Townhall Review | Commentaries

This is Carol Platt Liebau for Townhall.com.

No institution has hemorrhaged public confidence during the Covid pandemic like the CDC. Once trusted by nearly all Americans, now it’s ignored by almost everyone. Even Democratic governors have begun to ignore its advice—lifting mask mandates in schools contrary to CDC guidance.

Transparency is needed to restore the public confidence so it’s so strange the CDC has decided to withhold important data about the Covid vaccine.

In its infinite wisdom, the CDC refuses to publish vaccine information for those aged 18 to 49. What’s more, it’s failed to provide information on child hospitalizations. The rationale is the data might be misinterpreted to demonstrate that the vaccines were ineffective.

That’s not the way a government treats a free citizenry.

We’re government’s masters, not its servants. Remember Lincoln’s formula: ours is a government, “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Our bureaucrats today need a strong dose of accountability.

I’m Carol Platt Liebau.

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San Francisco voters recently recalled three members of their seven-member school board in a vote that came very close to a margin of 80 percent.

It’s an absolutely massive story. 

Remember: This comes from San Francisco—one of the most liberal communities in the United States. It is the bluest of the blue.

An editorial on The Wall Street Journal said, “The woke get a wake-up call as voters recall three school board members.”

The woke get a wake-up call. Here’s the question? Do they hear it? Are they going to heed it? The evidence says they won’t. They won’t because the Democratic party is now largely in the hands of the ascendant left, and the left is angry that it isn’t getting more.

What took place in San Francisco was the voters pulling the rug out from under progressives who simply went too far. 

By all indications, they’ll do so again.

Progressives across the nation ought to be watching closely. I doubt they will.

 

 

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Who in the Lord’s name,” Joe Biden asked at his presser on the Ukraine crisis, “does Putin think gives him the right to declare so-called countries on territory that belonged to his neighbors?” In one sense, it is Biden himself—who just a few weeks ago seemed to excuse any “minor incursions” into Ukraine by Russia. In a larger sense, however, the West has ignored Vladimir Putin’s clear ambitions to rebuild a Russian empire and to divide the West while returning Russia to superpower status.

In fact, Putin ran the exact same playbook in 2014 during the Obama/Biden administration—using Russian proxies to foment insurrection in Ukraine and to seize and annex Crimea outright. Before that, it was Georgia in 2008—setting up the Hillary Clinton infamous “reset button” moment. 

Biden announced some new sanctions in his presser, trying to parse the word “invasion” as an excuse to avoid confrontation. The vacillation from Biden presents a dangerous incentive to the ruthless geopolitical threat Putin represents. 

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Throughout human history, one of the elite’s greatest temptations has been to consider themselves above the law. Their flouting of Covid mask mandates has been a prime example.

Sometimes it’s politicians. Mask advocate Stacy Abrams was photographed grinning without a mask, surrounded by masked children. And pro-mask Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti were likewise caught maskless, while forcing their constituents to remain masked.

Celebrities also flout the rules. At the Super Bowl in LA, pro-maskers from Charlize Theron to Katy Perry to virtually every celebrity in attendance enjoyed the game mask-free. All this while lower-risk children remain forcibly masked in California to attend school.

Normal people want a word with the self-proclaimed elites. 

We’re on to them. From Canadian truckers occupying Ottawa to moms attending school board meetings, we’re done with covid theater and the coercive control of arrogant elites who’ve done nothing to earn their glorified status.

Bad news for them: It’s over. You’re done.

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Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Visa, Intel … these are some of the major American companies which have been sponsoring this year’s Beijing Olympics. We really have to wonder if they’re getting their money’s worth. In fact, I wonder if they might even be getting negative value for associating their brands with the tainted brand of the CCP. 

China has persecuted of whistleblowers and manipulated the WHO into playing along with the party line, thus robbing the world of precious time to prepare for the pandemic. 

Add to that the systematic religious persecution and broken pledge to leave Hong Kong free, and we see a China which is bereft of credibility. Does it really make sense to co-brand with that? 

