May 21, 2020
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
After peak in COVID-19 deaths, cases and hospitalizations, now it’s time to safely reopen America
America appears to be past the
peak in COVID-19 deaths, cases and hospitalizations, according to data compiled
by at Covid19.healthdata.org, with more than 91,000 dead from the
China-originated virus. Going forward, the projections say cases will dwindle
down to almost no new cases and deaths by August. That’s in part the good news,
as terrible as the ordeal we’ve been through already has been. The worst is
behind us. The bad news is that to keep the death toll as low as possible,
state government resorted to general closures of schools and businesses. As a
result, another 2.4 million Americans filed for initial unemployment claims the
week ending May 16, atop the 25.1 million who were already collecting jobless
benefits the week ending May 9, meaning as many as 27.4 million have lost their
jobs on a net basis since the economic shutdown began. That’s up from last week,
unfortunately, and if that number continues growing even after we are
reopening, watch out. Add to the up to 27.4 million jobs lost the 5.8 million
who were already unemployed when this all began, and more than 33.2 million are
unemployed, an effective unemployment rate north of 20 percent, the highest
since the Great Depression. Particularly hard hit has been none other than the
health care sector, with 2.1 million jobs lost between February and April as
private health providers cancel appointments en masse, postpone treatments,
therapies and other surgeries. But the other side of that are patients who are
cancelling their appointments, just as individuals are choosing to work from
home in many cases if possible. People are afraid to go outside. There has to
be an emphasis on safely reopening, or even states that are anxious to get on
with it will find their citizens’ still concerned about venturing out, creating
a vicious cycle. So, if they need masks and lots more tests to feel safe, and
that is what is necessary to get on with commerce, then make and deliver the
masks and tests so we can all get back to work.
Video: Some positives being seen as we begin to reopen America
As the COVID-19 shutdown winds
down, we see positives in businesses reopening. Hear from ALG President Rick
Manning on how things are looking pretty good so far.
An Open Letter to President Trump and Congressional Republicans
“As small business owners,
franchise operators, and entrepreneurs eagerly start safely re-opening their
businesses, they are running into roadblocks. We see it in person from a hair
salon in Houston, to an ice cream parlor in Florida, to restaurants all across
America. Managers can’t get their employees to return to work. No matter the
dearth of local COVID cases or the establishment’s strict safety precautions,
employees are incentivized to refuse to return to work. By the government! What
started as a virtuous incentive to stay home and ‘flatten the curve’ has become
a perverse incentive to not work. Many employees find they are compensated just
as well — or even much better — on unemployment than they were working. The
extended unemployment plus $600/week bonus is just too attractive. This is a
classic ‘barrier to entry’ in economic terms.”
Andrew McCarthy: The Rice CYA memo, unredacted
“How amusing to find President
Obama’s national-security advisor, Susan Rice, suddenly calling for public
release of the Flynn–Kislyak conversation intercepted by the Obama
administration in late December 2016. I called for its release nearly three-and-a-half
years ago. Dr. Rice, in a familiar pattern for her, has spent the ensuing years
saying things that were obviously untrue only to reverse herself once the paper
trail starts to dribble out. Try not to get dizzy. Rice has gone from claiming
to have had no knowledge of Obama administration monitoring of Flynn and other
Trump associates, to claiming no knowledge of any unmaskings of Trump
associates, to admitting she was complicit in the unmaskings, to — now — a call
for the recorded conversation between retired general Michael Flynn and Russian
ambassador Sergey Kislyak to be released because it would purportedly show that
the Obama administration had good reason to be concerned about Flynn (y’know,
the guy she said she had no idea they were investigating).”
After peak in COVID-19 deaths, cases and hospitalizations, now it’s time to safely reopen America
By Robert Romano
America appears to be past the peak in COVID-19 deaths, cases and hospitalizations, according to data compiled by at Covid19.healthdata.org, with more than 91,000 dead from the China-originated virus. Going forward, the projections say cases will dwindle down to almost no new cases and deaths by August.
That’s in part the good news, as terrible as the ordeal we’ve been through already has been. The worst is behind us.
