It's as if he were Donald Trump's shadow. David Cay Johnston was born two years after Trump and they stayed away from one another for 30 years. Then their paths crossed when Johnston was writing a book about casinos, Wall Street and the Mob. Johnston's new book The Big Cheat is his third on The Donald. 

Here And There with Dave Marash

Here And There 1 December, 2021 David Cay Johnston

Is America headed for a second Civil War? No, says Brian Michael Jenkins of the RAND Corporation. But mostly, he says, that's because that kind of formal war is out of date. What Jenkins worries about is an America beset by uncivil rhetoric leading to violent confrontation, even planned attacks like January 6, and old and new media sources busy normalizing them. But if and when such bad things happen, it's the job of government to respond to them. 

Here And There 30 November, 2021 Brian Michael Jenkins

When it comes to sentencing, how much consideration should be given to the age of the convict when the crime was committed? Special consideration for people under 18? Austin Fisher of Source NM has reported the case of a woman, just 17 when she was holding the bag that held a murder weapon. She got 30 years to life. Her defense was inept and her sentencing hearing took 19 minutes, which included an ill-judged rant from the judge.

Here And There 29 November, 2021 Austin Fisher

The migration of blue-collar jobs to non-union or lower-wage destinations on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border have left Indiana hollowed up. Indianapolis is a graveyard of abandoned factory buildings and hundreds of left behind workers. Farah Stockman's new book American Made is focused on a question: "What happens to people when work disappears?" She follows 3 skilled, but unemployed former factory workers --one woman, 2 men, one White, one African American.  But they're all human and all wondering what happens next.

Here And There 24 November, 2021 Farah Stockman

 When climate change hits the top of a mountain, a lot of things happen -- less snow, faster melt and more degradation of the rocks themselves. Elizabeth Miller has written in Scientific American about how this climate-driven process is putting more heavy metals and rare earths into less water headed for people's drinking supplies.We know some of the heavy metals, like lead and cadmium can endanger human health, but what's scary is what we don't know about rare earth elements. 

Here And There 23 November, 2021 Elizabeth Miller

The COP 26 climate change conclave is over.  Most of the world's most powerful leaders dropped by Glasgow , leaving people wondering why Chinese leader Xi Jinping didn't, and wondering what that signaled. Meanwhile Xi and President Biden had private talks, some also focused on climate change. But what did COP 26 accomplish? And what's supposed to happen next?  Talk is cheap, but real fixes are very expensive.  Is there a plan to pay for saving the planet? Andrew Freedman covers climate issues for Axios. 

Here And There 22 November, 2021 Andrew Freedman

The customers paying Facebook to help them target buyers say it's a process of inclusion...finding everyone likely to want their product,  But Zinyan Zang of the Kennedy School at Harvard and the Brookings Institution says his research shows Facebook's parsing of the population produces exclusion based on racial and ethnic discrimination. And Zang says so-called reforms forced on facebook by a suit by the ACLU have only made matters worse.

Here And There 17 November, 2021 Jinyan Zang

The story of asbestos is like that of leaded gasoline.  Its manufacturers knew for decades it was a deadly threat to human health, but they sold it just the same. Alisa Ghura of the Brookings Institution on the presence of asbestos in Philadelphia's public schools.  Ordinary school buildings filled with impoverished, mostly-minority students get patched, elite schools get fixed. The problem and the faux-solution exists in other cities from Baltimore to Chicago to Berkeley, CA. 

Here And There 16 November, 2021 Alisa Ghura

 China tests 2 hypersonic weapons and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs calls it a shock approaching the launch of Sputnik. But Mark Thompson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist now at the Project on Government Oversight reminds us, military threats like hypersonic weapons can begin with hype.

Here And There 15 November, 2021 Mark Thompson

 The US Constitution guarantees all people accused of crimes the option of a trial by jury.  But is part of that guarantee that it takes a unanimous vote to convict?  The Supreme Court says the answer is yes -- from this day forward.  But what about Louisiana's 1500 prison inmates convicted by less-than-unanimous juries? And does it matter that 80% of those people are African-American. Jeremy Young of Al Jazeera English's Fault lines has the story, of Jim crow justice.

Here And There 10 November, 2021 Jeremy Young

The region around Albuquerque has had several job-creation achievements to celebrate. But will Facebook and Amazon pay people enough to afford safe and sound places to live?  Reporter Patrick Lohmann of Source NM on the housing crisis in NM's biggest city and an ongoing hospital crisis in the smaller town of Gallup.  For weeks, Gallup's Rehoboth McKinley hospital was no place to birth a baby. The labor and delivery unit was shut down. 

Here And There 9 November, 2021 Patrick Lohman

4 words describe corporate spending on keeping America's power lines humming -- too little, too late. Ivan Penn of the NY Times on utility CEOs' promises and reality in hurricane-hit Louisiana and in fire-ravaged California, while the isolated Texas power grid's struggle with winter cold and summer heat prove, you can't cure stupidity. Penn says scientific progress is outrunning technical capacity as the country tries to fit the power grid for use in a post-fossil fuel world.

Here And There 8 November, 2021 Ivan Penn

Leon Panetta, one of the politicians most tied to the war in Afghanistan said, as the US withdrew its troops...you can leave a battlefield but not the war on terrorism.  David Bromwich columnist for The Nation and Professor of Literature at Yale University says Panetta is significantly wrong on both points. Reducing a country to a battlefield is a losing strategy, he says, and adopting strategies of warfare to combat terrorism has largely failed as well.

Here And There 3 November, 2021 David Bromwich

Since 2014, a Federal USGS study has tied fracking to earthquakes. In Oklahoma and Northeastern New Mexico, increased fracking for oil and gas extraction has been followed by increased seismic activity.  Now that pattern is showing up in SE New Mexico where not just petroleum products are below ground. Jerry Redfern of Capital & Main and Source NM reports on a potential threat to nuclear waste sites.

Here And There 2 November, 2021 Jerry Redfern

How did Donald Trump manage to turn America into a political dystopia?  Karen Greenberg, the Director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University Law School answers that question in her new book Subtle Tools.  Trumpism starts by corrupting language continues by undermining government structures and processes and hiding the impact through secrecy. 

Here And There 1 November, 2021 Karen Greenberg

Important news stories discussed in depth. Award-winning reporter Dave Marash talks with a journalist, analyst or witness with timely (often eyes-on) insights into major news stories. Deep coverage of news from HERE (New Mexico and the American Southwest) and THERE (everywhere else): The headline, the lead, the context, the nuance. You could learn something.

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Here And There with Dave Marash

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