Millions of Americans who smoke could soon see an increase in their prices, as Democrats target tobacco and nicotine to help finance their $3.5 trillion economic package.
The new proposal put forward in the House this week would raise or impose taxes on a wide array of products: It would hike existing federal levies on cigarettes and cigars while introducing new taxes on vaping. Democrats say the changes could help them raise $100 billion in revenue over the next 10 years.

Health experts and activists have heralded Democrats’ efforts, arguing that higher taxes on tobacco could help crack down on a dangerous, deadly habit among a nation of roughly 34 million cigarette smokers. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids this week estimated the increases could reduce the total number of smokers by 1.1 million in the first year after the law is adopted, while deterring over half-a-million kids from becoming addicted.



But the ideas still have brought fresh criticism, particularly from Republicans, who also oppose the broader thrust of President Biden’s economic agenda. Tobacco excise taxes are assessed on companies, which generally pass the expenses to consumers in the form of price increases. To GOP lawmakers, the higher taxes put Democrats at risk of violating Biden’s promise during the 2020 campaign not to raise rates on Americans who make less than $400,000 each year.
Democrats sorting through painful sacrifices as social bill enters final stretch
The heaviest users of cigarettes and other tobacco products tend to be middle-income or lower-income Americans, federal data shows. As many as 80 percent of smokers have incomes less than $200,000 annually, according to data presented to the House Ways and Means Committee, the tax-focused panel that debated the idea on Tuesday. Other federal data shows that the greatest number of smokers are those who make at or below poverty-level wages.
But Democrats have argued their efforts do not violate Biden’s pledge. A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the administration’s thinking, said smoking is not a required cost for working families and the introduction of higher taxes would not directly affect their incomes. The aide also highlighted the public health imperative behind the idea, given the well-known dangers of a practice they are trying to discourage.



Asked if the new proposal runs afoul of the president's past promise, Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, responded: “Absolutely, no question.”
But, he cautioned, it does not mean it is bad policy. “It clearly is a tax increase, and it clearly has benefits,” Gleckman said.
For now, the mere proposal itself reflects the all-out scramble on Capitol Hill as Democrats scrounge for any money they can find to cover the costs of their new spending ambitions. At no point this year had Biden or his congressional allies publicly embraced higher tobacco taxes, even as they pursued new spending to rethink federal health care, education and safety-net programs.

Democrats hope to raise most of the required revenue from a slew of additional tax increases, including higher rates on wealthy Americans, profitable corporations and investors. The party’s House lawmakers have debated the ideas in recent days as they race to complete work on their sprawling $3.5 trillion package by Wednesday.


The little-noticed tobacco taxes aroused discussion a day before that deadline, as the House Ways and Means Committee continued its marathon stretch of legislative sessions to write the fuller bill. The proposal put forward by the panel’s chairman, Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), aims to increase rates using a complicated set of calculations based on the type of tobacco product, its sale weight or total nicotine content.
For cigarettes in particular, the tax increases could ultimately result in smokers paying about $1 more per pack, according to Ulrik Boesen, a senior policy analyst tracking excise taxes for the Tax Foundation. He said it is harder to track the exact effect on vaping since it may vary considerably based on a company’s products, their potency and how it chooses to pass any added expense onto purchasers.

For some Americans, though, the added expenses could total hundreds of dollars annually. Boesen said that could fall hardest on Americans at the lower end of the economic spectrum, pointing to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that indicates that 1 in 5 adults making less than $35,000 a year are smokers.






The U.S. government last raised federal excise rates on tobacco in 2009, though state legislators in the meantime have layered on their own additional taxes targeting these products. Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said the increases historically have served their intended purposes, deterring people from smoking while reducing health care costs.
The group said this week that Democrats’ plan also could make a marked difference at a time when e-cigarettes, which are untaxed at the federal level, are increasingly on the rise among millions of younger Americans — so the new taxes could further deter their use as well. The Food and Drug Administration recently cracked down on the industry as it continues to review whether one company, Juul Labs, can sell its products in the United States.

