NEW YORK (AP) — The fossilized skeleton of a T. rex relative that roamed the earth about 76 million years ago will be auctioned in New York this month, Sotheby’s announced Tuesday.

The Gorgosaurus skeleton will highlight Sotheby’s natural history auction on July 28, the auction house said.

The Gorgosaurus was an apex carnivore that lived in what is now the western United States and Canada during the late Cretaceous Period. It predated its relative the Tyrannosaurus rex by 10 million years.

The specimen being sold was discovered in 2018 in the Judith River Formation near Havre, Montana, Sotheby’s said. It measures nearly 10 feet (3 meters) tall and 22 (6.7 meters) feet long.

All of the other known Gorgosaurus skeletons are in museum collections, making this one the only specimen available for private ownership, the auction house said.

“In my career, I have had the privilege of handling and selling many exceptional and unique objects, but few have the capacity to inspire wonder and capture imaginations quite like this unbelievable Gorgosaurus skeleton,” Cassandra Hatton, Sotheby’s global head of science and popular culture, said.

Sotheby’s presale estimate for the fossil is $5 million to $8 million.

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ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — The highest-earning New Yorkers would face the nation’s steepest income tax rate under a budget lawmakers expected to vote on Tuesday.

It would serve as a win for the Democratic party’s left wing, who say that millionaires in Manhattan penthouses have fared far better amid the pandemic then struggling small businesses and low-income New Yorkers.

States including California, Minnesota and Washington are also considering wealth taxes, raising taxes on capital gains or setting new top income tax rates. President Joe Biden — who said on the campaign trail he’d raise income taxes on high earners — has proposed tax hike s on wealthy individuals and families and a corporate tax rate increase to pay for his infrastructure plan.

Democrats in New York hope the tax increase could bring in at least $3 billion and prevent the need for spending cuts in years to come. Assembly Member Helene Weinstein said the bill would be introduced Tuesday, and Sen. Liz Krueger said the leaders of the Assembly and Senate have agreed on the bill.

New York’s top income tax rate is currently 8.82%, while New York City residents face an additional 3.88% top tax rate.

Democrats want to raise the combined top tax rate for New York City millionaires above California’s top income tax rate of 13.3%, though exact details of the proposal weren’t available Tuesday afternoon.

Senate Democratic Majority spokesperson Mike Murphy said he expected the public could view the revenue bill online shortly. Spokespeople for the governor and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie’s office didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

Democrats won control of the state Senate in 2018, but they gained more leverage last year by winning a veto-proof supermajority.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo expressed newfound openness to raising taxes on top-earners this year — his budget proposal included a limited, temporary tax increase on high-earners if New Yorkers didn’t receive extra COVID-19 aid.

He’s also long warned that raising taxes on the wealthy could drive them out of New York at a time when the state’s economy is still recovering from COVID-19 economic shutdowns last week. His budget director, Robert Mujica, has said the top 1% of earners pay 40% of New York’s income taxes.

And Mujica has said an additional $12 billion in expected federal COVID-19 aid could prevent the need for a tax hike.

But Democratic legislative leaders who have pushed forward with a proposed tax hike said there’s no conclusive evidence that tax hikes drive out the rich. And they criticize years of “fiscal austerity” under Cuomo, as health care costs rise and educational advocacy groups call for more spending on schools.

Medicaid costs have skyrocketed as New York has boosted enrollment, raised the minimum wage for all workers and taken on more Medicaid bills once shouldered by counties.

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I was among a group of African American staff who overheard a very senior Senator make a comment that, were I in a mood to be charitable, I would describe as ‘racially insensitive.’

But I’m not, so let’s call it what it was: racist.

It was ugly enough that the following morning he was in full damage-control mode, placing personal apology phone calls to every black staffer who was present and may have overheard his remark.

I will never forget how the call started. The senator greeted me by name, introduced himself, and said he was sorry for what I had heard the previous day. ‘It’s not who I am. I’m not that way,‘ he told me.

Multiple times during the conversation, he returned to the same theme — that regardless of whatever I heard, he wasn’t the horrible person I might assume him to be.

It remains one of the more remarkable conversations I’ve ever had: ten minutes of listening to a guy apologize for doing something racist, despite an almost comical inability to bring himself to even say the word ‘racist.’

By now, you’ve probably seen the viral video of Amy Cooper weaponizing her privilege faster than you can say the words ‘race card.’

Prior to filming the incident, Christian Cooper (no relation), who is black, asked Amy Cooper to leash her dog as per park rules. According to an account of the incident that Christian Cooper posted on Facebook along with the viral footage, he then told her, ‘Look, if you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.’ (‘I didn’t know what that meant. When you’re alone in a wooded area, that’s absolutely terrifying, right?’ Amy Cooper later expressed to CNN.)

