The New York Times reports:

So far in 2024, lawmakers in 10 states have introduced wealth-tax bills or are working on introducing them, according to Amber Wallin, senior policy and outreach director at the State Revenue Alliance. They are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington.

No states currently assess any taxes on a living individual's net worth or unrealized capital gains. If Vermont's bill were to become law, it would basically do that, Ms. Kornheiser explained: Someone whose assets, after exemptions, started the year worth $10 million and finished the year worth $11 million, for example, would have $1 million in unrealized gains that would be counted as income, and therefore subject to Vermont's top income tax rate of 8.75 percent, even though nothing was sold and the gains were all on paper.

In his New Hampshire primary victory speech, President Trump acknowledged John Paulson and floated the possibility of him serving as Treasury secretary in a second Trump administration.

What would that mean, policy-wise? In a February 2023 interview Paulson said, "gold is rising again. I say again because it's been the reserve currency of the world for thousands of years, a legitimate alternative to holding the dollar or other paper currencies. There has been a significant increase in demand from central banks to replace dollars with gold, and we're just at the beginning of that trend. Gold will go up and the dollar will go down, so you'd be better off keeping your investment reserves in gold at this point."

The nonprofit Baltimore Banner has a report on a newsroom speech by David Smith, the new owner of its for-profit competitor, the Baltimore Sun:

"Let me tell you something I can't do anything about. I can't do anything about a person who is a product of the Baltimore City school system. ... Can't do anything about that. As a news organization, you might be able to do something about it by focusing on those people, that class of people, who are products of the Baltimore City school system, who have never had a job. They're always going to be a product of the government. They're always going to be on welfare. Always going to be on some structure that the government takes care of. The only way you're going to fix that is to fix the school system."

"And it's not just Baltimore City. It's Baltimore County. It's Cincinnati. It's in every place I have business, it's in Portland, Maine. It's everywhere. And it's government controlling the system that is causing in large part, failure. So people who can't read or write, who do you blame for that?"

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens takes a second bite out of the pro-Trump apple:

His strength came from seeing, and saying, what most of America's coastal elites weren't: that life wasn't getting better for middle- and working-class America, that unchecked immigration was a serious problem and that elite institutions, particularly academia and the news media, had become preachy and untrustworthy. ... And his presidency was not the unmitigated disaster his critics claim: Operation Warp Speed was a triumph, as were the Abraham Accords, as was a pretty robust economy, at least until the pandemic.

Announcing a professional move from the Atlantic to the Brennan Center for Justice, longtime former Washington Post journalist Barton Gellman writes on X, "I've decided to get off the sidelines. I have resigned from The Atlantic and joined the leadership team at the Brennan Center in the fight for democracy."

That formulation made me chuckle for several reasons.

First, who thought that The Atlantic, in its current hyper-activist anti-Trump instantiation, was on "the sidelines"? Editor in chief Jeff Goldberg, my former Forward colleague, is a journalist, not a politician or a lobbyist, but one of his many talents is to place himself and his team's journalistic work right in the center of the action, not on the sidelines.

Second, a journalist getting "off the sidelines" might typically be leaving to join a political campaign, or to serve in the government. Gellman is leaving to join a 501c3 nonprofit organization with roots at NYU Law School. Sure, the c3 also has a c4 and it discloses some lobbying expenses, but even so.

The New York Times Magazine carries an interview with Andreas Malm, the author of the 2021 book "How To Blow Up a Pipeline." From the interview:

We live in representative democracies where certain liberties are respected. We vote for the policies and the people we want to represent us. And if we don't get the things we want, it doesn't give us license to then say, "We're now engaging in destructive behavior." Right? Either we're against political violence or not. We can't say we're for it when it's something we care about and against it when it's something we think is wrong. Of course we can. Why not?....

At times I wonder whether Harvard is so big, rich, and monolithic that no amount of pressure will change it. At other times I'm amazed at how rapidly it responds to suggestions and constructive criticism. In the second, "pleasant surprise," category comes the news that the university will feature former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, former American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, and former George W. Bush administration attorney general Michael Mukasey in the opening weeks of the Spring semester, as "part of a commitment to open discourse."

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce reasonably included ideological diversity (and the lack of it at Harvard) as a part of its hearing on "Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism," a hearing that resulted in the resignation of two of the three college presidents who testified at it, including Harvard's Claudine Gay.

Three recent examples from the New York Times provide some specific, concrete insights into rent control and rent stabilization in New York City:

From the obituary of Edward Jay Epstein: "Mr. Epstein lived alone in a lavish rent-controlled apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side."