The tobacco tax hike belongs to an even wider array of potential increases in Democrats’ broader $3.5 trillion plan that seek to incentivize or discourage behavior. The still-forming spending bill uses a mix of tax credits and payments to try to reduce carbon emissions, for example, and to keep companies from offshoring jobs and profits. And it similarly dangles tax breaks in front of Americans who purchase new or used vehicles and bicycles that are energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.


But the tobacco tax still seemed to conflict with the president’s pledge, even as its foremost supporters said it should not matter given its long-term benefits. That prompted Republicans to tee off on the idea Tuesday. Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.), a member of the Ways and Means Committee, at one point faulted Democrats for striking the wrong balance — seeking tax increases on tobacco that could hurt lower-income Americans, while supporting tax breaks for wealthier families who can buy electric cars.
“We’ve got folks making less [and] paying more taxes, and folks making a lot are getting a tax break,” he said.

This time, when Bashar al-Assad started to fall, Russia was not there to catch him.
Russia largely watched from the sidelines as Syrian rebels swept through the country in less than 10 days, overtaking Aleppo, Hama and Homs before entering Damascus, the capital, on Sunday. Mr. al-Assad is now gone, his departure celebrated by crowds of ecstatic Syrians. In Russia, where Mr. al-Assad has fled, the fall of his government amounts to a devastating loss. Decades of Russian military and political investment to carve out a foothold in the Mediterranean are now at risk. Vladimir Putin may yet manage to retain some stakes in a post-Assad Syria, but there’s no way around it: He just suffered a significant defeat.
Russia’s ties with the Assad family go back to the 1970s, when Hafez al-Assad — Bashar’s father — solidified Syria’s place in the Soviet orbit. When the younger Mr. al-Assad met a peaceful uprising with a violent crackdown that escalated into a bloody conflict, Russia responded, in early 2012, by vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on him to resign. The year before, Mr. Putin, then prime minister, had lambasted a separate U.N. resolution authorizing airstrikes against the Libyan dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi as a “medieval call for a crusade” and was said to be livid when Colonel Qaddafi was killed. He was determined that Mr. al-Assad not suffer the same fate.
Mr. Putin has given the younger Mr. al-Assad substantial military assistance in the years since. By 2015 Mr. al-Assad’s forces controlled barely 20 percent of Syria’s territory and Russia launched a military operation to save him. In 2017 Russia helped negotiate temporary cease-fires in parts of Syria, then enabled regime forces to gobble up many of those places. Its military presence eventually morphed into a smaller force suitable to managing low-level conflict, but Russia never withdrew from Syria even after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine eclipsed all other foreign policy priorities. By that point, maintaining a presence there, including the Hmeimim air base and the Tartus naval base, was also critical to Russia’s military operations in Libya, the Central African Republic and the Sahel — a new frontier for Russian power projection.
Russia’s military support was complemented by patient political backing. Mr. Putin and Mr. al-Assad remained as thick as thieves throughout several rounds of arduous peace conferences that attempted to negotiate a settlement to the conflict. In 2013, Mr. Putin had emerged as Mr. al-Assad’s knight in shining armor — and incidentally exposed the weakness of President Barack Obama’s “red line” in Syria — by vouching for the destruction of Mr. al-Assad’s chemical weapons within a year and heading off the prospect of American airstrikes. (A few years later, more than 80 Syrian civilians would be killed in a sarin attack that the United States attributed to the regime’s forces.)
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In early 2018, Russia hosted a Syrian congress in the resort town of Sochi that was mostly attended by pro-Assad delegates and diluted ambitious visions of a political transition to questions of constitutional reform. Once the war in Syria cooled, Moscow’s diplomats pivoted to lobbying for the three Rs: reconstruction support, refugee return and the rehabilitation of Mr. al-Assad.
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Throughout, Russia was often frustrated with the Assad regime’s refusals to make even the smallest concessions — as evidenced by Mr. Putin’s own occasional shows of contempt for Mr. al-Assad.
But Russia never threw in the towel — until Syria’s war suddenly reheated last month. If Mr. al-Assad’s persistent obstinacy had stretched Russia’s patience, the dynamics of the past weeks did the rest. Many of Mr. al-Assad’s own forces simply got out of the rebels’ way, and it quickly became clear that the Iranians, who had also backed him for years, weren’t coming either. Russia telegraphed its growing concern and intensified bombardments in the rebel-held northwest province of Idlib, but it did nothing to reinforce its presence in Syria. As the rebels advanced, it became obvious that Russia would not intervene in any major way. With Russia’s military capacity consumed in Ukraine, its calculus had changed: Mr. Putin probably realized that it was time to cut Mr. al-Assad loose and to prioritize retaining Russia’s military bases in a new Syria.
But Mr. al-Assad’s fall is still a loss. The Sunni Arab states had loathed Mr. Putin’s coming to the rescue of Mr. al-Assad, an Alawite, in a conflict they viewed as part of a wider struggle with Shiite Iran. But Mr. Putin had earned respect across the region and beyond, especially among autocratic leaders, by standing with his ally and showing it to the Americans. That respect is now in jeopardy, and Mr. Putin’s decision to grant Mr. al-Assad asylum may be a last-ditch effort to signal that he does not abandon his own.
Russia could always justify setbacks in Ukraine by claiming that it is fighting the “collective West.” It could explain its abandonment of its ally Armenia during Azerbaijan’s offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh last year on the basis of shifting regional realities, while hoping that few would take note. But Syria is different. No amount of rhetorical gymnastics by Russia’s spin doctors can distract from the fact that the abandonment of Mr. al-Assad is the clearest sign, since Mr. Putin invaded Ukraine, that there are new limits on Russian power projection.

