Archives

Senator Shaheen is closing in on her first year representing New Hampshire on Capitol Hill. We’ll talk about her work on the Senate Foreign Relations and Energy committees, as well as her thoughts on some of the biggest issues she’ll be voting on this spring, from the economy to health care to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Guest

• Jeanne Shaheen, Democratic US Senator from Madbury

Last June New England’s dairy farmers were in crisis, losing about three dollars per day per cow. Despite some recent assistance from the government, milk prices this December were at their lowest levels since the 1970's. We’ll revisit the dairy industry’s troubles, look at the progress made and see where it goes from here.

Guests

• Deborah Erb, member of the Dairy Industry Advisory Committee and owner of the Springvale Farms dairy farm and Landaff Creamery in Landaff
• Bob Wellington, Senior Vice President for Economics, Communications and Legislative Affairs for Agri-Mark, a dairy cooperative in New England

We'll also hear from

• Jeff Holmes, co-owner of Holmes Farm, a dairy farm in Langdon and president of the New Hampshire Farm Bureau
• Fergus Cullen, Executive Director of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy and former Chair of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee

The government has announced new, stepped-up levels of passenger screening, including greater scrutiny of travelers from so-called “countries of interest," and it’s ordering more full-body scanners for airports. But while these measures are meant to protect the public, there are complaints over privacy, racial profiling and whether passengers will really be any safer.

Guests

• Douglas Laird, president of Laird and Associates, Inc., an aviation security consulting firm based in Nevada
• Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union
• Richard Bloom, Chief Academic Officer and Director of Terrorism Intelligence and Security Studies at the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona

A new year means a new set of goals for the commissioner and his department. They include the beefing up of rail and bus services in the state, open tolling in Hampton, the updating of their 10-year plan and the hopes to stay above water during tough economic times. We’ll talk to George Campbell about these goals and the I-93 project that’s currently $260 million in the hole.

Guest

• George Campbell, commissioner for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation

The Capitol Steps began as a group of Senate staffers who set out to satirize the very people and places that employed them. In the years that followed, many of the Steps ignored the conventional wisdom ("Don't quit your day job!"), and although not all of the current members of the Steps are former Capitol Hill staffers, taken together the performers have worked in a total of eighteen Congressional offices and represent 62 years of collective House and Senate staff experience. Since they began, the Capitol Steps have recorded 27 albums and have been featured on NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS, and can be heard 4 times a year on National Public Radio stations nationwide during their Politics Takes a Holiday radio specials.