• This was a "best of" show.




• Welcome to new affiliate 92.1 The MIC, Madison.
  
• Guest: Reverend Dr. Jesse Lee Peterson, Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny. What Role is Race going to play in the presidential campaign?
  
• Profits over Humanity - How low can we go? (transcript)
  
• Guest: Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy. Should individuals convicted of terrorist acts against America get the death penalty?
  
• Guest: Rich Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO. AFL-CIO Working Families to McCain: Actions Speak Louder than Words.

Topics, guests, upcoming events, quotes, links to articles, audio clips, books & bumper music.

Friday 04 July '08 show

• This was a "best of" show.

• Welcome to new affiliate 92.1 The MIC, Madison. He was on their early show this morning (podcast).
  
• At the Talkers New Media Seminar, New York City on Friday there was a panel about the state of black radio. One of the panelists said that in most urban areas, African American radio outperforms white talk radio like Hannity, but compared to a dollar per white listener, there is only 60-80 cents.
  
• Guest: Reverend Dr. Jesse Lee Peterson, Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, who was on the panel, recommended by Sean Hannity. Why do urban black stations get fewer dollars than white stations with the same number of listeners? Several reasons, including most liberal blacks are angry towards whites, believing that white folks owe them something, and if somebody does not give it to them they are racist. What Role is Race going to play in the presidential campaign? In New York City Thom and Rob Kall were looking for a taxi, and when they told the first two that pulled up that a mixed couple had been waiting longer, they drove off rather than pick them up. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Thom suggested the disparity on radio is because there is a perception, and in some cases a reality, that African Americans are making 60 cents on the dollar, so advertising is considered worth less, the result of endemic racism in our society. He said he asked cab drivers about discrimination, and was told that some black folks don't pay or don't tip. Thom said unemployment is double among blacks, and even where a black and a white family are earning the same, the white family is likely to have three times as much generational wealth. He said that families with married couples were doing as well as whites, but in black communities 70% of babies are born out of wedlock. Thom said unemployment is the major driver of divorce.
  
  He said the black panelists at Talkers were rude and nasty and mean to him, which is typical among the black community, most black Americans are suffering not from racism, but because of a lack of moral character. Thom said that character is a multigenerational thing that depends on how people are raised, and their parents were raised, and their parents were raised. There were 400 years of institutionalized racism. He said he knew racism, being brought up on a plantation in Alabama, but there was not the hostility of blacks towards blacks then; they had moral character then. More recently most have depended on the government and racist black activists and preachers; they blame white folks. Most blacks support Obama because he is black. Thom said many of them started out supporting Hillary, and did not switch until they heard what he had to say. He said they had been dumb enough to stay on the plantation of the Democratic Party. Thom pointed out that the Democratic Party passed the Civil Rights Act. Jesse said the Democratic Party fought against it. Thom said perhaps in the 30s, but not since the 60s. Jesse said it is still racist, look at what happened between Hillary and Obama.
  
• Bumper Music: How Does it Feel, Avril Lavigne.
  
• Thom:
  

  Isn't it fascinating there's no gene for race? There are genes for things like the color of your skin or the way that your hair is, you know, whether it's curly or whether it's dark or light. There's genes for facial characteristics, individual character. There's thousands of genes but there is no gene for race; we're all humans, with a whole variety of different characteristics and qualities.
  
  It's, I remember years back in 1980 Dick Gregory and I were were going over to Africa for, we had taken over the Namalu prison farm during the war with Idi Amin and turned it into a refugee center and he'd, actually it was in '81, I went over in '80 and set the thing up and he came back in '81 with me as a part of a fund raiser. We were trying to raise, you know, awareness of what was going on. And he asked me this question on the plane and I still, I still think about it from time to time, you know. He said, "if you and I could have a child -- obviously we're too men -- but, you know, if a White woman and a black man or vice versa have a child, it's black. If a White person and an Asian person has a child, its called Asian. If a White person and native American has a child it's called native American. If a White person and a Hispanic has a child it's called Hispanic". He says, "what's wrong with the White race?" And I'm like, "what?" You know, it's like, where, just our whole, we need a fundamental rethinking of, you know, and frankly I think to a large extent a setting aside of this whole idea of race. It needs to happen throughout our society.
  
