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Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
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Problem is this dog won't hunt. He's either not capable or unwilling.
Who cares? The results are the same: Utter capitulation.
Obama will continue to push for the interests of the elite and crush the hopes and dreams of the average man and woman. What else can one expect from a center-right Republican president?
I know you like FDR. That was a different time and place.
Today, unlike the 30's, we provide and pay for the defense of most of the world.
Today, unlike the 30's, we provide foriegn aid to countries in amounts greater than some national GDPs
Today, unlike the 30's, we feed, cloth, house and educate more people in the US than live in some countries.
Today, unlike the 30's, 90% of homes in the US have air conditioning, nearly 100% have a TV and 75% have high speed internet. I volunteer at our local food bank and many coming for assistance have cell phones.
These are things not paid for in FDR's time and are costs beared by the taxpayer. To replicate the boom and recovery of the "New Deal", we would need to first depress back to the standard of living similar to that of the 1930s.
Unfortunately Obama is bought and paid for. He won't go bold and act like Truman or FDR. He idolizes Reagan. Enough said. We were fooled 3 years ago. In a do-over Hilary wins hands down. But in a perfect world Bernie or Russ Fiengold would be prez.
I tried to sign the petition at freespeech.org and I could not find one. If you want people to sign it (50,000 by week's end), tell your buddies to make it easier to find, like by putting it on the home page. Unless I'm just lame.
@Mathboy, that's not a bad idea. Perhaps instead of making 20 years the only way to initiate splitting the corporation, perhaps there could also be triggers to split a corporation when x number of employees have been reached or y amount of profit is being generated for a certain number of sequential quarters. That way a corporation that is getting too big too fast doesn't have an excuse to remain consolidated at the end of its 20 year period, claiming its too big to split.
N
Here's an idea. Rather than go back to dismantling corporations after 20 years or 40 years (since we kind of depends on the constancy of their existence), let's simply split every publicly traded corporation when it reaches 20 years. It doesn't matter if it's a monopoly or not. Each director and each stock holder would go to one or the other. The day of the split starts the clock on when those two companies will be split 20 years later.
We could even call it job creation, since each new corporation would have to fill out its ranks a bit.
Obama will BETRAY the PEOPLE over Corporate interests as usual, the "HOPE" of "YES WE CAN" died on arrival. I, like many others, supported Obama in 2008 with $$$ and my VOTE, 2012 will be different, voting for other than the two major parties may be my message. An excellent choice would be an administration made up of the likes of Bernie Sanders/Dennis Kucinich, Alan Grayson, Anthony Wiener, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Sheila Jackson-Lee, etc. Now this IS "CHANGE WE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN". Time is coming for the "Rumble of the People"!
Dan Williams
www.thebridgetonowhere.org
www.daretodreamnetwork.net
Hey Thom, good show today, but you just said that the gov't made it illegal to label milk as BST-free, and I think you are mistaken on this issue. I see such labels on milk, organic and commercial, everywhere, e.g. Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Ralphs, Vons, etc.
I would bet he will continue to work in the best interests of those with the money. If he gets the votes to be re-elected, and somehow manages to beat the likely senario of republican theft of our election process again, only then might he work towards the interest of the masses as he has no need to continue campaigning. I think too much confidence has been lost in our election process, and there will be weak voter turn out. We are getting what we deserve as a country of uninformed nonparticipatory citizens!
I agree. We are great for eating our own, knowing it will make us sick then spend years angerly crying about how ill we feel.
For people not showing up I will blame the citizens. I will blame Obama for not giving them a reason to. "Organizing democrats is like herding cats" is so true. Obama cannot herd cats with a spray bottle. Watching our "champion" bow down to the clowns arcoss the aisle on anything and everything, bothers me to no end. I am not a beta. I cannot just sit back and go along with crap.When I have to argue with teabaggers and Obama is kissing Cantor's ring then what more can I say?
We have been fighting with the GOP/teabaggers for a decade now. We would hope our champion would show up and lay down the law and settle things. But he doesnt. He wants us to lay down our arms during battle and be the better people and at the same time teaches the GOP better stomping techniques to use on a prone, unarmed enemy.
