MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Lockdown’

Next Entries »

A Coronavirus Counterfactual: What If Government Had Done Nothing? | RealClearMarkets

Posted by M. C. on March 21, 2020

Free people naturally prosper, and they do precisely because their individual wellbeing means so much to them. Had governments done nothing in response to the Coronavirus, individuals and businesses would have done much more, and done so without going out of business. The Ruling Class overseeing this crack-up deserves the mother of all comeuppances that goes well beyond losing in the next election cycle. The architects of this wholly avoidable debacle need to be publicly shamed and ridiculed.

The restaurant smoking ban laws in PA are a great example. Restaurants become mostly smoke free on their own. PA then passed laws and took the credit.

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2020/03/21/a_coronavirus_counterfactual_what_if_government_had_done_nothing_487172.html

By John Tamny

“The Pothole” is the title of episode 16, season 8 of the classic television series Seinfeld. In this one Jerry accidentally knocks girlfriend Jenna’s toothbrush into the toilet, only for Jenna to use it before Jerry can tell her about his accident. This rated a plotline given Seinfeld’s known aversion to germs. Readers can imagine where the story went. Seinfeld was surely a comedy defined by manufactured situations “about nothing,” but one reason the show was so popular (and still is) is that people could relate.

Certainly they could relate to Seinfeld’s obsessive aversion to germs. We all know people like this, or we are those people. These individuals never open doors by the door handle, wipe down tray tables and armrests on airplanes, and particularly if they have young kids, they require all visitors to wash or disinfect their hands upon entering their house or apartment.

In a work sense, most readers can probably remember their first job, or jobs. They paid hourly. If so, no doubt some can remember how holiday work paid double the hourly wage, or sometimes more. Eager to remain open for customers whose wants and needs didn’t and don’t cease on holidays, businesses pay workers extra to make sure they’ll serve their customers on days when most aren’t working.

These anecdotes have come to mind a lot while witnessing the mass shutdown of the U.S. economy on the city, state, and national level.  As this is being written, California’s 40 million residents are on lockdown per the order of Governor Gavin Newsom. The mayor of Hoboken (NJ) banned restaurants and bars from serving food, plus instituted a 10 pm to 5 am curfew. As all too many already know, Austin’s mayor canceled South by Southwest, thus devastating local businesses. On the national level, President Trump has ascribed to himself “wartime” powers, plus the federal government he leads is in the process of voting itself over $1 trillion to hand out to individuals and businesses.

About this extraction of enormous wealth from the U.S. economy, it barely rates mention that the Founders wrote the Constitution to severely limit the power of the federal government to do anything. Where then, is the outrage over a federal government set to spend $1 trillion? In fairness to the American people, it’s arguable they’re too stunned to protest after seeing politicians on all levels so rapidly take from them their ability to work and enjoy the fruits of their work. They’re told the crushing of the economy by the political class is “for their own good,” and that they should respect the “science” informing their decisions. Don’t the American people get it, politicians are fighting to save our lives! Since they are, we apparently must forfeit our liberty and prosperity.

Seemingly lost in all this alleged governmental beneficence is that people broadly get it. See once again Seinfeld. The episode was relatable because we yet again know all-too-many people who are exceedingly careful about being around the sick or those they presume to be germ carriers. This is true even in times free of viruses like Covid-19. Translated, people are self-regulating when it comes to their health. They don’t need a law.

That they don’t raises at this point a counterfactual question: what would have happened on the city, state and national levels if politicians had quite simply done nothing in response to the spreading virus? If so, does anyone seriously think that the death rate would be substantially higher, and that information about this potentially lethal virus wouldn’t have reached a population increasingly connected to the internet all day, and every day?

To the above, some might reply that rural types don’t always have internet access similar to that which cityfolk do, but then per demands of politicians around the world, they’re already isolated or socially distant. If our political minders are to be believed, their chosen isolation would make their being exposed to the virus highly unlikely assuming what’s even less likely: that they wouldn’t have been informed of the spread of a health-sapping virus well ahead of time.

So what of cities, and suburbs of cities? No doubt the risk of exposure would be greater for a variety of reasons, but then it’s safe to say that germaphobes in the best of times would be positively OCD in times like this. Not needing a law, they would socially distance themselves simply because that’s what they already do when viruses aren’t spreading.

Some will respond that others wouldn’t or won’t do as politicians demand. Yes, that’s true. And your point? Heroin is illegal, so is cocaine, but people still consume both. Lockdowns or none, some will disregard the risks that come with contracting Covid-19 much as they disregard the much-reported-on risks of heroin and cocaine use. Laws don’t factor with these individuals, at which point their interactions with one another, and potential infection with the virus, would have and realistically will provide crucial information about how rapidly the virus spreads, how lethal it is, etc.

