November, 2019,Part 8, Political Class Insanity: Failed Soda Tax In Philly, Failed Understanding of Gun Basics, and Failed City Government in Denver

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) More times than I care to mention we have made the case that most American politicians are completely ignorant when it comes to even basic economic principles. They raise the minimum wage to help the working poor and jobs for the working poor disappear. Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasi-Cortez, a business/economic major in college, has no idea what the definition of the unemployment rate is. An economic professor is hired by Washington politicians to design Obama Care and it is a total failure.

We have previously discussed the economic failure in Philadelphia relative to its idiotic soda tax. For those that missed that discussion of another failed economics test for politicians, consider the updated status of this failure as laid out in a recent article on the Freedom Headlines website. “Soda Tax Backfires, Now Philadelphia Is Hurting For It:”

• In theory the soda tax that the city politicians enacted was supposed to force city residents to make healthier beverage choices and get healthier.
• But since these politicians have no concept of basic economics, the economics of this decision has been a disaster for the city.
• The tax was so high that consumers did not stop drinking soda, they just left the city limits to buy soda where it was not taxed, namely out in the suburbs.
• Simple economics: when the price of a product gets too high, consumers will shop around for cheaper alternatives, duh.
• A recent study found that there was not higher demand for healthier beverage alternatives in the city, i.e. consumers did not switch to bottled water or other healthier liquid options, they simply went elsewhere to buy less expensive soda.
• By not understanding the simple concept of price elasticity, the city politicians raised the city tax on soda 17% which resulted in a sales drop of 51%, wiping out the tax increase and more.
• The article does some simple economic math by assuming that one million ounces of soda was sold annually before the tax increase went into effect.
• It the amount of soda consumed had stayed the same, the city would have seen annual soda tax revenue go from $54.300 to $62,400.
• But with volume decreased under the concept of price elasticity the city only received about $31,200 in annual revenue despite raising the tax rate by 17%.
• Almost immediately after the soda tax increase took effect, Pepsi said it would have to lay off 80 to 100 workers at their Philadelphia distribution locations because of decreased demand. [Source: www.philly.com]
• Acme supermarkets had to reduce hours in its 16 city stores because of the increased tax: “The beverage tax fell on about 4,000 items. In Acme city stores, soda sales dropped as much as 80 percent. Sales of other items covered by the tax, such as juices, creamers and energy drinks, were down 30 percent, and the number of customers declined by 5 percent. Philly stores cut an average of 150 to 200 employee hours per week, resulting in lighter paychecks for employees.”
• As for the original purpose of the law, reduce the consumption of sugary drinks to improve citizens’ health, it was a bust, people just went elsewhere to get their soda fix at more reasonable prices.

So, because of a severe lack of understanding regarding economics, Philadelphia officials introduced an economic law that:

1. Did not improve the health of citizens.
2. Reduced the employment level of workers in the city.
3. Reduced the number of hours other workers had available to them.
4. Gutted an existing city tax revenue stream.

Nice job, four for four in getting things more screwed up! These politicians did not only not understand economics they did not understand the right approach to the problem of obesity: this is a public health issue and should be resolved with public health programs. It is not a tax or economic issue and treating it as a tax and economic issue is never going to resolve the underlying root causes.

2) Sometimes politicians say the darndest things. In fact, we have dedicated whole posts to some of the idiocy that they have said over the years.You can access those gems of nonsense by putting”darndest things” in the search box above. Unfortunately, much of the stupid things they say call into question if they really know what they are talking about.

Joe Biden recently fell into this category. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, he voiced his opposition to gun magazines that hold “100 clips.” But it is physically impossible for a magazine to hold “100 clips,” that is just idiocy. A clip holds bullets together and a single clip holding multiple bullets is then loaded into a single magazine. 

So, Biden is talking about abridging Second Amendment rights and cannot even get the basics of the industry straight. How are we supposed to take him and other Second Amendment opponents seriously when they do not know the difference between a magazine, a clip and a bullet?

Now, apparently, Biden realized his mistake and corrected himself. But please understand what you are talking about before you start messing with the Bill of Rights.

3) We have previously talked about how cities like San Francisco have decided to not make it a crime to defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs in public. As a result, cities have had to create hazmat sanitation units to clean the streets of defecation and urination on a daily basis, the chances of disease and infections have risen dramatically previously dormant diseases such as typhus have made a comeback and there has been a significant negative impact on the environment as raw sewage is flushed down storm drains and into rivers and the ocean.

