Joe Biden has released $3 billion of Iran’s funds in Iraq, Oman and South Korea that were tied up by President Trump’s sanctions.
Despite the fact Iran was likely behind the attack on a U.S. air base in northern Iraq last month, Biden has reportedly approved access to billions of dollars for Iran without any known preconditions.
Hamid Hosseini, a member of the Iran-Iraq Chamber of Commerce, says $3 billion of Iranian assets in Iraq, Oman & S. Korea have been freed.
He says Iraq's PM got approval from the US to release the assets for humanitarian purchases, which Iran has used to buy corn already. pic.twitter.com/pzpP3GYtyo
US sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump have prevented Iran from accessing tens of billions of its assets in foreign banks.
Iranian frozen assets in Iraq amount to more than $6 billion, according to Iranian officials.
The head of the Iran-South Korea Chamber of Commerce said in October Iranian frozen funds in South Korea are worth $8.5 billion and added that their release depended on the outcome of the US presidential election.
Iranian officials have not commented on the value of Iran’s frozen assets in Oman.
Iran’s economy has been hit hard since 2018 when Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and reimposed sweeping sanctions on the country.
Iran’s chances of gaining access to billions of dollars of its frozen assets abroad have risen significantly since Trump, who pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran, left the White House.
Biden’s renewed policy of appeasement toward Iran is similar to Barack Obama’s, who had sent Iran a pallet of $1.7 billion in cash in 2015 to coax them into the Iran nuclear deal.
Notably, Iran put an $80 million bounty on Trump’s head last year after he ordered the airstrike against Gen. Qassam Soleimani, leading some to wonder if Obama’s payment was used to fund the bounty against Trump.
The Supreme Court dismissed former President Donald Trump’s final remaining challenge to the 2020 presidential election results this morning, a lawsuit challenging the results in the state of Wisconsin.
Also on March 8, the high court declined to hear an emergency petition for mandamus brought by pro-Trump lawyer L. Lin Wood who on Dec. 30, 2020, asked the court to block the Jan. 5, 2021 runoff elections for Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats. The races were won by Democrats who unseated two incumbent Republicans, handing control of that chamber to Democrats as President Joe Biden began his term of office.
The court, as is its custom when refusing to hear petitions, did not explain its actions March 8. No justices indicated they were dissenting from the dismissal orders.
In the case at hand, Trump v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, court file 20-883, Trump argued the commission violated the U.S. Constitution when it established rules for mail-in voting inconsistent with state law.
The commission and local election officials “implemented unauthorized, illegal absentee voting drop boxes, compelled illegal corrections to absentee ballot witness certificates by poll workers, and encouraged widespread voter misuse of ‘indefinitely confined’ status to avoid voter ID laws, all in disregard of the Legislature’s explicit command to ‘carefully regulate’ the absentee voting process,” Trump’s petition stated.
In the petition, Trump challenged the rules under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which states that “Each State shall appoint [electors for president and vice president] in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”
The dismissal came after the Supreme Court threw out a series of legal challenges on Feb. 22 to voting processes and results in several states left over from the recent presidential election cycle, as The Epoch Times previously reported.
Those cases concerned the presidential elections held in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
We should foster the inner strength and responsibility that upholds the Founders’ vision.
Words spoken from the heart enter the heart.
When we try to win the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens for the cause of free self-government, we need to communicate that we have considered the real issues that concern them and we are not just reciting a manifesto or a bunch of approved talking points. When we try to sound the alarm about big government and the ever-more-intrusive state, many people still suspect that we ourselves may simply wish to be unaccountable to our fellow citizens.
What then is the persuasive idea that we have to communicate? It is a near-universal recognition that in order to have an ordered nation, one needs to have first individuals who rule themselves.
We can look at this idea in great civilizations around the world. Paraphrasing Plato’s thoughts on politics, Professor W. J. Korab-Karpowicz writes, “The best government can be founded only on beautiful and well-ordered souls.” A good government is not the result of a program or of the best employment of rhetoric, but on knowledge of the deepest sort, knowledge of our identity reflected in God.
