Hartmann Report

The GOP is threatening to turn Ben Franklin’s public libraries into corporate profit centers. It’s time for Americans to truly take our country back. I hope this week to be able to resume writing original articles for you every day; most likely, from what I understand about this type of back surgery, that should be Wednesday, but I’ll keep you up to date. In the meantime, this OpEd from last December is particularly relevant right now, as so much of the money in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal are specifically designated to go to “public-private partnerships,” one of the favorite techniques neoliberals use to make a buck off what should exclusively be public/government responsibilities. Enjoy!

Equal trade, fair trade, honest, decent trade requires reasonable balance between trading partners and strong domestic economies. When that happens, Adam Smith’s model works pretty well: prices for labor, materials, and finished goods all settle near the area where they “naturally” should be. But as we’ve seen from the immensely imbalanced statistics on distribution of wealth in chapter 19, something is not working the way Smith envisioned. Wages appear to be dwindling, and the number of strong, healthy competitors appears to be shrinking.

In America today if you poison & kill your wife you'll go to prison - but - if you poison and kill 100s of 1000s of people you'll take home a multi-million-dollar paycheck and buy a new yacht. I’ll be back to the regular Saturday News Report next weekend, when, hopefully, I’m no longer living on post-surgery painkillers. This piece was first published here back in January, but since then the problem has only gotten worse and really needs to be highlighted again…

These hinge points of history are never painless, but they always leave enlightenment and true change in their wake. These hinge points of history are never painless, but they always leave enlightenment and true change in their wake. I’m recovering (hopefully <s>) from back surgery (and special and grateful thanks to all of you who posted comments or sent me notes wishing me well), and wanted to share with you an OpEd that’s even more relevant today than it was back in March when it was first published. Now that Ukraine has recovered somewhat from the damage Trump did to them by denying them defensive weapons for almost a year as part of his extortion scheme, Russia is starting to suffer significant setbacks on the battlefield, most recently near Kherson. This article puts the entire Ukraine situation in the larger context of 80-year cycles that I referenced somewhat obliquely in Wednesday’s Daily Take. I believe you’ll find it very, very useful information to help make sense of today’s world events and the radical changes we’re all witnessing at this hinge-point of history.

Hopefully Democratic politicians and our media will begin to call the GOP out on Wanniski’s and Reagan’s "Two Santa Clauses" scam. Today I’m in the hospital here in Oregon for back surgery, so yesterday I put this post together and scheduled it for delivery to you this morning. It was originally published back in September of last year, but I think you’ll find it even more timely today. Basically, it explains why Republicans on the weekend shows last Sunday were all claiming the would both increase inflation and the budget deficit (it will do neither), and are preparing to again crank up their rhetoric against “Democrat [sic] tax-and-spend policies.”

We must not let right-wing Redcoat/Redhat terrorists — who have openly proclaimed their goal of Americans killing Americans in an ideological and racialized war — prevail at this critical time… Every 80 years, it seems, America confronts a crisis in which we must again choose whether to remain a democratic republic, or to turn into a corrupt strongman oligarchy run by the richest men in America, along the lines of today’s Hungary or Russia. We’re there again, now.

No matter how hard Republicans try to reinvent the Founders & Framers in the image of their libertarian billionaire patrons, the reality is that America was history’s first great liberal experiment... While Trump-humping Republicans like to misquote the Founders of this nation and pretend a similar patriotism, the simple reality is that all of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution would have been disgusted by these modern-day grifters.

Let’s use this anniversary to honestly evaluate the actions that have so bloodied our soldiers, while transferring trillions of US taxpayer dollars to Bush- & Cheney-related military contractors. One year ago this week the United States pulled out of Afghanistan, ending the longest “war” in American history. For this anniversary the media has been covering Afghan government corruption, the Taliban’s reversion to violence and misogyny, and the famine that’s beginning to creep across that benighted nation. But the two most important aspects of the war from an American policy perspective are being completely ignored.

This Sunday, a book review instead of an excerpt... My trip back to Michigan last weekend for my brother Stan’s celebration of life led to a long conversation about the state of literacy in America with my brother Steve who, like me, shares my parent’s passion for reading and collecting books. That reminded me of one of my Dad’s favorite books, about which I wrote this review back in January, 2007 for Buzzflash.com. I hope you have a chance to read Cannery Row; it’s a great short introduction to Steinbeck’s extraordinary body of work which informed the nation in a way that set the stage for Truman’s, Eisenhower’s, Kennedy’s and LBJ’s reconstruction of America after the Republican Great Depression.

The Best of the Rest of the News — Did America have a true “Manchurian Candidate” in the White House for four years? A literal agent for one or more foreign governments and/or international organized crime figures? — Are death threats now a normal tool of politics for Republicans? — There’re YUGE pro-democracy protests happening in Brazil: will Bolsonaro survive the backlash against the authoritarian dictatorship he tried to set up? — Republican politicians who openly and enthusiastically reject democracy are winning primaries in the most important swing states, setting up a very dangerous 2024 if they can carry 2022 elections. — How “Christian” is it to expel a 5-year-old orphaned girl from school because the aunt who adopted her when her parents died is lesbian? — Geeky Science! What starts in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic... — Crazy Alert! Trump is calling the Qanon crowd to his side. — In Good News: The blowout jobs report & “Blowout Joe!”