Vance’s career and his life story are a grift. Just like most all of Donald Trump’s businesses. Republican policies, in fact, have been one long grift for more than half a century…
Well hell, I didn't think there was anyone Trump missed when it came to insults. Seems he found another grifter and someone that can cover that.
ABC started last night's news with JD Vance's remarks. They did not tell people how to interpret it. That's their job.
I hope to see some ads that include cat ladies and childless people that are out there trying to save the world AND the cats. I know a few if they need authentic examples.
The truth is out there. Vice President Harris is going to bring it, and we need to help her. Thank you Thom. We can at least ask people that support Vance, if they have seen Governor Walz's remarks.
Single, childless---don't have a cat. My nephew is the cat-lady in our family. By the way, he is a combat veteran, a Marine with a kind heart. He won't be voting Trump/Vance.
And that's the way it is. But a significant portion of the population in still hypnotized by the grifters, and either just voting Republican because they always have, or are grifters themselves. Main stream media is not consistent and assertive enough on this issue. I like that Biden and Harris have started sounding more like Senator Sanders in a somewhat progressive agenda for the country. They would have been marginalized by the media not that many years ago, like they tried to do to Senator Sanders, and Senator Warren, and AOC, and others.
The mainstream media is a grift now! No hard ball questions for the other grifters and don't you dare mention the truth, that is just the lying grifters right to have an opinion.
MSM can't explain the irrationality of the "marks" any more than anybody else, from Fromm to Dean (and Goldwater!) "Conservatives Without Conscience." If you call them crazy, or stupid, the backlash makes you the villain. (Hillary: "deplorables.")
In the early 70's, the "conservative" right-wing took over the radio air-waves with "talk radio", that started the brain washing of America, and it grew exponentially, while Democrats/liberals (and MSM) sat on their hands, saying, "Americans are too smart to fall for this." Nope, Americans are stupid and lazy, and by the time the Democrats woke up to the fact that half of America was brainwashed beyond repair, we got Trump.
But the mustard seed had fertile ground to fall on. I remember Al Gore tried to start BOTH a cable network AND a broadcast radio station, which, most notably, started the career of Rachel Maddow. Even in San Francisco Bay Area, couldn't get off the ground. (Randi Rhodes, I remember!) So hands weren't totally sat upon. It was sad that MSNBC, in it's early days, crumbled to bogus Iraq War propaganda. Dumped Phil Donahue and lifted up young slavering Tucker Carlson and: I do not forget! war-monger Joe Scarborough. But through it all, my mother and her family smoothly transitioned from N. Carolina plantation racists to Birchers to Michael Savage devotees to Tea Partiers to Birthers to, well it's over now. They never would have tuned into anything other than fascist input. Not stupid or lazy. Born, raised, and "true red?" since before 1900. I left out the multiple copies of "Protocols of the elders of Zion" around the house! Mom loved to brag about being "Anti-Zionist" NOT anti-semite! You try to figure out whose side she would be on now! (died 2010)
That is true Carla. I watched it slowly happen. When Rush Limbaugh started raking in millions of dollars, and many working class folks I met were excitedly embracing his sarcastic, sexist, racist, non-news commentary as real news, I watched a good portion of white males go down the rabbit hole of victim mentality.
RFK Jr has a whole new grift — sounding progressive and running to the left while being bankrolled by billionaire oligarch Timothy Mellon, who is also Trump’s biggest donor.
I read somewhere yesterday he may be in discussions with the Trump campaign to withdraw, throw his support to Trump and in return receive a position in his administration.
Corporations. My Dad & many in my family including me worked for the original "Ma Bell". I worked during the summers as an information operator, yes, one of those people you could ask to find a number for you. We had books, giant phone books, with paper pages, real books. And we were taught customer service. It was a must, an absolute must. And I know this is ancient corporate history but the big companies back then were run differently. Employees were important, customers were "always right" & service was paramount. And calling 411 was free! No charge for Information services.
Then someone decided that "Ma Bell" had to be broken up because it would create competition which would reduce fees. Well, how did that work out for Joe & Jane consumer? The monthly bill did NOT go down as promised it went up & service went out the window. Over some years the "Baby Bells" consolidated & now we have the behemoth AT&T. No operators to speak of, now you pay to have the computer find the number after you've tried unsuccessfully to find yourself.
So I agree consolidation is almost always bad for consumers today it wasn't necessarily the same 'back in the day's. Back then corporations "spoke" through the services or products they provided NOT through how much their CEOs are compensated.
And when those corporations fail their boards & officers walk away with golden parachutes even if they are the ones responsible for the failure! Nice work if you can get it.
The customer service department at the Republican Party closed long ago. They're not taking calls or emails. The don't want to hear from their customers ever again.
