Tag Archives: The Blue Plague

Jul 23 2020

AOC’s Baseless Accusation That the U.S. Is a “Brutal, Barbarian Society”


Re-Posted from Just Facts Daily By James D. Agresti

April 16, 2020

According to democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Covid-19 pandemic is proving that the United States “is a brutal, barbarian society for the vast majority of working-class Americans.” As evidence of this, she claims that “40% of us couldn’t even afford a $400 emergency” before this crisis, and Covid-19 “is more than a $400 emergency.”

However, her “40%–$400” statistic is false, and the facts that broadly inform this issue reveal that:

  • government social programs, which AOC seeks to enlarge, depress workers’ savings, causing the very outcomes that she decries.
  • the people of the U.S. lead the world in charity.
  • middle- and low-income Americans are more financially capable of handling Covid-19 than the bulk of people in most developed countries, including those who live in more socialistic nations that AOC says the U.S. should emulate.

AOC’s Allegations

In a recent video, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–NY) declared: “This is supposed to be the richest society in the world, and I think what this crisis is showing us is that this is only a rich society for a very small amount of people, and it is a brutal, barbarian society for the vast majority of working-class Americans because 40% of us couldn’t even afford a $400 emergency before this thing started. This is more than a $400 emergency, and we’re really going to have to step up and completely change our approach to our public systems.”

The “40%–$400” Statistic

The statistic cited by AOC stems from an annual Federal Reserve study of people’s “self-reported ability to handle unexpected expenses.” Contrary to her claim that “40% of us couldn’t even afford a $400 emergency,” the survey actually finds that 12% of U.S. residents fall into that category. Furthermore, the facts surrounding this 12% figure reveal that it overstates the portion of people who can’t afford such an expense.

Per the Federal Reserve’s report on this issue, “if faced with an unexpected expense of $400”:

  • 61% “of adults say they would cover it with cash, savings, or a credit card paid off at the next statement.”
  • 27% say they “would borrow or sell something to pay for the expense.”
  • 12% say “would not be able to cover the expense at all.”

Hence, AOC’s figure of “40%” includes people who would place the expense on a credit card and not pay it off right away. This is materially different from her claim that they “couldn’t even afford” it.

Moreover, the same report notes that another survey found 76% “of households had $400 in liquid assets (even after taking monthly expenses into account).” In other words, it’s not that they “couldn’t” immediately pay for an unexpected $400 expense; they just preferred not to do so. Given that 40% of U.S. residents carry a credit card balance “most or all of the time,” the “$40%–$400” statistic says little beyond that.

With regard to the 12% who claim they “would not be able to cover the expense at all,” consumer data shows that the lowest-spending 10% of U.S. households spend an average of $1,369 per year on entertainment and $208 per year on alcohol. That’s enough to handle about four $400 emergencies every year. Furthermore, these figures are based on household surveys, and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis explains that they “are subject to deliberate underreporting of certain items.”

The fourth-lowest 10% of households—who are also included in AOC’s 40% figure—spend an average of $2,830 per year on entertainment and $320 on alcohol. This is enough to cover about eight $400 emergencies, which means the issue is not about a lack of money but how it is spent.

In spite of these facts, media outlets have published headlines like these:

  • “The Shocking Number of Americans Who Can’t Cover a $400 Expense”
    – Washington Post
  • “Nearly 40% of Americans Can’t Cover a Surprise $400 Expense”
    – MSN
  • “40% of Americans Don’t Have $400 in the Bank for Emergency Expenses”
    – ABC News
  • “Nearly 40% of Americans Can’t Cover a Surprise $400 Expense”
    – CBS News
  • “40% of Americans Can’t Cover a $400 Emergency Expense”
    – CNN

Also, the survey includes all “noninstitutionalized, civilian” adults who live in the U.S., not just “working-class Americans” as AOC asserts. Thus, it also includes non-working Americans and millions of unauthorized immigrants who are not legally allowed to earn income in the United States. Since these individuals often work off the books and don’t disclose the money, this potentially skews the results of such surveys.

Government Social Programs

Also belying AOC’s rhetoric about the inability of Americans to weather a Covid-19 crisis is the fact that taxpayers already pay for most of the living expenses of low-income households, including the vast bulk of their medical costs. Roughly 22% of the U.S. population is on Medicaid, and as the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services explains:

Beneficiary cost sharing, such as deductibles or co-payments, and beneficiary premiums are very limited in Medicaid and do not represent a significant share of the total cost of health care goods and services for Medicaid enrollees.

Beyond medical care, federal, state, and local governments provide a wide range of other benefits to low-income households. In 2015, the U.S. Government Accountability Office identified 82 federal means-tested welfare programs. When all of these benefits and other sources of income are included, U.S. households that are officially “in poverty” consume an average of more than $50,000 per year in goods and services. This amounts to 5.2 times the income they report to the Census Bureau.

