Thom Hartmann reviews the “cycles of crisis” in the U.S. since the American Revolution
The Crash of 2016
In The Crash of 2016, Thom Hartmann documents why it is no longer wise to put faith in most elected politicians, or in our once-trusted institutions, especially the public media, banks, universities and the Supreme Court.
Maybe I’m more naive than most people, seeing a half-full glass, but the documentation in Hartmann’s book looks real, sounds scary, and makes me want to find a bolt-hole where I can make my own electricity and provide my own food. Soon.
Published in 2013, The Crash of 2016 outlines very clearly how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer… in fairly predictable cycles since the United States of America was founded.
Thom Hartmann claims that the U.S. is teetering on the edge of the “fourth great crash and war” in its history and that 2016 is the approximate timing for this to occur.
Hartmann presents a convincing case for this, citing eighty-year cycles between the three previous major crises faced by United States: the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Depression. Each event involved “horror and bloodshed,” but also subsequently brought about changes to the status quo that allowed America to grow and flourish.
The cycles all involved periods of oppression, followed by rebellion, resulting in reformation. When enough generations had gone by for citizens to have forgotten what happened during the previous crisis, the process repeated itself. Three times, so far, in this country.
Events of the 80 years since the last depression show all the indications that the fourth big crash will come around the year 2016.
The Plan to Destroy the Middle Class
Hartmann names names, too, from the economists who steered the politicians onto a slippery slope to the banksters who engineered multiple government collapses around the globe. He cites the U.S. presidents who pushed corporate agendas over the public good… including those who started with good intentions until threatened by the financial writing on the wall.
What horrified me was the idea that much of this destruction was planned ahead of time, including the obliteration of the middle class. Meetings were held, memos were written, laws were changed. “Economic royalists” effectively rule this country, says Hartmann, who gives examples of all of this.
Instead of a strong middle class with enough money to purchase goods and services, we now have a small wealthy oligarchy on one side and a growing class of people getting poorer by the year on the other.
Hartmann includes an interesting chart from the Economic Policy Institute that compares, graphically, the rates of productivity and wage growth between 1947 and 2010. The two indicators separated dramatically during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Since then worker productivity has increased significantly while wages have stayed essentially flat. When the Reagan tax cuts were implemented, corporate profits now went to CEOs who paid less in taxes than previously, rather than to the workers on the line.
Where to Point the Blame?
Clinton gets the blame for the upside-down balance of trade by removing protections for America’s domestic manufacturing industries. George W. Bush oversaw, not just the entry into two bankrupting wars, but also the deregulations leading to banking panics and bailouts and the housing meltdowns that lost people their homes and jobs.
President Obama, who began his term with such high aspirations, has been the object of a detailed opposition plan to derail any reforms he might put forward to help the middle class in America.
Hartmann says, “With the help of prominent media outlets, the Royalists, now a political minority, would engage in a scorched-earth strategy to defeat a coming Progressive Revolution, even if it meant crashing the United States as we know it.”
Enter the Tea Party, Fox News, the Koch brothers, the Mercatus Center, the American Legislative Exchange Council’s “shadow government,” Citizens United, and the Supreme Court’s decision to call corporations “people,” thus permitting them to finance election advertising (as free speech). Until this time, corporations were seen as legal entities requiring oversight by government.
As Hartmann points out, any foreign company, organization or government could, theoretically, form a U.S. corporation and, thus, influence elections through massive amounts of advertising. He points to Justice Stevens’ 99-page dissent of the Citizens United corporate personhood ruling, where the judge suggests that “the majority of the court had just handed our country over to any foreign interest willing to incorporate here and spend money on political TV ads.”
Thom Hartmann sees the reversal of this decision as one of highest importance (after the crash, when people come to their senses).
Hartmann’s main point is that we no longer have a democracy, as we once knew it. The strings are being pulled by concerns for self-interest, rather than the public good. The pocketbooks of the puppeteers hold more wealth than most countries’ GDPs. And it may be too late to reverse the situation before it all comes crashing down.
