Items related to What Would Jefferson Do?
When the Founding Fathers were searching for the best and fairest form of government, they studied the models of Athenian democracy, the Roman republic, and the Iroquois Confederacy and created what is now called a modern liberal democracy. Today, 81 nations can be described as fully democratic. Yet in numerous countries around the world democracy has failed or is tottering, and in the United States its principles are increasingly under siege from corporate and other forces. Americans pride themselves on their democracy, but today’s legislative process often no longer reflects the vision of the Founders.
In What Would Jefferson Do?, Thom Hartmann shows why democracy is not an aberration in human history but the oldest, most resilient, and most universal form of government, with roots in nature itself. He traces in particular the history of democracy in the United States, identifies the most prevalent myths about it, and offers an inspiring yet realistic plan for transforming the political landscape and reviving Jefferson’s dream before it is too late.
"Hartmann has done it again. Passionately written and filled with original historical research, What Would Jefferson Do? offers important insights into the meaning and nature of democracy and what we must do to counter the warlords, theocrats, and corporate aristocrats who now place it at risk."--David C. Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate World
"A riveting and absolutely essential book for anyone who wishes to reflect upon and awaken to the real meaning of America and the hope it still offers to the world."--Jacob Needleman, author of The American Soul:Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders
"A call to vigilance and action--to awaken the better angels of our democratic spirit and wrest our planet away from the corporate overlords. Infused with an optimistic spirit, What Would Jefferson Do? is a true 'patriot act' in the tradition of Thomas Paine."--Chuck Collins, United for Fair Economy, and coauthor of Wealth and Our Commonwealth
"Thom Hartmann looks at the big picture and asks the hard questions. He's an important voice for reclaiming our democracy."--Paul Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen
"Thom Hartmann calls on us to take control of the helm and guide our nation back to its base of 'We the people.' Read this book for its historic grounding; heed his SOS for our future well-being."--Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Global Exchange and Codepink:Women for Peace
"Thom Hartmann offers us an eye-opening view of how democracy is threatened. America needs this book now more than ever before."--Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
In What Would Jefferson Do?, Thom Hartmann shows why democracy is not an aberration in human history but the oldest, most resilient, and most universal form of government, with roots in nature itself. He traces in particular the history of democracy in the United States, identifies the most prevalent myths about it, and offers an inspiring yet realistic plan for transforming the political landscape and reviving Jefferson’s dream before it is too late.
"Hartmann has done it again. Passionately written and filled with original historical research, What Would Jefferson Do? offers important insights into the meaning and nature of democracy and what we must do to counter the warlords, theocrats, and corporate aristocrats who now place it at risk."--David C. Korten, author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Post-Corporate World
"A riveting and absolutely essential book for anyone who wishes to reflect upon and awaken to the real meaning of America and the hope it still offers to the world."--Jacob Needleman, author of The American Soul:Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders
"A call to vigilance and action--to awaken the better angels of our democratic spirit and wrest our planet away from the corporate overlords. Infused with an optimistic spirit, What Would Jefferson Do? is a true 'patriot act' in the tradition of Thomas Paine."--Chuck Collins, United for Fair Economy, and coauthor of Wealth and Our Commonwealth
"Thom Hartmann looks at the big picture and asks the hard questions. He's an important voice for reclaiming our democracy."--Paul Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen
"Thom Hartmann calls on us to take control of the helm and guide our nation back to its base of 'We the people.' Read this book for its historic grounding; heed his SOS for our future well-being."--Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Global Exchange and Codepink:Women for Peace
"Thom Hartmann offers us an eye-opening view of how democracy is threatened. America needs this book now more than ever before."--Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
THOM HARTMANN is the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, The Thom Hartmann Program, and the award-winning
author of fourteen books. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont, and can be found on the Internet at www.thomhartmann.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
author of fourteen books. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont, and can be found on the Internet at www.thomhartmann.com.
America's Democracy Is Eroding
The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign--that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole--some effective power of supervision over their corporate use. In order to insure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by, and be accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct.
--President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
For the past year, I've been on the air coast to coast for three hours a day, five days a week, going up against Rush Limbaugh in the 12-3 p.m. time slot (eastern time). Callers from California to North Carolina, Iowa to Texas, and even a few expatriate Web listeners who've phoned in from Australia, Germany, Taiwan, and Scotland repeatedly stress a consistent set of concerns.
"I feel as though our country has lost its democracy," said one caller in New York.
"Our politicians are for sale to the highest corporate bidder," said another in New Mexico.
"I was arrested for standing a block away from a Bush fund-raiser with a 'No War for Oil' sign," said another in South Carolina.
