MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Lockdown’

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

The Benevolent Fascism of Australia, Part I | The Libertarian Institute

Posted by M. C. on September 10, 2021

With QR codes and contact tracing, the discussion of further surveillance of Australians to minimize the spread of COVID-19 will be accepted an condoned. And in the case of the war on drugs, placing members of the public on lists and denying them travel and the ability to mail or receive items from abroad will continue. In time we will have quaint memories of a more liberal time as the future brings far more dire and extreme measures of law and order.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-benevolent-fascism-of-australia-part-i/

by Kym Robinson

Australia is in the news.

The images of police officers imposing themselves on the citizenry has drawn the attention of international critics. It has also raised admiration for those who have big government inclinations. Some have declared that Australia has fallen as a free society, that it should now be considered a police state. Australia, however, already had a history as a police state. The balance between individual freedom and an overbearing government has been one of constant, uneven sways over time and it usually takes a crisis to bring down the full weight of authoritarianism. And most Australians have always been fine with this.

The COVID-19 pandemic has tested both individuals and governments, and shown their true nature. The pandemic response has revealed a dangerous dependence that all of us have been forced to place on government monopolies, from health and infrastructure to security and in many cases, income. The lockdown culture of not only Australian state governments but governments the world over have shown an irrational and reactionary impulse to rule and control, not just to stop a virus but crush dissent itself. They claim it is for all of our health; it is scientific and it’s to save as many lives as possible. No room for debate, only obey and do as one is told. It is the science of law, order, and health.

In practice it has been random, arbitrary, inconsistent, unscientific and some lives really do seem to matter over others. The police have been a crucial element in the fight against the citizenry during the pandemic. It’s been the police that have enforced laws that have destroyed the economy and put lives indirectly in jeopardy. Last year entire apartment towers in Melbourne were instantly quarantined and the individuals inside only access to the outside world was via the police. Those trapped were treated as criminals and were sacrificed in an attempt to “flatten the curve.” Melbourne itself would soon suffer an almost indefinite lockdown cycle. The curve was never flattened.

Following the trend in liberal democracies, partisan politics alleviate blame from specific government departments. The police and experts are viewed as amoral objects who are wielded by incompetent and power hungry politicians. Regardless of the political leadership these technocrats, officials and police officers remain the same. Australia has a history of governance via experts and panels. The politicians usually help legitimize such measures when it comes to excessive policing. It is not a political leadership problem, it is a problem from the ground up. Morality, right and wrong, are exercised by the individual. “Just doing a job” or “Just following orders” is a coward’s shield by which to hide beneath.

It is not just an Australian phenomenon to see the police inserting themselves more and more into the citizen’s day to day. It is however an Australian tradition to lean heavily onto policing for numerous crises. The police are an important tool for the state and federal governments in Australia and act as the aggressive arm to both impose and implement policy while also to protect the government itself. Australia projects itself as a free society that values human rights, but at times in its own history it has a patchwork of authoritarianism which is more common than many wish to admit.

“Australian police forces were similarly founded on violence: racist violence, imperial violence and settler colonial violence. Some of the earliest forms of state policing were established with the specific purpose of extending the colonial frontier.”- Amanda Porter, Senior fellow at Melbourne Law School.

Many historians on colonial Australia consider that the early policing models were not based upon British community methods and organization but instead were a paramilitary model that was used during the same period to impose imperial oppression in Ireland. A lot of these traditions have remained in Australian policing and in how the various governments have continued to wield it. Public health and safety mandates are often the fixture of policing in Australia along with the ever aggressive War on Terror.

Beyond the state level Australia has numerous federal agencies that are granted great powers which obey the Department of Home Affairs and will in the coming years grow more powerful in reach, focus, and powers. The boundaries of colonial expansion may have been fulfilled but those into the individuals private life and against their rights are a frontier that Australian police agencies are continuing to encroach upon. To understand the Australian “police state” we must also understand certain aspects of Australian history and social norms that have made the modern situation possible and why it really is neither unusual or unexpected.

Australians are now in a society where they need to tune in to government officials to find out what they can and cannot do. It is a nation that is run on press conferences, where most Australians watch the television with an obedience to find out the infection and death numbers while hanging on to every word of experts and government ministers. In a recent incident those from regional NSW found themselves under lockdown mandates with only a tweet as the official announcement. The tweet posted at 3pm and stated that by 5pm all of regional NSW would be in a 7-day lockdown. The police perpetrated an ever active enforcement on those who do not have Twitter or didn’t hear about such a spontaneous announcement.

While Australia is in the media abroad, most Australians are oblivious to the condemnation and the risk that lies ahead for them. It is a future uncertain but with the promise of safety nets and blankets provided by a scientific government of planners and scientists. It is a government that is based upon altruistic welfare and reactionary impulses, while also being steered by careful trends of academic hubris. It is a nation of public servants and an ever dependent public. The police exist to protect not so much the individual (and certainly not freedom) but the nation state itself. And in an expression of true democracy, perhaps the mob of the majority welcome and embrace this because many are apart of it in some way.

