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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: When most nonrural Americans think about bankruptcies they think about shops they go to, or restaurants where they eat. But there is another set of bankruptcies that are going to have a very personal impact on how they live at home -- farm bankruptcies. The people who grow our food between Trump's ghastly tariff food wars and the Covid pandemic are going bankrupt at a rate not seen in decades. Even when they are not going bankrupt, because of Trump's racist immigration policies, they are having a hard time hiring the men and women they need to work in their fields.
My wife grows most of the non-protein foods we eat, but when I go into the market for something I notice that lettuce is $3-4 a head, with Romaine being most expensive. It will probably be $5-6 a head this winter. If you make $15 to $25 an hour, how do you spend $30-40 a week on lettuce so your kids can eat salads? And if they don't how do they stay healthy?
Bankrupt farmMore farmers are declaring bankruptcy despite record levels of federal aid, reported The Wall Street Journal (Aug. 6).
About 580 farmers filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy protection in the 12-month period ended June 30, according to federal data—8% more than a year earlier.
In 2019, farm bankruptcies were up, reported FB.org. Chapter 12 family farm bankruptcies increased by nearly 20% from the previous year, according to data from U.S. courts. Looking at figures from over the past decade, the 20% increase follows only 2010, the year following the Great Recession when Chapter 12 bankruptcies rose 33%.
With slightly more than 2 million farms in the U.S., the 2019 bankruptcy data reveals a bankruptcy rate of approximately 2.95 bankruptcies per 10,000 farms, just below the rate of 2.99 filings per 10,000 farms in 2011.
However, bankruptcies slowed slightly in the first half of 2020, partly due to an infusion of federal aid and hurdles to filing during the pandemic, according to agricultural economists and attorneys. In April, The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump announced a $19 billion […]
Stephan: Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama are part of a secret satanic international pedophile ring trading in child sex slaves. How sick do you have to be to take something like that seriously? I read a lot of rightwing websites because I think it is important to know what Trump world is thinking. It is a chore because it is so crazy it doesn't even work as satire and the fact that millions of people believe it I find astonishing. It isn't just that it is fact-free. It is the racism, the nastiness, the ugliness, and the very weird sexuality of these people. It is a kind of religious political S&M. Their obsessions tell more about them, than the people they talk about. Here is a little background on that world and what is going on in it.
Trump supporters, notice they are all White. Credit: Shutterstock
Remember the “Left Behind” series, about how the Rapture would whisk away all devout right-wing Christians before Jesus Christ unleashed the apocalypse on the unbelievers? Purity rings? Jesus Camp? Breathless stories about “girls gone mild,” giving up sex and tank tops for the Lord? A federal health official who believed that women who had premarital sex couldn’t feel love? Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson blaming 9/11 on the “pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way”?There can be no doubt that the heyday of Christian fundamentalism in America was the George W. Bush administration. Conservatives craved reassurance that they were defenders of “morality”, despite supporting an indefensible invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. These claims to moral superiority over liberals mainly came in the form of policing […]
Stephan: By any measure I can find, with the exception of the rich, who are getting much richer, America is coming apart. In three and a half years Trump, his orcs, and the Congressional Republicans and Red-state governors have taken a country that was thriving, when Trump came into office, into a nose dive that has left us in a medical crisis and an economic christofascist mire. Every social outcome measurement reports pain, suffering, fear, and anger. Pew Research Center lays it all out, with real facts, not conspiracy theories and fantasies.
With less than five months until the 2020 elections, Americans are deeply unhappy with the state of the nation. As the United States simultaneously struggles with a pandemic, an economic recession and protests about police violence and racial justice, the share of the public saying they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country has plummeted from 31% in April, during the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, to just 12% today.
Anger and fear are widespread. Majorities of Democrats and Republicans say they feel both sentiments when thinking about the country, though these feelings are more prevalent among Democrats. And just 17% of Americans – including 25% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents and 10% of Democrats and Democratic leaners – say they feel proud when thinking about the state of the country.
However, nearly half of adults (46%) say they feel hopeful about the state of the country, although a 53% majority says they are not hopeful.
In the presidential contest, Donald Trump faces a 10 percentage point deficit in his race against Joe Biden: 54% of registered voters say […]
Stephan: It is a measure of what the United States has become that, as this report describes, 25% of young adults have considered killing themselves rather than going forward with their lives. Think about that for a moment, and consider what that is telling you about America today.
If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal call or suggest they call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255.
Credit: Adobe Stock
“Symptoms of anxiety disorder and depressive disorder increased considerably in the United States during April–June of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released Friday. Just over 40 percent of respondents in a June 24-30 survey reported at least one adverse mental or behavioral health condition, ranging from anxiety disorder to increased substance use to cope with the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And 10.7 percent of respondents reported having seriously considered suicide over the previous 30 days because of the pandemic. That’s a high number, but it was especially prevalent among certain groups.
