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Trump Outlines 3-Phase Approach to ‘Opening Up America Again’ Amid COVID-19

April 17, 2020/in Budget and Finance, Elections, Featured, Healthcare, Policy, Politics/by The Daily Signal

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OPENING UP AMERICA AGAIN

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced a cautious, three-phase approach—one that still gives wide latitude to governors—for reopening the shuttered economy in states that have had low rates of transmission of COVID-19.

“Based on the latest data, our team of experts now agrees that we can begin the next front in our war, which we’re calling, ‘Opening up America again,’” Trump said. “… We are not opening all at once, but one careful step at a time.”

The president has said he would like to see the economy moving again by—or even before—May 1 in some states. He said the plan is based on “hard, verifiable data” and that the peak death rate from the disease is now behind us.

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

“Thanks to our all-out military operation and the extraordinary devotion of our people, we believe we will experience far fewer deaths than even the optimistic projections,” Trump said.

“We have incredible people that we’re working with, and we’re going to bring our country back, and it’s going to be bigger and better and stronger than ever before,” he said.

Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, presented slides to explain the phases of the process of reopening the country. Birx said each phases would be “related to 14 days of decreasing evidence of illness.”

Phase one is designed to “mitigate the risk of resurgence” and would allow public venues, such as arenas, theaters, and restaurants to reopen, only under certain social distancing conditions. However, “all vulnerable individuals should continue to shelter in place,” and low-risk individuals should continue social distancing.

Phase two only applies for regions with no evidence of a rebound. Visits to hospitals, nursing homes, and similar locations will remain prohibited. However, schools, day care centers, and camps can reopen, and nonessential travel can resume. Public venues can begin to ease social distancing restrictions.

Phase three is also for states or areas with no evidence of a rebound, but has fewer restrictions than phase two. Even vulnerable individuals would have more freedom, but should still practice social distancing, while others are urged to avoid “crowded environments.”

The president noted that “benchmarks must be met at each phase.”

Reacting to the president’s plan, Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James stressed that “good public health policy is good economic policy.”

“The administration is rightly working to restore livelihoods in the midst of catastrophic job losses, while also taking care to balance Americans’ health and safety,” said James, who is also chairwoman of The Heritage Foundation’s 17-member National Coronavirus Recovery Commission. The panel is working to provide recommendations to federal, state, and local governments, as well as to the private sector.

“I look forward to working with the administration to help move prudently toward getting Americans’ lives back to normal,” she added.

Vice President Mike Pence said the phased approach will focus on preventing recurrence of the coronavirus in states where it has declined.

“There is a focus in the president’s new guidelines on the most vulnerable,” Pence said. “We made this very clear to the governors today. These new guidelines for opening up America again can be implemented on a statewide basis or on a county-by-county basis.”

“The predominant and completely driving element that we put into this was the safety and the health of the American public,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who also serves on the White House’s coronavirus task force.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

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How Can We Have Two Systems of Justice in This Country?

April 16, 2020/in Commentary, Courts & Law, Culture War, Policy, Politics, Religion, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.

There should not be two standards of justice in this nation—a slap on the wrist for the politically correct who do wrong, while Gen. Michael Flynn’s whole life has been upended for allegedly lying to the FBI.

Flynn has lost his house, livelihood, and reputation. Meanwhile, in contrast, there is a high ranking FBI attorney who allegedly doctored an email to obtain a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) warrant for raw political sabotage, who has yet to be punished.

Last week, Senator Charles Grassley (R) Iowa declassified some footnotes to a Justice Department inspector general report on the whole Russian-Trump collusion allegation.

Of course, this whole mess began with a dossier written by former British spy Christopher Steele. He alleged that the Trump campaign secretly received help from Russia, so that Trump might become president. All of this has been investigated ad nauseam and found to be false.

Writing over the weekend an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (April 11-12, 2020), Sen. Ron Johnson, (R) Wisconsin, noted: “The Steele dossier already ranks as one of the dirtiest political tricks of all time.” The falsified Steele dossier became the pretext by which some FBI officials appear to have obtained FISA warrants.

How can this nation continue to have two standards of law and order? Two standards of judgment? Punishment of conservatives for alleged wrong-doing versus wrist-slapping of liberals for woeful violations of the law.

Consider the morality of this and then the legality.

High-ranking FBI officials allegedly lied to try to prevent a political opponent from winning the presidency. Then when he did win, they lied to derail his presidency.

Dr. Frank Wright, the president of D. James Kennedy Ministries, points out, “Lying has become so endemic in our time that many times when some politicians speak, it’s a given that some of what they say is not necessarily the truth—but rather it’s so-called spin. However, we’ve learned recently that there is serious deception among key government leaders—even in the FBI.”

Veteran journalist and author Robert Knight said to me in an interview for Christian television: “When I was growing up the FBI were the heroes….and now the FBI has grown into this enormous organization whose powers are far reaching, and whose powers could be abused if political partisans get a hold of it, which apparently is exactly what has happened.”

The Department of Justice is slowly examining some of the alleged crimes of bad actors, particularly in the FBI, but as of this writing, no concrete charges have been filed. The wheels of justice seem to be grinding awfully slow—and at least so far, in an unfair way—tilted to the ruling class.

Knight added, “I don’t recall anytime in American history where the FBI was used as a blunt political instrument. There’s a pattern of corruption here that’s far and deep. And Americans are wondering if anybody’s ever going to be punished for it.” Bob said these words in the summer of 2018. To my knowledge, no one involved on the left has yet been punished.

Jarrett Stepman of the Heritage Foundation comments: “It’s the idea that some men put themselves above the laws, and I think that’s what a lot of people see. Especially what happened with the FBI. Some agents thinking they had a right to try to overturn, essentially, the election by the American people.”

It’s against the Bible to have two separate standards of justice. And it’s against the Constitution.

In an interview for Christian television on the Judeo-Christian roots of America, Dr. Daniel Dreisbach of American University, outlined some of the ways the Bible influenced the U. S. Constitution. He told me, “Take, for example, something as simple as Article One, Section Eight, which authorizes Congress to ‘fix the standard of weights and measures.’”

Dreisbach continued, “Perhaps the greatest of the English Common Law Jurisprudence was a man by the name of Sir Edward Coke. He wrote a commentary on the Magna Charta. There’s a paragraph in Magna Charta, speaking to the necessity to fix standard weights and measures, and in his commentary, Sir Edward Coke, writing in the seventeenth century said, ‘This is an idea rooted in the Word of God.’” Indeed, we can read about this in the book of Proverbs

The idea of standard weights and measures implies that you would do the honest thing for all your customers. God is a God of justice, and He hates dishonest dealings—one standard for one person, but a different standard for someone else.

This country cannot have two standards of justice—one for the politically correct ruling class and another for the rest of us “deplorables.” It’s unconstitutional. And more importantly, it’s unbiblical.

Don’t trust China: Lessons from Taiwan

April 16, 2020/in Elections, National Security, Policy, Politics/by Center For Security Policy

Amid coronavirus upheaval, the Chinese government’s evasion and deception has remained constant.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) alone is responsible for the global pandemic and resulting consequential economic devastation. However, if the medical community had been skeptical of the totalitarian regime –and the World Health Organization (WHO) had not aggressively defended it –the outbreak may not have spread.

Taiwan, kicked out of the WHO in 2017 at Beijing’s behest, was denied access to WHO data. Taiwan’s successful containment of coronavirus was an alternative possibility for the rest of the world; had Beijing’s reports been challenged instead of accepted.

When doctors in Wuhan grew concerned about a new SARS-like virus, but those who tried to warn their colleagues were detained for “spreading misinformation.” Human-to-human transmission was clear to physicians by late December, but Beijing did not report that information to the WHO.

Instead, officials ordered labs to stop testing and destroy virus samples. Multiple labs mapped the genome sequence – information crucial for vaccine development – but the results were not made public. When the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center published their findings, the center was immediately shutdown with no explanation. Whistleblowers and journalists critical of the CCP’s handling of the crisis have also been detained or disappeared.

Globally, outbreak projections were based on the assumption the virus was only infecting people directly connected to the wet market into late January.

A study by the University of Southampton showed if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did—when they were silencing whistleblowers –the outbreak could have been reduced by 95 percent.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator for the White House, said the US medical community underestimated the coronavirus because of China’s unreliable data.

“The bottom line is, we didn’t know how contagious it was,” Dr. Birx said at a digital town hall event.

A John Hopkins’ study predicted Taiwan would be the second most infected country. But Taiwan has only 388 cases and 6 deaths, without canceling schools or locking down any major cities. Australia, with a similar population size, has had 6,313 cases and 61 deaths.

“What we learned from SARS was that we need to be very skeptical with data from China,” said Chan Chang-chuan, dean of National Taiwan University’s College of Public Health.

Taiwanese officials boarded planes and inspected passengers of direct flights from Wuhan for symptoms at the end of December. People who had traveled to Wuhan and had symptoms of a respiratory infection were screened. On January 26, Taiwan banned all flights from Wuhan, earlier than any other country and against WHO recommendations.

Taipei warned the WHO of human to human transmission on December 31, but was ignored. The WHO’s willingness to disregard Taiwan in order to flatter Chinese government diktats had a snowball effect as Western experts uncritically accepted WHO’s declarations.

“We would have learned at least six weeks earlier that the outbreak could be successfully suppressed and how to do so [if Taiwan was a member of the WHO],” said Richard Ebright, molecular biologist at Rutgers University.

The novel coronavirus has brought to the forefront the fundamental challenge of international institutions, which fail to distinguish between free societies and dictatorships. The successful response of Taiwan, a liberal democracy, to the virus serves as a foil to China’s brutal authoritarianism.

The most important CCP objective is to maintain control. Ultimately the party does not care about human rights, or even human lives. To protect itself, the Chinese regime suppressed life-saving information at the cost of 22,071 American lives, a number projected only to grow.

COLUMN BY

About Morgan Wirthlin

Morgan Wirthlin is the Chief of Staff at the Center for Security Policy. She graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in Political Science.

View all posts by Morgan Wirthlin →

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America’s Pyrrhic Victory

April 16, 2020/in Commentary, Culture War, Elections, Healthcare, Policy, Politics, Regulation/by Cherie Zaslawsky

In the end, we’ll see this pandemic wasn’t Armageddon after all. It was merely, as Fauci himself admitted, a bad flu, as we do get from time to time. But one of the patients who lies dying is America.

An unintended consequence of my years of reading Agatha Christie mysteries is that I learned how to separate the red herrings from the salient facts hiding in plain sight, which are always the key to solving the puzzle. Admittedly, the queen of the mystery novel often outsmarted me, as many times her chief detective Hercule Poirot conducted his denouement before I’d figured out who done it; nevertheless, I learned quite a bit from his exemplary method. And I’m going to attempt to use it now with respect to the unprecedented situation in America today.

Let’s begin with the premise that we know almost nothing with any certainty about the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. We don’t know with certainty how it began, or whether it occurred in nature or was created in a lab. There is also great confusion and uncertainty regarding how cases are confirmed, and whether the number of deaths being reported in Italy and in the U.S., at any rate—since we can trust nothing coming out of Communist China—are accurate, since co-morbidities are generally not being factored in. In addition, many assert the tests themselves are woefully inaccurate, producing both false positives and false negatives. Furthermore, last week the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent American hospitals a new directive to count COVID-19 as the cause of death even if it is merely “suspected” when a patient dies in the hospital. According to the directive, signed by Secretary Alex Azar, they are required to list: “Number of patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 who died in the hospital, or any overflow location on the date for which you are reporting.” (Italics mine).

So, what do we actually know for certain?

We know that the mainstream media has churned up enormous fear over the Wuhan flu, aka COVID-19. In fact, we can’t escape the ubiquitous picture of that spiky red ball that is out to get us. Does it strike you as odd that we were never on such intimate terms with any virus before? Apparently, none of them merited an artist’s rendition, let alone a fraction of the publicity this infinitesimal critter has amassed. If there were a virus Hall of Fame, we know who’d be in pride of place. We also know who can promote such stardom or notoriety overnight: our echo-chamber media propagandizers.

Truth be told, the media has not had such a field day counting up dead bodies since the war in Vietnam. Even the President is calling this flu epidemic a “war.” So we know there is a huge media campaign to impress us with the danger presented by this virus which is hyped as if it were the Black Death.

Turns out that COVID -19 is far less deadly than many other coronaviruses

Trouble is, the ballyhoo doesn’t fit the reality. Turns out that COVID -19 is far less deadly than many other coronaviruses have been, including SARS, MERS and Ebola, with their death rates of 20-40%, or the Avian flu with a whopping 60% mortality rate, whereas COVID-19 clocks in at a modest 1% or well below, closer to .1%, depending on whose data you trust.

In fact, Dr. Anthony Fauci himself affirmed in an article he co-authored for the New England Journal of Medicine’s March 26th issue, thatCOVID -19 is essentially “a severe seasonal influenza,” i.e. a bad flu. Nothing we haven’t seen before in terms of its death rate. Perhaps Fauci quietly published this article a couple of weeks ago to give himself plausible deniability later on when the public may well be clamoring for his scalp.

We also know that, as with the seasonal flu, most who succumb are our frail elderly—which is why we call them “frail.” Even a cold can result in pneumonia and death for our octogenarians. Have we forgotten that people grow old and eventually die of one thing or another? But I digress.

Let us now leave behind all thoughts and conjectures about the Wuhan flu/Chinese Coronavirus/COVID -19 pandemic, as if it had never occurred. Instead, let’s examine only the resultant facts, the way Poirot does as he separates out stories and fabrications from verifiable information to get at the truth. Let’s regard the reality before us without the distraction of the clangorous, anxiety-producing reports that are filling the airwaves.

Here then, are the facts stripped of all narrative: In America today, our Constitution and our Constitutional rights have been suspended. Our entire economy has been shut down. Schools have been closed.

Here then, are the facts stripped of all narrative

Churches and synagogues have been closed. A pastor was arrested for holding a church service in this country which was founded upon religious freedom. People are forbidden to congregate not only for religious worship, but even for their own weddings, bar mitzvahs, baptisms, and funerals, let alone birthday or anniversary celebrations. Many states are under lockdowns in which you can be fined and/or arrested for leaving your home for an “unnecessary” purpose. Public parks have been closed off to the very public they were intended for. Small businesses, the lifeblood of America and of our middle class, are dying in plain sight—many shutting their doors for good as the shutdown drags on.

Americans, in arguably the foremost of all first-world countries, suddenly can’t find toilet paper. And for weeks now, under draconian lockdowns in nearly every state, you can’t get a fast food hamburger, let alone sit down to a medium rare ribeye or grilled salmon at your favorite local restaurant; in many places you can’t get your pants hemmed or your dress dry-cleaned; you can’t get your teeth cleaned or cavities filled; you can’t get a haircut, manicure, pedicure, or a hip replacement, as these are all deemed “non-essential.”

By the way, did you ever stop to wonder just who is determining what is “non-essential”? Funny, I don’t remember voting on this. When exactly did we surrender all power over our lives in the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Our men are humiliated and subdued, our women demoralized, and our children traumatized. But none of this is due to the Chinese coronavirus. Rather it is due to dictatorial governmental edicts, i.e. tyranny—exactly the kind of abuses that led to the American Revolution in the first place. On second thought, no, not exactly—the current abuses are much, much worse.

Who is determining what is “non-essential”?

Note also that all “large” gatherings are forbidden. This includes football games, baseball games, concerts, live theatre, movie theatres, the opera, ballet, symphony, and, oh yes, Trump rallies.

In our culture that venerates expertise, the prevailing experts have given us their sage advice: kiss America goodbye, and go wash your hands.

Now let’s dig deeper by lining up a few key facts completely stripped of the scary pandemic narrative. This is the point when Poirot would be asking “Cui bono?” Who stands to gain?

Almost overnight the burgeoning Trump economy has been trashed. All the amazing job gains have vanished and we’re moving more and more into the red, as unemployment soars. Many of these job losses will not be magically restored once the economy is turned back on.

Similarly, the gains in the stock market that had instilled hope and enthusiasm and renewed consumer confidence in America have now been summarily wiped out.

And the increasingly popular Trump rallies, all but guaranteed to help carry this President to a landslide victory in November while making any Democrat’s rallies look pathetic by comparison, have been swept off the map.

Add to that the fact that President Trump, albeit practically at knife-point, signed the biggest bailout in American history, which makes him responsible for adding trillions to our national debt, though up till now he prided himself on trimming wasteful spending.

Do you begin to see a pattern here?

At last we are poised to discover “who done it,” and as Agatha Christie mystery fans have learned to expect, we’re about to be shocked by the revelation. As in many of her finest tales, this denouement involves not just a single culprit, but the stealthy employment of accomplices you’d never have suspected.

So, without further ado, Mesdames et Messieurs, let’s proceed.

Largely obscured by the hysteria surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, lies a truly audacious plan. A plan that could not have been perpetrated without the collusion of the media and the UN’s World Health Organization, among other players. This colossal undertaking partakes of Goebbels’ “Big Lie” phenomenon: manipulation on this scale is so preposterous that people just can’t believe anyone would attempt it. Yes, the virus is real. But virtually everything created around it has been orchestrated and scripted—to serve a purpose.

So who are the culprits? They should be familiar to us by now, as they are the same enemies of America who seek to turn our nation into a Socialist dystopia; they are the ones bent on removing Trump because he stands in their way. They tried six ways to Sunday to take him down, but nothing worked—until now. They can be grouped together as a consortium of America-hating globalists, Leftists, Democrats, Progressives, RINOs, and powerful New World Order zealots, who have now gotten precisely what they wanted. Even if the nationwide shutdown were to end tomorrow, they would have succeeded in turning America into a mirror image of Communist China for at least a few weeks. They know it can be done. They know how to do it. They just did.

They have succeeded in jettisoning President Trump’s 3½ unprecedentedly successful years in office, and have tricked him into conspiring in what may turn out to be his own and America’s demise.

Now, do you still want to talk about the virus and whether it came from bats?

