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Charles Bethea | Teeing Up With QAnon
Charles Bethea, The New Yorker
Bethea writes: "What would Groucho say? Would you rather belong to a club that had the proprietor of a porn shop as a member? Or Marjorie Taylor Greene?"
What would Groucho say? Would you rather belong to a club that had the proprietor of a porn shop as a member? Or Marjorie Taylor Greene?
In the spring of 2006, Charles T. Craton III, a businessman in northwestern Georgia, best known for his work on Chick-fil-A’s “Eat Mor Chikin” campaign, opened Entice Adult Superstore. “I did expect there to be controversy,” Craton later told the Rome News-Tribune. But, he went on, “you’d have thought I killed the Lindbergh baby, sunk the Lusitania, and started World War II.” There had never been a porn shop in Floyd County—although, as Craton had discovered, no ordinance barred them. The county commission subsequently passed one; Craton unsuccessfully challenged it. But he was allowed to stay open as long as he changed the store’s name to Entice Couples Boutique and promised that no more than thirty-five per cent of his inventory would be dildos and other “adult novelties.”
By that time, Craton had been expelled from the Coosa Country Club, in Rome, which is in Georgia’s Fourteenth Congressional District. The club offered Craton several reasons for his expulsion in addition to his ownership of Entice. A Coosa member is said to have resigned “because of a known pornographer”—Craton—among the membership, and because Craton’s wife allegedly appeared on a “pornographic Web site.” All this, the club maintained, endangered “the good order, welfare and character of the Club.”
Craton, who had been a Coosa member for four years, sued the club for five million dollars. “This is me standing my ground against the moral elitists of Rome, Georgia,” he told the News-Tribune. His lawsuit noted that he had “conducted himself, at all times, on and off the club premises, as a gentleman.” Craton also published an open letter in the paper, addressed to “The Members of Coosa Country Club,” in which he referred to “felony crimes” and “public drunkenness” by fellow-members, and mentioned “illegal gambling in the men’s locker room.” The letter went on, “If the Coosa Country Club Board is going to conduct witch hunts, then for God’s sake, let’s find all the witches.” It concluded, “Once we investigate who all the witches are, there won’t be any members left.”
The suit was dismissed before Craton could tell his Coosa stories to a jury. “Private clubs are the last bastion of legal prejudice,” he told the News-Tribune, after the decision. He built himself a house with a view of the club’s eighth hole.
“We called it the ‘porn hole,’ ” a former club member, who believed that Craton had got a raw deal, said recently. The club’s “moral hypocrisy,” as the former member put it, was on view again this month, when Coosa welcomed Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Greene and her husband, Perry, who runs a construction company, were among eight new members mentioned in the January edition of the Coosa Chronicle, along with an engineer and an anesthesiologist. Greene’s admission was never put before the Coosa membership committee, as is standard for a controversial figure, according to a committee member who first learned of it on Twitter. Shortly before joining Coosa, Greene described the events of January 6, 2021, as “just a riot at the Capitol.” The violence, she said, was consistent with the Declaration of Independence’s support of “overthrowing tyrants.” (Any wrongdoing, she suggested, was the work of the F.B.I.)
“They ran Craton off for ‘pornography,’ ” the former member said. “But they don’t seem to have a problem with an adulteress who promotes insurrection?” He said he’d read about various extramarital affairs that Greene allegedly conducted years ago—one with a man who, according to the Daily Mail, now calls himself the Polyamorous Tantric Sex Guru on his OnlyFans page—when she worked at a CrossFit gym outside Atlanta. (Greene’s office denied the affairs.)
He was not the only Coosa member to be perturbed. John Cowan, a local neurosurgeon, who lost to Greene in a primary runoff, tweeted his reaction: “I hope she realizes she can’t handpick who else attends while she’s there like she does for her Townhall meetings.”
Entice Couples Boutique closed in 2015, and Craton moved on to other businesses. By then, the Rome Area History Museum had published a book titled “Legendary Locals of Rome.” The chapter “Outside the Box: Innovators and Rebels” opens with the story of Charles T. Craton III, who built “the largest store of its kind in the southeast.”
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Rudy Giuliani oversaw efforts to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost. (photo: Getty)
Trump Campaign Officials, Led by Rudy Giuliani, Oversaw Fake Electors Plot in 7 States
Marshall Cohen, Zachary Cohen and Dan Merica, CNN
Excerpt: "Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the scheme."
The following is a recording left by an Angela McCallum who claims to be from the President Donald Trump campaign, urging a state legislator in Michigan to pick electors who will vote for Trump due to fact that the alleged fraud in Michigan's election has caused the current results to not reflect the true will of voters in the state.
Trump campaign officials, led by Rudy Giuliani, oversaw efforts in December 2020 to put forward illegitimate electors from seven states that Trump lost, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the scheme.
