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.
FRED PEARCE , Contributing Writer - Yale Environment 360
Stephan:
Albania is on the verge of making a dreadfully bad decision about its environmental future because of greed stimulated by Jared Kushner and his partners. The Trump family has no ethics and no concern for the wellbeing of the Matrix of Life. As they show us again and again, they care only about profit and power. I increasingly see them as the personification of the worse aspects of human consciousness. That doesn’t excuse the Albanian leadership, but it is very revealing about the Trump family.
The outer edge of the Nartë lagoon in Vlorë, Albania. Credit: Yuriy Brykakylo / Alamy
It is the jewel of the Adriatic. Its shimmering waters feed a rare colony of Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest freshwater birds, sustain the endangered Albanian water frog, and host loggerhead turtles on its encircling dunes. The Nartë lagoon is at the heart of the extensive and largely unspoiled delta of Albania’s Vjosë River, which researchers consider Europe’s most intact large river delta.
But that accolade won’t save it. The Vjosë delta and its lagoon are under siege. They are set to become the victims of a series of massive coastal tourist developments, partly bankrolled by a company set up by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The hotels and luxury villas will accommodate up to a million visitors arriving annually at a new international airport currently being built on salt marshes around the lagoon.
Until the fall of the Iron Curtain that walled off communist Eastern Europe from the capitalist West, Albania was the 20th century equivalent […]
Robert Reich, The Carmel P. Friesen Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. - AlterNet
Stephan:
Robert Reich has just published his version of The Great Schism Trend that I have been talking about for the last decade. We are essentially in complete agreement. Now the questions are: Will Americans awaken to what is happening by November? And, what is going to happen to the United States over the next decade as people wake up to the fact that we have become two countries?
Members of far-right groups marching in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017 Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Despite the popularity of the recent movie “Civil War,” we’re not on the verge of a second one. But we are separating into so-called “red” and “blue.” And if Trump is reelected president, he’ll hasten the separation.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade left the issue of abortion to the states, one out of three women of childbearing age now lives in a state that makes it nearly impossible to get an abortion.
And while red states are making it harder than ever to get abortions, they’re making it easier than ever to buy guns.
Red states are also banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in education. Florida’s Board of Education recently prohibited public colleges from using state and federal funds for DEI. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a law to require that all state-funded colleges and universities close their DEI offices.
Red states are suppressing votes. In Florida and Texas, teams of “
More and more of these horrible stories about women in Red states not getting the healthcare they need keep coming out. I picked this one not only because it proves what the Republicans have done to women’s healthcare in the states they control but also because it is from a British paper, and it gives one a sense of how the rest of the world now sees America. We are coming across as an increasingly unattractive country, and that is going to have long-term consequences.
Breanna Cecil and her husband in 2021 Credit: Handout
A Tennessee woman who was denied an abortion despite a fatal abnormality says the state’s anti-abortion laws resulted in her losing an ovary, a fallopian tube and her hopes for a large family.
“The state of Tennessee took my fertility from me,” Breanna Cecil, 34, told The Independent. She added that state lawmakers “took away my opportunity to have a family like my own biological family because of these horrible laws that they put in place.”
The mother-of-one said she has not felt the same since her doctor told her in January 2023 that her fetus was diagnosed with acrania, a fatal condition where the fetus has no skull bones.
Then, 12 weeks pregnant, Ms Cecil was getting her first ultrasound. She attended the appointment alone, so when the doctor told her the fetus was not viable outside the womb, she was left with only asking the doctor what she should do.
However, she was left with few options. The state’s
BRENDAN BORDELON, Tech Lobbying and Influence Reporter - Politico
Stephan:
Here we see once again the corruption of the U.S. Congress, and how this country gets into the terrible situations in which it so frequently finds itself. Instead of developing policies that foster wellbeing, once again Congress is whoring itself out to lobbying money. They are creating policy based not on facts, they are making policy on the basis of corporate profits. As a result, the future of our children may be severely damaged because of decisions based on greed.
The new influence web is pushing the argument that AI is less an existential danger than a crucial business opportunity. Credit: AP
In a shift for Washington tech lobbying, companies and investors from across the industry have been pouring tens of millions of dollars into an all-hands effort to block strict safety rules on advanced artificial intelligence and get lawmakers to worry about China instead — and so far, they seem to be winning over once-skeptical members of Congress.
