Bill Moyers is joined by the heads of two independent watchdog groups keeping an eye on government as well as on powerful interests seeking to influence it. Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics and OpenSecrets.org, and Danielle Brian, who runs the Project on Government Oversight, talk to Bill about the importance of transparency to our democracy, and their efforts to scrutinize who’s giving money, who’s receiving it, and most importantly, what’s expected in return.

Here's a snippet:

BILL MOYERS: The cliché is that you have to pay to play. What does that mean to the two of you?

SHEILA KRUMHOLZ: It means that organizations and mostly we’re talking about corporations, understand that Washington is often standing in the way of bigger profits for them. And so they see this as a perfectly legal, entirely common way for their companies to shape policy legislation, even regulation coming out of Washington that will ameliorate the damage and ultimately enhance their ability to turn a profit.

And so private interests if they are not successful in achieving their legislative agenda in Congress have other opportunities, many bites at the apple, to try to water down regulations that they see as onerous or to otherwise tweak laws as they are actually being implemented by the agencies.

Look at this headline: “After Aa Powerful Lobbyist Intervenes, EPA Reverses Stance on Polluting Texas County's Water.” That's a story from the news organizations ProPublica reporting that a big energy company wants permission from Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, for a large-scale mining project in Texas that would pollute a pristine supply of drinking water.

So the EPA says no, can't have it. The big company hires Heather Podesta who's a big time lobbyist, a big time fundraiser for Democrats who was married at the time to another big Washington Democratic fixer named Tony Podesta, who used to be president of the liberal organization People for the American Way.

Through their connections these two have become the king and queen of influence peddling. Lo and behold, some months after the industry hires Heather Podesta, EPA reverses itself and the company gets an exemption and is allowed to pollute the aquifer. To hell with the public health. This is routine, isn't it?

A full transcript of the show follows below the fold...

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The day before she left her family to go to jail, biologist, mother and activist Sandra Steingraber joined Bill Moyers to talk about the need to build awareness about toxins that contaminate our air, water and food — and threaten our children’s health. With government captured by the very industries it’s supposed to regulate, Steingraber said she’s lost patience with politicians and corporations, and the time for direct action is now.

Steingraber also talks to Bill about her arrest for illegally blocking the driveway of a natural gas company as part of a protest against the controversial energy extraction process known as fracking. Steingraber went to jail on April 17, and is currently serving a 15-day sentence.

“I believe, as do many of my colleagues in the sciences, that it’s not safe to compress explosive gases and store them underneath and beside a lake that serves as the drinking water for a hundred thousand people,” she tells Bill. “From my point of view as a biologist and a mother, this out-of-state company… is trespassing in our community.”

Steingraber returns often to the concept of “toxic trespass” — which “means that chemicals without our consent enter our body sometimes because we inhale them,” she explains to Bill. “You know, each of us breathes a pint of atmosphere with every breath. And so that’s one way in which toxic air pollutants then enter us, into our bloodstream.”

The unprecedented level of economic inequality in America is undeniable. In an extended essay, Bill Moyers shares examples of the striking extremes of wealth and poverty across the country, including a video report on California’s Silicon Valley. There, Facebook, Google, and Apple are minting millionaires, while the area’s homeless -- who’ve grown 20 percent in the last two years -- are living in tent cities at their virtual doorsteps.

“A petty, narcissistic, pridefully ignorant politics has come to dominate and paralyze our government,” says Bill, “while millions of people keep falling through the gaping hole that has turned us into the United States of Inequality.”

Full transcript below the fold.

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Bill Moyers brutally slams the hypocrisy of “justice for all” in a society where billions are squandered for a war born in fraud while the poor are pushed aside. Turns out true justice — not just the word we recite from the Pledge of Allegiance — is still unaffordable for those who need it most. Moyers says we’ve “turned a deaf ear” to the hopeful legacy of Gideon vs. Wainwright, the 50-year-old Supreme ruling that established the constitutional right of criminal defendants to legal representation, even if they can’t pay for it.

