It’s Thursday.
For Thursday September 9th, 2021, President Biden has received his daily brief. President Biden will offer remarks on his robust plan to stop the spread of the Delta variant and boost COVID-19 vaccinations.
CNN reported early Thursday, that President Biden will announce this evening that he will sign an Executive Order “requiring all government employees to be vaccinated,” against the coronavirus according to a source familiar with the plans.
The Washington Post was first to report, or possibly, the first I saw that reported his intent to sign the EO; President Biden is expected to sign an order Thursday requiring all federal employees to be vaccinated, without any option for regular coronavirus testing as an alternative to the mandate, according to a person familiar with the plans. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity ahead of the president’s scheduled 5 p.m. remarks. They added that he is also planning to call for a “global summit, to be held during the U.N. General Assembly later this month, to respond to the coronavirus crisis and boost vaccine supply to the developing world.”
I have doubled and tripled checked the White House website, they have not published anything regarding the EO.
President Biden has not tweeted so far for Thursday.
When Biden Bits was published for Wednesday, President Biden had tweeted 2 times. He added 6 tweets giving him a Wednesday Tweeting Total of 8 tweets and 0 retweets.
As was mentioned in the linked Biden Bits, on Wednesday, President Biden honored labor unions. Some of his tweets as is typically are based on his remarks.
The YouTube video is 38 minutes and 48 seconds long. President Biden’s full remarks can be found here. President Biden’s remarks start at the 16 minute and 50 second mark.
The above tweet was taken from remarks he gave on Friday, September 3rd, 2021, regarding the August Jobs report.
President Biden: And when corporations and the wealthiest start to pay their fair share, it’s going to put millions of people — according to all the estimates — millions of people to work in jobs that are going to help them punch their ticket to the middle class and stay in the middle class. And everyone will do better, including corporate America.
On Wednesday the Treasury Department issued a report, that to be fair, seems more like a news like article, that says the top 1 percent evaded paying taxes in 2020.
Now, I’ve searched the article/report and have used the find feature, but can’t locate the $163 billion figure, I can find this; The tax gap can be a major source of inequity. Today’s tax code contains two sets of rules: one for regular wage and salary workers who report virtually all the income they earn; and another for wealthy taxpayers, who are often able to avoid a large share of the taxes they owe. As Table 1 demonstrates, estimates from academic researchers suggest that more than $160 billion lost annually is from taxes that top 1 percent choose not to pay. (1)
The footnote:
These estimates for the distribution of unpaid taxes are based on DeBacker, Jason et al., 2020. “Tax Noncompliance and Measures of Income Inequality,” Tax Notes Federal, 17 February. Estimated unpaid taxes are calculated by applying these percentages to TY 2019 tax gap estimates. The distribution of the tax gap across the income spectrum is difficult to estimate, especially at very top incomes. Ongoing work by IRS researchers and outside academics suggest the concentration of the tax gap is even more skewed toward the top of the income distribution. Guyton, John, et al., 2021. “Tax Evasion at the Top of the Income Distribution: Theory and Evidence,” NBER Working Paper No. 28542 These estimates are based on imputations of undetected evasion using multipliers developed from earlier audit data. The advisability of so-called “detection-controlled estimation” (DCE) adjustments are debated in the literature, especially with respect to understanding the distribution of noncompliance.
Home.Treasury.gov. 09/07/2021.
Forbes says; According to the Treasury’s report, the top 1% of taxpayers, ranked by income, failed to pay about $163 billion in taxes last year, making up about 28% of total unpaid taxes, while the top 5% evaded about $307 billion, or nearly 53% of the overall sum.
Business Insider says; The top 1% of American earners evade about $163 billion in taxes every year, researchers at the Treasury Department said in a report published Wednesday. That counts for roughly 28% of the total US tax gap, a measurement of taxes owed compared to taxes collected. The total gap is about $600 billion on a yearly basis and will cost the government $7 trillion in lost revenue over the next decade, the department said.
We’ve gotten to the tweets that match the text from his remarks from Wednesday.
