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Please STOP spending so much time on Republican opinions of Obama's policies. They controlled the government for years and ran it into the ground. They destroyed our economy, took us into an illegal and disasterous war, alienated our allies, and made us into the most hated country in the world. Their ideology has now been completely discredited, they lost the election, they are completely irrelevant, and no one cares about what they think.
5 1 -
Too much focus on the economy right now. I know that it's a big issue, but the more coverage of it the more the public is panicking. So many people I know who have stable jobs are reeling in their spending which is just perpetuating the situation.
5 2 -
I am dumbfounded that all anyone ever discusses is how to repair all the defective systems we have in place.They are crumbling for a reason, because they aren't working anymore. Why do we keep looking backwards and talking about how to put bandages on these defective systems rather than looking forward, and taking this amazing opportunity to create new ways of living, working and participating in new profoundly positive, innovative, and human friendly ways of being in this world?
I really don't see anyone with any vision, so far, coming forward on these radio programs.1 0 -
One item I've heard mentioned in the news on NPR over and over is the fear on the part of charitable organizations that the reduction in what person's can claim as a deduction on their income taxes for charitable donations is going to adversely affect what they donate. This is an item that falls under the "makes my blood boil" category. So what these non-profit folks are saying is that people won't give as much if they don't get as much back. Well I guess it was never really GIVING in the first place then.
Maybe this is an example of one of those "sacrifices" we are going to need to make as a people if we are to recover from this economic, becoming societal RECESSION. Thinking a bit less about "Number 1" and more about the country as a whole is one thing I think our President has alluded to. However I wish he'd ask a bit louder and speak more often to the "big picture" and how we all need to be asking ourselves what we can do.
Speaking of the big picture and the discussion today-March 6-during the news roundup hour on Weekday comes the issue of balancing the Washington state budget and where to cut and if to raise taxes somehow. Mention was made by a couple of the panelists that we continue to look at things in the same old way and Joel was pretty much scoffed at by Joni for suggesting that we try to think outside the box and enlist our imagination.
These sacrifices I mentioned earlier are supposed to be voluntary but what inevitably ends up being sacrificed in tough times are basic services for the most vulnerable in our society and education which, once again, affects the most vulnerable both because of economics and youth.
So the woman who called and wondered at the possiblity of University administrators taking cuts in their salary had to defend this action as being at least symbolic, if nothing else. And I wonder why does it need to stop with them? Why aren't our Political leaders really leading and offering to not just forego a payraise, but maybe take a salary cut temporarily. Also why not suggest that those with plenty step up and start some sort of trust(like retired WAMU administrators have started for laid off or soon to be laid off wamu employees) as an alternative to cutting some of these services?
This is definitely the time for practical measures but who's to say that it is either or, as I believe Joel mentioned? Why not let the practical be informed and inspired by imagination?
I will complete my little contribution with this quote that I borrowed from a workshop announcement sent to me by a counselor:
"Poet David Whyte writes about "questions that have no right to go away." C.G. Jung says that problems cannot be solved, only outgrown. Proust asserted that "discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
These times in particular call for as any many of us as is possible to see things with new sets of eyes informed by the perspective that comes with hearts and imaginations that are open and big.
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KUOW blankets Puget Sound, yet 90% of the news is about Seattle, and usually that part north of the canal. Of the remaining 10%, most is spent on the northern suburbs. Discussions about the bridge- tunnel debate interests the rest of us, once. If you spend 5 more minutes on it, perhaps you could figure out why the Legislature isn't allocating $ to it right now. Why is the King County executive the only county executive interviewed monthly? Why is the Seattle mayor the only mayor interviewed monthly? If you set yourself up as a regional station, you need to broadcast regional information. Many, but not all, people who live in the collar counties also work in Seattle. That does not justify exclusivity in your reporting. Two hours spent in Tacoma once a year does not create equal coverage.
2 1 -
On the Friday 10 AM program i would like to hear many news topics considered. Lately discussion has been devoted to two or maybe three news events interesting to the guest reporters. Usually we have been hearing about these all week. Let's hear more from listeners and let's hear about some positive things listeners can do to shape the news.
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There is simple way to ensure the survival of the industry. Take away some of the Billions the petrochemical companys have stolen from us at the pumps and give some of it to the big three to keep them going, in other words, rob the highwaymen to feed the pickpockets.
Merry Christmas
1 0 -
Barak Obama and Middle East foreign policy.
Will Barak Obama continue the policies of the past without bringing change? Will he recognize his own history, and the policies that made his life and current position even imaginable?
Martin Luther King Jr did not say "Let there be two nations, one white and one black living side-by-side in peace and security". If he had, would Barak's opportunity have materialized?
