This is the Tom Hartman Program.

Welcome back to the Tom Hartman Program.

I am Jeff Smith sitting in for Tom this week and honored to do so.

With me is the intrepid George Bailey, a puggle.

He is not on camera at the moment,

but trust me he is here. He is not on the microphone of the moment because the

clip doesn't really work with his suit. It doesn't attach to his collar, I suppose it would,

but we will get back to your collars in a moment but

for right now we have a special treat James Steele Buelly Prize winning investigator reporter from the Center for Public Integrity,

multiple time Pule surprise winner, is joining us to talk about the legacy of Ronald Reagan's economic policy and its impact

on inequality.

James Steele, you're with us now.

Thanks for joining us.

Great to be with you, Jeff.

So first of all, give us just a bit about your background.

You won more than one Pulitzer Prize with your partner, and I think investigating maybe the IRS tell us a story.

Jeff probably written about taxes one way or another for many, many decades and the first Pulitzer we won back in the 1970s had to do with the way

the IRS collects taxes and we showed that most of the emphasis was on those who didn't

owe much,

insisting that they pay their full amount,

versus those who very often owed quite a bit

that were able to cut a deal with IRS

...