RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-covid-models-get-wrong-11592435169?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Here we go again. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has issued a new forecast that Covid-19 fatalities would spike over the summer in states that have moved faster to reopen. Cue the media drumbeat for another lockdown. Maybe someone should first explain why the models were wrong about so much the last time.

Take New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo locked down the state in mid-March based on dire warnings. His public health experts projected the state would need as many as 140,000 hospital beds and 40,000 intensive care units—two to three times more regular hospital beds and 10 times more ICU beds than were available. The UW model forecast that 49,000 regular beds and 8,000 ICU beds would be needed at the peak.

New York was hit hard, but Covid-19 hospital bed utilization in New York peaked at 18,825 and 5,225 for ICUs in mid-April. Even in New York City, hospital utilization never exceeded 85% of capacity and 89% for ICUs. Government-run hospitals in low-income neighborhoods with the most cases were unprepared, but they were ill-managed before the pandemic.

New York was the country’s frontline in the coronavirus attack, and caution was needed in the early days because so little was known about the virus. The original UW model, which was based on the experiences in Italy and Wuhan, assumed that strict lockdowns would curb infections, reduce hospitalizations and lower deaths faster than they actually did in the Northeast.

Asked last month about when fatalities and hospitalizations would meet state thresholds for reopening, Mr. Cuomo responded: “All the early national experts, ‘Here’s my projection model.’ . . . They were all wrong. They were all wrong. . . . There are a lot of variables. I understand that. We didn’t know what the social distancing would actually amount to. I get it, but we were all wrong.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/17/corporate-americas-strategy-of-mob-appeasement-will-destroy-it-just-as-it-always-has/

Twenty-six years ago, Morgan Stanley hired Marilyn Booker as their first diversity director, charged with overseeing corporate efforts from the firm’s New York City headquarters, a 685-foot, glass, Times Square skyscraper. Ten years ago, Booker left that post to work in their financial wealth management division. Seven months ago, Booker was fired.

But that was before video aired of George Floyd’s death, and spreading, national protests escalated into riots, violence, church burning, monument defacing, and occupations. How quickly things change. Now Booker is leading a group of black women in suing the company that employed her for a quarter-century, charging that the firm systematically discriminates against black employees.

The suit comes after a notably active week for the investment bank’s activism. Since Black Lives Matter blasted back into our Alzheimer’s-addled news cycle, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, James Gorman, committed $25 million to a new internal “diversity” effort, sent $5 million to the NAACP, promoted two black women, and sent an email about it all to staff. For his efforts, he was personally named in Booker’s lawsuit.

But Morgan Stanley is not uniquely stupid for empowering an activist whose sole job was to call them racists. For decades, corporate America has launched similar efforts in the vain hope that money, press releases, and choice divestments could virtue-signal them out of the mob’s cross-hairs and even hurt their competitors. None of it saves them. On the contrary, moves to embrace the mob have placed corporations more clearly in their sights than they were before.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/coronavirus-arizona-reopening-media-distort-numbers/

Yes, they’re up, but the media is rushing to deem the state’s reopening a catastrophe.

 A rizona is the latest focus of the reopening debate, with national headlines about the state heading for a COVID disaster.

The state’s positivity rate — the percentage of tests that are positive — and hospitalizations are up, key metrics that are more meaningful than simply having more confirmed cases (which can be simply a function of more testing).

There’s no doubt that there’s increased community spread in Arizona, a trend that bears watching. But the rush to push the state into shutting down and deem it a cautionary tale of the perils of reopening is simplistic at best and skips over details crucial to understanding Arizona’s true situation.

“We’ve been pretty clear to everyone that we don’t think Arizona’s immune to COVID-19,” says an Arizona official. “We know that we will see cases just like we had elsewhere in the country.”

Arizona hasn’t been particularly hard hit by COVID. It sits between Indiana and Tennessee in total cases, at about 39,000.

On a per capita basis, it’s roughly in the same place as neighboring states. It has 538 confirmed cases per 100,000, while Colorado has 511, New Mexico has 474, and Utah 470. Colorado and New Mexico have slightly more deaths per 100,000.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/17/the_political_logic_of_trumps_

n the White House Rose Garden on Tuesday, President Donald Trump laid out an executive order addressing police misconduct and the ensuing national protests. Until now, his main response has been to voice strong support for “law and order” while condemning the excessive use of force, specifically in the case of George Floyd and generally across the country. His main theme has been: stop the mob rule, restore order, and get rid of a few bad apples. The executive order goes further, adding real substance to those vague pronouncements.

What does the executive order do?

The president’s executive order establishes a national credentialing process for police, making it harder for bad cops to transfer quietly to another city or county. It bans chokeholds — the kind that killed Mr. Floyd — except when the officer’s life is in danger. It provides training to de-escalate conflicts and funds social workers to assist police with endemic problems, such as homelessness, mental illness, alcoholism, and drug abuse. It will pay for non-lethal equipment, an indirect recognition that our policing relies too heavily on military equipment bought cheaply after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Police sometimes need that firepower and protection, but over-reliance puts officers in the wrong frame of mind and endangers suspects’ lives. De-escalate, if possible, and leave punishment up to the courts. The executive order moves in that direction, without saying so directly.

