RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/with-lives-and-the-economy-on-the-line-nancy-pelosi-stalls-wuhan-coronavirus-relief-bill/

Shameful.Utterly, despicably shameful.

Having tried and failed in the first half of this to lard up the coronavirus relief bill with extraneous goodies and intrusive regulations to please her rabidly progressive constituency, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to take her bat and ball and go home for the day.

We’re in a situation where every day, every hour counts. Every day that passes without a paycheck or unemployment relief is a day untold numbers of families grow closer to losing their homes. Every hour that money doesn’t go out to manufacturers is another hour hospitals have to wait for masks and ventilators. Every hour some sick New Yorker has to wait for another hospital bed. Every dinner out postponed, every canceled event, every missed business opportunity is another step closer to economic collapse.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Congress knows what to do: Pass a clean bill and get it on the President’s desk. Pronto.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pelosi-reacts-to-virus-stimulus-deal-declines-to-say-when-house-will-vote_3285249.html

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said staffers and representatives are reviewing the stimulus deal reached in the Senate overnight Tuesday while declining to commit to a vote in the House on Wednesday.

“We have our staff and our chairman reviewing the bill. I’m optimistic but we’ll see,” Pelosi told reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Asked if the House could vote as early as today, Pelosi said: “No, we haven’t seen the bill yet. The Senate will vote first.”

“We’ll see the bill and see when the Senate votes,” she added. “So there’s no decision about timing until we see the bill.”

The House went into session at 10 a.m. for a brief session before adjourning in less than two minutes. There’s nothing on the schedule until 11 a.m. Thursday.

House Democrats plan to hold several conference calls throughout the day on the deal the Senate reached and plans for voting on the agreement, C-Span’s Craig Caplan reported.

The White House and leaders in the Senate reached a deal on a $2 trillion relief package overnight. The package includes direct payments of up to $3,000 to most American families as well as creating a $367 billion program for small business loans.

“This is a wartime level of investment into our nation,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor after the two sides had reached a deal. “The men and women of the greatest country on Earth are going to defeat this coronavirus and reclaim our future.”

Senators said they plan to vote on the package on Wednesday. The Senate was slated to reconvene at 12 p.m.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/inaccurate-virus-models-are-panicking-officials-into-ill-advised-lockdowns/

As U.S. state and local officials halt the economy and quarantine their communities over the Wuhan virus crisis, one would hope our leaders were making such major decisions based on well-sourced data and statistical analysis. That is not the case.

A scan of statements made by media, state governors, local leaders, county judges, and more show many relying on the same source, an online mapping tool called COVID Act Now. The website says it is “built to enable political leaders to quickly make decisions in their Coronavirus response informed by best available data and modeling.”

An interactive map provides users a catastrophic forecast for each state, should they wait to implement COVID Act Now’s suggested strict measures to “flatten the curve.” But a closer look at how many of COVID Act Now’s predictions have already fallen short, and how they became a ubiquitous resource across the country overnight, suggests something more sinister.

When Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins announced a shelter-in-place order on Dallas County Sunday, he displayed COVID Act Now graphs with predictive outcomes after three months if certain drastic measures are taken. The NBC Dallas affiliate also embedded the COVID Act Now models in their story on the mandate.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/24/trumps-coronavirus-response-is-foiling-his-enemies/

The president is already unlimbering the economic guns and starting to spike the dreams of those who hope that the economic consequences of the anti-coronavirus measures will lose the administration its reelection.

The political aspect of the coronavirus crisis is developing in a familiar way. The president’s enemies in the media have led the propagation of panic in the country, and have been given enough encouragement to do that from the scientific community, some of whose members are enjoying their 15 minutes of world fame a little more than is seemly.

Trump’s opponents are thus able to swaddle themselves in the legitimacy of science as they hurl their brickbats at the president. As is his custom, the president has given his opponents plenty of ammunition by speaking constantly, leaving a rich trove of contradictory, and in some cases, it turns out after a few days, absurd reflections on the medical and related problems as they unfold.

As is also the well-established custom, his enemies cannot resist embellishing and fabricating. The claim he had disbanded the pandemic response section of the National Security Council is false, as are suggestions that he has ignored or overruled scientific opinion.

