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Bad Company

Bad Company

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 Ralph welcomes journalist and author Megan Greenwell to discuss her book "Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream." Then, Ralph speaks to James Zogby (co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute) about the recent Israeli attacks on Lebanon.Megan Greenwell is a journalist who has written or edited for publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, WIRED, and ESPN. She is also the deputy director of the Princeton Summer Journalism Program, a workshop and college-access initiative for students from low-income backgrounds. She is the author of Bad Company: Private Equity and the Death of the American Dream.The real trick with private equity (and this was the thing that made me want to write a book on it) is that when they take out those billions of dollars worth of loans (if you’re buying a bigger company), the private equity firm is not responsible for paying those loans back. Only the portfolio company in whose name the private equity firm has taken the money out is on the hook for that money. And so what you end up with is this split in incentive where what’s good for the private equity firm is not necessarily what’s good for its own portfolio company.Megan Greenwell[Congress hasn’t repealed the carried interest loophole] because Congress is in the pocket of the private equity industry. 88% of members of the House and Senate take donations from private equity. Interestingly, Donald Trump has called twice for the carried interest loophole to be closed. And still, even he, as much of a stranglehold as he has on the Republican Party, he can’t build support for it among Republicans. Because they’re all taking private equity money, as are the vast majority of the Democrats. So this is not a partisan issue.Megan GreenwellOne of the reasons I was really interested to write this book as a series of narrative profiles of people trying to do something about [private equity] is: none of them are trying to do something about it through the federal government. And I think when we talk about “Only the federal government can save us,” we really risk turning people away from trying to do anything. And I think we’ve seen on the private equity issue there has been some really interesting movement on the state level in several places—real reforms that are much easier to accomplish on the state level than on the federal level.Megan GreenwellJames Zogby is co-founder and president of the Arab American Institute, and he is featured frequently on national and international media as an expert on Middle East affairs. Since 1992, he has written a weekly column— “Washington Watch” —that is published in 12 countries. He is the author of several books, including Looking at Iran: The Rise and Fall of Iran in Arab Public Opinion, The Tumultuous Decade: Arab, Turkish, and Iranian Public Opinion - 2010-2019, Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why it Matters, and Palestinians: The Invisible Victims.Not only are thousands being killed [in Lebanon], but there’s a process underway of demolishing villages, obviously expelling lots of people, creating internal refugees and sectarian tension as a result of it. And clearly (as Israel has stated, and I think we have to believe them), that they actually want to annex the territory up to the Litani River and maybe even further. They call it a buffer zone, but we’ve heard that buffer zone stuff before. It’s merely a way of taking new land and providing opportunities for settlements.James ZogbyAs we saw ourselves in Vietnam, as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel is now getting PTSD reports that are deeply disturbing to them. They’re getting suicides. They’re getting an exhausted military. They’re not exhausted with the weapons that they’re losing (because they’re losing a lot and they’re using a lot), they’re getting emotionally and physically exhausted. Look, when the soldiers do what they’ve been doing—which is basically inhuman behavior, I mean, it’s disgraceful behavior—it begins to eat away at the soul. You get these suicides. You get these emotional collapses. And what gets me upset is that—72,000 Palestinians dead, a few Israeli soldiers having PTSD and trauma and committing suicide becomes a news story? My feeling has to be with the Lebanese and Palestinians.James ZogbyWhen I hear on the DNC from other members who say to me, “When you talk about Israeli genocide, that’s anti-Semitic, it makes me uncomfortable,” I said, “You know what makes me uncomfortable? That genocide is actually taking place. And it makes me equally uncomfortable that you won’t admit it or even want us to talk about it.”James ZogbyNews 4/17/26* Our top story this week comes to us from New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani is delivering on yet another campaign promise thought impossible by mainstream pundits and beltway insiders: the creation of municipal grocery ...
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