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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: Here is another take on wealth inequality. When a society gets to this level of distortion social violence happens. History gives example after example. Read your French history, Russian history, Romanian history, or go back to Rome The Coronavirus epidemic, and the incompetence of the Trump federal government has brought the usually almost invisible world of the ultra-wealthy into focus, as this article describes.
A yacht is seen behind a police tape in the Marmaris district of Mugla, Turkey, on April 18, 2020. Sabri Kesen / Anadolu Agency / Getty
Everyday, it becomes clearer: the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting poor, working, and marginalized communities the hardest.
Millions of workers – especially low-wage retail, food service, hospitality, and care workers – have faced the terrible choice daily between going to work and risking their health, or staying home and risking their paychecks. Many other workers don’t even have that choice, with around 30 million people in the US filing for unemployment in the past six weeks.
But billionaires don’t face these same problems. As tens of millions have lost their jobs over the past two months, billionaire wealth soared by a whopping $282 billion between March 18 and April 10, according to a new study from the Institute for Policy Studies. And while finding enough space to wait out the pandemic is something many struggle with, billionaires have been escaping to their second (or third, or fourth) homes to ride it out in luxury – all while they […]
Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Mike Pompeo, and William Barr from left to right. Credit: Soohee Cho/The Intercept/Getty
The Four Horsemen of the pandemic are rampaging through Washington. Their names are Kushner, Miller, Pompeo, and Barr.
They are fulfilling Donald Trump’s darkest desires to twist the Covid-19 pandemic into a culture war, while also looking for ways to exploit the nation’s greatest public health crisis in a century to foment hoaxes and conspiracy theories and punish Trump’s enemies.
Meanwhile, they are ignoring the actual pandemic. Trump and his lackeys have decided to let America burn.
They have wasted the time the American people gave them to come to grips with Covid-19. It was precious time granted by people who, in overwhelming numbers, complied with state-level stay-at-home orders for two months so the government could come up with a serious national strategy to address the health crisis and its economic fallout.
But Trump has betrayed that sacrifice by failing to develop any coherent plan at all. He has surrendered to the virus, even as the American death toll heads rapidly toward 100,000.
ANDREW CHUNG, LAWRENCE HURLEY, JACKIE BOTTS, ANDREA JANUTA and GUILLERMO GOMEZ, - Reuters Investigates
Stephan: As you watch the stories of Ahmaud Arbery's murder by two White male morons, driving a pick-up truck, armed with a shotgun, read this and realize why Trump, Mitch McConnell, the other Republican senators are so committed to restructuring the American judiciary. They are pursuing a program to institutionalize an authoritarian police force, which is being legally justified by a Republican Supreme Court.
Your country is vanishing in front of your eyes people. And please pray for Ruth Bader Ginsburg; she is single-handedly holding the monsters at bay. I believe history will record her as one of the great heroes in American history.
Khari Illidge died after police hogtied him and a 385-pound officer kneeled on his back, but the court hearing Illidge’s mother’s lawsuit determined there was no precedent establishing the cops’ behavior as unlawful. Credit: Gladis Callwood/Reuters
Staff at the local hospital in tiny Madill, Oklahoma, called the police in the early evening of March 24, 2011, for help giving Johnny Leija an injection to calm him. Security cameras captured much of the ensuing encounter.
The officers, after shooting Leija with a stun gun, follow him down a corridor, shock him again, and wrestle him to the floor. One officer then straddles Leija’s back, trying to handcuff him as the others struggle to pull back his arms. They get one handcuff on. Leija goes limp. The officers step back. Hospital staff drop to Leija’s side and begin a futile effort to resuscitate him.
The Oklahoma Chief Medical Examiner’s Office determined that Leija, his lungs already compromised by pneumonia, was starved for oxygen in his struggle with the police and died from “respiratory insufficiency.”
The county sheriff and the Madill police chief defended the officers’ actions […]
Stephan: This is potentially a very big deal. If an electric car battery lasts 1,00,000km/621,371 miles it means you will never buy a replacement. In fact, a market in used batteries will arise. The average America only drives 13,476 miles a year.
The Lexus UX 300e, the luxury brand’s first EV, is on sale in China now and hits Europe later this year. Lexus in Europe announced today that the crossover’s air-cooled 54.3-kilowatt-hour battery will come with a 10-year, 1 million-kilometer (621,000-mile) warranty. The Lexus UX300e joins the Nissan Leaf as one of the few EVs with air-cooled batteries, which are considered not as robust.
In today’s official release, Lexus championed its air-cooled system as better than liquid cooling.
For the UX 300e, Lexus developed a battery cell air-cooling system which is safer and lighter than water-cooled systems. With cooled air circulating inside the battery pack, stable battery output can be attained even at high speed and during repeated rapid charging.
