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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 been telling you for years now that the MAGAt (formerly Republican) Party’s attempt to dismantle public education and privatize it, coupled with the obscene cost of obtaining a college education, is having a very negative long-term consequence. Consider: The average cost of attendance for a student living on campus at an in-state public 4-year institution is $27,146 per year or $108,584 over 4 years. Out-of-state students pay $45,708 per year or $182,832 over 4 years. Private, nonprofit university students pay $58,628 per year or $234,512 over 4 years. When I went to the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar, the cost was $238 a semester. What happened? What happened is that our tax structure was changed by the MAGAts during the Reagan administration creating a community of billionaire oligarchs and millions of millionaires and that, in turn, has transformed the American society from a country oriented to fostering wellbeing to a prospering middle class, into a nation whose only social priority is profit. That in turn has created a wealth inequality that is resulting in decreased educational levels, literacy and numeracy. As a result finding skilled workers has become difficult and, if a company needs skilled workers, it has to start its own technical education centers, as this article describes.
A ship under construction sits docked at Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wis. Credit: Mike Roemer / AP
The Navy’s ability to build lower-cost warships that can shoot down Houthi rebel missiles in the Red Sea depends in part on a 25-year-old laborer who previously made parts for garbage trucks.
Lucas Andreini, a welder at Fincantieri Marinette Marine, in Marinette, Wisconsin, is among thousands of young workers who’ve received employer-sponsored training nationwide as shipyards struggle to hire and retain employees.
The labor shortage is one of myriad challenges that have led to backlogs in ship production and maintenance at a time when the Navy faces expanding global threats. Combined with shifting defense priorities, last-minute design changes and cost overruns, it has put the U.S. behind China in the number of ships at its disposal — and the gap is widening.
Navy shipbuilding is currently in “a terrible state” — the worst in a quarter century, says Eric Labs, a longtime naval analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. “I feel alarmed,” he said. “I don’t see a fast, […]
Joe Salas, Contributing Writer - New Atlas | Xinhua (China)
Stephan:
Here is another example of the point I am trying to make. Because the MAGAt Party does not want an educated skilled population because well-educated people overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, and want greater wealth equality. Billiionaires as a rule are no patriots. They think in terms of the world and their personal profit. As a result we are no longer the science leaders we once were, and the difference between the U.S. and a country like China is increasing.
T-Flight mock-up of what it could be. Credit: China Science / X
In February of this year, we reported on the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, and its phase one testing of a low-vacuum-tube hyperloop-style maglev ultra-high-speed (UHS) train. In initial 1.24-mile-long (2-km) tests, the T-Flight hit a whopping 387 mph (623 km/h).
On its last go-around in October of 2023, it ran the fairly short track under non-vacuum conditions. This week, CASIC – unironically known for being China’s largest maker of strategic and tactical missiles – has just successfully tested the UHS maglev under low-vacuum conditions on that very same track with successful results. According to CGTN, “the test showed that the maximum speed and suspension height of the vehicle were consistent with the preset values.”
The test showed that all systems were nominal, and the train’s speed and height above the track lined up with the preset values of the test – which were not disclosed. CASIC was able to verify that all large-scale vacuum-related systems were also in working […]
Here is what looks like the engine for the car of the future and, once again, it is not an American design. It is Canadian, and the research I have read about this suggests, as this article does that this is a completely new deal, and is going to change cars, trucks, all vehicles.
New Canadian engine technology Credit: Eco News
Canada has taken a historic step in joining the mobility of the future, moving beyond EVs (in which America has been somewhat stagnant) and entering into direct competition with Japan. CES 2024 happened months ago, but we are still learning about innovations that were presented and have jumped to fame. One of them is the first engine that beats hydrogen and all known FCEVs. It works with a new fuel that is neither liquid nor gaseous, and could make things very difficult for Tesla.
It’s the end of ICE engines: A new prototype has been presented at CES 2024 and comes from Canada
Magna has revealed the next generation of its eDrive system at the CES 2024 with a demonstration of its capabilities for advanced electric vehicles. This new electric engine is still experimental, but it is expected to change the way most cars are designed and used in the future because it has better performance and adaptability to other uses than previous models.
This new electric engine by Magna is, therefore, developed to produce immense performance and […]
Gabriella Grabovska, Staff Writer - Raw Story / Open Secrets
Stephan:
Being a member of Congress can entail very hard work, or it can be a very cushy job with lots of perks and not much work. One of the perks is that you can travel where you like, lodge and eat as you like, and have everything paid for by you and me. MAGAt members tend to fall in the second category, and here is the proof.
House Republicans outspent their Democratic counterparts in taxpayer-funded travel expenditures by nearly $8 million since the start of 2023, a new OpenSecrets analysis found.
Eight out of the top 10 biggest spenders between the start of 2023 to March 2024 were Republican members of Congress. They accounted for 7% of total taxpayer-funded travel spending by GOP members of Congress and with each of the top spenders spending two to five times more than the average House office.
The total travel spending reported by House Republicans’ offices exceeded $23 million from January 2023 to March 2024 — nearly $8 million more than House Democrats spent on travel during the same period. Despite having only a seven-member majority, House Republicans have significantly outspent Democrats. Congressional offices of House Republicans spent around $102,000 on average for travel during that period, while the average spent by House Democrats sat around $70,000, according to the House Statement of Disbursements.
