If we're not going to be a force for good in the world, it's time for us to close down our foreign military bases & operations & spend some time & money rebuilding this country, gutted by Reaganomics.

America needs to define a consistent, honest and public position on foreign aid and foreign interventions. If we fail to do so, we'll continue to produce disasters that have long-term consequences not only for the countries with whom we've interfered but also here in the US.

Modern US "foreign aid" policy really began in a big way after World War II with the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Europe after the war. Germany was a huge recipient of that aid and it helped turn that nation from a renegade (although defeated) fascist empire into a modern liberal democracy.

With our aid, Germany rebooted their national healthcare program and wrote a constitutional provision requiring all corporations with more than 500 employees to have fully a third, and all companies over 2000 employees half, of their Board of Directors' seats filled by union representatives.

Read more at HartmannReport.com.

-Thom

Wednesday's Daily Stack

Hour One: National Progressive Townhall Meeting
- Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI, 2nd District) @MarkPocan @repmarkpocan

Article: "Senate prepares for procedural vote on bipartisan infrastructure bill as negotiators near deal" by Jack Turman, Melissa Quinn.

Article: "Bernie Sanders Is the Real Force Behind the $3.5T Reconciliation Bill" by Sharon Zhang.

Article: "Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have now both gone to space. Here's the difference between their Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic flights." by Caitlin O'Kane.

Article: "All Your Life, Charlie Brown. All Your Life: The complete history of Lucy's pulling the football away" by Eric Schulmiller.

Article: "The Cruelty Is the Point" by Adam Serwer.

Article: "Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count" by NY Times.

Article: "GOP Rep Steve Scalise Finally Gets Vaccinated – But Says No One Should Be 'Shamed Into' It" by Lindsey Ellefson.

Article: "Canada's vaccination rate overtakes US" by BBC.

Article: "Death is Their Election Strategy " by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "Macron to the French: Vaccinate or Else" by Roger Cohen.

Video: The next outbreak? We're not ready - Bill Gates, 2015.

Article: "President Trump Blasts Crooked Wisconsin RINOs Robin Vos, Chris Kapenga and Devin LeMahieu for Preventing Forensic Audit in State" by Jim Hoft.

Article: "Capital City Sunday: Vos defends taxpayer-funded election investigation; educators decry denied surplus funding" by A. J. Bayatpour.

Article: "The Medicare Part D Coverage Gap ("Donut Hole") Made Simple" by eHealthInsurance Services.

Article: "2020 United States presidential election in West Virginia" by Wikipedia.

Hour Two: Thom vs. Julio Rivera - Why can't America say "This time you are staying home, not us."
- Julio Rivera, Editorial Director - Reactionary Times / Contributor - Newsmax, American Thinker & Townhall.com

Article: "'I'm sorry, but it's too late': Alabama doctor on treating unvaccinated, dying COVID patients" by Dennis Pillion.

Article: "Fox Rails Against Vaccine Passports, Uses Vaccine Passports " by Peter Wade.

Article: "Michigan boy dies in his sleep three days after getting vaccine" by Joe Tacopino.

Article: "Dr. Fauci shouts down Rand Paul at COVID hearing: 'If anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you'" by David Edwards.

Article: "The Wuhan Lab and the Gain-of-Function Disagreement" by Lori Robertson.

Article: "Study: COVID-19 antibodies last up to 9 months following infection" by Brian P. Dunleavy.

Article: "Delta variant is reinfecting people who have already had Covid-19 " by Henry Bodkin.

Article: "Your guide to what's happening with vaccine passports in the US" by Bobbie Johnson, Adriana Fraser, Mia Sato.

Article: "School announces it won't employ vaccinated teachers and argues shots are in 'experimental' stage" by Emma Colton.

Article: "Powell Memo".

Article: "Federalist Society's Leonard Leo is helping Trump make courts more conservative" by Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Shawn Boburg.

Article: "Can America Go from Empire to "Good Neighbor?" " by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "The Marshall Plan and Recovery: German Coal and Steel" by David Peter Jensen and Phillip Bryson.

Article: "Central America wars, 1980s" by Virginia S. Williams, Roger Peace, and Jeremy Kuzmarov.

Article: "Afghanistan GDP - Gross Domestic Product" by Countryeconomy.com.

Article: "The Allende Years and the Pinochet Coup, 1969–1973" by Office of the Historian.

Article: "10 Reprehensible Crimes Of Ronald Reagan" by Nathan Wold.

Article: "A Pact with the Devil? The United States and the Fate of Modern Haiti" by Leslie Alexander.

Article: "Bush Wanted To Invade Iraq If Elected in 2000" by Russ Baker.

Article: "Thom Hartmann" (overview of Cuba coup) by John Simkin.

Book: "Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination" by Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann

Article: "$2 billion funding shortfall for replacement Interstate Bridge" by John Ley.

Article: "Iraq Oil Deals Fulfill Cheney's Goals" by Jason Leopold.

Article: "US Cannibals in Haiti" by Greg Palast.

Article: "CIA-assisted coup overthrows government of Iran" by history.com.

Article: "A blessing and a curse : Iraq needs help kicking the oil addiction" by Stanley A. Weiss.

Article: "69 years ago, a president pitches his idea for national health care" by Dr. Howard Markel.

Article: "Did Dick Cheney Sink Halliburton (And Will It Sink Him?)" by S. C. Gwynne.

Article: "Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over" by Guardian.

Article: "Nixon's Bay of Pigs Secrets" by Don Fulsom.

Article: "The Mafia's President: Nixon and the Mob" by Don Fulsom.

Article: "The US Has Military Bases in 80 Countries. All of Them Must Close" by Alice Slater.

Article: "Ultimate Sacrifice: Introduction" by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "Veto of the Taft-Hartley Labor Bill" by Harry S. Truman.

Article: "Germany: Board-level Representation" by ETUI.

Video: Time to Abolish Haiti's Enslavement? (w/ Greg Palast).

Article: "Turns Out It Was Bill Barr and Not Merrick Garland Who Decided Not to Prosecute Ross" by Sarah Jones.

Article: "Medical Debt in the US, 2009-2020" by Raymond Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, et al.

Article: "'Profiteering Healthcare System' Blamed as US Medical Debt Surges to $140 Billion" by Jake Johnson.

Article: "'They can't not have noticed': Why does Jeff Bezos's rocket look like that?" by Matthew Cantor.

Article: "Up to 410 million people at risk from sea level rises – study" by Rhi Storer.

Article: "IPCC steps up warning on climate tipping points in leaked draft report" by Fiona Harvey.

Article: "Tucker Carlson Compares COVID Vaccination Status to Asking If Someone Has HIV " by Katherine Fung.

Hour Three: Politics and the Digital Divide - It's Worse Than You Think...
- Yosef Getachew, Media and Democracy Program Director - Common Cause

Article: "New Report: How Lobbying and Political Influence By Broadband Gatekeepers Has Shaped The Digital Divide" by David Vance.

Article: "Rural Utilities Service" (Rural Electrification Administration, Rural Telecommunications) by Wikipedia.

Article: "To Bridge the Digital Divide, Some Cities Have Taken the Matter Into Their Own Hands" (e.g. Chattanooga) by Jason Ruiz.

Bill: "H.R.7302 - Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act" by Rep. Clyburn, James E. [D-SC-6].

Bill: "S.4131 - Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act" by Sen. Klobuchar, Amy [D-MN].

Article: "The FCC is deadlocked. When will Biden finally fix that?" by Andrew Wyrich.

Article: "Texas Senate Bill Drops Teaching Requirement That Ku Klux Klan Is 'Morally Wrong'" by Mary Papenfuss.

Article: "Southern strategy" by Wikipedia.

Video: "Ronald Reagan States' Rights Speech in Philadelphia, MS", August 3, 1980.

Article: "Mississippi civil rights workers' murders" by Wikipedia.

Video: Willie Horton 1988 Attack Ad.

Article: "'Drug dealers, criminals, rapists': What Trump thinks of Mexicans" by BBC.

Book: I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year by Carol Leonnig, Philip Rucker.

Article: "'I Alone Can Fix It' book excerpt: The inside story of Trump's defiance and inaction on Jan. 6" by Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig.

Article: "Texas Board of Education cuts Thomas Jefferson out of its textbooks." by DJ Carella.

Article: "Reality check: No, Macron did not say those who refused vaccines should stay home" by Aaron D'Andrea.

Article: "McCarthy pulls his 5 GOP members from 1/6 committee after Pelosi rejects 2 of his picks" by Annie Grayer, Jeremy Herb, Ryan Nobles and Daniella Diaz.

Book: Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

Book: Democracy In Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean.

Article: "Augusto Pinochet" (Chile) by Wikipedia.

Article: "James M. Buchanan" by Wikipedia.

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

I'll be talking with Economist Dr. Richard Wolff, Co-founder, Democracy At Work / Author of numerous books - his latest is The Sickness is the System (now also available as an eBook)

Plus, I'll be talking with Dean Obeidallah, Host of Dean Obeidallah show weekdays 6-9PMET @SXMProgress Radio Ch127/Columnist-The Daily Beast who's just filed a complaint with the FTC against Fox News for its possible violations of the recently enacted Covid-19 Consumer Protection Act.

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

The Thom Hartmann Program, Occupying The Media 3 hours a day 5 days a week for "we the people"

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

Covid: "This Time You are Staying Home, Not Us."

The Texas Anti-Voter Legislation Explained (w/ Lala Wu)

What's the "Now" Solution to America's Crime?

Time to Abolish Haiti's Enslavement? (w/ Greg Palast)