Embrace the burden of proof | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
"Writing in National Review (“Government Bears the Burden of Proof on Coronavirus Restrictions“), Andrew McCarthy counsels us to “embrace the burden of proof.” Here’s an excerpt (bold added): At every key juncture, we admonish the public and every participant in the system that the government bears the burden of proof. Accused Americans are presumed innocent. That is, they are presumed to remain entitled to their fundamental liberties. They do not need to prove their entitlement. The burden is wholly on the government to prove that liberty should be removed. And because nothing less than liberty is at stake, the burden is high — proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Only if the government presents proof, not speculation, in satisfaction of this burden can an accused American legitimately be deprived of liberty and property. ….. Attorney General Bill Barr did the nation and the cause of civil liberties a real service over these last days by mobilizing the Justice Department on the side of freedom. The AG’s admonition came down to the burden of proof: It is not an American’s burden to prove that his or her job is “essential” rather than “non-essential,” as some government official subjectively defines those terms; it is the government’s burden to prove that the job in question cannot be performed safely under any conditions. The problem with the counsel government officials are getting from medical doctors and other scientists is not that it is bad advice. It is that government officials seem to think they have the power to make it dispositive advice without first demonstrating to us that it is necessary, that less draconian restraints on liberty will not do. This is not the way it’s supposed to work. …… It is not enough for government officials, in reliance on experts, to tell you that they have very good public-health reasons to lock you down, remove your livelihood, deny your children access to education, and blockade your family from the use of outdoor spaces. Again, there is no question that government has a compelling interest in public safety. Nevertheless, before it restricts or denies our fundamental liberties, it has the burden of showing that its proposed restrictions are necessary, that there are no more modest measures that could better balance public safety with our right to live freely. ….. Embrace the burden of proof. If government does that, it will show respect for civil liberties, it will propose more sensible restrictions, it will exhibit awareness that it is not our ruler but our servant, and it will win broad support for safety measures that are truly essential."
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The Flynn case: Nice son. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to him. "I would say that all of these revelations are profoundly shocking except that we on the right already pretty much have known most of the scenario for years. But the MSM covered up, the FBI stonewalled, and it was only Flynn’s newer lawyer Sidney Powell and Barr who forced these documents out into the open. I think it’s a safe prediction to say that the MSM and the Democrats will continue to ignore it, excuse it, twist it, do everything they can to negate it in people’s minds (prosecutors pounce!), and hope enough people will believe them. It’s worked before. It might work again. But this is the fall of the rule of law, the utter politicization and corruption of the agencies of both the DOJ and the FBI under Obama, and so far the perpetrators have gone scot free. It offends any sense of decency or fairness, and it is an outrage if the people involved continue to walk." We either bring all of these criminals to justice, or we flush our republic down the drain. There is no middle ground here. "You might think them stupid to not have destroyed these papers long ago. After all, they had plenty of time to do so. But I think they thought the evidence was too well hidden and would never come to light. In addition, they were so arrogant, so full of themselves, and in particular so very sure that even if the information did come out, the press and the Democrats would cover for them no matter what. So they felt no need to destroy them. This isn’t ordinary corruption. This is something for which I don’t have a proper word. “Evil” is too general. “Depraved” isn’t quite right, either. It doesn’t fit the definition of “treasonous” either, not exactly. I see it as operatic or even Shakespearian in its hubris, its scope, and its triumphant malignity. That’ll have to do for a description. Will it be operatic or Shakespearian in its consequences for the perpetrators? In other words, will hubris lead to nemesis? I very much doubt it. Wuhan Flu: The Supply Chain Is Not OK
Country folk will take care of each other. The denizens of the city will fight for scraps. This is the outcome those living in the Clinton Archipelago should fear. Uh Oh, Joe!
I am old enough to remember Creepy Uncle Joe folding in his past Presidential attempts. A fold here would be in character. I give him a better than even chance of folding. “This Is a Rigged System!” – 22 Million Americans Laid Off Due to Government Lockdown Orders — But Government Employees Keep Getting Paid!
Government at all levels is too large, consumes too many resources, and is too wasteful. It is time to reform and automate all possible functions within government. Once the panic is over we need to take profligate government to task by reducing all government4/30/2020 “This Is a Rigged System!” – 22 Million Americans Laid Off Due to Government Lockdown Orders — But Government Employees Keep Getting Paid!
