Hartmann Report

How Yoon's State of Emergency and Trump's Strategies Are Eroding Global Freedoms South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose declaration of a state of emergency yesterday shocked the world, has often been referred to (both within and outside of his country) as "South Korea's Donald Trump." A political outsider, he came to power with anti-establishment and often outrageously inflammatory rhetoric, trash talking women's rights, "reforming" their healthcare system, and pushing hard for a neoliberal agenda that included raising the workweek from 52 to 69 hours. In that, he reflects a growing trend among advanced democracies around the world, as decades of neoliberalism have weakened multiple nations' abilities to sustain middle class lifestyles while enriching an oligarch class that's now reaching out — worldwide — to seize control of democratic governments to their own financial benefit.

A stark warning about Trump's dystopian plans for his second term... "The ideas you are about to hear are not idle conjecture. I have built upon a foundation of indisputable first causes, so that the unifying force which controls the cosmos is revealed in full clarity." — Jack Vance Trump named the plans for his second term "Agenda 47," although for reasons known only to them, America's mainstream media persists in ignoring it. They shouldn't. At best, it's a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world. Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans — which we'll probably see implemented during his first 100 days — include: Gut the EPA, OSHA, CPSB, IRS, the Labor Department, and other federal agencies that keep our air clean, our water pure, and protect average Americans from predation by the morbidly rich and their corporations

I don’t recall the year (think it was 2008?), but I remember well Louise and I meeting Ben Wikler over snacks and drinks at a small party at John Nichols’ home in Madison, Wisconsin. As we left, Louise remarked to me, “That kid’s going places. Keep an eye on him!” Ben has more than fulfilled her prediction, leading Wisconsin Democrats to victory after victory; this weekend he announced he’s running for head of the DNC. This is a truly big deal. The Democratic Party will decide who’ll lead it in February. Will it be a neoliberal agent of the donor class, another bland technocrat who tries to please everybody and offend nobody, or a true and tested agent of small-d democratic and middle class renewal like Ben? It may be the most important decision Democrats have made in fifty years. This matters because the morbidly rich always screw things up in their eternal quest for more! more!! more!!! wealth and power. And they’re doing it to our country now in a way that may well become irreversible if the Democrats make the wrong choice in February.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump is taking off the mask, after lying to us for over a year about not knowing anything about Project 2025 — Trump picks herd immunity advocate to lead National Institutes of Health (NIH). Want more death with your health policy? — Trump Chooses Megadonor Art Collector To Head U.S. Navy. Yep, an art collector and investment guy. To run the Navy. — So much for that "wall of separation between church and state" that Jefferson wrote about. — Musk wants to get rid of the anti-fraud police. Why? — Embarrassed Tesla owners are taking steps... — Jair Bolsonaro - aka "Brazil' Trump" (he fled to Mar-a-Lago when his followers attacked the legislature like Trump's did on January 6th) - thinks Trump and his people will get him back into power. — Crazy Alert! JD Vance posts a re-do of the famous Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting with him as Trump's wife - and rightwingers are going nuts with cringe. — Hunter in a Farmer's World: ADHD $ Neurodiversity Is Not a Disorder: India's Radical Respect for What America Loves to Pathologize — The Wisdom School: What it means to be human: From Chaos to Clarity: The Revolutionary Power of Being Alone

From Adams’ Sedition Acts to Trump’s relentless attacks, the war on truth threatens to unravel the very foundation of our republic... Yesterday, for Thanksgiving, I published a short history of Jefferson’s and his Democrats’ reaction to John Adams’ fearmongering for political power around the “XYZ Affair.” I referenced Adams’ shutting down the opposition newspapers in America, but a surprising number of people responded with: “What??? Really????? An American president shut down all the opposition newspapers because they insulted him? That really happened?” So here’s the rest of the story: Some Americans are suggesting that the ascendance of a strongman president who wants to shut down America’s press is totally new in the experience of America and may spell the end of both democracy and the Bill of Rights. History, however, shows another view, which offers us both warnings and hope. Although you won't learn much about it from reading the “Republican histories” of the Founders being published and promoted in the corporate media these days, the most notorious stain on the presidency of John Adams began in 1798 with the passage of a series of laws that would give him virtually unlimited strongman powers to attack his political enemies and, like Trump says he wants to do, end the First Amendment right of a free press.

