Today’s roundup
(1) The Biden administration is offering to lift oil and financial sanctions on Iran if Iran agrees to what is essentially Obama’s Iran deal. Sounds like win-win for Iran to me.
(2) The stock market isn’t happy, because of this:
…[The Biden administration] confessed that they were considering a whopping capital gains tax rate increase, nearly doubling it, to 39.6%, according to Market Watch. With the existing surtax on investment income, that could make the rate as high as 43.4% for the “wealthy.” Biden is expected to drop this plan next week to help pay, a little bit, for all the social spending that Joe has been piling up.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly 350 points or 1%, while the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 fell 0.38% and 0.46%, respectively, in reaction to this news.
What else did they expect? Or was it worth it to get rid of President Mean Tweets?
(3) No surprise here, either:
Travis Campbell, an economics PhD candidate at the University of Massachusetts, published his findings in a recent pre-print study examining the impact of BLM protests on police use-of-force incidents.
His analysis, which is still undergoing peer-review, found that cities with BLM protests had 15 to 20 percent fewer police homicides than expected if the protests had not taken place, equating to 300 fewer police killings nationwide over five years.
But, in a revised unpublished version shared with DailyMail.com, Campbell finds that cities with BLM protests also saw a 10 percent increase in murders overall, equaling 1,000 to 6,000 additional murders nationwide.
The researcher adds that the figures don’t “fully account for the positive impact of BLM protests” – he must be afraid of the woke mob coming for him. But then he adds that,”his data suggested that BLM protests result in ‘less police effort and less proactive policing,’ which could explain both the decrease in police killings and the overall increase in murders.”
Police homicides are not usually of people who aren’t engaged in crime or at the very least actively resisting arrest. They are often shot in the course of a murder in the making. So it’s hardly some stretch of logic to imagine that keeping police from doing that will cause murders to rise.
3) That study will be shut down and that researcher cancelled. Thinking he can appease the mob is pretty funny, though.
Kipling has the last word for the professor:
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;”
and the fourth thing:
“And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
The professor won’t be spared his fate.
There’s some fuzzy math going on there .
If a 20% reduction over 5 years is 300, that means that there were 1500 police homicides over those 5 years, or 300 per year-and the study is supposedly confined to cities with BLM protests, not all cities, suburbs and rural areas.
My understanding is that actual homicides by police (involving “victims” of all races) have been running in the 2-digit range annually, at least until the last year or so.
Are they extrapolating from the recent trends-which arguably result from the heightened “unrest” that BLM has been promoting?
Boatbuilder, are you thinking of police killings of unarmed people? Those do run in the 2-digit range annually.
Can you spell ‘squishy’? I suppose that PHD candidates have to publish studies; and it is not necessary for them to make much sense.
I am close to joining the ‘defund the police’ mob; on the condition that the money saved be used to buy weapons and ammunition for ordinary Americans, so as to put us on equal footing with the criminals. If we were also given marksmanship training we would be way ahead of the ‘spray and hope’ Cretins. Then the murder rate would likely plummet. Why not be honest? If the police are going to be neutered, whether by fiat or intimidation, why pretend that they will be there to protect us?
I am pleased to see that more states are passing ‘stand your ground’ laws. Unfortunately, it will never happen in California.
That noise you heard today was the sucking sound of cash going offshore.
Not only wealthy individuals … companies have investments and have capital gains.
And even we peons that have IRS’s have capital gains.
It’s NOT just the wealthy!
I no longer have an opinion on bizarre Democrat tax policies. They seem to lack, not only economics, but mathematics. The rich are funding BLM so raising their taxes is not my problem. The crazies that want to shut off all fossil fuels are more important to me and mine.
3) How can anyone make a percentage claim without identifying the base number? If you reverse-engineer the “savings” (300 over 5 years) you end up with 60 fewer “police murders” each year, on average. So has this brainiac identified the 1500 killings, as Boatbuilder points out.
Maybe the data is there, but just too detailed (math is hard) for a reporter and/or editor to grasp, let alone put in the paper.
