News: October 27

Top general: China's hypersonic missile test "very close" to a "Sputnik moment"

Once again, the U.S. has failed to take sweeping climate action. Here's why The brothers have given over $145 million to climate-change-denying think tanks and advocacy groups between 1997 and 2018. The Kochs were joined in their efforts by Exxon, which has given nearly $37 million over the same time to spread climate misinformation....... Think tanks that had thrived thanks to millions of dollars in grants from the oil industry labeled the climate bill "cap-and-tax." Conservative media picked up the idea that the legislation was a tax and amplified it. The Senate leadership understood over time that the bill would fail. In the end, it didn't even make it to a vote on the Senate floor. ...... Manchin is the top recipient in Congress of donations from the oil and gas industry.

Hillary Clinton aide describes sexual assault by a senator

Letitia James Isn’t Saying Whether She’s Running for Governor. But She Is Hiring. Ms. James, the New York attorney general, has recently recruited several advisers and fund-raisers ahead of a possible run for the state’s top office. ..... Ms. James is gearing up for a high-profile, competitive race — rather than focusing on her current run for re-election as state attorney general. .....

her potential to be the first Black female governor in America.

Her hires also reflect an intense focus on fund-raising.

India slams China's new boundary law amid border tensions

Zuckerberg's power makes him untouchable Outraged activists, pundits and lawmakers are demanding Zuckerberg take responsibility — the fish rots from the head down, after all. But holding Zuckerberg accountable is much easier said than done. ....... Facebook's tiered stock structure makes ousting Zuckerberg practically impossible. Although he owns less than half the company's stock, the class of shares Zuckerberg holds vote with much more power than common stock. ........ Facebook's structure is uniquely murky, even among tech companies ........ Some have proposed an entirely new regulatory body focused on tech giants.........

the vast majority of Facebook's ad revenue comes from small businesses who can hardly afford to leave.

....... Washington won't be able to suddenly resolve the regulation issues, and Wall Street isn't going to turn its back on a money-making machine. Critically, the 3 billion people using Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook aren't going to turn the apps off on principle. For many, those apps have become vital tools for communication, synonymous with the internet itself.

Democrats Hammer Out Novel Plan to Tax Billionaires and Corporate Giants New proposals would fund social and climate programs by tapping billionaires’ unrealized gains and by ensuring that the biggest companies cannot avoid income taxes altogether. ........ a transformative cradle-to-grave initiative to vault a stagnant working class into prosperity ......... a 15 percent minimum tax rate on corporations based on the profits they report to their shareholders, not what they show to the Internal Revenue Service. ........... For the first time, billionaires would face a tax on the unrealized gains in the value of their liquid assets, such as stocks, bonds and cash, which can grow for years as vast capital stores that can be borrowed off to live virtually income tax-free. ....... Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts and a longtime proponent of creative measures to break through the tax avoidance strategies of the rich. ......... Under the plan, companies with at least $1 billion in profits — about 200 publicly traded corporations — would no longer be able to escape income taxation altogether. The 15 percent minimum tax would also bring the United States into compliance with the standard recently set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to try to root out tax havens. ....... Senate Finance Committee aides singled out Amazon, which over the last three years reported $45 billion in profits, including a record $20 billion last year, but paid an effective tax rate of 4.3 percent. In 2018, they said, Amazon did not pay any federal income tax. Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, estimated the minimum tax would raise $300 billion to $400 billion over 10 years.......... Under the plan, Congress would impose a one-time tax on all the gains in value of tradable assets held by billionaires from the time they were initially purchased. That first hit would be huge, since men like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Elon Musk of Tesla and Jeff Bezos of Amazon sit on vast shares of the companies they created, which initially had a value of zero.

Exactly. Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2021

To Tax Billionaires, Democrats Should Keep It Simple One senator’s plan to tax unsold assets each year is complex and potentially illegal. A tax-at-death system that President Biden proposed would be easier to carry out........ Billionaires are able to pay low effective rates because the tax code only requires them to pay capital-gains taxes when an asset such as a business, stock or real estate is sold and the income is realized. For this cohort, those assets are where the bulk of their money is,

and they often borrow against their holdings to fund their lifestyles.