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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: While the Trump administration is making a complete cockup of the Covid-19 pandemic, under the radar it is doing the same thing about preparation for climate change.
Nature, like the virus, is not influenced by Trump's lies and rhetoric, and proceeds on the trend lines the data describes. And of course, the outcomes for both are worse than anyone originally thought possible. Here is the latest on sea rise.
Credit: Shmenny50/iStock
Oceans are likely to rise as much as 1.3 metres by 2100 if Earth’s surface warms another 3.5 degrees Celsius, scientists warned Friday.
By 2300, when ice sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland will have shed trillions of tonnes in mass, sea levels could go up by more than five metres under that temperature scenario, redrawing the planet’s coastlines, they reported in a peer-reviewed survey of more than 100 leading experts.
About ten percent of the world’s population, or 770 million people, today live on land less than five metres above the high tide line.
Even if the Paris climate treaty goal of capping global warming below 2 °C is met – a very big “if” – the ocean watermark could go up two metres by 2300, according to a study in the journal Climate Atmospheric Science.
Earth’s average surface temperature has risen just over 1 °C since the pre-industrial era, a widely used benchmark for measuring global warming.
“It is clear now that previous sea-level rise estimates have been too low,” co-author Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth system analysis at the Potsdam […]
Stephan: If we were not submerged in a pandemic this would be the lead story on every network and the A block on every news program. As things are, however, it is making hardly any impact. Imagine 2,000 men and women fully familiar with the inside workings of an institution have stepped forward to publicly deride the integrity and competence of the head of that institution.
Trump and Barr Credit: McNamee/Getty
Almost 2,000 former FBI agents and Department of Justice officials wrote an open letter Monday calling for Attorney General William Barr to resign over his handling of the Michael Flynn case, after the Justice Department abruptly dropped criminal charges against President Trump’s former national security advisor last week, despite Flynn’s earlier guilty pleas.
KEY FACTS
The DOJ on Thursday announced it was dropping its case against Flynn, who pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
The letter asks the federal judge overseeing Flynn’s case to dismiss the Department’s request to drop the charges: “Attorney General Barr’s repeated actions to use the Department as a tool to further President Trump’s personal and political interests have undermined any claim to the deference that courts usually apply to the Department’s decisions about whether or not to prosecute a case.”
The case has become a political rallying point for Trump, who alleges that the FBI mishandled Flynn’s case and who spent the weekend tweeting about the case, calling […]
Mary B. McCord, Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security (2016 to 2017) - The New York Times
Stephan: More than any other recent Attorney General William Barr reminds me of Nixon's AG John Mitchell, which is to say Barr like Mitchell is more a presidential Igor (Dr. Frankenstein's grotesque assistant) than competent ethical legal official. Barr is so far outside of honesty that former officials, like Mary McCord feel compelled to come forward, to tell the truth.
William Barr Credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times
At the direction of Attorney General Bill Barr, the Justice Department last week moved to dismiss a false-statements charge against Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser. The reason stated was that the continued prosecution “would not serve the interests of justice.”
The motion was signed by Timothy Shea, a longtime trusted adviser of Mr. Barr and, since January, the acting U.S. attorney in Washington. In attempting to support its argument, the motion cites more than 25 times the F.B.I.’s report of an interview with me in July 2017, two months after I left a decades-long career at the department (under administrations of both parties) that culminated in my role as the acting assistant attorney general for national security.
That report, commonly referred to as a “302,” is an interesting read. It vividly describes disagreements between leadership of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. about how to handle the information we had learned about Mr. Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and, more specifically, Mr. […]
About a week ago, I sent a good friend, who is an internationally recognized cardiologist, copies of three papers I have written for research journals. each dealing with a different aspect of the coronavirus pandemic.
He wrote back, "I have read your three articles with great interest, and to be honest: how is it possible that all those alarming facts are not well known nor accepted by the majority of the population in the USA? I really became a bit depressed by reading those papers, although we have not these problems in The Netherlands, except the rising sea levels. Healthcare is for free, including medication, for everybody. It costs us about € 3,500 per person per year. Retirement is being paid for each month after the day you have become 67 years old (we have paid for it during all our working years). During the Covid-19 crisis, the government has paid 80% of the salary of all the working people, and there has been an enormous financial support for business, like KLM airlines. Of course, we have also our problems, especially the immigrants from Africa ( economic) and from the Middle East ( war), but I feel that we are privileged. Especially as compared with ( especially Afro-American and Hispanic) people in the USA. And it is indeed impossible to understand the still 43% support for Trump.
"I really wish that in your beautiful and wonderful country, with such a rich history, change will come toward more wellbeing and more financial equality. It will need a huge change in consciousness indeed. For everybody, also for politicians."
I wrote back to him saying, Holland has a society whose fundamental priority is fostering wellbeing. Consequently, you have the programs you describe. In the United States, the only social priority is profit and, thus, we have the situation I describe in the papers. And you are correct until we change our values and adopt what the Netherlands already recognizes, we will continue to go downhill as a country. It is tragically sad.
Analysts project that 43 million Americans could lose their insurance when the unemployment rate hits 20%. According to the Department of Labor, the current unemployment rate is 14.7%. Credit: Elvert Barnes/Flickr
Medicare for All advocates on Sunday pointed to the latest study on the looming health insurance crisis already becoming apparent amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to job losses for more than 33 million people in the past two months.
