8 O'Clock Buzz

After a successful tour of comedy clubs in New York City and environs, Sasha Rosser has returned to Madison and is ready to make her first comedy album featuring a recorded show at the Crucible this Friday evening.  Sasha joins the 8 O’Clock Buzz and host Tony Castañeda to talk about her recent tour, tomorrow night’s show, and most importantly to wish her mother a happy birthday.  There are two scheduled shows, the first at 7:00 PM and the second at 8:30 PM.  Don’t miss out or the joke’s on you.

Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash

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After Janet Protasewicz was sworn as a new State Supreme Court Justice at the beginning of August, the liberal majority began to push for hearings on issues they thought important to bring to the front of the judicial docket.  This led to the dismissal of the Director of State Courts, Randy Koshnick, who they felt would unnecessarily delay action on these issues.  This led to a backlash from conservative justices on the Court and within the State Legislature, and now there’s even talk of impeachment proceedings of the new justice.  Matt Defour, Wisconsin Watch Statehouse Bureau Chief, joins the Thursday Morning 8 O’Clock Buzz to discuss recent events, and provide some insight into what the future holds for the Court.

 

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

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Somewhere around 350 million gallons of water used to quell the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant meltdown in 2011, and Japan has started discharging that contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Cindy Folkers, Radiation and Health Hazard Specialist at Beyond Nuclear, talks about the issues, including failure of testing and disclosure of all the radioisotope contaminants, the effectiveness of “filtering” performed on the water, bioaccumulation of the isotopes, and more.

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Do you like live music? How about live Rhumba and other fun dances?

Put on your dancing and toe-tapping shoes and come to the “Rhumba for Rainbow” fundraiser this coming Friday, September 8th, 2023 from 7pm to midnight at Varsity Hall at Union South. Executive Director of the Rainbow Project, Sharyl Kato, talks with Jan Miyasaki about the services of the organization in preventing and caring for the mental and physical health of children suffering from abuse, neglect, and domestic violence. For more information about the dancers and musical guests of this fun event, visit the website.

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“A manifesto to deconstruct the last 50 to 100 years of environmental protection and clean energy” — that’s how Kevin Curtis, Executive Director of the National Resources Defense Council Action Fund, describes the 1000+ page document, “Mandate for Leadership 2025, The Conservative Promise”, produced by the GOP as their guidelines on changes in the first 180 days of the next Republican presidency. Curtis describes in detail portions of the “Battle Plan”, from the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.

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Today on the Tuesday 8:00 Buzz with 1neofmani (Breyon Sommerville) and Tara Wilhelmi, Ashley Moseberry from Alkeme Brand joins us to talk about her business planning and producing events, making a difference, and connecting with community.

Find Alkeme Brand on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/creativeconnectionsevents/ or Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alkemebrand/ 

Alkeme’s Free Unity Garden Party on September 23rd with Arts+Literature Lab: https://www.facebook.com/events/305398322008469/

Events and shout-outs:

Mad Lit – Friday 9/8 at the top of State Street: https://ourgmmc.org/madlit/

Rob Dz Spoken Word Night – 9/14 at Cafe Coda: https://cafecoda.club/2023/01/21/spoken-word-night-hosted-by-rob-dz-every-2nd-thursday-of-the-month-7-pm-10/ 

UJAMAA  Black Business Night – 9/10 at Breese Stevens Field

Music playlist: https://spinitron.com/WORT/pl/17836562/Tuesday-8-O-Clock-Buzz 

Listen in Madison at 89.9FM or online anywhere at wortfm.org.  Support your community radio with a donation online at wortfm.org!

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On the eve of Madison East High School‘s first day of the 2023-24 school year, Thursday 8 O’Clock Buzz host Tony Castañeda is joined by Special Ed teacher and Madison East’s union rep, Mike Kovanda. Mike gives Tony the lowdown on the staffing situation at East (improved, but still insufficient), construction updates (long overdue) and how a stretch of leadership instability in the wake of Milt McPike’s retirement fuels instability among the staff and further undermines public education on the whole. Despite the challenges this, and all schools face, Mike loves East High School, its community and staff and is incredibly excited to welcome the students back over the next several days.

Photo courtesy of Scott Webb on Unsplash.

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Taking advantage of a recently passed state law, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has transferred control of the Houston Independent School District to the state’s Texas Education Agency. Claiming the takeover was “unfortunate but necessary”, Abbott replaced the district’s superintendent and elected school Board members, and in a move that adds insult to injury (and seems Orwellian), fired librarians and closed libraries, converting them to multipurpose computer rooms to be used, in part, for discipline. Thursday 8 O’Clock Buzz host Tony Castañeda welcomes David DeMatthews, associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, to learn more about the takeover and its potential to cause longterm negative outcomes.

Photo courtesy of Tim Gouw on Unsplash.

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Within days of the fire which leveled the town of Lahaina in Maui, predatory realtors and lawyers were trying to take advantage of local residents who had just lost everything. Troy Andrade, Professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa William S. Richardson School of Law, has recently penned an article “Maui and Predatory Realtors and Lawyers“. In this interview, he speaks in detail with Jan Miyasaki about not only recent events, but how Hawaii has been, and continues to be, exploited by capitalist interests and greed.

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In his recent article in the Institute for Policy Studies entitled “Oligarchy Has Arrived. Congress Must Take Notice — and Act! An innovative tax-the-rich proposal now before lawmakers would reverse the wealth concentration that’s suffocating our democracy“, Associate Fellow Bob Lord describes the rationale behind the proposed “Oligarch Act”. This proposal, effective only on individuals making more than one thousand times the median annual income, would be an annual progressive tax from 2-8% of the individual’s total wealth.

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