News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
After raking in enormous profits from its coronavirus vaccine in 2021, the U.S.-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has kicked off the new year by hiking the prices of more than 120 of its drugs, resulting in significantly higher costs for patients amid a deadly pandemic. That's according to a new report released Thursday by Patients for Affordable Drugs (P4AD), which found that pharmaceutical companies have raised the prices of 554 medicines this month alone. Pfizer led the way with 125 price hikes to start 2022, leading P4AD to label the company the industry's "poster child for greed." "Due to sales of its Covid-19 vaccine, which is set to be the best-selling drug of all time, Pfizer shattered profit records in 2021. Projected sales for 2022 are $54.5 billion–more than double the previous record for one-year sales for a prescription drug," the report notes. "To put this into perspective, AbbVie's Humira previously held the spot with $19.8 billion in sales, and Pfizer's best-selling product just prior to the pandemic achieved worldwide revenues of $5.8 billion." "Despite this record revenue in 2021," the report continues, "Pfizer began 2022 with price hikes on seven of its 10 best-selling drugs," including its pneumonia vaccine (up 6.9%), a breast cancer medication (up 6.9%), and a treatment for people with cardiovascular disease (up 6%). "These hikes of 5% or 6% can translate into thousands of dollars in higher costs for patients," P4AD notes.
Note: See also a Forbes article asking why physicians aren't challenging outrageous pricing for medical costs. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has banned from his social media platforms any claims that the novel coronavirus vaccine alters DNA, although he himself expressed similar concerns last year. Project Veritas released video Tuesday of Mr. Zuckerberg raising questions about whether vaccines include risks of side effects such as "modifying people's DNA and RNA" in July during a virtual Q&A meeting with staff. "I do just want to make sure that I share some caution on this because we just don't know the long-term side effects of basically modifying people's DNA and RNA to directly code in a person's DNA and RNA," Mr. Zuckerberg said in the video. "Basically the ability to produce those antibodies and whether that causes other mutations or other risks downstream." In a Feb. 8 post, Facebook updated its COVID-19 and vaccine policies "to protect people from harmful content and new types of abuse related to COVID-19 and vaccines," saying it would remove posts that included "Claims that the COVID-19 vaccine changes people's DNA." Project Veritas president James O'Keefe said that the newly leaked tape showed Mr. Zuckerberg "violating his own code of conduct" and that "he would be censored on the platform today for what he said." "Isn't it interesting that Zuckerberg can vacillate and evolve his thinking on the subject of vaccines, but as soon as he's made up his mind or appears to have made up his mind on the topic, he disallows the almost three billion Facebook users to do the same?" Mr. O'Keefe asked.
Note: Explore an informative essay on this on the Project Veritas websites. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.
After 30 years of immunology research, [Louis Picker] is on the verge of launching human trials for a vaccine that could stop AIDS, an epidemic that has become something of an afterthought decades after it began ravaging gay men in America. For many in the developed world, complacency has set in, largely thanks to a regimen of antiretroviral drugs that allow people with HIV to live long and healthy lives, and decades of failed attempts to develop a vaccine. In 1984, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler expressed hope ... that science might have a vaccine for HIV within two years. Instead, a decade passed, and by 1994, AIDS was the leading cause of death for Americans ages 25 to 44. Four vaccines have made it to human trials, but none made it to market. As Picker continued his research, scientists developed a series of antiretroviral drugs that slowly downgraded HIV to a chronic disease ... in the developed world. But globally, AIDS is still killing a lot of people, largely because most of those infected in poorer countries don't have access to the drugs. According to the World Health Organization, 1.1 million people died from AIDS in 2015. In the U.S., 50,000 new cases of HIV are reported every year. Worldwide, the number is 2 million. Every time news reports come out about Picker's research, he fields a series of phone calls from HIV-infected patients, their friends and their family. "Can I be in your trial?" people ask him. "Please, can you save my son?"
Note: How is it that COVID-19 vaccines were created just months after it became a threat while many decades later no vaccine has been found for the deadly AIDS epidemic, which according to the WHO has killed 36 million - many times the number of deaths from COVID? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on health from reliable major media sources.
