Hartmann Report

Medicare Advantage is not Medicare: it’s private health insurance for seniors that’s largely paid for with our tax dollars. They make their money by routinely denying claims… Want to invest in a scam that lets you make billions with virtually no risk? If you’re morbidly rich, all you have to do is to open or buy an insurance company that’s offering Medicare Advantage plans. And now, Republicans are saying that if they retake the White House they will change the Medicare rules so that people newly turning 65 will enroll by default into Medicare Advantage rather than real, traditional Medicare, further enhancing the profits of these massive, billion-dollar insurance giants while rapidly killing off real, traditional Medicare. This is the culmination of a long-term plan.

Now that several of the Republican justices have been so heavily saturated with fat-cat money and thus regularly vote in favor of their morbidly rich "friends," what do those rich dudes want? This Thursday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case of Trump v Anderson, which will determine whether Trump can appear on the ballot and hold office if elected or if he's disqualified by virtue of his having incited an insurrection on January 6th. The really fascinating part of this whole drama, though, will have to do with the power politics "behind the thrones" on the Court. Now that several of the Republican justices have been so heavily saturated with fat-cat money and thus regularly vote in favor of their morbidly rich "friends," what do those rich dudes want out of Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, and their other "investments"?

While the cancerous growth of giant corporate monopolies and oligopolies was largely held in check from the time of FDR until the Reagan administration, America’s middle class began to feel the influence of the laissez-faire Chicago School of Economics and Robert Bork in the last years of Nixon’s presidency. During Nixon’s era, when the US economy was about a third the size it is now, there were about twice as many publicly traded companies as there are today. Public companies began to collapse in earnest in the mid-1990s, as the Clinton administration embraced neoliberal economics and maintained Reagan’s policy of not seriously enforcing the Sherman Antitrust Act. In 1996, there were roughly 8,000 publicly traded companies; today it’s in the neighborhood of 4,000. In my lifetime, America has transformed from a nation of small and local family businesses into a nation of functional monopolies where small handfuls, typically three to five giant companies, control around 80% of pretty much every industry and marketplace, and make pricing and other decisions in concert with each other.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Nikki Haley Claims States Have the Right to Secede: Do they? — Let’s review the amicus brief 25 world-class historians filed with SCOTUS about Trump’s claim that he can’t be removed from the ballot via the 14th Amendment. — What is causing New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron to “slam on the brakes” on the Trump Org fraud ruling? — Why didn’t the FBI search Trump's hidden room? — Get Rid of DeJoy! House Dems Urge Biden to “Swiftly” Appoint Postal Board Governors. — The real story behind the GOP’s sham impeachment of DHS Secretary Mayorcas exposed. — Now Republicans are saying out loud that they don’t want non-Christians in government. When does it stop? Or are the Salem Witch Trials coming up next? — Warming-up Alert! Did Punxsutawney Phil just come through for all of us and predict an early spring?

Madison wasn’t talking about an abstraction or some highfalutin concept. He was talking about how some rich people will inevitably try to seize political power to screw everybody else. Republicans don’t even try to hide it anymore. Amazingly, the House managed to pass a piece of legislation Wednesday that both helps hungry kids and gives a boost to businesses that want to invest in future products. It was a compromise and neither side is ecstatic, but both Democrats and Republicans got something for their constituents. Democrats got to lift 400,000 children and their families out of poverty, and the legislation will immediately carry an additional 3 million kids from “deep poverty” to mere poverty with an expanded child tax credit. Over the next year, reports the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the legislation will help over 16 million children growing up in low-income households.

Not only has Section 230 turned the web into a stalking ground for sexual predators, it’s also given Putin cheap & easy access to Americans, an access he’s been using for years to tear us apart... Yesterday, families whose children died as a result of interactions with social media companies confronted the industry’s top CEOs. The most dramatic moments were when Senator Lindsay Graham told billionaire Mark Zuckerberg that he had blood on his hands, and when Senator Josh Hawley demanded Zuck apologize to the grieving parents in the room — which he did (sorta). But behind all that drama, which the TV networks loved, was a huge issue that the networks largely ignored because they benefit from it, too. It has to do with something called Section 230. The Republican case against regulation of business has always boiled down to arguing that when people are harmed by a company’s behavior they can sue for big bucks. ... But the five fabulously wealthy CEOs who were grilled by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday occupy a unique space in American law: they can’t be sued, can’t be arrested, and can’t be held accountable for almost anything happening on their platforms, even if they knew all about it and failed or refused to stop it. Nor can their companies, or any of their employees or shareholders.

This year’s election may be our last chance to push back against the oligarchy that the GOP has been constructing for the past forty-three years… Like an alcoholic family that won’t discuss alcoholism (proving Don Quixote’s warning never to mention rope in the home of a man who’s been hanged), far too many Americans are unwilling to acknowledge or even discuss the ongoing collapse of democracy in the United States. We see it in everything from our last two Republican presidents having lost the national vote but taking office anyway, to the extreme gerrymandering happening in every Red state in the country, to the naked bribery of our legislators and Supreme Court justices. And our media exclude it from almost every conversation. Networks run promotions mentioning Trump’s indictments, but completely fail to point out that he is calling for the end of democracy in America, the suspension of the Constitution, and playing the role of a “dictator” on day one.

Just turn everything over to the morbidly rich and let them and their companies run the entire country along the profit motive lines? What could possibly go wrong? Usually it’s Republican politicians bragging that they’re “more libertarian than conservative” but this time it’s a former Democrat, Bobby Kennedy Jr., who’s reportedly thinking of running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket. This bizarre experiment of libertarianism — now officially a political party with ballot access in all 50 states — has been promoted by the billionaire class ever since World War II. And it’s literally killing some of us, along with threatening our democratic republic.

Yes, prior to the Reagan Revolution American companies actually invested in their workers, their communities, and their business. They attended to the needs of their customers, by in large... A Boeing 737-Max9 lost a side door during flight, and commentators in the industry point out the plane manufacturer used to be run by engineers, but now, at the insistence of Wall Street, is run by bean-counters looking out for profits. One of my kids bought a new American-made car last year. While driving on the highway it died, complete with smoke coming out from under the hood; she barely made it to the shoulder where a tow truck could pick her up. The dealer held the car for months before she hired a lawyer who — after more months — finally forced them to take back the car and give her a partial refund under Oregon's lemon law: at every turn, she was stonewalled by both the manufacturer and their dealer here. Apparently this has happened to a lot of Americans.

The war for the heart and soul of America, funded by libertarian billionaires, has moved into the press, the internet, and our political arena. In that struggle, it’s more accurate to portray libertarians as “feudalists” than as advocates of anything new. Feudalism doesn’t exclusively refer to a point in time or history when streets were filled with mud and people lived as peasants. More broadly, it refers to an economic and political system, just like democracy or communism or socialism or theocracy. The biggest difference is that instead of power being held by the people, the government, or the church, those who own property and the other necessities of life hold power. At its essential core, feudalism could be defined as “government of, by, and for the rich.”