No one seems to get the idea that almost all people killed by police (as noted above) are involved in criminal acts and resisting arrest at the time they are killed. Maybe it would be easier to spend the time and effort at teaching people that 1) if you don’t do crime you won’t be in jeopardy, and 2) if you do the crime, then at least have the good sense to submit to arrest so you will not be the recipient of the police arrest and control continuum.
And the number of people killed by police is minuscule in comparison to the number of people killed by their fellow citizens in these cities.
(2) Biden is expected to drop this plan next week to help pay, a little bit, for all the social spending that Joe has been piling up.
Today’s news on this was a leak publicized by Bloomberg. A couple items of commentary I picked up were: a) the amount of revenue generated won’t be that great (because of aggressive tax dodging?) so why do it, and b) there might be an elimination of the 20% small business qualified income deduction coming in the formal announcement. Those are opinions of course.
Why are they doing a giant cap gains tax increase if it won’t raise a bunch of revenue? The obvious answer is it is a punishment, and because the uber wealthy launder their money through charitable trusts and won’t pay it.
I agree with jack. If you think only those “other” rich people are impacted, then the joke’s on you. Especially if you are involved in a small business and b) above comes true. If true, then it will be abundantly obvious that the Democrat party really does want to destroy small business in general. Can you say Kulak?
PS: I think jack was referring to those older folks with a fat IRA. When you are forced to withdraw funds, it’s gonna hurt.
TommyJay:
Yes about the kulaks. But I bet that maybe only 5% of people (if that) in the US know anything about the USSR and the kulaks.
No idea what “kulak” meant. So i looked it up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak
I would be considered # 2
1. bednyak, or poor peasants;
2. serednyak, or mid-income peasants; and
3. kulak, the higher-income farmers who had larger farms.
Wife says I’m anal about taxes and my answer is YES that’s right where the gov is shoving it … up the back side!
Christopher Rufo has a new article posted in City Journal about fighting CRT. Capsule summary: “There are three parts to a successful strategy to defeat the forces of critical race theory: governmental action, grassroots mobilization, and an appeal to principle.”
Read the whole article– it’s worth the time.
https://www.city-journal.org/how-to-fight-critical-race-theory
(3) I started working in NYC in 1970 and was there until 2008. There was lotsa crime of all sorts, but it was still a great city. To “live” there, you adopted certain rules: don’t ride the subway before or after rush hour, stay away from certain neighborhoods (Times Square, e.g.), be ever vigilant moving about the city, and other similar cautions.
Then, along came Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and voila, a Renaissance. Graffiti disappeared from the subway trains, Times Square became a fun tourist and local place to go, you could with reasonable caution ride the subways at anytime, and on and on. The great city became the greatest city.
Many of the supposed intelligentsia tried to explain it with all kinds of social change notions, but most folks could tell that it was out of the box thinking that lead to creative changes in policing techniques.
Proof of the pudding? Along comes Mayor DeBlasio. He systematically reverses the changes and goes so far as to cut the NYPD budget by $1.5B, “to satisfy the protestors”. Yes, that’s a B.
Impact? Check out the skyrocketing crime figures, especially the murder rate.
jack,
Neo probably knows much more than I, but I was thinking of this from Wikipedia:
Kulak, kurkul or golchomag was the term used towards the end of the Russian Empire to describe peasants with over 8 acres of land. In the early Soviet Union, particularly Soviet Russia and Azerbaijan, kulak became a vague reference to property ownership among peasants who were considered “hesitant” allies of the revolution.
Well, “more than 8 acres of land” is decidedly small. But these were proud largely self sufficient people who didn’t want or need a radical reimagining of their society or a paternal government to support them. So the government ended up killing many or most of them.
jack:
Wiki has a pretty good article on the kulaks (as best I can tell from a quick look). They were basically peasants who were a bit more successful than the others, often the natural leaders. The Communists decided to eliminate them. One way this was done was to allow people to report their neighbors who were supposedly kulaks, which gave free reign to the forces of envy and resentment. It was incredibly destructive both on the human level and the economic one.
