Public Affairs Program; Jello Biafra

Joining us in the studios this morning is Mr. Jello Biafra. Jill is the former leader of the legendary punk band the Dead Kennedys and he's a well-known social and political critic as well. Thanks for coming in Joe. Hi there. You're also a former Boulder resident but own raised him escaped. I don't know how long it's been since you've been in Boulder but have you had a chance to have your photo taken by our new photo radar system. I have no idea it's possible I saw one of those cameras today. Most cameras are in place all over the place in other countries like Austria and Germany and Australia. And people put up with them I've noticed a lot of cameras on California freeways and nobody seems to want to tell anybody what they're for. So they think maybe maybe this is one way to help the unemployed in the homo Sibby to get them all into rooms and have them spy on everyone else through surveillance you know one one half of the state watches the other and then you have full employment. Wanted to know if you saw the ad it was last Friday in The New York Times it was an interview with Bill Clinton the first interview he's given to the media in a long time. He was talking about how

germ and biological terrorist attacks are the newest threat and how he wants the Defense Department to start beefing up they're actually wants to establish a domestic branch of the Pentagon. There already is a domestic branch of the Pentagon it's called a National Security Agency. And then there's the Defense Intelligence Agency and they may say in the CIA's charter they're not supposed to engage in any sort of domestic hanky panky but obviously they do. It's already there. I think he just wants to get people to accept the idea and bring it more aboveboard. We have a drug czar why not a peeping tom czar. I mean this I find I have far more to fear from terrorism from our government in this area than I do from a tip from the kind of terrorists he's talking about as far as I'm concerned the drug war is a terrorist attack on the American people especially when they wind up bulldozing people's houses in Indianapolis because they're suspected to be crack houses kind of like what Israel does to

Palestinians. Or there's a group called Families Against Mandatory Minimums trying to put an end to these long ridiculous jail sentences for tiny little crimes and they've documented many cases where there's been a SWAT team or a DEA type paramilitary drug raid on somebody suspected of possessing or growing marijuana and they kill a person in a stand of course of a neo nazi like Randy Weaver get shot up in Idaho and collect three million bucks in a lawsuit. Move government lawlessness let's go blow up Oklahoma City. But if it's done in the name of the drug war people aren't told about it. People would care if they knew what was going on but of course with more and more of our mass media in the hands of a small handful of global corporations who are mainly interested in sedating the public to shut up and shop. You don't hear about these things. So do you think that the American people are would support the drug war if they knew it knew really knew what was going on. I'm not even sure they support it

now. I mean that I mean I suppose a lot of them wait until some one of their own loved ones or relatives gets locked up for a long sentence for like one sugar cube of acid for 20 to 40 years or something like that then they might become a little concerned. How about the prison industrial complex don't they stand to gain greatly from the drug war and they already have that American public I think that's a lot of the reason the drug war still there is because now with privatized prisons they're making so much money that corrections corporations of America is one of the top five stocks on Wall Street and it's the fastest growing sector of our K economy what does that say about family values America. And so they're making so much money they can afford to hire lobbyists at the national and state legislature level to lobby politicians to pass harsher drug laws longer sentences three strikes you're out which of course goes hand in hand with Clinton's renewed proposal to you. Hed do drug testing on prisoners

thereby you know if you get in a fight when you're a teenager in a gang strike one. And then if you get in a fight defending yourself against some sort of attack possibly sexual in jail and get written up for that strike to flunk your drug to strike three and you're never getting out of jail. But of course you can become slave near slave labor in captive labor for companies that use prison labor now such as t w a Bank of America Microsoft and yes folks Starbucks Starbucks is using prison labor. Yes they are. How are they doing that. Oh I haven't seen any details of what they're using it for whether it's keeping track of the math or making little cup holders or whatever I've just seen them mentioned in a couple different articles. Now do you know anything about the drug testing industry in this country because wood from what I understand it's also a rapidly rising industry and they're making a lot of money on piss tests. I wouldn't be surprised I thought you couldn't say that on the air. This is new You're not

