Tag Archives: COVID

Lockdowns are the Great Unequalizer

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Democrats and their liberal economic advisers obsess about income inequality. Will someone please tell them that no act in modern times has widened the gap between the rich and the poor more than the lockdowns going on right now?

Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the leftist National Low Income Housing Coalition, said, “The majority of the up to 17 million households at risk of losing their homes this winter are people of color.”

Politico reported that minorities and the poor have “been more vulnerable to job and income losses from the ensuing economic crisis, in large part because Black and Latino workers are over-represented in the service industries wiped out by shutdowns.”

James Parrott, an economist at the New York City New School, said that what the United States is experiencing is “the most lopsided economic event imaginable.”

The National Restaurant Association said that 40 to 50 percent of restaurants may go bankrupt in the months ahead if their stores don’t reopen immediately. Two of the U.S.’s most iconic restaurants, the 21 Club in Manhattan and the Cliff House in San Francisco, announced they had closed their doors permanently after nearly 100 years of business. As they die, so do hundreds of jobs in these cities. The workers out of work aren’t rich. Overall, 15 million middle-income people work for bars and restaurants.

Even Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and arguably the planet’s richest man, complained that the lockdowns exacerbate inequality. With tens of billions of dollars of added profits, Amazon has been the world’s biggest beneficiary from locking down brick-and-mortar stores.

For once, liberals are spot on.

Lockdowns are crushing the little guy. Even so, it is the Democrats who are pushing this anti-freedom agenda. Here are the 10 states listed by The New York Times with the strictest lockdown orders: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington. What do they have in common? Democratic governors.

Liberals love to talk about following the science, but all evidence of the last nine months points to the scientific conclusion that lockdowns do not work to reduce deaths. Contact-tracing studies show that about half of those infected with the coronavirus got it despite staying at home. Only 2 percent of the transmission comes from restaurants, and almost none comes from outdoor dining, which is now idiotically prohibited in California.

The states that have not locked down their economy have lower death rates than New York and New Jersey. The unemployment rate for service workers in these states has skyrocketed to as high as 10%. In contrast, the red states, such as Utah and Florida, that are still open for business have unemployment rates for service workers as low as 4 percent.

Yet lockdowns are supported by politicians, university professors, journalists, technology executives, government employees, preachers, teacher unions and wealthy suburbanites. Their incomes are not in jeopardy. They won’t wait in lines for a meal. Would teachers support school closures if they weren’t getting a paycheck? How many people get tenure like six-figure salaried university professors who have been inoculated from the lockdowns they cheered on?

I don’t see Yentel or many other “low-income advocates” protesting the lockdowns; do you? They think a government stimulus program of $1 trillion will solve the problems of the poor and the unemployed. Handouts are no substitutes for jobs and paychecks. Millions will fall through the cracks in any case.

There is an old joke about a boy who kills his parents and then throws himself on the courts’ mercy because he is an orphan. The modern-day version of that story is liberals who have helped burn down the house and then piously complain about rising homelessness.

Arthur Laffer, Walter Williams, Milton Friedman and so many other great economists have always warned us: The poor and minorities are the first victims of anti-growth and boneheaded public policies. Tragically, we are once again learning that lesson.

So, why is the left all in for lockdown policies? These policies are doing just the opposite of what they preach: “rewarding wealth, not work.” Perhaps the answer is that the left cares a lot more about power than the poor.

Stephen Moore, American Thinker

The Biggest Political Blunder in American History

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If courts and state legislatures award Joe Biden the presidency, the anti-Trump cabal, driven by a four-year single-minded obsession to defeat President Trump, will have committed the greatest political blunder in American history — the unabashed and overt theft of the 2020 presidential election. 

This myopic and oblivious group so misunderstood the depth and breadth of support for Donald Trump that their blatant manipulation of the election would fall monumentally short of the planned for and anticipated landslide defeat of the incumbent.  A landslide they needed in order to dominate the political arena for the foreseeable future and avoid any backlash from the electorate for their duplicity.

Thus, this cabal, which consists of the Democrat party establishment, Tech and Wall Street billionaires, the mainstream media and left-wing elitists, will find itself in a quagmire of being unable to govern.  The Democrat party’s dominant and radicalized left-wing base will revolt over failed promises and expectations while the extent of the fraud will inevitably be fully exposed, resulting in nearly half of the citizenry viewing the government as illegitimate. 

