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.
And Romney wasn't promising any goodies to his supporters? How about the deeper tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, even less regulation for the financial and corporate worlds, a boon for war contractors and oil magnets by going to war against Iran, and the end of so-called "entitlements" for the rest of us "moochers" without which the wealthy and corporations would not have their wealth.
Even with all these gifts the greedy wealthy have enjoyed the past 12 years, they have created very few jobs and economic growth, have contributed even less to the government and the US economy, have taken their earnings OUT of the country, and have acted as ungrateful spoiled bastards. They have failed. They are the ones who should be fired! It's time to let someone else, more responsible and with a better knowledge of how an economy works, be the "job creators."
Trump was right about calling for revolution, but the proper revolution would be to wrest his kind from power.
And Romney wasn't promising gifts to his wealthy "minority"? More tax cuts for the wealthy, even less regulation for business, the promise of more oil control and war contractor profits in a war with Iran, more control of the government by the wealthy and corporations, the end of "entitlements" for the rest of us "moochers" without which the wealthy would not have their wealth. All gifts the wealthy have received for the past 12 years and they have "created" very few jobs. They are the great failure. Mr Romney should try reading in the comment/blog world. I see many fine Republicans who say they abandoned their party because of the excessive butt-kissing of the wealthy and the embrace of the extremists and religious crazies (their word)to brainwash people to vote for them.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/11/romney-blames-obama-gifts-for-loss.html#ixzz2COIeRggG
These are statements designed to deflect from the issue that the GOP feels they are the entitled and Americans are less deserving than them for getting a Christmas present,...very juvenile.
BTW 2950-10K I was agreeing with you. It's the (poor misguided) TeaPartiers and Repugs I'd go after. I may be in the UK but I lived in Houston long enough (3 years) to get the drift - saw enough of Fox Snooze, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly to last me for several lifetimes. Had to get de-loused every time I chanced upon them.
First heard Thom on am radio in Chicago before and during the 2008 election and been a big fan ever since - a breath of fresh air at last!!
Hi #26 2950-10K
Yes, the rest of the world cannot understand why the USA does't want a not-for-profit health care system. In the UK we wonder what on earth is wrong with you people.
I am wondering if, when the President asks for more money for the victims of the recent hurricane, the Republicans will once again want a dollar cut for every $3.00 more they conotribute to FEMA!?! Perhaps we should get ready for another drawn-out fight. The Republican idea is for us to use philanthropy (our own, middle class earnings - after taxes) to help each other up... and just leave them and their millions and billions alone. We certainly get taxed on every dollar we make, before the allowable deductions; why don't they have to do the same, regardlless of what each one of them makes? If we all paid the same rate on every dollar we make - regardless it it's under $250K or over a hundred million, we wouldn't have a national debt. We'd have a very large surplus. And as long as the Democrats have the key to the cash drawer, most of us would get a fair shake. he Republicans, however, would use the cash drawer keys to operate it as a non-profit... In other words, every year they'd split up the overages between themselves. That's how non-profits work.
I keep hearing right wingers saying the rich done have enough money to pay for stuff. Sounds like a major crock heap to me. As does calling it a gift to allow the people who actually earn the money to keep a bigger piece of the pie. I'm starting to think we should not engage conservatives in these discussions, because all the bullshit makes it a waste of time.
You are wrong, Global. Our social programs like Social Security and Medicare are paid for through payroll taxes. Social Security payroll taxes apply to the first $110,000 of income earned each year. Social Security has not contributed a single dime to the national debt. It currently has a 2.7 trillion dollar surplus that makes Soc. Sec. funded fully for the next 35 years. In order to make it fully funded for the foreseeable future, all we need to do is remove the earnings cap. It would be the Ayn Rand utopia that would collapse without the support of the American tax payer - predominately the middle class. The middle class pays the vast majority of the taxes in this country.
