46th President of the United States, Joe Biden
Discussion
DB_11 said:
One of Pelosi's pork projects is her subway bill:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/02/pelosis-sub...
What attracted you to join a motoring forum where you only post about Donald Trump?https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/02/pelosis-sub...
rscott said:
DB_11 said:
One of Pelosi's pork projects is her subway bill:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/02/pelosis-sub...
What attracted you to join a motoring forum where you only post about Donald Trump?https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/03/02/pelosis-sub...
rscott said:
Let's get this straight.. you think that having the entire bill read out so they can take snippets and play later is better than their senators reading out the specific items of concern and trying to debate/change them?
No .... Not I think .... but as a mechanism to say to their supporters ..... Look the Dems are going to fund x.y.z. is this Covid related...Why would you twist what I'm saying here,
Can you not see the advantage of having something to attack your opponent with provided by the opposition,
As posted above .... $141 Mil to a subway and is this related to fighting Covid or supporting business..! Teased out of the bill reading ... An easy attack for the Republicans
DB_11 said:
I joined to get info on my DB11 and to get acquainted with AM. I just happened to see this thread and was appalled at how one-sided things appeared.
That's because it basically is one-sided. Biden appears to mostly be doing a good job so far and his predecessor was the worst president in history, and a total 
of human to boot.T6 vanman said:
rscott said:
Let's get this straight.. you think that having the entire bill read out so they can take snippets and play later is better than their senators reading out the specific items of concern and trying to debate/change them?
No .... Not I think .... but as a mechanism to say to their supporters ..... Look the Dems are going to fund x.y.z. is this Covid related...Why would you twist what I'm saying here,
Can you not see the advantage of having something to attack your opponent with provided by the opposition,
As posted above .... $141 Mil to a subway and is this related to fighting Covid or supporting business..! Teased out of the bill reading ... An easy attack for the Republicans
rscott said:
Completely normal for Us politics to include items in a completely unrelated bill. Usually they read out the relevant section and debate/amend. It's not normal to read out every single page and doesn't affect the ability to amend nor the likelihood of that succeeding.
I'll bet 90% of the dems didn't know what they're voting for. They're told that they will vote "yea" or "nah" and that's that. For quite a long time, dems have followed that mandate. DB_11 said:
rscott said:
Completely normal for Us politics to include items in a completely unrelated bill. Usually they read out the relevant section and debate/amend. It's not normal to read out every single page and doesn't affect the ability to amend nor the likelihood of that succeeding.
I'll bet 90% of the dems didn't know what they're voting for. They're told that they will vote "yea" or "nah" and that's that. For quite a long time, dems have followed that mandate. T6 vanman said:
JeffreyD said:
So where will they say the money is going?
FFS man stop being an attack dog for this echo chamber of a thread.I gave a plausible reason for having the bill read out .... nothing more
T6 vanman said:
I'm not the republican press secretary so whilst I've got better things to do lets have a beer (socially distanced infront of our laptops) and watch McEnany or Tucker next week and we could both discover together where this potential line is being played to.
As I said
You can see the future headlines ... Biden big business or money for Pelosi's interest groups
All is revealed! You want an echo chamber for whatever bAs I said
You can see the future headlines ... Biden big business or money for Pelosi's interest groups
ks some liars on FOX notnews are saying.hidetheelephants said:
T6 vanman said:
I gave a plausible reason for having the bill read out .... nothing more
What do you want for a more caring, sharing world?All is revealed! You want an echo chamber for whatever b
ks some liars on FOX notnews are saying.Jeff asked where the republicans will be saying the moneys going ... and I said we'd have to watch Fox to find out
We could equally watch MSNBC / CNN but they probably wont be spinning the republican message so unfortunately you'd need to inhabit FOX to find out ...., The message drawn out from and with snippets of the stimulus bill - Nothing to do with me wanting an echo chamber.
Imagine 2022/2024 and your a voter in a turned state, you historically voted Rep but gave Biden your vote in 2020,
The economy hasn't grown and the Biden promises haven't been fulfilled, you err slightly in favour of the 2nd amendment and slightly against 'wokeism' ...Picture this Joe Average voter?
Now imagine the republican politician highlighting passages in the stimulus bill and how instead of that money going to help the US, US businesses have spent in on the incurred costs of diversity this and woke that, How do you think that'll play to Joe Average voter.