“Australia’s federal constitution does not protect fundamental human rights nor does it regulate the use of force by the police. Australia‘s federal rules on police use of force generally comply with international standards although an amended law in New South Wales allows use of firearms against suspected terrorists where no imminent threat is perceived.”- Policing Law, The Law on Police Use of Force Worldwide

Medical State

For the advocates of government, especially an all powerful one that is responsible for every aspect of human life, a powerful and active police force is crucial. It is the ugly truth that confuses utopian governance with the dystopian truths of practical history. In the past, besides aspects of moral puritanism, the individual’s health and body was their own domain. But in the modern era of public health we are seeing the unification of the health and police state.

Australia has a populace that believes in the existence of a public health system. It is an ideological abstract which is rarely challenged. It is considered a right to all Australians to have access to “free health” regardless of any failings, scarcity, and prohibition of choice that such a system presents. Because of this the individual’s body becomes a shared entity, one that the state is expected to care for and in many aspects control. Despite the majority wanting such a powerful health system, the past belief in individual body autonomy still lingers in the minds of even the advocates of public health.

So Australia is going through a cross roads between human rights and the call for greater power to the healthcare system over the public and individuals themselves. The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the conflict between these two perspectives. Those who advocate public health as a right also want the individual to have the right of health autonomy. The reality is that a powerful public health system controls what medication and treatment an individual has access to. It also creates extended waiting periods and it has the ability to determine treatment based on wider concerns than the individual’s own health. Those concerns often being cost, time, resources, and the fatigue-availability of health practitioners.

It is an almost impossible fight for individual liberty when public health is entrenched in Australian society as a “collective good.” The wider implications of costs, shortages, and a lack of alternative treatments are disregarded in favour of a one-payer system that homogenizes and centralizes medicine. It is assumed that a free market of health would leave the poor under the bus and become expensive but it is the health state that creates dependence and makes it harder for many to actually get treatment, not to mention lengthy waiting periods and a lack of accountability when things go wrong.

The police and at times the military have been used to quarantine entire cities and states, separate families, and treat individuals as criminals because they “may” be sick. This is the new reality that health mandates and a powerful health state brings with it. Whatever pretence of human rights is lost and ignored because it is declared a crisis. Just as the War on Terror allows the police to trample on the freedoms that terror organizations threaten, a powerful police state can snatch those liberties away in the name of security. In matters of public health the individual is isolated and condemned as being selfish and placing others at risk, should they seek independence and autonomy. So as is in the War on Terror, those who question government overreach or act differently are marginalized as being a threat to the wider community.

It is not a too distant future in Australia where individuals may be forced to take medication against their will, receive procedures that they do not want, or are denied access to friends and families based upon health status. The public health system has become so important that the private citizen has little choice and say over their own body. The imperial approach and dominion over the individual is always done with a benevolent parental tone, assuming that all individuals are childlike or a risk to everyone else. That is the hallmark of the public health system in the first place, a one way street with little regard to individual needs, wants, and complexities.

The emergency powers of government allows it to disregard international laws and domestic laws that it has promised to uphold. These are the special, exceptional powers of all government, not just Australia’s. War allows a nation to declare martial law, impose curfews and grant itself extraordinary powers. The health crisis and mandates are treated as if the rule of law never really existed. It is an illusion that dupes those who romance government and believe that it stands for human rights. But it always serves itself and grows. The health state is just another aspect of the leviathan’s reach and control.

Just as a person consuming or selling “illicit materials” is considered a public threat regardless of their actual actions, so too can the benign existence of those individuals who do not want the same medical procedures or medications, whether because of ethical reasons or because it may be a direct danger to their health. Elements within the wider community have recently reported on such individuals and tar them as being selfish and “super spreaders” of the virus, which is apparently the greatest threat to human existence. “Dobbing is the new patriotism,” as one commentator put it.

Because a large part of the populace supports the government regardless of political affiliation and consider the experts the absolute authority regardless of human rights and individual liberty, the health state has a large community of active ‘dobbers’ who will inform the police on businesses, families, and people that are defying the mandates and rules that are constantly being amended during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis. Those doing the “dobbing” are often doing it because they genuinely believe that those in breech of such laws are dangerous and reckless or as is often cited, being selfish. And in other instances a more cynical aspect of jealousy and spite likely steer the dobber’s actions.

One police officer during the last South Australian state lockdown claimed that their phone lines were non-stop with members of the public reporting number plates of vehicles driving during the period or giving information on those who were suspected of being in breech of the lockdown. In 2020 wives were informing on their husbands who dared to sneak in a late night dog walk and beach goers were filmed swimming on their own in the sun. It is not just a legal problem but a cultural one.

