Taxation Without an Occupation

 Taxation without an Occupation

The View from the Middle

 

When Ronald Reagan was running for President he made it clear that he was not a fan of big government.  In fact, he famously said that the ten scariest words in the English language were, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”  He obviously understood the flaws inherent in big, cumbersome, corrupt and inept government.  Personally, I don’t think much has changed since the Reagan era, in fact, things might be getting worse.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s virologist, has now admitted that he intentionally lied to the American people to manipulate us.  Early on, he lied about the effectiveness of masks (I think he is lying now) and more recently he admitted that he lied about herd immunity, again to convince more people to take the vaccine.  Good intentions aside, once you admit that you are willing to lie to get your desired effect on the country, you lose all credibility with me. 

It is clear that Dr. Fauci and the elite lame-stream media clearly want to be the puppeteers of the American people, whether they know what they are doing or not.  They have lied about the danger of sending children to school to placate the teacher’s union.  They were actually anti-science in that area.  Science has proven that children are the least likely to contract this disease and also the least likely to transmit it to others.  If they acquire this disease their symptoms are usually mild and many are even asymptomatic.  Since that is not what they want you to believe, Fauci and the elites spread another lie – that asymptomatic people are virus super-spreaders lurking around the country spewing noxious clouds of viral droplets.  The science actually proves just the opposite, and the negative impact of closing schools will take years to identify and more years to repair.

And let’s not forget Dr. Fauci’s first lie that started this whole government overreach.  He tried to scare the country into submission to his whims when he told us that the mortality rate for Covid-19 would be ten times that of the seasonal flu.  Of course, he could have even stated this exaggeration differently and said that 99% of those who are infected will survive.  But that was not even the truth.  Studies now suggest that the survival rate of this virus is closer to 99.8%, and many believe that it will actually end up being the same as the season flu, or 99.9%.  If Dr. Fauci had not lied, or exaggerated or just plain “got it wrong” back in the beginning, might we as a country have made some very different decisions?  If the point of emphasis had been “99.9% of people infected will survive” would we have shut down our schools and our economy?  I doubt it, but this lie or grievous error was necessary to dupe our entire country into giving up our most fundamental rights and liberties.  

These puppeteers have also lied about the effectiveness of the economic shutdowns.  If these shutdowns worked, why are we in wave three of this virus.  We must also apply the laws of common sense as we create restrictions for our country’s businesses.  Why would we allow thousands of people to pack into Walmart stores like sardines, but shutdown small businesses whose normal customer count might be less than ten people?  Sure, Walmart sells food, which is essential, but they also sell apparel, hardware, toys, etc., etc. which their small business competitors now can’t.

And restaurants might be the most abused and villainized right now.  The latest studies (science, right?) have shown that less than 1.5% of infections come from restaurants yet they have been savaged by governors around the country with restrictive occupancy rules and absolute closures.  Let’s not forget that these callous, mindless, out-of-touch governors and still cashing their hefty monthly checks along with everyone else in government.  Why is that?  It’s because while these government bureaucrats are living large, they continue to tax the very people that they have prevented from making a living.  Imagine being a small business owner who has been shut down for months receiving a property tax bill or a government licensing fee that you are expected to pay – or else!!  That is taxation without an occupation.

This is why Business Insider predicted that as many as 85% of independent restaurants in American could close permanently because of the unnecessary restrictions placed on them by state and local governments.  Unless our governors and mayors get their heads out of their arses, I predict a massive revolt by this unjustly persecuted industry.  There will come a time when all of the restaurant owners across the country will just open and dare the state and local governments to arrest them all.  Then, if the government officials are stupid enough to do that, these eatery owners will come together and initiate a class action lawsuit against them.  Given that these closures and restrictions violate the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments of our Bill of Rights, I can’t imagine restaurant owners losing this argument!!

Maybe the bigger lesson here is that “We the People” need to stop being sheep and challenge government when it steps over the line of proper governance.  If we do not, an Orwellian future will be our fate.  Remember, Big Brother is doing more than just listening.  His intent is to subvert your very will and thus strip away all of your freedoms.  

                                                                                                                                     

*If you have not read the book 1984, by George Orwell, now would be a good time.  It is a classic commentary on the insidious nature of an all-powerful government.                             

The Illusion of Controlling the Coronavirus

 The Illusion of Controlling the Coronavirus

The View from the Middle

 

Before I even get into the message of this article, which is that this virus will run its course whether we like it or not, let me emphasize that I do believe that this virus is serious and that we should take all reasonable precautions to save lives.  We have known, almost from the beginning, who were the most vulnerable and we should have taken steps to protect those people even though in some cases, like in the state of New York, we didn’t.  I mourn all those who have lost loved ones to this virus, but “not living” is not the answer to this or any problem that we face as humans.  

