Recent comments
ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World
Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Joe Sestak (D-PA 7th) is good people . . .
I am quite happy that you gave him the opportunity to share his voice with us this morning.
Where can we donate to his campaign??? Does anyone have the URL?
The Cost Conundrum
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande
Deanna,
I read that article, too. I concur --- it's a "must read!"
A constituent of Rick Larson called in to say that Larson opposes single payer because of the cost. I'm not a constituent, but I called Larson's office to say that I heard his constituent's call on the Thom Hartmann radio show, and said that I'm sure he wouldn't want to take a position based on a lack of information. I suggested that he read an article called "The Cost Conundrum," in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine. Once he informs himself, he'll understand that we can drastically reduce the cost, and raise the quality of care. The Mayo Clinic has done it, the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin has done it, and there are many other models around the country. The aide said he is well aware of the Thom Hartmann show.
When someone from Talk Radio News Service comes on please ask about this Washington Times and Mark Masters venture. This is scary --> The Washington Times and Mark Masters creating a comprehensive news organization. Everyone knows that the Times is a Reverend Moon operation, but not so many people are aware that Mark Masters (son of Roy Masters) has a radical right wing quasi-spiritual background. They make Rupert Murdoch look like a democratic socialist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Masters
http://talkers.com/online/?p=1275
"The Washington Times enters talk broadcasting from the newspaper side of media
By Ellen Ratner
TALK RADIO NEWS SERVICE
Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON –– Many of us grew up believing that The New York Times or Washington Post would be on the cutting edge of journalism forever (or at least for the rest of our lifetimes). When many of us were first learning about news and talk radio, The Washington Times did not even exist. Now, though, with a visionary team lead by president and publisher Tom McDevitt and executive editor John Solomon, the newspaper/multimedia organization is leading the way, both in access and in ways to make the news business profitable. The Washington Times is well on its way to becoming what Michael Harrison terms a 21st century “media station.” Unlike most of the organizations covered by TALKERS magazine, it is approaching that powerful point from the print sector, not the broadcasting industry. While most newspapers are cutting staff, reducing pages and tiptoeing into the future by offering a handful of blogs and podcasts on their websites, The Washington Times has been aggressively becoming an online radio and television station backed by the resources of a full-service newspaper. It certainly renders the old 20th century issue of cross ownership (still being discussed in Washington) obsolete when you think about it....."
TOM SHOULD NOT WASTE HIS TIME AT FIXED NEWS. THESE PEOPLE ARE SO ABYSMALLY DUMB ? NOT STRONG ENOUGH. WITH THEIR RICKTUS- LIKE SMILES AND COLD SWEAT AND TRULY DEAD MINDS - THEY MAKE ME NAUSEOUS AND ASHAMED OF BEING LIKE THEM, HUMAN.
Making Progress,
Oops --- I should have said that the AMERICAN PUBLIC needs more exposure to Thom and Batra, not the other way around!
Thom,
I'm really looking forward to hearing Joe Sestak. I sent Specter money, as I promised when I asked him (via his staffer) to change parties to become a Dem. I will send any additional money for that race to Sestak.
I'm also eager (in a dark way, I guess) to hear what Eric Nadler has to say in Hour 3 of your program today. I spent a little time on the anthraxwar.com website + links and I'm really creeped out!
Thom,
Per Krugman’s recent column on the probability that the financial meltdown, if it had occured during Gore’s presidency (had he been allowed to preside over it) would be blamed on the Dems. instead of the Republics seems to be refuted by “Sea of Red Ink: How It Spread From a Puddle” by David Leonhardt on the front page of today’s NYTimes. Leonhardt contends the 2 basic truths about today’s financial deficit are that Obama’s ambitious agenda is responsible for only a sliver of the total, and the current administration doesn’t have a realistic plan to solve it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?_r=1&hp
“The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it.
Mr. Obama — responding to recent signs of skittishness among those lenders — met with 40 members of Congress at the White House on Tuesday and called for the re-enactment of pay-as-you-go rules, requiring Congress to pay for any new programs it passes.
The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.
You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.
How can that be? Some of his proposals, like a plan to put a price on carbon emissions, don’t cost the government any money. Others would be partly offset by proposed tax increases on the affluent and spending cuts. Congressional and White House aides agree that no large new programs, like an expansion of health insurance, are likely to pass unless they are paid for.
Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a widely cited study on the dangers of the current deficits, describes the situation like so: “Bush behaved incredibly irresponsibly for eight years. On the one hand, it might seem unfair for people to blame Obama for not fixing it. On the other hand, he’s not fixing it.”
“And,” he added, “not fixing it is, in a sense, making it worse.”
When challenged about the deficit, Mr. Obama and his advisers generally start talking about health care. “There is no way you can put the nation on a sound fiscal course without wringing inefficiencies out of health care,” Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, told me.
Outside economists agree. The Medicare budget really is the linchpin of deficit reduction. But there are two problems with leaving the discussion there.
First, even if a health overhaul does pass, it may not include the tough measures needed to bring down spending. Ultimately, the only way to do so is to take money from doctors, drug makers and insurers, and it isn’t clear whether Mr. Obama and Congress have the stomach for that fight. So far, they have focused on ideas like preventive care that would do little to cut costs.
Second, even serious health care reform won’t be enough. Obama advisers acknowledge as much. They say that changes to the system would probably have a big effect on health spending starting in five or 10 years. The national debt, however, will grow dangerously large much sooner.
Mr. Orszag says the president is committed to a deficit equal to no more than 3 percent of gross domestic product within five to 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of at least 4 percent for most of the next decade. Even that may turn out to be optimistic, since the government usually ends up spending more than it says it will. So Mr. Obama isn’t on course to meet his target.
But Congressional Republicans aren’t, either. Judd Gregg recently held up a chart on the Senate floor showing that Mr. Obama would increase the deficit — but failed to mention that much of the increase stemmed from extending Bush policies. In fact, unlike Mr. Obama, Republicans favor extending all the Bush tax cuts, which will send the deficit higher.
Republican leaders in the House, meanwhile, announced a plan last week to cut spending by $75 billion a year. But they made specific suggestions adding up to meager $5 billion. The remaining $70 billion was left vague. “The G.O.P. is not serious about cutting down spending,” the conservative Cato Institute concluded.
What, then, will happen?
“Things will get worse gradually,” Mr. Auerbach predicts, “unless they get worse quickly.” Either a solution will be put off, or foreign lenders, spooked by the rising debt, will send interest rates higher and create a crisis.
The solution, though, is no mystery. It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts. And it won’t be limited to pay-as-you-go rules, tax increases on somebody else, or a crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse. Your taxes will probably go up, and some government programs you favor will become less generous.
That is the legacy of our trillion-dollar deficits. Erasing them will be one of the great political issues of the coming decade.
Thom,
Per Krugman’s recent column on the probability that the financial meltdown, if it had occured during Gore’s presidency (had he been allowed to preside over it) would be blamed on the Dems. instead of the Republics seems to be refuted by “Sea of Red Ink: How It Spread From a Puddle” by David Leonhardt on the front page of today’s NYTimes. Leonhardt contends the 2 basic truths about today’s financial deficit are that Obama’s ambitious agenda is responsible for only a sliver of the total, and the current administration doesn’t have a realistic plan to solve it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?_r=1&hp
“The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it.
Mr. Obama — responding to recent signs of skittishness among those lenders — met with 40 members of Congress at the White House on Tuesday and called for the re-enactment of pay-as-you-go rules, requiring Congress to pay for any new programs it passes.
The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.
You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.
How can that be? Some of his proposals, like a plan to put a price on carbon emissions, don’t cost the government any money. Others would be partly offset by proposed tax increases on the affluent and spending cuts. Congressional and White House aides agree that no large new programs, like an expansion of health insurance, are likely to pass unless they are paid for.
Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a widely cited study on the dangers of the current deficits, describes the situation like so: “Bush behaved incredibly irresponsibly for eight years. On the one hand, it might seem unfair for people to blame Obama for not fixing it. On the other hand, he’s not fixing it.”
“And,” he added, “not fixing it is, in a sense, making it worse.”
When challenged about the deficit, Mr. Obama and his advisers generally start talking about health care. “There is no way you can put the nation on a sound fiscal course without wringing inefficiencies out of health care,” Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, told me.
Outside economists agree. The Medicare budget really is the linchpin of deficit reduction. But there are two problems with leaving the discussion there.
First, even if a health overhaul does pass, it may not include the tough measures needed to bring down spending. Ultimately, the only way to do so is to take money from doctors, drug makers and insurers, and it isn’t clear whether Mr. Obama and Congress have the stomach for that fight. So far, they have focused on ideas like preventive care that would do little to cut costs.
