AMERICA OFFERS TO HELP THE IRANIAN PEOPLE COMBAT THE CORONAVIRUS EPIDEMIC
"The link goes to U.S. State Department website and a press statement made by SecState Mike Pompeo. Extended quote: The United States stands with the people of Iran during the public health crisis caused by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The U.S. Government is prepared to assist the Iranian people in their response efforts. This offer of support to the Iranian people, which has been formally conveyed to Iran through the Government of Switzerland, underscores our ongoing commitment to address health crises and prevent the spread of infectious diseases. The United States calls on Iran to cooperate fully and transparently with international aid and health organizations. We will continue to work closely with countries in the region to help address unmet needs in response to the virus. Persons interested in providing support to the Iranian people should note that certain donations to Iran intended to relieve human suffering, including the donation of medicine, are exempt from U.S. sanctions… The statement delivers a diplomatic three-fer. (1) It’s noble and generous –the right action to take in a humanitarian crisis. (2) Sanctions exemptions demonstrate by deed that the U.S. opposes “Death to America” ayatollahs, not the Iranian people. (3) It challenges the Iranian dictatorship to behave with “transparency.” If the ayatollah regime fails to do so, it is responsible for increasing the epidemic risk the Iranian people confront. UPDATE: The BBC reports that Iran has rejected the U.S. offer. A telling quote: A member of the Tehran City Council told Ilna news agency that “the number of infected patients may rise to 10,000 or 15,000” in the coming weeks. The head of the World Health Organization’s emergencies programme, Dr Michael Ryan, said on Thursday that the apparent high mortality rate in Iran indicated its outbreak might be more widespread than realized."
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PREPARING FOR CORONAVIRUS:
"Preparing for the almost inevitable global spread of this virus, now dubbed COVID-19, is one of the most pro-social, altruistic things you can do in response to potential disruptions of this kind. . . . We should prepare, not because we may feel personally at risk, but so that we can help lessen the risk for everyone. We should prepare not because we are facing a doomsday scenario out of our control, but because we can alter every aspect of this risk we face as a society. That’s right, you should prepare because your neighbors need you to prepare—especially your elderly neighbors, your neighbors who work at hospitals, your neighbors with chronic illnesses, and your neighbors who may not have the means or the time to prepare because of lack of resources or time. . . . Staying home without needing deliveries means that not only are you less likely to get sick, thus freeing up hospitals for more vulnerable populations, it means that you are less likely to infect others (while you may be having a mild case, you can still infect an elderly person or someone with cancer or another significant illness) and you allow delivery personnel to help out others. This logic, though the author doesn’t quite seem to grasp it, actually applies to all varieties of prepping. The better you can look after yourself and yours, the less of a drain you are on emergency resources. The press wants to treat prepping as selfish, but it’s actually the opposite." Boy Scout Motto: Be Prepared! After we annihilate progressivism, first thing we do, we bring back the Boy Scouts. Donald Trump vs corona hysteria | Spectator USA
Sure. He is the luckiest being ever to live. Or, it might be due to competence we have not seen in the presidency for decades. Next, they will be telling me Obama was unlucky. Sure. That's why all he touched turned to dross, not that his policies were incompetent. Fact-Check: Obama Waited Until 'Millions' Infected and 1000 Dead in U.S. Before Declaring H1N1 Emergency Don’t Fear The Wu-Flu Relax, I agree with her. This could be bad, or not, but worrying about the unknown is for old ladies. I'd suggest you consider buying the market dip here in a few days. Mueller's Team To Be Charged With Crimes?
