Tom Coburn, Oklahomas independent voice for conservative principles and fiscal responsibility, died Friday. He was 72.

Coburn rose from obscurity to national prominence on the strength of his intellectual abilities and his dedication to a strict reading of the U.S. Constitution.

That often made him out of fashion in Washington, but he was made to order for the people of Oklahoma, who were fed up with a national government that seemed unrestrained by economics or common sense.

A Republican in the 2nd Congressional District, which had been historically dominated by Democrats, Coburn was swept into the U.S. House in 1994. It was his first bid for public office.

Abiding by a promise to limit himself to three terms in the House, Coburn retired in 2000, but returned more popular than ever to the Senate in the 2004 election. He would serve 10 years there before retiring from elected office.

In Congress, Coburn was steadfastly dedicated to serving the nations long-term interests as he saw them, not necessarily his constituents short-term desires. He wouldnt work for pet projects and successfully led the Senate effort to ban legislative funding earmarks, one of his most lasting accomplishments.

His unique brand of leadership only added to his stature in his home state. When he retired from the Senate in 2014, he was clearly the most popular politician in the state.

Coburn cast a long shadow in Oklahoma and the nation. He campaigned for a national constitutional convention to force a balanced budget amendment. His opposition to Medicaid expansion helped solidify Republican opposition to the idea in the Mary Fallin administration.

Coburn was an unabashed advocate for freedom and duty. He was dedicated to the proposition that one leader could make a difference if he remained true to his course.

In his valedictory speech from the Senate floor, Coburn said the most important number in that chamber wasnt 60, the number needed to proceed with business, or 51, the number needed to pass bills.

The most important number in the Senate is one, Coburn said. One Senator. Thats how it was set up.

Our nation will miss his dedication to the causes of liberty and good government.

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Tulsa World editorial: Tom Coburn an unabashed advocate for freedom and duty was loved in Oklahoma and will be missed in the United States - Tulsa...

The coronavirus crisis that has enveloped the world has brought about calls for society and economy-wide action on the part of governments that has been matched by the imposing of radical shutdowns and compulsory mass quarantining as tens of millions of people are told to not to go to work and to stay at home instead.

Governments have also been redirecting essential medical and related supplies in some places. In the United States, direct governmental commands for companies and industries to change what and how they produce has been declared to be in the executive hands of the president of the United States, when it is deemed necessary to meet the needs of the health crisis.

President Donald Trumps recent order for the automobile manufacturer, General Motors, to shift its production potentials to the manufacturing of ventilators for those stricken severely by the virus, under the authority of a Korean-war era piece of legislation, is merely an especially high-profile example of the central planning powers that governments have been asserting the right to implement.

Fundamental to everything that governments have been doing is the presumption that the crisis can only be handled and solved through a comprehensive system of political command and control. The chorus of voices making this case, along with their own proposals as to what should be the ingredients of the plan, has been deafening.

John Cassidy, writing for The New Yorker (March 28, 2020), insists that the most effective stimulus policy is doing whatever it takes to get some control over the viruss trajectory. He praised the bipartisanship of the Democrats and Republicans in successfully passing the $2 trillion spending package to stabilize the economy in the face of various levels of government ordering people to stop working and, therefore, to slow down or stop the flow of various goods and services from which come the streams of income dependent upon supplies being produced to meet market demands.

Over at Project Syndicate, Harvard University professor Carmen M. Reinhart says the lockdown and distancing policies that are saving lives also carry an enormous economic cost, and insists, Clearly, this is a whatever-it-takes moment for large-scale outside-the-box fiscal and monetary policies.

Also writing for Project Syndicate, economists Roman Frydman (New York University) and Edmund S. Phelps (Columbia University and Nobel Prize winner) declare that, the possibility of millions dying as the economy is crippled justifies substantially scaling up the extent and the scope of government action . . . citizens and governments should be prepared to pay what might appear an extravagantly high premium.

Among the government actions that Frydman and Phelps propose are the government redirecting the existing productive capacity to meet health care equipment shortages; financially supporting business firms to supply essential goods and services; supplying the needed quantities of money so people have the financial means to continue buying the goods and services they need; and a program to cover home and other mortgages of those no longer able to meet their regular financial obligations.

They want government helicopter money to be ongoing rather than a one or two-shot affair to meet the financial requirements of virtually everyones buying needs. To meet the needed production requirements to manage health demands from the virus, they say that the private sector cannot be trusted to do the job on its own; thus, the government must determine and direct what firms produce, for which purposes, in what quantities, and with government funding to make sure the job gets done.

To prevent price gouging for such products and failure to pay reasonable salaries to the workers doing these jobs, they also basically call for price and wage controls to assure reasonable wages and prices for the products at pre-crisis levels. If we can get it all just right, the coronavirus will be defeated, they are saying, and the world will be saved from disaster. We just need the right central plan designed in its details just the right way.

Of course, others are already looking beyond the coronavirus crisis to what lessons will have been learned for enlightened and rational intervention to guide human conduct away from its just-too-human follies and foibles. James Kirkup, the director of the London-based Social Market Foundation, therefore, asks, Will the Pandemic Kill Off Libertarianism? (March 25, 2020).

He criticizes rational choice theory in economics because it assumes that human beings are rational calculating machines who dispassionately weigh the implied costs and benefits from their actions, including the knowable and objective probabilities of the risks from following one course of action instead of another. Then each of the social and market agents makes the more or less correct decision concerning what to do and in what directions.

But when James Kirkup looks around, he finds that real human beings operate very far from such a benchmark of rational conduct and decision-making. Every reasonable person, fairly early on once the implications of the coronavirus were publicly known, should have stopped going to pubs or their local gym; they should have no longer socialized in common areas like public parks or in the shoulder-to-shoulder everyday marketplace.

People just would not do the reasonable and rational things to assure their own health and safety as well as all those around them, including friends and family members. The critics of traditional economic theory were, once more, shown to be right people are not rational calculators of the reasonable courses of action to follow. They are shortsighted in their thinking, they are illogical estimators of dangers and risks to themselves and others, and, therefore, they follow misguided notions of their self-interest that not only harms themselves but the rest of society as well.

Or as Kirkup suggests, If people arent rational about a situation that risks tens of thousands of lives and deep damage to our society and economy, how much weight should we put on the idea of rational actors in future? . . . Put it another way: once youve closed pubs and banned people from going outside, imposing, say, a tax to deter people from consuming sugary drinks is going to seem like a very small thing indeed.

So here we have a very interesting intellectual and ideological twist of fate. For more than 150 years, critics of the market disdained the economists emphasis on individual choice and pursuit of personal gain, especially reflected in the businessmans quest for profit.

These critics insisted that there was more to life than self-interest and material betterment; that man was a social animal connected with others outside of just himself that transcended personal profit and loss. There were the deeper attachments and senses of shared belonging of blood and soil and the transcendent community into which one was born. In addition, the rational economic man model in economics was also condemned by these earlier critics for assuming such rationality when, clearly, man is guided in reality by illogical and irrational views, values, and visions of what is good or bad, and reasonable or reckless.

Now we find among the latest generation of critics of the free market the argument turned around, with it being said that precisely because humans are not these rational economic calculators of costs and benefits, and of personal and social gains and harms, the government must radically intervene in various and sundry ways to make peoples actions consistent with conduct that would reflect such rational economic calculations, if only human beings could be trusted with the freedom to act in such ways!

The post-coronavirus world, according to Kirkup, will have to be one of extended and extensive political paternalism to reduce the impact of human imperfection in peoples thinking processes and actions, in both great and small ways, that do not represent the right choices for themselves or others in society. In other words: Im with the government, and I am here to make you live your life and act in ways you should and would want to, if only you were as reasonable, rational, and logical as those in government who have been assigned the task of designing policies that will nudge you in the directions that you will or should be thankful for, regardless if you realize it right now or in the future.

Herein lies both arrogance and hubris. There is the presumption of having found and distilled the correct and objective standards of judging and weighing alternatives on the basis of which the most rational choice would be made, when properly and accurately considering the relevant costs and benefits and degree and forms of risk facing each and every individual.

Who knows the logically correct and factually accurate data in the context of which a person should be making his decisions and choices? Clearly, the implied social engineer, the political paternalist, the economic nudger who will either directly command by requiring or prohibiting forms of conduct, or who will influence the terms of trade-offs indirectly through taxation, subsidy or regulation to move people into the proper courses of action.

This implies two ideas: first, that the planner and nudger knows the optimal or more desirable social outcome as a whole to which all the actions of the particular individuals should be moving the society; and, second, that the actions commanded or influenced by such government interventions are really right for the individual.

