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.
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.
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.
Solnit was in Manhattan earlier this month to conduct a workshop on social action and to speak at the Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice annual meeting. I spoke with him on April 8th here in the KSDB studio.
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.
Bacon is an associate editor at Pacific News Service, and writes for TruthOut, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Progressive, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. He has been a reporter and documentary photographer for 18 years, shooting for many national publications. He has exhibited his work nationally, and in Mexico, the UK and Germany. Bacon covers issues of labor, immigration and international politics.
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.
Community Bridge opens this week with Rich Jankovich, candidate for the Manhattan City Commission. In the second half of our first hour we hear from Naomi Klein on the union busting efforts that are taking place across the US and the frontal attach on our democracy by corporate-owned state governors.
On Saturday February 27th, approximately 1500 Kansans joined with hundreds of thousands of others across the United States to protest the war on the middle class that is being waged by the Republican Party and their corporate billionaire backers.
Joining with voices echoing the need to return government to the people, working class Kansans from teachers to correctional officers spoke out against the extremism of Sam Brownback and the Koch Brothers.
We hear from Aaron Fowler of Wichita, a member of the American Federation of Musicians union, who emceed the rally. Then, Teresa Molina, a Wichita teacher, Greg Winfield a correctional office at the Lansing State Prison, followed by Jane Carter, executive director of the Kansas Organization of State Employees, Emilio Ramirez of the United Steel Workers; Rep. Paul Davis, House Democratic Leader, and Senator Anthony Hensley concludes. Then we hear from a couple of people in the audience, Tracee Collins, Sen. Marci Francisco of Lawrence, and Janice Norlin of Salina.
In our second hour we hear from Washburn University instructor Kellis Bayless on the environmental destruction cause by mountain top removal coal mining and what our coal addiction is costing us.
Mountaintop removal/valley fill coal mining (MTR) has been called strip mining on steroids. One author says the process should be more accurately named: mountain range removal. Mountaintop removal /valley fill mining annihilates ecosystems, transforming some of the most biologically diverse temperate forests in the world into biologically barren moonscapes.
ILoveMountains.org - Local, state, and regional organizations across Appalachia are working together to end mountaintop removal and create a prosperous future for the region. Through iLoveMountains.org, members of the Alliance for Appalachia have come together to use cutting edge technology to inform and involve Americans in their efforts to save mountain and communities.
Mountain Justice - Mountain Justice seeks to add to the growing anti-MTR citizens movement. Specifically Mountain Justice demands an abolition of MTR, steep slope strip mining and all other forms of surface mining for coal. We work to protect the cultural and natural heritage of the Appalachia coal fields. We work to contribute with grassroots organizing, public education, nonviolent civil disobedience and other forms of citizen action.
On second hour opens with Joyce Glasscock, executive director of the Manhattan Boys and Girls Club, discussing discuss new after-school programs they are offering for students at Theodore Roosevelt elementary school.
Then hear an update on the situation with Net Neutrality from On the Media.
Community Bridge closes out this week's show with a special program from the National Radio Project's "Making Contact" in honor of Labor Day - "Working Beyond Unions," featuring: Dr. Frances Fox Piven, CUNY Graduate Center, sociology and political science professor; Dr. Stanley Aronowitz, CUNY Graduate Center sociology, cultural studies and urban education professor; Bill Fletcher, Jr., labor activist and editorial board member and columnist at BlackCommentator.com; James Gray Pope, Rutgers School of Law-Newark professor and Sidney Reitman Scholar; Saket Soni, Director of the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice; and Elaine Bernard, Executive Director of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School.
Krebs will be in Kansas to conduct a book signings in Kansas City, MO, on Monday, Aug 16th, 6:00pm - 9:00pm, and hosted by Drinking Liberally Kansas City. Then on Thursday August 19th at 7:00 pm at the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence hosted by Drinking Liberally Lawrence. To find out more about Living Liberally, listen to our show from 18 February 2010 at: http://communitybridge.blogspot.com/2010/02/18-feb-2010-impact-of-budget-cuts-on.html
Following Krebs we are joined by Jane Gibson of the Manhattan Living Wage Coalition who gives us the details about this year's Laborfest scheduled for Sunday September 5th.
