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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.
I have been telling you for years to watch what the insurance companies are doing in your region because they, more than any other industry, are following what is happening with climate change. They are the canary in the mine whose choices will tell you when it is time to sell. And here is a report on what they are doing. I urge you to act accordingly, since the biggest asset most American families have is the equity in their home.
Flooded house. Credit: WCNC
Climate change and generations of U.S. housing and development policy are making homes, neighborhoods and entire municipalities riskier to insure, undermining the ability of Americans to live where they choose.
The current face of this crisis is a nationwide withdrawal by the insurance industry from regions threatened by wildfires and hurricanes, particularly along the Gulf Coast and California.
While there are other factors at play, this retreat is largely driven by the collision of climate change with long-term federal decisions to incentivize ever more expensive homes in riskier areas.
But insurance is just one manifestation of a larger problem, experts told The Hill, a canary in the coal mine offering a warning of more significant dangers rising out of sight.
And in a country whose economy is among the most unequal in the rich West, the cost of that danger falls increasingly on those least able to bear it.
A record number of billion-plus dollar weather disasters hit the U.S. in 2023, with 28 such incidents costing nearly $100 billion collectively, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The previous record was set in 2020 at 22 […]
He is the latest fact-based assessment as to what is happening about religion in the United States present time. The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization that conducts public opinion polls on a variety of topics, specializing in the quantitative and qualitative study of political issues as they relate to religious values, and their surveys have proven over time to be objective and reliable. You can see here, and in the much longer report how christofascism arose, and why I say that it has very little to do with traditional Christianity, except it cloaks itself in Biblical language and mannerisms.
Executive Summary
America encompasses a rich diversity of faith traditions, and “religious churning” is very common. In 2023, PRRI surveyed more than 5,600 adults across the United States about their experiences with religion. This report examines how well major faith traditions retain their members, the reasons people disaffiliate, and the reasons people attend religious services. Additionally, this report considers how atheists and agnostics differ from those who say they are “nothing in particular.” Finally, it analyzes the prevalence of charismatic elements as well as prophecy and prosperity theology in American churches and the role of charismatic Christianity in today’s Republican Party.
“Unaffiliated” is the only major religious category experiencing growth.
Around one-quarter of Americans (26%) identify as religiously unaffiliated in 2023, a 5 percentage point increase from 21% in 2013. Nearly one in five Americans (18%) left a religious tradition to become religiously unaffiliated, over one-third of whom were previously Catholic (35%) and mainline/non-evangelical Protestant (35%).
While the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as “nothing in particular” is similar to a decade ago (16% in 2013 to 17% in 2023), the numbers of both atheists and agnostics have doubled since […]
Heather Long, Editorial Writer and Ccolumnist - The Washington Post
Stephan:
Here is a good assessment explaining why the young no longer have much faith in the social structure the Boomers took for granted. It has not seemed to dawn on most politicians that there has been a major transformation in the relationship between workers and employers, nor do they seem to recognize the growing dislike the young have for capitalism. I think this should be seen as yet another sign of the declining wellbeing of American society. We are a country that by almost any measure one chooses to name, from healthcare to childcare, education, eldercare or retirement, is headed downward as a culture.
Demonstrators calling for Congress to take bold actions to fight global warming are seen outside the Capitol in February 2023. Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post
I was at an event recently where several top business executives were perplexed about whyAmericans under 40 are so disillusioned with capitalism. What could they do to restore trust in our economic system?
My suggestion was simple: Treat workers better. This wasn’t the answer they wanted. Many rushed to tell me how generous their pay raises have been, how easy it is to go from an entry-level job to management at their company, and how they have diversified their workforce. These are all welcome efforts, but they miss the bigger picture. Young people in America have come of age during the Great Recession, the sluggish recovery that followed and then the coronavirus pandemic. Unemployment has been 10 percent or higher twice in the past 15 years. Young workers have seen how expendable they are […]
I am seeing more and more signs like this report about women and alcohol of growing social stress. I think this is arising not just from immediate crises but also from a precognitive awareness of the devastation that is coming caused by climate change. There are already over 117 million climate refugees, as I noted the other day. We are also seeing an enormous increase in risiing authoritarianism. Since 1986 we have gone from 13 to 42 countries under authoritarian rule. This is a species wide crisis, and almost no one is talking about it in that context.
Credit: MedPage Today
She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn’t her first concern.
“Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again,” said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.
But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. “It was super fast,” Adkins said.
Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent dataopens in a new tab or window from the CDC on deaths from excessive drinking shows […]
Even when we try to help preserve the ecosystem we don’t think it through fully and properly, as this report about Right Whales describes. We need to reorder our societies so that fostering wellbeing of all the creatures in the matrix of life are included. If our civilization is to survive there is no other way. Will we do it? I’m not even sure we can preserve our democracy in November.
A North Atlantic right whale, entangled in fishing rope, next to her newborn, on December 2, 2021, near Cumberland Island, Georgia. Credit: Georgia Department of Natural Resources/NOAA Permit #20556 / AP
The story of the North Atlantic right whale, an icon of the East Coast, should be one of hope — a tale of recovery.
Humanity’s strongest tools have been mobilized for their protection. For centuries, whalers hunted these graceful giants, which were once found throughout the North Atlantic, for their baleen and oily blubber. By the early 20th century, they were nearly extinct. But in 1935, alarmed by the shrinking number of right whales, international authorities banned commercial hunting of these animals. Decades later, as North Atlantic right whales were starting to recover, the US gave them another lifeline, listing them as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. That made killing or harming them a federal crime.
On paper, these whales were — and still are — highly […]
Another culture stressor we are not properly addressing. We are at a point in our society where we must rethink our values and the only way that is going to happen is if we each make all our daily decisions the most compassionate life-affirming and fostering of wellbeing we can. Culture is the creation of collective consciousness.
Illustration by Anna Bu Kliewer for The Washington Post; U.S. Department of Energy
If you follow the always abundant literature of What’s Wrong With Today’s Kids, then you’re already familiar with the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
A professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, he’s most widely known for his 2018 bestseller, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” in which he and co-author Greg Lukianoff excoriated the new campus culture of “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings,” and tied the emotional fragility they believed underlay those developments to soaring rates of depression and anxiety in college students.
In the years since, Haidt has been a frequent research and sometime writing collaborator of Jean Twenge, the prolific and controversial psychologist whose Atlantic cover story in 2017, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?,” set the tone for their work.
Along the way, Haidt has picked up a cadre of haters (the “kids are alright” crowd, he calls […]
Simon Montlake , Staff Writer - Christian Science Monitor
Stephan:
I have been telling you for over 15 years that all the overpopulation commentary is nonsense. There isn’t going to be an overpopulation problem, but rather the opposite. As this article describes we are going to face a population decrease so great that it is going to cause a societal restructuring. That’s why the christofascist nonsense about immigration restriction that people like criminal Trump spew out and the right-wing media picks up is all crap.
Credit: LM Otero / AP
After a century in which the global population grew almost fourfold to 6.2 billion people, stoking fears of overpopulation, conflict, and ecological collapse, a turning point awaits.
At some point in the 2060s, 2070s, or 2080s, the world population, currently 8 billion, will peak around 10 billion, according to forecasts, and then start to decline. An end to humanity’s relentless expansion is in sight.
When it comes, debates about population growth, which have been driven by beliefs that humanity is too fecund for the Earth’s carrying capacity, will acquire a different character. What goes up fast can come down just as fast, measured in decades and centuries, setting the stage for an era of population shrinkage that seems both inexorable and unfathomable.
Shrinkage is the logical result of tumbling birthrates today, not just in rich democracies like Germany and South Korea but also in most corners of the planet. “No future currently looks more likely than a long span of global depopulation,” says Dean Spears, an economist and […]
America’s horrible illness profit system has gotten worse, and you may have been affected. Read this, and if you are part of the ACA (Obamacare) system check to make sure you haven’t been made an unwitting victim. You would think there would be a huge outcry to establish universal birthright single-payer wellbeing healthcare, but Americans, particularly in Red states where they have given control over to the TCP, either don’t seem to understand or don’t care. I don’t see any national. movement for a wellbeing oriented healthcare system emerging.
Insurance brokers say rogue agents are switching batches of customers to new plans without the customers’ knowledge. The agents then collect monthly commissions on the Affordable Care Act plans. Credit: Ralf Hahn / Getty
Some consumers covered by Affordable Care Act insurance plans are being switched from one plan to another without their express permission, potentially leaving them unable to see their doctors or fill prescriptions. Some face large IRS bills for back taxes.
Unauthorized enrollment or plan-switching is emerging as a serious challenge for the ACA, also known as Obamacare. Brokers say the ease with which rogue agents can get into policyholder accounts in the 32 states served by the federal marketplace plays a major role in the problem, according to an investigation by KFF Health News.
Indeed, armed with only a person’s name, date of birth, and state, a licensed agent can access a policyholder’s coverage through the federal exchange or its direct enrollment platforms. It’s harder to do through state ACA markets, because they often require additional information.
“It’s rampant. It’s horrible,” says Ronnell Nolan, president […]
