RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/remember_federalism_covid19_takes_us_back.html

States, jealous of their power and prerogatives when it suits, have been furious over what some governors call federal inaction on COVID-19, deliberate or not. But equally, each state has a department of public health, a director of that department and staff. Each state is presumed to have a plan for emergencies: floods, forest fires, airliner crashes (the last fatal crash in the U.S. occurred in 2009, but it used to be on the “prepare for” list) or pandemics. Closing schools and parks is not handled in Washington. Calling out the state National Guard is, as its name suggests, a state prerogative.

Emergency plans are expensive, and states are often strapped for cash; so is Washington. And, now that the feds and the states are beginning to plan for “reopening,” each will look for a way to take credit and lay blame. President Donald Trump has pre-empted some of this with his announcement that the White House will work with all 50 governors to create reopening plans. Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded that New York cannot manage without Washington when he announced that he won’t fight with the President. If he won’t, no one outside the media will.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/vitamin-d-and-coronavirus-disparities-11587078141?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Black Americans are dying of Covid-19 at a higher rate than whites. Socioeconomic factors such as gaps in access to health care no doubt play a role. But another possible factor has been largely overlooked: vitamin D deficiency that weakens the immune system.

Researchers last week released the first data supporting this link. They found that the nations with the highest mortality rates—Italy, Spain and France—also had the lowest average vitamin D levels among countries affected by the pandemic.

Vitamin D is produced by a reaction in the skin to the ultraviolet rays in sunlight. Many Americans are low in vitamin D, but those with darker skin are at a particular disadvantage because melanin inhibits the vitamin’s production. As an Indian-American, my skin type is Fitzpatrick IV, or “moderate brown.” Compared with my white friends, I need double or triple the sun exposure to synthesize the same amount of vitamin D, so I supplement with 5,000 international units of vitamin D3 daily, which maintains my level in the normal range. Most African-Americans are Fitzpatrick type V or VI, so they would need even more.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/04/16/pelosi-schumer-take-small-businesses-h

Small business relief that was included in the $2.2 trillion legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump to shore up payrolls of millions of American workers during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic has been so popular that it is in danger of running out.

As of Tuesday, the $350 billion program had already exhausted $257 billion as President Trump’s top economic advisor told Fox Business, “At the present run-rate, we’re going to be out of money.”

Thirty million small businesses employ up to 60 million Americans, the backbone of the U.S. economy, and for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the shortfalls are just fine. Those are hostages.

The trouble is everyone knows they’ll kill the hostages, figuratively speaking, of course.

That is, they’ll let those funds run out, even if it means tens of millions more Americans will lose their jobs for good while they wait to exact another toll from taxpayers on behalf of their own special interests, including state and local governments they want to bail out again.

It’s a free for all.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/phase-one-of-reopening-will-be-expanding-list-of-essential-businesses-ny-governor_3314817.html

Businesses that aren’t currently labeled essential could soon be allowed to reopen in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, suggesting the first phase of reopening will be expanding the list businesses deemed “essential.”

Cuomo last month ordered so-called non-essential businesses to shut down as part of his stay-at-home order, which largely restricted people to their homes. The order and similar ones made by governors across the country crippled the economy and cost millions of jobs. Some experts say they helped slow the spread of the he CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus that emerged from mainland China last year, but others say less strict social distancing measures could have accomplished similar effects.

Hospitalizations dropped again in New York overnight, prompting Cuomo to unveil details on the regional plan for reopening.

Officials will work on determining which companies that were shut down can be reopened.

“How essential is that business service, right? You have to start somewhere. Right now, we have the economy working with ‘essential workers’ so we want to start to bring the economy back, move up one tranche with how you define essential,” Cuomo told reporters in Albany on Thursday.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/coronavirus-small-businesses-relief-funds-run-dry-amid-congressional-deadlock/

The $349 billion in emergency funding for small businesses has run out less than one month after it was created as part of the $2.2 trillion phase-three coronavirus economic relief bill.

“The SBA is currently unable to accept new applications for the Paycheck Protection Program based on available appropriations funding,” the Small Business Administrations said in a statement Thursday. “Similarly, we are unable to enroll new PPP lenders at this time.” Earlier Thursday, the agency said it had approved over 1.6 million loan applications.

It is unclear when the program might be replenished since Congress is not due to be back in session until May 4. Republicans and the White House attempted to add $251 billion more to the program last week, but Democrats pushed back, calling for more targeted relief to minority- and women-owned companies as well as local governments and hospitals.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-testing-will-reveal-much-about-virus-lockdowns/

Timelines grow shorter. The virus and the draconian reaction to it are wearing down a quarantined America.

We are a few days away from a rendezvous with some tough conclusions about COVID-19.

A number of concurrent developments are coming to a head. Most will bring light where so far there was only heat.

Greater information about the virus might cause as much acrimony as conciliation. Some experts will be discredited, others reaffirmed.

Antibody testing is expected to get under way shortly. Soon, several representative studies will give the country an accurate idea of how many Americans have been infected in the past few months.

With a more trustworthy denominator to compare against known deaths, we will finally learn just how lethal the virus is and whether comparisons to a severe annual flu are legitimate or still inapplicable.

Likewise, there will be greater precision in distinguishing those whose deaths were exclusively virus-related from those who were afflicted by serious chronic illnesses along with the virus. That will also help provide better data about the actual toxicity of the virus.

