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The real devastation from COVID-19: A destroyed economy imposed by government panic

While many state governors across the United States dawdle and hesitate about lifting their panic-induced lock downs on their states out of fear it might cause a few more Wuhan virus deaths, the real devastation from their panic is propagating uncontrolled across the landscape, and will in the end kill far far more people.

Their actions have caused the entire economy to collapse, destroyed entire industrial sectors, prevented untold numbers from getting the proper healthcare when needed, and put millions of people out of work. In the end, this government-imposed depression will do far more harm that the Wuhan flu ever could, and do it for a much longer time spell.

Don’t believe me? Well let me count the ways, citing the numerous stories I have posted here on Behind the Black in only the past week.

First there is the entire restaurant business. So far more than eight million people have lost their jobs, and it is expected that at least 1 in 5 restaurants will close down. Nor is there much hope for the survivors, since state governments appear insistent that they must limit customers within their restaurants, maintaining social distancing rules that will make these venues unprofitable. Overall loses are expected to exceed $240 billion.

By the way, do you remember why we were originally told to social distance? Why the lock downs were supposedly first imposed? Both were meant as a very very temporary efforts, lasting no more than a few weeks, to simply slow the onset of the virus so the healthcare system would not be overrun. Instead, our government and media have morphed both into a permanent requirement in the vain belief it will stop the virus from spreading.

Then we have the housing market. In March home sales plunged 8.5%, is expected to get worse, and appears to be hitting the entry-level market the most. On top of this the home-building market has crashed, with new housing starts plunging 22% in the past month, the worse such drop in almost forty years.

Meanwhile, the rental market is crashing, with wholesale evictions expected because the now-unemployed renters are unable to pay their rents.

Next we have the energy industry. Not only has the demand for oil plummeted, sending the energy markets into a tailspin, the entire clean energy industry is losing a half million jobs, with more job losses in March then were created in all of 2019.

What about the airlines? The government restrictions on travel as well as the demand for social distancing has essentially destroyed this entire industry. No one is flying, with a 96% decline in passengers this year. Nor will any of this change until people are reassured that they won’t die if they get on an airplane.

By the way, you wouldn’t die. All evidence so far indicates that the Wuhan flu appears to mimic the flu, in that it is relatively harmless to the bulk of the healthy population. If you fly and are young and healthy, the worst it will likely do is make you sick for a short time, though it is more likely you will get infected and not even know it. Afterward you will have antibodies to the disease and will act to hinder its spread.

Then we have the healthcare industry itself. Many of the government lock downs have included edicts that prevent hospitals and doctors from doing what the government considers non-essential procedures. No one asked any doctors it appears, because these edicts are resulting in the deaths of heart and cancer patients because they cannot get the care they desperately need.

The edicts are also threatening hospitals with bankruptcy. Banned from treating anyone except COVID-19 patients, hospitals have no income, and have been forced to shorten hours and cut staffin the middle of an epidemic— with some hospitals on the verge of closure forever.

Meanwhile the retail industries are getting wiped out. The clothing industry is shutting down. The flower and events industry is shutting down. The department store industry is shutting down. The theme-park industry is shutting down. The beer and pub industry is shutting down.

In fact, the entire economy is shutting down. New business starts have basically ceased, with the index of leading economic indicators experiencing its biggest crash in March in its entire sixty year history.

And we thought breadlines and soup kitchens were bad during the Great Depression in the 1930s? It is going to be far worse now, because these government edicts requiring social distancing will make it impossible to even go to a breadline or soup kitchen.

Why is this happening? It is happening because our government leaders, mostly at the state level, decided they knew better than anyone else, and required it to happen.

I don’t want to mince any words here. This Great Wuhan Depression was ordered by the governors of our fifty states. It is their economic collapse, through and through. They knew that if they shut down everything for a month or more the economy would collapse, and yet they did it anyway. And sadly, President Trump aided them in this effort by publicly activating the National Guard when requested by them in order to enforce these lock down edicts.

Moreover, I fear that this economic crash will be exacerbated by the accompanying loss of freedom. You can’t turn an economy around on a dime, but if freedom is allowed you raise the odds that things can recover faster.

Sadly, the government edicts, many of which literally nullified the Bill of Rights, have set a precedent that is very hostile to freedom, and one that our governments now appear to be following with enthusiasm. The so-called “plans” being announced by various state governments, many following federal guidelines developed by the Trump administration, all dictate which businesses can operate, when businesses shall reopen, and how people will behave. The idea of letting freedom do the job seems quite quaint to our modern rulers. They would much rather rule as dictators, setting the rules without referring to law or legislation.

