Diversity Lands on Mars

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The diversity movement has broken free of all earthly bounds

It was recently announced that 40% of management positions on Mars will be filled by minorities.

No, not the red planet, but my former employer, the privately-held Mars, Inc., a conglomerate with an estimated $37 billion in revenue and 130,000 employees.

The announcement is an example of how the diversity movement has become untethered from reality and is now being propelled across the ether by platitudes, virtue-signaling, group-think, double standards, and racial stereotypes.

The announcement was made almost simultaneously with the company changing the name of its Uncle Ben’s Rice to Ben’s Rice, after the Houston-based rice division had been accused of racial insensitivity for the former name and the accompanying caricature of a black man as venerable Uncle Ben. The accusation must’ve shocked the family owners, because they had always avoided politics and prided themselves on their progressive employment practices, high pay for plant workers, and concerns for all stakeholders.

No good deed goes unpunished in today’s hypersensitive America.

To digress for a moment, here’s why I’m qualified to speak about diversity and Mars:

In 1992, the Wall Street Journal published a long commentary of mine that touted the management philosophy of Mars, based on my experience working there as an executive in the 1980s. The article was subsequently used as a case study in business schools.

One of my responsibilities at the company was diversity, although it wasn’t called that at the time, because this was prior to the term being coined in 1990 by R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., in his landmark article in the Harvard Business Review. It was called equal employment opportunity or affirmative action and was often accompanied with sensitivity training and with the firing of managers and workers for prejudicial behavior—all of which I oversaw.

Mars was known for its marketing prowess and for high productivity and efficiency, a deserved reputation that was due in large part to its recruiting at some of the best business schools and engineering schools around the world, as well as its practice of rotating managers between divisions and countries in order to spread best practices across the organization. For example, when I worked at the headquarters of its U.S. confectionery division, the vice president of manufacturing was Dutch, the vice president of R&D was British, the division president was British, and the vice president of human resources had come from Mars’ pet food division.

The company’s divisional offices were always connected to a plant. Although one of the company’s first U.S. plants/offices was in Chicago, and although one of its first European plants/offices was in Slough, the working-class part of metro London, it preferred to locate its newer plants/offices in semi-rural locations in the States and Europe. The thinking was that the work ethic was better than in cities, and that cities had too many constraints in terms of limited space, poor truck access, and neighbors who might object to the noise and odors of 24/7 operations.

This is why, a half-century ago, the company moved the headquarters of its U.S. confectionery business, as well as the adjoining plant that made M&Ms, from Newark, NJ, to Hackettstown, NJ, in the northwestern part of the state near the Pennsylvania border.

It was of course more difficult to attract blacks and Hispanics in Hackettstown than in Newark. The same for semi-rural locations in the Netherlands and Germany. But these limitations were more than compensated for by its operations in diverse parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Texas.

Cultural dynamics changed within the company when the family retired from day-to-day operations. The dynamics further changed with Mars’ purchase of Chicago-based Wrigley in 2008 for $23 billion. It became more “professionally” managed, which is a euphemism for being managed in accord with conventional American business practices—practices that have resulted in manufacturing workers in other industries being treated like widgets and seeing their jobs shipped to Mexico and China.

It is Mars’ prerogative to change its longstanding management development policies and plant/office locations to advance diversity—and to send a potentially divisive message to its workforce that preferences will be given to some employees over others until 40% of managers are minorities. But there are two troubling societal aspects to this.

The first is legal. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act unequivocally states that employment decisions should not be based on race or ethnicity. Although it’s legal to eliminate racial and ethnic barriers to employment and promotion and to reach out to previously overlooked groups, it is legally questionable to favor some groups over others in order to meet some arbitrary racial mix—not that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cares about discrimination masquerading as diversity.

The second troubling aspect is the ambiguous meaning of “minority.” Most people would say they know what it means, but do they really?

They would say that in the context of diversity, “minority” refers to those races that are in the minority in America in terms of numbers, such as African Americans, Asians and non-white Latinos. Not only are there business benefits to this racial form of diversity, the thinking goes, but it’s a way of redressing past discrimination and achieving social justice for historically disadvantaged people.

 

A PhD dissertation could be written on the fallacies in this thinking, but since PhD dissertations put people to sleep, let’s look at the biggest fallacy.

The biggest fallacy of the current zeitgeist on diversity is that it is based on stereotypes. The underlying assumption is that all individuals within an official governmental racial category are the same in terms values, beliefs, outlooks, and socioeconomic circumstance. As such, all whites are seen as coming from privilege, even though many are impoverished, unlike, let’s say, college-educated emigrants from an upper-caste in India, or Latinos from the Spanish aristocracy of Mexico. Moreover, all whites are seen as being in the majority, even though there are over 100 unique ethnic minority groups within the so-called white race, such as Italian Americans, who are only six percent of the population, or Iranian Americans, who are only a tenth of a percent of the population.

Memo to stereotypers: A coal miner’s daughter in West Virginia didn’t grow up with the privileges and perspectives of a Mars daughter. Likewise, this grandson of a coal miner didn’t grow up with the privileges and perspectives of a descendant of a Boston blueblood family that became wealthy from the cotton trade. For you to believe otherwise suggests a political agenda or reflects appalling ignorance.

Japan, South Korea and China are manufacturing powerhouses and big markets for Mars and other American companies. But, ironically, they are not very diverse in terms of race, although China has some degree of ethnic diversity. Time will tell if diversity will prove to be a competitive advantage for U.S.-based companies. But even if it doesn’t, diversity should be pursued for other reasons, as long as it’s done legally and includes ethnic and socioeconomic diversity.

The only group that should be excluded from diversity considerations are aliens from the planet Mars.

IMPRIMIS: A Sensible and Compassionate Anti-COVID Strategy

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The following is adapted from a panel presentation on October 9, 2020, in Omaha, Nebraska, at a Hillsdale College Free Market Forum.

My goal today is, first, to present the facts about how deadly COVID-19 actually is; second, to present the facts about who is at risk from COVID; third, to present some facts about how deadly the widespread lockdowns have been; and fourth, to recommend a shift in public policy.

1. The COVID-19 Fatality Rate

In discussing the deadliness of COVID, we need to distinguish COVID casesfrom COVID infections. A lot of fear and confusion has resulted from failing to understand the difference.

We have heard much this year about the “case fatality rate” of COVID. In early March, the case fatality rate in the U.S. was roughly three percent—nearly three out of every hundred people who were identified as “cases” of COVID in early March died from it. Compare that to today, when the fatality rate of COVID is known to be less than one half of one percent.

In other words, when the World Health Organization said back in early March that three percent of people who get COVID die from it, they were wrong by at least one order of magnitude. The COVID fatality rate is much closer to 0.2 or 0.3 percent. The reason for the highly inaccurate early estimates is simple: in early March, we were not identifying most of the people who had been infected by COVID.

“Case fatality rate” is computed by dividing the number of deaths by the total number of confirmed cases. But to obtain an accurate COVID fatality rate, the number in the denominator should be the number of people who have been infected—the number of people who have actually had the disease—rather than the number of confirmed cases.

In March, only the small fraction of infected people who got sick and went to the hospital were identified as cases. But the majority of people who are infected by COVID have very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. These people weren’t identified in the early days, which resulted in a highly misleading fatality rate. And that is what drove public policy. Even worse, it continues to sow fear and panic, because the perception of too many people about COVID is frozen in the misleading data from March.

So how do we get an accurate fatality rate? To use a technical term, we test for seroprevalence—in other words, we test to find out how many people have evidence in their bloodstream of having had COVID.

This is easy with some viruses. Anyone who has had chickenpox, for instance, still has that virus living in them—it stays in the body forever. COVID, on the other hand, like other coronaviruses, doesn’t stay in the body. Someone who is infected with COVID and then clears it will be immune from it, but it won’t still be living in them.

What we need to test for, then, are antibodies or other evidence that someone has had COVID. And even antibodies fade over time, so testing for them still results in an underestimate of total infections.

Seroprevalence is what I worked on in the early days of the epidemic. In April, I ran a series of studies, using antibody tests, to see how many people in California’s Santa Clara County, where I live, had been infected. At the time, there were about 1,000 COVID cases that had been identified in the county, but our antibody tests found that 50,000 people had been infected—i.e., there were 50 times more infections than identified cases. This was enormously important, because it meant that the fatality rate was not three percent, but closer to 0.2 percent; not three in 100, but two in 1,000.

When it came out, this Santa Clara study was controversial. But science is like that, and the way science tests controversial studies is to see if they can be replicated. And indeed, there are now 82 similar seroprevalence studies from around the world, and the median result of these 82 studies is a fatality rate of about 0.2 percent—exactly what we found in Santa Clara County.

In some places, of course, the fatality rate was higher: in New York City it was more like 0.5 percent. In other places it was lower: the rate in Idaho was 0.13 percent. What this variation shows is that the fatality rate is not simply a function of how deadly a virus is. It is also a function of who gets infected and of the quality of the health care system. In the early days of the virus, our health care systems managed COVID poorly. Part of this was due to ignorance: we pursued very aggressive treatments, for instance, such as the use of ventilators, that in retrospect might have been counterproductive. And part of it was due to negligence: in some places, we needlessly allowed a lot of people in nursing homes to get infected.

But the bottom line is that the COVID fatality rate is in the neighborhood of 0.2 percent.

Continue reading at:  https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/sensible-compassionate-anti-covid-strategy


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Jay Bhattacharya is a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, where he received both an M.D. and a Ph.D. in economics. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and director of the Stanford Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging. A co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, his research has been published in economics, statistics, legal, medical, public health, and health policy journals.

 

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College. ©All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of the sponsors.

 

A Perspective on Social Justice

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Consider the expression “social justice”. What does it actually mean? Presumably, everyone is in favor of justice, as opposed to unfairness. But let’s consider what the people bloviating most strongly actually mean by the expression. What do they really want?

In the broadest sense the expression suggests that someone (or some group) is getting more than they deserve, while someone else (or some other group) is getting less than they deserve. It is not necessarily money. It can be anything from treatment by police to treatment by banks when considering mortgage applications or treatment by employers when deciding whom to promote.

Proponents of social justice always assume that either there is bad will on the part of someone making decisions or else that unfair outcomes have been institutionalized by historical events. In other words, either decisions are being made by racists or inherent racism is just the way things have developed over time. Such racism may be either overt or covert. Here I am using the word “racism” to cover all forms of discrimination for reasons of gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

I don’t think there is much argument that overt racism has been on the decline for many years. It certainly is not gone completely but incidents of everything from lynching to official redlining are no longer acceptable. When they do occur (as it appears may have been the case in the George Floyd killing) public outcry swiftly condemns perpetrators.

It is the hidden aspects of the problem that is causing the recent upsurge in controversy. How do we account for disparate punishment of criminals by courts? How do we explain pay disparities between groups that seems alike except for race, gender, etc.? Why do certain groups never seem to make it into positions of preference, power or prestige?  Is “the system” somehow holding them back or do they have certain characteristics or behavior that is a root cause of the problem?

