Hartmann Report

After all, doesn’t their wealth prove their brilliance? And doesn’t brilliance at busting unions and destroying competitors translate into the right stuff for guiding the fate of nations? Americans aren’t getting what a majority of us want, even when we show up in majority numbers to vote. The problem is that we’ve trusted the rich to run things here in America for 42 years now since the Reagan Revolution, and it’s not working.

How Corporations Became 'People' - and How You Can Fight Back. On December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court granted yet another gift to corporate power—and hammered yet another nail into the coffin of democracy in America. They did it in a strikingly dramatic fashion: by stealing the presidency. In the process five members of the unelected third branch of government made sure that its majority character and nature probably wouldn’t change for a long enough time that the Court could cast a hugely conservative shadow over the American electoral process, guaranteeing that people like themselves and their patrons—wealthy, powerful, and corporate-connected—would continue to have a disproportionate impact on future elections. Here’s how they did it and what their actions mean for the future of the battle between corporations and citizens for the soul of the nation.

The Best of the Rest of the News. The Best of the Rest of the News. - Why is the GOP taking orders from foreign dictators? - The January 6th treason committee is now investigating a Capitol "reconnaissance" tour led by MAGAT Congressman Barry Loudermilk. - Republicans know how to play political hardball, and former Republican consultant and commentator Charlie Sykes has advice for Democrats. - Meanwhile, Trump is endorsing and primary voters are choosing Republicans for elected office — particularly offices that can oversee the election process — who are openly saying they'll steal the 2024 election for Trump or an equivalent GOP candidate. - Aren't our schools supposed to teach — and demonstrate — the importance of our free speech rights protected by the First Amendment? - Will the leaked Alito decision — whether it survives intact or is watered down — lead to a Democratic sweep in elections this fall? - Remember when Trump issued an executive order forcing meat-packing workers back to work at gunpoint while ending any requirement that their employers use masks or social distancing? - The stock market is in the tank, officially breaking into "bear market" territory yesterday. - Geeky Science! Ready for radioactive fish in the Pacific Ocean? - Crazy Alert! Ever woken up to a strange dog in your bed?

Orbán’s speeches this week raise the question: Is he teaching the American GOP through his example, or is the GOP teaching him through their “replacement theory” & new laws banning books. Republicans believe that Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán has figured out the “secret sauce” to turn a republic into a hard-right oligarchy, and today they’re in Budapest drinking deep from his insights on the fine points of destroying democracy. In two speeches this week, Orbán laid out his Hungarian version of the racist American “Great Replacement Theory,” trashed Jewish financier George Soros as a proxy for Jews around the world, reiterated the importance of having friendly rightwing billionaires seize control of a nation’s media, and attacked societies that allow gay marriage and tolerate trans people as engaging in “gender madness.”

We need a new political vocabulary that includes "populist," "sellout," & "fascist": If the American press were to use simple, clear labels like this, it would save us all a lot of political confusion. The Chyron on MSNBC yesterday said, “Populist Fedderman Wins PA Primary.” A few weeks ago during the French elections the American press was referring to Marine Le Pen as a “French populist.” Trump is often called a “populist” in our media, as is Bernie Sanders. All of which raises the question: “Why are we using this one single word to describe radically different types and stripes of politicians?” Is “populist” simply shorthand or pop-news-speak for media-friendly, outrageous, or high profile politicians?

The poison that is racism has never made a nation better; every time it’s been used for profit or power it’s ended up destroying both its victims and, eventually, its promoters. Yesterday‘s elections show both a strong progressive drift across the Democratic Party, and an aggressive move toward fascism being driven by the base of the GOP and some of its billionaire donors. But more urgently, the Republican Party has a terrorism problem, and the failure this week of the party’s leadership and members to call it out after the terrorist attack in Buffalo suggests they’re just fine with it.

The white supremacy industry in America with a healthy fundraising and publishing arm stood right beside him giving him talking points and a twisted history to justify his rage... When the Buffalo Terrorist murdered 10 people with a semi-automatic rifle, he didn’t act alone. The weapons industry in the United States stood right beside him, making sure he had easy and legal access to highly profitable weapons of war that are banned or heavily regulated in every other developed country in the world. The Republican Party stood right beside him, taking money from that industry in exchange for blocking legislation the majority of Americans support that would regulate guns in America. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court stood right beside him.

When Donald Trump, Paul Manafort & Vladimir Putin set out to destroy the government of America, they aimed their largest weapons at this single most important element of any society: trust. The crisis with the Supreme Court; the racist mass shooter in Buffalo; Republican primary candidates trying to one-up each other on how they will refuse to count all the ballots in the 2024 election; and our hitting 1 million deaths from Covid all derive from the same thing: the destruction of trust. Donald Trump destroyed our trust in our public health institutions for his own political gain, so we have massively more Covid deaths than, for example, Australia. As the New York Times noted this weekend: “If the United States had the same Covid death rate as Australia, about 900,000 lives would have been saved.”

How Corporations Became 'People' - and How You Can Fight Back. People, at the time, generally weren’t all that concerned about the fate of the world’s dolphins. It was the last week of June 1944, and the war wasn’t going well for Adolf Hitler. The killing machines of his death camps were running full out, straining his resources and creating consternation as word leaked out across Europe. His forces were falling back before the Soviets, and his generals openly worried about an Allied invasion on the French coast. On Thursday, June 29, almost all of the eighteen hundred Jews of Corfu were murdered upon their arrival at Auschwitz, while twenty thousand Jewish women were relocated to the concentration camp at Stutthof. On Friday, June 30, more than a thousand Parisian Jews arrived at Auschwitz.

The Best of the Rest of the News. - We're in danger of losing our democracy and most Americans are in denial. - Today is a nationwide day of action for abortion rights, and to protest the loss of privacy rights embodied in Alito's draft opinion that will affect us all. - The baby formula shortage proves we have a monopoly problem in America. - Republicans don't care about "freedom," unless we're talking about the freedom to avoid paying taxes or the freedom to pollute. - Congressman Hakeem Jeffries has a question for Justice Clarence Thomas and it's really worth taking 2 minutes to watch - Why is inflation being blamed on Biden? - Crazy Alert! President Trump thought the increased severity of hurricanes and other terrible weather in America wasn't caused by global warming but, instead, that China had a "hurricane gun" they were shooting at us.