Democracy, I would repeat, is the noblest form of government we have yet evolved, and we may as well begin to ask ourselves whether we are ready to suffer, even perish for it, rather than readying ourselves to live in the lower existence of a monumental banana republic with a government always eager to cater to mega-corporations as they do their best to appropriate our thwarted dreams with their elephantiastical conceits. ~ Norman Mailer
Leaked: The Internet must go!
Hey! Are you on the internet right now? Of course you are! Then you should definitely check out this amazing video about what the internet companies are planning.
This move could hurt both consumers and content creators--but of course would be a huge windfall for internet providers.
How weathly are Americans?
The disparity in wealth between the richest one percent of Americans and the bottom 80 percent has grown exponentially over the last thirty years — but the video, posted by user politizane and relying on data from a popular Mother Jones post, focuses on the difference between the ideal disparity that Americans would like to see and the reality.
Tax the Rich
So long! It's been fun.
Dear listeners,
In July 2011 I started a new job teaching Italian at Kansas State University. In some ways this was a return to my roots, as I taught English as a Foreign Language for 17 years in Italy. Now I am teaching English speakers Italian. I've come full circle.
This coming full circle also means the end of an attempt on my part to start a new career in my 50s. Sadly, as much as I tried to bring community radio to Manhattan, I was not successful. So I have decided to dedicate my energy and time to my first love, being an educator.
The archive of my shows will remain active - there's a lot of great content in the shows. So I hope you continue to listen and enjoy them.
Once again thank you for your support and encouragement over the five years the show was on the air. I know many feel that my program needs to be on the air and I agree with you that a diversity of voices is sorely lacking in the local media. But alas, it is not I who will bring that diversity. It will have to be someone else.
Christopher E. Renner
Showing posts with label American Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Culture. Show all posts
Community Bridge celebrates the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots this week with Michael Bronski, Senior Lecturer, Women's and Gender Studies Program at Dartmouth College for a discussion of the his newly released book A Queer History of the United States.
Community Bridge opens this week with Beth Bailey and Ben Hopper,Union Program Council, along with musician CJ Manning for a preview of this year’s Little Apple Jazz Festival. At about half past the hour, Ashley Long, Lindsay and James Thompson of the Riley County Humane Society join us in studio to discuss the work of the organization and how people can support it.
2011 Little Apple Jazz Festival Line-Up
5:00 - 6:00 pm KC Youth Jazz Band
6:00 - 6:30 pm Barefoot Dixieland Band
6:30 - 7:00 pm Kelly McCarty Band
7:00 - 8:00 pm Pablo Sanhueza Latin Jazz Trio
8:00 - 9:00 pm Steven Richard Band
9:00 - 9:30 pm Swing Machine, a KSU Jazz combo
9:30 - 10:45pm CJ Manning and Company
Community Bridge opens this week with Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center, in a discussion of the Center's annual report "The Year in Hate." Potok discusses the rise of right-wing extremists and how they are infiltrating organizations such as the Tea Party to make racism mainstream once again. We close out the hour with Monique King, Yasche Glass, and Jonathan Anderson, from the Manhattan Juneteenth Planning Committee discuss this year's celebration.
McChesney is a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, host of the weekly talk show, Media Matters, on WILL-AM radio, and cofounder of the media reform organization Free Press.
McChesney has written or edited seventeen books on media and politics. He has also written more than 150 journal articles and book chapters and another 200 newspaper pieces, magazine articles and book reviews. His work has been translated into twenty-one languages. He has been the subject of more than 70 published profiles and interviews. In 2001 Adbusters Magazine named him one of the “Nine Pioneers of Mental Environmentalism.” Utne Reader in 2008 listed him as one of their "50 visionaries who are changing the world."
For our second hour we take up the theme of American empire in a tribute to GRIT TV which ceased operations on May 13th. First we hear GRITtv host, Laura Flanders, interviews Chris Hedges about the death of Bin Laden and the continuing concern over terrorism, the end of empathy in the U.S., and what avenues are left for progressives to fight back. Then we hear Flanders interviewing retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich about the changes in the administration and the ongoing situation in Libya and Syria, and notes that at a time when the Arab world is undergoing deep changes, it should be a time for modesty in the US and a reconsideration of military power and the use of violence to achieve goals. We close out this hour with a clip form Law and Disorder Radio featuring the award-winning independent journalist Will Potter. Potter is the leading authority on “eco-terrorism.” He’s the author of the new book, "Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege."
In our second hour we first hear from Dr. Vandana Shiva is a clip from GRITtv. Shiva says: "The American people should see that corporations have abandoned them long ago." Shiva is a scientist, environmentalist, and food justice activist Dr. Vandana Shiva. Shiva was named one of the seven most influential women in the world by Forbes magazine. Shiva spoke at K-State in October 2009 and the podcast of her speech is available on the Community Bridge website. Click on the link to the 2009 podcasts and scroll down to October.
Then we hear a clip from Truthdig Radio featuring Tim Canova, the Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law and co-director of the Center for Global Law & Development at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California. Canova takes on the Standards and Poors treat to downgrade the US credit rating in a discussion of the economic meltdown in our casino economy.
The show closes out addressing the Manhattan City Commission’s vote to repeal the new anti-discrimination ordinance.
Community Bridge opens this week with a look at lying as normative political discourse. Political lying has always been with us, but what the GOP and some Democrats have done is akin to carpet-bombing the truth. Mother Jones Magazine turns its investigative eyes on this reality in its May/June edition entitled: You Lie! Inside the GOP’s Fact Free Nation. We hear from Rick Perlstien whose article “Fact-Free Nation from Nixon’s Dirty Tricksters to James O’Keefe’s Video Smears: How political lying became the new normal," opens the topic.
Perlstien is the author of two noteworthy books: Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, and Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, which won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award for history. From the summer of 2003 until 2005 he covered the presidential campaigns as chief national political correspondent for the Village Voice. He has also published The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party, an essay with responses from commentators including Robert Reich, Elaine Kamarck, and Ruy Teixeira. In 2006 and 2007 he wrote a biweekly column for The New Republic Online. Perlstein was a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, for whom he wrote the blog The Big Con.
