April 13, 2020
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
It took 50 states to get to a national lockdown, and it will take 50 states to reopen—and that’s a good thing
In order to combat the Chinese
coronavirus and to save as many lives as possible, 42 states have issued stay
at home orders, and another three have some parts of their states closed, in
order to combat the Chinese coronavirus. All 50 states have schools closed. In
addition, with the national emergency declared by President Donald Trump,
including the overseas travel bans to China and Europe, social distancing,
private sector testing and treatments being authorized on an emergency basis,
the White House coronavirus task force has credited these closures in part with
helping to slowing the total number of cases, which in turn has, according to
the models touted by the medical community, already saved hundreds of thousands
of lives. Countries all over the world have resorted to similar national
lockdowns in order to win the war on the virus. The unfortunate side effect of
the closures is the U.S. and global economies have effectively been shut down
except for essential services, resulting in exceptionally high levels of
unemployment. In the U.S., anywhere from 17 million to 20 million jobs have
already been lost, with many more to come for every week the economy remains
closed. At some point, though, the pandemic will end and the economy will
reopen. But, just as it took all 50 states to get to the point of a national
lockdown, so too will it take all 50 states to reopen when individual state
governors determine it is safe to do so.
Video: Will the second amendment go away with COVID-19 fallout?
Second Amendment rights and
other constitutional rights could be jeopardized by the measures being taken
today.
Video: Thanks to the American people & w/ President Trump's leadership, we are winning the war on the virus
President Donald Trump
chose life at every turn in the war against the Chinese coronavirus — and that’s
a good thing.
John Solomon: Russia case footnotes to be declassified, exposing FBI concerns about Steele disinformation
“U.S. intelligence has decided
to declassify several redacted footnotes from a recent Justice Department
report that will expose more problems with the FBI’s investigation into
President Trump’s campaign, including that agents possessed evidence their
main informant may have been the victim of Russian disinformation, Just the
News has learned.The previously redacted footnotes are likely to
raise new concerns that the FBI ignored flashing red warning signals about
the informant Christopher Steele and gave a false picture in briefing materials
supplied to Congress.The declassified sections from Inspector General Michael
Horowitz’s December review of FBI FISA abuse could be made available to
key Senate and House committees as early as the end of this week, according to
people familiar with the effort.”
It took 50 states to get to a national lockdown, and it will take 50 states to reopen—and that’s a good thing
By Robert Romano
In order to combat the Chinese coronavirus and to save as many lives as possible, 42 states have issued stay at home orders, and another three have some parts of their states closed, in order to combat the Chinese coronavirus. All 50 states have schools closed. In addition, with the national emergency declared by President Donald Trump, including the overseas travel bans to China and Europe, social distancing, private sector testing and treatments being authorized on an emergency basis, the White House coronavirus task force has credited these closures in part with helping to slowing the total number of cases, which in turn has, according to the models touted by the medical community, already saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Countries all over the world have resorted to similar national lockdowns in order to win the war on the virus. The unfortunate side effect of the closures is the U.S. and global economies have effectively been shut down except for essential services, resulting in exceptionally high levels of unemployment. In the U.S., anywhere from 17 million to 20 million jobs have already been lost, with many more to come for every week the economy remains closed.
At some point, though, the pandemic will end and the economy will reopen. But, just as it took all 50 states to get to the point of a national lockdown, so too will it take all 50 states to reopen when individual state governors determine it is safe to do so.
For as much as journalists keep asking President Trump to override the few states that have not issued stay at home orders — all their curves are really flat anyway likely owing to very low population density and all the other measures that have been taken, including closing schools — he has noted that under the Constitution, the decision to close individual states is rightly not his to make.
The states are the ones with the schools closed and the stay home orders. This is a case study in how federalism works.
