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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.
Stephan: Over this past week, three non-American readers wrote me to say that now that travel is possible again they had reconsidered their long-planned trip to the U.S. and decided not to make it. "I don't think I would feel safe in Atlanta," one man wrote me. A woman said that rather than coming to America she had arranged for her nephew and his family to come to her in Portugal. All three commented that the America they had known and previously visited seemed to have disappeared, and been replaced by a country they no longer knew or that felt safe. I wrote them back and told each of them that I agreed and felt much the same way.
This weekend, American skies will be aflame with fireworks celebrating our legacy of freedom and democracy, even as Republican legislature after Republican legislature constricts the franchise and national Republicans have filibustered the expansive For The People Act. It will be a strange spectacle.
It is hard to view your own country objectively. There is too much cant and myth, too many stories and rituals. So over the past week, I’ve been asking foreign scholars of democracy how the fights over the American political system look to them. These conversations have been, for the most part, grim.
“I’m positive that American democracy is not what Americans think it is,” David Altman, a political scientist in Chile, told me. “There is a cognitive dissonance between what American citizens believe their institutions are and what they actually are.”
“The thing that makes me really worried is how similar what’s going on in the U.S. looks to a series of countries in the world where democracy has really taken a big toll and, in many cases, died,” Staffan Lindberg, a Swedish political scientist who directs the Varieties of Democracy Institute, said. “I’m talking about countries like Hungary under Orban, Turkey in the early days of Erdogan’s rule, Modi […]
Stephan: Four hundred and ten million people displaced and on the move. The impact on every aspect of the societies where these climate change migrations occur can hardly be calculated, let alone prepared for. And yet that is the task humanity will face. We are simply not doing what needs to be done, not as a single country nor as an international coming together. As a result, the impact of these migrations is going to be horrific.
Sea rise about to provoke migration
Close to half a billion people could be in the path of sea level rise by 2100, a first-of-its-kind analysis has shown.
The study, published in Nature Communications Tuesday, found that 267 million people currently live on land that is less than two meters (approximately 6.6 feet) above sea level, the range that is the most vulnerable to rising water levels. By 2100, the number at risk could climb to 410 million people.
“These numbers are another wake-up call about the immense number of people at risk in low-lying areas, particularly in vulnerable countries in the global South, where people are often experiencing these risks as part of a toxic mix with other risk factors, currently also including Covid-19,” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributing lead author Maarten van Aalst, who was not involved with the study, told The Guardian in response to the results.
Beyond its urgent warning, the new study was notable because of how it took land elevation into account.
“Coastal flood risk assessments require accurate land elevation data,” the […]
Stephan: Here is some good news for the entire planet.
It’s Friday, July 2, and the U.K. is accelerating its deadline for quitting coal.
The United Kingdom is planning to end all coal-fired electricity generation by October 2024, moving up the country’s previous target by a full year. The new timeline is designed to “send a clear signal around the world that the U.K. is leading the way in consigning coal power to the history books,” said Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the country’s energy and climate change minister, in a statement on Wednesday. The announcement comes months before the United Nations’ annual climate change summit, COP26, which will be hosted in November in Glasgow.
Ending coal-fired electricity does not mean ending coal extraction. The U.K. will still be mining coal for export and using it in industrial processes like steel production, and a heavily protested brand-new coal mine is still under consideration in Northern England.
Despite these caveats, any move to reduce coal consumption is good for the climate. Coal-fired electricity is extremely carbon-intensive, accounting for 30 percent of energy-related CO2 emissions globally. It’s also a major source […]
Stephan: I ran the earlier story referenced here. Wealth inequality has grown to such a difference that we essentially have two different species, each living in its own reality created by how the tax laws are conformed. This inequality has been planned and is deliberate. Laws were passed by politicians who would benefit from those laws. The tax laws make it legally permissible to turn a politician into your servant paying them through dark money. This matters because elections are so expensive in the United States that most Congress members spend hours each day raising money. The system is completely corrupt.
Warren Buffet Credit: Shutterstock
ProPublica is doing the Lord’s work. Specifically, investigative reporters Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel are doing it. Two weeks ago, the nonprofit news group published the first in a planned series of pieces revealing, in exquisite detail, the moral character of the very obscenely rich. The series will be based on “a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years.” It’s a goddamn truth-bomb:
It demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.
Their first report, published on June 8, exposed the very obscenely rich as the greatest tax dodgers of them all. But before I get into it, let me say two things. One, Eisinger et al. do more than […]
Stephan: It appears that in the push to get to herd immunity, 70% to 80% vaccination rate, we have reached the stupid threshold. We fell slightly short of Biden's goal for this date, and I think the Governor of West Virginia, a state notable for stupidity -- they elected Joe Manchin to the senate -- explains why that has happened. There is a percentage of the population, notably the MAGAts, who think Covid-19 is a fraud, and who refuse to get vaccinated. The only thing as Governor Justice, a Republican, points out likely to get them vaccinated is a high death rate in that community. So be it, and I think we are going to see hotspots in Red States across the country
Republican Governor of West Virginia Jim Justice Credit: AP News
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) said Sunday that those who are still unvaccinated against COVID-19 will be pushed to get the shot only by a “catastrophe” in which “an awful lot of people die.”