It started last November with a single string of Christmas lights on a Baltimore County street. Kim Morton was home watching a movie with her daughter when she received a text from her neighbor who lives directly across the road. He told her to peek outside. Matt Riggs had hung a string of white Christmas lights, stretching from his home to hers in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood, just north of the Baltimore city line. He also left a tin of homemade cookies on her doorstep. The lights, he told her, were meant to reinforce that they were always connected despite their pandemic isolation. "I was reaching out to Kim to literally brighten her world," said Riggs. He knew his neighbor was facing a dark time. Morton had shared that she was dealing with depression and anxiety. Riggs could relate. A bit of brightness was in order, he decided, but he certainly did not expect that his one strand of Christmas lights would somehow spark a neighborhood-wide movement. Neighbor after neighbor followed suit, stretching lines of Christmas lights from one side of the street to the other. Leabe Commisso ... wanted in. "I said to my neighbor: â€Let's do it, too,' " she recalled. "Before we knew it, we were cleaning out Home Depot of all the lights." Quickly, other neighbors caught on. "Little by little, the whole neighborhood started doing it," said Morton, 49, who has lived in Rodgers Forge for 17 years. "The lights were a physical sign of connection and love." For the first time in a long time, a feeling of togetherness – and light – had returned.
Note: Enjoy a wonderful compilation of inspiring stories from the pandemic times on this webpage. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Ben and Marilyn Keryluke didn't want to sell their late son's 1973 Pontiac Parisienne, which he painstakingly repaired and refurbished in the hopes of passing it on to his own children. But when Brent and Nicole Keryluke were killed in a motorcycle crash on May 5, the Red Deer, Alta., couple suddenly found themselves raising two small grandchildren with special needs. So they took Brent's prized car to Electric Garage Auctions on Saturday, hoping to earn at least $14,000. But when the auctioneer introduced the item, he told the whole story of what happened to the Kerylukes. "They told the story of why it was being sold and that we wanted to keep the car but, unfortunately, if you can't, you can't," Keryluke said. "Then they started the auction and what happened from there was nothing short of amazing." The auction house had previously promoted the item heavily in local media using the Keryluke family story. And the community came out in full force. The bids immediately soared past the family's expectations and the car sold for $29,000 to Rod McWilliams. McWilliams turned around and donated the car right back to the auction house, so it could go back on the block immediately. It sold in the second round for $30,000 to Danny Fayad from Edmonton, who also gave it back. Finally, it sold for $20,000 to Bob Bevins from Bulldog Metals, who returned the car, at no cost, to the Kerylukes. The donations ... are still pouring in, and so far the family has earned $100,000 from the auction – and they got to keep the car.
Note: Enjoy a wonderful compilation of inspiring stories from the pandemic times on this webpage. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
If anyone has earned a coffee break, it's 63-year-old Mike Mason of Midlothian, Virginia. He has served his country for decades – first as a captain in the Marines and later as the No. 4 man at the FBI. Mason left the bureau in 2007 and went to work as an executive at a Fortune 500 company, and then retired. But Mason said retirement did not sit well with him. [Yet] if he was going to start a new chapter, he knew it would have to be something really important. The choice was clear: He became a school bus driver. "When I gave them my resume, I actually got called by a very senior person in the county and he said, 'Just checking, why do you want to be a bus driver?' And I told him," Mason said. Mason had heard the Chesterfield County Public School District was short 125 drivers. It's part of a national crisis, with more than half of school districts in the U.S. reporting "severe" driver shortages. So Mason stepped up. "This is important work," he said, adding that he believes the work is just as important as what he was doing at the FBI. "I think in our society we need to get next to the idea that there are no unimportant jobs. I mean, what could be more important than the attention we pay to our education system?" As for the salary, Mason said he has already donated all of what he expects to make this year. But, of course, the much bigger gift is far less tangible. Mason had climbed to the highest level, but by ... beginning a completely new career in a time of need, he is demonstrating the greatest leadership of all.
