Cagle World

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

Everyone everywhere is demanding that we reform the police.

Everyone everywhere is demanding that we have to root out the “systemic racism” in our police forces because it results in innocent blacks being treated unfairly and even killed.

The demands for reforming, defunding and even disbanding our police are being driven by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the police shooting of Rayshard Brooks last weekend in Atlanta.

But despite the global reaction to the tragic deaths of those black men at the hands of police, they are extremely rare events here in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

As a black police officer in L.A. recently pointed out on his blog, during 2018 there were about 1.6 million contacts between LAPD officers and the public.

Of those contacts, the number of “Officer-Involved Shootings” that ended in a death was 33. Of those 33, most of whom were armed, two were black. The majority were Latino.

The officer-involved shootings in 2019 were lower.

The LAPD recorded 26 incidents resulting in the deaths of 12 suspects. Two were black men, eight were Latinos, one was white and one was not identified.

That’s hardly evidence of a racist pandemic by police in Los Angeles, whose population of nearly 4 million is nearly half Latino.

The national and local media never get around to telling us those key statistics, of course. Perspective doesn’t advance their narrative about racist police.

A recent NBC story about L.A., for example, made a big deal out of the fact that while blacks make up 9 percent the population they accounted for 36 percent of the 2,320 arrests by the LAPD that involved non-lethal use of force such as “body-weight takedowns” and tasers.

What NBC forgot to tell us was that black people – 9 percent of the population – accounted for 50 percent of the city’s violent crimes.

Despite these statistics in L.A. and similar ones across the country that contradict the claim that blacks are victims of systemic racism, there’s no denying that many police departments need to rethink the ways they interact with the public, especially those living in poor communities where crime rates are higher.

But while everyone is demanding that police departments fix themselves, shouldn’t somebody be saying to the black population and its leaders, “Hey, wait a minute. What are you doing to reduce violent crime in your own communities?”

Where are the black political and moral leaders who will ask blacks tough questions like, “What are you doing in your community to build strong two-parent families, keep your marriages together and make sure your child gets a good education?”

Where, by the way, is Barack Obama?

Wouldn’t he be the perfect guy to be on TV right now asking the black community tough questions and challenging young people to cut the crap, shape up, quit thinking like victims and make successes of themselves the way he and so many other blacks have?

Everyone agrees we need to get rid of the few bad police, train the many good cops better and treat all citizens equally under the law/

But taking $150 million away from the police like they’re doing here in L.A. is not how to do that. It’s not going to make things better in the black community, it’s only going to punish the people who need the police most.

Meanwhile, black leaders also need to be working to change the hearts and minds of the bad actors in their midst that cause the cops to come into their neighborhoods so often in the first place.

Every encounter between a cop and a citizen, black or white, good guy or bad guy, is a potential tragedy, as we saw last weekend in Atlanta.

The fewer encounters, the better it is for everyone. And the best way to keep the police out of any community, black or white or brown, is to not break the law.

–
Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

Getting rid of the police.

Now there’s a brilliant, progressive way to improve the criminal justice system.

There’s no question there are systemic problems with the way we police our cities that we need to address and fix.

But when Black Lives Matter and its allies begin demanding that cities like Minneapolis “defund the police” or get rid of their police departments altogether, it’s obvious they haven’t thought through what comes next.

What will happen in the real world of cops and robbers if the police are gone?

Apparently, you’ll call 911 to report a serious crime in progress and you’ll get a SWAT team of social workers – in a day or two.

Getting rid of cops won’t pose a problem for rich people in the nice parts of town or for movie stars in Beverly Hills.

They’ll just hire private cops and security services, which is what most of them already do to protect their mansions and gated communities.

Don’t tell the “Disband the Police” crowd, but it’s the people who live in the poorest parts of town – where the most serious crimes of violence are concentrated – who will pay the price by losing their police protection.

Even with cops on patrol 24/7, it’s already dangerous for law-respecting people living in the inner-cities.

But now the professional cop-haters, anarchists and “woke” progressives-without-a-clue want to get rid of police departments or turn them into church groups, which will ensure criminals and drug gangs have even less to worry about.

Despite a few brave proclamations from radical council members in dark blue towns like Minneapolis and Seattle, however, I don’t think we’ll be seeing city police departments disappear anytime soon.

