Category: zerohedge

Without firing a shot, well maybe unleashing a virus pandemic across the world, China has severely disrupted US Naval operations, from shipbuilding to deployments. 

Breaking Defense reports, the Navy’s USS Columbia nuclear missile submarine (SSBN 826) experienced months of construction delays thanks to virus-related issues.

During lockdowns, the main problem for the build were workers’ absences at a top supplier, which resulted in delayed work on missile tubes. At the moment, the service is struggling to make up for the lost time. 

Navy and Pentagon officials have become alarmed that large-scale work on the first of twelve nuclear-powered Columbia-class submarines, set to officially start in 2021, with deliveries, beginning in 2030, could now be fraught with timeline delays.

Rear Adm. Scott Pappano, executive program officer for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program, said “a hiccup” during coronavirus lockdowns led to a serious decline in workers at UK-based Babcock Marine, leading to major delays in the work schedule. 

“There was an interruption in our ability to do work,” Pappano said, calling the several month delays a “worst-case” scenario if no additional measures were taken to speed up the work going forward. 

“We’re analyzing the plan right now,” he added. “Prioritizing what tubes go where and then coming up with mid-term and long-term recovery plans to go deal with that.”

The Navy is now “walking a tightrope on its Virginia and Columbia programs, and any slip on one program will affect the other,” Breaking Defense said.

A major risk developing is that if any of the programs are delayed, it could give China and Russia a leg up in the global arms race. 

While the virus has affected the Navy’s shipbuilding, there were deployment issues due to an outbreak of infections on several vessels. One ship, in particular, was the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which saw at least 1,000 soldiers contract the virus. The aircraft carrier had to divert from its mission in the Western Pacific to treat and isloate crew in Guam. 

And just like that, the Chinese virus has weakened the US Navy — while China’s Navy conducts war drills in the South China Sea. 

Authored by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,

You can fool most of the people most of the time, but you can’t fool reality any of the time.

The reigning chaos reflects perfectly what passes for thought in millions of minds. Minds that have been taught that reality is whatever one believes it to be. That reason is a superstition and is inferior to random feelings and emotions. That observation, hypotheses, experimentation, discovery, and science itself are akin to voodoo rituals. That consumption precedes production and is morally superior to it. That anyone’s work, income and wealth are subject to anyone else’s proclaimed need. That actions have no consequences.

Rioters and looters are faithfully adhering to the distilled essence of what our rulers and intellectual have been telling them for decades: If you need it, or just want it, it’s yours to have or destroy. They are simply eliminating the government middleman. The only surprise is that it didn’t happen long ago.

The Age of Chaos has arrived. Violence is accomplishing what violence always accomplishes—destruction, ruin, and death. The only theoretical justification for government is that it employs force to protect its citizens from violence—invasion, violence against persons or property, and the indirect violence implicit in procuring and keeping value through fraud or extortion.

Modern governments don’t protect their citizens from violence, they subject them to it and are its chief instigator. The latest outrage is coronavirus totalitarianism. It is nauseatingly hypocritical for politicians to ritually and halfheartedly denounce looting and destruction after they’ve spent the last three months destroying millions of businesses and jobs.

There are other killers lurking out there: crime and mass unrest. The statistics for the former and the probability of the latter will only increase with the duration of lockdowns. Police are already reporting an uptick in crime. The death toll from a week of widespread urban rioting could easily surpass that of the entire coronavirus outbreak. There’s no mystery why President Trump has called up a million military reservists, and no assurance they will be able to prevent sporadic riots from deteriorating into total chaos and pandemonium. No mystery, either, why sales of firearms and ammo have jumped. By the way, rioters and looters don’t always social distance, so they may spread the coronavirus.

SLL, “Surrendered Without A Shot,” April 6, 2020

Let’s reach a conclusion that lockdown proponents will reflexively deny: the lockdowns have made the rioting worse. It’s not implausible to suggest that people stuck in their houses for three months might have joined in simply because they were going stir crazy…or were desperate and angry because they lost their jobs and can’t pay their bills.

Government now does everything except the one thing it’s supposed to do—protect the citizenry from violence. Some of the government officials who tossed people into jail for letting their kids play in parks or opening a barbershop are now assuring rioters and looters they feel their pain and are doing little to stop them. It’s the perfect inversion: persecute the innocent, succor the criminals.

