Hartmann Report

Student debt is a crime, weakening our intellectual infrastructure while maintaining and rigidifying racial and class caste systems inherited from the eras of slavery and indenture... Six Republicans on the Supreme Court just killed President Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness program. Republicans, predictably, are giddy, celebrating another Supreme Court victory in which, on behalf of their neofascist billionaire owners, they’re again “owning the libs.” They’re ecstatic that poor and working class people — particularly Black women who, as ABC News noted, “hold nearly two-thirds of the nearly $2 trillion outstanding student debt in the U.S.” — will find it ever harder to climb into the middle class, which increasingly requires a college degree.

"The War on Drugs employs millions—politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military—that probably couldn’t find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners." — Science-fiction author and political activist L. Neil Smith

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Republicans on the Supreme Court tell students to go screw themselves. — Are lunch counters denying service to Black people next? — Stochastic terror is their strategy, just like it was for the Nazis before them. — Geeky Science: Democracy prevailed in the Americas long before Europeans showed up. — Crazy Alert! Imprisonment for peeing your pants?

Is democracy — a system of decision- and rule-making that encompasses the collective wisdom of the group — a survival system every bit as important as technology, science, & economics? Republicans want a top-down, hierarchical political and economic system. Democrats want a bottom-up system with maximum participation and broad sharing of society’s wealth. Who is right?

As President Biden said, “We can't take democracy for granted any longer. … Make no mistake. Democracy is on the ballot...” NBC News reported this week that Trump is not only still leading the GOP field, but that his margin is growing: “Former President Donald Trump has expanded his lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the rest of the Republican presidential field since Trump’s latest indictment on federal criminal charges, according to a new national NBC News poll.” Another national survey, reported by NBC on Monday, shows a tossup in a Trump-Biden matchup; Biden’s small lead is within the margin of error. All of which raises the question: what would America be like if Trump or a similarly fascist Republican were to take the White House in 2024? What would the dire warnings about American fascism, were they realized, mean in real life?

Is there something in the GOP’s core beliefs and strategies that just inevitably leads to hating on their citizens and worshiping poverty, death, and disease? Yesterday in my Daily Take I documented some of the horrors Red state governors and legislators are using stolen Blue state tax money to inflict on their citizens. They include specific policies intended to impoverish workers, subjugate women, increase gun violence, enrich local oligarchs, and make life miserable for racial, gender, and religious minorities. But how did they get to this point?

Red states are mooching off the Blue states, using that essentially stolen tax money to reinvent the old Confederacy, “own the libs,” and wage “war on woke...” America is rapidly bifurcating — becoming two nations — and one of the main drivers of the process is a federal system that encourages Red states to mooch off Blue states, using essentially stolen tax money to reinvent the old Confederacy, “own the libs,” and wage “war on woke.” Most Red states have become oligarchic white supremacist medieval-like fiefdoms with obscene levels of often multigenerational wealth at the top, extreme poverty at the bottom, and working people, women, and minorities kept in subordinate roles through explicit government and corporate policy. In this, these Red states are following the once-classic European and later Southern US tradition of a patriarchal, hierarchical society run by male kings, nobles, plantation masters, and wealthy churchmen, with all the work done by serfs, slaves, women, or impoverished wage-slaves.

If we are to have a livable planet going forward, we must take on this toxic, poisonous, and deadly industry that is apparently run by psychopaths with little regard for human life. The county I live in is suing the fossil fuel industry for over $50 billion because their products and their lies about their products’ dangers killed almost 90 of our citizens. It’s a small step, but one that — if it spreads worldwide — could save billions of lives. My grandson is 5; by the time he’s my age the entire planet’s ecosystems could in full-blown collapse, according to a new study titled Earlier Collapse of Anthropocene Ecosystems Driven by Multiple Faster and Noisier Drivers published in last week’s peer-reviewed journal Nature Sustainability.

"There are no free and democratic and wealthy countries in the world that have our rate of gun violence." —E. J. Dionne, PBS NewsHour

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Looks like we can add another right-wing justice to the Supreme Court ethics scandals. — Did the DOJ delay inflict irreparable injury on the people of the United States, the rule of law, and the Constitution? — The GOP just took electoral control of Texas’ biggest Blue county. — Why do Republicans in Ohio want “both sides” of slavery and the Holocaust taught? — Georgia teacher fired for reading book about acceptance to fifth grade class of gifted students. — Why hasn’t the FBI searched Bedminster? — America continues to screw native Americans. — Geeky Science! The fossil fuel industry and their lies killed almost 90 citizens of the Portland area in 2021, and our county wants to held them to account in court. — Crazy Alert! Rightwingers are now livid because men in romance novels aren’t “alpha” enough — really?!?