In fact, if anything goes seriously wrong in liberating Seattle’s newly formed “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” we might see public support for police departments grow tremendously.

In Seattle several hundred protestors have occupied several blocks of the city’s downtown entertainment district, chased police from their precinct building and set up their own cop-free fantasyland.

The New York Times reporter on the scene romantically described the “CHAZ” as “part street festival, part commune” where hundreds “have gathered to hear speeches, poetry and music” and make chalk drawings on the pavement.

He never got around to telling readers what the residents or business owners in the neighborhood thought about their new rulers, who reportedly already are doing despotic things like shaking down businesses for protection and brandishing semi-automatic weapons.

The “leadership” of CHAZ is splintered, but they agree they aren’t leaving until the city meets their demands to defund the police, fund community groups and do dozens of other undoable things.

But the protestors better be careful. Their urban land grab could very easily backfire and wreck their dreams of a cop-free world.

If their occupation ends in violence, it will fuel the growing law-and-order backlash created when the country watched dozens of George Floyd protest marches turn into unpoliced rioting and looting.

If the mayor of Seattle doesn’t step up soon and retake CHAZ, we’re going to get copycat CHAZ’s in Portland, Los Angeles or a town near you.

Doing nothing to stop the protesters on Day One and then groveling before their absurd demands has been a huge mistake.

As my father knew, you have to stand up to people who take the law into their own hands, not surrender to them.

One of his most famous mottos was “Peace through strength.” It’s not peace through weakness, which Seattle’s spineless mayor apparently believes.

It’s a scary time for our country. I’m terrified of the violence and lawlessness and where it might go next.

Marching and protesting peacefully in the street is fine. It’s a Constitutional right.

But when you see mobs burning parts of our towns down or taking over several blocks of our cities, you shouldn’t wonder why gun sales are going through the roof.

–

Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

OK, protesters, we get it.

You were angry, sickened and sad about the cold-blooded killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Who do you know who wasn’t?

Tens of thousands of you have marched in dozens of cities demanding that Chauvin and the three cops who helped him press Floyd’s body to the street until he died be charged with murder.

On Wednesday the state of Minnesota finally agreed with you. The charges against Chauvin were upgraded to second-degree murder and the other officers were charged with aiding and abetting murder.

Your protesting work was successful. You accomplished your goals. You got 24/7 positive media coverage for your message.

You honored the life of George Floyd and called out the cold-hearted cops who so casually and deliberately ended it in public.

You demanded criminal justice reforms and the end of what you contend is “systemic racism” in the justice system. You signaled your virtue by the thousands – day after day.

Now you need to let the judicial process work. It’s going to take many months for the trials of those bad cops to end, so be patient.

Meanwhile, though you had legitimate reasons to take to the streets to express your feelings about George Floyd’s tragic death, you’ve done great damage to the country.

Your peaceful protests sparked waves of violence against people and property by leftwing anarchist groups like Antifa and they attracted thousands of young men and boys who looted, set cars and buildings on fire and attacked police with bricks and bullets.

You’ve been marching and chanting now for ten days. The National Guard had to be called out. Curfews have been enforced.

Whose minds are you still trying to change?

I don’t know anyone who is in favor of bad cops or racist police departments.

Every decent American agrees that something must be done to get rid of rotten cops like Chauvin and his partners in crime.

But are you really serious about reforming our criminal justice system, or are you just good at making “Black Lives Matter” signs?

Do you really want to clean up police departments in cities like Minneapolis that have long histories of harboring abusive cops or unjustly treating people in their black communities?

OK, protesters. Then get rid of the Democrats who’ve been running – and wrecking – most of our biggest cities for the last half century.

They’re the politicians who’ve failed to police their police for decades — not President Trump.

They’re the ones who’ve let police unions acquire so much power that potential killers like Chauvin are impossible to fire despite years of complaints from the citizens he mistreated.

If you want to give cities a financial incentive to clean out the bad apples in their police departments, you can push for Congress to eliminate their “qualified immunity.”

That’s the legal rule that protects police officers (and the cities that employ them) from being sued for damages by victims and their families even when the officers have violated their civil rights.

So OK, protesters. You won your battle.

You stood up for justice and woke up the world to a problem that has existed for too long in our criminal justice system and needs to be solved ASAP.

