BILL WOLFF: From NPR News in New York, this is the Bryant Park Project.
(Soundbite of music)
RACHEL MARTIN, host:
Overlooking historic Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, live from NPR Studios, this is the Bryant Park Project from NPR News. News, information, choose your own super power. I'm Rachel Martin.
MIKE PESCA, host:
And I'm Mike Pesca. It's Wednesday, June 11th, 2008. I'll bite. What do you mean?
MARTIN: Well, last night I had what I call a flying dream. Lots of people have flying dreams. And I wake up every time I have a flying dream with this sensation - also this sadness that I can't actually fly in real life.
PESCA: I thought you were going to say, I wake up with feathers in my mouth.
MARTIN: With feathers in my mouth, that's very confusing. But truly, I mean, we're going to talk later in the show with an author who's written a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book about a hero.
PESCA: Right.
MARTIN: Kind of a not-so-awesome hero, but it lead me to think, you know, if I could have any super power in the world...
PESCA: Uh-huh.
MARTIN: It's just not very creative, but I really - I would just want to fly. I would touch the sky.
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MARTIN: Open my wings...
PESCA: Yeah, but then you'd go on trial in Chicago for something horrible.
MARTIN: Yeah, probably. What about you?
PESCA: Yeah, any super - you ever hear the John Hodgeman "This American Life," where he asked people about invisibility and flying? And the people who chose invisibility are - always wanted to do terrible dastardly things.
MARTIN: Yeah, I know. See...
PESCA: And the flying people are, like, really super-special people.
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MARTIN: Really?
PESCA: Yeah, a pat on the back for you, Rachel. My ability would be the ability to communicate with marine animals, but I would live in Kansas, and never be to the ocean. So every once in awhile, I'd go to an aquarium on a field trip, and just be inundated.
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PESCA: Or maybe the ability to gain five pounds, but then quickly lose it in water weight.
MARTIN: But then you have to live in Kansas.
PESCA: Yeah, the ability...
MARTIN: No offense, Kansas.
PESCA: The ability to leave Kansas.
MARTIN: OK.
PESCA: Yes.
MARTIN: So, as I mentioned, we are going to talk with the author of a new "Choose Your Own Adventure" book. This one is not for kids. It's for grownups. It's called "You are a Miserable Excuse for a Hero."
PESCA: Also on the show this hour, an update on a story the BPP brought you last October about a neighborhood-policing program in Philadelphia. The idea was to get a thou - 10,000 black men to volunteer to be a presence in some of the most depressed and dangerous parts of the city. We will check in to see how that is going.
MARTIN: And Charleston High School in Charleston, Mississippi, was desegregated nearly 40 years ago, but they just had their first interracial prom this last April. Up until, then they had two separate proms, a black one and a white one. We're going to talk with a student who was there, and what this new integrated prom means for the town of Charleston. We'll get the day's new headlines in just a minute, but first...
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PESCA: With the he-said/she-said of the Democratic race barely behind us, the he-said/he-said of the general election has just begun. The - this week, presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama, and his Republican counterpart, John McCain, are setting out to define their differences on the economy.
MARTIN: McCain has changed his mind on the Bush tax cuts. He used to oppose them, saying they favored the wealthy. Now he's advocating to extend them, to jumpstart the economy. Obama would let them expire, thereby increasing taxes on those making more than a quarter million dollars a year.
PESCA: Speaking to a group of small-business owners yesterday, McCain took a traditional Republican stand, saying he'd reduce the corporate tax. He also said he would phase out the alternative minimum tax from middle-class families. He said an Obama presidency would mean more taxes, and not just for those quarter-million-dollar earners.
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Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arizona; 2008 Presumptive Republican Presidential Candidate): Under Senator Obama's tax plan, Americans of every background would see their taxes rise, seniors, parents, small-business owners, and just about everyone who has even a modest investment in the market.
PESCA: Obama, though, went for the classic Democratic position, tax cuts for the middle class, specifically a plan to ease taxes for families earning less than 75,000 dollars a year, and he said he'd eliminate the capital gains tax for small businesses. Speaking to Michele Norris on All Things Considered yesterday, Obama had this to say of McCain's plan.
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Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; 2008 Presumptive Democratic Presidential Candidate): I think it's going to be very important, as the debate goes forward over the next several months, for reporters and the public to ask John McCain, how are you going to justify 300 billion dollars in additional tax breaks for corporations, and not lower taxes for the middle class? How are you going to pay for it?
MARTIN: Also in his remarks yesterday, McCain echoed something he said numerous times in Republican presidential debates, that his presidency would mean an end to pork-barrel spending.
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Sen. MCCAIN: I will veto every single beer - bill with earmarks, and every single bill that we have come across my desk, I will make them famous. I will veto them. You will know their names.
PESCA: Yes, he said beer instead of bill. It's a slip of the tongue. I do it all the time. McCain looks at the states in which Obama lost in the primaries, states with shrinking manufacturing bases, like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Michele Norris also asked Obama how he'd connect with the white, working-class voters that so far he has failed to connect with.
(Soundbite of NPR's All Things Considered)
Sen. OBAMA: I lost those states to Senator Hillary Clinton, who had a similar economic agenda to mine. I didn't lose those states to John McCain, who has no economic agenda to address the problems in those states.
MARTIN: McCain is looking back further than the primaries. Obama's repeatedly characterized a McCain presidency as a third Bush term. For his part, McCain said Monday that Obama is, quote, "running for Jimmy Carter's second." You can go to npr.org throughout the day for updates on this story. Now let's turn for more of the day's news headlines, with the BPP's Mark Garrison.
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