I second the notion: “The words ‘Republican corruption' should be continuously on Democrats’ lips.” But they need pick ONLY a few ultra-ultra-simple talking points and repeat them until they’re blue in the face.
I think it requires a dumbing-down that comes naturally to Republicans, and is eaten up just as naturally by their base, none of whom are splitting the atom. It’s the illusory truth effect, and DJT is a master: say the same bullshit over, and over, and over, and over… and eventually it sticks – and like clockwork you’ll hear your racist uncle parroting the phrases like gospel at Thanksgiving.
Facts are not important here. Exhibits one through four: Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Make America Great Again, They Want to Open the Borders. This is Propaganda 101.
I hope that every single person running a DEM campaign this fall (and next year) has a prepared script written by DNC that includes every single item you've written about!! Starting w/the infamous tax deal that says donald and his sons and daughters and their families will never have to pay taxes or even sit for an audit!!! And that the $100 million that trump currently owes has just been 'erased!'!!!' That so totally honks me off!! and it should do the same to every tax paying DEM, IND, and GOP!! He's made $billions on his presidency -- much through not exactly legal means and he doesn't have to pay taxes. He started a war and is building gold stuff -- using our tax $$ when he isn't paying the first penny!!!
Amazing isn't it Tom, that the corruption is so out in the open, no longer hidden behind doors or in smoke filled rooms. The Republican party will do nothing of course, but sadly neither will the Democratic party, because those in the know and inside the beltway, slop at the same trough.
The everyday corruption is so invasive and so wide-spread that most Americans are now accepting it as a fact of life, without protest and without criticism; young people of this generation have never experienced, and cannot even remember, a time when our government (and even many of their neighbors) were concerned and honest, but those of us of the pre-Reagan era do. FDR's New Deal has been drowned in the Republican swamp.
Corruption is and has been a fact of life in America, especially in politics.
The Teapot Dome scandal, the great depresssion.
What is different today is the improvement in communications, and the internet enabling it easier to sleuth and of course the thouusands of blogs, influencers and independent investigators.
I received my weekly Oligarch Watch newsletter today, and In it I discover when Vivek Ramaswamy became a billionaire. He bought a failing Alzheimers
I remember well the Nixon era. Our sources were the Local paper, and the the three TV stations, of NBC, CBS and ABC and it is they who told what was important and what to worry about.
It seems that many people think that, to get ahead, it is necessary to cheat the system in some way. The problem is that when enough people cheat, the system no longer works for anyone. We're getting close to that point.
The SAVE act and an executive order, has no effect on national elections, because according to the Constitution, the conduct of elections, including who is eligible to vote is left up to the states, and it took Constitution Amendements,namely th 15th,m 17th, 19th and 26th to change that.
My question is why is those responsible for informing the public, llie Aaron, the print and internet media, and even MSNOW, not informing the media, but are perpetuating this scam by Trump.
Is it because of clicks?
Red states can and probably will adopt in part or in while, the provisions of the SAVE act, as that is their prerogative, Just like Georgia and Kentucky allowed 18year olds to vote before the 26th Amendment.
Wyoming, NJ and Utah allowed women to vote before the 19th Amendment.
In 1792 New Hampshire was the first state to enfranchise all men to vote, the rest of the states required them to be property owners.
Until around 1807 in Pennsylvania and NJ all men, so long as they owned property, including black men, could vote
The only way that the SAVE act affect elections is if the several states independently adopt it, otherise it is in defiance of the constitution and has to be ignored.
Thom, you have identified the issue that connects so many of the crises confronting our country: corruption thrives in darkness.
But I would add one essential point. If elections are how the American people peacefully defeat corruption, then the public must be able to verify the elections themselves.
I have spent twenty-two years examining election systems, records, court cases, recounts, and audits. I have also helped develop a program that compares cast-vote records with ballot images so ordinary citizens, working in bipartisan teams, can independently check the counts done by precinct.
That experience has taught me how vulnerable public confidence becomes when election results are produced by complex computerized systems, but the evidence needed to verify those results is withheld from the public. I am not alleging that a particular election was stolen. I am saying that no election system should require blind trust when it can provide verifiable evidence.
Results should be publicly committed before audit samples are selected. Ballot images and cast-vote records should be preserved and made available with appropriate safeguards. Genuine random audits should compare the electronic record with the voter-verified paper ballots.
