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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: Twenty percent of American children face hunger. If I wrote that about Guatemala or Ethiopia you'd think, Oh that poor third world country. How do you feel about that being true in the United States? And how do you feel about the Republican cult's response to this reality?
Once again I will state what I believe: It is not possible to be an ethical person and vote for Republicans. It is just that simple
As a padlocked economy leaves millions of Americans without paychecks, lines outside food banks have stretched for miles, prompting some of the overwhelmed charities to seek help from the National Guard.
A hungry child receiving food support Credit: Vetri Community Partnership
New research shows a rise in food insecurity without modern precedent. Among mothers with young children, nearly one-fifth say their children are not getting enough to eat, according to a survey by the Brookings Institution, a rate three times as high as in 2008, during the worst of the Great Recession.
The reality of so many Americans running out of food is an alarming reminder of the economic hardship the pandemic has inflicted. But despite their support for spending trillions on other programs to mitigate those hardships, Republicans have balked at a long-term expansion of food stamps — a core feature of the safety net that once enjoyed broad support but is now a source of a highly partisan divide.
Democrats want to raise food stamp benefits by 15% for the duration of the economic crisis, arguing that a similar […]
Stephan: This statement by Trump is so obviously stupid it is breath-taking. But it is very revealing. It makes perfect sense if your own approach to the pandemic is to get re-elected and that from Trump's is what matters. The health and wellbeing of the peasants, as he sees us, is only marginally important.
The single most disastrous element of the failed federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic is Donald Trump’s continued refusal to launch a massive federal effort to develop the capacity to test more Americans for the virus.
Without magnitudes more testing, public health experts agree, reopening the country is a death sentence for countless Americans, particularly the less affluent. And only the federal government is capable of what’s required.
On Wednesday, Trump explained himself with an extraordinarily revealing quote – one that included both a lie and a confession.
It was a lie because the number of tests administered in the U.S. – currently about 7 million – is tiny compared to the actual need.
And it was a confession because Trump was acknowledging that he sees testing as a matter of his own political health rather than the public’s.
The context of his comment was also revealing, because he was speaking entirely about the public perception of the problem rather than the problem itself — and […]
Stephan: The Republican cult, and the oligarchs that fund it want you to go back to work because the economic collapse is affecting their profits. If it kills you, well you will die a patriot's death, they say. And if you are not willing to make that sacrifice they make it clear they will punish you. They are designing this so it is: submit or be punished.
Republicans were really not happy about passing a $600 per week increase in unemployment benefits, and Republican governors are moving to make it impossible for many people to collect it. As Republican governors reopen their states quickly—more quickly than is safe—they force people back to unsafe jobs, and money is the weapon making it stick. If you can theoretically go back to your job, even if it’s unsafe, then you aren’t eligible for unemployment insurance.
After Ohio encouraged employers to turn in workers who don’t want to go back to unsafe jobs, 600 employers turned in 1,200 workers. (Ohio Democrats countered with a website for workers to report unsafe workplaces.) Iowa similarly has a tip line for employers to call to report reluctant workers, and Alabama’s government has warned people that collecting unemployment rather than going back to an unsafe job is fraud.
That message came through loud and clear to Arkansas massage therapist Tracy McFetridge, HuffPost reports, when her state’s secretary of commerce said that anyone who could return to work but kept collecting unemployment […]
Stephan: Under the cloud of the pandemic Trump is taking the Post Office apart, and you are going to suffer for his incompetent nastiness. The corruption of the Republican cult and "Dear Leader" Trump is so explicit and blatant you would think there will be a national citizens' uprising.
But study after study shows that that Trumpers cannot face the humiliation of recognizing how stupid they were and nothing will shake their allegiance to Trump. That's why in spite of the obvious corruption, incompetence, and sheer nastiness he still has a 43.3% approval rating.
This same process is exactly how Hitler came to power.
Donald Trump | USPS Credit: Salon/AP Photo/Evan Vucci/Lynne Sladky
A major donor to President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee was selected as the new head of the US Postal Service on Wednesday.
Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman who is heading up fundraising for the 2020 Republican National Convention, was approved by the USPS Board of Governors to become “the first postmaster general in two decades who did not rise through the agency’s ranks,” The Washington Post reported.
DeJoy has given more than $2 million to the Trump campaign and Republican causes since 2016, according to the report, including $1 million to the Republican National Committee and $650,000 to the Trump Victory Fund.
DeJoy’s wife, Aldona Wos, has also risen through the ranks of Trumpworld. Trump nominated Wos to be ambassador to Canada earlier this year, replacing Kelly Craft, another top donor who has since been promoted to U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Wos is also the vice chair of the president’s Commission on White House Fellowships. She previously served as ambassador to Estonia under former President George W. Bush.
Stephan: I'll just let this story speak for itself.