This clearly articulates where we are as a country. Personally, I see it in my own family, my three college educated daughters struggle financially. I am spending my parents estate to pay for their assisted living, which means there will not be any inheritance for me and my wife which also means we won’t be able to help my daughters with their student debt. I’m not complaining. It’s just a fact that my daughters will have less than we do. This is not sustainable. The country cannot sustain this.
Biden has tried to help with student debt, only to be stymied by Trump's supreme Court. Liz Warren was on MSNBC today calling out the "Supreme" America-haters. You have a right to complain! Get out there asking your neighbors, do they know any girl who just started her period, or any woman not done yet?
Thom: Your diatribe (in a good sense!) on the consequences of Reaganomics omits the two people who were instrumental in creating the changes we suffer under today: Milton Friedman and Jack Welch - who fed us the doctrine that corporations had only one responsibility: maximizing profit and shareholder value. Screw everything and everyone else. Out went the concept of stakeholders, including employees, community, environment. Out went hundreds of thousands of jobs in cost cutting, gutting communities, impoverishing families and ultimately destroying the corporations that were the beneficiaries of these policies. In went the enrichment of the CEOs, the rise of the billionaires and the monetization of society and the economy as it became finances and Wall Street über alles. Out went any concern for quality products, quality control, safety, etc. etc. Read Kurt Andersen's "Evil Geniuses" and David Gelles's "The Man Who Broke Capitalism." They lay out the trajectory of the tragedy. Boeing's gaffes with fatal consequences and the Microsoft debacle that shut the world internet down for some unstable code are just two examples that come to mind. All totally predictable.
Maybe now with Kamala and renewed energy and unity by the Democrats, we can actually throw the grifters out and take back the country for the people.
I know how right you are Eric, despite not having read the books or having your education. There will be a lot of Democrats that understand. Friedman/Welch concepts did real damage to my life and so many others, not just in America but all around the globe.
Vice President Harris knows her economics, it's one of her degrees. When she got that law degree and used it, she found out some effects of economics. I'd say we are lucky to have such a choice.
Eric it was a 1919 case, Dodge v Ford, in MI which has never been challenged, or appealed, that established that the only purpose of a corporation is to operate in the interests of it's shareholders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Wow - I had no idea. Must look up this case. I've never heard it mentioned in any of the literature about the shareholder vs. stakeholder histories. But when I did my MBA at Columbia in the 1960s, we were taught about stakeholders. Berle and Means meant something. Gelles's book shows how that died.
Pete Buttigiege brilliantly explains the transformation of Vance and Silicon Valley types who once had contrary values into Trump supporters: “It’s super simple. These are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican party that tends to do good things for very rich men.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XuIEg_Y4fM
Too much wealth divorces most people from their humanity. Yet the wealthy of this type are admired rather than scorned as sociopaths. And that despite a warning a couple of thousand years ago that, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle (the reference is to a dangerous camel path) than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. (Mark 10:24 English Standard Version). And yet even the very religious fail to see the predatory among the wealthy.
The rich also ignore the he sermon on the mount speech. They don't take personal responsibility. To get to heaven all that is required of them is to "believe" in the crack God, I mean correct God. It must be God's will?
I wrote about this yesterday. Many of us have the cultural appropriation blues. There is no doubt that some of us have the gift....to make money...make a living. Few of us have a sponsor to put us in positions of power.
There are lots of authentic Appalachian stories. But Vance is a product of a more Teutonic success story...more Wagnerian than Bluegrass. Peter Thiel bankrolled a pro-Vance super PAC with $15 million and brokered a meeting with Donald Trump that helped secure his endorsement, which proved decisive. "Thiel’s support interlocked with Tucker Carlson’s Fox News megaphone. Vance appeared on Carlson’s show 15 times, according to Media Matters: The combined cash and airtime helped enable Vance to withstand a barrage of negative ads from rivals funded by traditional GOP-aligned plutocratic interests." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/05/peter-thiel-bankrolling-jd-vance-reactionary-nationalism/
Notoriously, Thiel funded Hulk Hogan in the Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit because Gawker had previously outed Thiel as gay. The lawsuit eventually bankrupted Gawker and led to founder Nick Denton's bankruptcy.
Born in Deutchland, he has lived in South Africa, and now reportedly lives in Baghdad By the Sea
"In 1995, Thiel and David O. Sacks published The Diversity Myth, a book that criticized political correctness and multiculturalism in higher education. The following year, writing for Stanford Magazine, they argued against affirmative action in the United States, saying that it had hurt, not helped, the "disadvantaged" and had led to increased segregation at Stanford University in the name of "diversity".
