Monday 13 April '09 show

• Article: Rick Santelli's rant was a preplanned right-wing scam to torpedo Obama's economic agenda.
• Article: Tea Parties Forever.
• Guest: Andrew Langer, President of the Institute for Liberty. “National Tax Day Tea Parties” - anti-Obama conservative protests. They sponsor taxdayteaparty.com the umbrella web site, but individuals are setting up local parties. Rick Santelli rant on CNBC gave people the idea. Thom told the history of the original Boston Tea Party - a protest against a tax cut for a multinational corporation, but Santelli was using it as short hand for being upset with government policy. Santelli said most people are upset about government spending, they dumped the old administration and the new one is spending. Clip from a tea party, people showing up, and Republicans are using the tea party as a banner when the was original anti-corporate. Paul Krugman article today about fringe elements turning up.
• Bumper Music: Get The Party Started, Pink (video).
• Article: America’s First Anti-Globalization Protest, Thom Hartmann. The Boston Tea Party. George R.T. Hewes, who was there. Rusticus.
  "Are we in like Manner to be given up to the Disposal of the East India Company, who have now the Assurance, to step forth in Aid of the Minister, to execute his Plan, of enslaving America? Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given simple Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men. … Fifteen hundred Thousands, it is said, perished by Famine in one Year, not because the Earth denied its Fruits; but [because] this Company and their Servants engulfed all the Necessaries of Life, and set them at so high a Rate that the poor could not purchase them."
• Santelli's Tea Party speech was not spontaneous, but a trigger. Sick and twisted astroturf. Boston Tea Party rant.
• Bumper Music: Me And My Gang, Rascal Flatts.
• Bumper Music: Dizzy, Tommy Roe.
• Article: 4 Injured After Drunk Drivers Collide In Wisconsin.
• Why not ignore the tea parties? Fox and the right wing are covering them with loads of valuable free air time. Push back, or show up with anti corporate signs and co-opt them. The Boston tea party was about protectionism. Show up with "stop NAFTA" "pull out of WTO" signs. The send a tea bag to congressman idea has teenagers cracking up - teabagging is from video games, attacker crouches over the face of the vanquished. Don't show up as protester, so they don't know which side you are on. Use their infrastructure. Take the graph. The Cabinet is the same old, so how change? Show up with "tax the rich", "roll back the Reagan tax" signs. Gays and lesbians taxed without representation.
• Bumper Music: When I Come Around, Green Day.
• Upcoming Event: May 2 – Denver, CO – Green Festival – Thom is keynoting.
• Food Safety Modernization Act, organic farms.
• Article: Debt is Not Money – and Must Be Regulated, Thom Hartmann.
• Article: America’s First Anti-Globalization Protest, Thom Hartmann.
  "The next morning, after we had cleared the ships of the tea, it was discovered that very considerable quantities of it were floating upon the surface of the water; and to prevent the possibility of any of its being saved for use, a number of small boats were manned by sailors and citizens, who rowed them into those parts of the harbor wherever the tea was visible, and by beating it with oars and paddles so thoroughly drenched it as to render its entire destruction inevitable.

  In all, the 342 chests of tea - over 90,000 pounds - thrown overboard that night were enough to make 24 million cups of tea and were valued by the East India Company at 9,659 Pounds Sterling or, in today’s currency, just over a million U.S. dollars.

  "
• What did Thomas Paine actually say?
• Glen Beck had on Bob Basso, who pretends to be Thomas Paine and rants:
  "Have you become a nation of cowards, America? In the greatest show of arrogance and disdain any congress ever showed any citizenry your dysfunctionally elite, self interested non-representing representatives passed the largest spending bill in history without reading it and you did nothing. ...

  The biggest traitors among you hold elective office. Only when they feel the almighty wrath of ‘We the People” marching in the streets from California to New York shouting “We’re mad as hell and we want our country back!” will they get the message, they work for you! ...

  We have to find an event, to go beyond politics and become Americans again. And this tea bag, symblematic of the original Boston Tea Party, is becoming the symbol of American protest. How dare you, my government, pass the largest spending bill in history, and you don't ask me, the American citizen, for my input.

  "
• Book: "Thomas Paine and the Promise of America", Harvey Kaye.
• Book: Rights of Man, Thomas Paine.
• Book: "Common Sense", Tom Paine, 1776.
• Article: Agrarian Justice. Thomas Paine.
• Guest: Harvey Kaye, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, author of "Thomas Paine and the Promise of America", contributor to the Guardian. Thomas Paine would not have said the words Bob Basso said. Republicans prior to Ronald Reagan tried to suppress him. Social security in "Rights of Man". It was Paine's rebuttal to Sir Edmund Burke. Now they realize how popular Paine is. Glenn Beck is doing a stand up comedy show in which he rewrites "Common Sense". We should lay claim to Thomas Paine and challenge our representatives and insist on participating in the change Obama campaigned on. Thom suggests showing up at the tea parties. They are talking about cutting estate tax. "Rights of Man" policies: get rid of (corporate) aristocracy, take the wealth that would be saved by doing that and turning it over to create a reasonable employment system, social security. In "Agrarian Justice" he talked about creating a fund to give stakes to young people to keep them inside the system, prevent poverty, enable them to become productive and active citizens. Thomas Paine wrote about what FDR did in the New Deal, only Paine was more radical. FDR and Eleanor spoke of Paine. The labor movement pushed FDR.
• How do we co-opt this movement? Should we? Is the progressive movement being co-opted?
• Bumper Music: Stand, Rascal Flatts.
• Article: Rahm Emanuel's Think Tankers Enforce 'Message Discipline' Among 'Liberals'.
• Chris Matthews said, "Republicans want a leader, Democrats want a meeting". Good idea at first blush, but some groups are suddenly for the war in Iraq - which is tail and which is dog? It is good if groups are speaking to the White House, but not if the White House is doing the talking. This show has not taken money from anyone except sponsors - no guarantee of loyalty.
• Davina Kotulski, a clinical psychologist, life coach and author of "Why You Should Give A Damn About Gay Marriage", "Amazon just stripped the sales ranking indicators for all books with anything that has to do with gay content and they are calling it "adult" material. ...

  I was horrified when I received an e-mail today telling me about Amazon’s new policy and went to the site myself and found my rank missing. I searched other books like Eckhart Tolle’s The New Earth and a new favorite The Michaelangelo Method which ranks at #366,419 in Books still have their ranking. Evan Wolfson’s Why Marriage Matters has lost his ranking, but Focus on the Family’s Glen Stanton’s anti-gay Why Marriage Matters book has a rank.

  "
• Article: Crisis Altering Wall St. As Stars Begin to Scatter.
• They say it is a shame, Thom thinks it's great, let big banks fail and small ones will pop up, but regulate them. Banking should be a utility, not excessively well paid.
• Article: A Google Whiz Searches for His Place on Earth. "Sanjay Mavinkurve of Google lives in Canada because his wife can't get an American work visa." It does not focus on education, what if it had been told through the point of view of an American engineer who could not get job, or a genius who could not afford to go to college?
• Male suicides among the over 50s. Others underemployed. Americans replaced by software people brought in from India.
• Bumper Music: Just Feel Better, Santana featuring Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. (video)
• Bumper Music: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
• Article: Saudi man divorces wife by text message .
• Guest: P.J. Crowley, Senior Fellow and Director of Homeland Security at the Center for American Progress, former Special Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs under Clinton. Somalia has no effective government, so international corporations dumped toxic waste and radiation waste in their seas, fishermen lost their livelihood. Piracy. Failed and fragile states are an enormous problem. Piracy and jihad economies. We need to strengthen their institutions. 1992 aid then nation building but not successful. There is a tribal structure. Failed empire building, vacuum. Tribes have different view of borders. No tribe willing or able to form into a national government. Black Hawk Down. We've raised the cost of business for pirates. Bolton said today to bomb them back into the stone age and rebuild. What if we went in to build schools instead? It is complex. Shipping lanes. Like Iraq, the military cost more than the problem.
• Bumper Music: Jai Ho Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack.
• Article: As 'Secret Ballot' Myth Sputters, Chamber Launches New Anti-Union Attack Line.
• Article: The Senator from Wal-Mart.
• Guest: Doug Cunningham, Workers Independent News. Labor Update. 3M trying to buy out their older workers. CWA and AT&T, around 100,000 workers, AT&T $12.9b profit last year yet trying to cut benefits, wages, comparing selves to auto industry because of health package. New repot service sector workers 10.1% higher wages if unionized. Employee Free Choice Act ad war, mobilizing. How to get it passed? Tweak it? Eviscerate it? Advocates not doing well. Blanche Lincoln, Democrat, for Wal-Mart. Secret ballot. Business now talking about mandatory arbitration. Labor is talking about corporate greed.
• Bumper Music: Time of Your Life (Good Riddance), Green Day.
• Bumper Music: You can leave your hat on, Randy Newman.
• Article: Cable glitch switches religious program to racy ad.
• Taft-Hartley Act, Wagner Act.
• Clip:
  "Roosevelt is dead, his policies may live on, but we're in the process of doing something about that as well." Rush Limbaugh.
• Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
• Article: Plan to Change Student Lending Sets Up a Fight.
• Bumper Music: Closing Time, Semisonic (video).
• Victoria Jones of Talk Radio News. Obama economy speech tomorrow at Georgetown University. Robert Gibbs about to lift Cuba restrictions. Steps to enhance flow of information and humanitarian goods. Obama is going at the end of the week to the summit of Americas, Cuba not attending. John Bolton on Fox - nuke Somalis back to the stone age. Last Friday, Judge John Bates ruled Bagram prisoners can challenge. Obama will repeal district court ruling, same position as Bush. Usury laws. The Inspector General for TARP funs, looking for irregularities, seeing if any corporation has misstated funds, may be indictments. If financially sound they don't need TARP, but need to be sound to get it.