Friday, April 3, 2020

Rush Limbaugh: Democrats ‘Salivating’ over Coronavirus as Opportunity to ‘Decapitate’ U.S. Economy

 Rush Limbaugh at President's Podium
Article by Dr. Susan Berry in "Breitbart News":

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh warned Americans Thursday during his broadcast of the Democrats’ attempt to use the crisis of the coronavirus as a means to “decapitate the U.S. capitalist economy”:

So, they’re seeing this as an opportunity to decapitate the United States capitalist economy. And they are salivating over it. For them it’s the crisis opportunity of a lifetime to push through their agenda. Despite this, despite the fact that the facts show that it is capitalism and farmers and frackers and truckers who are saving us. People in many industries the left impugns and laughs at and makes fun of, they make fun of farmers, they make fun of people in flyover country, they make fun of people who make their living in the dirt, they make fun of people who take showers after work, they impugn all kinds of people in manual labor jobs. We would be [not] able to survive this without them.

Limbaugh said it is capitalism that is saving the country today. The popular host observed, for example, that by reversing net neutrality, the U.S. saved Internet connectability for emergency periods such as the one the nation is experiencing:

And, by the way, thank God for getting rid of net neutrality, because if we hadn’t gotten rid of net neutrality and if there were all kinds of these left-wing regulations on the Internet, it wouldn’t be up and running as it is today. Go to the U.K., go to the European Union, you’ll find out that the Internet and broadband service over there has been greatly interrupted in all this. Because they have massive more regulation of the Internet than we do.

Limbaugh criticized the left-wing media for joining with Democrats in portraying the current rise in unemployment as a failure of the Trump administration.

He observed MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “Do you think more needs to be done in the next stimulus package now that we’ve seen these appalling historic unemployment numbers?”

Pelosi responded:

Yes. Yes, indeed. And not only do I think so. You can just ask the Democratic and Republican governors. I’m very proud of my governor, Governor Gavin Newsom in California. In this bill we want to include some infrastructure that directly relates to the coronavirus crisis. For example, clean water. Clean water is a very important part of our infrastructure proposal. Community health centers. There’s funding for additional money for construction, rehabilitation, et cetera, of community health centers. Internet, broadband. Look at how we’re all dependent. And then the grid that makes so much of that possible as part of that.

“Yeah, the grid. The grid’s electricity,” Limbaugh reacted to the clip:

You people tried to shut it down with your Green New Deal. What do you mean? You’re the biggest hypocrite that’s come along during this crisis. Clean water, who the hell is opposed to it? What do you mean we need clean water initiatives in the infrastructure bill? Is there anybody out there in favor of dirty water? Who is opposed to this?

In the same segment, Limbaugh cited Fox Business Network’s Charles Payne, who said Wednesday to his guest, Vice President Mike Pence:

I think the fate of free market capitalism is on the line right now and that the administration and Big Business have got to show the American people that this is the best system. This, to me, is the moment of truth when capitalism is being tested, and it is your administration — you and President Trump — that have gotta prove that it is the best way to go about life.


Charles V Payne ✔ @cvpayne
This crisis has opened the door for many utopian dreams including those espoused in song "Imagine" and advocacy "Global Citizenship"

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too


Ted Cruz@tedcruz

Protect public safety, yes, but government does not have the constitutional authority to PERMANENTLY close churches and synagogues.

 Pence agreed, responding that farmers and small businesses are shining stars during the current crisis:

The fact that you’ve got farmers in the field working, you got grocery store clerks working the checkout counter? It’s keeping food on the table for every American. What you’re seeing is the American people are rising to the challenge. Our businesses across the country are rising to the challenge.

“I am so glad that he mentioned this to the vice president,” Limbaugh said. “He’s exactly right — and coming on the face of Gavin Newsom in California. The fate of free market capitalism is on the line right now, and we have shut it down.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/03/rush-limbaugh-democrats-salivating-over-coronavirus-as-opportunity-to-decapitate-u-s-economy/ 




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New York Stores Prepare for Civil Unrest

Store owners boarding up buildings across Manhattan

By Luke Funk
Fox 5 New York

  

NEW YORK - A growing scene for those who venture out into the streets of Manhattan these days is boarded up storefronts.  From luxury retailers to small bars, establishments that have no idea when they are going to be allowed to reopen are putting up protection over their glass doors and windows.

The businesses have taken the unsightly measure in an effort to defend against the potential for civil unrest caused by the coronavirus and a lack of officers on the streets.

Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered bars and restaurants closed except for takeout service in mid-March.  Most stores were also ordered to shut down.

Now, from Lower Manhattan to the Upper East Side, outlets are boarded up.  At least a few have offered makeshift messages of hope.


Posted on a pub at 28th and Park the message "let us go forward together" is painted on some of the plywood.  Another message is painted next to it saying, "if you're going through hell keep going."

Typically bustling Soho sidewalks are marred by boarded-up windows at designer brand stores, including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Coach, and Dolce & Gabbana.