If you don’t believe me, watch this interview of Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. He is asked repeatedly what legal authority did he have to nullify the Bill of Rights by arresting people in churches and synagogues, and repeatedly provides no answer. Murphy simply decided that he thought arresting religious people was in the best interests of society, and went ahead and had it done.

Meanwhile, the facts on the ground continue to suggest that the Wuhan flu is not the deadly plague that many politicians and health experts have claimed. With the rate of new cases apparently peaking, we can now make a reasonable prediction of how many the virus will eventually kill (recognizing that for many political reasons some of these numbers have been padded), and find that the numbers will likely end up comparable to a high flu season, and far less than many other causes of death that we routinely take for granted. In addition, there is clear evidence that the lock downs were unnecessary and that our health system was not going to be overrun. In fact, though the data remains incomplete at this moment, the overall mortality rate is actually low this year, when compared to recent years.

Thus, this virus did not warrant the panic that ensued, the destruction of the economy, and the nullification of the Bill of Rights. But yet that is exactly what our elected officials have done, destroyed the economy and nullified our freedoms.

Unless we as citizens take action to oppose this, our country will never be the same, and millions more will suffer as the economy continues its crash, hindered from recovering because we are now no different than socialist Venezuela or communist Russia.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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41 comments

  • Shaun

    Well assembled piece Bob. Do you suppose this might have been a grand, coordinated, social experiment to see if they could get away with it? If you look at it in that context it worked. They were able to incite panic in the general population and rush in to offer salvation (which will never prove to be enough). Thus, expanding government powers and establishing a new precedent in levels of acceptable control using those newly expanded powers. Create a good crisis and leverage it for all it’s worth. Get the people to accept the new restrictions in freedom by instilling fear, while assuring them that it’s for their own good. And, just for good measure, make them believe that they’re jeaporidizing the health of their loved ones if they don’t conform. Dangerous implications for current and future generations.

  • Max

    Good job Bob, you’ve done your homework on this one.

    From one of your links;
    “We are enduring a great national trial,” Trump said. “We’re at war. In a true sense, we’re at war.”

    Not foreign but domestic. Undermined by our own elected government.

    ““I want you to understand, this is not martial law,” FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor said””

    Huh? It walks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it looks like a duck…

  • wayne

    Loki’s Speech On Freedom
    https://youtu.be/_3CZExnn8MI
    1:33

  • Shaun

    Wayne

    Perfect

  • George

    Exactly what the Progressives have been hoping for, for decades, and have said as much. This is what they needed to “transform” America into their “better democracy”. All the while assuring us that the new workers’ paradise won’t be anything like China, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, or Venezuela, because they didn’t do it right. Theirs is the better way. Get ready to pay for it. And pay, and pay, and pay.

  • wayne

    Hoppewave
    “Absurdistan”
    https://youtu.be/8CvbDOJT1ro
    4:33

  • Edward

    Can someone remind me what is the difference between Governor Murphy and King George?

  • Shaun

    Edward

    As far as Governor Murphy goes – Good luck if you live in NJ. According to “The Hill” hes’s got a 71% approval rating in regards to the handling of COVID-19. He doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.

  • hondo

    Well Bob – looking for another example, there is me
    I went thru extensive Proton Beam cancer treatments in Nov/Dec in Philly (VA/Penn U). Went generally well.
    Necessary follow-ups/examination are another story – twice cancelled/delayed – next pending is 4/28! And that remains questionable due to CORVID 19.
    Have yet to get scheduled for (critical) PEP/CT thru for same reasons. Any other issues/side effects etc. must go thru VA Clinic – which btw – is not seeing anyone till about June (so far). Their substitute is a telephone consult – boy, that was dumb ans a waste!
    Generally screwed all around – question remains if this manufactured delay
    will have any consequences. Extreme high risk group – smart enough to self-isolate (before they gave it a new name). Live rural in an isolated cottage set back in the woods. Just have deer, squirrels etc, to bitch too. They don’t listen – but who does at the moment?

  • Max

    This helplessness of everything shutting down and fading away…

    We had such good intentions.
    https://youtu.be/U-NVs68X_S4
    Firefly serenity, Origin of the Reavers.

