In Egypt: more prosecutions of free speech, with dozens of journalists and activists already in prison.  In NY, Presidential Candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump pledge American loyalty to Cairo’s coup-created dictatorship in visits to President ex-Gen. Abdul Fatta el-Sisi.  Mideast scholar Marc Lynch looks at the grim Mideast reality in the backwash of the Arab Spring, and at how it is recreated daily by the highly-competitive Arabic-speaking media, old, new and social. 

How did it happen at Wells Fargo Bank…2 million bogus bank accounts, more than half a million credit cards issued to people who never asked for them, perhaps 10,000 employees involved in a scam that cheated customers for at least 5 years. Ethicist Lee Ellis on the culture that sustained the cheaters…

What’s Vladimir Putin up to, playing the aggressive military supporter in Syria, while appearing to tone down Russian aggression and aggressive Russians in Eastern Ukraine? Former US Ambassador William Courtney, now a specialist in Russia at the RAND Corporation joins us.

At Meadowlands Hospital in northern New Jersey they have a program that they call AmeriMama. The program has been aggressively advertised to pregnant women in Russia as a healthy way to give birth that also gives your child citizenship in the United States.  Investigative reporter Lilo Stainton of NJSpotlite broke the story.

Remember, last August, when the San Juan River ran a shocking yellow?  After 3 million gallons of waste water loaded with 440 tons of toxic metals, including cadmium, arsenic, and lead were accidentally released at the abandoned Gold King Mine, near Silverton, Colorado?  Last month the clean-up became a Federal Superfund project.  Rachell Conn of Amigos Bravos tells us what that means and brings us up to date on the state o the water and the bottom in those rivers.

The latest polls indicate, the overwhelming Presidential choice of the American people is Neither of the Above….dislikes outnumber likes for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump by almost 2 to 1 and and support for both candidates is trending down.  Meanwhile, the likeliest 3rd choice, Libertarian Gary Johson blew his chance to get into the debates when he didn’t recognize the key city in the war in Syria.  Where will the country turn for leadership?  NBC News Political correspondent Steve Handelsman has been on the campaign trail and joins us to assess the race.

It’s called Bridgegate.  The scandal of an intentional traffic jam that paralyzed the George Washington Bridge 3 years ago.  The jam was created by aides to Gov. Chris Christie and they go on trial this week.  Christie doesn’t but his political future it most definitely at stake.  Statehouse Correspondent Bob Jordan of the Asbury Park Press sorts out who tied up the busiest highway bridge in America, whom they thought they were punishing, and why.  One take home lesson – don’t send that email!!! 

Zika has devastated hundreds of families in Brazil and, as expected, the virus has moved north.  Zika is rampant in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and shows a growing caseload in south Florida. Why has Congress refused to hep with the crisis?  Dallas Morning News medical reporter Dr Seema Yasmin joins us on Here and There. 

Nicolas Maduro the radically unpopular radical who is President of Venezuela has tied himself to his top brass in the Venezuelan Army and sent out his police to make political arrests.  Meanwhile his Legislature demands a vote to recall him, and the economy falls farther and farther in bankruptcy.  All this big scale bad news is far outstripped by worse news about everyday life for most Venezuelans, crime, violence, and forced labor and still many families go hungry every night.  AP Buro Chief Joshua Goodmanon the crises in Caracas.

It’s now 15 years and a day since Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and killed more than 3000 people.  Still, some basic questions about the attacks and who helped them succeed remain unanswered.  Investigative reporter Jason Leopold of Vice News helps sort through new details from a Congressional investigation first made public in July.

On the money scoreboard, the 2016 Presidential race is a complete mis-match.  In the primaries Hillary Clinton out-spent Donald Trump by 5 to 1, and still today, Trump continues to run well behind Clinton in fund-raising. One reason is that most of the “serious” right-wing funders, like the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, are sitting the Presidential race out.  This does not mean they’ve given up on this year’s election.  They’re spending their money “down ballot,” to elect Senators, Representatives, Governors and more local officials.  Jane Mayer’s best-seller Dark Money profiles the players and explains the money games they excel in. 

The Justice Department says it will not renew any more contracts for privately-run prisons, because they create profits by cheaping out on everything from employee salaries and training to services for prisoners.  But the Department of Human Services says it’s happy with its recent private contract for the biggest immigrant detention center ever in America. Susan Terrio of Georgetown University studied DHS’ treatment of undocumented children over a 5 year period.  Her biggest problem: the Federal agencies’ policy of keeping  hidden everything that happens to a child after he or she is taken into Border Patrol custody. 

20 years ago, Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich combined to, as they loved to say it: “end welfare as we know it.”  One thing neither of them ever talk about is the beneath-the-underclass they created: people with few welfare benefits and almost no cash…people Living on $2 a Day.  Kathryn Edin of Johns Hopkins University literally wrote the book, reporting from the ground up on the real lives of people without money.  And by they way, almost everyone of them would gladly work if they could find a job that made sense.

It’s Labor Day, the perfect time to think again about one of America’s worst, persistent labor abuses…the abuse of the Federal statute known as H1B, by some of America’s biggest and richest corporations, who take jobs way from American workers and hand them to cheaper foreign temps, and often threaten to cut the severance pay of workers who refuse to train their replacements.  Where, you ask are the Dept of Labor, the Justice Dept fighting to protect American workers and the law?  The same place as the Obama White House, standing by.  Patrick Thibodeau of Computer World broke this story and has stayed on it. 

High school is for young adults…people transitioning out of the protected life of pre-adolescence into the so-called real world, a place of adult-like issues of personal rivalry, and sexual identity.  These complexities define the content of the book market called “young adult.”  John Feinstein is among its most successful writers, specializing in books about high school sports, a genre that has changed as dramatically as the lives of today’s mid-teenagers.  John talks about his books and the American literary tradition they are part of.