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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.
As I watched off and on throughout the day, it became clear to me that a large percentage of Americans are perfectly comfortable electing a President who is a multiple felon, a convicted rapist, pro-control of women advocate, multiple bankrupt racist, openly stating he intends to end democracy in the United States and become an authoritarian leader like Viktor Orbán of Hungary. Many of these men and women don’t seem to cherish democracy as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did. We are going to see how many voters think this way on Tuesday, and are willing to submit to authoritarian government. I am particularly struck by the number of young men who hold these views.
Trump speaks at the Ellipse outside the White House on January 6, 2021. Credit: AFP / Getty
In the game Jenga, players take turns removing wooden blocks from a rickety tower and then stacking them back on the top. Each removed piece makes the base more wobbly; each block put back on top makes it more unbalanced until it eventually topples.
This, I’d argue, is basically how we should be thinking about the stakes of the 2024 election for American democracy: an already-rickety tower of state would be at risk of falling in on itself entirely, with catastrophic results for those who live under its shelter.
We live in an era where democracies once considered “consolidated” — meaning so secure that that they couldn’t collapse into authoritarianism — have started to buckle and even collapse. As recently as 2010, Hungary was considered one of the post-Communist world’s great democratic success stories; today, it is now understood to be the European Union’s only autocracy.
Hungarian democracy did not die of natural causes. It was murdered by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who seized control of nearly every aspect of […]
I am astonished that the Department of Justice under Merrick Garland finds nothing illegal about Elon Musk pouring $100 million dollars into fascist Trump’s election campaign while, at the same time, getting billions of dollars in federal money (your money) for his corporations, using X to spread disinformation against the Democrats and Kamala Harris, and concurrently maintaining a secret ongoing relationship with America’s major adversary Vladimir Putin. I think Garland is the worst Attorney General in U.;S. history, worse even than Nixon’s AG, John Mitchell. Please stop using X as one of your social media links.
Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk Credit: Moscow Times
KEY POINTS
Elon Musk has engaged in secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.
Musk has become a major Republican donor this election cycle, and is among the most influential supporters of former President Donald Trump’s campaign.
The conversations reportedly occurred as Musk was in the midst of a leveraged buyout and takeover of Twitter, now X.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has engaged in secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022, according to reporting published Thursday by The Wall Street Journal.
Citing “several current and former U.S., European and Russian officials,” the Journal reported that conversations between Putin and Musk, a Republican megadonor and Pentagon contractor, took place while Russia was waging a brutal war on Ukraine, a top U.S. ally. Topics ranged from business to personal and geopolitical issues.
In one instance, Putin pressured Musk to direct SpaceX […]
Americans are becoming a society of isolated people. The Covid pandemic changed America in ways that are little discussed in politics or media and show up only in research studies like this one. For over a third of the population It has made us a lonely sad country. How is it going in your life?
Credit: fizkes / Shutterstock
NEW YORK, NEW YORK —Social isolation didn’t stop with the pandemic, and a concerning new poll finds many Americans are still starving for human contact in 2024. Specifically, researchers found that more than a third of Americans feel their social life is “stuck in a rut” (37%).
The survey of 2,000 adults who have traveled with friends in the past also found that 39% haven’t made a new friend in over a year, and a similar percentage haven’t gone to a party in at least six months (38%). For many, it’s also been at least a year since they’ve gone to a concert with a friend (59%) or been on vacation with them (44%).
Conducted by Talker Research for CheapCaribbean Vacations, the poll finds that while most would describe their existing friendships as fun and ever-changing (58%), a quarter of respondents believe their social lives feel repetitive (26%). Thinking about the friends they do have, the average person who said they have […]
Gen Zers and Millenials are increasingly not having children, and don’t want to have children. According to this surv ey it is largely about climate change, an effect getting almost no attention. But, I suspect, although this survey didn’t cover this, that women in MGAt Red states aren’t having children because the MAGAt Republican passed laws to control women, put their lives at risk. We need a complete restructuring of American society to foster wellbeing, and Tuesday is going to tell us, whether American voters realize that or not. If Fascist Trump wins that won’t happen and within a year we will have become a kind of Hungary.
Credit: Newsweek / Getty
One in three Gen Zers and millennials do not have and do not want to have children, a new report shows, as birth rates in the United States continue to decline.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in April that the general fertility rate, which measures the number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, had hit a “historic low.”
Many public figures have expressed concern about falling birth rates, including the billionaire Elon Musk, who wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”
Now, polling done by the Independent Center, in association with Newsweek, showed that 30 percent of Gen Zers (people born between 1997 and 2012) and millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) did not have nor want any children.
Comparatively, 62 percent said they had or wanted to have children, while 9 percent said they were unsure.
The Independent Center, which advocates for “centrist independent voters,” questioned 1,200 likely voters younger than 45 years old between October 18 and 22. […]
All those Americans who have voted, or are planning to vote for fascist Trump just don’t seem to get that the Republicans is they win are going to dismantle the ACA, to make healthcare even more profitable for the oligarchs who own the present system. We need universal birthright single-payer healthcare, like the rest of the developed democracies. Our healthcare social outcome data is horrible, and because of what has happened in the Red states getting worse. But many of us just don’t seem to be able to comprehend that reality.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Republicans would pursue “massive” health care reform if Donald Trump is elected president in 2024.Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty
If you’re confused, it’s not an accident.