Head east by a few thousand miles to hear the words of Lao Tzu, the revered mystic thinker and author of Tao te Ching:
He who would administer the kingdom, honoring it as he honors his own person, may be employed to govern it, and he who would administer it with the love which he bears to his own person may be entrusted with it.
The Biblical tradition teaches this idea with its own special emphases. The Book of Proverbs (16:32) teaches:
Better one who is slow to anger than one with might, one who rules his spirit than the captor of a city.
The Bible here sees force and anger as inferior to patience and self-governance. And here, we see that self-governance is meant in a very simple, straightforward way — a person’s mastering their own inner life, so that it is characterized by patience and coherent spiritual order.
Commenting on this verse, the medieval French-Jewish philosopher, scientist, and rabbi Gersonides asked a simple question:
How can someone who does not govern his own desires govern others?
And in the classic rabbinic work known as Ethic of the Fathers, a teaching from about 1900 years ago is recorded that cites this verse from Proverbs as well:
Ben Zoma would say: Who is wise? One who learns from every man. As is stated (Psalms 119:99): “From all my teachers I have grown wise, for Your testimonials are my meditation.”
Who is strong? One who overpowers his inclinations. As is stated (Proverbs 16:32), “Better one who is slow to anger than one with might, one who rules his spirit than the captor of a city.”
In this teaching, Ben Zoma is connecting the idea of self-governance with the Biblical concept of humanity being created in the image of God. Every person has something to teach, every person has a contribution, because every person is created in the image of the source of all knowledge and power.
This is the base for the step that is at the root of our republic — because each person has something to offer, and we become wise through learning from each person, then our government, which should be wise, should reflect what each person has to offer.
We learn further that the exercise of force is an inferior way to govern. External control can never equal the control that emerges from within, when each person internalizes the virtues that bring their soul to shine.
What we can bring uniquely to politics is a personal commitment to this kind of patience and the unshakeable conviction in the inability of outer force to properly govern a country. While might and force may be a temporary expedient, it is not the source and core of real political success. That can only come from the loving allegiance that is given fully and freely by those who come to know themselves as they truly are and care for the others in their state, and in their world, as they care for themselves.
All the other points we have to make come after this core realization. The Great Society cannot possibly substitute for the freely given love of the family and church structures that it unwisely tried to replace. Political correctness is as inferior in guiding education as the Inquisition was when it punished Galileo and tried to establish Aristotle as the final authority in all things. Intersectional theory can never capture hearts and minds and overcome bigotry in the way that a preacher’s impassioned words of truth do when he said, “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Dr. Seuss’s book The Sneetches will continue to enchant as it teaches its lesson of transcending bigotry long after the lockstep cancel-culturistas have pulled down their own homes and moved on to saner concerns.
The common thread, the key insight lying behind all these secondary points flows from the first insight set forth above. From whichever angle it is seen, the core point is that most meaningful place to find true and good governance is within.
This is what moved the Founders. They embraced the idea that humanity at last would have a chance to really not rely on external order, but to actually build a nation on the truth of self-governance.
We embrace this along with them. With patience, with consistency, with courage, we must continue to teach with words and examples that try not to coerce from without but to touch that Godly spark within each of our fellow citizens.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday to allow students to sue for monetary damages against a Georgia college that blocked the distribution of religious pamphlets, giving new ammo for campus free-speech lawsuits.
The ruling increases the potential of liability and legal costs for schools if they are found to have infringed students’ First Amendment rights.
The high court held in an 8-1 ruling that the students could sue for nominal damages if the college violated a constitutional right. Nominal damages, sometimes valued as low as $1, are awarded as a form of punishment to show a party engaged in wrongdoing.
“Nominal damages provide the necessary redress for a completed violation of a legal right,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in the court’s 12-page opinion.
In the case, Chike Uzuegbunam claimed Georgia Gwinnett College restricted his pamphlet distribution to a designated area on campus and then stopped him altogether with claims he was “disturbing the peace.”