  • Rose

    US records lowest coronavirus-related deaths in 2 weeks
    * https://www.foxnews.com/health/us-records-lowest-coronavirus-related-deaths-in-2-weeks

    Monday marked the lowest number of coronavirus-related fatalities in the U.S. in two weeks, just days after the number of deaths had spiked to 4,591 in a single day. According to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. lost 1,433 people to coronavirus on April 20, adding to the overall death toll of 42,364.

    Is this ill informed reporting or intentional deception?

    They are comparing the weekend-reporting-suppressed Monday figure with an artifact caused by that particular dataset lumping all the new NY suspected cases into a single day, without putting those two figures in context. This Tuesday’s JHU figure is 2,751 US covid-10 deaths, so should we expect tomorrow’s headline to be, “Record number of US coronavirus-related deaths!”. (I suppose that depends of whether they are seeking sensation or just pushing an agenda. Silly me, I’m sure they are doing both!) That 2,751 is an all time daily high (when excluding the weeks-of-previously-unreported-suspected-NY-covid-19-deaths-lumped-into-one-day artifact). Tuesday numbers do run a bit high, with the catching up of tardy weekend reports, but there is no sign that the reported US coronavirus-related death rate is peaking quite yet.

    And hey, for all of you who think (like I do) that the cure does look like it will be worse than the disease, you don’t have to lie to make your point. Yes, put these figures in context and compare them to annual deaths from other causes. But don’t minimize the magnitude of the disease, or you won’t be trusted and your arguments won’t be ignored.

  • Rose: Though the numbers for yesterday were the highest yet, I do think the disease is peaking. Some of these higher numbers are certainly padding from New York and other municipalities that very much want to justify their panic, as well as get as much federal money as possible.

    Overall, however, the numbers appear to be stabilizing, with a tendency to drop steadily after each weekend pulse.

    Sadly, I had hoped this would end up like SARS, with about 12,000 deaths attributed to it. It has ended up to be higher, but I remain unconvinced these numbers are entirely reliable. I really want to add these numbers to the flu numbers, because I think many state and local governments are making almost all flu deaths Wuhan flu deaths instead.

  • Josh

    If Mr. Bullock in MT really thought this was the big one, he should have treated it as such. Instead he deemed liquor stores as essential as the states runs many of them so that they could continue to make money off the revenue and taxes brought in by them. What a joke.

    Tobacco stores are also open, I guess sin taxes are more important that this so called epidemic.

    If I was a non essential business, such as a hair stylist, I’d run my business through house calls or clandestinely in my store.

  • C. Owen Johnson

    Rose and Robert: I also agree that all data available, such as it is, indicates the virus is peaking. As for the number of deaths, which was once thought to be the most reliable indicator, the politicization of this figure has undermined it almost completely. CDC’s guidelines are wildly irresponsible and therefore terms like “covid-related death” have pretty much lost their meaning. The uncertainty in actual number of deaths due to the virus approaches an order of magnitude: given the protocols in place, it’s not higher than the popularly quoted numbers, but it could as little 15% to 20% of those numbers. It’s simply not known at this point.

    The same goes for whether deaths are peaking yet or have peaked. I agree with Robert that the disease is peaking or has peaked, based on the actions of actors who are known to be unreliable and/or unscrupulous. When actors invested in a particular outcome start moving the goal posts, as it were, that is almost always a sure sign that things are not going as they’d like and they are trying to recover their position. That is what we’re seeing in NYC and elsewhere, as Robert cogently points out.

    So certainly, it does not do to minimize the magnitude of the disease, but the fact is that no one actually knows what the magnitude of the disease is. All available data shows that mortality and lethality are much less that predicted and currently assumed, and further there is in fact that no real evidence that the current lockdowns have reduced, or are reducing, the impact of the disease. That these measures work, the “flattening the curve” is an fact a good idea (if it could be done), that masks are worthwhile outside of certain narrow circumstances, are all conclusions based on unwarranted and/or unsubstantiated assumptions.

    So when one speaks of “do not minimize the magnitude of the disease” what does that mean? To state the currently known facts, as they stand, is in the view of many “minimizing the magnitude of the disease” because the panic induced by the irresponsible use of bad data and bad models, and exacerbated by unscrupulous actors, has so distorted and inflated perceptions of that magnitude.

