I don’t usually talk sports on my show. But yesterday, I started seeing tweets lamenting the loss of Marvin Miller – someone whose name I didn’t know before. After reading Keith Olbermann’s beautiful tribute to the man, I asked David Sloane (who happens to be my fiance) about him. David is an agent who represents professional baseball players, so I wasn’t surprised when he answered by saying, somewhat wistfully, that Miller is the man responsible for David being an agent today.
Marvin Miller’s story does have a place on this show. As head of the Players Association, Miller was a union boss. Both David and Keith Olbermann tell us that he was a very special man, not on deserving of all the accolades he’s already received, but much more.
So, David joined me on the show this morning to tell some stories about Marvin Miller, and also fill us in on how the Miami Marlins owners screwed over the City of Miami, and how David saw that one coming in a deal he did with them for Carlos Delgado eight years ago.
Also on the show this morning… I spoke with Kathy Kelly – part of a group of Americans in Gaza. She’s there with Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin and a dozen or so others who brought donations and other relief items and are helping the people of Gaza recover from the latest round of fighting.
In the second hour, we focused in on the bad bargains being bandied about. US Action is planning a day of action this Saturday – fighting to save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while insuring that taxes are raised on those in the highest 2% of income “earners”. (I put “earners” in quotations because I don’t believe anyone earns that much money…. some of the hardest working people I know earn much more than they make, and many who make obscene amounts certainly don’t earn it.) US Action’s Program Director Alan Charney joined me this morning to talk about it. Please visit TheAction.org and get involved!
And finally, I spoke with the PCCC Daily Change blog‘s Zaid Jilani, who’s been writing about the fact that the American people are on board with raising taxes on the wealthy and protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.