July, 2020, Part 7, Political Class Insanity: The Incredible Lack of Basic Math Skills Of Government, Politicians, and Ocasio-Cortez

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

1) As we have shown far too many times in this blog, American politicians have very little credibility on just about any topic. What they tell us very often is an outright lie, a shading of reality, or just plain ignorance on their part. Such is the case when it comes to informing the American public the true extent and reach of the coronavirus crisis as the following simple math and administrative foul ups point out:

• Fox 35 News in Orlando recently reported that a young man in his 20s, who was listed as a coronavirus victim, actually died from a motorcycle accident.
• This was part of a larger Fox 35 investigation that found massive errors in the Florida processes to county coronavirus cases.
• In more than one case, a testing site reported that all 83 of the people that were tested were found to have the virus, a very very unlikely outcome.
• One testing facility, Orlando Health, published statistics that showed that 98% of the people it tested for the virus actually had the virus but follow up investigations showed that the real rate was about 90% lower than the reported 98%.
• The Orlando Medical Center reported a positive rate of 76% but later admitted the actually positive rate was only 6%.
• Another research effort concluded that the Florida infection rate may be overstated by as much as 30%.
• In Virginia, it turns out that in that state the numbers being reported are the number of tests that are positive not the number of people that test positive. Thus, if someone went and had three tests done that were all positive, then the reported number would have been three, not one, distorting that state’s numbers.
• We have previously reported how it was shown in New York that it seemed when anyone died it was reported as a coronavirus death despite indications there were other causes of death.
• We have also previously reported on a California follow up autopsy study that found a high percentage of those reported as a virus deaths were not a virus death, that these unfortunate folks who passed away had the virus but the virus was not the cause of death.

As you can see, anything that the political class touches via government functions almost always gets screwed up. You cannot make wise and effective decisions if the data you are basing your decisions on are as screwed up as the virus counting processes. Insanity to begin shutting down the economy again when maybe the inability to count is the problem, not the virus.

2) We used to write a lot about the stupid and ignorant things that Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez would spout. For a while it was amusing to make fun of her ignorance and stupid rants. However, over time she just became a tedious drone, saying stuff that showed her lack of knowledge and real world experience and the fact that anyone who disagreed with her was almost always immediately classified as a racist or sexist by herself.

One of her major shortcomings is her inability to do simple math. She once proposed that the top income tax rate for those earning over $10 million a year be raised to 70% to pay for the idiotic New Green Deal climate idiocy. Using publicly available IRS records we were able to show in just a few simple calculations that doing so would pay for only a tiny, tiny fraction of her proposed climate pipe dream, not the entire cost as she claimed.

Her abysmal math skills were recently on display again:

• She has joined the chorus of some New York state politicians that want to slap a wealth tax on the state’s 118 billionaires.
• This wealth tax would be used, according to these folks, to help support those that are suffering as a result of the coronavirus issue.
• This wealth tax would generate about $5.5 billion which sounds like a lot of money especially to someone like Ocasio-Coertez who has shown to have some very weak math skills.
• That means that on average, each millionaire would pay about $46.6 million as a result of this wealth tax.
• There are currently about 1.3 million New Yorkers who are unemployed and would be likely candidates for part of this $5.5 billion according to the wishes of Ocasio-Cortexz.
• But if we divide that $5.5 billion by the 1.3 million candidates for financial relief the average payout would be….$35.42, hardly enough to pay the rent, pay the mortgage, or buy a lot of groceries.

Do the math Congresswoman, or if you cannot do the math, have someone on your staff do the math before coming up with these ridiculous ideas. And the $35.42 is probably on the high side:

• The $35.42 assumes that the wealth tax could magically go to the 1.3 million without any government bureaucracy costs reducing that amount actually available.
• And no one, no matter how rich they are, is going to willingly write a check for $46 million and give it to the government.
• These billionaires have the ability to pick up and move to other states without any wealth tax, and probably move to states that do not have any income tax either such as Florida, before the state government could pass the wealth tax. 
• Think about it, even if they lived in a $10 million mansion, they would be better off selling that New York mansion at a steep discount in order to avoid paying $46.6 million in a wealth tax.
• In such a case, they would end up at least $36 million ahead of the game and Ocasio-Cortez nitwit wealth tax idea and would quite quickly get their money back by moving to a state with a smaller tax burden

Again, like most politicians. Ocasio-Cortez does not have the ability to come up with real solutions to the country’ problems so she comes up with stupid non-solutions like this. In fact, not only does she not have any problem solving abilities, she has very weak math skills.

3) In the past few posts we have discussed the reality that crime in NYC is up tremendously over the past weeks/months:

• The year to date NYC murder rate is up 27.1% compared to the same time period last year.
• The number of shooting incidents is up 53.5%.
• During the Fourth Of July weekend, 10 city residents were killed, up 130% from last year.
• On a single recent Monday in the city there were 18 shooting victims involved in 14 different shooting incidents.
• However, instances of petty larceny, the stealing of property with a value less than $1,000, is down 7.5% compared to last year.

Okay, so a simple analysis of these numbers would indicate that violent crime is way up this year in NYC while petty theft crimes are down. But somehow, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lives in a different world when she views these statistics, assuming she even looked at the stats and the reality they portray:

• She contends that NYC crime is way up because people have to steal a loaf of bread to feed their families.
• Specifically: "Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent and so they go out and they need to feed their child and they don't have money. They feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry."
• So all of the shootings and increased violence, all of the attacks on police officers in the city and the looting of stores that have nothing to do with bread are happening because people are hungry for a loaf of bread?

Shootings are up, violence crimes in the streets are up, petty theft is down, a category that probably involves stealing a loaf of bread, and this is the conclusion she comes to? Her lack of world experience and ignorance in the face of facts and reality is mind boggling.

That will do it for today: the incredible lack of math skills of politicians in general and Ocasio- Cortez in particular.

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

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