The ballot must remain secret—but the counting must be public.
We will not defeat corruption merely by asking people to trust a different group of politicians. We defeat it by building systems in which no politician, party, corporation, or election vendor has to be trusted blindly.
Trust should never require blindness. Verification is what makes trust possible.
I remembering wondering why the Russian people who were obviously aware of the fact of Putin corruption could not overwhelmingly support and protect Alexi Navalny to get rid of the stranglehold hold they were in?
Well, they did support Navalny, but he ended up being poisoned in prison deep in Siberia.
The problem is that their country is so steeped in corruption and has been since for so long, that it’s a way of life. At a certain point there are no avenues of accountability and honest governance left—ONLY the corrupt system controlled by the same corrupt oligarch families and a population who have become dependent on this system every step of the way— pay offs and assassinations—a wink and a smile away.
Is this our fate? I can’t believe how fast this is happening to us as a country, this takeover and the blindness of those who are still supporters! More than that, the fact of these corrupt politicians who stick together to support what they know is against our laws and constitution.
States are disjointed and unable to stand up to this corruption en masse when the vast majority of the cognizant population is now frightened and do understand what a dangerous predicament we’re all in now.
All of a sudden we doubt election results because both sides are yelling about election tampering.
We all knew something was terribly wrong way back during the Gore/Bush election and the way the ballots were being checked in Florida, but both had ties to big business and billionaire money, so either way, I now think the country would have been screwed, although at the time that wasn’t so evident. Then there’s both of the present administrations. How in the world could we have trmp in office twice??
It’s not the party it’s the power behind the party and the election. If our system is being poisoned on both sides, where do people go for honesty and transparency?
Our only hope is to elect a candidate who doesn’t accept the premise behind Citizens United, and who doesn’t accept billionaire corporate PAC money. One who campaigns for issues we can ALL get behind. There are many—including an affordable, honest healthcare system not based on profits for billionaire corporations. OR campaign finance, for good sakes! Why does it now take billions of dollars to finance an honest campaign for a Representative??
Open a vein on TRump and anyone in his family or syndicate and corruption is what will pour out. Other than decadent decor and retribution, it is all that he cares about. It must be the primary message of the impeachment.
These criminals are doomed. England and Norway got some of the Epstein perpetrators. Albania got Ivanka and Jared. Time for clean-up on Aisle 47! As usual, Democrats are expected to right the wrongs, provide services, and protect consumers. It sucks to be us. It sucks to be an American right now. Let's change that! See you in the streets with a CORRUPTION sign in my hands.
The Dems should be able to run against Republican corruption and the Republican Epstein Empire of Globally Organized Pedophiles for years to come. I fear they’ll botch and fail again. When their messaging “on repeat” late in the ‘24 campaign on MSNBC was stuck on”JD Vance is weird” and “$35 insulin for seniors”, I sensed doom.
Meanwhile the Lincoln Project has been given a years long masterclass in Attack Ads, and Bush 1 & 2 showed how to bash, smear and smash the Dems.
Dear Dems… Time to soldier-up. Get Mean. Every Republican begins their day determined to protect the rapists, pedophiles and child traffickers at every level. Every Dem must be determined to crush and flush Republicans in every election.
Thank you for this important documentation. Sadly, we as a nation may have to experience a complete breakdown or "downfall" before any real solutions are at hand. But we cannot rely on today's Democratic Party alone to do the fixing. There will have to be mobilization of unaffiliated voters, and of people eligible to vote but who do not. A good start would be open primaries, ranked choice voting, automatic voter registration, and abolition of gerrymandering.
And there will have to be a recognition that Trump is the symptom and enabler, but not the cause, of our current predicament that this article describes, and an idea that is so well founded in your 2022 book, The Hidden History of Neoliberalism.
"At every level, ever since the Reagan Revolution, the heart of Republican policies has been the naked corruption of our American political and economic systems by billionaires and giant corporations. Since the 1980s, Republicans have sold their corruption with slogans like, “Government is the problem, not the solution,” and “Let the market decide,” but their real message is, “Turn it all over to billionaires and their corporations.”
I would add to that the observation that Republicans have convinced ordinary people that great wealth is a demonstration of superiority and that right-wing attitudes and beliefs, especially religious beliefs, give one greater moral credibility or character. The mythology has great appeal.
