Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #31 Written by Stephen Moore
1) House Votes Today on Nancy’s Obscene Left Wing Wishlist
A few of the lowlights of this $3 trillion monstrosity:
$900B+ to bail out the big blue states that failed so spectacularly at coronavirus response… $3.6 billion to federalize elections, ban voter ID laws, and make vote-by-mail universal… Another $10 billion postal bailout… More money for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities… $50 million for EPA “environmental justice grants” to left wing groups… Over $100 billion in public school funding — even though the Democrats want all the schools closed indefinitely… ANOTHER $15.75 billion for mass transit — on top of the $25 billion from the CARES Act — even though subways are rolling infection boxes… A new open-ended union pension bailout… Another SIX MONTHS of unemployment paying more than work… A huge grab bag of free money checks… stimulus, expanded EITC, expanded child cred, you name it… A two-year reinstatement of the unlimited SALT deduction — the ultimate tax cut for the rich in high-tax blue states… A new federal ban on “price gouging” that would undermine market pricing for needed medical supplies… Free internet (at taxpayer expense) for everybody laid off or furloughed… Another $300 million to bail out college and universities. $10,000 of student loan debate forgiveness on all federal student loans… we could go on.
We’ll be watching this vote closely.
2) Ohio’s health director doesn’t know who’s dying of COVID in Ohio
Dr. Amy Acton is everywhere in Ohio, at Governor Mike Dewine’s side for all the lockdown announcements and prophecies of doom. So Ohioans should be deeply concerned that on Tuesday when Acton was asked what percentage of Ohio COVID deaths are in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, she said 22%. The reporter questioned the answer, pointing out that previously released public stats has the number higher, and Acton reiterated the 22% figure.
Ohio reports its long-term care death data only weekly, on Wednesdays. But this week’s report didn’t appear until late Thursday, and it showed a total of 674 long-term care deaths since the state began collecting that information on April 15.
Ohio has reported 1,055 total deaths since that date, which means the percentage of COVID deaths in long-term care since they started tracking it is 63.7%!
That also means Ohio has only had 384 total COVID deaths outside of long-term care in the past month — somebody should tell Dr. Acton.
3) Polls finally turning towards reopening?
Polls show that a stubborn majority of Americans have caught up in the media hysteria enough to support lockdowns, but a recent survey found some cause for optimism.
In the Economist magazine YouGov poll of May 10 to 12, respondents supported opening parks, gold courses, beaches, and restaurants. Beauty salons were about even. We still have a lot of work to do on gyms, bars, schools (why won’t the media report on all the data showing kids are not at risk???), or tattoo parlors.
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/qhdhunqrzz/econToplines.pdf
There was also a huge partisan divide. Less than 30 percent of Democrats wanted to reopen restaurants, churches, or beauty salons while 70 percent or more of Republicans favored opening all three categories.
4) Kentucky TV stations show the real numbers
We love this screenshot that we’re told has been running on local news stations in central Kentucky. We wish the media everywhere would convey the real risk levels to the public instead of endlessly hyping the very small number of younger people who have had severe cases.
5) Good Bye Postal
One of the most blatantly political items in Nancy Pelosi’s mega-spending bill is a $25 billion bailout of the failed U.S. Postal Service.
CTUP senior fellow Cesar Conda, a former domestic policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, says the bailout has nothing to do with the disruption caused by coronavirus. Despite being exempt from state and local taxes along with many regulations, the USPS lost $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2018.
In an era when package delivery firms from UPS to Amazon are now everyday presences in the daily lives of Americans, a far more sensible solution would be to gradually downsize the Postal Service’s workforce through attrition while subsidizing private firms to increase their services to rural and isolated communities.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/05/14/conda-the-united-states-postal-service-is-a-bad-business-model/
6) Listen To The Science But Who Will Watch The Scientists?
In a piece he co-authored this week with former British Minister David Davis in the Sunday Telegraph, Matt Ridley details the pernicious influence of the Imperial College’s pandemic model run by mathematician Neil Ferguson. Ferguson’s model, released on March 16, forecast 500,000 deaths in the U.K. and over two million in the U.S. without draconian lockdowns. It was largely credited with a dramatic U-turn in government policy in both countries.
But Ferguson, who had a poor track record with other pandemics, didn’t release his model to the scientific community for weeks. When it finally come out earlier this month, Ridley notes “it was a reorganized program different from the version run on March 16.” The original, it turns out, produces different outputs from the same inputs depending on which computer it runs on, among many other severe deficiencies.
