Kobach's Boondoggle Vote ID Law

Community Bridge opens this week with a look at the "Voter ID" legislation nativist extremist Kris Kobach wants to force on Kansas. Inspired by "race laws" of a by-gone era, Kobach has thrown the sound bite of "voter fraud" around to cover up his xenophobic fears of brown and black people. In ten years, there have been 80 incidents which could be labeled "voter fraud." Just to give some perspective, Kansas has 1.7 million registered voters. That means there is a .00004 percent chance of a register voter being fraudulent. More people are misdiagnosed in hospitals in a month (research reports 155 misdiagnosed cases per 1,000 hospitalized patients) than there are cases of voter fraud in Kansas in 10 years. Now it looks like Kobach's xenophobic fears are going to cost Kansas tax payers over a million dollars, when the state doesn't have money to take care of it current commitments. So why is the legislature even considering this law?

Representatives from the Kansas Voter Coalition will discuss the proposed law, the testimony that was delivered on Wednesday against it, what Kansans can do to oppose this effort to limit who can vote in our state, and a discussion of Kobach and his links to white supremacist groups. Connecting by phone are Ernestine Kriehbel, League of Women Voters of Kansas, and Kari Ann Rinker, Kansas National Organization of Women.

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Robert Scheer on the Great American Stickup

Robert Scheer

In our second hour we take up the issue of the 2088 economic crisis with veteran journalist and author, Robert Scheer in a discussion of his recent book: The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street.

In "The Great American Stickup," Scheer begins with Ronald Reagan' s obsession with the radical deregulation of financial markets and it glorification under the Clinton administration to Obama' s reform efforts that oddly enough, rely on Clinton cronies to clean up and profit from the mess they made. Scheer proves that, when it comes to the ruling sway of money power, Democrats and Republicans are no different. He provides readers with the characters who set up the American economy for its own demise - Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Alan Greenspan, while at the same time telling us about those who sounded the alarm and underscoring the foreseeable results of putting Wall Street in the driver' s seat. Scheer demonstrates how a economy once designed to help Americans become members of the middle class was turned into a global casino - a confoundingly enormous and esoteric system of gambling on new financial products worth hundreds of trillions of dollars. By the time the house of cards began collapsing in 2007, only Wall Street understood what it had created while its government partners remained clueless and the American people were taken to the cleaners.

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A conversation with Roger Hodge

On this week's Community Bridge we first hear about Sigma Xi's Science Cafes with Mike Herman and Sam Wisely. Wisely will speak on Tuesday February 8th at 7:00 pm at Radina's.

Then Roger D. Hodge joins us my telephone to discuss his book: "The Mendacity of Hope: Barack Obama and the Betrayal of American Liberalism." Hodge enumerates the failings of the Obama presidency - the prison in Guantanamo Bay is still open, extraordinary rendition continues, the government invokes state secrets to thwart investigations of torture continue as do two wars that the Democratic base wanted an end to, Americans personal communications are routinely tapped by the FBI and freedom of speech continues to be curtailed. With a cataloging of his major donors, an assiduous review of his actions before and during his presidency and a foray into early American history, Hodge builds a case that Obama has betrayed his liberal base.

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Funding Public Education in Kansas

In our second hour, Mark Desetti, Kansas NEA, Kathy Cook, Kansas Families for Education, and Mark Tallman, Kansas Association of School Boards join us by telephone for a discussion of public education under the Brownback administration, what is happening in the legislature regarding the state budget, and what it means for local schools and the possibility that your property taxes will be once again going up as the state fails to meet the funding needs of our school system.

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Clippings for 2 February 2011

Saad's Revolution

Saad Eddin Ibrahim

Juan Cole writes for Truthdig.com: "A largely unheralded hero of the Egyptian revolution is a mild-mannered academic who endured imprisonment and then exile for daring to criticize the Mubarak family’s increasingly dynastic ambitions. Saad Eddin Ibrahim has spoken out forcefully on human rights and democracy for decades, and he is finally being vindicated. But his message that the United States needs to support democracy in the Arab world and put aside its paranoia about Muslim fundamentalist movements may be unpalatable to Washington’s elites."  Photo: AP/Amr Nabil

