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In HBO's The Last of Us, a handful of human survivors struggle to get by in a world overrun by formerly human, zombie-like monsters. It portrays its post-apocalyptic America as bleak and authoritarian, with a quasi-federal security apparatus, FEDRA, maintaining brutal control over the remaining population centers. Trade and travel are heavily restrictedthe show presents the zombie apocalypse as a libertarian nightmare.

The third episode specifically can be understood as a vindication, or at least humanization, of libertarian survivalists, who are normally portrayed as cranks. The story follows Bill, a gun-nut bunker-dweller who mumbles rants to himself about how FEDRA is the New World Order. When an uninfected man named Frank falls into a trap Bill has set, he lets Frank into his home.

Over time, they fall in love, squabbling about gardens as well as politics: "You live in a psycho bunker where 9/11 was an inside job and the government are all Nazis." Bill retorts, "The government are all Nazis!"

In the show's world, he's right, but it's not his politics that make him sympathetic. His capacity to love and be loved, and the ways that human bonds transcend ideology, give him dignity.

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Review: 'The Last of Us' Humanizes Libertarian Survivalists - Reason

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) The slaughterhouse cleaning company that was found to be employing more than 100 children to help sanitize dangerous razor-sharp equipment like bone saws has continued to lose contracts with the major meat producers since the investigation became public last fall.

For its part, Packers Sanitation Services Inc., or PSSI as it is known, said it has taken a number of steps to tighten up its hiring practices but it says the rising number of child labor cases nationwide is likely related to the increase in the number of minors crossing the U.S. border alone in recent years.

The scandal that followed the February announcement that PSSI would pay a $1.5 million fine and reform its hiring practices as part of an agreement with investigators also prompted the Biden administration to urge the entire meat processing industry to take steps to ensure no kids are working in these plants either for the meat companies or at contractors like PSSI.

Federal investigators confirmed that children as young as 13 were working for PSSI at 13 plants in Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, Tennessee and Texas. It wasn't immediately clear if any additional children have been found working for the company because PSSI declined to answer that and government officials haven't offered an update on the investigation since February.

The Labor Department has said there has been a 69% increase since 2018 in the number of children being employed illegally nationwide, and it has more than 600 child labor investigations underway. Officials have said they are particularly concerned about the potential exploitation of migrants who may not even have a parent in the United States.

PSSI maintains that it prohibits hiring kids and the only way children could have been hired is through deliberate identity theft or fraud at a local plant. Regardless of the reason they occurred, it is our responsibility to address the problem.

As has been widely reported, the recent record rise in unaccompanied minors from abroad and rising prevalence of identity theft has clearly revealed new vulnerabilities in the area of underage labor across hundreds of different businesses including ours, PSSI spokesman Ray Hernandez said.

Companies like PSSI are put in a difficult situation of having to turn away applicants who appear to have a valid ID when they want to hire workers, and they also have to be careful not to discriminate by imposing extra scrutiny on immigrants, said David Bier, an immigration policy expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute that advocates for more open immigration laws. The fact that more than half a million children have crossed the border without their parents since 2019 creates a large group of minors who may try to get jobs.

"Seventeen-year-old, 16-year-old or 15-year-old even gets an ID and a company needs workers, its difficult to police, Bier said. And the meatpacking industry is always desperate to find more workers. If youre willing to do the work and you have an ID, then youre going to be able to get a job.

Cargill, Tyson Foods and JBS have all terminated contracts with PSSI at at least some of their plants particularly any plants where Labor Department investigators confirmed children were working although Cargill went furthest and cut ties with the Kieler, Wisconsin-based company entirely. Another meat processing giant, Smithfield Foods, said only that it is taking a close look at its contracts with PSSI, which currently cleans about one-third of the companys 45 plants, to ensure that all labor laws are being followed.

Those four companies, along with National Beef, control over 80% of the beef market and more than 60% of the pork market nationwide. National Beef didnt respond to questions about its actions.

Cargill spokeswoman April Nelson said the company notified PSSI in March that it would end all 14 of its contracts because we will not tolerate the use of underage labor within our facilities or supplier network.

