THE THOM HARTMANN PAGE: Unequal Protection; The Hidden History of American Oligarchy; The Hidden History of American Healthcare

UNEQUAL PROTECTION: How Corporations Became "People" and How You Can Fight Back
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
$20.95 trade paper, presently backordered...wonder why...

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Was the Boston Tea Party the first WTO-style protest against transnational corporations? Did Supreme Court sell out America's citizens in the nineteenth century, with consequences lasting to this day? Is there a way for American citizens to recover democracy of, by, and for the people?

Thom Hartmann takes on these most difficult questions and tells a startling story that will forever change your understanding of American history. He begins by uncovering an original eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party and demonstrates that it was provoked not by "taxation without representation" as is commonly suggested but by the specific actions of the East India Company, which represented the commercial interests of the British elite.

Hartmann then describes the history of the Fourteenth Amendment—created at the end of the Civil War to grant basic rights to freed slaves—and how it has been used by lawyers representing corporate interests to extend additional rights to businesses far more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in U.S. law as "artificial persons." but in 1886, after a series of cases brought by lawyers representing the expanding railroad interests, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were "persons" and entitled to the same rights granted to people under the Bill of Rights. Since this ruling, America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior.

As a result, the largest transnational corporations fill a role today that has historically been filled by kings. They control most of the world's wealth and exert power over the lives of most of the world's citizens. Their CEOs are unapproachable and live lives of nearly unimaginable wealth and luxury. They've become the rudder that steers the ship of much human experience, and they're steering it by their prime value—growth and profit and any expense—a value that has become destructive for life on Earth. This new feudalism was not what our Founders—Federalists and Democratic Republicans alike—envisioned for America.

It's time for "we, the people" to take back our lives. Hartmann proposes specific legal remedies that could truly save the world from political, economic, and ecological disaster.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: If I need to spell out why this book's subject, fifteen years on, is still relevant...nay, even moreso, please accept my congratulations for your recent recovery from the coma.

Citizens United v. FEC is one of the most direct causes of the horrible politiscape of 2025. It is an outgrowth of the central argument of this book, that "corporate personhood" is the legal equal of natural personhood (ie being a human being, though even that isn't enough anymore) and therefore endows corporations with broad civil rights including First Amendment rights to free speech.

The lawyers are, of course, thrilled because this means their clients need hugely profitable PAC-running, fee-generating help. The rest of us? Totally screwed, you can have the justice you can pay for... Hartmann, to the political left in the US, argues this is absurd. It is. He goes on to ramble about stuff from history that isn't really well-supported by facts, and his anti-corporate bias goes a lot further than the nonsensical "personhood". It's a shame on some levels because the problems and abuses he rails against are real. Distracting from them by arguing the Boston Tea Party (of 1773!) was the first salvo of resistance to multinational corporations screwing over We-the-People is fanciful at best.

Had he stopped with noting that the notion of "corporate personhood" is explicitly NOT INCLUDED in the decision of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. but is present only in a headnote written by a clerk. Headnotes do not form part of the judgment in Supreme Court decisions; this was ruled on in separate decisions on other cases, and acknowledged in this decision.

There is no Constitutional basis for "corporate personhood" as now constituted. I wish Hartmann had played less to his audience and stuck more closely to what I perceive to be his strong, central thesis. I'd rate this tendentious mash-up of political grievance (which I share!) with historical research into legal history higher had he done so.

Still it's a hugely important topic and a book whose emotional register will propel most who really don't care much for argument and prefer conclusions to finish the read.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICAN HEALTHCARE: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Popular progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to implement affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality.

"For-profit health insurance is the largest con job ever perpetrated on the American people—one that has cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives since the 1940s,” says Thom Hartmann.

Other countries have shown us that affordable universal healthcare is not only possible but also effective and efficient. Taiwan's single-payer system saved the country a fortune as well as saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, enabling the country to implement a nationwide coronavirus test-and-contact-trace program without shutting down the economy. This resulted in just ten deaths, while more than 500,000 people have died in the United States.

Hartmann offers a deep dive into the shameful history of American healthcare, showing how greed, racism, and oligarchic corruption led to the current “sickness for profit” system. Modern attempts to create versions of government healthcare have been hobbled at every turn, including Obamacare.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This book is for you if you've ever wondered why Luigi Mangione is being treated like a terrorist for allegedly killing a very rich "insurance" company executive, and why when we-the-people failed to rise in our millions against his heinous murderous act, he suddenly vanished from our media landscape.

Creating a martyr, a face that can act as a rallying image for people against the horrible system that delivers the worst results for the great majority of its consumers yet fattens wallets at an obscene clip, is not what "They" want.

What this book does is delve into the ways, the compromises, the roots of capitalist seizure of healthcare delivery. It's definitely not going to convert anyone on the political right. It is unabashedly tendentious. It makes no serious effort to come up with any idea to persuade the capitalists to loosen, still less release, their grip on the public purse.

In preaching to the choir, Hartmann is mostly issuing a rallying cry. The reason to read the book is to become motivated, to pick up a few bits and bobs to hurl at the enemy within. If you're tired of arguing, this is not your best investment of time and treasure.

If like me you're in search of fuel for the possibly-wavering fires of battle, here's you a book.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICAN OLIGARCHY: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Thom Hartmann, the most popular progressive radio host in America and a New York Times bestselling author, looks at the history of the battle against oligarchy in America—and how we can win the latest round.

Billionaire oligarchs want to own our republic, and they're nearly there thanks to legislation and Supreme Court decisions that they have essentially bought. They put Trump and his political allies into office and support a vast network of think tanks, publications, and social media that every day push our nation closer and closer to police-state tyranny.

The United States was born in a struggle against the oligarchs of the British aristocracy, and ever since then the history of America has been one of dynamic tension between democracy and oligarchy. And much like the shock of the 1929 crash woke America up to glaring inequality and the ongoing theft of democracy by that generation's oligarchs, the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has laid bare how extensively oligarchs have looted our nation's economic system, gutted governmental institutions, and stolen the wealth of the former middle class.

Thom Hartmann traces the history of this struggle against oligarchy from America's founding to the United States' war with the feudal Confederacy to President Franklin Roosevelt's struggle against “economic royalists,” who wanted to block the New Deal. In each of those cases, the oligarchs lost the battle. But with increasing right-wing control of the media, unlimited campaign contributions, and a conservative takeover of the judicial system, we're at a crisis point.

Now is the time for action, before we flip into tyranny. We've beaten the oligarchs before, and we can do it again. Hartmann lays out practical measures we can take to break up media monopolies, limit the influence of money in politics, reclaim the wealth stolen over decades by the oligarchy, and build a movement that will return control of America to We the People.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is another provocatively unapologetic takedown of the right-wing slow coup that's been ongoing since "They" installed that fatuous old actor in the White House after manipulating the media into reporting insanity as facts.

Not gonna work to deradicalize your MAGAt relative, but definitely can offer you some armor against joining them for even a second. Staying alert to what their end game is will keep your from getting too far off the line "They" don't want you to draw. It's blatantly partisan and at times on the overkill side, but better that than playing nice with nasty people.

To fight intolerance, you must learn to be intolerant of it. Paradoxically that works for all topics in public life.