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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: Mitch McConnell is a vile corrupt human being. You damaged the country Kentuckians, are you surprised your state is at the bottom of the list for everything from healthcare to education, and so many of you are having miserable lives. You get what you vote for, and you voted for Mitch, so please spare us your whining.
Democratic Representative Katie Porter
Speaking on MSNBC this Wednesday, Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) blamed Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for putting the “imaginary need” of big corporations ahead of relief for Americans as coronavirus lockdowns continues to ravage the economy and shut down businesses.
According to Porter, Democrats “continue to want to negotiate” a new coronavirus relief package, adding that many Republicans are also willing to compromise, but “this is about Senator McConnell holding out, kind of basically giving a license to kill to big corporations that engage in reckless behavior to endanger workers and employees and Americans.”
“Republicans and Democrats agree there’s a potential to continue those [coronavirus relief programs] if [McConnell] will drop this ridiculous, and I think, corrupt attempt to try to put these imaginary needs of corporations ahead of the needs of the American people.”
Stephan: For most of my life, and I am about to be 79 in a few weeks, I and everyone I knew thought of America as special. I am part of the World War II generation and have always been proud of what America did in that war, and even prouder of what we did after that war with the Marshall Plan that helped to rebuild our former enemies.
But after four years in the hellish world of Republicanism and Donald Trump, a world that really begins with Nixon and Reagan and culminates with Trump, as a person who chooses to live in a world of facts, I am forced to acknowledge that America not only isn't special anymore (as dozens of social outcome studies have confirmed) our nation is in danger of becoming a racist authoritarian kleptocracy.
I’ve never been one to believe in happy endings.
Not that I always object to them in a movie or novel. In music, I definitely prefer a satisfying resolution at the end of a song or a symphony to a conclusion of crashing dissonance or irresolution. But a fulfilling end to a work of art is precisely that — a work of artifice, conjured in a mind, executed with intent, and brought to a moment of deliberate completion. The tidy tying up of a plot or the pleasing return to the tonic chord is a function of the human will to create a world more orderly than our own — one with a firmly defined beginning, middle, and end, and with internal movement that culminates in something beautiful.
Our own world — the real world — isn’t like this. Not only does it not have many happy endings, it doesn’t even have many endings, period. Wars start and they stop, usually with one side or another claiming victory. But the stream of moments goes on even in such cases. Every conclusion […]
Stephan: It may be that humanity is too stupid, too greedy, too selfish for the species to survive. Some remnant may survive but human civilization will not be the civilization we live in today.
A historian believes he has discovered iron laws that predict the rise and fall of societies. He has bad news. Illustration by Nicolas Ortega
Peter turchin, one of the world’s experts on pine beetles and possibly also on human beings, met me reluctantly this summer on the campus of the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he teaches. Like many people during the pandemic, he preferred to limit his human contact. He also doubted whether human contact would have much value anyway, when his mathematical models could already tell me everything I needed to know.
But he had to leave his office sometime. (“One way you know I am Russian is that I cannot think sitting down,” he told me. “I have to go for a walk.”) Neither of us had seen much of anyone since the pandemic had closed the country several months before. The campus was quiet. “A week ago, it was even more like a neutron bomb hit,” Turchin said. Animals were timidly reclaiming the campus, he said: squirrels, woodchucks, deer, even […]
Stephan: Let's be candid and honest. The United States is a deeply racist nation, and the racism is getting worse as it becomes ever clearer that within 20 to 25 years we will be a majority-minority country. There is a large portion of the White population who just can't stand that, and are prepared to do whatever they can, including violence and the destruction of democracy to keep it from happening. The Oath Keepers are one manifestation of this White Supremacy sickness that is particularly dangerous because they are infiltrating law enforcement.
Credit: Susan Walsh/AP
GRANBURY, Texas — In late August, the constable in a small county outside Fort Worth logged on to his Facebook account and called for the execution of a mayor nearly 2,000 miles away.
“Ted Wheeler needs to be tried, convicted and executed posthaste,” John D. Shirley wrote on Aug. 31. “He has blood on his hands, and it’s time for justice.”
What precipitated Shirley’s outburst against the mayor of Portland, Ore., was the shooting death on Aug. 29 of a member of a right-wing group called Patriot Prayer by an antifa activist. The killing was a violent escalation of clashes that had roiled Portland in the weeks since George Floyd was suffocated to death by police. Shirley said “patriots” in “socialist-controlled cities” needed to protect themselves. As the presidential election approached, he warned of “open conflict.” Twitter suspended his account shortly after, but he continued to post about violent disputes on Facebook with crescendoing alarmism.
