A propaganda effort backfires on its originators

I can't help laughing cynically at the outrage expressed by US Congressional representative Bobby Rush (D - Illinois) and Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot (christened "Groot" by the always useful Second City Cop blog, which has chronicled her missteps and foibles since she took office, including some rather revealing history).

The story begins with this news report.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot and U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush on Thursday condemned images they said depicted Chicago police officers making popcorn, drinking coffee and sleeping on a couch in the congressman’s campaign office while nearby businesses were being looted amid unrest nearly two weeks ago.

The revelation came at an unusual City Hall news conference where the former political enemies stood united, with Rush praising Lightfoot’s leadership and the mayor apologizing to the veteran congressman on behalf of the city.

“That’s a personal embarrassment to me,” Lightfoot said of the scene that played out inside Rush’s Fuller Park political office. “I’m sorry that you and your staff even had to deal with this incredible indignity."

. . .

Lightfoot pledged to hold them accountable for their actions.

“Not one of these officers will be allowed to hide behind the badge and go on and act like nothing ever happened,” she said.

There's more at the link.

Sounds bad, doesn't it?  I wasn't surprised to read it, though.  When the Mayor and her city administration spend most of their time bad-mouthing the police (and blaming them for problems largely caused by their elected and appointed administrators), it was no surprise to me that officers would prefer to remain somewhere peaceful rather than risk being publicly pilloried yet again for trying to do their jobs.

However, the story didn't end there.  Second City Cop confirms that the officers were assigned to Congressman Rush's office, to protect it after it had been burglarized (presumably by rioters).  They weren't sheltering from the riots or ignoring them - they were where they were supposed to be, on duty.  As SCC notes, "The officers were wrong in availing themselves of popcorn and coffee that wasn't theirs, but they were ordered to hold that position with no relief and, tactically, no ability to stop hundreds of persons bent on mayhem."  Puts a different complexion on the matter, doesn't it?

Now the news media are becoming aware of the real story.  For example:

Second City Cop notes, "It was an assigned detail. Rush has been lying his entire life, from the "racial profiling" that didn't happen, to being the insider who set up Fred Hampton. Groot's hatred of the CPD has blinded her to this fact."

I think there's a whole lot more to this case than meets the eye.  It looks very much as if Rush and Lightfoot were trying to manufacture more "dirt" with which to smear the Chicago Police Department.  I await further developments with interest, and I'll be reading Second City Cop to get the inside story.  If you're not familiar with Chicago, and want the lowdown on its crime and law enforcement situation, SCC is the place to go.

Peter

A sign of political backlash against the activist left?

I've been watching for signs of a political backlash against the aggressively "pushy" attempts by Democratic Party legislators to reshape their electoral districts, cities, states, and even the nation as a whole, in a progressive, far-left-wing, socialist image.  A good example is Virginia, where despite massive protests and rejection from over 90% of the state's counties, the new Democratic majority government (elected by only a few counties around Washington D.C., with large numbers of people) passed new anti-gun legislation and imposed it on the rest of the population willy-nilly.

It looks like that's already having consequences at the polls.

Staunton, a usually reliable Democratic stronghold in the conservative Shenandoah Valley, went surprisingly Republican in Tuesday’s City Council elections.

The slate ... took the four seats up for grabs in the 2020 local election, giving the Queen City a conservative majority for the first time in recent memory.

. . .

How unlikely was this conservative sweep? Hillary Clinton won Staunton in the 2016 presidential election, Barack Obama had won the city in the previous two election cycles, and Democrat Jennifer Lewis pulled 56.5 percent of the vote in her 2018 Sixth District congressional race against Republican Ben Cline, who eventually swept to victory, winning 59.7 percent of the vote district-wide.

. . .

The result is a shocker, to say the least, and if people in Richmond are paying attention at all, this one should be a wakeup call times ten.

There's more at the link.

I'm hearing increasing rumors of a similar, but even stronger electoral backlash following the riots over the death of George Floyd.  Many voters acknowledge the problems that exist in our society, and (like me) are more than willing to permit (even join in) peaceful protests to bring about change.  However, when thugs and low-lifes take advantage of protests to start rioting and looting, their tolerance (and mine) is at an end.  Matters should never have been permitted to get so far out of line.  The sight of uniformed police officers "taking a knee" in solidarity with protesters is also a step too far.  It's the job of police to maintain law and order - not to publicly adopt political positions or express political opinions.  They're supposed to be neutral, "above the fray", impartial.

The result is increasing determination among some of the electorate to make their feelings known at the ballot box in November.  I've heard many expressions of disgust, anger and resolve, and I know I'm far from alone in hearing them.  Other bloggers with whom I'm in touch report the same things from their audience.

The response from the progressive left, of course, will be additional voter and electoral fraud, as we've posited in these pages in the past.  They've become more and more blatant in their efforts to do that, including Congress' recent attempt to impose and fund "ballot harvesting", eliminate state and local electoral protections through national legislation, and other measures.  Fortunately, it looks as though their "license to steal elections" won't go any further this year . . . but they'll try again.  If they win control of the nation's government in November, look for that to become law next year, just as soon as they can ram it through.

As I've said many times before, I'm neither Democrat nor Republican - I vote for the individual, not the party.  Nevertheless, I'm encouraged by the outcome of the Staunton, VA elections.  If our politicians give us the metaphorical finger by forcing through legislation, we can return the favor at the polls.  Let's hope more American voters do that in November.

Peter

The real peril behind vote-by-mail

Tucker Carlson puts it into a short, concise segment.  This is a "must-see" if you're to understand why certain political parties, pressure groups and influencers are trying to promote universal vote-by-mail as a "solution" to the coronavirus pandemic and the risks it poses.

I think he's right.  If this pressure succeeds, you can effectively say goodbye to democracy in the USA.

Peter

Asking the unthinkable question

The wholesale erosion - or even flat-out denial - of our civil liberties and constitutional rights during the coronavirus lockdown has (not for the first time) raised vitally important questions.

• To what extent should we allow our government to do this?
• To what extent should we be prepared to acquiesce, to knuckle under, before we take a stand and say, "This far and no further!"?
• How should we resist when the intrusion into our rights becomes too great to bear?  Must we restrict ourselves to fights in the courts, which may well result in a verdict proving us right, but in the meantime - until that verdict is issued - will result in our having to endure those intrusions?  Or are we entitled to take physical, dynamic measures to resist oppression?

Let's set the scene first.  Carol Brown lays it out.

We have become part of a mass scale human experiment in government control and it turned out that stripping away our freedom wasn’t all that difficult. Under the guise of concern for our health and well-being, tyrants came out of the woodwork.  Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our lives are being destroyed as the left solidifies and expands their oppressive powers. We’ve been herded around like cattle, threatened, isolated, confined, silenced, and arrested. You name it, it’s happening.

. . .

We’ve been told who can work and who can’t ... We’ve been physically and verbally harassed, threatened, fined, detained, arrested, jailed, and/or placed in forced quarantine ... Stay home. Do not go out. Do not earn money. Do not pay your bills, feed your family, maintain your credit rating, live your life. Do not make a single move without permission from the State or you will be punished.

