IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
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.
If you have ever seen what children are offered for lunch in Europe compared to what they get in the U.S., you know how inferior school lunches in America are. It’s pathetic and, of course, it is all about money and profit. The fundamental problem we have as a country is that the only social priority we have is profit. It negatively affects every aspect of our lives, from healthcare, to child care, to elder care, to school lunches. And because we are an oligarchy dominated democracy nothing about this seems to change. Only you and I can change this, and that is by voting only for Democrats. Yes, I know all the Democrat problems, but the alternative is Project 2025 run by a criminal.
Student getting a slice of pizza for lunch Credit: Getty / SDI Productions
In 2022, The Lancet, a British peer-reviewed journal with a focus on global public health, published a short article with the title: “Unhealthy school meals: A solution to hunger or a problem for health?” As the report laid out, providing school meals is an important measure in preventing food insecurity as nearly 30 million children receive a free or reduced-cost breakfast and lunch on an average American school day, and many of those students rely on school meals as their main source of nutrition.
Yet while those meals meet federal nutrition mandates, they are often simply composed of a smattering of processed foods — breakfast cereal, fruit juice, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, frozen pizza — served alongside a fruit or vegetable and carton of dairy milk. “In fact, the official meal dietary guidelines do not discourage serving pizza or corn dogs, as long as the nutritional specifications (total calorie, sugar, fat, and salt content) are met,” the report said.
Dean Baker, Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. - The New Republic
Stephan:
There is so much misinformation being spewed out all over the internet, particularly on X, that I am afraid most American voters really don’t know what is going on with the economy. I searched for what I felt comfortable publishing as a fact-based report that might help my readers to make a valid assessment. Here it is.
Credit: The New Republic
Over the last few weeks, an extraordinary series of events has altered the course of an election that previously seemed to have few surprises in store. Eight days after Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt, President Joe Biden announced his historic decision to withdraw from the presidential race and cast his support for Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his stead. It will be some time before we know all the political ramifications of these events, but whatever they may be, they will not change the past.
What can the past tell us about what’s to come? Perhaps the most critical element of a candidate’s platform is their approach to the economy. In assessing Harris as a presidential candidate, people will want to look at the economic track record of the Biden-Harris administration. As always, the president takes the lead role in setting the economic course for the administration, but throughout Biden’s term in office, Harris was standing alongside him. The Republicans will surely blame her for everything that went wrong and many […]
For starters, do not use, or stop using, X. Elon Musk is one of the billionaires who want to end democracy in the United States so that they can establish an authoritarian oligarchy that they control. Criminal Trump is their puppet because his mind is fading as his ego grows and they have figured out how to manipulate him.
Elon Musk in Cannes, France. Credit: Marc Piasecki / Getty
False or misleading claims about the U.S. election that Elon Musk has posted to X this year have generated nearly 1.2 billion views, according to an analysis published Thursday by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Researchers from the center said they identified 50 instances this year when Musk posted election claims that have been debunked by independent fact-checkers but spread widely on the app anyway.
None of the 50 posts by Musk displayed a “Community Note” to correct his claims or add context, calling into question the effectiveness of X’s user-driven fact-checking system, the center said.
Musk is a supporter of former President Donald Trump, and the report is one of the first efforts to measure the scope of his influence on the election through his presence on X. This is the first presidential contest since Musk bought the app, formerly known as Twitter, and he has its biggest audience, with 193 million followers.
Here are the facts showing us what America’s gun psychosis and the mass murders it has manifested are doing to the wellbeing of the United States. It is not a happy story.
Key Findings
2 out of every 3 respondents expressed disapproval of the government’s actions in addressing gun violence prevention, while 19% offered no comment on the issue.
71% of respondents acknowledged that news coverage of gun violence increased their safety concerns in daily life. Among them, 42% of respondents characterized this impact as either “significant” or “extreme.”
36% of respondents reported that fear of a mass shooting has prevented them from going to a public place or event.
1 out of every 3 respondents noted the absence of a workplace response plan for mass shootings.
Generation Z is significantly more concerned about mass shootings at schools, with 48% expressing high levels of worry compared to just 6% of older adults.
1 in 2 Americans believe that current mental health support systems are inadequate to address the trauma associated with gun violence.
3 out 5 of respondents are somewhat confident in their local emergency services’ ability to effectively handle incidents of gun violence.
The Broad Impact of Mass Shootings on Daily Life
The FBI defines mass shootings as “incidents where four or more murders occur during the same incident, without a distinctive time period between the murders.” The immediate trauma for those directly […]
Anna Merlan, Author of Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power. - MIT Technology Review
Stephan:
Anti-vaxxerism advanced by people like Joe Rogan and Robert Kennedy, Jr., has killed people, and now there is a version of this idiocy emerging concerning AIDS and HIV. Personally, I think it ought to be a felony crime with a long prison sentence to knowingly spew out this anti-vaxxer crap that has put millions at risk of their lives, and has actually killed hundreds of thousands of Americans. Of 10 unvaccinated people, 5 died → the death rate among the unvaccinated is 50%. Of 50 vaccinated people, 5 died → the death rate among the vaccinated is 10%. The data on this is absolute and unimpeachable.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been vocal in his support of anti-vaccine causes long before his current bid for president. Credit: Ted S. Warren / AP
Several million people were listening in February when Joe Rogan falsely declared that “party drugs” were an “important factor in AIDS.” His guest on TheJoe Rogan Experience, the former evolutionary biology professor turned contrarian podcaster Bret Weinstein, agreed with him: The “evidence” that AIDS is not caused by HIV is, he said, “surprisingly compelling.”
During the show, Rogan also asserted that AZT, the earliest drug used in the treatment of AIDS, killed people “quicker” than the disease itself—another claim that’s been widely repeated even though it is just as untrue.
Speaking to the biggest podcast audience in the world, the two men were promoting dangerous and false ideas—ideas that were in fact debunked and thoroughly disproved decades ago.
But it wasn’t just them. A few months later, the New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, four-time winner […]
Alex Weprin, Buisness and Media Writer - The Hollywood Reporter
Stephan:
The media we knew as children is disappearing. Newspapers are closing, magazines are no longer publishing or going only online, or just closing. The three broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC have been transformed. And AI is growing and spewing ever more misinformation. In the 33 years I have been doing SR it has become harder and harder, and taken longer and longer each day, to make sure everything I publish is based on actual facts.
Dylan Dreyer, Sheinelle Jones, Al Roker, Hoda Kotb and Craig Melvin attend the 2023 Broadcasting + Cable Hall Of Fame Gala at The Ziegfeld Ballroom on May 3, 2023 in New York City. The owner of B + C plans to continue The Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame event. Credit: Arturo Holmes / Getty
This year’s media meltdown chaos is picking up again.
Six month after layoffs, labor unrest and contracts began rocking the media sector, the business continues to face dramatic challenges. Tuesday saw a number of examples.
In a major deal, Ziff Davis cut a deal to acquire CNet from Red Ventures for about $100 million. CNet — which CBS acquired for $1.8 billion and subsequently sold to Red Ventures four years ago for $500 million — will join other tech outlets like Mashable, PCMag and LifeHacker in the Ziff Davis stable. But the sharp decline in value underscores the perilous media moment.
It is not immediately clear what will happen to CNet staff.
Active affiliation with a Christian church is dwindling significantly in the American population. It seems to be generally replaced by people describing themselves as spiritual not religious. As this report describes, however, for White Christians this is an alarming and threatening development, and so America’s gun psychosis is melding with white Christians who are threatened by their declining percentage in the population. The result is we are seeing the emergence of Christian militias as one of the main responses. All this means to me is that there is going to be more gun violence and gun caused deaths.
Churchgoers have been told they must protect themselves. Credit: Spencer Platt / Getty
Church bulletins don’t usually set passions aflame, but last month, an ad in the newsletter of The Ascension Catholic Church in Chesterfield, Missouri, did just that. Placed by parishioner John Ray, the ad called to recruit “all young men back to the church to form a militia” at the Legion of Sancta Lana. Those taking up the offer would be tasked with “protecting the Holy Eucharist, our congregation, our clergy and the church grounds from violent and non-violent attacks”.
Recruits would receive instruction in military operations and Latin — a clear political signifier as the Vatican tries to prohibit Latin mass to the chagrin of the Church’s more conservative elements. The St Louis Post-Dispatchreported that the online application for the militia, which has since been taken down and disavowed by Ascension, also included references to “platoons”, “hand-to-hand combat” and even featured a sketch of the “bright white uniforms”. While Legionnaires would not serve as armed guards at the church, they “could be called upon […]
The uber-rich who are largely blocking effective attempts to mitigate climate change because such policies negatively impact their profits are, as this article describes, reverting to a kind of neo-medievalism by building fortresses to keep themselves safe should civil violence become a real threat to them. This is a really weird story about a really weird trend.
SHH, one of the world’s leading high net worth design studios, designed this London house with a cinema room complete with a reinforced door system to help residents “lock down” if needed. The firm say they are seeing a rise in requests of this “size and stature.” Credit: Hans Fonk
Few things appear to soothe the existential anxieties of the super-rich like a bunker designed to withstand anything short of total nuclear Armageddon. Yet it’s no longer enough for the security-conscious billionaire to stick an impenetrable safe room in the basement where it might sit empty forever. In today’s uber-prime properties, bunkers have gone seriously upmarket and hi-tech, in some cases growing to the extent that whole homes are becoming 21st century fortresses.
“We’ve seen a lot more of a focus on entertainment,” said Al Corbi, who has been at the forefront of secure luxury for 50 years as the president and founder of SAFE (Strategically Armored & Fortified Environments), based […]
