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One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
(429-347 BC)
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
'You Cry at the Window Knowing There's Nothing You Can Do'
by Tony Perkins: Staying home can be tough, but it's nothing like the nightmare our health care workers are experiencing. For thousands of brave men and women across country, their office is no longer a hospital or ER -- it's a combat zone.
"You spend hours in your [patient's] room," nurse Claudia Griffith wrote in an emotional post to the outside world, "gowned up head-to-toe, sweating and not able to breathe. Then you realize... this is it. I can't save this patient anymore. You sit there and say your goodbyes while they pass without family or loved ones, because nobody is allowed in the hospital for everyone's safety. You are their only contact and hope." Nothing, she says soberly, can describe it.
Even when they have a chance to sleep, the exhausted staff can't. "My mind won't shut off," one New York City nurse tried to explain. She lays in bed and cries, her mind filled with the faces of patients she lost. The helplessness is brutal, Claudia admits. "You don't even know how this virus works, but you watch as it kills your patient." To anyone who hasn't seen the suffering, she insists, it's real. And she's pleading with the country to act like it is. Stay inside, Claudia begs, "as if your life depended on it."
Theirs already do. And if Americans can't bring themselves to isolate for their own sakes, then they should do it for the medical teams risking everything. "Take it seriously," Johns Hopkins's Dr. Martin Makary told listeners on "Washington Watch, "and take it seriously for the sake of our most vulnerable." Right now, "our number one at-risk group," he explained, "the number one profession who is mostly likely to get this infection is health care workers. And what you do in your day-to-day life will actually impact the health of [those] workers you've never met."
"Folks may be going outside right now, saying, 'It's a beautiful day... My kids are in the backyard playing. What's the big deal? I don't know anyone who's dying that I'm friends with.'" But the big deal, he said somberly, is that "we're gearing up for a tsunami that's going to hit with a massive impact..." With projections topping 200,000 casualties now, Dr. Makary thinks the government was right to limit people's movements through at the least the end of April. "We want our leaders to... give us spirit and hope. But the reality is, they are all closely following these numbers -- not only in the preview that we're seeing in some countries overseas like Spain, but also locally in New York City..."
The administration is doing the best it can to prepare for the worst. That's no easy task, Dr. Makary explained, even with all of the metrics and experts they have. Because "when that peak happens, talk to any doctor or nurse. It's going to be ugly. We are basically at full capacity in some U.S. hospitals with very little room to take care of people that come in from this point forward... We are on track right now to have hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions more cases."
So when can we expect that peak? "New York is about two weeks away," Martin believes. "The rest of the United States is probably three to five weeks away depending on where you live. Now, one of the big concerns that many of us have is that some parts of the country were sort of slow to recognize that this is a real threat. Some places immediately took dramatic steps and others [went about] life as usual... even up until recently." Those are the areas, experts believe, that may be hit hardest. Of course, a lot of things factor into that -- like public transit and congestion. But the cities that have been in denial will pay, Dr. Makary warns, "because this infection is seeded everywhere in the United States. We need to abandon the idea that it's somehow contained."
Fortunately, there are still things you and your church can do to help. First, take the stay-at-home orders seriously. If not for you, then for someone on the front lines of the coronavirus war. Then, check out the creative ways you can meet the needs of the people in your community. Take a page from Midland, Texas and organize a car prayer chain or fill a truck with food for the hungry. See how you can get involved (from a safe distance!) on our special webpage, FRC.org/church.
Free People Take Responsibility And Solve Problems
by Star Parker: Several months ago, before anyone imagined the current crisis, I read a book called "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl.
Frankl was a Jewish Viennese psychiatrist who was captured by the Nazis during World War II and managed to survive four concentration camps including the infamous Auschwitz and Dachau.
He went through the ordeal observing human behavior, and the result was his formulation of a system of therapy he called logotherapy.
Frankl found that those who were most successful, surviving under the most challenging circumstances, were those who retained a sense of meaning in their lives. That is, the real challenge that every person faces is not what's happening outside of themselves but what's happening inside.
In Frankl's own words: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
He continued: "Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness."
With all our talk about freedom, somehow its essence has gotten lost: human beings taking responsibility for their own life and the world around them. Human beings are causes, not results. They are free agents, not victims.
I can't think of a more important message as we face these great challenges today as a nation and as individuals.
The whole idea of America was, and hopefully still is, freedom, which means America must be about individuals taking responsibility.
The country now faces two huge areas of uncertainty and lack of clarity.
One is regarding the nature of the health threat we are dealing with. I am still reading different opinions from knowledgeable sources about how lethal this virus is and the best way to stop it without totally shutting down and destroying our economy.
Second, we're suffering great absence of clarity in government regarding who is responsible for what.
Times of uncertainty are times, in the spirit of Viktor Frankl, for individuals to step up and take responsibility.
But, unfortunately, we're getting the opposite.
It's obscene that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who held up the emergency stimulus bill to insert left-wing nonsense, accused President Donald Trump of fiddling while "people are dying."
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer complained to the press, "We're not getting what we need from the federal government."
But this isn't new. Back in February, Whitmer delivered the Democrats' response to President Trump's State of the Union address and went on for her full 10 minutes about the federal government not doing enough.
She touted her efforts to expand health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, meaning more bureaucratization of our hospitals and health care delivery, and creation of government health care incapable of flexibility to changing market realities, let alone dealing with a crisis.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is taking deserved heat for his delayed action in response to the crisis in his city. Weeks ago, he was on television talking about how this crisis could only be addressed by the federal government.
This is all the result of generations degrading the clear constitutional lines between the federal government and the states, resulting in massive growth of the welfare state.
But while Democratic governors and mayors and Speaker Pelosi use valuable time looking for who to blame, America's private business is already churning to develop better and faster testing procedures, and soon we'll see a drug to eradicate COVID-19.
Small and large businesses are deploying resources in new and creative ways that will pay great dividends when we emerge from this crisis.
Challenges are met by free, responsible people stepping into the void: exactly what Viktor Frankl was talking about.
----------------- Star Parker (@UrbanCURE) is an author at and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. CURE is a non-profit think tank that addresses issues of race and poverty through principles of faith, freedom and personal responsibility. Tags:Star Parker, Center for Urban Renewal and Education, CURE, Free People, Take Responsibility, Solve ProblemsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Conrad Black: Even in such a worrisome and dangerous time as the current public-health and economic crisis, there are some entertaining election-year maneuvers. The Trump hating press has been reduced to desperate weaving back and forth in their search for a plausible alternative to the incumbent.
And President Trump’s domination of prime-time television every day with a demonstrably competent executive performance, even if it has not been without its Trumpesque flourishes of hyperbole and shifts of position, is propelling the practicing, wildly-out-of-the-closet Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi to severe lapses of judgment.
I don’t watch much television, but out of duty and in order to make an informed comment when necessary, I do a reasonable survey of the television, Internet, and national print news. Striding to the front of a dense congestion of thundering hooves as the media charge to the November election finish in their competition to smear the president, Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC told his viewers last week that the president had said that if the country wasn’t on its way back to work and school by Easter Sunday, it would be “dead.”
By this alarmist proposition, he apparently meant that the President had said that the whole country would be on suicide watch. The President was always clear that April 12 (Easter) was “aspirational,” and all he said about suicide was that financial difficulties do increase the probability of extremely depressive and hopeless thoughts.