Why is all of this talk about public health so important? Because it is one key aspect of modern Australian culture, the ingrained importance of the government to most people and what empowers the police force in their present conduct. The sword and spear of the Australian government are their police forces and the military. Both are becoming more of a Swiss Army Knife apparatus with so many uses to be wielded, removing the key conceptual function of such entities. The public belief in what the police and military do or should do is often in contrast with the reality of what they are being asked to do and continue to do.

The anti-lockdown protests in Australia have become a divisive issue. The protesters are accused of being “conspiracy theorists” and “anti-vaxxers” in an attempt to label them as simpletons. While some some certainly are, not all. Such simplified claims ignore very real grievances and frustrations. Those sympathetic and wary of police powers can see a heavy handed response and a media backlash that has not given a balanced perspective. In an age where diversity and being inclusive is promoted when it comes matters of political opinions, dissent about one’s own health is not allowed.

The war on the virus has created a paranoia and obsession with defeating an entity through laws and violence against individuals. It is the belief that more government can somehow make people healthy and safe. Just like the War on Terror it looks to erode the freedom that it boasts to safeguard and instead empowers the police state to the point that a nation becomes a prison full of either compliant and eager subjects who believe in such measures or those who are forced to suffer it despite their instincts and desires for liberty (or to be left alone).

What empowers the police state is its benevolent claim of safety and security. Public health is extremely important to the Australian government and the wider public. To question the public health system is taboo and often political suicide. It is a civic religion. The wider implications and dangers of such a system are ignored and denied and inevitably more funding and overhauls are demanded. This in turn gives all control to the government in regards to individual and community health. Because no real free market exists, regulations are so extensive and so many laws are in place that not only are alternatives impossible but people become dependent on the government for all their needs. In a pandemic this empowers the government during and after to such a point that it is impossible to turn off the spigot of dependence.

Lock in Hospitals of World War Two

See the rest here

About Kym Robinson

Some times a coach, some times a fighter, some times a writer, often a reader but seldom a cabbage. Professional MMA fighter and coach. Unprofessional believer in liberty. I have studied, enlisted, worked in the meat industry for most of my life, all of that above jazz and to hopefully some day write something worth reading.

Be seeing you

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

Why the Fed Is So Desperate to Hide Price Inflation

Posted by M. C. on September 9, 2021

Otherwise, as noted earlier, rising interest rates would collapse the debt pyramid and result in a collapse in output and employment. It is, therefore, no wonder that the Fed is doing whatever it can to hide the inflationary consequences of its policy from the public:

Thorsten Polleit

Speaking at the Jackson Hole meeting on August 27, 2021, Federal Reserve (Fed) chairman Jerome J. Powell indicated that he supported “tapering” toward the end of this year and hastened to add that interest rate hikes are still a long way off. The term “tapering” means that the central bank reduces its monthly purchases of bonds and slows down the monthly increase in the quantity of money accordingly. In other words, even with tapering, the Fed will still churn out newly printed US dollar balances, but to a lesser extent than before; that is, it will still cause monetary inflation, but less than before. 

Financial markets were not alarmed by the Fed’s announcement that it might take its foot off the accelerator pedal a little: ten-year US Treasury yields are still trading at a relatively low level of 1.3 percent, the S&P 500 stock index hovers around record highs. Could it be that investors do not believe in the Fed’s suggestion that tapering will begin soon? Or is tapering of much lower importance for financial market asset prices and economic activity going forward than we think? Well, I believe the second question nails it. To understand this, we need to point out that the Fed has put a “safety net” under financial markets.

As a result of the politically dictated lockdown crisis in early 2020, investors feared a collapse of the economic and financial system. Credit markets, in particular, went wild. Borrowing costs skyrocketed as risk premiums rose drastically. Market liquidity dried up, putting great pressure on borrowers in need of funding. It wasn’t long before the Fed said it would underwrite the credit market, that it would open the monetary spigots and issue all the money needed to fund government agencies, banks, hedge funds, and businesses. The Fed’s announcement did what it was supposed to do: credit markets calmed down. Credit started flowing again; system failure was prevented.

tp

In fact, the Fed’s creation of a safety net is nothing new. It is perhaps better known as the “Greenspan put.” During the 1987 stock market crash, then Fed chairman Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates drastically to help stock prices recover—and thus set a precedent that the Fed would come to rescue in financial crises. (The term “put” describes an option which gives its holder the right, but not the obligation, to sell the underlying asset at a predetermined price within a specified time frame. However, the term “safety net” might be more appropriate than “put” in this context, as investors don’t have to pay for the Fed’s support and fear an expiry date.)

The truth is that the US dollar fiat money system now depends more than ever on the Fed to provide commercial banks with sufficient base money. Given the excessively high level of debt in the system, the Fed must also do its best to keep market interest rates artificially low. To achieve this, the Fed can lower its short-term funding rate, which determines banks’ funding costs and thus bank loan interest rates (although the latter connection might be loose). Or it can buy bonds: by influencing bond prices, the central bank influences bond yields, and given its monopoly status, the Fed can print up the dollars it needs at any point in time.

