"Locke is the man whom Thomas Jefferson plagiarized, or was inspired by, when he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that the purpose of... government was to provide for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"... e replaced Locke's repeated and varied mentions of different types of property with "happiness." It was the first time that word ever appeared in the founding documents of any nation."

“Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It, Hartmann talks about his book in a video at Fora TV.”

“Thanks to a century and a half of truly bizarre Supreme Court decisions ... today's new corporate "person" is... endowed with many of the rights and protections of human beings. The modern corporation... can live forever, doesn't fear prison, and can't be executed if found guilty... It can cut off parts of itself and turn them into new "persons", can change its identity in a day, and can have simultaneous residences in many different nations. ...Nonetheless, today a corporation gets many of the constitutional protections America's founders gave humans ...”

“If something isn't done about the climate/carbon crisis, people... today might be living in the last generation to experience a stable atmosphere, and thus a stable form of governance, for any foreseeable future. ...ecause our Constitution doesn't mention the rights of nature , the Earth's biosphere is getting short shrift of our legal system...”

“For people who are freaked out about Trump and freaked out about the world... and everything else, meditation is like a really, really good thing. It's a way for us to kind of ground ourselves.”

“Given how reactive hard right snowflakes have gotten in response to a few truth-based jokes from Michelle Wolf, and that Mick Mulvaney has confessed to running a pay-for-play operation out of his congressional office, and Trump is daily breaking the Constitution’s emoluments clause, now might be a really good time to examine the origins and nature of the whole right-wing business/government model known as “fascism.”

“Various video clips at BigPicture.tv Hartmann speaking on various topics.”