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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.
Thom Hartmann, Commentator - Raw Story / Commentary
Stephan:
Thom Hartmann has it spot on, describing the White christofascist rural supporters of criminal Trump. Low education, low IQ, filled with fear and resentment. As Hartmann notes, and I agree, even though Trump and the Republicans have been screwing these people for decades they aren’t smart enough apparently to comprehend what is being done to them. It is very sad, but it is America’s reality today. The only thing that will counterbalance this cohort is you, me, and everyone we know voting for the Democrats. This is not about partisanship. This is about whether democracy is going to survive in the United States or not.
Christofascist Trumpers Credit: Berkeley News
Rural white voters have, in many cases, far more political power than suburban or urban voters, and they’re using that outsized power to push our nation toward disaster. While they’re only 20 percent of the country, for example, because of gerrymandering they control fully 42 percent of seats in the House of Representatives.
The authors of new book, White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy point out that rural whites are measurably more bigoted and xenophobic than suburban or urban voters, 13 points more likely to hate on queer people, 15 points more likely to support Trump’s Muslim ban.
They’re also far more likely to agree that setting democracy aside for a strongman like Trump or another Putin wannabee will “fix the mess and drain the swamp.” And fully 74% of the members of Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election represented rural districts.
The majority of rural white voters disagree with the statement (or have no opinion) that “diversity makes America stronger.” And while only 22 percent of city dwellers […]
You would think that the MAGAts who support criminal Trump would get how badly they have been treated under the Republican Party’s rigging of the IRS tax system to favor the very rich, as is described in this article. You might think that, but they don’t. They whine about their own taxes but don’t seem to have any concept of what is really going on. And it is going to keep going on as long as the Republicans hold power.
Criminal Trump, then President, speaks about the passage of tax reform legislation on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., on December 20, 2017. Credit: Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty
As of this month, the U.S.’s 806 billionaires are worth a collective $5.8 trillion, meaning that they control 1 in every 25 dollars of American wealth, according to an Americans for Tax Fairness report released Monday.
Due in part to the 2017 tax overhaul by Republicans, led by Donald Trump, this small group has seen an explosion of wealth in an extremely short amount of time.
Since the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, U.S. billionaire wealth has doubled, from an already staggering $2.9 trillion. In 2017, […]
The MAGAts are arming themselves. They want civil violence, and I think as a society government at both the state and federal level should be recognizing that and planning how we are going to deal with it. No living American has ever seen major civil violence on our soil. However, there is a hunger for violence in the White christofascists and it may manifest this Fall.
Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally. Far-right Oath Keepers patrol Emancipation Park. Credit: Anthony Crider / Wikimedia Commons / Carl Gibson
Americans who have purchased firearms since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic are far more willing to engage in political violence against their fellow citizens, according to a new study.
The Guardian recently reported on a study by the University of California-Davis’ violence prevention research program dubbed “Firearm Ownership and Support for Political Violence in the United States.” Researchers surveyed roughly 13,000 gun owners who bought their weapons over the last four years, and asked if violence was justified in order to accomplish political objectives. 39% of gun owners — a plurality — said yes, while 30% said no.
UC-Davis researchers warned that American gun owners in the survey could potentially be “arming up for anticipated civil conflict.”
“Our findings strongly suggest that large numbers of armed individuals who are at least potentially willing to engage in political violence are in public places across […]
HILLEL ITALIE and KIMBERLEE KRUESI, Report - Associated Press
Stephan:
If it isn’t clear to you by now it should be. The United States is under a christofascist attack led by criminal Trump. Although there are some Blacks and Hispanics this is an overwhelmingly White minority cohort, and they are trying to take control of the country and think they can achieve this in November. If they do censorship, gender control, White supremacy, and indoctrination instead of education will define the American culture, and the United States will become a larger version of Hungary and Russia. Putin, Orban, and Trump will be the leaders for their lifetimes.
Tom Bober, librarian and President of the Missouri Association of School Librarians. Credit: Jeff Roberson / AP
When an illustrated edition of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” was released in 2019, educators in Clayton, Missouri needed little debate before deciding to keep copies in high school libraries. The book is widely regarded as a classic work of dystopian literature about the oppression of women, and a graphic novel would help it reach teens who struggle with words alone.
But after Missouri legislators passed a law in 2022 subjecting librarians to fines and possible imprisonment for allowing sexually explicit materials on bookshelves, the suburban St. Louis district reconsidered the new Atwood edition, and withdrew it.