When they come to put the x in the box they'll recall the liars on MSNBC / CNN or FOX etc but most of all they'll use their own eyes and see the money was diverted from the "Covid stimulus" to in their eyes / experience the "Biden /AOC / Peloci pet projects stimulus"
Of course .. if you feel that the Republicans wanted the bill read out page by page because their stupid .. crack on .. And if you want to attack me rather than debating .. again crack on ... but me .. I believe there is a motive and the reading was a move .. possibly shrude in the chess game of politics
HughiusMaximus said:
Yup, anyone reading this thread would think the democrats walked on water as opposed to just being another set of griftng power obsessed politicians!
Not really, but when the other side is as comically nuts and compromised as many republicans are, the dems do tend to look like the adults in most situations.T6 vanman said:
FFS Ok let me help you out ... rather than attacking me try answering the question
The issue with your entire argument is that it's predicated on the necessity for the bill to be read out in full in order to be scrutinised. This simply isn't the case. Anyone who actually wanted to scrutinise the bill could have done so in written form, at their leisure. Having lengthy legislation read at you in monotone by some hatchet faced prick for hours at a time wouldn't be mistaken by any sensible person for reasonable scrutiny, especially when all concerned had the ability to peruse the proposed legislation before the fillibustering.
HM-2 said:
T6 vanman said:
FFS Ok let me help you out ... rather than attacking me try answering the question
The issue with your entire argument is that it's predicated on the necessity for the bill to be read out in full in order to be scrutinised. This simply isn't the case. Anyone who actually wanted to scrutinise the bill could have done so in written form, at their leisure. Having lengthy legislation read at you in monotone by some hatchet faced prick for hours at a time wouldn't be mistaken by any sensible person for reasonable scrutiny, especially when all concerned had the ability to peruse the proposed legislation before the fillibustering.
They didn't want the bill to be read out in full in order to be scrutinised, They wanted the bill to be read out in full in order to use the recorded material in future for political ammunition.In 2022 or 2024 the voters won't remember the hatchet faced monotone speech but the 30 second snipped where x is promised and y happened
Edited by T6 vanman on Sunday 7th March 21:01
HM-2 said:
gumshoe said:
You already agreed the excess deaths in CA was worse than FL. Why are you now going back to cases? Make your mind up on which metric you want to examine.
What's your point here? There are a multitude of metrics, all of which individually pose challenges and have inherent flaws.You seem to be taking issue with a rounded approach that considers multiple data sets...why, exactly?HM-2 said:
I'm not sure how you're misconstruing this as me saying "overall, Florida has performed significantly worse than California", but I can assure you that it's categorically not what I've said, and the post you've quoted literally affirms that for all to see.
What? Look back at the posts, and look at the context. You quoted me and another poster’s exchange. It was in relation to excess deaths. You gave no context to your reply. I really don't know how you continue to argue black is white. I think the only person you are convincing is yourself. What are you trying to argue?gumshoe said:
Byker28i said:
So as with all stats, we don't know we actually have the fuller picture, but holding Florida up as a positive example really isn't the answer.
Florida's population grows annually through migration by around 1.5% of its population.The annual deaths has been around 17% (or 15% adjusted for net migration/per capita) higher than the previous years. Basically no different or better when compared to states that had strict lockdowns.
Why don't you look at California. They had a 20% increase in deaths in 2020 compared to the year before. And California has net immigation, so per capita that looks even worse.
So why do you tihnk Florida isn't a good example of lockdown vs not lockdown?
What is their stats is worse than other states, per capita?
Cases rarely result in deaths. Deaths are the important figure to concern yourself with.
So explain why you think Florida has performed worse than California?
HM-2 said:
gumshoe said:
So explain why you think Florida has performed worse than California?
Right now, Florida is performing significantly worse than California.HM-2 said:
Then what measures have you implemented to address other factors that may also elevate death toll but which aren't directly related to Covid-19?
I haven’t. And that’s the point. ALL excess deaths have been considered in my model (because there was no other anomaly event in either state). I’ve already explained why but I’ll try again. If we start filtering out the data, some will complain and we never come to a consensus. How much of these excess deaths are due to lockdown effects? How many suicides should one expect vs an “average” year? How many cancer deaths?And so on. You can go forever delving into the nuances. There’s a diminishing return in doing so.The excess deaths gives a holistic view of performance. Unless you are saying all covid deaths must be avoided even at the cost of other deaths, we should, without question, be assessing the all cause deaths during a period compared to earlier ones. It gives us a good view into how well a region/country has been impacted and how well it has coped.
