Fight Plutocracy; Defend Public Services

What’s happening to American Democracy? Why are the two political parties only interested in what the wealthy think? Why does the middle class continue to shrink? Why does it seem corporations are above the law?

Well the answer lies in the growing reality that our democracy is being replaced by plutocracy. In the March/April edition of Mother Jones, Kevin Drum provides insights that every American should understand in preventing our experiment in democracy from becoming and fascist plutocracy. Joining us to discuss the Drum article as well as his own work on the topic is Andy Kroll, a journalist at Mother Jones.  You can find Any's writing at Mother Jones here.

In the second half of our first hour we take up HB 2390.

On March 14th, at the request of the Speaker of the House Mike O'Neal (R-Hutchinson), the chair of the Kansas House Appropriations Committee, Marc Rhodes (R-Newton), introduced HB 2390 that would abolish Kan-Ed and transfer all remaining assets to the state's general fund effective July 1 of this year.

Kan-Ed was created by the Kansas Legislature in 2001 and administered through the Kansas Board of Regents. The purpose of the program is to expand the collaboration capabilities of Kan-Ed's member institutions: K-12 schools, higher education, libraries and hospitals through the use of technology.  As such, it provides services including hospital ER databases, provides libraries, schools and hospitals with affordable and high-speed Internet connectivity, the ELMeR videoconferencing network, research databases (including all K-12 databases and Heritage Quest), Kan-Ed Live Tutor (Homework Kansas), and more.
HB 2390 is another attempt to destroy civilization as we know it and deprive Kansans of basic services.  We take up this issue in our first hour of Community Bridge this week with representatives from those communities served by the Kan-ed program.

Kan-ed is funded through the Kansas Universal Service fee which generates $60 million a year, of which $10 million is used to fund Kan-ed.  The other $50 million goes to telecom companies and since the KUS fee is excepted from the Kansas Open Meeting regulations, taxpayers have no idea where their money goes and why Cox Cable, the driving force behind the legislation, has determined that this public service needs to be doen away with.  The House passed HB 2390 by 69 to 51 on Friday April 1.

Joining us to discuss what Kan-ed is and how it benefits Kansans are Carol Barta from the North Central Kansas Libraries System; Jennifer Findley, Senior Director of Education at the Kansas Hospital Association; and Carol Woolbright who is the director Interactive Distance Learning Network at Greenbush Regional Education Service Center in southeastern Kansas.

MP3 File