Nearly two years after a global financial crisis almost crippled our economy, President Obama two weeks ago signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, otherwise known as the financial regulatory reform bill. The bill is supposed to prevent such a crisis and the subsequent bank bailouts from ever happening again, but will it really accomplish that? And more broadly, what does it do to reform the financial system that made Wall Street's abuses possible in the first place? The Nation's Washington DC Editor Christopher Hayes and finance blogger Mike Konczal tackle these questions on this week's edition of The Breakdown.
We close out this hour with this week's Media Minutes.
Opening our second hour, Ellen Welti from Students for Environmental Action, discusses the groups recent efforts at trying to help with the Gulf Coast clean up and the road blocks they ran into created by BP which prevents volunteers from address the worst human-made environmental disaster in our history.
Following Welti's report we continue our coverage of the BP oil spill by rebroadcasting a clip from GRITtv featuring Mike Papantonio.
"I know what a thug corporation looks like," says lawyer and radio host Mike Papantonio, who is busy building a RICO case against BP for the oil devastation in the Gulf. "These people are sociopaths and the GOP are apologizing for them."
Papantonio joins GRITtv host Laura Flanders from Florida to discuss the ongoing case against BP, noting that the company bragged back in 2008 of being able to better track its oil movements only to claim now that it had no idea how much oil was gushing into the water. He also discusses the studies that found brain damage and genetic mutations in people exposed to oil in previous spills--and why drilling in Alaska is going forward anyway.
During our second hour this week, Norman Caulfield, professor of history at Ft. Hays University, joins us by telephone to discuss his new book: NAFTA and Labor in North America.
Focusing especially on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (the first international labor agreement linked to an international trade agreement), Norman Caulfield notes the waning political influence of trade unions and their disunity and divergence on crucial issues such as labor migration and workers' rights. Comparing the labor movement's fortunes in the 1970s with its current weakened condition, Caulfield notes the parallel decline in the United States' hegemonic influence in an increasingly globalized economy. As a result, organized labor has been transformed from organizations that once pressured management and the state for concessions to organizations that now request that workers concede wages, pensions, and health benefits to remain competitive in the global marketplace.
David Corn writes for Mother Jones: "It shouldn't matter. Not at all. But the Afghanistan war hit a milestone on Tuesday: 1,000 dead American soldiers. The $100-billion-per-year war itself—and the daily losses in lives—should be front-and-center in the media most days, but that often is not the case. Consequently, when the number of lives lost reaches an odometer-tripping moment, attention is paid, if only briefly. Brave New Films, the Robert Greenwald outfit that released the anti-war film Rethink Afghanistan, has put out a video marking the 1,000-lives mark:"
Luke Mogelson writes for The Nation: "Last summer the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) closed one of its largest projects in Iraq, declaring that it had been a virtually unqualified success. The Community Stabilization Program (CSP), which cost $675 million over its three years of operation, has been lauded as one of the war's most effective counterinsurgency operations. Launched in May 2006, it was USAID's chief contribution to the Bush plan of rescuing a tailspinning military adventure with a civilian surge and increased focus on economic development. "Bottom line: it worked," said Jeanne Pryor, USAID's deputy director for Iraq reconstruction, during a recent colloquy on the CSP at the United States Institute of Peace. An evaluator contracted by USAID recommended that the CSP be replicated elsewhere, and in Afghanistan recent cash-for-work projects have emerged that appear to be based on the model it pioneered."
Holder Gambles With Terrorism Suspects' Miranda Rights
Aziz Huq writes for The Nation: "Lost against the predictable hubbub about the predictable Kagan nomination, Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that he will ask Congress to cut back on a decades-old constitutional protection for criminal suspects. He wants Congress to legislate an emergency “public safety” exception to the Miranda warnings that are given by police to suspects upon arrest to inform them of their constitutional rights. With some sharp liberal commentators endorsing the proposal, should progressives tone down their usual opposition to limits on criminal suspects’ rights?"
