Monday 1 February '10 show notes

  • Guests:
    • Jeff Sharlet, Contributing Editor for Harpers and Rolling Stone; author of the best selling book "The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power".
    • Doug Cunningham, Workers Independent News.
    • mega-corporate-capitalist-mogul Steve Forbes, CEO of Forbes Magazine and Forbes.com. His new book, "How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets At The Best Answer In Today’s Economy".
  • Topics:
    • Are religious cults killing democracy just like they kill people?
    • Should we all just start paying taxes to China?
    • Labor News Update - newly created "Union of the Unemployed".
    • Will capitalism save us or is it destroying America?
  • Bumper Music:
  • Today's newsletter has details of today's guests and links to the major stories and alerts that Thom covered in the show, plus lots more. If you haven't signed up for the free newsletter yet, please do. If you missed today's newsletter, it is in the archive.
  • Quote: "Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people and by the people, but a government for Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master...Let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us thus far beware." -- Mary Elizabeth Lease (1890).
  • Article: Watchdog: Bailouts Created More Risk in System by Daniel Wagner and Alan Zibel.

    "The problems that led to the last crisis have not yet been addressed, and in some cases have grown worse, says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the trouble asset relief program, or TARP. The quarterly report to Congress was released Sunday.

    "Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car," Barofsky wrote."

  • Quote:

    Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 1776.

  • Quote:

    Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 1776.

  • Quote:

    No society can be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed cloath, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed, and lodged.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 1776.

  • Quote:

    With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 1776.

  • Quote:

    All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 1776.

  • Frederick asked if there was any feasible, legal way to get the corporations' influence out of our government. Thom replied:

    I think that this is the moment in history, actually I'd say over the next three years, where we have the greatest opportunity to do that, because you still have some politicians who are funded by people rather than corporations. You still have some Bernie Sanders's in the Senate and you still have some Alan Graysons and Dennis Kuciniches in the House of Representatives and who have not been bought off and who are refusing to be bought off. And you've got a lot of politicians who have been bought off and don't like it, and certainly don't like the fact that they might have aligned themselves with the wrong companies. They might have been bought off by, for example, this particular health insurance company and some other health insurance company has decided that they are going to buy off a different politician and blow these guys out of the water and put this one in.

    And when we start seeing dueling giant monopolistic corporations who can drop amounts of money into political campaigns like they do onto TV campaigns, hundreds of millions of dollars in ways that are just going to explode the political landscape, and render real campaigning meaningless, I think you're going to see some very, very, very frightened politicians and I have a very strong feeling that the 2010 election is going to be, it's going to start happening in the 2010 election, the Chamber of Commerce has already said that they're going to start using this new-found muscle and it's going to scare the hell out of a lot of politicians. And hopefully, hopefully they will pass a constitutional amendment and change things.

  • Member of the day was Ryan A, who won a copy of "Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being" for blogging:

    Are religious cults destroying democracy? YES! The cult of laissez-faire capitalism teaches that people should worship the gods of powerful corporations and that the evil devil of government should stay out of their profits! If we want to take back our country we need to prove that this cult is a con.

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