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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.
This is one of the most horrifying stories I have ever published in SR, and it is the account of a trend that is growing throughout the country. The anti-choice Republican Party of the United States has become the equivalent of the Taliban, and it seeks complete dominance over women through legally making a fertilized egg a person. Alabama, a state with grossly inferior social outcome data, is leading the way in this trend but it is spreading through the Red States and in the U.S. Congress. This election is not just about defeating Trump, it is about defeating every Republican running for every office anywhere. If Republicans win you will not recognize the United States within two years. I ask you to pass this article along to at least 10 friends. The only thing that is going to stop this evil is the complete defeat of Republicans everywhere.
Illustration by Ana Juan / Rolling Stone
Krista Harding’s daughter was eight weeks old when that police cruiser pulled behind her on the interstate and hit the lights in September 2019. She called her boss at the Little Caesars in Pinson, Alabama, where she’d just been promoted to manager: I’m going to be a little late, but I’m coming in! Don’t panic. Harding’s registration tag was expired. She figured the officer would write her a ticket and she’d be on her way, but when he came back after running her driver’s license, he had handcuffs out.
There was a felony warrant out for her arrest, he said: “Chemical endangerment of a child.” Harding used her most patient customer-service tone to ask the officer if he’d please check again. But there was no mistake, the cop confirmed: He was taking her to the Etowah County Detention Center, almost an hour’s drive away.
“I’m in the back of the cop car just bawling my eyes out, […]
Here is some very good news from Cambridge University. Most of us don’t think much about cement as a problem but, as this article describes, it is a significant source of CO2 emissions, and this may be a solution to make it greener.
Old concrete can be recycled in furnaces used to recycle steel, in a new method that drastically reduces the CO2 emissions of both Credit: Cambridge University
Concrete and steel production are major sources of CO2 emissions, but a new solution from Cambridge could recycle both at the same time. Throwing old concrete into steel-processing furnaces not only purifies iron but produces “reactivated cement” as a byproduct. If done using renewable energy, the process could make for completely carbon-zero cement.
Concrete is the world’s most used building material, and making it is a particularly dirty business – concrete production alone is responsible for about 8% of total global CO2 emissions. Unfortunately it’s not easy to recycle back into a form that can be used to make new concrete structures.
Scientists have of course been investigating ways to make concrete greener. That can include changing the recipe to switch out the most polluting ingredients – specifically limestone – or designing concrete so that it absorbs more CO2 from the air after it’s laid. For the new study, Cambridge researchers investigated how […]
Brady Dennis, Kevin Crowe and John Muyskens, Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan:
If you live along a coast and are on a septic system I urge you to do research to see what your future sea rise is projected to be. Ihave lived much of my life on properties dependent on septic systems. We live on such a system now. But, before we moved here 16 years ago, I did a lot of research to make sure sea rise was not going to be an issue in the future. For much of the South, however, where millions live depend on septic systems the future is going to be an ongoing sewage disaster as this article describes. It is going to have an enormous effect on the value of real estate, even if one can obtain insurance, which is another crisis in the making that is already impacting states from Florida to California. If your house is an important part of your family’s wealth do the research before it is too late.
Credit: The Washington Post
On the worst days, when the backyard would flood and the toilet would gurgle and the smell of sewage hung thick in the air, Monica Arenas would flee to her mother-in-law’s home to use the bathroom or wash laundry.
“It was a nightmare,” Arenas, 41, recalled one evening in the modest house she shares with her husband and teenage daughter several miles north of downtown Miami.
She worried about what pathogens might lurk in the tainted waters, what it might cost to fix the persistent problems and whether the ever-present anxiety would ever subside.
Residents in neighborhoods around Arenas’s have similar tales to share — of out-of-commission toilets, of groundwater rising through cracks in their garage floors, of worries about their own waste running through the streets and ultimately polluting nearby Biscayne Bay.
For all the obvious challenges facing South Florida as sea levels surge, one serious threat to public health and the environment remains largely out of sight, but everywhere:
Septic tanks.
Millions of them dot the American South, a region grappling with some […]
This is what the MAGAt House Republicans are doing. Rather than passing policies that foster wellbeing, they are creating more chaos in a Congress already barely functional. Marijuana an issue from decades ago is being reintroduced by two MAGAts, Mary Miller, representing the 15th District of Illinois, and Doug LaMalfa, representing California’s 1st District. The Republicans are going to create hundreds of hours of wasted Congressional time as this resurrected issue if fought out again. I live in a state where marijuana has been legal for decades. It is a non-issue, no one talks about it, it causes fewer problems than alcohol, and people who use it just get on with their lives.
Markus Schreiber Credit: Associated Press
A ban on intoxicating hemp products has made it into the House version of the farm bill.
That previous bill made it far easier for American farmers to grow nonintoxicating varieties of cannabis, defined in the statute as “hemp,” for industrial and medical use.
