Hartmann Report

We’ve already banned fully-automatic weapons, shoulder-fired missiles & sawed-off shotguns, only used to kill humans -- it’s not a stretch ban Rittenhouse’s AR15 & Russian AK47s to save American lives. Expect the gun control debate in America to really get hot over the next 12 months as Beto O’Rourke runs for governor of Texas. O’Rourke said, when running for president in 2019, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!” And it’s entirely time for this debate. America has just a bit more than 4 percent of the world’s population, but, with more guns than people in our country, we have more than 40 percent of all the guns in civilian hands in the world.

All the Republican Party has left, now that they’ve abandoned any pretense over the past 40 years of supporting working people or even basic infrastructure, is hate, fear and death. The Rittenhouse verdict sent a shudder through America as terrorists and vigilantes celebrated: one rightwinger called for wholesale slaughter of Democrats saying on Telegram, “The left won’t stop until their bodies get stacked up like cord wood.” On Facebook, rightwing sites celebrating the verdict were the most popular nationwide by a factor of 9 to 1.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

If you were looking for a date when our modern American oligarchy started, it would be January 30, 1976. It was a clear day in Washington, DC, the temperature well above freezing with a light wind.