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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 warning readers for years about the insurance crisis climate change is going to cause. You may live in a state that is already being affected, and it is going to get much worse. As this article describes it isn’t just coastal states, and I predict we are going to see a growing internal migration as this trend worsens. Take a look at what is predicted for your state before your real estate value collapses.
Tornado wreckageCredit: Brandon Bell / Getty
The rising cost of homeowner’s insurance is now one of the most prominent symptoms of climate change in the United States. Major carriers like State Farm and Allstate have pulled back from offering fire insurance in California, dropping thousands of homeowners from their books, and dozens of small insurance companies have collapsed or fled from Florida and Louisiana following recent large hurricanes.
The problem is fast becoming a crisis that stretches far beyond the nation’s coastal states. That’s owing to another, less-talked-about kind of disaster that has wreaked havoc on states in the Midwest and the Great Plains, causing billions of dollars in damage. In response, insurers have raised premiums higher than ever and dropped customers even in inland states such as Iowa.
These so-called “severe-convective storms” are large and powerful thunderstorms that form and disappear within a few hours or days, often spinning off hail storms and tornadoes as they shoot across […]
Louisiana is a poor, poorly educated state scoring at the lowest rank in most social outcome research. It is ruled by a small group of christofascist White supremacist Republicans more interested in preserving their ideology than fostering wellbeing. This is their latest move in the post-Dobbs era to control women. Expect to see similar moves in other old Confederacy states controlled by similar cretins.
Abortion rights protesters in New Orleans on 24 June 2022. Credit: Sophia Germer / AP
Louisiana may soon become the first state in the country to pass a bill adding two common abortion pills to the state’s list of controlled dangerous substances, leading individuals who are caught with the drugs and lack authorization to potentially face years in prison.
Like the rest of the US deep south, Louisiana already bans almost all abortions.But recently, when a house committee in the Republican-controlled legislature debated a bill to ban people from performing abortions on people without their consent, lawmakers added an amendment to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs typically used in medication abortions, as Schedule IV drugs.
Under that amendment, a woman who obtains the drugs “for her own consumption” would not face penalties, but anyone who possesses them without a prescription or outside of normal medical practice could. In Louisiana, people who possess Schedule IV drugs can face up to five years in prison, while people who produce, distribute or intend to distribute such drugs can be sentenced to up to 10 […]
We have about a third of the American population who make up MAGAt world, and loneliness and a sense of abandonment producing resentment and hate, as this article describes, is one of the reasons seemingly rational people become so irrational. Take a look also at my podcast, Consciousness, Authoritarianism, and Political Violence for a further explanation. This is what is putting Republicans in power and so threatening our democracy.
Illustration by Bill Kuchman/Politico (source images via Creative Commons) /AP / Getty
Loneliness could represent a political threat, as well: a pathway to demagogues, mobs and destructive ideologies. That was an argument the German-born philosopher Hannah Arendt made in 1951 in The Origins of Totalitarianism, which examined the social elements that led to Stalinism and Nazism. And it’s an argument that some readers and scholars of Arendt are recirculating today.
Samantha Rose Hill is a professor at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a leading interpreter of Arendt’s thinking, particularly as it relates to loneliness. She notes that The Origins of Totalitarianism became a bestseller in 2016 […]
Reynalda Cordova Vivian Viallon Emma Fontvieille Laia Peruchet-Noray Anna Jansana Karl-Heinz Wagner, World Health Organization -- International Agency for Research on Cancer - The Lancet
Stephan:
A physician reader wrote to say that since SR publishes research about nutrition I should be aware of this. He was right, and the take away for me, and for you as well is: Don’t eat ultra-processed foods, and especially don’t let your kids eat them. This is a research paper published in one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. It’s conclusions are clear: “A higher consumption of UPFs was associated with a higher risk of multimorbidity of cancer and cardiometabolic diseases. Artificially and sugar-sweetened beverages, animal-based products and sauces, spreads and condiments, but not other items, were associated with increased risk of multimorbidity.”
It is currently unknown whether ultra-processed foods (UPFs) consumption is associated with a higher incidence of multimorbidity. We examined the relationship of total and subgroup consumption of UPFs with the risk of multimorbidity defined as the co-occurrence of at least two chronic diseases in an individual among first cancer at any site, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.
Methods
This was a prospective cohort study including 266,666 participants (60% women) free of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes at recruitment from seven European countries in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study. Foods and drinks consumed over the previous 12 months were assessed at baseline by food-frequency questionnaires and classified according to their degree of processing using Nova classification. We used multistate modelling based on Cox regression to estimate cause-specific hazard ratios (HR) and their 95% confidence intervals (CI) for associations of total and subgroups of UPFs with the risk of multimorbidity of cancer and cardiometabolic diseases.
