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Thom's blog
Starting to Feel like a Peon?
Good news! Companies are hiring again. Bad news – they’re hiring overseas. A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute revealed that Americans businesses created more than 1.4 million jobs overseas in 2010 – that’s compared to fewer than one million created here in the United States. Had those 1.4 million jobs been created here – the unemployment rate could have dropped by nearly a full percentage point. But as long as profits are up for CEOs and other millionaires and billionaires in the country – no worries right? According to Reaganomics - we just need to wait for that money to trickle down. It’s been more than 30 years though – still no trickle. Starting to feel like a peon?
-Thom
(Are starting to feel like a peon? Tell us here.) |
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Tonight on The Big Picture on RT TV at 9pm and 11pm... (check your local listings for stations or stream at RT, and catch past shows on Youtube)
Economist Michael Hudson: "Major countries looking for alternatives to US dollar" Rescued Banks Teeter Towards Collapse and World Tired of Paying Bill for US Military. With Michael Hudson, President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire...Professor Hudson is an economic advisor to governments worldwide including Iceland, Latvia and China on finance and tax law.
Screwed: Long distance relationship...? Job Market Booming Overseas For Many American Companies. With Edmund "Ed" Andrews, Managing Editor, Economics, Taxes and Budget-National Journal
You've heard of Julian Assange, but how about Bradley Manning? ‘Disgrace’: Wired editor criticized for withholding Bradley Manning chat logs. With Jane Hamsher, founder of firedoglake.com.
The Best of the Rest of the News...
Are We Too Dumb for Democracy? The Logic Behind Self-Delusion With Brendan Nyhan, political scientist currently serving as a RWJ Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan and lead researcher of the Michigan study profiled in the Boston Globe and Alternet.
Dumb and Dumber? Are We Too Dumb for Democracy? The Logic Behind Self-Delusion? With Seton Motley, President of Less Government.
Sam's 5 best/worst of 2010 countdown continues....
Crazy Alert: Watch out Michael Chertoff. A woman recently posted a detailed video on the internet of how you can build your own homemade TSA porno scanner. Using a hodge podge of various electronics - Jeri Ellsworth - created a rudimentary scanner that can detect objects through clothing. Unclear what she plans to do with this new invention - or how harmful the radiation emitted is - but one can gather there are endless amounts of fun that can be had with a personal porno scanner. In fact - it could be the hot item on next year's Christmas wish list.
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.
Daily Take: Retirement Crisis: Baby Boomers Near 65 With Retirements In Jeopardy.
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 Know what makes Thom crack up? The heartrending stories of the children arriving at the New England Salem Children's Village in New Hampshire which he and Louise founded in 1979. He'll tell a story a day on the radio show this week.
With states delaying payment for the children they entrust to the village, they need help with cash flow urgently.
And this week he is sending a signed book "Rebooting the American Dream" to anyone who donates $250 to Salem. This money goes directly to care for kids that are in long term care. They are the kids that need your help the most because when no one else can step in - we do at Salem. Go to their site and help now. |
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Read Thom's Book for Free!
Now you can read all of Thom Hartmann's " Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country" for free online. Truthout is publishing weekly installments over 12 weeks. Read Chapter Seven: Cool Our Fever today. |
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The Daily Stack 
Quote: "We want a better America, an America that will give its citizens, first of all, a higher and higher standard of living so that no child will cry for food in the midst of plenty." -- Sidney Hillman.
Hour One: Retirement Crisis: Baby Boomers Near 65 With Retirements In Jeopardy?
Speech: " A Rendezvous With Destiny", 27 June 1936 acceptance speech by Franklin D. Roosevelt. " An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men.""
Hour Two: One of the most productive lame duck sessions wrapped up last week...so what do conservative Tea Partiers think of their impact and what should we expect from them in the next Congress? Thom challenges Bill Pasco, Executive Vice President of Citizens for the Republic.
Hour Three: Is Eradicating Polio (or any other disease) a Good Idea? With Dr. Arthur Caplan, Professor of Bioethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania; author/editor of 29 books - his latest are "Smart Mice Not So Smart People"; and the "Penn Guide to Bioethics".
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Coming up Wednesday on The Thom Hartmann Program
Hour Three: Is the human race wired to be "too dumb for democracy?" Political Scientist & media critic Dr. Brendan Nyhan will be here to explain....
And, the best of the rest of the news and your calls right here on...
The Thom Hartmann Program... your media support group for we the people.
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Show Info
Call Thom on the show at 1-866-987-THOM (8466) (0870 974 9686 from the UK, +1 503 796 2324 from outside the US or UK).
Sign up for Thom's podcasts.
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Join in the discussions on Thom's free message board.
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Watch & Listen to Thom
Greg Palast busted by BP
Daily Take: How to End Islamic Extremism
First Responders John Devlin and Kenny George plead for Bill
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Bringing the lesson home
Fred Freundlich, our host in Mondragon who has lived there for 15 years, teaches at Mondragon University, an institution that represents another dimension of capital. “It’s social capital,” says Fred, noting that the university was the first institution started here by Don Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta, the priest who began in the 1940s what has now grown to become the worldwide Mondragon institution. “Investing in education – building knowledge – is like building a factory. Through Mondragon University we’re investing in humans just as much as the factories are investing in the business infrastructure of the towns where Mondragon works.”
That investment in educating and training students at a university with strong links to the cooperatives is evident in the fact that almost all students find work within weeks of graduation. Mondragon’s practice of placing people over profits clearly produces results that benefit all.
Somehow Americans have lost sight of this. We see no benefit in any investment that does not produce profit for the owners, whether the owners are the distant stockholders or the investors or the top executives. Such an attitude not only devalues workers, it also fails to recognize the importance of investing in public education, which is particularly tragic given what a difference education can make in social mobility.
The lessons are right before us and easily measurable. America's social mobility has fallen, making it the most socially rigid society in the world, having just recently surpassed the royalty-bound United Kingdom. Since 1981, the average ratio of the lowest-paid worker in a company to its CEO has increased from around 1:30 to 1:600, and among many of the Fortune 500 companies, it can be more than 1:5000.
We’ve gone from about a quarter of the workforce being unionized when Reagan took office to about seven percent of the private workforce today. Workers are so terrified of losing their jobs that sexual harassment claims have exploded, and most workers don’t even dare report it.
The new Rite of the First Night perpetrators are senior corporate managers and CEOs.
The antidote is to spawn Mondragon Corporations of our own.
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