Hartmann Report

When Trump ordered Pence to overturn the 2020 election, he was trying to repeat what Republicans did in 1876. There are things we can do to prevent a third attempt in 2024 and we need to do them now. Today’s January 6th Committee’s hearings are about the pressure campaign on Mike Pence to hand the election of 2020 to Trump. Official Washington and the media are shocked — “Shocked, I tell you!” — that John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump had come up with the “bizarre” idea that Vice President Pence could toss the election to the House, thus keeping Trump in office. They’re amazed when they reference five states having submitted two slates of electors each, the “real” Biden ones and the “phony” Trump ones that Giuliani and Eastman conspired with Republicans to create. But this was neither bizarre nor new.

If saving trillions of dollars and millions of lives isn’t enough to end political bribery in America, what will it take? Monday, Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Lindsey Graham had a debate on Fox Nation. Sanders asked: “In the United States, Lindsey, we spend twice as much per capita on health care compared to the people of any other country, while major countries like Canada, the U.K., Germany manage to supply health care to all their people. Why is that?” The simple answer is the same reason we have an ongoing climate crisis and a student loan crisis that Republicans refuse to let Congress address: the legal bribery of politicians like Lindsey Graham.

Buying a Medicare Advantage policy is a leap in the dark, and the federal government generally is not there to catch you: forewarned is forearmed. In my multiple writings on the Medicare Advantage scam, the most common two responses I get (besides, “Thanks, you may have saved my life!”) are, “I’ve never had a problem with my Advantage plan,” and “If it’s so bad, how come so few people are saying so?” Both are honest, good-faith questions and highlight how easy it is for insurance companies to get away with their Medicare Advantage scams. The answer to both boils down to the unique nature of insurance being the only “product” we buy where we have no idea if it’s any good until something bad happens — which can take years. Every state in the union has an insurance commissioner. But why?

If the GOP doubles down on fascism & racism, Lincoln’s “last, best hope for Earth” will rest in the hands of the European Union and America will become unrecognizable. The Democratic Party hit its crossroads moment in 2021 when President Biden embraced a progressive vision for America, breaking with Clinton's and Obama's neoliberal centrism. Even if Senators Sinema and Manchin prevented him from putting them into effect, Biden's hearty support for Bernie Sanders' $3 trillion Build Back Better plan and John Sarbanes' For The People legislation that ends gerrymandering and big money in politics showed his newfound commitment and progressive credentials.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. noted in the landmark 1919 Shenck v. United States case that shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater does not constitute free speech; the Bill of Rights guarantees that a person’s opinion can be expressed, not that there are no limits on what one can do. But consider how this fundamental freedom has been bent by corporations since Santa Clara.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — “All Roads Lead to Trump” is the headline at The American Prospect, and it accurately depicts what the January 6th Committee laid out Thursday night. — A functioning democracy requires the truth, actual news, and honest reporting by the media: Fox “News” did none of those during the Committee hearing. To the contrary, they deceived their viewers. — Ginni Thomas was far more aggressive at pushing state legislators to overturn the will of their voters and award Trump the presidency than we’d previously known. — If you want to see how far down the rightwing/fascist rabbit hole the GOP has gone, consider this: the leading Republican candidate for Governor of Michigan was just arrested by the FBI, apparently for participating in the seditious attack on the Capitol. — Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are trying to both save and expand Social Security. — When you mention January 6th to a rightwinger or hear mention of it on hate-talk-radio, they’ll invariably say, “What about BLM and Antifa burning down cities across America?” — Global warming is picking up pace so quickly that the glaciers in Antarctica are melting at a rate not seen in over 5,500 years, according to scientists. — Geeky Science! A glass of beetroot juice a day may help with coronary artery disease.

Sedition is the word for what we call, during times of war, treason. Trump and his Republican and media allies are in it up to their necks... “I have said that any man who attempted by force or unparliamentary disorder to obstruct or interfere with the lawful count of the electoral vote should be lashed to the muzzle of a twelve-pounder gun and fired out of a window.” —General Winfield Scott, 1861 Last night the January 6th Committee’s co-chair Liz Cheney told us that “Representative Scott Perry sought a pardon” along with “multiple other members of Congress” for their participation in the attempted coup, their sedition against the United States of America. They understood they had committed a crime. And they wanted Trump to give them absolution, to prevent them from being prosecuted, to keep them out of jail.

The Supreme Court legalized bribery for only one very narrow and very specific group of people in the United States: politicians & if America is to survive as a republic, we must end the legal bribery. Why don’t we have gun control? It’s because our Supreme Court, or, more correctly, five Republicans on our Supreme Court, legalized bribery.

Fifty-four years of Republican presidents using treason to achieve the White House (or inheriting it from one who did) has transformed America and weakened our democracy. Dwight Eisenhower was arguably the last Republican president who believed in democracy, the rule of law, and that government should do what the people want. From 1960 to today a series of leaders within the Republican Party have abandoned the democracy that American soldiers fought the Revolutionary War to secure, the Civil War to defend here at home, and World War II in Europe and the Pacific to defend around the world. This has brought us a series of criminal Republican presidents and corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices, who’ve legalized political bribery while devastating voting and civil rights. None of this was a mistake or an accident, because none of these people truly believed in democracy.

We can’t pretend we don’t know what’s happening and where it will lead if it’s not stopped - the question is what we will do about it. It’s time to talk about what an American fascist government would look like. The word “fascism” gets thrown around a lot, but most Americans have no idea what it would look like or how it would actually play out. It’s critical to lay out what a fascist America would look like now because this is what is being envisioned right now by many in the Republican Party, and it might come to pass.