For those of us who do our best to remain alert to what’s really going on out there, one of the things we watch for every week is called the “Friday night news dump”, a common practice where corporations, agencies and other groups that have news to release that they want minimal coverage of use the time frame of late Friday to break the story. This assures that there will be far less coverage and chatter about whatever unfortunate news they were obligated to share. It’s one prime reason that I make sure TMI is on each Saturday at noon: to have a moment to sift through the Friday releases for information you need to know about.
There are a few times each year that are essentially Friday night news dumps on steroids. These are when you really need to keep a sharp eye out for information that they’d rather you don’t hear about. Christmas Eve is one of those times, and this year’s “Christmas Eve surprise” comes from our very own National Security Agency. The NSA was obligated to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request put in by the ACLU, but being the NSA, they didn’t want you to hear about it. We’ll cover what the release revealed, and compare that with what we’ve learned this year about what the NSA has been up to.
We’ll also discuss how raising the minimum wage, while important, is just one of many reforms needed in order to address the widening inequality gap between the top 1% and the rest of us; another reform, in fact, is one that President Obama *could* put into place at any time, with no input necessary from Congress whatsoever: it is an Executive action alone, and it would possibly boost the economy as much or more as raising the minimum wage to $10.10/hour would.
All that and more on TMI for Saturday December 27, 2014 – the last one of the year – airing live at noon Central on WSUM 91.7 FM in Madison, or simulcast via live stream on wsum.org. Tune in for your Cure for the Common Media!