An annual wealth tax for all billionaires will not impact their lives or the lives of their future generations. Jeff Bezos, who is already the richest person in the world, has seen an increase in his net worth from $74 billion to $189.3 billion during 2020.
Author: coastcontact
I am a somewhat cranky but mostly optimistic 65 plus who refuses to give up on this maddening world. The purpose of this BLOG is to express my feelings, thoughts.
President Joe Biden is a Man in a Hurry
The president knows that his best opportunity to see laws passed that are on his agenda have to be completed during his first two years in office. Why? Because control of congress usually is won by the opposition party in the second two years.
Biden has stuffed everything he dreams of accomplishing into his $2 trillion infrastructure and climate plan. He calls it the American Jobs Plan. The ‘Imminent’ Collapse of Wastewater Reservoir in Florida Forces Evacuations definitely sends the message that America’s infrastructure is in very bad shape. America’s infrastructure received an overall grade of C- from the American Society of Civil Engineers, according to the group’s 2021 Report Card.
The control of the House of Representatives during Trump’s second two years went to the Democrats. That very thing happened during Barack Obama presidency. In fact both houses were controlled by the GOP during the last two years of his presidency. It’s not a given since George W. Bush managed to have a GOP congress for four years but Eisenhower, who was president for two terms, saw both houses in Democratic control for six of his eight years in office. The Democratic Party has a very narrow control of both houses. Just the loss of one seat in the Senate and the GOP will again be in control. Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times reports that most prognosticators predict the GOP will gain control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 election.
Incidentally, I started writing this piece before the McManus column.
A reservoir in Florida that holds nearly 400 million gallons of wastewater from a former phosphate mine was leaking on Saturday, prompting hundreds of evacuations, the authorities said.
Cesar Chavez was The United Farm Workers founder
Seven years after his death California’s governor signed a law making Cesar Chavez’s birthday a state holiday. At the time I asked why? After all other than recognizing his efforts to unite farm workers what did he do? The answer is nothing. Famed union leaders like Walter Reuther, who led the UAW, has not been honored with a holiday nor has any other union leaders. My theory is that Black Americans have a holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and so we must give the same honor to someone who is Hispanic because those people need someone to honor. It was a bad idea when the law was passed and it is still a bad idea.
Since Cesar Chavez‘s birthday is March 31 and a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times ,GUSTAVO ARELLANO, tried to justify the holiday but really does not make the case.
Suez Canal is one of the most important Waterways in the World
The Suez Canal was opened in November 1869. It connects the Mediterranean Sea with Red Sea. The completion of the canal reduced shipping time from East Asia to Europe by three weeks. Before the canal was completed ships had to travel around the horn of Africa. Today ships would take about a week longer to travel around the horn.
We have a problem that will impact the entire world. It has been reported that 12% of all goods shipped in the world pass through the Suez Canal. Right now one of the largest ships in the world has gone aground while traveling through that canal. The ship left China with a destination of Rotterdam Holland.
How the hell did this happen?
Evergreen Marine, owner of the ship, said the Ever Given, which is 59 metres wide, “was suspected of being hit by a sudden strong wind, causing the hull to deviate from the waterway and accidentally hit the bottom and run aground.”
Jamil Sayegh, a former captain and maritime law specialist with experience navigating the canal thought that human error may also have been a factor since ships traverse the canal in convoys and none of the vessels behind the Ever Given had run into similar troubles.
The Art of Evasion
President Joe Biden held a one hour news conference in the White House. It was successful from the standpoint of no gaffs and no off the subject responses. It was beautifully choreographed. The list of questioners were just what he dreamed of. All of them representing news media that is friendly to a Democratic president. The list of questioners were just what he dreamed of. All of them representing news media that is friendly to a Democratic president.
Sadly we learned almost nothing about his plans. Instead he bragged. rightfully so, that 200 million COVID-19 injections will be given in the first 100 days of his presidency.
Zeke Miller of Detroit News
Yamiche Alcindor of NPR
Kristen Welker of NBC
Caitlin Collins of CNN
Justin Sink of Bloomberg News
Newsmax’s Emerald Robinson and Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy were not called upon to ask a question.
Here is a link to a transcript of the conference.
If the Shooter…
Owning Guns is more important then Life Itself
This is beyond senseless. It seems improbably after two mass shootings just days apart, but the Supreme Court is scheduled to discuss a case that could expand Second Amendment rights.
Americans love there guns more than life itself. A law to prohibit the use of assault weapons in Boulder, Colo., barred assault weapons in 2018 as a
way to prevent mass shootings like the one that killed 17 at a high school in Parkland., Fla., earlier that year. That ban was blocked in court this month.
Boulder City Attorney Tom Carr declined to comment to The Washington Post, but pointed to language in the city’s code on assault weapons suggesting that the AR-556 pistol linked to the suspected shooter would have been included in the ban.
With each mass shooting flags are lowered, candles are light to remember the dead and flowers are placed near the place of the shooting. The last thing we do is walk away tsk tsking and do nothing to prevent another shooting elsewhere.
