Hartmann Report

To stop our climate-change-driven suicide, Congress must stop allowing oil exports, end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and promote clean American energy. Each American — man, woman and child — paid around $2000 last year to subsidize the fossil fuel industry, according to an analysis this year by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Worldwide, the fossil fuel industry’s lobbying power has gotten it about $6 trillion a year in subsidies; America’s $600 billion a year gift to the energy barons pours cash into this massively profitable industry at the rate of a million dollars a minute. We’re funding our own suicide: the world’s largest fossil fuel companies right now have drilling and mining operations underway that, if completed, will push the world well past a catastrophic 2.7 degrees Celsius, the level that some scientists estimate could lead to a dinosaur-level extinction.

It’s time to establish an ethics standard for the Court, as well as passing a law that legalizes abortion nationwide that can’t be struck down by 5 handpicked religious fanatics. Pramila Jayapal and Elizabeth Warren just introduced legislation to impose a code of judicial ethics on the Supreme Court. Today Chuck Schumer is holding a vote in the Senate to legalize abortion nationwide. The barrier to either becoming law is the Supreme Court’s own argument that it’s essentially above the law with regard to ethics and that — on constitutional issues — it has final say and can’t be overruled by Congress without a constitutional amendment.

Because he has not been held to account, Trumpism has spread across the US landscape like metastasized cancer, with GOP politicians who aspire to corrupt strongman status emulating him in every state. Trump unleashed what has become a million US Covid deaths, a war in Ukraine, and an attempted coup against the United States, all while coarsening our politics and ratcheting up hate. And now racist, rightwing politicians who disdain democracy are imitating him all across the nation. What is the impact of all this on America and Americans, and when will he be held to account?

America is no longer all-white or all-under-white-control and white supremacists on the Court are bound and determined to do something about it. The abortion battle is not just about religion. We’re also watching the last ages of white supremacy, and it’s scaring the hell out of white people who’ve bought into the racist belief that “others” are fundamentally different and inferior. This firestorm around abortion is another dimension of the white freak-out about the browning of America that stretches from the days of slavery through 19th century “scientific racism” to Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve: America is no longer all-white or all-under-white-control.

How Corporations Became 'People' - and How You Can Fight Back." Fast on the heels of the passage and then Supreme Court interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment, a new type of feudalism emerged in America with the Industrial Revolution; it included women, people of color, and first-generation immigrants. The explosion of factories in the East and the Midwest was so great and so rapid that millions of workers emigrated from Europe to the United States, many of them arriving deeply in debt and indentured to their new employers.

The Best of the Rest of the News. - Louisiana wants to be the first state to execute a woman for getting an abortion - How badly will Fed Chair and Trump appointee Jerome Powell damage the economy? - Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has an election-year strategy: go after the children of refugees and immigrants. - Speaking of the Supreme Court again (how can we avoid it?), they've opened a new can of worms around religion (surprise!). - Neoliberalism is hated, even in France. - Is Putin at peak desperation? - Geeky Science! If Meatless Mondays could save the world's forests, would you participate? - Crazy Alert! a lion, a bear, and a tiger cub were rescued from an abandoned house belonging to a drug dealer and were adopted by an animal sanctuary. For the next fifteen years, they lived together as best friends.

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.