Hartmann Report

Predatory industries — making millions by helping billionaires squeeze pennies out of working class people — are a tragic indicator of our having reached what I call “the cancer stage of capitalism.” In union news this week, Starbucks apparently isn’t happy when you go into the store and give your name as “Union Strong” so the baristas have to call that out when your order is ready. Management has apparently instructed their workers to refuse to shout out any name that has the word “union” in it.

It’s time to discuss religion, because it’s no longer knocking on our door: Sam Alito just sent it into the house with a no-knock warrant and stun grenades that threaten to catch the place on fire. Democrats are generally disinclined to discuss religion, much less debate it. They like to point out that Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin were famously atheist, Jefferson and dozens of other high-profile people in the Founding generation were deists (a close cousin to atheists and certainly not Christians), and that in two different places the Constitution explicitly rejects religion interfering with government or vice-versa. But it’s time to discuss religion whether we like it or not, because it’s no longer knocking on our door: Sam Alito just sent it into the house with a no-knock warrant and stun grenades that threaten to catch the place on fire.

If this decision succeeds in removing rights — like Dred Scott and Plessy did — history tells us the turning of events will still be toward progress. But how many women will die in the process? Sam Alito and his buddies may think they’re winning, but, if its any consolation, they’re on the wrong side of history and will ultimately lose. The history of democracy moves forward, then is jerked back by reactionary forces, then moves forward again: it’s been going that way since ancient Greece. The leaked SCOTUS decision on abortion isn’t a singular and lonely stream of misplaced misogyny; instead, it’s part of a larger river of political efforts to turn the clock back to a bygone era when straight wealthy white men ruled everybody else with absolute, unquestioned power.

Abortion can be re-legalized if Democrats in Congress choose to set aside the filibuster and either pass a law codifying Roe or, with a more long-term strategy, add new members to the Court. Politico is reporting that the Supreme Court has already voted to strike down Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey, and possibly even Griswold v Connecticut. The decision is in draft form, but expected to be released this summer. The GOP first set this as a goal in 1981 with the election of Ronald Reagan who, prior to cutting a cynical deal with Jerry Falwell for church help in the 1980 election, had signed the most liberal abortion law in the nation as California governor. Now it appears their 41-year campaign has reached its fruition. This is the first time in the lifetime of anybody living today that the Supreme Court has removed from our law a major “right” that directly or indirectly affects all Americans.

Racists and bigots must be called out, labeled and shunned, regardless of how wealthy or powerful they may be. The country needs rebuilding… It’s time to stop normalizing and accommodating the white supremacists among us. They may be a third of America, but they’re the lost third, longing for return to a time we will never revisit. Instead of looking forward, they’re stuck to a past that will never be revived, no matter how many elections they rig or people they terrorize or kill. The America I was born into and grew up in as a kid was a very different place from today. In the 1950s the country was firmly under the control of straight white men.

Jane Anne Morris is a corporate anthropologist and writer in Madison, Wisconsin, and she is affiliated with the Program on Corporations, Law, and Democracy (POCLAD), one of the leading organizations doing research and work in illuminating the story of corporate personhood. Morris discovered that on the eve of his becoming chief justice of Wisconsin's Supreme Court, Edward G. Ryan said ominously in his 1873 address to the graduating class of the University of Wisconsin Law School, "[There] is looming up a new and dark power…the enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economical conquests only, but for political power….The question will arise and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine, which shall rule—wealth or man [sic]; which shall lead—money or intellect; who shall fill public stations—educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital…."

The Best of the Rest of the News. — "Jan. 6 Committee's Bombshells Hiding in Plain Sight" — Is The Second Great Dying underway in our oceans? — What is the status of the Covid pandemic? — The Medicare "Advantage" scam is breaking through into mainstream media. — Is the Fed killing the economic recovery on purpose? — What kind of student debt relief is on its way? — In Good News, California is going after the plastics industry for over 50 years of lies about the human and environmental dangers of their products. — Crazy Alert! Fox host says public schools are part of a "new world order" conspiracy plan to "bring the children into part of the government."

The situation for girls and women in red states is surprisingly analogous to that of enslaved people escaping their tormentors in the South. Share “Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.” —Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale If you’re the family of a 12-year-old girl in Texas who’s been raped and impregnated, or the husband of a 50-year-old Oklahoma woman who’s at higher risk of death from pregnancy after a failure of birth control, your only truly safe option right now is to move to Canada.

The Trump presidency finally and for all time pulled the mask off their “we oppose big government” lie - there is no conceivable way a government could be “bigger“ than for it to establish martial law. Some say the Republican Party has gone nuts. In reality, they’ve simply reached the endpoint toward which they’ve been moving for 62 years: fascism. Republican politicians since Barry Goldwater’s 1960 campaign have trash-talked “big government” in the United States. Like Reagan’s assertions that cutting taxes on rich people would “trickle down” benefits to poor people, or his claim that destroying labor unions would increase take-home pay for working people, this one’s just another lie.

The reality is that Rand Paul’s beloved libertarianism can only be realized in an authoritarian oligarchy where average people lack the resources or political power to have a real say, like in Russia. Americans of all political persuasions were somewhere between horrified and mystified yesterday when Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul argued that the US shouldn’t help Ukraine gain NATO membership because, as Putin said when he started the war, Ukraine was “part of the Soviet Union.” Seriously — check it out...