Hartmann Report

Four Mistakes. "I fear our mistakes far more than the strategy of our enemies." Thucydides (47–400 b.c.), Pericles’ Funeral Oration.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — We have questions for the media about the debt ceiling — Speaking of questions, why wasn't Supreme Court Associate Justice Sam Alito asked under oath if he was responsible for the Dobbs decision leak? — Would the GOP survive a repeal of Citizens United? — As "macho man" Ron DeSantis says he wants to ban mask mandates by all Florida businesses, a new study shows one in ten people infected with Covid ends up with "long Covid". — And speaking of DeSantis, is his campaign against Black and queer people actually working? — Geeky Science! Strengthening your marriage might be as simple as putting pictures of you and your spouse around the house. — Video of the day: Anti-Abortion protestors get violent when someone with a bullhorn says the quiet part out loud

Has the American public finally wised up to Wanniski’s and Reagan’s Two Santas scam, even if they don’t know the details or the backstory? The media refers to it as a debate around the debt ceiling, but it’s actually far simpler than that. And entirely political. Back in November, a few weeks after House Republicans won the election and seized control of that body, I wrote to you warning that the House Republicans would try the same scam that Ronald Reagan first rolled out in the 1980s. I wrapped the article up with the “hope that Democratic politicians and our media will, finally, call the GOP out on Wanniski’s and Reagan’s Two Santa Clauses scam.” So far, no soap. I haven’t heard a single mention of Two Santas in the mainstream media, and I’ll bet you haven’t, either. That’s the bad news.

Will we continue to worship great wealth & allow the morbidly rich to manipulate our nation’s political processes to their own ends? Or will we wake up to the danger of this way of thinking? One of the stories out of the Davos Morbidly Rich Support Group meeting in Switzerland yesterday was Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema high-fiving each other, celebrating their success at killing voting rights legislation while preserving massive tax loopholes for banking and fossil fuel industry billionaires. But there was more “high” to that high-five than the media showed. They were literally high, both from the fortunes each has acquired and the billions they were surrounded by onstage. Science shows that acquiring wealth stimulates the pleasure/reward circuits in the brain’s ventromedial prefrontal cortex, just behind the eyes in the front-most part of the brain. Studies that map blood flow and electrical activity in the brain demonstrate that even anticipating money lights up this region, much like what happens when we’re presented with food or sex.

If working people were a bit more desperate about their economic situations, some conservative thinkers & the uber wealthy believe, they’d be less likely to organize, protest, or even vote. Why are America’s plutocrats funding efforts to weaken our democracy and replace it with plutocracy and oligarchy? Is it just about money? Or is there something much deeper that most Americans rarely even consider? An extraordinary investigative report from documented.net tells how morbidly rich families, their companies, and their personal foundations are funding efforts to limit or restrict democracy across the United States.

Why do other countries have extensive and functioning social safety nets and wealthy people who pay their taxes, and we have neither? We’re told by the Declaration of Independence that our nation was formed to provide every citizen with the basics of what government can and should provide: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…” The “governed” in today’s America, however, aren’t getting the “happiness” they want or even, frankly, that they need

Anybody who thinks cooler heads will prevail like they did in 2011 doesn’t know these Republicans. Buckle up - we’re in for a wild ride that could spell worldwide disaster. The United States is hitting our self-imposed debt ceiling this Thursday. Outside of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, it doesn’t seem that anybody in Washington or our national media is taking seriously the House Republican threat to crash our economy if Democrats don’t agree to gut aid to higher education, the EPA, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. But the situation is worse than most people realize. McCarthy’s goons really intend to follow through on their threat to cripple America if Democrats won’t go along with cutting entitlements for average working people and regulatory agencies. And the consequence, if history is any guide, could well be a worldwide depression that might even throws us into World War III.

"...women can act. ... Because the demographics and the opinion polls are on women’s side. Because women’s hour on the stage is long, long overdue. Because, whatever new obstacles are mounted against the future march toward equality, whatever new myths invented, penalties levied, opportunities rescinded, or degradations imposed, no one can ever take from the American woman the justness of her cause." — Susan Faludi, "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women" (1991)

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The new House rules continue to embrace Reaganomics to further impoverish the middle class and poor while making the morbidly rich even richer. — The difference between the way the French and Americans think about Social Security is fascinating — Is voter suppression the cool new thing for Republicans? — The Taliban has arrived in Missouri — Big Oil lies, wins, gains more political power, and continues working to destroy life on planet Earth — Geeky Science! Doing "acts of kindness" is one of the most effective psychotherapeutic interventions known to treat depression and anxiety — Crazy Alert! Trump wanted to use a nuclear weapon on N Korea & blame it on someone else? — Tweet of the day! AOC calls out the GOP meltdown on gas stoves, following a report that one in six cases of asthma are from childhood exposure to a gas stove in the home

These are the two primary strategies we all use to motivate ourselves and others every day. We use them in our internal self-talk, we use them with our children, and politicians use them constantly. Increasingly, the Democratic and Republican parties are offering us all a very real choice: trust or fear. Think back to the 2022 election we endured just two months ago. Remember the ads you saw on TV? Odds are each one fell into one of two very simple categories: “be afraid of the other guy” or “trust that I’ll make your life better.” Most of the “fear” ads came from Republicans; most of the “trust” ads came from Democrats. Pain or pleasure. Fear or trust.