Robert Reich, UC Berkeley professor and former U.S. labor secretary, joins Current TV’s John Fugelsang to weigh in on reports that a bipartisan group of Senators — the so-called Gang of Eight — may have reached a deal on immigration reform that includes a guest worker visa program. “I can’t remember the last time the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce got together on anything,” Reich says. “I mean, the Chamber of Commerce is interested in having a supply of guest workers so that basically wages don’t go up if the economy, and when the economy, turns around — particularly in low-wage professions, low-wage occupations. And the AFL-CIO has very different motives. The AFL-CIO sees undocumented workers in the future as potential members of the AFL-CIO and wants to court them. And both Democrats and Republicans obviously want to court Hispanics. So the stars are aligned in a very weird and unusual way here.”

David Cay Johnston at Reuters reports:

IRS data suggests that, globally, U.S. nonfinancial companies hold at least three times more cash and other liquid assets than the Federal Reserve reports, idle money that could be creating jobs, funding dividends or even paying a stiff federal penalty tax for hoarding corporate cash.

The Fed's latest Flow of Funds report showed that U.S. nonfinancial companies held $1.7 trillion in liquid assets at the end of March. But newly released IRS figures show that in 2009 these companies held $4.8 trillion in liquid assets, which equals $5.1 trillion in today's dollars, triple the Fed figure.
...
This cash pool came to $16,700 for every man, woman and child in the United States, a 53 percent real increase from 2004, my calculations from IRS data show.

You don't have to sit idle and frustrated pondering how many jobs these companies could be creating if they weren't just hoarding all this cash. As Johnston explains here:

Want to motivate companies to put some of those trillions of dollars of idle cash to work creating jobs, paying dividends or sharing the burden of taxes? Call 1-202-224-3121 and tell your senator or representative you want Section 531 vigorously enforced - now - and the offshore loophole closed immediately.

Big money and big media have coupled to create a ‘Disney World’ of democracy in which TV shows, televised debates, even news coverage is being dumbed down, resulting in a public less informed than it should be, says Marty Kaplan, director of USC’s Norman Lear Center and an entertainment industry veteran. In this encore broadcast, Bill Moyers talks with Kaplan about how taking news out of the journalism box and placing it in the entertainment box is hurting democracy and allowing special interest groups to manipulate the system.

Later on the show, Bill talks about Florida Rep. Allen West (R-FL) and shocking modern-day McCarthyism. Wasn’t this lesson already learned?

Transcript:

MARTY KAPLAN: It's all about combat. If every political issue is the combat between two polarized sides, then you get great television because people are throwing food at each other. And you have an audience that hasn't a clue, at the end of the story, which is why you'll hear, "Well, we'll have to leave it there." Well, thank you very much. Leave it there.

BILL MOYERS: And how the ghost of Joe McCarthy is back to haunt America.

SENATOR JOSEPH McCARTHY: They shouldn’t be called Democrats, they should be referred to properly as the Commiecrat Party.

BILL MOYERS: Welcome. How about this: enterprising and intrepid journalism students at Kent State University in Ohio took up our challenge to go to nearby television stations, collect data on the political ads they run and post that information on the Internet. It’s supposed to be public information in the first place.

KENT STATE STUDENT: We had one simple question for management at each station. Should these records be put on line? Three stations refused to be interviewed.

BILL MOYERS: Take a look at the complete Kent State video at our website, BillMoyers.com. We’re counting on other journalism students around the country – and maybe you as well – to follow their example and share the results with us. Meanwhile, on with the show, because as you can see, sometimes the truth reveals itself in the darnedest places. In an old movie, for example – one you saw some years ago, forgot, and then, by chance, happen on it again to discover that times have changed, and movies, too. But certain things never change: they just cost more.

Here’s what I mean: remember Eddie Murphy twenty years ago in The Distinguished Gentleman? That’s the term by which members of Congress address each other, no matter how disreputable their conduct.

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