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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: We talk a great deal about immigration, but very little about emigration; many people don't even know what the word means. But during the Trump era emigration has become an issue, one that I see as a symptom of America's societal illness. People leave the nation of their origin to move permanently to another country usually because they have come to find something about their home country intolerable. Consider this report; it is telling us something to which we should be listening.
Americans Renouncing 2020
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — 2020 is the record year for Americans giving up their citizenship, according to research by the Enrolled Agents and accountants of Bambridge Accountants New York.
6,045 Americans gave up their citizenship in the first nine months of 2020
Showing a 234% increase on the same 9 months to in 2019, where only 1,811 cases were recorded
2,072 Americans gave up their citizenship in 2019 in total
This is the highest year on record; the previous record was 5,411 cases in 2016. Already in 2020, with 3 months still to report, 6,045 is the record number of cases in a year
This is all while the U.S. State Department has stopped Americans being able to book appointments to renounce at many U.S. Embassies since March 2020
Americans must pay a $2,350 government fee to renounce their citizenship, and those based overseas must do so in person at the U.S. Embassy in their country.
There are an estimated 9 million U.S. expats. The trend has been that there has been a steep decline over the last few years of U.S. citizens expatriating – the first six months of 2020 is a huge increase in the […]
Stephan: Mitch McConnell has used his time in office to enrich himself, making himself a multi-millionaire on an annual salary of $174,000, and to destroy the integrity of the American judiciary. As a result, our system of justice, already very poorly rated -- 19th in the world -- is getting worse. He has filled the courts with judges, many considered to be unqualified for the bench by the American Bar Association. They are, in fact, less judges and more alt-right political operatives, and you and I are going to have to live with what the Republican senate has done under McConnell's leadership for a generation.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., arrives back in the Capitol via the Senate subway for the cloture vote on the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed Friday to continue confirming both U.S. circuit and district court nominees through the lame-duck session and right up to the end of the 116th Congress, which must adjourn Jan. 3.
“We’re going to run through the tape. We go through the end of the year, and so does the president,” McConnell said Friday on the show of conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “We’re going to fill the 7th Circuit. And I’m hoping we have time to fill the 1st Circuit as well.”
The seat on the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals opened up after the Senate elevated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in a truncated nomination process that culminated in her confirmation in the Senate on Monday. The other seat, on the 1st Circuit, opened after the […]
Stephan: The Republican Party does not like democracy. The party leaders recognize that they are a permanent minority. Less a party than a White Supremacist christofascist cult. The only way they can win is by voter suppression, cheating, and degrading the entire structure of the electoral process. This is not political partisanship, just objectively verifiable facts. And here they are.
Nationwide, nearly 21,000 polling stations have closed since 2016, a VICE News investigation has found. Of the 45 states that have in-person voting, 40 eliminated polling stations — many in response to the coronavirus pandemic. This could mean long drives and long lines for voters on Election Day—and it might keep some people from voting at all.
Almost 21,000 Election Day polling places have been eliminated heading into the 2020 U.S. election, a drastic dip in voting locations driven by a heavy shift to mail voting, coronavirus-related consolidations, cost-cutting measures, and voter suppression.
VICE News obtained data from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., on the number of physical polling locations they will have in place on November 3, and compared their numbers to how many sites they had in 2016 and 2012.
What emerged was a patchwork of cuts large and small across the country. Many states made these cuts as they were expanding mail voting — 23 states made it easier to vote by mail this year because of COVID. But the overall trend is clear: Most states are eliminating polling locations, a trend that could disproportionately impact poor, young and non-white voters.
Of the 45 states that weren’t using mail voting […]
Stephan: Trump's wall is, and should certainly be seen as, a national disgrace; an expression of Trumpian lies, business incompetence, and dishonest finances. Like most things he says he will do it was never built as he claimed it would be, it cost you and me billions more than it was supposed to, and Mexico didn't pay a dime to build even the small part that was constructed. Here are the facts.
A border wall construction site near Donna, Texas, on Dec. 8, 2019. Credit: Veronica G. Cardenas/Reuters
This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.
On the same day in May 2019, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded a pair of contracts worth $788 million to replace 83 miles of fence along the southwest border.
The projects were slated to be completed in January 2020, the Corps said then. Four months into this year, however, the government increased the value of the contracts by more than $1 billion, without the benefit of competitive bidding designed to keep costs low to taxpayers.
Within a year of the initial award, the value of the two contracts had more than tripled, to over $3 billion, even though the length of the fence the companies were building had only grown by 62%, to 135 miles. The money is coming from military counter-narcotics funding.
