Hartmann Report

Ms. Mornin: That’s good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute. President Bush: You work three jobs? Ms. Mornin: Three jobs, yes. President Bush: Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that. —President George W. Bush, Omaha, Nebraska, Town Hall, February 2005

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The stink continues with Trump's proposed loyalty-first Cabinet picks....behind the curtain — Republican Senator wants the FBI to investigate op-ed writers...say what?! Is this a preview of what happens if Trump becomes president? — It’s the monopolies, stupid! Now we know where the inflation really came from — Texas’ allegedly corrupt Attorney General threatens to prosecute doctors and hospitals who perform an abortion for the woman a Texas judge ruled could receive life-saving care — Is the GOP trying to “kill” Hunter to emotionally destroy Joe Biden and thus shatter his presidency — When they pitched Medicare Advantage to you, I’ll bet they never told you that some hospitals across the country are refusing to accept it — A new study identifies planetary climate tipping points that pose an “unprecedented” threat to humanity — Putin Lover Alert! Tucker Carlson and Trump Jr demand Republicans go along with Putin and stop all US aid to Ukraine.

America — and the Democratic Party — have arrived at one of our nation’s history’s great crossroads. Hopefully, we’ll make it through… Senator Chris Murphy gets it. And he’s begging his fellow Democrats to wake up, too. Forty-two years ago, Ronald Reagan launched America into a great social, economic, and political experiment. It was based on the 1940s utopian thinking of a handful of conservative economists and promised to bring peace and prosperity to the entire world through a magical thing they dubbed the “free market.” Reagan and his Vice President GHW Bush, who initially called it “Voodoo Economics,” became true believers, as did Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. And, it turns out, it was based on a lie and has produced an utter disaster for America.

At least never in the lifetime of anybody around today. Trump's stink is a tragic part of American history that will last generations… Dear Republicans, After the corruption of the Coolidge and Hoover administrations crashed the world economy, kicking off the Republican Great Depression in 1929, it took your party decades to rid itself of the stink. After Nixon extended the Vietnam War to get himself re-elected, unnecessarily killing over 20,000 American soldiers and a million Vietnamese civilians, and then got busted for Watergate and the bribes he solicited in the White House, it took you almost a generation to rid yourselves of the stink. But you'll never rid yourself of the stink of Donald Trump. At least never in the lifetime of anybody around today. Trump's stench is a tragic part of American history that will last generations.

You could call it 21st Century Jim Crow, but this time it's more like Ja It's no secret that for years Republicans have targeted Black and Hispanic voters, doing everything they can to make it harder for these folks to vote. Their latest targets are young people: the GOP has decided (probably correctly) that Gen Z is their mortal enemy. The DLC's National Communications Director, Abhi Rahman, laid it out for Rolling Stone magazine... You could call it 21st Century Jim Crow, but this time it's more like James Crow, PhD. The GOP has turned voter suppression from an anecdote into a computer-based science, and they've had a lot of help along the way from five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court.

Will VP Harris Drawing a Line In the Sand for a Two-State Solution Hold? Thom plus logo Will her stepping into this topic on the world stage help bring peace to the Middle East and elevate her profile? Behind the scenes at the COP28 Conference in Dubai, Vice President Harris has been engaged in aggressive diplomacy to try to bring about a two-state solution with a future Palestine and Israel, something currently opposed by Prime Minister Netanyahu. She has spoken with several Middle East leaders, including Egypt's President and the King of Jordan, at the global climate summit in Dubai over the weekend. Yesterday she gave an impassioned speech about it.

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.