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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: Like many of you, I suspect, I was appalled at the lack of courage and ethics on the part of those Republican senators who voted to acquit Donald Trump on a bogus technicality. But then in listening to final comments from McConnell and others I came to share the view of Jonathan Chait who wrote this piece. So, I guess we now wait to see what district attorneys in Georgia and New York do. One thing I am clear about is that history is going to condemn Trump and all his enablers for their lack of integrity. Of course, they don't care. What they care about is power and money, and for them only the here and now matters; that history will see them as loathsome hardly matters, they will be dead.
Donald Trump limped his way to acquittal in his second impeachmenttrial, with 57 senators voting to convict him of inciting insurrection. But it is an ominous sign that not only did many of the senators who did vote to acquit base their position on a technicality — Trump was supposedly ineligible for impeachment as an ex-officeholder, as opposed to not guilty of the crime — they conspicuously pointed toward the court system as a venue for further prosecution.
In front of the bars, for now. Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP/
“The ultimate accountability is through our criminal justice system where political passions are checked,” said Republican senator Thom Tillis, who voted not guilty, “No president is above the law or immune from criminal prosecution, and that includes former president Trump.” Mitch McConnell, who likewise voted to acquit, announced, “Impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice. … We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”
This might seem fanciful, or a convenient way for […]
Stephan: I suggest to you that the big takeaway from the Trump era and the first year of the pandemic is this: A bit more than a third of Americans are either unable or unwilling to deal with facts. Their lives are controlled mostly by their fears, ignorance, and resentments. They don't care about democracy. They don't care about facts. They have little or no conception of what the future holds in store, and don't want to learn. They are easily manipulated through disinformation that plays to their fears and resentments. They don't care about integrity. And, in the case of the pandemic, their distrust of vaccines, or even wearing masks, means that the other two-thirds of the country will be put at unnecessary risk, while many of the frightened resentful third will be dying at a disproportionate rate.
Credit: istock
Almost a third of U.S. adults are undecided on whether they’ll get the COVID-19 vaccine and are taking a “wait and see” approach, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll showed.
The poll, released Friday, found that 31 percent of adults are going to “wait until it has been available for a while to see how it is working for other people” before getting the coronavirus vaccine.
Many who are hesitant to get the vaccine say their fears stem from how fast the vaccine was developed and potential side effects, despite the available vaccines being approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
There are even some health-care workers who are hesitant to get the vaccine, with officials in New York acknowledging it has been difficult convincing some frontline workers to take the vaccine.
However, the survey found that those who said they would “wait and see” for the vaccine could be convinced to get it sooner if a health-care provider they trusted or friends and family got the vaccine.
The survey found the group of those who want to wait is politically and racially diverse as well as […]
Stephan: Don't think for a moment that the pharmaceutical corporations who are making the vaccines aren't in it for the money, or that even when they are caught killing people that they don't have a tax grift that takes at least some of the corporate pain away. It is a trend that has been going on for decades. The American tax codes are totally crafted to favor the rich, individuals, and corporations alike. This report tells a particularly nasty little story that makes this point.
“While tens of millions of Americans are experiencing extreme economic hardship and dealing with intermittent and often inadequate governmental support for unemployment, food, housing, and small business continuity,” said Robert Weissman of Public Citizen on February 12, 2021, “Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, Cardinal Health, and Amerisource-Bergen are laughing all the way to bank.” Credit: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty
Four pharmaceutical corporations that agreed to pay a combined $26 billion to settle lawsuits resulting from a deadly opioid crisis they helped create reportedly plan to recoup a portion of those costs by deducting roughly $4.6 billion of the payouts from their taxes—sparking intense condemnation.
Big Pharma is attempting to make the public cover some of the fines related to lawsuits filed by dozens of state and local governments highlighting the culpability of opioid manufacturers and distributors in the deaths of an estimated 70,000 people per year.
As Public Citizen president Robert Weissman put it in a statement released Friday, “The drug companies are settling with taxpayers (local government entities) and then demanding that taxpayers pay part of the cost (via a federal tax subsidy).”
Matt Spetalnick, Trevor Hunnicutt, Phil Stewart, - Reuters
Stephan: More good news from the Biden Administration. The Guantanamo Bay torture and detention facility is, and always has been, a vile stain on America's reputation. If you don't know why do some homework: https://www.google.com/search?q=Guantanamo+bay+and+torture&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS747US748&oq=Guantanamo+bay+and+torture&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l9.17656j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Obama tried to close it but could not, but Biden has taken up this battle and is dedicated, as he says, to closing this abomination.
I am so glad to see these wellbeing-oriented trends enter come into a new vitality.
The gate to the infamous GuantanamoCredit: Reuters
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Joe Biden’s aides have launched a formal review of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, reviving the Obama-era goal of closing the controversial facility with the aim of doing so before he leaves office, the White House said on Friday.