Now it’s time for you to do something else for the good of your country. Get off the streets. Go home before your peaceful protests do us any more harm.

–

Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

I feel terribly sorry for the hundred thousand Americans who’ve lost their lives to the coronavirus.

I also feel sorry for all the small business owners in the country who have become innocent victims of the government’s mishandled war on COVID-19.

They worked long and hard to start up their local restaurants, coffee shops, clothing stores, hair salons, health spas, book stores and pet grooming shops.

But in just three months their livelihoods – and the livelihoods of millions of their employees – were destroyed by the unnecessarily severe shutdown of most of our booming national economy.

An MSNBC business reporter I heard being interviewed on the radio predicted that 100,000 small businesses across the country will file for bankruptcy and never come back.

How are the owners of those doomed enterprises going to pay for their homes? Where will they find work in a seriously crippled economy? Amazon and Walmart can’t hire them all.

The Democrat Party’s answer to this tsunami of unemployed people is its usual one – “We’ll send them a monthly check for a year.”

But the people who run small businesses are by nature entrepreneurs. They don’t want checks from the government. They just want to be allowed to reopen before it’s too late.

Before the pandemic hit, we had more than 30 million small businesses. More than a third were owned by women and they alone employed nearly 10 million people.

No one knows how many of those self-employed small-business people are among the 40 million Americans who were thrown out of work overnight 10 weeks ago because the medical experts said we needed “15 days to flatten the curve” of the coronavirus pandemic.

Most bigger and stronger businesses will adapt to the strict and scientifically dubious new “guidelines” for social distancing and masks and slowly recover as the economy restarts.

But many small businesses obviously are never going to make it. Restaurants, bars and mom & pop stores especially will have a tough time adjusting, as that MSNBC business reporter pointed out.

He said when he picked up his lunch at his favorite restaurant that day the owner told him that according to the new rules he’s allowed to have no more than seven people eating in his place at one time – instead of the usual 35.

The owner said there was no way he’d be able to survive. He was going to have to close.

A friend of mine who owns a hair salon in Long Beach that employed 30 people before the shutdown is also looking at a grim future.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has finally decided that hair salons in the state can reopen. But because my friend’s business is located in Los Angeles County, which is still in an authoritarian lock down that may last through July, his doors must remain closed.

Meanwhile, literally 50 yards away, across the county line in Orange County, one of his competitors has reopened.

“What do you think that will do to my business?” he . “Where do you think my clients are going to go?”

Closer to home, my wife Colleen is an example of an entrepreneurial woman whose business has been crushed by the global shutdown’s devastating effect on the travel and hospitality industry.

After eight years of working for someone else, she opened up her own one-person travel agency in 1998.

Needless to say, she hasn’t guided any tours to Europe or anywhere else since March and recently a river cruise in France that she had booked for 50 people in July had to be cancelled by the cruise line.

Colleen didn’t seek a rescue loan from the federal government.

Like millions of other small business owners out of work through no fault of their own, she doesn’t want a government check. She wants her travel and hospitality industry to return to health just like the mom & pop stores owners want their businesses to reopen.

–
Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

Don’t tell the people in charge, but my friend’s wife is a member of the L.A. resistance.

She’s been regularly going out into the underground economy to get her hair done.

She’s been meeting with her hairdresser at an undisclosed location – his daughter’s driveway – and striking a small but symbolic blow for old-fashioned American freedom.

My friend’s wife is in no danger of getting in trouble with the authorities, but her hairdresser is.

According to power-mad politicians now in charge of the economic and social lives of 10 million people in Los Angeles County, if she’s caught defying the rules of the county’s super-strict shutdown, it’ll cost her a $1,000 fine.

The hairdresser, who has been prohibited from working for two months, isn’t worried about being caught and hit with a fine. She can’t afford to pay it anyway.

Her real fear is being turned in to the police by a neighbor, which reminds me of the way some rotten French people during World War II told stories about their neighbors to the Gestapo after the Germans took over their country.

I fully support what my friend’s wife has been doing. But watching her have to sneak around like a saboteur to get her hair done is just one reason living under L.A.’s shutdown is getting harder for me to take.

Across the country, dozens of states have finally come to their senses, ending their shutdowns and reopening their economies. Yet here in L.A. County we’ve been going backwards.

