The VA Bought 10,000 Smartphones during the Pandemic. 85% Were Never Used thumbnail

The VA Bought 10,000 Smartphones during the Pandemic. 85% Were Never Used

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

There’s a right way and a wrong way to help homeless veterans.


The US Department of Veterans Affairs wasted $1.8 million in data plan costs for unused phones, according to an inspector general’s report released on Wednesday. The Veterans Health Administration had spent $7 million to purchase 10,000 phones with unlimited prepaid calling plans for homeless veterans, but 85% of the phones went unused. The report also found that $571,000 was wasted on data plans for iPads sitting in storage due to poor oversight.

“The smartphones and iPads were purchased as part of the efforts to increase homeless veterans’ access to telehealth,” the Associate Press explains. “The veterans were enrolled in a Department of Housing and Urban Development VA Supportive housing program.”

The report called for the VA to “establish a realistic goal for days in storage along with a process for closely monitoring days in storage for each data plan provider and taking corrective actions when the goal is not being met.” It also called on the VA to create a process that starts the data plan charges only after the device has been issued to a veteran.

Regrettably, government waste and mismanagement like this is nothing new. From $2 million bathrooms to $400,000 camel statues, governments have managed to throw mad amounts of money down the drain over the years. In fact, government waste is so common that Senator Rand Paul prepares an annual “Festivus” report detailing the most egregious examples of wasted resources from the year.

But while government waste is nothing new, what’s intriguing about this particular case is the reason that was given for the problem.

“The inspector general concluded that Veterans Health Administration officials…made a good faith effort to help veterans get smartphones,” the Associated Press notes. “But they found there was a ‘lack of information for officials to be able to determine the quantity needed for the targeted veteran population.’”

If this assessment sounds familiar, well, it should. As the Nobel-prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek famously asserted, the “lack of information” possessed by government bureaucrats regarding the “quantity needed” of various resources is in fact the key problem with central planning. Waste is inevitable in these systems precisely because they can never accumulate, let alone manage, the knowledge that is required for determining the best allocation of resources.

Hayek spells out the knowledge problem in his famous essay, The Use of Knowledge in Society.

“The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality.”

The solution to this problem, says Hayek, is decentralization and market prices. With market prices, we can learn what people find valuable and direct production to those ends. But without market prices, we are “groping in the dark,” as Mises says. This is why Veterans Affairs wasted over a million dollars on these data plans. They had no way of knowing the demand for these phones, so they ended up buying way more than were needed.

Of course, none of this is to say we shouldn’t help homeless veterans. The question here is what’s the most effective way to help them. The government approach, or the market approach?

The government approach, as this story illustrates, is to assume that we know what homeless veterans need, buy a bunch of it, and then realize that we actually misjudged the need and wasted a bunch of money.

The market approach, on the other hand, begins with the assumption that we don’t know what’s best for other people or what their specific needs are. Following from that, we realize that it makes little sense to have central planners spending money on their behalf. Thus, rather than trying to guess what they need, we focus our efforts on getting out of their way. We get rid of minimum wage laws and occupational licensing requirements that might be keeping them out of jobs. We cut taxes so they can save money, and we tear down crony regulations that make everyday goods more expensive than they need to be. In other words, we let the market work.

To be sure, the market approach is radically different from what we’ve been doing. But given how things have turned out, perhaps radically different is exactly what we need.

This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

AUTHOR

Patrick Carroll

Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

GOP Sen. Braun to Becerra: Govt Shouldn’t Push Gender Surgery for Kids thumbnail

GOP Sen. Braun to Becerra: Govt Shouldn’t Push Gender Surgery for Kids

By Discover The Networks

At a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies hearing, Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) confronted Health and Human Services (HHS) Sec. Xavier Becerra over how the Biden administration is promoting life-altering surgeries for children — including breast and genital surgeries.

“Could you explain what irreversible top and bottom sex-change surgeries are and why that is on the portal as well?” Braun asked.

“Senator there as you’ve just indicated, there are many different types of procedures that can be deployed,” Becerra said. “What I will say to you is again, in any case, no individual, no patient, will proceed forward unless his or her doctor has advised of the procedure. And it is considered by the FDA and others who have to go ahead and certify a medicine or procedure to be safe and effective.”

“So, I’ll try to distill it into a more simple form. In what case would it be appropriate to perform irreversible sex-change surgery on kids?” Braun said.

“Those decisions are made by that individual in consultation with physician and caregivers, and no decision would be made without having consulted appropriately,” Becerra said.

“You know, I think the government shouldn’t be pushing or have an out there on a portal that moves you towards irreversible sex change therapy, and I think we just need to think about it carefully,” Braun, who called the surgeries “almost grotesque.” “Because we’re navigating into territory that we’ve never done before as a government.”


Xavier Becerra

40 Known Connections

Becerra Identifies “Health Equity” As Top HHS Priority 

During a March 18, 2022 address marking his first year in office as HHS Secretary, Becerra said: “Health equity has to be part of everything we do. You will see health equity pervades everything we do.”

On March 19, Breccan Thies of Breitbart.com provided the following context for Becerra’s remarks: “For the left, ‘equity’ means rationing and redistributing resources based on perceived oppression, privilege, and social status — typically based on race or gender identity. Becerra’s commitment to the ideology marks an important milestone for a movement that has been proliferating among medical schools and professionals.” (Click here for details about this movement and the ideology that drives it.)

To learn more about Xavier Becerra, click here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

A Cloud Hangs Over Trans Medicine + Video Documentary ‘Transbarnen’ [Trans Kids] thumbnail

A Cloud Hangs Over Trans Medicine + Video Documentary ‘Transbarnen’ [Trans Kids]

By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

“For almost forty years, I’ve considered it an honor to be a doctor. I believe in our role as healers, and I believe in our role as truth-tellers. The truth we need to confront right now is that medicine and science are being politically perverted around the country in ways that destroy human lives.”

That’s Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine, a USA Today Woman of the Year, and the Biden Administration’s most prominent transgender bureaucrat.

Speaking a few days ago at Texas Christian University, Levine declared: “Gender-affirming care is medical care. It is mental health care. It is suicide prevention care. It improves quality of life, and it saves lives. It is based on decades of study. It is a well-established medical practice.”

However, transgender care is far from being “well-established”, as Admiral Levine must surely know. In recent months, health authorities in one country after another in Europe have expressed their alarm, citing serious medical and psychological problems amongst people who have received “gender-affirming care”.

  • In France, the National Academy of Medicine declared on February 25: “great medical caution must be taken in children and adolescents, given the vulnerability, particularly psychological, of this population and the many undesirable effects and even serious complications that can be caused by some of the therapies available”.
  • In Sweden, the National Board of Health and Welfare issued new guidelines for gender-affirming care in February. It said, based on current knowledge: “the risks of puberty suppressing treatment with GnRH-analogues and gender-affirming hormonal treatment currently outweigh the possible benefits, and that the treatments should be offered only in exceptional cases.”
  • In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published two systematic reviews of puberty blockers in March 2021. It found that they “lead to little or no change in gender dysphoria, mental health, body image and psychosocial functioning. In the few studies that did report change, the results could be attributable to bias or chance, or were deemed unreliable.”
  • In Finland, the Finnish Health Authority (PALKO/COHERE) reversed course in 2020. Its new guidance stated that “psychotherapy, rather than puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, should be the first-line treatment for gender-dysphoric youth”.

Admiral Levine would benefit from viewing the last of four programs produced by the Swedish national broadcaster SVT about transgender medicine. Transbarnen (The Trans Children) examines the case of “Leo”, a ten-year-old girl who decided that she was really a boy. It is an appalling tale of abysmal medical care – at one of the world best hospitals, the Karolinska. The searing revelations from the SVT’s investigative reporters were one factor in the new guidelines in Sweden.

Here’s what Uppdrag Granskning (Mission Investigation) found.

At the age of 11, Leo embarked upon puberty blockers. The child and her mother were told that this was standard treatment and reversible.

“Leo was little when she wanted to become a he,’ her mother Natalie told the reporter, Carolina Jemsby. “I thought if this was his wish, I should agree with it. Everyone said Leo was brave to come out and I should be proud of him.”

The puberty blockers were meant to stop Leo from developing breasts, wider hips and menstruating. Their use is based on the so-called Dutch Protocol, developed in the Netherlands in 2011. But, as Jemsby points out, some experts have grave misgivings about this repeatedly-cited research. “The worry comes from the lack of long-term studies and that the Dutch study alone is not sufficient evidence. It has too few subjects, no control group and was done at only one clinic.”

Since a well-known side-effect of puberty blockers is a serious decrease in bone density, patients are supposed to be checked regularly. They should receive the powerful drugs for no longer than two years.

Leo was on the medication for four years and his bone density was never checked.

The effects were little short of catastrophic. Leo now suffers from severe osteoporosis, a weaking of bones which is normally seen in people in their 60s and 70s. It is almost irreversible. His mother says that he was in pain from skeletal damage; he was constantly depressed; and he attempted to commit suicide several times.

“But information about the potential risks and lack of evidence never reaches Leo and his family,” says Jemsby.

In fact, one of the most dismaying features of the Swedish journalists’ report is mismanagement in the medical bureaucracy. One group diagnosed children’s gender dysphoria; another administered the medications. They didn’t appear to communicate with each other. If this is one of the world’s best hospitals, what happens elsewhere?

Jemsby showed doctors incident reports not only on Leo, but on several children who had serious complications after embarking upon puberty blockers. The response? A lot of creased brows and finger-pointing and no answers. No one, it appears, was responsible.

“I think everyone involved in this case had good intentions,” Dr Ola Nilsson, a paediatric endocrinologist, says. “But now it’s time to take a step back and try to get really good data regarding what’s best – how best to diagnose and treat this group so we do more good than harm. Much more good than harm. Minimal harm and a lot of benefit is the goal of all healthcare.”

Unfortunately, the picture painted by the Swedish journalists is one of minimal benefit for children and a lot of buck-passing by doctors.

Leo’s back, shoulder and hips are constantly aching. His distraught mother says: “A 15-year-old shouldn’t have to deal with that. His bones shouldn’t look that way. A healthy skeleton that’s been destroyed by this medicine.”

Gender-affirming care “improves quality of life, and it saves lives,” says Admiral Levine. But it didn’t for Leo and for many other children. So many, that European healthcare regulators are slamming on the brakes for transgender care – while the Americans are turbo-charging it.

To cite Rachel Levine’s ill-chosen words, medicine and science are being “politically perverted”, but not by trans sceptics, but by the Biden Administration.

AUTHOR

Michael Cook

Michael Cook is the editor of MercatorNet. He lives in Sydney, Australia. More by Michael Cook

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

There’s an upside to the Alito draft leak thumbnail

There’s an upside to the Alito draft leak

By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

Why should close reading, historical insight and an abundance of footnotes delegitimate the Court?


The leak of Justice Alito’s draft of the majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, unfortunate as it may be, should not delegitimate the US Supreme Court.

If a snarky, plotting, election-related draft had been revealed, that would have truly delegitimated the court. But in the draft one only finds very solid scholarship, even if one disagrees with it. It’s exactly the sort of thing that one would have wished for in a profoundly serious, deeply researched opinion.

Why should close reading, historical insight and an abundance of footnotes delegitimate the Court?

As a pro-life writer, I actually was a bit disappointed in the draft’s content. It contains no mention of the horror of abortion, except for a few initial citations from Mississippi. Nor does it mention any of the procedural flaws of Roe, especially the lack of a factual record (re life and re women) tested at a trial proceeding. And, an even bigger gap, it doesn’t mention any of the arguments that abortion hurts women. (Justice Kennedy did better a few years ago.)

So I think Justice Alito bent over backwards to go easy on the supporters of abortion. His text only hammers hard at the surface incorrectness of the reasoning of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey.

In this regard, the leak has a silver lining. People will read through the draft opinion with greater care than they would ordinarily lavish on an actual Supreme Court opinion, where only the final result matters to most of us. Of course, even here many will be only concerned with where Alito comes out, but even then they will scrutinise it in order to figure out the best counterblow. And people find it plain exciting to read stuff that’s supposed to be secret.

Here is some evidence for my silver lining. The Washington Post yesterday published an annotated albeit somewhat simplified version of the text. I thought that both the abridgment and the textual comments were remarkably fair-minded, really devoted only to explicating Alito’s reasoning, not to unfairly debunking it.

Others are no doubt doing what the Washington Post did. This will soften support for Roe. If more and more people learn what an unfounded opinion it was, they will have less reverence for it. (I will concede that showing the extreme sloppiness of Roe does delegitimate the Supreme Court of 1973 quite a bit, but at the same time it elevates the legitimacy of the current Court. So I’m not sure how that eventually washes out in terms of the historical trajectory of legitimacy.)