Working hand in hand with the cabin air conditioning, the system enhances the car’s performance, battery life, and charging performance.
Reliability was also to the fore in the development of the battery heating system. Heating elements under each battery module minimize the impact of cold weather on the driving range, ensuring full power is available from the […]
Stephan: Republicans are very clear about what they value, and what they don't. Profit over health and wellbeing. And by the endless choices they have made they also demonstrate their uninterest and contempt for facts. Let me demonstrate these truths with this report on Arizona.
Once again I remind you, we have 4.25% of the world's population and a third of the world's cases of coronavirus. And our curve is rising, while the curves of other countries in the developed world are declining. Why is this happening? Why can the richest nation in the world, not do what nations no bigger than some American states, have shown they can do? Why? Because Republican policies are not based on fostering wellbeing but are based on other priorities.
For seven weeks, Gov. Doug Ducey has assured us that his decisions to reopen the state would be based not on politics or wishful thinking or even a wing and a prayer.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Arizona Department of Health Services Director Dr. Cara Christ (left) give an update on the COVID-19 pandemic response during a press conference at the Arizona Commerce Authority in Phoenix on April 14, 2020. Credit: Rob Schumacher/The Republic)
Data, he has said over and over again, would be in the drivers’ seat when it comes to steering Arizona through the coronavirus.
Just hours after Ducey announced on Monday that he’s accelerating the reopening of parts of the state’s economy, state health officials told a team of university experts to stop working on models that project what will happen next.
The universities’ models had shown that the only way to avoid a dramatic spike in cases was to delay reopening the […]
Stephan: I have held this report for a few days to see if there was any change in the direction of the data. There hasn't been.
Sweden, as the article mentions, is a kind of a control group, just the way Red and Blue state governors are teaching us what works, and what does not. The question is going to be: Will we learn from this experience? It is going to depend on whether things are assessed on the basis of facts, or ideology.
Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s “keep everything open” approach to the coronavirus, is having second thoughts. Credit: AFP/Getty
Many conservatives are in love with the idea of Sweden’s approach—no lockdown. They don’t take into consideration that half of Swedes live alone, or that they have a top-notch universal healthcare system. They just think “no lockdown” is a better response to the novel coronavirus pandemic.
If nothing else, Sweden’s alternative response to the virus was … a good control group. And what we’re learning now is that failing to shut down hasn’t just led to more deaths, but—surprise surprise!—it also didn’t prevent its economy from tanking. In fact, Sweden is poised for more economic pain than its neighbors.
Sweden is quickly rising up the ranks of the world leaders in deaths. Here is the world ranking of deaths per million residents, excluding micro-nations:
DEATHS PER MILLIONBELGIUM726SPAIN558ITALY495UK451FRANCE395NETHERLANDS309SWEDEN301IRELAND284USA230
Sweden (like the United States) has been quickly moving up this horrid chart and will overtake the Netherlands sometime this weekend for the sixth spot in the world. Meanwhile, its neighbors following more standard shutdown protocols are looking […]
Stephan: Over just the past week I have been notably struck by the behavior, attitude, and anti-democracy corruption of the Republican Party, which I now see as a White Supremacy christofascist Trumpian cult. The stories in today's SR are far from the only stories about this I have seen. There is Attorney General Bill Barr's behavior, for instance. But that's getting lots of coverage, so you already know about that. Instead, I have chosen a representative selection of stories that aren't getting a lot of national coverage.
Frankly, I see these actions, these events, these attitudes, as an intentional attempt to foment a quiet coup to create a racist fascist kleptocracy. If you find that as unacceptable as I do you better get out and vote these people out of office because if Trump, Barr, Mitchell, Mnuchin, and Devos and the others stay in power you may not get another chance.
Stephan: Here is the basic Trump strategy: Don't pay any attention to facts, scientists, or doctors peasants. Just listen to the president, he will tell you what reality is, and what to think.
As all my readers know, my first priority is fostering wellbeing and I do not think that at any time in American history there has ever been a president, an administration, or a party (read cult) less interested in that.
Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci listens to President Donald J. Trump as he speaks with members of the coronavirus task force during a briefing in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Monday, April 13, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty
Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were told by the White House that the agency’s detailed guidance on reopening local economies would “never see the light of day,” according to an Associated Press report published Thursday.
The guidance was set to be released last Friday and provided specific advice for local officials and business owners as many states begin to reopen. It covered safety protocols that should be in place before restaurants, childcare facilities, and other venues can begin operating as normal again.
Evidently preferring that the public rely on the White House’s more vague guidelines, the Trump administration shelved the 17-page report, which was then provided to the AP by CDC scientists on the condition of […]