Governments also shift the costs of some welfare policies to the private sector. A prime example is the federal law that requires most hospitals with emergency departments to provide an “examination” and “stabilizing treatment” for anyone who comes to such a facility and requests care for an emergency medical condition or childbirth—regardless of their ability to pay and immigration status.

In 2018, federal, state, and local governments provided an average of $23,050 in social benefits to every household in the United States. The federal government defines these as “payments from social insurance funds, such as social security and Medicare, and payments providing other income support, such as Medicaid and food stamp benefits.” These alone are on par with the total average household income of Eastern Europe, including both private earnings and government benefits.

In addition, the federal government has recently enacted enough Covid-19-related legislation to nearly double its regular $2.6 trillion annual spending on social benefits. This includes but is not limited to $192 billion for the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and an estimated $2.2 trillion for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

Impact on Personal Savings

Such levels of government social spending, which AOC wants to increase, are the main reason why many workers don’t save more of their income. As detailed in 2016 working paper published by the European Central Bank:

  • “As the state organizes and offers more public insurance, there is less need for relatively poor households to hold precautionary savings, and more income might be used for consumption purposes.”
  • “social services provided by the state are substitutes for private wealth accumulation.”
  • “an increase in welfare state spending goes along with an increase—rather than a decrease—of observed wealth inequality.”

Furthermore, Americans must ultimately fund these programs, which hinders their ability to save. The $23,050 per household in social benefits that governments paid out in 2018 ultimately came from American households. Although high-income households bear a greater share of these costs than others, middle-income workers lose about 15.3% of their paychecks to social insurance taxes.

If, in contrast, these workers could have saved and invested a fifth of these taxes during their careers, each retired middle-income worker would have an additional $199,000 to $764,000 in savings today.

Voluntary Charity

Long before governments began providing appreciable amounts of social benefits, the U.S. led the world in charity, and it continues to do so.

In notes that Thomas Jefferson wrote in the 1780s, he described how Americans cared for the sick and poor with striking contrast to modern, government-run welfare programs:

  • Churches collected money and appointed modest, quiet people to deliver these resources and personally look after each person in need.
  • For the poor who had “neither property, friends, nor strength to labour,” farmers took them in, and churches paid these caretakers an annual sum to do this.
  • For the poor who were “able to help themselves a little,” churches supplemented their income so they could “live comfortably in their own houses, or in the houses of their friends.”
  • “Vagabonds without visible property or vocation, are placed in work houses, where they are well clothed, fed, lodged, and made to labor. Nearly the same method of providing for the poor prevails through all our states; and from Savannah [Georgia] to Portsmouth [New Hampshire] you will seldom meet a beggar.”
  • Sick people were “visited by all the neighbors,” who brought them food and took turns watching over them at night. Regarding this charity, Jefferson wrote:
    • It “is without comparison better than in a general hospital, where the sick, the dying and the dead, are crammed together, in the same rooms, and often in the same beds.”
    • Being in a home and under the care of a local community has advantages that outweigh the “regularities of medicine and regimen” in a hospital.
    • “Nature and kind nursing save a much greater proportion in our plain way, at a smaller expense, and with less abuse.”

In the 1830s, a French historian and political scientist named Alexis de Tocqueville visited the U.S. and wrote a famous work entitled Democracy in America. In it, he stated that what “I most admire in America” is how people were personally engaged in advancing the welfare of society:

In the United States the interests of the country are everywhere kept in view; they are an object of solicitude [concern] to the people of the whole Union, and every citizen is as warmly attached to them as if they were his own.

When a private individual meditates an undertaking, however directly connected it may be with the welfare of society, he never thinks of soliciting the cooperation of the Government; but he publishes his plan, offers to execute it himself, courts the assistance of other individuals, and struggles manfully against all obstacles. Undoubtedly he is often less successful than the State might have been in his position; but in the end, the sum of these private undertakings far exceeds all that the Government could have done.

Although federal, state, and local governments consume about 33.5% of the U.S. economy—at an average cost of $54,000 per year to every household in the nation—U.S. citizens still donate about $50 billion each year to charities that provide “direct services to people in need.” That equals an average of $1,316 for every person who is reportedly below the poverty line.

U.S. citizens also donate $38 billion per year to health charities, along with $59 billion to education charities, and $127 billion to religious groups, many of which serve the poor.

A 2016 study of 24 nations by the Charities Aid Foundation found that the people of the United States are most generous and donate 1.44% of the nation’s gross domestic product to charities. The next closest nation, New Zealand, donates 0.79%, or 45% less than the USA. Nations such as Finland (0.13%) and France (0.11%) donate less than one-tenth of the USA.

The Big Picture

The most comprehensive mass measure of people’s financial condition is their consumption of goods and services. This is the World Bank’s “preferred” indicator of material well-being due to “practical reasons of reliability and because consumption is thought to better capture long-run welfare levels than current income.”

