Tag: chuck schumer

Here’s The Lawmaker Who Accepts More BlackRock Money Than Any Other Member Of Congress

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) accepted more donations in the last election cycle from BlackRock and individuals affiliated with the firm than any other member of Congress.

The connection between the lawmaker and the asset management company was noted by the American Accountability Foundation, a non-profit government oversight and research organization, after Schumer rebuked efforts to scrap a Labor Department rule that would allow retirement fiduciaries to allocate funds in accordance with the environmental, social, and corporate governance movement, also known as ESG. Both the House and Senate passed a resolution opposed to the rule, which President Joe Biden is expected to veto.

BlackRock is a leading proponent of the ESG movement, which critics say mingles political and social causes such as decreasing carbon emissions and achieving racial diversity in a manner that compromises or distracts from profitability. Schumer nevertheless accepted $103,950 from individuals associated with BlackRock and $10,000 from a political action committee controlled by the company, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets.

“ESG opponents are trying to turn it into a dirty acronym, deploying attacks they’ve used for elements of a so-called woke agenda,” Schumer said on social media this week as the resolution moved through Congress. “They call ESG wokeness. They call it a cult. They call it an incursion into free markets. I say ESG is just common sense.”

Candidates from both parties benefit from BlackRock money, with Republicans getting $639,000 and Democrats getting $453,000 in the most recent midterm election cycle. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) were the second and third-largest individual recipients of funds from BlackRock and individuals associated with BlackRock.

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Chuck Schumer Learned Nothing From the Failure of Pot Legalization in California

During the next year, California officials said last week, the state expects to seize “more than $1 billion worth of illegal cannabis products.” That announcement came a few weeks after the U.S. Justice Department bragged about guilty pleas by 11 unlicensed California marijuana merchants who had been nabbed with help from state and local law enforcement agencies.

The continuing war on weed in California, which supposedly legalized marijuana in 2016, reflects the striking failure to replace black-market dealers with state-licensed vendors, a plan that has been doomed by high taxes, local bans, and overregulation. Judging from the marijuana legalization bill he introduced last week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D‒N.Y.) has learned nothing from that experience.

Six years after California voters approved recreational marijuana, unauthorized suppliers still account for somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of sales. A recent report from Reason Foundation, which publishes this website, highlights one major reason why licensed businesses have had so much trouble competing with illegal suppliers: Taxes are too high.

Geoff Lawrence, Reason Foundation’s managing director of drug policy, found that California’s effective tax rate ranged from $42 to $92 per ounce, depending on the jurisdiction, compared to an estimated wholesale production cost of $35 per ounce. The corresponding rates in Colorado and Oregon, both of which have been more successful at displacing the black market, are about $33 and $21, respectively.

Despite modest tax relief approved this year, legal marijuana remains overpriced in California. It is also inconvenient to buy in much of the state, Lawrence notes, thanks to local sales bans that have created “massive cannabis deserts” where “consumers have no access to a legal retailer within a reasonable distance of their home.”

Legal sellers also must contend with burdensome licensing requirements and regulations. Dale Gieringer, California director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says those rules help explain why legal marijuana prices are much higher than he anticipated.

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‘Who Could Be That Dumb’: Top Democrat Wants Federal Crackdown on Fake Vaccine Cards

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that the federal government needs to crack down on the proliferation of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards in the midst of restrictions and rhetoric around vaccine passports.

The majority leader, in an announcement, called for “all-out enforcement” by the federal government.

“They are paying money for a fake card and risking prosecution,” said Schumer, holding up a picture of a falsified Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) card. “Who could be that dumb, who could be that dumb, the vaccine is free, the vaccine is safe, get the vaccine.”

Schumer said that the practice is illegal while saying that there needs to be a federal education campaign showing that it is against the law to sell or buy a fake card.

“Too many people,” he said, “are looking to buy them.”

Schumer is demanding U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the FBI team up with officials from the Department of Health and Human Services to launch a crackdown on the counterfeit cards and start a campaign to make clear that forging the cards could land people in federal prison.

He also wants the Justice Department to immediately prioritize cases involving fake vaccine cards and is pushing for Customs and Border Protection to work harder to find counterfeit cards being sent from overseas.

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Schumer Says Senate Will Move Ahead on Marijuana Legalization With or Without Biden

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared that Senate Democrats will move forward on marijuana legalization with or without Joe Biden’s support, highlighting Biden’s lack of influence within his own party.

In a Politico interview published Saturday, Schumer indicated that Biden’s hesitation to back federal marijuana legalization won’t stop the Democrats from enacting it.

“He [Biden] said he’s studying the issue, so [I] obviously want to give him a little time to study it. I want to make my arguments to him, as many other advocates will,” the Senate Democratic leader said. “But at some point we’re going to move forward, period.”

“When a few of the early states — Oregon and Colorado — wanted to legalize, all the opponents talked about the parade of horribles: Crime would go up. Drug use would go up. Everything bad would happen,” Schumer explained.  “The legalization of states worked out remarkably well.” 

“They were a great success. The parade of horribles never came about, and people got more freedom. And people in those states seem very happy,” he added.

Schumer’s remarks come after Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki noted on Friday that Biden “believes in decriminalizing the use of marijuana, but his position has not changed” on broader nationwide legalization.

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Schumer says Democrats will probe extremist groups after Capitol attack

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Tuesday that Senate Democrats will launch probes stemming from the Jan. 6 Capitol attack after they take back control of the chamber on Jan. 20. 

Schumer sent a letter to his caucus, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill, outlining plans for investigating both the mob violence and related issues and vowing “vigorous oversight.” 

“Our caucus will make sure that the events are fully investigated and every necessary security measure is in place for the upcoming Inauguration and the days leading up to it,” Schumer wrote in the letter.

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