We’ve just been told that our severe, absurd and often unscientific shutdown orders won’t be lifted until July 4 – at the earliest.

In other words, if I want to sit on a Pacific Ocean beach, I have to drive up to Ventura County.

If I want to eat dinner with my wife in a restaurant, I have to go to Santa Barbara.

If I want to drive to my favorite hotel in Palm Desert and play golf and hang around the swimming pool, however, I still can’t.

Right now, the hotel pool is empty and you have to order food and take it to your room. If I want to eat in my room, I can do it at home.

As I tweeted this week, if I hear about a hotel that opens and has a swimming pool with water in it and a restaurant that I can sit down and eat in, I’m there.

People have tweeted back to me and said, “Oh, please don’t do that. You could die.”

But I don’t care. I’m not afraid. Anyway, the odds of my not dying from the coronavirus are heavily in my favor.

My chances of being killed while driving 50 miles to a hotel are a lot higher than dying from any virus I might catch.

I don’t gamble, but I like to go to Las Vegas for the shows, swimming pools and great restaurants. I also like to drive to Palm Desert to play golf and to Solvang to do wine tasting.

I hope the state and local politicians in charge let me enjoy those simple pleasures again soon.

The New York Post, God bless it, did its best to shame them this week by demanding, on its front page, the end of the coronavirus shutdown – Now!

I’m on the same front page. I’m ready to get back to the world beyond my basement and backyard.

Tens of thousands of my fellow Los Angelenos are too, but it’s like we’re trapped in a foreign country whose rulers are dumb, stubborn and despotic.

Until July 4 if we want to go to a beach and sit on the sand or play volleyball – with our face masks on, I presume – we’ll have to drive up to Santa Barbara.

Friends of ours did that the other day and some locals innocently asked if they were tourists.

“No, we’re not tourists,” one of my friend said sadly, “We’re actually refugees from LA.”

–
Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

The disease experts and the panic-pushing media initially scared the pants off California’s 40 million people with their predictions about the death toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

They said 25 million people in the state would become infected by COVID-19 and a million of us would die from it.

Predictably, the experts’ computer models were way off the mark, thank goodness.

Compared to devastated states like New York and New Jersey, California has been relatively unscathed by the coronavirus pandemic.

So far about 3,000 people in the state have tragically died from the coronavirus – almost half in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

More than half of California’s deaths – 1,663 – have been here in Los Angeles. And about 25 of the state’s 57 counties have had one or zero fatalities.

California’s good fortune didn’t stop Gov. Gavin Newsom from torturing everyone in the entire state for two months with a strict shutdown that closed nonessential businesses and 280 state beaches and parks.

And now, as he works to gradually reopen the state, he’s come out with a detailed, four-phase, open-ended “roadmap” for that looks like it’s going to prolong everyone’s agony.

The good news is that Newsom has kindly reopened the beaches and state parks.

But he and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti have laid down a bunch of rules that will make living in L.A. about as enjoyable as living in a prairie dog hole in the Mojave Desert.

If you go outside your home to walk your dog, ride your bike or perform some other “essential” task, you have to wear a mask.

If you enter a retail store or stop at curbside pickup, you have to wear a mask.

And if you’re on a hiking trail, a golf course or a beach, you have to wear a mask – though not when you’re in the water.

The dumbest and most scientifically dubious social-distancing rules apply to California’s beautiful beaches.

You can walk, run, surf or swim at the beach, but you can’t sit on the sand and sunbathe. No standing around, either. Forget the coolers, chairs, umbrellas, Frisbees and footballs. And no parking in the lots by the beach.

This week we were told the bad news by the city that its stay-at-home orders and strict mask rules will remain in place for another three months.

Because the mayor figured that might be depressing news for mentally fragile citizens, he announced that the city has set up a suicide hotline where they could seek help.

Garcetti doesn’t get it and never will.

But there are millions of perfectly sane Americans, like me, who think going out and risking a COVID-19 infection is better than spending the rest of your life in your house.

We know the odds of getting hospitalized or dying are extremely low, and as adults in what’s supposed to be a free country we’d like to be able to choose to take the risk.

Garcetti obviously doesn’t think that way.

He said the city’s tougher rules are necessary to help slow the spread of the coronavirus and that wearing our masks “will help us get more freedoms.”