Cheeto’s Regime Has Made WE the People Complicit In Genocide
With Cheeto’s illegal Iranian war he and his fascist regime has decided that the alliance with the fascist Israeli regime is just fine.
In so doing the fascist Republican party has made our country composed of WE the People complicit in the Palestinian genocide. This neo Nazi movement which Steve Bannon has advocated for in other countries has drawn WE the People into crimes against humanity.
Not only have the fascists decided that lawlessness is ok but that anything that restricts their game to be off limits. In other words pornography, misogynistic behavior including putting an end to female reproductive rights, child and domestic spousal abuse, workplace sexual harassment are all on the table.
So Americans are at a crossroads of deciding what kind of country WE the People want to have. Do WE want a country that has moral standards? Or are WE just a bunch of lawless animals because that’s what the fascist Republicans are exemplifying to US.
One can now add racism and Islamophobia to the above list.
Damn both duopolistic parties as they are two sides of the same old wooden nickel (literally). Smitty (Trump) has requested a trillion and a half dollar military budget; and he'll get it. Now, query thyself this: what IF half that amount were allocated towards public healthcare, infrastructure or education?
The whole campaign should be naming the candidate (republican or Democrat) as an enabler of Trumpican Corruption.
Trump is not on trial -- the enablers have to be on trial in the 2026 and then 2028 elections. Keep it local , keep it specific to laws supported by the losers who support the regime.
I second the notion: “The words ‘Republican corruption' should be continuously on Democrats’ lips.” But they need pick ONLY a few ultra-ultra-simple talking points and repeat them until they’re blue in the face.
I think it requires a dumbing-down that comes naturally to Republicans, and is eaten up just as naturally by their base, none of whom are splitting the atom. It’s the illusory truth effect, and DJT is a master: say the same bullshit over, and over, and over, and over… and eventually it sticks – and like clockwork you’ll hear your racist uncle parroting the phrases like gospel at Thanksgiving.
Facts are not important here. Exhibits one through four: Drain the Swamp, Lock Her Up, Make America Great Again, They Want to Open the Borders. This is Propaganda 101.
I hope that every single person running a DEM campaign this fall (and next year) has a prepared script written by DNC that includes every single item you've written about!! Starting w/the infamous tax deal that says donald and his sons and daughters and their families will never have to pay taxes or even sit for an audit!!! And that the $100 million that trump currently owes has just been 'erased!'!!!' That so totally honks me off!! and it should do the same to every tax paying DEM, IND, and GOP!! He's made $billions on his presidency -- much through not exactly legal means and he doesn't have to pay taxes. He started a war and is building gold stuff -- using our tax $$ when he isn't paying the first penny!!!
The corruption never stops:
Earlier today I ran across this: "Trump’s Truth Social to charge Wall Street $1.2M a year for early access to posts." That is paying for "Early Access" aka Insider trading. The billionaires get richer while we can only watch. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-media-truth-social-api-mcgurn-b3030851.html
Later I read: More than 10 firms pay up to $100,000 a month for fast access to Truth Social posts - This is CORE-ruption! I wonder of GOP legislators get early access for free to ensure they will not impeach Trump. https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/crypto/articles/trump-media-reports-238m-loss-011216541.html
Amazing isn't it Tom, that the corruption is so out in the open, no longer hidden behind doors or in smoke filled rooms. The Republican party will do nothing of course, but sadly neither will the Democratic party, because those in the know and inside the beltway, slop at the same trough.
The everyday corruption is so invasive and so wide-spread that most Americans are now accepting it as a fact of life, without protest and without criticism; young people of this generation have never experienced, and cannot even remember, a time when our government (and even many of their neighbors) were concerned and honest, but those of us of the pre-Reagan era do. FDR's New Deal has been drowned in the Republican swamp.
Corruption is and has been a fact of life in America, especially in politics.
The Teapot Dome scandal, the great depresssion.
What is different today is the improvement in communications, and the internet enabling it easier to sleuth and of course the thouusands of blogs, influencers and independent investigators.
I received my weekly Oligarch Watch newsletter today, and In it I discover when Vivek Ramaswamy became a billionaire. He bought a failing Alzheimers
pharmaceutical hired his mother who then jimmied the stats.https://oligarchwatch.substack.com/p/how-vivek-ramaswamys-mom-manipulated
I remember well the Nixon era. Our sources were the Local paper, and the the three TV stations, of NBC, CBS and ABC and it is they who told what was important and what to worry about.