  This from the Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journal, and this goes to my point that that White families have had 400 years in the United States to establish a culture of wealth, knowledge of wealth, information about wealth; it's passed down from parents to children, and wealth itself. Children of black parents earning in the middle 20% of all families, in other words, the absolute right in the middle of the middle class. Black families in the middle class, White families in the middle class. The children, and we're talking intact families, not the stereotypes of single people on welfare, and by the way, there are more single people on welfare in the United States who are white than are black, but nonetheless, setting that aside, "Children of black parents earning in the middle 20 percent of all families in the late 1960s had a 69 percent chance of earning less than their parents, the study found. For white children, that chance was just 32 percent." So while Reaganomics, while forty years of Ronald Reagan tearing apart the social fabric of the New Deal and destroying America has hit all of us pretty hard, among whites we're just 32% less well off. The children of my generation, the kids coming up now, they're just 32% worse off than their parents were. Among blacks, 69% worse off. That's a huge difference. I mean, that is an absolutely substantial difference.

• Bumper Music: I'm so Glad, Cream.
  
• Article: Minneapolis decrees less idling for better air quality, and less booting of vehicles.
  
• Profits over Humanity - How low can we go? At what point is profit versus humanity the big deal? (transcript)
  
• Article: Today's Must Read, Andrew Tilghman.
  "The system designed to keep corporate cash from secretly slipping into the hands of doctors who do highly influential medical research isn't working very well...
  
  A front-page story in Sunday's New York Times reports that a Congressional probe found some top child psychiatrists earning more than $1 million in often undisclosed consulting fees from drug firms.
  
  What's most troubling about the investigation is that the these individual doctors and their public advocacy for certain drugs for mentally ill children "has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children."
  
  Dr. [Joseph] Biederman is one of the most influential researchers in child psychiatry and is widely admired for focusing the field's attention on its most troubled young patients. Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, his work helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder, which is characterized by severe mood swings, and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children. The Grassley investigation did not address research quality.
  
  Biederman, who works at Harvard Medical School's department of psychiatry, received $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators."
  
• Article: Biotech giants demand a high price for saving the planet.
  "Companies accused of 'profiteering' as they attempt to patent crop genes...
  
  Nine firms have filed at least 532 patents around the world on about 55 different genes offering protection against heat, drought and floods. If granted, the companies would be given control of crucial natural raw material needed to maintain food supplies in an increasingly hungry world...
  
  Small farmers in developing countries will be particularly hard hit by such "climate-change profiteering". Patenting will make the crops expensive and ensure that poor farmers have to buy them every year, by prohibiting them from saving seeds from one harvest to grow for the next."
  
• Article: Report: White House overstated Iraq threat.
  "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even non-existent," committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said at a news conference. "As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.""
  
• Clip:
  "I have talked to Negro mothers. I have heard them explain, try to explain how they tell their children how they can go into a store and buy a loaf of bread, but then can't go into that store and sit at the counter and get a Coca Cola. This is wrong and we have to do something about it.
  
  So, under the circumstances, what do we do? Well, what we do is what the Attorney General of the United States did under the direction of the President: Call in the owners of chain stores and get them to take action."
  Richard M. Nixon. Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon Second Joint Radio-Television Broadcast.
  
• Clip:
  "Well, Mr. Nixon hasn't discussed the two basic questions: What is going to be done and what will be his policy on implementing the Supreme Court decision of 1954? Giving aid to schools technically that are trying to carry out the decision is not the great question. Secondly, what's he going to do to provide fair employment? He's been the head of the Committee on Government Contracts that's carried out two cases, both in the District of Columbia. He has not indicated his support of an attempt to provide fair employment practices around the country, so that everyone can get a job regardless of their race or color. Nor has he indicated that he will support Title III, which would give the Attorney General additional powers to protect Constitutional rights.
  