Do not dare go to church. They have been shut down, some threatened with permanent closure. Even services that maintained social distancing were not tolerated ... Religion cannot thrive in a totalitarian state, as the state must reign supreme.

. . .

In several places, our right to protest has been stripped away as has our right to promote protests ... The Bill of Rights has been set on fire and tossed off the top of a skyscraper as a police state rushes in ... The government will hunt you down, find you, and force you and other members of your household to stay in your home, even if there’s no food in the house. The quarantine cycle could leave an entire household locked up for weeks and weeks on end, with no end in sight as we are essentially placed under house arrest. Strategies for how to identify people who’ve met certain criteria have been discussed, including government issued armbands.

. . .

And while the lust for power underpins this shocking spectacle, it’s wrapped up in the guise of “safety.” Who could possibly question a doctor in a white coat touting such an idea? No good totalitarian regime would be without its idealized worldview to sell fools down the river.

And so we’ve sailed, as our economy has collapsed, Americans have been controlled, law enforcement has complied, and people are bombarded with fearful messages every hour of every day – messages riddled with distorted information and lies, from bogus models to inflated mortality rates and everything in between ... When nations go to war, they do so to defend their culture and way of life. Instead, we are destroying ours.

. . .

So far, the police state has been a wild success.

There's more at the link.

If you want a classic example of the above, just look at Illinois Governor Pritzker's latest insanity.  He's going to make criminals out of anyone and everyone who dares disobey his dictatorial edicts.  Will the people of Illinois stand for it?  If they do, they've strayed far from the path our Founding Fathers laid out for us . . .

There have been some - pitifully few - law enforcement officers and agencies who have taken a stand, and refused to participate in this mandated assault on our constitutional rights and civil liberties.  However, the statists simply don't care about this.  They go right on riding roughshod over the "little people" they despise, even as they rule them.  Witness how the Virginia governor and legislature have ignored (and openly expressed contempt for) the more than 90% of Virginia counties who have opposed their drive to restrict gun rights.  Despite many counties declaring themselves "Second Amendment sanctuaries", despite thousands of gun owners demonstrating at the Virginia capitol, the powers that be went ahead and passed most of their anti-gun agenda into law.  The balance is likely to follow before long.  They were completely unfazed by the opposition;  in fact, their determination was probably strengthened by it.  "We'll show these deplorables who's boss!" appears to sum up their attitude.

What's more, our acquiescence in such administrative, executive and legislative overreach appears to be evidence that they can get away with it.  Apart from a few demonstrations, where has been the public outrage?  Where has been the mass civil disobedience that such overreach should call forth?  Where has been our signers of a modern Declaration of Independence who will pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honors to stopping such overreach, no matter what the cost?  All those things have been conspicuous by their absence.  No wonder the statists are emboldened!

The news media and social media are, of course, solidly behind the statists.  Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are actively censoring any views that oppose the mainstream, no matter how expert or authoritative the person espousing those views may be.  Dissenters are de-platformed, de-monetized, denigrated and denied the ability to propagate their views.  If those views are too well grounded in fact to be contradicted, they're simply ignored, as if not talking about them will somehow magically make them go away.

It's no coincidence that most of these offenses against our rights and liberties have occurred in left-leaning states and cities.  Matt Taibbi, no conservative, explains why.

Democrats have lately positioned themselves as more aggressive promoters of strong-arm policies, from control of Internet speech to the embrace of domestic spying ... Democrats clearly believe constituents will forgive them for abandoning constitutional principles ... In the process, they’ve raised a generation of followers whose contempt for civil liberties is now genuine-to-permanent. Blue-staters have gone from dismissing constitutional concerns as Trumpian ruse to sneering at them, in the manner of French aristocrats, as evidence of proletarian mental defect.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the response to the Covid-19 crisis, where the almost mandatory take of pundits is that any protest of lockdown measures is troglodyte death wish. The aftereffects of years of Russiagate/Trump coverage are seen everywhere: press outlets reflexively associate complaints of government overreach with Trump, treason, and racism, and conversely radiate a creepily gleeful tone when describing aggressive emergency measures and the problems some “dumb” Americans have had accepting them.

Again, more at the link.

Sadly, many applications to the courts to overturn executive overreach have been delayed, tied up in legal red tape, or even denied by activist judges who are entirely in sympathy with statism versus constitutionalism.  A shining exception is Texas Supreme Court associate Justice Jimmy Blacklock.  In a recent decision, he stated flatly and emphatically for the majority:

“The Constitution is not suspended when the government declares a state of disaster.” In re Abbott, No. 20-0291, 2020 WL 1943226, at *1 (Tex. Apr. 23, 2020). All government power in this country, no matter how well-intentioned, derives only from the state and federal constitutions. Government power cannot be exercised in conflict with these constitutions, even in a pandemic.

In the weeks since American governments began taking emergency measures in response to the coronavirus, the sovereign people of this country have graciously and peacefully endured a suspension of their civil liberties without precedent in our nation’s history. In some parts of the country, churches have been closed by government decree, although Texas is a welcome exception. Nearly everywhere, the First Amendment “right of the people to peaceably assemble” has been suspended altogether. U.S. Const. amend. I. In many places, people are forbidden to leave their homes without a government-approved reason. Tens of millions can no longer earn a living because the government has declared their employers or their businesses “ ‘non-essential.’ ”

Those who object to these restrictions should remember they were imposed by duly elected officials, vested by statute with broad emergency powers, who must make difficult decisions under difficult circumstances. At the same time, all of us—the judiciary, the other branches of government, and our fellow citizens—must insist that every action our governments take complies with the Constitution, especially now. If we tolerate unconstitutional government orders during an emergency, whether out of expediency or fear, we abandon the Constitution at the moment we need it most.

Any government that has made the grave decision to suspend the liberties of a free people during a health emergency should welcome the opportunity to demonstrate—both to its citizens and to the courts—that its chosen measures are absolutely necessary to combat a threat of overwhelming severity. The government should also be expected to demonstrate that less restrictive measures cannot adequately address the threat. Whether it is strict scrutiny or some other rigorous form of review, courts must identify and apply a legal standard by which to judge the constitutional validity of the government’s anti-virus actions. When the present crisis began, perhaps not enough was known about the virus to second-guess the worst-case projections motivating the lockdowns. As more becomes known about the threat and about the less restrictive, more targeted ways to respond to it, continued burdens on constitutional liberties may not survive judicial scrutiny.

Ideally, these debates would play out in the public square, not in courtrooms. No court should relish being asked to question the judgment of government officials who were elected to make difficult decisions in times such as these. However, when constitutional rights are at stake, courts cannot automatically defer to the judgments of other branches of government. When properly called upon, the judicial branch must not shrink from its duty to require the government’s antivirus orders to comply with the Constitution and the law, no matter the circumstances.

More at the link.

