And you can bet your bottom dollar they'll continue complaining about the crime that they've created, particularly in the election ads they'll start running next year.

The Republican Party is running a huge scam right now, similar to the one they ran in 1992 when President George HW Bush was setting up phony cocaine busts across the street from the White House and running his infamous Willie Horton ad.

Here's the essential formula:

• Increase levels of inequality in the country to the point where poverty and homelessness are a crisis.
  
• Do this with huge, trillion-dollar tax cuts for rich people so they get massively richer, while gutting social-safety-net programs and supports for working class people like unions.
  
• Poverty and homelessness increase which produces an increase in crime, and that freaks out middle-class people — the majority of voters.
  
• Then build your political identity and campaign around being "tough on crime" while completely ignoring the fact that the poverty you helped create is largely responsible for much of that crime.
  
• Blame the poverty-driven crime, instead, on "welfare" programs Democrats have put into place to try to soften the blow of the poverty caused by Republican policies.
  
• Get elected, create more poverty; rinse, wash and repeat.

Read more at HartmannReport.com.

-Thom

Thursday's Daily Stack

Hour One: Shouldn't we join the rest the rest of the developed world in protecting & nurturing our children during their most critical developmental period?
- Carrie Lukas, President - Independent Women's Forum, Author, Checking Progressive Privilege / Mom of five @carrielukas @IWF

Article: "Government paid leave is a gift moms should return" by Carrie Lukas .

Article: "One-Size-Fits-All Federal Paid Leave Plan Won't Work for America's Diverse Workforce " by IWF.

Article: "More than 120 Nations Provide Paid Maternity Leave" by ILO.

Article: "Mary Mallon" (Typhoid Mary) by Wikipedia.

Article: "How Charles Koch's Radical Free Market Ideology Is Contributing to America's Disastrous Response to COVID-19 and IWF Is Too".

Article: "Op-ed: Charles Koch's Radical Free Market Ideology Is Not a Symptom of America's Disastrous Response to COVID-19. It's a Cause." by Lisa Graves.

Article: "The Ugly Truth: Republicans Want More Poverty & Crime" by Thom Hartmann.

Article: "Poverty Causes Crime?" by Dennis Prager.

Article: "Violence is a symptom of poverty, not a cause" by Kevin Shird.

Article: "Crime" by The Equality Trust.

Article: "Mental Health" by The Equality Trust.

Article: "Most Republicans think poverty caused by laziness, new poll finds" by Morgan Whitaker.

Article: "Is poverty the mother of crime? Evidence from homicide rates in China" by National Institute of Health (NIH).

Article: "Fact check: Do Republican presidents oversee recessions and Dems oversee recoveries?" by Doug Stanglin.

Article: "AOC claims 'most' Republicans 'haven't experienced' poverty or crime" by Spencer Neale.

Article: "The Clinton economy, in charts" by Dylan Matthews.

Article: "How the Willie Horton Ad Played on Racism and Fear" by Erin Blakemore.

Quote: "Poverty is the mother of crime" - Marcus Aurelius.

Article: "Ohio's 1st million-dollar vaccine lottery winner revealed " by Ivan Pereira.

Article: "Republican Presidents' Impact on the Economy" by Kimberly Amadeo.

Article: "History of Federal Income Tax Rates: 1913 - 2019" by Bradford Tax Institute.

Article: "One key to getting women back to work post-pandemic: Childcare" by Jonnelle Marte.

Article: "One year after the worst jobs loss on record, millions of Americans remain out of work" by Anneken Tappe.

Article: "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, 1776.

Hour Two: Savers vs Spenders
- Economist Dr. Richard Wolff, Democracy At Work / Author of numerous books - his latest is The Sickness is the System (now also available as an e-book) @profwolff @democracyatwrk

Article: "Axios Markets Newsletter" by Dion Rabouin, May 27, 2021.

Article: "Trickle-down economics" by Wikipedia.

Article: "Trickle-up effect" by Wikipedia.

Article: "The World's Billionaires Have Gotten $1.9 Trillion Richer In 2020" by Chase Peterson-Withorn.

Article: "2021 is raining dollar stores" by Sasha Jones.

Article: "Florida The Latest State Dropping $300-A-Week Federal Unemployment Benefits" by Nicholas Reimann, Andrew Solender.

Article: "Senate Finance Committee advances Clean Energy for America Act with $12,500 electric vehicle credit" by Mark Sumner.

Article: "President Biden Announces American Rescue Plan" by White House.

Article: "Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan up for a vote in the House next week." by Chris Sommerfeldt.

Article: "Fact Sheet: The American Jobs Plan" by White House.

Article: "A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America." by Trymaine Lee.

Quote: "Today, we are ending welfare as we know it" - Bill Clinton.

Hour Three: Is it the time of reckoning for communities?
- Dr. Joi Lewis CEO & Founder - The Healing Justice Foundation - a national nonprofit founded in Minneapolis, providing community resources to address inequities & offering urgent healing and support to Black people / Author - Healing: The Act of Radical Self Care @drjoilewis

Article: "Show Me the Lettuce, John McCain!" by Petrarch.

Book: "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class" by Thom Hartmann. Get "Screwed" by Thom Hartmann!

Event: May 26th, 5-7 pm CT. "WCPT Virtual Labor Panel w/ Thom Hartmann, Joan Esposito, Rick Unger".

Article: "Modern Cannabis Workers Join Teamsters" by PRNewswire.

Geeky Science: "Taking just 4,500 steps each day may help you live longer" by Study Finds.

Speech: "1944 State of the Union Address" (Second Bill of Rights or Economic Bill of Rights Speech) by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Quote: "The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow's hands." - Will Rogers.

Article: "We Need to Treat Wealth Accumulation Like an Addiction" by Ashleigh Janelle.

Friday, Monday & Tuesday on The Thom Hartmann Program, 12-3pm ET

We're off Friday and Monday for Memorial Day weekend. Please enjoy some best-of programs.

On Tuesday, I'll be talking with Lisa Graves, Executive Director & Editor in Chief - True North Research about Dark Money... Exposed

And, the best of the rest of the news along with your calls right here on...

The Thom Hartmann Program, Occupying The Media 3 hours a day 5 days a week for "we the people"

And don't forget...Democracy is NOT a spectator sport...it begins with you...

The Economy Is In Trouble: Savers vs Spenders (w/ Prof. Richard Wolff)

Is a New Policing Possible? (w/ Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson)

If Trump is Indicted, Will MAGAs Be in the Streets?