For example, 25.5 percent of young adults age 18 to 24 said they had considered suicide in June, versus 16 percent of respondents age 25-44 and 3.8 percent of those 45 to 64. Other groups with high rates of suicidal ideation included essential workers (21.7 percent), people with less than a high school diploma (30 percent), Black (15.1 percent) and Hispanic (18.6 percent) respondents — 7.9 percent of white […]
Stephan: How ironic it is that Trump who brought shame to America by his nasty immigration policies to keep Brown and Black people out, through his incompetence with the pandemic, has ended up making it almost impossible for Americans to be welcomed anywhere.
The Atlantic/Getty
Becoming a United States citizen was meaningful to me for a great number of reasons. German by birth, I had come to feel at home in America, and to love it. For all the deep injustices that shape this country, I remained convinced that the United States was more likely than just about any other place in the world to build a thriving, diverse democracy. And when I wrote about the danger that right-wing populists like Donald Trump pose to the American republic, I cherished being able to speak about his assault on our, as opposed to your, values and institutions.
Alongside all these serious reasons, I also had a very practical one: the power of the U.S. passport. It granted access to just about everywhere, and escape from just about anywhere. Which country—Germany or the United States—would be more likely to rescue me if I got stuck in some foreign country in the middle of a perilous political crisis? Would the last plane to evacuate foreigners from Chad or Chile or Canada before that country devolved into civil war be sent […]
Stephan: Here is Sunday's Republican Scum Report. It's a classic image. Alex Jones, standing in a park without a mask shouting through a bull horn at some hikers and park workers who must have wondered who is that fat old loon shouting at us?
Alex Jones, ranting loon in a park
Austin-based conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was filmed screaming without a mask for several minutes through a small bullhorn earlier this week at a small group of largely unresponsive hikers and young park workers seated in camp chairs at one of the new check-point entrances to the city’s Barton Creek greenbelt, accusing the “cult member kooks” of participating in an “illegal power grab of the people’s greenbelt.”
“My wife came here this morning, when you cult member kooks showed up here. And you asked her, ‘Where’s her reservation?’” Jones, founder and host of the conspiracy theory website InfoWars, was recorded shouting in an InfoWars video that first went viral Monday.
“Her reservation is that we live in a free country,” he added. “We live in America.”
The city opened the greenbelt Saturday for the first time since the July 4 weekend, implementing a reservation system to limit attendance amid the coronavirus pandemic. Jones, who has peddled conspiracy theories for years, alleged the new system was a profit scheme.
“I want this removed tonight,” he screamed, pointing at the makeshift wooden registration stand […]
Erin Cox, Erin Cox Local reporter covering Maryland state politics Email Bio Follow Elise Viebeck, Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham, Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan: Donald Trump and his orcs, particularly Louis DeJoy, are attempting to pull off completely in the open, with no shame, the largest attack on the American electoral process ever witnessed. I do not understand why hundreds of thousands of people in cities and towns across America are not out in the street protesting the sabotage of the United States Postal Service. Please write your senators and representative, as I have just done, to protest this and demand that they do something to not only stop but reverse this attack on our national wellbeing.
Anticipating an avalanche of absentee ballots, the U.S. Postal Service recently sent detailed letters to 46 states and D.C. warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted — adding another layer of uncertainty ahead of the high-stakes presidential contest.
The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes.
The Postal Service’s warnings of potential disenfranchisement came as the agency undergoes a sweeping organizational and policy overhaul amid dire financial conditions. Cost-cutting moves have already delayed mail delivery by as much as a week in some places, and a new decision to decommission 10 percent of the Postal Service’s sorting machines sparked widespread concern the slowdowns will only worsen. Rank-and-file postal workers say the move is ill-timed and could sharply diminish the speedy processing of flat mail, including letters and ballots.
Bill Blum, Retired Judge - Independent Media Institute/AlterNet
Stephan: Judge Blum, in my view, speaks to the trend that really concerns me: the creation by Trump and his orcs of a legal structure justifying White supremacy christofascism.
Trump and his orcs Credit: Shealah Craighead/White House
The debate over whether Donald Trump is a fascist is no longer confined to a narrow segment of the far left. It is now out in the open. Even mainstream columnists like the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg and the Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor and influential Democratic politicians, such as Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, have come to use the “F” word to describe our 45th commander in chief.
Although it is an emotionally loaded and often misused term, fascism is as real today as a political and cultural force, a set of core beliefs and a mode of governance as it was when Benito Mussolini founded the Italian Fascist Party in 1919 and declared himself dictator six years later.
Nor is fascism a foreign phenomenon restricted to South American banana republics or failed European states. As University of London professor Sarah Churchwell explained in a June 22 essay published […]