I do not want to get caught up in debate over whether cops arrest more blacks because blacks commit more crimes or the issue of why blacks get harsher sentences on average than white. I know the arguments on both sides and I know the remedies that have been suggested. If society does not like “search and frisk” policies, it has to choose between frisking fewer blacks, frisking more whites, or frisking no one. NYC is conducting a lab with respect to the third alternative under Mayor de Blasio and the results are not encouraging.

However, the debate over social justice has moved beyond preventing discrimination in the future to undoing it in the past. In its most daring form, it is called “a conversation about reparations”. It starts with a recitation of past history and argues that bad things that happened in the past have effects that carry over into current generations and prevent them from achieving equality. Therefore, the argument goes, society has a moral obligation to somehow make up to the current generation of “victims” for the past injustices to their forebears. For example, if slave families were callously broken up a century and a half ago, that should excuse weak acceptance of familial responsibilities among many black men today. Similarly, if slaves were denied an education, that explains (at least in part) why blacks tend to do less well in school today, since they may not have grown up in a family environment that fostered educational achievement.

While these arguments are weakened by the multigenerational time periods involved since slavery ended, nevertheless, they cannot be dismissed out of hand.

The question is what can and should be done about it, if anything?

No matter how one tries to present it in order to make it palatable, social “justice” boils down to taking money from one group (taxpayers) and transferring it either in cash or services to a group labeled as “victims” of past injustice, even if was perpetrated on others many years ago. The scheme proposed by Senator Warren involves a wealth tax, which is simply a way of clawing back “ill-gotten gains” and redistributing them. If an entrepreneur or CEO paid his employees starvation wages while rewarding himself handsomely, the concept is to recapture and redistribute some of his accumulated wealth.

In theory, that is not absurd, although obviously not all of those being clawed would agree that their wealth was obtained immorally. This is not like seizing Bernie Madoff’s stolen funds and making restitution to those whom he defrauded. This is an all-wise Government deciding who is deserving of fleecing, who was shorn and who should benefit from it all.

In practice, “reparations” is a non-starter, even if you believe it has moral value (which I don’t, for reasons I will get to in a minute). Here are some real practical problems.

  1. Who decides and on what basis?
  2. What is the justification for taxing wealthy individuals whose parents were immigrants and did not benefit from slavery?
  3. Do those who qualify on racial grounds but are already wealthy get benefits or do they pay a reparations tax?
  4. How can the public be protected from benefits going primarily to supporters of the party in power?
  5. Why just blacks? Many other groups have also suffered from lack of social justice. Once we start deciding on victims, where does it end?
  6. Reparations are just another form of reverse-discrimination, doing good for one group by doing bad for the rest.

America was created out of equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. There is no question that various groups have been used and abused, starting with the indigenous peoples we threw off their lands and extending through various waves of immigrants. Not just black slaves, but also Irish, middle Europeans, Asians, Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, etc. all had to fight their way out of poverty and extreme, often brutal discrimination. Women also were in many ways kept in bondage for many decades. It may not have been as legal slaves, but they were systematically denied opportunities for education, training, and admission to professions for which they were deemed incompetent. Women were told they were mentally inferior.

This was all unjust. But tearing everything down in order to right the wrongs of the past will not make a stronger America. It will only strengthen the bitter animosity that divides us now. It will be in everyone’s interest to personally identify with some group of victims in order to get in on the largess. (Pocahontas comes to mind.) All of the groups mentioned above have made tremendous strides, sometimes helped by laws but more often by hard work and sacrifice. Little was handed to them on a silver platter. Now the folks clamoring for more social justice today want it for free, by taking from someone else, in order that they may live better. Confiscation is never a sound basis for social harmony and economic strength. Progress takes time, but we are increasingly living in a world dangerously used to and insistent upon instant answers.

Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of players in the NBA and NFL are black, the BLM movement insists that there is discrimination because too few coaches are black. There are few jobs more competitive than sports coaching. It is truly a matter of produce or perish. Black coaches have been appointed, but only a few have succeeded. I have no easy explanation. Undoubtedly, more will be tried. But is it not insanity for teams to aim for racial equality in the coaching positions instead of success on the field? If black coaches have talent, they will succeed, just as they have in the games. But most coaches fail. It isn’t easy nor should it be.

Some will argue that economic growth should take a back seat to social justice. This is the naive thinking of dreamers who believe that mankind is a perfectible species, capable of whatever sacrifice is needed to realize their dreams. While civilized humans possess an unusual willingness to help their neighbor and often exhibit a high degree of altruism, there are limits. Martyrs for a cause are in short supply. Dreamers would prefer that someone else be the martyr for their cause.

The economist Henry Hazlitt once summed it up by observing that when A and B get together and worry about the plight of C, they often call on D to do something about it. Hazlitt said that in that situation, the one that he worries about more is D.

I do not advocate doing nothing about discrimination, bad cops, etc. Specific situations need to be addressed, as it seems they have not been in the past. But defunding the police, toppling statues, rewriting history, and reparations are not the answer. Many injustices were ignored for too long and many remain to be corrected. Nothing, however, will be achieved by hatred and violence.

Ken Veit is a retired insurance company CEO and actuary.

The Injustice of Social Justice

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In today’s understanding of “social justice”, it is axiomatic that differences in populations are attributed to race.  This is precisely the position held by such enlightened organizations as the Ku Klux Klan.

People who are white are lumped together, regardless of socio-economic background or ethnic differences, and treated as a lump of humanity.  Likewise, are “people of color”.

This is the very essence of racism in that it treats all differences as a matter of skin color or in some cases, sexual preferences.

How just is this procedure?

Suppose you are on the Admissions Committee to assess and select incoming medical students for recently or long-established School of Medicine somewhere in the United States.  Imbued with the latest fads about “diversity”, “social justice” and “fairness”, you feel that you must admit people of color or marginalized sexual groups to have a “fair” admissions process.

In order to do this, you must downgrade objective criteria of performance such as grades, test scores, life experiences, the ability to write, to think and to deal with people.  For if you do use merit as the leading criterion, the mix of people you might select will differ from your goal to uplift underrepresented groups in the name of diversity, social justice and fairness.

Thus, a person of superior merit and achievement might well be rejected because of their skin color or because they aren’t defined as disadvantaged or of a particular group identity.  Is that fair treatment to a student that has worked very hard and sacrificed a lot to get where they are?  What if they are Asian?  Do you discriminate against Asians in favor of African Americans?  The answer to the latter is probably yes because that is precisely what many universities do.

What about the future quality of care provided by the medical schools of our nation?  If you don’t select, educate and train the best, are you likely to get the best outcomes for patients?  If the answer is no, is that ethical for the care of patients and supportive of the institutional reputation of a given medical school?  It has taken generations to establish and maintain that reputation, but does that simply get discounted in order to satisfy the desire to make the medical school classes look acceptable to the medical school faculty and administrators steeped in a culture of “diversity “, social justice and political correctness?

What about the patients and their families, some who travel hundreds or possibly thousands of miles to receive what they are led to believe is the very best treatment?  They are willing to pay premium prices for such care.  They come to the institution with some of the most difficult medical problems, many of life and death importance. But instead, in the future, the diversity-based selection of tomorrow’s physicians may well lower the quality of care because merit-based selection was not as important. You are not only being unfair (in medical practice, the more appropriate term in unethical) to future patients, you may well be defrauding them. And, by providing less than optimal care you may well injure or kill somebody.  Is that fair?  Is that just?

And what about the candidates themselves?  Having been selected by you in the name of diversity and fairness, they get the appointment that they otherwise may not deserve. Do they go to sleep at night wondering if they really are the best or are they simply a product of your diversity-based prejudice? Is that fair?  Is that just?

What does this process do to the medical profession itself?  Is the public justified in having confidence in professional training and treatment?  Or is that confidence now unjustified?  How do the members now view themselves?  Do they view themselves as the best life savers possible or just another institution corrupted by politics?

We use Arizona’s and the nation’s medical schools here as an example.  But you could make similar arguments about the teacher who forms your children, your lawyer, your tax accountant, your financial manager or your airline pilot.  In these situations, should you not expect the institution you are dealing with to provide the best possible service with the best personnel?  That can only be achieved by selecting and hiring the best people available.

Another way to look at this is to reverse the process.  Let’s look at professional basketball as an institution.  An institution incidentally, that loudly proclaims for “social justice.”

African Americans make up about 13% of the population.  A fraction of that are males in the age bracket to play professional basketball.  Yet, African Americans overwhelmingly dominate the game.

What if the NBA hired not out of merit but to achieve diversity so the team in question looks like the community it serves? Only about 6% of the population of Portland, Oregon is African American. Is that the way the Portland Trailblazers look to you?  If you really hired on the basis of the “community”, roughly one player should be African American, the rest white, Latino or Asian.  Incidentally, as Latinos are lumped together as a group (Cubans, Mexicans, El Salvadorans, etc.), how many Latinos are there in the NBA?  And where are the Jews?  At one time, Jews made up a considerable percentage of the NBA. The first basketball point ever scored in the NBA was shot by a Jew.

Was firing the Jews and hiring African Americans justice?  Yes, if replaced on the basis of merit and ability. But why is basketball more important than medicine?  Why does merit count when throwing an inflated bladder through a hoop but not when saving lives?

This is the problem you get into when all disparities in performance are assumed to be racial and compound the problem by arbitrarily lumping all individuals together into a group or class to be moved about like pawns in a chess game based on some quite arbitrary notion of diversity.

Social justice as practiced today is not justice, it is reverse discrimination.  You cannot reverse whatever historical injustice that may have existed by practicing injustice in the here and now.

 

 

Leg-Shootin’ Joe (Biden)

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To paraphrase Will Rogers, it ain’t so much what Joe Biden doesn’t know about guns; it’s what he is sure he knows that just isn’t so.

Biden considers himself an expert on guns; just ask him. He is completely unaware that he knows nothing, and that what he thinks he knows is just flat wrong. Jaw-droppingly, eye- rollingly, what-in-blazes-is-he-babbling-about wrong. Like Cliff Klaven, he speaks foolishness, but with supreme confidence. “Always wrong, but never in doubt.”

His latest Klavenism is this, in response to an ABC interviewer’s question about police reform:

“There’s a lot of things we’ve learned and it takes time, but we can do this,” Biden said. “You can ban chokeholds … you have to teach people how to de-escalate circumstances. … Instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.”

Shoot them in the leg? Really? Seriously? He said that? Out loud? On television? OMG.

Let’s start with the basics: The only thing that justifies shooting another human being is the overwhelming need to make that person stop doing whatever they are doing to imperil a life. That need must be so urgent that it does not matter – morally or legally – whether that person dies. Here is an example: A Bad Guy (hereinafter “BG” – and how judgmental!) is running through a shopping mall, hacking people with his machete. He has already hacked six people, and now he is approaching a young mother holding her child. You have a gun. If you do not shoot, it is 100% certain that he will chop the mother and the child. Are you justified in shooting? Of course. What if you shoot the BG, but he chops the mother and the child, and then dies in the ambulance? Was that a successful shooting? No, because you didn’t stop him. What if you shoot the BG, and he stops, and does not chop the mother and child – but recovers from his gunshot wound and does not die? Successful shooting? Yes, because the objective was to stop him, not kill him. Whether he dies or not is irrelevant. Thus, we (police and non-police alike) never shoot to kill; we shoot to stop. We don’t care whether the BG lives or dies, because the goal is to make the BG stop.