When Corporations Choose Despost Over Democracy
Amy Goodman writes for Truthdig.com: "“People holding a sign ‘To: America. From: the Egyptian People. Stop supporting Mubarak. It’s over!” so tweeted my brave colleague, “Democracy Now!” senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous, from the streets of Cairo. More than 2 million people rallied throughout Egypt on Tuesday, most of them crowded into Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Tahrir, which means liberation in Arabic, has become the epicenter of what appears to be a largely spontaneous, leaderless and peaceful revolution in this, the most populous nation in the Middle East. Defying a military curfew, this incredible uprising has been driven by young Egyptians, who compose a majority of the 80 million citizens. Twitter and Facebook, and SMS text messaging on cell phones, have helped this new generation to link up and organize, despite living under a U.S.-supported dictatorship for the past three decades. In response, the Mubarak regime, with the help of U.S. and European corporations, has shut down the Internet and curtailed cellular service, plunging Egypt into digital darkness. Despite the shutdown, as media activist and professor of communications C.W. Anderson told me, 'people make revolutions, not technology.'”

Gladstone's Legacy for Israel
Naomi Klein writes for The Nation: "A sprawling crime scene. That is what Gaza felt like when I visited in the summer of 2009, six months after the Israeli attack. Evidence of criminality was everywhere—the homes and schools that lay in rubble, the walls burned pitch black by white phosphorus, the children’s bodies still unhealed for lack of medical care. But where were the police? Who was documenting these crimes, interviewing the witnesses, protecting the evidence from tampering?"

Cow Most Sacred: Why Military Spending Remains Untouchable
Andrew J. Bacevich provides the following analysis for TomDispatch: "In defense circles, 'cutting' the Pentagon budget has once again become a topic of conversation. Americans should not confuse that talk with reality. Any cuts exacted will at most reduce the rate of growth. The essential facts remain: US military outlays today equal that of every other nation on the planet combined, a situation without precedent in modern history."

Govt's Loan Modification Program Crippled by Lax Oversight and Deference to Banks

Paul Kiel and Olga Pierce report for ProPublica: "With millions of homeowners still struggling to stay in their homes, the Obama administration’s $75 billion foreclosure prevention program has been weakened, perhaps fatally, by lax oversight and a posture of cooperation - rather than enforcement - with the nation’s biggest banks. Those banks, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Citibank, service the majority of mortgages. Despite a dismal showing for the program, rising complaints from homeowners, and repeated threats from officials, the government has levied no penalties against even the most error-prone banks and mortgage servicers. In fact, despite issuing public warnings for more than a year about imposing penalties, the Treasury Department told ProPublica this week they don’t even have the power to punish servicers for wrongfully denying help to homeowners. Instead of toughening the program, Treasury has actually loosened it in the face of industry lobbying." Photo: Robyn Back/AFP/Getty Images

Back to Full Employment
Robert Pollin writes for the Boston Review: "Employment conditions in the United States today, in the aftermath of the 2008-09 Wall Street collapse and worldwide Great Recession, remain disastrous - worse than at any time since the Depression of the 1930s. Since Barack Obama entered office in January 2009, the official unemployment rate has averaged more than 9.5 percent, representing some fifteen million people in a labor force of about 154 million. By a broader definition, including people employed for fewer hours than they would like and those discouraged from looking for work, the unemployment rate has been far higher - 16.5 percent, on average."

Debts Should Be Honored, Except When the Money Is Owed to Working People

Dean Baker writes for Truthout: "This seems to be the lesson that our nation's leaders are trying to pound home to us. According to The New York Times, members of Congress are secretly running around in closets and back alleys working up a law allowing states to declare bankruptcy. According to the article, a main goal of state bankruptcy is to allow states to default on their pension obligations. This means that states will be able to tell workers, including those already retired, that they are out of luck. Teachers, highway patrol officers, and other government employees, some of whom worked decades for the government, will be told that their contracts no longer mean anything. They will not get the pensions that they were expecting." Photo: MasonCooper

Happy Days Are Here Again - as Long as You Ignore the Jobs Crisis
Imara Jones reports for ColorLines: "If Tina Turner was to reprise her 1980's hit in 2011, it would surely be called, 'What's jobs got to do with it?' Unemployment and underemployment remain dangerously high, at around 17 percent, but you wouldn't know it listening to the optimism ringing out from Wall Street to Washington last week. The New York Stock Exchange flirted with 12,000, a level not seen since 2008, everyone celebrated economic growth data, and the annual gathering of global finance and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was dominated by declarations of an American rebound. A fundamental disconnect between the finance economy and the real one couldn't be more apparent."