I, for one, am not prepared to see the Constitution ignored or abandoned.  I swore an oath to support and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that oath had (and still has) no expiration date.  By that logic (and it is logical), those who ignore or trash the Constitution in their statist decrees and dictates are its enemies.  That means it's incumbent on me not to merely tolerate, temporarily, their excesses and overreach until courts can rule on the subject - particularly when we can't be sure the courts will rule as the Constitution requires.  Instead of tolerating, I need to take action.  The question is . . . what action?  To take up arms against, and violently resist, the duly and Constitutionally elected government and its officials - whether local, state or national - is by definition a criminal act.  However, it's well in line with the Declaration of Independence, which preceded the Constitution and precipitated the American Revolution.  That's a dynamic tension which may have to be resolved before too long.

I blame a great deal of the inaction of the American people on the abolition of civics education in American schools and colleges.  Even the Atlantic, a very left-wing, progressive source indeed, observed in 2016:

While there surely are many varied causes for the current American political situation, one among those is the relative ignorance of basic American history, scientific, technological knowledge, and what some refer to as “civics” among a large sector of our population. It is testimony to the failure of the country’s education system that a high percentage of the voting-age population is simply ignorant of basic facts—knowledge that is necessary to act reasonably and rationally in the political process.

. . .

James Madison put the current dilemma clearly in focus almost 200 years ago, when he wrote in an 1822 letter to W. T. Barry: “A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” The American people are not doing this today, and the results are evident in the cracks appearing in the country’s democracy.

More at the link. Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

The problem, of course, is that statist administrations don't want people educated in civics.  Their poisonous intrusion into and effective trashing of Constitutional rights couldn't be done if the electorate were more aware of the limitations on their power.  Remove that awareness, and overreach becomes much easier.

So . . . what do we do?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or 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.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

God forbid that a new civil war should be brewing . . . but I have a feeling in my water that one may be on the horizon.  I will not be ruled as a slave, licking the feet of dictatorial statist masters.  I will not allow my Constitutional rights and liberties to be ignored, trampled or taken away.  That's my bottom line;  and I'm old enough, and have little enough to lose, that I'm willing to insist on it, no matter what the cost.

What's your bottom line?  And how far are you prepared to go to insist on it?

This would be a good start . . . but I don't think it goes far enough.

The 2020 elections in November aren't far away.  Will the American electorate vote for statism, or freedom?  Subjection, or liberty?  We're about to find out.

Peter

Depressing, but probably accurate - and very important

Charles Hugh Smith, whom we've met many times in these pages, has a gloomy forecast for the economy in the short to medium term.  It's depressing reading, but it's vitally important to understand what's probably heading towards us.  Too many people are only looking at superficial details, not examining the "big picture" and planning (or failing to plan) accordingly.  Mr. Smith doesn't make that mistake.

Here's an excerpt.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

While the stock market euphorically front-runs the Fed and a V-shaped recovery, the reality is the crash has only just begun. To understand why, look at income and debt. Income, earned and unearned, is in free-fall, while debt — which must be serviced by income — is exploding higher.

Bailouts are not a permanent substitute for income. In the short-term, bailouts are a necessary substitute for lost income. But longer term, subsidizing income with borrowed money weakens the currency and the economy, as productivity stagnates.

As for servicing debt — the unemployed working class is getting an extra $600 a week not out of kindness but to make sure these households can continue to service their debts: auto and truck loans, student loans, credit cards, etc. Absent a federal bailout, millions of unemployed would cease making loan payments, creating a financial crisis for lenders.

. . .

The money that’s being sent to unemployed workers is borrowed, and small businesses are being offered loans, much of which will be forgiven if the funds are used to pay wages. In other words, all of these trillions of dollars being substituted for earned income are borrowed ... there are no capital flows which will support a return to commerce and productivity that will pay wages or generate investment income.

. . .

The crash has only just begun. Everything, including a rational, connected-to-reality, effective financial system, is on back-order and unlikely to ship any time soon.

There's more at the link.

I'm afraid that from a logical, rational perspective, Mr. Smith is quite correct.  Every cent the government is throwing at the coronavirus pandemic and its economic consequences is borrowed money - and that's on top of trillions upon trillions of dollars already borrowed in the past.  That leaves only three possibilities to deal with so vast a burden of debt:

1. The debt will be repaid, but that'll take a long time (decades), and the burden on the economy will hobble further growth and development.
2. The currency will be deliberately inflated (i.e. the dollar will be allowed to weaken), thereby allowing the "old" debt to be paid off with new, much cheaper dollars.  This will lead to massive economic disruption (see the Weimar Republic for details).
3. The debt will be repudiated (i.e. rejected and not paid) - which will destroy the "full faith and credit" of the United States, and have catastrophic worldwide consequences on the international economic system.

Right now, I 'd say #1 is practically impossible - the debt is already too large to be repaid out of current and future revenues.  #2 is most likely, IMHO, but #3 isn't beyond the realms of possibility, especially if economic illiterates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her Democratic Socialists have their way.

Mr. Smith teamed up with Gordon Long to discuss the impact of the current economic situation on municipal and local governments.  Since many of us live under the administration of such entities (including yours truly), this is a vitally important subject, as well as a microcosm of what our big cities are facing.  As Mr. Long points out, such governments have "expenses going out, but nothing coming in".

I respectfully suggest that this video provides vitally important information for all of us.  It's half an hour long, but well worth your time, IMHO.

Brace yourselves, folks, and keep your powder dry - economically and in every other way.

Peter

Betraying America, redux - or, fiddling while America burns

The well-known (and almost certainly apocryphal) story of Emperor Nero playing the fiddle while his city of Rome burned around him is well-known.  It seems the same story could be told of Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party right now . . . but not apocryphally.  They appear willing to let this country go to the dogs, just so long as they can ram through their ideology - an ideology which has nothing whatsoever to do with the coronavirus pandemic and the damage it's done to our nation and our economy.

Let Tucker Carlson explain just how ghastly is their new "HEROES Act" and its focus on ideological concerns, rather than relief for those who are suffering.  You really should take seven minutes to listen to his monologue from last night.  To call this bill "mind-blowing" is an understatement, IMHO, as he makes clear.

When the Democrat's first "relief bill" appeared, I called it "Betraying America", and asked:

Would somebody please point out to me what (if anything) those points have to do with providing relief to American citizens and corporations from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic?  I'm calling on Democratic voters and supporters in particular.  Come on - precisely how do those points bring relief to Americans who've lost their jobs and livelihoods, and to companies that are about to go to the wall under the impact of this crisis?

I can only say the same thing, in spades, for the legislative atrocity the Democrats are calling the "HEROES Act".  It's 1,815 pages long, containing 347,000 words.  Something that massive is obviously not a recent, hurried production.  Clearly, this has been prepared over a long period of time, probably with various departments and groups working on specific sections and clauses.  It's bundled together every pie-in-the-sky socialist wet dream you can imagine, and seeks to thrust this burden onto the backs of those Americans still working, who'll have to pay for it, one way or another, sooner or later.