​

Besides seeing its partner Iran weakened, Russia will lose leverage to other regional heavyweights, especially Israel and Turkey. Russia’s partnership with Mr. al-Assad and Hezbollah made it an Israeli “neighbor to the north,” which meant that Israel had to inform Russia when it was conducting strikes against Iranian proxies in Syria. Israel also had to navigate with caution on Ukraine, even as Russia moved closer to Iran and adopted a pro-Palestinian position on the Gaza war. With Mr. al-Assad gone and the Iranians sidelined in Syria, Israel has more room to maneuver.
With Turkey, with which Russia has a longstanding rivalry, the loss is arguably greater. Having already accumulated leverage over Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, Turkey could have formidable bargaining power in any negotiations over Russia’s future influence in Syria thanks to its patronage of Syria’s armed opposition.
Mr. al-Assad’s ouster could also lead to the more tangible loss of the bases, Hmeimim and Tartus. Russia will do all it can to retain the bases, of course. The shift in its language when talking about its new Syrian interlocutors — from “terrorists” to “armed opposition” — suggests diplomatic efforts are already underway.
In that, Russia may succeed. But its influence in Syria — and the regional clout that came with it — will never be quite the same.

Zabel, a fifth-year senior, told ESPN he had multiple offers in the "high six figures" to go play at power conference schools. Gronowski told ESPN his offers, which were heavy on Big Ten and Big 12 schools, topped out at $1.2 million.

Despite eye-popping offers, they both stuck around, reminders of an era of college football before the transfer portal when continuity offered a distinct competitive advantage.

It is great to be an Iowa Wrestling fan.

Go Hawks!

More encouraged from this performance than any win this entire season.

A high-speed, multicounty car chase ended abruptly with a head-on collision that killed two people on Highway 218 in Washington County Sunday afternoon.



According to a crash report from the Iowa State Patrol, Brittany Miles, 35, of Cedar Rapids, was fleeing police as she drove north in the southbound lane of Highway 218. Her vehicle ran head-on into the car driven by Olivia Alvarez, 27, of Cedar Rapids, who was driving south just before 4 p.m.


Miles died on impact, according to the report, while Alvarez died after emergency medical responders arrived on the scene.




The chase began in Muscatine after police there received reports of a woman driving around shooting at people at 3:15 p.m. According to a news release from the police department, the suspected driver refused to stop for police. Instead, she left town along 231st Street and traveled through Louisa County before entering Washington County.


