IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
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: Thanks to the incompetence of Trump and Pompeo, America's position in the world is evaporating, with geopolitical implications no one can fully predict. If Trump and Pence had been removed from office would this be happening? I don't think so. But it is and the world is realigning, and we will have to live with that reality.
Duterte (R) visits Xi in Beijing. Credit: Ng Han Guan-Pool/Getty
When the Philippines needed resources to fight its coronavirus outbreak, it turned not to its American allies, but to China.
Why it matters: The Philippines was a U.S. colony for half a century and is America’s oldest military ally in Asia. But the Southeast Asian nation is drifting further from the U.S. and toward America’s superpower rival.
Driving the news: While the U.S. has blamed Beijing for the pandemic, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has defended China and thanked Beijing heartily for sending medical equipment and personnel.
“President Xi Jinping, for all of his goodness to us, wrote me a letter and said that he is willing to help. All we have to do is to ask,” Duterte gushed in March.
The U.S. also sent help, but Duterte hardly acknowledged it.
Duterte has long touted China as the primary investor in the Philippines, and he pushed for a more “independent” foreign policy — summed up as, “less America, more China.”
Stephan: Here is an interview with one of the most prominent Irish historians and authors; a man who has been studying and writing about America for years. I chose it because I am trying to impress upon my readers how devastating the stupidity and incompetence of Trump and his minions, like Barr and Pompeo has been in blasting away the world stature of America. Decades of carefully constructed, by both Democrats and Republicans, geopolitical structure have been torn up like a petulant child destroys his toys. Trump has withdrawn from everything from nuclear control to healthcare treaties. He either doesn't understand, or care, or both, the critical importance of these international relationships. He has smeared and denigrated foreign leaders to a point where they laugh at him behind his back, and no longer look to America or the American president for leadership.
Fintan O’Toole and Donald Trump Credit: Salon/Alex Brandon/AP Photo/Alan Betson/The Irish Times
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills — a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public — had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity — to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.
Stephan: Donald Trump created his public persona as a reality television figure and gossip magazine star. This essay makes the very important point that the same moves that may work on reality television, or in a gossip column interview, don't work for a world leader and yet, it seems to be all Trump knows and in nearly four years he has not been able to grow into his office
A scene from a video depicting a fake President Trump massacring the news media and his critics that was shown at a conference for his supporters at Trump National Doral Miami last week.
For 20 years, 40 seasons, the television show,Survivor, has been extremely popular in the United States. The motto, Outwit, Outplay, Outlast, epitomizes the environment that contestants must navigate in order to win the grand prize of one million dollars (or in the most recent contest, two million dollars). Importantly, the skills used to win the game are the antithesis of those needed in a real survival situation. They are, however, strikingly similar to those of modern American politics.
In the television game, contestants form temporary relationships, ones that can be broken at a moment’s notice. Like Trump, egocentrism is the main focus at the expense of all others. Though artificial, often based on happenstance of assignment, tribal alliances are forged and often transcend mergers and may even be counterproductive to the participant in the long run. To their detriment, many players believe such […]
Senator Debbie Stabenow, DPCC Chairwoman Senator Chuck Schumer, Senate Democratic Leader Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic Senators - Democratic Policy & Communications Committee
Stephan: Since Mitch McConnell became the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, and particularly since Trump became president I have been telling you about the coordinated and explicit attempt by the christofascists to restructure the American judiciary system so that it favors corporations, Whites, male dominance, and the rich, rather than providing real justice. for all. A process paid for a small group of White fascist billionaires
It is my view that the Democrats in the Senate have been woefully feeble in resisting this Republican effort, but finally, a tiny group of them have gotten serious about his destruction of the structure of American democracy, and have put together a lengthy report laying the whole sordid business out. Here it is.
Mitchell, Kavanaugh, and Trump
Under the Trump Administration, the Mitch McConnell-led Senate has produced few significant legislative accomplishments. Instead, it has prioritized packing the judiciary with far-right extremists, who then enjoy life tenure as federal judges. Working hand-in-hand with the administration and anonymously-funded outside groups, the Senate has confirmed 200 new life-tenured federal judges to aggressively remake the federal courts and rewrite the Constitution. Most of these judges were chosen not for their qualifications or experience—which are often lacking—but for their demonstrated allegiance to Republican Party political goals. These judges have already begun rolling back the clock on civil rights, consumer protections, and the rights of ordinary Americans, reliably putting a thumb on the scale in favor of corporate and Republican political interests. From the Supreme Court on down, the special interests responsible for these judges’ selection and confirmation are effectively capturing the judicial branch, packing our courts with politicians in robes.