New York City appears to have needed much more aggressive mitigation than, say, Wyoming, because in New York, 8 million people live on top of one another in the five boroughs, the largest, most densely populated city in America. It’s not one size fits all. Even while less densely populated areas are seeing flatter curves, major metropolitan areas still had a legitimate problem and probably required far more mitigation.
Much has been made of the approach taken by Sweden where older Swedes are being isolated while normal life continues in many capacities even as social distancing is still being implemented, not unlike smaller states in the U.S. And for a less densely populated country, that probably works fine. A National Review column by John Fund and Joel Hay argues for the Swedish approach and quotes Emma Frans, a doctor in epidemiology at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, explaining the plan to Euronews: “The strategy in Sweden is to focus on social distancing among the known risk groups, like the elderly. We try to use evidence-based measurements.”
But that would not prevent a major recession, it would still guarantee one all the same with very similar outcomes in terms of collateral damage. Why?
In Sweden, 1.1 million of the civilian labor force are over the age of 55 and 200K of those are 65 or older, out of a total labor force of 5.5. million. Well that’s still accounting for about 21 percent of their own labor force. Unsurprisingly, Sweden’s own economists are predicting a major recession all the same, which appears unavoidable.
So, Sweden might argue for a slightly more lax approach in less densely populated areas, while still telling a quarter of the older workforce to stay home, which given the number of older workers, can still be devastating to the economy.
Here in the U.S., approximately 38 million of the civilian labor force are aged 55 and over, the age group were mortality rates from the coronavirus rise dramatically. Of those, 11 million of those are over the age of 65. So, even in a more conservative approach focused on the most vulnerable, and we’d still talking about potentially 23 percent of the total workforce staying home indefinitely while the virus massively circulates among the general population, still leading to a massive recession.
So, even saying only old people should stay home still is accepts that a quarter of the economy or more when state actions are taken into account would still be shut.
And even if the federal government was taking a more passive approach, governors, particularly those with larger metro areas, were likely to shut down their economies anyway, sending us into a deep recession. New York and California alone account for about 23 percent of U.S. GDP and they were always going to issue stay at home orders.
In addition, while there’s been a lot of focus on the governmental responses to the pandemic, what about individual decisions to stay home? So while there has been a lot of debate about the best way to respond from a policy standpoint, and in the interim, lots of people are choosing to stay home whether the government orders them to or not.
But even if they hadn’t, individuals were likely to stay home too with similar economic impact.
Either way seems to lead to a pretty deep recession. The difference in overall mortality might be owed to less population density in Sweden, just like it will in smaller states here, but the goal in the U.S. appears to be to get a point of no new cases by summertime, leading to the possibility of containment or perhaps some sort of antiviral treatment to mitigate the virus among the general population when we get to the cold and flu season begins again in the fall. But if the virus keeps kicking around all summer, the likelihood of a resurgence in the fall is much higher.
In the meantime there is no national stay at home and it is in fact individual governors who are the ones making the actual decisions that are resulting in the economic shutdown. Yes, the federal government is setting the tone. Yes, Congress has passed $2.2 trillion legislation to simultaneously incentivize and mitigate the effects of telling everyone to stay home. But even if those measures hadn’t been adopted, the states would have made these decisions regardless because if they hadn’t the number of cases and hospitalization likely would be much, much higher right now, likely resulting in shutdowns being forced on them like happened in Italy. So too would individuals have made those decisions, too. And the deep recession would have happened anyway.
Now in terms of how to reopen, I suspect what Sweden and some of the smaller states have done will be case studies on how small and medium sized states can contain or at least mitigate until we have a vaccine. It is fortunate we have those examples to compare to.
Since the stay at home orders are already in place, the challenge going forward is to get the governors to lift them and move to a more measured, data-driven approach while being mindful that it might not work in the major metropolitan areas for the other reasons I mentioned.
