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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.
I have had occasion to meet and speak candidly with several people I didn’t know, and their comments have left me seriously concerned with what I see as the growing sense that America is no longer a country where working hard will give you the success you seek. I see this as a fundamental aspect of the obscene wealth inequality that now shapes American society. I find it interesting that this article is appearing in Murdoch’s conservative Wall Street Journal. I see that as the recognition of a trend that has become irrefutable. I also think the reason that the Harris ticket is doing so well is because they are directly speaking to the trend and promising change.
Americans overwhelmingly desire all the traditional trappings of the American dream—owning a home, having a family, and looking forward to a comfortable retirement. But very few believe they can easily achieve it.
A July Wall Street Journal/NORC poll of 1,502 U.S. adults shows a stark gap between people’s wishes and their expectations. The trend was consistent across gender and party lines, but held more true for younger generations, who have been priced out of homeownership and saddled with high interest rates and student debt.
While 89% of respondents said owning a home is either essential or important to their vision of the future, only 10% said homeownership is easy or somewhat easy to achieve. Financial security and a comfortable retirement were similarly labeled as essential or important by 96% and 95% of people, respectively, but rated as easy or somewhat easy to pull off by only 9% and 8%.
Twelve years ago, when researchers at Public Religion Research Institute asked 2,501 people if the American dream “still holds true,” more than half said it did. When The Wall Street Journal asked the same question in July, that dropped to about […]
As this article explains the EPA has issued an emergency ban on a chemical used in commercial pesticides called Dacthal. I hope you don’t use chemical pesticides but, if your do, If you have any pesticides in your garage or garden shack that contain Dacthal, listed on products as dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate immediately take the container to some center that handles poisons. It is dangerous to your health, particularly pregnant women and children.
The pesticide Dacthal is commonly used on strawberries. Credit: bluecinema / E+ / Getty
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued an emergency notice pulling the pesticide dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, also known as DCPA or Dacthal.
The chemical was placed under an emergency order to stop further use, the first order of its kind in nearly four decades, because of the risk it poses to fetuses in pregnant people. According to the EPA, when pregnant people are exposed to DCPA, it can change the fetal thyroid hormone levels.
After birth, the baby may experience low birth weight, impaired brain development and decreased IQ, the agency warned. Later in life, the exposure could also be linked to impaired motor skills. The EPA noted that some of the effects of exposure could be irreversible.
“DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately,” Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, said in a statement. “It’s EPA’s job to protect people from exposure to dangerous chemicals. In this case, pregnant […]
The United States was once a world leader in education, now we aren’t even in the top 50 nations, and college has become a source of financial crisis for millions. This did not happen by chance, it is the result of a deliberate policy of the Republican Party. Project 2025 even proposing eliminating the Department of Education.
Here is a list of countries where college is free while in the U.S. it causes millions to go into serious debt.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Supreme Court on Wednesday kept on hold the latest multibillion-dollar plan from the Biden administration that would have lowered payments for millions of borrowers, while lawsuits make their way through lower courts.
The justices rejected an administration request to put most of it back into effect. It was blocked by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In an unsigned order, the court said it expects the appeals court to issue a fuller decision on the plan “with appropriate dispatch.”
The Education Department is seeking to provide a faster path to loan cancellation, and reduce monthly income-based repayments from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. The plan also wouldn’t require borrowers to make payments if they earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line — $32,800 a year for a single person.
Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rejected an earlier plan that would have wiped away more than […]
The United States, as you can see from the chart that heads this report the U.S. scores 36th in the world on educational capabilities. That we are the world’s leader on education is another of the lies we routinely tell ourselves. In fact we have a very poorly educated population, and a well-educated population is critical to a successful democracy.
As you see here Americans score very badly in the international rankings on educational capabilities
Reporting Highlights
Enrollment Plunging: Since the pandemic began, public school enrollment has declined by a million students nationwide, as many have switched to private schools and homeschooling.
City Schools Are Closing: Rochester, New York, is shutting 11 of its 45 schools. In Seattle, parents expect 20 elementary schools will close. In Columbus, Ohio, nine schools may cease to operate.
Unequal Effects: Closings fall especially on majority-Black schools. As top students move to private and suburban schools, special-needs students are left behind in fewer city facilities.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story. Were they helpful?
