Hartmann Report

Perhaps the 2022 election will bring Democrats a large enough progressive majority that they can work around their own grifters -- or maybe it’ll signal the death knell of the republic. Trump just unleashed an unhinged, barely coherent rant about the possibility President Biden might reveal what was going on in the White House on January 6th, the day Trump tried to finally end, once and for all, any possibility of governmental oversight of his ongoing criminal career. He believed he could follow in the footsteps of grifters before him who’ve taken control of and then drained dry countries from Hungary to Russia, Brazil to Turkey and The Philippines.

When everybody is vaccinated like Denmark, Fox “News,” and Israel, we can all be as “free” of disease in the workplace as Tucker Carlson - and wouldn’t that be a good thing! Tucker Carlson has some serious freedom that most Americans would love to also have. I’m not talking about the economic freedom he got from being born a multimillionaire trust-fund-baby heir to the Swanson Frozen Food fortune; his freedom to promote weird, racist conspiracy theories every night on TV ad nauseum; or even his white privilege freedom to drive down the street and not fear getting pulled over or killed by a racist cop. I’m talking about his freedom to do his job every day in a Covid-free environment. Tucker’s got it, big time, and most Americans would love to have it, especially those who have to deal with the public.

Unless we soon hold them accountable for their damage to America and the Constitution in a way they will understand and take seriously, this will continue and get worse. If we fail, G-d help us. Trickle-down authoritarianism is both making life miserable for and killing Americans, and it needs to stop. America has always had a dark undercurrent of authoritarianism, stretching from the slave owners going to war with the North over their right to own and control other human beings to Joe McCarthy’s demented (and false) rants about “communists in the State Department” to Nixon’s “War On Drugs.”

Democrats need to step up with a big and effective anti-crime program now, or the GOP will eat their lunch next year. Americans deserve to be safe in their homes and communities. Bill Clinton famously put 100,000 new cops on the streets nationwide, an action that de-fanged Republicans who claimed Democrats were “soft on crime.” So far, nothing the Biden administration has done comes even close. As a result, Republicans are highlighting rising crime rates around the country (often tied to local increases in homelessness), blaming it on Democratic mayors and the politically suicidal “defund the police” rhetoric from folks fed up with police killings of unarmed Black people.

Americans deserve to know how we’ve been manipulated, & by whom, for the past 40 years. Hopefully the Democrats & our media will begin to call the GOP out on Wanniski & Reagan’s Two Santa Clauses scam. The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus. —Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976 The stock market is falling, a reaction to GOP threats to shut down the government: it’s all part of their plan.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — You’ve probably already caught the news, but in case you didn’t: if you’re over 65 you can get a booster shot starting next week. If the US follows the trajectory of Israel, who reached high vaccination levels months before us, I’m betting there will be boosters for people younger than 65 in a few months. Meanwhile, vaccines for kids 5-12 will also probably be coming in the next few weeks or a month or two at the most.

The cancer of money in our politics is much deeper than just a handful of corrupt Democrats; they're also now blowing up President Biden’s effort to put America back together and save American lives. Want to know who owns your member of Congress? Just look at how they vote. For example, this week Representatives Kurt Schrader (D-OR), Scott Peters (D-CA), Kathleen Rice (D-NY) and, on another committee, Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) all voted with 100% of their Republican colleagues to kill the ability of Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

If the GOP had the courage of the Senate Republicans in 1974, Milley never would have been in a position to worry that an American president might start a nuclear war just to hang on to power. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley stepped outside the realm of his constitutional power to prevent Donald Trump from starting nuclear war with China or Iran. It was definitely unconstitutional and probably illegal. But he’s not the true villain in this story; the true villain is almost never mentioned in the press.

So Texas kids continue to sleep on office floors, get handcuffed to desks, and trafficked out of state while Abbott & his GOP buddies bask in the votes of “concerned” white evangelical voters. Governor Abbott and Republicans in Texas will tell you that they’re very, very, very concerned about children. Particularly before they’re born. Even when they’re the size of a grain of rice and have a tail, indistinguishable from a tadpole, at around 6 weeks of gestation. But when children are “post-birth” and old enough that the State of Texas might have to use tax dollars to pay to care for them when their own birth parents can’t or won’t? Suddenly Texas Republicans have amnesia about their much-vaunted concern for kids.

Racism, Demagoguery & Political Opportunism are Killing America. Ray DeMonia of Cullman, Alabama was a good and decent man, an antique collector and auctioneer, beloved by friends and family. He and his family were vaccinated, so they didn’t have to worry much about Covid. Two days short of his 74th birthday Ray died of a heart attack that, in and of itself, had nothing to do with Covid. But that’s only part of the story.