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.
In the interview, our esteemed Speaker of the House could not even get the name of the party right. John, it's "DEMOCRATIC"......not "DEMOCRAT" ! On a more-positive note, read the Nation Magazine's superb account of Bernie's tenure as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. This man's wisdom, fair-mindedness, and just plain intelligence should be an inspiration to all of us.
We Are going to start the trip down that road. This is what the delusionary Republicans wants us to follow. To return to the great depression.
In 1920 this country elected Warren Gamaliel Harding which became he 29thpresident of the United States, a Republican from Ohio, he promised the nation "a return to normalcy", in the form of a strong economy, independent of foreign influence. This program was designed to rid Americans of the tragic memories and hardships faced during World War I, Harding and the Republican Party had desired to move away from progressivism that dominated the early 20th century. He defeated Democrat and fellow Ohioan James M. Cox in the largest presidential popular vote landslide, a (60.32% to 34.15%) since popular vote totals were first recorded. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Warren Harding followed a predominantly pro-business, conservative Republican agenda. Taxes were reduced, particularly for corporations and wealthy individuals,
(Does this sound familiar)
high protective tariffs were enacted; and immigration was limited. Harding signed the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which streamlined the federal budget system and established the General Accounting Office to audit government expenditures. His campaign promise was "Less government in business and more business in government."
You can read more at http://ronsplaces.blogspot.com/2014/09/this-is-not-our-fathers-country-a...
We have to make a conscious effort the next Coming Election, to Vote out the Republicans and Conservatives, as much as we can. Or we will return to King George III Monarchy administration, where the aristocrat’s, the Lords and ladies, will rule over you because, all you are to them are peasants to serve all of their needs! We must get active and spread the word around, alert your friends, neighbors and your relatives to register to vote, to find out what the candidates platform is, if it meets the standards of the Americas working family’s needs to live in comfort and not to just survive. We do not need another Dynasty, we do not need any more millionaires as presidents, or do not want an aristocrat as president either,
This may be Senator Sander downfall... he says he won't take PAC money and suggests, instead, that small donors (averaging $40) will be the sustainable and possibly enough money to win the Democratic nomination. Has Senator Sanders done the math? Great ideas and progressive positions do NOT "pay the rent" whereas money will help deliver the Senator's message and ideas.
Read the article from Politico - rarely do I agree with their online publication, but they were spot on and Senator Sanders needs to heed their warning and realities of winning the presidency if he, Senator Sanders, is TRULY SERIOUS about winning and becoming President of the United States.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/bernie-sanders-fundraising-donors-... - after reading the article, do the math yourself!
If every person that has attended his political rallies up to this point in time, contributed $40 a person, that only comes out to about 12 million. Senator Sanders says he also wants to reach out working class poor as well as the struggling Middle Class, for their financial contributions. Now, if I were a "struggling" Middle Class or working class poor, would I be able to have enough discretionary money to contribute $40 to Senator Sander's political campaign, especially if I was barely earning minimum wage and struggling to put food on the table for my family? And even if I scrapped the bottom of my piggy bank and gave it all to the Sanders' campaign, Senator Sanders would still only have about $84 million dollars raised so far, unlike Hillary Clinton (DINO) and the top Republican candidates have raised.
Tell Senator Sanders, RICH individuals with progressive ideas ALSO HAVE A VOICE. They are fewer in numbers, but they do exist, and they should not be lumped in with the Koch Brothers. That difference needs to be pointed out: Tell Senator Sanders, there is also good money chasing after good ideas and policies.
Instead of decrying the "arms race" of political fund-raising,, Hillary continues to have that smirk on her face: somewhat critizing Citizens United on the one hand while on the other hand, taking donations wherever and from whomever ($45 million since her announcement to run for POTUS), and will then probably proclaim, after she gets into office, she would not be able to do much about Citizens' United.
