CA Rep. Tom McClintock on the House floor discussing Covid curfews and common sense. (Photo: C-SPAN)
Gov. Newsom: If Lockdowns Are So Successful, Why Do We Need to Keep Having Them?
‘Don We Now Our Plague Apparel’
By Tom McClintock, December 4, 2020 6:49 am
California Congressman Tom McClintock gave an audacious, common sense speech on the House floor Thursday, directed right at Gov. Gavin Newsom, on “Covid Curfews and Common Sense.”
Mr. Speaker:
Governor Newsom made a groundbreaking discovery regarding Covid-19 last week. Apparently, it has learned to tell time. Thus, acting under the strictest of scientific standards, he has ordered Californians to run home before 10 pm, lock their doors and hide from this insidious virus until daybreak.
Unfortunately, Covid doesn’t seem to be following the curfew, so Newsom is now threatening a “hard lockdown” of virtually the entire state throughout the Christmas season. Don we now our plague apparel. There’s just one nagging question the Governor hasn’t bothered to answer: if these lockdowns are so successful, why do we need to keep having them?
Not to worry: We are cheerfully assured that the jobs that are being destroyed are “non-essential.” Their term, “non-essential.” I have news for these self-absorbed elitists: If a job is putting food on your table and a roof over your head, that job IS essential for you and the family that depends on you.
Last Spring, I asked Anthony Fauci if he had taken into account the human cost of the lockdowns – the suicides, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, deferred health screenings and treatments and poverty related deaths that his policies were setting in motion. “No, we really haven’t considered that,” he breezily replied. Don’t know. Don’t care.
Before Fauci and his followers took a wrecking ball to our nation, poverty had dropped to its lowest rate since 1959, unemployment was the lowest in 50 years, the income gap was narrowing, wages showed strongest growth in 40 years. How many millions of these jobs have now been wantonly destroyed by autocratic officials who seem oblivious to the damage they are causing?
According to the CDC’s best estimates, those under 50 have a 99.98 percent chance of recovering from COVID – if they get it at all – and 40 percent who get it don’t even know they have it. Even for those in the most vulnerable group – over 70 – the survival rate is 94.6 percent.
Sweden didn’t force its businesses to close. Sweden didn’t shut down its schools and abandon its children to the streets. Sweden didn’t even order a mask mandate. Sweden did what free societies do: they gave the best advice they could and trusted their citizens to use their own judgment of what measures made sense to them.
The result? As of this morning, Sweden’s mortality rate for Covid is 154 deaths PER million below that of the United States, meaning if we had Sweden’s mortality rate it would mean 50,000 fewer American Covid deaths. Meanwhile, Sweden has sustained a fraction of the economic damage that our lockdown leftists have inflicted on innocent Americans. Globally, the United Nations warns that 130 million people will starve to death around the world because of the economic damage caused by these measures.
Mr. Speaker, this has to stop. The good news is that more and more Americans are questioning the lunacy of these policies and the hypocrisy of those that impose them. Newsom’s curfew order was met with spontaneous defiant demonstrations across the state. Elected sheriffs are increasingly refusing to enforce these orders. Pastors are reopening their churches. Businesses are reopening even as their owners are taken away in handcuffs.
All mass hysterias are driven by blind fear, fanned by politicians who see opportunity in them. We have learned that such fear can cause a free people to abandon their legacy of freedom and independence, their prosperity and commonsense – for a while. Yet every time in history this has happened, there is always a moment when the fear fever breaks, and the hysteria suddenly burns itself out. The French Revolution, the Salem Witch Trials, the Communist hysteria of the 1950’s all had a moment when the absurdity of it all became so apparent that it overcame the fear – and the people turned on their tormentors.
I don’t know if the recent wave of business and religious persecutions, the unlimited home detention orders and the demonstrated hypocrisy of those who ordered them signals that moment. But every shopkeeper who defies these petty tyrants, every parent who confronts their school officials, every person who refuses to submit to the dysfunctional, dystopian world created by the lockdown left, brings us one step closer to that turning point.
It can’t come soon enough.
- Free Speech is the Cure and Not the Cause of Antisemitism - December 15, 2023
- Rep. Tom McClintock: Why I Oppose the Censure and Fine of Adam Schiff - June 14, 2023
- McClintock: Why I Support the Fiscal Responsibility Act - May 31, 2023
RELATED ARTICLES
-
-
September 21, 2018 -
November 10, 2018
Thank you very much Mr. McClintock, for being so very brave to speak up for the “we the people”, and may God bless and keep you always! Psalm 91
Thank you Tom McClintock! Speaking the actual truth. Finally a politician who makes sense.
Comrades
Odd. Incompetent politicians, laughing Publicans, greedy government workers thrive……..
Why?
You always ask the right questions.
T.M. is the Man! Count me on-board. This is what political fresh air smells like in California…whenever you can find it.
From Newsom’s perspective these shutdown are a major success. He measures success in terms of jobs lost, churches shutdown, businesses ruined, increased suicides and drug addiction.
There really is such a thing as pure evil.
You’re absolutely right, CW. As usual.
Other than speaking what is McClintock doing about it all? If he as as federal Representative can only talk what can the rest of us do? If Newsom is breaking the law, the constitution, his oath of office, wherever, why isn’t someone in government doing something about it? People threaten to keep their business open, but the bureaucrats come and say if you defy you will lose your business license. It’s all a big game of some kind and we’re the suckers.
Have you contacted your state officials to let them know what it is that you want them to do? There are 40 senators and 80 assembly members in California, that IS the legislative branch. Tell them you want to hold Newsom accountable (the executive branch) by taking him to court (the judicial branch) like Kiley and Gallagher have done.
My state official was in Hawaii when I called. so he did not get the message. and he his wimpy staff told me they did not care if I voted for Mr Dodd or not… despicable people.. go Tom GO
Why oh why was Tom McClintock not elected Governor in 2003???
It’s past time for him to become Governor of this state and REINSTATE mature, rational LEADERSHIP and not the idiocy and fear-based reaction to a perceived threat by Greaseball Newsom…
Do the recall at http://www.recallgavin2020.com and get 10 of your friends to sign as well…
We need to send Newsom back to his Plumpjack (or prison would be even better) and make way for McClintock, Moorlach, Ring or Allen… Even Cox….
Newsom is an unmitigated DISASTER for California!!!
A honest vote might very well elect him. I would support his running and I pray that once the fraud is fumigated out of this state that he will run.
The Man that could have been Governor. I think when he was defeated by Arnie was the moment I knew it was over for California.
Lord help us.
Very shortly after grey davis was voted in it was painfully obvious the state was headed in a different direction. Within two years it was very painfully obvious the state was in a 400mph vertical dive. I’m not standing up for Arnold by any means, and I’ve heard loads of democrats blame him exclusively and ignore davis completely, but the beginning of the end really started with grey davis.
Schwarz at least vetoed a lot of bad stuff that made it to his desk. That’s a good thing.
He has always been and continues to be an honest and brilliant representative for Californians willing to break through their protective political bubbles and listen to him…a politician who actually cares about ALL Californians. He is willing to criticize our terribly corrupt and inept Governor Newsom, who only cares about himself and his evil political aspirations. PLEASE sign the Recall Gavin petition (if you haven’t already done so) and urge friends and family to do the same. We must purge out dishonest California politicians, starting with King Newsom.
https://recallgavin2020.com
I work at a school for public health at a university with a teaching hospital. We get reports on ICU bed shortages. McClintock makes comparisons to Sweden. But let’s face it, if left up to their own devices, Americans would not exercise what he calls “common sense”. We have to have disclaimers on how NOT to use appliances and other items. Having reached that point, how much common sense do people really have? And he wants to rely on them to do the “right thing” in the midst of a pandemic? Not buying it. The IQ of people in this country has deteriorated. Mortality rate is only part of the equation. Ease of transmission is the big problem and we have people who think they’re “bullet proof” running around with no concern for others. If they want to risk themselves fine. Just sign waiver that says they give up the ICU bed they would have otherwise taken so some one who really needs it can have it. If these people learned that Covid lead to the deaths of their pet dog or cat, they would be decked out in full hazmats suits without a single complaint.