Hartmann Report

The Best of the Rest of the News. — a Bizarre confluence of events could be setting America up for a real crisis in a year and a half. — A new study explains why Republicans are working so hard to make it more difficult for students and young adults to vote. — Earlier this week I wrote about a woman from Oklahoma who had to go to Kansas to get an abortion to save her own life. Soon, even Kansas may be shut down as a place of refuge for women in crisis. — Bed, Bath & Beyond is a poster child for the damage Reagan’s deregulation of capitalism has caused America. — Senator Dick Durban says a SCOTUS ethics overhaul is coming. — A new ocean warming study is so distressing, writes Julia Conley, that some scientists don’t want to talk about it. — Video of the Day: Wow. Hakeem Jeffries is so good at this. — Crazy Alert! This is what happens to people when they take money from fossil fuel billionaires.

This is a story as old as capitalism. During the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s, for example, some of America’s greatest fortunes were made or massively expanded… In yesterday’s Daily Take, I laid out a scenario where Kevin McCarthy and congressional Republicans could crash our economy by forcing a default on US debt, producing what could easily be a depression as deep and deadly as the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s. When I discussed this with people on the radio yesterday, several responded with incredulity. “Why would the Republicans,” they asked, “who generally represent the interests of corporations and the rich above all else, risk crashing the stock market and economy where those very same wealthy people have their money invested?” The question itself reveals a misunderstanding of how things work for the morbidly rich.

The US government has never, in our country’s entire history, defaulted on its debt. Neither, in recent history, have most other advanced democracies. Debt default is very much a Third World thing… Kevin McCarthy is playing with fire, and he’s on very shaky constitutional grounds. He believes that he can hold hostage payments for goods bought and services already provided to the federal government — debts of the United States — in exchange for forcing the Biden administration to go along with draconian cuts to veterans benefits, food stamps (SNAP benefits), Medicaid, the Inflation Reduction Act (particularly its subsidies for green energy), and the permanent establishment of Trump’s massive tax cuts for billionaires. Republicans started using the so-called “debt ceiling” — based on a law passed back in 1917 — as a cudgel to beat up Democratic presidents in 1995 during the Clinton administration. It was one of Newt’s “bright ideas.” Clinton and Obama went along with the GOP, but now their demands have become so extreme that President Biden is threatening a veto (if the bill even gets through the Senate, which it probably won’t).

If it seems to you like women in Red states are the subjects of witch hunts, you’re right. And it has nothing to do with “life”: it’s all about economic and political power. Jaci Statton wanted her baby, but the fetus wasn’t developing properly and was dying inside her. If it wasn’t removed from her uterus it might kill her, too. She was experiencing vaginal bleeding, high blood pressure, debilitating cramps, and “intense nausea.” As reporter Ben Felder wrote for The Oklahoman: “The longer the fetus remained inside her, the higher risk she would be for internal bleeding, kidney and liver failure, and even a stroke.” She and her husband first went to a nearby hospital, but — like one-in-six hospital beds in America — it was run to earn money for the Catholic Church and so refused to provide her with any help beyond fluids

I’m proposing Congress change the rules of how the Court operates around decisions in which they invoke the Constitution to change or strike down laws. America was never intended to have kings or queens, unaccountable to the people, ruling for life. But that’s what we have, because Congress and the White House never seriously pushed back against a power grab executed by the Supreme Court itself. It’s time to reduce the Court’s power in a way that agrees with the Constitution. We’ll almost certainly have to wait until the next time Democrats control the House, Senate, and White House, but that could happen in another 20 months, so we need to start planning now. I’m proposing Congress change the rules of how the Court operates around decisions in which they invoke the Constitution to change or strike down laws. Instead of operating along partisan majority lines, I’m suggesting they must have an absolute consensus — a unanimous decision — on any decisions involving the US Constitution.

So, why do people like this give a damn about whether a trans girl wants to compete in high school sports? Or whether a 10-year-old in Ohio, raped by her uncle, can get an abortion? Billionaires are funding the GOP, and many Americans wonder why. Do we really believe, for example, that a fossil fuel billionaire gives a rat’s ass about whether a high school in Florida teaches students about gay people or that African Americans were once enslaved in Tennessee? Why would they care?

The winter of 1610 in Jamestown, Virginia, is simply known as the “starving time.” Many settlers fled to join the Powhatan Indians to keep from starving. When summer arrived, the colonial governor sent a message to the Indians asking for the English settlers to be returned. It’s unclear exactly how the Powhatan tribe responded, but the colony reported to the English that they received “noe other than prowde and disdaynefull answers.” The Powhatan people most likely fed the refugee settlers and gave them shelter and hospitality, but the Virginia governor nonetheless dispatched soldiers to get “revenge.”

The Best of the Rest of the News. — It’s Earth Day - and the Earth’s ice is melting faster than anybody expected. — Did Fox “News” shoot Ralph Yarl? — Republicans are terrified by Gen-Z and have a plan to stop young people from voting — Trump judge Matthew Kacsmaryk didn’t just hide an anti-abortion rant he wrote for a law journal from the Senate, he also hid interviews he did with rightwing radio — Rightwing Billionaire-funded think tank is planning to put 20,000 Kacsmaryk’s in the administration of the next Republican president. — Tennessee Republicans want students, parents, and random rightwing nuts to “report” to the state for punishment teachers who dare discuss “divisive concepts” like Black or queer people having rights. — Senator Ron Wyden: Nothing unites Republicans more than “helping rich people cheat on their taxes.” — NATO chief says Ukraine’s “rightful place” is in the alliance. — In Good News: Washington state passed a semi-automatic rifle ban. — Geeky Science: The importance of small random acts of kindness

There’s still time to help the rest of America break those bonds by explaining how profitable hate and fear are for these media and social media empires… What’s the difference between heroin and Fox “News”? Starting in 1898, the Bayer company of Germany marketed diamorphine as an over-the-counter cough remedy and pain reliever under the brand name Heroin, taken from the German word for “heroic”; it took a generation to discover how addictive it was, leading to it being banned in the US in 1924 and around the world in the 1930s. Heroin’s power comes from its ability to reach below our level of conscious control and stimulate the body’s natural opiate system, producing a sensation of pleasure and fulfillment that sweeps away everyday concerns, seemingly answering all of life’s questions and problems.

The so-called “party of life” doesn’t, it turns out, give a damn about actual human life unless it has a net worth over a half-billion dollars... Kevin McCarthy has a keen new idea about what he thinks he can get out of Democrats in Congress in exchange for Republicans authorizing the government to pay the trillions in debt that Donald Trump racked up in his four years in office. In exchange for lifting the so-called debt ceiling, McCarthy wants Biden and congressional Democrats to throw millions of families off food stamps (SNAP) and end even the possibility of any help to low-income young people unable to pay off student loans.