RadioActive 1/26/12

Issue: Environmental and Social Justice

Broadcast Time:4-4:30PM

Program Topic: Governor LePage’s Proposed Budget Cuts to Department of Health and Human Services programs, including MaineCare

Key Discussion Points:
a) We look at efforts to uncover the coordinated crackdown on Occupy Wall Street encampments across the country, through the US Conference of Mayors.
b) We look at restrictions to those on unemployment insurance, under the proposed bill LD 1725, “An Act to Strengthen the Unemployment Insurance Laws and Reduce Fraud”.
c) And, we check in on the status of the massive cuts to low income social service and healthcare programs, proposed by Governor LePage. 65,000 people could be cut from MaineCare The Appropriations Committee has already agreed to cut funding for “Wrap Around Maine”, which has helped struggling youth turn their lives around.

Guests by name and affiliation:
A) Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, director of The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund : www.justiceonline.org , www.justiceonline.org/owsfoia
B) Jack McKay, director of Food and Medicine : www.foodandmedicine.org
C )Ana Hickes, Senior Policy Analyst at Maine Equal Justice Partners : www.mejp.org, www.reasonablesolutions.com

Call In Program: No
Political Broadcast: No

Host: Meredith DeFrancesco
Engineer: Meredith DeFrancesco

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 1/26/12

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Now that the SOPA and PROTECT-IP bills seem on temporary hold, it’s a good time to take a look at some webs sites that use today’s technologies to make our world more understandable. Here are several:

www.forvo.com – learn to pronounce words in over 280 lanuguages

www.loc.gov/jukebox – the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox site

oxforddictionaries.com/words/the-oec-facts-about-the-language – a look at the most commonly used words in the English language.

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WERU Special – Coal Mining 1/24/12

Broadcast Time: 10am
Program Topic: coal mining in southern West Virginia

Key Discussion Points:
a)Coal companies have assaulted the landscape of southern West Virginia with large-scale surface mining operations, blasting off the tops of mountains. As coal leaves the state, so does the money it generates, leaving poor communities with polluted wells, respiratory ailments, flash floods, and unnecessary miner deaths.
b) Junior Walk of Coal River Mountain Watch shares what he has seen over the past twenty years including citizen efforts to relocate an elementary school, which sits below an impoundment filled with toxic coal waste.
c)Writer Denise Giardina describes growing up in a coal camp, community solidarity with striking mine workers, and her own love of the mountains.

Guests by name and affiliation:
A)Junior Walk, outreach coordinator of Coal River Mountain Watch
B)Denise Giardina

FMI: www.crmw.net, www.denisegiardina.com

Call In Program: n
Political Broadcast:y
Host:Carolyn Coe

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 1/19/12

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

It seems that discussion over the PROTECT-IP act in the Senate and SOPA in the house is heating up. The mainstream press is now all over this story and important Internet services like Wikipedia, Google, WordPress, Reddit and others staged a day of protest over these proposed acts on January 18, 2012. Let’s catch up on where things stand at present and on some of the larger issues that aren’t getting a lot of attention in the regular press.

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