Politics is an exercise in criminal demagoguery, the promise of something for nothing in exchange for votes and power. That something has to be stolen from someone by the government. Governments don’t protect against the criminal element because they are the criminal element. Theft, extortion, and fraud can’t produce wealth. They only redistribute and ultimately reduce or eliminate it by destroying the rights of those who produce it.

Rioters have screamed, “Eat the Rich!” and have looted high end stores as an appetizer. To the extent that they’ve announced a program, this appears to be it: install a government that will eat the rich, and by implication anyone who produces wealth. Left open is the question: after they eat the rich and productive, where does their next meal come from?

The present government is already devouring producers and its debt is extortion, theft, and fraud all rolled into one. The full faith and credit of the United States is the full faith and credit of its present and future producers, whose production is and will continue to be extorted and stolen under threats of fines and imprisonment. Creditors are holding debt the value of which the government will do everything to fraudulently undermine via debt monetization, inflation, and currency depreciation.

You can fool most of the people most of the time, but you can’t fool reality any of the time. Reality never grants something for nothing, not even on credit. To get something out, you have to put something in.

The utterly incompetent and incoherent response by government officials to the nationwide rioting, in both word and deed, was inevitable. They can neither speak nor act with intellectual, philosophical, or moral clarity given the dominant political creed—that reality can be subverted, something can be had for nothing, and the rights of some are justifiably destroyed for the benefit of others. That creed obliterates the concept of individual rights and the principles that logically flow from that concept. Yet, only the intellectual vantage point afforded by that concept and its concomitant principles offers clarity.

A policeman in Minneapolis knelt on an already-subdued and handcuffed suspect’s neck for approximately eight minutes and the suspect died shortly thereafter. Three other police did nothing to either stop the policeman or aid the suspect. Based on the video evidence, which will probably not be the complete evidentiary record, the kneeling policeman should be charged with murder and the three other police should be charged as accomplices. All four should have the legal protections afforded all criminal defendants and receive a fair trial before either a judge or a jury. Verdicts would then be reached and any defendant who was found guilty, punished.

Anyone enraged by the police’s behavior, or by the way police treat people or specific groups of people, or any other conduct by the government or its agents has the right to peaceably protest and take other political action, either as an individual or as a member of a group. The key word is peaceably. Nobody has the right to initiate violence against anyone else or their property. The government’s duty is to protect its citizens from such violence and destruction. When it erupts en masse, as in a riot, the government must stop it, with force if necessary, up to and including deadly force. The motivations or justifications of those engaging in the violence and destruction are irrelevant.

Every year governments steal trillions of dollars from their productive citizens. Some of it remains with governments or their agents, some of it is bestowed as unearned largess to the politically favored. Foreign and military policy has degenerated into nonstop war whose only purpose is to feed the military-industrial-intelligence complex and enrich it’s contractors. People can be tossed in jail if they refuse to accept as legal tender a fiat-debt currency backed by nothing, one which the government’s central bank continuously debases, in part to reduce the real value of the government’s debt.

Industry after industry has been turned into government-sponsored predatory cartels, with the military-industrial-intelligence complex and the financial-banking complex at the head of the pack and the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance complex coming on strong. Regulation is an instrument of government extortion and a means for the cartels to exclude potential competition by making entry into cartelized industries prohibitively expensive. No industry is so inconsequential that it can escape regulation; the government has its arbitrary and grasping fingers in every pie.

Under a contradictory-on-its-face rationale of “equality,” governments have created unequal-by-law quotas, preferences, and set-asides for favored groups. Taking the next giant step towards the eradication of whatever remains of individual rights, governments have locked “unessential” people in their homes and prevented them from opening their businesses or working at their jobs. Virtually every government activity and job has been deemed “essential.” There are no individual rights when inequality is written into the law.

Adding insult to injury, attending schools, gathering in groups, or even breathing clean air have also been prohibited in response to a dramatically and intentionally overblown medical danger. When government destroys rather than protects individual rights, its law enforcement arm inevitably does the same. Enforcement becomes a matter of caprice, whim, and the personal predilections and prejudices of its agents. The multitude of laws give law enforcement virtually unlimited power to harass, arrest, brutalize, incarcerate, and kill. The coronavirus measures only increase that power.