Second, even serious health care reform won’t be enough. Obama advisers acknowledge as much. They say that changes to the system would probably have a big effect on health spending starting in five or 10 years. The national debt, however, will grow dangerously large much sooner.
Mr. Orszag says the president is committed to a deficit equal to no more than 3 percent of gross domestic product within five to 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of at least 4 percent for most of the next decade. Even that may turn out to be optimistic, since the government usually ends up spending more than it says it will. So Mr. Obama isn’t on course to meet his target.
But Congressional Republicans aren’t, either. Judd Gregg recently held up a chart on the Senate floor showing that Mr. Obama would increase the deficit — but failed to mention that much of the increase stemmed from extending Bush policies. In fact, unlike Mr. Obama, Republicans favor extending all the Bush tax cuts, which will send the deficit higher.
Republican leaders in the House, meanwhile, announced a plan last week to cut spending by $75 billion a year. But they made specific suggestions adding up to meager $5 billion. The remaining $70 billion was left vague. “The G.O.P. is not serious about cutting down spending,” the conservative Cato Institute concluded.
What, then, will happen?
“Things will get worse gradually,” Mr. Auerbach predicts, “unless they get worse quickly.” Either a solution will be put off, or foreign lenders, spooked by the rising debt, will send interest rates higher and create a crisis.
The solution, though, is no mystery. It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts. And it won’t be limited to pay-as-you-go rules, tax increases on somebody else, or a crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse. Your taxes will probably go up, and some government programs you favor will become less generous.
That is the legacy of our trillion-dollar deficits. Erasing them will be one of the great political issues of the coming decade.
(E-mail: Leonhardt@nytimes.com)
Making Progress,
I agree that progressive thinkers like Thom and Batra need more exposure to the American public. (I even attempted to convince the managing editor of the NYTimes to have Thom as one of its op-ed writers (especially since they were, at the time, allowing Bill Krystal to present his poorly researched, poorly argued columns on their pages.) BTW, I think it is very disturbing that Carlos Slim owns part of (and wants to own more of) the NYTImes. (http://www.slate.com/id/2211248/)
Mark,
It’s too bad NAFTA continues to go unchallenged…
Making Progress,
I agree that progressive thinkers like Thom and Batra need more exposure to the American public. (I even attempted to convince the managing editor of the NYTimes to have Thom as one of its op-ed writers (especially since they were, at the time, allowing Bill Krystal to present his poorly researched, poorly argued columns on their pages.) BTW, I think it is very disturbing that Carlos Slim owns part of (and wants to own more of) the NYTImes. (http://www.slate.com/id/2211248/)
Mark,
It's too bad NAFTA continues to go unchallenged...
Thom,
Per Krugman's recent column on the probability that the financial meltdown, if it had occured during Gore's presidency (had he been allowed to preside over it) would be blamed on the Dems. instead of the Republics seems to be refuted by "Sea of Red Ink: How It Spread From a Puddle" by David Leonhardt on the front page of today's NYTimes. Leonhardt contends the 2 basic truths about today's financial deficit are that Obama's ambitious agenda is responsible for only a sliver of the total, and the current administration doesn't have a realistic plan to solve it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/business/economy/10leonhardt.html?_r=1&hp
"The New York Times analyzed Congressional Budget Office reports going back almost a decade, with the aim of understanding how the federal government came to be far deeper in debt than it has been since the years just after World War II. This debt will constrain the country’s choices for years and could end up doing serious economic damage if foreign lenders become unwilling to finance it.
Mr. Obama — responding to recent signs of skittishness among those lenders — met with 40 members of Congress at the White House on Tuesday and called for the re-enactment of pay-as-you-go rules, requiring Congress to pay for any new programs it passes.
The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.
You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.
The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.
About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.
Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.
About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.
If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.
How can that be? Some of his proposals, like a plan to put a price on carbon emissions, don’t cost the government any money. Others would be partly offset by proposed tax increases on the affluent and spending cuts. Congressional and White House aides agree that no large new programs, like an expansion of health insurance, are likely to pass unless they are paid for.
Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author of a widely cited study on the dangers of the current deficits, describes the situation like so: “Bush behaved incredibly irresponsibly for eight years. On the one hand, it might seem unfair for people to blame Obama for not fixing it. On the other hand, he’s not fixing it.”
“And,” he added, “not fixing it is, in a sense, making it worse.”