The unleashing of Covid-19 on the world by the Chinese Communists opened the door for massive voter fraud, primarily via mail-in ballots, to be introduced into traditional battleground states.  Operating on the four-year premise that the destruction of President Trump justifies any means, the Democrat party establishment extra-constitutionally imposed changes to election laws in a number of states. 

At the same time their cadre of co-conspirators were also mobilized.  The social media oligarchs and the mainstream media controlled and blatantly censored the flow of information.  The self-styled progressive billionaires, in violation of campaign laws, poured untold millions into so-called get out the vote campaigns.  And the left-wing elites mobilized their army of foot soldiers to intimidate state and local politicians as well as state and federal judges in addition to being frontline participants in various statewide voter frauds.

These conspirators smugly believed that they had successfully set up a scenario wherein Donald Trump would be defeated in such a massive landslide that a vast majority of the citizenry would never question the results.  Further, Donald Trump would be so marginalized that his future as the leader of a growing political movement would be rendered moot as he slunk, tail between his legs, back to Mar-A-Lago.  Thus leaving the political playing field in the hands of the established ruling class in near perpetuity.

Instead the worst-case scenario played out.  The election came down to four battleground states, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania with a total margin for Joe Biden of 120,000 out of 18,600,000 legally or illegally cast votes or 0.6%.  The question of fraud, despite the cowardice of the federal and state judiciaries, cannot be swept under the rug particularly as so many illegalities have already been exposed. 

Further, nearly half of all likely voters (75% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats) believe there was sufficient fraud in the election to ensure Biden won.  Despite the best efforts of both social and mainstream media as well as the Democrat party hierarchy, that perception will never dramatically change, as in a recent poll just 56% of Americans say Biden is their president.   Once in office, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would be viewed by a significant plurality of Americans as transparent frauds and imposters thanks to an unabashedly fraudulent election.  A citizenry already consumed with contempt for the ruling class due to their ham-handed police-state tactics in dealing with the Chinese Coronavirus is now waking up to their duplicity and megalomania. 

Without the modicum of a mandate and open hostility towards a Biden/Harris Administration, there is very little the ruling class can do to enact their agenda with the specter of revenge in the 2022 mid-terms hanging over their heads.  However, there is a more pressing issue that will impact the nation.  The left-wing base of the Democrat party can rightfully claim that it was their grassroots efforts that pushed the Biden/Harris ticket over the top.  Had there been the landslide all had anticipated and planned for, then the left would have had no choice but to be satisfied with the crumbs from the executive table as their role in the election fraud would be downplayed.

But there will be no crumbs from the table, as many of the grandiose plans of the ruling class will have to be shelved.  This will not sit well with the rank-and-file left-wing radicals as they will realize they were mere pawns in the lawless seizure of power by their nemeses.  The billionaire class, the corporatists and the ruling elites and their collective self-interest runs counter to Marxist/socialist ideology of the left.  None of the promises made during the campaign season will be kept as these doctrinaire socialists and their leaders will be shunted to the side while their erstwhile allies focus on maintaining their stranglehold on the levers of power in the face of an aroused and determined opposition led by Donald Trump.

In the spring and summer of 2020, the ruling class, in a marriage of convenience, tacitly allied themselves with another anti-Trump faction, the left’s uncontrollable militant militias, Antifa and Black Lives Matter.  By their collective silence and capitulation in the face of ongoing riots, violence, intimidation and looting, they conveyed to these self-styled revolutionaries that they are spineless and easily intimidated.  When the radical left is ignored and marginalized by a Biden/Harris Administration and the frustration level reaches a boiling point, then these militants will again take to the streets in an even more violent manner. 

The bitter harvest of massive election fraud will be a government beset with an inability to govern, as it will have no good will with the bulk of the American people and a political base it cannot placate.  The perpetrators of this fraud are predestined to fail as well as hasten the ultimate demise of the Democrat Party.  The only issue outstanding is whether this nation will descend into chaos and bitterness as a result.