The hour closes out with Josh McGinn, Flint Hills Human Rights Project, discussing the what’s happening with the Manhattan City Commission and the efforts by the right-wing extremists Matta and Butler to repeal the city’s recently passed Anti-discrimination Ordinance.
The Hackers and the Hockey Stick - How climate science became the target of "the best-funded, best-organized smear campaign by the wealthiest industry that the Earth has ever known, Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones.
This week's Community Bridge opens with Ruth Douglas Miller giving an overview of the next Science Cafe that will take place on Tuesday, March 8th at 7:00 pm at Radina's.
Then we hear a previously-recorded interview Christopher Renner conducted with Tim Wise when he was at K-State earlier in February. Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators in the United States. Recently named one of “25 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World,” by Utne Reader.
The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction, connects the dots between crime, oil prices, Wall Street, global warming, nuclear waste and childhood violence. Costa reveals the four telltale patterns which paralyze innovative thinking, and with it, a civilization's ability to solve complex problems. Using both historic and modern day examples, The Watchman's Rattle describes what happens when complexity races ahead of the brain's ability to manage it, the underlying reason why experts and governments can no longer fix global crisis and conflict.
Martin Luther King's Legacy
Peter Rothberg writes for The Nation: "In the mid-1960s, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. contributed an annual essay to The Nation on the state of civil rights and race relations in the United States. His last piece, from March 14, 1966, could have been written today: 'Jobs are harder to create than voting rolls. Harmonizing of peoples of vastly different cultural levels is complicated and frequently abrasive.'" Readers will find links to several of King's speeches and to the video of King's "I Have a Dream" speech at this page.
Joshua Holland, a journalist at AlterNet provides the following summary of King's writings.
18 Disturbing Things We Wouldn't Know Without WikiLeaks
The Nation magazine writes: “Nearly fifty days have passed since the WikiLeaks document release in late November, this one centering on US diplomatic cables and quickly dubbed ‘Cablegate,’” Greg Mitchell writes in his article in "Why WikiLeaks Matters."
So far, WikiLeaks has released less than 3,000 cables from the 251,000-document cache, but already the media, politicians and the public are questioning the value of the leak. “It's important,” Mitchell writes, “to review a small sample of what we have learned thanks to WikiLeaks since April and the release of the 'Collateral Murder' US helicopter video, which showed the killing of two Reuters journalists, among others. It's necessary to do this because most in the US media, after brief coverage, provided little follow-up.”
Here are a few of the things we have learned from WikiLeaks.
Swiss Whistleblower Rudolf Elmer Plans to Hand Over Offshore Banking Secrets of the Rich and Famous to WikiLeaks
Ed Vulliamy reports for The Observer via The Guardian: "The offshore bank account details of 2,000 "high net worth individuals" and corporations – detailing massive potential tax evasion – will be handed over to the WikiLeaks organisation in London tomorrow by the most important and boldest whistleblower in Swiss banking history, Rudolf Elmer, two days before he goes on trial in his native Switzerland."
Larry Bienhart reports for AlterNet: "We’re in a class war. It’s the corporations and the very wealthiest against all the rest of us. We’re losing. In 1962 the wealthiest 1 percent of American households had 125 times the wealth of the median household. Now it’s 190 times as much. Is that a case of a rising tide lifting all boats, just a few of them a little bit higher? No." Photo: AlterNet
From The Nation: "Wendell Potter, author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, stopped by The Nation's offices this week to explain how insurance companies are manipulating the conversation surrounding healthcare legislation. Potter was a health insurance executive for nearly 20 years but quit his position in 2008 because he found it difficult to work for an industry that placed profit over people’s health. In 2009, Potter testified before the Senate on how insurance companies have engaged in practices that have forced millions of Americans to become uninsured."
Bradley Manning and GI Resistance to US War Crimes
Angola 3 News (via Truthout) interviews independent journalist Dahr Jamail on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the media's coverage of WikiLeaks, the actions of Bradley Manning and the military's response to soldier resistance. Jamail says, "The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq could not have more clearly violated international law. Even the former secretary general of the United Nations (UN), Kofi Annan, said in September 2004 that the Iraq war was illegal and breached the UN Charter. An illegal war is thus the mother of all war crimes, for from that stems all the rest.... What Manning did by leaking this critical information has been to uphold his oath as a soldier in the most patriotic way."
Combat in Our Genes?
Jay Stanley, Speech, Privacy and Technology Program, ACLU writes: "Born soldiers may say they have "combat in our genes" — but a new report suggests the Pentagon may want to give the phrase whole new meaning by turning DNA into the next military battleground. The report, prepared by a defense science advisory panel known as JASON and reported by Secrecy News and HuffPost's Dan Froomkin, among others, recommends that the military take advantage of the rapidly falling cost of gene sequencing by preparing to engage in the mass sequencing of the genomes of all military personnel."
Former Community Bridge guest, Andy Worthington, provides the following commentary about the ninth anniversary of the Guantánamo concentration camp: "On the afternoon of January 11, after I had spoken at a rally outside The White House and at a protest outside the Department of Justice, the New America Foundation in Washington D.C. hosted a panel discussion, “Nine Years of Guantánamo: What Now?” which I had organized as part of a week-long US tour to raise awareness of the plight of the remaining 173 prisoners at Guantánamo on the 9th anniversary of the prison’s opening."
The following video features Andy Worthington, Morris Davis, Tom Wilner and Ben Wittes at the New America Foundation discussing the GITMO camp.
Green Energy Opponents Are the Real Job Killers
Dan Fenton writes for The Nation: "Listen to how we discuss clean energy in this country, and you'll note that the conversation is exactly upside down. To hear the mainstream discourse tell it, clean energy may be a nice idea but it's prohibitively expensive. Going green, it's said, will cost jobs and strangle growth at a time when America must do whatever it takes to get our economy and people working again. Environmentalists are going to raise everyone's energy bills. We're the 'job killers.'"
