How Governments Seized Control of Money thumbnail

How Governments Seized Control of Money

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By Ryan McMaken

In discussions surrounding the world’s monetary systems today, there is usually one thing almost everyone can agree on: that money should be controlled by the organizations we call “states” or “sovereign states.” Nowadays when we say “the US dollar” we mean the currency issued by the US government. When we say “the British pound” we mean the money issued by the regime of the United Kingdom.

This assumed need to have state-issued money has not always been the reality, of course. Indeed, the history of the rise of the state is a history replete with efforts by states to replace private-sector money with state-controlled money. 

The reasons for this are numerous. Control of the money supply—usually complemented by intervention in the financial sector—allows states much more flexibility in expanding state spending and state borrowing. Perhaps most importantly, this allows states to spend prodigiously in times of war and other “emergencies.” 

As we will see, this struggle between state and private finance has been a long one. It took many centuries for regimes to secure the sort of legitimacy and regulatory power necessary to claim a monopoly over money. And even today, states are still somewhat constrained by the realities of international competition between currencies. They are also constrained by the continued existence of quasi monies that function as stores of value—such as gold, silver, and cryptocurrencies. Yet, it is impossible to deny that the state has made enormous gains in recent centuries when it comes to taking control of money. 

The order of these events also reminds us of another important aspect of states and money: the rise of states was not conditional on kings and princes seizing control of the production and regulation of money. Rather, the causation runs in the other direction: as states became more powerful, states used that power to also take control of money. 

Early Efforts to Control the Money Supply

In the ancient world, the despotic empires of old—under which we could include the Roman Empire—were careful to mint their own money and to control whatever primitive “financial systems” existed. The Romans famously devalued their currency for long periods of time—most notably under Diocletian—leading for the ruin of many Roman citizens.

According to David Glasner, the “prerogative of the sovereign over the coinage was preserved after the fall of Rome.”1 But this was only in theory. The civil governments of this period were far too weak to enforce a monopoly on money. Martin van Creveld writes, “Given the decentralized nature of the political system and its instability, European Rulers during the Middle Ages were generally in no position to imitate their oriental counterparts” in the Persian, Mongol, and Chinese empires.2

Moreover, there wasn’t that much money to go around in western Europe. Coins were often in short supply, and the agrarian nature of western Europe meant much trade was done through bartering.

That began to change in the later Middle Ages as Europe urbanized and began to produce an increasing agricultural surplus. Driven largely by Italian bankers who set up “branch offices” in France, Spain, and the Low Countries, a financial system took shape, which included the production of both coins and bank notes.

Yet, the monetary system was dominated by the private sector, and Van Creveld reminds us a sizable amount of money in this period

was produced not by the slowly emerging state but by private institutions. Before 1700, attempts to develop credit systems succeeded only in this places where private banking and commerce were so strong as to virtually exclude royal authority; in other words where merchants were the government. … Common wisdom held that, whereas merchants could be trusted with money, kings could not. Concentrating both economic and coercive power in their own hands, all too often they used it either to debase the coinage or to seize their subjects’ treasure.”3

The kings of Europe sought to control the money nonetheless. One of the earliest meaningful attempts materialized in England where monarchs early-on developed a more centralized and cohesive national regime. Thus, after the early date of 1222 in England, “money-changing and trade in bullion was a strictly enforced royal monopoly exercised by the Royal Exchanger.”4 Enforcement consisted of government officials engaged in acts designed to “suppress private trade in precious metals, to purchase or confiscate foreign coins, and to deliver them to the Tower of London mint for recoinage.”5

It’s unclear how well this was enforced, but such concerted efforts at national regulation were far more haphazard in much of Europe.

For example, the French state—the largest and most centralized state on the continent, sought in earnest to take control of the money supply by the sixteenth century. The results were mixed. Efforts to hammer together a national monetary regime began in the late Middle Ages, yet “France was not unified monetarily. Silver circulated in the west after the middle of the sixteenth century—gold coin before—and copper, infiltrating from Germany, in the east.”6

In practice, national kings needed to buy off uncooperative nobles with monopoly privileges, rights to tax, and the sale of titles. Kings relied on manpower supplied by nobles to carry out royal prerogatives. As late as the sixteenth century,