Stephan: At one level this is a story about Trump's deliberate incompetence in handling the pandemic. At a more important level, it is about the willful ignorance and stupidity of the people who support him.
Photo Donald Trump posted to Twitter of him speaking to a largely maskless crowd refusing to socially distance at a Florida rally.
According to a new study from Stanford University, President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies have resulted in 30,000 COVID-19 infections that would not have happened otherwise — and 700 of the infected people died.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/index.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1322527556126605313&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2F2020%2F10%2Ftrump-rallies-responsible-for-30000-infections-and-700-s-stanford-study%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=ed20a2b%3A1601588405575&width=550pxLISTEN: Mark Cuban Joins The New Raw Story Podcast!
The president has come under sharp criticism for hosting large campaign rallies in the middle of a pandemic. Many of these rallies have been followed by localized outbreaks, and conservative businessman Herman Cain died after attending an indoor Trump event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, although it is not clear whether the rally was his point of infection.
At Trump’s rallies, masks are typically provided but not required, and the president has frequently made fun of masks, leading to low mask use at the events and little or no social distancing. While the rallies typically require temperature checks at the gate, this alone is not […]
Stephan: Perhaps because a majority of Americans have never been outside the United States, there is an extraordinary ignorance and lack of interest in our society about the importance of geopolitical relationships, and Trump and his administration feed on this to the detriment of the country. It is going to take years to repair what was done by Trump and his incompetent orcs.
United Nations
The United States once again became the largest member state of the United Nations (UN) that has yet to pay their regular budget assessments, a UN regular budget statement shows, disclosing the international organization is undergoing tight expenditure controls.
The statement was released by the UN at the Fifth Committee of the General Assembly at the 75th session of the United Nations, during which member states showed concern over the UN’s financial situation and called for timely payment for the UN’s regular budget assessments.
The report warned that the 75-year-old organization is undergoing a cash crisis as the deficit reached $106 million. Among the 69 member states with unpaid budget assessments, the U.S. remains the largest overdue member state.
According to the report, as of September 30, the U.S. accounts for 73 percent or $1.09 billion and 54.3 percent or $1.38 billion of the unpaid assessment in both regular budget and peacekeeping operations assessments respectively.
Sound financial situation is the guarantee for the UN to fulfill its mandates and to implement program activities. Without enough financial support, many UN operations […]
Stephan: You cannot be a Republican and an ethical person, and that is not a politically partisan statement. The factual evidence of this truth is overwhelming.
An election worker guides voters in cars at a mail ballot drop-off site at NRG Stadium in Houston on Oct. 7. Voters can also cast their ballots at a drive-thru voting site. Credit: Go Nakamura/Getty
Texas Republicans have asked a federal judge to throw out at least 117,000 ballots cast in Harris County, a heavily Democratic area that has experienced an unprecedented surge in early voting this month. The brazen effort to undo legally cast ballots in a diverse, populous county is an eleventh-hour attempt to diminish Joe Biden’s chances of carrying the swing state on Nov. 3. Republicans claim that Harris County’s use of drive-thru voting violates the U.S. Constitution, requiring the judge to throw out every ballot cast this way—more than 117,000 as of Friday. This argument is outrageous and absurd. But the case landed in front of U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, one of the most notoriously partisan conservatives in the federal judiciary. Democrats have good reason to fear that Hanen will order the mass nullification of ballots as early as Nov. 2, when he has […]
Eric Lipton and Benjamin Weiser, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: As the election is upon us, I decided to take one last look for my readers at the astonishing criminality and corruption of Donald Trump and the people he chooses to have around him. It is absolutely gobsmacking, unlike anything in American history. Really. There is nothing even close. We'll start with this which in my opinion, by itself, ought to be impeachable.
The Justice Department eventually charged Halkbank, a state-owned Turkish bank, with money laundering, fraud and conspiracy to violate sanctions against Iran. Credit: The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Geoffrey S. Berman was outraged.
The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Mr. Berman had traveled to Washington in June 2019 to discuss a particularly delicate case with Attorney General William P. Barr and some of his top aides: a criminal investigation into Halkbank, a state-owned Turkish bank suspected of violating U.S. sanctions law by funneling billions of dollars of gold and cash to Iran.
For months, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had been pressing President Trump to quash the investigation, which threatened not only the bank but potentially members of Mr. Erdogan’s family and political party. When Mr. Berman sat down with Mr. Barr, he was stunned to be presented with a settlement proposal that would give Mr. Erdogan a key concession.
Mr. Barr pressed Mr. Berman to allow the bank to avoid an indictment by paying a fine and acknowledging some wrongdoing. In addition, the Justice Department […]
