A better business model

What if business people started saying "no?" No to mega-growth, no to the frenetic pace of trying to get superrich, no to dog-eat-dog economics... no to the prevailing corporate ethic that your business must always be getting bigger to be a "winner." Well, it's happening. It gets little coverage by a media constantly fawning over the barons who run the slam-bam expansionist operations like Amazon or Starbucks, but there is a quiet rebellion spreading among entrepreneurs who're choosing a heretical business path. 

These are folks who want to make a profit - but not a killing. They don't want to run over their competitor or become a far-flung chain. They want more control over their own lives, and they want their businesses to be based on genuinely satisfying customers and treating workers as valued partners. One of these community-based entrepreneurs says he rejected the chance to buy out a competitor: "I'd rather pack my kids' lunch and walk them to school," he decided. 

Another, who runs a tea shop isn't dreaming of 10,000 stores, but of making customers feel truly welcome: "You need to become part of the community and give people an alternative to the big chains," he says, adding that, "when I go to Starbucks... instead of hearing 'Thank you,' I hear 'Next.'" Likewise, the owner of a natural food store that successfully goes head-to-head with the Whole Foods supermarket chain says, "We live in an isolated and lonely culture. People stop in our store for the social interaction as well as the products. We're an oasis."

This is Jim Hightower saying... These community-based entrepreneurs are creating an economic model that contributes much more to our society's pursuit of happiness than the suck-em-dry, Wal-Mart model so beloved by the corporate establishment. You can vote with your dollars: Either choose Wal-Mart, where they have to hire a greeter to give you a hokey hello... or choose some real place, where they actually know your name.

You Can't Govern if You Don't Believe in Government

By Thom Hartmann.

In a May 25, 2001 interview, Grover Norquist told National Public Radio's Mara Liasson, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Norquist got his wish. Democracy - and at least several thousand people, most of them Democrats, black, and poor - drowned last week in the basin of New Orleans. Our nation failed in its response, because for most of the past 25 years conservatives who don't believe in governance have run our government.

As incompetent as George W. Bush has been in his response to the disaster in New Orleans, he wasn't the one who began the process that inevitably led to that disaster spiraling out of control.

That would be Ronald Reagan. It was Reagan who began the deliberate and intentional destruction of the United States of America when he famously cracked (and then incessantly repeated): "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

Reagan, like George W. Bush after him, failed to understand that when people come together into community, and then into nationhood, that they organize themselves to protect themselves from predators, both human and corporate, both domestic and foreign. This form of organization is called government. But the Reagan/Bush ideologues don't "believe" in government, in anything other than a military and police capacity. Government should punish, they agree, but it should never nurture, protect, or defend individuals. Nurturing and protecting, they suggest, is the more appropriate role of religious institutions, private charities, families, and - perhaps most important - corporations.

Let the corporations handle your old-age pension. Let the corporations decide how much protection we and our environment need from their toxics. Let the corporations decide what we're paid. Let the corporations decide what doctor we can see, when, and for what purpose.

This is the exact opposite of the vision for which the Founders of this nation fought and died. When Thomas Jefferson changed John Locke's "Life, liberty, and private property" to "Live, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it was the first time in the history of the world that a newly founded nation had written the word "happiness" into its founding document. The phrase "promote the general welfare" - another revolutionary concept - first appeared in the preamble to our Constitution in 1787.

Talk show cons and TV talking head cons and political cons - both Republican and DLC Democratic - repeat the mantra of "smaller government," and Americans nod their heads in agreement, not realizing the hidden agenda at work.

Reagan was the first American president to actually preach that his own job was a bad thing. He once said, "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." One can only assume he was speaking of himself and his fellow Republicans, and certainly the current Congress's devotion to the interests of inherited wealth and large corporations displays how badly his philosophy has corrupted a role so noble it drew idealists like Jefferson, Lincoln, and the two Roosevelts.

But cons can't imagine anybody wanting to devote their lives to the service of their nation. The highest calling in their minds is to make profit.

As Reagan said: "The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."

This mind-set - that the only purpose for service in government is to set up the interests of business - may account for why not a single military-eligible member of the Bush or Cheney families has enlisted in their parents' "Noble Cause," whereas all four sons of Franklin Roosevelt joined and each was decorated - on merit - for bravery in the deadly conflict of World War II.

There are, after all, no reasons in the conservative worldview for government service other than self-enrichment. As Ronald Reagan said: "Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book."

What they don't say is that the reason they want to remove government in its protective capacity is because they can then make an enormous amount of money, and have a lot of control over people's lives, when they privatize former governmental functions. They want a power vacuum, so corporations and the rich can step in. And with no limits on the inheritability of riches after the "death tax" is ended, wealth vast enough to take over the government can emerge.

Given this conservative world-view, it shouldn't surprise us that in 2001 George W. Bush appointed his 2000 presidential campaign manager (Joseph Albaugh) as head of FEMA, or that two years later Albaugh would have left FEMA to start a consulting firm to marry corporations with Iraq "reconstruction" federal dollars, and put in charge of FEMA his assistant (and old college roommate), an equally unqualified former failed executive with the International Arabian Horse Association.

It also shouldn't surprise us that although Dick Cheney has stayed on vacation in Wyoming through all of this, his company, Halliburton, has already obtained a multi-million-dollar contract to profit from Hurricane Katrina's cleanup.

It's not that these conservatives are incompetent or stupid. When their interests are at stake, they can be very efficient. Consider when Hurricane Charley hit Jeb Bush's state - a year earlier than Katrina - on the second weekend of August, 2004, just months before the elections. The White House website notes:

As of noon Monday [the day after the hurricane left], in response to Hurricane Frances, FEMA and other Federal response agencies have taken the following actions:

-- About one hundred trucks of water and 280 trucks of ice are present or will arrive in the Jacksonville staging area today. 900,000 Meals-Ready-to-Eat are on site in Jacksonville, ready to be distributed.

-- Over 7,000 cases of food (e.g., vegetables, fruits, cheese, ham, and turkey) are scheduled to arrive in Winter Haven today. Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT) are on the ground and setting up comfort stations. FEMA community relations personnel will coordinate with DMATs to assist victims. 

-- Urban Search and Rescue Teams are completing reconnaissance missions in coordination with state officials.

-- FEMA is coordinating with the Department of Energy and the state to ensure that necessary fuel supplies can be distributed throughout the state, with a special focus on hospitals and other emergency facilities that are running on generators.

-- The Army Corps of Engineers will soon begin its efforts to provide tarps to tens of thousands of owners of homes and buildings that have seen damage to their roofs.

-- The National Guard has called up 4,100 troops in Florida, as well as thousands in other nearby states to assist in the distribution of supplies and in preparation for any flooding.

-- The Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and Defense together have organized 300 medical personnel to be on standby. Medical personnel will begin deployment to Florida tomorrow.

-- FEMA is coordinating public information messages with Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina so that evacuees from Florida can be informed when it is safe to return. 

-- In addition to federal personnel already in place to respond to Hurricane Charley, 1,000 additional community relations personnel are being deployed to Atlanta for training and further assignment in Florida.

All of this aid was vitally important to Bush family political fortunes in the upcoming election of 2004. Disaster relief checks were in the mail within a week. In just the first thirteen days after Hurricane Charley hit Florida, the White House web site notes that the Bush administration had succeeded in:

-- Registering approximately 136,000 assistance applicants

-- Approving over 13,500 applications for more than $59 million in housing assistance

-- Establishing 12 disaster recovery centers, which have assisted nearly 19,000 disaster victims

-- Deploying medical teams that have seen nearly 3,000 patients

-- Disbursing 1.2 million liters of water, 8.1 million pounds of ice, and 2 million meals and snacks

-- Delivering over 20,000 rolls of plastic sheeting and nearly 170 generators

-- Treating more than 2,900 individuals through FEMA Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, supporting damaged hospitals.

That, of course, was for a Republican State, with a Republican governor, the crony brother of the President. Republicans needed to act like they cared about governing, because they wanted people to vote for them three months later. But now, with no election looming and with death stalking a Democratic State with a Democratic Governor unrelated to the President, we once again see the Reagan philosophy held ascendant. Bush's call to action? "Send cash to the Red Cross." One of those "thousand points of light" non-governmental organizations his father told us about.

As Brian Gurney, a listener from California, noted: "You can't govern if you don't believe in government." But you sure can make a buck, and take care of your brother, your campaign manager, and your vice president's company.

The real war - on American democracy

This article was originally posted in alt.politics.liberalism on April 14, 2003. I'm reposting it here today because so much of it is relevant to the left vs right argument over the role of government in our lives. My purpose is to suggest that the backbone of conservative idealology - Limited Government - is to blame for many of the deaths in New Orleans. Cutting funding of essential programs that serve "We The People" just so they could give tax cuts to the rich was the real cause. The hurricane was just the event that pushed the first domino over. 

The real war - on American democracy By Thom Hartmann 

In the midst of news of foreign wars, Americans are beginning to wake up to the real war being waged here at home. It is, however, a confused awakening. For example, Americans wonder why the Bush administration seems so intent on crippling local, state, and federal governments by starving them of funds and creating huge federal debt that our children will have to repay. Many think it's just to fund tax cuts and subsidies for the rich, that the multimillionaire CEOs who've taken over virtually all senior posts in the Bush administration are just pigs at the trough, and this is a spectacular but ordinary form of self-serving corruption. It all seems so plausible, and there's even a grain of truth to it. But juicy deals for Bush administration insiders are just a by-product of the real and deeper war against democracy. The neoconservatives are perfectly happy for us to think they're just opportunists skirting the edges of legality and morality, but this is far more dangerous than simple government corruption. Indeed, the neo-conservatives claim to be anti-government. As a leading spokesman for the neo-con agenda, Grover Norquist, told National Public Radio's Mara Liasson in a May 25, 2001 Morning Edition interview, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Without a larger view, the issues of domestic spending, oil, neo-conservative power plays in both major parties, the loss of liberties, anti-government rhetoric, and war in the Middle East all seem like separate and unconnected events. They're not. The "new conservatives" who've seized the Republican Party and, through the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) are nipping at the heels of the Democratic Party, are not our parents' conservatives. Historic conservatives like Barry Goldwater, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower would be appalled.

How Rich is Too Rich For Democracy?

How Rich is Too Rich For Democracy?

by Thom Hartmann&nbsp;<div><br /></div><div>At what point does great wealth held in a few hands actually harm democracy, threatening to turn a democratic republic into an oligarchy?

It's a debate we haven't had freely and openly in this nation for nearly a century, and by voting to end the Estate Tax, House Republicans tried to ensure that it wouldn't be had again in this generation.

But it's a debate that's vital to the survival of democracy in America.

In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective is the law of equal inheritance to all in equal degree..."

In this, he was making the same argument that the Framers of Pennsylvania tried to make when writing their constitution in 1776. As Kevin Phillips notes in his masterpiece book "Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich," a Sixteenth Article to the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights (that was only "narrowly defeated") declared: "an enormous proportion of property vested in a few individuals is dangerous to the rights, and destructive of the common happiness of mankind, and, therefore, every free state hath a right by its laws to discourage the possession of such property."

Unfortunately, many Americans believe our nation was founded exclusively of, by, and for "rich white men," and that the Constitution had, as its primary purpose, the protection of the super-rich. They would have us believe that the Constitution's signers didn't really mean all that flowery talk about liberal democracy in a republican form of government. read more....

The Boston Tea Party - America’s First Anti-Globalization Protest

The Boston Tea Party - America’s First Anti-Globalization Protest

Conventional wisdom has it that the 1773 Tea Act - a tax law passed in London that led to the Boston Tea Party - was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by American colonists. In reality, however, the Tea Act gave the world’s largest transnational corporation - The East India Company - full and unlimited access to the American tea trade, and exempted the Company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the Company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea they were unable to sell and holding in inventory.

The primary purpose of the Tea Act was to increase the profitability of the East India Company to its stockholders (which included the King and the wealthy elite that kept him secure in power), and to help the Company drive its colonial small-business competitors out of business. Because the Company no longer had to pay high taxes to England and held a monopoly on the tea it sold in the American colonies, it was able to lower its tea prices to undercut the prices of the local importers and the mom-and-pop tea merchants and tea houses in every town in America.

This infuriated the independence-minded American colonists, who were wholly unappreciative of their colonies being used as a profit center for the world’s largest multinational corporation, The East India Company. They resented their small businesses still having to pay the higher, pre-Tea Act taxes without having any say or vote in the matter. (Thus, the cry of "no taxation without representation!") Even in the official British version of the history, the 1773 Tea Act was a "legislative maneuver by the British ministry of Lord North to make English tea marketable in America" with a goal of helping the East India Company quickly "sell 17 million pounds of tea stored in England...."

Read the entire article here: http://www.thomhartmann.com/teaparty.shtml

The Fair Tax Act of 2005

Recently, my sister sent me an e-mail asking what I thought about the "Fair Tax Act of 2005" (S. 25, H.R. 25). I put an hour into reading about it, formulating a response, and then sending her my e-mail. Then I thought "Why share it with only her?"

Here is the e-mail that I sent to her:

I did some searching on the Internet and found a few problems with the Fair Tax proposal. Here is what I found (mostly cut-and-paste from various websites):

First, it exempts all business transactions so the burden of ALL taxation in the country will fall on the American people.

Second, it shifts the burden of taxation towards the poor and middle class. A sales-tax-only system burdens the poor much more than the rich. The poor spend a greater percentage of their income than the rich - if basic necessities cost $15,000 a year, someone making $20,000 a year spends a lot more of their total income on them than someone making $250,000 a year.

As far as non-optional expenditures (food, shelter, heat, cable TV... you know, necessities) the poor spend everything they get. This means that by default, the poor become the highest tax bracket. The richer you are, the more you can invest, the less you're taxed on.

Third, the Fair Tax proposal claims to be "revenue neutral", meaning the total amount of taxes collected will be the same as what is collected now - which lends credibility to the argument that it is just another tax-shift from the rich to the poor and middle class.

Fourth, everything you buy will instantly become 23% more expensive. It'll seem really nice when you get that first untaxed paycheck, until you realize that you weren't in the 23% bracket before, but now you are and now you have even less extra money in your budget. Note: The current tax rate for people earning over $68,500 is 25%. The tax rate for someone making less than $68,500 is only 15%. If you make less than $68,500 per year, this new system will bring you a significant tax increase (once again, shifting the tax burden from the upper classes to the lower classes).

Bottom line: If you make more than $68,500 per year, you should support Fair Tax. If you make less, you should oppose it.