Hartmann Report

To a large extent, this debate is really meta to a larger debate western civilization has been having since the days of Plato: are leaders made through experience & circumstance, or born to greatness? “No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” —Thomas Carlyle When Donald Trump fails or falls, are there other standing-in-the-wings fascist Republicans capable of taking his place?

Because the Founders set up America to be resistant to the coercive and corruptive influence of monopoly and vested interest, the monopolists didn’t have any direct means of taking over the American government. So, two processes were necessary. First, they knew that they’d have to take over the government. A large part of that involved the explicit capture of the third branch of government, the federal judiciary (and particularly the Supreme Court), which meant taking and holding the presidency (because the president appoints judges) at all costs, even if it required breaking the law; colluding with foreign governments, monopolies, and oligarchs; and engaging in massive election fraud, all issues addressed in previous Hidden History books. Second, they knew that if they were going to succeed for any longer than a short time, they’d need popular support. This required two steps: build a monopoly-friendly intellectual and media infrastructure, and then use it to persuade people to distrust the US government.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Now that both Colorado and Maine have disqualified Trump from the ballot for committing insurrection in violation of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, a few Democrats have joined virtually the entire GOP in claiming that it should be the “right of the voters, not the courts” to decide who our next president will be. — The Maine Republican who filed the initial complaint that led to Trump being removed from that state’s presidential ballots is also calling for Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from Trump’s appeal of Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ finding that he’s disqualified by virtue of his treasonous attempted sedition. — Lev Parnas was sentenced to over a year in prison for funneling Russian money into the Trump campaign. — Putin is “betting the farm” on Trump getting elected in 2024. — Speaking of Putin and Ukraine, now that the entire US press corps has left Kiev and relocated themselves like lemmings to Israel, Russia is doubling down on their violent, criminal assaults on Ukrainian civilians, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and shopping centers. — The Argentine crises deepens. — Leonard Leo and his Christianist fellow travelers are setting up a new case for the Supreme Court to okay a religious school to be 100 percent funded with taxpayer money. — Coal multimillionaire unhappy with President Biden’s decision to promote green hydrogen — Geeky Science! Global warming is killing salmon.

As Nikki Haley well knows — the Confederacy rose up not simply to preserve slavery and the Southern oligarchy, but to extend that oligarchy to the rest of the United States… First, a curious person in her New Hampshire town hall this week asked Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, “What caused the Civil War?” You could almost see the gears turning in her head, as she backs away from the questioner and takes a long pause, knowing that if she says “slavery” she’ll offend the white racist base of the GOP.

Republicans will then begin lobbying to “reduce spending” by cutting the amount allocated for the vouchers, locking the emerging two-tier status of publicly funded education into place... In 1776, British economist Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, a book that laid out the principles that modern economies have operated under for centuries (with the exception of the Reagan Revolution years of 1981-2021). In addition to arguing for a strong domestic manufacturing base and high taxes on the wealthy, Smith pointed out that one of the things that most directly constitutes the wealth of a nation is its educated workforce and well-informed populace (as a result of that education).

The world’s richest and most powerful oligarchs are depending on America’s Republican Party to make the world safe for their 21st century form of autocratic kleptocracy... Putin knows that the survival of his presidency depends on defeating Ukraine, which means getting control of the US political system. MBS knows that the best way he can minimize unrest and maintain his severe oppression of women and democracy advocates in Saudi Arabia is by helping Republicans defeat those pesky Democrats who keep talking about human rights, Jamal Khashoggi, and replacing oil with renewables. And Xi knows if he ever wants to seize Taiwan and eventually all of Indochina he must first cripple America’s Democratic Party, whose president a few weeks ago had the temerity to call Xi a “dictator.” The world’s richest and most powerful oligarchs are depending on America’s Republican Party to make the world safe for their 21st century form of autocratic kleptocracy. And Donald Trump, who’s been owned by the KGB/GRU since the 1980s, is their man who’s leading the charge.

How would you react if one day you were sitting at home and the phone rang and when you picked it up you heard a man shout: “Kill yourself now so we can save ammo!”

During these short, dark days let’s remember this ancient Christmas knowledge that illumination always follows darkness & that with love and compassion we will re-light our nations & lives... Today is Christmas Eve, a connection to some of the most ancient of all known northern European shamanic traditions. Like people living in the north for millennia, we continue to embrace them with regional, national, and religious tweaks. It occurs during the week of the shortest day and longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, when ancient holy men and women lit “yule logs” to push back the darkness and implore the gods or nature to bring back the light of summer.

The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream. As productivity continued to rise, due to increasing automation and better technology, so too would everyone’s wages. Or so went the theory. The glue holding this logic together was the then-top marginal income tax rate. In 1963, just before the Time article was written, the top marginal income tax rate was 90%. What that did was encourage CEOs to keep more money in their businesses: to invest in new technology, to pay their workers more, to hire new workers and expand. After all, what’s the point of sucking millions and millions of dollars out of your business if it’s going to be taxed at 90% (or even the 74% that President Lyndon Johnson lowered it to in 1966)?

The Best of the Rest of the News. — The six Republicans on the Supreme Court are either in the bag for Trump or terrified of him — or both. — Racism is a feature, not a bug, for Republicans in the 2024 campaign, — Lordy, there’s another recording of Trump criming! — A hospital in Seattle is suing Texas because that state’s attorney general, the oft-indicted, unfaithful-to-his-wife, and massively corrupt Ken Paxton, is demanding that they turn over all their records for treatment of trans patients from Texas to him. — President Biden is looking at seized Russian assets to fund the Ukraine war if Republicans in Congress continue to support Putin over America. — Putin’s getting desperate. — Republicans on the Huntington Beach City Council want to block any celebrations of Pride Month or Black History and replace them with festivals commemorating the discovery of oil in the town in the last century. — Geeky Science: Smoke cigarettes and your brain will irreversibly shrink!