Stop the Austerity Craze! Massive Budget Slashing Can Lead to Economic Disaster, Violence and Repression

Mark Ames reports for AlterNet: "Now that the shock of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting is starting to wear off and the country is returning to its more familiar climate of insanity, we’re back to facing a far worse, far more serious, and far more violent threat than mere rampage shootings: Austerity. The Washington-Wall Street power circuit has already decided for the rest of us that “austerity” will define the 2011 political agenda. Austerity is what the oligarch-sponsored Tea Party demanded, what the Republicans are promising to deliver now that they’re in control of drafting the budget in the House, and what the Obama administration is going to try to enact as part of its neo-Clinton triangulation strategy. And the DC pols have the total endorsement of the corporate media, which have been hammering home the same message for months now: Austerity is the answer to our problems — problems that were created by the same establishment which wants to make us scream in pain again."

Attack on Birthright Citizenship
Faiz Shakir, Benjamin Armbruster, George Zornick, Zaid Jilani, Alex Seitz-Wald, Andrea Nill, and Tanya Somanader write the Progress Report for Think Progess: "Last week, Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY) and David Vitter (R-LA) introduced a resolution that would amend the Constitution to eliminate the guarantee that all persons born in the U.S. are automatically citizens. The resolution stipulates that, in order for U.S.-born children to qualify for citizenship, at least one parent must be a legal citizen, legal immigrant, active member of the Armed Forces, or a naturalized legal citizen. Meanwhile, in Arizona, Republicans  introduced legislation this past Thursday seeking to challenge the right to U.S. citizenship for children born in the state whose parents are undocumented immigrants. The 14th Amendment explicitly states, "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." These proposals all seek to either radically change or reinterpret what it means to be "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."  As the draconian Arizona immigration law which made headlines last year moves its way up the courts, the attack on the 14th Amendment and over 100 years of jurisprudence is looking to be the next immigration battlefield in the months to come."

Crashing the Koch's Billionaire Caucus

Lindsay Beyerstein reports for The Media Consortium: "Oil barons Charles and David Koch held their annual billionaires' summit in Palm Springs on Sunday, Nancy Goldstein reports in The Nation. Every year, the Kochs gather with fellow plutocrats, prominent pundits, and Republican legislators to plan their assault on government regulation and the welfare state. This is the first year that the low-profile gathering has attracted protesters."

The Birther Plan To Block Obama's Re-election
David Corn reports for Mother Jones: "The birthers have a plan to end Barack Obama's presidency—and in Arizona, they're making progress. Last week, Arizona state Rep. Judy Burges, a Republican, introduced a bill that would bar presidential candidates who do not prove they were born in the United States from appearing on the ballot in the Grand Canyon state. And state Rep. Chad Campbell, the top Democrat in the GOP-controlled Arizona House of Representatives, tells Mother Jones that the bill is likely to pass. It was introduced with 25 co-sponsors in the House and 16 co-sponsors in the state Senate; the measure needs 31 votes in the House and 16 in the Senate for approval. 'Will it matter?' asks Campbell. 'We've started a tradition here of passing legislation that is political grandstanding or that sets up litigation.'"

The Smearing of Frances Fox Piven

Progressive America Rising reports: "Frances Fox Piven is a professor of sociology at City University of New York, longstanding advocate for the rights of working and poor people and an author of numerous books studied in universities across the country. In recent months, Fox News' Glenn Beck has repeatedly described Piven as an advocate of violence and "enemy of the Constitution." As a consequence, a torrent of death threats against Piven has appeared on Beck's Web site The Blaze--threats that went unopposed on Beck's site for weeks."

Recommended Audio - James Howard Kunstler: Peak Oil and Our Financial Decline

Kevin Gosztola writes for The Nation and On The Earth Productions:

In this fifth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, author, blogger and social critic James Howard Kunstler opens up on two circumstances he sees running neck and neck “that are going to put us out of business as an advanced industrial civilization”—the “fiasco” in banking, money and finance and the unfolding “energy predicament.” He explains that the crises are really all about "capital" and that we need to look at how wealth has been accumulated and deployed for productive purposes.

