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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 told you this would happen, and it is. We are seeing the population of the United States sort itself in accordance with the Great Schism Trend. Conservatives in significant numbers are moving to Red States so they can be around people who agree with their sense of resentment, victimization, racism, and views on abortion, education, and libraries. Young people and young couples, in contrast are moving to Blue States, as this poll and article describe. What this is also doing is creating a growing disparity in the intellectual levels of Red and Blue States. Blue States are getting smarter and better educated. Red states are getting less intelligent and less educated. This is all part of the growing reality that we are becoming two countries in a single nation, and I think this has growing implications for a change in how our government will operate in the future.
People gather to protest the Supreme Courts 6-3 decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization at Washington Square Park on June 24, 2022, in New York City. Credit: Michael M Santiago / Getty
A new poll demonstrates that young people across the U.S. are less inclined to live in and accept employment in states that have restrictive policies on abortion.
The CNBC + Generation Lab Youth Poll, conducted from April 26 to May 2, examined the viewpoints of respondents between the ages of 18 and 34. Among a number of issues, the survey asked young Americans how their living choices and employment selection — including where they would seek or accept employment opportunities — are affected by abortion accessibility.
Asked about whether they’d want to live in a state that bans abortions, the poll found that a majority (62 percent) would “probably” or “definitely” not choose to do so. Just 39 percent said that they “probably” or “definitely” would live in such a state.
The prospects of employment could change these individuals’ […]
This is an excellent article on the change in journalism. It is a major trend changing our culture as it withers, and not in a good way. Journalism is being replaced by the weaponization of lies on social media. The result is a population of ill-informed people who have lost contact with the truth, and who no longer understand or value democracy.
Members of the press cover former President Donald Trump’s address to supporters at the Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 4, 2023. Credit: Francis Chung/Politico
Wounded and limping, doubting its own future, American journalism seems to be losing a quality that carried it through a century and a half of trials: its swagger.
Swagger is the conformity-killing practice of journalism, often done in defiance of authority and custom, to tell a true story in its completeness, no matter whom it might offend. It causes some people to subscribe and others to cancel their subscriptions, and gives journalists the necessary courage and direction to do their best work. Swagger was once journalism’s calling card, but in recent decades it’s been sidelined. In some venues, reporters now do their work with all the passion of an accountant, and it shows in their guarded, couched and equivocating copy. Instead of relishing controversy, today’s newsrooms shy away from publishing true stories […]
I do not in any way excuse or defend the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas. They are war crimes. But I do not think what they have done compares with the genocide of Muslim women and children being carried out by the Israelis. How is it possible that Jewish men, many of whose forebearers were murdered by Hitler’s Nazis, could participate in such mass murder? To get the answer to that question watch my podcast Consciousness, Authoritarianism, and Political Violence, which will air this Friday afternoon on YouTube
People inspect destroyed houses following Israeli attacks in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. Credit: Rizek Abdeljawad / Xinhua / ZUMA
Israeli forces announced on Tuesday that they had seized control of the Rafah border crossing, a vital passageway for transporting aid into Gaza, prompting intense condemnation from international aid groups warning that the humanitarian crisis would be significantly exacerbated.
The incursion into Rafah comes a day after White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said that President Biden “doesn’t want to see operations in Rafah that put at greater risk the more than a million people that are seeking refuge there,” On Sunday, Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme, said on NBC’s Meet the Press that the “full-blown famine” in Gaza’s north was quickly “moving its way south.”
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been staunch about plans to invade Rafah, has openly defied these warnings. He said last week that the incursion would occur “with or without a deal” to free the hostages or enact a […]
We have never seen a former president who has been convicted as a rapist, financial fraudster, and eventually very possibly committer of treason. Now I think there is an excellent chance we are going to see a former president convicted and sent to prison. What do you think America will do if that happens?
Trump on trial Credit: NBC News
On Monday, the judge presiding over Donald Trump’s New York trial once again warned — this time face-to-face — that he could face jail time if he continues to violate a gag order. It’s a scenario that Trump’s presidential campaign has already been discussing.
“Over the past couple of months, everybody has come to the realization that [it’s a possibility], and thought about what must be done,” one person close to the campaign noted. “These are all professionals.”
Alternative punishments, like home confinement, have also been discussed by Trump’s team, given both the logistical questions that jail poses and the judge’s own admitted reluctance in issuing such a decision. Only one thing is clear: Trump would take the lead in messaging, just as he has throughout the trial.
What, exactly, the playbook would look like if Trump actually goes to jail remains to be seen. But, based on the tactics currently being deployed by the campaign, it would almost certainly include a ramp-up of fundraising messages, surrogates arguing Trump’s side in the media, and a […]
Judith Graham, Staff Writer - Kaiser Family Foundation Health News
Stephan:
The inferiority of the American Illness Profit System becomes clearer day-by-day, here is just the latest in an endless sequence of reports showing a factual basis proving its inferiority. Yet nothing happens in Congress to correct any of this because the Congress members are so corrupt, and in the pocket of the corporations that control health care in this country. The only thing that is going to change this is how you vote in what may be the last real election in which you will ever be able to vote.