The latest available data show that middle-income Americans and even the poorest 20% of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries. This includes the majority of nations in the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including more socialistic nations that AOC says the U.S. should emulate:

An important strength of this data is that it is adjusted for purchasing power to measure tangible realities like square feet of living area, foods, smartphones, etc. This removes the confounding effects of factors like inflation and exchange rates. Thus, an apple in one nation is counted the same as an apple in another.

Summary

Contrary to AOC’s portrayal of the USA as “a brutal, barbarian society for the vast majority of working-class Americans,” the key facts that inform this matter show that:

  • the lone statistic she used to support this allegation is false.
  • personal savings—the subject of her statistic—are depressed by government social programs that she champions and seeks to expand.
  • when it comes to charity, the people of the U.S. are the most generous in the world.
  • middle- and even low-income Americans have more material resources to weather Covid-19 than the majority of people in most developed nations
Jul 22 2020

Fake Noose Media and The Left Triggered by Cartoon


Daniel Scavino Jr. is one of Trump’s top people at the White House and recently he posted one of my cartoons on Facebook.

Bedlam from the left soon ensued. It was a cartoon I penned back in May and I depicted Dr. Fauci as a spigot spewing cold water on the country and washing the economy down the drain. I titled it “Dr. Faucet.” I made him look extra leaky, and he may be leaking everything to his boss, Bill Gates…but I can’t say for sure.

My cartoon made the news. I saw it flashed on CNN, MSNBC, and later on FOX, a network that for some reason has Chris Wallace as one of their personalities. The lying mass media, always looking for opportunities to attack President Trump, began spouting nonsense about Trump being ‘anti-science’ and discrediting the wisdom of the good doctor. Wallace was no different and flashed my cartoon at the president and asked for an explanation. Trump handled it (and the entire interview) very well and said he likes Fauci, but disagreed with him at times and he also pointed out a few of Fauci’s many errors. Trump said Scavino’s free speech is his own opinion.

I’ve been told (by some of the White House staff) that President Trump has seen my cartoons and it’s one of the reasons I was invited to the Social Media Summit last year. I won’t go into what caused me to be uninvited, but last weekend I at least got to know for sure that Trump has seen my work because I saw him looking at it. I chuckled when I saw it. I almost hoped he would say something positive about it such as “Way to go, Ben!” or some such. Of course, that didn’t happen but I decided to indulge myself and draw a cartoon about it. It’s rare that cartoonists do this, and I may be out of line, but I beg your indulgence because starting tomorrow I’m taking some time off.

I’ll be gone for about a week. I have not taken more than a couple days off in a long time and the wilderness is calling me. I’m going to go do some gold panning and I’ll enjoy getting away from the drawing table and the computer for a while. Too much bad news has taken its toll and I’ve found myself getting too angry. That’s not good for one’s health. I’m off to do some recovery.

Before I go I want to extend a very hearty “THANK YOU!” to all of you who have donated to our cause. We simply could not draw the cartoons without your help and when you look at our work on our site you’ll know you’re definitely a part of it. You make it happen.

The sun is going down in the west as I type this and soon I will be watching it go down while on the road. See you soon!

—Ben Garrison

Jul 22 2020

COVID Tests are Deliberately Being Used for Political Purposes


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jul 22, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

There is MASSIVE fraud taking place in COVID-19 reporting, which is clearly occurring for political purposes and should be declared a criminal act. I know people who signed up to be tested but never received a test because the line was too long. They subsequently were told they tested POSITIVE when they never were tested. Then people were recorded as POSITIVE when they only tested to see if they had antibodies.

During the Panic of 1869, the government managed to crash gold from the $162 level (reached during the Jim Fisk era), and the US Treasury deliberately used the same tactic to force gold lower. The US Secretary of the Treasury George Sewall Boutwell announced that the federal government had made $4 million of its gold reserves available for trading. This was an excessive amount, which they did not actually have at the time. Nevertheless, the announcement broke the back of the gold ring and prices collapsed. Only later did the Treasury admit that they had made a “mistake” in the amount of gold that would be released in their press statement. Instead of $4 million, the amount was actually only $400,000. Real or not, the statement by the US Treasury caused gold to collapse abruptly, bringing the price from $162 to $133 within 15 minutes. This is the very same tactic being used with COVID. The fake numbers get the headlines, and then the revision is never noticed. They accomplish the intended political impact, and nobody is ever held accountable.

Jul 22 2020

President Trump White House COVID-19 Taskforce Briefing – 5:00pm Livestream…


Posted originally on The Conservative Tree House on July 21, 2020 by 

President Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence and the COVID-19 taskforce hold a press briefing from the White House. Anticipated start time 5:00pm ET

White House Livestream – Fox News Livestream – Alternate Livestream

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Jul 21 2020

Where Will YOU Draw the Line?


Wearing an ineffective and downright harmful mask is now a daily event for most Americans.

