Hartmann Report

Why sickness bankrupts you and makes others insanely rich.

The Best of the Rest of the News.. — Trump pulls a Stalin in seizing the Voting Machines as part of the GOP "War on Democracy." —What will be the outcome of the GOP Civil War? —Dejoy defies Biden on electric trucks…and why is he still there? —Republicans are trying to "protect" children from an illustrated book about the Holocaust that tells the story through characters that are cats and mice. —Trump pays off Mark Meadows to keep his mouth shut? —Kyrsten Sinema rakes in the cash as she betrays American democracy. —Florida Republicans are trying to eliminate the right of Floridians to put up ballot measures for things like legal pot, voting rights and a $15 minimum wage. Geeky Science: The magic of N-95 face-masks. Crazy Alert! Alabama parents are certain that Black History Month is part of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) their state banned from classrooms last month.

A recent study of 100 US cities found that — between 1993 to 2017 — billions were spent to expand highway capacities by 42% but, instead of reducing congestion, traffic delays actual went up 144%! You’d think that if your freeway is clogged up every rush hour, adding an extra lane would reduce the congestion. You’d be wrong. And an uprising against Oregon state government plans to widen the I-5 freeway here in Portland may end up changing how cities around the country decide to use the hundreds of billions of dollars in highway funds coming to them from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Reagan's policy of starving education & cranking up student debt has made US banks piles of money, but stopped generations of young people from starting businesses, having families & buying homes. Ronald Reagan knew that an educated populace was more progressive and more Democratic, and he was determined to stop the explosion of college educated Americans caused by both the 1944 GI Bill and free tuition at the University of California. Forty years later, student debt has crippled two generations of young Americans: over 44 million people carry the burden, totaling a $1.5 trillion drag on our economy that benefits nobody except the banks earning interest on the debt.

If the DOJ and Congress don't prosecute Trump and change our laws, the next Republican to occupy the White House will probably also try to end our democracy. “Precedent” sounds boring and wonky. In reality, it’s the way past criminal Republican presidents have taught those who followed them to break the law. This is the shocking story of how Republican presidents taught each other to break the law, and how — if Trump isn't prosecuted — the next Republican president will try to end democracy in the USA.

And why a disparate group of billionaires, Republican politicians, televangelists, media outlets, and white supremacist militias have found common cause around a new and exciting moral panic. The moral panic currently sweeping America about Critical Race Theory (CRT) has been covered ad nauseum by the press and commentators across the political spectrum. That’s what typically happens with moral panics (more on that in a moment). What nobody is talking about, though, is the why of this particular issue at this particular time. As a result, we’re mistaking the tool for the goal.

According to the Framers of the Constitution themselves, the real reason for the Electoral College was to prevent a foreign power from placing their stooge in the White House... So Donald Trump is now telling us that having Mike Pence overturn the electoral college result would have been "perfectly legal." He's dead wrong, both factually and conceptually, and his admission should lead him straight to a jail cell.

How humans are hitting the thresholds of our environmental, cultural and psychological limits...and what we can do to rescue ourselves and life on our planet.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Get ready for lots of media attention to crime, probably starting in a big way this summer. — The rightwing cancer on American Democracy — Voter suppression works. — When cops are criminals — The gun industry targets our children — Privacy lost: When people call into crisis or suicide hotlines, they assume privacy and confidentiality. — The beginning of the end of the pandemic? — Crazy Alert! "Female problems" at Fox "News"? — Biden is cleaning up poisons.

Welcome to the racist, misogynous, anti-democracy faction that has seized control of today’s GOP and their media cheerleaders: How long will they hold onto their power over the entire party? The Republican Party has lost all its legitimacy because, in the past few decades, it has become a white supremacist version of what Father of the Constitution James Madison called a “faction.” Loosely, a “faction“ is a “special interest” group of people who are willing to damage the interests of other people just to gain their own benefit. And, as Madison warned us, factions destroy democracies.