Life will never be risk free.  People are going to die in car accidents every year.  The answer is not to stop driving or to ban cars.  The answer is to manage that risk.  People are going to die of cancer every year.  That doesn’t mean we should all put ourselves in a cryogenic freeze until there is a cure.  The answer is to manage that risk as we live our lives. The same is true for this virus.  We should not have put our trust in unscrupulous politicians or a paranoid media or even pompous scientists who suggest that THEY can save us if we just give up all of our autonomy and do as they say.  Of course, these hypocrites won’t follow their own rules because they want to maintain the freedoms they are denying everyone else.

While the media and politicians will desperately try to hide the facts, it appears that the real cure for this virus will be herd immunity, an idea that was scoffed at when this plague erupted.  Every virus has its own herd immunity level based on its infectious rate, and scientists have now agreed that the Coronavirus herd immunity will be reached when 70 to 75% of our population has contracted this disease and survived or has received a vaccine.  In either case, those people, of which I am one, will be immune and can’t be infected.  In that case, the virus will have nowhere to go and will die out.

The CDC has already estimated that this virus has infected ten times the number of people than have tested positive in this country because they have experienced mild symptoms or have been asymptomatic and thus have not even been tested.  That would suggest that over 170 million Americans (over 50% of our population) have already contracted this virus and survived.  Remember, the survival rate for this disease is currently being estimated at 99.8%.  Most, if not all of these people are now immune and cannot be infected again.  Over the next few months, given the natural infectious progression of this virus and the vaccine, another 80 million people will become immune which will bring our country’s immunity level to over 75%.  This is why even the politicians, media and scientists have agreed that Covid-19 will be gone or under control by May or June.

This would also say that all of the machinations our politician put our country through will not have prevented one person from contracting this disease.  We needed 250 million Americans to survive this virus to reach herd immunity and that is what is going to happen and that is what will end this scourge.  

But when this virus is dead and gone, there will be people who will try to take credit for its demise.  They will claim that the economic shutdowns worked even though they have absolutely no proof that they did.  They will exaggerate the estimated number of deaths that “could have” occurred and say that if they hadn’t put us through this hell of regulations and destroyed millions of small businesses (especially in the restaurant community) that two million people would have died.  Of course, that is impossible to prove and it is equally impossible to prove that every element of their plan was successful.  Did we really need to shut down our restaurants?  Did we really need to close our schools?  Remember, nothing we did saved even one person from contracting this disease (except the vaccine).  

And these “scientists” have used a most unscientific approach to evaluate the effectiveness of their strategies.  In a real scientific world, they would have isolated their tactics and compared them to a control group that would do nothing.  They would, for example, have one group only wear masks, another group would only wash their hands, another would only shut down businesses, etc.  And then they would compare all of these results to the control group that did nothing.  In this case they threw everything at this virus, including the kitchen sink and are now suggesting that everything they did was effective.  In reality, since they didn’t have a control group they have no idea how effective their total efforts were.  We could compare our results to Sweden’s, the country that came the closest to employing a herd immunity strategy.  If we did, we would find that Sweden’s deaths per 100,000 people is almost 20% lower than ours.

My point is, we are inflicting so much damage on our country in the name of controlling this virus without any proof that these moves are actually working.  We are demanding mask wearing and social distancing when hand washing and staying home when sick may be all we needed.  We know for a fact that we are destroying lives by shutting down businesses (especially restaurants) and setting our students back by closing schools when we have no idea what impact those moves are actually having on this disease.  But we KNOW that these decrees are having a negative effect on our country.

Is the media giving as much attention to suicide rates, increases in domestic violence or drug abuse?  Are they studying depression and the long-term effects of the social separation that Americans are experiencing?

We will face more influenzas, viruses, etc. in the future.  The 1918 influenza was particularly brutal killing 700,000 people in America (I believe that is a very conservative estimate) and up to 100 million people worldwide.  The Asian Flu in 1957 killed almost 120,000 people in the US and the Hong Kong Flu in 1969 killed over 100,000 people here when our population was less than half of what it is today.  Just two years ago, the seasonal Flu may have killed up to 95,000 people in America and if we had used the same methodology and counting practices that we have used for the Coronavirus, these numbers could easily have matched or even surpassed Covid-19.  We didn’t shutdown our economy for any of these pandemics and we actually fought WWI in the middle of the 1918 Spanish Flu.

