Calling Thom Hartmann out on his bullshit

Thom Hartmann is probably the most annoying and erroneous commentator on Air America radio. I have joked in the past that he refers to the founding fathers' principles as if they were all enacted during the late 1700s and as a result the country functioned perfectly... until Reagan destroyed everything. But it's true. He LITERALLY quotes the founding fathers' documents then references an obscure and presumably HORRIBLE event that occured during the '80s-- an event that DISRUPTED THE PERFECT FLOW OF THE FOUNDERS' VISION... or whatever.

One of his commercials is for purchasing gold. In his praise of gold, he states literally that everything was fine monetarily during the '70s, then during the '80s "the United States became a debtor nation."

Hey, moron, the United States WAS BORN INTO DEBT.

"The national debt after the American Revolution fell into three categories. The first was the $11 million owed to foreigners—mostly debts to France during the American Revolution. The second and third—roughly $24 million each—were debts owed by the national and state governments to Americans who had sold food, horses, and supplies to the revolutionary forces. Congress agreed that the power and the authority of the new government would pay for the foreign debts. There were also other debts that consisted of promissory notes issued during the Revolutionary War to soldiers, merchants, and farmers who accepted these payments on the premise that the new Constitution would create a government that would pay these debts eventually. The war expenses of the individual states added up to $114,000,000, compared to $37 million by the central government.[47] In 1790, Congress combined the state debts with the foreign and domestic debts into one national debt totaling $80 million. Everyone received face value for wartime certificates, so that the national honor would be sustained and the national credit established."


It has had periods of enormous debt before the '80s.

I'm tired of Hartmann's claim that the '70s was some sort of paradisaical decade for Americans. It's a load of shit.

Let's start with 1971:

Under the gold standard, governments that print too much paper money risk runs on their gold reserves. Runs occur as holders of the paper seek to convert to gold before the vaults are empty. A run on the dollar is what happened in the late 1960s, which culminated in President Richard Nixon closing the gold window in 1971.

“Closing the gold window” is a euphemism for the U.S. defaulting on its promise to other countries to redeem dollars for gold. As an alternative, Nixon could have devalued the dollar and continued to redeem. In effect, he chose a one hundred percent devaluation, a de facto default on the promise to redeem.
_________

No debt there! Nixon said, "Fuck it! No debt anymore. I waved my magic wand." He left it to that evil bastard Reagan... I guess that Hartmann believes that it wasn't real until Reagan was in office.

The runaway inflation of the '70s was so bad that the entire city of New York almost declared bankruptcy during 1975. It appealed to Washington for assistance.
President Ford was... less than helpful.



And we all remember reading about... or in some cases REMEMBER... the long lines at the gas station as "gasoline prices went up 60% between early 1979 and early 1980." None of these things happened in Hartmann World, I guess.

Those halcyon days of war in Vietnam and boom times that almost brought the largest American city to its knees were wonderful marks of success in Hartmann's ideal decade.

Jesus christ. Gag me with a scalpel.