Free Republic

California’s fiscal squeeze tightened up Sunday when congressional leaders reached agreement on a $900 billion COVID-19 relief package that did not include direct aid to state and local governments. It means that Gov. Gavin Newsom faces fewer choices in fashioning a 2021-22 fiscal year budget that he must propose to legislators by Jan. 10 and that California cities struggling with budget deficits won’t be getting help from Washington. However, Newsom, et al, have since gotten some good news from California taxpayers. Administration forecasts that revenues would plummet into the abyss as pandemic-spawned recession struck the state proved to be too...

Here, life has felt incredibly normal. It's also revealed how abnormal the lifestyle I followed in Virginia really was.OCALA, Fla. — Last Sunday I plopped a steaming hashbrown casserole and a bowl of freshly sliced oranges down on one of a row of endless folding tables covered in those flimsy plastic tablecloths you get at the dollar store. The casseroles were outnumbered only by the pans of homemade cinnamon rolls, and the fruit section was meager: it was a good Southern Baptist potluck. Church ladies buzzed around, removing tin foil from tin pans and putting serving spoons in each dish,...

The quality of life here has dwindled, and mental health has taken a hit. I had to start seeing a therapist because every other coping outlet has been eliminated.It’s more than eight months after the March 20, 2020 lockdown orders Gov. Gavin Newson placed on California. Most of the state is in a lockdown again, and we are now subject to a curfew, although no one can explain how that is going to “slow the spread.” Every freedom that I enjoy feels impeded upon, and simple outings can lead to a storm of frustration as I feel like everyone around...

HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — Hermosa Beach resident and swimmer Ana Fradkin can often be found at an outdoor pool in El Segundo. Swimming gives her peace of mind, so-much-so she makes in into the pool before dawn about five times a week. “I’m a butterflier, and a freestyler. But now I’m a nothing, I’m a survivor who just swims", said Fradkin. Fradkin is doing everything she can to survive today, because in August, she lost her 14-year-old son Scotty to an accidental drug overdose. The tragedy has uprooted her world, along with her husband and younger daughter Juliet. Fradkin says...

The idea that bars should remain open yet schools remain closed runs counter to any sense of logic, not to mention good public policy.The past nine months have seen more than a quarter-million Americans die from the coronavirus. Each and every death represents a tragedy — a life cut short, an empty place at the family table this holiday season, children mourning their parents, even parents mourning their children. But a separate and ongoing tragedy has also struck at countless more than another quarter-million Americans: Children who have disappeared from school following last spring’s COVID-19 closures. A survey conducted by...

One of the things happening in South Dakota is an infection rate that's among the worst in the nation, at about 8,000 cases per 100,000 people. In Vermont, another small, rural state with a Republican governor, Gov. Phil Scott has embraced safety measures, and the differences are pretty stark. Like South Dakota, Vermont has fewer than 1 million residents, most of whom don't live in cities. It has about 500 cases per 100,000 people. That's the lowest rate in the nation.

Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.. One thing should be abundantly clear by now, after ten months of this pandemic: our political leaders hate us and they think we’re stupid. Nothing else can explain the blatant hypocrisy we’ve seen, mostly from Democrat governors and mayors who are eager to impose harsh lockdowns and strict rules for the public at large but then turn around and do whatever they please with their own families, friends, and cronies. Examples abound, but this week brought a fresh spectacle of hypocrisy in the form of a nervous, patently disingenuous apology from California Gov. Gavin Newsom,...

During Connecticut’s ongoing second wave of COVID-19, Gov. Ned Lamont has taken a noticeably different approach to restrictions than he did during the first wave last spring. Whereas in March the governor closed schools and businesses as part of a widespread lockdown, this time he has pledged to avoid similar measures and has resisted the types of sweeping closures that governors in Washington, Michigan, California and elsewhere have recently announced.

While 'little people' told to cancel Thanksgiving, Speaker plans lavish party. The office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is responding to backlash over a planned dinner she is hosting with new Democratic members of Congress as coronavirus cases continue to spike throughout the country.

Her Activities Are ‘Essential’ Through her chief of staff, Mayor Muriel Bowser claimed her trip to a political rally constituted ‘essential travel,’ which therefore exempted her and her staff from her own quarantine order. Talk about the D.C. Swamp: Mere days after issuing a revised order regarding quarantines after travel to coronavirus “hot spots,” the mayor of the nation’s capital openly ignored the rules she established.While many will decry Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) for violating the travel restrictions, they shouldn’t feel surprised by her double standards. After all, Bowser and the Washington City Council have compelled D.C. residents with...