When the President was assuring everyone that the danger was overrated, the press magnified terror stories of the spread and possible lethality of the coronavirus. The usual opinionated talking (air) heads empurpled the airwaves with gloom and accused Mr. Trump of disregarding and scoffing at scientists, and of being a militant know-nothing who disparaged science in general.
When the president executed a 180-degree turn on two wheels, they tried to shadow him by swarming the television studios and op-ed pages predicting six- to seven-month shutdowns that would bring the entire population except Bernie Sanders’s “millionaires and billionaires” (such as, in the first category, Bernie Sanders) forward to feast off the destruction of the wealth of the middle and working classes.
When Mr. Trump appeared to be impudently dodging that bullet by saying that the shutdown was necessary but need not be prolonged, this was the signal for the former labor secretary, Robert Reich, former Treasury secretary, Larry Summers, and the lamest duck in American history, New York mayor Bill de Blasio, none of whom knows enough about epidemiology to fill an eye-dropper, bravely to prepare the nation for six or seven months of quarantine, and, implicitly, grinding poverty and societal chaos.
In Mr. de Blasio’s case, this descent to an economic Stone Age was to be supervised by the armed forces, though what their role, apart from contracting the coronavirus themselves, was to be has not yet been explained.
The President has trimmed his sails again and extended the present lockdown conditions to at least April 30. He appears daily with Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci, renowned authorities in this field, squashing all the nonsense about disagreements between them and Mr. Trump’s animosity to science, and in the latest attempt to mobilize the moral outrage that his enemies consider must be in a constantly febrile state, they have accused the President of changing his mind.
No one can claim that he has not assembled, with the Vice President, an outstanding task force; no one can say he has not been guided by its counsel. No one can say he has not moved swiftly and decisively to increase testing ability, distribute possible ameliorative medication, raise the country’s supply of ventilators and distribute them fairly, and increase hospital capacity. And with a six-trillion-dollar financial-assistance and liquidity-assurance plan, he has responded and led effectively in a way no one can dispute.
But the most unmistakable sign of the Democrats’ desperation was House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s appearance on CNN on Sunday, in which she announced that the administration’s delay in recognizing and addressing the coronavirus crisis would have to be “investigated.”
The President’s polls have risen steadily, and all polls show public appreciation of his leadership in the crisis, yet the Speaker not only demurs, but flops backwards into the Democrats’ helpless addiction to trying to criminalize policy differences and personal antipathy towards Mr. Trump.
The country awaits the results of the Durham special-counsel investigation of the origins of the Russian-collusion fraud by which Mr. Trump was belabored for over two years, and it was on Mrs. Pelosi’s miraculous conversion to the agitations of her extreme leftist House of Representatives colleagues that the most spurious impeachment attempt in the country’s history was limply played out. (None of the previous three — Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton — was justified, but the Trump impeachment was unfounded and unconstitutional, a disgrace and a mockery from A to Z.)
Speaker Pelosi is technically the highest-ranking Democratic office-holder, though in protocol terms she would rank behind Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama, and if she is reaching for an investigation, like a drunk in the extremity of alcoholism reaching for the bottle, the Democrats really are gasping, biting the carpet, and scratching the walls.
The Trump-hating press has, successively, accused Mr. Trump of calling the coronavirus a “hoax,” when in fact he used that term to describe criticism of his response to the pandemic (Politico), and falsely claimed that the United States resisted purchasing test kits from the World Health Organization (NBC, CNN, NPR).
The Washington Post published an op-ed that falsely accused the President of having closed the White House pandemic office, and this was taken up; MSNBC suggested Mr. Trump is guilty of homicidal negligence because of his handling of the issue; the press generally accused him of calling the coronavirus “the China virus” for racist reasons.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Rachel Maddow and others have advocated not covering Mr. Trump’s daily press briefings; ABC accused him of causing the death of a man who self-medicated with something purported to be chloroquine (which Mr. Trump has suggested, with professional concurrence, could be potentially beneficial) that was in fact fish-tank cleaner.
At the President’s press briefings, about a third of the journalists routinely arraign Mr. Trump for his alleged previous utterances, attempt to mousetrap him, debate with him, and imply that he is distributing more aid to states that have voted for him than to others.
Never in my time of watching these press encounters with presidents, going back to the Eisenhower era, has there been such a blatant attempt to provoke the President to immoderate responses, or a more sustained effort to misrepresent what he says and does.
The fact that it is finally blowing up in their faces must aggravate the frustration and the rage of the anti-Trump press beyond imagination. They are grossly demeaning the status of the free press, which is dangerous for any democracy; none of their bullets now wounds the target.
As the President rises in the polls, meets the crisis, and walks the line between an over-hasty lifting of the shutdown and a rigid posture that would invite fear-mongering about the enforced reduction of commercial activity continuing into the autumn, the Democrats have to face the implications of their position as, in their favorite phrase, “the walls close in.”
Mr. Trump gets the credit for acting promptly opposite China (for which he was reviled by office-holding and media Democrats as a “racist” and “xenophobe”), for launching a skillful containment of the coronavirus, for producing a mighty financial-assistance package, and for maintaining hope for a reasonably timely reopening, and the Democrats are reduced to trying to hide their presumptive candidate.
Vice President Biden cannot opine coherently on public-policy issues and seems like someone running for a position as a rural public-health commissioner, demanding a voice for the elderly, not as the 44th direct successor to George Washington.
No civilized person takes pleasure in a man’s serial embarrassment, but those who drafted Joe Biden for this role cannot possibly imagine that he can do more than spare the Democrats the utter annihilation they would suffer if they nominated Bernie Sanders.
----------------------- Conrad Black writes for the NY Sun. H/T McIntosh Enterprises. Tags:Conrad Black, Desperate Pelosi, Vows To Probe Trump, Over CoronaTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
. . . by now, California should be, as predicted in so many models, ground zero of infection.
Victor Davis Hanson
by Dr. Victor Davis Hanson: The bluest state’s public officials have been warning for weeks that California will be overwhelmed, given federal-government unpreparedness and the purported inefficacy of the local, state, and federal governments.
California governor Gavin Newsom has assured his state that over half of the population — or, in his words, 56 percent — will soon be infected. That is, more than 25 million coronavirus cases are on the horizon, which, at the virus’s current fatality rate of 1–2 percent (the ratio of deaths to known positive cases), would mean that the state should anticipate 250,000–500,000 dead Californians in the near future. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti predicted that this week Los Angeles would be short of all sorts of medical supplies as the epidemic killed many hundreds, as is the case in New York City.
It’s been well over two months since the first certified coronavirus case in the United States, so one might expect to see early symptoms of the apocalypse recently forecast by Governor Newsom. Yet a number of California’s top doctors, epidemiologists, statisticians, and biophysicists — including Stanford’s John Ioannides, Michael Levitt, Eran Bendavid, and Jay Bhattacharya — have expressed some skepticism about the bleak models predicting that we are on the verge of a statewide or even national lethal pandemic of biblical proportions.
The skeptics may be right. As of this moment, California’s cumulative fatalities attributed to coronavirus are somewhere over 140 deaths, in a state of 40 million. That toll is a relatively confirmable numerator (though coronavirus is not always the sole cause of death), as opposed to the widely unreliable denominator of caseloads (currently about 6,300 in the state) that are judged to be only a fraction of the population that has been tested. The Iceland study, for example, suggests that half of those who are infected show no symptoms. Currently, even with fluctuating statistics, California is suffering roughly about one death to the virus for every 250,000–300,000 of its residents.