Saulys, I choose that picture because I liked the provocation it projected. I didn't even know who it was until someone on this site pointed it out. I don't particularly care for politicians. They'll tell you want you want to hear to get elected. I've been much more successful by doing things myself. Much happier too.
As Bernie said, people overwhelmingly support the very words he uses. On other places that I use to blog, I can't tell you the amount of people that are claiming to be Republican,Libertarian, willing to change affilliations just to make sure Bernie gets elected, not just in the primary but as out POTUS. I sense this is no ploy to disrupt since their comments go beyond the focus and are given with a chip on their shoulders. They call him the only candidate worth voting for in any party. I am no fool in that a percentage might be thinking disruption, but the percentages which are responding say this is not anywhere near the majority who are real in their words. My opinion. Besides, this is the same old rhetoric used by Boehner and all Conservatives to paint their own idea of his candidacy and it is so clear that I can't believe they still think the American people so dumb.
Hey Ou812, here's your girl, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cJUBOZE26k. What a truly DISGUSTING fraud! Wolf Blitzer is complicit in this, it seems. Where's the moderation?
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance baffle 'em with bullshit, eh? Just keep your mouth moving and you won't have tob face reality. Somebody check her "facts".
Is this what you admire?
PUUUUUUKE!
These fascist pigs will take note when people get sick of the bs. Past time to take to the streets and physically run these jerks out of town. And if they think there aren't those among us that will fight they are mistaken. Gather around Bernie and try the peaceful way first. It can not go on much longer, they are causing real pain to innocent American citizens that obey the law and only want to work and make a living. They are taking everything from the working class. It has to end.
Now that Scott Walker has entered the race, perhaps Donald trump will attack him. We'll have to wait and see, but it's a good test.
Decentralization of power is one of the ways to let self-identifying minorities protect themselves. When Republicans yell "States' rights", they sound as if they like that protection. But really, they use that argument only when they can't get the federal government to do what they want. Now they're working on the other end, centralizing power in those states where Republicans control the state government and Democrats control most of the major cities.
Alice @ #18, What IRV meant at #15 was "deaths per trillion kilowatt-hours". He or she forgot proper spaces and hyphens: It should have been "deaths/trillion kW-hr", although "deaths/PW-hr" (petawatt-hour) would make more sense.
Thom go you one better, the same companies that were involved with the 1937 coup attempt belong to ALEC
Koch father played leader.
no theory actual conspiracy
One has to question Snyder's continued success pushing anti-worker legislation in a state that was once a major part of the prosperous Northeast Manufacturing Sector in this country ! After all, a majority of Wisconsin's population have consistently given him the ability to rape and pillage at will ! Further signs of a U.S. Population that has lost sight of the past battles that were fought to achieve social and economic equality for all citizens, a sad commentary that predicts the continuation of a devolving social order that is essentially morphing into a Plutocracy !
Instant-RunOff ~ Still not convinced. You fail to factor into the equation the cost of safely storing the ever increasing stockpile of radioactive wastes for thousands of years. What are you going to do with the heavy water nuclear energy produces. You can't just sweep this stuff under the carpet and forget about it. It is going to take a massive containment project to safely deal with all this mess. You aren't factoring in what it is going to cost to pay workers who haven't yet even been born with dealing with our garbage.
As far as Fukushima is concerned, that accident happened 3 years ago. It is still releasing tons of radioactive water into the ocean. According to one article I recently read it is too late to try and contain the damaged reactors with cement as was done in Chernobyl. Now the plan is to blow the reactors into the ocean with atomic bombs and remove the molten fused cores underwater with submarines. Sounds like a pretty expensive project.
We don't know what the end game in this accident is going to be. It could take several decades to gauge just how much damage we have done to ourselves and the ecosystem. What we do know is that when Chernobyl exploded, the resultant contamination claimed the lives of some 1 million people around the world and in the region; and, that's a rather conservative estimate. What we also know is that the Fukushima explosion released some 3 times as much radioactive particles into the atmosphere and the ocean than Chernobyl did. You do the math. Now put a price on the lives of one of those victims and factor that into your cost of nuclear energy.
You are suggesting we spend $4.6 Trillion on nuclear energy? Obviously that number doesn't even begin to touch on any of the hidden costs of nuclear energy. It might cover cleaning up Fukushima; but, it certainly isn't going to pay for all the lives lost, all the medical expenses, all the birth defects, and all the money lost in the seafood industry. There will be more expenses as time goes on and the casualties really start to get counted. In the article below it is estimated that total containment of this disaster could take 10 years. The damage done could continue to escalate several decades after that. I'm so sorry my friend; but, that industry is just too damn rich for my blood.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/10/11/what-are-efforts-to-contain-fukushima-2/
It wasnt socialism that caused the massive loss of jobs in 2008, or the loss of peoples home values, it wasnt socialism that destroyed peoples 401k's, or pensions or futures. It wasnt socialism that destroyed Detroit, it was UN-regulated capitalism that DID.
WHO BAILED out WHO?
It was PUBLIC money that bailed out PRIVATE companies and criminal banks.
So lets correct good old Maggie posthumously.........
"The problem with capitalism is that you eventually run out of other peoples money!"
Thatcher was an idiot, and it appears that you are too!
kend -- If there are no jobs at Walmart or McDons, where are those other jobs?
RJSchundler -- Do have any links to studies that try to show that raising the min wage hurts poor families more?
It's all about consolidating power into the hands of a few. In Indiana, it started when they eliminated the Justices Of The Peace from the judicial system; more recently, they merged the Marion County Sheriffs department with the Indianapolis Police department to form the Indianapolis Metropliton Police Department.
Fewer Hands - more power.
DAnneMarc I have been linking my sources, and reputable sources, not the crud that you have linked. Like for hemp you link a couple pro-marijuana sites that in one lame article extoll the virtues of hemp, including as a biofuel, with no numbers, no calculations, no analysis, no references. Whereas I linked Alice Friedemann on the subject who gives pages of analysis, calculations and and references.
Now I'm all for hemp, it is an excellent fiber, great for clothing, paper & textiles. And hemp oil is a wonderful food, very high in Omega 3's, if only it wasn't so bloody expensive. And I'm totally pro-marijuana legalization, and nobody hates the drug war more than me. But when greenie religious types go whacky and decide hemp will save the world, provide all of our fuel and energy, a total rejection of rational scientific analysis. Hemp straw in some areas could be competitive with switchgrass, miscanthus, willow or sugarcane for biomass production, but you are in greenie delusional paradise if you think that will even make a significant dent in world energy production.
The simple truth is that both you and Wonderland are just mirror images of Climate change deniers, both believing in NON-SCIENCE. Both types of deniers, reject science, embrace religious fanaticism, avoid all analysis and calculations like they were the bubonic plague. And just make stuff up, ridiculous even outrageous exaggerations like your fruitcake Fukushima radioactive fish delusion.
You want references, here's a good one for you, The graph shows recent monthly mean carbon dioxide measured at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_full
You see how that keeps rising, over 400 ppm already, and accelerating. In spite of 25 yrs and over $6 trillion (to end of 2014) thrown down the sewer on nutty non-Hydro renewable energy scams. Do you realize how much CO2 reduction would come from $6 trillion spent on nuclear energy instead? With that much expenditure we could have replaced virtually all Coal generation, with Nuclear power, the dirtiest half of all world electricity generation -- GONE --- GONE FOREVER. Instead optimistically 7% of world electricity [there are caveats with intermittent sources that limit their TRUE emission reductions, re: Lang below] was replaced with wind, solar, geothermal, biomass & tidal total. Not even enough to prevent the growth in electricity sector CO2 emissions. Some success that is.
Here is a scientific analysis of carbon abatement cost of various tech, by Peter Lang, not some hack or no-nothing, but a power engineer:
http://www.wind-watch.org/documents/wp-content/uploads/lang-wind-power-c...
