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.
KMH,
Thanks for the summary thus far. Very interesting. I'm glad Obama is trying to keep people honest.
Brandon is young, self-absorded and most-likely uninsured or insured by his employer. He has no concept of what tens of millions of people deal with on a daily basis.
@Wendey- it seems the right wing creates a world based around currency, where the rest of us value life and seek to set the rules around what suits the world we want to live in. We are creators and they are slaves to rules, mistreated souls, victims who accept lesser quality lives.
Hello there. Am watching C-span. The Republicans are quite the philosophers. Cantor Minority Whip R-Virginia, McCain and Dave Camp and some other guy from Arizona, are still trying to take on 'Wahsington' setting baseline standards. President just referred to Cantor's bringing in of the 2000+ page bill as a 'prop'. Obama is calling him out on it. He also told Mc Cain that the campaign is over. He is saying we could make food cheaper if we eliminated meat inspectors. Likewise, if we eliminated the FDA, we could allow people to think they are getting one thing when they are not.
Brandon needs to be careful what he wishes for - God forbid he loses his health insurance due to unemployment, illness or astronomical premiums, then finds himself in an ER needing help.
@ Humboldt - exactly
A motorcyclist, hit by a car, is comatose and ventilated. If he does not have insurance, does the hospital have the right to refuse care?
Fire insurance and health insurance have nothing to do with eachother. Fire insurance doesn't cover the fighting of the fire like health insurance does. It covers the cost after a fire.
The caller's analogy misses the point about fire departments. He is equating home insurance with fire response. The fire department will put out the fire regardless of the homeowner having insurance.
@ Mark K - I don't follow the business dealings of MLB, but I thought the luxury tax was a tool to subsidize small market teams to field better players.
When one stoops to conquer, one is conquered by stupes!
For profit health insurance does not operate under the premise of pooling individuals to share the cost. If they did, pre-existing conditions, age, race, and other outliers would have no relevance.
Pelosi was quoting Teddy.
Rep James Camp was pushing health savings acounts (HSA) noting that premiums drop for insurers who have HSA. What he did not acknowledge was the total healthcare cost is still there its only split into two funds.
I was sitting on a bus yesterday behind an older white guy and two Seattle police officers who were discussing the recent incident in the Metro bus tunnel (where a teenage girl assaulted another). The man seemed concerned about his safety, but the cops assured him that he was an unlikely target because his burly size. The officers also joked how they themselves preferred to target short people, because it was “safer.” The man discussed their weaponry, impressed by the lethality of the Glock 40, and waxed gleeful on other weaponry like 9 mm pistols. After that I blurted out that this is the guy you should be concerned about, a view which garnered a few murmurs of approval, which succeeded in ending the conversation between cops and paranoid gun nut
Also, over the weekend, I was listening to an ESPN radio commentator discussing the new business math of Los Angeles Dodgers’ owner Frank McCourt. McCourt’s goal is to reduce the player payroll from 40 percent of revenue—already one of the lowest percentages in MLB—to 25 percent. The question then was whether McCourt is at all interested or passionate about the sport enough to put a quality “product” on the field (given current salary levels) for fans who attended the games or helped keep television ratings up to provide a revenue source from network contracts. Some would rather speculate that ownership of a baseball team for McCourt is merely just another business venture in which the goal was to make as much profit as possible. This certainly is in opposition to the Steinbrenners’ passion to put the best team money can buy in New York, where winning—not necessarily profit—is the overriding goal, even if it means having to pay “luxury” taxes for going over the salary cap.
McCourt’s passion for profit over product was also the subject of a Los Angeles Times story the other day. It appears that IRS records show that McCourt hasn’t paid any taxes in recent years, and all apparently legal. Together with McCourt’s stinginess on putting a quality product (meaning players) on the baseball field (somewhat masked by the fact that the Dodgers play in the worst division in the National League) this has drawn the ire of both baseball fans and working stiffs already angered by businesses and corporations that do everything they can avoid paying their fair share of the tax burden. This isn’t just in sports franchises, obviously, but across the business spectrum that cutting payroll and avoidance of taxes is occurring.
As an aside, I don’t mean to embarrass Red Sox fans but did you know that in 1921, Babe Ruth hit 59 homeruns (probably juiced on alcohol), while Boston had a league low 17—as a team?
