1:06pm: North Koreans are mourning the death of Kim Jong Il, who died of a heart attack this weekend. The late Kim’s son, Kim Jong Un, is the heir apparent and experts say this transition period will be a challenge for the young man, who has had little time to develop a power base and inherits control of a country that is poorer than the one his father inherited in 1994. Barbara Demick is the Beijing Bureau Chief for the Los Angeles Times; she is author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. In the book, she tells the stories of several refugees from North Korea and the lives they left behind. We’ll hear from her this hour on what might be next for North Korean leadership.
1:12pm: Congress is deadlocked today with another bitter debate over tax cuts and government spending. And economist Jeffrey Sachs says his profession is partly to blame. Economics, he says, has been wrong on taxes and government for the last 30 years. Sachs says America’s economic problems cannot be solved by tinkering with monetary policy at the Federal Reserve. He says it will take significantly higher taxes and a more active government to restore America’s economy and culture. He joins us to explain.
1:40pm: As part of our series of conversations about the end of the war in Iraq, we hear from an Army veteran, a longtime critic of the Iraq War, whose son was killed in it. Andrew Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He’ll join us to talk about his recent op-ed for the Washington Post, in which he writes: “The beliefs to which the end of the Cold War gave rise—liberal democracy triumphant, globalization as the next big thing and American dominion affirmed by a new way of war—have all come to rest in that unmarked grave reserved for failed ideas. Those who promoted and persisted in the Iraq war wielded the shovel that helped dig the hole. This defines their legacy.”
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