Nasty stuff, crises that city politicians have no clue on how to manage or fix. Fortunately, at least for the rest of the country, this disaster has been confined to liberal run west coast cities such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, these problems have migrated out of the west coast and are affecting other cities such as Denver. Consider the poor plight of a small business owner in Denver and how liberal/Democratic politicians have made his life and business a similar living hell:

• According to an article by Ryan Saavedra, writing for the Daily Wire website, a Denver business owner has been fined by the city for not picking human feces that constantly appears in front of his business on a public sidewalk.
• The business owner claims that homeless people defecate in front of his business every day but the city refuses to clean up after them and are now fining him for not cleaning up also.
• Thus, he is taking the city to court to force them to do their job and keep the streets clean, something a taxpaying business owner should expect.
• The business owner, Jawaid Bazyer, who operates an internet service provider company in Denver, describes the situation: “The wall [of his building] is a bathroom stall. They [homeless folks] lean up against it and let it rip. In downtown Denver, that’s nonstop now, just piles of poop.”
• He goes on: “There’s food, trash, drug deals. In the alley, we get the defecation, drug needles.”
• He says that he has employees chased and attacked by criminals operating in the area.
• He sometimes calls local police to get vagrants off of his property several times a day to no avail.
• Given that the city sanitation and police have been ineffective in helping him, he started to refuse to clean up the feces and used drug needles from the front of his business, which resulted in the city fining him for not doing so.
• He rightfully claims that the situation is a bio hazard and he should not require his employees to expose themselves to such a danger: “Because it’s a bio-hazard. It could be infectious. I didn’t hire these people to clean poop off the ground. I can’t, as an employer, just say, ‘Go and clean up the feces. I’m not the one doing this, and they won’t do anything about the people committing the crimes, but I’m the one who’s easy to find and easy to punish.”

Gotta feel sorry for the guy, trying to build a business, provide good jobs for his employees, and the city bureaucracy and the politicians that operate it are punishing him for their failures. The primary reason for government to exist is to protect citizens. In Denver, it apparently means letting public health go out the window and then blame innocent citizens for the mess that ensues.

Another day of political class insanity: a failed tax in Philly, a failed understanding of gun basics, and a failed city government in Denver that endangers the health and financial welfare of everyone in the city.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

June, 2019, Part 3, Political CLass Insanity: More Hillary/FBI Corruption, Soda Tax Failure In Philly, and Liberal Wall Hyprocisy

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let’s get started:

1) In our last post we discussed the reality that we now know that Hillary Clinton’s use of an illegal unsecured computer server, that she used as Secretary of State, was likely hacked by foreign interests any number of times. This carelessness on her part should have gotten her arrested and prosecuted for breaking existing Federal laws.

But the saga of the Clinton misbehaving does not end with the lies and law breaking surrounding her server we discussed in the previous post:

• The Judicial Watch watchdog group has continued to gain access to government documents via the Freedom of Information Act.
• It recently announced that it had possession of 277 pages of FBI records that prove the FBI hid information related to the illegal Clinton email computer server as requested by the Inspector General.
• The FBI claimed that meeting notes are “missing” and conveniently the CD disc containing the notes is likely irreparably “damaged.”
• This information from 2015 finally came to light because the Obama administration blocked the release and Judicial Watch had to get a court order for its release.
• This effort uncovered the reality that a “Chinese state-owned company” had hacked Clinton’s server and the inspector general referred the investigation to the FBI on July 6, 2015.
• Within a month the FBI claimed the notes regarding the investigation had been lost forever.
• Which brings us to the lies of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest advisor during the time she served as Secretary of State. 
• We now know that while Abedin had warned people on Clinton’s staff and inner circle that Clinton’s unsecured, illegal server had indeed been hacked, the new Judicial Watch documents show that Abedin lied to the FBI when she told agents that she did not remember any hacking attempts.
• According to the head of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton: “The Obama FBI was frantic to target then-candidate Trump while magically losing or destroying important evidence in the sham investigation of Hillary Clinton’s illicit email system. This new information underscores the need for a fresh, unbiased investigation into the Clinton email scandal.”

Lying to the FBI, destroying official government records, getting hacked by Chinese interests, oh yeah, the slime, crime, and abuse from Clinton and her illegal email server go on and on, constantly uncovering the massive corruption that exists in the FBI and throughout the Washington political class.

