Who wants to be a rich man in a poor country?

About 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to "do what is right" when polled during most of the last years of the Eisenhower administration and early years of Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency.

In 2019, when the Pew Research Center released its most recent poll of public trust in the government, only 17 percent of Americans trusted their government. It's so bad that throughout 2020 armed protesters showed up nationwide to protest the "tyranny" of having to wear masks during a pandemic, and then stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election, all cheered on by the then-President of the United States and multiple rightwing media outlets.

This is no accident; it's the result of a four-decades-long campaign by some of America's richest people to tear apart the governing fabric of our nation, kicked off by their man, Ronald Reagan, proudly proclaiming at his January 20, 1981, inauguration that, "[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

Read more here.

-Thom

Thursday's Daily Stack

Article: "Blowing the lid off the billionaires' big con — and its deadly link to the coronavirus pandemic" by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "With Congressional Stimulus Fight Looming, 76% of Voters Back $1.9 Trillion Plan, Including 60% of Republicans" by Claire Williams.

Site: "Patriotic Millionaires".

Article: "Texas Gets Lay'd: How the Bush Family turned off the lights" by Greg Palast.

Article: "Do Republicans even want government to exist?" by Simon Kuper.

Article: "Republican Party Platform of 1956", August 20, 1956.

Video: "Reagan: Government is not the solution to our problem government IS the problem".

Book: "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.

Article: "Sen. John Thune, Opposing $15 Min Wage, Says He Earned $6 As a Kid—That's $24 With Inflation" by Daniel Villarreal.

Article: "Kansas Republicans spent a decade attacking social assistance. Now they are shocked at the results" by Christopher Reeves.

Article: "Bill to shorten early voting period, end Election Day early in Iowa heads to governor's desk" by Zack Budryk.

Article: "Claiming liberal bias in big tech, Iowa Republicans seek penalties if companies restrict online speech" by Ian Richardson.

Article: "Voting Laws Roundup: February 2021" by Brennan Center.

Article: "Capitol security officials in charge on Jan. 6 blame Pentagon, intel failures" by Kyle Cheney and Andrew Desiderio.

Article: "Wages grew in 2020 because the bottom fell out of the low-wage labor market" by Elise Gould and Jori Kandra.

Site: CPAC.

Article: "Pentagon faces scrutiny over response to Capitol riot" by Paul Sonne and Missy Ryan.

Article: "A festival of lies" by Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria.

Bill: "H.R.1 - For the People Act of 2021" by Rep. Sarbanes, John P. [D-MD-3].

Bill: "H.R.4 - Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019" by Rep. Sewell, Terri A. [D-AL-7].

Article: "Minimum Wage in America: A Timeline" by Patrick J. Kiger.

Article: "New Deal" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Here's what Lindsey Graham, Trump talked about at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend" by Emily Jacobs.

Article: "Lawmaker lives on food stamps" by Jackie Johnson.

Article: "David Petraeus" by Wikipedia.

Article: "This is why McConnell calls himself the 'Grim Reaper'" by Sunlen Serfaty.

Article: "American Legislative Exchange Council" (ALEC) by SourceWatch.

Hour Two: What the Bond Market is, how it works, and why the average person should understand and pay attention to it (or not)?
- Economist Dr. Richard Wolff, Democracy At Work / Author of numerous books - his latest is The Sickness is the System

Article: "What the Bond Market Is Telling Us About the Biden Economy" by Neil Irwin.

Article: "Watch live: Fed Chair Powell testifies before House panel" by Jeff Cox.

Geeky Science: "Scientists entered people's dreams and got them 'talking'" by Sofia Moutinho.

Movie: "Inception".

Book: Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge, Howard Rheingold.

Article: "Silva Method" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Builders grapple with land shortage, soaring lumber costs" by Alex Veiga.

Article: "Trump slaps tariff on Canadian softwood lumber" by Jill Colvin.

Article: "Service Charges Gain as Tips Are Taxed" by NY Times, 1988.

Site: Aden Forecast

Article: "Florida votes to raise state's minimum wage to $15 an hour" by Jacob Pramuk.

Video: The Alt-Right Playbook.

Article: "Marjorie Taylor Greene slammed for hanging anti-trans sign outside office in escalation of debate over Equality Act" by Caitlin O'Kane.

Book: The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich by Thom Hartmann.

Hour Three: Conversations with Great Minds: Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America
- Dr. Keisha Blain, Historian & Associate Professor of History-University of Pittsburgh / President-African American Intellectual History Society / Co-Editor (w/Ibram X. Kendi) of the new book, Four Hundred Souls / Author, Set the World On Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom and, the forthcoming, Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Vision of America

Article: "This Day In History: August 20 1619 First enslaved Africans arrive in Jamestown, setting the stage for slavery in North America" by History.com.

Article: "Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019" (overview)

Case: "Loving v. Virginia" by Wikipedia.

Chapter: "1619-1624: Arrival" by Nikole Hannah-Jones.

Chapter: "1629-1634: Whipped for Lying with a Black Woman" by Ijeoma Oluo.

Article: "White Man Whipped for Interracial Relations in Colonial Virginia" by EJI.

Chapter: "1654-1659: Unfree Labor" by Nakia D. Parker.

Chapter: "1689-1694: The Germantown Petition Against Slavery" by Christopher J. Lebron.

Article: "1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery" by Wikipedia.

Chapter: "1674-1679: Bacon's Rebellion" by Heather C. Mcghee.

Article: "Bacon's Rebellion" by Wikipedia.

Chapter: "1719-1724: Maroons and Marronage" by Sylviane A. Diouf.

Article: "Maroons and Marronage: Escaping Enslavement" by K. Kris Hirst.

Chapter: "1864-1869: The Civil War" by Jamelle Bouie.

Article: "American Civil War (1861 - 1865) by Wikipedia.

Article: "The Emancipation Proclamation" by President Abraham Lincoln, January 1, 1863.

Chapter: "1914-1919: The Great Migration" by Isabel Wilkerson.

Chapter: "1829-1834: Maria Stewart" by Kathryn Sophia Belle.

Article: "Maria Stewart" by Wikipedia.

Chapter: "1874-1879: Atlanta" by Tera W. Hunter.

Chapter: "1994-1999: The Crime Bill" by Angela Y. Davis.

Law: "Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, 1994.

Article: "Killing of George Floyd" by Wikipedia.

Article: "In House hearing on domestic terrorism, Republicans settle on a 'blame antifa and BLM' narrative" by David Neiwert.

Friday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET

It's Anything Goes Friday!

We'll have the latest news and information...everything you need to know to win the water cooler wars...

And, the best of the rest of the news along with your calls right here on...

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And don't forget...Democracy is NOT a spectator sport...it begins with you...

This Could Ruin Your Next Meal (w/ Zach Corrigan)

Why Are White Supremacists In the Military? (w/ Mark Pocan)

Did California Save The Internet From Ajit Pai's FCC? (w/Evan Greer)

They Screwed Texas & People Died (w/ Greg Palast)

Minimum Wage Maximum Rage (w/Bernie Sanders)