Although in principle, only kings had the right to coin precious metals, in practice, they farmed out this privilege, as also their right to exploit the royal domains and to collect taxes, because European kings, apart from those in Prussia, had only limited bureaucratic staffs. Achieving a central monopoly of their coinage would take another two centuries. Moreover, national borders were porous, and foreign coins circulated freely. A French edict in 1557 counted 190 coins of different sovereigns in use in France.7

The lack of national monetary monopolies in most cases did not stop nascent European states from engaging in two centuries of state building during this time. By the sixteenth century, France was already building an absolutist state even in the midst of ongoing currency competition. By the mid-seventeenth century, of course, the state had come into its own with absolutism gaining ground in France, Spain, Sweden, and other parts of the continent. In England—although the Stuarts failed to achieve their much-desired absolute monarchy—the state progressed far in the direction of a centralized, consolidated state during this period. Indeed, by the mid seventeenth century, Europe’s Thirty Years’ War—what might be called western Europe’s first era of “total war,” ended with the consolidation of the state system throughout western Europe.

Indeed, war and state-building—two things that were often one and the same—drove efforts to build government revenues through debasements of the coinage.  It was war with Scotland that drove Henry VIII to began a multiyear period of debasing the currency in 1542, which continued into the reign of Edward VI.  War drove other monarchs to similar ends, and on the continent Charles V devalued the gold taler in 1551. In the seventeenth century, European monarchs engaged in “progressive debasement …in anticipation of the Thirty Years’ War.”8 Ultimately, “Many princes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did a roaring business in currency depreciation.”9

The Effects of Continued Monetary Competition

Spain, France, and other rising states of the period accomplished all this without establishing true monopolies over the money supply. Yet currency competition limited what states could get away with. Even if national states had been able to solidify de jure monopoly control of money within their own borders, the sovereign’s money still faced competition from currencies in neighboring states and principalities. Just as dozens of different types of coins circulated within France, it was always possible for merchants, financiers, and more mobile classes of individuals to move their wealth in such a way as to avoid using the more heavily devalued currencies.

Thus, monarchs were cognizant of the risks that devaluation brought. “Too much” debasement of the currency could cause merchants, and even residents, to flee to competing imported or black-market currencies. Practical limitations controlled how much a regime could debase its currency. Thus, when Henry VIII began his campaign of debasement, he combined it with a broader wartime policy of confiscating goods and church property, and compelling forced loans.10 

In the seventeenth century, the ability to escape debased national currencies was further facilitated by the advent of the Bank of Amsterdam. Established by the city of Amsterdam in 1609, the Bank—technically a “government bank”—to calculate the values of the “no fewer than 341 silver and 505 golden coins” circulating in the Dutch Republic. The bank helped merchants identify which coins were “good” and which were debased.11 The bank then provided credit based on coins’ “real value” regardless of the coins’ claimed nominal values. The bank issued coins known as bank guilders which became “the world’s most used currency at the time,” or perhaps even a “reserve currency” of a similar status to the US dollar today.12  This was not due to any moral righteousness on the part of Dutch politicians.  It is likely that the Dutch regime would have also preferred to manipulate its own currency for gain. But the smallness of the Dutch Republic and its reliance on foreign trade greatly limited the regime in this regard. Thus, the Dutch were essentially forced to become a reliable, competitive financial center in order to compete with larger states.

Asserting Control over the Banks

Control of the coinage was only one aspect of states’ fights to control money. 

After all, much of the money being handled by Europe’s banks during this period was in the form of “bills of exchange” which facilitated the movement of funds across Europe without the need for physically moving metallic money. These bills began to function as money as well, and even as states were asserting greater control over coinage in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, “private institutions were thus beginning to develop paper money.”13 According to Kindleberger,

Begun early in the thirteenth century, the functions of the bill of exchange expanded in the sixteenth century as it became successively assignable, transferable, negotiable, and form the 1540s, discountable, thus bridging time and space and serving as private money (as distinct form specie, which was the money of the prince).14

Banks proved to be essential, providing access to money in many cases since even as late as the eighteenth century in many places, coinage was in short supply. This may have been especially acute where wage work replaced subsistence farming and agricultural barter. The new breed of employers needed money of various types.15 Bank-created paper money thus served an important role in providing a medium of exchange when coins were either unreliable or unavailable.

This diminished the dependence on the use of the sovereign’s coinage, and princes came to view these banks as troublesome competitors. Moreover, banks—unlike ordinary consumers—had the knowledge and the means to more carefully evaluate regime money and to accept devalued coins only at a discount.

