What does a president do when inflation surges under his watch, gas prices are out of control, and his signature legislation has failed miserably ?
Pivot back to scapegoating the rich, apparently.
At least, that’s President Joe Biden’s latest tactic. On Monday, Biden proposed a new “minimum tax” on billionaires. “For too long, our tax code has rewarded wealth, not work, and contributed to growing income and wealth inequality in America,” Biden said in a statement. “Under current law, when an American worker earns a dollar of wages, that dollar is taxed as they earn it. But when a billionaire earns income because their investments increase in value, that gain is too often never taxed at all.”
A White House fact sheet says this tax would apply to those worth over $100 million and force them to pay a minimum tax rate of 20%. It would do this by taxing unrealized capital gains, aka the nominal growth in value of stock investments that haven’t been sold off yet. There is already a tax on capital gains that the wealthy pay when they cash out their stock options. However, Biden’s tax proposal is seemingly aimed at the growth in “unrealized” investments held by many billionaires, who currently do not have to pay taxes until they cash it out.
At first glance, this might seem like a sensible way of cracking down on rich people (legally) evading taxes.
It is not.
Taxing unrealized gains is both fundamentally unfair and economically absurd. “The Biden tax plan is crackers,” Cato Institute economist Chris Edwards said. “Unrealized gain is not income. It represents the expectation of future income, which would be taxed in the future under a well-designed tax system. Often, expected future income doesn’t materialize and asset values drop.”
Moreover, a “capital gain” is just a fancy way of saying “value gain on a productive investment.” It’s simple Economics 101 that when you tax something, you get less of it. Do we really want the tax code to (further) discourage productive investments?
IT’S IRONIC THAT THIS PIECE IN THE NATION claiming implausibly that interracial marriage is “under attack” from conservatives is illustrated with a picture of Clarence and Ginni Thomas, whose marriage has been under unrelenting attack from leftists.
LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Inside NBC News’ Inside Look at ‘Ghost Guns’ and the Laws They Broke in the Process. “Our friends at Ammoland Shooting Sports News have done incredible work exposing the crimes – actual crimes – NBC correspondent Vaughn Hillyard and his crew committed while producing the liberal network’s latest hit-piece on homemade firearms. I was asked to take a look at the story from a different perspective. What I found was simply unbelievable – the worst news story focused on firearms ever produced for a network news program.”
Federal health officials have hotly debated the way forward, with some strongly in favor of a second booster now and others skeptical. But they have apparently coalesced around a plan to give everyone aged 50 and up the option of an additional shot, in case infections surge again before the fall. In the fall, officials say, Americans of all ages, including anyone who gets a booster this spring, should get another shot.
And here is the kicker: advisors not needed.
Unlike with the first round of regulatory decisions on booster shots, no meetings of the advisory committees of either the FDA or the CDC are planned ahead of the decision on second boosters.
Without the FDA advisory committee, without any data presented, they argue that if you are 50 and over, you need a 4th dose now, and a 5th dose in the fall! The rest of us need our 4th dose in the fall. WTF?
Let me make a few points:
The White House is operating at the lowest level of evidence. Just consider the 5th dose recommendation. Not only are there no randomized data, there is not even flawed observational data to draw from. The White House will soon approve a 5th, 6th, 7th dose. Albert Bourla, not Bob Califf, is now the FDA commissioner.
The age cutoff of 50 is based on what? Likely, it is invented. Practically, it means we will again neglect the very old 80++, and focus on healthy, rich 50-year olds. What evidence is there that a 50-year old who had 3 doses and might have had Omicron benefits from the 4th?
We are still talking about the original Wuhan strain coronavirus vaccine. Sad!
If Trump had done this, there would be revolt. Academics would be furious if Trump pressured Gruber and Krause to approve a 3rd dose, so much so that they resigned, and doctors would be upset that without FDA ad-com, the White House is telling society how many boosters they need of the old, ancestral mRNA.
They are skipping the ad-com because they know many smart people will disagree with them, and consider their plan reckless, and lacking data. These people will give great quotes. Skipping the ad-com is not what we do in a democratic, free, and transparent society.
