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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.
Yet another proof that policies that foster wellbeing are cheaper, more effective, nicer to live under, and more productive. Then why don’t we do this regularly? The answer I think is that affluent people mostly don’t like to help poor people. It is basically a kind of nastiness.
Husband and wife Denis and Bentha Otieno at their home in 2017, calculating their monthly budget shortly after they began receiving a monthly grant from the charity GiveDirectly. Researchers are studying whether the grant program — which provides $50 every month over 12 years — can lift people out of poverty. Credit: Nichole Sobecki for NPR
It’s an unprecedented – and massive – experiment: Since 2017 the U.S.-based charity GiveDirectly has been providing thousands of villagers in Kenya what’s called a “universal basic income” – a cash grant of about $50, delivered every month, with the commitment to keep the payments coming for 12 years. It is a crucial test of what many consider one of the most cutting-edge ideas for alleviating global poverty. This week a team of independent researchers who have been studying the impact released their first results.
Their findings cover the first two years of the effort and compare the outcomes for about 5,000 people who got the monthly payments to nearly 12,000 others in a control group who got no money. […]
DAVID A. LIEB and GEOFF MULVIHILL, Reporters - Associated Press
Stephan:
Missouri Republicans want to designate a woman who gets an abortion as a murderer, with her physician as an accomplice. As a result I think OB/GYN physicians will be leaving Missouri in droves, just as they are doing in other Republican controlled states, further exacerbating the already serious division of America into two quite different countries in a single nation. Within a few years it is going to become very difficult for a pregnant woman, or a woman with some kind of gynecological disorder, to get high quality healthcare. I also think we are going to see a number of young people leave these Red states, and the medical schools in those states to be profoundly affected.
Abortion-rights supporters take part in a protest in St. Louis. Some Republican state lawmakers have proposed a measure that would allow women who have abortions to be charged with homicide. Credit: Jeff Roberson / AP
JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI — Some Missouri lawmakers are renewing a call for the state to take an anti-abortion step that goes further than prominent anti-abortion groups want to go and that has not gained much traction in any state so far: a law that would allow homicide charges against women who obtain abortions.
Republicans in both the state House and Senate have introduced bills to be considered in the legislative session that begins next month to apply homicide laws on behalf of a victim who is an “unborn child at every stage of development.”
The bills would offer exceptions if the suspect is a woman who aborts a pregnancy after being coerced or threatened, or an abortion is provided by a physician to save the life of the pregnant woman.
A Tesla owner who is trying to sell her Tesla — it turns out not to be as easy as one might think — sent me this to warn other SR readers. If you are thinking of buying a Tesla you might consider this.
Wowza. For years, we’ve argued that one of the top reasons to buy a Tesla Model 3 or Model Y is because of their low total cost of ownership. And the more miles per year, the better the savings. Many of us have stories and spreadsheets highlighting our low operational costs (I’ve got an update coming this weekend), but the key buyers who can really analyze these numbers in a statistically significant way are fleet buyers, like rental car companies. The bad news: rental car companies have gone from big Tesla fans to avoiding and dumping Teslas. Yikes!
I already reported about a month ago on Hertz scaling back its plans with Teslas. The reasons: maintenance costs (especially tires), repair costs, and depreciation have been higher than expected. Now we have reporting that the rental car giant Sixt is facing the same problems and scaling back its Tesla offerings as well. Really, I have to say it again: yikes! This is a pillar of the pro-EV argument, and even if this is mostly a […]
Public education in the United States, elementary through high school, is amongst the worst in the developed world. It is shamefully bad, and now, as this report describes, Republican controlled states particularly are trying to make easier or eliminate altogether testing, particularly at the high school graduation level. As it is stands 48 million American Adults are basically illiterate, and 33 million are so computer illiterate they can’t do a google to find a recipe. A populace with literacy and math skills is essential to maintaining a democracy. I am beginning to think the 236 year old American democracy experiment is coming to an end and we are becoming one of the authoritarian anocracies of the world, an American Hungary.
Fueled by worries over the pandemic, equity and learning loss, Republicans and Democrats are rewriting decades’ worth of strict standardized testing and graduation requirements.
Florida lawmakers are angling to drop mandates for the state’s high school students. Georgia officials, led by a Republican superintendent, have allowed schools to reduce the impact of state test scores on final student grades. And in Louisiana, legislators and education officials are at odds over a plan to let seniors graduate if they cannot meet minimum state test scores.
The latest state poised to rebuild its high school testing system is New York, where education officials have created a blueprint to overhaul graduation requirements and learning standards needed to earn a high school diploma.