I’m not denying that the main political event that we are seeing right now is the marshalling of the mob. But that would have occurred in any event, as soon as the Court announced its decision in June .

But maybe advance titillation is slightly better than a done-and-dusted announcement in June.

AUTHOR

Richard Stith is a professor emeritus of law at Valparaiso University. He is active in the Consistent Life Network, although the positions taken in his essays are not necessarily those of the CLN or its… More by Richard Stith

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Unhinged Violent Left Goes Crazy over Abortion thumbnail

The Unhinged Violent Left Goes Crazy over Abortion

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

I’ve commented many times about the unhinged, violent Left.  They’re out in full force now, completely unglued by the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

We start with the actual violence they have already perpetrated. Pro-abortion activists smashed police cars and injured police officers with rocks and bottles in Los Angeles, shattered all the windows at City Hall in Portland, and spit on and shoved counter-protesters in front of the Supreme Court.  They also spit on counter-protesters in Arizona, while calling them names that can’t be repeated here.

Next come the public figures who are inciting others to violence.  California Governor Gavin Newsom said we will soon feel the fury of abortion supporters and told them to “fight like hell”, which was not OK and amounted to insurrection, according to Democrats, when Trump said it on January 6th. Transgender activist Chelsea Manning urged people to arm themselves and train in teams to learn how to use their weapons.  Other unhinged Leftists said, “BURN IT ALL DOWN” and “political violence works … burn down the Supreme Court”, among similar statements.  A leftist on Twitter said someone should murder Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Then there’s the intimidation.  Leftists groups are telling protesters to go to the homes of Supreme Court Justices to make their feelings known.  One group published the addresses.  The White House refused to condemn it.  What could possibly go wrong?  You might not recall, but a deranged angry leftist shot and injured a security guard at the Family Research Council in 2013, having gone there with the intent to massacre as many people as possible.  Another deranged Leftist shot Steve Scalise and other Republican congressmen on a baseball field four years later.  Maybe the Justices will get lucky and the protesters will only pound on their front doors like they pounded on the doors of the Supreme Court during the Kavanaugh hearings.

Meanwhile, other abortion fanatics are saying the wackiest things.  Whoopi Goldberg said abortion decisions should be between “my doctor, myself, and my child.”  Huh?  Well, Whoopi, what do you think unborn babies would say if given a choice in the matter?  They just might say, “My body, my choice.”  Too bad we don’t get to hear from them. A minor Hollywood actor tweeted, “I don’t think anybody actually believes fetuses are people.”

This is a change of tone for me on here but I don’t think anybody actually believes fetuses are people. I think they’re lying. There are almost 1,000,000 miscarriages each year in America, it happens to almost everybody. But we’re not constantly getting invited to the funerals.

— Alex Falcone (@alex_falcone) May 5, 2022

Oh, maybe just half the country.  Then there were the unhinged Leftists who said the Supreme Court will outlaw interracial marriage next. That will come as a surprise to Justice Clarence Thomas who is in an interracial marriage.

You can be sure there’s more to come – more wacky statements, more intimidation, and more violence from the unhinged Left.  But all of this pales in comparison to what they’re doing to the unborn.  It all fits, doesn’t it?  Anything goes with the unhinged violent Left, including murder, just to get their way.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Twitter, the Supreme Court and the Progressive Revolution

RELATED TWEETS:

Don’t even know what to say pic.twitter.com/mfcR5vlHfD

— Suzy (@Suzy_NotSuzy) May 6, 2022

NOW – Fence erected overnight around U.S. Supreme Court building.pic.twitter.com/kpKQyVTqUP

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) May 5, 2022

CALIFORNIA: New Witch Hunt to Strip Honest Doctors of Their Licenses thumbnail

CALIFORNIA: New Witch Hunt to Strip Honest Doctors of Their Licenses

By MERCOLA Take Control of Your Health

California Bill Seeks to Muzzle Doctors Who Tell the Truth About COVID


  •  California bill is now threatening to strip doctors of their medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not agree with. California Assembly Bill 2098 designates “the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct” warranting “disciplinary action” that could result in the loss of their medical license
  • Misinformation related to SARS-CoV-2 includes “false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.” But as far as what might constitute “misinformation” or “disinformation” is unclear and basically left open for interpretation by the state
  • Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat each patient as an individual, and to ensure each patient receives the safest and best care. Bill 2098 will turn doctors into government agents, leaving no one to advocate for patients’ health
  • California has also introduced six other bills seeking to enshrine tyranny into law, including bills to criminalize “amplification of harmful content,” create a centralized vaccination registry, strip funding from law enforcement that refuses to follow public health orders, mandate COVID jabs for school children, authorize minors to consent to vaccination, and require school districts to conduct routine COVID testing
  • If you live in California, please review these bills and VOTE NO

One of the most stunning parts of this pandemic has been the denial of basic science, and one of the most shocking developments from that has been the attack on medical doctors who try to set the record straight.

As reported by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — professor of health policy at Stanford, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and coauthor of the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for focused protection of the most vulnerable1 — a California bill is now threatening to strip doctors of their medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not agree with.2

Bhattacharya’s Personal Battle

Bhattacharya has first-hand experience with this kind of witch hunt. He was one of the first to investigate the prevalence of COVID-19 in 2020, and found that by April, the infection was already too prevalent for lockdowns to have any possibility of stopping the spread.

Bhattacharya has called the COVID-19 lockdowns the “biggest public health mistake ever made,”3 stressing that the harms caused have been “absolutely catastrophically devastating,” especially for children and the working class, worldwide.4

After Bhattacharya co-sponsored the Great Barrington Declaration, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and his former boss, now retired National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins, colluded behind the scenes to quash the declaration from day 1.5

To that end, they set out to smear and destroy the reputations of Bhattacharya and the other coauthors of the declaration. In one email, Collins referred to the three highly credentialed and respected scientists as “fringe epidemiologists” and called for a press “takedown” of the trio.6,7,8,9 I detailed this treachery in “Authors of Barrington Declaration Speak Out.”

“Big tech outlets like Facebook and Google followed suit, suppressing our ideas, falsely deeming them ‘misinformation,’” Bhattacharya writes.10 “I started getting calls from reporters asking me why I wanted to ‘let the virus rip,’ when I had proposed nothing of the sort. I was the target of racist attacks and death threats.

Despite the false, defamatory and sometimes frightening attacks, we stood firm. And today many of our positions have been amply vindicated. Yet the soul searching this episode should have caused among public health officials has largely failed to occur. Instead, the lesson seems to be: Dissent at your own risk.

I do not practice medicine — I am a professor specializing in epidemiology and health policy at Stanford Medical School. But many friends who do practice have told me how they have censored their thoughts about COVID lockdowns, vaccines, and recommended treatment to avoid the mob …

This forced scientific groupthink — and the fear and self-censorship they produce — are bad enough. So far, though, the risk has been social and reputational. Now it could become literally career-ending.”

Do You Want Your Doctor To Be Muzzled by the State?

California Assembly Bill 209811 — introduced by Assemblyman Evan Low, a Silicon Valley Democrat, and coauthored by Assembly members Aguiar-Curry, Akilah Weber and Wicks, and Sens. Pan and Wiener — designates “the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct” warranting “disciplinary action” that could result in the loss of their medical license.

Misinformation or disinformation related to SARS-CoV-2 includes “false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.” But as far as what might constitute “misinformation” or “disinformation” is unclear and basically left open for interpretation — by the state. As noted by Bhattacharya:12

“Doctors, fearing loss of their livelihoods, will need to hew closely to the government line on COVID science and policy, even if that line does not track the scientific evidence.

After all, until recently, top government science bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci claimed that the idea that COVID came from a Wuhan laboratory was a conspiracy theory, rather than a valid hypothesis that should be open to discussion. The government’s track record on discerning COVID truths is poor.

The bill claims that the spread of misinformation by physicians about the COVID vaccines ‘has weakened public confidence and placed lives at serious risk.’ But how significant is this problem in reality? Over 83% of Californians over the age of 50 are fully vaccinated (including the booster) …

What is abundantly clear is that this bill represents a chilling interference with the practice of medicine. The bill itself is full of misinformation and a demonstration of what a disaster it would be to have the legislature dictate the practice of medicine.”

The Shanghai Model

We don’t have to guess at what life might look like if this and other bills like it are implemented, Bhattacharya warns. The drama currently playing out in Shanghai offers a clear look into what can happen when public health is dictated by the state rather than by qualified medical professionals rooted in sound science.

“Shanghai is the model for the terrifying dangers of giving dictatorial powers to public health officials,” Bhattacharya writes.13 “The harrowing situation unfolding there is a testament to the folly of a virus containment strategy that relies on lockdown.

For two weeks, the Chinese government has locked nearly 25 million people in their homes, forcibly separated children from their parents, killed family pets, and limited access to food and life-saving medical care — all to no avail. COVID cases are still rising, yet the delusion of suppressing COVID persists.

In America, many of our officials still have not abandoned their delusions about COVID and the exercise of power this crisis has allowed. As the Shanghai debacle demonstrates, of all the many terrible consequences of our public health response to COVID, the stifling of dissenting scientific viewpoints by the state might be the most dangerous.”

The Science Deniers Are in Power

As stressed by Bhattacharya, the California bill includes a number falsehoods and fails to acknowledge basic science, starting with natural immunity. High-quality studies have repeatedly shown that natural immunity is equivalent or superior to the COVID shots. Were this bill to pass, a California doctor could lose his license for taking a patient’s COVID history into account when recommending the shot.

It also negates doctors’ ability to prescribe off-label drugs for the treatment of COVID, even though this has been a common and uncontroversial medical practice for many decades. It’s not uncommon for a drug intended for one condition to be used off-label for another. But for some reason, when it comes to COVID, this practice is now deemed hazardous and unprofessional.

The bill also falsely asserts that the “safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines have been confirmed through evaluation by the federal Food and Drug Administration.” Anyone who has followed this circus over the past year realizes that the FDA has completely ignored loud and clear warning bells showing the shots are far from safe and nowhere near as effective as initially claimed.

The bill also ignores the fact that the safety depends on the individual patient’s medical history and current state of health. “For example, there is an elevated risk of myocarditis in young men taking the vaccine, especially with the booster,” Bhattacharya notes.14

Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat each patient as an individual, and to ensure each patient receives the safest and best care. Bill 2098 will turn doctors into government agents, leaving no one to advocate for patients’ health.

“The false medical consensus enforced by AB 2098 will lead doctors to censor themselves to avoid government sanction. And it will be their patients, above all, who will be harmed by their silence,” Bhattacharya warns.

Californians, Vote NO on COVID Tyranny Bills

California Bill 2098 isn’t the only bill seeking to enshrine tyranny into law. Other pending California bills include:15

Senate Bill 1390,16 introduced by Sen. Pan, which seeks to criminalize “amplification of harmful content” on social media platforms.
Assembly Bill 1797,17 introduced by Assembly member Weber, which calls for the creation of a centralized vaccination registry.
Senate Bill 1464,18 introduced by Pan, which would strip state funding from any law enforcement agency that “publicly announces that they will not follow, or adopts a policy stating that they will not follow, a public health order.”

Those funds would instead be reallocated to the county public health department. Essentially, this bill would coerce sheriffs and police officers to violate their conscience or the law, or both, in the name of “public health policy.”

Senate Bill 871,19 introduced by Pan, which would mandate all school children, ages 5 and older, be “fully vaccinated” against COVID-19. The bill would also repeal exceptions to mandatory hepatitis B vaccination to attend school, and would remove the personal belief exemption against vaccination.
Senate Bill 866,20 introduced by Wiener and Pan, which would authorize minors, 12 years and older, to consent to vaccines without the consent of a parent or guardian.
Senate Bill 1479,21 introduced by Pan, which would expand “contagious, infectious, or communicable disease testing and other public health mitigation efforts to include prekindergarten, onsite after school programs, and child care centers,” and require each school district, county office of education, and charter school to create a COVID-19 testing plan, and report testing data to State Department of Public Health.

If you live in California, please review these bills and VOTE NO. In a Substack article, Margaret Anna Alice, offers the following guidance to Californians:22

“If you are a resident of California, please consider taking the additional step of contacting your respective senators and assembly members in addition to filling out the online portal. See Californians for Medical Freedom for step-by-step instructions on how to contact your local legislators as well as what to say if you decide to call (which is recommended).

The PERK website is also a very helpful way to track the hearing dates and status of these bills. In the comments, Donald Tipon has provided additional links for opposing AB2098 and AB1797 from A Voice for Choice Advocacy.”