Christian Cooper then started filming, and their exchange prompted Amy Cooper to call the cops in hysterics, pleading with them to send officers because, she claimed, she was being threatened by an African American man. Most chilling is that prior to calling the police, she warned Christian Cooper that she would call the cops to ‘tell them there’s an African American man threatening [her] life,’ a claim that any objective viewer would find laughable.

I’ll get back to Amy Cooper’s own flawed apology and what we can draw from it in a moment.

But first, to anyone trying to wring their hands about what is and isn’t racist, let me ask a basic question: Why did she immediately bring up Christian Cooper’s race when threatening to call the police, prior to even dialing?

It’s as if she needed to remind him that even though he was legally in the right and was the one holding the camera, she held all the societal power. Could she have been well aware of the numerous, tragic encounters between black men and boys and police (or renegade white men with shotguns taking the law into their own hands)? Or as a white woman, did she just have a hunch that the public would reflexively trust her account of the situation over his? It’s hard to imagine otherwise.

Nevertheless, it seems she knew afterward that she’d stepped in it. Not unlike the Senator, she gave what she considered to be an apology, claiming she meant no harm to Christian Cooper. And in doing so, she spoke in a manner reminiscent of many people far more famous than she who sought to absolve themselves by boasting of their racial virtue.

From chef Paula Deen’s plea to be judged by ‘what’s in the heart,’ despite her use of ethnic slurs, to NASCAR driver Kyle Larson’s reminder that ‘[he] wasn’t raised that way’ (as if we’d asked), or squirrely apologies from Madonna, Charlie Sheen, Paris Hilton, Tim Allen and countless others, offenders often seem to try to get a pass from actual contrition by merely saying (or convincing themselves) they’re not racist.

Amy Cooper was not widely known prior to this event, and likely doesn’t have access to the same public relations resources as rich celebrities who have apologized for their behavior. She is also, of course, human, and her full character is defined by more than a singular moment caught on tape, however shameful.

But it is still important to understand the impact Amy Cooper’s actions could have had. With this in mind, let’s play out the case of the two Coopers of Central Park, and take Amy Cooper at her word that she’s not a racist (whatever that means). Then what?

What if police had arrived at the scene, guns drawn, responding to the screams of a white damsel (with a cute dog, to boot) in distress? How could that scene have ended differently for the black man falsely accused of threatening her life? Had this ended in tragedy, would it matter that she had the decency to have never previously turned a fire hose on a black person or hung a noose at one’s home?

No. Regardless of her intent, her actions could have carried profound, racist consequences. And she had to — or at least ought to — have known that. In this case, and in so many others, words and actions matter. Both can be racist. Both often are.

Or, put another way, perhaps Amy Cooper is a racist. Perhaps she isn’t. It doesn’t matter. How she chooses to define herself is irrelevant to the question of what the impact of her (actually racist) actions was.

All of this flows from white people’s deep fear of the word ‘racist,’ which many evidently see as ‘the absolute worst, most vile thing you can call a person,’ as former Maine Governor Paul LePage once put it. This line of thinking seems to be that if being racist is an unforgivable sin, happening to do an occasional racist thing can be immediately forgiven by one’s simply not being racist to the core. Easy enough. But this disregards the notion that more often than not in matters or race, it’s the consequences (and not the intent) that cause the hurt.

Moreover, embedded in this attitude is the perverse notion that white people get to set the terms of the debate over what is racist. Maybe it’s me, but as someone who has actually been called a ‘n*****’ by white people more times than I care to count, I think I’m in a far better position to decide who has done something racist than, say, former ‘Seinfeld’ star Michael Richards.

The actor apologized and claimed he, too, was not a racist after being filmed onstage in an extended rant shouting at a black man, ‘fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass… A n*****, look, there’s a n*****!’

Comedian Chris Rock summed the issue up perfectly when he asked, ‘what do you got to do, shoot Medgar Evers to be a racist?’

White people could start with acknowledging in their apologies that even good people are capable of doing racist things. A real expression of contrition should include: ‘I’m ashamed that I was capable of doing something so racist.’ Or, ‘How I was raised decades ago is irrelevant; I did something racist today, and am sorry.’ Or perhaps, ‘I don’t think I harbor actual animus, but regardless of whether I do, I have work to do.’

If you are a white person who is ever in a position to apologize for something racist, try that approach next time. You’ll be a lot more credible to those tasked with forgiving you.

And if it’s to me, who knows? I (probably) won’t even accuse you of being that way.Popular in the Community

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