Friday, May 29, 2020

Tucker Laments Double Standard: ‘Normal’ People Must Follow ‘Countless New Rules,’ Rioters ‘Get To Ignore’ Them

Tucker Carlson laments justice double standard in Minneapolis (Fox News screengrab)
Article by Scott Morefield in "The Daily Caller":

 Fox News host Tucker Carlson lamented the double-standard created when rioters in Minneapolis and other places get away with disobeying the law while “normal” people can barely keep up with the “countless new rules” legislators and regulators create.

Carlson began Friday night’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” wondering if rioters who took over and burned the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd Precinct on Thursday will ever be “arrested for doing that.”

 “All of it happened on camera, but the perpetrators just walked away,” he said. “And it’s possible, maybe likely, that most of them will never be punished for it.”

Yet, it’s “a very different experience from the ones most Americans have living here,” Carlson noted.

 “As Minneapolis burns … the rest of us are continuing on as we always do, dutifully following the rules,” he said before listing a series of the “countless new rules” Americans are expected to follow, which “multiply like insects.”

“In public, we hide what we really think,” said Carlson. “We bury our natural instincts, we keep our deepest beliefs to ourselves. We know the boundaries. We understand we will be punished for telling the truth. This is the America the rest of us live in.”

While most people try to “follow those rules to the letter,” others “have somehow negotiated a far better deal” and “get to ignore the rules.”

“They don’t believe in order or fairness,” he said. “They reject society itself. Reason and process and precedent mean nothing to them. They use violence to get what they want immediately. People like this don’t bother to work. They don’t volunteer or pay taxes to help other people. They live for themselves. They do exactly what they feel like doing. They say exactly what they feel like saying. They spray paint their opinions on buildings. On television, hour by hour, we watch these people — criminal mobs — destroy what the rest of us have built. They have no right to do that. They don’t contribute to the common good. They never have. Yet suddenly, they seem to have all the power.”

 Instead of stopping rioters, authorities “pander to them, flatter them, desperately try to win their love,” said the Fox News host. “Why are masked lunatics setting fire to Wendy’s? Because the rest of us are sinful. That’s what our leaders tell us. The crimes of the mob are the punishment we deserve. That’s their argument. And many seem to buy it.”

“We should have seen this coming,” Carlson said. “When you express an opinion our leaders don’t like, they call it violence. When criminals commit actual acts of violence, they call it speech.”
 Since “the game is rigged,” Carlson wondered why “the rest of us” are “still playing it.”

“The authorities clearly don’t care about you,” he concluded. “The police won’t show up to save your life, literally. During election years, sweaty politicians claim to be on your side. It’s a lie. They’re not. They’ll waste your time with hollow posturing. They’ll feed you pointless symbolic victories, and expect you to celebrate, like you’ve actually won something. But when the mob comes, they’re gone. You’re on your own. That’s true. Those are the facts. We can’t change them. All we can control is our own behavior. Should you keep playing along with all of that? Ponder that the next time they demand you get a permit to put a deck on your own house. And think about it even harder the next time you write the next tax check.”

https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/29/tucker-carlson-minneapolis-rioting-double-standard/


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To Reset Relations With China, We Must Ignore The Stock Market


Communist China plays the long game, and if the United States plans to fix the imbalances in the Sino-American relationship, we must as well.


Consider that every time America attempts a hardline stance on China, equity markets drop. While a simple war of words can cause algorithms to spew sell orders, a disruptive reboot of the complicated bilateral relationship will spell nothing but trouble for share prices. Decades of globalism have made American companies, from Disney to General Motors massively dependent on China for growth. Without that growth, earnings suffer. And when earnings suffer, so goes the market.

 To tackle such a complicated revamp, America needs to think long term. China does it, looking decades into the future to implement initiatives intended to benefit the country’s 1.4 billion citizens for generations to come. Such planning often creates short-term pain, but the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t care. They play the long game. If the United States plans to fix the imbalances in the Sino-American relationship, we must as well.

 That means we have to ignore quarterly earnings reports and millisecond computer trading decisions, as well as demonstrate firm resolve beyond our two- and four-year election cycles. If the CCP can wait it out, Americans must have the steadfast determination to fight a drawn-out battle too—no matter how long it takes.

 I don’t see the pursuit of this necessary realignment with China as a war, nor do I want one. In fact, my mission is to promote the benefits of continuing bilateral commercial and cultural exchange, albeit with significant rebalancing.

The U.S. Needs a War Footing Against China

But for the mega-hawks out there, let’s pretend an economic war is at hand. And if it is, let’s look back to World War II for reference. From the time Japan first attacked our nation to April 28, 1942, equity markets plummeted, eventually hitting what investment strategist Barton Biggs referred to as the “bottom of the ages.”
But did that deter America’s resolve to engage for as long as it took to win? Not at all. In fact, it was hardly one month later that the U.S. won the Battle of Midway, turning the tide in the Pacific.

