Power to Destroy

Over two hundred years ago, Justice John Marshall and Daniel Webster came to the conclusion that "the power to tax is the power to destroy". After a tornado ravaged my hometown of Nashville and in the midst of his COVID plague extended lock down, Mayor John Cooper must want to finish Nashvillians off with his thirty-two percent property tax increase. I am not sure the citizens of Nashville will abide this despotism.

Nashville Punishes Taxpayers

My hometown of Nashville has just announced a thirty-two percent increase in property taxes. This is in the wake of a continuing forced closure of many businesses here that has lasted over a month and is not being ended by Mayor Cooper in spite of the fact our governor has opened most of the rest of our state as the COVID rates stabilize. The property owners are being forced to pay for the mismanagement of our city by those who continue to mismanage our city. At a time when some city workers continue to be paid while staying at home and not telecommuting, let municipal workers share our sacrifice with pay cuts and layoffs because a tax increase now on property owners who have been deprived of over a month of earning because of the Coronavirus lock down is tyranny!

The Corruption Chronicles

I do not know who is more corrupt, the mainstream media or the Democrat politicians. The media are baldfaced political partisans "resisting" our President. The Democrat politicians are self-serving, utterly venal Communists who support only the crony variety of capitalism that fills their wallets and the accounts of their largest backers. Both the dinosaur press and the mendacious Democrats would rather blame the innocent President Trump than the completely guilty Red Chinese leadership for the COVID crisis. I say the political flacks and the propagandist hacks are equally vitiated.

America's Elusive Recovery

COVID-19 may never be cured. A vaccine may never be developed. Even if treatments emerge for Coronavirus, we have already sustained such consequential economic damage that a depression is inevitable. If America elects Democrats on top of this to control the US Senate and replace President Trump, there will be no rebound in the economy for a generation. Even if the President is reelected and Republicans hold the Senate and retake the US House, we may well face misery on the scale of the Great Depression. President Trump gives us a better chance, even if it remains a slim chance, to avert the worst economy since the 1930s.

On Fear Itself

We are all going to die of something. Poverty kills. If you keep us locked in our homes away from our jobs and businesses, you will eventually kill us more surely than COVID-19 ever would. Most people survive the Novel Coronavirus, while economic depressions destroy whole nations and destabilize the world. Open America back up and let us, the citizenry decide the level of risk we are willing to accept. We are not fools or suicidal and we will comport ourselves accordingly.

Blame Red China

A Republican Party strategy document leaked that instructs GOP politicians that they should blame Communist China for what COVID-19 has wrought. That is precisely the right idea because China's lies enabled the disease to spread into a pandemic. It would be shocking dereliction not to fix blame where it belongs.

World's Greatest Salesman

Donald Trump is no doctor. Trump is a businessman and a good one, He also happens to be the greatest salesman in the world. The President sometimes wonders out loud, which produced his moronic conjecture about bleach, disinfectant, and ultraviolet light within the human body. The President should have known better, but he is no idiot and he listens to medical experts about COVID-19.

Heads Above Water

While most of us are struggling to survive the economic downturn forced on us by the government, the elite spent yesterday, which was Earth Day, hugging trees and criticizing our President. These celebrities may have some nominal religion but they really worship themselves and earth itself as was the case with primitive, pre-Christian man.

The Corona Confederacy

Some of the states from the old Southern Confederacy are to be among the first to reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 plague. South Carolina, Georgia, my home state of Tennessee, and super-state Texas are starting to emerge from shutdown. Though some may characterize us as ignorant and our action to awaken our economy as premature, governors of these states are taking measured steps to ensure deaths from an economic depression do not exceed anything the Novel Coronavirus could throw at us. We balance risk every day. Some in these states will be sickened and even die from COVID, but people are dying from the virus during the shutdown as well. I pray effective treatments and a vaccine rapidly become available, but we can not fall into an unrecoverable economic depression because that will kill people in great numbers as well.

To Die Broke

We are all going to die. With the current lock down, government is trying to assure we all die broke.

Our Best Interests

Many of us will be bankrupt if the country does not open up very soon. Those who owned businesses embarked in no moral hazard but because of the shutdown forced on them by government, many have shut their doors for good and others are teetering. We take risks every day, from crossing a busy Manhattan street to go to a job, to climbing a utility pole to get paid, to harvesting fish in heavy seas, and we can not lock ourselves in our houses to avoid these risks and survive. Maybe we have not seen the worst of COVID-19 yet, but we have to have a functioning economy to be a viable nation.

Government Stealing Freedom

There has always been a struggle through the ages as to whether the government answered to the citizen or the citizen was subjugated by a ruler. Through most of time and in most places, the government prevailed over the people, which almost always meant tyranny. In America, it was different prior to our new plague, with the people holding the leaders to account. Now, we are just about as deprived of rights as serfs were, for so long as we are willing to remain sheep to those who only have their own interests at heart.

Flattening the Nation

Several categories of business will likely not come back if there is no readily available cure and/or demonstrably effective vaccine that is universally administered and that the public has absolute confidence will work. Dining out in restaurants is likely a thing of the past until Coronavirus is rendered harmless. The same is true for vacationing on a cruise or flying in a commercial airliner. Similarly, hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts of all varieties are likely to see few guests. Casinos and theme parks are over too until a cure or proven vaccine emerges. Tourist destination towns (including my hometown Nashville) are likely to see few tourists. Spectator sports may go on, but without spectators, and if athletes are infected while competing, the sports will not go on until a cure is found. Movie theaters, concerts, plays, and just about any live performance will remain audience free until the public believes it is safe to be in a crowd. I do not know if our health measures have as yet flattened the curve of the virus, but the virus certainly has flattened the American economy and much of the rest of the world as well.