What about businesses? What if there had been no lockdowns? It’s safe to say that many would have operated short-staffed as is with germaphobes top of mind. Rather than forced furloughs, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that a good percentage of workers on all levels of the economic food chain would have voluntarily opted out. Others fearful of contracting the virus would have used this time to take a well-needed and rather isolated vacation somewhere, including one of the “staycation” variety.

The main thing is that as opposed to businesses shutting down, it’s not unreasonable to contend that in concert with certain workers opting out or vacationing during the period of greatest Covid uncertainty, patronage of bars, restaurants, movie theaters, amusement parks, stadiums, arenas, hotels, motels, casinos and everything else would similarly decline naturally, thus shrinking the need for fully staffed operations. This would once again materialize not by law, but based on the germ-obsessed and virus-averse choosing to stay at home, or away from crowds. An informed citizenry, one that is better informed than ever thanks to the internet, would revert to relative isolation in a numbers sense to mitigate the close interactions that doctors and scientists say are problematic.

And what if some businesses stayed packed no matter what? If so, high customer demand would have given businesses fearful of morphing into contagion zones a reason to limit customer inflow by yes, charging higher prices for said food or service. Assuming broad aversion on the part of the public to being in public, other business entities would have advertised their adherence to strict customer limits in order to bring in consumers who would have otherwise studiously avoided public places for fear of big crowds.

Still other businesses, perhaps newly opened, would have used this period of uncertainty to stay open while gaining market share that would be harder to attain during periods of normalcy. And if the newer, suddenly busier businesses were to find it challenging to staff for relatively larger customer inflow, they might offer holiday style or hazardous duty pay to attract quality help. The crucial point here is that as opposed to a one-size-fits-all shutdown of businesses that is wrecking the finances and dreams of tens of millions, market forces and market fears would have made it possible for many more businesses to stay open; albeit in a way that wouldn’t imperil workers or customers.

Mentioned earlier were movie theaters, stadiums and sports arenas. Unknown is the why behind the mass shutdown. Here, perhaps absent politics, those staging events and films might have used prices, and in particular high prices, to limit the size of crowds as opposed to canceling events altogether. If the game plan is distance, let price signals arrived at in the marketplace shrink crowd sizes not just in restaurants and bars, but in all manner of venues.

Turning to the federal level, one imagines in a perfect and rather sane world the president doing much less than nothing. It’s shooting fish in a barrel, but government cannot produce abundance. At the same time, it can provide the personal and economic freedoms that lead to abundance. It’s been said before in this column, but President Trump was going to be vilified by the major media no matter what. And precisely because they were going to make him out as the devil no matter what, Trump should have made plain that the federal government’s only Coronavirus plan was freedom on the correct assumption that creative, free, profit-motivated minds matched with capital would arrive at a virus vaccine quite a bit quicker than would a team led by Mike Pence.

Trump might have also made plain that his DOJ would file lawsuits in defense of private businesses around the country being shut down by local and state governments. To the latter some might reply something along the lines of “abuse of power,” that states are where policy should be enacted, but it seems these shutdowns amount to a “taking”? Yes or no, the Trump administration could have at least slowed down the horrid vandalism of the economy rather than his administration vandalizing it on its own with a $1 trillion spending plan that, while perhaps good cosmetics in the eyes of some, will logically weaken a U.S. economy already devastated by command-and-control.

To all of this some will yet again respond that a “business as usual” approach doesn’t work in the face of that which is potentially lethal. Such a view is insulting. Implicit there is that absent the guiding hand of government, people would approach what some say has the potential to kill by the millions with no regard for their own individual wellbeing. That’s not serious. In fact it’s obnoxious to presume that Americans need to be forced to protect themselves.

No, there’s a strong incentive for Americans and those of any other nationality to do what’s in their best interest. That this is true speaks to what a tragedy we’re in the middle of, both in terms of liberty and prosperity.

Free people naturally prosper, and they do precisely because their individual wellbeing means so much to them. Had governments done nothing in response to the Coronavirus, individuals and businesses would have done much more, and done so without going out of business. The Ruling Class overseeing this crack-up deserves the mother of all comeuppances that goes well beyond losing in the next election cycle. The architects of this wholly avoidable debacle need to be publicly shamed and ridiculed.

Be seeing you

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The End of Civilization? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 21, 2020

The federal government, he says. is “willing to crash the economy, kill businesses, particularly churches and restaurants that are unlikely to have the resources to re-open their establishments, and coerce people to stay indoors, a practice that will further lower vitamin D levels and result in widespread infection and death among retirees.”

Ron Paul, who is a medical doctor and can give an expert analysis of government medical propaganda. He says: “On Face the Nation, [Dr. Anthony]  Fauci did his best to further damage an already tanking economy by stating, ‘Right now, personally, myself, I wouldn’t go to a restaurant.’ He has pushed for closing the entire country down for 14 days.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/lew-rockwell/the-end-of-civilization/

By

Governments all over the world are using the alleged threat of a COVID-19 pandemic to shut down the world’s economy. Daniel Lacalle, an authority on energy economics, writes: “The decision to shut down air travel and close all nonessential businesses is now a reality in major global economies. The United States has banned all European flights as Italy enters a complete lockdown, Spain declares a state of emergency, and France closes all nonessential public places and businesses.”