"The Straussian Moment," an essay written by Thiel in 2004, is sometimes considered to be a fundamental text in his political thinking and was the subject of a 2019 interview at the Hoover Institution. The essay draws on several thinkers and political theorists and argues that the September 11 attacks upset "the entire political and military framework of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries," and therefore "a reexamination of the foundations of modern politics" was needed.
"Thiel explained in a 2009 essay that he had come to "no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible", due in large part to welfare beneficiaries and women in general being "notoriously tough for libertarians" constituencies, and that he had focused efforts on new technologies (namely cyberspace, space colonization and seasteading) that could create "a new space for freedom" beyond current politics.[94] Said essay has been referenced by Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land, the main theorists of the neo-reactionary movement, in their writings.
In a 2015 conversation with Tyler Cowen, Thiel claimed that innovative breakthroughs were happening in computing/IT and not the physical world. He lamented the lack of progress in space travel, high-speed transit, and medical devices. As a cause for the discrepancy, he said: "I would say that we lived in a world in which bits were unregulated and atoms were regulated."
"In 2019, Thiel called Google "seemingly treasonous" and urged a government investigation, citing Google's work with China and asking whether DeepMind or Google's senior management had been "infiltrated" by foreign intelligence agencies.
"Thiel is a member of the Steering Committee
of the Bilderberg Group, a private, annual gathering of intellectual figures, political leaders, and business executives."
David O Sacks, born in South Africa, is ironically Jewish.
If the Dominionists and their white supremacist allies take control, both Thiel and Sacks would be grist for concentration camps and perhaps a final solution. Vance's wife is Indian. According to Trump's Neo Nazi allies, she would suffer the same fate. https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-wife-attacks-maga-trump-running-mate-1926194
It makes sense, this filthy rich gays aren't interested in equality or anything other than money and social status, and money gives them social status, especially in their insular community.
Marriage they aren't interested in.
I lived in the Bay Area and attended a gay wedding in 1991 in the Golden Gate park. They were not legally married at that time, of course, but weren't interested in a legal marriage, but in a lifetime commitment.
Peter Thiel and Andrew Sullivan and the Log Cabin Republicans are not interested in anything but their pocket book and power, they have their own social circle, and their money and positions give them peripheral access to the beltway and Wall streets social circle.
They think of themselves as exceptions and exceptional. Not unlike Clarence Thomas and a few others I could name, and white women have been in the forefront of every anti-women movement since long before the 19th Amendment was ratified.
Well Susanna *I agree with you. The women who have been in the forefront of the anti women movement, are those that have made their bed, feathered their nest, climbed the ladder by propping up and supporting men.
I was on a libertarian forum, with a gal who argued strongly in favor of the patriarchy, she was a gamer and met a guy on the net, a Canadian, she married the dude and was thrilled because he supported her, made good money, and she didn't have to work. then he found a new honey bunny, divorced her and she changed her mind.
When I was a right winger, another right winger told me, "tell me who signs your paycheck and I will tell you the opinions they hold"
Have you seen the movie Django Unchained, if you have do you remember Stephen the House Slave, that drank brandy with the master, and instructed him as to how to deal with the slaves,including cutting their hamstring or lynching.?
Well the world is full of Stephens, gay, black, Hispanic, Female, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu
Wave fame, money and power in front of them and they will sell their soulds. The word for them is Quisling.
Here's what I said yesterday. Vance as the hitman for the campaign. Think Spiro Agnew. Not just women. Trump wants to play the victim of unrestrained targeted prosecutions and Harris was a lifetime prosecutor.
I heard Black Lung cases for 20 years mostly in Appalachia and grew up with that Wheeling Feeling, exposed to the culture. Fire in the hole! If he checks out who the Reagan Democrats in Macomb County Michigan, were, most of their antecedents took that Hillbilly Highway to get work in Detroit city. Same for every industrial area in the Midwest.
To a hillbilly, Vance ain't no hillbilly. "He is playing into the stereotype of the lazy, violent mountaineer who can't quite be trusted to take care of themselves." https://www.npr.org/2024/07/20/nx-s1-5043772/appalachian-writer-revisits-j-d-vances-hillbilly-elegy J.D. Vance Never Was and Never Will Be the Voice of Appalachiahttps://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/jd-vance-never-was-and-never-will-be-the-voice-of-appalachia. The voice of Appalachia these days is Governor Andrew Graham Beshear, who just last year flipped counties that went 70%-30 for Trump twice. He speaks the language. Her's a lay Decuples of Christ preacher who know the lyrics of all the hymns and Bill Monroe songs and knows what it takes to make burgoo.
