Lockdowns Haven’t Brought down Covid Mortality. But They Have Killed Millions of Jobs.

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During the early onset of covid-19 in the spring, government officials across the political spectrum widely agreed that government intervention and forced closure of many businesses was necessary to protect public health. This approach has clearly failed in the United States as it led to widespread economic devastation, including millions of jobs lost, bankruptcies, and extremely severe losses in profitability. Nor have states with strict lockdowns succeeded in bringing about fewer covid deaths per million than states that were less strict.

Consequently, a few months into the pandemic, some governors weighed the competing economic costs with covid-19 containment and slowly reopened their economies. Of course, these governors did not mandate businesses reopen; however, they provided businesses the option to reopen.

Hysteria ensued as many viewed easing restrictions as akin to mass murder. The Atlantic famously dubbed  Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s easing of restrictions as “human sacrifice” and referred to Georgians as being in a “case study in pandemic exceptionalism.” Instead, we should view the lockdowns as a case study in the failure of heavy-handed approaches in containing a highly infectious virus.

Now that we are nine months into this pandemic, there is a clearer picture of how state government approaches varied widely. It is clear that “reopened” economies are faring much better overall than less “reopened” economies. “Fueled by broader, faster economic reopenings following the initial coronavirus rash, conservative-leaning red states are by and large far outpacing liberal-leaning blue states in terms of putting people back to work,” writes Carrie Sheffield. This follows logically especially when considering that human beings learn to adapt very quickly. Now, we have learned much more about treating this virus and about who is most at risk from infection.

Not Everyone Can #StayHome

Even so, many proponents of lockdowns still contend that every covid infection is a failure of public policy. But this position is largely a luxury of white-collar workers who can afford to work from home. Lockdowns have been described as “the worst assault on the working class in half a century.” Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician, says, “the blue-collar class is ‘out there working, including high-risk people in their 60s.” Kulldorff’s colleague Jay Bhattacharya notes that one reason “minority populations have had higher mortality in the U.S. from the epidemic is because they don’t often have the option…to stay at home.” In effect, top-down lockdown policies are “regressive” and reflect a “monomania,” says Dr. Bhattacharya. With this in mind, it is easy to see why more affluent Americans tend to view restrictive measures as the appropriate response.

For many Americans, prolonged periods of time without gainful employment, income, or social interaction are not only impossible but potentially deadly. Martin Kulldorff notes that covid-19 restrictions do not consider broader public health issues and create collateral damage; among the collateral damage is a “worsening incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer and an alarming decline in immunization.” Dr. Bhattacharya correctly notes that society will be “counting the health harms from these lockdowns for a very long time.”

Mixed Messages

Bhattacharya emphasized the politicization of these restrictions: “When Black Lives Matter protests broke out in the spring, ‘1,300 epidemiologists signed a letter saying that the gatherings were consistent with good public health practice,’” while those same epidemiologists argued that “we should essentially quarantine in place.” Such a contradiction defies logic and undercuts arguments about the lethality of this virus. If this novel virus truly were as devastating to the broader public as advertised, then political leaders supporting mass protests and riots during a pandemic seem to be ill founded. This contradiction has been cited in countless lawsuits challenging the validity and constitutionality of covid-19 restrictions.

Separately, these often heavy-handed restrictions have targeted constitutionally protected rights like the freedom of religion. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito criticized the Nevada governor’s restrictions saying, “that Nevada would discriminate in favor of the powerful gaming industry and its employees may not come as a surprise…We have a duty to defend the Constitution, and even a public health emergency does not absolve us of that responsibility.” This scathing criticism, however, did not gain the support of the Supreme Court as a 5–4 majority deferred to the governor’s “responsibility to protect the public in a pandemic.”

The Worst State and Local Offenders

Such deference may be politically beneficial for the Supreme Court, but it presents a much more significant problem for basic freedoms. For one, many of these covid restrictions have been issued by state governors or administrative agencies rather than through democratic means. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has been targeted for her continued sidestepping of democratic channels and for her top-down approach.

These covid restrictions are somewhat meaningless without ample enforcement and resources, so many major American cities have created task forces for enforcing these covid restrictions. For example, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti has threatened to shut off public utilities for those who host massive house parties. Garcetti wants to treat private gatherings similarly to the bars and nightclubs he has forced closed. Not only is this ridiculous, but it is also authoritarian; there have been few checks on his ability to weaponize public utilities this way. The New York City Sheriff’s Office recently “busted a party of more than 200 people who were flouting coronavirus restrictions.” Their crime? Deputies found around two hundred maskless individuals “dancing, drinking and smoking hookah inside.” In typical government fashion, the owner of the venue was “slapped with five summonses…for violation of emergency orders, unlicensed sale of alcohol and unlicensed warehousing of alcohol.” What would we do without the government?

California governor Gavin Newsom has long been a part of this effort to restrict freedoms under the guise of public health. Governor Newsom and the California Department of Public Health released new “safety” guidelines for all private gatherings during the Thanksgiving holiday. According to Newsweek, “all gatherings must include no more than three households, including hosts and guests, and must be held outdoors, lasting for two hours or less.” Given Newsom’s interventionist tendencies, it is likely that these restrictions will be enforced. How will the government determine how many households are at a Thanksgiving meal and who will enforce the two-hour window? These are questions that journalists should ask.

Meanwhile, the varying levels of economic recovery between red states and blue states demonstrate how top-down policy can be a failure. Strict lockdowns have devastated millions of families’ incomes while failing to bring success in suppressing covid mortality. This failed experiment must be brought to an end.

Mitchell Nemeth is a Risk Management and Compliance professional in Atlanta, Georgia. He holds a Master in the Study of Law from the University of Georgia Law School, and he has a BBA in Finance from the University of Georgia. His work has been featured at the Foundation for Economic Education, RealClearMarkets, Merion West, and Medium.

This column, published 11/12/20, from Mises Wire (at Mises Institute) is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of the sponsors.

Equal Justice Under Law? Not if You’re Conservative

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How far does the Left want to go to cancel opposing viewpoints? Far enough to deprive citizens of their constitutional right to legal representation, apparently. Recently, a $500,000 negative ad campaign has been launched against law firms that are representing President Trump in his claims of voting irregularities and possible fraud in the various swing states.
Dr. John Eastman, Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law and Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at Claremont Institute, joined “Washington Watch” to discuss the Left’s growing intolerance and marginalization of anyone who does not accept the latest, constantly evolving progressive worldview, particularly in the area of legal representation.
“This is not new,” Dr. Eastman said. “The Left has been trying to cancel legal representation for positions they disagree with for near[ly] 20 years.” He pointed to just a few examples of this disturbing trend: “I remember when I tried to file a brief in support of the Boy Scouts way back in 1999 at a fairly conservative-leaning law firm, I was told ‘we’re not allowed to do that.’ And yet there were hundreds of briefs coming in from major law firms on the other side. The same thing went on in the David Daleiden exposé of Planned Parenthood selling baby parts. No major law firm would allow their lawyers to work on his behalf, so he’s got a small little non-profit helping him with scores of lawyers on the other side with some of the most prominent law firms in the country. This is an attempt to deprive people of valid representation.”
What’s truly alarming about trend is that it strikes at the very heart of the rule of law in our free republic by denying people access to justice. “You cannot have a legal system that succumbs to that kind of extortionist tactic,” Dr. Eastman observed. “Because then one side in the fight is not going to get adequate representation, and the results of the litigation are not going to be in pursuit of justice and truth, as we expect the adversarial system to lead to. When you’ve got 100 lawyers at the top firms with all of their resources against two or three lawyers on the other side with little or no resources, it’s just not a fair fight, and yet that’s the playing field they’re trying to establish.”
So how do we push back against this cancel culture that now wants to deny people due process in court? Dr. Eastman suggested that one strategy is to be very selective about the products we buy and the companies we support, because corporations have a huge sway over the legal system due to their financial stake in the top law firms they hire. “If Coca-Cola is pushing this, then we need to go to Pepsi,” he said. “We need to use our power in the market if they are going to use their power in the market to counteract it.”
COLUMN BY

Dan Hart

Managing Editor

Dan Hart is the Managing Editor for Publications at Family Research Council. His writing has appeared in such outlets as National Review, The Federalist, First Things, The Stream, The Christian Post, the National Catholic Register, and others. Before joining FRC, he served with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he worked to promote vocations to the clergy and religious life. His previous endeavors included serving as Associate Editor of iPhone Life Magazine and also in conference implementation at the Food and Drug Law Institute. Dan received a B.A. in English from Franciscan University of Steubenville. He enjoys spending time with his wife and two sons, freelance writing about music and culture, reading, golf, and playing guitar.
EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Another Pennsylvania USPS Insider Steps Forward with Story of Political Bias

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Project Veritas released a new video today of another Brave USPS Insider who says that pro-Trump and pro-Republican mail is being ordered to be discarded while pro-Biden mail is “to be treated as first-class.”
Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:

  • Elkins Park, Pa., USPS whistleblower: “The only political mail that will be delivered from now on will be that of the ‘winner,’ in this case, Joe Biden. Other political mail from other sources and senders would be put into the undeliverable bulk business mail bin.”
  • Elkins Park, Pa., USPS whistleblower: “All political mail for Biden was to be continued to be treated as first-class and delivered the day it was received.”
  • Elkins Park, Pa., USPS whistleblower: “I think that we’re a delivery service and that [playing politics] is not really our place.”
  • Elkins Park, Pa., USPS whistleblower: “The only thing that’s going to prevent a fraudulent election is people having the courage to come forward. I wouldn’t want to say that I had the opportunity to do that and didn’t do it.”
  • Whistleblower says Elkins Park, Pa., USPS Supervisor of Customer Services Walter Lee gave the order to 30 postal workers

You can watch the full video here:

What is going on with the USPS? Since when do they decide what political mail goes out or gets discarded?
This is the third Pennsylvania USPS Insider to blow the whistle on election malfeasance in the last week. There is something going on with USPS and we must get to the bottom of it immediately.
The truth must and will prevail.
RELATED VIDEO: Newsmax video on Georgia recount.

EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas investigative report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Domestic Violence More Than Doubled Under Lockdowns, New Study Finds

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New research shows that domestic violence surged during quarantine.

The unintended consequences of the COVID-19 lockdowns have been severe: mass unemployment, increased drug overdoses and suicides, and widespread social unrest are but a few of them.
On Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a paper detailing another: increased domestic violence.
Analyzing government-mandated lockdowns in India, researchers Saravana Ravindran and Manisha Shah found evidence of a 131 percent increase in complaints of domestic violence in May 2020 in “red zone districts,” or districts that experienced the strictest lockdown measures, relative to districts that had less strict measures (“green zones”).
The researchers, who used a difference-in-differences empirical strategy, found the increase in domestic violence complaints was consistent with a surge in Google search activity for terms related to domestic violence over the same period.
The authors’ findings “contribute to a growing literature on the impacts of lockdowns and stay-at-home policies on violence against women during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The findings, which also found a decline in reported sexual assaults because of decreased mobility, are similar to those from research that found lockdowns led to a 100 percent increase in intimate partner violence calls in Mexico City. A study analyzing data from police departments in four US cities showed smaller increases in domestic violence, 10-27 percent, during lockdown periods.
Globally about one-third of women experience “intimate partner violence” (IPV), which negatively impacts female earnings, labor participation, earnings, mental health, and household consumption.

The global increase in domestic violence during the lockdown period has received relatively little attention, though CNN recently reported on the increase south of the US border.
In Mexico, federal lawmakers shut down most of its economy on March 23, urging people to stay indoors. Activists told the network the action spurred “an onslaught of domestic violence,” and data show 911 calls for domestic violence are up 44 percent from the same time the previous year.
“The lockdowns triggered violence in so many ways,” Perla Acosta Galindo, Director of Más Sueños A.C., a women’s community center, told CNN. “People can’t work, there’s alcoholism, overcrowding; it’s a lot.”

To some degree, the COVID pandemic has been portrayed as a morality play. Some would have you believe those who care about people support lockdowns; those who don’t care about people oppose them. We’re presented with false choices: we can support the economy or protect American lives.
These types of arguments only serve to divide. They can also obscure a basic truth: there are human costs to lockdowns, besides the economic ones, that can ravage lives just as badly as any disease.
The Washington Post, for example, recently reported on ”a hidden epidemic within the coronavirus pandemic”: drug overdoses. One Ohio coroner said he can’t process the bodies fast enough.
“We’ve literally run out of wheeled carts to put them on,” Anahi Ortiz told the paper.
Statistics suggest the trend is national in scope. Data from the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program show that overdoses were up 18 percent in March, 29 percent in April, and 42 percent in May from the same periods the previous year.
These statistics should come as no surprise. Social scientists have been writing about the deadly consequences of social isolation for years.
It’s not just higher stress levels, disrupted sleep patterns, and altered immune systems. One 2015 study determined that social isolation substantially increased the risk of stroke (32 percent) and heart disease (29 percent).
Social isolation is also linked to suicide. While there is no comprehensive 2020 data on suicides, anecdotal evidence suggests many are struggling to cope with quarantine life. In May, during the peak of the lockdowns, one California doctor told local media his hospital has seen “a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”

As the French economist Frédéric Bastiat stressed, every policy, “produces not only one effect, but a series of effects.” The immediate and intended effects are what he calls “the seen,” while the indirect, unintended consequences are “the unseen.” “The seen” usually gets all the attention, while “the unseen” often goes neglected.
In this case, “the seen” are the victims of the virus and those who hopefully avoid spreading or catching the disease because of the lockdowns. They are, without a doubt, worthy of our care and attention.
But we also must not ignore “the unseen”: the millions of human beings who, as a result of the lockdowns, have become victims of domestic violence, drug overdoses, depression, suicide, and more.
As Antony Davies and James Harrigan wrote, “The uncomfortable truth is that no policy can save lives; it can only trade lives.” It may one day be determined that the lockdowns saved more lives than they destroyed, although recent evidence suggests the correlation between lockdown severity and COVID-19 deaths is weak. But let’s not underestimate the devastating human toll of this policy.
The lives ruined or snuffed out by the lockdowns deserve better than that. They deserve to be seen.
COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
RELATED ARTICLES:
4 Life-Threatening Unintended Consequences of the Lockdowns
The Lockdowns Crushed Minority-Owned Businesses the Most
Another Deadly Cost of COVID-19 Lockdowns: “A Hidden Epidemic” of Drug Overdoses
CDC: A Quarter of Young Adults Say They Contemplated Suicide This Summer During Pandemic
Social Isolation Is Damaging an Entire Generation of Kids
Four Newborns Die After Being Denied Heart Surgery because of COVID Travel Restrictions
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Stolen Election – American Pravda

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Bill Whittle writes:

We begin this multi-part series by stepping way back, because the scale of the corruption is so vast and so extensive that your vote might have been stolen years before the election.


Click this link to support the spread of messages like this by becoming a Member or with a one-time donation: https://BillWhittle.com.
©Bill Whittle. All rights reserved.
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EveryLegalVote.com has the Actual Electoral Vote Count by State

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There is a web site called “EveryLegalVote.com.” We tried four search engines before we found this website.  The internet tech giants, the media and those wanting to keep you in the dark make this website hard to find.
The EveryLegalVote.com website states:

Millions of honest Americans voted in 2020’s elections. But their voice is in danger of being denied by criminals committing election fraud. Just as troubling, this anti-democratic crisis is being ignored by mainstream and social media. As a result, the American people are losing faith in our election system – and our future. This is wrong but, together, we can make it stop!
EveryLegalVote.com has just been launched to help secure free, fair, and honest elections. It empowers us to expose, investigate, and eliminate election fraud. And it provides heat maps, news stories, videos, and testimonials so we can fight fraud like never before. Please join us! Click the Take Action Now button to help make every legal vote count.
And please visit us at https://everylegalvote.com to learn more. Thank you!

Here are the ACTUAL vote counts as of January 3, 2021!