Front Groups Marshal the Ignorant

Regulating the medical views a doctor can and cannot have is dangerous in the extreme, and hopefully the Californians who are left to vote in that state will quash such efforts. On the national level, we must also stay vigilant against similar legislative proposals, and push back against phony front groups that promote this kind of medical tyranny.

This includes the No License for Disinformation23 (NLFD) group, which promotes the false information disseminated by the dark-money group known as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

As most now know, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a medical doctor in his own right, has been the primary challenger of Fauci’s lies, and the NLFD has been instructing individuals to report him to the Kentucky Medical Board, with the aim of getting his medical license revoked.24

Just who are the NLFD?25 In November 2021, I wrote about the NLFD, pointing out that the bottom of their website declared, “Created & Developed by EverydayAmericanJoe.”26 At the time, I took a screenshot of it, in case they’d wise up and change it. Good thing, because that notice has since been deleted.

And, no wonder, because it leads right back to the Biden White House. EverydayAmericanJoe, created by a marketing strategist named Chris Gilroy, was a website dedicated to supporting Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. (That website has since been disabled.27)

According to his LinkedIn profile,28 Gilroy created EverydayAmericanJoe.com — “the largest Biden-Harris grassroots website online” — as a freelance senior marketing consultant and designer for the Biden campaign. Since 2007, he’s been the president of The Microtechs LLC, an online marketing, web development and digital advertising firm that produces custom websites and apps “that our clients can manage themselves.”

Aside from the EverydayAmericanJoe clue, there’s no indication of who is actually running the NLFD. It simply claims to be a “nonpartisan grassroots coalition of Americans” whose goal it is to get state medical boards to “protect the public” from medical professionals “who spread medical disinformation.” In all likelihood, the NLFD is run by a coalition of one — Gilroy himself — who is far from nonpartisan.

Not surprisingly, the NLFD has promoted and relied on the CCDH’s fabricated “Disinformation Dozen” report, which has even been denounced as biased and flawed in the extreme by Facebook.29

It’s quite clear that the CCDH exists to fabricate “evidence” that is then used to destroy the opposition in order to control the information, and the NLFD uses the CCDH’s fabrications as justification to suppress First Amendment rights.30 Indeed, Biden himself has publicly promoted and relied on this dark money CCDH report.31

The point of all this is that the censorship is being authorized and directed from the very highest level of our government, and there’s only one reason for that. Democracy flourishes under free speech and dies under censorship, and anyone who claims differently has an ulterior motive for trying to confuse these simple truths.

In my view, the war against “misinformation” and “disinformation” is nothing less than a covert war against the citizens of planet Earth. It’s an attempt to seize power by controlling what people can know, and a number of high-profile world leaders, past and present, have shown their true colors.

Among them, former president Obama, who in April 2022 gave lectures at the University of Chicago and Stanford, arguing for the regulation of information — what people can and cannot view on social media and elsewhere — “to protect democracy.”32

However, as noted by nonresident senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI), Mark Jamison, “Such controls have done the opposite throughout history and would this time too.”33

An Open War on the Public

We find ourselves in a situation where asking valid questions about public health measures are equated to acts of domestic terrorism. It’s unbelievable, yet here we are. Over the past two years, the rhetoric used against those who question the sanity of using unscientific pandemic countermeasures, such as face masks and lockdowns, or share data showing that COVID-19 gene therapies are really bad public health policy, has become increasingly violent.

Dr. Peter Hotez, a virologist who for years has been at the forefront of promoting vaccines of all kinds, for example, has publicly called for cyberwarfare assaults on American citizens who disagree with official COVID narratives, and this vile rhetoric was published in the prestigious science journal Nature, of all places.34

Doctors and nurses are now facing the untenable position of having to choose between doing right by their patients and toeing the line of totalitarianism. This simply cannot go on. It’s profoundly unhealthy and dangerous in a multitude of ways.

While frustrating and intimidating, we must all be relentless in our pursuit and sharing of the truth, and we must relentlessly demand our elected representatives stand up for freedom of speech and other Constitutional rights, including, and especially, the rights of medical doctors to express their medical opinions.

Sources and References

EDITORS NOTE: This MERCOLA column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Affirm Foundation: Scripture Helps Parents Combat Trans Craze [+video] thumbnail

Affirm Foundation: Scripture Helps Parents Combat Trans Craze [+video]

By Family Research Council

In a final rule released Thursday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) surprisingly omitted a proposed change to bundle so-called “gender transition” procedures into private insurance plans. Dr. Jennifer Bauwens believes comments submitted by Family Research Council, other policy organizations, and thousands of individual citizens are the reason. “By backing off this rule, they don’t have to respond to our comments,” explained Bauwens, Director of FRC’s Center for Family Studies, who drafted FRC’s comment. “The science behind this ideology is really flimsy.” Federal agencies are legally obligated to answer every comment submitted to a proposed rule.” FRC President Tony Perkins agreed they “avoided responding because… a scientific debate… [would] expose what’s behind the curtain.”

Behind the curtain is a “social constructivist point of view,” explained Bauwens, which denies absolute truth. The error is ancient. Post-modernists may gild it in academic jargon, or popularize it with expressions like, “you do you” or “my truth is…,” but it finds common cause with Pilate (“what is truth”), who “hears the truth about Jesus” through his wife’s dream, but “listens to the crowd” instead and orders his execution.

All people living in rebellion against God have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:25), extending even to meaning and purpose of sex and identity. “The truth of God’s Word is that God has made us either a man or a woman, male or female. He’s done so for his glory,” said Dr. Owen Strachan, Senior Fellow with FRC’s Center for Biblical Worldview. “What we call gender dysphoria really begins in sin. We don’t talk about it that way today. We don’t trace it back to a moral cause. But honestly, this has been a problem since the fall of Adam and Eve.”

A worldview as fictional as the transgender ideology cannot coexist peacefully with any truth because that would expose its foundation of lies. In government, transgender ideologues are “not going to stop,” warned Bauwens. In the culture, they’re already winning the battle for children — even children of Christian parents. “I’ve heard from many, many parents,” said Perkins, whose “children have been inundated with this.” Families and churches urgently need to help children misled by the culture’s lies.

“We don’t help them,” said Bauwens, “by playing along with their concocted reality.” We ought to affirm their feelings are real without affirming that their feelings are right. Perkins agreed, “if someone says I feel like Batman… or I’m Superman. I can leap tall buildings, and I can run faster [than a speeding bullet], that’s fine. You might feel that way, but don’t try it.” “The only way to truly help people who are experiencing what we call gender dysphoria is to go back to the scripture,” said Strachan.

That’s why “the first duty we have as a father or mother is to teach our kids the scripture,” Strachan said. “If we tie them to the mast of God’s Word, we give them a solid foundation.” “Scripture is really a vaccination of the soul,” agreed Perkins. “It may not be in vogue today, but… it’s going to stand for all eternity. And if you stand on it, you’ll never, ever be disappointed.”

If our children are believers, they “are going to feel the wind in their face at some point,” added Strachan. “It’s not a positive world for Christianity. But we have God, and one man with God is a man in the majority.” Their faith will be tested and tried, and they will need to hold fast to Christ “as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 6:19).

What about parents whose children aren’t believers? I can’t save my precious three children at home in Arkansas,” Strachan said. “But what I can do is lovingly try to teach [them] the truth of God.” “Tie them to the mast and save them from the siren song,” Perkins summarized. Teach them that “God loved us unconditionally — that’s why he sent Jesus — but he didn’t affirm us in our sin.” Christ called sinners to repentance (Luke 5:32).

What about children caught up in the lies of the transgender ideology? “You keep sailing through the storm…. You don’t affirm their sin, but you love them,” said Strachan. “The culture’s understanding of love is affirmation,” but “the Bible’s understanding of love for sinners like us is repentance…. We do continue to hug our kids and try to have conversations with them and take them to ice cream,” Strachan added, but “we cannot affirm them in their sin. That’s not loving. That’s fundamentally hating them and setting them up for eternal destruction.”

To escape eternal destruction, every man, woman, and child must repent of their sins and trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone for salvation. That good news is offered to all, even those led astray by gender anarchy. Those who find Christ find life. “God’s truth isn’t just true. It’s good for us,” Strachan concluded. The hard part is living like that’s true.

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Cori Bush: ‘Folks Who Can Become Pregnant’ Will Lose Abortion Right thumbnail

Cori Bush: ‘Folks Who Can Become Pregnant’ Will Lose Abortion Right

By Discover The Networks

In an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday, radical Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) stated that after the leak of the draft opinion on Roe v. Wade, she’s worried about “the 36 million women” and “other folks, people who can become pregnant,” losing access to abortion.

Bush said, “You know, just hearing the president speak and hearing just the announcement that came before that that this is real, that this is what’s going to happen, it felt like a hammer came down. I’m thinking about the 36 million women, nearly half of the women of reproductive age between 18 and 49. I’m thinking about them in the U.S. I’m thinking about other folks, people who can become pregnant, and how they lose this access, the access to abortion.”

Fact check: contrary to Democrat dogma, there are no “other folks” besides women who can get pregnant.

“And I think about what my mindset was at the time when I needed that help,” she continued, discussing her own decision to kill her baby. “And when we think — we have to look at it this way: When I went to get my abortion, I didn’t go to a gas station. I didn’t enter a fast food restaurant. I didn’t go to a bank. I went to a healthcare facility because abortion care is health care.”

Not for the baby, it’s not.

“And we are taking away — this will take away folks’ access to safe abortions,” she added. “And I’m thinking about those that have this need, and that need — that option will be gone.”

Fact check: overturning Roe v. Wade will not abolish abortions — it will simply give the choice back to each state.


Cori Bush

76 Known Connections

Condemning America As a Land of Oppression & “White Supremacy”

On July 4, 2021, Bush condemned America in a tweet that said: “This land is stolen land and Black people still aren’t free.” In a separate tweet, she stated: “We know what our own freedom looks like. End the slavery permitted under the 13th amendment. End the War on Drugs. End police violence. End health care, housing, and education apartheid, WE are the experts on our own liberation. And we won’t stop until it’s won.”

The next day, Bush tweeted: “It’s not a coincidence that the people who are saying Black people have full freedom in our country are the same ones trying to prevent teaching the truth about white supremacy in our classrooms.”

To learn more about Cori Bush, click here.

RELATED TWEET:

T.D.S. pic.twitter.com/B2KqdiuDwV

— Nick Adams (@NickAdamsinUSA) May 5, 2022

RELATED ARTICLES:

Obama: Overturning Roe Blow to All Who Believe in a Free Society

Kamala Freakout: ‘Opponents of Roe Want to Punish Women’

Warren: GOP ‘Extremists’ Want a Return to Back-Alley Abortions

Adams: Overturning Roe v. Wade Assault by Rightwing Extremists

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Democrats Brains Are Exploding! thumbnail

Democrats Brains Are Exploding!

By Save America Foundation

“Action is the real measure of intelligence.” – Napoleon Hill.


Roe vs. Wade may be on its last legs! Rightfully so. It was bad legislation and it should never have been a Federal Law but one that each State should decide. That power belongs at the state level.

Regretting being born to own the cons pic.twitter.com/MTZZHEWp1x

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 4, 2022

Human beings do not have a natural right to slaughter their babies at will. Especially to the degree that the left has taken it where abortion right up to birth is legal. How do doctors who take an oath to protect life justify this murder other than through their bank balances. How do they sleep? How could their family like what they do unless they are as empty morally and ethically as the abortionist? They do the work of Satan.

The leaked draft majority opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito appears in itself to not be a crime. However, if that opinion was taken illegally from a computer say by hacking or was physically stolen using nefarious means, those would be federal crimes and the FBI should investigate. However, I do not trust the FBI to do a fair and impartial investigation. What a shame that the FBI has sunk to such lows that the leadership ensures they bang the leftist drum.

I believe this document was deliberately leaked to bring pressure on SCOTUS to review and maybe switch their decision to one more favorable to the lunatic fringe on the left. They expect riots and mayhem and wide destruction and hope that will intimidate the SCOTUS to change their decision. In over 200 years this has never happened. The DemonRats have politicized this and other subjects and will stoop as low as they need to achieve their evil ends, aims and ambitions.

Also interesting is the timing of this leak. 2000 mules, the new movie on the stolen election of 2020 by the Democrats and produced by documentary film maker Dinesh D’Souza has just been released so the possibility of that becoming a topic of conversation has been diminished. The MSM will ensure that and even Faux News has fallen into that trap.

Democrats nation wide have come out swinging. From Sniffer Joe all the way down to that old feeble gay fool and chameleon Charlie Crist are baying like hunting dogs for action to be taken to stop Roe vs. Wade being removed.

After all, none of these idiots were ever aborted but are all so very pro. Nothing like a proficient vacuum sucking the very lives out of their mothers wombs, destroying the bodies and causing pain to the babies.

