Category: Politics and Issues

The election is just beginning, and we have long way to go. DeSantis twitter introduction was hardly a winning one, but it will be long forgotten months down the road, but Trump has all the advantages for now as the polls shows.

His lead in the poll began with the Bragg indictment in New York for yet another fake crime and for many Republicans, it was nothing more than a political attack. Trump is under legal siege from the special prosecutors and in Atlanta for interfering with 2020 election. As I wrote in America at the Abyss, Will America Survive, “The battle to see Trump punished will continue a state level and New York City and Biden’s Justice Department will certainly carry on their own jihad against Trump and his family.  There is a precedence for this as Franklin Roosevelt pursued members of the Hoover administration—and. in particular Andrew Mellon– legally and modern-day Democratic Party is even more nasty, and Joe Biden will not lose sleep over his DOJ or some state attorney general pursuing the Trump family until they find something to jail him or members of his family or bankrupt them. For many Democrats, Trump was an affront to them, and it is their attention to wipe out any aspect of Trumpism.”

The reality is that for many in GOP, DeSantis before 2024 was the heir to Trump conservatism. For many he was supposed to wait his turn and allow Trump to be coronated, but DeSantis decided it was the right time now. Let be blunt, Trump legal troubles, no matter how deserved, will take a toll on his popularity and ability to reach beyond his base.

The good news if Trump becomes radioactive due to his legal issues, the good news that many of Trump supporters would be willing to support DeSantis. For many right now, Trump is the number one guy, but DeSantis is their alternative.

DeSantis showed his proficiency in a serious crisis, managing to keep his state’s economy afloat while outperforming Democrat governors Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom throughout the pandemic. DeSantis’s goal of returning Florida to normal succeeded because he understood the virus and how best to deal with its aftermath by first concentrating on protecting the most vulnerable. His ability to vaccinate his citizens quickly compared favorably to many of his governor counterparts.

DeSantis combined competence with a drive and vision of how to tame the virus and get people back to work and children back to school. While many governors chose control and economic restrictions, DeSantis moved toward a freer economy. The one lesson for Republicans and conservatives that DeSantis teaches is not to depend upon the experts. DeSantis realized quickly that Dr. Anthony Fauci and others overestimated the lethality of the virus and underestimated the economic devastation of the lockdown. Others like Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. John Ioannidis, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Martin Kulldorff felt the lockdowns beyond the initial fifteen days in March and April 2020 would produce more deaths over the long term and damage the fabric of society. The price of lockdown would be too high, they contended, and DeSantis joined the lockdown skeptics. As it turned out, much of the criticism the lockdown skeptics made early in the pandemic proved valid and DeSantis demonstrated that the strategy they recommended was more effective than the punitive lockdown strategy. He also showed the politicization of the scientific class and the need to go beyond them to get better science to base policy on.

For Republicans, DeSantis showed that when given advice from experts, verify what they are saying is actually true and the policy recommendations they propose will not prove disastrous. The second lesson DeSantis provides is that. if the leadership class is wrong on an issue, challenge their advice and do not give in. DeSantis’s success in the pandemic like other Republican governors, including Kristi Noem, points the way for a new Republican Party that will combine conservative and free market principles and anchor those free market conservative principles to the new populism to build upon the Trump coalition. 

The original key to winning 2016 was for Republicans and conservatives to create an alliance that combines the concerns of diverse groups, including those who are concerned for gun rights, privacy rights, and those who fear the loss of religious freedom, in stopping expanding government while increasing economic freedom and economic opportunity. This coalition appeared threatened by Donald Trump’s national populism but as the 2016 election proceeded, Trump adopted many of the Republican Party’s ideas about reforming government spending and tax policies that promoted growth and opportunity. The Republican candidates who articulated a message of A Fair Opportunity to Succeed put themselves in the best position to win whether nationally, statewide, or in Congressional districts.

Trump showed that his populism can be combined with traditional free market ideas. His ideas on foreign policy was actually a return to what George W Bush campaigned in 2000, a more modest policy before 9/11. Trump view was not to expand conflict but to avoid them and reduce the present commitments. DeSantis is moving in the same direction.