The sources said members of former President Donald Trump's campaign team were far more involved than previously known in the plan, a core tenet of the broader plot to overturn President Joe Biden's victory when Congress counted the electoral votes on January 6.
Giuliani and his allies coordinated the nuts-and-bolts of the process on a state-by-state level, the sources told CNN. One source said there were multiple planning calls between Trump campaign officials and GOP state operatives, and that Giuliani participated in at least one call. The source also said the Trump campaign lined up supporters to fill elector slots, secured meeting rooms in statehouses for the fake electors to meet on December 14, 2020, and circulated drafts of fake certificates that were ultimately sent to the National Archives.
Trump and some of his top advisers publicly encouraged the "alternate electors" scheme in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico. But behind the scenes, Giuliani and Trump campaign officials actively choreographed the process, the sources said.
One fake elector from Michigan boasted at a recent event hosted by a local Republican organization that the Trump campaign directed the entire operation.
"We fought to seat the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that," Meshawn Maddock, co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, said at a public event last week that was organized by the conservative group Stand Up Michigan, according to a recording obtained by CNN.
Maddock was also one of the 16 Trump supporters from Michigan who served as fake electors and signed the illegitimate certificate that was sent to the National Archives.
"It was Rudy and these misfit characters who started calling the shots," a former Trump campaign staffer said. "The campaign was throwing enough sh*t at the wall to see what would stick."
Integral to the Jan 6 plan
The scheme was integral to Trump's plan to get then-Vice President Mike Pence to throw out Biden's electors and replace them with the GOP electors on January 6 when Congress counted the electoral votes. It has also come under renewed scrutiny by the January 6 select committee and state attorneys general, raising questions about the involvement of Trump's campaign and whether any laws were broken.
Committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi told reporters Thursday the panel is looking into whether there was a broader conspiracy or involvement from the Trump White House in the creation or submission of these fake electors.
"That's a concern" Thompson said.
In its subpoena letter sent to Giuliani on Tuesday, the House committee specifically references his efforts to convince state legislatures to overturn election results. The document cites Giuliani's comments from December 2020 in which he publicly urged lawmakers in Michigan to award the state's electoral votes to Trump.
One of the pro-Trump electors from Pennsylvania, Sam DeMarco, told CNN there was a last-minute dispute, where the state's GOP electors pushed Trump campaign officials to add legal caveats to the fake certificate to say they were only electors-in-waiting, if Trump's legal challenges prevailed.
The fake documents from Pennsylvania and New Mexico ultimately contained these caveats, but the documents from the other five states explicitly claimed, falsely, that the pro-Trump electors were the rightful electors.
It's not clear that any of the fake electors themselves participated in strategy sessions with top Trump campaign brass. But both Maddock from Michigan and DeMarco from Pennsylvania have said they were in direct contact with members of the Trump campaign.
Many of the players involved in the scheme, including Maddock, stand by their actions and are still pushing the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Giuliani, a Trump spokesperson and a representative from Stand Up Michigan did not respond to CNN's requests for comment.
Advancing the lie that the election was stolen
After Trump failed to stop battleground states from certifying Biden's victory, Trump campaign officials, led by Giuliani, launched its parallel effort to disrupt and undermine the Electoral College process. This included publicly promoting false claims of fraud, while quietly exploring the fast-diminishing avenues to overturn the results.
Trump hoped Republican legislators from the seven battleground states would replace Biden's authentic electors with the rogue GOP slate, and that Pence would seat those electors during the joint session of Congress on January 6.
A source familiar with the situation told CNN that Pence was concerned about the possibility of "alternate electors," and his team carefully worded what he said that day during the Electoral College certification to recognize only the legitimate electors.
One of the sources with direct knowledge of the scheme, a former Trump campaign staffer, told CNN that Giuliani worked closely on the seven-state stunt with Christina Bobb, a correspondent for the pro-Trump propaganda network One America News.
Many of Giuliani's unhinged conspiracies about the 2020 election found a home at OAN. And in a deposition last year as part of a civil lawsuit, Giuliani said Bobb was "very active in gathering evidence" as "part of the legal team" working for Trump's campaign during the presidential transition.
Bobb reached out to a top Arizona legislator about supposed voter fraud, according to emails obtained by the government oversight group American Oversight through a public records request. In the December 4, 2020, email Bobb said she was sending the message on Giuliani's behalf. The emails flesh out how Trump's team was trying to press state legislatures to overturn the results.
Bobb didn't respond to messages seeking comment about the pro-Trump electors.
"They were all working together. Rudy, John Eastman, and Christina Bobb, in tandem, to create this coverage for OAN, to advance the Big Lie," the former Trump campaign staffer told CNN.
