Liberal Mantra

A Facebook “Covid Meme” Examined (“Experts vs Dummies”)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is something I saw pop up on my FB in slow traffic yesterday and I thought it worthy of a “quick” retort.

A couple things going on here. First, no one I listen to or have read (other than the kooky “Alex Jones fringe,” has said it’s “not dangerous.” For instance, I myself argue it is as dangerous as the 1957-1958 and the 1968-1969 outbreaks — when the numbers are tampered down with the CDC’s change to how death certificates are written:

SOME EXAMPLES TO SUPPORT THE CONTENTION

  • Last month Alameda County, Calif., reduced its Covid death toll by 25% after state public-health officials insisted that deaths be attributed to Covid only if the virus was a direct or contributing factor. — Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School. (Wall Street Journal)
    1. Alameda County has changed the way it calculates deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a 25% drop this weekend. The official total fell from 1,634 to 1,223 on Friday after the county changed its methodology to align with narrower guidelines used by California and U.S. health agencies. According to a news release from the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency, the new number includes only people who “died as a direct result of COVID-19, or had the virus as a contributing cause of death as well as people for whom COVID-19 could not be ruled out as a cause of death.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

(FLASHBACK VIA RPT) And as states are going over death certificates, they are dropping by at least 25% in deaths by Covid-19. And some independent groups are helping “catch” the inflated number, like Pennsylvania’s “Wolf administration was caught this week adding up to 269 fake deaths to the state totals on Tuesday” (CITADELPOLITICS). Or this short example (PJ-MEDIA)

  • On Thursday, the Washington State Department of Health (DOH) confirmed a report by the Freedom Foundation that they have included those who tested positive for COVID-19 but died of other causes, including gunshot injuries, in their coronavirus death totals. This calls into serious question the state’s calculations of residents who have actually died of the CCP pandemic.
  • Last week, after it was reported that, like Washington, Colorado was counting deaths of all COVID-19 positive persons regardless of cause (which had resulted in the inclusion of deaths from alcohol poisoning), the Colorado Department of Health and Environment began to differentiate between deaths “among people with COVID-19” and “deaths due to COVID-19.”

Just one more of the many examples I could share is the New York Times getting 40% wrong of their “died from Covid-19 under 30-years old” front page news story. Mmmm, no, they didn’t die of Covid.

  • This Sunday morning, The New York Times has devoted their front page to the nearly 100,000 U.S. victims of COVID-19. The text-only cover lists 1,000 names and excerpts from the obituaries of people who have succumbed to the dreaded virus. The only problem with this lovely memorial is that at least one of the victims did not appear to have died from the coronavirus and his was only the sixth name on the list. [….] But others were quick to point out that Haynes was only the sixth name on the list. One replied, “He was one out of 5 under 30 on the list. Another in that group had a condition that doctors told him he would not live to 18. Did not test positive for COVID but still ruled a COVID death. That’s 40% of the under 30 age bracket.” (Red State)

[….]

APRIL 8TH (2020):

APRIL 19 (2020):

So, I am saying as an example, that a good portion of the deaths being attributed to Covid are not in fact Covid deaths.

The CDC has introduced a new ICD code, “to accurately capture mortality data for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) on death certificates.”

(Note: ICD stands for International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. It is a medical classification list by the World Health Organization (WHO).)

The new ICD code for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is U07.1. The CDC email says that the WHO has added a second code, U07.2, for instances “where a laboratory confirmation is inconclusive or not available. Because laboratory test results are not typically reported on death certificates in the U.S., National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is not planning to implement U07.2 for mortality statistics.”

The problem with the new codes is that it may result in an inflated number of coronavirus deaths….

(RED STATE)

And this is what I [for example] have argued. Do these changes made in April of 2020 impact previous outbreaks? Would this change also increase the 1957-1958 and the1968-1969 outbreaks? I think so.

A couple more examples to support the contention

(Story about a May 2020 death cert)

…. Jack Dake, an Oklahoma man who lived an admirable life as a veteran, a lifelong blue-collar worker and a loving dad, died on May 6 after contracting COVID-19.

There’s just one problem with his cause of death, his family says: Jack Dake did not die from the coronavirus.

The man barely had any symptoms, his family told The Oklahoman, and he died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

But, the family insists, that didn’t stop a coroner from labeling Dake as a coronavirus statistic on his death certificate on May 14.

Dake’s son, Jack Dake Jr., told the newspaper that his father’s death had absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic.

“Alzheimer’s was the cause of death, and COVID-19 was not even a contributing condition,” Dake Jr. told The Oklahoman. “Yet it’s recorded as the only cause of death.”

Dake apparently contracted the coronavirus at an Oklahoma City assisted living center and tested positive on April 17.

[….]

But the elder Dake was in one of the final stages of his battle with Alzheimer’s and had quit eating and drinking, which is common for end-stage sufferers of the degenerative brain disease.

Dake Jr. also said his father was never again tested for the coronavirus, but the family did request that he be put on hospice care, as he was not eating and was dehydrated.

Dake was listed as being terminal with COVID-19 by hospice workers, and when he died 20 days after testing positive, his death was recorded as one of the state’s coronavirus fatalities.

[….]