Things are going badly for these leftist idiots. What with Twitter being bought by Elon Musk, a former libtard favorite child, and the expectations that evil, patriotic Americans may actually be able to espouse an opinion different to the left is unthinkable. After all, social media had controlled that for years, banning conservative thoughts, words etc. After all, we are just domestic terrorists threats to a One World Nation!! Deplorable’s!!!Plus we believe in God, morals, ethics, working for a living, sanctity of life and worst of all – the America and the Constitution! Heck, we proved it by wanting to Make America Great!!Again and again!!!

So now all these real domestic enemies, the real domestic terrorists, the real threat to our national security, the type that have real thoughts to destroy our beloved nation, see that possibly the right to abortion could become a state issue – where it rightly belongs – and there is a real possibility that as a huge majority of states will be Red after November, the chances that abortions will be freely available to anyone who for example maybe uses it as contraception, is getting remote. The chances of a Republican run state government allowing late term abortions is zero. There will be no real space in those states for the murder machine of the left, Planned Parenthood.

So they are distraught. After all, Planned Parenthood was developed to remove all blacks and other minorities considered inferior by Democrats at the time. All that work and it may be destroyed.

Democrats are calling for a federal law to be written as quickly as possible, ensuring abortion is available for all and everywhere. They are talking about ending the filibuster ensuring they only need 51 votes instead of 60 so the 50 seats they hold plus the laughing hyena VP Dumbo Harris’s vote, would ensure its victory.

That will come back to bite them in a future GOP controlled House.

Packing the SCOTUS with libtard, political whores, is also back in conversation. Judicial puppets to political masters, each one breaking their oaths as easily as you would squash a bug. Each getting richer and each being promised a life of plenty. Sickening.

Both measures will not be popular with the greater population of voters. Real ones – not dead ones!!

I personally think that the clerk or whoever that leaked this document committed treason. I believe that their action was 100 times worse than any lies the DemonRats tell about January 6th. I think that person is a total lowlife commie who cares nothing for the rule of law, our system of governance or our history. Trust me, in any other country they would suffer a fate worse than you can imagine.

Even that girly boy Hussein Obama is getting in on the act. He/she/it is calling for Americans to join with the pro choice activists and act!

Act?

You mean like BLM and ANTIFA acted out and still are, rioting, murdering, looting and burning down cities, knocking down monuments, destroying wide swathes of American cities? Is that what that miserable, racist, anti American traitor Obama wants to have happen?

I believe so. Hussein Obama wants to fundamentally change the country into his ideal communist nation where government runs all citizens lives from cradle to grave and inbreeds like him (?) are in charge, incredibly rich and privileged.

As my Dad used to say, “The only true communist is one who can afford to be one.” Prophetic words and so wise and correct.

AMERICA. IT IS NOT OK.

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

Here’s What to Watch Following Dobbs Draft Leak thumbnail

Here’s What to Watch Following Dobbs Draft Leak

By Melanie Israel

Politico leaked a draft version of a Supreme Court decision for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization late on May 2. It would uphold a Mississippi law protecting unborn children when they can feel pain—15 weeks of pregnancy—and overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Dated Feb. 10, the draft decision is not final. Pro-life Americans are feeling more hopeful than ever that the Supreme Court may soon correct a grave error and leave Roe in the dustbin of history. But the leak is a nakedly political attempt to get the justices to back down. The court must issue its Dobbs decision without delay.

Roe v. Wade was a poorly reasoned, wrongly decided decision that legalized abortion on demand across the country in 1973. Sixty-two million lives and half a century later, it has poisoned our laws, our courts, and our country.

But a new day might soon be dawning. Here’s what you need to know about the shifting policy landscape on abortion and what to watch for in the days and weeks to come.

Quick Facts: Abortion in America

To set the stage for discussions about the leaked draft and the fallout, here are some key facts to keep in mind.

The United States is an outlier when it comes to abortion policy, thanks to Roe. We’re one of only a handful of countries that allows elective late-term abortion—in the company of human rights violators like China and North Korea.

Despite charges to the contrary, the law at issue in the Dobbs case, which protects unborn children after 15 weeks gestation, isn’t remotely extreme compared to the rest of the world. In fact, 47 out of 50 European countries restrict elective abortion before 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Take polls purporting to show strong support for Roe v. Wade with a grain of salt. Most Americans don’t realize that a) Roe permits abortion at any time and b) overturning Roe doesn’t prohibit abortion overnight, but returns the issue to the American people.

Most Americans don’t support Roe’s radical regime that permits abortion on demand. Rather, Americans support key protections for unborn children.

Overturning Roe has never been the final goal of the pro-life movement. When that day comes, hopefully soon, the next phase of work—especially in state legislatures—will begin in earnest. Freed from the shadow of Roe, policymakers can protect many more women and unborn children from an abortion industry that profits from their deaths.

The Radical Left’s Response

Leaking the draft opinion was a shameless act of intimidation, coercion, and destruction. It was clearly meant to try to get one or more justices to change their mind. But the left won’t stop there.

Already, activists—and senators—are calling for the Senate to eliminate the filibuster, which is the Senate’s rule for extended debate. In the Senate, a 60-vote threshold is required to end debate on a piece of legislation. Doing away with this proud tradition of extended debate—which in previous years has been praised by some of the very members who today want to end it—would mean the Senate could pass radical pro-abortion legislation by a simple majority vote.

Many of the left are happy to change rules and norms when it doesn’t suit them or frustrates efforts to impose a deeply unpopular policy. Thus, they’re renewing their calls to “pack” the courts. Under this scheme, Congress would create new judicial vacancies so that President Joe Biden could nominate activist judges.

The goal, of course, would be for activist judges, once approved by the Senate, to impose the left’s abortion policies. Such a scheme of course amounts to a “hostile takeover of the judiciary.” It would politicize the courts and undermine the fundamental principle of separation of powers.

The left is also renewing its attempts to “codify” Roe v. Wade. What it really means is legislation like the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act. This act is far more radical than Roe, which itself permits abortion for any reason throughout pregnancy.

The Women’s Health Protection Act would repeal existing state laws, expressly prohibit future laws that regulate abortion and the abortion industry and place at risk long-standing federal policies that reflect more than 40 years of bipartisan consensus.

It also would threaten policies that disentangle tax dollars from abortion, conscience-protection laws, and state-level pro-life laws such as informed consent requirements, reflection periods, parental involvement laws, and more.

Beyond Congress, abortion advocates are turning to the Biden White House. They’re urging the Food and Drug Administration to argue that its regulations permitting telemedicine abortion preempt state laws to the contrary. This would mean that abortion providers would be able to circumvent laws in over a dozen states that prohibit telemedicine abortion.

They’re also calling for the federal government to lease land to abortion clinics. This could mean that an abortion clinic could operate on federal land even within a pro-life state.

What Next?

Our laws should reflect the simple truth that every life, from the moment of conception, has inherent dignity and should be protected.

For too long, Roe has been a barrier to enacting laws that protect women and unborn children from the brutality of abortion. The Supreme Court justices in the majority must refuse to cower to the left’s appalling tactics of intimidation. They should issue their opinion without delay, allowing a new day to dawn in our country.

States can then revive old laws. These include unenforced pre-Roe statutes, conditional laws in the event Roe is overturned, and laws like “heartbeat” bills that had been blocked by lower courts. They can also enact new laws that protect the youngest and most vulnerable.

Congress, for its part, must use all its constitutional authority to protect innocent unborn children in states that refuse to protect them from abortion after their heartbeats can be detected. It must continue the work to protect babies who survive abortions, stop the interstate flow of abortion drugs, and stop taxpayer dollars from funding the abortion industry.

Congress must also ensure that nobody is forced to violate his or her moral or religious convictions by participating in abortion.

Finally, policymakers at all levels of government must commit to the central goal of the pro-life cause: to see the day when every person, from the moment of conception, is protected in law and welcomed in life.

*****

This article was published in The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

America is now aware of the Department of Homeland Security’s new ‘Disinformation Governance Board’. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called disinformation a “threat” that needs to be addressed with federal law enforcement power. (Is it coincidental that Elon Musk will shortly take Twitter private and re-establish a free speech platform in America?)

This new DHS office is the Biden Speech Police and represents an existential threat to our First Amendment and our Republic. Please click the adjacent red TAKE ACTION link for the resources to inform your Senators and Representatives about this unconstitutional and tyrannical assault on American Free Speech and our fierce rejection of it.

‘Judicial Insurrection’: DeSantis Reacts To Leaked SCOTUS Draft Opinion thumbnail

‘Judicial Insurrection’: DeSantis Reacts To Leaked SCOTUS Draft Opinion

By The Daily Caller

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion revealing that justices would likely overturn Roe v. Wade, which he viewed as an attempt to influence the Court’s final decision.

“I think It was really an attack on a lot of the justices. I think it was an intentional thing to try to whip up a lot of the public to try to make it very political, potentially try to bully them into changing one of their positions,” DeSantis said at a Tuesday press conference. “That is not something that’s appropriate for the judicial branch.”

“They need to figure out who did that and they need to hold them accountable because that’s a real significant breach of trust. You want to talk about an insurrection, that’s a judicial insurrection, to be taking that out and trying to kneecap a potential majority through extra constitutional means,” DeSantis said.

#BREAKING: Gov. Ron DeSantis responds to Supreme Court leak: “You want to talk about an insurrection — that’s a judicial insurrection.” pic.twitter.com/2ObpHkM7pz

— Forbes (@Forbes) May 3, 2022

Politico published a draft version of the court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Monday. The leaker was attempting to pressure justices and intervene in the constitutional process, according to DeSantis.

Liberals responded to the leak with calls for dramatic actions in congress including abolishing the Senate filibuster to ram through court-packing and the codification of the Roe precedent into federal law.

AUTHOR

LAUREL DUGGAN

Social and culture reporter.

RELATED VIDEO: Joe Concha: Supreme Court leaker did this to ‘mobilize liberals’

RELATED TWEET:

When they start violating the sanctity of the Supreme Court, it makes you wonder if they could even fix an election someday.

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) May 3, 2022

RELATED ARTICLES:

Lives Of Justices In Danger’: Legal Experts Urge Immediate Ruling On Roe

‘I See Fascism Down The Line’: ‘The View’ Hosts Lament Over Reported Roe v. Wade Decision

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

VIDEO: Why the Boosted Are Now at Highest Risk of COVID thumbnail

VIDEO: Why the Boosted Are Now at Highest Risk of COVID

By MERCOLA Take Control of Your Health

  • According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, more than 1 million excess deaths — that is, deaths in excess of the historical average — have been recorded since the COVID-19 pandemic began two years ago, and this cannot be explained by COVID-19. Deaths from heart disease, high blood pressure, dementia and many other illnesses rose during that time
  • Across the world, death rates have also risen in tandem with COVID shot administration, with the most-jabbed areas surpassing the least-jabbed in terms of excess mortality and COVID-related deaths
  • According to Walgreens data, during the week of April 19 through 25, 2022, 13% of unvaccinated persons tested positive for COVID. Of those who received two doses five months or more ago, 23.1% tested positive, and of those who received a third dose five months or more ago, the positive rate was 26.3%. So, after the first booster shot (the third dose), people are at greatest risk of testing positive for COVID
  • U.K. government data show the all-cause mortality rate is between 100% and 300% greater among people who got their first COVID shot 21 days or more ago. The risk for all-cause death is also significantly elevated among those who got their second dose at least six months ago, and mildly elevated among those who got their third dose less than 21 days ago. As of January 2022, all who got one or more doses at least 21 days ago were dying at significantly elevated rates
  • Other data also show that COVID mortality rates are far higher in areas with high vaccination rates, and risk-benefit analyses reveal the jabs do more harm than good in most age groups

According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data,1 more than 1 million excess deaths — that is, deaths in excess of the historical average — have been recorded since the COVID-19 pandemic began two years ago, and this cannot be explained by COVID-19.

Deaths from heart disease, high blood pressure, dementia and many other illnesses rose during that time.2 “We’ve never seen anything like it,” Robert Anderson, CDC’s head of mortality statistics, told The Washington Post in mid-February 2022.3

According to University of Warwick researchers, “the scale of excess non-COVID deaths is large enough for it to be seen as its own pandemic.”4 A number of explanations have been offered, including the fact that lockdowns and other COVID restrictions discouraged or prevented people from seeking care. But another, less discussed factor may also be at play.

Across the world, death rates have risen in tandem with COVID shot administration, with the most-jabbed areas surpassing the least-jabbed in terms of excess mortality and COVID-related deaths. This flies in the face of official claims that the shots prevent severe COVID infection and lower your risk of death, be it from COVID or all causes.5

Boosted? You’re Now at Highest Risk of COVID

Ever since the announcement that the COVID “vaccines” would be using novel mRNA gene transfer technology, I and many others have warned that this appears to be a very bad idea.

