Archive for 2020
May 8, 2020
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Betsy DeVos Brings Back Due Process and Libs Lose It. “Liberals are aghast that DeVos has brought fairness to a previously nightmarish situation. Rather than objectively assess the new rules, they’re miffed that their least favorite Cabinet member dared touch something that The Lightbringer instituted. “
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: New Red Flags Emerging From FBI’s Handling of Michael Flynn’s Case. “FBI supervisors, however, are not supposed to rewrite other agents’ 302 forms. Nor are 302 forms supposed to be edited by FBI personnel who were not present at the interview, and both of these things happened in the Flynn case.”
UPDATE: Is it still “conspiracy theory” when there’s an actual conspiracy?
Related: Barr: FBI set Flynn up in an illegitimate “perjury trap” — directed by top brass.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Also related:
TREAT THE NEWS WITH SKEPTICISM: Walla Walla County retracts claim about ‘coronavirus parties,’ says they never occurred. “Officials in Walla Walla County are retracting their claim that some people held parties in which they intentionally exposed themselves to the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Meghan DeBolt, the director of the southeast Washington county’s Department of Community Health, issued a statement late Wednesday saying her earlier remarks were incorrect.”
DON’T JUST CUT ‘EM, SLASH ‘EM: ‘Sober look’ at public payrolls urged as bailouts tax system.
The warning comes after Boston’s public payroll was posted by the Herald showing 8,000 employees who earned $100,000 or more last year. While first responders are on the front lines of the pandemic, others in Boston have not been furloughed.
“We are faced with a crisis. By necessity, the state and City of Boston must find places to tighten the belt. They have an obligation to do it now,” said Greg Sullivan of the Pioneer Institute, who once was the state inspector general. . . .
Out of the 8,000 city employees who took home six-figure pay last year, 31 recorded gross pay of $300,000 or more and another 700 workers clocked in at $200,000 and up, records show. There were also two large workers’ compensation settlements in 2019 for $772,000, to a school employee, and $401,000, to a council worker. . . .
The budget-tightening talk comes jobless numbers show one in four in Massachusetts are unemployed.
“This is the emergency we’ve talked about that would prod reductions,” he added. “What Congress is looking to provide states and cities is mind-numbing. We need to start now to get serious.”
It’s also why lockdowns can’t continue much longer, even in hard-hit states.
WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS, AMERICA: Record gun sales for second month, over 7M this year. We can make it 8.
HARD TRUTHS: Rand Paul Has a Frightening Reality Check for States Keeping Their Residents in Lockdown.
“We have no money, we have no rainy day account, we have no savings account. The three trillion that we’ve already passed out is imaginary money,” said Paul.
“It’s being borrowed, basically, from China. So the irony is we got the virus from China and now we’re going to be more dependent by borrowing more money from China,” continued Paul.
“The only thing that recovers our economy is opening the economy,” said Paul. “It’s not a lack of money, it’s a lack of commerce. If you let people have commerce, if you let them trade, if you take them out from forcible home arrest, our economy will recover. But if you keep everybody under home arrest and say you cannot practice your business, you cannot sell your goods, there will continue to be economic calamity.”
Let’s get back to work.
WHAT’S THE MANDARIN FOR GLEICHSCHALTUNG? EU envoy says removal of phrase in op-ed in China newspaper ‘regrettable.’
The European Union ambassador to China said on Thursday it was “regrettable” that part of an opinion piece co-authored by 27 European ambassadors and published in the official China Daily had been removed before publication.
A comparison between the original op-ed uploaded onto the EU embassy website and the one published on Tuesday by the China Daily showed that in a sentence beginning, “But the outbreak of the coronavirus”, the words that followed – “in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months” – were removed.
“It is regrettable that part of the sentence about the spread of the virus has been edited,” EU Ambassador to China Nicolas Chapuis told reporters at a briefing.
Predictable, too.
NEIMAN MARCUS BECOMES 2ND MAJOR RETAILER TO SEEK CHAPTER 11 BANKRUPTCY:
The move by the 112-year-old storied luxury department store chain was announced Thursday and follows the bankruptcy filing by J.Crew on Monday. Experts believe there will be more to come even as businesses start to reopen in parts of the country like Texas and Florida.
Related: Nordstrom permanently closing Sacramento mall store as COVID-19 hammers economy.
Sadly, Websites such as DeadMalls.com are going to have plenty of opportunities for updates in the next couple of years, as shopping malls lose their anchor stores and restaurants.
GET WOKE, GO MORALLY BROKE: Inside Nike: Sources share claims of sexism, cheating, abuse at the world’s wokest brand.
ANDREW CUOMO’S MORALLY GROTESQUE. Andrew Cuomo’s Morally Grotesque Rationale for Maintaining COVID-19 Lockdowns.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to show that he cannot be trusted to properly weigh the costs and benefits of COVID-19 lockdowns. While conceding the unavoidable tradeoff between lives and livelihoods, he insists that preventing even one death is worth any amount of economic pain.
“The faster we reopen,” Cuomo told reporters this week, “the lower the economic cost, but the higher the human cost, because the more lives lost. That, my friends, is the decision we are really making.”
Cuomo misleadingly implies that the economic burden of lockdowns—lost jobs, shuttered businesses, a precipitous drop in spending and output, unemployment at a level not seen since the Great Depression, tens of millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills and feed their children—is not a “human cost.” Who is hurt by this suppression of economic activity? Robots?
Given Cuomo’s cavalier treatment of nursing home patients, it’s not clear that he’s really that interested in preventing deaths.
GO AHEAD, BITE THE BIG APPLE. DON’T MIND THE MAGGOTS. Call it DeBLOVID-19: Mayor Urged NYCers to ‘Go On With Your Lives’ as City Became Cesspool of Infection.
What, you thought I could only do Steely Dan references?
JOEL KOTKIN: One Nation, Under Lockdown, Divided By Pandemic.
The last thing this polarized Republic needs is, well, more polarization, but that is what we are contracting from the pandemic. Americans, irrespective of region, broadly want the same things, such as safety, a return to normalcy, and an end to dependence on China for medical supplies, but they differ in the depth of their experiences with the pandemic.
Rather than rallying the nation, COVID-19 has amplified every fissure in this society from class to race, but perhaps most of all regarding geography. This reflects, in large part, the different experiences felt in various localities and the differences in how economies function from region to region.
On one hand there is the New York City urban area, which has suffered roughly 40 percent o