Hartmann Report

Money in politics has a long and ignominious history. Corruption by money of individual politicians, and of the legislative process as a whole, hit three peaks in the history of our nation: during the Gilded Age of the late 1800s, the Roaring Twenties in the last century, and the years since 2010 when the Supreme Court struck down numerous campaign finance and good-government laws, throwing the doors open to corporate and billionaire cash with its Citizens United decision. The Gilded Age excesses led to the Tillman Act of 1907, which made it a federal felony for a corporation to donate money or anything of value to a campaign for federal office. It was gutted by Citizens United.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Republicans in Congress kick the can down the road to March. — Why is President Musk endorsing the "German neo-Nazi Party"? — Trump is already walking back his promises. Why don't the headlines simply say, "He Lied"? — President Biden says debt student debt cancellation is coming for public servants. — Hunter in a Farmer's World: ADHD: What the Heck is Time? — Wisdom School: Everyone "Sees" (or "Hears" or "Feels") the World Differently: Why It Matters...

President Musk and his sidekick Donald Trump are demanding that Republicans in the House and Senate cut funding to numerous programs that help average Americans (including food, medical, and even child cancer research) and raise the debt ceiling to pave the way for the federal government to borrow another $5 trillion to hand to billionaires in the form of more tax cuts. You won't hear about what they're doing, or how we and our children will pay for it, on billionaire Murdoch-family-owned Fox "News," of course, nor on billionaire-owned rightwing radio stations, or from podcasts supported by billionaires. But that's exactly what's happening and it's no secret. This is called oligarchy, as I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class. It's a very different form of government from democracy, which is what most Americans believe we still have.

Trump's proven plan to crush opposition, corrupt government, and rewrite the rules in his and his billionaire buddies' favor… Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger is wondering out loud if "President Musk" will force "Vice President Trump" and Speaker Mike Johnson to shut down our government as Musk tweets his orders to the GOP. It's all about raising the debt ceiling, Trump says, so they can roll out the next round of tax cuts for billionaires, paid for by average working people. It seems like a bizarre power play: The actual story is much more sinister. As Trump is in the process of teaching America, it's impossible to disentangle democracy-ending authoritarianism from billionaire corruption of government. They require each other. And the way this will play out won't need a crystal ball to see: Trump has already begun traveling a well-trod path that leads to the destruction of our form of government.

As the old guard fades and democracy is under siege, the next generation of leaders is missing in action: who will step up and fight? Monday morning MSNBC and CNN (and, presumably, Fox, etc.) gave Trump roughly 40 minutes of live television time to rant and lie, threaten an Iowa newspaper and pollster, propose privatizing our Post Office, and muse about ending schoolchildren's vaccine mandates for polio. Everybody watching cable TV probably saw it; it was later the topic of numerous newscasts and newspaper articles that are still echoing across the news space. Around the same time, President Joe Biden spoke at the inauguration of the Francis Perkins National Monument to FDR's famous Labor Secretary and principal author of the New Deal. He truthfully pointed out that his one four-year administration had helped create 16 million new jobs, more than any single presidential term in history (and more than the jobs created by the Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and Trump administrations combined).

From Disney to big business: Corporations are aligning with Trump to avoid punishment and secure their place in the authoritarian future… "Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals." —Donald Trump Dec. 10, 2024 The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as: "fascism (fash'iz'am) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism." We're about to be there.

Americans are wondering out loud why we're getting ripped off by giant insurance companies when every other developed country in the world has healthcare as a right… In the wake of the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, Americans are wondering out loud why we're getting ripped off by giant insurance companies when every other developed country in the world has healthcare as a right and pays an average of about half of what we do — and gets better outcomes. As I point out in The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich, and brought up with Joy Reid on her program last week, America is: — The only developed country in the world that doesn't recognize healthcare as a human right, — The only country with more than two-thirds of its population lacking access to affordable healthcare and a half-million families facing bankruptcy every year because somebody got sick, — The only country in the developed world where over 40% of the population carries $220 billion in medical debt, — And the only country in the developed world that has, since its founding, enslaved and then legally oppressed and disenfranchised a large minority of its population because of their race. These things, along with UnitedHealth's $370 billion in revenue and $32 billion in profit, are connected.

Gerrymandering and money in politics are the two main ways in which the impact of our votes—after they’re cast and counted—is diminished, often to the point of irrelevance. American voters are aware of these, and their persistence and power may well account for why so many people don’t bother to register to vote, and only a fraction of those registered show up on any given election day. Gerrymandering entails using the process of redrawing congressional districts to provide a substantial political advantage to one party at the expense of others. A gerrymander of state legislative districts in Wisconsin in 2012, for example, produced a map where Republicans lost the statewide vote for the members of the State Assembly by 47 percent to 53 percent, but the GOP nonetheless ended up with 60 seats in the 99-seat legislative body.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Bargain: Buying the White House, One Regulation at a Time. — Man of the Year or Man of Their Wallets? — The Billionaire Death Grip on America’s Healthcare System. — The Corporate Death Toll? — Big Brother Trump — The final betrayal of disgusting traitors Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema — Geeky science: Unlock Your Brainpower — Hunter in a Farmer’s World: ADHD: Learning How To Learn — Wisdom School: Mind Over Pain: The Brain Hack That Reduces Pain Naturally

A Pardon for Justice: Isn't it Biden's Moral Duty in Trump's America? President Joe Biden should not only pardon Anthony Fauci, Liz Cheney, and the entire January 6th congressional panel, but hundreds more who are potentially in the crosshairs of Trump, Musk, Patel and his other malevolent henchmen. If you think the chances of Trump's enemies getting prosecuted are small because, after all, none of them have committed crimes of any consequence, I refer you to Hunter Biden, who was pursued by David C. Weiss, a rightwing inquisitor appointed by the Trump administration under Bill Barr to take Biden down.