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.
So much bullshit. The quickest and, really, only way to put money into people's pocket in a reccession in a way that they'll spend it and restart the economy is with a job and ONLY the government is going to create a job in a recession as no one else has a reason to.
Economic studies have shown that a dollar in direct spending is four times as effective as a dollar in tax cuts in creating jobs.
Not a bad guy at all probably and not a shill either.
Excellent mixture of political philosophies.
My favorite is the blending of Communism - not the Soviet Union & Bueacratic Totalitarinism that called themselves Marxist...Just treat it as it was invisioned by Marx & Engles; ultimately a society of the freedom of the individual, and rational use of the worlds resources.
Socialism; The use of a Democratic elected Government, to equalize resources and help people.
Last but not least...Anarchism; The suspicion of authority of all governs and a readyness to critisize and rebel against any government that started out balanced between humanity and prosperity but can easily become dictitorial ossified.
Practical??? Not in any immediatly acheivable way...But well worth holding onto as a goal...Good for measure.
As M. Gandhi once said after bloody battles between Muslims and Hindus; "...the world is not ready for true peace, but it is absolutly vital towards our future that we strive to resolve our issues and indifferences nonviolently, mankinds survival depends on it."
Kend, I think they all forget that the gulf coast of the US has over 17 million barrels per day refining capacity or about 44 percent of this nations capacity. So a pipeline of Canadian crude from our friendly neighbors to the north is just good business. Also, they always forget that these refining (manufacturing) jobs are good paying careers. As opposed to government stimulus dig a hole job. I think Hartmann also thinks it makes sense to export this raw crude right out of the pipeline, forgetting about the process of utilizing these multi-billion dollar refineries to process the raw material into transportation fuels, asphalt, plastics, etc.... Pipelines are the safest and cheapest way to transport.
I wanna apologize to Global, if I may yet, for my gratuitous nastiness to him. I think I mistook a comment of his for something ad homminem so I answered in kind and that started a spiral of invective which I made sure to get the better of. I don't think he meant to be like that at all.
I think Global is dead wrong and possibly a shill but not a real bad guy.
Seems he's got some class, apparently a good bit more than I.
Furthermore Kend, the 35% top incomers in the U.S. pay now or the 39% Obama proposes is not a just compensation to the working people of the United States nor is it good for our society. It is not enough to keep us out of prepetual deficit - albeit the deficit was willfully run up by the Republican gangs - and is not enough for needed programs.
Whatever you comprehend you are only capable of regurgitating talking points. You are not a very good shill. I don't think there's anybody here who isn't wise to you. You're not affecting the discourse very much. Nobody really listens to you here.
You're just kind of a fly buzzing around us, a minor annoyance.
Ken W you are right your country does belong to Americans. I don't have any say as I can't vote here. i could only be so lucky as to have Quebec separate from Canada they are so heavily subsidized by the rest of Canada they are dragging us down. Do you want them they are as far left as it gets. Oh and the only reason there is pipelines from Canada to the US is to supply energy to people who need it. What is wrong with that we have been doing it for 50 years.
What is cheap about stating facts. If what I said is right I just said it seems like they are contributing a lot already.
I'm not saying you, Kend, should pay 90% just the highest incomes on their second or third yearly million dollars.
Capital flight is indeed a problem but tariffs would probably solve that in the U.S. and, of course, an end to policies that encourage off shoring. I don't know if that would work in France, they are not as large a consumer market. It might, though, I'm not as familiar with their situation although I know that in the past the kept manufacturing in the country by giving workers many rights and making it too expensive to take their jobs as you would still be responsible for paying them after you left. I suspect that the French are implementing only one part of the policies that worked in the past without the necessary supporting measures that must go with them. IOW, they may be implementing only the high taxes on high incomes but not the tariffs or worker protections. I have to check that out.
I do think, indeed, that Canada is a very nice society.
