Author: Thom Hartmann

For far too many years, Americans have made the mistake of assuming that our republican democracy will be safe as long as we elect competent and well-intentioned politicians as leaders. Sadly, that is like thinking your surgeon, who is very good at what she does, will do a wonderful job even though the hospital can no longer provide her with sterile instruments or running water. The reality is that democracies depend on a particular type of infrastructure to function properly. Without that infrastructure, they rapidly slide first into oligarchy and then into fascism. The two most recent examples are...

San Diego recently banned tent camping in the city; the homeless just moved to a riverbed just outside town. West Palm Beach Florida has banned feeding homeless people; the penalty is a $500 fine and 60 days in the town jail. In Maryland, some school districts are trying to get around federal law that requires educating the children of homeless people. Nashville is making a good-faith effort to help some of their homeless, but the need is overwhelming them. Denver mayor Mike Johnson is trying to create micro-communities for homeless people, but getting pushback from residents. The same thing is happening here in Portland. Forty-two...

In a very real way, the United States of America and the Russian Federation have been at war for eight years now. Russian partisans will tell you that the U.S. started it when Victoria Nuland was representing U.S. interests in Ukraine in 2014, around the time Russia invaded and seized Crimea. Robert Mueller and the FBI will tell you it really started in 2015 and 2016 when Russia spent millions – via the Internet Research Agency, to successfully intervene in the U.S. election and put Trump into the White House. However it got started, this is the current status of the war: The...