RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/cuomo-wields-imperious-axe-against-nyc-restaurants-joseph-klein/

Power-hungry Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York is singlehandedly starving New York City’s restaurants. By executive edict, Cuomo ordered the city’s restaurants, which were barely getting along as it was, to once again shut down their indoor dining services completely. Cuomo the grinch did so just in time for the holidays, when restaurants were hoping to make up for at least some of the revenue they have lost this year. By decimating the restaurant industry, Cuomo is also destroying the livelihoods of low and middle-income New Yorkers. For many restaurants, Cuomo’s draconian order is their death sentence. Restaurants are closing permanently in droves.

Restaurant owners and workers have reached their breaking point. Together with industry leaders, they protested in Times Square on December 15th. “Save our restaurants! Save our jobs!” protesters chanted before marching to Cuomo’s Midtown East office, the New York Post reported.  “The situation continues to get more and more dire, and the shutting down of indoor dining during the holidays, when New York City restaurants are providing the safety measures, is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Jeffrey Garcia, president of the New York State Latino Restaurant Bar and Lounge Association (NYSRBLA), said at the protest. “We need action immediately.”

A restaurant owner lamented that “now that we’re unable to pay rent due to the shutdown, I’m afraid that I’m going to lose everything altogether.” Another owner said, “My employees don’t have a job two weeks before Christmas. It breaks my heart.”

An executive chef/owner of two lower Manhattan restaurants pointed out the ripple effect of the shutdown. “It’s important to understand that the restaurant industry is an ecosystem, so when you shut down restaurants you are looking at a serious domino effect from the purveyors to the farmers and the employees,” he said.

“How will I pay rent, buy food, support my family?” a long-time cook at a West Village restaurant asked. “That is what I am afraid of.”

https://spectator.org/biden-moderation-progressivism/

The dominant media is an unreliable arbiter of political labels. While it is quick to cast even the most prosaic Republicans as “hardline conservatives,” it is far more circumspect in its description of Democrats. To enhance the appeal of figures like Joe Biden, the media will often confer upon them the label “moderate.” This is a lever by which the media moves the ideological spectrum steadily leftward, to the advantage of liberals. A biased media would like the public to see liberalism and “moderation” as interchangeable. Hence, even though Biden ran a campaign to the left of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, many in the media still described it as moderate.

This media flattery continues as Biden rolls out his personnel picks. He hasn’t selected a veritable moderate yet. All his picks come from the ranks of liberal Democrats, and some of the most important posts have gone to the most ideological of them, from Neera Tanden at the Office of Management and Budget to Xavier Becerra at Health and Human Services. This week Biden named Jennifer Granholm, an opponent of traditional sources of energy, to head up the Energy Department, which is a bit like making a pacifist the head of the Defense Department.

It is clear that no serious dissenters from liberal orthodoxy will receive any positions in a Biden administration. Yet some in the media are still playing up “tensions” between Biden and “progressives” so that the mythology of Biden as a moderate can continue. “Progressives frustrated with representation as Biden Cabinet takes shape,” says the Hill. But the carping doesn’t amount to much. It appears more personal than ideological: Bernie Sanders and company would like to see more of their friends getting jobs. To the extent that it is ideological, it represents little more than an intramural dispute not between moderates and liberals but between leftists of varying degrees. (Neera Tanden is described in the article as “establishment,” though she is as liberal as they come.)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-end-lockdowns-next-month-11608230214?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The approval of several Covid-19 vaccines is an impressive technological development that should rapidly end the lockdowns and allow normal life to resume. But authorities like Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates argue that lockdown restrictions may have to continue through the fall and even into 2022, notwithstanding the catastrophic harms the lockdowns have caused, especially to young people, the poor and the working classes.

The imminent dissemination of vaccines can help end lockdowns by the end of January. The Great Barrington Declaration, which we wrote with Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School, provides the key idea: focused protection of people who face a high risk of mortality should they become infected.

The risk of mortality from Covid-19 infection is now well established by seroprevalence studies conducted world-wide. Seroprevalence studies measure a lower bound on the number of people who have been infected. There is a sharp age gradient in the survival rate after infection. At least 99.95% of people under 70 survive infection; that figure is only 95% for 70 and older.

Covid-19 is thus especially deadly for the old and others with chronic conditions. But the lockdowns are deadly as well. The harms include plummeting childhood vaccination, worse cardiovascular disease outcomes, and less cancer screening, to name a few. It’s impossible to quantify the total deaths they have caused and will cause, but it’s safe to conclude that for people under 70 without chronic conditions—especially children and young adults—Covid-19 is far less deadly than a lockdown. For children, the cessation of in-person schooling has led to severe learning losses, which are predicted to shorten the lifespans of affected students. Among 25- to 44-year-olds, the CDC reports a 26% increase in excess all-cause mortality relative to past years, though less than 5% of 2020 deaths have been due to Covid-19.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/18/want-real-economic-stimulus-end-economy-killing-lockdowns-now/

Congressional negotiators, we’re told, are inching ever closer to a deal for what’s being called a “second round of stimulus spending.” Sorry, but what’s planned has nothing to do with supercharging the economy. Want to really “stimulate” growth? End the foolish COVID-19 lockdowns that have decimated small businesses and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The sound you’ll no doubt soon be hearing is hundreds of Washington, D.C., politicians and policymakers clapping themselves on the back for the pending stimulus package.

As it now stands, the $900 billion-plus deal is likely to include “direct payments to all Americans, funding for vaccine rollout and delivery, and an extension of unemployment benefits as well as much-needed aid to small businesses,” according to The Week.

But this is not “stimulus” by any means. It is the economic equivalent of putting a dying patient on life support.

So call this bill what it is. Government relief for a problem the government itself caused through mandated lockdowns.