Stephan: More good news from the Biden Administration. As this article describes, Biden is reversing the Trumpian nonsense and replacing it with real science. The rules they impose are exactly right, in my opinion.
Xavier Becerra answers questions during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee. Credit: Greg Nash/Getty
The Trump administration, under pressure from allied anti-abortion groups, ended fetal tissue research at the National Institutes of Health and established an ethics board to review government support for the research at universities and other labs. The board, which was filled with critics of the research, met just once and rejected 13 of 14 projects that NIH scientists had deemed worthy of support.
Stephan: America's wealth inequality is an obscenity that severely damages our social wellbeing. By comparison, nearly 40% of Americans could not write a check for $400 if pressed. Our tax structure needs to be fundamentally changed if we want to solve a wide range of problems in our society.
After seeing their fortunes surge during the deadly coronavirus pandemic, America’s 719 billionaires are now collectively worth $4.56 trillion—making them over four times wealthier than the roughly 165 million people in the bottom half of U.S. society combined, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness.
“It’s not just during the pandemic—billionaires have been running up the score on average Americans for decades.” —Frank Clemente, Americans for Tax Fairness
The two groups found that the wealth of U.S. billionaires grew by $1.62 trillion—55%—between March 18, 2020 and April 12, 2021, a period in which millions lost their jobs and more than 500,000 Americans lost their lives to Covid-19.
The 165 million people at the bottom of the wealth distribution, meanwhile, collectively own around $1.01 trillion, far less than the nation’s hundreds of billionaires.
IPS and ATF note that in 1990, “the situation was reversed”—adjusted for inflation, the bottom 50% owned $380 billion in combined wealth while the nation’s 66 billionaires owned $240 billion.
“It’s not just during the pandemic—billionaires have been running up the score on average Americans for […]
MEGAN CASSELLA and BRIAN FALER, Senior Tex Reporter - Politico
Stephan: Here is some potentially good news. Biden seems to understand the issue of wealth inequality and, unlike most of officialdom in Washington, he is prepared to do something about it. I am so glad we finally have a president who lives in the real world.
Republicans who have drawn a hard line against corporate tax hikes are poised to dig in even deeper to fight higher taxes on wealthy families. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty
The cost of President Joe Biden’s big-spending agenda is about to get a lot more real for high-income American families.
Biden is weighing a new slate of tax hikes aimed at wealthy households to finance the second phase of his multitrillion-dollar infrastructure plans, according to people familiar with the discussions, after laying out a range of proposed levies last month on corporations to fund his first proposal.
The new set of proposals, needed to help defray the cost of a spending package focused on investments in the so-called care economy, is likely to be much more contentious than the battle over corporate taxes — among lawmakers at least.
Republicans who have already drawn a hard line against corporate tax hikes are poised to dig in even deeper to fight higher taxes on wealthy families. Centrist Democrats, particularly those from high-cost areas, may be hesitant to support new levies on households as the economy recovers from […]
Stephan: The intertwining of White supremacist militias, law enforcement and the military ought to scare the hell out of all of us. This is the Nazi playbook come to life in America.
In an interview with “60 Minutes” Sunday evening, Oath Keepers leader Jim Arroyo revealed that active-duty law enforcement is part of their movement and helping with militia training.
“Our guys are very experienced. We have active-duty law enforcement in our organization that are helping to train us. We can blend in with our law enforcement,” he said.
Javed Ali, Towsley Policymaker in Residence at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, formerly served as a former NSC senior director and was a counterterrorism official at the FBI under the Trump administration. Speaking to CBS News, he explained that the Oath Keepers is “unique.”
“Beyond the fact that they are a formal group with chapters all over the country, is that a large percentage have tactical training and operational experience in either the military or law enforcement,” the domestic terrorism expert said. “That at least gives them a capability that a lot of other people in this far-right space don’t have.”
In August 2020, Michael German is a former FBI special agent who penned several reports on U.S. law enforcement failing to control the right-wing terrorists in their ranks. According to […]
Stephan: Here is today's Republican Scum Award. At this point, I think it can now be said that based on the evidence no one was hired for a senior position during the Trump administration who was not some kind of grifter scum. Here is what the State Department Inspector General's office said in their official report https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000178-dc15-d112-a97e-ffbd8ebc0000:
What OIG Found
OIG reviewed allegations that former U.S. Secretary of
State Michael Pompeo directed Department of State
(Department) employees to carry out tasks of a
personal nature to benefit him and Mrs. Pompeo. The
allegations stated that the Secretary hired a political
appointee to complete such tasks and assigned such
work to other employees in the Office of the Secretary
and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
OIG found that both Secretary and Mrs. Pompeo
requested that the political appointee and other
employees in the Office of the Secretary undertake
work of a personal nature, such as picking up personal
items, planning events unrelated to the Department’s
mission, and conducting such personal business as pet
care and mailing personal Christmas cards. OIG found
that such requests were inconsistent with Department
ethics rules and the Standards of Ethical Conduct for
Employees of the Executive Branch.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fielded questions at his first news conference since President Trump fired State Department Inspector General Steve Linick on Pompeo’s recommendation. Linick had been conducting investigations into Pompeo. Credit: U.S. Department of State
WASHINGTON – Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan Pompeo, repeatedly misused State Department resources and staff for personal business, violating the ethical standards of the department, according to a long-awaited inspector general’s report.
The report details over 100 instances of misconduct that “had no apparent connection to the official business of the Department.”
In one instance, an aide to the former secretary spent government time in 2019 preparing for a meeting with a Kansas political organization, which included one of Pompeo’s donors, the report found.
The couple also had State Department staff “picking up personal items, planning events unrelated to the Department’s mission, and conducting such personal business as pet care and mailing personal Christmas cards,” the report said.
The report confirms that the inspector general’s investigation began with a whistleblower complaint that “that Department staff members were asked to complete tasks of a […]
