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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: Anti-democratic Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder was a particularly loathsome specimen of incompetent fascist Republican governance and, as a result, the brain of every child in Flint, Michigan was damaged because of the lead in their drinking water; I am sure you remember that sad story. Well, it is now possible that we will see Snyder and all the little slugs who served him go to prison. I hope that is the case.
Former Republican Governor and fascist Rick Snyder. Credit: The Flint Journal/AP
Former Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder knew about a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Flint as early as October 2014, when there was still a significant amount of time to save lives. That was the accusation of investigators looking into the Flint water crisis, according to documents compiled as part of a three-year investigation and obtained by The Intercept.
On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Snyder, as well as former Michigan health department director Nick Lyon, and Snyder’s top adviser Richard Baird, will be charged by the Michigan attorney general, Dana Nessel, over their roles in the Flint water crisis.
On Thursday, Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud announced charges against nine state of Michigan and city of Flint officials. Snyder was charged with two counts of willful neglect of duty, a misdemeanor. The Michigan penal code lists a maximum penalty for willful neglect as a year in prison or a fine of $1,000. In announcing Snyder’s charges, Hammoud said “for willfully neglecting his mandatory legal duties under the Michigan constitution and the emergency management act, thereby […]
Stephan: Here is the proof that law enforcement agencies are inherently biased again people of color and socially progressive peaceful demonstrations. It is baked into the American justice system and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or willfully ignorant.
Ademonstrator is pepper sprayed shortly before being arrested during a Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, Oregon, on 15 October 2020. Credit: Marcio José Sánchez/AP
Police in the United States are three timesmore likely to use force against leftwing protesters than rightwing protesters, according to new data from a non-profit that monitors political violence around the world.
In the past 10 months, US law enforcement agencies have used teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and beatings at a much higher percentage at Black Lives Matter demonstrations than at pro-Trump or other rightwing protests.
The statistics, based on law enforcement responses to more than 13,000 protests across the United States since April 2020, show a clear disparity in how agencies have responded to the historic wave of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence, compared with demonstrations organized by Trump supporters.
Nikki Schwab, Senior U.S. Political Reporter - Daily Mail (U.K.)
Stephan: Even after everything that has happened, the 60 court cases the Trumpers have lost, the certification, recertification, and re-recertification of the vote showing this was the safest most carefully counted election in American history, on the Fox propaganda operation high ranking Trumpers are still pushing the Fascist Big Lie that he won the election.
Navarro (right) appeared with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo (left) and said he was ‘never more pissed off in my life at this place’ telling lawmakers they should give up impeachment and let Trump ‘leave peacefully with his dignity’
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is still insisting that President Donald Trump was ‘legally elected’
He used that phrasing Thursday morning and also released a new report that contained debunked voter fraud claims
‘The Democratic Party did violence in this country by attacking a president, who I believe was legally elected on November 3,’ Navarro told the Fox audience
Navarro seethed over Trump’s impeachment over charges that the president incited an insurrection when he told supporters to march on Capitol Hill
Navarro said he was ‘never more pissed off in my life at this place’ because of Trump’s second impeachment
He told lawmakers they should give up on impeachment and let Trump ‘leave peacefully with his dignity’
Navarro, the White House’s top trade adviser, continued to prop up those discredited claims by releasing another report Thursday, where he alleges massive voter fraud in key […]
Peter Jamison, Carol D. Leonnig and Paul Schwartzman, - The Washington Post
Stephan: This story is a prime example of the Trump family's sense of privilege; it is like something from a medieval novel. The Kushner's see themselves as nobles and you can't have the peasants who guard you pissing in your toilet so we, the taxpayers, have to pay to rent a toilet for the Secret Service officers.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner
Many U.S. Secret Service agents have stood guard in Washington’s elite Kalorama neighborhood, home over the years to Cabinet secretaries and former presidents. Those agents have had to worry about death threats, secure perimeters and suspicious strangers. But with the arrival of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, they had a new worry: finding a toilet.
Instructed not to use any of the half-dozen bathrooms inside the couple’s house, the Secret Service detail assigned to President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law spent months searching for a reliable restroom to use on the job, according to neighbors and law enforcement officials. After resorting to a porta-potty, as well as bathrooms at the nearby home of former president Barack Obama and the not-so-nearby residence of Vice President Pence, the agents finally found a toilet to call their own.
Stephan: Lauren Boebert is a Republican Congresswoman, and I don't see any difference between her and a sniper spotter. I think she should be arrested as an accessory to the attempted murder of the Speaker of the House. I am sick and tired of the Republican anti-democratic insurrection enablers. There needs to be accountability and this party has to decide whether personal power or country is their first priority. So far it is pretty clear they choose power. Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Louie Gohmert, Mo Brooks, Mitch McConnell, the whole lot of them need to be thrown out of the Congress. They have no honor. They have no ethics except for their own personal advancement.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), a gun-toting supporter of the QAnon movement, is facing backlash after she was accused of live-tweeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) location during the attack on Capitol Hill last week.
Boebert shared the tweet soon after President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol with deadly results.
“The Speaker has been removed from the chambers,” Boebert wrote.
Twitter users responded by calling for the freshman representative to be jailed and removed from Congress.
“@FBIWFO please arrest @laurenboabert for aiding and abetting those who were hunting down @SpeakerPelosi on Jan, 6th by tweeting the Speaker’s whereabouts,” one person responded. “She’s 5ft tall, 100 pounds and carries a Glock (and won’t stop telling everyone).”
“@SpeakerPelosi you need to have her removed with every fight that you have. This is nothing short of […]
Stephan: I am amazed that this story is not getting greater coverage. Ginni Thomas, the wife of associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has long been known as a supporter of christofascist causes. But this is absolutely a bridge too far. Thomas should be immediately impeached and removed from the bench. It is preposterous that a supreme court justice's wife is cheering on an anti-democratic coup.
Insurrectionist admirer Ginni Thomas, wife of Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr
Hours before a violent mob of far-right extremists attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, President Donald Trump and his supporters spoke at an event in Washington D.C. — where they demanded that Congress overturn the electoral college results for the 2020 presidential election. And one of those supporters was conspiracy theorist Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Ginni Thomas tweeted her support of that event on January 6, saying, “LOVE MAGA people!” and “God bless each of you standing up or praying.” Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern notes that after the attack on the Capitol Building, she added an addendum and posted, “Note: written before violence in US Capitol.”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1347395084527017985&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.alternet.org%2F2021%2F01%2Fginni-thomas-applauded-the-rally-that-preceded-the-capitol-building-attack%2F&partner=rebelmouse&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550pxTired of ads? Want to support our progressive journalism? Click to learn more.
Stern, in an article published by Slate on January 8, notes, “Thomas, a conservative lobbyist and zealous supporter of Donald Trump, has fervently defended the president over the last four […]
Stephan: In the United States, as a culture, we have only one social priority: profit. As a result instead of a health care system, we have an illness profit system. And in our college education system, unique amongst the developed nations of the world, we have people in their sixties still with five-figure student debt. Did you know there are people near or after retirement with that kind of student debt? I didn't. When I went to the University of Virginia as part of an honors program called Echols scholars, my family paid $476 a year for my tuition.
In the 1970s when my daughter Katherine went to the University of California - Santa Cruz, in her own honors program, I paid about $4,600. Today, at a public four-year college (for in-state students) the average is $9,410, while for out-of-state students it is $23,890. For a private four-year college the average is $32,410, more than some families total income for a year, where the necessary living family income across the U.S. is $67,690.
There are all sorts of social outcome effects that arise from America's profit-based college system. First, of course, is the debilitating debt itself. Second, a profit-based college system means many who would like to go to college don't have the means to do so, because they can't handle the debt. As a result, only 36% of Americans over 25 have graduated from college while in Canada over 56% have a post-high school degree, and the U.S. ranks 6th in terms of college education.
But there are all kinds of other social effects. For instance, there is a strong correlation between being a Trumper and not having a college degree. Only 30.2% of the police in the U.S. have college degrees which helps to explain why American law enforcement is so violent. It also explains why so many scientists and physicians working today are immigrants.
Key Findings:
There are more people over the age of 50 with student loans (8.7 million) than people under the age of 24 with student loans (7.8 million), and they owe, on average, far more ($41,058 compared to $14,807).
There are more people over the age of 35 with student loans than under the age of 35 (22.7 million vs. 22.6 million), and they owe far more on average ($41,881 vs. $27,256).
A common popular belief about student loans is that they are a young person’s problem. We assume that, by and large, most borrowers are able to have their loans repaid by their mid-30’s. Sure, there may be a few stragglers who take until their 40’s or even beyond to repay their loans, but the conventional wisdom is that people 50 or older who haven’t yet been able to repay their loans are the outliers. The exception to the rule.
Well, it turns out that this is completely wrong.
This is Department of Education Data for the fourth quarter of 2020. For comparison purposes, we combined the source data to find statistics […]
Stephan: For the past 40 years or more, I have been listening to people interested in UFOs talk about "the government's secret files." Well, we may finally get to see at least some of them.
UFO
When President Donald Trump signed the $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief and government funding bill into law in December, so began the 180-day countdown for US intelligence agencies to tell Congress what they know about UFOs.No, really.The director of National Intelligence and the secretary of defense have a little less than six months now to provide the congressional intelligence and armed services committees with an unclassified report about “unidentified aerial phenomena.”It’s a stipulation that was tucked into the “committee comment” section of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, which was contained in the massive spending bill.
Pentagon to launch task force to investigate UFO sightingsThat report must contain detailed analyses of UFO data and intelligence collected by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force and the FBI, according to the Senate intelligence committee’s directive.It should also describe in detail “an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the Federal Government” and designate an official responsible for that process.Finally, […]
