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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 spite of everything the Trump administration is doing to keep carbon energy alive here is the fact-based evidence that it is dying. Excellent news.
California Solar and wind installation
According to a review by the SUN DAY Campaign of data just released – June 8th — by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), wind, solar, and hydropower provided 100% of the 1,328 MW in new US electrical generating capacity added in April 2020.
FERC’s latest monthly “Energy Infrastructure Update” report (with data through April 30, 2020) also reveals that renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) have accounted for 5,113 MW – or 56.3% – of the 9,082 MW added during the first four months of this year. Thirty-two new “units” of wind (totaling 3,104 MW) were added to the US’s total energy generating capacity accompanied by 110 units of solar (1,973 MW), six units of hydropower (25 MW), and two units of biomass (11 MW).
FERC also reported 3,964 MW (or 21 units) of new natural gas capacity, which accounted for most of the balance. There have been no new capacity additions by coal, oil, nuclear power, or geothermal energy since the beginning of the year.
Renewable energy sources now account for 22.87% of the […]
Stephan: Humanity just doesn't seem to be capable of acting with one intent, even when their survival as a species depends upon it.
A diver swims with sharpfin barracuda, one of the many ocean species under threat from global warming, in Australia, Queensland, Great Barrier Reef. Credit: Pete Atkinson / The Image Bank / Getty
The oceans could look much emptier by 2100, according to a new study that found that most fish species would not be able to survive in their current habitat if average global temperatures rise 4.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, as The Guardian reported.
The researchers of the new paper said that 60 percent of fish species face a grave threat from global heating if temperatures approach that worst-case scenario level. The species under threat include many common fish found in grocery stores, including staples like Atlantic cod, Alaska pollock and sockeye salmon, and sport fishing favorites like swordfish, barracuda and brown trout, as CNN reported.
The new study, published in the journal Science, looked at how nearly 700 fresh and saltwater fish species respond to warming ocean temperatures. The problem for most fish is that as ocean temperatures rise, […]
Stephan: If we have ever had a nastier viler administration in this country I certainly can't think of it. It is, in fact, the sheer nastiness of Trump and the people he appoints to high office that is their hallmark.
Ben Carson
The Trump Dept. of Housing and Urban Development late on Wednesday moved to roll back an Obama-era regulation that bans discrimination by taxpayer-funded shelter providers against transgender people. HUD Secretary Ben Carson wants to allow anti-transgender discrimination under the guise of religious freedom.
A statement on the HUD website filled with coded language says the proposed new rule “Returns Decision Making to Local Shelter Providers,” to allow them to “establish an admissions policy that best serves their unique communities,” and “better accommodate [the] religious beliefs of shelter providers.”
The move comes during an out of control pandemic, amid an unstable economy, and worse-than Great Depression-era unemployment.
“This important update will empower shelter providers to set policies that align with their missions, like safeguarding victims of domestic violence or human trafficking,” Secretary Carson said in the statement.
In reality, the new rule would remove protections for one of the most vulnerable populations in America, the transgender community. At some point in their […]
Stephan: Remember when the U.S. media used to describe how America would monitor the civil rights or voting practices of authoritarian governments in other countries? What goes around comes around. Now the rest of the world looks upon us as a collapsing democracy increasingly drifting into christofascist authoritarianism.
President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September. Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty
The Trump administration was in panic mode.
The United Nations Human Rights Council was debating launching a special investigation of racism in America after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died in police custody. And the United States was determined to derail any such probe.
That the Trump administration cared so much was surprising: It had quit the council two years ago, calling it an anti-Israel “cesspool of political bias” and denouncing its membership for including human rights abusing countries.
Publicly, U.S. officials kept their cool as the mid-June discussions played out. Behind the scenes, however, the State Department was scrambling to avert a public relations disaster, dispatching its diplomats to pull strings and call in favors.
Lana Marks, the U.S. ambassador in South Africa, reached out to top officials there, telling them a probe aimed squarely at the U.S. “would be an extreme measure that should be reserved for countries that are not […]
Stephan: Get ready. You may be certain that if and when a treatment or vaccine for the Covid-19 coronavirus is developed that the big pharma sector of the American illness profit system, like a coven of vampires at midnight, will fall on Americans by structuring drug prices for maximum profit.