It seems that many people think that, to get ahead, it is necessary to cheat the system in some way. The problem is that when enough people cheat, the system no longer works for anyone. We're getting close to that point.
The SAVE act and an executive order, has no effect on national elections, because according to the Constitution, the conduct of elections, including who is eligible to vote is left up to the states, and it took Constitution Amendements,namely th 15th,m 17th, 19th and 26th to change that.
My question is why is those responsible for informing the public, llie Aaron, the print and internet media, and even MSNOW, not informing the media, but are perpetuating this scam by Trump.
Is it because of clicks?
Red states can and probably will adopt in part or in while, the provisions of the SAVE act, as that is their prerogative, Just like Georgia and Kentucky allowed 18year olds to vote before the 26th Amendment.
Wyoming, NJ and Utah allowed women to vote before the 19th Amendment.
In 1792 New Hampshire was the first state to enfranchise all men to vote, the rest of the states required them to be property owners.
Until around 1807 in Pennsylvania and NJ all men, so long as they owned property, including black men, could vote
The only way that the SAVE act affect elections is if the several states independently adopt it, otherise it is in defiance of the constitution and has to be ignored.
Source: 10th Amendment
The SAVE act has no legs and don't give it any.
Thom, you have identified the issue that connects so many of the crises confronting our country: corruption thrives in darkness.
But I would add one essential point. If elections are how the American people peacefully defeat corruption, then the public must be able to verify the elections themselves.
I have spent twenty-two years examining election systems, records, court cases, recounts, and audits. I have also helped develop a program that compares cast-vote records with ballot images so ordinary citizens, working in bipartisan teams, can independently check the counts done by precinct.
That experience has taught me how vulnerable public confidence becomes when election results are produced by complex computerized systems, but the evidence needed to verify those results is withheld from the public. I am not alleging that a particular election was stolen. I am saying that no election system should require blind trust when it can provide verifiable evidence.
Results should be publicly committed before audit samples are selected. Ballot images and cast-vote records should be preserved and made available with appropriate safeguards. Genuine random audits should compare the electronic record with the voter-verified paper ballots.
The ballot must remain secret—but the counting must be public.
We will not defeat corruption merely by asking people to trust a different group of politicians. We defeat it by building systems in which no politician, party, corporation, or election vendor has to be trusted blindly.
Trust should never require blindness. Verification is what makes trust possible.
Read Thom Hartmann’s article: How Democrats Can Turn Trump’s Corruption Into a Political Revolution: https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-democrats-can-turn-trumps-corruption-9e1
Learn more about our work for transparent, trackable, and publicly verifiable elections: AUDIT USA’s or Cassandra Series link: https://johnrbrakey.substack.com/p/the-cassandra-series-breaking-apollos
Voting is secret. Counting is public. No verification, no trust.
I remembering wondering why the Russian people who were obviously aware of the fact of Putin corruption could not overwhelmingly support and protect Alexi Navalny to get rid of the stranglehold hold they were in?
Well, they did support Navalny, but he ended up being poisoned in prison deep in Siberia.
The problem is that their country is so steeped in corruption and has been since for so long, that it’s a way of life. At a certain point there are no avenues of accountability and honest governance left—ONLY the corrupt system controlled by the same corrupt oligarch families and a population who have become dependent on this system every step of the way— pay offs and assassinations—a wink and a smile away.
Is this our fate? I can’t believe how fast this is happening to us as a country, this takeover and the blindness of those who are still supporters! More than that, the fact of these corrupt politicians who stick together to support what they know is against our laws and constitution.
States are disjointed and unable to stand up to this corruption en masse when the vast majority of the cognizant population is now frightened and do understand what a dangerous predicament we’re all in now.
All of a sudden we doubt election results because both sides are yelling about election tampering.
We all knew something was terribly wrong way back during the Gore/Bush election and the way the ballots were being checked in Florida, but both had ties to big business and billionaire money, so either way, I now think the country would have been screwed, although at the time that wasn’t so evident. Then there’s both of the present administrations. How in the world could we have trmp in office twice??
It’s not the party it’s the power behind the party and the election. If our system is being poisoned on both sides, where do people go for honesty and transparency?
