Hartmann Report

In America, hate is all too often triggered by politicians who then sanctimoniously offer “thoughts and prayers” when random (or stochastic) terrorists to do their evil work for them. A terrorist attacked Club Q in Colorado Springs Saturday night. Another terrorist attacked WalMart workers in Virginia yesterday. It’s happened over 800 times this year. But nobody’s calling them terrorists, and that’s a problem for America. We didn’t call the jihadis who blew up the Twin Towers “mentally ill,” “disgruntled,” or discuss their “troubled past.” We correctly called them terrorists because they used mass murder to try to “right a wrong” or achieve a political goal, which is the literal definition of terrorism.

Which begs the question: What is freedom? Queer people in America are not feeling “freedom,” particularly after the most recent deadly attack on Club Q in Colorado Springs. As if to amplify the GOP’s message of hate and fear against this vulnerable group of our fellow Americans, it happened on Trans Remembrance Day, when we honor the memory of trans people who’ve been the victims of hate and violence. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to peddle LGBTQ+ hate as part of their “freedom agenda” with Ron DeSantis saying he’s “saving” children from evil Florida teachers bent on “sexualizing children in kindergarten” and Governor Kristi Noem proclaiming “In South Dakota, only girls play girls’ sports.” And Hershel Walker released a brand-new anti-trans ad.

As giddy as Republicans are about “owning the libs,” the citizens they govern pay a tragic price for the sport. If dying young appeals to you, here’s a simple bit of advice: move to a state or county controlled by Republicans. At first glance, the images below appear to be political maps. And in the most real sense of the word they are: the county-by-county differences shown by the map from Jeremy Ney’s brilliant American Inequality Substack newsletter and the state-by-state screen shot from the CDC’s NCHS below it. Both reflect, in large part, decades of regional policy differences.

Sunday book excerpt: The Hidden History of the War on Voting. While preventing people from voting has a long and sordid history in the United States (and, frankly, around the world), the modern-day Republican Party’s reliance on voter suppression as a primary tool to win elections kicked off in a big way in 1993. That was the year when 27 Democrats and one Republican cosponsored HR2, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), sometimes called the Motor Voter Act. In the House, it got 238 Democratic votes and 20 from Republicans; in the Senate, every Republican but two voted against it, while every present Democrat voted for it (Jay Rockefeller missed the vote). Several parts of the legislation freaked out the GOP, the most prominent being that it required every state to let people register to vote when they presented themselves at DMVs to apply for a new or renewed driver’s license (this part is called Article 5 of the Act).

This is part of an old GOP strategy — dating back to the Reagan Revolution — which worked well for them during both the Clinton and Obama presidencies. The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus. —Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976  The headline yesterday over at Politico says it all: White House’s hopes for a lame-duck debt ceiling deal are fading fast. It’s no accident or coincidence that this never once happened during the presidencies of Reagan, Bush, Bush, or Trump. Or that it did happen during the presidencies of Clinton and Obama…and, now, Biden. You could even call it a conspiracy: there’s an amazing backstory — with a unique name— here.

Democrats have two months before they lose control of the House. It’s absolutely essential that they do everything possible to stop the cancer of “big money” and “dark money” in our politics. Now it’s official. Twenty-seven men choose who runs the GOP. Pundits are fond of saying, “The President of the United States is the most powerful person in America.” He’s not and hasn’t been for over a decade. Political power in this country, since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court fully legalized both overt and secret political bribery in their 2010 Citizens United decision, is now centered in the money bins of the morbidly rich.

Millennials today hold only 4.6% of the nation’s wealth and, along with Zoomers, struggle to own a home & are deeply in debt. What happened? In a word, Republicans… Dear Millennials and Zoomers: back in the 1980s a lot of us worked like hell to try to stop the Reagan revolution. We failed. The next two years may be our last chance to save American democracy, our environment, and what’s left of the American middle-class. When my Boomer generation was the same average age as the Millennial generation is today, back in 1990, our generation held 21.3% of the nation’s wealth. Louise and I shared in that wealth; although we were still in our 30s, in 1990 we owned a profitable small business (our fourth) and a nice home in suburban Atlanta. That was, in fact, the “American dream.” It was normal then.

Many Americans are baffled by the Republican Party’s embrace of billionaire sociopath Trump and elected Republicans’ willingness to overlook the death of seven Americans, including three police officers, in an attempted coup. (Particularly after they spent over 2 years and tens of millions of dollars obsessing on 4 dead Americans in Benghazi.) They’re also wondering why Kevin McCarthy would reject Liz Cheney to embrace someone like Elise Stefanik, an apologist for the January 6 treason attempt, or go along with Mitch McConnell’s attempts to sabotage the American Rescue Plan, the American Jobs Plan, and the American Family Plan. After all, people are hurting. We just experienced the worst pandemic in a century, and, under Trump and Bush before him, two economic downturns unmatched since the Republican Great Depression of the 1920s. Why, Americans wonder, would the GOP embrace such anti-American and nakedly brutal politics and policies?

What is the most horrific crime humans can commit against other humans? Let’s take a momentary break from our politics today and look at what is really and truly driving all our crises around the world. “The Lost People,” was originally published in Spirit of Change magazine, November 1998. It’s even more relevant today than it was then: please set aside a few minutes to read it all the way through. I believe you’ll find it worth your time and would love to read your comments and thoughts on it; it cuts to the root of our “modern” world’s core crises.The last weekend of September was the Harvest Gathering, near Mount Washington, Massachusetts, sponsored by Spirit of Change magazine. At this gathering, Native American elders met with several hundred White, Black, Asian, and mixed-race immigrants to this continent. (Most were White.)

Sunday book excerpt: The Hidden History of the War on Voting. Outside of Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan (and a hedge fund guy), just about all American billionaires are white. And while their white privilege helped most of them to become billionaires in the first place, for the politically active billionaires on the right, it’s their money that they care about the most.