#US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #28

July 19-26 2024

The EPA announced the award of $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants. The grants support community-driven solutions to fight climate change, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition. The grants will go to 25 projects across 30 states, and one tribal community. When combined the projects will reduce greenhouse gas pollution by as much as 971 million metric tons of CO2, roughly the output of 5 million American homes over 25 years. Major projects include $396 million for Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection as it tries to curb greenhouse gas emissions from industrial production, and $500 million for transportation and freight decarbonization at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced a plan to phase out the federal government's use of single use plastics. The plan calls for the federal government to stop using single use plastics in food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035. The US government is the single largest employer in the country and the world’s largest purchaser of goods and services. Its move away from plastics will redefine the global market.

The White House hosted a summit on super pollutants with the goals of better measuring them and dramatically reducing them. Roughly half of today's climate change is caused by so called super pollutants, methane, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and nitrous oxide (N2O). Public-private partnerships between NOAA and United Airlines, The State Department and NASA, and the non-profit Carbon Mapper Coalition will all help collect important data on these pollutants. While private firms announced with the White House plans that by early next year will reduce overall U.S. industrial emissions of nitrous oxide by over 50% from 2020 numbers. The summit also highlighted the EPA's new rule to reduce methane from oil and gas by 80%.

The EPA announced $325 million in grants for climate justice. The Community Change Grants Program, powered by President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act will ultimately bring $2 billion dollars to disadvantaged communities and help them combat climate change. Some of the projects funded in this first round of grant were: $20 million for Midwest Tribal Energy Resources Association, which will help weatherize and energy efficiency upgrade homes for 35 tribes in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, $14 million to install onsite wastewater treatment systems throughout 17 Black Belt counties in Alabama, and $14 million to urban forestry, expanding tree canopy in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

The Department of Interior approved 3 new solar projects on public land. The 3 projects, two in Nevada and one in Arizona, once finished could generate enough to power 2 million homes. This comes on top of DoI already having beaten its goal of 25 gigawatts of clean energy projects by the end of 2025, in April 2024. This is all part of President Biden’s goal of creating a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pledged $667 million to global Pandemic Fund. The fund set up in 2022 seeks to support Pandemic prevention, and readiness in low income nations who can't do it on their own. At the G20 meeting Yellen pushed other nations of the 20 largest economies to double their pledges to the $2 billion dollar fund. Yellen highlighted the importance of the fund by saying "President Biden and I believe that a fully-resourced Pandemic Fund will enable us to better prevent, prepare for, and respond to pandemics – protecting Americans and people around the world from the devastating human and economic costs of infectious disease threats,"

The Departments of the Interior and Commerce today announced a $240 million investment in tribal fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. This is in line with an Executive Order President Biden signed in 2023 during the White House Tribal Nations Summit to mpower Tribal sovereignty and self-determination. An initial $54 million for hatchery maintenance and modernization will be made available for 27 tribes in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The rest will be invested in longer term fishery projects in the coming years.

The IRS announced that thanks to funding from President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, it'll be able to digitize much of its operations. This means tax payers will be able to retrieve all their tax related information from one source, including Wage & Income, Account, Record of Account, and Return transcripts, using on-line Individual Online Account.

The IRS also announced that New Jersey will be joining the direct file program in 2025. The direct file program ran as a pilot in 12 states in 2024, allowing tax-payers in those states to file simple tax returns using a free online filing tool directly with the IRS. In 2024 140,000 Americans were able to file this way, they collectively saved $5.6 million in tax preparation fees, claiming $90 million in returns. The average American spends $270 and 13 hours filing their taxes. More than a million people in New Jersey alone will qualify for direct file next year. Oregon opted to join last month. Republicans in Congress lead by Congressmen Adrian Smith of Nebraska and Chuck Edwards of North Carolina have put forward legislation to do away with direct file.

Bonus: American law enforcement arrested co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada. El Mayo co-founded the cartel in the 1980s along side Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Since El Chapo's incarceration in the United States in 2019, El Mayo has been sole head of the Sinaloa Cartel. Authorities also arrested El Chapo's son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez. The Sinaloa Cartel has been a major player in the cross border drug trade, and has often used extreme violence to further their aims.

[allthegeopolitics]

Pro-Israel advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over sanctions issued against individuals involved in settler violence in the occupied West Bank.  The plaintiffs, who filed the lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas, are composed of two NGOs, Texans for Israel and the Israeli nonprofit, Regavim, as well as two dual US-Israeli citizens who live in the West Bank. The defendants named in the lawsuit include the US Department of Treasury; US Department of State; Department of Homeland Security; Office of Foreign Assets Control; Financial Crimes Enforcement Network; and their department chiefs, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen. In February this year, Biden filed an executive order allowing federal agencies to impose financial sanctions and visa restrictions against individuals who attack or intimidate Palestinians and destroy or dispossess Palestinians of their property.

Continue Reading.

[technofeudalism]

every reddit community is being flooded right now with posts about how amazing Joe Biden is and how he is the greatest President in American history and how "he's still got it."

normally, i'd find this kind of odd. because the tone has been drastically different everywhere else since the election loss. but then i found out why there's a sudden explosion of pro-Biden content.

During the 2020 presidential primary, Jill Biden campaigned so extensively across Iowa that she held events in more counties than her husband—a fact her press secretary at the time, Michael LaRosa, touted to a local reporter. His superior in the Biden campaign quickly chided him. As the three rode in a minivan through the state’s cornfields, Anthony Bernal, then a deputy campaign manager and chief of staff to Jill Biden, pressed LaRosa to contact the reporter again and play down any comparison in campaign appearances between Joe Biden, then 77, and his wife, who is eight years his junior. Her energetic schedule only highlighted her husband’s more plodding pace, LaRosa recalls being told. The message from Biden’s team was clear. “The more you talk her up, the more you make him look bad,” LaRosa said. The small correction foreshadowed how Biden’s closest aides and advisers would manage the limitations of the oldest president in U.S. history during his four years in office. To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen—were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan. Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.  Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race. 

so it turns out that, after the last year and a half of leftists saying "hey, isn't this guy really fucking old and kind of dying?" and being completely shit on, told to shut the fuck up, sit down and know our place... the guy was indeed dying behind the scenes.

and now, because this story is gaining attention in the mainstream media (CNN ran a segment earlier), reddit has full tilt re-engaged the Biden propaganda machine in order to "preserve his legacy."

throughout the entirety of the Biden presidency, and even before the 2020 election, Biden's cabinet, advisors, spokespersons, campaign staff, etc., abdicated their duty. their lust to remain in power, retain influence and secure gainful future employment in Washington along with their contempt for the average human being (including Palestinians) has effectively doomed us to 4+ years of Republican rule. now, they will go onto lobbying in the private sector and cash in on years of clout accumulated through being a dutiful stooge.

target your anger appropriately. stop blaming the voters. the Democratic party has never and will never care about you or anyone in this country other than their corporate owners.

[saywhat-politics]

The United States made a $3.4 billion payment in direct budget support to Ukraine, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Dec. 30.

The payment is the final portion of funds allocated under the bipartisan Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act 2024, Yellen's statement read.

[mariacallous]

A few days after the “No Kings” protests, I flew to Washington, to attend an awards gala hosted by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan organization that trains and supports federal workers. The Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, or Sammies—touted as “the ‘Oscars’ of government service”—have been given to hundreds of Feds since 9/11, with the goal of “highlighting the extraordinary accomplishments of our government and the vital role it plays in our daily lives.” Guests in tuxedos and evening gowns streamed into the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center, the university’s swanky new graduate building in downtown Washington. They sipped sparkling wine and snacked on global-ish appetizers: Vietnamese summer rolls, norimaki, chicken cordon bleu.

Typically, the Partnership honors a couple dozen civil servants and names a Federal Employee of the Year. Each winner receives a trophy and gives a speech. This year, the organization briefly considered skipping the Sammies altogether, so as not to make anyone a target. Max Stier, the president of the Partnership, began his remarks on a sombre note. “Today, I’m worried,” he said, “about the future of the Sammies and the public-servant heroes who make it possible.” Adjustments were made to the usual program. Only one of the twenty-three awardees appeared onstage: David Lebryk, who won Employee of the Year in part for having resigned as fiscal Assistant Secretary of the Treasury rather than give DOGE access to payment systems. The honorees were introduced by Washington dignitaries such as Judy Woodruff, of PBS, and the former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The teleprompter was placed at an uncomfortable height for Yellen, who is five feet tall; the strain of her outstretched neck seemed to fit the occasion. (In 2018, Trump had told his aides that she was too short to run the Federal Reserve.)

At the Department of Agriculture, Yakov Pachepsky and Moon S. Kim were using drones and handheld scanners to detect toxic contaminants in food-processing plants and farms. Laura Cheever, formerly with the Health Resources and Services Administration, had managed a program that delivered care to millions of poor, uninsured Americans with H.I.V./AIDS. Thuc Hoang led the development of El Capitan, a supercomputer powerful enough to conduct nuclear simulations, at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Luis Coronado, Jr., and Matt Pierce, at the State Department, created a system for online passport renewals. The honorees stood up dutifully from their seats to receive the crowd’s applause. But they looked uncomfortable—perhaps bashful, or even afraid. Their biographies contained no hint of partisan finish; researchers tracking extreme heat (i.e., climate change) were described as engaging in “long-range scientific research” on “the leading cause of weather-related death in the United States.” Yet even the most seemingly neutral jobs were being politicized, and bludgeoned, by this Administration. A Sammy winner named Maya Bretzius, for instance, had revamped call-center operations at the I.R.S., reducing wait times for taxpayers. Congress has since rescinded the billions of dollars President Joe Biden allocated to such improvements, and the I.R.S. has twenty-five thousand fewer employees than it did at the start of the year.