Bottles of a trial Covid-19 vaccine on a table in a lab in Brussels on June 18, 2020. Credit: Vincent Kalut/Photonews/Getty
Government contracts obtained by consumer advocacy group Knowledge Ecology International show that the Trump administration is giving pharmaceutical companies a green light to charge exorbitant prices for potential coronavirus treatments developed with taxpayer money by refusing to exercise federal authority to constrain costs.
“The government has limited its ability to intervene if the pharmaceutical companies… charge unreasonable prices for the resulting Covid-19 vaccines or treatments.” —Knowledge Ecology International
Through the Freedom of Information Act, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) last week got hold of a number of heavily redacted agreements between the Trump administration and major pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson, Regeneron, and Genentech.
Five of the seven documents reviewed by KEI are classified as “other transaction agreements,” which allow federal agencies to loosen regulations designed to protect the public in order to help companies streamline the product development process.
In the case of four contracts for potential Covid-19 treatments or vaccines with Johnson & Johnson, Genentech, Regeneron, and Roche issued by the […]
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman has written what, in my opinion, is a particularly accurate description of the corruption that is eating away American democracy and wellbeing like a cancer.
Illustration by Woody Harrington
America is, in principle, a democracy, in which every vote counts the same. It’s also a nation in which income inequality has soared, a development that hurts many more people than it helps. So if you didn’t know better, you might have expected to see a political backlash: demands for higher taxes on the rich, more spending on the working class and higher wages.
In reality, however, policy has mostly gone the other way. Tax rates on corporations and high incomes have gone down, unions have been crushed, the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was in the 1960s. How is that possible?
The answer is that huge disparities in income and wealth translate into comparable disparities in political influence. To see how this works, let’s look at a fairly recent example: the budgetary Grand Bargain that almost happened in 2011.
At the time, Washington was firmly in the grip of deficit fever. Even though the federal government was able to borrow […]
Stephan: The country seems to have accepted as normal Trump's endless racist and fascist dog whistles. But we have now gone past that. Recently, for Trump and his orces that wasn't enough. Now we are at the stage of blaring trumpets. But, even at that level, this is gobsmacking.
The Trumplicans are now running an openly fascist campaign from its symbology to the desire of Trump for mass gatherings. Were it not for the Covid-19 pandemic I am sure we would be seeing the modern-day equivalent of Hitlers' rallies, with red hats in place of raised right arms.
Trump campaign symbol (left). Hitler’s comparable symbol
Donald Trump‘s re-election campaign has a new “America First” logo — and it looks a lot like the Nazi eagle used by Adolf Hitler and modern white supremacist groups, according to many critics on Twitter.
The logo, which can be found on T-shirts sold through the Trump campaign website, shows a stylized eagle grasping a circle containing the American flag. The eagle has its wings spread and its head turned to show its profile.
Photos of the new apparel quickly went viral on Twitter Wednesday, with critics sharing side-by-side images of the Trump logo and the Nazi eagle, which the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes as a “hate symbol.”
The Nazi symbol shows an eagle clutching a circle containing a swastika. The Trump and Nazi symbols depict the eagle in the same perched spread-wing pose, although the Nazi bird is typically drawn with more sharp-edged lines.
“Trump’s latest logo is yet another rip off of the Nazi logo,” tweeted
Stephan: I believe history is going to treat the Mueller Report as a historic failure. But why? Here is an answer.
Robert Mueller submitted his final report as the special counsel more than a year ago. But even now—in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and the Administration’s tragically bungled response to it, and the mass demonstrations following the killings by police of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others—President Trump remains obsessed with what he recently called, on Twitter, the “Greatest Political Crime in the History of the U.S., the Russian Witch-Hunt.” In the past several months, the President has mobilized his Administration and its supporters to prove that, from its inception, the F.B.I.’s investigation into possible ties between his 2016 campaign and the Russian government was flawed, or worse. Attorney General William Barr has directed John Durham, the United States Attorney in Connecticut, to conduct a criminal investigation into whether F.B.I. officials, or anyone else, engaged in misconduct at the outset. Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has also convened hearings on the investigation’s origins.
The President has tweeted about Mueller more than three hundred times, and has […]
The country seems to have accepted as normal Trump's endless racist and fascist dog whistles. But we have now gone past that. Recently, for Trump and his orces that wasn't enough. Now we are at the stage of blaring trumpets. But, even at that level, this is gobsmacking.
The Trumplicans are now running an openly fascist campaign from its symbology to the desire of Trump for mass gatherings. Were it not for the Covid-19 pandemic I am sure we would be seeing the modern-day equivalent of Hitlers' rallies, with red hats in place of raised right arms. 