After the Crash
The good news? According to the previous 80-year cycles, the crash will wake people up. Some of the awakening is already taking place. In December 2011, for example, the city of Los Angeles called for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood, saying that money was not the same as free speech. Hartmann recommends returning the Supreme Court to its “original” constitutional authority, which it has overstepped.
Fundamentals necessary for a strong middle class need to be addressed as well, including health care, investing in bridges rather than bombs, strengthening the job situation, reducing debt, adjusting the tax codes, decentralizing the power systems, and reclaiming the “commons” of the country, which are currently being sold to corporations at less than their worth.
One suggestion that resonated with me was the concept of co-operatives. Hartmann’s examples of this trend were encouraging and I’ll be researching that topic in some detail.
Thom Hartmann doesn’t portray what life will be like during and immediately after “the crash of 2016,” though he gives clues with his observations of the previous three cyclical crashes. It won’t be pretty, at any rate.
Will we be fighting in the streets over food? Who of us will be living in tent cities? Or garbage dumps? When our money is worthless, what do we have to barter for the necessities of life?
Or do you think everything can carry on as it has been? Has the tipping point been reached? Or will we pull ourselves together to make/demand the necessary changes in the nick of time.
Do commas, periods, colons, semi-colons, exclamation points and question marks go before or after quotation marks?
There are many different ways to use quotation marks and, in this tutorial, we’ll look at sentence punctuation in relationship to quotations. In other words, does the comma, period, question mark or exclamation point come before or after the quotation marks?
Rule for commas and periods
With commas and periods, the quotation marks go after the comma or period:
“I love you,” said Mary.
John replied, “I would follow you to the moon.”
Rule for semi-colons and colons
If you’re using a semicolon or colon, you place the quotation marks before the semicolon or colon:
I asked you the “question of the year”: do you love me?
Malcolm was “fit to be tied”; he had just missed the last bus home.
Where to put question marks and exclamation points
With a question or exclamatory sentence, place the quotation marks after the the question mark or exclamation point:
“Do you love me?” asked Mary.
“You do love me!” Mary gushed.
Exception
However… if you’re using a question mark or an exclamation point around a specific word, rather than enclosing a sentence, the quotation marks go before.
A common word usage question is when to use “lie” versus “lay.” Here’s a quick tutorial with the meanings and rules for lie and lay.
Lie:
One usage of the verb “lie” means “to recline”
I am going to lie down on the sofa for awhile.
Watch the lion lie down on the grass.
However… the past tense of “lie” is “lay”
I only lay in bed for half an hour.
The lion lay there until he got hungry.
And… the past participle is “lain”
I have lain in bed longer than I should have.
Had the lion lain there all day, he would have missed supper.
Lay:
A common usage of the verb “lay” means “to put or set down”
I am planning to lay my purse on that table.
Past tense is “laid”
I laid my purse on that table just ten minutes ago.
Past participle is also “laid”
I have laid my purse on that table every day for a month.
Of course “lie” also means to fib, but that’s not the one we confuse with “lay.” And we could “lay a bet” or “lay a plan” or “lay the table for dinner,” but these are not confused with “lie.”
Bottom line:
You don’t “lay down” in bed, nor would you have “laid in bed for a nap.”
You LIE down but you LAY something else down, when speaking in the present tense, which is where most of the mistakes come from with the lie-lay situation.
When to Use “Loan” versus “Lend”
Loan and lend are misused so frequently – even in print and TV advertising – that it’s no wonder so many of us get the word usages mixed up. Loan is a noun; lend is a verb. That’s the bottom line.
Loan is a noun:
I asked the bank for a loan.
Lend is a verb:
Will you lend me some money?
Incorrect: The bank will loan me $100,000 to buy a house.
Correct: The bank will lend me $100,000 – or – The loan from the bank is for $100,000.
Incorrect: I loaned her my best sweater.
Correct: I lent her my best sweater.
When I’m in doubt about a correct word usage, I look in my The Chicago Manual of Style. It’s got everything.
