Hartmann Report

Florida is putting into effect the first “election police” in the nation - expect other GOP-run states to jump onboard soon, as the Republican War on Democracy continues apace. “There's a famous statement: Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate.” —Donald Trump They used to go by the name Ku Klux Klan, those guys who’d show up every election day to “police” the ballot boxes and make sure only “authorized” people had a chance to vote. By the 1960s, when William Rehnquist got into the game and would stand outside polling places near Phoenix challenging the credentials of every Black, Hispanic or Native American, they’d changed the name to the infamous Operation Eagle Eye. Now Governor Ron DeSantis is bringing to the game millions of taxpayer dollars and the power, held solely by government, to imprison people.

For the majority of Americans who are so poor they barely have to pay income taxes, Scott’s plan is just the latest in a 40-year barrage of assaults and insults coming from the GOP. They’re at it again: Republicans want to raise taxes on poor and working-class Americans, end Social Security and Medicare, jack up pollution and corporate profits, all while continuing to pamper their billionaire donor base. This time it’s the guy in charge of getting Republican senators elected and re-elected, Florida’s Senator Rick Scott.

Want to know why gas costs so much? Trump may be long out of power, but the impact of his corrupt treachery lives on... It was a double-whammy for two of then-President Donald Trump’s biggest patrons, Vladimir Putin and American fossil-fuel billionaires and their industry: the price of oil was too damn low. Between the pandemic-induced collapse in demand for oil and the price war Saudi Arabia was then fighting with Russia — two of the world’s largest producers — Putin was being pinched badly. And in America, from Pennsylvania to Texas, oil producers were outright losing money on the oil they pumped. Gas prices were at record lows, gutting the profits even of refiners. So, Trump acted. It seemed inexplicable at the time, but in retrospect (knowing now how tied to Putin he was) it makes perfect sense.

The US & our allies must push the UN to convene a new round of negotiations leading to solid and unambiguous treaties that will prevent rogue nations from invading nearby states they covet. Nuclear non-proliferation and preventing war — stopping or even reversing the spread of nuclear weapons across the world and preventing the invasion of one country by another — is right up there with doing something about climate change in terms of guaranteeing a future that includes safety and security for the people of our planet. Right now we’re engaged in negotiations with Iran, for example.

We lost 45 years to the fossil fuel billionaires and their GOP toadies, who’ve kept us dependent on fossil fuels to keep their profits high - but still they want more, more, more... As Putin’s war of choice against Ukraine tears that nation apart, his army is in the process of seizing a second nuclear power generating station, which will allow him to cut off power — and thus communications, heat, and water — to large chunks of that nation. If most households in Ukraine had solar panels on their roofs and battery storage in their basements — as two states in Germany and the US State of California are now requiring for all new construction — blowing up or seizing a central power station would have far less ability to brown out large parts of the country.

How Big Data has not only invaded our privacy but also left us vulnerable to domestic predators & foreign threats - and how Trump opened the door to Russia. (This is my newest book, ships Tuesday.) Big Brother and the Global Info Wars

The Best of the Rest of the News — As they were being shut down by Putin's thugs, Russia's last independent news channel played Swan Lake, the same song that Russian media played during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. — Trump's henchmen are trying to run out the clock on the January 6th committee, and some may succeed. — "Don't Say Gay" legislation in Florida, Texas and other states is facing united opposition from students who are tired of being pawns in the GOP's election-year "culture war." — Putin's largest base of support in the US for the past decade or so has been white evangelical church leaders, who see his open hostility to Islam and his harassment of and laws against LGBTQ+ people as a model for the USA. — After Tucker Carlson has openly embraced Putin for months and now goes off on a cringeworthy racist rant about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, will Fox abandon him or is this really and truly the Murdoch brand? — Will the Fed cripple the Biden Boom? — In Good News, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has rejected a series of Republican gerrymanders that would have cemented GOP rule in that state even when a majority of Wisconsinites vote for Democrats every election. — Crazy (and I mean really crazy) Alert! As the "freedom convoy" of mostly pickup trucks and cars with a sprinkling of big rigs heads toward Washington, DC this weekend, word has spread that the CDC has dropped their mask guidance and the country is moving past mask and vaccine mandates. — Quote of the week goes to George Will who, in a Washington Post op-ed on Friday, referred to Donald Trump as "a stray orange hair to be flicked off the nation's sleeve."

Sabotage Ukraine aid because your donors paid you to? Sabotage your own country’s energy and environmental policies because your donors promise you millions of dollars? They’re at it again: holding up US aid for Ukraine — as you read these words — while demanding more pollution and greater profits for Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Gas. If it happened in any other developed country in the world, many of these senators would be in prison, or at least barred from office and paying huge fines.

Will Republicans rally unconditionally to Ukraine's side if it costs us more at the gas pump and raises the price of home heating oil? Ukrainian Member of Parliament Oleksandra Ustinova asked this morning how many Ukrainian deaths do Americans have to see on TV before we stop funding Putin by buying his oil? I’d add, how many Ukrainian deaths do we have to see on TV before Republicans stop using the Russian invasion of that country to promote the interests of American petrobillionaire oligarchs?

The Fourth Great Turning and a new geopolitical era is here. It's small comfort as we watch Ukrainians slaughtered live on television, but history tells us these turning points are real... As Russian President Putin tries his version of Hitler’s September 1939 “defensive” attack on Poland, we’ve reached the apex, the hinge, of American history’s Fourth Great Turning. And everybody sees it. Americans who were preoccupied with false claims of voter fraud and the “tyranny” of having to wear a mask or get vaccinated are seeing with their own eyes what actual tyranny looks like. Putin has miscalculated terribly. His entire career has been, much like Donald Trump’s, one of pushing moral and legal boundaries while getting off scot-free or even being celebrated for his “victories.”