Hartmann Report

How humans are hitting the thresholds of our environmental, cultural and psychological limits...and what we can do to rescue ourselves and life on our planet.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Get ready for lots of media attention to crime, probably starting in a big way this summer. — The rightwing cancer on American Democracy — Voter suppression works. — When cops are criminals — The gun industry targets our children — Privacy lost: When people call into crisis or suicide hotlines, they assume privacy and confidentiality. — The beginning of the end of the pandemic? — Crazy Alert! "Female problems" at Fox "News"? — Biden is cleaning up poisons.

Welcome to the racist, misogynous, anti-democracy faction that has seized control of today’s GOP and their media cheerleaders: How long will they hold onto their power over the entire party? The Republican Party has lost all its legitimacy because, in the past few decades, it has become a white supremacist version of what Father of the Constitution James Madison called a “faction.” Loosely, a “faction“ is a “special interest” group of people who are willing to damage the interests of other people just to gain their own benefit. And, as Madison warned us, factions destroy democracies.

Children are the future & to cripple a fifth of our kids with poverty while forcing their families into terrible choices between childcare or food is grotesque & America can do better. Does it, as the old African saying goes, take a village to raise a child? According to Republican Senator Ron Johnson, the answer is “no.” “I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children,” Johnson said while trying to lay his hands on some of the $403,733 that Kwik Trip’s executives and employees coughed up in the last election cycle (most went to the RNC). Johnson added that it wasn’t just his philosophy that rich people’s tax dollars shouldn’t help children in poverty get decent nutrition or housing. He thinks if we use those tax dollars to help out struggling families it’ll actually be bad for America.

After four years of America having a professional, lifelong criminal as our president, is it any wonder crime is up? Years ago when Nextdoor.com rolled out, Louise signed up to see what was happening in our neighborhood; back then it was mostly people offering kittens, trying to find their lost dogs, or begging neighbors to take piles of zucchini. Today, in many parts of the country, it’s become a running list of assaults and burglaries. Crime is up and people are noticing. Which means it’ll get political, and fast. Republicans are planning to make crime a big issue this fall for the elections: Newt Gingrich just pointed out on Fox how well it worked for Glen Youngkin in Virginia and they see it as a template for November.

This debate about how humans should govern themselves is the real battle of our time, both metaphorically and literally, both internationally and right here at home. Democracy is in trouble, and the Russian/Ukrainian conflict highlights how imperiled it is becoming in the 21st century. The real issue in eastern Ukraine isn’t just land, any more than the real issue in the US last week was the filibuster: that’s all the noise on the surface. What’s grinding away below the surface, however, is the erosion or outright destruction of democracy itself, whether by invasion from without or corruption from within.

Lives are at stake, and the next person needing help could easily be you, a member of your family, or, like me, an old friend’s husband. Lives are at stake, and the next person needing help could easily be you, a member of your family, or, like me, an old friend's husband. O. Henry died over a hundred years ago, but his story The Gift of the Magi about a poor woman who sold her long hair to buy a gift for her husband on the same day he bought her a hard-sought gift of combs for her long hair still echoes through our culture. In a modern-day variation on the story, my friend of many decades, Elizabeth Barlow Montes, donated one of her kidneys to a friend's sister back in 2004. Now her husband, whose lifelong diabetes finally destroyed his own kidneys, needs a kidney to save his life but Elizabeth can't be that donor as she only has one left.

The amazing story of how a lie told by a politically ambitious Supreme Court clerk in 1886 altered the course of American history and paved the way for the modern corporate takeover of US politics

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Are we on the verge of a third major European war? — The Plot to End America: — The Plot to Change America. — Covid didn't cause the hospital crisis. — Crazy Alert: fascists demand groveling. — In Good News: Republican voter suppression notwithstanding, Stacey Abrams has a good shot at becoming Georgia's governor, helping to turn that purple state blue. — Video of the week with Dr. Jason Box: Is the Jet Stream Collapsing? And what about all that frozen methane?

It's time to say “No” to Big Tech and “smart” appliances that are, in reality, data thieves attaching themselves to us and our homes like blood-sucking parasites. A few weeks ago our decade-old, serially-repaired dishwasher gave up the ghost, soaking the kitchen floor in the process. Louise found a replacement online that met her needs and fitted into the space we had, and two burly guys came out this week to install it while she stood outside with all the doors and windows open. “It’s a smart dishwasher,” she told me, handing me the instruction manual. “Figure out how to hook it up to my cell phone so we can control it remotely.” I dutifully read the manual and downloaded the app from the overseas company that made the dishwasher. And that’s where it got weird.