supposed to say that on the air because Kid new is much more likely to get shut down for something like that when some Colorado someone who escaped from Colorado Springs complains about the language or something than than a Bob Greenlee owned enterprise might be. Tinkle test will will be headed that way again. Another thing that's interesting about our so-called Democratic president he's bringing back Star Wars did you see that. Anything to keep the moneybags happy. I mean according to gore of the Dollon he's written about this several times in the nation among other places there was a conscious decision made at the behest of President Truman and his administration to lose the National Security Act of 1947 to aid to steer America onto a permanent war time economy rather than a peace time economy after World War Two. Thus in order to keep all the people on Wall Street and the executives happy you've got to forever be preparing

for more and more wars. And the people who think were this is all really going to do for defense should visit the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base outside of Tucson Arizona. A friend of mine took me down there and we were driving around the perimeter of this giant Air Force Base and it was an airplane graveyard row after row of decommissioned military planes and suddenly it looked around realized oh my god I recognize some of these used to be our current planes C5 a those big old bloated transport planes are still buying more of them. And then we leave them there to rot. That is how corrupt the military and prison industrial complex is. Do we need Star Wars. I think we we need to do whatever we can to prevent it because if you start putting nuclear stuff in space and something goes wrong it rains down on the rest of us and you know if you turn the world into one big Rocky Flats a lot of people are going to die. Speaking of nukes in space you mention it maybe maybe Bill Clinton's crossed over the fundamentalist

Christian thinking that Jesus is about to come back anyway so we should strip mine as much of Alaska and other places as possible and do whatever it takes to bring about the Second Coming. After all Jesus is going to put back all those trees. So in President Clinton's State of the Union address the other night he brought up the issue of how he wants to privatized Social Security by investing part of it in the stock market. Is this a good idea. I notice even Alan Greenspan one of the most obnoxious penny pinchers in our country is against it and maybe he's thinking of what happened when Orange County California home of Disneyland invested their money in the stock market and lost it. So there's a precedent here for you know there's many of them I mean what I mean what I see in San Francisco is deliberate budget cuts on schools the bus system Human Services and then they say we'll see you the government

can't run anything right anymore let's just give Golden Gate Park De Levis let's let's hand the bus system to somebody else so they can cut the routes by 50 percent and pocket the money. I mean the state of Texas even proposed turning their welfare system over to Lockheed. So the privatization often costs more than if people did it themselves and did the very idea of privatization is to say that there should be no more public service anymore. And maybe Jesse The Body Ventura thinks that a great that's a great idea but I don't. I mean at some point we have to be willing to take care of our planet and fellow human beings. And I repeat my memory goes back far enough to know when people were a little happier than they are now. And part of that was when people were taking care of their fellow man and their environment and privatization is is not like that I mean in San Francisco they sold the zoo for a dollar to a private consortium who promptly fired staff including zookeepers pocketed the salary money themselves

and ran the zoo for a million dollars and dead in two years. So then they got it on the. The local election ballot initiative to see you deserve to. There are all these little greeting card bearers on telephone poles save the zoo. Yes on whatever the initiative was who's not going to vote to save the zoo so people voted to hand this private consortium all the money that they wasted and then let them waste some more. Private privatization is like is like socialism for the rich. Basically that's not what that's not what socialists had in mind. Well I think what people think is that a private company will do something more efficiently there won't be the potential for corruption and bureaucracy. Oh there is more potential for corruption to the people at the top are there to serve the public or help people out like with welfare they are there to make money. I mean Lockheed's whole scam was going to be to trim the welfare rolls any way they could and kick people out into the street and instead of being able to appeal to a government agency and get a hearing on why you were kicked off of welfare

you'd have to go graveling to Lockheed. Well how do you think Lockheed going to react to that that's not the way it supposed to work I mean again privatizing a bus system that is going to try and run a skinflint thing that doesn't serve anybody. I mean for that matter. You know look at the greed going on around the Denver Broncos and their new stadiums for the amount of money they're put into that stadium. I mean either Elway and that owner in the fur coat could have paid for that themselves or for that amount of money this city could have bought the team and like the Green Bay Packers sees it under eminent domain and run it themselves. Didn't San Francisco just get a new taxpayer funded stadium. It's in trouble now because the election was so corrupt and the owner of the forty niners who has a very shady background got him busted for some irregularities with his gambling casino and now in Louisiana you know you can't gamble if you're an athlete but you can if you're in you can own the casino if you're on the team. Interesting. So I'm hoping that may go down the toilet. But