Senior age patient Credit: Getty
Every day, the scene plays out in hospitals across America: Older men and women lie on gurneys in emergency room corridors moaning or suffering silently as harried medical staff attend to crises.
Even when physicians determine these patients need to be admitted to the hospital, they often wait for hours — sometimes more than a day — in the ER in pain and discomfort, not getting enough food or water, not moving around, not being helped to the bathroom, and not getting the kind of care doctors deem necessary.
“You walk through ER hallways, and they’re lined from end to end with patients on stretchers in various states of distress calling out for help, including a number of older patients,” said Hashem Zikry, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Health.
Physicians who staff emergency rooms say this problem, known as ER boarding, is as bad as it’s ever been — even worse than during the first years of the covid-19 pandemic, when hospitals filled […]
Matthew D. Taylor and Paul A. Djupe, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies | Director of the Data for Political Research Program at Denison University - Religion News Service
Stephan:
The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement is the religious side of christofascism with TCP Republicanism the political side, and this report explains how this form of fascism was engendered by Trump. The democracy we have enjoyed in the United States, with its separation of church and state, has been deeply wounded already by this movement. If you want the country you grew up in to survive you better vote only for Democrats. They are far from perfect but they support democracy, and christofascism does not. It is that simple.
This past month, a group of self-styled American Christian prophets released an urgent word from God on YouTube about an impending Islamic uprising in the U.S. Pointing to pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, they declared that an “insurrection is forming that is like unto the communist takeover in Russia. … This is not only about bringing a Palestinian state to the Middle East but an Islamic state to North America and other nations.”
The good news, according to these prophets, is that God also says, “If the church repents, I will relent. I will protect your nations.”
If this God-speaking-through-prophets-and-warning-nations-about-other-religions business sounds fringy and oddball in modern Christianity, it once was. But such prophecies and these prophets are rapidly redefining mainstream American evangelical theology, practice and politics. They are affiliated with a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, a set of leadership networks whose leaders call themselves modern-day apostles and prophets and believe they are commissioned by God to take over the world.
This NAR movement runs like a golden thread through recent flashpoints of evangelical Christian support for Donald Trump, Christian nationalism […]
Adam Mahoney, Contributing Writer - Grist / Capital B
Stephan:
Do you remember the water crisis in Flint, Michigan? Well, it is still going on, and is as racist as ever. There are two takeaways here. One is the racism, America remains a deeply racist country. Two is that the water crisis from old lead piping remains a crisis throughout the older towns and cities all over the country. If you live in such a community I suggest you have a nongovernmental laboratory test your water.
At the edge of Saginaw Street, a hand-painted sign is etched into a deserted storefront. “Please help, God. Clean-up Flint.”
Behind it, the block tells the story of a city 10 years removed from the start of one of the nation’s largest environmental crises.
Empty lot. Charred two-story home. Empty lot. Abandoned house with the message “All Copper GONE,” across boarded-up windows.
John Ishmael Taylor, 44, was born in this ZIP code, 48503, and he’s seen firsthand the neglect of the place he loves, one he hopes will be reborn for his young children.
“The water crisis, no more jobs, the violence,” Taylor said, has left Flint like a “ghost town — a ghost town with a whole bunch of people still here.”
Over the past decade, Flint’s water crisis has revealed how government failures at every level could effectively kill a city while opening the country’s eyes to how an environmental crisis could wreak havoc on all facets of life, make people sick, destroy a public school system, and kill jobs.
Four years after Flint residents reached the largest civil settlement agreement in Michigan history, Taylor […]
This is good news and bad news. Women who want a job are working. But because the United States has such appallingly poor child care as a society that many working women have a very hard time getting child care for their kids. As a culture we just can’t seem to make fostering wellbeing important.
More working-age women are employed than ever before in U.S. history, according to Friday’s jobs report.
Why it matters: The rise in flexible work arrangements is likely helping, in addition to the strong labor market.
The increase in women working also likely contributed to the recent strength in household spending, Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, writes in a note.
Zoom in: The employment numbers — technically the employment-to-population ratio — include part-time workers. So it would include women who want to work full-time but can’t due to child care issues.
Women overall are working less now than in 2019, as ADP research found earlier this year.
Much of the improvement was driven by college-educated women (those are the ones who can work remotely) with children under 3, Diane Swonk, chief economist of KPMG said in a post on X Friday.
The bottom line: “Moral of the story. Women are working and caring for their families, but a crisis in childcare is making it harder for them to stay at work,” Swonk posted. “This could snowball and cause another setback in the pay gap between […]