Republicans are trying to have it both ways on health care during the 2024 campaign. They boast that they want to deregulate insurance and massively cut government spending, yet they also claim that they would never do anything to endanger people’s coverage.
That two-step keeps getting them into trouble. House Speaker Mike Johnson was recently caught on a tape promising to take “a blow torch to the regulatory state.” Donald Trump, Johnson said, would want to “go big” in his second term because he can’t run for a third one, the speaker told a group of Republican voters in Pennsylvania. And health care, Johnson said, would be “a big part” of the GOP’s agenda.
One attendee directly asked Johnson: No Obamacare? “No Obamacare,” Johnson said.
The thing about fascist Trump, that I notice, is that he is completely predictable. His model is Hitler, just as one of his earlier wives told us. If he is elected we are going to see concentration camps with everything but the ovens. We have already seen his earlier family separation version in 2018. If Americans are stupid enough to elect Trump again we are going to see troops in the streets smashing down doors to drag out families tearing the children away and sending them off to deportation camps. I cannot convey to you how disgusting I find Trump. He belongs in prison for the rest of his life.
A temporary detention center for underage immigrants in Tornillo, Texas, on June 18, 2018. It was used during Trump’s family separation program. Credit: Herika Martinez / Getty
Former President Donald Trump’s most significant policy plank in his third presidential campaign is to implement a system of mass deportation to remove up to 20 million noncitizens from the United States, a plan that apparently aims to not only remove people living here illegally but also to chase away ― or accidentally round up ― U.S. citizens as well.
He is promising to deploy the military and deputize local police officers to round up millions of people, detain them in makeshift camps and then ship them off to other countries ― whether or not the destination is the person’s country of origin.
This plan is billed as targeting only those who have come to the country or reside in it illegally, with a special emphasis on supposed migrant gang members. It offers a story of those who deserve to be here and those who don’t. […]
Rita Rubin, - Journal of the American Medical Association
Stephan:
In their obsessive sick need to control women, Republicans are damaging the entire medical structure of the United States, and particularly sabotaging healthcare in the states they control. To a point where, as I said yesterday, if I were a woman in a Red state like Texas, who did want to get pregnant (note my previous story about how Gen-Zers and Millenials are choosing not to have children) I would get pregnant and move to live with a family member or friend in a Blue state. And I would do that before anyone knew I was pregnant because the Republicans are going to try and stop pregnant women from leaving the state they control. If you stay in a state the Republicans control and something goes wrong in your pregnancy there may not even be a properly trained physician in your area and, even if there is, they may not be able to treat you. The United States already has the worse maternal mortality (maternal mortality = dead women) in the developed world, and it is becoming dramatically worse.
Credit: JAMA
Everything’s bigger in Texas, residents like to boast, and that includes the number of medical students and residents it trains. Only New York graduates more medical students than Texas, and only New York and California train more resident physicians. Dallas-based UT Southwestern Medical Center touts that its obstetrics and gynecology residency training program is the country’s largest and that 1 out of every 80 US obstetrician-gynecologists is a graduate.
However, applications to Texas obstetrics and gynecology training programs have fallen since the state banned virtually all abortions, and many of their current residents and practicing obstetrician-gynecologists are considering or have already made changes to their practice, such as leaving the state, according to a report released in October by Manatt Health.
The authors of the report, commissioned by a group of Texas foundations, surveyed practicing obstetrician-gynecologists and resident physicians statewide from June to September. Some respondents were interviewed, as were obstetrics and gynecology residency program directors.
“This was confirmatory of what everybody on the ground knew was happening,” lead author Alex Morin, MA, said of the findings. Morin is a managing director at […]
The rich in the United States are either moving into protected enclaves, as I published the other day, or planning to leave America for residency and citizenship elsewhere. They, and their financial advisors see clearly that the U.S. is no longer a leader in anything but military expenditures, and is becoming increasingly violent. If Kamala Harris is elected Tuesday there will be some improvement and this emigration ay decrease. However, if fascist Trump is elected I think the number of people leaving will significantly increase, and it will involve more than just the rich, even though Trump will explicitly serve their interests.
POINTS
Attorneys and advisors to family offices and high-net-worth families said they’re seeing strong demand from clients looking for second passports or long-term residencies abroad.
The American rich have been increasingly interested in leaving the U.S. since Covid-19, and wealth advisors said this time many of their wealthy clients are taking action.
A growing number of wealthy Americans are making plans to leave the country in the run-up to Tuesday’s election, with many fearing political and social unrest regardless of who wins, according to immigration attorneys.
Attorneys and advisors to family offices and high-net-worth families said they’re seeing record demand from clients looking for second passports or long-term residencies abroad. While talk of moving overseas after an election is common, wealth advisors said this time many of the wealthy are already taking action.
“We’ve never seen demand like we see now,” said Dominic Volek, group head of private clients at Henley & Partners, which advises the wealthy on international migration.
Volek said that for the first time, wealthy Americans are far and away the company’s largest client base, accounting for 20% of its business, or more than any other nationality. He said the number […]