Here is a surprise for the Bidens of the world: people don’t always stop when you shoot them. This ain’t the movies, where BGs are thrown backwards through plate glass windows when they are shot, while Good Guys shake it off because “it’s only a flesh wound.” If the bullet happens to hit the central nervous system (brain or spinal column), then the BG stops instantaneously; the electrical system is shut down. Otherwise, stopping is caused by one of three things: blood loss, pain, or psychological distress (fear). Blood loss can take a long time, often too long. Pain is an iffy thing, especially if the BG has lots of painkillers on board (alcohol and/or other drugs). Most stops are caused by fear: “Oh my God; I’ve been shot! I’m gonna die!”

Here is another surprise for those, like Biden, who are not knowledgeable about guns: hitting what you are shooting at is difficult. It’s darned hard to hit a human-sized paper target that is not moving. It’s much harder to hit an actual human who is moving, and who is trying, with great determination, to kill you. Depending on the police department, police officers hit the people they are trying to shoot somewhere between 10 and 50 percent of the time. For that reason, we practice shooting “center of mass.” That improves our chances of hitting the BG somewhere. If we aim at the center of the torso (approximately the heart), we consider ourselves lucky – and skilled – if we manage to hit the elbow or the hip. Because BGs don’t always stop when shot, and because so many shots miss, we don’t just shoot once and admire our work; we shoot a lot. How much? Twice? Ten times? We shoot until the BG stops doing the awful thing that made shooting him necessary and justified.

Trying to shoot somebody in the leg is an incredibly stupid idea. For one thing, it greatly increases the chances of missing. There are two downsides of missing: (1) the BG will not stop doing the awful thing that we need him to stop doing, and (2) every shot that misses has the potential to hit a Good Guy, such as the child that the BG was trying to hack with the machete or the man on the bus  a mile away. In addition, a shot in the leg rarely causes a person to stop, unless by luck the shot hits the femoral artery, in which case quick death is almost certain. Ironically, then, leg shots decrease the likelihood of stopping, but increase the likelihood of death. Biden certainly does not understand this.

On the subject of guns, as well as so many other subjects, Leg-Shootin’ Biden is full of – um – misinformation.

Don’t Mail Your Ballot (Anymore)!  But do VOTE.  And vote for me (please!)

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Election Day is less than a week away and that means that if you’re an Arizona voter, you should no longer mail your ballot.  If you’re a resident of Maricopa County, you can still take your mail-in ballot to any of the locations listed on this website, and drop it in a special box without waiting in line.  If you choose to vote this way, please drop off your ballot by Friday, so that it can be signature verified in time to be part of the initial returns.  You can then track your ballot by clicking “Check Your Status” on this website. You can also, of course, vote in person on Tuesday, Election Day.  By going to that same website, you can find a nearby voting location that allows in person voting.  You must bring valid identification.  You will get a ballot printed after waiting in line.  Fill out the ballot, and then feed it directly into a tabulation machine.

Whatever method you prefer, please VOTE!

So far, significantly more Democrats have voted.

As of October 26, Maricopa County has had:

  • 457,859 Democrat ballots returned
  • 421,858 Republican ballots returned
  • 295,622 Other ballots returned (Independents, No Party Declared, Libertarian)

This is not good for Republicans, but there is still time to catch and pass the Democrats.  There are approximately 2.6 million registered voters in Maricopa County.  They are divided accordingly:

  • Republicans = 917,596 (35.3%)
  • Democrats = 815,894 (31.4%)
  • Libertarians = 25,061 (1%)
  • Others = 839,407 (32.3%)

Republicans have the registration advantage.  Now we just need to put it to work by VOTING.

When you do vote, I ask that you vote for me, Stephen Richer, for Maricopa County Recorder, the office that oversees recordings, voter registration, and election administration.

I wrote previously for The Prickly Pear that we need to “Make The Recorder’s Office Boring Again.”  If you want a reminder as to how it unfortunately became not-boring, then check out www.FireFontes.com or PhonyFontes.com, a website produced by The Arizona Free Enterprise Club to get a sense of how the current Recorder has been incompetent, unfair, unlawful, and uncivil.

VOTE!

Stephen Richer is an attorney, businessman, and the Republican nominee for Maricopa County Recorder. He and his wife (who met while both in law school at The University of Chicago) live at the base of South Mountain in Phoenix. Learn more about Stephen at his website www.RicherForRecorder.com.

The “Myth” of Pre-Existing Conditions

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If you have a history of hypertension, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, breast or prostate cancer, lumbar stenosis, treated grand-mal seizures or any of tens of thousands of conditions in the spectrum of human disease, you have a pre-existing condition.  As a member of the human race, you either have or will eventually have one or multiple pre-existing conditions in your life. Not one medical condition or diagnosis in the vast universe of human pathology, whether minor or life-threatening, is mythical. As an anesthesiologist retired from a forty-year clinical career, virtually all of my patients had one or multiple “pre-existing” conditions. The co-morbidities in a given patient often have an important or critical impact on the management of the anesthetic. Why have I entitled this essay as The “Myth” of Pre-existing Conditions?

Let us shift our focus to the political and insurance implications of “Pre-Existing Conditions”. This focus is quite different from the medical reality of 320 million Americans’ true health care profiles. A different story always emerges when actual facts are considered in any political story, especially during an election season immersed in malignant partisan behavior. Consider the following about the history of “pre-existing conditions” since the 1990s to the present day.

  • The incessant cry of Americans being bankrupted by a “pre-existing condition” was used in the run-up to the March, 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act by a one-party majority legislative juggernaut with complete absence of any bipartisanship. Its purpose was to create fear and anxiety in the citizenry.
  • The real story of “pre-existing conditions” was then and is now that the vast majority of Americans, a large percentage of whom have existing medical conditions, are insured through employer-provided insurance (fully or in part), Medicare, Medicaid, VA coverage, the Indian Health Service and other insurance platforms that accept all patients with or without pre-existing conditions.
  • The problems of pre-existing conditions pertained to less than 1% of the population in 2009 and had been effectively dealt with by state-run, tax-subsidized high-risk pools in 37 states. The increasing movement toward state-subsidized, high-risk insurance plans for the very small (0.67%) segment of the American population trapped without insurance from job loss or a decision not to insure before illness occurred was growing, effective and appropriate for a society caring for its most needy. Obamacare ended this abruptly.
  • The 1996 HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) legislation was directed at protecting the maintenance of health insurance for Americans as well as issues surrounding “confidentiality” of medical information. Insurance companies were forbidden by statute to cancel insurance for a new condition or charging exorbitant premiums for clients continually insured prior to a new, now “pre-existing condition”.
  • The Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, raised insurance costs for American families and limited insurance options to the extreme. If you have an ACA “protected” pre-existing condition and are insured in the market outside of Medicare or Medicaid, premiums are more than 200% of pre-ACA costs and individual and family deductibles have risen to many thousands of dollars. If you or a family member have an expensive medical condition that was previously (pre-Obamacare) well covered by private health insurance with affordable premiums and deductibles, the annual cost of ACA insurance premiums and deductibles may now reach $20,000 or more before the first dollar of insurance coverage is triggered. A family with an annual income of $60,000 or more and ineligible for Obamacare subsidies is in a financial nightmare. This is not protection of “pre-existing conditions”, the rallying cry and fear mongering that was used to force the ACA into existence by a one-party vote.

This constant “Pre-Existing Condition” cry by the Democrat party and every Democrat candidate in the 2018 mid-terms and in the current election is indeed a political myth. Despite the GOP response always being to “Protect Pre-Existing Conditions”, the mythical perversion of a real medical and insurance coverage concern for a very small segment of the American population is a disgraceful use of language as a propaganda tool.

Reform of health care costs is the overwhelming issue for our economy and for all Americans relating to their medical care and access to the health care system. Unless voters are armed with the facts about health insurance and the reality of actual coverage for pre-existing conditions, their votes may be cast for candidates and a party seeking to achieve the century-long goal of a single-payer, government health care system primarily to advance political power and to create dependence. The majority of Americans wisely know or sense that a government controlled, single-payer health care system would deprive us of high-quality medical care by mandated rationing of resources and diminished future advances in medical care we expect and deserve.

Biden’s Plans to Restrict Second Amendment Rights

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The Biden/Harris campaign has posted The Biden Plan To End Our Gun Violence Epidemic  on their campaign website.  To spare you the discomfort of having to read through their proposal to regulate the Second Amendment out of existence, the following are some key features.

  • Banning the manufacture and sale of so-called “high-capacity” magazines and “assault weapons,” identified by cosmetic and functional features. The Biden euphemism for these is “weapons of war.”  Candidate Biden also wants them regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA) like full-auto firearms, short barrel rifles and sound suppressors.  Existing owners will have the “choice” of registering their “evil black rifles” as NFA firearms or surrendering them to the government.
  • Restricting firearm purchases to one-per-month and outlawing the private transfer of firearms. Online sales of firearms, ammunition, kits and gun parts would also be prohibited.  So would the possession of so-called “ghost guns” that can be assembled from kits, parts or 3D printing.  There would also be a federal requirement to report a lost or stolen firearm and punishment for not “safely” storing your firearm or preventing access by a minor.
  • Expanding prohibited possessors to include those convicted of certain misdemeanors and those adjudicated by the Social Security Administration (SSA) as unable to manage their affairs (like paying bills or writing checks) for mental reasons. They also propose the rapid identification of those who become prohibited possessors, for whatever reason, for swift confiscation of their firearms.
  • Extending the time limit that a NICS background check must be completed. Also, requiring local law enforcement to be notified when someone fails a background check.  Statistically, there is over a 99% chance that a failed NICS check is a false positive.  Under a President Biden, several hundred thousand law-abiding gun owners could experience an oh-dark-thirty SWAT raid simply because of a computer mismatch.
  • Incentivizing the state level passage of Red Flag laws that allow for firearms confiscations without due process. “Incentivizing” is political-speak for dangling the promise of federal funds to states to compel them to pass legislation.
  • Incentivizing states to establish a system to “license” firearms owners. Unelected bureaucrats would decide whether or not you would be allowed to exercise your Right to Keep and Bear Arms. They also want to treat “gun violence” as a public health epidemic.  It won’t be long before the dots are connected to prohibit firearms ownership as a medical preventative.
  • Repeal of the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” that protects firearms manufacturers from civil liability for criminal misuse of a firearm.
  • A whole lot more, such as empowering the U.S. Justice Department to enforce all these laws.
  • Remember in November!  How do you want your future as a gun owner to look?  Not voting is a decision to surrender your rights.

This article is reproduced by permission granted by the Arizona Citizens Defense League.

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The ACDL is the foremost Arizona organization protecting your Second Amendment rights, helping Arizona achieve the number one position in gun rights by Guns & Ammo magazine.

Presidential Election Chaos When Black Lives Didn’t Matter

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A nation that somehow survived the chaos of the 1876 election can survive the expected chaos of the 2020 election.

You’re no doubt aware of the predictions of chaos if the presidential election is close, due to several states changing the deadlines for mail-in ballots.

If the predictions come true, the nation will survive the chaos, based on history. After all, it survived the extremely chaotic election of 1876.

