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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 simply cannot understand how the Republican senators go home and look at themselves in their bathroom mirror. How do they live with themselves? How do you know that millions of people are on the brink of life-altering catastrophes, and you have recently given billions of dollars to your fellow uber-rich, but you are so nasty, so callous, that you block $2,000 from going to ordinary Americans? And that leads me to ask, Americans how do you justify voting to put these people into power?
Mitch McConnell and a band of Republican orcs. Credit: AFP/Nicholas Kamm
On MSNBC Tuesday, anchor Mehdi Hasan tore into Senate Republicans, noting that the top ten richest of them either oppose the increased stimulus, or are only now coming around to it to echo outgoing President Donald Trump.
“In a year when America’s billionaires grew their wealth by a trillion dollars, McConnell and his merry band of multimillionaire GOP colleagues in the Senate denied an attempt to send $2,000 checks to ordinary Americans,” said Hasan. “McConnell blocked the relief measure from coming to the Senate floor for a vote, even though it passed in the House, even though the Republican president is on board with it, even though a majority of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support it. But the Majority Leader and his super-wealthy friends said no.”
You should know who these people are. Our representatives, who are making life-altering decisions while living very different lives to the rest of us,” said Hasan. “These are the top ten wealthiest Republicans in the senate. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, along with […]
Stephan: I am really tired of what is happening in this country, fed-up with the lack of compassion, the social priorities that do not make wellbeing a priority. The racism and police brutality that I read about every day. The callous stupidity. If those of us who want to see a society based on a functioning democracy that fosters wellbeing do not become agents of change we are soon going to find ourselves in a very dark world.
Signs fill Broadwayon the one year anniversary of Tamir Rice’s death at the hands of the Cleveland police. Credit: Andy Katz/Pacific Press/LightRocket/Getty
Black children were six times more likely to be shot to death by the police than their White peers over a 16-year period, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics that offers support for a disparity long-highlighted by activists.Hispanic children were three times more likely to be shot to death than White children, the study found.”The results are not surprising, but that doesn’t take away from the tragedy of these results,” lead researcher Dr. Monika K. Goyal told CNN. “When we see that this extends to children, it makes this issue even more tragic.”
Stephan: When your Justice Department does not serve justice democracy cannot survive.
Tamir Rice
President Donald Trump’s Justice Department decided that it wouldn’t prosecute the police who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was playing in a local park when police opened fire on him.
According to the Associated Press the Justice Department the video that showed Rice playing when officers killed him was “too poor a quality” for prosecutors to make a conclusion about what happened.
“In closing the case, the department brought to an end a long-running investigation into a high-profile shooting that helped galvanize the Black Lives Matter movement and that became part of the national dialogue about police use of force against minorities, including children,” said the AP. The decision, revealed in a lengthy statement, does not condone the officers’ actions but rather says the cumulative evidence was not enough to support a federal criminal civil rights prosecution.”
Stephan: As he prepares to depart Trump is doing everything he can, from environmental to financial policies, everything he can do by Executive Order, to screw average Americans, and about 35% of them are so dim and addled they can't see it. Here is what he has done to Elizabeth Warren's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Get ready for housing crash 2.0. Families are being targeted once more with predatory mortgages. But this time the agency once charged with protecting borrowers has lessened restrictions on lenders and limited the period during which consumers can defend against foreclosures.
As most of the Trump administration is heading out the door, a holdout regime at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has rushed out two rules that will strait-jacket borrowers and protect lenders.
“Combined, the new CFPB rules likely will lead to more foreclosures while letting mortgage lenders off the hook for peddling loans that people cannot afford to pay over the long term,” said a National Consumer Law Center attorney, Alys Cohen.
The bureau is making it easier for lenders to push costly loans onto homebuyers while severely limiting the time financially troubled borrowers have to fight foreclosures.
The CFPB rewrote a requirement that loan payments not exceed 43% of a household’s income with a much looser “ability-to-pay” requirement for new “qualified mortgage” loans. The bureau also created a new category of “seasoned” qualified mortgages, […]
Stephan: As the days after the election wind down it becomes ever clearer that we have had a crime family in the White House, like something out of the Godfather only more vulgar and nastier.
Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty
The 24 pardons that Donald Trump granted last week drew a lot of attention, but no one seemed to notice the message Trump sent by not issuing pardons. Trump’s choices made it clear that he is a white-collar crime boss.
Trump pardoned four mercenaries who murdered Iraqi civilians, but not Jeremy Ridgeway the soldier-for-hire who plead guilty to manslaughter, testified against the others, and was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison
Trump pardoned Roger Stone, his dirty trickster confidant; General Michael Flynn his national security adviser who was on the Kremlin payroll; and his 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort, but not Manafort deputy Rick Gates, who turned state’s evidence and confessed to his crimes.