In the 1990s, when Liberia descended into civil war, the Kpor family fled to Ivory Coast. A few years later, in 1999, they were approved for resettlement in the United States and ended up in Rochester, New York. Janice Kpor, who was 11 at the time, jokingly wonders whether her elders were under the impression that they were moving to New York City. What she […]
This is one of best articles I have read about the obscene wealth inequality that has developed in the United States. This is why we are not preparing properly for climate change. This is why our democracy is in serious danger. This is why the United States does not have a healthcare system that has anything to do with fostering wellbeing; this is why college has become almost unaffordable; this is why rents are so high, and home ownership so difficult to obtain; and on and on. We have become a nation with a small cadre of uber-rich and a growing population of financial peasants. It is a medieval world based on money not blood.
Peter Phillips, author of Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity
The top 10 asset management firms now control $50 trillion of global wealth. They answer to no one but the ultrarich — the 0.05 percent — whose fortunes they continue to expand. The rest of us pay the price. Investing in everything from fossil fuel companies to private prisons to weapons manufacturers, they provide the economic lifeblood for some of the most destructive forces in the world. This not only undermines democracy, but imperils our very survival.
In his new book out this September, Titans of Capital: How Concentrated Wealth Threatens Humanity (The Censored Press & Seven Stories Press), Peter Phillips takes us deep into the world of these transnational asset management firms and the people who run them: the “Titans.” He shows how they constitute a new global elite who wield nearly unchecked power.
Phillips is professor of political sociology (emeritus) at Sonoma State University, the former director of Project Censored (1996 to 2010) and the former president of Media Freedom Foundation (2003 to 2017). He has been editor or co-editor of 14 editions of Censored, was co-editor with Dennis Loo of Impeach the President: The […]
People with brain lesions are more susceptible to religious fundamentalism, according to a study authored by a Harvard University neurology instructor.
Brain lesions aren’t isolated to brain tumors. Those with congenital disorders, degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s, Lewy body dementia, and Parkinson’s can add to brain cell death or malfunction, The Cleveland Clinic explains. There are also immune and inflammatory conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or lupus, that can lead to lesions in the brain. Problems like epilepsy, a stroke, traumatic brain injury or brain aneurysms can all cause brain lesions.
“The whole brain functional connectivity pattern was then correlated with religious fundamentalism scores on a voxelwise basis,” wrote Ferguson in a thread on X using a number of […]
Here is another prediction I have published in SR becoming and acknowledged reality. Climate change is going to transform agriculture of all kinds across the Earth. Plants that grew in one place will no longer do so. This fact-based article should be seen as a warning about what is coming. And I chose this report also because it makes what I think is the essential linkage between climate change and the food economy all over the world.
Credit: Adobe
Extreme weather events, geopolitical conflict, high input costs and increased demand all contributed to spikes in food prices around the world, experts told Carbon Brief in June.
The impact of these events varies depending on the type of food — olive oil, orange juice and other common supermarket items are now more expensive, for example, whereas grains have dropped in price compared to the start of this year.
Food inflation has even featured in the U.S. presidential election campaign, with Democratic nominee Kamala Harrisproposing to ban “price gouging” on groceries by corporations.
Carbon Brief has produced five charts — each focused on a specific area — to show how […]
DENYSE O'LEARY , Nobel Prize Physicist - Mind Matters
Stephan:
Brian Josephson is a colleague in consciousness research I have known for something like 40 years. Like many in physics he is struggling with making consciousness foundational and causal in physics but is getting there. I publish this to make the point that physicists including Nobel laureates are beginning to recognize that the current physicalist science paradigm is not wrong it is simply inadequate. This is a process that has been going on for almost a century. Planck, Einstein, Pauli, Heisenberg and other of the olympians who created modern physics began their careers as physicalists, but came to recognize as Planck said in 1931, the consciousness is causal and fundamental and that spacetime arises from consciousness, not consciousness from spacetime. It is a radical change but essential to understand the Matrix of Consciousness.
At Closer to Truth,Robert Lawrence Kuhn interviewed Welsh physicist Brian Josephson on the topic, “Must the Universe Contain Consciousness?” (June 12, 2024, 8:39 min). Josephson won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for predicting the Josephson effect.
He sees consciousness as an aspect of the universe that we can’t ignore, even as he is not sure what to make of it:
Our universe seems fine-tuned for life, with the constants of physical laws having to be within tight boundaries. Does this mean that the universe has a goal of consciousness? Is there a directedness of the universe toward consciousness? Is consciousness entirely contingent or is it something special, even a ultimate object of universal development?
Here are a couple of selections prepared from the auto transcript at YouTube:
Kuhn asks how consciousness can underlie the universe, given that the universe has been around for billions of years but conscious life on Earth got started “just in the last few million years, even if you talk about animal consciousness.”
Josephson: But that [2:58] doesn’t tell us how universe begins. There lots of problems there. So therefore I propose that something happening beyond the universe and on a larger and possibly infinite time scale has this organization and is […]
