Quotes from Thom Hartmann

as the consequences of global warming further manifest themselves, political will for a hard cap will undoubtedly build, just like it did with sulfur dioxide that caused acid rain in the 1980s. It's rarely discussed in the press, but President George Herbert Walker Bush successfully pushed through a cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide which radically reduced acid rain.

Activism begins with you, Democracy begins with you, get out there, get active! Tag, you're it

And so we see people who are spiritually disconnected, living in boxes and driving in boxes, perhaps once a year going "out to nature" to get a small touch of what was once the daily experience of humans. These people seek escape. They sit in urban and suburban homes and feel miserable, not knowing why, experiencing anxiety and fear and pain that cannot be softened by drugs or TV or therapy because they are afflicted with a sickness of the soul, not of the mind.

The 20th century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Both Jefferson and Adams were wary of priests in all forms, as they both knew theocracies are enemies of democracy. Jefferson pointed out that the Indians shared their wariness:

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.

There is more carbon in the atmosphere trapping heat and moisture than ever before in the 165,000 years of human history.

But Hamilton lost the day, Jefferson won, and we have a Bill of Rights built into our Constitution that, as Hamilton feared, has increasingly been used to limit, rather than expand, the range of human rights American citizens can claim. And because it's in our Constitution, the only way other than a Supreme Court decision to make explicit "new" rights (such as a right to health care) is through the process of amending that document.

With the help of prominent media outlets, the Royalists, now a political minority, would engage in a scorched-earth strategy to defeat a coming Progressive Revolution, even if it meant crashing the United States as we know it. If they were going down, then the rest of the nation was going down with them. Which is exactly what happened.

Humans are born with human rights. Those human rights are inherent—

nation and the Framers of the Constitution. They were sufficiently worried about corporate power that they didn't even include in the Constitution the word corporation, intending instead that the states tightly regulate corporate behavior (which the states did quite well until just after the Civil War).

the Constitution was designed not to give us rights but to prevent government from taking our rights.

An important book for understanding the history of our economic boom & bust cycles. It's an eye-opening account of how we are repeating the mistakes of the 1760's, 1850's, and 1920's. The author is a brilliant writer and is so good at explaining even the most complex subjects in a compelling & easy to understand way. The next crash will be painful but it's important to understand what is being done to us, and how we can learn from history and take action.

generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. [It] says what the states can't do to you. [It] says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

the Occupy Movement flared up and began setting up tents in public parks all around the nation, from New York City to Chicago to Seattle. But it actually happened exactly eighty years earlier, when the nation was drowning in President Hoover's Great Depression, and not President Bush's Great Recession. These settlements weren't called "occupations" at the time, they were called "Hoovervilles.

Her crime cost nobody their life, but she famously was escorted off to a women's prison. Had she been a corporation instead of a human being, odds are there never would have even been an investigation. Yet over the past century—and particularly the past forty years—corporations have repeatedly asserted that they are, in fact, "persons" and therefore eligible for the human rights protections of the Bill of Rights.

2003 case before the Supreme Court in which Nike claimed that it had the First Amendment right to lie in its corporate marketing, a variation on the First Amendment right of free speech. (Except in certain contract and law enforcement/court situations, it's perfectly legal for human persons to lie in the United States.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

His concern was that if there were a few rights specified in the Constitution, future generations may forget that those are just examples and that the Constitution itself protects all human rights.

Corporations haven't limited their grasp to the First Amendment; pretty much any and virtually every amendment that could be used to further corporate interests has been fair game.

Instead of defining a few rights, Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 84, "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain everything, they have no need of particular reservations.

Other corporations have asserted Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination as well as asserted that the Fourteenth Amendment—passed after the Civil War to strip slavery from the Constitution—protects their right "against discrimination" by a local community that doesn't want them building a toxic waste incinerator, commercial hog operation, or superstore.

I hold it to be impracticable"4 to try to define it or any right narrowly in a Bill of Rights.