Or the Fed can make it clear to investors that it is ready to fight any form of crisis, that it will bail out the system “no matter the cost,” so to speak. Suppose such a promise is considered credible from the financial market community’s point of view. In that case, interest rates and risk premiums will miraculously remain low without any bond purchases on the part of the Fed. And it is by no means an exaggeration to say that putting a safety net under the system has become perhaps the most powerful policy tool in the Fed’s bag of tricks. Largely hidden from the public eye, it allows the Fed to keep the fiat money system afloat.

The critical factor in all this is the interest rate. As the Austrian monetary business cycle theory explains, artificially lowering the interest rate sets a boom in motion, which turns to bust if the interest rate rises. And the longer the central bank succeeds in pushing down the interest rate, the longer it can sustain the boom. This explains why the Fed is so keen to dispel the notion of hiking interest rates any time soon. Tapering would not necessarily result in an immediate upward pressure on interest rates—if investors willingly buy the bonds the Fed is no longer willing to buy, and/or if the bond supply declines.

But is it likely that investors will remain on the buy side? On the one hand, they have a good reason to keep buying bonds: they can be sure that in times of crisis, they will have the opportunity to sell them to the Fed at an attractive price; and that any bond price decline will be short lived, as the Fed will correct it quickly. On the other hand, however, investors demand a positive real interest rate on their investment. Smart money will rush to the exit if nominal interest rates are persistently too low and expected inflation persistently too high. The ensuing sell-off in the bond market would force the Fed to intervene to prevent interest rates from rising.

Otherwise, as noted earlier, rising interest rates would collapse the debt pyramid and result in a collapse in output and employment. It is, therefore, no wonder that the Fed is doing whatever it can to hide the inflationary consequences of its policy from the public: the steep rise in consumer goods price inflation is being dismissed as only “temporary”; asset price inflation is said to be outside the policy mandate, and the impression is given that increases in stock, housing, and real estate prices do not represent inflation. Meanwhile, the increase in the money supply—which is the root cause of goods price inflation—is barely mentioned.

However, once people begin to lose confidence in the Fed’s willingness and ability to keep goods price inflation low, the “safety net trickery” reaches a crossroads. If the Fed then decides to keep interest rates artificially low, it will have to monetize growing amounts of debt and issue ever-larger amounts of money, which, in turn, will drive up goods price inflation and intensify the bond sell-off: a downward spiral begins, leading to a possibly severe devaluation of the currency. If the Fed prioritizes lowering inflation, it must raise interest rates and reign in money supply growth. This will most likely trigger a rather painful recession-depression, potentially the biggest of its kind in history.

Against this backdrop, it is difficult to see how we could escape the debasement of the US dollar and the recession. It is likely that high, perhaps very high, inflation will come first, followed by a deep slump. For inflation is typically seen as the lesser of two evils: rulers and the ruled would rather new money be issued to prevent a crisis over allowing businesses to fail and unemployment to surge dramatically—at least in an environment where people still consider inflation to be relatively low. There is a limit to the central bank’s machinations, though. It is reached when people start distrusting the central bank’s currency and dumping it because they expect goods price inflation to spin out of control.

But until this limit is reached, the central bank still has quite some leeway to continue its inflationary policy and increase the damage: debasing the purchasing power of money, increasing overconsumption and malinvestment, and making big government even bigger, effectively creating a socialist tyranny if not stopped at some point. So, better stop it. If we wish to do so, Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) tells us how: “The belief that a sound monetary system can once again be attained without making substantial changes in economic policy is a serious error. What is needed first and foremost is to renounce all inflationist fallacies. This renunciation cannot last, however, if it is not firmly grounded on a full and complete divorce of ideology from all imperialist, militarist, protectionist, statist, and socialist ideas.”1

  • 1. Ludwig von Mises, “Stabilization of the Monetary Unit–from the Viewpoint of Theory (1923),” in The Cause of the Economic Crisis. And Other Essays before and after the Great Depression, edited by Percy L. Greaves Jr. (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006), p. 44, appendix.

Author:

Thorsten Polleit

Dr. Thorsten Polleit is Chief Economist of Degussa and Honorary Professor at the University of Bayreuth. He also acts as an investment advisor.

Be seeing you

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

“Dear White People”: NHS Lectures Brits About Their “Privilege” | ZeroHedge

Posted by M. C. on September 8, 2021

Despite being notoriously terrible, the NHS is so venerated that it has all but replaced the church as the United Kingdom’s official state religion.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dear-white-people-nhs-lectures-brits-about-their-privilege

Tyler Durden's Photoby Tyler Durden

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

The NHS has published a blog on its official website called “Dear white people in the UK” which lectures Brits about their “white privilege” and says they should “be uncomfortable” about their “whiteness.”

