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Published on Wednesday, December 16, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
Healthcare: First They Came for the Banksters
With apologies to Pastor Niemöller:
First they came for the banksters, and showered them with money and put them in the Administration in a way that was not change we could believe in.
Then they came for the military industrial complex, and sent more and more of our children to die in faraway lands that had never attacked us in a way that was not change we could believe in.
And now they’ve sold out our hope for a national health care system not run by millionaire gangsters in suits. And who is left to speak for us?
President Obama is playing the Bill Clinton game of throwing people a bone and telling them it’s steak. Perhaps he’s doing it because he thinks it’s his only choice; perhaps it’s because he’s surrounded himself with Bill Clinton advisors (and Hillary as Secretary of State); whatever the reason, while it worked for Clinton, it won’t work for Obama.
It worked for Reagan, and for the first Bush, and even worked somewhat for George W. Bush.
But it won’t work anymore. Here’s why.
From 1929 until the 1980s, most Americans were “high information voters.” They were paying attention to politics. The Republican Great Depression of 1929-1938, World War II, the Korean War, Kennedy’s election, and the War in Vietnam were all Big Events that caused Americans to pay attention. Americans of that era needed to know what was up in Washington, DC, because they felt the consequences directly.
This is why in November of 1954, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote a letter to his John Bircher brother Edgar, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
The voters knew. Even as late as 1977, when George W. Bush ran for Congress from Texas on a nearly singular platform of privatizing Social Security, he lost badly. The voters knew.
Then came Reagan. He seemed so nice. He talked friendly. At the very minute – to the second – that he put his hand on the bible to be sworn in, those nasty Iranians let go the hostages they’d been holding (a kidnapping that had so humiliated the Carter administration that Carter lost the election).
America was once again a “shining city on the hill” and even though there were a few small invasions, Panama and Grenada and all, and a small recession, and a few S&L bank failures, mostly people lost interest in politics. TV was going big, home entertainment was huge, blockbuster movies were coming onto the big screen, and America was prosperous. Americans partied on cheap debt. We went to sleep. It was the beginning of the era of the “low information voter.”
During the 1980s, the right wing was working hard. Reagan stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and most of the media Americans consumed was consolidated in the hands of about a dozen very conservative-leaning corporations. Top tax rates were cut from over 70 percent to around 30 percent, so salaries at the top exploded, including those of the stars on TV…including the “news” stars.
The newly-rich TV news people began to hang out with the becoming-fabulously-rich business people, never again criticizing them because they now worked and played together and were members of the same clubs and their kids went to the same best schools. Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous became our new religion, “greed is good” our new mantra.
Conservatives began a war on textbooks, stripping from them references to the labor movement, so that anybody who went to middle school or high school during or after the mid-1980s can’t today tell you why phrases like “Pullman Porter” or “Haymarket Square” or “Great Flint Sit Down” have any meaning.
Reagan, and then Clinton, serially deregulated the media so it came into fewer hands still, while right-wing voices exploded across the landscape. By the mid 1990s there was virtually no corner of America, not even the smallest town, where a person couldn’t hear Rush Limbaugh. After Rupert Murdoch lost $100 million a year for a half-decade, finally around Y2K Sean Hannity and Fox News began to turn a profit and became equally ubiquitous. They all made sure that voters were “low information” or “wrong information.” The labor sections of the newspapers had vanished; NPR and 60 Minutes no longer did corporate-expose investigative reporting.
Reagan used our collective somnambulance to cut taxes for his rich buddies and throw trillions their way in defense contracts. George HW did more of the same, albeit without the elegance of Reagan. Bill Clinton smiled nice and raised taxes a few tiny points – from 33 to 36 percent on the most wealthy – and just that was enough to balance the budget, and during all those years it seemed like peace and prosperity were here. Politically, people stayed asleep.
The attacks of 9/11 woke a lot of Americans up, but they didn’t know what to believe. Retired generals taking million-dollar payoffs from defense contractors were wall-to-wall on the corporate news, telling us we needed more wars and more contractors and more military toys. The two dissenting voices – Bill Maher and Phil Donahue – were immediately silenced. Keep the people asleep. Other than a few old lefties from the 60s who showed up for anti-Iraq-war protests, it mostly worked.
Then came Barack Obama. People were sick of Bush, and Obama’s campaign for the presidency reminded the oldsters of what it meant to be politically active, while it taught the same lesson to the first generation to really involve itself in politics since the Vietnam War. Weeks before the election, the Bush crew had to admit that the phony-baloney Reaganonics games played by Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush while we were all asleep were collapsing. The economy was about to disintegrate. A wave of foreclosures, followed almost immediately by layoffs, swept the land.
People woke up, just like they had in 1929. They began to pay attention. And they had more than just Limbaugh and Fox to learn from; this new thing called the internet proliferated information without corporate control; Air America was birthed and liberal talk radio is now heard coast-to-coast; MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann caught fire (followed by Rachel Maddow); and even the normally cynical and innocuous Jack Cafferty at CNN began to go off on screeds worthy of the movie “Network.”
The Great Depression of 2008 – or what was billed as such – and the election of an African American president who used a ground-up instead of a top-down campaign caused high information voters to emerge again for the first time in 30 years.
Many, of course, were high with the wrong information. They showed up at tea parties and Palin rallies. But their passion is real, and their grievances are mostly legitimate. Thirty years of Reaganomics/Clintonomics has destroyed the labor movement, hollowed out our industrial sector, put us on a permanent war footing, wiped out the equity of the middle class, and created an entire generation of college-loan-indentured-servants. Who are now fully awake and seriously pissed.
