Author: Thom Hartmann

In 1776, British economist Adam Smith published “The Wealth of Nations,” a book that laid out the principles that modern economies have operated under for centuries, with the exception of the catastrophic Reagan Revolution years of 1981 to 2021. In addition to arguing for a strong domestic manufacturing base and high taxes on the wealthy, Smith pointed out that one of the things that most directly constitutes the wealth of a nation is its educated workforce and well-informed populace, as a result of that education. From Thomas Jefferson creating the first tuition-free American college (the University of Virginia), to Horace Mann’s...

Given the horrific trend of America always passing another world record for mass shootings, it is well past the time for how we hold political debates around guns. The discussion about guns in America generally falls into two polar opposite positions: do not regulate guns at all, or ban large parts of the spectrum of guns and heavily regulate ownership of the rest. The guaranteed defense of the status quo invokes FOX/rightwing culture war stuff like the “right to own weapons of war.” But there is a third position, entirely outside of that spectrum, which every actual “free market“...

The 1970s was a pivotal decade, and not just because it saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political and sometimes violent SDS. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed. Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91% and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%. Business leaders ran their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America, and...

Republican election theft used to be covert and was almost never covered by the press. Now they are doing it out in the open and defying federal courts to stop them, while ignoring press coverage that outs what they are up to. As Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers, the courts have neither sword nor purse: they don’t have any mechanism to force compliance with their rulings. So it appears that multiple Republican states have chosen to simply ignore their own courts, as well as the federal courts and the Supreme Court. This is a big step...

Senate Republicans refused to even allow that body to debate whether or not America should continue funding our commitment to the Ukrainian European democracy that is now under a brutal, violent, and sustained attack by Donald Trump’s friend, Russian President Putin. The nations of the world are aligning themselves into alliances reminiscent of the 1930s. The dangers associated with this are radically compounded by the Senate Republicans’ intentional decision to play politics and suck up to Vladimir Putin’s protégé, Donald Trump, who is now demanding we throw the millions of people in Ukraine into the arms of a Russian...

Forty-two years ago, Ronald Reagan launched America into a great social, economic, and political experiment. It was based on the 1940s utopian thinking of a handful of conservative economists and promised to bring peace and prosperity to the entire world through a magical thing they dubbed the “free market.” Reagan and his Vice President GHW Bush, who initially called it “Voodoo Economics,” became true believers, as did Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. And, it turns out, it was based on a lie and has produced an utter disaster for America. This experiment — called neoliberalism, but...