Yes, really.

The article is written by Aishnine Benjamin, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lead at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (not a real job).

It orders white people to read numerous far-left screeds about intersectionality and why white people should feel guilty about the color of their skin while telling them to shut up and “listen…to what black and minority ethnic people are saying.”

“Don’t say ‘I’m not political’ to excuse yourself from this conversation,” the text barks.

“Right now, ignorance isn’t an excuse. You can’t unsee what you have seen.”

That’s interesting given that all one can see in this article is outright racist hatred of white people thinly veiled in the garbled, quixotic rhetoric of social justice.

“Be uncomfortable,” the blog instructs white people, before asserting how “structurally racist systems” can only be properly understood by consuming numerous race-baiting books, videos and podcasts about how bad white people are.

The article then stresses that all of these messages should also be pushed on children before telling people to support Operation Black Vote, a leftist NGO.

“Diversity isn’t a fun to have it’s a must have,” the article aggressively ends.

Britain’s National Health Service — the taxpayer-funded, eternity-waiting-list for cancer patients but if you want your cock chopped off you’re right at the front health service — is now promoting racial Marxism to the nation. pic.twitter.com/ay6IpEkmVl — Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) September 5, 2021

While it’s easy to dismiss the blog as a meaningless exercise in performative white guilt, the situation becomes more ominous when you understand that the NHS can now literally deny health care to people it considers to be “racist” or “homophobic.”

Despite being notoriously terrible, the NHS is so venerated that it has all but replaced the church as the United Kingdom’s official state religion.

During the first lockdown, Brits were pressured to take part in a cringe-inducing weekly clapping sessions to show their appreciation for a health service that was apparently “overwhelmed,” but not overwhelmed enough to prevent nurses up and down the country performing Tik Tok dance routines for social media clout.

Some people who refused to take part were even publicly shamed by their community on Facebook.

As we previously highlighted, a prominent think tank published a report concluding that adulation for the NHS is not rational.

Be seeing you

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

Australian Citizens Ask Taliban To Liberate Their Country

Posted by M. C. on August 26, 2021

https://babylonbee.com/news/australian-citizens-ask-taliban-to-liberate-their-country

MELBOURNE—As Australia continues to brutally enforce a total lockdown on their own citizens, the increasingly desperate population has reached out to the Taliban and begged them to come and liberate their country. 

“If only those brave mujahadin fighters could ride in on their American tanks and Humvees, armed with American weapons, and liberate us all,” said local woman Charlotte Menda. “I mean, they aren’t perfect, but at least people can go shopping and walk their dog under Taliban rule. Anything would be better than this, right?”

According to sources in the country, Australians have been suffering under creeping totalitarian rule for years, and COVID only intensified the brutality and cruelty of the regime in the last year. In spite of this, the suffering of Australia has received little attention on the international stage. 

“Australia has a proud tradition of being a prison colony,” said Prime Minister Scott Morrison while eating gourmet seafood in a deserted restaurant. “I’m proud to be returning our country back to her roots.” 

Australians then chose a representative to fly to Kabul and ask the Taliban army to overthrow their tyrannical government and usher in an age of slightly less tyranny. 

The Taliban are reportedly considering the request, and have promised a decision next month after they have finished embarrassing America. 

Bee seeing you

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

Paying People Not to Work Won’t Make Us Richer | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 19, 2021

I am reminded of a saying by one of my favorite economists, Murray Rothbard, “It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”

https://mises.org/wire/paying-people-not-work-wont-make-us-richer

Paul T. Prentice

One of the most important principles of economics is that people respond to incentives. You get more of whatever you incentivize. You get less of whatever you disincentivize. This is irrefutable. The supplemental unemployment payment does both—it incentivizes people not to work, and simultaneously disincentivizes them from working.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

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

Five Times More Children Committed Suicide Than Died Of COVID-19 During Lockdown: UK Study | ZeroHedge

Posted by M. C. on July 17, 2021

https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/five-times-more-children-committed-suicide-died-covid-19-during-lockdown-uk-study

Tyler Durden's Photoby Tyler DurdenSaturday, Jul 17, 2021 – 07:00 AM

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

Five times more children and young people committed suicide than died of COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic in the United Kingdom, according to a study, which also concluded that lockdowns are more detrimental to children’s health than the virus itself.

Researchers with the University College London, the University of York, the University of Liverpool, and the University of Bristol found in a study (pdf) that has not yet been peer-reviewed that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, otherwise known as the coronavirus, doesn’t appear to present a significant risk to children as compared with other age groups.

The study concluded:

“The risk of removal of CYP (children and young people) from their normal activities across education and social events may prove a greater risk than that of SARS-CoV-2 itself.” 

SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the CCP virus.