The White House is not concerned first and foremost with your health. They have an election this fall. They need numbers to be low. Even if the 4th dose of the vaccine is disputed, if it helps their political fortunes, or at least they think so, it is their incentive to push it. This is why we need independent regulators to make these calls.
There is no one left to resign at FDA.
After the administration ends, I wonder how many officials who made this call will work for, consult for, or join the board of Pfizer and Moderna. The revolving door further undermines public confidence.
In short, the White House is not your doctor, yet they have decided they will act as such. This is a dangerous precedent. The American people will soon be participating in an uncontrolled clinical trial of 4th and 5th doses, possibly with coercive mandates. Not having an advisory committee is a threat to public health. This decision does not bode well.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: ‘Mega Emergency’ Unfolds For World’s Top Coffee Growers As Fertilizer Costs Spike. “Coffee farmers in Brazil, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, some of the largest coffee-producing countries in the world, are having trouble affording high fertilizer costs. Some farmers are substituting organic waste as a low-cost solution to nitrogen, phosphorous, and potash fertilizers. The move, however, will result in significantly reduced harvests of the bean.”
If the coffee runs out there’s going to be serious trouble.
Rebel News — Olivia Newton John Cancer Center denies unvaccinated family members from visiting their dying father because of ‘Australian national policy.’
FORMER NYTIMES SCIENCE WRITER EXPOSES THE CON: Nicholas Wade strikes again, this time exposing for the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal the reasons why so many science “reporters” are so credulous about the people they cover. Essentially, the explanation is that they view scientists as demi-gods:
“Why are science writers so little able to report objectively on the origin of the virus? Innocent of most journalists’ skepticism about human motives, science writers regard scientists, their authoritative sources, as too Olympian ever to be moved by trivial matters of self-interest.
“Their daily job is to relay claims of impressive new discoveries, such as advances toward curing cancer or making paralyzed rats walk. Most of these claims come to nothing—research is not an efficient process—but science writers and scientists alike benefit from creating a stream of pleasant illusions. The journalists get their stories, while media coverage helps researchers attract government grants.”
Mid-way between Iceland and Scotland, the Faroe Islands are a country of approximately 50,000 people. The Faroe Islands are part of the kingdom of Denmark, but self-governing for the most part. The Faroese are of Scandinavian and Celtic descent and speak their own language which is very close to Icelandic.
For an Icelander, reading Faroese is relatively easy, but the pronunciation is very different. The seafood industry is by far the largest sector in the Faroe Islands. The Faroese are a close-knit community, proud of their history and traditions, famous for their ring dance, locally called Faroese dance (Föröyskur dansur), which has lived on ever since the Middle Ages, while mostly disappearing in the rest of Europe.
The approach taken by the Faroese authorities at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was starkly different from that of most neighbouring countries. The Government did not issue any lockdown mandates, only recommendations, similar to the approach Sweden took. One of the most vocal opponents of COVID-19 restrictions in the Faroe Islands is musician and events planner Jón Tyril. Jón wrote to several ministers, members of the Faroese parliament and others in the political establishment at the outset. “I urged them to not adopt the same ‘epidemic law’ that Denmark had put in place, and which gave extended powers to the ministry of health and the police, to avoid mandates and forced restrictions, but rather to build on cooperation and trust,” Jón says.
This path of recommendations became the route they took.
Government offices and some public services were closed for a while and schools were closed for a few weeks at the start of the pandemic only. After that they remained open, even despite rising pressure for school closures towards the end of 2021. “There was strong pressure on closing schools a week early before last Christmas, but I did not agree to this,” Minister for Education Dr. Jenis Av Rana said in a recent interview with Icelandic online newspaper Frettin.
“It is important for children to keep their freedom and lead a normal life, this is important for their development and well-being. There was a heated debate on this amongst the Cabinet members. At first I encountered strong opposition, but in the end we agreed on this,” the Minister said. Dr. Rana, who is also the Minister of Foreign Affairs, along with Education and Culture, decided not to get vaccinated against COVID-19. A practising medical doctor for 35 years, the Minister said using vaccination to counter the spread of coronaviruses is futile. Events have clearly proved him right.
