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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 pandemic has made it clear just how inadequate the American illness profit system is. But within that failure and inadequacy, there is a special sector, rural hospitals, that stand out for the menace of their crisis. There are three issues going on in rural medicine: 1) Hospitals are closing all over the country because in a system based entirely on profit, they are profitable enough. 2) Rural hospitals are largely staffed by immigrant physicians and nurses and, because of Trump's racist immigration policies, fewer and fewer are coming to the U.S., so rural hospitals are understaffed, and in some cases closing because they can't get enough staff. 3) Rural hospitals have been, as this report from Kaiser Health News lays out, severely impacted by pandemic loans they have received and must repay.
If you live in a largely rural state, particularly if the ACA is overturned by the Supreme Court as Trump and your Republican Congressional members are trying to make happen, there is a very high probability that by this time next year you will have a level of health care one would see in a developing nation not a first-world democracy nation. You better think about that when you go in to vote.
Large red EMERGENCY sign on hospital entrance. Credit: Raw original.
David Usher is sitting on $1.7 million he’s scared to spend.
The money lent from the federal government is meant to help hospitals and other health care providers weather the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet some hospital administrators have called it a payday loan program that is now, brutally, due for repayment at a time when they still need help.
Coronavirus cases have “picked up recently and it’s quite worrying,” said Usher, chief financial officer at the 12-bed Edwards County Medical Center in rural western Kansas. Usher said he would like to use the money to build a negative-pressure room, a common strategy to keep contagious patients apart from those in the rest of the hospital.
But he’s not sure it’s safe to spend that cash. Officially, the total repayment of the loan is due this month. Otherwise, according to the loan’s terms, federal regulators will stop reimbursing the hospitals for Medicare patients’ treatments until the loan is repaid in full.
The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has not yet begun […]
Stephan: This truth, based on actual research data, confirms Trump as a mass murderer in my opinion. This was an act of deliberate evil.
Trump reacts to a question during a news conference in the Briefing Room of the White House on September 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. Credit: Joshua Roberts/Getty
President Donald Trump is responsible for nearly 38% of coronavirus misinformation in traditional media around the world, according to a new study by researchers at Cornell University. (emphasis added)
The study looked at what the World Health Organization has termed the “infodemic” of misinformation about the new coronavirus across 38 million traditional media articles published between Jan. 1 and May 26 in English-language media around the world.
“We found that media mentions of U.S. President Donald Trump within the context of COVID-19 misinformation made up by far the largest share of the infodemic,” the study said, noting that Trump mentions comprised 37.9% of the overall misinformation conversation.
“The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around COVID,” Sarah Evnega, the study’s lead author and director of the Cornell Alliance for Science, told The New York Times. “That’s concerning in that there are real-world dire health implications.”
Stephan: Because of the deliberate disinformation spread by Trump and his orcs, 25 states are now experiencing spikes of Covid-19 cases, millions have coronavirus, and over 200,000 have died. But that is just the beginning. The emerging evidence, as described by this report, suggests that many of the people who have contracted the virus face long-term health issues. And all of this is happening because of the way Trump and his administration, assisted by Republican governors and state legislators, have spewed misinformation, and incompetently handled healthcare in this country.
Tony Pinero, a ride-share driver, is among a growing group of Americans who survived their initial bout with the virus but are now reporting serious, long-term symptoms. Credit: Bridget Bennett /The New York Times
They caught the coronavirus months ago and survived it, but they are still stuck at home, gasping for breath. They are no longer contagious, but some feel so ill that they can barely walk around the block, and others grow dizzy trying to cook dinner. Month after month, they rush to the hospital with new symptoms, pleading with doctors for answers.
As the coronavirus has spread through the United States over seven months, infecting at least seven million people, some subset of them are now suffering from serious, debilitating and mysterious effects of Covid-19 that last far longer than a few days or weeks.
The patients wrestling with an array of alarming symptoms many months after first getting ill — they have come to call themselves “long-haulers” — are believed to number in the thousands. Their circumstances, still little understood by the […]
Stephan: Trump is not that bright. He bragged about 200,000 vaccinations a day, not realizing that with a population of 333 million that would take 4.56 years if everything went without a hitch.
At the first presidential debate of the 2020 general election, President Donald Trump tried to reassure viewers about his Covid-19 response by promising that he’s ready to distribute a vaccine: “We have the military all set up. Logistically, they’re all set up. We have our military that delivers soldiers, and they can do 200,000 a day. They’re going to be delivering the vaccine.”
In reality, this would be a paltry amount of vaccine distribution. At a rate of 200,000 vaccinations a day, it’d take more than 1,650 days — nearly five years — to vaccinate the entire country. If everyone needs two doses, which could be the case with the first generation of vaccines, it would take more than nine years.
Presumably, Trump was saying the military would play a supplementary role to other efforts, with hospitals, family physicians, pharmacies, and others distributing the vaccine alongside the military. But if the military piece is really the highlight of Trump’s plan, the math shows it’s so little it shouldn’t reassure anyone.
Trump also claimed that the US will have a vaccine in the […]
Stephan: It is my view that the most dangerous time the country will face in living memory will be 4 November to 20 January, because while he is still in power, but the election loser, Trump will create a civil war, and I mean that literally. Yesterday I ran a story making the point that about a third of the country are not only comfortable with, but would prefer, an authoritarian fascist government. It is of course a view of willful ignorance because they have no idea what that would really mean, having never lived under such a government. But they are up for it. And, as this article lays out, there are thousands of men and women prepared to take up arms to make that happen. Tuesday night Trump put them on notice to stand back and be ready.
Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers Credit: Philip Montgomery
Stewart Rhodes was living his vision of the future. On television, American cities were burning, while on the internet, rumors warned that antifa bands were coming to terrorize the suburbs. Rhodes was driving around South Texas, getting ready for them. He answered his phone. “Let’s not fuck around,” he said. “We’ve descended into civil war.”
It was a Friday evening in June. Rhodes, 55, is a stocky man with a gray buzz cut, a wardrobe of tactical-casual attire, and a black eye patch. With him in his pickup were a pistol and a dusty black hat with the gold logo of the Oath Keepers, a militant group that has drawn in thousands of people from the military and law-enforcement communities.
Rhodes had been talking about civil war since he founded the Oath Keepers, in 2009. But now more people were listening. And whereas Rhodes had once cast himself as a revolutionary in waiting, he now saw his role as defending the president. He had put out a […]
Robert Reich, Former US Secretary of Labor, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: As I check the polls each day, as I have done for months now, what stands out for me is the solidarity of Trump's support. As story after story comes out about his criminality, his cheating, his lying, his incompetence, the corruption he creates around him, and on and on, none of it seems to have any effect on his support. Today, as you can see in the graph from FiveThirtyEight he is at 43.8%. How is that possible given what we saw in the debate Tuesday. How could anyone still support Trump? Yet they do, unwaveringly. And have you noticed the silence from Congressional Republicans?
I think Robert Reich is correct, and it is hard for me to see how the United States goes forward without massive change.
Before Trump, most Americans weren’t especially passionate about politics. But Trump’s MO has been to force people to become passionate about him – to take fierce sides for or against. And he considers himself president only of the former, whom he calls “my people”.
Trump came to office with no agenda except to feed his monstrous ego. He has never fueled his base. His base has fueled him. Its adoration sustains him.
So does the antipathy of his detractors. Presidents usually try to appease their critics. Trump has gone out of his way to offend them. “I do bring rage out,” he unapologetically told Bob Woodward in 2016.
In this way, he has turned America into a gargantuan projection of his own pathological narcissism.
To Trump and his core enablers and supporters, the laws of Trump Nation authorize him to do whatever he wants
Stephan: I have been reading the reports in the foreign media about the debate, and the utter loss of status of the United States. Once acknowledged as the world's leader nation, we are now seen as a dangerous bully country led by a madman.
The world may be living through the last gasps of America First— or just getting a taste of what’s to come.
Why it matters: President Trump’s message at this week’s virtual UN General Assembly was short and relatively simple: global institutions like the World Health Organization are weak and beholden to China; international agreements like the Iran deal or Paris climate accord are “one-sided”; and the U.S. has accomplished more by going its own way.
“I am proudly putting America first, just as you should be putting your countries first,” he declared.
Between the lines: The “U.S.-led” system that’s governed international relations for 75 years has been shaken by four years of Trump, and many existing agreements and institutions would not survive a second Trump term.
The other side: Joe Biden has vowed to put the global order back together again. His view, expressed this week by his top foreign policy adviser Tony Blinken, is that “the world just doesn’t organize itself” and America remains the country best positioned to do […]
Stephan: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, USA (Ret.) after a distinguished Army career went with Colin Powell, and became his chief of staff. He is a recognized expert on the military-industrial complex, and this article should motivate you into voting for Biden, and demanding that the billions spent on the military be reassigned to prepare for climate change, and universal birthright single payer healthcare.
The Pentagon’s ever-expanding military budget ruins creativity and pollutes good leadership, argues retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson — a fierce critic of the ‘military-industrial complex.’ Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower cautioned the United States against “unwarranted influence” — what he saw as an alarming alignment of corporate interests with military operations, a relationship he famously called: “the military-industrial complex.”
Since then, the term has largely been taken up by the political left in its critique of America’s militarism, and how vast military expenditures end up creating conflicts they’re supposed to resolve.
But Col. Lawrence Wilkerson is firmly on the political right. He spent over 30 years in the U.S. Army, was chief of staff for former Secretary of State, General Colin Powell, and is a lifelong Republican.
Today we have become what Eisenhower’s worst nightmare predicted in his farewell address.- Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
He believes that Eisenhower was right, and is a fierce critic of the military-industrial complex. Or what he calls “the warfare state,” an obvious play on “welfare state.” He believes military spending has become an […]
As I check the polls each day, as I have done for months now, what stands out for me is the solidarity of Trump's support. As story after story comes out about his criminality, his cheating, his lying, his incompetence, the corruption he creates around him, and on and on, none of it seems to have any effect on his support. Today, as you can see in the graph from FiveThirtyEight he is at 43.8%. How is that possible given what we saw in the debate Tuesday. How could anyone still support Trump? Yet they do, unwaveringly. And have you noticed the silence from Congressional Republicans?
I think Robert Reich is correct, and it is hard for me to see how the United States goes forward without massive change. 
