Good morning, it’s Wednesday. First, some mea culpas.
Yes, I overlooked the fact that yesterday was Tax Day. (Perhaps willfully ignored?)
To be fair, things happened a little out of order this year, since Tax Day usually falls on April 15. But that was a Saturday. Then Washington, D.C. had holiday (Emancipation Day), which is actually April 16, but that was a Sunday, and so observance was pushed a day ahead to Monday).
Hence, April 18 Tax Day. Complicated.
In case you’re wondering, as of just over a week ago – April 7 – the IRS had processed more than 101 million tax returns. The average refund to taxpayers has so far been $2,878, which is down from $3,175 at the same time in 2022, due in part to the elimination of credits that were available last tax season.
If I’m being totally honest, I have to admit that I long for the days when one could simply plug one’s W2 information into TurboTax, collect one’s refund, and be done with it.
It turns out the older you get and the more you acquire, the more complicated your tax filings become.
Add a spouse and a part-time kid and a few properties and investments into the mix, coupled with ever more complex federal and state tax policies, and you’ve got yourself a situation only a skilled CPA can handle.
As much as I would have liked to altogether ignore the need to pay taxes, we actually took care of that a few weeks ago now. So my conscience is clear on that front.
However, I am feeling guilty about not noting Yom HaShoa (officially Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG’vurah, AKA Holocaust Remembrance Day), which is observed in Israel to remember the approximately six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in WW II. It also took place yesterday, and I didn’t mention it.
This day was first observed in 1951 (recall that the Holocaust ended in 1945), and officially codified in the Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day Law that was passed by the Knesset (Israel’s unicameral legislature) in 1959, after about eight years of debate and deliberations.
Yom HaShoah is always on the 27th of Nisan, (unless that’s Shabbat, in which case it gets shifted a day), and moves around from year to year, but generally falls in April or May.
So now that I’ve spent a pretty good chunk of time here addressing the things I should have addressed yesterday, I do want to take a minute to talk about today. Unfortunately, this quick shift is probably going to come off as fairly irreverent. Such is life.
Today – April 19, that is – is Bicycle Day, the date of the first recorded LSD ( lysergic acid diethylamide) “trip”, which was taken by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who actually had synthesized the drug five years earlier, but wasn’t immediately aware of its psychedelic properties.
Do NOT confuse this day with the UN’s World Bicycle Day, which is about, well, bicycling. THIS day is about tripping – maybe on your bicycle, like Hofmann, or maybe somewhere else.
And while most people think about LSD as a recreational drug, the truth is that Hofmann’s discovery was a significant contribution to science, demonstrating the brain chemistry can, in fact, be altered. Researchers are increasingly finding that LSD – and other psychedelics, may help treat mental illness – particularly depression – as well as PTSD and more.
Hofmann, by the way, remained a LSD evangelist for decades, even after so-called “acid” was banned in the 1960s. He strongly believed in the drug’s medicinal properties – though he did also recognize that it could be dangerous – and that belief is increasingly gaining steam today. Hofmann died of a heart attack in 2008 at the ripe old age of 102. Maybe he was onto something?
It looks like we’ll get a break from the rain today, with cloudy skies in the morning that partly clear by afternoon. Temperatures will be in the low 50s. Sweater and light jacket weather, for sure.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden earned $579,514 in 2022, slightly lower than their previous year’s earnings, according to new tax returns released Tuesday by the White House. They paid $137,658 in federal income taxes – an effective tax rate of 23.8%.
The bulk of their earnings came from Biden’s $400,000 salary as president, while Jill Biden earned $82,355 from Northern Virginia Community College, where she teaches.
Biden signed an executive order that contains more than 50 directives to increase access to child care and improve the work life of caregivers.
Flanked by child care and family care advocates and providers, Biden called the move “the most comprehensive set of actions any administration has taken to date to increase access to high quality child care and long-term care and support for the caregivers.”
“No one should have to choose between caring for the parents who raised him, the children who depend on them, and the paycheck they rely on,” Biden said before signing the order during a Rose Garden ceremony.
The Biden administration has been divided at the highest levels for years over how aggressively to limit economic engagement with China. But officials now appear to be nearing an agreement on one key effort to curtail Beijing’s technological and military rise.