@PA+Cat
Thanks for the City Journal article link. Is it too late?
JD Keene–
I hope it’s not too late– I’m glad you read the article.
On Big Government Day (April 15), Biden signed an executive order entitled, “Executive Order on Blocking Property With Respect to Specified Harmful Foreign Activities of the Government of the Russian Federation.” It deprives American citizens of fundamental rights by linking them, however tenuously, with Russia.
I’m not a big federal debt/deficit hawk because I find that stuff is usually just used as an excuse for libertarian/Randian nonsense but the 2020 federal deficit was not merely the biggest ever, it was more than DOUBLE the previous biggest ever federal deficit…and that was just was in 2009, so it’s not like inflation can account for it.
The market didn’t fall because of Biden’s capital gains trial balloon. That wouldn’t make any sense, just like it made no sense back in the 1990s when the market would tank on good economic news. Back then (and still today), Wall Street was terrified that a stronger economy would mean higher interest rates and low interest rates were (and probably still are) the foundation of the financial status quo. The drop in stocks now is the shock at being reminded that..
1. The feds are eventually going to have to stop shoveling money into America’s furnace to keep everyone warm.
2. That flowing federal spigot o’ cash is not just going to shut off. It’s going to be replaced by a vacuum that will be sucking back money wherever it can.
That’s the downside of economic inequality for the elite. Eventually the government needs more money so they have to target the people who have most of it.
Mike
The good professor is an apologist and the first sacrifice upon the apologist’s ideological altar is inconvenient facts.
“Why not be honest? If the police are going to be neutered, whether by fiat or intimidation, why pretend that they will be there to protect us?” Oldflyer
Honesty would utterly derail their strategy, which consists of neutering the police, resulting in a predictable spiraling escalation in violent crimes. Followed by the public’s predictable demands for law and order. But having established that all police orgs are, at the least unconsciously racist, a new start is required under federal direction… nationalized police directed by those hiding behind razor wire and armed troops.
“That noise you heard today was the sucking sound of cash going offshore.” jack
Treasury Sec. Yelen has an answer to that; legislation that taxes any corporation’s offshore accounts. She wouldn’t be suggesting it if she wasn’t confident of foreign cooperation. Once established, individual wealth will be targeted.
Tommyjay,
No, it won’t generate the revenue they knowingly lie about but establishing that they’re going after the wealthy is necessary preparation for when they go after the middle class’ assets.
PA + Cat,
Governmental action? Good luck with that. Grassroots mobilization? Both the GOPe and the Democrat party have repeatedly demonstrated that they could care less what the grassroots want. An appeal to principle is only effective with people who possess a conscience.
Artfldgr,
An unelected triumvirate will decide, one whose decision are without appeal and anyone so designated will find that their spouse and adult children are included in that category.
“Executive Order Canceling the Constitution”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/executive_order_canceling_the_constitution.html
MBunge,
Whenever the Federal gov. needs more money they just print more of it… they have an endless supply.
The purpose of taxation for CommieCrats is the redistribution of wealth, from each according to his or her or its ability to each according to its need — except if you are well-conned and well-connected enough.
The Kulaks were among the first genocided to get the boot for this. Everyone must see last year’s “Mr Jones,” an expose of the original Fake News story: during the Great Depression, Comrade Walter Duranty in Moscow tells readers of the New York Times of the great productive success by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin! All Rejoice!
A Great Egalitarian post-capitalist pig future is at hand, and it works! Comrade Duranty has seen it and Knows!
Except the Fake News was the Big Lie, the same one Adolf Hitler repeated often enough that it became the assumed Truth.
Thus, “Mr Jones” — or young and scrappy and sceptical and soon assassinated Garreth Jones — was its voice.
We are, again, at a historic hingpoint where the Big Lie and Reality are at stake, and an idealised and corrupt future is being forged.
George Orwell later saw Mr Jones living again in “Animal Farm,” telling us a tale so simple that even a child could see through the Evil of Groupthink – as “Mr Jones” tells us.
