Tax the Rich

By Akhilleus

Saw this online. Thought I’d pass it along. The numbers check out, although some sources put Zuckerberg’s 2011 wealth at $13.5 B and Bezos’ 2021 wealth at $211 B, both of which are even more outrageous.

“Wealth of Elon Musk
2011: $2,000,000,000
2021: $271,500,000,000

“Wealth of Mark Zuckerberg
2011: $17,500,000,000
2021: $121,900,000,000

“Wealth of Jeff Bezos
2011: $18,100,000,000
2021: $203,100,000,000

“U.S. Minimum Wage
2011: $7.25
2021: $7.25

“Three words: tax the rich”

November 15, 2021

Michael Shear & Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "President Biden on Sunday night named Mitch Landrieu, a former mayor of New Orleans and a former lieutenant governor of Louisiana, to oversee $1 trillion in infrastructure spending from the bipartisan legislation that the president will sign into law on Monday. As a senior adviser to Mr. Biden with the title of infrastructure coordinator, Mr. Landrieu will supervise funds for upgrading roads, bridges, pipes and broadband internet as the federal government distributes the money to states over the next several years, the White House said in a statement." CNN's report is here.

E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post: Democrats must learn to control the debate. "The ... logic applies to the battle for democracy itself. Democratic politicians should be ashamed that while Trump has turned his 'Stop the Steal' lies into a mobilizing battle cry for Republican base voters, Democrats have been unable to do the same with their defense of the right to vote. Turnout in GOP areas in Virginia and New Jersey was off the charts. Democrats couldn't match it.... The [Democratic] party, starting with the president when he signs the infrastructure bill on Monday, can use the power it has now to change the nation's political conversation. Or it can resign itself to defeat at the hands of a GOP in which a majority is not even willing to fix the damned roads." ~~~

~~~ Marie: Actually, it is not Republicans controlling the debate. It's Donald Trump. Here's Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who holds a leadership position. ~~~

Hannah Demissie & Janae Morris of ABC News: "Republican Sen. John Barrasso refused to criticize ... Donald Trump for recently revealed comments he made about former Vice President Mike Pence.... [ABC 'This Week' host George] Stephanopoulos played the audio of Trump's interview with Karl for Barrasso and pressed, 'Can your party tolerate a leader who defends murderous chants against his own vice president?' The senator avoided the question, saying that 'the Republican Party is incredibly united right now' and argued that 'Trump brings lots of energy to the party.' [Stephanopoulos continued to press Barrasso]: '... I'm asking if you, if you believe -- if you can tolerate the president saying, "hang Mike Pence is common sense.'" 'It's -- it's not common sense,' Barrasso said, though he refused to criticize Trump for the comments when asked once more by Stephanopoulos."

Trump's Plot to Steal the 2020 Election, Ctd. Libby Cathey of ABC News: "In a memo not made public until now, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows emailed to Vice President Mike Pence's top aide, on New Year's Eve, a detailed plan for undoing President Joe Biden's election victory, ABC News' Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl reports. The memo, written by ... Donald Trump's campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis..., [demonstrates] how Pence was under even more pressure than previously known to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Ellis, in the memo, outlined a multi-step strategy: On Jan. 6, the day Congress was to certify the 2020 election results, Pence was to send back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump falsely claimed he had won. The memo said that Pence would give the states a deadline of '7pm eastern standard time on January 15th' to send back a new set of votes, according to Karl. Then, Ellis wrote, if any state legislature missed that deadline, 'no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that state.' That would throw the decision to the House, which "shall vote by state delegation," and Republicans controlled 26 states. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: IOW, this was not just some off-the-wall plan proposed by a crazed right-wing professor who had captured the attention of a deranged loser-president; it was an organized plot in which at least one individual at the highest level of government -- the Chief of Staff to the POTUS* -- participated. As Donald Trump would say, "You've never seen anything like it." No, we have not. As a number of Reality Chex contributors have written in recent days, Democrats must stop pussyfooting around and talking about "the rule of law," yada-yada-yada, and speak instead about the "seditious conspiracy to overturn the presidential election." Or something. ~~~

