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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.
Fred Hiatt, Editorial Page Editor - The Washington Post
Stephan: I wondered whether I was the only person who was watching Trump commit one impeachable offense after another. I find it extraordinary that neither the media, nor Congress seems to want to actually acknowledge the truth of what is going on. We are openly moving into fascism, and we are being astonishingly casual about it.
President Trump’s contempt for the Constitution is deepening at an accelerating pace.
How can I tell?
In a June 28 column, Iupdated the articles of impeachment, imagining as a thought experiment that the Senate had postponed action at the beginning of the year rather than voting to acquit. Based on Trump’s behavior in the intervening five months and what we had learned of his earlier actions, I argued that at least four new articles were warranted.
Now, only four weeks later, there’s enough misbehavior to lengthen the indictment just as much again.
To be clear: I am not suggesting that the House should again impeach the president. It’s up to the voters to render judgment, and we will have our chance soon enough.
But the thought experiment is valuable as a measure of whether Trump was chastened by becoming only the third president in history to be impeached, as some Republican senators assured us he would be — and as a warning of what we might expect if he is returned to office for a second term.
You will recall that Trump was impeached on two counts: abuse of power, for withholding aid and a White House meeting in a corrupt attempt to extort political favors from […]
Stephan: The Republicans have been trying to privatize the Post Office since Reagan was in office. Although most people rarely think of it in this way, it is the branch of government the Founders felt to be so important that it is the one department, along with the Navy, in the Constitution. Initially, Republicans saw the conversion as a money-making operation but now they see it as essential to rigging the election so they can stay in power.
From left, Garrett Schaffel, and Judy Beard, American Postal Workers Union national legislative and political director, carry a Priority Mail box towards the Capitol for a photo-op on Tuesday, June 23, 2020. Credit: Bill Carr/ CQ Roll Call/ Getty
Janine Jackson:One congressmember said it would be “a stunning act of sabotage” if the new head of the US Postal Service is allowed to push through major changes. Big Trump donor—surprise—Louis DeJoy issued a series of memos, disclosed to the Washington Post, calling for significant operational changes, including restrictions on overtime that many, including the Postal Workers Union, contend would slow down mail delivery, at the same time as Donald Trump holds up crucial pandemic support for USPS, contingent on it making steep price increases. “Sabotage” starts to sound like quite an apt description.
But what we should know is that this direct attack on the Postal Service, while it may be felt especially acutely during a pandemic and an election in which the most reasonable response is voting by mail, is absolutely nothing new, only the latest iteration of a decades-long assault on the US […]
Stephan: This story, like the failure to have a national plan to deal with the pandemic, or create proper planning for school openings, and on and on, all results from one thing. America has become a society whose only social priority is profit. Everything is a calculation on profit. And none of this is going to get fixed properly until we decide to make fostering wellbeing our first priority. The problem is I am no longer sure we are capable as a people of achieving this.
Students at Rutgers University’s commencement in 2016. Student loan benefits are set to expire in September. Credit: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty
The federal government’s emergency relief for more than 40 million student loan borrowers is set to expire at the end of September, amid sky-high levels of unemployment and an overall economy still stifled by rising coronavirus cases.
The looming end of the benefits also comes with a clear political dilemma in an election year: Unless Congress or the Trump administration intervenes, the Education Department will demand monthly loan payments from tens of millions of borrowers in October, just before they head to the polls. The department is already preparing to send warnings to borrowers, starting Aug. 15, about the expiration of their benefits, according to people familiar with the plan.
“People have now priced into their family finances not having to make a student loan payment during this crisis,” said Mike Pierce, who worked on student loan policy at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama administration. “Restarting these payments six weeks before the election seems like […]
Stephan: What I don't get is how anyone can vote for Republicans like Jim Jordan, Louie Gohmert, or Ted Cruz. These men are such scum, how can the voters who elect them not see this? This trend amongst White Republicans of electing men and women who are demonstrable inappropriate to hold the offices to which they have been elected is one of the most dangerous in the country.
Margaret Brennan and Ted Cruz
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Sunday blasted waiters, waitresses and bus boys who he said don’t deserve an additional $600 per week for being unemployed during the coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview on CBS, Cruz told host Margaret Brennan that restaurant owners are at a disadvantage because their staff doesn’t want to work while the pandemic is ongoing.
“We need to do significantly more to fight the disease,” Cruz opined. “At the same time, we have an absolute economic catastrophe. We have over 44 million Americans [who] have lost their job and we have got to get America back to work.”
According to Cruz, Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) are “shoveling cash at the problem.”
“Do you object to providing any kind or any amount of federal boost to unemployment?” Brennan wondered. “Because not everyone is choosing to be out of work.”
“The policy the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi are pushing adds an additional $600 a week,” Cruz complained. “The problem is, for 68% of people receiving it right now, they are being paid more on […]
Stephan: As readers know I live on a rural island in the Pacific Northwest, just a few miles from a picturesque and historic village of about 1500 people. Today I went in to pick up the mail, and as I walked through the village I noticed yet another shop had closed and would not be reopening, the space is now empty. It made me think of the women who had worked in that shop, and from there I began to count up the number of hourly workers in my one little village who are out of work and have been for some months.