Frettin also interviewed Kaj Leo Holm Johannesen, former Prime Minister and currently Minister for Healthcare. The Minister said it was still not clear if people registered as dead from COVID-19 actually died from the disease or from other causes. “We cannot claim anyone has died from Covid, all we know is that people have died diagnosed with Covid. An autopsy is needed to verify the cause,“ the Minister told Frettin reporters.
During the initial lockdown in 2020 and into the summer, care homes and hospitals were totally closed to visitors. The decision to open up was made by the Heilsuverkid, the Faroese version of the NHS, and Kommunufelagid, which is the municipalities association together with the National Council on Ethics.
The policy statement claims the level of isolation resulting from continued closures was far too harmful to be justifiable. Instead people were urged to take the utmost precautions when visiting. As in most other countries, the Faroese epidemic committee pushed for mask mandates, but unlike most other countries the Government decided against them.
Stricter lockdowns in Iceland made no difference
It is instructive to compare the development of the COVID-19 pandemic during its first year (before vaccines were available) in the Faroe Islands and neighbouring Iceland, another tiny nation, very similar in terms of culture and living standards. While Iceland implemented strict measures (despite recent claims to the contrary), closed schools, intermittently closed bars and restaurants and hairdressers and other personal service businesses, and put strict limits on gatherings, the spread of infections remained largely the same in the two countries throughout those first 12 months.
Infections during the first year of COVID-19 in the Faroe Islands and Iceland (OWID)
By the end of February 2021, confirmed cases in the Faroe Islands were just under 14,000 per million and deaths were at 20 per million. In comparison, Iceland had 16,000 cases and 80 deaths per million during the first year of the pandemic.
In Iceland, the Government Ministers took pride in delegating all decisions to the Chief Epidemiologist, the Head of the Directorate of Health and a police officer, who formed a committee of three, “the troika”, which practically dictated the response to the pandemic. Until very recently, the Minister for Healthcare and the Government simply rubber-stamped their decisions every time.
Judging from discussions with locals and recent interviews with Faroese politicians, it looks as if a key differentiator between the Faroese approach and that taken by most other countries is that in the Faroe Islands it was the Government that took direct responsibility for decisions and often went against the recommendations of the epidemic committee.
Decisions were based on broader considerations than just the number of infections. It also looks as if they were fact-based to a larger extent than elsewhere. Schools were kept open, both because of the importance of avoiding disruption of children‘s education and also based on the low risk to children and low infection rates among mostly asymptomatic children. Mask mandates were never introduced, as the authorities never saw any solid evidence masks would limit transmission. “Masks do not prevent infections,“ Dr. Rana told Frettin‘s reporters. “They are not designed for this, but to protect physicians and patients in the operating room,” he said.
It was only in late 2021, with a large surge in cases and an outbreak at a care home that suddenly drove up deaths, that the Government bowed to public pressure to impose somewhat stronger restrictions. In November, a Covid-pass (vaccine passport) was allowed, but not mandated, only to be discontinued again about a month later. “This was not a good move,” Jón Tyril says. “In a small community like ours, refusing friends and family members entry to establishments can easily ruin social bonds.” A petition against the pass was started immediately and had reached 1,500 signatures when the measure was abolished.
All Covid recommendations and restrictions were lifted in the Faroe Islands at the end of February 2022, despite a strong rise in cases during the previous weeks.
The success of the Faroese approach shows how a pandemic can be dealt with without imposing strict lockdowns and mandates. The comparison between the Faroe Islands and Iceland strongly indicates the futility of mandatory lockdowns. Avoiding mandates is also likely to have helped avoid the friction seen in many other countries.