Donald Trump

232

Joe Biden

214

270 to Win

STATESDETECTED FRAUDBIDENTRUMP

Alabama
9 Electoral Votes
36.12%
834,473
62.08%
1,434,159
Alaska
3 Electoral Votes
33.04%
56,849
62.91%
108,231
Arizona
11 Electoral Votes
49.39%
1,672,054
49.08%
1,661,677
Arkansas
6 Electoral Votes
34.59%
420,985
62.56%
761,251
California
55 Electoral Votes
65.07%
8,180,018
33.03%
4,152,425
Colorado
9 Electoral Votes
55.16%
1,738,985
42.18%
1,329,989
Connecticut
7 Electoral Votes
59.29%
1,059,250
39.13%
699,079
Delaware
3 Electoral Votes
58.8%
295,413
39.78%
199,857
District of Columbia
3 Electoral Votes
92.62%
258,561
5.17%
14,449
Florida
29 Electoral Votes
47.77%
5,269,926
51.18%
5,646,949
Georgia
16 Electoral Votes
49.51%
2,472,002
49.23%
2,457,880
Hawaii
4 Electoral Votes
63.74%
365,802
34.25%
196,602
Idaho
4 Electoral Votes
33.06%
286,991
63.82%
554,019
Illinois
20 Electoral Votes
55.31%
3,016,834
42.73%
2,330,734
Indiana
11 Electoral Votes
40.88%
1,239,529
56.96%
1,727,085
Iowa
6 Electoral Votes
44.92%
757,699
53.13%
896,102
Kansas
6 Electoral Votes
41.09%
542,646
56.69%
748,608
Kentucky
8 Electoral Votes
36.04%
777,813
62.21%
1,342,474
Louisiana
8 Electoral Votes
39.84%
855,630
58.46%
1,255,528
Maine
4 Electoral Votes
53.49%
419,309
43.44%
340,512
Maryland
10 Electoral Votes
63.12%
1,367,129
35.09%
759,962
Massachusetts
11 Electoral Votes
65.26%
2,247,362
32.45%
1,117,629
Michigan
16 Electoral Votes
50.55%
2,795,366
47.92%
2,650,232
Minnesota
10 Electoral Votes
52.39%
1,716,207
45.28%
1,483,551
Mississippi
6 Electoral Votes
38.93%
447,162
59.51%
683,527
Missouri
10 Electoral Votes
41.28%
1,242,851
56.86%
1,711,848
Montana
3 Electoral Votes
40.43%
243,714
56.69%
341,763
Nebraska
5 Electoral Votes
39.13%
367,930
58.52%
550,231
Nevada
6 Electoral Votes
50.05%
703,486
47.66%
669,890
New Hampshire
4 Electoral Votes
52.57%
422,284
45.47%
365,248
New Jersey
14 Electoral Votes
58.41%
2,093,262
40.15%
1,438,777
New Mexico
5 Electoral Votes
54.17%
498,022
43.61%
400,920
New York
29 Electoral Votes
58.3%
4,235,992
40.38%
2,934,143
North Carolina
15 Electoral Votes
48.59%
2,683,787
49.92%
2,757,112
North Dakota
3 Electoral Votes
31.74%
114,687
65.03%
234,962
Ohio
18 Electoral Votes
45.19%
2,576,590
53.28%
3,038,247
Oklahoma
7 Electoral Votes
32.28%
503,890
65.37%
1,020,280
Oregon
7 Electoral Votes
56.47%
1,318,475
40.37%
942,737
Pennsylvania
20 Electoral Votes
49.69%
3,348,780
49.15%
3,311,966
Rhode Island
4 Electoral Votes
59.44%
300,325
39.07%
197,421
South Carolina
9 Electoral Votes
43.42%
1,092,330
55.09%
1,385,967
South Dakota
3 Electoral Votes
35.6%
150,475
61.77%
261,108
Tennessee
11 Electoral Votes
37.36%
1,139,364
60.65%
1,849,791
Texas
38 Electoral Votes
46.32%
5,216,321
52.15%
5,872,348
Utah
6 Electoral Votes
37.23%
444,531
58.72%
701,078
Vermont
3 Electoral Votes
64.89%
227,231
31.73%
111,131
Virginia
13 Electoral Votes
54.1%
2,412,893
44%
1,962,325
Washington
12 Electoral Votes
58.79%
2,303,430
38.65%
1,514,563
West Virginia
5 Electoral Votes
29.98%
259,193
68.23%
589,848
Wisconsin
10 Electoral Votes
49.45%
1,630,619
48.83%
1,610,073
Wyoming
3 Electoral Votes
26.55%
73,445
69.95%
193,454

Note: In some cases the latest voting data may be delayed, and as more fraud is reported and analysed the fraud numbers may continue to increase. We have a significant amount of voting data and suspected fraud examples that we have received and have yet to process, so expect regular updates. This site is not able to legally certify specific allegations of fraud, but will share the information received with those who can.

©EveryLegalVote.com. All rights reserved.

Joe Biden’s ‘Transition Agenda’ is Full of Big Government Power Grabs

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Biden’s rhetoric focuses on restoring order and stability amid emergency, but the details of his transition agenda involve a radical upheaval of our economy.

Joe Biden plans to hit the ground running after Inauguration Day.
Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have released a sweeping transition agenda they hope to implement after taking power. It focuses on several main issues: COVID-19, economic stimulus, racial equity, and climate change.
While Biden campaigned as a moderate Democrat, this transition agenda is very radical. It includes a whole host of policies that go far beyond the “return to normalcy” rhetoric that defined his campaign.


For example, Biden promises to respond to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic by further making use of the Defense Production Act. The emergency law allows the federal government to seize control of private industries and dictate their manufacturing. Biden says he would use this power to commandeer more private manufacturers and force them to build up the US’s supply of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE).
Biden also says he would use the COVID-19 crisis as cause to push for a massive expansion of government control of Americans’ healthcare.
Per his transition website, Biden will push for a government-run “public option” that “competes” with private health care companies.
As Pacific Research Institute healthcare analyst Sally Pipes has explained, this would lead to socialized healthcare in short order. Why?
Well, the government can force medical providers to accept lower rates and subsidize itself. Businesses can’t. No private company can “compete” with an institution that writes the rules of the game. They could eventually all go out of business, leaving just the government.
Biden says this plan is needed in the name of emergency pandemic response. But his public option would prove more than a short-term measure—it would almost certainly put the US on the path to permanent government-run healthcare for all.
On the economic front, Biden’s rhetoric focuses on restoring order and stability, but the details of his transition agenda involve a radical transformation of our economy toward more state control and intervention.
For example, Biden’s emergency economic recovery plan includes permanently implementing a federal $15 minimum wage. Slipped into his crisis response, this provision would put national price controls on the labor market and, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, eliminate millions of jobs.
That’s right: Biden has snuck a highly-debated big-government economic policy into the fine print of his COVID-19 emergency plan. And this quiet economic overhaul extends beyond the minimum wage.
“This is no time to just build back to the way things were before, with the old economy’s structural weaknesses and inequalities still in place,” reads Biden’s transition website. “This is the moment to imagine and build a new American economy for our families and the next generation.”
This overhaul would include a federal bailout for bankrupt state and local governments and further expansion of what was supposed to be a short-term, ultra-generous augmentation of unemployment benefits. Indeed, remember the benefits that paid 70 percent of the unemployed more to stay home on welfare than to go back to work?
Biden wants to extend what was sold as an emergency measure. (And, I’m sure, extend it after that, and after that…)
The obvious labor disincentive created evidently does not concern Biden, or, he has decided it is a price worth paying for a massive expansion of the welfare state. So, too, Biden would seize upon the pandemic to inject the government further into the labor market through the creation of a “Public Health Jobs Corps.”
And, as part of his “emergency” economic response, Biden wants to pass the PRO Act, a law permanently destroying many gig economy jobs and erasing right-to-work laws nationwide.
Oh, and don’t forget about climate change, of course.
The Biden-Harris transition agenda also promises to immediately address climate change and “achieve a carbon-pollution-free power sector by 2035.” In pursuit of this drastic goal they would inject government resources into the upgrading of 4 million buildings and 2 million homes as well as promoting the construction of 1.5 million new “sustainable” housing units.
We should acknowledge that all of these policy overhauls are eminently debatable. While free-marketeers and fiscal conservatives will no doubt find many of them harmful, people of good faith may support the Biden agenda.
What’s really disheartening is the quiet manner in which clearly radical policy provisions have been slipped into the Biden transition agenda and emergency response. In this, we can observe one of the perennial dangers of government power—that it will seize on emergencies to expand, yet never fully recede.
This is the danger economist Robert Higgs identified in his seminal work Crisis and Leviathan as “the Ratchet Effect.” As I’ve written before:

Higgs showed how throughout history, crises have been used to excuse government power grabs. After each crisis, the government lets go of some of the power, but never all of it. As a result, the federal government’s power (the Leviathan) has ‘ratcheted up,’ crisis after crisis, throughout the last hundred years.

This is seemingly what the transition agenda is constructed to do.
Of course, Biden and Harris have every right to argue for their progressive, big-government agenda once in office. However, we should all demand that they be upfront with the American people about what they are doing.
Otherwise, millions may unknowingly acquiescence to permanent government power grabs—masquerading as short-term emergency measures—that we may never fully be able to reverse.
COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Opinion Editor at the Foundation for Economic Education.
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The Arizona Corporation Commission “Regulates” Our Climate Thirty Years into the Future

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On October 29, almost out of the public eye, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) gave final approval to a dreadful regulation, mandating all energy in the state be produced with zero carbon emissions by 2050. Arizona has its own mini-Green New Deal!

The consequences will be devastating to Arizona’s economic competitiveness. A mere 15% mandate imposed in 2007 had a $1 billion impact on ratepayers and that was low-hanging fruit. Voters in 2018 soundly defeated a ballot proposition similar to the Commission’s.

The absurdity of legislating (by regulation) 30 years into the future was apparently lost on the three commissioners (two Republicans) who voted for the measure. Policymakers in 2050 will be elected to enact their own current priorities, not ones from 30 years ago. Attempts to gain credit for future emissions reductions without bearing the economic consequences are mere virtue signals on the cheap.

To be slightly fair, Commissioners are relentlessly targeted by environmental activists, known for their cult-like hysteria. Wildly impractical, poverty-inducing and ineffective solutions are common in today’s climate politics.

Hysteria production was the obvious goal of Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who wowed the UN and the Davos Economic Forum, sternly warning that we have only 12 years to avoid turning our planet into an uninhabitable hellhole.

Several prominent scientists and no less an expert than AOC herself confirmed her claim. Al Gore and others have made a handsome living proclaiming alarmist deadlines, most of which have already passed.