Abrahm Lustgarten reports for ProPublica: "In the context of today’s roiling political and energy debates, it’s not at all clear who will win. But if money is an indicator, the anti-regulatory group has the upper hand.... According to data from Open Secrets, the 32 [congress] members against disclosure received $1,742,572. The average contribution from the oil and gas sector to individuals from that group was $54,455. Oklahoma Democrat Dan Boren, who co-chairs the caucus, personally received more than $202,000, including almost $15,000 from Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest natural gas producers in the United States." Photo by Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica
Sierra Club Files to Block New Kansas Power Plant
John Milburn reports for Associated Press (in theBeaumont Enterprise): "The Sierra Club asked the state Court of Appeals on Friday to strike down an air-quality permit for a new coal-fired power plant in southwest Kansas. The request, filed in Topeka, asks the court to set aside the permit issued last month by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to Sunflower Electric Power Corp. Named in the petition is acting KDHE Secretary Robert Moser Jr., who was appointed to the post by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. Sierra Club attorneys argue in part that flawed environmental data were used in the permitting process. In addition, the Sierra Club says KDHE rushed the permitting process to ensure that Sunflower would have permission to build the plant before more stringent federal air quality regulations took effect Jan. 2."
Farmland by the Numbers
The Farmland Report writes: "Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2007 National Resources Inventory story of ournation’s farm and ranch landloss in numbers. The 2007 National Resource Inventory is the most comprehensive natural resource database in the United States—tracking conditions and trends on non-federal land from 1982 to 2007."
Come Saturday Morning: In Case It Wasn’t Obvious That Bigots Run The GOP
Phoniex Woman writes on FireDogLake: "So much racially-connected synchronicity going on over in Wingnutville lately. Michael Steele, presiding over a midterm electoral romp by the Republicans in which the moderate GOP candidates that managed to survive the primaries outperformed the Tea Party endorsees by a three-to-one margin, was ousted as RNC chair by a teabagger-endorsed guy named Reince Priebus, the former head of the Wisconsin GOP, who got the gig ostensibly for actually managing to get a teabagger who wasn’t the son of a famous congressman into the senate seat of the much-beloved Russ Feingold."
New RNC Chairman Bashed Stimulus, but Helped Clients Get Stimulus Funds
Charles Johnston writes for Little Green Footballs: "The new head of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus, is famous (or infamous, depending where you stand) for throwing this chunk of red meat to the angry right:
if you’re pro-abortion, pro-stimulus, pro-G.M. bailout, pro-AIG, well you know guess what, you might not be a Republican.
Blatant right wing hypocrisy has become so commonplace that it’s no surprise at all to discover that Priebus himself worked at a law firm that helps clients secure federal stimulus funds."
Steve Striffler comments for Truthout: "Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, however, holding muddled political views does not in and of itself necessarily make Loughner mentally ill, unstable, crazy, or even particularly unusual. It makes him American and peculiarly so. In the college classroom, at political events and in grassroots organizing meetings, it does not take long to find many young (and not so young) people who hold what many of us consider to be an oddly contradictory collection of political views.... In a world where fragments of information come from so many sources, it often leads them to the odd place where any explanation of the world is as good as any other, where there is no conceptual rudder for judging one theory or idea against another." Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: HeyThereSpaceman., unforth, D Sharon Pruitt
How the Right's Rhetoric Fueled the Actions of Arizona's Mass Murderer
Adele Stan writes for AlterNet: "It's too soon to say what, exactly, motivated the man apprehended for the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and 18 others outside a Tucson supermarket on Saturday. All we really know about Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year-old alleged shooter, is that he is apparently a profoundly disturbed young man whose paranoia involves some indecipherable notions about the U.S. Constitution."
Arun Gupta reports for AlterNet: "Jared Loughner’s attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is a wakeup call for us to confront the reality that hate and violence are encoded in the political DNA of the American Right. Since Obama took office in January 2009, there have been seven separate cases of disturbed white men committing political murders after becoming hopped up on guns, right-wing media and anti-government and anti-Obama blather. And this doesn’t even include Loughner’s attack or other incidents where the gunman was intent on killing but didn’t succeed." Photo: NewsCorpse.com
Talk show host Bill Maher once again displayed his ignorance for America's history and founding by telling Tea Partiers that the Founding Fathers would have "hated" their "guts."
As you'd come to expect from Maher he constantly referred to members of the Tea Party as "teabaggers" - which would probably be an insult coming from virtually everybody else. When Maher uses this word, however, the Tea Party should wear it as a badge of honor.
Next he told Tea Partiers that the Founding Fathers were "nothing like them." No, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Washington and all the others were profoundly different. How? Here comes Maher:
Michael Winship writes for AlterNet: "The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov had a rule: if you show a gun in the first act, by the time the curtain falls, it has to go off. For weeks and months, that gun, the weapon of angry rhetoric and intemperate rabblerousing, has been cocked and loaded in plain view on the American stage; Saturday morning outside a shopping mall in Tucson, Arizona, it went off again and again and again." Photo: AFP
ACTION ALERT: Tell Sarah Palin to Stop Inciting Violence
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) & 11 others were shot in a senseless act of a violence on Saturday morning in Tucson, Arizona.
Giffords was on Palin's "target list" (at right) before the election, with cross-hairs (from the score of a rifle) over her district.
Palin has since deleted the "target list" from her site after the shooting and removed tweets urging her supporters to "reload" and use a "Second Amendment remedy."
