Distinction Matter - Subscribed Feeds

Authored by Travis Gillmore via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

With the state facing a record-high budget deficit, tax collections are failing to meet California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal projections, which could put further pressure on the state’s finances.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks in Los Angeles on Jan. 3, 2024. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

As of April 25, the state’s franchise tax board is showing personal income tax collections on track to approximately match estimates for the month.

However, corporate tax revenues of $4.16 billion equate to more than $500 million below forecasts for the month and are off by $1.4 billion for the fiscal year.

Some economists point to disruptions in the technology industry—with thousands of California jobs slashed across several companies in recent months—as a contributing factor in declining corporate and personal income taxes.

“The loss of tech jobs has also hurt California’s public finances, which have grown heavily dependent on Silicon Valley,” Joseph Politano, independent writer for online data and economy newsletter Apricitas Economics, posted April 14 on Substack. “It will mean less future potential revenue—forcing the state to raise tax rates or pare back spending on investment, social services, and more.”

Sales and use taxes are also driving the shortfall, missing estimates by $1 billion since November.

In March, such receipts came in $653 million below forecast, which the finance department said, “reflect ongoing weakness in taxable sales.”

Data analysts blamed inflation and high-interest rates, in part, for the lackluster sales tax collections, as cash-strapped consumers are managing their finances by reducing spending on some items.

“This decline reflects consumer challenges balancing higher prices and financing costs with essential household needs,” Andy Nickerson, president and CEO of HdL Companies—a data and consulting services provider for local governments—said in an April 16 tax report summary. “As the Federal Reserve considers a delay in softening rates, [we anticipate] consumer spending may continue to stagnate, delaying a return to normal historical growth trends in 2024.”

Cumulative March tax receipts came in $243 million below estimates and contributed to a $5.8 billion shortfall since November—representing a 4 percent miss—according to a recently released report from the state’s Department of Finance.

While personal income tax receipts exceeded expectations in March, estimated payments since November were down $4.7 billion, suggesting weakness in tax collections for the 2023 tax year, the finance department reported.

With the income tax due date of April 15, more details will be available in the first week of May once calculations are complete. Preliminary information from the state’s controller’s office suggests the governor’s estimate could be $6 billion or more higher than actual revenues collected.

While Mr. Newsom’s January proposal was based on forecasts, a revision due in May will be able to incorporate receipts received, which should provide more clarity.

“All of these results suggest that April revenues, in the aggregate, may come in several hundred million dollars below monthly estimates,” Jason Sisney, budget director for Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, said in a Substack post April 25. “It is virtually certain that the May Revision will downgrade revenue projections from those the Governor released in January.”

Mr. Newsom is expected to provide the revision on or before the May 14 deadline.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office predicted earlier this year after weak tax collections in January that revenues would miss the governor’s estimates by about $16 billion for the 2023–2024 fiscal year and another $9 billion for 2024–2025.

But following personal income tax revenues in February and March that were closer to estimate, Mr. Sisney believes the shortfall will not be as large as the analyst’s office suggested.

“Based on revenue trends to date ... it is difficult for me to see revenues dropping quite that much,” he said.

Disparities in estimates between the governor and the analyst’s office have existed since January regarding the severity of the budget deficit.

Mr. Newsom estimates a $38 billion shortfall, while analysts forecast a $73 billion gap in funding. Some of the differences lie in the governor’s calculation of solutions proposed, which the analyst’s office says accounts for about $20 billion of the discrepancy.

With the numbers in flux, lawmakers and policy experts are awaiting final totals so that budget proposals can be debated in earnest.

Mr. Newsom recently approved a “budget bill junior” crafted by Democratic lawmakers as an early action plan to address a portion of the deficit.

Approximately $17 billion to chip away at the deficit—including deferrals, delays, borrowing, and some $3.6 billion cuts—primarily to one-time funding—were enacted by his signing of Assembly Bill 106 on April 15.

Authored by Roger Simon via The Epoch Times,

I am writing this column in the hopes you will pass it around.

To be honest, I write every column in the hopes it will be passed around, times being what they are. I’m arrogant enough to think what I have to say is at least somewhat needed. More humbly, G-d gave me a modicum of writing skill I have concluded for a reason and, more than ever in my life, I, at the age of 80, seem constrained to use it. I rarely stop, and when I do, all I seem to think about is what I’m going to write next, except when I’m playing tennis... And even then...

Today’s title is, of course, a knock-off of “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” written by Ed and Patsy Bruce, but made famous, as these things go, by others—the estimable Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. If you’ve been living under the proverbial rock and haven’t heard their fabulous recording—and even if you have; I listen to it all the time—it’s right here.

It begins: “Cowboys ain’t easy to love/And they’re harder to hold.” If you replace “Cowboys” with “Activists,” it still makes sense, maybe more. Trust me—I’ve been there myself, years and years ago. We were wrong then. They’re worse now.

This is all a long way around to what my theme is - the cause of the civilization-threatening unholy mess we are in with so many of our supposedly premier institutions of higher learning - indeed the world’s supposedly premier institutions of higher learning - Ivy League on down, turned into satanic campgrounds celebrating a group of bloodthirsty maniacs that make the Nazi Party seem like... well, let’s just leave it there.

Except that 1939 has come back. From Wikipedia:

“On February 20, 1939, a Nazi rally took place at Madison Square Garden, organized by the German American Bund. More than 20,000 people attended, and Fritz Julius Kuhn was a featured speaker. The Bund billed the event, which took place two days before George Washington’s Birthday, as a pro-‘Americanism’ rally; the stage at the event featured a huge Washington portrait with swastikas on each side.”

Déjà vu all over again? The proverbial canary in the coal mine come back for yet another bow?

Yes, but now it’s arguably worse. No more wrapping themselves in the flag. George Washington, no longer revered, is just another statue to be toppled. It’s “Death to America” all the way down at our leading universities and it’s spreading.

It’s Rashida Tlaib’s world. We just live in it.

Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be activists—see what I mean?

I’m not talking about the loyal readers of this site. I’d be astonished if they were the kind of parents or grandparents who would countenance that kind of thing. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they (you) know plenty who are.

Also, I know many fine people who have done their bests with their progeny only to find that years of critical race theory (flagrant or masked) and other assorted “woke” excrescences in the schools, not to mention the inability to concentrate brought on via the supposed gifts of Silicon Valley, have made it impossible anyway.

When looking for blame for what happened to this generation of college students, half or near of whom seem to prefer Hamas to Israel, most point at the educational system itself, so neo-Marxist “woke” from kindergarten up it’s hard to imagine how they could be more so, and to the media who cheer it along, amplify it, and excuse its excesses.