And so, how we reopen is probably going to look different given varying population densities. The Swedish model could be good for the suburbs and rural areas once there are no new cases and states are able to begin reopening, but additional care will be needed for areas exceeding certain population densities. At least at first. And then eventually if Dr. Trump’s miracle cure (hydroxycholoquine-zinc tablets?) works or something like it being fast-tracked at the FDA, then maybe we get to a more open situation. A lot appears to depend on if we can get to a no new cases scenario and if any of the new treatments under investigation really work.
Ultimately, states will tell us how quickly the economy can be reopened, eventually converging into a national, layered strategy taking into account the major differences between metropolitan areas and the suburbs and rural regions of our vast country. That’s the way the Constitution was designed. It is working as intended. And that’s a good thing.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: http://dailytorch.com/2020/04/it-took-50-states-to-get-to-a-national-lockdown-and-it-will-take-50-states-to-reopen-and-thats-a-good-thing/
Video: Will the second amendment go away with COVID-19 fallout?
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Ojc-vQxxc
Video: Thanks to the American people & w/ President Trump's leadership, we are winning the war on the virus
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTcmRYcgE1Q
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured report from Just the News’ John Solomon, several footnotes in the Justice Department inspector general report detailing abuses under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) are about to be redacted that will show that FBI informants might have been duped in a Russian intelligence disinformation campaign:
Russia case footnotes to be declassified, exposing FBI concerns about Steele disinformation
By John Solomon
U.S. intelligence has decided to declassify several redacted footnotes from a recent Justice Department report that will expose more problems with the FBI’s investigation into President Trump’s campaign, including that agents possessed evidence their main informant may have been the victim of Russian disinformation, Just the News has learned.
The previously redacted footnotes are likely to raise new concerns that the FBI ignored flashing red warning signals about the informant Christopher Steele and gave a false picture in briefing materials supplied to Congress.
The declassified sections from Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December review of FBI FISA abuse could be made available to key Senate and House committees as early as the end of this week, according to people familiar with the effort.
The unredacted footnotes are expected to provide new data points in the timeline showing when the FBI learned, or should have suspected, that its key evidence suggesting Trump was colluding with Russia was erroneous and how high up those concerns were known, the sources said.
The new information “will make clear the FBI possessed information at multiple levels that undercut the evidence it was using to sustain a collusion investigation” and will be specific enough to renew a debate in Washington over “whether the FBI intentionally ignored red flags or simply was blinded by ambition from seeing them clearly,” one source with direct knowledge said.
The evidence could also raise new questions about whether statements made to Congress during the Russia probe were false or misleading, and whether the intelligence community’s official assessment that Vladimir Putin was solely trying to help elect Trump was contradicted by some evidence in FBI files, the sources said.
The declassification was prompted in part by a letter sent in January by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., that requested four footnotes from the Horowitz report be declassified.
Grassley and Johnson are two strong allies of Trump who played a key role in debunking the false collusion allegations the FBI investigated. Johnson's investigators flagged the redacted passages during a review of the Horowitz report and worked with Grassley's team to escalate to Attorney General William Barr.
“We are concerned that certain sections of the public version of the report are misleading because they are contradicted by relevant and probative classified information redacted in four footnotes,” Grassley and Johnson wrote Barr. “This classified information is significant not only because it contradicts key statements in a section of the report, but also because it provides insight essential for an accurate evaluation of the entire investigation.”
The two followed up with a letter earlier this month to the Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Ric Grenell saying the release of the classified information would provide "insight essential for an accurate evaluation of the entire investigation."
Sources said DNI and Justice Department are planning to declassify those four footnotes as well as others in the report that will provide new understanding about failures in the FBI’s now-debunked Russia collusion probe.
One of the key revelations will be the unmasking of footnotes that show specific red flags raised inside the bureau’s intelligence files that Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent whose anti-Trump dossier played a key role in the collusion probe, could have been the victim of Russian disinformation through his contacts with Russian oligarchs, the sources said.