Fred Branfman writes for ALterNet: "Do you believe that it is in Americans' interest to allow a small group of U.S. leaders to unilaterally murder, maim, imprison and/or torture anyone they choose anywhere in the world, without the knowledge let alone oversight of their citizens or the international community? And, despite their proven record of failure to protect America -- from Indochina to Iran to Iraq -- do you believe they should be permitted to clandestinely expand their war-making without informed public debate? If so, you are betraying the principles upon which America was founded, endangering your nation, and displaying a distinctly "unamerican" subservience to unaccountable authority. But if you oppose autocratic power, you are called to support Wikileaks and others trying to limit U.S. Executive Branch mass murder abroad and failure to protect Americans at home." Image: Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide
Bradley Manning and the Case Against Solitary Confinement
Kynn Parramore writes for New Deal 2.0: "In the earliest days of our Republic, a group of well-meaning Philadelphia Quakers set out to reform the prison system. The idea was to remove convicts from the mayhem and corruption of overcrowded jails to solitary cells where sinners would return to mental and spiritual health through reflection. In the Walnut Street Jail, no windows would distract the prisoners with street life; no conversation would disturb their penitence. Alone with God, they would be rehabilitated. There was a small problem. Many of the prisoners went insane. The Walnut Street Jail was shut down in 1835."
Timothy Leary on the Culture of Secrecy
Timothy Leary comments for Truthout: "Secrecy is the original sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love. The issue is fundamental. What a blessing that Watergate has been uncovered to teach us the primary lesson. The purpose of life is to receive, synthesize and transmit energy. Communication–fusion is the goal of life. Any star can tell you that. Communication is love. Secrecy, withholding the signal, hoarding, hiding, covering up the light is motivated by shame and fear, symptoms of the inability to love. Secrecy means that you think love is shameful and bad. Or that your nakedness is ugly. Or that you hide unloving, hostile feelings. Seeds of paranoia and distrust."
Obama Created More Jobs In One Year Than Bush Created In Eight
Alex Seitz-Wald reports for Think Progress: "This morning (January 7, 2011), the Labor Department released its employment data for December, showing that the U.S. economy ended the year by adding 113,000 private sector jobs, knocking the unemployment rate down sharply from 9.8 percent to 9.4 percent — its lowest rate since July 2009. The “surprising drop — which was far better than the modest step-down economists had forecast — was the steepest one-month fall since 1998.” October and November’s jobs numbers were also revised upward by almost 80,000 each. Still, 14.5 million Americans remain unemployed, and jobs will have to be created much faster in coming months for the country to pull itself out of the economic doldrums."
Republicans' Radical Plans for Budget Could Threaten the Economic Security of Millions
Joshua Holland writes for AlterNet: "Through new budget rules that are expected to pass on a party-line vote in the House this week, and anupcoming battle over raising the government's “debt ceiling,” the new Republican leadership is preparing to codify a discredited far-right economic agenda into law, forcing deep cuts to public spending at precisely the moment when the economy needs that spending to build momentum."
In our previous interview withProfessor of Economics, Rick Wolff, we talked about austerity, that is imposing on society a severe regimen of rising taxes, or cut government spending to please and satisfy creditors. Massive protests erupt against austerity in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and soon maybe Spain, as governments raise college tuition, taxes, retirement ages plus cutting worker benefits and wages. These austerity measures are about to hit the United States. Veiled in the recent tax deal with the Republicans is a decision Americans will need to make. Higher taxes or cut services? With growing debts made worse by Obama’s tax deal, the US moves quickly toward austerity while the political establishment and the media mostly pretend all is well says Rick Wolff.
To download the MP3 file, click here.
Richard Woff writes on his blog: "Once again, the two old wings of the political establishment do business as usual in Washington. In the tax deal between Obama and the Republicans -- passed with the help of a majority of Democrats -- they all cut taxes, especially on the rich, and extended unemployment benefits. In short, the government keeps spending mountains of money to subsidize a deeply recessional private capitalist economy, to prevent it from spiraling down into depression. The result is a further expansion of the deficit that so recently was a pretend concern for so many candidates."
Democrats Failing Media’s Deficit Test: Embrace debt panel’s austerity to prove sincerity
Jim Naureckas writes for Extra!: "Having concluded that the United States needs an austerity program to cure its economic ills (Extra!, 1/10), and having decided in advance that the 2010 midterms were a mandate for downsizing the federal government (Extra!, 12/10), the leading outlets of the corporate media fixed on the deficit commission created by Barack Obama as a test of how serious the Democrats were about doing what needed to be done. The initial verdict: They’re failing the test."
Robert Naiman, Truthout: "For the third time in the last 20 years, establishment voices with high-profile slots in traditional media are trying to convince the public to accept cuts to Social Security by endlessly claiming such cuts are necessary, without giving coherent evidence to justify the claim. Twice, under former presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, these voices were defeated - but they didn't give up." Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: dboy, SqueakyMarmot
Republicans Are out for Blood– Yours.
Ken Sayers writes for The Daily Censored: "The Republicans want to kill the health care bill. They want to strip kids from their parent’s coverage. They want to eliminate affordable coverage for people who have lost insurance along with their jobs. They want to put a cap back on the amount of coverage your health insurance will have to pay. AND, they want to put exclusions for pre-existing conditions back into effect. Those are just a few of the benefits to which you are entitled under the new health care bill. They don’t just want to kill health care, they want to kill you."
The Great MMR Vaccine Fraud
Kevin Drum reports for Mother Jones: "The belief that vaccines cause autism got its start in 1998 with a paper in the Lancet authored by Andrew Wakefield. We've known for a long time that it was a piece of crap: it used a nonrandom sample of 12 children, it depended largely on observations by parents, it was marred by egregious conflicts of interest, and in 2004 it was renounced by 10 of its co-authors and later retracted by the magazine. That's all bad enough. But it turns out that it was even worse: the paper was an outright fraud from start to finish."
FactCheck.org reports: "House Republicans misrepresent the facts. Experts predict the health care law will have little effect on employment.
We find:
Independent, nonpartisan experts project only a "small" or "minimal" impact on jobs, even before taking likely job gains in the health care and insurance industries into account.
The House Republican leadership, in a report issued Jan. 6, badly misrepresents what the Congressional Budget Office has said about the law. In fact, CBO is among those saying the effect "will probably be small."
