Category: Politics and Issues

In reading Scott Atlas book, A Plague Upon Our House, the reader is given the inside story of the Trump response to the Covid pandemics and what become obvious, the mistakes caused by our scientific class.

Atlas details the debate within the administration but what becomes obvious is that neither Trump nor Pence had control of the bureaucracy as Debbie Birks and Anthony Fauci did essentially what they wanted and never considered the results of their failures.  Trump failed to rein Fauci or Birks as they determine policy.

Trump from the beginning was not sold on the original lockdown but he depended upon his experts but as Atlas noted, Birks along with Robert Redfern, the CDC head, fail to comprehend the virus they were dealing with.

Original debate in the Trump White House in January of 2020, how serious was Covid?  It was Peter Navarro who viewed this the second coming of Spanish flu and felt this could have massive impact on the economy.  It was Fauci and other of the scientific class within the administration who viewed this lightly. (Part of Fauci problem is that he believed the Chinese propaganda that it was not serious but then we will find out Fauci and others within the NIH were supporting with American tax dollars gain of function research.)  This was a debate with models beginning to support the original Navarro position that this could be the Spanish flu repeat which would have resulted in at least two million people

In February, Fauci and Redfern stated the IFR would be between .1 to 1 percent which proved correct but by March Fauci was telling Congress this was ten times worse than the flu.  The lockdown originally advertised as short term to reduce overcrowding at the hospitals, but it turned into a stricter economic restriction that threw millions of people out of work. 

Fauci and Birks strategy of “stopping virus in its track” was a disaster from day one and unattainable goal that they should have known unattainable. 

Atlas along with others like Martin Kulldorf, Jay Bhattacharya, and John Ioannidis feared the potential lockdowns and economic restrictions would be worse for America and lead to economic dislocation, more deaths from untreated chronic diseases, impact on younger workers and blue-collar workers who could not afford to say home as well the impact on learning of children not in school.

Much of their concern have been validated but Atlas view of his colleague is worth reviewing since it coincides with my upcoming book, America at the Abyss.  He noted how much of the scientist within the government like Birks and Fauci were not even up to date on the latest research and hung on the losing strategy no matter the cost.  Atlas also concluded that politics colored much of the response.

The key argument he made included:

1. Protecting the most vulnerable, reduce testing to those with symptoms and the elderly and nursing homes.
2. The data was showing that children rarely got seriously ill and even the CDC data showed that the flu was more likely to kill children than Corona virus.
3. The elderly was impact far greater than the younger health population along with those with underlying conditions.
4. Schools should be open, and the data backed that up.
5. The politicization of science made it difficult to have reasonable discussion and many ideas were being censored.
6. The economic price was too high and the much of the middle class, small businesses, blue collar workers, minorities paid the brunt of the attack. 
7. The virus IFR overall was significantly lower than what was being touted in March of 2020 in the range of .2 to .4.  Fauci original NEJM article was closer to the truth than his congressional testimony in March in which he declared the virus to be ten times as bad as the flu.
8. Lockdown and economic restrictions did not at all reduce the transmission.
9. Mask mandates were ineffectual.

Atlas noted that Birks who mostly was in charge and Fauci often went against the desire of the President whose own gut instincts proved right more often than not.

1. He had doubts about impact of the lockdown and economic restrictions but Birks consistently were telling governors to continue the restrictions.  Mixed messaging was the problem with the Task Force mostly doing what they wanted in spite of the policy above.
2. Many in the White House did not want to rock to the boat and push Birks to stay within the stated policies
3. Pence deferred to Birks and rarely challenged her when she stepped on the stated policies of opening up the economy quicker, along with schools. Nor did she buy into the protect the elderly first and allow younger workers to go about their lives  
4. Trump and Pence failure to keep their own task force focused on their goals not the task force goals was not just a disaster but led to unnecessary suffering still going on.

