Author: Thom Hartmann

Guarantee Clause: Buried in our Constitution for 232 years is an emergency mechanism to save Democracy

The Founders of this nation, and the Framers who wrote our Constitution, created as Ben Franklin famously said a constitutional republic: a government “deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed” through citizens’ right to vote. They referred to this as “republicanism” because it was based on the Greek and Roman republics (then thousands of years in the past but still remembered and idealized), and when put into law they called it “a Republican Form of Government.” Today that form of government in crisis in America, as that core right to vote that defines republicanism is under...

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Abandoning Democracy: A failure to pass meaningful voting rights will signal the death of our republic

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...

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Bankrupting American society: Why billionaires peddle the cultural lie of “rugged individualism”

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...

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Lost Voting Rights: How a “slow motion insurrection” over 2021 has put fascism on the ballot for 2022

When fascism reared its ugly head in Europe and Japan in the 1920s, it signaled a coming war. As a newer and slicker form of that despotism rises here in America, it may well bring the same type of crisis. We stand on the threshold of momentous change in this nation. While it’s rarely discussed in this frame, the next two elections will almost certainly determine what form of government we’ll have for at least a generation. Will America become more free and democratic, or will we devolve into a 21st century form of Trumpy fascism? The Democratic Party...

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On the brink of a New Progressive Era: America faces a moment of both great danger and great opportunity

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...

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Creating a less deadly society: Why so many Americans oppose saving the lives of so many Americans

Expect the gun control debate in America to really get hot over the next 12 months as Beto O’Rourke runs for governor of Texas. O’Rourke said, when running for president in 2019, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!” And it’s entirely time for this debate. America has just a bit more than 4 percent of the world’s population, but, with more guns than people in our country, we have more than 40 percent of all the guns in civilian hands in the world. Specifically, as a Swiss-based research group found, there are “approximately 857 million...

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