Hartmann Report

"Yes, people pull the trigger—but guns are the instrument of death. Gun control is necessary, and delay means more death and horror." —Former New York governor Eliot Spitzer

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The Don is desperate. — How to talk back to Fox cultists who say Trump was indicted on Free Speech. — Dark and twisted rhetoric swamping right-wing media about the Trump indictments doesn’t bode well for the future of American democracy. — DeSantis Alert! Florida has become “The Leper State,” both politically and literally. — In Ohio, politicians are trying to convince the people to give their own power away so that the politicians themselves face even less accountability: Say what?!? — Why is Florida banning advanced placement psychology? — Will the GOP take seriously a new poll showing 82% of voters not only oppose cuts to Social Security but want taxes raised to protect it? — FATCAT Alert! The morbidly rich pay less tax on jet fuel than you and me when we fly: why is that???

Very simply, a corporation is organized money and the only way to balance that power is through organized labor… CNBC’s Jim Cramer is upset. Very upset. United Auto Workers’ President Shawn Fain laid out the demands they’re putting forward as the UAW negotiates new contracts with Ford, GM, and Chrysler to replace those expiring on September 14th. The UAW is asking the automakers to stop using “temporary” workers to replace union members, to increase paid time off, for an end to the two-tier wage structure, to restore health benefits, for annual cost-of-living adjustments, and a small increase in pension benefits both for current and future retirees.

The bottom line here is that Trump and his co-conspirators were not only willing but planning to recreate Reagan’s and Nixon’s Kent State slaughter on a nationwide basis... Although it’s generally only mentioned in passing in the mainstream media, there are two particularly chilling passages in Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump. Both, to my mind, invoke Kent State, but on a much larger scale.

So, yeah, let’s take seriously the existential threat a GOP president represents to our nation, the nations of the world, and all life on Earth. The stakes have literally never been higher... Every day that goes by, even with yesterday’s newest indictment, looks more and more like Donald Trump will be the GOP’s standard bearer in 2024. After all, his popularity stood at 44 percent when NY DA Alvin Bragg indicted him; it then rose to 49 percent when he was indicted in the documents crime; following his conviction for raping E. Jean Caroll it rose to 54 percent among Republicans. But even if he’s not the candidate, Republican primary voters will demand a candidate with the same affection for Putin and other dictators; the same disdain for racial, religious, and gender minorities; the same abusive attitude toward women and girls; the same faux embrace of Confederate and hillbilly values and hatred of city-dwellers and college graduates; the same cavalier attitude toward guns and fossil fuels. There’s also the growing possibility that Trump or another MAGA Republican could win the White House. Yesterday, both the New York Times and CNN reported on polls showing that Trump and Biden are right now at a dead heat.

Is it to distract us from the actual Republican agenda, which bears a much closer resemblance to fascist states like Russia and Hungary than communism in Cuba? In June of 1954, Robert Oppenheimer lost his security clearance because his ex-wife had been a member of the Communist Party and he had described himself as a “New Deal Democrat,” which, to his inquisitors, meant “communist.” The Soviet Union had brought down the iron curtain on their people, after all, and millions of Russians lived behind it. The USSR also had the world’s second-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, and Americans lived in fear of nuclear war: I still remember the “duck and cover” drills from elementary school in the 1950s. Now the GOP is reprising their infamous McCarthyite “Red Scare” tactics, with more on the horizon. They’re doing it to distract us from the actual Republican agenda, which bears a much closer resemblance to fascist states like Russia and Hungary than communism in Cuba.

When Barbie has more integrity than six Republican members of the US Supreme Court, you know American democracy is in a crisis… Sam Alito wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week that: “No provision in the Constitution gives them [Congress] the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.” He’s deeply, profoundly, and constitutionally wrong: in fact, the constitution requires Congress to regulate the Supreme Court. I’ll get to that in a second, but first the important stuff: Barbie! Louise and I went to see the new Barbie movie Friday afternoon. Sitting in the theater, we both nearly choked on our popcorn when, in the first few minutes of the movie, one of the Barbies said: “In Barbieland, corporations are not people, and money is not considered protected free speech!” Wow! I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that Barbie has more common sense than Sam Alito, but there it is.

Among the new objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me with greater force than the equality of conditions. I easily perceived the enormous influence that this primary fact exercises on the workings of the society. —Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835), on how economic equality in America strengthens democracy and reduces violence

The Best of the Rest of the News. — New charges, “The boss wants it deleted.” — More evidence the Russians created the whole Hunter Biden laptop thing for the GOP. — Did giant health insurer Cigna flip off hundreds of thousands of claims, spending less than two seconds evaluating each? — In Florida now, it turns out, the state is requiring teachers to tell students that Black Americans shared the blame for their own massacres. — Is Bidenomics working? — Is Gen Z about to take the 2024 electoral baton and, if so, what will that mean? — The major automakers are building a new nationwide vehicle charging network! — Crazy Alert! Fox “News” guest flips out over “super diverse” movies. — Conservative of the Day: Example of “narcissistic collapse” as rightwing TV host freaks out over Giuliani’s confession that he lied about the election being stolen.

It looks like the billionaires who control the MAGA movement have learned from January 6th and won’t make the mistake of having an independent military, FBI, press, or Department of Justice again... The morbidly rich often believe they’re immune from the politicians they fund turning on them. And they’re often wrong. Now, here in America, rightwing billionaires are repeating the same mistake Germany’s ultra-rich made in the 1930s. And the MAGA Republicans and the billionaires who fund them are now gung-ho to put you and me under the thumb of the US military, just like Hitler did. There’s even some concern that Tommy Tuberville’s Senate hold on military promotions may be a way of keeping top military positions open so Trump or another MAGA Republican president can fill them if the GOP takes the White House in 2024. After all, it was one part of the military (the Secretary of Defense) that first helped Trump nearly assassinate Mike Pence and thus end American democracy, but then another part of the military (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) that apparently stopped him from finally succeeding.