Hartmann Report

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.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Shutdown Watch! McCarthy hands the gavel to Gaetz as Jeffries tells the GOP: “We’re not paying the ransom note.” — The UAW Strike expands, and we’re just at the beginning of a nationwide movement toward better labor protections. — Senator Bob Menendez says, “I was indicted because I am a first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings.” — Holy Moly! Clarence Thomas secretly participated in Koch network donor events. — Trump is going to use auto workers as props for his counter-programming against the GOP debate & Democrats are having none of it. — Are Trump’s GOP opponents in an “Arm’s race to our-extreme & out-cruel each other”? — “Who revels in such cruelty?” — What Maslow Overlooked: The Need to Feel Alive. — Geeky Science! From cage-free chicks to puppy mills, the GOP is trying to roll back animal protections and not only is it cruel but it would also speed the spread of zoonotic diseases. — Crazy Alert! The GOP are complaining to Merrick Garland about a YUGE issue: the “World Naked Bike Ride.”

So now we’re all standing largely naked before the coming onslaught of disinformation that is sure to come along with the 2023 and 2024 elections: the lies will be coming fast and furious… China, Russia, and a handful of rightwing billionaires are trying to tear down our democracy. “Putin Republicans,” aka the MAGA GOP, are trying to help them. For most of the 7,000-year history of modern civilization autocracy has been the default system all over the world, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Democracy. The past two centuries, however, have featured an ongoing battle for primacy between democracy and autocratic oligarchy. At the time of the Civil War there was only a small handful of democratic nations in the world, and they all held their breath to see if the American experiment would fail or succeed. Between the Civil War and the turn of the 21st century there was a steady growth in the number and vitality of democratic nations; since then, however, multiple democracies (Egypt, Hungary, Russia, Turkey, Philippines, Brazil, Peru, etc.) have turned away from democracy to embrace strong-man governments and rule by the rich.

This is an idea whose time has come... President Biden yesterday rolled out a new American Climate Corps. I’ll get to the details in a minute, but first it’s important to understand the backstory. America is facing an environmental crisis that’s costing us thousands of lives and tens of billions a year. The last time our country faced such a natural disaster President Franklin D. Roosevelt stepped up and dealt with it; now the Biden administration is doing the same. In 1933, America was both in the depths of the Republican Great Depression and facing an environmental disaster of national proportions. Sweeping from Texas to Nebraska, the Dust Bowl lifted 1.2 billion tons of soil from over 100 million acres, blowing it as far east as New York City, where it browned out the skies for weeks.

Hopefully this time Democratic politicians and our media will, finally, call the GOP out on Wanniski’s and Reagan’s Two Santa Clauses scam and put an end to it once and for all… As the United States barrels toward a GOP-caused fiscal disaster and government shutdown, House Republicans have laid out their vision for the future of America. In a budget document they released yesterday, the legislators proposed dramatic $9 trillion cuts to Social Security, food stamps, aid to women and children, Medicare and Medicaid, along a new round of tax cuts for America’s billionaires. Their argument is that we need to “balance the budget now!” This is the classic Two Santas strategy that the GOP has been running ever since 1981.

For today’s bought-off GOP (and a handful of bought-off “problem solver” Democrats), as long as Republicans on the Supreme Court keep the corrupt payola machine running, there simply is no bottom… According to a Lexington Law survey, a third of Americans check their bank balances every day. People who don’t check daily are most likely to check after a paycheck has been deposited or should have been through direct deposit. Now, imagine if you looked at your bank balance and saw that your employer just put $2,596,153.00 into your account. And then the same amount showed up the following week. And the week after that. Every week for the entire year.