Yes! Welcome to Republican rule - it looks more like Napoleon than Jefferson.
13%
No! This doesn't at all look like Democracy and it has to be stopped.
87%
Comments
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.
Images of Thom
Mueller's favorite place to pray (written about in "Prophet's Way"), and the roof of the room where the Last Supper is reputed to have happened.
From The Thom Hartmann Reader:
"Thom Hartmann is a creative thinker and committed small-d democrat. He has dealt with a wide range of topics throughout his life, and this book provides an excellent cross section. The Thom Hartmann Reader will make people both angry and motivated to act."
From The Thom Hartmann Reader:
"Thom Hartmann seeks out interesting subjects from such disparate outposts of curiosity that you have to wonder whether or not he uncovered them or they selected him."
From Unequal Protection, 2nd Edition:
"If you wonder why and when giant corporations got the power to reign supreme over us, here’s the story."
A government in which the people are the ultimate authorityis what this country was founded on. Of the people,by the people and for the people. Nowhere in any founding document do I see the words corporation rule or corporations are people.
We need to get our country back. So many people are unaware about what's happening. Corporations are not people. Millionaires and billionaires need to pay their fair share of taxes -- the cap MUST be lifted from Social Security and corporations HAVE to pay taxes. This country is going down the tubes. I makes me sad.
My husband and I lived in West Michigan, to be precise Grand Junction for 14 years before, we came back to the Detroit area 5 years ago. Where we lived we had 3 and more directions to go when we needed things,from groceries to services like the hospital in St. Joseph. We would go to Benton Harbor regularly because we missed the diversity of living in Detroit. As elections rolled around it was hard to take that there seemed to be so very little interest on that side of the state to participate. We tried a couple of times to get involved in what there was of a Democratic party. Our take was that if someone ran as a Democrat out there they did it so they could get thier name on the ballot. We only voted for a Republican one time in our entire lives and that was because the person who we wanted and felt would do the most for out township was running on the Republcan ballot against the Democrat who had a reputation of being corrupt. Politcally we ended up making more enemies than friends while we lived out there because of where we stood on the issues. In Holland for one election we saw plenty of signs on lawns for the Democrat for President, I don't remember if it was Clinton, Kerryor Gore. But even Kalamazoo didn't seem to take much interest in the elections. Benton Harbor was so sad when we were there, although they did try to bring the area up with a greater expanse of the shopping area, But we saw no hint of interest in the elections. On one positive note we did attend a rally in Muskegon when Gore was running and there was a great turnout, and we were in a restaurant in Benton Harbor when the Supreme Court ruling came down. That image is burned on my brain. We are 66 and 71, I will be 67 shortly.
My husband and I in our late sixties are pretty"well off" under the present circumstances. Old rickety, but paid off house, small pensions, Soc. Sec., Medicare, and additional health insurance as a retirement benefit from the places where we worked. What makes me sad is that we have come to the conclusion that we, just pre-babyboomer, truly are the "lucky" generation. No wars affected us personally, we did not suffer through a depression. We grew up middle class, modest wishes, but never really wanting for anything. Got excellent affordable educations. Oil and food were inexpensive for a long time, and the "entitlements" (to which we contributed ourselves for many decades) will most likely last our life times.
These times, we feel, will never come again. Anyone born middle class, 10 to 15 years after us, will never have the decent lives or retirement we had and have. We are not rich, but having no debts goes a long way toward living without worries.
What truly blows me away is that for years now, younger generations have been voting, if they vote at all, for people who blatantly have no interest in their well being: Now or in future. Books like Thomas Frank's "What's the matter with Kansas", and others, clearly and repeatedly, point this out.
The post from shayes mentions the apathy and disinterest of some people. I would go further and say it is stupidity. Years of underfunding schools and underpaying teachers have created a dumbed down population which appears to have lost the ability to think, As an example: Why would anyone argue against universal health care? This is the norm in most of western countries. It is a matter of basic consideration or "duty of care", we all should feel for each other. It has nothing to do with "socialism", "communism" or "fascism" (the fact that I have heard the term: "fascist communist" shows you the basic ignorance). It is simply a humanitarian issue. Even a Christian one.
Corporate fatcats stand at the sidelines egging on "rebels without a cause", funding their little tea parties, while handing them pink slips, and shipping their jobs overseas. When the desperation about being unemployed is large enough, you may get your job back, perhaps, at $5 an hour. Because there will be no union to plea your cause and fight for a fair wage.
The general energy and drive for a better tomorrow, many of us "children of the sixties" had, has now been rewritten in the history books as "subversive". Texas is rewriting history in school books. Evolution is now for "heathens" and the earth has become 5000 years "young". Years of promoting a diet of cheap fast food has made ever younger people fat and sick. If you want to be completely cynical, perhaps the plan is that they won't live long enough to ever need "entitlements". And health care costs will be prohibitive for this group and refused under the term: "preexisting condition".
If this isn't "1984", I don't know what is. And most people appear to have no clue that they are being bamboozled about the socalled threats to our security, while, under educated with no future prospects, they are being herded into the armed services and losing life and limb while singing their last patriotic song; "spreading democracy" around the world. Hurrah! USA, Number One.
It isn't and probably never will be again. And it is tragic.
I was just going to comment that the driving philosophical force behind the unabashed takeover of our country's resources - with pathetically little pushback until, hopefully, now - is Ayn Rand's "Objectivist" philosophy, and now I see that Thom has done an excellent segment on the subject today. Her appeal transcends intelligence for folks who, ironically, deify intelligence and cultivate a cold inability to empathize with the suffering of others. As a student (more than 40 years ago) I came under the spell of her exaltation of narcissism; it inspired me to major in philosophy. I very shortly came to understand how shaky the intellectual foundations of her philosophy are (not to mention its moral repugnance). Ayn Rand was - or aspired to be - the kind of individual a corporation now legally also is: a sociopath, and it was enlightening to discover that her admirers are very influencial in our government: Alan Greenspan, Clarence Thomas, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, et al. One could make a case that the naive assumption that people are too moral to operate from purely selfish motives in the role of "public servant" has made us lazy about our own civic duties (i.e paying attention so we don't leave a huge mess for our children and grandchildren to cope with). Humanitarians of all stripes, as you state very well, have an obligation to consider one another's well being. Ayn Rand's followers are seduced by the "freedom" of complete lack of moral responsibility for others, and the consequences are clear in the raid of our country's financial base and exemplified in W's assurances that the only sacrifice we needed to make for our country post 9-11 was to continue spending. Makes sense if all you care about - as a matter of principle - is maximizing your own profit, since accumulating as much wealth as possible by whatever means possible is the mark of your worth as a human being in that universe.