US President Joe Biden wants the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share of taxes, but it turns out they have become one of the main beneficiaries of his presidency.
The combined net worth of the top 100 ultra-rich people in the US has skyrocketed by $195 billion since Biden took office, according to Bloomberg’s calculations. From his election to his inauguration, they added $267 billion to their fortunes, bringing their total gain to $461 billion since November 4.
The rise in billionaires’ wealth in the first 100 days of Biden’s presidency is around 20% of the cash stockpile those billionaires raked in between Trump’s inauguration and the 2020 election. According to Bloomberg data, they became $860 billion richer over that period.
Buffett lamented that many novice stock traders treat the market like a “casino”
Warren Buffett on Saturday criticized stock trading platforms like Robinhood that allow buying and selling for free as encouraging a “gambling impulse.”
“There is nothing illegal to it, there’s nothing immoral, but I don’t think you build a society around people doing it,” he said at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting held virtually this year due to the coronavirus, The Guardian reported.
Buffett lamented that many novice stock traders treat the market like a “casino” and said that choosing a stock that is successful long-term is more difficult than it sounds.
He pointed out that there were more than 2,000 car companies in 1903 and although motor vehicles revolutionized society nearly all of the companies went out of business, according to The Guardian.
Mississippi and Missouri sued China in April last year
More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, two Republican states are keeping up their efforts to hold China accountable for the spread of the virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and sparked an economic downturn from which the U.S. has still not recovered.
Mississippi and Missouri both sued China in federal court in the initial days of the pandemic last year, joining several class-action lawsuits against Beijing — at a time when the Trump administration was blaming China as a key actor in the pandemic.
The virus is believed to have originated in Wuhan, and the secretive communist government was accused of downplaying the virus and misleading the world in the early days of the pandemic — leaving other countries, including the U.S., exposed and without time to prepare.
Legal experts have warned that the cases face long odds because foreign governments are generally granted immunity from domestic suits. But that doesn’t mean the Republican states plan on giving up holding the Chinese behemoth accountable.
Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene are hitting the road. The two pro-Trump, outspoken members of Congress are planning a tour across the nation called ‘America First.’
The tour begins on May 7 in the popular retirement community called The Villages in Florida.
For anyone running for statewide office in the Sunshine state, or national office The Villages is a mandatory stop. The hope is that the tour will gin up some grassroots Tea Party-like support and excitement.
Comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced the state would shut down dozens of prisons, citing high costs to maintain.
California is giving 76,000 inmates – including violent and repeat felons – the opportunity to leave prison early as the state aims to reduce the prison population in the name of social justice.
Per the executive action of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), over 63,000 inmates convicted of violent crimes will be eligible for good behavior credits, including 20,000 inmates who are serving life sentences.
Fortunately, though the new rule goes into effect on Saturday, it will be months or years before any inmates go free earlier, as it will take time for inmates to build the credits to meet the eligibility.
“The goal is to increase incentives for the incarcerated population to practice good behavior and follow the rules while serving their time, and participate in rehabilitative and educational programs, which will lead to safer prisons,” department spokeswoman Dana Simas said in a statement.
“Additionally, these changes would help to reduce the prison population by allowing incarcerated persons to earn their way home sooner,” she said.
Newsom faces criticism for making these unilateral changes to the incarceration system without input from the voters.
“He’s doing it on his own authority, instead of the will of the people through their elected representatives or directly through their own votes,” said Republican state Sen. Jim Nielsen.
“This is what I call Newsom’s time off for bad behavior. He’s putting us all at greater risk and there seems to be no end to the degree to which he wants to do that.”
This comes after Newsom announced the state would begin shutting down three dozen prisons, citing the multi-billion dollar pricetag to rehabilitate them.
Florida is expected to become the first state to penalize social media companies for banning politicians from their platforms. Proponents have hailed the bill as a victory for free speech, while critics call it a political ploy.
Under SB 7072, tech giants like Facebook and Twitter will be prohibited from “permanently” blacklisting a candidate running for political office. Fines of $250,000 per day will be issued for knowingly deplatforming a candidate for statewide office, while $25,000-per-day fines will be imposed for banning other office-seekers. The bill only applies to platforms with more than 100 million monthly users, and companies will still be allowed to sanction politicians with 14-day suspensions. Individual posts can also be removed if they violate the platform’s guidelines.
The bill passed both houses of Florida’s legislature on Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in the coming days.
DeSantis advocated for the new law as part of a pledge to take on the “Big Tech cartel.” In February, he called for measures to be taken against the “monopoly of communications platforms” that “monitor and control” Floridians.
State lawmakers who backed the legislation echoed similar sentiments. Republican state Rep. John Snyder said the bill would make it clear to Silicon Valley that they are not the “absolute arbiters of truth.”
“[T]he Constitution does not have an asterisk that says only certain speech is free and protected,” he said.
But critics say that the bill aims to settle old scores and contains politically motivated loopholes.
Audio of Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reveals he did not have knowledge about secret Israeli military operations until former Secretary of State John Kerry disclosed details about the operations.
According to leaked audio of Zarif that surfaced last weekend, Kerry disclosed to him that Israel was responsible for more than 200 covert operations against Iranian interests in the Middle East. The New York Times did not provide additional context beyond what Zarif had claimed, aside from the detail that Kerry’s admission left Zarif astonished.
Verizon Communications is reportedly considering selling its media division which includes brands such as Yahoo! and AOL, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg reports that Verizon Communications is considering selling its media division, according to people familiar with the matter. Verizon is reportedly attempting to offload once-mighty brands such as Yahoo! and AOL. Verizon Media could be worth as much as $5 billion, according to sources.
The company is reportedly in talks with Apollo Global Management about a deal but details on how a deal would be structured or if other suitors are involved were not clear. No final decision has been made and Verizon could opt to hold on to the unit.
The move comes as Verizon divests tertiary media assets while ramping up its focus on its wireless division and the expansion of its 5G services. Last year the company agreed to sell the HuffPost online news service to BuzzFeed and it sold the blogging platform Tumblr in 2019.
The divestiture could be a sign of Verizon’s final retreat from its foray into online advertising, a business division that was never particularly profitable for the company. Vierzon purchased Yahoo!’s internet properties in 2017 for around $4.5 billion and it acquired AOL in 2015 for about $4.4 billion.
According to Austin, he has spent most of the past two decades “executing the last of the old wars”, amid the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
United States Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said in his first major speech that the US and its allies should prepare for a new type of military conflict.
“The way we fight the next major war is going to look very different from the way we fought the last ones,” Austin said on Friday at the change of command for US Indo-Pacific Command at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Austin pointed at the rapid rate of technological advances, saying they would require “changes in the work we do to keep the United States secure across all five domains of potential conflict – not just air, land and sea, but also space and cyberspace”.
“They mean we need new capacities and operational flexibility for the fights of the future.”
Austin did not mention any particular country as an adversary in particular, however, the outgoing commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip Davidson, who was speaking after Austin, pointed at China.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the ‘war’ on COVID waged by our overlords in the name of health and safety has been the forcible muzzling of children in schools, particularly when playing outside or participating in sports. This virus has never been significantly driven by spread between or from children, yet they are the ones seemingly being punished with overbearing restrictions that last from the time they step on the school bus early in the mornings until they step off in the afternoon.
When complaints arise on social media, invariably some virtue-signaling, do-gooder parents will chime in that their children are “used to it” and “never complain” about having to wear a piece of cloth over the holes through which they breathe for most of their days. Well, I suppose prisoners eventually get “used” to having to wear chains too, but that doesn’t make it natural. However, while chaining prisoners is necessary from time to time for security and safety reasons, it was never necessary to mask children, especially younger ones, and the data seems to increasingly be bearing this out.
Consider this dataset on COVID spread in schools from Brown University Professor Emily Oster, hardly a member of Team Reality. Launched last fall, Oster’s “COVID dashboard project” has attempted to make up for the lack of a “coordinated federal effort to track COVID cases in context.”
“By ‘in context’ I mean with information on how many people were in in-person school and what mitigation factors allowed school to operate safely,” Oster writes in a March 1 dashboard update.
The amount of data collected here, although not exhaustive, seems surprisingly voluminous and impressive:
When we launched the dashboard in early September, our first announcement included about 100,000 in-person students. All of the data in that wave came from schools and districts that opted-in to the study to provide their information. These data provided a first, early look at case rates in schools. The sample was selected, yes, but it provided a first look at case rates in schools.