Polls are not conclusive at this point. More recent polls show Trump taking a small lead over Biden but since the 2022 midterm, Biden is essentially tied with both Trump and DeSantis. In spite of Biden’s unfavorable rating, he is still within striking distance of both. This is one of those races that will change America and GOP must be right with their choices. Trump legal issues will impact his own standing as we move into 2024 and is there a time when one more indictment is one indictment too far?

Ken Griffin too his business, the hedge fund Citadel, out of Chicago to Florida and this represented a trend that has been occurring, many wealthy are saying goodbye New IRS data found for example that more than 100,000 people left Illinois and they took some billion dollars nearly double its 2019 and an in New York, some nearly 25 billion dollars has left the state and California loss 29 billion dollars. 

That people migrating from these states are taking not just money but their expertise leaves with them.  Those coming into these blue states earn $35,000 less than those they are replacing and in Florida, those who came into the state averaged 150,000 dollars whereas those who left averaged less than half.   For many of these states the golden goose that provided the golden eggs are going elsewhere.

The problem as Wall Street journal writer Allysia Finley observed, “Cities are losing the voters who keep their leaders from going off the rails.” In Chicago, Brandon Johnson won by 20,000 which is but small percentage of the 175,000 who left Cook County or as Finney noted, “These are the people the city needs to back on the rails.

This trends cut in two ways. First, many investors, business leaders and wealthy citizens are leaving and taking their wealth with them.  Second, they are leaving behind what is left of escape.

Tucker Carlson demise on Fox may lead to a new direction in the media. My own view of Tucker Carlson was mixed, while I viewed him as a unique voice that represented forgotten America, and his view was more of a populist view versus a conservative view. Fox big mistake was first letting him go but the second was the unceremonious way they let him go. The sudden way that Tucker was released showed the classness of Fox and equally as bad, a complete disrespect for their audience.

Tucker represent a wave of conservatism and the American public that is often ignored even by conservatism. Fox represent a more traditional conservative that came out of the sixties and become prevalent in the 1980’s. It should be pointed out that Reaganonomics worked for over two decades to raise the middle class from early 1980’s going into the 21^st century. In the 1970’s, stagflation produce economic stagnation and many middle class found themselves in tax bracket reserved for the wealth a generation earlier.  Supply side tax cuts benefited the Middle Class and engineered a 25 year economic growth that extended into 21^st century.

This century has been different as America has changed, the rise of China and movement of businesses moving their factories overseas including China and massive illegal immigration that had immigrants competing with many Americans on the lower income strata for jobs. For many Americans, income not only was stagnant but overall wealth decline as many saw their housing prices dropped and many more left the investor class as Americans investors dropped from 63 percent in 2007 to 53 percent. Millions of Americans lost opportunities to expand their overall wealth and saw instead their wealth decrease to go with stagnant income. Carlson noted to John Hinderaker, “I always thought that the dividing line between liberal and conservative was economic. And that conservatives were champions of the free market and liberals were very suspicious of it. That really was the dividing line for a long time. There were other demarcations, but that was the main one. And the free-market argument won. It did, thanks to a lot of things, but liberals during the Clinton years joined in celebrating market capitalism…I am still for the free market, but the middle class is dying, and that’s not one man’s opinion. That’s a fact rooted in data. It’s shrinking in size. The life expectancy of blue-collar America is declining. That’s never happened. So, you have to ask, what did we get wrong? What assumptions did we have that turned out to be untrue? Free trade brings prosperity? Yeah, but not to everybody.”

He added,” Oh, it’s over. Capitalism lost because the people in charge didn’t pay any attention to the effects at all, and so with the average millennial it is far less likely that his parents are married or own a home, he owns his own car, or they own two cars. We’ve saddled people with overwhelming levels of debt—student loan debt primarily, but other kinds, too—that we’ve basically crushed an entire generation of kids. And they’re really angry.”  He represent a thought by many who view that the system is rigged and has failed them. Even on the right, there are many like Carlson who don’t believe that market economy works for them. Carlson made the point I have made in my books, that for many including on the right, the movement left is moving economics. In my report “From Trump to Le Pen, Where Does Populism Ends Up?”  I observed, “France is where the future of the populist movement may lie if Trump fails to move his agenda and improve the lot of American workers. Marine Le Pen is not a traditional American conservative or even a believer in free market. Many of Le Pen’s views mirror the hard-core left, embodied by Jean-Luc Melenchon, including her promise to maintain the 35-hour work week and lower the retirement age to 60. (The two combined actually collected 42% of the vote in first round voting in the 2017 French Presidential election showing political strength.)”  Carlson added, “When people don’t get married and don’t buy homes and aren’t rooted in the society long term, they’re volatile and scary, and their politics tend to be crazy. It’s really bad. You don’t want to ever let that happen. We let it happen. We didn’t pay any attention at all. All of that money was transferred to the Baby Boomers, and they’re about to feel the effects of that because economic populism is the future. I don’t want it. I’m just telling you. I’d bet my house on it. Bernie Sanders is going to seem moderate compared to the next guy.”

