#Committee on Finance

[connectthegeekvillage]

The Money Tree: My Thoughts on TIF and Mayor Johnson's $1.25 Billion Dollar Economic Development Plan

Since February, I have been attending the Committee on Finance meetings in Chicago, virtually as a Documenter with City Bureau’s’ civic program, and have witnessed what seems like a miracle until a bit of digging is applied. These meetings mainly cover the municipal government allocating funds towards community development projects and handling settlements, primarily centering around the…

[transformativeworks]

Five Things Cesy Said

In Five Things Cesy shares her journey from a volunteer involved in closed beta for AO3 in 2009 to her current role as a member of OTW Finance committee. Read more at https://otw-news.org/bddpzvr5

[baldwinheights]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

Here we go: At his confirmation hearing today, RFK Jr. revealed how the Trump administration is thinking about restricting abortion—dropping hints not just about mifepristone, but abortion ‘complication’ reporting, emergency abortions, and the possibility of a national ban. (Yes, really.) Watch key excerpts here with more details below, and click to skip ahead to a particular section: Mifepristone, Abortion Reporting, Emergency Abortions, National Ban on ‘Late’ Abortions

Mifepristone

Kennedy, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the president wants him to look at “safety issues” around mifepristone:

[“President Trump has asked me to study the safety of mifepristone. He has not yet taken a stand on how to regulate it. Whenever he does, I will implement those policies."]

As you likely know, mifepristone has been safely used to end pregnancies for decades, and all credible studies show that the drug is safe and effective. But anti-abortion groups claim otherwise, publishing misleading and false ‘research’ that says the medication puts women’s health and lives in danger. In fact, their studies are so false that they’ve been retracted by publishers. But anti-abortion activists know Americans overwhelmingly oppose abortion bans, so they see feigning concern for women’s health as their best shot at restricting the medication. Kennedy’s claim that Trump wants to “study” mifepristone’s safety signals that the White House will use a similar strategy when making their own moves against the medication. Whatever rollbacks they impose, they’ll frame as being in women’s best interest. That might mean reinstating the FDA’s pre-2016 restrictions on mifepristone, limiting its use to the first 7 weeks of pregnancy and requiring patients to see a provider in person—effectively blocking access to abortion pills by mail. Republicans could also invoke the Comstock Act to ban the shipping of abortion medication, framing it as a measure to ‘protect’ women from a so-called ‘dangerous’ drug. [...]

National Ban on ‘Late’ Abortions

I want to end by looking at the least explicit (but perhaps most worrying) clue that Kennedy dropped today:

[“I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy. I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. I agree with him that the states should control abortion. President Trump has told me he wants to end late term abortions.”]

On the surface, this may seem like an innocuous statement. But given the context—and everything we know about anti-abortion language tricks—Kennedy’s comments are a lot more troubling than they first appear. How, precisely, will Trump “end late term abortions?” And why does that assertion directly follow Kennedy’s assurance that “the states should control abortion.” To me, this is a clear hint that Trump is open to a national abortion ban if it’s framed as restricting ‘late’ abortions. Especially when you remember that anti-abortion groups have been laying the groundwork for exactly that.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has in the past supported abortion access and reproductive freedom, championed Project 2025 and Donald Trump’s anti-abortion push during his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate Finance Committee.

See Also:

Vanity Fair: RFK Jr. Proved Himself Out of His Depth—Even Under Friendly Republican Questioning

[jeromepowell]

I will take poll results into account next week. I’m sure the FOMC will be very grateful to hear your responses, valued citizens of the Tumblr ^.^

[lgbtiwtv]

haunted that lestat is like 21 yrs old leading a society. the other vampires should’ve iced his ass years ago on basic principle. well… i guess they tried several times but like a roach he persevered. I feel like they keep him around bc he’s the only one bringing interesting events to the community he’s like a human soap opera he’s like the personification of Murphy’s law. like he should be sucking and fucking his way across the globe having the vampire equivalent of a spring break trip to malibu as god intended but instead he’s doing paperwork and ruling a society….that’s cruel and unusual punishment for him AND the society like that is NOT his natural environment……..they should put him down humanely….send him to a nice farm upstate where all the other problem-causers run free in the fields etc but no he has the endurance capacity of a New York City roach with immortality to match and he just keeps getting more powerful and more manic-pixie-dream-girled so vampiric society gives up on trying to squash that gay bug and instead puts him in a jar to observe in captivity because the bug is easily the most thing to happen to their society in centuries. he’s like the sliced bread of vampires they’re like what did we even DO before lestat???????? and none of them can even answer because the worlds two oldest living vampires are ALSO obsessed with him. I’d tell them to get well soon but it’s just unrealistic at this point

[comite-de-salut-public]

You seem to have thoughts on this new calendar system. Do you perchance, have qualms with it yourself?