Behind this type of thinking, whether admitted to or not, is the belief that the social nudger assumes himself to be so far above and superior to others in his theoretical understanding, factual information, and valuational understanding of what is good for mankind and for all the individuals who make up humanity that he freely takes upon himself the authority and power to mold the shape of society and the destinies of all in it into the form that he considers the best.

Over 250 years after the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) published his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), is it necessary to remind people of the reality of the limits to our knowledge and understanding of ourselves, others, and all the unanticipated and unknowable outcomes from the multitudes of mankinds members interacting? Or that attempts to direct people in ways that they find undesirable only sets the stage for various forms of social conflict? Said Ferguson:

Mankind, in following the present sense of their minds, in striving to remove inconveniences, or to gain apparent and contiguous advantages, arrives at ends to which their imagination could not anticipate . . . He who first said, I will appropriate this field: I will leave it to my heirs; did not perceive, that he was laying the foundation of civil law and political establishments . . .

Men, in general, are sufficiently disposed to occupy themselves in forming projects and schemes; but he who would scheme and project for others, will find an opponent in every person who is disposed to scheme for himself . . .The crowd of mankind, are directed in their establishments and measures, by the circumstances in which they are placed; and seldom turned from their way, to follow the plan of any single projector.

Every step and every movement of the multitudes, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments [institutions], which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design . . .It may with more reason be affirmed of communities, that they admit of the greatest revolutions where no change is intended, and that the most refined politicians do not always know whither they are leading the state by their projects. (p. 122)

Or as Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) concisely expressed it in Theory and History (1957):

The historical process is not designed by individuals. It is the composite outcome of the intentional actions of all the individuals. No man can plan history. All he can plan and try to put into effect is his own actions which, jointly with the actions of other men, constitute the historical process. The Pilgrim Fathers did not plan to found the United States. (p. 196)

These presumptuous political paternalists, claiming to know what is best for every individual and optimally good for the society as a whole, show an indefensible hubris in asserting that they can step out of the very society and historical processes of which they are a single participant and know with necessary and sufficient certainty how the destiny of humankind should be directed, to be nudged into the best of all worlds?

This was emphasized by another Austrian economist, Friedrich von Wieser (1851-1926) in Social Economics (1914):

The economy is full of social institutions which serve the entire economy and are so harmonious in structure as to suggest that they are the creation of an organized social will . . . Such a social institution is illustrated by money, by the economic market, by the division of labor . . . finally by the economy [as a whole] itself, which is the greatest of these institutions, and includes all the others . . .

How could any general contractual agreement be reached as to institutions whose being is still hidden in the mists of the future, and is only conceived in an incomplete manner by a few far-seeing persons, while the great mass can never clearly appreciate the nature of such an institution until it has actually attained it full form and is generally operative? (p. 162)

Do these would-be nudging paternalists not get up each morning and put on their pants one leg at a time like the rest of us? Do they not sometimes give into everyday temptations and desires that their social scientific objectivity tells them is not always in their best interest? Are they not subject to the same imperfections and limits of knowledge like you and I are in often having retrospective thoughts on the errors and mistakes we have made? In other words, are they demigods to be trusted with the future of each and every one of us and the general society in which we all live? I will go out on a limb and suggest, probably not!

If they are correct that human foibles are too serious to be left up to the free choices of the individuals who make them, then how can those same imperfect and irrational individuals be trusted with the democratic right to vote for those who will be elected to government office? Not always knowing where their true interests lie, might they not elect wrong-thinking politicians who fail to appoint these very political paternalists to the policy making positions, without whose help society and the individuals in it could be doomed to disastrous consequences?

Is there, here, the faint scent of ideological and political despotism? Do these paternalists not have an inkling that as would-be government policy nudgers they are really societal noodges, political pests, irritatingly telling people how they should live, when those poor, irrational people yes, you and me would rather decide this for themselves?

And this gets us around to the earlier writers who we mentioned, above, those who consider a free, competitive, decentralized marketplace of supply and demand the wrong place to place trust in to solve the problems of a societal plague such as the coronavirus.

A good number of years ago, UCLA economist Harold Demsetz (1930-2019) pointed out the not infrequent tendency of critics of the market economy to compare markets as they work in the real world with a hypothetical ideal of a perfectly informed and only public interest-minded government, the latter being what he called the the nirvana viewpoint. It is then deduced that there are market failures all around us in contrast to a world in which that ideal government, manned by all-knowing, and perfectly rational politicians and bureaucrats, were put in charge instead.

Demsetz said that the working of real markets should be compared to how real governments operate. It would soon be seen that the society suffers from an abundant quantity of government failures in contrast to a vibrant and highly successful market economy.

When these critics who doubt the effectiveness of the market economy in a crisis such as the coronavirus suggest turning to the government to manage the problem, they suffer from the nirvana viewpoint that Demsetz challenged. The media has been full of stories about the failures of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in both thoughtfully preparing for such a dangerous health risk before it arrived, and then their bureaucratic rigidity and attempts at protecting their monopoly turf in failing to allow developments of private testing techniques for the virus, or the operation of independent labs performing the tests to speed up results, or in not permitting the manufacturing and supplying of essential medical equipment by private producers not completely under their regulatory thumbs.

What could be better examples of government failure, failures that are inherent in the way bureaucracies operate in top-down central planning structures of regulatory control and command. Information has to be collected and digested at various local points, then passed on up through the bureaucratic control chain to different levels of evaluation and summary until it reaches a high enough level of policy decision-making that an actual plan concerning a course of action may be designed and ordered to be implemented.

At each level is the human element, not just in the sense that people may make mistakes and poor judgments. But, also, in that the people at each level have their own implicit motives and agendas relating to their departments authority and budget that influences how those responsible for evaluating and passing on information to the next higher level consider what is or is not important and relevant and consistent with the procedures and rationales for what each in the bureaucratic hierarchy is doing. This is the real world of government, not some hypothetical utopia of magical, wand-waving government that is ready, willing and able to solve all the problems of the world.

In the meantime, people on the ground often are limited or restricted in their ability to use their own knowledge and judgments, based on their own skills, experiences, and abilities, to solve part of the problem, if they only had the liberty to try.

To give just one instance, Wales Online recently told the story of a Welshmen who devised a way to design and quickly construct a ventilator that can serve as a highly workable device in place of the more scarce and more costly traditional ventilators used in hospital ICUs. Dr. Rys Thomas designed it in three days drawing upon his military and civilian experience with the use of anesthetics and resuscitation; he began manufacturing in partnership with a small private enterprise. It was allowed to be produced with little red tape, fortunately, by the Welsh government. But if Dr. Thomas had had to submit documentation, proof of testing and trials, and a lengthy approval process according to the usual FDA procedures here in the United States, people might have died that are being helped to breathe right now in Wales.

This is the type of discovery and adaptation to changing circumstances that Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992), had in mind, I would suggest, when in his famous article on The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945), he referred to the special and local knowledge of time and place possessed by individuals on the spot. By people having the latitude and liberty to not only see an opportunity but the discretion and freedom to try to use it in advantageous ways, we all benefit from what other individuals, whom we know nothing about, may do that will end up benefiting us in ways we could not have originally imagined.

This all highlights, in my view, why the emphasis upon and calls for the concentration of centralized decision-making and planning by government in meeting the challenge of the coronavirus is completely wrong-headed. It should be exactly the reverse. We should not want to restrict what people are able and could do to one overarching and imposed leadership team meant to guide and coordinate all that is going on in society to overcome the health crisis through which we are all passing.

The whole purpose of competitive markets and the price system is to have an institutional setting in which each individual in his own corner of society and the social system of division of labor may freely utilize what he comes up with and sees as possible answers to various aspects of the problems constantly popping up in different places, in different ways, with different features and requirements, given the way the virus is spreading and impacting different areas and communities.

The continuous changeability and adaptability of a competitive price system serves to indicate to any and all interested or potentially relevant fellow members of society where demand is greatest for various items and services, and what supplies are available in which quantities to meet those shifting needs in different parts of the country, and, indeed, around the world. Prices and wages are the best rationing guide for people to economize here as best they can, until some supplies relatively more abundant and less urgently needed there can be transported and transferred from one part of the country to another.

That very much ridiculed and condemned profit motive acts as a wonderful incentive mechanism for people to more accurately anticipate the patterns of future market demands for these health-related products and to adjust to changes when they have not had perfect forethought in a world in which the future can never be perfectly known.

The last thing that should be imposed are price and wage controls, like Roman Frydman and Edmund Phelps and others have been calling for. This short-circuits the institutional mechanism that enables the coordination of more people who know far more than any one or handful of minds can ever know to best utilize what everyone can contribute to solving any one problem and those other problems that are in competition for the scarce resources and labor services of the society.