Democrats are bitterly clinging to a myth that if only someone else had been president, the pandemic would have passed over the United States as if by some divine mark of virtue. On Sunday, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes accused the president of perpetuating an “extended mass slaughter” of the American people in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming that 2020 has been “the deadliest year in American history.” Republican staffers “all worked together on a project that just let our people be led to the slaughter for months and months. Dying alone with no one around. Day after day,” he...

March 28 – very early in the pandemic – an article that I felt at the time received far too little attention. “Drugs, Suicide, and Crime: Empirical Estimates of the Human Toll of the Shutdown” by economists Audrey and Thomas Duncan cited empirical literature on the human toll of economic devastation. This article forecasted more than 100,000 excess deaths due to drug overdoses, suicide, alcoholism, homicide, and untreated depression – all a result not of the virus but of policies of mandatory human separation, economic downturn, business and school closures, closed medical services, and general depression that comes with a...

San Francisco has managed to curb the virus slightly in its city – but at what cost? Those paying sky high taxes to live in the Bay Area may soon be wondering why they are paying to live in a shut down city that state and local government officials have refused to allow to reopen due to a virus with a CDC-predicted infection fatality rate of between 0.00002 and 0.093. The entire downtown area of the city, once vibrant with business and tourism, is now “empty” according to a new report by AP. Everything from food trucks to local workers...

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the stay-at-home measures and disruptions to daily life that aimed to slow the spread of the virus and save lives led many public health specialists to worry that the nation also could see an uptick in suicides, drug overdoses and domestic violence. Nine months later, those grim predictions look like they're coming true. "There is a mental health wave to this pandemic," Dr. Ken Duckworth, chief medical officer of the National Alliance for Mental Illness, told ABC News. "We as a species don't do well with uncertainty." The pandemic, for many Americans, has exacerbated already-stressful...

A far left group is vowing to “make sure Trump leaves” the White House after the election, even if he wins, with radicals preparing to storm and occupy DC. The Shut Down DC group says it will “be in the streets before the polls even close,” asserting that “Trump will not leave office without mass mobilization and direct action.” “On Election Day, when you’re done voting, doing election protection, or getting out the vote, come join us at Black Lives Matter Plaza,” states the group’s manifesto. “We’re inviting everybody who agrees with these organizing principles to work together to make...

Freaking out about ‘herd immunity’ looks like a smear campaign designed to prevent Americans, including the president, from hearing the scientific case against the lockdowns. Why is the press and officialdom suddenly shrieking about “herd immunity”? On Oct. 12, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said pursuing herd immunity is “unethical.” Within hours, most of the media broadcast the same message. It’s as though someone sent out a list of talking points. “Sweden’s experiment with herd immunity is unethical and undemocratic,” Australia’s ABC intoned, “and reveals an underlying political pathology.” According to Fortune, herd immunity against SARS-CoV2 is a...

the impact of mandated shutdowns ... In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, widespread lockdown restrictions were imposed, ostensibly to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed and medical resources from being consumed to exhaustion. Whether policymakers purposely or out of ignorance disregarded them, the tradeoffs of stay-at-home orders were immediate and severe: a massive spike in unemployment, rivaling the Great Depression ... Among Mideast states, New York’s GDP declined the most: 39.3%. .. long-lasting nature of lockdowns on New York City. Yet compared against all other U.S. states, Hawaii and Nevada’s GDP plummeted the most: both by 42.2%. ... artificial economic slowdown...

What makes Trump look worse before the election: trying to get a deal with no success, or pointing out that the other side doesn’t want a deal for political reasons and pulling out of talks? President Trump announced on Twitter that he was shutting down stimulus talks with Democrats until after the election because they were “not negotiating in good faith.” “Pelosi is asking for $2.4 Trillion Dollars to bailout poorly run, high crime, Democrat States, money that is in no way related to COVID-19,” wrote Trump.The president continued: “Immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill...

The political drama in Michigan reveals how essential it is in a republic that the citizens defy unconstitutional and illegal orders of their government. The news broke late on Oct. 2 that the Michigan Supreme Court had invalidated Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s authority to issue executive orders related to Covid-19 after April 30. This was a victory for the rule of law, for the separation of powers, and for the liberties of the American people (okay, maybe just the people of Michigan).Whitmer had declared a state of emergency on March 10 and extended it through a series of executive orders, on...

Without "much more aggressive shutdowns," a New York Times editorial warns, "well over a million" Americans "may ultimately die" from COVID-19. The paper does not cite a source for that estimate, which seems highly implausible based on the death toll so far, projections for the next few months, the gap between total infections and confirmed cases, and a crude case fatality rate that continues to fall. Independent data scientist Youyang Gu, who has a good track record of predicting COVID-19 fatalities, is currently projecting about 231,000 deaths in the United States by November 1. The University of Washington's Institute for...