    Therefore, the current position is such that evident truths are (to a large degree) not (yet) socially acceptable. A primary truth, which sadly is not socially acceptable in our current society, is “that is unknown” is a statement which , in this day and age, leads to a maximally alarmist and panicky response. Under these circumstances “trusted” comes to mean telling people what they want/need to hear, because they are insufficiently capable dealing with facts and data appropriately. So saying something like: “you don’t have to lie to make your point” while obvious, is also useless if people lack the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, in part (though not entirely) because reliable ground-truth does not exist or is badly obscured.

    Things are never clear during the initial stages of crisis (real or manufacturer), or in the immediate aftermath, but the sad fact now is that we are paying an enormous price for deleterious attitudes that have been allowed (by some and actively encouraged by others) to grow in our society throughout the past several decades. When, where, and to what degree the truth will be recognized and its rational assessment will be possible remains to be seen. One hopes that will be before too much more damage is done. But I’m not sure how willing I am to bet on that. The next few weeks will likely tell us a lot.

  • Col Beausabre

    THE VULTURES GATHER – Anytime the government hands out money, the “morally challenged” will show up along with the deserving…

    Harvard – the richest school in the Solar System with an endowment north of $40 BILLION dollars – got $8.6 million from the “stimulus” package. $8.6M of taxpayer money at a time 22 million Americans are out of work. Harvard even has the gall to require its undergrads to take a course in “Ethics and Civics”

    Vultures have an excuse, they operate on instinct. But we’re talking about the home of our self proclaimed “Best and Brightest”

    ‘Nuff said

  • Cotour

    “DIVIDE ET IMPERA”

    “The retention of power by utilizing a deliberate strategy of causing those in subordinate positions to engage in conflicts with each other that weaken and keep them from any unified effort to remove the status quo force from power. This policy of maintaining control over subordinates or potential opponents by encouraging or causing dissent between them, thereby preventing them from uniting in opposition to pose any serious threat to the existing power structure is a very familiar story throughout history. It’s an age old formula having multiple applications, most commonly used in the political arena but also in the military, sociological and economic realm as well.”

    A form of Strategy Over Morality theory. Starting to sound familiar?

    Whether the Communist Chinese leadership “Bat soup” contagion and the U.S. reaction to it by voluntarily halting and essentially destroying our own economy was either a function of human error in a research laboratory where there should be no mistakes, Or whether it is a function of a malevolent Orwellian executed plan, at this point does not really matter so much. The result has the potential to be the same.

    And what is that result? The forced resetting of ALL economies on the planet, from the production of oil and the generation of power, right down to the bagel store on the corner, they are ALL essentially being destroyed and must be reformulated under a “New” operational paradigm.

    Now anyone reading this may believe in what is called the “Globalist” agenda and the newly minted term and agenda “The green new deal”, all clearly stated and laid out by the likes of Soros and the people that he funds on the Left and within the Democrat leadership and within their ranks, or not. That is really unimportant at this point in time. Why? Because it or something very closely resembling it has arrived or is very close to being established.

    And what is the “Globalist” agenda: Depopulate the planet, abortion, making being vaccinated a mandate, create the need for the people to be extraordinarily dependent on the government with things like “Universal income”, the need to be monitored through ones health status, disarm the people, specifically disarm the people of America, eliminate personal property (U.N. Agenda 2030), destroy or make “adjustments” as Mr. Soros would say to the American Constitution, create the necessity for an Orwellian type over arching international government. Plus much more.

    So again, whether this virus event is a act of human carelessness in a laboratory, and I think at this point it has been reliably established that the virus is not a function of nature and a “wet market”, or an agenda of useful S.O.M. type chaos and reorganization, the end result can be seen as being almost exactly the same.

    YOU LOSE.

    (And Americans take note, the Democrat party and its well paid for now Leftist driven leadership is pushing exactly these agendas. Don’t fool yourself to think they are not.)

  • Insufficiently Sensitive

    Meanwhile, the rental market is crashing, with wholesale evictions expected because the now-unemployed renters are unable to pay their rents.

    The rental market in Seattle has been conscripted to furnish free housing to deadbeat tenants, by municipal ordinance forbidding foreclosures on deadbeat tenants for unpaid rents.

  • Cotour

    Chaos is but an opportunity.

  • Col Beausabre

    “The rental market in Seattle has been conscripted to furnish free housing to deadbeat tenants, by municipal ordinance forbidding foreclosures on deadbeat tenants for unpaid rents.”

