Tom Hall: Wouldn’t it be great if this latest Pentagon boondoggle to shovel more taxpayer dollars out the door for worthless crap brought together progressives and tea baggers in opposition to real government waste?
About Tom Hall
Tom Hall is a family lawyer in West Los Angeles. He is from Boston, and was raised in Friends Meeting at Cambridge (Quakers) to think that religion was a progressive force. During the Vietnam War, he organized draft counseling centers and worked with groups training people in techniques for disciplined nonviolent demonstrating. After the war, he became just another yuppie working to make a comfortable life. The Bush administration shocked him back into social concerns. Now he’s working to see that the Obama administration lives up to its progressive promises. Tom can be reached at [email protected]
Graduation Day: When Foster Care Works
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Tom Hall: Every day in Los Angeles, parents and foster parents and social workers and teachers strive so that Anton and Joseph and Marlon and Eric and Laquisha and Ronette can have lives beyond the bigotry, beyond the fear, beyond poverty.
“No Brainer” Conspiracy Theories
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Tom Hall: Sometimes, conspiracy theories implode on themselves. Our freedoms are preserved by the 2nd Amendment solution of shooting first and checking facts later. This theory worked for the looney putz who shot Trayvon Martin – just see how free he’s been since ‘defending his rights.’
Will Roberts Court Light a Fire in Gutting the Voting Rights Act?
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Tom Hall: The Roberts Court’s formal gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act will be announced later this spring, after the weather has warmed up, after the school year has ended. After young black men in cities around the nation will join their fathers, standing on line to apply for jobs they won’t be given.
Killing Civilians Without Due Process
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Tom Hall: It is not the drones actively killing civilians in Yemen and Pakistan that threaten us, but rather the drones lounging in front of TVs on the homefront as our rights and freedoms slip further away.
Tea Baggers Declare Jihad on Women in Combat
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TOM HALL: The parallels between the Tea Bagger’s arguments and Moslem fundamentalist arguments were striking. But equally disturbing were the more sane-sounding claims by pseudo- intellectual voices.
Gun Nuts
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Tom Hall: The NRA isn’t about protecting people or constitutional rights, but rather about driving sales for an industry of sociopaths selling to a market of wannabe psychopaths, with absolutely no regard to the costs to real people,
Gun Silence
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Tom Hall: The earnest M.C. at Saturday’s benefit concert suggested that we all pause for a minute of silence in honor of the recent tragedy in Connecticut. Seated in the audience, I wanted to scream out “NO. No more silence.”
A Broken Media and Gun Violence
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Tom Hall: Is there anything “free” about a ‘free press’ that is controlled so as to eliminate serious discussion about an industry that leads to the death of tens of thousands of people every year?
Teahadis Demand Creation of Texassippi
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Tom Hall: In Texassippi, there will be no taxes, of course, and no tax revenue to support governmental operations. Under Teahadi theory, that won’t matter. All functions that other governments perform for themselves will be handled by private enterprise in Texassippi.
Saving the Nation by Breaking It Up
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Rom Hall: Any good Teahadist can tell you that America faces the same risk of destruction that ended the Roman empire.
Sharia Is Coming! Sharia Is Coming!
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Tom Hall: the Fundagelical fear of Sharia rests on a misunderstanding of our nation’s fascinating history of changing legal systems.
When Businesses Go Unregulated
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Tom Hall: New England Compounding Center took advantage of deregulation to eliminate costs for safety measures. And “customers” died, killed by the contaminated drugs produced in the newly deregulated factories.
The False Lure of Third Parties
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Tom Hall: Third parties offer, once every four years, the pretense that their presidential candidates, with no supporting body of local, state or Congressional allies, will make major changes in “the system”. This is balderdash.
“Legitimately Raping” Women, Businesses, and the Truth
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Tom Hall: What the mob does is to rape small businesses. Romney’s Bain Capital does exactly the same thing. But because it is all done according to securities laws, it is “Legitimate Rape.”
Romney and Ryan Go Low
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Tom Hall: While the “liberal media” focuses on the regular, intentional lies that Romney and Ryan spew, there is an insidious, flagrantly racist, anti-semitic campaign being waged in emails to every potential hate voter in the U.S.
God Bless America. In God We Trust. But Which God?
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Tom Hall: Watching as he talks down to people and dismisses the concerns of mere workers, unemployed people and inferior races, one must wonder whether Romney believes that he has already become a God.
How American Unions Failed Their Members; What They Can Do Now
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Tom Hall: Unions bargained for better benefits in exchange for slightly lower wages. But then the unions didn’t require that the benefits actually be provided.
Romney’s Gods Problem
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Tom Hall: Clearly, Romney has no issue with the doctrine of lying to achieve any goal he wants. But his lying about his religious beliefs doesn’t mean that other people can’t tell the truth about those religious beliefs.
Traditional Marriage
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Tom Hall: Most references to Traditional Marriage today are made by for-profit businesses and televangelists, who use the phrase to raise millions of dollars in support of business plans based on promoting discrimination against people who want to get married.
From Moon Landings to the F-22: How War Profiteering Dulled American’s Technical Edge
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Tom Hall: If Lockheed Martin had been building boats at the time, the Pilgrims would never have reached Plymoth Rock on the Mayflower.
Like Burning Rivers, Tea Party Will Dump Problems on Public
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Tom Hall: This third week of June provides some interesting history, in the context of the current Tea Party Republican efforts to return America to some disneyfied fantasy about what we used to be.
Elegy for Our Empire
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Tom Hall: The American Exceptionalism that matters to the rest of the world is the example that we used to set for loving freedom and working for a better world.
What the Indianapolis 500 Says About America
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Tom Hall: The Tea Party Republican candidate is now beloved because he lies, rather than despite his lies. The concept that a political leader can lie with impunity has become a badge of success.
What Tea Party Republican Fundagelicals Really Want
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Tom Hall: The Tea Party Republican Fundagelical program wants to return America to pre-Gutenburg days – when few, even among the nobility could read, or had anything to read. To a time when people were told, by their religious leaders, what the “truth” was, and how to behave.
How Debt Ceiling Crisis Reelects Obama
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Tom Hall: The mainstream media has had little to say about Obama’s accomplishments. Why would they? The mainstream media is owned by, and serves, a handful of huge corporations in New York.
What Now for the Unraptured?
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Tom Hall: How perfect can heaven be, with 200 million new souls crowding into a facility designed by He who designed a world with shifting tectonic plates, ozone holes and republicans?
Lessons from the History of Corporate Compassion
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Tom Hall: To today’s Tea Bag Republican Party, the days of shooting striking miners and of roasting workers alive and then collecting insurance on their bodies seems a good system to return to.
The Hypocrisy of Being Earnest
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Tom Hall: Of course the whole lying about being divorced, and cheating on his wife and child positions him to be the latest Republican spokesmodel for family values.
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