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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.
Apoorva Mandavilli, Science Reporter - The New York Times
Stephan: You can't fix stupid. The problem is that when you have this level of stupidity in a country it may make getting this pandemic under control impossible. Here are the facts, and they are very disturbing.
Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.
Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.
Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.
How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, […]
Stephan: The Republican Party so far as I can see Is not interested in democracy or in social wellbeing. There is only one thing that interests Republican politicians -- power. They like the pay. They like the healthcare. They like the deference their titles afford them. They like the insider information they can use to enrich themselves.
Fox propagandist Laura Ingraham speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)
Herd immunity just ain’t happening, folks. Once anti-vaccine rhetoric became normal on the right, the goal of herd immunity to stop the spread of COVID-19 was doomed.
Many folkshave beensaying itfor a few months now, but it appears that the slower-moving medical experts in the federal government are finally admitting it. Despite half of Americans getting the shot, Apoorva Mandavilli of the New York Times writes, “vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.”
Herd immunity just ain’t happening, folks. Once anti-vaccine rhetoric became normal on the right, the goal of herd immunity to stop the spread of COVID-19 was doomed.
Stephan: Over the last several days I have read or heard Republicans touting the benefits of Biden's Covid-19 relief legislation, even though they all voted against it. I found it amazing. Do their listeners, readers, and viewers, I wondered, not realize that these men and women voted against the very legislation for which they are now taking credit? Apparently, in the fantasy world of the Right where facts are irrelevant, they do not.
Republican Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina) takes credit on the House floor for something he voted against. Credit: House Television/AP
Republicans are touting benefits of the COVID-19 relief legislation they opposed in Congress.
Mitch McConnell said Republicans would have a “talk” with Americans about the bill’s issues.
Meanwhile, funding for healthcare and restaurants is being praised by some GOP members.
For months, Congressional Republicans have been unanimously opposed to the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that was backed by President Joe Biden and signed into law in March.
The stimulus package, which included $1,400 direct stimulus payments for individuals, funding for state and local governments, $300 in federal unemployment aid through September, and an expansion of the child tax credit, among other measures, did not receive a single GOP vote of support in the House or Senate.
After the bill’s passage, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky slammed the legislation as “a classic example of big-government Democratic overreach in the name of Covid relief” and […]
Stephan: It is my view that Trump and his minions should be tried for crimes against humanity, not only for the disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic but also for what they did to gut the EPA and its environmental regulations. It began before Trump to be sure, and Obama shares some of the blame, although he was blocked by Republicans in Congress, which should serve as a textbook study on the corruption of Congress as a result of Citizens United, which legitimized corporate and uber-rich bribery of public officials.
Happily, the good news is that now, after 14 years of legal battles, the courts have finally ruled on this, and the news is good.
Chlorpyrifos
After 14 years of legal battles, a federal court ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to take actions that will likely force the neurotoxic pesticide chlorpyrifos off the market. The federal agency has for years been considering mounting evidence that links the pesticide to brain damage in children — including loss of IQ, learning difficulties, ADHD, and autism — but, as the court acknowledged, has repeatedly delayed taking action.
“Rather than ban the pesticide or reduce the tolerances to levels that the EPA could find were reasonably certain to cause no harm, the EPA sought to evade through delay tactics its plain statutory duty,” Judge Jed S. Rakoff wrote in his decision, which was released today by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. “During that time, the EPA’s egregious delay exposed a generation of American children to unsafe levels of chlorpyrifos,” he wrote, and ordered the EPA to issue a final regulation within 60 days.
While Rakoff stopped short of requiring the EPA to immediately ban the pesticide, he gave the agency little choice in how to respond. “The EPA’s obligation is […]
Stephan: Have you ever walked down a sidewalk and inadvertently stepped on a dog turd, tried to scrape it off your shoe, yet an hour later found yourself in an embarrassing situation because you and those around you can still smell it? That's more or less the way I look at the Trumps and the Kushners. They have been gone for months but the smell of their endless scandals still lingers in the nation's political air.
What makes this important to me, is that the Republican Party pays no attention to these criminal smells, and the majority of Republicans still believe the election was stolen from Trump, and that Biden is not a legitimate president.
Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Credit: Trump White House
Kushner — the son-in-law of former president Donald Trump — is co-owner of Westminster Management and the company JK2 along with his brother Joshua, which had been accused of violating state laws protecting tenant rights.