He calculates the cost of CO2 emissions avoided for Wind energy (the #1 dump for renewable energy funding) @ $1149 per ton. Vs $22 per ton for Nuclear. So in other words for the same expense we could have avoided 50X more emissions if we had spent some $4.6 trillion (to end of 2014) on Nuclear instead of Wind.
Kend, as usual, disingenuous and facile on so many levels. One thing about your Thatcher platitude is that it willfully and dishonestly - and with willful dishonesty - conflate socialism with the welfare state. The latter is a socialist cop out, an inadequate compromise with capitalism, a half way measure resulting, like all half way measures, not in the best of both worlds but the worst, not both socialism and capitalism but neither.
Socialism is not the welfare state but the workers' state.
Detroit was built around the auto industry so when it was made easier for manufacturing to off shore Detroit became a ghost town. It's a stark example of the results of policies facilitating the practice.
The Greek situation is much more nuanced than the Republican talking points you repeat would have it. Goldmann-Sachs' clever flim flam - exacerbated by austerity measures - is mainly what's behind it.
You are not doing a good job of pushing "supply side" economics. No shiller's fee for you today - but you're a volunteer in that field protecting your own investment, from what you say.
Ou812, that's a big problem, Democrats are now taking money from the same people as Republicans. Legalized corruption that is legal only because corrupt politicians make the laws.
It's like Obama care. Because Republicans voted, reliably, as expected, in lockstep to obstruct every Democratic and independent vote was needed to pass. Joe Liebermann of Connecticut, who always was in the pocket of the insurance industry, wouldn't vote for it unless the public option was removed. The rest is history.
Billy, Thorium molten salt reactors are definitely the way to go forward with Nuclear. Funny how the Federal government is giving zip to nil in $R&D for that, in spite of the USA inventing the tech. Main R&D is in China now. But the Feds have 100's of $billions to throw down the sewer on nutty crony corporate scams like wind & solar, hydrogen, ethanol & carbon capture.
A good talk with DR. KIKI INTERVIEWING KIRK SORENSON ON LFTR and the vast energy reserves of Thorium in the Rare Earth Mine tailings that they will pay you to take that thorium away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEpnpyd-jbw&feature=player_embedded#at=51
Instant-RunOff ~ As (3) of us have requested in this thread alone - I, chuckle8, and Aliceinwonderland - I will ask one last time, PLEASE STATE YOUR SOURCES!!
Without credible sources your statements mean NOTHING!!
If the City should be 'free' to set wages, then why not employment, prices and the amount of output as well?
That would be true freedom.
what's happening in California the weather modification should be criminal I'm a Carolina boy love the woods the weather hasn't been natural for decadesI don't know what they're spraying up there but it can't be good! as for a new energy source its laying around in piles at every mine.its called thorium and it is better it runs about 98% efficiency but we can't make nuclear bombs out of it I guess that's the reason we don't use it I respect you Thom but we're misinformed on so so many levels we need to come together as a people for the common good of all especially mother earth she should not be raped and pillaged for profit the the American Indians had it right quit killing and fighting respect people's right to live and be there self and start loving thank you...
There are protections built-in to the workplace for gays -- at least, at corporate State Farm. I worked in one of the larger centers in Missouri, and there was a man who bragged about one of his sexual escapades to another co-worker. This may not have been a problem, except that the co-worker was on the phone with a customer, who was disgusted and outraged. Supervisors got on the phone and tried to do damage control, apologizing to the customer. The violator was given a two week vacation while they tried to sort this out. They knew that if they fired the guy, that could open up a discrimination lawsuit. He was guilty of a number of minor offenses, mostly altercations and screaming matches with other employees, that should have had him canned long before that. Mind you, he came back, and he overstepped, going through an employee's desk to accuse him of wrongdoing. That finally got him fired. There are protections built-in, you just have the be the right person to take advantage of them.