With a captured judiciary, the Republican Party can do its donors’ dirty work through the courts without fear of electoral consequences. This is anti-democratic and fundamentally un-American. Indeed, it […]
Stephan: The Republicans have turned the entire multi-billion dollar bailout into an enormous corporate grift to support their friends and sponsors. I cannot believe the media are not climbing all over this since the facts are relatively easily available. It is a disgusting story of how to enrich the already rich while screwing the modest business world and the poor. It is also incredibly racist. But that is Trump world, and the sad little Magas who seem incapable of understanding what is going on will vote for more of it in November I am sure.
The ‘phase 3’ stimulus plan was signed into U.S. law on March 27, 2020 in response to the widespread health and economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak. It included a $500 billion bailout fund for ‘distressed’ large businesses at the insistence of President Trump and his allies in Congress.
TrumpBailouts.org was created by government watchdog Accountable.US to keep the public informed of the administration’s efforts to bail out billion-dollar corporations as the needs of newly unemployed American workers and struggling families continue to compound.
For bailout applicants, there was no consideration for how many billions of dollars in quarterly profits they had recently posted. No limit on how many millions of dollars they pay their CEOs. No considerations for how many dividends they have paid out to shareholders or profits they wasted on stock buybacks to boost their share price, even in the middle of this crisis. No consideration for how much they benefited from the 2017 Trump tax cuts directed at the largest corporations.
The result: industries that should have been better positioned than most Americans to absorb an economic downturn are lining up for taxpayer assistance.
Stephan: Donald Trump is very insecure in his manhood. He makes this clear in dozens of ways. And he has real issues about male dominance. These are two powerful psychological issues that permeate the Republican Party, so it is not surprising that Trump and the Republicans are using the Covid-19 pandemic as cover to pursue their hatred of uppity women who demand control over their own bodies. Here is the latest in their weak unmanly moves.
Planned Parenthood supporters in Los Angeles in 2015.
Credit: Nick Ut / AP
Earlier this year, 38 Planned Parenthood affiliates around the United States received over $80 million in loans from the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). Now, the Small Business Administration (SBA) is pressuring those affiliates to return the loans, arguing that they were not eligible for them in the first place.
The loans, distributed as part of a program designed to help small employers keep paying their staff during the economic crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, were crucial for the clinics that received them, Planned Parenthood representatives say.
In normal times, the clinics provide reproductive health services from STI testing to contraceptive counseling to abortion. But with coronavirus spreading across the country, clinics have had to space appointments out, convert some in-person visits to phone consultations, and cancel fundraisers, leaving them with a drop in revenue, Stephanie Fraim, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, told Vox.
Thanks to the PPP loan, she was able to keep all of her staff employed and launch a […]
Stephan: Here are some more facts about the obscene wealth inequality in the United States, and the great grift made possible by the pandemic.
The number of U.S. citizens filing for unemployment increased to 38.6 million since March 18, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the same two months, the wealth of U.S. billionaires has surged $434 billion – an increase of 15 percent.
The combined fortunes of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg alone grew by nearly $60 billion during these two months, according to a new analysis, jointly released by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies, which released Billionaire Bonanza 2020 in April to examine billionaire wealth during the first month of the pandemic.
Between March 18 and May 19, the total net worth of the 600-plus U.S. billionaires rose from $2.948 trillion to $3.382 trillion. In March, there were 614 billionaires on the Forbes list. There are 630 two months later, including newcomer Kanye West at $1.3 billion.
Among other COVID-19 victims are the more than 16 million Americans who have likely lost employer-provided healthcare coverage. Low-wage workers, people of color and women have suffered disproportionately in the combined medical and economic crises. Billionaires are overwhelmingly white men.
Stephan: Here in the words of George Packer writing for Atlantic is the same thing I have been writing for months now. The failure and diminishment of America are incontrovertible if you live in a fact-based world. However, in Maga world, where the words of "Dear Leader Trump are scripture, which is to say about 40% of Americans, all is well. The only problem is the liberal hoax about the Coronavirus.
Credit: Oliver Munday
When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.
The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering. The administration squandered two irretrievable months to prepare. From the president came willful blindness, scapegoating, boasts, and lies. From his mouthpieces, conspiracy theories and miracle cures. A few senators and corporate executives acted quickly—not to prevent the coming disaster, but to profit from it. When a government doctor tried to warn the public of the danger, the White House took the mic and politicized the message.
