Hartmann Report

This debate about how humans should govern themselves is the real battle of our time, both metaphorically and literally, both internationally and right here at home. Democracy is in trouble, and the Russian/Ukrainian conflict highlights how imperiled it is becoming in the 21st century. The real issue in eastern Ukraine isn’t just land, any more than the real issue in the US last week was the filibuster: that’s all the noise on the surface. What’s grinding away below the surface, however, is the erosion or outright destruction of democracy itself, whether by invasion from without or corruption from within.

Lives are at stake, and the next person needing help could easily be you, a member of your family, or, like me, an old friend’s husband. Lives are at stake, and the next person needing help could easily be you, a member of your family, or, like me, an old friend's husband. O. Henry died over a hundred years ago, but his story The Gift of the Magi about a poor woman who sold her long hair to buy a gift for her husband on the same day he bought her a hard-sought gift of combs for her long hair still echoes through our culture. In a modern-day variation on the story, my friend of many decades, Elizabeth Barlow Montes, donated one of her kidneys to a friend's sister back in 2004. Now her husband, whose lifelong diabetes finally destroyed his own kidneys, needs a kidney to save his life but Elizabeth can't be that donor as she only has one left.

The amazing story of how a lie told by a politically ambitious Supreme Court clerk in 1886 altered the course of American history and paved the way for the modern corporate takeover of US politics

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Are we on the verge of a third major European war? — The Plot to End America: — The Plot to Change America. — Covid didn't cause the hospital crisis. — Crazy Alert: fascists demand groveling. — In Good News: Republican voter suppression notwithstanding, Stacey Abrams has a good shot at becoming Georgia's governor, helping to turn that purple state blue. — Video of the week with Dr. Jason Box: Is the Jet Stream Collapsing? And what about all that frozen methane?

It's time to say “No” to Big Tech and “smart” appliances that are, in reality, data thieves attaching themselves to us and our homes like blood-sucking parasites. A few weeks ago our decade-old, serially-repaired dishwasher gave up the ghost, soaking the kitchen floor in the process. Louise found a replacement online that met her needs and fitted into the space we had, and two burly guys came out this week to install it while she stood outside with all the doors and windows open. “It’s a smart dishwasher,” she told me, handing me the instruction manual. “Figure out how to hook it up to my cell phone so we can control it remotely.” I dutifully read the manual and downloaded the app from the overseas company that made the dishwasher. And that’s where it got weird.

It’s a low bar, but America must become at least as functional as the NFL! How do criminals take over countries? Donald Trump, for example, is a criminal, as the Supreme Court arguably determined yesterday when they denied his efforts to claim executive privilege to conceal his crimes. And as would be strongly suggested by his son Eric invoking the Fifth Amendment over 500 times in a single deposition about fraud.

Voter fraud isn’t real, but, election fraud is very much real and alive & that’s exactly what DeSantis and the Texas GOP are proposing -- right out in the open. Republicans have been committing election fraud right out in the open since 1964 and covering it up by yelling about “voter fraud.” Remember the hours-long lines to vote we’ve seen on TV ever since the 60s in minority neighborhoods? Those are no accident: they’re part of a larger election fraud program the GOP has used to suppress the vote for sixty years now.

The morbidly rich have taken over politics, nobody trusts anybody, violence is up, gun sales have exploded & our nation experienced its first armed assault from traitors within since the Civil War. “Conservative” columnists in America are bemoaning how coarse, violent and Third-World-ish the US has become in the past 40 years. David Brooks, for example, comes right out and says “America is falling apart at the seams.”

Russell's entire political career focused on his single-minded use of the filibuster to block Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation, just like a few well-known senators are doing today... On this Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. day and in this era of reconsidering monuments to people who built their careers on racism, it’s time to rename the Russell Senate Office Building, where 33 senators today conduct their daily business. This is not just a symbolic gesture: follow along with me for a moment. Democratic Senator Richard Russell was most famous as the guy who wielded the filibuster to destroy Civil Rights legislation.

Reclaiming our democracy from the ruling class... If you were looking for a date when our modern American oligarchy started, it would be January 30, 1976.