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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.
Stephen Groves, Reporter - The Washington Post/Associated Press
Stephan: South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem has proven again and again she is an incompetent Trumper. Now it becomes clear she is also another Republican grifter. It has gotten to a point where I wonder if it is possible for the party to back anyone for office who isn't ethical scum. It seems to be a requirement.
This story is the latest on Noem, and it is particularly disgusting. Noem is so obviously incompetent one can only ask, what were the people of South Dakota thinking? Were they thinking? Can they think?
South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem speaking at CPAC. Credita: John Raoux/Associated Press
PIERRE, SOUTH DAKOTA — Family members of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem received more than $600,000 in funds from a state grant program pushed by the governor that directed federal coronavirus relief funds to small businesses.
A ranch belonging to Noem’s family, Racota Valley Ranch Partnership, received one payment of $500,000, and a business operated by her brothers, Rock and Robb Arnold, received payments of just over $100,000, according to records on the grant program.
The Legislature approved the grant plan in October, but the family businesses benefitted from adjustments the Republican governor made. The plan initially capped grants at $100,000, but later in the month, with plentiful federal funds at their disposal, Noem’s administration adjusted the grant cap to $500,000. The governor also later opened up a second round of grant applications to businesses hurt by the pandemic from September to November.
A total of 126 businesses across the state — less than 4% of grant applicants — received grants of $500,000. Some received even more because they […]
Stephan: There is a growing amount of discussion in both the scientific and popular media about sea rise. Far less about the weight of cities compacting the soil upon which they are built to compress and cause them to sink. Here is a good introduction to this topic.
The primary paper upon which this report is based, The Weight of Cities: Urbanization Effects on Earth's Subsurface
Credit: Alexander Spatari/Moment/Getty
Cities don’t just have sea level rises to worry about – they’re also slowly sinking under the weight of their own development, according to new research, which emphasises the importance of factoring subsidence into models of climate change risk.
Geophysicist Tom Parsons, from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) agency, looked at San Francisco as a case study of how large urban developments could be affecting and depressing the actual surface of the Earth.
By his calculations, San Francisco might have sunk as much as 80 millimetres (3.1 inches) as the city has grown over time. Considering the Bay Area is under threat from as much as 300 mm (11.8 inches) of sea level rise by 2050, the extra variation added by slow subsidence is significant enough to be concerning.
“As global populations move disproportionately toward the coasts, this additional subsidence in combination with expected sea level rise may exacerbate risk associated with inundation,” writes Parsons in his paper.
Taking into account an inventory of all the buildings in […]
Stephan: One in seven children in the United States has hunger issues. One in seven. Forty seven percent of the American population is over 65, and nearly 14% of them are in poverty. As Jackson, Louisiana proves America's infrastructure, much of it built nearly or over 100 years ago is coming apart. Jackson has been without potable water, or any water, for 16 days.
Yet we have spent trillions, that's TRILLIONS, of dollars on F-35s, a new fighter aircraft, a form of aircraft increasingly irrelevant to military strategy, and in any case the plane is a dud.
The reality, which few Americans can even conceptualize, is that we spend more on our defense budget than the next highest defense budgets of the next seven nations COMBINED. What could possibly justify that? Why corporate profits of course. American defense contractors are amongst the highest profit corporations in the world. We are a very sick fearful country.
F-35
Somehow the United States has managed to develop a fighter jet for all three services — the Air Force, Navy and Marines — that goes for $100 million apiece, ran up almost a half-trillion dollars in total development costs, will cost almost $2 trillion over the life of the plane, and yet it can’t be flown safely.
Top eight defense budgets by nation
How did this happen, you ask? Well, it’s a long, complicated story, but basically it involves taking something that’s supposed to do one thing and do it well, like take off from the ground and fly really fast, and adding stuff like being able to take off and land on an aircraft carrier or hover like a hummingbird.
That’s why they call it the “flying Swiss Army knife.” Have you ever tried to use one of the things? First of all, you can’t find the knife blade, hidden as it is among scissors and […]
Stephan: You wouldn't think that anyone seriously believed that secession by their state was a good idea. But in the fantasy world of Trumperism and QAnon a movement for secession has been growing like a toadstool in the dark. One of the reasons proponents believe this is possible is that people in Red states continue to vote for people like Greg Abbott, Mary Taylor Greene, Ron Johnson, Ron DeSantis, or Kristi Noem. To Trumpers this suggests a voter population so ignorant or racist, hate-filled, and resentful they can be manipulated to vote against their own self-interest. If you can't even vote for your own personal wellbeing, Republican politicians figure, you can be talked into anything as long as your resentments, fears, and prejudices are stimulated.
A man wears a face covering that reads “secede” outside the Texas state capitol on Jan. 16, 2021 in Austin, Texas. Credit: Sergio Flores / Getty
For the past few months, a long-buried idea has been creeping from the fringe into mainstream Republican discourse: secession. Following President Joe Biden’s victory in November, GOP officials from Wyoming to Florida to Mississippi have floated the idea, claiming that the time for a national fracturing may be near. While there’s something of a seasonal flavor to this injection of rhetoric — Republican honchos like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry openly discussed secession following Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency, for instance — the recent rounds feel qualitatively different. As journalist and author Richard Kreitner, an expert on American secessionism, recently wrote, it’s time to “take secessionist talk seriously.”