 I was in China co-hosting a delegation of U.S. Congressional Members on Aug. 23, 2019, when President Trump tweeted, “American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China.” Our Chinese hosts shook their heads at the harshness of his directive. Not me. Steadfastly nonpartisan with my work in the U.S.-China space, I silently supported the core principle buried beneath the bluster: American companies should look to alternatives that prioritize the economic health and security of the nation that nurtured them.

 U.S. markets disagreed, and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 624 points that day. That weekend, supporters of unrestricted globalism and reckless free trade policy—influenced more by the violent fall of equities than the long-term pro-America benefits associated with the tweet’s underlying theme—pressed the administration to calm down its hawkishness. The lobbying globalists won the argument. America backed down, and the markets rewarded misguided short-term thinking by rising 270 points the following Monday. Our Chinese hosts smiled for the remainder of the visit.

 And that’s my point. If our great nation wants to tackle this challenge—one that will be a drawn-out battle of wills between the world’s two superpowers—the U.S. needs to assume a war footing. We must forget about stock markets, short-term pain, and all-too-regular election cycles. We must start thinking about the long game. This is exactly what I’ll discuss with Steve Bannon on his “War Room Show” Friday. 

 But how do Americans stay both inspired and determined to see it through to victory? Let’s look again to World War II. Inspiration came from consistent, tangible battle victories. Every journalistic platform proudly reported each notch of good news, amplifying the courage coursing through the veins of Americans. It started with Midway, then on to Milne Bay, then Buna-Gona, and later by Guadalcanal. Patriotic fortitude crescendoed into D-Day and the Axis Surrender, finally peaking with the white flag of Japan.

 Only stock traders watched the markets from the attack of Pearl Harbor to the war’s eventual end. The rest of America concentrated on inspirational achievements, buttressing our nation’s resolve through each visible step of success.

America Needs a New Scoring System

Applying such a strong lesson today requires news platforms—whether digital, print, or televised—to stop updating Americans incessantly on stock markets. That scoreboard is no longer relevant and ultimately hinders our mission. Wall Street’s indexes are not real-time indicators of Main Street’s fitness, a reality only magnified during the recent stock market surge in the face of Depression-era unemployment and bankruptcies. Nor do they indicate a proper score of our nation’s long-term health and security. America’s goal to rebalance the bilateral relationship involves an immense and protracted challenge. We must demand relevant measurements capable of inspiring us through the undertaking.

 Therefore, let’s institute a truly pro-America scoring system showcasing victories that:
  1. Repatriate manufacturing
  2. End quotas and tariffs
  3. Halt technology transfers
  4. Extinguish joint venture mandates
  5. Rebalance lopsided revenue splits
  6. Prohibit cross-border censorship
  7. Create domestic jobs
  8. Increase per capita income
  9. Secure vital supply chains
  10. Eliminate pirated products
  11. Prevent fraudulent companies U.S. capital market access
  12. Benefit the long-term health and national security interests of our nation

 As each battle is won, score it! Recently, American company Phlow returned the manufacturing of $354 million in pharmaceuticals from China. Score that! Phlow’s actions will create 350 middle-class jobs. Chalk up that win too! Announcing these triumphs and all others will solidify our nation’s collective determination to see the bilateral reset through to the very end.

 When the reset is complete, equity markets will have adjusted too. Even better, they will start to rise at some point during the fight. They did so when America turned the tide in World War II, and history will repeat. Eventually, both Wall Street and Main Street will walk in lockstep, both heathier and more sound, celebrating a Sino-American trade balance that works for all Americans.

 As for the world, the two superpowers will have undergone a necessary venting and readjustment. With frustrations mitigated and understandings heightened, a sounder bilateral connection grounded on a fair and level playing field becomes the new reality. America and China will settle into a more agreeable normal as two strategic competitors, creating a better foundation for peace and prosperity across the globe. 

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President Donald Trump 'terminates' relationship with World Health Organisation

Donald Trump has announced that the US will be "terminating its relationship" with the World Health Organisation.
Speaking in the Rose Garden at the White House, the US president said he wants to redirect funds into other organisations, as part of an anti-China address.

He announced he would issue a proclamation that would secure research at US universities - a move which will mean the US relies on its own science, rather than that of the global health body.
Mr Trump has spent weeks taking aim at the WHO, accusing them of not acting fast enough on the coronavirus outbreak.
The president claimed in his speech on Friday that China had "total control" over the organisation, and that the country pressured the WHO to mislead the world during the initial outbreak of COVID-19.
The US is the biggest single contributor to the World Health Organisation, paying in around $450m (£360m), with Mr Trump saying that China only contributed around $40m (£32m).
President Trump's move is expected to significantly weaken the organisation while it is in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-donald-trump-terminates-relationship-with-world-health-organisation-11997100
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Surveillance Bill Yanked...





Surveillance Bill Yanked After Trump Tweets Veto Threat. Will It Be Changed for Better or Worse?




