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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.
Emily Hutto, Associate Video Producer - MedPage Today
Stephan:
Social media with its torrent of misinformation and lies, AI generated fake audio, and fake porn, its use to make classmates and fellow workers humiliated and hurt is, as the Surgeon General of the United States spells out, causing great social damage. Through it all the Congress sits on its hands and does nothing. Social media is a major factor in the creation of two countries in a single nation.
MedPage Today’s editor-in-chief Jeremy Faust, MD, (left) sits down with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA,
In this exclusive video interview, MedPage Today‘s editor-in-chief Jeremy Faust, MD, sits down with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, to talk about his advisoryopens in a new tab or window on social media and youth mental health.
The following is a transcript of their remarks:
Faust: Hello, I’m Jeremy Faust, Editor-in-Chief of MedPage Today. I’m so glad to be joined today by Dr. Vivek Murthy.
Dr. Murthy is the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States, and he has issued a number of very important public health advisories, which we will discuss today. Dr. Vivek Murthy, thank you so much for joining us.
Murthy: Of course. I’m glad to join you, Jeremy.
Faust: Recently, I think there’s been a lot of talk about social media and your advisory regarding social media use. I’ve heard you speak in a very nuanced way about this, and my initial take is that the dose makes the poison or that certain forms are less harmful than others. And right there on page five […]
Here you see an excellent analysis of why so many countries in the world are being so slow to prepare for climate change. Simple answer: Because profit is the only priority that matters. As this piece describes to exit the carbon era, the electrical systems cannot be principally petroleum fueled as they are in the United States. As the author says, “The idea that markets are the best way to solve social problems or distribute scarce resources must be one of the most thoroughly exploded propositions in the history of social thought.” Markets have only one priority, profit. Read, and weep for our children’s future.
A figure looks at the dynamic map board showing power distribution through California’s electrical grids in the control center of the California Independent System Operator, 2004. Credit: David McNew / Getty
The idea that markets are the best way to solve social problems or distribute scarce resources must be one of the most thoroughly exploded propositions in the history of social thought. Proponents of this notion have accumulated quite a list of qualifiers and exceptions: asymmetric information, market failures, natural monopolies, externalities, imperfect competition, irrationality, public goods, time inconsistency, and principal-agent problems, just to name a few. The empirical record is even worse. We are now more than 40 years into a global process of generating more markets in more things, including healthcare, childcare, education, housing, energy, and retirement. The results are unambiguous: The great expansion of the marketplace, and the long process of privatization and liberalization needed to achieve it, has led to a world that is […]
Throughout the day I have watched different channels cover the Trump Republican Party convention. It is astonishing. Every person speaking at the convention does nothing but lie and spread misinformation. I have never seen anything like it. Meanwhile Biden is diagnosed with Covid and we have only 110 days until the election. And then there are the polls. If you haven’t realized that our democracy hangs by a fraying thread, now is the time to wake up. This election is not about political partisanship. It is about democracy vs Project 2025.
A memorial sign near the site of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Butler, Pennsylvania, 16 July 2024. Credit: Carlos Osorio / Reuters
Has the US entered its late Soviet phase? The country is a gerontocracy led by ailing leaders and with a crisis of confidence in its dominant ideology; it is a flailing superpower suffering foreign humiliation (not least in Afghanistan); and its economic system struggles to meet the needs of many of its people. The similarities are a little uncanny.
There are, of course, clear differences too. The US is a democracy, albeit one severely compromised by wealthy vested interests and concerted rightwing efforts to weaken voting rights, and it is a racially diverse union of states, rather than an unstable federation of nations. But, crucially, if Joe Biden is a Leonid Brezhnev or one of his two short-lived elderly successors, then Donald Trump is no Mikhail Gorbachev: he is more of an American Vladimir Putin.
The attempted assassination of Trump marks a further descent into the darkness. Earlier this year, a poll found that more than a third of Americans […]
I think Biden should announce his retirement. He would leave and history would see him as perhaps the most successful President since Franklin Roosevelt. If he stays and loses I think history will revile him for for letting his ego and his family’s egos put himself above his nation’s best interests. If he stays and wins it will be seen as one of the greatest upset wins in American history. We are going to know how this turns out in 110 days.
President Joe Biden at the White House. Credit: Kevin Dietsch / Getty
A whopping 65% of Democrats believe President Biden should withdraw from the 2024 presidential race and let the party pick a different nominee, according to an AP-Norc poll out Wednesday.
Why it matters: The findings add more evidence to the damage done by Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, which highlighted longstanding concerns about his age and fitness for office.
The resultsbased on a survey of 1,253 adults also fly in the face of Biden’s own claim that the “average voter” wants him to stay in the race.
The big picture: Overall, 70% of U.S. voters want Biden to withdraw from the 2024 race, while only 57% want to see former President Trump withdraw.