The rate certainly will go up each hour, and no doubt in geometric fashion, as the virus spreads. Yet we should remember that California loses about 270,000 lives to all causes every year — meaning, on any given day, around 740 Californians die. So far there is no published clear evidence that in January, February, and March more Americans have died from pneumonia-related diseases than in an average year.
Note too that not all deaths attributed to coronavirus are the work of COVID-19 alone; they are often accompanied by advanced age and serious chronic conditions that may have soon led to death without any accompanying viral infection.
In contrast, as of Monday morning, New York State, with about half of California’s population, has about eight to nine times the number of deaths, and 20 times the per capita rate, at 60 deaths per million residents. In fact, California has a much lower per capita death rate than many of the nation’s largest states; for that matter, its per capita death rate is similar to that of nations that so far have mysteriously escaped the virus’s modeled wrath. Currently, California has lost fewer than 4 people per million, roughly between South Korea’s 3 deaths per million and Germany’s 5, which are both being studied as outliers. Of course, statistics change hourly, but for now California’s data remain mysteries.
Even at this midpoint in the virus’s ascendance, most believed that California would be faring far worse. And they have good reason for such pessimism. California in a normal year usually experiences the greatest number of deaths associated with the flu in the United States, and it ranks about midway among the states in flu deaths per capita. The state was hit hard by influenza unusually early in the first weeks of November, including a strain that at the time was characterized as probably not “A” but a rarer “B” — and on occasion quite virulent. A typical news story related, in early 2020, “California health officials have identified 16 outbreaks since the start of the flu season Sept. 29.
Flu cases, hospitalizations and flu deaths are all higher than anticipated, according to the health department.” Many Californians complained late in 2019 of getting the flu a bit early, with flu symptoms that were somewhat different from the norm, at times including severe muscle aches, some digestive cramping, an unproductive cough, and days or even weeks of post-fever fatigue.
Forty-million-person California, in normal times — that is, until around or shortly after February 1, 2020 — hosts dozens of daily direct flights from China in general to San Diego, SFO, LAX, and San Jose, and in particular, since 2014, several weekly nonstop flights from Wuhan. Of the nearly 15,000 passengers who were estimated to be arriving every day in the U.S. on flights from China in 2019 and 2020, the majority flew into California. After the ban, there were thousands of Chinese tourists who remained in California and could get neither direct nor indirect flights home to China.
Travel forecasts from China for 2020, even amid the trade war, had estimated more than 8,000 daily arrivals in California. Two years ago, Los Angeles mayor Garcetti bragged that 1.1 million Chinese tourists had visited L.A. — more than 3,000 per day. The greatest number of foreign tourists to Los Angeles are Chinese, and the city is the favorite spot in America of all visitors from China. During the months of October, November, January, and February alone — before the travel ban — perhaps nearly 1 million Chinese citizens arrived in California on direct and indirect flights originating in China.
Moreover, researchers in Italy believe that the Chinese were not telling the truth about the origins or birth dates of the virus; they argue that COVID-19 was first loose worldwide in the middle of Autumn 2019 rather than in Winter 2020. Reuters recently reported:Adriano Decarli, an epidemiologist and medical statistics professor at the University of Milan, said there had been a “significant” increase in the number of people hospitalized for pneumonia and flu in the areas of Milan and Lodi between October and December last year. . . . He told Reuters he could not give exact figures but “hundreds” more people than usual had been taken to hospital in the last three months of 2019 in those areas — two of Lombardy’s worst hit cities — with pneumonia and flu-like symptoms, and some of those had died. . . . Decarli is reviewing the hospital records and other clinical details of those cases, including people who later died at home, to try to understand whether the new coronavirus epidemic had already spread to Italy back then. . . . “We want to know if the virus was already here in Italy at the end of 2019, and — if yes — why it remained undetected for a relatively long period so that we could have a clearer picture in case we have to face a second wave of the epidemic,” he said.In a recent Oxford study, a heterodox hypothesis was offered questioning the widely circulated study of Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist with Imperial College London. He and his team had offered a worst-case projection of as many as 2.2 million American and 510,000 British deaths. Ferguson has now emphasized the low-end estimates of death rates in some of his modeling, for example, suggesting that maybe only 20,000 in Britain may die from the virus, given how Britain has taken actions to curb and treat it. In any case, other models from the Oxford authors offer far less pessimistic hypothetical scenarios. In one, they suggest that viral infections in the U.K. might have begun almost 40 days before March 5, which was the first confirmed death there. If that is true, they argue, then to square the current figures of transmission, perhaps 68 percent of the British population would have had to be already infected by at least March 19 — reflecting a herd immunity that will radically curtail future transmission. Of course, without widespread antibody testing alongside testing for current infections, no one knows the number of past and present infections. Regardless, the Chinese notion that the world was not seriously infected until mid February increasingly seems mathematically unlikely.
In the case of California, again, unfortunately, the state still should have had many things going against it, at least in terms of susceptibility to any pandemic infection that curbs its huge tourist and commercial travel with China. The state has the nation’s highest poverty rate (affecting over 20 percent of the population, or some 8 million people); the greatest number of homeless people, at somewhere over 150,000; and the most residents in the nation on some form of public assistance, one-third of the nation’s total.
Over a quarter of the state’s population was not born in the U.S. Until recent bans, many frequently went to and from their countries of origin. It has the largest number of non-English speakers in the U.S., suggesting that public dissemination of key information might become far more problematic.
The state is not especially healthy and rarely rates among the top ten states in terms of per capita health, by whichever metrics one uses. A decade ago, studies suggested that one in three admissions of those over 35 to California hospitals were suffering from either diabetes or pre-diabetes — a known risk factor for coronavirus patients.
California ranks near the bottom when we count the number of available hospital beds per 1,000 population, at about 1.8. Likewise, its number of active doctors per 100,000 is similarly unimpressive, about midway among state rankings, at 276 per 100,000 — versus Massachusetts’s high of 450 and Mississippi’s low of 191. In most surveys of nurses per 100,000 population, California ranks near last (664).
How, then, has California in the third month of known COVID-19 infections in the U.S. lost between 140 and 150 lives to it?
Again, a number of experts have offered hypotheses. Is it a question of the statistical anomaly — as some have suggested is the case for Germany, which similarly posts few total deaths from the virus — given differences in how countries and perhaps even states record the chief causation of death (i.e., are some places listing COVID-19 as the cause of death, even when the decedent suffered from underlying chronic conditions)? Is California experiencing a brief lull, in the fashion of Japan, which likewise has suffered few deaths so far but may be poised to suffer far more?
Is there a lag in ascertaining and determining deaths in a state that’s geographically huge and linguistically diverse, a lapse that will shortly cease, correcting such misimpressions with a radical increase in corona-associated deaths — as is now forecast for Japan and to a lesser extent Germany?
Did California’s Draconian shelter-in-place policies that antedated many of those in other states simply arrest (so far) what should have been by now a lethal epidemic?
