It was a good day for Minnesota and the nation when the voters of the 5th Congressional District elected State Representative Ilhan Omar to represent them in the United States Congress.
Representative Omar is a bright and charismatic young leader who has the interests of all her constituents, and all Americans, at heart.
Take for example her legislation known as the College for All Act.
The College for All Act would eliminate tuition and fees at all public four-year colleges and universities, as well as make community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs tuition free for all. The proposal also eliminates all $1.6 trillion in student debt for 45 million Americans.
“That’s 45 million people who are being held back from purchasing their first home; 45 million people who may feel that they can’t start a family; 45 million people who have dreams of opening a business or going into public service, but are held back,” Omar said when the bill was introduced in June.
Omar estimates the College for All Act would give a boost of one trillion dollars to the American economy, once it is passed.
The entire thing would be paid for by a very small tax on Wall Street speculators.
“During the financial crisis, Wall Street received the largest tax payer bailout in the history of the United States,” Omar said. “Now it’s Wall Street’s turn to help rebuild the disappearing middle class.”
The bank and speculator bailout that Rep. Omar is referring to was officially called the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and it cost some 700 billion dollars. It surpassed any previous government bailout by hundreds of billions of dollars.
Representative Omar’s College for All Act proposes imposing a tiny Wall Street speculation tax of just 0.5 percent on stock trades (fifty cents for every $100 worth of stock), a 0.1 percent fee on bonds, and a 0.005 percent fee on derivatives. These taxes would have a minuscule effect on speculator profits but would raise $2.4 trillion over the next decade.
If you’re thinking this is socialism, maybe you’re right. But it’s the kind of socialism, like Social Security and the Veterans Administration, that economists say is good for the economy. In fact more than 1,000 economists from fifty-three countries recently called on the twenty richest countries, including the U.S., to adapt what they are calling Robin Hood taxes, according to the British newspaper The Guardian. Forty countries, including India, Brazil, and the United Kingdom, already have these taxes.
But maybe these Robin Hood taxes that would pay for Rep. Omar’s College for All Act aren’t socialism. Maybe those taxes are the trickle down economics that they’ve been promising us all these years.
But, as I was saying, Rep. Omar is a leader Minnesotans can be proud of. In May she introduced the Protect Democracy from Criminal Corporations Act. This bill would bar corporations from political spending for ten years after being convicted of a crime.
“Companies that conspire to defraud the federal government or commit other felonies involving dishonesty or a breach of trust should not have influence over our political system,” Rep. Omar said. “This is just common sense. Companies that break the law shouldn’t be allowed to poison our democracy with dirty money.”
Rep. Omar points to British Petroleum as an example of such a felonius company.
“One such corporation, BP, was found by a federal judge in 2014 to have acted on “profit-driven decisions” that amounted to “gross negligence” resulting in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,” she said. “Even as BP was arguing in court over the billions of fines it owed in Clean Water Act violations, it found a way to spend nearly $5 million on lobbying and campaign donations that year.”
Under Omar’s legislation BP would have been barred from lobbying or making political contributions. The Protect Democracy from Criminal Corporations Act would be a big step forward in cleaning up The Swamp.
Omar, who sits on the Congressional Foreign Affairs Committee and the Education and Labor Committee, is doing the work voters in the Minnesota 5th sent her to do. She is a visionary and positive leader that all Minnesotans can look up to.
On the other hand, the Individual Named Trump only complains, whines, and insults. He complains about judges and the judiciary. He whines constantly about Congress and the elected Representatives of the people. And on a daily basis he spews hateful things about the media.
The judiciary, the Congress, and the media are American institutions that have made America great. If Trump hates our great American institutions so much, he should resign and go back to selling real estate. He should let leaders like Representative Omar, who believe in our system of governance, do the work they were elected to do.
Tim
Central Minnesota Political
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