My own view is that we can compare Trump, Pence and DeSantis on leadership based on this. DeSantis controlled his task force and got them on the page he wanted, they failed. Pence in particular did not do is job in dealing with the task force and Trump rarely pushed it

Vaccines themselves proved effective at reducing deaths and hospitalizations but like previous vaccines for flu, its potency waned and did very little to stop the transmission of the virus.   It was oversold, a point made by Kevin Roche of Heathy Skeptic who predicted much of what would happen on his website the Healthy Skeptic.

Carol Roth notes in her book the impact of the pandemic on smaller businesses as government policies in her view purposedly favor big business at the expense of smaller business.  As she noted, “We were not all in this together” and that restrictions allowed bigger business-like Wal mart and Amazon to increase their share while smaller business declined.

Below are books

What really happened in Wuhan A virus like no other countless infections, millions of deaths by Sharri Markson   

Atlas Plague on our House

The War on small business how the government use the pandemic to crush the backbone of America Carol Roth

When Politicians panicked The New Coronavirus expert opinion and the tragic lapse of REASON John Tamny

The number of jobs by month from May 202. From DOL, “Nonfarm employment has increased by 18.2 million since a recent trough in April 2020 but is down by 4.2 million, or 2.8 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. ” means about 80% of jobs have been recovered.

The recovery that begins in May 2020, continues, call it the continuation of Trump recovery into the Biden years.

My final observation begins with how Youngkin added to the Trump coalition by running on a Trumpian theme.  He talked not about the economy and his business experience but also cultural issues including opposing Critical Race theories and questioning the wisdom of allowing “boys” into Girls bathroom by showing the result of those policies, rape.   He added those suburbanites we lost in 2020 back to the coalition. 

Youngkin ran on a platform that parents have a say in their children’s education and that he is understand that it is important to control what is taught in the classroom.  There is a cultural war going on and the GOP ran on winning that cultural war. Youngkin showed that you can win on a Trumpian theme without Trump on top of the ticket.  

New Jersey shows that the election battleground has expanded and even blue states are now on the docket.  States like Nevada is within reach and there could be other states up for grab that right now look hopeless but with the right tsunami, this can be changed.  

Also there will be GOP states that could be vulnerable including Iowa and Florida Senate races.   While Grassley looks good but a new candidate has enter the race, Admiral Franken and our own data shows that many voters like Grassley but concern that he is turning 88 and while other polls show Rubio well ahead, our own poll showed vulnerability to Val Demming. 

Virginia shows the GOP coalesced around ideas that can combined the best of the Reagan years and Trump issues.  And that the Democrats are not unified.

One last things, Terry McAuliffee made a crucial mistakes, he told the truth about what he would do as governor.  He made it clear that parents’ children belong to the state and they had no role in what their children are taught.  Normally Democrats are not that blunt on how they are truly governed but McAuliffee told the voter exactly what he thought about parents.  And they voted accordingly.  

There were so many interesting tidbits about the past election including the Minneapolis rejection of the hard left version of policing (or the lack of policing).  In Minneapolis, the most radical Democrats including Representative Omar and Minnesota Attorney General Ellison campaigned for this but many others more established lefties in Minnesota supposedly oppose this but refuse to come out publicly against it.  They fear the left wing of their own party than the voters. 

In Buffalo, a incumbent mayor got ambushed in the primary and lost to a socialist who wanted to defund the police in Buffalo.  Buffalo is a blue collar Democratic area but as the general election shows, these voters are not crazy.  Mayor Brown decided to run for the mayor race on a write in basis and won by a big margin.  So far his opponent won’t concede but it shows the real divide is not in the GOP, but on the Democrats side.  The Mayor refuse to go slowly into the night and instead decided to fight for his city against a radical candidate.  This was a Democrat vs Democrat battle.  

While the Media concentrate on the impact of Trump on the GOP, they ignore the real battle, the take over of the Democratic party by the socialist wing of the party and so far, they are blaming moderates for the defeats and not their own radical agenda.  The treatment of Sinema and Manchin is showing that there is no role even for very liberal Senators.  (Sinema has already stated that she will support a 1.5 trillion infrastructure on top of other spending but is balking of spending an additional 3.5 trillion. There was time that being for a 1.5 trillion dollars spending plan would make you a liberal in good standing. Maybe these two Senators might want to consider changing Party.)  