While mainstream news outlets covered the Electoral College proceedings, which cemented Biden's position as President-elect, OAN focused on the rogue electors and voter fraud myths.
The Washington Post first reported new details about the role of Giuliani and Bobb.
Battleground Michigan
Republicans in Michigan were central to the effort to try and overturn the election results and Meshawn Maddock -- along with her husband State Rep. Matt Maddock -- were instrumental to the effort inside the state.
The Maddocks have deep ties to Trump. The former president has endorsed Matt Maddock in his bid to be Michigan House leader. Maddock tweeted a photo last year of an article written about his campaign that Trump had signed, and added, "Matt, I am with you all the way."
In the months leading up to January 6, Matt Maddock consistently pushed Trump's lie about the election. In early December 2020, Matt Maddock and other state GOP lawmakers in Michigan held a series of hearings seeking to validate unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud -- prompting a personal visit from Giuliani.
When the effort to convince state legislators in Michigan to block Biden's electors ultimately failed, Maddock was among the GOP lawmakers from five states who sent a letter to Pence on January 5, urging him to delay certification of the electoral votes. Pence refused to go along with the plan.
Meshawn Maddock is equally close to Trump and is still peddling the lie that the election was stolen.
Along with being an elector, she also helped organize buses to take GOP activists to Washington for protests around January 6 and took part in the march to the US Capitol. She later disavowed the violence that came after the march.
Maddock was named co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party one month after January 6. But as she is gaining prominence, her role as a fake elector is also attracting legal scrutiny.
"Under state law, I think clearly you have forgery of a public record, which is a 14-year offense, and election law forgery, which is a five-year offense," Michigan Attorney general Dana Nessel, a Democrat, told MSNBC last week, about the fake certificates signed by pro-Trump electors.
No one, including Meshawn Maddock, has been charged with any crimes related to the scheme.
"This is nothing more than political prosecution of convenience led by Dana Nessel," said Gustavo Portela, MIGOP Communications Director, when asked about Maddock's comments and role as a fake elector.
Hedged language in Pennsylvania
The documents from Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada explicitly stated, falsely, that the GOP electors were the rightful electors, representing 59 electoral votes.
But the documents from Pennsylvania and New Mexico contained clauses saying that the Trump supporters were electors-in-waiting, in case a court or some other proceeding later ruled that they were the "duly elected and qualified electors."
If anything, this provided a veneer of legal protection for Trump supporters who were trying to exploit the Electoral College process to overturn an election.
Demarco, who was one of the state's pro-Trump electors, and is the chairman of the Allegheny County Republican Committee, told CNN he and other alternate electors signed the certificate at the Trump campaign's request but first demanded the language be changed to make clear it was not intended to contest the will of voters in that state who voted for Biden.
The hedging language was included at the last moment as the Trump campaign had concerns, and questioned whether the change was appropriate in the immediate lead-up to December 14, according to a Trump campaign staffer with knowledge of the matter.
Ultimately the Trump campaign acquiesced. But the internal debate shows that even some of Trump's strongest allies were concerned about the attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
The office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said in a statement that they looked into the matter but concluded that the fake certificate was not an illegal forgery.
"These 'fake ballots' included a conditional clause that they were only to be used if a court overturned the results in Pennsylvania, which did not happen," the statement said. "Though their rhetoric and policy were intentionally misleading and purposefully damaging to our democracy, based on our initial review, our office does not believe this meets the legal standards for forgery."
Concerns about democracy
Democratic lawmakers, state officials, and Biden himself have roundly condemned the fake electors plot. Biden brought it up at a news conference Wednesday when asked about his stalled voting-rights bills in Congress.
"I never thought we would get into a place where we were talking about... what they tried to do this last time out -- Send different electors to the state legislative bodies to represent who won the election, saying that I didn't win but the Republican candidate won," Biden said. "I doubt that anyone thought that would happen in America in the 21st century, but it is happening."
The coordinated nature of these fake elector efforts and the rising power of Big Lie-promoters in Republican circles has concerned voting rights organizations across the country.
Nancy Wang, executive director of the Michigan-based Voters Not Politicians, said her group was founded in 2016 to address redistricting and voting access, but Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election spurred her group to focus on countering anti-democratic efforts at large.
"This is existential. This about the very fundamental institutions of our government - whether we can vote at all, whether we have any power whatsoever," Wang said. "It is a completely different time that we are facing in 2020 and 2022. It really feels urgent. It is a battle of a completely different kind. It is massive, it is coordinated at a national level. It is much more threatening."
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Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema leave the Senate chamber after a vote on 3 November. (photo: Kent Nishimura/Shutterstock)
Moira Donegan | Republican Voter Suppression Is Rampant. Manchin and Sinema Are Complicit Now.
Moira Donegan, Guardian UK
Donegan writes: "Manchin and Sinema's intransigence on the filibuster helps the Republican party usher in an era of voter suppression and election subversion."