Vance is a guy who married an Indian, gave his kids Indian names. His opponent is also partly Indian. I bet they eat the same food and it ain't burgoo. I bet he doesn't put syrup on his samosas and pakoras. On his naam bread. I bet he doesn't eat Martha White biscuits and chew Mail Pouch.
This is also a guy who has been, as I have written previously, the spokesman for the Putin position in Ukraine, despite the fact that 70,000 Ukrainians live in Ohio, not to mention folks interested in preserving democracy in Baltic and other European countries threatened by Russia.
BTW Vance lost the Republican childless cat woman vote. Trump hates dogs. Vance hates cat women, be they Democrat or Republican.
We risk entering modern dark ages. Many of us could lose our civil rights. The right to vote. Some of us could face physical; harm. Millions of unregistered folk trend heavily Democratic. FT6 has a database containing 9 million unregistered likely Democrats in swing states. FT6 uses every outreach method there is: email, text, phone, geofencing, direct mail, targeted ads, social media storms, postcards, and live voter drives. Register Democrats -- save the world.
Spread these words of wisdom to the digital wind, internet people. Thom Hartmann paints the world as it is every damn day. And it's well beyond time for the majority of people to hear the message he shares. Thom is one of humanity's most thorough truth teller's - during a time when our world perilously teeters upon a broken truss of disposable promises.
Here's an excerpt from today's Hartmann Report:
"The latest grift is Trump and Vance promising that they’ll “restore American greatness” when it was their Party and policies that stole America’s greatness, handing it off to the morbidly rich and the world’s largest corporations."
But hey, we can get all the guns we want! Thanks for laying this out so clearly, and especially for underscoring why Joe Biden's presidency has been, to coin a cliché, transformational.
Gov. Tim Walz's words hit home with me! While drinking beer in the small town of Nimrod, Minnesota (population 69) in the 1970's, I was asked by one of the canoers who had come to navigate the beautiful waters of the Crow Wing River, "Why do you keep calling those people 'cuz'?" I responded, "'Cuz' is just short for 'cousin'." He laughed and said, "They can't all be your cousins!" I then shouted out to the assembly of beer-guzzling rednecks, "Would all of my cousins please raise their hand!" When half the patrons in the bar raised their hands, he exclaimed "OMG!" I then asked him if he had ever seen the movie "Deliverance." He and his companions quickly left the bar...
Mr. Hartmann, I was pleased to see that you suggest Biden/ Harris are responding to our economic decline with Keynesian economic policies. Keynesian policies are the only thing that could reform Capitalism enough for it to survive into a stable future. This was demonstrated by Franklin D. Roosevelt when he pulled this country out of the Republican's depression, which we call The Great Depression, the most severe in our history. FDR literally saved American Capitalism through his Keynesian policies. Most Americans are not old enough or informed well enough to be aware that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia scared hell out of the elite in America. This country was experiencing a serious rise in Communist, Socialist, Francis Townsendist, and Unionist sympathy. Talk of revolution was in the air. The reaction of America's wealthy elite was to go "underground" and hide for a long time. Roosevelt's adoption of Keynesian policies worked. He pulled us out of depression, restored faith in constrained, regulated Capitalism and made America's economy the envy of the world. Talk of revolution subsided. The public rewarded FDR for this by electing him four times to the Presidency. Which demonstrates that if an administration enacts good, sound policies which benefit us all: that incumbent party continues to win the White house well into the future. FDR was an overweight, cigarette smoking, polio survivor who could not stand up from his wheelchair without metal braces to hold him erect; and the public respected and loved him passionately.
FDR's policies lasted for two generations until that dishonest man who, acting the role of a president, began the systematic elimination of them: Ronald Reagan, the 3rd rate Hollywood actor who made it to the White House where he slept through cabinet meetings while his team of right wing operatives did their dirty work against working people.
If the Democrats win big enough in 2024; we might see something similar to the Roosevelt administration again. Biden has already begun the Keynesian-pump-priming of our economic system with his fiscal policies the last four years. These fiscal policies pulled us out of the worst mess since the 1930s. This time, after four years of a sociopathic-narcissist President and a once-in-a-century plague made Biden's challenge much harder. But he stood up to that challenge and we are better off for it.
This American dynasty , ( Debt) authored by the Republicans throughout decades of their ‘dubious dealings’.
It is contrived by people who position themselves as ‘successful leaders ‘.
When in fact they are thieves who have set up the system to accommodate the wealthy and ‘ screw’ those with less.
And screwed we’ve been .
We do not have to allow this system any support at all.
Vote for Kamala Harris and Democrats who’ve expressed their values and followed through with actions to help all of us .
Deny the ability for Maga to practice their lying thievery anymore .