The GOP also cites a study projecting a 1.6 million job loss — but fails to mention that the study refers to a hypothetical employer mandate that is not part of the new law.
The same study cited by the GOP also predicts an offsetting gain of 890,000 jobs in hospitals, doctors’ offices and insurance companies — a factor not mentioned by the House leadership."
Cutting the Defense Budget?
Faiz Shakir, Benjamin Armbruster, George Zornick, Zaid Jilani, Alex Seitz-Wald, Max Bergmann, and Tanya Somanader write the Progress Report for Think Progress: "One potential area for bipartisan action in the new Congress may be cutting the massively bloated Pentagon budget, which has risen to $540 billion annually and more than $700 billion if you include spending on Iraq and Afghanistan. Total defense spending in real terms is higher than at any point since World War II. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates yesterday announced a series of efficiency proposals to reduce waste in defense spending and to cut the projected Pentagon budget by $78 billion over the next five years. While these proposals represent a good start in constraining the runaway spending that accrued during the Bush administration, the cuts will result only in a decline in the rate of growth in the Pentagon's budget, not in absolute dollars. In other words, Gates was allowed to shift money around, and was not forced to actually cut the budget. As a result under this proposal, the Pentagon's budget will be bigger in five years than it is now. This is not real fiscal restraint. To adequately address the problem of out-of-control defense spending and a growing deficit, not only are more defense cuts needed, but the U.S. must also re-balance its foreign policy and defense priorities. This means taking a hard look at the utility of continuing combat operations in Afghanistan, eliminating white elephant weapons programs, and looking for ways to make the Pentagon bureaucracy more efficient. Reducing Pentagon spending is possible, since it is advocated not just by progressives, but by Tea Party conservatives and now the House Republican leadership."
Chuck Spinney writes for New Deal 2.0: "The lead editorial in a recent Washington Post article, “Steady in Afghanistan,” claimed the early results of President Obama’s escalation strategy in Afghanistan 'are mixed — but promising,' because President Obama 'has raised the odds for success by committing U.S. forces to Afghanistan for four more years and by promising to negotiate a strategic partnership with the government of Hamid Karzai in 2011.' Raised the odds for success? Four more year versus 2011? Consider please the unexamined ramifications of these words." Photo: Getty
Wrong Again, Senator Graham
Juan Cole writes for Truthdig.com: "Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., repeated on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday his hope that the United States can maintain at least two permanent air bases in Afghanistan. He was pushing back against Vice President Joe Biden’s pledge that the U.S. would be out of Afghanistan by 2014 “come hell or high water.” Graham has been wrong about almost everything in the Middle East for a decade and a half, so this harebrained proposal is hardly surprising. But it signals the harder line likely to be pursued by Republicans now that they have taken back the House of Representatives and have much strengthened their position in the Senate."
Freedom Fighters for a Fading Empire
William J. Astore provides the followign analysis for TomDispatch: "Words matter, as candidate Barack Obama said in the 2008 election campaign. What to make, then, of President Obama’s pep talk last month to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in which he lauded them as “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known”? Certainly, he knew that those words would resonate with the troops as well as with the folks back home."
Jason Leopold reports for Truthout: "An experimental, Army mental-health, fitness initiative designed by the same psychologist whose work heavily influenced the psychological aspects of the Bush administration's torture program is under fire by civil rights groups and hundreds of active-duty soldiers. They say it unconstitutionally requires enlistees to believe in God or a "higher power" in order to be deemed "spiritually fit" to serve in the Army." Image: US Army
Recommended Audio: Keith Olberman - US Military Under Fire for Religious Test
Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, discussed Jason Leopold's report detailing the forced spiritual testing of over 800,000 uniformed soldiers as part of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program.
GOP Votes to Make Constitution Violation Go Away
Alex Pareene reports for Salon.com: "At least the Democrats are having fun in the minority. They're never as united as Republicans are, but most House Democrats voted against today's resolution invalidating the unconstitutional votes taken by Representatives Pete Sessions and Mike Fitzpatrick when they had not yet been sworn in as members of Congress. The resolution magically removes the votes they took while not being members, but doesn't do anything about all the other stuff they did -- like chairing the Rules Committee."
Dahlia Lithwick writes for Salon.com: "Members of the Tea Party are really into the Constitution. We know this because on Thursday, House Republicans propose to read the document from start to finish on the House floor, and they also propose to pass a rule requiring that every piece of new legislation identify the source of its constitutional authority. Even Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute—its popular pocket version of the Constitution is only $4.95!—agrees that these are largely symbolic measures, noting in the Wall Street Journal that as a legal matter, "at least since Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the Supreme Court has had the last word on what the Constitution authorizes Congress to do." Nobody has suggested that legislators don't have an independent duty to uphold the Constitution as they understand it. But that doesn't change the fact that the courts, not Tea Party Republicans—even those with the benefit of extra-credit classes from Justice Antonin Scalia—get to make the final call."
Republicans to Spend $1.1 Million Reciting Constitution on House Floor
Juli Weiner reports for Vanity Fair: "As we reported this morning (January 4), House Republicans will kick-start the 112th Congress tomorrow with a spirited recitation of the Constitution, a document whose recent relevance is due largely to the ideological and sartorial interests of the Tea Party. It’s an opening act designed to herald the arrival of a new season of checks, balances, and financial cutbacks. As Politico’s nocturnal prophet Mike Allen reported, House Republicans plan to reduce Congress’s budget by $32.5 million—a savings reaped from cutting 'the amount authorized for salaries and expenses of Member, committee, and leadership offices in 2011 and 2012.'"
Dave writes for the Journal of Idiocracy: "On November 2nd, 2010 citizens of Kansas were asked to elect an official to the position of Secretary of State. As known to most individuals, the secretary of state is constitutionally charged with administering elections, voter registration, lobbyist registration and the filing of campaign finance reports. In short, if it involves elections, the secretary of state will be involved to ensure they are effectively run, maintained and fair. In addition to these duties, the secretary of state registers businesses, trademarks and provides regulation for these entities within the state of Kansas. Whoever holds the office of secretary of state serves a term lasting four years, after which candidates, including the incumbent, may seek election."