Scott Shackford | 5.28.2020 12:55 PM


The House of Representatives on Wednesday did not vote on a surveillance bill after President Donald Trump tweeted his displeasure with the legislation. The fate of the bill is now up in the air, as are the fates of potential amendments to protect Americans from unwarranted surveillance by federal law enforcement."

The USA Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020 (H.R. 6172), had already passed the House once with two-thirds majority support from Democrats and Republicans. The original bill renewed surveillance authorities that expired in March, but it also included some modest reforms: the March version of the bill prohibited the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA) from mass-collecting and accessing our internet and phone metadata, and it expanded the ability of the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court to bring in independent experts to advocate for the constitutional rights of Americans targeted for surveillance."

The bill then went to the Senate, where some toothier civil liberties amendments were proposed and blocked (most notably: one to forbid the collection of Americans' browser and internet search histories and one to entirely forbid the FISA Court from authorizing surveillance of Americans)."

The Senate then voted the bill back to the House, where Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D–Calif) and Warren Davidson (R–Ohio) worked to draft their own version of one of the failed Senate amendments. But after Wednesday morning's Rules Committee hearing, it became apparent that the Lofgren-Davidson amendment would not be considered."

Then this tweet from President Donald Trump happened, and everything changed:"




The shift in subsequent voting was rather remarkable to watch live. On Wednesday evening House members voted whether to accept the debate rules prior to a vote on the bill (the rules would accept the amendment that the Senate approved but not any new ones introduced in the House yesterday)."

Suddenly, Republicans who had voted in favor of the bill back in March turned against it: 183 Republicans voted against the debate rules. Not one Republican voted in favor. Rep. Justin Amash (L–Mich.) also voted against moving the bill to debate."

But because the Democrats control the House, there were still enough votes for the motion to pass. 228 Democrats voted to push the bill forward. But this was hardly a victory. Last time H.R. 6172 came up for a vote, 75 Democrats voted against it, primarily because they wanted more protections for Americans against secret surveillance. If Republicans all voted as a block against passing the bill, the Democrats wouldn't have enough votes to overcome it."

And so Wednesday night the final vote never happened. The House instead recessed. This morning, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D–Md.) announced the bill had been yanked:"




The good news is that there is now an opportunity to strengthen the reforms. In the Senate, the amendment to prohibit federal law enforcement from collecting Americans' internet browsing history failed by a single vote, and only because four senators, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) were absent from voting. The House now has the opportunity to provide stronger protections and maybe reconsider the Lofgren-Davidson amendment or the even stronger amendment proposed by Sens. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) and Steve Daines (R–Mont.)."

On the other hand, negotiations could result in the bill being further weakened and watered down, despite Trump's stated preference for stronger protections. The Department of Justice has called for the veto of the bill precisely because it strengthens protections from unwarranted surveillance."

Davidson worried on Twitter this morning that despite what Trump says, negotiations could end with bipartisan proponents of the national security state getting what they want, while civil libertarians and privacy activists get even less."

There are reasons to be concerned about whether Trump actually wants stronger surveillance protections for all Americans. He rails regularly against FISA laws and the FISA Court because of the surveillance and investigation of his campaign staff in 2016, but when given the opportunity, he signed his name to a law that actually expanded the authority of the federal government to snoop on Americans."

Since signing that legislation in 2018, an investigation by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General showed that not only did the FBI omit important information from its warrant application to snoop on former Trump aide Carter Page, the FBI regularly screws up its FISA warrant applications targeting any American it investigates."

So the question here will be whether Trump will stick to his insistence that surveillance protections for all Americans be improved or whether he can be satisfied with reforms that are specifically focused on political surveillance. Rep. Paul Gosar (R–Ariz.) had submitted an amendment to require the attorney general to inform the leaders of the House and Senate when a person associated with a candidate for president is the target of FISA surveillance. In the Senate, Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) has attempted to restrict the ability of the FISA Court's independent amicus curiae advisor to advocate on behalf of Americans targeted for surveillance, unless the surveillance targets in need of defending are candidates for federal office or suspected of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act."

What McConnell and Gosar are doing can be read as currying favor with Trump or simply placating him, but either way, there's no reason to deprive all Americans of these protections—unless you're not actually serious about restraining the ability of the FBI to secretly snoop on Americans."

Privacy groups appear happy that the bill has been yanked. Daniel Schuman, policy director of left-leaning group Demand Progress, put out a statement this morning responding to the attempt by Democratic leaders to blame Republicans for the bill's stall, telling them they need to look within their own party as well."

"Democratic leadership is blaming Republicans on FISA, but Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi blocked pro-civil-liberties amendments and stymied reforms over the last year, including yesterday," Schuman said. "That's why she doesn't have the votes—she hasn't earned them."


