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 Coast to Coast
10PM to 12AM
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The Thom Hartmann Program
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Listen to The Thom Hartmann Program Weekdays from 3PM to 6PM...
Hartmann was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and grew up in nearby Lansing. Interested in politics from a young age, he reportedly campaigned for Barry Goldwater during the U.S. presidential election, 1964. By 1967 Hartmann was studying at Michigan State University and working as part-time news announcer at local country-music station WITL while protesting the Vietnam War with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Hartmann is considered to have progressive / liberal politics (although he describes himself as part of the radical middle). He is the author of numerous books including Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and Theft of Human Rights, in which he argues that the 1886 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (118 U.S. 394) did not actually grant corporate personhood, and that this doctrine derives from a mistaken interpretation of a Supreme Court reporter's notes. Hartmann considers this a clear contradiction of the intent of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He has also written on the separation of Church and State, drawing upon the Federalist Papers to argue that the Founding Fathers warned against the notion of The United States of America being a Christian nation. He contends that the 2000 American election and 2004 American election were stolen through electronic tampering, denial of the voting franchise by rigged voting lists, and limiting availability of voting machines. He also raises the issue of the erosion of democracy and of individual freedoms by the Bush Administration.
Hartmann is also a vocal critic of the effects of globalization on the U.S. economy, claiming that economic policies enacted since the presidency of Ronald Reagan have led, in large part, to many American industrial enterprises being acquired by multinational firms based in overseas countries, leading in many cases to manufacturing jobs - once considered a major foundation of the U.S. economy - being relocated to countries in Asia and other areas where the costs of labor are lower than in the U.S.; and the concurrent reversal of the United States' traditional role of a leading exporter of finished manufactured goods to that of a primary importer of finished manufactured goods (exemplified by massive trade deficits with countries such as China); Hartmannn argues that this phenomenon is leading to the erosion of the American middle class, whose survival Hartmann deems critical to the survival of American democracy. This argument is expressed in Hartmann's 2006 book, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class and What We Can Do About It. (Also noted: corporate deregulation and the end of enforcement of the Sherman anti-trust act. Consequent media deregulation leading to corporate media shifting the American consensus towards the acceptance of privatization, massive corporate profits -which causes the shrinking of the middle class.)
Born in 1951, he is the father of three adult children, and has been married to his wife, Louise, for more than thirty years.
Check out Thom's Website or Contact Thom. |
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