Category: Biden/Harris

Dr. Joe Biden, M.D., Ph.D., has read all of the papers and looked at the data and made a science-informed decision to order anyone who wants to keep working in a Medicare/Medicaid-funded health care business (i.e., everyone in American health care) to get vaccinated against the coronavirus version that existed in December 2019. Unless they want to transition to the disability lifestyle (“my long COVID is acting up”), employees at companies with at least 100 employees will also have to get vaccinated against this two-year-old virus under OSHA emergency rules.

Via this order, COVID-19 will be in full retreat. What’s next for this selfless hero of public health? How about bold action against gun ownership? “‘Something has to be done’: After decades of near-silence from the CDC, the agency’s director is speaking up about gun violence” (CNN, August 28, 2021):

For the first time in decades, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the nation’s top public health agency — is speaking out forcefully about gun violence in America, calling it a “serious public health threat.”

“Something has to be done about this,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in an exclusive interview with CNN. “Now is the time — it’s pedal to the metal time.”

This summer alone has seen a spree of gun injuries and deaths, and the weekends have been especially violent, with an average of 200 people killed and 472 injured by guns each weekend in the United States, not including suicides, according to an analysis done by the Gun Violence Archive for CNN. That’s nearly 3.4 people shot every hour every weekend.

In April, President Joe Biden said the country was facing “a gun violence public health epidemic,” but the CDC hasn’t said how it plans to address the epidemic until now.

(I trust and expect that the aforementioned weekend shooters were following all local mask mandates when on their sprees.)

If vaccines can be ordered by the President/Physician-in-Chief as a condition of employment, why not giving up gun ownership? If nobody with a job has a gun, then by definition there can’t be any workplace gun violence (examples: San Bernardino 2015 attack, in which 14 were killed and 22 injured; 2009 Fort Hood shooting, in which 13 were killed and 30 injured).

Just as President Biden’s order on vaccines won’t reach every American (since many of us wisely decided to choose disability or unwisely decided to work for a small company) and therefore won’t end the pandemic overnight, the above-proposed order from President Biden on gun violence won’t end all gun violence, but I hope that everyone can agree that it would be a positive step forward for our nation or, at least, that if President Biden has the authority to end anti-vax violence in the workplace then he has the authority to end gun violence in the workplace.

In my view, the biggest financial implication of the Biden/Harris victory is the transfer of funds from rural Americans to urban Americans. Big Government spends nearly all of its money in cities so a bigger government accelerates the process of looting from rural Americans to enrich those who live in cities, e.g., with free public housing, improved transportation systems, fancier hospitals, etc.

“Over budget and behind schedule: Why the Bay Area can’t get big transportation projects right” (San Jose Mercury News, June 27, 2021) has some interesting data:

In 1998, Caltrans estimated that a new eastern span of the Bay Bridge would cost $1.4 billion and take four years to build. The actual cost was $6.4 billion; plagued by design controversies, brittle steel rods and more, the project lasted 11 years.

The Transbay Transit Center in downtown San Francisco cost nearly twice as much as its initial budget and opened two years behind schedule — then had to close for another nine months to repair cracked steel beams that were not built to code.

Construction has not yet begun on the project extending BART service through downtown San Jose, but its price tag has risen twice over the last three years, to $6.9 billion, while its projected opening date has slipped by three to four years.

Now, with lawmakers in Washington announcing a deal for a huge increase in federal infrastructure spending, and officials in the Bay Area eyeing the next big round of “mega-projects” — including a second transbay BART tube, the extension of Caltrain service into downtown San Francisco and a long list of other plans that by one estimate could total $100 billion — there is mounting pressure to get our act together.

The high cost of transportation projects is not unique to the Bay Area. It’s a nationwide problem, with the United States frequently spending far more per mile of new subway construction, for instance, than other countries around the world.

Take the six-mile, four-station South Bay BART extension, for instance. The design for its 4.7-mile tunnel beneath downtown San Jose is based on a construction method pioneered in Barcelona that was meant to lower costs and minimize disruptions at street level during construction.

The Spanish project cost less than $250 million per mile, according to SPUR. The BART extension is set to cost well over $1 billion per mile.

The rest of the article isn’t so interesting. After decades of failure, it is obvious that Americans can reorganize government so that we will do everything efficiently going forward. (If it is that easy, why not reorganize ourselves to be able to build integrated circuits with competitive quality and price compared to what the Taiwanese are able to do? Then we wouldn’t have a chip shortage shutting down our car factories.)

I find it fascinating that so many Americans are still so enthusiastic about infrastructure spending when building infrastructure is one of the things that we are worst at. Even when urban dwellers can stick rural Americans with the bill, one would think that they’d prefer instead to loot out the rural Americans in some other way that would deliver greater benefits to city residents.

Related:

• “The Most Expensive Mile of Subway Track on Earth” (NYT)
• “American infrastructure projects often cost five to six times what they cost in other developed countries. Can we learn to be thriftier?” (New Yorker, 2017; answer so far… “No”)

“Biden’s Capital-Gains Tax Plan Would Upend Estate Planning by the Wealthy” (Wall Street Journal, April 29):

President Biden’s American Families Plan would raise capital-gains taxes and end a rule that has been a cornerstone of estate planning for generations of wealthy Americans.

The change—increasing the top capital-gains rate to 43.4% from 23.8% and taxing assets as if sold when someone dies—would upend the tax strategies of the very richest households.

Let’s consider Jack and Jill Billionaire. Jill was the first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion manager hired by a successful Silicon Valley startup. Her shares in the company, purchased for $1, are now worth $1 billion. Jack and Jill have two children, Morgan and Parker. Jack and Morgan currently identify as male. Jill and Parker currently identify as female.

If Jack and Jill were to die from triple-mutant coronavirus during President Harris’s reign, their children would inherit only around $430 million ($1 billion minus 43.4 percent federal tax minus 13.3 percent California state tax).

The U.S. offers no-fault divorce and same-sex marriage (by Supreme Court ruling). There shouldn’t be any obstacle to Jack and Jill cooperating on a divorce then Jack marrying Morgan and Jill marrying Parker. South Carolina law, for example (from Wikipedia):

(1) A man with his mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, stepmother, sister, grandfather’s wife, son’s wife, grandson’s wife, wife’s mother, wife’s grandmother, wife’s daughter, wife’s granddaughter, brother’s daughter, sister’s daughter, father’s sister or mother’s sister; (2) A woman with her father, grandfather, son, grandson, stepfather, brother, grandmother’s husband, daughter’s husband, granddaughter’s husband, husband’s father, husband’s grandfather, husband’s son, husband’s grandson, brother’s son, sister’s son, father’s brother or mother’s brother.

Jack and Jill might each be able to marry either child if both children identify as some gender that takes them out of the “son” and “daughter” categories.

Now, when the Grim Mutant COVID-19 Reaper comes for Jack and Jill, the kids inherit $1 billion rather than $430 billion.

[What if Jack and Jill have four children rather than two? There is no limit to the number of no-fault divorce lawsuits that an American can file. Jack and Jill can marry and divorce their children in succession, with a tax-free agreed-upon property division after each divorce.]