Hartmann Report

This time it’s not just about saving our banks, keeping our schools intact, or fighting a war. This time, it’s about saving the world. Back on October 13th, I wrote an article here titled When Will the Victims of Oil Companies’ Lies Get Their Day In Court? detailing how Big Oil has been deceiving Americans — and, thus, killing Americans and our climate — for more than a half-century. Their model, “Doubt is our product,” was borrowed from the tobacco industry and weaponized against us. Suing the big oil companies like we did the tobacco companies is a good start, but we need more to get our climate-destroying emissions under control.

This election may well seal or determine the fate and future of democracy in the United States and, by extension, most of the rest of the world. “American democracy is under attack because the defeated former president of the United States refuses to accept the results of the 2020 election,” President Biden told the nation last night. “He refuses to accept the will of the people, he refuses to accept the fact that he lost.” I wrote about this six months ago, and it’s time to talk again about what an American fascist government would look like. Because over the next two weeks we may or may not, depending on how these elections turn out, very rapidly slide into a state-by-state form of fascism much like the old Confederacy. Like the old Confederacy, it will feature political violence and threats of violence, rigged elections, and single-party rule combined with a corrupt oligarchy that finances the politicians.

The most important takeaway from today’s inflation crisis is that we must get our corporations back under control if we’re to have an economy that works for us instead of just for the billionaires. Lifelong Republican and Trump Fed appointee Jerome Powell is preparing to hit the American economy — American workers, in particular — upside the head with another 2x4 today. His theory is that if enough people get thrown out of work, employers will have so many folks desperate for jobs they can start cutting pay (or at least stop having to offer pay increases). But is out-of-control pay driving inflation? There’s little evidence of that.

No democracy in the world can work if its citizens don’t believe their votes are legitimately counted: This lie that started in 1964 is now a harpoon pointed at the heart of our democracy. Following Donald Trump’s corrupt script, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is encouraging his followers to shut that country down because he is, so far, refusing to acknowledge that he lost the election. This is a crisis for democracy. Nations have to figure out how they are to be governed. Most of recorded history tells the story of kings, popes, priests, lords, and barons who ruled through violence and imposed themselves on their people rather than the people selecting them. Ultimately, as we all learned in high school civics, you can have a government chosen democratically with a free and fair vote or you can have a government chosen through brute force and violence. There really aren’t any other choices. That was the great American experiment. Replacing a violent hereditary warlord king with a president and congress elected by the people. Democracy.

They're betting no one will notice the GOP is increasing their wealth & lowering their taxes while manipulating white male anger & violence against women, immigrants, liberals, and people of color... America’s rightwing billionaires are making a risky bet. They’re betting that supporting openly fascist policies and politicians will increase their wealth, lower their taxes, and let them get away with more and more questionable business practices without government oversight. All without blowing back on them. They’re betting that, with the blessing of 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court (Citizens United), they can pour just enough money into election campaigns to swing them by slim margins to friendly politicians, but hold back enough on their funding (and those electoral margins) that it won’t be obvious to everybody that they’re simply buying elections all across the nation.

Sunday book excerpt: The Hidden History of the War on Voting. Wealthy white men have had the right to vote in America since the beginning of our republic. It’s been a very, very different story for women and Native Americans. Women’s voting rights took a long time. Native Americans’ took longer.

The Best of the Rest of the News — He was watching Nancy! Politically-inspired violence. — New research proves GOP policies are killing Americans. — Two Presidents gave talks this week and one was ignored. — Why don't they ever say "Republican"? — We now know a Trump-humping FBI chief blew the Portland protest all out of proportion. — Why the GOP can't help with inflation. — Now, even the Mayo Clinic is warning people about the Medicare Advantage scam! — Geeky Science: There's good news and bad news on the climate. The UN reports that we're at "a sobering moment" for the planet... renewable sources of electricity are, with only few exceptions, now cheaper than any other form of power generation. — Twitter seems to be pretty damn shocking under its new management.

If Democrats had run all the Red states in 2019, then 171,030 fewer Americans would have died that year; if the GOP ran the Blue states, there would have been an additional 217,635 dead Americans. If you were born and live in Japan, you can expect to live to 85 years old. For South Korea average lifespan is 83, as are Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Israel, and Australia. It’s 82 for Italy, Spain, Ireland, France, Finland, and New Zealand. Cuba (!) and Panama are 79; Uruguay and Croatia are 78. A total of 61 countries have average lifespans of 78 years or older, ranging from Singapore’s 84 to Estonia’s 78. And then there’s the United States. Our average lifespan comes in at a paltry 77 years, along with Iran, Tunisia, and Morocco. And it’s entirely because of Republican policies.

Economic crises represent social and political transition points, times of great difficulty but also times of great opportunity - We now stand at the edge of one those rare windows in time. America is in the midst of an economic crisis and Russia and China seem hell-bent on pushing us to what may become a world war. We’ve been here three times before in the history of our country, and each one has heralded major changes in the nature and structure of our government. As we watch corporations pour increasingly large amounts of money into politics, it’s a good time to reevaluate their role in governance and society. At the top of that list is the doctrine created out of whole cloth by the US Supreme Court in the late 19th century called “Corporate Personhood.“ It has become one of the most destructive forces in American politics.

We can tell Saudi Arabia’s dictator and the most predatory oil companies to go screw themselves at the same time we do the best thing for an average working Americans. It’s not even winter yet, and America’s Northeastern states are already experiencing both shortages and price shocks on heating oil. The headline at Bloomberg this week says it all: “New York, New England Ration Heating Oil Even Before Peak Winter.”