Bill Gates and his paid-for medical tyrants along with the globalist Illuminati got their way on this one. Mass compliance through fear is working for them. They are accustoming us to do what we’re told while giving up our freedom. What do you think they’ve been discussing at all those Bilderberg meetings?

They own the mass media, which has drummed out a steady beat of fear for many months now. They don’t tell us about their satanic pedophiles at the top. They don’t tell us about the mass theft by the Fed that benefits only them—the global elite. They lie and exaggerate as they fan the flames of COVID-19 hysteria constantly—and they blame it all on Trump. Their planned scamdemic has succeeded just as Gates’ supercomputer predicted it would. Things are going according to plan.

Isn’t it strange how the top .001 percent—the unelected elite who own most of the world—now shut down businesses and run our lives over a medical issue. Our elected officials go along for the ride. Most governors and big city mayors are puppets of the globalists.

Many of us have complained loudly about the masks. I made a scene at the local post office. All the sheeple there were complying dutifully. I shouldn’t call them sheeple—they HAD to wear them if they wanted to carry out their postal business. I did not—my mail went back to the truck. They sported their face mufflers as they lined up next to signs that tersely ordered them worn. People obey ‘authority,’ and when the mass majority obeys, then everyone else complies.

The time for resistance is over. The mask pushers won. It reached critical mass. Anyone objecting is now seen as a nut job. I got treated like that at a grocery store. I was the ONLY one without a mask and the checkout clerk barked her orders at me to obey social distancing. I was a disease in her eyes. The globalists managed to divide and conquer humanity in a mere few months.

We’ll see this pattern repeat itself with a mandatory vaccine. Will this be the final line in the sand? Will Americans finally grow a backbone and yell, “NO!” If they don’t, we’ll move onto Gates’ next step: A worldwide digital ID. What comes with that? A cashless system. A social credit system. The Chicoms already has part of this plan in place. Gates, the central bankers, Silicon Valley, the socialists, and the big globalist corporations want to control every aspect of our lives. Their high-tech noose is around our necks. The time to start kicking is now—not after we drop.

We’ll see their mark of the beast. No buying and selling until one is part of their demonic control grid. And, like communist China, there will be concentration camps. The Chicoms are rounding up millions of Chinese Muslims right now and forcing them onto trains….gulag bound.

Think that can’t happen here? It will. All we have to do is keep complying.

—Ben Garrison

Jul 21 2020

Emaskulate! Or, Die!


We will not escape the culture war so we must pick a side. Our choices are, burn the masks, and cancel Fake News, or wear them and cancel freedom

Mark Gray image

Re-Posted from the Canada Free Press By  —— Bio and Archives—July 20, 2020

Emaskulate! Or, Die!

A mask with pores or gaps bigger than the virus is like a condom with perforations bigger than the ‘boys’.”

“Conclusion: Wearing masks will not reduce SARS-CoV-2.” So says the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons who produced substantial evidence to support that conclusion.

So, there is no benefit to wearing masks if they fail to prevent the spread of the virus. None, which not only suggests the need for masks is Fake News, but that the best possible outcome for wearing them would be benign. That means everything “not the best” will influence society in some negative way. Unfortunately, the cumulative net impact of mask wearing will be the sum total of all the negative “not the best” events.

Not The Best Events

Masks reduce the amount of air breathed in, putting people at risk of hypoxia. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxia_(medical)] At minimum, a lack of oxygen produces physiological stresses that weaken our immune systems, making us more susceptible to viruses. Social costs include needless fears of the unmasked, uncivil discourse, the loss of one’s freedom to choose, and financial ruin.

Yes, mask wearing will make matters worse. Of course, the media and politicians will cite that degradation as evidence proving the need for more masks/shutdowns/lockdowns, placing us in a perpetual cycle of failure and, coincidentally, establishing permanent political power.

The Truth Of Fake News

It’s obvious that refusing to wear a perforated face condom has zero to do with “public safety”, so why are we being coerced into harming ourselves by wearing them?

It’s quite simple. The primary goal of Fake News is to set, and then sustain, Fake Beliefs that serve an ideological agenda. A society acting on those beliefs will automatically advance that agenda even if that agenda is harmful to society itself.

Rest assured, the inability of masks to stop viruses is well known by both Fake News providers and the government, so, if masks aren’t about public safety, what is the point of forcing them on people?

The true purpose of masks is the legitimization of the original, delusional COVID Fake Beliefs, which are then used to justify draconian political actions. Masks tell our rulers that, yes, it was OK to shut down schools and businesses. We agree with quarantining the healthy and shutting down parks. It’s OK for large corporations to corral aged customers outside for extended periods on cold, rainy, days. It’s OK to strip us of freedoms and destroy our way of life. And, most importantly, masks say it will be OK next time too.

