Threshold by Thom Hartmann

I just completed Thom Hartmann's Threshold.  Hartmann is the author of The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight -- a phrase that aptly describes the human predicament -- and many other books.  Many would label him a "populist."  (Jim Hightower -- probably the best known "populist" -- has top billing as an endorser on the back cover.)  The book drew attention -- at least it did for me -- to the danger of using labels such as conservative and libertarian.  Most individual's world views do not fall neatly under any single category.  A person can subscribe to health care availability for all and also realize that the current legislation is not going to be affordable, will only improve healthcare at the extreme margins, and should therefore not be passed.  This does not make them a bad person or even a libertarian.  A new paradigm is required.

Several high points from the book (for me, at least):

• As a former psychotherapist, Hartmann attempts to analyze why CEOs are paid so much.  His conclusion is that they are sociopaths.  If you follow his logic -- based on supply and demand of credible candidates -- it is hard not to disagree.
• Personhood for corporations is grounded in the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Union Pacific Railroad.  However, the Court had avoided the issue of corporate personhood altogether in the Santa Clara case.  Rather, corporations have claimed that they are persons based on a court reporter adding a note to the case "saying that the chief justice, Morrison R. Waite, had said that 'corporations are persons' who should be granted human rights under the free-the-slaves Fourteenth Amendment."
• Crohn's disease and other bowel inflammation-related conditions may be the result of humans over time ridding themselves of parasites.