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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: I have been holding this story for a while to see if any of the major media picked it up and did anything with it. Or any Republican came forward and commented on it. No one really did, and I didn't hear a word on the cable networks.
This is yet another perversion of the law by Trump using the powers of the Federal government to promote White supremacy. The corruption of the American government under Trump is almost complete.
The Trump administration just took another significant step toward derailing a controversial fair housing rule issued by the Obama administration in 2015.
Last year, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said that HUD will look to “reinterpret” the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which requires that cities and towns receiving federal funding to examine their local housing patterns for racial bias and to design a plan to address any measurable bias.
Then, in January, HUD announced that it was delaying the deadline for local governments to submit their fair housing evaluations by one year.
But delaying the fair housing evaluations, which were required as part of the AFFH rule, essentially “gutted” the AFFH rule, according to former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, who oversaw the rule’s announcement in 2015.
At the time, HUD said that the delay was due to technological issues with the Local Government Assessment Tool, a computer program that was to be used by local governments to submit their relevant housing data.
HUD said that it planned to use the delay to fix the […]
Stephan: Trump whose only real governing interest seems to be advancing himself and his family, and currying favor with the billionaires whose approval he craves, has appointed his orcs to the SEC, so they could help him to rig the laws in their favor. This is where it has left the working people of America, and if you have a 401(k) you better pay close attention.
Securities and Exchange Chairman Jay Clayton awaits the start of a hearing on Capitol Hill September 24, 2019 in Washington, DC. Clayton testified before the House Financial Services Committee on the topic of “Oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission: Wall Street’s Cop on the Beat.” Credit: Win McNamee/Getty
In 2017, Donald Trump appointed private-equity lawyer Jay Clayton as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), one of the agencies that is responsible for policing the financial industry. Soon after getting the job — and only a few years after the SEC finedmajorprivate equity firms for bilking investors — Clayton was pushing to change federal law to let asset managers funnel more money from retirees to those high-risk, high-fee firms.
Clayton finally got his way last week when the Trump administration issued a letter letting 401(k) plans move the savings of 100 million workers and retirees to private equity billionaires, some of whom have been among
Stephan: Crime has been going down for years in America even as police murders of civilians have been dramatically going up. This to a point where there are more murders by police by an order of magnitude than all the police forces of the 37 developed nations that are members of the OECD. Why is this happening? Here is the answer.
A Miami Police officer watches protestors from a armored vehicle during a rally in response to the recent death of George Floyd in Miami, Florida on May 31, 2020. Credit: Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty
Police unions have emerged as the leading opponent of reform efforts as lawmakers respond to weeks of protests over the police killings of Black people across the country.
Despite years of demonstrations against police violence, data shows that law enforcement agencies killed more people last year than they did five years ago. Black people are killed at a far higher rate than white people.
Looking at the historical data, researcher Lyman Stone, a former federal economist who now serves as a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, found that police killings mostly fell between the 1960s and the 2000s but have been at high levels ever since.
Stephan: Here, in contrast to Trump's reaction to police violence, is the reaction of someone who actually cares about social wellbeing. This, in my view, is a very big issue, because we are in danger of developing into a police state.
On December 4, 2014, Cleveland was in turmoil. Just days before, a white police officer had killed a 12-year-old boy playing in a park with a toy gun. The city was outraged at its police department, which many said was ill-trained, poorly supervised, and deeply troubled. On that day, Attorney General Eric Holder arrived in town with a report that seemed to bear out those complaints.
“In recent days, millions of people throughout our nation have come together, bound by grief and bound by anguish,” Holder said, mentioning Tamir Rice’s death and the killings earlier that year of Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
With that, Holder announced the results of the Justice Department’s 1½-year investigation in Cleveland. “There is reasonable cause to believe that the Cleveland Division of Police engages in a pattern and practice of using excessive force,” he declared. The report Holder delivered was a scathing indictment of Cleveland police for “poor and dangerous tactics,” pistol-whippings, guns fired at “unarmed or fleeing suspects,” and of supervisors […]
In repressive states across the world, I have often watched with deep dismay the response of foreign military and police forces towards political reform movements or popular mobilization efforts. In many cases, brutal tactics, sometimes made possible by U.S. equipment, are used to stifle civil society and to guard the regime in power from criticism, accountability and reform. Yet, even as a member of an organization that tracks and scrutinizes the policies and behaviors of U.S.-backed foreign security forces, I was ill-prepared for the surreal yet painfully familiar scenes that have taken place across the United States since the killing of George Floyd.
