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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 the year ends there is some good news about the preservation of our democracy. It is not definitive but it made me feel more optimistic to read it.
Credit: Alex Wong / Getty
Over the past few years, states across the country have passed laws that make voting more difficult and elections more vulnerable to partisan interference, and 2023 is no exception. But it is critical to remember that there is also flourishing pro-democracy movement that has pushed many states to make important strides in the opposite direction.
Between January 1 and October 10, at least 23 states enacted 47 laws that expand access to voting. In addition, there have been other important advancements across the country: at least six states passed laws to protect election workers from harassment and two states passed campaign finance reform. Yet state lawmakers cannot safeguard democracy on their own. Robust federal legislation is needed to ensure that democracy is protected across the country and that every voter has equal access to the ballot.
Among the most notable advances in 2023 was Minnesota’s passage of a transformative package of pro-voter reforms. Among them is automatic voter registration, bringing the total number of states with automatic voter registration to 23 […]
In spite of everything else going on in the U.S. and all the negative news, we are beginning to create a clean energy infrastructure, and I see that is good news for the future.
Clean energy workers Credit: Mario Tama / Getty
When people hear the phrase, “clean energy jobs,” many think of solar panel installers or wind turbine technicians. But those are just two of many careers in clean energy.
Keefe: “Think about the manufacturers that produce, for instance, energy-efficient appliances, who produce electric vehicles … construction workers … who go out and make our homes, our offices, our schools more energy efficient through better insulation, through better windows and doors, through better lighting systems, better HVAC systems and that sort of thing. That’s actually the biggest part of the clean economy and the clean jobs market.”
Bob Keefe directs Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), which publishes an annual clean jobs report.
The report finds that more than 3 million people in the U.S. are employed in clean energy, and clean jobs grew 4% in 2022.
These jobs are expected to keep growing, so Keefe says it’s important to make people aware of the many career paths available in clean energy.
Keefe: “And starting at an early age. We need to be talking to high school […]
Here is a follow up report on a story I published several months ago, and it is more good news. It gives us some proven information on fostering wellbeing, and helping the poor.
Residents of a Kenyan village learn they will receive UBI payments from GiveDirectly. Credit: Oliver Ochanda / Vox
Large sections of my brain that could contain useful knowledge are instead filled up with dumb tweets I saw years ago. One of my absolute favorites was someone identifying himself only as “Side Hustle King,” who would ask his followers, “Would you rather get paid $1,000,000 right now or $50 every month for the rest of your life? I’ll take Option B. That’s what passive income is.”
To save you some arithmetic: Unless you plan to live at least another 1,667 years (which is what it would take to make $1 million in $50 monthly increments) and do not care about inflation, Side Hustle King is mistaken. Option A is far better. It’s a case in point that, sometimes, you should take the lump sum, not regular payments.
GiveDirectly, a charitable nonprofit that sends cash directly to low-income households, has identified another such case, one where the answer was a little less obvious. For years now, GiveDirectly […]
The christofascist Republicans who control the Texas government are committed to their “Texit” vote in March 2024 to secede from the United States and create a Republic of Texas. It is an astonishing stupid play because it will turn Texas into a third world country. Texas is already so badly governed that it social outcome data, from education to maternal mortality is already dreadful, and it’s all going to get worse because a third of the Texas budget is paid for from the money the federal government gives to Texas. We will also see massive emigration of tens of thousands out of Texas if they secede.
The Texas State Flag is seen during the game between the Baylor Bears and the Texas Longhorns at McLane Stadium in Waco, Texas, on September 23, 2023. The Texas Nationalist Movement is campaigning for Texas to become an independent nation. Credit: Tim Warner / Getty
Supporters of “Texit,” the campaign for Texas to secede from the United States and become a fully independent nation, have had a busy year. Earlier this month the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM), the leading pro-independence campaign group, delivered a petition with 139,456 signatures to the Republican Party of Texas in Austin.
It called for an advisory referendum on Texan independence to be included on the March 2024 primary ballot. According to the Texas election code, the minimum number of signatures needed for a referendum to be considered is “five percent of the total vote received by all candidates for governor in the party’s most recent gubernatorial general primary election.”
The most recent Republican gubernatorial primary was in 2022, when 1,954,172 votes were cast, electing incumbent State Governor Greg Abbott. […]
RICHARD FRY, Senior Economics and Education Researcher - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
America, compared to the rest of the world, has lower literacy, math skills, and the ability to solve problems and, as this report describes it is getting worse, particularly as it concerns young men. We are becoming a nation with a population that is very different from the populations of other developed nations, and that has profound negative implications for our future.