Did California’s proverbial warmer weather slow down the virus? Did its suburban ranch-home lifestyle and the large open spaces in the Central Valley, Sierra Nevada, desert and northern counties make transmissions harder than it has been in, say, the high-density living of New York City?
Maybe and maybe not.
While testing tardiness might explain outliers in terms of California’s relatively small number of proven cases and lethality rates, it would not greatly affect accurate statistics of deaths attributed to the virus. If anything, as the number of known cases grows, the lower the lethality rate will likely appear.
While California adopted shelter-in-place policies on March 19, other states did the same about the same time. And visiting a California Costco on any Saturday morning is a reminder of current mob frenzies. After a near-record dry and warm January and February, the state has been unseasonably cold and wet for most of March during the epidemic’s spike. True, California encompasses an enormous area, but it also is home to the country’s largest population and thus still ranks about eleventh in population density among the states. Some districts in San Francisco and Los Angeles are as densely populated as East Coast cities.
One less-mentioned hypothesis is that California, as a front-line state, may have rather rapidly developed a greater level of herd immunity than other states, given that hints, anecdotes, and some official indications from both China and Italy that, again, the virus may well have been spreading abroad far earlier than the first recorded case in the U.S. —and likely from the coasts inward.
So given the state’s unprecedented direct air access to China, and given its large expatriate and tourist Chinese communities, especially in its huge denser metropolitan corridors in Los Angeles and the Bay Area, it could be that what thousands of Californians experienced as an unusually “early” and “bad” flu season might have also reflected an early coronavirus epidemic, suggesting that many more Californians per capita than in other states may have acquired immunity to the virus.
Here in Fresno County (1.1 million people), we are warned daily that we are the next hot spot. But as of late March, we’ve had no recorded deaths and only 41 known cases. The figure will no doubt multiply rapidly and geometrically, but it still seems incomprehensible that not a single death was attributed to the virus in its first 60 days of visitation. I live near the Kings County line in rural Fresno County (which is not so rural anymore, given urban sprawl from greater Fresno). There have been two recorded cases and no deaths among the county’s more than 150,000 residents.
We won’t know the answers until antibody testing becomes widespread enough to determine who has already been infected, and who carried the virus without symptoms, and who wrongly attributed symptoms to the flu or a bad cold. Or epidemiologists will have to go over average daily pre-coronavirus death rates in California to determine whether, in comparison with past years, the state had any per capita spikes in deaths in October, November, December, and January, or an increase in hospitalizations attributed to the flu.
In the meantime, for a few days at least, we are left with the California paradox. As with the apparent outliers of Germany, South Korea, and Japan, it reminds us that there are endless known unknowns about the origins, lethality, infectiousness, and patterns of travel of the coronavirus — and that today’s latest frightening statistical model is often superseded tomorrow by more realistic appraisals and theories, and then again rendered naïve by even more frightening new backlash models. Until now, without either widespread antibody or current-infection testing, the number of people who die from the virus in comparison to a given population base is about all we can rely on to determine the lethality of the disease. And in that regard, at least for a few days or weeks longer, California remains a mystery.
------------------------ Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T National Review. Tags:Coronavirus, The California Herd, Victor Davis HansonTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Civil Liberties Matter More Than Ever in a Pandemic
. . . This is not the time to stop asking questions.
by Daniel Greenfield: 1 in 5 Americans have been ordered to stay home. Major states and cities have been shut down.
Our response to the coronavirus represents the biggest challenge to the relationship between individuals and the government in this country since the Civil War, WW1 or WW2. These decisions will likely be debated by scholars and historians the way that the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, the Espionage Act, Japanese internment camps, and other emergency decisions continue to be litigated.
A generation ago, the ACLU might have had something to say about the civil liberties implications of shelter-in-place orders. That was a different ACLU that at least pretended to care about civil liberties as an objective value, defending the civil rights of people it disagreed with. The new ACLU is an identity politics zombie whose only civil liberties concerns for the coronavirus response is that illegal aliens won’t be able to enter the country and that prison inmates should be released as quickly as possible.
The ACLU's position on the coronavirus is that, "individual rights must sometimes give way to the greater good. After all, when it comes to disease, we are not just individuals but also one big bio-mass."
"A disease cares little for our notions of individualism," the former civil liberties organization argues.
That is no doubt true. But we don't run our society from the perspective of a disease. And we don’t ask civil libertarians to mind-meld with viruses. Once upon a time, the ACLU might have asked what the Constitution thought of a policy. Now it asks what a disease thinks of the United States of America. And to the disease, the ACLU, and the Left, we're one big bio-mass collective with no room for individualism.
Meanwhile the ACLU has missed the civil liberties debate over what an “essential” establishment is. Shelter-in-place and other variants of the same term list the local definition of what is considered an essential or non-essential establishment. There is, as of yet, no formal federal definition.
Are liquor stores essential? They are in New York, New Jersey, St. Louis and Michigan. But not in Pennsylvania. Pot stores were deemed essential in California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
And in Pennsylvania.
But the “essential” debate is really blowing up when it comes to firearms.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva freed 1,700 criminals from county jails and launched an aggressive push to force gun stores to shut down as non-essential.
“We will be closing them, they are not an essential function,” Villanueva insisted. "You have the mixture of people that are not formerly gun owners and you have a lot more people at home and anytime you introduce a firearm in a home... it increases fourfold the chance that someone is gonna get shot.”
Whether or not that’s true, it has nothing to do with whether gun stores are essential or not. Villanueva is wrongly conflating a gun control risk argument with defining what is an essential business.
And when thousands of criminals are set loose, firearms become more essential than ever.
While Illinois had deemed firearms businesses to be essential, Pennsylvania did not. The state’s version of “essential” or “life-sustaining”, like California, covers marijuana, but not firearms. That’s a problem since Philly authorities had announced that they wouldn’t be arresting “non-violent offenders”.
Non-violent offenders, a highly misleading term for a wide variety of some, potentially quite hostile and dangerous criminals, includes car theft, burglary and other threats to personal property.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard a case by a gun shop owner and split, with the majority upholding the Democrat shutdown of gun stores in the state, while a minority dissented, arguing, that it's, “an absolute and indefinite prohibition upon the acquisition of firearms by the citizens of this commonwealth — a result in clear tension with the Second Amendment”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the political dial, Louisiana, Ohio, and Texas abortions as non-essential, though Ohio abortion facilities don’t appear to actually be obeying orders to close down.
Are gun stores or abortion clinics essential?
To people on one side, one of them is the footprint of a murderous industry that shouldn’t even exist and on the other is a constitutionally protected right. Litigation over both sides and both industries has been fought endlessly, but is now being settled by fiat under the guise of emergency measures.
That’s the civil liberties problem with giving government unlimited emergency powers to shut down everything it wants to with very little scrutiny and no meaningful appeal against its decisions.
There is an emergency. But civil rights don’t disappear in emergencies. They matter more than ever.
The use of emergency powers allow government to strip away individual rights with very little oversight. And it’s inevitable that, as in Los Angeles County, those powers will be used for self-serving reasons.
In an emergency, it’s vital to keep government honest by questioning how it uses its powers, examining its motives for using those powers, and pushing to set limits on these emergency powers. The tension between emergency powers and civil liberties is the cauldron out of which freedom is constantly reborn.
When the government is gifted with the power to shut down anything in an emergency, its officials will make those decisions along the lines of their preconceived cultural, moral, and political views.