But it all starts in the home. In other words, someone was not home to give these young people guidance and rein in at least some of their excesses—the parents.

It’s not been just an abdication of responsibility. In more cases than we would like to know, the parents may also have cheered them on, seeing in their rebellious children the vindication of their own, much more tepid, rebellions years ago.

In yet other cases it’s more direct, and worse.

As illustration, recall how, back in 2020, former president Barack Obama proudly announced his daughters’ participation in protests led by Black Lives Matter, an organization that proved to be a financial rip-off not just of other blacks, but of all who contributed to their racialist con game. (That link, by the way, comes to you via the oh-so-chic folks at Harper’s Bazaar.)

Of the three causes mentioned, the parents may, in the end, be the most to blame, though needless to say a fourth element, our government, has its portion too, an amazingly large one, fomenting what Christopher Rufo sees as internal “color revolutions” via such amusements (for children yet) as “Drag Queens for Palestine.”

It’s impossible to know how many of these protestors come from single-parent homes, but it’s almost certain to be a high percentage. This is a national disaster in itself.

It’s hard to know in general how many of them there are or even who they are because they wear masks or keffiyehs covering their faces (for fear of COVID or, more likely, identification by future employers).

What we are seeing on our campuses is the product of a family environment imploding or, sadly, already imploded. Much of this is and has been intentional.

I apologize to all of you for being so “hobbyhorsical,” as Laurence Sterne termed it hundreds of years ago, on this topic, but the situation we are in is indeed civilizational. One can only praise the few governors—Texas, Florida—who have stood up to the onslaught and properly used the National Guard to return their universities to what was supposedly their real purpose—something called education.

So let’s end with some good news. It was long overdue, but the Ivy League and similar institutions are finally losing their luster. It is being widely reported that many students and their families—not just Jewish ones—are deciding to go elsewhere, to the Midwest and South, for their studies that might be more even-handed.

Others are deciding that college isn’t such a great thing after all and are going to trade schools. Good on them. (I wonder how many of those trade schools are having pro-Hamas demonstrations. Not many, I’d wager.)

Finally, a word about a word—“activists.” It is used as well to characterize adherents of what we often think of as good causes. I say—bag it. Let’s leave that term to the Left. That way you don’t have to let your babies grow up to be “activists,” because, chances are, they’re not going to be the kind you want.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Do not believe the White House/mainstream media-concocted narrative that the four criminal court cases - prosecuted by Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis - were not in part coordinated, synchronized, and timed to reach their courtroom psychodramatic finales right during the 2024 campaign season.

These local, state, and federal Lilliputian agendas were designed to tie down, gag, confine, bankrupt, and destroy Trump psychologically and physically. They are the final lawfare denouement to years of extra-legal efforts to emasculate him.

Indeed, the nation is by now worn out by these serial assaults on constitutional norms: the Hillary-funded Steele dossier subterfuge; the pre-election Russian laptop disinformation campaign; the two impeachments without special counsel reports; the impeachment Senate trial of a private citizen; the effort to remove Trump’s name from state ballots; the ongoing attempt to emasculate the Electoral College; or the radical opportune changes in state election laws to ensure massive mail-in balloting.

Recently, Andrew McCarthy has reviewed in depth this coordination between White House personnel and prosecutors, long known and long denied by the left.

Biden, for example, had complained to aides about Attorney General Merrick Garland’s tardiness in getting special federal prosecutor Smith appointed - and thus apparently ensuring Trump was convicted before the election.

Nathan Wade, Fani Willis’s now-fired paramour prosecutor, visited and consulted with the White House counsel’s office when he was acting supposedly as a purely local county prosecutor. The January 6th left-wing-dominated congressional committee consulted with the Biden administration in sending forth its criminal referrals about Trump’s purported role in the protests. And to handle his pseudo-indictment against Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg hired Biden Justice Department official Vincent Colangeio.

Two, the prosecutors’ delayed criminal indictments and E. Jean Carroll’s civil suit were predicated only on Donald Trump running for reelection. After his 2020 defeat, the loss of the two Republican senate seats in Georgia, and the January 6 demonstrations/riot, Trump was written off by pundits as politically toxic.

Then his historic comeback in the subsequent year terrified the left. The reboot prompted the subsequent indictments and suits years after the purported crimes. It was left unsaid that had Trump not been a conservative Republican and leading presidential candidate, he would have never been indicted.

Three, most of the indictments either had no prior precedent in criminal law or will likely never be used again, at least against anyone left-wing. Moreover, many of the writs relied on manipulation of statutes of limitations.

Neither Bragg nor any other local prosecutor had previously transformed a supposedly local affidavit misdemeanor into a supposed federal campaign finance violation, a gambit so preposterous that it had been passed on by federal attorneys.

Letitia James was the first New York Attorney General to indict a state resident for the supposed crime of overvaluing real estate to obtain a loan, which was paid back timely and in full, to the profit of lending institutions. No bank, after auditing Trump’s assets and viability to pay back loans, was unhappy to loan to him. But all were quite happy to profit from the hefty interest—and would likely be happy to loan to him again.

James sought to make Trump a criminal without ever finding a crime, much less a victim. Nor, until the checkered and unethical career of Fani Willis, had any local prosecutor ever indicted an ex-president for a supposedly improper phone call questioning whether all the state’s votes had been fully counted.

Alvin Bragg’s case was nonexistent given the statute of limitations on supposed misdemeanors committed over six years prior—until Bragg transmogrified the accusations of minor crimes into felonies and, with them, extensions granted supposedly due to the COVID lockdowns.

In Carroll’s case, her unsubstantiated accusations of a sexual assault were also well past the statute of limitations until a left-wing New York legislator and unapologetic Trump hater passed a special law—a veritable bill of attainder aimed at Trump—waiving the statute of limitations for a year in cases of accusations of long-past sexual assault in the state of New York.

Four, all the indictments and suits took place in either blue cities, counties, or states. And most of the jury pools in or near New York, Atlanta, or Miami were or will be heavily Democrat. So far, the New York judges who have overseen Trump’s civil and criminal trials—Justices Engoron, Kaplan, and Merchan—were all liberals, appointed by Democrat or liberal politicians, and some have donated to Democrat causes. They were not shy about expressing disdain for defendant Trump. No changes in venues were ever allowed.

Five, all the prosecutors, Bragg, James, Smith, and Willis, are likewise either Democrats or associated with liberal causes. In the case of Bragg, James, and Willis, all three ran for office and raised money on promises and boasts of getting Donald Trump. And all three have now set the precedent that local and state prosecutors can warp the law and use it to go after an ex-president and leading presidential candidate of the opposite party for naked political purposes.