We slept while Clinton’s boys Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and the whole gang, Republicans and Democrats together, signed us up for NAFTA and GATT; created the WTO; moved our jobs to China; sold off our airwaves; and “financialized” our economy (fully a quarter of all corporate profits in 2007 were from the “financial services industry” – an “industry” that creates nothing whatever that can be used or eaten or has any other real-wealth value). We slept through the explosion of the private prison industry and the wars in the Balkans (who knows where Kosovo is, anyway?). Seinfeld was far more interesting.
But now both the Vietnam oldsters and the Hip Hop youngsters are awake. Even the Reagan generation is awakening, but confused, as they’ve grown up on Limbaugh and Fox, and didn’t learn much in school about politics after Reagan’s guys stripped most classes of in-depth civics requirements. (It’s interesting – when Michael Medved and I debated in Chicago last year in front of 1000 people, 500 tickets sold by each of our radio stations, my side of the room was mostly people over 50 or under 30. His side of the room was almost entirely 30- and 40-somethings.)
And that’s why Obama is heading for a disaster.
He’s betting that he can do like Bill Clinton did to us with NAFTA and the World Trade Organization – hand us a turd and tell us it’s gonna blossom beautifully if we’ll just wait a year or three or five. Rahm’s betting that if he can “deliver health care reform” – even if the fundamental system of gangster corporations standing between us and our doctors while skimming 40 percent off the top for their mansions and private jets is intact – we’ll be all excited at his “victory” and elect more Democrats in 2010 and reelect Obama in 2012.
Ditto for cosmetic repairs of the banks, which is really just trickle-down Reaganomics on steroids. Rahm and his DLC buddies truly believe that this “change” brought to us by Bush’s man Tim Geithner or Clinton’s man Larry Summers is something we’ll “believe in.”
We don’t.
We oldsters of the Vietnam era, and the youngsters coming up who see how college loan banksters are screwing them as badly as their Clinton-era parents were screwed by the mortgage scammers, are all now fully awake.
President Obama, sir: Meet what is in large part your own creation – the High Information Voters of 2009/2010.
We’re awake, we’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it any more. Natalie Portman to Matt Taibbi to Arianna Huffington to Bill Moyers represent the span of our four awakened generations; generations who have figured out how the game is played. And don’t like it.
First Obama continued Bush’s policy of giving the banksters money, and we protested feebly.
Then he expanded Bush’s wars, and we protested more loudly.
Now he’s going to force us to give trillions to the gangsters who run the “health insurance” companies (while they promise to behave nicely in return) and thinks we’re going to go along with it and it’ll get him re-elected.
He’s wrong.
Please, President Obama, step up and lead. We’d like some that “change we can believe in” that’s actually the real thing.
Kill the bill.
First they came for the banksters, and showered them with money and put them in the Administration in a way that was not change we could believe in.
Then they came for the military industrial complex, and sent more and more of our children to die in faraway lands that had never attacked us in a way that was not change we could believe in.
And now they’ve sold out our hope for a national health care system not run by millionaire gangsters in suits. And who is left to speak for us?
President Obama is playing the Bill Clinton game of throwing people a bone and telling them it’s steak. Perhaps he’s doing it because he thinks it’s his only choice; perhaps it’s because he’s surrounded himself with Bill Clinton advisors (and Hillary as Secretary of State); whatever the reason, while it worked for Clinton, it won’t work for Obama.
It worked for Reagan, and for the first Bush, and even worked somewhat for George W. Bush.
But it won’t work anymore. Here’s why.
From 1929 until the 1980s, most Americans were “high information voters.” They were paying attention to politics. The Republican Great Depression of 1929-1938, World War II, the Korean War, Kennedy’s election, and the War in Vietnam were all Big Events that caused Americans to pay attention. Americans of that era needed to know what was up in Washington, DC, because they felt the consequences directly.
This is why in November of 1954, Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote a letter to his John Bircher brother Edgar, “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
The voters knew. Even as late as 1977, when George W. Bush ran for Congress from Texas on a nearly singular platform of privatizing Social Security, he lost badly. The voters knew.
Then came Reagan. He seemed so nice. He talked friendly. At the very minute – to the second – that he put his hand on the bible to be sworn in, those nasty Iranians let go the hostages they’d been holding (a kidnapping that had so humiliated the Carter administration that Carter lost the election).
America was once again a “shining city on the hill” and even though there were a few small invasions, Panama and Grenada and all, and a small recession, and a few S&L bank failures, mostly people lost interest in politics. TV was going big, home entertainment was huge, blockbuster movies were coming onto the big screen, and America was prosperous. Americans partied on cheap debt. We went to sleep. It was the beginning of the era of the “low information voter.”
During the 1980s, the right wing was working hard. Reagan stopped enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and most of the media Americans consumed was consolidated in the hands of about a dozen very conservative-leaning corporations. Top tax rates were cut from over 70 percent to around 30 percent, so salaries at the top exploded, including those of the stars on TV…including the “news” stars.
The newly-rich TV news people began to hang out with the becoming-fabulously-rich business people, never again criticizing them because they now worked and played together and were members of the same clubs and their kids went to the same best schools. Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous became our new religion, “greed is good” our new mantra.
Conservatives began a war on textbooks, stripping from them references to the labor movement, so that anybody who went to middle school or high school during or after the mid-1980s can’t today tell you why phrases like “Pullman Porter” or “Haymarket Square” or “Great Flint Sit Down” have any meaning.
