Illinois Review

75 days into the COVID-19 crisis, Illinois focuses on where 46% perished

CHICAGO - Thursday, May 27th, 2020, 75 days after his emergency declaration shutting down the state of Illinois to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Governor JB Pritzker focused his attention on residents living in long-term nursing facilities. 

75 days into the COVID-19 health care crisis, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) filed emergency rules mandating long-term care facilities comply with infection control practices, including testing all residents and staff for COVID-19. The IDPH will require each facility "to develop and implement a testing plan to better protect vulnerable residents and ensure no facility is shirking its responsibilities for those in their care."

Nearly three months into the world-paralyzing crisis, long-term care facilitie became a priority to state health officials. 

According to the IDPH's own website, there have been 14,862 confirmed COVID-19 cases among long-term residents and staff statewide, with 2,402 tragically dying from COVID-19. (The latest stats were posted May 23)

As of Friday afternoon, Illinois is reporting 117,455 COVID-19 cases, including 5,270 deaths. 

That means that nearly 46% of Illinois COVID-19 deaths were among long-term care residents.

Pritzker's removal of all COVID restrictions on churches cannot be trusted, says Liberty Counsel

CHICAGO - Thursday night, less than four hours before the deadline for Illinois Gov JB Pritzker to file his response to the Supreme Court to an emergency injunction request brought by the two Romanian churches, the governor unilaterally removed all restrictions on churches and houses of worship.

But Pritzker's change-of-heart may be temporary, Liberty Counsel says.

Ridings: The COVID relevation: What the Left insists is "settled science" is really "ideology"

By Jim Ridings -

I will never again wonder how Adolf Hitler got the German people to follow him to their destruction. I am seeing it today.

I am amazed by the Democrat governors and mayors who have issued unconstitutional orders shutting down businesses and putting millions of people out of work, using law enforcement agencies to arrest shopkeepers who are trying to earn enough money to stay alive, or go to church, or walk on the beach, and locking down citizens under house arrest.

Governors cannot suspend the United States Constitution because they fear a virus that is less deadly than the average annual flu, or for any other reason.

I am even more amazed at all the people who have willingly complied and surrendered their basic liberties and freedoms without a whimper.

Thorner/Ingold: Good News on Spread of Coronavirus

By Nancy Thorner & Ed Ingold -

A CNN headline on May 22, 2020 read, CDC estimates that 35% of coronavirus patient don't have symptoms. The article by Arman Azad was based on new guidance for mathematical modelers and public health official from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In summary, the CDC finds that 36% of the individuals testing positive for COVID-19 were asymptomatic. Under CDC guidelines, only those showing symptoms of COVID-19 are eligible for testing. Random data of this sort is trickling in now that employees are being tested in order to return to their workplace, where the percentage is as high as 86%.

Bad news for checking the spread of coronavirus?  Not so fast.

Former Illinois state senator about COVID-19: "It's a lie to pretend that government can protect you"

CHICAGO - "It's a lie for government to pretend it can protect you," former State Senator Steve Rauschenberger (R-Elgin) said this week in an video-recorded interview with Illinois Review. "It's an embarrassment [that elected officials responded as they did] - that's not American, it's not the people we are. We should never let this happen again this way."

"As things have become clearer that this is not going to kill five million Americans," Rauschenberger said. "I think there's been a slowness to address the real issues. We should be focused on the vulnerable, and let the rest of society get back to work, back to school and get on with their lives," Rauschenberger said. 

The 6 min interview:

Americans Need Employment Opportunities, Not Unemployment Incentives

Federal assistance can help bridge a temporary gap in employment and incomes, but the only long-term solution is to let people get back to work.

Extending already excessive unemployment benefits won't help. It will increase unemployment and reduce economic output.

If unemployment averages 10%, these additional benefits could cost every household in America an extra $3,300 to $4,000 in taxes.

More HERE

Civil Society Was Made for Moments Like This

Now, more than ever, efforts to rebuild our civic institutions are absolutely vital. Ryan Streeter and David Wilde write:

The spirit of American volunteerism has been on display from the very beginning of the coronavirus crisis: Medical workers have flocked to virus hotspots to help; scientists are volunteering to battle the virus; students are providing childcare for health workers; community volunteers are delivering food to the elderly and vulnerable and sewing thousands of protective masks for hospital workers. The list goes on.

“Hate Speech” and the New Tyranny over the Mind

A powerful movement intent on outlawing “hate speech,” will destroy self-government.  Arthur Milikh writes:

America is the only Western nation that does not criminalize “hate speech.” Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most nations of Europe already do so. The United Nations relentlessly pressures the remaining holdouts to follow suit: “As a matter of principle,” says the U.N. Secretary-General, “the United Nations must confront hate speech at every turn.”