Further, he points out, governments can’t solve the problems they have created through massive spending programs and bigger deficits. These policies make things worse: “Governments will implement large demand-side policies that are the wrong answer to a shutdown of the economy. Most businesses will suffer from the collapse in sales and subsequent working capital build, and none of that will be solved with deficit spending. You cannot mitigate a supply shock with demand policies, which increase debt and overcapacity in the already indebted and bloated sectors and do not help the sectors that are suffering an abrupt collapse in activity.” And government printing of money, i.e., outright inflationism, is even more dangerous.

Lacalle’s remarks bring to mind the trenchant comments on Ludwig von Mises. He warns against attempts to shore up disastrous policies by printing more money. Mises says, “No emergency can justify a return to inflation. Inflation can provide neither the weapons a nation needs to defend its independence nor the capital goods required for any project. It does not cure unsatisfactory conditions. It merely helps the rulers whose policies brought about the catastrophe to exculpate themselves.” He tells us where a policy of inflationism will end: “Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism.”

Bill Sardi emphasizes the criminal folly of US government policy. The federal government, he says. is “willing to crash the economy, kill businesses, particularly churches and restaurants that are unlikely to have the resources to re-open their establishments, and coerce people to stay indoors, a practice that will further lower vitamin D levels and result in widespread infection and death among retirees.” States and cities have rushed to follow suit. Los Angeles and San Francisco, for example, are now under drastic “shelter-in-place” orders that require “non-essential businesses” to close and forbid dining in restaurants.

To understand more fully what is happening, we need the guidance of two great thinkers, Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. They teach us a vital lesson. Civilization depends on the international division of labor. To destroy the division of labor would plunge us into chaos. Life as we know cannot survive under a system of economic autarky.

Rothbard explains this key principle in “Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor:” No one can fully develop his powers in any direction without engaging in specialization. The primitive tribesman or peasant, bound to an endless round of different tasks in order to maintain himself, could have no time or resources available to pursue any particular interest to the full. He had no room to specialize, to develop whatever field he was best at or in which he was most interested. Two hundred years ago, Adam Smith pointed out that the developing division of labor is a key to the advance of any economy above the most primitive level. A necessary condition for any sort of developed economy, the division of labor is also requisite to the development of any sort of civilized society. The philosopher, the scientist, the builder, the merchant — none could develop these skills or functions if he had had no scope for specialization. Furthermore, no individual who does not live in a society enjoying a wide range of division of labor can possibly employ his powers to the fullest. He cannot concentrate his powers in a field or discipline and advance that discipline and his own mental faculties. Without the opportunity to specialize in whatever he can do best, no person can develop his powers to the full; no man, then, could be fully human.

While a continuing and advancing division of labor is needed for a developed economy and society, the extent of such development at any given time limits the degree of specialization that any given economy can have. There is, therefore, no room for a physicist or a computer engineer on a primitive island; these skills would be premature within the context of that existing economy. As Adam Smith put it, ‘the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.’ Economic and social development is therefore a mutually reinforcing process: the development of the market permits a wider division of labor, which in turn enables of further extension of the market.”

Mises writes along the same lines: “The fundamental social phenomenon is the division of labor and its counterpart human cooperation. Experience teaches man that cooperative action is more efficient and productive than isolated action of self-sufficient individuals. The natural conditions determining man’s life and effort are such that the division of labor increases output per unit of labor expended.” The division of labor, Mises tells us, is the key to the development of civilization. He says, “We conceive what incentive induced people not to consider themselves simply as rivals in a struggle for the appropriation of the limited supply of means of subsistence made available by nature. We realize what has impelled them and permanently impels them to consort with one another for the sake of cooperation. Every step forward on the way to a more developed mode of the division of labor serves the interests of all participants.”

Now, governments all over the world want us to give this up. Abandoning the international division of labor will hit Africa, dependent on trade for bare survival, especially hard. To what end is the world’s carefully wrought economic system being dismantled? Does the spread of COVID-19 require us to destroy the world’s economy? Here we can learn from another outstanding thinker, Ron Paul, who is a medical doctor and can give an expert analysis of government medical propaganda. He says: “On Face the Nation, [Dr. Anthony]  Fauci did his best to further damage an already tanking economy by stating, ‘Right now, personally, myself, I wouldn’t go to a restaurant.’ He has pushed for closing the entire country down for 14 days.

Over what? A virus that has thus far killed just over 5,000 worldwide and less than 100 in the United States? By contrast, tuberculosis, an old disease not much discussed these days, killed nearly 1.6 million people in 2017. Where’s the panic over this?