Unhappy about the fact banks could often do an end run around the king’s coinage, states then sought to compel payments in metals which the sovereign could more easily control. Glasner writes:

The tension between the state monopoly over coinage and private banking is manifested in legislation that was frequently enacted to restrict the creation of notes and deposits by banks. In the fifteenth century, for example, hostile legislation in the Low Countries … caus[ed] virtually all banking activity to cease.16

The downside of crippling a polity’s banking sector is sizable, so eventually the state abandoned this strategy and learned to love paper money. But getting the public to accept government-issued paper money would be a long uphill battle.

Van Creveld places the first government attempt at paper money in the 1630s when the Spanish duke of Olivares, in need for funds for—yet again—the Thirty Years’ War, confiscated silver and provided “interest-bearing letters of credit” in their stead. Given the reputation of princes for debasing the currency by this time, this paper money swiftly depreciated. Only a few years later, Sweden attempted a similar scheme, but this also quickly failed.

It was not until 1694 with the Bank of England—that is, after more than 300 years of modern state-building—that the foundations were laid for a true note-issuing central bank. And even then, the Bank of England did not begin as an institution that creates money and did not have a monopoly on issuing banknotes until 1844. Rather, the Bank of England initially financed the government deficit by issuing shares. These shares, not surprisingly, were very popular given the fact the bank also enjoyed a monopoly on government deposits.17

A national bank in France, The Banque Royale, followed in 1718. But like the Bank of England, the Banque Royale did not possess a functioning monopoly on issuing bank notes. This did not stop the French bank from printing a great many notes, however, and it did so, sparking a financial crisis in the wake of the Mississippi Bubble.

Central Banks and the Gold Standard

It was not until the nineteenth century that Europe’s states established and wielded the sorts of central banks and money-issuing powers that we now associate with state monopoly powers over monetary systems: “By 1870 or so, not only had [central banks] monopolized the issue of notes in most countries but they were also beginning to regulate other banks.”18

The rise of these central banks throughout much of Europe provided states with unprecedented powers in terms of issuing new debt and financing explosive government spending in times of emergency. The regulatory role of central banks further solidified the regime’s control of their financial systems overall.

Ironically, however, it was also in the nineteenth century that states faced mounting opposition to state monopoly powers in the form of the classical gold standard.

This was a result of the rise of laissez-faire liberalism in the nineteenth century which was especially notable in Britain, France, and the US. Increasingly in western Europe, the liberals and the commercial class insisted on an “obligation to maintain the convertibility of gold or silver at a fixed parity.”19 These formal definitions of a currency’s value in metals were important in that they made it easier to see the extent and effects of government manipulation of the currency. That’s all to the good, but it offered no challenge to the state’s growing monopoly over money. After all, the gold standard could be—and repeatedly was—suspended for reasons of war.

In other words, it would be a mistake to regard the era of the classical gold standard as a period of state weakness in financial and monetary matters. On the contrary, the classical gold standard was built on a firm foundation of state power limited only by legislation. The legitimacy of the state’s prerogative to ultimately oversee the monetary system was not in question. By the end of the nineteenth century in Britain, and in many other key polities, the days of privately-issued bank notes and privately minted coins were over. (The US lagged this trend somewhat but the outcome was eventually the same.) That is, there were no institutions left that could realistically challenge the state in terms of issuing and creating money.

The nineteenth century did present obstacles to the state’s ability to inflate and debase the currency, but states nonetheless remained very much the victors over private money, private banks, and private mints. It should not surprise us that the classical gold standard was soon followed by the gold exchange standard, a system thoroughly dominated by state actors. The total abandonment of precious metals soon followed.  

In many ways, this change to state-dominated monetary systems was a reversion to the “traditional” way of doing things before the collapse of the Roman Empire. The era following the end of Roman despotism lacked states able to establish monopolies on coinage and money production. Yet, as civil governments grew into increasingly powerful states, they also asserted themselves as masters of money and finance. Few now question this state of affairs.

*****

This article was published on December 2, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

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Joe Manchin Does It Again

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By Rick Moran

Senator Joe Manchin announced he would join all 50 Republicans in the Senate in voting for a resolution of disapproval that would roll back the OSHA vaccine mandate.

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) allows for a majority of Congress to disapprove of any agency rule. Since the CRA vote is in the form of a resolution, only a simple majority is needed in the Senate to pass it.

