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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 am so sick of these stories, they are endless. To Trump, everything is a grift. There is no morality, there are no ethics, only the grift, the chance to make profit or advance oneself by any means.
Donald Trump (Salon/Getty Images/AP
A private jet company founded by a major Republican donor received nearly $27 million in federal grants from a $2 trillion economic relief package intended to offset the blunt of coronavirus pandemic.
The company — Clay Lacy Aviation, which is headquartered in Van Nuys, Calif. — provides private charter and management services to “business and world leaders, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, professional athletes, sports franchises, celebrities and dignitaries,” according to its website.
Its U.S. fleet reportedly numbers more than 100 business jets, worth more than $1 billion, and conducts charter operations in a number of locations including West Palm Beach, nearby Mar-a-Lago and Trump International Golf Club. The $27 million was a grant — and not a loan — so it does not have to be repaid.
The week after President Donald Trump accepted the Republican party nomination in July 2016, Clay Lacy Aviation donated $50,000 to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising vehicle shared between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, according to FEC filings. Trump Victory transferred $2,700, the maximum amount, to the Trump campaign.
Stephan: And here we have another tale of special favors to special friends. One by one Trump eliminates the inspector generals whose task is to ensure the integrity of government and thumbs his nose at the Congress as a group of impotents to whom he need show no deference or concern.
Your democracy is disappearing before your eyes America and 44% of us, the Magas, think that is a grand thing.
Empires do not last forever, and they die from the inside out. We are watching it happen. This is how it will go down in the history books.
An Omaha, Nebraska-based private jet company whose principal owner donated generously to Donald Trump and Republicans ahead of the 2016 election received $20 million in taxpayer aid from the federal bailout package passed in March.
A Jet Linx aircraft on Sept. 25, 2019, in Teterboro, New Jersey. The private jet company, whose owner was an early Trump donor, received $20 million in taxpayer aid. Credit: Sylvain Gaboury/Patrick McMullan via Getty
Jet Linx Aviation, which caters to well-to-do CEOs and executives, was the second private plane company founded or owned by Trump donors to receive federal funds designated for the airline industry under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. CNBC reported on Thursday that Clay Lacy Aviation, a Van Nuys, California-based private jet company whose founder has given nearly $50,000 to the Republican National Committee and Trump, got $27 million in federal funds.
Jet Linx Management Company Vice Chairman John Denny Carreker and his wife, Connie, gave $68,100 to Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Trump Victory Committee between October 2015 and November 2016, Federal Election Commission filings show. Connie […]
Stephan: Beneath the umbrella of the pandemic Trump and his Igors are dismantling 30 years of pollution controls in order to allow greater corporate profits. Thus they show their endless contempt for ordinary Americans, the wellbeing of the country, and the earth itself. And yet his approval rating goes up. Today it is 44.2%, up nearly a percent from a week ago. Nothing he does, nothing he says seems to touch the thinking of the Magas.
The EPA signaled Thursday it will not regulate perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel, in drinking water. Credit: wonderisland/Shutterstock
Environmental campaigners vowed to fight President Donald Trump’s EPA Thursday after the agency said it would propose that the rocket-fuel chemical perchlorate does not need to be regulated, despite its links to cognitive damage in fetal and child development.
According to the New York Times, the EPA plans to tell the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that it is “not in the public interest” to regulate the chemical at all, a year after the agency recommended the allowable amount in drinking water be limited to 56 parts per billion (ppb).
The 2019 proposal was already 10 to 50 times higher than what water safety experts recommend, the Times reported.
The new recommendation defies a court order, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) said, which was issued in 2018 after the group sued over the Obama administration’s inaction on regulating perchlorate.
“EPA’s cynical decision to defy a court order and the law, and to ignore the science that, as the American Academy of Pediatrics has said, dictates […]
Stephan: Eric Trump in a normal world would be an anonymous nobody somewhere. But in the reality show that America has become under Trump he is a national figure. But media attention does not increase your IQ as this report makes clear. And what is worse the Magas will believe what he says, further complicating the nation's recovery.
Eric Trump and Lara Trump, President Trump’s son and daughter-in-law, applaud as Trump speaks at an “Evangelicals for Trump Coalition Launch” in January at King Jesus International Ministry in Miami. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP
Eric Trump claimed Saturday that the coronavirus will “magically” vanish after the November election and allow the country to fully reopen — an assertion that has no basis in science and is contradicted by health experts worldwide.
In an interview with Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro, Trump suggested the president’s critics were using the pandemic to undermine his father’s rallies, calling it a “cognizant strategy” that would cease once it was no longer politically expedient.
“You watch, they’ll milk it every single day between now and November 3,” the younger Trump said. “And guess what, after November 3, coronavirus will magically, all of a sudden, go away and disappear and everybody will be able to reopen.”
He also attacked former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and boasted about crowd sizes at President Trump’s political events.
