Hartmann Report

Then came the twin hits of trade liberalization in the 1970 — cutting tariffs and allowing cheap imports, so that American workers were competing with lower-paid, then-mostly Japanese workers—and Reagan’s massive tax cuts of the 1980s, which explicitly encouraged employers and CEOs to drain as much money out of their companies as they could rather than reinvest it or pay their employees well. Since the 1970s, productivity has increased by 146%,16 but wages have actually either stagnated (if looking at household incomes; today many more are two-wage-earner households) or fallen (looking at individual incomes). CEO compensation has rocketed from 30 times the average worker’s to hundreds of times, in some industries even thousands of times (for example, Coca-Cola’s CEO, James Quincey, gets paid $16.7 million per year—or 1,016 times the typical employee’s pay).

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Sandra Day O’Connor has passed away. The former Supreme Court Justice was arguably the deciding vote installing George W. Bush into the White House. — Will the billionaires who bought the Supreme Court be held to account? — Loyalty test for people who want to work in the next Trump Republican administration revealed. — While British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, bowing to the demands of the fossil fuel industry in a way characteristic of “conservative” politicians across the world, brags about “scrapping” plans to convert UK home heating systems to heat pumps, King Charles III is pulling no punches. — A recent report from The New Republic is asking why Democrats in the Senate aren’t investigating the hundreds of millions (billions if you include Saudi funds) Jared and Ivanka made from their time working in the White House. — Firearms suicides have reached epidemic levels in the US. — Bucking a national trend, Michigan makes it easier to vote. — Crazy Alert! The man two heartbeats away from the presidency, MAGA Mike Johnson, wrote a foreword for a book that endorses using the N-word and promotes bizarre conspiracy theories.

Why Netanyahu's "Intelligence Failure" is being Treated Very Differently than Bush's Thom plus logo While nothing could be done about Bush when America learned he'd lost Florida & his "intelligence failures" came to light, Netanyahu can be replaced whenever the Knesset musters the political will... The New York Times this morning published a blockbuster report about how Israeli intelligence — and, thus, presumably, Prime Minister Netanyahu — knew the details of the coming Hamas attack a full year before the horrors of October 7th. The article, by Ronan Bergman and Adam Goldman reporting from Israel, lays out the damning details... In many ways, today's reporting from Israel echoes the "intelligence failures" of the Bush administration on 9/11 here in America.

Unlike the 1890s, when there were still papers engaging in serious journalism, today's yellow journalism is ubiquitous across media consumed by the majority of Americans… Over at his excellent Substack newsletter, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich asks the question that's probably on the minds of many: "Why are so many people prepared to vote for Trump?" After all, there have been at least seven national polls conducted by reputable organizations in the past few weeks and not a single one shows Biden beating Trump in a 2024 matchup. Reich cites the many crimes, lies, and outright fascistic statements attributed to Trump, followed by the considerable list of Biden's accomplishments, and then offers a poll asking if people say they're voting for America's first true wannabee dictator because of ignorance, anger/fear, racism/xenophobia, or Biden's age. All are no doubt significant factors, but I believe the largest variable in Americans' willingness to say they'll vote for Trump is far simpler: the consequence of yellow journalism.

The wealthiest & most powerful people, companies, & countries are working to frustrate efforts to salvage a livable planet for us, our children, and our grandchildren. We can’t let them prevail… More than 70,000 people from nearly 200 countries — including an estimated 700+ fossil fuel industry lobbyists (there were 636 at the last conference) — are arriving this week in Dubai for the opening of the 28th “Conference Of Parties” (COP28) that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). COP is the main decision-making body of the UNFCCC. And already the Republican Party is doing what it can to sabotage any efforts by the Biden administration to help the world adapt to climate change while reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

Both the MAGA faction and the old-line “conservative” members of the GOP are dead serious about killing off this vital and important part of FDR’s legacy… Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed Social Security through Congress, signing it into law on August 14th 1935, and Republicans opposed it then and have hated it ever since. This week, they’re planning to do something about it with a House hearing designed to set up a closed-door commission to “reform” the program. They figure when government funding runs out in January they’ll be able use the fiscal crisis they intend to create to force Democrats to go along with what the Biden administration calls a “Death Panel for Medicare and Social Security.” There is an incredibly long history here.

In a lawsuit filed this year by Noelle Dunphy, a former employee of Giuliani, she asserts that Giuliani was offering people pardons for $2 million, the money to be split 50/50 between him & Trump… Yesterday’s New York Times has a fascinating article about Trump pardoning a major drug dealer and violent loan shark; it’s titled “A Troubling Trump Pardon and a Link to the Kushners.“ Like with so much reporting on Trump and his possible criminal activity while in the White House, it somehow manages to miss a possible larger picture, in this case the multiple allegations that Trump and Giuliani were selling pardons for $2 million a pop. Although the allegations are well documented, including under oath in a lawsuit, there’s not a single mention of it in the Times article. The reporters do, however, an excellent job of laying out a case for Jonathan Braun not being pardoned.

We hear a lot about “the good old days,” as if to suggest that America was always an economically strong nation with a vibrant middle class. But the fact is that we got really, really rich—we being the bottom 90% of Americans—in just a few decades after World War II, as a result of Franklin Roosevelt putting into place the economic theories of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, and those policies holding steady until the election of Ronald Reagan. In 1900, the average yearly household income was $4497— the equivalent of around $13,800 in today’s dollars. That kind of income today guarantees a life of want and poverty, and it did in 1900 as well. The only buffer then was the family farm; while today only 1% of Americans live and work on farms, in 1900 it was around 40%.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — America’s largest newspapers are actively working against our democracy. — The world’s largest iceberg is on the move for the first time in three decades. — Speaking of “polar,” President Biden did a “polar plunge” into the icy Atlantic waters this week as part of a long-running family tradition. — Fani Willis and her prosecution of Trump, et al, live on!

It shouldn’t surprise us that a political party that swears its first allegiance to billionaires and giant multinational corporations would choose money and profits over health and life.. Something terrible and deadly is happening here in the United States, and House Speaker Mike Johnson just announced that he wants to double down on it. More on that in a moment. If you were born and live in Japan, you can expect to live to 85 years old. For South Korea average lifespan is 83, as are Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, Israel, and Australia. It’s 82 for Italy, Spain, Ireland, France, Finland, and New Zealand. Cuba (!) and Panama are 79; Uruguay and Croatia are 78. A total of 61 countries have average lifespans of 78 years or older, ranging from Singapore’s 84 to Estonia’s 78. And then there’s the United States. Our average lifespan comes in at a paltry 77 years, along with Iran, Tunisia, and Morocco. And it’s entirely because of Republican policies.