Mask wearers, while believing they are doing what’s right, are actually vindicating the ongoing tyrannical destruction of liberty and freedom. Mask wearing compliance doesn’t reflect weakness, it reflects Fake Belief acceptance. Refusing to wear a mask, then, tells the Fake News ruling class who the COVID deniers are, and as the highly politicized OPP proved in Minden, Ontario, dissent will not be tolerated!

A Politicized Police Force is a Corrupt Police Force

A politicized police force is one whose purpose is to protect ideas, ideology, and those who agree with them from being challenged. The moment this happens is the moment the police no longer serve to protect people and instead serve an ideologically corrupt ruling class.

Canada’s police force became politicized long ago. Examples include the OPP standing aside in Caledonia to let the Mohawk “warriors” abuse Caledonians, allowing pipeline “protestors” to disrupt lives and the flow of goods and services, the “Peace” march in Calgary that resulted in the beating and assault of a Jewish woman and her children, the fining of people eating a muffin in the Tim Horton’s parking lot they bought it at, and the SWAT-styled, armed takedown of a Lethbridge woman walking the streets dressed as a Storm Trooper on “May The Force (Fourth) Be With You”.

The tragic killing of a 73-year-old man after an alleged altercation at a grocery story over mask compliance and endangering “public safety” as defined by COVID Fake News is one of the final pieces in tyranny’s puzzle. Law enforcement has crossed the Rubicon and now, dissent, not violent, abusive acts, is the new standard for the state sanctioned elimination of ideological opponents. What’s next, the shipping of Fake News deniers into re-education Gulags?

The Police, as much as we need them, are no longer on our team. They have been corrupted from the top down and need a complete overhaul to ensure their independence from ideological agendas. Otherwise, tyranny will face little resistance in its ceaseless march to power.  Sort of like right now.

Dissent Will Not Be Tolerated

Cancel culture is not a new phenomenon, it’s just gained strength to the point it can destroy lives, topple statues, and terrorize people with sanctioned impunity. At its root, cancel culture is simply the elimination of any opposition. It began silencing dissent in news, academia, and entertainment decades ago.

Cancel culture has moved quickly from silencing to ostracizing, then discrediting and destroying, fining and jailing, and now, thanks to the OPP, the killing of an old, cranky, cuss who refused to wear a damn face mask that could harm his immune system and make him more susceptible to viruses!

It doesn’t matter if COVID-19 is the weakest, wimpiest, pandemic in history, you will believe in its killing power or else! You will comply as expected. You will kneel as demanded. You will do as you’re told, when you’re told, as any “good” citizen would. You will OBEY, and you will demand the same from everyone else.

You will emaskulate, or, you will die.

Cancel Culture Is A Culture War Tactic

If a free country loses the culture war, what type of country will rise in its wake? Think about it. What would a “free” country gain from taking over another “free” country? The premise rejects entirely the notion of freedom.

Are you free to work, to go outside, to travel, to visit grandma, to attend school or church, to eat at a restaurant, to not wear a perforated condom on your face? What were once common freedoms are now benevolent gifts from a totalitarian ruling class, and we’re expected to be thankful for them.

We will not escape the culture war so we must pick a side. Our choices are, burn the masks, and cancel Fake News, or wear them and cancel freedom.

Jul 21 2020

Optimistic for the Future


Armstrong Economics Blog/Opinion

Re-Posted Jul 21, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

 

I had a professor who once said that two people were standing on top of the World Trade Center and a gust of wind blew them off the roof. The pessimist immediately starts praying to be forgiven for his sins. The optimism, as he is passing the 4th floor says, “So far so good!”

In these trying times, we have to be balanced. Yes, there will be a rise in civil unrest and anarchy particularly post-September 2020. Nevertheless, these times have been orchestrated by a sinister group. The entire reason for the lockdown was because of the forecast that 3 million would die from COVID-19, which meant that there would not be enough bed spaces in hospitals. This is the chart put out to justify the lockdown. Well, the hospitals were empty and the excuse for the lockdown was nonsense, particularly when applied nationwide. But ever since, these lockdowns no longer talk about a shortage of bed space to justify them. Now, it is just a prerogative of state governors and it has been abused for political purposes.

This virus has been drastically manipulated for political purposes and nobody involved will ever admit that they were wrong. The lockdowns will result in protests and civil unrest. We have the opportunity to make a difference. We cannot change the shift of the financial capital from the United States to China. Nevertheless, that does not mean we will starve to death and be reduced to eat bugs despite the fact that such a trend is promoted by the United Nations and this sinister consortium.

The British Empire collapsed but the British people survived. We will do the same.

Jul 21 2020

Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany Discusses Renewed COVID-19 Briefings – Video


Posted originally on The Conservative Tree House on July 20, 2020 by 

Earlier today President Trump announced there will be a restart of direct briefings from the White House. Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany gives an interview to discuss the latest developments. [WATCH]

Jul 21 2020

President Trump Oval Office Remarks on Legislative COVID-19 Response – Video and Transcript…


Posted originally on The Conservative Tree house on July 20, 2020 by 

Earlier today President Trump held a press availability in the oval office sharing updates on a legislative “phase-4” coronavirus relief package being developed by the House and Senate.   Additionally, President Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence provided updates on the latest COVID-19 mitigation efforts along with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin.