Manchin and Sinema’s intransigence on the filibuster helps the Republican party usher in an era of voter suppression and election subversion
The last chance for federal legislation to stem the tide of Republican state-level attacks on the franchise died this week, when Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema rejected a bid by the Senate’s Democratic majority to change the filibuster rules to allow the passage of two voting rights bills.
The Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would together serve to establish a baseline of federal rules enabling access to the ballot in all 50 states, and would restore the congressional authority to oversee new election laws in states that have a history of racist voting restrictions – a civil rights-era provision that was gutted by the Republican-controlled supreme court. But the two bills have been blocked repeatedly by Senate Republicans, who have used the chamber’s supermajority rule to prevent them from coming to a vote.
With the support of President Biden, who endorsed filibuster changes in a speech in Atlanta last week, the Democrats hoped to carve out an exemption that would finally allow the bills to be passed – Sinema and Manchin, after all, had both professed support for the bills themselves, though Manchin’s endorsement had to be cajoled. And exemptions to the filibuster are nothing new: according to Exceptions to the Rule, a book about the filibuster by the governance scholar Molly Reynolds, the filibuster was amended 160 times between 1969 and 2014. Both Manchin and Sinema supported a carve-out to the filibuster just weeks ago, when they both agreed to amend the rule to allow the Senate to raise the national debt ceiling.
But evidently, voting rights are different. Last Thursday, in a tearful speech on the Senate floor, Sinema announced that she would not support changing the filibuster to pass the bills. She called for compromise, and chided Democrats for not doing more to reach out to Republicans to treat the nation’s “disease of division”. For his part, after a meeting with Senate Democratic leaders on Tuesday night, Manchin, too, reiterated that he would not support a voting rights filibuster carve-out, and dismissed fears that Black Americans would be denied the ballot. “The government will stand behind them to make sure they have the right to vote,” Manchin said. “We have that. The things they’re talking about are in court.”
Responsible adults, assessing the state of voting rights in America in good faith, would of course know that neither the Republican party nor the federal courts are partners in the effort to preserve voting rights. Republican-controlled state legislatures have spent years imposing restrictive laws that make it harder and harder for people of color to vote, and have now progressed to making it easier for themselves to discard the voters’ preferences if they choose. These efforts have largely been supported by the federal courts, where Republican partisans in robes have gutted voting protections and given the green light to severe restrictions. It was the supreme court’s evisceration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, in the cases Shelby County v Holder and Brnovich v DNC, that spurred congressional Democrats to write the John Lewis Voting Rights Act in the first place – the bill that Manchin and Sinema profess to support. The Republican party and much of the federal judiciary won’t preserve the franchise; they’re in fact working in concert to destroy it. Any competent and honest political observer will acknowledge this. That Manchin and Sinema will not suggests that they are either cynical or stupid.
For the past year, Manchin and Sinema have used the filibuster, and the Democrats’ paper-thin majority in the Senate, to flex their own influence, withholding their support on essential measures and hampering the Democrats’ agenda – most recently the Build Back Better Act, the Biden social infrastructure bill that Manchin single-handedly killed in December. They have served primarily as saboteurs, scuttling hopes that a Democratic trifecta in government might yield the actual realization of Democratic priorities. To hear Manchin and Sinema tell it, the filibuster has become a kind of totem: they speak of preserving the rule as a way of maintaining the principle that unity, cooperation and bipartisanship remain both possible and desirable. But for all their platitudes, there is little evidence that the filibuster encourages compromise. Critics like the writer and former Senate staffer Adam Jentleson have suggested that the filibuster in fact incentivizes obstructionism, giving the minority more opportunities to sabotage the majority’s agenda and few reasons to try to shape it. But Manchin and Sinema are immune to reality. They still speak as if the procedural accident of a 60-vote threshold represents some kind of republican virtue. Getting rid of it, they say, will plunge the country into disunity and distrust. One wonders what they think the state of the country is now.
Manchin and Sinema’s naive intransigence on the filibuster is now helping the Republican party to usher in an era of nationwide voter suppression and election subversion that will end meaningful representative government as we know it. The senators insist on delivering bromides to cooperation and bipartisanship, and baselessly claim that the Republican party, radicalized against democracy and increasingly centering its politics around interpersonal cruelty, can be persuaded to support voting rights if only the Democrats were kinder, more patient and less willing to use the power that the voters gave them. Listening to them try to justify themselves, Manchin and Sinema sound bizarrely detached from reality, as if they’re reading lines from the wrong play. The Senate they describe, the Republican colleagues they imagine themselves to have, the country they think they are living in – none of these bear much relation to the present reality of politics in America.