The bad news is that to keep the death toll as low as possible, state government resorted to general closures of schools and businesses. As a result, another 2.4 million Americans filed for initial unemployment claims the week ending May 16, atop the 25.1 million who were already collecting jobless benefits the week ending May 9, meaning as many as 27.4 million have lost their jobs on a net basis since the economic shutdown began.
That’s up from last week, unfortunately, and if that number continues growing even after we are reopening, watch out.
Add to the up to 27.4 million jobs lost the 5.8 million who were already unemployed when this all began, and more than 33.2 million are unemployed, an effective unemployment rate north of 20 percent, the highest since the Great Depression.
Particularly hard hit has been none other than the health care sector, with 2.1 million jobs lost between February and April as private health providers cancel appointments en masse, postpone treatments, therapies and other surgeries.
But the other side of that are patients who are cancelling their appointments, just as individuals are choosing to work from home in many cases if possible. People are afraid to go outside.
Meaning, as state governments are in the process of reopening they need to do so in a safe way to give Americans the confidence they need to return to the economy. It’s not going to be easy, but one place that the federal government can help in this regard is with proposed phase four legislation now on the table.
Top of the list should be the necessary testing and protective gear including masks that employers will need to give employees and customers assurance that their health and safety needs are being taken into consideration. Otherwise, customers might be unwilling to venture to stores, restaurants or other establishments. If that means the Defense Production Act needs to be invoked again, then invoke it.
Pitfalls in phase four legislation include any proposals to engineer price fixing to deal with the issue of surprise medical billing, which could have negative impacts on already beleaguered and cash-strapped private health providers particularly in rural areas. That should be kept out of any legislation.
Other risks include simply the price tag involved with spending trillions of dollars to rebuild the economy that has been decimated. Any stimulus has to be focused on incentives to get people to rejoin the labor force, and for employers to rehire rapidly. Presumably payroll protection that was already passed will factor in, but the more than 25 million on unemployment right now clearly did not qualify. What will it take to get those Americans back into the labor force to prevent this from becoming a depression? Besides stopping the pandemic there is no more urgent consideration?
The real rub will come with the fact that it needs to be more profitable to hire employees than it is to sit on cash reserves. Similarly, prospective employees need to be making more at their jobs than is presently being offered via unemployment benefits in certain regions, paying more than what they were getting at their jobs. That’s a perverse incentive for many to stay on unemployment.
Then there are exigent factors that can unduly impact the economic outlook, including the incredibly strong dollar relative to other trade partner currencies. With the dollar so strong, the costs of U.S. exports increase dramatically while the price of imports drop. This will continue to pinch jobs in the U.S. until the dollar weakens. The Federal Reserve and Treasury can intervene when this happens. Just as they can when the dollar is too weak creating inflation, so too can they intervene to prevent deflation.
It’s all a lot for policymakers to consider, but suffice to say there has to be an emphasis on safely reopening, or even states that are anxious to get on with it will find their citizens’ still concerned about venturing out, creating a vicious cycle. So, if they need masks and lots more tests to feel safe, and that is what is necessary to get on with commerce, then make and deliver the masks and tests so we can all get back to work.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: http://dailytorch.com/2020/05/after-peak-in-covid-19-deaths-cases-and-hospitalizations-now-its-time-to-safely-reopen-america/
Video: Some positives being seen as we begin to reopen America
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXNJr10Hf-U
An Open Letter to President Trump and Congressional Republicans
America is re-opening! That’s the good news. But it’s not going smoothly. Much attention has been given to government orders barring operation, however, the businesses that are allowed to re-open are finding a different challenge.
We have some policy recommendations based on experience and real world observations.
As small business owners, franchise operators, and entrepreneurs eagerly start safely re-opening their businesses, they are running into roadblocks. We see it in person from a hair salon in Houston, to an ice cream parlor in Florida, to restaurants all across America. Managers can’t get their employees to return to work.
No matter the dearth of local COVID cases or the establishment’s strict safety precautions, employees are incentivized to refuse to return to work. By the government!
