by Meshawn Maddock
Workers and business owners across the state are still waiting to learn what fate Governor Gretchen Whitmer has in store for them.
Of course, businesses that wield political clout and make significant contributions to Whitmer’s budget — say, a crowded Detroit casino — have no such uncertainty to worry about. They’re allowed to open.
For five months, Michiganders have endured a largely arbitrary system of lockdown restrictions imposed by a governor more concerned with political posturing than making decisions based on data or common sense. In addition to the economic pain, the coronavirus pandemic has served to aggregate into the governor’s office seemingly limitless power over the economic fate of thousands of businesses and millions of jobs, not to mention the most fundamental aspects of our daily lives. Even some Democrats are beginning to question the wisdom of leaving Michigan’s extraordinarily broad emergency powers in the hands of a politician so fervently committed to abusing them in defiance of every check our system imposes to protect individuals from government overreach.
Michiganders have experienced all of this firsthand, and soon we’ll play a pivotal role in deciding whether the rest of the country will be subjected to the same sort of ordeal.
Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden says that if he takes office this January, he is prepared to do “whatever it takes” — up to and including a blanket shutdown of the American economy. “I would shut it down; I would listen to the scientists,” he said.
Never mind that experts who have examined the actual data concluded that lockdowns don’t make an appreciable difference in the rate of COVID-19 transmission — Biden undoubtedly has his own “experts” on standby to contradict the evidence.
Six months from now, Americans might very well be confronting the prospect of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris throwing our economy into an artificial depression by locking the whole country down in much the same way that Gretchen Whitmer is currently wielding discretion over whether Michiganders are allowed to go to the gym.
Is there anyone who doesn’t realize the magnitude of damage the previous round of lockdowns did to the economy? Does anybody really want to put an end to the fastest recovery in American history and return to the fear and uncertainty we experienced a few months ago?
We’ve just experienced the four most explosive months of job creation since records began — more than 10 million new jobs in just one-third of a calendar year. This is the “V-shaped recovery” that the President promised, and has now delivered, with the economy adding another 1.4 million jobs in August. It didn’t happen by chance; it happened because President Trump was busy laying the groundwork for this recovery while Joe Biden was spending all his time trying to make sure blame landed on the White House and Gretchen Whitmer was making up stories about the President denying Michigan medical supplies.
The federal Small Business Administration distributed over half a trillion dollars in forgivable loans under the Paycheck Protection Program, saving more than 51 million jobs. That proved crucial in allowing businesses to come out of hibernation relatively unscathed. The Trump administration’s measured, constitutionally sound approach has allowed governors and local officials to adjust the pace of reopening based on conditions on the ground. Biden disdains this thoroughly American approach, preferring “national mandates” that — besides having no basis in the Constitution — would force the entire country to live under rules devised by cosmopolitan elitists for places like Detroit or New York City.
Despite Governor Whitmer’s capricious lockdown orders, Michigan’s economic prospects are undeniably improving. The only thing that could derail our return to prosperity would be electing a shut-it-down candidate like Joe Biden.
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Meshawn Maddock was a Michigan delegate for Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. She is also the Co-founder of Michigan Trump Republicans and the wife of Michigan State Representative Matt Maddock.
Photo “Joe Biden and Gretchen Whitmer” by Gretchen Whitmer.