According to USA Today,  a provision in the Coronavirus Aid, Relieve and Economic Securities Act provides a “20% premium or add on” to Medicare reimbursements to health care facilities. (More information about that provision from the American Hospital Association.)…

(WESTERN JOURNAL)

  • The Montezuma County Coroner’s Office is disputing the state’s claim of a third fatal case of the coronavirus in Cortez, saying the person died of alcohol poisoning. County Coroner George Deavers said the person tested positive for COVID-19, but an investigation by him and the pathologist determined the cause of death was ethanol toxicity. The person’s blood-alcohol content was 0.55, or almost seven times the legal driving limit of 0.08 in Colorado, Deavers said. A BAC of 0.3 is considered lethal. (DURANGO HERALD)
  • CBS 12 News examined medical examiner’s reports on COVID-19 deaths and found eight examples where a person was listed as a coronavirus death but had actually died from something else. This includes a 60-year-old man who died from a gunshot wound to the head, a 90-year-old who fell and broke a hip, and a 77-year-old who died of Parkinson’s disease. (CBS)
  • A woman is left with “no peace” after her father’s death certificate stated he died of the coronavirus despite previously testing negative and an MRI test showing he suffered multiple strokes. Jay Smith died on July 12 in San Antonio, Texas, after an MRI showed brain damage from enduring multiple strokes. Kayla Smith, however, said last week that her father’s death certificate listed him as a coronavirus victim. “They put him as COVID. He didn’t have COVID. He had a stroke,” she said. “The MRI showed that he had multiple strokes in the brain, and also he had a blood clot. Those multiple strokes caused so much damage in his brain that it caused damage in his body.” Jay Smith was first taken to the hospital on July 6, where he tested negative for the coronavirus and was transferred to a non-COVID floor on July 7, according to local outlet KATU. (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)

I have argued from the very get-go [or pointed to] stuff like: that (a) the PCR “cycle test” was too high, (b) that deaths attributed to Covid shouldn’t have been (here as well) that (c) the numbers of unknown – asymptomatic – cases lower the infection percentages/rates, i.e., the Infection Fatality rate, Etc., Etc.

The other contention in the “meme” is that “no experts” agree with portions of the above. Just high-school dummies.

Here is an older post:

List of “Dummies”

Dennis Prager interviews the co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, Jay Bhattacharya. Dr. Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He directs Stanford’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the health and well-being of populations, with a particular emphasis on the role of government programs, biomedical innovation, and economics. Most recently, Bhattacharya has focused his research on the epidemiology of COVID-19 and evaluation of the various policy responses to the epidemic. He is a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, a document proposing a relaxation of social controls that delay the spread of COVID-19.

A worthwhile interview.

Here are some of the signatories of Great Barrington Declaration:

  • Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
  • Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
  • Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
  • Alexander Walker, principal at World Health Information Science Consultants, former Chair of Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, USA
  • Andrius Kavaliunas, epidemiologist and assistant professor at Karolinska Institute, Sweden
  • Angus Dalgleish, oncologist, infectious disease expert and professor, St. George’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, England
  • Anthony J Brookes, professor of genetics, University of Leicester, England
  • Annie Janvier, professor of pediatrics and clinical ethics, Université de Montréal and Sainte-Justine University Medical Centre, Canada
  • Ariel Munitz, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • Boris Kotchoubey, Institute for Medical Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany
  • Cody Meissner, professor of pediatrics, expert on vaccine development, efficacy, and safety. Tufts University School of Medicine, USA
  • David Katz, physician and president, True Health Initiative, and founder of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, USA
  • David Livermore, microbiologist, infectious disease epidemiologist and professor, University of East Anglia, England
  • Eitan Friedman, professor of medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
  • Ellen Townsend, professor of psychology, head of the Self-Harm Research Group, University of Nottingham, England
  • Eyal Shahar, physician, epidemiologist and professor (emeritus) of public health, University of Arizona, USA
  • Florian Limbourg, physician and hypertension researcher, professor at Hannover Medical School, Germany
  • Gabriela Gomes, mathematician studying infectious disease epidemiology, professor, University of Strathclyde, Scotland
  • Gerhard Krönke, physician and professor of translational immunology, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
  • Gesine Weckmann, professor of health education and prevention, Europäische Fachhochschule, Rostock, Germany
  • Günter Kampf, associate professor, Institute for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine, Greifswald University, Germany
  • Helen Colhoun, professor of medical informatics and epidemiology, and public health physician, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Jonas Ludvigsson, pediatrician, epidemiologist and professor at Karolinska Institute and senior physician at Örebro University Hospital, Sweden
  • Karol Sikora, physician, oncologist, and professor of medicine at the University of Buckingham, England
  • Laura Lazzeroni, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of biomedical data science, Stanford University Medical School, USA
  • Lisa White, professor of modelling and epidemiology, Oxford University, England
  • Mario Recker, malaria researcher and associate professor, University of Exeter, England
  • Matthew Ratcliffe, professor of philosophy, specializing in philosophy of mental health, University of York, England
  • Matthew Strauss, critical care physician and assistant professor of medicine, Queen’s University, Canada
  • Michael Jackson, research fellow, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
  • Michael Levitt, biophysicist and professor of structural biology, Stanford University, USA.
  • Recipient of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
  • Mike Hulme, professor of human geography, University of Cambridge, England
  • Motti Gerlic, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • Partha P. Majumder, professor and founder of the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani, India
  • Paul McKeigue, physician, disease modeler and professor of epidemiology and public health, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Rajiv Bhatia, physician, epidemiologist and public policy expert at the Veterans Administration, USA
  • Rodney Sturdivant, infectious disease scientist and associate professor of biostatistics, Baylor University, USA
  • Salmaan Keshavjee, professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, USA
  • Simon Thornley, epidemiologist and biostatistician, University of Auckland, New Zealand
  • Simon Wood, biostatistician and professor, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
  • Stephen Bremner,professor of medical statistics, University of Sussex, England
  • Sylvia Fogel, autism provider and psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School, USA
  • Tom Nicholson, Associate in Research, Duke Center for International Development, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, USA
  • Udi Qimron, professor of clinical microbiology and immunology, Tel Aviv University, Israel
  • Ulrike Kämmerer, professor and expert in virology, immunology and cell biology, University of Würzburg, Germany
  • Uri Gavish, biomedical consultant, Israel
  • Yaz Gulnur Muradoglu, professor of finance, director of the Behavioural Finance Working Group, Queen Mary University of London, England