2) Although we have discussed the disaster in Philadelphia that occurred when the local politicians established the city’s so-called “soda tax,” Warner Todd Huston, writing for the Godfather Politics website on May 21, 2019, brings us up to date on how this effort failed so miserably:

• Recall that this soda tax was supposed to raise the cost of soda at stores within the city limits in a lame attempt to curb obesity, the theory being that if soda costs more to buy, consumers would use less of it and would get skinnier.
• A side benefit was to bring more tax revenue into the city government.
• But the theory backfired since city residents simply went out of the city limits to buy their soda and taking their soda dollars with them resulting in falling soda sales in Philadelphia stores.
• In addition, the significant increase in taxes that the city government expected never materialized as planned and forecasted since while the tax on soda was increased 17%, the sales of soda fell by 51% in the city’s limits so raising the tax rate actually reduced tax revenue.
• Specifically: “So, let’s look at this assuming one million ounces of soda was sold annually before the tax went into effect. If sales had remained the same, the city would have realized $62,400.00 in revenue instead of $54,300.00. But with the volume cut in half, they managed to slash their revenue to $31,200.00…. Great job, guys. You gutted your revenue stream, caused layoffs in the beverage industry and depressed sales in the city’s retail outlets, likely impacting entry level jobs.”
• The sales of bottled water or healthier drinks to replace the use of soda did not increase as hoped so there was no increase in healthier drinking options.
• And city stores did not only lose soda sales since when city consumers went out of town to buy soda, they also bought other groceries while they were in the out of city stores, which in turn reduced the overall grocery sales of in city stores.
• The local Pepsi plant laid off 100 workers because of the shift in demand out of the city.

This is why every politician needs to take and pass a simple economics course before taking office. By being so economically stupid, the city’s politicians implemented a plan that raised tax rates but reduced tax revenue, caused the city’s economic vitality to shrink, caused more unemployment, reduced the chance of a city kid getting an entry level job,and did nothing to reduce obesity. Insanity.

3) Jim Geraghty, writing for the National Review on May 23, 2019, gave some examples on how hypocritical Democrats and liberal can be when it comes to “building walls:”

• Most liberals and Democrats are against building a wall on our southern border to keep out gang members, drug cartel members, illegal drugs, human traffickers, and potential terrorists. 
• They would prefer that we just let anyone strut across the border, regardless of their intentions. They would prefer to ignore the rule of law as it applies to current, legal ways to get into this country.
• Unless those walls are what they desire to keep the less wealthy out of their ultra wealthy neighborhoods:
• First off, Farhad Manjppo, who recently wrote a New York Times article on how liberals are in favor of walls when it keeps the poor and needy out of their neighborhoods got a lot of grief from those same wealthy liberals.
• His specific words that put him on the wrong side of liberals and Democrats go as follows: “Reading opposition to SB 50 and other efforts at increasing density, I’m struck by an unsettling thought: What Republicans want to do with I.C.E. and border walls, wealthy progressive Democrats are doing with zoning and Nimbyism. Preserving “local character,” maintaining “local control,” keeping housing scarce and inaccessible — the goals of both sides are really the same: to keep people out. We’re saying we welcome immigration, we welcome refugees, we welcome outsiders — but you’ve got to have a $2 million entrance fee to live here, otherwise you can use this part of a sidewalk for a tent,” said Brian Hanlon, president of the pro-density group California Yimby. “That to me is not being very welcoming. It’s not being very neighborly.”
• For this honest appraisal he got crucified by liberals. 
• But this is not the only example of the liberal hypocrisy when it comes to walls.
• In liberal and wealthy San Jose, California, 500 local residents showed up at a town meeting when one of the topics of the meeting was a proposal to build some new, low income apartment buildings in the town for lower income Americans citizens.
• Those in attendance screamed and shouted at the local politicians holding the meeting and actual broke out in the chant, “Build a wall” to keep those beneath their social status from moving in nearby.

Outrageous liberal hypocrisy. At least when Trump and his supporters talk about building a wall, they are not talking about keeping Americans out, they are talking about protecting the safety of Americans from foreign elements.

That will do it for today’s insanity: liberal hypocrisy in California when it comes to walls, soda tax insanity in Philly, and more and more corruption that pops up on whatever Hillary Clinton touches. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Bruno-Korschek/e/B002KYU08Q/ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Epic Failure Of The Philadelphia Soda Tax - Another Lesson In Politicians' Economic Ignorance

People, mostly Democrats and liberals, constantly want to raise Americans’ taxes to fund programs that never work and often cause more damage to an existing problem. The problem is that raising taxes often backfires on these folks since Americans are very good at protecting their assets or politicians never to do the math to understand the idiocy of raising taxes.