I actually quite like it. The plants of the day have been very amusing to track, and I'm looking forward to the multiple-day New Year celebration at the autumnal equinox. This seems to be one of the occasional positive things Citizen Fabre d'Églantine has accomplished as of late.

[worldsportsnews25]

WATCH LIVE: RFK Jr. faces Senate questioning in first confirmation hearing

SEE MORE

[anotherpapercut]

if you're a sane human being who possesses a reasonable amount of common sense with extra time/a flexible schedule consider applying or nominating yourself to be on a library board

[transformativeworks]

OTW Finance: 2023 Budget

OTW's Finance Committee has released our 2023 budget.  They detail where donations go and what our expected income is this year.  Find out more about what it takes to run the organization at https://otw.news/af6503

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[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

enablers standing by

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 8, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

Andrew Restuccia, Richard Rubin, and Stephanie Armour of the Wall Street Journal today published a preview of President Joe Biden’s budget, due to be released tomorrow. Their article’s beginning sent an important message. Biden’s budget plan, they wrote, will “save hundreds of billions of dollars by seeking to lower drug prices, raising some business taxes, cracking down on fraud and cutting spending he sees as wasteful, according to White House officials.” Those officials said that, over the next ten years, the plan would cut deficits by close to $3 trillion. Reflecting the needs of Ukraine to fight off the 2022 Russian invasion, as well as tensions with China, Biden will call for a larger defense budget. As he outlined yesterday, part of the budget plan will fund the Medicare trust fund for at least another 25 years, in part by increasing tax rates on people earning more than $400,000 a year. “That is not going to happen. Obviously he knows that,” Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) told the Wall Street Journal reporters. “Republicans are not going to sign up for raising taxes.” Without a budget plan of their own to offer, House Republicans appear to be trying to steal the president’s thunder. They told Tony Romm of the Washington Post that they are getting ready for the House Ways and Means Committee to begin consideration tomorrow of a bill to prioritize the national debt in preparation for a national default. House Republicans continue to insist they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling to pay for expenses already incurred—many of them under Trump—thus forcing the U.S. into default for the first time in our history. They are suggesting they could rank the debts in order of importance, but as Brian Riedl, an economist at the Manhattan Institute, told Romm, the computer systems were written with the assumption the country would, in fact, pay its debts, and they do not have programs that would let them prioritize payments to one group or another. In any case, the White House has refused to negotiate over paying the nation’s bills. It remains eager to discuss the budget with Republicans and to negotiate over it—which is how the process is supposed to proceed—but insists the Republicans cannot hold the nation hostage by threatening a default that would spark an international financial crisis and destroy the American economy. Indeed, the willingness of the Republican Party to default on the country’s debt shows how thoroughly radicalized it has become. Even the Republican leaders who do not embrace the racism, sexism, religiosity, nihilism, and authoritarianism of the hard-core MAGA Republicans appear to believe they cannot win an election without the votes of those people. And so the extremists now own the party. They continue to support former president Trump, who at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend promised “those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” The party is now one of grievance and revenge, feeding on their false conviction that Trump won the 2020 election. The Fox News Channel was key in feeding that Big Lie, of course, and filings from the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against the Fox News Network have revealed that Fox executives and hosts alike knew it was a lie. They continued to spread it because they didn’t want to lose their base. On Monday, Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, who has found himself badly exposed by the Dominion filings, threw himself back into the Trump camp. He showed a false version of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, suggesting it was a mostly peaceful tourist visit rather than the deadly riot it actually was. Carlson’s false narrative was possible because House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave Carlson exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of video taken in the Capitol on that fateful January 6, illustrating that there is no daylight between the lies of the Fox News Channel and the House Republican leadership. Outrage over that transaction has sparked a backlash. Former officer of the Metropolitan Police Michael Fanone, who was badly injured defending the Capitol on January 6, published an op-ed at CNN saying he knew for certain that Carlson’s version of that day was a lie. “I was there. I saw it. I lived it,” Fanone wrote. “I fought alongside my brother and sister officers to defend the Capitol. We have the scars and injuries to prove it.” Former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) tweeted that if the House Republicans want new January 6th hearings, “bring it on. Let’s replay every witness & all the evidence from last year. But this time, those members who sought pardons and/or hid from subpoenas should sit on the dais so they can be confronted on live TV with the unassailable evidence.” Senate Republicans also spoke out against Carlson’s lies. Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) aligned himself with Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger, who called Carlson’s piece “offensive.” McConnell said: “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.” Democrats, along with the White House, also condemned Carlson’s video. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said the White House supported the Capitol Police and lawmakers from both parties who condemned “this false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our Constitution and the rule of law—which cost police officers their lives.” Bates went on: “We also agree with what Fox News’s own attorneys and executives have now repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law: That Tucker Carlson is not credible.” But McCarthy says he does not regret giving Carlson access to the tapes, and Carlson indicated that anyone who objected to the false narrative he put forward on Monday had revealed themselves as being allied against the Republican base. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) are organizing a visit for members of Congress to visit the jail where defendants charged with crimes relating to the January 6th riot are behind held. In the past, Greene called those defendants “political prisoners of war.” Today the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the 2023 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community. It warned that transnational “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists” (RMVEs) continue to pose a threat more lethal to U.S. persons and interests than do Islamist terrorists. RMVEs are “largely a decentralized movement of adherents to an ideology that espouses the use of violence to advance white supremacy, neo-Nazism, and other exclusionary cultural-nationalist beliefs. These actors increasingly seek to sow social divisions, support fascist-style governments, and attack government institutions,” the report said. They “capitalize on societal and political hyperpolarization to…mainstream their narratives and conspiracy theories into the public discourse.” They are recruiting “military members” to “help them organize cells for attacks against minorities or institutions that oppose their ideology.” Finally, John Bresnahan of Punchbowl News reported that 81-year-old Senator Mitch McConnell fell at an event at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, D.C., tonight and has been hospitalized.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[developmentinformationday]

