Latest Content for Old Mole Variety Hour

Raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour in 2010!  That's the proposal of well-known author and activist Holly Sklar and Let Justice Roll.  Holly talks with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick about the gap between the minimum wage and a living wage, and why raising the minimum is ... Read more

Movie Moles Fran Michele and Jan Haaken compare, contrast, and recommend two current films, "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Wendy and Lucy".  Wendy and Lucy was shot here in Portland.  Read more

The housing crisis continues as more people become homeless  because of foreclosures.  On this program, Bill Resnick talks with Chester Hartman, Director of Research for the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, about  the problem and how it could be solved. The Movi... Read more

"ISRAEL’s war in Gaza is an act of political insanity. It is the product of a deeply disturbed society, able neither to curb its military arrogance nor calm its profound paranoia. The consequences are likely to be painful for Israel’s long-term prospects."  So argues a l... Read more

Neo-liberalism has been discredited by the current economic crisis.  What will replace it?   Walden Bello argues that it will be "Global Social Democracy" -- in some ways better than the failed ideas that got us into this mess, but it's still as undemocratic as capitalis... Read more

Tom Becker hosts the first Old Mole show of 2009.  Topics include The Housing Crisis and how to solve it The War in Gaza Two movies: Slumdog Millionaire and  Wendy and Lucy A new kind of capitalism ahead? Hear the whole show by clicking on the arrow at th... Read more

Foreclosures.  Unemployment.  Poverty.  At least  a third of the nation ill-housed or un-housed.  What to do?  Chester Hartman has written widely on housing issues, and he talks with the Old Mole's Bill Resnick.  Hartman, an urban planner and author, is Director of Resea... Read more

This program revolves  around the prospects for universal health care in the Obama years and beyond.   Can we have real universal coverage in a profit-driven insurance system?   Why are other nations better at this than the US?   And we hear a review of  Kaye Gibbons' no... Read more

  Reports  of its death have been greatly exaggerated -- Socialism is coming back in full force in Europe, according to an article by Neil Clark in the New Statesman.  Tom Becker reads, and adds  a  caveat by the Old Mole's Bill Resnick. Read more

  How many of the problems with our health care will, and will not, be solved by what's on the table in the national health care debate that will take place in the Obama years?   Paul Gorman of  Physicians for  a National Health Care Program, and a Portland physician, t... Read more