If anything, what people like Fauci and the other fearmongers are demanding will likely make the disease worse. The martial law they dream about will leave people hunkered down inside their homes instead of going outdoors or to the beach where the sunshine and fresh air would help boost immunity. The panic produced by these fearmongers is likely helping spread the disease, as massive crowds rush into Walmart and Costco for that last roll of toilet paper.” Ben Swann supports Ron Paul’s skepticism with a careful analysis of World Health organization statistics in this important video:

Even if the COVOID-19 virus turns out to be more severe than the skeptics give us reason to think it is, we can get through it. We cannot survive the end of the division of labor. It would be the finish of civilization as we know it.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Haaretz.Com- ‘Total suspension of individual freedom’: Inside Israel’s secret coronavirus debate

Posted by M. C. on March 20, 2020

The Knesset runs the show in Washington.

You can’t say you weren’t warned.

https://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page//.premium-total-suspension-of-individual-freedom-inside-israel-s-secret-coronavirus-debate-1.8690950

Noa Landau, Jonathan Lis

Public health services chief tells Knesset intelligence panel that Israel needs to employ a total lockdown and personal monitoring in the struggle to contain the spread of the disease

Israel’s public health services chief told an emergency meeting of lawmakers on an intelligence panel earlier this week that the key to eradicating the coronavirus pandemic relies on the enforcement of strict isolation measures, and the timing of introducing that policy.

In her remarks to the Knesset Subcommittee on Intelligence and Secret Services on Monday, concerning the Shin Bet security service’s monitoring of coronavirus patients, Sigal Sadetsky referenced the Chinese handling of COVID-19. She told the panel’s chairman, MK Gabi Ashkenazi (Kahol Lavan), that it all depends on “when you start it and how strongly you do it,” and that she believes “everyone will do the same thing.”

When MK Yoav Kish (Likud) sought to clarify whether she meant a total lockdown or curfew, Sadetsky replied: “A lockdown and personal monitoring of people, and a total halt to personal freedoms.”

Sadetsy and Moshe Bar Siman Tov, the Health Ministry’s director general, tried to persuade committee members to give the Shin Bet the go-ahead to use “special technological means” to detect where people diagnosed with the disease had been and the people they were exposed to while they were contagious, and to isolate them.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Saturday that such methods had been adopted, it provoked a strong public outcry due to the extraordinary loss of civil liberties by methods normally reserved for use in the war on terror.

These special means include gathering data about a person’s location via their cellphone and additional technological information using secret tools, and cross-referencing all of the data.

The process identifies all of the contacts coronavirus patients have had and the places they were, whether they are aware of it or not. A text message is then sent to any people who may have been affected, telling them to self-isolate.

The draft proposal of the government’s plan had already been sent to the intelligence committee’s legal advisers on Sunday, but at that time it was kept classified. Panel members were only able to see it the following day, when they had just one hour to debate it before the new Knesset was sworn in.

Ashkenazi wouldn’t approve the proposal without an in-depth discussion. He proposed reappointing the committee as soon as the new Knesset was sworn in. But the cabinet approved the plan in the dead of night the following day, bypassing parliamentary oversight by using state emergency regulations.

The minutes of the brief panel meeting, only some of which has been approved for publication, show that Bar Siman Tov and Sadetsky painted a very dark picture of the situation.

They tried to persuade the panel that only swift and “strong” measures could successfully get the spread of the disease under control – even at the expense of taking extreme measures in violation of individual rights.

“Look at the Chinese example. China had Wuhan: There was a terrible catastrophe there and we all saw where it went,” Sadetsky said. “There was the Hubei district, a lower-level catastrophe, and there were other places in China as well. What was the difference among these centers I’ve mentioned? The timing and the level of quarantine enforcement that was implemented. That was the entire difference – when they acted, and how. That’s the whole concept here,” Sadetsky added.

In response to Ashkenazi’s question about whether these were the most important factors, Sadetsky responded: “These are the most important factors.”

Ashkenazi then asked: “When did they start it, and how effective was it?”

Sadetsky: “It’s about when you start and how strenuously you apply it, because the fact that it was all collapsing there … there was no doubt about it. Everyone will do the same. How do we see it? They will do it after the collapse and then they will…”

She was interrupted by Kish: “Lockdown?”

Sadetsky: “A lockdown, while personally monitoring people and placing a total suspension on individual freedom.”

MK Yair Lapid (Kahol Lavan) tried several times to point out that China is not a democratic country and, therefore, its situation is different to Israel’s. The health officials did not respond directly, but reiterated that both the timing and strength of the response were critical, and therefore there was scope to approve the extreme measures.

Ashkenazi noted that the extraordinary measures they were requesting would affect a great many people, because they wouldn’t only be applied to those infected but also those who were in their proximity. Bar Siman Tov confirmed this.