That election was between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden, to see who would replace incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant, whose administration had been tarnished by various scandals, especially scandals regarding the politically-powerful railroads, which had been paying off members of Congress with shares of stock in exchange for subsidies and land grants.

Like today, race was a big issue of the day.  It is not a stretch to say that unresolved racial issues back then laid the foundation for Black Lives Matter today.

In essence, Republicans were the party committed to ensuring that freed blacks were able to exercise their voting rights in the former Confederacy. Democrats, on the other hand, wanted to maintain Southern white supremacy, resorting to unspeakable violence if necessary.

Black lives didn’t matter much to Democrats after the Civil War.

To stem the violence, Grant had sent federal troops into the South, a military intervention that raised constitutional issues of states’ rights and further exhausted a nation already exhausted from the Civil War and the debts from the war. Southern blacks had won many elected offices because of military protection, but when the protection waned, so did their political power.

Blacks weren’t the only targets of racism. Irish immigrants in the North and South were hated about as much as blacks. Later, Italians and other Southern Europeans would replace the Irish as targets.

Ignorant of history, ‘woke’ Americans typecast all of the 100 or so white ethnic groups as coming from privilege, without realizing that Southerners put Italians in the same socioeconomic class as blacks, restricted them to black schools, and lynched eleven of them in New Orleans.

In 1876, Harper’s Weekly ran a political cartoon displaying ugly caricatures of blacks and the Irish on its cover by popular cartoonist Thomas Nast, who made a racist equivalence in the cartoon between “ignorant voters” of the Irish immigrant North and the black South.

An aside:  Several other liberal publications, including The Atlantic and The New York Times, have a sordid history in terms of racism, imperialism, and other issues, going back to the 19th century and much of the 20th century. Maybe their fixation on white guilt today is a projection of their own guilt onto those who don’t deserve such guilt.

Anyway, back to the election of 1876.

It would take a couple of pages to detail all of the shenanigans surrounding the election, so an overview will have to suffice here. Let’s begin with an excerpt from the book, The Republic for Which It Stands, by Richard White:

The Democrats had relied on fraud, violence, and coercion to suppress the black vote, and the Republicans marshaled fraud of their own and their control of the returning [election] boards to count out the Democrats. Even the Democrats agreed that Hayes had carried South Carolina in a corrupt and violent election where there were more votes cast than adult males. In Florida, first the courts and then the new Democratic legislature had intervened, resulting in three different counts, one for Hayes and two for Tilden. In Louisiana, the head of the electoral commission, with his eye on the main chance, tried to sell the results to the highest bidder, but although there is some evidence that both sides nibbled, they did not bite. The attempt failed.  Both states gave their electoral votes to Hayes.

The drama continued when Democrats got an elector in Oregon invalidated, which resulted in a tie in the Electoral College.  Congress then had to convene and officially count the votes, but couldn’t reach agreement on the count because of differing interpretations of the Twelfth Amendment and disputes over the constitutionality of its own rules.

Neither side wanted the election decided in the House or Senate. If the election were decided by having the president of the Senate count the votes, Hayes would win. If it were decided in the House, Tilden would win.

Civil War hero George McClellan, a Democrat and first commander of the Army of the Potomac, threatened to raise troops and march on Washington.

To break the stalemate, both sides agreed to create a Federal Electoral Commission, drawn from the Supreme Court, Senate and House. But that also split along partisan lines, until a compromise was reached and the impasse was broken by an associate justice of the Supreme Court, who voted for Republican Hayes. To get the vote, Hayes had to agree to not deploy federal troops in the South and leave the fate of Southern blacks in the hands of Southern Democrats. As a result, Democrats retained the House, Republicans retained the Senate, and the nation missed an opportunity to heal its racial wounds.

It would take another nine decades before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, both of which were followed by Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society. All of these did much to advance equal rights and economic opportunities for blacks, but the last two also produced misguided welfare programs that led to the breakup of two-parent families, leaving most young black males today without a father in the household.

This is one of the leading causes, if not the leading cause, of crime, poor test scores, and economic disparities among African Americans—a causal relationship that is largely pooh-poohed by Democrats, who see traditional families as a white thing (and an Asian thing). This runs counter to their cliché that black lives matter, but at least they’re now saying that black lives matter, which is not what they said in 1876.

Mark Kelly and the Second Amendment

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Mark Kelly is running for the U.S. Senate in Arizona against incumbent Senator Martha McSally.  He tries to portray himself as a “moderate” and often runs television ads without even identifying his Democrat Party affiliation.

That is tailor made to appeal to right-of-center and “maverick” Arizona voters.

Kelly is doing his best to play down his financial ties with the Chinese Communist Party, his personal corruption and his anti-Second Amendment/anti-police attitudes that he knows will not fly well in Arizona.

But bit by bit, the truth is leaking out.

The Washington Free Beacon reports that the Deputy Press Secretary for the Kelly campaign, one T.J. L’Heureux, posted his vile anti-police slur on Twitter one week before becoming Kelly’s campaign Deputy Press Secretary in August, calling them “worthless f***ing pigs.”

Kelly has attempted to distance himself from those anti-police sentiments, but unfortunately for Kelly this fits into a pattern of positions and campaign personnel that are hostile to law enforcement and the Second Amendment.  The Arizona Police Association threw its endorsement behind Senator Martha McSally in September.

The Democrat Party as a whole has continually propagated the lies spread by Black Lives Matter about the actual number of police shootings and the myth of “systemic racism.”  Mark Kelly swims with the other Democrat fish on this matter and we find no strong statements where he disagrees with his party. If elected, he unquestionably will be a Chuck Schumer rubber-stamping, loyal left-wing Democrat U.S. Senator voting to crush the Second Amendment, pack the U.S. Supreme Court and vote to end the Senate legislative filibuster that prevents majority tyranny, exactly what our Founders wrote the U.S. Constitution to prevent.

Elsewhere in https://www.thepricklypear.org we provide you a complete breakdown of the position of the Democrat Party relating to the Second Amendment and your Right to Bear Arms.

Steven Kruiser of PJ Media, points out that left-wing billionaire Michael Bloomberg is pouring big money into the Arizona campaign for Kelly through his conduit “Everytown For Gun Safety.” Arizonans don’t like the idea of big out-of-state New York City money interfering with our election process and so it is understandable why Kelly wants to keep these close ties hidden from voters.

An undercover video by Project Veritas shows how truly anti-Second Amendment Kelly is and how close his ties are to billionaire New York liberal Michael Bloomberg.

The Democrat Party is actually promoting a pro-crime agenda – spreading lies about police shootings trumpeted by Black Lives Matter, releasing criminals and getting them to vote, defunding police agencies, electing local district attorneys who will not prosecute criminal behavior, eliminating bail and then following-up by stripping individuals of the effective means of self-defense by taking away their guns.  We cannot think of a more potent pro-crime agenda than that.

Arizonans are smart enough to know when they are being conned. Despite his admirable military record, Mark Kelly should not become our U.S. Senator.  Vote NO on Mark Kelly and YES for Senator Martha McSally.

If Mark Kelly cannot support the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, how can we be confident he will support the rest of the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution?

Your Second Amendment rights, our Supreme Court as the judicial (not legislative) branch of the federal government, the U.S. Senate keeping its legislative filibuster and our expectation of societal law-and-order are all on the ballot in 2020. The choice is yours. Do not allow Mark Kelly to be a U.S. Senator from Arizona.

The Real Threat to Your Guns is Not Just Rust and Politicians

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The biggest threat to your fundamental right – your right to keep and bear arms – may not be what you’ve always feared. It may not be new laws. The risk may not even be from the two main political parties, though they both need constant watching, as Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers warned.

No, the threat may be coming from something we were keenly alerted to back in the 1950s and 1960s, which we’ve grown inured to, bored with, discarded onto history’s trash heap. We may have forgotten it as a guns-and-ammo threat, but it’s still there. As alive as ever, active as ever, working its nefarious magic, seeking to take every gun you own, every round of ammunition you possess, either by direct force or through subversive covert action. That enemy is our old friendly villain, Marxism and communism, now in control of fully one third of the world’s population and making inroads here. Mass media, infected with that scourge, is not alerting us. They hide it, disguise it, aiding and abetting a mortal enemy of our Republic.

Thomas Jefferson warned, “Be eternally vigilant” to preserve freedom. He could never have imagined an enemy like Karl Marx. The rioting, looting, arson and upheaval we have WITNESSED on our televisions every night, is being run by dedicated Marxists with announced plans, signage, upraised fists. They make no secret of it. Class warfare. Call it “racism” if you want, but that’s not it, we are as free from racism as any nation you can name, which is why American immigration is basically a one-way street – inbound. No one is breaking into Cuba, China, Africa or lining roadways escaping here. These nightly mobs have communist influences and international provocateurs at their heart. Leaving you armed to resist is not their plan.

In fact, leaving your police armed to resist is not the plan either. Stop and think. Could true Democrats or Republicans support any version of eliminating armed police, abandoning swaths of cities to mobs? No. They have been overwhelmed by a mindset, a propaganda wave, a core tool of communism. The very brainwash that turned 5,000 years of a brilliant Chinese empire’s art, music, religion, history, culture and the rest, into a monolithic, terrified, follow-the-leader brutal dictatorship is here, proposed right now, in your face.

“The United States will eventually fly the communist flag. The American people will hoist it themselves,”
–Nikita Khrushchev

The proof is in writing, in Congress (HR5717), and the Senate (S3254). While our primary gun-rights networks have been distracted with familiar lists of horribles – these bills have them all – the real gun bans are more subtle, more total, and more devastating than anything our enemies ever presented before.

You’ve heard these before. Sure, it’s not good. At least it’s familiar, mostly:

  • AR-15 Confiscation
  • AR-15 Look-alike Confiscation
  • Ammunition and Magazine Limits
  • Shopping Restrictions
  • Carry and Loaded-Possession Bans
  • Semi-auto Bans
  • Bans by gun type – Including guns with grips
  • Taxation on Arms, Ammo, Accessories
  • Registration Schemes
  • Background Checks
  • Personal Transfer Bans
  • Private Sale Bans
  • Gun Show Bans
  • Training Restrictions
  • A “Heller Ban,” Overturned in D.C. by the U.S. Supreme Court, no loaded or accessible gun at home unless under attack
  • Plus, Joe Biden’s website calls for prohibiting teaching teachers about marksmanship and firearms.

THE REAL GUN BAN: PSYCH TESTS
None of that matters though. It’s a distracting smokescreen – a diversion. Hidden in page after page of gun bans and conditions, no one will be allowed to have a gun or ammo at all – including anything you already own – without the new “comprehensive” federal gun license that’s only issued at an official’s discretion.
Democrats wrote this and put it in both houses of Congress, ignoring the fire it sets to the U.S. Constitution and the Second Amendment. Republicans have stayed quiet, regardless of their oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic.

Gun ownership under Democrat’s control requires a psychology evaluation. There is no indication who will conduct this, or how it might be appealed if unfavorable. An unelected federal board of decision makers will decide:

  • Are you of “sound mind and character” (no standards described, to be Board determined later);
  • Do you have “factors that suggest that the individual could potentially create a risk to publicsafety”  (what armed citizen doesn’t potentially pose such a risk?);
  • Do you meet or fail to meet “any other requirements the State determines relevant” (to be set after elections, without any statutory parameters – completely arbitrary, limitless control);
  • And then authorities shall, “make a determination of suitability” for your ownership and possession of arms, including your own (in other words, a “may issue” vs. “shall issue” license at the federal level, with socialists in charge, if they get their way);
  • These are written into the bill. In addition, authorities, “shall establish standards and processes by which licensing authorities can revoke, suspend, or deny the issuance or renewal of a covered license” required to possess firearms;
  • The new required federal gun license, with mandatory written and shooting testing in addition to the psych tests, and numerous other conditions, applies to all guns you own or seek.

Gun-averse mass media has “overlooked” this. The Second Amendment is being changed from an uninfringed right to a might-be-issued licensed and scrutiny under dictatorial control. Go ahead, say it: “They can’t do that!”

How can an armed electorate even resist this wild scene? Democrats’ “representatives” are “with them.” Speak against them, they attack your principles. The few people standing up against this cultural revolution find themselves the ones facing “hate” charges – thought crime. Police are ordered to stand down! The ones who stand up are decommissioned, disbanded and defunded. It’s the socialist way. One election is all that stands between this and collapse of the Constitution.

“The United States will eventually fly the communist flag. The American people will hoist it themselves,” Nikita Khrushchev predicted. Even now, our leaders propose funding Red Flag Laws (in HR5717/S3254). Mass media and many citizens think that’s great. “No, you won’t accept communism outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you already have communism…. We will destroy you from within,” Khrushchev again.

In 1963, communism’s 45 goals were put in the Congressional Record. These few lines illuminate the mob’s movement and threat to your guns and way of life:
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motion pictures.
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

It’s Marxism, infecting America – as predicted – our guns’ and liberty’s greatest enemy.

Award-winning author Alan Korwin has written 14 books, 10 of them on gun law and has advocated for gun rights for nearly three decades. See his work or reach him at GunLaws.com. This article originally appeared in Dillon’s Precision Blue Press.

Lessons Learned From the Summer of 2020

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As we survey the results of what I am calling the of the Summer Maelstrom of 2020, what do we know?

We know that extreme views of race and gender, once isolated in the crazier confines of the university, are now mainstream on the streets of America.

We know that violence against persons and property are not only being condoned but encouraged. In the case of property, we have actually seen law enforcement state publicly they would not risk their members to protect property. City officials have also abandoned whole swaths of cities, allowing them to be looted, burned and devastated in the mistaken and craven belief that if an area for rioters to “act out and vent” were permitted, the violence would end.

In an open display of soft bigotry, there is no explanation why some groups require destruction as part of their political expression or emotional therapy. Who else gets this privilege?

It has lasted over 100 days in Portland, Oregon, one of the most Caucasian cities in America and so the rationale permitting criminal and destructive behavior, if it ever had validity, has been disproven.

We know that the ‘movement’ driving this unlawful and un-American behavior has a high percentage of white rioters and an unusually high number of angry women of all colors.

We know the movement is overwhelmingly from the radical, leftist side of the ideological and political spectrum. The movement is openly anti-Semitic and has made alliance with Islamic extremists. We know that outside money from people like George Soros and contributions from many American corporations and foundations are providing logistical and moral support to the lawbreakers. Black Lives Matters is the dominant driver, Marxist in its origin and vision and seems to operate seamlessly with Antifa, recognized now as a domestic terror organization.

We know when they are not peddling lies about police bias, they are pushing for socialism in the name of “social justice.”

We know that the mainstream press cannot be trusted to cover these stories. There are many ludicrous video-captured examples of “mostly peaceful protests” with the back drop of fires and looting.

We know that the American people sense they are being poked and prodded into a race war, but at this time they are still showing enormous patience.

We know from history that developments such as this have a distinct political fault line. Overwhelmingly, the rioters are progressive, leftist Democrats and those who want the violence stopped are mostly conservative, Republican and inner-city citizens who must live with the consequences of “sponsored rioting.”

We know that the almost all the afflicted cities have been under Democrat control for 50 years or more.

We know that city mayors and district attorneys, the elected officials who are supposed to enforce the laws with an even hand, have tilted the scales towards the rioters in most of the stricken cities. They reduce or eliminate bail and because of their own personal views, refuse to prosecute lawbreakers.

We know that leadership in cities having a high percentage of black police officers or black police chiefs or black mayors have done little if anything to discourage rioting and destruction. So much for the theory that good policing requires the force to look like the community.

When the police withdraw under political pressure, what results? It is not primarily about guns. It really is about the God-given right to protect oneself and one’s property which in many cases is the work of a lifetime. Such life-long effort cannot be replaced with the casual, often heartless response: “it’s insured” or “property can be replaced.”

We have known for years of the slow response in many urban areas to emergency calls but we rarely have seen officials simply abandon whole precincts to looting, burning, and murder.

Sensing this, the American people are buying arms and ammunition at a record clip. Guns are hard to get right now and the price of ammunition has gone up fourfold. Regrettably, we cannot be assured all these supplies are being purchased by good people.
Some years ago, the working definition of a “Conservative”, was a “Liberal” who had been mugged.

Undoubtedly, there are increasing numbers of people in urban areas who feel violated and frightened by the violence.

Confidence in public officials is hardly warranted, especially when these officials see themselves as part of the revolutionary movement.

These are the lessons to be learned from the Summer Maelstrom of 2020.

Peace, security and equal application of the law are on the ballot in 2020. Where do you stand?

Lincoln’s Warning to America

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One of Abraham Lincoln’s first major speeches, the Lyceum Address, was a warning to America that rings truer yet today.

Americans are blessed to have inherited so much from the Founders including guarantees of liberty more “than any of which the history of former times tells us,” Lincoln said in 1838.

Americans’ obligation, he said, was to show, “gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general.” That would be the formula for a young nation to thrive.

In 2020, we find ourselves asking: What are the greatest dangers we face? How do we recognize them? How do we overcome them?

Our 16th president, a visionary, saw the threat not from external forces but from within.

“If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher,” he said.

The greatest threat to United States is lawlessness and mob rule, he said. “I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.”

Continue reading at Townhall.com…

County Recorder Adrian Fontes Disrespects the Law and Voters

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Adrian Fontes won his seat for county recorder in 2016 by capitalizing on an underprepared Presidential Preference election at which no one anticipated the wave of turnout.  Despite Fontes’ unrelenting criticism of then long-time recorder Helen Purcell and lofty promises to “restore democracy,” Fontes’ record as recorder is ironically marred by utter incompetence, corruption and reckless disregard for the law and voters.

In short, Fontes has been a disaster and the electorate deserves better representation.

Fontes Has Done a Horrible Job Running County Elections, Wasting Millions in Taxpayer Dollars

Fontes’ debut election was the Primary in August 2018.  By 6:00AM 62 polling centers were not operational.   In fact, it took until 11:30 AM on voting day for all the centers to be up and running.  Though Fontes was quick to pass the buck to the contractor for the voter check in system, these were not the only operational gaffes.  Public records procured by the media showed Fontes’ office received over 200 complaints from voters.  Poll workers were untrained and unprepared, voters received incorrect ballots and many instances were cited of unsecured ballots.  And the “mundane” details required to grease a smooth election process were too tedious for Fontes to bother with – many polling stations lacked the basics including working internet, printers without toner and locations that were simply locked.

Ultimately, taxpayers were on the hook for another $200,000 for outside audits to determine why the election had been such a debacle.

Fontes has claimed he needs more resources to run day to day operations, increase outreach to the community and invest in new ballot tabulation systems.  In fact, he has squandered these tax dollars hiring useless positions like a taxpayer-funded lobbyist, personnel to run voter registration drives at Democrat-rich events, and flashy new technology that come election day failed.

Fontes Has a Complete Lack of Respect for Voters

Aside from Fontes’ just being bad at his job, the current county recorder has demonstrated a complete lack of respect for the elections office and subsequently for the voters he is supposed to represent.  After a voter on Facebook had the “audacity” to question why the mail-in ballot he received did not have a clear date it needed to be returned by, Fontes told him (a fellow Democrat) to “Go f— yourself.”   Though Fontes claims he serves voters, his belligerent treatment of valid voter concerns demonstrates an actual deep disdain for being accountable to them.

This record of erratic and incompetent behavior led to the County Board of Supervisors hiring their own elections director and taking a more direct role in overseeing election day operations.

Fontes Does Not Believe He Should Have to Follow the Law

Adrian Fontes has seemed to be incapable of coming to terms with his loss of powers.  In an effort to be more relevant, this year Fontes proceeded in his cavalier fashion to unilaterally rewrite election law.  Fontes declared he would mail early ballots to all voters even those who are not on the Permanent Early Voters List (PEVL).  This was not legal.  And he was told so by the County Board of Supervisors, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State (a member of his own political party), and finally a Superior Court judge.

And as if there wasn’t enough confusion and uncertainty during these times, Fontes continued with his disregard of the law by instructing voters if they made a mistake on their ballots to cross it out and refill it.  This unlawful advice could have led to many voters’ ballots not being counted at all.  Acting upon his own authority, with blatant indifference for the law (again), a Superior Court judge (again) blocked his actions.  Of course, this was after 2 million erroneous instruction sheets were already printed at the expense of taxpayers.

It is clear when Fontes does not like a law, he simply chooses to ignore it.  Unfortunately, it is the taxpayers and voters who keep flipping the bill for his immature and irresponsible behavior.

It is obvious at this point that Adrian Fontes is not interested in the job of administering elections. Fontes sees the position of County Recorder as nothing more than a political operation to be used for the benefit of himself and his political cronies.  Voters deserve a fair, unbiased and seamless election process, something Fontes is incapable of delivering.  Come November, voters should vote accordingly.

This Blog from the Arizona Free Enterprise Club https://www.azfree.org/county-recorder-adrian-fontes-disrespects-the-law-and-voters/ is republished with permission. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of our sponsors.

Profound Leftism and Indoctrination In Our Universities: Is There a Solution?

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It’s become almost trite in our day to point out that colleges and universities are disproportionately left wing. Does anyone dispute it anymore? Universities are grossly intolerant of conservative viewpoints and Phoenix gets really hot in the summer.

But that is precisely the danger. We’ve become so accustomed to knowing that faculty are radically unrepresentative of the people at large, it no longer surprises us when we hear stories or read details confirming it. Sometimes we find it funny, on par with the satire of a witty Vonnegut or Kafka novel, mocking or laughing off some of the more rank absurdities of the university system. But it’s deadly serious. These same administrators and faculty members are propagandizing the next generation. We see the fruit of it now.

According to a Gallup poll in 2019, 37% of Americans identify as conservative, 35% of Americans identify as moderate and 24% of Americans identify as liberal. Ideologically, America remains a center-right nation. When it comes to party affiliation, the Democrats fare a little better. In another Gallup poll the same year, 47% of Americans identify politically with the Democratic party and 42% of Americans identify politically with the Republican party.

What about college professors? A recent study by Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens showed that college professors are 95 times more likely to donate to Democrats than to Republicans. The same study also explored party affiliation. Among the faculty at Harvard University, there are 88 registered Democrats for every registered Republican. At Georgetown the ratio is 75:1. At Princeton the ratio is 40:1. The more elite the school, the more unrepresentative is the faculty but even at smaller colleges and regional universities, the ratio is extremely lopsided.