Numerous potential mechanisms for harm have been identified and detailed in previous articles, and we’re now seeing some of our worst fears come to bear. “Fully vaccinated” individuals are both more likely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 and more likely to die, whether from COVID or some other cause.

As reported by investigative journalist Jeffrey Jaxen in the April 22, 2022, Highwire video above, data from Walgreens’ COVID-19 tracker6 reveal that COVID-jabbed individuals are testing positive for COVID at higher rates than the unjabbed. What’s more, people who got their last shot five months or more ago have the highest risk.

As you can see in the screenshot below, during the week of April 19 through 25, 2022, 13% of unvaccinated tested positive for COVID (with Omicron being the predominant variant). (The data reviewed by Jaxen are from the week of April 10 through 16.)

Of those who received two doses five months or more ago, 23.1% tested positive, and of those who received a third dose five months or more ago, the positive rate was 26.3%. So, after the first booster shot (the third dose), people are at greatest risk of testing positive for COVID.

CLICK HERE TO VIE THE INFOGRAPHIC: POSITIVITY RATE BY VACCINATION STATUS 04/19/2022 – 04/25/2022

A deeper dive into the data7 reveals that two doses appear to have been protective for a short while, but after five months, it becomes net harmful. The group faring worst of all is the 12 to 17 cohort, where no one with one dose tested positive, but after the second dose, cases suddenly appear, and get higher still after five months. After the third dose, positive cases drop a bit, but then shoot up higher than ever after five months.8

Deaths by Vaccination Status in the UK

Data sets from the U.K. government reveal an equally disturbing trend. The raw data from the Office for National Statistics9 is difficult to interpret, so Jaxen had data analysts create a bar graph to better illustrate what the data actually tell us. A screenshot from Jaxen’s report is below.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE INFOGRAPHIC: ENGLAND – ALL CAUSE MORTALITY RISK (%) BY VACCINATION STATUS COMPARED TO UNVACCINATED

Bars going upward are a good thing, as it indicates the risk for all-cause mortality based on vaccination status is either normal or reduced. Bars that dip below zero percent are indicative of increased all-cause mortality, based on vaccination status.

As you can see, the all-cause mortality rate is between 100% and 300% greater among people who got their first dose 21 days or more ago. The risk for all-cause death is also significantly elevated among those who got their second dose at least six months ago, and mildly elevated among those who got their third dose less than 21 days ago. As of January 2022, all who got one or more doses at least 21 days ago were dying at significantly elevated rates.

More Jabs, More COVID Deaths

United States 🇺🇸

Source: Our World In Data pic.twitter.com/E2KCE9Si3o

— Lindsay (@TexasLindsay) April 25, 2022

 Everywhere we look, we find trends showing the COVID shots are resulting in higher death rates. Above is an animated illustration10 from Our World In Data, first showing the vaccination rates of South America, North America, Europe and Africa, from mid-December 2020 through the third week of April 2022, followed by the cumulative confirmed COVID deaths per million in those countries during that same timeframe.

Africa has had a consistently low vaccination rate throughout, while North America, Europe and South America all have had rapidly rising vaccination rates. Africa has also had a consistently low COVID mortality rate, although a slight rise began around September 2021. Still, it’s nowhere near the COVID death rates of North America, South America and Europe, all of which saw dramatic increases.

Here’s another one,11 also sourced from Our World In Data, first showing the excess death rate in the U.S. (the cumulative number of deaths from all causes compared to projections based on previous years), between January 26, 2020, and January 30, 2022, followed by an illustration of the tandem rise of vaccine doses administered and the excess mortality rate. It clearly shows that as vaccination rates rose, so did the excess mortality rate.

Risk-Benefit Analysis Condemns the COVID Jabs

At this point, we also have the benefit of more than one risk-benefit analysis, and all show that, with very few exceptions, the COVID jabs do more harm than good. For example, a risk-benefit analysis12 by Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., and independent researcher Kathy Dopp, published in mid-February 2022, concluded that the COVID jab is deadlier than COVID-19 itself for anyone under the age of 80.

They looked at publicly available official data from the U.S. and U.K. for all age groups, and compared all-cause mortality to the risk of dying from COVID-19. “All age groups under 50 years old are at greater risk of fatality after receiving a COVID-19 inoculation than an unvaccinated person is at risk of a COVID-19 death,” Seneff and Dopp concluded. And for younger adults and children, there’s no benefit, only risk.

“This analysis is conservative,” the authors note, “because it ignores the fact that inoculation-induced adverse events such as thrombosis, myocarditis, Bell’s palsy, and other vaccine-induced injuries can lead to shortened life span.

When one takes into consideration the fact that there is approximately a 90% decrease in risk of COVID-19 death if early treatment is provided to all symptomatic high-risk persons, one can only conclude that mandates of COVID-19 inoculations are ill-advised.

Considering the emergence of antibody-resistant variants like Delta and Omicron, for most age groups COVID-19 vaccine inoculations result in higher death rates than COVID-19 does for the unvaccinated.”

The analysis is also conservative in the sense that it only considers COVID jab fatalities that occur within one month of injection. As demonstrated by the U.K. data above, the risk of all-cause death is nearly 300% greater for those who got a second dose at least six months ago.

Teens Are at Dramatic Risk of Death From the Jabs

Similarly, an analysis13 of data in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) by researchers Spiro Pantazatos and Herve Seligmann suggests that in those under age 18, the shots only increase the risk of death from COVID, and there’s no point at which the shot can prevent a single COVID death, no matter how many are vaccinated.

If you’re under 18, you’re a whopping 51 times more likely to die from the jab than you are to die from COVID if not vaccinated. In the 18 to 29 age range, the shot will kill 16 for every person it saves from dying from COVID, and in the 30 to 39 age range, the expected number of vaccine fatalities to prevent a single COVID death is 15.

Only when you get into the 60 and older categories do the risks between the jab and COVID infection even out. In the 60 to 69 age group, the shot will kill one person for every person it saves from dying of COVID, so it’s a tossup as to whether it might be worth it for any given person.

How Many Are We Willing to Sacrifice?

We also have a risk-benefit analysis by researchers in Germany and The Netherlands. The analysis was initially published June 24, 2021, in the journal Vaccines.14 The paper caused an uproar among the editorial board, with some of them resigning in protest.15 In the end, the journal simply retracted it — a strategy that appears to have become norm.

After a thorough re-review, the paper was republished in the August 2021 issue of Science, Public Health Policy and the Law.16 The analysis found that, “very likely for three deaths prevented by vaccination we will have to accept that about two people die as a consequence of these vaccinations,” the authors wrote in a Letter to the Editor17 of Clinical and Translational Discovery. Defending their work, they went on to note that:18

“The database we based our analysis on was a large naturalistic study of the BioNTech vaccine in Israel. This was the only study at the time that allowed for a direct estimation of an absolute risk reduction (ARR) in mortality.

Admittedly, the ARR estimate was only available for a short observation period of 4 weeks after the first vaccine dose, a point raised by critics. One might have wanted a longer observation period to bring out the benefit of vaccinations more clearly, and our estimate of a number needed to vaccinate (NNV) of 16 000 to prevent one death might have been overly conservative.

The recently published 6-month interim report of the BioNTech-regulatory clinical trial now covers a period long enough to let us look at this risk benefit ratio once again. In Table S4 of this publication, 14 deaths are reported in the placebo group (n = 21 921) and 15 in the vaccination group (n = 21 926).

Among them, two deaths in the placebo-group were attributed to COVID-19, and one in the vaccination group was attributed to COVID-19 pneumonia. This leads to an ARR = 4.56 × 10–5, and conversely to an NNV = 1/ARR = 21 916 to prevent one death by COVID-19. This shows that our original estimate was not so far off the mark.

The most recent safety report of the German Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI) that covers all reported side effects since the vaccination campaign began (27 December 2020 until 30 November 202119 … reports 0.02 deaths per 1000 BioNTech vaccinations or 2 per 100 000 vaccinations.

We had gleaned four mortality cases per 100 000 vaccinations (all vaccines) from the Dutch pharmacovigilance database LAREB. Using the data of Thomas et al., a liberal NNV = 20 000, we can calculate that by 100 000 vaccinations we save five lives.

Using the PEI pharmacovigilance report for the same product, we see that these 100 000 vaccinations are associated with two deaths, while using the LAREB database back in June 2021, they were associated with four deaths across all vaccines and are associated with two deaths in the most recent reports concerning the BioNTech vaccine … In other words, as we vaccinate 100 000 persons, we might save five lives but risk two to four deaths.”

The risk-benefit ratio may be even worse than that, though, as these calculations do not take into account the fact that passive pharmacovigilance data “are notorious for underestimating casualties and side effects,” the authors note, or the fact that severe side effects such as myocarditis are affecting young males at a staggering rate, which can reduce lifespan in the longer term.

We Do Not Have a Functioning Pharmacovigilance System

In an August 2021 editorial, editor-in-chief of Science, Public Health Policy and the Law, James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., wrote:20

“There are two messages from those who hold appointed offices or other influential positions in Public Health on long-term vaccine safety.

The first message is that long-term randomized double-blinded placebo-controlled clinical trials are not necessary for the long-term study of vaccine safety because we have ‘pharmacovigilance’; i.e. long- term post-market safety surveillance that is supported by widely accessible, passive vaccine adverse events tracking systems.

The second message is that any use of those very same vaccine adverse events tracking systems that leads to the inference or conclusion that vaccines might cause serious adverse events or death is unsupported by such systems …

When those seeking support for public health initiatives, such as a new vaccination program, offer evidence that long-term vaccine safety studies are well in hand due to the possibility of detecting adverse events that happened following vaccination, they are either:

(a) unaware that the vaccine adverse events tracking systems upon which they are basing their confidence about society’s ability to detect and track vaccine adverse events are alleged to be unable to be used to infer causal links between health outcomes and vaccination exposure, or:

(b) participating in a disinformation campaign to end scrutiny over the absence of properly controlled long-term randomized clinical trials to assess long- term vaccine safety. Neither of these is sufficient empirical basis for the knowledge claim of long- term safety …

There must be room for disagreement in science; otherwise, science does not exist. It is sad to bear witness to the fact that science has degenerated into a war against unwanted and inconvenient results, conclusions and interpretations via the process of post-publication retraction for issues other than fraud, grave error in execution, and plagiarism.

The weaponization of the process of retraction of scientific studies is well underway, and it induces a bias that could be called “retraction bias”, or, in the case in which a few persons haunt journals in search of studies that cast doubt on their commercial products, a ‘ghouling bias,’ which leads to biased systematic reviews and warped meta-analyses.”

In his editorial, Lyons-Weiler specifically criticized the Vaccine journal for its retraction of the risk-benefit analysis cited above, and mocked the editorial board members who quit in protest, noting that “Rage-quitting is not science.”

“The resigning editorial board members’ knowledge claim is that no deaths have occurred due to the vaccination program. As helpful as that claim might be to a prescribed narrative, it is not based on empirical evidence, and it is, therefore, unwarranted,” Lyons-Weiler wrote.21

“From a Popperian view of science, one can see the fatal flaw in the editorial board members’ knowledge claim: if, as they insist, passive vaccine adverse events tracking systems cannot test the hypothesis of causality, then how can editorial board members, resigning or otherwise, know that the events were NOT caused by the vaccine? …

It is logical to conclude that since passive vaccine adverse event tracking systems do not lend themselves well to testing hypotheses of causality, they do not provide the opportunity to design and conduct sufficiently critical tests of causality, and therefore a replacement system is needed … one that is suitable to detect risk.”

While we may indeed need better pharmacovigilance, there’s really no doubt at this point that the COVID jabs are ill-advised for most people. I believe that in the years to come, people will look back at this time and vow to never repeat it. In the meantime, all we can do is look at and assess the data we do have, and make decisions accordingly.

Sources and References

EDITORS NOTE: This MERCOLA column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

STUDY: Rise In Women’s Uterus Disorder Following Covid Vaccination thumbnail

STUDY: Rise In Women’s Uterus Disorder Following Covid Vaccination

By The Geller Report

What they are not telling us about the vaccine, in effect hiding from us, is…destroying lives and in some cases killing people. 

(STUDY) Rise in women’s uterus disorder following Covid vaccination

By Sharyl Attkisson

A new scientific research paper published in The Gazette of Medical Sciences on April 21, 2022 showed an alarming, unprecedented spike in reported cases of a previously extremely rare gynecological condition called membranous dysmenorrhea, or “decidual cast shedding” (DCS).

This trend began in 2021, as Covid vaccines were being widely distributed to the U.S. population, according to the paper.