The CRA would still have to be approved in the House where several Democrats have said they’re considering voting for it. And even if it’s passed by both chambers, Biden would almost certainly veto it.

But it would be a powerful statement to make prior to a Supreme Court ruling on the case.

“Let me be clear, I do not support any government vaccine mandate on private businesses. That’s why I have cosponsored and will strongly support a bill to overturn the federal government vaccine mandate for private businesses,” Manchin said in a statement.

“I have long said we should incentivize, not penalize, private employers whose responsibility it is to protect their employees from COVID-19,” he added.

Manchin had an opportunity to eliminate the mandate when Senate Republicans were able to get Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to allow a stand-alone vote on an amendment that would defund the OSHA mandate.

But Manchin chose to vote against it, knowing that the CRA vote would be held next week.

*****

Continue reading this article, published December 3, 2021 at PJ Media.

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The Long Cycles in Markets and Political Order

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By Joakim Book

The best class I took in all my economics education was called “Cyclical Fluctuation,” taught by Dr. Susan Schroeder at USYD. It was a broad-scope class in the many heterodox ideas that economists have about what causes business cycles, and what makes the output, employment, and financial prosperity fluctuate so wildly around otherwise steady long-term trends.

One kind of explanation goes by the name of “long waves” – perhaps the most famous of which is Kondratieff waves, developed by the Soviet and Marxian economist Nikolai Kondratieff. Many other theories exist that try to account for fluctuations through long-dated cycles, identifying historical patterns over 50 or 100 years. I see these stories quite a lot: the historian Niall Ferguson had plenty of long-arc thinking in his latest book; and the generational theory by William Strauss and Neil Howe (The Fourth Turning), is all the rage in the crypto world.

Usually, cycle theories or long-wave patterns suffer from problems of overfitting past data – or pushing past events through vague-enough definitions such that almost anything goes. They lack nuance or don’t offer enough evidence. Personally, I always found it absurd that a world so unlike the past from which it came could be governed by motions in that (pre-industrial) past. If “it’s different this time,” there’s no point bothering with elaborate cycles; quite a lot of things are different, but not all. If indeed enough trends echo the past, there might be a future trajectory that an astute eye can detect.

Ray Dalio, the prolific writer and founder of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest and renowned hedge funds, has if not changed my mind, then at least massively shifted the needle on how I see cycle theories. Released today, his latest 500-page tome, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail, aims very high: analyzing five centuries of markets, currency collapses, and changes to the world financial and political order.

Dalio avoids most of the traps associated with cycle theories. Changing World Order is jam-packed with charts, showing long-run changes in major countries, often reaching back centuries. Population, real GDP per capita, asset returns (of various portfolios and the main asset classes), mortality from war or famine are all included. At the core of Dalio’s view on markets and politics lies a conviction that underlies all cycle theories (“Knowing how things have changed in the past leads me to consider the possibility that something similar might happen in the future”). But he also improves on that by observing that over the longer horizon, cycles and the rise-and-fall of empires notwithstanding, cycles operate on a trend that for reasons yet unclear continues upward – through pandemics, world wars, inflations, and natural disasters

He shows us the result of the indices of competitiveness, technology, or military strength that he uses to analyze the world and inform his investment decisions. He manages to do what many successful investors writing books about their investment lens fail at delivering something new and interesting without giving away precisely the secret sauce that fueled his success.

What I like the most is the metrics of the rise and fall of reserve currencies. The Dutch guilder, Europe’s dominant reserve currency after a century or more of Dutch economic outperformance, was overtaken by the pound sterling when Britain’s industrialization and military strength later surpassed the Dutch. In turn, it subsequently lost to the US dollar during the first half of the 20th century. A dominant currency observes Dalio, lags heavily the economic punch its economy packed in the past. 

We’ve only had three or four of these global monetary transitions, so it’s hard to assess Dalio’s claim that this is a universal pattern. And if so, what does it say about the renminbi? About currencies like bitcoin, which are unconnected to a nation-state?

To analyze markets, Dalio combines the money-credit focus of Ludwig von Mises with the macro-debt focus of Hyman Minsky: “Unless you understand how money and credit work, you can’t understand why the world changed as it did.” His turning points for the debt cycles are also distinctly Minskyiate: when income isn’t enough to service debt; when people’s excesses and decadence vastly exceed their ability to create tangible value; when fear and greed are rife, jealousy and domestic conflict imminent. To this, Changing World Order expertly adds the big-picture history of people like Ferguson, Deirdre McCloskey, and Jared Diamond. Halfway through, Dalio reveals his main role model: the British historian Paul Kennedy, whose door-stop-sized The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers is on the curriculum of every undergraduate history program.

