IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE

When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.

— Stephan

SCHWARTZ REPORT PODCAST

Schwartz Report Episode 52: Secrets of Happiness

GOP rep defends Trump’s calls to deploy the military against his political opponents

Stephan: 

We are less than three weeks away from the possibility that the United States will become a christofascist White supremacist, male dominant oligarchy controlled unless you and everyone you know, and everyone they know, vote and vote only for Democrats. If the Trumpers win you can expect to see the military used to stifle dissent and America descending into civil war. The situation is that dire. MAGAt Republican Representative scum Mike Waltz should be defeated by Florida voters if they wish to remain a democracy.

MAGAt Republican Representative Mike Waltz of Florida Credit: ABC Screengrab

One Republican member of Congress is now openly defending former President Donald Trump’s call to use the military as a means of crushing American dissent.

Earlier this week, Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that he wasn’t ruling out deploying the U.S. military against “the enemy from within,” which apparently includes “radical left lunatics.” Trump even mentioned Rep. Adam Schiff (D-California), who is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, when discussing “lunatics that we have inside.” And on Tuesday morning, CNN host John Berman got Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Florida) on the record in favor of the former president’s proposal.

“Do you think deploying the military against political opponents is something that’s responsible to discuss from political candidates?” Berman asked.

“I think that’s completely appropriate,” Waltz said. “I think it’s responsible to discuss deploying the National Guard, which is clearly part of the military, John, to keep our streets safe, to keep rioters out of the street. Everyone […]

Read the Full Article

1 Comment

Analysis Shows Trump Tax Plan Would Make Rich People Richer, Working People Poorer

Stephan: 

What surprises me is that unions and large numbers of working class people simply don’t seem to be able to understand that if they vote for Trump they are voting to worsen the quality of their own lives and the lives of their family. It is indisputable that this is true, and yet I just saw another report of a union that is not backing Harris because a majority of their members don’t want that. It’s pathetic, and they are going to be so miserable if Trump wins.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s proposal to further reduce the U.S. corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% would make the bottom half of the nation’s income distribution poorer while boosting the fortunes of those at the very top, according to an analysis published Thursday by economists at American University.

The analysis, released just over a month before the high-stakes November 5 election, projects the hypothetical macroeconomic and distributional impacts of corporate tax rate plans put forth by Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. Harris has called for increasing the corporate tax rate to 28%.

If implemented, the economists found, Trump’s plan would “modestly reduce” the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), decrease government revenue, and “significantly increase inequality,” given that wealthier households “are the primary owners of corporate stocks” that would benefit from the former president’s tax cuts.

The “share of national income going to the top 5% would increase by around 1.6%, while the share of the bottom 50% would fall by roughly 4.8%,” the analysis estimates.

Harris’ plan, by contrast, would “mildly” raise U.S. GDP, increase […]

Read the Full Article

1 Comment

Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?

Stephan: 

Every scientific paper about climate change that I see is screaming with alarm. Most are too technical for SR, so I search for general audience versions like this report from The Guardian because I want you, my readers, to fully understand that science is in a panic of concern. Yet you see and hear almost nothing about these alarms in corporate media. Earth’s matrix of life is under a threat most don’t even seem to understand and yet every living being, from bacteria to humans, is going to be disastrously affected.

Phytoplankton in the Barents Sea. Melting sea ice exposes algae-eating zooplankton to more sunlight, which could cut the amount of carbon stored on the seabed. Credit: Nasa / Alamy

It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae, returning to the depths at sunrise. The waste from this frenzy – Earth’s largest migration of creatures – sinks to the ocean floor, removing millions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year.

This activity is one of thousands of natural processes that regulate the Earth’s climate. Together, the planet’s oceans, forests, soils and other natural carbon sinks absorb about half of all human emissions.

The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating

It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae, returning to the depths at sunrise. The waste from this frenzy […]

Read the Full Article

No Comments

Female Genital Mutilation Happens in America, Too

Stephan: 

Several years ago I organized and got hundreds of scientists, physicians, and nurses to sign a petition to stop this hideous practice of cutting off a girl’s clitoris and clitoral hood, so she cannot have a clitoral orgasm. At the time I thought it was only going on in Middle Eastern, African, and Asian societies. However, as this medical report describes, it is going on in the United States as well. Of course, it is connected with the perversion of Christianity that has taken over much of that religion as described in the report.

Credit: MedPage Today

I’m 80 years old, white, a lifelong resident of the Midwest, and a regular churchgoer. I am also a survivor of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).

Does this shock you? I imagine it does. But similar stories are happening on every continent except Antarcticaopens in a new tab or window every day, most often driven by deep-seated cultural beliefs about and fears of women’s sexuality and sexual pleasure. It’s not surprising that the doctor who cut me was a Seventh-day Adventist, a religion that has historically had strict prohibitions against masturbation.

These operations can lead to a lifetime of health issuesopens in a new tab or window (some of which I’ve suffered): frequent urinary tract infections, menstrual problems, infertility, pain during sexual intercourse, and difficulty giving birth. Too often the pain of this is compounded by inappropriate reactions from clinicians, including expressing disdain for the person’s culture, bringing others in to view the altered genitalia without permission, and failing to listen to what the patient says she needs — particularly patients who are coming in […]

Read the Full Article

No Comments

The Media Has Three Weeks to Learn How to Tell the Truth About Trump

Stephan: 

Finally, I am beginning to see some coverage about the abject failure of journalists to cover “the most dangerous man in the country” to quote General Mark Milley. I don’t know whether it is because journalist just don’t comprehend what traitor Trump is doing and represents, or whether the billionaires who own much of the corporate media won’t run the truth about him. But we are three weeks out from deciding the fate of America and unbelievably we are seeing near tie election polls. The piece I ran yesterday about The Mass Psychology of Trumpism, I think explains the voters, but the media should be ashamed of themselves. I am not sure the United States as we have known it is going to exist in a month.

Credit: Michael Ciaglo / Getty

Donald Trump keeps getting worse and worse. Last Friday in Aurora, Colorado, he gave a speech that was both bonkers and fascist, asserting that the city—where crime is down 17 percent—had been “conquered” by Venezuelan gangs and announcing that he’d use a 1798 law to deport them. Sunday morning, he said on Fox that “the enemy within” who might be planning any Election Day chaos—“sick people, radical left lunatics,” but presumably for the most part citizens of the United States—should be handled by the National Guard or even the military.

Of course, these things received coverage. The New York Times’ account of the Aurora speech was really quite good. The first paragraph said outright that in the speech, Trump “repeated false and grossly exaggerated claims about undocumented immigrants that local Republican officials have refuted.” It went on to explain that the demagogic claim about the gangs started as a housing dispute, was quite isolated, and was taken care of by local law enforcement.

It quoted the city’s Republican mayor as saying: “The […]

Read the Full Article

2 Comments

Suspect arrested after reports of threats toward FEMA operations in North Carolina

Stephan: 

Can you image how sick we are as a country when armed White men are threatening the FEMA workers trying to help desperate families whose homes have been destroyed? Why are they doing this? Because of the lies being spread by traitor Trump, his frankenstein Vance, and other MAGAt Republicans.

FEMA Workers trying to help while being threatened by crazed Trumpers Credit: CNN

A North Carolina man was arrested over the weekend for allegedly threatening harm against FEMA employees responding to Hurricane Helene, according to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office.

William Jacob Parsons, 44, was arrested and charged with Going Armed to the Terror of the Public, a misdemeanor, Capt. Jamie Keever said in a news release issued Monday.

“Parsons was armed with a handgun and a rifle,” Keever said.

The sheriff’s office began investigating Saturday after receiving a call that a man “made the comment about possibly harming FEMA employees working after the disaster of Hurricane Helene in the Lake Lure and Chimney Rock area.”

Parsons was found later that day after investigators received information about the color and license plate of his vehicle, according to the sheriff’s office.

Parsons was arrested in his car outside a grocery store that is functioning as a storm relief site, Keever said.

Parsons is now free on a $10,000 secured bond, the sheriff’s office said.

It was not immediately clear if Parsons had an attorney. CNN was […]

Read the Full Article

No Comments

Democrats forced out of Tempe, Arizona campaign office after being targeted by gunfire three times in less than a month

Stephan: 

Here is a another report of what White MAGAt Republican men are doing to turn America into a fascist state with dictator Trump in control. And look where I had to go to get the story. Why aren’t these stories the leads headlines on every media. This is another example of the failure of the media to tell Americans the truth about what the Republican Party has become, and what its supporters are doing.

One of the bullet holes that struck the Democratic National Committee campaign office in Tempe, Arizona earlier this month.

On Friday, the Arizona Democratic Party closed a campaign office in Tempe, Arizona after it had been targeted by gunfire on three separate occasions in the last month.

Arizona is one of the seven states that will likely decide the US election, and Maricopa County may decide the outcome in Arizona. Trump lost the state in 2020 by less than 11,000 votes.

In the lead-up to the January 6, 2021 coup, Trump and his Republican allies targeted election officials and politicians, including Republicans, who refused to overturn the vote and award the state’s electors to Trump.

As of this writing, police have yet to identify a suspect or motive in the shootings. It appears no one was injured in any of the incidents. In an October 9 X post, the Tempe Police Department claimed the last shooting occurred on October 6 at about 12:30 a.m.

In the same post, the police shared a flyer from “Silent Witness,” a “non-profit” that […]

Read the Full Article

No Comments