The NYPD has reported that crime in the city has actually dropped since the coronavirus outbreak has limited people on the streets.



As the number of NYPD officers are added to the sick list or test positive to coronavirus, there are questions on the ability to effectively fight crime.

On Thursday, 6,498 uniformed members of the NYPD were on the sick report which accounts for 18% of the Department’s uniformed workforce.  1,354 uniformed members and 169 civilian members have tested positive for the coronavirus.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the Empire State will do "whatever we have to do" in response to a growing number of city police officers who have called out sick.

Fox 5 News
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SCOOP: FISH TANK CLEANER LADY BOMBSHELL! | Louder with Crowder

SCOOP: FISH TANK CLEANER LADY BOMBSHELL! | Louder with Crowder

 It's sad when a Canadian comedian is more of a true journalist than all the leftist MSM combined.

 
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Taliban: We will stop fighting for COVID-19

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 2:00 PM PT — Friday, April 3, 2020
The Taliban recently announced a ceasefire in the areas of Afghanistan that have been affected by the coronavirus. A spokesperson made the announcement via Twitter, saying the group would stop fighting to allow medical teams to provide health services and aid.
“If, God forbid, the outbreak happens in an area where we control the situation, then we will stop fighting in that area,” said Zabiullah Mujahid.
The announcement followed a UN Security Council statement, which urged for an immediate ceasefire in response to the pandemic.
This week, Afghanistan imposed a lockdown in several cities in an attempt to curb the spread. So far, there have been nearly 300 infections and six deaths in the region.

Meanwhile, neighboring country Iran has been struggling to contain the coronavirus pandemic as the death toll continues to rise. Iran’s health ministry announced Friday that 134 people lost their lives to the virus in a single day. This brought the country’s death toll to nearly 3,300.
Officials also confirmed the virus has infected more than 53,000 people in the country. Iran has taken various measures to stop the spread of the virus, including disinfecting the streets and public areas.
“The main goal is disinfection of public places in areas of prevalence of the coronavirus,” stated one local. “This virus suddenly spread and affected the whole country, but it is also affecting all countries in the world.”
Iran has been one of the hardest hit countries in the world after it reported its first coronavirus death on February 19th.
 In this Friday, March 27, 2020 photo, members of the Islamic Health Society, an arm of the Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group prepare to spray disinfectant as a precaution against the coronavirus, in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon.
https://www.oann.com/taliban-we-will-stop-fighting-for-covid-19/
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Audio Of Biden Calling COVID A ‘Hoax’



Trump Camp Exposes Twitter’s Double Standard, Releases Altered Audio Of Biden Calling COVID A ‘Hoax’


The Donald J. Trump 2020 reelection Campaign released altered audio on Twitter Thursday of former Vice President and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden calling the coronavirus a “hoax.” Biden never called it a hoax. The campaign, however, used the audio to expose Twitter for allowing many Democratic groups to alter sound of President Trump to trick the public into thinking he called the pandemic a “hoax.” He also never called it that.

“The media is giving a pass to a pro-Biden TV ad that doctors and deceptively edits audio of President Trump, even though every independent fact checker said President Trump DID NOT call the coronavirus a hoax. Joe Biden, on the other hand? This sounds authentic,” the campaign wrote in a tweet with the audio clip.

The Trump campaign and several independent fact checkers have alerted Twitter to the altered videos of Trump, but Twitter refuses to remove them.



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No institution has failed the public worse than the news media during the pandemic



No institution has failed the public worse during the C19 pandemic than the news media.

It seems impossible that this should be the case, especially considering the federal government’s sluggish, incoherent, and unfocused handling of this crisis. But even the federal government has managed to get some things right. The same cannot be said for our self-important Fourth Estate.

From the very beginning, corporate media got the story wrong, publishing article after article assuring readers that the virus was not as dangerous or serious as it sounded.

“Is this going to be a deadly pandemic?” Vox asked on social media on Jan. 31. “No.”

Later, after it became clear the pandemic that began in China was indeed a fatal, fast-moving global disaster and the bodies started to stack up, major newsgroups in the United States changed tacks, abandoning earlier efforts to downplay the seriousness of the disease to champion the Beijing-approved talking point that says it is “racist” and “xenophobic” to refer to the virus by its city or country of origin. 

“Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s coronavirus tweet echoes anti-Chinese racism. He must apologize,” the Sacramento Bee’s editorial board demanded on March 10 after the House GOP leader used the term “Chinese coronavirus” in a tweet. Prior to its editorial, the Sacramento Bee published no fewer than five news headlines featuring the exact term “Chinese coronavirus."

As corporate media rushed to condemn the terms it coined, its individual members embraced a number of demagogic talking points and outright falsehoods, perpetuating junk arguments and total lies in a none-too-subtle effort to score political points.

It gets worse.

