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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.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, Staff Writer - The New Yorker
Stephan:
It is my view that Biden should retire on his laurels which are many, but not the relevant point. This election is not about his ego or his family’s egos; it is about whether the United States remains a democracy. Biden’s answer to George Stephanopoulos’ question about how, given what he knows will happen if criminal Trump wins, he will feel if he loses — I’ll feel I did my best — is appallingly egotistical, and grossly inappropriate and inadequate at this juncture of our nation’s history. If Trump is not defeated, and the MAGAt Party (formerly the Republican Party) is not overwhelmingly defeated in both the House and the Senate, given the complete politicization and corruption of the Supreme Court, the country we have grown up in and known all our lives is going to disappear.
President Biden and his wifeCredit: The New Yorker
Families have long memories. Longer than those of White House correspondents, or communications directors, or cable-news producers. Following Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week, as a loud chorus of pundits and donors—and a few elected Democrats—called for the President to end his reëlection campaign, Biden’s family members have emerged as his most important and perhaps final defenders, drawing on resentments and defenses that extend deep into the President’s personal history.
Speaking with the Times this week, a former adviser to First Lady Jill Biden, Michael LaRosa, focussed on the end of Joe Biden’s 1988 Presidential campaign, which Biden abandoned under pressure after it was revealed he had plagiarized a speech from Neil Kinnock, the leader of the U.K. Labour Party, about his personal experience of class inequities. “In 1987, she saw him be forced out by the press, pundits and polls, and it really was a scarring experience for both of them,” LaRosa said. […]
If convicted felon and rapist Trump wins the election you may be sure that the United States will be woefully and miserably unprepared for climate change. Criminal Trump is not smart enough to understand the realities of climate change, and he has whored himself to the carbon industries to get them to give his campaign millions of dollars. If he becomes President again millions of Americans will face complete disruption of their lives misery and death.
The convicted former president speaks at Greenbrier Farms in Chesapeake, Virginia, on June 28. Credit: Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot/ZUMA
When Donald Trumpembarked upon a lengthy complaint at a recent rally about how long it takes to wash his “beautiful luxuriant hair” due to his shower’s low water pressure, he highlighted the expanding assault he and Republicans are launching against even the most obscure environmental policies—a push that’s starting to influence voters.
In his bid to return to the White House, Trump has branded Joe Biden’s attempt to advance electric cars in the US “lunacy,” claiming such vehicles do not work in the cold and that their supporters should “rot in hell.” He’s called offshore wind turbines “horrible,” falsely linking them to the death of whales, while promising to scrap incentives for both wind and electric cars.
But the former US president and convicted felon, who has openly solicited donations from oil and gas executives in order to follow industry-friendly priorities if re-elected, has also spearheaded a much broader attack on a range of […]
We are watching our nation’s laws be taken apart by the christofascists who control the Supreme Court. This is the only article in the general media I have seen that touches on this, but the professional legal media is aflame with what this political cabal is doing to our justice system. Nothing but a strong Democratic majority in the Senate is going to be able to stop this.
The corrupt christofascist majority dismantling the U.S. justice system. Credit: CNN
The Supreme Court isn’t making it easy to be a law professor these days.
After overturning the 40-year-old Chevron deference last week, the justices threw law curricula for another major loop on Monday with their earth-shaking ruling on presidential immunity — all this just two years after Roe v. Wade was struck down after 50 years on the books.
Law school professors have been meeting to discuss the forthcoming changes to their courses, trying to get their heads around the new legal landscape the conservative-leaning court is creating.
“Administrative law goes through some periods where change is glacial, if at all, and other periods when it’s extremely rapid. The period around the New Deal is a very rapid change, the Nixon administration and immediately afterwards was a period of rapid change and this is now a period of very rapid change,” said David Super, a professor at Georgetown Law. “So if you were to compare a syllabus from three years ago, four years ago, with one from next year, I think you’d see […]
Here is some good news about the advancement of offshore wind, and evidence that the lies promoted by the petroleum industries are nothing more than their usual lies to stop the transition out of the carbon era. Wind power is not harming whales.
The pace of the US offshore wind industry is picking up, despite years of opposition fueled by fossil energy interests. Credit: CleanTechnica
The US offshore wind industry has faced some choppy waters in past years, including demonstrably false accusations of whale-killing and the impact of a maritime law dating back to 1920. Nevertheless, the clouds are clearing. Somewhat ironically, much of the new offshore activity is taking place hard by former President Trump’s old stomping grounds, in the waters of New York and New Jersey.
