Hartmann Report

Economic crises represent social and political transition points, times of great difficulty but also times of great opportunity - We now stand at the edge of one those rare windows in time. America is in the midst of an economic crisis and Russia and China seem hell-bent on pushing us to what may become a world war. We’ve been here three times before in the history of our country, and each one has heralded major changes in the nature and structure of our government. As we watch corporations pour increasingly large amounts of money into politics, it’s a good time to reevaluate their role in governance and society. At the top of that list is the doctrine created out of whole cloth by the US Supreme Court in the late 19th century called “Corporate Personhood.“ It has become one of the most destructive forces in American politics.

We can tell Saudi Arabia’s dictator and the most predatory oil companies to go screw themselves at the same time we do the best thing for an average working Americans. It’s not even winter yet, and America’s Northeastern states are already experiencing both shortages and price shocks on heating oil. The headline at Bloomberg this week says it all: “New York, New England Ration Heating Oil Even Before Peak Winter.”

Simply put, the elections are “tightening” because rightwing billionaires and giant corporations are pouring billions of dollars into advertising. And advertising works. The polls are tightening up right now, and the media is treating it like it’s some mystical force of nature causing people to shift their concerns from abortion, guns, climate, democracy, and the survival of Social Security over to gas prices, Black crime, banning books, and trans kids playing sports. The media, of course, knows what’s going on. They’re the secondary recipients of it, right behind the politicians, because they’re making billions conveying the GOP message to America. Which, of course, is why they won’t tell you what the real game is here or how it’s being played.

Authoritarianism has been interwoven into the fabric of our republic since its inception and the Republican Party is today fighting what will hopefully be a losing battle to hang onto and expand it… Americans are afraid of the wrong thing. When you ask most Americans what authoritarianism looks like, they’ll describe jackbooted thugs goosestepping up to their house to drag them away to a concentration camp. That, however, is not authoritarianism: that’s Nazi style tyranny, aka totalitarianism, where the government controls every aspect of life including those that are social, religious, and economic, along with a police state that uses terror to rule with absolute power.

Sunday book excerpt: The Hidden History of the War on Voting As the drama of writing the Constitution for a new nation was going on during the summer of 1787 in Independence Hall in Philadelphia (then the home of the Pennsylvania Legislature), a different kind of drama was playing out in the streets of that city. It was, according to the newspapers of the day and the letters sent home from delegates to the convention, a brutally hot, muggy, mosquito-infested summer in Philadelphia. This was during a time when the mechanisms of weather were largely unknown, and superstition was thickly merged with Christianity. Thus, on May 5, when a boy of about five years died of an apparent heatstroke, an elderly woman in town was accused of being the witch who’d cast a spell upon him.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Whoa...Was Trump selling America's secrets on Iran & China? — On top of being a traitor, Trump is also a criminal, although this most recently identified crime was also in furtherance of his attempts to destroy democracy in the United States of America. — While Ukrainians are fighting for their lives, Republicans are openly bragging that they intend to stab our allies in the back. — Meanwhile, it appears that Putin is upping his genocide threat against Ukraine, while his own military may be sabotaging his desire to use tactical nuclear weapons against that country. — The predictable consequence of too many guns. — If you want to destroy a democracy, the first step is to convince its citizens that they can't trust their own election systems. — What's up with the polls? — Why is the mainstream media ignoring the GOP plan to blow up the global economy and destroy Social Security? — Good News: Record numbers of Americans are voting early.

We can have democracy here in America, or we can have leaders of government beholden to billionaires and corporations - we can’t have both. As long as money is considered First Amendment-protected “free speech” under US law, we will remain gridlocked in a corrupt stasis where the will of the American people is ignored in deference to the will of billionaires and giant corporations. I just checked, and there’s $86 in the pocket of my jeans. I rarely use cash anymore; it’s probably been in there for at least a month, maybe two. And in that entire time, I’ve never heard a single word, sound, or even a grunt from my small wad of dollar bills. Nonetheless, in defiance of literally hundreds of good government laws passed over a 200-year period by both federal and state legislatures and signed by multiple presidents and governors, “conservatives” on the US Supreme Court have declared that my $86 is “speech.”

Instead of putting the Supreme Court in charge of US laws, the Framers of the Constitution did the opposite: they put Congress in charge of the Supreme Court. Why isn't congress regulating them? The Supreme Court may be within a few months of ending democracy in the United States and turning the White House over to a group of billionaires who’ve already funded the GOP takeover of multiple state legislatures. But don’t just take my word for it. Consider these sources: Law & Crime: Election Law Experts Sound the Alarm About ‘Extremely Dangerous’ Voting Rights Case the Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear Demand Justice: Republican Supreme Court to Decide If Democrats Are Allowed to Win Elections Anymore The Atlantic: Is Democracy Constitutional? MSNBC: Moore v. Harper Could Upend Elections as We Know Them And Moore v Harper is just the latest in a long string of naked assaults on American democracy and the rights of average American citizens, particularly when they conflict with the rights of billionaires and giant corporations. So, how the hell did we end up here?

When you compare Trump’s cons with the $50 trillion that the GOP has swindled out of the American working class and given to the top 1 percent since 1980, Trump looks like a piker. The title of Maggie Haberman’s new book about Donald Trump is “Confidence Man” and, truth be told, Trump has been a con man his entire life. Haberman documents it all in excruciating detail. But when you compare Trump’s cons with the $50 trillion that the GOP has conned out of the American working class and given to the top 1 percent since 1980, Trump looks like a piker. He played his role in that GOP con, of course, setting up the very richest Americans to get more billions of dollars a year in tax breaks for the foreseeable future, but he’s a Johnny-come-lately to the GOP game.

It’s all in the message and it’s repetition, but if you don’t engage a topic, put it at the top of your 3-item list, and relentlessly pound on it - it’s as if it doesn’t exist. Republicans are pulling ahead in the polls right now because of the issues of the economy, crime, and homelessness, according to a new New York Times/Siena College poll published just yesterday. More than a year ago, I wrote about this very danger in an article titled, “A Crime Wave Could Take Down the Democrats in 2022” (among others). Democrats must start addressing crime and homelessness right now, and the most effective way to pull it off is to fold it into a holistic message that includes two more issues — say, the economy/inflation and the environment — so that they’re making use of “the rule of threes.”