Meanwhile in America, Members of Congress issue their support for speech restrictions, and Big Tech’s digital oligarchs, enjoying a disproportionate power over society, continue to impose speech restrictions in exchange for access to their platforms. So are America’s colleges and universities more and more governed by an aggressive chorus of students, faculty, and administrators who demand and impose speech codes. These fronts promises to grow in size, strength, and confidence in the coming years.

We Need Production to Recover

Through most of the coronavirus crisis, those who have made the case for stay-at-home, reduce or stop work, and narrow the range of retail shopping to assure “social distancing” to reduce the spread of the virus have accused their critics of being more interested in preserving livelihoods than “saving lives.” But there is no preservation of any lives if people are not able to produce and work, without which none of the necessities and other wants of any members of society can be fulfilled.

Listening to many politicians and political pundits, and even some “economists,” you could easily think that 250 years of economic understanding had never happened. One of the oldest of economic fallacies is that money is wealth; that is, the notion that if you create pieces of paper, put some kind of government stamp on it announcing that it is “money,” and spread it around among the members of society, you thereby conjure up from nothing actual material and other forms of wealth.

More HERE

Rabine: Is Pritzker’s “FAIR TAX” Fair?

What Comes Next for Colleges?

COVID-19 has disrupted almost all aspects of life, including higher education.  Colleges moved classes online during the spring semester and some observers believe that this will permanently change higher education.  I think this will create new focus on how college creates value.

Online education has existed for years.  Arguably though, the willingness of the nation’s most prestigious universities to shift online affirms the quality of online instruction.  I would caution about reading too much into any response to this unprecedented pandemic.

Higher education’s predicament becomes much greater if the 2020-21 year ends up online.  I will not try to forecast the progression of COVID-19 here, but the California State University system recently announced online classes for fall.  An online year would produce an immediate financial crisis and a longer term viability challenge.

More HERE

What Does Separation of Church and State Mean?

Nearly every American knows the phrase “separation of church and state.” Do you know where it's from? Here’s a hint: it’s not in the Constitution. John Eastman, professor of law at Chapman University, explains how and why this famous phrase has played such an outsized role in American life and law.

Rossi: Hard Facts On the Tragic and Unnecessary COVID 19 Shutdown

Thanks to the COVID 19 shutdown, 40 million Americans have lost their jobs causing massive pain and suffering all over our nation. That is bad enough if that shutdown was necessary but new overwhelming facts show that this shutdown was a tragic mistake driven by hysterical and irrational fear and completely wrong forecasts from government bureaucrats. Originally the CDC told us that COVID 19 would have a fatality rate of 3.4% which they said would kill 2.2 million Americans. Now the CDC admits it was wrong and dramatically lowered the COVID 19 fatality rate by 91% to 0.3%. They were wrong by 91% and that is what created the hysterical panic and fear which allowed them to launch the massive COVID 19 shutdown that put 40 million Americans out of work. Americans should be outraged.

Sadly, “we the people” are part of the problem because we let fear drive us instead of logic and facts. Take a look at this very interesting chart below from the Washington Times. It shows that we should fear COVID 19 a heck of a lot less then the real dangers that we live with every day. On average we are 43 times more likely to die from something else than COVID 19. People 34 years old and younger are 200 more times likely to die from something else than COVID 19. People 35 to 64 years old are 49 times more likely to die from something else than COVID 19. Even people 85 years old and older are 39 times more likely to die from something else other than COVID 19. The bottom line is that we shut down our entire nation and put massive pain on 40 million Americans and their families because of a 0.03 percent chance that we could die from COVID 19. That folks is the definition of being ruled by hysterical and irrational fear.

As bad as that is, it gets worse. In addition to putting 40 million Americans out of work based on fear, we have created a massive mental health issue by putting those 40 million people out of work and scaring the heck out of all Americans 24X7 on social media and the “Fake News”. According to a Washington Post analysis of a new U.S. Census report from last week, 34% of Americans have symptoms of anxiety, depression, or both because of the COVID 19 pandemic. Suicides are up dramatically and one doctor in San Francisco said that he has seen a “year’s’ worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks. Folks, what did we think would happen when we took jobs away from 40 million Americans and made all Americans hide in their basements for two months? And the media kept telling us 24X7 that we might die from COVID 19 even though the odds of dying from it are 0.03%?