Reagan, and then Clinton, serially deregulated the media so it came into fewer hands still, while right-wing voices exploded across the landscape. By the mid 1990s there was virtually no corner of America, not even the smallest town, where a person couldn’t hear Rush Limbaugh. After Rupert Murdoch lost $100 million a year for a half-decade, finally around Y2K Sean Hannity and Fox News began to turn a profit and became equally ubiquitous. They all made sure that voters were “low information” or “wrong information.” The labor sections of the newspapers had vanished; NPR and 60 Minutes no longer did corporate-expose investigative reporting.
Reagan used our collective somnambulance to cut taxes for his rich buddies and throw trillions their way in defense contracts. George HW did more of the same, albeit without the elegance of Reagan. Bill Clinton smiled nice and raised taxes a few tiny points – from 33 to 36 percent on the most wealthy – and just that was enough to balance the budget, and during all those years it seemed like peace and prosperity were here. Politically, people stayed asleep.
The attacks of 9/11 woke a lot of Americans up, but they didn’t know what to believe. Retired generals taking million-dollar payoffs from defense contractors were wall-to-wall on the corporate news, telling us we needed more wars and more contractors and more military toys. The two dissenting voices – Bill Maher and Phil Donahue – were immediately silenced. Keep the people asleep. Other than a few old lefties from the 60s who showed up for anti-Iraq-war protests, it mostly worked.
Then came Barack Obama. People were sick of Bush, and Obama’s campaign for the presidency reminded the oldsters of what it meant to be politically active, while it taught the same lesson to the first generation to really involve itself in politics since the Vietnam War. Weeks before the election, the Bush crew had to admit that the phony-baloney Reaganonics games played by Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush while we were all asleep were collapsing. The economy was about to disintegrate. A wave of foreclosures, followed almost immediately by layoffs, swept the land.
People woke up, just like they had in 1929. They began to pay attention. And they had more than just Limbaugh and Fox to learn from; this new thing called the internet proliferated information without corporate control; Air America was birthed and liberal talk radio is now heard coast-to-coast; MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann caught fire (followed by Rachel Maddow); and even the normally cynical and innocuous Jack Cafferty at CNN began to go off on screeds worthy of the movie “Network.”
The Great Depression of 2008 – or what was billed as such – and the election of an African American president who used a ground-up instead of a top-down campaign caused high information voters to emerge again for the first time in 30 years.
Many, of course, were high with the wrong information. They showed up at tea parties and Palin rallies. But their passion is real, and their grievances are mostly legitimate. Thirty years of Reaganomics/Clintonomics has destroyed the labor movement, hollowed out our industrial sector, put us on a permanent war footing, wiped out the equity of the middle class, and created an entire generation of college-loan-indentured-servants. Who are now fully awake and seriously pissed.
We slept while Clinton’s boys Robert Rubin and Larry Summers and the whole gang, Republicans and Democrats together, signed us up for NAFTA and GATT; created the WTO; moved our jobs to China; sold off our airwaves; and “financialized” our economy (fully a quarter of all corporate profits in 2007 were from the “financial services industry” – an “industry” that creates nothing whatever that can be used or eaten or has any other real-wealth value). We slept through the explosion of the private prison industry and the wars in the Balkans (who knows where Kosovo is, anyway?). Seinfeld was far more interesting.
But now both the Vietnam oldsters and the Hip Hop youngsters are awake. Even the Reagan generation is awakening, but confused, as they’ve grown up on Limbaugh and Fox, and didn’t learn much in school about politics after Reagan’s guys stripped most classes of in-depth civics requirements. (It’s interesting – when Michael Medved and I debated in Chicago last year in front of 1000 people, 500 tickets sold by each of our radio stations, my side of the room was mostly people over 50 or under 30. His side of the room was almost entirely 30- and 40-somethings.)
And that’s why Obama is heading for a disaster.
He’s betting that he can do like Bill Clinton did to us with NAFTA and the World Trade Organization – hand us a turd and tell us it’s gonna blossom beautifully if we’ll just wait a year or three or five. Rahm’s betting that if he can “deliver health care reform” – even if the fundamental system of gangster corporations standing between us and our doctors while skimming 40 percent off the top for their mansions and private jets is intact – we’ll be all excited at his “victory” and elect more Democrats in 2010 and reelect Obama in 2012.
Ditto for cosmetic repairs of the banks, which is really just trickle-down Reaganomics on steroids. Rahm and his DLC buddies truly believe that this “change” brought to us by Bush’s man Tim Geithner or Clinton’s man Larry Summers is something we’ll “believe in.”
We don’t.
We oldsters of the Vietnam era, and the youngsters coming up who see how college loan banksters are screwing them as badly as their Clinton-era parents were screwed by the mortgage scammers, are all now fully awake.
President Obama, sir: Meet what is in large part your own creation – the High Information Voters of 2009/2010.
We’re awake, we’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it any more. Natalie Portman to Matt Taibbi to Arianna Huffington to Bill Moyers represent the span of our four awakened generations; generations who have figured out how the game is played. And don’t like it.
First Obama continued Bush’s policy of giving the banksters money, and we protested feebly.
Then he expanded Bush’s wars, and we protested more loudly.
Now he’s going to force us to give trillions to the gangsters who run the “health insurance” companies (while they promise to behave nicely in return) and thinks we’re going to go along with it and it’ll get him re-elected.
He’s wrong.
Please, President Obama, step up and lead. We’d like some that “change we can believe in” that’s actually the real thing.
Kill the bill.
