• Guest: Timothy Lee, Center For Individual Freedom. Topic: Why is American industry spending big bucks to kill unions?
• Guest: William Yeatman, energy policy analyst on the energy and global warming team at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
• Obama - Ask Hillary First!
• Sponsor segment: Guest: Laurie Walters, Ironweed Films, a progressive film club.
• Upcoming Event: Unity Day in the Bay with Thom Hartmann, May 29th, Redwood City, CA.
• Guest: Christy Harvey, Center for American Progress, MicCheckradio.org. "News Under the Radar".

Topics, guests, upcoming events, quotes, links to articles, audio clips, books & bumper music.

Thursday 22 May '08 show

• Quote for the day:
  "Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories."
  John Wilmot (2nd Earl of Rochester).
• Guest: Timothy Lee, Center For Individual Freedom. Topic: Why is American industry spending big bucks to kill unions? Employee Free Choice Act. Deceptive name. Eliminates secret ballot. Employees fired for unionizing. He says unemployment is lower. Thom said read Kevin Philips. He said they have not played with numbers. He said most jobs went through automation, productivity gains. America produces more now. Unions kill jobs, he said. Thom said Taft Hartley, right to work. He said real pay is not down, because statistics exclude benefits like health care. Thom said fewer have it now, he said not true.
• Bumper Music: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, Ennio Morricone.
• Anti union ads. The SEIU is going to organize to get the Employee Free Choice Act in. Currently employees have to sign a card to say they want a union.
  - strengthen penalties for coercing employees
  - if new union and don't get a contract in 3 months then arbitration. More than a third of the time they have no contract within a year
  - majority sign up
  Unions brought us the 5 day work week, 8 hour day, no kids working or sexual harassment or women being forced to have sex with the boss, no organizers being beaten up and killed. Wagner act, National Labor Relations Act.
• Bumper Music: What Do Ya Think About That, Montgomery Gentry.
• Contest. Before the last segment of the show, go to thomhartmann.com and post a comment in response to today's "On the Program" entry. The winner gets a signed copy of .
  The winner was ottomine for:
  

  If there are so many manufacturing jobs in American, why can't I find a pair of sandals that say "Maid in America"? Help. Thom, you give us sanity every day. Thanks

• Bumper Music: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
• Article: Car dealer promotion: Gas or guns?
• Bumper Music: Chain Gang, Sam Cooke.
• Thom:
  

  I don't, unlike many of the conservative shows, I don't trash my guests on the air or off the air and I appreciate the fact that my listeners don't, as well. Because I think it's really important, number one, that we have a dialogue, that we model how to have a discussion and that we have opposing points of view.

• Book: The Sixth Extinction, Richard Leakey.
• Guest: William Yeatman.
  "William Yeatman is an energy policy analyst on the energy and global warming team at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Prior to joining CEI, William was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic, where he taught entrepreneurship and small business management to rural women. Before that, he ran a homeless shelter in Denver, Colorado. William holds a Master’s in International Administration from the Denver Graduate School of International Studies, and a Bachelor’s in Environmental Sciences from the University of Virginia."
  What should we save - the polar bear or Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson's 16.7 million compensation package? It's up 28% from the year before. Free market rather than conservative. It would lead to every single federal project having to take into account if it would affect the polar bear. According to a recent study, since 1960 30% of all animals gone, the human footprint is so big. We're interrelated with them. "The Sixth Extinction". It used to be termites, now humans are the biggest. Competing for water, etc. E O Wilson. Losing 100 species a day? Who do we want deciding; bureaucrats in Washington DC we can vote for, or CEOs of Exxon Mobil? Endangered Species Act.
• Bumper Music: I'm a Liberal, Neal Gladstone (video).
• Obama is not the most liberal.
• Article: GAO: Interior Dept. Officials Politicized Endangered Species Decisions.
  "In May of 2007, Julie MacDonald, deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks at the Interior Department, abruptly resigned just one week before Congress was to examine her political interference in endangered species decisions. MacDonald had a long history of rejecting scientists’ recommendations to politicize the Interior Department:

  – MacDonald presented industry positions as equivalent to scientific studies, denigrating scientific studies as mere “opinion,” and saying, “We should treat [them] as we would treat an industry publication.”

  – MacDonald pressed staff biologists to more seriously consider industry positions, especially when industry pushed for less regulation of a given species.