An extreme example to prove the point would be to lock the entire population of a city away into an underground bunker with no access to food or light (before they got covid). They then die of starvation. This would have zero excess covid deaths, but the death toll would be extreme. This is actually being borne out (not on that scale of course) by people committing suicide and failing to get necessary healthcare. So it is important to include them when analysing the impact of a crude tool such as strict lockfown when the horse has already bolted.
Further, with your focus on cases, looking at the holistic view, it would suggest that people becoming infected with covid (and say if Florida is under reporting, this point is further accentuated) is maybe the better option. Less people are dying despite an increase in cases. So even on that argument Florida has possibly done better.
HM-2 said:
gumshoe said:
I never said anything about "excluding excess mortality" which isn’t covid 19 related.
Except you did:gumshoe said:
You will note I said earlier that I am ignoring additional deaths as a consequence of additional suicides, untreated cancer or other treatable illnesses that have been ignored.
You literally said you are ignored excess deaths that are consequences of other causes. Now you're pretending you didn't?HM-2 said:
gumshoe said:
You think 31 deaths out of tens of thousands is statistically significant?
...no, that's absolutely not what I said. Go back and read again. Properly, this time. Follow the citation to the study.First off, Florida could claim hurricanes from the past could have accelerated deaths such that some of their excess is not due to covid. So where do you draw the line?
I also pointed out to you that 2017 and 2018 had bigger death tolls due to wildfires in California.
Look at the notes for the data you used, it states it has excluded other deaths:
“Deaths due to external causes (i.e. injuries) or unknown causes are excluded. For more detail, see the Technical Notes”
So the dataset has already excluded the 31 deaths.
Why did you pick up on the 2020 wildfires but ignored the earlier 2014-2019 wildfires? You would have realised these wildfires were far more deadly and more destructive, And they would equally be open to the "thousands more died as a result" argument. You would have realised the excess death comparison includes earlier year’s knock on effects (2017 & 2018). Meaning your wildfire “knock on effect" deaths are already factored in. Lol.
It further goes to highlight another point: people with underlying issues will unfortunately die from various factors and futility of the aggressive lockdown is exposed. So your argument is a complete fallacy, whether the knock on deaths are real or not. They do not impact the calculations.
Are these strict lockdowns suppressing people's exposure to medical care and early detection? Will this have knock on effects for the future?
Like I said a holistic approach is more sensible strategy and that is what Florida has done; it appears to have paid off.
HM-2 said:
gumshoe said:
What experience do you have of statistics or modelling?
I sense an appeal to authority coming on, in which you make some bold claims about your own qualification on the subject. HM-2 said:
gumshoe said:
You have not explained your methodology
Er, I have, in great detail. I don't really think your inability to notice external links embedded within text, or your apparent inability to comprehend fairly rudimentary English, is my problem.https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_...
There appears to be a number of different data sets which look like they have age related and ethnicity data, which could be worth an explore (one day when I'm bored). I assume the simple excess deaths set is the one you are referring to. From the brief look I had, I can see what you mean regarding the low to high estimations of excess deaths per month. Some of the high and low ranges are vast and indicate a low confidence in their estimations.
I notice they mention “Farrington surveillance algorithms” which I had to search online for and it seems very specific to pathology surveillance so I suspect it is designed for exactly this situation (good). BUT having said that I have found some references that suggest Farrington is not suitable for where you have no historical data on the pathogen:
[i]
Examples of when not to use the Farrington algorithm: Historical data are missing for the pathogen (the result would show a large random variation). The pathogen has an incidence or frequency of reporting that has changed over the past years (would result in many false positives/negatives signals). There are large fluctuations in pathogen incidence not explained by calendar time (large random variation).
[/i]
https://case.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/MANUAL%202014...
(page 8)
So maybe that raises questions over how appropriate it is. The technical notes will likely explain more, but there seems little point in delving into it though (because we’re not in dispute) and I cannot be bothered to delve into understanding that algorithm.
My method was:
- Use the full weekly datasets for 2014 to 2021, which includes breakdown of causes
- Include population of each state for each year to calculate it per capita.
- Track the population age per state and the deaths in each age group for each year and adjust for population growth in the age bands.
- Calculate excess deaths compared to previous 5 year data.
- Used predictive method to estimate what deaths, without pandemic, could have looked like in 2020
- Based the excess on the deaths over the averaged per capita expected death rate (factoring in population age susceptibility to death)
My model looks at changes in the various age ranges, which is pertinent because covid is more fatal to older people in general. Florida has an older population and in all the age ranges it has larger increases in population, especially so in the older age ranges.