When to Use “Affect” versus “Effect”
When to use affect vs. effect is confusing – for good reason. Since the 1400s, these words have been more or less interchangeable, with meanings passing back and forth between them. Here’s today’s accepted word usage.
Affect
“Affect” is mostly used a verb that means “to influence” or “to change.”
The state of the economy can affect a person’s buying habits.
In many circles, your clothing affects how you are perceived.
However… “affect” as a noun describes a feeling or emotion and is a term used most often in psychology.
Effect
“Effect” is most often used a noun meaning “result.”
The effect of his naval training was a well-run ship.
Every cause has an effect.
However… “effect” is sometimes used as a verb meaning “to accomplish” or “to bring about.”
They hope to effect a settlement of the dispute before the weekend.
He effected a studious demeanor, thinking it would impress his teachers.
Here’s a quickie tutorial for one of the most common spelling mistakes: knowing the spelling rule for “your” versus “you’re.”
Your is the second person singular adjective that relates to something “you” possess:
Your clothes. Your car. Your outlook on life.
You’re is a contraction for “you are.”
You’re going to be impressed. You’re on the right road. You’re going to love this post.
The apostrophe essentially takes the place of the letter “a” here.
Spelling Rule for “Its” versus “It’s”
Are you unsure when to use an apostrophe for the word “it’s?” Here’s the spelling rule for its versus it’s. This spelling mistake is so common now, it has everyone second-guessing which one is correct.
“Its” without an apostrophe – is a possessive, third person, singular adjective that typically relates to something other than a person. The noun it refers to was probably mentioned just previously (in this sentence, “it” refers to the noun “noun”), so you know what “it” is.
“Its” refers to something “it” possesses:
The dog was so agitated, its barks were deafening.
I picked a daffodil and its color reminded me of sunshine.
“It’s” with an apostrophe – is an abbreviation for (1) it is or (2) it has:
It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s raining.
It’s been proven long ago. Look at the daffodil; it’s gone to seed.
The main rule to remember here is – the apostrophe takes the place of missing letters and represents a shortened version of a pronoun and a verb: “it is” or “it has.”
No apostrophe means ownership of some kind -– and no missing letters.
Spelling Rule for “Their”, “There”, and “They’re”
Many people get confused by the three different spellings for these three words that sound exactly the same: their, there, and they’re. Here are the rules.
“Their” is a possessive, third person, plural adjective relating to “something belonging to them” – as in: their house, their political party, their stupid rules of grammar – and the entities involved have been named earlier, so it’s implied that you know who or what “they” are. What is being pointed out now is the house, party or rules “owned” by “them.” You can just as easily be talking about daffodils, with “their” flowers shimmering in the sun.
“There” has a few meanings. It can mean a physical place: over there, go there – or it can mean a virtual place: stop right there before you say something you’ll regret.
Sometimes “there” is used to express satisfaction, sympathy or even defiance:
There, it’s finished!
There, there, you’ll soon feel better.
There! You do it!
And “there” is frequently used to introduce a sentence or clause: “There comes a time…”
“Hi there” and “you, there” are sometimes used when we don’t remember someone’s name right away.
And let’s not forget They’re:
To confuse the issue even more, there’s a third usage that sounds the same but is spelled differently – “they’re.” Here the apostrophe indicates a missing letter. “They’re” is an abbreviation for “they are” – as in “they’re coming” or “they’re not so big.”
Spelling Rule for “Whose” and “Who’s”
Do you sometimes choose the wrong spelling for these two words that sound the same: “whose” and “who’s?” Here are the spelling rules to remember:
“Whose” is an adjective that essentially asks a question about the ownership of something:
> Whose shoes are they? > Whose science project won? > I don’t know whose idea that was.
Who’s is simply an abbreviation for “who is” or “who has.” The apostrophe indicates missing letters.
For example, “Who’s coming with me?” or “Who’s the man?”
“Who’s” – as in “Who’s got the tickets” is a contraction for “who has.” We could have said, “Who has the tickets,” but we just as often say, “Who’s got…” (which is short for “who has got”).
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