Filibuster Hypocrisy: Biden Supported It, Harris Led It, Dems Used It

Published by Papa Giorgio

DAVID HARRIS JR. expands on the facts mentioned above in the video:

According to the Democrats, anyone who uses the filibuster is a racist, If that is true then Democrats in the Senate. Last year alone the Democrats used the filibuster over 300 times. The KKK did not block anything. That must mean that the Democrats are much worse than KKK. I’m just kidding.

The reason that Democrats used the filibuster over 300 times is their ideology, not their racism.

Now, the Democrats want to kill the filibuster so that they will have a dictatorship in order to control the masses. The Democrats claim that slave owners were the people responsible for the filibuster.

But, that s a lie.

The filibuster was put in place in 1806, 55 years before the civil war. Slavery was the law of the land them. There was no need to put the filibuster in place due to slavery.

The filibuster is the only thing standing in the way for the Democrats to have total control of the government. That should scare you and it is a dangerous thing for them. What happens when the Republicans take control with no filibuster?  They could make crossing our border a felony and anyone who aids them could be tried for aiding and abetting the illegal aliens. They could cut all funding for Planned Parenthood and other budget items.

The Washington Examiner reports:

Democrats used filibuster 327 times, compared to only once by GOP in 2020: Report

President Joe Biden has been increasingly critical of the Senate filibuster, calling it a Jim Crow relic and saying it has been widely abused despite Democrats using it over 300 times in 2020, compared to once by Republicans.

    • “After @POTUS @JoeBiden denounced the rampant abuse of the filibuster last year, we did some digging,” Fox News anchor John Roberts tweeted Friday. “Republicans used it once. Democrats used it 327 times.”

Remember when Kamala Harris said she would get rid of the filibuster to pass AOC’s socialist, job-killing Green New Deal. (See more at DAILY CALLER)

BREITBART:

Harris said, “Here’s the thing. first of all, let me tell you, I think about this issue about this, my nieces are one-and-a-half and three-years old. When I look at those babies, and I think about what the world will be like in 20 years if we don’t act. I’m really afraid. And as it relates to those Republicans in Congress where I’ve now been for two and a half years, every one of those members needs to look at the babies, the grand babies in their life and then look in the mirror and ask themselves why have they failed to act?”

She continued, “On the issue of this climate crisis, I strongly believe this is a fight against powerful interests. and leaders need to lead. So lead, follow, or get out of the way. Get out of the way starting with Donald Trump. So yeah we need to work across the aisle. I’m going to tell you, I’ve been there two years and some months. I see no evidence of it. I kid you guys not. In the United States Congress, I was part of a committee hearing during which the underlying premise of the hearing was to debate whether science should be the basis of public policy. This on a matter that is about an existential threat to who we are as human beings.”

She added, “So again back to the United States Congress, here’s my point. if they fail to act as president of the United States, I am prepared to get rid of the filibuster to pass a Green New Deal.”

Disinfecting the Media | The Bleach Lie (Part 2)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Rumble — Larry Elder touches on a previous media and Democrat obsession. That is, that Trump told people to drink bleach or inject disinfectant. PART ONE is here: “Larry Elder Sanitizes the Left (Bleach Lie)”.

I have also posted on the topic a bit….

Here, Larry Elder knocks it out of the park as usual. I insert a flashback to PART ONE (3:30 to 5:25). Likewise, I include my “Biden Edition” of the President mischaracterizing Trump’s Charlottesville statements (6:08 to 7:15). I also include a phone call Larry took (7:53 to 9:32). At the end of the call I insert another upload I cobbled together to expand what Trump was trying to express (11:11 to the end).

People Never PAID 90% in Taxes (Economic Myths)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is posted for adding to a conversation from FACEBOOK where I repeatedly noted no one ever paid 90% in taxes after it was brought up by my antagonist — hoping the operative word “PAID” would sink in — (conversation reproduced at the end of this post for clarity — JUMP.) Other Posts that discuss related issues:

90% MYTH

(From the video):

  • “economic historian Phil Magness, of the American Institute for Economic Research, says that progressives miss an important fact: The high tax rates that America had in the past actually didn’t bring in much revenue. When rates were at 70 percent, Magness tells John Stossel, ‘A millionaire on average would pay 41 percent’.”