I flipped through my own mental Rolodex of Feds. Some I still messaged with regularly; others had fallen out of touch, after layoffs or relocations, or because they were tired of talking about work. Mary, a young scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, had resigned and moved across the country to start a job in the private sector. Juan, an airport agent with the Transportation Security Administration, had seen his union contract nullified then restored, at least temporarily, through litigation. Rachel Gittleman, who’d worked on student financial aid at the Department of Education, was rehired because of a court ruling, then fired again, and hopes to be re-rehired on appeal.

There continues to be widespread disarray, burnout, and pressure to quit. Many of the civil servants who remain are pushing against their limits. Steven, a Social Security customer-service representative I wrote about in March, now sees going to work every day as an act of civil disobedience. “The fear has changed,” he told me. “Before, it was mainly about losing our jobs. ‘Don’t say this, don’t do that.’ My fear now is, some people flat-out don’t care if they get fired.”

When the Federal Government Eats Itself: After six months of DOGE, vital institutions are in disarray as the civil service braces for new cuts.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

‘Morally, nobody’s against it’: Brazil’s radical plan to tax global super-rich to tackle climate crisis

A 2% levy would affect about 100 billionaire families, says the country’s climate chief, but the $250bn raised could be transformative

Proposals to slap a wealth tax on the world’s super-rich could yield $250bn (£200bn) a year to tackle the climate crisis and address poverty and inequality, but would affect only a small number of billionaire families, Brazil’s climate chief has said.

Ministers from the G20 group of the world’s biggest developed and emerging economies are meeting in Rio de Janeiro this weekend, where Brazil’s proposal for a 2% wealth tax on those with assets worth more than $1bn is near the top of the agenda.

No government was speaking out against the tax, said Ana Toni, who is national secretary for climate change in the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“Our feeling is that, morally, nobody’s against,” she told the Observer in an interview. “But the level of support from some countries is bigger than others.”

However, the lack of overt opposition does not mean the tax proposal is likely to be approved. Many governments are privately sceptical but unwilling to publicly criticise a plan that would shave a tiny amount from the rapidly accumulating wealth of the planet’s richest few, and raise money to address the pressing global climate emergency.

Janet Yellen, the US Treasury ­secretary, told journalists in Rio that the US “did not see the need” for a global initiative.

Continue reading.

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

The US House of Representatives has launched an investigation into 20 nonprofit organizations that are currently funding anti-Zionist student groups mounting pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses, an effort aimed at uncovering long suspected links to terrorist organizations and other hostile foreign entities.

As part of the inquiry, US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and James Comer (R-KY) wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday, asking her to share any “suspicious activity reports” generated by the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and other groups.

Foxx and Comer chair the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, respectively.

“The committees are investigating the sources of funding and financing for groups who are organizing, leading, and participating in pro-Hamas, antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American protests with illegal encampments on American college campuses,” Foxx and Comer wrote in their letter to Yellen. “This investigation relates to both malign influence on college campuses and to the national security implications of such influence on faculty and student organizations.”

The inquiry comes amid widespread suspicion that an eruption of anti-Zionist protests on college campuses, in which students illegally occupied sections of section and refused to leave unless their schools agreed to condemn and boycott Israel, was fueled by immense financial and logistical support from outside groups. Foxx and Comer said in their letter that the investigation’s findings will inform recommendations for new federal laws requiring increased transparency and reporting of foreign contributions to American colleges and universities.

On Tuesday, Foxx told the Washington Free Beacon, which first reported the investigation, that the protests were a symptom of a larger threat to national security.

“It’s no coincidence that the day after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, antisemitic mobs began springing up at college campuses across the country,” Foxx said. “These protests have been coordinated and well organized, indicating that outside groups or influences may be at play. American education is under attack. It’s critical that Congress investigates how these groups — who are tearing apart our institutions — are being funded and advised before it’s too late.”

Foreign links to the anti-Zionist student movement have been the subject of numerous comprehensive studies.

Last week, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) published a report showing a connection between the anti-Zionist group Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) — a group formed immediately after Hamas’ massacre on Oct. 7 — and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). NCRI explained that SID4P, which organized numerous traffic-obstructing demonstrations after Oct. 7, is an umbrella group for several other organizations which compose the “Singham Network,” a consortium of far-left groups funded by Neville Roy Singham and Jodie Evans. The report describes Singham and Evans as a “power couple within the global far-left movement” whose affiliation with the CCP has been copiously documented.