While people are, rightly, upset over a lone gunman nut killing school children...there are other nuts that have "institutionalized" torture and murder of children for fun and profit. I often don't catch all the news and this one I had missed (maybe I blinked) but this was in the news briefly a few months ago. Do a search on Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Mass.
--attachment D
http://cryptome.org/2012/12/e-punish-torture.pdf
Maybe we need a law to ban electricity. electricity doesn't kill or torture people...people kill or torture people.
Mark I never ever said I want all of my money I know we need to pay taxes. I live in Canada which would be heaven to most people that comment on this program. We pay much higher taxes then you. We have government health care, although It is not national like you are getting down there. I pay employees very well thank you I never had anyone quit that worked for me.
To make people pay 75 to 90 percent is insane. Like France they will be exiting the country for lower tax countries. Both our countries have that problem already.
You parasites steal from US. Try do ANYTHING without us. You're gonna give us a fair percentage of the profits either in the form of wages or taxes.
I just got done telling Kend that an economy is a game. Don't get carried away with it. There is nothing that says you deserve all the money you get from a business venture or transaction just because you might get away with keeping it. You gotta share it fairly with those who work for you either in the form of wages or taxes, whether you like it or not.
Did you not see my two replies right under your statement or question? There is more to it; and the answer is"no". We should go back to previous tax rates of 75-90% for top earners. That was more just and society was much better for it.
Economy, my man, is just a game. There is nothing handed down from Mt. Sinai that says you deserve all or part of the money you get from any particular venture or transaction. Our current rules and system says you can keep so much of it that was "agreed" upon but that doesn't mean those are the best and most just rules or the best and most just system. We could just as well agree on something else. I know you wanna keep all that money but maybe it would be more just and better for society if you shared it and gave it up to the people who work for you either in the form wages or taxes.
Kund - I guess the truth is I personally dislike anyone like you and global. If I had my way you would not be allowed to venture into our country. I personally would like to see all conservatives rounded up and put into re-educational camps or concentration camps to be more direct. I also would have no problem turning Canada into a nuclear waste site. As the fiscal cliff becomes a reality the wealthy will pay their fair share and they will not be able to buy politicians to prevent it. Obviously you are making a profit or you would not invest in this country, I wouldn't doubt that you are probably an employer of illegal aliens that suck the life out of our country. I am not a progressive, I am an independent. And I do favor all and any means in accomplishing what has to be done to free our country of the leaches that suck the blood out of every American worker. War has taught me one thing, there can only be one winner and taking prisoners is not an option. Of course I am speaking politically. I am looking forward to the day when Americans rise up and turn the Dogs of War loose on the politicians that serve their millionaire and billionaire masters. Of course again I am speaking in political terms. The reason why the pipeline is running through our country is the Koch brothers were able to buy enough political votes to use the Domain laws to steal land from Americans. It will not benefit Americans unless you’re speaking of the billionaires that will make a bundle shipping the oil to countries like China and India. These countries are enemies of the American public and use slave labor to steal away American jobs by supplying cheap slave labor to the multi-national corporations that run Washington and have bribed politicians like Obama and Washington Politicians into signing free trade agreements that destroy the ability of Americans to find good jobs. Free trade means they are free to ship American jobs to slave labor nations like those mentioned above. Get something straight for a change; because you pay taxes on profits made here in America it does not give you any right to think you have "skin" in the game. This country belongs to the American public, not Canadians. And your two bit comments are just that cheap, two bit comments about a country and political system you have nothing to do with. And when you leave our country for that frozen pond you call a country, please take fools like Global with you. I bet he would be highly valued in a country that is basically a socialistic society. Now I know why the French Canadians want to form their own nation with idiots like you from the English speaking portion of your country trying to run their lives. I can understand why you would have a place in Az., they are as warped as conservatives can get, present company included...I really hope you have an opportunity to read this and the courage to respond from Scottsdale.
Yes, me too. By the way, are you referring to the "M-Fund", Operation Golden Lily, or "Black Eagle Fund" or something else? Must be something more recent than those stories...because books have been written about them..and I've read some of them...and the stories have been all over the internet for quite some time.
