Hartmann Report

Milton Friedman’s feet didn’t touch the floor. This was the University of Chicago 1975 and Prof. Friedman was God. God sat in a chair, the little man’s feet dangling, as he humiliated students who deviated in the slightest from the Gospel of Friedman, what he dubbed, "Neoliberalism." I kept my head down. Friedman didn’t know I was sent to study with him and his Chicago Boys by the city’s labor leadership. They wanted to know if this Friedman was as dangerous as he seemed. Friedman was the not-so-hidden hand behind the new dictatorship of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet liked to throw dissenters out of helicopters, whatever it took to create what Friedman called, “The Miracle of Chile,” a radical right-wing makeover of the nation’s economy. Bless Thom Hartmann for exposing the neo-lib Genesis story, the “Miracle” in Chile was a con. Hartmann notes that Chile’s economy went into free fall under the Chicago Boys’ regime; unemployment hit 30%.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The Appeals Court for the Federal District just ruled 7-4 that when the Constitution says only Congress can impose tariffs, it means exactly that. — Trump's fascist plan to militarize Blue cities to intimidate voters and flip states Red in the 2026 and 2028 elections takes clearer shape. — Trump's plan to destroy Medicare goes into effect. — Russia threatens to march on Paris. — We need fighters like FDR, not someone to send another "strongly worded letter." — If the Atlantic current collapses, Europe will descend into famine and chaos. — Trump is offering $5000 checks to voters who go GOP. — Crazy Alert! Bob Kennedy thinks kids should again be able to bring guns to school? — Geeky Science: Chinese company files a patent for a battery that will take a car 1800 miles on a single charge and can be recharged in 5 minutes or less.

Mamie Till did it in 1955. One grieving mother will do it again, and the gun industry will never recover… Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of the brutal murder of Emmett Till. The day also brought us another mass school shooting, this time in Minneapolis with two children dead and 17 others in the hospital. There are lessons we must learn from both, as I'll lay out in a moment.

For decades, the GOP has perfected the art of sabotage, turning government into a racket where the suffering of millions is simply the cost of keeping billionaires happy… Yesterday there was another highly publicized school shooting. Republicans, as usual, are offering thoughts and prayers. But why?

When elections are stolen, history shows crowds flood the streets. Trump plans to crush the protests before they even begin… Monday night, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker came right out and said it. Trump sending troops into American cities has nothing whatsoever to do with crime or policing but, instead, is all about stealing the 2026 election: “Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans,” Pritzker said bluntly. “None of those states is Illinois.” In fact, the cities with the highest crime and homicide rates are Memphis, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri respectively, both in Red States. So, if this isn’t about crime, why is Trump working so hard to get Americans used to heavily armed troops — who aren’t trained in policing but can be very effective at crowd control — in our Blue cities?

How "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime" is rewriting American justice… I'm not just worried; I'm enraged. We're watching our system of government being systematically, step-by-step refashioned into a surveillance-fueled engine of political vengeance. Even worse, the same chilling logic that ruled Stalin's courts — "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime" — has become this administration's sinister operating principle. It retrofits guilt to the target, not justice to evidence.

The last moments to resist are slipping away, and history shows once fascism's grip tightens, it rarely loosens… Trump's now raiding the homes and launching investigations into political insiders who've publicly criticized him; other former Trump administration officials are clamming up. We've entered the phase of this transition to fascism where objections to his actions are "chilled." Remember Jade Helm in 2015? The Obama administration was running a "joint realistic military training (RMT)" exercise led by the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), coordinated across several branches including Army Special Forces (Green Berets), Navy SEALs, Air Force Special Ops, Marine Corps forces, the 82nd Airborne, and other interagency partners. It was conducted across seven states — primarily in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado — and overseen from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The objective was to train special forces in maneuvering through civilian populations and operating in varied terrain to simulate overseas combat environments like in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it made rightwingers absolutely hysterical, with wall-to-wall coverage on Fox "News" and across the nation's 1500 hate-radio stations.

As I mentioned in the opening chapter of this book, when my Boomer generation was the same average age as the Millennial generation is today, back in 1990, our generation held 21.3% of the nation’s wealth. Louise and I shared in that wealth; although we were still in our 30s, in 1990 we owned a profitable small business (our fourth) and a nice home in suburban Atlanta. Millennials today, in contrast, are about the same number of people as Boomers were in 1990 but hold only 4.6% of the nation’s wealth and, if they’re the same age I was in 1990, they’re most likely struggling to own a home, are deeply in debt, and find it nearly impossible to start a small business. And the story for Zoomers is pretty much the same.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Last weekend, John Bolton told ABC News that he thought Trump’s FBI would be coming after him; yesterday, they did. — Now we see why Trump’s people moved Ghislaine Maxwell from a high-security women’s prison to the nation’s cushiest country club facility where she can leave during the day to take a job. — Tina Peters was a Colorado county clerk who criminally helped Trump partisans hack into voting machines in an attempt to prove he won the 2020 election and is now serving 8 1/2 years in prison for her multiple crimes involving that. — Trump goes after the only Black woman on the Fed’s Board of Governors. — The Republican war against science hits the Supreme Court and even John Roberts gagged on it. — Say what?! Trump wants to investigate all 55 million people with visas to make sure none are engaged in “support for terrorism,” which appears to be rightwing code for “critical of Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza and land thefts on the West Bank.” — Is a 100-seat permanent Republican majority Trump’s gerrymandering endgame? — A New York appellate court confirms that Trump and his real estate empire committed massive tax and insurance fraud.

Every gerrymander, purge, and press attack tightens the screw — until the system is locked and the tyrant holds the only key… With the raid on John Bolton's home, it looks like we may have reached that stage when fascist governments begin to turn against their critics, weaponizing the tools of a police state. Richard Nixon went after his enemies, too, and once said, in the depths of the Watergate scandal, that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." He discovered the hard way that wasn't true, at least back in the 1970s. More than 40 people connected to his White House and campaign were indicted, and many went to prison. Nixon's Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman, Domestic Policy Advisor John Ehrlichman, White House Counsel John Dean, Attorney General John Mitchell, and special counsel Charles Colson all did time. So did several members of Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President, better known as CREEP, for their crimes of burglary, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy. Nixon himself escaped accountability only because Gerald Ford pardoned him. That experience left a permanent scar on America's political consciousness, but it also left a roadmap that Trump and his inner circle are determined not to follow. They have no intention of being, like Nixon and his people, crooks who lost their grip on power. They're apparently making plans to guarantee it never happens to them.