thelibertybeacon--2020-12-01--COVID-19 Lockdowns: Liberty & Science

COVID-19 Lockdowns: Liberty & Science

The Chinese Coronavirus ( COVID-19 ) hit American shores — officially , anyway , there is significant evidence that it arrived earlier — in late January 2020 .
The American public was then told that a two-week shutdown of the economy would “ flatten the curve , ” relieving the pressure on hospital intensive care units and saving lives in the long run .
The average American , including conservatives , being people of good faith , complied , thinking that this was a common-sense measure that would save lives in the wake of a new and mysterious pandemic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the goalposts moved .
No longer was it enough to “ flatten the curve.
” Now we were to be locked down until there was a cure .
Even the cure was not enough for some figures like the lionized-by-liberals Dr. Anthony Fauci — we would continue to be locked down even after a vaccine had been rammed through the approvals process with limited testing .
When would we be allowed out by our masters ?
No one could answer this .
Second , there was an intensification of the authoritarian measures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tech , introduced “ contact tracing ” where people had to sign in with extensive personal information if they wanted to , for example , eat out at a restaurant .
This was so that , in the event of infection with COVID-19 , the state health department would be able to track and trace everyone you had contact with .
We should add that a third thing didn ’ t so much “ happen ” but was discovered : As it turns out unless you are old ( over the age of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from a complicating disorder ( such as diabetes or asthma ) , COVID-19 was little more than a bad cold or the flu .
What ’ s more , there was a financial incentive from the government to mark deaths as COVID-19 deaths when they were not .
George Floyd , the man who died while being arrested by the Minneapolis Police Department , sparking riots over the summer of 2020 , is officially a COVID-19 death because he died with COVID-19 , despite not dying of COVID-19 .
By the fall of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ While COVID-19 was dangerous for select populations , it had an extremely low death rate among the young and healthy .
The generous or naive might say that the COVID-19 health measures are misguided attempts to protect the population .
A more hard-nosed or cynical person likely thinks that these measures are a deliberate attempt to enact totalitarian measures leveraging public panic .
This , of course , would not be the first time the government and its toadies took advantage of such a panic , with the 9/11 attacks presenting a recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 measures are little more than a cynical power grab .
We also believe that they have no basis in “ the science ” often breathlessly invoked by the toadies of this power grab .
In this article , we will make a compelling case that there is nothing scientific about this attack on the individual civil liberties of Americans .
As Canadian Dr. Roger Hodkinson , a top pathologist , virologist , and CEO of a biotech company manufacturing COVID tests said , “ this ( COVID-19 ) is the greatest hoax @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Who Is Hurt By Lockdowns… And Who Isn ’ t ?
Before launching into specifics about “ the science ” of lockdowns , it is worth discussing who was impacted by lockdowns and who wasn ’ t .
Despite the rhetoric from the political and media class about how “ we are all in this together , ” there is clearly no “ we ” and there are different impacts on different people .
First , let ’ s discuss the American and international media elites .
These jobs are largely done remotely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ performed so , can easily be transitioned to be done remotely .
Then there is the small matter of the political class of bureaucrats who receive their paychecks whether they perform any ostensible “ work ” — to say nothing of obtaining results — or not .
Unsurprisingly , these are two groups heavily invested in both lockdowns and in policing the behavior of ordinary citizens .
Compare with the working- and middle-class Americans who do not see a dime unless they actually show up to work , work which often can not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rules of the lockdowns .
While one can write clickbait articles about how anti-mask and anti-lockdown protesters are agents of white supremacy from the comfort of one ’ s own home , the same can not be said for tasks like construction , manufacturing , many forms of retail sales or hospitality .
This isn ’ t just a matter of a few people missing out on a few weeks of work .
CNBC host Jim Cramer has noted that the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic led to one of the biggest wealth transfers in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cleaned up at the expense of Main Street .
Small businesses shuttered at an astonishing rate with restaurants and retailers hardest hit .
All told , 60 percent of business closures were expected to be permanent , for a total of over 100,000 businesses .
While Main Street businesses were locked down , Amazon was making a killing — all while Jeff Bezos ’ vanity blog , the Washington Post was pushing lockdown policies .
Walmart , Lowe ’ s , and Target were likewise seeing booming profits .
This is emblematic of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Main Street businesses to Big Tech and the financial sector .
Indeed , the tale of the Chinese coronavirus in total might well be described as a massive upward consolidation of power .
The point of all this is to point out that there is a massive social and economic cost to the lockdowns that is borne entirely by the plebeians and not at all by the political and media elites who push the lockdowns hard .
People ’ s lives have been ruined by the lockdown .
And while the projected increase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to materialize , why does someone have to kill themselves for us to be concerned about how COVID-19 has impacted their lives ?
Further , we have evidence that people die of “ despair ” — effectively giving up on life and failing to perform adequate self-care , overdosing on drugs or other similar types of deaths — at an alarming rate during the pandemic lockdowns .
Indeed , there is even a mathematical formula for this , whereby there is an expected 5,300 to 10,000 deaths for every 1 percent of unemployment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 14.7 percent , which would be an expected excess death total of between 77,910 and 147,000 .
The COVID lockdowns of Spring 2020 saw an uptick in a number of other serious conditions .
Increased suicide was one , but also drug overdoses , alcohol-related illness , tuberculosis infections and on the non-lethal side of things , increased alcohol abuse generally as well as increased spousal and child abuse .
Delayed cancer screenings were another problem during the lockdowns .
The United Kingdom , which has socialized medicine , believes that there are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ delayed treatment because of COVID alone .
Conservative news and opinion website Revolver has conducted an extensive study of just how impacted American quality of life has been by COVID lockdowns , in terms of actual months of life lost .
They concluded that over 10 times as much life has been lost due to COVID lockdowns than due to the disease itself .
The Revolver study is largely based on “ back of the envelope ” type calculations , but is still worth reading to get a sense of the scope of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lives of Americans significantly more than the disease itself .
The Great Barrington Declaration , signed by over 7,000 scientists , virologists , and infectious disease experts believes that lockdowns are destroying “ at least seven times as much life ” as the disease itself and that in the United States and the United Kingdom , there is “ irreparable damage ” being done .
The declaration notes clearly that “ seven times as much damage ” is the absolute minimum , putting a more realistic figure at 90 times .
There is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to quantify how bad the lockdown has been for non-sick people .
Global debt has ballooned , growing by $ 20 trillion since the lockdowns began , according to the Institute of International Finance .
This is thought to be the biggest increase in debt in the world ’ s history Perhaps worst of all , none of this is ever explained to the public as being necessary .
It is simply not acknowledged at all .
It is an article of faith in the COVID cult that any measure that will prevent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no matter what the social or economic consequences .
How Dangerous Is COVID ?
Not Very .
On the flip side of this are the large number of “ COVID deaths ” which are actually attributable to some other cause .
We ’ re not talking about an elderly person with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder pushed over the edge by the Chinese Coronavirus .
We ’ re talking about people who died of gunshot wounds , got into motorcycle accidents , fell off a ladder or had a drug-related heart attack while a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were counted as COVID deaths .
With fat government subsidies for COVID cases , it ’ s unsurprising that hospitals and other healthcare facilities would diagnose people as having COVID who actually did not .
We know very little about COVID and how it is spread , but here are a few things we do know : First , we know that there are a number of comorbidities that make it far more dangerous , one of which is obesity , which increases the risk of COVID death by a whopping 48 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as dangerous as it first sounds : In California where they have had 18,000 deaths , a scant two of these were people under the age of 18 , one with underlying health conditions .
A much more important factor is age .
A large study conducted on data from cases in South Korea , Italy , China , and Spain , three of the early breeding grounds for the virus , found a 0 percent death rate for those under the age of 9 , The death rate didn ’ t climb @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 50-59 — and then only in China and Italy and then only just barely , at 1.3 and 1 percent respectively .
It climbed slightly above 1 percent for all four countries in the 60-69 age bracket , staying below 2 percent in South Korea and Spain , but below 4 percent for Italy and China .
Death rates then spike dramatically over the age of 70 .
This tracks with flu deaths over the 2017-18 “ flu season ” in the United States : Very few deaths under the age of 18 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slightly more for 18-49 ( 2803 ) , another modest jump between 50 and 64 ( 6,751 ) and then a huge spike over the age of 65 ( over 50,000 ) .
Of course , there are more cases of the flu , which has a lower death rate overall : The overall death rate for COVID-19 is 1.5 percent , regardless of age , with an average season ’ s flu killing about .1 percent of everyone who gets it .
Closer to home , we ’ re finding that there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about for most healthy people .
The COVID survival rates according to the CDC are 99.997 percent for those under the age of 20 , 99.98 percent for those between the ages of 20 and 49 , 99.5 percent for those between the age of 50 and 69 and even 94.6 percent for those over the age of 70 .
These numbers include people with comorbidities such as respiratory diseases .
And even these numbers are likely off , as only 6 percent of all COVID deaths are attributed to COVID alone .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least two comorbidities .
The average death rate annually for the flu is about .1 percent .
It ’ s worth noting that this data all comes from the early stages of the pandemic when medical professionals had little way of treating the disease other than ventilating — and thus , probably killing — severe cases .
Now we know quite a bit more about therapeutics that aid in recovery .
President Donald Trump , a clinically obese 74-year-old man , recovered from the disease in less than a week .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ becoming less deadly , not more .
Death rates fall because of increased testing , but the median age of infection has likewise gone down .
Do Lockdowns And Masks Even Work ?
All of this raises an important central question : Why do the elderly , those with underlying health conditions and the obese simply sequester themselves or take reasonable precautions rather than shutting down the world economy ?
Indeed , there is mounting evidence that government intervention has , surprise of surprises , actually made things worse .
As of November @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 34,058 COVID deaths in the state of New York .
Of these , over 6,500 ( or approximately one in seven total deaths ) were nursing home deaths that were a direct result of Governor Andrew Cuomo ’ s policy of forcing nursing homes to accept COVID patients and lock them down with the vulnerable and uninfected .
This is a concrete example of government lockdown measures killing people .
But you won ’ t hear about it in the controlled media .
What about the omnipresent masks that we are now seeing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a mask is seen as the strange one .
They must work , of course !
But there is scant evidence that masks prevent the transmission of COVID or any other respiratory infection .
In every randomized clinical trial ever conducted , there have been inconclusive findings that mask wearing aided in suppressing transmission of respiratory diseases .
Studies generally rely upon fitted N95 respirators that must be sterilized after every use or surgical masks that should be thrown away .
We have more evidence that typical masks cause headaches than that they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what you see on your average trip to the grocery store : People wearing unfitted cloth masks that get occasionally cleaned — maybe .
Many people don ’ t even bother to pull them up over their noses .
Thus , most mask wearing is useless and little more than a form of social control or forced act of “ solidarity.
” There ’ s magical thinking involved in the current mask mandates : If cases go up , it ’ s because people weren ’ t good little boys and girls and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If they go down , everyone has been well behaved and gets to pat themselves on the back for wearing their face diaper .
Some evidence suggests that masks make people feel magically protected from the virus and thus they do not take common-sense precautions against all disease , such as handwashing , keeping fingers off the face , covering their nose when they sneeze and the like .
What this means at its root is that people are trading effective measures for ineffective theater .
Mask reuse likewise increases infection rates and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of that ?
What ’ s more , studies suggest that people who wear the cloth masks , that are now virtually required to do anything outside one ’ s home , lead to an increase of flu-like symptoms — and thus create lots of COVID paranoia where there ought not to be any .
It was only in March that many experts were urging people not to wear masks at all , with this article from April likewise urging people to not wear masks .
There are also the “ soft ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ significant evidence to suggest that children living under COVID will have their emotional and psychological development severely stunted and warped thanks to mask orders .
As if you needed another reason to pull your kids out of public school .
Indeed , we have a mountain of troubling data about the social effects of mass mask wearing that go back decades .
Put simply , masks make people stupid , pliant and anti-social .
Examples of findings from mask studies include : • A 1976 study where people were more likely and required @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ masturbation is fun ” if they were masked .
• A 1979 study found children were more likely to take more than their allotted amount of Halloween candy if they were masked .
• A 1989 study found that masking led people to abandon defense mechanism and revert to more primitive psychological states .
• Studies conducted in 2005 and 2017 found neurological evidence inhibit both impulse control and identity formation , decreasing prefrontal cortex activity .
• Repeated studies have found that masking reduces blood flow to the brain .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of masking as a panacea , instead pushing it as an act of “ social solidarity.
” Sure , masks might not actually do anything — but what about feelings ?
British politicians Michael Gove and Nicole Sturgeon are indicative of this trend .
Your Social Betters Are Not Actually Afraid of COVID But perhaps the best evidence that this is all just a bit of political theater is seeing how our media and political class actually behave when they think no one is watching .
Chris Cuomo , brother of Governor Andrew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fredo ” due to paling in comparison with his brother , was quarantined for two weeks , not for abstract reasons , but because he was actually exposed to COVID .
This didn ’ t stop him from leaving his house unmasked after he got tired of lifting fake weights on camera .
Bill De Blasio , the Mayor of New York with questionable connections to Communist organizations and a daughter in Antifa , was caught at the gym and didn ’ t feel even a twinge of shame about it , explaining @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gym , but you do not .
Lori Lightfoot , Mayor of Chicago , told Chicagoans to stay home for Thanksgiving .
This didn ’ t stop her from taking to the streets following Joe Biden ’ s ersatz “ victory ” in the 2020 Presidential election to celebrate .
Gavin Newsome , Governor of California has presided over some of the harshest lockdowns in the nation , going so far as to shut off power and water to people who defy his lockdown diktats .
He somehow finds time to dine out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Laundry with some of the top medical bureaucrats in the state .
He ’ s not the only governor who believes in “ lockdowns for thee , but not for me.
” Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan went as far as to threaten lockdown protesters with further lockdowns because of their protests .
She is a bit of a poster child for the mediocre people who have appointed themselves COVID cops .
Whitmer put in some of the most restrictive lockdowns in the country , then attempted to use them to blackmail Michiganders into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she began threatening jail time for businesses who did not record personal details of their customers for her personal perusal .
Her husband attempted to throw his weight around to get his boat moved into place for vacation early in violation of state orders .
Nancy Pelosi ’ s lockdown-violating haircut is well known .
Less known is that she planned to carry on with the reception dinner for new members of Congress until her plan was exposed and widely mocked at a time when she and other political elites were telling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The elephant in the room , of course , were the BLM riots of the summer of 2020 .
In cities such as New York , Portland ( where riots literally went on every night for months ) , and Seattle ( where insurrectionists took over several blocks of the capitol district and demanded ethnic cleansing of whites from the area ) , there were leftist riots growing out of a media manufactured panic centered around the death of George Floyd , a criminal who died of a drug overdose while resisting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as COVID .
These riots were fine , indeed necessary and it wasn ’ t just politicians who were saying so .
The medical profession also chimed in , predictably declaring that “ racism ” was the “ real pandemic.
” Compare with the reaction to anti-lockdown protests .
Those seeking a consolidation of power upward in the form of breaking police unions and disbanding local police departments , who terrorized small businesses and local communities , not just in big blue cities , but also in places like Kenosha , Wisconsin and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these sensibly held rioters on $ 1 million bail .
The message is simple and clear : Freedom fighters are superspreaders .
The freelance goons of government repression and Big Tech labor discipline enforcement are free to do as they will .
Their “ protests ” aren ’ t just safe , but vitally important .
There is no other term for the COVID regime than a nascent police state .
Governors and bureaucrats , without any legislative authority have demanded that people remain in the homes at their personal whim for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Australia is an example of a country that has moved very firmly and decisively into police state territory .
Zoe Buhler , a 28-year-old pregnant mother was arrested , handcuffed and had her electronic devices confiscated for the crime of posting about an anti-lockdown protest on Facebook in a town with four active cases .
The name of the crime ?
“ The planning and encouragement of protest activity.
” The punishment ?
Mrs. Buhler is looking at 15 years in prison .
You can watch the video of Mrs. Buhler ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your stomach turn .
The Premier of Victoria ( equivalent to the governor of this Australian state ) allowed and encouraged BLM protests of up to 10,000 that summer .
In Victoria , as elsewhere in Australia , as well as in many American states , people are not allowed to leave their houses except for reasons deemed “ essential ” by their government , then only for so long and between certain hours and you might need a hall pass explaining to officers where you are going and why you are going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crime of sitting down on park benches include a law professor with cerebral palsy and her 70-year-old mother and a heavily pregnant woman while a young tradesman was harassed and fined for not having his papers filled out properly .
With new lockdowns rolling out that involve requirements to wear masks in your own home and a prohibition on all visitors , it is clear that some are attempting to bring back the bad old days of Spring 2020 , but with even more restriction and enforcement .
Thinking about protesting ?
Forget @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
If your protests get too large , as they have done in Germany , the police will turn fire hoses on you like you ’ re in Alabama in 1956 .
And then there ’ s the prospect of the vaccine , two versions of which will soon be available , if not mandatory .
Could the coronavirus vaccine be “ the Mark of the Beast ?
” One doesn ’ t have to be religious to see it as such .
Public health officials are already boasting that no one will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ go to school without this vaccine that was rushed through approvals for political theater .
Former Vice President Joe Biden hasn ’ t ruled out making the vaccine mandatory , though the federal government will likely just punt enforcement to large corporations , similar to how they use Big Tech to manage information on the Internet and Big Finance to take banking services away from dissidents .
Bill Gates has called not only for mandatory vaccines , but also mandatory tracking of people who have received them .
It ’ s worth noting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notion that people who don ’ t know they ’ re sick are passing the disease around and thus , the entire basis of mask mandates and lockdowns , is patently false .
Are our elites deliberately conspiring to instill fear or are they just idiotic dupes ?
Probably a little from Column A and a little from Column B .
But one thing is clear — the economic , political , academic , and media elites in this country are using a disease with a 99.9 % survival rate to transform the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and freedom lovers must resist this by any means necessary .
One way to do this is by patronizing local businesses who are openly defying mask mandates .
But in many cases you can circumvent these laws — particularly at big box stores — by saying : ” I have a health concern.
” The law prevents them from asking anything further and risk averse large companies generally won ’ t for fear of a lawsuit or an Americans with Disabilities Act or HIPAA complaint .
About the Author : Sam Jacobs grew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the part of the country with the weakest gun culture .
However , from a young age he believed firmly in the right of self defense and the right to keep and bear arms .
This , coupled with 12 years of education in public schools and an argumentative nature , meant that he was frequently getting into debates with his teachers about the virtue of the Second Amendment .
A precocious student of history and the Constitution , Jacobs became interested in both the practice of armed self defense throughout history as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Second Amendment .
Jacobs has an affinity for the individual and the common man against centralized forms of power and elites , whether they be in the government or the private sector .
In particular , he is interested in the ways in which private companies work to subvert the legislative process and to undermine American freedoms outside of normal legal channels .
He considers the resolution of how corporate power can hem in Constitutional freedoms to be the most pressing political question of our age .
The private sector and the public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , both because of behind-the-scenes corporate chicanery that undermines the legislative process and because private companies are rapidly becoming far more powerful than the federal government .
Thus , it is more important than ever to both fight the incursion of private companies into our government and to become independent and self-reliant enough to make it difficult for private companies to hem in your rights .
Jacobs is the lead writer and chief historian with Ammo.com , and is the driving intellectual force behind the content in the Resistance Library .
He is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ places like Bloomberg , USA Today and National Review , but he is far more proud to see his work republished on websites like ZeroHedge , Lew Rockwell , Sons of Liberty Media and The Liberty Beacon .
How many firearms does Sam own and what ’ s his everyday carry ?
That ’ s between him and the NSA .

COVID-19 Lockdowns: Liberty and Science
By: Sam Jacobs
The Chinese Coronavirus (COVID-19) hit American shores — officially, anyway, there is significant evidence that it arrived earlier — in late January 2020. The American public was then told that a two-week shutdown of the economy would “flatten the curve,” relieving the pressure on hospital intensive care units and saving lives in the long run.
The average American, including conservatives, being people of good faith, complied, thinking that this was a common-sense measure that would save lives in the wake of a new and mysterious pandemic.
But two things quickly happened: First, the goalposts moved. No longer was it enough to “flatten the curve.” Now we were to be locked down until there was a cure.
No longer was it enough to “flatten the curve.” Now we were to be locked down until there was a cure.
Even the cure was not enough for some figures like the lionized-by-liberals Dr. Anthony Fauci — we would continue to be locked down even after a vaccine had been rammed through the approvals process with limited testing. When would we be allowed out by our masters? No one could answer this.
Second, there was an intensification of the authoritarian measures. Some states, aided by Big Tech, introduced “contact tracing” where people had to sign in with extensive personal information if they wanted to, for example, eat out at a restaurant. This was so that, in the event of infection with COVID-19, the state health department would be able to track and trace everyone you had contact with.
We should add that a third thing didn’t so much “happen” but was discovered: As it turns out unless you are old (over the age of 65), morbidly obese or suffer from a complicating disorder (such as diabetes or asthma), COVID-19 was little more than a bad cold or the flu.
What’s more, there was a financial incentive from the government to mark deaths as COVID-19 deaths when they were not. George Floyd, the man who died while being arrested by the Minneapolis Police Department, sparking riots over the summer of 2020, is officially a COVID-19 death because he died with COVID-19, despite not dying of COVID-19.
By the fall of 2020, the facts became clear: While COVID-19 was dangerous for select populations, it had an extremely low death rate among the young and healthy.
The generous or naive might say that the COVID-19 health measures are misguided attempts to protect the population. A more hard-nosed or cynical person likely thinks that these measures are a deliberate attempt to enact totalitarian measures leveraging public panic.
This, of course, would not be the first time the government and its toadies took advantage of such a panic, with the 9/11 attacks presenting a recent example of such.
We believe that COVID-19 measures are little more than a cynical power grab. We also believe that they have no basis in “the science” often breathlessly invoked by the toadies of this power grab.
In this article, we will make a compelling case that there is nothing scientific about this attack on the individual civil liberties of Americans. As Canadian Dr. Roger Hodkinson, a top pathologist, virologist, and CEO of a biotech company manufacturing COVID tests said, “this (COVID-19) is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”
Who Is Hurt By Lockdowns… And Who Isn’t?
Before launching into specifics about “the science” of lockdowns, it is worth discussing who was impacted by lockdowns and who wasn’t. Despite the rhetoric from the political and media class about how “we are all in this together,” there is clearly no “we” and there are different impacts on different people.
First, let’s discuss the American and international media elites. These jobs are largely done remotely and, where they are not customarily performed so, can easily be transitioned to be done remotely. Then there is the small matter of the political class of bureaucrats who receive their paychecks whether they perform any ostensible “work” — to say nothing of obtaining results — or not.
Unsurprisingly, these are two groups heavily invested in both lockdowns and in policing the behavior of ordinary citizens. Compare with the working- and middle-class Americans who do not see a dime unless they actually show up to work, work which often cannot be done under the restrictive and arbitrary rules of the lockdowns.
While one can write clickbait articles about how anti-mask and anti-lockdown protesters are agents of white supremacy from the comfort of one’s own home, the same cannot be said for tasks like construction, manufacturing, many forms of retail sales or hospitality.
This isn’t just a matter of a few people missing out on a few weeks of work. CNBC host Jim Cramer has noted that the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic led to one of the biggest wealth transfers in all of American history. Wall Street cleaned up at the expense of Main Street.
Small businesses shuttered at an astonishing rate with restaurants and retailers hardest hit. All told, 60 percent of business closures were expected to be permanent, for a total of over 100,000 businesses.
While Main Street businesses were locked down, Amazon was making a killing — all while Jeff Bezos’ vanity blog, the Washington Post was pushing lockdown policies. Walmart, Lowe’s, and Target were likewise seeing booming profits.
This is emblematic of the massive transfer of wealth from small Main Street businesses to Big Tech and the financial sector. Indeed, the tale of the Chinese coronavirus in total might well be described as a massive upward consolidation of power.
The point of all this is to point out that there is a massive social and economic cost to the lockdowns that is borne entirely by the plebeians and not at all by the political and media elites who push the lockdowns hard.
People’s lives have been ruined by the lockdown. And while the projected increase in suicide rates has thus far failed to materialize, why does someone have to kill themselves for us to be concerned about how COVID-19 has impacted their lives?
Further, we have evidence that people die of “despair” — effectively giving up on life and failing to perform adequate self-care, overdosing on drugs or other similar types of deaths — at an alarming rate during the pandemic lockdowns.
Indeed, there is even a mathematical formula for this, whereby there is an expected 5,300 to 10,000 deaths for every 1 percent of unemployment. Unemployment during COVID lockdowns peaked at 14.7 percent, which would be an expected excess death total of between 77,910 and 147,000.
The COVID lockdowns of Spring 2020 saw an uptick in a number of other serious conditions. Increased suicide was one, but also drug overdoses, alcohol-related illness, tuberculosis infections and on the non-lethal side of things, increased alcohol abuse generally as well as increased spousal and child abuse.
Delayed cancer screenings were another problem during the lockdowns. The United Kingdom, which has socialized medicine, believes that there are tens of thousands of deaths related to delayed treatment because of COVID alone.
Conservative news and opinion website Revolver has conducted an extensive study of just how impacted American quality of life has been by COVID lockdowns, in terms of actual months of life lost. They concluded that over 10 times as much life has been lost due to COVID lockdowns than due to the disease itself.
The Revolver study is largely based on “back of the envelope” type calculations, but is still worth reading to get a sense of the scope of how COVID-19 lockdowns have negatively impacted the lives of Americans significantly more than the disease itself.
The Great Barrington Declaration, signed by over 7,000 scientists, virologists, and infectious disease experts believes that lockdowns are destroying “at least seven times as much life” as the disease itself and that in the United States and the United Kingdom, there is “irreparable damage” being done.
The declaration notes clearly that “seven times as much damage” is the absolute minimum, putting a more realistic figure at 90 times.
There is another metric worth mentioning in our quest to quantify how bad the lockdown has been for non-sick people. Global debt has ballooned, growing by $20 trillion since the lockdowns began, according to the Institute of International Finance. This is thought to be the biggest increase in debt in the world’s history
Perhaps worst of all, none of this is ever explained to the public as being necessary. It is simply not acknowledged at all. It is an article of faith in the COVID cult that any measure that will prevent even a single death is worth it no matter what the social or economic consequences.
How Dangerous Is COVID? Not Very.
On the flip side of this are the large number of “COVID deaths” which are actually attributable to some other cause. We’re not talking about an elderly person with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder pushed over the edge by the Chinese Coronavirus. We’re talking about people who died of gunshot wounds, got into motorcycle accidents, fell off a ladder or had a drug-related heart attack while a police officer kneeled on their neck who were counted as COVID deaths.
With fat government subsidies for COVID cases, it’s unsurprising that hospitals and other healthcare facilities would diagnose people as having COVID who actually did not.
We know very little about COVID and how it is spread, but here are a few things we do know: First, we know that there are a number of comorbidities that make it far more dangerous, one of which is obesity, which increases the risk of COVID death by a whopping 48 percent. But even that might not be as dangerous as it first sounds: In California where they have had 18,000 deaths, a scant two of these were people under the age of 18, one with underlying health conditions.
A much more important factor is age. A large study conducted on data from cases in South Korea, Italy, China, and Spain, three of the early breeding grounds for the virus, found a 0 percent death rate for those under the age of 9, The death rate didn’t climb above 1 percent until the age of 50-59 — and then only in China and Italy and then only just barely, at 1.3 and 1 percent respectively.
It climbed slightly above 1 percent for all four countries in the 60-69 age bracket, staying below 2 percent in South Korea and Spain, but below 4 percent for Italy and China. Death rates then spike dramatically over the age of 70.
This tracks with flu deaths over the 2017-18 “flu season” in the United States: Very few deaths under the age of 18 (a little over 600), slightly more for 18-49 (2803), another modest jump between 50 and 64 (6,751) and then a huge spike over the age of 65 (over 50,000). Of course, there are more cases of the flu, which has a lower death rate overall: The overall death rate for COVID-19 is 1.5 percent, regardless of age, with an average season’s flu killing about .1 percent of everyone who gets it.
Closer to home, we’re finding that there’s absolutely nothing to be concerned about for most healthy people. The COVID survival rates according to the CDC are 99.997 percent for those under the age of 20, 99.98 percent for those between the ages of 20 and 49, 99.5 percent for those between the age of 50 and 69 and even 94.6 percent for those over the age of 70.
These numbers include people with comorbidities such as respiratory diseases. And even these numbers are likely off, as only 6 percent of all COVID deaths are attributed to COVID alone. The rest had, on average, at least two comorbidities.
The average death rate annually for the flu is about .1 percent.
It’s worth noting that this data all comes from the early stages of the pandemic when medical professionals had little way of treating the disease other than ventilating — and thus, probably killing — severe cases.
Now we know quite a bit more about therapeutics that aid in recovery. President Donald Trump, a clinically obese 74-year-old man, recovered from the disease in less than a week. There is ample evidence that the disease is becoming less deadly, not more. Death rates fall because of increased testing, but the median age of infection has likewise gone down.
Do Lockdowns And Masks Even Work?
All of this raises an important central question: Why do the elderly, those with underlying health conditions and the obese simply sequester themselves or take reasonable precautions rather than shutting down the world economy?
Indeed, there is mounting evidence that government intervention has, surprise of surprises, actually made things worse. As of November 18, 2020, there have been 34,058 COVID deaths in the state of New York. Of these, over 6,500 (or approximately one in seven total deaths) were nursing home deaths that were a direct result of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s policy of forcing nursing homes to accept COVID patients and lock them down with the vulnerable and uninfected.
This is a concrete example of government lockdown measures killing people. But you won’t hear about it in the controlled media.
What about the omnipresent masks that we are now seeing everywhere to the point where someone without a mask is seen as the strange one. They must work, of course!
But there is scant evidence that masks prevent the transmission of COVID or any other respiratory infection. In every randomized clinical trial ever conducted, there have been inconclusive findings that mask wearing aided in suppressing transmission of respiratory diseases. Studies generally rely upon fitted N95 respirators that must be sterilized after every use or surgical masks that should be thrown away. We have more evidence that typical masks cause headaches than that they prevent against COVID.
Compare this to what you see on your average trip to the grocery store: People wearing unfitted cloth masks that get occasionally cleaned — maybe. Many people don’t even bother to pull them up over their noses. Thus, most mask wearing is useless and little more than a form of social control or forced act of “solidarity.”
There’s magical thinking involved in the current mask mandates: If cases go up, it’s because people weren’t good little boys and girls and didn’t wear their masks. If they go down, everyone has been well behaved and gets to pat themselves on the back for wearing their face diaper.
Some evidence suggests that masks make people feel magically protected from the virus and thus they do not take common-sense precautions against all disease, such as handwashing, keeping fingers off the face, covering their nose when they sneeze and the like.
What this means at its root is that people are trading effective measures for ineffective theater. Mask reuse likewise increases infection rates and who among us isn’t guilty of that?
What’s more, studies suggest that people who wear the cloth masks, that are now virtually required to do anything outside one’s home, lead to an increase of flu-like symptoms — and thus create lots of COVID paranoia where there ought not to be any.
It was only in March that many experts were urging people not to wear masks at all, with this article from April likewise urging people to not wear masks.
There are also the “soft” effects of mask wearing. There is significant evidence to suggest that children living under COVID will have their emotional and psychological development severely stunted and warped thanks to mask orders. As if you needed another reason to pull your kids out of public school.
Indeed, we have a mountain of troubling data about the social effects of mass mask wearing that go back decades. Put simply, masks make people stupid, pliant and anti-social. Examples of findings from mask studies include:
A 1976 study where people were more likely and required less pay to carry a sign reading “masturbation is fun” if they were masked.
A 1979 study found children were more likely to take more than their allotted amount of Halloween candy if they were masked.
A 1989 study found that masking led people to abandon defense mechanism and revert to more primitive psychological states.
Studies conducted in 2005 and 2017 found neurological evidence inhibit both impulse control and identity formation, decreasing prefrontal cortex activity.
Repeated studies have found that masking reduces blood flow to the brain.
A number of public figures have backed off of masking as a panacea, instead pushing it as an act of “social solidarity.” Sure, masks might not actually do anything — but what about feelings? British politicians Michael Gove and Nicole Sturgeon are indicative of this trend.
Your Social Betters Are Not Actually Afraid of COVID
But perhaps the best evidence that this is all just a bit of political theater is seeing how our media and political class actually behave when they think no one is watching.
Chris Cuomo, brother of Governor Andrew Cuomo, often referred to as “Fredo” due to paling in comparison with his brother, was quarantined for two weeks, not for abstract reasons, but because he was actually exposed to COVID. This didn’t stop him from leaving his house unmasked after he got tired of lifting fake weights on camera.
Bill De Blasio, the Mayor of New York with questionable connections to Communist organizations and a daughter in Antifa, was caught at the gym and didn’t feel even a twinge of shame about it, explaining that he needs to go to the gym, but you do not.
Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago, told Chicagoans to stay home for Thanksgiving. This didn’t stop her from taking to the streets following Joe Biden’s ersatz “victory” in the 2020 Presidential election to celebrate.
Gavin Newsome, Governor of California has presided over some of the harshest lockdowns in the nation, going so far as to shut off power and water to people who defy his lockdown diktats. He somehow finds time to dine out at the three Michelin star restaurant French Laundry with some of the top medical bureaucrats in the state.
He’s not the only governor who believes in “lockdowns for thee, but not for me.” Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan went as far as to threaten lockdown protesters with further lockdowns because of their protests. She is a bit of a poster child for the mediocre people who have appointed themselves COVID cops.
Whitmer put in some of the most restrictive lockdowns in the country, then attempted to use them to blackmail Michiganders into voting for Joe Biden. In November, she began threatening jail time for businesses who did not record personal details of their customers for her personal perusal. Her husband attempted to throw his weight around to get his boat moved into place for vacation early in violation of state orders.
Nancy Pelosi’s lockdown-violating haircut is well known. Less known is that she planned to carry on with the reception dinner for new members of Congress until her plan was exposed and widely mocked at a time when she and other political elites were telling average Americans to skip Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The elephant in the room, of course, were the BLM riots of the summer of 2020. In cities such as New York, Portland (where riots literally went on every night for months), and Seattle (where insurrectionists took over several blocks of the capitol district and demanded ethnic cleansing of whites from the area), there were leftist riots growing out of a media manufactured panic centered around the death of George Floyd, a criminal who died of a drug overdose while resisting arrest and whose death is officially listed as COVID.
These riots were fine, indeed necessary and it wasn’t just politicians who were saying so. The medical profession also chimed in, predictably declaring that “racism” was the “real pandemic.”
Compare with the reaction to anti-lockdown protests. Those seeking a consolidation of power upward in the form of breaking police unions and disbanding local police departments, who terrorized small businesses and local communities, not just in big blue cities, but also in places like Kenosha, Wisconsin and Lancaster, Pennsylvania — the latter of these sensibly held rioters on $1 million bail.
The message is simple and clear: Freedom fighters are superspreaders. The freelance goons of government repression and Big Tech labor discipline enforcement are free to do as they will. Their “protests” aren’t just safe, but vitally important.
The Coming COVID Police State
There is no other term for the COVID regime than a nascent police state. Governors and bureaucrats, without any legislative authority have demanded that people remain in the homes at their personal whim for a disease with a 99.9% survival rate.
Australia is an example of a country that has moved very firmly and decisively into police state territory. Zoe Buhler, a 28-year-old pregnant mother was arrested, handcuffed and had her electronic devices confiscated for the crime of posting about an anti-lockdown protest on Facebook in a town with four active cases. The name of the crime? “The planning and encouragement of protest activity.” The punishment? Mrs. Buhler is looking at 15 years in prison.
You can watch the video of Mrs. Buhler’s arrest here. It should make your stomach turn. The Premier of Victoria (equivalent to the governor of this Australian state) allowed and encouraged BLM protests of up to 10,000 that summer.
In Victoria, as elsewhere in Australia, as well as in many American states, people are not allowed to leave their houses except for reasons deemed “essential” by their government, then only for so long and between certain hours and you might need a hall pass explaining to officers where you are going and why you are going there.
Among people harassed for the crime of sitting down on park benches include a law professor with cerebral palsy and her 70-year-old mother and a heavily pregnant woman while a young tradesman was harassed and fined for not having his papers filled out properly.
With new lockdowns rolling out that involve requirements to wear masks in your own home and a prohibition on all visitors, it is clear that some are attempting to bring back the bad old days of Spring 2020, but with even more restriction and enforcement.
Thinking about protesting? Forget about being arrested and manhandled by police. If your protests get too large, as they have done in Germany, the police will turn fire hoses on you like you’re in Alabama in 1956.
And then there’s the prospect of the vaccine, two versions of which will soon be available, if not mandatory.
Could the coronavirus vaccine be “the Mark of the Beast?” One doesn’t have to be religious to see it as such. Public health officials are already boasting that no one will be able to work, travel or go to school without this vaccine that was rushed through approvals for political theater.
Former Vice President Joe Biden hasn’t ruled out making the vaccine mandatory, though the federal government will likely just punt enforcement to large corporations, similar to how they use Big Tech to manage information on the Internet and Big Finance to take banking services away from dissidents.
Bill Gates has called not only for mandatory vaccines, but also mandatory tracking of people who have received them.
It’s worth noting that “asymptomatic transmission,” the notion that people who don’t know they’re sick are passing the disease around and thus, the entire basis of mask mandates and lockdowns, is patently false.
Are our elites deliberately conspiring to instill fear or are they just idiotic dupes? Probably a little from Column A and a little from Column B. But one thing is clear — the economic, political, academic, and media elites in this country are using a disease with a 99.9% survival rate to transform the country into a police state. Patriots and freedom lovers must resist this by any means necessary.
One way to do this is by patronizing local businesses who are openly defying mask mandates. But in many cases you can circumvent these laws — particularly at big box stores — by saying :”I have a health concern.” The law prevents them from asking anything further and risk averse large companies generally won’t for fear of a lawsuit or an Americans with Disabilities Act or HIPAA complaint.
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Read more articles by Sam Jacobs
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About the Author: Sam Jacobs grew up in Southern New England, probably the part of the country with the weakest gun culture. However, from a young age he believed firmly in the right of self defense and the right to keep and bear arms. This, coupled with 12 years of education in public schools and an argumentative nature, meant that he was frequently getting into debates with his teachers about the virtue of the Second Amendment. A precocious student of history and the Constitution, Jacobs became interested in both the practice of armed self defense throughout history as well as the philosophical underpinnings of the Second Amendment. Jacobs has an affinity for the individual and the common man against centralized forms of power and elites, whether they be in the government or the private sector. In particular, he is interested in the ways in which private companies work to subvert the legislative process and to undermine American freedoms outside of normal legal channels. He considers the resolution of how corporate power can hem in Constitutional freedoms to be the most pressing political question of our age. The private sector and the public sector are increasingly indistinguishable from one another, both because of behind-the-scenes corporate chicanery that undermines the legislative process and because private companies are rapidly becoming far more powerful than the federal government. Thus, it is more important than ever to both fight the incursion of private companies into our government and to become independent and self-reliant enough to make it difficult for private companies to hem in your rights. So Sam believes. Jacobs is the lead writer and chief historian with Ammo.com, and is the driving intellectual force behind the content in the Resistance Library. He is proud to see his work name-checked in places like Bloomberg, USA Today and National Review, but he is far more proud to see his work republished on websites like ZeroHedge, Lew Rockwell, Sons of Liberty Media and The Liberty Beacon. How many firearms does Sam own and what’s his everyday carry? That’s between him and the NSA.
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The above article (COVID-19 Lockdowns: Liberty and Science) was originally created and published by LIBERTAS BELLA and is republished here by contribution with attribution to author and website libertasbella.com. TLB recommends you visit LIBERTAS BELLA for mre great articles and information.
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Stay tuned to …
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The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
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Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.
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Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
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Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.


thelibertybeacon--2020-12-01--Media stars, Business magnates lead Exodus from California to Southern states [Video]

Multiple business leaders and media enterprises in 2020 are making plans to leave California for southern states , where local governments exert a lighter touch on business matters .
Among the media companies to announce such a move this year was the Daily Wire , the conservative website founded in 2015 with Ben Shapiro as its editor in chief .
The digital news site announced in September that it would be moving its headquarters from Los Angeles to Nashville .
Shapiro cited California ’ s political environment as the motivating factor for the move .
California “ has turned into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a video announcing the move .
The notoriously rapid-fire Shapiro called the decision “ specifically , and really only , due to the crappy governance of the state.
” Watch… .
Shapiro , who grew up in California , told Fox News host Laura Ingraham earlier this year that high taxes , the threat of more tax hikes , “ absolutely crappy public services , ” the “ undermining ” of police forces , and rampant homeless problems in the state were among the reasons the Wire was moving to the south .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ he said .
Daily Wire Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Boering told media at the time of the announcement that roughly 80 % of the site ’ s 75 employees were expected to move with the company .
The Wire has not been the only company or business leader dissatisfied with California ’ s political climate .
Elon Musk , the CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla , Inc. , signaled his intent in the spring to move that company ’ s headquarters west and south of California .
Citing COVID-19 lockdown orders in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Musk tweeted in May : “ Frankly , this is the final straw .
Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately.
” In the months since , Tesla appeared to shelve its immediate ambitions to move , though Musk has still left the door open for a move .
“ There ’ s no question that our headquarters will remain in California for the short term , ” he told Automotive News late in the summer .
“ Long term , we ’ ll have to wait and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ – the host of the successful podcast “ The Joe Rogan Experience ” – announced that , like the Daily Wire , he too would be leaving California due to what he said were the chronic problems currently facing the state .
Announcing his intent to move to Texas , Rogan cited the need for “ a little more freedom ” as one of the motivating factors .
He also cited what he said was “ the traffic … the economic despair … [ and ] the homelessness problem that ’ s accelerated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last decade .
Rogan in May had already teased the possibility of his leaving the state .
“ If California continues to be this restrictive , I don ’ t know if this is a good place to live , ” he said , referring to the state ’ s COVID-19 lockdowns .
“ I might jet .
I ’ m not kidding .
I ’ m not kidding , this is silly .
I don ’ t need to be here.
” Rogan has not revealed whether or where he has moved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Austin earlier this year .
In August he posted on Instagram a shot of a new podcast studio being built in Texas .
Lesser-known but still locally prominent businesses have also announced their intent to leave the state .
Paul Petrovich , a longtime developer out of Northern California , has stated his intent to move to Austin to avoid California ’ s proposed wealth tax .
The tax bill , which has stalled in the state ’ s assembly , would if passed “ impose an annual tax at a rate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this state ’ s worldwide net worth in excess of $ 30,000,000.
” Petrovich told the San Francisco Business Times that his decision to move was motivated “ not [ by ] frustration as much as need and not wanting to be taken advantage of.
” “ When you really don ’ t have a choice after working for 40 years , you have to do this .
It ’ s an evacuation , ” he said , adding that he was “ not a lone wolf ” on the issue and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ planning to move as well .
In addition to concerns over the state ’ s tax climate , California ’ s government has been the subject of significant criticism for its COVID-19 policies , which have been among the strictest and longest-lasting in the country since going into place in the spring .
Lockdown measures in the state have reportedly driven many residents to move elsewhere .
Nearly a third of small businesses in New Jersey have closed since pandemic ’ s start Disney to lay off 32,000 employees as COVID-19 impedes theme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with permission of John Solomon at Just the News Some emphasis and pictorial content added by ( TLB ) Click Here to read about the staff at Just the News The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate , and for this we are grateful and excited !
But we must also be practical .
For 7 years we have not asked for any donations , and have built this project with our own funds as we grew .
We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we represent .
So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them .
Nothing is too small .
We thank you for all your support and your considerations … ( TLB )

Media stars, Business magnates lead Exodus from California to Southern states
Seeking lower costs and less state oversight
By Daniel Payne
Multiple business leaders and media enterprises in 2020 are making plans to leave California for southern states, where local governments exert a lighter touch on business matters.
Among the media companies to announce such a move this year was the Daily Wire, the conservative website founded in 2015 with Ben Shapiro as its editor in chief.
The digital news site announced in September that it would be moving its headquarters from Los Angeles to Nashville. Shapiro cited California’s political environment as the motivating factor for the move.
California “has turned into a hellhole,” he said in a video announcing the move. The notoriously rapid-fire Shapiro called the decision “specifically, and really only, due to the crappy governance of the state.” Watch….
Shapiro, who grew up in California, told Fox News host Laura Ingraham earlier this year that high taxes, the threat of more tax hikes, “absolutely crappy public services,” the “undermining” of police forces, and rampant homeless problems in the state were among the reasons the Wire was moving to the south.
“Bad governance has consequences,” he said.
Daily Wire Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Boering told media at the time of the announcement that roughly 80% of the site’s 75 employees were expected to move with the company.
The Wire has not been the only company or business leader dissatisfied with California’s political climate.
Elon Musk, the CEO of electric car manufacturer Tesla, Inc., signaled his intent in the spring to move that company’s headquarters west and south of California.
Citing COVID-19 lockdown orders in Alameda County, in Northern California, Musk tweeted in May: “Frankly, this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately.”
In the months since, Tesla appeared to shelve its immediate ambitions to move, though Musk has still left the door open for a move.
“There’s no question that our headquarters will remain in California for the short term,” he told Automotive News late in the summer. “Long term, we’ll have to wait and see.”
‘A little bit more freedom’
In July, Joe Rogan – the host of the successful podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” – announced that, like the Daily Wire, he too would be leaving California due to what he said were the chronic problems currently facing the state.
Announcing his intent to move to Texas, Rogan cited the need for “a little more freedom” as one of the motivating factors. He also cited what he said was “the traffic … the economic despair … [and] the homelessness problem that’s accelerated radically” in Los Angeles over the last decade.
Rogan in May had already teased the possibility of his leaving the state.
“If California continues to be this restrictive, I don’t know if this is a good place to live,” he said, referring to the state’s COVID-19 lockdowns. “I might jet. I’m not kidding. I’m not kidding, this is silly. I don’t need to be here.”
Rogan/Twitter screen shot
Rogan has not revealed whether or where he has moved, though he reportedly purchased a house in Austin earlier this year. In August he posted on Instagram a shot of a new podcast studio being built in Texas.
Lesser-known but still locally prominent businesses have also announced their intent to leave the state. Paul Petrovich, a longtime developer out of Northern California, has stated his intent to move to Austin to avoid California’s proposed wealth tax.
The tax bill, which has stalled in the state’s assembly, would if passed “impose an annual tax at a rate of 0.4% of a resident of this state’s worldwide net worth in excess of $30,000,000.”
Petrovich told the San Francisco Business Times that his decision to move was motivated “not [by] frustration as much as need and not wanting to be taken advantage of.”
“When you really don’t have a choice after working for 40 years, you have to do this. It’s an evacuation,” he said, adding that he was “not a lone wolf” on the issue and that numerous other wealthy individuals in California were planning to move as well.
In addition to concerns over the state’s tax climate, California’s government has been the subject of significant criticism for its COVID-19 policies, which have been among the strictest and longest-lasting in the country since going into place in the spring. Lockdown measures in the state have reportedly driven many residents to move elsewhere.
Facebook groups such as “Conservatives Leaving California” and “Life After California,” meanwhile, boast a combined tens of thousands of members detailing their efforts, plans and successes in leaving the state. “Life After California,” for instance, has gained nearly 50,000 members after being created in January of this year.
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RELATED ARTICLES
*********
(TLB) published this article with permission of John Solomon at Just the News
Some emphasis and pictorial content added by (TLB)
Click Here to read about the staff at Just the News
••••
••••
Stay tuned to …
••••
The Liberty Beacon Project is now expanding at a near exponential rate, and for this we are grateful and excited! But we must also be practical. For 7 years we have not asked for any donations, and have built this project with our own funds as we grew. We are now experiencing ever increasing growing pains due to the large number of websites and projects we represent. So we have just installed donation buttons on our websites and ask that you consider this when you visit them. Nothing is too small. We thank you for all your support and your considerations … (TLB)
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Comment Policy: As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. This also applies to trolling, the use of more than one alias, or just intentional mischief. Enforcement of this policy is at the discretion of this websites administrators. Repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without prior warning.
••••
Disclaimer: TLB websites contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of “fair use” in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, health, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than “fair use” you must request permission from the copyright owner.
••••
Disclaimer: The information and opinions shared are for informational purposes only including, but not limited to, text, graphics, images and other material are not intended as medical advice or instruction. Nothing mentioned is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.


thelibertybeacon--2020-12-01--PM Orbán: Europe must NOT Succumb to the Soros Network (VIDEO)

ER Editor : Hungary and Poland are currently defying the EU on its budgetary control and largesse concerning the virus crisis , being used to consolidate EU financial power in the wake of the plandemic .
Neither country , along with Slovenia , will be blackmailed into accepting funding on condition that they make critical changes to how they choose to run things back home .
See Tom Luongo ’ s piece from this week titled Hungary And Poland Create The Unbridgeable Gap Of The Great Reset .
This amazing letter by Hungarian PM Viktor Orban concerning George Soros is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a commentary by Alexander Mercouris we recommend .
The article penned by Soros to which Orban is referring can be found here – Europe Must Stand Up to Hungary and Poland .
Check out the childish , mocking photograph of Orban and one of Poland ’ s influential political figures , Jarosław Kaczyński , used at the head of the piece .
PM Orbán : Europe must not succumb to the Soros network The following text is PM Orbán ’ s reply to the article by George Soros , published in Project Syndicate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the prime minister of a country should not enter into an argument with George Soros .
Their reasoning is that Soros is an economic criminal , because he made his money through speculation , ruining the lives of millions of people , and even blackmailing entire national economies .
Just as governments must not negotiate with terrorists , they say , prime ministers must likewise not debate with economic criminals .
Yet now I am compelled to do so , because in an article appearing on the Project Syndicate website on 18 November @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Soros issued open commands to the leaders of the European Union .
In his article he instructs them to severely punish those Member States that do not want to become part of a unifying European empire under the banner of a global “ open society ” .
Throughout history , Europe ’ s strength has always been derived from its nations .
Although of different origins , European nations were bound together by the common roots of our faith .
The foundation of our communities was the European family model , itself based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ freedom which ensured freedom of thought and culture , and which created benign competition among the continent ’ s nations .
This magnificent amalgam of contrasts made Europe the world ’ s leading power through centuries of history .
Every attempt to unify Europe under the aegis of empire has failed .
Thus historical experience tells us that Europe will be great again if its nations become great again , and resist all forms of imperial ambition .
Great forces are once again moving to eradicate the nations of Europe and unify the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ empire .
The Soros network , which has woven itself through Europe ’ s bureaucracy and its political elite , has for years been working to make Europe an immigrant continent .
Today the Soros network , which promotes a global open society and seeks to abolish national frameworks , is the greatest threat faced by the states of the European Union .
The goals of the network are obvious : to create multi-ethnic , multicultural open societies by accelerating migration , and to dismantle national decision-making , placing it in the hands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Union is suffering from multiple afflictions : since 2008 an economic crisis of proportions not seen for generations ; since 2015 a migration crisis ; and in 2020 a devastating global pandemic .
Europe has still not recovered from its previous crises , and so the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has the potential for even greater distress .
There are already signs of this : in several countries public debt , unemployment rates and the general economic situation have reached critical levels .
The need for European solidarity , for European nations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , has never been greater .
During all these crises , this speculator – who calls himself a philanthropist – did not consider the interests of the people of Europe , but acted to his own advantage .
Memorably he attacked the Hungarian forint ( ER : Hungary ’ s currency ) and Hungary ’ s largest bank in the economic crisis , and he planned to speed up , distribute and finance the resettlement of immigrants during the migrant crisis ; and now he is proposing that Member States punish one another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ assistance .
The network directed by George Soros has now discarded any hesitancy it may have had about open intervention .
He wants to put more pressure on nation states than ever before .
He is setting the peoples of Europe against one another .
The network ’ s operational system is labyrinthine , and is present in various arenas of public life .
On the payroll of George Soros are a long list of politicians , journalists , judges , bureaucrats and political agitators masquerading as members of civil society organizations .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ enemies of corruption , he himself is the most corrupt man in the world .
He pays off and buys whoever he can – and those whom he can not bribe will be slandered , humiliated , intimidated and destroyed by the network through its formidable weapon : the left-wing media battalions .