    And how are the landlords supposed to pay their staff, pay for building maintenance and pay their mortgages, you ask

    Easy, we’ll pass an ordinance forbidding banks from foreclosing on mortgages

    What prevents the banks from going under when mortgages aren’t paid…..Easy, the Fed bails them out

    Where does the Fed get its money for bailouts….Easy, the Treasury rolls the presses and prints up lots of nice, new money

    But doesn’t all that new cash cause inflation, which reduces the value of the money I’ve saved

    Sure does…..SUCKER!

    As the late, great Bob Heinlein put it, TANSTAAFL

    BTW, even if you can pay your rent, why should you when your neighbor, who sits on their butt all day, doesn’t (it’s called moral hazard, kiddies). Hey, equality, man!

  • Cotour

    “And how are the landlords supposed to pay their staff, pay for building maintenance and pay their mortgages, you ask”

    That is called the redistribution of wealth, its a part of the “New green deal”.

    Talked about and laughed at by the more Conservative among us, but here it is all the same conveniently and coincidently delivered right to your door step and neighborhood.

    Chaos is just an opportunity.

  • Cotour

    A related story from the real world:

    A graphic artist / internet web builder friend called me the other day, she has problems. Her customer who agreed to pay a large bill out over the year in $500 payments per month for producing a job for her called her and complained that no one is buying her product and so she is stopping her payments.

    She was outraged that someone would do that, she has a contract! What should she do, she asked? I had to explain to her that 80 percent of the economy is shut down and people are going to have to conserve their cash because NO ONE has cash flow because there is no one buying what they are producing. What are you going to do? Nothing IMO.

    And this now translates down stream to her and her ability to pay her rent, and her land lords ability to pay his mortgage. And so on down to the core of our economy. And understand, this makes the Left oriented among us happy.

    This is the tip of this growing iceberg and it will run through every inch of the economy through out the country, and then what? This must end one way or another.

  • Andrew_W

    Mr. Zimmerman: “Though the numbers for yesterday were the highest yet, I do think the disease is peaking.”
    For the US new cases peaked about April 4 since then they’ve declined. the rate of change for the 18 before and after that date looks linear to me, increasing at a rate of charge of about 1900 a day up to the peak and dropping at about a quarter of that rate after the peak.
    If that were to continue the US would get to zero new cases per day in another ~54 days. The number of cases after the peak would be 4x the number before the peak which was about 315,000, so total recorded cases would be 1,575,000. I’m still working on the true number of cases being 4 times the recorded number and deaths being at 1.2% of true cases; so 1575000 x 4 x 0.012 = 75,600 deaths.

    If the sort of division in US society that destroyed America’s ability to fight in Vietnam were to manifest in the fight against this virus we might see a turn-around in numbers and eventually a similar costly (in lives and $) defeat to the one in Vietnam.

  • William

    There is one thing that will stop our precious government from suspending our Bill of Rights indefinitely, the many gun and AR-15s that Americans have wisely purchased in recent years. The tyrannical actions we have seen from cops lately will be stopped by Americans way before they presume to implement an O’Rourke police door to door kick in.

  • Cotour

    Some real economic destruction analysis by a pilot in the airline industry, some very sobering numbers:

    https://youtu.be/mJmqssxtxe0

  • John

    Yup, it’s over, an economic depression is inevitable and the government has spent so much that it can never be paid for. The next generation’s standard of living has gone down significantly. Their freedom and liberty will never be the same as ours was.

    I’m amazed at how scared most people are over this sickness. I’m also amazed that people think the government’s money is effectively limitless and can just be printed. The idea that it comes from society is alien.

    Corona virus isn’t going anywhere, anymore than influenza or rhinovirus are. One day, there will be another one, maybe worse, maybe not. What pray tell will the people do then.

  • Cotour

    Now I found someone who I think has some really good and practical ideas related to actually counterbalancing the government having everyone self quarantine and surrender their jobs and businesses as they shut 80 plus percent of the economy down where those Americans have had NO income due to that order.

    EXTREME ADULT LANGUAGE WARNING: Go to YouTube and enter: Ticked Off Vic: A Message to the Government

    If you do not want to listen to the video I understand, Vic is a little excitable, he speaks plainly in a loud manner and he is literally spitting mad and he uses adult man language. What does he simply suggest to help here? All mortgages and auto loans and similar financial instruments be automatically back loaded on which ever financial instrument is involved for the duration of this national emergency and or until you get back on your feet and reacquire your job. And that suggestion must be passed down to renters.