Sadetsy added that the special Shin Bet measures they were asking for would help “pinpoint the chain of contagion,” which was important so they could “do much more in terms of prevention and patterns of contagion.” In other words, the personal data they would receive would aid their internal research about the virus’ spread and their own decision-making process.

When Ashkenazi asked why the extent of testing for the virus could not be significantly increased, the health officials said there were people coming up negative in tests yet still spreading the disease to others. As a result, they added, there was a need for “complementary strategies” – chiefly, as much home quarantine and self-isolation as possible.

Bar Siman Tov added: “We have trouble envisaging the disappearance of this event by the summer.”

Lapid asked about the degree of cyber-readiness to prevent sensitive information about Israeli citizens being leaked. They both replied that the data would be treated as classified “medical information.”

Asked by MK Gideon Sa’ar (Likud) whether there were other Western countries that have taken such steps, Bar Siman Tov responded: “The way I read what is going to happen in Europe, this is a massive need.”

When Sa’ar tried to clarify the specific kind of methods that would be used, Ashkenazi interjected: “Due to technological capabilities we won’t go into detail about here, they would know who’s near someone [a confirmed case] everywhere.”

MK Yoav Ben Tzur (Shas) asked whether the authorities could only detect such data via smartphones. Bar Siman Tov replied, “No, any phone.”

Deputy Attorney General Raz Nizri implored everyone to swiftly approve the request. If they didn’t, he said, the government would adopt it via the emergency regulations.

“You want us to approve an order we don’t know anything about?” Ashkenazi asked.

The meeting was adjourned with the understanding that the Knesset would swiftly reappoint the committee after the lawmakers were sworn in. “I discussed it with the Knesset speaker,” Ashkenazi said, referring to Yuli Edelstein (Likud).

But the committee wasn’t reestablished and the government ultimately approved the sensitive decision without any subsequent Knesset debate.

Be seeing you

Nit

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Only Pandemic in America Is Unbridled Fear and a Total Lack of Intelligent Thought – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 19, 2020

Coronavirus, according to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, is a part of all viruses, and 8% to 15% of viruses are coronavirus, so that will show up in testing

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/gary-d-barnett/the-only-pandemic-in-america-is-that-of-unbridled-fear-and-a-total-lack-of-intelligent-thought/

By

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” ~ Frank Herbert, Dune

Can the common flu cause people in America and worldwide to lose their minds, and lose all ability to think? Apparently, that is the case, as Americans have gone insane over a new monster created out of thin air called coronavirus. I have anticipated a scenario such as this, and written about it for the past decade or more, but the response by the people of this country is more ridiculous than even I could have imagined. It is the most pathetic sight I have seen in my life.

Without any initial testing, without any proof, without any certainty as to what this new fake threat to all mankind actually is, the world is now in lockdown, and therefore very easy to control. A better plan for the globalists could not have been imagined, as the sheep get into line for sheering without any resistance or question. I have watched this take place, and it was structured incrementally, all along testing the gullibility and fear of the populace, and as it progressed, it became obvious to those perpetrating this lie that taking over the entire country was going to be a cakewalk.

What is happening now is exactly as Bill Gates previewed it in his idiocy called Event 201, which seems to have been the initial test and propaganda piece set in place to start this engine. This was no coincidence, regardless of what the mainstream media and globalists’ claim, but was an active exercise for what was to come. And yes, this is real conspiracy, not “conspiracy theory.”

I will not relent in my efforts to expose the fact that the U.S. economy has been decimated due to spending, debt, and money creation for many years. Considering the situation in 2008, when all markets should have failed, the current economic picture is not only far worse, but has reached the pinnacle of disaster. This economy cannot be saved by money printing, QE, or sending checks out to those that have been forcibly relieved of their jobs by government fiat. I firmly believe that a major factor in why this so-called pandemic was created is to shift blame for the impending economic collapse on this virus, and hide the fact that the Fed and central banks around the world completely destroyed the economy. Had the markets and economy been allowed to fail without any fake pandemic, the government and banking system would have been exposed for the criminal thieves they are. This could not be allowed to happen by the ruling elites. Hence, the flu will kill us all!

As I wrote yesterday here:

“It is my belief that the regular flu is being used as a cover for this fake virus, and will serve to hide fault of a state-created economic collapse. In the process, all will become slaves to the state, and this is not a temporary tyranny, as it will last long after this current non-risk is over. Today, Trump and his entourage of idiots stood before the cameras and said now we can do this next spring to help stop the flu! That is basically an announcement that these measures can be used for any excuse deemed “necessary” by the ruling class. They are actually preparing the sheep for ongoing martial law.”