How does this executive order play out politically?

First, it allows Trump to tell swing voters, “See, I’m not a hardline law-and-order president. I want to restore order, of course, but I want enforcement to be fair and applied in a race-neutral way. Policing is a difficult and dangerous job, but a necessary one. Whenever possible, it should be done with the least violence possible.” Who could object to that message? It is especially important for the president to deliver it after the harsh police confrontation around Lafayette Park last week and Trump’s support for it.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/president-trump-signs-historic-executive-order-joseph-klein/

President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday on police reform after addressing police officers and other invited guests in the White House Rose Garden. The executive order is entitled “Safe Policing for Safe Communities.” It provides a sensible approach to police reform that rejects the left’s attempt to portray support for strong law enforcement and police accountability for misconduct as mutually exclusive. “Americans believe we must support the brave men and women in blue who police our streets and keep us safe,” President Trump said in the remarks he delivered in the Rose Garden before signing the executive order.  “Americans also believe we must improve accountability, increase transparency, and invest more resources in police training, recruiting, and community engagement. Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals. They are not mutually exclusive. They work together. They all work together.”

The executive order acknowledges the instances where police officers have misused their authority, and the effect of such misconduct on African-American communities in particular. The order states that “we must redouble our efforts as a Nation to swiftly address instances of misconduct.” But it also recognizes the vital work of law enforcement officers who “provide the essential protection that all Americans require to raise their families and lead productive lives.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/remembering-william-sessions-lloyd-billingsley/

William Sessions, former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, died on June 12 in San Antonio, Texas, at the age of 90. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, Sessions served until 1993, when President Clinton fired him, charging poor leadership and use of his position to leverage perks. The more likely cause was Sessions’ effort to prevent the politicization of the FBI, then gearing up under the new administration.

President Clinton fired Sessions on July 19, 1993. The next day at approximately 1 p.m. Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster came out of his office with his suit jacket in hand. He told Linda Tripp, an aide to White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum, that he left some M&Ms on a tray if she happened to want any. Foster didn’t say where he was going, but as he headed out the door, he told Tripp “I’ll be back.” As it turned out, he wouldn’t be back.

At approximately 6 p.m. that day, Foster’s body was found in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia, on the George Washington Parkway. Foster had suffered a gunshot wound to the head, but in one account he was found on a berm near a Civil War cannon in a straight coffin-like position, with the gun still in his hand. That seldom if ever happens in a suicide, the default explanation for Foster’s fate.

Accounts also differed on where, exactly Foster’s body had been found, which raised the possibility that it may have been moved. A point-blank gunshot wound to the head leaves an enormous amount of blood, bone and tissue but accounts of the body, and photos of the scene, do not reflect that reality.  The bullet was never found, and accounts also differed on the type of gun found in Foster’s hand.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/06/16/road-to-recovery-retail-sales-jump-17-7-in-may-dow-surges-n540000

The Commerce Department reports that U.S. retail sales surged by a record 17.7 percent in May over the previous month, in part due to a rebound in consumer spending caused by the coronavirus recession, which caused many businesses to close or limit business.

The Associated Press reports that “retail sales have retraced some of the record-setting month-to-month plunges of March (8.3%) and April (14.7%) as businesses have increasingly reopened. Still, the pandemic’s damage to retail sales remains severe, with purchases still down 6.1% from a year ago.”

The changes have in many cases intensified the financial strain on traditional physical stores and boosted online purchases. Sales at non-store retailers, which include internet companies like Amazon and eBay, rose 9% in May after posting growth of 9.5% in April. Clothiers achieved a stunning 188% monthly gain, but that was not enough to offset a 63.4% drop over the past 12 months.

Retail sales account for roughly half of all consumer spending, which fuels about 70% of total economic activity. The rest of consumer spending includes services, from cellphone and internet contracts to gym memberships and child care.

Last month’s bounce-back comes against the backdrop of an economy that may have begun what could be a slow and prolonged recovery. In May, employers added 2.5 million jobs, an unexpected increase that suggested that the job market has bottomed out.

The bounce in May’s retail numbers suggests that the worst of the coronavirus recession is behind us.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/16/no-camden-new-jersey-didnt-defund-the-police

Proudly labeling Camden’s transformation as the result of disbanding its police force isn’t the whole story. Camden reorganized and grew its police force.

Proponents of defunding or disbanding police departments are lauding Camden, New Jersey, as a model for the nation. They suggest that the rapid decline in the city’s crime since it disbanded its police department in 2012 proves the merits of their position.

We can discern the truth by analyzing the policies Camden implemented after it disbanded its police department and measuring how well they worked.

It bears noting up front that in spite of the heartening declines in crime rates Camden has achieved since 2012, it remains one of the most dangerous cities in America. Its violent crime rate in 2019 was eight times that of New Jersey’s overall rate of violent crime, the highest rate by far of any city in a state with several high-crime urban centers. Yet this qualifies as progress. Last year marked the lowest-crime year in Camden in decades.

Proudly labeling Camden’s transformation as the result of disbanding its police force would be to tell less than half the story. Rather, Camden reorganized and grew its police force.

Camden Didn’t Exactly ‘Defund the Police’