At this moment, millions of Americans are unable to feed themselves and their families. Over 54 million citizens of the richest country in the world are projected to experience the pain of food insecurity this year.
Last month, I was getting ready to convene yet another meeting by Zoom. I got a message from a wealthy New York lawyer informing me that her second home in East Hampton, a beach area about a two hour drive from New York City, didn’t have reliable enough high-speed internet to handle Zoom. For us, it wasn’t a big problem – we rescheduled our meeting … Continue reading The Digital Divide
Labor Day weekend is just around the corner. For lots of folks, this holiday is an excuse to have a cookout and enjoy the end of summer, and that’s not a bad thing at all. Using that day for rest and relaxation – instead of work – is exactly the point of Labor Day. But it’s also important to remember the roots of the holiday … Continue reading Labor Day Is More Than Just A Holiday
As the final sprint to the 2020 election kicks into gear, prepare to hear a lot about the choice at the top of the ticket and the accompanying admonitions not to forget down ballot races. However, just as importantly, voters will weigh in on an array of ballot initiatives and referendums in 26 states and Washington, D.C. Although these are often glossed over for splashy, … Continue reading Taxing the Rich: The People’s Choice
California is in crisis. From wildfires, to blackouts, to the deadliest month of the COVID pandemic, disasters of every kind are wreaking havoc across the state. Now with the state facing a $54 billion dollar deficit, due to the economic ramifications of COVID, massive cuts to critical public programs are slated to go into effect come October. That’s only going to make a bad problem … Continue reading Instead of taxing the rich, the California legislature jumped ship
With both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions behind us, the 2020 election is finally, really, underway, ushering in the final sprint in a race for the White House with profound economic implications. After four years of President Trump, we have a clear sense of what he wants to do with our tax code – cut taxes for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations. Considering that the … Continue reading Biden’s Tax Plan Doesn’t Go Far Enough
A year ago, in a time before the Coronavirus upended our economy and made taxing the rich more urgent than ever before, the idea of a wealth tax was all the rage in the 2020 Democratic presidential debates. First introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a wealth tax would go miles towards curbing our country’s inequality by laser-targeting extreme wealth held by the likes of … Continue reading In Wealth Tax, California Looks Toward the Future
This marks the second week since the tumultuous negotiations between Congress and the White House over a fourth COVID-19 stimulus package fell apart. With the Senate on vacation, there is no end to the stalemate in sight. We need a bill now. The $600 unemployment boost and a litany of renter protections expired last month, leaving between 30 to 40 million people on a financial … Continue reading Congress Failed State and Local Governments. Here’s How They Can Fix It.
After the White House ran out the clock on negotiating the next COVID-19 relief bill last week, President Trump enacted four new executive orders to try to circumvent Democrats’ demands. These new orders are largely unconstitutional, and they amount to nothing more than posturing without meaningful substance. One of the key orders arose from Trump’s oft-touted desire to pass a payroll tax cut, which had … Continue reading A Payroll Tax Cut is the Worst Stimulus Yet
For the past two months, Republicans twiddled their thumbs in the Senate doing nothing as the worst crisis in a century wreaked havoc on their country. Over that same period, millions of front-line workers were experiencing the nightmare of COVID-19 each and every day: indignant customers refusing to observe health protocols, hospitals overflowing with sick and dying patients, demanding delivery and factory quotas, corporate bosses … Continue reading Republicans Have Failed Essential Workers for Months. Don’t Do It Again.
On March 12th, the lights went out on Broadway when Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the theaters to close. The same day, other institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, Carnegie Hall, and the New York Philharmonic announced that they would close too, while performances were canceled across the country in places like California, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Boston. With Broadway fully shuttered … Continue reading Want to Save the Economy? Save the Arts First.
On Monday, Senate Republicans released the details of the HEALS Act, their version of a fourth coronavirus relief package – a version that offers too little, too late. The bill is a pathetic and morally bankrupt response to the numerous crises currently plaguing Americans. Below, we go over what’s in the bill, including exclusions that are desperately needed in the next recovery package, and where … Continue reading Too little, too late: A breakdown of the HEALS Act
During college in Louisiana, I heard people say, “So much of life is the family one is born into,” I didn’t have a clue what this meant. My father was the first in several Louisiana generations to graduate college. He supported us by selling janitorial products and our mother, who didn’t graduate college, never worked. I’d never imagined life as the one-percent, the top ten … Continue reading Inheriting Opportunity: Public vs. Private Schools
My memory of Representative John Lewis, an icon of the 1960s Civil Rights movement and a decades-long member of Congress, is from 2012. Lewis was at a Democratic party event and he related a story of someone recently coming to his office on Capitol Hill, and apologizing for having beaten him up many decades earlier – all the way in 1961. To put that in … Continue reading To Honor John Lewis, Take Up His Battle
If you think back to the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in the US in March, you might remember all the doomsday headlines about the stock market tanking to record lows and investors losing millions of dollars as a result. Three months later, those headlines have entirely disappeared, and there’s a reason for that: the stock market has recovered almost all of the losses incurred … Continue reading A Wealth Tax Is the Perfect COVID Stimulus Measure
I’ve always thought that the more you make, the more you should give back to your community. However, over the course of my life, I’ve realized that my beliefs were often at odds with the wealthy folks around me – folks who would take any opportunity to ignore their societal responsibility to give back to those that helped them earn their fortune, and instead exploit … Continue reading Why I’m A Patriotic Millionaire: Kristin Luck
As someone new to being wealthy, I’ve discovered it’s cheap to be rich in this country. Only in America can you make a fortune in Silicon Valley, yet safely send your children to public school, drive your own car, and travel without a bodyguard. The wealthiest Americans can claim depreciation on their private jets, own 2+ homes to claim residence in a no-income-tax state, and … Continue reading Why I’m A Patriotic Millionaire: Karen Edwards
House Democrats are making a serious mistake. On July 1st, the Democrat-controlled House passed a massive, $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill. This bill is basically just a messaging bill, intended to serve as a display of Democratic priorities, since it has almost no chance of getting passed in the Republican-controlled Senate. This infrastructure bill has a lot of good things in it, but there’s one significant … Continue reading The House Infrastructure Bill Has a Big Problem
The U.S. has been mired in the worst recession in most Americans’ lifetimes since late February, according to top economists. From the highest rates of unemployment in our country’s entire history to miles-long lines at food banks, it’s obvious that millions of Americans are in dire financial straits. One would expect, then, that the poverty rate in America would also be skyrocketing. However, multiple studies … Continue reading A Closer Look: Mid-Recession, Why Aren’t Poverty Rates Skyrocketing?
The way Senator McSally would like it presented, her bill gives Americans $4,000 to take a vacation, but the reality is much more complicated.