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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.
Jennifer Taub, Professor of Law at Western New England School of Law and author of “Big Dirty Money: The Shocking Injustice and Unseen Cost of White Collar Crime, - Reporter
Stephan: Under Trump and the Trumplicans we have become world leaders on grifts, corruption, and kleptocracy. Here's the story.
President Trump in the Oval Office in January 2017 with then-national security adviser Michael Flynn, center, and then-chief strategist Steve Bannon. In a new book, Financial Times correspondent Tom Burgis places Trump within the context of a widening number of international kleptocrats. Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty
The United States is a money-laundering mecca. Our legal system, corporate lawyers, bankers, real estate agents, title companies and accountants are eager to turn dirty money into gold. Or yachts. Or sparkling new luxury condos in Manhattan and South Florida. Though the true owners of these clean assets largely hide from view, the fact that America welcomes big dirty money from abroad is no secret. The mystery, however, is why our leaders in Washington have not taken the simple steps to stop this.
In June 2019, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “Combating Kleptocracy: Beneficial Ownership, Money Laundering, and Other Reforms.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) laid out the problem starkly: “America too often enables global corruption” by providing leaders who loot their countries “the shelter of our rule of law for their ill-gotten gains.”
Stephan: Here is the Saturday Republican Scum Report. We don't have a functioning Attorney General of the United States; we have a mafia consigliere. Just another Trumpian orc.
William Barr
Attorney General Bill Barr denied Wednesday that there are “two justice systems” for Black and white people in the U.S., claiming in a wide-ranging interview on CNN that the idea that there is an “epidemic” of police shooting unarmed Black men is “simply a false narrative.”
The big picture: Barr acknowledged that there is a “widespread phenomenon” of Black men being treated with “extra suspicion” and “maybe not being given the benefit of the doubt” by police officers, but he denied that this is the product of “systemic racism.” A number of other Trump Cabinet officials and the president himself have denied that there is systemic racism in policing.
What he’s saying: “I did say that I do think that there appears to be a phenomenon in the country where African Americans feel that they’re treated, when they’re stopped by police, frequently, as suspects before they are treated as citizens,” Barr said.
“I don’t think that that necessarily reflects some deep-seated racism in police departments or in most police officers. I think the same kind of behavior is done by African American police officers.”
“I think there are stereotypes. I think people operate very frequently according to […]
Stephan: Today's SR has only this one story; that's how important I think it is. Speaking as a veteran - a medic in the army during the beginning of the Viet Nam era -- I think this story, which is supported by numerous witnesses to these events, more clearly defines the character of Donald Trump, a draft dodger, than anything else I have read. I also think this may be the leverage point that causes Trump to lose the election. The largest demographic supporting Trump is older White men without a college education, a large percentage of whom are veterans. How a single one of them can now vote for Trump I cannot fathom.
Donald Trump greets families of the fallen at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day2017. Cre3dit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America […]
Stephan: If there is an incorrect way to do something, you can rely on that being the option Trump will choose. This story I think, at its core, is about trying to protect pharmaceutical corporatists from competition so they can possibly beat every other research group to creating a viable vaccine and reap billions of dollars of profit. The fact that this is against the best interests of the families of America means nothing to Trump and his orcs. Your good health, and the good health of your family doesn't earn Trump supporters a dime.
Technicians work as King Philippe of Belgium visits the seat and lab of candidate vaccine against Covid-19 developer Janssen Pharmaceutica, on June 17, 2020 in Beerse, Belgium. A brand new biotech lab was recently established to perform Covid-19 diagnostic tests. Belgium takes a pioneering role in the fight against viral infectious diseases. (Photo: Olivier Matthys/Getty
Provoking a flurry of critical reactions from health experts and lawmakers, the Trump administration announced Tuesday afternoon that it will not participate in the “global effort to develop, manufacture, and equitably distribute a coronavirus vaccine, in part because the World Health Organization is involved”—a decision the Washington Postsaid “could shape the course of the pandemic and the country’s role in health diplomacy” going forward.
The purpose of the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) Facility is to “speed vaccine development and secure doses for all countries and distribute them to the most high-risk segment of each population,” explained the Post.
While more than 170 countries are in negotiations to participate in Covax, Judd Deere, a spokesperson for the White House, told reporters that “The United States will continue […]
Stephan: Perhaps because the majority of Americans have never been outside the borders of the United States, they simply have no idea how radically different the police murder rate in this country is from other nations. If you are a male, and a person of color, your chance of being murdered by the police is vastly greater than that of a White man of your age. You don't have to be doing anything. Being in a public place or street while Black is enough. But it also has to be said that more Whites than people of color are killed by police, in absolute numbers, as opposed to proportional to your race's percentage of population. What does that tell us? It tells us that the police murder more people regardless of race in days than are killed in some nations over decades. Here are the facts.
Police kill map in the U.S.Credit: The Guardian
The Guardian has built the most comprehensive database of US police killing ever published. Compare our findings to those from the UK, Australia, Iceland and beyond.
It’s rather difficult to compare data from different time periods, according to different methodologies, across different parts of the world, and still come to definitive conclusions.
It is undeniable that police in the US often contend with much more violent situations and more heavily armed individuals than police in other developed democratic societies. Still, looking at our data for the US against admittedly less reliable information on police killings elsewhere paints a dramatic portrait, and one that resonates with protests that have gone global since a killing last year in Ferguson, Missouri: the US is not just some outlier in terms of police violence when […]
Stephan: Here is yet another proof that fostering wellbeing not only helps those you help it also helps you by putting years on the length of your life. Here are the facts.
When parents transfer resources to their kids or to their aging parents, research has shown, life spans increase.
Giving money or resources to your children or aging parents is likely to increase their life span, according to a new paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
How to find resilience during the coronavirus pandemicThere is a linear relationship between the amount and frequency of wealth transfers and the lengths of individuals’ lives, the study results have shown.”At the beginning of life you are reliant on others,” said lead study author Tobias Vogt, who is an assistant professor in the faculty of spatial sciences at the University of Groningen. “It’s a good idea to help others throughout the course of our lives.”The researchers’ goal was to track data on how every individual in a given society consumes and saves.Intergenerational wealth transfers can include money, but they can also include houses, benefits or time.
Wealth transfers are more common where social cohesion is high
The researchers recognized that other factors — such as country’s gross domestic […]
Hiroko Tabuchi, Michael Corkery and Carlos Mureithi, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: I have told my readers over and over that petroleum corporations are not going to wither away without a fight, which means doing even more damage to the earth than they have already done. And here is yet another proof of that prediction.
A dump in Nakuru, Kenya. A trade group is pushing United States trade negotiators to demand a reversal of the country’s strict limits on plastics. Credit: Khadija M. Farah/The New York Times
Confronting a climate crisis that threatens the fossil fuel industry, oil companies are racing to make more plastic. But they face two problems: Many markets are already awash with plastic, and few countries are willing to be dumping grounds for the world’s plastic waste.
The industry thinks it has found a solution to both problems in Africa.
According to documents reviewed by The New York Times, an industry group representing the world’s largest chemical makers and fossil fuel companies is lobbying to influence United States trade negotiations with Kenya, one of Africa’s biggest economies, to reverse its strict limits on plastics — including a tough plastic-bag ban. It is also pressing for Kenya to continue importing foreign plastic garbage, a practice it has pledged to limit.
Plastics makers are looking well beyond Kenya’s borders. “We anticipate that Kenya could serve in the future as a hub […]
Stephan: Here is some wonderfully good news. Young people are becoming active in protecting American democracy by volunteering to serve at voting places. If you know a young person who is over 18, suggest that they, too, volunteer to work at polling places for the election.
A poll worker sanitizes a voting booth at a polling location in Louisville, Kentucky, on 23 June 2020. Credit: Bloomberg/Getty
Ahead of the 2016 election, Maya Patel, then a student at the University of Texas at Austin, registered 250 students to vote. But after seeing first-hand the hours-long lines voters were forced to navigate before casting their ballots, she knew there was more work to do. Two years later, she worked to install an additional polling location on the campus just in time for the midterm elections.
Now Patel is getting ready to be a poll worker in November. Why? Well, because it’s fun, and more importantly, she said, there’s a dire poll worker shortage around the country that could threaten the presidential election.
Elderly and retired people normally comprise a large portion of poll workers, but this year many of them have dropped out over fears of contracting Covid-19. In the 2016 presidential election, about 917,694 poll workers were responsible for managing more than 100,000 polling sites. This year, even as half of the American electorate is expected to vote […]