Don’t tell the mayor, but I don’t think we need to please him so he’ll give us back the freedoms we used to have.

Despite abuse we’ve suffered from over-cautious and power-grabbing politicians, Californians have done pretty much what they have been told to do – so far.

But the statewide economic shutdown should have been relaxed weeks ago. The curve has been flattened by social distancing and our healthcare system was never overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients.

It’s inevitable that many more people are going to die from the coronavirus. Developing a vaccine could be a year away – or never – and achieving zero deaths is a fantasy.

So unless California and the rest of the country isn’t quickly and safely reopened, the coronavirus is going to end up killing more businesses than people.

–
Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

A month ago I said it will be the public that makes the decision to reopen America, not the government.

It took too long, but that’s exactly what has happened.

From the beaches of Southern California and Florida to the state capitals of Michigan and Pennsylvania, thousands of regular people have yelled, “End the COVID-19 shutdown. Give us back our country and our freedoms.”

The elite liberal media portrayed the peaceful crowds that crashed the beaches and waved their handmade “Freedom is Essential” signs as irresponsible grandma killers, mindless Trump supporters or Nazis.

But as usual, the liberal media had it backwards.

The ordinary people calling for the reopening of America and defying the sweeping decrees of petty tyrants like California Gov. Gavin Newsom or Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf are not villains.

They’re American heroes.

The Rebels of 2020 have uncommon American common sense.

They’re the ones who know that waging a war against a new and lethal coronavirus does not mean we must shut down the economy, throw 33 million people out of work overnight and cancel the Bill of Rights.

The Rebels are the ones who are not willing to cower in fear in their basements until a vaccine comes to save them.

They’re people like the brave businesswoman from Dallas who was sent to jail (and later released) for refusing to apologize for reopening her spa in defiance of city orders.

And after almost three months of being spooked and confused by the media, medical experts and authoritarian politicians, they’re people who have figured out that the coronavirus – dangerous and mysterious as it is – doesn’t attack people randomly.

They know that unless you are over age 75, living in a nursing home and already have serious medical problems like heart disease or diabetes, your chances of catching COVID-19 are low, your chances of getting seriously sick from it are even lower, and your chances of dying from it are minuscule.

The Rebels of 2020 also realize that our all-out war against the spread of the coronavirus has been a historic economic and social mistake for the country and that it has to end as quickly as possible.

It was their peaceful civil disobedience that put the political pressure on several governors and forced them to begin relaxing their severe policies or end their statewide shutdowns sooner.

It sure wasn’t “elite” liberal journalists and pundits who made that happen. They were universally fearful and pro-shutdown – and still are.

They couldn’t stop praising the most-dictatorial Blue State governors for their “courage” and, despite the mistakes of Gov. Cuomo of New York, they crowned him as our wisest and greatest leader in a time of crisis.

At the same time the media shamed Red State governors like Kristi Noem of South Dakota for not closing down their states and criticized Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia for reopening his state too soon.

Gov. Noem was called foolish and stupid for supposedly risking thousands of lives. But she didn’t panic and refused to shut down the economy of South Dakota, which as of Thursday had 31 COVID-19 deaths out of a population of 900,000.

She was sensible and measured. She advised the vulnerable population to stay home. And she urged social distancing while encouraging the rest of the state to continue the economic activity they needed to survive.

Most important, Noem didn’t fold to the pressure to get tough and become an overnight dictator.

As she said, “The people of South Dakota are the source of the power and legitimacy of our government – not the media, not politicians and not political parties. That’s a healthy perspective for any elected official to keep in mind.”

Noem will never be hailed as one of the heroes of the COVID-19 crisis by the liberal media, but she should be.

Unlike most of governors, she was always in touch with the people.

–
Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

California was well down the road to becoming a Bernie Sanders-model socialist state when the coronavirus crisis came along.

But fighting COVID-19 and slowing its spread gave “liberal” Gov. Gavin Newsom a perfect excuse to unleash his inner dictator and greatly expand his power over the social and economic lives of his subjects.

Like other authoritarian Blue State governors across the country, he quickly ordered the shutdown of all nonessential activity in the entire state and issued stay-at-home orders for 40 million Californians.

Almost four million were immediately thrown out of work, schools were closed and hospitals were emptied in anticipation of a wave of COVID-19 victims that thankfully never came.

