A Progressive-Democrat Governor’s View

…of the intelligence and responsibility of American citizens, including particularly Kentucky citizens.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) has said he’s going to identify, track, and isolate Kentucky citizens who dare go to their church’s Easter services. His excuse—and that’s all it is, a cynical rationalization—for his government’s surveillance of a broad swath of citizens is the present Wuhan Virus situation.

It’s for the greater good, you see.

I hear people say, “It’s my choice”. Well, it’s not the person next to you’s choice….

That’s plainly not true. It was the person next to you’s clear choice to be there, also, knowing full well the nature and the proximity of the company both of those individuals, and it was the clear choice of all of the rest of the congregation.

Neither is there anything in either the Free Exercise Clause or the Establishment Clause that says “except for when a State governor thinks better.” This is simply a confluence of two Progressive-Democrat ideologies: American citizens are too grindingly stupid to make their own decisions or to act intelligently (here, to govern their own post-service behavior), and religious freedom is just a phrase that’s gone out of vogue because, after all, the Constitution isn’t binding on anything.

Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) is on the right track:

Taking license plates at church? Quarantining someone for being Christian on Easter Sunday? Someone needs to take a step back here[.]

The Progressive-Democrat Beshear has no faith in the citizens of Kentucky or their ability to act intelligently, he wants Government to identify and surveil them and then control them, and he has no respect for Law.

Kentuckians might want to remember this at the next election for Governor, in three more years.

A Bit of NLMSM Racism

Surgeon General Jerome Adams, in last Friday’s Wuhan Virus situation update, talked about the need, especially for minorities, to observe the CDC’s recommendations for staying at home as much as possible and staying safe.  He did so, too, in vernacular.

I want to close by saying while your state and local health departments and those of us in public service are working day and night to help stop the spread of COVID-19 and to protect you regardless of your color, your creed, or your geography, I need you to know that you’re not helpless and that it’s even more important in communities of color, we adhere to the task force guidelines to slow the spread. Avoid alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. And call your friends and family. Check on your mother, she wants to hear from you right now.
And speaking of mothers, we need you to do this if not for yourself than for your abuela. Do it for your granddaddy. Do it for your Big Mama. Do it for your Pop-Pop. We need you to understand, especially in communities of colors, we need you to step up and help stop the spread so that we can protect those who are most vulnerable.

Naturally, the NLMSM decided to jump on that and cry ra-a-aci-i-i-st.  Here’s NPR…journalist… Yamiche Alcindor:

You said that African Americans and Latinos should avoid alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. You also said do it for your abuela, do it for Big Mama and Pop-Pop. There are some people online who are already offended by that language and the idea that you’re saying that behaviors might be leading to these high death rates. Do you, I guess, have a response to people who might be offended by the language that you used?

Wow.

The Surgeon General wasn’t intimidated by Alcindor’s racism slur.

Adams responded by telling Alcindor that he had spoken with The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and stressed that they need “targeted outreach to the African American community” and that he was using language that he uses in his “own family.”
“I have a Puerto Rican brother-in-law. I call my Grand Daddy ‘Grand Daddy.’ I have relatives who call their grandparents ‘Big Mama.’ So that was not meant to be offensive, that is the language that we use and that I use, and we need to continue to target our outreach to those communities….

Alcindor is well aware of that. She’s well aware that she has no foundation whatsoever for her racist beef.  That she’s making up her racist beef out of thin air is an especially pernicious and despicable form of racism.

And she was caught at it. AG Hamilton:

This is pure art. In her first tweet as soon as he said it, she insisted “some will find this language offensive” and by the time she wrote her second tweet suddenly “many” had already “found this language offensive.” She discovered those many people awfully quickly[.]

Ryan Saavedra also noticed.

You posted your tweet just so you could get people pissed off so you could turn around and say that people online were “offended[.]”

NPR‘s silence speaks very loudly. It cries out for cutting off any and all public funding for this outlet.

