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So far John Patrick has created 367 blog entries.

Letter from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform to Emily Murphy, the administrator at the GSA

2020-11-20T11:10:38-05:00November 20th, 2020|Home, Musings|

OK, it’s time for him to go…

• Roger Cohen at the NY Times sums it up very nicely in his Mr. President, Pack Your Bags and Be Gone  essaySome excerpts:

-Donald Trump, departing president, lost in an election that a division of the Department of Homeland Security has now called“the most secure in American history,” with no “evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised.”

-Trump can no more accept defeat than recall the fact that he took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

-The world needs an American democracy restored, rid of its brooding ruler, and led by the man who won, Joe Biden. End of story.

2020-11-20T12:00:46-05:00November 14th, 2020|HomeRecommended|

Please vote!

• If you have not already voted, please remember to vote today. I hope you will choose to do so in a way that preserves our democracy.

2020-11-03T13:43:09-05:00November 3rd, 2020|Home, Musings|

Republicans will actually raise your taxes – unless you are wealthy

• Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz tells the truth about taxes in the NYT – Republicans, Not Biden, Are About to Raise Your Taxes (except if you’re rich, in which case they will go down).  The law initially lowered taxes for many, but there are automatic stepped increases starting after this election year, increases every two years through 2027 for people making under $75K (about 65% of the population).  Some excerpts:

• The current poverty line for a family of four is $26,200: People with incomes between $10,000 and $30,000 — nearly one-quarter of Americans — are among those scheduled to pay a higher average tax rate in 2021 than in years before the tax “cut” was passed. The C.B.O. and Joint Committee estimated that those with an income of $20,000 to $30,000 would owe an extra $365 next year — these are people who are struggling just to pay rent and put food on the table.

• By 2027, when the law’s provisions are set to be fully enacted, with the stealth tax increases complete, the country will be neatly divided into two groups: Those making over $100,000 will on average get a tax cut. Those earning under $100,000 — an income bracket encompassing three-quarters of taxpayers — will not.

• At the same time, Trump has given his peers, people with annual incomes in excess of $1 million dollars, or the top 0.3 percent in the country, a huge gift: The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the average tax rate in 2019 for this group to be 2.3 percentage points lower than before the tax cut, saving the average taxpayer in this group over $64,000 — more than the average American family makes in a year.

2020-11-03T09:13:38-05:00October 31st, 2020|Home, Musings|

What he said…

• Frank Bruni, writing in the NYT about the election of our president, captures the essence of how I feel quite nicely in his How Will I Ever Look at America the Same Way Again? column. An excerpt:

“In him we forgave florid cruelty, overt racism, rampant corruption, exultant indecency, the coddling of murderous despots, the alienation of true friends, the alienation of truth itself, the disparagement of invaluable institutions, the degradation of essential democratic traditions.

He played Russian roulette with Americans’ lives. He played Russian roulette with his own aides’ lives. In a sane and civil country, of the kind I long thought I lived in, his favorability ratings would have fallen to negative integers, a mathematical impossibility but a moral imperative. In this one, they never changed all that much.”

2020-10-29T14:57:47-05:00October 29th, 2020|HomeRecommended|

A threat to the rule of law…

• From the New York Times:

“A group of 20 Republican former federal prosecutors endorsed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Tuesday, calling President Trump “a threat to the rule of law in our country” who uses the Justice Department “to serve his personal and political interests.”

“He has politicized the Justice Department, dictating its priorities along political lines,” the signatories said in an open letter. “We do not support his re-election.”

The letter from the former U.S. attorneys includes signatures from appointees of every Republican administration since President Eisenhower’s.

“The president has clearly conveyed that he expects his Justice Department appointees and prosecutors to serve his personal and political interests in the handling of certain cases — such as the investigations into foreign election interference and the prosecution of his political associates — and has taken action against those who have stood up for the interests of justice,” the letter said.”

2020-10-27T15:59:01-05:00October 27th, 2020|HomeRecommended|

No, health care providers are most decidedly *not* inflating COVID-19 numbers

Adding to his seemingly unending stream of self-serving lies and distortions, the current president this weekend claimed that since doctors and hospitals “get more money” if they report a death as COVID-related, they are inflating COVID-related numbers, and he continued to claim that the pandemic “is going away.” The recent spikes in reported cases and ensuing deaths (as predicted by the same scientists the president has disparaged) make the latter claim ridiculous on its face. In a statement issued Sunday, the American College of Emergency Physicians  called the president’s assertions “reckless and false.” The American College of Physicians, which represents internal medicine doctors, denounced the president’s allegations as “a reprehensible attack on physicians’ ethics and professionalism.” The Council of Medical Specialty Societies said Trump’s claims “promulgate misinformation that hinders our nation’s efforts to get the Covid-19 pandemic under control.”  The number of excess deaths in the US has to be attributed to something, and it’s not traffic deaths.

2020-10-31T15:27:28-05:00October 27th, 2020|Home, Musings|

BIDEN WILL MAKE AMERICA LEAD AGAIN

William McRaven, from a 10/19 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal:

We need a president who understands the importance of American leadership, at home and abroad. We need a leader of integrity whose decency and sense of respect reflects the values we expect from our president. We need a president for all Americans, not just half of America.

This week I went to the polls in Texas. Truth be told, I am a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative. But, I also believe that black lives matter, that the Dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is the great equalizer, that climate change is real and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy. Most important, I believe that America must lead in the world with courage, conviction and a sense of honor and humility.

If we remain indifferent to our role in the world, if we retreat from our obligation to our citizens and our allies and if we fail to choose the right leader, then we will pay the highest price for our neglect and shortsightedness.

I voted for Joe Biden.”

McRaven was a Navy admiral and commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011-14. 

2020-10-22T12:11:54-05:00October 22nd, 2020|Home, Musings|
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