LIBERADIO(!)

I can dream, can’t I? If you have a minute today go over to Truthout.org and watch Geoff Millard’s short yet inspiring interview with Mr. Independent, Senator Bernie Sanders. Topics covered include power and big money in Washington and the media, American voters’ feelings of frustration at what they perceive to be a largely ineffective Congress, ending the Iraq war, and that guy in the White House with the veto power.

It’s always a treat when friend of the show John Flansburgh and his band, They Might Be Giants, come to Nashville. They’ll be in town again this Saturday, November 3, at the Exit/In.

• Listen to: The Inauguration of John Flansburgh (May 1, 2006)
  A half hour with one half of TMBG.
• Listen to: Citizen Flansburgh Returns (October 15 2007 )
  Did you know he’s related to muckraker Ida Tarbell? We didn’t either!

Summary: If it’s Monday then it’s the Media Matters for America Smackdown with research fellow, Elbert Ventura. And it’s time to expose yet another gaffe by the King of Sticking his foot in it, Bill O’Reilly. This time he rejects JK Rowling for teaching tolerance. Oh, the horror.

Listen to: October 29, 2007 Media Matters for America Smackdown (42MB, approx 25 minutes)

Summary: In this segment we call on Carah Ong, Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, to brief us on the Bush Administration’s sanctions against Iran, including designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and labeling its elite Quds force as a supporter of terrorism. As you’d expect, the sanctions aren’t what they seem.

Listen to: Carah Ong’s Majestic Presence

Summary: Int his segment we interview Paige La Grone Babcock, the Nashville Community Organizer and National Outreach Coordinator for Mothers Acting Up, a movement of mothers publicly and passionately advocating for the world’s children. Paige very eloquently said that MAU believes that mothers are a giant force to be reckoned with and that together they can work towards prioritizing children in corporate and public policies. And they know how to have fun! Check out the MAU events in Nashville this weekend. It’s a privilege to have them here. Don’t miss it.

Listen to: Mothers Acting Up, the Interview

Summary: It’s our Halloween show and Freddie’s wearing ass-less leather chaps and carrying a wand. Talk about scary. Plus, all those people who think Rudy Giuliani’s a maverick simply don’t understand baseball. And we pick our ticket: Colbert/Dumbledore ‘08!

Listen to: October 29, 2007 Part One (47.38MB, approx 30 minutes)

Because I’m married to “that guy in Lambchop,” I maintain their website and have a Google Alert tagged for the band so that I can keep up with their news stories and blog posts. This morning I came across an entry featuring the band’s song Up with People (Zero 7 Remix). I thought I knew what the song was about but the meaning has now been redefined. In light of what’s happening today in Mexico, I’d say it’s been changed for the better.

From unrulymob.blogspot.com:

Are you listening to the things the children aren’t saying out loud…yet?
Are the children singing songs to themselves?
If you wrote your own lyrics, what story would your song tell?
What song is the Bush administration singing?
And if government officials fail to provide protection, doesn’t that make them enemies of our collective future?

Today’s City Paper column by Steve Gill proves my point that some people would prefer to use the immigration issue as a political football rather than solve the problem or create sound public policy:

[Fred] Thompson has the opportunity to pounce on the issue and make it his, which would give him an advantage in both the Republican Primary as well as the general election. Granted, Thompson’s personality and style do not fit well with the image of a quick, cat-like “pounce.” So perhaps he should be more like a grizzly bear and launch a big pawed “swipe” at Hillary…with the claws out.

Gill also chooses to reference a Rasmussen Reports poll to suggest that the rest of the country is in line with his views:

The Rasmussen poll showed that eighty-two percent (82%) of Virginia voters are opposed to allowing illegal immigrants to receive a drivers’ license. Eighty-six percent (86%) say that illegal immigrants should not be allowed to receive public benefits such as rental and housing assistance. Backing up those views, 79% believe that if a police officer pulls someone over for a traffic violation, the officer should automatically check to see if that person is in the country legally. Sixty-seven percent (67%) believe that illegal aliens discovered in this manner should be deported.