“If you doubt these lefties won’t put you and your family against a wall and […]
Stephan: The Republican Party in my opinion has become a christofascist White Supremacist criminal organization whose function is favoring the corporations and uber-rich who fund it, while maintaining White supremacy and Christian cultism in the United States.
Trumper demonstrators Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times
Perhaps you remember the terrible ordeal suffered by the White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the Red Hen in 2018. She was awaiting her entree at the Virginia farm-to-table restaurant when the co-owner, appalled by Sanders’s defense of Donald Trump’s administration, asked her to leave. This happened three days after the homeland security secretary at the time, Kirstjen Nielsen, was yelled at for the administration’s family separation policy as she tried to dine at a Mexican restaurant in Washington.
These two insults launched a thousand thumb-suckers about civility. More than one conservative writer warned liberals that the refusal to let Trump officials eat in peace could lead to Trump’s re-election. “The political question of the moment,” opined Daniel Henninger in The Wall Street Journal, is this: ‘Can the Democratic Party control its left?’”
Somehow, though, few are asking the same question of Republicans as Trump devotees terrorize election workers and state officials over the president’s relentless lies about voter fraud. Michigan’s secretary of state, […]
Stephan: Here is some excellent good news. Trump has been doing everything he can to destroy the arctic regional environment, and now he has been blocked from his latest depredation. I don't think he will have enough time to take another run at producing damage.
Polar bears stand on an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean. Credit: Lev Fedoseyev/TASS/Getty
Climate action advocates and wildlife defenders celebrated Monday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s approval of Liberty, a proposed offshore oil-drilling project in federal Arctic waters that opponents warned would endanger local communities, animals, and the environment.
“In the face of a worsening climate crisis, the federal government should not be in the business of approving irresponsible offshore oil development in the Arctic.” —Jeremy Lieb, Earthjustice
“This is a huge victory for polar bears and our climate,” declared Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “This project was a disaster waiting to happen that should never have been approved. I’m thrilled the court saw through the Trump administration’s attempt to push this project through without carefully studying its risks.”
Marcie Keever, legal director at Friends of the Earth, similarly applauded the ruling (pdf), saying that “thankfully, the court put the health of our children and our planet over oil company profits.”
Stephan: This report has been overtaken by events in some details, but it is one of the first pieces I have seen that describes another crisis we face in the U.S. that has been getting grossly inadequate coverage, and for which we have been doing little or nothing under Trump.
Medications slated for destruction are shown in a locked storage area of the police department in Barberton, Ohio. | Keith Srakocic/AP
President-elect Joe Biden, long viewed as a drug policy hawk during his four decades in the Senate, is signaling a different approach to confronting a still-raging drug addiction epidemic made worse by the pandemic.
Biden, who has stocked his team with addiction experts with extensive backgrounds in public health, will emphasize new funding for substance abuse treatment and prevention, while calling to eliminate jail time for drug use. It’s a departure from his tough-on-crime approach as a senator — and from President Donald Trump’s frequent focus on a law enforcement response to the drug crisis, which experts said undercut necessary public health measures.
“We have every reason to believe President-elect Biden will view this primarily as a public health issue,” said Michael Botticelli, who led the White House drug policy office under President Barack Obama. “They recognize there is a critical component law enforcement has to play but leading with a public health strategy.”
Stephan: Every day since the election I have noticed one act after another of Trump sabotaging the social wellbeing of America. It is deliberate, conscious, and intentional. This is an angry nasty little man trying to punish the people of America because they did not re-elect him and, instead, made him once again the loser he fundamentally is.
Just weeks away from relinquishing power to incoming President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration is quietly launching a last-minute assault on Social Security by rushing ahead with a rule that, if implemented, could deny critical benefits to hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) late last week submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a proposed rule aiming to further tighten eligibility requirements for Social Security disability benefits, which around ten million Americans currently rely on for a modest monthly income.
While it is unclear whether the rule can be finalized before Biden takes office next month, Social Security defenders reacted with outrage to the proposal and called on the president-elect to make clear that he will immediately roll back the change.
“It is outrageous,” Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said in a statement Monday. “The Trump administration could pull the rug out from millions of Americans, especially older Americans, in the waning days of its administration. Since the day […]
