Friday, October 20, 2023

Strange Beliefs in Government



Jon Stewart's Apple broadcast has been dropped. He and Apple executives had disagreements over some of the topics and guests on “The Problem." Mr. Stewart told members of his staff on Thursday that potential show topics related to China and artificial intelligence were causing concern among Apple executives, a person with knowledge of the meeting said. As the 2024 presidential campaign begins to heat up, there was potential for further creative disagreements, one of the people said.
The commercial mix with entertainment is difficult.

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Rep. Tlaib was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrant parents. She will bring, as many do, the problems of the old world's efforts to insinuate itself into America's new world.

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Strange Beliefs in Government

There is a lot of global trouble, national and international threats. These must be fought or surrendered to. How we lurch depends to some degree on what we, as citizens, know and will allow. (This, of course, accepts the notion that we citizens have input as to what the government does.) Yet never in this country's history has mendacity been a pillar of society. With that poison in the culture, it is difficult to see how it can be mobilized against perceived dangers. And last night Biden tried to do just that.
But in a culture of lies, will a speech like that be meaningful? Can anything?

An example. 
In a recent speech, I heard Biden claim, “Billionaires pay an average of — guess what? — less than 8 percent in federal taxes — less than 8 percent on a yearly basis.” To drive home the point, the President declared that this is a “lower federal tax rate than a firefighter, a teacher, a cop” pays.

According to Congressional Budget Office statistics for 2019 (the most recent year with data), the heaviest tax burdens still fall squarely on the highest income earners. The Top 1 percent of filers pay an average federal tax rate of 30 percent. This number holds among the ultra-wealthy as well. Suppose we restrict the subset to only the top 0.01 percent of earners, a category that generally applies to people with multi-million dollar annual salaries. In that case, the CBO estimates an average federal tax rate of 30.2 percent.

By contrast, the average tax rate on the lowest quintile of filers was just 0.5 percent in 2019 – a result of generous tax credits that are designed to relieve the poor of almost their entire federal tax burden. The second lowest quintile paid an average rate of just 8.9 percent in federal taxes.

How could the President of the United States not know this? And is this president making policy on this misconception? What other strange concepts does the President of the United States suffer from? And is it a surprise that these people cannot enlist support or be believed?

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