~~~ Teaganne Finn of NBC News: "The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol will 'move quickly' to refer Mark Meadows ... for criminal contempt for not cooperating with its investigation, a committee member, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Sunday." ~~~

~~~ Jonathan Swan of Axios: "NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told 'Axios on HBO' that the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol was also an attack on the core values of the world's biggest military alliance.... 'I regard that as an attack on the core democratic institutions of the United States and therefore also on core values of NATO,' Stoltenberg said in an interview recorded last Monday at NATO's headquarters in Brussels." ~~~

~~~ ** "Power at Any Cost." Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "At 1.35pm on 6 January, the top Republican in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, stood before his party and delivered a dire warning. If they overruled the will of 81 million voters by blocking Joe Biden's certification as president in a bid to snatch re-election for the defeated candidate, Donald Trump, 'it would damage our Republic forever'. Five minutes before he started speaking, hundreds of Trump supporters incited by the then president's false claim that the 2020 election had been stolen broke through Capitol police lines and were storming the building. McConnell ... went on: 'If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral.... Every four years would be a scramble for power at any cost.' Eleven months on, McConnell's words sound eerily portentous. What could be construed as an anti-democratic scramble for power at any cost is taking place right now in jurisdictions across the country. Republican leaders loyal to Trump are vying to control election administrations in key states in ways that could drastically distort the outcome of the presidential race in 2024.... The stage is being set for a spectacle that could, in 2024, make last year's unprecedented assault on American democracy look like a dress rehearsal." Read on. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'm sure the irony is not lost on you -- that is Addison Mitchell McConnell, of all people, warning against taking "power at any cost."

Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump's real estate company plans to sell the federal lease to its luxury D.C. hotel to Miami-based CGI Merchant Group, according to a report Sunday in the Wall Street Journal. The Trump Organization, which leased the Old Post Office property beginning in 2013, has been in discussions with CGI Merchant about selling the lease, according to two people who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the discussions. CGI Merchant signed a contract to buy the lease for $375 million, according to the Journal, citing anonymous sources." ~~~

     ~~~ Kara Scannell of CNN: "The Miami group is expected to remove the Trump name from the ornate building located a short walk from the White House and is partnering with Hilton Worldwide Holdings to brand it a Waldorf Astoria...."

The Pandemic, Ctd.

The Washington Post's live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here.

Emily Anthes of the New York Times (Nov. 13): "Throughout the pandemic, schools have been flash points, the source of heated debates over the threat the virus poses and the best way to combat it. School nurses are on the front lines. They play a crucial role in keeping schools open and students safe but have found themselves under fire for enforcing public health rules that they did not make and cannot change. This new academic year has been the hardest yet, they say. After a year of remote or hybrid learning, schools generally reopened at full capacity; many did so in the middle of the Delta surge and in the midst of an escalating political battle over 'parents' rights' to shape what happens in schools."

The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Sunday are here: "Several dozen New York City workers have been suspended without pay as a part of an investigation into the use of fake vaccine cards at the Department of Sanitation, a city official with knowledge of the investigation said." Marie: Real IDs are free; fake IDs are not. On the other hand, workers with fake IDs have not forever lost their manly sexual potency and they do not have Joe Biden sitting in the White House residence watching their every move with the aid of the sensors the virus implanted in their bloodstreams.

Florida. Lori Rozsa of the Washington Post: "A special legislative session dubbed 'Keep Florida Free' begins Monday at the behest of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who wants lawmakers to pass more measures to block coronavirus vaccine mandates by public and private employers. The four bills being considered would ratchet up the penalties for businesses, local governments and other entities that require workers to be vaccinated against the virus and students to wear masks in school. According to DeSantis (R), the session will strengthen as well as augment rules already in place -- in part through his own executive orders." MB: Ron thinks the path to the White House is paved in pandering to anti-vaxxers & making people sick. And he thinks this is "governing."

Beyond the Beltway

Texas. Giulia Heyward of the New York Times: "A 9-year-old boy on Sunday became the 10th, and youngest, person to die from injuries sustained at the Astroworld festival. The boy, Ezra Blount, had been in a medically induced coma from injuries his family believes he sustained after being trampled at the Nov. 5 festival, an outdoor concert in Houston headlined by the rapper Travis Scott that was attended by 50,000 and took a tragic turn after a crowd surge occurred near the stage during his performance. Authorities are still trying to determine the cause. The death was announced on Sunday night by the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner."

