LATEST USRESIST NEWS
Maryland’s New Tax – A Significant Step Forward in Digital Policy-Making
Brief #38—Technologybr>By Scout Burchill
On Friday, February 12th the Maryland State Senate overrode Governor Hogan’s veto to become the first state in the nation to impose a tax on digital advertising revenue. Even though the new law is already being challenged in the courts, its passage reflects the dire need to plug gaping holes in state and local budgets due to pandemic losses as well as enact innovative new approaches to taxing and regulating big tech companies that have continued to rake in record profits over the past year. Maryland’s Digital Advertising Gross Revenues Tax would impose a 2.5% tax on advertising revenue made by selling digital advertising within the state for companies that make over $100 million a year globally from digital advertising revenues. This tax rate increases to 5% for companies making between $1 billion and $5 billion, 7.5% for companies making between $5 billion and $15 billion and finally 10% for those companies making more that $15 billion, essentially targeting Google and Facebook. The new tax is expected to generate $250 million after the first year, which will be set aside for Maryland’s education system.
MIS-C: What is it, and Why it Matters
Brief #96—Health & Gender
By Justin Lee
There are multiple reports of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (in children, MIS-C) being seen across the world shortly after the onset of COVID-19. Children and teen patients with MIS-C can suffer from inflammation that can limit blood flow throughout the body, exposing danger to major organs such as the heart, kidneys, and other organs. While cases, which have ranged from ages 2 to 15 years, have been considered rare the outcome can be dangerous if left untreated. MIC-C can be treated with drugs that can control the inflammation and prevent prolonged, permanent organ damage.
Where Do Things Stand with Iran?
Brief #102—Foreign Policy
By Will Solomon
A central premise of the Biden candidacy was reentering the JCPOA (the Iran Nuclear Deal), which was negotiated and signed by the Obama administration in 2015, and subsequently exited by the Trump administration in 2018. This goal was seen as both a rebuke to Trumpism, as a means for international diplomatic re-engagement, and as practical step to avoid increased nuclear proliferation and potential war in the Greater Middle East.
Leading Environmental Organizations Went Public with a Letter That Supported the Impeachment of President Trump
Brief #110—Environment
By Shannon Q Elliot
Leaders of America’s most prominent environmental organizations penned a letter to the US House of Representatives in support of House Resolution 24; a second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The letter was authored by The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Greenpeace US, and the Natural Resources Defense Council who concluded the letter gently reminding our leaders that the “health of our democracy and environment are inextricably linked”
Fishing Boat Dispatch
USRN Environment Blog
By Katherine Cart
The Gulf of Alaska last summer was warm. The edge of wind was warm. The water in Yakutat Bay, when I jumped from the boat to swim, was warm. When the July storms came, waves swamped decks. The entirety of our horizon would be green water and foam for days. At night deck lights showed rain and rime flying laterally, our flags ironed straight out, as though the wind would carry what it caught until land’s mountains put up a wall.
Racial Inequity Within USDA Highlighted by Bills Seeking Policy Reform
Brief #1—Agriculture
By Katherine Cart
Farmland is lucrative. Acreage denotes wealth and provides multi-generational investment returns. Racial inequity and farm policy, in this country, have long been indivisible; discrimination in agrarian land ownership and by the USDA has made a farce of an already flimsy bid for equality, for financial freedom and freedom to farm and ranch American land with the nonpartisan support of government. The Covid-19 pandemic has both exacerbated and highlighted the racism within the USDA’s treatment of farmers. Two bills, the Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act and the Justice for Black Farmers Act seek to begin the remediation of racial disparity in US agriculture.