Even “CheckYourFact” says this:

  • While the top marginal income tax rate was over 90 percent [92%] while Eisenhower was president, few people were subject to that rate due to deductions and other tax loopholes. Top income earners paid much lower average tax rates.

(MISES.ORG has an excellent article dealing with the 90% issue, as well as GREY ENLIGHTENMENT)

ALMOST CLASSICAL notes this in their “The 90% Tax Rate Myth” post:

… So, let’s get more complicated. When there was a 94% top rate in 1944-45, there were so many deductions and exclusions that the taxable income was not comparable to someone’s entire income. First, the top rate started at $200,000, which today is equal to $2,413,059.90 — so the maximum EMTR would apply only to incomes of $2.5 million. But, that’s still taxable income, not earned income.

In 1944, you could deduct business meals, all business travel, all forms of interest payments, and much more. You could even deduct spousal travel expenses on a business trip! (Why travel alone?) Companies could also “loan” or “provide” almost anything to an employee, from an apartment to standard benefits. It was possible to shelter tens of thousands of dollars from taxable income. Three-martini lunches and expense accounts were important realities, skewing tax calculations.

As a result of deductions and exclusions, even the theoretical maximum Real Rate of taxation at 60% in 1944 overstates taxation dramatically. The reality? On earned income, the richest U.S. taxpayers paid close to 40 percent of their earned incomes in taxes in 1944. We simply didn’t count much of the compensation as taxable income.

Allow me to introduce you to Hauser’s Law. Published in 1993 by William Kurt Hauser, a San Francisco investment economist, Hauser’s Law suggests, “No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP.” This theory was published in The Wall Street Journal, March 25, 1993. For a variety of reasons, we seem to balance tax collections within a narrow range.

Since 1945, U.S. federal tax receipts have been fairly constant in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with taxes ranging from 15 to 20 percent of GDP. The graph is as follows:

When people demand higher taxes on the rich, usually phrased as paying a “fair share,” they are ignoring how our tax system has functioned historically. We could create more brackets, to tax the top 1% at a higher rate once again, but the net increase in tax revenues wouldn’t be dramatic. Why not? Because government spending is near historical highs: we are spending at near-WWII levels. It would be nearly impossible to tax enough to pay the federal bills, and doing so would likely crush the economy….

CREATING MORE REVENUE

So, what did JFK’s “the rising tide lifts all the boats,” Reagan’s tax cuts and Bush’s tax cuts show? (See: “John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan Proved Tax Cuts Work“) That lower taxes brings in more revenue.

  • Should tax rates be higher? It’s the million dollar question! Up? Down? No change? Where in the world should taxes go? In election years, the question of tax rates fills the airwaves. In non-election years, the question of tax rates, again, fills the airwaves. So what’s the answer? UCLA Professor of Economics Tim Groseclose explains his research on the topic. Basically, there’s a certain point at which higher tax rates actually reduce the amount of revenue the government collects. What’s that point? When are tax rates too high? Learn a valuable lesson in economics, and public policy.

Which is why either a national sales tax or a flat tax would help fuel our GDP engine more. Thomas Sowell further explains via an excerpt (my scan from my book) of the “conclusion” of Thomas Sowell’s “The World of Numbers.” You can listen to the entirety of chapter 4 read via MIKE READS: Chpt 4(a) | Chpt 4(b).

I will also emphasize AEI’s PARTIAL QUOTE from my expanded quote — it has changed a bit due to my having the revised edition (as usual I add the references for people to further follow the rabbit trail):

THOMAS SOWELL

  • Thomas Sowell, Discrimination and Disparities: Revised and Enlarged Edition (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2019), 110-114; (references), 255-257.

IMPLICATIONS

The emphasis on complex statistical analysis in economics and other fields— however valuable, or even vital, such statistical analysis may be in many cases— can lead to overlooking simple but fundamental questions as to whether the numbers on which these complex analyses are based are in fact measuring what they seem to be measuring, or claim to be measuring. “Income” statistics which lump together annual salaries and multi-year capital gains are just one of many sets of statistics which could stand much closer scrutiny at this fundamental level— especially if laws and policies affecting millions of human beings are to be based on statistical conclusions.

What can be disconcerting, if not painful, are the simple and obvious fallacies that can pass muster in intellectual circles when these fallacies seem to advance the prevailing vision of what is called “social justice.” Among prominent current examples is French economist Thomas Piketty’s large international statistical study of income inequality, which was instantly acclaimed in many countries, despite such obvious and fundamental misstatements as one pointed out by Professor Steven Pinker of Harvard:

Thomas Piketty, whose 2014 bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century became a talisman in the uproar over inequality, wrote, “The poorer half of the population are as poor today as they were in the past, with barely 5 percent of total wealth in 2010, just as in 1910.” But total wealth today is vastly greater than it was in 1910, so if the poorer half own the same proportion, they are far richer, not “as poor.”66

In addition to speaking of percentages as if they represented a given amount of income or wealth over the course of a century, Professor Piketty also made such assertions as that, in income, “the upper decile is truly a world unto itself,”67 when in fact just over half of all Americans are in that upper decile at some point in their lives.68 When Piketty said that the top one percent sit atop the “hierarchy” and “structure of inequality,”69 he again verbally transformed a changing mix of people in particular income brackets into a fixed structure rather than a fluid process, in which most Americans do not remain in the same quintile from one decade to the next.

Such misstatements are different expressions of the same fundamental misconception. As an empirical study of the 400 richest Americans pointed out, Piketty “naively assumes that it’s the same people getting richer.”70 But the majority of the 400 richest Americans have earned their fortunes in their own lifetimes, rather than being heirs of the 400 largest fortunes of the past!71

Such misconceptions are not peculiar to Professor Piketty. Nor are these the only problems with his statistics. But that such simple and obvious misstatements can pass muster in intellectual circles is a problem and a danger that goes far beyond Thomas Piketty.

Whether income differences are measured before taxes or after taxes can change the degree of inequality. If inequalities are measured both after taxes and after government transfers, whether in money or in goods and services, that can reduce the inequality considerably, when high-income people pay higher taxes and low-income people receive most of the government transfers.

Statistics on tax rates themselves can be grossly misleading when changes in tax rates are described in such terms as “a $300 billion increase in taxes” or “a $300 billion decrease in taxes.” In reality, all that the government can do is change the tax rate. How much tax revenue that will produce depends on how people react. There have been times when higher tax rates have produced lower tax revenues, and other times when lower tax rates have produced higher tax revenues,72 as well as times when tax rates and tax revenues moved in the same direction.

During the 1920s, for example, the tax rate on the highest income Americans was reduced from 73 percent to 24 percent— and the income tax revenue rose substantially73— especially income tax revenues received from people in the highest income brackets. Under the older and much higher tax rate, vast sums of money from wealthy investors were sheltered in tax-exempt securities, such as municipal bonds. The total amount of money invested in tax-free securities was estimated to be three times the size of the annual budget of the federal government, and more than half as large as the national debt.74

Such vast and legally untaxable sums of money caught the attention and aroused the ire of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, who declared it “repugnant” in a democracy that there should be “a class in the community which cannot be reached for tax purposes.”75 Failing to get Congress to take steps toward ending tax exemptions for incomes from particular securities,76 Secretary Mellon sought instead to lower the tax rates to the point where it would in fact lead to collection of more tax revenues.

Tax-exempt securities tend not to pay as high a rate of return on investments as other securities, whose earnings are taxed. It made sense for wealthy investors to accept these lower rates of return from tax-exempt securities when the tax rate was 73 percent, but not after the tax rate was lowered to 24 percent. In terms of words on paper, the official tax rate on the highest incomes was cut from 73 percent to 24 percent in the 1920s. But, in terms of events in the real world, the tax rate actually paid— on staggering sums of money previously untouchable in tax shelters— rose from zero percent to 24 percent. This produced huge increases in tax revenues received from high-income people, both absolutely and as a percentage of all income taxes collected.77

This increase in income taxes collected from high-income taxpayers was a result of the plain fact that 24 percent of something is larger than 73 percent of nothing. Tax rate cuts in some later administrations also led to increases in tax revenues!78 For example, a front-page news story in the New York Times of July 9, 2006 said: “An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year.79

However unexpected this increase in tax revenues may have been to the New York Times and others decrying “tax cuts for the rich,” this was precisely the kind of outcome predicted and expected by others in various administrations over the years, who had urged that tax rates be cut, in order to get money disgorged from tax shelters and invested in the market economy. This included people in the Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, where there were similar outcomes.80 But the very possibility that tax rates and tax revenues can move in opposite directions is seldom mentioned in the media— a crucial error of omission.

These are not simply arguments about history. Among the consequences in our own time is that proposals to reduce income tax rates are automatically met with objections to reducing income tax revenues. In the Wall Street Journal of January 31, 2018, for example, economist Alan Blinder objected to tax rate cuts on grounds that “the deficit is already too large!”81

This is in defiance of what the New York Times reported about the unexpected reduction of the deficit by increased tax revenues during the administration of President George W. Bush. It is also in defiance of a record-breaking budget surplus after tax rates were reduced in the 1920s— a surplus large enough to allow about one-fourth of the national debt to be paid off.82 Like many others, Professor Blinder proceeded as if it were axiomatic that tax rate reductions mean tax revenue reductions.

There is, of course, no guarantee of what any given tax rate reduction will lead to in a given set of circumstances. But Professor Blinder’s assertion was not based on any argument that a tax rate reduction under particular current circumstances would lead to a reduction in tax revenues. There was in fact no argument whatever on that point, nor apparently any sense of need to make such an argument. Similarly, a twenty-first century book on President Calvin Coolidge likewise asserted that, as a result of the tax rate cuts during his administration, “the bounty that the rich enjoyed sapped the U.S. Treasury of funds it might have used for other ends.”83 Thus a record-breaking budget surplus under President Coolidge was verbally transmuted into a deprivation of funds, with the turn of a phrase.

All the voluminous and detailed statistics on tax rates and tax revenues published by the Internal Revenue Service, going back more than a hundred years, might as well not exist, as far as many of those with the prevailing social vision are concerned. This is ultimately not a question about history, but about what such heedlessness implies for the present and still more so for the future.