The establishment of Israel, not as a democracy, but as a Jewish democracy correlates to some degree our earlier effort to establish our country as a White Man's Land, a white democracy, complete with exclusion, alienation and violence, along with overwhelming military force and the cleverest justifications for it. Just ask the Native Americans and other people not of the preferred group.
Is it possible let alone advisable to establish an exclusive democracy in a region of diverse people? Israel allows others to vote, yet its leaders declare that Israel must have a Jewish majority to allow this. That places Israel in the business of controlling populations just as we tried to do.
With the Cold War, our president Johnson decided that it would be better to alienate Southern Segregationists and their friends than to continue to promise third world peoples the democracy we ourselves denied to those who looked most like them. When we modernized our democracy to make it inclusive we were able to provide a much more credible promise of democracy to compete with the promises of socialism and communism, and contribute to bringing the cold war to a conclusion.
Our policy in Iraq is for one country in a single democracy. In Palestine we demand the separation of the people into different countries. Then we ridicule the Muslims because they just don't get it!
I know that almost all who read this will be outraged at my words. But shall we continue to completely ignore issues that may be obvious to some while the overwhelmingly popular policies of the past accumulate an ever longer and greater record of failure? Why is there broader discussion of this issue in the Israeli press than ours? Why is there a broader range of opinions in the Knesset than in our Congress? What is our responsibility to open up the discussion?
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I'd like mayoral candidates to answer any or all of these questions:
Do you think it's a good idea to allow strip clubs near our professional stadiums?
Do you think strip club developments near Safeco and Quest Field improves the business climate of these areas?
Do you think redirecting strip club development away from where our youth congregate is an example of responsible government?
Are you will to urge City Council to clairify the current strip club zoning laws to include "stadiums" in the definition of "parks" thereby requiring strip clubs to be at least 800 feet away?
Would you hold your victory party in a strip club?
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I am an avid follower of NPR on the radio and on the web and I am always interested in local news stories. Here is a really positive local success story everyone will appreciate:
Local Autism Breakthough!
Children with Autism struggle to learn language and social communication. Autism now affects 1 out of every 150 children and because there is no known cure, parents are devastated when they hear this diagnosis. But now there is hope! A Bellevue, Wa. based company, Neuropath Learning, has found a breakthrough therapy for Autism. Neuropath Learning creates web based, real world, education programs for children. Children with autism who have used Neuropath Learning programs have made some very note worthy gains including development of expressive and receptive language , focus and attention, social communication, they have even been able to come of their medication! Watch these video testimonials and visit www.neuropathlearning.com find out more.....Neuropath Learning is currently offering FREE trials!
Parent testimonial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLZ1XsXmnSc
Autism teacher testimonial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBM0GOzem2s
Sutapa Ray (sutapa@neuropathlearning.com)
Bellevue, WA0 0 -
I'm amazed how KUOW is incapable of questioning any of the reigning assumptions of mechanistically liberal Seattle; the critical faculty is asleep of perhaps dead at your station. So let me offer this critique of your Friday program here (re: the Elly DeWolfe Hale story - her family was involved in the 19th century slave trade), to wit:
It is always good when white folks and black folks dig in and try to understand each other. Less good is the white liberal belief that they can fix the present by apologizing for a past they didn't participate in. The present offers more than enough opportunity for whites to do something to try to fix race relations (to dust off an old time civil rights phrase). I wonder, does Elly DeWolfe Hale - and by extension, her other family members - send her kids to private school or public school? Do any of the DeWolfe Hales attend a black church? Do they contribute to inner city Boys and Girls Clubs? After school study programs? Rich and guilty, there is no limit to the real-time, concrete gestures the DeWolfe Hales could perform to positive effect.
Once you go down the road of believing apologies for the sins of ancestors will advance racial harmony you go down a road that never ends or ends in a kind of make believe fantasy of racial harmony. For starters the DeWolfe Hale's apologies will be incomplete without the concomitant apologies of the descendants of interior African tribal chiefs who arranged for the kidnapping and shackling of other tribesmen and women, or without the apologies of Muslim slavers, or without the apologies of the descendants of the slave ship insurance executives. How about the apologies of the descendants of the ship slaver second mates, or those of their helmsmen? The water boy? The point is that western civilization promoted an evil trade that stood against everything it stood for. The very least America could do was stop it and she did at the cost of a war that took out 600,000 young American lives.
This apology movement, in reality, buries the heroism, and yes, majesty of African Americans' sojourn in the new world. It presupposes that blacks have been just sitting around waiting for whites to apologize - that something like an apology would complete or round off their experience until now. It denies blacks' amazing self-creation and their efforts to, as Clive James said of Duke Ellington, carve the rhythms and phrases of their forgotten ancestors into the American ear - and soul. It wrongly presupposes that whites have something to bestow (guilty whites always want to have something to bestow). If these guilty white descendents could be magically transported back to, say, 1864 to apologize to soon-to-be ex-slaves I think those soon-to-be ex-slaves would mock them: hey baby, we're here and we made it and we did it without you and your apologies.
