Hartmann Report

America’s oligarchs have always known that their warnings about making people “dependent on government” and “lazy” were a scam… Cities across America (and around the world) are proving, with new Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiments, how wrong the old Republican canard really is. And what kind of damage it’s done to America during the 80 or so years it’s held the GOP in its thrall. The first time I heard it I thought it was profound wisdom. Of course, I was only 16 years old, but it still seemed pretty important.

Oligarchy is always a transitional system, typically a mere waystation in the shift from democracy to fascism or some other form of authoritarianism… Many of America’s oligarchs — the people whose great wealth and/or ownership of media properties gives them tremendous influence over our politics — believe they’re arguing for policies that will produce a “better” America. Or at least an America that’s better and safer for oligarchs and their families and businesses. Tragically, they’re wrong. Their support for GOP-aligned racist, “free market deregulation,” and climate denial policies are tearing America apart and will threaten their grandchildren every bit as much as they do yours and mine. Nonetheless, in America and increasingly around the world, oligarchs taking over the political dialogues of nations are all the rage. From America to Turkey to Russia to the Philippines, oligarchs have either risen to near-absolute power or bought off so many politicians that they have effective control of entire political parties and thus entire nations. Increasingly, America’s oligarch problem has become the world’s oligarchy problem, as country after country follows the GOP’s example and sidelines labor rights, women’s rights, voting rights, and democracy itself.

There are two basic types of monopoly: those created by a business growing so large that it controls a marketplace, and those explicitly created by government. At the time of the writing of the Constitution, the term monopoly was generally used to describe either corporate monopolies like the British East India Company or government-created ones like patents and copyrights. Much of this book is devoted to the East India Company types of monopoly, but the monopolies created by patent and copyright laws are important as well, particularly because these systems can either foster or stifle innovation and markets.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — MAGA Mike Johnson says there's no need for gun laws cuz we still use cars... — Did you know that last quarter we had "blockbuster" GDP growth running at 4.9%? — Will Dean Phillips upset the campaign or will he be marginalized? — The GOP is eating their own: Matt Gaetz outs a gay Republican congressman — Why don't the judges threaten Trump with jail time now? — Why do auto execs think that EVs are not working? — Is the Koch network all about getting the "right" cases to the Supreme Court? — Speaking of the Supreme Court, it appears that the quarter-million-dollar loan a wealthy healthcare baron gave Clarence Thomas to buy a luxury super-bus was never repaid — Exposed: the Dangers in Viewing ADHD as a "Disorder" — Geeky Science - Here's the best "pill" to keep cancer at bay

If America is to recover any semblance of meaningful democracy in our country, we must cut out the cancer of big money in our political system by overturning Citizens United… According to Talkers Magazine, the “Bible of the Talk Radio Industry,” I talk with around 6 million people every week on my nationally syndicated call-in radio/TV show. What I’m hearing, increasingly (I’ve been doing this program for 20 years now), is frustration bordering on despair about the inability of America to get basic, necessary things done. Why is it, people ask, that we can’t do anything about guns amidst all these mass shootings? Or homelessness? Or affordable healthcare and education? Why are we moving so slowly on climate change? How did social media get excused from responsibility for its own content and then become overrun by Putin bots and Nazis?

In Johnson, the GOP have found the perfect embodiment of their deplorable basket of hatreds - the only “loves” are rightwing billionaires, the fossil fuel industry & of course Trump’s buddy, Putin... The election of Louisiana’s Mike Johnson as House Speaker proves the premise that all the GOP has left are Donald Trump and hate. As Congressman Jamie Raskin told reporters yesterday: “Donald Trump has cemented his control over the Republican conference in the House of Representatives. He has a stranglehold on the Republican Party. Even as he faces 91 criminal charges and several of his election lawyers have pleaded guilty now to election-related offenses, one of his enablers on January 6 has just become the speaker of the House Representatives.” Johnson’s hate of Democrats is so deep that he led a Trump-backed effort in the House to get Republicans to back a lawsuit by 18 Republican state attorneys general to overturn Biden’s election as president.

It’s so dramatic & so shocking that scientists — typically not prone to hyperbole — published in the journal BioScience: “Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory...” Sometime in the past year, this tiny planet we live on in an obscure corner of our Milky Way galaxy went through some sort of tipping point, a “state change” of sorts, and now things are different from how they’ve been at any other time in the 300,000 year history of the human race. Nobody knows for sure what that change or tipping point is.

Republican-aligned rightwing billionaires are gleeful at the prospect of further government dysfunction gutting social programs while Putin, Xi & the leaders of Hamas are reveling in the chaos... Eleven Democrats on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent letters to the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA Director asking for a briefing on how the Chinese government is manipulating Republicans amidst the Speaker debate to keep America enfeebled in anticipation of a possible invasion of Taiwan. The letter explicitly asked for information about how: “[O]ur foreign adversaries are leveraging current political dysfunction in the U.S. House of Representatives to discredit democracy globally in their efforts to promote an alternative authoritarian model of governance internationally, enhance their ability to form economic and national security alliances, and harm our standing with strategic partners.” As an old hippie peacenik it pains me to say it but America, Europe, and the democracies of Asia are preparing for an all-out world war.

Voters who believe in democracy, a free press & a public education committed to honest inquiry & intellectual integrity must also step up and let their reps how important these things are to them… For far too many years, Americans have made the mistake of assuming that our republican democracy will be safe as long as we elect competent and well-intentioned politicians as leaders. Sadly, that’s like thinking your surgeon, who is very good at what she does, will do a wonderful job even though the hospital can no longer provide her with sterile instruments or running water.

Government is the agency that we collectively create (at least we do in a democratic republic) to manage the natural monopolies that we all use, share, and/or need: the atmosphere, water and waterways, septic and waste, public roads and skyways, police and fire, and, most broadly, the entire infrastructure of commerce and the public good. The whole idea of government grew out of ancient families, tribes, and clans, who worked together to protect the youngest, eldest, and weakest members of then-hunter-gatherer communities.