Bits 'n pieces from east, west and beyond

East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:

If passed, the 2021 Raise the Wage Act (to make the minimum wage $15 an hour by 2025) will not only boost paychecks for 21 percent of the workforce, but annual government expenditures for major public assistance programs could fall by up to $31 billion, according to estimates by the Economic Policy Institute.

On Feb. 6 of last year, the nation’s first-known COVID-19 victim died. The U.S. is now at over 464,000 COVID-19 deaths, more than the number of Americans that died in World War II.

Regarding former President Donald Trump’s current impeachment trial: If his attorneys focus on what Trump wants then he should end up being a witness, according to U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), lead impeachment manager.

If there are no repercussions regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection, which is the focus of the impeachment, Raskin said that would establish “a precedent, where every president on the way out the door” can “try to incite an armed insurrection against the Union. And if it succeeds, he becomes a dictator. If it fails, he’s not subject to impeachment or conviction because we just want to let bygones be bygones.”

Moving on is not an acceptable outcome from the Capitol insurrection, according to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who experienced the violent raid. She has revealed that she’s been a victim of sexual assault. The “forget about it” attitude is used by abusers, who find it convenient if everyone just “moves on.” Ocasio-Cortez said prosecutions are not about revenge; they’re about creating safety.

According to Reuters, the Justice Department is considering whether to prosecute the Capitol insurrectionists using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The Act was designed to address the people who orchestrate events but don’t get their hands dirty.

The heiress to the Publix Super Markets donated “hundreds of thousands of dollars” that funded the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol building Jan. 6, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Smartmatic, producer of voting machines, is suing Fox Corporation for at least $2.7 billion for defamation and for contributing to the insurrection at the Capitol building Jan. 6. The suit also targets Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, according to The New York Times. As well, Dominion Voting Systems has filed suit against Giuliani and Powell. Fox Corporation is valued at $17.8 billion, making the Smartmatic suit significant if Fox loses.

Newsmax surprised far right viewers when having Mike “My Pillow Guy” Lindell on as a guest recently. Asked about Twitter’s ban on him for spreading disinformation, Lindell dodged that question and launched into an erroneous explanation of how the election was stolen. The interviewer interrupted and said, “We at Newsmax have not been able to verify any of those allegations … there’s nothing substantive that we have seen.”

After revelations about her recent past, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told The Hill that U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is a “cancer for the Republican Party” due to her stances on conspiracy theories (including those that claim no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, school shootings have been pre-staged, California fires were started by Jewish space lasers and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s aircraft). She’s also called for killing Democrats. McConnell stated all that means Greene “is not living in reality.” She now faces calls for expulsion after having her committee assignments taken away.

Last week President Joe Biden announced the end of U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, saying it has been a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.”

The IRS estimates that $441 billion a year in taxes owed are not collected. New Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced the hiring of officials who will work on collecting those funds.

Economists at Citigroup say that if black entrepreneurs had better access to credit, there would be an additional $16 trillion in economic output since 2000, Bloomberg.com reported.

The more contagious coronavirus variant from Brazil recently arrived in the U.S. via a traveler returning from the South American nation. Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccines offer protection, but will be slightly less effective, according to the companies and reported in The New York Times.

Blast from the past: In 1858, when Abraham Lincoln was a Senate candidate, he stated that arguments making white men more worthy of rights than black people were part of the same argument “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world … an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it, where will it stop?”