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90 Comments so far
Show AllAccelerate. I've always thought the same thing. If a wreck is inevitable I suppose it's only good sense to up your odds of survival by making sure you hit the other car harder. Maybe not, I don't know. But at least you've done something within a limited set of choices. I'm tired of getting 'tossed a bone and being told it's steak', or better, 'being pissed on and being told it's raining'. At this point I think the ship of state is passed the point of no return, and is pushed so far to the right (or the wrong, such as the case may be) that it's cheaper to let it keep turning till it has executed a full 'revolution'. I don't have any hope that things will be corrected without violence here at home. When enough people are homeless, jobless, and when their only option is either prison or the military, THEN we'll start seeing some shit roll uphill. But it'll be costly, and we'll have wished terribly that we'd done more, sooner.
Good insight! Stringing us along is what politics is about.
Just imagine what is up their sleeves. Will they manage to fool enough of us ... again? Again?! I don't think I can bear to watch.
I wonder if Thom voted for Obama--and, if he did, why should we listen to a word he says?
One notices a strong correlation between progressives who take an irrationally dim view of the Clintons and progressives who got snookered by Obama.
"Conservatives began a war on textbooks, stripping from them references to the labor movement, so that anybody who went to middle school or high school during or after the mid-1980s can’t today tell you why phrases like “Pullman Porter” or “Haymarket Square” or “Great Flint Sit Down” have any meaning." -- Thom Hartmann
I learned absolutely NOTHING about the labor movement, the killing of Native Americans, women's history (beyond winning the right to vote), inequality, race and class, etc., when I attended school in the 1960s. My textbooks must have been different than yours! I did, though, learn about some of these issues through my very progressive grandparents, the music of the 1960s -- Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan; and through literature -- specifically, Willa Cather, John O'Hara, Charles Dickens, etc. My curiosity took me straight-away to the Public Library, where I could read anything I wanted -- if the books were on the shelves. As Ray Bradbury so astutely stated, "The library is the brain of the community."
Kay,
I was surprised to see public school history textbooks in our town today telling the truth about natives in the Americas, and not just in passing mention, either.
Also, everyone with half a brain knows that the post-60s social concerns displaced the earlier labor history in left academia, thereby more or less leaving a whole generation (and more now) of "well educated people" completely devoid of any economic sense whatsoever.
(How can Thomm Hartmann--busy smacking around people who were kids during the inflation years (like myself)--possibly have missed this?)
Feeds the culture war. And it's a serious intellectual deficit with real political implications. Everyone seems to have been laboring under the impression that economies never change, all you need to do is provide "equal opportunity." This is magical thinking libertarianism alright--the perfect companion for the neo-liberal Washington consensus. Heck, most *less educated* people have more economic common sense than that.
They know full well what Robert Rubin et al have been up to.
When Obama voted in favor of illegal surveilance (FISA and immunity for spying corporations) before he was elected Thom and others were convincing themselves and others it was just realpolitic to do so. Things would be different after he was elected. A real Obamafest it was and anyone who critized was obstructionist.
After the election Thom's and other's total obsequiousness became so unbearable I stopped listening to talk radio. Oh I still get enough Obama worship on these blogs. Many are still trying to figure out who is influencing him and more hilarious counting on the second term to see the real man.
The liberal and progressives like to make fun of right wingers who seem to stupidly work against their own interests. Isn't it funny we now have liberals unable to withdraw support from the man who cowardly continues to torture, continues to spy, continues to lie as he glowingly promotes war and death while accepting a peace prize!
Poor Thom and the sycophants, which way can they turn?
d
'After the election Thom's and other's total obsequiousness became so unbearable I stopped listening to talk radio.'
I feel exactly the same way. I still listen to Thom's show from time to time, but frankly, I simply cannot STAND--not only his defense of O--but the unbelievable amount of valuable air time he wastes by having 'con after 'con on his show to 'teach my listeners how to argue with republicans.'
Sorry, Thom, this lame excuse is not a good enough price to pay for wasting so much valuable air time. In the meantime, you give these people unbelievable credibility by just having them on your show and debating them as if you were at Harvard vying for a good grade.
I never thought I'd feel this way about Hartmann...someone I've listened to, and learned from, for years...but the ship is sinking fast, very fast, and we need those on board to provide life preservers, not reason with the iceberg.
This is a very good article pointing out some ugly facts . We are now in a position where our very lives are on the line while the egotist fight over face in the camera time . When ever there is an announcement we see a crowd behind and shoulder to shoulder with the person making the announcement . The very people that we hired to represent us are arguing over public health and corporate profit . When public health and corporate profit become on a par we have a serious problem . To make matters worst we have a completely disorganized electorate and talkers like Big E , mad because he didn't get a front row seat , claiming the President should go beyond what is laid out in the U.S. Constitution regarding law making . If you are on a sinking ship do not get in the life boat with Big E because he might pull the plug and sink that too because he did not get the seat he thought he should have and things were not done the Big E way . Only the electorate can get us back on the road to where we want to go but as long as there are individuals in the media , the place where we get our information , that are influencing and dividing the electorate we will continue to be stuck in this whirlpool with the very poor near the center and the rest of America being sucked along .
one of the things that is happening in Copenhagen is the coming-to-grips with the fact that many of the world's countries and their governments, including America, are essentially run by criminal organization...
the level of control (finances and laws, communication and information, weaponry and technology, and, of course, land, water and food) is awesome...
'Copenhagen' is the discovery that no one, not even you, is on your side...
all we have done must be undone...all we possess, relinquished...
Dems that took Rahm + DLC advice, lost. Those that did not, won. I don't have stats or links, but I'm pretty sure I read about this at one point.
Interesting analysis. And completely wrong.
The vast majority of people do not vote on the basis of "information." They vote based on their "opinions."
But given that advertising executives have been working on methods to overload reason and intelligence for over a hundred years, - primilary using fear - and given that political campaigns are essentially identical to product marketing campaigns, I see no reason whatsoever why "information" should enter the voter decision-making process.
I think if Mr. Hartmann really felt that these "high-information" voters were going to actually wield any power, he would not be practically begging Obama to kill the bill. He would simply state that if Obama lets the bill pass, it will be the last political act of his career, because the people will insist on his removal from office. Now that is real power, and it should be equally clear that the people no longer have that power.
I refuse to vote because the system is rigged.
Voting only encourages the bastards. Besides, elites know and understand nothing but violence. Just look at Copenhagen.
And aren't you Obama apologists getting tired of arguing that the guy has a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand? Effing wake up already!
Yawn.
The Banksters own The Place.
BO does what the Owners of The Place tell him to do. As do all other Bankster-paid employees of The Place they Own.
'Why is BO doing this? Why would he do that? But he said he wouldn't do that? Or this? Whahhhhh."
Guess if 'we' all stop jerking ourselves off and accept the cold, hard truth 'we' would have nothing else to write about.
It's like a whole new genre: pretending the POTUS doesn't work for the Bankster Owners of The Place and 'demanding' he DO THE RIGHT THING as if he actually could even if he wanted to (which he might, but that's irrelevant.)
People: is the Emperor dressed? Or naked? It can't be both.
If he's naked, then we target The Owners of The Place. If not... put down the crack pipe...
"I refuse to vote because the system is rigged. Voting only encourages the bastards. Besides, elites know and understand nothing but violence."
Boycotting the entire ordinary partisan electoral process, because (as we all know) the playing field is not even and the vote count may well involve fraud, is self-defeating. Such withdrawal from civic life simply insures that nobody but the bastards will ever write laws, enforce laws, or get their hands upon the public treasury.
Elites know and understand violence all right. But they also know how to count noses, and how to count ballots.
Thom's core point in this article is well taken: Barack Obama will never duplicate the feats of Bill Clinton, and his Afghanistan decision pretty much insures he will go the way of LBJ. When the masses of new, energized voters, grassroots Dems, and independents who put Obama into office turn their backs upon the DLC "bipartisan centrists" who are actually fomulating Bush-lite policy inside the DC beltway, the elites will fully understand.
Bill from Saginaw
Until we pull off a General Strike and bring this murderous Permanent War Economy to a standstill, no one will pay attention.
I agree. To be effective it means liberals and progressives will have to abandon their sense of eliteness and readjust their priorities. As John Lennon sang 'your just an effing peasant'. A sterile cubicle and a college degree doesn't change the politics one bit.
Solidarity with and respect for the hard working people delivering the mail, serving food, checking out purchases, hauling the trash and mowing the lawns is sorely needed. Pretending to know better is belied by the state we are in.
I am certainly in favor of protecting the air, land, fauna and oceans. We must remind ourselves in light of the ongoing wars and phony healthcare reform the legislatures local and national could care less about what the people care about. The priority must be aimed toward gathering convincing power. Only then will our concerns be addressed.
To start with withdraw support of major corporations in media, consumer goods, chain stores, banking and investment. Help out your neighbor and by all means possible be disobedient.
Amen! But try to convince the sheeple to do that. Ha!
it is still time to shame congress into subjecting the healthcare industry to standard antitrust legislation and abolish so their price rigging and force them to outbid each other.
additionally, as a price to do business and as a service to the nation, they should be forced to compete in states where only one insurer is active.
most importantly, a "reasonable profit" limit should be imposed on them (and on doctors, etc, who facture say more than $200k per year), a limit akin to those nominally imposed on weapons manufacturers when they sell anything to the government.
healthcare is at least as important as national defense. the government needs only to imitate the few tricks that it uses on a daily basis to keep (somewhat) in check the greed of the military-industrial complex.
even if "medicare for all" and the "public option" are killed by bribed congressmen, nobody will be able to defend the position that market-place laws meant to foster competition should not apply to a de facto cartelized healthcare sector for which competition obviously means nothing at all.
let's put the healthcare leeches and their co-bloodsucking bribed politicians on the spot using their own arguments about free markets !
and let's hear what they can invoke to justify why the weapons industry should be more heavily regulated than, and not be allowed to be as "profitable" as, the healthcare leeches.
The power of the President is only his ability to persuade the law makers . As someone that understands what is writen in our Constitution and understands the makeup of Congress (the law makers and controller of the funds) he can only suggest what he wants . To get in to fight with Congress would be a fatal mistake for this man . Senator H.R. the Senate leader said on the day this man was inaugurated that "Congress was not going to be pushed around because it is an equal branch of our government" . That was a shot across the bow of the Obama ship . So what we have as a President is someone who will select the court judges we want and sign in the execution of the laws we want . There is in this nation a great desire to blame the failure of the electorate to do what is necessary on the President and accuse him of the failure of the electorate to join forces against the law makers who are controlled by the corporations . Our media controllers have had for many years the ablilty to control a large portion of our electorate and when the source of our information is pointing in a direction many of us tend to follow the advice . Unless the electorate begin to understand that the media information is designed and fed to us by people that are very well paid , very well insured , and very well schooled in how to coerce by the corporations that are the cause of the debt , high energy prices , high health care costs , and the high inflation that is cloaked by the Congress of the U.S.A. the poor of our nation will be sucked down in this whirlpool and the rest of America will follow . They have divided us with rhteoric and need an enemy to keep us divided and as long as we remain divided we will not watch what they are doing to us as a nation .
We have a Constitutional right to react to a government that no longer listens to it's people. All of the blogging, emailing and phone calling does nothing if it is done without an attention grabbing cause.
The only way to get our Government's attention is through the pocketbook. Send mass emails,phone calls and whatever you can to inform your Representatives that for (3) days starting December 28th, we the people, will bring this countries economy to a halt via no working or purchasing of any kind! Anything less is useless! Quit talking and backup your words with actions! NOW
Thommy Hartman's history is a little skewed. His "hi/lo information voter" is nonsense. I was there. White America went to sleep after Taft-Hartley in '47 and the Unions made their deal that they wouldn't act in social movements (wages and hours only) so that HUAC and the Justice Department didn't make their lives constant war - which Hoover was more than prepared to do (but more about Hoover in a moment).
White America "woke up" starting with the Civil Rights movement in the 50's. They woke up because they were terrified, "Angry Black folk are coming to get us." (Brown v Board of Ed)
Yes, they were. They were trying to break out of the segregated schools. They were trying to break out of restrictive CCRs. They were trying to break out of the basement where White America had held them in chains since the 17th century after stealing their bodies from Africa. Theirs were the backs that built the first "outrageous fortunes" of America and they were trying to break out of White Male Supremacy.
Women started to get divorce settlements, and alimony, and even child support (though collecting through male judges could be thorny) and the Males went nuts. You could hear the anger in the comedians of the era with the "bitchy wife" comedy on Ed Sullivan. The Females were trying to gain their freedom from Male Supremacy. And the males were terrified and females who had prospered in the gender slave game worried about "losing their place".
Oh yeah they were waking up. Especially when Females got the pill in the 60's and began to say "No" to pregnancy and Males freaked out some more. The bitch was insisting that she wasn't just a walking uterus and free labor. They went mad.
Then you add in the greatest protests against a colonial WAR that had ever happened in America - these people ACTUALLY BELIEVED they had a right to protest against the policies of the current administration in DC. The White Majority was appalled. Those people didn't know their place and they had forgotten and they needed to be taught.
You see what percolated all the tension was a simple fact - the incredible abundance produced by the Roosevelt Legacy - by the mid-60's White Males had the greatest distribution of wealth ever seen in 6000 years of human history - and everybody knew it.
Everybody knew the END OF POVERTY forever in this country was in sight. LIFETIME STABLE employment at middle class wages was around the corner. All we had to do was make an equal starting place for everyone at the table, reject war and the rights of conquest as a force that gives our lives meaning, and we had to let our (nearly moribund) Oligarchy DIE, a direct and intended result of the Roosevelt Legacy...BUT...
That would mean the DEATH of White Male Supremacy. That would mean the DEATH of Gender Slavery. That would mean the DEATH of Constant War and booty. That would mean the DEATH of feral blood drinking Oligarchy to bind this Roman Slave Republic together (our "Best Men").
White America cheered the Civil/Voting Rights Acts because they didn't cost a dime. It was also a sop to a Europe that was somewhat aghast at our approach to "keeping our nigras in their place" e.g. blowing up small children in churches, murdering civil rights workers, beating grannies, turning fire hoses on teenagers etc. etc. etc. THIS IS OUR HISTORY.
Once those feux "Acts" were past White America went hysterically reactionary. I've written this before I'll say it again, it needs to be remembered. By '68 the White Majority was 87% of the population. In 49 States they overwhelmingly elected RMN to, "Put those people in their place" (Normal obscenities omitted). Nixon took the purple, Hoover took the call.
Hoover, graduate of the Palmer Raids, and Anslinger's protege dusted off programs for Ritual Defamation, False Imprisonment, & Extra Judicial Executions he'd been developing back to '24 when he was politically appointed Director of the "Bureau of Investigation" under Treasury. Within a decade, from the assassination by government agents of MLK in '68 to end of the 70's - there were NO national leaders and NO mass movements for Economic and Social justice. They were hounded into silence and suicide, they were falsely imprisoned and they were executed in their beds at 4am. Such has ALWAYS been the fate of people who challenged the ESTABLISHED ORDER of the Roman Slave Republic. THEN the way was open for the White Majority to go back to sleep. THEN the way was opened for "Pappy" Ray-gun and "Morning in America". This country was firmly placed back on track as a society based on Exclusion. It was also rushing headlong back to the 12th century. 80-20 societies are the only way to maintain Exclusion - with Slave Masters drinking your blood. But at least the niggers, the bitches, and the anti-war protesters are put in their place. Right? That's certainly worth a century of squalor, destitution, and degradation before the death of the species, Right? America #1 but for what? Lies? Murder? Genocide? Slavery? Germ Warfare? Chemical Warfare? Nuking Civilians?
Tell'em the real history Thom, the one with the blood fresh on the slaughterhouse floor. Not the sanitized version.
Like one black man could go against the oligarchy and keep his skin. It's time to hit the streets.
"They" have thought of that. From MSEHPA laws http://farmwars.info/?p=1243 that came from Bush and at the same time as the Patriot Act, allowing the WHO (the pharmaceutical/biotech/chemical corporations and Rockefellers in white coats) to "declare" a pandemic (with no criteria) and institute martial law, using quarantine to force people into the hundreds of FEMA camps (able to hold a million Americans), all ready for this time which they planned - to steal everything.
And they also put martial law rules into S 510, a "food safety" bill now coming up the Senate that is the Kissinger plan - control food: control people. It's a complete take over of all you need to survive (food being more important than money).
In one insidious bill after another, they have stitched military provision, tracking provisions, warrantless entry provisions, draconian control provisions.
They planned all this and they planned how they would deal with people waking up. The ironic thing is that conservatives saw it first, calling Obama "Hitler" and though they confuse socialism with fascism, they got it about state power and FEMA camps and martial law long ago.
Homeland Security has everyone on the right or left who ever "clicked" to save a turtle, listed as suspected domestic terrorists, and that list is what they will work off of, rounding up people, if Obama declares there is an emergency. Then all Bush's unconstitutional orders which Obama promised to revoke but didn't, could come into play - a take over of everything in the country - utilities, transportation (including personal cars), resources, communications, farms, food, and even people as forced labor.
Here is what Obama has done to contribute and ensure against people hitting the streets in some democratic way.
Secret police
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-Secret-Police-in-America-by-Trutha-Diver-091209-396.html
Million troops
http://www.eutimes.net/2009/11/obama-orders-1-million-us-troops-to-prepare-for-civil-war/
I totally disagree with this article. I see it exactly the opposite. The left wing of our party pushed and pushed Clinton to go left and in doing so we lost control of congress. To stay in power you have to be a big tent. We are a BIG country when many different points of view and we have to be able to listen respectfully (a main point of Obamas campaign) Oh and Clinton was able to be pretty successful once the Democrats lost congress he had to deal with Republicans in power. This let him move center. I dont' like Nafta or the repeal of glass/steagall act or the Welfare reform but in my opinion our left pushing too hard and being too rigid created a back lash that moved the public right....And its happening again!!
I have never ever believed that the "public option" was the be all end of this healthcare bill. I cannot for the life of me understand why the right is so scared of it OR why the left thinks it is the ONLY thing that can fix things. I think the left is making a big big mistake.
It makes me sick that they are threating to not support ANY bill at all. Who cares about expanding medicare - its breaking us anyway - I was EXCITED to see the exchange use the federal employees insurance as an option for the public. This is what I've wanted all along. How can anyone argue against "the same insurance Congress gets?"
Look - the bill WITHOUT the public option sure looks like it would help ME if I do lose my job!!! And I figure many are in a similar situation as me. It provides subsidies to help low income folks purchase insurance AND it expands medicaid AND it outlaws denying based on preexisting condition AND limits how much can be charged, it creates an exchange that pools individuals and small businesses so they have some bargining power.
JUST WHAT IN THE HECK IS SO BAD ABOUT THAT???? I think it is a BIG improvement.
I believe a big part of the reason individual and small business insurance is so expensive is because an individual or small business has no big pool and therefore NO bargining power with the insurance cos. I also think those not carrying insurance raise the prices for the rest of us as well.
It is my personal belief that the changes offered in the bill just might reduce costs without need for any government run insurance. And I agree with the moderates - government run insurance would cost the goverment (us) more and we are already deep in depth. So why not try the it without it at least 1st and if it doesn't work then try the other. Personally I like the trigger idea by Olympia Snow.
Personally I'm not that far polically from Liberman...And I am so ANGRY AT THE LEFT WING OF MY PARTY!!!!
Throwing us a bone has taken on a new meaning.
Hartmann got the chronology of events right, but then at the tail end of this piece he lapses into the worn out practice of appealing to Barry Obama to "step up and lead."
First of all, Obama is not a leader. He is an empty suit that dances on the strings of the corporations that bought him during his election campaign. He needs to be sent packing back to Chicago after his term is expired.
Secondly, it's past time for the left wing in this nation to become as radicalized and energized as the right wing has been for 30 years. We need to be in the streets demanding that the stacked deck that prohibits third-party candidates an equal chance of getting on state and national ballots is eliminated. We need to take back the airwaves that have been stolen by the ridiculous right. We need to drum out of government the reactionaries who have occupied their cushy offices for decades and replace them with progressive third-party candidates.
President Obama remains a wishy-washy, mediocre, just-right-of-center, pro-corporatist.
I know that ‘Progressive’ oriented folk LOVE to gnash their teeth and wring their hands and whine that they can’t figure out what Obama is doing BUT . . . Apply the above framework . . . and, magically, EVERYTHING falls into place perfectly every-farging-time.
Re health care, it looks like we have to scare Obama more than the deniers can. That should be possible, since they aren't a big enough bloc to cost him an election, but we are by virtue of including his erstwhile supporters. Now we must let him know it.
I agree he's not a leader in the traditional sense, but he can be pressured, and so can other key people among the Dems.
Time to drop the Mr. Nice Guy routine.
Obama knows full well - perhaps a trick he's learned from his buddies in Israhell - that if you repeat something enough times, the idiots will start to believe it and, in due time, it will become the truth (or as my good friends the X-ians would say, the Truth)
I don't agree with everything in this article but I do think I've had enough of the status quo in Washington and in the state houses and all the way down to local politics. We can't have "career" politicians "representing" US. They are all representing themselves because most of them are two bit lawyers who haven't made it in their professions and go into politics for the steady incomes and pensions and the, post public career, influence peddling with the special interests. I'm for un-electing EVERY incumbent and having a system with NO private contributions for politicians! No pensions and NO chance to work as lobbyists when they are out of office. That's the America the founding fathers probably envisioned!
Diana couldn't have put it better re Hartmann. And...unfortunately there's more.
Its laughable how the so-called progressives who defend O were celebrating the pip-squeak "put-down" of Lieberman by comedian-senator Al Franken. The Democrats are pathetic; sending Stuart Smalley on a fool's errand. As if shutting down GOP Joe for a whole minute was in any way some serious punishment for his turncoat behavior. Silly and stupid. Even Lieberman was laughing. Spineless Dems are having trouble in their own kennel, controlling their misbehaving Blue-Dogs, because they failed to make an example of turncoat Joe after the election.
Hartmann should explain calling for "kill the bill", which the WH opposes, and then ranting about GOP attacks on O as he did on Friday's show. Can't be credible straddling the fence Thom.
More laughs as Thom's pal Sen. Bernie Sanders got blindsided by GOP parliamentary tactics, forcing his 750-page "bill"to be read out loud. After 20 years in Congress, Burnie should know you can say "public option" in less than a page. Punked, he folded; his excuse, holding up Senate business...like voting for more Pentagon money. Bottom line...more GOP talking points about dems inability to govern. O-Voters are plenty upset. Maybe those views don't get past Thom's screeners. Hartmann continues to voice the "hope" that his man in the White House isn't Bushwhipped. Face it Thom, O is coming off more like Neville Chamberlain than FDR.
And where are the jobs? How about that massive public works program to replace our crumbling infrastructure, projects funded by trillions saved by ending two mistake wars and cutting bloated defense spending? Instead, unemployed millions as hungry mice on a Mobius strip...circling round and around...looking for work and finding nothing. Where's the hope in that?
...and it goes on and on...today in Copenhagen, tomorrow somewhere else. An avalanche of O-words, followed by the same old, same old. Meanwhile, people suffer and die...while mean, cruel pro-life tea-bagging hypocrites honor the American spirit by turning their backs on the less lucky while they pray to a compassionate Jesus.
As Christmas approaches...do those in need and their families still have "hope" Thom?
Yes, Virginia...er Thom...apparently you do believe in O-Claus. But you know as well as we do that there's no real Pony under the pile of sh*t passing for alibis from the WH.
A nice gift would be for you and other "progressive" talkers to say you know and will speak the un-spun truth in the new year, even if it means you have to crash WH parties instead of getting invited.
While we become more informed on every Scam going and the reasons behind them, every False Flag Attack and its core Agenda, the farce of our supposedly Democratic Government embodied by the Terrible Twins; it seems the majority is still getting sucked in by 'The Game' of taking sides !
There is also enough information available now for 'More Informed Voters' on the Military-Industrial Complex and its Ultimate Power. And same applies to the various Players who are pulling the Obama strings even more tighly then the prior Bush and Clinton strings,
So any suggestion that "Your Vote" will make any difference next time... is absolutely ludicrous. By then Obama is expendable as he will have played his part in the Bigger Game !
Thus the question remains... HOW do we Impact on the Real Power Brokers ? How DO we stop something as obvious as Chemtrail Spraying for example... that will surely have devasted the US Economy and remaining IQ beyond salvage by that next Election ?
My suggestion... Stop the Talk and Start the Walk ! And here are a few Simple Steps. Cancel your Credit Cards and defaull on the Loans... En Masse ! Withdraw your money... if you still have some... and Invest in proven Commodities eg. Food or Essential Metals. Boycott every Corporation 'scamming' your wealth abd welfare.. and that's a long list. Don't buy into 'Bigger is Better' and live within your means. Boycott Main Stream Media... if you really want to Impact... but it too has to be En Masse. And that's just the first few steps !
Thus, those proviledged with more time, money or other resources to further "The Walk" should focus on 'Promoting & Co-ordinating this Walk'... and then watch how the Rabbit will Run !
But if you really think it is of greater value to continue squabbles about 'Liberals' and 'Conservatives'. or better places to live etc etc... you will continue to do the Real Power Brokers the favor they expect.
So don't rely on 'Them' for the Changes... rely on Yourself !
This just like all shock jock personalities there is plenty of complaining and hyping a situation offering no solution only the waste and stress of everyone involved.
Where was the solution in this article? or any article like this right or left winged? There are no solutions but it's so easier to point out what everyone is doing wrong. But hey it will keep bloggers on here cuz everyone likes to complain? Look at me I'm complaining about your complaining.
And since I'm already here - maybe if these editorials offered a real solution, they could submit it to the Obama administration or whoever we voted into ridicule at the time. The only real change I've seen is the Obama administration has solicited ideas and solutions from all parties. If you have a solution that would really work I'm sure they would hire you. Just show it on paper it will be successful and you can get everyone to agree to do it and he'll pass it. Everyone agree to it? Remember? it's a democracy shame we couldn't have a dictator that could just shove his boot in anyones a.r.s.e. that didn't want to play nice..."Yep I'm closing all the banks going to run it myself, or We are pulling everyone out I don't want to hear any complaints and I just don't care about anything that happens because of it"...LOL oh wait we have problems with that too."
Believe it or not change does take a long time, look at the abolition of slavery, or how long it has taken and still is to eliminate racism. Beliefs, way of lives, take generations to change. You can't just go in slam democracy in their face then leave and expect to vacation there next year. Wether we should've gone in the first place or not, we are there and we have to leave it better than when we came. Or we will fight a guerilla/terrorist war longer than they have been fighting amongst themselves.
So quit complaining unless you have a solution. I know I don't have one otherwise I would be moving to DC.
Bah, we aren't low information voters because of a conspiracy, we are low information voters because we were taught at a young age if we vocalize an idea, WE will be tasked with doing the work.