Author: Thom Hartmann

Democrats must stop giving in to grifter bullies. If you don’t take on bullies, they keep going further and further until either they win or you fight back and defeat them. The best political example of this writ large was Hitler. He pushed around most of Europe and they kept giving in or trying to appease him, thinking at some point he’d have gotten enough. Neville Chamberlain thought he could negotiate with a bully and came back from his meetings with Hitler believing he’d achieved “peace in our time.” But, of course, you can never actually negotiate with a...

You would think we have a right to vote, rather than just a privilege that Republican-controlled states could take away in dozens of different ways. After all, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution references “the right to vote at any election” and even says that any state that violates that right shall lose members of its congressional delegation as punishment. The 19th Amendment references “The right of citizens of the United States to vote…” The 24th Amendment starts, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote…” The 26th Amendment is all about, “The right of citizens of...

Parasites attach themselves to your body and suck your blood to feed themselves. Most, like ticks and mosquitos, while they may provide food for birds, bats and other animals, seem to provide no direct benefit at all to humans. That “no benefit” equation goes double for the latest parasites who have attached themselves to the backs of Americans and are rapidly draining us of our economic blood: health insurance companies. There is quite literally no reason for these corporations to exist, at least when it comes to providing for the health needs of 99 percent of Americans. Virtually every...

Prior to 1965, the only American president to have both promoted and presided over a multiracial democracy was Ulysses Grant, the former general in Lincoln’s army who became president when impeached Southern slaveowner Andrew Johnson’s term expired on March 4, 1869. Grant (and Johnson, but grudgingly) saw freed African Americans not only voting but taking political office by the hundreds. It lasted until the day Grant left office, when the Tilden/Hayes election “compromise” of 1876 ended the period known as Radical Reconstruction the following year. During this brief time, more than 600 African Americans were elected to state legislatures...

America needs to define a consistent, honest and public position on foreign aid and foreign interventions. If we fail to do so, we will continue to produce disasters that have long-term consequences not only for the countries with whom we’ve interfered but also here in the United States. Modern U.S. “foreign aid” policy really began in a big way after World War II with the Marshall Plan, which helped rebuild Europe after the war. Germany was a huge recipient of that aid and it helped turn that nation from a renegade (although defeated) fascist empire into a modern liberal...