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Local News & Opinion
01.26 Local Democrats Invited to Brainstorming Session on Sun., Jan. 31 Ref. : Local Newsbriefs Travel
Books, Films, Arts & Education
02.04 'The Power of Nightmares': Underwear vs. Reason Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
Health & Environment
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries 02.03 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients 01.18 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients 01.09 Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression 01.09 Probation Ends for "Baucus 8" Media Watching
02.04 Err-America 02.03 The Right Gets Itself 'Wired' 01.15 Cuba is Missing...From US Reports on the International Response to Haiti's Earthquake 01.13 WaPo Ombud Responds on Fiscal Times 01.12 Goodbye Moyers, Hello Bush Institute? Ref. : The Daily Howler Legal Matters
01.25 Thinking About Fictions 01.24 US Democracy's End of the Road 01.22 Editorial: U.S. Supreme Court Nails Down the Coffin of Democracy 01.22 Security Fools US Politics, Policy & Culture
02.09 Growing Hunger in America 02.08 The US Government has Lost its Reason for Being 02.08 Thinking About Oracles 02.06 No Direction Home: Pakistan and the Imperial Principle 02.04 Howard Zinn and the State of the Union 02.04 The US Supreme Court: Vanguard of Friendly American Fascism? 02.04 The New War Against Money 02.04 David Brooks Goes After Greedy Geezers 02.02 Obama's Budget Ducks Pentagon Cuts 02.02 Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite 02.01 Thinking About Definitives 02.01 Remembering Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010) 01.29 American History 101: We Are Devo 01.29 Obama's Outreach to Americans: Empty Rhetoric, Business As Usual 01.28 The Supreme Court's Partisanship 01.27 Freeze Frame: Flopsweat and Farce in the Hollow Halls of Power 01.25 Granny D on Campaign Finance Reform 01.25 S.C. Republican’s Plan: Starve the Poor So They’ll Stop “Breeding” 01.23 It's Time for Kucinich, Conyers, Feingold and Other `Progressives' in Congress to Take a Stand 01.21 Massachusetts' Message of Stupid 01.21 Terrorism Defined: Bill Clinton Lights Our Way to Truth 01.21 How Obama Lost His Way 01.21 Political Earthquake Rocks Massachusetts 01.20 Obama Cuts Deal that Will Reduce Social Security, Medicare and all Entitlements 01.20 Critical Mass: Dem Agenda Opens Right-Wing Doors 01.19 Outsourcing War: The Rise of Private Military Contractors 01.13 Haiti and America's Historic Debt 01.13 Seize Wall Street Bonuses and Send them to Haiti 01.12 Do Republicans Deserve a Reward? 01.10 Hard Lessons from Decades Past High Crimes?
01.25 The Silence and the Shield: Depraved Indifference to the Atrocities of Power 01.19 Dark as a Dungeon: A Brutal System Stripped Bare Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
02.07 AIG-Gate: The World's Greatest Insurance Heist 02.06 The Free Market Fetish 02.04 The Crisis is Not Over 02.03 States Face Worsening Recession with Health Care Funds on the Chopping Block 02.02 Rule by the Rich 01.29 The Battle of the Titans: JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs 01.27 State of the Union: Obama’s “Automatic IRA” Plan Could Make Bush’s Wildest Dreams Come True 01.26 Obama, Read Your Reagan on Capital Gains Taxation 01.24 Funding Public Health Care with a Publicly-Owned Bank: How Canada Did It 01.18 Thinking About Accelerants 01.15 Lessons from America's Lost Decade 01.11 Thinking About Gadgets 01.11 The Recession Is Over, the Depression Just Beginning International
02.08 Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Injustic 02.07 Annals of Liberation: Obama Surge Driving Thousands From Their Homes 02.05 Human Rights Abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestine 02.03 Child Slavery in Haiti 01.30 Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry" 01.28 Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning 01.27 Haiti's Earthquake: Natural or Engineered 01.26 Helping Haiti’s Elders 01.26 Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs 01.25 Focus on Haiti: Washington's Militarized Takeover 01.22 The Lessons of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions 01.18 Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti 01.15 U.S. Policy Helped Keep Haiti in Chaos 01.15 The Big One Devastates Haiti 01.14 Help Haiti: The Unforgiven Country Cries Out 01.14 Israeli Democracy or Hypocrisy 01.13 Red Dusk: Vision and Deceit at Empire's End 01.13 Israeli Prohibitions Against Free Expression and "Enemy Alien" Contacts 01.10 Mondo Hondo: Obama Goes Traditional in Latin America We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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SPEAKING OUT:The Future May Not SuckUltimately, it's not up to the new congressional Democratic majority to save the Great American Middle -- it's up to us, to hold them to their promises.
We're not asking for much: a Social Security check that won't bounce, schools for our kids that won't make them dumber, a fighting chance for a job that will let us take the tykes to Disney World, health insurance, and, when the waters rise, a government that will have some kind of plan to pluck us from the flood.Fat chance.
Since Thom first wrote this alarm-ringing book, the war has turned severely, senselessly brutal. I'm talking about the Class War -- and if you're in the middle zone, No Man's Land, well, Good luck, Jack! Since Thom's book hit the street, 38,000 workers at Ford Motor lost their jobs. Add that to the Delco Auto Parts bankruptcy and all of Michigan is busted. In the Bush years, the average annual income in that state declined by $9,000 per family. You didn't have to move to Michigan to get it in the neck. Average income in the U.S has fallen $2,000 per household since the last days of Bill Clinton. Hartmann once told me that Thomas Jefferson said his greatest accomplishment was the founding of the University of Virginia -- establishing the right of Mr. and Ms. Average Income to a decent, free education. "Universal education." That's what made this nation King of the Planet -- a conquest of ideas, ideals and inventions that no imperial army could have accomplished. Jefferson thought free universal education so important he had his university presidency, not the U.S. presidency, carved on his tombstone. But I think that behind Jefferson's seemingly over-the-top enthusiasm for educating the country was an unstated fear that, unless Americans stayed continually informed, knowledgeable and alert, we'd end up a nation of knuckleheads and pea-brains ruled by dangerous, pompous pinheads who would take away our rights on the way to taking our wealth. Jefferson was right: education's the key. I had feared that the 2004 presidential election, recording a Republican plurality, was an intelligence test that America flunked. But, by the end of 2006, the Great American Middle rose up in revolt and voted the scoundrels out. Generally, we've done OK. FDR expanded our Bill of Rights with the Four Freedoms, including a New Deal guaranteeing our economic security. They don't dare take that away -- in the open. I know our nation has sometimes fallen into the Bushes, but we always seem to get back up on our hind legs and follow our populist scent back to the True Path. Of course, the story's not over. Whichever party is in the majority in Congress, it remains a millionaire's club where Average Americans, plucked of their vote, are soon carved into chewable pieces for the corporate carnivores. Like I say, we aren't asking for much: Hartmann's prescriptions to cure America can be summarized on a photo of Laura Bush's fake smile. That's the point. Ultimately, it's not up to the new congressional Democratic majority to save the Great American Middle -- it's up to us, to hold them to their promises. I want you to photocopy Thom's conclusion, The Road to Victory, and check off each task as you complete it, from joining a union to calling into a radio talk show. Then, years from now, when your kids ask you, "What did you do in the Class War, daddy?" you can point to the list and say, "My share." Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild
To read an excerpt from Hartmann's book click here. Check out the podcast of Palast on Thom Hartmann's 5/29 show here. Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. This story was published on May 30, 2007. |
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