They offer no solutions for that reality, and no insight into its increasingly frayed constitutional order. Their best ideas consist of pretending that the Senate is not what it is, pretending that Republicans are not who they are. Like ostriches with their heads in the sand, they think that if they pretend not to see what is happening, then the circumstances will change by the force of their denial. This hasn’t worked, but Manchin and Sinema seem more committed to maintaining the delusion than to protecting the rights of this American people. And this is what makes their failure to do what is necessary to protect voting rights not only a tactical failure, but also a moral one.
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Alumni of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns are at the forefront of efforts to primary Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. (photo: Getty)
Bernie Sanders Alumni Are Leading the Effort to Replace Kyrsten Sinema
Kayla Epstein, Yahoo! News
Epstein writes: "Alumni of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns are at the forefront of efforts to primary Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and they just got a major boost from their old boss."
Alumni of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaigns are at the forefront of efforts to primary Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, and they just got a major boost from their old boss.
Scattered among at least three different efforts to primary Sinema in Arizona are several notable Sanders supporters, who say they are acting independently of the Vermont Independent. Still, they believe his criticism of Sinema will boost their efforts. While Sinema, who represents a purple state, has sometimes sided with Republicans in Congress, the efforts by Sanders' acolytes and the growing disdain from her own state party signals a building challenge to Sinema from the left.
On Wednesday, Sanders called for primary challenges against his colleagues who did not vote to end the filibuster — namely, Sinema and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, both conservative Democrats.
"These are people who I think have undermined the president of the United States," Sanders told reporters after a motion to change Senate rules failed late Wednesday night, and added that they "can expect to find primary challenges."
"I commend him in saying that," said Brianna Westbrook, a former Sanders surrogate now running for the Arizona legislature, and a leading organizer of the Sinema Primary Pledge. "I hope other senators join him."
Chuck Rocha, a strategist and former senior advisor on Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, is leading a different effort to draft Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona into the 2024 Democratic primary. Along with Westbrook, Belen Sisa, Sander's national Latino press secretary in 2020, and Dan O'Neal, a member of Our Revolution Arizona in the 2020 election, are all signatories of the Sinema Primary Pledge.
Westbrook said that 2020 supporters of Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, as well as President Joe Biden, had also signed onto the pledge.
"We didn't coordinate this," Rocha told Insider. "I think it's because Bernie Sanders Democrats are part of the activist wing of the party."
Sanders' former staffers aren't taking their marching orders from him, Rocha said, but he believed the senator's statement this week boosted their efforts.
"I think what me and others started, is becoming the mainstream of where everybody is right now," Rocha said.
Sinema's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Explaining her moderate stance, she has frequently invoked the late Republican Sen. John McCain, who held her Senate seat until his death in 2018. Democrats are still gaining ground in Arizona, a purple state where they represent less than a third of all voters.
Sinema and Manchin both voted "no" on a motion to change the Senate filibuster rules on Wednesday night. Sinema had previously said that altering the rule would "worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country."
But the upstart primary effort from Sanders supporters in her state signals a shift within Arizona Democratic politics away from the more centrist lane that Sinema occupies, and towards a more progressive stance in line with Sanders. Her refusal to vote with her fellow Senate Democrats to alter the chamber's filibuster rules in order to pass voting rights legislation has enraged her constituents and put her out of step with her party back home.
In October, the party issued a resolution that threatened a vote of no confidence if Sinema did not vote to abolish or alter the filibuster.
The Arizona Democratic Party is "without a doubt" becoming more progressive as younger voters join its ranks, said Westbrook, who also serves as the party's education coordinator.
"I don't think she understands the consequences of her actions," Westbrook said. "It's like she's almost playing politics like it's 20 years ago. She doesn't understand it's not the same as it used to be."
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There are more than 183,000 people in the world with wealth over $50 million that have a combined wealth of $36.4 trillion. (photo: Pola Damonte/Getty)
A Worldwide Tax on Extreme Wealth Could Lift Billions Out of Poverty
Luke Savage, Jacobin
Savage writes: "A new report reveals the breathtaking extent of global inequality - and the vast progress that a global wealth tax could underwrite in areas like child poverty and climate change."
A new report reveals the breathtaking extent of global inequality — and the vast progress that a global wealth tax could underwrite in areas like child poverty and climate change.
Though it remains politically out of reach, it’s well worth thinking about a global wealth tax. Global tax agreements, after all, already have precedent in existing treaties. But, more importantly, there are critical insights to be gleaned in conceiving and designing such a tax.
Those insights are explored in a new report from coauthors Omar Ocampo and Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies in collaboration with Oxfam, Patriotic Millionaires, and the Fight Inequality Alliance. Among other things, Taxing Extreme Wealth offers a detailed analysis of the world’s billionaires and multimillionaires — revealing both the breathtaking extent of their wealth and what kinds of initiatives could be funded with a global wealth tax.