It was revealed in the study that only 25 children under the age of 18 died of COVID-19 from the start of the pandemic until the end of February 2021. Around 61 children in all died after testing positive, but in 36 cases it was found the virus “did not contribute to their death.”

But during the same time period, there were 124 suicides among children and 268 deaths from trauma, the study authors found, while noting the virus is “rarely fatal” for children.

“These new studies show that the risks of severe illness or death from SARS-CoV-2 are extremely low in children and young people,” said University College London Professor Russell Viner, a senior author of the study, in a release this week. 

“Our new findings are important as they will inform shielding guidance for young people as well as decisions about the vaccination of teenagers and children, not just in the UK but internationally.”

Professor Lorna Fraser of the University of York added that “even when we found higher risks for some groups with severe medical problems, these risks were still very small compared to risks seen in adults,” explaining that people should know that COVID-19 risks for children “are very low.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Elizabeth Whittaker of Imperial College London said that the researchers hope the “data will be reassuring for children and young people and their families.”

In November, one UK researcher issued a warning that COVID-19 lockdowns are causing a spike in children harming themselves and drug overdoses among children.

“Children are a lost tribe in the pandemic. While they remain (for the most part) perplexingly immune to the health consequences of COVID-19, their lives and daily routines have been turned upside down,” Dr. John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary wrote at the time.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Investors Are on the Lookout for a Crash. But Prices Keep Going Up. | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on July 16, 2021

https://mises.org/wire/investors-are-lookout-crash-prices-keep-going

Doug French

An insider confided to a friend that all he is doing right now is transaction work for real estate holders who are selling now before the market crashes. His clients, members of Sin City’s illuminati, once bitten by the ‘08 crash, believe they’ll beat the crowd to the sales window before the local retail and office market collapses.

Tiny capitalization rates translating into unsustainable values are being dangled in front of these folks and they are willing to absorb the tax consequences to cash out and be ready to repurchase their properties back at a discount in a couple years.

Easy peasy.

With the country just emerging from lockdown, where’s the crash already? The original grave dancer, Sam Zell, has left the cemetery and is “following the pack and spending big on something safer,” Peter Grant wrote in the Wall Street Journal. 

One of Zell’s companies paid $3.4 billion for Monmouth Real Estate Investment Corp. Not all distressed, Monmouth “owns 120 industrial properties in 31 states,” Grant reported. “The sector is one of the most profitable because of high demand for fulfillment centers from e-commerce companies such as Amazon.com Inc.”

Bloomberg reported a year ago that Amazon-leased buildings could sell for a capitalization rate of 4 percent, the equivalent of twenty-five times earnings. A Las Vegas real estate broker and developer who is also doing business in red-hot Reno said recently, “Amazon buildings will start selling for three CAPs soon.”

Back in the days of quasi-laissez-faire, a pandemic would have created plenty of opportunities for the Zells of the world, but, as Grant explains, “Hotels, malls and other properties have suffered enormous declines in revenue. But few owners have been forced to sell at steep discounts thanks to government stimulus programs and the Federal Reserve’s easy money policy which kept a lid on foreclosure.”

Tenants bellied up to the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) bar and while having trouble operating due to labor shortages, with staff staying home on the taxpayer’s dime, they are paying rent. As for Amazon and other fulfillment tenants, covid was a colossus. 

“From both a monetary and fiscal perspective, authorities have made sure that distress would be extremely limited in all walks of life,” Cedrik Lachance, Green Street Advisors’ head of global real estate investment trusts (REIT) research told the WSJ. 

Zell does think retail properties are a “falling knife.” Zell said, “There obviously is going to be an opportunity in retail. I just don’t think it’s here yet.” He added that hotels also look expensive: “I can’t relate … pricing to the way I see opportunity.”

Billionaire Charles Koch can relate. His Koch Real Estate Investments took over the unfinished multibillion-dollar hotel and casino Fountainbleau development on the Las Vegas Strip after the previous owner defaulted on the mortgage.

Florida developer Jeffrey Soffer bankrupted the sixty-three-story, four thousand–room project in the 2008 crash, before the doors were ever opened. In 2010, an opportunistic Carl Ichan bought it for $150 million (essentially the trade liens on the property), “sold the furniture, and flipped it to New York developer Steven Witkoff for $600 million seven years later,” Konrad Putzier reported earlier this year. 

Witkoff couldn’t obtain a construction loan to finish and defaulted on loans from JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank AG, as well as more than $200 million in subordinate debt held by South Korean investors.

Koch appeared, bought the JPMorgan note for $350 million, and waved goodbye to the South Koreans and Witkoff. Koch has brought back Mr. Soffer to restart the project. Putzier wrote in March that the project was far from a sure bet. 

However, the opening of Resorts World on the former Stardust site on the Strip’s north end recently has the town abuzz. The Fountainbleau is nearby.

