Stephen Moore: Dem Governors: Stop Turning a Health Crisis Into an Economic Crisis

By Stephen Moore | January 5, 2021 @ CNSnews

(Editor's Note:  I met Stephen Moore here in Cleveland about three for four years ago and got his permission to publish his work.  As a side bar, I can honestly say he's a classy down the earth guy you would happily invite to your home for dinner and to meet the family.  RK)

We are now almost one year from the dark days when the coronavirus first hit these shores. Why are the politicians making the same policy mistakes today that they made nine months ago? The 300,000+ deaths are an act of nature, but the virus's death and despair have been compounded by acts of man — i.e., foolish politicians.

Haven't we learned anything about how to combat this virus without slamming shut our economy? Yes. And so, in the hopes that these errors of government are corrected, I present some well-established truths about how to keep us safe from the virus:

No. 1: Yes, COVID-19 is a very dangerous disease for those over the age of 70 and for those who are severely overweight or with preexisting health issues. For young and healthy people, the risks remain miniscule.

No. 2: Lockdowns have had very limited efficacy in reducing death rates from the virus. I recently examined the correlation between the stringency of business lockdowns in states and their corresponding death rates. The relationship is slightly positive. In other words, strict lockdowns have NOT been a smart strategy to stop the spread of the disease. Sequestering the elderly and the infirm is a much more effective strategy — something New York, New Jersey, and Michigan failed to do.

No. 3: The factor most associated with death rates from the virus is the population density of an area. Pandemics are primarily urban diseases. If you want to minimize your health risks, get out of the big cities like Chicago or New York.

No. 4: The only statistically significant impact of lockdowns is SEVERE and potentially long-term damage to the local and state businesses and workers. Another way to put this is lockdowns do not flatten the curve of the virus, but they do flatten the economy and put millions of Americans in long unemployment lines.

No. 5: Almost all of the severe lockdowns are in blue states with Democratic governors, and these are the states with very high unemployment rates. Here are the unemployment rates in blue states with severe lockdowns: New Jersey 10%, Nevada 10.1%, New York 8.4%, Connecticut 8.4%, and California 8.2%. These blue-state unemployment rates are almost twice as high as the rates in states that have minimal or no lockdowns: Nebraska 3.1%, South Dakota 3.5%, Iowa 3.6%, Utah 4.3%, and Alabama 4.4%.

No. 6: The blue states of America, led by Democratic governors and mayors, have tragically turned a health crisis into an economic crisis.

My New Year's wish is that Democratic governors stop the misery of soup lines and unemployment lines and small-business bankruptcies and open up their stores, restaurants, shopping centers and schools — now.

 

The Year in which Comforting American Myths Were Ravaged

James Bovard – December 30, 2020 

 

Thanks in large part to Covid lockdowns, this year has left vast wreckage in its wake, with ten million jobs lost, more than 100,000 businesses and dozens of national chains bankrupted or closed. Up to 40 million people could face eviction in the coming months for failing to pay rent, and Americans report that their mental health is at record low levels. But the casualty list for 2020 must also include many of the political myths that shape Americans’ lives. 

Perhaps the biggest myth to die this year was that Americans’ constitutional rights are safeguarded by the Bill of Rights. After the Covid-19 pandemic began, governors in state after state effectively placed scores of millions of citizens under house arrest – dictates that former Attorney General Bill Barr aptly compared to “the greatest intrusion on civil liberties” since the end of slavery. Politicians and government officials merely had to issue decrees, which were endlessly amended, in order to destroy citizens’ freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of choice in daily life. Los Angeles earlier this month banned almost all walking and bicycling in the city, ordering four million people to “to remain in their homes” in a futile effort to banish a virus. 

The Rule of Law is another myth impaled by 2020’s dire developments. Courts have repeatedly struck down sweeping restrictions. Federal judge William Stickman IV invalidated some of Pennsylvania’s restrictions in a September ruling: “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.” After the Michigan Supreme Court effectively labeled Governor Gretchen Whitmer a lawless dictator, she responded by issuing “new COVID-19 emergency orders that are nearly identical to her invalidated emergency orders,” as the Mackinac Center noted. How many governors and mayors have you seen on the television news being led away in handcuffs after their arrest for violating citizens’ rights this year? None..........To Read More....

 

When are Local and State Governments Illegitimate?

August 20, 2020 By J. Robert Smith

 

Watching “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Monday night, my stomach turned and heart sank.  Carlson ran video footage of a couple in Portland being dragged from their pickup truck and beaten.  Their sin: their whiteness.  The culprits, BLM thugs.

There were no police to intervene.  Portland police, like Seattle and Minneapolis police, are practically neutered.  Police are hamstrung, defunded, and demoralized in these cities.  Many have handed in their notices.  National Guard deployments are verboten.  Curfews are nonexistent.  The human excrement that pummels innocents to within inches of their lives are ghouls prowling the night.  They’d come for us, if they could. 

This descent into hell is enabled by so-called progressive Democrats in the aforesaid cities and Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and wherever next.

The progressives have names:

• Ted Wheeler, 
• Jenny Durkan, 
• Jacob Frey -- 

all mayors -- along with numerous council members. And governors,

•  Kate Brown, 
• Jay Inslee, and 
• Tim Walz.  
• Add Lori Lightfoot, 
• J.B. Pritzker, 
• Bill de Blasio, 
• and Andrew Cuomo to the roster.

All -- all -- have taken oaths of office to uphold the law and attend to the public safety.  They are glaringly derelict in their duties. These elected leaders aren’t simply craven, they’re complicit in the violence and destruction that bedevils their cities. 

• They see the mobs in the streets.
• They witness the destruction.
• They are apprised of the violence.
• They know innocents are being harmed.
• They know citizens cower behind locked doors.
• They know -- know – that the least among their constituents are the most vulnerable to the predation. Yet they permit the mayhem.
• They let the mobs roam.
• They fiddle as their cities burn.

These elected leaders are, in fact, aiding and abetting insurrections.  Their inactions are actions.  They hate America, the America of the founding, the America of liberty and the rule of law.  They learned to detest the nation growing up in “progressive” households and on college campuses.  What other conclusions can we draw?  Today, we finally know: scratch a progressive and you uncover a revolutionary...........

Let’s turn to the Declaration of Independence for guidance.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. [italics added]...........To Read More...