Signature

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a political hero among liberals and populists, next week will formally kick off the campaign to place a new tax on billionaires on California’s November ballot.

The controversial proposal, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of the state’s wealthiest residents, is critical to backfilling federal funding cuts to healthcare enacted by the Trump administration, Sanders said in a statement.

“This initiative would provide the necessary funding to prevent over 3 million working-class Californians from losing the healthcare they currently have — and would help prevent the closures of California hospitals and emergency rooms,” he said. “It should be common sense that the billionaires pay just slightly more so that entire communities can preserve access to life-saving medical care. Our country needs access to hospitals and emergency rooms, not more tax breaks for billionaires.”

The independent senator from Vermont, who caucuses with Democrats in the nation’s Capitol, will appear Feb. 18 at the Wiltern in Los Angeles alongside prominent musical acts. Sanders has a deep base of support among California Democrats, winning the state’s 2020 presidential primary over Joe Biden by eight points, and narrowly losing the 2016 primary to Hillary Clinton. In both elections, he won the votes of more than 2 million Californians, who were also a major source of the small-dollar donations that fueled his insurgent campaigns.

The tax proposal, which Sanders previously endorsed on social media, is proposed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. The supporters need to gather the signatures of nearly 875,000 registered voters and submit them to county elections officials by June 24 for the measure to qualify for the November ballot. They began gathering signatures in January.

Supporters of the tax argue it is one of the few ways the state can backfill major federal cuts to healthcare services for California’s most vulnerable residents. Opponents warn it would kill the innovation that has made the state rich and prompt an exodus of wealthy entrepreneurs.

More than 200 billionaires in Californians would be affected if the proposal qualifies for the ballot and is approved. Some prominent billionaires have already left the state, notably PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and venture capitalist David Sacks.

Both men were major supporters of President Trump.

Democrats are divided about the issue. Notably, Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is among a dozen candidates running in November to replace the termed-out governor, oppose the proposal.

Who’s ready for a Minions happy dance?

Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté said Tuesday that he may be able to skate his Minions-themed program at the Olympics after all. He shared on Instagram that Universal is allowing him to use the music from its popular animated franchise for the “special occasion” and said he is working to clear the remaining hurdles.

“There are still a couple things to be tied up with the other 2 musics of the program but we are so close to accomplishing it!” Guarino Sabaté wrote in his update thanking his supporters. “I’m so happy to see that the minions hitting Olympic ice is becoming real again!! I’ll keep you posted!”

A six-time Spanish national champion, Guarino Sabaté said on Monday that he had been informed Friday — exactly a week before the opening ceremony of the Milan-Cortina Games — that the medley of “Minions” music he had skated to, while dressed in blue overalls and a yellow shirt, through the entirety of the season could not be used at the Olympics due to copyright issues. This meant that Guarino Sabaté, who had been set to make his Olympics debut with his Minions-themed short program on Feb. 10, would need to change his plans last minute. How bananas.

The cheery yellow creatures are a signature of Universal and Illumination’s “Despicable Me” film franchise. NBCUniversal owns the U.S. media rights to the Olympics.

“Finding out about this … so close to the most important competition of my life, was incredibly disappointing,” Guarino Sabaté wrote in his post sharing the initial news. “This season I competed with my Minions short program to bring joy and playful style to the ice while still meeting every required element to show that skating as a male Olympic figure skater can be fun. … Nevertheless, I will face this challenge head on and do my best to make the best of it.”

The Olympian said then that he had followed the proper procedures and submitted his music through the International Skating Union’s recommended rights clearance system in August. The situation has brought to attention to the complexities of music licensing and how it affects artistic sports like figure skating. Contemporary music is not in the public domain and skaters are responsible for clearing their own music.

For now, fans will just have to remain hopeful that Guarino Sabaté’s dream of bringing joyous Minion mayhem to the Olympic ice will come true in the end.

WASHINGTON — The House, with Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose) emotionally recalling his own experiences in a camp for Japanese-American internees during World War II, today gave final congressional approval to a bill expressing a national apology and providing a $20,000 tax-free payment to every surviving internee.

The bill, whose total price tag is $1.25 billion, passed by a vote of 257 to 156 and now goes to President Reagan, who has already promised to sign it and “close a sad chapter in American history.”

The bill provides for the tax-free payments to an estimated 62,000 former internees who are still living.

It acknowledges “the fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation, and internment” of the 120,000 men, women and children, mostly West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry, in the months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, propelling the United States into the war.

‘A Monumental Injustice’

Mineta was 10 years old when he and his family were taken in 1942 from their home in San Jose to a prison camp established at the Santa Anita race track. Today he presided as Speaker pro tem as the House took final action on the compensation bill.

“This legislation touches all of us because it goes to the very core of our nation,” Mineta said in a speech closing debate. “I am deeply honored to serve in this body as it takes the great step of admitting and redressing a monumental injustice.”

But the bill was opposed by a number of members who, although they agreed the evacuation order was wrong, said cash payments were not appropriate.

Rep. Norman D. Shumway (R-Stockton) said: “There was a serious wrong done to many good American citizens. . . . But I do not see the remedy, the payment of $20,000, as the right answer.”

Nothing for Families

The Senate approved the measure by voice vote last week. The bill authorizes $1.25 billion for the payments, but the money will be provided over time with no more than $500 million to be appropriated in any one year.

The measure does not provide compensation to families of internees now dead; only those living when the bill becomes law will be eligible for the $20,000 payments.

The Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to the internment camps in the Rocky Mountains and the South under a 1942 executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Despite arguments that the order violated the constitutional rights of those sent to the camps without any charge or trial, the Supreme Court ruled in 1944 the action was within the President’s powers as commander in chief in wartime.

In 1980, a special commission was created to examine the issue. It recommended that compensation be paid, concluding that the evacuation order was based on war hysteria and racial prejudice. No similar action was taken against Americans of German or Italian ancestry, although the United States also was at war with those two countries.

Aleutian Islanders

The bill directs the Justice Department to identify and locate eligible individuals, who will be notified and then have 18 months to accept payment.

It also provides restitution payments of $12,000 to residents of the Aleutian Islands who were relocated by the government during the war. In addition, the bill provides $5-million compensation for the Aleuts for destruction of their villages and community property, plus $1.4 million for destroyed church property.

Another $15 million is provided to compensate the Aleuts for the loss of Attu Island, which was turned into a national wildlife refuge following the war.