Hartmann Report

Republicans worship cheap labor — and having a steady and reliable supply of cheap labor requires widespread poverty… We must not confuse statistical probability with some transcendental and utterly compelling force. — Unspiek, Baron Bodissey One of the enduring mysteries of America is why the citizens of Red states are generally poorer, less educated, and sicker than the citizens of Blue states. To that question, I step up as your hierophant with an answer to this deep mystery that you may not have previously considered.

Jack Smith reveals Trump's illicit crimes to power, showing how Republicans repeatedly break the law in elections... The media is shocked, shocked, I tell you, that Jack Smith has the goods on Trump and, holy cow, we had a traitor in the White House! And he committed crimes to both gain and try to hold office! But our media continually ignores context: this is nothing new for Republican presidents. What's troubling isn't so much Trump's being busted for a very small slice of his multitude of crimes, but that our media so consistently ignores the crimes of past Republican presidents as if they never happened. For example, Tuesday was Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday, but did you read in any media reports that the 1980 election was criminally stolen from him by the Reagan campaign cutting a treasonous deal with the Iranians to hold the American hostages?

Birds, dolphins, and insects are vanishing — and we're the killers... More properly, the question should be, "Are we killing off the natural world?" Because if it is dying, it's dying at our hands. In the debate last night JD Vance lied about several things, as expected, but his most egregious lie was about climate change (which just killed hundreds of Americans), saying the United States has the "cleanest" economy in the world while generally dismissing the topic. The global carbon budget finds that the United States emits .26 kilograms of carbon dioxide per dollar of economic activity and is the third dirtiest economy behind India and China. And Trump is still claiming that climate change is a "scam," parroting the fossil fuel billionaires who fund the GOP.

Jimmy Carter was the finest man to become president of my lifetime. When he passes, America will be the poorer... It's Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday, so I wanted to share a few things you may not know about my favorite president. Jimmy Carter has always been one of my heroes, and not just because he was the only president willing to come on my radio program and speak bluntly about the Supreme Court and American oligarchs (among other things). — He was one of those rare Christians in political life who actually lived the values Jesus taught.

Under the next Republican regime, every fertile woman in Red states could face invasive state surveillance. It's not dystopia — it's reality... "Menstrual police?" you may be thinking. That's not possible! Not in America! Read on. The Comstock Act is an 1873 law that, if enforced, would outlaw all abortions in America by banning the shipping via mail, UPS, FedEx, etc., of any device, drug, or instrument that can be used to produce an abortion. It would even shut down hospital abortions. It could also be used to empower new state or even federal police agencies specifically overseeing women violating its provisions. Like the menstrual police, which a Trump senior advisor just said was a very real possibility.

An excerpt from my book Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being "It still strikes me as strange that the case histories I write should read like short stories and that, as one might say, they lack the serious stamp of science." —Sigmund Freud, 1895 After nearly thirty years of searching for ways to help people heal from trauma, it’s amazing to me that it was right there in front of us all the time.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — October surprise? — For the first time ever, Democrats make it rain in all 50 states. — Speaking of radio… — Justice Department sues Alabama for purging voters off the rolls. — Jews and Catholics warn against Trump’s latest attack on religious voters. — Will NYC Mayor Adams claim he was just taking tips? — Once again, the media will refuse to do their damn job and fact-check Republican lies, this time in Tuesday’s Vance/Walz debate. — Crazy Alert! JD Vance is attending an event today with a corrupt evangelist who said Harris uses “witchcraft.” — ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World alert: Tired of Tossing & Turning? ADHD’s Secret Sleep Fixes Revealed — Wisdom School alert: In Praise of Shitty First Drafts & Talking To Yourself Read more at HartmannReport.com.

While the ideas and policies promoted by the libertarian wing of the Republican Party have made CEOs and billionaire investors very, very rich in recent decades, it's killing the rest of us. As noted yesterday, über-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, according to The New York Times, now professes to be a libertarian. So, once again, why are Republicans so cruel and why do they seem so fond of libertarianism? Why does Greg Abbott put razor wire in the Rio Grande river? Why does Donald Trump target people for assassination by his followers? Why does Ron DeSantis revel in keeping tens of thousands of low-income Florida children from getting Medicaid? Why would Zuckerberg hook up with a group that wants to strip Americans of basic social safety net protections and regulations? Yesterday, I laid out the terrible impact libertarian policies, which have infected the GOP for five decades, have had on the United States. But where did the whole idea of libertarianism come from, and who started the Libertarian Party? Get ready for a wild ride as we do a deep dive into America's most bizarre (and phony) political party. How is it that Republicans so often embrace casual cruelty like tearing mothers from their children or throwing pregnant women in poverty off public assistance? Why have 11 GOP-controlled states refused to this day to expand Medicaid for their 30 million minimum-wage working people when the federal government covers 90 percent of the cost?

But where did all this "greed is good" as a political philosophy that Zuckerberg is now embracing start? A new profile of mega-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg in last week's New York Times identifies America's richest millennial (he owns 1/50th of all millennial wealth in the US) as a Libertarian: "Privately, Mr. Zuckerberg now considers his personal politics to be more like libertarianism or 'classical liberalism,' according to people who have spoken to him recently. That includes a hostility to regulation that restricts business, an embrace of free markets and globalism and an openness to social-justice reforms — but only if it stops short of what he considers far-left progressivism." Zuck, of course, isn't the only one. It's high fashion across Silicon Valley and the GOP to claim your Libertarian credentials; Ron (and now Rand) Paul turned it into a moneymaking scam, and most all of the Putin Caucus in the GOP love to talk up libertarianism, as do multiple rightwing tech billionaires. Senator Mike Lee proclaims himself a Libertarian, and has for years. We see it writ large in the rhetoric of Republican members of Congress and conservative pundits who argue that shutting the government down is a good thing, because most government functions are "unnecessary" or "woke." Libertarians believe the only legitimate functions of government are running the army, the police, and a court system to adjudicate crimes. Forget about everything else, from protecting consumers and the environment to the social safety net.

Inside the GOP's 30-year plan to dominate America's talk radio system… "Whoever controls the media controls the mind." — Jim Morrison After Ronald Reagan struck down the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule, Republican money men got the memo. Whichever party controlled the most states would have a big edge in both the Senate (and thus control of the Supreme Court nominations) and the Electoral College, and most of the low- and medium-population states had relatively inexpensive media markets. You could buy or lease radio stations for less than a party might spend over a four-year electoral cycle on advertising, so why not simply acquire a few hundred stations across a dozen or more states and program them with rightwing talk radio 24/7?