On May 13, 1888, Brazil abolished slavery with the passage of the Lei Áurea (“Golden Law”).
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Brazilian slavery
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On the 1197th Day…
Yesterday, the COVID crisis ended. Officially.
That is, on May 11, 2023, the “public health emergency” expired, following the termination of the “national emergency” over a month earlier.
Jordan Schachtel, writing at The Dossier on Substack, did the math and noted that this “marks an incredible 1196 Days To Slow The Spread.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Schachtel elaborated. “Almost three and a half years of engaging in peak absurdity in the name of stopping [the] virus. And yet, the ‘experts’ don’t have a single thing to show for it.”
Remember why our leaders wanted to “slow” that “spread”: not to save lives over all. They admitted that the gross numbers of the affected couldn’t be affected by the half-a-month lockdown and mask mandates that Anthony Fauci and President Donald Trump pushed. They argued merely that lockdowns might “flatten” the distribution of cases and personal crises over time to alleviate a bottleneck — crowding — for a brief, initial pandemic period in the nation’s hospitals.
That was it.
That was the rationale.
But after the 15 days were over, almost none of the emergency pandemic units set up by the military had been used to take hospital overflow. Either (a) the 15 days had been enough, or (b) it had all been unnecessary. The answer is (b).
Everything else was just politics — the extended lockdowns, mask mandates, suppression of alternative treatments, the massive subsidies and vaccine mandates and passports and much else. What it sure seemed like? A vast jury-rigged scheme to get people to take the experimental “vaccines” then being rushed through the regulatory process.
Indeed, one thing was very clear from Day 16 onward: a “national” policy made no sense, for the pandemic hit regions of the country at different times and to different degrees. New York got hit hard in 2020, but the Pacific Northwest’s hospitals were mostly empty during the pandemic — causing a very different “beds” stressor.
Yet our politicians pushed a national policy of emergencies that lasted, at the very least, 1181 days too long.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Orson Welles
I don’t regard my career as something so precious that it comes before my convictions.
Orson Welles, in an interview with Bernie Braden in Paris (1960).
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Axis in Africa
On May 12, 1943, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.
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Deadbeat California
The injustices pile up so thick and fast that one can’t really keep track. Some state governments are especially prolific in producing them. Governments like the Deadbeat State, formerly known as the Golden State.
Now businesses in California must pay the price for the state government’s profligacy during the pandemic, when it borrowed $20 billion from the federales to help pay unemployment benefits. California is refusing to repay.
In the budget proposal for 2023-2024, $750 million had originally been set aside to begin repaying this debt. But Governor Gavin Newsom killed the provision. So, in accordance with federal regulations, businesses must take up the slack. Starting in 2023, the unemployment tax rate that businesses will pay, which had been 0.6 percent, is being increased by 0.3 percent until the loan is repaid.
“California is just not really an employer-friendly state,” says Marc Joffe of the Cato Institute. “This one thing will not be a difference between a business remaining open or closing, but it’s just another burden on top of the many burdens the state puts on employers.”
A major contributor to the size of this debt is the state’s failure to act to prevent massive fraud in filings for unemployment benefits. LexisNexis estimates that fraudulent payments amount to more than $32 billion.
California taxpayers must pay for this unsalutary neglect one way or another. But what Newsom has done ends up penalizing businesses in particular.
Yet another reason to avoid doing business in the state.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Alfred Hitchcock
We do not recommend suicide as a way of life.
Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1965).
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Union, disunion
On May 11, 1858, Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. State.
Nine years later, to the day, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg’s independence and neutrality were affirmed in the Second Treaty of London.
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Here-at-Home Problem
The China problem is “not just a distant ‘over there’ problem,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.) recently argued. “As the spy balloon incident as well as the illegal CCP police stations on American soil illustrate, it’s a ‘right here at home’ problem.”
It’s also a just-north-of-us problem. Canada is currently expelling a Chinese diplomat and dealing with the fallout over China’s interventions in Canadian politics, along with big financial gifts to a foundation for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s father.
An article in The Globe and Mail nonchalantly explained the reasons China is engaged in trying to control the speech of every one of the planet’s inhabitants. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has many international goals:
- “build acceptance abroad for its claims on Taiwan, a self-ruled island that it . . . reserves the right to annex by force.”
- “play down its conduct in Xinjiang, where the office of former UN Human Rights commissioner Michelle Bachelet last year said China has committed ‘serious human-rights violations.’”
- “generate support for a draconian 2020 national-security law to silence opposition and dissent in Hong Kong.”
- “quell foreign support for Tibet, a region China invaded and annexed more than 70 years ago, and to discourage opposition to Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea and sweeping maritime claims in the region.”
Having committed a long list of crimes against humanity, the CCP understandably demands that everyone keep their mouths shut.
Rep. Gallagher believes the U.S. should improve “our deterrent posture across the Taiwan Strait” and communicate “in clear terms that we will not stand idly by while the CCP continues to increase its aggression internationally” — while President Biden has repeatedly pledged U.S. military support for Taiwan.
But for some reason, Biden has never discussed the prospect with the American public.
As if it weren’t our concern, too.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Orson Welles
The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.
Orson Welles, in an interview from Hollywood Voices (1971), Andrew Sarris, editor.
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Victoria Woodhull
On May 10, 1872, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for President of the United States.
In a landmark Supreme Court decision on May 10, 1893, the tomato was ruled a vegetable, not a fruit.