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.
Alyssa Bowen and Evan Vorpahl, Staff Writers - truthout
Stephan:
If Biden isn’t re-elected and both the Senate and the House do not end up with Democratic majorities this is what is going to happen to destroy a fair judiciary based on law not politics. It all comes down to who votes, how many, and how the vote comes out.
A demonstrator holds a sign reading “Protect the right to choose” during a march at the U.S. Capitol on April 15, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Credit: Probal Rashid / Lightrocket / Getty
As state courts continue to hear cases related to abortion bans and protections across the country, following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, these institutions have come even more into the crosshairs of a few ultra-wealthy extremists who want to codify and impose their personal religious beliefs on all of us via binding law.
In April and May of this year, Arizonans and Floridians saw their reproductive rights limited by decisions handed down by their respective state supreme courts, but that isn’t the end of the story. Democrats in Arizona have since spearheaded legislation that Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-Arizona) signed to repeal the draconian 1864 near-total abortion ban their court deemed constitutional. And Floridians will likely decide in November on a ballot initiative that would guarantee them broader abortion access, counteracting their supreme court’s greenlighting of a near-total […]
Our population is aging, and as the article describes we are painfully unprepared for what that means in terms of social wellbeing. Take just one example, healthcare. Our illness profit system is not getting better it is deteriorating. You hear Republicans saying Medicare is already too expensive. It is a dastardly lie. What passes for healthcare in the United States is already orders of magnitude more costly than any other developed democracy pays. For example: In 2022, France which has far better healthcare than the U.S. spent $6,630 per person on health. I chose France because its costs are higher than the OECD average of $4,986. But note, France spent, not individuals spent. France has universal birthright healthcare.In contrast, in 2022, the average American spent $13,493 per person on healthcare, which was $4.5 trillion in total.
Illustration by: Lindsey Bailey / Axios
It’s little surprise that America is rapidly getting older — but now that we’re at the brink of that demographic shift’s major consequences, we’re still completely unprepared.
Why it matters: It’s not just that seniors are an increasing share of the population, which is a huge challenge in itself. The seniors of the future may also require care for longer, and aging inequalities are becoming more stark.
The big picture: Americans 65 and older will make up more than 20% of the population by 2030, according to Census Bureau projections, up from 17% in 2022. By 2050, they’re projected to make up 23%.
One of the most obvious impacts of the aging population is on the federal budget, as spending on health programs — namely Medicare — is expected to swell.
But the change will be felt economy-wide: A smaller share of the population will be working age and, without drastic course correction, more may drop out of […]
David Wainer, Reporter - Micrsosoft Start / The Wall Street Journal
Stephan:
I have been warning readers not to get embroiled with the Medicare Advantage scam the health insurance corporations are pushing. Yes, you may need a supplemental to your Medicare policy. My wife and I both have such. But that is not Medicare Advantage. Here is a very good explanation from the conservative Wall Street Journal about why I keep warning you about this. And it also gives some little appreciated or even noticed good news about the Biden administration’s recent actions. Of course, you can expect massive renting, particularly of Republican Congress members, by these healthcare corporations through their lobbying. If Trump wins the election your healthcare like democracy itself will be severely degraded.
The Medicare Bubble Has Burst Credit: The Wall Street Journal
For years, the privately run Medicare Advantage business generated outsize profit growth for health-insurance giants.
With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars flowing to insurers in a fast-growing market buoyed by aging baby boomers, there was little not to like as far as Wall Street was concerned. Companies like UnitedHealth Group and Humana bet big on the program, and investors generally rewarded them for it. Medicare Advantage, in which the government pays insurers a set amount to manage the care of seniors, recently surpassed traditional Medicare’s share of beneficiaries. It was 30% a decade ago.
But the gold rush is over for investors, at least for now. After years of reports, lawsuits and whistleblower accounts accusing big insurers of gaming the system and overcharging the government, the Biden administration has made a series of policy changes that have negatively affected what the plans get paid. Meanwhile, a post-Covid surge in seniors’ medical costs caught insurers by surprise.
The stark drop in profitability is rattling corporate boards and investors. […]
Google is the largest search engine in the world, with a 90.91% market share and you probably use it every day. As this article tells us it is about to change radically.
Google Search is about to fundamentally change—for better or worse. To align with Alphabet-owned Google’s grand vision of artificial intelligence, and prompted by competition from AI upstarts like ChatGPT, the company’s core product is getting reorganized, more personalized, and much more summarized by AI.
