Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Black Agenda Radio for Week of May 22, 2017
23 May 2017
🖨️ Print Article

U.S. Healthcare is Profiteered to Death

Only a single payer system can bring U.S. health care into the 21st century, said Dr. Susan Rogers, of Physicians for a National Health Program. Private insurance corporations drain society of health care resources. “If you look at a large hospital, I bet they’ve got more billing clerks than they do nurses, per patient,” said Rogers. “That tells you where the money is going; it’s not going to health care, it’s going to billing.”

The Democrats’ Formula for Losing Elections

The Democrats “know what they need to do to get out the vote,” said Margaret Kimberley, editor and senior columnist for Black Agenda Report. “They need to raise wages, stop the student loan debt, and protect people’s homes. But none of these things are acceptable to their patrons” among the 1 percent,” said Kimberley, who recently authored an article titled “The Democratic Party Death Spiral.” The Democrats “cannot depend on corporate money and do what the people want them to do.”

U.S. Can’t Rule World by Force

Despite its massive military, the U.S. cannot rule the world by force of arms, said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Duboisian scholar from Philadelphia. China’s regional neighborhood includes “three of the five largest economies in the world,” said Monteiro. Therefore, a war with China “would be like the U.S. shooting itself in the head.” A war with Iran, on the Persian Gulf, “would throw the world into a recession or depression.” These are “wars that the United States can’t win; wars that the American public don’t want; and wars that most of humanity would condemn as wars of aggression,” he said.

Mumia: Back to the Bad Old Days

Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, recalled being beaten up by cops, as a 14 year-old, in 1968 Philadelphia. It was “a little taste of [former mayor and police chief] Rizzo, and “an introduction to Trump,” Abu Jamal told journalist Chris Hedges, host of the RT program “On Contact.” “I lived in the ‘bad old days,’” said Mumia. “They were ugly days, and they’re ugly days, today.”

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

 


More Stories


  • Dr. CBS
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Dr. CBS on Trump's Black/Red Scare
    31 Jul 2026
    The U.S. Department of State released "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism," which justifies the genocidal siege against that country while also attempting to criminalize leftist organizing.…
  • Kshama Sawant
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Kshama Sawant, Socialist Candidate for Congress
    31 Jul 2026
    Kshama Sawant is a former Seattle, Washington City Council Member best known for her role in raising the minimum wage to $21 per hour, the highest in the nation. She is now running for Congress in…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Venezuela, Memory, and the Long Arc of U.S. Imperialism
    29 Jul 2026
    Memories of a sovereign Venezuela collide with the reality that it is now a U.S. vassal state.
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Neoliberalism to Trumpism: The Re-Normalization of White Supremacy as State Ideology
    29 Jul 2026
    The crisis of late-stage capitalism has stripped away the liberal disguise and revealed white supremacy as the official ideology of the U.S. state.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    STATEMENT: Question of Western Sahara, Tinguiri Mansour Omar, 1979
    29 Jul 2026
    “It is perfectly clear that the war of aggression waged by Morocco against the [Western] Saharan people is a purely colonial war.”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us