But that is the past. The present cries out for real gestures of commitment and sacrifice that will heal racial wounds. Large sentimental gestures will not do this. Besides, grand sentimental gestures have a way of always redounding to assuage the guilt of guilty whites but somehow leaving blacks where they were. I mean, if you’re determined to go to a West African village to apologize at least have the good grace to do it and then roll up your sleeves and dig a village water well. Don’t just stand around looking glum and white and guilty. (See the video: Traces of the Trade)
And for you guilty whites who believe in running around apologizing for past sins, BEWARE: don’t you dare come around telling me that my black son got a “C” on his report because of the oppressive past institution of American slavery. If you do I’ll punch you in the nose and I think any parent – black or white – should do the same.
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With the release of the Senate and House state budgets, I have heard multiple segments discussing the potential effects on UW and WSU. I would also like to see some coverage of the impact to the Community and Technical College system. These two-year schools serve a population hard hit by the economy. How will reducing services such as GED classes and worker retraining programs impact our state?
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I had been very excited about Earth Hour this past weekend, thinking it would be really cool and talked about. I was so disappointed when I didn't hear about it in any media except a small mention on the front page of the Seattle Times on the day it was to happen - which I thought was too late for people to plan. I think it was observed throughout the world, but much less than I had hoped and I didn't understand why it wasn't being talked up in the media.
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Yes Hi Steve, With Gil Kerlikowske our new drug Czar, the "war on drugs", what I think is a war on Americans, would be a topic that is not under enough discussion. What is the real reason, that there is not more discussion? Maybe input from Gil Kerlikowske on his experience with the system in his own family, and have Norm Stamper ex-police chief way in. Maybe Rick Steves, for an international view. What really makes my blood boil is that the media just reported about 1600 people getting killed by drug gangs in one town in Mexico. The only response to the solution is to sent more guns to fight them. Is there no other solution? If the drugs were legal and controlled, the Al Capones of the drug cartels would not have anything to protect. Who is really profiting from fostering and promoting fear of drugs. Thank God for public media. Public media only works if people speak out without fear. Please check out the below web site.
Thanks, Greg Martz
http://www.leap.cc
0 0 -
Why is Puget Power asking it's customers to contribute to their "Green Power" campaign when they should be building their own
green power.0 0 -
What are the policies of the Federal Government that are serious enough to be "deal breakers", for significant numbers of Americans? To me, there are three issues. Our wars of empire killing millions in wars that are not self-defense, the concentration of wealth maintained in this country, and the unsustainability and environmental destruction. These things, I can no longer accept and have broken from my country, I oppose my country. Do you understand this question? Now, the 2nd question: why, exactly, cannot we have a conversation about devolution of power from the Federal Government? They've had success with this in the UK and other places.
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Why do economists suggest that it is bad for taxpayers to “save” their tax breaks at the same time they insist we need to recapitalize banks? Put another way, when taxpayers save, don’t THEY recapitalize banks? Don’t they recapitalize the banks with the best mix of services and locations for them?
Why don’t we hear anything about Credit Unions - the other players in the financial system? Why can’t depositors and businesses turn to depositor-owned Credit Unions (with relatively stable business models) as an alternative to banks (which have needed government money to stabilize following pursuit of risky growth strategies)?
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This is a general complaint I have about Steve Scher's 9 am weekday show, not related to the current economy. (By the way, I agree with S. Bobbins's post on that.) Having recently moved from New York City (where I was an avid WNYC listener) to Seattle, I am disappointed in the choice of material covered in the 9 a.m. weekday show. Honestly, I usually turn it off in disgust. Why the focus on such petty and silly topics as city laws on gardens extending onto sidewalks, whether to weed or not in the wintertime... and during the snow storm, an actual call-in discussion on "why cats and dogs love the snow"? How about the time he asked the public, "What coupons are you clipping these days?" This is fluff, and that's not what I want when I am starting my day. Why not more important topics such as, for example, battles between environmentalists and corporations in the region, redlining, the controversial push for a new jail in Seattle, racial profiling, homelessness, domestic violence...? I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I suggest that Steve Scher tune in to Brian Lehrer's morning weekday show on WNYC.ORG to get a sense of more relevant types of subjects that I imagine more people than just myself want to hear about.
2 2 -
I would like to see a discussion around the state legislature looking at changing the law that ferries must be built in the state of Washington. To jeopardize our ability to receive federal funding assistance, especially as part of the upcoming stimulus package, is irresponsible! We have a ferry crisis in this state and it is jeopardizing the economy of rural western Washington. Like it or not, the ferry system is part of our state highway system and is a major transportation route. FUND IT SO THAT IT WORKS! AND IF A LAW IS STANDING IN THE WAY OF FUNDING IT, THEN CHANGE THE LAW! This is ridiculous!
