Hartmann Report

Either the GOP will be crushed to near irrelevance in the 2024 elections, or they will win enough power to end the American experiment. Which will it be? “Thirty years ago,” Damon Linker told The Guardian, “if I told you that a bunch of billionaires and intellectuals on the right are waiting in the wings to impose a dictatorship on the United States, you would have said that I was insane.” Now, however, the senior lecturer at Penn State University’s Department of Political Science and author of the Notes from the Middleground Substack newsletter has reconsidered. “But it’s no longer insane,” Linker writes. “It’s now real. There are those people out there.” And, Linker notes, “The question is: will they get their chance.” The simple reality is that they already have had their chance in multiple Red states, and when we watch what they’re doing with it we see that step-by-step, day-by-day the GOP is inching towards full-blown fascism. Now they’re calling to end democracy and replace our president with a “Red Caesar.”

So now it’s largely up to us. You and me. People who value democracy and want to see a world safe from tyrants and wannabee tyrants like Putin, Xi, MBS, and Trump… Russia is not just at war with Ukraine; they’re also in a cold war with us. And last week Putin got a significant victory in that war, which is now being fought on the battleground of social media and the Internet. Representative Matt Gaetz and Senator Rand Paul helped lead Putin’s victory this week in his cold war with America by stripping aid for Ukraine out of the continuing resolution to keep our government funded for the next 45 days. It was a clear signal from Republicans in Congress to Putin that if he can just hang on long enough, his propaganda efforts will eventually lead America to drop out and hand Ukraine over to them. It was also a signal to China, Japan, Australia, South and North Korea, and Taiwan that America can’t be trusted to defend allied democracies when they’re physically attacked by larger authoritarian states. By increasing the chances of an aggressors’ victory, the GOP’s continuing resolution encourages authoritarian states like Russia and China and, thus, made the world less safe.

Left to its own logic, Big Business cares only about profit. With the rules that are currently in place, Big Business is encouraged to ruthlessly pursue profit at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment. Just like in the game of Monopoly, this will eventually result in a situation where one person, or company, owns nearly everything (at least sector by sector). This happened with the railroads at the end of the 19th century, with the electric lines at the beginning of the 20th century, and with copper telephone lines in the mid-20th century in America under the Bell System, aka “Ma Bell.” Each time, it has taken the heavy hand of government to break up these monopolies, because monopolies aren’t just bad for consumers, they’re also bad for the economy as a whole.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Are we on the verge of an imminent shutdown over “nothing?” — Chief justice urged to make Alito and Thomas step aside in megadonor cases. — Trump’s NY fraud trial starts next week and it’s probably not going to go well for him. — They’re prosecuting the Trump officials who tore kids from their families! — What will be the impact of homes being unaffordable for 99% of Americans? — “Danger Will Robinson” Alert!! The architect of the Texas abortion ban is trying to get his hands on thousands of patient records! — Geeky Science! Why is ADHD So Often Overlooked & Misdiagnosed in Older Adults? — Good News! All electric big-rigs are coming

Can we rescue our nation from the treasonous Republicans, who are trying to shut down our government to help Putin while they continue to bow and scrape to The Rapist Who Would Be King? Speaking at an event in Phoenix honoring the late Republican Senator John McCain, his old friend President Joe Biden forcefully pointed out how Trump and the movement he leads — the MAGA movement — fundamentally reject democracy and the historic American ideals that have made our country a beacon to the world for over 200 years... While there are plenty of countries and dictators all around the world who would like to tear our democracy down, the “threat” Biden was referring to is coming from within our country, from within our political system, from within a Republican Party that has been captured by a man who has repeatedly taken the side of dictators against his own nation.

Why are Democrats Fighting with One Hand Tied Behind Their Backs? Republicans in the House of Representatives today are opening a phony “impeachment hearing” using Hunter Biden as a foil to try to destroy Joe Biden politically. (They never even held a vote to establish a committee for that purpose: this is purely theatre.) Meanwhile, Democrats in the Senate have an opportunity to examine some actual, egregious, and destructive-to-the-country crimes committed in the White House by Trump and his family members that they’re apparently going to whiff. They need to hear from us.

The man who so inspired Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes was named William Edward Hickman, and he lived in Los Angeles during the Roaring Twenties... Tonight is the Republican debate, where we’ll probably hear lots of predictable rants about crushing the “welfare state” and restoring “freedom” and “self-reliance.” So, once again, why are Republicans so cruel and why do they seem so fond of libertarianism? Why does Greg Abbott put razor wire in the Rio Grande river? Why does Donald Trump target people for assassination by his followers? Why does Ron DeSantis revel in keeping tens of thousands of low-income Florida children from getting Medicaid?

Now that Robert Kennedy Jr. says, “I’ve always been aligned with libertarians on most issues” let’s look at how libertarianism would work out in America, and where it came from in the first place... So let’s take a look at how libertarianism would work out in America, and where it came from in the first place. Generally speaking, Libertarians don’t believe in democracy, which, they say, should be replaced by “the magic of the marketplace” — or at least the “magic” of people made rich by the marketplace — running the country’s essential services.

The Putin Caucus in the GOP, along with the fossil fuel billionaires, appear quite pleased that they’ve succeeded in intimidating fact-checkers just in time for the 2024 election… The Putin GOP wants misinformation to reign as we head into the 2024 election. Without lies, they can’t win most competitive elections, and they want to keep those lies safe from fact-checking, regardless of what accurate information the voters need or the damage they inflict on our nation. As a result, Stanford University is considering shutting down their Election Integrity Partnership that calls out political lies across social and mainstream media and their Stanford Media Observatory; other groups that do similar research are also on the brink of shutting down in the face of expensive and time-consuming attacks from Jim Jordan and other Republicans in Congress and from rightwing media. The Republican attacks on fact-checkers come as increasing numbers of Americans reject Republican policies on everything from gutting Social Security to banning abortion to making it harder for city-dwellers to vote: the new Trumpy GOP has decided that abandoning that whole pesky idea of democracy itself is the way to go.

Cell phone service that costs $15 a month in France or $12 a month in Australia bills out at an average of $61.85 per month in the United States. High-speed broadband that’s a bit over $31 a month in France or $36 in Germany (for higher speeds and better reliability than almost anywhere in the United States) averages nearly $70 per month in the US. Similar metrics are found with pharmaceuticals, airfares, and medical costs, among dozens of other product and service categories. Why is this? Monopoly. The average American family pays an annual “monopoly tax”—in additional costs for pretty much everything—of around $5,000, according to economist Thomas Philippon. And things are steadily getting worse as monopolistic concentrations continue to tighten their grip on every American industry from banking to telecom to food.