Further south on the Strip, where gaming has taken a backseat to real estate dealing, MGM announced it was buying its 50 percent partner Dubai World out of the sprawling CityCenter project for more than $2.1 billion, providing MGM full ownership of the Aria and Vdara resorts. Not missing a beat, the company then sold the Aria and Vdara real estate to Blackstone for $3.9 billion and will lease the properties back for $215 million a year in rent to start, or a 5.5 percent cap rate. 

Once upon a time, the casino was king of the Strip’s income department. Not so much anymore. Hotel casinos might as well be shopping malls with some slots and table games attached. During the boom years the casino accounted for only 30 to 40 percent of revenues. And while the floor space, with the odds stacked in the houses’, favor has crept upward in recent years, it’s still not half a property’s revenue.

Ludwig von Mises explained, “Interventionism means that the government not only fails to protect the smooth functioning of the market economy, but that it interferes with the various market phenomena; it interferes with prices, with wage rates, interest rates, and profits.” 

Mr. Zell’s goal was always to reinvest that cash. “What it tells you about the Covid era is that they just couldn’t find true distress,” Mr. Lachance said. No distress means a manipulated market that economic actors cannot assess properly. 

In the end, “as the government goes farther and farther,” Mises wrote, “it will finally arrive at a point where all prices, all wage rates, all interest rates, in short everything in the whole economic system, is determined by the government. And this, clearly, is socialism.”

Las Vegas was once a city driven by odds. No more. Now government has loaded the dice. Author:

Doug French

Douglas French is former president of the Mises Institute, author of Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Money Supply, and author of Walk Away: The Rise and Fall of the Home-Ownership Myth. He received his master’s degree in economics from UNLV, studying under both Professor Murray Rothbard and Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Be seeing you

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

No Victory Lap For Governors Who Locked Down America – AIER

Posted by M. C. on July 15, 2021

The lockdowns that governors imposed also pointlessly ravaged many Americans’ mental health. The Centers for Disease Control last month reported a 51% increase in emergency room visits for suspected suicide attempts by teenage girls in early 2021. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found a 300% increase in the percentage of adults reporting symptoms of anxiety disorder and/or depressive disorder (41% of adults in January 2021). The CDC also reported a record number of drug overdose deaths last year, due in part to the lockdowns and other government-imposed disruptions. 

https://www.aier.org/article/no-victory-lap-for-governors-who-locked-down-america/

James Bovard

James Bovard

There are no fact-checkers for victory laps. Last week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo summarized his experience with the Covid-19 crisis: “Speaking for myself, it was a tremendous personal benefit.” Cuomo made that declaration in a speech concluding his one-year chairmanship of the National Governors Association. Because Cuomo’s spiel sought to rewrite history to exonerate politicians who ravaged Americans’ rights and liberties, it requires a rebuttal. 

Cuomo declared that “we maximized the moment as governors. Governors have a new credibility. Governors have a new status.” Cuomo epitomized the rush to “absolute power” that occurred in governor’s mansions across the nation. After he fueled pandemic fears, the New York Times proclaimed, “Andrew Cuomo Is the Control Freak We Need Right Now.” A New Yorker profile, titled “Andrew Cuomo, King of New York,” explained that Cuomo and his aides saw the battle over Covid policy as “between people who believe government can be a force for good and those who think otherwise.” Cuomo denounced anyone who disobeyed his edicts, including condemning sheriffs as “dictators” for refusing to enforce his mask mandate inside people’s homes. 

Cuomo justified placing almost 20 million people under house arrest: “If everything we do saves just one life, I’ll be happy.” Though his repressive policies failed to prevent New York from having among the nation’s highest Covid death rates, he became a superhero thanks largely to media scoring that ignored almost all of the harms he inflicted. Cuomo won an Emmy Award for his “masterful use of television” during the pandemic. Media valorization helped make Cuomo’s self-tribute book,American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic, a bestseller. 

Cuomo had plenty of power-mad accomplices in the governors’ association.  Oregon Governor Kate Brown banned residents from leaving their homes except for essential work, buying food, and other narrow exemptions and also banned all recreational travel. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer imposed some of the most severe restrictions, prohibiting anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti even banned people from walking or bicycling outside. The CDC eventually admitted that there was almost no risk of Covid contagion from outdoors activity not amidst a throng of people. But that did not stop politicians from claiming that “science and data” justified locking people in their homes. 

Some governors have acted as if their shutdown orders gave them unlimited sway to decree when normal life could resume. California Gov. Gavin Newsom decreed that Covid restrictions would be perpetuated in California counties based on voter turnout, alcohol availability, and other non-health factors. California assemblyman Kevin Kiley groused, “An entire county can be kept shut down because certain areas are judged to be lacking in ‘equity,’ even if the whole county has relatively few cases of Covid.” The end of Covid restrictions turned into hostage release negotiations with domineering rulers clinging to all their new prerogatives. 