Well hell, I didn't think there was anyone Trump missed when it came to insults. Seems he found another grifter and someone that can cover that.
ABC started last night's news with JD Vance's remarks. They did not tell people how to interpret it. That's their job.
I hope to see some ads that include cat ladies and childless people that are out there trying to save the world AND the cats. I know a few if they need authentic examples.
The truth is out there. Vice President Harris is going to bring it, and we need to help her. Thank you Thom. We can at least ask people that support Vance, if they have seen Governor Walz's remarks.
Single, childless---don't have a cat. My nephew is the cat-lady in our family. By the way, he is a combat veteran, a Marine with a kind heart. He won't be voting Trump/Vance.
And that's the way it is. But a significant portion of the population in still hypnotized by the grifters, and either just voting Republican because they always have, or are grifters themselves. Main stream media is not consistent and assertive enough on this issue. I like that Biden and Harris have started sounding more like Senator Sanders in a somewhat progressive agenda for the country. They would have been marginalized by the media not that many years ago, like they tried to do to Senator Sanders, and Senator Warren, and AOC, and others.
The mainstream media is a grift now! No hard ball questions for the other grifters and don't you dare mention the truth, that is just the lying grifters right to have an opinion.
MSNBC has been showing a couple of sessions of Harris' "hard-ball" questions for Kavanaugh and Barr in Congressional hearings.
MSM can't explain the irrationality of the "marks" any more than anybody else, from Fromm to Dean (and Goldwater!) "Conservatives Without Conscience." If you call them crazy, or stupid, the backlash makes you the villain. (Hillary: "deplorables.")
In the early 70's, the "conservative" right-wing took over the radio air-waves with "talk radio", that started the brain washing of America, and it grew exponentially, while Democrats/liberals (and MSM) sat on their hands, saying, "Americans are too smart to fall for this." Nope, Americans are stupid and lazy, and by the time the Democrats woke up to the fact that half of America was brainwashed beyond repair, we got Trump.
But the mustard seed had fertile ground to fall on. I remember Al Gore tried to start BOTH a cable network AND a broadcast radio station, which, most notably, started the career of Rachel Maddow. Even in San Francisco Bay Area, couldn't get off the ground. (Randi Rhodes, I remember!) So hands weren't totally sat upon. It was sad that MSNBC, in it's early days, crumbled to bogus Iraq War propaganda. Dumped Phil Donahue and lifted up young slavering Tucker Carlson and: I do not forget! war-monger Joe Scarborough. But through it all, my mother and her family smoothly transitioned from N. Carolina plantation racists to Birchers to Michael Savage devotees to Tea Partiers to Birthers to, well it's over now. They never would have tuned into anything other than fascist input. Not stupid or lazy. Born, raised, and "true red?" since before 1900. I left out the multiple copies of "Protocols of the elders of Zion" around the house! Mom loved to brag about being "Anti-Zionist" NOT anti-semite! You try to figure out whose side she would be on now! (died 2010)
That is true Carla. I watched it slowly happen. When Rush Limbaugh started raking in millions of dollars, and many working class folks I met were excitedly embracing his sarcastic, sexist, racist, non-news commentary as real news, I watched a good portion of white males go down the rabbit hole of victim mentality.
Thank you, Thom. There is nothing I can add to this brilliant analysis.
RFK Jr has a whole new grift — sounding progressive and running to the left while being bankrolled by billionaire oligarch Timothy Mellon, who is also Trump’s biggest donor.
I read somewhere yesterday he may be in discussions with the Trump campaign to withdraw, throw his support to Trump and in return receive a position in his administration.
Corporations. My Dad & many in my family including me worked for the original "Ma Bell". I worked during the summers as an information operator, yes, one of those people you could ask to find a number for you. We had books, giant phone books, with paper pages, real books. And we were taught customer service. It was a must, an absolute must. And I know this is ancient corporate history but the big companies back then were run differently. Employees were important, customers were "always right" & service was paramount. And calling 411 was free! No charge for Information services.
Then someone decided that "Ma Bell" had to be broken up because it would create competition which would reduce fees. Well, how did that work out for Joe & Jane consumer? The monthly bill did NOT go down as promised it went up & service went out the window. Over some years the "Baby Bells" consolidated & now we have the behemoth AT&T. No operators to speak of, now you pay to have the computer find the number after you've tried unsuccessfully to find yourself.
So I agree consolidation is almost always bad for consumers today it wasn't necessarily the same 'back in the day's. Back then corporations "spoke" through the services or products they provided NOT through how much their CEOs are compensated.
And when those corporations fail their boards & officers walk away with golden parachutes even if they are the ones responsible for the failure! Nice work if you can get it.
