Hartmann Report

The casting couch is now largely a relic of the past. If we keep pushing hard, soon the same could be true of murderous and corrupt cops. Sometimes cultural change takes generations or even centuries; sometimes it happens in the seeming blink of the eye. America's bad cops — and their enablers — are having their Harvey Weinstein moment. Harvey was a big shot in Hollywood for decades when it was not uncommon for powerful men to help make women into stars in exchange for sex. It was so common that in a Cagney and Lacey TV show from the 1980s one of the characters openly asks the other if a particularly ditzy "movie star" character in that episode of the show "slept with the producer" to get the part.

Much like America gave the world democracy in 1776, our experience today may well determine whether the world moves forward or backward in the all-so-human struggle for equality, dignity and peace. Today is the first anniversary of George Floyd's murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. At the Founding of America we set two goals: A democratically-run nation and equality for all citizens. We've largely put into place the democracy part over the years; now we must make the "equality" part happen.

Politicians, corporations and billionaires who funded Trumpism and continue to support GOP efforts at outright sedition should face serious consequences, including expulsion from office and prison. Are Trump-humping Republicans doing more damage to American democracy than bin Laden did on 9/11?

While Democrats want to expand the commons, Republicans want to steal it & make it billionaire- or corporate-owned. It's really that simple. Louis DeJoy is trying to do nothing less than steal the Post Office from the American people and privatize it for a profit to himself and his buddies. Democrats want to expand the commons, while Republicans want to steal it. It's really that simple.

As this nation recovers from a deadly pandemic and rightwing hate groups that are trying to provoke a second Civil War, let’s remember how this all came about. And all for a few extra pieces of gold. As we’re struggling to recover from Trump’s half-million unnecessary Covid deaths here in America, fighting to get a clear picture of how extensive the sedition was among Republicans in Congress around January 6th, and trying to pass legislation to ensure clean and safe elections and put the country back into shape, dark money, foreign oligarchs and rightwing media groups are hard at work tearing this nation apart. And they’re having considerable success.

Typically, oligarchies flip in one of two directions within a generation: either back to democracy, or into a full-blown fascist police state. Now that the January 6th Commission is dead, it’s time for Pelosi and Schumer to create Congressional panels with subpoena power to take a serious look at the rise of fascism in the GOP, from the Trump/Manafort effort in 2015 through the vote-rigging laws being passed in state after state today. It may be our last chance to expose and stop this country’s slide into fascism.

This is not a fight over something like the minimum wage. This is a battle for the survival of the American republic and in a larger sense, it's about the survival of democracy across the world. Republicans and their authoritarian supporters are working right now to steal the 2024 election and drop their 2020 treason into the memory hole. We can't let them get away with it.

But Democrats have some big sticks, if they choose to use them. In the minds of the authoritarian base of the GOP, there are only two kinds of people: those who bully, and those who get bullied. Republicans in Congress have decided which side they're on. Or at least which side they're cowed by. Liz Cheney recently said that a number of Republicans in the House of Representatives believed Donald Trump had committed crimes for which he should be impeached, but were afraid to vote for impeachment. They were, Cheney said, "Afraid for their own security and … afraid for their lives."

Control of our schools is essential to the GOP undoing the "wokeness" of the Millennial Generation and returning the US to a "1950s Beaver Cleaver" kind of racial order. Imagine if hard-core crazies like Marjorie Taylor Greene ran most of the school boards all across America. They could raise up an entire new generation of civics-clueless right-wing racist kids, and probably keep much of it well below the nation's radar screen.

The stakes are higher than they’ve been since the 1860s and the 1930s; this may be our last chance to rescue democracy in this country. Want some racism, sexism, misogyny, blunt and angry nationalism, and good-old-fashioned corruption with your government? We just had an example during the four years of the Trump presidency of how this could change everyday life in America, and the election to leadership of Trump acolyte Elise Stefanik shows how many in the Republican Party want to institutionalize it. It’s important to understand what it really means.