Tyson and JBS officials also reiterated their commitment to eliminating child labor in their plants, and they said each of their companies had ended PSSI contracts at several plants. But they declined to provide specific numbers about how many contracts they cut and how many plants PSSI is still cleaning for them.

Tyson Foods is committed to compliance with all labor laws and holding those we do business with to the highest standards of accountability, said Dan Turton, a senior vice president at Tyson, in a letter to members of Congress about their child labor concerns. He promised Tyson would step up its audits of contractors and continue cooperating with federal officials to ensure its own hiring meets all standards.

The major meat processors say they are looking to bring more of the cleaning work at their plants in house, but they will likely continue to rely on contractors in many places. Tyson, for instance, said that its own workers clean about 40% of its plants.

PSSI wouldn't say how many workers it has laid off after losing contracts, but the way it describes itself on its website hints at the job losses. PSSI now says it has about 16,500 employees nationwide working at more than 400 plants, down from the more than 17,000 it cited last fall before the investigation. Still, it remains one of the largest cleaners of food processing plants.

PSSI says it is going above and beyond what the official court agreement required to ensure no kids are working there. And the company, which is owned by the New York-based private equity firm Blackstone, named a new CEO who just took over last week after its longtime top executive retired after 24 years.

PSSI hired a former U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer to help strengthen the training its managers get to spot identity theft, and brought on a former Labor Department official to conduct monthly unannounced checks on its practices. The company also set up a hotline for employees to anonymously report any concerns.

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Firm that hired kids to clean meat plants keeps losing work - Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Columbia University professor Mark Lilla, a perspicacious liberal critic of the contemporary right and left, has an essay in the latest issue of Liberties Journal analyzing the appeal and perils of nostalgia. The appeal is universal, he argues: Like late-middle-aged adults flipping through vacation pictures that remind us, or delude us into thinking, that family relations were once simpler and happier than they are now, almost every society finds itself mythologizing and romanticizing its own origin or past. But the peril is inherent in the romance: No less than the utopian futurist, the backward-looking romantic is tempted to violently wrench the present out of joint, to sacrifice lives and treasure on the altar of a lost wholeness, a fantasy of never-was.

Lilla illustrates this peril with a long discussion of the role that nostalgia and imagined pasts played in the rise and shape and savagery of National Socialism in Germany. The Hitlerian politics of nostalgia wasnt confined to fantasies of Teutonic purity, he notes; the Nazis laid claim to the heritage of Greece as well, with Adolf Hitler himself drawing a parallel between the Spartan practice of abandoning handicapped children in the wild and his regimes industrialized-scale eugenic cleansing. And that kind of invocation, the conscious linkage of the ancient world to the modern present, was itself an imitation of the spirit of Augustan-age Rome, whose cultural project, embodied most of all by Virgil, was to redirect nostalgia for the past toward the future and raise the prospect of leapfrogging over the present to arrive at a utopian world to come.

In this sense, Lilla argues, the ideologies of modern fascism are all heirs to the Aeneid.

I think this is true, but the nature of its truth suggests a necessary counterpoint to Lillas critique or maybe an extension and complication of his argument, since I doubt he would fully rule out a constructive role for nostalgia in human civilization. Because Virgils Aeneid is, after all, one of the central artistic works of Western history, and the larger Augustan Age is likewise well remembered for good reason. So the influence of both Virgil and his era runs down through time through countless channels: Renaissance art, 18th-century poetry, early modern political theory, neoclassical architecture and more. The fascists were heirs to Augustan Rome not because of an affinity between their worldviews, but because Augustan Rome had a lot of would-be heirs.

And it had all those heirs and imitators because the phenomenon Lilla describes, the redirection of nostalgia for past greatness toward a vision of the future, is an essential part of human civilization-building. It is not that you have the steady march of progress on the one hand and on the other, people throwing themselves backward into fantasies of lost arcadias as some kind of escapist alternative. The relationship is much more complicated. What we think of as moral and cultural progress is often dependent on backward glances, rediscoveries and recoveries that enable escapes from the cul-de-sac of presentism, the repetitions of decadence. Or alternatively, nostalgic rediscoveries are often necessary to humanize and tame the excesses of progress, to maintain continuities that might otherwise be shattered by social or technological shifts.