Since the pandemic came to U.S. shores, members of the White House press corps have attended coronavirus briefings for the explicit purpose of peppering the president and his response team with insipid questions about whether it is racist to use terms such as “Wuhan virus” and “Kung flu.” Members of the press have belittled and talked down to the healthcare experts charged with leading the White House’s response efforts. Reporters and pundits ridiculed a business owner who overhauled his facilities so that they are now focused mostly on producing cotton face masks. NBC News has even suggested that the president is responsible for an Arizona couple who drank fish tank cleaner thinking it would protect them from the virus. 

Worst of all, U.S. newsgroups have taken to praising despotic regimes that are hostile to the U.S., including Russia and China, going so far as to parrot their propaganda. CNN, for example, published a report on March 21 comparing the U.S. unfavorably to Russia, which CNN claims has its coronavirus cases mostly under control thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The figures touted in the CNN report come directly from Moscow.

Elsewhere, major media have blindly accepted Beijing’s laughable assertionthat it has halted the spread of the disease in Wuhan and in other places. 

“How uncomfortable is it,” asked MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, “that perhaps China’s authoritarian ways did prevent this? Meaning, had China been a free and open society, this might have spread faster?”

Chinese authorities knew about the virus in December when it first appeared in the city of Wuhan. Instead of taking measures and sharing what it knew about the disease with the international community, China’s government engaged in a massive cover-up. The Chinese Communist Party suppressed the sharing of relevant information, arresting and punishing medical professionals who tried to warn people that there was something going around with SARS-like symptoms.

China’s deception and incompetence, all of which led to its gross mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak, are a matter of historical fact. Yet ostensibly free and independent journalists in the U.S. eagerly repeat Beijing’s coronavirus case counts anyway, "reporting" uncritically China’s totally unbelievable claim that new incidents of infections have remained essentially flat since late February.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that the U.S. intelligence community has determined that China “has concealed the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in its country, under-reporting both total cases and deaths.” 

Don’t hold your breath waiting for corrections from the same journalists who reported last week that the U.S. has more known coronavirus cases than any country in the world. You certainly should not expect a correction from New York Times editors responsible for the March 18 report titled “Its coronavirus cases dwindling, China turns focus outward.”

The Bloomberg news alert, by the way, came just hours after a number of journalists and pundits interpreted a tweet from a New York Times reporter to mean the White House’s stated “goal” is to reach 100,000-240,000 deaths from the virus. (This most certainly is not the administration’s goal.) 

In other words, the news media’s handling of the crisis has been consistently wrong and tendentious from the get-go. It has only gotten worse since then.

There is a reason why, amid the coronavirus pandemic, the press is the least trusted institution in the U.S. compared to hospitals, schools, daycare centers, state governments, President Trump, and Vice President Mike Pence, according to recent Gallup polling data. 

This is what happens when an entire industry is bad at its job.

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Far-Left Media Group Asks FCC To Censor Trump Press Conferences



An influential far-left media group has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to develop a wide-ranging censorship plan of President Donald Trump’s press conferences. “Free Press,” the group calling for the censorship of broadcasts of the press conferences, says in its petition that it’s a “life and death” issue. They are asking the FCC to limit the public’s right to hear directly from the president about the federal government’s handling of the global pandemic, that any broadcasts of his press conferences come with a pronounced disclaimer, and that media figures with different political views than the progressive organization be further censored.

“This is a sweeping and dangerous attempt by the far left to weaponize the FCC against conservative media outlets and elected officials. They want to turn the FCC into a roving speech police empowered to go after the left’s political opponents,” says FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr.

While the requests are extreme, Free Press has previously taken far-left views about government control of the media and turned them into orthodox Democratic Party positions. The group successfully lobbied the FCC under President Obama to regulate the internet via Title II “net neutrality” rules, later repealed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who has described Free Press as “a spectacularly misnamed Beltway lobbying group.”

FCC rules regulating the broadcast of intentional hoaxes could be used to limit media coverage of President Trump, Free Press argues. The Commission’s previous ruling that the government has a “compelling interest in preventing substantial public harm,” could be interpreted to prevent unregulated media coverage of the president, Free Press argues. The group posits no limit to its theory, setting up a system where the FCC could shut down any group pushing ideas it doesn’t like.

To make their case, they cite President Trump’s discussion of an anti-malarial treatment that some doctors had been using to treat COVID-19. He specifically said that even if it didn’t work as treatment, it had been used for so long in humans, that the risk was low. “It’s been around for a long time, so we know if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody,” he said.

Free Press argued that a man without COVID-19 who died after ingesting fish tank cleaner at home, outside the direction of any medical professional, was a victim of Trump’s remarks and that therefore its censorship plan should be adopted. Citing anti-Trump activists who blamed Trump for this death, Free Press called Trump’s support for the treatment “deadly disinformation.” The group also claimed that Trump had engaged in a “mischaracterization of the efficacy” of hydroxychloroquine.

In recent days, the FDA approved the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients. And the New York Times conceded that the drug “helped to speed the recovery” of a group of patients who were stricken by the Wuhan Coronavirus.

Free Press cofounder and longtime board member Robert W. McChesney is an avowed socialist. He has made his views clear, saying “In the end, there is no real answer but to remove brick by brick the capitalist system itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.” He also said of his work, “[w]e need to do whatever we can to limit capitalist propaganda, regulate it, minimize it, and perhaps even eliminate it.” He has also praised Venezuela’s control of the media.

Free Press’s censorship plan echoes one suggested last year by Democrat FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. Her plan was to censor e-cigarette ads on television in the name of “public interest.” The plan has statutory and constitutional obstacles, notes Jacob Sullum.

Particularly since the election of Trump in 2016, progressive groups have been making a concerted effort to use the government to limit the expression of conservative speech. These prominent groups and representatives are openly signaling that they would use the power of the FCC to censor conservative speech if they were to gain control of the commission under a Democratic president.

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Singer Bill Withers dead at 81 from heart complications, Rolling Stone reports

https://www.oann.com/singer-bill-withers-dead-at-81-from-heart-complications-rolling-stone-reports/
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The Doctor Isn’t Always Right

 
Article by Bryan Preston in "PJMedia":

True story: A friend of mine was in the military and fell in love with a local national. Military doctors and the base command have to approve when a troop marries a local, so the bride-to-be had to undergo a medical examination via a military doctor on the base. That doctor took X-rays, blood tests and thought he detected tuberculosis, and set about to derail the marriage. The shocked couple went and got a second opinion from a local doctor, who chuckled at the very idea that the lady had any ailment, let alone TB. She was fine. The second opinion saved the wedding and they have been married happily and healthily ever since.

Another true story: A young friend of mine in the military mysteriously broke his femur. He was 19 and otherwise very healthy. Military doctors believed he had cancer and after treatments and repeated breaks, were preparing to amputate his leg. A last-minute second opinion from another military doctor found that there was no cancer at all. He had a staph infection brought on when a military dentist removed the man’s wisdom teeth. He nearly lost his leg, and could have died, if the doctors had kept on down the wrong path they were on. The second opinion saved his life.

Despite knowing that both of these actually happened, when I visit my doctor I tend to trust what I hear and act on it. Doctors know a lot more than I do.

Still, the doctor isn’t always right. Good doctors encourage us to get a second opinion on anything very important. There’s room to disagree with Dr. Anthony Fauci when he prescribes a national lockdown as we face COVID-19. He’s not an economist and jobs aren’t necessarily his job. His medical advice, which is likely the best we have available, has to be balanced with economic and other information available to President Trump. I do trust President Trump not to happily preside over the destruction of the economy he built over the past three years. His seriousness, including the quick action to ban travel from China back in January and his quick thinking to involve corporate America from Honeywell to MyPillow, should give us all some comfort even as we face an unprecedented economic crash thanks to the shelter-in-place orders that about 75% of Americans now live under. His business sense serves us well now.

We’ve seen 10 million apply for unemployment just in the last two weeks. A huge majority, 87%, of small businesses say they are experiencing major impacts from the shutdowns. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s not 100%.

The economy is essentially frozen. You can preserve something by freezing it. But you can also kill it that way. Freezing the economy, which is basically a living thing, will eventually kill it. It’s just a matter of time until the economy looks like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.

All of that said, outside the United States COVID-19 is creating dire situations. CNN published this video of what’s taking place in Ecuador. I know...CNN. But still. There, authorities can’t even keep up with removing bodies of those killed by the virus, or who had the virus and died due to underlying conditions. It’s stark. They’re flooding streets with soap to combat the virus.

Assuming CNN isn’t just making this up, and there’s no indication of that, COVID-19 is a deeply serious threat. Dr. Fauci is trying to prevent similar scenes from happening here. But, and this is very important, such scenes are made worse by Ecuador’s economy being much weaker and less advanced than ours. We have to have an economy while we act on medical advice to get through this.

The president knows this. Today he’s meeting with oil executives to save the U.S. oil industry. It was thriving just a month ago, but is on the verge of collapse today. No energy means the lights literally go out, and many many more will suffer and die not just here, but everywhere. American industry and technology are facing similar threats, red lights blinking away on the nation’s dashboard.

At some point, the president will probably have to reject Dr. Fauci’s medical opinion and render his own opinion -- and restart the economy so we can get back to work. When we get back to work we have to get the timing right to balance the medical interests with the economic ones. I won’t even pretend to know when that is -- but it needs to be soon.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-doctor-isnt-always-right/ 
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Coronavirus Puts Counterproductive Regulations...


Coronavirus Puts Counterproductive Regulations Into Perspective

Many regulations serve little to no public purpose.

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(Paul Christian Gordon/ZUMA Press/Newscom) 

Governments in the United States are restricting freedoms to unprecedented degrees in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. As dangerous as this expansion of power is, in some ways, federal, state, and local governments are also reducing their intrusions into our lives by cutting many regulations.

