Category: Government

Happy Juneteenth for government workers

by philg

Juneteenth (June 19) is the latest day off for government workers, a great mid-summer demonstration of why it is stupid to work in the private sector (an Irish small business owner friend: “Government workers have been at home watching daytime TV for 15 months now”; just today: “the Government are still on holidays due to an abundance of caution”). But the paid day off this year falls on a Saturday, so “Most feds off Friday as Biden set to make Juneteenth a federal holiday” (Federal News Network). On the side of the article was the “Fed Photo of the Day”. What’s the most significant thing that this enterprise is doing in exchange for the $6 trillion that Americans will have to earn to fund it? (see “Biden to Propose $6 Trillion Budget to Make U.S. More Competitive” (NYT; the more you spend the more competitive you are)) The soon-to-be-on-vacation government workers are hoisting a rainbow flag:

If you’re a government worker, enjoy your well-deserved extra day of leisure. Hoisting that flag must have been a huge effort!

Everyone else: What are you doing to mark Juneteenth?

A scan of my inbox…

From Carnegie Hall:

Juneteenth commemorates our nation’s true independence—the day when all members of the newly reunited nation were finally declared free after the American Civil War. More than 400 years after the first enslaved African people were brought to the North American colonies, the fight for equality continues. Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr. leads this celebration—along with Tamara Tunie, and special guests Wayne Brady, Martin Luther King III, and Annette Gordon-Reed—to recognize the importance of this historic day and to acknowledge the long road still ahead. In addition to music, dance, and commentary, the evening also recognizes contributions made by prominent African Americans today: Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; Robert F. Smith, businessman and chairman of Carnegie Hall’s Board of Trustees; and Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.

A 400-year fight! The Vietnam War and the Iraq/Afghanistan wars were mere blips. (Note that the “event” is just a streaming TV show, not an in-person gathering in Manhattan.)

From the Boston Museum of Fine Arts:

In celebration of Juneteenth, join us for a virtual conversation with BIPOC leaders. Panelists will discuss the need for disruption in their industries, their personal stories of seeking and achieving liberation in their careers, the impact they hope to make with their own positive disruption, and what liberation looks like on individual and collective levels.

From KAYAK, the travel site:

Grab your popcorn! San Francisco Pride will be hosting two socially distanced Pride Movie Nights on June 11th &12th, to celebrate San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community. They’ll also be hosting a Black Liberation Event in partnership with the AAACC on June 18th, the eve of Juneteenth, to highlight the intersection between LGBTQ+ rights and racial justice.

Separately, how soon before it becomes simpler for the government, rather than list holidays, to write down a list of days when government workers are expected to come into the office and work?

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Memorial for the Paycheck Protection Program

by philg

Yesterday was Memorial Day and also the final application deadline for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans (actually grants, since they don’t have to be paid back). Small business owners who relied on this deadline and focused on completing income taxes, complying with various local COVID-19 restrictions, trying to hire staff, and serving customers, however, were denied loans due to funding having run out on May 5 (source with some history).

So the most successful enterprises might turn out to be those who were most plugged into and aggressive about claiming government bailouts.

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Government says employers can require experimental vaccines

by philg

“U.S. agency says employers can mandate COVID-19 vaccination” (Reuters):

U.S. companies can mandate that employees in a workplace must be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said on Friday.

The EEOC, in a statement posted on its website explaining its updated guidance, said employees can be required to be vaccinated as long as employers comply with the reasonable accommodation provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws.

In other words, a healthy 25-year-old does not have to agree to take an “investigational” non-FDA-approved vaccine designed to prevent deaths among the unhealthy elderly, but he/she/ze/they will not be receiving a paycheck if he/she/ze/they refuses.

For anyone whose earning potential is near the median, this is another great argument in favor of choosing the welfare lifestyle. The is no vaccine requirement to continue occupying means-tested public housing. There is no vaccine requirement to continue receiving free health insurance via Medicaid. There is no vaccine requirement to continue purchasing food via SNAP/EBT. There is no vaccine requirement to continue chatting on an Obamaphone. Employers can mandate random drug and alcohol tests and transportation-related employers are required to conduct random drug and alcohol tests, but, at least here in Maskachusetts, a resident of public housing can enjoy “essential” alcohol and marijuana every day. In other words, an American with a job is not free to decide what drugs to take and what drugs not to take while an American on welfare is free to choose what drugs and medical treatments to accept and what recreational drugs to consume.