Nor is this the only study confirming extreme partisan bias. A study in 2016 examined the nation’s top 40 colleges and universities, focusing on five fields: economics, history, journalism, law and psychology. The study found a ratio of 11.5 Democrats for every Republican. History was the worst, with a ratio of 33.5 Democrats for every Republican. Another study by Mitchell Langbert in 2018 examined 51 of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. At 39 percent of these colleges, the faculty had zero Republicans. Zero. The vast majority of the remainder had so few Republicans that it made virtually no dent at all in the university’s intellectual life.

Academia has leaned Left for many decades, since at least the end of World War II. Yet the problem has greatly intensified over the last quarter century. Survey data revealed that in 1969 about 27 percent of American professors described themselves as at least moderately conservative. By 1999 that number had plunged to 12 percent and by all indications, today it lies somewhere in the low single digits. The number of faculty who identified as Left (at the expense of moderate or conservative) grew proportionally. As late as 1984, only about 39 percent of American professors, on average, described themselves as Left. By 1999 that number had soared to 72 percent. The biggest shift, then, occurred around the early to the mid-‘90s, so that today it is simply a given – of course university faculty are left wing. We forget that not too long ago, faculty were not so homogeneous. We forget that universities used to be a place of discourse, debate, and disagreement between scholars of diverse ideological perspectives. Today, ideological consensus is the rule and the consensus goes one direction.

Barring fundamental changes in the university system, this trend will only worsen. Langbert’s 2018 study found that among younger, tenure-track professors, the ratio of Democrat to Republican is almost 13:1. It is worst of all in the humanities (English, literature, philosophy, history, anthropology, art, etc.). Among tenure-track professors in the humanities, there are 32 Democrats for every Republican. Think about that: only three percent affiliate with a party supported by forty-two percent of the American people. Those same professors, on receiving tenure, will train graduate students to become a new wave of PhDs, more prone to groupthink than even the last and will monopolize the search committees that hire new faculty.

What have we created?

Colleges and universities are becoming full-fledged indoctrination centers. Some have already reached that dreaded point; others are fast approaching it. Sadly, that is not hyperbole. Even STEM fields are giving way to this trend. Why have we allowed this? Why are we subsidizing this? Why are we sending highly impressionable young adults to institutions that are overtly, systemically and unapologetically hostile to ideas and values (moderate or conservative) cherished by upwards of 70 percent of the American population?

What do we do? The answer is complicated. But obviously something must be done. We can begin by urging our state legislatures to grow a backbone: demand that they hold taxpayer-funded universities accountable and refuse to subsidize them if the extreme ideological biases continue. Additionally, alumni must be encouraged to withhold donations to endowments, i.e., defund, to affect change in the profound ideologic imbalance endemic in higher education today.

This needs to be a priority. Liberty itself is at stake. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, called knowledge “the soul of a republic.” If that is the case, we’re in deep trouble.

The Golden Rule of Gun Handling: What Beginners and Experts Need to Know and Do

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“Keep your finger off the trigger till the sights are on the target.
This precept we must emphasize as well as we are able.
If you think that we are kidding, or we just need you to bark at,
A leg shot isn’t funny on the operating table.” *

Like many things that sound simple, the “Golden Rule of Gun Handling” – keeping your finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target – is more complicated than it sounds. It is easy to put your finger on the trigger inadvertently. Keeping your finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target is hard and requires your conscious effort.

Any visit to a public shooting range will reveal numerous gun owners who have their fingers on the triggers when they are not shooting. They know the Golden Rule. They can recite the Golden Rule – while simultaneously and unconsciously having their fingers on the triggers. When you show them photos of themselves with their fingers on the triggers, they all say the same thing: “I had no idea!” The challenge for all of us is to become conscious of where the trigger finger is at all times. A yoga instructor calls this “mindfulness”.

The first part is (relatively) easy: putting your finger on the trigger when actually firing a shot. After you fire the shot, though, it gets tricky. As soon as the shooting stops and the sights come down off the target – even by an inch – your finger must go straight alongside the frame of the pistol.

Here’s how to train yourself to do it right, every time. It is called the “Up-Down Drill”. First, unload your pistol. (Step One: Remove the magazine. Step Two: Remove the round from the chamber. Don’t reverse these steps or an unexpected loud noise and possible injury or death could happen!) Second, unload your pistol again – that is, unload your pistol again. Really!

OK, now find a Safe Direction** in your house. Start with your pistol in “Ready” position (see photos) with your finger off the trigger. Raise it up and align the sights with the target. (Tape a target onto your Safe Direction.) When the sights come onto the target, put your finger on the trigger. Now lower the gun back down to Ready position. The instant the sights come off the target your finger comes off the trigger.

Do that 1000 times. Seriously. 1000 times. Break it into ten sets of 100. After 1000 repetitions, it should be difficult – hopefully, impossible – to do it wrong.

One last thing: The Golden Rule (finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target) applies whether or not your gun is loaded. It is considered a terrible faux pas to say those awful words “It’s OK; it’s not loaded.” Those are the words of a fool. Resolve never to say them. It does not matter if the gun is loaded or unloaded; it is never OK to break The Golden Rule.

Go ye forth now, and be a practitioner and an apostle of the Golden Rule of Gun Handling.

*Jeff Cooper (1920-2006) was the founder of The American Pistol Institute (“Gunsite”) and is acknowledged as “The Father of Modern Pistolcraft.”

**A Safe Direction is something that (1) stops bullets and (2) won’t be a big problem to fix or replace if you shoot it. Unless they are made of brick or block, the walls in your house won’t stop bullets – anybody or anything on the other side will get shot. Your mattress won’t stop bullets. Your refrigerator will stop bullets, but is expensive to replace. Consider filling a banker’s box or two with old books/magazines/newspapers or sandbags (bags and sand sold separately at Home Depot). Bucket or jugs filled with water will stop bullets, but then you risk soaking your carpet.

Photos by Andrew Siminski

Save Yourself: Stop Believing in Lockdown

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Storied minds have argued that a failure to critically examine our beliefs makes us culpable for adverse outcomes. Beliefs lead to actions, which impact other people.

As Voltaire wrote during the Enlightenment — when society still had time away from the screen to reflect on philosophy, morality, and fundamental truth — “those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”

This has never been more true than in the age of social media, when information and opinions constantly bombard us from all sides, isolating us from our own thoughts and values. We have a moral duty to critically examine our beliefs — especially our belief in “lockdown,” the most oppressive and universally destructive public policy implemented in our lifetimes.

Is it the least-restrictive means available to minimize casualties in this pandemic?

Our belief in it was formed when we felt legitimate fear — this can lead to irrationality — so we really cannot answer this question in good conscience unless and until we take the time to conduct a proper, honest examination with the benefit of hindsight.

Any number of atrocities can occur when human beings act on unfounded, unexamined beliefs.

Consider the example of the shipowner in William Kingdon Clifford’s 1876 essay, “The Ethics of Belief.” Troubled by the condition of his aging ship, which others have suggested is not well-built and is in need of repairs, he eventually pacifies himself with these comforting thoughts: “She had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come home from this trip also.” The shipowner develops a sincere conviction that she will not sink, and acts on his belief.

“He watched [the ship’s] departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.

What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in nowise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. He had acquired his belief not by honestly earning it in patient investigation, but by stifling his doubts.”

The shipowner’s belief was built on sand — he knew he had questions to answer, but instead he took the comfortable path, and other people had to pay with their lives for it. While it may appear that he personally got off easy, his reputation, confidence and conscience surely suffered.

People who harbor false beliefs and ignore warning signs routinely end up grievously harmed: consider the investors in Elizabeth Holmes’ Theranos scam, or Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, or the parents of Larry Nassar’s little-girl gymnasts. These examples prove just how easily the trust and credulity of very intelligent people is easily exploited. It happens like magic, in broad daylight — millions are lost or gained, irreparable actions are taken — with the victim all the while believing he or she is choosing to participate in a beneficial relationship or situation.

The passengers trusted the shipowner. The investors trusted the entrepreneurs. The parents trusted the doctor. Should WE be trusting the government?

Perhaps, instead of taking the easy path of blind faith, we should challenge our government’s assertions about COVID-19 and how to deal with it. After all, governments have already admitted to manipulating us in writing:

Perceived threat: A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate in their demographic group . . . The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging.

I respectfully submit to you: anyone willing to adopt this shady tactic is not worthy of your blind trust. Governments know that emotional people are easy to manipulate. As Robert Greene wrote in the authoritative tome on human nature, “You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life…[b]ut you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe…”

Logically, terrified people want to believe in the existence of a sturdy lifeline. They like that lifeline even more if grasping onto it makes them “good people,” and turns those who prefer to swim with the tide into “killers.” Knowing what it knows about human nature, we can be certain our government knew that proposing lockdown to us at this particular moment was pretty much guaranteed to succeed.

It would be wise to take the government to task now that we’ve calmed down. What have they asked us to believe, why have they asked us to believe it, and what are the grounds for doubt?

Belief #1: “Lockdown saves lives.”

Blind faith in lockdown rapidly took hold in March 2020 like a fire in a haystack. The spark that ignited it was terror, lit by the media’s sensationalist reporting of the “disaster” in Northern Italy, shortly followed by the doomsday predictions from fancy-sounding (“Imperial College! London!”) modelers. Those same modelers offered a lifeline: — lockdown, the long awaited real-life opportunity to test a pet theory. Too bad we never stopped to question their credibility (“they sound so fancy!”) and motives (“we’ve been waiting for this moment!”) before taking any action — particularly drastic, life-altering action.

“Every man who has accepted the statement from somebody else, without himself testing and verifying it, is out of court; his word is worth nothing at all. Two serious questions must be asked in regard to him who first made it: was he mistaken in thinking that he knew about this matter, or was he lying?” ~ William Kingdon Clifford

A second, even bigger credibility issue is found when we consider the first lesson we ever learned about “lockdown.” That lesson came from China. None of us — or even our parents — had ever heard of a population-wide quarantine until the Chinese government planted the idea with a highly-publicized “lockdown” of its own.

This normalized the concept, preparing our minds to accept it as a scientifically-supported measure to manage infectious diseases. Then, after bombarding us with images of its citizens’ sacrifices, China predictably declared, “It worked! We defeated the virus! Disease is gone!”

The lifeline. The island of escape. Thank you, China — because of you, we will not die.

Little did we know that decades of public health work unequivocally established the opposite: “There is no basis [in science] for recommending quarantine either of groups or individuals.”

From the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention:

“It is hard to imagine that measures like those within the category of social distancing would not have some positive impact by reducing transmission of a human respiratory infection spreading from human to human via droplets and indirect contact. However, the evidence base supporting each individual measure is often weak.”

From the United States Center for Disease Control’s 2007 Interim Pandemic Planning Guidelines (p.25):

“[M]athematical models that explored potential source mitigation strategies that make use of . . . infection control and social distancing measures for use in an influenza outbreak identified critical time thresholds for success. . . the effectiveness of pandemic mitigation strategies will erode rapidly as the cumulative illness rate prior to implementation climbs above 1 percent of the population in an affected area.”