Perhaps instead he should have suggested Fred Thompson focus on what really matters to the American people. According to the Rasmussen’s September 2007 ranking of the issues in order of importance to voters, immigration is issue 9 out of 10 – behind the economy, health care, and education.

1. Gov’t Ethics & Corruption – 78%
2. Economy – 72%
3. National Security/War on Terror – 71%
4. Health Care – 67%
5. Social Security – 63%
6. Education – 63%
7. Iraq – 62%
8. Taxes – 55%
9. Immigration – 53%
10. Abortion – 42%

As a side note, Iraq at #7 really is quite a shock.

HAT TIP: That luscious AC over at VolunteerVoters.com.

The Food Stamp Challenge is over.

The purpose of the challenge, a project co-sponsored by the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Nashville and The Second Harvest Food Bank of Nashville and taken on by several high-profile Nashvillians, was to increase public awareness about the depth and breadth of poverty in Nashville and the rest of the country and create awareness of the difficulty of sustaining a healthy and nutritious diet on a food stamp budget. It was also supposed to raise awareness of the Farm Bill currently before Congress which includes an increase in the allotment of Food Stamps and has not yet passed the Senate.

It’s a big change to have to really think at the grocery store. Sure, if you’ve been brought up to never pay retail, you’re always looking for a bargain. But there’s a difference between choosing to buy the least expensive thing in the store and having to. “What do you mean I can’t buy that $4.00 tube of imported Italian anchovy paste?” You start to feel a little bratty and the sense of entitlement – you know, the one you you didn’t think you had? – thankfully withers away.

But it’s more than that. Once you’re into the challenge you start thinking about all the other elements of your daily lifestyle you take for granted. For instance, if you were on food stamps would you really be able to fill up your gas tank whenever you needed to? Or would you even have a car? Would you have a stash of multi-vitamins that you could take to supplement the lack of nutrition in all the frozen vegetables your eating? Would you have cumin in your cupboard to flavor up your beans? And would you work at a job where you would be celebrating birthdays and holidays with access to free meals and cake and candy? Would you have friends who knew what you were doing and would offer to feed you one night for free? And on the flip side, would your friends really hang out with people that might need food stamps to supplement their weekly meals? Would they, in reality, have the chance to help? Would you have a warm house? Well-taken care of pets? A Phone? In a letter to the editors of the Tennessean, Mary Linden Salter asked even more pertinent questions:

What if your neighborhood was so dangerous that no big-name grocery store would go near it, and you had to travel for miles to get to a store that charged reasonable prices? What if you had nothing but a hotplate to cook on? What if you couldn’t buy in bulk and freeze the leftovers?

Since Nashville’s version of the challenge was announced there’s been some criticism. Most of it leveled at the concept of the middle-class “playing” at being poor, some shining light onto shortcomings in the Farm Bill, and a bit from those that can’t manage empathy for the “can’t pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstrappers” among us. We had one commenter on this website quote Richard Dobbs, director of food stamp policy for Tennessee’s Department of Human Services, who said that the $21.00 food stamp allotment is meant to “supplement rather than replace the entire food budget for most recipients, with earned income, school free-lunch programs, and local food banks filling the gaps.” Of course, he left out the rest of Dobbs’ quote,

“Once upon a time, the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour was supposed to be sufficient to keep a person off food stamps” but that is no longer the case.

“Even the $10 an hour ‘living wage’ approved last week by the Shelby County Commission,” reports John Branston and Mary Cashiola in The Memphis Flyer, “would still make some people eligible for food stamp assistance. For a family of three, the food stamp threshold is a monthly gross income of $1,799, which is slightly more than the $1,600 a month a person would earn working 40 hours a week at $10 an hour.”

The 2007 Farm Bill, passed by the House and approved unanimously by the Senate Agriculture Committee, is now headed for some heated floor debate. The House version includes a $4 billion increase in food stamps. Critics say the bill still hands out too many subsidies and not enough money for nutrition programs. As one of our other commentors pointed out, “Wait a sec…is this the same farm bill that subsidizes the overproduction of corn leading to a glut of high fructose corn-syrup based products?” It is, but it’s also the same Farm Bill that will increase education efforts to promote healthy nutrition. We’ll be keeping an eye on this one as it reaches the Senate floor.