IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
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: Another SR prediction is coming true, as this report spells out. Big Oil is going the way sailmakers, and carriage harness makers. Not disappearing but enormously diminished, although I think Big Oil is going to use its wealth to try to segue into dominating solar and wind generation.
A further confirmation of this transition: President Biden has committed to creating 500,000 EV charging stations and newly confirmed Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said he is going to do everything he can to see that Biden's goal is met or surpassed. The times they are achanging, as Bob Dylan's song had it.
A total refinery in Port Arthur, Texas. Even with a dim view of the future, there are signs of a recovery in the oil industry. Credit: Brandon Thibodeaux /The New York Times
HOUSTON — Big Oil isn’t so big anymore.
Exxon Mobil, BP and other large oil companies collectively lost tens of billions of dollars last year, posting their worst performance in years and, for some companies, in decades.
The pandemic was largely to blame. It sapped demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel as countries and states locked down and people stayed home. But such painful years could become more commonplace as growing concerns about climate change, tighter regulations, and the rise of electric cars and trucks force a reckoning for an industry that has dominated the global economy over much of the last century. General Motors further raised the stakes for the industry last week when it said it aimed to do away with internal combustion engines and sell only electric cars by 2035.
The oil industry is slowly transitioning to a future dominated by cleaner energy. BP, Royal Dutch […]
Hannah Denham and Andrew Ba Tran, Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan: I find this story quite alarming. America already has a serious gun psychosis problem. How serious is this national mental illness? In 2020 19,223 people, were killed by guns, almost a 25% increase from 2019. There is no other developed nation in the world that has that level of gun death, both as an absolute number and as a percentage of population. Now gun sales are soaring into levels never before seen, which means that gun deaths are going to be going up. Here are the facts.
Firearm sales soared in January after a mob-led assault on the U.S. Capitol and the arrival of a new administration that favors tighter gun restrictions.
More than 2 million firearms were bought last month, according to The Washington Post’s analysis of federal gun background-check data. That is an 80 percent year-over-year spike and the second-highest one-month total on record.
Background checks, and sales of firearms and ammunition, have been increasing pace for months. The surge is in line with the record pace set in 2020: Nearly 23 million firearms were bought, representing a 64 percent jump year over year.
Stephan: Today we witnessed 199 House Republicans who were not willing to hold racist antisemite anti-democratic gun-obsessed Marjorie Taylor Greene accountable for what she has said, done, and advocated. The previous day they had given her a standing ovation. Why did the Republicans in the House do this? Because the people who voted those Republicans into office wanted them to. This is the cancer that is eating America from the inside.
Conspiracist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is far more popular than Rep. Liz Cheney among Americans who align with the Republican Party, according to a new Axios-SurveyMonkey poll.
Why it matters: As the House GOP caucus is being torn over calls to yank Cheney from congressional leadership for backing Donald Trump’s second impeachment, and strip Greene from committee assignments for her baseless conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric, these findings show how strongly Trumpism continues to define most Republicans.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is much more popular with Republicans than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the survey finds.
By the numbers: McCarthy enjoys the highest favorable versus unfavorable ratings (net favorability) of the four among Republicans, at 38%-16% (+22); followed by Greene, at 28%-18% (+10); McConnell, at 31%-46% (-15); and Cheney, at 14%-42% (-28).
Greene is the least well known of the four, with 51% of Republicans and Republican leaners saying they don’t know enough to say whether their impression is favorable or not. Respondents have the most fully formed views of McConnell.
Stephan: The alt-right whines that social media is biased against them. You have surely heard this claim. Like most Trumper claims it is a lie. Here are the facts.
After decades of claiming that everyone from the Los Angeles Times to Newsweek and Time has a “liberal media bias,” the far right has found a new target: social media. Countless Republicans — along with their allies at Fox News, Newsmax TV and AM talk radio — have been claiming that major social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have it in for conservatives. But according to a new study from New York University, there is no evidence that such a bias exists. And in fact, the study found that social media outlets and big tech have allowed conservatives to reach a larger audience.
“(The) claim of anti-conservative animus is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it,” according to New York University’s report. “No trustworthy large-scale studies have determined that conservative content is being removed for ideological reasons or that searches are being manipulated to favor liberal interests.”