In Washington, D.C., heavily armed riot police, national guard units and a veritable alphabet soup of federal agencies clashed with peaceful protesters at the behest of a president keen on projecting strength through force. These scenes evoked the well-worn playbook of authoritarian states from across the globe. A Black Hawk helicopter and other aircraft, Humvees and hundreds of armed “troops” spread across the streets of […]
JAMES FALLOWS, VIVEK WADHWA, PICO IYER, ROLF POTTS, ELIZABETH BECKER, JAMES CRABTREE, ALEXANDRE DE JUNIAC, - Foreign Policy
Stephan: I think it is going to be a long while before things return to what we grew up thinking was normal, and further, I'm not sure that normal will ever return. Apparently, I am not alone in thinking this way because other people are writing about this as well. Here, for instance, is a view about travel in the future.
Credit: Brian Stauffer Illustration for Foreign Policy
As we enter the first summer of this new era of pandemics, a tenuous easing of travel restrictions has begun. This month, the countries of the European Union will reopen their internal borders, and they plan to allow travel from outside the block some time in July. Singapore and China have begun permitting essential travel between them, but only for passengers who test negative for the coronavirus, use a contact-tracing app, and don’t deviate from their itinerary. Iceland will allow tourists, but it plans to test them for the virus at the airport.
Grounded for many months, airlines are beefing up their summer schedules—though the number of flights will be a fraction of their pre-pandemic frequency. Airports are still mostly ghost towns (some have even been taken over by wildlife), and international long-distance travel is all but dead. Around the globe, the collapse of the tourist economy has bankrupted hotels, restaurants, bus operators, and car rental agencies—and thrown an estimated 100 million people out of work.
With uncertainty and fear hanging over traveling, no one knows […]
Stephan: My wife and I haven't been to a restaurant in months, and you probably haven't been either. And I like restaurants. And you probably do too. So what is going to happen to them in the future? Here is one possible scenario.
A business model that seemed marginal before the coronavirus pandemic now looks like the future of restaurants. Illustration James Clapham/The New Yorker
Last fall, walking down Mission Street, in San Francisco, I noticed a new addition to an otherwise unremarkable parking lot at the base of Bernal Heights Hill: a large, white trailer, about the size of three parking spaces, plastered with a banner that read “food pick up here.” On one side was a list of restaurant brands with names and logos that seemed algorithmically generated: WokTalk, Burger Bytes, Fork and Ladle, Umami, American Eclectic Burger, Wings & Things. The trailer was hooked up to a generator, which was positioned behind two portable toilets; it occupied parking spots once reserved for Maven, an hourly-car-rental startup, funded by General Motors and marketed to gig-economy workers. (G.M. shut down Maven in April.) Through a small window cut into the side, I could see two men moving around what appeared to be a kitchen. The generator hummed; the air carried the comforting smell of fryer oil; the […]
Stephan: In the early 1970s two friends of mine, Christopher Bird, and Peter Tompkins, after interviewing several people interested in biodynamic gardening who, in turn, led them to several scientists wrote first an article in Harpers Magazine and, then, a book, The Secret Life of Plants, that created an international sensation. The idea that plants have consciousness was considered my materialist scientists the worse kind of woo-woo thinking. Conferences were held deriding the idea, papers were written, and derogatory interviews filled the media, even as the book became a bigger and bigger best seller. It changed Chris' and Peter's lives forever.
I had another friend Alan Chadwick, the leading biodynamist of his day whose gardens remain world famous, who was also a kind of remote viewer who specialized in plants, who told me that what Secret Life of Plants was saying was true. Plants not only had consciousness individually, but they they and all life were part of a matrix of consciousness. Then the Gaia Hypothesis emerged, that hinted at this nonlocal consciousness network without quite saying it.
Now, years later, it turns out the materialists were wrong; there is indeed a matrix of consciousness. Here is some of the recent plant research supporting that concept.
‘You need to imagine a plant as a huge brain’ … the plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso. Credit: Alessandro Moggi
I had hoped to interview the plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso at his laboratory at the University of Florence. I picture it as a botanical utopia: a place where flora is respected for its awareness and intelligence; where sensitive mimosa plants can demonstrate their long memories; and where humans are invited to learn how to be a better species by observing the behaviour of our verdant fellow organisms.
But because we are both on lockdown, we Skype from our homes. Instead of meeting his clever plants, I make do with admiring a pile of cannonball-like pods from an aquatic species, on the bookshelves behind him. “They’re used for propagation,” he says. “I am always collecting seeds.”
Before Mancuso’s lab started work in 2005, plant neurobiology was largely seen as a laughable concept. “We were interested in problems that were, until that moment, just related to animals, like intelligence and even behaviour,” he says. At the time, it was “almost forbidden” to talk about behaviour in […]