On the left, Robert Kennedy Jr. opposition to the Covid vaccines mandates and the overall lost of freedom by various mandates including closing schools and businesses mirrored much on the right and his recent statement opposing central banking digital currency and remarking that one can be in favor of legal immigration and still oppose illegal immigration are uniting points for merging of the right and forces on the left.

Conservative are left with the task of combining an agenda that benefits the Middle Class and allow the poor to move up the economic ladder while defending free market economy. We are dealing with a culture war that is far larger than culture wars in the past. It is not just about abortion but also parents finding their daughters competing with transgender women (men) in sports and called bigots if they want their daughters to compete with only other women. It is about defending those basic principles that bring success like showing up to work on time, the do best you can in school and wait tuntil you are married before having children. These were values that wasn’t even debatable but advocating hem now marks you as supporting “White privilege.” We are living in a land where the cultural norm will be mediocrity as opposed to meritocracy.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds described the suicide of expertise: “It was the experts — characterized in terms of their self-image by David Halberstam in The Best and the Brightest — who brought us the twin debacles of the Vietnam War, which we lost, and the War On Poverty, where we spent trillions and certainly didn’t win. In both cases, confidential assertions by highly credential authorities foundered upon reality, at a dramatic cost in blood and treasure. Mostly other people’s blood and treasured, and these are not isolated failures.”

 Over the past decade, we have seen the Great Recession, due to a housing bubble engineered by existing laws and promoted by the best and brightest on Wall Street. Trump inherited a foreign policy debacle in the Middle East engineered by Obama’s experts, who produced a policy that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, a million refugees headed for Europe, the rise of ISIS, and the upending of previous relations between the U.S. and the State of Israel. Nor can we forget the toppling of Moammar Gadhafi, which led to Libya becoming yet another sanctuary for Islamic terrorists and another places where refugees fled the Middle East for Europe. A year after the toppling of Gadhafi, attack on two United States facilities resulted in the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds concluded, “If experts want to reclaim a position of authority, they need to make a few changes. First, they should make sure they know what they’re talking about, and they shouldn’t talk about things where their knowledge isn’t solid. Second, they should be appropriately modest in their claims of authority. And third, they should check their egos. It doesn’t matter what your SAT scores were, voters are under no obligation to listen to you unless they find what you say persuasive.” Modesty is not a trait that this generation of the Leadership class has demonstrated. The elites have done well while the ordinary folks in fly over country have seen their incomes plummet and their ability to make a fortune shrivel. The expert class who guided America from the 1940 to the 1960’s won a world war, designed a bipartisan policy of containment that prevented World War III and a victory over the Soviet Empire presided over by two members of that generation, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. The Greatest Generation discovered vaccines for polio, antibiotics that saved lives, and sent a man to the moon. Jet planes and space flights were dreams that became reality and it was that generation that began to redress the wrongs done to our Black citizens. The present generation of experts may have given us computers, and the computing power in our hands is greater that what took Apollo flights to the Moon. While planes have become faster, the time to get from point A to B is longer and while cars may have advantages over the cars of the 1950’s, the average person in 1950 would have little trouble recognizing or driving what we drive today. There are no flying cars, and we are replacing reliable nuclear power with less reliable energy derived from wind and solar power. The electric car is a century-old technology that is hardly a major advance in automotive history. And again, where are the flying cars?

Tucker Carlson has shown the failure of the political class and on a daily basis, he pointed out their failures. Carlson is a voice that details the struggle of the forgotten American and idiocy that the Leadership class has imposed on them. Carlson chronicles the reality America is indeed standing on the Abyss.