Six, all these cases were equally applicable to high-profile Democrat politicos. E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit was the most laughable of all the court dramas, but its outline and protocols just as easily could have applied to Tara Reade. She came forward to accuse candidate Biden of having sexually assaulted her years earlier—roughly about the same period’s as Carroll’s fluid timelines. Her story is about as believable or unbelievable as Carroll’s. But the difference was that whereas the media canonized the delusional and self-contradictory Carroll as a useful anti-Trump tool, it demonized Reade as a crazy loon and liar—and a potential impediment to Biden’s 2019-20 primary campaign.

Bragg had to torture the law to fabricate a federal campaign finance indictment against Trump. But Hillary Clinton clearly violated federal campaign statutes—and was variously fined—when she tried to hide her “opposition research” payments to Christopher Steele as “legal expenses.” In truth, Steele was hired and paid to concoct a fake anti-Trump dossier and likely should have been barred from working for a presidential campaign given he was not a U.S. citizen.

In the case of Smith, simultaneously with his case against Trump, his twin special prosecutor, Robert Hur, found that Joe Biden had unlawfully removed classified files for much longer than Trump (30 years plus), in a much less secure location (his rickety garage), and without a president’s authority to declassify his documents. Moreover, he had disclosed their contents to his ghostwriter, who destroyed evidence under subpoena by Hur. Yet unlike Trump, Biden was not charged, given that Hur claimed that Biden, in his opinion, was so old and amnesiac that he might win sympathy rather than a conviction from a jury.

Willis indicted Trump for supposedly trying to pressure officials to “find” missing Trump ballots, thus supposedly violating “racketeering” statutes, as he oversaw an attempt to find troves of ballots he thought had been cast for him. Of course, in the same state, Stacy Abrams, after losing the gubernatorial race of 2018, claimed she had actually won, despite losing by over 50,000 votes. She sued to overturn the election and then made a celebrity-political career touring the nation, falsely claiming she was the real governor and her victorious opponent was an illegitimate governor.

For that matter, in 2016, left-wing organizations, celebrities, and thousands of political operatives sought to overturn the Trump victory by appealing to the electors to renounce their states’ popular vote tallies and thus become “faithless electors.” In sum, there was a true conspiracy, or, better, a “racketeering” scheme, to use Willis’s parlance, to coordinate various groups to overturn the constitutional duties of electors to throw the election to Hillary Clinton. Clinton, along with the likes of ex-president Jimmy Carter and soon-to-be House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries, would continue to deny that Trump was the legitimately elected president.

In sum, the number of suits against and indictments against Trump grew in correlation to his political fortunes. They were designed in the election year 2024 to do what Democrat voters likely cannot. They are ridiculous and sui generis, and will never be used against anyone other than Trump. They have done more damage to democracy, the rule of law, and equal justice to the law than all of the antics that Trump is accused of.

Moreover, they will set in motion a dangerous tit-for-tat cycle of weaponization that threatens the very constitutional order of the United States.

If Trump is elected to restore the rule of equal justice, will a Republican special counsel revisit Robert Hur’s work and find ex-President Biden quite capable of standing trial for the crimes Hur has already investigated and confirmed?

Will then a new Republican-appointed FBI director order a SWAT-like raid, with Fox News forewarned and Newsmax reporters on the scene, to descend into the Biden beach house?

Will county and state prosecutors in Utah, Montana, and Oklahoma feel that to stop this cycle of illegality, they must charge the Biden family members by bootstrapping local indictments onto federal crimes?

Will conservative women in the future come forward in Arkansas, Idaho, and Alabama to claim that in their past, they now suddenly remember that decades ago a prominent Democrat candidate harassed them? Will their right-wing lawyers cherry-pick the proper red-state judge?

Will conservative district attorneys find ways to indict Joe Biden on the various imaginative bookkeeping and “loan repayments” used to disguise the fact his corrupt family received well over $20 million from illiberal foreign interests, much if not all of it camouflaged to avoid income taxes?

Will some South Carolina legislator get a bill of attainder passed in the legislature, ending the statute of limitations for a year for all those in 2016 who sought to undermine the electors and flip them to Hillary Clinton?

In August or September, will a right-wing state prosecutor and a conservative judge find that Joe Biden’s creative bookkeeping warrants a $450 million fine, payable before appeal?

And will Republican officials and judges in purple states move to get Biden’s name off the ballot?

Such scenarios are endless and, given the current precedents, could all be justified as desperate deterrent measures to shock the left into ceasing their efforts to sabotage our constitutional system and rule of law.

A final note.

There is a divine order of balance in the world, one known variously by particular civilizations as kismet, nemesis, karma, or what goes around, comes around payback. We’ve already seen such forces at work: Sen. Schumer at the head of a mob at the doors of the Supreme Court, calling out threats to justices by name, only now finding pro-Hamas thugs circling his own home. Or Democrats during the Trump years straining to find ways to invoke the 25th Amendment, now humiliated into claiming a non-compos-mentis Joe Biden is “sharp as a knife.”

Tragically for the country, to stop this left-wing madness, the Trump travesties may not be the end, but the beginning of precisely what the Founders feared.

Uranium stocks moved higher late in the US cash session after a report from Bloomberg, citing "people familiar with the matter," revealed that the Biden administration is considering an executive order to ban Russian imports of enriched uranium after congressional efforts stall. 

Officials from the White House National Security Council, the Department of Energy, and other top-level officials have discussed reducing reliance on Russian uranium imports. The people said the potential ban could include waivers similar to legislation that quickly passed the House last year. 

"Because of procedural rules, the next best potential legislative vehicle to attach the uranium ban in the Senate to is must-pass legislation needed to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, which is slated for the Senate floor this week," Bloomberg said. 

Certainly, final decisions have yet to be reached on the matter. According to sources, the administration and the nuclear industry favor Congress enacting the ban. However, if push come to shove, executive authority could be used, they said. 

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Washington imposed sanctions on Russian-produced oil and gas—yet Russian-enriched uranium is still being imported. 

In this graphic, Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti shows how much America's nuclear power plants rely on Russian uranium. 

According to the Energy Information Administration, Russia supplied about a quarter of all enriched uranium used in more than 90 commercial reactors. 

Bloomberg estimated that America's power plants spend at least $1 billion a year on Russian-enriched uranium. The White House has warned that dependence on Russian sources of uranium "creates risk to the US economy." 

"At the same time, replacing that supply could be a challenge and is poised to raise the costs of enriched uranium by as much as 20%," the media pointed out. 