Jacobin’s Luke Savage sat down with Ocampo and Collins to discuss the report and its findings.
LS: The report includes some staggering facts about the extent of wealth inequality — both globally and within individual countries. But before we get to its topline findings, I want to ask about the calculations themselves. Where did your data come from and what was the scope of your analysis?
OO: This report is unique in that we dig into the tier of wealth that is below the billionaire level. We know a lot about billionaire wealth, in the United States and globally, thanks to Forbes and Bloomberg and their just-in-time wealth estimates. But we don’t know as much about the rest of the ultra-high net worth class, those with over $5 million or over $50 million in wealth.
For example, we estimate that there are more than 183,000 people in the world with wealth over $50 million that have a combined wealth of $36.4 trillion. We then apply a wealth tax similar to the one advocated by Elizabeth Warren, a progressive wealth tax with higher rates on the billionaires.
What is different about this report is we contracted data from Wealth-X, a private wealth research firm that has built a rather substantial global database on wealthy individuals. Their main clients are nonprofits, large charities doing major fundraising, and luxury companies selling luxury goods to multimillionaires and billionaires.
LS: Coming to your findings, the report estimates that a global wealth tax levied on the world’s millionaires and billionaires could raise a little over $2.5 trillion every year. How exactly did you reach that figure, and what would your theoretical wealth tax look like in practice?
CC: We looked at the global data and focused on the seventy countries that account for 98 percent of the global GDP. There are many countries that don’t have tax reporting or estimates of private wealth. But we think we include most of the world’s multimillionaires and billionaires.
We applied a number of different wealth tax formulas, but in the report, we only discuss two. The first applies an annual tax rate of 2 percent on wealth between $5 million and $50 million; 3 percent on wealth between $50 million and $1 billion; and 5 percent on wealth over $1 billion. This is the rate that would raise $2.5 trillion.
A second wealth tax rate is really aimed at more aggressively reducing billionaire wealth, with an annual tax rate of 10 percent. That rate would raise closer to $3.6 trillion a year. In the United States it would raise $1.34 trillion. But we also looked at higher rates and what they could raise.
A few other stats we found interesting:
- 3.6 million people globally have over $5 million in wealth, with a combined wealth of $75.3 trillion.
- There are 1,436,275 individuals with a net worth of $5 million or more, with wealth totaling $28 trillion.
- There are 63,505 individuals in the US with $50 million or more with a combined wealth of $12.8 trillion.
- Between 2016 and 2021, the number of US individuals with wealth over $50 million increased from 37,140 to 63,505 with combined wealth increasing from $8.4 trillion to $12.8 trillion, a gain of 51.84 percent, adjusted for inflation.
LS: Perhaps the most important conclusion of Taxing Extreme Wealth has to do with what a global wealth tax could actually pay for. Can you give us a rundown of those findings? What sorts of things could an annual revenue of $2.5 trillion actually pay for?
OO: We estimate that $2.5 trillion is enough to lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty, create enough vaccines for the whole world, and deliver universal health care and social protection for all the citizens of low and lower middle-income countries — an estimated 3.6 billion people.
According to the World Bank, there are roughly 3.3 billion people below their poverty line of less than $5.50 a day. It would cost, on average, $901 per person to lift them out of poverty. With regards to vaccines, COVID-19 vaccinations would cost $27.8 billion. Universal social protection and health care would cost an estimated $440.8 billion. In 2020, the finance gap for achieving universal social protection coverage and health care for low- and lower-middle-income countries was $440.8 billion.
Working with Oxfam International and the Fight Inequality Alliance, we worked with individual countries to identify how revenue could be deployed in their countries, primarily with an eye toward expanding public health systems. The fact sheet report includes country by country fact sheets for forty-four countries.
LS: This report is obviously something of an exercise in utopian thinking. Which is to say: we currently lack the global institutional infrastructure that would be necessary to institute a worldwide tax on wealth, to say nothing of the balance of forces that would be required to bring something like one about.
Nonetheless, these are really political obstacles more than they are technical problems. So, putting aside the question of how we’d actually get there, do the two of you have thoughts on how a global wealth tax could theoretically work in practice? What kind of future institution (or institutions) do you envision would be needed to administer it?
CC: While there is no central global tax authority, there are ways that nation states can agree on parallel policies. For example, we’ve just witnessed 136 countries come together and pass a treaty creating a 15 percent global corporate minimum income tax. Once implemented, this will discourage multinational corporations from pitting countries against one another in a race to the bottom to lower taxes.
It is hard to envision individual countries yielding to global tax authority (try and get that one through the United States Senate!), but with the mounting global pressure to address extreme inequality and billionaire tax avoidance, you could envision a process similar to what led to the global corporate minimum tax. A similar treaty agreement could unify countries to tax, in tandem, extreme concentrations of wealth and diminish billionaire wealth and power. The same international tax agreement should shut down the hidden wealth system, making it hard for the billionaire class to hide sequester wealth in trusts, offshore tax havens, and anonymous shell companies.