What started as a virtuous incentive to stay home and “flatten the curve” has become a perverse incentive to not work. Many employees find they are compensated just as well — or even much better — on unemployment than they were working. The extended unemployment plus $600/week bonus is just too attractive. This is a classic “barrier to entry” in economic terms.
Republicans in Congress and President Trump must fix the distortions that created this barrier and refuse to adopt policies that create further barriers disincentivizing people from returning to work. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is wrong in suggesting we need “additional fiscal support.” We need the government, at all levels, to get out of the way!
A franchise manager observed, “These young people just don’t realize that unemployment doesn’t last forever.” Maybe not, but current expanded benefits are promised to last long enough and pay well enough that they cannot justify going back to work. It is an entirely rational decision.
IF WE ARE GOING TO SUCCESSFULLY RE-OPEN AMERICA — Congress must fix the unemployment payments distortion with new rules:
- Unemployment benefits cannot exceed the individual’s previous level of earnings.
- Individuals who are offered their previous job and refuse it are ineligible for payments.
- At a minimum, individuals who are offered their previous job and refuse it are ineligible for the bonus $600/week payments.
Congress and the President cannot allow the Democrats to extend the current exorbitant unemployment provisions indefinitely, especially beyond the phased reopening in each state. This will simply thwart state’s plans by incentivizing workers and businesses to remain in shutdown.
The Democrat Socialists definitely cannot be allowed to enact their plan to provide a minimum income to everyone whether they are willing to work or not. This will create a permanent under-class and further divide America by social/economic classes. The disincentive to employment will be raised to a point where too many Americans will just choose to be wards of the state rather than work to achieve the American Dream.
As you well know, people who are effectively wards of the state vote for politicians who promise to perpetuate the largess.
We are all focused on re-opening, but we must also focus on laying the groundwork to allow it to succeed.
Tim Wildmon –
President, American Family Association
Ginni Thomas – President, Liberty Consulting
Rick Manning – President, Americans for Limited Government
Peter W. Wood – President, National Association of Scholars
LTG (Ret.) William G. Boykin, US Army – Executive Vice President, Family
Research Council
Jenny Beth Martin – Honorary Chairman, Tea Party Patriots Action
Cathie Adams – 1st Vice President, Eagle Forum
Beth Biesel – Forum Chief, American Liberty Forum
Pat Carlson – National Environmental Chairman, Eagle Forum
Cindi Castilla – President, Eagle Forum Texas
Stephanie Coleman – Executive Director, Liberty Action Network
Dr. Tim Daughtry – Author and Consultant, Daughtry & Company
Becky Gerritson – Executive Director, Eagle Forum Alabama
Cindy Honcoop – State Director, Eagle Forum Washington
Paul Hood, CPA – President, Hood CPAs
Sheryl Kaufman – Corporate Chief Economic (retired), Phillips Petroleum Company
Rick Trader – Producer/ Co-host, Conservative Commandos Radio Show
George Landrith – President, Frontiers of Freedom
Rosina Kovar – Member, Eagle Forum
Elaine D. Little – Vice President, Eagle Forum Alabama
Dr. Everett Piper – Columnist and Author; President Emeritus, Oklahoma Wesleyan
University
George K. Rasley, Jr. – Managing Editor, ConservativeHQ.com
Sandy Rios – Director of Government Affairs, American Family Association
To view online: https://getliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ReopenAmericaNowLetter5-20-20.pdf
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from the National Review, Andrew McCarthy takes apart the unredacted memo former National Security Advisor Susan Rice wrote to herself on Jan. 20, 2017, the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated, about the targeted surveillance of the then-incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn at a Jan. 5, 2017 meeting in the Oval Office with former President Barack Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey and Rice herself:
The Rice CYA memo, unredacted
By Andrew McCarthy
How amusing to find President Obama’s national-security advisor, Susan Rice, suddenly calling for public release of the Flynn–Kislyak conversation intercepted by the Obama administration in late December 2016. I called for its release nearly three-and-a-half years ago. Dr. Rice, in a familiar pattern for her, has spent the ensuing years saying things that were obviously untrue only to reverse herself once the paper trail starts to dribble out.