In markets, the world's largest publicly traded uranium company, Cameco Corporation, caught a slight bid after the Bloomberg story was released. Miner Uranium Energy Corp and Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (URNM) also rose. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that a ban on Russian uranium imports could raise nuclear fuel costs by at least 13%, if not more. 

Late last month, Jonathan Hinze, president of UxC, a nuclear industry research firm, told Bloomberg that uranium prices have likely "reached a bottom." 

The Biden administration is reportedly in the midst of a diplomatic full court press in efforts to prevent the International Criminal Court (ICC) from issuing arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ICC is also expected to issue warrants for Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Herzi Halevi, in connection with alleged large-scale human rights abuses related to the war in Gaza.

Axios reports Monday that the Israeli government is growing "increasingly concerned" over the possible action, while Walla news has written that Netanyahu is "under unusual stress" over what will be a largely symbolic, albeit still deeply embarrassing reputational black eye for his government at a moment he's facing immense domestic pressure at home to bring back the hostages.

Via AFP

The Israeli leader has personally asked President Biden to intervene. Axios details of the call: "The officials said Netanyahu expressed his concern to Biden in a phone call on Sunday, where the two leaders also discussed hostage negotiations, Israel's defense against Iran's missile attack, and the need to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza, according to a White House readout."

The White House has issued a fresh statement Monday stressing that the United States "does not support" the ongoing ICC investigation into Israeli war crimes.

The ICC's investigation actually goes all the way back to the 2014 Israel-Hamas war. But also following Oct.7 and Israel's invasion of Gaza, South Africa brought a fresh war crimes case - which has gained the support of countries like Turkey, but especially a number of countries of the Global South.

The Hague-based court in March 2023 issued an arrested warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine war, so this means that ironically Netanyahu could soon be a "wanted" man right alongside Putin.

On Friday Netanyahu defiantly said, "We will never stop defending ourselves. Whereas decisions of the court in the Hague will not affect Israel’s actions, they would be a dangerous precedent threatening the soldiers and officials of any democracy fighting criminal terrorism and aggression," in a message on X.

Israel is now warning that an ICC warrant could blow up a hostage deal being mediated by Egypt and Qatar:

If the International Criminal Court does issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, continues the official, it will lead to “a wave of antisemitism around the world” that could blow up a potential hostage deal. This is not an Israeli threat to walk away from talks in the case of an ICC decision, explains the official, but reflects Israel’s belief that international pressure on Israel will remove pressure on Hamas to make compromises necessary for a deal.

Reacting to the US State Department report that found five IDF units guilty of “gross human rights violations,” the official says that Jerusalem “categorically rejects any attempts to harm the IDF and Israel’s right to defend itself.”

In January, the ICC issued an interim ruling which stated that South Africa's case has legal merit and can proceed while ordering Israel to take all measures capable to prevent acts of Genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. 

Ultimately the ICC has no enforcement power on its own, but can call on member states to arrest leaders on its blacklist if they ever travel through their territories. Putin back in August canceled an in-person trip to South Africa for a BRICS summit precisely to avoid a potential embarrassing situation at a moment Pretoria was being pressured to act.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Pep Talk On A Dark Day

“We live in an age of full spectrum deception.”

- Edward Dowd

You realize, don’t you, that what’s going on in our country is the collapse not just of an empire, or an economy, but a comprehensive paradigm of human progress. The hallmark of post-war life in Western Civ was supposed to be a return to sanity after the mid-twentieth century fugue of mass psychotic violence. The wish for just and rational order was not entirely pretense. But that was then. Now that we are going medieval on ourselves, the not-so-ironic result will be our literally going medieval, sinking back into a pre-modern existence of darkness, superstition, and penury, grubbing for a mere subsistence in the shadow of scuffling hobgoblins, our achievements lost and forgotten.

What’s most appalling is that our governing apparatus is visibly willing that to happen. When Barack Obama warned America to not underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to fuck things up, was that some kind of joke? After all, it was Mr. Obama and his fellow blobsters — the cabal of Intel spooks, covert Marxist bureaucrats, lawfare ninjas, globalist megalomaniacs, post-liberal think tankers, weapons grifters, degenerate billionaires, and assorted mentally-ill camp followers — who inflicted Joe Biden on the body politic. And then ran him on the country like some demon algorithm designed to wreck the USA as fast as possible.

The source of anguish in all that is the struggle to understand why they would want that to happen. What debauched sense of history would drive anyone to such lunatic desperation? It’s a cliché now to say that the Democratic Party has turned its traditional moral scaffold upside down and inside out. It acts against the kitchen table interests of the working and middle classes. It’s against civil liberties. It demands mental obedience to patently insane policy. It’s avid for war, no matter how cruelly pointless. It’s deliberately stirring up racial hatred. It despises personal privacy. It feeds a rogue bureaucracy that has become a veritable Moloch, an all-devouring malevolent deity. And now, rather suddenly, it aligns itself with a faction that seeks to exterminate the Jews.

And how did the opposition to that epic divergence into bad faith turn so flabby? How did the Republican Party roll over and wheeze so feebly while the FBI ran amok swatting grandmothers in dawn raids, and the US attorney general made justice a whore, and a Republican Congress allowed the Frankenstein agency of Homeland Security to flood the country with its enemies and give them gobs of operational cash? If Mr. Trump was unappetizing to them as a leader, why were they unable to produce an alternative figure of standing and stature at least equally resolute? They look like traitors and cowards.

For the moment, the country lies mired, inert, and demoralized in the face of in those terrible mysteries. But events are still tending and the hidden hand of emergence still operates backstage, preparing surprises for us. You are necessarily aware that the center did not hold. It’s even hard to locate where the center used to be with the action so heavy on the far-out margins. You’re watching drag queens importune young children to shove all the Jews into the sea. And the kids are sitting next to their mommies. What happened to the mommies’ brains that permits them to think this spectacle is okay? How will the mommies ever get their minds right?

In some quarters, a great rage is building. Not a few resent the overthrow of common sense, common law, and common decency. You better believe they will be aiming to do something about it. They will stand up for their dignity, their culture, their history. Virtue isn’t dead; it’s just broke down on a lonely highway waiting to hitch a ride back to where the lights are still on. Don’t forget that this really is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Meanwhile, prepare for action. It’s obvious that the enemies of the people don’t intend to rest. They are going to try to play out this string to the last move because otherwise a lot of them will be going to jail, or might even hang for their wickedness. Once they turned criminal, there was no turning back. They have dishonored themselves and they’re trying to dishonor their country.

