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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: I am beginning to see assessments of Congress popping up in a wide range of publications. And I certainly agree about the mediocrity of most of the Congress in both houses. But I have a slightly different take from this and other commentaries. People like Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are in office because Americans voted them into those offices. The solution is obviously to vote them out in 2022. Will that happen? Perhaps surprisingly, I am mildly optimistic. Because Biden and his administration are making real and serious policy moves to foster wellbeing, by 2022 we should see some substantive results. Maybe that will wake up enough Americans that we can get back on track.
These are the types of adjectives that every so often—the interval between episodes never lasts long—are inspired by one story or another about this or that member of Congress.
As it happens, we are in one of those seasons again. Perhaps you long ago relinquished your faith that most lawmakers are decent, conscientious, responsible people who are concerned first and above all with legislating in the public interest, and only then turn their attentions to their own earthly appetites.
Even so, some of these recent cases are out there: allegations of underage sex trafficking, unwanted public groping, resume-padding, and other manifestations of human weakness and depravity.
One useful thing about extreme behavior, however, is that it can help illuminate prevailing norms—the non-extreme, perfectly ordinary reality. So at a time when a lot of recent coverage of lawmakers revolves around allegations, or documented evidence, of unacceptable behavior, it seemed in a peculiar way an apt moment to look at Congress through the prism of a different noun: Mediocrity.
As an informal poll, I recently asked a bunch of people […]
Stephan: People, including many scientists, who believe we have worked out how nature works, are in for a surprise; a new fundamental force has been detected. Here is a general audience presentation on what has been discovered.
Scientists working at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois have made some of the most important discoveries in physics over the years, including the existence of the top quark and characterizing the neutrino. Now, the team working on Fermilab’s Muon g−2 experiment has reported a tantalizing hint of a new type of physics, according to the BBC. If confirmed, this would become the fifth known fundamental force in the universe.
Our current understanding of particle physics is called the Standard Model, which we know is an incomplete picture of the universe. Concepts like the Higgs boson and dark energy don’t fully integrate with the Standard Model, and the Muon g−2 might eventually help us understand why. The key to that breakthrough could be the behavior of the muon, a subatomic particle similar to an electron. The muon has a negative charge, but it’s much more massive. So, it spins like a magnet, which is what points to a possible new branch of physics.
The roots of the Muon g−2 experiment go back to work done at CERN in the late 1950s. However, the instruments available at the time were too imprecise to accurately measure the “g-factor” […]
David J. Lynch, Financial Writer - The Washington Post
Stephan: I don't think most Americans realize quite how competently and strongly Biden and his administration are fostering wellbeing, not only in the United States but throughout the world. Nor do most people seem to realize just how incompetently and badly Trump and the Republicans damaged not only the U.S. economy but the world economy.
The robust U.S. economic recovery this year is expected to be good news for factory workers, freight handlers and farmers.
Factory workers in China. Freight handlers in the Netherlands. And farmers in Germany.
Amid steady progress with coronavirus vaccinations, the U.S. economy is gathering so much steam that its gains will not stay at home. Demand for goods and services this year is expected to spill well beyond U.S. borders, making the United States the largest single contributor to global growth for the first time since 2005, according to Oxford Economics.
The U.S. ascent ends — at least for now — China’s long reign as the principal engine powering the $90 trillion global economy.
Free spending by the Biden administration — coupled with the Federal Reserve’s ultralow interest rates — is driving the nascent U.S. boom and lifting other countries, where governments have not responded as aggressively to the pandemic. As Americans spent their $600government stimulus checks in January on furniture, laptops and clothing, the U.S. imported a record $221 […]
Stephan: Unions were instrumental in creating the American middle class. Along with Franklin Roosevelt's policies designed to foster wellbeing they transformed the peasants of America, into doctors, professors, and entrepreneurs whose small businesses transformed the U.S. landscape. But now workers don't seem to understand the role of unions, and the Republican Party from the beginnings of unions, financed by the growing class of uber-rich has opposed them. The question for American workers is: Do you organize and speak collectively as one, or do you have your individual lives defined by your corporate masters to their benefit?
People hold pro-worker signs and rally outside a Whole Foods Market after marching from Amazon headquarters in solidarity with Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama on March 26, 2021. Credit: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty
The decades-long assault on organized labor by corporations and their allies in government resulted in a dramatic erosion of union membership that cost the median U.S. worker $3,250 per year between 1979 and 2017, according to a new report released Thursday morning by the Economic Policy Institute.
The report estimates that the percentage of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements fell from 27% in 1979 to just 11.6% in 2019, a drop that had a direct impact on the wages of unionized workers and “spillover” consequences for non-unionized workers, who benefit from strong union density.