As a political operative, I hope that the Democrats listen to their socialist wing and keep pushing their radical agenda since it makes my job easier.  Buffalo showed that many at the grass roots and many minorities are not supporting the more extreme features of the new Democratic socialist party.  (I should point out that Buffalo was not only a Democrat vs Democrat but a black politician vs a black politician. )  

My favorite take is that Youngkin won based on racism and reminds me of a joke when a White businessman, Black marine and Hispanic lawyers walk into a restaurant what do you get?  The next Virginia governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General.   So who are the real racist?

From Joe Benson

Hi Tom, I saw your post about your view of VA and I wanted to put something else on your radar. One election that might have been overlooked was Seattle. I am originally from WA state so I keep an eye on things to see how much worse they are making it up there and I was quite surprised. Bruce Harrell ran on a Mayoral platform that was about taking action on homelessness and supporting law-enforcement, while he’s far from a Republican those issues were important enough to the electorate to reject his competition. Even more incredible is that they elected Ann Davidson for City Attorney, who is a Trump Republican. I never would have expected that to ever happen in Seattle… but even in a place that is about as far left as you can get, people were fed up!

This was a great effort on all of the GOP to win Virginia and shows the importance of keeping a watchful eye on cheating.  In reviewing Voter Reference data, we still have issues and have to expand our efforts to multiple states in 2022.  If I understand the data, there are 63,000 plus more votes than voters in Virginia but in 2020, these numbers were small percentage of the margin that Trump lost or below MOF (margin of Fraud) for 2020 but these numbers represent a significant portion of the margin that Youngkin and Sears won plus within the MOF of Mijares margin.   You can add in the possibility of illegal voters voting.  A few years ago, Public Legal Foundation found a number of illegal voters who had voted before being removed off the public voting role and data provided by research of Old Dominion University along with my own research foundation demonstrated that numbers of illegal citizens voting were significant.  We showed we can win by the other guy rules but it doesn’t mean we don’t have issues.  I will be curious what we find out about  New Jersey since much of our efforts were concentrated in Virginia and how that turns out.

Many of the states we compete in, including Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania will be conducted by the Democrats rules so obviously this coordination needs to continue as well as passing and enforcing election security rules.  The good news is that we showed that we can win under the worse of conditions and that our vote will count.    Plus it helps that most of the issues are running in our direction.  

The recent unemployment tells two stories. The first is that unemployment went down to 4.8% and the second, actual job creation was less than 200,000 and below expectations.  The recovery that began in May of 2020 when Trump was President, continues but inflation is now turning into stagflation and the Biden’s economic plan is threatening the recovery.

This recovery and drop in unemployment is Republican driven as Republican states have 30% less unemployment than Democratic states as Democratic states average 17% over the national average and the bottom ten in unemployment are all run by Democratic governors.  Without Republican governors, our unemployment would be even higher since many of these governors open their economy sooner in the face of the pandemic. 

Regardless how you defined a Republican and Democratic States, Republican states out performed Democratic states when it comes to job creation.   

Since May 2020,  the economy has produced an average of 1,200,000 jobs per year with 1.5 million jobs created average from May 2020 to December 2020 as the economy saw unemployment dropped from 14.4 to 6.7, lower than originally predicted.  The economy now has dropped to 4.8 as we have seen an average of 500,000 jobs created. 

The one black cloud over the horizon is stagflation and the Biden economic plan concentrate more on dividing more evenly a stagnant pie as opposed to growing that pie to allow those at the bottom to move up the economic ladder. 

Biden inherited a growing economy and simply allowing the economy to heal while learning to live with the virus, Biden would be farther ahead but alas, he decided to allow the left to take over the agenda, putting the recovery at risk.