According to the Congressional Management Foundation, the average total annual budget of a House office is around $1.5 million, which is distributed across a […]
There is something seriously wrong with the U.S. corporate media. They are covering Trump and Harris as equivalent candidates. They are not. Harris is an historically typical partisan candidate. What you would normally expect from either party. Criminal Trump is a psychopathic liar, and almost everything he says is either a distorted lie or a total fabrication lie. As for social media, in my view it really has become a hopeless cesspit of misinformation. If you get your information from social media, you are almost certainly wrongly informed. Sadly, except for a very few people like Lawrence O’Donnell, and Rachel Maddow, if you get your information from television the same equivalency problem exists.
Criminal Trump lying from the podium at a news conference. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty
There were a host of false things that Donald Trump said during his hour-long news conference Thursday that have gotten attention.
But there was so much more. A team of NPR reporters and editors reviewed the transcript of his news conference and found at least 162 misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies in 64 minutes. That’s more than two a minute. It’s a stunning number for anyone – and even more problematic for a person running to lead the free world.
Politicians spin. They fib. They misspeak. They make honest mistakes like the rest of us. And, yes, they even sometimes exaggerate their biographies.
The expectation, though, is that they will treat the truth as something important and correct any errors.
But what former President Trump did this past Thursday went well beyond the bounds of what most politicians would do.
Here’s what we found, going chronologically from the beginning of […]
Robert Reich, Carmel P. Friesen Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. - Raw Story | Commentary
Stephan:
Robert Reich clearly describes the other failure I see in media. Criminal Trump is not only a psychopathic liar, if you listen to him it is clear he is also increasingly demented. His sentences are not only lies and fabrications they also frequently make no sense. If you wrote them out this would be immediately clear. The MAGAt Party is advancing a candidate who is obviously increasingly mentally dysfunctional, which says a great deal about what this party is about.
Criminal Trump visits a bodega in the Harlem neighborhood of upper Manhattan where a worker killed a man who had assaulted him in 2022, on April 16, 2024 in New York City. Credit: Spencer Platt / Getty
Today, Trump held an hourlong news conference in the main room at Mar-a-Lago. He insulted Kamala Harris’s intelligence, lied about the state of the U.S. economy, and claimed the country would be in mortal danger if he didn’t win the election.
In other words, the usual Trump torrent of lies and insults.
But what got my attention was his description of his departure from the White House as a “peaceful” transfer of power, his insistence that the group that mounted the assault on the Capitol was relatively small, and his boast that attendance at his January 6 rally preceding the assault was larger than the crowd Martin Luther King Jr. drew on the National Mall for his “I Have a Dream” speech.
There is still so much we do not know about the systems of the Earth, as this article describes. This is why we need to be focused on new technologies and how to create a healthy Earth. Instead all we focus on is profit.
The potato-sized metal nodules look like rocks, littering parts of the deep seabed. Credit: NOC / NHM / NERC SMARTEX
Scientists have discovered “dark oxygen” being produced in the deep ocean, apparently by lumps of metal on the seafloor.
About half the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean. But, before this discovery, it was understood that it was made by marine plants photosynthesising – something that requires sunlight.
Here, at depths of 5km, where no sunlight can penetrate, the oxygen appears to be produced by naturally occurring metallic “nodules” which split seawater – H2O – into hydrogen and oxygen.
Several mining companies have plans to collect these nodules, which marine scientists fear could disrupt the newly discovered process – and damage any marine life that depends on the oxygen they make.
“I first saw this in 2013 – an enormous amount of oxygen being produced at the seafloor in complete darkness,” explains lead researcher Prof Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science. “I just ignored it, because […]
Fiona Harvey, Environment Editor - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
The corporations involved with the carbon era are pouring billions of dollars into lies and misinformation on corporate and social media. These people have no interest in the wellbeing of humanity, only in their immediate continued profit. The MAGAt (formerly Republican) Party is fully in league with this at local, state, and federal level as they clearly outline in Project 2025. As a result they are slowing down or stopping appropriate and adequate response to climate change and there is going to be great misery and death as a result. Do not vote for anyone in any country who is not fully committed to the Paris Accord, and proper preparation for what is coming.
Consequences of climate inaction are being felt in rich countries as well as poor, the UN climate adviser said. Credit: Steven Saphore / AAP
Fossil fuel companies are running “a massive mis- and disinformation campaign” so that countries will slow down the adoption of renewable energy and the speed with which they “transition away” from a carbon-intensive economy, the UN has said.
Selwin Hart, the assistant secretary general of the UN, said that talk of a global “backlash” against climate action was being stoked by the fossil fuel industry, in an effort to persuade world leaders to delay emissions-cutting policies. The perception among many political observers of a rejection of climate policies was a result of this campaign, rather than reflecting the reality of what people think, he added.
“There is this prevailing narrative – and a lot of it is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers – that climate action is too difficult, it’s too expensive,” he said. “It is absolutely critical that leaders, and all of us, push back and explain to people the value of climate action, but […]