Horowitz's report in December concluded that most of the allegations Steele included in the dossier he gave the FBI were inaccurate, uncorroborated, or internet rumor and that the FBI falsely represented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that Steele's intelligence had been verified in securing a FISA warrant to target the Trump campaign and former adviser Carter Page in fall 2016 in an investigation code-named Crossfire Hurricane.
Horowitz’s report also raised concerns the FBI failed to fully evaluate evidence in its intelligence files that suggested Russian disinformation was flowing to Steele, who was working during the 2016 campaign for the opposition research firm trying to help Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party defeat Trump.
Those concerns were echoed in the report by former FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap and former Justice Department lawyer Stuart Evans.
“In view of information we found in FBI files we reviewed, and that was available to the Crossfire Hurricane team during the relevant time period, we believe that more should have been done to examine Steele's contacts with intermediaries of Russian oligarchs in order to assess those contacts as potential sources of disinformation that could have influenced Steele's reporting or, at a minimum, influenced Steele's understanding of events in Russia that furnished context for the analytical judgments he used to evaluate the reporting,” Horowitz wrote at the time. “We agree with the assessment of Priestap and Evans that this issue warranted more scrutiny than it was afforded.”
While Horowitz raised the issue broadly, a detailed set of footnotes laying out what actually was in the FBI files was completely redacted. That footnote is expected, along with other information, to be declassified.
Persons familiar with the effort said the new declassifications also may raise questions about representations FBI witnesses made in classified briefings and briefing documents to Congress in 2017.
Horowitz’s report flagged one such possible episode, recounting a memo that the FBI provided in December 2017 to congressional leaders that claimed to have dismissed the notion that Steele was the victim of disinformation.
“According to an FBI memorandum prepared in December 2017 for a Congressional briefing, by the time the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was transferred to the Special Counsel in May 2017, the FBI did not assess it likely that the [Steele] [ election reporting] was generated in connection to a Russian disinformation campaign,” Horowitz noted.
Such a claim may have dismissed or overlooked evidence sitting in the FBI’s own files, the report suggested.
When pressed by the IG about the possibility that Steele had been the victim of Russian disinformation, Priestap, the former counterintelligence chief whose supervised the lead case agent Peter Strzok, offered an uncertain answer.
“I'm struggling, with, when you know the Russians, and this I know from my Intelligence Community work: they favored Trump, they're trying to denigrate Clinton, and they wanted to sow chaos. I don't know why you'd run a disinformation campaign to denigrate Trump on the side,” Priestap answered.
Steele broadly defended his work in an interview with the IG. And after Horowitz's report was issued, the former British spy issued a statement through his lawyers and his company Orbis Business Intelligence disputing many of the IG's findings, including the allegation that Steele's primary sub-source had disowned or denied much of the information attributed to him in the dossier.
"Public discussions about a source are always fraught with danger for the source and the source's sub-source," the statement said. "Had Orbis been given an opportunity to respond in a private session, the statement by the primary sub-source would be put in a very different light."
Horowitz isn't the only government official to raise concerns that Steele may have been victimized by Russian disinformation. One of the Democrats' star witnesses during President Trump's impeachment investigation, government Russia expert Fiona Hill, testified about Steele that she had "misgivings and concern that he could have been played" by Russian disinformation. Hill had previously worked with Steele when he was with MI6.
“Their goal was to discredit the presidency,” she testified in an October deposition. “Whoever was elected president, they wanted to weaken them. So, if Secretary Clinton had won, there would have been a cloud over her at this time if she was President Clinton. There’s been a cloud over President Trump since the beginning of his presidency, and I think that’s exactly what the Russians intended.”
The new evidence from the declassified footnotes will give the American public a first chance to evaluate whether the FBI dropped the ball on evaluating Russian disinformation in the Steele dossier.
Whatever the final verdict, the upcoming declassifications are a pointed reminder that the public still has much to learn about what did, and did not, go right in the Russia collusion probe.
To view online: https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/russia-case-footnotes-be-declassified-exposing-fbi