The uterus disorder DCS occurs when the entire lining of the uterus sheds and exits the body in one piece, say scientists. They say the process can be extremely painful.

Prior to Covid, there were fewer than 40 cases of the uterus disorder reported in the medical literature over the previous 109 years, according to researchers.

The authors of the paper conducted the MyCycleStorySM study in which 292 women reported having a DCS uterus disorder event over 7.5 months in 2021.

Three of the study’s co-authors, Dr. Brian Hooker, Dr. Sue Peters and Ms. Heather Ray, are part of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) science and research team.

The study was designed after an extraordinary number of women began sharing their experiences of menstrual irregularities on various social media platforms following the wide-spread distribution of the COVID vaccinations, resulting in a survey with over 150,000 participants that suggested a remarkable increase in menstrual irregularities starting in 2021.

MyCycleStorySM was created and conducted by thirteen scientists and physicians to follow up on previous reports and to gather more extensive data on the unusual increase in menstrual issues after the Covid vaccines were introduced into the population.

The MyCycleStorySM study collected detailed data from 6,049 survey participants between May 16 – December 31, 2021, all of whom described having abnormal menstrual symptoms.

In addition to the survey data, the study authors looked at Google metadata during 2021 and found that there was a 2,000% increase in the search terms “decidual cast” and “decidual cast covid vaccine” during the first two quarters of 2021.

Read the rest……

RELATED ARTICLE: Why the Boosted Are Now at Highest Risk of COVID

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Guilty Secrets and The Fall of the National Health Service in the UK thumbnail

Guilty Secrets and The Fall of the National Health Service in the UK

By Shirley Edwards

AUTHORS NOTE: These are my views as a woman living in England, on how the culture and spirit of my country has changed over 50 years.  Why the country does not feel protected or strong any more, how it has lost, and is losing it values and decency, and how we are daily losing our free speech.


“But don’t be afraid of those who threaten you. For the time is coming when everything that is covered will be revealed, and all that is secret will be made known to all.  What I tell you now in the darkness, shout abroad when daybreak comes. What I whisper in your ear, shout from the housetops for all

to hear!”   Matthew 10:26-28

I have a very guilty secret. I have been watching the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard court case on a daily basis.  It is intriguing.   I have also followed it up with an analysis by body language experts to see if I agree with their observations.  One of whom schools the G7 participants!  I have been late for appointments and late going to bed.  One could say it has been a massive ‘distraction’.  It has certainly been exhausting.

It is a fascinating insight into how lies and abuse can be so manipulated that an innocent person can be become the villain, and vice-versa.  I am now wondering how many people who having watched this have made the correlation of this drama being conducted, into the experiences that we go through in life, and have especially related it to the drama we are all going through now?

Are you a perpetrator, a victim, or a survivor in life from abuse? Or just an innocent bystander?   What is the truth? They are hard questions we should all ask ourselves.

After listening to the exhaustive testimony of Johnny Depp without any interruption or cross examining, I thought how fortunate he was to have had the privilege of being able to tell his story.  Some people just don’t get the opportunity.   It was painful to listen to and yet insightful.   Yes, so called ‘fact checker’s’ were on hand, and some tried to trip him up and silence him, but on the whole free speech was allowed.

I identified with some of his stories and his mannerisms.  His lazy left eye, his stumbling over words, wrong accusations, the injustice and the bullying and the shame.   I also remembered how at some periods in life those childhood resentments had manifested in me and I had inflicted them on others.   However, as in all scenarios I think the one thing which I really identified with is that there somewhere there is always ‘Truth’ and above all else this is something we strive and long for regardless of the pain of our own mistakes. Maybe this is why I am watching this so intently.

Truth is light on a dark day.  It is clean and decent.  It requires no guessing, no prompts, no acting.   It possesses common sense.  It sets you free.

Mutiny on the Bounty

Truthfully, loving others, or loving your neighbor, as the Bible would instruct, has been particularly difficult these last few years, as I am sure it has been for many readers.

Although I am not a nurse, working in the health service, for me, has been particularly challenging to say the least.   It has been disturbing to know the harm that may have been caused to both adults and children alike, both physically and psychologically.

Exposing the sheer hypocrisy on what has been promoted as a world-wide ‘health initiative’ to protect our health, minus any risk assessment, long term data, or any type of acknowledgement to the damage that may be caused by an mRNA injectable, together with the long term use of plastic face masks, has seen some staff persecuted in my work environment, discriminated against, bullied and also accused of being selfish in their failure to comply or even quietly question some of the orders being forced upon them.

I would like to say that in witnessing this I have been like the pirate Jack Sparrow, and taken my sword, my eye-liner and boots, and stamped out the evilness of the one-eyed masters of lies and treachery, who with a ‘common-purpose’ mission, together with some neuro-linguistic programming, have seen themselves as the new and more insightful leaders of our society bullying my colleagues into submission.

The most I have done is refuse to walk the plank, worn a bit of concealer, and now with a bitter-sweet smile stand divided alongside thousands of unseen others in our health service who don’t want to cause a mutiny, but no longer feel loyal to the system who recently threatened to throw them overboard for questioning a vaccination, based on the orders of the actor Captain Johnson, the Prime Minister, who certainly likes to party.

I am very aware that for light relief, many succumbed to the pressure of not being able to stand firm or alone in what can only be considered coercive and ‘abusive’, and that there are some who feel proud at having become fully compliant into a belief they are now more competent and somehow more caring.   It is a crazy mix.     There are also many others who now also feel isolated themselves and regret having fallen to the oppressor.

We must always remember that.

How do you love or trust someone who has used you but then tells you to do as you are told otherwise there will be consequences?

Because of this, many have distanced themselves. The have jumped ship from the National Health Service.   It is my personal belief it was that they have been unable to take the injustice and no longer feel motivated by the system they have been loyally serving.  For six months prior to April 2022, health care workers had been told to take the vaccination, or else lose their job, although the terminology used was ‘deployed’ to a non-patient facing role.   However, this requirement was also extended to non-patient facing staff who had been ‘scoped’ as potentially coming into contact with a patient.  GP’s and doctors have also moved on, left or retired.

Warning ‘many’ care workers will not return to jobs despite vaccine rule change | Nursing Times

In responding to the latest GP workforce Data, January 2022.   Dr Farah Jameel, GPC England chair at the BMA, is quoted as saying,

“At a time of significant upheaval, long waiting lists and increasing sickness in our communities, it is a terrible indictment of the current state of the NHS that highly qualified GPs are leaving the profession in such large numbers. The latest data show that over the last year England has lost the equivalent of 279 fully qualified full-time GPs, with 91 having left in the last month alone. This loss of 91 GPs works out as the equivalent of more than 200,000 patients having lost their family doctor between December and January”

Declining number of GPs shows no signs of abating without a workable plan to recruit and retain NHS staff, says BMA – BMA media centre – BMA,

Unvaccinated nursing staff who have remained and have always dedicated their lives into caring for others who were told they would now not lose their jobs, have also discovered that the re-validation requirements that they require to practice may in the future require evidence of a vaccination.  From personal experience I am aware that applying for a job in the NHS, whatever it might be, also requires revealing your vaccination status.

News | Royal College of Nursing (rcn.org.uk)

Jobs Not Jabs (UK) – Proposed group action for healthcare

The National Health Service, known as the NHS which the British were once so proud of is apparently sinking.

Founded in July 1948, in the UK, it has been one of the biggest employers in the world.    Employing over 1.3 million staff it has been promoted as being a government funded medical and health care service which anyone can freely use.   However, contrary, to the narrative of it being a free health service, the NHS is actually publicly funded for by the taxpayer, and in some areas, such as in the case of prescriptions or private consultations; patients do have to pay for that service.   In some areas such as dentistry or ophthalmology, payments are also made, albeit at a reduced rate in comparison to private care in those fields.

In 2019, prior to the pandemic it was announced by Boris Johnson that there was a bounty of gold amounting to £34 billion being put into the NHS to save it.   I’m sure it won him some favor, but in light of how the money has been mis-used, the continual cry of the NHS needing even more money to still save it is becoming tiring in the face of what we have now witnessed and experienced.

The £20.5 billion NHS England spending increase is the largest five year increase since the mid-2000s – Full Fact

The mental health of people is a real world-wide epidemic which is now taking place.    The harm we have inflicted upon children has always outweighed the risks of a virus.

It is also reported that whistleblowing by care home staff was up by 66% during Covid 19.   Vulnerable adults should have always had a family member or guardian to physically visit and support them.  Elderly patients who were discharged from hospital were also placed in care homes across the UK and were not tested for Covid 19.

Former minister Baroness Altmann said the “shocking rise” in whistleblowing complaints was “clear evidence” of a “broken social care system”.

Jayne Connery, founder and director of Care Campaign for the Vulnerable, said she was “saddened” but not surprised by the rise in complaints. Jayne said the corresponding fall in safeguarding reporting was because local authorities and the CQC were not visiting care homes

Whistleblowing by care home staff up 66% during COVID-19 (carehomeprofessional.com)

COVID-19: Government acted unlawfully when it sent patients into care homes without coronavirus testing | UK News | Sky News

Dr Cathy Gardener, whose father died from Covid in a care home after untested patients were sent there from hospital, also took legal action against Health Secretary Sajid Javid, NHS England and Public Health England.

Despite the request by the government to throw the case out, in a ruling made in April this year, it was concluded that the government indeed acted unlawfully.

Knowingly, or unknowingly, this is the abuse which has been inflicted upon us.  Various spokespersons including thousands of professional and qualified health professionals and scientists world-wide have tried to warn others.    They have even exposed the abusers to the detriment of their own livelihood.   Missiles were thrown at them.   The isolation and the division that has now been created in the workplace is heartbreaking.   I don’t believe it can be repaired.

Working in the health service I have witnessed some very dedicated staff.   Some of them I have known for over 17 years.  They are like family to me.   I am aware that some have been vaccinated and some have not.   I am much more aware of those who have been vaccinated as they still have much more freedom to talk about it.  Sometimes I notice they seem indifferent to the fact that others are not afforded the same freedom or respect.  There is sometimes a silence now as I watch from a distance not knowing what will happen long term to those who are still part of this psychological trial and the experiment which has taken place upon us, but   I am encouraged that more people are coming forward to talk about the adverse reactions that have been experienced from the vaccination and that people are becoming more aware of the yellow card system where doctors should record side-affects.

Exclusive: Sir Christopher Chope MP on vaccine adverse reactions and the need for compensation | UKColumn

However, who can count the number of psychological problems, the pain, the division and the hurt that has been created in the home and the workplace.

This is Domestic Abuse.

The jury will soon be out on the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard case.  The outcome will soon be revealed. I can hardly wait.

Are you a perpetrator, a victim, or a survivor in life from abuse?   What is the truth? These are hard questions we should all ask ourselves.

©Shirley Edwards. All rights reserved.

Links

Warning ‘many’ care workers will not return to jobs despite vaccine rule change | Nursing Times

Declining number of GPs shows no signs of abating without a workable plan to recruit and retain NHS staff, says BMA – BMA media centre – BMANews | Royal College of Nursing (rcn.org.uk)

Jobs Not Jabs (UK) – Proposed group action for healthcare

The £20.5 billion NHS England spending increase is the largest five year increase since the mid-2000s – Full Fact

Exclusive: Sir Christopher Chope MP on vaccine adverse reactions and the need for compensation | UKColumn

ANIMAL CRUELTY: New Report Reveals the Federal Government Is Spending Millions To Get Animals High thumbnail

ANIMAL CRUELTY: New Report Reveals the Federal Government Is Spending Millions To Get Animals High

By Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Research indicates that the federal government is actually responsible for the vast majority of animal cruelty in the country.


Animal rights groups like PETA raise millions of dollars per year and spend their time dumping fake blood on celebrities’ fur coats. Even more radical groups like the Animal Liberation Front set restaurants that sell meat on fire and torch research labs.

But a new report from the White Coat Waste Project (WCW), a free-market based animal rights group, indicates these organizations should probably be directing their fury at a much bigger culprit: the government.

That’s right. Research indicates that the federal government is actually responsible for the vast majority of animal cruelty in the country. According to WCW, the government spends millions of taxpayer dollars every year on animal laboratories that carry out unethical testing on animals through grants, contracts, and experiments within its own labs.

In a new report, Up In Smoke, WCW exposes even more of these corrupt practices. In particular, they detail millions of taxpayer dollars the government recently spent on cannabis and e-cigarette animal experiments—and rampant violations of federal spending transparency law that were committed in the process.

In one experiment, “pregnant mice were confined to a chamber, where they were forced to breathe e-cigarette vapor for hours.” According to the report, “After giving birth, their pups underwent behavioral tests, and were then killed and their brains analyzed. However, experimenters openly acknowledged significant differences between rodent brain development and human brain development.”

