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: 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.
Stephan: The hard truth is that you just can't fix stupid. Any political calculation has to start with the fact that the average IQ in the U.S. is 98, with 34% of people being between 98 and 85, and 14% between 85 and 70. Retardation starts diagnostically at 75.
To give further nuance to that 40% don't believe in evolution, and 30% believe the Bible is the inerrant literal word of God.
When you recognize that reality then this Gallup survey about belief in the lethality of the Covid-19 virus, as described in this report, makes better sense.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Partisan gap in perceptions of COVID-19 vs. flu lethality widens in April
Half of Republicans say death rate exaggerated; 5% of Democrats agree
News diet strongly predicts attitudes on COVID-19 when facts get politicized
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The novel coronavirus pandemic provides a view into the deep partisan divisions that have persisted despite the unfolding national crisis. Two recent Gallup/Knight Foundation surveys find Americans’ understanding about the coronavirus is strongly shaped by partisan affiliation and news consumption habits, especially when basic facts are politicized.
Specifically, while Democrats and independents increasingly see COVID-19 as more deadly than the seasonal flu, Republicans’ views have not changed. And while Democrats tend to think the death toll from COVID-19 is understated, Republicans believe it is exaggerated.
Stephan: The White Supremacy christofascists who comprise Donald Trump's base are going to do everything they can honest or deceitful to get him re-elected. In my view this election is going to come down to how many non-christofasct women, people of color, and young people vote for Biden. The Republicans know this, which is why they are so adamantly opposed to vote by mail, even as their "Dear Leader" votes by mail, as do many in Congress.
Evangelicals and Trump
“The Covid virus has been a gift from God,” began Ken Eldred. “The kingdom of God advances through a series of glorious victories, cleverly disguised as disasters.”
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Eldred noted, millions of Americans are turning to Christ, Walmart is selling out of Bibles, and online church broadcasts have hit record numbers.
But while religiosity was growing, there have been setbacks from the disease outbreak. “Satan has been busy too,” Eldred, a major donor to evangelical and Republican causes, explained. “The virus has messed up many of our plans involving our in-person meetings with voters.”
And the rise of mail-in ballots, Eldred added, would undercut voter identification laws, which have been a pillar of GOP election strategy. “The children of the darkness put early voting into this CARES package,” he grumbled, a reference to the $400 million for election assistance programs to states included in the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill.Key Takeaways
United in Purpose is a group on the religious right that worked to grow evangelical support for Donald Trump in […]
Ray Sanchez, Joe Sutton and Artemis Moshtaghian, - CNN
Stephan: American police, kill Americans at a rate greater than all the law enforcement agencies in European and Nordic nations COMBINED. And the blatant racism is outrageous.
To quote Statista, a fact-based data website, "Sadly, the trend of fatal police shootings in the United States seems to only be increasing, with a total 228 civilians having been shot, 31 of whom were Black, as of March 30, 2020. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004."
And here we have another murder of a Black man by racist White cops. The cop, Derek Chauvin, with his knee on the neck of the Black man, George Floyd, apparently has a history of being involved with police shootings.
The good news is that in contrast to the usual Blue Wall of silence and cover-ups, these four cops were fired immediately, so bravo to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Medaria Arradondo.
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd
Four Minneapolis police officers have been fired for their involvement in the death of a black man who was held down with a knee as he protested that he couldn’t breathe, officials said Tuesday. The FBI is investigating the incident, which drew widespread condemnation of the officers after a video showing part of the encounter circulated on social media.Officers responding to an alleged forgery in progress Monday evening were initially told that a person later described as the suspect was sitting on a car and appeared to be under the influence, police said.A pair of officers located the man, who was at that point inside the car and who police said “physically resisted” the officers when ordered to get out. Officers handcuffed the man, who “appeared to be suffering medical distress,” according to police. He died at a hospital a short time later, police said.
