Puerto Rico Rocks

Still Dithering: The Democrats still haven’t come together on the final details of their Build Back Better/reconciliation multi trillion dollar legislation but we keep on hearing that they will very soon and they’d better because their future control of Congress and several state governorships including the too close to call and obsessively watched Virginia race may depend on it.  It’s hard to tell but it appears that in addition to the billionaire wealth tax which may or may not be constitutional, they are also planning to impose a 15 percent minimum tax rate on corporations based on the profits they report to their shareholders rather than what they are allowed to show to the IRS. That should be a rather popular solution as who other than Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and their crowd doesn’t believe that hugely profitable companies should actually pay taxes? Arizona’s Senator Sinema who has been adamant about leaving the FG tax cuts in place, is on board for the corporate minimum tax as is West Virginia’s Manchin.  Though Manchin still says he isn’t switching parties, he says that he doesn’t really relate to his Democratic colleagues these days though he loves all of them.  That’s nice but he also says that he loves all of his Republican colleagues too.    

Insurrection Update: On the January 6^th front, Rolling Stone reports that some of those who helped organize, then participated in the January 6 “festivities,” and are now cooperating with the House January 6^th committee, allege that multiple members of Congress were “intimately” involved in planning both the FG’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the events of “coup” day. They claim that there were dozens of those so-called planning meetings. In addition to cooperating with the House committee, two of those cooperators have told their version of events to Rolling Stone. According to the Rolling Stone article Arizona Congressman/Dentist Paul Gosar, actually told some of the January 6th organizers that he’d spoken with the FG who told him that they would get a “blanket pardon” for anything they might do during the insurrection.  According to Rolling Stone’s sources, in addition to Gosar, the other members of Congress involved in planning the insurrection included Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, Alabama’s Mo Brooks, North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn, Arizona’s Andy Biggs and Texas’ Louis Gohmert, in other words the usual suspects.  The allegation is that those members of Congress either participated directly or sent high level staffers to help out and that some of those meetings also involved then chief of staff Mark Meadows.  So far the substance of the Rolling Stone article hasn’t been verified by other news outlets but it’s highly likely that they’re on to something big which explains why a number of those suspected Congressional insurrectionists have been issuing carefully worded but odd statements that kind of sort of deny their involvement in the planning of the coup.  Mo Brooks, who wore protective combat gear under his clothing that day, said he had nothing to do with the planning but his staff might have and good for them.  Though Qster Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn’t on the Rolling Stone list, she probably wishes that she was.  Yesterday on Steve Bannon’s podcast she said that “January 6 was just a riot at the Capitol and if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”  To be clear by tyrant she doesn’t mean the FG.  Isn’t it nice that Bannon gets to keep podcasting when he should be in jail?

Viral Musings:  The big news on the virus front is that yesterday the FDA’s advisory committee recommended by a vote of 17 to 0 with one abstention that regulators authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for 5 to 11 year-olds. Like the adult shots, the kids shots will include two jabs spaced three weeks apart, however the dose delivered to kids will be one third the adult dose. Assuming the FDA follows the advisory panel’s advice and then the CDC agrees, and it’s highly likely that both will, shots will likely be available at the end of next week.  In other news, Moderna said that its study of more than 4500 youths shows that its shots for kids aged 6 through 11 show a “robust" immune response.  Their kid dose, like their adult booster, is half of the full adult dose. Moderna plans to submit data to the FDA "in the near term."  So far, in the US Moderna is only approved for those 18 and over so, at least for now, the status of the Pfizer shot is more relevant for those hoping to get their children vaccinated in the near term.  One more thing, Dr Debbie Birx who we haven’t heard from in a while told the House subcommittee on the pandemic, not to be confused with the January 6^th committee, that had the FG not been so distracted by his reelection 130,000 lives could have been saved.  On a more positive note, if you are looking for places to go to on your next vacation, consider Puerto Rico.  The island which mostly gets bad press for its storms and failing electricity grid has the highest vaccination rate in the USA, something to do with politicians there focusing on protecting people rather than politicizing that which shouldn’t be political.  We could learn a thing or two from them, maybe it’s time for statehood?