Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #30 Written by Stephen Moore
1) The Shocking Costs of Lockdowns Mount
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said in a speech on Wednesday that almost 40 percent of households earning less than $40,000 a year lost their jobs in the month of March.
Some of those households worked in small business, which has been whacked far more seriously than big business by lockdowns. A survey cited by the Washington Post reports that 100,000 small businesses – including 3 percent of all restaurants – have vanished forever.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/12/small-business-used-define-americas-economy-pandemic-could-end-that-forever/
“We are going to see a level of bankruptcy activity that nobody in business has seen in their lifetime. This will hit everyone, but it will be harder for small businesses since they don’t have a lot of spare cash.” James Hammond, chief executive of New Generation Research, which tracks bankruptcy trends, told the Post.
That, in turn, will cause skyrocketing suicides, drug overdoses, and other deaths of despair. And this comes on top of spiking heart attack and stroke deaths, necessary cancer treatments and screening being delayed, and breakdowns in global supply chains that threaten literally millions of lives.
A new study — funded, ironically, by super lockdown cheerleader Bill Gates — finds the lockdown economic collapse could cause such widespread poverty that over a million children could literally starve to death globally:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30229-1/fulltext
Moreover, there is less and less evidence that lockdowns are even effective at limiting the spread of the virus. Governor Cuomo professed himself shocked to learn that two thirds of hospitalized cases in New York were among people who were carefully sheltering at home.
The question is not whether it’s safe to open. The question for proponents of imposing mass poverty is this: can you prove that it’s safe to stay locked down?
2) Opening Up Not Leading To More Virus Cases
In Europe, a range of countries – from Denmark to the Czech Republic – haven’t seen the reopening of their economies produce a surge in coronavirus cases. So far we’re seeing the same development in several of the first U.S. states that began to reopen in late April.
Some of the states that the media were most hysterical about- including Florida and Georgia – haven’t seen the rise in total cases that lockdown proponents were adamant would come.
Florida’s new cases have actually declined by 14% compared to the previous week, and Georgia’s fell by 12%.
https://www.axios.com/coronavirus-cases-map-high-risk-states-8ceeaa05-cc07-4e8b-b9f4-df3a3315f143.html
And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis released this chart, showing that the percentage of positive tests has fallen to a lower level than we’ve seen in any lockdown state:
We should also note that DeSantis, one of our favorites, issued an invitation to any professional sports league: “if you have a team in an area where they just won’t let them operate, we’ll find a place for you here in the state of Florida, because we think it’s important and we know that it can be done safely.”
3) Nation’s Capital Is Gasping For Economic Oxygen
Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had news for D.C. residents on Wednesday when she emerged from her office to announce that her “economic winter” lockdown would last another four weeks.
The mayor said the city hadn’t yet met all the required benchmarks to reopen economic life and dismissed the examples of other jurisdictions that reopened last month and haven’t see a spike in cases. Those include states like Colorado and Montana that have Democratic governors.
She’s sticking with the same secret University of Pennsylvania model that has guided her to originally claim DC would melt down “about two weeks behind New York,” before claiming a July peak, then a May peak, then a June peak.
It’s often been said that Washington D.C. is the only part of the country that is recession proof because its large government presence never shrinks and its existence has spawned a private sector largely immune to outside shocks.
That may no longer be true. Even Washington D.C. can’t survive without any economic oxygen and its local leaders have decided to keep standing on its air hose.
4) Maryland opens up, except the DC suburbs
Governor Hogan, consistently the most irrationally lockdown-loving Republican governor, has finally loosened his grip. A little. His current stay-at-home will lift in favor of a new order that allows retailers, car washes, barbers and salons, and churches to open at 50 percent capacity. Except of course for Montgomery and Prince George’s County, which stay on full lockdown.
Over the past week, Maryland had only 114 COVID deaths statewide outside of long-term care facilities. The state now has over 60% of its total deaths in LTCs.
5) FOX Features CTUP Research on Nursing Homes
Great write-up of our research on nursing homes from FOX yesterday here, under the headline “Why many states failed the ‘most basic test’ in responding to coronavirus”:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/states-failed-most-basic-test-covid-nursing-homes
Reminder you can see our nursing home/LTC data sheet here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ETm51GayRjlnoaRVtUOWfkolEeAQZ-zPhXkCbVe4_ik/edit?usp=sharing
And do let us know if you have any corrections or additions. We’re changing the debate!