The nostalgia of Victorian pastoralists like John Ruskin, whom Lilla refers to, would be an example of the second category with Gothic-revival architecture and the Arts and Crafts movement as necessary humanizing forces amid the turmoil of the new industrial society.

For an example of the first category, you could look at the Italian Renaissance, the founding of the State of Israel or the Meiji Restoration in Japan. Or for that matter, you could just look around: The American republic, our oh-so-modern and liberal home, was itself founded upon a lot of the backward-looking impulses (toward ancient Greece, toward the Hebrew Bible and the Anglo-Saxons) that Lilla identifies with 20th-century fascism. It was a new order for the ages, but what was the Freemasonry, whose symbols decorate our legal tender, if not an example of invented tradition, no less than any Nazi myth of Aryan antiquity?

The point being, what was fundamentally wrong with the Nazis was not that they were interested in the restoration of imagined glories; its that they were moral monsters who included mass murder among the glories of the past. Or to take Lillas formulation about nostalgists leapfrogging over the present to arrive at a utopian world to come, the problem there is the utopianism, the belief in a perfect society that necessarily requires the elimination of anything and anyone that doesnt fit. Its not the idea of going backward in the hopes of leapfrogging ahead, of trying to find somewhere new and different via some kind of connection with antiquity.

That idea seems more neutral than lamentable, with its moral valence depending on what you are trying to revive or reinvent (a renaissance in Nahuatl literature, good; a revival of Mesoamerican human sacrifice, bad). But even the word neutral makes creative nostalgia sound like a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing; better to say that its an inextricable component of human culture-making that, like any such aspect, can be turned to wicked ends but cant be purged or exorcised, except at a great cost to any future creativity or progress.

Which brings me around to our own era. Lilla concludes his essay with a warning that political nostalgia is now filling the vacuum left by the abandonment of progressive ideologies like socialism and democratic liberalism with implicit references to Western populism and explicit ones to Indias Hindutva movement and the civilizational ambitions of Moscow and Beijing.

But one can go back and read an exemplary Lilla essay from nine years ago, before the populist surge, when he was writing on the emptiness and willful historical ignorance of a libertarian-inflected neoliberalism at the end of history, and gain a slightly different perspective on our situation. Heres some of what Lilla wrote then:

Never since the end of World War II, and perhaps since the Russian Revolution, has political thinking in the West been so shallow and clueless.

Try to convey the grand drama of political and intellectual life from 1789 to 1989 to young students today American, European, even Chinese students and you are left feeling like a blind poet singing of lost Atlantis. Fascism for them is radical evil, hence incomprehensible; how it could develop and why it appealed to millions remains a mystery. Communism, while of course it was for many good things, makes little sense either, especially the faith that people invested in the Soviet Union.

ours is a libertarian age by default: whatever ideas or beliefs or feelings muted the demand for individual autonomy in the past have atrophied.

Our libertarianism is supremely dogmatic, and like every dogma it sanctions ignorance about the world, and therefore blinds adherents to its effects in that world. It begins with basic liberal principles the sanctity of the individual, the priority of freedom, distrust of public authority, tolerance and advances no further. It has no taste for reality, no curiosity about how we got here or where we are going.

If this is really where weve ended up, then maybe its not quite right to say that liberal and democratic ideals have been rashly thrown over for the sake of a dangerous nostalgia. Maybe the circumstances Lilla described in 2014 made some kind of retrospective yearning or questing more or less inevitable as a natural response to a landscape where progress seemed to have ended in boredom, repetition, intellectual sterility, liberal democracy as a dogma rather than a practice, all under the stewardship of what Lilla, then, called a leadership class of self-satisfied abstainers removed from history.

He would draw a distinction, I suspect, between the neoliberal vapidity he described in that essay and the more robust form of democratic liberalism he posits as an alternative to nationalist nostalgia now. But maybe robustness within democratic liberalism is dependent, as the more conservative kind of liberal has long argued, on a pre-liberal inheritance for both stability and vigor, and when that inheritance is spent, liberalism alone does not suffice for its rebuilding. In which case, the quest for a usable past, the invention and reinvention of tradition, is essential to any forward-looking movement, left-wing as well as right-wing because as much as history is subject to mythologization and falsification, its still more accessible than the unknown future, still the most powerful cultural material we have.