I was a diehard Obama supporter and would like to be again but my faith is so rattled. No one can be that naive to watch his coworkers talk about taking him out all the time then submit to them. He cant be dumb enough to think that only good will come from that.
There is only one way to grow an economy. That is for people to buy goods and services.
We gave money to the corporations. They gave big bonuses to their top executives. They paid off their creditors, the banks. NO JOBS CREATED!!!
We gave money to the BANKS. They gave big bonuses to their top executives. They put it in their vaults. NO CREDIT EXTENDED!!! NO JOBS CREATED!!!
If they had taken those hundreds of billions that they used to bail out corporations and banks and divided it evenly among all the people in this country that made less than $100K. That money would have done more to grow the economy than all their corporatist 'stimulus' plans.
If every time a corporation packs up and abandons a community. The local industrial development agency siezes their assets by right of imminent domain and forms an employee owned corporation out of the workers that were laid off and set them into competition with the company that abandoned them. That would grow OUR economy.
Every suggestion that has been put forward by liberals and moderates has been labeled 'socialist.' I say,"IF YOU ARE GONNA WEAR THE NAME THEN PLAY THE GAME!"
~;^}>
Superstition is harmful to Children and other living things
Cost behind the privatization scam should be investigated. Not long ago received a letter from my former Congressman Rush Holt when I lived in New Jersey in response to the attempt of privatizing Social Security. His second to last paragraph was a topic of importance which is the first time I heard be addressed. The paragraph says:
“Privatizing Social Security is certainly not the answer. Any potential increases in yields from private accounts would almost certainly be wiped out by the rising dept burden heaped on the young from financing the transition, which could cost as much as $2 trillion in the first ten years. In the meantime, payroll taxes would have to increase or benefits would have to be cut in order to cover the shift of money into the private sector.”
I have never heard anyone in favor of privatizing government programs address the massive cost to us and the massive effort in the transition from public to private before.
Supposedly high salaries, top medical benefits and other compensations are suppose to attract the best and brightest according to the “free market” promoters’ logic. These same people who believe this tell me teachers who help to train our future generation are being paid too much and should pay more for less medical and retirement benefits to solve everybody's state budget problems. If it’s all about the money, let’s be consistent. The whole argument against the small raising of taxes 3% or 4% on those ultra-rich is absurd when they can pay off state debts and keep Social Security and Medicare alive with their collective pocket changes. Corporate executives have had their tax cuts for about 10 years and still didn’t produce much living wage jobs for those struggling to maintain a Middle Class, but gave themselves bonuses and other compensations after being bailed out under the Bush Administration.
With 600,000 USPS employees, it is one of the largest grass roots organizations being singled out for annihilation and securing the billions spent by the poor class, as over 50% of Americans are unemployed, underemployed or working for the same wages they have for almost 40 years, will now be expected to pay exorbitant prices for paper communications through corporate citizen's like FedEx, UPS, and any number of 100's more that will be cropping up under hidden corporations similar to that which gave Romney $1,000,000 campaign contribution and was only in business for several months with no "real" individual to contact, or real office for that matter. We are being scammed from every wannabe capitalist with a twisted Republican or Christian Right Wing ideology, which is the norm for a society that has fallen into the muck of a capitalist run government, which, by the way, if anyone's proven it doesn't work, America has! Yet, there must be over 1 million people who will be directly effected by the demise of USPS, besides it's over 300 million customers, if we don't fight for the true blue of the US Postal Worker and their services, well, only the rich can go live in another country! Since I'm victim as most Americans are who believe it or don't, I'll just have to stand my ground in my country and fight for what I know constitutes a Constitutional Democracy growing its way into a more perfect union! By the way, that CAN'T include corporate "citizens"! Impeach the Supreme court, or please, President Obama, tie the so and so's up with additional appointees, it'll be just a distraction but perhaps it'll give you time to close Guantanamo and reverse your decision on that dirty rotten lousy pipeline you've convinced yourself is a "good idea"?
I certainly wish he'd go FDR, but nothing so far has shown he will.
