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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: The American Gulag is a national humiliation. We have 4.23% of the world's population, and 25% of the world's prisoners. Either Americans are the most criminal people in the world, or there is something desperately wrong with our system of justice. It has to be one or the other. Now the Covid-19 pandemic has really brought into focus the failure of the gulag structure, and its effects on both prisoners and guards.
Battered by a wave of coronavirus infections and deaths, local jails and state prison systems around the United States have resorted to a drastic strategy to keep the virus at bay: Shutting down completely and transferring their inmates elsewhere.
From California to Missouri to Pennsylvania, state and local officials say that so many guards have fallen ill with the virus and are unable to work that abruptly closing some correctional facilities is the only way to maintain community security and prisoner safety.
Experts say the fallout is easy to predict: The jails and prisons that stay open will probably become even more crowded, unsanitary and disease-ridden, and the transfers are likely to help the virus proliferate both inside and outside the walls.
“Movement of people is dangerous,” said Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who has been tracking coronavirus cases in correctional settings. “We’ve got really good examples of overcrowding equals more infection and greater risk of outbreak. We’ve got lots of evidence that even transferring people from one facility to the next is very dangerous.“
Stephan: The United States has an incarcerated population of 2.3 million men, women, and children. That is more than the entire population of the following states:
New Mexico
Nebraska
West Virginia
Idaho
Hawaii
New Hampshire
Maine
Rhode Island
Montana
Delaware
South Dakota
North Dakota
Alaska
Vermont
Wyoming
Approximately 22% -- 500,000 -- of those prisoners have contracted Covid. And that's not counting the guards and prison staff. It is, or should be, a national humiliation
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said that hospitals could face fines of up to $100,000 if they did not use their current supplies of vaccine by the end of the week. Britain imposed a strict new national lockdown.
The number of inmates and guards known to have been infected with the coronavirus at American correctional institutions exceeded 500,000 on Monday, according to a New York Times database.
As correctional institutions have been battered by coronavirus infections and deaths, the number of cases reported in has risen by nearly 84 percent in the last two months, according to a Times analysis of the data from some 2,600 prisons, jails and immigration detention centers.
There are now 88 facilities that have had at least 1,000 infections, according to the database.
Local jails and state prison systems have been so devastated by the virus that they have resorted to the drastic strategy of shutting down completely and transferring inmates elsewhere. Experts say the jails and prisons that stay open will probably become even more crowded, unsanitary and disease ridden, and the transfers are likely to help the virus proliferate both inside and outside the walls.
Stephan: Other countries have corruption, to be sure, but it hasn't been formalized and made legal, as it has in the U.S. as a result of Citizens United and several subsequent decisions. America is the only developed nation that has legalized the bribery of public officials although you have to know how to do it. Not any rube with money can come into Washington and pull it off; that's why there are lobbyists.
And all the lobbyists, as this report describes, are gearing up for the new Congress. Reversing Citizens' United, I hope, becomes a priority in the Biden administration.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other House Republicans may see theirinfluence grow in the new Congress as the Democrats’ majority shrinks, according to lobbyists with ties to them. Credit: Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call
Before the elections, lobbyists with ties to House Republicans, such as Annie Palisi, had to wonder how much influence they would have in the 117th Congress. They are not worrying anymore.
While Democrats predicted their party would gain seats in the chamber, in reality they lost at least 12 incumbents — and did not pick off a single House Republican. And that means Palisi, a former House GOP leadership aide-turned-lobbyist with the bipartisan firm Invariant, and others with similar backgrounds are poised to see their fortunes rise.
Democrats’ super slim majority this year in the chamber will offer House Republicans uncommon sway for the minority party, providing opportunities to help broker legislative deals, or sink them. And that means the lobbyists with close ties to GOP House leaders, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and the top Republicans on congressional […]
Stephan: The first thing to know about this story, and why it is important, is that it was published in The Lancet, one of the most important and prestigious medical journals in the world. The second thing to know is that, as this paper itself demonstrates, it is beginning to dawn on at least some in the establishment are beginning to understand, "In shutting down entire societies, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fundamental inequities and inadequacies of market-driven economies that prioritize profits over human welfare.
I have been telling my readers for over four decades now that the only way forward in a civilized way is to make the fostering of wellbeing the first priority in the formalization of all government policies. All other paths lead to pain, suffering, death, and disorder.
Food line in Brooklyn. Credit: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty
In shutting down entire societies, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fundamental inequities and inadequacies of market-driven economies that prioritise profits over human welfare. Inequities show up in businesses that furlough employees while paying high salaries and bonuses to executives. They are also revealed by the dependence of food systems on poorly paid workers and cheap global supply chains. The COVID-19 crisis demonstrates how current food systems fail to protect populations from hunger and diet-influenced non-communicable diseases and why the poor, disenfranchised, discriminated against, and chronically ill are those most vulnerable to this disease.