Government at all levels is too large, consumes too many resources, and is too wasteful. It is time to reform and automate all possible functions within government. Dr. Ioannidis is the bearer of good news so the progressive left loses its mind and attacks him. Sigh. Opinion | The Bearer of Good Coronavirus News It's beginning to look as if California is deliberately trying to tank the economy
The governors are totalitarians. It is time for Americans to stand against these tyrants. The Changes to Come - American Greatness
The Democrats are taking their stand on the coronavirus crisis in an untenable position. It is like building a defensive redoubt in a valley surrounded by hills in the hands of the enemy (like the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1955, as President Eisenhower warned them). Whether this is tactical stupidity by the president’s enemies or strategic genius by the president or—more likely—a bit of both, is not clear except to insiders. Readers will recall that the Democrats charged out of the gate on the issue of taking science seriously and reacting comprehensively; the president picked up the gauntlet, brought prominent scientists forward, and “flattened the curve.” The Democrats wallowed in glee at the almost instant increase (in a month in fact) of unemployment by almost 30 million. The president and the Republican leaders in Congress brought forth very generous and relatively simple financial assistance packages and the Democrats jumped aboard, trying to lard the payments with concessions to organized labor and the green terrorists, which the Republicans generally resisted. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was confined to his basement in Delaware and all he had to do was put on a shirt and Skype into members of the Trump-hating media. The fact that even this proved a syntactical challenge to him indicates the level of embarrassment self-distancing spared him. The national Democratic leadership locked arms and deployed their media acolytes in support of a prolonged shutdown where virtually everyone in the country would be tested and those who test positively identify everyone they have been in contact with in the last two weeks and those people are chased down and the hunt for the last bacillus of coronavirus is pursued throughout the country to every attic, basement, homeless shelter, and rustic cabin. The president, under this scenario, would, in the greater national and human interest, commit political suicide like a kamikaze in a good cause, and patiently explain to the next scores of millions of Americans thrown out of work by the Pelosi-Biden-Schumer counter-virus strategy, that their sacrifice is noble and inevitable. What a godsend the coronavirus crisis was supposed to be to a political party that struck out corrupting the upper ranks of the Justice Department and the intelligence services with a fraudulent narrative about illegal election-rigging with Russia, and struck out again with a fatuous presidential impeachment for unimpeachable acts with no serious evidence that the president committed the accused acts anyway. On the heels of the total failure of their own skulduggery, the force majeure of nature, with the assistance of China’s duplicitous and irresponsible government, rushed to the rescue of Trump’s enemies. The celebratory pleasure of Speaker Pelosi as she shows the nation her well-stocked freezer, and of presumptive presidential candidate Biden as he shambled through banal softball sessions with the likes of Joy Behar (a woman lumbered with America’s most unsuitable first name), was palpable. The NeverTrumpers have fallen in with this nonsense, more subtly, by calling for putting “safe ahead of soon.” This is all piffle and the Democrats have turned the heat on under the frying pan and then jumped into it. Despite all the unctuous asseverations that nothing will be the same again and that this is a human crisis that must unite the country, it is mainly political and rather tawdry politics at that. The anti-Trump media whipped up a state of frenzy and panic with no real evidence of the medical danger, initially to set the president up for responding inadequately. When he instead responded very effectively, they shifted course and without commending him on the lockdown, said that because he hadn’t developed testing capabilities quickly enough, the lockdown must be long enough to give the Democrats a chance of winning the election. (An economic depression on the scale of some plague from the Old Testament is all that could put Joe Biden into the White House.) In fact, testing only establishes whether a person has, or has had, the coronavirus up to the time of testing. It is no magic bullet, but it has enabled extensive research that permits us to estimate the scale of this problem. Extensive recent testing indicates that in the “hot spot” of New York, more than 20 percent of New Yorkers have had the coronavirus, but fewer than half of those realized it. Since testing has been so uneven among the 40 or so Northern Hemisphere countries that provide reliable statistics, the ultimate relevant issue is deaths per million (or another unit) of population. Sweden, which has not had a shutdown but has taken some measures of protection for vulnerable groups, has had 211 deaths from this cause per million people in the country. That is one for every 4,900 Swedes. The United States, with all its precautions and protections, has 156 per million, or 1 in 6,400 people. For various reasons of circumstance and swiftness and thoroughness of response, Japan, Germany, Canada, and some smaller states have better results, but the British (1 in 3,300 people), French (1 in 3,000), Italians (1 in 2,450 people), and Spanish (1 in 2,100 people), have fared worse than Sweden. Since about 80 percent of fatalities in all these countries are people over 60 with additionally compromised immune systems, much depends on the effectiveness of protection of vulnerable categories of people, and not on shutting down everything. The agreed facts deduced to date entitle policymakers to come to a number of reasonable conclusions. Even more elaborate measures should be taken for people with reduced immunity. (The Canadian measure this past weekend of dispatching the armed forces to some homes for the elderly is better public relations than epidemiology.) The rest of the shutdowns should be ended fairly quickly. Here again, President Trump has acted wisely in leaving these decisions with the governors and creating conditions where Democratic governors like Gavin Newsom in California and even Andrew Cuomo in New York will have to break ranks with the national Democratic leaders. They are working now on their last plausible scenario for salvaging the presidential election, while the governors have their own voters’ welfare to serve. Trump has got his eminent scientific cohort on his side, and lined up scores of eminent people in every conceivable activity to support his normalization plans, and respected the requirements of federalism in leaving precise decisions to local authorities. There is no reason whatever to imagine the result of reopening the United States (with some precautions) would raise American fatality rates above Swedish levels, and there is every reason to believe, given the steps taken, that American fatalities will not be as high as 1 in 5,000 people when the crisis has subsided. Every death is a sadness, but this is not a demographic threat or a public health assault that justifies pushing up to 1 million people a day into unemployment and the loss of trillions of dollars of value on the stock exchanges. It has been a severe crisis, but most of its severity has been the consequence of the panic generated by the irresponsible media, who thought they might destroy the Trump presidency at last. They have failed again, and this is not such a watershed moment. In a few months, everything will be largely back to what it was within the United States. The big changes will be geopolitical: the mystique of the inexorable rise of China will be very faded, and the remaining credibility of the concept of the European Union will be in tatters. Trump wins the political chess game at home in a clean sweep: the medical crisis, the financial rescue, the rebound of the economy, and at the voting places of the nation. And he will be the winner in the world. China and Europe have long been billed as rivals to the United States as the world’s most powerful government and population. We will hear less of that. |
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