Who is that Truth-teller today? Like Jones and Orwell? Here, in the US?
Geoffrey Britain — your cynicism is a tonic to sooth suffering souls.
The Fools will not Will Out. We are all going to be sacrificed for their power lusts.
From Artfldgr: “On Big Government Day (April 15), Biden signed an executive order entitled, “Executive Order on Blocking Property With Respect to Specified Harmful Foreign Activities of the Government of the Russian Federation.” It deprives American citizens of fundamental rights by linking them, however tenuously, with Russia.”
I think someone else mentioned it in another thread, but it is Must Reading if you haven’t already.
This is a massively important move, explained lucidly here:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/executive_order_canceling_the_constitution.html
And goes along with this one, in the same Democrat vein of “Tyranny or Bust.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/the_post_office_is_spying_on_americans.html
“The Biden administration…”
Surely you mean the “Biden” administration…
Now that certain business has been “taken care of” and the Iran “affair” is back on track, it’s time to settle accounts regarding those who dared stand against the “Biden” administration in its previous incarnation as Obama’s.
Yes, it is now time to destroy Kash Patel, chief among those who dared to uncover that administration’s criminality in 2016 and onward. Criminality that continues to this day.
https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1385319831726133248
https://twitter.com/bhweingarten/status/1385382713620930562
https://twitter.com/winningatmylife/status/1385441194977767427
It is now Patel’s turn to be ground up, personally destroyed and spit out by the “Unity” mob of which “Biden” is the smiling, smirking face (with the avid assistance of its media Red Guards).
And this current administration, headed, at least figuratively, by one of America’s biggest crime families (if not THE biggest) has much to hide.
There are those who claim that China has the goods on the family’s (i.e., not just Hunter’s) corruption vis a vis China itself; but this strikes me as fanciful, since Biden’s corruption is KNOWN, even if Twitter, Facebook, Google and Youtube (the Fab four?) along with the NYT, Wapo and similar thoroughtly compromised, thuggish “news” orgs have done their damnedest to prevent news of it from ever seeing the light of day.
So what DOES China have on the current administration? No doubt, there’s the potential loss of extraordinary amounts of money to be made by American businessmen (and politicians) on both sides of the political aisle that serves as a formidable tool of coercion.
But I wonder if China holds a much more valuable—a far more impressive—“card” that it’s holding over the “Biden” administration: knowledge of how the Democratic party “cabal” perpetrated its coup d’etat. And the willingness, hinted at of course, to divulge it. Unless…
To be sure, it’s not just the Middle Kingdom mega-tyranny that holds such a card….
No wonder the payoffs MUST be enormous. And WILL BE even more so.
But a small price to pay, no doubt, for possession of The Ring….
I don’t know about it all being a big nefarious Chinese plot any more than it’s the Rooosssians, or for that matter Schlemiel Schlimazel Hasenpfeffer Incorporated exercising its Tentacles of Talmudic Trickery.
What we have here is late-stage civilizational decay and all the associated corruptions, incompetence, elite stupidities and moral panics which go along with this. The *competent* bits of the West — e.g. parts of the Deep State, Big Tech have become self-aware and are part of the now well-developed class consciousness of the Managerialists (James Burnham sense) and have their own agendas which are not necessarily congruent with any classical or Rubes’ views of that quaint thing once known as ‘The National Interest’.
Naturally in a situation like this, Folks mentioned in Para 1 and others are likely to try to leverage as much as they can. Who can blame them for trying?
Still… I have visions of brains trusts in the Central Party School in Beijing where the power elite go for a final polish sitting around in seminars asking their in-house America Experts: ‘So is it really true that they worship N-Words as gods? Really?’
Although we’re living through the beginnings of a slow motion tragedy on a vast scale, there are distinctly comical aspects to the whole thing.
Incompetence corruption and stupidity explain most.
Old Flyer: “I am close to joining the ‘defund the police’ mob; on the condition that the money saved be used to buy weapons and ammunition for ordinary Americans”
As GeoffreyB notes, many are guessing that the plan is to nationalize the police. They’ll say it’s for consistent standards and to provide equal services for poor communities. But the point will be central control.