The four officers were “separated from employment,” Officer Garrett Parten, a police spokesman, said Tuesday.”I support your decisions, one hundred percent,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, in […]
Stephan: For months now the whole country has been focused on the Covid-19 pandemic and the startling incompetence of Trump and his fellow grifters. But earth itself all this time has been following different trends, all centered around climate change. And the message coming out of those trends is just getting worse and worse. And once again it is a story with one overriding theme: water is destiny, something I have been telling you for almost four decades. The Republican Party and certainly its "Dear Leader" Trump doesn't believe in climate change and, like the pandemic, as a result we are woefully unprepared for what is coming. But the scientific truth is clear: Either too much water or too little water is going to shape the future of every nation, and every person living in those nations So, today, I am focusing on that. We'll start with aridification.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Discussions of drought often center on the lack of precipitation. But among climate scientists, the focus is shifting to include the growing role that warming temperatures are playing as potent drivers of greater aridity and drought intensification.
Increasing aridity is already a clear trend across the western United States, where anthropogenic climate warming is contributing to declining river flows, drier soils, widespread tree death, stressed agricultural crops, catastrophic wildfires and protracted droughts, according to the authors of a Commentary article published online May 19 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
At the same time, human-caused warming is also driving increased aridity eastward across North America, with no end in sight, according to climate scientists Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Michigan and Bradley Udall of Colorado State University.
“The impact of warming on the West’s river flows, soils, and forests is now unequivocal,” write Overpeck, dean of the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability, and Udall, senior water and climate scientist at Colorado State. “There is a clear longer-term trend toward greater aridification, a trend that only […]
Stephan: The Magas of South Carolina will probably vote true to form in November, which is to say they will vote entirely on their emotions and prejudices with no reference to any actual facts, and will thus elect morons like Lindsey Graham. Earth doesn't care, and has its own agenda. Because of the stupidity and greed of humans like Graham and the damage they have done to the Earth's meta-systems, South Carolina is rapidly going to become a very different state. Boohoo Magas.
Aerial view of the Sampit River in South Carolina. As saltwater encroaches due to rising sea levels and climate change, the vast cypress forests have been ravaged by high salinity, leaving only skeletons of a once thriving freshwater system. Credit: Mac Stone/ProvidedMac Stone
The oldest living tree in the eastern continent has stood for more than 2,000 years in a cypress swamp just over the North Carolina border.
Seventy miles to the south, young cypress trees are dying from salt intrusion on the Sampit River in Georgetown.
The contrast is just that stark between how the vibrant South Carolina coast looks today and how it could largely look not so far into the future — skeletal patches of drowning seascape and dying wetlands.
The outer barrier islands in the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge already are getting overrun by tides. The sand needed to create new islands and beaches has been blocked by lake dams, coastal groins and jetties.
The 400,000 or so acres of marsh in the South Carolina estuaries — the miles of sweeping grasses that are a […]
Stephan: Here we see yet another Maga state that is going to be pulled out of its Trumpian racist fantasies. I expect Louisiana will vote for Trump and his climate change denial in November, even as the Earth changes the ground beneath their feet. We will see how these Maga states deal with that. This article may be considered the Best Case Scenario, and I do not think it is accurate. Schwartz' Law says when it comes to accounts of climate change the reality will come quicker and be much worse than predicted.
So what will Louisiana do over the next couple of decades? My prediction is Louisiana will become even more than it currently is less a state and more a third world country, and they will look to the federal government, which will use the largesse of the Blue states to bail them out. All these Red states already get more back than they put into the federal treasury.
As a nation just as with the pandemic we are idling away the time with our leader playing golf instead of planning. It is all in the prep, and we are unprepared.
Aerial view of Louisiana wetlands Credit: Times-Picayune
Because of increasing rates of sea level rise fueled by global warming, the remaining 5,800 square miles of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands in the Mississippi River delta will disappear. The only question is how quickly it will happen, says a new peer-reviewed study published Friday in Science Advances.
“This is a major threat not only to one of the ecologically richest environments of the United States but also for the 1.2 million inhabitants and associated economic assets that are surrounded by Mississippi Delta marshland,” the report concludes.
The new study reviewed the rates of sea-level rise that caused wetlands to disappear along Louisiana’s coast during the 8,500-year history of the current Mississippi River delta. It found that at rates of relative sea level rise — the combination of rising water and ground subsidence — of between 6 and 9 millimeters a year , ancient coastal marshes would turn into open water within 50 years. At rates of 3 millimeters a year, it would take a few centuries.
The globally averaged rate of sea-level rise between 2006 […]