Even the Washington Post, in late January 2020, published an article soundly condemning the Chinese lockdown:

“This is just mind-boggling: This is the mother of all quarantines. I could never have imagined it.” ~ Howard Markel, University of Michigan medical historian

“The truth is those kinds of lockdowns are very rare and never effective . . . They’re doing it because people who are in political leadership always think that if you do something dramatic and visible that you’ll gain popular support. They couldn’t have any sound public health advice.” ~ Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of global health law at Georgetown University

We can now confirm the accuracy of these statements with live data from our lockdown experiment. We even have the scientific gold standard — a control group — Sweden. Swedish mortality data proves that not only does lockdown not “save lives,” it leads to increased mortality. Sweden has far less “excess” (above-average) all-cause mortality in 2020 than heavily locked-down areas such as New Jersey, Michigan, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and the U.K. Sweden’s all-cause mortality this year is similar to that of its Scandinavian neighbors: they each have moderate excess mortality, in line with historical averages.

Sweden also proves that COVID’s true mortality impact — when additional lives are not lost due to terrifying propaganda and draconian government actions leading to fear, despair, and the destruction of medical and social systems — is that of a severe flu. For weeks 1–32 of 2018, Sweden had 56,770 deaths. For the same weeks of 2020, it has 59,346 deaths — a difference of 2,576 or ~4%, and going down from there since mortality is now running below average.

In short, many of the weakest citizens in Sweden sadly died a few months early. While all lost time is regrettable, it is unlikely that any dying 86-year-old, in order to extend his own life by 5–9 months (the average remaining life expectancy of 70% of Swedish COVID deaths), would propose that a 30-year-old father be sentenced to lose his business and hang himself.

Yet that’s exactly what happened in countries that did lock down. The elderly we were supposed to be “saving” didn’t get to speak on the matter— instead, they got COVID secretly sent straight into their places of residence, like a fox to the henhouse. According to the government officials who issued these orders and their ideologically-aligned media, Sweden is the bad guy. We accept this perverse, overtly-biased claim and resulting atrocity only because we firmly believe in the effectiveness of lockdowns. Otherwise, we would be rioting in the streets, recognizing that the same people who created the problem sold us the remedy. Their remedy.

“We all suffer severely from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide.” ~ William Kingdon Clifford

Belief #2: It is imperative FOR EVERYONE to avoid COVID-19 infection.

Some people, particularly the very elderly with serious comorbidities, should indeed try to avoid infection. But for the millions of people at low risk, COVID should be treated the same as the flu. They should circulate normally, serving humanity by exposing themselves to the virus without hysteria, as the Swedes did. This will minimize overall mortality by reducing the duration of the epidemic, freeing the high-risk elderly from confinement earlier, and avoiding all of the lockdown deaths and other traumas. It is a scientific fact that every epidemic ends at the threshold of “herd immunity” — not before.

The alternative we have chosen — an epidemic identical in size, but longer in duration, with people at statistically zero risk hiding inside their homes getting more stressed, fatter, and sicker — is utter madness. The most tragic part is Imperial explained this to us on March 16, and posted it online for everyone to see:

“Once interventions are relaxed . . . infections begin to rise, resulting in a predicted peak epidemic later in the year. The more successful a strategy is at temporary suppression, the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination, due to lesser build-up of herd immunity.”

While Imperial designed lockdown as an ICU-capacity management strategy, it apparently did not foresee the difficulty in persuading people terrified by lockdown to go right back out and live two weeks later. “All clear! We have thousands of ICU beds staffed and ready for you! Good luck!”

Good luck indeed.

Thankfully, now we know that COVID is much less deadly than Imperial, WHO, and mainstream media led us to believe. Most of us know no one who has died — only .05% of the population has, after all. We do indeed have the all-clear, and we should feel perfectly fine conducting ourselves exactly like a Swede — and thanking others for doing just that, instead of bullying them with life-defeating, authoritarian mandates.

Belief #3: If she doesn’t wear a mask, I won’t be safe.

See above. If she acquires the infection and recovers, you will be safer than you were before. Unless you are routinely pounced on by sneezing strangers, you can wear your own mask and maintain your distance. You don’t need any help from anyone else. Established science says that masks and distancing don’t work, anyway — COVID-19 spontaneously shows up on naval ships 49 days into isolation, and similar viruses have appeared during the 17th week of perfect Antarctic quarantines. But at least you will feel like you’re doing something.

Belief #4: If I was wrong about lockdown, that makes me gullible and unintelligent.

No, it makes you human. To err is human. Admitting this is noble and altruistic, while persisting on course despite red flags is pathological and damaging. We should all aspire to be like Socrates, who understood his human fallibilities: “I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.”

There is no shame in falling for such a sophisticated propaganda scheme. Most people did. A few shining stars have since emerged to admit their mistake, quietly adopting the Swedish approach. You would be wise to join them, avoiding the fate of Don Quixote:

“As long as he fought imaginary giants, Don Quixote was just play-acting. However once he actually kills someone, he will cling to his fantasies for all he is worth, because only they give meaning to his tragic misdeed. Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to those sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.” ~ Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow

Belief #5: COVID-19 is much more dangerous than the flu.

Nope. As stated above, in terms of mortality impact, Sweden already proved that COVID-19 is indeed similar to the flu. The diseases are similar in other respects — both can have long-term health effects, both kill random outliers (the flu even kills young teachers), and both can cause hospitals to overflow, as influenza did as recently as two years ago. They have similar survival rates: ~997 out of 1,000 for COVID, ~999 out of 1,000 for flu. Over fifty percent of Americans don’t even get the flu shot, yet we have destroyed the planet to “stop” COVID-19.

Why did it happen? Because the media chose to depict this virus as Black Plague — and we believed it. Now that we know that the media can do this, we can understand why the U.K. Prime Minister — and others in his position — was afraid of its powers. He reportedly imposed lockdown because he was threatened as follows: “If he didn’t lock down, journalists will ask him on national television to accept responsibility and apologise to the families of those who have died as a result of Covid-19, because the rhetoric would have been that it was his fault for not locking down.” In other words, the media had a three-step plan: (1) convince us that politicians have the power to stop death, (2) put the politicians in the position of needing to do what the media suggests will “save our lives,” (3) watch as we drive ourselves over a cliff.

The media cannot do this without our participation. We can stop them immediately by refusing to believe their superstitious, pseudo-scientific proposition that this is the only disease in history that needed a politician-imposed lockdown to abate. They cannot trick us into burning down our own houses once we simply stop believing that politicians have the power to stop death. Standing firmly on this foundation of scientific truth, we will finally be at peace, realizing that COVID-19, like every disease in history, will infect a certain number of people, kill a minute percentage of them, and then move along, lockdown or no lockdown.

We really must stop believing otherwise. Our credulity is destroying us. So long as we do believe the myth, we are avoiding the responsibility to manage this virus the way intelligent societies always have, by permitting medical professionals to treat sick people as individuals, one ailment at a time. One cannot merely unleash a total state on the whole of society–even on nearly the entire planet–in a futile effort to scare the virus into going away.

That’s completely mystical thinking that unleashes the very catastrophe that smallpox eradicator Donald A. Henderson predicted in his 2006 plea never to lock down.

“The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.” ~ William Kingdon Clifford

Continue reading at AIER…

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This column from American Institute for Economic Research https://www.aier.org/article/save-yourself-stop-believing-in-lockdown/ is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of our sponsors.

Vote by Mail? No Thanks

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As a general rule, whatever comes cheap and easy isn’t highly valued. Yet some people these days want to take something once cherished—sacrificed for with oceans of blood and treasure—and reduce it to nothing more than a short walk to the mailbox.

I am referring to the act of voting.

About 110 billion human beings have lived on this planet since Adam and Eve. What portion of that total do you suppose were empowered to cast a secret ballot in a free and fair election? I doubt it was even as much as six or seven percent.

Where do you stand on the question of mail-in voting for this November’s election? It is a hot topic right now, propelled to the fore by the pandemic. One side says that since we are supposed to keep our distance, casting our ballots by mail will avoid circumstances that could spread the virus. The main argument from the other side is that mail-in voting presents unacceptable risks of fraud, dysfunction and uncertainty that would jeopardize the integrity of the electoral process.

Personally, I think those risks are real. Just because a mailed-in ballot gets delivered to the right place at the right time does not mean there wasn’t some hanky-panky at the moment the boxes were checked. But I do know that when you show up at a polling place, it is you and only you who’s checking those boxes in the privacy of the booth.

It took more than a month for the results of several races in the June 23 New York primary to be known, all because of a surge in virus-related mail-in balloting. Roughly 20 percent of mail ballots were ultimately rejected during the certification process.

Imagine the potential for confusion and abuse if vote-by-mailman were mandated nationwide for legislative, congressional, and presidential contests. Moreover, I am suspicious of the idea because those who are calling for it are pretty much the same crowd that doesn’t want a voter to ever have to produce identification. I think they realize that anything that makes fraud more feasible will help their political party—which is a sad commentary on that party.

In a recent commentary, the Heritage Foundation’s Hans Spakovsky argued that “Americans should insist on their right to vote in-person in their polling places in November, where they can be sure their ballots are safely received and counted.”

He reasons as follows:

Mail-in ballots are the ballots most vulnerable to being altered, stolen, or forged. Just look at the current investigation going on in Paterson, N.J., over a recent municipal election conducted entirely by mail.

Four Paterson residents have already been charged with criminal election fraud, including a councilman and councilman-elect. Evidence is surfacing of everything from voters reporting that they never received their absentee ballots (even though they are recorded as having voted) to accusations that one of the campaigns may have submitted fraudulent ballots.

Mail-in ballots also have a higher rejection rate than votes cast in person. In the Paterson case, election officials apparently rejected one in five ballots for everything from signatures on the ballots not matching the signatures of voters on file, to ballots not complying with the technical rules that apply to absentee ballots.

What about the virus, you ask? No problem. We can add a few extra polling places if necessary. We can wear masks and stand a few feet apart. We can early vote in most states. And if you know you will be out of town or ill on Election Day, you can vote absentee—a legitimate option no one objects to when it’s necessary and minimal. If the virus nonetheless adds some inconvenience to the voting process, so be it. You can complain about that some day to people who live where they can’t vote at all, or to your 95-year-old grandfather who dodged hellfire on Hacksaw Ridge.

Do not mis-read me. I am not one of those folks who thinks voting, no matter who or what you vote for, is holy writ. I would never support mandatory voting, as a few countries have. I’ve even defended a principled non-voter’s right to send a message by not voting. I urge lazy or thoughtless people to get up to speed or leave the vote to others more serious about public affairs. And to those who see voting as their license for legalized plunder, I say clean up your character or stay home.

What I am against are these two evils: corrupting the process to serve the interests of crooks who lust for power and demeaning it by requiring no real effort.

If mass mail-in voting takes hold in this country, we can add yet another of our hard-won rights to the growing pile we don’t much care for anymore. And if a walk to the mailbox gets too onerous, we could just vote by phone. Punch a few buttons from the convenience of our recliners and bingo! We will have ourselves a President, a Governor or a Senator! Then we can get back to the Khardashians before the commercial’s over.

That is not, in my view, a technique for either strengthening or preserving a free society.