A caller in Dallas told the story of how his master's degree in engineering and service as an officer in the army didn't qualify him to compete with the engineer in India who took his job. "I've been unemployed for 42 months," he said, "although I'm still looking every day for a good job."
A pervasive concern is sweeping across our nation, a fear that both the economic American dream is slipping away while the ideals of American democracy are under an organized and powerful attack.
Both worker productivity and wages increased 108 and 101 percent, respectively, between 1947 and 1973, the golden years of the American middle class. Since then, though, many of the key indicators of a functioning democracy have been eroding in America.
One of the most significant indicators is that from the time Ronald Reagan became president until today the income of the middle class in real dollars has declined 10 percent (adjusted for inflation) while the minimum wage has fallen 17 percent (also adjusted for inflation). Worker productivity went up 52 percent--Americans are working harder and working longer hours--but pay has fallen, causing middle-class debt to explode, doubling in just the past two decades.2
Today's middle class spends 21 percent less on clothes than 20 years ago (cheap imports), while an unprecedented 80 percent of homeowners in low- and moderate-income categories spend more than half their income on housing.3 Bankruptcies are at an all-time high, and half of all people filing are doing so because of devastating medical bills (another 40 percent file because they're wiped out by job loss or divorce).4
Democracy in America is eroding. And with it are going many of the essential rights that democracy is supposed to ensure.
Instead of democracy--government for, by, and of the people--we increasingly have "corporatism"--a term that Benito Mussolini invented. He defined it as a merger of state and corporate power, and in the past few decades it's been adopted as a guiding tenet of conservative thought. The effect has been a steady shift of wealth away from the middle class and into corporate coffers and large investor portfolios, combined with a dramatic loss of the freedoms on which this country was founded:
*The First Amendment to the Constitution clearly states: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people to peaceably assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances." Nonetheless, George W. Bush has, with virtually no mention in the mainstream corporate media, ordered his Secret Service to direct local police departments to create "free speech zones," out of the view of the press and sometimes as much as a mile away from the events at which he speaks. All persons carrying anti-Bush signs or showing an inclination to speak out against Bush are herded into these zones--often at gunpoint--and those who refuse to go have been arrested in nearly a dozen states.
*The Fourth Amendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. . . ." Yet in 2003 parts of PATRIOT II were passed that give the government the right to search through your doctor's records, credit card records, pawnshop records, bank records, and any other information about you from any source it deems relevant--without a warrant, without a court's order or oversight, and without informing you. This extraordinary assault on the Bill of Rights was unnoticed by the press, buried in a 2004 Intelligence Authorization bill, and signed into law without fanfare by George W. Bush.
*Legislation introduced and pending in 2003 and 2004, supported by the Bush administration, would extend the death penalty to crimes related to terrorism while redefining terrorism to include crimes "against commerce." Some suggest that, at least in theory, you can now be put to death for any interference with corporate activity. Additionally, under these various legislative provisions, the ACLU notes that the government would have the ability to defy the Eighth Amendment and deny bail, and to defy the Fifth Amendment and "compel testimony."5
*The PATRIOT Act itself includes a broad reduction in citizen privacy rights and the presumption of innocence.
Bad for democracy, good for giant corporations
In other cases, the move away from democratic principles doesn't involve just suppression of fundamental freedoms; the government is being substantially reprioritized to serve business, with less and less regard for the impact this has on citizens.
*Our unemployment statistics don't count how many people are unemployed; they leave out a large number of jobless:
*If you're unemployed for more than 18 months, the government eliminates your eligibility for unemployment benefits and no longer counts you in the unemployment statistics--even if your family is starving.
*Worse, if your career simply disappears to India, your education is down the drain, you lose your life savings, and you finally give up and take a job at a quarter of your former pay, you don't count as unemployed at all.
*Lobbyists roam freely in the halls of Congress and even write the specific language for much (if not most) of our nation's legislation. In early American history it was a crime for businesses to interfere with the citizens' legislation--and it's still illegal in many democratic nations. Meanwhile, average citizens, unable to get their elected representatives on the phone, rightly feel that their politicians are not there for them but are instead for sale to the highest bidder.
*Executives from regulated industries frequently head up the agencies that regulate them. Examples:
*Because of industries being their own regulators, the number two person in the USDA responsible for managing the Mad Cow situation was the head lobbyist for the Cattlemen's Association. And the Bush administration vetoed an appropriation to increase the inspection of beef. Up until the actual outbreak in January 2004, only one-tenth of "downer cows" (cows with symptoms of Mad Cow) were inspected.
