KBOO Community Radio

06/20/07 Get This
Chris Andreae

1. Need vs. Greed: Oregon’s Department of Human Services is getting 13 percent more money this year. Which won’t begin to restore all the assistance that got chopped back in the bad old days (‘Reichstag Blowback’, if you will. Breaking few eggs to make a cake and the eggs just happened to be the economy and a few thousand lives…). And the requests for Human Services money just keep pouring in from state agencies that help the needy…at least the ones who have managed to survive in the poisonous atmosphere of the last seven years. (Look, “Tax and Spend” is exactly and precisely what the government is supposed to do that is what it exists to do. That is the only way of preventing all the money from aggregating in the hands of the very few….)
2. Tiiiiiimber! More timber payments. (Plant industrial hemp. You’ve got plenty of space now that you’ve cut down all the trees…)
3. So Sue Me: Oregon lawmakers are voting on a bill today that is intended to hold manufacturers accountable for the life of their products, not for the current eight year statute of limitations. What it means is that if you buy oh, say, carpeting and twenty years later become ill as a result of two decades of toxic carpet fumes invading your dreams, then you can go after the manufacturer. This would have been a stronger law thirty years ago. Now most products and their components have changed hands so many times between factory and shop, who are you going to go after for damages?
4. Ishmael, Call My Lawyer: In Washington, San Juan County isn’t waiting for the Feds to provide protection for Orcas in the waters of the San Juan Islands. They went ahead and passed their own ordinances. Works okay for local whale watching boats, but rogue operators and foreign-flag vessels are going to continue to sail under the radar.
5. Paper Cuts Hurt, Even For Those With Bad Circulation: Now it’s the noteworthy San Jose Mercury News that is cutting its newsroom staff.
6. Bush is going to veto the controversial Hollow Microscopic Ball of Cells Called the Blastocyst Stem Cell Bill. Don’t call it ‘ Embryonic Stem Cell’ research, because it isn’t. The cells in question are derived from the blastocyst stage of development. (The guy who thought up the “Embryo” business is none other than Frank Luntz, the genius behind the terms, War on Terror, Clear Skies Act and every other seemingly harmless term the Bush administration has ever uttered…)
7. Connecticut’s Republican governor has vetoed a medical marijuana bill. (But that could change. Jodi Bell is ‘in remission’…)
8. America’s Drug Dealer: Rudy Giuliani’s campaign chairman, Thomas Ravenal has been indicted on federal cocaine charges. (Good thing for Tom that it wasn’t crack; He’d be in serious trouble …)
9. The ACLU is suing the government to prevent it from drugging immigrants before deporting them. (Doesn’t the ACLU realize that this is America! Immigrants are supposed to bring us the drugs with them when they enter the country: We aren’t supposed to be giving them the drugs when we are in the process of sending them out….)
10. If You Can Make It There, You’ll Make It Anywhere! Start spreading the news….New York’s billionaire Bureaucrat, Michael Bloomberg is switching sides again. Bloomberg was a lifelong Democrat until he decided to run for Mayor. Now that he (perhaps) is running for president, Bloomberg has decided that he is an Independent.….It’s….Showtime!
