Hartmann Report

America is now the most unequal society in the developed world. Our billionaires are the richest, and our poor people are the poorest of any functioning democracy on Earth… Every now and then we all get those moments of shocking clarity and insight that give us a new perspective on reality. Mine came over the weekend when I was watching the political shows on cable TV. This one had to do with the stunned realization of how we’ve normalized the damage that corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have done to our country by legalizing political bribery. An ad came on for a company that buys life insurance policies. The senior citizen in the ad says something to the effect of, “We learned that we could sell our policy when a friend did so to pay their medical bills.”

Increasingly Americans are being forced to choose sides: are we with democracy, or will we elect Trump and join Russia, China, and North Korea in making the world safe for dictators? Trump and Putin are collaborating to tear America apart. And Trump and his allies in Congress and across the spectrum of rightwing hate media aren't even trying to hide it. Americans aren't used to thinking of our country as a battleground. We haven't been invaded by another country's military since the War of 1812 and haven't seen blood shed on our soil in formal armed conflict since the Civil War. But the United States is very much a battlefield today; instead of bullets and bombs, the weapons being used are digital, psychological, and social.

In 40 short years, America has devolved from being a relatively open market economy and a functioning democracy into a largely monopolistic economy and a monopolist-friendly political system. One of the principal architects of that transformation was Robert Bork. Most Americans, if they remember Robert Bork at all, remember him as the guy who railed against homosexuality and “forced integration” in such extreme language that his nomination to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan had to be withdrawn. But Bork’s most important effort—one he worked on for more than 15 years nearly full-time—was in reshaping the business landscape of this country.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The Supreme Court has wimped out on Trump. — Trump steals classified documents, the ones about US spies in Russia are missing (and our spies are dying), and Biden wrote a letter to Obama when he was VP that he kept, and now the media and this idiot special counsel and lifelong Republican hack Robert Hur are doing their best to conflate the two. — Pink triangles come to Kansas? — Smartmatic is suing OAN, and they busted the CEO! — Crazy Alert! Republicans want Florida schools to teach kindergartners all about the “threat of communism.” — Fascism Fear, Fear, Fear and Even More Fear Alert! — Geeky Science! Tornadoes aren’t supposed to happen in the winter

The simple reality is that the future of American democracy is as much on the line in this case as it was in 1866: that was lost in yesterday's arguments, but should have been central to them… The single most astonishing thing about yesterday's oral arguments before the Supreme Court was the almost complete lack of historical context in those arguments about an insurrectionist staying on the ballot. The fear that led Colorado to ban Trump from the ballot was that he'd keep his word and "suspend the Constitution" and "be a dictator on day one." Neither were mentioned even once: the words "suspend" and "dictator" don't appear anywhere in the transcript.

Odds are, however, that this decision will be as political and corrupt as the 2000 Bush v Gore was. But I'm more than willing to be surprised. Donald Trump is a threat to America. His loyalty to Putin also makes him a threat to world peace, as he just showed us by killing the Senate bill to secure the border and provide aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, and the Palestinians in Gaza. And today the Supreme Court will have an ability to remove that threat by simply following the plain language of the US Constitution that says people who've engaged in insurrection or provided aid and comfort to same can't hold public office. Today's arguments, ironically, will also be the second time the 14th Amendment has been invoked to try to change the outcome or the setup for an election. The first was Bush v Gore in 2000, and we know how that turned out. So, what can we expect? Will the Court follow the law?

You have to break government pretty badly before people are willing to trade in a normal democracy for a dictatorship, but it’s sure happened before... Recent reporting suggests that Trump followers, by and large, are fine with him being or becoming a dictator. It seems crazy, but there it is, irrefutable: they’d rather have Trump as a dictator than Biden or any Democrat as a “normal president.” But why? When I was 22 years old, on the advice of an old friend, I took the Dale Carnegie Course: it was literally a life-changing experience, and I credit that course with a good bit of the successes I’ve enjoyed in business and the media in the intervening years. In one of the early weeks of the course, we each had to get up in front of the class and act out with great emphasis this statement (almost a mantra): “I know people in the ranks who will stay in the ranks. Why? I’ll tell you why: Simply. Because. They. Haven’t. The. Ability. To. Get. Things. Done!” The ability to get things done is a high value for business, but it applies to politics as well. And that’s where authoritarian strongmen come in.

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.