Coronavirus, according to Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, is a part of all viruses, and 8% to 15% of viruses are coronavirus, so that will show up in testing. This is especially the case when testing the already sick and dying, the old and infirmed, and this kind of testing would be far different than random population tests. In other words, if testing is set up to test sick people, up to 15% will show coronavirus. It is a natural part of flu, and will always show up, so it would be easy to use to fool the dumbed-down and dependent herd. They are easily frightened, and expect government to take care of them from cradle to grave, so this test has been successful for those intending to take control of populations around the world.

Today, we all face horrendous consequences of this staged pandemic. The economic collapse alone will devastate much of the population. This will cause unheard of disaster, and will bankrupt many around the country. This will be life-changing for all Americans, and will change forever the landscape of what is falsely considered a “free” country. Voluntary lockdowns will quickly become mandatory lockdowns, which requires martial law and certainly medical martial law. Police will patrol not for real crime, but to force all to stay in a home prison. National guard units have been deployed in many states already, and that will continue to expand, and then the military will take to the streets to enforce government mandates once full martial law is implemented. In cities, gun sweeps will begin soon, as many areas have already banned gun and ammunition sales.

One of the saddest and most pathetic behaviors that have emerged in this chaos is that most all citizens are accepting everything they are fed, are monitoring their neighbors and anyone showing signs of dissent, and reporting them to authorities. They are helping to enslave themselves without any concept of the stupidity of their actions.

Get prepared for total chaos, economic destruction, martial law, forced vaccinations, permanent job loss, lockdowns, panic, riots, and state violence against dissenters and regular citizens that has never been seen in this country before now. Isolation will be universal, and many more will die from these tyrannical measures than any flu could ever cause.

The governing bodies are calling this a war, and they are correct, but this war is an aggressive war against Americans, not against any virus or outside foreign threat. The enemy now is us, and the aggressor forces will include full military power, with the sole objective of total control. The only solution available is mass disobedience and mass dissent. Numbers matter, and without numbers, any individual dissenter will be quickly taken out!

Be seeing you

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

In the Pandemic, It’s Every Nation for Itself – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on March 18, 2020

But what governments in Europe are saying by closing their borders, what Americans are saying by banning travel from Europe, is that while all men may be created equal, we will always put our own people first, ahead of the rest.

When a crisis comes, be it a war in which the survival of the nation is at stake or an epidemic where the health and survival of our people is at stake, we take care of our own first.

This is human nature. This is the way the world works.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/patrick-j-buchanan/in-the-pandemic-its-every-nation-for-itself/

By

“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time,” said Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey to a friend on the eve of Britain’s entry into the First World War.

Observing from afar as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the Old Continent, Grey’s words return to mind. And as the Great War changed Europe forever, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be changing the way European peoples see each other.

“All for one and one for all!” These were the words by which “The Three Musketeers” of Alexandre Dumas lived their lives.

This was the ideal upon which the EU and NATO were built. An attack against one is an attack against all. The Schengen Agreement by which citizens of Europe are as free to travel through the countries of their continent as Americans are to travel from Maryland to Virginia is rooted in that ideal.

Yet, suddenly, all that seems to belong to yesterday.

How the EU’s nation-states are reacting to the coronavirus crisis brings to mind another phrase, a French phrase, “Sauve qui peut,” a rough translation of which is, “Every man for himself.”

The New York Times has written of the new reality. In Sunday’s top story, “Europe Locks Up and Faces Crisis as Virus Spread,” the Times wrote:

“While some European leaders, like President Emmanuel Macron of France, have called for intensifying cooperation across nations, others are trying to close their countries off.

“From Denmark to Slovakia, governments went into aggressive virus-fighting mode with border closings.”

Describing a host of countries heeding the call of tribalism and nationalism, the Times laments Monday:

“Today, Europeans are… erecting borders between countries, inside their cities and neighborhoods, around their homes — to protect themselves from their neighbors, even from their own grandchildren.”

“Confronting a virus that knows no borders, this modern Europe without borders is building them everywhere.”

In a few days, the Europe of open borders has become history.

“As the pandemic spreads from Italy to Spain, France, Germany,” reports the Times, “there is a growing sense of the need for harsh, even authoritarian methods, many of them taken from China.

“Europe has been terrified by Italy. Suddenly, many of the continent’s countries are trying to lock down, to protect themselves and their citizens. The idea of European solidarity, and of a borderless Europe where citizens are free to travel and work, seems very far away.”

Italy, hardest-hit country after China, is on lockdown. Germany is closing its borders with Austria, Denmark, France, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The Czech Republic, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia have announced they will close borders to all foreigners. President Donald Trump has expanded his travel ban on Europe to include two of America’s oldest friends, Britain and Ireland.

Slovenia has closed its border with Italy. Norway is on lockdown. International travelers who arrive in Norway risk a mandatory 14-day quarantine, regardless of their health.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that Canada is barring entry to all travelers who are not citizens or permanent residents. The only exceptions are air crews, diplomats, and, “at this time,” U.S. citizens.