[Video and Transcript Below]

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[Transcript] – THE PRESIDENT: Okay, well, thank you very much. You’ve asked to see what’s going on at our meetings, so I figured let you come in. You’ll look and you’ll see we have a lot of — a lot of good things happening. We have tremendous progress on vaccines and therapeutics. We’re getting reports. We’re studying the reports very closely. I think people are going to be very pleasantly surprised with what’s going on on the vaccine front and the therapeutic front. And that, to us, is always the first topic.

Secondarily, but very importantly, we’re working and negotiating with the Democrats on trying to get a plan that helps small businesses, helps people, helps this country. And I think we’ve made a lot of progress on that. And the discussions are going on.

Steve, do you want to say a few words as to where we are?

SECRETARY MNUCHIN: Yes, Mr. President. Mark and I have been working very hard over the last two weeks, with Mitch and Kevin, on really what we see as the focus is kids and jobs, the Recovery Act, CARES 4.0.

We’ve spent an unprecedented amount of money. The good news is a lot of the $3 trillion, we still have left to put in the economy and put back to work. We’re focused on starting with another trillion dollars. We think that will make a big impact.

And the focus is, as I said, is really about kids and jobs and vaccines. We’re going to make sure that we have a vaccine by the end of the year for emergency use. And the plan is — we just updated the President and the Vice President; they signed off on this. Mark and I will be meeting tomorrow with the Republicans at the lunch to give them a full briefing, and then we will also be reaching out to the Democrats to begin our discussions.

But we are committed that, by the end of this month, make sure that before the enhanced unemployment insurance expires, that we pass legislation so that we can protect Americans that are unemployed.

Now, we’ve said the number one issue is we have to finish the technical fix on enhanced unemployment. We’re going to make sure that we don’t pay people more money to stay home than go to work. We want to make sure that people who can go to work safely can do so. We’ll have tax credits that incentivize businesses to bring people back to work. We’ll have tax credits for PPE, for safe work environment. And we’re going to have big incentives, money to the states for education, for schools that can open safely and do education.

So these are the priorities, as well as liability protection. We want to make sure that frivolous lawsuits don’t prevent schools, universities, and businesses from reopening.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Mike?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, Mr. President, I just want to — I want to say how much we appreciate the leadership in the House and Senate. Today’s conversation is a continuation of your commitment to do whatever it takes to get the American people, American businesses, and communities through this very challenging time.

The outbreaks across the Sun Belt are serious, but because of the support that we’ve had from, frankly, leaders in both political parties in the Congress of the United States, we’re meeting this moment with expanded testing, personal protective equipment, and, as you said, Mr. President, with the development and distribution of therapeutics and a rapid development of vaccines. That will all continue.

But it’s important that the Congress come together and provide additional resources for families that have been impacted, businesses that have been impacted. We’ll make sure our healthcare workers and our states have the resources that they need. But also, Mr. President, we’re going to continue to advance policies that’ll make it possible for us to open up America again and open up America’s schools.

And I look forward, I know as you do, in working with the leaders that are gathered here and members of Congress in both political parties, to deliver another important elements of a recovery package that will keep on working until we bring our country all the way back and reach that day that we someday put this coronavirus in the past.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay. Mitch, please.

LEADER MCCONNELL: Yeah, tomorrow begins the process of socializing what we’ve been discussing with the administration over the last two weeks with our members. And if you’re looking for a theme here, think liability protection for those who have been trying to deal with the pandemic. We don’t need an epidemic of lawsuits on the heels of the pandemic we’re already struggling with.

Kids in school, jobs, and healthcare will be the theme of the proposal that we hope to come together and present to our Republicans. And then, as the Secretary of the Treasury indicated, obviously you can’t pass the bill in the Senate without the Democrats, and we’ll begin to talk with them as well.

THE PRESIDENT: Kevin?

LEADER MCCARTHY: Yes. I mean, just to sum up what we’re looking at: If you’re sitting at home and you’re concerned that you don’t have a job, we want to make sure you’re able to come back. We don’t think any federal money should be spent that gives you a disincentive to work. We want to make sure we have incentives to keep going.

For those small businesses, we want to make sure you can stay open. We want to make sure your kids can go back to school, but go back safely — not just for the children, but for the teachers as well.

We continue to make strides to make sure we get to a vaccine — that we find a cure for this virus that we did not invite, that came from a foreign land. And I think that’s the focus that we have to be a part of.

Mitch talks about — and I think it’s fundamental not just for schools, but for any businesses striving — whether they can open back up or not. They should not have an attack from any lawsuits. We need to give the protection that we rebuild, restore, and renew this country to where we were before, and I know we can do it together.