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U.K. proposes citizenship for Hong Kong residents

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 10:56 AM PT — Friday, May 29, 2020
The U.K. is looking to provide Hong Kong residents with a path to citizenship in response to China’s controversial new national security law. British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced the proposed policy change Thursday.
It would affect Hong Hong British national passport holders, which is a group of about 300,000 people who lived in the region before it became Chinese territory. Raab said the move would extend visa rights, allowing Hong Kong nationals to stay in the U.K. for longer than six-months.
“If China continues down this path and implements this national security legislation, we will change that status and we will remove that six month limit and allow those BNO passport holders to come to the U.K.,” explained the secretary. “And to apply to work and study for extendable periods of 12 months, and that would itself provide a pathway to future citizenship".
China claims the move would violate international law and has threatened counter-measures if the U.K. moves forward with the policy.
https://www.oann.com/u-k-proposes-citizenship-for-hong-kong-residents/

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Will We Wear Masks Forever?


Are facemasks a temporary way to fight a specific virus, or will they become part of our "new normal?"


“I don’t care about philosophy, just tell me how it ends.” That line is repeated on the final page of Len Jenkin’s play ‘Dark Ride.’ I’ve been thinking about Len, whom I had the great pleasure of working with a few times, a lot of late. His work always creates a world a bit out whack, dusty and dim, characters engaged in slow motion chaos. Today’s creepy streets of masked New Yorkers feel like a Len Jenkin play, and all anybody wants to know is how it ends.

When can we take off the masks? It’s a simple enough question. Three months ago pretty much nobody outside of recent Asian immigrants in urban Chinatowns donned the face protectors, but now they are ubiquitous. As with so many changes the Chinese virus has wrought on our lives, the emerging question is whether the changes are temporary and specific to this one threat, or if they will become permanent.

After all, even if the virus disappeared tomorrow through some force of magic, facemasks would still be an effective tool to slow the spread of other deadly diseases like the flu. If the philosophy is that changing our ways is worth it if it “saves one life,” then the end of this will be everyone wearing masks at baseball games and plays, in airplanes and shopping malls.

And mask wearing is, as its proponents point out, a small thing. Just like keeping six feet apart is a small thing, just like not attending church is a small thing, just like being contact traced is a small thing. But the thing about small things is that when you stack them up they can get pretty big. The “new normal” like a pointillist painting will be constructed of small dots that together create an entire vision of reality.

The whole coronavirus crisis has been a long exercise in cost benefit analysis. But as deaths decline and states reopen the crisis may be abating, but its social after-effects could be with us for a long time to come. Is there a metric that can be reached which would mean we could take off the masks? If so what is it? It is my very real fear that for many Americans the answer is no, and they will wear the mask until something other than a virus takes them to their graves.

This is a discussion that we need to be having. Because if we are to become a nation of faceless mask wearers it ought to be an active choice, not a jaundice we creep into by being peevish. We must be in control of the lifestyle changes that come from this experience, not controlled by it. Nor should we acquiesce to medical experts in making these decisions. They have a role to play, of course, but it is not dispositive, nor are they always right anyway.

In emergencies people and societies react fast, often in inefficient and ineffective ways. Life becomes about getting through the moment, not about creating a future. We are now two months into this unprecedented season of death and economic devastation. It is time to look forward.

For my part I reject the idea that the facemask should become a permanent mark of American life. I want to smile at people; I want to see facial expressions and a pretty woman’s lipstick. These are not minor aspects of life; they are deeply ingrained in the experience of being human.

The final line of ‘Dark Ride’ is delivered by a disembodied voice, Len loves a good disembodied voice, it says, “Those who wish to ride again stay in your seats. A man’ll be around to take your tickets. Those getting off, step lively. Exit to your left or your right.” I’m ready to step lively; unlike Len’s play this dark ride is no amusement.

Will we wear the masks forever? Will some of us? Will that mark some division in our society? Is that the mark we want to leave on the world? Do we want to explain to our kids that there used to be a world where faces abounded and fear was not the coin of the realm but we destroyed it? These are the questions we have to answer and we have to answer them now.

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Letter from Dunkirk soldier arrives 80 years later .UK.

The family of a soldier who died on the retreat to Dunkirk during World War Two have finally received his last letter 80 years after he wrote it.
Pte Harry Cole, of the Suffolk Regiment, wrote the letter just before he was killed but it was never sent.
The letter to his mother was found with a collection of other post by a German soldier who handed them to the British embassy in 1968.
His surviving brothers Derek and Clemmie Cole have now been found.
They were tracked down by Suffolk County Council's assistant archivist Heidi Hughes, who realised she lived in the same village where Clemmie still lives - Hasketon, near Woodbridge in Suffolk.
"I just wanted to cry with the emotions of it all as I realised it was somebody from my village," she said.

In the letter, Pte Cole, 29, wrote: "Well Mother, Dad and boys, I guess I must close once again, hoping you all keep well, roll on when this do is over so we can get back to rest peace and quietness once again.
"Don't worry if you have to wait a long while for a letter or card sometimes Mother, as we can't always write for days at a time, also there is delay in getting it away."
Clemmie, 87, said it was amazing to receive the letter after all that time had passed.
"It's unbelievable that such a thing could happen," he said.
Pte Cole wrote in the letter that he expected the German army would "soon be on the run and when that happens nothing will stop them getting back to Germany in double quick time".
Clemmie said most of the soldiers did not know the real situation, adding: "I suppose like with all these things you live in hope."