The customer service department at the Republican Party closed long ago. They're not taking calls or emails. The don't want to hear from their customers ever again.
This clearly articulates where we are as a country. Personally, I see it in my own family, my three college educated daughters struggle financially. I am spending my parents estate to pay for their assisted living, which means there will not be any inheritance for me and my wife which also means we won’t be able to help my daughters with their student debt. I’m not complaining. It’s just a fact that my daughters will have less than we do. This is not sustainable. The country cannot sustain this.
Biden has tried to help with student debt, only to be stymied by Trump's supreme Court. Liz Warren was on MSNBC today calling out the "Supreme" America-haters. You have a right to complain! Get out there asking your neighbors, do they know any girl who just started her period, or any woman not done yet?
Thom: Your diatribe (in a good sense!) on the consequences of Reaganomics omits the two people who were instrumental in creating the changes we suffer under today: Milton Friedman and Jack Welch - who fed us the doctrine that corporations had only one responsibility: maximizing profit and shareholder value. Screw everything and everyone else. Out went the concept of stakeholders, including employees, community, environment. Out went hundreds of thousands of jobs in cost cutting, gutting communities, impoverishing families and ultimately destroying the corporations that were the beneficiaries of these policies. In went the enrichment of the CEOs, the rise of the billionaires and the monetization of society and the economy as it became finances and Wall Street über alles. Out went any concern for quality products, quality control, safety, etc. etc. Read Kurt Andersen's "Evil Geniuses" and David Gelles's "The Man Who Broke Capitalism." They lay out the trajectory of the tragedy. Boeing's gaffes with fatal consequences and the Microsoft debacle that shut the world internet down for some unstable code are just two examples that come to mind. All totally predictable.
Maybe now with Kamala and renewed energy and unity by the Democrats, we can actually throw the grifters out and take back the country for the people.
I know how right you are Eric, despite not having read the books or having your education. There will be a lot of Democrats that understand. Friedman/Welch concepts did real damage to my life and so many others, not just in America but all around the globe.
Vice President Harris knows her economics, it's one of her degrees. When she got that law degree and used it, she found out some effects of economics. I'd say we are lucky to have such a choice.
Eric it was a 1919 case, Dodge v Ford, in MI which has never been challenged, or appealed, that established that the only purpose of a corporation is to operate in the interests of it's shareholders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Jack Welch popularized the doctrine.
Wow - I had no idea. Must look up this case. I've never heard it mentioned in any of the literature about the shareholder vs. stakeholder histories. But when I did my MBA at Columbia in the 1960s, we were taught about stakeholders. Berle and Means meant something. Gelles's book shows how that died.
Pete Buttigiege brilliantly explains the transformation of Vance and Silicon Valley types who once had contrary values into Trump supporters: “It’s super simple. These are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican party that tends to do good things for very rich men.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XuIEg_Y4fM
Too much wealth divorces most people from their humanity. Yet the wealthy of this type are admired rather than scorned as sociopaths. And that despite a warning a couple of thousand years ago that, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle (the reference is to a dangerous camel path) than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. (Mark 10:24 English Standard Version). And yet even the very religious fail to see the predatory among the wealthy.
The rich also ignore the he sermon on the mount speech. They don't take personal responsibility. To get to heaven all that is required of them is to "believe" in the crack God, I mean correct God. It must be God's will?
I wrote about this yesterday. Many of us have the cultural appropriation blues. There is no doubt that some of us have the gift....to make money...make a living. Few of us have a sponsor to put us in positions of power.
There are lots of authentic Appalachian stories. But Vance is a product of a more Teutonic success story...more Wagnerian than Bluegrass. Peter Thiel bankrolled a pro-Vance super PAC with $15 million and brokered a meeting with Donald Trump that helped secure his endorsement, which proved decisive. "Thiel’s support interlocked with Tucker Carlson’s Fox News megaphone. Vance appeared on Carlson’s show 15 times, according to Media Matters: The combined cash and airtime helped enable Vance to withstand a barrage of negative ads from rivals funded by traditional GOP-aligned plutocratic interests." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/05/peter-thiel-bankrolling-jd-vance-reactionary-nationalism/
Notoriously, Thiel funded Hulk Hogan in the Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit because Gawker had previously outed Thiel as gay. The lawsuit eventually bankrupted Gawker and led to founder Nick Denton's bankruptcy.
Born in Deutchland, he has lived in South Africa, and now reportedly lives in Baghdad By the Sea
"In 1995, Thiel and David O. Sacks published The Diversity Myth, a book that criticized political correctness and multiculturalism in higher education. The following year, writing for Stanford Magazine, they argued against affirmative action in the United States, saying that it had hurt, not helped, the "disadvantaged" and had led to increased segregation at Stanford University in the name of "diversity".
