Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #48 Written by Stephen Moore
1) Hero of the Day: Herschel Walker
It’s easy to despair these days that Americans have lost their minds and that far-left groups like Antifa, Black Lives Matter and the New York Times’ approval of violence and destruction is winning out. It’s normal to get enraged when you see the gutless NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announce the league’s new policy of solidarity with the pampered multi-millionaire NFL players who engage in unpatriotic gestures during the national anthem.
And then you see a video by a prominent black American like Herschel Walker, former Heisman Trophy winner and star NFL running back. His wisdom and common sense, “peaceful protesters, I am with you…but criminal protesters should go to jail,” cheered us up and perhaps it will you too.
2) More Evidence that the Left’s Lockdowns Discriminate Against Blacks
Professor Robert Fairlie of UC Santa Cruz looked at Current Population Survey data to determine the demographic makeup of the businesses destroyed by lockdowns, and the results strongly reinforce what we’ve been saying about lockdowns being the most racist policy in America: “African-American businesses were hit the hardest by COVID-19. The first estimates from April 2020 for black business owners in the United States indicate a massive drop of 41 percent.”
https://www.nber.org/papers/w27309.pdf
3) When They Say It’s About the Science, It’s About Politics
John Tierney is a contributing science columnist for the New York Times, and a rare voice of sanity there.
In the latest issue of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal he takes on the role “science” has played in our imposing the lockdown madness.
https://www.city-journal.org/covid-19-questionable-expert-guidance
Tierney says that “science” has become the modern equivalent of the Greek Oracle of Delphi, which ancient rulers used to consult. The modern version “gives leaders an excuse to duck responsibility for decisions—and their consequences.”
He notes that Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York promised he would be guided by the experts: “And if they say we should move forward, we move forward.”
The problems is the experts Cuomo brought in were an epidemiologist from the University of Minnesota and a statistician from Imperial College in London. The latter was part of the team that produced the infamous Imperial College model that predicted, under its worst-case scenario, that more than two million Americans could die from the virus. That was the model that Cuomo and so many other leaders used to guide their decisions.
Cuomo listened to his experts in March and warned the state would need 110,000 hospital beds to deal with COVID-19. In the end, it needed less than 20,000 or half of existing capacity. Tierney reports “state officials were so afraid of running short that they ordered hospitals to free up beds by transferring Covid patients to nursing homes. To avert a projected disaster, they created a real one by allowing the virus to spread rapidly in nursing homes, killing thousands of people.”
Cuomo now concedes the models he followed have been so inaccurate he no longer makes predictions. But they did have one useful byproduct. They enabled him to clam his decisions were merely “an exercise in science and math.” That’s not called following the science, it’s passing the buck.
4) Disrupted Medical Care Harmed Millions
Evidence of just how much pain and suffering have been caused by the virus lockdowns keeps piling up.
Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute in California takes us through some of the numbers.
Nearly half of Americans say the outbreak has forced them or someone in their household to delay care, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Over 10 percent of those reporting delays said they or their family member’s condition worsened because of the delay.
Four in five cancer patients currently undergoing treatment report delays in health care, according to the American Cancer Society.
Not seeking medical help can have worse consequences than trying to avoid the virus.
5) Lockdown Poverty Stalks The Planet
Back in April, the World Bank warned lockdowns would force between 40 million and 60 million people into poverty across the globe.
Now the bank has upped that estimate to 70 million, and it further predicts the global economy will shrink by 5.2 percent.
Countries from Brazil to India are expected to shrink for the first time in 60 years. Nations in Latin America and the Caribbean will likely take a 7 percent cut in their GDP.
This worldwide disaster can be ameliorated if the US to take leadership and end its lockdowns – giving other nations the confidence to do the same. This “lead by example” strategy would likely do more good for advancing human health that all the foreign aid programs combined.
https://www.ft.com/content/47998ee3-b2d3-4066-a914-edbf60b797b5
6) Camden, NJ Is No Case Study in Abolishing the Police
Now that the Left has made abolishing police departments its top policy priority, the media has been scratching its head to find an example of a city that actually did it successfully. They settled on the very strange choice of Camden, New Jersey.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html
Camden’s police force was disbanded under a plan by then NJ Governor Chris Christie because, as CNN explains: “corruption rendered the existing agency unfixable.” But this policy didn’t remove police protection in Camden. The Christie administration funded a new, county-wide police force to take its place, tearing up the old union contracts.
Since Governor Christie instituted these changes, murders in Camden have fallen from 67 in 2012 (the last year of the city police force) to 25 in 2019 — a 62% decline. That’s a remarkable achievement by a Republican governor in a deep blue state. Get rid of the police unions and reward good cops and fire bad cops. How hard is this?
7) Anti-Hero of the Day
Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez has been busy collaborating with Mayor Eric Garcetti on a $150 million cut in the police budget. But he also enjoys a personal LAPD security detail.
Detective Jamie McBride says the consequences of detailing officers to council members are real: “If a citizen calls 911 there’s less units on the streets to respond to that 911 call….for two officers in front of a residence since April, you’re probably over $100,000 of the people’s money.”
If Martinez wants to show the police are unnecessary, he should give up his own security detail first.
8) Quote Of The Day: The New Dismal Profession?
“Every now and then, a young person will ask me what advice I have for someone who is thinking about becoming a journalist. My advice: don’t do it. If you are an honest person — whether you’re liberal, conservative, or somewhere in between — you are going to live in constant fear of inadvertently causing a job-ending offense. You will end up a nervous wreck, or you will end up as a conformist drone, or you will end up jobless.”
–Rod Dreher, a former journalist at the Dallas Morning News, writing in the American Conservative
