LIBERADIO(!)

You can see the new and improved Metro Council website here.

What’s really cool is the subscriber function that sends automatic email updates so you can keep track of council business. Sweet!

But due to some personal business, we’ll have to wait until Monday, 9/12, for our next show. Thanks for checking on us…Love, Mary & Freddie

Monday’s Guest: Fresh from reporting from Hurricane Katrina’s wake, we welcome Clay Risen , Assistant Editor for The New Republic. Risen holds a B.A. from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. Among other publications, his work has appeared in The American Prospect, Foreign Policy, Metropolis, The New York Times, and The New York Observer. He has been with the magazine since January 2003.

The Larger Shame By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

“The U.S. Census Bureau reported a few days ago that the poverty rate rose again last year, with 1.1 million more Americans living in poverty in 2004 than a year earlier. After declining sharply under Bill Clinton, the number of poor people has now risen 17 percent under Mr. Bush.

If it’s shameful that we have bloated corpses on New Orleans streets, it’s even more disgraceful that the infant mortality rate in America’s capital is twice as high as in China’s capital. That’s right – the number of babies who died before their first birthdays amounted to 11.5 per thousand live births in 2002 in Washington, compared with 4.6 in Beijing.”

more…

NEW: Hands On Nashville knows that volunteers will be needed to provide goods and services to the hurricane victims relocated to Nashville. They have prioritized volunteer needs into short, intermediate and long-term anticipated needs. More info here.

The Nashville Area Chapter of the American Red Cross has opened a shelter for victims of Hurricane Katrina who are stranded in Davidson County.
Contact the Red Cross at 1-866-HELP-NOW or click here to donate. Nashville Public Library list of relief organizations. Unitarian Universalist Association website to volunteer housing or request housing here. Moveon.org’s emergency national housing drive to connect empty beds with hurricane victims online at: http://www.hurricanehousing.org

The debate over Kanye West’s statements last night during the Concert for Hurricane Relief, rages on here and here.

But the point that Kanye (and others who voice the same sentiment) is missing is that President Bush doesn’t “hate” black people, he “hates” poor people. And by “hate” I mean he doesn’t understand them nor does he care to help them. President Bush’s disregard for the poor is absolute while he worships at the altar of supply-side economics (hat tip: Bradley Whitford). The majority of the people suffering in New Orleans were left behind by this country a long time ago. They live in abject and systemic poverty.

The Bush administration’s decision to focus on tax cut after tax cut (let’s just watch and see if the debate on the estate tax continues this week in congress) while chopping at the budget for programs meant to help the poor is the debate to focus on…after we get the Red Cross the money they need to help, of course.

We thought there was a line the right-wing smear-merchants wouldn’t cross but we were wrong. They vilified Cindy Sheehan. We thought there was a line that the Bush Administration “apologists” wouldn’t cross, but again we were wrong. They continue to make excuses for the lack of leadership while the victims of Hurricane Katrina languish in their destroyed city, begging for help. To these people we say:

Imagine the President is vacationing during the time a major metropolitan area prepares for a Category 5 hurricane to hit.

Imagine the President is still on vacation and playing a round of golf on the day a category 5 hurricane slams into a large part of his country leaving panic and devastation in its wake.

Imagine it’s the day after the hurricane hits and the levees that protect the major metropolitan area break creating even more devastation and the President decides to stay on vacation and gleefully pretend to play guitar while posing for a photo op with a country music star.

Imagine the President’s administration, during his first term, turning down requests from the state of Louisiana for the funds to build the levees surrounding the city of New Orleans so they can withstand the Category 5 hurricane that scientists know will inevitably hit the city.

Imagine FEMA warning that a hurricane striking New Orleans was
one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. and the President’s administration deciding to cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for an opportunistic war.

Imagine the President giving an interview to Diane Sawyer a full three days after the hurricane saying that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

Imagine the President’s Director of Federal Emergency Management Agency saying, a full four days after the hurricane, that he had not heard reports of people in the Superdome without food and water when the reports are pouring out of the city on every news channel and in every newspaper.

Imagine it’s day 5 after a category 5 hurricane hits a major metroplitan area and people that survived the initial storm and the floods are now dying of dehydration and heat exposure in the streets and the President says in a brief state that morning that “we’ll deploy the assets necessary to get the situation under control” because the assets necessary to get the situation under control have clearly not yet been deployed.

Now, imagine that President is Bill Clinton.

“The word in Tennessee is that Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, has presidential aspirations. I find that interesting. Perhaps he can run on the success he’s had throwing sick people off of Medicaid.

Thanks to Mr. Bredesen’s leadership, Tennessee is dumping nearly 200,000 residents, some of them desperately ill, from TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program. Cindy Mann, a research professor and executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute, concisely characterized the governor’s efforts:

“What he’s decided to do is save health care costs simply by not giving people health care.”

How’s that for a solution to a tough public policy issue?”

More from Bob Herbert in today’s NY Times here.

Also, Malcom Gladwell writes about “The Moral Hazard Myth” in the New Yorker. The real moral hazard is, of course, the difficulty most Americans have in obtaining, or keeping, affordable health care. When did taking care of our people become a chore? A commodity? Not a priority?