Nouriel Roubini: How to Break Up the Banks, Stop Massive Bonuses and Rein in Wall Street Greed
Zach Carter writes for AlterNet: "New York University economist Nouriel Roubini is the author of, most recently, 'Crisis Economics: A Crash Course In The Future Of Finance.' He is considered one of the most prominent and respected economists in the world. When both Wall Street bankers and Bush administration policymakers were insisting that everything was just fine, Roubini was warning about the most dire financial crisis since the Great Depression. In 2007, the financial elite laughed him off, but Roubini was vindicated by the crash of 2008."
Adele Hampton reports for The Huffington Post Investigative Fund: "Amid attempts to rein in Wall Street, persuaders safeguard bank's interests. For all of Goldman Sachs' professed support for an overhaul of financial regulations, the megabank hasn't exactly withdrawn its army of lobbyists. Far from wearing out its welcome, the firm is busier than ever safeguarding its interests while a Wall Street crackdown takes shape in Washington."
Happy Days Aren't Here Again
Moshe Adler writes for Truthdig.com: "The torrent of good news started before the first bailout dollars had even been paid. First, we were told that the bailout would prevent a significant increase in unemployment, and President George W. Bush even balked at extending unemployment benefits. Then we were told that without the bailout, the unemployment rate would reach 25 percent. Less talk about the unemployment rate followed when the story changed and we were told that the recession was actually over, since “the economy” was growing. Next we were told that we had turned the corner because the rate of unemployment was already decreasing. And finally, when the April unemployment figures were released on May 7 and showed that the rate of unemployment increased from 9.7 percent to 9.9 percent, the bad news appeared beneath headlines that announced the arrival of what was apparently the best news yet. Economy Gains Impetus as U.S. Adds 290,000 Jobs, read the headline in The New York Times. In the Los Angeles Times, the headline was April Hiring Surge Largest in Four Years."
Kai Wright reports for ColorLines: "The wealth gap between Blacks and Whites has grown by fourfold over the course of Generation X's lifetime, exploding to $95,000, a study released today found. And the debt burden among African American families has nearly doubled. The study comes from Brandeis University’s Tom Shapiro, who’s among the pioneers in measuring economic equality by considering overall household wealth—your assets minus your debts—rather than just income. Shapiro’s research team looked at data from a decades-long, national survey of family economics and discovered that, between 1984 and 2007, the wealth gap saw unprecedented growth, as assets among high-income White households shot up while debt among all Black households did the same. "
Andy Kroll writes for Mother Jones: "You've heard of subprime mortgages—the risky, high-interest-rate, often toxic home loans doled out like candy to borrowers who lacked the ability to repay them. In the Senate's financial reform overhaul, a new consumer protection bureau would crack down on these shady loans and the predatory brokers who peddled them. But the Senate is poised to give a big pass to another form of subprime lending on the rise—high-risk student loans, a corner of the financial industry New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo branded the "Wild West" of lending." Photo: Flickr /Bernal KC
Getting to Know Elena Kagan
Ralph Nader writes fro CounterPunch: "Given the Niagara of commentary on the nomination of Elena Kagan to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, we know very little about the nominee. For friend and critic alike, the predominant view of Ms. Kagan is that she has publically uttered or written remarkably little of her own views on any subject that directly or remotely relates to her forthcoming position."
Airlines Against Democracy
Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Matt Corley, Benjamin Armbruster, Zaid Jilani, Pat Garofalo, and Alex Seitz-Wald write The Progress Report for Think Progress: "Last week, the National Mediation Board (NMB) -- which is tasked with overseeing labor-management relations under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) -- issued a ruling making elections for union representation more democratic. Previously, under the RLA (which governs railroads and airlines), workers who did not cast votes in an election were counted as having voted against unionization. Now, however, they will simply not be counted at all, like non-voters in any election for political office. The change brings the RLA's process into line with elections held under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which covers most workplaces. The NMB said that the change "will provide a more reliable measure/indicator of employee sentiment in representation disputes and provide employees with clear choices in representation matters." "The board will no longer presume that the failure or refusal of an eligible employee to vote is a vote against representation," it added. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA said that the NMB's ruling represents "a new era of democracy." "For far too long, flight attendants and other aviation and railway employees have faced significant obstacles in their quest for collective bargaining rights," it said. However, since the ruling came down, the affected companies and their pro-corporate allies have been in an uproar, defending the antiquated previous rule, which unfairly tilted the playing field against workers trying to organize."