In the words of Jón Tyril:
“I think that we had less of a divide in the public than many other nations. We did not have pro- and anti-maskers, since there were no mask mandates. We did have a certain level of pro- and anti-vax divide, but the Government never went in and talked down to those who chose not to get vaxed, as we saw in other countries like Denmark, France, Italy, Canada. In fact, they kept saying that this was voluntary and nobody should feel forced to take the vax. So, the pandemic was divisive, especially because we are a very closely knit society, but my impression is that we were not nearly as divided as countries with mandates, long standing Covid passes and hard rhetoric from the leaders.”
The Faroese authorities never fell prey to the irrational fear and scare tactics that unfortunately prevailed for the most part in the rest of the world. Instead, they showed the self-confidence, the respect for fact-based decision-making and consideration of the broader picture needed when confronted with an acute situation.
Finally, what the Faroese approach shows us is how important it is that elected representatives take direct responsibility for all decisions, instead of delegating them to officials without any democratic accountability. This might in fact be the most important lesson we can learn from the tiny Faroese nation.
As the president of the Indian National Congress once said of Gandhi, “It costs a lot of money to keep this man in poverty.”
And that’s part of the problem, as one wag observed, further up the coast. “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s,” SF Weekly noted a decade ago, stumbling into the Fox Butterfield effect.
‘TVA Nuclear Plant’ Photo courtesy of Tennessee Valley Authority.
On January 19, Senator Bob Rankin (R-District 8) and Representative Hugh McKean (R-District 51) introduced Senate Bill 22-073, “Alternative Energy Sources,” in the Colorado General Assembly. And after its introduction, SB22-073 moved to the senate’s State, Veterans and Military Affairs committee.
If it’d passed, SB22-073 would’ve required the Office of Economic Development to look at the possibility of establishing small modular nuclear reactors as a carbon-free energy source for Colorado. But apparently, nuclear energy isn’t the right kind of green energy for Colorado Democrats, and the bill failed on a party-line committee vote. Here’s why this is bad for Colorado.
Green Energy and Nuclear Power
Over the past year, The Maverick Observer has taken an in-depth look at Governor Polis’ plan to move Colorado to 100 percent renewable energy by 2040 and how, for Polis, this involves modernizing the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to include more wind and solar.
However, what we’ve discovered is that neither wind nor solar are reliable sources of energy. Consequently, the energy produced from wind and solar must be stored in batteries and supplemented with natural gas and coal.
The problem is that coal produces a mean carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of 948.9 g CO2eq/kWh, and natural gas produces 446.1 g CO2eq/kWh. This is significant in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
And while initially onshore wind power only generates 14.4 g CO2eq/kWh, and photovoltaic power (solar panels) generates 50.9 g CO2eq/kWh, once you add storing energy in utility-scale lithium-ion batteries, emissions increase between 70 g CO2-eq/kWh and 300 g CO2-eq/kWh GHG. In other words, once you store wind or solar energy, it becomes significantly less “green.”
On the other hand, nuclear energy produces no GHG emissions during operation and throughout its life cycle, produces approximately 12 g CO2eq/kWh, according to the World Nuclear Association. Simply put, nuclear is as “green” as wind. More importantly, nuclear energy is reliable and deployable on a large scale.
‘CO2eq/kWh’ Chart courtesy of onlinecharttool.com.
Consider France, for example. Seventy percent of France’s energy comes from nuclear, which has resulted in very low levels of carbon dioxide emissions per capita from electricity generation. Further, France’s energy costs are below average, and France is energy independent.
Conversely, consider Germany. Germany has tried moving away from nuclear energy (closed all but three of its nuclear plants) and to wind and solar. However, unfavorable weather conditions and stagnating capacity mean Germany doesn’t have enough power for its country. As a result, Germany now relies on Russian natural gas and coal. Current world events have proven that relying on Russia for anything is a bad idea.
‘Nuclear Forensics’ Photo courtesy of Dean Calma IAEA.
No to Scientific Studies
Moving to 100 percent renewable energy is a worthy goal, but wind and solar aren’t currently capable of fully supplying Colorado’s energy needs. On the other hand, nuclear power is, and that’s exactly why Rankin and McKean introduced SB22-073.