Suffolk Archives has produced a new online display showcasing extracts from undelivered letters written by soldiers from the Suffolk Regiment, including Pte Cole's.
The letters spent almost 30 years tucked away in a German soldier's attic, before he took them to his local British Embassy in Bonn, Germany, in 1968.
From there they were returned to the Suffolk Regiment Museum but, following an attempt to resend, many remained undelivered.
Claire Wallace, curator of the Suffolk Regiment Museum, said: "It is striking that their personalities and humour shine through these letters."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-52812539
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Left Aims To Use Virus Scares To Tamper With Voting Systems



“It is only when the other party is concerned or feels threatened,” the hard-left activist and political theorist Saul Alinsky wrote, “that he will listen—in the arena of action a threat or a crisis becomes almost a precondition to communication.”

COVID-19 and the economic ramifications of the subsequent lockdowns are nothing if not a serious crisis. Now some are hoping to achieve previously unattainable voting changes, such as universal mail-in balloting.

Another interesting trend has emerged as well: Calls to end the Electoral College are often paired with calls to enact mail-in voting. Are the two moves seen as serving the same end? Or are they merely two goals that would seem unachievable, but for the crisis thrust upon us?

“Abolish the electoral college,” Rep. Joe Kennedy III tweeted on April 29. “End the filibuster. Enact vote by mail.”

Other commentators remind voters they don’t have a right to vote in the presidential election on Election Day. The Constitution gives state legislatures wide discretion, and legislators could simply appoint electors directly if the pandemic is still ongoing. Legislative selection of electors hasn’t been used in decades, but now the power is spoken of again as if it could happen in 2020.

Other commentators worry that disputed election outcomes might prompt state legislatures to directly appoint electors. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is slated to hear a case about faithless electors that Electoral College opponents hope to use to their advantage.

Is all this grumbling intended to lay the groundwork for abolishing the Electoral College? Or will a governor use his or her emergency powers to end the regular popular election, looking to the legislature to directly appoint electors? Or perhaps the people proposing such actions are simply casting a wide net and seeing what they can catch?

The governor of at least one swing state has already shown her capability for muscling past the state legislature and implementing her desired policy. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer refused to accept a legislative decision not to extend her emergency powers on April 30. Instead, she simply declared another emergency, claiming she could extend her own powers for 28 more days.

Perhaps you won’t be surprised to hear one power that Whitmer seized as she declares emergencies. She’s expanded absentee voting for local elections in her state and has made moves towards universal mail-in voting. Although the presidential election is months away, the move is already being called a “blueprint for the presidential battleground state in November.”

Legislative debate surely would have resulted in a different answer. Some legislators doubtless agree with the governor, but others likely would have objected based on concerns over voter fraud. Or perhaps they would want to spend more time investigating best practices for mail-in voting. Others would have looked to the example set in other nations, such as South Korea, which have already successfully held in-person elections, despite the pandemic.

There is plenty of time to convene legislatures between now and November—in special sessions, if needed. State legislatures, not governors, should be making decisions about what to do and about what accommodations should or should not be made on Election Day, assuming any special accommodation is even needed.

Importantly, voters should be holding their legislators accountable to make thoughtful, rational decisions, not panic-driven or political ones. Radical changes should not be made to our election system in the heat of the moment.

America’s unique system of checks and balances protects everyone, ensuring that every voice is heard. Rule by executive fiat flies in the face of constitutional principles that have served us for centuries. Sometimes the best answer is simply to persevere through bad times—and, yes, let that serious crisis go to waste.

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Let the Sun Shine In


Let the Sun Shine In

Florida has proven that a measured, evidence-based response to reopening works.

For a moment in April, the Internet tried to cancel Florida. Photos showing crowds flocking to Jacksonville Beach amid the Covid-19 pandemic brought the hashtag  #FloridaMorons to the top of Twitter. The media  eagerly spun scenes of ignorant spring breakers endangering themselves and others. Nearly two months after America’s first case of coronavirus, here was Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, joining neighboring state Georgia’s “experiment in human sacrifice” by letting locals lift restrictions on their own.

Nearly a month later, Jacksonville’s Duval County reports new Covid-19 hospitalizations in the single digits. Rates of hospitalizations, cases, and deaths remain steady across Florida. So far, fewer Floridians have died of the novel coronavirus than in New York’s nursing homes alone (2,259 compared with 5,800, at least). More than half of the state’s known cases of Covid-19 are found in just four South Florida counties—the top out-of-state destinations for fleeing New Yorkers. As Politico recently concluded, “Florida just doesn’t look nearly as bad as the national news media and sky-is-falling critics have been predicting for about two months now.”

