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Thom Hartmann Tote - We are offering this canvas tote for the very first time. Roomy and stylish, it's the perfectly practical way to show your support for FSTV and Thom Hartmann!

Thom Hartmann Was the Boston Tea Party the first WTO-style protest against transnational corporations? Did Supreme Court sell out America's citizens in the nineteenth century, with consequences lasting to this day? Is there a way for American citizens to recover democracy of, by, and for the people? Thom Hartmann takes on these most difficult questions and tells a startling story that will forever change your understanding of American history. Amongst a deep historical context, Hartmann the describes the history of the Fourteenth Amendment--created at the end of the Civil War to grant basic rights to freed slaves--and how it has been used by lawyers representing corporate interests to extend additional rights to businesses far more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in U.S. law as "artificial persons." But in 1886, after a series of cases brought by lawyers representing the expanding railroad interests, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were "persons" and entitled to the same rights granted to people under the Bill of Rights. Since this ruling, America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior.

By Thom Hartmann In this work, Thom Hartmann covers 11 straightforward solutions to America's current problems. At the core of each is a call to reclaim economic sovereignty and to wrest control of democracy back from the corporate powers that have hijacked both America and her citizens. What's particularly unique about Hartmann's solutions is that all have been proven to work. Every single one of his 11 steps either was historically part of what built America’s greatness in the past (such as enforcing the Sherman Act and breaking up big corporations or returning to a tariff-based trade policy), or has worked well in other nations (like a national single-payer healthcare system —Medicare Part "E" for "Everybody"—or encouraging the growth of worker-owned cooperatives like the $6 billion Mondragon cooperative in Spain). Hartmann's solutions are essentially nonpartisan. Virtually all have been promoted at one time or another in American history by both political parties, although today most (but not all) fall into the realm of "progressive solutions." Both Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan will find broad areas of agreement with this book. From addressing the problem of a warming globe to the death of America's middle class to the loss of our essential liberties, Rebooting The American Dream shows how America can reclaim the vision of our Founders and the greatness we held both at home and abroad for over a century.

Director Chris Paine takes his film crew behind the closed doors of Nissan, GM, and the Silicon Valley start-up Tesla Motors to chronicle the story of the global resurgence of electric cars.

In Pity the Billionaire, Frank, the great chronicler of American paradox, examines the peculiar mechanism by which dire economic circumstances have delivered wildly unexpected political results. Using firsthand reporting, a deep knowledge of the American Right, and a wicked sense of humor, he gives us the first full diagnosis of the cultural malady that has transformed collapse into profit, reconceived the Founding Fathers as heroes from an Ayn Rand novel, and enlisted the powerless in a fan club for the prosperous. The understanding Frank reaches is at once startling, original, and profound.

Consumerism has become the cornerstone of the post-industrial age. Yet how much do we know about it and what it is doing to us? Using theories of evolutionary psychology to underpin a bold narrative of our times, this film takes a whirlwind tour through the "weird mental illness of consumerism," showing how our insatiable appetite has driven us into "the jaws of the beast." "By the age of 20, the average westerner has seen one million commercial messages." With this kind of exposure, it is impossible to live in the modern world without being a product of consumer society. Now psychologists, like Geoffrey Miller, are saying that it is distorting the way we interact with the world and each other: "We've all kind of gone collectively psychotic".

This feature length documentary explores the ravages of American suburban sprawl, what America has lost as a result, and the perils we face if we don't change the way in which we build our cities. Americans have been lulled into a false sense of security by cheap energy that has allowed us to spread endlessly into our landscape. We are trapped behind the wheels of our automobiles. and with the demand for oil outpacing the Earth's ability to supply it, this suburban living arrangement will fail. America's love affair with the automobile is unsustainable... the wake up call is coming.

THE BEST GOVERNMENT MONEY CAN BUY? is the first behind-the-scenes, comprehensive, non-partisan examination of the system of lobbying in Washington, DC. The cost of election campaigns has spiraled out of control, to the extent that, on average, our representatives spend more than 25% of their time fund-raising. Even our Presidents regularly interrupt the nation’s work in order to spend time fund-raising! Raising funds to get elected – that's the key interface between lobbyists and Members of Congress. The number of registered lobbyists has more than doubled since 2000; their fees have also increased by 100%; and in 2006-7 they spent a staggering $13.5 million per day. Over the past six years, they have spent more than $13 billion. Would it be naive to conclude that the interests whose money they channel into the political process, expect nothing in return for it?

The fight for the last great mountain in America's Appalachian heartland pits the mining giant that wants to explode it to extract the coal within against the community fighting to preserve the mountain and build a wind farm on its ridges instead. With Bobby Kennedy Jr. enlisted as a passionate force for preserving Coal River Mountain and the economic power of the fossil fuel industry twisting democracy to its advantage, this documentary highlights a battle for the future of energy that affects us all.

Half compendium of lost opportunities, half hopeful look toward the future, Powering the Dream tells the stories of the brilliant, often irascible inventors who foresaw our current problems, tried to invent cheap and energy renewable solutions, and drew the blueprint for a green future.

(Book) "The Occupy Wall Street movement named the core issue of our time: the overwhelming power of Wall Street and large corporations— something the political establishment and most media have long ignored. But the movement goes far beyond this critique. This Changes Everything shows how the movement is shifting the way people view themselves and the world, the kind of society they believe is possible, and their own involvement in creating a society that works for the 99% rather than just the 1%."