Moyers says:

The next time you say the Pledge of Allegiance – “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” – remember: it’s a lie. A whopper of a lie.
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“Justice for all” is a line item in the budget – sequestered now by the Paul Ryans of Congress and the Fix the Debt gang of plutocratic CEOs who, with a wink-wink from our president, claim, “Oh, we can’t afford that!”

Of the $100 billion spent annually on criminal justice in this country, only two to three percent goes to defend the poor. Of 97 countries, we rank 68th in access to and affordability of civil legal service.

No, we can’t afford it, but just a decade ago we started shelling out $2.2 trillion for a war in Iraq born of fraud.

We can’t afford it, while Dick Cheney’s old outfit Halliburton raked in $40 billion worth of contracts because of that war.

Watch Bill’s conversations with civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson and journalists Martin Clancy and Tim O’Brien for more insight and context on Gideon, as well as in-depth exploration of current inequalities in America’s criminal justice system.

Bill Moyers:

Even as President Obama’s talking points champion the middle class and condemn how our economy caters to the very rich, 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 seem to show allegiance first and foremost to America’s wealthy and powerful.

Yet some aren’t just wringing their hands about our economic crisis; they’re fighting back. Economist Richard Wolff joins Bill Moyers to shine light on the disaster left behind in capitalism’s wake, and to discuss the fight for economic justice, including a fair minimum wage. A Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, and currently Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School, Wolff has written many books on the effects of rampant capitalism, including Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It.

Also on the broadcast, activist and author Saru Jayaraman marches on Washington with restaurant workers struggling to make ends meet, and talks about how we can best support their right to a fair wage. Jayaraman is the co-founder and co-director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, which works to improve pay and working conditions for America’s 10 million-plus restaurant workers. She is also the author of Behind the Kitchen Door, a new exposé of the restaurant industry.

Full transcript from the show below the fold.

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Journalist Matt Taibbi assesses the Obama Administration’s approach to holding banks accountable for their behavior, and early indications are not promising. Taibbi tells Bill Moyers that fearing another economic calamity is no excuse for turning a blind eye to shockingly unethical decisions and management.

“The rule of law isn’t really the rule of law if it doesn’t apply equally to everybody. If you’re going to put somebody in jail for having a joint in his pocket, you can’t let higher ranking HSBC officials off for laundering $800 million for the worst drug dealers in the entire world,” Taibbi tells Bill. “Eventually it eats away at the very fabric of society.”

Watch Bill’s full conversation with Taibbi on this weekend’s Moyers & Company.

When a political party’s in the majority, it wants to change the filibuster… until it falls from power and winds up the minority. Then it suddenly becomes the filibuster’s biggest supporter. In this web-only exclusive, Bill Moyers says such hypocrisy “has cost the Congress its standing in public respect and cost our democracy the capacity to address the problems that threaten to overwhelm us.”

But hope of resurrecting the Senate’s noble purpose by reforming the filibuster is being championed by a diverse group of organizations and activists, including The Democratic Initiative and Fix the Senate Now. They want to take the filibuster, which can now be easily and quietly activated, and restore its original, public use (Think Mr. Smith or Mr. Sanders). Time is not on their side, however. Unless the Senate reforms the filibuster at the beginning of the new 113th Congress — that’s as soon as next Tuesday, January 22 — the minority wrecking crew remains in charge for the next two years.

See four suggestions below to make your opinion loud and clear. Learn even more by watching Bill’s conversation with union leader Larry Cohen this weekend.

As Bill says, “End the silence. Speak up now. But do it quickly — the clock’s ticking.”

A Filibuster Reform To-Do List:

1. Contact your senator to tell him or her that you support filibuster reform and the end of the silent filibuster. Calling 1-888-717-0911 will connect you automatically based on where you call from. You can also find Senate contact information here. Or call Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (202-224-3542) or Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ( 202-224-2541) directly, and tell them where you stand.

2. Share graphics on your Facebook timeline letting your friends know that you support filibuster reform. Download graphics made by Fix the Senate Now at their website.

3. Follow #FixtheSenate tweets and send your own tweet with your position on the issue. Also, tweet any interactions or contact efforts you had with senators.