Another student, Joseph Bradford, decided not to proselytize on campus after witnessing Mr. Uzuegbunam’s ordeal with school officials.
They sued the college for violating the First Amendment. The college settled the litigation, agreeing to change its policy.
Lawyers for the former students then brought the legal battle to the high court, arguing they should be able to pursue nominal damages against the college — even in the amount of $1 — as a form of punishment and a declaration that the school acted unlawfully.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dissented, saying the case should be dismissed as moot because the students no longer attend the school.
“There are just a few problems: Uzuegbunam and Bradford are no longer students at the college. The challenged restrictions no longer exist. And the petitioners have not alleged actual damages,” Justice Roberts wrote.
Kristen Waggoner, an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom that represented the students, said the Supreme Court was right to hold officials accountable.
“When public officials violate constitutional rights, it causes serious harm to the victims,” she said. “When such officials engage in misconduct but face no consequences, it leaves victims without recourse, undermines the nation’s commitment to protecting constitutional rights, and emboldens the government to engage in future violations.”
The Democratic leader of New York’s Senate called for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign Sunday amid mounting allegations of sexual harassment and undercounting COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins added her voice to a growing number of Cuomo’s foes and allies who believe the three-term Democrat should step down.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, also a Democrat, stopped short of echoing Stewart-Cousins but said in a statement that “it is time for the Governor to seriously consider whether he can effectively meet the needs of the people of New York.”
On Saturday, another woman who worked for Cuomo publicly accused him of inappropriate behavior, on the heels of other allegations in recent weeks.
“Every day there is another account that is drawing away from the business of government,” Stewart-Cousins said in a statement. “New York is still in the midst of this pandemic and is still facing the societal, health and economic impacts of it. We need to govern without daily distraction. For the good of the state Governor Cuomo must resign.”
Her push for his resignation came shortly after a Sunday press conference where Cuomo said it would be “anti-democratic” for him to step down.
“They don’t override the people’s will, they don’t get to override elections,” Cuomo said during a conference call with reporters when asked about members of his own party calling for him to step down. “I was elected by the people of New York state. I wasn’t elected by politicians.”
Cuomo said the next six months will determine how successfully New York emerges from the coronavirus pandemic. “I’m not going to be distracted because there is too much to do for the people,” he said, noting that the state must pass a budget within three weeks and administer 15 million more COVID-19 vaccines.
Asked about Ana Liss, who told The Wall Street Journal in a story published Saturday that when she worked as a policy aide to the governor between 2013 and 2015, Cuomo called her “sweetheart,” kissed her hand and asked personal questions including whether she had a boyfriend, Cuomo said such talk was “my way of doing friendly banter.”He acknowledged that societal norms have evolved and noted: “I never meant to make anyone feel any uncomfortable.”Liss told the Journal she initially thought of Cuomo’s behavior as harmless and never made a formal complaint about it, but it increasingly bothered her and she felt it was patronizing.“It’s not appropriate, really, in any setting,” she said. “I wish that he took me seriously.”Cuomo’s workplace conduct has been under intense scrutiny in recent days as several women have publicly told of feeling sexually harassed, or at least made to feel demeaned and uncomfortable by him. The state’s attorney general is investigating.Former adviser Lindsey Boylan, 36, said he made inappropriate comments on her appearance, once kissed her on the lips at the end of a meeting and suggested a game of strip poker as they sat with other aides on a jet flight. Another former aide, 25-year-old Charlotte Bennett, said Cuomo asked if she ever had sex with older men and made other comments she interpreted as gauging her interest in an affair.Another woman, who did not work for the state, described Cuomo putting his hands on her face and asking if he could kiss her after they met at a wedding.In a news conference last week, Cuomo denied ever touching anyone inappropriately, but apologized for behaving in a way that he now realized had upset people. He said he’d made jokes and asked personal questions in an attempt to be playful and frequently greeted people with hugs and kisses, as his father, Mario Cuomo, had done when he was governor.
Pope Francis visited the ruins of Mosul and a Christian community damaged by the Islamic State during the third day of his historic visit to Iraq Sunday. The day earlier, the pontiff visited the birthplace of Abraham, met with a prominent Shia cleric and gave a sermon in Baghdad.
“How cruel it is that this country, the cradle of civilization, should have been afflicted by so barbarous a blow, with ancient places of worship destroyed,” the 84-year-old pope said Sunday, according to Reuters, as he met with Muslim and Christian residents in a destroyed portion of Mosul Sunday.
Pope Francis flew into Mosul by helicopter and saw the ruins of homes and churches in a part of a town that used to thrive before the Islamic State’s takeover in 2014. Thousands were killed and millions were displaced by the brutal terror group. The Islamic State was accused of genocide against religious minorities and occupied Mosul from 2014 to 2017.
In addition to visiting Mosul, Pope Francis also met with Christians in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the predominantly Christian town of Qaraqosh, which was destroyed by the Islamic State but efforts have been made to help restore the town. The church itself was also damaged by the extremist group.
“How much has been torn down! How much needs to be rebuilt! Our gathering here today shows that terrorism and death never have the last word,” Pope Francis said. “The last word belongs to God and to his Son, the conqueror of sin and death. Even amid the ravages of terrorism and war, we can see, with the eyes of faith, the triumph of life over death.”
The night before, Francis spoke on the Beatitudes, part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, in a packed Chaldean cathedral in Baghdad. He said the blessed are not the wealthy, powerful or famous, but “the poor, those who mourn, the persecuted.”
Pope Francis (C) delivers a sermon at the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation (Sayidat al-Najat) in Baghdad at the start of the first ever papal visit to Iraq on March 5, 2021, accompanied by Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako (C-R), Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans and head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, and Ignatius Joseph III Yunan (C-L), Syriac Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and all the East of the Syriacs. – In an address to the faithful in Baghdad, Pope Francis expressed his gratitude to his fellow clergy for supporting Iraq’s Christians, whose population has dwindled due to conflict. (Photo by Ayman HENNA / AFP) (Photo by AYMAN HENNA/AFP via Getty Images)
“Love is our strength, the source of strength for those of our brothers and sisters who here too have suffered prejudice, indignities, mistreatment and persecutions for the name of Jesus,”the pope said, according to a transcript posted by the Vatican.
“Such inequality, which has increased in our time, is unacceptable,” he said, adding that “the lowliest may be pardoned in mercy, but the mighty will be mightily tested.”
The more powerful are “subjected to rigorous scrutiny, while “the least are God’s privileged ones.”
He also explained that adversity confronts us with two temptations: “to run away” or “to fight.”
He then referred to Jesus’ disciples in Gethsemane, who fled while Peter drew his sword.
“Yet neither flight nor the sword achieved anything,” the pope contended.
On Saturday afternoon, Pope Francis met with a prominent Iraqi Shia leader on the second day of his historic trip, the first by a Pope to Iraq. He also visited the ancient city of Ur, where Abraham was believed to have been born.
The leader of the Catholic Church met with Iraq’s top Shiite cleric in the holy city of Najaf, after which the Shia-majority country declared March 6 as National Day of Tolerance and Coexistence.
The pontiff met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a spiritual authority for Shiite Muslims in Iraq and other countries who is renowned for his promotion of peace.
Vatican News reports that the pontiff and the grand ayatollah “were able to share perspectives and draw attention to the importance of friendship, mutual respect and dialogue, so that all people, no matter their ethnic, cultural or religious tradition, may live together in brotherhood and peace.”
Earlier during the day, Francis attended an interfaith meeting in the ancient city of Ur, urging Iraq’s Muslims, Christians and people from other faith communities to end their historic animosities and work together for peace and unity.
According to the Bible, Abraham, to whom Jews, Christians and Muslims trace their origin, was born in Ur.
“This blessed place brings us back to our origins, to the sources of God’s work, to the birth of our religions,” he said, according to the text of his remarks obtained by the Catholic News Agency.
“Here, where Abraham our father lived, we seem to have returned home. It was here that Abraham heard God’s call; it was from here that he set out on a journey that would change history. We are the fruits of that call and that journey.”
He added that “the greatest blasphemy” was “hating our brothers and sisters.”
“Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion,” he stressed. “We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion; indeed, we are called unambiguously to dispel all misunderstandings.”
While Pope Francis has described his first travel to Iraq as a “pilgrimage of peace,” some radical militant groups have reportedly opposed his visit, which they say amounts to Western interference, according to BBC.
On the first day of his visit on Friday, the pope brought focus on the country’s dwindling Christian population that suffered mass killings by the Islamic State terror group and a mass exodus.
“The age-old presence of Christians in this land, and their contributions to the life of the nation, constitute a rich heritage that they wish to continue to place at the service of all,” said Francis after arriving in Baghdad, addressing Iraqi President Barham Salih and other officials and diplomats at the Presidential Palace on Friday.
“May there be an end to acts of violence and extremism, factions and intolerance! May room be made for all those citizens who seek to cooperate in building up this country through dialogue and through frank, sincere and constructive discussion.”
Pope Francis declared that it is “essential” to “ensure the participation of all political, social and religious groups and to guarantee the fundamental rights of all citizens.”
“May no one be considered a second-class citizen,” he told the authorities.
There were about 1.5 million Christians in Iraq in 2003, and the number has reduced to roughly 250,000, according to estimates.
Even after the defeat of the Islamic State in December 2017, many of Iraq’s Christians haven’t found their homeland livable. They have either not returned home or continued to leave the country.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Sunday designed in part to increase voting and voter registration access for criminals in prison and on probation, according to the White House.
“The order will direct the attorney general to establish procedures to provide educational materials related to voter registration and voting, and to the extent practicable, to facilitate voter registration, for all eligible individuals in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons,” the White House states in a fact sheet on the measure.
The attorney general also must help former prisoners obtain appropriate identification to satisfy state voting requirements under the new law.
Biden also requested the U.S. Marshals Service include language in its contracts to facilitate voting by mail and provide eligible criminals information on voting and voter registration.
Biden’s plan was announced during a recorded address on the 56th commemoration of “Bloody Sunday,” the 1965 incident in which some 600 civil rights activists were viciously beaten by state troopers as they tried to march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama.
“Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have it counted,” Biden said in his remarks to Sunday’s Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast before signing the order. “If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let the people vote.”
Biden’s order directs federal agencies to expand access to voter registration and election information, calls on the heads of agencies to come up with plans to give federal employees time off to vote or volunteer as nonpartisan poll workers, and pushes an overhaul of the government’s Vote.gov website.
Democrats are attempting to solidify support for House Resolution 1, which touches on virtually every aspect of the electoral process. It was approved Wednesday on a near party-line vote, 220-210.
The voting rights bill includes provisions to restrict partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and bring transparency to a murky campaign finance system that allows wealthy donors to anonymously bankroll political causes.
Democrats say the bill will help stifle voter suppression attempts, while Republicans have cast the bill as unwanted federal interference in states’ authority to conduct their own elections.
The bill’s fate is far from certain in the closely divided Senate. Conservative groups have undertaken a $5 million campaign to try persuade moderate Senate Democrats to oppose rule changes needed to pass the measure.
With his executive order, Biden is looking to turn the spotlight on the issue and is using the somber commemoration of Bloody Sunday to make the case that much is at stake.
Bloody Sunday proved to be a turning point in the civil rights movement that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“In 2020 — with our very democracy on the line — even in the midst of a pandemic – more Americans voted than ever before,” Biden said. “Yet instead of celebrating this powerful demonstration of voting — we saw an unprecedented insurrection on our Capitol and a brutal attack on our democracy on Jan. 6. A never-before-seen effort to ignore, undermine and undo the will of the people.”
Biden’s also paid tribute to the late civil rights giants Rev. C.T. Vivian, Rev. Joseph Lowery and Rep. John Lewis. All played critical roles in the 1965 organizing efforts in Selma and all died in within the past year.