But vagueness in the law’s wording, combined with the fact that intoxicating and nonintoxicating varieties of cannabis (“hemp” and “marijuana,” respectively) are functionally the same plant, allowed the evolution over the past six years of something not seen in America since the Gilded Age: a thriving market in universally available and largely unregulated cannabis products, as The Hill reported.
“Because of the ambiguity created by the 2018 Farm […]
Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley, Staff Writer - RollingStone
Stephan:
The Republicans in Congress are no longer interested in governing. They are no longer a political party, they are a cult. What they are doing is kneeling subserviently before their master because their political advisors have told them if they don’t, and criminal Trump says something against them, they could lose their status and benefits (much more than just their salaries) and be reduced to being ordinary people, as they were before they were elected. They are willing to lie, cheat, or sabotage our democracy, whatever it takes to keep their master happy.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom for his hush money trial on May 21, 2024 in New York City. Credit: Mark Peterson / Getty
Donald Trump likes to tell anyone who will listen that he’s absolutely convinced he will win his 2024 rematch against President Joe Biden. And, according to people who’ve spoken to the ex-president about this, Trump also seems convinced that if he wins another four years in the White House, stateprosecutors will still be waiting for him on the other side of his term — ready to put him on trial, or even in prison, just as they are now.
To avoid such risks, the former and perhaps future president of the United States wants Congress to create a very specific insurance policy that would help keep him out of prison forever, two sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. Trump vaguely alluded to this idea last week outside his New […]
This decision by the christofascists majority on the Supreme Court castrates the Voting Rights Act, promotes anti-Black racism, and legalizes minority White rule in states. I think it should also be noted that Chief Justice Roberts chose to assign Associate Justice Alito to write the decision and then chose to release the decision the day after Alito flaunted all ethical considerations and flamboyantly announced he is a christofascist, and above any ethical standard. Associate Justice Kagan in his dissent made this point by saying it was “an upside down decision.” The failure of the Democrats and the Biden administration to develop a response to all this other than words on news shows, is going to haunt America for a generation.
The case was brought by the South Carolina branch of the NAACP and a South Carolina voter. Credit: Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post / Getty
South Carolina Republicans do not need to redraw their congressional map, the US supreme court ruled on Thursday, saying that a lower court had not properly evaluated the evidence when it ruled that the lawmakers had discriminated against Black voters.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices sent the case back to the lower court for further consideration. The decision, in Alexander v South Carolina Conference of the NAACP, is a major win for Republicans, who hold a slim margin in the US House with six of South Carolina’s seven congressional seats. It also could give lawmakers more leeway to discriminate in redistricting and use partisanship as a proxy for race. That could be enormously powerful in the US south, where voting is often racially polarized.
South Carolina Republicans do not need to redraw their congressional map, the US supreme court ruled on Thursday, saying that a lower court had not properly evaluated the evidence when it ruled that […]
Although a large number of Americans don’t seem to recognize it, the facts are irrefutable. The economy and individual Americans do better under Democratic governance than under Republican governance. It is true at both the federal level and at the state level.
Barack Obama with Joe Biden Credit: Pete Souza / Official White House Photo
There’s plenty of good news out there, people, even if during this endless money grab called “election season,” our click-bait corporate media would rather you didn’t see any of it.
The United States economy is once again the envy of the entire free world, much of which is still gasping for air, struggling along in the turbulent wake of a once-in-a-century killer pandemic the morbid, “pro-life” Republican Party would prefer we all just forgot about.
The U.S. dollar is strong, wages are up, inflation is down, and our jobless rate is historically low. Sure, we have a way to go to get back to the economy we enjoyed during Barack Obama’s Administration, before the ghastly Donald Trump became just the latest Republican to wreck it by handing over our hard-earned money to billionaires, and making it easier for them to line his slippery, 10-gallon pockets, while stepping on the necks of powerless consumers of all […]
This article describing how many Americans are completely out of touch with what is really going on in the U.S. economy. I see this as an illustration of how powerful misinformation on social media, and the endless lies spewed out by the MAGAt cult has become in this country.
Nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in an economic recession, and the majority blame the Biden administration, according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian. The survey found persistent pessimism about the economy as election day draws closer.
The poll highlighted many misconceptions people have about the economy, including:
55% believe the economy is shrinking, and 56% think the US is experiencing a recession, though the broadest measure of the economy, gross domestic product (GDP), has been growing.
49% believe the S&P 500 stock market index is down for the year, though the index went up about 24% in 2023 and is up more than 12% this year.
49% believe that unemployment is at a 50-year high, though the unemployment rate has been under 4%, a near 50-year low.
Many Americans put the blame on Biden for the state of the economy, with 58% of those polled saying the economy is worsening due to mismanagement from the presidential administration.
The poll underscored people’s complicated emotions around inflation. The vast majority of respondents, 72%, indicated they think inflation is increasing. In […]