Fear of the End of Days isn’t the only driver of environmental radicalism. It’s also another social justice movement. Global Climate Strike, known for organizing massive demonstrations worldwide, demands that we “ensure a rapid energy revolution with equity, reparations and climate justice at its heart”.

These self-appointed experts aren’t searching for the most feasible ways to limit carbon emissions. They demand instead “non-corporate solutions that recognize the traditional knowledge, practices and resilience of indigenous people”.

Climate change thus conceived incorporates rejecting capitalism and technological innovation while implementing a wish list including, among other items, minimum wages, forgiveness of international debts and “access to nature for all”.

But the mother of all proposals to zero out carbon emissions is the federal Green New Deal. As outlined in a report produced by congressional Democrats, it would “mobilize every aspect of American society on a scale not seen since World War II.“

Every building in America would be upgraded or replaced for “state of the art energy efficiency”. High speed rail would replace air travel. The report proclaims nothing less than “a massive mobilization of all our resources into renewable energies.”

The GND would completely transform how we produce and consume energy, harvest crops, drive cars and manufacture goods. But all this coercive transforming would not come cheap.

The net cost of the GND is difficult to pinpoint, but credible estimates are in the 50 to 90 trillion range, an unimaginable sum many times our total GDP. But don’t worry. According to the report, “the investments will be paid for with public money appropriated by Congress”. Isn’t that nice?

But here’s the clincher. Even a fully implemented GND would have only a negligible effect on the earth’s climate. Using the methodology developed by the UN Climate Panel, eliminating all U.S. carbon emissions would make the globe only 0.138°C cooler by 2100. If the entire developed world also went to zero, the effect would only be 0.278°C by 2100. For this we would devastate our way of life?

Even some prominent left-wing intellectuals realize that this is laughingstock material. As Peter Franzén put it in the New Yorker, “to prepare for the coming climate apocalypse, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it “.

Each dollar we waste on pipe dreams is one less dollar we have to spend on what humans always do in the face of threatening change: adapt accordingly. Climate change is a problem and anthropogenic warming is real but the wisdom of the crowd is also correct: we have other equally vexing, expensive problems to deal with.

We can get through this if we use human intelligence to stay calm and thoughtful – not like the Arizona Corporation Commission.

 

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.

 

Why Do Dead People Vote for Democrats?

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As controversy swirls around the latest Presidential election results, we need to ask ourselves some basic questions.

Why do dead people overwhelmingly vote for Democrats?

Historians widely agree that the election of 1960, the state of Illinois was delivered to the Democrats by the Daley political machine in Chicago. That resulted in the defeat of Republican Richard Nixon and the election of Democrat John F. Kennedy. Robert Dallek, who wrote definitive biographies of both JFK and LBJ, concluded that Daley “probably stole Illinois from Nixon”. However, some suggest Kennedy would have won without it.

Nevertheless, Nixon considered contesting the election, but given the tense situation in the Cold War, decided against doing so.

There is considerable speculation that the dead may again be pivotal in our most recent election. Voting by dead people and voter fraud has a long tradition in America, especially among Democrats.

You would think these events alone would perk up the interest in the dead by political scientists and pollsters. But no, this group remains largely marginalized and ignored.

Some have speculated it is because the dead are notorious for not responding to pollsters.  That may be true but their participation is still important to our democratic process.

We think it more likely Democrats simply have a better ground game. Either way, it is a grave problem that needs to be explored.

Democrats simply have more experience at mobilizing the dead. And the dead, are vulnerable so to speak. No one contacts them very often. If Democrats contacted you every two years and said they needed your vote, how would you respond?

Not only are they seeking your vote, they might let you vote multiple times and even fill out the ballots for you. From this perspective, it is understandable why the dead might vote for Democrats. All of us respond, or would try to, when we are made to feel important. That is especially so if one feels ignored for a long time.

Make no bones about it, the Democrats simply are better at reaching out to the dead and getting their vote.

Republicans cannot hope to be competitive unless they develop a better outreach to the deceased community. They must learn to dig deeper to uncover more voters. Failure to develop a competitive strategy could be a deadweight on the GOP for years to come.

 

Inconceivable! – The “Election” of Joseph Biden

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The last week has seen some of the most bizarre behavior I have ever witnessed by our country. Yes, we had an election, complete with the usual vitriol, slanders and innuendos. Yes, we had the usual partisan lines drawn. Yes, we had the usual swamp dwellers climb out from the swamp and try to sway the masses to their candidate. None of this is unusual, so why is the current result of the election inconceivable? This happens in every election process. What made this election so different?

Let us just review the state of AZ. This is a proud state that remains rooted in its western independence, so much so that approximately 1/3 of all voters here are registered independent. They believe in the Second Amendment. They believe in the First Amendment too. So, what was different about this election? Let’s begin with the results as stated by the Secretary of State, Katie Hobbs: Biden received 1,643,488 votes and Trump received 1,626,536 votes. What is so unusual about that? On it’s face, there is nothing unusual about it. Underneath the numbers, a lot of this defies any reasonable test of logic.

Let’s begin with the anecdotal evidence. The Trump campaign made nine, yes nine, campaign trips to the Grand Canyon state. Every visit was overflowing with supporters, not just at capacity but people lined up for hours to get into these events. The enthusiasm was palpable around these events, there was never an empty seat or even room to add another person without running into trouble with the fire marshals. Let’s contrast this with the one, yes, one event that the Biden team held in Phoenix – if you took away the media, the Secret Service detail and his staffers, would have been empty! Virtually no one came. I get that this is a Covid-19 campaign environment, social distancing is considered important by certain doctors and that some members of the public are reluctant to come out of their homes. But it defies logic to think that a voter response like that would be the foundation for the highest voter turnout ever. Yet that is exactly what we are expected to believe. Inconceivable!

Here is a Presidential candidate who virtually never left his basement in Delaware. He managed to get through two debates, although each required almost a full week of rest and preparation just to be able to stand upright and maintain coherence for 90 minutes. He then would retire for ‘a few’ days in order to recuperate. It begs the question, at age 78, can he even handle the intense and consuming demands of POTUS? His cognitive gaps are staggering and blatant, his numerous gaffes in public speaking are horrific and he rarely seems fully aware of where his or who he is with. This is the compelling rhetorician who was able to de-rail the Trump train? Inconceivable!

A quick look at the numbers: 2008 was an historic vote. We had the first African American candidate on the ballot and we had just gone through eight years under George W. Bush which culminated in the Great Recession. It was not a big surprise that the country was looking forward to a new path forward, yet even in one of the biggest turnouts in American election history, Obama was only able to garner 44.9% of the AZ voters to his cause for his 2008 campaign to victory; granted this was against a local favorite. In 2012, Mr. Obama again was riding his populist wave and achieved another term in the White House but his success in AZ waned further to 44.1% of the vote, this time against Mitt Romney. Let’s try the Hilary Clinton campaign in 2016, surely this would be a record breaker! Not exactly, she was only able to get 46% of the vote as voter apathy hit an all-time high in the new millennium with voter participation declining to 70% of the voting population. All three elections from 2008 forward were solid red for the Republican party. So, what was different in 2020?

First, we had Covid-19. Second, we had to shut down our entire economy for a quarter. Third we had to figure out how to re-start the economy under some bizarre and illogical regulations. Social distancing, masking, working from home, the death of the fitness industry – all new circumstances we all have had to adjust to. Oh, yes, and we had a Presidential election for the leader of the free world. One candidate: highly visible, highly energized, and crisscrossing the USA in order to gain support. Another candidate who was rarely seen outside of his basement. At this juncture, we are asked to believe that Mr. Biden won this election of the people of the United States. Inconceivable!

Mr. Biden’s compelling campaign strategy of never leaving his house, never holding a press conference and never issuing a campaign platform or speech was enough carry him in this predominantly Red state. Remember, this is the same candidate who was unable to fill an elevator with his supporters on the campaign trail. He chose as his VP, the most Socialist member of the Senate. His son and brother are embroiled in pay-to-play schemes in China, Ukraine and Russia. His campaign strategy was to hide from the press, the people and any scrutiny. The strategy that we are expected to believe generated the highest voter turnout total in AZ history: 77.6% of the electorate, more than Barack Obama and more than Hilary Clinton. How (without being inconceivable)?

We may never know as our Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs who oversaw the process is doing her best to avoid scrutiny during the process. There are serious allegations of fraud in FL, GA, TX, MI, NV, PA and AZ from two software programs that have manipulated votes around the country (called The Hammer and Scorecard) as whistleblower Dennis Montgomery, their architect who built the program for the 2009 Obama intelligence agencies, maintains. At the very least, this level of fraud requires that the governor demand a recount of this election. The very foundation of our Republic is at stake. Two final thoughts: “sunlight is this best disinfectant” and democracy dies in darkness. Let us shed some sunlight and dispel the darkness. The doubts over this election process are just too great to ignore. They are indeed inconceivable.

VIDEO: Tucker Carlson, ‘It’s Hard to Trust Anything!’