'Aflockalypse': Here's Why We Should Really Be Concerned About the Huge Bird and Fish Die-off
Tara Lohan reports for AlterNet: "By now, we've all seen the news reports of the "Aflockalypse." The New Year came in with a bang in Beebe, Arkansas when thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky. As news reports of the eerie incident spread, similar stories began surfacing all over the world: Massive fish kills by the thousands in Brazil, New Zealand, the Arkansas River and the Chesapeake; more bird deaths in Louisiana, Kentucky and Sweden; and tens of thousands of dead crabs (aptly named dead devil crabs) washing ashore in the U.K."
Panel: BP Well Blowout Revealed Industry-Wide Problems
Mark Seibel reports for McClatchy Newspapers: "The errors and misjudgments that led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling rig last spring weren't the result just of blunders by BP and its contractors, but reflect industry-wide problems that require new regulations and standards, a presidential commission has concluded."
Doug Stanhope discusses the U.S. media's fear-mongering and what it really means for you in the new series of Charlie Brooker's Newswipe..."I'm Doug Stanhope and that's why I drink."
Krystle Manintveld writes for Extra!: "Over the last decade, dozens of media mergers and purchases have resulted in a media industry controlled by a handful of companies—and the cable giant Comcast wants to be one of them. After a failed attempt to purchase Disney in 2004 for $66 billion (Inter Press Service, 3/20/04), Comcast offered to take over NBC Universal for the bargain price of $30 billion—which would buy a 51 percent controlling interest from General Electric, with the expectation of acquiring the remaining stake over the next seven years (Globe and Mail, 12/3/09)."
Court Reverses Order Unmasking Politician's Critics
Wendy Davis reports for Media Post News: "Backing online commenters' right to anonymity, an appellate court in Pennsylvania has overturned an order requiring a Web site operator to disclose the identities of commenters who slammed a local politician. The Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled that Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas Judge Peter O'Brien didn't adequately examine whether the commenters' right to speak out anonymously was outweighed by former Scranton City Council President Judy Gatelli's defamation allegations. "Comments on matters of public importance or those which criticize public officials are entitled to robust protection, for it is in the public forum that the First Amendment right of speech is strongest," the court wrote."
Nate Anders reports for Ars Technica: "The new, Republican-controlled House of Representatives started work yesterday, and it took only a few hours before anti-net neutrality legislation was introduced to stop the "vampires" at the FCC from imposing net neutrality on American Internet access providers. No surprises here; Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) had last year made plain her opposition to net neutrality, and she pledged back in November to legislate against the FCC."
The FCC's Net Neutrality Rules Leave the Future of the Internet Unclear
Fipna Morgan reports for Independent Weekly: "One of the best things about the Internet is its indifference to how you use it. Call your mom on Skype, watch some Simpsons on Hulu, settle an argument by consulting Wikipedia, update your blog. Whatever you do, you're seconds away from doing the next thing. Behind the scenes, there is a shakedown going on that may change the way you use the Internet, as well as how—and how much—you'll pay. Last month, the Federal Communications Commission approved rules that regulate network neutrality, or net neutrality for short. While the concept has many definitions, the guiding principle is that everything on the Internet, be it content, applications or services, should be treated equally, and that Internet service providers should not be allowed to serve as gatekeepers of what you can access online."
Schools, Libraries Say They Need Faster Broadband
John Eggerton reports for Multichannel News: "A just-released Federal Communications Commission study found that while 95% of schools and libraries that receive e-rate funding have some terrestrial broadband connection to at least one facility (2% have satellite and 3% still use dial-up), and while over half of those (55%) have it at speeds greater than 3 Mbps, 80% say it is not enough to meet their current needs. Ten percent said they had speeds greater than 100 mbps. The e-rate program provides discounted broadband service to schools and libraries through the Universal Service Fund."
The Newsonomics of Tablets Replacing Newspapers
Ken Doctor writes for Nieman Journalsim Lab: "Ready to trade up? That’s the new question now moving to the forefront of news publishers’ longer-range strategic planning, as the real tablet revolution seems to be upon us. The Consumer Electronics Show is shining a bright light on The Year of the Tablet. With tablet sales projected to reach 70 million in the U.S. in 2011 and 2012 (50 million of them iPads), and with early survey results, such as the Reynolds Journalism Institute’s study, showing longer news session times, more-than-snippets-reading, and a renewal of lean-back, pleasurable longer-form reading, publishers have been edging into an age of news reading renewal."
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since 1 January 2009
Promoting Change
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
From "Beyond Vietnam," an address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church, 4 April 1967 in New York City.
Community Bridge won two first place awards at the 2010 Kansas Association of Broadcasters collegian competition for public affairs programming and for documentaries.
First place for public affairs programming was awarded to An Interview with Marci Penner, in which we explored the wonders of Kansas. Penner is the Executive Director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation. We discuss the mission of the foundation, how it works to help small communities thrive, and the quest for perfect pie.
Our first place documentary, Voices from the National Equality March, captures the essence of participating in Equality Across America's march in Washington on October 11, 2009. In order of appearance we hear: Cleve Jones; Courage Camp participants; voices from 15th and I Streets; Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC; Reverend Troy Perry; Robin McGehee and Kip Williams; David Mixner, Corrine Mina; Tobias Packer; Aiyi’nah Ford; Mario Nguyen, Lady Gaga, Billy Myer and Dave Koz; Maxin Thorne; Julian Bond; Kate Clinton; Urvashi Vaid; and conclude with the voices of the DC Gay Men’s Chorus. C-Span has recorded all the speakers at the rally. Visit: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/video.php?progid=213759 to watch.
In 2008 the Kansas Association of Broadcasters awarded Community Bridge it's First Place Award for public affairs programming for the program entitle The Kansas Stem Cell Debate.