We get lots of schematic cycles, so many that I quickly lost track. The money-capital markets-debt cycle is the one he’s most known for, to which he adds cycles about internal order (values, institutions, and conflicts within a country) and cycles for external order (military, trade wars, and technology differences between countries). These are all mapped out in a fairly detailed way, with a half-dozen stages and their relative components explicitly marked.

“Most investors,” Dalio writes, don’t look for history, “because they think history and old investment returns are largely irrelevant to them.” He soothes my initial skepticism of cycle theories with plenty of graphs showing smoothed lines that move in discernable wave-like fashion.

While his long cycles are stuck in a limited history, he offers an outstanding amount of real-world evidence for this thesis: asset returns, currency debasement against gold or consumer baskets, and the expansion of debt and financial markets.

Even if his main pattern of political and economic power is broadly correct – that innovativeness, competitiveness, and education leads to prosperity, which eventually lead to excesses and decadence, decline, and conflict – it’s not clear to me what to do with that. Spain in the 1500s, fueled by Potosí silver, withered away over a hundred years; the Roman decline similarly took centuries; the Russian tzar reign ended abruptly. How do we know which historical echo signals our immediate future?

The reader must overlook the occasional statements where Dalio slips into the mistakes of other cycle theories. Like most of them, Dalio is forced into making vague, trivial, or often meaningless claims – like “most cycles in history happen for basically the same reasons.” “All markets,” he adds “are primarily driven by just four determinants: growth, inflation, risk premiums, and discount rate.”

Or this, about the internal struggles and disorder cycle:

While the length of time spent in each of these stages can vary a lot, the evolution through them generally takes 100 years, give or take a lot and with big undulations within the cycle.

With a main pattern of a century, with “a lot” of fluctuation around the start and end-points, on top of “big undulation within the cycle,” almost anything seems to fit the pattern. And “after self-interest and self-survival, the quest for wealth and power is what most motivates individuals, families, companies, states, and countries.”

At a high enough level of abstraction, these statements are plausible – even undeniable – but it is unclear what they give us. Yes, they’re true; but also very diluted in meaning. History may rhyme, but the ways in which poets can play on words is almost infinite – so what does identifying a vague, broad, or imprecise pattern really give us?

I wasn’t overly fond of the parts dedicated to China – over one-fifth of the book. It makes sense as a case study of a rising power, and is very relevant considering the many brooding U.S-China conflicts over technology, trade, and geopolitics. It pays homage to Dalio’s belief that China is rising in the many indicator curves against the stagnating (and even declining) indicators he reports for Europe and the US. But those chapters are long, detailed, and hard to follow for those without intricate knowledge of China’s past.

To nitpick, I don’t like how he tweaks established terms for no apparent reason: “store of value” became “Storehold of wealth”; “exorbitant privilege” was replaced by “extraordinary privileged.” One unconventional phrasing is useful: describing bonds and other liabilities as debt assets and debt liabilities to emphasize their role in balance sheets for different economic agents.

It is a very rare country in a very rare century that didn’t have at least one boom/harmonious/prosperous period, so we should expect both. Yet, most people throughout history have thought (and still think today) that the future will look like a slightly modified version of the recent past. […] Because the swings between great and terrible times tend to be far apart, the future we encounter is likely to be very different from what most people expect. […]

No system of government, no economic system, no currency, and no empire lasts forever, yet almost everyone is surprised and ruined when they fail.

The big curveballs are the turning points of history – modern tools of finance, the machine age, inclusive societies, or the scientific method. We can’t anticipate them, yet per Dalio’s own cycle theory we should still try to identify them, understand them, and adapt. That conflict runs through Dalio’s impressive book but doesn’t detract much from a thesis that I found much more persuasive than I had anticipated: some historical patterns are real, wave-like, and operate over long horizons. With skill, data, and humility, we can uncover the likely prospects for our own times.

*****

This article was published on November 30, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from AIER, American Institute for Economic Research.

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Respecting the Corona Virus

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By Neland Nobel

It is one thing to describe something. It often is different actually to experience it. In this case we are talking about the Corona virus.