On ABC’s “This Week,” host Martha Raddatz asked the governor what would push those who have not gotten vaccinated in the state “over the edge” to change their minds.
The governor, who in recent weeks has called on hesitant constituents to get the shot, responded, “I hate to say this, but what would put them over the edge is if an awful lot of people die.”
Justice said the “only way” he could see the nearly half of adults in West Virginia who have not yet gotten vaccinated alter their thinking would if be “a catastrophe” occurred “that none of us want.”
The governor said that while the state has launched a lottery to give cash, guns, trucks and other prizes to people who have gotten vaccinated, another lottery is happening in his state in which people are gambling with their lives.
Stephan: Here is another view on the stupid threshold trend. It is amazing to me that the MAGAts have reached this level of anti-science hysteria, but apparently they have. This also explains, I think, the wholly inadequate response to climate change one sees in the Red value states. Basically, the net effect of this trend will be some thousands of White people are going to die from stupidity, as many already have.
As formerly Confederate states struggle with low vaccination rates as the Delta variant of coronavirus spreads across America, pastors stuck between the science of what is best for their flocks and superstitions that their congregants believe.
The rampant stupidity the MAGAts. Note that they are all White people.
“Biden administration and state officials hoped that pastors would play an outsized role in promoting Covid-19 vaccines, but many are wary of alienating their congregants and are declining requests to be more outspoken. Politico spoke with nearly a dozen pastors, many of whom observed that vaccination is too divisive to broach, especially following a year of contentious conversations over race, pandemic limits on in-person worship and mask requirements. Public health officials have hoped that more religious leaders can nudge their congregants to get Covid shots, particularly white evangelicals who are among the most resistant to vaccination,” the publication reported Saturday.
“State health officials are conducting informal focus groups and outreach to try to ease pastors’ concerns about discussing vaccination, but progress is often elusive, they said. Many pastors said […]
Stephan: Here is some more good news from the Biden administration. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which for more than a decade has been in the pocket of the corporations it was supposed to oversee -- but did not -- under its new chair, Lina Khan, is now going in a new healthier direction.
The Federal Trade Commission’s first meeting under new Chair Lina Khan broke decades of precedent by taking place in public. | Graeme Jennings-Pool/Getty
The Federal Trade Commission’s first meeting under new Chair Lina Khan broke decades of precedent Thursday by taking place in public — something unheard-of for the notably secretive antitrust and consumer protection agency.
Then it pushed through a series of actions on progressive Democrats’ wish list: Fines for companies that lie about products being “Made in America.” Greater latitude for launching antitrust probes and lawsuits. And a wider door to writing new regulations — something else the FTC hasn’t done much of in decades.
All this came despite fierce objections from the commission’s two Republicans, in a sign that partisan rancor is also back in vogue at the Biden-era FTC.
Thursday’s videoconferenced session was the first public glimpse of what may lie in store for the 106-year-old agency under its youngest-ever chair, a former Columbia University law professor who made her reputation as a critic of tech giants like Amazon. And fellow tech critics were particularly thrilled.
Stephan: I wrote this piece for Smithsonian Magazine in 2001. I ran across it looking for something else, read it, and thought Dr. Franklin had it right over two centuries ago, and we would do well to listen to him. I wish all my readers the best for a wonderful July 4th. Spend a little time today thinking about what you can do to keep America's democracy healthy. If you are brave enough, talk about it amongst family and friends. Maybe you could do something together. This may be the most important 4th of July in your lifetime.
Franklin, by the way, usually shown as an elderly man -- because those are the images available -- had you met him would have left you with a very different impression. To begin with, Franklin was physically powerful. He was 5' 9" compared to Jefferson's or Washington's 6' 2" and built like a wrestler with a powerful upper body, big chest. He was charming, friendly, funny, and incredibly knowledgeable. He made a point by telling a story.
The sudden illness of his wife Martha called his travelling companion Thomas Jefferson back to Monticello. So on a Saturday in late October 1776 Benjamin Franklin, almost 70, exhausted and afflicted by gout and boils went aboard without him, and sailed for France in the 16-gun sloop Reprisal.1 He did so in the certain knowledge that if Reprisal was taken by a British warship he would be hanged for High Treason. His name was on the inflammatory Declaration of Independence, a document he had just helped Jefferson to write.
Franklin had been home less than a year, after almost two decades spent in the belly of the most powerful empire in the world representing first Pennsylvania’s and, eventually, America’s case at the court of King George II then, when he died, his grandson George III. The experience had made him more familiar with the ways of Europe than anyone else in the new American government, and he was going to need all the expertise he could muster. If he could not convince the French to fund and […]