Those with antibodies will likely be able to return to work with little risk. Arguments will arise over whether their status should be cataloged and banked, or whether such classification would institutionalize creepy two-tier categories of citizenship.

The prior pessimism of most epidemic models will either be confirmed or refuted, depending on the percentages of Americans who have already weathered the virus.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-who-funding-halt-does-he-have-the-power-to-do-it/

President Trump announced yesterday that he plans to halt U.S. taxpayer funding for the World Health Organization. Our recent editorial laid out chapter and verse on how appallingly the WHO has performed in connection with the pandemic. It continues to be China’s cat’s paw, peddling Beijing’s propaganda and helping obfuscate its culpability. But even agreeing, as I do, that our government should cut off the WHO, does the president have the power to do it?

The question presses because the United States is the top financial backer of the WHO. No other country is close. The WHO’s budget is about $6 billion per annum, and the American contribution is over $400 million — about ten times China’s contribution, as the president has pointed out. Democrats are gearing up to fight Trump on the plan to halt WHO funding, and they will get help from the usual array of moneyed progressives (Bill Gates is already raising alarms) and the self-regarding “international community” . . . not least the WHO itself. There will be lawsuits challenging the president — bank on it.

Which, naturally, raises the question: Is it legal for the president to do this? Probably so, but it’s tricky.

The simplest route is to repurpose the congressionally authorized funding. We’ll have to see what the budgeting fine print says, but as we noted when the president reprogrammed some Defense Department funding for the purpose of border-wall construction, presidents often have wiggle to move appropriated money around. This is especially so when there is a national emergency. Recall that there are many emergency provisions in federal law, some going back decades, through which Congress has given the president spending discretion. Recall in addition that President Trump has already invoked Stafford Act emergency provisions in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/fbi-received-repeated-warnings-about-steele-informant

The FBI received repeated warnings dating to 2015 that Christopher Steele, the ex-British spy it used to build a case against President Trump, had concerning contacts with Russian oligarchs and intelligence figures that might call into question the credibility of his intelligence reporting, newly declassified documents showed Monday.

The suspect sources included a person described as a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and a Russian intelligence figure under separate counterintelligence investigation by the FBI, the memos show. And the red flags included a warning that Russian intelligence appeared to be aware as early as July 2016 that Steele was working on a U.S. election-related investigation, making him susceptible to misinformation.

The revelations are found in newly declassified footnotes from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December, 2019 report about failures in the Russia probe that included using false evidence to secure a FISA warrant against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in October 2016.

Some of those red flags were raised prior to the bureau’s decision to rely on Steele’s dossier as key evidence in seeking the FISA warrant targeting the Trump campaign in the final days of the 2016 election, and nearly all were raised before Special Counsel Robert Mueller opened his probe in spring 2017.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/16/the_stress_pandemic_142944.html

Deliberately closing down the economy, which has never been done before, has created a more infectious, possibly more lethal disease than COVID-19. Let’s call it the Stress Virus. For the Stress Pandemic there can be no vaccine. There is only one cure — more jobs, more economic growth. Federal, state, and local governments should immediately begin to open the economy. Conditions in states, cities, localities vary. State and local officials should act accordingly with a clear goal: remove restrictions as fast as prudently possible.

The United States, and the world, have gone to war against COVID-19. Just weeks ago, little was known about this mysterious virus. When the news broke, it was accompanied by apocalyptic predictions: untold millions of infections and deaths. The threat seemed obvious. The focus was clear: Do everything possible as soon as possible to diminish the number of fatalities. The main thrust? Encourage people to isolate themselves. Almost overnight, this appeal swiftly morphed into a demand and the economy was essentially shut down by government fiat.

As we learned more about the virus and the models began to take this knowledge into account, the projected rates of infections and deaths declined dramatically. From 2.2 million projected deaths in the United States alone down to about 240,000 worldwide. This in but a few weeks. It’s fair to ask — and the answer may be unknowable — was the less cataclysmic modeling due to the social distancing, or were the models wrong all along? This much is known, however: The world economy has never been closed for any reason and the effects of the economic contagion are painfully obvious — massive unemployment, massive business closures, massive wealth destruction.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/15/are-we-witnessing-a-targeted-hit-against-trump-voters/

If you tried to design an attack against the president’s supporters, you couldn’t do better than what the experts have done in the name of public health.

The debate about “reopening the economy” is a phony debate.

It’s phony because “the economy” isn’t shut down. Far from it. Walmart is still open. Dollar General is open. Amazon is open. Alibaba is open.

It just so happens that the big-box mass merchandisers and online retailers responsible for flooding our country with crap from Communist China are open.

Meanwhile, other, very specific parts of the country are shut down.

Family-owned shops and workshops, the backbone of America, are closed. Fast-food franchises remain open—drive-through windows are operating at full tilt—but independently owned restaurants are shuttered or trying to survive at diminished capacity doing takeout only.

Conveniently, if not coincidentally, small-business owners make up an important segment of Trump’s base. Like the president, they have signed the front of a paycheck, experienced the brunt of the well-meaning administrative state, and endured the predations of giant corporations and subsidized Chinese competition. That’s why they love President Trump–he understands what they go through.

While these largely family-owned, small and medium-sized enterprises are laying off workers by the millions, Amazon and Walmart are hiring.

In the energy industry, the big guys can weather the storm while small, independent producers are getting crushed as oil prices fall off the cliff along with demand.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Zoom and other giant internet overlords are seeing more traffic than ever as people are locked in and white-collar professionals work from home.