June 25, 2020

Tax the Rich and Their Heirs

A massive transfer of wealth is underway and will accelerate in the coming years. Baby boomers and the generation that preceded them currently own $84 trillion, or 81 percent of all U.S. household wealth — wealth that will before long be inherited by their children and other beneficiaries.

This extraordinary transfer of resources will further cement the economic inequality that plagues the United States because this wealth is tightly concentrated in the hands of a few. And it will be passed on as taxes on such transfers are at historic lows.

Among high-income countries, the United States has one of the lowest levels of intergenerational economic mobility, meaning a child’s economic future is heavily influenced by his or her parents’ income. We have the second-highest level of income inequality after taxes and government transfers, and the highest level of wealth inequality. These disparities are sharply skewed by race. Median black household wealth is only 9 percent that of white households, a racial wealth gap that is even larger than in 1968. New research suggests the pandemic will further increase wealth inequality, as the affluent save more and the poor earn less.

Effectively addressing these systemic inequalities will require many things. But increasing the taxation of inheritances is one vital component.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/opinion/inheritance-tax-inequality.html

June 25, 2020

The Jobs We Need

Over the past four decades, American workers have suffered a devastating loss of economic power, manifest in their wages, benefits and working conditions. The annual economic output of the United States has almost tripled, but, with the help of policymakers from both political parties, the wealthy hoarded the fruits.

In the nation’s slaughterhouses, the average worker in 1982 made $24 an hour in inflation-adjusted dollars, or $50,000 a year. Today the average meatpacker processes significantly more meat — and makes less than $14 an hour.

The hundreds of thousands of home health care aides, often female, often minorities, who care for a nation of aging baby boomers rarely receive paid time to care for their own families.

Even in the high-flying technology sector, companies have found ways to leave their workers behind. More than half of the people who work for Google do not actually work for Google. They are classified as contractors, which means they do not need to be treated as employees.

Picture the nation as a pirate crew: In recent decades, the owners of the ship have gradually claimed a larger share of booty at the expense of the crew. The annual sum that has shifted from workers to owners now tops $1 trillion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/opinion/income-wealth-inequality-america.html

June 24, 2020

President Stable Genius Wants To Challenge Joe Biden To Feats Of Strength, ID'ing 'Camel'

There is so much going on for us to make fun of, so much important news to very seriously report (and add solemn dick jokes to), but we need you to all pause and look at the gift the Washington Post has given Wonkette.

YES? TELL US ALL OF IT.

NO.

The test he bragged about, where he was so proud of how good he was at "identify camel"? He bragged and bragged about getting a 30 out of 30 (which some people don't even know is the same as "100" ) on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which features questions like "What is camel"?

That one. And as recently as earlier this month, Trump was going around the Cabinet Room recounting his exploits, in "identify camel."

Dunno how this can get better, but it can:


NO HE DID NOT.

You have to repeat five words in order to take the presidential oath of office! This should not be considered a major intellectual feat!

Dunno how this can get better, but it can:


Oh my God, he wants to challenge Joe Biden to a duel of "identify camel." Can this please take the place of one of the debates? Wonkette would be fine with that. Because in the assessment, Trump also had to draw "clock" and say what do banana and orange have in common (EWWWW PFFFFT GROSS THAT IS NOT "BIG MAC" is what they have in common).

https://www.wonkette.com/president-stable-genius-wants-to-challenge-joe-biden-to-camel-identifying-contest

I must say Wonkette has some very clever writers, and the comments can be a real hoot to read, too.

June 23, 2020

Senate Republicans greenlight Trump, AG Barr annihilating America's system of justice

The rule of law in America is currently dangling by a thread. Yet it seems that only one Senate Republican believes the upper chamber is there to do anything more than conduct performative acts of governance—even when the president of the United States has fired his chief investigator.

With the exception of Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, every Senate Republican asked shrugged off the fact that Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr ousted the man who has been overseeing several investigations into Trump's dealings and inner circle.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn seemed annoyed by questions about the ouster of top prosecutor Geoffrey Berman. "Everything that happens around here creates a tempest in a teapot," Cornyn told CNN when asked about Berman. (Gee, wonder if that has anything to do with the president he voted to acquit.) "I feel like I've got more important things to do," Cornyn added.

Sometimes being routinely asked about your job is such a downer. Cornyn's got a reelection run, folks, the country can just suck it.

