Hartmann Report

Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" . Cindy Anderson predicted that hospital consolidation in rural Missouri would kill people. At the time, she didn't realize that her husband, Butch, would be one of its victims. The first big wave of hospital consolidations happened in the wake of Reagan stopping enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1983 and ran through the late 1990s. The second wave followed when the Affordable Care Act — written with plenty of input from the hospital industry — introduced more incentives to form monopolies in 2013. Thus, while there were 1,412 hospital mergers between 1998 and 2015, 561 of them happened in just the 2010 to 2015 period.

Saturday Report 3/16/24 - When did it become a crime for two consenting adults to have an affair? Thom plus logo The Best of the Rest of the News. — When did it become a crime for two consenting adults to have an affair? — Former RNC Chairman implies Trump takeover of the party is good news for Democrats. — Now that Donald Trump has officially agreed with the GOP's 70+ year effort to cut Social Security benefits and gut Medicare, it's safe to say, as Nobel Prize winning Economist Paul Krugman recently pointed out in The New York Times, "Social Security and Medicare are on the ballot." — "Foreclosure King" Steve Mnuchin may organize a bid to buy TikTok. — Fareed Zakaria asks, "Is America as determined as Putin?" — Crazy Alert! Republican politician says she wants President Obama executed on live television to raise money for the GOP. — Hunter in a Farmer's World Alert! How to Avoid Becoming the Victim of the ADHD Industry — Video of the week: every woman in America should watch this

Trust is the single most important thing any government has; it is truly what makes a nation viable… When the Nixon scandals were at their height, 36 percent of Americans told pollsters they still had a "high degree of trust in the American government." Today, according to Pew, that metric stands at 16 percent. How did we get here?

Their diabolical plan, for purely political purposes, was virtually ignored by the American mainstream media… March 13th this week through April 7th next month commemorate the anniversary of what could only be called an intentional, racially-based mass murder of American citizens, planned and executed by Donald Trump and Jared Kushner for purely political purposes, and virtually ignored by the American mainstream media. If that sounds extreme, read on: all details are hotlinked to credible, mainstream sources. And, as these anniversaries over the next 3 weeks are noted in the press, hopefully some in the media will report on this now-well-documented history.

Is there something in the GOP's core beliefs and strategies that just inevitably leads to these outcomes? According to a popular meme, comedian Noel Casler (the guy who worked on The Apprentice and outed Trump's drug abuse and diaper wearing) asks, "How come everything the Republican Party stands for involves other people dying?" He then goes on to note GOP support for assault weapons, opposition to masks and vaccines, opposition to saving the environment, and their all-out war on Obamacare and Medicare-for-All.

With TikTok, he is bowing to president Xi. With Ukraine, he is bowing to President Putin. And in both cases, he and the GOP are bowing to big money… Donald Trump's flip-flop yesterday on TikTok shows how corrupt and sold out he and the rest of the GOP have become. With TikTok, he is bowing to president Xi. With Ukraine, he is bowing to President Putin. And in both cases, he and the GOP are bowing to big money. Reagan's Republican Party was committed to making the world safe for democracy; today the only force arguing for actual democracy in the United States and overseas is the Democratic Party. How did it come to this?

Don't be fooled: The crocodile tears of those like Bill Barr & the "ex-Republicans" longing for a return of their "Grand Old Party" are still the con of Iran-Contra, Bush v Gore & Citizens United… With nepo-daughter-in-law Lara Trump taking over the GOP, Donald Trump has essentially declared the "old Republican Party" — the party of Reagan and Bill Barr — dead, arguing that it no longer exists in the form it's taken since the 1970s. At a Virginia rally a week ago Saturday, Trump said his neofascist MAGA movement has taken over the Republican Party, that it "represents 96%, and maybe 100%" of Republicans, and that, "We're getting rid of the Romneys of the world. We want to get Romneys and those out." While many in the GOP love the nativist, authoritarian turn the party's taken, others — like former Attorney General Bill Barr — are mourning the loss of the old guard, calling Trump's actions "despicable" and "nauseating." But what is — or was — the old GOP that Bill Barr so loved?

The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream In 1923, the patent for insulin was sold for $1 to the University of Toronto. Less than 100 years later, a 26-year-old Minneapolis man named Alec Raeshawn Smith died of diabetic ketoacidosis. Alec died three days before payday, his insulin injector empty and his blood sugar at a lethal level. How did this happen?

The Best of the Rest of the News. — State of the Union: Dark Brandon shows up & proves he's still capable of kicking Republican ass. — Russians are intervening in the election! — When there's money to be made, Republicans don't care how many people die. — Republicans are helping Mexicans smuggle fentanyl into the United States. — It was disgusting enough when Tommy Tuberville kneecapped our military because he wanted raped service members to be forced to carry their fetuses to term, but now a Republican senator is blocking an Air Force colonel's promotion to brigadier general because in 2020 he wrote an op-ed for Stars and Stripes asking his "fellow white colonels" to engage in conversations about racism. — Hunter in a Farmer's Alert! ADHD: Study the Lives of Other Unique People — Crazy Alert! Hannity says President Biden was too "jacked up" at his State of the Union speech. — Geeky Science/Health Alert: Oscar Mayer is getting serious about plant-based foods.

The GOP have been trying to gut or privatize Social Security ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt put it into place in 1935. They refer to it alternatively as a Ponzi scheme, or as socialism… Want to end Social Security? Just vote for Donald Trump or pretty much any Republican this fall. Every year that Donald Trump was president he proposed budgets that would have cut Social Security funding and benefits; in 2020 he even campaigned on ending the payroll tax — that funds it and Medicare — altogether.