There are so many laws and regulations that no person can possibly be aware of or comply with them all, yet government exempts law enforcement from even the most basic strictures against criminality. Under asset forfeiture laws, it can steal property arbitrarily deemed to be involved in the commission of a crime and it is then up to the owner to prove that it was not. Incidents like the one in Minneapolis are commonplace, but the chances the police who commit crimes will be imprisoned, or even lose their jobs, is minimal. The glaring inequity of a system in which innocent citizens are routinely treated as criminals but government exempts itself from justice has not been lost on the citizenry. It has not been lost on police forces, who have been militarized not to protect themselves and the government from criminals, but from an increasingly subjugated and enraged citizenry.

To believe that a government that has destroyed individual rights while enshrining its own criminality can speak or act with any kind of moral authority towards criminal rioters and looters is absurd. The apex of absurdity—so far—is the Minneapolis police force’s abandonment of its own precinct station to rioters. Criminals will attack soft targets, and those who agree with them in principle are soft targets. If a government won’t protect its own property from criminals, it’s certainly not going to protect law abiding citizens’ lives or property.

The rioting makes a mockery of arguments that the government should control or eliminate citizens’ right and access to firearms, which would make them soft targets. A government that refuses to protect individuals and their rights hasn’t a leg to stand on when it tries to restrict individuals from defending themselves. Such restrictions are clearly seen for what they are: another government destruction of individual rights.

How long can governments that outlaw businesses, jobs, and education—in short, production—and engage in and legitimize theft, fraud, extortion, vandalism, violence, and murder—in short, destruction—survive? Reality cannot be fooled. Production is survival—for both producers and the governments they support—destruction its antithesis. The bell tolls.

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The Declaration of Independence, 1776

Our government effects only terror and misery. To effect our Safety and Happiness, it’s past time to withdraw “the Consent of the Governed” and “to alter or to abolish” it. That is our right, enshrined in our Declaration.

Just in case you hadn’t had enough of the utter hypocrisy of our ruling classes and liberal elites as they juggle unrequited support for anyone and everyone “protesting” vs the tyrannical need for groups of humans to remain locked up inside their homes, the San Francisco Bay Area just issued its new “rules” for ‘gathering’…

h/t @EconomPic

Under the updated Contra Costa County health order, protests of up to 100 people will be permitted.    

Also allowed to reopen in Contra Costa County starting Wednesday are child care for everyone (not just children of essential workers and select others), business offices, sports team practices for up to 12 participants (but not games with other teams), Scouting-type gatherings of young people and summer camps with “cohorts” of up to 12 people each that don’t mix with other groups. 

And so, for the hard of ‘rithmetic, the math goes something like this:

Our leaders and their health professionals believe 100 “Protesters” are equally ‘deadly’ and equally likely to ‘kill their granny’ as 12 “non-protesters” who stayed at home.

This fantastic new cognitively dissonant math is “the latest step toward reopening our county is a reflection of our successful collective effort as a community to limit the spread of the virus,” county Health Officer Dr. Chris Farnitano said in a statement.

“I know there’s a lot of frustration out there, but it’s important to  keep in mind that interventions like social distancing have saved lives.”  

Frustration indeed Chris!

As one wit pointed out, this would seem to also equate the contagion of 100 “protesting” Americans as being equally terrible as the contagion of 12 “non-protesting” Americans – that sounds very racist to us!!!

#ProtestersLivesMatter(AboutOneEightOfANonProtester)

However, in the spirit of ‘freedom’, this new ‘rule’ inspired some rather exceptional entrepreneurial ideas…

Welcome to the Protest Bar and Grill™, Protest Child Care™, Protest Cinema™, and Protest Gym™.

We will be first in line.

TGIF!

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Black Lives Matter Melbourne has issued a list of required behavior from white people attending their protest, which includes no selfies and the demand that, “If a black person tells you to do something, you do it immediately without question.”

Up to 40,000 people are expected to attend the demonstration in Australia, which the potential for riots high given the city’s militant left-wing nature.

In anticipation of that, BLM Melbourne issued a lengthy list of requirements for how white people are allowed to behave during the rally.

“DO NOT TAKE SELFIES,” states the guide. “Ask to take pictures or videos of individuals. You are there to witness only. Film the police as much as possible. Your goal is documentation to ensure that the true narrative is told.”