We can’t and shouldn’t shutdown our economy and our schools every year or every other year or even every 10 years without doing permanent or at least long-term damage to our country.  Disease is part of life and we all need to figure out how to manage the risks that surround it.  We should use science to develop therapeutics and vaccines that treat these diseases.  BTW – kudos to the doctors and scientists who participated in operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccine that is currently being distributed, and those who developed therapeutics to treat those who contracted this virus.  We can and should protect healthcare workers so that they can care for those who do get sick without shaming the rest of the country who just needs to keep living.

The bottom line is that I don’t believe the draconian steps that our government forced upon us has impacted the total number of people infected in this country.  The numbers actually might even have been lower if we hadn’t applied a perverse monetary incentive to declare everything from gunshot deaths and cancer fatalities as Covid casualties.  

Some will declare victory when this is over, and we should fear them most.  For their own benefit they will try to convince us that this handling of the Coronavirus should become the new normal. They will tell us that we should listen to the politicians and the media, the most untrustworthy people on the planet, and give away our freedom of movement, speech and religion and even our freedom to earn a living, at their whim.  If you are unsure of the potential duplicity of the press and politicians in matters like this, just read The Great Influenza by John Barry about the 1918 Spanish Flu.  It will enlighten you.

If we are to retain any of the freedoms that this country was founded on, we must denounce our city, state and federal government’s attempt to shred our Bill of Rights and control every aspect of our lives.  We must reject people in the media and politicians who will deny millions of people the opportunity to make a living while they themselves continue to cash their bloated checks.  It’s easy to ask someone else to pay the price for their oppressive regulations.  If they try to sell this as the new normal, I plan to reject it.  I will use common sense practices to protect myself and others, but will defy any paranoid, controlling, manipulative regulations no matter the consequences!!

Joe Biden's 100 Day Lie

 Joe Biden’s 100 Day Lie

The View from the Middle

 

Joe Biden just put out a statement that says that after his inauguration he is going to ask the country to wear a mask for 100 days, as if that will finally put an end to this dreaded virus.  This is incredibly misleading in a number of ways.  First, this suggests that no one in the United States is wearing a mask today.  Unfortunately for Joe, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.  According to a UPI article written October, 23^rd, 93% of Americans already wear masks sometimes, often or always.  The same article revealed that 72% of Americans already “always” wear a mask.  Does Joe Biden actually think that he can drive those numbers up just by asking Americans to wear masks?  Of course not.  This is just his attempt to take credit for something that is going to happen anyway.

If you have been following any of the news shows lately, they have been showing that virtually every virologist and doctor on TV has been predicting that this virus will be under control by May or June in the United States.  This is because of a combination of herd immunity and the new vaccine which will begin to be delivered in the United States by the end of December, thanks to President Trump.

So, what is “herd immunity’ anyway? Herd Immunity is when a large part of a country’s population is infected by a disease, such as a virus, and survives it and thus becomes immune to it.  In effect, herd immunity gives a virus nowhere to go.  Everywhere it looks it finds immunity.

Back in June, the CDC said that the actual infection rate for Covid-19 might be 10 times as high as the published infection number because so many people have had mild symptoms or even have been asymptomatic and thus have not even been tested.  If this is true then today over 150 million Americans have already had this virus and survived, meaning that they have the antibodies and are thus immune to it.  That is almost half of the country’s population.  The CDC also suggested that we would reach herd immunity for covid-19 in the US when 70% of our population has had the virus.  We’re not far off that number right now.  

Now, there are two ways to become immune to this virus.  First, you can get it, as I did, and survive.  At that point you have acquired the antibodies and are thus immune to the disease.  The second way to become immune is to get the vaccine, which, in effect does the same thing.  Now, let’s do a little projecting.  If we have roughly 50% herd immunity now, what if we have 50 million more Americans get infected and survive by May? (remember, the survival rate is roughly 99.8%).  Plus, what if we have 30 to 50 million Americans get the vaccine by May, as projected?   That will get us to that 70% to 75% herd immunity number by May or June.

Joe Biden knows that most experts are already projecting a dramatic decrease if not a complete demise of this disease by May or June, which is exactly 100 days after Joe Biden’s inauguration.  His proclamation / recommendation to wear masks will have nothing to do with it.  He might as well ask us to wave dead chickens over our heads for 100 days.  The results are coming (nothing last forever) no matter what Joe says or does, but he will try his very best to take credit for the results.  This is the action of a typical, deceitful politician.  Way to go, Joe.  You’re already showing your true colors.

Hey Joe, why don’t you promise that green leaves will start growing on our trees 100 days after your inauguration if we all wear our masks.  That could (will) happen too!!