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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.
Several readers wrote me to ask my views on the Time Magazine cover article about Trump, and I have seen commentators talking about it all day on various television channels. I read the interview, thought it was crap, and then found this CNN fact-check which shows it was just what I thought it was. It is indeed nothing but a sequence of 32 lies. Time Magazine should be ashamed of publishing such an interview. I don’t think Trump knows the truth. It is not so much that he is lying, it is that he is mentally ill; he is a psychopath. He doesn’t really live in reality. He lives in his fantasy world of being victimized, and of accomplishing things he does not, in fact, accomplish; being a hero when he is actually a criminal villain.
Washington, D.C.– Former President Donald Trump delivered a bombardment of dishonesty in his interviews with Time magazine.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, made at least 32 false claims in the two April interviews that Time released this week. His serial inaccuracy spanned a wide range of subjects, including the economy, abortion, the NATO military alliance, the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, his legal cases, his record as president and the 2020 election he has relentlessly lied about for more than three years.
Trump claimed that, during his presidency, “there was very little terrorism. We had none. I had four years of — we had no terrorism. We didn’t have a World Trade Center knocked down.”
Facts First: While it’s true, of course, that Trump’s presidency didn’t feature anything comparable to the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, his claim that “we had no terrorism” isn’t true. There were […]
Yet another example of a corporation choosing greed for profit over integrity and fostering wellbeing. What can you do about something like this? The answer is simple, and it can be very effective. Do not ever buy anything produced by the Tyson Foods Corporation. Tell your family and friends. Do not buy anything produced by Tyson Foods, and ask them to tell their families and friends. Tyson Foods is a modern, multi-national, protein-focused food company producing approximately 20% of the beef, pork and chicken in the United States in addition to a portfolio of foods under the Tyson®, Jimmy Dean®, Hillshire Farm®, BallPark®, Wright®, Aidell’s® and State Fair® brands. If you want to make a difference that fosters wellbeing this is what to do. Be assured Tyson will notice and pay attention.
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has found that Tyson Foods dumped hundreds of millions of pounds of pollutants into U.S. waterways from 2018 to 2022. The pollutants came from company facilities including slaughterhouses and processing plants.
UCS analyzed publicly available data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and found that Tyson Foods processing plants released 371.72 million pounds of pollutants into waterways from 2018 to 2022. Half of the pollutants were dumped in waterways of Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri. The group published the findings in a report titled Waste Deep: How Tyson Foods Pollutes US Waterways and Which States Bear the Brunt.
“As the nation’s largest meat and poultry producer, Tyson Foods plays a huge role in our food and agriculture system and has for decades exploited policies that allow big agribusiness corporations to pollute with impunity,” Omanjana Goswami, co-author of the report and an interdisciplinary scientist with the Food and Environment Program at UCS, said in a press release. “In 2022, the latest year for which we have data, Tyson plants processed millions of cattle and pigs […]
Jingwen Hu, Professor, Michigan Transportation Research Institute, University of Michigan - Live Science
Stephan:
Here is the best report I have found after considerable research on the safety of EVs. It is clearly an evolving technology, but moving in the right direction which, I think, is good news.
Crash test results, field injury data and injury claims suggest that EVs are better at protecting their occupants than conventional vehicles. Credit: DPA / Alamy
Public opinion about EV crash safety often hinges on a few high-profile fire incidents. Those safety concerns are arguably misplaced, and the actual safety of EVs is more nuanced.
I’ve researched vehicle safety for more than two decades, focusing on the biomechanics of impact injuries in motor vehicle crashes. Here’s my take on how well the current crop of EVs protects people:
The burning question
EVs and internal combustion vehicles undergo the same crash-testing procedures to evaluate their crashworthiness and occupant protection. These tests are conducted by the National Highway Safety Administration’s New Car Assessment Program and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
These analyses use crash test dummies representing midsize male and small female occupants to evaluate the risk of injuries. The tests can evaluate […]
This flooding in Texas, I think, should be taken as a warning as to what climate change is doing, and how it is going to get worse and worse. Texas under the Republicans is not preparing properly, but then nor is much of the rest of the country, particularly the Red States. It is a sad business to watch because it is going to cause so much misery, suffering, and death.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered in parts of Texas, and residents in Harris County, home to Houston, were told to be ready to stay put for days after heavy rain caused flooding.
Harris County Judge Linda Hidalgo, the county government’s top executive, declared a disaster Thursday.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered along the East Fork of the San Jacinto River, and residents were urged to leave before nightfall.
“What we’re going to see tonight and into the weekend will not be Hurricane Harvey, but we are going to see significant impacts,” Hidalgo said in a statement.
“At this time, folks in the impacted area should either prepare to stay where they are for the next 2-3 days or leave,” she said.
The American Red Cross of the Texas Gulf Coast opened shelters, and the National Weather Service warned drivers to beware, especially at night.