The Union of Concerned Scientists report: "Economies in three dozen states are collectively hemorrhaging tens of billions of dollars annually on imported coal to generate electricity, according to a report released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Residents in those states would be better served, the report concludes, if more money were spent in-state on local renewable energy technology and energy efficiency programs. The first-of-its-kind report, which ranks the 38 states that are net importers of domestic and foreign coal based on the most recent available data, found that 11 of them each spent more than $1 billion annually on imported coal in 2008. Sixty-three percent of domestic coal comes from just three states: Wyoming, West Virginia and Kentucky. Foreign coal burned in U.S. coal plants mainly comes from Colombia." Photo: Codrington, Stephen. Planet Geography 3rd Edition (2005).
How Long Will the Oil Spill Last?
David Biello writes for the Scientific American: "More than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez foundered off the coast of Alaska, puddles of oil can still be found in Prince William Sound. Nearly 25 years after a storage tank ruptured, spilling oil into the mangrove swamps and coral reefs of Bahia Las Minas in Panama, oil slicks can still be found on the water. And more than 40 years after the barge Florida grounded off Cape Cod, dumping fuel oil, the muck beneath the marsh grasses still smells like a gas station."
BP and the ‘Little Eichmanns’
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com: "Cultures that do not recognize that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension, an intrinsic value beyond monetary value, cannibalize themselves until they die. They ruthlessly exploit the natural world and the members of their society in the name of progress until exhaustion or collapse, blind to the fury of their own self-destruction. The oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico, estimated to be perhaps as much as 100,000 barrels a day, is part of our foolish death march. It is one more blow delivered by the corporate state, the trade of life for gold. But this time collapse, when it comes, will not be confined to the geography of a decayed civilization. It will be global."
Which Household Cleaners Contain Secret Toxic Ingredients?
Kiera Bulter reports for Mother Jones: "The label on my shower spray cleaner claims it's supposed to smell like ylang ylang. To me it smells like, well, chemicals. I was curious to see whether any real ylang ylang actually made its way into my cleaner, so I looked up the ingredients online. No ylang ylang (or any other plant for that matter) in sight. Near the end of a long list of ingredients were the words "fragrance oil." Mysterious. Is my shower spray hiding something?"
Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D., comments for Truthout: "It's morning in America, and the nativists are getting restless. Often cited amidst the moderate chagrin over rightwing rampaging in recent weeks is the dubious proposition that these factions are openly rebelling against 'business as usual' in US politics. While social movement activities in general are worthwhile, we ought to distinguish between those that actually challenge power and those that are supported by it. In the case of the Tea Party and their ilk, we are witnessing a unique posture whereby people are raging against the system even as they epitomize it." Photo: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Video4net, City On Fire, .sandhu
Kansas House Proposes 50% Cut In Public Broadcasting Allocation
AllAccess.com reports: "The KANSAS House has proposed a $903,161 cut in the annual budget allocation for public radio and television. The 50% cut affects stations statewide but has particular impact on stations in the western portion of the state, where the state funding represents a larger portion of the budget.
HIGH PLAINS PUBLIC RADIO in GARDEN CITY, KS told listeners, "For HPPR, that amounts to a cut of more than $120,000 -- money that HPPR was budgeted to receive this fiscal year. These cuts are drastic, without precedent, and threaten each public broadcasting station's ability to bring high-quality, independent, informative programs to KANSAS. With only five months left in our fiscal year, it will be nearly impossible to raise that kind shortage from membership and underwriting." The station said that the cuts are equivalent to the budget for NPR programming ($65,000) plus two of the station's 10 full-time staff positions ($60,000).
The station is urging listeners to tellGov. MARK PARKINSON to line-item-veto the cut, which is reallocating the funds to the KANSAS COMMISSION ON VETERANS AFFAIRS. If PARKINSON signs the bill as-is, the cuts will be effective on JULY 1st.