Like Lilla, Im dissatisfied with the kinds of reinvented tradition on offer at the moment a category that encompasses certain forms of left-wing antiquarianism, like the hunt for exemplars of Indigenous power in the colonial past, as well as the nationalist romances of the right.

But these efforts should be critiqued on specific moral or intellectual grounds, not dismissed on principle. Their appeal cant be answered by simply telling people not to be nostalgic or warning them against the desire for regeneration. Because when progress leads to decadence, there is no way forward that does not go some distance or some direction back.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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In defense of nostalgia - Kathimerini English Edition

Lawmakers this week tabled a pair of bills that would make it harder for third-party and independent candidates to land on the ballot ahead of Montanas 2024 U.S. Senate race.

The House State Administration Committee voted to table Senate Bill 566 on a nearly unanimous voice vote Wednesday. Two days earlier, the same committee though with less agreement tabled Senate Bill 565.

Critics saw the bills, both sponsored by Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, as attempts to consolidate support behind Republicans as they marshal resources to challenge U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, Montanas only remaining statewide elected Democrat and a key piece in the fight for partisan control of the Senate.

I have had a lot of my folks from back home reach out to me and ask me to vote no on this, Rep. Gregory Frazer, R-Deer Lodge, said of SB 566 in committee Wednesday before making a motion to table the bill. A lot more than I thought. And with all due respect to the sponsor, because I know that hes worked very hard, but as the conduit of my constituents, Im their voice. Im going to oppose this bill.

Tester announced his reelection bid in February, ending speculation that he might abdicate the seat. A Republican has yet to formally declare their intent to run, but the party has several potential candidates in the state. Moreover, Montanas other U.S. senator, Steve Daines, chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP organization that helps elect Republicans to the U.S. Senate.

Senate Bill 566 was particularly controversial, generating national headlines and outcry from the Montana Libertarian Party, the only third party in the state to consistently make the ballot. The bill would change how U.S. Senate primaries are run in the state, replacing partisan primaries with a top-two contest in which the two candidates with the most votes would advance to the general election, regardless of party. But the bill would sunset in 2025, meaning that it would only apply to the closely watched race for Testers Senate seat.

Such a shift would unlikely hurt Testers chances of advancing from the primary. But it would almost certainly prevent a Libertarian or other third-party candidate from making it to the general election. In theory, that would then allow a Republican challenger to Tester to consolidate support, as Libertarians are generally seen as more closely aligned with the GOP than Democrats. Tester has won several close races with a Libertarian on the ballot.

While the assumption that eliminating a Libertarian candidate from the general election would necessarily help Republicans has some mathematical and social-scientific flaws, critics pounced on the bill as an attempt by the national GOP to rejigger Montanas elections with a single outcome in mind.

Republicans in the Montana Senate Monday revived and endorsed previously stalled legislation that would provide for a top-two primary in the 2024 race for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Jon Tester.

The bill primarily affects third parties that already have ballot access, Sid Daoud, a Kalispell city council member who chairs the Montana Libertarian Party, said in opposition to the bill during a Senate hearing earlier this month. In an effort to knock Sen. Tester out of the next Senate race, Sen. Hertz is attempting to remove the potential Montana Libertarian Party candidate from taking a percentage in what is expected to be an extremely tight race.

Hertz repeatedly defended his bill as an experiment in democracy that would ensure that the eventual winner of the Senate race would have majority rather than plurality support from Montana voters.

It always bothers me that sometimes our statewide elected officials dont end up with the majority vote, he said earlier this month.

An earlier version of the bill applied the top-two primary system to other statewide races. But on March 26, lobbyist and former Montana GOP Executive Director Chuck Denowh who has worked for previous campaigns of both Daines and U.S. House Rep. Matt Rosendale, a likely challenger to Tester wrote Hertz and legislative drafters to request that the bill be modified to apply only to the U.S. Senate race and sunset in 2025. Hertz approved of the changes.