The HRC is not quite Kabuki Theatre but the Repubs did try to filibuster with prepared statements and notes until Harry Reid called them on it. McConnell's response was to report the time disparity.
Science News – “Magic” Energy Box
The Bloom Box may be an important future source of clean energy. This story was featured on last Sunday’s “60 Minutes.” A shorter story was hightlighted on MSNBC. Fascinating (video):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#35568227
Gingrich Points One Finger at Obama; 4 Fingers Point Back at Republicans: “Gov’t. is Smart, You’re Stupid”
Excellent summary of Republican/Democratic polices since Eisenhower (video):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olb...
Rep. Anthony Weiner: Righteous Anger on the House Floor
Video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show#3557...
It is interesting that, just as majority leader Steny Hoyer started to introduce the idea of the public option, TV channels that were carrying the health care meeting went to commercials.
Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Chris Van Hollen have been working on legislation to put the evil Citizens United genie back in the bottle. There approach can be found here:
http://vanhollen.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=169969
But are there are other possible avenues of attack to push corporations out of politics?
What about the IRS tax code?
Currently religious and non-profit entities receive tax-exempt status on the condition they NOT engage in political campaign activities. This is NOT considered a restraint on their First Amendment free speech laws. If these groups violate this agreement, they lose that perk.
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=161131,00.html
Corporations receive numerous benefits such as limited liability protections and tax benefits such as the ability to write off expenses all designed to facilitate commerce.
Why can’t the tax code be changed to make these tax benefits conditional on corporations NOT engaging in political campaign activities?
Technically this would NOT be a restraint on corporate free speech any more than it is with those religious and non-profit organizations.
Corporations, likewise, would remain free to engage in political activities. Only they, too, would be faced with the choice that such involvement would end all of those special benefits in the tax code. Changing IRS code could possibly be done in time to prevent a massive avalanche of corporate money from affecting this year’s election.
I contacted the offices of Chuck Schumer at 202-224-6542 and Chris Van Hollen at (202) 225-5341 last week to suggest this idea, but the current proposal still does not include it.
If you see any merit in this idea I urge you to call your Senators and Representatives. The clock is ticking for this year’s mid-term elections.
http://reinventing-america.blogspot.com/2010/02/tax-code-and-citizens-un...
Steve King seems to be awfully familiar with James Clyburn's floor speech to not believe he was the subject.
I'm having a hard time stepping away from the healthcare summit.
Hoping the Federal Government will care about consumer protection is fruitless. Carpe Diem, or the consumer beware is the modus operndi. Even if there is consumer protection there will always be corporations or busineses that take advantage of the consumer. That the consumer's only recourse is to sue. And look at Ford with the exploding Pinto gas tanks where it came out that it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits than fix the problem. That many bad busineses or shady ones know many consumer can not afford to sue or few will. And even if they do win in court continuances make it so their grand children will be lucky to collect. Look at big tobacco. Few legal winners ever collected and even fewer will ever collect the damages.
As for more nuclear power plants, I am perplexed. I am union electrician and need the work to build the plants. I also have had to travel to many different nuclear power plants for fuel changing shutdowns. But working for Exelon, who has the most nuclear power plants in the U.S. that the fuel will be radioactively deadly for 10,000 years. How can you safely bury that with proper warning signs? Who knows what langauge will be spoken by all around the dump sites? Or even if the people are knowledgeable enough to even be able to read the warnings?
As for the nuclear reactor, some reactors have 1 million gallons of water flowing every minute through the reactor. This creates massive strain on the plumbing and piping. Any foreign material caught in the system flowing that fast hitting the piping hurts too. That is why most nuclear plants where licensed for 20 years so the corroded or damaged parts do not leak.
I have worked at five different Exelon nuclear reactors in IL. And have training from the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, Exelon on lessons learned from past mistakes doing the same or similar job. To err is human like the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. And accidents happen. That the power plant has so many back up fail safes that the plant can recover for most mistakes. If the plant can not recover, they scram the reactor, or lift fuel rods so the nuclear reaction stops. Even after the reactor is scrammed it still needs cooling water flowing.
The Daily Blog section isn't displaying well on the front page.
It starts out with the blog sections laid out from Mon, Tue, etc... then after a few sections that section reloads and displays Thurs the 25th, two sections from the 24th, then Thurs the 25th again.