Even when the effect is to override existing civil liberties.
The debate over the shutdowns has been presented as a utilitarian contest between lives and the economy: balancing the risk to people and the risk to their ability to earn a living. But beyond the utilitarian debates and the numbers, of unemployment figures, and projected casualties, are the intangible moral and cultural factors that may well mark this nation even generations afterward.
Every emergency violation of civil liberties has left its scars on America. Including the Civil War. If this time is to be different, we must learn the lessons of those pasts before they turn into the new present.
No society is free all the time. But the difference between a free and unfree society is that a free society keeps asking challenging questions even during periods when civil liberties have been suspended. And by asking questions, its citizens work to keep this state of affairs an aberration, not the new normal.
When people become reflexively used to obeying orders, to jumping without asking any questions, then the crisis response becomes a new cultural norm. That’s why the fight to protect civil liberties from shutdown orders should not wait until the crisis is over. Even now may already be too late.
This is not the time to stop asking questions, but to start asking them.
President Trump can take an important first step by adopting a definition of essential businesses that includes gun stores: sending the message that the government stands behind the Second Amendment.
Because civil liberties don’t stop mattering during a pandemic. They matter now more than ever.
------------------- Daniel Greenfield (@Sultanknish) is Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an investigative journalist and writer focusing on radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Tags:Daniel Greenfield, Sultanknish, Civil Liberties Matter, More Than Ever, in a PandemicTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Stephen Moore: "Government help to business is just as disastrous as government persecution. ... The only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off." -- Ayn Rand.
Congress has just approved an economically bloated $2.2 trillion spending relief bill, an amount more substantial than the GDP of all but a handful of countries. It is only the third massive relief bill, and we've been told several trillion dollars more would have to get spent. Then there are the trillions of dollars more of Federal Reserve Board liquidity injections. We are starting to talk about real money here.
The politicians believe that sending $1,200 checks to people will "stimulate" the economy. Among the many mistaken provisions of this new law is a welfare benefit to workers that pays them more money if they quit and become unemployed than if they stay on the job.
Here we go again. A decade ago, during the height of the folly of the bank bailouts and trillions of dollars of spending for "shovel-ready projects" (that didn't create jobs but plunged our nation into greater indebtedness), I noted in a Wall Street Journal article that with each successive bailout and multibillion-dollar economic stimulus scheme from Washington, the politicians were reenacting the very acts of economic stupidity that Ayn Rand parodied in her 1,000-page-plus 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged." In many surveys, "Atlas" rates as the second most influential book of all time behind the Bible.
For those of you who have not read it (first, shame on you!), the moral of the story is that politicians invariably respond to crises -- that, in most cases, they created -- by spewing out new, mindless government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to spawn even more programs. At which point, the downward spiral repeats itself until there is a thorough societal collapse. Isn't this precisely what is happening now?
In the book, the well-meaning politicians pass bills such as the "Anti-Greed Act" to prevent companies and wealthy people from making too much money. Another of my favorites was the "Equalization of Opportunity Act," which required successful people who invented things and started new businesses to share their wealth. Now, in real life, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders propose legislation like this all the time. They rant daily against "greedy" millionaires and billionaires (though Sanders dropped "millionaires" the moment he became one) and wonder whether the wealth producers of our economy deserve to exist at all. And these two were competitive in the Democratic presidential nomination.
We are living through the Ayn Rand dystopia right now. We have given police-state powers to the government to shut down "nonessential businesses" and tell people whether they can play golf or go for a hike. Some of these measures may make sense based on public health, but at what point are we degrading the rights of individuals to choose risks for themselves?
At one point in "Atlas Shrugged," the incompetent rent-seeking politicians finally have to admit that they have brought the economy to its knees with all the do-goodism. Out of desperation, they ask the heroic business owners in society what they must do. "First, abolish the income tax," they are told.
Sound like a wild-eyed idea today? Guess what? For the $2 trillion-plus that Congress has just spent to protect the economy, we could have completely eliminated the personal income tax on every worker and business this year. Isn't it abundantly evident which would have been the smarter choice to revitalize our economy?
I can just hear Warren shriek: "This would benefit 'the rich!'" But, of course, the people who are suffering most from the lockdown on the economy and other power grabs by the government today are the lowest-income workers.
In "Atlas Shrugged," everyone gets poor, and if we stay on our current turn toward statism and don't stand up for our rights, we will be poorer and a lot less free.
------------------------- Stephen Moore, (@StephenMoore) is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economic consultant with Freedom Works. He is the co-author of "Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy." Moore encouraged the ARRA News Service editor at SamSphere Chicago 2008 to blog his articles. His article was in Rasmussen Reports. Tags:Stephen Moore, Steve Moore, Rasmussen Reports, Atlas is ShruggingTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Patrick Buchanan: The media are paying a price in lost reputation with the nation they claim to represent by re-assuming the role of “adversary press” in a social crisis where, whatever one’s view of Donald Trump, the country wants the president to succeed.
“This is the question that is going to dominate the election: How did you perform in the great crisis?”
So says GOP Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma in today’s New York Times.
GOP National Committeeman Henry Barbour of Mississippi calls the crisis “a defining moment… The more (Trump) reassures Americans, gives them the facts and delivers results, the harder it will be for Joe Biden.”
Indeed, it is not a stretch to say Trump’s presidency will stand or fall on the resolution of the coronavirus crisis and how Trump is perceived as having led us in that battle. Recent polls appear to confirm that.
Though daily baited by a hostile media for being late to recognize the severity of the crisis, in one Gallup poll a week ago, Trump was at 49% approval, the apogee of his presidency, with 60% of the nation awarding him high marks for his handling of the pandemic.
What was the public’s assessment of how Trump’s antagonists in the media have performed in America’s great medical crisis?
Of 10 institutions, with hospitals first, at 88% approval, the media came in dead last, the only institution whose disapproval, at 55%, exceeded the number of Americans with a favorable opinion of their performance.
The media are paying a price in lost reputation with the nation they claim to represent by re-assuming the role of “adversary press” in a social crisis where, whatever one’s view of Donald Trump, the country wants the president to succeed.
If Biden begins to mimic a hostile media, baiting Trump at every turn, pointing out conflicts in his views, Joe will invite the same fate the media seem to have brought upon themselves.
Since that Gallup poll, Trump has been seen daily by millions in the role of commander in chief. He speaks from the podium in the White House briefing room or the Rose Garden just outside the Oval Office. He is invariably flanked by respected leaders in medicine, science, business and economics. All appear as Trump allies, and Trump treats them as his field commanders in the war on the virus.
And Joe Biden? He pops up infrequently in interviews out of the basement of his Delaware home where, sheltering in place, he reads short scripted speeches from a teleprompter.
And Biden’s presence has been wholly eclipsed by daily televised appearances of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is at the epicenter of the crisis in New York. Cuomo is taking on the aspect of both rival and partner to Trump.
What Trump is doing calls to mind Richard Nixon’s “Rose Garden strategy” in 1972. Though goaded by the press, Nixon avoided attacking his opponent, George McGovern, and declined to engage him on issues. Instead, Nixon used the Rose Garden to highlight popular initiatives.
Candidate Nixon’s campaign strategy in 1972 was not to campaign.
