Category Archives: regulation

Holding Some Back

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Forty-three million students are doing homework at home due to the current Wuhan virus situation.

Here’s the shocker about that:

Some public schools are calling online work “enrichment,” not part of the curriculum, because they can’t guarantee that all students will have access to it.

The work, which was part of the curriculum when school was in session, won’t be graded, won’t count.  This is another example of the Left’s view of equality: hold back the successful because the less successful don’t, or can’t, keep up.  Don’t take steps to help the less successful do better. No, that’s too hard.

Remember this view of equality next November.

Scapegoating

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…and fake apologies.

Recall that Doctor Li Wenliang, a resident of Wuhan, Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China and an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital, gave early warnings about the dangers and contagious nature of the Wuhan virus. Recall further that subsequent to his warnings, the police were sicced on him and that they threatened him if he didn’t shut the hell up. Li subsequently died of that same Wuhan virus.

Now the Communist Party of China is pretending to apologize to his family for that behavior.

The party’s top disciplinary body said the police force in Wuhan had revoked its admonishment of Dr Li Wenliang that had included a threat of arrest.
It also said a “solemn apology” had been issued to Li’s family and that two police officers, identified only by their surnames, had been issued “disciplinary punishments” for the original handling of the matter.

Punishing two cops who were caught up in the early stages of the CPC’s attacks: nothing like a couple of scapegoats to put an end to the escapade.

Sure.

A Start

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But we need to go further.  Recall that an official of the Communist Party of China threatened to cut off US access to life-savings medicines that are manufactured in the People’s Republic of China [Bing Translate translation from the Xinhua publication].

If China retaliates against the United States at this time, in addition to announcing the travel ban on the United States, it also announced the strategic control of medical products and the ban on exports to the United States, then the United States will fall into the ocean of new crown [corona] viruses.

Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) and Congressman Mike Gallagher (R, WI) have introduced legislation that will begin to address such dependencies and improve our national security.

The Chinese Communist Party threatened to cut off America’s access to vital drugs in the midst of a pandemic caused by its own failures. It’s time to pull America’s supply chains for life-saving medicine out of China and make the CCP pay for contributing to this global emergency.

The proposed legislation would

  • task an FDA registry with tracking drug ingredients
  • ban the Federal government from buying drugs with a supply chain that originates in the PRC
  • require drugs to be labeled with the name of the country where they came from
  • provide benefits to manufacturers who make their drugs or medical equipment in the US
  • take effect in 2022.

But it, or quickly following legislation, needs to go much farther.

  • Feds should buy no drugs with a supply chain that passes through the PRC, not merely originate there
  • manufacturer benefits should be limited to preferential government buys and support for drug development, not overt outlays of taxpayer money
  • push the pace: the requirements should take effect in 2021, or sooner, depending on how quickly manufacturers can readjust their supply chains

Further legislation should do the same regarding other items important to national security, items like medical equipment, computer chips of all types, energy-related equipment.

“Novel Ways to Apply Homicide Liability”

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That’s what an ex-federal prosecutor in DC and current “legal” analyst for a broadcast network’s cable outlet says he was always on the lookout for in those unfortunate days of his prosecutor-ness.

Rule by law, instead of rule of law—this ex-federal prosecutor is an example of that.

Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime—this ex-federal prosecutor is the modern example of Lavrentiy Beria.

We have ‘way too many Federal criminal laws, laws, too, that usurp the individual States’ legitimate police powers—this ex-federal prosecutor demonstrates the failure of that and illustrates the need to “quinquagintate” those Federal criminal laws and then target pare from there..

Reusable Grocery Bags

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…and reusable shopping bags, generally. These are supposedly better for our environment than nominally single-use plastic or paper bags (though both, until they wear out, can serve other purposes than holding food or other goods—usually two or three reuses until they’re truly ready for the trash or the recycling bin).

The serious questions, though, and ones that have been missed until the current COVID-19 situation has exposed them empirically, are:

For whose environment, exactly, are reusable shopping bags better?

Who, exactly, are the ones doing the reusing?

The answer to the first is…germs.

The answer to the second is…germs.

And today, the threat to us short-sighted humans is COVID-19, right along with our old foes, bacteria. CDC has said that COVID-19 can remain viable on a large variety of surfaces for hours to days—surfaces like the burlap or canvas of some reusable bags—and especially on the plastic linings of many more reusable bags.

Researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University surveyed grocery shoppers and randomly tested their reusable bags. “Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half,” they wrote in their 2011 study….

And this datum:

In 2013 millions of American piglets died amid an outbreak of novel swine enteric coronavirus disease, and after an investigation the US Department of Agriculture concluded that reusable feed totes were the most likely root cause.

This has been a problem of which we’ve been aware for some years.  And yet….

Does anyone really think these reusables aren’t harboring today’s COVID-19? Or the bug du jour of tomorrow’s outbreak?

Reusable bags have become strongly illustrative of unintended consequence.