Is the Sandy Hook Hoax Video A Hoax?

“The Sandy Hook Shooting – Fully Exposed” is a YouTube video that has quickly garnered over 10 million views questioning the official story about last month’s elementary school massacre. In this post I will prove to you there has been a lot of deception surrounding this Sandy Hook Shooting video. This is a simple, logical post. No aliens, holigrams, rituals, or anything like that. Just facts.

Let’s make the story we have been told clear. According to the video, there were no children who perished at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. People acting sad were unconvincing actors with holes in their stories and mistakes in their actions. The whole thing is a hoax, possibly perpetrated by the government or Illuminati to take away our guns.

If this is true, it is truly one of the most saddening conspiracies ever pulled off in the U.S. And after watching the video, you would have no reason to question it. The clips, the images, the background music, the sans-serif text, the misspelled words. Why would they lie about something like this? How could they pull off something so horrible?

More importantly, who could possibly have something to gain from something like this? Like everyone who watched the video in the last two weeks, I felt a chilling sadness. However, after investigating for myself, my sadness quickly became confusion, frustration, and disbelief, you are about to see why, this is a run-on sentence. Here are some things that show another side to that “Official Hoax Story.”

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Selective Tax Cut Syndrome

I’ve seen conservatives arguing that the fiscal cliff deal was a “victory” of sorts because it got the Democrats to support permanent extensions of the Bush tax cuts for almost all income levels.

When the cuts were originally enacted, Democrats opposed them as “tax cuts for the rich.” But when it was time for them to expire, Democrats had to admit that the cuts affected all income levels. (Obama often claimed Republicans were holding the middle-class “hostage” to extend tax rates for the wealthy.) So the Democrats supported extending them, first temporarily for all income levels, and then permanently for all income levels under $400,000.

When Republicans lowered taxes for all Americans, Democrats pretended they didn’t help average Americans – it didn’t fit the Democratic narrative that Republicans don’t care about them. But when Republicans are about to let those taxes go back to the rate they used to be, Democrats get all upset that they’re going to hurt average Americans, even though the only way this “hurts” is that it takes away the “help” they pretended was never there in the first place!

But Democrats aren’t the only ones suffering from Selective Tax Cut Syndrome.

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Reasons For Optimism 55-58

55. Africa’s rapid economic development continues. “64 recent major discoveries of fuel deposits” will help the continent meet its growing energy needs, and connecting more Africans to the electric grid will save millions of lives from the respiratory illnesses caused by “kerosene lanterns and charcoal cookstoves,” among many, many other coming improvements to their standards of living.

56. At the other end of the spectrum, obesity may be declining in children of low-income families in the US.

57. Doctors have restored a man’s sight with adult stem cells.

58. SpaceX has successfully test-launched their reusable Grasshopper rocket at a new record height. It’s pretty cool to watch the rocket defy gravity as it calmly hovers and lands. SpaceX is working on fully reusable launch vehicles with the goal of making space travel dramatically cheaper.

See the latest from Expected Optimism for several more reasons for optimism.

The Loopholes That Aren’t Available to Most Americans

I briefly mentioned the infuriating, market-distorting, rent-seeking tax credits in my previous post on the fiscal cliff deal. I’m glad to see that the issue is getting more attention.

The tireless Tim Carney reveals that the lobbying for these tax credits did not occur in the busy final hours at the turn of the year, but in lobbying for a bill last summer that was copied verbatim into the fiscal cliff bill. Carney claims the Obama administration specifically insisted that these tax credits be shoved into the deal.

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Curious Trends in the National Debt

As another year comes to an end, it’s time for the annual treasure troves of annual statistics. Here’s one: “Treasury 10-year note yields were poised for the lowest annual average since at least World War II.” The interest rates on treasury bonds have continued falling despite the enormous rise in the national debt.

us-national-debt-2012The national debt has tripled since 2000, but the amount of interest paid per year has definitely not. These things are hard to measure, depending on how you count that Social Security IOU thing and “net interest” and other factors that make my head hurt, but by pretty much any metric, the amount of interest paid per year has barely budged. Here’s some data straight from the Treasury website:

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Income Taxes Are Probably Becoming More Progressive

We still don’t know what kind of “fiscal cliff deal” we’re going to get, or when we’ll get it, but I agree with those who think it will probably include an extension of the Bush tax cuts for incomes under some level. Much of the current haggling has to do with whether or not that level is $250,000 or $1 million or somewhere in between.

If this happens, it means the income tax rate will become more progressive than it already is, as higher-income folks see higher tax rates and everyone else’s stay the same. This will be difficult to reverse; can you imagine later trying to sell either a tax hike for everyone except the rich or a tax cut only for the rich?

Such an increase in progressivity would be slightly good for the deficit, and good for my current personal finances, but I’m not sure it’s sustainable policy.

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Why I Love the Debt Ceiling

Whenever the debt ceiling creeps back into the news, Smart People start talking about how ridiculous the whole thing is and why it should be completely abolished. Congress already approved the legislation that led to increasing the debt, so why should they get a chance to play dangerous political games around actually allowing it to be increased? As Bill Clinton says, “The idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy.”

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