“When school systems have the kinds of results that are showing up as they are, it gives the opportunity to take stock and rethink,” New York Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said in an interview. “We wanted to make sure that success was defined in a much broader sense than just paper and pencil, or getting a 90.”
Here is Thom Hartmann again, and once again he is correct and insightful. The Republican Party is trying to turn the United States into an anocracy like Hungary ruled by Viktor Orbán. My question, and it haunts me, is will American voters wake up to what is happening, or are they just too disconnected from reality to comprehend what Trump and the Republicans are trying to do? I guess we will find out at the 2024 election. If they don’t wakeup then that will be the end of democracy in America.
Image by Pete Linforth / Pixabay
It’s no secret that for years Republicans have targeted Black and Hispanic voters, doing everything they can to make it harder for these folks to vote. Their latest targets are young people: the GOP has decided (probably correctly) that Gen Z is their mortal enemy.
The DLC’s National Communications Director, Abhi Rahman, laid it out for Rolling Stone magazine:
“Young people are the reason why Biden won in 2020 and Democrats up and down the ballot won in 2022 and 2023. If Gen Z continues to vote, we’re on the cusp of the most progressive era in our country’s history. Republicans know this as well, and that’s why they’re doing everything they can to stop young people from voting, including the fight for restrictions that we’re seeing play out in states like Wisconsin today.”
You could call it 21st Century Jim Crow, but this time it’s more like James Crow, PhD. The GOP has turned voter suppression from an anecdote into a computer-based science, and they’ve had a lot […]
Racism and White supremacy were baked into the founding of the United States, an historical fact MAGAt world wants to deny and hide. How many Americans even know that of the first five Presidents of the United States four were slave owners — John Adams being the lone exception. How many Americans know the White House, the Capitol, and most of the early government buildings were built by Black slaves or freed Blacks. And racism has been a central part of the Southern states from their founding. The Republicans fear Blacks, largely because their votes can give the Democrats victory in elections. So, of course, they are doing everything possible to either gerrymander districts to diffuse Black power, or make it so difficult for them to vote that they don’t.
Confederate memorial Credit: Shutterstock
Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama — three states that were part of the Confederacy that was founded in part to maintain the institution of slavery — are now at the forefront of a new effort to rebel against court rulings aimed at securing the voting rights of Black Americans.
The Atlantic’s David Graham writes that those three states’ Republican-led state legislatures have, in recent months, shown a defiant attitude toward legal mandates that they redraw their voting maps so as not to dilute the power of Black voters in their states.
Although Graham said it would be possible to dismiss one of these states’ resistance to court orders as an aberration, he thinks that having three states engaged in the same conduct makes it part of a dangerous trend.
“That state politicians now see incentives to defy federal-court orders, for whatever reason, poses a danger to national unity, the rule of law, and, ultimately, the Constitution,” he writes.
Graham does not ascribe the actions of the GOP […]
You have read my saying a number of times on SR that I don’t think that EV charging will end up being an EV version of the gas station model. Instead I think a system will develop in which EVs will be charged as they drive over the road because the roads will have evolved into a charging system. Well, it is happening in several countries, and here is a report from one such project, this one in Israel.
Tel Aviv EV roadway
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Thom Hartmann and I often agree, and in this essay, he makes a point I have written about and with which I totally agree, corporate personhood. It is the result of a Supreme Court decision in 1886 which should be eliminated as should the Citizens United decision be reversed. This is why the American government has become so notably corrupt and is now, at least the Republicans, openly moving to making the U.S. a fascist anocracy. What I particularly respect is that Hartmann lays out the historical path explaining how this came to be. It is the first such essay I have seen outside of academic publication. Please read this. It will help you understand what is going on today, and why it is happening.
America is in the midst of a domestic political crisis with a literal madman and his cult/Party — heavily supported by some of America’s largest companies — threatening to turn America into a dictatorship.
“Could a second Donald Trump presidency slide into dictatorship? A sudden spate of dystopian warnings has got America talking about the possibility less than a year before the US elections.
“Dark scenarios about what could happen if the twice-impeached Republican former president wins in 2024 have appeared in the space of a few days in major US media outlets that include The Washington Post, The New York Times and the Atlantic.”
So, where are we now and how the hell did we get here? It turns out we are seeing the consequences of a corrupt, bribed Supreme Court from over 150 years ago.
It was a fraud at the time, the result of a Supreme Court Justice having been bribed by the big railroads, and continues to be a fraud to this […]
Fueled by worries over the pandemic, equity and learning loss, Republicans and Democrats are rewriting decades’ worth of strict standardized testing and graduation requirements.