This is so blatant, so in-your-face, that its sheer chutzpah leaves one breathless.  Nancy Pelosi has even gone so far as to dismissively observe, "I can't be bothered about what others say.  What I'm proud of is what we are doing."  I'm sure she is . . . but I suspect the rest of America, particularly its taxpayers, won't be anything like as proud.  In particular, allocating about $900 billion to cities and states to bail out their spendthrift budget deficits and long-term indebtedness is sheer lunacy.  All that guarantees is that they'll immediately take out more loans and go into debt once again, to continue to fund expenditure they can't afford;  then they'll come back to Congress and demand yet another bailout, citing this first one as a precedent.

If this bill passes, America will become a debt-ridden, fiscally crippled hellhole almost overnight.  It's that bad.  I sincerely hope that every legislator who's signed on to, or votes for, this monstrosity will be punished severely at the polls in November's election.  They deserve nothing less than to lose the offices they've disgraced by ignoring reality and pandering to socialist pie-in-the-sky.




Peter

Has the FBI institutionalized malfeasance of office?

I'm glad that the Attorney General has withdrawn the charges against General Flynn:  but I'm sickened that they were ever brought at all.  The entire affair demonstrates that a major US government agency deliberately disregarded both the law and the facts in going after an individual for partisan political purposes.

Something has got to be done about this.  It's simply intolerable to think that those responsible can continue their lives and careers, getting away with their crimes - because they were crimes.  Be in no doubt about that.  If we allow them to pass now, then future administrations and bureaucrats and officials will take that as a sign that they, too, can get away with it.  Examples need to be made.  Heads need to roll - and very senior heads, at that - not only through dismissals, but through criminal prosecution, too.

Tucker Carlson put it very well.  Please take the time to watch the video below, if you haven't seen it already.  He hits all the right notes, IMHO.

Senior officials were willing to destroy the life and livelihood of an innocent man, in order to get at his boss.  Politics triumphed over the rule of law - at least in the past.  That may have been prevented, finally, in General Flynn's case . . . but there's nothing except the rule of law to prevent it happening again.  That's a very scary thought.  Therefore, that rule of law needs to be applied to the perpetrators.  It's as simple as that.

Peter

Practical, effective ways to combat the COVID-19 virus

In mid-March, I cited Tomas Pueyo's article "Coronavirus:  Why You Must Act Now".  It was a clarion call to politicians and business leaders to take immediate action to slow the spread of the coronavirus, and listed various measures that would help in that process.

I was interested to learn that a number of experts in their field have since joined with Mr. Pueyo to study the matter further.  They've published four more articles, which I recommend to your attention, and will be publishing more (you can sign up for notifications here).  The articles analyze what's happened around the world, what's worked, and what hasn't.  Those so far published include:

Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance

What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time

Coronavirus: Learning How to Dance

Part 1: A Dancing Masterclass, or What We

Can Learn from Countries Around the World

Coronavirus: The Basic Dance Steps

Everybody Can Follow

Part 2 of Coronavirus: Learning How to Dance

Coronavirus: How to Do Testing

and Contact Tracing

Part 3 of Coronavirus: Learning How to Dance

They've also produced a more formal, scientific article titled "Evidence-based, cost-effective interventions to suppress the COVID-19 pandemic: a rapid systematic review".  Click on that link to go to its summary page, then click "Preview PDF" to read the text.

I find these articles interesting in that they're analyzing events "on the ground" and recommending ways to make dealing with the pandemic easier for all of us.  They're not politically motivated, and don't seem to have any particular special-interest agenda to push.  They appear to aim to provide as much useful, practical information as possible.  For example, from their latest article:

Many countries are enduring the Hammer today: a heavy set of social distancing measures that have stopped the economy. Millions have lost their jobs, their income, their savings, their businesses, their freedom. The economic cost is brutal. Countries are desperate to know what they need to do to open up the economy again.

Thankfully, a set of four measures can dramatically reduce the epidemic. They are dirt cheap compared to closing the economy. If many countries are enduring the Hammer today, these measures are the scalpel, carefully extracting the infected rather than hitting everybody at once.

These four measures need each other. They don’t work without one another:

• With testing, we find out who is infected
• With isolations, we prevent them from infecting others
• With contact tracing, we figure out the people with whom they’ve been in contact
• With quarantines, we prevent these contacts from infecting others

Testing and contact tracing are the intelligence, while isolations and quarantines are the action.

There's much more at the link.

The thing is, of course, that these measures aren't "one-size-fits-all" like the total shutdown of the economy currently being experienced.  They require good judgment, careful administration and constant monitoring of the health care workers in the field doing the work.  That's anathema to bureaucrats, who'd rather use a single mold and force everyone into it, because it's easier to administer that way.  (The bureaucrats will also have to get out of the way of those who can produce solutions - such as, for example, cheap, accurate easy-to-use tests for COVID-19 - rather than micromanage every aspect of the problem.)  Politicians also won't like it, because it demands that they use their heads rather than react with a knee-jerk.  (For an example of the latter, note the number of states whose governors have extended the lock-down, some into July, rather than proactively seek to restart their economies while protecting citizens so far not affected by the virus.)

Kudos to Mr. Pueyo and his team for producing these articles.  It's good to have all the information pulled together and synthesized, to provide a detailed overview of successes, failures, and potential next steps.  I look forward to seeing what they have in mind in future.  Thanks to them and those like them, the rest of us are better informed, and have options to consider - and to recommend to our elected leaders.

Peter

Behind the scenes of the meat shortage

The Washington Examiner takes a hard look at some of the factors causing the current meat shortage in the USA.  As usual, they can be summed up in a single phrase:  the government got involved.

Dig a little deeper, and the situation gets even more dire. We could soon see farmers unable to keep their farms afloat, livestock killed in mass with no means to be sold, and hungry families.

For those unfamiliar with agriculture policy, this scenario seems unimaginable. But according to those who’ve spent their years toiling in the amber waves of grain, the problem was merely exasperated by the pandemic, not the result of it.

. . .

There is no actual shortage in livestock ... Rather, the breakdown is coming on the plant side of the equation where cramped quarters are hazardous. Why can’t farmers sell directly to consumers and circumvent this problem? You guessed it — government regulations.

In 1967, the federal government blocked states from making their own decisions on how meat was processed and promptly handed the power to the Department of Agriculture, or USDA.

What followed was essentially a takeover of control of the industry. Farmers had to travel long distances and sell their livestock to a small number of USDA slaughterhouses instead of to local butchers, small processors, or directly to consumers. This relationship began to severely impact their profit margins as the government was able to force farmers to sell their product for pennies on the dollar. When you limit the number of places the producers can sell, you control the prices.

Even before the current crisis, this was a powder keg of cronyism waiting to blow. The economic model forced on farmers by the government simply doesn’t work. They’re buried in debt as they must finance expensive equipment to do their jobs, yet also must pay all of the costs of raising the animals upfront. And they increasingly see their returns diminish at the end of the equation.

Farmers are boxed in. While “Big Ag” gets bailed out from the ramifications of trade wars and other bad economic policies, small farmers, who make up the bulk of production, are struggling to survive.

To add insult to injury, as our farmers bend over backward to create under the heavy burden of strenuous regulations on our own soil, the USDA continues to import beef from Brazil’s cheaper, unregulated marketplace instead. You wouldn’t know that, though, because in 2013, Congress abolished the Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) law that would have tipped consumers off.