Through the price system, we all contribute through our demands and our abilities to supply to compositely determine what should be produced, where and how it should be produced, and for whom at any moment of time and over periods of time in changing circumstances. No other economic and social system of human association and cooperation has ever been found to better improve the condition of humankind, both in sickness and in health, and in normal times as well as in serious emergencies and crises, as the competitive, price-guiding market economy. (See my article, Price Controls Attack the Freedom of Speech.)

Finally, this also brings us back to James Kirkups presumption on the claimed irrationality of real human beings and the need to paternalistically nudge us all into the direction of choice-making based upon a postulated model of rational economic man. It is not a secret that we all, in hindsight, make numerous mistakes and misjudgments in our choices. I know this certainly applies to me; just ask my wife, who never tires of reminding me of my follies and foibles!

But I would suggest that often what the political paternalist, with his model of supposedly objective, rational behavior, is missing is the fact that much of what is criticized and condemned as illogical or irrational conduct needing nudged correction are often reasonable and rational choices, if only looked at in the context of the local knowledge and circumstances that only that individual may possess and fully appreciate concerning the situation, opportunities, and costs as he sees them during and over any given period of time.

What we need, in general, concerning our fellow human beings is a humility that we do not and cannot really know enough to tell others how they should live and for what purposes. Furthermore, none of us, even the self-appointed social engineers, know enough to plan the direction and destiny of human society.

As Ferguson and Mises and Wieser reminded us, social and historical processes are far too complex, multifaceted and unknowable to plan the destination of mankind. This all is no less true when needing to call upon and coordinate the knowledge and abilities of millions to confront a health crisis like the coronavirus. Liberty remains the best means of saving and bettering mankind.

What is the underlying premise behind all of these arguments, whether focused on the immediate coronavirus crisis or looking beyond to the world after the crisis is behind us? It is that freedom does not work or does not work as effectively as the critic thinks it should if this health crisis is to be successfully grappled with. It is once again considered to represent a failure of the market that can only be compensated and corrected for by turning command and control over to the government and to the guiding judgments and decisions of those holding high political office and the presumed experts manning the bureaus, agencies and departments that make up the government.

[Originally posted at the American Institute for Economic Research]

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What Comes After the Coronavirus, Freedom or Despotism? - The Heartland Institute

Week3 begins: PM out of self-isolation but still working from home

With Sophie Gregoire Trudeau now fully recovered from the bout of COVID-19 that put her husbandinto self-imposed self-isolation for 14 days, the prime minister is now officially free to venture past the stoop of Rideau Cottage, but so far, theres no indication that hes planning to take advantage of his restored mobility rights any time soon.

READ MORE:Bill with emergency COVID-19 aid becomes law; offers $2,000 benefit for workers

Instead, likethe tens of thousands of Canadiansnowon pandemic-imposed lockdown,hes expected to keep working from home for the foreseeable future aside, that is, from his regularly scheduled mid-morning forays before the cameras.

Over the weekend, he announced new restrictions on domestic travel, which, as the Star reports, will kick in on Monday at noon, and prevent anyone presenting COVID-19 like symptoms such as fever, coughing, or difficulty breathing from boarding domestic flights or inter-city train services like Via Rail.

He also rolled out another round of emergency funding earmarked for the most vulnerable Canadians: seniors, youth and the homeless, as well as women and children fleeing domestic violence.

So, whats on the prime ministerial to-do list for this week?

While he doesnt tend to share the details in advance, it will almost certainly include regular huddles with his cabinet which, of course, he can now do in person, at least in theory as well as more announcements on what his government is doing to combat the spread of the virus, although not necessarily with quite so much frequency as has been the case for the last two weeks.

One thing he can at least tentatively cross off his to-worry-about list, however, is the prospect of American troops massing in proximity to the Canada-U.S. border, which was reportedly under serious consideration by U.S. President Donald Trump, but, as per the Wall Street Journal, was abruptly dropped after Canadian officials strenuously objected to the scheme.

Two House committees set to hit virtual meeting circuit

After reopening briefly last week for what turned out to be a considerably more contentious emergency sitting than expected, the House of Commons is nowback on hiatus until April 20, buttwo key committees have gotten the green light to start holding weekly meetings in the interim to track of the governments response to the pandemic.

Courtesy of the motion adopted at the end of last weeks marathon House sitting, the House finance and health committees have been duly authorized to get together at least once per week not in person, of course, but via video or teleconference call and accessible by the public through the parliamentary website. The committees will hear from ministers, public health officials and other expert witnesses who can provide real-time updates from the frontlines of the campaign to flatten the curve.

In addition to the weekly briefing sessions, as of March 30, the finance committee will also start getting a bi-weekly report on exactly how Finance Minister Bill Morneau has been using his temporary new fiscal freedom to funnel public funds into the fight against the coronavirus, as laid out in the COVID-19 Emergency Response Act adopted byParliament last week.

The motion also stipulates that either minister or his delegate will appear before the tele-committee to discuss the contents of those reports and if a majority of committee members arent satisfied with how the government is exercising his powers under the Act, they can file a report of their own to the speaker, which would trigger a recall of the entire House.

Meanwhile, Morneau will also have to set aside time to host a bi-weekly conference call to provide his opposition critics with regular updates on his efforts to mitigate the economic impact of the crisis.

As of Sunday morning, there was still no word on when the first round of tele-meetings would take place, but considering how keen the combined opposition forces are to continue holding the minority Liberal government to account despite the break in regular parliamentaryprogramming, its a safe bet that the virtual circuit will be up and running as soon as the technology required is in place.

Conservative leadership race officially on hold until May 1

Afterweeks of resistingincreasingly frantic pleasto hit pause on the race to replace Andrew Scheer and despite a franticlast-minute push from supporters ofpresumptivefront-runner Peter MacKay to stick to the pre-pandemic schedule the Conservative Party bowed to the inevitable on Friday with the announcement that the leadership election process has been suspended, effective immediately. As a result, the June 27 convention has been cancelled, with a final decision on the post-COVID-19 timeline to be made on May 1.

READ MORE:Conservative leadership race suspended, citing non-essential business closures

In the interim, the party notes, leadership campaign fundraising has also been suspended, as the party wont be processing directed donations, while the four candidates set to face off on the ballot will be asked and encouraged to refrain from contacting party members until after May 1.

Althoughthe membership deadline has been bumped to May 15, the suspension wont offer aretroactive reprieve for now former leadership hopefuls like Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu, who made the initial cut to be listed as an authorized applicant only to fall short of the requirements to be designated as a verified candidate.

As for the final four which, addition to MacKay, includes Conservative MP Erin OToole, who is widely viewed as a close second to MacKays, as well as rookie MP Derek Sloan and Toronto-based activist Leslyn Lewis it will be fascinating to see how their respective teams will deal with the party-imposed ban on fundraising and outreach.

Then again, given the ongoing lockdown, its not as though any of them would have been booking venues for in-person rallies.

As for MacKay, he may come to regret his very public pitch for the contest to carry on as planned during a Canada-wide public health crisis, particularly his much-retweeted two-word response to CTV News host Evan Solomon.

After all, depending on how the party decides to proceed, this could wind up being the first-ever leadership battle to be waged nearly entirely via social media messaging and meme drives, and its doubtful thatMacKays most recent tour of the political TV circuit will garner many votes from either rank-and-fileparty members or the undecided voters he hopes to win over when he leads his party into the next general election.

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What We're Watching: New travel restrictions for those with COVID-19 symptoms start Monday - iPolitics.ca

It is not cognitive dissonance the impossibility of holding two or more contradictory beliefs simultaneously to favor the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump while at the same time worrying about what the increasing national debt (nearing $24 trillion and counting) will do to the country.

Are we mortgaging our future for the sake of temporary relief from the economic side effects of the coronavirus pandemic? If our elected representatives and unelected bureaucrats can effectively order the U.S. Treasury to print more money and borrow in continuing excess, what happens when the next crisis hits, or if the current one returns in the fall, as some medical experts believe it might? Where will it end? Is this a precedent that proponents of big government will use to justify even more spending on whatever future projects they choose?

Historically, debt has been a major contributor to the decline of great nations. It is why James Madison warned: If Congress can employ money indefinitely, for the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public treasury. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.

We are ignoring the prophetic nature of Madisons statement at our peril. The philosophy of individual freedom is under assault. There are troops in the streets of some American cities and towns. Edicts are handed down by elected and unelected officials and experts on what is allowed and what is not permitted. Churches, as Madison feared, are closed. Most of us seem indifferent, having become intoxicated with the notion that anything government does must be good.

