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    Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country
    Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country
    Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country
    Ebook297 pages2 hours

    Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country

    By Thom Hartmann

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    About this ebook

    “If we are going to live in a democracy, we need to have a healthy middle class . . . tells us what needs to be done to reclaim what it is to be American.” —Eric Utne, founder, Utne Reader
     
    America does not need an “upgrade.” For years the Right has been tampering with one of the best political operating systems ever designed. The result has been economic and environmental disaster.
     
    In this hard-hitting book, nationally syndicated radio and television host and bestselling author Thom Hartmann outlines eleven common-sense proposals, deeply rooted in America’s history, that will once again make America strong and Americans—not corporations and billionaires—prosperous. Some of these ideas will be controversial to both the Left and the Right, but the litmus test for each is not political correctness—but whether or not it serves to revitalize this country we all love and make life better for its citizens.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 1, 2011
    ISBN9781605099439
    Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country
    Author

    Thom Hartmann

    Thom Hartmann is the host of the nationally and internationally syndicated talkshow The Thom Hartmann Program and the TV show The Big Picture on the Free Speech TV network. He is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of 24 books, including Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception, ADHD and the Edison Gene, and The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, which inspired Leonardo DiCaprio’s film The 11th Hour. A former psychotherapist and founder of the Hunter School, a residential and day school for children with ADHD, he lives in Washington, D.C.

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      Book preview

      Rebooting the American Dream - Thom Hartmann

      Rebooting the American Dream

      Also by Thom Hartmann

      Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became People—and How You Can Fight Back

      Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture

      Cracking the Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America’s Original Vision

      Screwed: The Undeclared War against the Middle Class—and What We Can Do about It

      What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return to Democracy

      The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It’s Too Late

      Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK

      Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination

      We the People: A Call to Take Back America

      Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-being

      Attention Deficit Disorder : A Different Perception

      Thom Hartmann’s Complete Guide to ADHD: Help for Your Family at Home, School and Work

      Healing ADD : Simple Exercises That Will Change Your Daily Life

      The Edison Gene: ADHD and the Gift of the Hunter Child

      ADD Success Stories: A Guide to Fulfillment for Families with Attention Deficit Disorder

      Think Fast: The ADD Experience

      Beyond ADD: Hunting for Reasons in the Past and Present

      ADHD Secrets of Success: Coaching Yourself to Fulfillment in the Business World

      The Prophet’s Way: A Guide to Living in the Now

      The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century

      Rebooting the American Dream

      11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country

      Thom Hartmann

      Rebooting the American Dream

      Copyright © 2010 by Mythical Research, Inc., and Thom Hartmann.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

      Ordering information for print editions

      Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the Berrett-Koehler address above.

      Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com

      Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626.

      Orders by U.S. trade bookstores and wholesalers. Please contact Ingram Publisher Services, Tel: (800) 509-4887; Fax: (800) 838-1149; E-mail: customer.service@ingrampublisherservices.com; or visit www.ingrampublisherservices.com/Ordering for details about electronic ordering.

      Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

      First Edition

      Hardcover print edition ISBN 978-1-60509-706-0

      PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-909-5

      IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-60509-943-9

      2010-1

      Cover/jacket Designer: Ian Shimkoviak/The Book Designers

      Interior design and composition by Gary Palmatier, Ideas to Images

      Elizabeth von Radics, copyeditor; Mike Mollett, proofreader; Medea Minnich, indexer.

      DEDICATION

      To our daughters, Kindra and Kerith,

      who are coincidentally both back in school

      and rebooting their own lives.

      May the world you inherit be as rich in wonder and

      opportunity as the world into which your parents were born.

      Thank you both for being such wonderful, caring,

      and honorable human beings, so dedicated to

      healing the world one person at a time.

      Contents

      Introduction: Back to the Future

      CHAPTER 1    Bring My Job Home!

      CHAPTER 2    Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts

      CHAPTER 3    Stop Them from Eating My Town

      CHAPTER 4    An Informed and Educated Electorate

      CHAPTER 5    Medicare Part E—for Everybody

      CHAPTER 6    Make Members of Congress Wear NASCAR Patches

      CHAPTER 7    Cool Our Fever

      CHAPTER 8    They Will Steal It!

      CHAPTER 9    Put Lou Dobbs out to Pasture

      CHAPTER 10  Wal-Mart Is Not a Person

      CHAPTER 11  In the Shadow of the Dragon

      Conclusion: Tag, You’re It!

      Acknowledgments

      Notes

      Index

      About the Author

      Introduction:

      Back to the Future

      I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

      —Thomas Jefferson, letter to William

      Charles Jarvis, September 28, 1820

      ON APRIL 14, 1789, GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS OUT WALKING through the fields at Mount Vernon, his home in Virginia, when Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress, rode up on horseback. Thomson had a letter for Washington from the president pro tempore of the new, constitutionally created United States Senate, telling Washington that he’d just been elected president and the inauguration was set for April 30 in the nation’s capital, New York City.¹

      This created two problems for Washington.

      The first was saying goodbye to his 82-year-old mother, which the 57-year-old Washington did that night. She gave him her blessing and told him it was the last time he’d see her alive, as she was gravely ill; and, indeed, she died before he returned from New York.

      The second problem was finding a suit of clothes made in America. For that he sent a courier to his old friend and fellow general from the American Revolutionary War, Henry Knox.

      Washington couldn’t find a suit made in America because in the years prior to the American Revolution, the British East India Company (whose tea was thrown into Boston Harbor by outraged colonists after the Tea Act of 1773 gave the world’s largest transnational corporation a giant tax break) controlled the manufacture and the transportation of a whole range of goods, including fine clothing. Cotton and wool could be grown and sheared in the colonies, but it had to be sent to England to be turned into clothes.

      This was a routine policy for England, and it is why until India achieved its independence in 1947 Mahatma Gandhi (who was assassinated a year later) sat with his spinning wheel for his lectures and spun daily in his own home. It was, like his Salt March, a protest against the colonial practices of England and an entreaty to his fellow Indians to make their own clothes to gain independence from British companies and institutions.

      Fortunately for George Washington, an American clothing company had been established on April 28, 1783, in Hartford, Connecticut, by a man named Daniel Hinsdale, and it produced high-quality woolen and cotton clothing as well as items made from imported silk.² It was to Hinsdale’s company that Knox turned, and he helped Washington get—in time for his inauguration two weeks later—a nice, but not excessively elegant, brown American-made suit. (He wore British black later for the celebrations and the most famous painting.)

      When Washington became president in 1789, most of America’s personal and industrial products of any significance were manufactured in England or in its colonies. Washington asked his Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, what could be done about that, and Hamilton came up with an 11-point plan to foster American manufacturing, which he presented to Congress in 1791. By 1793 most of its points had either been made into law by Congress or formulated into policy by either President Washington or the various states, which put the country on a path of developing its industrial base and generating the largest source of federal revenue for more than a hundred years.

      Those strategic proposals built the greatest industrial power-house the world had ever seen and, after more than 200 successful years, were abandoned only during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton (and remain abandoned to this day). Modern-day China, however, implemented most of Hamilton’s plan and has brought about a remarkable transformation of its nation in a single generation.

      Hamilton’s 11-point plan for American manufactures is a primary inspiration for this book (see sidebar). It was part of a larger work titled Alexander Hamilton’s Report on the Subject of Manufactures: Made in His Capacity of Secretary of the Treasury.

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