Fox recent firing of Tucker Carlson and it fiasco with Dominion shows that even conservative media can be corrupted and on key issues to its viewers, unreliable.   Fox is still more accurate than its competitors whose own laundry list includes the Russian collusion hoax, the cover up of the Hunter Biden laptop which impacted an election, following the party line of Tony Fauci and gang, even when it was totally wrong. Even to this day, outside of Fox and Newsmax, Tony Fauci is still adore despite his horrendous record.   This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Much of the mainstream media was always to the left but there was difference.  When I was running a congressional campaign against incumbent Democrat, there was a controversy over debating as my candidate’s opponent refuse to debate my candidate and a liberal reporter who covered our campaign caught my opponent campaign manager in a lie in which even made the evening news.  Today that would not even happen for a leftist Democrat campaign manager can lie all he wants and there will be no problem for him. The media would cover it all.

When Dan Rather broadcast a lie about George Bush national guard record during the 2004 election that could have changed the course of the election, he was called out by many pundits and blogger.  CBS investigated the aftermath of the story after it was debunked and fired Dan Rather and those responsible for the story.

After the Russian collusion hoax, Washington Post and New York Times won Pulitzer Prizes and after it was exposed as a hoax, no prizes were returned and even to this day not one reporter or broadcaster lost their jobs.  Many of those who perpetuated this hoax still appear on many broadcasts as experts.  No one ever paid the price.  Rather got fired and Rachel Maddow who added to her ratings promoting the hoax is still at MSNBC, still well paid.   

Real journalism still continues but not in the mainstream media.  Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, and Matt Taibbi still practice their trade on substack and reach millions with their reporting.  (All three of these reporters are left of center but yet managed to report the stories that others will not touch.)

Glenn Greenwald often appear on Tucker Carlson, who was willing to allow an honest leftist journalist on his show and substack is the exception to the rule when it comes to journalism for real journalism is still practiced.

The media today is nothing more than state media, repeating the talking point of the Biden Administration and much of the political class. They don’t investigate or hold those in power accountable, instead they have morphed into being part of the political class understanding its role to promote the politically correct talking points while making sure that those journalists who buckThe the narrative are censored or sidelined. 

The twitter files demonstrated the close cooperation of the FBI, various other government agencies working with social media to censor stories not in line with the prevalent left-wing narrative and promoting their own agenda.  

As for the firing of Tucker Carlson and silencing him, Fox may be soon going into a different direction, but it would appear that it may no longer be the one mainstream media friendly to conservative causes or it will attempt to promote its version of establishment conservative and move way from the more populist wing of the right. The media is beholden to the political class and no longer the vehicle designed to hold the powerful accountable.

Fox and Tucker Carlson have split, Fox willing to part with their number one star in an unexpected move. Tucker Carlson was the one pundit who understood the forgotten America and was willing to go outside the box when it came to thinking outside the box. My own view is that Fox is trying to redefine itself in the post Rupert Murdoch era and I suspect that Murdochs did not care for Carlson reporting on January 6^th.

When it came to 2020 elections, Fox team missed the bigger story which Don Surber explained, “Dominion’s cheating was a distraction from the real evil of the 2020 election: ballot harvesting. Democrats were able to get people to vote from home. Voter participation leaped from 56% to 67% — setting a century high by a large margin. People voted from home because so many Americans are too lazy to go to the polls.”

I find it interesting that every network other than Fox could push the Russian Collusion hoax and no one ever paid the price, the Pulitzer prizes never returned when it became obvious this was fake. Elon Musk exposed through the twitter files the cooperation of social media and many government agencies in censoring stories that were detrimental to Biden campaign in 2020 and then detrimental to the Biden administration. Much of the media was quiet when it was released and still is. Don Surber added, “Russiagate’s lies cost no one their jobs. The cover-up of Hunter’s laptop cost no one their jobs. The lies about the Raid on Mar-a-Lago cost no one their jobs. Welcome to post-truth America. If Carlson is surprised, he has not been paying attention to what has happened to us. We are no longer a great nation because we are led by greedy little bastards who saw nothing wrong with Hillary emailing state secrets to Red China and to foreign donors of her fake charity while secretary of State. We are led by greedy little bastards who saw nothing wrong with Barack Hussein Obama using the FBI to spy on candidate Donald John Trump. We are led by greedy little bastards who saw nothing wrong with Biden withholding a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine until it fired the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, the company that gave his worthless son an $800,000-a-year no-show job.”

