Hartmann Report

America fought back America’s oligarchs twice; will we succeed this third time with an actual oligarch (Trump) running for president as a neofascist populist? Neoliberalism broke the world, but the neoliberals at the height of political and corporate power don’t want to admit it and so helplessly complain about the backlash to it that they call populism. The easy solution is to end neoliberal policies and return to democracy and its associated classic American values. But how? The groupies and oligarchs at the annual Davos “Billionaire’s Woodstock” are confused and frightened. More than 50 countries around the world are facing elections this year, and rightwing populists aligning themselves with Putin and against democracy are on the rise. Particularly here in America.

When the commons are sliced and diced by private enterprise, the result is almost always a true “tragedy of the commons” (to quote ecologist Garrett Hardin): exploitation, monopoly, and price gouging. Whether in a nation’s schools, its utilities, its prisons, its public roads, or even its internet access, when these core parts of the commons are privatized and then ring-fenced by private enterprise, somebody is going to get rich, and the majority of the people will be poorer.Libertarians and their fellow travelers, however, deny that such natural monopolies even exist.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Trump is leaning hard on SCOTUS, just like he did on Mike Pence. Will members of the Supreme Court get the Pence “gallows” next? Will they cave to his threats and promises? — “Largest presidential grift in history”: House Democrats dropped the hammer on Trump and Kushner. — A new report finds half of the inflation America has experienced since the pandemic is caused by corporate price-gouging. — Billionaires ask for higher income taxes and even a wealth tax: is anyone listening? — This is what happens when rabid anti-abortion freaks take over: a woman gets 30 years in prison after her baby dies. — Why the discovery that Greenland is losing ice faster than we knew is concerning. — Crazy Alert! Oklahoma Republican submits legislation to deal with the crisis of kids using litter boxes in school. — Do multivitamins stave off dementia?

The current explosion in colorectal cancer among young adults, for example, appears to be at least partly caused by our gut being flooded with microplastics in the food and beverages we consume… My father died young because the asbestos industry chose to lie to the public about the dangers of their product for decades. When I was born, Dad dropped out of college and went to work in a steel mill in Grand Rapids; as the hot steel came out of the furnace it passed over asbestos-covered rollers, causing him to work in a cloud of asbestos dust for over a year. He died in 2006 from mesothelioma; his story is here. As recently as 2015, that industry has been caught paying off Republican members of Congress to make it harder for people like my father to claim any sort of compensation for having their lives cut short. Now the plastics and chemical industries are fixing to do the same to our children and grandchildren. Already, they're paying off Republicans in both the US Congress and in state houses across the country to keep our environment and food supply filled with deadly microplastics.

It's gotten so absurd that a reporter spoke with a woman at a Trump rally sporting a crucifix & tee-shirt that said "Hang Joe Biden For Treason." She essentially said Jesus would watch the execution… Monday, in addition to being Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, was National Religious Freedom Day. But what does that mean, and for whom? What would the "Christian America" that Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson are calling for look like?

The Supreme Court, it appears, is planning to gut most of America's regulatory agencies in what could be the most consequential re-write of the protective "deep state" since the New Deal… Republicans on the Supreme Court are, it appears, planning to gut most of America's regulatory agencies, in what could be the most consequential re-write of the protective "deep state" since it was largely created during the New Deal in the 1930s. The vehicle for this radical transformation of America is a case that will be argued today, in just a few hours, before the Court: Loper Bright Enterprises v Gina Raimondo... Virtually the entirety of America's ability to protect its citizens from corporate predation through regulation rests on what's called the Chevron deference (more on that in a moment), which the Court appears prepared to overturn in today's case.

So, Donald Trump won Iowa. A crazed billionaire who wants to "suspend the constitution" and claims the right to a murder his political enemies. It doesn't have to be this way. Imagine. Fox "News" shuts down (or just decides to only tell the truth), and most of the steam goes out of the rightwing populist MAGA movement which its billionaire owners helped create in the US. Insurrectionist members of Congress find themselves in jail facing sedition charges, as the previous leader of the country is under criminal investigation for taking help from Putin's Russia. The government begins the process of decriminalizing abortion nationwide. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is overturned and, without the flow of billionaire money directing their votes, Congress begins to actually pass laws that reflect the desires of the majority of the people. Unless you read international newspapers like The Financial Times, odds are you have no idea that same scenario is now playing out in Poland which, for the previous eight years, had been suffering under a Trump-like administration.

While your GOP friends are sitting in the dark complaining that they can't follow Trump on his Nazi-infested social media site or recharge their phones, you can ride out the next storm in comfort! Republicans deny climate change and hate on electric vehicles. As such, they're risking induction into the Darwin Awards Hall of Fame: they're risking their own safety and comfort, and, in some cases, even their lives. As I'm writing these words, it's sixteen degrees Fahrenheit here in Portland and the winds are whipping down the Columbia River at up to 60 miles an hour. Which raises two questions: Why is America experiencing such extreme cold in an era of global warming, and is there any way we can power our homes with our cars in a blackout?

Reagan’s “starve the beast” strategy has been used for nearly 50 years to shrink government until it no longer works well and then point to that failure to justify privatization. Trump most recently reduced the workforces of Social Security, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRA) by tens of thousands as his contribution to starving the “beast” of government: the result is that it can now take two years for Social Security to process a disability claim; the EPA is virtually impotent against corporate polluters; the USDA is letting factory farms “self regulate,” producing a nationwide explosion of food poisoning; and the IRS has largely stopped conducting large, multiyear audits of wealthy people, focusing instead on cheaper and faster audits of average working people—all while private tax-preparing companies’ efforts to prevent the IRS from offering free tax services got a huge boost.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Violent political threats are surging as we enter 2024: trickle down fascism? — MAGA has taken over much of the evangelical movement. — Following Trump’s new religion, Republicans are spitting in the face of Jesus. — Telling a gay-basher that he’s “homophobic” will cost you $35,000 in fines under new Republican legislation just introduced to the Florida House. — Book bans, another import from Nazi Germany, are getting absurd in Florida and other Red states. — Hunter in a Farmer’s World Alert! ADHD: Learning how to focus your attention. — Wisdom School Alert! The Motivation Code revealed. — Who are the Houthis and why should we care?