Hartmann Report

From 50-year mortgages to paywalled car features, the rental economy is replacing ownership with lifelong monthly bills... Yesterday, both Trump and his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development told us that 50-year home mortgages may soon be a thing. While seemingly insane (you could end up paying more than three times the cost of the house and never escape the burden of debt before you die), this is just the latest iteration of one of American businesses' most profitable scams: the rental economy. It's a growing threat to the American middle class that rarely gets named, even as it reshapes our lives every day. Over the past two decades, it's snuck in quietly, disguised as convenience, efficiency, and "innovation." As a result, nothing is "ours" any more. Instead, we're renting our lives away.

"Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle." —Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny Ruby Freeman just wanted to count votes. She wasn’t a politician or activist. She was a sixty-two-year-old grandmother running a small fashion boutique called “Lady Ruby’s Unique Treasures” in suburban Atlanta. In fall 2020, seeking to do her civic duty during a pandemic that kept many older poll workers home, she took a temporary job with Fulton County’s election office. Her daughter, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, had worked for the county elections department for a decade, and Ruby was proud to join her in supporting the democratic process, something particularly meaningful to her as a Black woman whose ancestors had been denied the right to vote.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Lift a toast to all the new billionaires made in 2025, including 50 of them just in the tech arena. — Trump threatens Democrats on Christmas day, saying “Enjoy What May Be Your Last Merry Christmas!” — Drip, drip, drip come the rape and abuse allegations against Trump, who a jury has already found raped (according to the judge) E. Jean Carroll and more than 20 other women have accused of sexual abuse or rape. — Bondi’s Department of Justice now appears to be saying that if you’re taking pictures of masked ICE agents beating up, shooting, or otherwise abusing immigrants (or American citizens) you’re guilty of “domestic terrorism” and can be arrested by those same unaccountable ICE agents and disappeared into their growing collection of concentration camps. — The Trump regime is on the brink of turning routine travel into a permanent surveillance apparatus and most travelers have no idea. — Trump’s racism brings nursing home crisis. — The official White House Spiritual Advisor, Paula White, says of Epstein’s best friend: “To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God, and I won’t do that.” — Recession watch: Ten housing markets are in a crash right now, with more soon to come. — Racist MAGA goes nuts over King Charles III’s Christmas message. — Geeky Science: Eat your chocolate and drink your coffee!

The future lay before us now, and if we care about the country our children will inherit, we can't let this moral vandalism to go unanswered. Yesterday, on Christmas of all days, Donald Trump chose to call Democrats "scum." Not criminals. Not misguided. Not wrong. Scum. A word we usually reserve for things we scrape off the bottom of a shoe or skim off polluted water. A word whose entire purpose is to dehumanize. That moment matters far beyond the day's news cycle, and far beyond partisan politics. It matters because leaders don't just govern; they model.

Yule fire, candlelit pines, and the old northern promise that if we hold each other close, the light returns… Today is Christmas, a connection to some of the most ancient of all known northern European shamanic traditions. Like people living in the north for millennia, we continue to embrace them with regional, national, and religious tweaks. It occurs during the week of the shortest day and longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, when ancient holy men and women lit "yule logs" to push back the darkness and implore the gods or nature to bring back the light of summer.

The playbook that showers the rich, spikes the debt, then demands you sacrifice Social Security and healthcare… "The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus." —Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976 The Washington Post published an article this week titled A Middle-Class Family's Only Option: A $43,000 Health Insurance Premium about how the GOP's refusal to extend ACA/Obamacare subsidies means that Stacy Newton's family in Jackson Hole, Wyoming will have to pay $43,000 a year for health insurance if they want to stay covered. If, however, the United States had an extra trillion dollars a year — the amount we're now spending every year on interest payments against the GOP's $38 trillion national debt — the Newtons would only pay a few hundred dollars a month and we could also have Universal Childcare & Pre-K, Paid Family & Medical Leave, Tuition-Free College, Affordable Housing & No More Homelessness, End Child Poverty & Hunger, and, as mentioned, Affordable Healthcare for all Americans.

They turned clean air into "socialism," turned polluters into victims, and turned America into a profit center with our kids as casualties… Given how the Republicans who run Congress let health insurance premiums for over 24 million Americans explode by not acting last week before going on vacation, it appears former Congressman Alan Grayson was right. The GOP Healthcare Plan is simple and straightforward: "Don't get sick. "If you do get sick, die quickly." And it appears Trump is handily helping us all along with that "die quickly" part, promoting both cancer-causing chemicals in our environment and food supply as well as pushing for more greenhouse gasses to kill more of us with droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires via climate change.

The commons, unions, and a livable wage built the first mass middle class. Now younger voters want to reboot that machine at full throttle… The media is freaking out over a new Rasmussen poll that found: "A majority of voters under 40 want a democratic socialist to win the White House in the next presidential election. "… 51% of Likely U.S. Voters ages 18 to 39 would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election. Thirty-six percent (36%) don't want a democratic socialist to win in 2028, while 17% are not sure. … "Among the youngest cohort (ages 18-24) of voters, 57% want a democratic socialist to win the next presidential election… "Among those who voted for Kamala Harris in last year's presidential election, 78% would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election…" (emphasis added) I was on Ali Velshi's MSNOW show yesterday morning discussing this, along with Michael Green who recently wrote a thought-provoking article about how the official poverty line in America is completely out-of-date and out of touch with the needs of most Americans. I shared a few statistics from my recent book The Hidden History of the American Dream: the Demise of the Middle Class and How to Rescue Our Future:

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both." —Louis D. Brandeis, Other People’s Money. Jakelin Caal Maquin was only seven years old when she died in the custody of our government.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — How do we save journalism and democracy? — Is Our Gun Culture Grooming People to Kill? — Does Trump's Chief of Staff have Russia ties? — The Billionaire Protection Program at the Department of Justice rolls on — Jack Smith has the goods on Trump's criminal activity and Republicans in the House don't want you to hear the details. — How strange is it that the GOP has the urge to jump off the health-care cliff? — Bob Kennedy's Children's Health Defense anti-vax group is circulating disinformation at the height of a measles outbreak, according to reporting in The Guardian. — Geeky Science. Feeling awe and wonder actually improves your health, both mental, emotional, and physical.