Because health insurance is tied to employment for about half the country—160 million people—as many as 43 million are expected to lose their health insurance due to the pandemic, according to a new report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the Urban Institute.
Analysts project that 43 million Americans could lose their insurance when the unemployment rate hits 20%. According to the Department of Labor, the current unemployment rate is 14.7%. Some economists estimate that between 19% and 23.6% of Americans are actually out of a job, including those who lost their jobs in the last two weeks and those who have not filed jobless claims.
Stephan: Yet again, Trump's incompetence degrades America's geopolitical standing. This got almost no coverage in the U.S. but was widely covered in other countries. Here is a report from France.
The United States on Friday stunned other members of the UN Security Council by preventing a vote on a resolution for a ceasefire in various conflicts around the world to help troubled nations better fight the coronavirus pandemic, diplomats said.
Washington’s reversal came a day after it agreed to the text, negotiators said under cover of anonymity.
“The United States cannot support the current draft,” the country’s delegation declared, without further detail, to the 14 other Security Council members, after nearly two months of difficult negotiation over the text.
The latest stalemate continues to leave the global peace and security body largely mute in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic that has killed more tha 270,000 people and raised further fears for the world’s most vulnerable.
When asked for an explanation of the US move, a State Department official told AFP that China had “repeatedly blocked compromises that would have allowed the Council to move forward.”
Diplomats told AFP that the language used in the draft to describe the World Health Organization was behind the US move to prevent […]
Stephan: I got an email this morning from a reader in California who told me she was "just stunned at the number of people walking around now without masks. I just can't imagine what they are thinking. Where do they get the idea this is okay?"
Here's the answer. Trump media each day spew out information that is not just inaccurate but dangerous to their readers and viewers. Like everything associated with Trump Fox, and these other media outlets lack fundamental integrity, further demonstrating that you cannot be both an ethical person and a Republican.
Fox Commentator
A Fox News host infamous for claiming he hasn’t washed his hands in a decade urged viewers to go out and get infected by the deadly coronavirus.
Pete Hegseth applauded Americans who were defying stay-at-home orders and other social distancing measures aimed at slowing the spread of the highly communicable COVID-19, which is significantly more deadly than the flu.
“I don’t love the ‘warrior’ talk, but I do think you are going to need that kind of ethos and that spirit to put freedom before fear,” Hegseth said. “Listen, there’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of of misinformation. The experts have been telling us, hundreds of thousands of people are going to die.”
More than 74,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 so far, but Hegseth — who last year claimed he never washed his hands because “germs aren’t real” — urged viewers to go about their daily lives without fear of the virus.
“Now that we are learning more, herd immunity is our friend,” Hegseth said. “Healthy people getting out there are going to have to […]
Stephan: Robert Reich, in this essay mirrors what I have been saying for weeks now. Trump and the Republicans are destroying the country. As I write this they are trying to limit food programs; stack the judiciary branch of government with incompetent (by expert evaluation) ideologues; limit healthcare, and make what healthcare there is stingier and more difficult; sabotage science, in the belief if you hide the numbers what is going on won't be obvious. The list goes on and on, and only the rich are prospering.
And yet, according to FiveThirtyEight, 43.4% of Americans approve of Trump and what he is doing, even as they live the results. I just can't get my head around it.
Donald Trump listens during a meeting with Republican members of Congress on Friday. Credit: Tom Brenner/Reuters
No other nation has endured as much death from Covid-19 nor nearly as a high a death rate as has the United States.
Donald Trump’s four-step plan to reopen the US economy – and why it will be lethal
With 4.25% of the world population, America has the tragic distinction of accounting for about 30% of pandemic deaths so far.
And it is the only advanced nation where the death rate is still climbing. Three thousand deaths per day are anticipated by 1 June.
No other nation has loosened lockdowns and other social-distancing measures while deaths are increasing, as the US is now doing.
No other advanced nation was as unprepared for the pandemic as was the US.
Marshall Auerback, - Independent Media Institute/Raw Story
Stephan: The wealth inequality in America is grotesque, and the pandemic has brought that into sharp focus. Here's one take on that.
In his now must-see-TV daily press conferences, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has referred to COVID-19 as “the great equalizer.” In the sense that anybody can be infected by the virus, the governor is right. Yet after several months, the data shows clearly the impact is unequally landing on the shoulders of people of color and all but the most wealthy. The health impacts and absence of economic measures to protect them are so extreme that Cuomo’s statements are more than hollow—they are cruel cover-ups.
If anything, COVID-19 has been little more than a novelty for the 1 percent and a dystopian nightmare for the rest of us. Had we experienced a repeat economic crash more along the lines of what happened in 2008, that might have forced a true reckoning and consequent reform in our system. Instead, we have a pandemic that is facilitating public looting under the cover of a collective surgical mask as it is entrenching pre-existing inequities. A toxic mix of racial, financial, and geographic disadvantage is literally proving to be a death sentence.Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.
Robert Reich, in this essay mirrors what I have been saying for weeks now. Trump and the Republicans are destroying the country. As I write this they are trying to limit food programs; stack the judiciary branch of government with incompetent (by expert evaluation) ideologues; limit healthcare, and make what healthcare there is stingier and more difficult; sabotage science, in the belief if you hide the numbers what is going on won't be obvious. The list goes on and on, and only the rich are prospering.
And yet, according to FiveThirtyEight, 43.4% of Americans approve of Trump and what he is doing, even as they live the results. I just can't get my head around it. 
