Fire and Fury

A couple of months ago a new Trump book called, “Fire and Fury” came out and the major networks spent an inordinate amount of time picking out the most anti-Trump parts of the book. After a few weeks of airing the book was no longer discussed because it was filled with false and misleading statements and lost all credibility. The book sold over one million copies before it was discredited. It had very little to do with policy and almost exclusively filled with examples of what the author considered personality shortcomings involving the President. In early January 2018, Wolff's book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was published. Excerpts released before publication included unflattering descriptions of behavior by U.S. President Donald Trump, chaotic interactions among the White House senior staff, and derogatory comments about the Trump family by former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon

stats

Late term abortions are those that take place after 20 weeks or halfway through the gestation period. Of the 1 million legal abortions that occur each year only 1.3% are late term but this is still 13,000 per year. Last year there were 17,000 murders and 8,000 of those were blacks and 90% of those were killed by other blacks. There were 44,000 suicides in the US and more than 90% of suicide victims are later diagnosed as mentally ill. Murders like all major crimes have been declining for the past 25 years and the abortion rates have also been going down. The morning after pill which only cost $8 is one of the reasons however this is a type of abortion but difficult to get data on. I bring all this to your attention, because it is helpful if people who have strong opinions on different subjects make themselves aware of the statistics because often there is misinformation which reinforces false claims.

Guns in schools

Since the topic of arming teachers is in the news a quick look at some statistics would be helpful. 22% of women in the US have a gun license and there are 3.2 million K thru 12 teachers in the US and 76% are female so it could be concluded that there are over 500,000 female teachers in the K thru 12 system in the country who have a gun license. Since there are about 100,000 public schools that would be 5 female teachers per school who have a gun license. Add in the male teachers and you get 2 more licensed gun owner per school. Half of the people working in public schools are not teachers and so that would mean 12 licensed gun owner per school. The argument says that it would be a deterrent if soft targets like schools had trained gun users on campus. It would be interesting to find out how many school employees would volunteer to carry their guns in school and offer them additional training and pay to do so.

Racist wall

The government has been building a wall along the California/Mexico border since 1994 and it was accelerated with the passage of the Secure Fence Act of 2006 which was approved by the House 283 to 138 and in the Senate by 80 to 19. The Trump administration is proposing to repair the barrier in some places and replace it in others. - The federal government began work Wednesday on replacing border wall in California, the first wall contract awarded in the Trump administration outside of eight prototypes that were built last year in San Diego. Many officials in California say this is racist.

Gun control

In 2013 a bill was introduced in the senate to ban assault weapons and it was defeated by a vote of 60 to 40. At that time the democrats controlled the senate with 55 democrats and one independent. The vote was 44 republicans against, 15 democrats against and one independent against. There are an estimated 10 to 15 million assault rifles in the country and there was a ban on these weapons for ten years from 1994 to 2004 and not one of these weapons was collected by the government. They did not try to collect these guns because the back lash would have been political suicide. For those who are anti-gun consider this possibility. Say anti-abortion people want to ban abortions the day before delivery. The fear is that if that is allowed the next step will be a week before delivery. Gun advocates feel if the government wants to collect one type of gun the next step is to collect other guns. If the country could agree to ban assault weapons what would be done with the 10 million that are already in the hands of the public? If by some miracle these guns could be kept safe, would a potential mass killer change his mind because he could not get an assault rifle?

Post card taxes

Under the new tax plan estimates say that 90% of people will use the standard deduction of $24,000 rather than itemize deductions. For these people the dream of filing a simple tax form will become a reality. The most common reasons for itemizing is to deduct mortgage interest and property taxes and it takes a lot of house to bring those two deductions up to $24,000. In most areas of the country this means a $350,000 mortgage and that is limited to about 10% of home owners and using bank income ratios to receive a loan means an income of over $80,000. Here is the tax calculation for a married couple with no children. Income $80,000 Less standard deduction $24,000 Taxable income $56.000 Tax due at 12% $6,720 There it is. The long awaited post card tax return. For those with dependents it requires more info to collect the earned income credit and the child tax credit.

Russian ads

The FBI report on Russian interference in the election says that half the ads appeared before the election and were designed to promote Trump and the other half which appeared after the election and were designed to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election. “During the election, they were trying to create discord between Americans, most of it directed against Clinton. After the election you saw Russian-tied groups and organizations trying to undermine President Trump’s legitimacy. While there is no direct evidence that the ads affected the outcome of the election they were certainly successful in casting doubt on the results of the election.