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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.
Julie Wernau and Zusha Elinson, - Wall Street Journal
Stephan: America's gun psychosis has become a kind of secondary epidemic. More guns in the U.S., means more shootings, more deaths, and many of those shootings will be one family member shooting another in an argument.
MINNEAPOLIS—Americans are buying guns in record numbers.
The new coronavirus pandemic, civil unrest after the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing movement to defund police are bringing in new buyers worried about their personal safety, according to buyers, store owners and gun experts.
Gun sales began rising to unusual highs in March, as coronavirus cases began surging in the U.S. and government-ordered lockdowns led to the highest unemployment levels since the Great Depression. The Federal Bureau of Investigation processed 7.8 million background checks for gun purchases from March to June, according to National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group.
In June, background checks for firearms were up 136%, compared to a year earlier, according to the trade group, which gives the best proxy for gun sales. Background checks in June for civilians seeking a license to carry were the highest since the FBI began conducting checks 20 years ago.
Background checks for guns in Georgia tripled last month versus last year, according to NSSF data, and have more than doubled in Oklahoma, New York, Illinois and Minnesota.Total U.S. background checks […]
Stephan: I wrote this, and consider it one of the most important papers I have written about American healthcare.
Texas Coronavirus ICU Credit: CNN
I can’t speak for you, but as I watch day-by-day, the thing that stands out for me is that we are asking a relatively small group of men and women to both save us and put their lives on the line. And yet we are failing them in almost every way. What kind of mental space do you have to be in not to see this? I will never forget the images of ER personnel cutting holes in 50-gallon trashbags and putting them on because they didn’t have enough proper PPE gear. The only thing comparable is going into combat knowing you might be killed or crippled in some way that would dominate the rest of your life and doing it anyway. That is real heroism. I think there should be some kind of national recognition, something special.
But because of those images, and that reality, what I want to talk about is the failure of the system that put these people in that position. If you stress a system to its limits, its strengths, but […]
, - National Center for Coverage Innovation at Families USA
Stephan: It suprises me how little media coverage the dramatic loss of health insurance being experienced by Americans is generating. It is yet another aspect of the utter failure of U.S. the illness profit system to deal with the pandemic and its effects.
Results in Brief » An estimated 5.4 million workers are becoming uninsured because of job losses they experienced from February to May of this year. » These estimated increases in the number of uninsured adults would be 39% higher than any annual increase ever recorded. The highest previous increase took place over the one-year period from 2008 to 2009, when 3.9 million nonelderly adults became uninsured.
» Nearly half (46%) of the increases in the uninsured resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crash have occurred in five states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, and North Carolina
» In eight states 20% or more of adults are now uninsured: Texas, where nearly three in ten adults under age 65 are uninsured (29%); Florida (25%); Oklahoma (24%); Georgia (23%); Mississippi (22%); Nevada (21%); North Carolina (20%); and South Carolina (20%). All but Oklahoma are also among the 15 states with the country’s highest spike in new COVID-19 cases during the week ending on July 12.
» Five states have experienced increases in the number of uninsured adults that exceed 40%: Massachusetts, where […]
Roberto Stefan Foa and Jonathan Wilmot, Lecturer in politics at the University of Melbourne | Founder and CEO of xAI Asset Management - Foreign Policy
Stephan: Since American mass media doesn't really cover international news on a regular basis anymore, it's not surprising that this major trend about wealth inequality has gone almost entirely unremarked, although I have written about it a number of times. But I am not the only one who sees this as an issue of real concern. Here from the major American foreign policy journal, Foreign Policy, is a good exegetic essay on this trend.
A woman holds an electoral map as voting results come in at Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s election night event at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center Nov. 8, 2016 in New York City. Photo by Drew Angerer / Getty
In 2014, the Hill newspaper rated Minnesota the second-most-liberal U.S. state. For decades, Minnesotans had reliably supported Democrats in the House, in the Senate, and for the presidency—in Ronald Reagan’s landslide presidential reelection of 1984, it was the only state in the country to support his opponent, former Minnesota Sen. Walter Mondale.
Yet in 2016, America’s second-most-liberal state did something unexpected. As the presidential campaign rolled on, Donald Trump picked up a surge of support, drawing level with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. In the end, Trump bettered Clinton in 78 of the state’s 87 counties. While Clinton eked out a narrow victory in the state by a 45,000-vote margin, it came almost entirely from the state’s largest city, Minneapolis.
On the morning of Nov. 9, 2016, progressives in Minneapolis woke up to find themselves on a lonely […]
Stephan: Trump has resurrected Sebastian Gorka, pulling him from a grave somewhere, and appointed him to the National Security Education Board. How can that be? The man, even by Trump standards is an outstandingly vile orc from the rightwing sewage pit. The answer I think is that Trump's most dominant personality aspect is his obsession with wreaking vengeance against anyone who does not support him. I think he realizes he is probably going to lose, and so he is going to use the rest of his time in office essentially punishing Americans for his loss. Have you noticed that everyone he appoints is a grifter, corrupt, a scumbag, or all three? They will destroy the institutions to which they are appointed from the inside. So take that America. You didn't love me so I am going to screw you big time.
Sebastian Gorka
He’s been called a “fish-oil salesman,” a “terrible scholar,” and a “fake terrorism expert,” and has been accused of having ties to a neo-Nazi group but on Tuesday President Donald Trump nominated Sebastian Gorka to become a member of the prestigious National Security Education Board. The term is for four years.
Gorka, supposedly a “counterterrorism adviser,” spent about seven months as part of the nascent Trump administration, serving as a Deputy Assistant to the President and Strategist but ultimately “was unable to get clearance for the National Security Council,” the AP reported in May of 2017.
While working in the Trump White House Foreign Policy published an article titled, “Sebastian Gorka May Be a Far-Right Nativist, but for Sure He’s a Terrible Scholar.” That makes it challenging to defend placing Gorka on the National Security Education Board, which have “Cabinet-level” status, according to its own website.
Board members “include experts from non-profit organizations and academia,” and currently “include representatives from the Department […]
Stephan:
Today as the nation's economy is crashing, as 39 states are experiencing Covid-19 surges so great that local health care systems are collapsing, as millions of American children are facing food stress, while their parents are weeks away from being evicted, losing their cars, and going bankrupt, I have decided to devote today's edition of SR to where the billions of our tax dollars have gone instead of going to ordinary Americans.
We are in the midst of a catastrophe created by the corruption, and incompetence of the Trump administration, the silence and ineptitude of the Congress, and the complete moronic incompetence of Republican governors. But also, importantly, this situation is due to the utter stupidity of a large percentage of Americans themselves. And it is all getting worse, not better. Meanwhile, Trump has a 40% approval rating.
Today I saw this Trumpian support play out in the real world. I went to the pharmacy to pick something up, and as I was going into the store a White woman looking to be in her 50s, a "Karen" in the parlance of the day was just in front of me. She was not wearing a mask but did have a little label pasted on her chest, that she had downloaded from some website, saying she was an American and was not required to wear a mask As she tried to enter the store manager stopped her, and told her it was the store's policy that everyone wear a mask. She pointed to the label on her chest and said she was an American and she was exercising her rights. He politely told her he did not care about her label. And that if she had no mask she could not enter. She became agitated and rude, but he was unyielding and she finally stormed off, cursing him as she walked away.
I realized as I watched this little scene that the Great Schism Trend about which I have written on multiple occasions (see SR archives), has reached a level that I have never seen before, not even at the height of the anti-Viet Nam War movement and that the November election, at both the presidential and congressional level, is going to determine what kind of country America will be going forward.
Stephan: It should come as no surprise that the Kushners and Trump families, and their cronies, are raking in buckets of your tax dollars, but even saying that the scale is gobsmacking. Children may be hungry, elders may living day to day, and your brother or sister may be on the verge of losing their homes, but Trumpian grifters couldn't care less; they are just trying to get every dime they can. Here is some data making this point.
White House senior adviser Jared Kushner attends a meeting with President Donald Trump and several CEOs of major banks discussing the coronavirus response during a meeting in the Cabinet Room at the White House on March 11, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty
The Kushner family, large chains backed by private equity, Wall Street investors, Kanye West, members of Congress, and the law firm that represented President Donald Trump during the Mueller probe were among the thousands of beneficiaries of a Covid-19 relief program aimed at rescuing struggling small businesses and keeping workers employed, according to new federal data released Monday.
While the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) data disclosure reveals just a fraction of recipients of forgivable Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans, critics voiced concern that large, wealthy firms were able to readily access millions of dollars in relief funds as more vulnerable companies frequently received less money than they applied for—or nothing at all.
“We cannot allow those small businesses that were grossly underfunded or disadvantaged by the program to disappear and not have their stories told and rectified.” —John […]
Stephan: Betsy DeVos was appointed by Trump, and confirmed by a Republican senate with the explicit intention that she work to dismantle public education in the United States and privatize it so that profit not education could become the system's first priority. Therefore, this story should come as no surprise. That doesn't make it any less despicable, or destructive of the nation's wellbeing.
From right, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, and Secretary of Labor Eugene Scalia listen during a White House Coronavirus Task Force press briefing the U.S. Department of Education on July 8, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Credit: Alex Wong/Getty
Charter schools across the country tapped the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for what could have been more than $1 billion, according to a preliminary analysis of Treasury Department data.
One network alone, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), appears to have pulled somewhere between $28 million and $69 million in taxpayer dollars.
Another network of publicly-funded, privately-run schools, Achievement First, appears to have taken in between $7 million and $17 million in PPP loans. The network also received $3.5 million from a special $65 million federal grant that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos awarded to 10 charter management organizations in April, weeks after the PPP was passed, to “fund the creation and expansion of more than 100 high-quality public charter schools in underserved communities across the country.
