Hartmann Report

When corporations gained the protections that had been written for persons in the United States, a substantial shift began in who bears what risk, resulting in an imbalance that now affects virtually all parts of the world. Most companies handle risk responsibly, but many corporations are legally allowed to avoid responsibility in ways that would never be permitted for an individual. Risk is a matter of who suffers when something goes wrong. Corporations and their shareholders may risk loss of income or even loss of their investment, but that pales in comparison with the risks that humans share as a result of a corporate activity—such as degradation of the environment, higher rates of cancer and other diseases, job-related disfigurement or death, community and family breakdown after a factory is closed and jobs are shipped overseas, and even a life with no income or health insurance if we choose not to affiliate with a corporation.

The Best of the Rest of the News — This is a crime. Corrupt Republican Associate Justice Clarence Thomas appended a concurrent opinion to yesterday’s Hobbs decision arguing that next the Supreme Court should end our right to contraception (Griswold), gay marriage (Obergefell), and reverse the legalization of gay sex (Lawrence) — The January 6th hearing on Thursday produced one of the most shocking moments of the entire Trump election theft saga. — Could you go to jail or lose your home for telling others not to buy products from a company or country whose practices you deplore? — It’s not just progressive authors and talk show hosts talking about the fascist danger to America: now five respected, high-profile, retired generals have signed up to defend democracy as well. — How the rest of the world deals with medical expenses. — A supermarket/drugstore chain in Florida has announced it won’t vaccinate kids under 5 years old. Why? — Crazy Alert! Tucker Carlson claims the FDA’s plan to reduce nicotine in cigarettes to make them less addictive and reduce the 500,000 deaths from tobacco every year is all part of a plan to de-masculinize “working class men.”

The big difference between 2000 and 2020 is that in 2000 Stone’s plan worked: he stopped the vote count and cemented Bush’s ascent to the White House, even though Bush lost the election. As the January 6th Committee continues to unpeel layers of criminality and conspiracy, it’s important to note that the Stone/Bannon/Trump “Stop The Steal” scheme did not originate in 2020. It was, in fact, 20 years in the making. Roger Stone, Trump’s dirty trickster who was sentenced to 40 months in prison before Trump pardoned him, rolled out version 1.0 in Florida in 2000, helping the George W. Bush campaign stop a Florida Supreme Court-mandated statewide recount that would have handed the election to Al Gore.

Violence is the cardinal characteristic, the logo, the brand identity of fascism. Every fascist movement in history has lifted itself to power on the scaffold of violence. Blood alone moves the wheels of history. –Benito Mussolini “Have you noticed that people are getting meaner?” the villain asks in a Paramount+ promo for their new show Evil. “What does it mean?” asks the “nice” character. “It means,” says the evil character with a note of triumph in her voice, “that your side is losing.” And here we are. The lede of an above-the-fold story in yesterday’s Washington Post lays it out: “In the past 24 hours, there has been an uptick in the number of violent threats against lawmakers on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and all lawmakers on the committee are likely to receive a security detail…”

How did a corrupt senator even find himself in a position where he could’ve handed two pieces of paper to the VP that would have changed the outcome of our presidential election? The Electoral College. We just learned from the January 6th hearings that Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson tried to hand a phony slate of electoral votes from Michigan and Wisconsin to Vice President Mike Pence just before the election was certified on January 6. How did a corrupt senator even find himself in a position where he could’ve handed two pieces of paper to the Vice President that would have changed the outcome of our presidential election? The Electoral College.

The GOP has planted their flag deeply into the soil of fear and hate, right up to and including a call to repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - this year we must vote as if our future depends upon it. The Texas GOP’s state party meeting last week gave America a clear insight into Republican thinking going into this year’s election and the 2024 presidential race. They’ve planted their flag deeply into the soil of violence, fear, white supremacy, and hate right up to and including a call to repeal the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Democratic candidates across the nation, on the other hand, show that party is leaving behind the neoliberalism of Clinton and Obama and moving forward with a futuristic “Freedom Agenda.”

The SCOTUS is about to use it's ill-gotten power on behalf of the fossil fuel industry to cripple America’s ability to meet the challenge of climate change. It appears that Republicans on the Supreme Court are preparing to light our planet on fire. Longtime readers of my work and listeners to my program know that the Supreme Court has seized for itself extraordinary powers that the Framers of the Constitution never intended for it to have. There are summaries here and here, for example. This is not an opinion unique to me or my book The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America: two Harvard Law professors just this week wrote an article for The Atlantic that lays out pretty much the same arguments. And now it appears Republicans on the Court are about to use that ill-gotten power — on behalf of the fossil fuel industry — to cripple America’s ability to meet the challenge of climate change.

There’s a side to regulation that most people don’t think about, and it has far-reaching effects if representatives of corporations are writing the rules. Once a regulation is passed saying, “you can emit no more than 10 ppm [parts per million] of mercury,” you can legally emit up to 10 ppm.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — "A Big Mistake": Economists warn Fed rate hikes risk plunging US into recession. — Is America doomed to follow Russia and Hungary's path to fascism like Fox "News" and the GOP are hoping? — Hating on LGBTQ people has been the province of bigots and those who'd advance their political goals at the expense of people least likely to fight back. Cowards, in other words. — New Mexico is the first test run for Republicans refusing to count votes before the critical 2024 presidential election. — When Republicans want to string along Democrats — the modern version of Lucy and the football — they call on Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn. — Republicans have been trying to end Social Security and Medicare ever since both programs were put into law. — I remember "duck and cover" when I was in elementary school in the 1950s, but we never really took the possibility that we'd all die in a nuclear holocaust seriously, in part because we never saw any evidence of it happening (at least until the Cuban Missile Crisis). — In Good News, Houston has moved over 25,000 people off the Streets and into homes of their own. — GOP Death Cult Alert! DeSantis doesn't care how many children die from Covid, and is proud of it.

Student debt is a crime against our nation, weakening our intellectual infrastructure - Any nation’s single biggest asset is a well-educated populace and student debt diminishes that. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) along with 55 colleagues just sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona requesting both details and rapid action on President Biden’s campaign promise to forgive student debt in America.