This deregulation falls into three categories: help people deal with the virus (including those who are confined to their homes with children who need to be home-schooled); help businesses stay open and cater to their consumers under these unusual circumstances; and free the private health care sector to better respond to the virus.

Here are just a few of the rules that were lifted to enhance our freedom and our safety:

In New York state, the government has suspended a regulation mandating that child care providers undergo criminal background checks. The state's governor also eliminated almost two dozen other regulations, including those that artificially restrict the number of children allowed in day care facilities to ones that set minimum staffing requirements.

Many states have also lifted restrictions to home-based instructional policies. The Federal Communications Commission waived existing E-Rate rules to allow schools to issue Wifi hotspots or devices to students who lack internet access at home. And the U.S. Department of Education has eased rules that made it unnecessarily difficult for colleges and universities to shift classes online.

To help avoid shortages in stores, the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced a nationwide exemption to some rules forbidding most commercial truckers from driving more than 11 hours in a 14-hour span. The DOT also relaxed a rule requiring that drivers' rest periods be a minimum of 10 hours; now each rest period can be split into two separate breaks. In Texas, trucks are now allowed to deliver both groceries andalcohol at the same time. Some states, like Alabama, are also allowing prescriptions to be filled for longer than 30 days. But the best deregulation of an unnecessary rule is that the Transportation Security Administration, at least during this crisis, now allows passengers to bring liquid hand sanitizer containers of up to 12 ounces in carry-on bags.

Many businesses that deal directly with the public may now cater to consumers in ways that were once forbidden. For instance, several states, including Texas and New Hampshire, now allow restaurants to deliver alcoholic beverages with carryout and delivery orders. New Jersey just allowed microbreweries and brewpubs to deliver beers. Other jurisdictions—in order to reduce the spread of the virus—have lifted their bans on plastic bags and single-use cups. And some states now allow spirit distillers to produce hand sanitizer. Meanwhile, North Dakota now recognizes expired occupational licenses.

On the health care front, many states now recognize physicians and other medical professionals who are licensed in other states. Colorado, California, and other states extended a grace period for lapsed licenses for retired doctors and nurses who want to practice. And the Department of Health and Human Services is lifting the rules preventing doctors and medical professionals to practice across state lines.

Many states also lifted certificate of need regulations, rapidly increasing health care capacity. HHS and many states have eased restrictions on the practice of telemedicine, too, thus allowing patients to see their doctors from the comfort and safety of their homes.

The Food and Drug Administration—an agency that has rightfully been shamed for the role it played in our current lack of COVID-19 tests and face masks—is eliminating some of its counterproductive rules. For instance, the agency is streamlining the process to expedite COVID-19 tests. It's allowing private companies to market the COVID-19 test without prior approval as well.

The Trump administration is also relaxing some of its tariffs on certain medical equipment and supplies. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency lifted the protectionist Buy American Act, now giving Puerto Rico and other territories discretion to acquire personal protective equipment from non-U.S. sources.

The large number of rules lifted by federal, state, and local governments in response to this pandemic reveals the sad reality that many regulations serve little to no good public purpose. Hopefully, people will realize how counterproductive these rules were and will not allow them to be reinstated after the crisis is over. In the end, we'll all be freer and safer.


COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

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‘You Might Be a Technocrat If …’ Conservatives Must Argue Principles, Not Numbers, If We Are to Survive

 Cartoons of the Day | WarSclerotic
Article by Clint Fargeau in "RedState":

When the Founders signed their names to the Declaration of Independence, they were saying in effect: “These principles are so important to us that we will die on the gallows to hold on to them.”

Few Americans, including conservatives, really think in terms of hard-core principles like that now. A case in point: the punditry, liberal and conservative, discuss the Wuhan virus almost entirely in terms of infection numbers, expert predictions, and economic statistics, rather than principles.

When the occasional commentator points out that the government, in the name of safety, is savaging Americans’ civil liberties today–the right to peaceably assemble, keep and bear arms, run a lawful business, attend church, etc.–he is met with: “But but but … the experts say people could DIE if we don’t shut people in their homes and force businesses to close, so the crisis makes it okay.”

“Okay”?

If every decision by the country were made on metrics of safety, the United States never would have been formed in the first place. The founders would have said: “Rebellion is NOT safe. We might get our necks broken. Better to stomach the King’s oppression.” For that matter, no one would ever be allowed to smoke, drink, or eat a Big Mac; and skateboarding would be illegal.

Moreover, if the government can do anything it pleases during a crisis, then what good are civil liberties? Any time the government powers want to enact an unprincipled change, all they must do is declare a ‘crisis’ of one sort or another. There’s always a crisis near at hand.

Civil liberties are supposed to be a red line of principle the government may not cross, no matter the cost, so as to hold back mankind’s perennial tendency toward government tyranny and societal self-destruction.

Yet Americans today seem quite content to embrace burgeoning authoritarianism, as long as the authoritarianism is rationalized to us by experts in medicine, law, social science, and the media. Oh, and Hollywood! Because people in Hollywood are experts on EVERYTHING, and we need to listen to them, dontcha know.