No one knows yet how much harm Newsom’s severe and unconstitutional shutdown will do to the people of California in the long run.

But you can bet that the number of suicides and heart attacks from financial and emotional stress will spike. So will cases of spousal and child abuse.

Meanwhile, while much of the state has been put into a politically induced economic and social coma, Californians have behaved like good citizens – until last weekend.

That’s when tens of thousands of young people stormed several re-opened beaches in two Southern California counties.

Gov. Newsom got really angry at this first sign of mass resistance to his arbitrary shutdown orders.

He shamed the beachgoers publicly for not practicing social distancing and putting all Californians at risk of catching and dying of COVID-19.

There was talk that he was going to close the state’s 280 beaches and parks this weekend to teach all Californians a lesson.

But on Thursday, he backed off because of the increasing push-back and ordered only the beaches in Orange County to close.

Acting like anyone who doesn’t keep six feet away from another person on a wide ocean beach is a potential murderer is pretty silly, but that’s what we’ve come to in America.

The media and power-happy politicians like Newsom often fan the public’s fears by implying that everyone everywhere is equally vulnerable to catching or dying from COVID-19.

But that’s simply not true, and they know it.

If you’re healthy and under 30 – or if you’re a 20-year-old beach bunny, biker or hiker – the statistics show you have virtually zero chance of dying of COVID-19.

Of the 61,000 Americans who’ve died from COVID-19, nearly 2,000 have been Californians. Half of them lived here in dense Los Angeles.

Like in other states, the great majority of my state’s coronavirus fatalities have been people who were very old, already very sick or both. Many were also obese.

The pandemic’s death toll is obviously tragic, newsworthy and scary.

But from what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think the media and governors like Newsom have provided the public with enough perspective about who is most at risk from COVID-19 and why.

The media report the rising infection and fatality numbers from the coronavirus twenty times a day, as if the only people who are dying in America are COVID-19 victims.

But the coronavirus doesn’t compare to the much larger annual totals from common killers like cancer, high blood pressure and heart disease. About 50,000 Americans die of something every week.

Luckily, for reasons the disease experts don’t know yet, California seems to have been spared the worst of the coronavirus pandemic.

But while we wait for the country to reopen and for the invention of a COVID-19 vaccine, I wish the national media and the health experts would do a better job.

They need to spend more time telling the American people how to eat right, get healthy, stay in shape and build up their immune systems.

That way when the next pandemic comes along, they’ll have a better chance of defending themselves from the virus and won’t need so much “help” from the politicians.

–
Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

I don’t know what daily life is like during our Great National Shutdown in states like Pennsylvania, where I hear golfing is verboten, all liquor stores are closed and masks must be worn into retail stores.

But out here in sprawling Los Angeles, where half of the state’s 1,512 COVID-19 deaths have occurred, things are getting goofier and scarier all the time.

It’s not the coronavirus I’m sacred of.

It’s power-mad politicians like Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, both of whom have been making it sound like we’re going to be in strict lockdown mode until Thanksgiving.

Newsom recently released a detailed six-point plan for safely reopening the state that includes protecting the old, the sick and vulnerable and tracking positive cases, beefing up hospitals and isolating people who’ve tested positive for COVID-19.

It’s almost as if he is looking to achieve perfection – “When no one is dying from the virus, we will start re-opening.”

What? Hello?

That level of perfect safety is never going to be achieved, but look at what Mayor Garcetti is willing to do to make sure people like me and my wife stay in our homes and avoid all unnecessary travel – or movement.

“Mayor Gloom and Doom” wants to use drones to see if you’re going outside and he’s talking about checking license plates and tracking cell phones.

If he sends a drone over my house, I might shoot it down with my shotgun.

Meanwhile, every day our politicians and media repeat the same things to scare people: “Stay in your house. If you go out, you’re going to kill somebody.”

Garcetti’s acting a lot like an angry parent. When some kids kept showing up at a skateboard park, he had city trucks dump sand on the concrete.

The kids, bless them, went home and got their dirt bikes.

Given the mayor’s attitude, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he’d charge you with attempted murder if you were caught outside on non-essential travel and someone near you catches COVID-19.

People in California, like people across the country, now know what they are supposed to do to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

But Garcetti, Newsom and the other people in charge of California refuse to treat their citizens and business people like adults who are capable of taking care of themselves.