There’s still a lot that we don’t know about mitigating Covid-19, but Florida’s approach—a decentralized health response with targeted lockdowns and quarantines reinforced by voluntary social distancing—appears to have worked. Other populous states adopting this approach, such as Tennessee, have seen similar success. Governor DeSantis’s experience suggests that it is possible to keep a lid on the coronavirus even while gradually reopening.

Florida is large and diverse. North Florida and the Panhandle are the reason for the saying that the farther north you go in Florida, the further south you get; the I-4 corridor, running from Tampa through Orlando to Daytona Beach, is pure Middle America. South Florida is the polyglot “New Havana,” a bubbling melting pot between the Gulf and Gold Coasts. Unsurprisingly, then, DeSantis gave counties leeway in responding to Covid-19. “The epidemic is not going to affect this state uniformly,” he told National Review.

Miami-Dade County, for instance, shuttered all its nonessential businesses before New York City, and it was local leaders who first closed many of Florida’s beaches and cracked down on large gatherings. When Florida did issue a stay-at-home order (two days after New York), it targeted the state’s 4 million seniors and residents with underlying medical conditions. Statewide rules issued on April 1 broadly limited “nonessential” activities and business, but by this point Floridians had already imposed their own restrictions on themselves.

Meantime, the state government in Tallahassee was ramping up testing and issuing personal protective equipment (PPE), ultimately totaling more than 7 million masks and a million gloves. By late April, the state was conducting some 12,000 daily Covid-19 tests, with capacity for more, and drive-through facilities alone had conducted more than 100,000 tests by early May. (New York, by contrast, was doing 20,000 tests daily in mid-April, at least 100,000 below what it needed, considering the size of its outbreak.) State-based labs were soon running 30,000 samples daily. Decentralizing testing has meant that Jacksonville’s testing volume, for instance, now runs far above federal guidelines. And the state’s rate of positive samples—a sign of testing capacity relative to size of outbreak—stands at 2.41 percent as of May 24, well below the World Health Organization’s threshold of 5 percent for safely reopening.

Florida’s response to Covid-19 focused on nursing homes. More than a third of the nation’s Covid deaths have occurred among the residents and staff of long-term-care facilities—a share that jumps as high as 80 percent in Minnesota and West Virginia. Florida counts more than 350,000 people living or working in such facilities, and the state has one of the highest shares of residents over the age of 65. At the start of the outbreak, Florida deployed rapid-response teams to these facilities to test, treat, and, if necessary, isolate or quarantine residents testing positive for the virus. The state issued PPE to these facilities and mandated its use. While New York was moving sick patients into nursing homes, Florida was moving them out. On March 15, DeSantis prohibited the transfer of Covid-19-positive patients into long-term-care facilities and established Covid-only homes for getting residents out who could not be properly isolated or treated. By contrast, New York governor Andrew Cuomo—celebrated in the media, while DeSantis was condemned—required that infected patients be admitted into nursing homes, where Cuomo himself had said the virus could spread “like fire through grass.”

As DeSantis saw growing numbers of cases from out-of-state visitors, he promptly ordered travelers to self-quarantine for 14 days, a measure that the governor believes “no doubt” saved lives. Florida’s targeted, data-driven approach to tackling the coronavirus may be the most realistic strategy when many are still trying to understand how Covid-19 spreads—and how to stop it. The Department of Health produces a daily report for the governor tracking the outbreak and new hotspots, such as state prisons, or The Villages, a sprawling retirement community with more than 125,000 people, which hasn’t had a single resident hospitalized for more than a week. Contrary to what recent media coverage would suggest, Florida’s Covid-19 open-data dashboard has earned praise from officials like Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator.

DeSantis is not the only governor whose performance is going largely uncredited. Tennessee’s governor Bill Lee is an unsung hero of the pandemic. Lee declared a state of emergency in March and told residents to “do your part, stay apart.” The state’s largest cities—Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville—issued stay-at-home orders as cases appeared, but Lee held off on statewide mandates. Studies have since shown that such early, targeted lockdowns, combined with state guidance, appear to be more effective at mitigating the spread of the virus than late-stage total lockdowns. Lee focused on ramping up Tennessee’s testing capacity, ultimately hitting more testing benchmarks than any other state. During the height of the pandemic, Tennessee’s testing rate was three times that of neighboring Kentucky—and all tests were provided free of charge, regardless of symptoms.

Lee’s performance—and its media treatment—contrast sharply with that of neighboring governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky. Louisville’s Courier-Journal has praised Beshear’s response while declaring that Lee has “taken more heat than Prince’s Hot Chicken for his slow response to the coronavirus outbreak.” Even an ocean away, Beshear won praise: the U.K.’s Guardian celebrated his “quick pandemic response, his calm, empathetic briefings” and likened him to “Mr. Rogers.” Yet Kentucky has now suffered more deaths than Tennessee from the virus, though the latter state’s population is half again larger.

