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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: You remember a week ago I ran a story about the poor readiness of Air Force planes. Well here is the Navy's version of that story. The United States spends more on its military than the next seven highest nations in the world combined. And you this is what we get. The military-industrial complex and Eisenhower called it has too much money and too little competence. This is not a problem caused by the soldiers and sailors this is the politicians and the corporations who buy them like cattle.
USS Gerald R. Ford Credit: Seapower Magazine
Aircraft takeoff and landing systems on the USS Gerald R. Ford remain unreliable and break down too often more than three years after the $13.2 billion carrier was delivered, according to the Pentagon’s top tester.
The latest assessment of the costliest warship ever built “remains consistent” with previous years, director of testing Robert Behler said in his new summary of the program obtained by Bloomberg News before its release in an annual report.
“Poor or unknown reliability of new technology systems critical for flight operations,” including its $3.5 billion electromagnetic launch system and advanced arresting gear, could “adversely affect” the carrier’s ability to generate sorties, he said.
The Ford’s new systems — which propel planes off the deck and into the sky and then snag them on landing — are crucial to justifying the expense of what’s now a four-vessel, $57 billion program intended to replace the current Nimitz class of aircraft carriers.
The Ford class is also the backbone of the Navy’s aspirations to expand its fleet from 297 vessels today to 355 and then almost 500 by […]
Stephan: What I don't understand is why Bill Barr has not been disbarred? The problem with the American government is that there is no accountability. When you get to a certain level things that would put ordinary people in jail for decades produce no accountable response.
William Barr the don’s personal consigliere
Call it the last stand of the confederacy: a Republican administration attempting to roll back decades of civil rights protections for American citizens. Before he left office, former Attorney General Bill Barr submitted a regulatory change to the White House that would narrow the department’s enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the provision that strips federal funding away from entities discriminating against people of color and other groups, including women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people. The rule change would mean the civil rights division would only enforce the cases where it could prove intentional discrimination, getting rid of the “disparate impact” rule.
That rule is based on the legal doctrine that a policy is discriminatory if it adversely impacts a group based on that group’s race, color, religion, sex, and, more expansively, sexual orientation. It’s been applied in education, housing, transportation, health care—essentially every facet of government policy by previous administrations, but especially expanded under former President Barack Obama. Trump has been chipping away […]
Stephan: One of my main takeaways from the insurrection and, indeed the last four years, is that something must be done about the disinformation and propaganda operations that have taken over the public forum. Facebook has now banned Trump for life, but why wasn't this done years ago? The answer, of course, is that in hours Trump will cease to have the power to harm these corporate interests, whereas previously he could have.
I don't think for a minute that this is the end of Trumper terrorism for the reasons this article lays out. That is one of the reasons that accountability is so imporant.
“If you don’t bother to pause and learn a single thing from it, from your citizens storming your Capitol building, then you’re a fool,” Fox News prime-time star Tucker Carlson said Wednesday night.
While his comments were a typical bad-faith jab at elites, he’s absolutely right. But there’s been no soul-searching on his network after violent insurrectionists tried to prevent the U.S. Congress from confirming President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump, no on-air consideration of the role Carlson and his colleagues played in inciting that mob.
The pro-Trump insurrectionists, egged on by the president, invaded the Capitol because they had been lied to. Trump, his congressional allies, and his propagandists at Fox and elsewhere had all spent weeks whipping them up with conspiracy theories about massive election fraud that had “rigged” the election in favor of Biden and stolen it from Trump. They bear responsibility for the horrific, lethal results.
Instead, Fox’s most prominent personalities spent Wednesday […]
Stephan: This Pew Research study I think should be taken very seriously. First, Congress is not reflective of the general populace. Second, a large percentage of the Christian Republicans, and this is an aspect this study mentions but does not address, are really White supremacist christofascists voted into office by Red state voters. Particularly in the Senate this is a lurking problem that is going to make things very difficult for Biden and Harris.
When it comes to religious affiliation, the 117th U.S. Congress looks similar to the previous Congress but quite different from Americans overall.
While about a quarter (26%) of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated – describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – just one member of the new Congress (Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz.) identifies as religiously unaffiliated (0.2%).
Nearly nine-in-ten members of Congress identify as Christian (88%), compared with two-thirds of the general public (65%). Congress is both more heavily Protestant (55% vs. 43%) and more heavily Catholic (30% vs. 20%) than the U.S. adult population overall.
Members of Congress also are older, on average, than U.S. adults overall. At the start of the 116th Congress, the average representative was 57.6 years old, and the average senator was 62.9 years old.1 Pew Research Center surveys have found that adults in that age range are more likely to be Christian than the general public (74% of Americans ages 50 to 64 are Christian, compared with 65% of all Americans ages 18 and older). Still, Congress is more heavily Christian even than […]
Stephan: Racism has been a cancer in American culture since the beginning of the history of Whites in the new world. Like a hereditary disease, it eats away at our social wellbeing in ways great and small, known and unknown. Here is one symptom that I, for one, did not previously know about. Until we cure ourselves of this disease we will never fully become who we can be.