It’s true nonetheless that we’re moving into a new disposition of the human project. It’s going to be smaller and leaner, and not nearly as complex as the tottering Rube Goldberg apparatus we’re currently trapped in. We don’t know yet what the shape and texture of that America is going to be. As the sage Yogi Berra observed, our whole future is ahead of us. If you’re not among the insane, have faith. We’ll get there and everything is going to be all right.

*  *  *

Support his blog by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page or Substack

A quiet micro and macro-economic day was dominated by Treasury's refunding size estimates (which spoiled all the fun by coming in less than some hyperbolic expectations a but generally in line with expectations), and Japanese intervention the FX markets.

As Goldman's trading desk noted, a quiet start to a busy week with the S&P trading within a 15 handle range (volumes -11% vs 20dma) and largely traded in a vacuum for the majority of the session as the market awaits macro (QRA, ISM, ECI, FOMC, JOLTS, NFP) and micro (24% of SPX reports including AAPL, AMZN and AMD) catalysts slated for later this week.

And that prompted a rapid kneejerk down-draft in stocks shortly after 3pmET (led by Small Caps which had been outperforming). However, that didn't last long as traders quickly remembered that the buyback window reopens later this week. All the majors ended higher on the day with Small Caps leading and the S&P and Nasdaq lagging. By the last few minutes, all the QRA anxiety was long-gone and stocks were surging back towards the highs...

The Dow and Russell 2000 both found support at their 100DMA on the initial QRA dip and bounced right off it...

'Most Shorted' stocks dumped on the QRA news, after extending the large two-day squeeze from Thurs/Fri. The basket still ended green on the day...

Source: Bloomberg

TSLA made headlines with news from China that the carmaker's full-self-drive will be cleared for us, rallying 15% for its best day in three years...

Yields also kneejerked higher on the QRA news but not enough to ruin the day, with yields down 2-4bps across the curve (with the belly outperforming)...

Source: Bloomberg

By the end of the day, yields were at the low of the day and stocks at the high of the day...

Source: Bloomberg

Elsewhere the reaction was muted as traders tried to figure out what the QRA news meant.

The dollar index was dominated by Japanese officials fiddling while Tokyo burns...

Source: Bloomberg

...after yen plunged overnight to its 1990 lows and the very visible hand stepped in...

Source: Bloomberg

Did Japan's "benign neglect" come to an end?

Source: Bloomberg

Gold was magnificently unmoved by the Borrowing and BoJ buggery, ending very modestly lower...

Source: Bloomberg

Oil ended lower on the day, legging down three times, interestingly in tune with Japan's intervention...

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin was lower today after a modest rollercoaster over the weekend. Notably BTC found support at $62,000 and bounced this afternoon...

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, fear is being rapidly rinsed out of the markets once again...

Source: Bloomberg

...and financial conditions will start easing...

Source: Bloomberg

...too much (again) for Powell's liking (even in an election year)

Ahead of today's big event - the Treasury borrowing estimates publication - we said that contrary to hyperbolic expectations of $300BN in revised Q2 funding needs and a whopping $1.2 trillion in Q3, the most likely range of Q2 and Q3 borrowing estimates is as follows: a ranges of $120bn to $240bn for Q2, and $650bn to $850bn for Q3, to wit:

Well, at exactly 3:00pm the Treasury published the numbers, and while we were almost spot on correct, they did come on the high end of our forecast range, specifically:

• Q2 funding needs were revised higher to $243 billion (just above the upper end of our range of $240 billion) from $202 billion projected last quarter.  According to the Treasury, the borrowing estimate was "$41 billion higher than announced in January 2024, largely due to lower cash receipts, partially offset by a higher beginning of quarter cash balance."
• Q3 funding needs (released for the first time) were estimated at $847 billion, just below the upper end of our range of $850BN.

But wait, there's more, because while the Treasury projects $750BN cash balance at end of Q2, this number rises to $850BN at end of Q3, and since the streetwide estimate for Q3 end of quarter cash was $750BN, this suggests that the real funding needs (on an apples to apples basis) is actually $747BN, which is below the median Wall Street estimate.

Bottom line: amid some ridiculous speculation and even conspiracy theories that the BOJ intervened today because it was expecting a surge in funding needs, the Treasury reported numbers that came in in line with expectations for Q2, and actually below the estimate for Q3, which is precisely what we said, because the number is driven not so much by financial but by political considerations.

The real question should be not what the Treasury projects for Q2 and Q3, but Q4, which is after the election, and when all the lipstick on this pig will finally wash off.

Tesla bears are getting their nuts squeezed in the US cash session Monday after Elon Musk's surprise weekend trip to Beijing landed the EV carmaker a deal with tech giant Baidu to roll out its driver-assistance system, known as "Full Self-Driving," or FSD, in the world's largest car market.

Earlier, we noted Wedbush Securities senior analyst Dan Ives' comment on Musk's trip as a "watershed moment" for Tesla and "this could open up FSD in China, which I view as unlocking what really could be the golden opportunity for them." 

Now Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas, one of Tesla's most prominent Wall Street bulls, states in bold print on the top of his note to clients today, "He's back." 

"Elon Musk's visit to China means far more than seeking approval for self driving tech on Chinese roads. Whether Tesla's CEO is sleeping on a floor or on a plane... the message is clear: he's back," Jonas said. 

Jonas wrote there had been mounting investor concerns about whether Musk was "all in" on Tesla, considering the billionaire spends some of his precious time (only appears) on an anti-woke crusade on his X platform. The analyst said Musk's weekend trip to China was a "gesture of commitment" to Tesla:

• Commitment. Investor concerns around whether Elon Musk was 'all in' on Tesla have been weighing heavily on the stock since the compensation package was rejected by Delaware judge. Even the smallest gesture of commitment (an unannounced trip to Beijing) has elevated meaning here, combating concerns over Musk's commitment to Tesla relative the broader Musk ecosystem of companies (SpaceX/X.AI/etc.).

Jonas made a very interesting point about Musk's national security clearance, saying it must be "higher than that of the typical American CEO due to his control of SpaceX and the range of missions it conducts with NASA, Space Force and the broader DoD." 

He added that China's "blessing" of an FSD rollout in the country "seems to address embedded fears of Tesla's China profit (we estimate China accounts for as much as one half of profit)." 

Jonas reiterated an overweight rating on Tesla with a $310 price target. 

Here's how the analyst arrived at the $310 figure: 

He also touched on notable upside and downside risks to the future outlook. 

Musk's timing of the China trip comes as Tesla's short interest hit a three-year high, or about 3.84% of the float short, equivalent to about 106 million shares. 

For all those technicians out there... 

