RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/03/26/is-there-wasteful-spending-in-the-coronavirus-stimulus-bill/#16ac159460ae

Last night, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a $2 trillion “Phase III” emergency aid package to help America recover from the coronavirus lockdown. Previous phases provided funds for testing and paid family leave.

Not one U.S. Senator voted against the legislation: 96-0. Twice during the first hour of Senate debate, two “final” versions were distributed. No one had time to read the final language.

Our organization at OpenTheBooks.com posted an official summary of the legislation’s supplemental $340 billion surge to emergency funding here.

The Republican majority Senate and Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) introduced their 250-page version of this coronavirus aid relief and economic security act a week ago. It eventually became the $2 trillion, 883 page CARES Act – Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (H.R.748).  

Two days ago, in the ramp up to negotiations, House Democrats and Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the “Take Responsibility For Workers and Family’s Act” (H.R.6379) – a $2.5 trillion, 1,404 page coronavirus response.

Our auditors dug deeply into McConnell’s Senate bill and compared it to Pelosi’s House bill. While half the nation was “sheltered in place,” here’s what lawmakers — in both parties — considered “essential spending” for coronavirus recovery:

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/489698-trump-outlines-plan-to-classify-counties-by-risk-level-for

President Trump on Thursday outlined plans for his administration to classify each county across the United States based on its risk for an outbreak of coronavirus and use that information to create targeted guidelines.

In a letter to the nation’s governors, Trump spoke optimistically about expanded testing capabilities that would allow officials to identify which areas of the country are grappling with outbreaks and where the virus is spreading.

Based on that surveillance testing data, federal agencies would determine if a specific county is high-risk, medium-risk or low-risk for the virus. The administration is simultaneously working on new guidelines for social distancing that would apply to an area depending on its classification, Trump wrote. 

“With each passing day, our increasingly extensive testing capabilities are giving us a better understanding of the virus and its path,” Trump wrote. “As testing gives us more information about who has been infected, we are tracking the virus and isolating it to prevent further spread. This new information will drive the next phase in our war against this invisible enemy.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/26/the-scientist-whose-doomsday-pandemic-model-predicted-armageddon-just-walked-back-the-apocalyptic-predictions/

British scientist Neil Ferguson ignited the world’s drastic response to the novel Wuhan coronavirus when he published the bombshell report predicting 2.2 million Americans and more than half a million Brits would be killed. After both the U.S. and U.K. governments effectively shut down their citizens and economies, Ferguson is walking back his doomsday scenarios.

Ferguson’s report from Imperial College, which White House and other officials took seriously, said that if the U.S. and U.K. did not shut down for 18 months, and isolation measures were not taken, “we would expect a peak in mortality (daily deaths) to occur after approximately 3 months.” His “models” showed overflowing hospitals and ICU beds.

“For an uncontrolled epidemic, we predict critical care bed capacity would be exceeded as early as the second week in April, with an eventual peak in ICU or critical care bed demand that is over 30 times greater than the maximum supply in both countries,” the report reads.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, reportedly said the administration was particularly focused on the Imperial College report’s conclusion that entire households should stay in isolation for 14 days if any member suffered from COVID-19 symptoms.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/25/octopelosi/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi turns 80 on Thursday. In the runup to that milestone, Pelosi launched impeachment proceedings against President Trump, who was duly acquitted. By way of follow-up, she decided to block the Senate’s coronavirus response package earlier this week, and on Monday offered a 1,200-page version of her own chock full of goodies meant to keep the Ocasio-Cortez-Tlaib-Omar squad in line.

And behind the scenes, Pelosi is pulling the strings on the Golden State.

“I want to thank Speaker Nancy Pelosi,” said California governor Gavin Newsom in his March 12 press conference telling 40 million Californians to stay home. “We had a very long conversation today. Talk about meeting the moment. We are so blessed to have her leadership in California. She’s very familiar to northern Californians, certainly familiar to me as a former mayor of San Francisco.”

Listeners might not have known the other ways in which Nancy Pelosi is familiar to the governor, whose grandfather, William Newsom, helped Pat Brown win the 1943 race for San Francisco district attorney.

In 1960, with the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, Governor Pat Brown awarded the concession to William Newsom and John Pelosi. In 1963, John’s son Paul married Nancy D’Alesandro, daughter of congressman and Baltimore mayor Thomas D’Alesandro. In 1969, Paul and Nancy Pelosi moved to San Francisco, where Paul’s brother Ron was a county supervisor. Ron married William Newsom’s daughter Barbara, so Nancy Pelosi was Gavin Newsom’s aunt by marriage until the couple divorced.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/senate-passes-coronavirus-bill-proving-pelosi-gambled-with-americans-lives-and-lost/

In the wee hours of Wednesday evening, the U.S. Senate finally passed the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill after a great deal of Democrat stalling and a futile effort by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to put forward a separate bill jam-packed with liberal Christmas wish-list items. The bill provides crucial relief to businesses struggling with the social distancing strategy of stopping the spread of the coronavirus. It now heads to the House.

The stimulus bill is far from perfect, but its passage unmasked Pelosi’s tactics as a disgraceful waste of time during this crisis. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) slammed the speaker for her attempt to jam her liberal pipe dreams down Americans’ throats in the midst of a crisis.

“Democrats wanted to use the coronavirus response package to change election law & implement parts of their Green New Deal. The Senate just passed strong bipartisan legislation that scraps those items, & it’s clear. ⇨ Their delay achieved nothing but more pain for Americans,” McCarthy tweeted.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/03/new-york-dems-demand-coronavirus-cash-museum-w29-daniel-greenfield/

Fear not ladies and sufferers, the Pelosi coronavirus pigout is just getting started.

New York is facing an eruption in coronavirus cases. And what’s on the minds of its Dem delegation? Ventilators, masks? Museums.

“NYC isn’t NYC without our non-profit museums. But if we want our museums to survive COVID-19, we need to protect them NOW. That’s why I led the NYC Congressional delegation with @RepMaloney in calling for $4 billion in emergency funds to equip museums to outlast this pandemic,” Rep Nadler tweeted.

How many ventilators could $4 billion buy? We know the answer to that one.

In 2015, the state could have purchased the additional 16,000 needed ventilators for $36,000 apiece, or a total of $576 million.

But why bother. Now it’s time for the pork pigout.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/with-lives-and-the-economy-on-the-line-nancy-pelosi-stalls-wuhan-coronavirus-relief-bill/

Shameful.Utterly, despicably shameful.

Having tried and failed in the first half of this to lard up the coronavirus relief bill with extraneous goodies and intrusive regulations to please her rabidly progressive constituency, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to take her bat and ball and go home for the day.

We’re in a situation where every day, every hour counts. Every day that passes without a paycheck or unemployment relief is a day untold numbers of families grow closer to losing their homes. Every hour that money doesn’t go out to manufacturers is another hour hospitals have to wait for masks and ventilators. Every hour some sick New Yorker has to wait for another hospital bed. Every dinner out postponed, every canceled event, every missed business opportunity is another step closer to economic collapse.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Congress knows what to do: Pass a clean bill and get it on the President’s desk. Pronto.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pelosi-reacts-to-virus-stimulus-deal-declines-to-say-when-house-will-vote_3285249.html

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said staffers and representatives are reviewing the stimulus deal reached in the Senate overnight Tuesday while declining to commit to a vote in the House on Wednesday.

“We have our staff and our chairman reviewing the bill. I’m optimistic but we’ll see,” Pelosi told reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Asked if the House could vote as early as today, Pelosi said: “No, we haven’t seen the bill yet. The Senate will vote first.”

“We’ll see the bill and see when the Senate votes,” she added. “So there’s no decision about timing until we see the bill.”

The House went into session at 10 a.m. for a brief session before adjourning in less than two minutes. There’s nothing on the schedule until 11 a.m. Thursday.

House Democrats plan to hold several conference calls throughout the day on the deal the Senate reached and plans for voting on the agreement, C-Span’s Craig Caplan reported.

The White House and leaders in the Senate reached a deal on a $2 trillion relief package overnight. The package includes direct payments of up to $3,000 to most American families as well as creating a $367 billion program for small business loans.

“This is a wartime level of investment into our nation,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor after the two sides had reached a deal. “The men and women of the greatest country on Earth are going to defeat this coronavirus and reclaim our future.”

Senators said they plan to vote on the package on Wednesday. The Senate was slated to reconvene at 12 p.m.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/25/inaccurate-virus-models-are-panicking-officials-into-ill-advised-lockdowns/

As U.S. state and local officials halt the economy and quarantine their communities over the Wuhan virus crisis, one would hope our leaders were making such major decisions based on well-sourced data and statistical analysis. That is not the case.

A scan of statements made by media, state governors, local leaders, county judges, and more show many relying on the same source, an online mapping tool called COVID Act Now. The website says it is “built to enable political leaders to quickly make decisions in their Coronavirus response informed by best available data and modeling.”

An interactive map provides users a catastrophic forecast for each state, should they wait to implement COVID Act Now’s suggested strict measures to “flatten the curve.” But a closer look at how many of COVID Act Now’s predictions have already fallen short, and how they became a ubiquitous resource across the country overnight, suggests something more sinister.

When Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins announced a shelter-in-place order on Dallas County Sunday, he displayed COVID Act Now graphs with predictive outcomes after three months if certain drastic measures are taken. The NBC Dallas affiliate also embedded the COVID Act Now models in their story on the mandate.