The guide also instructs white people to show deference and obedience to black people at all times.

“FOLLOW DIRECTIONS. If a black person tells you to do something, you do it immediately without question. You respect the authority and decisions of the black protestors at all times.”

White people are also not allowed to lead chants and will be required to stay at the back of the protest until they are called forward, with the guide telling them, “WHEN YOU ARE AT THE FRONT, YOU ARE SILENT.”

The no selfies rule is funny because it’s likely to keep many protesters at home given they won’t be able to properly virtue signal for the purposes of their Instagram page, which for some is the most important thing.

 

The other irony is that protest leaders are basically enforcing racial segregation by keeping the white attendees away from the main demonstrators.

*  *  *

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An Illinois journalist who broke the story that Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s wife violated the state’s “stay-at-home” order by traveling to the family’s equestrian estate in Wisconsin has sued after she was barred from Pritzker’s coronavirus press briefings.

On Friday, May 15, Jacobson broke the story that Pritzker’s family had traveled to their equestrian estate in Wisconsin amid Illinois’s stay-at-home order – weeks after it was reported that his family was at another estate in Florida. The news raised questions about why the stay-at-home order did not apply to the governor’s family.

On the day of the governor’s next press briefing, Pritzker’s press secretary told Jacobson she was banned from the briefings because she had attended a rally advocating for Illinois to end its lockdown. When questioned by reporters about Jacobson’s exclusion the next day, Pritzker told the press corps that Jacobson could not attend because advocating for Illinois to end its stay-at-home order represents an “extreme position.” The governor went on to say: “That is not a reporter … once upon a time she was a reporter but she proved that she is no longer a reporter.” –AP

Here in Chicago I found 2 signs to be offensive. There is NO need for this. @GovPritzker @MorningAnswer @DanProft https://t.co/QOl3wrJ0cD pic.twitter.com/TBoIHTtg1J

— Amy Jacobson (@AmyJacobson) May 16, 2020

The lawsuit, filed by attorneys from the Liberty Justice Center, asks the court to take immediate action to allow Jacobson back into the press briefings. 

“Gov. Pritzker has been in the hot seat over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s visible from his reactions to Amy Jacobson’s questions that her reporting made him uncomfortable. But what the governor appears to not understand is that Americans have a right to hold their elected officials accountable, and one of the ways they do this is through a vibrant, free press,” said Liberty Justice Center president and co-founder, Patrick Hughes.

“It’s not up to Gov. Pritzker to pick and choose which reporters can cover him based on how much he agrees with their coverage or their points of view. And keeping reporters out of the room because he disagrees with their line of questioning or point of view is a gross violation of the First Amendment.”

Jacobson has worked for television and radio stations nationwide for over 25 years – the last decade of which has been spent as a reporter and morning show host on Salem Media’s Chicago AM 560 The Answer.

Jacobson has been attending the governor’s COVID-19 press briefings on behalf of the station since April. While some reporters have used the daily briefings to ask softball questions, such as how the governor is holding up, Jacobson has asked notably tough questions. –AP

“The reason we sent Amy to these press briefings is because she is a dogged reporter with a reputation for holding public officials accountable. Over the last two months Amy has done her job well, asking the tough questions that are on the minds of so many of our listeners,” said AM 560 regional VP and general manager, Jeff Reisman. “We’re disappointed that the governor would retaliate against her and take the unprecedented step of blocking her from his press briefings. We had hoped litigation would not be necessary, but it’s imperative for Amy to get back into the room and keep doing her job.”

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Do you have to go to “looting school” to learn this stuff?  It is not that difficult to smash a few store windows and grab a few things, but some of the incidents that we have witnessed over the last several days have been so bizarre that it is hard to believe that they are actually real.  In fact, if they were put into a big Hollywood disaster movie at lot of people would probably dismiss them as “unrealistic”.  But it is very important to understand what is going on out there, because these looters are giving us a preview of coming attractions.  If they will sink to such depths now, what will they be willing to do once things get really, really bad in this country?

There are so many examples that I could share with you, but I think that I will start with the looters in Fairfield, California that decided to use a telescopic forklift to break down the doors of a Best Buy store…

A particularly brazen attempt by looters to storm a store in Fairfield, California, has been caught on video, showing them commandeering what appears to be a telescopic forklift to force their way in.