In fact, some anti-Trump pundits have attacked social media for failing to adequately police content from […]
Stephan: Here is some more excellent news coming from the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress. Finally, the obscene tax cuts passed by the Republicans that so favored the ultra-rich are going to be corrected. Bravo, Elizabeth Warren.
My first order of business on the @SenateFinance Committee – the committee that leads tax and revenue policy in the Senate – will be to introduce legislation for a #WealthTax on fortunes above $50 million. It is time to make the ultra-rich pay their fair share. pic.twitter.com/IccP6do57y
After announcing that she landed a spot on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday said she plans to immediately introduce legislation to impose a wealth tax on individual fortunes above $50 million with the goal of reining in soaring inequality and funding “needed investments for working families.”
“My first order of business on the Senate Finance Committee—the committee that leads tax and revenue policy in the Senate—will be to introduce legislation for a wealth tax on fortunes above $50 million.” —Sen. Elizabeth Warren
“I’m very pleased to join the Finance Committee, where I’ll continue to fight on behalf of working families and press giant corporations, the wealthy, and the well-connected to finally pay their fair share in taxes,” Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement. “I look forward to being a progressive voice at the table to […]
Stephan: Here is more good news from the Biden administration. His Secretary of Defense is flushing out all the little incompetent Trump orcs and replacing them with competent people. Lovely story.
President Biden’s Secretary of Defense, retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin testifies at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee at the U.S. Capitol on January 19, 2021 in Washington, DC. Previously Gen. Austin was the commanding officer of the U.S. Central Command in the Obama administration. (Greg Nash-Pool/Getty
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered hundreds of Pentagon advisory board members to resign in a move aimed at removing Trump loyalists who were added to the boards in the final weeks of his presidency.
Austin removed all members serving on 31 of the Pentagon’s advisory boards and suspended the operations of all 42 boards amid a Pentagon review, according to a Defense Department memo first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Austin’s purge of the Pentagon’s 42 advisory boards, which advise the secretary on various areas of their expertise, came after former acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller removed dozens of board members and replaced them with Trump loyalists like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the Vatican, and former acting Pentagon official Anthony Tata, a onetime Fox […]
Stephan: Here is the sad and sorry tale of how Russia played the racism, hate, and antisemitism of White Americans to create the QAnon movement that has taken over the Republican Party.
QAnon
The cult of QAnon is at a crossroads. Adherents of the conspiracy theory/new religious movement convinced themselves that Donald Trump was poised to purge the cannibal pedophile cabal and its traitorous enablers in a cleansing burst of political violence. But with Joe Biden in the White House, and Capitol rioters facing charges for their insurrection of January 6, prophecy has apparently failed. QAnon has been banished from major social media platforms. You can’t even sell Q merch on Etsy anymore. True believers are struggling to make sense of it all. Q himself has fallen silent. It has been over a month since his last dispatch to the faithful.
In just three years, QAnon has exploded from an anonymous post on 4chan to a household word. The FBI has declared QAnon a domestic terrorist threat and the QAnon ideology has been the impetus for numerous terrorist attacks, not even counting the major role played by QAnon adherents in the assault on the US Capitol. QAnon has fractured families and destroyed lives. Astonishingly, we still don’t know who Q […]
Stephan: The people of South Dakota elected, Kristi Noem, an incompetent Republican ideologue for their governor and that's the performance they got from her. The question this story leaves you with is this: Is she just incapable of living in a fact-based reality world, or is she just not intelligent enough to understand facts? Either way, the people of South Dakota have no one to blame but themselves. And this is yet another proof that Republican governance is always inferior.
Incompetent Republican Governor Kristi Noem
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) appeared on Fox News Tuesday evening, claiming that under her “unique approach,” she was able to help her state get through the pandemic better than “virtually every other state.”
The problem, however, is that South Dakota actually did among the worst in the nation when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Looking at the Center for Disease Control of data since Jan. 2020, South Dakota has had 12,244 cases per 100,000 people. To put that in context, New York has only had 7,378 cases per 100,000 people. California has had 8,247 cases per 100,000. Even Texas is lower than South Dakota […]