Another experiment forced mice to breath a variety of flavored e-cigarette vapors to “study the effects of vaping on the heart.” But notably, the authors said that “caution should be exercised when extrapolating the findings in the mouse heart to the human heart due to the presence of many obvious differences including those related to important species differences.”

So, in short, our government has been hotboxing mice for no apparent reason—they aren’t even producing research that could improve human health.

There are other problems detailed in the report as well. For instance, the Stevens Amendment is an old federal policy that requires public disclosure of taxpayer monies spent, yet WCW reports that not one experiment detailed in their report was in compliance with that law.

This is the second time in under a year that abusive animal testing by our government has come to light. Just a few months ago it was revealed that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided a grant to a lab in Tunisia to torture and kill beagle puppies for scientific experiments.

These revelations are chilling. But they really won’t surprise anyone who is even vaguely familar with the practices of our government.

While our Founders intended the US to be a bastion of human rights and ethics, decades of rampant spending with little accountability have spawned a sprawling federal system that is anything but this. We see this leviathon bombing innocent civilians in other countries, persecuting journalists and whistleblowers who tell the truth about the government’s actions, and condemning thousands of innocent Americans to life behind bars for nonviolent offenses. Is it any wonder they also do not value the lives of animals? Hardly.

There’s a cruel irony here, too. While the government locks American citizens in jail for cannabis use with its right hand, it’s turning around and drugging animals with the same product with its left.

As economist Ludwig von Mises once said, “The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.”

This report is yet further proof of what many in the libertarian camp have long known: government is the real source of most of the evil in this world. But unlike when individuals do something wrong, there is little to no accountability for government actors when they carry out actions that would land the rest of us in jail.

AUTHOR

Hannah Cox

Hannah Cox is the Content Manager and Brand Ambassador for the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Stock Markets in China & Honk Kong Dive, Yuan Slides, Crude Oil Drops on Confidence Crisis in China thumbnail

Stock Markets in China & Honk Kong Dive, Yuan Slides, Crude Oil Drops on Confidence Crisis in China

By Wolf Richter

The Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng fall to where they’d first been in 2007 during the run-up of the bubble.

The Shanghai Composite Index plunged 5.1% to 2,928 on Monday, the biggest one-day drop since February 2020, during the Wuhan crisis. The index is now down 20% year-to-date and down 14% from a year ago. And for folks promoting buy-and-hold: The index has now returned to a level it had first reached in February 2007 during the run-up of the ridiculous stock market bubble just before the Beijing Olympics.

Also gone is the hype-and-hoopla bump that Chinese stocks got in mid-March when Vice Premier Liu He, in order to stem the slide then in progress, came out with promises of market-friendly measures.

The CSI 300 index, which tracks the biggest blue-chip stocks trading in Shanghai and Shenzhen, dropped 4.9% on Monday, to 3,933, is down 23% year-to-date, and is down 25% from a year ago.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index, where many Chinese companies are listed, plunged 3.7% on Monday and is down 31% year-over-year. At 19,869, the index has regressed to a level first seen in January 2007.

The offshore yuan, after dropping 2% last week against the dollar, fell as much as 1.3% on Monday to 6.60 per dollar, the lowest since November 2020.

When it hit that level, the People’s Bank of China came out to support the currency and said it would cut the foreign-exchange reserve requirement ratio for banks next month to 8%, from 9%, thereby “increasing banks’ capabilities of forex fund use,” the PBOC said, according to Bloomberg. This announcement caused the currency to recover some from the losses earlier today, and it ended down 0.7%.

Last year, the PBOC raised the foreign-exchange reserve requirement, from 5% to 9%, to tamp down the appreciation of the yuan against the dollar.

Crude oil prices fell globally, with WTI now down 5.1%, at $96.87 a barrel, on fears of demand destruction resulting from further supply chain chaos due to prolonged lockdowns in Shanghai and potentially in Beijing, which would trigger broader and even bigger inflation that will hit demand.

Suddenly forgotten are the factors that had powered the spike in oil prices to begin with, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which has made Russian oil toxic on parts of the global markets. Markets are kind of funny about these memes that suddenly do U-Turns.

What rattled markets on Monday was the fear of a draconian lockdown in Beijing, similar to the draconian lockdown in Shanghai that is now entering its fifth week and entailed measures such as fences around some residential buildings so people couldn’t get out, mass testing, and forced quarantine in massive quarantine centers. 

*****

Continue reading this article at Wolf Street.

TAKE ACTION

America is on to the LGBTQ…., transgender, gender fluidity, sexualizing agenda the Walt Disney Company is openly grooming our nation’s children with. It is timely and imperative that we inform Disney of our rejection of their indoctrinating, far leftist and godless attempt to sexually groom our youngest generation…

Stock Markets in China & Hong Kong Dive, Yuan Slides, Crude Oil Drops on Confidence Crisis in China thumbnail

Stock Markets in China & Hong Kong Dive, Yuan Slides, Crude Oil Drops on Confidence Crisis in China

By Wolf Richter

The Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng fall to where they’d first been in 2007 during the run-up of the bubble.

The Shanghai Composite Index plunged 5.1% to 2,928 on Monday, the biggest one-day drop since February 2020, during the Wuhan crisis. The index is now down 20% year-to-date and down 14% from a year ago. And for folks promoting buy-and-hold: The index has now returned to a level it had first reached in February 2007 during the run-up of the ridiculous stock market bubble just before the Beijing Olympics.

Also gone is the hype-and-hoopla bump that Chinese stocks got in mid-March when Vice Premier Liu He, in order to stem the slide then in progress, came out with promises of market-friendly measures.

The CSI 300 index, which tracks the biggest blue-chip stocks trading in Shanghai and Shenzhen, dropped 4.9% on Monday, to 3,933, is down 23% year-to-date, and is down 25% from a year ago.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index, where many Chinese companies are listed, plunged 3.7% on Monday and is down 31% year-over-year. At 19,869, the index has regressed to a level first seen in January 2007.

The offshore yuan, after dropping 2% last week against the dollar, fell as much as 1.3% on Monday to 6.60 per dollar, the lowest since November 2020.

When it hit that level, the People’s Bank of China came out to support the currency and said it would cut the foreign-exchange reserve requirement ratio for banks next month to 8%, from 9%, thereby “increasing banks’ capabilities of forex fund use,” the PBOC said, according to Bloomberg. This announcement caused the currency to recover some from the losses earlier today, and it ended down 0.7%.

Last year, the PBOC raised the foreign-exchange reserve requirement, from 5% to 9%, to tamp down the appreciation of the yuan against the dollar.

Crude oil prices fell globally, with WTI now down 5.1%, at $96.87 a barrel, on fears of demand destruction resulting from further supply chain chaos due to prolonged lockdowns in Shanghai and potentially in Beijing, which would trigger broader and even bigger inflation that will hit demand.

Suddenly forgotten are the factors that had powered the spike in oil prices to begin with, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which has made Russian oil toxic on parts of the global markets. Markets are kind of funny about these memes that suddenly do U-Turns.

What rattled markets on Monday was the fear of a draconian lockdown in Beijing, similar to the draconian lockdown in Shanghai that is now entering its fifth week and entailed measures such as fences around some residential buildings so people couldn’t get out, mass testing, and forced quarantine in massive quarantine centers. 

*****

Continue reading this article at Wolf Street.

TAKE ACTION

America is on to the LGBTQ…., transgender, gender fluidity, sexualizing agenda the Walt Disney Company is openly grooming our nation’s children with. It is timely and imperative that we inform Disney of our rejection of their indoctrinating, far leftist and godless attempt to sexually groom our youngest generation…

The Grave Dangers of Politicizing Medicine thumbnail

The Grave Dangers of Politicizing Medicine

By Joe Wang

For the past 20 years, medical practitioners (nurses and doctors) were ranked the most trusted professions by the Gallup Honesty and Ethics poll. When a patient visits a doctor, he or she can assume that the doctor will only consider treatments benefiting the patient. This is because hundreds of years of medical practice have established a tradition of trust in which the patient believes that the doctor adheres to the ancient Hippocratic Oath (first do no harm) and the modern-day Declaration of Geneva, the ethics of medical practice published by the World Medical Association.

The Declaration of Geneva’s Physician’s Pledge states in part: “I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient.”

Political affiliation should not be a consideration when a doctor sees a patient.

Of course, things are seldom as simple as they seem. Politics and medicine have been around as long as human civilization, and the two have been intermingled at the individual level since ancient times. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Western world particularly, we have started to see the politicization of medicine at the institutional level, and this should worry us all.

About 1,800 years ago, in ancient China’s Three Kingdoms era, warlord Cao Cao invited renowned doctor Hua Tuo to treat his chronic headaches, thought to be caused by a brain tumor. Hua wanted to open up Cao’s skull to remove the tumor, but Cao suspected that Hua was hired by his political enemies to kill him, so he had Hua imprisoned. Eventually, Hua died in prison, and Cao died from the tumor that Hua had sought to remove.

When politics intersect with medicine, the trust between doctor and patient breaks, and both parties suffer.

Fast forward to 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) became the ruling regime in China. Under the CCP, suspicion such as Cao’s became policy, and everything was politicized. They took control of every aspect of people’s lives, from the cradle to the grave.

Amid COVID, authorities in the West have been making medical decisions for millions of its citizens, some even without solid scientific support. As a Chinese Canadian who grew up in communist China, I would like to warn people of the dangers of this unprecedented approach.

My Body, the CCP’s Choice

The CCP even makes a woman’s womb political.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when Mao wanted to increase the Chinese population so that he would have more people to fight American imperialism, women were encouraged to have more babies. I was born during that time, the ninth child in my family.

But in the 1970s, the CCP decided that Mao was wrong, and China had too many people, so they implemented the brutal one-child policy, with forced abortions killing millions each year. That went on for four decades.

Then in 2016, when the regime saw population decline as a threat to China’s economy and to its own power, it wanted women to have more babies again and changed the one-child policy.

The CCP’s flip-flop “family planning” practice is not only inhumane, but it also failed to achieve the intended goal in some ways. In my case, I was born as part of Mao’s desire to have more people fighting the Americans, but here I am siding with the Western democracies against the CCP’s authoritarian policies.

COVID: a Political Opportunity for the CCP

Similarly, when SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, the CCP immediately treated the outbreak as political. Facts became irrelevant; Beijing’s political narrative was paramount.

On Dec. 30, 2019, when Dr. Li Wenliang took to his personal social media platform to alert a few friends and colleagues about this new pneumonia he was seeing in Wuhan, he was punished by the authorities as what he wrote was not politically correct. He later tragically died from COVID-19 himself.

The politically correct narrative at that time was that the new pneumonia cases in Wuhan did not exist. A couple of weeks later, when the CCP could not deny the existence of the cases, they told everyone, including the World Health Organization, that the virus was not transmissible from human to human.

Then, from late January 2020 to March 2020, the CCP’s lies became so crazy that their narratives would contradict one another. On one hand, they locked down Wuhan and prevented domestic travel from the city to the rest of China; on the other hand, they continued to allow international travel from Wuhan to the rest of the world, while accusing anyone suggesting a travel ban from Wuhan as being racist.

Many now believe it was the CCP’s political intention to spread the virus to the rest of the world while trying to control it in China.

The question must be asked: If an international travel ban had been implemented, could the virus have been contained inside Wuhan, thereby avoiding the pandemic and the deaths of more than 6 million people worldwide?

In any case, the CCP’s behavior cannot be explained scientifically—it only makes political sense. And it was aligned perfectly with the regime’s global view. The pandemic could serve as an opportunity to prove to the Chinese people and the world that the CCP system is superior to Western democracy. Through stringent and even draconian lockdowns, and through lies and total media control, the CCP was able to convince the Chinese people that it had stopped the spread of the virus in China. At the same time, the media played up the inefficiency of western democracies as being incapable of controlling the spread of the virus, leading to millions of deaths.

Zero Omicron, Lots of Xi

It has been two and a half years since the start of the pandemic, and during that time the CCP has boosted its model of pandemic control. Up until last month, it seemed that the CCP was able to control the spread of the virus—even with the fast-spreading Omicron variant and holding a big international event like the Beijing Winter Olympics. Xi Jinping claimed that the achievement was made possible under his personal vision and leadership. The core of his strategy is zero COVID—eliminate the virus with all of the mighty power of the CCP.

Then late last year, COVID appeared in Xi’an, a city of 13 million people. The city was locked down from Dec. 23, 2021, to Jan. 24, 2022, with a total of only 2,053 COVD cases detected. Although there is no official statistics on the deaths caused by the lockdown, individual cases of death were reported due to a lack of access to health care. It was clear that the damage of the lockdown was more severe than the disease itself.

