RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/01/29/bidens-worst-executive-order-went-almost-entirely-unnoticed/

In the flurry of President Joe Biden’s executive orders was one that was almost entirely overlooked but could easily end up having the biggest impact.

The order also seems harmless enough, going by the seemingly innocent title “Modernizing Regulatory Review.” Except this order isn’t about modernizing regulations. It’s about unleashing the regulatory state with a ferocity never before seen in this country.

Biden’s order – which didn’t get released to the press until late in the evening of his first day – aims to effectively toss the cost-benefit analysis that for many decades has served as at least a modest brake on the ambitions of regulators. In the past, regulations where the cost of compliance far exceeded the benefits could be stymied by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Biden wants the review process instead to be “a tool to affirmatively promote regulations” and “to ensure swift and effective federal action” on everything from the pandemic, to the economy, to racial inequality, to the “undeniable reality and accelerating threat of climate change.” In other words … everything.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/28/how-equity-will-destroy-america/

Back in 2019, as the race for the Democratic nomination for president was shaping up, the field was heralded as the most diverse in history. But when the dust settled, it was the old white guy who had once palled around with segregationists who came away with the prize. The Joe Biden administration is making up for his paleness now by making race and identity the grand unifying principle of its approach to everything. If they succeed, the results will be a disaster.

The administration has identified four emergencies facing the nation that it seeks to prioritize. One is racism itself; the other three are COVID-19, the economy, and climate change. In all of these areas, Biden has promised to keep a laser focus on equity. It is important to realize that equity is not equality. The latter concerns itself with opportunities, the former with outcomes.

How do we know this? It’s right there in Biden’s executive order on equity. The order states, “Affirmatively advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice, and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our Government.” It is telling that equal opportunity comes last and that equity comes first. Equity basically means that it is the job of the government to make sure that little or no disparities exist when comparing the outcomes of different demographic groups. It is an insane and dangerous fallacy.

Setting aside the notion that our government (and we ourselves) should be treating people as individuals, not as representatives of their demographic groups, there is a deeper problem with equity. This is that different demographic groups on average prioritize different things. Broadly speaking, a big reason why Asian students outperform white students is that their parents look at education in very different ways.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/01/28/the-after-trump-era-begins-covid-19/

Pfizer had hinted that a vaccine could be ready in late October. Then, mysteriously, it wasn’t. Then, stranger still, it appeared — a few days after Election Day.

Suddenly, after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Illinois, Michigan, and other blue states eased some of their lockdown restrictions to get their economies back on track despite little change in COVID-19 rates.

During the Trump Age, the president was supposedly responsible for every death from COVID-19. Now, the media report that career scientists and health administrators in the federal government, especially at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were largely to blame for past slow testing, and were tardy and lax in apprising the nation of the infectious threat.

The Biden campaign’s widely reported promises of a new, superior COVID-19 plan turned out to be more of the same old, same old from the Trump Age.

Biden did mandate the wearing of masks on all federal property. But he then immediately undermined his own order during his first few hours on the job by going mask-less during a photo op at the Lincoln Memorial.

Stranger still, during his first few hours in office, President Biden announced, “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”

https://apnews.com/article/new-york-nursing-home-coronavirus-deaths-a6c214f4467976efdfca9ba75f8adaef

New York may have undercounted COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents by thousands, the state attorney general charged in a report Thursday that dealt a blow to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s oft-repeated claims that his state is doing better than others in protecting its most vulnerable.

The 76-page report found an undercount of more than 50%, backing up the findings of an Associated Press investigation last year that focused on the fact that New York is one of the only states in the nation that count residents who died on nursing home property and not those who later died in hospitals.

Such an undercount would mean the state’s current official tally of 8,711 nursing home deaths to the virus is actually more than 13,000, boosting New York from No. 6 to highest in the nation.

“While we cannot bring back the individuals we lost to this crisis, this report seeks to offer transparency that the public deserves,” Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.

The report from a fellow Democratic official undercut Cuomo’s frequent argument that the criticism of his handling of the virus in nursing homes was part of a political “blame game,” and it was a vindication for thousands of families who believed their loved ones were being omitted from counts to advance the governor’s image as a pandemic hero.

https://apnews.com/article/state-lawmakers-governor-coronavirus-7d5710f2d8aa4e659c0ec68400ad3d3c

Irritated by the sweeping use of executive orders during the COVID-19 crisis, state lawmakers around the U.S. are moving to curb the authority of governors and top health officials to impose emergency restrictions such as mask rules and business shutdowns.

The push is underway in such states as Arizona, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana and Pennsylvania, where legislators are seeking a constitutional amendment to strip the governor of many of his emergency powers.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Wayne Langerholc said the amendment would “make it unequivocally clear that our General Assembly is a co-equal branch … that we are not a monarchy and that our voices matter.”

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and some of his counterparts around the country have argued that they need authority to act quickly and decisively against the fast-changing threat.

The coronavirus has killed an estimated 430,000 Americans and is going through its most lethal phase yet, despite the rollout of vaccines, with new and more contagious variants from abroad turning up in the U.S.