Eric Lipton and Michael Forsythe, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: Have you noticed that Biden has been in office less than two months and there hasn't been a single scandal? In contrast, the Trump administration even out of office is still producing them. There are at least four senior Trump officials, in addition to Trump himself, under active criminal investigation. Elaine Chao, like her husband Mitch McConnell, has a long history as a grifter, someone who uses high-ranking public office principally to enrich themselves, their family and friends. These people have little interest in fostering social and individual wellbeing; they don't see the point in holding office to help ordinary people.
Elaine Chao testifying before a House subcommittee last year. Credit: T.J. Kirkpatrick/TheNew York Times
WASHINGTON — The Transportation Department’s inspector general asked the Justice Department in December to consider a criminal investigation into what it said was Elaine Chao’s misuse of her office as transportation secretary in the Trump administration to help promote her family’s shipping business, which is run by her sister and has extensive business ties with China.
In a report made public on Wednesday, the inspector general said the Justice Department’s criminal and public integrity divisions both declined to take up the matter in the closing weeks of the Trump administration, even after the inspector general found repeated examples of Ms. Chao using her staff and her office to help benefit her family and their business operations and revealed that staff members at the agency had raised ethics concerns.
“A formal investigation into potential misuses of position was warranted,” Mitch Behm, the department’s deputy inspector general, said on Tuesday in a letter to House lawmakers, accompanying a 44-page report detailing the investigation and the findings of wrongdoing.
Stephan: America's tax structure ought to be a national embarrassment; that it isn't tells you a lot about how America is governed. The U.S. tax structure is completely skewed in favor of the rich and to the benefit of corporations, many of which pay little or no taxes at all.
What few seem to realize is that the growth of the American middle class, and the successful economics we think of as American, occurred in the post World War II era when the tax on the rich was as high as 50%. So as history has proven Republican trickle-down economics are crap.
Now Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and some of the other brighter Democrats are proposing a modest tax increase on the uber-rich. Here is a report on what they have in mind. May it be so.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren
KEY POINTS
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democrats on Monday proposed a 2% annual tax on wealth over $50 million, rising to 3% for wealth over $1 billion.
The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act would aim to close the U.S. wealth gap, which has grown wider during the Covid pandemic.
Citing the explosive growth of inequality during the coronavirus crisis—which has followed more than four decades of upward redistribution and concentration of wealth at the top—Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday introduced a bill to tax a small portion of the wealth of the richest 100,000 households in the United States to help fund President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.
“A tax on wealth above $50 million is very popular, and is even more popular when it funds priorities like child care, healthcare, and jobs in our communities.” —Stephanie Taylor, PCCC
“As Congress develops additional plans to help our economy,” Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement, “the wealth tax should be at the top of the list to help pay for these plans because of the huge amounts of revenue it […]
Stephan: Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, and Tate Reeves, governor of Mississippi, both Republicans, are incompetent disasters for their states as attested by the appallingly bad social outcome data defining each state. But even by orc standards what they have done, as described by this report is gobsmackingly bad, and it is going to kill people.
Mississippi Republican Governor Tate Reeves
Barely one hour after Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott announced he was lifting all COVID-19 restrictions, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, also a Republican, joined in, tweeting “it is time” to get rid of his state’s mask mandate. Next to a vaccine, wearing a mask is the single most effective action anyone can take to control the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
“Starting tomorrow, we are lifting all of our county mask mandates and businesses will be able to operate at full capacity without any state-imposed rules,” Reeves declared on Twitter, revealing that he has blocked other “lockdown” protocols. “Our hospitalizations and case numbers have plummeted, and the vaccine is being rapidly distributed. It is time!”
Governor Reeves, dubbed a “Trump acolyte” by The New Yorker, early on in the pandemic refused to take any action, and worse, overrode local officials who had ordered lockdowns and other protective measures. Instead, Reeves told Mississippi residents to trust the “power of prayer” over the deadly virus. And then he flew to Europe for […]
David Drake and Jeffrey York, Assistant Professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Operations Management, University of Colorado Boulder | Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, University of Colorado Boulder - The Conversation
Stephan: Why is coal a dying industry. This article, based on actual research, gives an important answer: Collective intention. As they describe it: "Looking at coal units individually, however, we found that the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, backed by over US$174 million to date from Bloomberg Philanthropies, had the most impact per targeted plant."
The use of coal for electric power has been declining fast in the U.S. Credit:AP Photo/J. David Ake
The big idea
People often point to plunging natural gas prices as the reason U.S. coal-fired power plants have been shutting down at a faster pace in recent years. However, new research shows two other forces had a much larger effect: federal regulation and a well-funded activist campaign that launched in 2011 with the goal of ending coal power.
We studied the retirement of U.S. coal-fired units from January 2008 to September 2016 and compared the effects of various market factors, regulations and activism on their early closure. In all, 348 coal-fired units either retired or switched to natural gas during that time.
Among the many pressures on coal power that we reviewed, a federal regulation implemented in 2015 had the biggest overall effect. The Cross State Air Pollution Rule requires states to reduce soot and smog pollution that blows across states lines, including from power plants. We estimate that it was responsible for reducing the expected production life of the coal power units that it […]
Stephan: Here is a first measure of the country's gestalt in the month since the Trump era ended. I take this as good news
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
27% of U.S. adults are satisfied, up from 11% in January
Satisfaction among Democrats surges 40 percentage points
COVID-19 surpasses the government as most important problem
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Twenty-seven percent of U.S. adults are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S, more than double the percentage observed in January. The increase reverses a three-month decline that saw satisfaction drop to one of its lowest levels ever.
Line graph. Recent trend on Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. Twenty-seven percent are currently satisfied, up from 11% in January. Satisfaction had declined since hitting 28% in October before the election. It remains below where it was before the coronavirus pandemic, including a recent high of 45% in February 2020.
Satisfaction, which had been 28% at the time of the 2020 presidential election, fell in the ensuing months as U.S. coronavirus infections surged and then-President Donald Trump and his allies disputed Joe Biden’s victory, culminating in the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill. The 11% satisfied in January was four percentage […]