And when the New York Times got ahold of the story, it reported a text exchange between Republican lawmakers and Senate Majority Leader Steve Fitzpatrick, R-Great Falls, in which Fitzpatrick said the bill came from Daines and Jason Thielman, Daines former chief of staff who now serves as executive director of the NRSC. Fitzpatrick later acknowledged to the Times that he believed the bill came from national Republicans.

Senate Bill 565 attracted less attention but had a similar purpose, proposing to increase the number of petition signatures required for third-parties to hold primaries.

In my short political career of about 15 years here, what Ive noticed is both major parties are weaponizing our third-party candidates, Hertz said on the Senate floor this month in support of his bill, pointing to instances in which Democrats propped up Libertarians and Republicans backed Green Party candidates.

Critics of the bill seized on its partisan implications and the fact that as with Senate Bill 566 it was gaining steam relatively late in the session.

These are huge changes to our elections, and if were gonna make such a big change, we shouldnt make it at the last minute, Bozeman Rep. Kelly Kortum, the ranking Democrat on the House State Administration Committee, said this week.

Both bills could conceivably be revived in committee. The House State Administration Committees set to meet again on Friday.

House Bill 234 has driven intense debate over in-school materials that some parents view as inappropriate or sexually explicit. But an amendment tacked on in the Senate could clear up confusion and alleviate the concerns of some critics.

The Montana Legislature has advanced a Republican proposal to determine how the state will allocate as much as $700 million in rural broadband funding in the coming years, leaving a Democrat-sponsored proposal that passed the House earlier this year in the lurch.

Republicans largely endorsed Gianfortes revisions, but none of the governors changes won approval from the groups that the bill would affect: transgender, nonbinary and two spirit Montanans and their families and much of the states medical community.

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Bills targeting third parties ahead of Montana's 2024 U.S. Senate ... - Montana Free Press

GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper has filed his income tax return. So have most of the men who have said they might want his job starting in 2024.

We mention this because today is tax day, a focal point in the debate that has raged widely these past few years: Should top elected officials and candidates for those offices be required to release their tax returns?

You may recall that presidential candidatesannually released their returns not necessarily before tax date but soon after all the way back to former President Richard Nixons 1969 return. Franklin D. Roosevelt also released his returns from 1913 to 1937. President Joe Biden may have released more returns than H&R Block.

But that ended when former President Donald Trump never fulfilled his promise to do so, although an order by the Supreme Court in November released six years of his returns to Congress. Those returns were opened to the public in December.

Along with that release, the House also passed legislation to require the IRS to release the returns of presidents, but that tradition of transparency and it is untested legislation in a few states has extended to governors mansions in a very haphazard manner.

Cooper has released an income statement this year as he has every year since taking office in 2016, but those who might succeed him in 2024 have a mixed response to questions about the idea or how they might view this option.

Among the five confirmed or highly likely candidates to seek a run for governor next year, only three disclosed their tax status or expressed opinions about the issues. The two who did not both already hold state office, and at least one has had a sketchy history of tax payments.

That would be Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the states highest-ranking Republican, who last year wasfound to be behind on some property taxesin Guilford County, where he and his wife make their home. He also has faced federal and state liens against unpaid tax bills.

A spokesperson for Robinson, who is widely expected to fulfill the foregone conclusion that he will run for governor during a rally Saturday in Alamance County, didnt respond to several emails from WGHP seeking answers to questions.

Neither did the spokesperson for the only confirmed Democratic nominee, Attorney General Josh Stein, whose office is responsible for enforcing tax laws. Representatives from the state Democratic and Republican parties did not respond, either.

But a confirmed GOP candidate, state Treasurer Dale Folwell, did offer his position, as did another presumed Republican possibility, former U.S. Rep. Mark Walker of Greensboro, and the Libertarian candidate, Gaston County financial adviser Mike Ross.

Those queries to Cooper and the candidates asked whether they had met the tax filing deadline, whether they would release their returns and how they in general viewed the idea that returns by top candidates should be made public.