In states such as Tennessee and Florida, where lockdowns are ending, infection rates are declining, not increasing, as JPMorgan Chase found, “even after allowing for an appropriate measurement lag.” Rising case counts, where they occur, have more to do with increases in testing capacity than renewed outbreaks. This should encourage some humility from observers who feared the worst with reopening, especially in a media environment overwhelmingly concentrated in the blue, urban hubs that have suffered so much more from this viral outbreak than the redder states now likelier to reopen. Even today, after the virus has spread to all corners of the country, the Tri-State area alone accounts for 43 percent of the nation’s deaths. Indeed, the closer one gets to New York City, the higher the death toll from Covid-19. No wonder that, at the height of the pandemic, some 420,000 people fled the Big Apple to its suburbs and to South Florida.

Florida’s beaches and businesses are slowly opening, county by county, and life is returning to a semblance of normalcy. Retailers and restaurants, hair and nail salons, gyms and hotels are opening with reduced occupancy; soon, “phase two” will allow gatherings of up to 50 people and further loosen occupancy limits. Partially opened Tampa was among the first U.S. cities to let restaurants extend dining space onto closed streets and open sidewalks, helping them stay in business while preserving social distancing.

Florida considers numerous factors in deciding when and how to reopen, such as whether the state is controlling the virus’s spread, containing new cases, ensuring hospital capacity, and monitoring vulnerable populations. It turns out that most Americans are not heedlessly returning to “normal” as viral videos suggest, but are wearing masks and social distancing on their own, including in Florida.

The United States has reached a grim milestone: 100,000 deaths from Covid-19. In addition to its toll in lives, the virus has also ushered in an economic downturn as deep as the Great Depression nearly a century ago, with more than 38 million Americans having filed for unemployment. Each state’s experience differs, with each paying its own price in lives or livelihoods. Governors should be judged by their own state’s record going into and coming out of this crisis. It’s a standard that surely elevates governors like Ron DeSantis and Bill Lee—and likely condemns Andrew Cuomo.


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Democrats Fear Prosperity

Scott McKay for American Spectator

Democrats Fear Prosperity 

They’re terrified the American private sector will defeat them this fall.
The former Cabinet secretaries and Federal Reserve chairs in the Zoom boxes were confused, though some of the Republicans may have been newly relieved and some of the Democrats suddenly concerned.

“Everyone looked puzzled and thought I had misspoken,” Furman said in an interview. Instead of forecasting a prolonged Depression-level economic catastrophe, Furman laid out a detailed case for why the months preceding the November election could offer Trump the chance to brag — truthfully — about the most explosive monthly employment numbers and gross domestic product growth ever.

Since the Zoom call, Furman has been making the same case to anyone who will listen, especially the close-knit network of Democratic wonks who have traversed the Clinton and Obama administrations together, including top members of the Biden campaign.

Furman’s counterintuitive pitch has caused some Democrats, especially Obama alumni, around Washington to panic. “This is my big worry,” said a former Obama White House official who is still close to the former president. Asked about the level of concern among top party officials, he said, “It’s high — high, high, high, high.”

What Furman said really isn’t all that counterintuitive. There was no fundamental sickness afoot in the American economy before the virus hit; there was a decent possibility of a recession as part of the natural business cycle, but overall we were at full employment, corporate profits were healthy, personal savings were up, and the stock market was at record highs. If anything, the most prevalent threat to the economy was the structural deficiency of America’s increasingly underperforming and obsolete education system at both the K-12 and college levels. Had COVID-19 not come along, you would likely have seen by now increasing calls for major reform by the business community tired of having to coddle and remediate unprepared younger workers.

But the shutdowns coming out of the COVID-19 scare have essentially created an artificial recession. A good analogy would be what you’d get if you took a fully inflated basketball and held it down in a swimming pool. Let that sucker go and it won’t just rise quickly to the surface but will explode out of the water. Furman thinks that’s what’s going to happen when the shutdowns end, and any objective understanding of economics would give him a better than 50-50 chance of being right. Additionally, that recovery has the chance of being a prolonged thing since the shutdowns have accelerated market changes that were already happening — from homeschooling to home-officing to front-door delivery to Zoom — that give businesses and families a chance to find more efficiency in time and financial costs, boosting productivity and creating lasting opportunities for growth.

All of which scares the bejesus out of the Democrats. Here was one:
One progressive Democratic operative pointed out that recent polling, taken during the nadir of the crisis, shows Joe Biden is struggling to best Trump on who is more trusted to handle the economy. “Trump beats Biden on the economy even right now!” he said. “This is going to be extremely difficult no matter what. It’s existential that we figure it out. In any of these economic scenarios Democrats are going to have to win the argument that our public health and economy are much worse off because of Donald Trump’s failure of leadership.”

Some of this is simply the reality of life as the opposition party. You’re always looking for some condition that provides you an opening to take power at the next election, and if that condition happens to be a poor economy, so be it.

But it’s a little different for Republicans. Typically speaking, the further left the Democrat is who manages to get elected president, the worse the economy will perform.

Because socialism doesn’t work. This is known to everyone but socialists. And the college and high school kids who have to parrot them in order to get a passing grade.

