Also on today’s menu:
‘Delivering Results’
Biden Plan To Fight Inflation
History — Letter To The Nazis
When Christie’s announced it would be auctioning off Andy Warhol’s “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn”, it predicted the silkscreen image of Marilyn Monroe would draw bids as high as $200 million. On Monday night, an unnamed buyer purchased it for $195 million. It made the 1964 image the most expensive work by a U.S. artist ever sold at auction, and the most expensive piece from the 20th century ever auctioned.
The previous record-holder was a painting labeled “Untitled” by Jean-Michel Basquiat. His 1982 painting of a skull-like face sold for a record $110.5 million at Sotheby’s in 2017.
The Thomas and Doris Ammann Foundation Zurich put the painting up for auction. The proceeds will support health care and educational programs for children.
‘Delivering Results’
The Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report that New Hampshire’s benchmark premium rates for insurance through the Affordable Care Act are the lowest in the country.
Those rates have decreased for the second year in a row, from $405 per month in 2020 to $333 per month in 2021 to $309 per month in 2022. The national average was $453 in 2020, $446 in 2021, and $438 in 2022.
New Hampshire’s 8.2 percent rate reduction was the fifth-largest in the country. The national average reduction over that time period was a 2.2 percent.
Governor Chris Sununu commented on the report, “We have worked hard to implement policies that lower costs for our families and this study is a clear sign that the steps New Hampshire has taken are already delivering results for our citizens.”
Biden Plan To Fight Inflation
Although the United States is in a stronger economic position than any other major advanced economy in the world, inflation is putting a strain on the country, and President Joe Biden Jr. has outlined steps he believes will help working families.
Addressing what Biden calls “Putin’s price hike” — blaming all of the gasoline price increases on the war against Ukraine, rather than the oil companies’ profiteering to boost investor returns — the president announced plans to release 1 million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the next six months. The White House also is asking allies to release an additional 60 million barrels of oil from their reserves; to allow E15 gasoline (which uses expensive-to-produce biofuels) to be sold this summer, despite their potential to increase greenhouse gas emissions, put pressure on water resources, increase air and water pollution, and raise food costs; and he is calling on Congress to make companies pay fees on idled wells and non-producing acres on federal lands as an incentive for them to start producing oil on land where they hold federal leases.
Other initiatives include seeking clean energy and vehicle tax credits and investments that will reduce the country’s dependence on “reckless autocrats like Putin” and save families an estimated $500 per year on their utility bills; as well as accelerating clean energy innovation. Biden also wants to increase fuel economy standards for cars and trucks; adjust the Affordable Care Act’s “family glitch” to make Marketplace plans more affordable; and calling on Congress to lower prescription drug costs and health care premiums.
History — Letter To The Nazis
May 9, 1933
To the student body of Germany:
History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. Tyrants have tried to do that often before, and the ideas have risen up in their might and destroyed them.
You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds. I gave all the royalties of my books for all time to the German soldiers blinded in the World War with no thought in my heart but love and compassion for the German people.
I acknowledge the grievous complications that have led to your intolerance; all the more do I deplore the injustice and unwisdom of passing on to unborn generations the stigma of your deeds.
Do not imagine that your barbarities to the Jews are unknown here. God sleepeth not, and He will visit His judgment upon you. Better were it for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and sink into the sea than to be hated and despised of all men.
— Helen Keller
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THANK YOU TOM FOR PRINTING THE LETTER FROM HELEN KELLER. I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT
BEFORE. SHE WAS SO RIGHT ABOUT IDEAS.
BARB G.