Our only hope is to elect a candidate who doesn’t accept the premise behind Citizens United, and who doesn’t accept billionaire corporate PAC money. One who campaigns for issues we can ALL get behind. There are many—including an affordable, honest healthcare system not based on profits for billionaire corporations. OR campaign finance, for good sakes! Why does it now take billions of dollars to finance an honest campaign for a Representative??
Nothing makes sense.
GRIFTER-IN-CHIEF: Trump's top 22 grift schemes
https://embed.kumu.io/a14442199a8fb058052b7df678dd8886
Open a vein on TRump and anyone in his family or syndicate and corruption is what will pour out. Other than decadent decor and retribution, it is all that he cares about. It must be the primary message of the impeachment.
These criminals are doomed. England and Norway got some of the Epstein perpetrators. Albania got Ivanka and Jared. Time for clean-up on Aisle 47! As usual, Democrats are expected to right the wrongs, provide services, and protect consumers. It sucks to be us. It sucks to be an American right now. Let's change that! See you in the streets with a CORRUPTION sign in my hands.
The Dems should be able to run against Republican corruption and the Republican Epstein Empire of Globally Organized Pedophiles for years to come. I fear they’ll botch and fail again. When their messaging “on repeat” late in the ‘24 campaign on MSNBC was stuck on”JD Vance is weird” and “$35 insulin for seniors”, I sensed doom.
Meanwhile the Lincoln Project has been given a years long masterclass in Attack Ads, and Bush 1 & 2 showed how to bash, smear and smash the Dems.
Dear Dems… Time to soldier-up. Get Mean. Every Republican begins their day determined to protect the rapists, pedophiles and child traffickers at every level. Every Dem must be determined to crush and flush Republicans in every election.
Thank you for this important documentation. Sadly, we as a nation may have to experience a complete breakdown or "downfall" before any real solutions are at hand. But we cannot rely on today's Democratic Party alone to do the fixing. There will have to be mobilization of unaffiliated voters, and of people eligible to vote but who do not. A good start would be open primaries, ranked choice voting, automatic voter registration, and abolition of gerrymandering.
And there will have to be a recognition that Trump is the symptom and enabler, but not the cause, of our current predicament that this article describes, and an idea that is so well founded in your 2022 book, The Hidden History of Neoliberalism.
"At every level, ever since the Reagan Revolution, the heart of Republican policies has been the naked corruption of our American political and economic systems by billionaires and giant corporations. Since the 1980s, Republicans have sold their corruption with slogans like, “Government is the problem, not the solution,” and “Let the market decide,” but their real message is, “Turn it all over to billionaires and their corporations.”
I would add to that the observation that Republicans have convinced ordinary people that great wealth is a demonstration of superiority and that right-wing attitudes and beliefs, especially religious beliefs, give one greater moral credibility or character. The mythology has great appeal.
What a great article! You have outdone yourself. Thanks!
Cheeto’s Regime Has Made WE the People Complicit In Genocide
With Cheeto’s illegal Iranian war he and his fascist regime has decided that the alliance with the fascist Israeli regime is just fine.
In so doing the fascist Republican party has made our country composed of WE the People complicit in the Palestinian genocide. This neo Nazi movement which Steve Bannon has advocated for in other countries has drawn WE the People into crimes against humanity.
Not only have the fascists decided that lawlessness is ok but that anything that restricts their game to be off limits. In other words pornography, misogynistic behavior including putting an end to female reproductive rights, child and domestic spousal abuse, workplace sexual harassment are all on the table.
So Americans are at a crossroads of deciding what kind of country WE the People want to have. Do WE want a country that has moral standards? Or are WE just a bunch of lawless animals because that’s what the fascist Republicans are exemplifying to US.
One can now add racism and Islamophobia to the above list.
Damn both duopolistic parties as they are two sides of the same old wooden nickel (literally). Smitty (Trump) has requested a trillion and a half dollar military budget; and he'll get it. Now, query thyself this: what IF half that amount were allocated towards public healthcare, infrastructure or education?
The whole campaign should be naming the candidate (republican or Democrat) as an enabler of Trumpican Corruption.
Trump is not on trial -- the enablers have to be on trial in the 2026 and then 2028 elections. Keep it local , keep it specific to laws supported by the losers who support the regime.