Quote: "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. That struggle might be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand." - Frederick Douglass.
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Article: Fascism Coming to a Court Near You: Corporate Personhood and the Roberts' Court by Thom Hartmann.
Article: Inside The Great American Bubble Machine. Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression .
"Brunch with Bernie" with Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont. Go to his site to get the health care crisis booklet of stories. Bernie read some. The only cost effective solution is to get rid of corporate waste. Lobbyists. Change your world view. Look at the problems. Look at good friends, former colleagues, who lobby, they make themselves your friends and present the perspective of the problems of insurance companies. It is their job to become your friends and get you to look at the world from their point of view. Some are former party leaders. It is more insidious than bribery. Thom's piece on Common Dreams about the Supreme Court.
Reduce medicare eligibility age gradually? Get employers to pay to Medicare instead of insurers? Curbing oil speculation. Bernie put a hold on Gary Gensler for 5 months. Taibbi article, oil was traded 27 times, 25 of those not by companies that would use oil. Democrats voting against a public option. 60 votes now, let's kill the filibuster, Bernie is doing everything else he can. The fear mongering about cost is putting people off the public option. If we leave things, the estimate is that within 10 years, health care will cost 50% of their income for the average American. Introduce legislation on inheritance tax, national debt? A lot of people moved to Canada because of war in the past. Is there a humanitarian status where countries will let people in because the alternative is to die because they cannot afford healthcare? People go to Mexico, India, Canada for some procedures. People have had good experiences abroad. Bernie's daughter became ill when studying in Italy. Countries often do not want to collect money. France pays 90% of salary to support the family of somebody sick. Next week a guest from Norway will be on the show.
Representative democracy? They are ignoring us. We voted for change. Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. America has more income inequality. Bernie would rescind them, Obama is letting them sunset. Demonstration outside Cantwell's office. It is frustrating to have Democrats we cannot trust. Tell them we have their back, the future is with us, not lobbyists. Print out Bernie's booklet and give to right wing friends.
Bumper Music: World Hold On, Bob Sinclar (video).
Bumper Music: The Door Is Always Open, Waylon Jennings.
Guest: Christy Harvey, Director of Strategic Communications at the Center for American Progress, MicCheckradio.org. Sarah Palin, Levi Johnson says she is resigning for the same reasons as Thom suggested. Book. Her reasons make no sense. Both sides are very angry in Alaska. Levi Johnson to tell all. Her failure to give clear answers, she is going to small places and not answering people. Photo-op in hip waders, if you go on a boat with them you could die if you fall overboard, it was a photo-op for national media. She had a brand new fancy manicure, you don't go on a boat with them. $96,000 John Ensign. His parents paid off her family. Ensign and Sanford are members of "the family" cult. Sanford telling story of King David. A guy went underground to join the family, wrote in Harpers. C street. Big increase in homelessness. October 2007 to September 2008 1.6m used a homeless shelter or traditional housing, abut same as before, but lots were families with kids. McClatchy yesterday, legal aid offices flooded by low income, foreclosure etc. John Calvin. Also story about AIG $2.4 billion for 40 bonuses.
Article: New Downbeat Unemployment Numbers Include Republican Mistresses by Andy Borowitz.
Article: Climate change deal eludes big polluting nations By Guy Dinmore in L'Aquila and Fiona Harvey in London.
Article: China attacks dollar’s dominance By George Parker and Guy Dinmore in L’Aquila, Krishna Guha in Washington and Justine Lau in Hong Kong .
Article: Fed fights Congress attack on powers By Tom Braithwaite.
"Ron Paul, the Texas Republican, has gathered the support of a majority of the House of Representatives for a bill that would audit the Fed's monetary policy decisions. He told a congressional hearing he wanted the power to prevent the central bank being "secret and clandestine and serving special interests". "
Article: Drunk badger blocks German road.
"Anything Goes" Friday.
Al Franken.
Book: "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century", by James Howard Kunstler.
Faith based initiatives.
Article: Fed warns of eroding confidence if Congress wins scrutiny rights By Tom Braithwaite.
Bumper Music: Time That It Would Take , Toby Keith.
Bumper Music: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
Article: Texas man gets 'Only God can judge me' tattooed on his arm, then skips out on paying bill.
Separation of church and state.
Guest: Les Leopold, executive director of the Labor Institute and Public Health Institute in New York and author of The Looting of America; also author of The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi. Live in the studio with Thom, in Portland at the invitation of the Alliance for Democracy on Friday, July 10 at the First Unitarian Church beginning at 7 PM. Author, "The Looting of America, How Wall Street's Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity and What We Can Do About it" and "The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi". The book was written so that anyone who never learned economics can understand. The vast experiment that we have just been put through, (1) deregulation of finance, undoing new deal controls, last 30 years. it was lethal. financial industry - banks, brokers, mortgage, some real estate, where money is moving money. (2) gigantic redistribution of income to top. In 1970 the ration of the average remuneration package of the top 100 to workers was 40:1, it was 1723:1 in 2007. The top 1/10 of 1% had as much income as the bottom 50% - 180-300,000 people. It was supposed to lead to a giant investment boom, raise all boats, but the average wage is down 18%, there weren't enough investments for the money, they invented instruments, and they crashed. Fantasy finance bubble. Essentially they were bets. Credit default swaps, betting on bets on bets on bets. There's only $300 billion of sub prime mortgages at risk of default, but that was leveraged to several trillion. Danger for carbon credits. Does it move money from top down? No. From financial to economy? No.
Cynthia McKinney's arrest by an Israeli boat patrol when with peace activists from other countries. Israel. Gaza. Obama has spoken out against settlements. They were trying to deliver aid and publicized issues, they were in the waters illegally. it is a very complex issue, no easy or simple answers. We need serious genuine meaningful conversations. Thom has had a show with an Israeli and a Palestinian on together, will do it again.
Free Peltier now. Hearing July 28. Great travesty of the American justice system.
Article: Goldman Trading-Code Investment Put at Risk by Theft By David Glovin and Christine Harper.
"The bank has raised the possibility that there is a danger that somebody who knew how to use this program could use it to manipulate markets in unfair ways".
Article: Inside The Great American Bubble Machine. Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression.
Coal. T Boone Pickens. There's no such thing as clean coal. Should tax it. 2007 was the first year that wind power was the most rapidly growing in the US. Cap and trade giving away 85% credits and making it illegal for the EPA to regulate carbon, a huge gift to Goldman Sachs, will take years.
Bumper Music: What a Wonderful World, Louis Armstrong. Thanks.
Canadian health care.
Victoria Jones of Talk Radio News. Congress pushed back on Obama's signing statement, said if we're to give money to the IMF we have to have oversight. 429-2. Last year revised FISA< said would review warrantless wiretapping, review just out. The terrorist surveillance program is called the president's surveillance program in the report. The blue dogs delayed unveiling health care for a few days, say concerns, that is, they don't want government underselling insurers. Details of blue dogs. Deficit neutrality. Letter.