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Tucker: We heard you. It’s hard to trust anything. Here’s what we know.
WATCH:

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Purple People Without a Political Party: A purple person recounts a lifetime of living among the red and blue

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TUCSON – As the nation has divided into red and blue (Republican and Democrat), purple people like myself no longer have a political party.

Most of us are classical liberals or distant cousins to today’s libertarians.

Purple had become our color because we had preferred a blend of red and blue policies at the national level. But we no longer prefer the blend because of what the two parties have become.

A long time ago, the Democrat Party was attractive to purple people because it stood for civil liberties, working stiffs, the poor and balanced budgets. And the Republican Party was attractive because it stood for prosperity, low taxes and balanced budgets.

Both parties then proceeded to tarnish themselves with foolish wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Drugs), huge deficits, a big government isolated in the out-of-touch Imperial City of Washington, the financialization of the economy, the screwing of working stiffs, and a failure to address the root problems among the black underclass, choosing instead to pander to middle- and upper-class blacks, who were doing well without the paternalism and tokenism of half-baked diversity programs.

Democrats went on to embrace globalism, racial and identity politics and socialism while taking money from Wall Street and Silicon Valley and snookering poor minorities. Republicans went on to embrace globalism and corporatism while forgetting Main Street.

Trump saw a political opening and stepped in with his nationalism and his populist appeals to working stiffs. In some ways he was like Teddy Roosevelt and the Bull Moose Party. Unlike the old Bull Moose Party, however, Trump succeeded in winning the presidency; but like the Bull Moose Party, his movement could end in the dustbin of history, due to demographic trends and corresponding changes in American values, especially among miseducated millennials and their offspring.

Democrats and Republicans have become eaters of purple people, in the political sense. They should adopt the hit song of 1958, “The Purple People Eater,” as their theme song.

Although Democrats and Republicans have forsaken purple people at the national level, many reddish cities and states are better for them at the local level, including those run by Democrats who govern with a reddish tint. Reddish locales are also better for people of all political colors, skin colors and socioeconomic classes.

To that point, two respected demographic researchers have developed an Upward Mobility Index for the nation’s 107 largest metropolitan areas—those with populations of 500,000 or more in 2018. The index weighs the factors that lead to upward mobility and entry into the middle class for the three largest ethnic and racial minorities: African-Americans, Latinos and Asians.

The Upward Mobility Index shows that cities with bluish policies—affirmative action, programs for racial redress, strict labor and environmental laws—help nonwhites far less than reddish cities with low housing costs, friendly business conditions and reasonable tax rates.

That finding matches my own research and my own experience in living in red and blue locales.

I began life in the working-class neighborhood of my hometown of blue St. Louis, then later moved to the blue barrio of San Antonio, then served in the blue/red Army, then moved to blue Chicago to start my business career, then moved to the red metropolis of Phoenix, then moved to blue New Jersey, then moved back to the red metropolis of Phoenix, and finally, for family reasons, then moved in retirement to the deep blue of the Tucson metropolis, where Democrats have had a political monopoly for decades in the City of Tucson and the surrounding Pima County.

Now I find myself living in a blue state, due to Arizona turning from red to blue in the 2020 election and voting in favor of a class-resentment proposition that will increase taxes on the so-called wealthy and cause the state to lose its primary competitive advantage. As a result, fewer Californians escaping the Golden State will move to Arizona. They will keep driving until they reach Texas, where they will try to turn that state blue.

To see what life is like among the blue and red, below is a synopsis of life in each of the places I’ve lived.

City of St. Louis

The Democrat machine of the City of St. Louis brought corruption, bloated government, decline and crime to what had been one of the nation’s largest and most prosperous cities in the early twentieth century. During its heyday, the city wanted nothing to do with the surrounding reddish county, even to the extent of establishing its own county-level courts and services. Now it’s dependent on the county for life support.

Personal anecdote: When the city was well into its decline, one of my college jobs was working for a former city mayor whose shady company specialized in helping taverns in renewing their liquor license. The job required getting the signatures of a majority of property owners within a 200-foot radius of a drinking establishment, which was often in a slum. I quit after seeing the sordidness of the process and learning that most slumlords lived in leafy liberal enclaves.

San Antonio

This city was an impoverished, crime-ridden economic backwater when I lived there. It later became wealthier by means of reddish economic policies and the annexation of much of the surrounding reddish Bexar County. It also had the benefit of being located in reddish, low-tax Texas.

Personal anecdote: I would be awakened in the barrio to the sound of gunfire, got caught in the middle of a gunfight one night and had my car stolen once and my wheels stolen twice.

Chicago

It’s difficult to top Chicago and Cook County in corruption, high taxes, crime, and bloated government. This is such common knowledge that nothing else needs to be said.

Personal anecdote: Chicago was so corrupt that when I was buying a house there, my real estate attorney asked for $200 to bribe a county clerk to expedite the title recording.

New Jersey

On second thought, the Garden State may top Chicago in corruption, taxes and bloated government.

Life in the Garden State came with potholed county and state roads, piles of trash and litter along roadsides, and sleazy Italian mobsters who gave Italians a bad name by controlling the garbage industry, other industries and politicians. The state was so disgusting and misgoverned that an overpass on the major east-west artery of Interstate 78 burned down and was closed for months when a 40-foot-tall pile of illegally-dumped trash started on fire.

Personal anecdote: Taxes in New Jersey were so high that my wife and I paid annual property taxes of $14,000 (in today’s dollars) on our 2,200 sq. ft. house in the suburb of Basking Ridge. By contrast, we paid $3,500 in property taxes on our former 3,700 sq. ft. house in the Phoenix suburb of Scottsdale.

Metro Phoenix

When my wife and I first moved decades ago to a blue-collar neighborhood in bluish Phoenix, the city was still somewhat of a cowboy town, with a smattering of resorts and retirement communities. It was not unusual to see guys in cowboy hats and boots with six-shooters and holsters on their hips. But the metropolis was clean, well-managed, had visionary leadership and bipartisan elections and oozed optimism and promise.

When we moved to Scottsdale years later, that suburb had grown from a sleepy bedroom community to a thriving, hip place to live, work and play, thanks to the visionary leadership of former mayor Herb Drinkwater, whose party affiliation was unknown to residents and didn’t matter to them.

Anecdote: Scottsdale government was so forward-looking and efficient that the city invented and implemented a new way of picking up trash, a way that reduced the number of employees per truck to one: the driver. Under the system, homeowners rolled a trash bin to the curb on pickup days, where the bin was picked up and emptied by a lift operated by the driver of the trash truck. The system is now widespread, but at the time it was the opposite of the prevailing union featherbedding in Chicago and New Jersey.

Tucson

The dark-blue City of Tucson and surrounding blue Pima County are examples of what decades of one-party government and partisan elections can do to a city and county.

The city has a poverty rate twice the national average, a rate of property crimes near the top nationally, below-average test scores, poorly maintained roads and parks and widespread shabbiness.

The surrounding unincorporated county is wealthier, but streets are in such disrepair that if I were to describe them accurately, you’d think I was lying. Parks are in similar condition and too many commercial and public properties are poorly maintained. Roads are so littered that my wife and I come home from our daily walks with bags that we’ve filled with the detritus from residents who have become accepting of bad government and desensitized to the consequences.

In spite of being the home of the University of Arizona, which is a major research university, the metropolis as a whole is an economic backwater shunned by large corporations as a headquarters location. As such, ambitious college graduates tend to move elsewhere for opportunities, especially to such cities as Phoenix, Denver and Dallas. And even though big companies are now letting their headquarters’ employees work from anywhere due to the coronavirus, Tucson doesn’t seem to be on their radar, in spite of its favorable climate, pretty natural setting and nearby outdoor attractions.

Meanwhile, local politicians engage in hollow virtue-signaling about the poor, climate change, and other progressive pieties. For instance, the mayor of Tucson wants to plant thousands of trees to counteract global warming – this in a city without abundant water that already does a lousy job of maintaining existing vegetation.

Personal anecdote: When my wife and I moved from well-run Scottsdale to badly-run metro Tucson, we ended up paying 50% more for the combined total of property taxes, water, sewer, trash pick-up, and fire service – although our house here has the same assessed value as our former house.

In conclusion, regardless of what color they are, people generally do better in reddish cities, including purple people.