    A reasonable suggestion that possibly the president could fashion an executive order to deal with? And government should keep in mind, the American public are on their way to getting just as mad as Vic is today. At this point a good percentage of the every day American are realizing that they are being screwed (For their own good of course) and their $1200.00 that they may, or may not have gotten deposited into their bank accounts is essentially nothing. And when they see big and not so big company’s being bailed out to the tune of Billions of dollars they are going to do who knows what?

    Here is a good one, Harvard laid all of their workers off and took a bail out, and they have $40 billion in endowments. This does not play well.

    “Coronavirus bailout? Yep. Harvard has been granted, and is accepting, $8.7 million in federal aid — and only half of that must be reserved for emergency financial aid for students. Consider that in fiscal year 2019, Harvard spent $1.9 billion of its endowment covering the gaps for students in need and ended the year with a nearly $300 million surplus.”

    This all could be seen like a very convenient power move by the government as this lingers on and on. To what end is all of this headed? What is the end game here? Bankrupt all of the people, make them dependent on the largess of government who is paying them with the peoples own money that does not actually exist and then run all of their lives for their own good? Because that is exactly what this is shaping up to look like. The Democrat Leftists are in heaven, they are all giddy. This is the “Green New Deal” incarnate.

    Educate the public as best as you can and allow those adults to make the decisions in their own lives and for their families. Have the respect to allow people to choose how they want to live or die.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “Some of these higher numbers are certainly padding from New York and other municipalities that very much want to justify their panic, as well as get as much federal money as possible.

    As I have been telling coworkers for three decades: be careful what you measure, because that is the behavior you will get. Companies that I worked for would set policies and then set measurement points to determine the success of those policies. Unfortunately, none of them were careful of their measurements, and although the measurements looked good, the behaviors were not what the companies said that they had intended.

    America’s welfare programs work the same way. We think we are setting up a safety net, but the behaviors treat the net as a hammock. Even my mother once said to me, ‘well, my unemployment is running out, so I had better start looking for a job.’ (Three guesses which party she votes for, and the first two don’t count.) During this Great Oppression, we are seeing similar problems, where businesses that are now setting up to reopen are reporting that they are having trouble getting their employees to come back, because the federal addition to unemployment checks makes staying home and being unproductive far more desirable than working and producing our economy. I would say that this is the law of unintended consequences, but many people warned Congress of this very phenomenon before they passed their idiotic bill.

    Not getting employees back merely adds to the devastation of the Great Oppression.

  • Jason Hillyer

    We are officially living in an Orwellian Dystopian society.

    FLATTEN THE CURVE!!
    STAY AT HOME!!

    Ignorance is Strength.

    Is the United States doomed?

  • pzatchok

    We are all going to be fine.
    AOC knows this. She is so confident that she wants people to just not go back to work and effectively boycott working at all and just stay on unemployment.

  • Cotour

    You must step back in amazement when trying to understand how a young lady in America has grown up so thoroughly indoctrinated in her Leftist doctrine and says the things that she says.

    https://youtu.be/94L6wkczNZQ God, the lens loves her.

    What exactly is going on between her pretty little ears? Either she is mentally damaged and is unable to properly understand the full spectrum of what actual existence entails, or she is being paid large amounts of money to say the things that she says. Choose one.

    Instead of promoting the actual education of the people of America, and the world for that matter, and making themselves more than, her default position is not self dependency, its bigger and ever bigger and bigger government dependency. In other words people are less than. Where does she think she comes from?

    Liberalism, which eventually translates into Leftist thought process truly is a mental illness.

  • Cotour

    To illustrate my main point, I post this short video of Titan, of Titans Of CNC: https://youtu.be/pOTXMAOFEXc

    This guy is a bit of a character and is a big personality, he owns what has developed into a major CNC manufacturing operation dealing in the aerospace industry. And what has he initiated? He sees the power in CNC manufacturing technology and he has developed an academy to train technicians in CNC and in the philosophy of hard work combined with this technology and how it can build a powerful and rewarding life for anyone. And, more importantly he focuses on the young who wants a direction in their lives and where they can make a good living.

    Very different, 180 degrees from the likes of an indoctrinated Leftist like an AOC.

    Titan, two thumbs up, a positive full blooded American that solves problems in business and makes himself essential through innovation and hard intelligent work.

    AOC, she probably has some degree of good intent, as confused as it is, but she works the wrong end of the equation and sells dependency and self limitation. Two thumbs down for the likes of AOC.

  • Cotour

    A little more, a comment on the difference between the AOC Liberal / Leftist dependency model, and the self starter, self employed entrepreneurial business type model, or the “Worker” model.

