Hartmann Report

How is it possible that the rest of the world is recovering from the Covid/Oil/War inflation bump, but things are getting worse here in the USA? “[T]he monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us … like an overgrown standing army, has become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.” — Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776 There’s lots of speculation about what may be causing today’s terrible inflation to continue to rise. Is it rebound demand from Covid? Too much “quantitative easing” stimulus from the Fed? Chinese botched-Covid supply chain issues? Saudi Arabia withholding oil from world markets? Russia’s terrorist campaign against Ukraine?

The NRA used to say, “An armed society is a polite society.” The truth is that an armed society is a fearful, dangerous, and — eventually — authoritarian society. When I was a child there was a kid in our neighborhood who made my life hell. Dennis was a bully and delighted in chasing and beating up me and several others; we’d alter our route home from elementary school to avoid him. Some of the kids he pounded on joined him as a way of protecting themselves from him — the way Lindsay Graham sucks up to Donald Trump — which only increased the terror level for the rest of us in our little lower-middle-class suburb as Dennis and his friends formed their own gang.

Your generation today holds only 4.6% of the nation’s wealth and you’re most likely struggling to own a home & are deeply in debt. What happened? In a word, Republicans… Dear millennials: back in the 1980s a lot of us worked like hell to try to stop the Reagan revolution. We failed. This may be our last chance to save American democracy and the American middle-class. When my boomer generation was the same average age as your millennial generation is today, back in 1990, our generation held 21.3% of the nation’s wealth. Louise and I shared in that wealth; although we were still in our 30s, in 1990 we owned a profitable small business (our fourth) and a nice home in suburban Atlanta. That was, in fact, the “American dream.” It was normal then.

Will Ron DeSantis succumb to the same temptation to rig the election for himself, like Jeb Bush did for his brother George? As Michael Keaton once said in a movie, “Is a frog’s ass watertight?” It appears that Ron DeSantis is getting ready to pull a Jeb Bush: Floridians should get ready. Jeb, then governor of Florida, famously threw the 2000 election in Florida — with a little help from 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court — to his brother, Texas Governor George W. Bush, who won the election by a mere 537 votes. Jeb did this through his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, using voter purges and “spoilage” of Black people’s ballots.

Will enough Americans finally wake up to this 40-year grift to put an end to it and return our country to sanity? Minneapolis residents Jess and John Pentz — a couple who’ve been married for 17 years — were traveling through Hayward, Wisconsin over the 4th of July weekend when Jess realized she’d forgotten to bring her birth control pills. They pulled into the local Hayward Walgreens pharmacy, where Jess picked up a box of condoms from a shelf and handed them to the clerk manning the register. “Manning” seems to be the right verb here: “John,” the Walgreens clerk, refused to ring them up.

In 1982 a study of America’s five hundred largest corporations reported that “23 percent of them had been convicted of a major crime or had paid more than $50,000 in penalties for serious misbehavior during the previous decade.” If Corporations Are Persons, Why Aren’t Their Crimes in the Statistics?

The Best of the Rest of the News. — In the past 11 years, Republican gun policy has killed over 26,000 American children. — Republicans on the Wisconsin Supreme Court choose voter suppression over democracy. — Now that DeSantis has brought to Florida the requirement for students and professors to register their sense of political freedom on campus with the state, will the GOP try to pass similar laws nationally? — A Canadian study has found that US cops are five times more likely (per capita) to kill a citizen than Canadian cops. — Only 5 percent of Republicans — having marinated in 4 years of lies and attacks on the press by Trump — say they trust American news; six times as many Democrats say they trust the news. — The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision striking down Roe v Wade is now putting the lives of women with lupus, severe arthritis, and cancer at risk. — Russia is betting that if the GOP takes control of the House of Representatives or the Senate this fall, their loyal Republicans will kill US support for Ukraine. Representative Matt Gaetz confirms that's the plan. — Speaking of Russia, the Financial Times (subscription required) is reporting that they're intentionally targeting Ukrainian hospitals and healthcare facilities to worsen the chaos their indiscriminate shelling of civilians is causing. — Crazy Alert! Women cause mass shootings, not guns, according to Fox "News." — Special bonus story: Gavin Newsome all but announces he wants to run against Ron DeSantis for president in 2024

If DeSantis — an authoritarian who’s even followed Il Duce’s lead in creating a private police force answerable only to himself — becomes president, George Washington’s nightmare could become true. I just got an alarming email from Ron DeSantis. More about that in a moment. Historians and political observers have been predicting that America would get our very own Mussolini ever since the days of Barry Goldwater. And there’s been no shortage of candidates: bribe-taking Nixon; Central American fascist-loving Reagan; Gitmo torturing and war-lying Bush; and, of course, Trump. But with Ron DeSantis, we may finally be facing an all-American politician who has Mussolini’s guile, ruthlessness, and willingness to see people die (from Covid or lack of medical care/Medicaid) to advance his political career, all while being smart and educated enough to avoid the easily satirized buffoonishness of Trump.

It turns out that America actually does have an issue with “cancel culture” but, the media has been focusing on the wrong one. Republicans are all about canceling things: you could call it GOP Cancel Culture. Most recently, for example, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is trying to cancel the First Amendment, requiring university teachers and students to register their political perspectives with the state. He has, in his rush to run for president in 2024, achieved a pinnacle of success, a victory of sorts, within the newest iteration of Republican Cancel Culture.

For much of the past four decades, climate activists have been warning us that we’re approaching tipping points that will alter how Americans live - now we’re there. There’s a new study out about climate change — and our new climate normal — that is truly shocking and, for those of us concerned about future generations, alarming. The lead researcher’s first name is Cassandra, no doubt an unintentional choice in the paper’s authors’ pecking order, but still. For much of the past four decades, climate activists have been warning us that we’re approaching tipping points and thresholds that will alter how Americans live, cost us a fortune, and kill thousands of Americans every year. Now we’re there. Our “normal” climate is dead; the weather has gone insane, and it is killing Americans and millions of people all around the globe.