AN ATTEMPTED ELECTION THEFT

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Increasingly, it looks like the election process, particularly in battleground states, is so flawed that their results, as presently reported, cannot stand.  Evidence has been mounting faster than we can tally it demonstrating that we have indeed been witnessing an attempted election theft on a massive scale, and thankfully, it looks increasingly likely to fail.
The attack on election integrity took place in multiple states using both conventional and cyber methods. On the conventional front, physical manipulation of ballots and tabulation processes have been perpetrated in selected jurisdictions. The malfeasance took multiple forms, seemingly centered   on the tampering of mail-in ballots.  In Philadelphia, multiple efforts were made by election officials to hide the tabulation process from the public, efforts so brazen that they have included disobeying court orders to allow representatives from the Trump campaign and the Republican Party from overseeing the counting process.  The brazenness of their efforts was heightened by the actual changing of the counting facility’s layout to make sure that counting stations were too far to allow for any effective oversight.
Philadelphia was also the first subject of Supreme Court intervention when Justice Alito ordered the facility to separate out and seal ballots that came in after 8 p.m. on November 3, 2020.  Unconfirmed by this writer are reports that Justice Alito had to issue the order twice because of noncompliance.  Regardless, as of this writing, there is no evidence the orders were obeyed.
In Georgia, a video seems to show thousands of navy ballots being found in nearby dumpsters with no explanation as to how or why they got there.
In Michigan, there is the late arrival of over 100,000 ballots, all for Biden, in one mysterious batch. Moreover, the GOP claims to have collected over one hundred affidavits from poll workers and post office employees, amongst others, attesting to the frauds they have witnessed.  These include reports from postal workers ordered to change the receipt-dates of ballot envelopes received after the election deadline so that they would be falsely stamped as having timely arrived.  And similar to Philadelphia, Wayne County poll watchers have been kept from witnessing tabulations, this time through the use of locked doors and covered windows.
In Nevada, the GOP has already filed suit alleging over 3,000 instances of persons with residencies outside of that state who nevertheless cast ballots in the Nevada election.  The plaintiffs report this to be the first of many batches they will be providing, some of which involve the deceased and may number as many as 7,000 votes.
On the virtual front is the intrusion of software designed to flip votes.  A vote-counting software by Dominion, called Hammer, appears to be the conduit for the manipulation.  The software is equipped with an app called Scorecard designed to flip up to 3% of the votes.  Discovered as a “glitch” by a poll worker in Michigan, the computer program was identified as the culprit in flipping 6,000 Trump votes to Biden votes (a 12,000 vote swing) in Antrim County.  Manual  tabulations have handed that county back to President Trump, but a review of the various programs used throughout Michigan indicate forty-seven counties may have been affected.  It also appears the software was used in eleven states, including every state presently under contention.
The origins of the Hammer and Scorecard are even more disturbing as they seem to link its production and distribution to Senator Diane Feinstein’s family and the Chinese.  Most compelling is a conversation between Steve Bannon and Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney that took place prior to November 3, 2020.  Here, General McInerney reports that Hammer is software developed by the NSA and picked up by the CIA as a Signals Intelligence Program (SIGIP).  According to McInerney, the Obama Administration added Scorecard to change vote counts by up to 3%.  What’s most compelling about this interview is McInerney’s prediction that the program would deploy on election night.  “They’re trying to set up this voting thing for Tuesday night,” said McInereny.  “It’s gonna look good for President Trump, but they’re going to change it.  And that’s the danger that Americans and everybody must realize.”
A simply amazing, apparent demonstration of the moment the “glitch” took place was captured by one CNN viewer involving the  Andy Beshear/Matt Bevin race in Kentucky.  The viewer showed the exact moment when Bevin lost 560 votes and Beshear gained the exact, same number.
Adding credibility to the concerns are the statistical anomalies in vote tabulations.  Benford’s Law, a statistical analysis used to detect fraud, evaluates the distribution of the first digits in multiple results.  This cycle, all elections tested, except Biden’s, comply with the predictions of the law.
Then there are the statistical impossibilities.  It is highly unlikely in an election that saw an increase in House seats for the President’s party and no change in his senate races, that the President would not prevail.  Of course, the mysterious arrival of over 100,000 votes in Michigan and Wisconsin, 100% of which were  only for Biden, strains credulity.  Another oddity, the percentage of mail-in votes in Pennsylvania (60.55) Michigan (37.95%) compared to the next closest states (Ohio at 15.3% and Arizona at 6.4%) raises significant concerns.
There is also the inexplicably high numbers of votes collected for Biden in certain jurisdictions.  Thus far in 2020, President Trump has handily overwhelmed his 2016 numbers.  His vote counts have been so large, that in order for him to lose, former Vice President Biden would need to have surpassed Hillary Clinton’s vote counts in 2016 and President Barack Obama’s vote counts in 2012. In no state does that happen except in some major cities in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona, a highly unlikely result.  Most notably, in Wisconsin, a 91% voter turnout is being recorded, blowing past the prior record of 66.8%, a difference of greater than five standards of deviation from the norm.
The totality of the data overwhelmingly suggests that the election, particularly those in highly contested states, has been breached, fatally tainted by malfeasants and opportunists.  The saving grace is that they have been largely discovered, leaving only two questions to be answered.  First, can the GOP and Trump’s lawyers successfully execute the legal arguments?  And second, will the judiciary have the intestinal fortitude to invalidate those illegal votes, regardless of their massive numbers?
If there truly is an attempt to steal this election, then it is imperative the coup be stopped because if not, there will literally be no reason to ever hold another election again.
RELATED ARTICLE: Did a ‘computer glitch’ flip 7.9 million Trump votes to Biden?
EDITORS NOTE: This The Federalist Pages column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Disinformationists

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A republic is not just a nation of laws. It also relies on its good-faith watchdogs, such as honest pollsters, the media, and bipartisan institutions.
We still didn’t know the final result of Tuesday’s presidential election as of Wednesday night. But there are lots of reasons to worry that something in America has gone terribly wrong.
Many of the mainstream pre-election polls predicted that Donald Trump would lose in a landslide. He did not—to the shock of a host of propagandists.
A CNN poll had Trump down 12 percentage points nationally entering the final week before the election. An ABC News/Washington Post poll in late October claimed Joe Biden was leading in Wisconsin by 17 points. That state’s voting ended up nearly even.
The left is actively working to undermine the integrity of our elections. Read the plan to stop them now. Learn more now >>
YouGov’s election model showed Biden prevailing with a landslide win in the Electoral College. Progressive statistics guru Nate Silver had for weeks issued pseudo-scientific analyses of a Trump wipeout.
Pollsters were widely wrong in 2016. Yet they learned nothing about their flawed methodologies. So how do they remain credible after 2020, when most were wildly off again?
A cynic might answer that polling no longer aims to offer scientific assessments of voter intentions.
Pollsters, the vast majority of them progressives, have become political operatives. They see their task as ginning up political support for their candidates and demoralizing the opposition. Some are profiteering as internal pollsters for political campaigns and special interests.
Never again will Americans believe these “mainstream” pollsters’ predictions because they have been exposed as rank propagandists.
That bleak assessment won’t make much difference to pollsters. They privately understand what their real mission has become and why they are no longer scientific prognosticators.
Big liberal donors sent cash infusions totaling some $500 million into Senate races across the country to destroy Republican incumbents and take back the Senate. In the end, they may have failed to change many of the outcomes.
But did they really fail?
Democrats dispelled the fossilized notion that “dark money” is dangerous to politics. They are now the party of the ultra-rich, at war with the middle classes, whom they write off as clingers, deplorables, dregs, and chumps.
In that context, the staggering amounts of money were a valuable marker. The liberal mega-rich are warning politicians that from now on, they will try to bury populist conservatives with so much oppositional cash that they would be wise to keep a low profile.
Winning is not the only aim of lavish liberal campaign funding. Deterring future opponents by warning them to be moderate or go bankrupt is another motivation.
Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey seemed unapologetic that his company was systematically censoring and de-platforming conservative users. In a recent hearing he talked to members of the Senate as if he were a 19th-century railroad baron.
Google has been accused of massaging its search results to favor progressive agendas. During the final weeks of the campaign, social media platforms shut down accounts and censored ads and messages, providing an enormously valuable gift to Biden.
Silicon Valley, like the 19th-century oil, rail, and sugar trusts, sees no reason to hide its partisanship and clout.
The media coverage of the election was unsavory. Journalists confirmed the findings of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center, which in an assessment of news coverage of Trump’s first 100 days in office found that 80% of the coverage was negative.
As in the fashion of the Russian collusion hoax, the media for weeks on end revved up their engines for a seemingly certain Biden landslide victory. They rarely cross-examined Biden on the issues. And they certainly stayed clear of the Biden family influence-peddling scandal.
What do all these power players—big polling, big money, big tech, and big media—have in common other than their partisanship and their powerful reach?
One, they stereotypically represent a virtue-signaling coastal elite that feels its own moral superiority allows it to destroy its own professional standards.
Two, they worry little about popular pushback because they assume that their money, loaded surveys, and internet and media cartels create, rather than reflect, public opinion.
Three, while these elite cadres have enormous resources, they still are relatively unpopular. Despite being outspent 2-to-1, pronounced doomed by pollsters, often censored on social media, and demonized in print and on television, Trump was neck and neck with Biden—a fact that a few days ago was deemed impossible.
If Biden wins, we should assume that in late January 2021 these same forces will regroup to frame a new post-election narrative.
Expect our Big Brothers to instruct Americans that the COVID-19 pandemic is mutating into little more than a bad flu.
The “Biden vaccine” and miraculous “Biden recovery” will have ended the need for Trump-era lockdowns.
And the rioting, looting, and arson?
They will all have miraculously disappeared because the disuniter and inciter Donald Trump is now gone.
(C)2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
COMMENTARY BY

Victor Davis Hanson

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.” You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com. Twitter: .