“They think they’re taking away Donald Trump’s greatest […]
Julian Borger in Washington, Helen Davidson in Sydney, Leyland Cecco in Toronto, Daniel Boffey in Brussels Philip Oltermann in Berlin, Angela Giuffrida in Rome, Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro and Emmanuel Akinwotu in London, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: As I am writing this I am listening in the background to a BBC commentary show discuss the collapse of America's status in the world because of Trump and his Igors. Before that, I listened to an Australia news program in which the main topic of discussion was the rise of China as the major world leader as America is diminished as a result of the incompetence, petulance, and ignorance of Trump.
This has become a major geopolitical trend, which may seem distant and of little importance to your personal life, but as a result of this trend, how America interacts with other countries will be profoundly affected and that, in turn, will affect everything from trade, food, and travel, to military cooperation. In three and a half years, Trump has destroyed America's status and the world has changed.
Donald Trump participates in a tour of Owens & Minor Inc, a medical supply company, on Thursday in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the US is “leading the world” with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow.
Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the US handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet.
“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” the columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
Stephan: It is amazing to watch Trump eliminate or intimidate any oversight of his actions, with the effect that the United States is increasingly becoming a christofascist kleptocracy. This article explains what is happening and it is frightening.
Credit: U.S. State Department
President Donald Trump has removed State Department Inspector General Steve Linick and replaced him with an ally of Vice President Mike Pence — the latest in a series of moves against independent government watchdogs in recent months.
Trump informed Congress of his intent to oust Linick, a Justice Department veteran appointed to the role in 2013 by then President Barack Obama, in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday night.
The president said he “no longer” had the “fullest confidence” in Linick and promised to send the Senate a nominee “who has my confidence and who meets the appropriate qualifications.” The executive branch is required to notify Congress 30 days ahead of time if it intends to remove an inspector general.
Trump’s move infuriated Democrats who say he’s trying to circumvent oversight of his administration, undermining the ability of other branches to hold him accountable. The move follows Trump’s anger at being impeached, but it also comes as the White House struggles to combat the coronavirus pandemic just months before the presidential election.
“The president’s late-night, weekend firing of the State Department inspector general has accelerated his dangerous pattern […]
I believe any woman or man who believes they have been harassed, let alone molested, should have the right to come forward and have that charge evaluated by neutral parties, and if found to be valid whomever the molester, whatever their rank or station, they should be tried and found guilty. On those grounds alone Trump should never have been chosen as a candidate let alone elected as President.
That said I think Tara Reade's charges are absurd on several levels. When I was in government I had several occasions to interact with Biden, personally, and with his staff. In contrast to so many Congress members, Biden was considered notable for never having had a word breathed about inappropriate behavior; quite the contrary his love and fidelity for his wife were remarked upon.
But more than that is the description Reade makes about her molestation. The idea that a senior senator would press a staffer up against the wall in a public senate office building corridor, pull up her skirt, pull down her panties and thrust his fingers into her vagina is only plausible to someone who has never been in those corridors. They are filled with staffers, reporters, film crews, other congresspeople, and hundreds of Americans who come to see their senator. Those corridors are about as public as a space can get.
When Tara Reade first made her assault allegation against Joe Biden, I thought the charge was more likely to be true than false. To be clear, I had no intention of changing my vote. The allegation came too late to reopen the nominating process without doing violence to the expressed will of the electorate. And I’ve always believed the primary criteria for voting on a candidate is their policy impact (which is why I wrote a column in 2018 defending Republicans who still supported Roy Moore over Doug Jones). But I did feel bad about voting for a candidate I suspected had done something terrible.
Tara Reade Credit: AP Photo/Donald Thompson
Since then, however, three detailed reports — by Vox’s Laura McGann, PBS NewsHour, and Politico’s Natasha Korecki — have delved into Reade’s allegations. Neither reaches a definitive conclusion. But all of them on balance add a lot of grounds for skepticism. At this point, Reade’s allegation seems to me to be more likely to be false than true.
McGann’s story recounts her yearlong effort to report on and corroborate Reade’s […]
Stephan: This story gives you the true measure of the immoral and true nature of healthcare in the United States. In any honorable nation that cared a whit for the wellbeing of its citizens, you would never read this story. But here, where profit is all that matters, it is completely predictable.
Participants hold signs during the Senate Democrats’ rally against Medicaid cuts in front of the U.S. Capitol Credit: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
States are announcing deep Medicaid cuts due to budget shortfalls stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, at the same time that millions of people lose their employer-based health coverage.
During the Great Recession, state Medicaid programs slashed coverage for services like dentistry, podiatry, and insulin pumps amid steep budget cutbacks. The current crisis “is going to be the ’09 recession on steroids,” Matt Salo, the executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, told Politico. “It’s going to hit hard, and it’s going to hit fast.”
Medicaid, which is one of the largest programs funded by states, covers about 70 million low-income adults and children — the same population that has been hit hardest by the coronavirus. Though the federal government pays more than half of the Medicaid cost, governors ultimately determine the scope of the program in each state.
Several states have already announced cuts to their Medicaid programs and others are expected to […]