This episode of Community Bridge features Brad Kemp, Executive Director of Kansans for Lifesaving Cures and Dr. Mark Weiss of the K-State School of Veterinary Medicine in a discussion of the issues around stem cell research
Kansans for Lifesaving Cures' policy position is that any stem cell research, therapies or cures that are permitted by federal law should be allowed in Kansas – provided that such activities are conducted ethically and safely and do not involve human reproductive cloning.
Community Bridge also received First Place in 2007 for public affairs programming for Evolutionary Faith. Join our guests: John Carlin, Roman Catholic theologian; Keith Miller, Assistant Professor of Geology at KSU; and, Boo Tyson, MAINstream Coalition in a discussion of evolution, faith and reason.
With over 30 years of publishing under its belt, and more than 55,000 subscribers worldwide, the New Internationalist is renowned for its radical, campaigning stance on a range of world issues, from the cynical marketing of babymilk in the Majority World to human rights in Burma.
Podcasts for 2011
For a complete listing of 2010 shows, please click on the 2010 page link above.
May 19 - GOP's War on Women
It’s almost an unbelievable figure — 916. That’s the amount of legislation that has been introduced primarily by the GOP so far this year, in an attempt to regulate a woman’s reproductive system. And Kansas is no different that the national trend. With tens of millions of Americans unemployed, states facing dire fiscal situations, and more and more people loosing their homes, one has to ask why abortion has become the GOP's number one priority?
A report by The Guttmacher Institute, finds that in addition to these laws, more than 120 other bills have been approved by at least one chamber of the legislature, and some interesting trends are emerging. As a whole, the proposals introduced this year are more hostile to abortion rights than in the past: 56% of the bills introduced so far this year seek to restrict abortion access, compared with 38% last year. Three topics—insurance coverage of abortion, restriction of abortion after a specific point in gestation and ultra sound requirements—are topping the agenda in several states and all three have been approved by the Kansas legislature. For the complete Guttmacher report, click here.
For our second hour we take up the theme of American empire in a tribute to GRIT TV which ceased operations on May 13th. First we hear GRITtv host, Laura Flanders, interviews Chris Hedges about the death of Bin Laden and the continuing concern over terrorism, the end of empathy in the U.S., and what avenues are left for progressives to fight back. Then we hear Flanders interviewing retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich about the changes in the administration and the ongoing situation in Libya and Syria, and notes that at a time when the Arab world is undergoing deep changes, it should be a time for modesty in the US and a reconsideration of military power and the use of violence to achieve goals. We close out this hour with a clip form Law and Disorder Radio featuring the award-winning independent journalist Will Potter. Potter is the leading authority on “eco-terrorism.” He’s the author of the new book, "Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege."
Community Bridge opens this week with our third round table discussion on the state of the media in Kansas. Joining the discussion are Mike Shields, Managing Editor of the Kansas Health Institute's News Service; Justin Kendall, weekly writer for the KC Pitch, the largest of alternative weeklies in Kansas; Michael Caddell, newspaper publisher, blogger and radio talk show host; and R. J. Dickens, news director at KCTU TV in Wichita.
Andrew Breitbart has no problem lying to his readers, especially if he can score points against progressives. Breitbart's website BigGovernment.com is famous for promoting heavily edited videos that turn truth on its head that are produced by anti-abortion rights activist Lila Rose and falsely claiming that the video proves that Planned Parenthood engages in systemic criminal activities. In 2009, Breitbart promoted heavily edited tapes that he falsely claimed showed systematic corruption at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) related to child prostitution and sex trafficking. In 2010, Breitbart posted heavily edited video of Shirley Sherrod speaking at an NAACP function and falsely suggested that Sherrod discriminated against a white farmer in her capacity as the Agriculture Department's Georgia Director of Rural Development. This video caused her to lose her job, but Sherrod is now suing Breitbart.
Then in April, just a week after he promised to "go after the teachers and the union organizers," his website started running a series of choppy, heavily edited videos taken from labor studies courses taught at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the University of Missouri-Kansas City by this week’s guest, Judy Ancel and a colleague, Don Giljim. Ancel is the Director of UMKC's Institute for Labor Studies. Breitbart's posts promoting these videos claim, among other things, that the professors "instruct students on how fear, intimidation, and, even, industrial sabotage are important and, often, necessary tools," and that they teach their students that the US flag is "racist." But as listeners will hear, this is just another lie by a right-wing fanatic as Ancel exposes Breitbart's tactics and his dishonesty on this week’s show.
Since the 1980´s, Sister Cities has built people-to-people solidarity relationships between the United States and El Salvador. These relationships are the core of their work and the foundation upon which the Sister City project works for human rights, social justice, and cultural exchange. This important work only happens through hundreds of dedicated volunteers in cities around the United States who maintain “sister city” relationships with Salvadoran communities. On this week’s show, we hear from Sara Bishop, national coordinator of the US - El Salvador Sister City Project, about the Sister City program. Then we hear from Sofia Pablo-Hoshino, Shahna Campbell and Ivone Damian, three of the fourteen K-State student who when to El Papaturro, the Salvadorian community coupled with the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice since 1995 through the Sister City program. The students talk about their experiences with in El Salvador and the plans to return in 2012.
In our second hour we first hear from Dr. Vandana Shiva is a clip from GRITtv. Shiva says: "The American people should see that corporations have abandoned them long ago." Shiva is a scientist, environmentalist, and food justice activist Dr. Vandana Shiva. Shiva was named one of the seven most influential women in the world by Forbes magazine. Shiva spoke at K-State in October 2009 and the podcast of her speech is available on the Community Bridge website. Click on the link to the 2009 podcasts and scroll down to October.
Then we hear a clip from Truthdig Radio featuring Tim Canova, the Betty Hutton Williams Professor of International Economic Law and co-director of the Center for Global Law & Development at the Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California. Canova takes on the Standards and Poors treat to downgrade the US credit rating in a discussion of the economic meltdown in our casino economy. The show closes out addressing the Manhattan City Commission’s vote to repeal the new anti-discrimination ordinance.