(The American on welfare is, of course, much better situated for avoiding coronavirus infection than the American who goes to work. The American on welfare need not leave his/her/zir/their apartment when variant COVID is raging. The American on welfare need not commute in a bus or subway. The American on welfare need never be in a public indoor environment.)

How about the spending power? From back in 2013, before all of the coronapanic-related enhancements to government programs, The Work versus Welfare Trade-Off (CATO):

Let’s also consider freedom of speech. The First Amendment isn’t useful if your employer disagrees with what you say or write. A recent story from Massachusetts, “An Elementary School Teacher’s Secret Life As A White Nationalist Writer” (HuffPost):

But “Sinclair Jenkins,” HuffPost has now confirmed, is really a pseudonym for Benjamin Welton, a 33-year-old Boston University history PhD candidate who, until this week, taught English, social studies and computer science at Star Academy, an elementary school in Massachusetts. When HuffPost contacted the school for comment, Welton was put on leave, and was fired shortly before this article was published.

Like many conservatives, Welton has expressed anger about the teaching of “critical race theory” in American schools. Last August, shortly before he began teaching at the Star Academy, he tweeted under a pseudonym that a return to American greatness “requires defunding critical race theory.” It’s clear from his pseudonymous writings where his real objection lies: criticism of white people.

A group of anti-fascist researchers, the Anonymous Comrades Collective, figured out Welton’s double life and shared the details with HuffPost.

Regardless of the content of his thought, speech, and writing, Mr. Welton (unlikely to become “Dr. Welton” given that his Ph.D. program at Boston University is right next to a Center for Antiracist Research) would have enjoyed a secure spending power and standard of living if he’d chosen welfare rather than work.

Related:

  • “Child Support Litigation without a Marriage” (Real World Divorce); the American who has sex with two already-married dentists and harvests the resulting child support can enjoy the same spending power as a dentist without the need to accept non-FDA-approved pharmaceuticals, interact with the COVID-plagued public, or worry about the reaction to what is said or written (alimony also works since family court profits are not conditional on medical decisions or thought/speech/writing content, but collecting alimony requires persuading a future divorce lawsuit defendant to agree to get married rather than a future slam-dunk child support lawsuit defendant to agree to have sex for one night or one hour (see Hunter Biden, for example))
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Irrational for Americans to work unless above-median income can be earned

by philg

As we celebrate Tax Day (updated date for coronapanic) and you add up what you’re paying to the Feds and states, it might cheer you up to look back to this 2019 article from a former Senator and a former top executive at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a Wall Street Journal article on income inequality:

Official measures of income inequality, the numbers being debated, are profoundly distorted by what the Census Bureau chooses to count as household income.

The published census data for 2017 portray the top quintile of households as having almost 17 times as much income as the bottom quintile. But this picture is false. The measure fails to account for the one-third of all household income paid in federal, state and local taxes. Since households in the top income quintile pay almost two-thirds of all taxes, ignoring the earned income lost to taxes substantially overstates inequality.

The Census Bureau also fails to count $1.9 trillion in annual public transfer payments to American households. The bureau ignores transfer payments from some 95 federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, which make up more than 40% of federal spending, along with dozens of state and local programs. Government transfers provide 89% of all resources available to the bottom income quintile of households and more than half of the total resources available to the second quintile.

Today government redistributes sufficient resources to elevate the average household in the bottom quintile to a net income, after transfers and taxes, of $50,901—well within the range of American middle-class earnings. The average household in the second quintile is only slightly better off than the average bottom-quintile household. The average second-quintile household receives only 9.4% more, even though it earns more than six times as much income, it has more than twice the proportion of its prime working-age individuals employed, and they work twice as many hours a week on average. The average middle-income household is only 32% better off than the average bottom-quintile households despite earning more than 13 times as much, having 2.5 times as many of prime working-age individuals employed and working more than twice as many hours a week.

Condensed version of the above: Your spending power will be roughly the same if you don’t work at all (and therefore don’t have to file tax returns, extensions, estimated tax, etc.) than if you work full time, unless you are a high-skill worker who can command a wage that is well above the median. The article includes a chart from 2017, before all of the Coronawelfare was ladled on top:

Note the flat shape of the “Net income” (i.e., spending power) curve until one is in the top 20 percent. The old sourpusses who wrote the article conclude with a scolding tone:

America already redistributes enough income to compress the income difference between the top and bottom quintiles from 60 to 1 in earned income down to 3.8 to 1 in income received. If 3.8 to 1 is too large an income differential, those who favor more redistribution need to explain to the bottom 60% of income-earning households why they should keep working when they could get almost as much from riding in the wagon as they get now from pulling it.

