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As US mourns 500,000 lives lost, report shows billionaires added $1.3 trillion to their fortunes during pandemic
February 24, 2021
As the United States this week mourned the devastating milestone of 500,000 lives lost to the coronavirus, a report out Wednesday shows that the nation's billionaires have seen their collective wealth grow by $1.3 trillion since the deadly pandemic began last year.
According to the new analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), America's 664 billionaires now have a combined net worth of $4.2 trillion—a figure that stands in staggering contrast to the economic pain being felt by countless families across the U.S. as joblessness, uninsurance, and hunger remain sky-high.
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"Taxing those who have experienced windfall wealth gains to pay for Covid relief and recovery is a matter of equity and justice."<br/>
—Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies
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"It is unseemly that billionaires have experienced such gains as we mark a half a million lives lost and millions more who have lost their health, wealth and jobs," Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality at IPS, said in a statement. "Taxing those who have experienced windfall wealth gains to pay for Covid relief and recovery is a matter of equity and justice."
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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—and SpaceX founder Elon Musk saw their wealth grow by $76.3 billion and $158 billion respectively between March 18, 2020 and February 19, 2021—bigger gains than any other U.S. billionaire. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, saw his net worth jump by $41 billion during that period.
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"Even as congressional Republicans try to nickel-and-dime suffering Americans by opposing President Biden's American Rescue Plan, including its $1,400 relief checks, American billionaires have reaped $1.3 trillion in pandemic profits," said ATF executive director Frank Clemente. "The need for the kind of fair-share tax program Biden ran and won on becomes clearer every day, as billionaire wealth balloons while working-family hopes deflate."
</p><div class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display: flex; max-width: 550px; width: 100%; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" allowtransparency="true" class="" data-tweet-id="1364582878181527553" frameborder="0" id="twitter-widget-0" scrolling="no" src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1364582878181527553&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rawstory.com%2Fr%2Fentryeditor%2F2650743126%23publish&theme=light&widgetsVersion=889aa01%3A1612811843556&width=550px" style="position: static; visibility: visible; width: 551px; height: 801px; display: block; flex-grow: 1;" title="Twitter Tweet"></iframe></div><p>The U.S., which has the highest coronavirus death toll in the world, reached 500,000 lives lost to Covid-19 on Monday. "About one in 670 Americans has died of Covid-19, which has become a leading cause of death in the country, along with heart disease and cancer, and has driven down life expectancy more sharply than in decades," the <em>New York Times</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/22/world/covid-19-coronavirus" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">noted</a>.</p><p>While <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/coronavirus-cases-decline-across-u-s-experts-urge-caution-n1257942" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">declining</a> cases and an <a href="https://prospect.org/first100/biden-vaccine-rollout-is-working/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">improving</a> vaccine rollout have prompted some optimism, the grim milestone and still-rising death toll served as urgent reminders of how much work remains to be done to bring the catastrophic pandemic under control.</p><p>"We are still at about 100,000 cases a day. We are still at around 1,500 to 3,500 deaths per day. The cases are more than two-and-a-half-fold times what we saw over the summer," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/coronavirus-cases-decline-across-u-s-experts-urge-caution-n1257942" target="_blank">told</a> <em>NBC</em> earlier this month. "It's encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they're coming down from an extraordinarily high place."</p> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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'Read the fine print': Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick says Texans who 'gambled' deserve $17,000 power bills
February 24, 2021
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) this week blamed consumers who he suggested didn't "read the fine print" before being hit with massive energy bills during a recent winter storm.
In an interview on Fox News, Patrick responded to reports that consumers had seen bills as high as $17,000 to heat 900 square feet.
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"I saw the story about the high bills," Patrick said. "Let me explain that. We have in Texas, you can choose your energy plan and most people have a fixed rate. If they had a fixed rate per kilowatt hour, their rates aren't going up."
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"But the people who are getting those big bills are people who gambled on a very, very low rate," he continued. "But I've told those folks, do not panic. We are going to figure that out."
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Patrick added: "But going forward, people need to read the fine print in those kinds of bills and we may even end that type of variable plan because people were surprised."
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Watch the video below from Fox News.
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GOP lawmakers rant and whine about 'rabid' attacks on Louis DeJoy: 'We didn't hear anything about Obama!'
February 24, 2021
House Republicans opened an investigative hearing into the U.S. Postal Service by whining that embattled postmaster general Louis DeJoy was the victim of "insane, rabid" attacks.
The House Oversight Committee grilled former president Donald Trump's appointee about changes he made last year that led to widespread delays in delivery that complicated mail-in voting in a pandemic year -- but GOP lawmakers complained that Democrats were only trying to score cheap political points.
<p>"Let's remember what Mr. DeJoy actually did with the postal service," said Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA). "First, he removed the blue boxes, drop boxes. But in so doing an attempt to sabotage the election? Absolutely not. It's a routine process. In fact, over the past couple of decades approximately 35,000 of these drop boxes have been removed and some 12,000 under President Obama's watch. We didn't hear anything about it then. It's only when Mr. DeJoy continues the process of scaling down."</p><p>Hice then claimed the postmaster general removed mail sorting machines because they took up too much room and reduced overtime to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/11/901349291/postal-workers-decry-changes-and-cost-cutting-measures" target="_blank">cut costs</a>, all of which are continuing to cause delays, and the lawmaker <a href="https://www.pennlive.com/news/2021/02/theres-no-end-to-this-mail-slowdown-continues-under-trump-era-honcho.html" target="_blank">said</a> the changes were necessary.</p><p>"If that much overtime is in part of the operating procedures and yes, then there's a serious problem with overtime," Hice said. "Now perhaps all of this that I am saying is water under the bridge at this point. I certainly hope so."<br/></p><p>Hine then suggested Democrats only cared about the changes to the postal service because DeJoy was a major Republican donor, and he claimed the postmaster general deserved better treatment.</p><p>"If moving blue boxes and mail sorters and trying to bring sanity to overtime usage is somehow viewed as criminal activity by the postmaster, then what in the world is going happen with the business plan he comes up with, and what is any postmaster general, be it Mr. DeJoy or someone else going to do to try to ride the ship of postal service," Hice said. "I'll be very much interested in hearing questions answered. We've got to get input and deal seriously with him reform issues get beyond nonsensical, insane, rabid rhetoric that is been coming for the past year, and I hope will be able to do that."</p><p><br/></p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="0bd53e3fe3730d826a47fc8d4423dadf" style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="auto" type="lazy-iframe" scrolling="no" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w0Chri_87iE?rel=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" width="100%"></iframe></span>
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