President Biden (24:30): [When unions win, workers across the board win. That’s a fact. Families win, community wins, America wins. We grow. And despite this,] workers have been getting cut out of the deal for too long a time. You know, from 1948, after the war, to 1979, productivity in America increased by more than 100 percent while the pay for American workers grew by nearly 100 percent. And then along came 1979, and everything began to change. Productivity in the country has grown almost four times faster than pay since 1979. That means the workers have been giving much more to their employers’ bottom lines than they’ve gotten back in their paychecks, breaking the basic bargain of this country. The bargain was: If you work hard and you contribute to the welfare of the outfit you work with, you got to share in the benefits. Well, that stopped for a long time. So, you can carve out your piece of the middle class and make it a possibility. That’s what got taken away for a lot of people. Instead, some people started seeing the stock market and corporate profits and executive pay as the only measure for economic growth. By the way, the stock market has gone up exponentially since I’ve been President. You haven’t heard me say a word about it. (Laughter.) I’m glad it’s gone up. No problem. But, look, let me tell you something: My measure of economic success is how families, like mine growing up — working families busting their neck — how they’re doing; whether they have a little breathing room; whether they have a job that delivers some dignity, a paycheck they can support a family on. In an economy — you know, in the economy my administration is building, instead of workers competing with each other for the jobs that are scarce, everybody is mad at me because now — guess what? — employers are competing to attract workers, having to raise pay. (Applause.) No, I’m serious. Think about it. That kind of competition in the market helps workers earn higher wages. It also gives them the power to demand dignity and respect in the workplace. Simply put, worker power is essential to building our economy back better than before — it’s just that basic — to counter corporate power, to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. [I’m so tired of trickle-down.]
President Biden (29:31): But there’s another reason — a basic American reason. Workers who join unions gain power — power over the decisions and the decision-makers that affect their lives. Workers’ voices are heard and heeded. In a simple word, a union means there is democracy. Democracy. Organizing, joining a union — that’s democracy in action.
As seen @ the News Blender in March of this year, President Biden offered the following statement regarding the Pro Act:
I strongly encourage the House to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act of 2021, which would dramatically enhance the power of workers to organize and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.
As America works to recover from the devastating challenges of deadly pandemic, an economic crisis, and reckoning on race that reveals deep disparities, we need to summon a new wave of worker power to create an economy that works for everyone. We owe it not only to those who have put in a lifetime of work, but to the next generation of workers who have only known an America of rising inequality and shrinking opportunity. All of us deserve to enjoy America’s promise in full — and our nation’s leaders have a responsibility to deliver it.
That starts with rebuilding unions. The middle class built this country, and unions built the middle class. Unions give workers a stronger voice to increase wages, improve the quality of jobs and protect job security, protect against racial and all other forms of discrimination and sexual harassment, and protect workers’ health, safety, and benefits in the workplace. Unions lift up workers, both union and non-union. They are critical to strengthening our economic competitiveness.
But, after generations of sweat and sacrifice, fighting hard to earn the wages and benefits that built and sustained the American middle class, unions are under siege. Nearly 60 million Americans would join a union if they get a chance, but too many employers and states prevent them from doing so through anti-union attacks. They know that without unions, they can run the table on workers – union and non-union alike.
We should all remember that the National Labor Relations Act didn’t just say that we shouldn’t hamstring unions or merely tolerate them. It said that we should encourage unions. The PRO Act would take critical steps to help restore this intent.
I urge Congress to send the PRO Act to my desk so we can seize the opportunity to build a future that reflects working people’s courage and ambition, and offers not only good jobs with a real choice to join a union — but the dignity, equity, shared prosperity and common purpose the hardworking people who built this country and make it run deserve.
White House.gov. 03/09/2021.
From the linked News Blender article: The PRO Act passed the House on Tuesday with 225 yea’s and 206 nay’s. According to clerk.house.gov, five Republicans joined the Democrats in supporting the bill. Republican Thomas Tiffany from Wisconsin did not vote. This is the second time the PRO Act passed the House; according to the Washington Post, in February of 2020, the House passed the bill with a vote of 224-194. It was not taken up in the GOP controlled Senate.
There’s more at the link…
Alright guys I’m winging this tweet as President Biden hasn’t issued a formal statement posted to the White House. I believe or in reality Google told me that la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre via ewtn.com that; The Virgin of Charity of Cobre La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre Tradition tells that one morning in late 1612 three slaves who worked in the copper mine at Barajagua, ten year old African, Juan Morteno, and two blood brothers of native origin, Rodrigo and Juan de Hoyos, left to look for salt in the vicinity of the Bay of Nipe. Once at the site, they realized that it was impossible to collect salt because of the rough seas, so they sought refuge. After three nights and three days they managed to undertake their trip by canoe to collect salt from the coast. Soon after getting underway they saw a white object floating in the sea. Seen from a distance it looked like the corpse of a sea bird; however, they soon realized that it was an image of the Virgin affixed to a wooden board. They took the image out of the water and put it in the canoe. It was at that moment that they read the inscription on the wood: “I am the Virgin of Charity.”
The daily press briefing is scheduled to start at 1:00 p.m. D.C., time.
President Biden’s remarks are scheduled for 5:00 p.m. D.C., time.
This is an Open Thread.
In other news…
Happy Thursday.