By not opening up beaches and parks, and by not allowing businesses to reopen now in careful and responsible ways, the governor and the mayor have inadvertently fostered a new underground market in the service industry.

Ordinary people in L.A. – not just movie stars – are getting manicures, having their hair cut and getting their dogs groomed in their own homes or backyards.

You pay the providers of these and other black-market services in cash, so there is no credit card record that can be traced, but I don’t think it’s technically illegal – not yet.

I’m not worried about leaving my home and getting the virus. For all I know I’m one of the hundreds of thousands of people in L.A. County who may already have been infected and didn’t know it.

Last Sunday morning my wife did some traveling that we considered essential.

We went to a drive-through blessing at our church, dropped off some food for some local first responders, picked up a bunch of burritos and went over to my son’s house, where he had set up a little teepee on the front lawn.

We put a big blanket down on the grass, sat six feet apart and celebrated my granddaughter Penelope’s second birthday.

I hope one of the mayor’s drones wasn’t watching.

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Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

I ran into a nurse I know this week.

“Let me ask you a question,” I said, keeping a safe six feet away from her.

“About 40 percent of the people in the country get a flu vaccine each year and yet we still lose between 25,000 and 60,000 every flu season. A couple years ago there were something like 80,000 deaths. And we didn’t shut down the country.”

“That’s right.”

“I know people who get flu shots each year but still get the flu. Their doctor always explains it was because they caught a different strain of the flu than the one she gave them the vaccine for.”

“That’s right.”

“So if we come up with a vaccine for COVID-19 in a year or so, and I start getting COVID-19 shots, could I still get COVID-20, or COVID-21?”

“Yes.”

“So this war against the coronavirus is just the beginning of a never-ending war?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s sad so many people are dying, but many of us think that what we’ve been doing is kind of silly.”

I talked to another friend this week who is a state senator in California.

She said her biggest problem right now is that she has six hospitals in her district and a total of three COVID-19 patients. The rest of the hospital beds are empty.

Because the coronavirus has barely shown up in her part of the state, and because hospitals have decided not to schedule elective surgeries, the hospitals are empty and are having to lay off nurses and other employees.

My two friends are among the millions of Americans who’ve come to realize it was a terrible mistake to shut down so much of our country, crush a booming economy and throw nearly 20 million people out of work in our war against the coronavirus.

Here in California, the coronavirus apocalypse we were warned to expect never happened.

It still could get worse, but the percentage of Californians who’ve been infected by COVID-19 – 70 per 100,000 people – is a tenth of New Jersey’s and the number of our daily cases of new infections seems to be leveling off.

So far we have had 949 deaths. Most are concentrated in dense Los Angeles County (457) and the San Francisco Bay Area (130).

People in rural places like Modoc County, where COVID-19 deaths are zero, or Imperial County, where three have died, think it is absurd that their communities had to be closed down like super-dense New York City, where nearly 12,000 have died.

It’s also extremely frustrating living in L.A.

This weekend, as the weather turns warm, the beaches, hiking trails and golf courses will remain closed.

Like everywhere else, schools and restaurants are closed. Parks and playgrounds too. Except for grocery runs and take-out food pickups, we’re expected to stay home like bad children.

But this week there were hopeful signs that the Great American Shutdown will end soon.

Some federal and state officials and disease experts still think that it’s too dangerous and shouldn’t happen until the coronavirus is completely gone in a month or two – or more.

But they’re wrong. We’ve already done too much harm to the economy and our future fiscal health.

President Trump is right to speed up the reopening of the country, return it to normalcy and reassert the basic freedoms that have been taken away from all of us.

I think he knows the American people are not as stupid, irresponsible or helpless as many Democrat politicians and the liberal media think.

We can be trusted to wear a mask and keep our social distance when it’s necessary.

Our retail businesses, restaurants and golf courses are perfectly capable of figuring out what they must do to reopen safely by working with their local health departments. Major league baseball and other sports leagues can figure out how to play in front of fans, too.

From now on, we have to rebuild and reshape our daily lives and concentrate on protecting our most vulnerable citizens – the oldest and sickest folks – while the drug companies work on that vaccine for COVID-19.

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Copyright 2020 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to [email protected]. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.
Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on using columns contact Sales at [email protected].