Indeed, through SB22-073, Rankin and McKean hoped to appropriate $500,000 from the general fund for a study on the feasibility of using small modular nuclear reactors in Colorado. Specifically, this study would’ve looked at current state laws and regulations related to small nuclear reactors, the economic feasibility of replacing carbon-based (coal and natural gas) energy sources with nuclear reactors, and the safety and waste streams that result from small nuclear reactors.
After the study concluded in July 2024, a report would’ve gone to the committees that have jurisdiction over energy matters in the Senate and House of Representatives.
In other words, Rankin and McKean wanted to undertake a scientific and economic study into the positives and negatives of nuclear power in Colorado and then use the results of that study to inform green energy initiatives in the future. If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “that sounds reasonable,” you’re not alone in that opinion. But, Democrats Jaquez Lewis, Coleman, and Gonzales didn’t hold the same view and, on a party-line vote on Feb. 17, successfully moved to postpone SB22-073 indefinitely.
The Future of Green Energy in Colorado
Colorado Democrats are quick to assert that they are the party of science and the environment regarding green energy initiatives. However, February’s vote proves otherwise. Instead of allowing a study into the possibility of nuclear power in Colorado, lawmakers killed SB22-073 because it’s not the “right” kind of green energy. Given the limitations of wind and solar, this is shortsighted and bad for the environment.
When she arrived at her neighbor’s house and found him unconscious and turning blue, Brianna Colquitt knew what to do.
While someone called 911, Colquitt, then a high school senior in Carrollton, Georgia, started CPR. She kept it up until emergency responders arrived. Her training, which she’d received in a high school health class the year before, had prepared her to act, she said. “Everything just clicked.”
But it didn’t prepare her for everything that followed. First came the news that her neighbor didn’t make it. Then came the wondering: Had she done all she could? Even now, more than three years later, “the memories are very vivid, because it was a traumatic experience,” Colquitt said.
The need to understand such experiences is part of what inspired a new report from the American Heart Association about lay responders and CPR.
“We’ve trained people for decades to do bystander CPR, but we’ve never actually gone back and paid attention to supporting them after we call them to action,” said Katie Dainty, who led the writing committee for the scientific statement published Monday in the AHA journal Circulation.
When we came upon that awful head-on collision on Interstate 81 a few years back, I ran up to the overturned pickup with my bleed-control/trauma kit and was super-relieved to see an obviously more qualified person (he turned out to be a former military medic) with a friend already looking after the guy. He didn’t make it — it was a 100 mph head-on, at least that’s how fast they said he was going — and the medic told me later he knew as soon as he got there the guy wasn’t going to make it, but he had to try. If it had just been me, I would have tried, too, but I would have wondered if my lack of experience made a difference.
And the sad fact is that when you’re trying to save someone with CPR or a tourniquet, there’s a really good chance they won’t make it, so lots of people will feel that way. In the last refresher class Helen and I did, they spent a couple of minutes saying it’s better to try and fail than not to try at all, but still.
It all started on Monday night when Hannah-Jones tweeted (and later deleted): “Tipping is a legacy of slavery and if it’s not optional then it shouldn’t be a tip but simply included in the bill. Have you ever stopped to think why we tip, like why tipping is a practice in the US and almost nowhere else?”
Well, no, actually, I haven’t. There are all sorts of customs and cultural habits that have their roots in long-forgotten beliefs and practices. But Hannah-Jones’ claim that “tipping is a legacy of slavery” strains credulity. Did slave owners tip their slaves?
After getting some pushback for her nonsense, Hannah-Jones hastened to assure the world that she was a big tipper: “Are y’all reading what I am writing or nah? I said I tip. I tip well. I tip almost always. But I object to the idea that I am obligated to tip no matter how I am treated. Nope. And you can’t get more offended at me than employers that pay less-than-minimum wage.” As the firestorm continued, she grew weary of the topic, concluding with: “I’ve said what I have to say about this. I have been utterly disrespected at restaurants. Ignored. Rudeness. Nope.”
