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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

SCHWARTZ REPORT PODCAST

Schwartz Report Episode 25: Why Fostering Wellbeing is Good for You

References to further explore this episode can be found HERE

America’s Grid Isn’t Ready for the Green Transition

Stephan: 

Here we have yet another warning that the United States is woefully unprepared for what climate change is going to do to our society. While the TCPs in the House spend most of their time and millions of our dollars trying to find some way to embarrass President Biden and his family, and the Senate TCPs block help for Ukraine, the infrastructure, of bridges, roads, electric grid, and airports built from the 1920s to the 1960s age and falter. We are so unprepared that it is going to produce great misery and deaths, and yet you hardly see it mentioned by corporate news on television, state legislatures, particularly those controlled by the TCPs can’t be bothered, and it is hardly a factor in the 2024 election in November. It took me several Google searches and 20 minutes to find this piece in Time Magazine.

Transmission lines exit the plant at Pacific Gas and Electric’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the only operating nuclear powered plant in California. Credit: Los Angeles Times / Getty 

Michael Polsky, the founder and CEO of renewable energy developer Invenergy, has earned a reputation as a renewable energy pioneer. His company, founded in 2001, has more than 200 clean energy projects across the world completed or in progress.

When we spoke this week at this year’s Aspen Ideas: Climate conference, he could have taken a bit of a victory lap. But instead he was eager to deliver a warning: without a concerted effort to fix its electric grid the U.S. may soon face electric reliability issues, not to mention challenges meeting its climate goals. “People don’t realize how fragile the grid is,” he said.

Polsky is far from alone. In the year and a half since the passage of the climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), energy experts have called for regulatory reforms to help fix the grid—think of expediting permits for transmission lines that deliver electricity from power […]

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The 6% commission on buying or selling a home is gone after Realtors association agrees to seismic settlement

Stephan: 

A major change in real estate transactions has just occurred, as this report describes. It is probably going to lower house prices and change the whole cost of buying or selling a house. If any of you are in the midst or such a sale or purchase check to see what effect it is going to have on your transaction.

An aerial view of homes in a housing development on September 08, 2023 in Santa Clarita, California. 
Credit: Mario Tama / Getty

In a sweeping move expected to dramatically reduce the cost of buying and selling a home, the National Association of Realtors announced Friday a settlement with groups of homesellers, agreeing to end landmark antitrust lawsuits by paying $418 million in damages and eliminating rules on commissions.

The NAR, which represents more than 1 million Realtors, also agreed to put in place a set of new rules. One prohibits agents’ compensation from being included on listings placed on local centralized listing portals known as multiple listing services, which critics say led brokers to push more expensive properties on customers. Another ends requirements that brokers subscribe to multiple listing services — many of which are owned by NAR subsidiaries — where homes are given a wide viewing in a local market. Another new rule will require buyers’ brokers to enter into written agreements with their buyers.

The agreement effectively will destroy the current homebuying and selling business model, in […]

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“It Feels Impossible to Stay”: The U.S. Needs Wildland Firefighters More Than Ever, but the Federal Government Is Losing Them

Stephan: 

Yet another story of the failure of the U.S. government at both the federal and state levels to plan ahead and foster wellbeing. Anyone who does a half hour researching what climate change is going to do learns quickly there are going to be more forest fires, and to preserve our nation’s forests we need much more preparation and planning, and building a much larger cadre of trained personnel. Here is an earthy but accurate presentation covering this issue. LIke the previous grid story in today’s edition, we just are not doing what is needed to prepare for our future.

Firefighter Credit: ProPublica

Highly skilled firefighters are the last line of defense against wildfires, but that line is fraying because the government decided long ago that they’re not worth very much.

Black Butte is an inactive volcano that rises from the high desert in eastern Oregon. In May 2022, a turboprop plane approached its pine-blanketed slopes, carrying about 10 men wearing bulky Kevlar outfits. They were smokejumpers with the United States Forest Service, the agency that directs the majority of the nation’s efforts to manage wildfires. Within the vast and hierarchical fire service, smokejumpers occupy a singular niche, parachuting into remote areas to fight early-stage wildfires. There are only about 450 nationwide, and the physical requirements are rigorous.

One of the smokejumpers on board was Ben Elkind. Thirty-seven years old with a long, athletic build and restless energy, he had been fighting wildfires for 14 years and jumping for the last eight of them. Despite his elite status, Elkind earned about $43,000 in 2021 over the course of the seven-month fire season. His base paycheck, though, […]

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The Great Resignation hits Congress: Lawmakers are quitting, too

Stephan: 

Most people don’t seem to have noticed what I see as an alarming trend in Congress, an unprecedented number of Congressional members are either not running in November, or like Republican Representative Ken Buck of Colorado are just quitting and walking away. Why is this happening? In my view it is a byproduct of the conversion of the Republican Party to the Trump Christofascist Party (TCP), and the growing failure of both houses of the Congress to function effectively as a result.

Republicans attempt to win the votes required to elect Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) as House speaker on Oct. 25.
Credit:  Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post

Despite all the congressional gridlock these days, lawmakers have succeeded in one surprising area of productivity: driving their colleagues into resignation.

On Friday, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) will resign outright, becoming the sixth member of the House in the 118th Congress to quit, with no other public office lined up. The onetime renegade conservative, who’s drifted ideologically away from his far-right friends, summed up the feelings of the quitters.

“This place just keeps going downhill, and I don’t need to spend my time here,” Buck told reporters.