There's more at the link.

The article doesn't mention some of the positives of USDA involvement and the centralization of slaughterhouses.  Among others, they include the best use of the limited number of inspectors.  There aren't enough of them to assign several to every remote slaughterhouse;  but if those facilities are centralized into larger, regional units, the inspectors can cope with the workload.  Also, there's the problem of ensuring uniform standards among many scattered processing plants.  This is illustrated every day by outbreaks of food poisoning in countries that don't pay enough attention to standardized processing, food hygiene, etc.  (We've all heard phrases such as "Montezuma's Revenge", "gyppo gut", "the Zulu two-step", "Delhi belly", and so on.  They all have the same origin - or should I say "point of departure"?  On second thought, perhaps not . . . )

That said, there's also a very strong case to re-examine the current system and see whether it can't be improved, for the benefit of the nation as a whole.  I, for one, would like to know whether I'm buying beef "made in America" or produced elsewhere.  I'd also like to see an expansion of farm "buying clubs" where farmers are allowed to sell their meat direct to consumers.  Miss D. and I have bought half a cow before (its name was "Sir Loin", we were told), and it lasted us well over a year - it was very good meat, too, straight from the farmer to the consumer.  Why not allow that on a wider basis?  Local game processors, ubiquitous in the hunting regions of the country, could just as easily process cows or pigs as they can deer or wild hogs.

Peter

US foreign policy: run by "The Blob"?

A very interesting (and sometimes amusing) article takes a critical look at US foreign policy:  how it's made, how it's run, and its consequences over the past half-century or so.  It doesn't pull its punches.

The major policy think tanks in Washington are rife with three sources of funding: government, private defense companies, and very wealthy neoliberal and neoconservative foundations (think Carnegie on the left, Scaife on the right). The National Security and “Grand Strategy” programs at elite schools are no different. They all have one thing in common: the status quo. As a result, the output is hardly dynamic, it’s little more than dogmatic, conventional thinking about world problems that keep bureaucrats in jobs and always meddling, the military amped up with more hammers and nails to hit, and politicians (and attending administrative class) favorable to either or both of these goals in Washington, preferably in power.

This is a closed club that offers only gradations of diversity just like Democrats and Republicans during the war: No one argued about “liberating” Iraq, only about the tactics. That was why it was so easy for Hillary Clinton’s Nat Sec team in-waiting to create the Center for a New American Security in 2008 and transition to an Obama think tank shop in 2009. Plug and play one for the other, counterinsurgency under Bush? Meh. Under Obama? Let’s do this! They all had a plan for staying in Afghanistan, and they made sure we were, until this day.

This doesn’t even include the orbit of research centers like RAND and the Center for Naval Analysis, which actually get government funding to churn out reports and white papers, teach officer classes, lead war gaming, and put on conferences. Do you really think they call for less funding, killing programs, eliminating lily pads, or egads, pulling out of entrenched strategic relationships that might not make sense anymore? Never. The same players get the contracts and produce just what the government wants to hear, so they can get more money. If they don’t get contracts they don’t survive. It’s how the swamp works.

As for it being a cabal? This ecosystem—the Blob—is a revolving door of sameness, a multigenerational in-crowd of status-driven groupthink inhabiting a deep state that is both physical and of the mind. It’s a lifestyle, and a class. To get anywhere in it, you not only have to have the right pedigree, but the right way of thinking. Ask anyone who has attempted to break in with the “wrong credentials,” or marched off the reservation in the early years of Iraq only to be flung to the professional margins. Conference panels, sanctioned academic journals, all run by the same crowd. Check the Council on Foreign Relations yearbook, you’ll catch the drift. You can be a neocon, you can be a “humanitarian” interventionist, but a skeptic of American exceptionalism and its role in leading the post-WWII international system? Ghosted.

There's more at the link.  Recommended reading.

This is the "deep state" writ large, IMHO.  It doesn't matter who's in power:  the foreign policy "establishment" has (in the past) continued to run things its way, and basically forced the administration to conform (not that much forcing was needed).  President Trump overturned that.  From the beginning, he ran down the importance of the State Department with its entrenched cabal, and got rid of a lot of the deadwood there by appointing Secretaries of State who would wield the axe with vigor.  He continues to run the USA's foreign policy on the basis of "America First", and insists that professional diplomats toe the line on that.  Many of them still resist, more or less covertly, but so far he's managed to keep control.

However, let a more compliant President take office, and all bets are off.  The Blob will grow again, because you can't decapitate a Blob - it has no head, only an endless appetite.  Feed it, and it'll grow back to what it was.  Let's hope that doesn't happen.

Peter

Voting by mail will be "The Most Massive Fraud Scheme in the History of America"

That's the opinion of lawyer Jim Bopp Jr., who's filed suits in more than one state to prevent unsupervised, check-and-balance-free postal balloting.

“I don’t use the word ‘voters,’” he says, “I use the word ‘people on the registration rolls’ because many of them are ineligible to vote. They’re not voters. They’re people that are on the registration rolls that are ineligible to vote.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the nation, Democratic officials and activists began pushing states to switch to voting by mail, eliminating in-person voting altogether — and probably permanently.

But organizations that have spent years reviewing the voter rolls in many states estimate that more than 20 million of the names nationwide are duplicates, people who have moved away, are deceased, non-citizens or felons who have not had their voting rights restored.

“Democrats have been trying to register everybody in the country and then fight purging the rolls of ineligible people, and now they want to mail ballots to every single one of them,” says Bopp. “It’s just like, talk about the most massive fraud scheme in the history of America. Makes Tammany Hall looks like a bunch of pikers, or the Pendergast Machine in Kansas City look like they didn’t even know how to steal elections.”

. . .

All-mail voting is not the same as absentee voting as voting absentee involves the voter requesting an absentee ballot, usually by mail, with a signature.

Some states have more stringent requirements than others. In Kansas, for example, people requesting an absentee ballot are required to send a copy of a driver’s license or State ID with the application for an absentee ballot.

“Part of the problem with this discussion is, we are familiar with absentee ballots, and that does involve quote mailing a ballot, end of quote,” says Bopp, “but there are numerous safeguards, the most important of which is the prior application. You have to apply.

“You have an audit trail, and all sorts of things. And that’s why a lot of these Democrats and liberal activists don’t like absentee ballot,” he says. “They want wholesale mailing out without application because it eliminates half the fraud protection.”

There's more at the link.

Equally dangerous, IMHO, is the push to legitimize so-called "ballot harvesting".  That resulted in all the Congressional districts in Orange County, CA - previously solidly Republican - turning Democrat in the last election, due solely to a flood of mail-in and absentee ballots "collected by volunteers".  Republicans used similar shenanigans to win an election in North Carolina.  The problem isn't limited to one political party.