The crash happened close to mile marker 78, just south of Riverside near 135th Street. Emergency response vehicles could be seen lining the median in the area, where traffic was backed up in both directions.


The Muscatine Police Department reported no one was hurt by the gunfire, but it is “continuing to investigate those reports.” The chase did wreck a Muscatine squad car and injure an officer.


“A Muscatine Police Officer, involved in the pursuit, lost control of his car and crashed near the Cedar River,” the news release states. “The Officer sustained non-life threatening injuries and was transported to the hospital for treatment.”





Assistant Police Chief Steve Snider said the crash totaled the police vehicle. The officer driving it was released from the hospital Monday morning.


Miles had previously been charged with eluding officers at least twice in Iowa. One of those charges was in June, and followed another high-speed chase in Cedar Rapids, which reached 100 mph, according to court records, which report her license was barred at the time. She was convicted of eluding officers in 2021, and was convicted of theft and numerous traffic violations in recent years.

Just spent 10 minutes on line and did all the wife's Christmas shopping, I may not like a lot of things about the era we're currently in but not having to go out to stores to shop anymore is wonderful! csb/

They’re laying the groundwork now. As stupid as this claim is.

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Does anyone have $29 trillion laying around?

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Just saw in NYT

From possible US AG to this

I caught myself doing this today in ChatGPT.

Going through some investment strategies and ending with a “Thanks”.

After this I thought to myself… why the F did I just do that..does anyone else do that??

Some details from our national team on a 2025 three-star center who plans to take an official visit to Iowa.

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The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative finalized its plan Friday to raise tariffs on a slew of goods made in China, largely adopting hikes it first proposed in May.

The heightened tariffs go after strategic product categories, including electric vehicles, batteries, critical minerals, semiconductors and solar cells. The final tariff structure includes 14 product categories that cover thousands of items.

The first tariff hikes are set to go into effect on Sept. 27, with the next increase dates at the start of 2025 and 2026.

The Biden administration’s dramatic hikes for this year include a 100% tariff on electric vehicles, a 25% tariff on lithium-ion EV batteries and a 50% tariff on photovoltaic solar cells. A 50% tariff on semiconductors made in China will go into effect in 2025.

The final plan provides additional relief for ship-to-shore cranes, which are set to get a 25% tariff that begins this year. The final structure will allow exclusions for cranes ordered prior to May 14, 2024 and that enter the country before May 14, 2026.

The updated structure hones in on increased tariff rates for medical supplies.

The administration initially proposed a 25% tariff on face masks — that increase will still go into effect this year, now followed by a 50% tariff in 2026. USTR took similar action on medical gloves, upping its initial 25% tariff proposal to a 50% tariff in 2025 and a 100% tariff in 2026.

Finally, it decreased the number of allowed exclusions for solar manufacturing equipment from 19 to 14. It eliminated five exclusions for solar manufacturing module equipment.

The federal agency had previously pledged to finalize the new tariff structure by the end of last month, delaying the process by two weeks.

The Amazing Kreskin, an entertainer who used mentalist tricks to dazzle audiences as he rose to fame on the night show circuit during the 1970s, died on Tuesday in New Jersey. He was 89.
Ryan Galway, his former road manager and close friend, said that Mr. Kreskin had died in his home in Caldwell, N.J. He did not name the cause of death.
Mr. Kreskin’s feats included divining details of the personal lives of strangers and guessing at playing cards chosen randomly from a deck. And he had a classic trick at live shows: entrusting audience members to hide his paycheck in an auditorium, and then relying on his instincts to find it — or else going without payment for a night.
Born George Joseph Kresge Jr., in Montclair, N.J., Mr. Kreskin has said he was drawn to magic and psychology as a child. He was performing mentalist tricks for audiences by the time he was a teenager.
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His star rose in the 1970s when he was a regular guest on the talk show circuit, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Mike Douglas Show and Late Night with David Letterman. With other famous guests, he played psychological tricks that looked like magic: asking people to put their fingers on objects that would seem to move, for example, or guessing what card had been pulled from a deck.
He also did live performances around the world, using audience members as his props, promising that he had no secret assistants or electronic devices that enabled him to find hidden objects or guess a strangers’ thoughts.
As his career progressed, Mr. Kreskin diversified. He wrote several books. He earned a few acting credits. He offered mental training to boxers. He even created a dating website for people interested in the supernatural.
Mr. Kreskin often said that he was not psychic and did not possess any supernatural powers but was able to read certain cues, like body language, and use the power of suggestion to guide people’s actions.
That didn’t stop him from making predictions about the future, including about the 2016 presidential election. In 2015, Mr. Kreskin told a Fox News affiliate in Washington that he knew who would win the presidential election nearly a year later but didn’t want to get too specific.