Cornyn, like other Senate Republicans, expressed the view that Trump and Barr were well "within their rights" to sack the guy who was running an investigation into Trump's lawyer and fixer, Rudy Giuliani. And no, he wasn't interested in why they fired Berman and even confirmed that he had no intention of asking—because frankly, it would just be a real pain in the butt to do something resembling his job.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/23/1955380/-Senate-Republicans-greenlight-Trump-AG-Barr-annihilating-America-s-system-of-justice

June 23, 2020

Ron DeSantis to bars and restaurants: Follow social distancing guidelines, or else

Source: Tampa Bay Times

Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation Secretary Halsey Beshears threatened to pull the liquor licenses of "flagrant" violators of social distancing guidelines.

Florida bars and restaurants that violate the state’s social distancing guidelines now risk losing their liquor licenses.

That’s according to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who made the announcement at a news conference Tuesday in Orlando.

“If you go in and it’s just like mayhem, like dance party USA and it’s packed to the rafters, that’s just cut and dry. That’s not just an innocent mistake,” DeSantis said.

The governor said businesses that are clearly out of compliance with state rules can count on a visit from Department of Business and Professional Regulation Secretary Halsey Beshears, whom DeSantis called “the grim reaper for business licenses.”

Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/06/23/desantis-to-bars-and-restaurants-follow-social-distancing-guidelines-or-else/

---

Nowww he's decided to do something...

June 23, 2020

Trump team weighs a CDC scrubbing to deflect mounting criticism

With Trump under fire for his handling of the outbreak, his advisers are eyeing the federal bureaucracy for other culprits ahead of the election.

White House officials are putting a target on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, positioning the agency as a coronavirus scapegoat as cases surge in many states and the U.S. falls behind other nations that are taming the pandemic.

Trump administration aides in recent weeks have seriously discussed launching an in-depth evaluation of the agency to chart what they view as its missteps in responding to the pandemic including an early failure to deploy working test kits, according to four senior administration officials. Part of that audit would include examining more closely the state-by-state death toll to tally only the Americans who died from Covid-19 directly rather than other factors. About 120,000 people in the U.S. have died of the coronavirus so far, according to the CDC’s official count.

Aides have also discussed narrowing the mission of the agency or trying to embed more political appointees in it, according to interviews with 10 current and former senior administration officials and Republicans close to the White House. One official said the overall goal would be to make the CDC nimble and more responsive.

Politically, Trump aides have also been looking for a person or entity outside China to blame for the coronavirus response and have grown furious with the CDC, including its public health guidance and actions on testing, making it a prime target. But some wonder whether the wonky-sounding CDC, which the administration directly oversees, could be an effective fall guy on top of Trump’s efforts to blame the World Health Organization.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/23/trump-cdc-overhaul-coronavirus-335039

What a fucking disaster this president is.

June 23, 2020

Porn Star Ron Jeremy Charged With Sexually Assaulting Four Women

Porn star Ron Jeremy was charged on Tuesday with sexually assaulting four women in incidents dating back to 2014.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office charged Jeremy with eight counts, including forcible rape, forcible penetration and forcible oral copulation.

If convicted, he faces up to 90 years to life in prison, according to prosecutors.

Jeremy, 67, is expected to be arraigned later on Tuesday. Jeremy is accused of sexually assaulting three women at West Hollywood bar in separate incidents in 2017 and 2019.

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/ron-jeremy-porn-charged-sexual-assault-1234646918/

This will be an interesting case to follow...

June 23, 2020

Is Anybody Even Scared Of Bill Barr Anymore?

We don't know how to say this, but we think Attorney General Bill Barr might have bited off LI'L BIT more than he can chew.

Everything was going so great for Barr, he was doing so many fascisms and cover-ups for Donald Trump, and Trump really seemed to trust him to pretty much singlehandedly destroy America's concept of the rule of law with his grubby stinkpaws. With Barr's help, whatever assignments Vladimir Putin seems to have given Trump have seemed totally achievable!

Except for how things suddenly aren't going quite so well.

