Customer Rating: Summary: Hartmann Is Brillant Comment: Thom Hartmann is brillant, and every time I hear or read his books he provides me with new information that I would have never gotten anywhere else. He's on Sirius Radio every day, and should be listened to if you want the truth about politics in America Customer Rating: Summary: EXELLENT - Get this one for your collection Comment: Thom Hartmann has provided a synthesis of history, economics, politics and social issues in a way that is grounded, easy to read, and above all, provides a secure understanding of the path this country has taken to surrendering democracy.
I must emphasize how nicely this information and analysis sticks to your brain, and yet is a comprehensive work that does not dumb down to the reader.
Great Christmas gift for your conservative friends who don't even know why they are conservative!!!! Customer Rating: Summary: I recommend "Unequil Protection" as high school reqd reading Comment: Thom starts with the East India Company of the 1500's and its "corporate" charter, and walks you through to today. Then he presents you with several sources and methods or starting a grass-roots movement to change the "Santa Clara" decision, which gave corporations personhood...excellent, excellent. Customer Rating: Summary: Unequal Protection Comment: As is the case with all Thom Hartmann's books, a must read for all liberals. Customer Rating: Summary: Value Base Economy Comment: Hartmann calls for a values based USA and less emphasis on big business in this book.He sets out to show how the way things are currently are inimical to economic growth of the ordinary folks of the USA. A must read.
Some other great books: "Fluctuating Life" by Jamaican-Canadian, author, teacher and poet, Joshua Spencer and "Quest for a Dream - A Life Committed to Progress" by Jamaican educator, author, social worker and entrepreneur, Joyce Buchanan.
Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights
Was the Boston Tea Party the first WTO-style protest against transnational corporations? Did Supreme Court sell out America's citizens in the nineteenth century, with consequences lasting to this day? Is there a way for American citizens to recover democracy of, by, and for the people?
Thom Hartmann takes on these most difficult questions and tells a startling story that will forever change your understanding of American history. He begins by uncovering an original eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party and demonstrates that it was provoked not by "taxation without representation" as is commonly suggested but by the specific actions of the East India Company, which represented the commericial interests of the British elite.
Hartmann then describes the history of the Fourteenth Amendment--created at the end of the Civil War to grant basic rights to freed slaves--and how it has been used by lawyers representing corporate interests to extend additional rights to businesses far more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in U.S. law as "artificial persons." but in 1886, after a series of cases brought by lawyers representing the expanding railroad interests, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were "persons" and entitled to the same rights granted to people under the Bill of Rights. Since this ruling, America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior.
As a result, the largest transnational corporations fill a role today that has historically been filled by kings. They control most of the world's wealth and exert power over the lives of most of the world's citizens. Their CEOs are unapproachable and live lives of nearly unimaginable wealth and luxury. They've become the rudder that steers the ship of much human experience, and they're steering it by their prime value--growth and profit and any expense--a value that has become destructive for life on Earth. This new feudalism was not what our Founders--Federalists and Democratic Republicans alike--envisioned for America.
It's time for "we, the people" to take back our lives. Hartmann proposes specific legal remedies that could truly save the world from political, economic, and ecological disaster.
