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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.
Paul Kane and Scott Clement, Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan: The things that stand out for me about the Congressional Republicans, as Trump's Marx brothers coup continues, are their lack of ethics or morality, and their cowardice. These are weak small people whose only interest is protecting their own ass. They don't give a damn about you or the country's wellbeing. Here is the hard data proving this.
Just 27 congressional Republicans acknowledge Joe Biden’s win over President Trump a month after the former vice president’s clear victory of more than 7 million votes nationally and a convincing electoral-vote margin that exactly matched Trump’s 2016 tally.
Two Republicans consider Trump the winner despite all evidence showing otherwise. And another 220 GOP members of the House and Senate — about 88 percent of all Republicans serving in Congress — will simply not say who won the election.
Those are the findings of a Washington Post survey of all 249 Republicans in the House and Senate that began the morning after Trump posted a 46-minute video Wednesday evening in which he wrongly claimed he had defeated Biden and leveled wild and unsubstantiated allegations of “corrupt forces” who stole the outcome from the sitting president.
Stephan: I live in a state where marijuana is legal, and the one thing I have learned about marijuana legality is that it is definitely the option that fosters wellbeing. The Democrats have had the courage to finally end the nearly five decades of Nixonian and Reaganite viciousness about Marijuana that has destroyed hundreds of thousands of American lives. But it won't pass the Senate unless Georgia votes out the two Republican grifters currently in office.
Marijuana plants
The House on Friday passed a landmark bill that would remove federal penalties on marijuana and erase cannabis-related criminal records.
The bill passed by a vote of 228-164, with several Republicans on board. While the MORE Act is not expected to come up in the Senate this year, and likely won’t in the next session of Congress either, its passage nevertheless marks a monumental step in marijuana policy.
“We’ve been patient for years on this,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), one of the co-founders of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus. “My perspective was … that this Congress should not adjourn without addressing cannabis legalization, because it has such a profound effect on especially Black Americans [and] other people of color.”
Friday’s vote reflects the shift in American and global views on marijuana over the past decade: Polls show support for legalization has increased 20 percentage points, to 68 percent, since Colorado and Washington state legalized weed in 2012. One in 3 Americans now lives in a state where marijuana is legal for adults […]
Stephan: The ordinary voter folk who make up Trumper world seem to be so driven by their racism, fear, the dimness of their thinking that they don’t see what Trump and the Republicans have been doing. As a result of 40 years of Republican fiscal policies, the United States leads the world in wealth inequality. All those Trumpers have had their lives degraded as a result of these policies, but seem unable to recognize that this is not a random occurrence but an intentionally contrived reality.
Credit: Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
The reason everybody is so angst-ridden about the economy is because we all have the wrong idea about what it is supposed to do and how it’s supposed to work.
Most of us have a quaint, 19th century idea about free markets and all that up-by-the-bootstraps Horatio Alger stuff. You know, work hard, play by the rules, keep your nose clean, and you’ll do well. That is certainly the cultural myth our society bathes us in.
But that’s not how things actually work. It’s the dissonance between how we imagine things work and how they really work that causes our perplexity and angst, and rage. It is also that dissonance that has been so deftly manipulated by Donald Trump and given rise to Trumpism.
Forty years ago, around 1980, the uber-wealthy decided they wanted to get their money out of the economy. There was too much political turmoil (Vietnam, Watergate), too much economic turbulence (Arab oil embargos, stagflation), and too high of a cost of production (high wages, environmental and labor protections).
Stephan: My readers know I deal in data not the usual political ideologies. My position on everything I post I hope is evident and clear. What I care about is fostering wellbeing at every level from humans to the planet itself. And here is the latest of the many proofs I have published about wealth inequality being a Republican intentional feature not a flaw.
Members and supporters of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) participate in a protest in the Hart Senate Office Building Atrium on February 11, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Sarah Silbiger/Getty
After fattening the pockets of wealthy Americans and big corporations with tax cuts and deregulation during his four years in the White House, President Donald Trump is ramping up his assault on workers on his way out the door by backing the Senate GOP’s attempt to freeze the pay of civilian federal employees in 2021.
In a letter (pdf) earlier this week to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Trump’s budget director said that the White House “supports the policy in the bill to maintain for 2021 the current level of federal civilian employee pay,” pointing to “budgetary constraints and recent, pandemic-related impacts on non-federal labor markets.”
The letter by Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was sent around three weeks after Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed freezing the pay of federal workers in 2021 as part of their omnibus spending […]
Stephan: It is my belief that Trump, Barr, and every member DOJ, ICE and the Border Patrol who participated in this infamy should be taken to the Hague and tried for crimes against humanity. You probably noticed the recent story that they had contact information for the over 600 kids not returned to their families, when they knew how to get in touch with them and lied about it.
I see this as quite apart from the simple financial Trumpian crimes. This and the failure to deal appropriately with the Covid-19 pandemic, constitute the most egregious humanitarian crimes ever committed by a president and his administration. If you read this in a novel it would be described as torture and mass murder, because that's what it is.
A week after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against a Trump administration directive ordering it to stop deporting unaccompanied children under the pretext of preventing the spread of the coronavirus, the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday night filed a notice to appeal to a higher court.
“There is no basis for allowing this cruel, unprecedented policy to take effect, given the harm that these young children would face if sent back.” —Lee Gelernt, ACLU
The Associated Pressreports the Justice Department asserted the November 18 injunction by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan “likely will have an irreversible impact on public health” by straining the ability of hospitals and other medical facilities and personnel to adequately manage the worsening coronavirus pandemic. Citing spiking Covid-19 cases in border communities in Arizona and Texas, the DOJ warned of the potential risks of transporting “potentially infected” children through airports and other transit hubs.
Sullivan’s injunction involved Title 42, which the Trump administration unsuccessfully argued allows for the removal of non-U.S. citizens who carry diseases. Sullivan ruled that while Title 42 allows the government to deny such people entry into the country, it does not provide for their expulsion. Stephen Miller, a senior […]
Stephan: When you have no ethics or morals yourself, only people who also lack morals and ethics will work with you. That is one of the major takeaways I have from the Trumpian years. Here is the latest proof of this axiom. It is criminality raised to the level of buffoonery.
Melissa Carone, who was working for Dominion Voting Services, speaks in front of the Michigan House Oversight Committee in Lansing, Michigan on December 2, 2020. – The president’s attorneys, led by Rudy Giuliani, have made numerous allegations of election fraud. Credit: Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty
A star witness in President Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election just recently got off probation for committing a “computer crime,” the Daily Mail reports.
Mellissa Carone was sentenced to 12 months probation in September of 2019 for the crime which took place the year before. Carone struck a deal with prosecutors who dropped a first-degree obscenity charge against her.
Carone became a viral story after she appeared as a key witness in the Trump campaign’s Michigan voter fraud claims.
Everything that happened at that TCF Center was fraud,” she said, when appearing on December 2 in front of a Michigan House oversight committee. “Every single thing.”
“I have 19 things in my affidavit. I was at the TCF Center for 27 hours. I am a mother, I have two children, and I […]
Stephan: And here, in this situation, we have another proof. It is Trump's consistency, the people he picks, and the beingness of the people themselves that makes the case.
Corey Lewandowski Credit: New York Magazine
Top Trump allies Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie are among nine new members of a Pentagon advisory board installed after the administration fired the previous members.
The purge at the Defense Business Board, which provides Pentagon leaders with outside advice on business management issues, was first reported Friday by Politico.
It is the latest shake-up at the Department of Defense (DOD) following President Trump’s loss to President-elect Joe Biden in November’s election.
“I’m proud to welcome each of these new members to the Defense Business Board and I look forward to their contributions to help guide the Department’s business efforts in the coming years,” acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, whose installation kicked off the Pentagon shake-up, said in a statement Friday. “These individuals have a proven record of achievement within their respective fields and have demonstrated leadership that will serve our Department, and our nation well.”
Lewandowski served as the president’s campaign manager for part of his 2016 White House bid and joined the 2020 campaign as a senior adviser.
Stephan: It is going to be very interesting to watch what happens with the Supreme Court. Trump has appointed three christofascists including an outright cultist in Associate Justice Barrett. So the court is becoming christofascist while the country is becoming less religious, and White Christians a dwindling minority. The House already is beginning to reflect this new demographic reality. These two institutions are moving in very different culture directions.
The New England Crusade for Religious Freedom rallies in Boston’s City Hall Plaza in 1984. Credit: Ted Gartland / AP
The Supreme Court’s decision last week overturning New York State’s limits on religious gatherings during the COVID-19 outbreak previewed what will likely become one of the coming decade’s defining collisions between law and demography.
The ruling continued the conservative majority’s sustained drive to provide religious organizations more leeway to claim exemptions from civil laws on the grounds of protecting “religious liberty.” These cases have become a top priority for conservative religious groups, usually led by white Christians and sometimes joined by other religiously traditional denominations. In this case, Orthodox Jewish synagogues allied with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn to oppose New York’s restrictions on religious services.
But this legal offensive to elevate “religious liberty” over other civic goals is coming even as the share of Americans who ascribe to no religious faith is steadily rising, and as white Christians have fallen to a minority share of the population.
That contrast increases the likelihood of a GOP-appointed Court majority sympathetic to the most […]