Virus Versus Trump

If there is a surge of deaths, things could go very badly for President Trump. These losses would not be the sitting President's fault, but he will inevitably be blamed for them by those who already hate him. There is no way around future fatalities, whether Trump is in office or someone else, and the economy can not stay shut down much longer without causing a depression.

Trump Versus Virus

President Trump has to balance the fight against COVID-19 versus the complete collapse of the US economy that the shutdown is causing. At some point soon, the economy must reopen even though people will still be sickened by and die from Coronavirus. The President is already despised by many, and the inevitable deaths from this plague will be laid at Trump's feet by those who loath him no matter what. Ultimately, the President must save the economy to preserve our nation, even though that will mean more deaths.

Murdered by Rival

If a geopolitical adversary deliberately hid details of a readily-transmissible virus that then killed thousands of people in the United States, I would contend that opponent is criminally culpable. Red China could have warned the world early and be hailed as a hero nation, but instead acted as a international outlaw with their pattern of minimization and deception.

Chances of Recovery

Thank the Lord, most people afflicted with COVID-19 do not die but recover. I only pray the US and world economy are as resilient as most of the Coronavirus patients have been. That is a hope and a prayer but not a realistic expectation. I expect a worldwide economic depression unparalleled since the Great Depression.

World Might Unite

Would it not be wonderful if the nations of the world could forget their differences and rally to fight COVID-19? With every country suffering from this plague except North Korea who implausibly denies any cases, all the great minds on earth could work together for treatments, vaccines, and ultimately a cure. This of course will never happen.

The Saddest Easter

In our world of home confinement, the Lord is still here. Coronavirus may extinguish our lives but it can not dim our faith.

Just the Facts

One thing about COVID-19 that is absolutely true is that the models keep changing. Another thing that is true is that the advice from medical and government experts keeps changing. First the economy was going to be shut down for two weeks but now at least two months seems likely. First they said no masks were necessary for non-medical folks but now they mandate the masks in many places. First there were going to be two million dead Americans, but now thankfully the number may be less than one hundred thousand. If you keep moving the goalposts, there is no way to win the game.

Why Destroy Ourselves?

America might well have ended up better off using the German model for fighting COVID-19. We should have isolated those over sixty, those with underlying respiratory issues, or immune disorders, but kept the rest of our economy up and running as Germany did. We should have had old-fashioned house calls with medical professionals monitoring the sick and taking them immediately to hospital if their conditions deteriorated, as the Germans did with their "medical taxis". That way hospitals would not have been overwhelmed but those entering medical crisis could still have received timely care to save their lives. We can not put the genie back in the bottle but can still adopt these life-saving policies without destroying our economy in the manner that Germany has instituted to preserve the German economy.

COVID Is Winning

If we are in a war against the novel Coronavirus, then this plague is winning. We have closed most of our nation's economy. We have run up debt to the extent that America will be left with a fiat currency. There is no vaccine in sight. Can we surrender to this sickness or at least plead for a truce?

Not a War

The struggle against COVID-19 is not a war. In a war, you do not destroy your own economy.

Closed for Business

America is perpetuating much misery by keeping the economy shut down. We must reopen business again soon before the dislocation is unrecoverable. What the nation is doing is equivalent to slitting one's own throat to remove a splinter.

Were We Ready?

America was unprepared for a pandemic. There were voices in the wilderness warning of some coming plague years ago. Bill Gates was one of them. If we had listened then, thousands of lives might have been saved. Recrimination will not turn back the clock but we can never be caught short again.

Level of Readiness

You never reveal to potential enemies that your preparedness for war is anything other than optimal. I agree with the decision to relieve the captain of the aircraft carrier who disclosed his vessel was NOT mission-ready. Whether it was a virus or broken nuclear reactor, America's adversaries did not need to know any of our few carriers was having any issues that would diminish our ability to respond to threats.

Our Pyrrhic Victory

We may (and I hope will) one day overcome Coronavirus. If in the process, we have destroyed our economy, our Constitutional rights, and our founding values, we will have lost more than any virus could ever take from us. Prior to this, I thought just about every job was essential. After all, what we earned supported us and our families, kept roofs over our heads, and food on our tables. We are turning millions of heretofore productive Americans into involuntary dependents of the state. They never wanted universal basic income, but some may like their government checks more than they ever liked work. We are giving up our freedom of movement, the right to open many of our businesses, and even houses of worship to people who failed to protect from COVID-19 in the first place. We will likely eventually beat the virus but may be beating ourselves for good in the process.

Impeachment Round Two

It looks like Pelosi and her Democrats want to impeach President Trump again, this time for his conduct regarding the Coronavirus. I am hoping the people of our besieged nation have tired of partisan shenanigans in this time of the greatest national crisis of my lifetime and rebuke Pelosi and her cadre of troublemakers.

State of Grace

We never knew how good we had it prior to COVID-19. We did not count our blessings near enough. We did not guess how fragile it all could be. The way time is marked may now change with a new "BC"- Before COVID.

Crime Free State

Red China has very little street crime. In this police and surveillance state, Communist Chinese cities do not suffer the level of burglaries, robberies, and muggings of comparably-sized Western cities. The Draconian punishments the Reds dish out are a deterrent and that is certainly a factor. The other reason you see is that when the government and the police are themselves super-criminals, it crowds out the ordinary criminals we see other places. When a whale occupies a small pool, there is no room for little fish.