But, as Cicero noted more than 2000 years ago, “The cash that comes from selling your labour is vulgar and unacceptable for a gentleman … for wages are effectively the bonds of slavery.” Maybe the fact that we’ve created the world’s largest group of humans who don’t work is a feature, not a bug?

(Separately, I don’t see how the above calculation can be done accurately. Many of our brothers, sisters, and binary resisters who receive free housing and/or reduced rent are in private-sector apartment buildings that have been ordered by local governments to provide free or reduced rent. The rent subsidy is reflected in higher rents paid by market-rate tenants, not in a local government’s budget.)

Related:

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Kristi Noem and support for small business

by philg

Kristi Noem, famous or notorious (depending on your perspective regarding governor-ordered masks and shutdown) for saying that people who didn’t want to get COVID-19 should stay home and not rely on the government, a bandana, or a 3-cent paper surgical mask to protect them from a respiratory virus, is being talked about as someone who might enter national politics.

A recent CATO analysis of the small business environment in the 50 states has Ms. Noem’s South Dakota at #2 for business freedom:

Note that New Jersey, which if it were its own country would have the world’s highest COVID-19 death rate (ranking), is almost dead last! Also, states that you might expect to be free, e.g., Montana, aren’t. It is interesting to look at correlations with how easy it is to make money via pregnancy and child support. Georgia, where the government wants you to set up a business, has a soft cap on child support profits (so does South Dakota). Connecticut, on the other hand, is the nation’s most difficult state in which to start a business, but is a paradise for alimony plaintiffs and also offers unlimited child support.

Readers: Now that the Republican Party draws its support primarily from those who operate small business (everyone else is on the government gravy train either through welfare at the low end and crony capitalism at the high end), is Kristi Noem a likely future presidential candidate?

Related:

  • states ranked by COVID-19-tagged death rate (unfortunately not adjusted for percentage of population over 65), in which we see #Science-following Maskachusetts right near the top and give-the-finger-to-the-virus South Dakota at around #10.
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Why aren’t vaccines available at highway rest stops?

by philg

We visited a friend’s 12,000 square foot house the other day in an all-white suburb of Boston (what I learned: don’t buy a 12,000 square foot house unless you want to pay about $75,000 every time it needs paint). After passing all of the Black Lives Matter signs put out by his rich white neighbors (they adore low-income BIPOC but will keep their one-acre zoning minimum, thank you very much!), we got on the state-run highway. During the 40-minute drive, every 5 minutes we passed a state-run sign urging us to get vaccinated. The person reading the sign, quite possibly a driver all by him/her/zir/their self, is told to visit a web site and begin a cumbersome appointment process, We also passed a couple of state-owned state-run rest stops in which health-promoting food, such as donuts, are available.

Wouldn’t it make more sense if the signs said “Get vaccinated right now at the next rest stop”? If the government wants people to do something unpleasant and, in the case of younger folks, quite possibly against their personal interest (since the median age of a COVID-19 death in Massachusetts was 82), why not make it easy? Add an incentive too: “free coffee, donut, and vaccine, next right”.

Given that the government itself owns these highway rest stops, why isn’t there a vaccine tent at every one?

(The Florida Department of Transportation runs similar signs, but the messages that we saw in April were all related to driving, e.g., “check your tire pressure” or “road work scheduled”, rather than coronapanic.)

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Can billionaires marry their children to avoid Joe Biden’s new estate taxes?

by philg

“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.]

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CIA Officer: My existence is not a box-checking exercise

by philg

“I am perfectly made” and “My existence is not a box-checking exercise”:

(Note that I disagree with this Twitter user’s comment, “I think it’s safe to say the contemporary American left has failed.” First, I don’t think politics in the U.S. is supported by any coherent philosophy and therefore there is no “left” or “right”. Second, to the extent that checking victimhood boxes is associated with “left”, this ad would be evidence that the contemporary American left has succeeded.)

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Why do governments have to steal vaccine rights? Why not print more money to buy them?

by philg

“Taking ‘Extraordinary Measures,’ Biden Backs Suspending Patents on Vaccines” (NYT):

The Biden administration, siding with some world leaders over the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, came out in favor of waiving intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines.