Meanwhile, on X, Musk posted this image...

pic.twitter.com/eygrdIhWZz

There's nothing like a good ole' squeeze. 

Authored by Liliana Zylstra via The College Fix,

Female college athletes are “crying out for justice,” safety, and privacy in a lawsuit challenging the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s transgender policies, their attorney told The College Fix in an exclusive interview.

Attorney William Bock III said the 16 plaintiffs, all current or former collegiate athletes, are challenging the NCAA and the University of Georgia for violating Title IX’s provisions for equal opportunity in sports by allowing males to compete in the women’s category.

The lawsuit also alleges female athletes’ right to bodily privacy under the 14th Amendment was violated.

According to the suit, the NCAA authorized “naked men possessing full male genitalia to disrobe in front of non- consenting college women and creating situations in which unwilling female college athletes unwittingly or reluctantly expose their naked or partially clad bodies to males.”

Bock told The Fix in a recent phone interview that many athletes sent letters sharing their concerns about these policies to the NCAA, but they were ignored.

“They’re crying out for justice and the NCAA won’t even talk to them,” he said.

“It isn’t even willing to respect their concerns enough to give them an audience. So it became clear that the only thing that would have a chance of changing their policy is filing a lawsuit.”

Bock told The Fix, “The NCAA is so committed to radical gender ideology that they have completely lost concern for women’s rights.”

“It’s very clear that the NCAA violated the law,” he said.

Bock formerly worked as general counsel for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency and served as the lead attorney for USADA in the case against professional cyclist Lance Armstrong.

“The advantage that Lance Armstrong got through doping pales in comparison to the advantage that male athletes have when competing against females in collegiate sports,” he said.

“The NCAA suggests that one can reduce or eliminate the performance gap [between men and women] by suppressing testosterone and that’s ludicrous from a matter of science,” Bock told The Fix.

Bock also served on the NCAA Committee on Infractions for several years. However, he quit earlier this year after expressing concerns about transgender athletes like former University of Pennsylvania swimmer William “Lia” Thomas, a male who identifies as female who won an NCAA Division I championship on the women’s team in 2022.

Safety is among female athletes’ biggest concerns, Bock said. “The NCAA is not in many instances even telling women that they’re competing against a male. And that’s dangerous … in a contact sport where you can get a concussion.”

Female athletes speak out

Two of the plaintiffs also spoke with The Fix in a phone interview about their concerns for safety, fairness, and the overall future of women’s sports.

Ainsley Erzen (pictured right), a soccer and track athlete at the University of Arkansas, said, “We want the stories that people are seeing now to be the last ones. We don’t want the generations in the future to deal with that.”

Erzen said she and her fellow athletes are fighting so women will have the opportunities to set records, win championships and earn college scholarships.

“What kind of message are we sending to women — but especially to young girls — when we tell them that their safety doesn’t matter, their rights don’t matter, their opportunities don’t matter, their futures don’t matter?” she told The Fix.

Kaitlynn Wheeler (pictured left), a former swimmer for the University of Kentucky, said the protection of women’s sports is a ”common-sense issue.”

Wheeler told The Fix speaking up is important “because the overwhelming majority of people are on our side.”

“This lawsuit is really not about hurting anyone. It’s about helping the women who have been hurt and preventing it from happening in the future. It’s about ensuring fair, equal, and safe competition and I think that just about everyone should want that,” she said.

An NCAA spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit in response to a request from The Fix.

“College sports are the premier stage for women’s sports in America, and while the NCAA does not comment on pending litigation, the Association and its members will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports and ensure fair competition in all NCAA championships,” the association said in an emailed statement.

Others involved in the lawsuit include Riley Gaines, a former 12-time All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky and current advocate for women’s sports. The Independent Council on Women’s Sports is supporting the athletes’ case.

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Biden and Yellen support a global minimum tax on corporations. And a new wealth tax scheme is now in the works...

Watch Out for a Global Wealth Tax

The Wall Street Journal says Watch Out for a Global Wealth Tax

In our new socialist age, the demand to tax and redistribute income is insatiable. The latest brainstorm arrives in a proposal by four countries in the G-20 group of nations to impose a 2% wealth tax on the world’s billionaires.

“The tax could be designed as a minimum levy equivalent to 2% of the wealth of the super-rich,” write economic ministers of Germany, Spain, Brazil and South Africa in the Guardian. They say the levy would raise about $250 billion a year from some 3,000 billionaires and “would boost social justice and increase trust in the effectiveness of fiscal redistribution.” The countries plan to float this at the next G-20 meeting in June.

Presumably, the plan is to have the G-20 endorse the idea, including President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Then negotiate a global tax deal that would wait until Democrats control all of the U.S. government to approve it, even if that takes many years.

That’s more or less what Ms. Yellen has done with her global minimum tax on corporations, and the four ministers are candid in saying this is their model. The wealth tax “is a necessary third pillar that complements the negotiations on the taxation of the digital economy and on a minimum corporate tax of 15% for multinationals,” the ministers write.

Ms. Yellen went along with the first two pillars, though as we’ve written they subject American companies to foreign tax raids of the kind the U.S. government has long opposed. An architect of the wealth tax idea is French socialist Gabriel Zucman, who was also behind Ms. Yellen’s global minimum tax. Once a global wealth tax is in place, you can be sure that billionaires won’t be the last target.

The Biden Administration is run by liberal internationalists who are happy to cede more power to multilateral institutions. President Biden is also campaigning on a wealth tax of his own that would impose the highest tax rates on Americans since before the Reagan tax reform. For this crowd, taxing American billionaires to redistribute income around the world is all too imaginable.

I used to dismiss ideas like this. Not anymore.

Letting the G-20 set US tax rates would be unconstitutional, but since when does Biden give a damn?

Besides, if Democrats get control of the Senate, House and White House they may try to pack the courts.

President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen embrace a massive wealth tax redistribution scheme including taxes on unrealized gains in their Fiscal Year 2025 proposal.

Advancing Equity Through Tax Reform

Please consider Fiscal Year 2025 Revenue Proposals on Racial Wealth Inequality

The revenue proposals in the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget (U.S. Treasury, 2024) would raise revenues, help ensure the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share, expand tax credits for working families, and improve tax administration and compliance.

Research has demonstrated that wealth gaps are one of the primary “mechanisms for
perpetuating racial economic inequality”.

The millions of African Americans who left the southern United States to escape Jim Crow laws faced formal and informal employment, educational, and housing discrimination in destination cities in the North and West, including discriminatory “redlining” policies that started in the 1930s. In addition to funneling Black households into neighborhoods with lower home values, research has illustrated the extent to which redlining introduced place-based policies that affected the employment, education, and health of residents in those neighborhoods, all of which are directly related to income and wealth accumulation.