  – Under MacDonald, the Interior Department reversed a staff ruling on an endangered species of tree after the Air Force complained. Today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the politicization of the Interior Department stretches beyond Julie MacDonald. Robin Nazzaro, a GAO investigator, told the House today that four other officials “may have put political pressure on lower-ranking employees who were deciding endangered species cases”

  "
• Article: Obama - Ask Hillary First! Thom Hartmann, May 22 2008.
• We need to get a Democrat in the White House, probably Obama. Hillary seems to be pushing hard for the vice president slot at this point. Thom's "Obama - Ask Hillary First!" AAR email. If Hillary goes back to the Senate she should have Harry Reid's job, or she should go on the Supreme Court. But president and vice president are what get you into the history books. There's a subtle but visible shift in her campaign. Bobby Kennedy / LBJ story. LBJ was very good except for the Vietnam war.
• Bumper Music: Radio Operator, Rosanne Cash.
• The movie "Dalai Lama Renaissance" opens tomorrow in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Narrated by Harrison Ford. Thom is briefly in the movie, and his is the second voice heard, after the Dalai Lama's.
• The true terrorists are not Osama bin Laden etc, but oil companies who will change the landscape along with corrupt politicians. It is oil companies who funded Reagan to stop renewables. Hubbert's peak. After 1974 the United states became a net importer of oil. Norway is making a viable electric car, Ford owned until 1995. It might be worth stocking up on canned goods, but Thom is not ready for stocking up on ammunition.
• Thom's Buzzflash "Book" of the Month: The 11th Hour (DVD). The DVD is only $5.
• Polar bears. Safari Club International. Trophy hunting, very powerful, the Bushes are honorary members, James Baker did a keynote for them. Cheney. Brian Ross did an undercover about 2 years ago. All they care about is competition.
• Clip: "The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.

  What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important. Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation.

  The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade -- a saving of over 4-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day.

  "
  Jimmy Carter televised "Crisis of Confidence" Speech on July 15, 1979.
• Bumper Music: Lawless Avenues, Jackson Browne.
• Sponsor segment: Guest: Laurie Walters, Ironweed Films, a progressive film club.
• Upcoming Event: Unity Day in the Bay with Thom Hartmann, May 29th, Redwood City, CA.
  "Join Green960 and fellow listeners of Progressive Talk Radio for a night of Unity featuring Thom Hartmann, Angie Coiro, John Scott along with Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton delegates. Portion of proceeds will be donated to the California Democratic Party." 7pm to 8:30pm.
• Book: "Democracy in Cuba and the 1997-98 Elections", Arnold August.
• Bumper Music: Some Days You Gotta Dance, Keith Urban.
• Bumper Music: Into the Mystic, Van Morrison.
• Clip:
  [Henry Waxman]: "It seems to me you're being awfully evasive and I don't know why you cannot tell this committee whether you in fact had a discussion about this rule, or that rule, or the other rule. We're only talking about three different rules. Either you did or you didn't. And I don't know why you cannot tell us that information. No one is asking you what was said, we're just asking you whether you had a conversation. The answer is not acceptable to say, 'I've had conversations with the president and others on a routine basis and I'm not going to tell you whether I had a conversation on these subjects'. What else did you talk to the about?"

  [Stephen Johnson, EPA]: "... I have routine conversations..."

  [Henry Waxman]: "In those routine conversations did you talk about..."

  [Stephen Johnson, EPA]: "... a wide range of topics ..."
  House Oversight and Government Reform Committee: EPA's New Ozone Standards hearing.

• Article: Gitmo Admiral: Detainees pretty much live in a fraternity house.
  "We don't have any solitary confinement down here in Guantanamo, what we have is single cells. I mean, there's one person to a cell. All the cells are all right next to each other."
• Guest: Christy Harvey, Director of Strategic Communications at the Center for American Progress, MicCheckradio.org. "News Under the Radar". Henry Waxman clip, his third attempt at getting an answer from the head of the EPA about whether he talked with the White House about the ozone standards or the California emissions standards. Unethical. He played hard core politics with his agency, trashed it. He had been for the California standards until a call from the White House. Rear Admiral Mark Busby, in a conference call with bloggers about Guantanamo, said that the living situation there is basically the same as living in a frat house, with single cells, the same as for prisoners. But that is prisoners in supermax prisons which are only legally used temporarily for the worst of the worst. Solitary confinement destroys people. They asked Gates about Guantanamo "well, we're stuck with it". The #3 guy at CIA, Dusty Fogo, connected to Duke Cunningham, has a new indictment - bribes in the form of sexual companionship. Polar bears; the Republican governor of Alaska is going to sue the government to stop listing the polar bear, because it would hurt oil companies. A subpoena has just been issued for Karl Rove in the Don Siegelman case.
• Bumper Music: Belief, John Mayer.
• Article: Pelosi Deflects VP Question; Dishes on Superdelegates.
• Audio: Pelosi: Both Clinton and Obama have a good chance at the nomination.
• Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News. She usually keeps out of Hillary vs. Obama - quicksand. Pelosi weekly press conference. asked re vice president, she's not giving advice - audio will be up. Harold Icke and Wolfson conference call, said all delegates from both states should be seated as uncommitted, hopefully decided May 31. States were punished by not getting advertising dollars. Hillary may get it so that it is decided at convention, her nuclear option. Thom thinks the blowback would be impossible. Ellen now thinks it is probable, but she is bad predictor. George Washington University conference call on poll, no question that McCain is a formidable candidate, but Barack is winning over independents more than McCain. Bush speech at Fort Bragg, redefinition of success in Iraq. Petraeus echoed at hearing, when no al Qaeda, Iraq supporting self. Iraq is able to buy billions of dollars of arms. By those definitions Iraq was a success before we invaded.