“The Singham Network exploits regulatory loopholes in the US nonprofit system to facilitate the flow of an enormous sum of US dollars to organizations and movements that actively stoke social unrest at the grassroots level,” the report said. “Alternative media outlets associated with the Singham Network have played a central role in online mobilization and cross-platform social amplification for SID4P.”

In 2022, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) revealed that one of the founders of Students for Justice in Palestine, Hatem Bazian, is also a co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine, an advocacy group which, NAS said, “retains ties to terrorist groups operating in the Palestinian Territories.”

NAS added that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Cultural Boycott of Israel — which has been influential is steering the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in academia — is “structurally linked” to Palestinian terrorist organizations through the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine — a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee which comprises Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Popular Front-General Command, Palestinian Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“On the one hand, BDS is designed to secure political legitimacy vis-á-vis Israel, with boycotts and divestment offering Palestinian activists and terrorists new domains to assert their cause,” NAS senior fellow Ian Oxnevad wrote. “On the other hand, BDS, along with the formation of multiple NGOs and nonprofit organizations, offers the Palestinians new avenues by which to access funding in a post-9/11 international financial system designed to curtail funding for terrorism.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich:: GOP strategy in its totality

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 18, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 19, 2024

Today, at a White House reception in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, President Joe Biden said: "We don't demonize immigrants. We don't single them out for attacks. We don't believe they're poisoning the blood of the country. We're a nation of immigrants, and that's why we're so damn strong."

Biden’s celebration of the country’s heritage might have doubled as a celebration of the success of his approach to piloting the economy out of the ravages of the pandemic. Today the Fed cut interest rates a half a point, a dramatic cut indicating that it considers inflation to be under control. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has maintained that it would be possible to slow inflation without causing a recession—a so-called soft landing—and she appears to have been vindicated.

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell said: “The labor market is in solid condition, and our intention with our policy move today is to keep it there. You can say that about the whole economy: The US economy is in good shape. It’s growing at a solid pace, inflation is coming down. The labor market is at a strong pace. We want to keep it there. That’s what we’re doing.”

Powell, whom Trump first appointed to his position, said, “We do our work to serve all Americans. We’re not serving any politician, any political figure, any cause, any issue, nothing. It’s just maximum employment and price stability on behalf of all Americans.”

Powell was anticipating accusations from Trump that his cutting of rates was an attempt to benefit Harris before the election. Indeed, Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported that Trump advisor Steven Moore called the move “jaw-dropping. There's no reason they couldn't do 25 now and 25 right after the election. Why not wait till then?” Moore added, "I'm not saying [the] reduction isn't justified—it may well be and they have more data than I do. But i just think, 'why now?’” Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville called the cut “shamelessly political.” 

The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch noted that “Trump has been begging officials worldwide not to do the right thing for years to help rig the election for him—no deal in Gaza, no defense of Ukraine, no Kremlin hostages release, no border deal, no continuing resolution, no interest rate cuts etc—just sabotage & subterfuge.”

That impulse to focus on regaining power rather than serving the country was at least part of what was behind Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s lie about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. That story has gotten even darker as it turns out Vance and Trump received definitive assurances on September 9 that the rumor was false, but Trump ran with it in the presidential debate of September 10 anyway. Now, although it has been made very clear—including by Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine—that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are there legally, Vance told a reporter today that he personally considers the programs under which they came illegal, so he is still “going to call [a Haitian migrant] an illegal alien.”

The lies about those immigrants have so derailed the Springfield community with bomb threats and public safety concerns that when the Trump campaign suggested Trump was planning a visit there, the city’s Republican mayor, Rob Rue, backed by DeWine, threw cold water on the idea. “It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Rue said. Nonetheless, tonight, Trump told a crowd in Long Island, New York, that he will go to Springfield within the next two weeks. 

The false allegation against Haitian immigrants has sparked outrage, but it has accomplished one thing for the campaign, anyway: it has gotten Trump at least to speak about immigration—which was the issue they planned to campaign on—rather than Hannibal Lecter, electric boats, and sharks, although he continues to insist that “everyone is agreeing that I won the Debate with Kamala.” Trump, Vance, and Republican lawmakers are now talking more about policies.

In the presidential debate of September 10, Trump admitted that after nine years of promising he would release a new and better healthcare plan than the Affordable Care Act in just a few weeks, all he really had were “concepts of a plan.” Vance has begun to explain to audiences that he intends to separate people into different insurance pools according to their health conditions and risk levels. That business model meant that insurers could refuse to insure people with pre-existing conditions, and overturning it was a key driver of the ACA.

Senate and House Republicans told Peter Sullivan of Axios that if they regain control of the government, they will work to get rid of the provision in the Inflation Reduction Act that permits the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. Negotiations on the first ten drugs, completed in August, will lower the cost of those drugs enough to save taxpayers $6 billion a year, while those enrolled in Medicare will save $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses. 