Rachel Maddow ticked off a bunch of Barr's recent failures yesterday evening, starting with when Barr tried to do a Friday Night Massacre this past weekend at the Southern District of New York (SDNY). Barr tried to remove Trump appointee Geoffrey Berman as US attorney — most likely to try to damage/thwart ongoing investigations into Trump associates like Rudy Giuliani, and maybe even Trump himself, and maybe as a favor for Trump's dictator pal in Turkey — and replace him with some pant-licker sycophant from New Jersey named "Craig." Unfortunately, Barr is such a fuckup that he completely lost the game of chicken with Berman, who, though he is still obviously fired, managed to make sure his successor would be his longtime deputy, Audrey Strauss, whom SDNY actually respects, until a permanent nominee is confirmed. Not the pant-licker from New Jersey named "Craig."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, who continually battles with Barr for the employee-of-the-month parking space inside Trump's ass, responded to the Berman firing by saying he will respect home-state Democratic senators' right to "blue-slip," or veto, Trump's new Manhattan US attorney nomination, which is theoretically supposed to be current SEC chair Jay Clayton, except for how Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand are like "Eat this bag of New York dicks, they're really weird and foldy like New York pizza, so you'll need a buncha napkins."

https://www.wonkette.com/is-anybody-even-scared-of-bill-barr-anymore

Wonkette's Evan Hurst certainly has a way with words...

June 23, 2020

How the Republican Party became a death cult

This week’s Pew poll has mixed news on mask-wearing, a proven method of reducing the likelihood of coronavirus infection. On the positive side, “65% of U.S. adults say that they have personally worn a mask in stores or other businesses all or most of the time in the past month, while 15% say they did this some of the time. Relatively small shares of adults say they hardly ever (9%) or never (7%) wore a mask in the past month, and 4% say they have not gone to these types of places.”

However, when you break out mask-wearing by party, the numbers are disturbing. “Democrats and those who lean Democratic are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say they personally wore a mask all or most of the time in the past month (76% vs. 53%),” the pollsters found. “Conservative Republicans are among the least likely to say they have worn a mask all or most of the time in the past month — 49% say they’ve done so, compared with 60% of moderate Republicans. Liberal Democrats are the most likely to say they have worn masks (83% say they’ve done so all or most of the time, vs. 71% of moderate Democrats).”

The racial and education breakdown of this survey mirrors the polarization of American politics. Nonwhites and college-educated Americans are more likely to be Democrats and mask-wearers. Whites and non-college-educated Americans are more likely to be Republicans and eschew mask-wearing. There is one constant: More older Americans than younger Americans are wearing masks.

This outcome is the triumph of Republicans’ tribal politics, in which identification with the cult and assault on the truth win out over common sense, science and even self-preservation. To be a Republican — at least in the eyes of millions of them — means to adopt illogical, anti-factual beliefs and oppositional conduct. You cannot take seriously the threats of climate change or the novel coronavirus because … well, because that is not what Republicans do, and to do otherwise would be to concede that the dreaded radical left and elites (presumably one can be both) are right. At the extremes, Republicans will engage in objectively destructive conduct to prove their point — hoarding hydroxychloroquine even if the Food and Drug Administration says the drug is ineffective or dangerous, and, of course, going without masks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/23/how-republican-party-became-death-cult/

June 23, 2020

Funny how Trump's dislike for 'losers' doesn't extend to Confederate generals

We are suffering from “monumental” confusion about historical statues, place names and symbols. Some on the right, including President Trump, insist that we continue to honor prominent Confederates. Some on the left — mercifully not in the mainstream — are attacking statues of American icons such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ulysses S. Grant. Both sides insist it’s all or nothing: The far right says we shouldn’t rename anything because then we will rename everything. The far left is just fine with renaming everything. I reject the extremes of both sides and so, I suspect, do most Americans.

We need to draw some fine distinctions here. Study the specifics of each individual to decide whether he or she is still worth honoring. The rule of thumb should be that those who contributed a great deal to the development of our country deserve to be recognized, however flawed they were as human beings.

The Founding Fathers easily pass the test. Jefferson, Washington and other Founders were slaveholders, but they also produced a Declaration of Independence that declared “all men are created equal.” The Constitution did not make good on that promise for far too long, but eventually it was amended and laws were passed to extend the blessings of liberty to all Americans.

Grant fought to defeat the Confederacy as a Union general and then, as president, he fought against the Ku Klux Klan. That far outweighs the fact that he briefly owned one slave whom he freed before the Civil War. Frederick Douglass said of Grant: “In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.” Grant deserves to be honored more — not less. There are 10 U.S. Army bases named for Confederate officers. All of them should be renamed — one of them for Grant.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/23/funny-how-trumps-dislike-losers-doesnt-extend-confederate-generals/