Jan Haaken and Frann Michel discuss the dystiopian futuristic film, "The Hunger Games", directed by Gary Ross. The film stars Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, a participant in the national "hunger games" instituted by the oppressive continental state years ago as a response to youth rebellion. In the hunger games, teenage nominees from every district in North America fight to the death every year until there is only one left, and their district then gets extra rations for the year.

Bill Resnick talks with Chuck Sheketoff, executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy. They talk about the corporations that don't pay any appreciable taxes in Oregon, how they get away with it, why public services rather than tax-cuts support business, and the struggle to get these companies to disclose their tax contributions.

Tom Becker reads  David Michael Green's CounterPunch essay: "A Very Sick Country: deep maladies of the body politic". Green argues that, while it's not all bad, core features of the American political system -- the president, the electoral system, judicial review, state ownership and the separations of powers -- are either counterproductive to democracy or at best antiquated. He then goes on to make the case for a unitary parlimentary government, like most of the rest of the democratic world uses.

                 Tom Becker hosts this Old Mole Variety Hour and with musical interludes from Leonard Cohen we hear: