Thanks to business, my family and other business associates and I have been able to travel through several states, and it is clear that the Lockdown is far from over, even in the West.  And that economic impacts are continuing and growing.  When coupled with a brief perusal of the news (I’m still “on recess” from my usual news diet), that appears to be the case across the Fifty States and much of the planet.

I personally saw thousands of businesses still closed or with severely limited operations due to the Pandemic Panic – many hit hard NOT by government decrees but by their own corporate bosses or their masters under terms of their franchise agreements.  Far too many businesses have signs posted stating the sad fact that they are permanently out of business. This is especially true in the smaller towns.  (Most businesses in the very small rural/frontier towns in the Great Plains died a long time ago: now even the post offices and automated fuel stations – and sometimes schools – are closed for now.  And may not be able to reopen – foreclosed, bankrupted, or just unable to get necessary operating credit and capital.

Individuals are being pushed hard as well – furloughed from jobs, or just plain laid off.  Hours of work reduced.  The owners of those small businesses, all outgo and no income.  Ranchers unable to sell cattle; farmers unable to sell stored crops; because of shutdown of food processing and packing plants.  Imported and domestically produced goods NOT being produced and sold means that truckers – and therefore mechanics and fuel stations and more on very limited operations or even shut down. And people who can’t sell their products, people who have lost income because the businesses that owed them money, or the givers who contributed to their organizations, don’t have the money to give them. Everyone from preachers to dressmakers to crane operators. To say nothing of people whose businesses or professions or jobs have been destroyed either by government or by rioters and looters and arsonists.

We know personally dozens if not hundreds of people badly hurt – and even more knowing that they are GOING to get hurt. And we know from them and other friends of hundreds and hundreds more that see doom ahead of them. Not now, but later this year.

And counties and towns and cities are all pinched as well.  Some more than others, either because they don’t care about where those dollars will come from tomorrow or figure that the FedGov will bale them out, so they continue to spend, spend, spend.  Or in a very few cases, those State and local governments ARE seeing that the easy money is gone and they do both accept that (a) you can’t get blood from a turnip, and (b) some things HAVE to stop being done because the money isn’t there. And we know that some governments – scumbags as usual – are stopping things like retirement pay, medical self-insurance, and things like that. Things that people have grown (wrongly) to depend on government to provide.

Over the next few weeks, I’m looking for interesting (and frustrating) tidbits to share that illustrate some of these problems and what is being done – good and bad – to either solve them, or kick them down the road.  And what we should be doing as lovers of liberty to get people to think outside the box – or out from under the domes of State capitols and the Feds’ house of worship (the US Capitol).

I’ll start with a personal situation in the great State of Wyoming. See the next commentary, please, and learn about their rest area crisis.