*When new overtime rules were introduced in 2004, the White House touted how much increased overtime laborers would get. Meanwhile, the Department of Labor published guidelines to employers on how to avoid paying any more. Example: "Lower the base wage."
*In January 2004, an ad for a "Margaritas and Mulligans" get-together at a posh Arizona resort invited industry executives to play golf with Republican lawmakers, for a fee of $3,000 each, to help plan the changes "for the upcoming rewrite of the Clean Air Act." For $5,000, industry executives could support the keynote speech by Interior deputy secretary J. Steven Griles, the man responsible for overseeing the nation's public lands so coveted by oil, gas, mining, and timber industries, and himself a former lobbyist for the coal and oil industries.
*Profits of "managed-care" health-care providers such as HMOs are at record levels, while according to the American Medical Association (AMA), over 43 million Americans have no medical insurance of any sort.
*This is a true crisis of human well-being, because under today's rules, it's often impossible to get health care if you don't have insurance.
*For-profit hospitals have succeeded in putting uninsured people who can't pay their bills into jail.
*Prescription drug costs have risen dramatically.
*The very heartbeat of our democracy--our vote--has been turned over to fewer than a half-dozen large corporations with conspicuous conservative political connections. These corporations assert that voters have no right to examine the programs that run voter machines, even though many of the machines have repeatedly failed security and reliability tests.
*From mercury in the air to arsenic in the water to logging of old-growth forests to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, our environment is in a crisis exacerbated by conservative policies. Global warming poses one of the greatest threats to humankind, the average person has over a hundred detectable carcinogenic chemicals in his bloodstream, and one in three of us will get cancer in our lifetimes.
*Thomas Jefferson said, "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." In that spirit, until the eras of Reagan and Clinton, radio and television stations were largely required to be locally owned and operated in ways that served their local communities. Thes...
The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign--that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole--some effective power of supervision over their corporate use. In order to insure a healthy social and industrial life, every big corporation should be held responsible by, and be accountable to, some sovereign strong enough to control its conduct.
--President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909)
For the past year, I've been on the air coast to coast for three hours a day, five days a week, going up against Rush Limbaugh in the 12-3 p.m. time slot (eastern time). Callers from California to North Carolina, Iowa to Texas, and even a few expatriate Web listeners who've phoned in from Australia, Germany, Taiwan, and Scotland repeatedly stress a consistent set of concerns.
"I feel as though our country has lost its democracy," said one caller in New York.
"Our politicians are for sale to the highest corporate bidder," said another in New Mexico.
"I was arrested for standing a block away from a Bush fund-raiser with a 'No War for Oil' sign," said another in South Carolina.
A caller in Dallas told the story of how his master's degree in engineering and service as an officer in the army didn't qualify him to compete with the engineer in India who took his job. "I've been unemployed for 42 months," he said, "although I'm still looking every day for a good job."
A pervasive concern is sweeping across our nation, a fear that both the economic American dream is slipping away while the ideals of American democracy are under an organized and powerful attack.
Both worker productivity and wages increased 108 and 101 percent, respectively, between 1947 and 1973, the golden years of the American middle class. Since then, though, many of the key indicators of a functioning democracy have been eroding in America.
One of the most significant indicators is that from the time Ronald Reagan became president until today the income of the middle class in real dollars has declined 10 percent (adjusted for inflation) while the minimum wage has fallen 17 percent (also adjusted for inflation). Worker productivity went up 52 percent--Americans are working harder and working longer hours--but pay has fallen, causing middle-class debt to explode, doubling in just the past two decades.2
Today's middle class spends 21 percent less on clothes than 20 years ago (cheap imports), while an unprecedented 80 percent of homeowners in low- and moderate-income categories spend more than half their income on housing.3 Bankruptcies are at an all-time high, and half of all people filing are doing so because of devastating medical bills (another 40 percent file because they're wiped out by job loss or divorce).4
Democracy in America is eroding. And with it are going many of the essential rights that democracy is supposed to ensure.
Instead of democracy--government for, by, and of the people--we increasingly have "corporatism"--a term that Benito Mussolini invented. He defined it as a merger of state and corporate power, and in the past few decades it's been adopted as a guiding tenet of conservative thought. The effect has been a steady shift of wealth away from the middle class and into corporate coffers and large investor portfolios, combined with a dramatic loss of the freedoms on which this country was founded:
*The First Amendment to the Constitution clearly states: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people to peaceably assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances." Nonetheless, George W. Bush has, with virtually no mention in the mainstream corporate media, ordered his Secret Service to direct local police departments to create "free speech zones," out of the view of the press and sometimes as much as a mile away from the events at which he speaks. All persons carrying anti-Bush signs or showing an inclination to speak out against Bush are herded into these zones--often at gunpoint--and those who refuse to go have been arrested in nearly a dozen states.