That’s why we’re working here. We’ll be reaching out to the Democrats. And I hope, for that moment in time, they put politics aside; that we look at one nation, that we don’t sit back inside of a rule within a Senate that a minority denies the ability to have this debate, that denies the ability to help America unite and solve this problem once and for all.

We are making great strides when it comes to therapies, what — this Warp Speed. History will write about this. When we get to the moment in time that we have this vaccine, they’ll write about how fast it would and no other country could do what we did because of the ingenuity of this nation. And that’s the focus of what we’re trying to do for the safety of this country, for our students, for our teachers, and for our businesses that we’re back to work again, stronger and safer and more united.

THE PRESIDENT: It came from China. It should have never been allowed to get out. They could have stopped it. They could have stopped it easily. They chose not to. And we’ll have further reports on that. But it came from China. They could have stopped it, but they didn’t. They stopped it from going into China, but they didn’t stop it from going to the rest of the world. It didn’t stop it from going to Europe, to us.

They should have stopped it. They could have stopped it. They weren’t transparent at all; they were the opposite. It’s not good.

I spoke with the President of France this morning, and I spoke with — I spoke with the President of Egypt, and we had a very, very good conversation, both of us. And all of us, and all of us together — I’ve had many conversations with leaders all over the world over the weekend, and over the last couple of weeks in particular. And this is a pandemic that is flaring up all over the place. Countries thought they were in good shape and then, all of a sudden, they have a big flare-up.

I see that over the weekend — I guess on Friday — there was a worldwide number of death — worldwide. Because when you watch the news — the local news — and you see it, and it’s — it’s, like, all about the United States. They never like to talk about what’s going on in the world. But you look at Mexico, Brazil, many countries in Europe, many countries — all over — Russia. Russia has a got a tremendous problem. It’s — what’s going on is terrible. It’s terrible. But this is a worldwide problem.

And we’re helping the world with ventilators. We’re helping a lot of countries. They don’t have ventilators, and we’re sending thousands of ventilators to different countries. But I do want people to understand this is a worldwide problem caused by China, but it’s a worldwide problem.

Countries are going through hell, and it’s going to — we’re going to give you a lot briefings in the next week and over the next few weeks as to — I think it’s very important to do it, the vaccines and the therapeutics. I think I’m going to bring some of the great companies that are working, and very successfully in the past have worked on these things, and they’re going to tell you very specifically what they’re doing and how they’re doing. But we think we’re doing very well in that regard.

Those two items — I think, frankly, therapeutic, I like almost better at this point. You go in and you make people better. Now, we have had some very good luck with remdesivir, and that’s been successful. And others have been successful. The plasma has been successful. But we are — we’re really coming up with some very good answers, meaning, they are. All over the world, they’re working. And we’re working very closely all over the world on the vaccines and the therapeutics.

So we’re going to have some of the heads of these great companies coming in. Johnson & Johnson is doing very well, in particular. They seem to be doing very well. But numerous are doing very well. It’s something that I really feel certain — I guess you can never use “totally certain” but pretty damn certain that they’re going to have the vaccine, they’re going to have therapeutics, and it’s going to start taking place very shortly, and that will be a great thing. For the world, that will be a great thing.

But this is happening all over the world, not just the United States. And it’s a tough one. It’s very tough. It’s very sad when you see the death. It’s all death that could have — could’ve been stopped by China. If they wanted to stop it, they could’ve stopped it.

Okay, thank you very much, everybody. Please. Thank you. Thank you.

Q How important, President — how important is the payroll tax cut?

THE PRESIDENT: The what?

Q How important is the payroll tax cut in phase four?

THE PRESIDENT: I think it’s very important. I think it’s a very important thing. It’s very good. It’s been proven to be successful. It’s a big saving for the people. It’s a tremendous saving, and I think it’s an incentive for companies to hire their workers back and to keep their workers. So the payroll tax cut, to me, is very important. We’re working on it. And I don’t think that there’s too much dispute as to the level of importance, John. It’s a very important thing. Okay?

It’s one of — that’s one of many elements we’re discussing. We’re discussing probably a total of 10 different elements. But payroll tax cut is a very important one.

Q Are they signing on it?

THE PRESIDENT: Oh, absolutely. No, I think — I think, hopefully, we’ll get there, but we’re talking about a lot of things, not just the payroll tax cut.

Q So you’re bringing back the coronavirus briefings? Is that — do I understand you correctly?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, we had very successful briefings. I was doing them, and we had a lot of people watching — record numbers watching. In the history of cable television — television, there’s never been anything like it.

And we were doing very well, and I thought it would be, sort of, automatic. And a lot of — a lot of positive things were happening. And, frankly, a lot of the country is doing well. A lot of the people don’t say it, as you understand.