I think there's likely to be absolutely massive electoral fraud this November as Democrats try to ensure, by hook or by crook, that they retain the House, take back the Senate, and defeat President Trump.  They've never forgiven him for defeating Hillary Clinton last time, and they want to make him a one-term President to exact revenge.  If they can't do that, they at least want to emasculate his policy agenda by controlling Congress.  Endangered Republican incumbents will be sorely tempted to indulge in shady tricks of their own to defend their seats, or unseat key Democrat players.  I think Mr. Bopp's warning needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

Perhaps we need to throw out every incumbent, irrespective of their party affiliation, and elect fresh blood?

Word!




Peter

I agree - let the states dig themselves out of the hole they've made

Earlier this week I pointed out that, just as I predicted some time ago, states with serious budgetary and fiscal problems of their own making were using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to get Federal funds to bail themselves out.  I used Illinois as the prime example, but added:

Look for other states to make similar demands during this crisis.  They think that since so much federal money is being thrown around, no-one will notice (or care very much) that they're taking the opportunity to divert billions, even trillions of federal dollars to pay for their own excesses and self-indulgence.  We dare not let that happen, because it will establish a precedent that will be used again in future.  If we pay off Illinois', or California's, or any other state's deficits, what's to stop them spending just as much all over again, then demanding another bailout?  What makes you think they've learned anything from their excesses, and won't repeat them at our expense given half a chance?

I'm relieved to see that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is well aware of the danger, and has a proposal to fend it off.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he favors allowing states struggling with high public employee pension costs amid the burdens of the pandemic response to declare bankruptcy rather than giving them a federal bailout.

“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route,” he said Wednesday in response to a question on the syndicated Hugh Hewitt radio show. “It’s saved some cities, and there’s no good reason for it not to be available.”

The host cited California, Illinois and Connecticut as states that had given too much to public employee unions, and McConnell said he was reluctant to take on more debt for any rescue.

“You raised yourself the important issue of what states have done, many of them have done to themselves with their pension programs,” he said. “There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations.”

McConnell’s remarks drew a biting response from state and local officials ... McConnell’s statements also set up a conflict with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said on Bloomberg Television Wednesday that a “major package” of aid for state and local government will be in the next stimulus legislation considered by Congress.

There's more at the link.

I think the Senator is exactly right.  Our Founding Fathers never intended the Federal government to be an endless cornucopia of funds and other largesse, pouring taxpayer dollars into the states to cater for their needs.  Each state was supposed to be financially independent, raising its own funds, balancing its own budget, and providing for its own needs.  That's long since gone by the board, because the allure of federal funding has proved too strong for greedy, fiscally feckless politicians.  It's long gone time the constitutional balance was restored.

Of course, the propaganda drumbeat in favor of the states has already started.  Consider this article yesterday, published even as Senator McConnell was stating his position.

State and local governments are warning of a wave of layoffs and pay cuts after getting left out of the federal coronavirus relief package expected to pass Congress this week.

In many places, those painful reductions are already taking shape:

• Los Angeles plans to force city workers to spend 26 days on unpaid leave as revenues are forecast to drop as much as $600 million next fiscal year.
• Detroit has proposed laying off 200 workers and furloughing thousands more.
• In Ohio’s Hamilton County, Commissioner Denise Driehaus is taking a 10% pay cut alongside county workers. “We are really struggling,” Driehaus said.

The $2.2 trillion emergency legislation known as the CARES Act, which President Donald Trump signed late last month, included $150 billion in direct help for state and local governments grappling with the impact of the deadly outbreak. Democrats pushed to include another $150 billion in the next tranche of aid, but Republicans sought to keep the bill narrowly focused on support for small business.

By Tuesday night, Democrats yielded on their demand. The Senate passed the legislation by unanimous consent — without additional help for state and local governments. The House is slated to vote Thursday, and Trump is expected to sign it.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed to revisit the issue in the coming round of negotiations over what could be an even bigger package of relief.

“The people who are on the front lines, they should get extra money, and at the top of the list is a robust state and local plan,” Schumer said. “We’re going to fight for that and many more things” in the next aid bill. It “will soon be upon us because the nation will demand it.”

. . .

“The approaching state budget cuts … will cause the U.S. economy to contract further — making the economic downturn deeper and more protracted, causing many more people to lose their jobs, and magnifying the serious hardship we already see,” said Robert Greenstein, the think tank’s president.

Again, more at the link.

The comment by Mr. Greenstein is disingenuous.  As Illinois just showed, fiscally irresponsible states aren't just asking for money to cope with the coronavirus.  They're asking for billions and billions of dollars to bail out their pension systems, pay off their deficits, and fund their own social and entitlement programs.  Funds for day-to-day state government expenditure are relatively minor by comparison.

For that matter, why shouldn't state governments be forced to contract and reduce expenditure, just as almost every business - and every taxpayer - has had to do in their jurisdiction?  Why should government employees be "feather-bedded" and insulated against the economic realities imposed on the rest of us?  Why should taxpayers have to bail them out at their expense, at a time when many of us are facing personal ruin as we watch our jobs and our livelihoods being destroyed as the result of the pandemic and resultant government decisions and actions?

There's no way I can or will ever support federal funds being used to bail out states and state governments for the mistakes their own politicians have made, and the egregious greed they've demonstrated.  They dug their own hole.  Let them get out of it by their own efforts - or, as Senator McConnell rightly states, let them declare bankruptcy and find a fiscally responsible way out of the mess.  Funds to deal directly with the pandemic and its problems?  Possibly.  Funds to bail out decades of overspending and waste?  No way!

For a start, how about balanced budget amendments for the federal government and every single one of our fifty states, including a prohibition on borrowing more than a given percentage or proportion of state expenditure?  If they were all forced to balance their budget each and every year, instead of relying on deficit spending and endless, uncontrolled borrowing, the entire nation - and all of us taxpayers - would be in a far better position.  Now that's a financial system I'm sure many of us, of all shades of political opinion, would support!

Peter

The sheer, unmitigated gall of it!

The dictator governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, is displaying all the hallmarks of a wannabe tyrant in her handling of her state.  Her latest atrocity was to make even the gathering of health information into an exercise in partisan politics.

Michigan Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer has handed over control of the state’s new contact-tracing operation to one of her own campaign vendors and one of the left’s biggest technology firms. The move has sparked concern that she is using the coronavirus to strengthen the Democratic Party’s data operation, potentially at the expense of public health.

The Whitmer administration announced Monday that it had awarded a contract for contact tracing in the state to Every Action VAN, an arm of the Democratic data behemoth NGP VAN ... The group is run by Stuart Trevelyan, a longtime Democratic campaign operative who worked in the Clinton White House and is currently assisting presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign with voter outreach and fundraising, according to Federal Election Commission reports. Whitmer’s own gubernatorial campaign paid NGP VAN nearly $5,000 in 2019, according to state campaign finance records. Every Action is a branch of the firm that works with nonprofit organizations.

. . .

Partnering with Every Action, Michigan hopes to collect information from thousands of individuals across the state to better understand the spread of the coronavirus. Trained volunteers are placing phone calls to those who have been in contact with coronavirus-infected individuals, inquiring about their health and advising them on appropriate precautions.

But state Republicans are raising concerns that the project will give the Democratic firm access to health and other private data of unwitting residents.

There's more at the link.

The public outcry was immediate, and so strong that Whitmer rapidly backtracked.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration acknowledged Tuesday that normal protocols were bypassed when a no-bid contract for coronavirus contact tracing was awarded by the state to Great Lakes Community Engagement, which is operated by a well-known Democratic consultant Michael Kolehouse -- who has previously written that President Trump should "get Coronavirus ASAP" and that someone should "do the country a favor and cough on that man," Facebook posts reviewed by Fox News show.

. . .

The state abruptly canceled the contract Tuesday.

“Nearly every major Democratic campaign in America is powered by NGP VAN's software, including the Obama campaign’s voter contact, volunteer, fundraising and compliance operations in all 50 states," NGP VAN boasts on its website. The Washington Post has described NGP VAN as "the voter file provider for Democratic campaigns and independent groups up and down ballot."

NGP VAN has previously exposed secretive and proprietary information due to technical glitches, The Washington Post has reported, including when a software patch was improperly applied.

. . .

“I want to know how Gov. Whitmer’s administration decided to hire this company without a competitive bid process, or letting the Legislature — charged with ensuring accountability within state government — know about it,” wrote GOP state Rep. Shane Hernandez in a letter to Whitmer that was first reported by The Detroit News. “I want to know what safeguards the governor has in place to ensure the information gathered during this COVID-19 response doesn’t wind up in the hands of any campaigns."

Again, more at the link.

I'm mind-boggled by the sheer chutzpah displayed by the Governor.  How on earth did she think she was going to get away with this?  Did she really think her opponents were going to turn a blind eye to such malfeasance of office, or roll over and play dead and allow her to ride roughshod over normal State acquisition and purchasing rules and procedures to benefit her own partisan supporters?

From issuing plainly nonsensical (not to mention unconstitutional) orders, to managing the state of Michigan for the benefit of her partisan supporters rather than all its citizens and residents, Governor Whitmer is demonstrating every day that she's unfit for office.  I don't know how Michiganders propose to remove her, but they'd better do so as quickly as possible, before she and her cronies ruin or destroy their state around their ears.  She's a disaster in the making.




Peter

Am I a prophet, or what? - Illinois edition

I've been warning about the budget woes and pension underfunding of Illinois in general, and Chicago in particular, for years.  It's a classic case of politicians who spend, spend, spend (using money they haven't got - deficit spending) in order to favor the constituencies (unions, liberal and progressive pressure groups, etc.) that re-elect them.  (Illinois isn't alone in that, of course.  Earlier this year there was a sneaky, underhanded attempt to fix up a federal bailout [to the tune of billions, perhaps even trillions of dollars] for such mismanaged state pension systems.  It's still on the back burner, but if the Senate and the White House change hands in November, I expect it to be rammed through faster than prunes through a duck.)

A couple of years back, I wrote:

... before long, Illinois' corrupt politicians and their union cronies will be calling upon the Federal government to bail them out, at the expense of every taxpayer in the USA.  Other states that have similarly mismanaged their finances (California for sure) will probably do likewise.  I can only hope and pray that the response to such demands will be "Not just no, but HELL, NO!"  Why should US taxpayers have to bail out Illinois unions and politicians, only to allow them to continue in the same vein as before?

Looks like I was exactly on target.  Using the current coronavirus pandemic as an excuse, Illinois Democrats are doing precisely that.

Illinois Senate Democrats are asking the federal government for more than $41 billion in federal aid — about a quarter of it for a pension fund bailout — to keep the state financially afloat as the coronavirus pandemic continues to slash revenues across the board.

A letter from Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, addressed to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, went out Tuesday to Illinois’ entire congressional delegation — a day before Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced the economic shutdown would result in an estimated $2.7 billion revenue shortfall in the state’s current budget.

“I realize I’ve asked for a lot, but this is an unprecedented situation, and we face the reality that there likely will be additional, unanticipated costs that could result in future requests for assistance,” Harmon wrote on behalf of the state senate Democratic caucus.

Harmon’s federal wish list for the second phase of federal coronavirus relief includes $15 billion in block grant funding to shore up the state’s spending plans for this fiscal year and the next two.

The Oak Park Democrat also asked for $10 billion for the state’s desperately underfunded pension plans.

The Illinois Republican Party slammed that request on Twitter, accusing Democrats of “brazenly using a global pandemic as an excuse to ask the [federal government] to bail them out of the fiscal disaster they manufactured over the last two decades.”

Harmon also wants $9.6 billion for local governments, $6 billion for Illinois’ overloaded unemployment insurance system and $1 billion in public health support for “historically underserved communities”.

There's more at the link.  There are also more details of the request at Wirepoints, which has accurately and consistently covered Illinois' fiscal fecklessness for years.

It was Rahm Emanuel (until recently Mayor of Chicago) who opined during the Obama administration, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before."  Clearly, his advice has not been lost on his party, or his successors in office.

Illinois' fiscal problems are almost entirely of its own making.  The state, and left-wing/progressive strongholds within it, have overspent and wasted money for not just years, but decades.  They're now trying to make the rest of us, the taxpayers of this country, pay for all their excesses and mis-spending.  As far as I'm concerned, and as I've said before, the answer should be not just "No", but "Hell, no!"

Look for other states to make similar demands during this crisis.  They think that since so much federal money is being thrown around, no-one will notice (or care very much) that they're taking the opportunity to divert billions, even trillions of federal dollars to pay for their own excesses and self-indulgence.  We dare not let that happen, because it will establish a precedent that will be used again in future.  If we pay off Illinois', or California's, or any other state's deficits, what's to stop them spending just as much all over again, then demanding another bailout?  What makes you think they've learned anything from their excesses, and won't repeat them at our expense given half a chance?

We, the taxpayers of this country, should all be writing to our representatives and Senators to protest any attempt to foist others' economic incompetence and corruption onto our backs.  If we don't, and it happens, we'll have only ourselves to blame.




Peter

"The COVID-19 Boogaloo Opus"

That's the title of a very long and, frankly, very worrying article over at Handwaving Freakoutery (a blog we've met in these pages before).  I strongly recommend taking the time to click over there and read it in full.  (In case it's deleted by politically correct administrators, an archived copy may be found here.)

To whet your appetite, here are a few excerpts.

As the sensemaking crisis goes into overload on COVID-19, many people are shutting down, many people are hyperventilating, and many people don’t know what’s real and what’s not. The signal to noise ratio on this is very badly weighted towards noise, with our mainstream media sources and politicians failing to be particularly helpful. And while COVID-19 could kill you, other things could kill you too, such as unemployment, starvation, or national civil war, and we need to look at all of those things honestly to pull the signal out of the noise. There are a lot of things to consider.

. . .

The USA lost 45 days as compared to South Korea, at the same starting gun, entirely due to pencil pushers at the FDA and CDC. The important thing to take away from the Tale of The Second National F***up, is that no politician could have prevented this, unless they were willing to unilaterally step in, deplatform the FDA, burn HIPPA sooner, and bust the CDC down into an “advisory only” role. Not Trump, not Hillary, not Biden, not Bernie. The one politician who might have been able to do it, is the hypothetical caricature of Trump for which many Trump voters voted. And knowing how government works in the USA, it is unthinkable that this will get fixed, or that this won’t happen again the next time, because our universal bipartisan answer to government failure is more government.