11. Wal-Mart is in the prepaid debit card business. You don’t need a credit check or even a bank account to pick up one of these babies. (They know more about you than your own mother anyway…) A whole new world of financial woes awaits you.
12. The gap between the rich and the poor ever widens. Globalization: It’s the economic version of ‘the two-state solution’
13. As if it were not bad enough that we’ve gone and pissed off the entire Muslim world, now we’ve gone and rubbed Antigua and Barbuda the wrong way (And, No. It isn’t because we’re killing the oceans, but we’ll get to that…). Trouble is, we owe them 3.4 billion dollars a year for failure to comply with a WTO ruling that US Internet gambling restrictions are illegal. (Unlike, oh, say, the Vancouver Stock Exchange….)
14. John Rizzo is Bush’s Chosen One for CIA Counsel. There was a strange, other-worldly hearing yesterday – rather like a séance - in which lawmakers asked Rizzo ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions to which Rizzo answered ‘yes and no’ on grounds that if he really answered the questions, he would jeopardize national security (If destroying the legally elected Hamas government and supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people does not “jeopardize national security”, then I’m not sure what does…Digression there.. Sorry.). Many of the questions Rizzo was asked have been a matter of public record for years. Does America engage in the practice of extraordinary rendition to countries known to use torture? Does the Pope write Motoring Ten Commandments…
15. The Haditha Massacre trial drags on, slouching towards a slap on the wrist. (But look on the bright side: The Marines who murdered those people will in all probability go mad…)
16. It’s Surge-arific! Attacks on the Green Zone are on the rise. A mortar or possibly a rocket – I mean, who knows in all the chaos – narrowly missed the PX today.
17. Japan has extended its air force transport mission in Iraq by two years. (And Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe says that the Rape of Nanking never happened. Coincidence?)
18. In Nigeria, there is a general strike on right now that is lead by thee oil workers unions.
19. Jimmy Carter has pointed out to the rest of the world that what the US and the EU did to the Palestinians is a deliberate attempt to divide and thus destroy the Palestinian nation and people. (America, as always, fingers in the ears, eyes squeezed shut, muttering, ‘I can’t hear you I can’t hear you I can’t hear you…’)
20. Speak of the Devil: Israel launched major attacks on Gaza today. While Bush sat back, enjoying the ‘Rapture’ from a safe distance.
21. Israeli opposition leader and Likud chairman Benjamin Netanyahu is off to Washington to negotiate stricter economic sanctions on Iran – as long as we’re in the neighborhood. He is also getting together with Hillary Clinton, Fred Thompson and Dick Cheney. (Entertainment provided by a chorus line of naked AIPAC lobbyists, high-kicking their way through the evening’s show-stopper, ‘Presenting the Family Jewels…’)
22. And now the envelope please. The winner in the ‘World’s Worst Polluter’ in the CO2 emissions category is……………………….China!

