• "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont.


• 'Anything Goes' Friday.


• Show Your Support for Single-Payer Healthcare--HR 676 Today!

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

Friday 30 January '09 show

• "Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. The economy. Ireland. Finland. America. Bush kept saying it was a robust economy, that the fundamentals were sound. Health care - in stimulus? It has funding for projects that are ready to go, not new legislation, some of the programs will help. Credit companies increasing interest rates to maintain profitability on accounts, and applying retroactively. They want to be able to change charges whenever they want, and many are associated with banks that are being bailed out. Bring back usury laws. The Glass Steagall Act. Taft-Hartley. Corporate personhood. Campaign finance. They will bring up significant labor law, Employee Free Choice Act. Bernie believes in public finding of elections.
  
  Are we seeing collapse of global capitalism? Arrest Wall Street and rescind the Bush tax cuts? We need investigation, process, trial, which we should be moving towards. He wrote to Harry Reid yesterday about a real investigation. Congressional indignation about executive jets? What they must do in tarp. Don't say "you guys" when referring to Senate or Congress, there are a variety of people there. How elections make a difference. They passed Lily Ledbetter act. Just last night at 9 the Senate passed SCHIP which Bush vetoed twice. Defense spending too high? How to break the hold on Solis? With 60 votes.
  
• Bumper Music: We'd Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover, from "Annie". This song has been omitted from recent versions of the show.
  
• Bumper Music: United We Stand, Brotherhood of Man (video).
  
• Bumper Music: America, Simon & Garfunkel.
  
• Want to stimulate the economy? We need a national health care program. Every other industrialized country gets it, has it. We need solid roots. Make business competitive, easier for small businesses to start, produce a healthier and more productive populace, happier populace. Human infrastructure is very important. Also physical, education. Preferably single payer, but there are other suggestions. Rant.
  
• Thom's blog for the day:
  

  Show Your Support for Single-Payer Healthcare--HR 676 Today!
  
  On Sunday, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said on C-SPAN that he would oppose any comprehensive health care reform in 2009. And the next day, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers reintroduced HR 676, the single-payer health bill that was co-sponsored by 93 members of Congress last year, including James Clyburn.
  
  Congressman Clyburn needs to know that he cannot take single-payer health care off the table. So on Friday, Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) together with its allies in the progressive community have organized the Single-Payer Moment. We need to flood Congressman Clyburn's DC office with your phone calls asking him to keep single-payer on the table and to co-sponsor HR 676.
  
  Air America and progressive radio talk show host Thom Hartmann will be helping us get the word out. He's heard live and he will be taking calls (866-303-2270) about single-payer healthcare in the last 2 hours and urging folks to do 2 things:
  
  Call Congressman Clyburn and ask him to whip up support for HR 676: 202-225-3315
  Call your member of Congress and ask that they support and co-sponsor HR 676: 202-224-3121
  
  For more information about HR 676 and TODAY"S Single-Payer Moment go to www.pdamerica.org and www.afterdowningstreet.org

  
  
• Article: First-of-Its Kind Study: Medicare for All (Single-Payer) Reform Would Be Major Stimulus for Economy with 2.6 Million New Jobs, $317 Billion in Business Revenue, $100 Billion in Wages. California Nurses Association / National Nurses Organizing Committee.
  
• Quote: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
  
  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government." Declaration of Independence.
  
• John Conyers has introduced national health care bills for several years. Clyburn is usually a good guy, done great work, but in CSPAN interview suggested "incrementalism might be better". Thom thinks we can chew this. They need to know we have their back. Call Congress, thanks and please support it now. He is the number 3 guy. Call senators even if Republican. The Nation, John Nichols who, like Thom, is on the PDA advisory board. Calnurses study. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - which involves health. People called in throughout the rest of the show with their experience of health care in other countries as well as in the US.
  
• It's FDR's birthday.
  
• Quote: "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." "One Third of a Nation": FDR