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‘I Have a Very Deep Well of Empathy’
Are there any corporations that you think are good citizens?
Oh, yes.
How does News Corp. do?
[Rupert] Murdoch has basically commodified the news. He has basically suppressed the highest traditions of journalism, from objectivity to challenging the powers that be, and he has taken advantage of the public airwaves … and engaged in soliloquies of extraordinary abuse of people who cannot fight back.
Are they still your publisher?
I think they own HarperCollins, yeah. It's hard to escape the conglomerate web.
Is that the best part of the conglomerate web to have your books published by?
They publish anticorporate books, not just mine. So, they have a good distribution system.
It is certainly the role of reform-minded candidates to push the major parties to innovate. But isn't that only going to work if they are afraid they might lose?
My concern is not them. My concerns are the voters and giving voters a broader choice when they go to the ballot box in state after state. We, for example, want to reduce the bloated military budget, which is full of waste … They're not talking about that: McCain, Obama and Clinton.
You've done more than one life's worth of work. Why go do this at this point?
Well, you're asking a personal question. So I will give you an unusual personal answer. I have a very deep well of empathy, and I take my motivation from what I see around the country. And I'll give it to you just briefly, statistically: 47 million people who make less than $10.50 an hour—six and a half, seven, eight dollars an hour before deductions; 45 million people without health care, 18,000 of whom die every year, according to the National Academy of Sciences, because they can't afford health care; 13 million children who go to bed hungry every night; 45 million people in dire poverty; 58,000 people who die from workplace-connected diseases and trauma every year, according to [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration]; 65,000 people who can't breathe, and die because of air pollution. I mean, do I have to go on? I mean, just what more evidence is needed that each and every one of us who has an ability to improve his or her country has got to do what they have to do within the confines of the Constitution and rule of law and freedom of speech?
© 2008
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Member Comments
Posted By: getzel @ 04/11/2008 11:37:24 PM
Comment: War ends We win: when we pass a law that makes the minimum price of gasoline at the pumps: $1.75/gallon.
The ethanol investors do not build ethanol distilleries because monopoly OPEC would lower the price of crude/gasoline to rust out the billion dollar/million barrel a day ethanol stills.
Brazil is energy independent: ethanol; All their cars come built running on ethanol; The gas station fills the tanks with ethanol, no gasoline.
Archer Daniel Midland made millions in the USA selling $1.00 gallon ethanol in the 1990s;
That trumps any canard/invalid objection to ethanol. Use Cellulose ethanol, not corn ethanol.
Cellulose Ethanol energy independence in the USA, will balance the trade deficit, create full employment, bring down the price of fuel, break the monopoly on the pricing of fuel, balance the USA government budget, create less pollution, make the USA energy independent, and end the war because we will stop funding the bad guys everyday at the gas pumps.
With all the cars running on ethanol; the price of oil will collapse and the radical Moslem hordes will no longer have the funds we used to give them from gasoline sales to finance the war against us.
I built a distillery and converted my GM car to 160 proof ethanol by 1982; and tried 25 years to get the USA off of gasoline. Unless the strategy I am outlining is adopted, the war that is coming, regardless of who is elected, will make Vietnam look like a cake walk.
Sharia people are at war with The West because Sharia people believe Islam can not survive against: a free market economy with free speech to criticize Islam.
International law, has defined a set of war rule parameters that guarantee no war can be won by good guys and that guarantee nice long lasting wars with lots of weapons sales.
Generals: Patton. Eisenhower, Marshall , Sherman et al would all be war criminals under international law and Europe would be under Hitler; the American civil war would not be over if fought under the current rules; which, intentionally or unintentionally, are designed for a hundred year terror war.
Cut off terrorist infested countries/areas: no phones, no lights, no motorcars not a single luxury. No food, no water, no ships/airplanes in and out, no trucks cross their borders; nothing till they give up the terrorism. Better the terrorist should die right there than have a war where the world is terrorized for 100 years.
The leadership that sponsors these terrorist suicide murders are the Heads of state in Tehran, Riyadh, and Damascus.
Intelligence analyst: Getzel
Posted By: jimbo3800 @ 03/29/2008 9:21:13 PM
Comment: Is it a full moon tonight? Must be...
Posted By: olderwiser @ 03/28/2008 9:55:09 PM
Comment: Cryopresidentiasis- n. A belief, frozen in the brain of a candidate for president, that he can win the presidency of his nation on arcane issues, usually characterized by repetitive efforts on the occasion of presidential elections in the countries which allow such people to run, by the simple act of throwing one's hat into the center of a ring of cow patties with a diameter of exactly ten feet, so far limited to the United States of America.