Kunstler suggests that “cheap abundant energy” has facilitated ever-increasing industrialization for centuries. But now that society is in a period of self-destructive capital accumulation, he expects debt to increase as abundance in energy drops. The tremendous amount of accumulated debt, “a by-product of cheap abundant energy,” will mean that in the future governments will be less able to make investments in socially-beneficial programs.

He also criticizes the US environmental movement for shying away from the problem of energy. The movement is unable to talk about walkable neighborhoods, smaller cities or investing in rail or water transit, an “intellectual failure of the culture to have a coherent conversation from people who ought to be leading” such a conversation.

Go here to learn more about "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate," and to see the other videos in the series.

The Disappearance of Keith Olbermann

Robert Parry writes for Consortium News: "Keith Olbermann’s abrupt departure from MSNBC should be another wake-up call to American progressives about the fragile foothold that liberal-oriented fare now has for only a few hours on one corporate cable network. Though Olbermann hosted MSNBC’s top-rated news show, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” he disappeared from the network with only the briefest of good-byes. Certainly, the callous treatment of Olbermann by the MSNBC brass would never be replicated by Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing Fox News toward its media stars."

News Organizations Should Stop Being Neutral on Net Neutrality
Kat Aaron writes for MediaShift: "Many news organizations have a love-hate relationship with the Internet. While the abundance of free, online news has helped wreak havoc on the industry, the Internet itself has created incredible possibilities for news outlets to expand their reach and spark innovation. Thanks to the Internet, audiences can contribute to reporting and news in ways that would have been unimaginable a generation ago. Even the most venerable papers are experimenting with crowdsourced journalism."

With a Quiet Vote this Year, Congress Could Irreparably Damage Public Media

Bill King comments for Current.org: "In coming weeks, public media in this country could quietly cease to exist as we know it. It's up to us to make sure our audiences are aware of this threat, and that they have the opportunity to do something about it. In 1967, I began my career as the first hire at what would become Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media. The Public Broadcasting Act was signed into law that same year. Flash forward to 2011 as I prepare to step down as c.e.o. of MPR/APM, and I see CPB facing the biggest threat so far to its continued funding."

Shutting Down Sesame Street: Republicans Aim to End the Arts
Adriel Luis reports for Change.org: "Conservatives are getting frugal up in this piece. Last week the Republican Study Committee pledged to cut $2.5 trillion in spending through the Spending Reduction Act – a bill that would eliminate a slew of government-funded programs. Among this list of "unnecessary spending" are the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – all vital outlets for the livelihoods of workers in the art and media industries. Killing the arts isn't new for Republicans. In fact, some measures from the new Republican Study Committee proposal date back to 1995."

The Watchman's Rattle

Community Bridge opens this week with a live interview of author and sociobiologist Rebecca Costa in a discussion of her thought-provoking new book: The Watchman's Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction.  

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. 

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Engaging the Muslim World

For our second hour we will broadcast Carolyn Benton Cockefair Chair in Continuing Education lecture given by Juan Cole on Nov. 15, 2010, at the University of Missouri - Kansas City entitled “Engaging the Muslim World."

Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. His most recent book is Engaging the Muslim World (Palgrave Macmillan, March, 2009). As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on television, and testified before the United States Senate. He has published several peer-reviewed books on the modern Middle East and is a translator of both Arabic and Persian. Since 2002, he has written a weblog, Informed Comment.

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Clippings for 25 January 2011

8 Reasons Global Capitalism Makes Our Lives Worse -- And How We Can Create a New Kind of Economy

Tara Lohan reports for AlterNet: "To many of us, a society where no one goes hungry, where there is no unemployment, where people are happy and they have spacious homes and lots of leisure time seems like fantasy. But it's not a fantasy for Helena Norberg-Hodge -- she saw it firsthand in the tiny Himalayan region of Ladakh, a remote mountain community that borders Tibet. During the course of 35 years there, she also saw what happened when Ladakh was suddenly thrown open to the outside world in the 1970s and subsidized roads brought subsidized goods to the region. The local economy was undermined, the cultural fabric was torn apart. Unemployment, pollution and divisiveness emerged for the first time."

Obama Embraces the "Economic Philosophy That Has Completely Failed"
William Black comments on Michael Moore's Blog: "President Obama's Executive Order on regulatory review was originally set in motion by his February 3, 2009 direction to OMB to create an improved regulatory review process.