Then there is the "Black Budget" which only a few have ever been able to peek inside of. Maybe Wikileaks is about to enlighten us all? It was "leaked" by Wikileaks that they will reveal, in this next year, yet something more that is sure to tick off the ruling elite. Wikileaks has still not released the promised video footage of the massacre by the US military of up to 147 people, mostly women and children, in Granai, Afghanistan* on May 4, 2009. The US military had encrypted the video and Wikileaks was trying to decrypt it. I hope whatever it is they are planning to release next year is done in January.
I wouldn't be surprised that of those $trillions that went missing and unaccounted for, as reported by Rumsfeld on the day before 911**, and those $trillions that went missing in Iraq later on are now part of the Republican Underground Slush Fund and War Booty.
Doing a Google search using the information you gave doesn't come up with anything...unless you are connecting to the "dark side" of the internet. I'm told, and it stands to reason, that it swamps the visible side of the internet...something like 999.999 to 000.001. A goldmine of information treasure that people spend lots of money trying to keep hidden.
Cryptome.org is sometimes interesting but while that, like Wikileaks, antagonizes some people in high places it is just a sliver of information that can be discovered. I know you have discovered a lot of interesting things in the past, yourself....some very arcane tidbits of history that some in power would rather was kept hidden.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granai_airstrike
9/10/2001: Rumsfeld says $2.1 Trillion Went Missing from Pentagon.
note the date: day before 9/11..coincidence? right!!
** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xU4GdHLUHwU
Very good information at this link, thanks. Now, I have to agree with the "progressive" liberals that wealth in-equality is health in-equality. I know this because my spouse is a phd in public health and epidemology. However, the fix is not short term. It is 50 to 80 years away at current course and speed. It will require some very painful events to take place over a very long time. That said, the current IDIOTS are US. We elected this bunch and they are doing exactly what we asked them to do. Take from the "other" guy, but NOT MY STUFF!!! Obama talks about millionares and billionares and yet wants to levy high taxes on $250K???? And there goes GE, Google, Verizon, GM, INTEL, with the slight of hand move the money offshore and pay no taxes....WHAT THE HELL is that? NO ONE and I MEAN NO ONE ever says Hey....Mr. GE, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Verizon.....PAY UP. Oh NO....we can't piss them off. Besides, the RICH need to pay and pay and pay....who the heck thinks $250K makes one rich while a MULTI NATIONAL Corp plays the game legally while the guys/gals that wrote the legal law let it happen. WE ARE SCREWED....protect your assets, hope that the younger generation will finally get pissed off enough to fire the group we hired. I fear for my grandchildren.
Really getting cynical in my old age. Maybe I need to move to an island....Except my father was a marine. Semper Fi
Oh I comprehend you loud and clear, you are a complete wacko and as I said before you need to find your own island nation to burn down and start over.
I don't think I need to answer for mauiman but he is right on his numbers. Hundred billion per year at best. You might get 40 percent of the annual defecit if you stole all the money from the top 2 percent. And I know you would if you could.
Hey history writer, what is the quickest way to put money in people's pocket? Answer -- cut taxes. Why do companies have lots of cash right now that they do not want to spend and expand? Answer -- uncertainty of what this radical regime is going to do next and the unknown of what the monstrosity of Obamacare is going to cost.
Mark Saulys: That's probably quite true...but calling them wimps makes me feel better. Kind of like calling the so-called 19 Arab hijackers "cowards"..I guess. I don't know how many times I've heard people call them that despite the fact that it would have taken some pretty brave (or crazy) people, knowing they were about to die along with all those other people they were about to kill. Contrast that with another misused term that many Americans often use to describe a US soldier who murders civilians using drones or helicopter gunships with very little likelihood that they, themselves, would ever be in danger, are called "heroes". Not many Americans would be brave (or crazy) enough to do such a thing as strap on an explosive vest or crash into tall buildings. Yet those same people who misused the "coward" name must have gotten some satisfaction out of it even though it was like calling a cat a dog.
