Just because I am irreverent does not mean I do not take the COVID-19 matter seriously. Even though my own immune system is compromised I admit I see humor in most things and that has helped me live beyond my own life expectancy.
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp Talks About COVID-19's Spread in Georgia
By Erick Erickson
A little while ago, I interviewed Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp about the spread of COVID-19 in Georgia. The daily count of the virus has gone up to over 40 cases and now impacts the entire metro Atlanta area. Three counties in South Georgia also now have cases.
The University System of Georgia is shuttering. Many counties in Georgia are closing schools early for spring break. Even the state legislature has shut down and left Atlanta early — a first since probably the Civil War (don’t hold me to that).
Governor Kemp is urging churches to close and schools to close but is not yet demanding it. He wants local systems to have flexibility. I talked to him about all these things and the state of the budget if the legislature is leaving before wrapping up their legislative session with work still to do.
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What the current virus episode indicates is virtually every time something new occurs and there is a demand for a government response the government is often slow in its response and , in some cases as with this one, the testing process is truly behind the curve.
Our government is woefully behind in technology when it comes to something as basic as computers. Most agencies have old ones and different so the matter of communication within the government is impacted.
Obviously congress is interested in transfers that are visible and buy votes than addressing matters that are of the "behind the scene" type. We are very vulnerable to a "cyber war."
As for Trump's response to this problem, I am posting a WSJ editorial which I believe is reasonable in whatever blame sharing is appropriate. Personally speaking,I am tired of watching our V P praise Trump every time he get's a chance for reminding us Trump acted early..
Meanwhile, Trump did act decisively and early but he also, understandably, blended a need to be factual during a period when knowledge was flawed with the need/desire to be upbeat in order to build confidence. Sometimes,Trump did more harm than good because, as I have written, it is in Trump's nature to overstate and be upbeat. He is a former real estate mogul and expresses everything in superlatives. That said,he has also been effective His policies have been mostly productive and I reject those who hate and demean him and want him to fail and say this is his Katrina moment. Lamentably, Trump, as with most politicians, has a problem admitting when he is wrong. That is a human trait but is less acceptable when one is in a leadership position.
As in Ecclesiastes, this too shall pass. We will learn from this period, probably not make the same mistakes in the future but will also make new ones as we are confronted with new occurrences. That is life and that is what one should expect from big, bloated government and government bureaucracies. It comes with the territory.
America’s Self-Shutdown
The public has made ‘social distancing’ de facto national policy.
By The Editorial Board
For all the foreboding about the novel coronavirus—foreboding that is justified—it is heartening to see the American people responding in ways reminiscent of the frontier spirit. Most people are doing what they have to do to survive a clear and immediate threat to their lives and communities.
The new watchword is “social distancing.” That means minimizing the transmission of an infectious virus for which no personal immunity exists by minimizing the chance that any one carrier will pass the virus to others. The speed with which the American people and their institutions are executing that sound strategy is breathtaking.
Private companies, where possible, are advising their employees to work from home. To minimize large crowds, professional sports leagues are suspending seasons. St. Patrick’s Day parades, held back to the 19th century, have been canceled. Broadway’s theaters are closed. Universities are voluntarily replacing in-person classes with online instruction. The list lengthens by the hour.
Health emergencies in the U.S. mainly and appropriately remain the responsibility of state and local officials. Governors in states with the greatest outbreaks so far—Washington, California, New York and New Jersey—are closing schools and ordering limitations on the size of public gatherings. These closures will come at enormous cost to affected individuals and the broader economy. The possibility that the virus will tip the U.S. into a recession is real, though unlike 2008 the economy was healthy when the virus struck.
Here at the Journal, we regard the stock market as a sensitive barometer of expectations. The historic decline of the market this week is posing an obvious question: Where is the nation headed with the coronavirus?
Given the scale and costs of voluntary mitigation underway, the moment has arrived for the relevant authorities in Washington to inform the American people more precisely about the purpose and parameters of social distancing. President Trump’s 10-minute talk Wednesday evening wasn’t nearly enough, and his focus on travel bans from Europe is not adequate to explain the domestic disruption. The answers have to come from the presidential task force headed by Vice President Mike Pence.
Useful primers are available online, such as a recent article in the Lancet—“How will country-based mitigation measures influence the course of the Covid-19 epidemic?” We recommend it. But Americans shouldn’t have to poke through medical journals or watch C-Span to see NIH’s Anthony Fauci testify before House committees.
Mr. Trump should assemble his specialists prominently to describe the realities and goals of all these voluntary closures. They ought to explain the math behind minimizing person-to-person transmission of the virus—the so-called reproduction number. Or why it’s important to suppress infectious spread before the onset of detectable symptoms. They should explain how mitigation will “flatten the curve” of the virus’s course by spreading it over 12 to 18 months, rather than letting it spike destructively across the population in two months.