And, yes, collapsing police protection will lead to vigilantism.
By the way, I saw a map recently (forget where) that listed CA as “stand your ground” due to court case not legislative action.
Finally, a Rufo article on CRT is in Hillsdale College’s latest Imprimis publication. Probably the same content?
Its a cast iron cinch that the Post Office is not the only gov. agency spying on conservative Americans. Identification is needed in order to, when it’s time, send the deplorables to the reeducation camps and the irredeemables to either the gulags or to the killing fields.
The proposed capital gains rates are even higher than those stated, once the effect of inflation is considered…indeed, a taxpayer can wind up paying taxes on apparent gains when in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, he has actually lost money.
Well-explained in the following video, which is 10 years old but unfortunately still relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvzqa71plv4
David Foster, So true.
My guess on the “tax the rich” political program, is that the top 0.2% in wealth will be “allowed” to dodge it, and the top 10 or 15%, excluding the top 0.2%, in wealth will targeted. This chart shows that this is where the money is. (Note: wealth and income are different and often confused and used interchangeably by the left.)
My other fear is that when the Dems really screw up the federal debt to unsustainable (or should I say unmaskable?) levels, they will come after our retirement accounts. Don’t worry, they will only take 10% of it. Then another 10%, etc. They already held congressional hearings on this during Obama’s second term, if memory serves.
“they will come after our retirement accounts.”
That will be the “hang them from lamp posts” stage of things because the number of upper middle-class folks who NEED those retirement accounts cannot be underestimated.
Mike
MBunge, I feel your sentiment, but I couldn’t believe that there was not a huge blow-back from those congressional hearings. Those who testified were mostly a group of ditzy professors, so hopefully that explains it.
Warren’s wealth tax on the uber rich would do less harm than this, but of course it would be expanded, and the principle undermines property rights.
And forgive the plug, but I make mashups of Shakespeare and current events (at abardseyeview.com), and I just finished a book in that vein: ‘Hamlet’s 2020 Vision: A recasting of Hamlet as the tragedy of the 2020 election.’
When you combine these two tragedies you get quite a bit of comedy, it turns out, and a chance to vent and gain some perspective on what has just happened to us.
And the parallels! The Biden cabal as the usurping King Claudius, President Trump as the Ghost (still haunting the liberals, after all), Polonius the spymaster as the tech oligarchs, and Hamlet as All of Us, since we, like Hamlet, are trying to avenge the theft of a nation’s entire government in a way that reveals the illegitimacy of the usurping regime and restores the nation to legitimate rule. Again, sorry for the plug. The book is here: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=hamlet%27s+2020+vision&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss
It’s not the just upper middle class. Anyone who has saved for retirement is the target:
“Why do you rob banks? That’s where the money is.” IIRC
om,
Gentleman Bank robber Willie Sutton said that in an interview.
“an American bank robber notorious for his prolific criminal career which lasted for forty years. He is estimated to have robbed over 100 banks, stealing around $2 million.
He was a master of disguise who often impersonated a postal telegraph messenger, police officer or maintenance man. His expertise at carrying out robberies in disguise earned him the nicknames “Slick Willie” and “Willie the Actor.”
Besides being an innovative robber, he also had a reputation for cleverly breaking out of prisons, which he did thrice.
In spite of being a criminal, Willie was non-violent and polite; he never killed anyone throughout his career as a professional criminal. He always carried a gun on his robberies, but he later admitted that he never carried a loaded gun as he was afraid of injuring anyone.
He was often arrested for his crimes and spent half of his adult life in prisons.”
Quite a memorable character.
If I have this right, Biden puts the kibosh on development of American hydrocarbons while unleashing those of Iran, the Switzerland of Eurasia.
Oldflyer, California has a form of “stand your ground” as it has no mandated “duty to retreat” law, as some other states have. Most of Calif’s SYG is via case law on self defense.
https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/laws/is-california-a-stand-your-ground-state/