Hartmann Report

Nature and economics share some fascinating patterns, one of which explains why Donald Trump is about to become president and how the morbidly rich have appropriated over $50 trillion from working class people since the 1980s. Scientists use something called the Lorka-Volterra equations to explain how predators and prey interact in the wild. These equations show us that animal populations rise and fall in predictable cycles — when there are lots of rabbits, fox populations grow, but as foxes eat more rabbits, the rabbit population shrinks, which then causes fox numbers to drop, allowing rabbits to multiply again. Incredibly, this back-and-forth pattern mirrors what happens between the wealthy and working classes in our economy and political systems over the past 100 years.

The real reason GOP policies target wages, unions, and public education. Donald Trump, a billionaire himself, will soon become president with a cabinet worth at least a third of a trillion dollars. Add Musk, and you're over $800 billion in wealth held by this small handful of people. By comparison, the entire combined net worth of Joe Biden's cabinet is $118, million. That's about one-tenth of one billion dollars: $0.118 billion. All of them, combined, including Biden himself, are worth what some of these billionaires make in a day. To become a billionaire, generally you have to have a singular priority. One that is reflected in your work, your life, and your politics. And that priority, contrary to the poor MAGA suckers Trump and his billionaire buddies convinced to vote for him in November, has nothing to do with average Americans or the middle class. If anything, it has to do with sucking as much wealth out of the middle class as possible to make yourself a billionaire. Just since Reagan's tax cuts, they've taken $50 trillion from us.

To get an honest immigration system, we must reverse Reaganism... Trump says he's going to imprison and then deport millions of brown-skinned immigrants. He's going after the wrong people. It seems that ever time a Republican goes on one of the national political TV shows, they make sure to get in the lie that "Joe Biden opened the southern border wide open," or toss in a reference to "Biden's open borders." It is, of course, a vicious lie — but one that's almost never called out by the hosts because it's peripheral or tangential to the topic being discussed. And, as is so often the case, this all started with Reagan (more on that in a moment). While it's true that two factors have driven a lot of migration over the past few decades (climate change wiping out farmland, and political dysfunction and gangs caused by the Reagan administration devastating the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) the latest main driver of would-be immigrants and refugees is the Republican Party itself.

January 6th was a rehearsal; they're now planning 2025. Coups quietly build to an explosive tipping point, then suddenly appear as a fait accompli… As we look at the upcoming year this New Year's Eve, the most urgent question facing us is whether the assault Putin, Orbán, Trump, Musk, and Vance have planned for our political system in 2025 will succeed. In 1926 Ernest Hemmingway published his novel The Sun Also Rises, which has this extraordinary bit of dialogue about how change happens in most aspects of life — and how governments rise and fall. "How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked. "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly." "What brought it on?" "Friends," said Mike. "I had a lot of friends. False friends." For some unfathomable reason, Democrats insist on calling their Republican colleagues their "friends." They are not friends. With few exceptions, they are systematically destroying American democracy with the clear objective of replacing it with strongman authoritarianism, a new and American version of what Benito Mussolini called fascism.

Why Republicans Fear Critical Thinking, Science, and Equality. "Those who control the present, control the past; and those who control the past control the future." —George Orwell, 1984 From outlawing the polio vaccine to ignoring the scientific consensus on gender dysphoria to refusing to wear masks in hospitals to trying to strip evolution and science from our schools, stupid has become fashionable in today's GOP. When Republican politicians want to score points, they criticize their opponents as having had "elite" educations; the GOP's war against Ivy League colleges was particularly evident during the student protests of Israel's slaughter in Gaza. Congressional Republican inquisitors voices' dripped with scorn and contempt as they grilled university presidents. It wasn't always this way.

For over a century, most states used biometrics to verify voter identity. Signatures done in front of a witness are nearly impossible to fake (unlike IDs, which can be easily faked). Polling place workers would compare the original registration signature with the signature of the person signing in to vote, and if they didn’t match, the worker would disqualify the voter. When the Motor Voter Act was passed in 1993, not a single state required proof of citizenship to vote, and there was no national problem of voter fraud. The threat of a few years in jail is more than enough to discourage even the most ardent partisan from trying to double-vote or fraudulently vote.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — This is what happens when five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court put our government up for sale to the highest bidder — Far-right activist Christopher Rufo — the guy who put DEI and CRT in the bullseye of Republicans and rightwing media — now wants to take on Harvard. — Will a jury ever convict Luigi Mangioni? — Weiner went to prison but Gaetz won’t? — The CDC reports the first severe bird flu case in the US involves a virus that has mutated in a way that makes it more effective at infecting human lung tissue. — My Australian friend tells me that there’s a huge housing shortage here in Oz “because conservative governments have let housing become an investment vehicle to make money” instead of an essential resource needed by humans that should be protected by government. — Hunter in a Farmers World: ADHD: The Butterfly Chaser and the Seed Planter — Wisdom School: Master the Art of Talking Less and Saying More — Knights Templar: How Powerful a Force is Thought?

The for-profit health insurance industry has attached itself to us like a giant, bloodsucking tick and "Scientific Racism" is part of the reason why There's only one person in this photograph/video of a recent G7 meeting who represents a country where an illness can destroy an entire family, leaving them bankrupt and homeless, with the repercussions of that sudden fall into poverty echoing down through generations. Most Americans have no idea that the United States is quite literally the only country in the developed world that doesn't define healthcare as an absolute right for all of its citizens. That's it. We're the only one left.

How algorithms distill fear and rage into society's deadliest addiction, destroying society and political systems in the process… A fascinating article in The New York Times this week by Kurt Gray, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gives us the beginnings of an understanding of how and why social media is so destructive to society. Gray points out that most people assume humans have historically been predators, the metaphorical big cats of the jungle. In fact, Gray says, we've historically been prey, the victims of predators: "This picture of fearfulness is consistent with our understanding of human psychology. We're hard-wired to detect threats quickly and to stay fixated on places where threats once appeared, even after they have vanished. We fear that 'child predators' will abduct our kids even when they are safer than ever. "Modern humans, ensconced in towns and cities, are now mostly safe from animal predators, but we are still easily frightened. Whether we're scrolling social media or voting for a presidential candidate, we all still carry the legacy of our ancestors, who worried about big cats lurking in the darkness." Thus, if you could invent a drug that would cause people to be fearful — and thus stimulate the rage that comes from fear — you could have incredible control over a population if you could simply tell them where and against whom to direct that fear-induced rage.

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… Merry Christmas! The GOP-caused fiscal disaster and government shutdown has been postponed until March, but in the meantime, House Republicans have laid out their vision for the future of America. In a budget document they released last year, anticipating this very moment, 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. In addition to showing the hypocrisy and depravity of these politicians who are happy to live on the largesse of rightwing billionaires but see no benefit in feeding hungry children, it also shows that Jude Wanniski's grand plan, adopted by Reagan in 1981, is alive and well. It's no accident or coincidence that the threat of a failure to pay the nation's bills or fund an upcoming year constantly happens when Republicans control the House of Representatives.