Hartmann Report

Sedition is the word for what we call, during times of war, treason. Trump and his Republican and media allies are in it up to their necks... “I have said that any man who attempted by force or unparliamentary disorder to obstruct or interfere with the lawful count of the electoral vote should be lashed to the muzzle of a twelve-pounder gun and fired out of a window.” —General Winfield Scott, 1861 Last night the January 6th Committee’s co-chair Liz Cheney told us that “Representative Scott Perry sought a pardon” along with “multiple other members of Congress” for their participation in the attempted coup, their sedition against the United States of America. They understood they had committed a crime. And they wanted Trump to give them absolution, to prevent them from being prosecuted, to keep them out of jail.

The Supreme Court legalized bribery for only one very narrow and very specific group of people in the United States: politicians & if America is to survive as a republic, we must end the legal bribery. Why don’t we have gun control? It’s because our Supreme Court, or, more correctly, five Republicans on our Supreme Court, legalized bribery.

Fifty-four years of Republican presidents using treason to achieve the White House (or inheriting it from one who did) has transformed America and weakened our democracy. Dwight Eisenhower was arguably the last Republican president who believed in democracy, the rule of law, and that government should do what the people want. From 1960 to today a series of leaders within the Republican Party have abandoned the democracy that American soldiers fought the Revolutionary War to secure, the Civil War to defend here at home, and World War II in Europe and the Pacific to defend around the world. This has brought us a series of criminal Republican presidents and corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices, who’ve legalized political bribery while devastating voting and civil rights. None of this was a mistake or an accident, because none of these people truly believed in democracy.

We can’t pretend we don’t know what’s happening and where it will lead if it’s not stopped - the question is what we will do about it. It’s time to talk about what an American fascist government would look like. The word “fascism” gets thrown around a lot, but most Americans have no idea what it would look like or how it would actually play out. It’s critical to lay out what a fascist America would look like now because this is what is being envisioned right now by many in the Republican Party, and it might come to pass.

Apparently, Medicare now needs the money to pay the Advantage scammers, who continue to pour millions into TV advertising to sucker in new rubes…er…customers. The latest grim news from the for-profit “Advantage” assault on Medicare is two-fold. First, the private “Advantage” plans continue to rip us all off; there’s a new round of busts of companies caught defrauding our government and every worker in America who’s paying into Medicare through their FICA payroll taxes. Second, the “Real Medicare” price hike of a few months ago (originally rationalized by the price of the new Alzheimer’s drug) will stay in place, even though that drug won’t generally be available. Apparently, Medicare now needs the money to pay the Advantage scammers, who continue to pour millions into TV advertising to sucker in new rubes…er…customers.

How Corporations Became 'People' - and How You Can Fight Back. During the bruising primary election season of 2008, a right-wing group put together a ninety-minute hit-job on Hillary Clinton and wanted to run it on TV stations in strategic states. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) ruled that advertisements for the “documentary” were actually “campaign ads” and thus fell under the restrictions on campaign spending of the McCain-Feingold Act and thus stopped them from airing. (Corporate contributions to campaigns have been banned repeatedly and in various ways since 1907 when Republican President Teddy Roosevelt pushed through the Tillman Act.) Citizens United, the right-wing group, sued to the Supreme Court.

This morning I sent our "Saturday Report" to our paid subscribers — including a rather freaky Geeky Science about a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) program that, without being told to do so by its programmers, has invented its own internal language with which it talks to itself! And we just wrapped up a great Zoom meeting with some really fascinating questions and thoughts, including issues like “Star Voting,” whether Democrats should campaign on issues or values, how to build movements, and the future of progressivism in America.

The Best of the Rest of the News. - Trump trade advisor and January 6th co-conspirator Peter Navarro was busted yesterday for refusing to release documents to, and meet with, the House committee investigating that act of sedition. - Was Chuck Grassley in on the coup? - ‘It’s going to be an army’: Tapes reveal GOP plan to contest elections. - Is Tucker Carlson playing the dictator's game? - What could possibly go wrong with DeSantis assembling his own private militia paid for with state funds? - The Supreme Court has put on hold an attempt by Texas to use the force of law to require Facebook and other social media groups to carry openly Nazi and racist hate speech without moderation. - Geeky Science! The climate is changing faster than we’d anticipated, and scientists are scrambling to understand what’s happening. - Geeky Science #2! Should we be concerned that an artificial intelligence (AI) program has invented its own language and is talking to itself with it? - Crazy Alert! Fox’s Ingraham says our epidemic of gun deaths aren’t so much caused by guns as by legal marijuana.

White freak-out about Black people having weapons back in the 1960s was a stronger motivator for Republicans than today’s slaughter of innocent children - at least so far... On May 2, 1967, the destinies of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Ronald Reagan collided. The day saved untold thousands of lives. At the time, California was an open-carry state with few gun restrictions. Governor Reagan was on the steps of the State Capitol to meet and share lunch with a group of visiting 8th graders when Newton, Seale, and nearly 30 other Black Panthers pulled up out front in a small caravan of cars. Armed with everything from pistols to 12-gauge shotguns, they climbed the half-dozen steps to the area around the front doors of the building.

In addition to an economy held together with the baling-wire of Fed stimulus (that’s ending), both the US & the world are facing a wild spectrum of assaults that could have huge economic impacts. The CEO of America’s largest bank is worried, and for good reason. Yesterday the Fed started something it hasn’t done for quite a while. It started dumping bonds.