Yesterday Trump promised New Yorkers that he would restore the state and local tax deduction (SALT) that he himself capped at $10,000 in his 2017 tax cuts. In part, the cap was designed to punish Democratic states that had high taxes and higher government services, but now he wants to appeal to voters in those same states. On CNBC, host Joe Kernan pointed out that this would blow up the deficit, but House speaker Mike Johnson said that the party would nonetheless consider such a measure because it would continue to stand behind less regulation and lower taxes.

In a conversation with Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary, Trump delivered another stream of consciousness commentary in which he appeared to suggest that he would lower food prices by cutting imports. Economics professor Justin Wolfers noted: “I'm exhausted even saying it, but blocking supply won't reduce prices, and it's not even close.” Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark added, “Tell me more about why you have to vote for Trump because of his ‘policies.’”

Trump has said he supports in vitro fertilization, or IVF, as have a number of Republican lawmakers, but today, 44 Republican senators once again blocked the Senate from passing a measure protecting it. The procedure is in danger from state laws establishing “fetal personhood,” which give a fertilized egg all the rights of a human being as established by the Fourteenth Amendment. That concept is in the 2024 Republican Party platform.

Trump has also demanded that Republicans in Congress shut down the government unless a continuing resolution to fund the government contains the so-called SAVE Act requiring people to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote. Speaker Johnson continues to suggest that undocumented immigrants vote in elections, but it is illegal for even documented noncitizens to do so, and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the nonprofit American Immigration Council notes that even the right-wing Heritage Foundation has found only 12 cases of such illegal voting in the past 40 years.

Johnson brought the continuing resolution bill with the SAVE Act up for a vote today. It failed by a vote of 202 to 220. If the House and then the Senate don’t pass a funding bill, the government will shut down on October 1.

Republican endorsements of the Harris-Walz ticket continue to pile up. On Monday, six-term representative Bob Inglis (R-SC) told the Charleston City Paper that “Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to the republic” and said he would vote for Harris. “If Donald Trump loses, that would be a good thing for the Republican Party,” Inglis said. “Because then we could have a Republican rethink and get a correction.” 

George W. Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzales, conservative columnist George Will, more than 230 former officials for presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and 17 former staff members for Ronald Reagan have all recently added their names to the list of those supporting Harris. Today more than 100 Republican former members of Congress and national security officials who served in Republican administrations endorsed Harris, saying they “firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump.” They cited his chaotic governance, his praising of enemies and undermining allies, his politicizing the military and disparaging veterans, his susceptibility to manipulation by Russian president Vladimir Putin, and his attempt to overthrow democracy. They praised Harris for her consistent championing of “the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles.” 

Yesterday, singer-songwriters Billie Eilish, who has 119 million followers on Instagram, and Finneas, who has 4.2 million, asked people to register and to vote for Harris and Walz. “Vote like your life depends on it,” Eilish said, “because it does.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[olivafans]

The Treasury warns Congress that the debt ceiling could be reached in January. The FDA says that the decongestant in many cold medicines is ineffective

WASHINGTON-Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said her agency would need to start taking "extraordinary measures," or special accounting maneuvers intended to prevent the nation from hitting the debt ceiling, as early as January 14, in a letter sent to congressional leaders Friday afternoon.

Kids do not click this link

"Treasury expects to hit the statutory debt ceiling between January 14 and January 23," Yellen wrote in the letter addressed to House and Senate leadership, at which point extraordinary measures would be used to prevent the government from breaching the nation's debt ceiling — which has been suspended until January 1.

The department has deployed the "extraordinary measures" before to keep the government operating. But once those measures run out, the government risks defaulting on its debt unless lawmakers and the president agree to lift the limit on the U.S. government's ability to borrow.

"I respectfully urge Congress to act to protect the full faith and credit of the United States," she said.

The news comes after President Joe Biden signed a bill into law last week that averted a government shutdown but did not include President-elect Donald Trump's core debt demand to raise or suspend the nation's debt limit. Congress approved the bill only after fierce internal debate among Republicans over how to handle Trump's demand. "Anything else is a betrayal of our country," Trump said in a statement.

After a protracted debate in summer 2023 over how to fund the government, policymakers crafted the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which included suspending the nation's $31.4 trillion borrowing authority until January 1, 2025.

Notably however, Yellen said, the debt is projected to temporarily decrease on January 2 because of a scheduled redemption of nonmarketable securities held by a federal trust fund associated with Medicare payments. As a result, "Treasury does not expect that it will be necessary to start taking extraordinary measures on January 2 to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations," she said.

The federal debt, which ballooned across both Republican and Democratic administrations, is now roughly $36 trillion. The spike in inflation after the coronavirus pandemic increased government borrowing costs; as a result, debt service next year will exceed spending on national security.