In the USA, the pandemic has caused massive unemployment and impoverishment. But it has brought to public attention the plight of formerly invisible low-wage food workers, many of them migrants or immigrants, whose jobs on farms and in slaughterhouses, meat-packing plants, and grocery stores rarely provide sick leave or health-care benefits yet put them at risk of contagion. Their work is now deemed essential. Suddenly, the inadequacies of US policies on labour, immigration, health care, food assistance, and international […]
Rebecca Robbins, Frances Robles and Tim Arango, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: You would think that knowing a vaccine, or vaccines, was the proper response to a virus pandemic that from the first day a plan would be developed at the national, federal level, to quickly get that vaccine into the arms of every man, woman, and child in the country. But because the Trump administration never saw the pandemic or the vaccine to counteract it as a national program, this preparatory planning was never even attempted. And as this report lays out, this is the result. I do not understand why this is not seen as criminal incompetence that has resulted in the unnecessary illness of millions, and death of tens of thousands.
Boxes of Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine were prepared for shipping at a distribution center in Olive Branch, Miss., earlier this month. Credit: Paul Sancya
In Florida, less than one-quarter of delivered coronavirus vaccines have been used, even as older people sat in lawn chairs all night waiting for their shots. In Puerto Rico, last week’s vaccine shipments did not arrive until the workers who would have administered them had left for the Christmas holiday. In California, doctors are worried about whether there will be enough hospital staff members to both administer vaccines and tend to the swelling number of Covid-19 patients.
These sorts of logistical problems in clinics across the country have put the campaign to vaccinate the United States against Covid-19 far behind schedule in its third week, raising fears about how quickly the country will be able to tame the epidemic.
Federal officials said as recently as this month that their goal was to have 20 million people get their first shot by the end of this year. More than 14 million doses of […]
Stephan: It is a measure of the division in this country that QAnon supporters have been elected to Congress, but so have 11 openly LGBTQ lawmakers. Here is a list of who America's states have sent to Congress. I think this assures the continued Red/Blue bifurcation of the country and ongoing conflict.
Credit: Eric Baradat / AFP/Getty
With 2020 in the rearview mirror, the 117th Congress is now getting under way as members take their oaths of office on Capitol Hill Sunday.
For many, the process will be familiar territory. But for most of the incoming lawmakers, it’s the beginning of a brand new chapter.
Here’s a look at that group of lawmakers and what their first few days will look like:
Pandemic looms large
The first day brings with it considerably less pomp and celebration than typical opening day proceedings, where Capitol Hill is flooded with newly elected lawmakers and their families.
Instead, the atmosphere will likely be quite somber, especially in light of the death of Congressman-elect Luke Letlow, who died from complications of COVID-19 just five days before he was scheduled to be sworn in.
The pandemic’s presence will also be felt through strict social distancing procedures members will follow on their first day of work, limiting access to the floor. Incoming freshmen are allowed one guest each in the gallery to watch as they take their oaths. Returning members aren’t […]
Stephan: This is yet another alarm bell about America's misuse of the environment. It is time to wake up, but will we? It depends on you and me.
For those who wish to delve deeper into this important issue, the primary research paper upon which this report is based can be found at: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL088946
The Animas River flows through the center of Durango (Brent Lewis/The Denver Post /Getty
A new study reveals that roughly one out of three large American rivers have appeared to change color since 1984, with many of the bodies of water seeming to slowly turn yellow and green — and scientists tell Salon that this could mean some very bad things for human health.
Analyzing approximately 15.9 million satellite images taken over a period of more than three decades, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Pittsburgh and Colorado State University discovered that of the more than 108,000 kilometers (roughly 67,000 miles) of rivers at least 60 meters (197 feet) wide studied throughout the country, 56% appeared predominantly yellow and 38% appeared predominantly green. While rivers often change color based on the seasons and flow regimes, the scientists found that one-third of rivers had experienced long-term “significant color shifts” between 1984 and 2018. (If you want to see what has happened with your local river, there is a handy interactive […]
Stephan: Although the media is consumed by the story of Trump openly committing sedition in a phone conversation with Georgia's Secretary of State, and I support this. I don't want this report about Trump's tweets on Sunday about Covid to get lost. We now have almost 350,000 dead from Covid-19, and yet America's response to this unparalleled pandemic has been a disaster from the start of incompetence and indifference at the Federal level because we have a psychopath in the White House. A man who simply can't deal with reality, even today and who, in my opinion is, in fact, guilty of mass murder.
Donald Trump kicked off his Sunday morning by launching a full scale attack on the Centers for Disease Control, calling their reporting on COVID-19 infections and deaths “Fake News!.”
As the coronavirus death toll climbs and most states are seeing surges in infections, the outgoing president lashed out at CDC officials for reporting on the numbers to the public.
“The number of cases and deaths of the China Virus is far exaggerated in the United States because of @CDCgov ‘s ridiculous method of determination compared to other countries, many of whom report, purposely, very inaccurately and low. “When in doubt, call it Covid.” Fake News!” he tweeted.