The success of the pro-tech, anti-China AI push, fueled by several new arrivals on the lobbying scene, marks a change from months in which the AI debate was dominated by well-funded philanthropies warning about the long-term dangers of the technology.
The new influence web is pushing the argument that AI is less an existential danger than a crucial business opportunity, and arguing that strict safety rules would hand America’s AI edge to China. It has already caused key lawmakers to back off some of their more worried rhetoric about the technology.
Grotesque wealth inequality has become a major social force shaping the United States and much of the rest of the world. Here is a very good take on this reality.
In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, residents in unplanned settlements live just blocks away from wealthy suburbs. Credit: Viviane Moos / Corbis / Getty
BOOK:Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme WealthIngrid Robeyns Allen Lane (2024)
As radical as they might seem, calls for limits on wealth are as old as civilization itself. The Hebrew Bible and Torah recognized years during which debts should be cancelled, slaves set free and property redistributed from rich to poor. In classical Greece, Aristotle praised cities that kept wealth inequality in check to enhance political stability. And in 1942, then-US president Franklin D. Roosevelt argued that annual incomes should be capped at the current equivalent of US$480,000.
In Limitarianism, Dutch and Belgian economist and philosopher Ingrid Robeyns argues that it’s time for twenty-first-century governments to do the same. She explores what setting limits on wealth ownership might mean, and why our societies should want to do so. It is a fresh take on a much-needed discussion at a time when, for example, the richest 1% of the US […]
Here is a recent report on the state of America’s Illness Profit System. It isn’t good, things that were already bad are getting worse. As the report lays out it is all about the social status of the patient and money. The United States has the worst and most expensive pseudo-healthcare system in the world. And, because the healthcare industry rents through lobbying funding most Congress members like hookers at a politic conference, except for a few ethical members like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Katie Porter, not many are even trying to do anything about this.
Illustration: Lindsey Bailey / Axios
For the decade-ish that I’ve been reporting on health care, insurance coverage has dominated conversations about who has access to care. But in the post-pandemic era, it’s become clear that having insurance is only the first step toward receiving quality care.
Why it matters: Where Americans live, their health status and a range of socioeconomic factors increasingly determine their experience with the health care system, and in many cases that experience appears to be getting worse.
Affordability, while critical, isn’t synonymous with access. Long wait times for doctor appointments, crowded emergency departments, complicated insurance requirements and a dearth of local providers are all making things tougher on patients.
For many people, whether they can get the care they need when they need it seems to come down to the luck of the draw.
State of play: Provider shortages and a post-pandemic surge in demand for care have played a large role in today’s squeeze.
Here is further information on the absolute corruptness of criminal Trump. (And yes, I say criminal Trump given all his convictions for rape, and fraud, what else should he be called.) The carbon industry CEOs who went down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss criminal Trump’s ass and to whine about how ineffective the $400 million they spent on Congressional whores last year were told as blatantly as you could imagine: Spend a billion dollars to get me elected and I will gut all the programs designed to prepare for what climate change is doing. Screw the people of America, I don’t care about any of them. All I care about is getting elected so I don’t go to prison even if I am found guilty. That is the Republican Party’s candidate for president, and I assume it will cheer the MAGAts who are now going around wearing diapers. This is the state of the United States of America today.
Former president Donald Trump shakes hands with North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R), who is leading the Trump campaign’s development of its energy policy, at a rally in Laconia, N.H., on Jan. 22. Credit: Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post
As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.
Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because […]
Yet another report on the decline of healthcare for women in states controlled by Republicans. Tracking this trend is one of the saddest American stories I have ever tracked. So much misery for no reason other than prejudice.
Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung spent four years in medical school, four years in an OB-GYN residency, and three years in a maternal-fetal medicine fellowship learning how to care for high-risk pregnant patients. In her decade-plus of medical training, she learned that in some cases, the only rational and responsible option for medical intervention is an emergency abortion. In July 2021 she moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and discovered she was the sole provider in her area trained to perform second-trimester dilatation and evacuation abortions for patients who needed them to survive.
But in 2022, the Supreme Court delivered its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, and Tennessee’s trigger ban—written in preparation for the possibility that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe—went into effect a month later. Suddenly, providing an abortion in Tennessee became an immediate Class C felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. There were no exceptions, even when an abortion was necessary to save a life or prevent serious bodily harm. Only after being arrested could a physician provide something called an “affirmative defense” to fight the charges. (Eight months after the trigger law took effect, the […]