Dominic Pino writing in National Review observed, “The Fed’s dual mandate is to maintain low unemployment and low, stable inflation. In the long run, those are both good things for the country, and they are both possible to achieve. In the short run, however, there is a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment… The Fed’s dual mandate is to maintain low unemployment and low, stable inflation. In the long run, those are both good things for the country, and they are both possible to achieve. In the short run, however, there is a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment… But if inflation is not transitory, and unemployment keeps declining, the Fed may wind up in a really tricky situation: It may be forced to contract the money supply and reverse good unemployment numbers in the short run to get inflation back in line.”

The Feds may be facing that choice where inflation needs to be dealt with and this will bring a recession in an economy facing trillions of dollars of debt and deficit.  As it stands now, many families are losing income through inflation.  In a recent analysis, we found that families in Georgia, New Hampshire, and Nevada saw their income decline by 1100 to 1500 dollars due to the rise of inflation.

The recovery is still going on but the recovery is stagnating and stagflation is now in play. 

The lockdowns should be seen as a failure and we have surrendered far too much of our freedom to stop this virus. We adopted measures not seen before in a Pandemic.

Government shut down businesses, schools, vaccine passports and mandates, a loss of freedom for a virus that killed 2 to 4 per 1000.

They failed for the following reasons:

1. They failed to stop the virus spread and those state who had less restrictions did not see a significant death total per capita vs those states or countries that didn’t.
2. States with less restrictions had less unemployment, better job creation.
3. States more open had more children in classes.
4. The number of screenings for chronic diseases, mental health issues increases shows other health issues were ignored.
5. One study shows that as many as two people have died or will prematurely die as a result of these policies.

So if the economics falter, more people died from the other cases than the virus and children’s education interrupted. That is not a success but a failure. Those who are responsible for this needs to be defeated.

A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed data on Covid and most folks totally missed what I was saying. I am going to start with unemployment to show my point that the economic restrictions and lockdown did more damage than the virus itself.

Of top ten states, 100% GOP governors, 72% of the top 25, 65% of states at national average or lower. Democrats had 65% of states in bottom half of LOWER half and 91% of the bottom 11.

The result GOP states unemployment were significantly lower!!!!!! Overall 4.4 for GOP states and 6.4 Democratic states!!!! We viewed GOP and Democratic in two ways plus we compared bigger GOP and Democratic states.

Now there is very little difference in death per capital when all studies looked at. We are talking 6 per 100,000.

Bottom line, GOP states had a SIGNIFICANTLY LESS UNEMPLOYMENT BUT THERE WAS VERY LITTLE DIFFERENCE DIFFERENT IN DEATH PER CAPITA!!! END OF PART ONE

Wilfred Reiley has done three studies on lockdowns and found the following:

1. Unemployment in both non lockdown and Republican states lower than lockdown and Democratic states.

2. Lower bankruptcy in non-lockdown states per capita More below

3. Lower death per capita for GOP and non-lockdown states but no significant difference.

4. Blacks were more likely to die in Democratic states and lockdown states. Reilly looked at different variables including density which he rated a significant variable.

Texas is higher when adjusted. Average age of major states

Red states have slightly older population.

When comparing major states, these states were similar in demographics but Republican states had slightly more blacks and Hispanics.

Lockdown failures and economic restrictions failed to stem the infections and there was very little difference in death per capita regardless of variables used. Unemployment were significantly lower in Republican states so showing the failure of the lockdown

Republican states had significantly lower unemployment. This should show policy makers that our economic shortcomings are not due to the virus but to economic plans and plan to combat the virus.

School children are seeing setback in their education and many younger people are being killed by drug overdose and suicide, and many are not getting treated for chronic diseases or screened. There are studies showing that many have died or will died prematurely.

These deaths totals exceeds death by Corona virus. Our policies have been a disaster and have not stem infection but added significant damage to society.

Lockdown failures and economic restrictions failed to stem the infections and there was very little difference in death per capita regardless of variables used. Unemployment were significantly lower in Republican states so showing the failure of the lockdown.