A video has emerged showing vandals using heavy equipment on the doors of the Best Buy store in Fairfield, a city in Solano County, located between San Francisco and Sacramento.

Looters Use Telescopic Forklift To Break Into Best Buy In Fairfield, California pic.twitter.com/PKIkjAeKU6

— GrantB911 (@GrantB911) June 2, 2020

I suppose that the moral of this story is that you should never leave a telescopic forklift sitting around where looters might find it.

Now that criminals have seen how much they can get away with, they are going to become more emboldened than ever, and the entire west coast is going to be a major danger zone for the foreseeable future.

In the East Bay area, police say that “caravans of cars full of looters” have been roaming around systematically searching for targets.  Authorities have been trying to crack down on these caravans of looters, but that has proven to be quite difficult because many of them are heavily armed.

Elsewhere in northern California, one group of looters just pulled off an absolutely stunning heist that is like something out of a “Fast and Furious” film…

Police in Northern California are searching for suspects after rioters reportedly stole more than 70 premium cars from a dealership near San Francisco Sunday night.

San Leandro Chrysler Dodge Jeep dealership owner Carlos Hidalgo said that although he blocked the exits as a precaution, the thieves “started ramming, ramming until they could get out. They took out chains and fence posts. It was a very malicious act,” FOX 2 in Oakland reported.

This means that at least 70 looters must have descended upon that dealership simultaneously, because each of those vehicles would have required a driver.

If you stop and try to envision what that must have looked like, it will send a chill up your spine.

Of course it isn’t just the west coast that is dealing with such over the top criminality.  The following is how Rachel Olding described the crazy looting that we just witnessed in Midtown Manhattan…

Hard to describe how rampant the looting was tonight in Midtown Manhattan and how lawless it was. Complete anarchy. Literally hundreds of stores up and down Broadway, Fifth Ave, Sixth Ave. Kids ruling the streets like it was a party.

These are the stores where the Wall Street elite shop.

If law enforcement authorities can’t even keep that area secure, do you think that any city in the entire country is truly safe at this point?

And some of these looters are not exactly “impoverished”.  In fact, the New York Post is reporting that some of the looters were pulling up to the stores “in luxury SUVs”…

New York City looters were caught on camera pulling up in luxury SUVs — including what was claimed to be a pricey Rolls-Royce — before apparently looting an upscale retail store in Manhattan, according to footage shared on social media.

The video, filmed by Justine Miller and Keith Feldman, shows a group of men in masks hopping out of two cars and charging through a smashed door in Soho before running back outside carrying boxes of goods on Monday night.

I honestly don’t know what the police in New York City were doing.

They had to know that the luxury retail outlets in Midtown Manhattan would be prime targets, and yet this was allowed to happen anyway.

Down in Philadelphia, the looting has been absolutely insane.  Just yesterday, I discussed the fact that looters were allowed to loot one drugstore for 15 hours straight.  Elsewhere in the city, one very ambitious looter ended up dying in a botched attempt to blow up an ATM machine…

A looter has been killed in a botched ATM explosion in Philadelphia, that police believe was part of a ‘coordinated’ effort to raid 30 machines across the city over a series of two nights.

Police said the 24-year-old man died early Tuesday, several hours after attempting to break into an ATM with explosives in the north of the city.

Needless to say, bank robbery has nothing to do with justice for George Floyd.

All over America, thousands upon thousands of criminals are using the George Floyd protests as an opportunity to commit crimes, and the fact that it is happening on such a widespread basis is extremely sobering.

At this point, things have gotten so crazy that looters are even looting from other looters.  The U.S. is descending into madness, and many people believe that this is just the beginning.

Of course all of this rampant lawlessness is deeply alarming millions upon millions of ordinary citizens, and a lot of people are deeply concerned that this sort of behavior could start spreading into the suburbs and beyond.  In fact, Polk County Sheriff Judd Grady has publicly acknowledged that in his county “some folks were threatening to take their criminal conduct into the neighborhoods”…

Grady said the department “had received information on social media that some folks were threatening to take their criminal conduct into the neighborhoods.”

“I would tell them, if you value your life, they probably shouldn’t do that in Polk County,” Grady said. “Because the people of Polk County like guns, they have guns, I encourage them to own guns, and they’re going to be in their homes tonight with their guns loaded, and if you try to break into their homes to steal, to set fires, I’m highly recommending they blow you back out of the house with their guns. So, leave the community alone.”