Global-No one has implied you are responsible for anyone but yourself and your family. Paying taxes is something everyone does on a daily basis. We elect leaders to determine what should be done with those taxes. If we elect a progressive, as the majority of Americans has, then we will see policies that favor the working man and the middle class. If we elect a conservative, whom we did not do, then the policies generally favor the upper class and the very wealthy. Your man lost and our man won. So, perhaps in the next election for the White House your type of politician will win and put forth his policies. Stop your crying and bitching about your taxes, your starting to sound like Romney for Christ sakes! Be a man and deal with the present political environment and pay your taxes just like we would be doing if that loser Romney had won. If you think health insurance for those with preexisting health issues is a gift, you’re wrong it is a right here in America for the fore seeable future. Taxing the wealthy with a 3% increase is not going to hurt them and it will help the country and fellow Americans. Of course it will not fix all the problems we face, but it's a start in the right direction for us. We have to change some of the funding on certain programs, but there is no reason to cut the programs all together. I hope we do go over the so called fiscal cliff and the taxes will go on you and everyone else and there will be funding adjustments made to programs you Republicans call gifts! Those cuts will include the military and social programs. The Republicans have been bought off to a large degree by the super wealthy and the multi-national corporations and that is why the will do anything to protect the income of their wealthy donors. During the Clinton Administration we had higher taxes on the wealthy and we still had a surplus of revenue and plenty of jobs. So what is it that you guys are really afraid of, your taxes might actually help someone beside the wealthy and those who build weapons for mass killing around the World? Taxes are collected and used as a whole to fund everything from roads to education, and of course the military. I guess the $5,000,000,000 tax cut Romney promised his wealthy donors wasn't a gift or a pay back to get him elected! He stated very clearly he supported the Ryan budget and that included the super tax break to the rich. And one last thing, we won (DEM.'s) and you lost the federal and state elections here. Get used to it and stop moaning about how only you Republicans are the only people that have worked for what you have. You know it is nothing more than a lie to make you feel better after losing the race....
What's wrong with the word "entitlements"? It means that we are entitled to receive benefits because of all the money we put in to it. I think the Republicans have manipulated the word just as skillfully as they have all the other words to make them sound like bad names....like "liberals". The fact that their money can buy up all the news media and use it all to do a psy ops propaganda campaign to get people to react adversely to these words has a lot to do with it. They have even created the perverse situation where they can besmirch the word "government" while they corrupt it to favor themselves instead of the majority of people who the government is supposed to protect and help.
Who would pay? To start with, a non-profit single payer healthcare system would cost about half of what we pay per person right now. I'm sure the rest of the world must think we're complete idiots, paying a for profit health insurance CEO over $100 million per year. So I guess to answer your question, "who will pay," for starters the CEO will, by not receiving 100 million per year for not doing much more than chasing a young secretary around his desk.
Romney doesn't understand the concept of giving.....he only understands getting, and the only thing he has never been able to GET/BUY during his entire life, is the White House....which in my opinion is why he was in a state of shock on election night.
You wouldn't be rich without us. We don't need you, we'd get along great without you. Just stop sitting on and sucking up our resources. We don't need to buy bottled water from you or anybody.
Relinquish control of our resources and stop crapping on everything. and we'll build you a spaceship so you can mess up a different planet.
Hey Oz, it's called individual freedoms, ingenuity, and necessity that drive man to create great things. But you liberals would not understand that because it is much easier to sit back and let someone else do it. I am not responsible for you, I am responsible for me and my family and the sooner the liberals understand that basic concept everyone will appreciate life a little more instead of being trapped in your life of just existing and envious of the rich.
Jay Cay Johnstone described the willfully misleading language of business when it says things like, "From now on our employees will have to pay more of their own pension." or, "... more of their own health insurance." as though those payments were, until then, charitable generosities on the part of those employers when in fact they were part of the agreed upon compensation of those workers. It's like they're saying, "From now on our employees are going to have to pay more of their own salaries or wages."
