Biden's claim that tens of millions of people would lose insurance coverage if he ended the public-health pandemic emergency is a sham and a shame

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) report, “Although Medicaid enrollment is expected to decrease significantly,” CMS explains, “many individuals who were not disenrolled from Medicaid during the public health emergency already had comprehensive coverage from another source (such as through an employer) and thus remain insured even when disenrolled from Medicaid.”

Hat tip to the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal.

The EB of the WSJ says that focusing on median wages to measure discrimination is a Sham and a Shame

The Editorial Board (EB) of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) notes that the median woman on Biden's staff earn 80% of what the median man earns. It goes on to point out that this one statistic does NOT demonstrate discrimination or sexism. Here are three nuggetts.

1. "How can this be, since the salaries are public and people with equal titles get equal pay? The answer is that there’s a composition effect: Among 269 female and 179 male White House staff in Mr. Perry’s spreadsheet, there are more women in lower-paid roles such as staff assistant." 
2. "Many trends feed into the aggregate wage gap, including people’s free choices. To take one example, more than 90% of workplace deaths in 2021 were men, and dangerous jobs like repairing power lines command a wage premium."
3. "Lumping all these people together and then cutting the data set by gender is not a way to understand what’s truly going on in the world."

Kimberly Strassel and James Freeman say the Jan 6 Indictment against Trump is a Sham and a Shame

"Dishonest politicians who act on dubious legal claims? There aren’t enough prisons to hold them all." Kimberly Strassel then lists people who could be charged with similar crimes.

1. Al Gore for claims about 2000
2. George W. Bush for claims about 2000
3. Barack Obama for his claim about his authority to decree that the Senate was is recess
4. Joe Biden for his claim that he could erase student debt
5. Stacey Abrams for claims about her loss in 2018
6. Dozens of Democrats who objected to slates of electors in 2001, 2005, and 2017
7. Adam Schiff for claims about a classified surveillance warrant application
8. James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok for "using a dossier full of lies to get that warrant"

Here is her conclusion.

"There are any number of things as certain as death and taxes. One is that politicians will lie, and act on those untruths. Now that might make them felons."

James Freeman adds "Messrs. Obama and Biden" to the list for the claim "that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it."

Why politics is a sham and a shame

Politicians put party over principles.

Politicians focus on political expediency instead of practical excellence.

Politicians resort to demagoguery and slogans to solve our complicated problems. We need clear discussion and careful analysis.

‘Incitement’: Cori Bush Called Out For Rittenhouse Remarks, Claims White Supremacists Shot At Her

"'When we marched in Ferguson, white supremacists would hide behind a hill near where Michael Brown Jr. was murdered and shoot at us'" (Daily Wire, Nov. 2021). 

"The Washington Post’s fact-check previously reported:

'[Kamala] Harris and [Elizabeth] Warren have ignored the findings of the Justice Department to accuse [police officer Darren] Wilson of murder, even though the Justice Department found no credible evidence to support that claim. Instead, the Justice Department found that the popular narrative was wrong, according to witnesses deemed to be credible, some of whom testified reluctantly because of fear of reprisal. The department produced a comprehensive report to determine what happened, making the senators’ dismissal of it even more galling. Harris and Warren both earn Four Pinocchios.'"

"
Ferguson Police Chief Frank McCall Jr. said on Monday that he was not aware of any record of [shoots fired at Cori Bush]occurring, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch." 

The COP26 Summit and the Global Age of Shams

"COP26 was the kind of hollow ritual that characterized Carlyle’s Age of Shams. As one politician after another committed their countries to carefully crafted unenforceable pledges, none had the bad manners to observe that no country anywhere fully honored the climate pledges made with such fanfare in Paris six years ago. Even the pledges are insufficient to meet the stated goals of the U.N. climate process, and nobody is keeping the pledges" (Mead, WSJ, Nov. 2021)

What is this, the honor system?

Nancy Pelosi's rhetorical question implies that what politicians say is a sham and a shame. (RCP, May 2021) She implies that they will say that they have been vaccinated or act as though they have been even when they have not. If she doesn't trust them to tell the truth, why should I?

Gerrymanders and Double Standards

What Eric Holder and Barack Obama say about “fair maps and more representative democracy” when states draw new lines for districts is a sham and a shame. Karl Rove notes that only complain when Rs gerrymander but not when the Ds do. (WSJ, May 2021) Illinois is an example. I am reminded of the adage, "If they didn't have double standards, they would not have standards at all".