Hopefully things will start to cool down at least for a while.

But many Americans understand that it is just a matter of time before more violence erupts, and so they are preparing to defend themselves and their families.  Gun sales are absolutely soaring, and one shop owner in New York says that he has been so busy that he is literally running out of stuff to sell…

Phones have been ringing off the hook and the line has been wrapped around the building at Coliseum Gun Traders in Uniondale, Nassau County, ever since the coronavirus pandemic began. And now with protests and rioting after the killing of George Floyd, the store has seen another enormous spike in sales. Keeping the shelves stocked has been hard, store owner Andy Chernoff said.

“We started out this week with a fair amount of merchandise. We’re running out. Literally running out,” Chernoff said. “Never thought I’d say that.”

Just six months ago, life in America seemed so “normal”, but now everything has changed.

All of the anger that has been building up for years is now starting to boil over, and the upcoming election in November is just going to increase tensions even more.

So please be very careful out there, because our society really is starting to fall apart right in front of our eyes.

In a freak occurrence during Wednesday night’s protests, two National Guardsmen were badly injured after being struck by lightning near the White House, officials said early Friday. The two service members were struck shortly after midnight within the Lafayette Park perimeter, where protests over the death of George Floyd continued for a seventh day (note: it was the ninth day of demonstrations in Minneapolis).

Both officers were taken to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Video of the aftermath went viral.

Shortly after midnight, #DCsBravest received a call for a report of 2 military personnel suffering the effects of a nearby lighting strike within the Lafayette Park perimeter. Both were transported with non life threatening injuries. pic.twitter.com/JvwRIHk74k

— DC Fire and EMS #StayHomeDC (@dcfireems) June 5, 2020

Despite the heavy rain and flood warnings, a core group of protesters returned Thursday night despite the weather after Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser rescinded a planned curfew after there were zero arrests the night before.

The DC area saw some pretty intense lightning during last night’s storm.

INSANE Video from our @wusa9 SkyCam WOOOOOW #lightning #WashingtonMonument pic.twitter.com/iYmwDwDUMO

— Ryan Sprouse (@RSprouseNews) June 5, 2020

Probably not an ideal time to be standing outside carrying a bunch of metal.

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

American cities are burning, there’s a lethal pandemic and we’re in a new Great Depression.

Other than that, everything’s fine…

People often ask me when things will “get back to normal.” Well, the answer could be never (or at least not for a long time).

Germany was not “normal” from 1914–54, for example. Social disorder is like a virus; it goes away eventually but not necessarily soon.

Meanwhile, we’re now in our third month of a national lockdown, with perhaps another month to go, depending on your locality.

Some states and cities are beginning to reopen, but they’re doing it in “phases,” so maybe your hair stylist reopened last week and your favorite restaurant will reopen next week.

The lockdown has certainly been painful for many. Even under the best of circumstances, anxiety levels went up, patience wore thin and tempers flared at trivial things. Cabin fever is a real disease.

Was it all worth it?

I’ve done a deep dive on this and the answer is almost certainly no.

The lockdown did slow the spread of the virus and did save some lives, that’s true. Yet the gains may only be temporary.

“Flattening the curve” does not mean reducing total infections and deaths. It just means stretching them out over a longer period so the hospital system is not overwhelmed.

There were much better solutions for this, including temporary hospitals and sending doctors and nurses from low-infection areas to those areas most in need, like New York City.

The biggest problem with the lockdown was that everyone counted the benefits but no one calculated the costs.

Many may have died and still could die from suicide, drug overdoses, alcoholism, domestic violence and other untreated medical conditions like cancer and heart attacks because patients were afraid to go to hospitals for fear of getting the virus.

In short, the lockdown may end up costing more lives than were saved.

That’s on top of trillions of dollars of lost wealth and lost economic output. That’s what happens when you put doctors in charge of the economy. Next time, it might be a good idea to let a few economic analysts into the room also.

But don’t worry, the optimists say. We’ll see a “V”-shaped recovery once the lockdowns are fully lifted.

You probably know the theory of a “V”-shaped recovery. The idea is that the economy fell sharply in March and April 2020 but it’s ready to bounce back with a record recovery this summer and fall.