​

“I’ve been in his house,” he said. “The one that’s been shouting all over — everywhere.” Fox’s report mused that “the one presidential-hopeful who could easily fit his description would be Republican candidate Donald Trump,” whom many considered a long shot at the time.
But Mr. Kreskin’s predictions have disappointed fans, too — most notably in 2002, when he said there would be mass U.F.O. sightings over Las Vegas on June 6 and promised to donate $50,000 to charity if he was wrong.
Reports indicate that the gathered crowds were underwhelmed by the night sky on that Thursday. But Mr. Kreskin said a few people saw strange things overhead — enough that he didn’t have to make his donation. And anyway, he said to The Las Vegas Sun, his ultimate goal had been to make a point about the dangers of public susceptibility to suggestion.
Though he continued to perform until this spring, Mr. Kreskin’s star has been on the decline since the 1970s. That trajectory was captured in a 2008 movie based loosely on Mr. Kreskin’s life, “The Great Buck Howard.” The actor John Malkovich starred as the title character, a once-famous mentalist struggling to make a comeback amid increasingly distracted audiences.
Mr. Kreskin himself has suggested that the march of technology was making his work more difficult, changing not only the entertainment industry but the nature of human interaction in general.
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In a video for the online knowledge forum Big Think, Mr. Kreskin complained that “traditional culture is disintegrating” in ways that made it hard to communicate as a mentalist.
“People don’t hear each other anymore,” he said. “There are actually human beings, and this is going to seem incredible, who when they’re in a restaurant have a cellphone on the table and they’re looking into it.”
Fans mourning Mr. Kreskin might take some solace in a comment he made in 2015, suggesting that not even death could stop his work. It was during an interview with The Huffington Post, when the still-practicing mentalist was asked when he might retire.
“Exactly 10 days after I drop dead,” he replied.
A list of survivors was not immediately available.

I have a feeling I'm going to regret watching this.

I'm one episode in working on two

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PSA - Christmas games will be on Netflix

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President-elect Donald J. Trump’s support for Pete Hegseth, whom he announced as his nominee for defense secretary shortly after Election Day, is wobbling after a crush of controversy over a rape allegation and a 2018 email from Mr. Hegseth’s mother accusing him of a pattern of abuse toward women.
How Mr. Hegseth fares through a series of tests on Wednesday will be critical for his chances. He is set to continue his meetings with key senators, including Joni Ernst of Iowa, a combat veteran who has spoken about being sexually assaulted herself, and his mother is expected to sit for an interview on Fox News. He is also set to start defending himself on television.
Mr. Trump has made clear to people close to him that he believes Mr. Hegseth should have been more forthcoming about the problems he would face getting confirmed, according to two people with knowledge of his thinking.
The combination of events could determine whether he hangs on as the expected nominee. Mr. Trump is openly discussing other people for the job, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whom he defeated in the Republican presidential primaries and with whom he has had a contentious relationship. Mr. Trump likes the story of bringing on someone he dominated publicly, and he talked about it with Mr. DeSantis on Tuesday at a service honoring three Florida sheriff’s deputies who were killed in a car crash.
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The Wall Street Journal earlier reported Mr. Trump’s discussions about Mr. DeSantis.
But the number of people in Mr. Trump’s world who dislike and distrust Mr. DeSantis — and bitterly recall the campaign he ran against the president-elect — is vast. Those people are discussing other options, including whether Mike Waltz, the Florida congressman whom Mr. Trump picked as his national security adviser, could slide into the job, expecting he would be confirmed fairly easily by the Senate. While criticizing Mr. Trump in the past is not always an obstacle for his appointees, Mr. DeSantis threw aggressive jabs at Mr. Trump during the primary. They included a flip line about paying money to a porn star, which was the basis for an indictment against Mr. Trump.
“I think some of these articles are very disturbing,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a close Trump ally, told CBS News, referring to Mr. Hegseth. “He obviously has a chance to defend himself here, but some of this stuff is going to be difficult.”
Mr. Trump has spent little if any personal capital with senators trying to push Mr. Hegseth through. And the incoming president’s advisers are mindful in private discussions that Republican senators are trying to be respectful of Mr. Trump while not approving of a nominee who concerns them.
Mr. Hegseth, 44, could become the third person whom Mr. Trump has announced as a nominee to withdraw from the role after Matt Gaetz withdrew his name for attorney general and Sheriff Chad Chronister withdrew as D.E.A. administrator.
In the past two weeks, Mr. Hegseth has come under intense scrutiny. It was revealed that he had entered into a settlement agreement with a woman who accused him of rape in 2017; he had insisted it was a consensual encounter, and Mr. Trump told aides at the time that he wanted to stick with his announced nominee.