    This young woman, April Wilkerson, started out just making simple wood working videos in her home shop and posting them on YouTube. Just like many others do.

    https://youtu.be/l3Rm8avK6kM

    She has now built things to the point where she built her own shop building on her property which in itself created good content for her channel. And now she has grown that into a real brand in the wood working / tools / home projects industry. And I assume she has become an inspiration for many other young girls and woman who watch her channel to the point where she has a sizable 1.19 million viewers. And that translates into real cash flow. And that will just continue to grow.

    And now she has leveraged that into buying this commercial building in the above video and has plans to expand that into three new businesses where she will employ three very happy people. Two thumbs up, well done. All documented in the real world. What stops her? Nothing.

    And the likes of an AOC, a fully indoctrinated Leftist operative, despises the likes of an April Wilkerson and her positive self image and her independence and her aspirations or anyone else that might aspire to be like her.

    The AOC’s (Read: The Democrat leadership in our own American Congress) of the world deal fear and dependency and that is just depraved to me and really dark and evil in so many ways.

  • Edward

    The food supply is on its way to being another devastation from the COVID-19 Wuhan Flu virus. Meat plants are being closed by government action, when employees are discovered to have the Wuhan virus (or is it that they have the antibodies?). Some panicking food processing employees are afraid to go to work. Some farmers are plowing crops back into the ground or euthanizing their food animals, because the processors are taking in less food for processing.

    With restaurants closed, the supply lines have been disrupted, where less food is needed in the bulk-distribution system to restaurants, and America’s food distribution system is not set up to easily redirect that food elsewhere.

    Because America is producing less food, we are shipping less to the rest of the world, which may cause overseas food prices to rise, just as they did when we started turning food into gasoline. America probably won’t have a shortage of food anytime soon, but the rest of the world could.

    As the Great Oppression continues, we run the risk of learning that industries and companies that were deemed non-essential (e,g, Pelosi’s Congress, which stopped meeting for a few weeks) are actually supplying essential supplies and services.

    One of the first things I need to do once the Great Oppression ends is get a haircut. I needed one even when the Great Oppression began. I hope my favorite barber will still be in business.

  • Edward

    Here is another potential devastation. It turns out that COVID-19 positive patients have been being sent into nursing homes.
    https://nypost.com/2020/04/20/cuomo-didnt-know-coronavirus-patients-are-being-sent-back-to-nursing-homes/

    New York’s health commissioner on Monday defended a directive that requires nursing homes to readmit residents who’ve tested positive for the coronavirus — as Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed he didn’t know the policy was in place.

    While the rest of us were destroying our lives and our economy because “if it saves just one life then it is worth it,” New York has required that COVID-19 positive patients into the places with the highest concentration of the most vulnerable people!

    WTF! (This is a most appropriate time for a curse word.)

    Did I say potential devastation?

    the state revealed last week that at least 3,316 people in nursing homes and adult care facilities had died of coronavirus at their residences or in hospitals across the state.

    And:

    Updated statistics released Monday afternoon increased the death toll to 3,448 as of Sunday, with 2,105 in the Big Apple. Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, to whom Cuomo referred the question, said that under the state’s policy, “if you are positive, you should be admitted back to a nursing home.” “The necessary precautions will be taken to protect the other residents there,” he said during Cuomo’s daily coronavirus briefing in Albany.

    There health commissioner knew about this? Unbelievable. If we can’t keep people from getting COVID outside of nursing homes, what does he think can be done to protect the people inside the nursing homes from the others inside?

    The answer is that he did this without knowing how to protect the others:

    Zucker was asked to explain how the policy could be justified, given how state officials have repeatedly said how quickly the virus can spread and how vulnerable nursing home residents are to COVID-19. “And that’s why we’re working closely with the nursing home leadership and the individuals who are working in the nursing homes to protect those individuals who are coming back who have COVID-19 and went back to the nursing homes and where they came from,” he said.

    They started this just after New York’s lockdown started, and apparently it was reported over a month ago:

    The COVID-19 readmission policy was adopted March 25 and was contained in a Health Department directive that says, “No resident shall be denied readmission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19,” Newsday reported last month.

    Yet no one changed the policy, and the governor was kept in the dark? What a cluster.

    Welcome to Obama’s America, home of the incredibly stupid governance.

  • Edward

    Robert keeps asking, “Are you enraged yet?