Republicans, who will have full control of the White House, House and Senate in the new year, have plans to extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts and other priorities but debate over how to pay for them.

Kids do not click this link

[cogitoergofun]

The IRS announced Thursday that it has collected $1 billion in back taxes from high-wealth tax cheats — a milestone meant to showcase how the agency is making use of the money it received as part of the Biden administration’s signature climate, health care, and tax package signed into law in 2022.

Part of the push for public awareness of high-wealth tax collections is a growing recognition by agency officials that a potential Republican takeover of the White House and Congress could mean massive future budget cuts for the IRS. Showing the public how much work the IRS is getting done is meant to give the much-maligned agency a more sympathetic image.

As part of that effort, last year the IRS launched a series of initiatives aimed at pursuing high-wealth individuals who have failed to pay their tax debts. The IRS says the campaign is focused on taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt.

“President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is increasing tax fairness and ensuring that all wealthy taxpayers pay the taxes they owe, just like working families do,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

In June, the Treasury proposed a rule and guidance that includes plans to essentially stop “partnership basis shifting” — a process by which a business or person can move assets among a series of related parties to avoid paying taxes. That could raise more than $50 billion in revenue over the next decade, Treasury said.

Other initiatives announced in the past year have included pursuing people and businesses that improperly deduct personal flights on corporate jets and collecting back taxes from delinquent millionaires.

Eugene Steuerle, a fellow and co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said if the IRS “can show they’re having a positive impact and it’s not impacting average American taxpayers, there would be more public support for this activity and the agency.”

“Any increase in government investigations appears like an intrusion,” Steuerle said. He added that if the IRS can show taxpayers how it is conducting its investigations, the broader public may become less fearful of an audit.

Republicans have meanwhile threatened a series of cuts to the IRS, sometimes successfully.

House Republicans built a $1.4 billion reduction to the IRS into the debt ceiling and budget cuts package passed by Congress in the summer of 2023. The deal included a separate agreement to take $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years and divert that money to other non-defense programs.

House Republicans’ fiscal year 2025 proposal out of the Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee in June proposes further cuts to the IRS in 2025, and would cut funding to the Direct File program that is being expanded to allow Americans to file their taxes directly with the IRS.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Biden Administration blocks sale of US Steel by Nippon Steel

Jeff Stein and David J. Lynch at Washington Post:

President Joe Biden’s decision to block Nippon Steel’s proposed purchase of U.S. Steel was a political act made in “clear violation of due process and the law,” the two companies said Friday, signaling that a courtroom fight is imminent. The government’s review of the deal “was deeply corrupted by politics and the outcome was predetermined, without an investigation on the merits, but to satisfy the political objectives of the Biden White House,” the two companies said in a joint statement.

The companies said they were “left with no choice but to take all appropriate action to protect our legal rights,” reiterating earlier warnings that they would go to court to challenge a presidential rejection. Biden’s rejection of the dealcame in a presidential order posted on the White House website, declaring Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid for the U.S. steelmaker “prohibited.” In a statement accompanying the order, the president said the nation would be “less strong and less secure” without a U.S.-owned steel industry. “This acquisition would place one of America’s largest steel producers under foreign control and create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains,” Biden said. Biden opted to kill the deal despite intense efforts in recent days by some of his senior advisers, who warned that rejecting a sizable investment from a top Japanese corporation could damage U.S. relations with Japan.

Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel had previously vowed to pursue legal action against the government, claiming it failed to follow proper procedures during its consideration of the acquisition. The president’s action comes after a Dec. 23 report by the interagency committee responsible for reviewing foreign investments in the United States for potential national security concerns. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) said it was unable to reach a consensus on the risks of the Nippon Steel deal, leaving the final verdict with the White House. In its final evaluation of the transaction, the committee warned that after buying U.S. Steel, Nippon Steel could reduce domestic steel output and pose “risks to the national security of the United States.” Among the industries hit hardest in that case would be the transportation and energy sectors, said the panel, chaired by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen.

[...] Biden had planned in September to block the deal. But after Democratic officials in Pennsylvania raised alarms about potential economic and political costs in that critical swing state, he agreed to postpone the decision until the presidential election was finished.

[...] The collapse of Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.9 billion acquisition represents a victory for United Steelworkers union president David McCall. A fourth-generation steelworker who rose to lead the union following the 2023 death of his predecessor, McCall objected to the deal from the moment it was announced in December 2023. At the time, Nippon Steel said it wanted to buy U.S. Steel to benefit from the industrial revival spurred by Biden’s economic policies. The president’s signature legislative achievements — the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, semiconductor industry subsidies and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act’s clean-energy projects — were driving steel demand higher. And U.S. tariffs made it more profitable to produce industrial metals here rather than import them from Japan.

[...] U.S. Steel’s next step is not clear. The Pittsburgh-based steelmaker could resume its search for a buyer. Previous bidders include Cleveland Cliffs, the second-largest domestic steel producer, which offered $7.3 billion to acquire the company in 2023. U.S. Steel also could opt to proceed as a stand-alone company. But CEO David Burritt already has warned that it lacks the financial resources needed to reinvigorate some of its aging blast furnaces in Pennsylvania’s Mon Valley and in Gary, Indiana.

Smart move by President Joe Biden (D) to block the purchase of US Steel by Nippon Steel.

[darkmaga-returns]

Janet Yellen will finally step down from her role as Treasury Secretary in January, leaving a massive mess for her replacement, Scott Bessent. The budget deficit surpassed $36 trillion under the Biden-Harris Administration, with Yellen touting that the US had an endless supply of funds to spend and imaginary success of Bidenomics.

As head of the Federal Reserve under Obama, Yellen was an outspoken advocate for QE. She worked closely with Bernanke and Greenspan, but is actually considered the main architect of the Fed’s now dead quantitative easing program that began in December of 2008. “Potentially anything – including negative interest rates – would be on the table. But we would have to study carefully how they would work here in the U.S. context,” Yellen argued back in 2015. This academic and longtime Fed insider spent her career pandering to the White House.

Perhaps part of her legacy as America’s CFO under Biden-Harris would be her insistence that inflation was “transitory.” Yellen called the US debt downgrade “arbitrary” when Fitch Ratings downgraded US long-term debt late from AAA to AA+.

She never spoke as an authority on economics, but rather, she spoke as if she were a puppet of the WEF implanted in government to spread economic-related propaganda. Yellen is akin to the Karine Jean-Pierre of America’s financial system insofar as her job is to openly lie to the public and convince them that their reality is not as it seems.

Video Player

00:00

01:01

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is proof that the establishment is completely clueless when it comes to the lives of the average citizen. “People are better off than they were pre-pandemic,” Yellen touted on national news last week. Perhaps she meant to say “politicians” rather than people, and no, one cannot point at rising US indexes and claim that is sufficient evidence that the overall economy is sound.

Despite millions of Americans struggling financially amid inflation in the post-pandemic landscape, Yellen had the audacity to claim that most Americans are happy with their financial situation despite every bit of data indicating otherwise. “So, they seem to perceive the economy as a whole as doing less well than they are personally. But most Americans feel good about their own economic situation.”

Yellen insisted that inflation was under control. Completely out of touch, Yellen even denied the prevalence of food inflation. “I think largely it reflects cost increases, including labor cost increases that grocery firms have experienced, although there may be some increases in margins,” Yellen, who has a net worth of $20 million, stated before advocating centralized agriculture.

Yet, she promoted every major spending package Biden signed off on. Yellen was the first to admit the true reason behind the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest spending package in US history, was to propel the climate change agenda. “The Inflation Reduction Act is, at its core, about turning the climate crisis into an economic opportunity,” Yellen admitted.

[lagoe]

US Government Announces New Policies to Curb Rising Inflation

Washington D.C., January 20, 2025 - The U.S. government has taken a major step toward curbing inflation, which has reached a decade high. With the inflation rate now at 6.8 percent, economists and citizens are facing rising prices for basic goods, fuel, and housing costs.

The first step taken was an interest rate adjustment by the Federal Reserve. In a statement released on Tuesday (19/1), Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced a 0.5 percent increase in the benchmark interest rate. This increase aims to reduce excessive consumption and investment, which is considered to be one of the triggers of high inflation. Powell emphasized that this monetary policy will be implemented carefully to avoid the risk of recession.

In addition, the White House also launched a new stimulus package that focuses on the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector. In a press conference held on the same day, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained that this package includes providing energy subsidies to SMEs, tax breaks, and incentives for businesses that switch to renewable energy. “We understand the pressure that small businesses are feeling right now, and the government is committed to providing real help to maintain their competitiveness,” Yellen said.

However, this policy is not free from criticism. Some parties, including opposition groups in Congress, said the interest rate hike could have a negative impact on low-income people who are still in the process of post-pandemic economic recovery. They also questioned the effectiveness of the stimulus, which is considered to be less directly targeted at households affected by inflation.

On the other hand, analysts give mixed views. Sarah Johnson, senior economist at the Brookings Institution, said that this policy is a necessary step to control inflation, but it must be balanced with close monitoring of its social impact. “We need to make sure that these measures do not increase the burden on vulnerable groups,” she said.

Meanwhile, Americans continue to wait for the impact of this policy on prices in the market. Some citizens have voiced concerns over the rising prices of basic goods, while others hope that the government's policy can immediately restore economic stability.

The US government's move is in the spotlight, given the country's position as one of the world's largest economic powers. The extent to which this policy succeeds in lowering inflation without triggering other negative impacts, will still be a big question that continues to be monitored in the next few months.

