Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #50 Written by Stephen Moore
1) Don’t Fall for Media Freakout on Hospitalization Stats
From Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review:
“As is always the case, there is a grain of truth that is hugely distorted by numerous obfuscations of important facts and context. The truth is that new hospitalizations of people coming in for serious coronavirus infections are actually extremely low. What they are actually counting are the extra people coming in for all of the delayed health care caused by the lockdown. But thanks to universal testing in hospitals, they are discovering more asymptomatic cases than ever before, which had nothing to do with the original purpose of the hospital stay. Thus, they are blaming the fallout of the lockdown on the easing of the lockdown!
“This chart from Arizona’s coronavirus dashboard says it all.”
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/horowitz-new-panic-lie-increased-coronavirus-hospitalizations-cases-southwest/
He makes a compelling case. If he’s got it right, it sure would be nice if governors or the White House stepped up and explained this clearly!
2) Green light go!
From the CDC COVIDView report:
“While the number of COVID-19 cases reported to CDC is cumulative and continues to increase, nationally, the proportion of visits to outpatient providers EDs for illnesses with symptoms consistent with COVID-19 continued to decline or remain stable at low levels. On a regional level, the percentage of outpatient visits for influenza-like illness ranged from 0.4% to 1.1% during week 23. All ten regions are at low levels and below their region-specific baselines.”
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html
3) Clueless in Seattle
A ragtag group of left-wingers, anarchists and street people have taken over a six-block section of downtown Seattle, declared it a separate “autonomous zone” called CHAZ that they say is separate from the United States. The police are forbidden and one reason may be that officers say some businesses inside are being extorted for “donations.”
John Carlson, a radio talk show host in Seattle, visited there on Wednesday and reports:
“This happened for the same reason homeless encampments have overrun Seattle – because the city allowed it to happen. CHAZ actually followed a 10-day siege at 11th and Pine. The city let protestors stand in the street, across from police lines, night after night, confronting, baiting, and throwing things at the cops. Over two dozen Seattle cops were injured, most at 11th and Pine. Things are calm now, but only because they haven’t decided on their next step. Nor has the city.”
But the occupiers have listed some 30 demands and among them are:
“The Seattle Police Department and attached court system are beyond reform. We do not request reform, we demand abolition.”
“We demand a retrial of all People in Color currently serving a prison sentence for violent crime.”
“We demand that the funding previously used for Seattle Police be redirected into: A) Socialized Health and Medicine for the City of Seattle. B) Free public housing, because housing is a right, not a privilege. C) Public education, to decrease the average class size in city schools and increase teacher salary. D) Naturalization services for immigrants to the United States living here undocumented. (We demand they be called ‘undocumented’ because no person is illegal.) E) General community development. Parks, etc.”
Ahh, a worker’s paradise. We wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the “progressive” politicians in Seattle cave in to all these demands.
4) Kerpen Implicates Bad State Policies for Nursing Home Deaths
Yesterday, Committee to Unleash Prosperity president Phil Kerpen testified before the House Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis that it was incompetent government policy, including forcibly re-admitting corona-positive patients back into nursing homes, which led to widespread deaths among the most vulnerable population. He pointed out that most of the deaths were in just a handful of states, like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts with liberal governors. Phil called out Cuomo’s New York for missing data on nursing home deaths, suggesting a broader cover-up to hide the failure to safeguard the elderly.
The other four Democratic witnesses only had one solution to the nursing home crisis — throw more taxpayer money at the problem.
Kerpen makes a compelling case that systemic government policy failures and terrible leadership is a problem that can’t be solved by throwing more money at the problem – which, alas, is probably what Nancy Pelosi’s gang will end up doing.
You can watch the hearing below. Phil’s testimony begins at 36:45
https://coronavirus.house.gov/subcommittee-activity/briefings/devastating-impact-coronavirus-crisis-america-s-nursing-homes
5) Lockdowns Imposed Massive Pain for Very Little Gain
Yinon Weiss has another excellent article showing the costs of lockdown are not only massive, but the benefits in terms of reducing disease spread are very limited.
