Hartmann Report

American workers are fed up with minimum wage "Do you want fries with that?" jobs that you can't raise a family on or pay off student loans with. Reagan’s neoliberal policies — maintained to this day — sent our good manufacturing jobs overseas and now most all we’re left with are, “Do you want fries with that?” service jobs. Americans are furious.

If Democrats continue to ignore the American working class’ increasing hatred of neoliberal policies — particularly so-called “free trade” — they’ll get buried by it in the next elections. As I detailed last week, the neoliberal era that the Reagan presidency ushered in and has held until the past few years is disintegrating. The idea that the “invisible hand of the free market,” putting profits over people and turning America over to our billionaires and corporate monopolies will solve all our problems, is now largely seen as a disaster.

If we’re committed to reaching zero emissions, we must return to that goal of local self-sufficiency, this time with free power from the sun & wind instead of clear-cutting forests or burning fossils. Electric vehicle (EV) sales are booming in Oregon: we’ve gone from around 300 sold a decade ago to over 12,000 sold in our tiny state last year. And EV owners are saving a ton of money on their daily commutes — as much as half the cost of gasoline — by just plugging into their homes every night to recharge. But what if that home’s electricity wasn’t generated by a faraway dam or power plant, but from each car owner’s own home’s roof? The savings and convenience would be revolutionary.

The Iroquois Confederacy had a “law” that every decision had to be made in the context of its impact on the seventh subsequent generation... Imagine if scientists succeeded at genetically modifying a bacteria that’s found on the roots of almost all plants on Earth — and it was modified in a way that caused it to kill those plants. At the most extreme, if it got loose it could wipe out most plant life on Earth — and that almost happened just a few decades ago! At their core, all these crises and near-misses are really cultural as much as technological problems. That assertion runs through this book, "Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture."

The Best of the Rest of the News. The Best of the Rest of the News. — Good News: We may be on the edge of the end of the pandemic crisis. — More Good News: Congress has passed the largest infrastructure bill in decades. — January 6th was worse than we knew. — A thousand unionized nurses in Huntington, West Virginia have adopted "Build Back Better" for some of their signage as they strike against a huge hospital chain. — Meet the House's versions of Manchin and Sinema. Representatives Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.). — Seven Republicans who participated in the January 6th treason attempt were elected to public office last Tuesday. — Some within the Qanon movement/religion are saying that their ultimate goal is to kill Democrats and liberals. — In Science News: Could the Supreme Court Destroy the Planet?

Freedom of religion is one of America’s top values and deserves respect. Terror groups, on the other hand, have no place in a civilized society. A significant number of Qanon followers, according to NBC News reporter Ben Collins, believe the end-point of their religion will be reached when Donald Trump takes back control of America, unleashes police to mass-arrest elected and other high-profile Democrats, and Qanon followers then engage in an orgy of violence and murder against Democratic Party-aligned neighbors, friends and family.

To save our Democracy -- it needs to be taken from the hedge funds, movie makers, and merchandise sellers, and returned to the hands of journalism professionals who understand and care about it. “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” —Thomas Jefferson

Neoliberalism is a wounded, dying animal. America is returning to populism, whether our politicians want it or not: the big question is will it be progressive or fascist populism? Populism was the big winner in the Virginia election yesterday. As Glen Abernathy noted this morning in The Washington Post: “The fact that parental rights in education became a central campaign issue shows that populism is still a potent element in U.S. politics. And in the Republican Party, even with Trump out of the White House, populism — not conservatism — remains the GOP’s principal identity.” But populism can cut two ways, as the world saw in 1932 when Americans and Germans brought to power two very different types of populists: FDR and Hitler.

If a half-million people had died — unnecessarily — while Obama was president, you know how the GOP would react: after all, they held 4+ years of hearings over Benghazi and hounded Clinton for years. All across America this past year-and-a-half 700,000+ people have died an agonizing, terrifying, drowning-in-their-own-fluids death, their relatives helpless, saying goodbye using Zoom or FaceTime. Families broken and shattered; husbands, wives, children and grandchildren left bereft; doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants dying along with them or holding their hands as they drew their final, tortured breath. Many of those deaths were absolutely unnecessary. They happened because of decisions made by a small group of people led by Donald Trump.

There is no country in the world or time in history when racism as a political strategy has ended well for a nation - If the GOP fails to purge itself of its racist politicians our future is grim. For Democrats, there are tons of issues on the ballot. Climate change, free college, expanding Medicare, family leave after giving birth, Pre-K education, middle-class tax cut, child tax credit, the minimum wage, the right to unionize, and literally dozens of other less high-profile ways to expand democracy and rebuild our middle class after 40 years of assault by neoliberal Reaganomics. For Republicans there’s really only one issue: race. Or, more specifically, maintaining the dominance of white people over every other racial group in America, and the survival of political and economic white supremacy.