[mariacallous]

The U.S. Treasury Department has announced a $20 billion loan to Ukraine, to be repaid using interest from frozen Russian assets.

“These funds – paid for by the windfall proceeds earned from Russia’s own immobilized assets – will provide Ukraine a critical infusion of support as it defends its country against an unprovoked war of aggression,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

The U.S. loan is part of a $50 billion aid package agreed upon by G7 nations at their June summit. In October, the European Council approved a loan of up to 35 billion euros ($36.7 billion) for Ukraine, also backed by revenues from frozen Russian assets.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Western nations have frozen more than $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets, most of which are held in Europe. Earlier this year, the European Union began transferring profits generated from these assets to Ukraine.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

In an address in Belém, Brazil, United States Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said the world needs $3 trillion in financing annually to reach its 2050 climate and biodiversity goals.

Yellen said transitioning to a low-carbon economy would require far more than the current amount of yearly financing, but that filling that gap is the greatest economic opportunity of this century, reported Reuters.

“Climate change poses a daily and existential threat to individuals, communities, and countries. It harms human health, damages homes and businesses, and strains government budgets,” Yellen said at the Goeldi Museum in Belém, considered Brazil’s gateway to the Amazon, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. “Put simply, neglecting to address climate change and the loss of nature and biodiversity is not just bad environmental policy. It is bad economic policy.”

Yellen also announced the Amazon Region Initiative Against Illicit Finance to combat nature crimes by battling their financing, as well as the international criminal organizations that benefit from it. The initiative is a partnership between the U.S., regional partners and Amazon basin countries Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Guyana and Suriname.

Yellen said reaching net-zero was one of the Biden-Harris administration’s top priorities, but that it would require expanding endeavors beyond the United States.

“We know that we can only achieve our climate and economic goals — from reducing global emissions to adapting and building resilience, from strengthening markets to bolstering supply chains — if we also lead efforts far beyond our borders,” Yellen said.

Yellen went on to say that she had seen the value of three specific aspects of the department’s approach to advancing the international climate, nature and biodiversity agenda of the administration. The first is strengthening ally and partner relationships, the second is making global financial architecture operate better for nations, and the third is putting to use the power of markets.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Who is brave enough to back Brazil’s global tax on billionaires? The answer will define our future

It would raise $250bn to help offset some of the damage the super-rich cause. Yet they’ll do everything to stop it in its tracks

Who is government for? It’s a question we should never stop asking. The answer that keeps coming back is “not the majority”. For example, the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic produced remarkably consistent polling results. Repeated surveys showed fewer than 10% of people wished to return to the pre-pandemic economy. The great majority wanted to see one good thing emerging from the trauma of the illness and the measures used to address it: a fairer, greener, kinder economic system.

But the Conservative government had other ideas. It announced what then prime minister Boris Johnson called a “significant return to normality”. His normality, of course. The structure of the Covid bailouts ensured that the big banks gained massively, often at the expense of small businesses. Executive pay and dividends for shareholders soared, while lowlier workers lost incomes and livelihoods.

I think we are all either vaguely or painfully aware that, regardless of changes of government, our needs will be met only if they coincide with the demands of capital. If they run directly counter to those demands, however great and consistent our wishes might be, they scarcely stand a chance.

The response to the pandemic was one test of that proposition. Now the world’s governments face another. Last week, Brazilian climate minister Ana Toni explained a proposal put forward by her government (and now supported by South Africa, Germany and Spain), for a 2% global tax on the wealth of the world’s billionaires. Though it would affect just 3,000 of the super-rich, it would raise around $250bn (£195bn): a significant contribution either to global climate funds or to poverty alleviation.

Radical? Not at all. According to calculations by Oxfam, the wealth of billionaires has been growing so fast in recent years that maintaining it at a constant level would have required an annual tax of 12.8%. Trillions, in other words: enough to address global problems long written off as intractable.

You would need to perform Olympian mental gymnastics to oppose Brazil’s very modest proposal. It addresses, albeit to a tiny extent, one of the great democratic deficits of our time: that capital operates globally, while voting power stops at the national border. Without global measures, in the contest between people and plutocrats, the plutocrats will inevitably win. They can extract vast wealth from the nations in which they operate, often with the help of government subsidies and state contracts, and shift it through opaque networks of shell companies and secrecy regimes, placing it beyond the reach of any tax authority. This is what some of the global “investors” in the UK’s water companies have done. The money they extracted is now gone, and we are left with both the debts they accumulated and the ruins of the system they ransacked. Get tough with capital, or capital will get tough with you.

The Brazilian proposal, which will be put before the G20 summit in Rio in November, has already been dismissed by the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, who suggested there was no need for it. On whose behalf does she make this claim? Not ours. Wherever people have been surveyed, including in the US, there is strong support for raising taxes on the rich.

Continue reading.