Note: Enjoy a wonderful compilation of inspiring stories from the pandemic times on this webpage. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
A year ago, just two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine – or even one, in the case of Johnson & Johnson's formulation – were thought to offer sufficient protection against the coronavirus. On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded eligibility for boosters to adolescents and backed away from describing anyone as "fully vaccinated" because two shots no longer seem adequate. Instead, one's vaccination status will now be "up to date" – or not. It's no surprise that many Americans are wondering: Where does this end? Are we to roll up our sleeves for booster shots every few months? Scientists are reluctant to predict the future. But in interviews this week, nearly a dozen said that whatever happens, trying to boost the entire population every few months is not realistic. Nor does it make much scientific sense. For starters, persuading people to line up for shots every few months is probably a losing proposition. Just as important, there are no data to support the effectiveness of a fourth dose of the current vaccines. If the coronavirus settles into a flulike seasonal pattern, as it seems possible, "you can imagine a scenario where we simply give boosters before the winter each year," Dr. Hensley said. Lessons from flu season also suggest that frequent vaccination is unlikely to be helpful. Giving the flu vaccine twice a year "has a diminishing return, and so it may not make sense to do vaccination so frequently," said [epidemiologist] Ben Cowling.
Note: Could it be that this is what big Pharma has been hoping for all along - forever boosting? And if it's all free, you won't even see how billions of your tax dollars are flowing into the pockets of the elite. Could this be why the Australian government on their website stated they are securing 195 million doses of COVID vaccine boosters for their population of 25 million? For more, see this revealing article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
In "Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free: And Other Paradoxes of Our Broken Legal System," [Judge Jed S.] Rakoff reaches far beyond corporate boardrooms to highlight an array of shortcomings within the criminal justice system. His proposed fixes are worthy of consideration but also lay bare a harsh reality: The entrenched interests tolerating the system's inequities and, in some cases, profiting from the status quo pose significant obstacles to reform. Rakoff realized that America's "system of justice is failing its mission" after becoming a federal district court judge a quarter-century ago. What's the nature of this failure? The country imprisons millions of indigent Americans yet routinely allows white-collar criminals to avoid punishment. "To a federal judge," he declares, the government's reluctance to hold executives accountable and instead enter into "cosmetic prosecution agreements" with corporations that are repeatedly violated and unenforced "is disturbing ... in what it says about the DOJ's apparent disregard for equality under the law." Rakoff fittingly cites Pfizer to exemplify his point. The four deferred-prosecution agreements between the pharmaceutical giant and federal authorities from 2002 to 2009 – all devised to prevent future misconduct – failed to stop the company from flouting the law. Through it all, Pfizer's executives went unpunished, and the fines the company paid represented a fraction of its ill-gotten gains.
Note: For a much deeper analysis and discussion of Judge Rakoff's highly revealing book by courageous journalist Matt Taibbi, see this excellent essay. Consider subscribing to Taibbi's excellent work. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in the court system and in Big Pharma from reliable major media sources.
The Associated Press sought answers Monday from the Department of Homeland Security on its use of sensitive government databases for tracking international terrorists to investigate as many as 20 American journalists, including an acclaimed AP reporter. In a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, AP Executive Editor Julie Pace urged the agency to explain why the name of Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Martha Mendoza was run through the databases and identified as a potential confidential informant during the Trump administration, as detailed in a report by Homeland Security's inspector general. The DHS investigation of U.S. journalists, as well as congressional staff and perhaps members of Congress ... represents the latest apparent example of an agency created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks using its vast capabilities to target American citizens. The AP's letter ... called for "assurances that these improper practices and apparent abuse of power will not continue going forward." That would be in line with recent order from Attorney General Merrick Garland prohibiting the seizing of records of journalists in leak investigations. That followed an outcry over revelations that the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump had obtained records belonging to journalists, as well as Democratic members of Congress. During the Obama administration, federal investigators secretly seized phone records for some reporters and editors at the AP.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.