The fundamental principles and structures governing contemporary regulatory review were set out in Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993. A great deal has been learned since that time. Far more is now known about regulation -- not only about when it is justified, but also about what works and what does not. Far more is also known about the uses of a variety of regulatory tools such as warnings, disclosure requirements, public education, and economic incentives. Years of experience have also provided lessons about how to improve the process of regulatory review. In this time of fundamental transformation, that process--and the principles governing regulation in general -- should be revisited."

Turbulence Ahead
Joseph E. Stiglitz provides the following analysis for Truthout: "Another year of malaise along the Atlantic. By the numbers, the great recession's long gone. The World Bank forecasts that developing countries - chugging along at an average growth rate of 6 percent - will expand the global economy by more than 3 percent this year. In the last six months, London's FTSE 100 is up more than 15 percent, and Wall Street's Dow Jones index is up nearly as much. It's just about enough to say the good times are back."

Discretion Advised

Ruth Marcus writes for Truthdig.com: "Discretionary spending, the part of the federal budget that is not on autopilot and is subject to annual appropriations, generally constitutes less than 40 percent of federal spending. Take out defense spending and that share drops to well under 20 percent. So if your goal is to slash government spending and your approach is to go after discretionary spending without touching the military, it will require punishing, drastic cuts to make any serious dent in the deficit."

Is America Too Corrupt to Keep Up?
David Sirota comments for Truthout: "A sovereign nation investing its wealth in its domestic economy seems like a no-brainer, especially during a global recession. But in this crazy age of American politics, even that has become a controversial notion. This is the subtext of a dispute that simmered beneath the pomp and circumstance of this week's U.S.-China summit.... China's industrial policy success carries a basic lesson: When a nation couples public spending with incentives that encourage domestic corporate investment, an economy tends to grow its own wealth-building industries. That's simple enough to understand, right? Evidently, not within our own government."

Congress to Investigate Pentagon Decision to Deny Coverage for Brain Injured Troops
T. Christian Miller, ProPublica, and Daniel Zwerdling, NPR, report for ProPublica: "A key congressional oversight committee announced today that it was opening an investigation into the basis of a decision by the Pentagon's health plan to deny a type of medical treatment to troops with brain injuries. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the chairman of the subcommittee on contracting oversight, said she wanted to examine a contract issued by Tricare, an insurance-style program used by soldiers and many veterans, to a private company to study cognitive rehabilitation therapy for traumatic brain injury. Such injuries are considered among the signature wounds of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."

US Case Against Wikileaks’ Julian Assange Collapses

Juan Cole writes on Informed Comment: "The US government, according to NBC correspondent Jim Miklaszewski, now admits that it cannot tie Pfc. Bradley Manning to Wikileaks leader Julian Assange. The military also admitted that Manning was put on suicide watch improperly twice last week by the base commander at Quantico, essentially as a form of punishment and with no consultation with psychiatrists. During the watch they took his glasses from him so he could not read."

Patriot Act's Wiretapping, FISA Provisions Quietly Come Up For Renewal
Rachel Slajda reports for Talking Points Memo: "At the end of next month, two of the Patriot Act's controversial provisions -- one authorizing "roving" wiretapping and one allowing the government to pull all sorts of records and electronic communications from U.S. citizens -- will expire. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has already introduced legislation that would simply extend the provisions for one more year.  That would essentially be a repeat of what happened a year ago, after the provisions expired in December 2009. There was a bit of a fight from civil liberties advocates, but the measures were renewed for another year at the end of last February."

Justice Department Seeks Mandatory Data Retention

Declan McCullagh reports for CNET News: "Criminal investigations 'are being frustrated' because no law currently exists to force Internet providers to keep track of what their customers are doing, the U.S. Department of Justice will announce tomorrow. CNET obtained a copy of the department's position on mandatory data retention--saying Congress should strike a "more appropriate balance" between privacy and police concerns--that will be announced at a House of Representatives hearing tomorrow. 'Data retention is fundamental to the department's work in investigating and prosecuting almost every type of crime,' Jason Weinstein, deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division, will say, according to his written testimony. 'The problem of investigations being stymied by a lack of data retention is growing worse.'" (See related article.)"

It's Not the Teachers' Unions
Richard Kahlenberg writes for the American Prospect: "The resignation of Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee concludes the latest chapter in the ongoing war between free-market education reformers and teachers’ unions. Many Rhee supporters blame union opposition for the electoral defeat of Rhee’s boss, Mayor Adrian Fenty, and see unions as the biggest problem in education. In the much-discussed documentary, Waiting for Superman, in which Rhee is painted as a heroine, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter declares, 'It's very, very important to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time. Teachers are great, a national treasure. Teachers' unions are, generally speaking, a menace and an impediment to reform.'"