We have previously discussed what happened when the state of Maryland raised the tax rates for state millionaires. Although they raised the tax rates on millionaire earners they ended up getting LESS tax revenue from millionaire earners since these folks just moved to other states:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2011/05/why-overtaxing-rich-is-usually-stupid.html

We have discussed the idiocy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who wants to raise the tax rate to 70% on Americans’ income over $10 million. She thinks that raising tax rates just on these high earners high income will fund such socialistic pipe dreams like Medicare For All, free college, the New Green Deal, etc. The problem is she did not do the simple math analysis of IRS records, something we did which we showed her 70% tax rate would fund a only tiny, tiny portion of only one of the programs listed above, never mind funding most, if not all, of the programs:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2019/01/january-2019-part-8-political-class.html

Raising taxes rarely works, and it did not work in Philadelphia when it decided to significantly raise taxes on soda purchased inside the city limits. We have previously discussed this insanity but Kyle Smith, writing for the National Review on January 14, 2019, recently did a great job dissecting what has happened in Philly because of a simple soda tax:

• Back in 2017, Philly politicians decided they wanted to start a universal Pre-K program, with the additional benefit of fighting obesity, and to fund it they would put a tax on all soda sales that went down within the city limits.
• As with all politicians who are almost always ignorant of basic economics, namely price elasticity, they assumed that people would buy the same amount of soda and gladly pay the higher prices on that soda caused by the new soda tax.
• The tax they agreed to was 1.5 cents per ounce and so a two liter, standard sized bottle of soda would see its price go up over $1.00.
• But hopeful results never even got much off the ground.
• First, a study by Stephan Seiler of Stanford, Anna Tuchman of Northwestern, and Song Yao of the University of Minnesota found that, “The tax was ineffective at reducing consumption of unhealthy products.” 
• So out of the gate we see that putting a soda tax in place neither resulted in healthier consumption or the reduction in sugary drinks’ sales.
• In addition, it found that the tax hit the poorest residents the hardest since they did not have the ways and means to leave the city limits to purchase their soda, forcing them to pay the higher tax in higher numbers than the less poor.
• Turns out that the non-poor decided that they would rather drive outside the city limits to purchase their soda than stay inside the city limits and pay far more.
• As a result, it turns out that soda sales within the city limits dropped 42% as a result of the tax, resulting in far less money than the politicians had planned for since they did not take into account the simple economic principle of price elasticity.
• Soda sales jumped up significantly in stores within a two mile zone just outside of the city limits.
• “In summary, the tax does not lead to a shift in consumption towards healthier products, it affects low income households more severely, and it is limited in its ability to raise revenue,” the study said. “We find no significant reduction in calorie and sugar intake,” the authors concluded. (A different study in the U.K. found that those who consume the most sugar are the least likely to reduce soda consumption.)
• In addition, since many poorer Philadelphians are on food stamps, the so-called SNAP Federal government program that allows them to use their food benefits for the purchase of soda, indirectly the American taxpayer ended up funding some of the Philly soda tax revenue stream since poorer city residents just used their Federal benefit to pay the higher soda prices.
• Previous studies have found that almost 10% of SNAP dollars are actually used for soda purchases so it is no surprise that there was no improvement in healthier living in the city since it was the Federal government still subsidizing soda purchases.
• Another ironic side effect of raising soda prices so much is that in some cases, beer is now cheaper than soda on a per ounce basis which has resulted in beer sales going up within the city limits.
• And it gets worse: a 2017 study found that supermarkets within the city were losing $80,000 a month on average in beverage sales alone because of the soda tax.
• Even worse, they were losing $300,000 a month in total grocery sales.
• This was because as city residents went out of town to purchase their soda, they decided to do their other grocery shopping while they were there, resulting in grocery sales also migrating outside of the city limits.
• And as a result of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to lost sales, some in city supermarkets were forced to shutdown like one of the Shoprites shutdown by owner Jeff Brown.
• Mr. Brown’s overall sales were down 15% which is a gigantic loss in the slim margin supermarket business, causing him to shut down one of his supermarket stores and lay off 200 employees.
• Mr. Brown had made a point of hiring hundreds of people with criminal records to give them a second chance at life, with many of them now unemployed.
• One such employee, Anthony Jackson, told The Wall Street Journal, “I’d probably be dead, to be honest” if one of Brown’s ShopRite stores hadn’t taken him on. “The Brown family saved me. They showed me something different, that I could be a man in society,” he added. 
• In a sign of total political arrogance and ignorance, the mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, publicly stated that Brown is “a crybaby, basically.” 

So, simple ignorance about economics on the part of Philly politicians has resulted in the poorer residents paying more to live inside the city, Federal taxpayers continuing to fund not only soda sales but also the Philly soda tax, migration of grocery sales out of the city resulting in closing of stores and the laying off of likely lower income residents within the city limits including ex-cons who were getting their lives together through the generosity and compassion of people like Jeff Brown who was labeled a crybaby by the local political class. 

Oh, and by the way the revenue expected from the tax never came close to what was expected. Higher living costs, lost job opportunities, increased alcohol sales, no public health benefit, and low tax revenues. Seems like the local political class could not have tried harder to be unsuccessful if they tried to fail.

Proving again, that often raising taxes resulted in less not more when it comes to the benefits.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w