But we’ve have had this big flare-up in Florida, Texas, a couple of other places. And so I think what we’re going to do is I’ll get involved and we’ll start doing briefings, whether it’s this afternoon or tomorrow — probably tomorrow — and I’ll do briefings. And part of the briefing, I think much more so than last time — because last time, we were nowhere with vaccines or therapeutics. And let’s say that ended six weeks ago, and we’ll start them again. And I think it’s a great way to get information out to the public as to where we are with the vaccines, with the therapeutics, and, generally speaking, where we are.

And so I think we’ll start that probably starting tomorrow. I’ll do it at 5 o’clock, like we were doing. We had a good slot. And a lot of people were watching, and that’s a good thing. I think that Kayleigh will continue hers at 11 o’clock, just like they were. And I’ll be discussing the — as I call it, the China virus, the China plague. I’ll be discussing it, and I’ll also be discussing perhaps some other things.

But, you know, we’re doing very well in so many different ways, but unfortunately, this is something that’s very tough, but we’re going to get it solved, and I think we’re going to get it solved in numerous ways, but the two best would be vaccines and therapeutics. So we’ll — we’ll be having that.

Q Mr. President, on Portland and other cities that are experiencing violence —

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah.

Q — there was a report out this morning that you’re considering sending 175 federal troops to these cities to help local law enforcement. Can you fill us in on that?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it depends on what your definition of “troops” is. I mean, we’re sending law enforcement. Portland was totally out of control. The Democrats — the liberal Democrats running the place had no idea what they were doing. They were ripping down — for 51 days, ripping down that city, destroying the city, looting it. The level of corruption and what was going on there is incredible. And then the governor comes out: “We don’t need any help.”

How about Chicago? I read the numbers were many people killed over the weekend. We’re looking at Chicago too. We’re looking at New York. Look at what’s going on. All run by Democrats, all run by very liberal Democrats. All run, really, by radical left.

But we can’t let this happen to the cities. New York was up 348 percent — the crime rate. So the governor has to do something about it. And if the governor is not going to do something about, we’ll do something about it.

But what’s happening in New York, a place I love — I love New York. And look at what’s going on over there. The woman who was shot because she said, “Could you please not light off fire crackers?” And they turned around and shot her eight times, and she died. That’s not our civilization. That’s not about us.

And then the police are afraid to do anything. I know New York very well. I know the police very well — New York’s Finest. And the fact is they’re restricted from doing anything. They can’t do anything.

Q So what are you planning on doing?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’m going to do something — that, I can tell you. Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these — Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.

Q Send more federal law enforcement to some of these cities?

THE PRESIDENT: We’re going to have more federal law enforcement — that, I can tell you. In Portland, they’ve done a fantastic job. They’ve been there three days, and they really have done a fantastic job in very short period of time. No problem. They grab them; a lot of people in jail. They’re leaders. These are anarchists. These are not protestors. People say “protestors”; these people are anarchists. These are people that hate our country. And we’re not going to let it go forward.

And I’ll tell you what: The governor and the mayor and the senators out there, they’re afraid of these people. That’s the reason they don’t want us to help them. They’re afraid. I really believe they’re actually maybe even physically afraid of these people — because what they’re doing is incredible.

We didn’t just go there. This wasn’t like it started right away. We went there after 51 days. We said, “We can’t let that happen anymore.” But these are anarchists. And the politicians out there, yes, they’re weak, but they’re afraid of these people. They’re actually afraid of these people. And that’s why they say, “We don’t want the federal government helping.”

How about Chicago? Would you say they need help after this weekend? Do you know the numbers? Did you hear the numbers? Many, many shot. Many, many killed. I’m not talking about one, two. Was it 18 people killed? I think more than that. And you add it up over the summer — this is worse than Afghanistan, by far. This is worse than anything anyone has ever seen. All run by the same liberal Democrats. And you know what? If Biden got in, that would be true for the country. The whole country would go to hell. And we’re not going to let it go to hell.

Thank you very much, everybody.

END 11:26 A.M. EDT

Jul 20 2020

The End of a Culture – Epidemiologists are Becoming the Destroyer of Civilization


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease

Re-Posted Jul 20, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

What these Epidemiologists have done to society is beyond belief. Once upon a time, there were buffets with all you could eat, and a Sunday brunch was often the highlight of the week. Now every stranger and every set of communal salad tongs have become a threat to our very existence. Buffets are a thing of the past and their very existence threatens our life. Masks do not protect you since they claim you can catch a virus from just touching something, which now justifies ending physical money even though it has been in use since the 7th century BC.

Many restaurants are finished and this is also impacting weddings, no less funerals. The philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844—1900), was very anti-religion and it appears that his ideas have captured the recommendations of Epidemiologists. These people have utterly destroyed civilization from sports to a simple buffet, that the invisible strings that bind society together and make it function has been snipped and do not appear anywhere on the horizon for a return.