If Madisons warning isnt warning enough, how about this one from 18th-century Scottish lawyer, writer and historian Alexander Fraser Tytler: A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

Government is growing ever bigger with no spending cuts, no doing away with any program or agency, no matter how useless or outmoded it has become. Republicans used to consider national debt their issue. They are now joined at the pocketbook with Democrats and can never again argue against debt with any credibility.

While I have seen this quote attributed to Tytler associated with other names, whoever first said it correctly summarized the cycle of the worlds great civilizations: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.

America, you have been warned by the ghosts of the past, but how many are listening and heeding those warnings?

If uncontrolled and unlimited spending continues, we might have to change the nations abbreviation from USA to ATM.

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas new book Americas Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States (HarperCollins/Zondervan). Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.

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Cal Thomas: The dark hole of debt - Washington Times Herald

It is not cognitive dissonancethe impossibility of holding two or more contradictory beliefs simultaneouslyto favor the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump while worrying about what the increasing national debt (nearing $24 trillion and counting) will do to the country.

Are we mortgaging our future for the sake of temporary relief from the economic side effects of the coronavirus pandemic?

If our elected representatives and unelected bureaucrats can effectively order the U.S. Treasury to print more money and borrow in continuing excess, what happens when the next crisis hits, or if the current one returns in the fall, as some medical experts believe it might? Where will it end?

Is this a precedent that proponents of big government will use to justify even more spending on whatever future projects they choose?

Historically, debt has been a major contributor to the decline of great nations. It is why James Madison warned:

If Congress can employ money indefinitely, for the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public treasury. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.

We are ignoring the prophetic nature of Madisons statement at our peril. The philosophy of individual freedom is under assault.

There are troops in the streets of some American cities and towns. Edicts are handed down by elected and unelected officials and experts on what is allowed and what is not permitted. Churches, as Madison feared, are closed.

Most of us seem indifferent, having become intoxicated with the notion that anything government does must be good.

If Madisons warning isnt warning enough, how about this one from 18th-century Scottish lawyer, writer, and historian Alexander Fraser Tytler:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

Government is growing ever bigger with no spending cuts, no doing away with any program or agency, no matter how useless or outmoded it has become. Republicans used to consider national debt their issue. They are now joined at the pocketbook with Democrats and can never again argue against debt with any credibility.

While I have seen this quote attributed to Tytler associated with other names, whoever first said it correctly summarized the cycle of the worlds great civilizations:

From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage.

America, you have been warned by the ghosts of the past, but how many are listening and heeding those warnings?

If uncontrolled and unlimited spending continues, we might have to change the nations abbreviation from USA to ATM.

(c) 2020 Tribune Content Agency LLC

Continued here:

A Warning From the Dark Hole of Debt - Daily Signal

The far-right, Trump-aligned student activist groupTurning Point USA(TPUSA) is attempting to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to out "radical leftist" professors "corrupting our youth."

On March 22, TPUSA President Charlie Kirk asked "all college students" to record their classes, which had been converted to online formats as a method of coronavirus protection. "Now is the time to document & expose the radicalism that has been infecting our schools. Transparency!" he tweeted.

Kirk maintains that "leftist professors are corrupting our youth" and that college campuses pose a threat to the country by teaching students to hate America.

TPUSA has a history of harassing professors. The group launched a "Professor Watchlist" site in November 2016, which is an attempt to target liberal college and university professors. The project, which purports to expand academic freedom, is in realitya threat to academic freedom, according toThe New York Times. The site has led to harassment and intimidation of higher education faculty, and it parallelsa similar effortto target liberals more broadly by the anti-Muslim hate group theDavid Horowitz Freedom Center.

This time around, a powerful right-wing network that has worked with TPUSA in the past is speaking out against its latest attempt to direct ire at liberal professors. Charles Koch Foundation Vice President of Philanthropy Charlie Ruger said ina statement:

"Inciting harassment against scholars isn't just wrong at a time when many are seeking out new ways to engage their students during a crisis, it's always wrong. Targeting, intimidating, and otherwise attempting to silence academics chills the open exchange of ideas and, in turn, chokes off progress."

"The Koch Foundation's statement against faculty harassment is hypocritical and insincere," Samantha Parsons, director of campaigns for activist group UnKoch My Campus, told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). "The Koch network is funding media outlets like Campus Reform and The College Fix, which directly attack scholars that are critical of free-market capitalism and white supremacy. Some of the professors covered by these donor-funded stories have received death threats or been forced to leave their institutions."

Just as Koch has funded outlets such as the Leadership Institute, which runs Campus Reform, and the Student Free Press Association, which publishesThe College Fix, his political funding network has been instrumental in getting TPUSA itself to where it is today. A CMD investigation of federal tax records has found that a number of funders in the Koch donor network, including a charity that the Koch Foundation uses heavily to distribute charitable donations, have provided a large part of TPUSA's revenue since the fiscal year of 2014.

Over one dozen TPUSA funders since FY2014 have also donated to nonprofits at the helm of Koch's political network, such as Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Partners Institute (rebranded in 2017 asCapital Leaders), and theSeminar Network Trust. Many more have contributed to heavily Koch-funded groups such as the Institute for Humane Studies, a free-market economics center at George Mason University that is funded by the Koch Foundation, and the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, which Koch co-founded.

Overall, CMD tracked more than $11.1 million in donations to TPUSA from FY2014 through 2018, which amounts to roughly 43 percent of the organization's revenue from FY2014 to FY2018.

DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund sponsor that invests and delivers right-wing donors' money to charitable nonprofits of their choosing while keeping their identities hidden from the Internal Revenue Service and the public, gave $610,000 to TPUSA from 2017-18, most of it coming in the latter year. Numerous conservatives use DonorsTrust to score tax breaks and distribute their charitable dollars.

Koch family foundations are some of DonorsTrust's biggest clients. In 2014-15, the Koch's Knowledge and Progress Fund gave $5.3 million to DonorsTrust, and the Charles Koch Foundation has given $980,000 to it since 2014. The connectedDonors Capital Fund, to which Koch family foundations have also contributed large sums, donated $100,000 to TPUSA in 2016.

The biggest TPUSA donor in the Koch network is theEd Uihlein Family Foundation, the foundation of wealthy Uline CEO and GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein, which gave $750,000 to TPUSA from 2014-18. The biggest donation, $250,000, came in 2018.

Other Koch network donors since FY2014 include theDeason Foundation, the charity ofAffiliated Consumer Servicesfounder, billionaireDarwin Deason($510,000; Deason's son, businessmanDoug Deason, is on TPUSA's Advisory Board);Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundationand the connectedBradley Impact Fund($232,500 total from 2014-18, plus an additional$100,000from the Bradley Foundation in 2019, according to its website); theThomas W. Smith Foundation($400,000); and theEinhorn Family Charitable Trust($120,000).

The biggest known donor to TPUSA is the family foundation of Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus. TheMarcus Foundationgave TPUSA $1,573,000 from 2015-18.

Another donor is theTracking Foundation, which donated $800,000 to TPUSA from 2017-18 and was funded by Cerberus Capital Management CEO Stephen A. Feinberg and his wife, Gisela Feinberg. The couple resigned from the board at the end of 2018, according to the nonprofits most recenttax filing. Stephen Feinberg is a GOP megadonor and Trump ally but is not affiliated with the Koch network. The only other grantee of the Tracking Foundation from 2017-18 was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which received $420,000.

Balance for Freedom, a nonprofit led by digital trading billionaireThomas Peterffy, contributed $302,000 to TPUSA in 2018.

Major donor-advised fund sponsors includingVanguard Charitable($950,000),Schwab Charitable($407,000),Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund($363,000),National Christian Foundation($283,000), andNational Philanthropic Trust($160,000) have all given six-figure amounts to TPUSA since FY2014. As with DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, donors can contribute to nonprofits anonymously through their donor-advised funds, which are managed by the sponsors for a fee.

Koch-funded groups have collaborated with TPUSA on events over the years. In late 2017, the director of the Center to Protect Free Speech, a project of corporate bill mill theAmerican Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC), took part in a"campus free speech" panelhosted by the conservative Washington Examiner. The director,Shelby Emmett, is now director of free speech initiatives at Koch'sStand Togethernonprofit.

The two groups have some rotating staff. For example, a former Americans for Prosperity field director is now aTPUSA field director, and the former Florida state director at TPUSA is currently grassroots engagement director at Americans for Prosperity.

A photo on the now-deleted Facebook page of TPUSA's University of Minnesota chapter shows its members making get-out-the-vote calls for Koch's premier political nonprofit, Americans for Prosperity.

Koch has for decades funded ideologically right-wing and libertarian economics professors and programs at hundreds of colleges and universities around the country. With George Mason University, a public university in Virginia, as the hub, the Koch Foundation has launched free-market centers, created professorships, and sponsored lecture series that seek to indoctrinate young minds with libertarian economic ideas of low taxes and minimal, if any, regulations.

Some of the Koch Foundation's agreements with universities have allowed foundation officials to have a say in the hiring process and even impact course curricula.

In a recent statement, Ruger says the Charles Koch Foundation is "proud to partner with universities and professors who continue to demonstrate steadfast commitment to expanding students' access to a diversity of ideas."

UnKoch My Campus's Parsons disputes that characterization, pointing out that the Koch network has been pushing legislation to quell students' ability to protest extremist speakers and hate speech on campus.

"The Koch Foundation is also behind a recent wave ofanti-protest billsthat prevent college students from speaking their mind on campuses across the country," said Parsons. "To suggest that the Koch Foundation wants to increase the diversity of ideas on campus completely ignores the ways in which the Koch network itself is leveraging its wealth to lead the charge in intimidating and silencing ideas that do not align with their own agenda."

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Koch Foundation Criticizes Turning Point USA Even as Koch Network Funds the Group - PR Watch

Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW), the global cybersecurity leader, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire CloudGenix, Inc., an industry-leading cloud-delivered SD-WAN provider. Under the terms of the agreement, Palo Alto Networks will pay approximately $420 million in cash to acquire CloudGenix, subject to adjustments. The acquisition is expected to close during Palo Alto Networks fiscal fourth quarter, subject to the satisfaction of regulatory and customary closing conditions.

As applications continue to move from corporate data centers to the cloud and SaaS, and users require secure access to applications from anywhere in the world, organizations are struggling to manage access for the distributed workforce. Current remote access solutions for the branch and retail offices are complex, costly and often insecure. To support the modern workforce, organizations need access to all applications from all locations, delivered via a global network as a service for accelerated access, and with integrated world-class security from the cloud. This is what the industry calls secure access service edge, or SASE.

Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access is the industrys most comprehensive SASE platform, delivering a global cloud network with cloud-delivered security for all users. With the proposed acquisition, Palo Alto Networks will integrate CloudGenixs cloud-managed SD-WAN products to accelerate the intelligent onboarding of remote branches and retail stores into Prisma Access. This combination will extend the breadth of the Prisma Access SASE platform, address network and security transformation requirements, and accelerate the shift from SD-WAN to SASE.

CloudGenix has attracted approximately 250 customers, many of which are in the Fortune 1000 and include companies in healthcare, retail, manufacturing, finance, banking, tech and hospitality. CloudGenix was named a 2020 Gartner Peer Insights Customers Choice for WAN Edge Infrastructure. CloudGenix co-founders, Kumar Ramachandran, Mani Ramasamy and Venkataraman Anand, have agreed to join Palo Alto Networks.

Quotes:

As the enterprise becomes more distributed, customers want agile solutions that just work, and that applies to both security and networking. Upon the close of the transaction, the combined platform will provide customers with a complete SASE offering that is best-in-class, easy to deploy, cloud-managed, and delivered as a service.

Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO, Palo Alto Networks

CloudGenixs vision has been to revolutionize branch offices through cloud-delivered Autonomous WANs. With CloudGenix, enterprises gain cloud-scale economics for the branch office with the freedom to use any WAN, any cloud, and best-of-breed infrastructure services. We thank our customers for making us an industry leader in enterprise SD-WAN. By joining forces with Palo Alto Networks, we will accelerate our ability to serve customers and partners in their network and security transformation.

Kumar Ramachandran, co-founder and CEO, CloudGenix

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks, the global cybersecurity leader, is shaping the cloud-centric future with technology that is transforming the way people and organizations operate. Our mission is to be the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life. We help address the worlds greatest security challenges with continuous innovation that seizes the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, analytics, automation, and orchestration. By delivering an integrated platform and empowering a growing ecosystem of partners, we are at the forefront of protecting tens of thousands of organizations across clouds, networks, and mobile devices. Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. For more information, visitwww.paloaltonetworks.com.

Palo Alto Networks, Prisma, and the Palo Alto Networks logo are trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other trademarks, trade names, or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are based on our managements beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. Such forward-looking statements include statements regarding our intention to acquire CloudGenix, Inc., expectations regarding the timing of when the acquisition will be completed and our integration efforts after we close the transaction, the expected benefits of the acquisition of CloudGenix to us and to our customers, and the expected impact of the acquisition on our offerings. These forward-looking statements are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. There are a significant number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from statements made in this press release, such as risks associated with new product and subscription releases, including our ability to successfully integrate CloudGenix into our product offerings; risks associated with managing our growth; our ability as an organization to successfully integrate CloudGenix and acquire and integrate other companies, products or technologies in a successful manner; the risks associated with new products and subscription and support offerings, including the discovery of software bugs; our ability to attract and retain new customers; delays in the development or release of new subscription offerings, or the failure to timely develop and achieve market acceptance of new products and subscriptions as well as existing products and subscription and support offerings; rapidly evolving technological developments in the market for network security products and subscription and support offerings; length of sales cycles; the coronavirus effect on our supply chain, our ability to ship products, complete the transaction in a timely manner, or execute on integration plans; and general market, political, economic and business conditions. Additional risks and uncertainties are included under the captions Risk Factors and Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on February 25, 2020, which is available on our website atinvestors.paloaltonetworks.comand on the SECs website atwww.sec.gov. Additional information will also be set forth in other filings that we make with the SEC from time to time. All forward-looking statements in this press release are based on information available to us as of the date hereof, and we do not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made or to update the reasons why actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

Disclaimer:The story is in the form of a Press Release and has not been edited or reviewed for language or content. The content is published in the form that it was received by the editors after removing certain personal information such as contact numbers and emails. CXOToday.com is not responsible for the veracity of this content

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Palo Alto Networks Announces Intent to Acquire CloudGenix to Extend the Industry's Most Comprehensive Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Platform -...

Wrong

Sadly to admit but right is right. I support President Trump on most issues but this time he is wrong, Massie is correct! The pork in this bill is not just feeding favorite and contentious supporters such as PBS and Pelosis theatre in D.C. but it contains many things that are just flat WRONG and I can not support! The money for abortion, Planned Parenthood, the rules changing ballots and who can vote, collect and handle those ballots is anti-American and pro illegal immigrant! Why can Congress not figure out how to pass a clean bill without all the garbage, perks, favors and outright lies? This bill will pass as most representatives will vote without ever reading the bill, that is NOT what they are elected to do! The bill will be challenged and head to the Supreme Court thus more delay to those that truly need the help. Lazy, close minded, partisan and self-aggrandizing representatives are not what the citizens deserve! The Wuhan Virus shall also pass, hopefully with minimal casualties, but the damage to the Country and the economy may be irreversible! I am over 60, have respiratory health issues and am high risk, but I care more about the future of America and my Grandchildren than my personal health threats. This bill should be voted down, a clean bill passed by informed and moral House and Senate Representatives. Anything else is simply a direct violation of the oath of office these people swore they would uphold. What is the larger treat, Wuhan or Washington?

Ken Withey,

Blanchard

The lengthy article that appeared on Page A8 today (Friday, March 27) is just one example of what many people see as a bias in the news media against President Trump.

The headline reads: Even as US coronavirus deaths top 1,000, Trump claims his early action saved lives. The implication is clear: The President is out of touch with the reality of the situation.

The two-deck headline, flush left and right across the top of the page, seems out of place, as if it belongs on an editorial or an opinion piece and not a news article. That is, until you read the text: President Trump has repeatedly overstated the effects of his decisions, has misrepresented federal efforts to fight the spread of the virus and has repeatedly minimized and falsely claimed and overstated and so forth and so on. So the headline does belong with the story.

In fact, however, the piece was not a news article but a commentary, straight from that bastion of liberalism, the Los Angeles Times. It should have been labeled as such. Unless, of course, the Idaho Press considers that fair and balanced reporting.

Roger Neumann,

Nampa

Gratitude

After reading letters which criticize the President and other leaders, I wanted to correct an idea that seems to run wild during times of crisis. A true leader calms the masses, assembles experts who do their best to solve the problem and uses everything possible to help, strongly but calmly. Leaders give encouraging news to all, even those who cant handle the slightest upset to their apple cart.

Ninety nine percent of us could not solve the Covid-19 problem in time to save millions of people. We are witnessing heroic actions from medical, scientific and ordinary citizens. Leaders keep the peace and pass on the latest good news. This is what most Americans expect from them.

Why are so many willing to criticize when they have no solutions to offer? The country is tired of whiners and complainers. Unfortunately, we have a whole segment of society who cant cope without therapy dogs and play-doh.

Cmon people, lets appreciate the hardworking professionals, support the leaders who are trying to get things back to your normal. Dont panic. Be generous, kind and remember you live in the country where everyone in the world would want to come for medical treatment. We have our beautiful Treasure Valley, plenty of water, beautiful skies and hardworking neighbors. By summer we will probably be looking back with gratitude that we made it through.

Nancy Oleksy,

Eagle

Same page

Can someone explain to me why the Redhawk golf course is still open?

It pulled the pins and filled in the cups Thursday and Friday morning it was back in Business? Governors office said this was a MAYOR issue, Mayors office said Governor said golf courses could stay open? The city of Nampa closed its Rec Center and BOTH golf courses. Redhawk is still renting golf carts to golfers, wonder just how sanitary those are. Another course we contacted said ONLY carts owned by the GOLFER will be allowed. The vast majority of golfers today fit into the age bracket of the MOST vulnerable potential patients. Does the owners of this facility REALLY care about the well being of our citizens or is MONEY the motivating factor? We all need to be on the SAME page with this pandemic.

Ronald Green,

Nampa

Spending

Those of you who think that our two major political parties cant agree on anything of substance, take heart. There is one very important issue on which, with rare exception, they agree almost unanimously.

That would be running up debt. When it comes to that, not only do they reach across the aisle, they bear-hug each other. Heck, they even sing koombaya.

Which means the days of severe austerity measures and rioting are not a question of if, but when. And when future generations who are going to feel the brunt of this fiscal irresponsibility ask why we didnt do anything about it, you can tell them because they were too busy arguing about transgendered bathrooms.

But is it really our leaders fault? After all, how many of We the People are demanding they do something about the debt? Compare that to the number of us who are demanding some kind of goodies free health care, free college, massive military spending, corporate bailouts the list is endless.

In our personal lives, we look at $10,000 credit as being the same as $10,000 cash. No, it isnt. If you have $10,000 credit, you aint got bupkis. Youll have to pay it all back, plus interest, some day.

So when the county does buckle and possibly collapse under the weight of its debt, dont be too harsh on our leaders. Theyre only doing what the most vocal of us demanded they do spend, spend, spend.

Phil Bridges, Nampa

Recently, our pastor spoke of an angry atheist who attacked Mother Teresa claiming she was only reaching out to the poor for selfish reasons; she desired only personal attention for her acts of charity.

The lesson of the angry man was not that he was an atheist. Rather, he could be any one of us who chooses to belittle, mock, or attack someone else rather than consider improving themselves.

The current Pandemic provides an opportunity for all of us in these abnormal times for self-reflection.

Families have an opportunity to draw closer. Children, restrained from the physical proximity of friends may find themselves playing games with their parents and actually communicating. Parents cannot respond by stating they do not have time.

Married couples now have the opportunity to recall the joy of marriage given the additional time to consider the meaning of love and the vows they made long ago.

We are removed from the oldnormal, but now enter the abnormal with an opportunity for a new normal.

Hopefully, when the virus completes its carnage, mankind will be able to look back recognizing that through this painful experience a greater good has emerged.

Bob Fontaine,

Eagle

Wind

Wake up Idaho! These wind farms are only coming to Idaho because of complacency. Idahos biggest wind farm planned near Shoshone. Magic Valley Times, Friday, March 20.

Did you know-

Power generated is not stored (like coal and gas) but must be used as it is being made.

In their own words this power is not for Idaho it is going to be sold to the highest bidderto the West. Maybe those folks should unplug and get outdoors instead.

The only thing Idaho gets?

A constant stream of heavy trucks (think oversize loads) tearing up infrastructure, i.e. roads. Sure theyll give money for roads now but 5 years down the road? You pay.

A landscape permanently scarred whether power is being generated or not. You pay.

Idaho prides itself on the preservation of the outdoors. Yet this will kill how many birds? The travel patterns and habits of countless animals will change. You pay.

The noise generated, perhaps not heard by all, nevertheless exists. You pay.

These companies dont make money on the power generated.

They make money from grants and subsidies (Wind Production Tax Credit) and then leave. You pay.

It starts local. Contact the cities, the counties, the state and federal legislators. Keep Idaho green, or youll pay.

Rosanne Smith,

Moyie Springs

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Better

21 day Order

Governor Little,

Your order directly addresses the most basic needs and rights of Idahoans. Nothing is more fundamental to our State and the rights of citizens than our health. Isnt there a document called the Declaration of Independence which leads off by citing three basic unalienable human rights; Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness? Do not, for one minute listen to those who proclaim or announce, their rights rise above your order. Your order is based on the knowledge of science and medical care. Rest assured history will prove you right.

To those of Health Freedom Idaho, the Idaho Freedom Foundation and others who criticize, please remember how you treat the small child roasting marshmallows by the campfire. One, dont let them get too close. Two, let the marshmallow cool before stuffing into their mouths. They will be the better for it.

Charles Gains,

Boise

The truth

Who can we trust? Everything that has been reported to date about the caronavirous seems to be proven false. Its like the flu.

The symptoms are mild. Only the elderly.

Those with underlying conditions. Just wash your hands. No more than 10 people in a room. Those who need tests will get tests.

Theres no need to be afraid. To quote the president, you probably wont die.

Conventional wisdom doesnt seem to hold true either. We have the best medical system in the world. If your sick they will help you. Share and share alike. Were all in this together. The pillars of our society are crumbling before our eyes. The right to assemble. The freedom to choose your religion and the right to practice it. The right to be secure in your person, place and effects and the freedom to go where you please. The freedom of the press, whos search for the truth was so important, that its rights were codified in the first amendment, now simply a mouthpiece of propaganda and lies. We simply cant trust anyone. Test, test, test. Identify, isolate, investigate. Whos sick? Who isnt? Why and why not? Where and when?

These are all things that must be done to stop a pandemic. Yet, the vast majority of people who have symptoms are refused testing. Those with positive tests, isolated at home with family members that are never tested.

Reporting one positive test per household.

The numbers are a lie. The math is invalid.

Whats true and what isnt? Who do we trust?

The Drs. And nurses on the front lines, denying access to their facilities and refusing patients?

The government? The press? Our neighbors?

I keep trying to figure out whos telling the truth. Ive come to the conclusion, no one is.

Erin Hagadorn,

Emmett

Work together

I want to thank the governor for calling the statewide shelter in place order. I think its less confusing for all involved, and will help us pull together as a community to stop the spread of the virus and protect health care workers. I feel more confident going forward with recommendations based on science and prevention. Perhaps the members of Health Freedom Idaho who were protesting the announcement should step up and volunteer on the front lines since they believe that the order is disproportionate. If they feel safe out and about in the community, they might be the perfect folks to help deliver groceries to those of us who are more vulnerable due to age or pre-existing conditions. Or perhaps they could volunteer to help test people at the drive up testing stations? We all need to work together to make this work!

Kari Filson,

Boise

Continue reading here:

Letters to the editor, April 1, 2020 | Opinion - Idaho Press-Tribune

Tom Coburn, an ultraconservative Oklahoma Republican and family physician who in 16 years in Congress crusaded for limited government, using a rule-book technicality to block so many bills that frustrated legislators called him Dr. No, died on Saturday in Tulsa. He was 72.

The cause was cancer, said John Hart, his former communications director. Mr. Coburn had said in 2013 that he was being treated for a recurrence of prostate cancer, and in 2014 he announced that he would retire.

Mr. Coburn was an obstetrician who treated some 15,000 patients and delivered 4,000 babies in a maternal and family practice in Muskogee, Okla., before embarking on his political career three terms in the House of Representatives (1995-2001) and, after a four-year hiatus, two terms in the Senate (2005-15). He retired two years before the end of his second term because of deteriorating health.

A visceral foe of Washington long before such disaffections coalesced into the Tea Party, Mr. Coburn swept into Congress with the class of 1994, when Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years and installed Newt Gingrich as speaker and his Contract With America agenda to shrink government, cut taxes and promote welfare reforms and business activity.

Mr. Coburn soon set about displeasing everyone, including the constituencies most politicians covet: his own partys activists, donors, leaders and congressional colleagues. He battled with Mr. Gingrich often, charging that he was drifting to the political center and away from his contractual pledges to the nation. He openly vented his disdain for career politicians.

His contempt for them is genuine, bipartisan and in many cases mutual, The New York Times reported years later. He once prescribed a spinal transplant for 70 percent of the Senate, and another time said his colleagues had reproductive organs the size of BBs.

As if separating himself from the pack, Mr. Coburn continued to deliver babies as a member of the House. (He gave up his obstetric moonlighting only after a dispute with ethics officials when he entered the Senate.) But he won grudging respect as a political maverick and was admired by some colleagues as one of the toughest fiscal and social conservatives of his era.

For the sake of smaller government, he voted against nearly all spending bills, particularly pork-barrel allocations for the pet projects of legislators. He opposed gay rights, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research and abortions except those to save a womans life. He denied that global warming was real. He favored term limits for elected officials and pledged to abide by them himself.

In the House, he supported gun rights and favored the death penalty, even for doctors who performed abortions. He also wrote laws aimed at protecting infants from AIDS and expanding medical care for the elderly. He helped reform welfare and other federal entitlement programs, and led workshops for young staff members on sexually transmitted H.I.V. infections.

He caused a stir in 1997 when he protested NBCs decision to televise, in prime time and without editing, Schindlers List, Steven Spielbergs Oscar-winning Holocaust film. He called it televisions all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity, adding, I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program.

He was heavily criticized, including by the American Jewish Congress, which said: This isnt Melrose Place, Mr. Coburn. This is the Holocaust. He apologized to all those I have offended, but insisted that the film should have been aired later in the evening.

Keeping his campaign pledge to serve no more than three consecutive terms in the House, Mr. Coburn did not run for re-election in 2000. He resumed his medical practice, and in 2002 was appointed by President George W. Bush as a co-chairman of his advisory council on H.I.V. and AIDS, giving him a prominent platform as he prepared to run for the Senate.

Mr. Coburn also wrote a book about his experiences in Congress, Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders (2003, with Mr. Hart). In it, he called careerism the central tenet of Congress. Both parties today, he wrote, are ultimately controlled not by ideas, but by the desire to be in control, a posture that creates little motivation for bold change.

In 2004, Mr. Coburn won the Senate seat being vacated by a four-term Oklahoma Republican, Don Nickles. He handily defeated former Representative Brad Carson, a Democrat.

Mr. Coburn continued his conservative fiscal and social voting record, but with far wider public and media attention. He became notorious for using a procedural senatorial privilege, called a hold, with which a single senator could block bills from being voted on by the full Senate.

At first his obstructionist tactics were relatively innocuous. He blocked two 2007 bills honoring the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson and her landmark 1962 book, Silent Spring, which documented the environmental effects of pesticides. Mr. Coburn called the book junk science and the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT.

Later bills blocked by Mr. Coburn included provisions for health care, penalties for child pornography and protections for natural resources. Senate business was dragging to a crawl under the tactical loophole he was exploiting.

In 2008, to expose and embarrass Mr. Coburn, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, introduced 35 of the most irresistible-sounding bills together as omnibus legislation. It was a benign collection that almost any senator would be ashamed to vote against: a Mothers Act to relieve postpartum depression, a Protect Our Children Act to thwart internet predators, and a shameless measure to commemorate The Star-Spangled Banner.

Tom Coburn put a hold on the package, which was mocked as the Tomnibus bill. He did not back down. Neither did Senate Democrats.

The struggle lasted two years, but came to a head when he put a hold on a bill to fund the disarming of the Lords Resistance Army, a Ugandan terrorist group that had massacred countless civilians and dragooned children into its ranks. After an 11-day round-the-clock protest outside Mr. Coburns office by people outraged that funds to suppress terrorists were being held up, he relented and the bill passed.

Re-elected in 2010, he pledged not to seek a third term. He left the Senate in early 2015 after retiring for health reasons, but continued to write and speak against government waste and profligate spending.

Thomas Allen Coburn was born in Casper, Wyo., on March 14, 1948, to Orin Wesley and Anita (Allen) Coburn. In Muskogee, where the family settled, his father was an optician who founded Coburn Optical Industries, which made ophthalmic equipment and eyeglass lenses. The company was sold to Revlon for $57 million in 1975, although the elder Mr. Coburn continued as president of the subsidiary. Tom Coburn graduated from Central High School in Muskogee in 1966.

In 1968 he married Carolyn Denton, the 1967 Miss Oklahoma. They had three daughters: Callie, Katie and Sarah, the operatic soprano. He is survived by his wife, his daughters and nine grandchildren.

At Oklahoma State University, Mr. Coburn was an honors student and president of the student business council. He graduated in 1970 with a bachelors degree in accounting. From 1970 to 1978, he was the manufacturing manager of the ophthalmic division of Coburn Optical Industries in Colonial Heights, Va.

After the family business was sold, he attended medical school at the University of Oklahoma and received his medical degree with honors in 1983. He interned at St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City, had a residency at the University of Arkansas Health Education Center in Fort Smith and returned to Muskogee to open his family and obstetrics practice.

He was a deacon of the Southern Baptist Church and participated in medical missions to Haiti in 1985 and Iraq in 1992.

His decision to run for Congress in 1994 was a long shot. He narrowly won, becoming the first Republican to represent Oklahomas Second Congressional District in 73 years.

Mr. Coburn had homes in Muskogee and Tulsa. Besides Breach of Trust, he wrote two books: The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington From Bankrupting America (2012, with Mr. Hart) and Smashing the DC Monopoly: Using Article V to Restore Freedom and Stop Runaway Government (2017), about a plan for the states to amend the United States Constitution.

While he never drifted from his conservative convictions, Mr. Coburn forged a friendship in Washington that was as unlikely as it was enduring. Arriving in the Senate together in 2005, he and Barack Obama quickly bonded.

Shortly before he retired, Mr. Coburn said of Mr. Obama: I think hes a neat man. You dont have to be the same to be friends. Matter of fact, the interesting friendships are the ones that are divergent.

Jonathan Martin contributed reporting.

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Tom Coburn, the Dr. No of Congress, Is Dead at 72 - The New York Times

Covid-19: History Has The Bad Habit Of Repeating Itself!

Exactly 100 Years Ago, just as the First World War (WW1)were finally starting to wind down, the deadliest strain ofinfluenza in modern history infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide and killed more than 50 million victims, including an untold number of Africans and some 675,000 Americans. At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain dub The Spanish Flu because Spain was the only country during the war to openly report the virus. It was a neutral country and not involved in the WW1.

For those countries affected, social distancing and quarantine were used to curtail the spread of the pandemics. People were ordered to wear masks, churches, theaters and businesses were shuttered and bodies piled up in makeshift morgues. Some advised their citizens to also avoid shaking hands and to stay indoors, libraries put a halt on lending books and regulations were passed banning spitting. As can be seen below, every available town halls or space were transformed into hospitals and women were conscripted to serve as nurse transporting dead bodies for mass burials.

(1919 pandemic). Women transporting corpses Patients in make-shift hospitals overwhelmed with victims.

Additionally, hospitals in some areas were so overloaded with flu patients that schools, private homes and other buildings had to be converted into makeshift hospitals, some of which were staffed by medical students as there was a shortage of doctors and other health workers caused by the war. In some places there werent enough farm workers to harvest crops. Basic services such as mail delivery and garbage collection were hindered due to flu-stricken workers. By the summer of 1919, the flu pandemic came to an end, as those that were infected either died or developed immunity. Some estimates put the number of deaths as more than 50 million making it the worse pandemic in the history of mankind.

Those protective measures adopted to fight the epidemic 100 years ago, are similar to the harsh restrictive measures employed by many countries including the Gambia to curb the spread of covid-19 as recommended by the WHO. In the realm of infectious diseases, in terms of mortality rates, the 1918-19 epidemic clearly reveals how much more severe the 18th century influenza was relative to coronavirus pandemic and other deadly viruses that emerged during the last century.

So far, a total of 199 countries and territories have been affected with the coronavirus going by the latest provisional data made available as at 17.28 03/30/20 as follows:

Coronavirus Cases- Tuesday, 30th March 2020

Source: Worldometer.info

Gambia is one of the lowest countries with the lowest number of reported cases of 4 with and one death so far.Both United States, Italy and Spain have overtaken China in terms of number of cases. However, both Italy and Spain have reported more deaths than China and USA combined. Many theories have been forwarded for the reasons for this inexplicable circumstances but one thing is certain, taking the right protective measures on time before the virus start spreading could prove effective.

The lessons to be learned from 1918 is for officials response to the spread of the disease must focus on containment and this exactly what the governments are doing. The reason why the 1918 pandemic resulted in so many deaths was that so many people caught the disease in the first place. They were exposed because policymakers failed to stop the spread. Indeed, their actions helped spread the flu more widely. The repatriation of troops to their countries of origin was probably the main culprit.

Having good reliable and timely information is key to disease control. We cannot afford a media blackout or, worse, an active doctoring of the right data for political gains. We can already see the terrible consequences of such policies in Iran. The truth always comes out eventually there is nothing to be gained from hiding it. Indeed, political scientists are already pontificatingon the long-term political impact of media manipulation of coronavirus news in China.

To conclude, one of the most important lessons is that we must prepare for the economic and human consequences of the coronavirus and act to minimize its impact. This pandemic is both a shock to demand and supply. Just as the disease is highly contagious, so too is the economic crisis it causes. Closing down entire businesses and hotels, will no doubt cause a recession. Providing tax relief and lowering of interest rates should be the first of many policies aimed at mitigating the economic impact of COVID-19. New fiscal policy measures must now also come into play. Government spending must be prioritize and resource allocations strategize based on approved revised expenditure framework consistent with sound austerity measures adopted for prudent fiscal management in a state of emergency.

The devastating 1918-19 Spanish Flu killed an estimated 675,000 Americans among a staggering 20 to 50 million people worldwide. When it was all over, cities that dragged their feet or let down their guard paid a heavier price. More than a century later, the most effective step necessary to curb this incurable disease is to be prepare adequately for a well-organized and early responses to slow the spread at least temporarily.

We can always learn important lessons from the past to prepare for future global calamities knowing fully well that history has a bad habit of repeating itself.

We shall overcome this fight Insha Allah!

Written By: M

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Covid-19: History Has The Bad Habit Of Repeating Itself! - Freedom Newspaper

Now is the time for Nomvula Mokonyane to shine. Lets hope shes been hitting the gym hard. Because this, right here, is the moment she promised three years ago after the night of the long knives, when her ally, former president Jacob Zuma, sacked most of the cabinet, sparking a ratings downgrade.

"Let the rand fall," said Mokonyane famously in April 2017 after Fitch and S&P downgraded SA to junk status, "we will pick it up."

Yet, when her moment arrived on Friday, after Moodys became the last of the ratings agencies to downgrade SA to junk status, and the rand plummeted to R18 to the dollar (down from R14 in January) there wasnt a peep from the former water & sanitation minister. In fact, the only real reference to Mokonyane in recent weeks was a report by the German-based Water Integrity Network, which detailed how R4bn was lost in "irregular expenditure" during Mokonyanes tenure as minister. Not exactly flattering stuff.

True, Mokonyane doesnt really have a soapbox from which to lift up the rand: last May she withdrew as an ANC MP because of "family responsibilities" (nothing to do with being accused of taking bribes by Angelo Agrizzi). But she is still a member of the ANCs national executive committee, so there is that.

Still, Mokonyanes fighting words were typical of so many politicians in the heady months before Zumas axing: aggressive economic foolhardiness, characterised by a toxic mixture of pig-headed arrogance and startling, wilful fiscal illiteracy.

Many of her ilk faded into the shadows as the economic meltdown became apparent. Others, however, still have no problem pronouncing on the economy, and the ratings agencies, despite being fatally ill-equipped to do so.

Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, in 2019, tweeted: "God deliver us from these rating agencies and oppressors of the downtrodden for economic freedom in our lifetime."

Mkhwebane, of course, has no idea what shes talking about. Blaming a ratings agency for diagnosing the economy is like blaming a doctor for telling you youve got cancer.

If anything, Moodys deferred the diagnosis until there was no chance it wasnt cancer. The two other agencies, Fitch and S&P, had SA in junk status three years ago.

Other critics piled on this week. The SACP, for example, "denounced" the action by Moodys, saying it was "heartless, insensitive and inconsiderate". The SACP which, lets remind ourselves, is still an alliance partner of the governing party even accused Moodys of wanting to "usurp economic policy formulation from democratically elected governments". The SACP, no doubt, would also accuse the cancer-diagnosing doctor of being part of a "class agenda" and a "neoliberal manoeuvre to impose corporate capture". The National Education, Health & Allied Workers Union, an affiliate of Cosatu, was as clueless, calling Moodys "depraved".

The truth is, this downgrade is already costing us. The fall in the rand makes imports more expensive, and prevents SA from getting the full benefit of the drop in the oil price. At least $2bn in foreign investment (in government bonds) will leave the country, and itll cost the state more to borrow money, which has to be repaid.

But tell that to Danisa Baloyi, the former Black Business Council president and Zuma ally who said in 2017 that a downgrade didnt matter, since "many South Africans dont have billions on the stock exchange".

Luckily, the person speaking the most sense on this issue, who knows all too well whats at stake, is finance minister Tito Mboweni. Its high time that the economic duncerati in the ANC left it to him. After all, theyve had their time to "pick up the rand" and theyve failed.

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EDITORIAL: Heres Mokonyanes chance to lift the rand - Rand Daily Mail

The coronavirus pandemic presents much more than a healthcare crisis: It serves as the latest iteration of the EUs inability to handle its own systemic weaknesses. Thus, the pandemic must be understood as nothing less than a clarion call for pan-European politics, writes Joel Boehme.

Joel Boehme is a board member of Volt Europa, a pro-European, federalist political movement.

We Europeans must step up our game. Moreover, we must do so with a holistic understanding of the Unions reluctance to own uncomfortable competences. Indeed, the legitimacy of our ever closer union will not come from touting Europes fairweather victories, but by ensuring that Europe has the capacity to handle system shocks.

Until now, the EU has had the luxury of driving policies based on building wealth. Matters such as free movement and the euro make for positive, marketable policies.

Theyre geared towards building a richer future, and until the 2010s, they presented feel-good stories of the successful European story. However, our shared prosperity will remain a house of cards if we do not empower Europe to handle transnational threats.

Its important to note that this isnt the first time Europes reluctance to take ownership of crises is made apparent in this last decade. Its the third.

Lets look at two staples of these last ten years the refugee waves and the eurozone crisis.

Free movement has been crucial to Europe reaching historically unprecedented wealth and freedom. Its at the very core of the idea of Europe and should be defended with the devotion it deserves.

However, when free movement collided with the Dublin Regulation in 2015, we saw member states struggle to make sense of the paradoxical division of competences. Case in point; the collapse of the European-Turkish stopgap deal underlines the inability to combine Europeanised borders with national asylum jurisdiction.

Being the guarantor of free movement, Europe must also commit to handling transcontinental refugee waves. If Europe cannot deliver, member states will scramble to secure what they perceive to be their threatened security, and Europeanisation will be put on the backburner.

Had Europe claimed ownership not only of the free movement, but also of the scarier subject of asylum processing, its likely that the subsequent anti-European backlash would have been less substantial.

Similarly, consider the eurozone. Although the common currency had facilitated a flourishing market, when the 2008 crisis hit, the EU was woefully underequipped.

Eurozone interdependence required financial tools the EU simply werent allowed to flex. Hence, this originally external crisis saw the EU descend into petty North vs South blame games, failing to act as one.

With history in mind, lets set our eyes on the current pandemic. The emerging Eurosceptic pitch is as cynical as it is succinct: free movement helped spread the disease. Europe is not helping us to combat the spread of the disease, and Europe is leaving us to clear up the finances mess.

With this, two-penny populists can condemn Europes absence, ignoring that healthcare is currently a vehemently guarded national competence, not a European one.

When comparing past emergencies, two trends emerge.

Firstly, the Eurosceptic hypocrisy is as obvious as it is shameless. Less comfortable to address, however, is the paradoxical mentality of European competences.

Brusselss long-standing tradition of happy-go-lucky integration must be complemented with the bravery to clearly own the European responsibility to regulate crisis-related spillover fields such as a refugee crisis, a financial crisis, or a pandemic.

As Europe will have to face this political struggle head-on, its leaders must take up responsibility. An honest and ambitious pan-European political narrative must emerge.

This is the hour of a European vision. Europeanisation must not regress in the wake of this new crisis. Instead, it must accelerate.

With that in mind, measures such as corona-themed eurobonds are a welcome step, but we need more.

We need shock-proofing across the entire board. We need a shared asylum system, a united fiscal policy and massively expanded contagion prevention.

While this may seem like an ordinary federalist wish list at first, these aims must be treated as key components of making sure that Europe can take the next big challenge in its stride.

Given the tone of the public discourse, convincing the member states will of course be an uphill battle. That said, it is a battle worth fighting, and it is the duty of all passionate Europeans to make sure that it is won.

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Third time's the charm - Europe must shockproof itself - EURACTIV