Findings
After a median of 11.2 years of follow-up, 4461 participants (39% women) developed multimorbidity of cancer and cardiometabolic diseases. Higher UPF consumption (per 1 standard deviation increment, ∼260 g/day without alcoholic drinks) was associated with an increased risk of multimorbidity of cancer and […]
Brendan Fischer and Victoria Cadostin, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
We have an active and growing movement of people who want to take over America, end its democracy, and make it a christofascist White supremacy, male-dominant heterosexual-only society. It is not one single unified movement. Rather a collection of groups each promoting this transformation in their own way to make it happen. All being promoted by wealthy people who see themselves as becoming the ruling elite.
Citizens for Sanity is housed at the headquarters of the Conservative Partnership Institute, which is a key Maga political base. Crew: Alex Wroblewski / AFP / Getty
A dark money group with ties to Trump’s inner circle dropped more than $90m on ads described as vile, racist and transphobic in the second half of 2022 alone, new tax records obtained by Documented and the Guardian reveal. The staggering sum makes the newly created group, which is based out of the nerve center for the Maga movement, one of the top political spenders in the last election cycle, as it now appears to gear up to influence voters with violent, bigoted messaging in 2024.
Julian E. Barnes and Steven Lee Myers, - The New York Times
Stephan:
I don’t think Americans, particularly American politicians understand what is happening as a result of the misuse of the internet, and the weaponization of misinformation. Our culture is being altered in front of our eyes, literally. Russia wants Trump to be elected because their psychiatrists, their intelligence agencies, and Putin himself all know he can easily be manipulated, and if it is to his benefit he will sacrifice anyone, or anything in the country.
Microsoft said the video probably came from a group it calls Storm-1516, a collection of disinformation experts who now focus on creating videos they hope might go viral in America. Credit: Nanna Heitmann / The New York Times
Last month, a video began circulating on social media purporting to tell the story of an internet troll farm in Kyiv targeting the American election.
Speaking in English with a Slavic accent, “Olesya” offers a first-person account of how she and her colleagues initially worked in support of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Then, she says, after a visit by mysterious Americans who were “probably C.I.A.,” the group began sending messages to American audiences in support of President Biden.
“We were told our new target was the United States of America, especially the upcoming elections,” the woman in the video says. “Long story short, we were asked to do everything to prevent Donald Trump from winning the elections.”
Alyssa Bowen and Evan Vorpahl, Staff Writers - truthout
Stephan:
If Biden isn’t re-elected and both the Senate and the House do not end up with Democratic majorities this is what is going to happen to destroy a fair judiciary based on law not politics. It all comes down to who votes, how many, and how the vote comes out.
A demonstrator holds a sign reading “Protect the right to choose” during a march at the U.S. Capitol on April 15, 2023, in Washington, D.C. Credit: Probal Rashid / Lightrocket / Getty
As state courts continue to hear cases related to abortion bans and protections across the country, following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, these institutions have come even more into the crosshairs of a few ultra-wealthy extremists who want to codify and impose their personal religious beliefs on all of us via binding law.
In April and May of this year, Arizonans and Floridians saw their reproductive rights limited by decisions handed down by their respective state supreme courts, but that isn’t the end of the story. Democrats in Arizona have since spearheaded legislation that Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-Arizona) signed to repeal the draconian 1864 near-total abortion ban their court deemed constitutional. And Floridians will likely decide in November on a ballot initiative that would guarantee them broader abortion access, counteracting their supreme court’s greenlighting of […]
Our population is aging, and as the article describes we are painfully unprepared for what that means in terms of social wellbeing. Take just one example, healthcare. Our illness profit system is not getting better it is deteriorating. You hear Republicans saying Medicare is already too expensive. It is a dastardly lie. What passes for healthcare in the United States is already orders of magnitude more costly than any other developed democracy pays. For example: In 2022, France which has far better healthcare than the U.S. spent $6,630 per person on health. I chose France because its costs are higher than the OECD average of $4,986. But note, France spent, not individuals spent. France has universal birthright healthcare.In contrast, in 2022, the average American spent $13,493 per person on healthcare, which was $4.5 trillion in total.
Illustration by: Lindsey Bailey / Axios
It’s little surprise that America is rapidly getting older — but now that we’re at the brink of that demographic shift’s major consequences, we’re still completely unprepared.
Why it matters: It’s not just that seniors are an increasing share of the population, which is a huge challenge in itself. The seniors of the future may also require care for longer, and aging inequalities are becoming more stark.
The big picture: Americans 65 and older will make up more than 20% of the population by 2030, according to Census Bureau projections, up from 17% in 2022. By 2050, they’re projected to make up 23%.
One of the most obvious impacts of the aging population is on the federal budget, as spending on health programs — namely Medicare — is expected to swell.
But the change will be felt economy-wide: A smaller share of the population will be working age and, without drastic course correction, more may drop out […]