I sympathize with Seattle metro area feeling isolated by the closing of I-90 over the pass and I-5 south of Seattle. It is frightening to be isolated AND it jeopardizes the economy when normal transportation access routes are cut off. This is something which the Olympic Peninsula, Whidbey Island, and the San Juan Islands face every day! One thing goes wrong and you are cut off!0 0 -
The flooding.
1. The flooding in many area is quoted as "worst ever", but most of these areas I have seen flooded to higher levels. Mostly it just seems to be people surprised that their new housing development was built in the flood plain. But some of it seems to be the down stream flood plains being filled in (like near South center). Is there someone responsable to assure there is no chain flooding and houses are not allowed in flood plains?
2. Every few years the major interstate high ways flood at the same points shutting down the entire state. It would seem rather easy to fix some of these (not cheep). For example at Chailus (sp) the road could easily hug the hill and be 50 feet higher.0 0 -
You should cover the issue of global warming from the point of view of leading climate scientists like James E. Hansen who can tell your listeners truthfully what global warming means and its impact on the planet, the plant and animal species, and the human race. Locally the profs at UW's Climate Impacts Group would be good resources to call on in regards to this subject. You should stop covering the issue from a columnist "he said she said" point of view as if there are no proven scientific facts about the subject. You should also be telling your listeners truthfully the impact of their choices and behaviors on the planet and the human race and what they can do to make a difference.
1 1 -
US Aid to Isreal: (1.)1949-1973 = $3.1 Billion; (2.)1974-2008 =$80.0 Billion...
(3.)source: Harvard Isreal Review:
(4.)URL: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hireview/content.php?type=article&issue=spring04/&name=feith
(5) in 1973 I traveled to isreal, the tour guide I had was a palastian anthropoligist who had worked on the dead sea scrolls: as we got acquainted he drove our tour bus past a home in bethelehem, and informed us Menachan Began was a soldier (Terrorist) who invaded his home after WWII and removed his family and moved an isrealie family into it.
So who is the terrorist? perspective...Would like you to discuss subsidy of war between US aid and arab support of palastians... The HIR gives a perspective.
0 0 -
Vivian Schiller's jump from NYT.com to CEO of NPR.
What is the future of the New York Times and other newspapers? They are running out of money, are they running out of time? Will they die before they have a chance to reinvent themselves? What will happen to the news as we know it without newspapers like the NYT?
Dave Winer thinks we need to change the way we do news.
Meanwhile I'm worried it will all be over before we know it - the New York Times has <$50M in cash and a note coming due for about $400M. New York Times Revenues Plummet.
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Death of newspapers. Newspapers should be a source of information to the populace. UNBIASED information. As in just the FACTS of a situation.
Instead, today's newspapers are filled with opinionated reporters doing what bloggers are entitled to do but are increasingly being depended upon NOT to do: provide the simple facts of a story.
When did answering the "who/what/when/where/why and how" of a story, become passe? From what I see, what passes for journalism today seems to be simply a means to push one's own (or one's employer's...or the subject of the story's) agenda/bias. I believe the rise of fact-checking websites is directly tied to the lack of objective reporting found in the our newspapers, radio and television. (Perhaps leading readers to question why they should bother reading them?!)
Journalism today seems to me more akin to ADVERTISING when it is not blatantly EDITORIALIZING. But this shouldn't be a surprise: Journalism and Public Relations are in the same department at universities across the country.
I'd like to hear what your panel thinks about these comments. Thanks!
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BIG 3 shutting down factories for extended periods. Car manufacturers asking for bail out money. What do these two items have in common? NO CARS BEING SOLD.
Two reasons for no car sales, perception and reality.
The perception - (driven by the media) is that the BIG 3 have no cars to offer, only TRUCKS and SUVs (neither of which seem to offer economical transportation).
The reality - the economy is failing. People have less money to spend.
The FIX - do NOT give "Detroit" money! Give money to potential car buyers. People who want an economical car because their older car needs replacing. Or they are tired of pouring money into gas guzzlers.
GIVE AWAY CARS - using the U.S. tax laws (no voting or politicking required). Offer a $25,000.00 tax REBATE to anyone who wants a fuel efficient car made ONLY by the BIG 3. Existing inventory would count. Buyers
who do not have the credit rating to qualify could be financed by banks or other lenders in exchange for their tax credit coupons and a minimal monthly finance fee.FEED DETROIT USING BUYERS - This idea would generate INSTANT car sales. The 15 - 20 BILLION dollars Detroit now "requires" would instead be spent as car purchases not loan bail outs. The incentives to build more, better, smaller, efficient cars would be driven by the public, not mandated by government which would increase the returns on investment.
WIN WIN - Please think about this idea. Many believe it has merit. WE the people need immediate fixes, not more corporate welfare. PLEASE HELP!
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