(1st plenary meeting) Preparatory Committee for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, Third Session.

Opening of the session: Co-Chairs of the Preparatory Committee; Deputy Secretary-General (pre-recorded video); Representative of the host country of the Conference (Spain); Representative of Mexico

Adoption of the agenda and other organizational matters

Preparations for the Conference: Organizational and procedural preparations

Presentation of the zero draft outcome document of the Conference

Ministerial scene-setter

The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) will take place in Seville, Spain from 30 June to 3 July, 2025. The Conference will address new and emerging issues, and the urgent need to fully implement the Sustainable Development Goals, and support reform of the international financial architecture.

FfD4 will assess the progress made in the implementation of the Monterrey Consensus, the Doha Declaration and the Addis Ababa

Related Documents

Third Preparatory Committee Session for FfD4 website

Proposed organization of work of the third session of the Preparatory Committee

The Third Session of the Preparatory Committee for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development will be held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York from 10 to 14 February 2025.

(1st plenary meeting) Preparatory Committee for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, Third Session!

[wausaupilotreview]

Wausau Finance Committee to review downtown parking project

An update on this project:

By Shereen Siewert | Wausau Pilot & Review The Wausau Finance Committee will meet on Tuesday to review necessary amendments to the city’s Tax Increment Districts to accommodate previously approved 2025 budget projects, including planned parking improvements in downtown Wausau. The project, which was approved by the City Council in the 2025 budget, involves parking improvements along North 4th…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Greg Owen at LGBTQ Nation:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came under bruising scrutiny in the first of two U.S. Senate confirmation hearings to possibly put him in charge of Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services. The hearing did not go well. Kennedy, who is widely known as an anti-vaxxer, struggled in the hearing to reframe his opposition to vaccines as concern for “chronic disease.” [...] Kennedy’s past statements, some promoting conspiracy theories, haunted him throughout the questioning. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado (D) asked Kennedy, “Did you say that exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender?” Kennedy replied, “No, I never said that,” despite his repeated assertions that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay and transgender and cause the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls. Bennet also grilled Kennedy about HIV and AIDS. Kennedy has repeatedly promoted the false claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, instead attributing it to other factors like use of amyl nitrate, or poppers, and “lifestyle.”

RFK Jr. embarrassed himself on national TV in his Senate confirmation hearing by denying he said that pesticides turn kids trans when grilled by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO).

See Also:

The Advocate: RFK Jr. lies to senators about claiming that pesticides make kids transgender in HHS confirmation hearing

[elprupneerg]

putting together a big list of what all my state's congress people are involved in. some of the senate subcommittees have very annoying websites and it pisses me off. like the committee on health, education, labor, and pensions. they say they've got 3 subcommittees but won't say what those subcommittees are. also their name lists 4 things they're in charge of. did 2 of them get combined into 1 subcommittee? who's part of each subcommittee? why are all the "recent" press things from 2011? several of the pages have a little blurb that's like "We hope you find this website helpful." i appreciate that you hope that but i'd prefer if you put effort into making those hopes a reality please and thank you!