REFERENCES

66 Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (New York: Viking, 2018), p. 99.

67 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014), p. 252.

68 Thomas A. Hirschl and Mark R. Rank, “The Life Course Dynamics of Affluence,” PLoS ONE, January 28, 2015, p. 5.

69 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, p. 278.

70 Robert Arnott, William Bernstein, and Lillian Wu, “The Myth of Dynastic Wealth: The Rich Get Poorer,” Cato Journal, Fall 2015, p. 461.

71 “Spare a Dime,” a special report on the rich, The Economist, April 4, 2009, p. 4.

72 See, for example, Phil Gramm and John F. Early, “The Myth of American Inequality,” Wall Street Journal, August 10, 2018, p. A15. See also Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, fifth edition (New York: Basic Books, 2015), pp. 426-427, 428.

73 Gene Smiley and Richard Keehn, “Federal Personal Income Tax Policy in the 1920s,” Journal ofEconomic History, Vol. 55, No. 2 (June 1995), p. 286; Benjamin G. Rader, “Federal Taxation in the 1920s,” The Historian, Vol. 33, No. 3 (May 1971), p. 432; Burton W. Fulsom, Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America, sixth edition (Herndon, Virginia: Young America’s Foundation, 2010), pp. 108, 115, 116.

74 Burton W. Fulsom, Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons, sixth edition, p. 109.

75 Andrew W. Mellon, Taxation: The People’s Business (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1924), p. 170.

76 Gene Smiley and Richard Keehn, “Federal Personal Income Tax Policy in the 1920s,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. 2 (June 1995), p. 289.

77 Burton W. Fulsom, Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons, sixth edition, p. 116. The share of income tax revenues paid by people with incomes up to $50,000 a year fell, and the share of income tax revenues paid by people with incomes of $100,000 and up increased. At the extremes, taxpayers in the lowest income bracket paid 13 percent of all income tax revenues in 1921, but less than half of one percent of all income taxes in 1929, while taxpayers with incomes of a million dollars a year and up saw their share of income taxes paid rise from less than 5 percent to just over 19 percent. Gene Smiley and Richard Keehn, “Federal Personal Income Tax Policy in the 1920s,”Journal ofEconomic Histoy, Vol. 55, No. 2 (June 1995), p. 295; Benjamin G. Rader, “Federal Taxation in the 1920s,” The Historian, Vol. 33, No. 3 (May 1971), pp. 432-434.

78 Alan Reynolds, “Why 70% Tax Rates Won’t Work,” Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2011, p. A19; Stephen Moore, “Real Tax Cuts Have Curves,” Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2005, p. A13. Professor Joseph E. Stiglitz argued that the tax rate cuts during the Reagan administration failed: “In fact, Reagan had promised that the incentive effects of his tax cuts would be so powerful that tax revenues would increase. And yet, the only thing that increased was the deficit.” Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012), p. 89. However, the tax revenues collected by the federal government during every year of the Reagan administration exceeded the tax revenues collected in any previous administration in the history of the country. Economic Report of the President: 2018 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2018), p. 552; U. S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Part 2, pp. 1104-1105. The deficit reflected the fact that there is no amount of money that Congress cannot outspend.

79 Edmund L. Andrews, “Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Curbs U.S. Deficit,” New York Times, July 9, 2006, p. Al.

80 James Gwartney and Richard Stroup, “Tax Cuts: Who Shoulders the Burden?” Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Economic Review, March 1982, pp. 19-27; Benjamin G. Rader, “Federal Taxation in the 1920s: A Re-examination,” Historian, Vol. 33, No. 3, p. 432; Burton W. Folsom, Jr., The Myth of the Robber Barons, sixth edition, p. 116; Robert L. Bartley, The Seven Fat Years: And How to Do It Again (New York: The Free Press, 1992), pp. 71-74; Alan Reynolds, ‘Why 70% Tax Rates Won’t Work,” Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2011, p. A19; Stephen Moore, “Real Tax Cuts Have Curves,” Wall Street Journal, June 13, 2005, p. A13; Economic Report of the President: 2017 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2017), p. 586. See also United States Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income 1920-1929 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1922-1932).

81 Alan S. Blinder, “Why Now Is the Wrong Time to Increase the Deficit,” Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2018, p. A15.

82 The national debt, which was a little over $24 billion in 1920— the last year of President Woodrow Wilson’s administration— was reduced to less than $18 billion in 1928, the last year of President Calvin Coolidge’s administration. U. S. Bureau of the Census, _Historical Statistics ofthe United States, Part 2, p.1104. See also David Greenberg, Calvin Coolidge (New York: Times Books, 2006), p. 67.

83 David Greenberg, Calvin Coolidge, p. 72.

CONVERSATION

 

Thomas Sowell DEBUNKS the Legacy of Slavery Argument

Published by Papa Giorgio

In this video Thomas Sowell quashes the legacy of slavery argument that liberals use to explain disparities between blacks and whites in the United States. He also shares his thoughts on giving reparations for descendants of slaves.