While there’s something of a seasonal flavor to this injection of secessionist rhetoric the recent rounds feel qualitatively different.
Eric Lipton and Michael Forsythe, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: Have you noticed that Biden has been in office less than two months and there hasn't been a single scandal? In contrast, the Trump administration even out of office is still producing them. There are at least four senior Trump officials, in addition to Trump himself, under active criminal investigation. Elaine Chao, like her husband Mitch McConnell, has a long history as a grifter, someone who uses high-ranking public office principally to enrich themselves, their family and friends. These people have little interest in fostering social and individual wellbeing; they don't see the point in holding office to help ordinary people.
Elaine Chao testifying before a House subcommittee last year. Credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick/TheNew York Times
WASHINGTON — The Transportation Department’s inspector general asked the Justice Department in December to consider a criminal investigation into what it said was Elaine Chao’s misuse of her office as transportation secretary in the Trump administration to help promote her family’s shipping business, which is run by her sister and has extensive business ties with China.
In a report made public on Wednesday, the inspector general said the Justice Department’s criminal and public integrity divisions both declined to take up the matter in the closing weeks of the Trump administration, even after the inspector general found repeated examples of Ms. Chao using her staff and her office to help benefit her family and their business operations and revealed that staff members at the agency had raised ethics concerns.
“A formal investigation into potential misuses of position was warranted,” Mitch Behm, the department’s deputy inspector general, said on Tuesday in a letter to House lawmakers, accompanying a 44-page report detailing the investigation and the findings […]
Stephan: America's tax structure ought to be a national embarrassment; that it isn't tells you a lot about how America is governed. The U.S. tax structure is completely skewed in favor of the rich and to the benefit of corporations, many of which pay little or no taxes at all.
What few seem to realize is that the growth of the American middle class, and the successful economics we think of as American, occurred in the post World War II era when the tax on the rich was as high as 50%. So as history has proven Republican trickle-down economics are crap.
Now Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and some of the other brighter Democrats are proposing a modest tax increase on the uber-rich. Here is a report on what they have in mind. May it be so.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren
KEY POINTS
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democrats on Monday proposed a 2% annual tax on wealth over $50 million, rising to 3% for wealth over $1 billion.
The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act would aim to close the U.S. wealth gap, which has grown wider during the Covid pandemic.
Citing the explosive growth of inequality during the coronavirus crisis—which has followed more than four decades of upward redistribution and concentration of wealth at the top—Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday introduced a bill to tax a small portion of the wealth of the richest 100,000 households in the United States to help fund President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.
“A tax on wealth above $50 million is very popular, and is even more popular when it funds priorities like child care, healthcare, and jobs in our communities.” —Stephanie Taylor, PCCC
“As Congress develops additional plans to help our economy,” Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement, “the wealth tax should be at the top of the list to help pay for these plans because of the huge amounts of […]
Stephan: Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, and Tate Reeves, governor of Mississippi, both Republicans, are incompetent disasters for their states as attested by the appallingly bad social outcome data defining each state. But even by orc standards what they have done, as described by this report is gobsmackingly bad, and it is going to kill people.
Mississippi Republican Governor Tate Reeves
Barely one hour after Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott announced he was lifting all COVID-19 restrictions, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, also a Republican, joined in, tweeting “it is time” to get rid of his state’s mask mandate. Next to a vaccine, wearing a mask is the single most effective action anyone can take to control the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
“Starting tomorrow, we are lifting all of our county mask mandates and businesses will be able to operate at full capacity without any state-imposed rules,” Reeves declared on Twitter, revealing that he has blocked other “lockdown” protocols. “Our hospitalizations and case numbers have plummeted, and the vaccine is being rapidly distributed. It is time!”
Governor Reeves, dubbed a “Trump acolyte” by The New Yorker, early on in the pandemic refused to take any action, and worse, overrode local officials who had ordered lockdowns and other protective measures. Instead, Reeves told Mississippi residents to trust the “power of prayer” over the deadly virus. And then he flew to Europe […]
David Drake and Jeffrey York, Assistant Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Operations Management, University of Colorado Boulder | Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, University of Colorado Boulder - The Conversation
Stephan: Why is coal a dying industry. This article, based on actual research, gives an important answer: Collective intention. As they describe it: "Looking at coal units individually, however, we found that the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, backed by over US$174 million to date from Bloomberg Philanthropies, had the most impact per targeted plant."
The use of coal for electric power has been declining fast in the U.S. Credit:AP Photo/J. David Ake
The big idea
People often point to plunging natural gas prices as the reason U.S. coal-fired power plants have been shutting down at a faster pace in recent years. However, new research shows two other forces had a much larger effect: federal regulation and a well-funded activist campaign that launched in 2011 with the goal of ending coal power.
We studied the retirement of U.S. coal-fired units from January 2008 to September 2016 and compared the effects of various market factors, regulations and activism on their early closure. In all, 348 coal-fired units either retired or switched to natural gas during that time.
Among the many pressures on coal power that we reviewed, a federal regulation implemented in 2015 had the biggest overall effect. The Cross State Air Pollution Rule requires states to reduce soot and smog pollution that blows across states lines, including from power plants. We estimate that it was responsible for reducing the expected production life of the coal power units that […]
