Hartmann Report

Sunday book excerpt: The Hidden History of the War on Voting. Exit Polling around the World Most Americans, when they hear the name Viktor Yushchenko, vaguely remember a Ukrainian politician lying in a hospital bed with a severely disfigured face, the result of poisoning with a deadly form of dioxin, the toxic ingredient in Agent Orange. But it was exit polls that got him there.  Exit polls are polls taken outside of voting stations or polling places, where people who have already voted are questioned as they’re leaving. They’re considered far more accurate than other types of pre- or post-election polling because they don’t rely on people answering their phones, returning a mailed inquiry, or asserting that they intend to vote when they may well not. 

The Best of the Rest of the News — Are we surprised? Big business was giving big bucks to election deniers for their campaigns in the midterms. — Meanwhile, the actual rigging of elections is happening in virtually every state currently under Republican control. — Meanwhile, the actual rigging of elections is happening in virtually every state currently under Republican control. — Mike Pompeo, running for president in 2024, took a shot at the head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten. — Hershel Walker promotes hate, attacking transgender people right after the shooting at Club Q: how do we handle the deplorables? — Without gerrymandering, Democrats would still hold the House of Representatives. — Why Is AARP pushing Medicare Privatization? — Geeky Science! Will the world need to dim the sun to save the planet? And will it work?

Umberto Eco, seeing the rise of Mussolini, noted in his “14 indicators of fascism” dumbing down the populace by lowering educational standards was critical to producing a compliant populace. Former Tea Party congressman and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently put a bulls-eye on the back of the president of the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers. “I tell the story often — I get asked ‘Who’s the most dangerous person in the world? Is it Chairman Kim, is it Xi Jinping?’” Pompeo told Semafor’s Shelby Talcott. “The most dangerous person in the world is Randi Weingarten. It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘Who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teacher’s unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids…” Louise and I have known, respected, and admired Randi for years.

There's a "Free Market" solution every Republican should love, even “Crazy Uncle Ralph” who insists on discussing politics during the holidays… It’s Thanksgiving, and many of us are gathering with friends and family. Given the horrific news of our having passed 600 mass shootings in America this week, the dinner topic in many homes will inevitably turn to the political debate around guns. That discussion about guns in America generally falls into two polar opposite positions: don’t regulate guns at all, or ban large parts of the spectrum of guns and heavily regulate ownership of the rest. But there’s a third position, entirely outside of that spectrum, which every actual “free market“ conservative in America could embrace, and liberals could be down with as well.

In America, hate is all too often triggered by politicians who then sanctimoniously offer “thoughts and prayers” when random (or stochastic) terrorists to do their evil work for them. A terrorist attacked Club Q in Colorado Springs Saturday night. Another terrorist attacked WalMart workers in Virginia yesterday. It’s happened over 800 times this year. But nobody’s calling them terrorists, and that’s a problem for America. We didn’t call the jihadis who blew up the Twin Towers “mentally ill,” “disgruntled,” or discuss their “troubled past.” We correctly called them terrorists because they used mass murder to try to “right a wrong” or achieve a political goal, which is the literal definition of terrorism.

Which begs the question: What is freedom? Queer people in America are not feeling “freedom,” particularly after the most recent deadly attack on Club Q in Colorado Springs. As if to amplify the GOP’s message of hate and fear against this vulnerable group of our fellow Americans, it happened on Trans Remembrance Day, when we honor the memory of trans people who’ve been the victims of hate and violence. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to peddle LGBTQ+ hate as part of their “freedom agenda” with Ron DeSantis saying he’s “saving” children from evil Florida teachers bent on “sexualizing children in kindergarten” and Governor Kristi Noem proclaiming “In South Dakota, only girls play girls’ sports.” And Hershel Walker released a brand-new anti-trans ad.

As giddy as Republicans are about “owning the libs,” the citizens they govern pay a tragic price for the sport. If dying young appeals to you, here’s a simple bit of advice: move to a state or county controlled by Republicans. At first glance, the images below appear to be political maps. And in the most real sense of the word they are: the county-by-county differences shown by the map from Jeremy Ney’s brilliant American Inequality Substack newsletter and the state-by-state screen shot from the CDC’s NCHS below it. Both reflect, in large part, decades of regional policy differences.

Sunday book excerpt: The Hidden History of the War on Voting. While preventing people from voting has a long and sordid history in the United States (and, frankly, around the world), the modern-day Republican Party’s reliance on voter suppression as a primary tool to win elections kicked off in a big way in 1993. That was the year when 27 Democrats and one Republican cosponsored HR2, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), sometimes called the Motor Voter Act. In the House, it got 238 Democratic votes and 20 from Republicans; in the Senate, every Republican but two voted against it, while every present Democrat voted for it (Jay Rockefeller missed the vote). Several parts of the legislation freaked out the GOP, the most prominent being that it required every state to let people register to vote when they presented themselves at DMVs to apply for a new or renewed driver’s license (this part is called Article 5 of the Act).

This is part of an old GOP strategy — dating back to the Reagan Revolution — which worked well for them during both the Clinton and Obama presidencies. 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 headline yesterday over at Politico says it all: White House’s hopes for a lame-duck debt ceiling deal are fading fast. It’s no accident or coincidence that this never once happened during the presidencies of Reagan, Bush, Bush, or Trump. Or that it did happen during the presidencies of Clinton and Obama…and, now, Biden. You could even call it a conspiracy: there’s an amazing backstory — with a unique name— here.

Democrats have two months before they lose control of the House. It’s absolutely essential that they do everything possible to stop the cancer of “big money” and “dark money” in our politics. Now it’s official. Twenty-seven men choose who runs the GOP. Pundits are fond of saying, “The President of the United States is the most powerful person in America.” He’s not and hasn’t been for over a decade. Political power in this country, since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court fully legalized both overt and secret political bribery in their 2010 Citizens United decision, is now centered in the money bins of the morbidly rich.