Try not to get dizzy. Rice has gone from claiming to have had no knowledge of Obama administration monitoring of Flynn and other Trump associates, to claiming no knowledge of any unmaskings of Trump associates, to admitting she was complicit in the unmaskings, to — now — a call for the recorded conversation between retired general Michael Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak to be released because it would purportedly show that the Obama administration had good reason to be concerned about Flynn (y’know, the guy she said she had no idea they were investigating).
Naturally, we have now learned that Rice was deeply involved in the Obama administration’s Trump–Russia investigation, including its sub-investigation of Flynn, a top Trump campaign surrogate who was slated to replace Rice as national-security advisor when President Trump took office. Last night, I did a column for Fox News, analyzing the newly unredacted paragraph from Rice’s previously reported email memorializing a White House meeting on these subjects.
The meeting took place on January 5, 2017, and involved Rice, Obama, and Vice President Biden, the administration’s top political hierarchy on national-security matters, along with Obama’s top law-enforcement and counterintelligence officials, deputy attorney general Sally Yates (soon formally to take the acting AG role she was already performing), and FBI director James Comey. Prior redactions had already demonstrated that the meeting’s central purpose was to discuss the rationale for withholding intelligence about Russia from the incoming Trump national-security team.
It is perfectly obvious that not all Russia information was being withheld. Indeed, the following day, Comey would join other intelligence chiefs to brief then-president-elect Trump on Russia’s interference in the 2016 campaign (and we now know the FBI treated Comey’s conversation with Trump as an investigative mission). What Obama officials decided to conceal was the Obama administration’s investigation of the Trump campaign — a probe based on the absurd theory that Trump’s campaign had conspired in the Kremlin’s hacking and other cyberespionage operations.
The Obama administration hoped to conceal what it had done so that the FBI and the Justice Department, which Comey and Yates would be staying on to lead, could continue the investigation even after Trump took office. And, of course, they did just that; in fact, the Bureau and DOJ renewed the 90-day FISA surveillance warrant on Carter Page just before Trump was inaugurated, and would renew it two more times (in April and June 2017) after Trump was in power — renewals that were easier to green-light because both Flynn and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had been sidelined from the Trump–Russia investigation.
Clearly, Rice, Obama, and Biden realized it would eventually become known to President Trump and top advisers that the Obama administration had both investigated his campaign, and had laid the groundwork to persist in investigating his administration. The patent point of Rice’s last-second email — written “To the File” (what file?) as she was leaving her office on January 20, memorializing a meeting that had occurred over two weeks earlier — was to shift responsibility from President Obama to FBI Director Comey for the pursuit of the Trump–Russia probe.
The newly unredacted paragraph from Rice’s email relates that Comey reported to Obama, Biden, and Rice on the FBI’s investigation of Flynn. The FBI director is said to have framed it as both a “law enforcement” matter (the theory that Flynn committed a crime by violating the moribund Logan Act) and a “national-security” matter (the counterintelligence investigation that the Bureau had actually closed for lack of evidence but was extending due to the Kislyak conversation — despite the lack of any wrongdoing).
According to Rice, Comey was non-committal when Obama asked whether Russia intelligence should be withheld from Flynn — “potentially,” he is quoted as responding. Rice claims Obama left the matter of concealing information from the Trump team unresolved, with the proviso that Comey was to report back if there were any changes.
Again, remember that Rice wrote this email on January 20. She knew it had been 15 days since the meeting. But her email includes no indication that Comey ever reported any changes back to Obama. We are left to conclude that Obama must never have directed that anything be done. Hey, if it turns out the FBI kept up its Trump–Russia investigation, that must have been Comey’s doing — Obama had nothing to do with it. Yup.
It is vital that the documentary record, which should have been uncovered years ago, continue being brought to light. It is good that Trump’s National Intelligence director Ric Grenell is forcing the issue. But let’s not forget: When it turns out that Obama officials have intentionally inserted after-the-fact CYA memos into “the File,” we have to ask why they have done so . . . and to read what they’ve written with that in mind.
To view online: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-rice-cya-memo-unredacted/