This tells us something: culturally speaking, the United States is no longer a democratic republic. That period is over. The United States today is a technocracy.

THE TYRANNY OF EXPERTS

We are not in danger of ‘becoming’ a technocracy–we ARE a technocracy. The train has arrived. Citizens elect leaders and lawmakers, who promptly delegate the running of the country to credentialed mandarins: unelected technical experts, mangers, and advisors, who wield vast and ever-growing authority.

Managerial experts claim to possess technical skills that enable them to achieve (or to advise others how to achieve) whatever outcomes are worth achieving. “Expertise” is a claim to efficiency in achieving those ends. It is the basis for a manager’s authority to manipulate human beings into compliant patterns of behavior. The authority of expertise legitimates many of the institutions that dominate modern social life–government bureaucracies, psychological counseling, progressive education, and more. The claim of expertise purports to justify all kinds of social control …
Corporate bureaucracies cannot run the country; they can barely run themselves. Yet appeal to the authority of expertise is used to make the pronouncements of managers unquestionable. The experts declare non-experts incapable of deliberation, excluding ordinary human beings from debate on the grounds of their alleged incompetence.

The cancer of expert authority is so advanced in the United States that psychiatrists are now floating the idea they should have the power to impeach an elected president for what they judge to be mental unfitness, or disqualify presidential candidates they find unsuitable.
 
What they propose is a fundamental change in the nature of American government, with medico-experts at the top of the pyramid, dictating the limits of discourse and action within which voters may make their choices.

Much like the medical-expert field, progressive crusaders for technocracy would also like to ‘reform’ the First Amendment, anointing “news experts” to “fact-check” and oversee the news, then suppress outlets–almost always conservatives outlets such as RedState–they find to be spreading “misinformation.”

LAW MANAGERS

But perhaps the most heinous case of encroachment on the basic civil liberties of Americans comes from the legal profession. Over the last century and a half, progressive legal scholars and jurists have systematically deconstructed and ‘managed away’ the intuitive principles of the Founders and the Constitution, brick by brick.

When the average citizen says something like, “Wait! It very clearly says ‘shall not be infringed’ right there,” the legal experts come back with: “You aren’t an expert, and you don’t understand that the document doesn’t really say what it says. Now shut up and go back to digging your ditch.”

The legal profession has managed to build a species of priesthood within the state, guarded by magical language and credentialism, to render the citizen’s own laws and legal system almost wholly inaccessible to him; and to make their own knowledge and services so powerful as to be inescapable.

The United States today might be better called a *legitocracy*–a government by the legal priesthood for the legal priesthood. Judges, lawyers, prosecutors, regulators, law schools, bar associations, and legal-activism conglomerates like the ACLU and GLAAD use their specialized knowledge to function as gatekeepers of society’s rules, politics, and culture.
Nothing is accomplished without the involvement of the legal priesthood. Armies of lawyers draft bills for elected lawmakers, who enact their recommendations with only a vague understanding of their mandates. Then the lawmakers turn the laws *back over* to prosecutors, regulators, and jurists for implementation and enforcement …
Thus the legal priesthood operates in a closed system, disconnected from the populace and unaccountable to anyone but themselves. To be sure, the priesthood declaims with great eloquence about “democracy,” a “nation of laws,” and “the people”; but they amount to an insular social class–the card carriers in a one-party state. The rest of us are merely along for the ride.

Legal experts have so warped Americans’ thinking that they don’t even expect to understand their laws anymore, or to have their laws reflect common-sense principles. And the expert class has exploited the populace’s ignorance to turn them into techno-surfs, shut in their houses watching Netflix and fiddling on their phones until the experts tell them they can go outside and pursue life and happiness again.

AMERICA’S CLASS WAR GOES INTO OVERDRIVE

America’s present class war is often styled as one between progressives and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, red states and blue states, metropolitan and rural areas, or rich and poor.

While those binaries describe the division to some extent, a more precise binary comes from Michael Lind’s recent book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite. According to Lind, the fundamental division in America runs between working-class Americans (who are more often but not always conservative, Republican, and rural) and the university-educated, expert/manager class of Americans (who are more often but not always progressive, Democrat, and metropolitan).

The former are far more numerous; the latter, while a minority, hold most authority, institutional power, and wealth in the nation–ranging through medicine, law, media, government, finance, technology, entertainment, and education. In a very real sense, the managerial elite amount to a new American aristocracy.

The Wuhan virus crisis has put America’s class war into overdrive. The expert class decided to shut down the country and work from home. For them, the decision made sense. Few if any of them would lose their jobs. Many can telecommute. A great number work for the government, government-adjacent institutions, or large businesses that will weather the storm or be wholly unaffected, attached as they are to the government teat.

But working-class Americans are getting hammered flat. Working-class Americans are facing economic death from the national shutdown–followed by increased homelessness, suicide, drug addiction, family disintegration, and multi-generational despair.