MP3 File
April 28 - Living in a Fact-Free Political World
Community Bridge opens this week with a look at lying as normative political discourse. Political lying has always been with us, but what the GOP and some Democrats have done is akin to carpet-bombing the truth. Mother Jones Magazine turns its investigative eyes on this reality in its May/June edition entitled: You Lie! Inside the GOP’s Fact Free Nation. We hear from Rick Perlstien whose article “Fact-Free Nation from Nixon’s Dirty Tricksters to James O’Keefe’s Video Smears: How political lying became the new normal," opens the topic.
Perlstien is the author of two noteworthy books: Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, and Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, which won the 2001 Los Angeles Times Book Award for history. From the summer of 2003 until 2005 he covered the presidential campaigns as chief national political correspondent for the Village Voice. He has also published The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party, an essay with responses from commentators including Robert Reich, Elaine Kamarck, and Ruy Teixeira. In 2006 and 2007 he wrote a biweekly column for The New Republic Online. Perlstein was a senior fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, for whom he wrote the blog The Big Con.
The hour closes out with Josh McGinn, Flint Hills Human Rights Project, discussing the what’s happening with the Manhattan City Commission and the efforts by the right-wing extremists Matta and Butler to repeal the city’s recently passed Anti-discrimination Ordinance.
David Solnit first became involved in creating change in high school when he joined a campaign to abolish draft registration. Since then, the California-based carpenter, activist, and puppeteer, has been on the frontlines of direct action, protesting the US role in Central America in the 1980s, free trade deals and the WTO in the 1990s, and, more recently, the US intervention in Iraq. Solnit is a co-founder of Art and Revolution, a loose-knit collective that combines art and theater with direct action. This creativity-with-a-purpose stands in a colorful tradition of theatrical dissent from the Diggers, the Yippies, and the French Situationists of the 1960s. Solnit and his predecessors subvert the system by pointing to alternatives, using blatant contrast they show how fundamentally flawed the “normal” state of affairs truly is.
Community Bridge opens with representatives of Morning Star, Inc., a consumer run organization (CRO). CROs are not-for-profit organizations, run by current and former consumers of mental health services. Richard Stitt, Executive Director and Elizabeth Stitt, Community Transition Coordinator at Morning Star, Inc., will join us to discuss this important community service. Then David Bacon, union activist, journalist, and immigration rights advocate has a conversation with Community Bridge host Christopher Renner. Bacon presented the spring Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice lecture at K-State on February 28th.
Community Bridge opens this week with our follow up to last month's panel discussion on the state of the media in Kansas. This week we take up the issue of conservative bias on the op-ed pages have how that affects reporting in general. We touch on the issue of think tanks and how their talking points help determine what is said on the editorial pages. Panelists also explore the role of Net Neutrality in providing people with access to diverse opinions and its role in a health democracy. We also hear about the National Conference for Media Reform, which took place this past weekend in Boston. Joining us for this discussion are Michael Caddell, host of Radio Free Kansas; Tim Hjersted, Co-Founder and Director of Films for Action; and Pam Pohly, editor in chief of the Kansas Free Press.
In our second hour, Riley County Commissioner Karen McCulloh and aTa Bus director Anne Smith join us for a update on the future of public transportation in Manhattan. aTa has received millions in federal grants to begin a regional and fix route transportation system in Manhattan. Smith and McCulloh provide an update, but could the recent Manhattan City Commission election waste this possibility to improve the quality of life in Manhattan? We also find out what is planned for the 2011 Earth Day celebration at K-State from Students for Environmental Action president Zach Pistora.
April 7 - An Interview with Author Pam Schoenewaldt
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Community Bridge opens this week with an interview featuring author Pamela Schoenewaldt in a discussion of her new novel, When We Were Strangers. The novel tells the story of Irma Vitale, an Italian immigrant who leaves her Abruzzo mountain village to come to America. Schoenewaldt takes up such current issues as immigration reform and women's reproductive rights in this historical novel that readers of Geraldine Brooks, Nancy Turner, Frances de Pontes Peebles, and Debra Dean will most certainly cherish. When We Were Strangers will live in the mind and the heart long after its last page is turned. Visit Schoenewaldt's webpage for more background information about the story.
The MRFF fights unconstitutional religious oppression and tyranny in the U.S. armed forces. Founded by Michael Weinstein, a 1977 Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and legal counsel for the Reagan administration, MRFF directly battles the far-right militant radical evangelical religious fundamentalists who have infiltrated the US military. This battle is detailed in: With God On Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military released by St. Martin's Press in October 2006. The book is an expose on the systemic problem of religious intolerance throughout the United States armed forces.
Rodda is a regular contributor at Talk2Action.org, a blogger on the Huffington Post, and maintains the Liars for Jesus website that provides inquiring minds with news and information on the radical extremists Dominionist Christian activities to pervert our constitutional rights and our US history.
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 that intends to terminate Kan-ed - the technology backbone that provides Internet services to K-12 education, public hospitals, public libraries, and public institutes of higher education. 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.
A new report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, entitled, "State Mental Health Cuts: A National Crisis," reports that Kansas ranks seventh in the nation when it comes to cutting state funding for mental health programs.
During the second half, we are joined by Rev. Tobais Schlingensiepen, paster of First Congregational Church in Topeka, and Rev. Trudy Cretsinger, former pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Topeka, representing Kansas families served by the Kansas Neurological Institute, another service Sam Brownback has deemed too costly for the state to continued to support. State appropriations for KNI amount to $10 million. KNI serves around 160 Kansans, the majority (83%) are aged between 30 and 59; 88 percent have a profound intellectual disability; 83 percent are unable to speak and the remainder have very limited speech abilities; 68 percent are unable to walk; and, 94 percent have lived at KNI for 10 years or more. But for Sam Brownback these people do not deserve to be care for by the state.