  These are the great questions. Equality of education in schools. About 2 percent of our population of white people is illiterate; 10 per cent of our colored population. Sixty to seventy percent of our colored children do not finish high school.
  
  These are the questions and these areas that the North and South, East and West are entitled to know what will be the leadership of the President in these areas to provide equality of opportunity for employment, equality of opportunity in the field of housing, which could be done on all Federal supported housing by a stroke of the President's pen.
  
  What will be done to provide equality of education in all sections of the United States? Those are the questions to which the President must establish a moral tone and moral leadership. And I can assure you that if I'm elected President we will do so."
  John F. Kennedy. Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon Second Joint Radio-Television Broadcast.
  
• Bumper Music: Let's Go To Mars, Lenny Solomon.
  
• Article: U.S. Government Sought Customer Book Purchasing Records from Amazon.com.
  "Recently unsealed court records shed more light on the federal government's attempts to secure the online book purchase records of 24,000 Amazon.com customers.
  
  In 2006, federal prosecutors investigating Robert D'Angelo, a Madison, WI official accused of fraud and tax evasion, subpoenaed online book retailer Amazon.com for transaction records on anyone who had purchased books from him through Amazon Marketplace since 1999. Prosecutors said they were hoping to find witnesses to testify against D'Angelo.
  
  Amazon agreed to tell prosecutors what books D'Angelo had sold, but refused to turn over information on the buyers, citing its customers' First Amendment rights to privacy. The government came back with a request for only 120 customers, but Amazon still refused. The case went before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker, who ruled in June to strike down the subpoena on First Amendment grounds.
  
  "The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their knowledge or permission," Crocker wrote in his ruling. "It is an unsettling and un-American scenario to envision federal agents nosing through the reading lists of law-abiding citizens while hunting for evidence against somebody else."
  
  Crocker also expressed concerns that allowing the government to pry into people's reading habits could function as intimidation, thereby depriving them of their right to read what they wish."
  
• Article: Wyo. festival to offer chances to dunk a Democrat.
  "Republicans will get a rare opportunity this weekend to show that the Democrats are all wet. All they need is $5 and a good throwing arm.
  
  Four Democratic candidates for federal office have volunteered to get dunked in chilly water at the annual Jackalope Days festival in Douglas, about 115 miles north of Cheyenne....
  
  The county has about a 4-to-1 ratio of registered Republicans to registered Democrats."
  
• Bumper Music: Not Every man Lives, Jason Aldean (video).
  
• Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News. Great presentation of Joe Madison at Talkers. Bush goodbye speech (President Bush Departs for Europe, June 9, 2008), going to EU, meeting pope, Italy PMs. 3 minute rambling, laundry list. He'd not had his Ritalin or coffee. The House government and reform committee, Henry Waxman, proposed a report for vote Thursday about Abramoff, Ney was not allowed to talk by his jail. Supreme Court decisions, 6-3 says you can sue for work force discrimination, but the government not as much as corporations. Executive order Friday (Executive Order: Amending Executive Order 12989, as Amended, June 9, 2008), federal subcontractors must use the system for workers' eligibility. The Supreme Court will hear the Philip Morris case from Oregon. Federal whistleblower protection can be applied to subcontractors. Bush is trying to strip protections, but the Supreme Court is saying no.
  
• Article: The Rebellion Within: An Al Qaeda mastermind questions terrorism, Lawrence Wright, New Yorker, 02 June 2008.
  "Last May, a fax arrived at the London office of the Arabic newspaper Asharq Al Awsat from a shadowy figure in the radical Islamist movement who went by many names. Born Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, he was the former leader of the Egyptian terrorist group Al Jihad, and known to those in the underground mainly as Dr. Fadl. Members of Al Jihad became part of the original core of Al Qaeda; among them was Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden