Destroying A City By Withholding Information

Nashville, Tennessee, is an amazing city. Musicians and music are everywhere. The nightlife is amazing. There is a large concentration of talent in one place, which makes for an amazing tourist attraction. However, Nashville is suffering because bars and restaurants have been shut down. Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article that brings into question the motives behind that shutdown.

The article reports:

Leaked emails show Nashville’s Metro Health Department and the mayor’s office attempted to withhold information from the public that strongly suggested COVID-19 wasn’t spreading through the city’s bars and restaurants.

“They are fabricating information,” said city councilmember Steve Glover. “They’ve blown their entire credibility.”

“I don’t trust a thing they say going forward … nothing,” he added.

The emails between the mayor’s office and the health department discuss the low number of COVID-19 cases coming out of the city’s bars and restaurants and how to keep that information from going public.

The article continues:

Contract tracing in late June showed that construction sites and nursing homes were seeing the worst virus spread in the city, with more than 1,000 cases linked to each industry. Bars and restaurants, however, accounted for just 22 cases.

A month later, reporter Nate Rau asked the health department about rumors that only 80 virus cases originated from Nashville’s bars and restaurants.

“The figure you gave of ‘more than 80’ does lead to a natural question: If there have been over 20,000 positive cases of COVID-19 in Davidson and only 80 or so are traced to restaurants and bars, doesn’t that mean restaurants and bars aren’t a very big problem?” Rau asked.

The article concludes:

Glover had a staff attorney reach out to the mayor’s office and the health department to verify the authenticity of the emails.

“I was able to get verification from the Mayor’s Office and the Department of Health that these emails are real,” the attorney said.

Glover said he has been contacted by many restaurant owners, bartenders, and staff asking why the city was trying to keep a lid on the numbers.

“We raised taxes 34% and put hundreds literally thousands of people out of work that are now worried about losing their homes, their apartments … and we did it on bogus data. That should be illegal,” Glover said.

The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.

This is a true ‘what were they thinking?’ moment. The coronavirus is real, and people need to take precautions to avoid getting it or spreading it. However, we now know that the people most in danger from the virus are the elderly and those with certain preexisting medical conditions. It is highly unlikely that a healthy person sitting in a restaurant is at risk. Why in the world did the Mayor choose to destroy the economy of the city while raising taxes by 34%? That is the question that needs to be asked and answered not only for Nashville, but also for a number of states.

 

Leaving California

Yesterday Deadline posted an article about The Daily Wire, the conservative media company started by Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Boreing and Caleb Robinson. The Daily Wire, founded in 2015, has always been based in California.

The article reports:

The Daily Wire, the conservative media company started by Ben Shapiro, Jeremy Boreing and Caleb Robinson, plans to move its headquarters from Los Angeles to Nashville.

Boreing said that the move was being made due to a declining quality of life in the city, including high housing costs and homelessness.

The publisher’s 75 employees based in Los Angeles are being given until Oct. 1 to decide whether to make the move, Boreing said. He said that it looked like about 80% would make the move.

The article continues:

“The dream of California and the weather were enough to draw us all here and keep us here, even when it was hard,” he said. “But it’s hubris to think you can keep making it worse and worse for people and that somehow the idea of temperate winters will be enough to make them stay forever.”

He said that he plans to move in November, and much of the staff will follow after that.

“L.A. benefits from the fact that, while it leans left, it draws individualists out to find their fame and seek their fortunes. They’re an ornery bunch. But they aren’t so ornery that this out of control government can’t break them.”

He said that they considered moving to Texas, but chose Nashville because it “offers the creative talent we need to keep growing the business.”

“We were shocked by the reception when we announced the move,” Boreing said. “But, of course, our employees see all of the same challenges we see and it’s even harder for them to afford this place.”

California used to be ‘the place to live,’ but due to bad governance, it has become a haven for homeless people and drug addicts. The cost of living there has gone through the roof as a result of high housing costs, high taxes, and over-regulation. There is still hope for California to return to normal, but it would take a voting population that wanted to correct the errors of the past.

Paying For Spaying Your Pet With Obamacare

I realize that some of the information coming out about the Obama Administration is just dumb–politics has been happening in America for a long time–President Obama did not invent it, but Chicago politics seems to be a slightly different animal. The misuse of money in Obamacare is rampant–but some of the explanations given for the spending are really creative.

Yesterday’s Washington Examiner reported that some of the anti-obesity money from Obamacare was used in Nashville, Tennessee, to spay dogs and cats. Yes, you read that right.

The article reports:

The Nashville health department issued a press release last year that told residents in one neighborhood that they could get free pet spaying, neutering, rabies shots and other services as part of $7.5 million grant from the Communities Putting Prevention to Work, which is part of the Public Health and Prevention Fund that will soar to $2 billion in 2015 under Obamacare. The program was initially funded by the Obama stimulus initiative.

There are two things here–first the program was originally funded by the Obama stimulus, second, it is now funded by Obamacare. The City of Nashville’s comment was ““This targeted effort aims to address residents’ concerns that identify stray dogs as a barrier to outdoor physical activity. The Nashville Public Health Department Communities Putting Prevention To Work campaign is funded fully by the Department of Health and Human Services, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.” Good grief.

Please follow the link to the Washington Examiner to read the entire story. It is an amazing example of government run amok.

I need to say at this point that I support the spaying of pets. I am a foster parent for a local cat shelter. Below is a picture of one of the cats I fostered. The shelter spays the stray cats that they take in and requires new owners to place a deposit for spaying that will be returned to them when the animals are spayed. There are many ways to raise money to help people with the cost of spaying pets–Obamacare is not one I recommend.

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