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As Romney Releases Tax Returns, Fmr Senate Investigator Says: We’ve Got to Start Taxing Corporations
During the GOP primary, Mitt Romney has come under fierce attack for parking millions of dollars of his personal wealth in investment funds set up in the Cayman Islands, a notorious Caribbean tax haven. We speak with Tax Justice Network USA chair Jack Blum, a former top congressional investigator of financial crimes, who says tax evasion could seriously cripple the already struggling economy. Blum appears in “We’re Not Broke,” a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film examines widespread corporate tax evasion in the United States and the increasing role of offshore tax havens. “Has Romney cheated? No,” Blum says. “What he’s done is take full advantage of a system that has been structured the way it is because of political influence and a tremendous amount of lobbying money on Capitol Hill… We must not only rewrite the Internal Revenue Code, but we must get a fair contribution from the very wealthy and from corporations, and that is the only way to balance the budget.”
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“The Atomic States of America”: Exploring a Nation’s Struggle with Nuclear Power
Nuclear power has drawn wide support from both sides of the aisle, with both Republicans and Democrats advancing a pro-nuclear agenda even in the aftermath of last year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan. We speak with Sheena Joyce, co-director of the new documentary “The Atomic States of America,” which is featured at 2012 Sundance Film Festival. We’re also joined by Kelly McMasters, whose book “Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town” inspired the film. Joyce says, “We used Kelly’s book and the town of Shirley as kind of a springboard into the issue, to just talk to people really on both sides, but mainly to speak to the people in reactor communities… We wanted to seek an intelligent dialogue.”
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Robert Redford on How Truth Telling, Challenging Power Fuels His Passion for Independent Film
Robert Redford is well known as an actor, a director, a producer and an activist. Since 1980, through the Sundance Film Festival and the Sundance Institute, Robert Redford has helped independent voices develop their craft-in film, in theater and in music-to reach larger and newer audiences. We speak with Redford about how independent cinema became his passion. “To me, stories that were worth telling were stories about what’s the truth beneath the truth that you’re given, or think you know… I wanted to focus on independent films to keep alive the independent spirit through storytelling and movie making.”
2012-01-24 13:00:00 – RF/Democracy Now!