All this is moot since we are not in disagreement as to what the excess deaths data is showing. We agree excess deaths are worse in California?
HM-2 said:
gumshoe said:
It was made very clear the reasons why excess deaths was the best measure we have
Excess deaths is the best measure to people who want to argue excess deaths is the best measure. That doesn't make it the best measure for assessing the efficacy of responses in objective terms, especially if you decide to ignore any and all other contributory factors affecting excess deaths. From a purely empirical perspective, the best approach would be to blend multiple data sets to create a holistic picture, but you seem unduly hostile to that idea.The nonsense about wildfires being significant to the excess deaths calculations in California in 2020 is what made me question your intentions. It's straw clutching at its finest. California had plenty of wildfires in the data date range (2014-2020). 2018 suffered more destructive wildfires which destroyed far more structures and took more lives. Why didn't you think to factor that in? It was obvious your intention was to give California a mitigation for their failure. That comes across as bad faith.
We're risking derailing the subject so in conclusion I take from this that your net position is that California has had more excess deaths, but contend that Florida has had more cases and as such is performing worse that California? And I say that is a silly position to take.
T6 vanman said:
I guess I'm not explaining myself properly
What else is new?T6 vanman said:
They didn't want the bill to be read out in full in order to be scrutinised, They wanted the bill to be read out in full in order to use the recorded material in future for political ammunition.
So you're take is that the whole thing was a stunt to score political points?T6 vanman said:
stuff
You cite Tucker Carlson as a source, a man that was successfully defended in court by lawyers arguing that no reasonable person would believe what he was saying. You might as well have cited an anecdote where you were approached by a man, a big man with rough workers' hands, who had tears in his eyes....HM-2 said:
T6 vanman said:
I guess I'm not explaining myself properly
What else is new?T6 vanman said:
They didn't want the bill to be read out in full in order to be scrutinised, They wanted the bill to be read out in full in order to use the recorded material in future for political ammunition.
So you're take is that the whole thing was a stunt to score political points?Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: What's in the $1.9 Trillion House COVID Relief Bill? https://www.crfb.org/blogs/whats-19-trillion-house...
This is the source being used by Fox, USA Today and I daresay other news sources who are all spinning it for political purposes however it does appear to be a decent source and I'd recommend it over main stream sources. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is non government and bi-partisan but does as the name suggests have a bias towards reducing government spending.
A notable thing when searching for information on the Covid Relief Bill is that the issues being discussed in the media and on this thread are not even on the radar of more reputable financial press. As an example this short article from ABN Amro is looking at PMI, restaurants and vaccination rates - Reopening spurs continued US recovery: https://insights.abnamro.nl/en/2021/03/global-dail...
There is good reason for this. Just as it's easy to write an article claiming claiming Biden is supporting ordinary Americans it's also easy to write an article claiming that Pelosi is funding pet projects because a public service like BART might get a paltry few million out of this. (There's actually $28Bn marked for transit agencies which I'm sure will boil the piss of people who weren't bothered at all by Trump creating a $500Bn bailout fund for large corporations including $32Bn just for airline payrolls. Source: https://covidbailouttracker.com/ )
None of this matters with regard to the American taxpayer and is for the most part political tittle tattle. What matters to Americans is a) how much of the outlay returns to the public purse and b) how much economic growth it creates. This is why economists are looking at a different set of measures to the general public.
In terms of the corporate bailouts by Trump they should follow the same pattern as previous bailouts such as the TARP banking bailouts from 2008 which have so far netted the public purse $110Bn profit, however that does assume team Trump wrote the loan terms properly.
By contrast the democrat bill is is mostly putting money in to places where it can be repaid via circulation and taxation, which is harder to track but likely more effective at getting money where it needs to go in order to provide economic growth. To demonstrate this I made a quick spreadsheet:
The government puts $100 in to circulation which gets taxed at 25% which leaves £75 in circulation. That $75 circulates a second time and is taxed at 25% leaving $56.25 in circulation. That $56.25 circulates again, etc, etc.
Result after ten circulations is $377.47 of GDP from a $100 investment and $94.37 returned to the public purse in order to do it all again.