Fudging the Facts on Health Care and Deficits

Joe Conason writes for Truthdig.com: "Facts always matter, but never more than when politicians deal with issues of real consequence, like health care and budget deficits. Data sets and out-year projections may make everybody’s eyes glaze over, but without accurate information, the end result of legislation is disaster. Today, there is no way to avoid fiscal ruin and social erosion unless we can determine whether health care reform will tame or swell deficits. Yet the Republican leaders in Congress are now insisting on their own 'facts' concerning health care and deficits, which directly contradict the careful studies of the Congressional Budget Office. They have gone so far as to denigrate the CBO, among the most respected agencies in Washington since its founding in 1974, by accusing its analysts of using 'rigged' assumptions to reach its conclusions."

Study: 84% of Nutrition Labels On Kids' Foods "Misleading"

Josh Harkinson reports for Mother Jones: "Labels on the front of foods marketed to children tout all sorts of nutritional benefits, from high protein and natural flavoring to heaps of fiber and vitamin C. But most of those claims are just feel-good marketing designed to mask the fact that our kids are being sold junk food. This is according to a study released yesterday by the Strategic Alliance, a California-based group of nutrition and exercise experts. It concludes that 84 percent of the nutritional claims made on the front of 58 "better for you" products were misleading; most of the products didn't even meet the basic nutrition standards set by the US Department of Agriculture and the National Academies of Science. "

Climate Benefits of Natural Gas May Be Overstated

Abrahm Lustgarten reports for Propublica: "The United States is poised to bet its energy future on natural gas as a clean, plentiful fuel that can supplant coal and oil. But new research by the Environmental Protection Agency—and a growing understanding of the pollution associated with the full “life cycle” of gas production—is casting doubt on the assumption that gas offers a quick and easy solution to climate change.  Advocates for natural gas routinely assert that it produces 50 percent less greenhouse gases than coal and is a significant step toward a greener energy future. But those assumptions are based on emissions from the tailpipe or smokestack and don’t account for the methane and other pollution emitted when gas is extracted and piped to power plants and other customers. Photo: Douglas C. Pizac/AP file photo

Foot-and-Mouth Study, in Kansas?
Bill Bishop reports in the Daily Yoder: "There are some who don’t think it is the best idea in the world to build a facility that will study live foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) pathogens across the street from the Kansas State University football stadium — and within 200 miles of nearly ten percent of the U.S. cattle herd."

Where Liberals Go to Feel Good
Chris Hedges comments for Truthdig: "Barack Obama is another stock character in the cyclical political theater embraced by the liberal class. Act I is the burst of enthusiasm for a Democratic candidate who, through clever branding and public relations, appears finally to stand up for the interests of citizens rather than corporations. Act II is the flurry of euphoria and excitement. Act III begins with befuddled confusion and gnawing disappointment, humiliating appeals to the elected official to correct 'mistakes,' and pleading with the officeholder to return to his or her true self. Act IV is the thunder and lightning scene. Liberals strut across the stage in faux moral outrage, delivering empty threats of vengeance. And then there is Act V. This act is the most pathetic. It is as much farce as tragedy. Liberals - frightened back into submission by the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party or the call to be practical - begin the drama all over again."

SPLC Report: Nativist Laws Cost Communities Millions, Inflame Racial Tension

The Southern Poverty Law Center writes: "Harsh anti-immigrant laws enacted in communities across the country – promoted by national nativist organizations that want to severely limit immigration – have burdened taxpayers with millions in legal expenses, inflamed racial tensions and devastated businesses, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).  The report – When Mr. Kobach Comes to Town: Nativist Laws and the Communities They Damage – examines the impact of these laws, which have been promoted and defended by former law professor and newly elected Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Kobach also played a leading role in drafting Arizona's controversial anti-immigrant statute, S.B. 1070."