Justice seems to want to sweep the dirt under the carpet. Trump should push back, and since Trump is the administration, not the underlings he has hired to run these departments he can do as he pleases. Pull the pin on the hand-grenade Mr. President. We need a full and accurate accounting, and we need to see justice being done no matter how difficult for the Deep State to accept. Are Democrats About to Self-Destruct? In a shot up Studabaker Clown Car, filled with shot up Clowns including Minigunned Mini Mike, bland Klubyorcar, Howdy "Platitude Machine" Doody, Fauxahontas "The Scalp Taker", Joe "The Golem" Biden, and The Bern, aka, "The Millionaire Socialist." I'd call the self-destruction a done deal from my vantage point by your mileage may vary. "With new polls showing Joe Biden possibly winning in South Carolina tomorrow, suddenly the Democratic Party nomination contest is unsettled again. Oddsmakers and polls in other states still say Crazy Bernie is going to clean up next week on Super Tuesday, but because of the crazy proportional delegate rules the Democrats are using the contest might go to a contested convention. And the primal screams of the Democratic Party establishment are becoming more and more audible from under the pillows they are pressing to their faces. “Democratic Leaders Willing to Risk Party Damage to Stop Bernie Sanders,” the New York Times reported earlier this week. It is always fun to read the Times when its “reporting” is just a thinly disguised memo to the Democratic Party to get its act together: Dozens of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders’s candidacy, but are also willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his nomination at the national convention in July if they get the chance. . . Bill Clinton, in calls with old friends, vents about the party getting wiped out in the general election. . . In a reflection of the establishment’s wariness about Mr. Sanders, only nine of the 93 superdelegates interviewed said that Mr. Sanders should become the nominee purely on the basis of arriving at the convention with a plurality, if he was short of a majority. A contested convention that denies Bernie the nomination will be a disaster for Democrats. But it may be a price they are willing to pay. Chris Matthews has openly speculated that Democrats might be better off losing this election even to Trump if it means staving off the disaster of a Bernie nomination. Meanwhile, Times “conservative” columnist David Brooks, who has previously written that he’d vote for Lizzie Warren over Trump, offers his own primal scream, declaring that even NeverTrumpers are also BanishBernie: Bernie Sanders is not a liberal Democrat. He’s what replaces liberal Democrats. . . Populists like Sanders speak as if the whole system is irredeemably corrupt. Sanders was a useless House member and has been a marginal senator because he doesn’t operate within this system or believe in this theory of change. . . He believes in revolutionary mass mobilization and, once an election has been won, rule by majoritarian domination. . . Sanders also claims he’s just trying to import the Scandinavian model, which is believable if you know nothing about Scandinavia or what Sanders is proposing. Those countries do have generous welfare states, but they can afford them because they understand how free market capitalism works, with fewer regulations on business creation and free trade." Once at the convention, the DNC will undoubtedly destroy the Democratic Party. I'm long popcorn right now! Higher education has been hijacked by leftist, ideological interests. Portland State University professor spells out five ways to fix it | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
In an article in First Things titled “Taking Power in the Academy” Bruce Gilley, professor of political science at Portland State University, outlines “five powerful ways to fix higher education” (as summarized by The College Fix, slightly revised version below): 1. Enforce existing laws that protect free speech, academic freedom, and due process A university that allows students or other groups to prevent speakers from coming to campus, whether through force or through administrative tricks, should be denied government benefits. So, too, with efforts to regulate speech on campus or to deny recognition to student groups outside the dominant ideologies. Regulation of speech includes speech codes, such as those that compel people to use gender pronouns not consistent with a person’s gender at birth or to use euphemisms like “undocumented migrant” instead of “illegal immigrant.” 2. Abolish university offices of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ … which have grown like great blobs from a narrow legal mandate into ideological shock units, tuition-funded activist agencies that push all sorts of left-wing agendas. By radically reducing the size of these bureaucracies, we can rein in both administrative bloat and the administrative imposition of left-wing viewpoints on the student body. Diversity offices have become not only legislative actors (making new rules to guide campus behavior) but also executive actors (promoting and implementing those rules) and judicial ones (setting up mechanisms that allow students to trigger Star Chamber–like inquiries and impose punishments). These offices should be abolished. Universities that preserve them should be excluded from federal student loan programs. 3. Stop letting professors be the only ones in charge of hiring The solution may be for hiring and promotion to cease to be the exclusive prerogative of the faculty: Alumni, boards of trustees, community partners, and grant agencies could have a role as well. In religious universities that have succumbed to political correctness, clerical control should be reasserted. Hiring and promotion committees should be forbidden to ask applicants about their commitments to diversity, social justice, sustainability, equality and inclusion, or other political or ideological issues. An employment ombudsman might guard against what is, in effect, the political blackballing of candidates. 