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| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #16 Written By Stephen Moore 1) She got a PPP loan. Her employees hate her for it. CNBC has a terrific illustration of the insanity of the regular-unemployment-plus-$600-a-week the CARES Act saddled the country with until July 31: “Jamie Black-Lewis felt like she won the lottery after getting two forgivable loans through the Paycheck Protection Program. When Black-Lewis convened a virtual employee meeting to explain her good fortune, she expected jubilation and relief that paychecks would resume in full even though the staff — primarily hourly employees — couldn’t work. “She got a different reaction. ‘It was a firestorm of hatred about the situation,’ Black-Lewis said. “The anger came from employees who’d determined they’d make more money by collecting unemployment benefits than their normal paychecks.”  2) More than 20% of NYC has already had coronavirus Big news on antibody testing yesterday in New York, where state-run testing found seroprevalence of 21.2% in NYC, 16.7% on Long Island, and 11.7% in Westchester and Rockland counties. The rest of the state, at 3.6%, is about the same as the 4.1% Los Angeles County reported earlier this week. Same story in several places in Europe. It’s everywhere: vast numbers of previously undetected cases with mild or no symptoms that dwarf known cases. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Kz9cSk_49-lZsL1AGlP8yV5yIZlBnTbMZ307lxepuXk/edit#gid=0 That means the demands for massive testing and tracing operations as a precondition for reopening the country are crazy. You can’t trace something when you can only see the tip of the iceberg. It’s a recipe for staying on lockdown indefinitely, to prevent something that mostly can’t be stopped and that for the overwhelming majority of people will not be harmful. 3) Fresh air and sunshine — who knew? A study from China (excluding Hubei) on transmission locations got a lot of attention today when Scott Gottlieb — an ardent lockdown supporter – tweeted it “raises key chance for states to move services outdoors (religious, gym classes, restaurants, etc).” The study found: “Home outbreaks were the dominant category (254 of 318 outbreaks; 79.9%), followed by transport (108; 34.0%; note that many outbreaks involved more than one venue category). “We identified only a single outbreak in an outdoor environment, which involved two cases.”  https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1.full.pdfAnd the president rolled out a new study from DHS’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center yesterday showing that heat and sun rapidly destroy the virus:  Maybe stay-at-home lockdown orders are inferior advice to the old standby of fresh air and sunshine? 4) AOC: Americans Should Refuse To Work After Economy Opens Up Leave it to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to declare that returning to normal won’t be good enough. She told Vice News that Americans must protest economic inequality by refusing to work even after we get the all-clear on the virus. “When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say ‘no’ — we’re not going back to that,” AOC told Vice. “We’re not going back to working 70-hour weeks just so that we could put food on the table and not even feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives.” https://www.foxnews.com/media/aoc-boycott-work-coronavirus-shutdown Perhaps pining for her more revolutionary program, AOC was the only Democrat in the House or Senate to oppose the latest coronavirus spending bill. 5) “Liberals Love Diversity…Except in Beliefs” In Georgia, Democratic State Rep. Vernon Jones announced last week he would endorse President Trump for re-election. As a former chief executive of DeKalb County (population 760,000) Jones’s endorsement drew some attention. He said liberal policies were “detrimental” to African-Americans, while President Trump had signed criminal justice reform and promoted economic growth. Jones said he would resign over the backlash before changing his mind: “I am going to remain on the battlefield. I am going to complete my term. I am going to continue to put my country before my party, and I’m going to do everything I can to help Donald J. Trump get reelected,” Jones said in a video posted on social media. The DeKalb County Democratic Party is exploring ways to discipline Jones for his actions. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/country-ahead-of-my-party-trump-supporting-georgia-democrat-wont-resign-after-outcry-from-the-people In Michigan, Democrats will vote Saturday on a motion to censure State Rep. Karen Whitsett for crediting hydroxychloroquine for saving her life, and appearing with the president with other survivors who used the drug to treat COVID. “I did not know that saying thank you had a political line,” she told Trump. “I’m telling my story and my truth, and this how I feel and these are my words.” But her local district Democratic Party bitterly attacked her for meeting with Trump. If the censure motion passes on Saturday she will be denied the group’s endorsement in this year’s election. “They do not belong to themselves,” Jonathan Kinloch, chairman of the local Democratic Party, said of local officials. “They belong to the members and precinct delegates of the Democratic Party.” https://www.nationalreview.com/news/detroit-dems-to-censure-state-lawmaker-who-thanked-trump-for-touting-chloroquine/ 6) Quote of the Day “The number of deaths due to the disruption of cancer services is likely to outweigh the number of deaths from the coronavirus itself over the next five years. The cessation and delay of cancer care will cause considerable avoidable suffering… We need an urgent exit strategy and an effective, integrated and intelligent approach to get the lockdown lifted in a controlled manner in order to get time-critical patients like those with cancer back into the system. We need to do this as fast as possible.” Richard Sullivan, director of the Institute of Cancer Policy at King’s College London https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1268059/cancer-deaths-coronavirus-nhs 7) Hero Of The Day: Idaho Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin Idaho Governor Bruce Little announced a plan on Thursday that would allow some retail stores to reopen on May 1. But Idahoans will still be barred from non-essential travel or privately visiting family and friends. By the end of June, Little said he hoped the state’s economy can be brought back in a “somewhat normal” state. Little was under growing pressure to act in part because Janice McGeachin, his own lieutenant governor, was turning up the heat on him. A small business owner herself, she plans to be the keynote speaker for an “All Jobs Are Essential” rally on Saturday. She wrote on Facebook that the state had to reopen quickly: “My business is essential, my employees are essential. We are ALL essential; no government shall tell us that we are not.” https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article242185291.html#storylink=cpy 8) Anti-Hero Of The Day: Don’t Mess With Texas Police PJ Media says Lina Hidalgo, the county judge of Houston’s Harris County, “seems to be full of authoritarian glee and is giving Gretchen Whitmer competition” for the most draconian enforcement of a virus lockdown. That’s no easy feat. In Texas, a “county judge” actually refers to a county’s powerful executive official rather than a jurist. Hidalgo first used her power to try to release 4,000 criminals from county jails, although a federal judge blocked that this month. On Wednesday, she was back with an order mandating $1,000 fines and up to 180 days in jail for anyone not wearing a mask in public. Requiring that police officers use scarce resources to enforce her order while violent crime is rising sent the Houston Police Officers’ Union into orbit: “We draw the line at the draconian measures Hidalgo has decided to engage in. Our officers work every single day to bridge the gap with our community and earn their trust, we will not stand idly by and allow Hidalgo to tear that bridge down with her horrific leadership and echo chamber decision making…We do not have time to be pawns in Hidalgo’s game of attempting to control the actions of law abiding, tax paying individuals of our community. Especially since this idiotic order is possibly an unconstitutional one.” We’ll keep you posted on the fate of “Loopy Lina” and her orders. https://pjmedia.com/trending/houston-police-officers-union-to-harris-county-judge-hidalgo-take-your-idiotic-mask-order-and-shove-it/  |
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