When challenged about the deficit, Mr. Obama and his advisers generally start talking about health care. “There is no way you can put the nation on a sound fiscal course without wringing inefficiencies out of health care,” Peter Orszag, the White House budget director, told me.
Outside economists agree. The Medicare budget really is the linchpin of deficit reduction. But there are two problems with leaving the discussion there.
First, even if a health overhaul does pass, it may not include the tough measures needed to bring down spending. Ultimately, the only way to do so is to take money from doctors, drug makers and insurers, and it isn’t clear whether Mr. Obama and Congress have the stomach for that fight. So far, they have focused on ideas like preventive care that would do little to cut costs.
Second, even serious health care reform won’t be enough. Obama advisers acknowledge as much. They say that changes to the system would probably have a big effect on health spending starting in five or 10 years. The national debt, however, will grow dangerously large much sooner.
Mr. Orszag says the president is committed to a deficit equal to no more than 3 percent of gross domestic product within five to 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office projects a deficit of at least 4 percent for most of the next decade. Even that may turn out to be optimistic, since the government usually ends up spending more than it says it will. So Mr. Obama isn’t on course to meet his target.
But Congressional Republicans aren’t, either. Judd Gregg recently held up a chart on the Senate floor showing that Mr. Obama would increase the deficit — but failed to mention that much of the increase stemmed from extending Bush policies. In fact, unlike Mr. Obama, Republicans favor extending all the Bush tax cuts, which will send the deficit higher.
Republican leaders in the House, meanwhile, announced a plan last week to cut spending by $75 billion a year. But they made specific suggestions adding up to meager $5 billion. The remaining $70 billion was left vague. “The G.O.P. is not serious about cutting down spending,” the conservative Cato Institute concluded.
What, then, will happen?
“Things will get worse gradually,” Mr. Auerbach predicts, “unless they get worse quickly.” Either a solution will be put off, or foreign lenders, spooked by the rising debt, will send interest rates higher and create a crisis.
The solution, though, is no mystery. It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts. And it won’t be limited to pay-as-you-go rules, tax increases on somebody else, or a crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse. Your taxes will probably go up, and some government programs you favor will become less generous.
That is the legacy of our trillion-dollar deficits. Erasing them will be one of the great political issues of the coming decade.
E-mail: Leonhardt@nytimes.com
Tuesday’s show was quite fascinating, especially the last hour’s conversation with Abraham Bolden. Nevertheless, there were several things Thom disappointed me with. "Populism" is to me little removed from mob rule; the only difference between conservative and progressive versions of populism is that conservatives are more brazen is offering-up the “other” as a scapegoat. I think it should be pointed that free trade with the U.S. has also hurt Mexican farmers; most Mexican tariffs have been removed, while the American farmers still receive government subsidies that their counterparts in Mexico do not. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. exports more foodstuffs to Mexico than vice-versa, and competition from the U.S. has driven tens of thousands of poor farmers in Mexico from their fields to the cities, and failing to find work there, to the U.S. It is interesting to note as well that the dollar value of U.S. exports to Mexico is double that what the U.S. exports to China.
The side-stepping of immigration reform doesn’t make sense to me either, especially given the fact that nonsensical U.S. immigration policy is part of the problem. A couple years ago a local weekly published a story concerning the Emerald Downs horse race track , which employed Mexican immigrants who obtained work visas to labor as horse grooms, before returning to Mexico for several months. But because of the rising anti-immigrant onslaught, there were unexplained visa problems when the next season was about to begin. There “magically” appeared a three-month "window of opportunity" for the "natives" to take those jobs. But despite extensive advertising for jobs in print, only two “natives” showed interest in the work, and apparently after being told that the job included cleaning stalls, they were never heard from again. "White people don't want to work; they just want to bitch and say there are no jobs” one 60-year-old trainer was quoted as saying. He and other trainers were obliged to do the groom work themselves until the work visas were finally granted and the Mexican grooms arrived. They were “soaked-up” by relieved trainers “like a wet rag.”
There is need for seasonal workers like these for the kind of work that Americans do not want to demean themselves or find too inconvenient to do. If the U.S. had a work visa program that was less prejudicial and more flexible, it stands to reason that fewer would have reason to come into and stay in the country illegally.
The Daily Show was great last night! John Hodgman makes fun of California’s Ballot initiative system and how they are privatizing everything instead of raising taxes.
