Hartmann Report

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?

The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- And What We Can Do About It. How Did We Get Screwed? The Story of Carl

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Justice Sonia Sotomayor attached a scathing commentary to the Supreme Court's majority decision to allow a challenge to the "Texas Vigilante Antiabortion law." — You'd think that even Republicans would look at the way Trump ran the White House for his own profit and to the benefit of foreign autocrats, who then recycled money into Trump properties, as a bad thing. Apparently not. — Labor is making a comeback, and it's young workers who've taken the lead. — Thanks to John Roberts and the Supreme Court gutting the unanimously-passed Civil Rights Act in their disgusting and racist Shelby County decision, Georgia Republicans are pulling Black Democrats off elections boards in that state and replacing them with white Republicans — Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows prepared a Powerpoint presentation about how to overturn a legitimate election and keep Trump in power. — Normally when a country is hit with an attack from outside or a natural disaster, people pull together regardless of their political affiliation. Think of America after Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Now, however, Republicans are openly refusing to cooperate with (and even openly sabotaging) President Biden's efforts to get a once-in-a-century pandemic under control. — In the name of fighting inflation, will the Fed repeat what it did to Jimmy Carter back in the day, raising interest rates and crashing the economy just before an election? — Do We Ignore Or Engage Rural Voters? — Eric Boehlert and Michael Moore are offering insights into why the media is so obsessed with the "Biden is failing" and "the economy is a wreck" narratives when both of those memes are exactly, completely 180-degrees out of sync with the truth. — Geeky Science: Now we know why overweight people get worse cases of Covid! — Geeky Science: It's not just for rats — exercise protects the brains of elderly humans, too.

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet nonetheless go out to meet it” -- Thucydides. I write today to praise bravery. Your bravery for subscribing to, reading, and sharing this newsletter. For not looking away. Thucydides, who had one of the clearest eyes in history about the dangers faced by democracies, said, “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet nonetheless go out to meet it.”

These are dangerous times, and news organizations putting profits over democracy is a sure path to America ending up like Hungary with a corrupt, strongman “conservative” running the country... Donald Trump — the most corrupt president in our history — is getting better press right now (and has for 6 years) than Joe Biden, who is working to restore democracy and sanity to our country. Where the hell did this come from? The fact is that our media, particularly our broadcast media, is a business that profits when its viewership and listenership goes up. And Donald Trump, who NBC paid millions to train as a reality TV star, is walking, talking clickbait.

This may be our last chance to avoid Ben Franklin’s warning that we have “a republic, if you can keep it” -- It may also be our best chance to revive democracy in America and, by example, the world... Donald Trump and the Republican Party are working to end democracy, what (ironically) the Founders called “a republican form of government,” here in the United States. One of the hottest topics in the news today is Barton Gellman’s article in The Atlantic that posits an overthrow of the American political system by a determined group of neofascist Republicans (my phrase, not his) intent on taking full control of the American government by corrupting the election of 2024. It’s a brilliant article and everybody should read it. This is not a new idea, however.

If you want to know who Republicans in Congress value, look at who they protect and who they let die. By any reasonable standard, America has taken a very wrong and and very tragic path. Our children are dying from gun violence: why don’t Republicans in Congress give them the same concern we do our police and soldiers, who also face gunfire?

For Americans, freedom is not only a sacred right and duty, but it’s also the ultimate political marketing tool…and it’s past time for Democrats to take it back and claim it as their own. There was a time when Democrats called their party “the Party of Freedom.” Largely because of the horrors of the Republican Great Depression, Americans realized that, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his 1944 State of the Union address, “Necessitous men are not free men.” You can’t disentangle economics from liberty.