Author: Thom Hartmann

Remember when the Biden presidency was brand new and Democrats in the House and Senate proposed a sweeping, $6 trillion package to rebuild our social safety net, cut drug prices, upgrade our infrastructure, rescue our students and elderly, and save the environment? As it was moving forward, a small group of Republicans and Democrats who call themselves the “corporate problem solvers caucus,” told us that if they could just peel off the parts that involved actual physical construction of infrastructure into a separate bill, they’d get it going right away without having to worry about the filibuster. The Democrats...

December was full of messages pushing the spirit of giving on consumers, and reminding those who itemize their taxes that charitable 2021 deductions would vanish on December 31st. I found myself talking back to the TV and appeals by mail that crushed me over the holiday month. Why was a children’s hospital asking for money when every other developed country in the world finances pediatric research and pays the full cost of kids who need medical care? Why were dozens of charities helping homeless people when Finland — a country nowhere near as wealthy as America — has functionally...

Do we stand on the edge of a grand new progressive era, with good wages for all, racial and gender equality and justice, and a reduction of the political power of reactionary forces in America? Or will the next president gleefully overthrow American democracy, shutter the free press, and imprison those who object? When Mussolini put Antonio Gramsci, the founder of Italy’s Communist Party, in prison in 1927, Gramsci wrote from his prison cell that, “[T]he old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” Two forces in American...