Coronavirus Models Are Failing

Professor Neil Ferguson, who led the COVID-19 modeling team at Imperial College in London, resigned May 5 from his government advisory role after breaking the very same British lockdown rules that he had a role in influencing.

Ferguson led the Imperial College team that designed the computer model that, among others, had been used to justify the recent stay-at-home orders in England as well as in the United States. We now know the model was so highly flawed it never should have been relied upon for policy decisions to begin with.

Epidemiology—the study of the incidence, prevalence, and impact of disease—frequently calls upon models to forecast potential outcomes of diseases. Not surprisingly, once COVID-19 became a pandemic, policy experts from all across the world began relying on such models.

More HERE

TSA’s $77 Million Canine Units Can’t Detect Explosives, Put Aviation System at Risk

From Judicial Watch - 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spent $77 million on Passenger Screening Canine (PSC) teams at airports but the dogs used by federal agents to detect explosives in luggage and travelers are not effective. “As a result, our Nation’s aviation system and the traveling public could be at risk of a catastrophic event caused by an undetected explosive device,” according to a federal audit. You can’t blame it on the dogs, though. Their human handlers at the famously inept Transportation Security Administration (TSA) fail to train them properly or use them in an appropriate fashion, investigators from the DHS Inspector General’s office found. Some TSA managers are also more focused on moving checkpoint lines quicker than using security dogs correctly, the probe reveals.

More HERE

New Study shows Re-Open Movement concerned about others and nation's founding principles

WASHINGTON DC – A new study from The Frontier Center identifies four values that are motivating the growing Reopen Movement, revealing they are concerned about the interests of others and the nation’s foundational principles above their own self-interests.
 
The Frontier Center's three-part behavioral science study examines the deeply-held values of Reopeners and the decision pathways that have led them to support the movement.  The report reveals that critics of Reopeners—and even some supporters—are getting it wrong.
 
“This research reveals the deepest motivations of Reopeners, and provides useful data to understand more about our national psyche at this time,” said research director Anne Segal. 
 
The research found that protest participants are answering the question, “Who am I?” at a moment when their courage and convictions are being tested.

Mayor Lightfoot's boast Re-Open Illinois rally was dispersed by Chicago Police doesn't line up

Photo by Mark Weyermuller

CHICAGO - Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was very unhappy about the group "Re-Open Illinois" organizing at the Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park on Memorial Day. She boasted via Twitter that the Re-Open Illinois rally posed an "unacceptable health risk" and was "dispersed" by the Chicago Police.  

The Chicago media took the Mayor's word for it, and reported that the Chicago Police broke up the rally. 

But Mayor Lightfoot's version of what happened doesn't line up with the version "Re-Open Illinois" rally organizers and attendees tell. Lake County Board member Dick Barr walked by a line of observing Chicago Police when leaving the rally - and says the police didn't interfere at all.

Thorner: Former CIA officer reveals Islam's Influence in America

By Nancy Thorner -

Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer, is a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on Middle East, national defense, WMD, and counter terrorism issues. On Wednesday, May 20, 2020, she held a Zoom meeting on specific areas of expertise, including Islam and Iran. Ms. Lopez writes for The United West organization.

During the span of two hours, Ms. Lopez covered two topics of great importance.  The first topic, Bully of Asia, dealt with China and the coronavirus.

Di Leo: The Retail Model – From National Anchor to the Corner Store

 
By John F. Di Leo - 

For years, friends walked through the mall, chuckling as they passed that funny counterculture store, on their way to the department store that served as an anchor at that end of the mall.  They only came for the big department store, for its holiday sales and gift cards, and the licensed sweatshirts and jackets that they wore everywhere. 

They never noticed, but they often passed another group, going the other way.  That group would enter at the department store entrance because they liked parking there, but they’d never shop in it; they liked the little boutiques down the aisles; that’s where they spent their time.

Across the mall, on the other end of the wheel, another couple of friends headed toward the sporting goods store, never noticing the couple passing them in the other direction, headed for the health food store or the “natural crafts” shop halfway down the aisle.  For years, these stores had all been the source of smiles, or maybe sneers, from each other’s respective customer bases.

Victor Davis Hanson: Losing Our Fears, in War and Plague

Seventy-five years ago this month, Germany surrendered, ending the European theater of World War II. At the war’s beginning, no one believed Germany would utterly collapse in May 1945.

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, German invaders were on the verge of capturing Moscow. Britain was isolated. London had barely survived a terrible German bombing during the Blitz.

A sleeping America was neutral, but it was beginning to realize it was weak and mostly unarmed in a scary world.

More HERE