After President Biden's inauguration this year, protesters marched once again through the streets of Portland, Ore., sending a message that putting a Democrat in the White House would not resolve their problems with a system of policing and corporate wealth that they saw as fundamentally unfair. The event ... included a variety of anarchists, antifascists, communists and racial justice activists. But there were others mingling in the crowd that day: plainclothes agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The F.B.I. set up extensive surveillance operations inside Portland's protest movement ... with agents standing shoulder to shoulder with activists, tailing vandalism suspects to guide the local police toward arrests and furtively videotaping inside one of the country's most active domestic protest movements. The breadth of F.B.I. involvement in Portland and other cities where federal teams were deployed at street protests became a point of concern for some within the bureau and the Justice Department who worried that it could undermine the First Amendment right to protest against the government. Some within the departments worried that the teams could be compared to F.B.I. surveillance transgressions of decades past, such as the COINTELPRO projects that sought to spy on and disrupt various activist groups in the 1950s and 1960s. There has been no evidence so far that the bureau used similar surveillance teams on right-wing demonstrators during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Note: Read more about the FBI's COINTELPRO program. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the erosion of civil liberties from reliable major media sources.
For 33 years and four months [the highly decorated General Smedley] Butler had been a United States Marine. Butler knew what most Americans did not: that in all those years, he and his Marines had destroyed democracies and helped put into power the Hitlers and Mussolinis of Latin America, dictators like the Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo and Nicaragua's soon-to-be leader Anastasio Somoza – men who would employ violent repression and their U.S.-created militaries to protect American investments and their own power. He had done so on behalf of moneyed interests like City Bank, J. P. Morgan, and the Wall Street financier Grayson M.P. Murphy. And now a bond salesman, who worked for Murphy, was pitching Butler on a domestic operation that set off the old veteran's alarm bells. The bond salesman was Gerald C. MacGuire. He made his proposal: The Marine would lead half a million veterans in a march on Washington, blending the Croix de Feu's assault on the French legislature with the March on Rome that had put Mussolini's Fascisti in power. They would be financed and armed by some of the most powerful corporations in America – including DuPont, the nation's biggest manufacturer of explosives and synthetic materials. The purpose of the action was to stop Roosevelt's New Deal, the president's program to end the Great Depression, which one of the millionaire du Pont brothers deemed "nothing more or less than the Socialistic doctrine called by another name." Butler recognized this immediately as a coup.
Note: Read a concise summary of the highly decorated US General Butler's important book "War is a Racket." He makes clear that the reason we have so much war has little to do with national security and everything to do with padding the pockets of those in the military-industrial complex. Read more about the fascist plot to take over the US that he uncovered. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption from reliable major media sources.
Millions of doses of a new, cheap coronavirus vaccine will soon be available in India, and they will arrive with one distinction neither Moderna nor Pfizer can claim: They're patent-free. The new CORBEVAX inoculation, which was developed in Texas with decades-old technology and little support from the U.S. government, received emergency use authorization last week from India's drug regulation agency. The researchers behind the vaccine stand with little to gain financially. "We don't own any intellectual property," said Dr. Peter Hotez, a researcher who helped lead the vaccine's development. Human rights campaigners are pressuring pharmaceutical companies to transfer new vaccine technology to speed global access to shots. And while doubts linger about CORBEVAX ... its development, outside the path of typical pharmaceutical development and stripped of the same financial incentives for inventors, represents a model for others. About 59 percent of the world's population has received at least one dose of a vaccine. But fewer than 9 percent of residents in low-income countries have received a dose. To this day, countries like India remain without access to the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which have largely been purchased and distributed by wealthy countries. Boosters, and even fourth doses, are being administered in rich countries before access to first and second doses are available worldwide.
Note: In this time of crisis, why is big Pharma raking in huge profits while wonderful researchers like this are offering their findings free of charge? Why in every recent pandemic do the rich get richer while the financially disadvantaged suffer. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Psychedelics startups don't just want to just reinvent mental health. They also want to reinvent capitalism. And judging by the news coming out of last week's "Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics" conference in Manhattan, they're having some early success. Stephen Jurvetson, co-founder of Future Ventures and a board member at SpaceX, told me ... that he's a true believer in the industry's mission to fix the state of mental-health care. He decided last week to carve up his own estate by giving around half of his net worth to fund psychedelic science. Organizations like the public-benefit corporation of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelics Studies, or MAPS, and the Psychedelic Science Funders Collaborative, a nonprofit organization, have both accepted charitable donations but fund research that could lead to blockbuster drugs. Psychedelics startups do need funding, and badly. Like biotech, it's a high-risk industry with expensive clinical trials and regulatory uncertainty. And patents, a traditional financial engine for biotech, are harder to win for plants that have been around for centuries, or molecules that have already made the rounds as street drugs. MAPS also made a major announcement: The New York-based venture capital fund Vine Ventures has created a $70 million special purpose vehicle to fund its Phase 3 clinical trials on post-traumatic stress disorder and MDMA. The novel funding method ... will help keep MAPS a nonprofit while letting it retain control of its intellectual property.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the healing potentials of mind-altering drugs from reliable major media sources.
