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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.
Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel, Senior Editor | Senior Data Reporter | Business and Consumer Finance Reporter - ProPublica
Stephan:
If American voters are stupid enough to elect criminal Trump for President, which I hope does not happen, he has promised his uber-rich backers he will lower their taxes and through imposing tariffs raise yours. What most Americans don’t seem to comprehend is that the uber-rich already pay only a tiny faction of the tax rate you pay, and sometimes, they pay no income taxes at all. This article from ProPublica will give you the facts. The obscene wealth inequality in the U.S., the worst amongst all the developed democracies, is in large part the result of a tax system that is already rigged by corrupt Congress members to favor the rich.
Credit: ProPublica
ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.
In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.https://audm.herokuapp.com/player-embed/?pub=propublica&articleID=secret-irs-files-eisinger
Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.
ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the […]
Because of the endless greed of American corporations, the Great Schism Trend, the lack of universal birthright single payer healthcare and the cost of every aspect of healthcare, as well as the grotesque wealth inequality, and what climate change is doing, the culture of the United States is radically changing, and not in a good way. Like many of my friends, I bought my first house in 1971 when I was just 29 much like the generation described in this piece. It was in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a very desirable location just outside of D.C.. It cost $48,000 with a $5,000 down payment. The house is now appraised at $790,000, and I doubt many 29-year-olds would have the money to afford that today. This article on home ownership is based on actual research and describes the nature of our society today, and it is not a happy story.
The big picture: Gen Zers, roughly those aged 12-27, feel deeply pessimistic about the world around them, Axios’ Erica Pandey reports.
What they’re saying: “There’s nothing left to put away for a down payment” after shelling out for rent and other bills, and saving for retirement, Minneapolis renter Jaylen Santos, 23, tells Axios.
Unless someone’s married or they get homebuying help from family, “I don’t see how Gen Z can afford it,” Dallas renter Annabelle Hull, 22, says.
Some say they’d rather rent in buzzy neighborhoods than cough up for houses further from the action.
Over half of U.S. adult men (57%) and women (55%) under 25 lived in their parents’ home in 2022, an arrangement that’s become more common in the past several […]
LAUREN BAKER, JANE MALAND CADY, and MICHAEL KWAME NKONU, Senior Director of Programs at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food | Program Director, Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems, McKnight Foundation | Head of Portfolio - Agricultural Livelihoods at the IKEA Foundation. - Common Dreams
Stephan:
Finally, here is some good news about efforts being made to prepare food systems throughout the world for climate change. I will be paying close attention to how the United States prepares. So far I do not see the kind of preparation that is going to be required.
Agroecology has been lauded as an approach that should guide the transformation of food and agriculture systems. Credit: Wendy Stone / Corbis / Getty
A growing coalition of philanthropic organizations, under the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, is committing to scale up funding for agroecological food systems to address intersecting challenges across climate, food and nature.
This year climate finance is all the talk. As the UN Climate Conference in Bonn wraps up and the stage is set for COP29 later this year, expectations are high for governments to agree on a new climate finance package that will tackle the worsening climate and ecological crises.
In many countries, food production is the climate frontline. Nearly 95% of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) include adaptation and mitigation actions in the agriculture sector yet fail to address the full food system.
It only takes one climate disaster—a drought, flood or heatwave—for entire villages to spiral into debt, poverty and hunger, impacting regional food systems and economies.
Tony Diver, Reporter - Yahoo News / The Telegraph (U.K.)
Stephan:
The willful ignorance, actually the stupidity, of anti-vaxxers anti-science mostly Republican MAGAts is amazing to me. The anti-vaxxers died by hundreds of thousands because they would not get vaccinated. Now they want to go back to drinking raw milk. Milk has been pasteurized for over a hundred years since Louis Pasteur discovered pasteurization in 1862, and German agricultural chemist Frans von Soxhlet suggested in 1886 that milk sold to the public should be pasteurized. Over time it has saved uncounted lives. We will see what happens as a result of drinking raw milk.
Credit: USA MILK
For more than 130 years, Americans have been instructed that drinking milk that comes directly from a cow’s udder can be dangerous.
The US dairy industry spends millions of dollars each year heating its product to 70C before sale, to kill microorganisms that can make people ill.
But a growing number of consumers would rather they left it alone. No longer the preserve of farmers and hippies, “raw” milk is now on sale in corner shops and trendy health food stores across America.
Its proponents argue that it helps with weight loss, gut health and lactose intolerance. Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress and a longtime promoter of unorthodox health advice, takes it in her coffee every morning.
“I think there are schools of thought that drinking raw milk is better because once you process it and everything, that’s when the dairy becomes harder to tolerate,” she said in a recent interview.
Pasteurisation, once a consensus issue, has become the latest frontier in America’s never-ending culture war.