So Republicans don’t really have to root for a poor economy to sink a Democrat president. On balance, the poor economy is a given, unless, as was the case when Bill Clinton was president, there was a Republican majority in the legislative branch able to temper the worst impulses of a Democrat in the White House. This was not the case of the Republican majority in the House when Obama was president, and so we got a stagnant economy and an opioid epidemic in all the places our coastal elites couldn’t care less about.

But if you’re a Democrat, you actively root against the economy, because it’s a real threat to your quest for political power if the other side can prove again and again that their way works better than yours.

We know, because it was a very poorly kept secret, that the Democrats were praying for COVID-19 to kill the American economy and create the conditions Furman is saying won’t persist through the fall. They did everything they could to stoke fear and keep people from working, spending, and investing at the beginning of this panic.

In the beginning, there was at least a patina of justification for all of this. Nobody knew how bad the virus was going to be, so nobody was truly in a position to push back against the economic shutdowns prescribed by the public health bureaucrats. When Imperial College London, employing one of the all-time great academic con men, whose work was almost immediately debunked, put out a study projecting that 2.2 million Americans could be felled by the virus, the hook was set, and the Overton window moved so quickly that even Donald Trump, perhaps the greatest champion of America’s private sector ever to hold the office of the presidency, felt he had no choice but to recommend the shutdowns.

It’s clear now that it was a mistake, and a bad one, to have chosen that course. At the time, however, it would have taken a Herculean political effort to keep the economy open amid the media-driven hysteria and uncertainty the virus occasioned. One could argue that even if there had been no official shutdown the economy would still have tanked to a large extent simply from changes in consumer behavior arising from the panic.

Trump might not get a gold star for having been initially carried along with the hysteria, but it’s been quite clear for some time that he’s for getting America back to work.

And this is where the rubber of that Politico piece meets the road of blue-state governance.

Is there any other viable interpretation, as May turns into June, of the bizarre decisions made by the Gavin Newsoms, Gretchen Whitmers, Andrew Cuomos, Phil Murphys, J. B. Pritzkers, John Bel Edwardses, and Roy Coopers of the world but that they’re trying to stall the economic recovery as long as they can?

You really can’t explain it any other way. Not after that mythical curve got flattened. Persecuting barbers and fitness club owners and arresting surfers does nothing to promote public health. We already know that, even though the CDC and the other public health nerds can’t tell you from one day to the next what their judgment is on how far the virus can travel in midair, how long it lives on surfaces, and so on, being outside in the sun is awfully good for you if you want to avoid getting sick from COVID-19.

And yet these clowns are doing everything they can to ensure that people stay home.

It isn’t to keep people from getting sick. By now it’s obvious that staying home doesn’t keep you from being sick. More people got sick in the states with the strictest shutdowns than in the states that either never shut down or opened back up quickly. That was also true internationally.

The Democrat governors are the ones insisting on keeping restrictions in place long beyond what the data would suggest. They’re the ones insisting that everyone wear a mask, more as a test of the subservience of the public than as a public health measure. Those masks are good for one thing, which is to symbolize the fear people are supposed to feel as a result of the virus. And panicked people do not a robust economy make.

These governors are heaping idiotic restrictions on businesses attempting to open back up. In Louisiana, for virtually no discernible reason Edwards decreed that restaurants could only reopen their seating areas at 25 percent capacity — including staff. As no restaurant could make a profit under such a stricture, many restaurants, particularly in New Orleans, which is governed by a mouth-breathing socialist caudillo of a mayor in LaToya Cantrell, have said, “No thanks; we’ll wait.” Others are open and flagrantly violating the 25 percent rule, because why pay obeisance to tyranny?

Meanwhile, vaccine tests are hampered by a lack of new virus cases, hospitalizations are dwindling as hospitals begin a fight for economic survival with furloughs and layoffs becoming the nationwide norm, and as testing ramps up greatly the CDC is sheepishly admitting the coronavirus’ death rate is 0.26 percent. As almost half of the deaths from the virus come now in nursing homes, an industry whose operators are waist-deep in electoral contributions to Democrat machine politicians (though not exclusively so), the real rate for most Americans is closer to 0.1 percent.

Which is an awful lot like the flu. But you aren’t supposed to compare this to the flu.

Look, we could go on and on here. But the point isn’t complicated; nor is it particularly arguable. Democrats are trying to keep the economy closed because it’s more important to beat Trump in November than for the country to succeed. You can call that bad faith, or you can call it economic treason — call it what you want. But don’t call it a conspiracy theory.

Don’t call it a conspiracy theory, because they admitted it to Politico earlier this week. One last quote from the piece:
The former Obama White House official said, “Even today when we are at over 20 million unemployed Trump gets high marks on the economy, so I can’t imagine what it looks like when things go in the other direction. I don’t think this is a challenge for the Biden campaign. This is the challenge for the Biden campaign. If they can’t figure this out they should all just go home.”



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