Quotes from Thom Hartmann

Blessings are the spiritual equivalent of breathing in, and prayer is the spiritual equivalent of breathing out.

ON SEPTEMBER 2, 2009, THE TRANSNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICAL GIANT Pfizer pled guilty to multiple criminal felonies. It had been marketing drugs in a way that may well have led to the deaths of people and that definitely led physicians to prescribe and patients to use pharmaceuticals in ways they were not intended.

since 1886, the Bill of Rights has been explicitly applied to corporations. Perhaps most astoundingly, no branch of the U.S. government ever formally enacted corporate personhood "rights": • The public never voted on it. • It was never enacted into law by any legislature. • It was never even stated by a decision after arguments before the Supreme Court.

On March 9, 1937, Roosevelt told the nation that the Court was ruling not just against himself and Congress, but against the will of the American people, themselves.

for one hundred years people have believed that the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad did in fact conclude that "corporations are persons." But this book will show that the Court never stated this: it was added by the court reporter who wrote the introduction to the decision, a commentary called a headnote.

We are literally releasing the carbon dioxide that nature had locked up over a hundred million [years] down below the Earth. And we're releasing all that carbon dioxide now at a rate a million times faster [than it accumulated].

There is no evidence when we look to the past for any precedent for the rate of change in atmospheric composition that we're causing, and the rates of change in climate that we can expect, as we continue to burn fossil fuels and elevate these greenhouse gas concentrations.

The clause that grants all "persons" equal protection under the law, in context, seems to apply pretty clearly only to human beings "born or naturalized" in the United States of America. But fate and time and the conspiracies of great wealth and power often have a way of turning common sense and logic on its head

in previous decades a chemical company took to the Supreme Court a case asserting its Fourth Amendment "right to privacy" from the Environmental Protection Agency's snooping into its illegal chemical discharges.

If this trend continues, it's probably just a matter of time before a corporation (maybe one of the many mercenary forces that emerged out of George W. Bush's Iraq War?) claims the Second Amendment right to bear arms anywhere, anytime, and your credit card company's bill collector shows up at your home with a sidearm.

And those rights are not to be lightly infringed upon by government in any way. They're explicitly protected by the Constitution from the government. We are, after all, fragile living things that can be suppressed and abused by the powerful.

Breaking Big Money's Grip on America is a brilliant analysis of where we are and where we need to go. Read this book.

We no longer have a government of, by, and for the people—representative democracy. We have government by plutocracy—the rule of the rich for the rich by the rich," Moyers

among men and not among angels; among men as intelligent, as determined and as independent as myself, who, not agreeing with me, do not choose to yield up their opinions to mine. Mutual concessions is our only resort, or mutual hostilities."*

There are five steps to correctly performing a Walking Your Blues Away session. They are: Define the issue. Bring up the story. Walk with the issue. Notice how the issue changes. Anchor the new state.

Thomas Paine said, "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."1

America is the only developed country in the world that doesn't recognize healthcare as a human right, the only country with more than two-thirds of its population lacking access to affordable healthcare, and the only country in the developed world that has, since its founding, continuously enslaved and legally oppressed and disenfranchised a large minority of its population because of their race.

The Constitution doesn't give us rights: it restrains government from infringing on rights we acquire at birth by virtue of being human beings, "natural rights" that are held by "natural persons." The Constitution holds back (restraining government) rather than gives forward (granting rights to people).

Cuz all they have is bigotry and they're calling it Christianity.

So why does the National Chicken Council feel it's important that Americans eat chickens who are infected with cancer?

grows near exponentially.

It's estimated that the Arctic, within seven years and maybe as soon as 2015, will have its first ice-free summer in the last 700,000 years (keep in mind that humans have only been on this planet for 165,000 years). Earlier projections predicted ice-free summers as far out in the future as 2080.

Electric cars have an easy minimum range of 100 miles and a typical range of closer to 200 miles. And the technology is just getting started. We fight wars all over the world for oil, and we don't even need it. That, in and of itself, is insane.

Most Americans — 78% to be exact — drive fewer than 40 miles per day. Which means that for more than three-quarters of us, we really don't need gasoline at all. Electric cars have an easy minimum range of 100 miles and a typical range of closer to 200 miles. And the technology is just getting started. We fight wars all over the world for oil, and we don't even need it. That, in and of itself, is insane.