United Nations and Racism

The UN’s World Health Organization has come under fire for its pandering to the People’s Republic of China over the latter’s mishandling of the Wuhan Virus situation, a pandemic that originated in the PRC’s Wuhan, Hubei Province.

Now the WHO’s chief, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is crying racism by the Republic of China because the RoC has been one of the vocal critics.

Tedros claimed he had been personally attacked, had suffered racist abuse and had even received death threats.
”This attack came from Taiwan,” said the WHO chief, who is a former Ethiopian health and foreign minister and the organization’s first African leader.

Having made his racist beef, though,

The basis of his allegations were unclear and neither the WHO, nor Tedros provided specific examples.

Never mind that Tedros’ WHO, at the PRC’s behest, ignored the RoC’s early warnings about the nature of the virus’ outbreak in Wuhan, and that Tedros, also at the PRC’s behest, has excluded the RoC from participating in research related to the Wuhan Virus.

Now, with no one at the UN’s WHO willing to provide any evidence of RoC racism toward Tedros, it’s clear that, unable to defend the WHO’s own mishandling of the Wuhan Virus situation, Tedros is making up his racist beef out of whole cloth.

Which is racist.

Progressive-Democrat Extortion

The Progressive-Democrats in Congress held up the last Wuhan Virus Federal aid program for four critical days, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Pelosi (D, NY). These persons tried to force inclusion in the aid an array of programs irrelevant to it but central to the Progressive-Democrats’ ideology and platform.

They’re at it again. The new aid effort, currently under way in the Senate, is centered on small businesses and their employees: an additional $250 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program

Two top [Progressive-]Democrats—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—in a statement on Wednesday morning said they want the additional $250 billion for PPP to get packaged with other provisions, such as $100 billion for health-care institutions, $150 billion for state and local governments and extra help for food-stamp recipients.

These two, and their cronies in both houses of Congress, are holding up the aid while they try to force inclusion of $100 billion for health-care institutions, $150 billion for state and local governments and extra help for food-stamp recipients.

This is just naked extortion. Nice aid program you have there. You need to pay some protection fees for it.

Never mind that additional funding—from some source, not necessarily on the taxpayers’ backs, but maybe so—for hospitals, et al., for state and local governments who’ve a long history of fiscal irresponsibility, for those on food stamps could easily be discussed and debated in a separate bill or three.

Never mind, too, that not a single red penny of the $150 billion already appropriated for health care and medical-related stockpiles has been spent. Piling more money behind that bottleneck serves no purpose beyond virtue-signaling.

No. Small businesses and their employees can just go hang unless Progressive-Democrats get their demands met. As The Wall Street Journal put it, [t]ens of thousands of small businesses are heading for bankruptcy without short-term liquidity from the feds. That’s OK, though, if Party can’t get its demands met.

Again, no. Paying the vig, paying the ransom—paying the Danegeld just gets the payer stuck with the Dane forever.

Sounds Like a Market Niche

Some credit card companies, Visa and Mastercard come to mind, have been looking at raising the fees they charge merchants for using their cards. While the present Wuhan Virus situation has crimped those plans, the delay is only temporary and will last only as long as the virus problem and associated economic problem lasts. The fee increases, though, when they are implemented,

in some cases would be hardest on small businesses[.]

After all,

the abrupt global slowdown has been most acute for the smallest businesses, which tend to operate on thinner profit margins and smaller cash reserves.

Such a move by the major credit card players would seem to create a market niche. Maybe small businesses—perhaps by industry association, perhaps by geographic association, perhaps generally—could band together to create, issue, and support their own credit card(s). Bypassing the name cards and bypassing the banks that issue them also would allow the small business card issuers to charge a lower fee for use of the cards.

Which, ultimately, would be good for the businesses’ customers, and so for the businesses, a multi-win situation.  Small businesses in these new credit card associations would find their costs lowered—no longer having to pay the major card players such high fees—and so fewer costs to pass on to their customers or to eat, and so more customers entering their stores.