The crash is one side of the “V” and the recovery is the other. The result is you end up recovering all of your losses and are ready for new growth from the old levels.

You’ll hear this a lot, but don’t believe it.

Remember “green shoots” in 2009 and 2010? They turned out to be brown weeds. Yes, the economy eventually recovered and the stock market went on to new highs, but it was the weakest recovery in U.S. history and those stock market highs took almost seven years to appear.

Things are much worse now.

Yes, we will hit a bottom this summer. And yes, a recovery will begin. But it will be long and hard.

Output may not get back to 2019 levels until 2022 or later. Unemployment will come down, but it is still expected to be higher than the worst of the 2008 crisis in 2023. The bankruptcies are just starting.

We’ve seen J. Crew, J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus, Pier 1 Imports and Hertz all file for bankruptcy in recent weeks. There is a long line of name-brand companies right behind them preparing to go bankrupt also.

Not only will we not have a V-shaped recovery, but it will probably be an “L” (down and then sideways).

The 2009–2020 recovery was an “L” where the new trend for growth was 2.2% instead of the post-1980 trend of 3.2%.

Now the new recovery (when it begins) may have output of only 1.9% or less.

When each recovery is weaker than the one before and debt goes up faster than growth, it’s just a matter of time before you go broke — or eventually break out in inflation.

We probably won’t see inflation for a while because inflation has a strong psychological component and right now a deflationary mindset prevails.

That may change — it probably will — but we’re not there at this point.

Meanwhile, people are looking for “safe havens” right now.

Stock and Treasury market behavior can be explained as much by “safe haven” demand as fundamentals. But what happens when the safe haven doesn’t look so safe?

There’s still one place to go — gold.

The NFL – in a decision that will likely be remembered as a major victory for the anti-police brutality protest movement inspired by the horrific death of George Floyd – has just announced that it was wrong to not wholeheartedly support the league’s black players who participated in the kneeling protests started by Colin Kaepernick.

It seems like ancient history now, but the culture war over Kaepernick’s decision, which infuriated conservatives and sparked a massive backlash among many NFL fans, while activists castigated the league for appearing to blackball Kaepernick, who hasn’t played since he left the 49ers, despite remaining a competitive athlete on the field.

In a video statement released just minutes ago, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says the league “is listening” to protesters and their message. Goodell apologized, saying the league was “wrong”, for not supporting athletes who kneeled during the national anthem during a protest movement a couple of years back. Goodell added that “I personally am with you, and want to be part of the change in this country,” and added that “the NFL would be nothing” without black players. He added that he would be reaching out to black players for feedback on “how we can improve and go forward for a better, more united NFL family.”

We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter. #InspireChange pic.twitter.com/ENWQP8A0sv

— NFL (@NFL) June 5, 2020

The decision will put pressure on other sports leagues, particularly the NBA and its commissioner, Adam Silver, to speak out and offer similar assurances.

But after the latest images of police brutality during the protests surfaced on Friday, will this be enough to quiet the unrest that’s expected to spring back into gear during rallies planned for tomorrow in Washington DC and across the US.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Attorney General Bill Barr acknowledged yesterday that there is a “witches’ brew” of groups fostering violations, including an anarchist group from the right. The anarchists on the left or right are opportunists who will strike at any time of unrest to seek the breakdown of order. However, police are reporting a high number of Antifa and anarchist members arrested in various states.  These are groups that are all too familiar to some of us on college and university campus.  While I have opposed efforts to declare Antifa a terrorist organization, the role of all of these groups in the recent violence should be a cautionary tale for academics and politicians alike in the tolerance shown for such anti-free speech movements.

Ian Fleming famously lamented that history often moves so quickly that “heroes and villains keep on changing parts.” Our media and politicians are now struggling with the same problem today, following the killing of George Floyd. As rioting and looting continue across the country, the question is who to blame for the mayhem. Ultimately, the response was strikingly familiar and telling. Maybe white supremacists were behind it. Maybe the Russians were. It could be anyone except people in the rioting communities or, worse yet, groups lionized or tolerated by the left.

