Hartmann Report

The problem for Republicans is that unions are "democracy in the workplace," and the GOP hates democracy as a matter of principle... The UAW's successful unionization effort last week at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee — the first successful unionization effort at a car factory in the South since the 1940s — is breaking the brains of Republicans in that region. They're truly astonished that workers might not trust their corporate overlords with their working conditions, pay, health, and retirement. Tennessee's Republican Governor Bill Lee — along with Governors Kay Ivey (AL), Brian Kemp (GA), Tate Reeves (MS), Henry McMaster (SC), and Greg Abbott (TX) — issued a joint statement last Tuesday condemning the vote... The problem for Republicans is that unions represent a form of democracy in the workplace, and the GOP hates democracy as a matter of principle. It's why conservatives have opposed every effort to expand voting rights from the Jim Crow era, through fighting woman's suffrage, to opposing voting rights legislation from 1965 to this day.

Trump's vision of fascism, supported by the neofascist ideologues behind Project 2025 and Project 47, is claiming the Democratic Party is so extreme it's a threat and needs to done away with... Like good fascists throughout modern history, Donald Trump and the RNC are rolling out a program to try to intimidate minorities and Democratic voters so badly they'll leave polling places without voting... Claiming fraud or proclaiming the illegitimacy of their political opposition is an old, old trick. And now Trump's RNC is embracing that claim and the other major aspects of fascism with gusto.

Our entire popular understanding of the cause of much crime — enough to "tipping point" a society into crisis — is usually wrong… In the midst of all of his trials, in a moment pregnant with irony, Donald Trump recently claimed that if he was reelected he would seize direct control of Washington, DC because, he said, crime there was out of control. "We're going to federalize it," Trump told attendees to a Las Vegas rally. "We're gonna have the toughest law enforcement in the country. We're not going to have any more crime and it's going to look beautiful." As usual, Trump doesn't know what he's talking about.

Both homeless & inflation are the result of America allowing housing to become a commodity that can be traded & speculated in by financial markets & overseas investors... Back in 1967, a friend of mine and I hitchhiked from East Lansing, Michigan to San Francisco to spend the summer in Haight-Ashbury. One ride dropped us off in Sparks, Nevada, and within minutes of putting our thumbs out a city police car stopped and arrested us for vagrancy. The cop, a young guy with an oversize mustache who was apologetic for the city’s policy, drove us to the desert a mile or so beyond the edge of town, where we hitchhiked standing by a distressing light-post covered with graffiti reading “39 hours without a ride,” “going on our third day,” and “anybody got any water?” Vagrancy laws were so 20th century.

"That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are their means of acquiring property strictly so called." —James Madison, Property, March 29, 1792 While the monopolization of wealth and political power by giant corporations and the billionaires they create has reached crisis proportions in this country, the monopolization of middle-class wealth by white people—and, particularly, white men—is also a crisis that keeps our country unequal and out of balance.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Will Trump face stronger contempt charges for violating his gag order while sitting in court? And, if Trump is jailed, will there be mass protests? Does anyone really care? — Ukraine may lose by the end of 2024 — will our Congress stand up to the Putin caucus or let down democracy? — Why do Republicans in Congress want banks to be able to continue to “squeeze customers with junk fees”? A — Will the “FART” team work for House Republicans? — Wisdom School Alert: Is There Power In How We Think About Things? — Crazy Alert! House Democrats filed a bill to make Marjorie Taylor Greene “Putin’s Special Envoy to the US Congress.” — Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert: ADHD: “Good German Schools” Come to America — Hospitals are “so scared” of GOP abortion laws that they’re turning away pregnant women in trouble. — Good News Alert! During periods in 30 out of the last 38 days, 100% of California’s power came from renewable, non-nuclear sources. — More good news...Maine’s legislature passed sweeping gun safety laws in all-night session.

Seriously. We should have known, but, still, the science is shocking: when conservatives run governments, suicides and homicides go up; when liberals run governments, suicides and homicides go down. We got the first clue back in 2002, when, in a 100-year longitudinal study published that year in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Australian researchers found that the suicide rate in that country and the UK increased throughout the 20th century whenever a Conservative government (similar to Republicans here in the U.S.) was in power and declined measurably when the liberal Labour Party was in charge. The BBC cited the research, noting that tens of thousands of Australians and Brits would not have committed suicide if conservatives had never run either government during the 20th century.

Hopefully, Israel will soon return to its democratic roots with new elections, Ukraine will get the aid it needs to repel Putin's army & America will turn away from Trump's authoritarian siren's song… The most amazing thing about Donald Trump's current criminal trial is that it is happening at all. He has told us that if he becomes president he's going to change our country in a way that such a trial could never be possible again. There will be absolute immunity for Trump and his cronies, as he will argue before the Supreme Court on April 25. No person aligned with him will ever be prosecuted again. Just like in Hungary, Russia, Iran, Turkey, or China. Those countries are all run by strongman, the men Trump openly admires and aspires to be. As does Netanyahu.

It's time to declare the 43-year Reagan Revolution's neoliberal experiment a failure, and outlaw or heavily tax the share buybacks that are one of its most visible markers… I hate stock buybacks. I think they are one of the most self-serving things that corporate America does. Instead of investing in workers and in training and in research and in equipment, they don't do a thing to make their company better and they artificially raise the stock price by just reducing the number of shares. They're despicable. I'd like to abolish them. —Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer August, 2022 A Boeing whistleblower is testifying before Congress today that the 787 has dangerous flaws in the way it's put together. Senator Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee's investigations subcommittee that will hear from the whistleblower, told The New York Times he has heard: "Repeated, shocking allegations about Boeing's manufacturing failings [that] point to an appalling absence of safety culture and practices — where profit is prioritized over everything else."

And now we learn he apparently covered up Trump's link to Russia (the Mueller Report) & his scheme to fix the 2016 election by shutting up Stormy Daniels, Karen MacDougal & the Trump Tower doorman… Congressman Jim Jordan wanted revenge on behalf of Donald Trump against Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg for charging Trump with election interference in Manhattan. He threatened Bragg with "oversight": dragging him before his committee, threatening him with contempt of Congress; putting a rightwing target on Bragg's back by publicizing him to draw sharpshooters from as far away as Wyoming or Idaho; and facing the possibility of going to jail if he didn't answer Jordan's questions right. Jordan, James Comer, and Bryan Steil — three chairmen of three different committees — wrote to Bragg: "By July 2019 ... federal prosecutors determined that no additional people would be charged alongside [Michael] Cohen. ... [Y]our apparent decision to pursue criminal charges where federal authorities declined to do so requires oversight...." They were furious that Bragg would prosecute Trump for a crime that the federal Department of Justice had already decided in 2019 and announced that they weren't going to pursue. But why didn't Bill Barr's Department of Justice proceed after they'd already put Michael Cohen in prison for a year for delivering the check to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet at least until after the election, and then lying about it? Why didn't they go after the guy who ordered the check written, the guy who'd had sex with Daniels, the guy whose run for the presidency was hanging in the balance?