The assault on the president’s credibility as an enunciator of facts has had some success, partly because there is some reason to question his attention to facts and partly because he is routinely smeared by his media enemies.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/private-industry-mobilizes-against-the-coronavirus-11585091775?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

President Trump can’t do right by some critics no matter what he does. For three years he’s been denounced as a reckless authoritarian, and now he’s attacked for not being authoritarian enough by refusing to commandeer American industry. The truth is that private industry is responding to the coronavirus without command and control by the federal government.

Last week Mr. Trump invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act that lets a President during a national emergency order business to manufacture products for national defense, set wage and price controls and allocate materials. On Tuesday the Federal Emergency Management Agency used the Korean War-era law for the first time in this crisis to procure and distribute testing kits and face masks.

But Democrats want the Administration to take over much more of the private economy. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday tweeted that the federal government should “nationalize the medical supply chain” and “order companies to make gowns, masks and gloves.” He has been echoed by Democratic governors and leaders in Congress.

Yet businesses across America are already chipping in where they can. Aerospace manufacturer Honeywell plans to hire 500 workers at its plant in Rhode Island, which currently produces safety goggles, to make millions of N95 face masks for medical professionals. 3M has doubled its global output of N95 masks and this week is sending 500,000 respirators to hot spots in the U.S.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/congress-reaches-deal-on-2-trillion-relief-package-for-covid-19_3284826.html

The White House and U.S. congressional leaders in the Senate reached an agreement on a $2 trillion relief package amid the COVID-19 pandemic, White House official Eric Ueland said shortly after midnight on Wednesday.

Congress earlier passed an $8.3 billion emergency spending package (pdf) over the CCP virus in early March that Trump signed into law on March 6. The legislation enables funding to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 and other prevention measures.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are done. We have a deal,” he said.

The text of the deal was not expected to be available until later on Wednesday.

The package would give direct payments of up to $3,000 to most U.S. families, and provide some $367 billion to a program for small-business loans to help them keep making payroll as workers are forced to stay home due to “stay at home” orders in several states across the country.

The package also includes a $500 billion fund for guaranteed, subsidized loans to help larger industries, $250 billion for expanded unemployment aid, and $75 billion for hospitals.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pelosi-schumer-contagion-11585006077

What a spectacle. Much of America is quarantined at home, the public is so panicked there’s a run on toilet paper, the country desperately wants reassurance, and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer decide to take a bipartisan rescue bill as a political hostage.

That’s the display of Democratic leadership in a crisis the nation received on Monday as Senate Democrats blocked a $1.8 trillion bill that has urgent money for workers, hospitals, small business and, yes, even larger companies threatened by the forcible shutdown of the U.S. economy. When America most needs bipartisan cooperation, Democrats add to the economic uncertainty by putting their partisan interests above the needs of the country.

***

Democrats are lucky the Federal Reserve chose Monday to deploy its biggest financial guns so far, or the markets might have taken an even bigger fall amid Washington’s dysfunction. Equities still fell by 3% or so, but investors took some comfort in the Fed’s offer to buy as many mortgage securities and Treasurys as needed to calm the panic. The mortgage-securities market has been strained as sellers who need cash struggle to find willing buyers.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/03/24/we-still-have-to-be-vigilant-er-doctor-and-

““Americans should know that the vast majority … of the people who get COVID-19 are going to be fine,” says Rep. Mark Green.”

Mark Edward Green is an American politician, physician, and retired U.S. Army Major who currently represents Tennessee’s 7th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives.

Besides being a congressman, Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., is an emergency room physician and Amy special operations veteran. He joins me today on The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss his perspective on the coronavirus pandemic, what the Senate’s relief package gets right and wrong, and why the U.S. shouldn’t be dependent on China for pharmaceuticals and medical supplies. Read the lightly edited transcript, pasted below, or listen on the podcast:

Rachel del Guidice: I’m joined today on The Daily Signal Podcast by Congressman Mark Green of Tennessee. Congressman, it’s great to have you back on The Daily Signal Podcast.

Rep. Mark Green: Hey, thanks for having me.

Del Guidice: Given your background in medicine as an emergency room physician, and what’s on the minds and hearts of all Americans right now is the whole coronavirus pandemic, what is your perspective overall on everything that’s going on?