4. Link to or embed Fix the Senate Now’s YouTube video.

Bill’s conversation with New York Times columnist Paul Krugman yielded many insights, cautions, and honest takes on Jack Lew, President Obama’s choice for Treasury Secretary. We clipped three of those specific moments — including one web-exclusive that will not be shown on air — below.

In the first cut, Krugman discusses public support for seeing him in the Treasury position, and why Lew might have the right temperament for the job.

In this next, web-exclusive clip, Bill asks Krugman what he thinks of Jack Lew’s stated view that financial industry deregulation was not the “proximate cause” of the financial crisis, a view that recently moved Senator Bernie Sanders to oppose Lew’s nomination.

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Remember climate change? The issue barely came up during the presidential campaigns, and little has been said since. But bringing climate change back into our national conversation is as much a communications challenge as it is a scientific one. Scientist Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, joins Bill Moyers to describe his efforts to do what even Hurricane Sandy couldn’t — galvanize communities over what’s arguably the greatest single threat facing humanity. Leiserowitz, who specializes in the psychology of risk perception, knows better than anyone if people are willing to change their behavior to make a difference.

“[A] pervasive sense up to now has been that climate change is distant — distant in time, and distant in space,” Leiserowitz tells Bill. “And what we’re now beginning to see is that it’s not so distant. It’s not just future generations. It’s us and it’s our own children. I have a nine-year-old son — he’s going to be my age in the year 2050. I don’t want him to live in the world that we’re currently hurtling towards.”

BILL MOYERS: So if the president asks you to suggest what he should say, to send him a draft of what he should say about climate change in his upcoming State of the Union message, what would you urge him to do?

ANTHONY LEISEROWITZ: I would ask him to do two things. One is to say I have consulted with the nation's leading climate scientists including the National Academy of Sciences which exists to guide the nation on science and science policy. And they all tell me, all of them tell me that this is real, that it's human caused, it's a serious problem but that we have the solutions in hand to do it. So, one, I would want him to carry that message.

But the second thing I would like to hear him say is that this issue has to stop being a partisan issue. The climate -- the earth's climate does not care whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. It doesn't care whether you're liberal or conservative. Sandy did not only destroy the homes of Democrats and not Republicans.

The terrible drought that has gripped the Great Plains and our nation's bread basket has not only gone after liberal farmers and ranchers, it's gone after all of us. The point is that climate change will affect all Americans no matter what your political beliefs, your religious beliefs, your race, class, creed, et cetera, okay. And in the end the only way we're going to deal with this issue is if we come together as a county and have a serious conversation not about is it real, but what can we do about it, okay. And I think that the effort to try to de-politicize this issue so it doesn't just become this knee-jerk-- identity politics: I'm a Democrat, therefore I believe in climate change, I'm a Republican, therefore I think climate change is a hoax. This is crazy, okay. I mean, again the climate system doesn't care.

A full transcript of the show is below the fold.

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One reason so many people are disillusioned by the state of things in America is that our political system hasn’t produced consistently good results in a long time. We’ve forgotten that democracy is supposed to be about addressing our problems through a political system that encourages bargaining, compromise, and progress. Except for taking us to war, showering largesse on the privileged and powerful, and courting donors instead of representing voters, Washington politics promotes gridlock, paralysis, and stalemate.

But Bill Moyers finds hope in the movie Lincoln. Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, who wrote the film’s screenplay, joins Bill to talk about finding the man inside the monument, and what Abraham Lincoln — 147 years after his death — can still teach us all about politics, compromise, and the survival of American democracy.

“The job of the president is both to make the compromises necessary to actually have things happen in a democracy, which means compromising at a slower pace than anybody would necessarily like,” Kushner tells Bill. “At the same time he has to keep telling us where we’re going, what we’re trying to arrive at. And I think that Obama has done an astonishing job of doing that over and over, of reminding us that government is a good thing, and that we share responsibility for one another because without that shared responsibility our own lives are destroyed.”

Trailer for "Lincoln" below:

Full transcript after the jump.

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