I am a 73-year-old, unvaccinated male in generally good health who came down with the Chinese virus almost exactly two weeks ago. It came along just in time to screw up Thanksgiving and the beginning of Hannukah.

Everyone is different and so what I will describe is simply my experience.  Of course, that could differ from another person’s experience. No doubt many had it easier, and a number had it worse. Overall, I feel fortunate it was not worse than it turned out to be. I feel bad for those who have had a more severe case or lost someone they loved.

My wife had it first so we went down pretty much two days apart. She had a milder case and I had it a bit more severe. I had all the standard ailments: cough, fever and chills, loss of taste, brain fog, fatigue, and weakness. The body wanted to sleep, even after the most minor exertion. Weakness followed in the wake of other symptoms retreating.

The beginning was mild, days three to four were rough, and by the end of the first week, I started feeling better, and have continued to gain strength. As I write, we are exactly two weeks from initial symptoms, and I was able to take a short hike and get outside in the glorious sunshine.

I used the word respect in the title. My wife and I expected to get infected and were surprised it took so long. We never curtailed our activities, flew on airplanes, hugged friends and relatives, lived as best we could in this confusing period. Thus, we were exposed. We knew if we got it, it could be severe but chose to live our lives without undue fear. We knew from others and from reading, most will recover but a minority of those with preconditions and advanced age are at greater risk. We did not take the bug for granted.

We know so many vaccinated people who have gotten it, we decided we would take our chances getting natural immunity, which seems far superior to the short-term benefits of the jab. That was our decision to make and we faced the consequences.

We pre-positioned ivermectin which we took for five days, had thermometers, oximeters to watch oxygen levels, took our own blood pressure, and tried to get extra rest.

Over the recent weekend, news of the Omicron variant hit the news. Stock markets tanked and Governor Kathy Hochul of New York declared a state of emergency. She said she was concerned about a cold-weather variant, even though it came from South Africa, where it is summer. No cases have been reported in New York, but she has gone into “emergency mode.” The doctor who discovered the new variant has described it as “mild.”

Still, though, Governor Hochul thought it was wise to panic.

Meanwhile, the Courts are striking down Federal vaccine mandates, and the White House just caved on mandatory vaccines for Federal employees.

As we suggested earlier, a healthy respect for the bug certainly is due, and intelligent people should take preparations because it is clear the much-touted vaccine does not stop one from getting it.  The virus will do its thing, therefore respect its power. As a society, we are not going to stop it. It was foolish to think we could. Better to be prepared and learn to live with it.

Having gone through this now on a personal level, turning our society inside out seems both unnecessary and damaging.

The arrogance of our officials is on display. Not only do they think by seizing power and changing the Constitutional order they can change these natural processes, they continue to behave this way in the face of obvious failure. Stifle your hubris. You are not going to stop the virus and you are not going to change the climate of the earth either.

During the worst of the illness, I thought to myself, despite all the inflation of prices, the disruption of life government policy has caused, I still got it and must suffer through it. While many of us will get it, we all, in the end, suffer alone. And so, must my fellow citizens. Government cannot save us.

The chief job of any public officials is to protect the liberty of its citizens.

Having just come through this experience, I have to say the fear mongers have done a great disservice to the world. The virus is nasty to be sure, but not so much nastier than other illnesses I have had. Such concentration on ineffective vaccinations while largely ignoring, dare we say even prohibiting, the development of treatments, looks particularly stupid.  This is particularly so as it becomes clear the vaccines don’t work as advertised and that variants and boosters will be in a constant arms race.

My wife and I had to jump through a number of hoops to get the ivermectin we wanted. The government did not only not help, it actually actively got in the way of us helping ourselves. Big media and much of the medical profession were equally useless.

Respecting and fearing are two quite different things. Taking steps to inform people objectively, giving them broad choice for their individual circumstances, respecting their autonomy to make decisions, respecting their property, prosperity, and liberty; all seem to be much better than the one size fits all dictatorial panic from “experts” like Dr. Fauci and Governor Hochul.

When you look at the actual results of policy, Sweden and Florida, look so much better than Austria and New York, it can’t be ignored. And if the health outcomes are not demonstrably better in Austria and New York, how can these constant panic attacks by the government be justified?

It is time for government and health professionals to grow up and show some maturity. Most of us will survive this thing, but we may not survive the destruction to society these Covid policies are inflicting.

We have reached a point where the governmental reaction to Covid poses a greater threat to both health and liberty than the virus itself. Respect the power of the virus but governmental panic neither stops the virus nor helps the people.

