Hartmann Report

The simple solution to the Medicare Advantage problem is to kill off the program. It was just a Trojan horse to privatize Medicare. Over 100 Democratic lawmakers last week introduced legislation to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60. There is one small problem that needs fixing, though: so-called “Medicare Advantage.” This week my new book, The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich is officially available in bookstores nationwide and online. Here’s a chapter excerpt I think you’ll find interesting, particularly after all those awful TV ads with former football and sitcom stars we’ve had to endure the past few years…

Genuine patriots work to heal a country, to bring out its best, to strengthen its social and political fabric and make a better nation and world for future generations. They show up at school board and city council meetings sometimes literally wrapped in the American flag while carrying semiautomatic weapons in one hand and bibles in the other, screaming obscenities and threats at public officials. They demand that children be exposed to Covid in school, then support governors who refuse federal money to expand Medicaid in 12 GOP-controlled states that would have paid for the medical treatment of low-income kids and their parents when they become ill.

We don’t need to read fiction about “handmaidens” to know what America is capable of when religious fanatics make and enforce law. This actually happened. Back on August 30th, I wrote a Daily Rant here about how hate, misogyny and the use of religion to control Americans was nothing new. That was before the Texas Abortion Bounty Hunter Law was allowed to go into effect by the Supreme Court. In that Rant I included a few verses from John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, first published in 1894, titled How The Women Went From Dover. Given the events of last week, it’s worth reading in its entirety as a reminder of what happens when “religious” men assert their claim to power over women’s minds and bodies.

The best of the rest of the news. — Roe v Wade is dead and, along with it, are equal rights for women in Texas. For over 50 years, Republicans have fought the Equal Rights Amendment and with their new vigilantism abortion legislation they’re tightening the screws on the rights to privacy, equal protection and bodily autonomy women still had. As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote: “This is untenable. It cannot be the case that a State can evade federal judicial scrutiny by outsourcing the enforcement of unconstitutional laws to its citizenry. ... [The] Court has rewarded the State's effort to delay federal review of a plainly unconstitutional statute, enacted in disregard of the Court's precedents, through procedural entanglements of the State's own creation. The Court should not be so content to ignore its constitutional obligations to protect not only the rights of women, but also the sanctity of its precedents and of the rule of law.” The question now, as I posited in Thursday’s Daily Rant, is whether the voters of Texas will reward or punish that state’s GOP (and, indeed, Republicans across the country) for this. My guess is that this is not a “victory” for the GOP — they wanted the issue so they could pander to its hardcore adherents (who only make up about a third of the base) during election time — but the majority of voters and probably of Republicans will think twice when the long arm of Greg Abbott’s law reaches out for their daughters, wives and friends. I believe they’re overreached and this, along with Covid denialism, will hurt the GOP badly in 2022. If not, G-d help us all.

Times of great crisis are also moments of great opportunity, and, while some will give up and walk away from political activism, others realize the importance of doubling down on our activism... Some Americans feel like we’re living through a “last days” biblical Revelation kind of scenario. There’s a worldwide pandemic that is even killing our children; climate change has drowned the East Coast while the West Coast is on fire; emergency workers and firefighters are struggling with Covid; and a group of rightwing billionaires and religious freaks have seized control of one of our political parties and are hell-bent on pushing us back to the 19th century, crushing democracy and rolling back voting rights while taking ever-more control over women and minorities.

Republicans are proud of how they're intimidating women in Texas. But could this abortion ban & its vigilantism be the tipping point that activates women & allies to take down the GOP? Texas Republicans and five hardcore rightwing Republican appointees on the Supreme Court are quite proud of themselves right now. “The court’s order is stunning,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor last night in dissent. “Presented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.” But this is a political as much as a legal and social issue, bringing to mind old clichés about counting chicks and things coming home to roost.

All Republicans who want to survive a GOP primary must bow to the "Biden didn’t really beat His Orangeness" line, just like they were required to “take a vow against communism” back in the 1950s. Lauren Windsor is a journalist’s journalist (disclosure: I’ve supported her work, and you can, too) and she just got Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson to essentially expose for the world the real con the GOP has been running for decades. It’s burning across the internet right now, as you can see on her Twitter feed.

Trump has so far avoided the final fate of Abimelech, who was taken out by a woman...or has he? Back in November when it was clear that Trump had lost the election in an historic landslide of 7 million votes, a fascinating CNN piece noted how he and his top officials were working to create absolute chaos during the presidential transition specifically and intentionally to sabotage the incoming Biden Administration. “Some observers,” the authors noted, “pointing to Trump's rush to pull troops [out of Afghanistan] over unanimous objections from the military's most senior leaders as well as NATO commanders, question whether the President and his officials are trying to salt the earth for Biden.”

It’s probably beyond the power of human nature to prevent this from happening again, but we must not resign ourselves to another authoritarian movement now rising to power in America. Get active! "The tale is one of an evil time, When souls were fettered and thought was crime, And heresy’s whisper above its breath Meant shameful scouring and bonds and death! —John Greenleaf Whittier, “How the Women Went from Dover”

The best of the rest of the news. — Thomas Paine once pointed out: “The only ground upon which exclusion from the right of voting is consistent with justice would be to inflict it as a punishment for a certain time upon those who should propose to take away that right from others. The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case. The proposal therefore to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property.” Republicans, however, think that restricting the right to vote is simply good politics. Many Americans disagree with them and are planning protests today across the US for voting rights.