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Government Can’t Count Ballots. How Can It Possibly Manage a Pandemic or Our Health Care?

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The 2020 presidential election fiasco holds a warning about central planning.

Elections are a nasty business, but sometimes they can be clarifying.
We don’t yet know who won the US presidential election, and we may not for days or weeks to come. This stems largely from the ineptitude Americans witnessed on Election Tuesday.
It wasn’t just the fact that pollsters once again failed disastrously, or that networks fumbled their election coverage.
The bigger issue is that America’s governing bodies look incapable of managing something as simple as a vote, something Americans have managed to do efficiently for centuries without the benefit of computers, digital communication, and mass transportation.
As an American, I find this a tad embarrassing. As the journalist Glenn Greenwald observed Wednesday, countries with far fewer resources and less advanced technology regularly manage to hold speedy, efficient elections. This is something the US failed to do on Tuesday, Greenwald noted.

The richest and most powerful country on earth — whether due to ineptitude, choice or some combination of both — has no ability to perform the simple task of counting votes in a minimally efficient or confidence-inspiring manner. As a result, the credibility of the voting process is severely impaired, and any residual authority the U.S. claims to “spread” democracy to lucky recipients of its benevolence around the world is close to obliterated.
At 7:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the day after the 2020 presidential elections, the results of the presidential race, as well as control of the Senate, are very much in doubt and in chaos. Watched by [the] rest of the world — deeply affected by who rules the still-imperialist superpower — the U.S. struggles and stumbles and staggers to engage in a simple task mastered by countless other less powerful and poorer countries: counting votes. Some states are not expected to [finish] their vote-counting until the end of this week or beyond.

This, to be blunt, is unacceptable.
The most prosperous country in the world cannot manage to do something as simple as collect and count ballots. Think about that for just a moment.
Unfortunately, this incompetence carries consequences that are quite real. Americans are beginning to lose faith in the integrity of elections. I’m not just talking about voters in the fever swamps of Twitter.
Many impressive journalists, thinkers, and students of various political stripes have expressed alarm at what they witnessed in the last 24 hours.


Many readers can probably relate to some of these concerns.
The reality is, the inability of election authorities to do something as simple as gather and count votes is undermining Americans’ faith in the constitutional system. As Greenwald notes, this is dangerous; but it’s also rational.
Because of the power and breadth of the federal government, there is a great deal at stake in presidential elections—too much at stake. Americans sense this, and when they see mail-in ballots missing, precincts that can’t get votes counted, voting delays, errors in data feeds, and other problems it naturally creates a feeling of uncertainty. Uncertainty in turn breeds distrust.
One could argue that this year’s election was unique. Turnout was unprecedented (at least in raw numbers), perhaps in part because of the coronavirus pandemic and the record number of mail-in ballots.
Perhaps that’s true. But the fact remains: how hard is it to collect and count ballots? I don’t wish to disparage the people working these elections. The process is probably far more complicated than many Americans realize. But this is true of most systems, which brings me to a key point.
Is collecting and counting ballots more difficult than running a vast health care system that involves pricing, insurance, medication, billing, and the very lives of individuals? The answer is no.
Is collecting and counting ballots more difficult than attempting to manage the spread of an invisible virus without ruining the livelihoods, spirits, educations, and very lives of hundreds of millions of people? Again, the answer is no.
In some ways, we should not be surprised to see governing bodies fail to manage something as elementary as an election. For decades we’ve watched the United States Post Office bungle something as simple as collecting and delivering mail. The USPS bleeds billions of dollars every year doing something a private company would make a profit doing, while delivering substandard service. (This is why libertarians have been arguing for more than a century that the Post Office should be subjected to competition.)
It’s no coincidence that the election debacle of 2020 happened in the year the Post Office played its largest role ever. It was bound to happen.
As the economist Ludwig von Mises observed in his 1944 book Bureaucracy, government agencies can never be anywhere near as efficient as private businesses. The competitive market compels entrepreneurs and their employees to competently and efficiently serve the buying public or go out of business. And profit-and-loss accounting enables them to figure out exactly what’s working and what’s not. In contrast, as Mises wrote:

“Public administration, the handling of the government apparatus of coercion and compulsion, must necessarily be formalistic and bureaucratic. No reform can remove the bureaucratic features of the government’s bureaus. It is useless to blame them for their slowness and slackness. It is vain to lament over the fact that the assiduity, carefulness, and painstaking work of the average bureau clerk are, as a rule, below those of the average worker in private business. (…) In the absence of an unquestionable yardstick of success and failure it is almost impossible for the vast majority of men to find that incentive to utmost exertion that the money calculus of profit-seeking business easily provides. It is of no use to criticize the bureaucrat’s pedantic observance of rigid rules and regulations. (…)
All such deficiencies are inherent in the performance of services which cannot be checked by money statements of profit and loss.”

That isn’t to say that bureaucracy is inherently evil. Mises clarified that, “bureaucracy in itself is neither good nor bad.”

“There is a field,” he continued, “namely, the handling of the apparatus of government, in which bureaucratic methods are required by necessity.”
Elections, for example, are necessarily a bureaucratic affair, even if that means they often get bungled.
The big problem is when governments bureaucratize things that don’t need to be bureaucratic. The evil lies in, as Mises said, “the expansion of the sphere in which bureaucratic management is applied.”
For example, health care does not need to be bureaucratic. It can and has been provided through the market. To the extent that it has been, market forces and signals have made it better.
But if health care were to be socialized—as in a single-payer scheme—it would have to be managed bureaucratically and would inevitably suffer all the deficiencies of a bureaucracy: ineptitude, slowness, neglect, etc.
Just imagine having to depend on the DMV or the USPS for your medical treatment. (If you’ve ever had to deal with the Veterans Administration, perhaps you don’t have to imagine.)
One may object that our health care system already suffers from those failings and is already quite bureaucratic. But that is because the government is already so heavily involved in it. As Mises wrote, “Every kind of government meddling… breeds bureaucratism.”
It is the absence of market forces and signals that makes governments inefficient. The normal mechanisms in markets that lead to efficiency, productivity, and prosperity simply cannot be replicated in a government system. Ever.
This is not to say some government systems cannot be managed more effectively than others. Naturally, they can. Just as many countries manage to hold elections and quickly get reliable results instead of the fiasco Americans witnessed this week.
The point is bureaucracy is inefficient by nature. We saw that Tuesday night.
And we should all be asking ourselves an important question: If government cannot manage something as simple as an election, how can it possibly make rational decisions about health care and pandemics that affect hundreds of millions of people?

COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org.
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MICHIGAN: US Postal Worker Whistleblower Details Directive From Superiors to Back-Date Late Mail-In-Ballots As Received November 3rd, 2020

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Where’s AG Barr?

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https://twitter.com/JamesOKeefeIII/status/1324174186366074880?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1324174186366074880%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com%2F2020%2F11%2Fmichigan-us-postal-worker-whistleblower-details-directive-from-superiors-back-date-late-mail-in-ballots-as-received-november-3rd-2020-so-they-are-accepted.html%2F
 

https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1324265103097651202


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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