Will Bunch reports for Media Matters for America: "Throughout Glenn Beck's meteoric rise to become king of all right-wing media, a once-obscure Santa Monica peddler of gold coins called Goldline International has been along for the ride. The support of Beck and other radio hosts -- mainly conservatives like Mark Levin and Fred Thompson -- who spend 55 minutes creating fear of an economic collapse and then five minutes telling you why coins from a company like Goldline are the only safe haven has helped Goldline become a $500 million company."
The Second Decade
Michael T. Klare writes for TomDispatch.com: "As the second decade of the twenty-first century begins, we find ourselves at one of those relatively rare moments in history when major power shifts become visible to all. If the first decade of the century witnessed profound changes, the world of 2009 nonetheless looked at least somewhat like the world of 1999 in certain fundamental respects: the United States remained the world's paramount military power, the dollar remained the world's dominant currency, and NATO remained its foremost military alliance, to name just three."
Journalist Chris Hedges discusses his recent book “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” at the New School in New York. Hedges is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. His writing appears regularly in Foreign Affairs, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, Mother Jones, among other publications.
What's Ahead for the Economy and Politics in 2010
Robert Reich writes on RobertReich.org: "Just about everything you'll hear coming out of Washington starting now is really about November's midterm election. The gravitational pull of the midterms was already apparent last year, as Republicans marched in perfect lockstep to vote against whatever the president and Dems proposed (Republicans always have authoritarian discipline on their side, which is why they're Republicans) but you haven't seen anything yet."
Abandoning EFCA Is Obama's Political Suicide: Lessons From Three Presidents on Workers' Rights
Mike Elk comments for Truthout: "Whatever happened to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)? Is it dead? I remember sitting in a meeting last May with Senate staff who said that after Al Franken was sworn in, EFCA would be an eight-week fight and then a vote in the Senate. It has been nearly eight months and there still has been no vote, not even in committee."
Poverty and Unemployment Equal Misery In America
Tom Eley writes for The Daily Censored: "The new decade finds the US working class suffering a level of social misery not seen since the Great Depression. Unemployment, poverty, hunger, utility cutoffs, homelessness, foreclosures and bankruptcies have become common experiences for millions. But unlike in the Great Depression, when limited reforms were put in place in response to the crisis, the Obama administration, Congress, and state and local governments are taking no serious measures to provide relief. On the contrary, the two parties of big business are exacerbating the crisis through budget cuts at the state and local level and the federal government is preparing new austerity measures."
Less Than Honest Policy
Bob Herbert comments for the New York Times: "There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate's version of President Obama's effort to reform health care. The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it's a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care."
Recommended Audio: Rep. Eric Massa Delivers Dick Cheney Smack-Down
The Pictures of War You Aren't Supposed to See
Chris Hedges writes for Truthdig.com: "War is brutal and impersonal. It mocks the fantasy of individual heroism and the absurdity of utopian goals like democracy. In an instant, industrial warfare can kill dozens, even hundreds of people, who never see their attackers. The power of these industrial weapons is indiscriminate and staggering. They can take down apartment blocks in seconds, burying and crushing everyone inside. They can demolish villages and send tanks, planes and ships up in fiery blasts. The wounds, for those who survive, result in terrible burns, blindness, amputation and lifelong pain and trauma. No one returns the same from such warfare. And once these weapons are employed all talk of human rights is a farce. "
Multiple Deployments Leads to Major Increase in PTSD Cases, New Study Says
Mary Susan Littlepage reports for Truthout: "Soldiers with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are more than three times as likely as soldiers with no previous deployments to screen positive for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depression, according to a new study published by the American Journal for Public Health."
After Flight 253, Should Obama Ramp Up on Terrorism Politics?
Simon Rosenberg, who heads the New Democratic Network, has an interesting take on the failed Christmas Day terrorism attack. He notes that this bungled al Qaeda-linked attempt to blow up an airliner flying to Detroit from Amsterdam "could radically impact Washington's agenda in 2010" and "may very well knock other important priorities off the legislative calendar." That calendar is already overflowing with the completion of health care reform, financial reform, climate change legislation, and Obama's top priority for the election year of 2010: jobs, jobs, and jobs.