“Rebuilding collective bargaining is a necessary component of any policy agenda to reestablish robust wage growth for the vast majority of workers in the United States.” —Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute
EPI distinguished fellow Lawrence Mishel, the lead author of the new report, estimates that “for the ‘typical’ or median worker, declining unionization translates to a […]
Stephan: One of the most powerful negative social trends we are experiencing in the U.S. is the transformation of Christianity into White supremacy christofascism. People self-righteously posturing and judging others, quoting Jesus, and then supporting and participating in things in direct opposition to his teachings. Here is an example of what I mean.
When I ask Heather Wilson and Jacob Wells, the founders of GiveSendGo, the “#1 Free Christian Crowdfunding Site,” whether they would host a fundraising campaign for the Ku Klux Klan, the call goes dead for a few seconds.
“Some of these campaigns are situational,” Wells finally offered.
“It would depend on what they were raising money for,” Wilson said.
The pair are siblings in their 40s, just two in a family of 12 children who grew up in Salem, N.H. Along with their sister Emmalie, they founded GiveSendGo in 2014 because, as a 2017 blog post put it, “Gofundme has taken a stance against Christians and has been taking down campaigns that they did not agree with.” The idea, Wells said, was not just to run a profitable business but to create a community where both givers and receivers could be inspired by the hope of Jesus. On the site’s clean, spare interface, the “Share Now” button is supplemented with a “Pray Now” button, allowing users to offer their devotions with a click.
On GiveSendGo, where “the most valuable currency is God’s […]
Stephan: The disinformation trend is one of the greatest corruptors of American democracy. Mostly it gets discussed and analyzed from the perspective of how disinformation operations like Fox and InfoWars manipulate Americans as if they were passive ignorant easily manipulated children. The reality, however, is that as our society changes there is a large percentage of White Americans who motivated by hate and resentment brought on by these changes actively seek out purveyors of such disinformation because it confirms and supports their biases.
The way to deal with this is to foster wellbeing at every level so that those biases are marginalized and become irrelevant.
President Donald J. Trump participates in a town hall interview taping with Sean Hannity of Fox News Thursday, June 25, 2020, at Green Bay-Austin Struble International Airport in Green Bay, Wis. Credit: Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour
Perhaps it was inevitable, but now it’s certain: Three months out from the violent insurrection Donald Trump incited at the U.S. Capitol, the majority of Republican voters have settled on a story that they can use to justify supporting what Trump and the rioters did. According to a poll released this week by Reuters and Ipsos, belief in conspiracy theories about the insurrection is widespread among Republican voters, with 55% claiming to “agree” or “somewhat agree” that the rioters were really “antifa” in disguise. Another 51% of Republican respondents agree or somewhat agree that the rioters — who look to have killed one police officer, violently assaulted hundreds of others, and were chanting “hang Mike Pence” as they ransacked the Capitol — “were mostly peaceful, law-abiding Americans.” And a full 60% agree or somewhat […]
Stephan: Finally, someone in authority telling the truth about America's gun psychosis and offering a path to dealing with this addiction. In 2020, 19,379 men, women, and children died of gun deaths. It's hard to remember when the flag was not flying at half staff. Biden is correct, it is, and should be, an embarrassment.
Biden speaking out about guns and the Second Amendment on 8 April 2021. Credit:Kevin Lemarque | Reuters
President Biden announced a series of executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence, while urging Congress to pass broader gun-control legislation.
The actions were unveiled in the wake of a recent spate of mass shootings across the country, including a deadly attack Thursday in South Carolina.
The actions direct the Justice Department to craft a rule addressing untraceable “ghost guns” and to publish example “red flag” legislation for states.
Biden also called for a national red-flag law.
President Joe Biden announced a series of executive actions on Thursday to reduce gun violence and urged Congress to pass broader gun-control legislation.
The bundle of actions, Biden’s first attempt as president to tackle the fraught politics surrounding guns in America, was unveiled in the wake of a recent spate of mass shootings across the country, including Thursday in South Carolina, where five people were gunned down. In the past three weeks, other deadly mass shootings occurred in Georgia, Colorado and California.
Stephan: To show you how bad the gun death epidemic has become, as horrible as this article is, it is only current to 1 April. We have had three more killings since this article was published, three just today.
Two weeks have passed since the three Atlanta-area spa shootings claimed the lives of eight people, and in that time at least 20 other mass shootings have taken place.
The incidents have stretched from California to Washington, DC, and many have left multiple victims dead, CNN reported.
At least seven mass shootings occurred in the week between the attacks in Atlanta and in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. In the week that followed, that number more than doubled.
CNN defines a mass shooting as a shooting incident that results in four or more casualties (dead or wounded), excluding the shooter(s).
Five people were shot in Washington, the DC Police Department said. The incident started as a dispute and ended with two people dead and three injured.
March 28: Cleveland, Ohio
Seven people were shot at a Cleveland nightclub, according to CNN affiliate WOIO. The victims, four men and three women, were all between 20 and 30 years old, and police believe several shooters fired inside the nightclub, the station […]
