Hartmann Report

America must get to the bottom of this before these "traitors or saviors" let it happen again, perhaps as soon as next November. So, which was it? Because of the diligent work by the January 6th Select Committee in the House of Representatives, we’re learning that “stop the steal” was first planned for when Trump lost the 2016 election, except they had to put it on the shelf for four years because he unexpectedly won.

In these days of dark news from the rise of militarism to a new wave of Covid, there are green shoots: neoliberalism is finally being replaced by social democracy around the world & in America. Seventeen years before Reagan plunged America into the pains of our current 40-year-long experiment with neoliberalism, Henry Kissinger, the CIA and the University of Chicago’s Milton Friedman helped a murderous general, Augusto Pinochet, stage a military coup in Chile. Their goal was to “prove” Friedman’s bizarre new economic and political theory could one day save the world from both communism and fascism. Not only did neoliberalism not save the world, it has (predictably) empowered authoritarians across the planet.

There is a “potential power,” a tightly coiled force quietly waiting for a real emergency, buried deep in our Constitution for 232 years. It's time to unleash it. The Founders of this nation, and the Framers who wrote our Constitution, created (as Ben Franklin famously said) a constitutional republic: a government “deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed” through citizens’ (then white men) right to vote. They referred to this as “republicanism” because it was based on the Greek and Roman republics (then thousands of years in the past but still remembered and idealized), and when put into law they called it “a Republican Form of Government.” Today that form of government in crisis in America, as that core right to vote that defines republicanism is under attack by Republican legislators in red states across our nation.

Two excerpts from a book that changed the worlds of education, psychiatry and psychology by suggesting that neurological differences are not necessarily mental diseases and can actually be assets. Hunters and Farmers Twenty Years Later. Hunters in Our Schools and Offices.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — One chapter heading for the report from the House Select Committee on Covid issued yesterday is: "The Trump Administration's Persistent Political Interference in the Pandemic Response Contributed to One of the Worst Failures of Leadership in American History." — Wednesday saw the last checks from the expanded child tax credit. — Which raises the question: why are Manchin and Sinema so committed to breaking with their own party and stabbing the American people in the back? — Last Thursday I proposed Democrats in Congress should openly defy the Supreme Court and pass legislation that blows up the Citizens United decision, including language forbidding the Court from ruling against them. — At the same time Fox "News" personalities Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Brian Kilmeade were downplaying the violence at the Capitol on January 6th and suggesting on the air that "antifa" was sprinkled through the crowd stirring things up, they were frantically texting Mark Meadows to tell his boss, Donald Trump, to call off his mob before more people died. — Crazy Alert! While one of Elon Musk's companies is working on a way to rebuild the spinal cord connections to the brain for paralyzed people, Steve Bannon sees a plot to "chip" us just in time for the 2022 elections. — In (Maybe) Good News: New York's Attorney General Tish James says she's "tired of prayers" and is going to do something about guns. — More Good News: The FDA has ruled that pharmaceuticals that can safely and reliably induce an abortion at home up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy can be sold online and delivered in the mail.

Science doesn’t lie - A true sh*tstorm is on its way, and it’s going to hit red-county Trump voters like the climate change hurricanes just hit Kentucky . Omicron is on its way, and it loves to infect people who’ve been previously infected with other variants of Covid, the unvaccinated, and even people who think they’re fully vaccinated (but not boosted). While all of us can get infected with Omicron, how sick you get from that infection is very different, depending on which category you belong to.

Congress should stand up for what’s right and "legally bribed politicians" isn’t that: it's time to end the bribery & get something done for the people, for a change. Our democracy is in a crisis, with many thoughtful and not-prone-to-hysteria commentators are wondering out loud if the Republican embrace of Trumpism has gone so far that it may take the entire country over the edge.

If our media and body politic are infected with a cancer it’s time to isolate it so it can’t further harm our democracy and, by extension, the democracies of the world. What country in its right mind would allow a foreign entity to come into their country, set up a major propaganda operation, and then use it to so polarize that nation that its very government suffers a violent assault and its democracy finds itself at a crossroads? Apparently, the United States. And we’re not the first, according to former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Inflation is not Biden’s fault and I’d argue what my wife threatens to put on my tombstone: that “it all started with Reagan.” America is experiencing inflation, and Republicans are saying it’s because Democrats want to help out average Americans instead of just attending to the wants and desires of billionaires and the fossil fuel industry, as we’ve been doing since 1981. In fact, most of today’s inflation was set up by Ronald Reagan when he kicked off the turn of our government from Keynesian to neoliberal economic policies in 1981. Without his neoliberal “free trade” and “monopoly-is-okay” policies we wouldn’t be experiencing most of it.

The GOP has embraced the oligarchic strong-man police-state & the Democratic Party is returning to its progressive & populist roots -- we face a moment of great danger & one of great opportunity. Do we stand on the edge of a grand new progressive era, with good wages for all, racial and gender equality and justice, and a reduction of the political power of reactionary forces in America? Or will the next president gleefully overthrow American democracy, shutter the free press, and imprison those who object?