What we are witnessing is the clash of the claims of human nature and of ideology.

Through history, most men have put attachments of family, tribe, faith, country, race and nation above the claims of liberal ideology.

But while all citizens may have the same God-given right to life and constitutional right to “equal protection of the laws,” all people do not have equal rights to our affections or concerns.

For most men, the claims of the heart are superior to those of the mind. Foreign folks do not have the same claims upon us as our own. In a crisis, people put families, friends and country first.

In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson declares that, “all men are created equal.” Yet, what truly seems to enrage him and to justify the rebellion against George III are the crimes the king had committed and that he had been “deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.”

The king had violated the claims of our common blood while we Americans had not been “wanting in attentions to our British brethren.”

Closing borders is a grievous offense against liberalism that is supposedly rooted in the sin of xenophobia. But what governments in Europe are saying by closing their borders, what Americans are saying by banning travel from Europe, is that while all men may be created equal, we will always put our own people first, ahead of the rest.

When a crisis comes, be it a war in which the survival of the nation is at stake or an epidemic where the health and survival of our people is at stake, we take care of our own first.

This is human nature. This is the way the world works.

Be seeing you

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Real Crisis Starts Now in Europe

Posted by M. C. on March 16, 2020

The lockdown of Italy isn’t a temporary thing. Oh, the suspension of free movement is temporary, but it portends something far bigger.

https://tomluongo.me/2020/03/14/real-crisis-starts-now-europe/

Author: Tom Luongo

I think it’s safe to say the new crisis just killed the Schengen Treaty. That ridiculous document which guaranteed freedom of movement across the European Union finally hit something it couldn’t bully, COVID-19.

Regardless of whether you believe the pandemic is real or not, the reaction to it is real and is having real consequence far beyond the latest print of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The lockdown of Italy isn’t a temporary thing. Oh, the suspension of free movement is temporary, but it portends something far bigger.

It’s the beginning of the real political balkanization that’s coming to the European Union over the next few years. Old enmities and prejudices have not been stamped out under the boot heel of oppressive legislation coming from a bunch of disconnected technocrats in Brussels.

They have only been suppressed.

Because when there are existential threats there’s no time or desire to virtue signal about how we’re all one big happy dysfunctional family.

For decades Germany refused to lighten up on its fiscal inflexibility believing, rightly, that it shouldn’t subsidize profligacy in places like Italy, Spain and Greece if it didn’t want to.

At the same time, however, Germany transmitted those rules to the single currency regime of the euro. That was the price they forced on the rest of Europe.

This ensured that eventually they would have to do exactly that, subsidize or bailout debts, as the mispricing of labor and capital efficiency inherent in the any single currency applied over multiple economies drove capital to Germany and out from those countries.

Now Germans face the existential threat of COVID-19 imported into Europe mostly through Wuhan textiles workers in Milan’s leather shops/ Their leaders will force them to accept looser spending rules.

And do you think this will engender an outpouring of love and affection towards Italians?

If you do you might be delusional or an open-borders libertarian… but I repeat myself.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled for months she would spend more to satisfy the rising Greens on Germany’s political left.

Her finance minister, Olaf Scholz, unleashed the full force of Germany’s sovereign wealth fund to offer unlimited support to German businesses facing troubles because of this virus.

This is as good a cover story for the gargantuan holes in the balance sheets of zombie German banks as they were likely ever going to get folks.

ECB President Christine Lagarde was brought in to ram through the political changes needed to loosen Germany’s tie. She knew the only way the EU would survive the growing crisis within its non-functional sovereign debt market was to print money to the high heavens.

Or allow the union to break up. But, there is no Door #2 in Europe. All doors lead to Brussels.

Germany stood in the way of that while at the same time Merkel ruthlessly enforced Schengen. She weakened the political center in Germany and inflamed memories of a Germany which rampaged across Europe militarily in the 20th century through enforced austerity hollowing out less-efficient euro-zone economies.

So in the midst of this mess comes COVID-19 and the uncoordinated and inept response to it from the political center of Europe to date. Only now are they coming to the conclusion they need to restrict travel, after sitting on their hands for a few weeks while Italians died by the hundreds.

And do you think that’s engendering waves of love and affection among Italians towards Germans?

If you do then you don’t know Italians… at all.

And this is your signal that this is the beginning of the real crisis. Because while COVID-19 may have been the catalyst for the breakdown of capital markets, capital markets were simply waiting for that spark to occur.

Any other type of spark, a bank failure from a run of bad loans, could have been handled and absorbed. There was no Credit Anstalt the central planners weren’t prepared for.

They’ve been able to keep Deutsche Bank operational for the past few years, for pity’s sake, they could have handled any other single bank failure.

But with COVID-19 being the ultimate form of exogenous shock to the global economy there is no containing the financial contagion. And that’s why we saw a strong unwind of U.S. equities and a sharp rise in both the Japanese yen and the euro when this thing began.