As government becomes so much more entangled in our lives, it is worth asking, if I am going to get it and suffer with it, is the government over reach in my interests or theirs? And why in the heck are our tax dollars being used to develop this plague, that was then set upon the land?

The virus needs to be respected but irrational fear is hardly a helpful public policy.

While the government did little to get me through this virus, I have renewed respect for the wonderful body God gave me. I took some meds, drank water, and slept. My immune system, which runs pretty much on its own, did the rest. That is true for most Americans and that is why about 99% of us will survive.

That is something truly to be thankful for.

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Biden’s Climate Power Grab Via Trillions of Dollars in Annual Federal Procurement

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By David Wojick

Spending by federal agencies is governed by the extensive Federal Acquisition Regulations or FAR for short. In response to a Biden executive order, the FAR Council is conducting a silly public inquiry as to how climate change should be factored into federal spending. The Federal Government spends over $6 trillion a year so this is a very big deal.

The concept is ridiculous and some of the ideas are illegal but this foolish agency action deserves serious attention. The FAR Council has issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rule Making (ANPRM) titled “Federal Acquisition Regulation: Minimizing the Risk of Climate Change in Federal Acquisitions“. Comments are due by December 15. I urge people to comment.

See https://www.regulations.gov/document/FAR-2021-0016-0001

Advanced Notices like this are asking for ideas prior to proposing regulations, including that the whole idea is nuts. One of the worst things mentioned is that in competitive procurements agencies should give preference to bidders who are cutting their emissions. I cannot believe this is legal but there it is.

The ANPRM includes this list of leading questions:

(a)How can greenhouse gas emissions, including the social cost of greenhouse gases, best be qualitatively and quantitatively considered in Federal procurement decisions, both domestic and overseas? How might this vary across different sectors?

(b) What are usable and respected methodologies for measuring the greenhouse gases emissions over the lifecycle of the products procured or leased, or of the services performed?

(c) How can procurement and program officials of major Federal agency procurements better incorporate and mitigate climate-related financial risk? How else might the Federal Government consider and minimize climate-related financial risks through procurement decisions, both domestic and overseas?

(d) How would (or how does) your organization provide greenhouse gas emission data for proposals and/or contract performance?

(e) How might the Federal Government best standardize greenhouse gas emission reporting methods? How might the Government verify greenhouse gas emissions reporting?

(f) How might the Federal Government give preference to bids and proposals from suppliers, both domestic and overseas, to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or reduce the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions most effectively?

(g) How might the Government consider commitments by suppliers to reduce or mitigate greenhouse gas emissions?

(h) What impact would consideration of the social cost of greenhouse gases in procurement decisions have on small businesses, including small disadvantaged businesses, women-owned small businesses, service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses, and Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HUBZone) small businesses? How should the FAR Council best align this objective with efforts to ensure opportunity for small businesses?

The questions imply proposals that clearly make federal spending an instrument of alarmist policy. Suppliers are required to report their greenhouse emissions and to take steps to reduce them. The result can only be to drive up the cost of goods and services, which taxpayers pay for.

I see no statutory authority for this nonsense. Surely only Congress can make rules like this. Agencies cannot just decide what to buy based on Biden’s climate power agenda.

Some of this is truly far out, like asking procurement officials to measure the life cycle emissions of products and services. Complex products up to and including warships can have components, sub-components, etc., from all over the world, and lead long complex lives. In fact, the Defense Department is a lead agency in this ANPRM, as is NASA.

Imagine trying to measure the life cycle emissions for $6 trillion a year’s worth of products and services, and then basing procurement decisions on these measures. This is truly absurd.

There is also this vaguest of concepts: the “climate-related financial risks” to the Federal Government, which are supposed to be both mitigated and minimized. The real risk here is doing silly stuff in the name of climate alarmism.

And of course, there is the nutty “social cost of greenhouse gases”. This goofy number is claimed to measure to the dollar the damage done over the next 300 years by a ton of today’s emissions. I am not making this up!

The Biden Administration is trying to grab power it does not have, using regulations that have no statutory authority. I urge people to comment, especially saying how stupid and dangerous this proposed rule-making really is.

*****

This article was published on November 26, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from CFACT, The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.