From the obituary for Alice Mason, real estate broker and society hostess: "She never left the rent-stabilized apartment where she held her storied dinners, in a century-old building on East 72nd Street. (In Manhattan real estate parlance, it was a classic eight, a gracious prewar layout that included three bedrooms and two maid's rooms.) When she moved there in 1962, the rent was $400 a month. At her death, it was $2,476. The apartment below her, in the same line, was recently on the market for just under $10 million."

The governor of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, delivered her state of the commonwealth address last night. I found this passage newsworthy:

we passed a billion-dollar tax cut that will save money for everyone in our state.

That's right, we cut taxes in Massachusetts for the first time in 20 years.

You'll see the savings when you file your returns in April.

We now have the most generous child and dependent tax credit of any state in the country. And we got rid of the two-child cap!

For someone like my mom, it would've meant an extra $2200 every year. Mom, I bet you could've used that money.

For every family with a child, or an adult with disabilities – you will get dollars back to help with groceries, utilities, gas, and housing.

Renters and commuters will also get more money back, as will folks dealing with lead paint or septic systems.

Families will be able to pass on more of their hard-earned money, because we also cut the estate tax.

The "No Labels" solution-oriented, not Trump, not Biden political group has been the subject of some interest around here. Today the group disclosed that it has written to the Justice Department complaining about what it calls "unlawful harassment and extortion" of its supporters, staff, vendors, and potential candidates.

The letter from No Labels is worth a look, describing plans to "intimidate" potential candidates such as former Governor Huntsman. "Although there is no question that the entities and individuals harassing No Labels and its donors and potential candidates have a First Amendment right to engage in political speech, the law does not give them the right to intimidate, threaten, coerce, and/or extort any person who may be inclined to promote the No Labels cause in general, support its effort to secure ballot access for the 2024 election in particular, or run on its ticket," the letter says.

The letter is signed by Senator Lieberman and Benjamin Chavis Jr., national co-chairs, and three others.

The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, spoke at the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos with some clarity:

"The Western world is in danger. It is in danger, because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are coopted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty...." he said.

"The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. We're here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause," he went on. "...Free enterprise capitalism is not just the only possible system to end world poverty, but also that it's the only morally desirable system to achieve this."

One helpful thing about the extreme left is that it actually announces its goals publicly in advance. The latest example is a piece in the Nation, "The Case for Capping Wealth at $10 Million," by Ingrid Robeyns, who is a professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands: "there should be an upper limit to how much personal wealth any individual can have. And that limit does not lie at a billion: Instead, we should look more in the range of $10 million as a hard cap on personal wealth."

The article is refreshingly, or breathtakingly, candid about goals: "there should be a global push to take all the surplus money that the richest do not need." Give credit for using the word "take" rather than some euphemism like "tax."

More: "raising taxes will not be enough...We must also transform the economic system (including the fiscal system) to make it impossible for anyone to become too rich."

JPMorgan Chase CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon tells CNBC from Davos: "I wish the Democrats would think a little more carefully, when they talk about MAGA...When people say MAGA.... They are basically scapegoating them, that you are like him....Take a step back, be honest. He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.... He wasn't wrong about some of these critical issues, and that's why they are voting for him."

Dimon went on: "I think people should be a little more respectful of our fellow citizens."

The CNBC anchor observed, "It's hard to hate 75 million of your fellow Americans.

Dimon said, "I agree. The Democrats have done a pretty good job, with the 'deplorables,' hugging onto their bibles and their beer and their guns. I mean, really, can we just stop that stuff and actually grow up and treat other people with respect and listen to them a little?"

It's too early to start measuring measure the office drapes. There are scenarios—a "No Labels" independent ticket, a Nikki Haley New Hampshire Republican primary miracle powered by crossover Democrats and independent voters, a legal twist or turn that keeps Trump off the ballot or makes it practically impossible for him to continue—that could change things. But the morning after the Iowa caucuses, it sure looks like Donald Trump has a reasonably good chance of returning to the White House.

Their names and photos haven't yet been released, and I hope and pray that by some miracle they may yet be found alive, but at this writing it sure looks as if the new phase of the war between Iran and the U.S. has claimed two American seamen.

A press release from U.S. Central Command reports that on January 11, "U.S. Navy SEALs operating from USS Lewis B Puller ... executed a complex boarding of the dhow near the coast of Somalia in international waters of the Arabian Sea, seizing Iranian-made ballistic missile and cruise missiles components." The dhow—a sailboat with a triangular sail—was "conducting illegal transport of advanced lethal aid from Iran to resupply Houthi forces in Yemen as part of the Houthis' ongoing campaign of attacks against international merchant shipping," the press release said. More from the release: