu—could legally happen again.

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136: Martina Navratilova stick to tennis? "No chance" Apr 21, 2016

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She’s made millions of dollars, achieved world-wide fame and yet, former world number one tennis pro Martina Navratilova likes to spend her days tweeting about...politics.
The tennis legend is a self-identified liberal, and two major events affected her politics and how she sees the world. At age 18, she defected from the then-Communist country of Czechoslovakia. She’s also an openly gay woman.
“I was political when I came out of the womb, I just didn’t know it,” says Navratilova.
On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams sits down with Navratilova to find out why someone who has enjoyed so much success chooses to enter the political fray.
While she actively engages in politics on both Twitter and real life, don’t expect Navratilova to run for office anytime soon. “I know I would be okay as a politician, but maybe my skin is too thin. I would have a really hard time dealing with people that really don’t know what they’re doing, if they have the power,” she explains.
And true to her competitive spirit, Navratilova says she can’t be president (because she wasn’t born in the U.S.), so what would be the point?

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135: No taxation without....special interests Apr 14, 2016

Show notes

When Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Tax Reform Act into law, the Republican president hoped that the law would simplify the tax code and close loopholes. Reforming the tax code had been Reagan’s number one domestic priority during his campaign and it took him more than two years of wrangling members of Congress, even pushing past a blockade by House Republicans.
But according to Pam Olsen, whose résumé includes stints at the IRS and U.S. Treasury Department, says the Tax Reform Act did the exact opposite. “It made the tax code a lot bigger. It certainly made the tax code a lot longer and a lot more complicated,” said Olsen.
On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams tells the story of the how the tax law came to be, and the consequences of its passage, including loopholes for billionaires and laymen alike, and how it created an avenue for members of Congress to push through social policy without actually legislating.

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134: Running as a Woman Apr 07, 2016

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When Hillary Clinton first ran for president in 2008, forecasters and prognosticators quickly seized on what they perceived as a concerted effort to project an image of strength, in part by de-emphasizing her gender. But eight years later, her 2016 campaign seems to be embracing her potentially historic election as the country's first female president. This time, so goes the story, Clinton is "running as a woman."
This week on the podcast, we sit down with Corrine McConnaughy, a political scientist professor and researcher at George Washington University, to talk about how this strategy plays among different generations and political persuasions.

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133: The FEC is a watchdog that doesn't bite Mar 31, 2016

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The 2016 presidential election is on track to becoming the most expensive campaign in U.S. history. But the the Federal Election Commission, charged with regulating how that campaign money is raised and spent, may be the least understood and most ineffective agency of them all.
On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams sits down with three people who have all been part of the FEC. They explain that from the start, the agency had a built-in partisan divide that made decision making difficult.

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132: Who's caring for the vets? Mar 24, 2016

Show notes

On the latest DecodeDC podcast, host Jimmy Williams sits down with Scripps Investigative Reporter Mark Greenblatt about his 6-month-long investigation into problems at the Cincinnati VA. Greenblatt teamed up with WCPO reporter Dan Monk, who together connected with more than 30 whistleblowers.
They discovered that a new solution created to solve the VA wait-time scandal that left some veterans for dead back in 2014, may be causing new problems for veterans and hospital staff alike.
From staffing cuts, to cost shifting, to the hospital’s acting chief of staff prescribing controlled substances to her boss’ wife, issues at the Cincinnati VA are leaving veterans who are trying to seek care in a bureaucratic abyss.

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