4. Abolish grievance, indignation, and bitterness studies The abolition of departments with an explicit left-wing agenda would be another useful step. All of the grievance studies departments and programs should be ended and their fields of inquiry returned to the relevant disciplines. If you want to study black literature, it should be in a department of language and literature or English; if you want to study Native American history, it should be in a department of history; if you want to study women and politics, it should be in a department of political science. This reform would be a double winner, since we know from earnings data that grievance studies graduates are the lowest-earning of all those with university degrees. 5. Conservative and classical liberal faculty need to organize The corruption of the universities has come about through the use of political power, above all in university hiring committees and diversity offices. The deliverance of the universities will be achieved in the same way. Far from constituting a violation of academic freedom, the use of power is the only way to restore the conditions under which academic freedom is possible. The case against electric vehicles: Should average taxpayers be subsidizing EV purchases that mostly benefit high-income Americans? | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
Kill all subsidies. "In an op-ed in the Washington Examiner “Taxpayer subsidies for electric vehicles only help the wealthy,” I make the case against EVs: Electric vehicles have been popping up in driveways, parking lots, and roads across the country for the past decade or so. Proponents of the electric vehicle revolution are wondering what’s taking the rest of us so long to follow suit. The reality is that the rest of us are already doing a lot to support the adoption of electric vehicles. For example, taxpayers fund the federal electric vehicle tax credit program, which grants up to $7,500 for qualifying purchases. States such as Colorado offer an additional state income tax credit of $4,000, and New Jersey just passed legislation for a new $5,000 state rebate in addition to an existing sales-tax exemption for electric vehicle buyers. The nation’s teachers, nurses, and factory workers are all paying higher taxes for a program that generously benefits those who buy electric vehicles. Electric vehicle sales have grown in recent years, and cars such as the Tesla Model 3 have made the market a bit more affordable (though not much) for everyday people. But data show most of those who claim the electric vehicle tax credit earn far more income than the national average. In fact, people with annual incomes of $100,000 or more have claimed nearly 80% of federal electric vehicle tax credits, and about half of all sales take place in California. Taking a deeper look at the issue means asking ourselves an important question: Should average taxpayers be responsible for subsidizing electric vehicle purchases that overwhelmingly benefit high-income earners? Also, what about the issue of infrastructure costs for charging electric cars? Last week, Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Andy Levin of Michigan announced a plan to install a national network of charging stations within five years. Levin told Reuters the charging network would be “expensive,” but he believes it will ultimately result in the “broad-scale adoption of electric vehicles.” But until manufacturers are able to bring down production costs and the price consumers pay, without the help of generous taxpayer subsidies, widespread electric vehicle adoption may never occur, charging network or not. Even if widespread adoption does occur, there are inherent issues with the nation’s transportation system that would need to be addressed first. Chief among those issues is that electric vehicle drivers use our highways, roads, bridges, and tunnels for free. The rest of us pay gasoline taxes — 18.4 cents for every gallon at the federal level, in addition to an average of 31 cents in state gas taxes. Those taxes go into the Highway Trust Fund and state budgets that are used to maintain the infrastructure. Because electric vehicles don’t use gas, their owners don’t pay these taxes. If more are going to hit U.S. roads in the years ahead as experts predict, we need to make sure those drivers pay to support the nation’s transportation system like the rest of us. In the near term, Congress will have the opportunity to address the other major issue: the electric vehicle tax credit. An effort to expand the credit (upping the vehicle cap for manufacturers eligible to receive subsidies from 200,000 to 600,000 and lowering the maximum payout from $7,500 to $7,000) died during congressional budget talks in December. Those conversations are likely to pick up again in the spring. Those who oppose the expansion of the tax credit will have a key piece of data at their disposal this time: a recent report by the Treasury Department inspector general uncovered nearly $74 million in potentially erroneous or fraudulent tax credits during a recent four-year span. Fifteen senators signed a letter last month seeking more details about “what appear to be systemic problems” with the electric vehicle tax credit program. Members of Congress will soon have an opportunity to defend the hardworking taxpayers who put them in office when debate returns to the merits of the electric vehicle federal tax credit program and whether to support its expansion. Our elected leaders should put the priorities of the majority of average Americans ahead of providing generous taxpayer subsidies to a minority of the nation’s wealthy electric vehicle owners." WSDOT Wants Lawmakers to Remove Congestion Relief as a Transportation Policy Goal | Newgeography.com
Finally, transportation policy which ensures nothing moves and at the highest cost possible! |
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