The above is an ideal situation with 100% efficiency which is obviously not how things work in the real world, however I hope demonstrates why economists are looking at a different set of metrics from the general public. The question of how effective the Covid Relief Bill will be depends on how people are going to eventually spend money in to the economy and how that money circulates, which we measure through a combination of statistics such as the personal savings rate, PMI, housebuilding, trade deficit, etc, etc.
One of the most important statistics is vaccination rates because consumer confidence is of far higher importance than whether a specific state has hard or soft lockdown rules. A state can remove all covid restrictions but if consumers are still staying away from public spaces or there is a renewed wave of the disease then at best it makes marginal difference to the economy and at worst is detrimental. For economic growth we need vaccines to get back to full consumer confidence.
IMO both republican and democrat have been incontinent with the cash so either side complaining about the deficit gets short shrift from me. The corporate bailout did need to happen to prevent job losses however the democrat policy is more likely to get money in to circulation and produce economic growth.
This is the source being used by Fox, USA Today and I daresay other news sources who are all spinning it for political purposes however it does appear to be a decent source and I'd recommend it over main stream sources. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget is non government and bi-partisan but does as the name suggests have a bias towards reducing government spending.
A notable thing when searching for information on the Covid Relief Bill is that the issues being discussed in the media and on this thread are not even on the radar of more reputable financial press. As an example this short article from ABN Amro is looking at PMI, restaurants and vaccination rates - Reopening spurs continued US recovery: https://insights.abnamro.nl/en/2021/03/global-dail...
There is good reason for this. Just as it's easy to write an article claiming claiming Biden is supporting ordinary Americans it's also easy to write an article claiming that Pelosi is funding pet projects because a public service like BART might get a paltry few million out of this. (There's actually $28Bn marked for transit agencies which I'm sure will boil the piss of people who weren't bothered at all by Trump creating a $500Bn bailout fund for large corporations including $32Bn just for airline payrolls. Source: https://covidbailouttracker.com/ )
None of this matters with regard to the American taxpayer and is for the most part political tittle tattle. What matters to Americans is a) how much of the outlay returns to the public purse and b) how much economic growth it creates. This is why economists are looking at a different set of measures to the general public.
In terms of the corporate bailouts by Trump they should follow the same pattern as previous bailouts such as the TARP banking bailouts from 2008 which have so far netted the public purse $110Bn profit, however that does assume team Trump wrote the loan terms properly.
By contrast the democrat bill is is mostly putting money in to places where it can be repaid via circulation and taxation, which is harder to track but likely more effective at getting money where it needs to go in order to provide economic growth. To demonstrate this I made a quick spreadsheet:
The government puts $100 in to circulation which gets taxed at 25% which leaves £75 in circulation. That $75 circulates a second time and is taxed at 25% leaving $56.25 in circulation. That $56.25 circulates again, etc, etc.
Result after ten circulations is $377.47 of GDP from a $100 investment and $94.37 returned to the public purse in order to do it all again.
The above is an ideal situation with 100% efficiency which is obviously not how things work in the real world, however I hope demonstrates why economists are looking at a different set of metrics from the general public. The question of how effective the Covid Relief Bill will be depends on how people are going to eventually spend money in to the economy and how that money circulates, which we measure through a combination of statistics such as the personal savings rate, PMI, housebuilding, trade deficit, etc, etc.
One of the most important statistics is vaccination rates because consumer confidence is of far higher importance than whether a specific state has hard or soft lockdown rules. A state can remove all covid restrictions but if consumers are still staying away from public spaces or there is a renewed wave of the disease then at best it makes marginal difference to the economy and at worst is detrimental. For economic growth we need vaccines to get back to full consumer confidence.
IMO both republican and democrat have been incontinent with the cash so either side complaining about the deficit gets short shrift from me. The corporate bailout did need to happen to prevent job losses however the democrat policy is more likely to get money in to circulation and produce economic growth.
kowalski655 said:
The bill is trying to give money to businesses that will do something to combat climate change,and combat racism and sexism in corporate boardrooms, rather than to pals of Don, or churches, or billionaires,unlike the GOP version. Can't see much wrong
Exactly, we're not trying to solve climate change or racism/sexism with this bill. It's labelled as Covid relief and that's to scare the citizens into buy-in/support for the bill. If the people don't support it, they're anti-American. Only a small portion of the bill is for Covid and economic stimulus due to Covid. And much of that is slated for years 2022 and beyond.And who is buying up that debt? The Chinese.
Meanwhile, there remains ~$1 trillion left unspent from the previous Covid bills.
Edited by DB_11 on Monday 8th March 05:37
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