​

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But the troublesome headlines, which Mr. Trump hates, only grew worse. The New York Times reported on an email his mother wrote him in 2018 as he was going through an acrimonious divorce, in which she told her son he had “abused” a number of women “in some way” over the years. Mr. Hegseth’s mother has recently said she regretted sending the email and has retracted the comments that she said she made during an emotional time as he was going through a divorce — a comment she is expected to expand upon in her Fox appearance.
Mr. Trump has told people he was unhappy with the story about the email.
Mr. Hegseth was also the subject of a damning article in The New Yorker, which reported that he had been forced out as the head of two veterans’ groups because of his behavior. NBC News reported on Tuesday that Mr. Hegseth’s drinking worried his colleagues at Fox News.
It was unclear how extensive the vetting was into Mr. Hegseth’s past by Mr. Trump’s transition team.
Now the Trump team will watch closely how Mr. Hegseth and his mother perform in the interviews, knowing they will be critical for the incoming president in deciding whether to stick with the former Fox News host and combat veteran whose qualifications to lead the Pentagon have come into question.
The perception from people close to Mr. Hegseth is that if he wants to save himself, he must perform well. The Trump team is particularly worried about female Republican senators breaking with Mr. Hegseth, and especially Ms. Ernst.

He is your daddy! >

This shit is insane! And a pretty sad reflection on modern society in this grumpy old man's opinion.

The first step to F1​

The preteen go-kart drivers spending millions on a shot at professional motorsports​

By Kevin Sieff
,
Claudia Gori
and
Zoeann Murphy
December 11, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EST

Julian and Alessandro were walking to the starting line, trying their best not to look at each other. They wore child-size racing uniforms and tiny driving gloves. Behind them, mechanics pushed their 160-pound cars with a list of corporate sponsors on the hood. The team’s name was emblazoned on the side: Baby Race.
The two boys were Baby Race’s star drivers, among the favorites to win the World Series of Karting championship that was minutes away. In theory, they could work together to secure a team victory. But Alessandro Truchot and Julian Frasnelli had been fierce competitors since they were 9 and 10. Now they were 11 and 12, respectively, and the rivalry had grown violent, culminating in high-speed crashes that caused a roaring crowd to hold its breath.
As its popularity has boomed, Formula One has faced a problem: how to identify future champions who can’t yet drive a car. Karting is the sport’s best approximation, a birthday party diversion that has been bankrolled and professionalized into a series of miniature Grand Prix races. Every current F1 driver started in a go-kart.
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Julian and Alessandro’s race in Sarno was a battle for childhood pride, but it was also leverage in dueling quests to reach Formula One. The boys’ parents and sponsors had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in their careers. Julian and Alessandro had stopped attending school full-time to focus on racing. They were too light for the karts, so mechanics added weights to the chassis to keep them from flipping over. Scouts representing Mercedes and Ferrari, who are now tracking drivers as young as 6, know their names.
Before they got to the pit, Julian removed his SpongeBob sandals, took off his helmet, vomited and cried. Alessandro, who wore only gray and black Nike apparel, repeated over the grunts of go-kart engines what he had said to himself many times before: “I’m not here to make friends.”
Unmute the videos below to meet Alessandro and Julian.