At Google’s annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California, today, Liz Reid showed off these changes, setting her stamp early on in her tenure as the new head of all things Google search. (Reid has been at Google a mere 20 years, where she has worked on a variety of search products.) Her AI-soaked demo was part of a broader theme throughout Google’s keynote, led primarily by CEO Sundar Pichai: AI is now underpinning nearly every product at Google, and the company only plans to accelerate that shift.
“In the era of Gemini we think we can make a dramatic amount of improvements to search,” Reid said in an interview with WIRED ahead of the event, referring to the flagship generative AI modellaunched late last year. “People’s time is valuable, right? They deal with hard […]
It is my personal view that the Biden administration is making a major error in its policy about arming Israel. To me, it is very clear Netanyahu and his cronies are committing genocide. This is the best explanation I have found about why Biden is doing what he is doing and what the rationale is. I don’t agree with it, but I do understand it better.
The Biden administration is weighing selling Israel up to 50 new F-15 fighter jets, for $18 billion, as well as other weapons. Credit: Senior Airman Sophia Robello / U.S. Air Force
One day, President Joe Biden is pausing bomb shipments to Israel. Another day, he’s approving other arms deals. He’s threatening to cut off more shipments if Israel invades Rafah — but only those that are offensive in nature.
As tensions between the U.S. and Israel have risen over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza, Biden’s recent moves can be hard to follow.
For days now, as I have worked while the Trump trial played on one of my other screens, and I listened to the endless commentary, my growing sense of what I was witnessing was the sheer scumminess of Trump and the people with whom he surrounded himself. And it culminated with watching Republican members of Congress who had left their jobs representing their constituents to go to New York and trash America’s judiciary using words criminal Trump had approved for them to say. Robert Reich is correct in everything he writes in this essay.
‘The trial has introduced us to a world of moral and ethical loathsomeness in which people use and abuse one another routinely. It’s Trump world.’ Credit: Mark Peterson / AFP / Getty
There is something important about Trump’s criminal trial in New York that’s not being openly talked about. I don’t mean we’re not getting the facts about what’s happening in Manhattan superior court. But something very big is being left out.
The trial has introduced us to a world of moral and ethical loathsomeness in which people use and abuse one another routinely. It’s Trump world.
Consider Stormy Daniels. Adult film stars are entitled to do as they wish to make money. But when they extort people who are running for public office – demanding huge payments in order to stay quiet about an affair – they’re contributing to a society in which every interaction has a potential price.
Last week we heard Daniels’s story, even more detailed and lascivious than expected. But perhaps the most troubling aspect of her behavior is that the moment the former president ran for office, she saw a […]
We are being set up. MAGAt world is preparing to end democracy, whether criminal Trump wins or loses the election. We are not taking this split seriously enough. Americans must start talking about how we can peacefully split up, or find a new form, or become a single nation again. Otherwise, I think, there is going to be serious violence.
MAGAt world Credit: Reuters
Donald Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork to contest a potential loss in November, stoking doubts about the election’s legitimacy even as opinion polls show the Republican presidential candidate leading in battleground states.
In recent interviews, Trump has refused to commit to accepting the election results. At his rallies, he has portrayed Democrats as cheaters, called mail-in ballots corrupt and urged supporters to vote in such large numbers to render the election “too big to rig.”
He also backed a new Republican-sponsored bill aimed at keeping foreigners from voting, seeking to link his false election fraud claims with the issue of illegal immigration, even though voting by non-citizens is already unlawful and studies show it is exceedingly rare.
Trump’s tactics are an intensified version of the strategy he used during the 2020 election, when his baseless voter fraud claims inspired his supporters to assault the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn his election defeat.
Rather than being cowed by looming criminal trials over his conduct in the wake […]
Think about what this article is telling us, and it is based on first-hand factual observation. We have a party whose Congress members walked away from doing their Congressional duties, so they could go to the trial of a convicted rapist and con man in order to lie as he told them, and attack America’s judicial system and the judge sitting on the bench. This is what the United States of America has come to. There is only one solution. The Republicans must be overwhelmingly voted out of office. The MAGAt world is not the majority.
Former Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy returns to the courtroom after a short break during former U.S. President Donald Trump hush money trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 14, 2024 in New York City. Credit: Michael M. Santiago / Getty
Donald Trump’s allies have been packing the New York City courtroom where he’s standing trial — and speaking out in his defense in statements that come close to violating the gag order imposed on him.
And an onlooker reported Tuesday Trump appears to be very much in control of what they’re saying.
In recent days political big guns including Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum have given impassioned speeches outside the courtroom parroting Trump’s accusation of a political witch hunt and attacking witnesses and the judge’s family members.
Trump is forbidden from speaking about witnesses, jurors, court staff or their families under a gag order — though it also forbids him asking others to do it on his […]