College enrollment among young Americans has been declining gradually over the past decade. In 2022, the total number of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in college was down by approximately 1.2 million from its peak in 2011.
Most of the decline is due to fewer young men pursuing college. About 1 million fewer young men are in college but only 0.2 million fewer young women. As a result, men make up 44% of young college students today, down from 47% in 2011, according to newly released U.S. Census Bureau data.
This shift is driven entirely by the falling share of men who are students at four-year colleges. Today, men represent only 42% of students ages 18 to 24 at four-year schools, down from 47% in 2011.
At two-year colleges, which are largely community colleges, the drop in enrollment has been similar for men and women, so the gender balance has not changed much. Men represent 49% of students ages 18 to 24, up slightly from 48% in 2011.
The decline in young college enrollment since 2011 is not driven by a drop in the overall number of 18- […]
The American job market has utterly changed in the last decade. For starters there are many more jobs available than people to fill them. For another, job applicants are much fussier than they were a decade ago about what they will and will not put up with. Also unions are coming back as workers realize there is power in collective intention. And finally, America is no longer the world leader it once was.
Workers at work Credit: Harvard School of Public Health
A new piece of research has found 39% of employees who have been with a company for less than six months plan to leave within the next 12 months, a six point increase from last year.
With the new-job honeymoon phase well and truly over, employees are increasingly determined to make their voices heard when it comes to ensuring their workplace experience addresses their individual needs. They’re not prepared to hang around in jobs that aren’t working for them.
So why are American workers so unhappy that they are thinking about quitting so soon after starting?
Often it’s a case of finding out that the grass is not quite as green as they might have been led to believe.
That can be because the people who hired them are not the ones they end up working with, and the vague promises and commitments made during the recruitment process fail to materialize once they are in position.
Subtle reasons
It’s not that employers are breaching the terms of the employment contract––it’s more subtle than […]
The United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world and, particularly under criminal Trump and Republicans warehousing humans badly, became a big profit center for investors with no ethics or compassion. Biden made an initial effort to fix this, but it has not been entirely successful, so now other Democrats led by Senator Elizabeth Warren are trying to mend a final piece, as this report describes.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren Credit: Michael Brochstein / Sipa / AP
Almost three years ago, during his first week in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order instructing the Justice Department to stop renewing its contracts with private prison companies. The news was like a glimpse of blue sky for critics of the controversial sector—especially after four years of Donald Trump, who had fostered a cozy, mutuallylucrative relationship with the private prison industry.
The order restored an Obama-era policy first announced in 2016—and later suspended by Trump administration—after a damning federal report found that private federal prisons were less safe and less secure than their publicly run counterparts. No longer would the Bureau of Prisons sign deals with corporations to lock up people serving federal prison sentences. Nor would the US Marshals Service, in charge of detaining people while they await trial on federal criminal charges, enter or renew contracts with those same companies.
Or, at least, that was the idea. And over the last three years, the Bureau of Prisons has indeed ended its use of private prisons—moving the roughly
I ran a report last August about Canada warning its citizens to be careful travelling, or not to travel at all, to the United States, particularly to Southern states. That warning is still in place, and other countries have issued similar warnings. In the eyes of the rest of the world we have become a dangerous, and rather nasty country that one visits only with caution. This stands in stark contrast to the desperate immigrants at our southern border.
OTTAWA, CANADA — It was a polite Canadian warning from a close friend and neighbor.
But Canada’s updated travel advisory to its citizens, counseling them to be careful about traveling to the United States, set off an international furor last summer.
The message renewed attention over the rightward shift in state-level policies governing abortion and the rights of LGBTQ+ people — a trend that has stirred deep concern in Canada, especially after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
And the previously unreported back story behind the travel communique is even more revealing, exposing the delicate dance of a left-of-center Canadian government as it sought to navigate America’s incendiary cultural politics without imperiling the tightest of alliances.
The travel advisory that went viral was 71 days in the making. Correspondence shared with POLITICO through a freedom-of-information request reveals the change started with a concern raised by federal health department officials about Canadian travelers’ access to emergency care in an era of backsliding U.S. abortion rights.
The internal emails reveal Canada was aware it was an “outlier” among “most-like-minded” countries because […]