Diana Andrade and Jacob Wohl, the woman who falsely accused Dr, Anthony Fauci of sexual misconduct, and the man who paid her to do it. Credit: Diana Andrade
After failing to frame Robert Mueller, Elizabeth Warren, and others for sexual misconduct, the infamous Trumpster hoaxers tried to go after Fauci. But the woman they hired to play the victim had second thoughts.
I’d just finished Saturday morning’s second cup of coffee when an email popped through, subject line: “Exposing Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman.”
“Hi Nancy, I hope you are having a nice weekend. I feel very bad about lying to you and others about Dr. Fauci. I took it upon myself to call Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman and record them (see attached)… Many thanks and again, I feel very bad about all this. I apologize to you, the other reporters and Dr. Fauci.”
The writer of the email identified herself as Diana Andrade. I had never before emailed with Andrade, but had spoken with her 10 days earlier, when I knew her as “Diana Rodriguez.” At […]
Stephan: You know what I don't understand? How is it that each day's news brings yet another story of Trumpian incompetence, grift, or just plain nastiness, and yet that hasn't become the story.
I am amazed that you don't see on the major cable and broadcast channels, this fact that I have cited before: The American population is 4.25% of the world population and yet has 33% of the coronavirus cases, and 28% of the deaths, as of today. And, of course, the American numbers are deliberately being undercounted.
Compared to how European nations are coping with the coronavirus, Trump and his administration seem pathetic, corrupt, and third world. America will never be seen in the same way again. I see this as a geopolitical shift that will play a major role in how other nations see and deal with the U.S. from now on. This is not something easily rectified.
London (CNN Business)In Europe, nearly 39 million people are being paid by governments to work part time or not at all, a record level of support that will shape the region’s ability to claw its way out of the deep recession triggered by the coronavirus.Like never before, European countries are relying on programs that encourage struggling companies to retain employees but reduce their working hours. The state then subsidizes a portion of their pay, in some countries paying as much as 80% of average wages.
Europe’s economy just had its worst quarter since records beganUnlike the system widely used in the United States, where employers lay off workers who then need to apply for government benefits, programs such as Germany’s “Kurzarbeit,” which translates to “short-time work,” maintain the relationship between employers and their employees, helping work resume quickly once business picks back up.It’s been effective in the past. Kurzarbeit is credited with helping prevent mass layoffs in Germany following the 2008 global financial crisis, and for allowing manufacturers […]
Frances Stead Sellers , Senior Writer - The Washington Post
Stephan: When you stress a system all its weaknesses and flaws come into focus. If you go into the SR archives you will find over a dozen stories tracking the degradation of the water distribution infrastructure. America once led the world in water purity for citizens. That is no longer true, and the data is unequivocal about this. And so we have come to this.
Cassandra Chavez, 19, had a lung condition in her early teens. The Chavez family suspects that the ailment was caused by the nitrate-contaminated well water at their small ranch. Credit:Melina Mara/The Washington Post
For the Chavez family and many others in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley, bottled water is the toilet paper of their coronavirus pandemic — an everyday necessity that vanished from supermarket shelves.
In the Navajo Nation, where about a third of the population lacks indoor plumbing, volunteers are creating public hand-washing stations by repurposing detergent bottles as makeshift faucets.
And Jessica Endicott, who lives in the tiny community of Turkey Creek in eastern Kentucky, said the virus has exacerbated distrust of the local water, which leaves her skin red and itchy every time she bathes.
Having plundered several major cities, the novel coronavirus is taking root in marginalized rural communities. Many of them lack clean water, making it impossible for residents to shelter at home or wash their hands frequently.
The pandemic is highlighting the yawning racial and socio-economic disparities in access to clean water […]
KEVIN RUDD, Former Prime Minister of Australia and President of the Asia Society Policy Institute - Foreign Affairs
Stephan: This, in my opinion, is a brilliant geopolitical assessment by Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister of Australia. It is also an utter condemnation of Donald Trump. I urge you to read it.
The USS Porter fires a tomahawk land attack missile, April 2017
In January and February of this year, there was audible popping of champagne corks in certain quarters of the U.S. foreign policy establishment. What some observers had long seen as this era’s giant geopolitical bubble had finally begun to deflate. China’s Communist Party leadership, the thinking went, was at last coming apart, a result of its obsession with official secrecy, its initial missteps in responding to the novel coronavirus outbreak, and the unfolding economic carnage across the country.
Then, as China began to recover and the virus migrated to the West in March and April, irrational jubilation turned to irrational despair. The commentariat greeted with outrage any possibility that the pandemic might in fact help China emerge triumphant in the ongoing geopolitical contest with the United States. This concern was a product of China’s seemingly cunning remolding of the narrative on the origins of the virus, the brutal efficiency of the Chinese authoritarian model in containing it, and Beijing’s global COVID-aid campaign. China’s own nationalist commentariat happily […]
But study after study shows that that Trumpers cannot face the humiliation of recognizing how stupid they were and nothing will shake their allegiance to Trump. That's why in spite of the obvious corruption, incompetence, and sheer nastiness he still has a 43.3% approval rating.
This same process is exactly how Hitler came to power. 