The American expert class looked at the numbers and dispassionately concluded that the lives worth saving are their own. The ugly feelings and class division that will be generated by this decision will probably eclipse the bad feeling generated by the financial crisis of 2008.

NUMBERS AND THE DEATH OF PRINCIPLE

To the expert class in America, it is numbers rather than the Constitution or any other set of principles that reign supreme. If ‘the numbers’ suggest fewer people–and particularly fewer of the really important and worthwhile people–will die by confining everyone and shutting down the economy, so be it.

And arrest anyone who holds a party in his own home, or tries to go to work and feed his kids, or goes to church. To hell with principles. The managers know best.

Average citizens bear blame in all this. They chose to believe the expert class when they told them that principles aren’t real, that only numbers matter. They have allowed the expert class to bamboozle and shame them with cherry-picked, spurious statistics into violating one fundamental principle after another–constitutional, religious, cultural, common sense, or otherwise–always with the promise of more money, convenience, entertainment, and virtue signaling in return.

Well, the bill has come due.

Without robust and widely agreed-upon principles to cement pubic resolve and resist the technocrats, they can do what they please. We are seeing it unfold now, with horrendous consequences to the fabric of the society. Not even a president resistant to technocratic manipulation can withstand the full might of the technocracy–not with the whole country now clamoring for technocrats to keep them safe and fix everything.

But technocrats cannot keep us safe. They pretend to predict the future, but they cannot. They pretend to have solutions to all social problems; but all they do is create new and different problems. Liberal progressives have been pushing for and expanding technocracy and coersive social engineering for a century, treating society like a math problem a few smart people could solve.

Have they solved it?

We still have roughly as much poverty, drug use, disease, crime, etc. as before we turned the nation over to technocratic managers to engineer to progressive perfection. Solutions are not what we’ve received. We’ve received leviathan and fantastically expensive bureaucracy, sprawling campuses and state buildings filled to the ceilings with technocrats all eager to manipulate the society.

If ordinary Americans do not rediscover voluntary and commonly understood principles soon to hold them together, the United States will become a nation held together entirely by coercion, both physical and legal. Count on it.

https://www.redstate.com/diary/clint-fargeau/2020/04/03/you-might-be-a-technocrat-conservatives-must-argue-principles-not-numbers/
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With virus crisis raging, Pelosi and Schiff ramp up new Trump investigations

The US is in midst of a terrible, life-or-death crisis. Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff spring into action--with new investigations targeting the president.

by Byron York at Washington Examiner

The team is back in action. On Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the creation of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis. The new panel will have the authority to investigate any aspect of the virus emergency and the Trump administration's handling of it. 

Pelosi's announcement came a day after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called for a 9/11-style independent commission to investigate "mistakes" in the virus response. Shortly after that, Schiff told the Washington Post that in Congress, House Democrats must investigate the Trump administration's handling of virus testing and the government's distribution of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers.

"We need to make sure there's no favoritism in terms of political allies, no discrimination against states or governors based on lack of presidential flattery," Schiff said, indicating the probe would be aimed squarely at President Trump.

Less than three months after sending to the Senate impeachment articles to remove the president from office and less than two months after the Senate trial ended in Trump's acquittal, the Pelosi-Schiff team is up and running again.

In a "Dear Colleague" letter, Pelosi said she envisions a coronavirus committee along the lines of the Truman Committee, created shortly before World War II to investigate defense spending. Pelosi said the new committee, which will be headed by Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, will be "bipartisan." It is not entirely clear why the speaker said that; all committees in the House are bipartisan and run by the majority party. The Intelligence Committee, run by Schiff, that pushed impeachment through the House was "bipartisan." And the new committee will be, too.
Pelosi also stressed that the select committee will oversee the spending of $2 trillion provided for in the latest coronavirus relief bill. That is certainly a huge amount of money, the spending of which will have to be scrutinized for waste. Congress has a legitimate responsibility to oversee such an enormous federal expenditure.

But Pelosi also gave Democrats room to go after Trump for whatever reason they choose. "The committee will be empowered to examine all aspects of the federal response to the coronavirus," she wrote. Among those powers, she added, will be the ability to "press to ensure that the federal response is based on the best possible science and guided by the nation's best health experts." That could mean just about anything.

Republicans are wary of watching Pelosi and Schiff — he told the Post his committee is already examining virus warnings the Intelligence Community reportedly gave the White House — resume their efforts to target the president.

First, some in the GOP argue the recent relief bill had all sorts of oversight mechanisms built into it. That is what a lot of the debate surrounding the bill was about. There is a special "Oversight Commission" to be created in Congress, a "special inspector general" to monitor spending through the Treasury Department, and another committee of inspectors general to watch things. Pelosi and other Democrats insisted on strong oversight measures in the bill and then turned around and created yet another body in the select committee.

"This seems really redundant," Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said after Pelosi's announcement.

