http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/44093

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/02-5

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/070109b.html

President Obama held a town hall meeting on healthcare in the White House recently, with Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer on hand, pretending to be journalists.  Single payer advocates were excluded, but corporate interests were, once again, very well represented.  A woman in a bright yellow jacket was seated on the front row of the event in the East Room of the White House could be the poster child for corporate health care interests. 

Local activists working for single-payer healthcare are the main focus of this week's show, but we start with a little coverage of WMD in Kansas City. 

Most people don't know that a plant in Kansas City produces about 85% of the components for the United States' nuclear weapons arsenal.  The General Services Administration and the National Nuclear Security Administration have teamed up with private developers,  compliant Kansas City politicians, the KC Planned Industrial Expansion Authority (PIEA)- a state chartered quasi-city agency - and the Lathrop & Gage law firm  to come up with a $600 million + Kansas City tax-abated, PIEA-owned new WMD components plant built in a soybean field they contrived to have designated as "blighted."

We have some short excerpts from the latest PIEA hearing, where boosters speak and power-point at length, and critics, including a former employee charging poor work place hazard handling are removed by security.

After that, we listen to Dee Berry and Mary Lindsay, local activists with Heartland Healthcare for All talking about why Single Payer Healthcare is the only healthcare 'reform' worthy of the term, and what they are doing to get the word out.

Links and contact info for Single Payer:

Mary Lindsay - citizenpower@aol.com

Dee Berry  - dberry7@sbcglobal.net

Physicians for a National Health Plan - www.pnhp.org

Heartland Healthcare For All - www.heartlandhealthcareforall.com

Single Payer Action - www.singlepayeraction.org

Links for Kansas City WMD Plant:

http://www.nukewatch.org/KCNukePlant/index.html

http://kcnukeswatch.wordpress.com/page/3/

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Tell Somebody is a weekly public affair program airing on Tuesdays at 6pm Central Time on 90.1 FM KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio, podcasting via the iTunes store, and www.tellsomebody.us

Tom Klammer - host - Tell Somebody

www.tellsomebody.us

comments or questions?  send an email to mail@tellsomebody.us

 The FCC is seeking public input as they formulate a national broadband strategy. They are seeking public comments until July 8th –

The media reform advocacy group Free Press recently released a paper: Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a National Broadband Strategy . The paper argues that America’s broadband failure is rooted in poor policy decisions made by the FCC. Free Press believes the FCC must learn from their past mistakes in order to create a national broadband strategy that finally delivers fast, open and affordable Internet to everyone.  

We'll hear from Free Press' Campaign Director Timothy Karr.

http://freepress.net/files/changing_media.pdf

http://www.freepress.net/summit

Dismantling Digital Deregulation: Toward a National Broadband Strategy 

On June 10th we read in the Kansas City Star that former U.S. Representative Karen McCarthy is suffering from Alzheimer's Disease and is now living in a area nursing home.  We'll repeat part of an interview McCarthy gave to Tell Somebody last summer where she explains how she arrived at her decision to vote "no" to the bill giving Bush the green flag to invade Iraq.

Tell Somebody is a weekly public affairs program airing at 6pm Central Time Tuesdays on 90.1 FM KKFI in Kansas City, Missouri, streaming live around the world at www.kkfi.org.  You can subscribe to the podcast for free at the iTunes store. 

Tom Klammer

www.tellsomebody.us

David Himmelstein, M.D. — Harvard Medical School, co-founder, Physicians for a National Health Plan is the guest on this edition of Tell Somebody.

The following came in a press release from Public Citizen:

Two-Thirds of Bankruptcies Are Medically Related; National Health Insurance Needed Now

Statement of Sidney Wolfe, M.D., Director, Health Research Group at Public Citizen

A nationwide study showing that 62 percent of bankruptcies in 2007 were related to medical bills or illness underscores the need for a single-payer health care system.

The study, conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School and Ohio State University (David Himmelstein, Steffie Woolhandler, Elizabeth Warren and Deborah Thorne) found the high bankruptcy rate even though more than three-quarters (78 percent) of the people having medical bankruptcies had health insurance - mainly private insurance - at the start of their illness. It is astounding that medically related bankruptcies increased by half from 2001 to 2007 - well before the current economic crisis.

Dr. Himmelstein, one of the authors of the study, will talk about it and why a single payer plan is the only solution that makes sense.

Dr. Himmelstein practices and teaches primary care internal medicine at the Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard. He was a co-founder of PNHP and one of two National Coordinators for the first five years of the organization. Dr. Himmelstein co-authored PNHP’s original proposal, its long-term care proposal, and its proposal for financing a national health program.

More information at www.pnhp.org

Tell Someobdy!!!!

www.tellsomebody.us

What is the true cost of Chevron? 

At http://truecostofchevron.com/, we read that

"Chevron shareholders were given a full account of the true costs of Chevron's global operations by a delegation of representatives of Chevron affected communities from the across the nation and around the world. Outside supporters filled the entryway, closing Chevron's front gate with a vibrant rally.

Representatives from Nigeria, Ecuador, Richmond and the Philippines, were joined inside by those representing communities from Burma, Kazakhstan, Iraq and Alberta to present to shareholders an alternative annual report, The True Cost of Chevron."

On this edition of Tell Somebody, I talk with Antonia Juhasz, principal author of the alternative report.

And, in a blog on the Women in Media and News website, WIMN founder and Executive Director Jennifer L. Pozner asks Will Media Report Dr. George Tiller’s Murder as an Act of Terrorism?

 http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=1264

I talked to Pozner about media coverage of Dr. Tiller's murder last week and about media coverage of related domestic terrorism generally.