All of this he says, “leave us with a worrying question. Did we base one of the biggest peacetime policy decisions on crude mathematical guesswork?”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/10/chilling-truth-decision-impose-lockdown-based-crude-mathematical/
7) Oregon Imposes a Statewide Curfew
Oregon’s lockdown has been severe, especially for a state with all of 52 deaths outside of long-term care. But at least today the 60 percent of people not living in the Portland area will find bars and restaurants open for on-site customers.
But the opening comes with a Catch-22. Governor Kate Brown has decided that patrons will have to finish their food and drink by 10 p.m. The arbitrary curfew strikes many as absurd.
Tip Hanzlik, a bar owner in Wood Village, says the curfew is “baloney.” “We don’t serve drunk people,” he told OregonLive.com. “We have folks who work at Lowe’s and Fred Meyer right down the street who get off work at 10, and they’d like to have a beer, hear a joke. And they’re going to have to tug on a locked door?”
Kurt Huffman, who manages 20 high-end independent restaurants in Portland, says the curfew may prevent him from reopening. “With only 50% of the old table limit allowed, we want to encourage people to space out their dining experience so we can at least break even,” he told us. “No way we can make money if we have to close at 10.”
https://www.oregonlive.com/dining/2020/05/oregon-restaurant-bar-owners-arent-happy-with-gov-kate-browns-10-pm-curfew.html
8) Southwest Airlines Won’t Ban You for Not Masking
Here’s a surprising move for a little consumer freedom — Southwest isn’t going to kick you off your flight if you choose not to comply with the mask recommendations. There are different opinions on masks — even among the so-called public health experts, who were all against them until a couple weeks ago when they all decided to be for them — but people in favor of masks have lots of other airlines to choose from. Consumer choice is a good thing.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/business/airlines-mask-policy-enforcement/index.html
9) Anti-Hero of the Day – Pete King (RINO-NY)
What is wrong with this guy?
“To me, it’s like war — when you’re at war you spare whatever you have to spend to get to the war then you worry about it later on. So listen, there’s a lot in there that has nothing to do with the virus. I think the Speaker is piling it in there to keep our left-wing base happy — I’m against all that, but that’s the price I have to pay to get funding to keep New York and Nassau County and Suffolk County and New York City alive, then I’ll do that,” he said.
Hey, congressman, we’ve got a crazy solution for “keeping New York City alive.” Open up the damn economy for business!
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/497693-gop-rep-peter-king-slated-to-buck-party-lines-on-dem-led-coronavirus-relief
10) Hero Of The Day
The club of 50 state governors is usually a cozy and collegial one. But Florida’s Ron DeSantis didn’t hold back yesterday on the “draconian” lockdowns other governors have ordered were counterproductive.
“You’re not a dictator, you don’t have unlimited authority, and people do have rights,” DeSantis said.
“If you look around the country, clearly there have been examples of really draconian, arbitrary restrictions that have nothing to do with public health, like you can’t plant a seed in your front yard in your garden, you can’t walk around the neighborhood with your daughter or something like that.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8320257/Florida-Gov-DeSantis-calls-governors-draconian-lockdowns.html
11) Quote of the Day
From longtime Florida political reporter Marc Caputo:
“First, let’s just come out and say it: DeSantis looks more right than those who criticized the Sunshine State’s coronavirus response. According to the latest Florida figures, fewer than 2,000 have died, and around 43,000 have been infected. That’s a fraction of the dire predictions made for Florida when spring breakers swarmed the beaches, and those numbers are dwarfed by similarly sized New York, which has seen 12 times more deaths and nearly eight times more infections. More people reportedly died in New York nursing homes than in all of Florida.
“The polling disparity: DeSantis is actually polling worse than Cuomo in their respective states, and the Florida press is wondering why… most of the difference between DeSantis and Cuomo is due to politics. DeSantis governs a politically divided state. Cuomo is a scion of Democratic royalty in a deeply Democratic state.
“Cuomo also has something else DeSantis doesn’t: a press that defers to him, one that preferred to cover ‘Florida Morons’ at the beach (where it’s relatively hard to get infected) over New Yorkers riding cramped subway cars (where it’s easy to get infected). In fact, people can still ride the subways for most hours of the day in New York, but Miami Beach’s sands remain closed. Maybe things would be different if DeSantis had a brother who worked in cable news and interviewed him for a ‘sweet moment’ in primetime.”
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-nightly-coronavirus-special-edition/2020/05/14/florida-man-beats-covid-for-now-489225
12) Looking more like 90 days where we are, but