Aides involved in internal discussions are considering an executive action to be signed by Biden in coming weeks or months, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, signaling a new effort to remove what human rights advocates have called a stain on America’s global image.
Asked whether Biden would shut the high-security prison located at the Guantanamo Naval Station by the time his presidency ends, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters: “That certainly is our goal and our intention.”
But such an initiative is unlikely to bring down the curtain anytime soon on the offshore facility, due largely to the steep political and legal obstacles that also frustrated efforts by his ex-boss, former President Barack Obama, to close it.
Stephan: This global pandemic in its U.S. manifestation has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children and, as this report in the Lancet spells out, 40% of those deaths happened because of the utter incompetence of the Trump administration. If this is not a form of mass murder I don't know what is.
The British medical journal the Lancet, on Wednesday, published a damning assessment of Donald Trump’s presidency and its impact on Americans’ health, concluding that 40 percent of the nearly 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. over the past year were avoidable. The journal came to the conclusion by comparing the U.S. health outcomes on the coronavirus—the country leads the world in COVID deaths and confirmed cases with more than 27 million—with the weighted average of other G-7 nations. So it’s not a wildly abstract conclusion to draw: the U.S. could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives if it had just performed similarly to its economic peers.
The report assailed Trump for his response to the pandemic, but emphasized that the disastrous response to the virus’s spread was the result of years of destructive public policy decisions on health that extended well beyond the Trump years. From the Lancet:
Many of the cases and deaths were avoidable. Instead of galvanizing the U.S. populace to fight the pandemic, President Trump publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, […]
Stephan: More good news and competence from the Biden administration. As this report describes because of the Trump administration's adherence to petroleum, and its utter incompetence, we have fallen behind the rest of the developed world in the transition out of the carbon era. Now we have a president and an administration that understands the importance of catching up.
Robots work on Model X cars in the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., in 2018. Credit: Mason Trinca/The Washington Post
As the Biden administration promises to jump-start the clean-energy economy, it faces an uphill climb: The United States has fallen behind Asia and Europe in the race to produce the central technology — the high-tech batteries that power electric cars and store solar and wind energy.
China dominates battery production today, with 93 “gigafactories” that manufacture lithium-ion battery cells, vs. only four in the United States, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a prominent data provider. If current trends continue, China is projected to have 140 gigafactories by 2030, while Europe will have 17 and the United States, just 10.
That would leave the United States dependent on China and other trading partners for much of its battery supply, a risky proposition not just for the auto industry but for the military, which is planning to electrify more of its vehicles and gear. It would also mean missing out on much of the jobs boom the sector […]
Stephan: The instance described in this report, as in this charade of an impeachment trial, both make clear the moral and ethical shabbiness of Republican lawmakers. Our two-party system is in peril, and the election of 2022 becomes ever more important.
President Joe Biden signed a January 27, 2021 executive order temporarily pausing new oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands and waters. Credit: Citizens of the Planet/Education Images/Universal Images Group /Getty
Dozens of Republican lawmakers who oppose President Joe Biden’s executive order temporarily halting new oil and gas leasing on federal lands have taken tens of millions of dollars in career campaign contributions from fossil fuel, energy, and natural resources industry interests, a report published Wednesday revealed.
“Oil and gas CEOs and their political allies on Capitol Hill are doing whatever they can to prop up a system that allows them to exploit public lands at low costs and boost their profits.” —Alan Zibel, Public Citizen
The Public Citizen report—entitled Big Oil’s Capitol Hill Allies (pdf)—examines fossil fuel industry and other polluters’ campaign contributions to the 29 GOP lawmakers from the 70-member Congressional Western Caucus who issued a January 27 statement denouncing an order signed the previous day by Biden pausing new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and in offshore waters pending further review.
While climate campaigners and environmental activists praised Biden—and also […]
Jessica Glenza, National Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: The Republican Party in service to the evangelical christofascist community continues to seek the overthrow of Roe vs Wade as part of the party's commitment to male dominance. That may sound partisan, but it is not. Here are the facts.
This year, since Donald Trump lost re-election and the Republican party has split into warring factions, the spectrum of anti-abortion legislation has come to reflect that intra-party feud. Credit: Will Oliver/EPA
At a church-style rally in Arizona, the state Republican lawmaker Walter Blackman described his “perfect” legislative proposal: to prosecute women who have abortions for homicide alongside the doctors who provide them.
“We are not going to amend this bill,” Blackman said in January. “This is a perfect bill. I just want to tell you that now.” Nine of Blackman’s colleagues signed on to the bill.
The bill was just one of nine more Arizona bills designed to ban, restrict or undermine abortion rights – ranging from funding religious crisis pregnancy clinics which oppose abortion to banning abortion at six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant.
“It’s nothing less than appalling,” said Dr Julia Kwatra, an obstetrician and gynecologist […]
