Hartmann Report

Are Americans catching on and increasingly rejecting horses, sparrows, and politicians who try to sell them on more trickle-down tax cuts for the rich? They're at it again. And it's not even original: the trickle-down economics that two-dozen Republican governors and Trump are reviving as you read these words has a long history. "Trickle down," of course, was the theory advanced by Ronald Reagan that if America only made rich people massively richer with staggering tax cuts, ending anti-trust regulation, and government subsidies for their industries, they would use all that extra free money to build new factories, hire people, and the abundance would trickle down to the average worker. It was a lie, but it wasn't the first time the GOP had tried that lie. Then knew exactly what they were doing, and what outcome it would produce. Instead of raising the pay of their workers, the rich people on the receiving end of Reagan's, Bush's, and Trump's tax cuts simply added the cash to their money bins and investments, bought new yachts or trophy wives, and blasted themselves into outer space on penis-shaped rockets.

The bottom line is that we — as a nation, voluntarily or involuntarily — have now had the full Republican experience. Which is why we're no longer listening to the Republican politicians' BS… Donald Trump tells us we are experiencing "American carnage" and the solution is to round up and put into concentration camps 11 million immigrants; imprison prosecutors, judges, Democrats, and reporters he says criticized him; and replace the FBI and our court systems with his own armed cadre that is loyal to him. The Proud Boys are stepping up again, and he is embracing them. Seventy million Americans — and commentators across the massive rightwing media ecosystem — agree with him, as I learned Friday when I debated a conservative talk show host in New York before an audience of hundreds of rightwing (and a small handful of liberal) talkshow hosts and program directors at the nation's largest convention of talk radio and television media. (Glenn Beck was the keynote speaker.) How did we get here?

While the human death penalty has largely disappeared in the world and is fading in the United States (a good thing), the corporate death penalty needs a revival. The corporate death penalty, widespread in the 19th century, is a political and economic process that weeds bad actors out of the business ecosystem to make room for good players. The process of revoking corporate charters goes back to the very first years of the United States. After all, the only reasons that states allow (“charter”) corporations (normal business corporations can be chartered only by a state, not the federal government) are to serve the public interest.

— Trump’s vow to prosecute Democrats puts the rule of law on the ballot. — The Justice Department is apparently looking into the company started by Clarence Thomas’s sugar daddy, Harlan Crow. — Handmaid Alert! Radical GOP senators vote against birth control. — The Republican war on women amps up in Texas, where two male professors want to fail female students who get abortions. — An all-Republican court gives Trump a delay past the election in the Georgia case. — Jared Kushner‘s new development deal includes a memorial to the victims of NATO. — The pay gap between CEOs & workers is growing. — Wisdom School Alert! It's All One Thing - the Story of the Worms — Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert! ADHD: Can You Redirect Your Cravings? — Crazy Alert! Donald Trump tells Sean Hannity on Fox “News” that he never suggested Hillary should be imprisoned.

The GOP and rightwing hate media have turned racism into both a political weapon and a machine to generate billions in annual profits… The politically cancerous pattern of using racism for political gain and financial profit dates back to the earliest days of our republic, but now, amplified by Donald Trump, is again increasingly in our faces. Black workers at a General Mills plant in Georgia are suing over white management allegedly sanctioning a "Good Ole Boys" club that uses Confederate symbols and open racism to intimidate and cow them. A producer on The Apprentice show is — now that his NDA has expired — telling the story of Trump's casual and repeated use of the N-word, questioning whether Americans would ever "buy a n— winning" the show's faux business competition. The GOP and rightwing hate media have turned racism into both a political weapon and a machine to generate billions in annual profits. Today's "school choice" movement, racial and anti-immigrant hatred, and the MAGA movement all have the same roots.

We are the last barrier to America being overwhelmed by this fascist tide. You, me, and average people like us. Nobody else is coming to our nation's rescue. As we remember and honor the sacrifice of American GIs who died at Normandy in the battle against fascism, it's vital to realize that the struggle against that evil form of government is once again before us. From November 2020 until last week we lived in the era of Trump Big Lie 1.0, his assertion that he'd won an election he actually lost by over 7 million votes. It was a bold, audacious move, something no American politician had ever had the fundamental lack of integrity, decency, or shame to try. While some of the most spineless, craven, and sold-out Republicans were quick to take his side with Big Lie 1.0 (139 of them in the House of Representatives and 8 in the Senate) — even in the face of his throwing a deadly mob against the US Capitol that tried to hang his Vice President and murder the Speaker of the House — there were still some who held to principle and didn't vote to overthrow the election. Those Republicans are now mostly all gone, purged from the party or cowed into silence by fear of violence against their families or the end of their political careers. And now, as of last week, we live in the era of Trump Big Lie 2.0: that Trump is the victim of a political prosecution.

This fall may well be the first big national test of this "new internet," and, like the Internet Research Agency's interventions in 2016, could well lead to disaster... In one of the great and thought-provoking albums of all time, I Think We're All Bozos on This Bus (1971), my dear old buddy Phil Proctor and his three brilliant colleagues in The Firesign Theatre envisioned a world constructed largely of holograms — including one that's the President of the United States, directly interacting with average voters — run by a giant AI. Today, this is no longer unthinkable, and it might help Trump into office this year. Artificial Intelligence systems are pushing Moore's Law to warp speed, and the most sophisticated of them are already indistinguishable from real humans in every dimension except in-person interactions.

Religious evangelism can be a deadly thought virus. It explicitly posits that, "There is only one right way to live and we know what it is" along with, "There is only one true God." Twenty-eight states, nearly all Republican-controlled, are now spending billions of taxpayer dollars to support indoctrinating children in religion through voucher programs that can be used for mostly Christian schools. Five Republican-controlled states are in the process of letting vouchers ghettoize their entire public-school systems. As The Washington Post noted yesterday: "Billions in taxpayer dollars are being used to pay tuition at religious schools throughout the country, as state voucher programs expand dramatically and the line separating public education and religion fades." Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, flies an "Appeal to Heaven" flag outside his official congressional office that, since 2013, has been the semi-official logo of a militant arm of charismatic Christianity involved with January 6th. Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito flew a similar flag outside his summer home.

Irregular warfare involves the use of propaganda, proxies, or people willing to betray their own country... Trump lies that the guilty verdict against him — by a jury of his peers that his own attorneys picked — is an illegitimate, politically motivated show trial. Trying to help Trump destroy Americans' faith in our democracy and its justice system, Russian president Vladimir Putin's spokesman today said of Trump's trial: "If we speak about Trump, the fact that there is simply the elimination, in effect, of political rivals by all possible means, legal and illegal, is obvious." Hungary's dictator Viktor Orbàn and Italy's neofascist Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, both also argued that Trump is the victim of political persecution. Right wing media commentators and Republicans in Congress have leaped at the opportunity to echo Putin and Orbàn. This sort of propaganda is called "irregular warfare" (IW) — warfare by means outside of troops, bombs, navies, etc. — and the US used to be an expert at it. Typically, irregular warfare involves the use of propaganda, proxies, or people willing to betray their own country.

The American Revolution would probably never have gotten off the ground were it not for meeting places available to the public—the most famous being Sam Adams’s tavern. Similarly, churches open to the public (although privately owned but regulated on a nonprofit basis) were the core of the 20th century’s civil rights movement. Facebook has, for millions, replaced these public places as a nexus for social, cultural, and political interaction. As such, it resembles a part of the natural commons. When radio achieved the equivalent of four hours of “screen time” a day for the average American, in 1927 and 1934 we passed comprehensive regulation of the industry to prevent the spread of disinformation and mandate responsible broadcasting practices.