However, Trump enjoys high support from within his own party. Only 26% of Republicans think he should exit the race and let the GOP pick a different candidate, while 73% of Republicans want him to keep running.
The MAGAt Party: overwhelmingly White, less educated, frightened by immigration, incapable of understanding economics, and hostile to those who don’t think as they do, or look as they do. We are two countries in a single nation.
As Republicans prepare to open their national convention in Milwaukee and renominate Donald Trump for president, here are some key facts about the roughly half of registered voters who identify with or lean toward the party, according to Pew Research Center data.
How we did this
Republican voters are overwhelmingly White, though less so than in the past. About eight-in-ten Republican voters (79%) are non-Hispanic White, down from 93% nearly two decades ago. Still, Hispanic, Black and Asian voters together make up a much smaller share of Republican voters than Democratic voters (15% vs. 39%).
About two-thirds of Republican voters (64%) do not have a four-year college degree – modestly higher than the share among all U.S. voters (60%).
Overall, about half of Republican voters (51%) are White adults without a college degree, making them the single largest bloc within the party when looking at race, ethnicity and education together. By comparison, White adults without a college degree account for 38% of U.S. voters overall.
Republican voters are older than voters overall. About two-thirds of Republican voters (65%) are ages 50 and older, compared with 59% […]
Criminal Trump tried to trash as many of the policies designed to protect us from the destruction of climate change as he could in order to serve the interests of the petroleum industry billionaires whose interests align with his. The damage was far greater than anyone knew, or few know today. Here is a good assessment of what he has done. If Trump and Vance, who is also a flunkey for the oil billionaires who along with Peter Thiel financed his election to the Senate, then you can be sure that there will be the same sabotage of any climate change preparation.
Former President Donald Trump dismantled the pillars of U.S. climate policy when he exited the Paris climate accord and rolled back more than 100 regulations to protect air, water, endangered species and human health.
But it’s clear, as he officially assumes his role as the Republican nominee and standard bearer this week, that he altered American environmental protection in even deeper and more longer-lasting ways.
The United States returned to the Paris pact after Trump’s presidency, but he showed other populist leaders a way out of the global climate agreement, which is itself now unstable. While no other nation has as yet followed suit and walked away, pledges to cut carbon emissions—already inadequate, according to the scientific consensus—are weakening. Insurgent right-wing politicians in Europe have embraced the Trump doctrine, insisting that backing down from climate pledges can boost faltering economies.
President Joe Biden’s administration has reversed most of the regulatory rollbacks of his predecessor, but Trump left behind a conservative 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court that has already irrevocably changed environmental protection in America. The biggest shock came on June 28, when the court overturned a 40-year-old legal precedent that buttressed federal regulatory action. By dismissing the so-called “Chevron doctrine,” the court handed […]
Charging is the major obstacle to ending the carbon era. I have been telling you for several years now that the gas station model for EV charging isn’t going to work. The major roads need to be built to charge the vehicles that drive over them. Not every road, just the bigger ones. It will be cheaper and much easier to do.
Charging stations Credit: iStock
California will have to build public charging stations at an unprecedented — and some experts say unrealistic — pace to meet the needs of the 7 million electric cars expected on its roads in less than seven years.
The sheer scale of the buildout has alarmed many experts and lawmakers, who fear that the state won’t be prepared as Californians purchase more electric cars.
A million public chargers are needed in California by the end of 2030, according to the state’s projections — almost 10 times more than the number available to drivers in December. To meet that target, 129,000 new stations — more than seven times the current pace — must be built every year for the next seven years. Then the pace would have to accelerate again to reach a target of 2.1 million chargers in 2035.
A robust network of public chargers — akin to the state’s more than 8,000 gas stations — is essential to ensure that drivers will have the confidence to purchase electric vehicles over the next several years.
“It is very unlikely that we will hit our goals, and to be completely frank, the […]
There is simply no limit to criminal Trump’s sleaziness. Can you imagine Dwight Eisenhower, or Theodore Roosevelt, or any other Republican President as vulgar as this? I certainly can’t.
Criminal Trump will do anything to make money for himself. Credit: Trump Sneakers
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN — A company is now selling $299 sneakers showing an image of Donald Trump with streaks of blood on his cheek and pumping his fist in the air after he was the target of an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.
The white high tops are being sold as “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT High-Tops” for $299 on a website that sells Trump-branded shoes that is run by CIC Ventures LLC, a company that Trump reported owning in his 2023 financial disclosure. The company says the new shoes are limited edition with only 5,000 pairs available and estimated to ship in September or October. It also said 10 pairs will be randomly autographed.
“These limited edition high-tops, featuring Trump’s iconic image with his fist raised, honor his unwavering determination and bravery,” it says. “With only 5,000 pairs available, each one is a true collector’s item. Show your support and patriotic pride with these exclusive sneakers, capturing a defining moment in history.”