Driving home I listened to commentators on npr talking about how Mitch McConnell and the Republicans had put the senate into recess without passing the acutely need legislation to help these millions of hourly workers. All I could think about was: Mitch and the others how could you be so callous, so lacking in compassion? So indifferent to the suffering that is going on all around you? Of course, you are getting your paychecks, aren't you? No stress for you. There are 23 Republican senators up for re-election. Come on America! Vote everyone of these bastards out of office.
Carlos Ponce joins other demonstrators participating in a protest asking Senators to support the continuation of unemployment benefits on July 16, 2020 in Miami Springs, Florida. Credit: Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty
As Senate Republicans headed home for the weekend without extending unemployment insurance benefits or approving other economic relief programs that could help millions of Americans weather the ongoing financial catastrophe of the coronavirus pandemic, progressives and congressional Democrats warned that disaster is on the horizon.
“This whole house of cards is going to collapse,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) warned during a press conference Friday afternoon.
As Common Dreamsreported, the departure of the GOP-controlled Senate for the weekend without a resolution to the benefits questions earned the upper chamber’s leadership a harsh rebuke in a speech from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who called the decision by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to recess until Monday unacceptable.
“The lapse that is being forced on this country right now is because Senate Republicans would not step up,” said Wyden. “The lapse is going to lead to evictions, it’s going to lead to hunger, it’s […]
Stephan: I am always searching the academic literature for social outcome data -- I am sure everyone who reads SR knows I am a data person first and last. Today in Googling the databases I came across a new study ranking countries on which are best and worst in which to raise a family, and I was appalled at the ranking of the United States. We are really off-the-rails. I urge you to read this article, and then the primary research on which it is based: https://www.asherfergusson.com/raising-a-family-index/.
We must reboot our culture and do so on the basis of fostering wellbeing, not just making profit. We are a very sick nation.
We get an “F” for family.
New York family Credit: Getty
In case you thought America wasn’t experiencing enough turmoil of late, the United States has been named the second-worst wealthy nation in which to raise a family in 2020, according to new research by travel site Asher & Lyric.
“The first time I looked at the data, I was in disbelief,” co-founder Lyric Benson-Fergusson said of the findings in the “Raising a Family Index” (RAFI).
The Los Angeles-based mother of two started the site with her Aussie husband, Asher Fergusson, to help people “stay safe, healthy, and happy at home and while traveling,” per the website’s description.
To determine the most and least family-friendly countries, the couple rated 35 OECD countries (part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development forum) according to safety, happiness, cost, health, education and time.
The US clocked in at an abysmal 34th place, just ahead of last-place finisher Mexico, whose murder rate jumped to the highest in nearly two years as drug cartels have run amok during the coronavirus […]
Stephan: Trump and the Republicans are going to try to rig the November election in every way they can. It is highly probable that in your state you are going to have to fight to vote, and to get your vote counted. Now is the time to join an organization working to protect your right to vote and to see that if you do vote that your vote is accurately counted. And it is very important that every one of us vote. Not voting is voting for Trump.
A voter in Michigan. Credit: Shutterstock
It’s official: 1,913,369 ballots were cast but never counted in the 2016 presidential race. That’s from the US Elections Assistance Commission.
And not just anyone’s ballot gets tossed into the electoral dumpster. The US Civil Rights Commission took a look at Florida’s throw-away pile and calculated that your chance of having your vote simply go uncounted, “spoiled,” is 900% higher if you’re Black than if you’re white.
Trump’s call for an army of 50,000 vigilantes is laughable: some schmuck in a Hawaiian shirt and MAGA cap won’t scare off voters of color. But 50,000 challengers, challenging every single ballot for Biden – that could succeed. It did for Trump in Michigan in 2016.
Here’s how Michigan – and so the Presidency – was stolen four years ago.
This little chapter from How Trump Stole 2020 tells you how they did it in 2016 … and can do it again in 2020:
Michigan Michigass
Here’s what you know: In 2016, Donald Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes. Officially.
Here’s what you don’t know: 75,355 ballots were never counted. That’s official, too. Just […]
Stephan: We are so close to becoming a fascist autocratic kleptocracy, and so few seem to realize this. My correspondents in Germany though, having lived through fascism, see it all too clearly.
Germans have a particular relationship to fire. The Reichstag fire of 1933 enabled Hitler and the Nazis to scrap the fragile Weimar democracy that had brought them to power. Hitler’s murderous fantasies could now become reality. War, Auschwitz and the German catastrophe followed.
I have known many thoughtful German diplomats over the years, including Michael Steiner, who labored to stop the Balkan wars of the 1990s, and Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to the United States. It always seemed to me that their particular passion for freedom, democracy and openness stemmed from the knowledge of how easily these are lost.
Michael Steinberg, a professor of history at Brown University and the former president of the American Academy in Berlin, wrote to me this week:
“The American catastrophe seems to get worse every day, but the events in Portland have particularly alarmed me as a kind of strategic experiment for fascism. The playbook from the German fall of democracy in 1933 seems well in place, including rogue military factions, the destabilization of cities, etc.”