Public health officials say that drinking the milk is dangerous, and could lead to […]
Elizabeth Cooney, Cardiovascular Disease Reporter - Stat
Stephan:
Here is a good news, bad news, report from FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. What also caught my attention is that Commissioner Califf’s testimony also illustrates how wealth and education inequality in the illness profit system contributes to the Great Schism Trend that is making us two different nations.
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf. Credit:Anna Moneymaker /Getty
ORLANDO, FLORIDA — The United States is at a critical juncture in its efforts to treat chronic diseases, particularly type 2 diabetes, and now has a chance to change the dangerous trajectory it’s currently following, FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said Friday.
“The U.S. is leading the world in technology development, innovation, new gadgets of all kinds, new drugs, you name it,” he said. “These advantages unfortunately are not resulting in superior health and outcomes for the U.S., population, or for most individuals in the U.S.”
Health outcomes as a whole are deteriorating in the U.S., Califf said in his remarks at the American Diabetes Association conference, but he sees one outlier.
“There’s an exception for type 1 diabetes, which I believe is on the verge of a major breakthrough in terms of the biology and biological therapies that can make an enormous difference for this special population of people with diabetes,” he said. “But on the other hand, for the larger epidemic of type 2 diabetes, we’re failing right now.”
This story, one of many similar reports, makes it clear there is a nationwide network of MAGAt christofascists who are organized and working together to end American democracy. I hope that all of you who read SR are clear about this. It is the reason that every voter should forget about partisanship and Biden’s age, and vote Democratic. This election is about one thing: democracy v authoritarianism.
A screen for a teleconference is shown in court in Las Vegas, on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023, where six Republicans pleaded not guilty to two felony charges each, stemming from their roles as fake electors in 2020 where they signed certificates falsely claiming former President Donald Trump won Nevada over Joe Biden. Credit: Ty O’Neil / AP
A nonprofit organization aligned with former President Trump paid $100,000 of legal fees for the six so-called “fake electors” in Nevada, according to people familiar with the payment.
Personnel Policy Operations, or PPO, shelled out the fees to assist the Trump-supporting electors who faced charges for falsely claiming the former president won the state in the 2020 presidential election. The case was dismissed Friday after a judge ruled the Nevada attorney general’s office chose the wrong venue in which to file it.
“There’s a strong and wide network of America First patriots doing our best to support each other and prevent the unjust weaponization of our legal system,” Joshua Whitehouse, director of strategy at the nonprofit, told The Hill. “PPO serves […]
Here is some semi-good news about Aquatic Farming. Good news because it has helped reduce overfishing which causes the breakdown the oceanic ecosystem. Bad news because how the system works has not been refined to a point where the waste does not cause damage. But, at least, it is moving in the right direction.
Colorful buoys float at an oyster farm in Shantou, Guangdong Province of China on April 22, 2024. Credit: Qiao Qiming / VCG / Getty
For the first time, the amount of aquatic life — such as fish, clams and shrimp — that was farmed outpaced wild-caught aquatic life in 2022, according to the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
In the UN’s latest The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report, it found that aquaculture, or farmed aquatic life, produced 130.9 million metric tons in 2022. By comparison, the same year saw 92.3 million metric tons of aquatic life products from global capture fisheries. Inland fisheries generated 11.3 million metric tons, while marine capture produced 81 million metric tons.
According to the UN, this is the first time that aquaculture production has outpaced capture fisheries, although it said that both are essential for feeding the global population.
In total, fisheries and aquaculture production produced 223.2 million metric tons of aquatic life, most of which (185.4 million metric […]
This is how bad the American illness profit system has become. If you live in a rural area, particularly in a state where voters have put Republicans in control, and you are a pregnant woman, even if you want desperately to have a child you may have nowhere close to you to go for OB/GYN care. Why? Because nearly 25 percent of rural hospitals stopped providing obstetric services between 2011 and 2021. Why this happen? Senate Finance Committee Chair, Democratic Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden, gives us the explanation.
“Closures like these are driven by stark economic realities facing the hospitals and efforts by large hospital chains to streamline the business at the expense of young families.” Wyden has introduced a bill to improve this dreadful situation. We will see how the Republicans respond.
Empty infant beds sit gathered in a corner in a quiet maternity ward at rural Madera Community Hospital, which closed in January 2023, creating a lack of health care services for the blue-collar Central Valley agricultural community in Madera, Calif. Credit: Melina Mara / The Washington Post / Getty
The chair of the Senate Finance Committee on Monday released a bill that would increase federal financial support to hospitals in hopes of stemming the tide of labor and delivery unit closures in rural and underserved areas.
Nearly a quarter of rural hospitals stopped providing obstetric services between 2011 and 2021, according to Chartis, a health care consulting firm. Analysts blame the closures on low Medicaid reimbursement rates and declining birth rates in rural communities. The combination, they said, makes it financially challenging to keep labor and delivery units staffed.
In a call with reporters, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he was inspired to introduce the bill after hearing of the […]
