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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: Donald Trump and the Republican Party have utterly failed to competently deal with the pandemic causing hundreds of thousands of unnecessary illnesses and deaths; they have crashed the economy for millions of Americans; they have ruined America's relations with the other countries in the world, aligning us with authoritarian governments; and, now, they have smeared their feces across American democracy by encouraging a mass insurrection to the astonishment of the rest of the world.
Pro-Trump supporters on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6. Credit: Samuel Corum/Getty
World leaders reacted with horror after a pro-Trump mob assaulted American democracy and the peaceful transfer of power by storming the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, as lawmakers were attempting to certify President-elect Biden’s victory in November.
Why it matters: The U.S. government is typically a leading voice in condemning political violence all over the world.
What they’re saying
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson:“Disgraceful scenes in U.S. Congress. The United States stands for democracy around the world and it is now vital that there should be a peaceful and orderly transfer of power.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: “Canadians are deeply disturbed and saddened by the attack on democracy in the United States, our closest ally and neighbour. Violence will never succeed in overruling the will of the people. Democracy in the US must be upheld – and it will be.”
Stephan: These have been an historic two days during which time the Republican Party took off its smiling mask and revealed its true face. That of a slavering monster dedicated to destroying American democracy.
Pennsylvania Democrat State Senator Jim Brewster
Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate majority refused to seat a Democratic state senator who narrowly won re-election over a challenger who won’t concede.
The GOP majority removed Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who was to preside over the ceremony, and president pro temp Jake Corman took over instead and prevented Sen. Jim Brewster (D-Allegheny County) from being sworn in, reported the Inquirer‘s Abraham Gutman.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=true&id=1346522564865253376&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2Fpennsylvania-state-senate%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px.
Republican Nicole Ziccarelli has challenged Brewster’s win, asking the courts to throw out 311 mail-in ballots from Allegheny County that lacked a handwritten date on the outer ballot envelope, as required by law, but the state’s Supreme Court permitted those votes to count.
Nearby Westmoreland County, which partially sits within Brewster’s district, did not count undated ballots, and Ziccarelli complained to U.S. District Court that her due process and equal protection rights were violated, although Brewster and Democratic officials argued federal courts had no jurisdiction to overturn a state court decision.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-1&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1346524843584475137&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2Fpennsylvania-state-senate%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550px
Stephan: Trump has two weeks left, and you can be sure he is going to do everything he can to harm the United States because he did not win his election. Here is one example of what I mean.
Rivers run through the lush tundra valleys of Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge. Credit: Acacia Johnson
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In one of its last strikes against the American wilderness, Donald Trump’s administration will on Wednesday auction off portions of the Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drillers.
The lease sales are the climax to one of the nation’s highest-profile environmental battles. The lands on the northern coastal plain of Alaska are home to denning polar bears and migrating herds of Porcupine caribou that indigenous communities depend on and consider sacred. But the oil industry has long suspected that the ground beneath the plain holds billions of barrels of petroleum.https://www.theguardian.com/email/form/plaintone/4199Sign up for monthly updates on America’s public lands
Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies, they would be difficult to claw back. The incoming president, Joe Biden, could, however, discourage development in the refuge by putting regulatory hurdles in the way of drillers.
The refuge has become central to America’s debate over how quickly to stop drilling for and burning fossil fuels as […]
Stephan: There just is no limit to the nastiness of Trump and his orcs. I wonder where we will be two weeks from today, what other horrors will they perpetrate?
Interior Secretary and Trumpian Orc David Bernhardt. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call
Companies in the petroleum and other industries will not be held legally responsible for killing migratory birds as long as they did not mean to, the Trump administration said Tuesday, drawing swift condemnation from animal welfare and conservation groups.
The Interior Department is scheduled to finalize the rule change Wednesday, a boon to oil and gas companies that sought weakened protections of birds from an administration in its waning days.
A draft of the final rule comes two weeks before President-elect Joe Biden assumes the presidency, as well as on the heels of a new bipartisan conservation law protecting wetlands and waterfowl. It also coincides with a sharp decline in the overall population of birds in North America.
The number of birds on the continent has dropped by 3 billion, about 30 percent, since the 1970s, according to a survey published in the journal Science in September 2019.
The waterfowl-protection law (PL 116-188) that President Donald Trump signed Oct. 30 protects birds and bird habitats.