And the government’s final response to needlessly wasting 45 days reacting to this, is to issue a 2 trillion-dollar bailout to pause the national economy for 56 days, so we can catch up, while everyone loses their jobs.

. . .

The math is all wrong. For one, we have some dead people who probably had COVID-19 and didn’t get counted because they didn’t get tested. For another, we have a lot more people who caught it and survived, but never got confirmed, because of the testing SNAFU. For a third, we have some currently alive cases who haven’t resolved in our numbers. This means the numerator in the fraction is wrong, and the denominator is very wrong. It is likely, on speculative analysis, that the final CFR for this thing will turn out to be very similar to the flu, as we see in South Korea and Iceland which have good testing. It’s “just” a flu that everyone gets all at once because nobody started with any immunity to it, which leads to more dead people. The spike of COVID-19 deaths we will see in the coming months are going to be several times higher than the flu deaths, because basically they’re several years-worth of flu victims squeezed into one year.

. . .

Most [gun store owners] estimate around 75% of gun sales in March 2020 were first time buyers. That would constitute 2.8 million people, almost 1% of the total US population buying their first gun. Many foreign nations only have 1% gun ownership rate nationwide. We may have that many who became first time owners a month ago. And now the ranges are closed, and they can’t practice or train with their new purchase, and they’re sitting at home losing their jobs reading a stream of social media anxiety.

These numbers don’t even count peer to peer sales or gifts of prior owned firearms. And the other things people are buying? Nonperishable food, medicines, seeds, things to use at home. Prepper stuff.

The makeup of COVID-19 America now constitutes the following classes:

1) Previously armed previous preppers
2) Previously armed new preppers
3) Newly armed new preppers
4) Unarmed new preppers, lovingly referred to as “targets.” Bless their heart.

Nobody’s not a prepper anymore. Certain corners of the internet might call this a “Boogaloo Soup.”

. . .

Be very clear, at the peak of the Syrian Civil War, the total number of combatants on all sides only numbered 2% or less of the population on a per capita basis. We have 1% new gun owners alone, a national gun ownership rate around 30%, and a projected number of Red or Blue tribal goons who support terrorism to be up around the 15% range before COVID-19 entered the picture ... Put simply, the Red Tribe / Blue Tribe cultural divide in the United States is thicker than mid-20th century racism. We have all the dehumanization we need for a civil war, and all the gear. We’re just not motivated yet.

. . .

A lot of people I speak to don’t seem to understand that the economy is not just something we do to manipulate a stock market. It is the fundamental way that humans provide for our needs, including food, and has been since we came down out of the trees and settled on this idea of “labor specialization” ... The calculus of when to come off lockdown is different everywhere, and the damage the lockdown does must be accounted for in this calculus ... If the lockdown doesn’t actually save that many people anyway, because our treatments in the hospital don’t help that much, then this entire calculation gets a lot muddier. And all this ignores the hunger element, which for the USA is tied in with both the Potential Boogaloo and the food service industry.

. . .

According to the New York Times, tens of millions of pounds of fresh food are being destroyed by the nations farmers because we closed restaurants, hotels, and schools ... Farmers are currently plowing under fields of fresh produce, because they have no choice ... the terrifying thing lies below the surface. It’s conceivable that bailout money could keep those industries alive, but there is no amount of bailout money that will dig that onion out of the ground. And the onion served a more important purpose than farming revenue. It was food. It prevented hunger. That’s what the economy is for, remember? ... in a very real way, if we don’t open the restaurants up soon, and get the prior supply chains working again, we are very likely to end up with long term food shortages here.

And that’s the last element we need to start shooting each other.

There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

The author argues his case cogently, persuasively and convincingly.  I wish I could find more in his article with which to disagree . . . but I can't.  What's more, I'm seeing more and more every day to confirm his thesis.  Just as one example, consider the actions of local and state governments in response to this pandemic.  On balance (although not always), most Republican governments appear to be focused on getting back to work as quickly and as safely as possible, to keep their local and regional economies going.  On balance (although not always), most Democratic governments appear to be focused on enforcing their authority over their constituents, whether or not that authority is being constitutionally and legitimately exercised.

Progressives are also using this opportunity to even further cement their ideological positions into law, whether or not those positions are widely accepted among their people.  Their attitude appears to be, "Now that we've made it the law, you will obey, or else! - even if you disagree."  Let South Park sum it up, for such ideological hard-liners and those who enforce their will:

To that attitude, many Americans have a visceral and emphatic response, often associated with a single finger, duly extended.  If progressives are so unwise as to push the issue, some of the hands behind those fingers might soon wield something a little more emphatic in its disdain.

Let Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform summarize what many Americans are thinking and feeling right now.

The time is approaching when we will need to separate the wheat from the chaff. This ongoing test of character will reveal the true nature of our political, financial, corporate, religious, and neighborhood leaders. You will be able to determine what type of person they are by whether they are willing to violate moral and ethical codes to achieve their objectives. It is times like these where your true nature is revealed.

So far, virtually every national leader, and most certainly Powell, Mnuchin and Congressional leaders, have failed this test miserably. They have confirmed we are run by one party, beholden to corporate and banking interests, and perfectly willing to destroy the livelihoods of the 99.9% to keep the 0.1% enriched and empowered. The ruling class has violated every moral and ethical code known to man, and will continue to do so until they are stopped through violent means. The chaff will need to burn.

. . .

I, along with many other like minded people in this country, have been stoically living our lives, prudently managing our affairs, working and saving, not being lured into the rigged markets, preparing for the challenges we saw ahead, and viewing everything spewed by politicians or media talking heads as nothing but hot air and propaganda.

I’ve hated the road this country has been on for the last twenty years, but with the actions taken by the Fed and government in the last few weeks, they have pressed down hard on the accelerator as if they want to take the country over the cliff and into the abyss below. What is the end game to these machinations and schemes? Do they have some master plan for a global world order, or are they just arrogant psychopaths flailing about trying to retain their wealth, status and power? Whatever the purpose, it is not going to end well.

I’ve been able to live my life without much interference from the surveillance state until now. When the State purposely destroys the economy, endangering my ability to earn a living, imprisons me in my home with threat of sanctions if I don’t obey, uses technology to monitor my movements, and then throws a couple grand of my own tax money back at me as compensation to shut up and submit to their shitting on my Constitutional rights, I’ve got a problem.

I’m not willing to sacrifice my liberty and freedoms for the safety and security of a corporate fascist oligarchy disguised as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. This farce has gone on for far too long. Once we acquiesce and surrender our liberty, it can never be recovered.

. . .

Those who would give up essential Liberty,
to purchase a little temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

                                Ben Franklin

Again, more at the link.

Go read the first article above, think about it, and - if I may so suggest - consider preparing yourself accordingly.  I wish I could say the author was way out in left field in his appreciation of what's going on . . . but I can't.

Peter