Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition Issue #733
03/17/2023, 03/18/2023, 03/19/2023
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1) Did Lockdowns Kill People? Non-COVID Deaths up by Roughly 250,000
Here's a grim finding from a new CTUP study by senior fellows Casey Mulligan and Rob Arnott: three years after the infamous 15 days to slow the spread, non-COVID deaths are running about 100,000 per year higher than expected, with no signs of slowing down. These are above-trend deaths from alcohol, drug overdoses, delayed hospital visits, and so on.
2) Poor, Poor Pitiful Michigan
Who is running things in Lansing, Michigan these days? That would be the Big Labor bosses - who elected a Democratic legislature and Governor Gretchen Whitmer. And, boy, do elections have consequences.
First, they repealed the state's Right-to-Work law - as we have previously reported. The Mackinac Center finds that some 50,000 Michigan workers left the union when the Right-to-Work law was enacted. Now, they will be forced to pay union dues against their will as a condition of employment.
Now the Michigan House wants to divert taxpayer dollars into union coffers by making union dues a tax write off through a refundable 100% tax credit. The bill has no cap on the amount that could be reimbursed. That means, essentially every penny of union dues paid would be reimbursed by the state.
This is such a brazen power play, our jaws are hanging wide open. The Dems are effectively making the union contributions to their campaigns fully funded by taxpayers. This means that the six out of seven Michigan workers who don’t belong to a union have to pay for the Dems’ political agenda.
3) Blue States Like New York Are "Uninvestable"
You gotta watch this video of Kevin O'Leary of CNBC's Shark Tank fame telling a stunned panel of CNN hosts that no one wants to invest in blue state America anymore. CNN's Don Lemon asks, is it just the higher taxes. O'Leary responds, no "it's regulations" and other anti-business policies as well.
4) San Francisco and New York to Ban Nearly All Gas Appliances
Seemingly every crackpot leftist idea is incubated in California, so buyers beware:
This week, San Francisco's Bay Area Air Quality Management District voted to ban the sale and installation of natural-gas furnaces and water heaters within eight years.
The Democrats in Albany are now pursuing a ban on all natural gas connections in new buildings, period.
And as we reported earlier this week, Biden wants to take the anti-gas crusade national.
Our view is: keep the government out of our kitchens and basements.
5) Dutch Farmers' Big Win Against Climate Change Fanaticism
Even in some parts of Europe climate change hysteria has gone way too far.
In the Netherlands last week, farmers facing government seizure of their land in the name of global warming enjoyed a political earthquake at the polls.
The coalition of farmers and anti-big government conservatives united in opposition to stringent government plans to slash nitrogen emissions by dramatically reducing livestock numbers and buying out thousands of farms. They won.
The Dutch media reports that the election results are evidence that this this movement’s “appeal has spread rapidly beyond its rural heartland, on a populist platform that represents traditional, conservative Dutch social and moral values.”
Reminiscent of the truckers’s strike against lockdowns in Canada, the run-up to the vote was dominated by the sight of farmers' tractors on the streets of The Hague and outside the venue of a pre-vote leaders' debate.