Yes, the Governor has filed his taxes, Jordan Monaghan, Coopers deputy communications director, wrote in response to WGHPS query. Additionally, each year, the Governor files aStatement of Economic Interest that shows sources of income and ownership interests which can beviewedthrough the NC State Ethics Commission website.These are filed by April 17th, and this years should be posted soon.

Folwell, the state treasurer since 2017 who announced in March that he wouldseek the GOP nominationto succeed Cooper, is a CPA by trade, and he said late last week that he was filing by Monday.

I file an SEI and insider trading form, Folwell wrote to WGHP. I have never thought about releasing [the returns] but will think on it.

Thats similar to the response of another Republican who has said he isconsidering a run, Walker.

Well, I am not a declared candidate, but if we do engage and, if other candidates are in agreement, Id be happy to share bottom line numbers on taxes paid state and federal, charitable giving, etc., Walker told WGHP.

I always do my taxes. To be exact, Ive only used two accountants in three decades, and Ive never been delinquent on any of my federal or state taxes. Before I agree to release prior years returns, I need to make a final decision on our political path forward; but Im not opposed to it.

Ross,the Libertarian who also announced his candidacy last month,has filed his income taxes by the deadline this year and every year (including extensions, required payments, and filing by the later deadline, as applicable sometimes) noting that he does so under protest of the legitimacy of the government stealing your money arbitrarily, Rob Yates, his spokesperson, told WGHP.

Mike has no problem providing his tax returns, and further he believes in complete and utter transparency in government. That being said, we do not have plans to release them at this time, simply because we believe that it could create an unnecessary distraction for a burgeoning campaign.

Should tax returns become an issue, and the need arises to release them, we would do so immediately. Otherwise, the plan is to release his tax returns for the tax year 2022 and 2023 at the conclusion of the first debate between the Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian candidates.

And those positions and openness can be important in how voters understand a candidates record.

Any aspect of a candidates successes and failures should be open for voters to consider, Eric Heberlig a professor at UNC-Charlotte and expert on campaign finance, wrote in response to questions from WGHP. Financial issues may be important to some voters; careerissues may be important to others. Some are only concerned with parties or issue positions.

There are lots of different potential considerations and voters figure out how to weigh them relative to each other.

Robinson, a native of Greensboro and former student at UNC-Greensboro, and his wife, Yolanda Hill, last year were discovered by WRAL in Raleigh to owe $1,271.33 in vehicle property taxes in Guilford County, a mistake that Robinson said came about because of a change of address. Guilford County Tax Assessor Ben Chavis confirmed to WRAL that Robinson paid the bills within 48 hours after he learned of them.

When you start talking about taxes, if Im the guy doing them, somebodys going to jail, Robinson told WRAL. Im not very good at math.

Robinson, whose failed childcare business with Hill had led to personal bankruptcy filings, court records showed, also paid off federal and state tax liens that totaled about $15,000, which ended in 2012. Any outstanding issues we might have had with the IRS have been taken care of, he told The News & Observer in 2020.

Robinson is in his first elected position after rising to prominence when making a fiery speech about gun shows at a meeting of the Greensboro City Council. With some assistance from Walker, that clip on YouTube went viral, and he rode to fame on those millions of views, a strong affiliation with the National Rifle Association and a talent for gaining attention with Trumpian attacks on almost every social group in both speeches and social media.

I presume he says that [about math] because many voters also think they are bad with math, Heberlig said. The challenge here is that developing and implementing the state government budget is one of the governors core responsibilities.

The governor certainly has an expert budget staff to help with their math, but most people also wouldnt want the governor to treat budget issues cavalierly.

Said Robinson to WRAL: I now have a responsibility to the people who voted me into this office to show some restraint and to show, quite frankly, some leadership. We intend to do that. Those lessons that I learned in the past help me to maintain that.

But other than those comments, his views toward releasing his tax returns are unknown, and his spokesperson didnt respond to those questions in repeated emails.

