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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.
Do you remember the article I ran in yesterday’s edition, about new technologies that replace acrylics, nylon, rayon, and plastic water bottles? Well, here is one of the reasons I think the replacement of petroleum-based plastics is such a big deal. This is where we are today, its horrifying and it must end. We must developed new technologies that foster wellbeing at every level, and the time to do that is running out.
Credit: Getty
Hoof it through the national parks of the western United States—Joshua Tree, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon—and breathe deep the pristine air. These are unspoiled lands, collectively a great American conservation story. Yet an invisible menace is actually blowing through the air and falling via raindrops: Microplastic particles, tiny chunks (by definition, less than 5 millimeters long) of fragmented plastic bottles and microfibers that fray from clothes, all pollutants that get caught up in Earth’s atmospheric systems and deposited in the wilderness.
Writing today in the journal Science, researchers report a startling discovery: After collecting rainwater and air samples for 14 months, they calculated that over 1,000 metric tons of microplastic particles fall into 11 protected areas in the western US each year. That’s the equivalent of over 120 million plastic water bottles. “We just did that for the area of protected areas in the West, which is only 6 percent of the total US area,” says lead author Janice Brahney, an environmental scientist at Utah State University. “The number was just so large, it’s shocking.”
Throughout the United States, in both Red and Blue states, Republican MAGAt state legislators are authoring legislation to further control women’s bodies. They seek to outlaw contraception and, as this article describes, they want to compile databases of women who have had abortions. The Republican Party has become a White supremacy Christian Taliban that wants to control women and make sure they are subordinate to men. If you are a woman and you vote for a Republican be prepared for what is coming, and don’t claim you were not warned.
Oklahoma Republican MAGAt Representative Kevin West authored a bill that would ban some forms of birth control. Credit: Doug Hoke / The Oklahoman
A Democratic lawmaker expressed concerns Wednesday that a GOP-sponsored anti-abortion bill could create a state database of women who have undergone the procedure and ban emergency contraception.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers, including the Republican chair of the House Public Health Committee, expressed concerns that House Bill 3216 from Rep. Kevin West, R-Moore, could ban some forms of birth control, such as IUDs.
After West vowed to change the bill’s language, HB 3216 passed the committee on a party-line vote with Rep. Trish Ranson, D-Stillwater, as the lone dissenter.
Chairwoman Cynthia Roe, R-Lindsay, questioned whether part of the bill pertaining to contraception could ban intrauterine devices, a popular form of contraception.
“If we’re looking at preserving the life of the unborn, I think one of the ways to do that is access to birth control,” said Roe, a nurse practitioner.
West said he intends to change that part of the bill to target over-the-counter contraception that is not used under a physician’s supervision.
It is clear, as the article makes clear, that journalists and publications outside of the United States understand that the White supremacy Republican christofascist Taliban want to outlaw contraception. Sadly, however, except for a few media commentators like Rachel Maddow American corporate media apparently does not want to report on this trend, and millions of American women don’t seem to comprehend what the Republicans are up to.
Credit: Irish Times
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — The fall of Roe v Wade in 2022 sparked fears that access to contraception could soon follow. A look into their legislative votes suggests that those fears are not unfounded.
We previously reported that Republicans standing for re-election this year keep changing what they say about abortion on their public websites. Many would rather the public didn’t bring up their voting records on contraception, either.
Despite prominent Republicans’ claims to the contrary, “Republicans have a long history of attacking contraception,” says Dana Singiser, cofounder of the nonprofit Contraceptive Access Initiative. And since the Dobbs decision, “it is getting harder and harder for Republicans to actually hide their long-standing opposition to contraception.”
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion on Dobbs that the court “should reconsider” its long-standing rulings, including the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which granted married couples the right to use contraceptives without government oversight. (The Eisenstadt v. Baird decision seven years later granted unmarried couples the same right.)
“If that’s not a direct threat, I don’t know what is,” Ms Singiser says.
This is going to drive the Republican Christian Taliban crazy. It completely changes the contraception reality in the U.S., and it will be interesting to see how they respond. I will keep you briefed.
A three-month pack of Opill has a suggested retail price of $49.99. Credit: Perrigo Company
Opill, the first oral contraceptive approved for over-the-counter use in the United States, will be available in stores and online this month, with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $19.99 for a one-month supply and $49.99 for a three-month supply, according to Perrigo, the company behind the product.
Perrigo announced Monday that Opill has shipped to major retailers and pharmacies and will be available to pre-order from select retailers beginning this week. Once the product hits shelves, anyonecan buy it without a prescription. It will also be available at Opill.com.
“From an online perspective, it should be available for order pretty much immediately,” said Triona Schmelter, executive vice president and president of consumer self-care Americas at Perrigo.
As for the availability, “I expect it’s going to take a few weeks for it to get through the distribution pipeline, of us shipping to retailers’ distribution facilities and then them shipping to their stores,” she said. But once the product is on shelves, “consumers […]
A woman who had recently become an SR reader wrote me today to thank me for my ongoing comments about America’s gun psychosis because recently her husband who had lost his job had shot and killed himself. She said she had never thought much about guns or had any interest in them, but now she understood why I felt so strongly about what guns have become in America. Her email prompted me to look at the trend of suicide in the United States, and I was both astonished and appalled at what I found, including this article. To quote it, “Since 2017, firearm suicide has been the cause of roughly 25,000 deaths each year. Nearly 80 percent are white males ages 15 and older…. The core of the gun rights movement — and the firearms market — is made up of white men who live in suburbs or rural areas. These buyers are among the least likely to encounter gun violence, but the most likely to die by their own hand using a firearm.” What surprised me is that suicide in the U.S. is essentially a White male problem and that the NRA argument about keeping a gun in your home for protection is complete crap. The reality is that White men who keep a gun in their homes mostly end up killing themselves, as this article describes. This is a real cultural sickness, and I think it is fundamentally caused by the fact that an increasing number of men are not adapting to gender and racial equality and, based on the data White Christian men, historically dominant, are particularly unable to deal with this emerging equality and are increasingly killing themselves.
One Saturday night in April 2017, Jenn Jacques and Bob Owens stayed up late drinking at an outdoor bar in Atlanta. They had worked together for more than two years, and Owens had become like an older brother to Jacques. On this Saturday, Owens seemed relaxed and was looking forward to the future; he talked about an upcoming family vacation. “That was such a special night,” Jacques told me. “I can say that there was no warning.”
They were both in their 40s, and had spouses and kids back home. Jacques lived in Wisconsin, and Owens in North Carolina. They were in town for the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting. Together, they edited a popular gun-rights news and opinion website called Bearing Arms.
As a blogger, Owens was often combative and blunt. He had a tendency to mock those who disagreed with him; he believed that gun-control advocates were performative and that they ignored inconvenient facts. A few days earlier, he’d written that protesters who were planning a “die-in” near the NRA convention were staging “a dramatic hissy fit.”
But the man Jacques knew was different. “His personality was as calm […]
If criminal Trump were elected and did what he is quoted as describing in this article it would condemn millions of American children to death. Literally, I mean death. The stupidity of Trump’s statements is breathtaking and very dangerous. What is equally alarming is that I see almost no commentary in the media about this.
MAGAt criminal Trump speaking to his worshippers. Credit: Gage Skidmore.
Donald Trump said something about public schools that got no media coverage, yet it’s causing political analysts, ex-prosecutors, and other onlookers to sound the alarm.
Trump began hinting last year that, if he were made the president once again, he would withhold all federal funds from schools that require vaccines or masks.
On Saturday, he doubled down on that promise.
As reported by former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA), “Trump said in Richmond, that he will take all federal funds away from public schools that require vaccines.”
“Like most states, Virginia requires MMR vaccine, chickenpox vaccine, polio, etc.,” she then added. “So Trump would take millions in federal funds away from all Virginia public schools.”
Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu responded to Comstock Sunday, saying, “It’s almost like Trump and his advisors want Americans to be sickened from disease…”
The comment futher caught the attention of Elizabeth de la Vega, also a former federal prosecutor. She said, “Trump said yesterday that he would take away federal funding from school […]
The United States has become a nation where a small handful of families buy the laws they want by renting the overwhelmingly corrupt U.S. Congress and, equally, but largely unrecognized, funding scientists and physicians to do research that supports the fascist right. We need to pass the laws necessary to have publicly funded elections, to make it possible for all voters to vote, and to have all votes equally counted. It is all going to turn on what happens in the 2024 elections. What are you going to do to make sure the Democrats win at every level? I know they are far from perfect but the alternative is criminal Trump and his racist christofascists.
Illustration by Jason Lancaster / CNN / Getty
From the Ambien and Dramamine in millions of bathroom medicine cabinets, to the sugar substitute that makes diet sodas sweet, to the first-ever birth control pill, some of America’s most common medicines and supplements can be traced back to the G.D. Searle pharmaceutical company.
Now, more than a century after the company’s founding, the massive family fortune built from those scientific advances has emerged as a major benefactor of the right, mostly out of the public eye.
The Searle Freedom Trust, a foundation funded by the company’s former chairman, has doled out more than $200 million in grants over the last decade, sending more money to conservative non-profits than nearly any other private foundation in recent years, according to a CNN analysis.
This year, the Searle trust is poised to play an even bigger role as it empties out its coffers. Following the wishes of its founder, the late Daniel C. Searle, the trust is closing down in 2025 and planning to award most of its last major grants in […]
Here, at last, is some good news about sustainable replacements for polyester, rayon, and acrylic. I think this is a huge deal as all the stories I have posted over the years showing the growing negative effects of microplastics should make clear.
A collection of materials from Spiber Inc., manufactured through fermentation of plant-based ingredients. Credit: Spiber Inc.
As research and production of next-gen synthetic fibers takes off in search of alternatives to polyester, some natural fiber producers worry they’ll be left in the hamper.
Polyester was once thought to be a wonder fiber. Both durable and efficient, with no need for farmland or vast amounts of water, it threatened to leave natural fibers like cotton in the dust.
It turns out the miracle thread made from oil isn’t so recyclable. But it does break down, bit by bit: in the wash, on land, everywhere. Textiles are a major source of microplastics in the ocean, where they weave their way into the food chain, causing untold harms to marine life. Entire ecosystems are being altered by our clothes.
Studies tell us we eat and drink its flecks, too, with unknown health impacts, and that the volume of plastic particles in the ocean is doubling about every six years.
Our daily clothing choices are part of it all, but with polyester, rayon and acrylic so […]
