Hartmann Report

It’s hard to underestimate the damage to our nation done by Donald Trump along with the propaganda and social media efforts of Russia and, perhaps, other autocratic nations. It’s time to tell the truth about Trump: he’s been an agent of organized crime and foreign governments for decades. And he’s continuing his work for Putin, Xi, Erdogan, and MBS — undermining Americans’ faith in democracy — to this day. Czechoslovakia’s Státní bezpečnost (StB) first started paying attention to Trump back in 1977, as documented by the German newspaper Bild when the StB’s files were declassified, because Trump married Czech model Ivana Zelnickova, his first wife, recently buried on his golf course in New Jersey. Czechoslovakia at that time was part of the Warsaw Pact with the Soviet Union, and Ivana and her family had been raised as good communists. Now that a Czech citizen was married into a wealthy and prominent American family, the StB saw an opportunity and started tracking Trump virtually from his engagement.

Purging Democratic voters from the rolls has now gone nationwide, at least in states where voting is controlled by Republicans. Get ready. If you’re a Democratic voter, there’s a chance you’ll show up to vote this November and discover you can’t because you’re no longer registered. Millions will be blindsided this way, and it could turn elections toward Republicans across the nation. America hates GOP policies of banning abortion, gifting the morbidly rich with trillions in tax cuts, denying climate change and blocking any remedies to it, and filling our cities with guns. So, Republicans know, the only way they can win in many places is to simply prevent people from voting.

The corruption of our justice system is a cardinal characteristic of fascism, which is what Trump and — it turns out, Barr — were actively trying to do to America. Geoffrey Berman has a new book out, Holding the Line: Inside the Nation's Preeminent US Attorney's Office and Its Battle with the Trump Justice Department, laying out chapter and verse of how Bill Barr corrupted the Department of Justice on behalf of Donald Trump. Barr’s coverups for Trump range, in my read, from criminal activity to treason. It shouldn’t surprise us. There was also a time when George HW Bush and Ronald Reagan were facing the possibility of treason charges, much like Trump. Who did they call? Bill Barr.

As the world watches its 40-year experiment with neoliberalism collapse, Republicans in the US and Putin in Russia are facing a crisis they once thought would be an opportunity. There’s a reckoning coming. The kind of oligarchy that neoliberalism has brought to both America and Russia is so unstable it will not hold. Both nations are thus confronting dramatic transitions over the next few years. As Russia has suffered substantial defeats in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin may be looking at the end of his reign. There’s similar tough stuff facing Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and their GOP buddies.

Although we have much that we might change about our government and business, it’s clear that we also have a great and noble heritage on which to build and many great leaders in whose footsteps we can follow. Unlike America’s Founders, however, we don’t have to start from a blank piece of paper. The Founders set the principles for us, and they inspired the world over—from the French Revolution to Tiananmen Square. Our job is to pick up the torch of liberty. In this chapter we ask, “Is this a biased view, or do others see a problem, too?” This time we look to three powerful proponents of capitalism and free enterprise: a billionaire, a Nobel laureate who was chief economist of the World Bank, and Business Week magazine.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Bannon and Trump are grifters, but the Republican Party has been a grift ever since Reagan. — Uvalde suffers again, with another mass shooting this week. — Is voting going to be safe in Georgia this November? — Bucks County, Pennsylvania says "No" to privatizing their water and sewer systems. — Another Republican-appointed right-wing judge goes on the attack against gay people. — Good news! President Joe Biden is repudiating neoliberalism and embracing unions in a big way. — Crazy Alert! Fox "News" host Bret Baer asks Turkish/New Jersey citizen Dr. Mehmet Oz if he should've gone to the meat counter instead of the vegetables.

Elizabeth Warren's new legislation would give back to workers the power Republicans have taken away - It could restore the middle class, and expand it to include people in virtually all labor sectors. Elizabeth Warren has a plan, and it’s great, if only Republicans weren’t committed to fighting it tooth and nail. But first some backstory… Most Americans, having never studied Civics in school since Reagan stopped federal support for it, don’t realize that a middle class is not a normal thing. It has to be intentionally created, by law, by having government “interfere” in the so-called “free market” on behalf of labor.

This year will be an unprecedented referendum on democracy. Fully sixty percent of Americans will have an “election denier” Trump-humping Republican on the ballot this November. Our country has been poisoned, and if we don’t remove the poison and start using the antidote America may soon be completely unrecognizable as a “free” nation. It’s taken 50 years, but we’re now at the point of maximum crisis. First came the poison of big money corrupting politics.

It’s time to enforce the Constitution, and a judge in New Mexico just kicked off the process. Democrats need to jump on this with the vigor of Trump crashing a Miss Teen USA dressing room. Before I even get into the guts of this argument, just ask yourself: if Democratic Members of Congress had engaged in a seditious conspiracy to overthrow our government to put or keep a Democratic president in power against both the popular vote and the Electoral College, and Republicans controlled Congress right now, what would those Republicans be doing?

Like in 1933, a Democratic President is calling out fatcats and fascists in the GOP while uniting Americans in a great project to rebuild our nation... It’s easy to get lost in despair and outrage over the state of affairs in America. Women and queer people are being forced back into the kitchen and closet, climate change is killing scores of Americans every week, our schools and public areas are under constant assault by armed Republican gangs and GOP-sanctioned mass shooters. Over the past decade more than a million American lives have been lost to “deaths of despair” as a result of our 40-year experiment with Reagan’s neoliberalism. And it’s not just domestic bad news coming out of the GOP’s open opposition to democracy. After Trump betrayed Ukraine, Russia attacked them; China is openly threatening a similar sort of war against Taiwan. There’s lots to be concerned about. Nonetheless, I’m hopeful right now.