GOP's State of the Union Responder Would Set Higher Taxes on Middle-Class Than Millionaires
Pat Garofalo reports for Think Progress: "House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) was announced today as the Republican who will be responding to President Obama's State of the Union address next week. Ryan has gained a (largely unearned) reputation as a fiscal hawk due to his radical Roadmap for America's Future, under which the U.S. budget will eventually be balanced (after federal debt surpasses 100 percent of GDP), mostly via privatizing Social Security and Medicare. According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, the Roadmap would raise taxes on 90 percent of Americans, while dramatically lowering them for millionaires. In fact, a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute found that Ryan's plan would ultimately translate into middle-class tax rates being higher than those for millionaires."

Angry Progressive Coalition to Protest Billionaire Gathering Hosted by Koch Brothers, Major Tea Party Funders

Don Hazen reports for AlterNet:Increasingly, Democrats, liberals and progressives are coming to understand that the Koch brothers, a secretive right-wing billionaire family that pours limitless money into virtually every destructive anti-democratic initiative affecting tens of millions of Americans, are "Public Enemy Number One."
More and more, leaders and activists are shifting tactics and confronting the Kochs face-to-face, challenging their efforts to steal the American Dream and drown out the voices of ordinary Americans by buying our democracy, and trying to take control of civic and economic life. The Kochs' goal appears to be nothing short of transforming America into a radical right-wing, corporate, third-world-like country, crushing social safety nets, and letting the destructive "free market" reign supreme."

Clarence Thomas Failed to Report Wife's Income, Watchdog Says
Kim Geiger reports for the L. A. Times: "Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife's income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday. Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation's IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled "none" where "spousal noninvestment income" would be disclosed."

Recommended Audio: Democracy Now! - On Anniversary of Citizens United Ruling, Calls for DOJ to Investigate Scalia and Thomas

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now!: "Today marks the one-year anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate spending on election campaigns. We speak with Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause, which has filed a petition with the U.S. Department of Justice urging it to investigate whether Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves from the case last year because of a conflict of interest."

With New TV Show, Radio Talker Thom Hartmann Brings Substance to Style

Adele M. Stan reports for AlterNet: " It's 9pm in the middle of a busy week and Thom Hartmann, the nation's most popular progressive talk radio host, is just sitting down to dinner with his wife Louise at a crowded Washington restaurant. As host of "The Thom Hartmann Program" (heard on 120 affiliates, according to the show's Web site), Thom did his customary three hours of radio earlier in the day, and just wrapped up an episode of his hour-long daily cable television program, "The Big Picture," which airs on RTTV and was just picked up by Free Speech TV, which runs the show over the Dish and DirecTV networks. (It's also available from iTunes in podcast form.) It's a typical 14-hour day for Hartmann, but he's hardly worse for the wear. At 59, he looks at least 10 years younger, and his energy is still bubbling over. Louise, just back from a day at the hospital with a friend who rushed there in an emergency, begs off the interview, wanting nothing more than a quiet meal after a stressful day."

FCC Blesses Comcast Merger and New Era of Media Monopoly

Joe Torres reports for the Huffington Post: "Yesterday the Federal Communications Commission gave its blessing to the Comcast-NBC Universal deal, one of the largest media mergers in a generation, and we have one man to thank for it.  When Julius Genachowski took the helm of the FCC in 2009, many predicted the chairman would restore confidence in an agency that has for too long placed corporate interests over the public interest.  He had President Obama's ear; he had experience at the agency and in the tech industry; and he pledged to change the way the agency operated. The new FCC chairman seemed to be the right man at the right time to lead this agency."

The Comcast-NBC Merger: Why the FCC Should Be Held to a Higher Standard
Corie Wright writes at StopBigMedia.com: "Question: Two federal agencies review the same merger. Both agencies have jurisdiction to review the merger under U.S. law. The agencies review the merger during the same time period, and ultimately they reach the same decision – to approve the merger with conditions. One is right, the other is wrong. Why? This is not an SAT question – it really happened."

Verizon Sues to Protect its Right to Pillage

Kevin Fogarty reports for ITworld: "Verizon sued the FCC today, asking a U.S. District Court to overturn a set of net neutrality rules the FCC created by taking the overly lax suggested outlines handed in by Verizon and other carriers and running them through a photocopier. Forget for a moment whether it's really kosher to take rules written by the companies you're supposed to regulate and pass them off as your own, and the overwhelming tendency of the FCC to protect the carriers at the expense of their customers and all you're left with is astonishment. That's all most of us are left with; Verizon still has some outrage left. Not only is Verizon not satisfied treating the FCC like a bully treats a nerd with lunch money, it wants to formalize the relationship."