I think, if there even were Arab hijackers, that they were "patsies" set up to take the blame...and couldn't even have steered those planes to their targets because they weren't skilled enough pilots (couldn't even very skillfully fly the small aircraft they were "trained" on) and because those planes that hit the WTC towers and the Pentagon were electronically hijacked and guided to their targets...just like any other drone or guided missile....which is the reason why they actually hit their targets. And the one that hit the Pentagon may not even have been a plane at all but a missile. The last plane that supposedly crashed in Pennsylvania could easily have been a flub that had to be aborted and shot out of the air...there was no wreckage to speak of...it just ...disappeared.
Mark that is why I asked if my numbers where right. Everything I have seen shows the 10/70 and if that is correct isn't the wealthy paying enough already. What would you do with out them?
Screw the uber class and its political wing the so called Republican party. Yield as little as possible, continue to show them for what they are. I can wait until the mid term and a Democratic House in the wake. We must not budge, right is on our side. The simple fact is....
For over 50 years and over the past 12 years on steroids the rich have been on a free ride; not paying taxes in proportion to their wealth, garnering wealth through regulatory shift and this has severely weakened our economy. Over the past 4 years the politcal wing labored arduously to block any revenue raising and/or spending on ourselves while on a parallel track the class itself while charting positive growth and profits refused to hire; redistributing the load on existing workers. I have rarely met anyone in the private sector who tells a story of corporate hiring, only of having been shouldered with a greater and greater work load.
When the reality of the past 50 years is presented, the cost or revenue issue around these concerns is often argued back by the uber class and its minions as class warfare and transfer of wealth but there is another view; the economy has been rendered anemic. It has been weakened as surely as a living organism would be weakened, rendered anemic if almost 50% of its blood were removed and sequestered.
It is clear that under such a reality the majority cannot enjoy the promise of this great nation as set forth in the preamble to the Constitution as the promotion of the “general welfare”. Said another way, the ability of the many to enjoy life vibrantly cannot occur within an economy where almost half of available wealth has been removed and sequestered to the advantage of only a few. Under such a reality, it is clear that the general economy of goods and services cannot function vibrantly and provide benefit to the many anymore than life itself could function vibrantly on this planet were almost half of the available oxygen removed and sequestered to the advantage of a few.
Tax the 2% as promised and do not cut the cut the meager stipend and health benefit that we have paid for and earned throughout our lives of productive contribution to this Nation. Spend on ourselves on our nation putting people to work, creating people with money in their pockets spending and paying taxes. Eventually the class must act to meet demand, just sayin'.
Watch the NRA’s response. Very sensible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgu9f-qd_Uo
I'm amazed at how FOX along with Cantor and his Teabaggers have successfully convinced so many that the Democrats and in particular Obama have a spending problem. They've scapegoated the so called entitlement programs, or by my definition, paid for nonprofit social insurance programs. In other words they want us to believe the problem is the lazy free-rider, Reagan's welfare Queen!
It's quite easy to find the truth about spending and who has the problem, just google, "annualized federal spending growth,"...the facts are there, and it's clearly a Republican problem.
The Teapublicans want Obama to agree to pay for a problem they created with out of control SPENDING on socialized Bank bailouts, unfunded wars, unfunded tax breaks for the rich...etc...... in part with our hard earned contributions to social insurance programs, by down sizing them.
I agree, it's time for Obama to take Social Security Insurance benefits off the table and stay in line with what the vast majority wants.....bending over for the billionaires will gain him nothing except a big drop in the polls.
No Fraud: right on, that's right...or if OBL did have anything at all to do with it...it was at the behest of those who planned it from the US, Israel, with the help of Pakistan ISI..and even, perhaps, elements within Saudi Arabia. OBL was still a CIA asset right up until 911.