(Check out the 22 books Thomas Sowell highly recommends)

Slavery’s Twist of Fate (Larry Elder and Roger D. McGrath)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Some amazing discussion about the beginnings of slavery, as well as more information on indentured servitude and the first legal slave owner:

“Slavery’s Ironic Twist of Fate,” By Roger D. McGrath

…Instrumental in establishing slavery in Virginia was an African slave, later known as Anthony Johnson, who was sold in Jamestown as an indentured servant in 1621 to a tobacco farmer with the surname of Bennet. By that time, tobacco had become the highly profitable cash crop of the colony and tobacco farms had begun filling up the hinterland of Jamestown.  Johnson was one of the few on the Bennet farm who survived the Massacre of 1622, a surprise Indian attack on the farms surrounding Jamestown that left 347 colonists dead and mutilated. Johnson’s luck held, because the next year the Bennet farm had its first female indentured servant, an African called Mary, whom he married.

By the 1630s, Johnson was free of his indenture and, as was customary, received 50 acres of farmland from the colonial government. Soon he was selling crops of tobacco and importing indentured servants himself. For every servant he brought to Virginia he received 50 acres of land. By 1651, Johnson farmed 250 acres of land and had five indentured servants, four of them white and one black, a man named John Casor.

Claiming Johnson had kept him in servitude long beyond any term of indenture, Casor went to work for a neighboring farmer, Robert Parker. With Parker championing Casor’s cause the dispute went into the courts in 1654. Johnson argued that Casor had been sold in Africa as a slave and Johnson had bought him without Casor having signed a contract of indenture. Therefore, said Johnson, Casor was simply his property.

At first, the court rejected Johnson’s precedent-setting argument but, after an appeal in 1655 declared in Johnson’s favor, Casor was Johnson’s property and would remain so until Johnson sold him or freed him. There had been an indentured servant in Virginia sentenced to lifetime servitude as a punishment for a crime in 1641, but it was the Casor case that formally established the legal precedent for slavery. It is one of the ironies of history that a black African, Anthony Johnson, could be called the Father of American Slavery.

In 1661, the Virginia House of Burgesses, recognizing the Casor decision, enacted a statute that said any free person—white, black, or Indian—could own servants for life. This didn’t mean much to Indians who had practiced slavery for centuries anyway, but it did mean that the Indian tribes of the southeast would eventually own thousands of black slaves…..

Some Turkey Sized Myths About Thanksgiving and America

Published by Papa Giorgio

One should see my stuff on the topics as well:

  1. (Editor’s note: A recent federal bill memorializing as a National Historic Trail what has come to be known as the Cherokee Indian Trail of Tears is based on false history, argues William R. Higginbotham. In this article, the Texas-based writer delves into the historic record and concludes that about 840 Indians not the 4,000 figure commonly accepted died in the 1837-38 trek west; that the government-financed march was conducted by the Indians themselves; and that the phrase “Trail of Tears” was a label that was added 70 years later under questionable circumstances.) The problem with some of our accounts of history is that they have been manipulated to fit conclusions not borne out by facts. Nothing could be more intellectually dishonest. This is about a vivid case in point.

Happens every Thanksgiving, doesn’t? Some bleeding heart liberal you’re “related to” gets on their moral high Crazy Horse and lectures about how horribly rotten the white man was to the Native Americans. Which is why this year we’re throwing in the tomahawk. Time to scalp the facts about the Indians. Feathers not dots….

MYTH: THE NATIVE AMERICANS WERE A PEACEFUL CULTURE TO WHOM THE CONCEPT OF WAR WAS FOREIGN

FACT: MANY WERE BRUTAL, CONQUERING ***HOLES

Native Americans warred with each other since, forever. Sometimes it was over hunting or farming grounds, sometimes revenge, sometimes to steal, sometimes to kill. I don’t say this to demonize them, they were no different than any other regressive, Neolithic cultures on other continents.

But the truth is that the only way settlers were able to conquer this land was through the help of Native Americans who teamed up with them to settle the score with the other, more assholish tribes. You think Cortes was able to conquer with only 500 Conquisadors. Course not, it took 50,000 ANGRY allied Native Americans who’d had it up to here with being enslaved and forced to carry gold for the other, Native Aztecs.

Some of of the Indian tribes were the most brutal in existence.

They practiced enslavement, rape, cannibalism, would sometimes target women and children, tribes like the Commanchees would butcher babies and roast people alive… and by the way, where do you think we LEARNED scalping?

MYTH: NATIVE AMERICANS WERE AN ADVANCED SOCIETY

TRUTH: NOT EVEN CLOSE

Smell that? It’s your sacred cow being torched. After I scalped her, of course. Unlike Rome, Greece, China, or pretty much any great empire which had already existed at that time, the Native Americans didn’t have advanced plumbing, transportation, mathematics or really… anything that led to the iphone on which you’re currently watching this. That whole beautiful “horseback Indian” culture you read about? It’s a lie because they hadn’t even domesticated horses. Not only that, but they didn’t even use the WHEEL. No really. 1400 AD… no wheel.

Even more reason that, when you’re that far behind, the clash of civilizations is going to be THAT much more drastic when the new wheel-using world catches up to you.

