Hartmann Report

Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 21, 2021

Sunday Book Excerpt from "The Crash (Crisis) of 2016"

Echoing warnings Jefferson made a century and a half earlier, Roosevelt argued that America’s survival depended on constant vigilance against the Economic Royalists... This book, which was startlingly prescient about what’s happened over the past five years and essentially predicted the 2016 Trump election back in 2013, is no longer in print. But there’s some really great stuff in it, particularly the story of how Jefferson, Lincoln, and both Roosevelt presidents took on the oligarchs of their day and warned posterity of the dangers of oligarchy in America.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 20, 2021

Saturday Report 11/20/21

The Best of the Rest of the News... — The singlemost ransacked office in the Capitol on January 6th was the office of the Parliamentarian. — As Paul Gosar was censured for threatening the life of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a colleague who’s a woman of color, the Washington Post reports that, “About a dozen Republicans stood beside Gosar in a show of support as he was censured.” — A key part of the GOP’s new Southern Strategy is to bleach white the history of America taught to our children, particularly white children, making white supremacy more mainstream, normalized, and palatable. — Lose your job in North Dakota for teaching even the smallest details of the history of slavery or the modern Civil Rights movement? That’s what the new law signed by that state’s governor requires. — Bogus economic stories in the media are driving down President Biden’s poll numbers. — Sweden is prosecuting oil executives for their complicity in war crimes. — Bernie notes, "While we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and one out of four Americans can't afford the medicine they need, the top 15 pharmaceutical executives pulled in more than $470 million in salaries and bonuses last year.” — Getting Pregnant Shouldn't Up Your Chances Of Getting Killed. — How Many Lives Could Have Been Saved If Trump & Cronies Didn't Muzzle Experts? — In Geeky Science: Coffee and tea consumption reduces risk of both stroke and dementia. — Also, in Geeky Science: 300 Minutes a Week of Moderate Exercise May Help Ward Off Cancer. — In Good News: The Biden administration is reversing Trump’s gutting of clean and environmental water regulations, restoring federal protections to waterways across the nation.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 19, 2021

The “Medicare Advantage” Plan to Kill Real Medicare

If they can move more than half of Americans off traditional Medicare and onto these corporate plans, it’ll provide the political cover to kill off Medicare altogether — and they’re nearly there now. Share In 2003, George W Bush set up the destruction and privatization of Medicare. The end of “real Medicare” is getting closer every day, and Congress and Medicare’s administrators are doing nothing. Last Friday the Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) announced a 14.5% increase in Medicare Part B premiums, raising the monthly payments by the lowest-income Medicare recipients from $148.50 a month to $170.10 a month next year. If you’re trying to live on the bottom rung of Social Security (about $365/month), that’s consequential. People with Medigap policies are also seeing their policy price rises announced this month.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 18, 2021

Is the New GOP "Southern Strategy" Civil War & Bloodshed...and a Return to "Leave It To Beaver"?

When LBJ signed the Civil & Voting Rights Acts the white Racists were homeless - so Nixon prepared one, Reagan fluffed up the pillows, & Trump stood out front with a bullhorn & a “Whites Only” sign. Yesterday all but 2 Republicans in the House of Representatives went on record saying it’s okay to openly encourage the assassination of one of their own, a person of color and elected Member of the House. That last part about Representative Ocasio-Cortez not being white was no coincidence, by the way. It was really at the core of the issue: Republicans now openly refer to her and the women of color who call themselves “the Squad” as the “Jihad caucus.” As in “Muslim terrorists,” as in “the Other.”
Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 17, 2021

What is the “Wealth of a Nation"?

It’s time to break the curse of “Voodoo Economics”; a return to manufacturing must be at the core of the effort to rebuild the “wealth of this nation.” China just surpassed America as the nation with the greatest wealth in the world. But what does that mean? What is “wealth”? Look around you. If you’re at home, you may be seeing a living room with furniture and a television. In the kitchen there are appliances, dishes and cookware. Other rooms have beds, a desk, bookshelves and tools. The house or apartment itself sits on a foundation and is made of 2x4s and sheetrock and copper wiring and piping, covered with siding and roofing to protect it from the elements. All of those things are wealth. They have value.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 16, 2021

Seventh Generation Amendment: The Blah-Blah-Blah Has to End!

This is one way to reveal how shallow and rotten so much of our lawmaking and business activity is today: put every decision to this test -- How will it affect the grandchildren of our children? Juice Media, one of the groups I support on Patreon, has a new video out (with a cameo at the end by Greta Thunberg) that puts the failures of the COP26 meeting in perspective. In summary, they say we are…well…to keep this family-friendly (in print at least), let’s just say “we’re screwed.”
Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 15, 2021

Will You Storm the Capitol If the 2024 Election is Stolen?

We may well be facing that terrible question that Trump true believers faced last year: what do we do? Winter is coming... We’re demonizing the wrong people. This is not a call to “understand” or “have compassion” for Trump voters. Instead, it’s a call for a wholesale political and social indictment of Trump’s Big Lie, along with every elected Republican politician or media member who knows Trump lost but keeps perpetuating that Lie. If we fail, history may repeat itself and — this time — the result will be far worse than Bush’s lying us into two wars and privatizing Medicare.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 13, 2021

Saturday Report 11/13/21

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Violence has become normalized in the GOP. — Trump says murdering Vice President Pence was just "common sense". — McCarthyism reappears in Wisconsin. — Republicans in Florida want to force employers — with a $50,000 fine — to keep people on the job and in the workforce who refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask. — A man in New York has been arrested for threatening a GOP lawmaker. — Media Matters for America is reporting how Fox "News" has been spreading vaccine and Covid lies, myths and misinformation on a daily basis ever since Biden was elected. — A few of our Nazis — specifically the ones who organized the "Unite the Right" rally where Heather Heyer was murdered — are being held to account in a civil lawsuit. — The Bulwark is reporting on a 2020 plan to use corrupted police to keep Donald Trump in office. — A judge whose phone's ringtone is Donald Trump's campaign theme song has ruled that the jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse murder trial can't know that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist who posed with a terrorist group and flashed the white power sign for an iconic photo.— Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is making a point I highlighted in my book The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream. — Coal baron Joe Manchin is, according to several billionaires who support him, soon to be the guest of honor at huge fundraisers. — Another woman has died because of "fetal heartbeat" and other draconian abortion restrictions. — In Science News, as Covid recedes among Blue state humans, it's exploding in the feral deer population. — Also in Science News, the oceans aren't the only thing rising from global warming: so is the outer edge of our atmosphere. — In Good News for our Republic, Steve Bannon has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress. — More good news: California has expanded booster access to all adults as research suggests immunity wanes after 6 months or so.
Posted at Hartmann Report on Nov. 12, 2021

Authoritarian Coups Are Gradual then Sudden

Meanwhile, all across social media, the word is spreading: “The storm is upon us.” In 1926 Ernest Hemmingway published his novel The Sun Also Rises, which has this extraordinary bit of dialogue about how change happens in most aspects of life — and how governments rise and fall. “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. ”Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” ”What brought it on?” “Friends," said Mike. "I had a lot of friends. False friends.” For some unfathomable reason, Democrats insist on calling their Republican colleagues their “friends.” They are not friends. They are systematically destroying American democracy with the clear objective of replacing it with strongman authoritarianism, a new and American version of what Benito Mussolini called fascism.

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