Sunday Roast: Rebooting the American Dream

Truthout is publishing one chapter per week of Thom Hartmann’s new book, Rebooting the American Dream: 11 Ways to Rebuild Our Country.  This week’s post is an introduction, and the next twelve weeks will consist of one chapter of the book.

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 first 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.

We need a modern day do-over of Hamilton’s 11-point plan that made America great, and in his book Thom Hartmann is offering up his own plan to do exactly that.

These are the chapter we can look forward to over the next weeks:

Chapter 1, “Bring My Job Home!” covers how economies work and why we need to heed Alexander Hamilton’s advice.

Chapter 2, “Roll Back the Reagan Tax Cuts,” points out how when top income-tax rates on millionaires and billionaires are above 50 percent, not only does the gap between the very rich and the working poor shrink but the nation’s economy stabilizes and grows.

Chapter 3, “Stop Them from Eating My Town,” covers the ground of monopoly- and crony-capitalism, an economic system born and bred when Reagan stopped enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

Chapter 4, “An Informed and Educated Electorate,” begins by showing how badly our news media has deteriorated, how it only caters to what people want and not to what they need, and how important it is that we take our media back from the profit-hungry corporations that have abandoned the public-service mission of media.

Chapter 5, “Medicare ‘Part E’—for Everybody,” points out how a nation that liberates its citizens from worrying about getting proper medical care is a nation of entrepreneurs, innovators, and stress-free families.

Chapter 6, “Make Members of Congress Wear NASCAR Patches,” tackles the problem of our private money–fueled electoral system and all the havoc it has wreaked.

Chapter 7, “Cool Our Fever,” shows the incredible problems that arise from our own addiction to oil, especially in transportation, and it calls out the corporations and the billionaires who are making fortunes by pumping carbon into our atmosphere, putting all life on earth at risk—including us.

Chapter 8, “They Will Steal It!” is based on one of the greatest foreign policy insights I’ve ever gotten, shared with me by activist and comedian Dick Gregory at around 3:00 A.M. as we were well into our third glass of wine and about five miles above the Atlantic Ocean on our way to Uganda.

Chapter 9, “Put Lou Dobbs out to Pasture,” addresses the problem of what’s popularly referred to as “illegal immigration,” when, in reality, it is a problem of economics and illegal hiring by American companies.

Chapter 10, “Wal-Mart Is Not a Person,” tells the story of how back in the 1880s corporations—then the railroad corporations, the giants of the Robber Baron Era—turned to the U.S. Supreme Court to give them human rights under the Constitution.

Chapter 11, “In the Shadow of the Dragon,” tells the story of a visit to the Mondragon Corporation headquarters in the town of the same name in the Basque region of Spain in late 2009.

The conclusion, “Tag, You’re It!” is about tried-and-true methods—most that we’ve used before in this country and all that we’ve at least flirted with—that can bring back a strong middle class and restore America to stability and prosperity without endangering future generations.

It’s up to us, people.  Sure, it’s going to be tough, especially in the face of such powerful corporations and monopolies.  But hey, we Americans fought a war for independence against the greatest military might in the world — the British.  This was a war we shouldn’t have been able to win under any circumstances, but the British underestimated us and we won that war.  We can do it again!  Maybe I’m a Pollyanna, pie-in-the-sky nutter, but I’m not ready to give up yet.  It sure as hell won’t be easy, but things worth doing are rarely easy.  We already know Corporate America underestimates us — let’s not underestimate ourselves!!  If we don’t try, we will certainly fail.

Check the Sunday Roast for the next twelve weeks, we’ll be posting links and commentary on each chapter of Thom’s book.

This is our daily open thread — discuss!!