Several of the companies have lectured Americans about systemic racism and voter rights—all while remaining mute in the face of a regime which suppresses entire ethnicities and allows no one to vote. 

These companies owe the American people, their customers and investors an explanation. 

 

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Have you ever looked at the back of a dollar bill? 

It has a representation of the Great Seal of the United States as commissioned by Congress. It references 1776, the year of the declaration’s assertion of inalienable rights. Why put that on the dollar? To declare to the world that our currency is backed by a pledge to adhere to certain principles. 

When the country remains true to those principles, currency retains its value. Unfortunately, we’re seeing now that the converse is true: when the country abandons those principles, the currency loses its value. 

We just got some new reports that help us to put a number on that loss of value, 7.5 percent on an annualized basis. That means that at the rate of loss in January, it took a dollar to buy what previously cost only 92 cents. This is a colossal failure on the part of our ruling class.

It's hard to imagine a more complete failure. 

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There was big news over the weekend from special counsel John Durham, charged with investigating the Trump Russiagate hoax. The special counsel has alleged the Clinton campaign paid a tech company to infiltrate servers belonging to Trump Tower and later, The White House. The plan was to create the appearance that Donald Trump was colluding with the Russians.

In short, the special counsel believes Trump’s political enemies spied on and lied about an opponent, and then, more seriously, the president of the United States in order to drive him from office. If true, it’s a mind-blowing atrocity. Political wrongdoing doesn’t get more serious than that.

Yet there’s been barely a peep from the legacy media. And it’s not hard to understand why. They’re the ones who embraced the Russiagate narrative and drove it, reporting night after night on how the “walls were closing in” on President Trump. Covering its implosion reveals them for what they are: Corrupt, craven partisans.

 

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Russia’s imperial ambitions have brought its armies to the frontier of Ukraine—and with them comes a dawning realization that the West miscalculated the meaning of the collapse of the Soviet Union. So did Russia.

 

In our haste to extend NATO to the borders of Russia, the West made the fatal mistake of seeing the Soviet collapse as an end to history itself. We led Ukraine to believe we would defend its borders against Russia when, in reality, we had neither the resources nor the will to do so—and never did.

 

Vladimir Putin has miscalculated too. If he invades Ukraine as expected, such a war and occupation will be costly in lives and treasure, neither of which Russia can spare. Even if they win the war, an extended occupation will grind down the Russians and potentially be as destabilizing to Moscow’s power structure as Afghanistan turned out to be.

 

The costs for all sides will be enormous. We pray Putin will realize that in time.

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The trucker protests in Canada remain big news—on both sides of America’s Northern border. What’s notable is the fact that this kind of thing really doesn't happen in Canada—but it did.

Yes, our cultures have many similarities—but they have just as many differences. One of those difference is that Canadians—in general—don’t do protests. Americans do. Just look at what we have seen over the course of these past two years.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about the development in a very interesting way, “The lesson for the COVID-19 police is that when you’ve lost even Canadians, arguably the most law-abiding people on the planet, you’ve lost the political plot. Time to adopt a new strategy, more tolerant of the need to return to life not dominated by pandemic fear and government commands.”

That's really, really accurate. 

When the pent up frustration of two years of government crackdowns in the midst of a pandemic rolls over into protests in Canada … well those protests are big news.

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Sometimes we have to go back to basics and make sure we don't forget the hard lessons learned by the Founders. America as founded on the basis of “natural liberties.” These liberties pertain to all human beings by nature and forbid the government jurisdiction over them. Examples would be freedom of speech and religious liberty.

 

These liberties have made our nation unique and distinctive on the world stage. Religious liberty—simply put—leaves government out of the business of faith. But endorsing religious liberty does not mean endorsing everything that people do with that liberty.

 

If we lose the basic idea that endorsing liberty does not mean endorsing everything people do with that liberty, then liberty will be blamed for all the ills of mankind, and will continue to erode, and will eventually be lost.

 

In our frustration with a declining culture which increasingly abuses freedom, let’s not abandon our foundational liberties, instead let’s teach people how to use them wisely.

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