As Megyn Kelly noted, Fox news had exclusive videos on January 6^th and much of it told a different story that was reported.  Fox news department outside of Carlson did nothing with it and Carlson only spent two days on it, most likely due to pressure from within the network. We know that while many crashed through windows, others were invited in. One story that was not reported by the media and that Carlson found that many of the Capital police were not informed of intelligence that their leaders knew about the potential of violence but failed to pass on. Nancy Pelosi have never questioned or been forced to account for what she could have done to prevent what happened since she could have asked for more protection. She did not.

The reality is that much of the media has long since decline into state media and as for Fox, its successes was due to counterprogramming as they reached out to the audience that other media ignore, the 50 percent that was conservative or independent. Much of the media has always been dominated by the left but today, the façade of neutrality has been lifted and the media makes no pretense whose side they are on. CNN collapse was due to the end of the Trump presidency as the reason for its existence for the past several years was gone and many leftists simply got their news from MSNBC. Fox coming collapse will be due to many conservatives deciding that after Carlson firing that the network that catered to them no longer cares.

Carlson parting with Fox is as much about defining conservatism, the right is still trying to define what conservatism means today. Fox began its quest to be a conservative alternative but as but now we are asking what conservatism is. Carlson brand of conservatism combined questioning previous conservative ideas of foreign policy and wondering to what extent America’s role in the world and viewing much of big business in opposition to the spirit of America. He even questioned free market economy when he criticized other conservative for “worshipping free market as a religion and not a tool.”

Carlson, like Robert Kennedy, feared the power of big business and big government uniting and the threat of losing our civil liberties. What Carlson saw was the rise of oligarchy threatening to place much of the Middle Class into a neo feudal state, a warning that scholar and writer Joel Kotkin has detailed for years. The Covid pandemic exposed the collapsed of our leadership class and how much of our business class, scientific class and political class united to strip away much of a freedom to save us for a virus that may have killed 3 to 4 per 1000, not much higher than many flu pandemics. As I noted in my book, America at the Abyss, Will America Survive, we saw the biggest transfer of wealth from the small businesses and the Middle class to big corporations. We witnessed big Media tech working closing with government agencies to censor thoughts they did not like and the rise of misinformation racket in which the left and corporate media will decide what is truth. This will prove to be a serious threat to our civil liberties and even to the freedom of the press.

I will repeat the argument that I made in my book, the path to conservatism will be uniting the best of Reagan conservatism with Trump populism. Trump foreign policy was not an isolationist policy but a more modest policy that concentrated on our primary rival China and supported free market policies at home. His tax plan was similar to Reagan and while he was a protectionist at heart, the one treaty he redid, NAFTA, was essentially 90 percent the original treaty, allowing more goods allowed while adding minor protection for US workers.

Carlson is on the populist wing of the movement, defending the forgotten America but to win 2024, you have to combine what worked in the past into a program of providing the average American a fair opportunity to succeed. Market economy is not a religion but a pathway to protection of liberty and prosperity. The Democratic party is the socialist party of America, using government to protect those major corporations whose goals aligned with the Party starting with the Green new deal in which we move away from traditional industry such as fossil fuels industry. What Carlson and RFK, jr are rebelling against is not free market but the uniting of major corporations and big government in a corporativism vision in which government directs big businesses into an economic polices it desire. Those businesses that cooperate are guarantee their share of the marketplace and profits. This has been tried in the past and we would recognize by two names, National socialism, or fascism.

Carlson may not have been right on his solutions, but he was right in identifying the threat before us. As for Fox, it success was due to reaching out to those forgotten Americans. It appears Fox have forgotten that.

Brandon Johnson is the new mayor and so far, he is proving even dumber and more incompetent than Lori Lightfoot. A major league baseball manager once commented when asked can it get any worse for your team, “Yes it can.”  This weekend there were 32 shootings and 8 fatalities, and the Chicago loop saw a riot in which cars and city buses vandalized, and two additional shootings. Or as one commenter noted, just another weekend in Chicago.

Chicago haven’t had a Republican mayor in at least nine decades so you can’t blame Republican leadership and despite having one of the toughest gun control regime, crimes continue to spiral out of control.

Chicago had a choice, a left of center Democrat who at least promised to protect the community or Johnson, a hard-core leftist socialist supported by the local teacher unions. In the end, Chicago voted for more crime and disorder. While Johnson response to the recent riots was carefully worded as not give the opinion that he was not condoning the violence, he added that the violence and disorder was no reason to demonize youth.

Johnson, Cook County commissioner and a former teacher union organizer favored defunding the police and on one radio appearance stated, “about “our effort and our move to redirect and defund the amount of money that is spent in policing, redirect funds from policing and incarceration to public services not administered by law enforcement that promote community health and safety equitably.”  52% of votes opted for unicorns and ignored the hard reality that controlling crime is important in ensuring that Chicago remains a viable city and maintains civilization. There is no evidence that Johnson is genuinely interested in reducing crime. According to Chicago police every crime is up except murder, but murders are significantly up from 2019, pre Covid. Stolen car up by 135%, theft up by 22%, robbery up by 15%, burglary up by 6%, sexual assault is up 2%, and aggravated battery up by 4%.

Chicago votes do have a role in this disaster since over half of them voted for Johnson after rejecting Lori Lightfoot for her incompetence. They supposedly rejected her for her failure to provide protection to the city but yet they elected a candidate who will continue the same policies.

Johnson fiscal plan is to soak commuters, businesses and the ultra-rich while splurging on social spending. and Chicago also has a severe problem with pension spendings which makes up 12 percent of the city budget and this restrict spending in other needed areas just as public safety.

The teacher unions organized voters and helped Johnson to get over the top and those voters who voted for Vallas and some aspect of law and order will pay the price. Many of them will leave for the suburbs or simply leave Illinois to join the migration to red states.

One of my projects is finally done. I have been tracking state unemployment since the summer of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. What I have found is that GOP governors consistently outperformed their Democratic counterparts.

GOP governors averaged 3.2 percent versus 3.9 percent for Democratic governors.

I also found that states with GOP controlling all aspects of government outperformed their Democratic counterparts. States with mixed government finished in between both GOP and Democratic controlled states.

In the bigger states, Republican governors also outperformed their Democratic counter parts. Florida led the way among the bigger states with unemployment at 2.5 percent.

The one good news for many blue states is that they opened up their economy in 2022. They reduced the margin versus GOP states. In August of 2020, Blue states unemployment was 24% higher than Reds states but by December 2022, 18%.

90 percent of the states with lower unemployment had Republican governors and 70 percent of states at the national average or lower had Republican governors.

States that opened their economy sooner had lower unemployment during the pandemic and afterwards. GOP states were more likely to open their economy and had lower unemployment as a result. GOP states were more likely to be under the national average.

Scott Adams asked recently about us Pandemic lockdown skeptic “No, I literally want to know how the people who were right knew it advance.  They know but won’t explain it.” This is an interesting questions and Adams wants to know how did we know the lockdowns and other efforts For me, It began with research on past pandemics and had a good idea what would happen.

There were many in the Trump administration early in the pandemic who viewed this as a Spanish flu returning and forecast 2,000,000 deaths from Covid.  Originally Fauci opposed this, but within a short period of time, he jumped on board.

Others looked at the numbers and did their own research. John Ioannidis and others found the lethality was lower than originally feared, but instead their data was rejected simply because it went against narrative. 

The 1957-8 flu season had per capita death similar to Covid in the first 6 months and the lockdown ever been tried on the large scale in a virus and it failed.  Common sense would tell you, shut the economy down and you will have an economy down and you will have an economic depression or at least severe recession.  April saw unemployment up to 14.7 percent and going into summer, unemployment stayed in double digit. 

In 1957-58 unemployment nearly doubled to 7.5 percent and recession happened.  There is very little articles on the impact of the flu on the recession but you have to assume that millions of Americans not working would have impact on productivity.    Anyone familiar with literature would have easily predicted the economic disaster the lockdown would produce. Unemployment went up to 14.7 and it took two years to recover these jobs. Those states that opened their economy, had lower unemployment from the worse of the pandemic to the present.

Groups like Rational Ground using data, saw the failure quickly and many specialists like the Great Barrington Declaration warned of the impact.  Data collected, and reviewing history gave us information needed to know a mistake was made.  

As for Adams question, we knew early because we looked at the actual facts and saw the flaws in the government data.  We also understood that government officials had their own objectives and were willing to manipulate the data to obtain those objectives.