In 2017, NC Sen. Jay Chaudhuri (D-Wake) filed a bill titled Tax Returns Uniformly Made Public Act, which was the T.R.U.M.P. Act, matching legislation filed in several other states. Senate Bill 587 referred only to candidates for president and vice president the last three vice presidents released their returns, as did the candidates for both those offices back until at least 2008 who would appear on the ballot in the General Election, requiring them to release their federal tax returns. The bill passed a first reading and went to the Rules Committee, where it died.

Chaudhuri didnt respond to questions about that bill, but it didnt address candidates for state office. Heberlig said that he hadnt heard about state proposals for candidates for governor to release their tax returns.

Because of the political context, Democratic states would be more likely to have such proposals as viable agenda items, Heberlig said. I dont know how many states have similar laws already. Such ethics laws tend to be passed in the wake of past scandals in the state.Some states may also have passed them in the Watergate era when there was a wave of ethics and campaign finance reform legislation.

In 2012, Republican Pat McCrory, a former Duke Energy executive and mayor of Charlotte who then was involved in a successful campaign for governor, declined to release his returns,saying they were my private records.

IF wouldnt ask you to release your records to be a newsperson either, McCrory told WWAY-TV. Listen: I own a house, 2,600-square-foot house. My wife and I own two used cars. Both are over 10 years old. They are paid for.

I have a 401k, and I have no pension. I own no other land. I wish I had some land here in Wilmington and on Wrightsville Beach or something, but I dont. Thats my wealth. Thats it. Im not independently wealthy.

And, as Heberlig said, that approach varies from state to state. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat in a state controlled by Republicans, made a social media announcement on Monday that he had released his returns.The entire time I have served in elected office, I have worked to be transparent with Kentuckians and to earn their trust, Beshear posted on his Twitter account, which is why I have released my tax returns for the seventh straight year. I challenge all public officials to do the same.

Beshear was attorney general from 2016 to 2019 and then elected governor. He is seeking re-election in November.

A Republican governor recently re-elected and who might campaign for another office soon, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis,released two years of federal tax returns in 2018, when he first ran for governor. Governors and candidates in Florida have done so historically, but its unclear whether DeSantis repeated that release for re-election last year.

Another sitting governor, Californias Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, was facing a recall election in May 2021when he released his tax return for 2019.

Newsom two years earlier had signed a somewhat controversial legislationthat required presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release five years of tax returnsto have their names appear on the California primary ballot. The state Republican Party sued to stop the legislation, and theCalifornia Supreme Court struck down the part of the law that applies to presidential candidates.

Jerry Brown, another Democrat who had preceded Newsom, had vetoed similar legislation in 2017. NRP reported that heexpressed concerns about the constitutionality of the requirement. He also said it could create a slippery slope.

Folwell said that Im generally in favor of more sunshine, and its the reason Ill be there best gov money cant buy.

Yates, speaking on behalf of Ross, takes that quite a bit further. Without transparency, it is impossible to hold elected officials accountable. Mike begrudges no one income of any amount, provided it is earned honestly, thus he is ambivalent in terms of disclosing pure income, as he doesnt believe anyone should have the amount of money s/he makes held against him/her, Yates said. He does believe in the transparency afforded the voters when candidates disclose their tax filings and he also believes that no one is above the law, especially the laws they create. So, until such a time as income taxes are eliminated, or become so simple that there is no concern about cheating, Mike supports candidates disclosing their tax filings.

Mike also wants to specifically highlight that, as governor, he would make his entire filing history public record. Further, he would put all of his holdings into an unmanaged index fund, and would not trade in any stocks, derivatives, or related securities asset classes of any sort the entirety of the time he was in office.

Walker served the 6th Congressional District for three terms (2014-19), during which he waschair of the Republican Study Committee, and lost in a primary for U.S. Senate last spring.

I believebeing transparent is crucial in making sure candidates rhetoric is consistent with how they live their own lives, Walker said.The very basis of someones character is honoring onesfinancialobligations.

As a conservative, how can you lead onfiscalresponsibility, if you cant manage your ownfinances? Hardships canoccur but if someone has a longhistory of defrauding people and institutions, they wouldnt be allowed to serve on a church finance committee, much less be considered a candidate for governor.

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Taxing questions: Will North Carolinas candidates for governor release their returns? - WGHP FOX8 Greensboro