06/19/07 Get This
Chris Andreae

1. Dudley-do-Wrong: Jefferson High School’s president Leon Dudley is resigning. And who can blame him? He has had virtually no support from the school board (Translation, ‘Vicki Phillips’), the student body is traditionally Black and hence already discriminated against, and the as for sufficient funding? If you think that money doesn’t make a difference, compare Lincoln High School and Jefferson….Whatever Leon Dudley’s failings might be, he was given a population of smart, needy kids and nothing to give to them.
2. You win some, you lose some: School districts from Beaverton to Bend are finally going to get he the money they need to build new classrooms. And it comes from an unusual source, Taxes. Yes, School boards are going to be able to levy construction taxes without seeking voter approval (It would be nice to believe that voters are smart enough to pass legislation that is in their own best interests as well as those of their communities. Yes, that would be nice, wouldn’t it…)
3. The Service Employees International Union is getting more influential in politics – no surprise there since we have an economy based almost exclusively on service sector employment at one end and Wall Street at the other.
4. Raid This: Even before the recent ICE raid on the Del Monte plant and the staffing agency Stafco, a Hillsboro woman had fired a lawsuit at the gigantic companies. The suit claims that the company failed to pay its workers in a timely and proper manner, as well as taking improper deductions from paychecks. The workers themselves had no recourse because of fear of deportation.
5. Veterans In Action staged an anti-war protest on the banks of the highly polluted Willamette River where Senator Gordon Smith was out punting along the watery ways with boy-pal, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. What were they talking about? Immigration? Funding the war? Probably their escape plans when Bush drops his pre-election ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ event on the unsuspecting public…
6. US District Judge John Coughenour ruled in favor of endangered salmon and against developers who claim that hatchery fish and wild fish are the same thing. (Here’s an idea: Lets raise a bunch of developers in captivity, grow them fat and helpless and stupid and then…Never mind…)
7. The top enlisted man at Naval Base Kitsap was sentenced a paltry nine months in jail for attempting to have sex with one 12 year-old child while encouraging another child to have sex with the mother. It’s that strong moral character that the military teaches, y’know…
8. Give That Student a Bonus!: The University of Washington has studied the phenomena carefully and found out that – yup, sure enough – CEO’s are paid bonuses even when the companies they captain are losing money.
9. Today is Juneteenth, the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. (It’s ended? Ask any member of a minority population who works three jobs and is the target of discrimination and racial profiling if slavery in the US is over. They aren’t celebrating…
10. Our ‘War President’ has decided to end the embargo on the beleaguered Palestinian people - which he levied because he didn’t like the results of a free, fair and democratic election. (I think its safe to say that if a Dennis Kucinich wins the presidential election, the Neocons will issue an embargo on the United States….)
11. Seymour Hersh has got the real dirt on Abu Ghraieb from no less an insider than Antonio Taguba, the key military investigator. It’s all there in this week’s New Yorker magazine.
12. The Government Accountability Office has a rather anticlimactic report out finding that the Bush administration and its legions of cronied-up agencies ignored Congressional legislation on 30 percent of the occasions when Bush issued a presidential signing statement after signing bills into law. (Translation? What we have here is a rogue regime, answerable to no one but the world’s wealthiest men and women. Since we have allowed our responsibility as citizens to lapse, it will be virtually impossible to change the course of our own history.)
13. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (“Oversight”? “Reform”? Well, It’s going to be a little difficult to oversee and reform a government that has cloaked itself in secrecy and become invisible to the average citizen…) But I digress…The Committee reports that GOP ‘off-the-books’ e-mails are proliferating and as for the ‘on-the-books’ ones, those have been destroyed.
14. The administration is threatening Valerie Plame with a subpoena. But of course Republicans wouldn’t “play politics”, would they?
15. Energy lobbyists have screwed the energy bill because it dared - a small way - to actually attempt to conserve energy.
16. Two North Dakota farmers who have been granted the first licenses in the nation to grow industrial hemp have filed a lawsuit to get final permission from the Drug Enforcement Administration (Won’t the DEA be surprised when they figure out there are not drugs in hemp…)
17. Well, the ten thousand-man American Surge is cutting down Iraqi freedom fighters and civilians alike. What the US is doing in Iraq right now as I am writing this is a war crime of epic proportions.
18. Even the Ban Ky Mooned United Nations has figured out that the US has banjaxed peace-keeping efforts in Darfur.
19. Members of the UN’s new human rights watchdog agency (They came up with a new one that is guaranteed not to watch the US too closely…) has agreed in principle to a compromise on how to launch investigations into some of the world’s worst offenders. (See the previous story for a case in point)
20. Poland is threatening the somewhat fragile European Unity.
21. North Korea is closing its nuclear reactor this July. (Right…and Bush is pulling out of Iraq)
22. The US-funded spraying of coca plantation in Colombia near the Ecuador border has done permanent, irreparable damage to the DNA of indigenous people (But just think how many young hipsters it is saving from rehab…)
23. Fidel Castro says his country will defend itself from the US. (Now we need someone to defend the US from the Bush administration. France?)

Guest Mark Bitterman from The Meadow in North Portland talks to us about chocolate and the cocoa butter regulation changes being proposed by the FDA. Weigh in on the issue by following the FDA link on The Meadow website: www.atthemeadow.com
Other guests are local chefs talking about hunger.

The severely contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune (Us Marine Corps Base in North Carolina is in the spotlight again after federal hearings this week.
Joanne Laurier, a journalist for the World Socialist Web Site published an in depth article about the Base’s toxic Legacy today.
KBOO’s Lina Aglialoro has this summary.

After more than a decade of rising costs and declining state funding, Oregon students in higher education are finally hearing some good news from lawmakers in Salem. kboo’s courtney dillard has more:

0615 Get This
Chris Andreae

1. Look out Ruth Reich!: Here comes Oregon’s state review of prison food. Basically, the cuisine is acceptable; it’s the ambiance and the service that really suck.
2. Shoot First, Pay For It Later: Our newly militarized police force is starting to cost us. The family of Jason Porter has launched a $4 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Springfield and the policeman who shot their unarmed, 15 year-old son in the face after a car chase.
3. ‘Ich bin ein Angleno’: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told the National Association of Hispanic Journalists that if Hispanic kids want to learn English faster, they should watch more English language TV.
4. The human rights, civil rights and the progressive community joined with Hispanic leaders yesterday to raise one, united voice of outrage at the immigration raids this week. The fallout from the roundup has occupied everyone’s attention up until yesterday’s press conference at the Mexican embassy. Meanwhile, parents and children search for one another in a wasteland of paperwork and legal barbed wire.
5. Oregon Senators Ron Wyden and Gordon smith offered up their financial disclosure statements on the altar of public scrutiny yesterday. And, Lo! There seemed to be nothing amiss.
6. Textbook Bill: The thing about higher education is the higher price of the books. Students at colleges and universities have been crushed by the cost of their books for years. What Governor Kulongoski is going to do about it is to sign a bill that partially puts the damper on the amoral greed driving companies to exploit a captive market.
7. This is what Measure 37 Looks Like: In Marion County, commissioners ignored their own planning code as well as the scientific review when they approved a 42 house subdivision in a limited groundwater area. Neighbors are already having trouble with their wells and the ground is barely broken on this latest of Oregon’s burgeoning sprawl of rural slums.
8. And now it’s on to the Haditha Massacre. Lance Corporal – and psychopath-in-training – Justin Sharratt told a military court that he thought the three people he murdered in cold blood were insurgents. His statement is unsworn so there won’t be any cross examination. (See, this is what you learn in the military; impeccable moral character and the courage to tell the truth…Then when you get out of the military, you apply what you’ve learned to civilian life…with predictable consequences.)
9. Alberto Gonzales: What can one say really about this guy??? Here’s what: Gonzales has gone and used an interim appointment authority procedure that is already banned by Congress. The ‘Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act’ was passed and sent to the president to be signed on June 4th. Bush has yet to sign it (Tennis elbow?). If the Act is not signed or vetoed in ten days, it expires. That would be…let’s see, yesterday…Stay with me here: The main thing the Act does – make that ‘would have done’ – is overturn a GOP stealth measure that allowed the AG to appoint US Attorneys on an interim basis with congressional confirmation. So Gonzales plans to appoint George Cardona as an interim US Attorney when his stint as Acting attorney runs out…wait for it…tomorrow. We could have stopped all this back in 2000 but the hogs are in the kitchen now…
10. The Supreme Court has ruled against public sector labor unions. (Pure failure on the part of Grover Norquist: There wasn’t supposed to be a ‘public sector’ at this stage in the program…)
11. Bush is trying on his old cheerleader costume for this new $4 billion dollar (Helloooo, contractors!) border patrol proposal intended to sweeten his immigration bill. (At last! We find out whether or not Republicans swallow…)
12. Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell say they ‘envision’ a vote on this compromise immigration bill before the rockets’ red glare on July 4th. (‘Envision’? Don’t these people know not to mix hallucinogens and fireworks unless you really know what you’re doing…some of us do.)
13. Massachusetts has rejected a same-sex marriage referendum. (How about a ‘same-marriage sex referendum’ making it legal to have sex with other people while remaining in the same marriage? It’s just a thought…)
14. A federal judge has finally convicted Klansman James Ford Seale of kidnapping and conspiracy in the 1964 deaths of two black teenagers in southwest Mississippi. (“But everybody knows about Mississippi goddamn” as Nina Simone sings…)
15. Hamas is in control of Gaza, Fatah is control of the West Bank…(Where’s Ban Ky Moon? Where’s the Security Council? Where’s Condoleeza Rice? Ahhhh, yes, of course, celebrating the death of Palestine with the Israeli government in Tel Aviv. When the world’s heavy weights said they were after a ‘two state solution’, little did we know what they were really talking about….)
16. IAEA chief Mohammed al-Baradei says that an attack on Iran would be “madness” (Since when has “madness ever stopped the Bush administration? Of course it’s “madness”, that’s the whole idea…)
17. There’s a new medical school opening in Cuba. A great many of the students are from Bolivia and many of those are indigenous people…
18. Venezuela is buying itself some submarines from Russia. This, just days before George takes Vladimir home to meet his parents in Kennebunkport. . (Barbara to Vladimir: “George Sr. and I just hope you will be able to support our little boy in the manner to which he has become accustomed…”)
19. Striking civil servants and their supporters have shut down most of South Africa’s major cities.
20. Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was elected for a record third term in succession yesterday.
21. Police in the Democratic Republic of Congo have arrested two soldiers suspected of killing a journalist working with Radio Okapi. The station was set up to aid the peace process in the wake of the 1998-2003 war.
22. Iran, Iraq and the US are planning to meet “again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but they’ll meet again some sunny day…”
23. In Oaxaca yesterday, marchers turned out to commemorate last year’s uprising which, for all intents and purposes, is still on the rise.