Julian


Alessandro
Elite go-karting has become both maniacally competitive and wildly expensive. To become one of Formula One’s 20 drivers — the sport has only 10 teams with two cars each — now requires an absolute commitment years before a child is eligible for a driver’s license.
By the time a driver makes it to Formula One, his parents and sponsors will have invested several million dollars in his career. Go-karting has become a magnet for the money and power flowing through motorsports. Baby Race charges its drivers $7,500 for a four-day race event (plus a $600 entrance fee).
The team motto: “The First Step to F1”.
Julian, who is Italian, and Alessandro, a French American citizen, represent different marks on the spectrum of go-karting wealth. Julian’s father owns a karting track in northern Italy, where he had finagled sponsors to finance his son’s career. Alessandro’s father started a string of technology companies that brought him enough wealth to bankroll the soaring costs of racing. The two families, who spend weekends under the same Baby Race tent, do not speak to each other.
TOP: Drivers prepare for race in Brescia, Italy, on Sept. 8. Every current F1 driver got their start in racing in a go-kart.

BOTTOM: Racing fans gather for a look at the podium in Brescia, Italy, following a race in early September.
When the Sarno race started, with the karts quickly nearing their top speed of 50 mph, even a casual fan could tell that Julian and Alessandro appeared to be in their own class.
“There goes Frasnelli,” the Australian commentator bellowed over the loudspeaker at the racing facility south of Naples. “There goes Truchot.”
The boys’ parents watched from opposite ends of the track, screaming, “Pass! Pass!” in French and Italian when their sons drove by in a blur. Julian and Alessandro had freakish control over their lawnmower-size vehicles, weaving expertly through a mass of other drivers. Julian had just won the Italian championships. Alessandro was the second-ranked driver on the karting tour. Either could be the next Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton, F1’s current superstars. But the chances that both boys will make it to Formula One are almost zero.

As they neared the end of the fourth lap, Julian was in second place and Alessandro was a few feet behind him. The two cars rocketed toward the front. But Julian and another driver made contact coming around a turn. Julian lost control. His kart went airborne.

“Huge crash!” the announcer exclaimed.

Julian’s father gripped the metal fence at the edge of the track and then put his hands on his face, almost covering his eyes.

“No, NO, NO!”



Formula One scouts swear they can predict future greatness in the way a child handles a tight turn or avoids a crash. They’ve identified talent that way before.
At 6, Michael Schumacher, one of Formula One’s all-time greats, won a karting race with a vehicle his father put together with spare parts. In the early ’90s, Hamilton started racing in a secondhand kart while his father washed dishes to pay for races.

But the sport is now unrecognizable. The surge in global interest in Formula One has transformed karting into a kind of oligarchy. It is now crowded with the sons and daughters of multimillionaires (and actual oligarchs) who crisscross Europe every weekend for mini-Grand Prix. The circuit is a traveling carnival for the global elite, a series of racetrack parking lots colonized by parents in luxury athleisure wear.

There is effectively no way for young American drivers to aspire to Formula One without relocating across the Atlantic. Alessandro flies from Miami, where he lives, to Italy once a week during peak karting season. That’s where the F1 scouts spend their time.

The races are dominated by prestigious teams, like Baby Race, which supply personal mechanics to each child. Some kids arrive with their own bodyguards. Some arrive in helicopters. Many parents seek sports psychologists for their preteens. A number of Baby Race’s 25 drivers — it’s obvious which ones — are extremely wealthy and extremely average.

“I’m paying 50,000 euros a year for you to race like this?!” one of the lesser drivers’ fathers screamed at him one morning in Sarno.