bill mitchell

EPISODE 200: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: The journalistic malfeasance was so thorough, the internal staff rage so vituperative, and the on-air ratings so underwhelming, that if Anderson Cooper or Wolf Blitzer or Jake Tapper or all of them went into the office of Chris Licht’s boss this afternoon and said that the Trump Town Hall was the final straw and it had damaged theirs and the network’s credibility and they were walking out, Licht would be gone from CNN by Monday.

Instead, Cooper blamed his own audience! He began his program last night regretting… that CNN viewers were “staying in their silos” and directing his infamous condescension to his own audience, or what’s left of it after the Trump debacle. “Now, maybe you haven’t been paying attention to him since he left office… thinking it can’t happen again…” Cooper’s premise – that to understand Trump and the threat he poses, we have to approve of CNN’s capitulation to and collaboration with him, is absurd, indefensible, and sanctimonious. Instead of using his platform to bravely recognize that the threat of Trump is paralleled within CNN by the threat of Chris Licht and the conservatives he’s prostituting the network for, instead of showing just SOME guts, Anderson Cooper decided to try to guilt whoever was left to watch CNN last night. Shame on him.

The CNN town hall drew 3,308,000 TOTAL viewers, and 781,000 demo viewers. But just one hour after the Hindentrump crashed and burned live on CNN, the ratings bump was GONE. In the 10 O’Clock hour CNN was back to third place, half a million total viewers BEHIND Fox, 300,000 behind MSNBC. Three quarters of the total audience had vanished before midnight. By the ELEVEN O’Clock hour that “demo” audience of 781,000 had shrunk back to 186,000. They got nothing out of it. Nobody stayed. Nobody saw it and said “I like this new CNN. I’m going to try out their other shows. Like 'No You're Wrong Mr. President With Kaitlan Collins.'"

B-Block (20:00) POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Biden really does seem poised to spring the 14th Amendment on Republican Debt Ceiling Hostage-Takers; Why is every news report calling the white man who choked another man to death on the NYC subway a "Navy veteran" rather than what they would call a person of color, something like "Crazed Subway Strangler"? (23:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: There is ONE political boss still backing George Santos. There is one presidential campaign running on a promise to disenfranchise some of the people who would elect him. There is one CNN on-air person praising Kaitlan Collins' persistent impotence.

C-Block (28:30) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: The brindle mix on the kill list in New York is named, in sad irony, "Free." (30:35) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: It's his story that best fits the saga of Trump and degeneracy mistaken for power: "The Greatest Man In The World."

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Australia's unemployment rate has fallen to 4.9 per cent, with almost 30,000 jobs created in June according to the official Bureau of Statistics data. The last time it was this low was a decade ago. Can Australia get even more people into work?

Guests:

Emeritus Professor Sue Richardson, Flinders University, former director of the National Institute of Labour Studies

Emeritus Professor Bill Mitchell, Chair in Economics, Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle

Host Tom Appel and co-hosts Jill Ciminillo and Damon Bell start off the show by discussing  their test-drive experiences in the Mercedes-Benz AMG E53 midsize sedan. Collectible Automobile magazine Editor-in-Chief John Biel joins us to chat about the great features in the February 2021 issue, including a profile on Bill Mitchell's Corvette Stingray racer and an overview of GM's cars of 1961. John sticks around for the third segment to help us review the top automotive stories of 2020, such as the effect of COVID-19 on the industry and automakers' increasing focus on pure-electric vehicles. 

After more than four decades of dominance, free-market capitalism is facing a challenge.

Its rival, the rather blandly named Modern Monetary Theory, promises to return economic planning to a less ideological footing.

It’s also keen to strike a blow against the “surplus fetish” that many economists now blame for declining public services and growing inequality.