2023 Archives

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 12, 2023

How Will America Weather the Historic Times We Face?

These are moments pregnant with possibility, but also saturated by danger - they require exceptional and farsighted leadership, statesmanship instead of politics & a commitment to the general welfare… We are living through one of those hinge points in history, a time people remember other events in the context of “before” and “after” that moment, the kind that comes along only once every few generations... In this generation, we Americans may well determine the fate and future of democracy all around the world. If our democracy falters in the 2024 election thirteen months from now, the United States will almost certainly go neofascist like Russia and Hungary have. As a result, authoritarianism and oligarchy will spread all across the world and it could be decades or even centuries before democracy again emerges.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 11, 2023

Why Trump and the GOP are Burning the Entire System Down

The difference between Republican and Democratic visions for America is as clear as the difference between Russia and Norway (or California and Mississippi)… Today’s Republican Party is dedicated to destroying what they call the “deep state” and the rest of us call the American government. From Trump followers in MAGA hats at rallies to Republican US Senators, they’ll all tell you this without a moment’s hesitation. Steve Bannon even proclaimed it as the main goal of the Trump presidency in their first months in the White House, saying Trump’s goal was the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Talking about government regulations that protect the environment, punish companies and con men who rip off consumers, and provide for a safe workplace, Bannon said in March, 2017: “That’s all gonna be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.” In this, the GOP, Putin, and fossil fuel billionaires are all working toward the same goal: to do away with or at least fatally weaken the institutions of our government that prevent the morbidly rich and wannabee strongman autocrats from taking over America.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 10, 2023

Did Hamas Somehow Get Inside Information About Israel’s Defenses from a Trump Leak?

I have a few questions in trying to make sense of Gaza... This past weekend, Hamas launched a brutal, horrific attack against civilians in Israel. While there is a very real history that has led up to this, there is no justification for it. Even in a state of war, civilians must be protected. This horror raises a couple of important questions. First, did Hamas somehow get inside information about Israel’s defenses that helped them pull this off? Second, how might this play out, how might it be resolved, and how can America and the world avoid the mistakes from previous but similar situations?

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 9, 2023

Something or Someone is Not Going to Save Us from Tyranny

As much as it pains me to say it (my personal urge toward salvationism is as strong as anybody else’s), nobody is coming to save us... “Saved at the last minute” is pretty much the story of our culture. It’s built into our major salvationist religions, particularly Christianity and Islam. Even when killed or facing death, Jesus and Muhammed managed to ascend to heaven at the last minute and claim eternal life. By this worldview, no matter how terrible a life you’ve lived, if you say a handful of magic words at the last minute before you die, you’re guaranteed a spot in paradise. There’s always the last minute. It’s at the core of most all of our fiction, and a good chunk of our nonfiction. In the old Greek dramas it was deus ex machina — the god in the machine — when Our Hero was finally trapped in an impossible situation but then a platform is cranked down from the ceiling of the amphitheater with a god on it, who waves his hand and makes everything okay again.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 8, 2023

Part One: America Was Founded on Resistance to Monopoly: The Hidden History of Monopolies

America was birthed in a fight against monopoly. There’s a pervasive myth in America—promoted by wealthy anti-tax activists—that the Revolutionary War was fought because colonists didn’t want to pay taxes to England. While that sentiment was certainly widespread, the spark that lit the fuse of the Revolution was monopoly and a giant tax cut for the world’s largest corporation, not an increase in taxes. By 1773, Great Britain had a stranglehold on the economy of the colonies, enforced through the British East India Company, which held monopoly rights to much of the commerce with North America.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 7, 2023

Saturday Report 10/7/23 - Is a "Dangerous conspiracy" to end democracy in 2025 succeeding with right-wing billionaires?