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After seven years of supporting the Saudi-led coalition, Congressman Peter DeFazio says Washington needs to offer more than 'vague' declarations about its role. (photo: AFP)
Democrats Demand Biden Clarify US Role in Yemen War
Umar A. Farooq, Middle East Eye
Farooq writes: "Democratic lawmakers and policy analysts have said President Joe Biden needs to clarify what support the US is offering the Saudi-led coalition at war with Yemen's Houthi rebels, and avoid taking any steps that lead to Washington becoming further embroiled in the devastating seven-year conflict."
After seven years of supporting the Saudi-led coalition, Congressman Peter DeFazio says Washington needs to offer more than 'vague' declarations about its role
Democratic lawmakers and policy analysts have said President Joe Biden needs to clarify what support the US is offering the Saudi-led coalition at war with Yemen's Houthi rebels, and avoid taking any steps that lead to Washington becoming further embroiled in the devastating seven-year conflict.
Congressman Ro Khanna, a staunch critic of the war, told Middle East Eye that the White House needed to immediately end all military support afforded to the Saudi-led coalition and instead "focus on diplomacy" to end the bloody conflict.
Earlier this week, Houthi rebels launched drone attacks on Abu Dhabi airport and an oil storage site, killing three people and leaving another six injured.
The Iran-aligned group told MEE they targeted the Gulf nation because it was still actively engaged in the conflict and supports Yemeni militias fighting against them.
The Saudi-led coalition responded to the attack on Tuesday by launching several air strikes on Sanaa, the Houthi-controlled capital of Yemen, killing 20 people including a number of civilians.
"This dangerous escalation in Yemen has to stop. For years the Saudi-led coalition has been pounding civilian areas and infrastructure in Yemen and recently escalate[d] those strikes. Earlier this week we saw a horrific Houthi drone and missile attack that killed three civilians in UAE," Khanna told MEE.
"The coalition also has recently conducted strikes on water treatment facilities, leaving more than 120,000 Yemenis in Sanaa without access to clean drinking water.
"To bring this war to a close, we must use the only leverage we have, which is on the Saudi-led coalition, and end US military support to focus on diplomacy to secure a political solution and life-saving aid for one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises."
'Vague declaration'
Shortly after taking office last year, Biden declared in a speech - largely met with praise from many Democrats - that he would end "American support for offensive operations in the war".
But exactly a year into his presidency, it remains unclear as to what ending "offensive support" entails. For months, questions have lingered regarding the details of the decision, such as what constitutes an offensive operation versus a defensive one, and what weapons systems would fall under such categories.
According to Vox, the "defensive" support the US provides the kingdom also includes greenlighting the servicing of Saudi aircraft through defence contractors.
In February 2021, 41 members of Congress asked Biden to clarify what forms of military aid the US was providing to Saudi Arabia under Trump, what aid would continue, and how his administration would define "offensive operations".
Two months later, the State Department, in a letter obtained by The Intercept, sidestepped the questions and provided what appeared to be no new information.
Then in November, the 46th president approved a $650m weapons sale to Riyadh, which consisted of 280 AIM-120C air-to-air missiles that will be launched from Saudi Arabia's fighter jets.
The sale, while described as defensive in nature, sparked the ire of some Democrats, who noted that continued weapon deals - no matter their categorisation - would only fuel the conflict.
Congressman Peter DeFazio, another critic of the conflict, called on the White House to "end its involvement in this war now" and lashed out at Biden's vague announcement that signalled an end to America's "offensive" support for the coalition.
"At the start of his term, President Biden promised to end US support for so-called 'offensive' operations in this war - but he never defined what this vague declaration actually meant. A year later, the US continues to directly support this war," DeFazio told MEE.
The conflict in Yemen erupted in September 2014 when the Houthis seized Sanaa, sparking a civil war that forced President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi to seek refuge in Aden and then Saudi Arabia.
The kingdom and its regional allies intervened in March 2015 and have since carried out more than 22,000 air strikes in an effort to roll back the Houthis, with one-third striking non-military sites.
Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced in what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, a Democrat who has urged the Biden administration to "publicly pressure" Saudi Arabia into ending its land, air and naval blockade on Yemen, called for efforts to de-escalate the situation and bring about a peaceful resolution immediately.
"Yemen's humanitarian and security crisis continues to worsen," Dingell told MEE. "We won't solve this conflict with war - I condemn the deadly air strikes and continued violence and call for de-escalation and a peaceful resolution immediately."
'Old pattern of US foreign policy'
Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, told MEE that the Biden administration's Yemen policy "isn't working", and the White House did not have the situation under control.