Wisconsin. Kim Bellware of the New York Times: "Whether Kyle Rittenhouse provoked the first fatal encounter on the streets of Kenosha, Wis., last summer and whether he can be found guilty on a charge less serious than first-degree homicide are among the crucial questions a judge said he will ask jurors to consider when they convene for deliberations this week. Judge Bruce Schroeder gave tentative rulings as he hashed out jury instructions with lawyers in a sparsely populated courtroom on Friday. The jury had been sent home for a three-day weekend before closing arguments that will begin Monday. Rittenhouse, 18, was present Friday. Schroeder indicated how he will rule on what probably will be the most consequential decisions guiding how jurors apply the law and consider the evidence in the charges against Rittenhouse."

Way Beyond

Myanmar. Richard Paddock of the New York Times: "Danny Fenster, an American journalist, was released from prison in Myanmar on Monday and will be allowed to leave the country, according to a spokeswoman for the ex-diplomat who helped secure his freedom. The release of Mr. Fenster, who was sentenced on Friday to 11 years in prison, is a rare positive development in Myanmar, which has been torn by violence since the military staged a coup in February and began a brutal crackdown against pro-democracy protesters. 'This is the day that you hope will come when you do this work,' said Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who has a long record of winning the release of American prisoners from autocratic countries." CNN's story is here.

U.K. Miriam Berger, et al., of the Washington Post: "British police said Monday that a car explosion that took place outside a hospital in northwest England that left one person dead and another injured on Sunday was a 'terrorist incident.' The blast occurred right before 11 a.m. local time as a taxi pulled up outside an entrance of Liverpool Women's Hospital, according to a Merseyside Police statement. Witnesses said the vehicle was quickly engulfed in flames. One passenger, who has not been publicly identified, was declared dead at the scene."

November 14, 2021

A War Crime, a Cover-up. Dave Philipps & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "The battle at Baghuz represented the end of a nearly five-year United States-led campaign to defeat the Islamic State in Syria and was a foreign policy triumph for ... Donald J. Trump.... [On March 18, 2019,] in the last days of the battle..., when members of the once-fierce caliphate were cornered in a dirt field next to a town called Baghuz, a U.S. military drone ... saw only a large crowd of women and children huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American F-15E attack jet streaked across the drone's high-definition field of vision and dropped a 500-pound bomb on the crowd, swallowing it in a shuddering blast. As the smoke cleared, a few people stumbled away in search of cover. Then a jet tracking them dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of the survivors.... An initial battle damage assessment quickly found that the number of dead was ... about 70. The Baghuz strike was one of the largest civilian casualty incidents of the war against the Islamic State, but it has never been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. military. The details, reported here for the first time, show that the death toll was almost immediately apparent to military officials.... The details suggest that while the military put strict rules in place to protect civilians, the Special Operations task force repeatedly used other rules to skirt them. The military teams counting casualties rarely had the time, resources or incentive to do accurate work. And troops rarely faced repercussions when they caused civilian deaths."

Brad Plumer & Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: "Diplomats from nearly 200 countries on Saturday struck a major agreement aimed at intensifying global efforts to fight climate change by calling on governments to return next year with stronger plans to curb their planet-warming emissions and urging wealthy nations to 'at least double' funding to protect poor nations from the hazards of a hotter planet. The new deal will not, on its own, solve global warming, despite the urgent demands of many of the thousands of politicians, environmentalists and protesters who gathered at the Glasgow climate summit. It leaves unresolved the crucial question of how much and how quickly each nation should cut its carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over the next decade. And it still leaves many developing countries far short of the funds they need to cope with increasing weather disasters." CNN's report is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Admittedly, this isn't the greatest agreement. But it is an agreement. Among most of the nations of the Earth, in all their glorious diversity. How come the people of the Earth can all agree on something, and 100 U.S. senators, even 50 U.S. senators of the same political party, can't come to an agreement on a way forward for their own country?

It might help to watch some of this to understand the lede joke in this: ~~~

News You Can Use. Maggie Fox & Tami Luhby of CNN: "The federal government announced a large hike in Medicare premiums Friday night, blaming the pandemic but also what it called uncertainty over how much it may have to be forced to pay for a pricey and controversial new Alzheimer's drug. The 14.5% increase in Part B premiums will take monthly payments for those in the lowest income bracket from $148.50 a month this year to $170.10 in 2022. Medicare Part B covers physician services, outpatient hospital services, certain home health services, medical equipment, and certain other medical and health services not covered by Medicare Part A, including medications given in doctors' offices. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services played down the spike, pointing out that most beneficiaries also collect Social Security benefits and will see a cost-of-living adjustment of 5.9% in their 2022 monthly payments, the agency said in a statement. That's the largest bump in 30 years.... The actual spike -- the largest since 2016 -- could hurt some seniors financially. It 'will consume the entire annual cost of living adjustment (COLA) of Social Security recipients with the very lowest benefits, of about $365 per month,' said Mary Johnson, a Social Security and Medicare policy analyst for The Senior Citizens League...."

Rachel Pannett of the Washington Post: "Hackers compromised the Federal Bureau of Investigation's external email system on Saturday, sending spam emails to potentially thousands of people and companies with a faked warning of a cyberattack. The FBI said in a statement it was 'aware of the incident this morning involving fake emails from an @ic.fbi.gov email account' but declined to provide further details. 'The impacted hardware was taken offline quickly upon discovery of the issue,' the FBI said. It did not respond to an emailed request for more information." MB: Say, maybe FBI employees need a more secure password than "fbi-hoover".

Marie: I pretty much ignore polls, but this one should give you an idea of how profoundly stupid the American voter is: ~~~

     ~~~ Brianne Pfannenstiel & Stephen Gruber-Miller of the Des Moines Register: "In a hypothetical 2024 rematch..., Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in Iowa by 11 percentage points, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows. In 2020, Trump defeated Biden by about 8 percentage points, carrying the state 53% to 45%."

Politifact corrects Fox "News" personalities and a boatload of confederate writers who took umbrage at President Biden's supposedly calling pitcher Satchel Paige "the great Negro." What Biden was trying to say, and what he said in the next breath to correct himself, was the great "pitcher in the Negro Leagues." MB: If these same yahoos had showed proper respect for Blacks all along, their high dudgeon still would not have been appropriate, but we can rest assured that they're all opposed to doing anything that they're afraid might advance racial equality -- like, fer instance, voting rights. Still, we're way glad the yahoos at long last have taken to political correctness. ~~~

The Pandemic, Ctd.

The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Saturday are here.

Oklahoma. Going Rogue. Davis Winkie of the Army Times: "The new commander of the Oklahoma National Guard has declared the organization will not enforce the Defense Department's COVID-19 vaccine mandate on its troops, according to local media outlets. Army Brig. Gen. Thomas Mancino was announced as the state's new adjutant general Wednesday, though he has not yet been confirmed by the state Senate, according to a press release from Gov. Kevin Stitt's office. On Nov. 2, Stitt formally requested that DoD not enforce the mandate on the state's Army and Air National Guard members. In the letter, which his office posted online, he said that 10% of the state's troops had refused the vaccine and that the mandate was 'irresponsible.' The Defense Department is aware of the Mancino memo and Stitt's letter and 'will respond to the governor appropriately,' Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.... It's not yet clear whether the order will jeopardize [federal] funding[, the main source of revenue for the Guard]." The Washington Post's story is here.

Way Beyond the Beltway

Belarus, etc. Jane Arraf & Elian Peltier of the New York Times: "The sudden surge of migrants to Belarus from the Middle East that is now the focus of a political crisis in Europe was hardly an accident. The government of Belarus loosened its visa rules in August, Iraqi travel agents said, making a flight to the country a more palatable journey to Europe than the dangerous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece. It increased flights by the state-owned airline, and then actively helped funnel migrants from the capital, Minsk, to the frontiers with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. And Belarusian security forces gave them directions on how to cross into the European Union countries, even handing out wire cutters and axes to cut through border fences.... Now, thousands of people are stranded or hiding along the border in freezing conditions, not wanted by the European Union countries or, circumstances are making clear, by the country that lured them there in the first place." A related Guardian/Observer story is here.