Steve McCann, American Thinker

COVID Fascism Continues

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Heroin overdoses in San Francisco far outnumber COVID deaths. Yet there’s NO discussion whatsoever of the harmful effects of lockdowns; only the real or exaggerated harmful effects of COVID. COVID fascists are not concerned with “public safety.” No mistake of this magnitude could have been innocent. We are witnessing, in real time, the murder of human civilization.

And in Seattle, the city government prepares to legalize theft and looting — whenever the government feels the guilty party is too poor NOT to steal or loot. Wow. Marxism is here. It’s no longer just ideology: IT’S REALITY. In Seattle, you can now violate property rights if you offer an entirely subjective claim to poverty. Theft is OK, if you’re poor. Under a one-party commanded by a George Soros/Zuckerberg/Bill Gates cabal and Kamala Harris, you had better believe it’s coming to your town or neighborhood next.

And in other news … Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus response, has been caught going to her family’s elite beach resort for a big Thanksgiving party after she shamed her fellow Americans for even THINKING of getting together. We have created an aristocracy of pull and arrogance in this country that makes the British royalty of 1776 look Jeffersonian in comparison. People like Birx are disgusting parasites who should be defunded, if not criminally prosecuted. I will never dignify them with obedience.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Costs Must Always Be Weighed Against Benefits

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One of the first lessons in an economics class is every action has a cost. That is in stark contrast to lessons in the political arena where politicians virtually ignore cost and talk about benefits and free stuff. If we look only at the benefits of an action, policy or program, then we will do anything because there is a benefit to any action, policy or program.

Think about one simple example. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 36,096 Americans lost their lives in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2019. Virtually all those lives could have been saved if we had a 5 mph speed limit. The huge benefit of a 5 mph speed limit is that those 36,000-plus Americans would have been with us instead of lost in highway carnage. Fortunately, we look at the costs of having a 5 mph speed limit and rightly conclude that saving those 36,000-plus lives are not worth the costs and inconvenience. Most of us find it too callous, when talking about life, to explicitly weigh costs against benefits. We simply say that a 5 mph speed limit would be impractical.

What about the benefits and costs of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic? Much of the medical profession and politicians say that lockdowns, social distancing and mask-wearing are the solutions. CDC data on death rates show if one is under 35, the chances of dying from COVID-19 is much lower than that of being in a bicycle accident. Should we lockdown bicycles? Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, biostatistician and epidemiologist, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University and an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician and epidemiologist were the initiators of the Great Barrington Declaration. More than 50,000 scientists and doctors, as well as more than 682,000 ordinary people, have signed the Great Barrington Declaration opposing a second COVID-19 lockdown because they see it doing much more harm than good.

Efforts to keep very young from getting COVID-19, given most will not even realize they have it or will suffer only mild symptoms, may be counterproductive in that it delays the point where a country has herd immunity. According to the CDC, COVID-19 deaths in young people (from babies to college students) are almost nonexistent. The first age group to provide a substantial contribution to the death toll is 45-54 years, who contribute nearly 5% of all coronavirus deaths. More than 80% of deaths occur in people aged 65 and over. That increases to over 92% if the 55-64 age group is included.

Thus, only a tiny number of people under age 25 die of COVID-19. Yet, schools have been closed, and tens of millions of schoolchildren have been denied in-class instruction. Mandating that 5-year-olds wear masks during their school day is beyond nonsense. Virtual learning can serve as a substitute for in-class teaching but it has mixed results. Some parents can provide their children with the necessary tools, perhaps hire tutors, and take an active interest in what their children are doing online. Other parents will not have the interest, ability or the time.

Here is a lockdown question for you. Government authorities permit groceries and pharmacies to remain open during lockdowns. They permitted stores likes Walmart, Costco and Sam’s Club to remain open. However, these stores sell items that are also sold in stores that were locked down such as: Macy’s, J.C. Penney, J. Crew Group, Neiman Marcus and Bed Bath & Beyond. The lack of equal treatment caused many employees to lose their jobs and many formerly financially healthy retailers have filed for bankruptcy.

As political satirist H. L. Mencken said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” By the way, the best time to scare people, be wrong and persist in being wrong is when the costs of being wrong are borne by others.

The late Walter E. Williams was a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.