"The Straussian Moment," an essay written by Thiel in 2004, is sometimes considered to be a fundamental text in his political thinking and was the subject of a 2019 interview at the Hoover Institution. The essay draws on several thinkers and political theorists and argues that the September 11 attacks upset "the entire political and military framework of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries," and therefore "a reexamination of the foundations of modern politics" was needed.
"Thiel explained in a 2009 essay that he had come to "no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible", due in large part to welfare beneficiaries and women in general being "notoriously tough for libertarians" constituencies, and that he had focused efforts on new technologies (namely cyberspace, space colonization and seasteading) that could create "a new space for freedom" beyond current politics.[94] Said essay has been referenced by Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land, the main theorists of the neo-reactionary movement, in their writings.
In a 2015 conversation with Tyler Cowen, Thiel claimed that innovative breakthroughs were happening in computing/IT and not the physical world. He lamented the lack of progress in space travel, high-speed transit, and medical devices. As a cause for the discrepancy, he said: "I would say that we lived in a world in which bits were unregulated and atoms were regulated."
"In 2019, Thiel called Google "seemingly treasonous" and urged a government investigation, citing Google's work with China and asking whether DeepMind or Google's senior management had been "infiltrated" by foreign intelligence agencies.
"Thiel is a member of the Steering Committee
of the Bilderberg Group, a private, annual gathering of intellectual figures, political leaders, and business executives."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel
David O Sacks, born in South Africa, is ironically Jewish.
If the Dominionists and their white supremacist allies take control, both Thiel and Sacks would be grist for concentration camps and perhaps a final solution. Vance's wife is Indian. According to Trump's Neo Nazi allies, she would suffer the same fate. https://www.newsweek.com/jd-vance-wife-attacks-maga-trump-running-mate-1926194
Thiel, Log Cabin Republicans, the Andrew Sullivans of the world use to confound me, How can gays align themselves with and support people with such homophobic and anti LGBT agendas, but I read an article about how Grinds gay dating app saw an influx of users in Minneapolis during the Republican convention https://www.salon.com/2024/07/20/the-grindr-super-bowl-gay-dating-app-saw-influx-of-users-during-national-convention/?lh_aid=112154&lh_cid=dpgkn4dqm6&lh_em=myocicats%40gmail.com&di=fabf818b1431ad889ec2834b92bc1792
It makes sense, this filthy rich gays aren't interested in equality or anything other than money and social status, and money gives them social status, especially in their insular community.
Marriage they aren't interested in.
I lived in the Bay Area and attended a gay wedding in 1991 in the Golden Gate park. They were not legally married at that time, of course, but weren't interested in a legal marriage, but in a lifetime commitment.
Peter Thiel and Andrew Sullivan and the Log Cabin Republicans are not interested in anything but their pocket book and power, they have their own social circle, and their money and positions give them peripheral access to the beltway and Wall streets social circle.
They think of themselves as exceptions and exceptional. Not unlike Clarence Thomas and a few others I could name, and white women have been in the forefront of every anti-women movement since long before the 19th Amendment was ratified.
Well Susanna *I agree with you. The women who have been in the forefront of the anti women movement, are those that have made their bed, feathered their nest, climbed the ladder by propping up and supporting men.
I was on a libertarian forum, with a gal who argued strongly in favor of the patriarchy, she was a gamer and met a guy on the net, a Canadian, she married the dude and was thrilled because he supported her, made good money, and she didn't have to work. then he found a new honey bunny, divorced her and she changed her mind.
When I was a right winger, another right winger told me, "tell me who signs your paycheck and I will tell you the opinions they hold"
Have you seen the movie Django Unchained, if you have do you remember Stephen the House Slave, that drank brandy with the master, and instructed him as to how to deal with the slaves,including cutting their hamstring or lynching.?
Well the world is full of Stephens, gay, black, Hispanic, Female, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu
Wave fame, money and power in front of them and they will sell their soulds. The word for them is Quisling.
Have
This is super useful. Thank you!!! Guess I need to add another Substack to the rolls . . .
Here's what I said yesterday. Vance as the hitman for the campaign. Think Spiro Agnew. Not just women. Trump wants to play the victim of unrestrained targeted prosecutions and Harris was a lifetime prosecutor.
I heard Black Lung cases for 20 years mostly in Appalachia and grew up with that Wheeling Feeling, exposed to the culture. Fire in the hole! If he checks out who the Reagan Democrats in Macomb County Michigan, were, most of their antecedents took that Hillbilly Highway to get work in Detroit city. Same for every industrial area in the Midwest.