But it wasn’t just because Hannah-Jones has unfortunately stumbled upon racist restaurants where she was “utterly disrespected” that she is against tipping. It is also because she is a Marxist. During the controversy her initial tipping tweet created, she asked Touré, who had rejected the idea that one should tip based on the quality of service: “What do you think is the purpose of tipping, Toure? Why does it exist?” Another Twitter user answered: “to transfer labor costs from the business to the consumer.” To that, Hannah-Jones replied: “Bingo.”
Earlier: “Tipping is racist. That’s the argument being forwarded by some liberal activists and politicians as a way of stigmatizing laws that exempt certain professions, mainly restaurant workers, from the federal minimum wage. However, there is little historical evidence for the argument.”
Flashback: “Ah, well. Let’s just chalk it all up to nuance. Lefties want a free reign to speak in absurdities, but also want us to go along with their calling verbal mulligans when their absurdities become punchlines.”
Connor Ericsson, 25, posted videos on his Instagram page this week, showing him and his friends zipping through the sand on their bikes, then helping skateboarders shovel out the sand “so they could do some social shredding.”
“I think it’s a big joke, these kids are cooped up inside their house and just want to go out and have some fun,” Ericsson told KUSI News.
That would only be true under the scenario where their definition of dis or mis information is any information which disagrees with the democrat party narrative.
Bret: … [W]hat really bothered me was the not-so-subtle media effort to bury the email story right before the election as some kind of “Russian disinformation” campaign. If someone had discovered that, say, Ivanka Trump had left a laptop at a repair shop stuffed with emails about 10 percent being held “for the big guy”— to use a reference that appears to be to Joe Biden, which comes from one of the emails found on Hunter’s computer — would the story have been treated with kid gloves?
Her non-reply reply: “Well, Ivanka is a much tidier person.”
Complete details here… Vertical dive caught on video… The last seconds of China Eastern Airlines MU5735 were caught on a CCTV camera. Shows that it was in a near vertical dive. pic.twitter.com/0ZaBcJqLR7 — Oliver Alexander (@OAlexanderDK) March 21, 2022 #BREAKING The crash of the #ChinaEasternAirlines flight #MU5735 has lead […]
A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION: Virginia School Covered Up Sexual Assault That Left Victim Hospitalized. “School boards, accustomed to operating without much democratic input and to winning elections with minuscule turnout, are reacting to the sudden spotlight by covering up the consequences of their decisions and hiding crucial information from parents, even when it concerns their children’s safety. In Loudoun County, Va., the district’s cover-up of a sexual assault in a school bathroom became a national story last year and arguably affected the state’s gubernatorial election. Now, a similar case is coming to light.”
If you are really industrious, you can dig 20 pages into the A section of today’s New York Times and find a 1,700-word news story by three of its top reporters, relating that the Justice Department’s investigation of President Biden’s son, Hunter, is not merely a tax-matter. Turns out that prosecutors are probing his penchant for cashing in on his father’s political influence, through payments by overseas entities for which he did not register as a foreign agent.
Well, I’ll be damned!
Even better, if you wade 23 paragraphs into the story, you will learn that prosecutors are examining emails between Biden and his business associates that come from “a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. [Hunter] Biden in a Delaware repair shop.”
You don’t say.
Funny how this keeps happening at the Times whenever there is bad news involving a prominent Democrat. As Byron York wrote on September 24th, 2008:
Today is a red-letter day for the New York Times. For the first time, the paper has reported in its news section that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright once uttered the phrase “God damn America.” Wright’s comments were widely reported and widely discussed beginning with an ABC News report six months ago. Barack Obama even had to give a much-publicized speech because of those words, and others. But the newspaper of record has never seen fit to publish Wright’s quote in its news pages. Until today.
The Times’ article on Cuomo preceded his defenestration by New York’s attorney general. It will be curious to see what becomes of their reporting on Hunter.
UPDATE: On his Facebook page, Michael Walsh writes, “It’s important for you civilians to know how to read the secret messages encoded in Pravda’s ‘news’ stories. Its admission that — surprise!! — the Hunter Biden laptop stories were all, of course, true is a signal to Dems that the Big Guy is now expendable.”