Doris swashbuckling privatization. A reverse Robin Hood of a mayor named Willie Brown is doing his best to try and save it. This is called wake up and smell the noise. The corporate Lords their loyal opposition and that vast majority known as the rest of us all agree on one thing. America has gone to hell. The whole world seems damn near ruined. We might have been a great country once but we sure as hell ain't anymore. Everyone knows that everyone feels that everyone asks what for hospitals close cause there ain't no money playgrounds close cause there ain't no money. Schools can't teach because there ain't no money. Roads and bridges fall apart because there ain't no money. People sleep in the street because there ain't no money. And every time it's the same old story gotta make do without cause there ain't no money

there ain't no money cuz we've run out of money. Where did that money go the money gone. It's just been stolen by the kind of people who already have so much money they can't think of anything better to do than plot and scheme ways to make even more money. If that means screwing everyone else so much the better. Or at least that way so one way is that's an excerpt from delivery off his latest release it's called if evolution is outlawed only outlaws will evolve. And you're listening to KGO new Boulder and we are here with jello bee offer up this morning. You know a lot about me eyeball to eyeball agreement on investment. Where is that at right now. That I don't know. The one clue again was in the state of the onion address from Clinton where he talked Ironically he gave this long impassioned speech for greater labor rights in the

world and in the end the child laborers going yeah. Whoa whoa whoa whoa trendy. Well I sure wish it was but it sure isn't with his friends anyway. But then he demanded in veiled language that Congress give him the fast track authority to ram through international treaties where they barely get to debate them at all and can't amend them at any point it has to be yes or no. And of course when you have a Congress full of rich people who are put there to do favors for other rich people they're not going to get in the way of a treaty that basically signs all governmental of story over to corporations and says you're now are sovereign nations laws are laws don't apply to you and give companies the right to sue governments which citizens don't have in this country for interfering with their right to profit. You know pesky things like minimum wage laws environmental regulations or is either the last thing I read about which it was

probably the source was Ralph Nader's publications or Public Citizen or multi-national monitor one of those was the saying of it there was even a provision in there were companies could sue governments for failure to quell civic gun rest over the behavior of the corporations. Maybe that goes hand in hand with getting people all scared about germ bombs from terrorists or something so they'll want to be policed more. Lest they get in the way of Exxon or Mobil or whatever they call themselves now or than Microsoft or Wacken hut or whatever. Whats interesting is how this banana battle that's going on and if you read about this how the US government is pressuring Europe to stop buying fruit from the Caribbean. I guess they prefer to buy from their former colonies and they subsidize the indigenous farmers and thus pay them more than they would have to pay Chiquita. And the official complaint to the World Trade

Organization that lovely group created by the GATT treaty that I'll be talking about later at the Fox at least a little bit. Apparently that action came one day after Carl Lindner the head of Chiquita gave a huge campaign contribution to the Democratic Party. You mean surely or not surprise you mean campaign contributions are influencing legislation. Well there is novel new ways to do it too. I mean no the more I find out about this Bill Owens creature the more scared I become. I mean he said wants to gut the school system gut women's right to choose of course. But did you notice how he was selling his office right in front of everybody's nose by offering people different like gold status or Silver status depending on how many tens of thousands of dollars they put into his inaugural ball. Not too many not many regular general post complained about that. Well like I'm trying to remember whether the Daily

Camera did or not because they get their own by the same people who own the Rocky Mountain News. I mean that was one of the biggest changes since the last time I visited here is that I mean you can barely tell the camera apart from what used to be the Sunday entertainment supplement or something that was you know a lot less local news and a lot less news in general. Big business section what's a stock market you know information and so forth. Well that's what's important after all we're not a community we're a marketplace competitiveness is much more important than caring. Get with the program. If you just did you see anything that bill and the new keys agree on. Now the pope is taking free market capitalism on the did you see this and he's been coming out and taking shots at capitalism and the free market cap and I have not heard a thing about that and I'm quite surprised by it. They're sitting on a ton of money they could start giving away if they were really that serious about it. Welfare reform I guess there was a article in the paper today from the Health and Human