In early March 2022, COVID arrived in Shanghai, China’s biggest city. As no deaths were reported at that time, top scientist Dr. Wenhong Zhang, head of the city’s COVID task force, advocated coexistence with the virus. Given the lessons learned from Xi’an, one would think a lockdown, with all the hardship it brings for people, would not be implemented in Shanghai. Unfortunately, the whole of China is under Xi’s personal leadership, and Shanghai is no exception.

Starting April 3, more than 20 million residents in Shanghai were barred from exiting their homes, leaving many struggling to obtain food, water, and medical care. Stories of deaths occurring as a result of the hardline measures were circulated online. By April 12, at least 15 million residents were still being locked in their homes.

We have no way of knowing how many lives were lost due to the lockdown, but it’s probably in the thousands given the size of the population. Here is one example. Professor Larry Hsien Ping Lang, a Wharton graduate, well-known economist, and TV host in Shanghai who openly endorses Marxist ideology, could not help his mother. She died outside a hospital as she waited for hours for her COVID test result, which she needed to enter the hospital for her routine treatment. The brutal lockdowns affect everyone, including the CCP elites.

Just as Mao’s policy didn’t succeed in forcing me to become a CCP-loving anti-American soldier, Xi Jinping’s lockdowns lack common sense given that the measure has now proven to be useless in fending off Omicron. As a result, we are witnessing another man-made catastrophe happening in Shanghai and possibly other Chinese cities. One can only hope that the zero-COVID lockdown madness stops before more people die. The Chinese people have suffered enough.

Stop Politicizing Medicine in the Free World

With most of the population vaccinated or naturally immune from having been infected by SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 has become a manageable disease in the United States and Canada. Although it can still be deadly, this now-endemic flu-like disease could be managed with minimal deaths, while society returns to normal life.

In some jurisdictions and sectors, however, masking and vaccination are still mandatory. But why? It doesn’t make any sense at this stage of the pandemic.

In fact, it was the CCP’s tactics that fueled the politicization of COVID, not only in the United States and Canada but pretty much worldwide. This led to the lockdowns, dividing people against one another, governments strong-arming their mandates, and public health officials having far too much control.

We also had the Donald Trump factor. Americans seemed to be divided into two opposing camps: Trump supporters and never Trumpers. With the legacy media in the never Trumper camp, anything Trump supported became controversial, particularly advocating for drug therapy to treat COVID-19.

How far are we from the CCP’s complete politicization of everything in our lives? Warlord Cao’s suspicious approach was passed on to generations of Chinese, but it never became an institutional practice to completely destroy the trust between doctor and patient. When the CCP took control, however, they proceeded to politicize everything and destroyed the doctor-patient trust in just a few short years, because they did it with state power.

If the authorities in the West make politicizing medicine a policy, it could quickly destroy the doctor-patient trust beyond repair. We should never allow what the CCP did in China to happen in the free world. We still have some time. We should remain aware and be willing to fight to preserve the integrity of modern medicine.

*****

This article was published by the Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

America is on to the LGBTQ…., transgender, gender fluidity, sexualizing agenda the Walt Disney Company is openly grooming our nation’s children with. It is timely and imperative that we inform Disney of our rejection of their indoctrinating, far leftist and godless attempt to sexually groom our youngest generation…

The Border Invasion is an Existential Crisis for America thumbnail

The Border Invasion is an Existential Crisis for America

By Thomas C. Patterson

The invasion crisis on our southern border is baffling. How could this outrage be happening?

The White House wants you to believe that they’re powerless to stop it. They’re willing to appear negligent and/or stupid to keep the wheels turning.

But there’s only one possible explanation that holds water: it’s a plan. And it’s working, as the border zone is flooded with millions of illegal immigrants, almost all of whom will stay permanently and lay the groundwork for an invincible voting bloc in the future.

If they sincerely wanted to do something about it, officials wouldn’t have to do any complicated thinking. Just stop egging on illegal immigrants to come and reinstate the Trump-era policies that were at least somewhat helpful.

You have to almost admire the masterminds of this catastrophe for persevering in the face of growing bipartisan revulsion at this inhumane tragedy. They are playing the long game even at the price of taking short-term political hits.

In contrast to the helpless-to-resist image they’re trying to peddle, they’re contemplating the revocation of Title 42, a Trump-era rule allowing migrant crossings to be turned away for public health reasons. Homeland Security projects ending Title 42 would result in an inconceivable 18,000 migrant crossings daily, up from our already unmanageable 7000. At that rate, by the end of Biden’s term, one in five American residents would be here illegally.

Americans don’t need to be told the results of massive illegal immigration. We live it daily. Illegal immigrants by law have access to our emergency rooms. Over half of the newborns at LA County Hospital are newly minted American citizens born to illegal immigrant parents at taxpayer expense.

Illegal immigrants crowd our schools, forcing our already stressed educational system to divert focus to ESL instruction. Moreover, they undercut unskilled American workers and drive down their wages.

They also contribute to our burgeoning crime problem. The number of criminals who have evaded Border Patrol is obviously unknown but over 40 migrants on the terror watchlist have been apprehended in addition to those who have slipped through. Enough fentanyl has been imported for every single American to have taken a fatal overdose.

But America’s greatest threat from massive illegal immigration isn’t the effect on our safety, our education nor our healthcare.  It’s not the welfare and correctional services illegal immigrants consume. The greatest danger is losing our nationhood.

America is uniquely a nation based not on geography nor blood but on its values and ideals. We have amply demonstrated our ability to absorb large numbers of immigrants who love America, who come because they want to be Americans and share our values and ideals, established in our Declaration and Constitution.

Illegal immigrants, by contrast, begin their relationship by defying a foundational principle that has made the US a magnet for immigrants since its creation: the Rule of Law.  This is the belief that we are ruled by laws, not men (people), and that each of us stand as a free and equal individual before the law.

Unfortunately, this tsunami of immigration from socialist autocracies where corruption is the norm is occurring at a time wherein America is struggling with growing levels of tribalism. E Pluribus Unum is fading as many Americans now identify primarily as members of a political, racial or other groups that competes for favors from government.

Assimilation is now scorned as a micro-aggression.  America is regarded by its own citizens as oppressive and bigoted.

Tens of millions of illegal immigrants who neither know nor care about America’s defining values don’t bode well for our future. In a decade or two, we’ll undoubtedly begin to hear about how they “deserve“ citizenship, they’ve been here a long time, don’t have any other home, and so on.  Our unity as Americans will become more fractured.

Americans are historically compassionate and resilient.  But it is past time for Americans to reinforce the crucial distinction between illegal and legal immigrants.

It’s not racist or xenophobic to protect our borders from those who ignore our principles but want to enjoy the fruits of our success. It is crucial to the survival of America as we know it.

*****

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.

TAKE ACTION

America is on to the LGBTQ…., transgender, gender fluidity, sexualizing agenda the Walt Disney Company is openly grooming our nation’s children with. It is timely and imperative that we inform Disney of our rejection of their indoctrinating, far leftist and godless attempt to sexually groom our youngest generation…

FLORIDA: Illegal Drug Deaths Have Skyrocketed in the Sunshine State Since Legalizing Marijuana thumbnail

FLORIDA: Illegal Drug Deaths Have Skyrocketed in the Sunshine State Since Legalizing Marijuana

By Dr. Rich Swier

In 2014, Democrat John Morgan decided that he wanted to legalize the use of marijuana in Florida. His first attempt in 2014 failed. However, on December 17th, 2015 the Florida Supreme Court approved a constitutional amendment, drafted by  John Morgan and United for Care, that called for the legalization of medical marijuana. The state ruled it valid for placement on the Florida 2016 ballot.

Because of John Morgan and United for Care on November 8th, 2016, Floridians voted in favor of Amendment 2.

Today a variety of Cannabis Based Products (CBP) are now available in most Florida supermarkets and pharmacies including CVS, Walgreens, Publix and Walmart.

Marijuana as Gate-Way Drug

Many studies have looked at marijuana to determine if it is a “gateway drug” that leads to the use and abuse of other drugs, both legal and illegal.

The National Library of Medicine published a paper titled “Cannabis as a Gateway Drug for Opioid Use Disorder” by professor Arthur Robin Williams. Professor Williams noted:

[O]ne study published by the American Academy of Pediatrics documents findings from one analysis that adolescents who use cannabis are 104 times more likely to use cocaine than adolescents who never use cannabis. There are significant differences between these two populations of adolescents predating the onset of cannabis use. These observations are often used by proponents of cannabis legalization to disregard the possibility that the adolescent use of cannabis may, in and of itself, create de novo risk for the use of opioids or other drugs that otherwise would not exist. This review discusses recent scientific discoveries that address neuropathophysiological mechanisms whereby cannabis use could biologically introduce additional risk for the likelihood of opioid initiation, dose escalation, and OUD that otherwise might not occur within the same individual.

Drug Deaths in Florida

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) published a report on opioid related drug deaths in Florida.  They NIDA report stated:

Nearly 68% of the 4,698 reported drug overdose deaths in Florida involved opioids in 2018—a total of 3,189 fatalities (and a rate of 15.8) (Figure 1).

  • Deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone (mainly fentanyl and fentanyl analogs) remained stable but high with 2,091 in 2018 (a rate of 10.7).
  • Deaths involving heroin and prescription opioids also remained steady with a respective 689 (a rate of 3.5) and 1,282 (a rate of 6.0) reported in 2018.3

If you look at Figure Figure 1 you will find the following:

  • Since 2015 heroine deaths have risen from less 500 in 2015 to 2,091 in 2018.
  • Prescription opioid deaths have risen from under 1,000 in 2015 to 1,282 in 2018.
  • Synthetic opioid deaths have risen from under 500 in 2015 to 2,091 in 2018.
  • Overall opioid deaths have doubled from 1,500 in 2015 to 3,189 in 2018.

In the 2020 Florida Medical Examiners Commission Report “Drugs Identified by Deceased Person” found.

The State of Florida’s Bureau of Vital Statistics reported 243,088 deaths in Florida during 2020. Of the 44,577* deaths investigated by Florida’s medical examiners, toxicology results determined that the drugs listed below were present at the time of death in 14,708 deaths. The medical examiners assessed whether the drug(s) identified was the cause of death or merely present at the time of death. The data were then submitted to the Medical Examiners Commission (MEC) for presentation in this report. It is important to note that each death is a single case, while each time a drug is detected represents an occurrence. The vast majority of the 14,708 deaths had more than one drug occurrence.

Here are the “other” drugs listed in the Florida Medical Examiner report:

Cannabinoids

• Carisoprodol/Meprobamate

• Cathinones

• Cocaine

• Gabapentin

• GHB

• Ketamine

• Mitragynine

• Sympathomimetic Amines

Synthetic Cannabinoids

• Zolpidem

The Bottom Line

On Thursday, February 17th, 2022 in Port Everglades, Florida the U.S. Coast Guard seized about 54,500 pounds of cocaine and about 15,800 pounds of marijuana worth $1.6 billion on the street.

Florida has a serious drug problem and the legalization of marijuana (cannabinoids and synthetic cannabinoids), has not helped Floridians but has in fact killed Floridians.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse:

In 2018, Florida providers wrote 53.7 opioid prescriptions for every 100 persons, compared to the average U.S. rate of 51.4 prescriptions.

On March 16th, 2022 Attorney General Ashley Moody warned Floridians of a new, deadly synthetic opioid found in Florida called Isotonitazene—commonly referred to as ISO. According to reports, ISO is approximately 20 to 100 times stronger than fentanyl—an already incredibly dangerous opioid. Similar to fentanyl, this new synthetic opioid is being mixed with other drugs and appearing in the illicit drug market—possibly in powder or pill form. Often, users have no idea that a lethal synthetic opioid is mixed into a drug until it is too late. Attorney General Moody is sounding the alarm and asking people to never take an illicit drug because just one pill can kill.

Attorney General Ashley Moody said,

“For years, we have been warning about the dangers of fentanyl and how just one pill laced with this synthetic opioid can kill. Now, there is a new, deadlier drug being found in Florida. Isotonitazene, also known as ISO, is so strong that it can kill just by coming in contact with someone’s skin or being accidentally inhaled. ISO has already been linked to overdose deaths in Florida, so please, never take any illicit drug and know that using just one time could cost you your life.”

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said,

“ISO is a dangerous substance that we have, unfortunately, seen in Pasco County. As law enforcement continues to have to address the healthcare crisis of substance abuse, our goal remains to save lives and protect our community, which is why we have highlighted and brought awareness to the impact this dangerous substance has in our community.”

Since 2015 more and more illegal drugs are flowing into the Sunshine State and harming our youth, all thanks to the efforts by John Morgan and United for Care to legalize marijuana!

Thanks John, for nothing.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.