Hartmann Report

"The scariest sentence in the English language is: 'I'm a billionaire, and I'm here to help.'" The recent assassination of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare — the health insurance company with, reportedly, the highest rate of claims rejections (and thus dead, wounded, and furious customers and their relations) — gives us a perfect window to understand the stupidity and danger of the Musk/Trump/Ramaswamy strategy of "cutting government" to "make it more efficient, run it like a corporation." Consider health care, which in almost every other developed country in the world is legally part of the commons — the infrastructure of the nation, like our roads, public schools, parks, police, military, libraries, and fire departments — owned by the people collectively and run for the sole purpose of meeting a basic human need. The entire idea of government — dating all the way back to Gilgamesh and before — is to fulfill that singular purpose of meeting citizens' needs and keeping the nation strong and healthy. That's a very different mandate from that of a corporation, which is solely directed (some argue by law) to generate profits.

The Help America Vote Act may provide another answer to the puzzling mystery of American red shift (where exit polls show Democrats won but Republicans got the most recorded votes). That legislation, written in large part by Representative Bob Ney, R-Ohio, contains a provision requiring people who show up to vote—even if they’ve been purged from the voting lists—to be given something called a “provisional ballot.”

The Best of the Rest of the News. — A large handful of billionaires spent several billion dollars to get Trump elected, and now he’s repaying — big time — the class into which he was born. — Russian media is bragging that Tucker Carlson could be shuttling secret messages between Trump and Putin. — Will Joe pardon “the enemy within”? — Trump nominee for Ambassador to China once gloated about shipping American jobs to China. — Republicans want Trump to sign off on throwing millions of Americans off their health insurance and raising the rates for the rest of us. — Will we face another pandemic under Trump and will it be “disease X” brewing in the Congo? — Crazy Alert! Thanks to the idiots in the GOP, public school students in Ohio can now take classes in how to follow Satan! When will the followers of Thor and Zeus weigh in? — Hunter in a Farmer’s World: ADHD and the Language of Connection — Wisdom School: When Writing Becomes a Dance of Minds

What happens when global powers abandon their word? Just ask Ukraine… Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Ukraine, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States signing the Budapest Memorandum. To celebrate, Russia massed thousands of troops on Ukraine's southern border, preparing for another massive and bloody invasion. Donald Trump, meanwhile, continued to ignore the situation, much to the delight of Putin and Xi, increasing the chances of a third world war. While countries around the world are trying to create and build nuclear weapons stockpiles (particularly China, Iran, and North Korea) only one country in the history of the world has ever given up their nuclear hoard and unilaterally denuclearized their military: Ukraine.

Save your healthcare and dump Medicare Advantage before it's too late. Here's why you should return to real Medicare if you still can... You have three days left, if you got suckered in by those omnipresent ads for Medicare Advantage and left regular Medicare for the siren song of cheaper coverage, "free" vision, hearing, or dental, or even "free" money to buy groceries or rides to the doc. The open enrollment period for real Medicare closes at the end of the day Saturday, December 7th; after that, you're locked into the Medicare Advantage plan you may have bought until next year.

How Yoon's State of Emergency and Trump's Strategies Are Eroding Global Freedoms South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose declaration of a state of emergency yesterday shocked the world, has often been referred to (both within and outside of his country) as "South Korea's Donald Trump." A political outsider, he came to power with anti-establishment and often outrageously inflammatory rhetoric, trash talking women's rights, "reforming" their healthcare system, and pushing hard for a neoliberal agenda that included raising the workweek from 52 to 69 hours. In that, he reflects a growing trend among advanced democracies around the world, as decades of neoliberalism have weakened multiple nations' abilities to sustain middle class lifestyles while enriching an oligarch class that's now reaching out — worldwide — to seize control of democratic governments to their own financial benefit.

A stark warning about Trump's dystopian plans for his second term... "The ideas you are about to hear are not idle conjecture. I have built upon a foundation of indisputable first causes, so that the unifying force which controls the cosmos is revealed in full clarity." — Jack Vance Trump named the plans for his second term "Agenda 47," although for reasons known only to them, America's mainstream media persists in ignoring it. They shouldn't. At best, it's a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world. Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take. They, and his many statements about future plans — which we'll probably see implemented during his first 100 days — include: Gut the EPA, OSHA, CPSB, IRS, the Labor Department, and other federal agencies that keep our air clean, our water pure, and protect average Americans from predation by the morbidly rich and their corporations

I don’t recall the year (think it was 2008?), but I remember well Louise and I meeting Ben Wikler over snacks and drinks at a small party at John Nichols’ home in Madison, Wisconsin. As we left, Louise remarked to me, “That kid’s going places. Keep an eye on him!” Ben has more than fulfilled her prediction, leading Wisconsin Democrats to victory after victory; this weekend he announced he’s running for head of the DNC. This is a truly big deal. The Democratic Party will decide who’ll lead it in February. Will it be a neoliberal agent of the donor class, another bland technocrat who tries to please everybody and offend nobody, or a true and tested agent of small-d democratic and middle class renewal like Ben? It may be the most important decision Democrats have made in fifty years. This matters because the morbidly rich always screw things up in their eternal quest for more! more!! more!!! wealth and power. And they’re doing it to our country now in a way that may well become irreversible if the Democrats make the wrong choice in February.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump is taking off the mask, after lying to us for over a year about not knowing anything about Project 2025 — Trump picks herd immunity advocate to lead National Institutes of Health (NIH). Want more death with your health policy? — Trump Chooses Megadonor Art Collector To Head U.S. Navy. Yep, an art collector and investment guy. To run the Navy. — So much for that "wall of separation between church and state" that Jefferson wrote about. — Musk wants to get rid of the anti-fraud police. Why? — Embarrassed Tesla owners are taking steps... — Jair Bolsonaro - aka "Brazil' Trump" (he fled to Mar-a-Lago when his followers attacked the legislature like Trump's did on January 6th) - thinks Trump and his people will get him back into power. — Crazy Alert! JD Vance posts a re-do of the famous Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting with him as Trump's wife - and rightwingers are going nuts with cringe. — Hunter in a Farmer's World: ADHD $ Neurodiversity Is Not a Disorder: India's Radical Respect for What America Loves to Pathologize — The Wisdom School: What it means to be human: From Chaos to Clarity: The Revolutionary Power of Being Alone

From Adams’ Sedition Acts to Trump’s relentless attacks, the war on truth threatens to unravel the very foundation of our republic... Yesterday, for Thanksgiving, I published a short history of Jefferson’s and his Democrats’ reaction to John Adams’ fearmongering for political power around the “XYZ Affair.” I referenced Adams’ shutting down the opposition newspapers in America, but a surprising number of people responded with: “What??? Really????? An American president shut down all the opposition newspapers because they insulted him? That really happened?” So here’s the rest of the story: Some Americans are suggesting that the ascendance of a strongman president who wants to shut down America’s press is totally new in the experience of America and may spell the end of both democracy and the Bill of Rights. History, however, shows another view, which offers us both warnings and hope. Although you won't learn much about it from reading the “Republican histories” of the Founders being published and promoted in the corporate media these days, the most notorious stain on the presidency of John Adams began in 1798 with the passage of a series of laws that would give him virtually unlimited strongman powers to attack his political enemies and, like Trump says he wants to do, end the First Amendment right of a free press.