Similarly, taxes on business must be seen as the just compensation business must pay to the people who work for them and not a charitability on their part. We earned all the government's social programs with our hard work making Mitt Romneys rich.
Just as Walmart gave its employees in California instruction on how to get on food stamps, most welfare recipients are the "working poor" - which is itself an abomination of any justice - or, grossly undercompensated workers. So, what business doesn't pay in wages it pays in taxes. If it refuses to do either - as it is doing now - you have, resulting, what is happening now, the destruction of the middle class and the pauperization of the working people
What are you talking about, Mauiman? The rich have been paying less than ever. They absolutely would be able to take up the slack, however reluctantly, as they had for so long before.
There is NO need to tax the middle class any more.
How do you think the middle class became the middle class?
Gifts? Like help for Hurricane Sandy maybe? Or how about Social Security, which we have paid into all our lives and our now getting some of it back. It's not an "entitlement," by the way. That's the word repubs use to make it sound as though we're getting something just because we're all whiny, irresponsible victims.
The rich need to pay more. They need to pay what they did in earlier years--the Clinton years, perhaps, when we had a surplus and a steaming economy.
Yes, I agree, if they keep this up they will not only become irrelevant, but will have a hell of a time finding anyone to grow their food and sew their clothes or wait on them for dinner at their fine clubs.
People will always find "witches" to burn...if not the gays then they'll find someone else...and feel quite self-righteous about it.
Still if you have all these wonderful programs,you have to convince the voters to pay for them. And the rich do not have enough money to pay for them, sorry. The middle class will have to be hard hit to pay for Santa Claus's gifts. And the middle class taxpayers have said loud and clear that they are unwilling to pay. So you simply have to cut the programs or convince the middle class to pay. Good luck on the second part of that.
We earned those "gifts" with our hard work making all the Mitt Romneys rich.
Truly a diabolical strategy the Democrats have, make government work for the people and they'll vote for you. It can be surreal oft times when the Republicans falsely accuse their opponents of the very thing that they, themselves, are guilty of.
Now we, the Democrats, are buying elections by their contorted, euphamistic definition.
Global: If the rich created their Randian Utopia, what would they eat and who would they get to clean their mansions? Maybe they could eat their money. But then they'd have to clean up after themselves. THAT would be a shock to their systems! Who would build their roads, keep them safe at night, and construct their mansions and cook their food for them?
Yes, by all means the rich should take their cash and flee to their gated community and sit and count the money until they starve to death for all I care.
If the Democrats are "Santa Clause" The Republicans are surely "Ebeneezer Scrooge".
If Obama promised his voters "gifts" What exactly do you call it when you promise $1 trillion in tax cuts in exchange for campaign money?
Someone should write a follow-up to "Atlas Shrugged". Maybe "Atlas Shrugged Redux". I'm sure that 10 years later, Dagny Taggart (appropriately named) would have "tagged" 70% of the men in Galt's Gulch, just like she did in the original novel. I wonder which one of the heroes would end up with 95% of all the wealth in the valley by being ruthless capitalists - rendering all the rest "parasites".
What is really sad is that Republicans blame the loss on not appealing to a large enough group (i.e.hispanics and women) by "doing a better job getting their message out". Never once do they consider that their platform and policies might be flawed.
He lost. He ran in a new district because he thought he would lose in his old district. Now, he's lost in the new district. He should just man up and admit the loss. You'd think a former military man would realize the correct mode of behavior.
I'm not surprised the ruplicans call them "gifts" - these same people refer to equal rights for gays as "special" rights. They just have no idea what equal rights and foreberance really are.
Here is a pdf of Florida law concerning recounts https://doe.dos.state.fl.us/rules/adopted-rules/pdf/1s2031.pdf
"(c) All recounts are to be ordered by the respective county canvassing board or canvassing commission
responsible for certifying the results of the race or races being recounted. "
It is up to Florida county canvassing boards. I doubt all of them are going to want to take on the added work and cost for this. West should man up and admit defeat.