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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: In his three and a half years as President Trump, as this article describes, has trashed America's place in the world, and it may take years to repair this damage, if it can be repaired at all. International geopolitics have changed, and China is emerging as the world leader.
Trump and European leaders
London (CNN)It’s no secret that Donald Trump is no big fan of the European Union. Over the past four years, the US President has talked positively about Brexit and claimed that the bloc was created in order to “take advantage of the United States.”So it’s perhaps no great surprise that several of his ambassadors to several European nations have behaved in ways that are not exactly diplomatic, in the traditional sense.Earlier this week, it emerged that Pete Hoekstra, the US ambassador to the Netherlands, hosted an event at his embassy for Forum for Democracy (FvD), a far-right, anti-immigration and anti-EU party that is gaining popularity in the country. Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, which first reported on the event, described it as a fundraiser for the party.A US state department spokesperson told CNN that this event was not a fundraiser, but a “town hall discussion and Q&A session” with FvD. They added that during his stint in the Netherlands, Hoekstra has hosted “15 town halls with […]
Stephan: What is now documented makes it clear that Trump ought to be in prison for mammoth criminality and grifting, not President of the United States.
Felix Sater
In a new book, investigative reporter Tom Burgis details the shocking ways in which corrupt leaders used Russian “businessman” Felix Sater to conduct sketchy deals, including ones for President Donald Trump.
According to the Daily Beast, Kleptopia: How Dirty Money is Conquering the World reports the “terrifying” and true tale of overwhelming corruption, “clandestinely fusing their business interests, and forming alliances.”
“What they crave is legitimacy—for their money and their power,” the Beast described. “That means hijacking democracies, harnessing the rule of law to protect their own lawless fortunes and destroy their enemies.”
If people like Sater can funnel cash quietly through different channels, it can help untrusted regimes garner some form of trust from the global community by hiding their illicit activities. The person who does that is Sater, and his relationship with Trump is well-documented.
BRIAN KAREM, Senior White House Correspondent - The Bulwark
Stephan: I have always been amazed that there has been so little commentary on the fact that most days Trump plays golf or watches television most of the time. His actual work schedule is just a few hours. Don't you wish you had a job like that?
The Oval Office of the White House is seen after renovations including new wallpaper August 22, 2017 in Washington, DC. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty
It isn’t just that Donald Trump is crazy.
It isn’t just that he lies.
It’s not just that his administration is filled with chaos.
And it isn’t just that he is “Putin’s puppet.”
There’s another problem we tend to overlook as we react to the president’s bombast, wild claims, misogyny, racism, lies, greed, avarice, and abandonment of all the core principles of our country and his party. We overlook it because it is so common that it is no longer news.
It is this: Donald Trump rarely shows up in the West Wing, and when he does, he is too incompetent to effectively fulfill his oath of office.
The Marine guard posted outside of Trump’s office when he is in it almoste never appears before noon and is rarely seen in the afternoon. There have been days when Trump has held press briefings where the guard wasn’t outside of the door even as Trump entered the briefing room—indicating that […]
Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: Today I am running this single story, which is quite lengthy, yet I hope you will click through and read all of it. I am sure you have already heard the story's highlights, but it is in the details that the full griftiness and dishonesty of Donald Trump comes into focus. This man should never have become President of the United States, and wouldn't have if the truth about him were known.
Forty-three percent of the people who could vote did not vote in 2016, and each of us must take it as a personal responsibility to strongly encourage everyone they know to vote in this election. Your future, the country's future, depend on voting Trump out of office, and flipping the Senate so that it is under Democratic control. It is going to take years to undo the damage this criminal psychopath and his orcs have wrought.
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.
The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year […]
Stephan: One of the nastiest Trump actions is gutting the environmental protections so painstakingly passed by both prior Democratic (mostly) and Republican administrations. Trump sees the earth as exploitable assets to be used to enrich himself and his friends. He has no sense of the Matrix of Life, nor any respect for the biosphere.
Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, FEMA Director Brock Long, President Donald Trump, Paradise Mayor Jody Jones, and Gov. Jerry Brown tour the Skyway Villa Mobile Home and RV Park in Paradise, Calif., on Nov. 17, 2018. Credit: Paul Kitagaki Jr.-Pool/Getty
As wildfires destroy millions of acres in California, Oregon, and Washington, and an unprecedented series of hurricanes cause historic flooding in the South, leaving parts of the region uninhabitable, the Trump administration has been racing to reverse rules designed to prevent exactly these kinds of climate disasters.
Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has presided over the rollback of more environmental rules and regulations than any other president. The result has been that, even as climate change is on track to soon force millions of Americans from their homes and eventually heat the Earth to temperatures not seen for 34 million years, the leader of the country that bears more responsibility for the climate change than any other has doubled down on the decimation of efforts meant to combat both pollution and the climate crisis.
“The Trump administration is the first in the history of the agency […]
Stephan: It is in the environmental issues that the true vileness of Donald Trump is most evident. He is a truly disgusting human being, and your children and their children will curse his name for the damage he is permitting to be done to the earth and the Matrix of Life.
A bay in the Tongass National Forest, Alaska. Credit: Eleanor Scriven/Getty/
More than half of the Tongass national forest – a 16.7m-acre old-growth temperate rainforest in south-east Alaska – has been protected for the last two decades by the so-called “roadless area conservation rule”, which prohibits development in designated wild areas. The US Forest Service is expected to release a final environmental impact statement on Friday which would allow for the Tongass to be exempt from the rule, moving one step closer to ending the protections entirely.
Supporters of the exemption see it as increasing access to federal lands for such things as timber harvests and development of minerals and energy projects. Republican leaders in Alaska have lobbied the federal government to reverse the rule over the last two years. In […]
Juliet Eilperin, Senior National Affairs Correspondent - The Washington Post
Stephan: And here, via these formerly secret recordings, we see bragging by coal executives describing the naked corruption of Trump and his administration.
Ronald Thiessen President and Ceo of Northern Dynasty Minerals
A direct line to the White House, but routed through a third party to hide it from public view. Easy access to Alaska’s governor, as well as the state’s two U.S. senators. A successful push to unseat nine Republican state lawmakers who opposed their plan to build a massive gold and copper mine — the biggest in North America — near Bristol Bay in Alaska.
Those were some of the boasts made by two top executives of a company trying to build the Pebble Mine in videotapes secretly recorded by an environmental group and made public Monday. It was a rare glimpse into the private discussions surrounding the company’s heated campaign to win federal permits for the project, which environmentalists say will destroy a pristine part of Alaska and decimate its world-famous sockeye salmon fishery.
The conversations were secretly recorded over the past month and a half by the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency. Posing as potential investors in the mine, EIA investigators conducted Zoom calls in which the mine’s sponsors […]
Stephan: Here, finally, is some good news, augmenting the story I published the other day about California moving out of the carbon era. Even as the Republicans led by Trump try to do everything they can to preserve carbon energy to protect the profits of their friends and supporters, the world is moving away from carbon powered energy.
Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios
Gasoline-powered carsmay be going the way of the woolly mammoth, even if it will take decades to replace them and seems hard to fathom today.
The big picture: Internal combustion engines (ICEs) have powered automobiles for more than 100 years. But the shift to electric vehicles, slow to materialize at first, is now accelerating due to tightening government policies, falling costs and a societal reckoning about climate change.
Driving the news: California said this week it plans to phase out sales of conventional new cars by 2035 in favor of zero-emission vehicles that run on electricity.
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order no doubt faces a giant legal fight and could depend heavily on the election outcome and the shape of the Supreme Court, Axios’ Ben Geman explains.
The rest of the world is far ahead, with at least 15 countries already banning new gasoline cars and others adopting strict policies to spur EV adoption.
“Europe and China have woken up to the fact that [the combustion engine] is dead,” Arndt Ellinghorst, automotive analyst at Bernstein Research, […]