*The Fourth Amendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. . . ." Yet in 2003 parts of PATRIOT II were passed that give the government the right to search through your doctor's records, credit card records, pawnshop records, bank records, and any other information about you from any source it deems relevant--without a warrant, without a court's order or oversight, and without informing you. This extraordinary assault on the Bill of Rights was unnoticed by the press, buried in a 2004 Intelligence Authorization bill, and signed into law without fanfare by George W. Bush.
*Legislation introduced and pending in 2003 and 2004, supported by the Bush administration, would extend the death penalty to crimes related to terrorism while redefining terrorism to include crimes "against commerce." Some suggest that, at least in theory, you can now be put to death for any interference with corporate activity. Additionally, under these various legislative provisions, the ACLU notes that the government would have the ability to defy the Eighth Amendment and deny bail, and to defy the Fifth Amendment and "compel testimony."5
*The PATRIOT Act itself includes a broad reduction in citizen privacy rights and the presumption of innocence.
Bad for democracy, good for giant corporations
In other cases, the move away from democratic principles doesn't involve just suppression of fundamental freedoms; the government is being substantially reprioritized to serve business, with less and less regard for the impact this has on citizens.
*Our unemployment statistics don't count how many people are unemployed; they leave out a large number of jobless:
*If you're unemployed for more than 18 months, the government eliminates your eligibility for unemployment benefits and no longer counts you in the unemployment statistics--even if your family is starving.
*Worse, if your career simply disappears to India, your education is down the drain, you lose your life savings, and you finally give up and take a job at a quarter of your former pay, you don't count as unemployed at all.
*Lobbyists roam freely in the halls of Congress and even write the specific language for much (if not most) of our nation's legislation. In early American history it was a crime for businesses to interfere with the citizens' legislation--and it's still illegal in many democratic nations. Meanwhile, average citizens, unable to get their elected representatives on the phone, rightly feel that their politicians are not there for them but are instead for sale to the highest bidder.
*Executives from regulated industries frequently head up the agencies that regulate them. Examples:
*Because of industries being their own regulators, the number two person in the USDA responsible for managing the Mad Cow situation was the head lobbyist for the Cattlemen's Association. And the Bush administration vetoed an appropriation to increase the inspection of beef. Up until the actual outbreak in January 2004, only one-tenth of "downer cows" (cows with symptoms of Mad Cow) were inspected.
*When new overtime rules were introduced in 2004, the White House touted how much increased overtime laborers would get. Meanwhile, the Department of Labor published guidelines to employers on how to avoid paying any more. Example: "Lower the base wage."
*In January 2004, an ad for a "Margaritas and Mulligans" get-together at a posh Arizona resort invited industry executives to play golf with Republican lawmakers, for a fee of $3,000 each, to help plan the changes "for the upcoming rewrite of the Clean Air Act." For $5,000, industry executives could support the keynote speech by Interior deputy secretary J. Steven Griles, the man responsible for overseeing the nation's public lands so coveted by oil, gas, mining, and timber industries, and himself a former lobbyist for the coal and oil industries.
*Profits of "managed-care" health-care providers such as HMOs are at record levels, while according to the American Medical Association (AMA), over 43 million Americans have no medical insurance of any sort.
*This is a true crisis of human well-being, because under today's rules, it's often impossible to get health care if you don't have insurance.
*For-profit hospitals have succeeded in putting uninsured people who can't pay their bills into jail.
*Prescription drug costs have risen dramatically.
*The very heartbeat of our democracy--our vote--has been turned over to fewer than a half-dozen large corporations with conspicuous conservative political connections. These corporations assert that voters have no right to examine the programs that run voter machines, even though many of the machines have repeatedly failed security and reliability tests.
*From mercury in the air to arsenic in the water to logging of old-growth forests to increasing greenhouse gas emissions, our environment is in a crisis exacerbated by conservative policies. Global warming poses one of the greatest threats to humankind, the average person has over a hundred detectable carcinogenic chemicals in his bloodstream, and one in three of us will get cancer in our lifetimes.
*Thomas Jefferson said, "Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost." In that spirit, until the eras of Reagan and Clinton, radio and television stations were largely required to be locally owned and operated in ways that served their local communities. Thes...
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- PublisherHarmony
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 1400052084
- ISBN 13 9781400052080
- BindingHardcover
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- Number of pages304
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