Biden’s Wealth Tax Remedy

• A minimum tax of 25 percent on total income, generally inclusive of unrealized capital gains, for all taxpayers with wealth greater than $100 million.

• Requiring the wealthiest taxpayers to pay at least 25% of their total income in taxes will reduce economic disparities among Americans and raise needed revenue

• Inheritance Taxes: In 2019, thirty percent of White families received an inheritance compared to 10 percent of Black families and 7 percent of Hispanic families. The Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget would limit the duration of the GST [Generation Skipping Trust] tax exemption.

• The Budget would tax long-term capital gains and dividends at ordinary rates for taxpayers with more than $1 million in income, curtailing a tax expenditure the benefits of which accrue disproportionately to White families. It would also treat transfers of appreciated property as realization events and impose a minimum tax on the wealthiest families, while expanding tax credits that improve equity.

Biden Explanations

There’s still more if you dive into General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 Revenue Proposals

The explanations are 256 pages long. The following points do not represent all of the ways the administration is coming after you.

I have a 15-point synopsis at the end for those just wishing to see general ideas.

Here are some details.

• The child tax credit would be expanded through 2025, would permanently be made fully refundable, determined monthly, and paid out in advance. Reforms to the delivery of the credit would facilitate take-up. The earned income tax credit would also be expanded to cover more workers without children. The premium tax credit expansion first enacted in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and extended in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 would be made permanent, making health insurance more affordable for millions of families.

• Raising the corporate income tax rate is an administratively simple way to raise revenue to pay for the Administration’s fiscal priorities.

• The proposal would increase the tax rate for C corporations from 21 percent to 28 percent. The effective global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI) rate would increase to 14 percent under the proposal.

• The proposal Revise the Global Minimum Tax Regime, Limit Inversions, and Make Related Reforms described later in this text would further increase the effective GILTI rate to 21 percent.

• A new 25- percent minimum income tax would be imposed on extremely wealthy taxpayers. For high income taxpayers, gaps in the law that allow some pass-through business owners to avoid Medicare taxes would be eliminated and Medicare tax rates would be increased. Additional loopholes, including the carried interest preference and the like-kind exchange real estate preference, would be eliminated for those with the highest incomes. Together these reforms would sharply curtail tax preferences that allow the wealthy to pay lower tax rates on their investment income and exacerbate income and wealth disparities, including by gender, geography, race, and ethnicity.

• The child tax credit would be expanded through 2025, would permanently be made fully refundable, determined monthly, and paid out in advance. Reforms to the delivery of the credit would facilitate take-up. The earned income tax credit would also be expanded to cover more workers without children.

• The proposal would increase the tax rate on corporate stock repurchases to 4 percent.

• The Secretary would be granted authority to promulgate any regulations necessary to carry out the purposes of the proposal, including (a) coordinating the application of the proposal with other interest deductibility rules, (b) defining interest and financial services entities, (c) permitting financial reporting groups to apply the proportionate share approach using the group’s net interest expense for U.S. tax purposes rather than net interest expense reported in the group’s financial statements, (d) providing for the treatment of pass-through entities, (e) providing adjustments to the application of the proposal to address differences in functional currency of members, (f) if a U.S. subgroup has multiple U.S. entities that are not all members of a single U.S. consolidated group for U.S. tax purposes, providing for the allocation of the U.S.

• The proposal would repeal: (a) the enhanced oil recovery credit for eligible costs attributable to a qualified enhanced oil recovery project; (b) the credit for oil and gas produced from marginal wells; (c) the expensing of intangible drilling costs; (d) the deduction for costs paid or incurred for any qualified tertiary injectant used as part of a tertiary recovery method; (e) the exception to passive loss limitations provided to working interests in oil and natural gas properties; (f) the use of percentage depletion with respect to oil and gas wells; (g) two year amortization of geological and geophysical expenditures by independent producers, instead allowing amortization over the seven-year period used by major integrated oil companies; (h) expensing of exploration and development costs; (i) percentage depletion for hard mineral fossil fuels; (j) capital gains treatment for royalties; (k) the exemption from the corporate income tax for publicly traded partnerships with qualifying income and gains from activities relating to fossil fuels; (l) the OSTLF and Superfund excise tax exemption for crude oil derived from bitumen and kerogenrich rock; and (m) accelerated amortization for air pollution control facilities.

• The eligibility of the petroleum taxes dedicated to the OSLTF and Superfund for drawback would be eliminated.

• An excise tax on electricity usage by digital asset miners could reduce mining activity along with its associated environmental impacts and other harms. Any firm using computing resources, whether owned by the firm or leased from others, to mine digital assets would be subject to an excise tax equal to 30 percent of the costs of electricity used in digital asset mining.

• The proposal would expand the NIIT base to ensure that all pass-through business income of high-income taxpayers is subject to either the NIIT or SECA tax.

• The proposal would increase the additional Medicare tax rate by 1.2 percentage points for taxpayers with more than $400,000 of earnings. When combined with current-law tax rates, this would bring the marginal Medicare tax rate up to 5 percent for earnings above the threshold. The threshold would be indexed for inflation.

• The proposal would increase the top marginal tax rate to 39.6 percent. The top marginal tax rate would apply to taxable income over $450,000 for married individuals filing a joint return and surviving spouses, $400,000 for unmarried individuals (other than surviving spouses and head of household filers), $425,000 for head of household filers, and $225,000 for married individuals filing a separate return. After 2024, the thresholds would be indexed for inflation using the CPI-U, which is used for all current thresholds in the tax rate tables.

• Under the proposal, the donor or deceased owner of an appreciated asset would realize a capital gain at the time of the transfer. The use of capital losses and carry-forwards from transfers at death would be allowed against capital gains and up to $3,000 of ordinary income on the decedent’s final income tax return, and the tax imposed on gains deemed realized at death would be deductible on the estate tax return of the decedent’s estate (if any). Gain on unrealized appreciation also would be recognized by a trust, partnership, or other noncorporate entity that is the owner of property if that property has not been the subject of a recognition event within the prior 90 years.

• Preferential treatment for unrealized gains disproportionately benefits high-wealth taxpayers and provides many high-wealth taxpayers with a lower effective tax rate than many low- and middle-income taxpayers. Preferential treatment for unrealized gains also exacerbates income and wealth disparities, including by gender, geography, race, and ethnicity. The proposal would impose a minimum tax of 25 percent on total income, generally inclusive of unrealized capital gains, for all taxpayers with wealth (that is, the difference obtained by subtracting liabilities from assets) greater than $100 million.