Legal psychedelic medicine is poised to soon disrupt the multibillion-dollar mental health field. Treatments being trialed today in clinical settings using substances like psilocybin-containing mushrooms will soon offer legal alternatives to the more than 50 percent of patients receiving therapy for major depressive disorder (MDD) who do not respond to approved depression medications. The creation of new effective therapies will likely put pressure on healthcare providers to examine the upside of psychedelic therapies and how such treatments will inevitably affect their bottom line. While these therapies will not be a cure-all for everyone, over the next three to five years an expanding number of psychedelic treatments will produce alternatives for the many patients who find no relief from FDA-approved, first-line therapeutics like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Since legalizing the use of psilocybin-containing magic mushrooms in 2020 through a ballot measure, Oregon is now in the process of creating an intricate statewide system for qualified caregivers to deliver psilocybin treatments in therapeutic settings. Sessions using psilocybin can last over six hours, which does not include vital therapy before and after treatments. MDMA-assisted therapy for severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is very close to being an FDA-approved therapy, will likewise require significant clinician involvement before, during and after a session.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the healing potentials of mind-altering drugs from reliable major media sources.
Five of the world's largest nuclear powers pledged on Monday to work together toward "a world without nuclear weapons" in a rare statement of unity amid rising East-West tensions. "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," said the joint statement, which was issued simultaneously by the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France. "As nuclear use would have far-reaching consequences, we also affirm that nuclear weapons - for as long as they continue to exist - should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war." The statement also stressed the importance of preventing conflict between nuclear-weapon states from escalating, describing it as a "foremost responsibility." The statement released by the five powers ... as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, called on all states to create a security environment "more conducive to progress on disarmament with the ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons with undiminished security for all. The five pledged to adhere to the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) which obligates them "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament." Some of the text of the statement ... echoes a statement issued by the five nations after a December conference in Paris that laid the groundwork for the since delayed review of the treaty.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Dave Isay has created a program called "One Small Step" to get Americans from across the political spectrum to stop demonizing one another and start communicating - face to face, one conversation at a time. It has taped more than half a million Americans telling their stories – to become the largest single collection of human voices ever recorded. StoryCorps is an important part of adding history and context and the individuals who make history. Not just the ones that we see on the news, but the people who are part of the fabric of our American life. Around the time of the 2016 presidential election, Dave Isay says he got the idea for a new kind of StoryCorps that could perhaps help unite a country becoming increasingly divided. He decided to call it "One Small Step." "So we match strangers who disagree politically to put them face-to-face for 50 minutes," [said Isay]. "It's not to talk about politics, it's just to talk about your lives." Facilitators begin by asking the participants to read one another's biography out loud. The project tries to match people who may be from different political parties but have something else in common. The format is derived from a psychological concept developed in the 1950s called contact theory. When you have two people who are enemies and you put them face-to-face under very, very specific conditions , and they have a conversation and a kind of visceral, emotional experience with each other, that hate can melt away. And people can see each other in a new way.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Canadian officials said Tuesday they have reached $31.5 billion in agreements in principle with Indigenous groups to compensate First Nations children who were unnecessarily taken from their homes and put into the child welfare system, a major development in a dispute that has long been a sticking point in Ottawa's efforts to advance reconciliation with Indigenous people. Under the agreements, half of the money would go to children and families harmed by an underfunded and discriminatory child welfare system on First Nations reserves and in the Yukon, while the rest would be earmarked over five years for long-term reforms, the Indigenous services ministry said. "This is the largest settlement in Canadian history, but no amount of money can reverse the harms experienced by First Nations children," Marc Miller, Canada's Crown-Indigenous relations minister, told reporters. "Historic injustices require historic reparations." The dispute dates to 2007, when several Indigenous advocacy groups claimed in a human rights complaint that the federal government's "inequitable and insufficient" funding of child welfare services on First Nations reserves was discriminatory. In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal agreed with the advocates. The panel said the federal government's funding formula was based on "flawed assumptions about children in care," resulting in a system that incentivized the removal of First Nations children from their homes and their cultures.
Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Existing surveillance studies are not designed to reliably estimate life-threatening event or vaccine-induced fatality rates (VFR). Here, regional variation in vaccination rates was used to predict all-cause mortality and non-COVID deaths in subsequent time periods using two independent, publicly available datasets from the US and Europe. Results [suggest] 146K to 187K vaccine-associated US deaths between February and August, 2021. Comparing our estimate with the CDC-reported VFR (0.002%) suggests VAERS deaths are underreported by a factor of 20, consistent with known VAERS under-ascertainment bias. Comparing our age-stratified VFRs with published age-stratified coronavirus infection fatality rates (IFR) suggests the risks of COVID vaccines and boosters outweigh the benefits in children, young adults, and older adults with low occupational risk or previous coronavirus exposure. There is little to no evidence that vaccines reduce community spread and transmission. Vaccine mandates in workplaces, colleges, schools and elsewhere are ill-advised. The mandates are not based on sound science given the relatively low COVID risk in healthy middle-aged and young adults and growing evidence base for alternative prevention and early treatment options for COVID.
Note: See this webpage for information on the author of this study. Why has the media been all but silent on deaths and injuries from the vaccines? Read hundreds of personal stories of severe vaccine injury and death that are not being reported. And explore an excellent website which presents official VAERS information and in easily understandable format. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.
Remember the "carried interest" loophole that lets hedge fund executives and private equity managers – among the wealthiest people in America – pay a tax rate no higher than most Americans? It's a pure scam. They get the tax break even though they invest other peoples' money rather than risk their own. Barack Obama promised to get rid of the loophole. He failed. So, remarkably, did Donald Trump. Now that Democrats are trying to find ways to finance President Biden's Build Back Better package, you might think that the carried interest loophole would be high on their list. After all, closing it could raise $180bn over 10 years. Think again. The loophole – which treats the earnings of private equity managers and venture capitalists as capital gains, taxed at a top rate of just 20%, instead of income, whose top tax rate is 37% – remains as big as ever. Bigger. Influential Democrats, such as House ways and means committee chair Richard Neal, argue that closing the loophole would hobble the private equity industry, and, by extension, the US economy. The truth is there's zero economic justification for retaining this loophole. The sole reason the loophole survives even during Democratic Congresses, is fierce lobbying by the private equity industry – and the dependence of too many Democrats on campaign funding from the partners of private equity and hedge funds. The private equity industry ... has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to congressional campaigns.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.
The digital Covid vaccination certification, or "passport," is a mobile app that instantaneously affirms the vaccinated status, Covid test results, birth date, gender, and/or other identifiers of its holder. The information is usually mosaicked in a QR code, read by a proprietary scanner, and linked to a government registry. Led by New York, California, and Louisiana, as many as 30 states are rolling them out. The Biden administration announced last spring that it would wrangle them under national standards but so far it hasn't. Internationally, the EU and a growing number of countries are adopting them, from repressive regimes like Bahrain to democracies like Denmark. Twenty U.S. states have banned the passes, and hashtags like #NoVaccinePassports are proliferating. "Spoiler alert," tweeted British DJ ... Lange. "They are not planning on removing vax passports once introduced. This is just the first step to get you conditioned to accepting government restrictions in your daily life via your mobile phone. This digital ID is going to expand to all aspects of your life." New York, for one, is not expecting to mothball the technology when Covid wanes. State bureaucrats are "exploring how the platform could be retrofitted to verify other types of records and credentials." The surveillance technologies of the War on Contagion are inherited from the War on Terror, and the software is encoded with the same forever-war mentality: Both fight risk rather than actual threat.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.