Under the new rule, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife […]
Stephan: In my opinion, the activity of Trump and the Trumpers in this post-election period constitutes a text book example of sedition and treason. The real question for me is will these people be held accountable Will anyone go to prison? The answer will determine whether this happens again. No accountability guarantees the Republicans will try this again, and do a better job of it.
Credit: Lambert/Getty
“We are what we pretend to be,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote in the opening of his 1962 novel, Mother Night, “and so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” Republicans in Congress are pretending to be seditionists—and so they have become, in fact, seditionists.
Forget all the whispered denials and the off-the-record expressions of concern in private; ignore the knowing smirks on camera from GOP officials who are desperately trying to indicate that they’re in on the joke. Brush aside the caviling of the anti-anti-Trump writers who would rather talk about that time in 2017 when some Democrats objected to the Electoral College vote (and were gaveled down by Joe Biden himself).
This is sedition, plain and simple. No amount of playacting and rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party and its apologists are advocating for the overthrow of an American election and the continued rule of a sociopathic autocrat.
This is not some handful of firebrands making a stand for the television cameras. In 2005, one Democrat in the House and one in the Senate
Stephan: Trump is not the only loser trying to undermine democracy in America, and I think that is an important point to bear in mind. This is an attack by a party on the fundemantal structure of the election system.
With the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden only 15 days away, President Donald Trump is still refusing to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election. And Dan Lavoie, who served as a speechwriter for former New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, is noting that Trump isn’t the only Republican who has been challenging election results. Two others include Jim Oberweis in Illinois and Nicole Ziccarelli in Pennsylvania.
In Illinois’ 14th Congressional District, Democratic incumbent Rep. Lauren Underwood defeated Republican challenger Jim Oberweis in November — and she has been sworn into a second term in the U.S. House of Representatives. But only one day after Underwood was sworn in, Oberweis announced that he was challenging the election results. That election was quite close: Underwood, according to the Illinois Board of Elections, defeated Oberweis by 5,374 votes. Take advantage of our limited time offer. Go ad-free for just $2 a week. Support independent journalism.
In an official statement, Oberweis (an Illinois state senator) said, “I do not believe we found any rampant fraud, but what […]
Stephan: It isn't just the politicians, it is the people, who are against democracy, and that is the critical point to bear in mind. This is exactly the same process that went on in Germany when Hitler came to power.
Members of the Proud Boys yell in front of a hotel in Washington, D.C. Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty
This year was quite active for the far right in the United States, especially after its relative downturn in 2019 as a violent street movement compared to the recent past. Although the far right may not have committed as many high-profile massacres as previous years, 2020 saw more murders and car attacks at demonstrations than any year in recent memory.
While the openly fascist wing of the “alt-right” continued to implode over the past year, some on the far right picked up steam: the Boogaloo movement — a new grouping of younger activists with militia-style politics, but the look and feel of the alt-right; Gropyers — white nationalists and their allies who are trying to influence the Trumpist movement from inside; and followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who believe Trump is always about to arrest a cabal of liberal, deep state, satanic pedophiles. Moreover, aggressive street demonstrations led by the Proud Boys reached a fever pitch, inspired by comments from Donald […]
Stephan: This article raises what I see as an important question about the continuation of democracy in the United States. If you notice the Republicans are not claiming the elections they won were fraudulent, only the elections won by Democrats. So are elections legitimate only in Republicans win?
Of the many stories to tell about American politics since the end of the Cold War, one of growing significance is how the Republican Party came to believe in its singular legitimacy as a political actor. Whether it’s a hangover from the heady days of the Reagan revolution (when conservatives could claim ideological hegemony) or something downstream of America’s reactionary traditions, it’s a belief that now dominates conservative politics and has placed much of the Republican Party in opposition to republican government itself.
It’s a story of escalation, from the relentless obstruction of the Gingrich era to the effort to impeach Bill Clinton to the attempt to nullify the presidency of Barack Obama and on to the struggle, however doomed, to keep Joe Biden from ever sitting in the White House as president. It also goes beyond national politics. In 2016, after a Democrat, Roy Cooper, defeated the Republican incumbent Pat McCrory for the governorship of North Carolina, the state’s Republican legislature promptly stripped the office of power and authority. Wisconsin Republicans did the […]