    Although I was enraged when my state first extended the lockdown beyond the original 3 week duration, I am far angrier now. It is unbelievable that while

    We are sacrificing so much, attempting to make our sacrifices worth the lives saved, but it tuns out that the experts are intentionally counteracting our efforts by putting the most vulnerable population into harm’s way. Unbelievable!

    We are actively sabotaged by the very people that we had relied upon for knowledge, wisdom, and leadership through these difficult times.

    New York did this, yet it was New York’s high death numbers that were used to justify nationwide extensions to the lockdown period. No governor wanted his state to look like New York, so they delayed ending the Great Oppression.

    By extending the Great Oppression, our medical community and the experts that they rely upon have purposefully harmed We the People as well as thousands of New York’s elderly population. This is outrageous. OUTRAGEOUS!

    The devastation here is the loss of the faith that we Americans had in our medical community, which it turns out was willing to put thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of vulnerable people in jeopardy even as we suffered in order to protect those same people from harm. We once believed that the healthcare industry had our best interests and health in mind as they made decisions, but that is no longer the case — assuming it ever was. How will our healthcare industry ever earn our trust again?

    Am I enraged yet? Hell yes!

  • wayne

    Beatles
    “Revolution”
    -kinetic typography-
    https://youtu.be/DJQtozWKCyg
    3:00

  • Ian C.

    Edward,

    Meat plants are being closed

    That might be the real nothing burger then.

  • Andrew_W

    That might be the real nothing burger then.

    That was nearly tea sprayed all over my desk.

  • Bob C

    Great article, well written…but it isn’t just a government drunk with new found power…it’s a population that has acquiesced, freely given up their constitutional rights that made their plan successful. Whatever happened to American individualism? What happened to ‘give me liberty or give me death’? What would our forefathers…my own late father…say if they saw how easily government and media have cowed the populace into compliance with clearly unconstitutional ‘stay at home’, wear a mask, stay 6 feet from others “orders”? Lives are, indeed, precious. But is, as NY Governor Cuomo has said, one life worth the utter, catastrophic economic and financial devastation this whole scam has caused? Families ruined, businesses shuttered and more to come, incomes destroyed (“replaced” by pathetic $1,200 government checks, paid for by the very people who are devastated). And who are these self styled elites to tell the American people what businesses are “essential”, and “permitted” to remain open? EVERY business that has employees to whom they pay a wage that helps support individuals and families is essential. The LEAST essential employees I can think of are politicians, at all levels, who continue to collect their taxpayer financed paychecks while throwing tens of millions out of work.

  • Jane Doe

    How do we know what the government is telling us is true ? Hasn’t our government given false information or contradiction before? I believe the government was awarding hospitals more more for patients that had COVID-19. Even more money if they had to be placed on a ventilator. Hospitals don’t usually give discounts. They are a profitable organization for the most part. That would seem to be why they are furloughing so many of their staff and cutting hours to necessary employees. Doctors were also stating people were dying of COVID-19 if they had the disease but were also suffering from other illnesses. Even if a person was killed in a vehicle, if they had COVID-19, the COVID was the cause of death. Personally, I would have to disagree with that and say that’s false information.
    Look at what the government has done to our economy. Stores are struggling, owners are trying to find ways to keep their businesses open. So many stores have closed. Landlords are struggling to pay the banks. Sales are so off . Only the big box stores and online companies have made HUGE profits from this pandemic. They have made millions.
    Government has also put the fear in people – everyone must wear a mask or else – when will the time come for the end of the masks? People are afraid of getting to close to another person. This is not something that is helping our society.
    We need to change. People need to change. Government needs to change. Voices need to be heard. The truth needs to be told

  • Mike

    Ive watched and listened to the goverment and concluded the goverment is not in their right minds this is the first of it common sense. The goverment has destroyed our economy either or both for their own personal agenda and their lack of wisdom concerning the virus.they want us to depend on them instead of ourselves. The deaths dont. Constitute their results a economy destroyed. You know a thing by its fruit.and their fruit is rotten to the core they say they care for us when they only. Care for themselves. They’ do all these things for a secret agenda which will be revealed in due time. Their decession only effect not them their able to take care of themselves with total disregard whether we can or not. They are working for us depend on them and most of them have destroyed by fear are spiritual and human rights to be able to not be able to fend for ourselves We are not to be servants of their secreat or misguided agendas but rather to be a goverment for and by the people.i tire of hearing it is the viruses doing it when in reality it is the goverment.their continual misunderstanding of the truth has destroyed the world as we know it.

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