According to the report, Administrative Law Judge Emily Daneker ruled Thursday that the company owned by the two brothers “repeatedly violated state consumer protection laws by collecting debts without required licenses, charging tenants improper fees and misrepresenting the condition of rental units.”
The judge issued a 252-page decision that called the violations “widespread and numerous.”
The lawsuit was filed in 2019 by Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, as part of a series of suits going after 25 companies accused of violations.
As for the judge, the brother’s company was cited for […]
Stephan: The fact that Stephen Miller, an avowed White racist fascist, and former Trump speechwriter still commands media attention and is treated seriously tells us something very important about the United States: White racism is a major political and cultural trend in the country.
White supremacy has been a problem in the United States since the earliest colonial days, and is now as bad as it was in the late 1950s and early 1960s in what history knows as the Civil Rights Era. It has become so bad in the present day that it now defines the U.S. and the question being asked around the world is can it be overcome, or is America doomed to be a nation with a kind of apartheid?
Stephen Miller and Joe Biden Credit: Salon/Getty
A conservative legal group founded by former Trump officials Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows has filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration for its support of the American Rescue Plan, which the suit alleges discriminates against farmers of “white ethnic groups” by reserving funds for “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers.”
The legal group, America First Legal, which vows to take on “the radical activist left,” is representing Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. The suit, which the plaintiffs brought to the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Texas, argues that “white farmers and ranchers are not included within the definition of ‘socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers,’ making them ineligible for aid under these federal programs.”
“These racial exclusions are patently unconstitutional,” it continues. The group argues that, if the court does not recognize this, “then it should at the very least declare that the phrase ‘socially disadvantaged group’ must be construed, as a matter of statutory interpretation, to include ethnic groups of all types that have been subjected to racial and ethnic […]
Stephan: I am running this piece because I think it is telling us something very important about the thinking of those associated with the Republican Party. I am not a Romney supporter; he is not someone for whom I would vote. But he and Liz Cheney do represent a Republican perspective that is at least partially based on facts. His treatment at the Utah Republican convention demonstrates how most Republicans are far to the right of that moderate perspective and not at all interested in actual facts. That tells us that about a third of the country lives in a world that is a non-fact-based fantasy. And that is extraordinarily dangerous for a democracy. I think the 2022 election is going to tell us whether the United States will continue as a democracy or sink into White supremacy christofascist authoritarianism.
Mitt Romney at Utah Republican convention
Mitt Romney was loudly booed at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday – and called a “traitor” and a “communist” as he tried to speak.
“Aren’t you embarrassed?” the Salt Lake City Tribune reported the Utah senator asking the crowd of 2,100 delegates at the Maverik Center in West Valley City. “I’m a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last president’s character issues.”
Romney was the sole Republican to vote to impeach Donald Trump twice – for seeking political dirt on opponents from Ukraine and for inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January, before which he told supporters to “fight like hell” in support of his lie that the presidential election was stolen by Joe Biden.
Six other Republican senators voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment.
“You can boo all you like,” Romney told a crowd the Tribune said spat insults “like so many poison darts”.
“I’ve been a Republican all my life. My dad was the governor of Michigan and I was the Republican nominee for president in 2012.”
Stephan: The Covid-19 pandemic has stressed the American illness profit system and this has revealed its fundamental failure. Here are some of the facts of this failure. It should be very obvious to anyone who isn't benefiting from this profit-first system that it needs to be changed from the ground up into a universal birthright healthcare system based on creating wellbeing not just producing profit.
Wheeling out the dead from Covid-19, on stretchers to container morgues at the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York City. Credit: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty
In calculating its human toll, a pandemic is similar to a war. The most precise way public health researchers can get a handle on the impact of something like COVID-19 is to compare the number of total deaths recorded in a specific place during the pandemic with death tallies from prior years.
That analysis will yield a figure known as “excess deaths” — which simply means deaths above and beyond what would normally be expected.
That figure captures not just COVID-19 deaths, but the number of people who were unable to access health care at a moment in their lives when a chronic condition was becoming life-threatening. It also includes individuals whose primary cause of death may have been something else, but who were also infected with COVID-19.
And now that the dust has settled and the data are being tabulated, America’s excess death numbers over the past year are staggering.
The importance of tabulating such a dark statistic is twofold: its record-breaking nature is due […]