Services announced that the number of people on welfare is the lowest in 30 years. Where are all these people. Well if you go to San Francisco you'll find them kind of like the older man who stands at the exit ramp off us thirty six and you go to baseline roll holding up signs homeless will work for food. People are begging change all over the place in San Francisco sleeping in doorways in areas they never used to before. There's more and more. I mean maybe maybe there is an economic boom but according to Jim Hightower 80 percent of the American people have either not seen any money from it or seen their income go down. And of course some people it's gone clear down where they don't even have a place to live anymore. You say that most people don't hate the rich people who are screwing them. They want to be like them. How is there going to be any social change if this is people's attitudes.

Each of us individually by example and sometimes by getting on our knees and pleading with people who aren't receiving to be reachable. Pointing out that there is something spiritually wrong with that even if you aren't religious or something spiritually wrong. There was a time when taking pride in war and being a part of the community meant more than just getting more and more and more and more money for yourself and spending it on psychiatrists for the kids or putting Jon-Benet in beauty contests or whatever. I mean people are less happy than they used to be and more fragile. Maybe there should be a time to not pull the plug at least curtail a little bit and try to get some one's individual humanity back. And it does it is not always tied in to getting wealthy. It's much harder for people who are struggling to get by. As it stands now there's Y2K things here you would all I'm far more scared of mobile and Exxon merging than I am with Y2K whatever. They're talking about sending out the National

Guard because of a computer glitch. You have to start asking why do they really want to send out the National Guard. What is the purpose of having them guard the banks. Maybe by then people want to barbecue bankers at major intersections for sport I have no idea. The color color line alleges that a deliberate third world ization of America cuts two ways and the backlash has started to gel You seem very informed about domestic policy even international policy how do you stay informed how do you recommend people stand formed when so much of the media is controlled by so few people. Their media for what it is and read between the lines such as this new germ terrorism scare we're all supposed to be worried about and why Monica's magical orifice is more of a scandal than the people lying down on the job when Mobil and Exxon merge and things like that. That's part of it and I also keep up with. I don't read very many books but I read a lot of

periodicals and just stuff that people send me and letters of things that happen to them personally or stuff they cut out of local papers and send me periodicals like oh nation and progressive sometimes Mother Jones multi-national monitor sometimes E and local. Local weeklies like the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the Anderson Valley Advertiser and whatever I come up with in my travels I mean as gutted of interesting content as westward it is now that it's owned by that conglomerate in Phoenix. The cover story this time about these about immigrants who are locked in jail or who knows how long you know being held just like Palestinians in refugee camps. That's a very interesting article and worth reading. Their article on the Piri are trying to come to terms with its growth while pretending they're not a town was an interesting one too. You mention that I just dig it up or you find it.

I thought what I thought was interesting and I hadn't heard about it until I heard your disc. What's going on in Denver with this kind of list they have of. Gang associates I guess they're calling it a suspected gang member. That wasn't any orders. Times that have that reporting that two out of three black teenagers were on the Denver Police Department's gang member list. You know it's sort of a way along with gated communities and getting the welfare system and people buying armored cars in the form of sport utility vehicles just to drive to work and back. It's resegregating the country basically. Watch out for Business Improvement District. They started it in New York they're trying to do it in San Francisco I don't know about Denver where a certain area of businesses can declare themselves a b i d Levy their own taxes and then pay for their own private police force to keep out undesirables such as people who don't dress you up enough or people whose skin is the wrong color.

So as they have done that on the mall yet. Well Boulder do you have to. Boulder gets a little more like Aspen if not road Dayo Drive in Beverly Hills every time I'm back here. Have you seen any Hummers on the road. Only military ones. Actually there's a few of the few civilian ones around to Jello I don't take up too much of your time. Thank you for coming in and joining us appreciate having you. Thank you.