The United States had been a major holdout at the World Trade Organization over a proposal to suspend some of the world economic body’s intellectual property protections, which could allow drugmakers across the globe access to the closely guarded trade secrets of how the viable vaccines have been made. But President Biden had come under increasing pressure to throw his support behind the proposal, drafted by India and South Africa and backed by many congressional Democrats.

If we’re comfortable with borrowing and spending $trillions (i.e., printing money) every few months during coronapanic, why not print a little more money and buy, rather than steal, the rights to the vaccines that we think should be free and open-source? Surely there is some price at which at least one of the vaccine makers would sell voluntarily. Pick the one that is easiest to manufacture, buy the formula, put it on a web site, and pay the inventors additional $$ to help anyone who wants to make it.

From earlier today, “Federal judge vacates CDC’s eviction moratorium” (The Hill): A federal judge on Wednesday vacated a nationwide freeze on evictions that was put in place by federal health officials to help cash-strapped renters remain in their homes during the pandemic. … “The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not,” Friedrich wrote [full text].

Same question for that one. Why did the government, which can print as much money as it wants to (and where such printing has no cost, according to an MIT economist), need to steal from individual landlords? If the CDC wanted everyone to have a rent holiday, why didn’t the CDC pay the rent with borrowed/printed money?

Related:

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How will the government and media convince parents to give children a non-FDA-approved Covid vaccine?

by philg

Now that nearly all U.S. adults are on their way to vaccination (see Fact-checking Donald Trump’s predictions regarding COVID vaccine availability), it is time to get Americans to accept the injection of an “investigational” (non-FDA-approved; see We love our children so much we will give them an investigational vaccine and Facebook fact check) vaccine for their children.

I know a remarkable number of young people who are major Mask and Shutdown Karens and who are generally afraid to leave their apartments due to expressed personal fears of contracting coronavirus. I always ask these folks “Do you personally know anyone who has been hospitalized for COVID-19?” and the answer is almost always “no.” Nor do they know anyone who claims to be suffering from “Long COVID”. In other words, if they weren’t exposed to government and media stories about COVID they wouldn’t know that it existed or was hazardous to anyone their age.

Before people here in Maskachusetts were going to hear the news that public schools would remain shut, the state removed fatality-by-age-group data from the Covid dashboard. Thus, the general public was unable to learn that nobody under age 20 in MA had ever died from COVID-19. I’m wondering if there will now be a ramp-up of stories about children testing positive, being harmed, etc. Here’s a recent Boston Globe story:

Most people wouldn’t read beyond the headline to see a hint as to what might be behind the increase in “cases” (positive PCR tests), i.e., that many Massachusetts schools recently initiated a pooled testing program (test a pool every week, wait for result, then start testing individuals if the result for the pool is positive; due to the days of lag time, “useless” was the rating from a friend who is an expert in public health informatics).

From government-funded media, “Michigan Sees Surge In COVID-19 Among Children” (NPR):

There’s an alarming spike in COVID-19 cases among children in Michigan.

Dr. Bishara Freij is chief of pediatric infectious disease at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich., which is just north of Detroit, and he joins us now.

FREIJ: Children do much better than adults in terms of infection. So their infections are much less severe, and far fewer of them get hospitalized. And certainly, death is pretty uncommon.

FREIJ: … The problem is it’s not predictable who’s going to do OK and who won’t. So I can tell you that most of the kids that have been really sick that we’ve taken care of had been previously well children. You know, they were not the chronically ill patients who happened to get COVID on top of their other problems. And so when we look at them, there’s no way to predict which child is going to have a bad disease. The odds are low, but you cannot say, my child is going to escape because that child is healthy.

Only the vaccinated will be spared!

Can the scientists help? “Vaccinating Children against Covid-19 — The Lessons of Measles” (New England Journal of Medicine, February 18, 2021):

Protecting children against SARS-CoV-2 infection is both an ethical obligation and a practical necessity. We need data from pediatric trials to reassure parents about the safety and wisdom of this approach. We must prepare for disinformation campaigns that prey on parental fears and target communities made vulnerable through histories of medical neglect, health disparities, and racism. … Dare we imagine a campaign that would actually thank children and parents for helping to protect others, as the rubella campaign did, perhaps suggesting that they proudly display their SARS Stars or Corona Diplomas?

(From the same journal: an editorial saying to stop classifying babies as boys/girls on birth certificates.)

I would love to see the “SARS Star” to be affixed to the clothing of a vaccinated person. As a starting point, here’s an idea from a museum:

What word should go in the center, though?

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