Hartmann Report

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!

When will America — and, particularly, American media — wake up to these scams and start calling them out for what they are? The GOP — to keep the support of “average” American voters while they work entirely for the benefit of giant corporations, the weapons and fossil fuel industries, and the morbidly rich — have run a whole series of scams on voters ever since the original Reagan grift of trickle-down economics. Oddly, there’s nothing comparable on the Democratic side. No lies or BS to justify unjustifiable policies: Democrats just say up-front what they’re all about:.

If you thought it can’t happen here, I have an old Sinclair Lewis book to share with you… If Trump is re-elected, he’d be America’s 47th president, so he’s named the plans for his second term “Agenda 47.” At best, it’s a dystopian nightmare: at worst it means ending our current system of American government; aligning the US with Russia and other autocratic nations; and the USA leading the charge against democracy and in favor of authoritarian, strong-man forms of government across the world. Over at his website, Trump lays out the details of his governing agenda, complete with short videos promoting each of the steps he plans to take.

In last year’s election fully six Red states used illegal maps in defiance of the courts, keeping the House of Representatives and state legislatures in GOP hands through the 2022 balloting… Republican election theft used to be covert and was almost never covered by the press. Now they’re doing it out in the open and defying federal courts to stop them, while ignoring press coverage that outs what they’re up to. As Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers, the courts have neither sword nor purse: they don’t have any mechanism to force compliance with their rulings. So it appears that multiple Republican states have chosen to simply ignore their own courts, as well as the federal courts and the Supreme Court. This is a big step up from how they used to steal elections.

Understanding how they got here — and dragged the rest of us with them — may give us some clues to how to get out of this mess… "Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason." — Sir John Harington (1560-1612) Now that Donald Trump is openly calling for fascism in the United States, complete with concentration camps "for millions" including "Democrats" and "the media," it's a good time to look at how the GOP became so badly corrupted. Understanding how they got here — and dragged the rest of us with them — may give us some clues to how to get out of this mess. I was thirteen years old in 1964 when my dad, a Republican activist, gave me a copy of John Stormer's book "None Dare Call It Treason." The Goldwater campaign had sent it to him, and its claim that the State Department was filled with communists intent on handing America over to the USSR had his friends buzzing. Ironically, Stormer's book and the movement it ignited within the GOP is largely responsible for that party today standing on the precipice of fully endorsing fascism as an alternative to democracy in the US.

If the GOP's price for aid for Ukraine and Israel is to stop the flow of immigrants into this country for year or so, I say pay the ransom… It may be time for Democrats to engage in some good-old-fashioned backroom dealmaking. If they do it right, they can strip Republicans of one of their most potent electoral issues while setting the stage for true reform of what has become a true American crisis. Russian President Putin has ordered Donald Trump to sabotage US aid to Ukraine, and Trump has passed the word along to Republicans that anybody who doesn't go along with the two of them will face a primary challenger. Trump just doubled down on it this weekend in New Hampshire, praising Putin up one side and down the other while quoting Orbán and Hitler that immigration by nonwhite people "poisons the blood" of a nation. In an attempt to appease Trump and Putin, Republicans in the Senate claim they're putting together a "security" deal to send foreign and military aid to Ukraine and Israel while also "securing" our southern border from immigrants and asylum seekers.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party: it happened exactly 250 years ago. And once again there’s a growing movement in America to push back against monopolistic corporate power. So, here’s an edited excerpt from my book Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People”…

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Are conservatives trying to clean up "Tricky Dick" and convince you that Watergate was a set up because it helps Trump and other Republican con-men and look less extreme? — Where is the missing binder filled with top-secret super-highly-classified intel including the names of our spies in Moscow, last seen on Trump's desk? — Morbidly rich billionaires in America haven't just been buying Supreme Court justices — they've also purchased over 100 federal judges... — How Trump screwed working people to pay for his tax cuts for the rich... — Are "manosphere influencers" promoting abuse and violence against women? — Anti-abortion groups are attacking Kate Cox for getting an abortion, likening the procedure to eugenics....say what?! — Crazy Alert! The Pizzagate crowd have a crazy new conspiracy theory about Etsy and it involves photos of pizza being clever messages…you can't make this stuff up!

While Zelenskyy was meeting with Biden for help defending his democracy against the brutal aggression of Putin, GOPers were meeting behind closed doors at the Heritage Foundation w/ Orban's people... Want to know what Republicans have in mind for America's future? Just visit Hungary. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was meeting with President Biden this week to ask our help defending his democracy against the brutal, violent aggression of Russia, Republican lawmakers in DC were meeting behind closed doors at a Heritage Foundation event with representatives of Hungary's strongman president Viktor Orbán. It got almost no press coverage at all, other than The Guardian. Orbán has been cozying up to Putin for years and is now blocking EU aid to Ukraine on Putin's behalf (the EU is meeting today about the crisis he's provoking); his representatives were reportedly trying this week to get Republicans in Congress to join them so, together, they can hand Europe's largest country over to Russia. At the same time, Orbán himself was overseeing a new round of laws in Hungary criminalizing any sort of free press in that nation. Under the rubric of "defense of national sovereignty," Orbán's new law, as Barron's reported Tuesday, "could be used to crack down on dissent against nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's government."