Part of what had been pushing U.S. equities higher was the capital flow from Europe and Japan into the U.S. That reversed for short time as the eurodollar markets seized up and the demand for cash locally rose sharply.

It’s no different than what is happening here.

I went to my bank yesterday to grab some cash and finish our self-quarantine prep (we’d bought extra toilet paper weeks ago). The teller told me she’d moved out a lot more cash than normal and it wasn’t even the end of lunch hour.

Then I told her the bank run on corporate credit began earlier in the week as companies like Boeing maxed their credit revolvers to front run the bank pulling it.

That got her attention.

The same thing on a larger scale was happening in Europe until Lagarde told the world that she wasn’t done blackmailing Germany to loosening its stance on fiscal rules at her presser on Thursday.

And the rally in the euro, which was already sick, died.

Annnnd…. it’s gone!

What we saw to end this week was an epic reversal of that capital outflow as the USDX and U.S. equities rallied while the euro crashed back to $1.11. And now that it’s started I don’t expect it to stop.

The Fed fired major blanks at the dollar-funding crisis in the credit markets this week. What is the ECB going to do to stop rates from rising in Europe as money flees their incompetence?

Fairy dust springs to mind, honestly. But, more likely there will be a very quick move to close the banks and cancel the use of cash while new rules are adopted and Lagarde turns to the IMF to bailout the ECB which can very easily go bankrupt here.

The weakest banking system in Europe serves a country on lockdown over this virus.

So, it doesn’t matter now that Germany has acquiesced, pledging its own savings and lifting fiscal restraints of euro-zone members. All the printing will does is feed the vortex of unpayable debt that is far bigger than their prodigious piggy bank.

The next stage of the crisis is here with the focus finally turning to Europe. The U.S., for all of its faults, is one nation with a unified debt market and an executive who can and has exercise powers necessary to keep the wheels from completely falling off the U.S. economy.

Will Trump spend money he doesn’t actually have? Yes. So what?

That money will go into a logistical pipeline that far outstrips Europe’s to combat a disease over a smaller population spread across larger distances. That limits the damage to the U.S. It ensures political stability that the EU cannot hope to compete with for the trust of spooked capital.

Add the global economy grinding to a halt. We’ll see the crisis emerge in Europe to feed a widening gyre of debt servicing that will look like a global bank run on dollar liquidity.

It will force fundamental reform of the euro and the ECB. They are necessary for the EU to survive this crisis in anything close to its current form.

I’m not laying odds that will work. Instead I expect Schengen’s suspension to hold and more countries go the way of the Brits by exiting the EU itself.

While this crisis is tailor-made to shove the federalization of Europe down the throats of what’s left of the German middle class, I don’t think it succeeds.

Until Germany is willing to bail out Italian banks, there is no solution to this.

And while I think Merkel is willing to fall on her sword to get this done, It may still not work.

How convenient it is that Merkel’s CDU just cancelled their April 22nd leadership vote because of this crisis. This forestalls any possibility of Merkel losing control of her party until after Germany begins its EU Commission Presidency.

Whatever she has planned she has to do soon. Her political capital is just about spent.

There will be no change of leadership during a crisis like this. She’s almost done completing the sell out of Germany to the EU begun by Helmut Kohl.

Just in time for the whole experiment to come crashing down.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Rutherford Institute :: From Boston to Ferguson to Charlottesville: The Evolution of a Police State Lockdown |

Posted by M. C. on August 14, 2018

Remember, a police state does not come about overnight.

It starts small, perhaps with a revenue-generating red light camera at an intersection.

When that is implemented without opposition, perhaps next will be surveillance cameras on public streets. License plate readers on police cruisers. More police officers on the beat. Free military equipment from the federal government. Free speech zones and zero tolerance policies and curfews. SWAT team raids. Drones flying overhead. City-wide lockdowns.

No matter how it starts, however, it always ends the same.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/from_boston_to_ferguson_to_charlottesville_the_evolution_of_a_police_state_lockdown

By John W. Whitehead

“It takes a remarkable force to keep nearly a million people quietly indoors for an entire day, home from work and school, from neighborhood errands and out-of-town travel. It takes a remarkable force to keep businesses closed and cars off the road, to keep playgrounds empty and porches unused across a densely populated place 125 square miles in size. This happened … not because armed officers went door-to-door, or imposed a curfew, or threatened martial law. All around the region, for 13 hours, people locked up their businesses and ‘sheltered in place’ out of a kind of collective will. The force that kept them there wasn’t external – there was virtually no active enforcement across the city of the governor’s plea that people stay indoors. Rather, the pressure was an internal one – expressed as concern, or helpfulness, or in some cases, fear – felt in thousands of individual homes.”—Journalist Emily Badger, “The Psychology of a Citywide Lockdown”

It has become way too easy to lockdown this nation. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Next Entries »