"As long as we're providing intelligence-sharing, spare parts, maintenance transfers, selling weapons, regardless if they're offensive or defensive in nature, or so-called offensive or defensive, we're going to see more violence," he told MEE.
Trita Parsi, executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, agreed, telling MEE that the administration's strategy appeared to involve ratcheting up support for the Saudi-led coalition in the hope that it would bring an end to the war.
Parsi said the strategy had been ineffective and had only "deepened the conflict", with the Houthis responding with their own escalations.
The UN reported last week that around 358 civilians were killed or injured in December as a direct result of hostilities by all sides - the highest monthly figure in three years.
"Over the course of the last year, we've seen that [Biden] has quickly gone back into the old pattern of American foreign policy in the Middle East, which is to take sides, get yourself embroiled in other countries' conflicts, and sell more weapons," Parsi said.
"The US, if at all, should be engaged in trying to resolve the problem. That is not what is happening."
Houthi designation
On Wednesday, Biden said his administration was considering re-designating the Houthis as an international terrorist organisation, as US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin underscored his "unwavering support for the security and defense of UAE territory against all threats".
A US terror designation against the Houthi movement could further isolate the rebels, but it also poses the threat of making the humanitarian crisis in Yemen worse.
Parsi added that if the administration were to submit to Abu Dhabi's demands to re-designate the Houthis it "would be such a symbolic move to show that Biden has truly turned 180 degrees - all the way back to the policies of Trump".
Aid groups have previously warned the US against blacklisting the Houthis, expressing fear that the listing, which would bar Americans from dealing with the group, would make it difficult for them and commercial entities to provide much-needed assitance to most Yemenis who live under the group's control.
Yemen has lost tens of thousands of civilians not only to violence, but also to hunger and disease. According to the United Nations, 80 percent of the population relies on humanitarian aid and protection to survive, while 58 percent live in extreme poverty.
And aid groups are already struggling to operate in the country, as the international community has for several years failed to meet funding benchmarks laid out as necessary for civilian survival.
"This designation will do nothing to address the concerns by people who, rightfully so, blame the Houthis for significant human rights violations in Yemen," El-Tayyab said.
"Even if there are humanitarian exemptions that are permitted, I worry that financial institutions, shipping firms and insurance companies, along with aid organisations, are going to find the risk of these potential violations too high, and dramatically scale down their critical work in Yemen.
"And that would have really severe human consequences for innocent Yemenis all over the country."
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Scientists want PR firms to stop taking on fossil fuel clients that spread disinformation about the climate crisis. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
450+ Scientists Want Advertisers to Ditch Fossil Fuel Clients
Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch
Rosane writes: "More than 450 scientists have signed a letter to PR and advertising agencies urging them to drop clients that profit from fossil fuels."
More than 450 scientists have signed a letter to PR and advertising agencies urging them to drop clients that profit from fossil fuels.
The letter was released by Clean Creatives and the Union of Concerned Scientists on Wednesday, as PR Week reported, and emphasized the importance of spreading accurate information about the climate crisis.
“If PR and advertising agencies want to be part of climate solutions instead of continuing to exacerbate the climate emergency, they should drop all fossil fuel clients that plan to expand their production of oil and gas, end work with all fossil fuel companies and trade groups that perpetuate climate deception, cease all work that hinders climate legislation, and instead focus on uplifting the true climate solutions that are already available and must be rapidly implemented at scale,” the letter writers said.
Fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil have historically worked to cast doubt on the connection between human activity and global heating, despite acknowledging the science internally.
“As scientists who study and communicate the realities of climate change, we are consistently faced with a major and needless challenge: overcoming advertising and PR efforts by fossil fuel companies that seek to obfuscate or downplay our data and the risks posed by the climate crisis,” the letter writers said.
They cited a 2021 study showing that PR firms played an important role in shaping climate discourse and policy, and that the utility and oil and gas sectors hire more PR firms than any other interested party.
“We climate scientists have been trying to raise the climate crisis alarm for decades, but we’ve been drowned out by these fossil fuel industry-funded PR campaigns,” climate scientist and letter signatory Michael Mann told Reuters.
Clean Creatives has led a campaign pressuring major PR firm Edelman to ditch its oil and gas clients. The firm has so far refused but created a panel of “external climate experts to offer input and guidance on strategy and on assignments and client situations of concern,” as Reuters reported.
The letter and the Edelman campaign could indicate a new tactic in the climate movement, building on pushes to get universities, banks and religious groups to divest from fossil fuels.
“The campaign targeting Edelman is one of many more to come, especially if ad agencies continue to ignore their crucial role in exacerbating the climate crisis,” Grecia Nuñez, an American University law student who is part of Law Students for Climate Accountability, told The Washington Post in an email.
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