Fox News forged a last-minute $787 million settlement of the $1.6 billion defamation case filed by Dominion Voting Systems as the two sides prepared for what was expected to be a blockbuster trial over the network’s pro-Trump campaign of election lies.
The landmark settlement is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company, and was announced hours after the jury was sworn in at the Delaware Superior Court.
The settlement earned banner coverage on every television news network but one: Fox News. In about six minutes of coverage, the network acknowledged the story, but then moved on.
The last-minute agreement makes clear just how sticky a situation Fox was headed for if the trial did occur.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took aim at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, saying he doesn’t think the Florida leader is a conservative in light of his ongoing conflict with Disney.
The Atlanta-area prosecutor investigating efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election indicated she has conducted fresh interviews with some of the Republican activists who falsely claimed to be Georgia’s legitimate presidential electors.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s office said some fake electors for Trump have implicated each other in potential criminal activity and is seeking to disqualify their lawyer, according to a new court filing.
Prosecutors in New York City asked the judge overseeing the criminal case against Trump to seek additional information from one of Trump’s attorneys who they believe may have a potential conflict of interest in the case.
Trump announced he is releasing a second round of superhero-style digital trading cards with cartoonish images of him at $99 apiece, as the 2024 GOP candidate looks to keep raising money and rally his base after his historic indictment earlier this month.
The 84-year-old white man charged with shooting Ralph Yarl, a Black Kansas City teen who went to the wrong home to pick up his siblings, has turned himself in to authorities.
“Andrew Lester, charged in the shooting of Ralph Yarl, has surrendered at our Detention Center and is in custody,” the Clay County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “He is in the booking process right now.”
Lester, who faces two felony charges – assault in the first degree and armed criminal action – in the April 13 shooting of Yarl, was released on bail and will be arraigned this afternoon, according to Yarl family attorney Lee Merritt.
Many residents of Kansas City remained deeply troubled by the events that had shaken their city for the last several days.
U.S. health officials authorized an additional COVID vaccine booster for most adults and people with weak immune systems as part of a series of updates designed to “encourage future vaccination.”
The agency said people who are 65 and older who have not had a bivalent booster shot in at least four months may get another one. For those who are immunocompromised, additional doses of the bivalent vaccine can be given two months after the last shot.
The FDA also authorized using the bivalent formula in all Covid vaccines moving forward and is doing away with the multidose primary series for people who have not yet been vaccinated.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is backing off a key piece of her ambitious housing plan that would have forced local governments to meet production targets or force the state to take over.
“After weeks of negotiations, the Legislature continues to oppose core elements of the Housing Compact, including the requirement that communities across the state meet growth targets,” Hochul said in a statement, Spectrum News reported.
New York Housing Conference Executive Director Rachel Fee said it was “especially shocking” that legislators who campaigned on promises to fix the housing crisis would reject the plan and instead “capitulated to powerful NIMBYs who prefer the status quo.
Albany Democrats and Hochul have yet to strike a deal on the state’s bail laws, despite a report suggesting the regs would be partly revamped, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said, insisting that “nothing is finalized.”
“We could be within reach but we’re not close,” Heastie said yesterday afternoon while walking from the Capitol to the Legislative Office Building. “We’re going to keep working today and tomorrow and see where it goes.”
A gunman who shot and wounded a 20-year-old man outside Heastie’s Bronx storefront district office fled the scene in a white BMW, police sources said.
The state Senate confirmed liberal judge Rowan Wilson to lead New York’s top court, despite concerns about past rulings indicating he would push the judiciary far to the left.
Wilson was confirmed 40-19 on a party-line vote in the Democratic-dominated state Senate. Democrats have praised Wilson’s resume and his jurisprudence. Republicans, however, criticized him for being too far to the left to lead the court.
Survivors of sexual assault spoke out this week in a last-ditch effort to block the state Senate from confirming Wilson to lead New York’s top court, due to the fact that he wrote the majority opinion in March that freed a convicted rapist on technical grounds.
State Senate lawmakers signaled they were supportive of former Solicitor General Caitlin Halligan’s nomination to New York’s top court to fill Wilson’s seat, but a potential Republican-backed lawsuit hangs over the proceedings.
Hochul’s office announced it is launching a public education campaign to promote legal purchases of cannabis from licensed dispensaries.