But if Biden cannot gather crowds to hear him in a time of social distancing, how does he get his message out? How does he attack Trump without appearing to undermine the president in his role as a wartime commander in chief, where America wants Trump to succeed?
How does a basement-bound Biden compete with Trump in the Oval Office, Cabinet Room, East Room and Rose Garden?
Whom does Biden call upon to rival Trump’s instant access to respected leaders eager to come and stand beside the president in the most serious crisis since World War II?
How does Biden recapture the spotlight of Super Tuesday?
Sen. Bernie Sanders wants Biden to come out and debate. But that seems a no-win proposition.
Moreover, when Biden appears on camera, he often seems confused and forgetful, loses his train of thought and doesn’t remember what he came to say. The sense that Biden is losing it is taking hold, and not only on the Republican right.
Democrats have to be looking closely at Cuomo’s success, as they wonder how Biden will stand up in the debates with Trump six months from now.
And what lies ahead for Democrats when spring turns into summer?
The Tokyo Olympics, scheduled to begin July 24, have been postponed until 2021. The Democratic National Convention, scheduled for Milwaukee even earlier in July, has yet to be postponed.
But if Tokyo recognizes it would be a terrible risk to the health of athletes and spectators to have people come from all over the world to Japan this summer, would it not also be an intolerable risk to have Americans from all 50 states and U.S. territories arrive for a week of mingling in midsummer in Milwaukee?
For Biden to win this election, Trump must lose it.
And the one way Trump can lose it is the perception on the part of a majority of Americans that he has proven an ineffectual president in America’s worst pandemic since the Spanish flu of 1918.
If Trump is seen as the victor over the virus, Biden is toast.
-------------------- Patrick Buchanan (@PatrickBuchanan) is currently a blogger, conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior adviser to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. Tags:Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, Is the Pandemic, Killing Biden’s BidTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Over the weekend, as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kent.) was single-handedly battling the entire Congress, another fighter with the inner courage to stand up against the Washington mob was sadly losing his battle with cancer. On Saturday, Dr. Tom Coburn passed away at age 72.
Honored in his day with the sobriquet “Dr. No,” Coburn the obstetrician had delivered 4,000 babies; Coburn the congressman had “frustrated Democrats and Republicans alike,” The New York Timesexplained, “with his propensity for blocking bills.”
When Coburn successfully blocked $150,000,000 in proposed new government spending, the Washington Post derisively called it “chicken feed.” In this space, we used this term: priceless.
“His contempt for [career politicians] is genuine, bipartisan and in many cases mutual,” noted The Times, adding that Coburn “once prescribed a ‘spinal transplant’ for 70 percent of the Senate.”
Dr. Coburn challenged the House rule prohibiting him from continuing to practice medicine while in office. “They’re really killing any idea for representation outside the clique of good old boys,” he argued. “It suggests people can’t believe in term limits and serve in Congress.”
He won.
Tom Coburn pledged to serve no more than three House terms and kept his word. Four years later, he ran for and won a U.S. Senate seat, likewise pledging a two-term self-limit* — becoming “The Conscience of the Senate.”
“One of the reasons I’ve been such a pain in the neck up [in Washington],” offered Coburn, “is because I knew I was leaving.”
Dr. Tom Coburn was one of us — a representative, and not a politician. He will long be remembered by those who love our Republic.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* “I believe more than ever,” Coburn said in keeping his self-imposed three-term House limit, “that our nation’s problems have been created because career politicians have set themselves apart as an elite class of people trying to dictate to us how we run our lives.”
------------------ Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service. Tags:Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Coburn’s Terms, Dr. Tom Coburn, dead at age 72To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Mario Murillo: Many who were once vibrant soldiers, today languish in a shadow existence. They are out of church, disconnected from their former passion and sick in body and soul. The ongoing political debate and demonstrations have only added to the crisis. The conflicting opinions of church leaders leave the army of God baffled and vulnerable.
The problem is, with all the anger, division, loud perversion, and persecution, Christian teachers find their instructive messages woefully inadequate. What happened? The answer is…life. Life happened, and it is gripping believers with fear. This is a new kind of fear coming from the screaming villains, who now have an out-sized influence.
The church in America needs a terrifying collision with the Glory of God. But right now we are awash in ‘advisory sermons.’ The titles are similar and predictable: “How to handle fear, uncertainty, finances, relationships, marriage, and children.” We are drowning in whiteboards, blackboards, statistics, PowerPoint Presentations, props, and illustrations.
We’ve been taught to death. We need to pour gasoline on what we’ve been taught and light it on fire.
Happy-face sermons do not give believers the power they need to overcome in a time like this. What is happening now runs clear off the over-optimistic maps drawn in pulpits. Tragedies can uproot neat formulas like a palm tree in a hurricane. Hip theories will collapse like a brick house in an earthquake.
Leaders have brought a lot of this on themselves. The culture has changed dramatically in the last few months—but the American pulpit has not.
Why are we surprised that modern believers suddenly need more? The power that could answer a thousand questions and extinguish a myriad of personality ills has been ushered out of church.
Closing the altars, ordering people to tone it down, and focusing on recovery programs indeed brought in a crowd. However, what is the end game if the crowd leaves as weak as they came—and in some cases weaker—without power to face the culture of a nation gone berserk?
Paul’s cure was simple: an undeniable encounter with the fire of God…”that your faith should not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:5).
The answer for conquering fear today is to burn it out! Just for shock value, I’ll use this phrase…perfect love casts out fear but so does perfect fear. No doubt many will think it is crazy to take a wonderful verse like 1 John 4:18: “perfect love casts out fear” and mess it up. But I am not messing it up I am fulfilling it!
PERFECT FEAR DOES INDEED CAST OUT FEAR! We have downplayed and even banned something that Christians desperately need…A TERRIFYING COLLISION WITH THE GLORY OF GOD.
Go back with me to 758 B.C. Isaiah the prophet enters the Temple in fear for his life. The tide of public opinion has turned against him. The death of his friend and protector King Uzziah has put the finishing touch on 5 years of ministry that seemingly had no impact on Israel, and Isaiah felt like he had just been treading water. His despair is now complete. He enters the Temple looking for comfort from God.
He kneels in prayer, resting his elbows on the altar seeking solace from the storm. Instead, the building starts quaking, knocking his elbows so that he is now punching himself in the face.
He looks up and sees Seraphim: Angels of fire, fire that burns hotter and brighter than any sun. They tower over him from either end of the altar.
Their voices roar, vibrate, boom and dislodge the mighty beams of the Temple! “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, IS THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY. THE WHOLE EARTH IS FILLED WITH HIS GLORY!” Back and forth, again and again, they blast this mighty proclamation until Isaiah could not bear the fright!
The mighty God Himself stands before Isaiah unfurling the indescribable train of His Glory! The prophet convulses beneath the weight of glory. From the very core of his being came an all-consuming cry… “WOE IS ME!”
The startling effect of the Glory of God—a wonder-working fear—overrules human fear.
No threat matters now. This demonstration of Glory conquered his suffering. Isn’t this exactly what Paul meant?: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). Of course, Paul is speaking of the final GLORY…but it is a part of our birthright to have earthly collisions of glory: “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all” (1 Corinthians 12:7). An overarching, fear-destroying encounter is the legacy of every child of God.
“But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.”