Peter Schiff was also on The Daily Show on Tuesday and Jon Stewart was fawning over him. I feel like if he can get air time why can't Ravi Batra? While Schiff correctly predicted the credit crunch, his causes and solutions are not entirely correct. He fails to discuss wages and trade policies. I realize that Ravi Batra is only an SMU professor and not running for the Senate or the economic adviser for Ron Paul's campaign. But why can’t Batra, an obvious establishment outsider, get an interview with Jon Stewart under the guise of the paperback release of The New Golden Age. For that matter, Thom should go on The Daily Show. More exposure is needed for progressive view points. My fear is that the general populous will adopt the libertarian ideology as a so-called middle ground from where we’ve been the last eight years.
Quark,
You may be right. Eisenhower may have felt regrets later in his life. Smedley Butler felt that way after serving over 3 decades in the military. He said that most of the time he spent in the military he was "...a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism..."
There's a good short article on him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler It has that full quote.
B Roll,
It sounds a little like Eisenhower may have made his "beware the military industrial complex" remarks with hindsight regret, since he didn't seem to have a problem using the military for some of these pro-corporate, antidemocratic ventures.
Re: What was the website for the Harvey J Kaye, Thomas Paine Promise of America?
http://www.forgottenfoundingfather.net/
B Roll,
Thanks for the history lesson. I've read a couple of the books you referenced, but have forgotten about some of these events.
Once again, the military and corporate industrial complex shows how it runs the world.
P.S.: In relation to my post about Scarborough and Eisenhower above and for people who may not know:
Mohammed Mossadegh was the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran in the early 1950s. He ran afoul of the western powers when he decided to nationalize Iranian oil because Britain was taking an unfair share of the profits. This upset the Brits who asked President Harry Truman to help them get rid of the Mossadegh government. Truman said, “No.”
The Brits asked again when our hero Dwight Eisenhower became president. He said, “Okie Dokie,” and the CIA engineered the overthrow of Mossedegh and the installation of the playboy Shah of Iran who had been partying it up in Europe. Decades of brutal rule ensued. The Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, trained by the U.S. and Israel, were infamous for their brutality.
Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, usually referred to as Arbenz was the democratically elected president of Guatemala. He was liberal, but not as liberal as Franklin Roosevelt. He was ousted in a CIA organized coup. He got on the wrong side of our country when his government decided to buy some of the vast unused land holdings of United Fruit Company, the largest landowner in Guatemala, with 85% of its holdings uncultivated. The Guatemalans decided this unused land could be used to grow food to feed their country.
To determine what they should pay for the land, they looked at how the United Fruit Company valued the land on its tax returns. Well, it seems that the United Fruit Company listed the land at a very low value so they could pay very low taxes. The Guatemalan government offered to pay United Fruit Company the value they listed on their tax returns. United Fruit Company wasn’t very happy. That made Eisenhower unhappy, so he told the CIA to get rid of Arbenz, which they did in 1954. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans were killed and tortured in the following decades. The United States and the repressive Guatemalan government have been on pretty good terms since then.
One of my big issues with Thom Hartmann is that he knows about these incidents and many more, but he refuses to include this information in his views on this country and its foreign policy. But these things are important because the U.S. has been doing this for quite a while.
Reading recommendations: “The People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn, “Overthrow” by Stephen Kinzer (a very middle of the road journalist), and “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” by John Perkins. Thom knows all these books, but it seems he can’t handle these truths.
When I type in www.dealeyplaza.net I get re routed to http://www.jfk.org/ is this right?
Quark,
I didn't base my comment about Scarborough on today's interview. I based it on what I've heard from him on TV. There was a time, when he was speaking out against the Iraq war when he seemed to be becoming reasonable, But after a while, he started slipping to the right again. It was like someone whispered something in his ear.
What was the website for the Harvey J Kaye, Thomas Paine Promise of America?
People of Nebraska and Louisana (Nelson and Landrieu) please get on your senators case about the public option. Call or go to their office if you have to. This is going to be a huge battle and we need your help.
One thing ignored and unexplained about JFK's assassination is the video clip showing the secret service being told to stand down and get off JFK's limo as it took off on its route...the one where the SS agent throws his arms out in disbelief as he was told to get off the car where he was "supposed" to stand. Only the SS had the authority to remove him at that moment. Hope your guest will explain that.
I too was impressed with what little I heard from Joe Scarborough. He reminded me of the republican party I once knew.