Hochul and her husband Bill raked in nearly $1 million in 2022, her first full year in office, and paid $338,077 in state and federal taxes, according to the couple’s tax return released by her administration.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that New Jersey can unilaterally withdraw from the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, formed by a bistate compact in 1953, ending an uneasy alliance that was a rare source of discord between the two states.
The New York Board of Regents has officially banned all uses of images and names for school mascots related to indigenous people.
Nearly 60 school districts will be required to “eliminate” all use of Indigenous-related mascots and imagery by the end of the 2024-2025 school year, or risk losing state aide, board members unanimously ruled. This does not apply to tribal schools.
New York lawmakers are beginning to grapple with the emergence of xylazine in illicit drug supplies as a public health threat sweeping both urban and rural areas across the state.
A proposal that would enable the state to charge the oil and gas industry to help mitigate the effects of climate change in New York advanced in the state Senate this week, with advocates for the measure calling for its final adoption.
The City Council’s powerful Progressive Caucus today will release its list of spending priorities, laying down battle lines over which version of Democratic leadership prevails in New York.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thinks Mayor Eric Adams gave away the store this month when he greenlit raises for cops under City Hall’s recent agreement with the Big Apple’s largest police union – after the thin blue line went seven years without a raise.
Three more hotel sites in Queens are being used as “sanctuary” shelters to help house the seemingly never-ending flood of southern-border migrants into New York City.
New York City’s worst-in-the-nation federal immigration office wait time continues to grow — with appointments for migrants waiting to get a court date after illegally crossing the southern border now “mostly booked” through March 2033.
A Bronx man facing federal charges for allegedly running a secret Chinese government “police station” in Manhattan has together with his brother in recent years donated more than $30,000 to New York politicians, including Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul.
A former Upper East Side PTA treasurer who embezzled $185,000 from a children’s school fund to splurge on lavish trips to the Caribbean was sentenced to 2½ to 5 years in prison for his crimes.
One person was killed and multiple others trapped yesterday after a parking garage collapsed in Lower Manhattan, officials said.
A portion of the four-story Ann Street structure fell in, leaving cars stacked atop one another and rubble down to street level.
A five-year investigation into the NYPD’s gang database found that inclusion in the internal roster did not cause anyone harm, according to results released by the Department of Investigation.
A Lebanese art collector accused of financing the militant group Hezbollah evaded U.S. sanctions using a complex web of businesses to disguise millions of dollars in transactions involving art and diamonds, according to an indictment.
A man whom the Police Department described as a leader of a gang that perpetrated a series of robberies and killings at Manhattan gay bars has been arrested, law enforcement officials said.
Workers at the region’s largest Trader Joe’s are about to cast ballots that could make it the company’s first unionized store in New York.
Allergy season is in full swing — and it could send some New Yorkers to the emergency room, according to a new bulletin from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene geared toward medical professionals.
New York City bounced back from a mass exodus of wealthy people during the pandemic and maintains its spot as the city with the highest number of ultra-rich people.
John J. Doherty, who began working as a New York City garbageman in 1960 — when trash was still called garbage and was collected only by men — served 54 years with the Sanitation Department and became its longest serving commissioner, died at 84.
Kevin Monahan, 65, the Washington County man who fired on three vehicles that mistakenly drove up his driveway, killing Kaylin Gillis, 20, had a reputation as a sour character who did not like visitors.
Gillis died after being struck by a slug fired from the homeowner’s 12-gauge shotgun, designed to kill large game and roughly three times bigger than a round fired by a handgun.
Gillis’ “devastated” and “heartbroken” parents posted touching tributes to their daughter on Facebook.
For the second time within a few months, a Black Lives Matter activist was charged following a heated Saratoga Springs City Council meeting.
The City of Troy has rolled out an online interactive map and is asking property owners to help identify the status of water lines at their homes as part of its effort to eradicate lead pipes.
A yearlong federal grand jury investigation that has focused on the handling of absentee ballot documents by numerous Renssleaer County officials is nearing an end and more charges could be filed soon, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Chick-fil-A fans are just weeks away from getting their hands on the brand’s signature chicken sandwiches and waffle fries — but not at the location they might expect.
Southwest Airlines planes were stopped from taking off nationwide for what the airline called an intermittent tech issue, causing more than 1,500 flight delays yesterday just four months after the carrier suffered a meltdown over the Christmas travel rush.
After 25 years, Netflix is ending its DVD-by-mail business.
