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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.
The problem with the Republican Party is Republican voters. Here, in this report on who does and does not believe in climate change, you can see why I say this. Our problem as a country is we have a large percentage of the population who are poorly educated barely literate racists. I think what this is telling us is that as a country we need better education, and higher literacy, because Republicans, as a party, are more poorly educated, and less literate than Democrats. That is not, although it may sound like it is, a partisan statement. It is simply based on objectively verifiable facts.
Wilted palm trees line a destroyed property in Lahaina, Hawaii, on 8 December 2023, amid recovery efforts following the August wildfire. Credit: Lindsey Wasson / AP
Nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, a new study out of the University of Michigan reveals – shedding light on the highly polarized attitude toward global warming.
Additionally, denialism is highest in the central and southern US, with Republican voters found less likely to believe in climate science.
Using artificial intelligence, researchers analyzed over 7.4m tweets posted by roughly 1.3 million people on the social media platform X (previously Twitter) between 2017 and 2019. The social media posts were geocoded, and classified as “for” or “against” climate change using a large language model, a type of artificial intelligence developed by OpenAI.
“Over half of the tweets we looked at simply denied that climate change was real, that it was a hoax,” said Joshua Newell, co-author of the study and professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan. “It wasn’t surprising but it was disappointing, I would hope that more and […]
Here is a very important interview about the grotesque and, in my view the evil wealth inequality that is doing such damage to America’s social wellbeing. It also discusses how to reverse this negative trend. One of the key steps is reversing the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. That isn’t going to happen as long as we have the christofascist cabal that controls the Court today. But if the Democrats could take a strong majority in both Houses of Congress, and Biden wins, laws could be passed changing the tax code and controlling the banks that could accomplish what needs to be done.
Protesters display signs during a demonstration in New York City Credit: Michael Nigro / Sopa Images / Lightrocket / Getty
The fortunes of the five richest men in the world have “shot up by 114 percent since 2020,” according to a January 2024 Oxfam report on global inequality, while “nearly five billion people have been made poorer.”
This most recent gross increase in wealth and income inequality builds on global trends that took hold in the early 1980s, with the decades-long increase in inequality being particularly large in the United States compared to other developed nations. Wealth inequality is typically higher than income inequality, which in turn feeds higher future income inequality. Indeed, income inequality in the U.S. continues to rise, according to the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office, utilizing data through 2020.
At the same time, and quite unsurprisingly, the largest U.S. banks made record profits in 2023, with JPMorgan Chase reporting $49.6 billion in net income for the year. In the meantime, the Federal Reserve, which world-renowned progressive economist Gerald Epstein calls the “chairman” […]
, Reporter - Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology
Stephan:
You may remember a federal judge in Texas ruling that Mifepristone the drug that induces abortions should be taken off the market citing a peer-reviewed journal published by the academic publisher Sage. It turns out, however, that the paper was misinformation submitted by a group of anti-choice researchers. Sage, as this announcement from the publisher reports has retracted the paper and announced it was fake. It will be interesting to see whether the Republican judge follows with his own announcement.
Credit: Reuters
At the request of Sage and the Journal Editor, the following articles have been retracted:
Studnicki J, Harrison DJ, Longbons T, et al. A Longitudinal Cohort Study of Emergency Room Utilization Following Mifepristone Chemical and Surgical Abortions, 1999–2015. Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology. 2021;8. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/23333928211053965
Studnicki J, Longbons T, Harrison DJ, et al. A Post Hoc Exploratory Analysis: Induced Abortion Complications Mistaken for Miscarriage in the Emergency Room are a Risk Factor for Hospitalization. Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology. 2022;9. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/23333928221103107
Studnicki J, Longbons T, Fisher JW, Harrison DJ, Skop I, MacKinnon SJ. Doctors Who Perform Abortions: Their Characteristics and Patterns of Holding and Using Hospital Privileges. Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology. 2019;6. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/2333392819841211
Reader concerns and investigation
A reader contacted the journal with concerns about the 2021 article as to whether presentation of the data in Figures 2 and 3 is misleading, whether there are defects in the selection of the cohort data, and whether the authors’ affiliations with pro-life advocacy organizations, including Charlotte Lozier Institute, present conflicts of interest that the authors should […]
MAGAt world is largely a White, low education, low literacy, racist christofascist cult. Why? I think one reason that gets almost no discussion is that no living Americans have ever experienced organized massive civil violence in their own town, city, or county; it hasn’t happened since the Civil War. I think that is an important reason so many people in the United States find criminal Trump’s fascism so interesting.
Donald Trump’s fascistic rhetoric about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country, as well as the GOP’s embrace of the “great replacement theory,” are repellent to many Americans. But for a startling number of people, new survey results exclusively provided to Rolling Stone reveal, the message that immigrants pose a dark threat to the nation is being met with enthusiasm — or a dangerous shrug of indifference.
More than a third of Trump’s 2020 voters — 35 percent — agree with Trump’s claim, parroted from fascists before him, that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” according to survey results from the University of Massachusetts Amherst Poll. Only 32 percent of Trump voters and 37 percent of Republicans outright disagree with the Nazi slogan.
Trump first started using the blood-poisoning rhetoric late last year, ratcheting up his longstanding hateful declarations that migrants are “rapists,” “murderers,” or “animals.” The notion that immigrants are corrupting the national bloodline, though, directly echoes Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Trump believes this fascist rhetoric works for him, and has privately said that “poisoning the blood” is a “great line,” a source previously told Rolling Stone.
One of the rarely discussed negative consequences of the materialist paradigm which fails to recognize that all life is interdependent and interconnected in the matrix of consciousness is the greedy stupidity that is driving our fellow beings on earth to extinction. This report suggests we may be awakening to this. I certainly hope so.
A blue whale Credit:Creative Commons
As world governments gathered in Uzbekistan Monday for the United Nations conference on migratory species, they centered the theme “Nature Knows No Borders”—an idea that a new landmark report said must take hold across the globe to push policymakers in all countries and regions to protect the billions of animals that travel each year to reproduce and find food.
The Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) marked the opening of the 14th Conference of the Parties (CMS COP14) to the United Nations biodiversity treaty by releasing the first-ever State of the World’s Migratory Species report, showing that nearly half of migrating species are declining in population.
The crisis is especially dire for more than 1 in 5 species that are threatened with extinction, and 70 species listed under the CMS which have become more endangered, including the steppe eagle, the Egyptian vulture, and the wild camel.
The populations of nearly all species of fish listed in the U.N. treaty, including sharks and rays, have declined […]
Personally, I think both of them are too old. I think Trump is a criminal who was the worst president in American history, and he ought to be in prison. Biden has been a good and effective President but will be 86 by the end of a second term, and that is simply too old. My preference would be for a younger progressive president, and my ticket would be Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer. That said the media’s obsession with Biden’s age is a disgraceful example of what is going wrong with media. Biden, as I said, has been an excellent president in most regards, and what he has accomplished is not getting anything close to the attention and reportage it deserves. I also think that there should be much more detailed coverage of Trump’s criminality and the fact that American voters are not recognizing this. Trump’s comments about NATO are not only virtually a repeat of Hitler’s words as he invaded Poland, they are also factually wrong, which most Americans don’t seem to understand. The nations of NATO don’t pay dues, nor are they supposed to pay anything to us. The NATO agreement is that each country pays at least 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP, a measure of national production) for the support of its own armed forces. The intention was that if that were done then all the member nations would be prepared to come to the aid of any nation attacked as described in Article 5. Trump seems to think NATO has dues like a country club. His ignorance like his blatant criminality is one of his defining characteristics.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after the release of the Hur Report finds that a majority of Americans (59%) believe that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are too old for another term as president. This finding, coming after allegations in Special Counsel Hur’s report of President Joe Biden’s memory lapses, suggests that age will continue to be a factor in the 2024 election. An additional quarter of Americans (27%) say that only Biden is too old to serve another term (but not Trump). Only one in ten Americans (11%) say that neither is too old to serve another term. Partisanship plays a large part in assessments of the candidates’ age with the majority of Republicans (62%) saying only Biden while the majority of both Democrats (69%) and Independents (70%) say both are too old.
On the substance of the Hur Report, Americans are divided about whether Biden should have been charged with a crime for his handling of classified documents after he left office as vice president. On this question, similar shares […]
I think Clare Malone and The New Yorker have published a critically important coherent report on what is happening in the media. The media you grew up with, and read, listened to, and watched is dying, and fact-based journalism is disappearing. Replaced by misinformation, biased reporting, and AI. I have been doing SR since 1991, because as long ago as that I was finding fact-based journalism to be harder and harder to find. I have done SR ever since funding it myself with your help, and it is getting ever more expensive to do it. Thankfully, when my computer was recently attacked by MAGAts to stop me from doing SR, and the repair costs became an issue, a number of you stepped forward and helped out, for which I am deeply appreciative, as I told you. I think the need to keep doing SR has never been greater and let me ask a favor of you. If you like and read SR regularly would you recommend it to a few friends? Culture is the creation of collective individual choices, and we, you and me, need to get as many people as we can involved with facts and in support of wellbeing.
Illustration by Nicholas Konrad; Source photographs from Alamy / Getty
My first job in media was as an assistant at The American Prospect, a small political magazine in Washington, D.C., that offered a promising foothold in journalism. I helped with the print order, mailed checks to writers—after receiving lots of e-mails asking, politely, Where is my money?—and ran the intern program. This last responsibility allowed me a small joy: every couple of weeks, a respected journalist would come into the office for a brown-bag lunch in our conference room, giving our most recent group of twentysomethings a chance to ask for practical advice about “making it.” One man told us to embrace a kind of youthful workaholism, before we became encumbered by kids and families. An investigative reporter implored us to file our taxes and to keep our personal lives in order—never give the rich and powerful a way to undercut your journalism. But perhaps the most memorable piece of advice was from a late-career writer who didn’t mince words. You want to make it in […]
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York - The New York Times
Stephan:
Here is Paul Krugman’s view of the state of America, which I read after writing my commentary for the previous article. I was very pleased to discover we saw things much the same way. The illiteracy and ignorance of American voters, particularly the MAGAt crowd, and the failure of U.S. media to do its job properly has left me, like Krugman, very concerned about the future of the country as a democracy.
Credit: Damon Winter / The New York Times
Until a few days ago, I was feeling fairly sanguine about America’s prospects. Economically, we’ve had a year of strong growth and plunging inflation — and aside from committed Republicans, who see no good, hear no good and speak no good when a Democrat is president, Americans appear to be recognizing this progress. It has seemed increasingly likely that the nation’s good sense would prevail and democracy would survive.
But watching the frenzy over President Biden’s age, I am, for the first time, profoundly concerned about the nation’s future. It now seems entirely possible that within the next year, American democracy could be irretrievably altered.
And the final blow won’t be the rise of political extremism — that rise certainly created the preconditions for disaster, but it has been part of the landscape for some time now. No, what may turn this menace into catastrophe is the way the hand-wringing over Biden’s age has overshadowed the real stakes in the 2024 election. It reminds me, as it […]