Illustration by Dóra Kisteleki/The Washington Post
Rachel Hardeman has dedicated her career to fighting racism and the harm it has inflicted on the health of Black Americans. As a reproductive health equity researcher, she has been especially disturbed by the disproportionately high mortality rates for Black babies.
In an effort to find some of the reasons behind the high death rates, Hardeman, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and three other researchers combed through the records of 1.8 million Florida hospital births between 1992 and 2015 looking for clues.
They found a tantalizing statistic. Although Black newborns are three times as likely to die as White newborns, when Black babies are delivered by Black doctors, their mortality rate is cut in half.
“Strikingly, these effects appear to manifest more strongly in more complicated cases,” the researchers wrote, “and when hospitals deliver more Black newborns.” They found no similar relationship between White doctors and White births. Nor did they find a difference in maternal death rates when the doctor’s race was the same as the patient’s.
David Fathi, Director of the ACLU National Prison Project - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: As if our insurrection were not bad news enough, now we have this British condemnation of the American gulag. It is my fervent hope that the Biden/Harris administration will seriously undertake to change virtually every social policy created by the Trump/Pence debacle to one that fosters wellbeing.
A supporter of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange holds a banner in central London, 6 January 2021. Credit: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA
Britain refused a request to extradite Julian Assange because US prison conditions might make him suicidal. That’s damning.
What does it say about the humanitarian condition of US prisons and jails when one of the United States’ closest allies refuses to extradite a person for fear that American prison conditions would drive him to suicide?
This is exactly what happened on Monday when a British court ruled against the United States’ extradition request for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange due to concerns that his health and safety cannot be assured in US custody.
The United States fought vigorously to extradite Assange so that he can stand trial for alleged violations of the US Espionage Act, as well as other alleged cyber crimes.
We were dismayed by Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s apparently sympathetic approach to the United States’ legal arguments, and we’re disappointed that the court did not reject the radical theory that foreign publishers can be prosecuted for publishing US secrets. The job of national security journalists is to publish […]
Stephan: I think it is very important that Americans capable of rational thought, particularly my readers, understand just how deranged the christofascist right has become. You watched what happened on Wednesday. You heard the Trumpers chanting. You have seen the stories identifying some of the major christofascist terrorist leaders who were involved. You know the outcome of the election. But in Trumpworld it didn't happen that way. It was Nancy Pelosi and Antifa that tried to pull off a coup to overthrow Trump who had actually won the election.
When you are dealing with that level of derangement, there is no talking it through because one side lives in a different reality. In my opinion what is required is accountability, the public process of identifying, naming, and holding accountable in our democracy's justice system those who actually carried out this insurrection, and then punishing them.
Those on the left have been accusing President Donald Trump of fomenting an insurrection because of the Capitol protest. But Trump never called for violence or a riot.
But these are the same people who for four years tried to take out and undermined the duly elected president of the United States through a false Russia Collusion hoax story. These are the same people who rioted on Trump’s Inauguration Day, attacking and setting fire to thing in Washington, D.C.(By the way, all those arrested in those attacks were ultimately released without any time for their actions). These are the same people who refused to go to his election, calling him illegitimate. These are the same people who ignored attacks on federal buildings for the last several months because they were perpetrated by those on the left, ignored over 700 law enforcement officers being injured and over 32 people being killed. These are the same people who celebrated the BLM […]
Amy Gardner, National Political Reporter - The Washington Post
Stephan: Trump's level of anti-democratic corruption, I think, is so great most people cannot even imagine it. We are not used to someone in high office who doesn't even pretend to care about the country he leads. All he cares about are himself, and his power. It turns out Trump was not only pressuring Georgia's Attorney General Raffensperger to overturn the election, he was also trying a backdoor approach. Here is the story. Trump is a monster, a manifestation of America's darkest Id. Unquestionably the worst president in our history.
President Trump urged Georgia’s lead elections investigator to “find the fraud” in a lengthy December phone call, saying the official would be a “national hero,” according to an individual familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the conversation.
Trump placed the call to the investigations chief for the Georgia secretary of state’s office shortly before Christmas — while the individual was leading an inquiry into allegations of ballot fraud in Cobb County, in the suburbs of Atlanta, according to people familiar with the episode.
The president’s attempts to intervene in an ongoing investigation could amount to obstruction of justice or other criminal violations, legal experts said, though they cautioned a case could be difficult to prove.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had launched the inquiry following allegations that Cobb election officials had improperly accepted mail ballots with signatures that did not match those on file — claims that state officials ultimately concluded had no merit.
In an interview with The Washington Post on Friday, Raffensperger confirmed that Trump had placed […]