The data for congressional resignations is somewhat murky, but it’s clear that over the last four decades, at least, the House hasn’t seen this many people just quit public service in the middle of their term.

It started last May when Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) resigned after more than 12 years in office to lead the Rhode Island Foundation, and soon after Rep. […]

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Adult illiteracy and the distortion of American culture

Stephan: 

The lack of literacy and numeracy in American adults is becoming an increasing problem undermining maintaining  U.S. democracy. If you can’t read and comprehend a standard newspaper report, or if you can’t understand basic statements about the economy, you can’t really understand why democracy is so important to our society. Authoritarianism, where someone like criminal Trump claims  to know how to fix everything, if you put him in power seems a simpler easier solution to the country’s problems than the reality of the actual complexities. As the Trump christofascists (TCP) try to dismantle public fact-based education, this problem is just going to get worse. It is yet another failure on the part of the U.S. Congress, and Red state legislatures as well, I am sorry to say, both the Trump and Biden administrations and corporate media.

The SchwartzReport tracks emerging trends that will affect the world,
particularly the United States. For EXPLORE it focuses on matters of health in
the broadest sense of that term, including medical issues, changes in the
biosphere, technology, and policy considerations, all of which will shape our
culture and our lives. Something very insidious is going on in our world today. Something
that is directly eating away American democracy. I am speaking here of
adult illiteracy, dropping education levels amongst children, and the
weaponization of misinformation trends that collectively have combined to create an alternate reality with alternate facts. When the Founders created the First Amendment in 1791 they understood the
power of misinformation. Someone spreading a false rumor in a bar, a
printer distributing flyers filled with misinformation. A charismatic
speaker spewing lies to a crowd in a square. The amendment’s wording
itself reveals their thinking. “Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the
people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress […]

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The WSJ Wants to Delegitimize Democratic Opposition to Violence

Stephan: 

I think Biden has made a serious miscalculation by continuing to support Israel’s attempted genocide of Palestinians and takeover of Gaza. Over 30,000 have died a large percentage innocent women and children, and hundreds of thousands more are facing starvation. That doesn’t justify what Hamas did but if Netanayou had been properly governing the Hamas raid would not have ended as it did. This has become such a big issue amongst Muslim and young American voters it may cost President Biden the election. Senator Schumer’s public statement rejecting Netanayou’s behavior has now placed Biden in a very awkward position.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., the only Palestinian-American in Congress, is joined at left by Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., as she speaks at an event to call for a cease-fire by Israel in Gaza, at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 14, 2023.
Credit: J. Scott Applewhite / AP

The Wall Street Journal (2/26/24) is concerned that they live among us. They are Arab Americans. And what are they doing to threaten the United States? Voting.

The Journal’s editorial board sounded the alarm in response to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Palestinian American and a member of the left-wing voting bloc known as the Squad, calling for Democrats to vote “uncommitted” in the Michigan presidential primary. “Will Dearborn, Michigan, Determine US Israel Policy?” the headline wondered ominously. The subhead explained: “The pro-Palestinian Democratic left wants to force Biden to stop the war in Gaza against Hamas.”

At issue was that Tlaib’s mobilization of the large Arab-American community of Dearborn, Michigan, against Biden’s pro-Israel stance could put Michigan in play in the 2024 presidential election, thus potentially swaying the incumbent to be […]

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Trump is out of his mind and desperate

Stephan: 

Robert Reich obviously feels the same way I do. Each of us must not only vote only for Democrats, we must do everything we can to get everyone we know to do likewise. This is not a typical election, Democrat vs Republican. This is a unique election in our history: Democracy vs criminal authoritarianism.

Criminal Trump

At a rally today outside the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio, Trump warned that “if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath … for the country.”

He also warned that if he didn’t win, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”

In the rest of the speech he repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, which have been utterly discredited.

He praised the people serving sentences in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol — calling them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots,” commending their spirit, and promising to help them if elected in November.

He cast migrants as threats to American citizens — claiming without evidence that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”

Trump is clearly desperate. He knows that his future freedom and his fortune both depend on winning in November. He has no qualms […]

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Most Students Prefer Colleges That Restrict Guns on Campus

Stephan: 

Students prefer colleges with more restrictive gun regulations, as this Gallup Survey documents. I’m not surprised, given the U.S. murder rate in schools and colleges. It would certainly be a consideration if I were choosing a college. What this survey doesn’t address is the disproportionate effect this is going to have on colleges and universities in Red states as compared with Blue states. Like the OB/GYN issues that are leading girls to choose Blue state colleges over those in Red states, so this is going to do the same for college headed girls and boys. It is startling to watch voters in Red states destroy the quality of society in their states, but they are doing it year by year with each election.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

  • 81% of current and potential students say gun policies influence enrollment
  • Most students prefer schools that restrict guns on campus
  • One in three students worry at least a fair amount about gun violence

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the wake of recent gun violence on college campuses in Virginia, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada, as well as a major legal victory for gun rights advocates in NYSRPA v. Bruen, about eight in 10 current and prospective college students say a college’s policies related to firearms on campus are at least somewhat important in their decision to enroll or remain enrolled.

Regardless of age, gender or race/ethnicity, campus gun policies are at least somewhat important to more than three-quarters of current and prospective students. The largest importance gap across subgroups is a nine-percentage-point difference between Democrats and Republicans; however, more than three-quarters of current and prospective Republican students say campus gun policies are important in their enrollment decisions.

The latest results are from the Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2024 State of Higher Education Study, conducted Oct. 9-Nov. 16, 2023, via a web survey […]

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