Proponents say tax could help fund infrastructure programs, while Wall Street groups contend it would hurt investors
The wild volatility in GameStop Corp. shares this year has emboldened Democrats who support a tax on stock trades.
A financial-transaction tax, or FTT, would raise money by collecting a fraction of the value of securities trades. Proponents say such a tax could help fund programs like President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, while reining in high-frequency trading and excessive speculation. Critics, including Wall Street lobbying groups, say it is a flawed policy that would hurt investors.
Left-leaning politicians such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have long advocated a transaction tax, with little success. Now, with Democrats holding the White House and narrow majorities in Congress, progressives have their best chance in years of enacting an FTT. Potentially, such a tax could be passed without Republican support, using the budget-reconciliation process that allows tax and spending bills to pass the Senate on a simple majority vote.
To be sure, the odds are still against an FTT passing Congress. There is broader support among Democrats for other ways to raise revenues, such as lifting the top individual tax rate or corporate tax rate, both of which were lowered under former President Donald Trump. Still, the idea of taxing trades has gained traction among more centrist Democrats in recent years, raising the hopes of FTT advocates.
“There’s much broader support and interest in the concept among members of Congress than there was a decade ago,” said Antonio Weiss, a Treasury Department official in the Obama administration who proposed his own version of a transaction tax last year.
Mr. Weiss’s plan calls for a 0.1% tax on stock, bond and derivative trades that would be phased in over a multiyear period. Such a tax could raise $60 billion a year, he estimates. Some lobbyists and tax-policy advisers see his plan as a basis for a bill that could win over Democratic moderates.
‘One way to ensure that this enormous wealth generated on Wall Street actually reaches the real economy…is to enact and look at proposals like a financial transaction tax.’— Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.)
Lately, the FTT issue has gained fresh visibility from an unlikely source: GameStop. After the furious rally and subsequent crash of the videogame retailer’s stock in January, politicians and pundits have stepped up scrutiny of high-speed trading and questioned whether the stock market is fair to small investors. Some progressives have seized the opportunity to promote an FTT.
“One way to ensure that this enormous wealth generated on Wall Street actually reaches the real economy…is to enact and look at proposals like a financial transaction tax,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) said at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee last month devoted to the GameStop episode.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.) to impose a financial-transaction tax has attracted House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, as a co-sponsor. The bill has 27 co-sponsors in all, including five who added their names after the Feb. 18 hearing. Further hearings on GameStop are planned later this month in the House and Senate.
In Albany, N.Y., some lawmakers are pushing to revive a New York tax on stock trades that the state hasn’t collected since 1981. Supporters say it would shore up a state budget battered by the coronavirus pandemic, but business groups and the New York Stock Exchange say it could prompt an exodus of financial firms, hurting the state economy. Similar pushback from Wall Street helped scuttle a bill to tax trades in New Jersey last year.
A bill sponsored by Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon to impose a financial-transaction tax has 27 co-sponsors in all.
At the federal level, it is unclear whether Mr. Biden would back a transaction tax. The White House has made no formal FTT proposal, and taxing trades wasn’t part of Mr. Biden’s campaign plan. As a candidate, he made contradictory comments on the issue, at one point saying an FTT would hurt the middle class, but later giving an interview where he appeared to endorse the tax.
The president’s team includes some vocal FTT supporters, such as Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and others who have criticized the idea, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Asked about a transaction tax last month, Ms. Yellen said: “It could deter speculation, but it might also have negative impacts.”
Wall Street and its congressional allies say a transaction tax would make U.S. capital markets less competitive and spur trading activity to shift overseas. They also accuse FTT proponents of making overly optimistic projections of how much revenue such taxes would raise.
“Wherever this has been tried in the past, it has ended up having negative consequences with respect to market liquidity, and it has never raised anywhere near the amount of revenue that was advertised,” Kenneth E. Bentsen Jr. , president of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said in an interview.
Groups like Sifma warn that brokerages would pass the cost of the tax to investors, and mutual funds would incur the cost of the tax each time they rebalanced. Even though the rate paid on each trade might seem tiny, it could add up to hefty costs over time, industry groups say.
In June, Vanguard Group released an analysis of how various types of transaction taxes would affect an investor putting away $10,000 annually for 40 years. For a portfolio with a mix of stock and bond index funds, Vanguard estimated that a 0.1% tax on purchases would ultimately cost the investor $25,705—or between 2% and 3% of his or her savings, which under Vanguard’s assumptions would grow to $1.2 million at the end of 40 years.
Proponents of a transaction tax say such industry studies are distorted to overstate the impact on Main Street investors. “Financial transaction taxes fall overwhelmingly on the rich,” said Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.
It wouldn’t be unprecedented for the U.S. to tax stock trades. The government levied a similar tax from 1914 to 1965. Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s budget is supported by a small fee on trades, which brought the agency nearly $2.6 billion in the 2020 fiscal year.
Overseas, dozens of countries have FTTs, including France, Singapore, South Korea and the U.K. The global experience has been mixed: One tax imposed by Sweden in the 1980s led much of the country’s trading volume to migrate elsewhere, while Hong Kong has remained a global financial center despite charging a type of transaction tax called a stamp duty.
Last month, Hong Kong said it would increase its stamp duty to 0.13% from 0.1%, the first increase since 1993, as it confronts a record budget deficit.
America is entering its very own Mao-like Cultural Revolution. The iconoclasm of the left’s culture war isn’t a side effect, it’s the point.
r. Seuss has been cancelled. Some of his work has been deemed racist, and we can’t have that. On Tuesday, the entity that oversees the estate of Theodor Seuss Geisel announced it would no longer publish six of Geisel’s books because they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”
Among the works now deemed unfit for children are Geisel’s first book under the pen name Dr. Seuss, “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street,” published in 1937, and the much-beloved, “If I Ran the Zoo,” published in 1950. The former depicts a “Chinaman” character and the latter shows two men from “the African island of Yerka” in native garb.
There’s not much point in quibbling over whether these and other such illustrations in the condemned Dr. Seuss books are in fact racist or bigoted, or whether Geisel held racist or xenophobic views. By all accounts he was a liberal-minded and tolerant man who hated Nazis and, as a political cartoonist, mocked the antisemitism that was all-too-common in America during World War II.
He was also a man of his era. Later in life, he regretted some of his political work during the war that stereotyped Japanese Americans, which, as jarring as it might seem today, nevertheless reflected attitudes that were commonplace at the time.
But context and nuance don’t factor into the inexorable logic of the woke left, which flattens and refashions the past into a weapon for the culture wars of the present. What’s important to understand is that this isn’t simply about banning six Dr. Seuss books. All of Geisel’s work is, in the judgment of left-wing academia, an exercise in “White supremacy, paternalism, conformity, and assimilation.” It might be easy for conservatives to laugh that off as nonsense, but they shouldn’t, because this isn’t really even about Geisel.
The Left Is Carrying Out a Cultural Revolution
To grasp how a man known as much for his messages of tolerance as for his artistic genius could be canceled for racism, you have to understand what’s actually happening here. The left’s war on the past, on long-dead authors like Geisel, isn’t really about the past, it’s about the future. It’s about who gets to rule, and under what terms.
There’s a predictable pattern to what we’re seeing now. It’s predictable because it has happened before in much the same way it’s happening now. During China’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and ‘70s, the Chinese Communist Party, at the direction of Mao Zedong, called for the destruction of the “Four Olds”: old customs, old culture, old habits, old ideas. All of these stood in the way of Mao’s socialist ideology, so they had to be destroyed.
Children and students were encouraged by the communist government to inform on their parents and elders, to shame and condemn them in public. The guilty were forced to recant in “struggle sessions,” during which they were mocked and humiliated, sometimes tortured, sometimes murdered. Before it was over, millions were dead.
We’re obviously not there yet, but the woke revolutionaries who now run our elite institutions and exert outsized influence in the corridors of power are following this same pattern.
