The Brian Lehrer Show

Though both Cuomo and de Blasio are counting the most recent state budget as a victory, many on the left are unhappy with some of the provisions that were included--and left out. Karen Scharff, executive director of Citizen Action of New York and co-chair of the Working Families Party, and James Parrott, chief economist and deputy director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, discuss the budget.

In January, we started keeping a running list of technology the NSA has at its disposal -- disclosed by the documents stolen by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and leaked to the media. Shane Harris, senior staff writer at Foreign Policy, returns to discuss the updates to the list since he was last on. → See The Full List and Add Your Comments Here

Inspired by a piece in The New York Times this weekend, "Last Bohemian Turns Out the Lights", we're starting the show today with an artist's census. What's your neighborhood like for you? What do you do to support your art, and what do you need to get more support? 

Millions of women around the world use skin-lightening creams. Arun Venugopal, WNYC reporter, discusses the different attitudes towards cosmetics and race and his reporting for the new series, Micropolis.

David Letterman announced he'll retire from the Late Show sometime next year. Matt Zoller Seitz, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com and Editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, discusses the talk-show host's place in the history of late night TV, his comedic innovations and takes your (non-traditional) suggestions on who might replace Letterman. // Post by Brian Lehrer.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has voted to release the massive report detailing Bush-era interrogation techniques. The White House still has to approve it, though - Karen Greenberg, head of Fordham's Center on National Security, discusses what we know and can expect.

Nomi Prins, senior fellow at Demos, former investment banker and author of All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power (Nation Books, 2014), looks back over the last century at the "symbiotic" relationship between American presidents and the banks.

Three of our favorite segments from the week, in case you missed them. Solving Sleep Problems (First) | The Secret World of Bodega Cats (Starts at 26:35) | Bette Midler (Starts at 45:55) If you don't subscribe to the Brian Lehrer Show on iTunes, you can do that here.

David Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning senior military correspondent for Huffington Post, talks about his reporting on veterans and the idea of "moral injury" and what part that might have played in the recent shooting at Ft. Hood. The "moral injury"/PTSD Venn diagram we are mentioning on air with @woodwriter @HuffPostPol http://t.co/fNMsdAoyC4 pic.twitter.com/4L0nwroJuD — Brian Lehrer Show (@BrianLehrer) April 4, 2014

What's so bad about being overly involved? Alfie Kohn, author of 12 books, including The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2014), takes issue with the view that today's children are entitled. Excerpt: DOES PERMISSIVE PARENTING CREATE SPOILED KIDS? Even if a lot of parents were permissive and a lot of children were self-­centered, these phenomena are not necessarily related. Those who criticize what they see as an indulgent style of child-rearing are obliged to show, rather than merely assume, that it explains the characteristics in children they find troubling. There’s nothing new about trying to link undesired out-comes to insufficiently traditional parenting. Indeed, the entire 1960s counterculture was attributed to parents—well, let’s just say “blamed on” parents, given the assessment of that counterculture by those who did the attributing. Specifically, the fault was said to lie with moms and dads who supposedly let their offspring have their way too often. This connection seems to have been sparked in the spring of 1968 by a New York Times Magazine essay called “Is It All Dr. Spock’s Fault?” written by a young sociologist named Christopher Jencks. “The new ethos . . . on leading college campuses,” he declared, is the result of “upper-middle-class children who . . . are mostly products of permissive homes.” The trouble was, the homes that Jencks proceeded to describe—and it’s not clear how common they actually were—didn’t seem permissive so much as simply respectful of children. They were defined by hands-on parenting, but the active involvement consisted of justifying rules on their merits (rather than demanding absolute obedience), listening to kids’ reasons, and involving them in decision making. As Jencks saw it, these parents still relied on discipline to elicit compliance, but it was a version based more on wielding disapproval and guilt than on the crude employment of power. Furthermore, despite his article’s title (which was likely supplied by an editor), Jencks didn’t entirely condemn what was happening on college campuses or the new generation’s resistance to authoritarian institutions. But a parade of conservatives who appropriated his thesis certainly did. For example, Spiro Agnew, soon to be Richard Nixon’s vice president, turned this issue into one of his signature campaign tropes, blasting student radicals as “spoiled brats who have never had a good spanking. . . . [Their] parents learned their Dr. Spock and threw discipline out the window.” One inconvenient fact for such critics, which didn’t escape Jencks’s notice, is that some of the products of those allegedly permissive households ended up to the political right of their parents, challenging the established order as rebellious Goldwater conservatives. But an even more decisive rejoinder to the basic argument is that there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support it; indeed, there were several good reasons to question its plausibility. Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out that the young activists “were far from being the stereotyped products of permissiveness. In fact, they were no doubt among the hardest-working, most disciplined members of their generation.” Moreover, a social scientist who reviewed some empirical investigations of the issue found that they “demonstrated rather clearly that the political activity of young people . . . shows no substantial relationship with ‘permissiveness.’” People with a strong distaste for what they viewed as indulgent parenting couldn’t substantiate their contention that it bred political radicalism, so eventually a new charge was dredged up: Such parenting was now said to have produced a generation of narcissists. (Similarly, we’re told, “Today, punishment has a bad reputation” and the result is that we find ourselves with “self-indulgent, out-of-control children.”) Is there any evidence to support these claims? As we’ve seen, the contention

In the wake of the "Bridgegate" scandal, the governors of NY and NJ have suggested restructuring the Port Authority that oversees big regional infrastructure projects. Hugh O'Neill, president of Appleseed (an economic development consulting firm based in NYC) and a former assistant executive director of the Port Authority (1985-1991), talks about the report he and NYU's Mitchell Moss put together that argues the problem is not mismanagement or politics, but the business model that funds revenue-free projects requiring hefty toll increases.

Felix Salmon, finance blogger for Reuters, explains the debate and the backlash - and the backlash to the backlash - about Flash Boys, Michael Lewis' new book about high-frequency trading.

With April 15th approaching, Shelly Goch, CPA with Adeptus Partners LLC, specializes in taxes for non-traditional families -- gay marriages, non-married partners, plus artists and foreign nationals working in NYC.

Reihan Salam, columnist for Slate and lead writer of the Agenda for the National Review, argues that the tax code should be made friendlier to parents -- and that people without kids should pay more to help them out. He'll make his case and take your calls. // Post by Brian Lehrer.

Reportedly, more parents chose to have their children sit out the state ELA exams this week than did last year.  If your kids took the exam, did you consciously "opt in"?  If you opted out, how would you like to see schools held to account for preparing their students to do college level work after graduation?