The twelve disciples were in a boat out on the Sea of Galilee, gripped by fear of the storm. But when Jesus rebuked the storm their fear of drowning was replaced with an awestruck wonder. They exclaimed: “what manner of man is this that even the wind and the sea obey Him!?”
We are told that General Patton won battles because his men were more afraid of him than the Germans. Again, ours is not a negative fear, but the holy awe born from the manifestation of God’s glory.
This truth reinforces the fact that “Perfect love casts out Fear” because love disciplines, love gives us what we need… and what we need today is not a subtle pat on the head. We need a fear-killing encounter! Solomon said in Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
Why are we blocking people from experiencing the fire of God? Why would we keep this miracle from people? I am talking about fire—fire that keeps them from the evil one—fire that forges a reverence, and turns them into your best soldiers.
We should have made room and time for people to be so filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit and fire that they are equipped to prevail against all enemies. If we had, we would not be nursing hordes of Christians on life support. We would have an unstoppable army!
There is still time to reverse course. If you have never been drenched by God then obey Him and seek to be overcome by His Glory. If you have received a filling of the Holy Spirit in the past, now is the time to receive FRESH FIRE!
-------------------- Mario Murillo is an evangelist Mario Murillo, minister, blogger. Tags:Mario Murillo, Ministries, Terrifying Collision With, The Glory Of GodTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
. . . The relief bill is the largest one-day expansion of government power in U.S. history.
by Thomas Gallatin: As the dust settles following Congress’s hurried passage of the emergency relief package known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, spending details of the 880-page, $2.2 trillion behemoth are now becoming known, and it’s not a pretty sight. While billions of dollars go for needed virus relief, roughly $600 billion goes into government coffers. It’s the biggest one-day expansion of government power ever, with the vast majority going to increase the welfare state.
It’s clear that Big Government proponents, especially the Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, followed Rahm Emanuel’s advice and didn’t let this crisis go to waste. What may be an even greater danger than government expansion is the precedent this crisis action has produced. Now, even more Americans will look first to the government to bail them out of a crisis, costing billions and saddling them with all the more Liberty-limiting regulations as the bureaucratic state grows exponentially.
As The Wall Street Journalastutely notes, “Republicans waved much of this through, viewing it as the Democratic price for urgently needed business liquidity. But they should understand the left has every intention of making these spending levels the new normal. Long after this virus has passed, long after the economy is recovering, Democrats will cry foul at any cut. Should they win the presidency or the Senate this fall, the chances of rolling any of this back fall even further.”
The bill’s most glaring and dangerous aspect is that it fails to distinguish between that which is expected to be a temporary expansion of government from that which is permanent — exactly as the Democrats wanted it. The Journal observes, “Democrats successfully exploited the crisis to expand the power of government overall — perhaps for the long term. That’s especially perverse, given it was government that imposed the restrictions that shut down the economy, necessitating this rescue bill in the first place.”
Will Americans one day come to regret the Orwellian-named CARES Act and see it as the cure that was worse than the disease?
------------------------ Thomas Gallatin is a staff analyst at The Patriot Post. Tags:Thomas Gallatin, The Patriot Post, CARES Act, Massively Expands GovernmentTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Mark Meadows to Start as White House Chief of Staff
Incoming White House chief of staff Mark Meadows returns to the White House on Saturday with President Donald Trump.
by Fred Lucas: Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., was expected to resign Monday from the House and begin serving Tuesday as White House chief of staff.
A Trump administration official confirmed to The Daily Signal that Meadows resignation will go into effect Monday evening and his first day at the White House is on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump announced in a March 6 tweet that Meadows would become his new chief of staff, but did not announce a start date.
I am pleased to announce that Congressman Mark Meadows will become White House Chief of Staff. I have long known and worked with Mark, and the relationship is a very good one....
Fox News reported that Meadows told the network that he would resign Monday afternoon and begin his new position at the White House the next day.
After attending the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in late February in suburban Maryland, where someone had tested positive for the coronavirus, Meadows announced that he was going into a 14-day self- quarantine.
Meadows, elected to the House of Representatives in 2012 to represent North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, will become Trump’s fourth chief of staff, following Reince Priebus, John Kelly, and Mick Mulvaney. Also a former congressman, Mulvaney served more than a year in an acting capacity.
Meadows is a vocal member and former chairman of the Freedom Caucus, made up of some of the most conservative Republicans in the House.
The Freedom Caucus initially clashed with Trump in early 2017 over the best course of action for repealing Obamacare.
However, Trump and the caucus began to work closely on conservative agenda items such as rolling back taxes, cutting regulations, and enforcing immigration laws.
Meadows has been a member of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, where he pushed investigations of improper conduct in the Justice Department, as well as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
-------------------------- Fred Lucas (@FredLucasWH) is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal. Tags:Fred Lucas, The Daily Signal, Mark Meadows, White House, Chief of StaffTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Tags:Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, Shelter in Place, Nadler, doesn’t have far to go, in order to shelter in place, during, coronavirus crisisTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by NRA-ILA: Our nation continues to struggle with the widespread impact of the COVID-19 virus. By now, everyone should be aware of the new “social distancing” paradigm, where we are all encouraged to avoid large groups of people, and maintain at least six feet of distance between each other when we do interact. Regular washing of our hands—which we should have been doing already—is now the norm, and anyone caught coughing or sneezing outside of the confines of their own elbow is at risk of being labeled a pariah.
Welcome to the new “normal,” at least for a while.
As we’ve mentioned before, though, Americans are a resilient bunch. We’ll get through this as we’ve made it through other calamities, even if this one seems a bit different.
That said, even with most legislatures having shut down operations, or severely limiting what they are doing in order to focus on responding to this viral threat, there are still those who would seek to exploit the situation and work to undermine the Second Amendment.
These uncertain times have led to many realizing that there could be occasions when they and their loved ones might need protection, and the government simply cannot respond in time. While it has always been true that police are often delayed when responding to an emergency situation, today’s reaction times may be even more dramatically reduced, as local government services are extended by the circumstances of today.
In order to ensure the security of their loved ones, law-abiding citizens are turning more and more to the Second Amendment. Gun stores have had their shelves stripped of stock, and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has been overwhelmed over the past few weeks.
Sadly, this renewed interest in the right to keep and bear arms for personal protection by law-abiding citizens has led to many irrational responses. Anti-gun media outlets responded to the increase in firearms purchases with mocking and misleading articles about who is buying guns, and why.
Newsweek ran a story titled “People Panic Buying Firearms Are ‘Adding Gasoline To A Fire’ Instead Of Protecting Families, Gun Control Advocacy Group Warns.” It included the standard hysteria from representatives of numerous groups that advocate banning firearms, including Giffords, Brady, and the Mike Bloomberg-funded Moms Demand Action.
Salon titled its anti-gun screed “Why Are People Buying Guns? That’s About the Last Thing We Need Right Now.” This article suggests people are buying guns because they fear “virus-zombies,” and claims “people imagine they can use these guns to defend their lives, families and property.”
While nobody is actually concerned with “virus-zombies,” people need not “imagine” firearms can be used for protection. It is simply a fact.
More troubling than the expected backlash from anti-gun media outlets, however, is how some government entities have reacted as part of their response to COVID-19.