Do you want to talk about test kits, or “flattening the curve”?

Look around you. Look at our desolate downtowns, empty streets, shuttered stores—look at the sad eyes of your fellow citizens above their pathetically masked faces. This is the reality. The purpose of the media’s incessant fear-mongering as they gleefully trumpet “skyrocketing” new cases of the virus, is just to distract you from grasping the tragedy unfolding all around us.

In the end, we’ll see this pandemic wasn’t Armageddon after all. It was merely, as Fauci himself admitted, a bad flu, as we do get from time to time.

But one of the patients who lies dying is America.

And I fear that nothing short of Divine intervention can bring her back.

Trump Set to Lay Out Plan for Reopening America

April 16, 2020/in Budget and Finance, Culture War, Economy, Elections, Featured, Labor & Unions, News, Policy, Politics/by The Daily Signal

President Donald Trump intends to announce guidelines Thursday for states to “reopen” as the nation makes progress against the coronavirus pandemic.

“The data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak on new [COVID-19] cases. Hopefully, that will continue,” Trump said Wednesday evening in the Rose Garden at the White House. “These encouraging developments have put us in a very strong position to finalize guidelines for states on reopening the country, which we’ll be announcing tomorrow.”

Trump also threatened to use his “constitutional authority” to adjourn both houses of Congress so that he could make recess appointments because Senate Democrats continue to block dozens of his nominations, some of which he said are important in the fight against COVID-19.

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution grants the president the power, “on extraordinary occasions,” to “convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper.”

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Trump said he and the White House coronavirus task force will brief governors Thursday on the guidelines to reopen the country, then announce them to the public.

The president said the change won’t happen all at once, since each state is different.

“We’ll be opening up states, some much sooner than others,” Trump said. “We think some of the states can actually open up before the deadline of May 1, and I think that will be a very exciting time indeed. Governors are looking forward, they are chomping at the bit to get going.”

Trump spoke to industry leaders and CEOs earlier Wednesday in a conference call to get feedback on reopening the nation’s economy, among them Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James.

Trump announced Tuesday that James is among influential leaders named to 17 “Great American Economic Revival” groups that he would consult on getting the country back to work.

“I am grateful to work with President Trump alongside economists, scholars, and industry leaders on the Great American Economic Revival,” James said in a prepared statement. “We are committed to developing plans to get Americans back to work as soon as it’s safe to do so and helping the nation recover from COVID-19.”

James, named by the president to the “thought leaders” group, continued:

“Heritage recently formed the National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, bringing together experts in medicine, economics, business, government, disaster relief, and education to develop recommendations to save both the lives and livelihoods of Americans from this pandemic and provide our nation’s leaders with a road map to reopen America when the time comes to do so safely. I am excited to bring those recommendations to the president’s Great American Economic Revival team.”

The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation.

Trump administration officials note that while there are coronavirus hot spots in the Northeast and former hot spots on the West Coast, 25 states have fewer than 2,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and nine states have fewer than 1,000.

The U.S. has seen 605,390 cases of COVID-19 and 24,582 related deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although Vice President Mike Pence put the death toll at over 27,000 Wednesday evening.

Responding to reporters’ questions, Trump again said that the federal government has the authority to require individual states to reopen. But, he said, he prefers not to take that route.

“If we’re not happy, we’ll take very strong action against a state or a governor,” Trump said. “If we’re not happy with the job a governor is doing, we’ll let them know about it. As you know, we have very strong action we can take, including a close-down. But we don’t want to do that. We’re working with the governors.”

Pence, a former Indiana governor as well as congressman, has been the president’s point man in communicating with governors.

The vice president, who also chairs the White House’s coronavirus task force, noted that 3.3 million tests for COVID-19 have been administered, yielding 619,000 positive results.

Still, Pence noted, 24% of all counties in the United States have zero confirmed cases of the contagious disease caused by the new coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China.

“Sadly, we mourn the loss of more than 27,000 of our countrymen,” Pence said. “Despite the heartbreaking losses, we are getting there, America.”

Rhode Island is getting hard hit by COVID-19 cases that originate in New York City and Boston, even as those cities are seeing a decline, said Dr. Deborah Birx, response coordinator for the task force.

Birx said things are looking up, but offered a sober warning.

“I will just remind the American people again, this is a highly contagious virus. Social gatherings, coming together, there is always a chance that an asymptomatic person can spread the virus unknowingly,” Birx said, adding:

No one is intending to spread the virus. We know if you are sick you will stay home. But to all of you out there that would like to join together and just have that dinner party for 20, don’t do it yet. Continue to follow the presidential guidelines. We really appreciate the work of the American people.

COLUMN BY