Hartmann Report

Turn on a light, the old saying goes, and the cockroaches will scatter. It’s time to bring honest and unflinching light to the Republican Party’s use of the word “woke”… Ron DeSantis says he’s going to save America from “wokeness,” proclaiming to a Los Angeles fundraiser: “So in Florida, we say very clearly, we will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Our state is where woke goes to die.” Nikki Haley declares: “Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.”

It’s time to tax the rich, be they individuals or giant corporations, if we want to restore the American middle class and return our nation to the vitality that was once normal… If we want a healthy, happy society in America, it’s not enough to just raise the top personal income tax bracket; we must also raise corporate taxes. Let me explain…

"Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate . . . the return of the human dignity, repentance, and regeneration becomes almost impossible." —Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House of the Dead

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Republican leadership declares a new war on Social Security and Medicare. — Clarence Thomas was the deciding vote on behalf of giant real estate developers like his “friend” and benefactor Harlan Crow. — Can the GOP ever win an election honestly? — Manchin and Sinema join forces with Republicans to screw people with student debt. — Doorbell spying: Did you think I was exaggerating when I wrote The Hidden History of Big Brother? — Scientists say our planet is seriously ill. — Good News! The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that renewable energy will beat fossil fuel development worldwide this year for the first time in history. — Geeky science: don't eat junk food if you want a good night’s sleep!

We did it before, and the result was the creation of the world’s first and largest middle class and a level of peace and prosperity that held its own until Ronald Reagan took a meat-axe to it… “Succession” is over, but spoiled, entitled billionaire man-children are still very much with us, running social media companies, owning newspapers and television networks, and funding politicians and judges who then keep their taxes low and regulations minimal. America’s billionaires (and soon to be trillionaires) pay an average of around 3.1 percent as their functional income tax rate; as a result, America is the most unequal developed society in the world. The last time severe poverty and extravagant wealth coexisted in such extremes as today in this country was during the 1920s and 1930s.

The crisis for any Republican who wants to run against Trump is that they’ll have to run to the right of fascism. But what occupies that space? Pure, raw, genocidal dictatorship that ends America... Ron DeSantis has a problem. No matter how hard he tries to kill off The [“woke” Black] Little Mermaid by taking down the company that brought her to life, it’s not going to help him beat Donald Trump in the GOP primary. Nobody in the Republican Party, in fact, can successfully “run to the right of Trump” because Trump is running as an open fascist. And the only thing to the right of an open fascist is a total dictator who has utterly shattered even the façade of fascist democracy (remember that Putin and many other modern autocrats were “elected” repeatedly).

Republicans know the only way they can continue to hold onto national power — and even keep their control over states like Texas, Georgia, and Florida — is by making it difficult to register and vote… The first rule of business and marketing is that if you make it easy for folks to buy your product or engage with you, more people will do so. If you don’t want people to buy or use your product or service, on the other hand, just make them jump through hoops to complete the transaction and many won’t bother. Republicans know this and have been applying it to voting for the better part of 50 years; recently they’ve turned it into a science.

In 2021 the Zelenskyy declared a campaign to “de-oligarchize” his nation, having diagnosed Ukraine's political & economic crises as tracing back to the corruption by the morbidly rich. Can little Ukraine teach big America how to deal with our oligarch problem? Viktor Medvedchuk was the Rupert Murdoch of Ukraine. He ran a rightwing television network and owned TV stations across the country, while simultaneously being one of the richest men in that nation. He promoted hate and division, tax cuts for the rich and gutting the Ukrainian social safety net, and supported some of Ukraine’s most toxic politicians. Like many of today’s American oligarchs, he owned hundreds of politicians, who consistently voted in Parliament, state, and local governments to protect his businesses, wealth, and influence. Then came Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who successfully campaigned for president on a Teddy Roosevelt-like anti-corruption platform and, like both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, declared outright war on politically active oligarchs.

A recent study of 100 US cities found that — between 1993 to 2017 — billions were spent to expand highway capacities by 42% but, instead of reducing congestion, traffic delays actual went up 144%! It’s Memorial Day, and millions of Americans are on the highways. You’d think that if your freeway is clogged up every rush hour, adding an extra lane would reduce the congestion. You’d be wrong. And an uprising against Oregon state government plans to widen the I-5 freeway here in Portland may end up changing how cities around the country decide to use the hundreds of billions of dollars in highway funds coming to them from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The Gunshot That Ended Reconstruction "If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle [of ending slavery] . . . I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it." —Abraham Lincoln, speech in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 22, 1861