Many high-ranking EU bureaucrats are working with the Soros network to create a unified empire .
They want to build an institutional system that , under the aegis of the open society , seeks to force a unified way of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unified social model on Europe ’ s free and independent nations .
They seek to rescind the right of every people to decide its own destiny .
This is also the purpose of their “ rule of law ” proposal – which does not , in fact , recognize the rule of law , but of strength .
It would be more honest to call it the “ rule of the majority ” .
The differences between us are obvious .
Soros wants an open society , while we want a safe society @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only be liberal , while we think it can be Christian .
According to him , freedom can only serve self-realization , while we believe that freedom can also be used to follow the teachings of Christ , to serve one ’ s country , and to protect our families .
The basis of Christian freedom is the freedom to decide .
This is now in jeopardy .
We in the eastern part of the EU know very well what it means to be free .
The history of the nations of Central @ @ @ @ @ @ @ freedom against great empires , a repeated battle to win our right to decide our own destinies .
We have bitter first-hand experience that every imperial endeavor brings enslavement .
There are still quite a few here from the generation of freedom fighters – in the former Eastern Bloc , from Estonia to Slovenia , from Dresden to Sofia – who can personally remember what it is like to oppose tyranny , the rule of man and its communist version : intimidation , material and moral ruination , physical and mental abuse .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Western leaders who have lived their whole lives in a world of inherited freedom and the rule of law should now listen to those who have fought for freedom and who – based on their personal life experiences – can distinguish between the rule of law and tyranny , or the rule of man .
Such Western leaders must accept that in the 21st century we shall not surrender the freedom we fought to achieve at the end of the 20th century .
The battle for and against the new Brussels empire has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be surrendering , but many nation states continue to resist .
If we want to preserve our freedom , Europe must not succumb to the Soros network .
Published to The Liberty Beacon from EuropeReloaded.com

ER Editor: Hungary and Poland are currently defying the EU on its budgetary control and largesse concerning the virus crisis, being used to consolidate EU financial power in the wake of the plandemic. Neither country, along with Slovenia, will be blackmailed into accepting funding on condition that they make critical changes to how they choose to run things back home. See Tom Luongo’s piece from this week titled Hungary And Poland Create The Unbridgeable Gap Of The Great Reset.
This amazing letter by Hungarian PM Viktor Orban concerning George Soros is discussed in a Duran video below, a commentary by Alexander Mercouris we recommend.
Hungary PM Viktor Orban demolishes SOROS in open letter
The article penned by Soros to which Orban is referring can be found here – Europe Must Stand Up to Hungary and Poland. Check out the childish, mocking photograph of Orban and one of Poland’s influential political figures, Jarosław Kaczyński, used at the head of the piece.
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PM Orbán: Europe must not succumb to the Soros network
The following text is PM Orbán’s reply to the article by George Soros, published in Project Syndicate on November 18.
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Many believe that the prime minister of a country should not enter into an argument with George Soros. Their reasoning is that Soros is an economic criminal, because he made his money through speculation, ruining the lives of millions of people, and even blackmailing entire national economies. Just as governments must not negotiate with terrorists, they say, prime ministers must likewise not debate with economic criminals.
Yet now I am compelled to do so, because in an article appearing on the Project Syndicate website on 18 November, the Hungarian-born speculator and billionaire George Soros issued open commands to the leaders of the European Union. In his article he instructs them to severely punish those Member States that do not want to become part of a unifying European empire under the banner of a global “open society”.
Throughout history, Europe’s strength has always been derived from its nations. Although of different origins, European nations were bound together by the common roots of our faith. The foundation of our communities was the European family model, itself based on Judeo-Christian traditions. It was Christian freedom which ensured freedom of thought and culture, and which created benign competition among the continent’s nations. This magnificent amalgam of contrasts made Europe the world’s leading power through centuries of history.
Every attempt to unify Europe under the aegis of empire has failed. Thus historical experience tells us that Europe will be great again if its nations become great again, and resist all forms of imperial ambition.
Great forces are once again moving to eradicate the nations of Europe and unify the continent under the aegis of a global empire. The Soros network, which has woven itself through Europe’s bureaucracy and its political elite, has for years been working to make Europe an immigrant continent. Today the Soros network, which promotes a global open society and seeks to abolish national frameworks, is the greatest threat faced by the states of the European Union. The goals of the network are obvious: to create multi-ethnic, multicultural open societies by accelerating migration, and to dismantle national decision-making, placing it in the hands of the global elite.
The European Union is suffering from multiple afflictions: since 2008 an economic crisis of proportions not seen for generations; since 2015 a migration crisis; and in 2020 a devastating global pandemic. Europe has still not recovered from its previous crises, and so the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has the potential for even greater distress. There are already signs of this: in several countries public debt, unemployment rates and the general economic situation have reached critical levels. The need for European solidarity, for European nations to come together to help each other, has never been greater.
During all these crises, this speculator – who calls himself a philanthropist – did not consider the interests of the people of Europe, but acted to his own advantage. Memorably he attacked the Hungarian forint (ER: Hungary’s currency) and Hungary’s largest bank in the economic crisis, and he planned to speed up, distribute and finance the resettlement of immigrants during the migrant crisis; and now he is proposing that Member States punish one another, instead of embracing solidarity and mutual assistance.
The network directed by George Soros has now discarded any hesitancy it may have had about open intervention. He wants to put more pressure on nation states than ever before. He is setting the peoples of Europe against one another. The network’s operational system is labyrinthine, and is present in various arenas of public life. On the payroll of George Soros are a long list of politicians, journalists, judges, bureaucrats and political agitators masquerading as members of civil society organizations. And although the billionaire accuses all his enemies of corruption, he himself is the most corrupt man in the world. He pays off and buys whoever he can – and those whom he cannot bribe will be slandered, humiliated, intimidated and destroyed by the network through its formidable weapon: the left-wing media battalions.
Many high-ranking EU bureaucrats are working with the Soros network to create a unified empire. They want to build an institutional system that, under the aegis of the open society, seeks to force a unified way of thinking, a unified culture and a unified social model on Europe’s free and independent nations. They seek to rescind the right of every people to decide its own destiny. This is also the purpose of their “rule of law” proposal – which does not, in fact, recognize the rule of law, but of strength. It would be more honest to call it the “rule of the majority”.
The differences between us are obvious. Soros wants an open society, while we want a safe society. According to him, democracy can only be liberal, while we think it can be Christian. According to him, freedom can only serve self-realization, while we believe that freedom can also be used to follow the teachings of Christ, to serve one’s country, and to protect our families. The basis of Christian freedom is the freedom to decide. This is now in jeopardy.
We in the eastern part of the EU know very well what it means to be free. The history of the nations of Central Europe has been a relentless struggle for freedom against great empires, a repeated battle to win our right to decide our own destinies. We have bitter first-hand experience that every imperial endeavor brings enslavement. There are still quite a few here from the generation of freedom fighters – in the former Eastern Bloc, from Estonia to Slovenia, from Dresden to Sofia – who can personally remember what it is like to oppose tyranny, the rule of man and its communist version: intimidation, material and moral ruination, physical and mental abuse. We want no more of that.
Western leaders who have lived their whole lives in a world of inherited freedom and the rule of law should now listen to those who have fought for freedom and who – based on their personal life experiences – can distinguish between the rule of law and tyranny, or the rule of man. Such Western leaders must accept that in the 21st century we shall not surrender the freedom we fought to achieve at the end of the 20th century.
The battle for and against the new Brussels empire has not yet been decided. Brussels seems to be surrendering, but many nation states continue to resist. If we want to preserve our freedom, Europe must not succumb to the Soros network.
Viktor Orbán
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Published to The Liberty Beacon from EuropeReloaded.com
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