Offshore Wind Turbines Are Not Killing All Your Whales
The false whale-killing accusations have featured prominently in the activities of local anti-wind groups in New Jersey, though reporters and other observers note that out-of-state fossil energy stakeholders are also at work, including a web of activity supported by the Delaware-based organization Caesar Rodney Institute.
In February of 2023, for example, the news and analysis organization Governing: The Future of States and Localities observed that some of the local opposition groups were “funded by pro-fossil fuel organizations.” Governing pointed out that the group Protect Our Coast New Jersey “solicits […]
A number of you have written to ask me where they can get more information on The Strategy of Beingness.
As it happens I am about to teach a two-week online course on how to use the strategy to become an agent of change fostering wellbeing. You take the course when it is convenient for you during those two weeks, and you can ask questions and I provide answers. It starts on 3 August.
Here is the link to sign up: https://www.glidewing.com/sas/agent_of_change.html
Our lives are being shortened, and we are being killed — the data says this literally — by corporations like 3M — that created and distributed throughout the world “forever chemicals” such as polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Why was this done? For profit of course. In my. opinion, these corporations should be fined billions of dollars and told they must come up with alternatives or go out of business. I urge you to click this link, and look at the podcast, How to Live Longer and in Better Health I just put online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVW9lLavvkA. I think you may be amazed at how dangerous these chemicals are, and how they shorten lives, and the three things you can do to live longer and enjoy better health.
A 3M plant near the Belgian port city of Antwerp was the subject of a 2022 legal settlement over release of “forever chemicals” that degrade only very slowly in the environment and the human body. 3M was one of the main companies that developed and manufactured the chemicals that are now pervasive worldwide. Credit: David Pintens / Belga / AFP / Getty
Common foods including white rice and eggs are linked to higher levels of “forever chemicals” in the body, new research from scientists at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth shows.
The researchers also found elevated levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in people who consumed coffee, red meat, and seafood, based on plasma and breast milk samples of 3,000 pregnant people. The findings, published in Science of the Total Environment, add to the mounting evidence of the accumulation of PFAS, which were developed by chemical companies in the mid-20th century, in the natural environment and the body.
Criminal Trump who is a compulsive liar, I don’t think he would tell you the truth if you asked him the time of day, denies he knows anything about Project 2025, which is the Republican election platform. You would think the media would pick this up and may a significant story about his lie inasmuch as it is what he plans to do to end American democracy, but they aren’t. Personally, I think corporate media is pathetic in its coverage of what is happening to the United States. But that is the reality. Please go to https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf and download Project 2025 and read it. Hitler could have written it. It is that scary. If Trump wins this election, and the Republican Party controls the Congress as they already control the Supreme Court this is what America will become.
The Trump Campaign attempted to distance itself from the conservative Project 2025 playbook on Friday. Despite significant overlap between Project 2025 personnel and staffers from former president Donald Trump’s administration and campaign, Trump issued a statement saying he had “no idea who is behind” the project.
Project 2025 is spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation in partnership with dozens of rightwing advocacy organizations. It has two main components: First, a 900-page manifesto with a wish list for the first 180 days of the “next conservative administration,” including to further restrict abortion access and “dismantle the administrative state.” The second component is an application-only recruitment effort to ensure the administration is quickly staffed with loyalists.
On Friday, Trump disavowed Project 2025 in a post to Truth Social, his social media platform, saying he found unspecified parts of the project “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
“I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” Trump wrote. “Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Trump’s vague disavowal of Project 2025 came a few days after Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, made inflammatory […]
The christofascist cabal that controls the Supreme Court has openly and deliberately skewed the laws to reduce regulatory. oversight and protect corporate profits. This article describes what may happen as a result of several decisions to eliminate regulations. Although the economic data proves it is not the case, the fascist view of the Court, criminal Trump, and the MAGAts, if they even understand what is happening, is that fewer regulations create more profit and economic growth. That is not only not true, but this is about far more than economics. These decisions could prove catastrophic in terms of climate change.
Credit: Celal Gunes / Anadolu / Getty
On Tuesday the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a long-overdue draft standard protecting indoor and outdoor workers from exposure to excessive heat. Forty workers on average die every year from heat exposure. The proposed rule (click here to read the text) requires certain employers to provide workers with 15-minute rest breaks every two hours, to provide drinking water, and to take other commonsense measures.
“It will definitely be challenged” in court if there’s a second Biden administration, Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant labor secretary for OSHA, told me. (If Trump wins, he’ll probably kill the heat standard before it’s issued in final form.) Barab can be certain of that because “every OSHA standard for the past 50 years has been challenged by business interests.” The heat standard “will be the first one to be decided in the post-Chevron era.”
We can’t know, after the Supreme Court’s decision last […]