6) If you like the shutdown… then you’ll love socialism
Powerful video produced by our friend Frayda Levin.
TFAS Venezuelan speakers Jorge Galicia and Andrés Guilarte tell us the pandemic in America is giving them flashbacks to life in a socialist country.
7) Pennsylvania Union Workers Backlash Against Green Extremism
The latest blue-green rift comes in Pennsylvania, where the AFL-CIO is bashing Governor Wolf’s efforts to sidestep the legislature and force Pennsylvania into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative cap-and-trade program of northeastern states.
“RGGI enrollment would impose a carbon tax on coal and natural gas plants that would prove financially fatal to several key jobmakers around the state. That, combined with the economic impact of COVID-19, would decimate communities and pass energy rate hikes onto consumers at the worst possible time,” said Pennsylvania AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pennsylvania-afl-cio-encourages-caution-and-consideration-in-rggi-process-301057697.html
He’s absolutely right of course — and it’s a related problem for energy workers in Pennsylvania that Joe Biden has announced AOC is now advising his campaign on the Green New Deal.
https://nypost.com/2020/05/12/biden-says-aoc-has-joined-policy-panel-created-with-bernie-sanders/
8) Heroes Of The Day – Wisconsin Supreme Court Overturns Lockdown
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported: “The Wisconsin Supreme Court has struck down Gov. Tony Evers’ order shutting down daily life to limit the spread of coronavirus — marking the first time a statewide order of its kind has been knocked down by a court of last resort.”
The 4 to 3 decision was a repudiation of Governor Evers’s overreach, which prompted us to give him an “F” rating in our governor rankings.
The court’s ruling takes effect immediately (contrary to some reporting suggesting otherwise) and the Tavern League of Wisconsin has told its members they can open now. The court did express hope that the governor and the GOP legislature will work out a new arrangement for how the state opens up. But no deal sounds better if it means there’s no lockdown in a state that has seen just 240 coronavirus deaths outside of long-term care homes.
GOP state legislators had challenged the shutdown, arguing that Andrea Palm, the state’s health secretary, went beyond her authority in extending the governor’s shutdown until May 26.
During oral argument, Justice Rebecca Bradley challenged the idea that ordinary people or business owners could be jailed for violating the order: “Isn’t it the very definition of tyranny for one person to order people to be imprisoned for going to work among other ordinarily lawful activities?”
https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/13/wisconsin-supreme-court-strikes-down-tony-evers-coronavirus-orders/5179205002/
9) Anti-Hero of the Day: At Least She Loves Her Mom
Over 2,700 of Pennsylvania’s 4,000 Corona virus deaths have involved nursing home patients. A March 18 policy issued by Secretary of Health Rachel Levine ordering those homes to accept patients suffering from coronavirus but who couldn’t return to their own homes. That no doubt contributed to the nursing home carnage.
Now we know that Secretary Levine may have had her suspicions about the wisdom of her own order. She transferred her 95-year-old mother from a nursing home into a hotel.
“My mother requested, and my sister and I as her children complied to move her to another location during the COVID-19 outbreak,” Levine admitted to reporters this week. When asked what message that sent, Levine replied she had the health of all the state’s residents in mind.
https://nypost.com/2020/05/13/pennsylvania-health-official-moved-mother-from-nursing-home/
For two months, the administration of Governor Tom Wolf has insisted nursing home were so safe that only people inside them with symptoms should be tested. This week, in a major reversal, Wolf announced a program of full testing for all care facilities.
But the governor, who won an “F” grade in our governor’s rankings, is still sticking with his health secretary.
“Dr. Levine has done a phenomenal job of making sure that we do what we need to do in keeping Pennsylvanians safe,” Wolf told reporters.
As far as we are concerned, any governor who gives a hypocrite like Dr. Levine an “A” will continue to deserve an “F” in our grade book.
10) Quote of the Day
“When we set out to flatten the curve by taking aggressive unprecedented measures like staying at home orders and mass small business closures, we didn’t set out with a goal of preventing 100 percent fatalities. That would be unrealistic.”
— Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) at this week’s coronavirus hearing
11) Tweet of the Day!