The Best of the Rest of the News. — Is a "Dangerous conspiracy" to end democracy in 2025 succeeding with right-wing billionaires? — Is MAGA politics poisoning the world? — Trump discussed sensitive nuclear info with a foreign billionaire who paid him $200,000. — Will Gym Jordan as speaker strengthen the authoritarian "Red Caesar" movement or damage them? — Interest rates & jobs report: Alan Greenspan lives on. — There are some crucial cases before SCOTUS this year that will impact Americans for decades if not centuries. — Breaking Good News/Bad News Alert! A federal court has approved a new congressional map for Alabama while the Governor of Virginia, Glen Youngkin, oversees the purging of tens of thousands of voters from that state's rolls. — "Absolutely gobsmackingly bananas": September 2023 was the hottest month in the history of humankind. — Crazy Alert! Now we know how conservatives think children should be raised to not be snowflakes: they need to be beaten with a belt!

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 6, 2023

The Medicare Advantage Ripoff that Every American Should Know About

Just the overcharges happening right now in that scam are costing Americans over $140 billion a year: more than the entire budget for the Medicare Part B or Part D programs… President George W. Bush and Republicans (and a handful of on-the-take Democrats) in Congress created the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 as a way of routing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies. Those companies, and their executives, then recycle some of that profit back into politicians’ pockets via the Citizens United legalized bribery loophole created by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court. Just the overcharges happening right now in that scam are costing Americans over $140 billion a year: more than the entire budget for the Medicare Part B or Part D programs. These ripoffs — that our federal government seems to have no interest in stopping — are draining the Medicare trust fund while ensnaring gullible seniors in private insurance programs where they’re often denied life-saving care.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 5, 2023

How the Billionaire Corruption of SCOTUS Could End Social Security — and America

If the six Republican justices rule the way the oligarchs who support their extravagant lifestyles want, America could be a very, very different place in just a few years… Republicans are “this close” — just a matter of months away — from ending Social Security, a goal they’ve worked toward ever since 1935. They’re hoping to use six Republicans on a corrupted Supreme Court to get there. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse points out, in his book The Scheme and his YouTube series about same, that American oligarchs launched a campaign to seize control of the Supreme Court — and, thus, the American government — over 40 years ago and they’re now close to their goal of turning America back to the 1920s.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 4, 2023

Is Non-Accountability for the Crimes of January 6th at the Root of Chaos in Congress?

Sunlight and accountability are still the best disinfectants and America needs to close this ugly chapter in our history with a sense of both finality and justice… Kevin McCarthy is humiliated, the first Speaker in history to have been thrown out of his office by his own party (or any party, for that matter), and the House has been thrown into chaos. By Matt Gaetz, a bizarre congressman under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sex trafficking minor girls in Florida. Putin, Xi, and MBS are loving this, as it freezes America’s ability to defend our democratic ally Ukraine, further destabilizing the international order and providing China with a model for their hoped-for attack on Taiwan. And because Putin is loving it, Trump mandated it to his followers in Congress. Along with other actions that have taken a bite out of average Americans’ hide.

Posted at Hartmann Report on Oct. 3, 2023

The GOP’s "Red Caesar” New Political Order Plan Marches Forward

Either the GOP will be crushed to near irrelevance in the 2024 elections, or they will win enough power to end the American experiment. Which will it be? “Thirty years ago,” Damon Linker told The Guardian, “if I told you that a bunch of billionaires and intellectuals on the right are waiting in the wings to impose a dictatorship on the United States, you would have said that I was insane.” Now, however, the senior lecturer at Penn State University’s Department of Political Science and author of the Notes from the Middleground Substack newsletter has reconsidered. “But it’s no longer insane,” Linker writes. “It’s now real. There are those people out there.” And, Linker notes, “The question is: will they get their chance.” The simple reality is that they already have had their chance in multiple Red states, and when we watch what they’re doing with it we see that step-by-step, day-by-day the GOP is inching towards full-blown fascism. Now they’re calling to end democracy and replace our president with a “Red Caesar.”