You can bet there will be more mass shooting this year and every year as long as we love guns more than lives.
A Nation of Haters
I am back to this topic again because it keeps coming up in the news. It is necessary for me to remind you that HATE is alive and well in America.
The sickening hatred of all Non-White Christian Americans has never been worse than it is today. They are racists. (Racist definition: a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.)
When the president of the United States promotes hatred for minorities it provides the haters with the encouragement they crave.
“You Will Not Replace Us” is a white supremacist slogan that became popular in early 2017, as did its acronym version, YWNRU. The slogan appeared on white supremacist flyers, banners and graffiti in a variety of places in the first six months of 2017, gaining wider attention when white supremacists used the phrase at several rallies held in Charlottesville, Virginia, culminating in the large and violent Unite the Right event in August 2017. Many in that march were chanting “Jews will not replace us.”
Now the focus is on Asian Americans. The hate against them was promoted by former president Donald Trump who called the COVD-19 virus the China virus. The haters have seen that as a signal to attack them.
The history of hate of Asian Americans is not new. The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.
A total of 11,507 people of German ancestry were interned during war II, comprising 36.1% of the total internments under the US Justice Department’s Enemy Alien Control Program. By contrast, an estimated 110,000–120,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly relocated from the West Coast and incarcerated in internment camps run by the US War Department’s War Relocation Authority.
2018 marked an anniversary if a massacre of 15 Mexicans in el Paso, Texas. The slaughter, which was carried out by white Texas Rangers, US soldiers, and local vigilantes, was justified by labeling the Mexican American families “bandits” and criminals. It wouldn’t be the las.t On The August 3, 2019 a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, which left 22 people dead, appeared to be the deadliest terror attack and hate crime against Latinos in recent American history.
The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was a mass shooting that took place on October 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The Charleston church shooting (also known as the Charleston church massacre)[6][7][8] was a mass shooting on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Dylann Roof, the killer, was a 21-year-old white supremacist, had attended the Bible study before he committed the shooting. He was found to have targeted members of this church because of its history and stature.
President Joe Biden may have empathy for those who have been attacked but it will take more than showing compassion to alter the hate in so many hearts.
Ending the Filibuster in the U.S. Senate
What happened to majority rules? You take a vote on any subject and the majority wins. That is not the way it works in he U.S. Senate. 
The U. S. Senate is on its way to ending the filibuster. Rather than doing so in one step they are eating away at the idea of 60 votes to end debate. The intent of this process was to bring about compromise. The rule as created by the senate and is not in the Constitution. This nightmare rule denies the majority the power to pass legislation.
While Senate rules still require just a simple majority to actually pass a bill, several procedural steps along the way require a supermajority of 60 votes to end debate on bills.
The filibuster is an Informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions.
The most common form of filibuster occurs when one or more senators attempt to delay or block a vote on a bill by extending debate on the measure. Changes in 2013 and 2017 now require only a simple majority to invoke cloture (The cloture rule–Rule 22–is the only formal procedure that Senate rules provide for breaking a filibuster) on nominations, although most legislation still requires 60 votes.
The Senate has a number of options for curtailing the use of the filibuster, including by setting a new precedent, changing the rule itself, or placing restrictions on its use.
For many matters in the Senate, debate can only be cut off if at least 60 senators support doing so.
In 2013 the rules were changed under the leadership of Democratic Senator Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) eliminated the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster against all executive branch nominees and judicial nominees other than to the Supreme Court.
In 2017 the rules were again changed under the leadership of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) eliminated the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster for approval of nominations to the Supreme Court formally by lowering the threshold for ending debate on a nomination to 51 votes from 60, paving the way for Neil Gorsuch to win confirmation to the Supreme Court.
It is time to end minority control.
The Big Three isn’t so big anymore
Once upon a time there were three large companies that built most of the cars sold in the United States. All three were American companies. They were called The Big Three: Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors. All the other car companies struggled to compete (American Motors – a combination of Nash, and Hudson, Willys Jeep, Studebaker, Packard, Kaiser Frazer. All those smaller car companies are now history.
I just received the latest issue of Consumer Reports annual auto issue. Of their top ten picks not one is made by The Big Three. Tesla’s Model 3 is the only American brand. The rest are made by Honda, Kia, Lexus, Subaru, and Toyota.
Even by category The Big Three did poorly.
Sedans under $25,000: none from The Big Three
Hatchbacks under $25,000: Chevrolet Spark with an overall rating of 45, next to last place
SUVs under $25,000: Chevrolet Trailblazer in last place with an overall rating of 55
Sedans $25,000 – $35,000: Chevrolet Malibu in last place with an overall rating of 45.
In none of these categories there were no Chrysler or Ford models.
Without listing the other categories I can inform you that The Big Three did well in high priced sedans, SUV and truck categories.
My question is what happened to The Big Three?
Coast Contact 