MYTH: THE SETTLERS DELIBERATELY INFECTED NATIVES WITH SMALLPOX BLANKETS TO WHIPE THEM OUT

TRUTH: ONLY IDIOTS COULD POSSIBLY BELIEVE THIS

Think about it. You really believe Europeans waged microbial, biological warfare… long before discovery, mass acceptance or even close to an understanding of advanced germ theory?

So it’s not true. You can look forever for historical accounts of mass smallpox blankets being pajamagrammed to the peaceful Indians, but you won’t find them.  But there is SOME truth to the myth, which brings us to our final point.

MYTH: EUROPEANS COMMITTED MASS GENOCIDE. KILLING EVERY NATIVE AMERICAN FOR SPORT

TRUTH: NOT EVEN CLOSE

However, it is estimated that at high as 95% of pre-Columbian Native Americans were in fact killed off by disease, WHY? Because Europeans introduced new diseases to which the Native Americans hadn’t developed an immunity not only with THEMSELVES but now contact with animals like again HORSES which Native Americans hadn’t domesticated. Again, because they were such an archaic, unadvanced society.

Sure there were plenty of bloody, horrendous, unimaginable battles that occurred, and generally when it comes to neoloithic tribes and more advances settlers, the guys with the boom-boom sticks win. This isn’t exclusive to America or all that uncommon.

But Europeans were not hellbent on wiping out Native Americans, they were actually encouraged to bring the people into European culture and convert them to Christianity. Plus, inter-marrying was incredibly common. How else do you explain Johnny Depp, Angalina Jolie, Kid Cudi and even imaginary Elizabeth Warren claiming to be 1/16th Cherokee?

Killing people is bad. But so is milking, misleading and guilting all future generations for crimes they didn’t commit. Yep, Europeans conquered the Native Americans, created a Constitutional Republic, and advanced in mere centuries what Natives couldn’t do for thousands of years here on the plot of land that is America. So close this smartphone window, go enjoy your turkey and tell your social justice warrior cousin at the table to shut that mustached, single-origin-coffee drinking-hole. Or just… hand him a smallpox napkin.

SOURCES

Read more: http://louderwithcrowder.com/thanksgiving-truth-about-native-americans/#ixzz3sigd2v9t
Follow us: @scrowder on Twitter | stevencrowderofficial on Facebook

BONUS ARTICLES:

  • Our Rebel Thanksgiving (AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE)
  • A Typical US Worker Will Earn Enough This Morning to Pay for a Thanksgiving Banquet (FEE)
  • Thanksgiving and America (IMPRIMIS)
  • The other capitalist Thanksgiving story: How trade saved the Pilgrims, and the U.S. (ACTON INSTITUTE)

Corey Booker’s Trump Card Is A Race-Card (ACB/BDP/EPMD Edition)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Firstly, Amy Coney Barrett’s simple “yes” reminded me of a song from my younger years: “Boogie Down Productions – My Philosophy”, so I mixed it in a couple of times.

This upload is really in edition to the CRAZY notion by Democrats that Trump has never condemned neo-NAZIs or white supremacists. Here are my other editions of this lie:

MORE

The video I used for Cory Booker is via BREITBART’s YouTube. The first montage of Trump condemning over the years racism/David Duke/white supremacy/neo-NAZIs is with a hat-tip to PATRIOT POST. And the second montage (w/music) is via Adrian Norman (TWITTER). I end with an older mix I did for “The Sage” using EPMD’s “Strictly Business”.

Trump Should Denouncing the KKK, White Supremacists, and the Like

Published by Papa Giorgio

Some Supercuts and other videos/graphics showing the media is ravenous. See my post with Democrats lying about this event, HERE

1) SUPERCUT! Trump Condemns White Supremacy, Racism, and Hate

  • Joe Biden has never condemned the KKK but did praise a former KKK Exalted Cyclops as his “mentor”

2) How many times does President Trump need to denounce white supremacy for the media to actually listen?

3) 

A Caller Triggers Larry Elder’s “Beast Mode”

Published by Papa Giorgio

A caller, while polite, was still trying to “trap” Larry Elder, but he was having none of it. In this long screed, Larry Elder travels through facts and reason to school the caller about the non-existence of “Systematic Racism.” Buckle up — it is Larry at his best!

BTW, Larry mentions in passing this story of bigotry via an MSNBC host:

  • “MSNBC Guest Cheryl Dorsey on Black Kentucky AG: ‘He’s Skin Folk But He Is Not Kinfolk'” (REAL CLEAR POLITICS)
  • “CNN guest Cheryl Dorsey slams Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron: ‘He is not kinfolk'” (WASHINGTON TIMES)

1619 Project Author Changes Foundational Claim

Published by Papa Giorgio

Armstrong and Getty go over the recent change via the New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones. Here is a quote from the WORLD SOCIALIST WEBSITE’S article: “The New York Times and Nikole Hannah-Jones abandon key claims of the 1619 Project“:

…It is not entirely clear when the Times deleted its “true founding” claim, but an examination of old cached versions of the 1619 Project text indicates that it probably took place on December 18, 2019.

These deletions are not mere wording changes. The “true founding” claim was the core element of the Project’s assertion that all of American history is rooted in and defined by white racial hatred of blacks….

Another article worth a read is this one

  • 1619 Project Author Nikole Hannah-Jones Now Says She Never Implied That Year Was America’s True Founding (REASON-ORG)