Verizon Loves Net Neutrality to Death
Tim Karr writes for the Huffington Post: "Verizon has a love-hate relationship with Net Neutrality. The company professes its love of the open Internet, but then tries to smother it with a pillow in the middle of the night. The company's strained relationship with openness was evident yesterday when Verizon asked a federal appeals court to overturn an extremely weak Federal Communications Commission rule protecting Net Neutrality -- the principle that guarantees Internet users' the right to go where they want and do what they choose online. Ironically, the rule in question, adopted by the FCC just last month, was modeled after a vastly unpopular "policy framework" drafted by Verizon and Google attorneys in August. (Nate Anderson of ArsTechnica lays out these similarities in graphic detail)."

Organizations Renew Long-Outstanding Requests for Examination of Hate Speech in Media

The National Hispanic Media Coalition writes: "Yesterday, the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), joined by a robust and diverse collection of other organizations, reached out to leaders at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to urge each entity to act on NHMC's long-standing requests to study the effects of hate speech in media. NHMC sent letters to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Assistant Secretary Lawrence Strickling of the NTIA. In the letter to FCC Chairman Genachowski, NHMC requested prompt action on its two-year-old petition for inquiry and urged the FCC to examine the extent, nature and effects of hate speech in media, and possible non-regulatory ways to counteract or reduce its negative impacts. All four FCC Commissioners have been receptive to opening the inquiry. As the only person with the power to add the petition to the FCC's agenda, Chairman Genachowski is solely responsible for the delay. In the other letter, NHMC renewed another two-year-old request, and urged the NTIA to promptly update its 1993 report, The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes. Assistant Secretary Strickling has agreed to update the 1993 report. However, he says that he cannot do so until he receives funding from Congress."  Image: TransGriot Blog

Update on Sunflower Energy's Holcomb Plant

Community Bridge begins a new season with an old topic - the Sunflower Energy power plant slated for construction in Holcomb. Blocked numerous times and opposed by a majority of Kansans, Gov. Parkinson’s parting gift to Sunflower was a construction permit, after it had previously been denied.  

Scott Allegrucci, Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy, and Stephanie Cole, Sierra Club of Kansas, join us for a discussion of recent developments including the firing of KDHE Secretary Bremby, the issuing of a permit for Sunflower, and the Sierra Club’s lawsuit against it.

Additional information/resources:

• http://www.gpace.org/blog/who-really-owns-the-coal-plant/ - obviously posted prior to KDHE granting a permit for the project; and Tri-State's 2009 annual report showed closer to $54 million given to Sunflower to support the project (excluding water and land purchases)
• http://www.gpace.org/blog/gpace-comments-and-questions-to-tri-state-generation-transmission/ - posted after my trip to Westminster to provide public comment as part of Tri-State's IRP public process (Tri-State has never answered any of the questions we asked)
• http://www.gpace.org/blog/gpace-comments-from-scott-allegrucci-at-final-kdhe-hearing/ - my oral comments delivered at the fourth and final public hearing on the permit
• http://www.gpace.org/blog/gaming-the-system-to-get-a-coal-plant/ - covers the leaked Sunflower email that confirms political collusion between Parkinson and pro-coal forces to pressure KDHE
• http://www.gpace.org/blog/a-coal-plant-over-the-rainbow-the-parkinson-kdhe-sunflower-electric-mess/ - most recent entry that is a pretty good overview of the mess this process in Kansas has become over the last several months

Community Bridge apologies for the sound quality of this recording, we had some technical difficulties.

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Cutting Funding for the Arts in Kansas

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is proposing to phase out state tax funding for the arts andthat the Kansas Arts Commission become a privately funded nonprofit organization.  If these budget cuts are approved, Kansas will be the ONLY state in the country without a State funded arts agency.  Llewellyn Crain, Executive Director of the Kansas Arts Commission, and Penny Senften, director of the Manhattan Arts Center join host Christopher Renner in studio to discuss Sam Brownback's proposal to defund the arts in Kansas.  

Join the fight to save the arts by joining the Facebook group “Keep Funding for Kansas Arts!” at http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=100725473337844.

We close out by rebroadcasting an interview with Wendel Potter, author of Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans, conducted by The Nation magazine. Potter explains 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.  We hear the first half of The Nation's interview with Potter.  To hear the complete interview (one hour in length) click here.

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