I'm so disillusioned. I know he's battled nothing but the Party of NO! and fillibusters even when they had the majority.
But...
I guess what I am trying to say -- its time to quit pissing on Americans! Its time for all of us to stand up and tell people who say teachers should make less, workers should make less --- so how much should YOUR wages be cut? 50%? 60%? Let them know they are speaking of their future too!
Whenever I talk to the RW's - they are constantly putting down America and Americans! No, we can't expect better of the government! We can't have workers rights! We can't have government investing in Americans or business to go in the 'right' direction! We can't provide for the poor, the elderly or expect clean air, clean water or food to be safe! Everytime we don't speak up -- they think they are right!
I get sick every time I think of that. Bush has really made his mantra of fear a reality for us. Now we fear the GOP.
Perhaps the left should embrace globalization, perhaps unions in the US should start making demands that other countries have unions too. One way I think it could be started would be the longshoremens unions refusing to unload cargo from countries of orgin that do not have union counterparts loading cargo. If we're going to be saddled by free trade agreements, then perhaps its time we raise the tide world wide, and give every country a middle class economic structure by demanding it, and going on general strike if we don't get it.
BTW, if you search "two santa claus theory" in Google, Thom's article on CommonDreams is at the top of the list, then wikipedia is second.
N
GM was upset when the economy was tanking. Not because things were going downhill, but that THEY could afford to keep their workers at their current salaries. This is one of the untold tales of the recession. Almost EVERYONE took a pay cut for the recession. A few top executives did not - in almost business out there!
The attack against workers - that teachers make too much money - that public sector jobs are NOT paid less then the private sector..... all of these lies go unchallenged in the mainstream media. Just as the pathetic Palin comments, the Bachmann blustering and the Perry Prayer pledge get prime time coverage as worthwhile ideals.
While all the ills of education are dumped on the teacher - few people are aware of the actual work requirements, the reporting, the regulation of what can be taught, how it can be taught, the constant shift of methodology, practices and policies are never mentioned. You cannot present material at a high grade level in a classroom - even if the students are bright - because there is a restriction on that. Only certain classes are allowed to bypass that rule. This is just one example. Meanwhile, all the naysayers claim to know what the teachers do and how they could do it better. The skills to teach are belittled or overlooked.
The more people - like these - that are threatened and successfully attacked - the more likely that your job and salary will go down in the future!
We need to inform people -- that person could be you next!
I don't even think he will feign a strong stand. President Obama has worked his ass off alienating liberals and essentially insulting them for 3 straight years.....and I am afraid he may see the results of that in the 2012 election. I will still vote for him of course...but I would bet my house that a lot on the Left simply will sit out 2012....which could bring in the nightmare scenario...President Perry and Repubs controlling BOTH the House AND and the Senate. I swear I would be my at my wit's end then.
He will feign to take a strong stand.
Using S.O.B.s instead of A.M.F.
Although my parents largely failed to educate us on the full spectrum of swear (I am unhappy with you) phrases, my fellow Marines were able to bring me up to speed on them.
My first instinct in hearing the clip from Mr. Hoffa's speech, was that A.M.F.s (rear-end orafice + maternal incest) would have carried the sentiment better, but upon reflection I see that S.O.B.s is apropos, after all, because he refers to thoses who actively choose to embody the proceeds from the Whore of Babble On.
GOP plan ? Same old same old More corp cuts, loopholes. More deregulation. More wealth favoring policies. ALl that led us to Bush global crash 2008 & TARP joke on taxpayers, 799 Billion in Corp Welfare along with 28 yrs under Reaganomics Bush 1-2 GOP Cheney's unfunded huge debt and 2 long failed wars based on lies & war profits, jobs sent overseas with big Bush tax . 2 yrs 7 months is NOT enough time to undo all that toxic greeed. .
What about the personal touch? It might be quicker to call someone or email them, but I was thinking it might still be cheaper to write a letter on a nice greeting card bought or handmade, put a stamp on it and mail it. At the very least it seems more personal to share thoughts or send a short warm greeting written by your own hand every so often.