36 Facts About Thom Hartmann

Thomas Carl Hartmann was born on May 7,1951 and is an American radio personality, author, businessman, and progressive political commentator.

Thom Hartmann lived in Detroit at age two, and later grew up in Lansing, Michigan.

Thom Hartmann campaigned with his staunch-Republican father for Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential election when he was thirteen.

Thom Hartmann enrolled at Lansing Community College and transferred to Michigan State University, majoring in electrical engineering.

In 1968, Thom Hartmann opened his first business, a repair shop named "The Electronics Joint" located next to Michigan State University and became a part-time disc jockey at local country music station WITL-FM.

Thom Hartmann had been interested in consciousness and spirituality since childhood, and by 1969 his interest evolved from hippie subculture to Christian mysticism.

In 1971 Thom Hartmann was ordained as a Minister with Coptic Fellowship International.

Thom Hartmann has since been a keynote speaker at many Coptic Conferences nationally.

In 1973, Thom Hartmann returned to Detroit to work as an engineer with RCA.

Thom Hartmann began his business career in the early 1970s while in his 20s, co-founding The Woodley Herber Company.

Thom Hartmann moved to New Hampshire to start The New England Salem Children's Village, which currently operates in Rumney, New Hampshire.

Thom Hartmann was its Executive Director for five years and served on the board of directors for more than 25 years.

Thom Hartmann founded International Wholesale Travel and its retail subsidiary Sprayberry Travel in Atlanta in 1983, a business which in the intervening years generated over a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue.

Thom Hartmann sold his share in the business in 1986, and retired with his family to Germany to work with the international relief organization Salem International.

Thom Hartmann sold his interest in that company in 1996, and re-retired to Vermont.

ET Monday to Friday, The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann, which was editorially directed by his wife and was broadcast from the Washington, DC, studios of the RT America news network.

Thom Hartmann co-produced the program with RT, who provided studio and carriage, while Thom Hartmann retained full editorial control of his programming.

Thom Hartmann has published more than twenty books on diverse topics.

Thom Hartmann won the Project Censored Award in 2004 for Unequal Protection.

Thom Hartmann publishes The Hartmann Report, a daily progressive newsletter.

Thom Hartmann is a practitioner of the pseudo-scientific Neuro-Linguistic Programming, having been trained by Richard Bandler.

Thom Hartmann popularized some of NLP's concepts in Cracking the Code, arguing Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz made use of them in the 1980s and 1990s for Republican Party causes, while advocating using them to advance liberalism.

Thom Hartmann was one of several contributors to Air America, the Playbook, a collection of essays, transcripts, and interviews by liberal radio personalities.

Thom Hartmann appears in DiCaprio's 2007 documentary The 11th Hour, as well as the feature documentary film Dalai Lama Renaissance, and Crude Impact.

In September 2013, Thom Hartmann was granted an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Goddard College in Port Townsend, Washington.

Thom Hartmann served on the board of Voqal, a collaboration of EBS licensees working to advance social equity.

Thom Hartmann's books include Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights, in which he argues that the 1886 US Supreme Court decision in Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad Company did not actually grant corporate personhood, and that this doctrine derives from a mistaken interpretation of a Supreme Court clerk's notes.

Thom Hartmann considers this a clear contradiction of the intent of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Thom Hartmann has written on the separation of church and state, drawing upon The Federalist Papers to argue that the Founding Fathers warned against the notion of the United States being a Christian nation.

Thom Hartmann contends that the 2000 American election and 2004 American election were stolen through electronic tampering, denial of the voting franchise by rigged voting lists, and limiting availability of voting machines in selected precincts.

Thom Hartmann accused the Bush administration of eroding democracy and individual freedoms.

Thom Hartmann argues that this phenomenon is leading to the erosion of the American middle class, whose survival Thom Hartmann deems critical to the survival of American democracy.

Thom Hartmann has been a vegetarian since he was a teenager.

Thom Hartmann has written about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and adult attention-deficit disorder, and has proposed the hunter vs farmer hypothesis, suggesting that ADHD is an expected evolutionary adaptation to hunting lifestyles where individuals have the ability to rapidly shift focus and external attention, while holding multiple trains of thought.

Thom Hartmann has established specialized schools for children with ADHD, such as The Hunter School in Rumney, New Hampshire, which he co-founded with his wife Louise.

Thom Hartmann operated the "ADD Forum" and "DeskTop Publishing Forum", along with several others, on CompuServe.