While most protesters remained peaceful, the narrative quickly spiraled glaringly out of sync with images of burning buildings in the background. Although “Today” show host Craig Melvin tweeted out a guide not to refer to them as rioters but rather as protesters, that narrative has since broken down. Indeed, news outlets have been reporting that “outsiders” have been fueling the rioting and that the destruction might be the work of nefarious groups of white supremacists or Russians.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and other officials there claimed a majority of those arrested were outsiders. Walz estimated the figure at 80 percent. National Urban League President Marc Morial ratcheted up the outrage in a cable news interview. He demanded an investigation to confirm “if it is white supremacists, if it is Russians, if it is other foreign actors who have tried to exploit the pain and exploit legitimate protests.”

It was manifestly implausible to suggest the rioting was the work of white supremacists or Russians. Arrest data showed a majority of those arrested in Minneapolis were from the city. The four people arrested in New York in fire bombing attacks were all state residents. The problem is that the most obvious culprits are all too familiar. A movement of anarchist, antifascist, and extreme left wing groups has been building for years, with violence from Washington to Berkeley. The most prominent is antifa, but there are also groups like By All Means Necessary with similar histories.

This is a broad movement, not one group, which makes the suggested designation by President Trump of antifa as a terrorist organization both constitutionally and practically dubious. However, the growing antifascist movement has attacked conservative speakers and events for years, with far less media attention than their right wing counterparts receive. Just as many critics have accused Trump of not doing enough to denounce extreme right wing groups, many Democratic leaders have been conspicuously silent in denouncing these antifascist groups.

Indeed, when Attorney General William Barr correctly observed that the rioting shows “antifa like tactics,” politicians and media figures both balked at the suggestion, as opposed to accepting the white supremacist or Russian option. Despite reports of antifa followers and anarchists being arrested, White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor objected that there was “no evidence” of any activity sparked by anarchists.

Antifa, By All Means Necessary, and other militant or anarchist groups have disrupted universities across the country, including my own, for years. They have found many political and academic allies. Dartmouth Professor Mark Bray wrote a book on antifa, defining the movement as committed to the silencing of opponents and the rejection of classic concepts of free speech. The movement has since found open or passive acceptance with many on the academic left. In fairness, however, many Democratic politicians have denounced past violent attacks.

Yet despite its violent history, some Democratic leaders have been enablers or outright supporters of the antifa movement, insisting that such groups cannot be compared to extreme right wing groups.

While criticizing antifa members three years ago, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the group has “been there forever” and that “some people may have infiltrated” it. This was not viewed as her Charlottesville moment of claiming there are “very fine people” in antifa. It was a commonly held view that antifascists are by definition better than fascists.

Other Democratic leaders have been much more direct in their support, including the former deputy chair of the Democratic Party, Representative Keith Ellison. Although Germany has banned an antifa website, Ellison posed with the antifa handbook to show support at a Minneapolis bookshop and said it would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump.

Ellison, now the Minnesota state attorney general, was under fire this week for telling protesters they should not attack the National Guard on the streets or “react to them the way you might react to the Minneapolis Police Department. Their job is to try to bring peace and calm back again.” His son Jeremiah Ellison, a Minneapolis city council member, declared support for antifa even as the city endured rioting and looting.

Meanwhile, some media coverage has the uncomfortable feel of a new type of Russia collusion theory. Susan Rice, former national security adviser to President Obama, said that she suspects Russia is behind the effort “to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different” and that “this is right out of the Russian playbook.”

It is likely that racist or foreign actors will try to exploit the unrest on the internet. The same was true, on a larger scale, with Russian interference in the 2016 election. While most of us denounced that Russian interference, it was never plausible that the work of a dozen internet trolls in Saint Petersburg or a dozen military hackers in Moscow had a measurable, let alone meaningful, impact on the outcome of the election.

The same is true with these protests. The rioting began due to deep seated and legitimate anger over police brutality and the tragic death of Floyd. Young people and others did not rush to the streets because they read a posting from some skinhead on the Stormfront website. Yet the references to white supremacists or Russians continued even as reports filtered in of antifa and anarchists being arrested in various cities.

Some politicians in the past sought to tap into the antifascist movement. Others completely avoided denouncing the group. After all, for years, the movement threatened or attacked conservatives. They were not treated as an outside element but rather as this grassroots movement outraged by Trump and his policies. However, the same tactics and likely some of the same people are now burning buildings and cars, attacking police officers and business owners, and destroying property across the country. This is why, during the French Revolution, the journalist Jacques Mallet Pan warned, “Like Saturn, the revolution devours its children.”