“There’s a depiction of a rape scene, a handmaid being forced into a sexual act,” says Tom Bober, Clayton district’s library coordinator and president of the Missouri Association of School Librarians. “It’s literally one panel of the graphic novel, but we felt it was in violation of […]
Here is an important assessment showing that wellbeing is fostered by ordinary people even when the profit greed corporations and those who work within them, pour countless money into maintaining things that cause damage to the earth’s wellbeing. What it is saying is that you can make a difference. Are you willing to?
Hundreds of Native Americans and supporters protested the Dakota Access Pipeline at Lafayette Park in front of the White House on October 12, 2021, in Washington D.C. Credit: Yasin Ozturk / Anadolu Agency / Getty
Human activity in a profit-driven world divided by nation-states and those who have rights and those who don’t is the primary driver of climate change. Burning fossil fuels and destroying forests have caused inestimable environmental harm by producing a warming effect through the artificial concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has risen by 50 percent in the past 200 years, much of it since the 1970s, raising in turn the Earth’s temperature by roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit.
Indeed, since the 1970s, the decade which saw the rise of neoliberalism as the dominant economic ideology in the Western world, CO2 emissions have increased by about 90 percent. Unsurprisingly, average temperatures have risen more quickly over the past few decades, and the last 10 years have been the warmest years on […]
As this report lays out, the U.S. is doing pathetically badly at creating a EV charging network. The plan was 500,000 charging stations by 2026; it is not going to happen, or even anything close. At both the federal and state level there is no real understanding as to how urgent this is. Personally, I think it is the wrong way to go in the first place. I don’t think the gas station model is what should be developed. I think the roads themselves should charge the vehicles that drive over them. Not every road, of course, but the bigger ones.
Liam Sawyer charges his 2023 Ford Mustang Mach-E at an electric vehicle charging station in London, Ohio, on March 8. The charging ports are a key part of President Biden’s effort to encourage drivers to move away from gasoline-powered cars and trucks. Credit: Joshua A. Bickel / AP
President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution.
But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks — which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road — the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars.
“I think a lot of people who are watching this […]
Academic freedom and fact-based education have seriously declined in the United States. If you read SR regularly you know that. What you may not realize is that degradation of education is going on all over the world as authoritarianism rises. I think all of this is happening because of the fear engendered by the precognitive unconscious awareness of what climate change is going to do to the cultures of the world. But the effect is going to be a humanity far less capable of factual understanding than in the past, and that has all kinds of negative implications.
A university protest in Hungary, which had the lowest level of academic freedom in Europe, according to an annual index Credit: AFP
Just one in three people live a nation that guarantees the independence of universities and research, according to an annual index warning that academic freedom is declining worldwide, particularly in Russia, China and India.
Attacks on freedom of expression, interference at universities and the imprisonment of researchers are just some ways that “academic freedom globally is under threat,” the index said.
The Academic Freedom Index — based on input from more than 2,300 experts in 179 countries — was published last month as part of a report on democracy by the V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.
It measures changes in higher education and research over the last half century by looking at five different indicators: freedom of research and teaching; of academic exchange; of academic and cultural expression; of institutional autonomy and campus integrity.
I have been telling you for over 20 years that water is destiny. I did one of my recent podcasts on this. Now, as this article describes a group of water studying scientists have put together a book on the future scenarios they see. It is even bleaker than my own research had suggested. Governments, throughout the world, including the United States, are simply not taking what is happening with water seriously enough. Basically, they can’t get past short-term greed. The price for this stupidity and short-sightedness, as these scientists describe, is going to be horrific.
An artist-generated image illustrating possible futures in policy and research due to human modifications of the atmospheric water cycle. Credit: Patrick Keys and Fabio Comin / Interesting Engineering
The line between science and fiction blurs when it comes to the Earth’s water cycle. Humanity’s relentless intervention is transforming this delicate balance, leaving scenes of arid landscapes and failing crops a preview of a far more dire future. Land development disrupts rainfall patterns. Desperation fuels experimentation with cloud seeding, bending the weather to human will. The stuff of dystopian novels is fast becoming our inconvenient reality.
To grasp the magnitude of these changes, a team led by Colorado State University’s Assistant Professor Patrick Keys has embarked on a daring experiment. They’ve enlisted water scientists from around the globe to use the power of storytelling to create chilling visions of our potential futures. This unique effort is a desperate bid to understand the far-reaching consequences of our actions.