We no longer live on the frontier. Science may not fully understand this virus yet, but it knows a lot about the reasons for dislocating a nation’s social and economic life. It’s time for leaders to explain this to a worried but resilient American public.
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Schiff should be pleased the focus is off him but it will return and when it does it will highlight , once again, what Kim has , ie. a liar and threat to our nation.
Adam Schiff’s Surveillance State
By Kimberley A. Strassel
An FCC official calls him out for obtaining call records without judicial review.
Lawmakers are debating ways to prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from abusing its surveillance authority again. While they’re at it, they have an obligation to address their own privacy transgressor, Rep. Adam Schiff.
That’s the gist of a pointed letter from Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr, which landed Thursday at the House Intelligence Committee. Chairman Schiff spent months conducting secret impeachment hearings. His ensuing report revealed that he’d also set up his own surveillance state. Mr. Schiff issued secret subpoenas to phone carriers, to obtain and publish the call records of political rivals. Targets included Rudy Giuliani and another attorney of the president, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee (Rep. Devin Nunes) and a journalist (John Solomon).
Impeachment is over, but Mr. Carr hasn’t forgotten this abuse of power, and his letter, which I obtained, calls for answers and reform. The FCC takes call privacy seriously, only recently having proposed some $200 million in fines on phone carriers for failing to protect customer data. Mr. Carr’s message to Mr. Schiff is that Congress doesn’t get a pass. It is not automatically entitled to “a secret and partisan process that deprives Americans of their legal right to maintain the privacy of this sensitive information.”
Mr. Carr doesn’t dispute that Congress may, “in at least some circumstances,” have the legal authority to obtain call records under the Communications Act. The offense, he writes, was denying his targets the right to fight the subpoenas: “Courts long ago established a process for Americans to seek judicial review before Congress obtains and then publishes documents in response to a congressional subpoena.”As a lawyer and congressional lifer, Mr. Schiff knows this. It’s expected that Congress give notice of demands, as it did when it issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Mazars for Donald Trump’s financial records. That notice allowed the president to file suit to block those institutions from responding. The Supreme Court in December issued stays, halting Deutsche Bank and Mazars compliance while it considers Mr. Trump’s appeal. Oral arguments are scheduled for March 31. Congress isn’t entitled to everything.
This history is what made Mr. Schiff’s subpoenas so devious and abusive. He issued them secretly. He didn’t notify his targets, and Republican committee members were barred from telling the public what they knew about the subpoenas.
Worse, he deceived one of his targets. He sent a subpoena for call records to Mr. Giuliani on Sept. 30 and suggested Mr. Giuliani had two weeks to work with the committee, even as Mr. Schiff was already secretly demanding Giuliani call records from a phone carrier.
House Democrats suggest this cloak-and-dagger was necessary for their investigation. Mr. Carr punctures that absurd claim. Yes, law enforcement sometimes needs secrecy in surveillance warrants, so as to freely monitor “real time” on continuing communications. But Mr. Schiff was seeking past call data. Telling Mr. Giuliani about the carrier subpoenas wouldn’t change the call-record history. The only reason to keep him in the dark was to strip him of the right to litigate.
Mr. Carr details how many legal issues Mr. Schiff denied his targets the opportunity to test. He notes that the Supreme Court is considering the limits on congressional subpoena authority in Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Deutsche Bank, and that the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia last month dismissed a House lawsuit to compel testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn. Mr. Carr also points out the heightened First Amendment questions that accompanied Mr. Schiff’s acquisition and publication of records for an investigative journalist—one who was writing stories critical of Mr. Schiff.
And he asks whether Mr. Schiff exceeded his authority by publishing call records that lack “any apparent nexus to the Committee’s legitimate work.” That includes a drive-by smear of Mr. Nunes. In Watkins v. U.S. (1957), the Supreme Court held that “there is no congressional power to expose for the sake of exposure,” especially when “the predominant result can only be the invasion of the private rights of individuals.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Carr asks: Is Mr. Schiff continuing to issue secret subpoenas? And what else is he sitting on? The impeachment report indicates the committee obtained “nearly 4,000 pages of confidential call records,” nowhere near what Mr. Schiff published. Who else’s life is getting ransacked at this moment?
“The Committee created out of whole cloth a secret and effectively unreviewable and unchecked mechanism for obtaining call records on any and all Americans,” Mr. Carr writes. He holds out the possibility the FCC will modify its rules to check such abuse.
But he also suggests Congress take the question up as part of its surveillance debate. That’s the better forum, and it ought to be as big a priority for Republicans as reform of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The House has little credibility to lecture the FBI on surveillance abuse if it won’t rein in its own snoopers.
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