To a hillbilly, Vance ain't no hillbilly. "He is playing into the stereotype of the lazy, violent mountaineer who can't quite be trusted to take care of themselves." https://www.npr.org/2024/07/20/nx-s1-5043772/appalachian-writer-revisits-j-d-vances-hillbilly-elegy J.D. Vance Never Was and Never Will Be the Voice of Appalachiahttps://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/jd-vance-never-was-and-never-will-be-the-voice-of-appalachia. The voice of Appalachia these days is Governor Andrew Graham Beshear, who just last year flipped counties that went 70%-30 for Trump twice. He speaks the language. Her's a lay Decuples of Christ preacher who know the lyrics of all the hymns and Bill Monroe songs and knows what it takes to make burgoo.
Vance is a guy who married an Indian, gave his kids Indian names. His opponent is also partly Indian. I bet they eat the same food and it ain't burgoo. I bet he doesn't put syrup on his samosas and pakoras. On his naam bread. I bet he doesn't eat Martha White biscuits and chew Mail Pouch.
This is also a guy who has been, as I have written previously, the spokesman for the Putin position in Ukraine, despite the fact that 70,000 Ukrainians live in Ohio, not to mention folks interested in preserving democracy in Baltic and other European countries threatened by Russia.
BTW Vance lost the Republican childless cat woman vote. Trump hates dogs. Vance hates cat women, be they Democrat or Republican.
___________________________________________________
Hillbilly Highway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BxFfAxJYvw
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Thank You.
Spread these words of wisdom to the digital wind, internet people. Thom Hartmann paints the world as it is every damn day. And it's well beyond time for the majority of people to hear the message he shares. Thom is one of humanity's most thorough truth teller's - during a time when our world perilously teeters upon a broken truss of disposable promises.
Here's an excerpt from today's Hartmann Report:
"The latest grift is Trump and Vance promising that they’ll “restore American greatness” when it was their Party and policies that stole America’s greatness, handing it off to the morbidly rich and the world’s largest corporations."
Now that's truth.
But hey, we can get all the guns we want! Thanks for laying this out so clearly, and especially for underscoring why Joe Biden's presidency has been, to coin a cliché, transformational.
Gov. Tim Walz's words hit home with me! While drinking beer in the small town of Nimrod, Minnesota (population 69) in the 1970's, I was asked by one of the canoers who had come to navigate the beautiful waters of the Crow Wing River, "Why do you keep calling those people 'cuz'?" I responded, "'Cuz' is just short for 'cousin'." He laughed and said, "They can't all be your cousins!" I then shouted out to the assembly of beer-guzzling rednecks, "Would all of my cousins please raise their hand!" When half the patrons in the bar raised their hands, he exclaimed "OMG!" I then asked him if he had ever seen the movie "Deliverance." He and his companions quickly left the bar...
Now is our chance! I just sent $100 to Harris campaign!
Mr. Hartmann, I was pleased to see that you suggest Biden/ Harris are responding to our economic decline with Keynesian economic policies. Keynesian policies are the only thing that could reform Capitalism enough for it to survive into a stable future. This was demonstrated by Franklin D. Roosevelt when he pulled this country out of the Republican's depression, which we call The Great Depression, the most severe in our history. FDR literally saved American Capitalism through his Keynesian policies. Most Americans are not old enough or informed well enough to be aware that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia scared hell out of the elite in America. This country was experiencing a serious rise in Communist, Socialist, Francis Townsendist, and Unionist sympathy. Talk of revolution was in the air. The reaction of America's wealthy elite was to go "underground" and hide for a long time. Roosevelt's adoption of Keynesian policies worked. He pulled us out of depression, restored faith in constrained, regulated Capitalism and made America's economy the envy of the world. Talk of revolution subsided. The public rewarded FDR for this by electing him four times to the Presidency. Which demonstrates that if an administration enacts good, sound policies which benefit us all: that incumbent party continues to win the White house well into the future. FDR was an overweight, cigarette smoking, polio survivor who could not stand up from his wheelchair without metal braces to hold him erect; and the public respected and loved him passionately.
FDR's policies lasted for two generations until that dishonest man who, acting the role of a president, began the systematic elimination of them: Ronald Reagan, the 3rd rate Hollywood actor who made it to the White House where he slept through cabinet meetings while his team of right wing operatives did their dirty work against working people.
If the Democrats win big enough in 2024; we might see something similar to the Roosevelt administration again. Biden has already begun the Keynesian-pump-priming of our economic system with his fiscal policies the last four years. These fiscal policies pulled us out of the worst mess since the 1930s. This time, after four years of a sociopathic-narcissist President and a once-in-a-century plague made Biden's challenge much harder. But he stood up to that challenge and we are better off for it.