First, they come for the monuments, destroying the icons of the past and re-writing history to turn even our national heroes and Founding Fathers into enemies. The animating ethos of the mobs pulling down Confederate statues is the same as The New York Times editors who gave us the 1619 Project. And because there is no limiting principle to iconoclasm, they have moved on from Confederates.
The City of Charlottesville, for example, having removed or tried to remove every last Confederate monument, is now pleading for someone, anyone, to haul away a giant statue of explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The 18-foot-tall bronze statue, which was erected in 1919 and depicts Lewis and Clark with Sacajawea crouched behind them, is free for anyone who can prove he knows how to move it safely—although at this point it’s a wonder the city doesn’t just dynamite the thing to rubble, Taliban-style.
Then they come for the books, destroying any ideas or literature that challenges their ideology—like Ryan Anderson’s 2018 book on the dangers of transgenderism, which Amazon summarily canceled last month. Even seemingly unobjectionable books can be targeted, if not for their content then for the race of their author. Just ask Jeanine Cummins, whose novel “American Dirt” drew the ire of the left last year simply because Cummins, who is white, wrote a book about Mexican drug cartels. The list goes on and on.
So much for statues and books. At some point, the left will come for actual people, because the ideology of revolution demands that dissent—and therefore dissidents—be silenced, by force if necessary.
If you think that’s an exaggeration, recall what happened all across the country last summer when Black Lives Matter “protesters” took to the streets. They didn’t just march and chant, they rioted. They attacked businesses, destroyed entire city blocks, and carried out a campaign of intimidation, harassing, and in some cases attacking random people if they didn’t kneel and repeat the slogans of the revolution. Dozens of people lost their lives in the chaos and violence that ensued.
The people behind the statue-toppling, the digital book burnings, and the street violence won’t stop until all three of these things—history, ideas, and dissidents—have been destroyed. These are all impediments to their cultural revolution, and they mean to eliminate them.
So forget about Dr. Seuss. Forget about the statues and the books. Those things are just the beginning. It could easily get much worse. The woke revolutionaries of the left can’t be bargained with or appeased. They believe this is a zero-sum game, that one side will win and one side will lose. And they’re right.
The petition needs just shy of 1.5 million verified signatures
The petition to recall California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has climbed above 1.9 million signatures with two weeks to go until its deadline, proponents announced Wednesday evening.
“We have cleared another milestone, and now we are entering the final stretch of this part of the official campaign to remove California Governor Gavin Newsom from power and office,” organizer Orrin Heatlie said in a statement.
After removing his mask to speak, California Gov. Gavin Newsom delivers comments while visiting one of San Luis Obispo County’s vaccination centers at Cuesta College, Tuesday March 2, 2021, in San Luis Obispo, Calif. Newsom was critical of other states that are dropping their masking requirements. (David Middlecamp/The Tribune (of San Luis Obispo) via AP)
The petition needs just shy of 1.5 million signatures – but they need to be verified as authentic and the recall movement expects Newsom to challenge many of them in court, so they’ve continued collecting names.
“The people of California are speaking loud and clear, and we will continue to work tirelessly until the People of California become the final judge and jury on this recall,” said Mike Netter, of the RecallGavin2020 organization, the group behind the recall effort alongside the California Patriot Coalition.
On Feb. 20, when the petitioners had collected about 1.1 million signatures, more than 670,000 had been verified.
The deadline for organizers to submit signatures is on March 17. If the effort succeeds, a recall election would likely occur later this year.
A spokesperson for Newsom did not immediately respond to Fox News’ requests for comment.
In addition to the recall effort, Newsom is facing a low point in his approval ratings as well as criticism over his handling of the state’s coronavirus response and vaccine rollout.
He even got sued by a high school student last month over his pandemic-induced ban on scholastic sports.
Although Californians have tried to recall their governors dozens of times over the years, the Golden State’s only other chief executive recalled from office was Gray Davis, also a Democrat, in 2003. He was replaced by the action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.