A section of U.S. Highway 59 in Polk was completely closed because of flooding Thursday, the state Transportation Department said. It warned drivers to “turn around, don’t drown.”
More than 7 inches of rain had fallen in parts of Harris County by 11 a.m. Thursday, the National Weather Service said. A flood watch was in effect for Houston until 7 p.m. Friday.
Lauren Kaori Gurley, Reporter - Microsoft Start / The Washington Post
Stephan:
Here is the latest on the labor market and, as the report describes it, “marks the 27th consecutive month that the unemployment rate was below 4 percent. This was last recorded during a low-unemployment period between 1967 and 1970, and again for a longer period between 1951 and 1953.” Sadly, I don’t think Biden is getting any credit for helping to make this happen.
Employers added 175,000 jobs in April, as labor market growth slows. Credit: Nam Y. Huh / AP
Employers added 175,000 jobs in April, signaling slower but steady growth compared to earlier this year, as higher interest rates ripple through the economy.
The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.
That marks the 27th consecutive month that the unemployment rate was below 4 percent. This was last recorded during a low-unemployment period between 1967 and 1970, and again for a longer period between 1951 and 1953.
“The labor market is still going strong even if it’s a slowdown,” said Andrew Flowers, chief economist at Appcast, a firm that helps companies recruit online. “One-hundred-and-seventy-five thousand jobs is more than enough to absorb the workers in this market, and you can see that with the [low] unemployment rate.”
After a mini jobs boom that powered the first quarter of 2024, the labor market cooled down in April, reflecting job growth that looked more like the latter half of 2023. April’s job gains were the smallest […]
Ai is becoming a factor in a wide range of public sectors with very little public discussion in Congress as to how this should be regulated. In this report, you can already see how AI is becoming a major factor in criminal cases in courts all over the country. As time goes on and the AI technology continues to develop I predict this is going to become an even bigger factor shaping American society.
Summit County Common Pleas Court in Akron, Ohio. Credit: Google Maps
Law enforcement agencies and prosecutors from Colorado to New York have turned to a little-known artificial intelligence tool in recent years to help investigate, charge and convict suspects accused of murder and other serious crimes.
But as the software, called Cybercheck, has spread, defense lawyers have questioned its accuracy and reliability. Its methodology is opaque, they’ve said, and it hasn’t been independently vetted.
The company behind the software has said the technology relies on machine learning to scour vast swaths of the web and gather“open source intelligence” — social media profiles, email addresses and other publicly available information — to help identify potential suspects’ physical locations and other details in homicides and human trafficking crimes, cold cases and manhunts.
The tool’s creator, Adam Mosher, has said that Cybercheck’s accuracy tops 90% and that it performs automated research that would take humans hundreds of hours to complete. By last year, the software had been used in nearly 8,000 […]
More Congressional corruption, this time a Democrat Representative from the 28th District of Texas. This is the most corrupt Congress in our history as far as I can tell, and we keep voting these cretins into office. The problem is not just the corrupt politicians, it is the willfully ignorant American voters. That is the worst problem our democracy faces.
Democrat Representative from Texas 28th District Henry Cuellar: ‘Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of South Texas.’ Credit: Mark Schiefelbein / AP
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The US justice department on Friday accused the Democratic congressman Henry Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, of accepting about $600,000 in bribes in exchange for influencing policy in favor of Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank.
The Cuellars had made their first appearance before a federal magistrate judge in Houston by the afternoon, but it was not clear how they pleaded. Earlier, the congressman, who has represented a swath of Texas’s border with Mexico in the US House since 2005, issued a statement denying unspecified “allegations” against him.
“I want to be clear that both my wife and I are innocent of these allegations. Everything I have done in Congress has been to serve the people of South Texas,” Cuellar said.
He added that “I’m running for re-election and will win this […]
More corruption of the political process. We are one of the most corrupt developed nations in the world, and this is yet another example of an existing industry trying to block an emerging technology in order to ensure its continuing profits even though it does damage to society’s wellbeing.
A piece of GOOD Meat’s cell-cultivated chicken cooks on a grill at the company’s California office in July 2023. Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty
On Wednesday, Florida became the first US state to ban the production and sale of lab-grown, or “cell-cultivated” meat.
“Take your fake lab-grown meat elsewhere,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said before signing SB 1084 into law. “We’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”
Alabama is on the cusp of passing similar legislation.
Cell-cultivated meat is different from products made by companies like Impossible Foods that use plant ingredients to mimic meat. Instead, cell-cultivated meat is real meat, but made without slaughtering an animal. It’s produced by taking a small sample of animal cells and feeding them a mix of amino acids, sugars, salts, vitamins, and other ingredients for a few weeks until it grows into edible meat.
The Florida law’slead sponsor, Republican state Rep. Danny Alvarez, had claimed the novel technology’s “unknowns are so great,” despite a multiyear review from the US Agriculture Department and US Food and […]