He also pardoned Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor convicted of trying to sell a Senate seat. But there was no pardon for Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, and longtime fixer who confessed to committing felonies at the direction of unindicted coconspirator “Individual 1,” identified in federal court as Trump.
A future president could use the pardon power to protect […]
Stephan: It tells you a lot about the Trump family that Donald Trump's sons are big game killers. I have always thought big game hunting for trophies is a disgusting and immoral activity and have never killed any animal with a gun. The fact -- that's right the fact -- is there is nothing sporting about hunting animals, whether they are lions or bunnies.
The only justification for doing so, in my opinion, is if you need their bodies for meat to feed yourself and your family. And I say this as a veteran who the Army tried to turn into a sniper because my marksmanship, as a result of my constant competitive shooting, was the highest they had seen in the proceeding two years (Happily, I became a medic). Anyone who knows how to competently use his weapon, and has the appropriate weapon, can kill any animal. There is no sport in it. You might as well shoot a cow in a field, or a squirrel in your driveway.
Trump’s disgusting cretinous sons bragging they killed an endangered animal
More than 1.7 million animals have been slaughtered in the past decade
Wealthy hunters are competing to kill the most highly prized creatures
Some hunters are even shooting pigs from helicopters in latest US craze
Bloodthirsty trophy-hunters are killing one animal every three minutes, a damning exposé of the industry has revealed.
More than 1.7 million animals, including lions, elephants and endangered rhinos, have been slaughtered in the past decade, with wealthy hunters competing to kill the most highly prized creatures.
The devastating figures have emerged in a book which highlights the links between the £300 million-a-year industry and powerful global elites.
Trophy Leaks: Top Hunters And Industry Secrets, by Eduardo Goncalves, also reveals the latest craze among American hunters is to shoot pigs from fast, low-flying helicopters. It claims that:
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is a member of a breeding programme that has raked in millions of pounds selling rare animals to trophy-hunters;
Almost 800 hunters have won the ‘African Big 5’ prize, an industry award for killing at least one lion, elephant, leopard, a […]
Stephan: Yet another proof of Schwartz' first and second laws of climate change. First Law: Whatever is predicted the change will be worse than predicted. Second Law: Whatever time frame is predicted will occur faster than predicted.
Since the end of the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago, Sea levels have risen dramatically, sometimes at a very fast pace. Chart by John Englander
Of the many threats from climate change, sea-level rise will most certainly be among the most impactful, making hundreds of thousands of square miles of coastline uninhabitable and potentially displacing over 100 million people worldwide by the end of the century. This threat is a top concern for national security experts because forced migration poses significant risks to international security and stability.
The magnitude of this threat depends heavily on how much the oceans rise in the coming decades. But because of the complex dynamics of massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, exact estimates remain elusive, ranging from just over a foot to several feet above current levels. That disparity is the difference between tens of millions of people forced from their homes or a much more unmanageable hundreds of millions displaced.
Stephan: We are a nation in crisis because our entire political system has broken down. We no longer have a two-party system with each party committed to democracy. Now we have one party still supportive of democracy and another party in conflict with itself, mostly dedicated to White supremacist christofascist authoritarianism. Worse yet, there is a large percentage of Americans who seem to support the end of democracy in the United States, although they would never admit that. As with their religion, they keep the words and forms, but not the substance.
This year, 2021, I think is going to be the year when we either recommit to democracy or slide into christofascist authoritarianism, and the great American experiment ends. The country will go on, slowly disintegrating, but it will not be the America we have known. Georgia will give us a first look revealing which way it is going. The choice is up to each of us, as to which side we are on.
Trump supporters outside of the Georgia State Capitol Building in Atlanta in November 2020. Credit: Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire
Republican lawmakers in key states that President-elect Biden won have vowed to crack down on voting reforms implemented amid the coronavirus pandemic that made it easier for Americans to vote, according to AP.
Why it matters: The popular reforms contributed to this year’s record turnout and did not produce widespread fraud as claimed by President Trump and his supporters, according to the Department of Justice.
Context: Attorney General Bill Barr told AP in early December that the department did not uncover evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
The big picture:
Georgia: Republicans in Georgia, which Biden narrowly won, have proposed requiring a photo ID when voting absentee, a ban on drop boxes and requiring an excuse for mail voting.
Georgia’s two U.S. Senate runoffs in January will take place under current law.
Pennsylvania: Republicans, who hold a majority in both Pennsylvania legislative chambers, are discussing changing a law that extends mail voting to […]