• The proposal would require a high-income taxpayer with an aggregate vested account balance under tax-favored retirement arrangements that exceeded $10 million as of the last day of the preceding calendar year to distribute a minimum of 50 percent of that excess.

• The provision would prohibit a rollover to a Roth IRA of an amount distributed from an account in an employer-sponsored eligible retirement plan that is not a designated Roth account (or of an amount distributed from an IRA other than a Roth IRA) for a high-income taxpayer.

• Increase the maximum credit per child to $3,600 for qualifying children under age 6 and to $3,000 for all other qualifying children. Increase the maximum age to qualify for the CTC from 16 to 17. The proposal would make the CTC fully refundable, regardless of earned income.

• The first-time homebuyer credit would be equal to ten percent of the purchase price of a home, up to a maximum credit of $10,000. For multiple individuals who purchase a home together, the maximum credit would be allocated proportionally to ownership interest in the purchased home or in a manner determined by the Secretary in published guidance. The credit allocated to a married individual filing a separate return would not exceed $5,000. The home must be in the United States.

• Upon disposition, any measured gain on an item of section 1250 property held for more than one year would be treated as ordinary income to the extent of the cumulative depreciation deductions taken after the effective date of the provision. Depreciation deductions taken on section 1250 property prior to the effective date would continue to be subject to current rules and recaptured as ordinary income only to the extent that such depreciation exceeds the cumulative allowances determined under the straight-line method. Any gain recognized on the disposition of section 1250 property in excess of recaptured depreciation would be treated as section 1231 gain. Any unrecaptured gain on section 1250 property would continue to be taxed to noncorporate taxpayers at a maximum 25 percent rate.

• In general, no Federal income tax is imposed concurrently on a policyholder with respect to the earnings credited under a life insurance or endowment contract. Furthermore, amounts received under a life insurance contract by reason of the death of the insured generally are excluded from the gross income of the recipient. The proposal would limit the tax benefits for private placement life insurance and annuity contracts.

• The proposal would expand the regulatory authority under which the Secretary may require taxpayers to furnish information relating to the verification and computation of the FTC [Foreign Tax Credit].

• A separate proposal would first raise the top ordinary rate to 39.6 percent (43.4 percent including the net investment income tax). An additional proposal would increase the net investment income tax rate by 1.2 percentage points above $400,000, bringing the marginal net investment income tax rate to 5 percent for investment income above the $400,000 threshold. Together, the proposals would increase the top marginal rate on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends to 44.6 percent.

Massive Wealth Distribution Scheme.

The administration went after anything and everything from wealth taxes, huge jumps in marginal rates, REIT, Roth IRA conversions, etc.

Here are the key changes, and I may have missed some.

Fifteen Key Points

1. The top marginal rate on long-term capital gains jumps to 44.6 percent.

2. Deductions for oil and gas companied eliminated.

3. 30 percent tax on electricity used in mining cryptos

4. Restrictions on conversions to Roth IRA

5. Forced acceleration of IRA withdrawals

6. Taxes on insurance policies

7. Expanded Child Tax Credits

8. Earned Income Tax Credits to include those with no kids.

9. Restrictions on trusts to avoid inheritance taxes

10. Corporate minimum taxes

11. Homebuyer tax credits

12. Minimum 25 percent tax on unrealized stock gains for wealthy individuals

13. Marginal Medicare tax rate upped to 5 percent

14. Tax rate for C corporations goes to 28 percent from 21 percent. The effective global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI) rate would increase to 14 percent.

15. If there is anything ambiguous, the Secretary of the Treasury gets to determine what the law is.

If you have any money or assets, Biden is coming after you. He is also going after oil and gas companies, corporations, and Bitcoin to fund massive wealth distribution schemes.

This is on grounds “Research has demonstrated that wealth gaps are one of the primary mechanisms for perpetuating racial economic inequality“.

Soon on the heels of President Biden last week signing into law a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine's defense, President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday indicated that he's working with Washington on a bilateral security agreement which would last ten years.

"We are already working on a specific text," Zelensky said in his nightly video address. "Our goal is to make this agreement the strongest of all."

Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP

"We are discussing the specific foundations of our security and cooperation. We are also working on fixing specific levels of support for this year and the next 10 years."

He indicated it will likely include agreements on long-term support centering on military hardware and joint arms production, as well as continuing reconstruction aid. "The agreement should be truly exemplary and reflect the strength of American leadership," Zelensky added.

But ultimately a key purpose in locking such a long-term deal in would be to keep it immune from potential interference by a future Trump administration.

Below is what The Wall Street Journal spelled out last year:

The goal is to make sure Ukraine will be strong enough in the future to deter Russia from attacking it again. More immediately, Ukraine’s Western allies hope to discourage the Kremlin from thinking it can wait out the Biden administration for a potentially more sympathetic successor in the White House. 

Western officials are looking for ways to lock in pledges of support and limit future governments’ abilities to backtrack, amid fears in European capitals that Donald Trump, if he recaptures the White House, would seek to scale back aid. Trump has a wide lead in early polling in the Republican presidential primary field, but soundly lost the 2020 election to President Biden and has been indicted in four criminal cases in state and federal courts. 

We and others have previously underscored that NATO and G7 countries are desperately trying to "Trump-proof" future aid to Ukraine and the effort to counter Russia.

As for its first new weapons package in the wake of the $61 billion being authorized, the Biden administration has announced new arms packages totaling $7 billion. The US has vowed to rush the weapons to Kiev, given that by all indicators its forces are not doing well on the frontlines.

"We are still waiting for the supplies promised to Ukraine – we expect exactly the volume and content of supplies that can change the situation on the battlefield in the interests of Ukraine," Zelensky had said over the weekend. "And it is important that every agreement we have reached is implemented – everything that will yield practical results on the battlefield and boost the morale of everyone on the frontline. In a conversation with Mr. Jeffries, I emphasized the need for Patriot systems, they are needed as soon as possible."

Zelensky announces that Ukraine is working on a security agreement with the U.S. that will fix levels of support for the next 10 years. The $61 billion was just the beginning. The next two U.S. presidents won’t be able to switch it off. pic.twitter.com/q1RWCxf93m

But all of this means the war will be prolonged, and this puts negotiations much further away on the horizon, despite what are now daily acknowledgements of Ukraine forces being beaten back. Currently the governments of Greece and Spain are being pressured by EU and NATO leadership to hand over what few Patriot systems they possess to Kiev. The rationale is that they don't need them as urgently as Ukraine does.