METRO PODCAST | Thorne Dreyer : Community activists Bill Oakey & Roger Baker on Austin transportation politics

Affordability blogger Oakey joins The Rag Blog’s Baker in a lively discussion of the city’s proposed billion dollar transportation bond election and other community issues.

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Roger Baker, standing, and Bill Oakey in the studios of KOOP-FM in Austin, Texas. Photo by Tracey Schulz / Rag Radio.

Interview by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | August 7, 2014

[Also read Roger Baker’s in depth analytical article, “Is Austin’s ‘Strategic Mobility Plan’ smart planning or a billion dollar boondoggle?” on The Rag Blog.]

On this Rag Radio podcast, Austin community activist and affordability blogger Bill Oakey and transportation writer and Rag Blog contributing editor Roger Baker discuss a number of community issues affecting Austin, including affordability and gentrification, but they focus primarily on Austin’s controversial proposed billion dollar transportation bond election.

Download the podcast of our August 1, 2014, Rag Radio interview with Bill Oakey and Roger Baker here, or listen to it on the player below.

Bill Oakey, a retired accountant who, in the 70s and 80s wrote about country music for national publications, has been active in local politics since the ’80s. Oakey worked for various state agencies for 36 years and served on the City of Austin’s Electric Utility Commission. Now, when he isn’t fighting for the taxpayers at City Hall or the Travis County Commissioners, he works as an artist photographer.

Roger Baker is a long-time transportation-oriented environmental activist, an amateur energy-oriented economist, and amateur scientist and science writer, and a founding member of and an advisor to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA. He is a driector of the Save our Spring alliance and the Save Barton Creek Association in Austin. He is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.
 
853px-Rag_radio2Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer who was a founding editor of the original Rag, published in Austin from 1966-1977. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer. And we are honored to have noted investigative journalist Ken Martin is our apprentice.

Rag Radio has aired more than 200 shows since September 2009, on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP — and streamed live on the web — and is rebroadcast and streamed on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio is also aired and streamed on KPFT-HD3 90.1 — Pacifica radio in Houston — on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. (CDT).

After broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

Please contact us at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
FRIDAY, August 15, 2014: Hip-hop duo, performance artists, and community activists Riders Against the Storm, the Austin Music Awards’ 2013 Band of the Year.

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