In New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy (D) issued an executive order on March 21, establishing that all “non-essential” businesses shall be closed until the order is revoked or modified. Gun stores were not included as “essential,” but liquor stores and pet stores were.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (D) “New York State on PAUSE” executive order went into effect at 8:00PM, March 22, and required the closing of “in-office personnel functions” for all businesses in the state that are not considered, under his order, to be an “Essential Business.” Firearm dealers are not listed as “Essential Businesses.” Like New Jersey, however, liquor stores made the cut. New York law requires all firearm transfers, with a few exceptions for “immediate family” members, to include a NICS check conducted by a licensed firearm dealer. How Governor Cuomo’s executive order ultimately impacts lawful transfers of firearms in New York remains to be seen.
Whether or not gun stores in California will be allowed to operate seems to depend on where they are located. Governor Gavin Newsom (D) declared a state of emergency due to COVID-19 on March 4. He then issued another order on March 19, which directed “all individuals living in the State of California to stay home or at their place of residence,” with exceptions for those considered “Essential Critical Infrastructure Workers.”
While Newsom’s order doesn’t specifically close down any businesses, if one is required to remain at home, one cannot operate a business. Unless, of course, you are classified as an “Essential Critical Infrastructure Worker.” California guidelines do spell out who are considered exempt, but licensed gun dealers are not on the list. Yet again, liquor stores are.
But since stores are not specifically ordered to be closed, many gun dealers have remained open in California.
In Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the nation, Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced on March 23 that gun stores would be deemed “not an essential function,” and be ordered to shut down. Sheriff Villanueva told Fox11, “I’m a supporter of the Second Amendment, I’m a gun owner myself, but now you have the mixture of people that are not formerly gun owners and you have a lot more people at home and anytime you introduce a firearm in a home, from what I understand from CDC studies, it increases fourfold the chance that someone is gonna get shot.”
Villanueva being a gun owner should not be a surprise, considering he is the top cop in Los Angeles County. It is surprising, and quite revealing, to see him make an anti-gun claim to bolster his reason to shut down gun stores, rather than sticking strictly to the script that gun stores are “non-essential.”
In the Bay Area of California, things look equally murky for local gun shops.
On March 16, the County of Santa Clara California issued an Order of the Health Officer that directed residents to stay at home in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Several other counties in the Bay Area issued similar orders. The Santa Clara order also instructed businesses that are not considered to be “essential” to close, and Sam Liccardo, the Mayor of San Jose (a city within Santa Clara County) declared that gun stores are “non-essential” the following day, ordering them to be closed.
Pennsylvania, like California, was a bit confusing, but appears to be evolving in the right direction. Governor Tom Wolf (D) signed an executive order on March 19 that prohibits the operation of businesses that are not “Life Sustaining.” Governor Wolf also issued a “guide” to help businesses determine how they might be impacted. Firearms dealers were not specifically mentioned, initially, so it was unclear how they would be impacted throughout Pennsylvania.
In Philadelphia, government officials have indicated firearms dealers are NOT considered “essential,” and should be closed.
A lawsuit challenging the order from Governor Wolf that claimed the governor overstepped his authority as it relates to shutting down gun stores was dismissed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The dismissal of the lawsuit, without comment, led some to believe that all gun stores in Pennsylvania would be ordered closed. As one justice pointed out in his dissent to the dismissal of the case, as Pennsylvania requires all firearm transfers—with only a few exceptions involving some family members—be conducted at either a licensed firearm dealer’s place of business or a county sheriff’s office, Wolf’s order effectively eliminated virtually all lawful firearm transfers in Pennsylvania as long as it remains in effect. Whether or not county sheriff’s offices will continue to be available for processing private transfers is not clear.
Fortunately, Pennsylvania has quietly updated its “guide” to allow for firearms dealers to “operate physical businesses on a limited basis to complete only the portion of a sale/transfer that must be conducted in-person under the law” provided the transaction is conducted by appointment and the business follows “social distancing” and “sanitization” guidelines.
Delaware, like Pennsylvania, started out on the wrong foot, but appears to be improving. Governor John Carney (D) issued a Declaration of a State of Emergency for Delaware on March 12, and has issued five “modifications” since then. As with other states, Governor Carney attempted to define businesses as “essential” and “non-essential,” with those deemed “non-essential” ordered to close. Yet again, stores that sell alcohol were specifically singled out as “essential.”
Gun stores were not listed, specifically, as “essential,” but would easily qualify under the category “Necessary Products Retailers,” which includes one definition as “Any other household consumer products or other products necessary to maintain the safety, sanitation, and essential operations of residences.” Clearly, firearms are “necessary to maintain the safety…of residences.”
Nonetheless, NRA received notification that at least one gun store had received a cease and desist order, stating it needed to close. After NRA notified Delaware of our intent to take legal action, the state relented, somewhat, and issued the following guidelines for gun stores:
“Firearms dealers may conduct sales of firearms, ammunition, and other goods directly related to responsible firearm storage and maintenance, by appointment only. No more than two appointments per half hour shall occur, and sellers are limited to operating during normal working hours they operated on prior to the State of Emergency. Any seller who violates such directive may be subject to criminal prosecution or other civil enforcement remedies up to and including arrest or the involuntary closure of the business.”
We continue to receive reports from some states indicating gun stores are being closed, including Maine and New Mexico. The order issued by Washington Governor Jay Inslee (D) does not specifically exempt gun stores from operating, although it does allow for businesses to remain operational if they are used for “[o]btaining necessary supplies and services for family or household members…to maintain safety…of the home or residence.” Again, firearms are clearly used to “maintain safety” of people’s homes. Nonetheless, we have received numerous reports that gun stores in Washington are being told to close.
But there is also plenty of good news as it relates to the Second Amendment during these trying times. While all states have now issued some sort of emergency order in response to the national outbreak of COVID-19, few have ordered gun stores to close. In fact, many have singled them out as “essential,” and are to remain open while other businesses may be forced to close down.
Arizona has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Colorado has determined that gun stores fall under “Critical Retail.”
Connecticut has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Hawaii has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Idaho has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Illinois has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Indiana has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Kentucky’s order states, “nothing in this Order should be construed to interfere with the lawful sale of firearms and ammunition. Any businesses engaged in the lawful sale of firearms and ammunition must follow social distancing and hygiene guidance from the CDC and the Kentucky Department of Public Health…”
Louisiana has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Maryland State Police stated: “The governor’s orders do not close gun stores. Under federal guidelines and advice from the governor's legal counsel, gun stores are retail establishments that can remain open, provided they comply with the 10-person requirement and social distancing guidelines.”
Mississippi has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Montana has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
New Hampshire has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Ohio has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) has issued Opinion No. KP-0296, which clarifies that municipalities and counties are prohibited from adopting regulations related to the transfer of and commerce in firearms.
Virginia law explicitly prohibits the governor or any other government entity from restricting “the otherwise lawful possession, carrying, transportation, sale, or transfer of firearms….”
West Virginia has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
Wisconsin has determined that gun stores are an “Essential Business.”
As everyone is reminded daily, response to the COVID-19 outbreak in America is in a constant state of flux. While most states may either explicitly protect gun stores, or at least not require them to close, local governments, as we have seen in California, may try to go beyond what the state mandates. NRA will continue to monitor these and related issues, and determine what action may need to be taken.
Please be sure to return to this site regularly to stay current on the impact the virus may have on the Second Amendment, and to see what you can do to help protect our fundamental right to keep and bear arms.
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