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Thom's blog
Why Baltimore is Burning
If you want to understand what’s going on in Baltimore right now, just ask John Angelos, the COO of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. Seriously, I’m not kidding. On Sunday, one day after his team’s stadium was locked down to protect fans from nearby protests, Angelos took to Twitter to respond to Brett Hollander, a local sportscaster angry at protesters for “violat[ing] the basic freedoms of non-protestors.” While he agreed with Hollander that the “principle of peaceful, non-violent protest… is of utmost importance in any society,” Angelos said that he was ultimately more concerned with the root cause of this week’s unrest: the obliteration of Baltimore’s middle and working class by decades of so-called free trade deals. “[M]y greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case,” he said,
is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.
As Angelos then went on add,
while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.
That really is about as good of explanation about of what’s going in Baltimore right now as you’re going to get.
Riots and violent protests do not occur in a vacuum. They are the natural, if unfortunate, outcome of poverty and failed policy.
There is a long history of this from Roman times to the French Revolution forward. In this case, though, the failed policy in question isn’t, as it was in 1789, France’s war debt. Today, it’s so-called free trade.
-Thom
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Tonight on The Big Picture on RT TV at 7pm and 10pm... Reclaiming the American Dream for Baltimore... (check your local listings for stations or stream at RT or Free Speech TV, and catch past shows on Youtube)
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Daily Take: Why Baltimore is Burning
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Tuesday's Daily Stack 
Hour Three: Introducing the "We the People Amendment"- David Cobb, Move to Amend 
Article: " 14th Amendment, July 9, 1868 (citizenship, representatives, public debt)
Quote: " The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress" - Frederick Douglass".
Science and green news
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Wednesday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET
I'll be talking to Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress Justice about the Supreme Court's deep divide over gay marriage.
And, the best of the rest of the news along with your calls right here on...
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Thom's Poll
Are riots the inevitable result of decades of injustice and racism?
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Watch & Listen to Thom
Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here!
The Good, The Bad, and the Very, Very, Petulcously Ugly!
Why Does Petraeus Get No Jail time for Leaking?
The GOP Outraged About Clinton Cash but Not Koch Brother Money? Why?
Fast Track Flouts the Constitution
When Is The NSA Going to Stop Spying on Americans?
Or watch the Full "Big Picture" Show...
The Definition of Marriage...
How Baltimore can Reclaim the American Dream...
Caller: Violence and Destruction is NOT the Answer!
Baltimore...the new Detroit?
Thom Hartmann on Science & Green News: April 27, 2015
Did you Hear the Story About the Black Man Killed by Police?
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Caller: I'm Tired of Religion in the Public Sphere!
Caller: Right-Wingers are the Opposite of Christians!
How Would Jefferson Define 'Religious Freedom'?
Jefferson: Religion is the Tyranny Over the Mind of Man...
The Fight for Marriage Equality isn't Over!
Ted Cruz: Democrats are Targeting Christians!
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