From Jefferson’s era to today, history proves democracy’s defenders can still win… It’s probably, politically and spiritually, the darkest Thanksgiving for our nation in my lifetime. So how about a quick story out of America’s earliest history that somewhat echoes this moment and may give us some hope? Donald Trump has told us he’s going to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to declare a state of emergency, which will allow him to round up not only undocumented immigrants but also his political opponents, who he refers to as “the enemy within.” He came to power using Willie Horton-like ads trashing trans people and is happy to demonize anybody else who stands up to his hunger for absolute power. In an age-old technique usually employed during wartime, Trump regularly uses the rhetoric America has employed against foreign enemies to characterize Americans who disagree with him and his policies. Remember the “raghead” slurs against Arabs from the Afghan and Iraqi wars? Or politicians referring to Vietnamese in the 1970s as “slants” and “gooks”? My dad, who volunteered to fight in WWII straight out of high school, called Germans and Japanese “krauts” and “Japs” to his dying days; American propaganda during wartime encouraged popular usage of these racist characterizations. In this regard, Trump’s trying to lie us into a war. But not an external war; this time he’s pushing for something very much like a 21st century version of a second civil war. A war by Americans against Americans.

The right approach to tariffs could rebuild American manufacturing and reshape the political landscape… The stürm und drang all over the media this week is about Trump, on Monday, doubling down on his tariffs saying that he'd impose across-the-board 25 percent tariffs on all goods from China, Mexico, and Canada until there's no more fentanyl or undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers coming into the US. That's a substantial lift, and if he follows through with the threat (which seems likely, although I'd bet money that he'll drill lots of holes in those tariffs to satisfy corporate donors) it'll cause a considerable disruption in American commerce. Those three countries, after all, account for more than 40 percent of all American trade. Weirdly, Trump may be doing the Democrats a favor by taking this position, and I don't mean the possibility that he'll wreck the economy and thus his party's chances in 2026 and 2028 (although that's real, too).

Democrats have a long and illustrious history of strong leadership: FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Clinton, Obama. Where is this generation's leader? So much for American democracy and the concept that "no man is above the law." There is no law and not a word in the Constitution that requires Attorney General Merrick Garland to order Jack Smith to drop charges against Trump. It's merely a policy written in a letter by Richard Nixon's corrupt Justice Department (whose director, Attorney General John Mitchell, went to prison for his corruption) when Nixon was being investigated…and doubled down on by Bill Clinton's Justice Department when Clinton was being investigated for lying under oath. It has no force of law. It's merely policy. Written by an agency lawyer who was never elected by anybody to anything.

Incompetence and conspiracy theories meet a deadly virus: Will history repeat itself, or will we face an even deadlier disaster with unprepared leaders at the helm? "The political folks believed that because [Covid] was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy." — Vanity Fair's Katherine Eban quoting Jared Kushner's team in March, 2020 Arguably the most important aspect of political leadership is the ability to deal with a crisis. The massive incompetence and malice of the Trump administration in 2020 led, for example, to the unnecessary deaths of an estimated half-million Americans. And now we may well be facing a repeat that could be even worse.

Most of the corruption of our federal and state governments by big money track back to two central pillars of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. They are: “Money is the same thing as speech” and “corporations are persons entitled to rights under the Bill of Rights in the Constitution.” Both are based on lies. I’ll deal with the “free speech” lie in a separate chapter, but first let’s take a deep dive into the history of corporate personhood.