Cuomo was proud that, when he visits a school, he is no longer asked “‘What does a governor do?” because “people know what governors do and how important governors are.” Governors can wreck kids’ futures by shutting down schools and placing children under indefinite home detention, costing millions of children almost an entire year of learning.

See then rest here

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a frequent contributor to The Hill, and a contributing editor for American Conservative

Be seeing you

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

Underground Fiber Optics Cables Allow People and Cars to Be Tracked. Did You Know? – Activist Post

Posted by M. C. on July 1, 2021

https://www.activistpost.com/2021/06/underground-fiber-optics-cables-allow-people-and-cars-to-be-tracked-did-you-know.html

By B.N. Frank

Some experts have raised concerns about underground fiber optics cables being used for unsafe “last mile wireless” with 5G and/or Wi-Fi (see 1, 2).  Some experts have raised concerns about fiber optics causing health issues in certain people.  But what about privacy?

The U.S. Military seems to have been aware of fiber’s potential for surveillance since at least 1999.  Activist Post has reported before about this before too.

More from Wired:

How Underground Fiber Optics Spy on Humans Moving Above

Vibrations from cars and pedestrians create unique signals in cables. Now scientists have used the trick to show how Covid-19 brought life to a halt.

When last spring’s lockdown quieted the Penn State campus and surrounding town of State College, a jury-rigged instrument was “listening.” A team of researchers from the university had tapped into an underground telecom fiber optic cable, which runs two and half miles across campus, and turned it into a kind of scientific surveillance device.

By shining a laser through the fiber optics, the scientists could detect vibrations from above ground thanks to the way the cable ever so slightly deformed. As a car rolled across the subterranean cable or a person walked by, the ground would transmit their unique seismic signature. So without visually surveilling the surface, the scientists could paint a detailed portrait of how a once-bustling community ground to a halt, and slowly came back to life as the lockdown eased.

They could tell, for instance, that foot traffic on campus almost disappeared in April following the onset of lockdown, and stayed gone through June. But after initially declining, vehicle traffic began picking up. “You can see people walking is still very minimal compared to the normal days, but the vehicle traffic actually is back to almost normal,” says Penn State seismologist Tieyuan Zhu, lead author on a new paper describing the work in the journal The Seismic Record. “This fiber optic cable actually can distinguish such a subtle signal.”

More specifically, it’s the frequency in the signal. A human footstep generates vibrations with frequencies between 1 and 5 hertz, while car traffic is more like 40 or 50 hertz. Vibrations from construction machinery jump up past 100 hertz.

Fiber optic cables work by perfectly trapping pulses of light and transporting them vast distances as signals. But when a car or person passes overhead, the vibrations introduce a disturbance, or imperfection: a tiny amount of that light scatters back to the source. Because the speed of light is a known quantity, the Penn State researchers could shine a laser through a single fiber optic strand and measure vibrations at different lengths of the cable by calculating the time it took the scattered light to travel. The technique is known in geoscience as distributed acoustic sensing, or DAS.

A traditional seismograph, which registers shaking with the physical movement of its internal parts, only measures activity at one location on Earth. But using this technique, the scientists could sample over 2,000 spots along the 2.5 miles of cable—one every 6 and a half feet—giving them a superfine resolution of activity above ground. They did this between March 2020, when lockdown set in, and June 2020, when businesses in State College had begun reopening.

Read full article

Be seeing you

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

The Pandemic Led To The Biggest Drop In U.S. Life Expectancy Since WWII, Study Finds : Coronavirus Updates : NPR

Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2021

NPR screams “racism” when their own article screams “lockdown” and “isolationism”.

What is a “simulated estimate”? A “government guess”? A step below a “simulated fact”? Oh wait…it is a joke.

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/23/1009611699/the-pandemic-led-to-the-biggest-drop-in-u-s-life-expectancy-since-ww-ii-study-fi

Allison Aubrey - 2015 square

Allison Aubrey

A new study estimates that life expectancy in the U.S. decreased by nearly two years between 2018 and 2020, largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And the declines were most pronounced among minority groups, including Black and Hispanic people.

In 2018, average life expectancy in the U.S. was about 79 years (78.7). It declined to about 77 years (76.9) by the end of 2020, according to a new study published in the British Medical Journal.

“We have not seen a decrease like this since World War II. It’s a horrific decrease in life expectancy,” said Steven Woolf of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine and an author of the study released on Wednesday. (The study is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and includes simulated estimates for 2020.)

Beyond the more than 600,000 deaths in the U.S. directly from the coronavirus, other factors play into the decreased longevity, including “disruptions in health care, disruptions in chronic disease management, and behavioral health crisis, where people struggling with addiction disorders or depression might not have gotten the help that they needed,” Woolf said.

The lack of access to care and other pandemic-related disruptions hit some Americans much harder than others. And it’s been well documented that the death rate for Black Americans was twice as high compared with white Americans.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »