Recent comments
ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World
Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Eh. There's nothing we can do about it, anyway. Maybe huff and puff and send in another truckload of petitions (and don't forget to send those urgent donations...). Besides, liberals evident;ly support the TPP. After all, lib media have spent 2016 hard-selling Hillary Clinton, who had worked so long and hard promoting the TPP to Congress. And really, what's thre worst that could happen?
Bernie Sanders does campaign on rejecting TPP but he could do more, this is a great opportunity for him to inject more vitality into his campaign. He is uniquely positioned to give high profile platform to the issue from the people's side and it would give his campaign new life and would galvanize America behind him.
Both he and Donald Trump are popular because they aren't afraid to say what Americans consider to be the plain truth. If he would make this trade deal a main part of his campaign he would really become what Ralph Nader calls "unstoppable" and go all the way.
I so agree with what you have said here Thom. This country is privatized to the hilt, while income has not raised in a couple of decades, if not since Reagan and our consumption is limited. The economy cannot sustain itself, nor we, it if the many have so little, while the few have so much. YES...I support Bernie Sanders!
Pepto-Bismol™
{a limerick}
The political news tends dismal;
‘bout SHAFTA it’s especially abysmal.
My tummy churns.
Diarrhea burns.
I need some Pepto-{Bismol}-Bismal™.
=============================
Re: Shafta
Note there are angry protests in many of the member countries, each having specific concerns, and all worried about loss of national sovereignty.
Yet this thing moves forward.
Like crime syndicates meeting for peace talks, multinationals are finding it profitable to meet and set up these trans national trade agreements.
"Nothing personal, just business."
ct
Bernie Sanders should campaign on rejecting TPP!
Great Show today, Thom...
We must stop the Treasonous Preparation for the Plummet. Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now was excellent today. Lori Wallach covered it Brilliantly and also gave us info on where we can find tools to educate ourselves/others. Also in the subsequent segment she covers how the for-profit prison cos. are, get this, applying for child care licenses so they can continue to detain refugee children at the boarder… “the largest trend in family detention since the Japanese camps”
Education is the great equalizer. We have to demand the redistribution be fundamentally about improving quality of and access to education, especailly pre-K and college. As far as what to do now, keep educating everyone we can. Educated people call BS on the false promises of the conservatives. And be patient: the angry conservatives who have managed to largely shout us down for the past decade are mostly old, white guys and they are dropping like flies. The ultra-conservative base of the Republican party is shrinking rapidly while the Progressives are adding to our ranks daily. Keep fighting the good fight.
http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/
I'm just wondering, because Alan Grayson used the phrase, whether "the almighty dollar" was coined when "In God We Trust" was put on the currency.
See the following recent article which shows how our tax law has contributed to income inequality in the United States.
How Clintonomics Created Carly Fiorina
Rana Foroohar; TIME; Oct. 15, 2015
http://time.com/4074571/how-clintonomics-created-carly-fiorina/
The right-wing military fetish is real. I've already seen something on Facebook trying to turn Thanksgiving into a military holiday.
OK, so we all, mostly, know what is wrong. What the hell do we do about it? So many complaining but no one with a solution. We need a solution that works immediately. Telling folks to vote for the right person doesn't seem to work and it would take forever for results. We need results now not later. Someone step up and give us a solution. Voting for Senator Sanders and standing with him could be a step in the right direction but do we really think those with the money will let that happen? Not likely. So what do we do before we are all in the street because that is where we are heading faster than any solution I've heard. Some great ideas out there, but how do we make them happen? Soon?
A VERY-useful show {its usefulness enhanced by its not featuring a “Rumble” fiasco}.
No society can work sustainably unless the basics of life are socialized and removed from the marketplace. We already freely socialize our military our police, our schools, our parks, our infrastructure. It's about time we socialized basics like food and medicine. In nature it's survival of the fittest, strongest, luckiest. Do we want to go back to that with our predatory market system? Basically the wonders of our modern system are due to cooperation and this is being eroded by the current market competitiveness.
I agree. The proper role of government is to protect the commons and the inalienble right of the people. We are overlooking some of the most obvious cures for poverty in this country and abroad. This must include price restrictions on the most basic necessaties of life such as medical care, utiliites and education. Additionally, it is long over due for a mandanaroty living wage based on regional cost of living with yearly cost of living adjustments. This is basic common sense, something too many of our "representatives" have lost. A living wage would not only drastically reduce poverty but also the crime and addictions that stem from it.
Kentucky has elected a tea party governor.
Matt Bevin who ran against McConnell as a tea party politician. He now claims to be a"real deal conservative"
Bevin/Hampton (R) 511,363. 52.53%
Conway/Overly (D) 426,599. 43.82%
Curtis/Curtis*. (I) 35,596. 3.66%
* husband and wife.
Matt Bevin will be sworn in Dec 8 2015.
Bevin took a page out of McConnell's playbook and ran against Obama.
The rich man is laughing all the way to the Cayman Islands.....He's convinced the religious right that voting for the Fascist Party is God's will. He's convinced gun nuts that voting for the Fascists will protect their ownership of guns, guns needed to overthrow the government...the same government that he has bought and paid for, and thus controls. He's convinced many average income citizens that voting for Democrats will only cause their taxes to go up. He's convinced the same group that the continuing private for profit health insurance, the Affordable Health Insurance Act/Romneycare, is a government takeover...WTF? He's even convinced many that the trillions in the Social Security Trust fund are no longer there. He's convinced citizens that the word Socialism means something evil, something other than public highways , the VA, public Schools, Social Security, Medicare, our massive military industrial spy complex...the biggest socialist program in the history of the world, the local police force...etc etc.
He also knows all of this a big damn fat lie. He knows most people are gullible enough to believe the media he owns. That's why he's laughing, laughing as his,"our" trillions flow into off shore tax shelters. The most extreme concentration of wealth in our history...all going to a relative few because it's government to the highest bidder...bald faced REPUBLICON FASCISM!
Both right answers here,either way is is disastorous for america.
Proverbs 963:24-25
{…a rhyme…}
That day shalt thou rue,
thou witless fool who
votest for knaves of the Right.
For lo! shalt they bring thee their night
of xenophobic hates, -
- and rapacious spates
of the rich rulers’ sin.
Thou shalt weep therein.
===================
Both right answers actually,those are the only things they can win with, and fear mongering.
cccccttttt, you're confusing anti-discrimination laws with hate crime laws. Anti-discrimination laws outlaw acts that would not otherwise be illegal. Hate crime laws allow higher penalties for violent crimes based on the motivation of the perpetrator.
I cannot agree with you more ! The Left in this country went off the rails in the early nineties when the George Soros backed Democrat Leadership Council, a collection of Neo-Liberals that had ambitions that included the total occupation and control of the DNC. They made the Clinton's their charter members and backed them as an alternative to the Republic domination that had gone on throughout the entirety of the nineteen eighties and early nineties. It didn't take long for a minority of Progressive Democrats to detect Clinton's love affair with various powerful individuals on the Right but most Democrat voters could only see him as a long awaited resurgence of New Deal America, a political era that had been permanently put out of it's misery in the late sixties !
The current rise in support for Socialists policies among younger Americans marks a return to an era eighty years ago when the population of that period experienced the devastating effects of unregulated runaway Capitalism and stood up to demand substantial changes. As you previously pointed out, both majority political parties have essentially become what Ralph Nader defined a decade ago, a two party duopoly - two sides of the same coin. I agree with you that we can forget about expecting any real change in 2016 if Sanders doesn't jump to a third party, a long shot at best given the total control of information by the current privately owned media in this country. Some of the bought and paid for media analysts admit that a large segment of both Republican and Democrat voters are not happy with the current direction taken by their respective political parties ! Hopefully political patriots on both sides of the isle will use this to their advantage !
Article 28.1 of the newly released TPP text would seem to cast ALL signatories as "parties" and as equals in any dispute. This appears, in a few sentences, to throw out the concept of national sovereignty and place the American People at the mercy of the machinations of any corporate boardroom, foreign or domestic. Rep. Doggett (D-Tx) would be glad to share his views on this issue.
Mayhemically Pandemic
{…1.20 limericks…}
Things which I’ve learned academically
are that things proceed systemically
to rot pandemically
and quite mayhemically, -
- while Rightists deny this polemically.
{Their brains are infected endemically.}
===================
re the Houston vote-result: - During my decades of college-teaching, I’d tell studes that election-structures often allow “intense minorities” to prevail. F’rinstance in the “low turnout” of “off-year” elections. Such stuff as this is among a great many glitches in how our “democracy” works not so well. {I first taught in the mid-‘60s, back when John Birchers kept small Texas towns from flouride-in-city-water. “Egad,” I told the studes.}