‘I Have Cash’: Joe Biden Offered Financial Assistance To Hunter, Texts Show

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  • Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden offered his son financial assistance at least four times between November 2018 and March 2019, text messages show.
  • The texts cut against allegations that Joe Biden benefited financially from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
  • The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a copy of Hunter Biden’s alleged hard drive on Wednesday. While a review of the drive is ongoing, no evidence has yet surfaced showing Joe Biden reaped financial benefits from his son’s business dealings.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden offered Hunter Biden financial assistance on at least four occasions between November 2018 and March 2019, text messages obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.
The texts cut against allegations that Joe Biden benefited financially from his son’s foreign business dealings.
“Dad can you please cash app me $2,000,” Hunter Biden texted Joe Biden on March 15, 2019. “I’m again overdrawn in my account for bills that can’t be left unpaid.”
“I’ll have it all paid back next week I hope,” Hunter Biden texted his father after he was asked if the transfer went through.
The texts were on a hard drive that Hunter Biden allegedly dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019 but never retrieved. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani provided the DCNF with a copy of the drive on Wednesday.
The DCNF has not been able to review all of the more than 40,000 emails and scores of text messages on the drive, but no direct evidence has yet surfaced showing that Joe Biden reaped any sort of financial benefit from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
A cybersecurity expert previously authenticated a key email from the laptop that the New York Post called “smoking gun” evidence that Joe Biden was introduced by his son to a Burisma executive in 2015.
Hunter Biden appears to have been under financial strain around the time he texted his father asking for financial assistance. Emails and other records on the hard drive show that Hunter Biden owed $37,000 a month in alimony payments to his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle Biden, following their divorce in 2017. [CLICK HERE FOR TEXT]
An email from the drive reveals that Hunter Biden was stuck at a rest stop on March 6, 2019, with no money to buy gas awaiting a $50,000 wire for his company, Owasco, LLC. [CLICK HERE TO SEE THE EMAIL]
“Buddy do you have cash app to send me … $100 until wire goes,” Hunter Biden emailed his business partner Jeff Cooper. “I have no I have no money for gas and im literally stuck at a rest stop on 95 on my way from Boston to DC.”
On March 1, 2019, Joe Biden texted Hunter Biden about his daughter, asking: “Do you want me to do anything about Maisy dentist bill.”
“Let me know if you need anything cash,” Joe Biden said in another text to Hunter Biden on Feb. 6, 2019.
And in a Nov. 28, 2018, text, Joe Biden told his son: “Do you need anything. I have cash. Love Dad.”
Joe Biden received a financial windfall of his own after he left the White House in 2017. He signed a book deal valued at $8 million in April 2017, according to Publishers Weekly, and he and his wife reported a combined adjusted gross income of $16.6 million in their 2017, 2018 and 2019 tax returns.
Joe Biden’s offers of financial assistance came after Hunter Biden received a much-publicized May 2017 email that suggested he would hold a 10% stake in a joint Chinese business venture for the “big guy,” a reference to the former vice president, according to Hunter’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski.
However, corporate records for the joint venture reviewed by the DCNF show no indication that Joe Biden obtained any off-the-books stake in the firm when it was finalized later in May 2017.
Joe Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement in October that the former vice president “has never even considered being involved in business with his family, nor in any overseas business whatsoever. He has never held stock in any such business arrangements nor has any family member or any other person ever held stock for him.”
COLUMN BY

ANDREW KERR

Investigative reporter.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Bloomberg and Rosenwald: Compare & Contrast

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Michael Bloomberg, a Jewish billionaire who built his fortune on a computerized data base and computer terminal used by Wall Street firms, put in $100 million in Florida to try to swing the election for Democrats.

Numerous other billionaire tech moguls, are pumping millions of dollars into Black Lives Matter, a Marxist organization dividing America.

No doubt both think their actions will help black people.  Or perhaps they think they can buy off the mob by aiding those that want to destroy the free enterprise system that made these moguls wealthy. It is hard to know.

Contrast this tendency among today’s ultra-rich with the story of Julius Rosenwald.

In the 1870s through the 1890s, the revolution in retailing was the mail order business. Montgomery Ward became the Amazon of the era, servicing customers in the underserved rural market with low prices, variety and quality.

Around the turn of the 20th century, a new competitor was launched by two watch salesmen, Alvah Roebuck and Richard Sears.  The firm they founded expanded rapidly under the leadership of a Jewish clothing salesman, Julius Rosenwald.

The firm did very well but as demographics shifted from farm to city, Sears Roebuck kept its mail order business but also pivoted with a major emphasis on retail stores in urban areas.  The company did even better.

The firm sold just about anything, including kits for the construction of homes.  A good collection of these can be found still occupied in Bisbee, Arizona.

Rosenwald pumped his own money into the firm to support it during the Great Depression.

While running this very successful company, Rosenwald developed a deep concern about the plight of blacks in the Democrat ruled South. Democrats had imposed a series of legal restrictions based on race, that parade under the name of Jim Crow laws.  Educational funding for blacks was minimal.

After meeting with Booker T. Washington, the outstanding black leader of the Tuskegee Institute (later the source of courageous black fighter pilots known as the ‘Red Tails’), Rosenwald began building schools for poor blacks in rural areas.

Eventually, he built over 5,300 schools that educated about 36% of the southern black population.

The schools were simple and successful.  Many studies suggest these schools helped black income climb over a third in relation to white incomes at the time, raised scores for military entry, increased both the odds and success of migration out of the South, and even raised IQ scores. They functioned until the 1954 school desegregation decision.

Contrast this program with what we see today, millions of dollars poured into Marxist oriented organizations that have been involved in promoting racism with reverse discrimination and civil disturbance.

Millions more are poured into the Democratic Party, that has blacks trapped in horrible inner-city schools in cities like Baltimore where students can graduate barely knowing how to read.  In 2019, only 13% of Baltimore 4th graders could read at their grade level.  Another study showed that of city of 700,000, about 200,000 people in Baltimore are functionally illiterate.

Many of these cities have been dominated by the Democratic Party and its largest contributor, the teacher’s union, for a half century or more.  The platform of the Democratic Party has come out foursquare against school choice. They will not tolerate competition for the educational establishment.

Today’s billionaires apparently either want to double down on failure or to double down on cowardice.

Rosenwald always treated blacks with respect. He required parents to have a stake in the game by contributing something towards their children’s education, even if it was labor to construct a school. Rosenwald took a different direction in philanthropy wherein he made large grants to various causes on the condition that recipients also raise funds to “cure the things that seem to be wrong.”

He did not give grants for political lobbying. He did not give grants without self-help. He did not give money to buy off violent protestors. He did not give money for racial isolation. White groups were often required to “buy in” to get a project done.

Rosenwald put his money where his mouth is out of religious conviction while today’s billionaires put their money where their political interest is.

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


********************

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.

 

‘1619 Project’ Founder Melts Down After Criticism Of Her Fake History

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This article was originally published by  the Federalist on October 16, 2020.

The lead writer of The New York Times’ anti-American “1619 Project” suffered a meltdown last week when a colleague at her paper offered fair criticism of its revisionist and inaccurate account of history.

On Oct. 9, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens published a more than 3,000-word essay outlining the project’s blunders that have led the academics with the National Association of Scholars (NAS) to call on the Pulitzer Prize Board to revoke its award to the project’s chief essayist, Nikole Hannah-Jones.

“Journalists are, most often, in the business of writing the first rough draft of history, not trying to have the last word on it,” Stephens wrote. “We are best when we try to tell truths with a lowercase t, following evidence in directions unseen, not the capital-T truth of a pre-established narrative in which inconvenient facts get discarded. And we’re supposed to report and comment on the political issues of the day, not become the issue itself.”

Under this model, Stephens writes, “for all of its virtues, buzz, spinoffs and a Pulitzer Prize – the 1619 Project has failed.

At the heart of his criticism is the project’s central thesis to revise the date of America’s “true founding” to the year 1619, when the first African slaves found their way to the colonies (Native American tribes had kept slaves on the continent for centuries by then). Several months after the campaign’s launch, now that it is infecting some 4,500 K-12 classrooms, the legacy newspaper stealth-edited the project to remove the language of its “true founding” to when the “moment [America] began.”

“These were not minor points,” Stephen wrote. “The deleted assertions went to the core of the project’s most controversial goal, ‘to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regards 1619 as our nation’s birth year.”

The criticism sent the architect of the project into a rage, according to the Washington Post, predictably calling the fair-minded critiques of her deceptive scholarship racist.

“Hannah-Jones, though, was livid, and let Kingsbury and Stephens know it in emails ahead of publication,” the Post reported. “One the day the NAS called for the revocation of her Pulitzer, she tweeted that efforts to discredit her work ‘put me in a long tradition of [Black women] who failed to know their places.’ She changed her Twitter bio to ‘slanderous and nasty-minded mulattress’ – a tribute to the trailblazing journalist Ida B. Wells, whom the Times slurred with those same words in 1894.”

The revisionist project, which has attracted sharp scrutiny since its publication last year, has since maintained full editorial support from the newspaper despite major corrections to its essays and leagues of historians debunking its primary claims.

After a group of leading historians objected to the Times’ project’s false information, the magazine’s Editor in Chief Jake Silverstein wrote back that “historical understanding is not fixed.” In other words, the Times doesn’t care what historians with decades of experience think if it counters the religious narrative that critical race theory demands.

Several months later, the Times finally did issue a two-word correction to its lead essay authored by none other than Hannah-Jones clarifying that keeping slavery was only a primary motivation for some of the colonists rather than all of the colonists to seek independence from Great Britain. While it might seem a minor change, it’s actually a significant one provided that the project has been adopted widely into curriculum teaching children the United States was built for the sole purpose to oppress, a key tenet of the left’s critical race theory driving the nation’s 21st century woke revolution.

It’s worth noting this correction was made before the Pulitzer committee awarded Hannah-Jones its prestigious prize based on an essay that the Times admitted was historically inaccurate.

Despite the corrections, the inaccuracies, the controversies, and the criticisms of the project, Dean Baquet, the executive director of the Times, rejected Stephens’ arguments.

“Our readers, and I believe our country, have benefited immensely from the principles, rigorous and groundbreaking journalism of Nikole,” Baquet wrote, celebrating the work of the same writer who said “it would be an honor” for the nation’s explosion of deadly unrest which tore through the cities this summer to be named”the 1619 Riots.”

Tristan Justice is a staff writer at The Federalist focusing on the 2020 presidential campaigns. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.

This column from the Federalist is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The opinions expressed may not necessarily reflect the views of The Prickly Pear or of the sponsors.

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