And then there is the fact that Pelosi's colleagues were the ones who, during the debate over the relief bill, tried to insert costly Democratic policy priorities that had nothing to do with coronavirus. Many were ultimately left out of the bill, but some, such as $25 million for the Kennedy Center and $75 million for public broadcasting, became law. (The Kennedy Center intensified the outrage when, after the big grant from Congress, it nevertheless stopped paying its musicians.)

"Congress should look into why Nancy Pelosi insisted on $25 million for the Kennedy Center," said Republican Rep. Brad Wenstrup in a text exchange. "The Center has not been converted to a hospital to treat coronavirus patients, but it's reported they are laying off most of their staff." Wenstrup, who is a doctor and wants "after-action reviews" at federal agencies when the virus crisis is over, said he supports a bill for Congress to rescind the $25 million grant.

"I'd rather have a select committee to investigate how so much liberal pork got into the Covid response bill," texted Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Those are legitimate concerns. But Republicans have yet another worry. Some House Democrats have been engaged in a long campaign to remove the president from office, using whatever weapon — Russia, Stormy Daniels, Ukraine, Michael Cohen, emoluments, whatever — might be available at the moment. Now, the United States is in the midst of a terrible, life-and-death crisis with the virus and its health and economic effects, and the investigation machine is revving up once more.

"It's the same old, same old," said Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. "They never miss a beat to get political and go after the president."

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Italy Risks Losing Grip in South With Fear of Looting, Riots

 
Article by John Follain in "Bloomberg News":

As Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte fights to hold Italian society together through a crippling nationwide lockdown, the depressed south is turning into a powder keg.

Police have been deployed on the streets of Sicily’s capital, Palermo, amid reports gangs are using social media to plot attacks on stores. A bankrupt ferry company halted service to the island, including vital supplies of food and medicines. As the state creaks under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic, officials worry the mafia may be preparing to step in.

Preventing unrest in the so-called Mezzogiorno, the underdeveloped southern region that’s long lagged behind the wealthy north, has become the government’s top priority, according to Italian officials who asked not to be named discussing the administration’s strategy.

With the European Union’s most dangerously indebted state already fighting the Germans over the terms of the financial aid it needs, the fallout may reach far beyond Rome if Conte fails.

“We need to act fast, more than fast,” Palermo Mayor Leoluca Orlando told daily La Stampa. “Distress could turn into violence.”

As the lockdown enters its fourth week, Health Minister Roberto Speranza said in a statement late Monday that the government will follow the recommendation of its scientific advicers to extend the lockdown from the current deadline of April 3 until Easter at least. Conte is also working on a new stimulus package for mid-April worth at least 30 billion euros ($33 billion), following initial measures worth 25 billion euros, the officials said.

Italy has the highest death toll from the virus, with more than 11,000 fatalities, and almost 102,000 confirmed cases, second only to the U.S. It reported the smallest number of new coronavirus infections in almost two weeks on Monday.

Calls for Help

Within the aid he’s already announced, Conte is trying to channel funds toward the South. Over the weekend he advanced 4.3 billion euros from a solidarity fund for municipalities and added 400 million euros to mayors that can be converted into coupons for groceries. “No one will be left behind,” the premier said in a televised address.

Still, southern leaders are clamoring for more. They say that cash from the solidarity fund was already due to them and the economic damage from the lockdown has brought their region to the verge of a breakdown.

That opens another front for Conte, who is already struggling to stop the Italian health system from collapsing and fighting the European Union for joint debt issuance to help relieve the financial pressure on his government. Italy’s economic output is set to shrink by 6.5% in 2020, according to research group Prometeia.

The lockdown has hit the 3.7 million Italians working in the underground economy particularly hard since they don’t receive a regular salary and have difficulty accessing unemployment benefits. Many of them are concentrated in the South.

In the South, “many people live day-to-day, doing odd jobs, like unloading trucks at markets, and they are in trouble,” Stefano Paoloni, a police union leader, said by phone. “We need to be on the alert to see whether there’s organized crime behind social unrest.”

Criminal Gangs

Police have been stationed outside supermarkets in Palermo after at least one group of angry residents refused to pay for their purchases. The private Facebook group National Revolution, which has about 2,600 members, is urging others to stage such raids, according to newspaper la Repubblica. Other social media outlets, including WhatsApp chats, are being monitored, the newspaper said.

Adding to the sense of things breaking down, ferry company Tirrenia CIN on Monday decided to halt all its connections with Sicily, Sardinia and other minor islands because of financial difficulties. The government said in a statement it will ensure that vital goods are delivered.

Giuseppe Provenzano, who is in charge of the south in Conte’s cabinet, said an emergency handout should also be given to those in the illegal economy. The risk is that organized crime gangs will step in to provide assistance to those in need, filling the gap left by the state.

The government needs to move “without hesitation,” said Graziano Delrio, leader of lower-house lawmakers from the Democratic Party, the second-biggest group in Conte’s coalition. Rome needs “to do whatever’s necessary for the essential needs of families,” he said in an interview.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-30/italy-risks-losing-grip-in-south-with-fears-of-looting-and-riots 
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