All Together Now: Shut Up You Lefties
Kai Wright comments for The Nation: "It's bound to happen, any time progressives have the audacity to demand brave leadership from a Democratic Party that asks for our money, our votes and our volunteer labor. The cry goes up from the self-proclaimed level heads of corporate media: You impractical, self-defeating lefties! Stop whining and let the adults run things! And so, as the leadership debacle that was health reform reaches its climax, it's little surprise that those of us who won't stop fighting for true reform are once again told to shut up."
Reading the Tea Leaves
Howard Kurtz writes for the Washington Post: "The tea party movement -- if that angry, inchoate mass of disaffected dissidents deserves to be called a movement -- was probably the most surprising development of last year, and the most underestimated by the MSM. It wasn't just that lots of folks turned out for protests, but that the demonstrators were fueled by considerable emotion -- which surfaced again amid the shouting of the summer's health-care town halls. Even today, I can't tell you exactly what the tea partiers stand for, since the shorthand label covers all sorts of people with all kinds of grievances."
Meltdown, USA: Nuclear Drive Trumps Safety Risks and High Cost
Art Levine writes the following news analysis for Truthout: "The pro-nuclear Department of Energy is set to offer this month the first of nearly $20 billion in loan guarantees to a nuclear industry that hasn't built a plant since the 1970's or raised any money to do so in years. But although the industry is seeking to cash in on global warming concerns with $100 billion in proposed loan guarantees, environmentalists, scientists and federal investigators are warning that lax oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of the nation's aging 104 nuclear plants has led to near-meltdowns along with other health and safety failings since Three Mile Island - including what some critics say is a flawed federal health study apparently designed to conceal cancer risks near nuclear plants."
Rethinking Education as the Practice of Freedom
Henry A. Giroux writes for Truthout: "As the market-driven logic of neoliberal capitalism continues to devalue all aspects of the public good, one consequence has been that the educational concern with excellence has been removed from matters of equity, while the notion of schooling as a public good has largely been reduced to a private good. Both public and higher education are largely defined through the corporate demand that they provide the skills, knowledge and credentials that will provide the workforce necessary for the United States to compete and maintain its role as the major global economic and military power."
Reclaiming Legal Abortion as a Fundamental Right
Frances Kissling writes for The Women's Media Center: "The debate about abortion coverage in health insurance reform is the latest disappointing moment in the efforts of feminists to ensure that the social transformation Roe promised women was equally available to all women, including those who were dependent on the government for health care. To hear President Obama call the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funds for abortion, an “American tradition” is only the most recent of many misstatements about what a fundamental right entails. It seems that prochoice legislators, following the president’s lead, now explicitly consider that throwing women who cannot afford to pay for their own abortions under the bus is a reasonable compromise between those who favor and those who oppose legal abortion and a sensible concession to those who think abortion is immoral."
Comcast Launches "TV Everywhere": Say Goodbye to Free Online Television
Josh Silver writes for The Huffington Post: "On Monday, public interest groups called on federal authorities to investigate a plan by the largest cable, satellite and phone companies that threatens the future of Web-based video. "TV Everywhere" gets programmers like TNT, TBS and CBS to keep their content offline unless a viewer also pays for TV through a traditional company like Comcast or AT&T (phone companies are starting to offer TV service, too)."
Consumer Groups Cry Foul over 'TV Everywhere'
Kim Hart writes for The Hill: "Free Press, Consumers Union, New America Foundation and Public Knowledge are among the public interest groups pushing Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to investigate the "TV Everywhere" initiative. The groups say it is an attempt by phone, satellite and cable companies to stamp out competition by requiring consumers to pay for a pay-TV subscription to access online programming."
Nearly 140 Journalists Killed in 2009
John Plunkett reports for the Guardian (UK): "Governments must take more action to protect journalists after 137 media personnel were killed last year, according to the International Federation of Journalists. The IFJ described last year as one of the worst for the targeted killing of journalists, with 113 deliberate killings out of a "grim total" of 137 deaths among journalists and media personnel. The Philippines, Mexico and Somalia were the most dangerous countries for journalists, it found. But the number of killings in Iraq – which for much of the decade has seen the highest number of media deaths – fell from 16 to five."
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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.
since 1 January 2009