For additional information, see:

The Risks of Mail-In Voting by Hans Von Spakovsky

How Important is Your Vote? By Lawrence W. Reed

The Left is Calling for Mail-In Voting: Here’s Why It’s a Bad Idea by Virginia Allen

28 Million Mail-In Ballots Went Missing in Last Four Elections by Mark Hemingway

Continue reading at FEE.org.

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This Foundation for Economic Education column https://fee.org/articles/vote-by-mail-no-thanks/ is republished with permission.
©️ All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of our sponsors.

We Need a Principled Anti-Lockdown Movement

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Shell-shocked is a good way to describe the mood in the U.S. for a good part of the Spring of 2020. Most of us never thought it could happen here. I certainly did not, even though I’ve been writing about pandemic lockdown plans for 15 years. I knew the plans were on the shelf, which is egregious, but I always thought something would stop it from happening. The courts. Public opinion. Bill of Rights. Tradition. The core rowdiness of American culture. Political squeamishness. The availability of information.

Something would prevent it. So I believed. So most of us believed.

Still it happened, all in a matter of days, March 12-16, 2020, and boom; it was over! We were locked down. Schools shut. Bars and restaurants closed. No international visitors. Theaters shuttered. Conferences forcibly ended. Sports stopped. We were told to stay home and watch movies…for two weeks to flatten the curve. Then two weeks stretched to five months. How lucky for those who lived in the states that resisted the pressure and stayed open, but even for them, they couldn’t visit relatives in other states due to quarantine restrictions and so on.

Lockdowns ended American life as we knew it just five months ago, for a virus that 99.4-6% of those who contract it shake off, for which the median age of death is 78-80 with comorbidities, for which there is not a single verified case of reinfection on the planet, for which international successes in managing this relied on herd immunity and openness.

Still the politicians who had become dictators couldn’t admit such astonishing failure so they kept the restrictions in place as a way of covering up what they had done.

That shock of Spring has now turned to a Summer of wickedness, with everyone pointing fingers at everyone else for the sorry state of life. Patience has run out and a national viciousness has taken its place. It is evident not only online but in person where strangers scream at each other for behaving in ways in which they disapprove.

What many states are calling “open” today would have been called “closed” six months ago. Sports are rare. Theaters aren’t open. In some places, you still can’t go to gyms or eat inside. Mask mandates are everywhere, and mask enforcers too. People are ratting out their neighbors, sending drones to ferret out house parties, and lashing out at each other in public places.

In a mere five months, lockdowners have manufactured a new form of social structure in which everyone is expected to treat everyone else as a deadly contagion. Even more preposterously, people have come to believe that if you come closer than six feet of another person, a disease spontaneously appears and spreads.

America has become an extremely ugly place. This is what lockdowns did.

All of this has occurred in the midst of the greatest political divide in many generations. Oddly, you almost predict a person’s politics based on their attitude toward the virus, as if sitting political figures are responsible for creating or controlling pathogens that have been part of the human experience since we first walked and talked. The politicization of this disease has been a terrible noise that has distracted from the wise disease management that characterized the American way for more than a century.

But the American people support this, right? I’m not so sure. It’s true that the TV and online media are blaring panic all day every day. If that’s where you get your information, it surely must feel like a plague. There is also the problem that people feel tremendously powerless right now. They have been locked down, silenced, humiliated, brutalized. The few attempts to get out and protest the lockdowns were greeted with jeers and derision by mainstream media. But it turned out that this was because they were protesting the wrong thing. When the protests against police brutality and racism swept the country, the media wholly approved. Yes, it all felt like gaslighting.

Where precisely does American opinion stand on lockdowns today? The polls one cannot trust: people know exactly what they are supposed to say to pollsters during a police-state lockdown. It’s usually a good guess that one-third of Americans take a position that is more-or-less consistent with human liberty – it’s not a fixed group and it shifts depending on the issue – so that’s probably a good guess now.

The incredible frenzy of the lying media has confused vast numbers. A poll revealed that many Americans think that 9% of us have died from C-19 whereas it is really 0.04%. So yes, we have a propaganda problem, starting with the New York Times, which just today demanded “more aggressive shutdowns than have been carried out in the past. The United States has not had a true national lockdown, shuttering only about half the country, compared with 90 percent in other countries with more successful outbreak control.”

None of which is true. This is pure ideological propaganda. The people who are saying true things seem to be only the 1% vs. the barrage of nonsense coming from media culture today.

We see almost no discussion in the mainstream press of the empirical evidence at home and abroad that the lockdowns make no sense from a medical and economic perspective. Medical experts for many decades have warned against disturbing social functioning in the event of disease. Preserving freedom has always been the policy priority: 1949-52, 1957-58, 1968-69, and 2005. The American revolution itself took place in the midst of a smallpox outbreak. Liberalism arose during centuries of pandemics.

And yet here we are.

This country needs a serious anti-lockdown movement, one that is not just political but cultural and intellectual, one that is deeply educated on history, philosophy, law, economics, and all sciences, and can rally around traditional American civic postulates concerning individual freedom and the limits of governments, and also around universal principles of human rights. If liberty means anything, it means that we are not locked down. It means, moreover, that lockdowns are unconscionable.

What should this movement – which need not be formally organized – study, believe, and teach?

Because property rights are the first violated in lockdown, the movement needs to embrace and champion the right of private ownership and control: of businesses, homes, and ourselves. The liberal tradition has long affirmed this principle, and it is nothing but appalling that the lockdowns took place as if private property doesn’t exist. Suddenly everything and everyone belonged to the state, and it would be the state to declare what is or is not essential, or even what is elective vs. nonelective for your medical care.

It should embrace the freedom to choose our associations, since that is what came under attack next: we couldn’t gather in groups, hold conferences, go to the movies, do anything not “socially distant” (I’m so sick of that phrase, wth dubious origins, that I could barely type it), or even go to another state to visit friends and relatives.

This movement needs to celebrate and defend religious freedom, since, incredibly, most houses of worship were forcibly closed by government. The modern idea of freedom came about in the late Middle Ages when exhaustion from religious wars gradually gave rise to the idea of tolerance. Religious toleration was the first great freedom that came to be codified in law. It’s stunning that it was so flagrantly violated this year.

It must come to terms with free enterprise and the innovation that comes with it. How much wealth and creativity has been lost in the lockdowns? It’s unfathomable. The biggest victims have been small and medium-sized businesses, whereas the large tech firms have thrived. To start and manage a commercial enterprise is a human right, the realization of which was the great achievement of modern life, as it spread prosperity throughout the world and lifted up the world’s people from the state of nature and to levels of the entrenched hierarchies of old.

Part of this liberal ideal is free trade, which has come under fire from both the left and right. Don’t forget that Donald Trump kicked off this dictatorial frenzy with his sudden and shocking bans of travel from China and Europe, which resulted in a frenzied and frantic mass crowding of airports in the days following. He did it with a stroke of a pen, overriding all his advisors. He still brags about it.

How much did his extreme reaction here inspire governors to do the same? Of course his actions reflect his persistent isolationism on not only trade but immigration too. Even now, Trump is refusing to allow foreign workers into the U.S. (except for emergency cases) because he incorrectly believes this will help the American job market. It’s an outrage: free enterprise entitles the employment of anyone from anywhere. This is a policy that is good for everyone.

So long as we are talking about freedom fundamentals, let’s talk about masks. They have become exactly what the New England Journal of Medicine called them: a talisman. They are symbols of social commitment and political loyalty. A free society rallies around individual choice, so if masks make a person feel safe, or if it makes them feel they are keeping others safe from their breath, fine. But when people attack others for resisting wearing them, and are apparently upset at the seeming appearance of rebellion from rules, this is imposition and intolerance – perhaps understandable given the times, but still illiberal.

Laws requiring face coverings in public would never have been tolerated even six months ago. And yet here we are, not only with laws but a growing number of recruits within the public to enforce them with appalling rudeness. It’s hardly the first time in history. American sumptuary laws in Colonial times mandated that people not dress in fancy clothes for reasons of piety and social conformism. Part of the capitalist revolution included the freedom to dress as one wants and the mass availability of fashion for everyone. The mandatory mask movement and its shock troops among the public is but a revival of puritanism.

The lockdowns crushed the economic prospects of millions, and government attempted to make up for that with wild spending of other people’s money and an unprecedented use of the printing press, as if government can somehow paper over the destruction it caused. Therefore, the anti-lockdown movement needs a commitment to fiscal sanity and sound money. We now know that a government with the capacity to create unlimited amounts of paper money cannot be constrained. This needs to be fixed.

As for health, the topic or excuse that unleashed the lockdowns in the first place, we surely should learn from this experience that politics and medicine need to be separated with a high wall. We have medical professionals who are traditionally in charge of mitigating disease, and they do so in line with their own professional associations and best judgement. Politics should never override the doctor/patient relationship, nor presume to know what is better for us than our own physicians.

On the matter of education, governors all over the country cruelly locked down all the schools, though there is near-zero threat to kids from the virus and there is no verified case of a child passing C-19 to an adult. Perhaps a small silver lining is that we have learned more about how parents can exercise more control over education than they have previously had. The anti-lockdown movement needs to embrace a multiplicity of educational alternatives including the possibility of full privatization so that education can again be part of the free enterprise matrix.

It’s true that anti-lockdown carries a negative connotation. Is there a better word to convey the positive dimension? My preference: liberalism. Progressives have abandoned it. It is also correct from a historical and international perspective. Liberalism and modernity are inextricably linked in history, says Benjamin Constant. A liberalism of the future needs to be prepared to understand, advocate, and fight for freedom in a non-lockdown world. No exceptions.

Which takes us to the final point. Whether this movement is working in the realms of academia, culture, journalism, or politics, there is an absolute urgency that it exercise unrelenting moral courage and integrity. Ferociously. It should be uncompromising on crucial points. It must be willing to speak even when it is unfashionable to do so, even when the media is screaming the opposite, even when the Twitter mob floods your notifications, even when you are shamed for thinking for yourself.

This time around, as you have surely noticed, even the voices of good people with good ideas fell silent in fear. This fear must be banished. The blowback against this despotism will come but it is not enough. We need character, integrity, courage, and truth, and this perhaps matters more than ideology and knowledge. Knowledge without the willingness and courage to speak is useless, because (as E.C. Harwood taught us) for integrity there is no substitute.

In the end, the case for unlocking society is a spiritual matter. What is your life worth and how do you want to live it? How important are the hard-won freedoms you exercise daily? What of the lives and liberties of others? These are everything. Freedom has never prevailed without passionate and courageous voices to defend it. We have the tools now, many more than before. They can throttle us but can’t finally shut us down. The notion that we would fail to speak for fear of the Twitter mob is absurd.

This movement, whether it is called anti-lockdown or just plain liberalism, must reject the wickedness and compulsion of this current moment in American life. It needs to counter the brutalism of lockdowns. It needs to speak and act with humane understanding and high regard for social functioning under freedom, and the hope for the future that comes with it. The enemies of freedom and human rights have revealed themselves for the world to see. Let there be justice. The well-being of us all is at stake.

Continue reading at AIER…

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This column from American Institute for Economic Research https://www.aier.org/article/we-need-a-principled-anti-lockdown-movement/ is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of our sponsors.

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