Hartmann Report

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.

Different eras, different villains, same perceived fight for justice? It's a time of extremes. Our national media is reporting that CEOs across the nation are doubling up on security in the wake of Brian Thompson's assassination. Outside of the healthcare industry, though, they probably don't need to bother. Luigi Mangione and Donald Trump are both revolutionaries trying to change the essential nature of the system. Both have employed violence, both have caused people to die through their revolutionary efforts (Mangione one CEO, Trump three cops and five civilians). Both are proclaimed heroes by many of the people who want the same changes they want. But that's where the similarities end.

The terrifying implications of pardoning insurrectionists who killed and maimed… This past weekend, in his Meet The Press interview with Kristen Welker, Donald Trump reaffirmed his intention to pardon the people who attacked our Capitol, killing five civilians and three police officers and sending more than 140 cops to the hospital. "I'm going to be acting very quickly. First day," Trump said of pardoning Jan. 6 killers. "They've been in there for years, and they're in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn't even be allowed to be open." Most media and political observers and commentators appear to be of the opinion that this is simply Trump's way of thanking the people who made what he considers a heroic effort to keep him in office through violence. That would be bad enough, but experts at The Critical Internet Studies Institute are worried that there may be a much more sinister explanation. If they're right, it would also go a long way toward explaining his picks for Attorney General, Defense Secretary, and FBI director. This theory, increasingly shared among counterterrorism experts and people who monitor violent rightwing extremist groups, suggests that the real reason Trump would do the pardons (and is unafraid of discussing them) is because he's recruiting. And you don't need to go back to 1930s Europe to find examples of how that could work.