Just The Facts Ma'am

With all due regard and respect for Dragnet's Joe Friday, Thursday evening's debate was rife with inaccuracies.  I'm not talking about the typical election year hyperbole; I'm talking about intentional mistruths and outright lies.

A couple of the whoppers that stand out include:

We have a thousand millionaires in America, I mean billionaires.  And what's happening?  They're in a situation where they in fact pay 8.2 percent taxes.

- Biden

Pants on fire!  Biden is referencing a 2021 White House study concluding that the 400 wealthiest taxpayers paid an effective tax rate of 8 percent. 

Because the estimate included unrealized capital gains in the calculation the resulting effective tax rate is fallacious.  Smoke and mirrors wrong. A deception.  That is not the way the tax code works in real life.

People are taxed on capital gains only when the asset (stock, real estate, business, whatever) is sold.

According to the IRS, the top 1 percent of taxpayers (defined as income of $548,000 and up) paid taxes averaging 26%.

 

He's destroying Medicare because all of these people are coming in.  They're putting them on Medicare.  They're putting them on Social Security.  They're going to destroy Social Security.  This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security.

- Trump

Some of you readers may recall my own experience with applying for Medicare the summer of 2020.

My application for coverage was declined.

Yup.  Because I happen to have been born in another country; Germany in-fact.  No matter that I have been paying into the system forever and hold a valid US passport. The Social Security Administration had me classified as a non-citizen.  I was undocumented and therefore ineligible.  I can only speculate; but this was likely a bureaucratic record-keeping holdover traced to my registration for the draft in the very early 1970s.  The local draft board was somehow convinced that because I held both a US Army birth certificate and a German birth certificate my dual citizenship would entice me to flee the country and thereby circumvent any attempt at conscription and free trip to Vietnam. The fix was I had to renounce any claim to German citizenship.  After I raised my right hand and swore an oath to absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen, I was issued a Certificate of Naturalization.  As a sole citizen of the US of A my draft-dodging moment was over.  

The people over at the Social Security Administration eventually cleared-up any confusion over my citizenship status and I am covered by both Medicare and Social Security.  Happy ending to a stressful three months.

Donald Trump is a liar.  And this lie is a howler.  Sure, I know his followers believe this BS but the truth of the matter is that undocumented individuals are ineligible for both Social Security and Medicare.  

That a dazed and confused Joe Biden didn't nail Trump to the wall over this has me stumped.

The entire Thursday event over at CNN was an unparalleled shit show.