“Now, with months of data, we know the verdict: Lockdowns did very little to save lives, were not worth their economic costs, and their collateral damage could lead to far more deaths worldwide due to social turmoil and disruptions in medical care and food supplies,” he writes. “The COVID-19 lockdowns may be one of the biggest medical and economic blunders of all time, and those who supported them may have a hard time reconciling their past views with new data. However, it’s not too late to have an open mind.”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/11/unnecessary_lockdowns_created_social_turmoil_global_suffering_143419.html
6) The Shakedown Begins
Newsweek reports: “Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said Wednesday he was in favor of paying slavery reparations to African Americans and Native Americans if studies found direct cash payments to be a viable option.”
“If, in fact, there are ways to get direct payments for reparations, I want to see it,” Biden said Thursday, “But why are we waiting around for the study?”
Biden was speaking to the NAACP, so this was a shameful pander. Even Obama wasn’t for the idea of reparations – which just a few years ago was widely acknowledged to be a nutcase idea. Reparation to whom? From whom? If I have 4% African-American blood (like Elizabeth Warren) do I get a share of the bounty?
This endorsement of a raid on the Treasury shatters any lingering myth that Joe Biden is a ”moderate”. So why this blunder?
The answer is that Biden’s leftwing base has been unsatisfied with his refusal to commit to the cash payments – which is supposed to be compensation for the evils of white slave owners. Some academics argue that these payments could come close to $1 trillion – so this would be a big pay day. Biden no doubt thinks this would be an economic stimulus.
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-wants-see-studies-about-feasibility-slavery-reparations-1510096
7) Lockdown Job Losses in Historical Context
8) Spain Comes Clean On Deaths Caused By Lockdown
In the end it may be shown that almost as many or even more people died from the lockdowns than the actual coronavirus. Depression, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, failure to keep needed medical appointments and domestic violence have all been exacerbated by the confinement.
Spain provides the latest example of just how many non-virus deaths lockdowns may have contributed to. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez reported to the nation last Sunday that, according to the Associated Press the virus “likely increased mortality among those who were suffering from other ailments and failed to get necessary treatment during the crisis.”
Spain’s Carlos III Institute says more than 43,000 deaths have taken place since March above what would have been predicted in a normal year. Only 27,000 of those have been attributed to COVID-19 causes.
Sanchez pleaded with his fellow citizens for time to evaluate all of the costs that “the pandemic, the confinement, and the structural changes have caused.”
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/06/07/world/europe/ap-eu-virus-outbreak-spain.html
9) Now the Film Burning Begins
HBO Max has decided to drop the 1939 film “Gone With the Wind” – temporarily it claims – from its library because of its outdated and offensive portrayals of blacks. It is widely considered one of the five greatest films ever made.
Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News anchor, wonders if we will now “pull all of the movies in which women were treated at sex objects too?” She noted “every episode of Friends,” may have to go now that the show’s co-creator Marta Kauffman has admitted she “didn’t do enough” for diversity by hiring an all-white lead cast. “If not, you hate women (& LGBTQ ppl, who also don’t fare well on Friends).”
We vote that HBO keep Gone With the Wind in its library, and if that offends some people, to paraphrase the immortal Rhett Butler: frankly, my dear, we don’t give a damn.
Oh and to give a sense of how times have changed, some people on the right wanted to ban Gone with the Wind because of that racy line.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/megyn-kelly-rails-against-censorship-amid-gone-with-the-wind-being-pulled-161742326.html
10) Hero of The Day
Governor Kristi Noem – a well-deserved A on our report card – for a stirring video in which she outlined lessons to be learned from the virus. Among them were that “freedom is a better friend of true science than government-centered and government-controlled science. Freedom, not government, is the best friend of innovation.”
But the real meat of her remarks came when she addressed the role of models in making the crisis worse:
“No model can actually predict the future, especially when it’s based on data that is incomplete. We saw modeling as a tool, and we used to prepare for the worst-case scenario…But no model can take into consideration all of the factors that make real life work. A blind reliance on insufficient modeling has led some politicians to institute disastrous lockdowns that have not only jeopardized people’s health and welfare but have also created conditions for a financial catastrophe that will impose untold burdens and costs on people for generations.”
Watch the whole thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuoZ0nzZV8E&
Governor Noem has a future, and it may not be confined just to South Dakota.
