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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: All you Trumpers, between Trump's comments about the military, and his subservient deferential behavior in regards to Putin, how much clearer does it need to get for you that Donald Trump is a traitor? How can you vote for a traitor, and yet claim you love your country?
WASHINGTON — An hour into his rally Thursday night in a Pittsburgh suburb, President Trump slammed states that have expanded mail-in voting, a familiar target for his reelection campaign.
“These mail-in ballots are a disgrace, and they know it,” he scoffed.
But Trump isn’t alone in trying to undermine faith in absentee ballots. U.S. officials say a Russian disinformation campaign is pushing the same disruptive message to Americans four years after the Kremlin sought to help Trump win the White House.
A Homeland Security intelligence bulletin issued hours before Trump spoke in Latrobe, Pa., warned that a Moscow-backed operation involving state media and proxy websites had “denigrated vote-by-mail processes, alleging they lack transparency and procedural oversight, creating vast opportunities for voter fraud.”
U.S. officials say Russia’s operation includes false allegations that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s health is failing and that he acted improperly in Ukraine when he served as vice president. Trump has made the same allegations.
The overlap in messaging between Trump’s rhetoric and Russian disinformation in some ways echoes the symbiotic relationship between the president’s first White House bid and Russian intelligence […]
Stephan: Even Trumpers should remember that Republicans used to bray on and on about the national debt, never seeming to remember that the national debt goes down when Democrats are in power, and up when Republicans are in power, largely because Republicans are always trying to rig the Tax structure to favor their rich patrons. The last time we didn't have national debt was under Bill Clinton's administration. Unfortunately, it went completely off the rails again under Bush but was brought under control during the Obama administration, only to go crazy again under Trump.
But I don't think most Americans realize how really bad the national debt issue has become; it is now the worse such World War II and, because of the Republicans' incompetence in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, it is projected to get even worse than that previous historic high in the coming months. Biden is going to have to spend much of his first term, assuming he wins and the Senate flips just sorting out the mess Trump and the Trumpers will leave.
So when they do polls showing that an overwhelming majority of Republicans think Trump is better at handling the economy than Biden would be, you know that what you are really seeing is not a poll on economics, but one on Trumper willful ignorance.
WASHINGTON—U.S. debt has reached its highest level compared to the size of the economy since World War II and is projected to exceed it next year, the result of a giant fiscal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that federal debt held by the public is projected to reach or exceed 100% of U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of U.S. economic output, in the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1. That would put the U.S. in the company of a handful of nations with debt loads that exceed their economies, including Japan, Italy and Greece.Borrowing BounceU.S. government debt is expected to exceedthe size of the economy for fiscal year 2021.U.S. federal debt as a share of GDPSources: Office of Management and Budget, WendyEdelbergNote: 2021 is an estimate%RECESSIONFY2021: 104.4%’70FY1941’50’60’80’902000’10’20020406080100120
This year the ratio is expected to be 98%, also the highest since World War II.
The surge in borrowing so far isn’t creating angst among investors or hampering the U.S.’s ability to borrow more. Investors have gobbled up U.S. Treasury assets, drawn to their relative […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