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Challenging Technocensorship, Rutherford Institute Appeals to Federal Court to Prohibit Facebook From Censoring COVID-19 Vaccine Critics

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By Editorial Staff

Rutherford Institute Appeals to Federal Court to Prohibit Facebook From Censoring COVID-19 Vaccine Critics

Warning against the rising threat to free speech posed by the government’s collusion with large technology companies in order to regulate and control what ideas can be shared on the internet and through social media, The Rutherford Institute has asked a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court ruling and prohibit Facebook from censoring and de-platforming critics of the COVID-19 vaccine in violation of the First Amendment. In calling on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to allow the lawsuit in Children’s Health Defense v. Facebook to move forward, Rutherford Institute attorneys argue that Facebook acted in concert with U.S. government officials and agencies to suppress and punish Children’s Health Defense for sharing information critical of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“We should all be alarmed when prominent social media voices are censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous, extremist or conspiratorial,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “At some point, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes ‘extremism,’ we might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other and subjected to technocensorship.”

Founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending childhood health epidemics by exposing causes, eliminating harmful exposures, seeking justice for those injured, and establishing safeguards to prevent future harm. CHD, an outspoken critic of the proliferation of childhood vaccines, seeks to inform the public about vaccines and the health dangers posed by vaccines and wireless technologies. CHD’s mission has brought it in conflict with the pharmaceutical industry, which obtains huge profits from the sale of vaccines; the United State government, which accepts millions of dollars in funding from the pharmaceutical industry; and big-tech internet companies that profit from expanded wireless technologies. Crucial to CHD’s mission of educating the public is its use of social media, including Facebook, to provide links to studies and information provided by experts on public health that exposes the dangers of vaccines. However, since January 2019, Facebook has waged a campaign to discredit CHD: repeatedly posting labels and overlays on CHD’s Facebook page labeling information provided as “false,” preventing persons visiting CHD’s Facebook page from making donations to CHD; and otherwise asserting that CHD violated Facebook’s terms of service by posting false information. In August 2020, CHD filed a lawsuit alleging that Facebook’s actions, in retaliation for CHD’s speech critical of vaccines and wireless technologies, violated the First Amendment’s guarantee to freedom of speech. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook acted at the behest of and in concert with the U.S. government to suppress “vaccine misinformation.” In June 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted Facebook’s motion to dismiss the First Amendment lawsuit. The social media giant argued that because it is a private entity, it is not subject to the First Amendment.

The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.

*****

This article was published on November 9, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Rutherford Institute.

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15 States Threaten To Pull $600 Billion From Banks That Won’t Give Equal Service To Energy Industry

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By Tristan Justice

Fifteen state financial officers sent a letter to U.S. banks last week noting $600 billion in assets they pledge to take elsewhere if the financial institutions embrace corporate wokeism and prohibit financing to the fossil fuel industry.

Led by West Virginia Republican Treasurer Riley Moore, the group promised “collective action” in the form of an “economic boycott.”

“Just as each state represented in this letter is unique in its governing laws and economy, our actions will take different forms,” they wrote in the letter obtained by The Federalist. “However, the overarching objective of our actions will be the same – to protect our states’ economies, jobs, and energy independence from these unwarranted attacks on our critical industries.”

Signatories to the letter putting banks on notice include chief financial officers from Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Alabama, Texas, and Kentucky, in addition to West Virginia.

“How can we as states get dollars from severance taxes and then park it in banks that are at the same time trying to diminish those dollars by trying to boycott our industries?” Moore said in an interview with The Federalist. “This is just more of the same from these woke capitalists, globalist interests out there when it’s them trying to dictate to us the way we need to live our lives.”

Asked why more states haven’t joined the letter, considering at least 22 state financial offices are run by Republicans, Moore said it was a consequence of standard hesitancy.

“I do believe there are going to be more states that are going to join this coalition effort. I think they want to see a little bit of how this plays out,” Moore said. “How long are we just going to take it in the face and not do anything?”

President Joe Biden has been aggressive in quickly curtailing oil and gas development as promised on the campaign trail. Beyond the illegal suspension of new leases on federal land, the prohibition of new drilling sites on major untapped reserves, and higher fees in the pipeline for new energy exploration permits, however, it’s the administration’s pressure on Wall Street to refuse investment in the capital-intense industry that’s dealt the biggest blow to producers, spiking prices at the pump in the process.

“We can’t get capital because they’re putting so much pressure on banks not to lend to us in the name of climate change,” explained Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based industry trade group Western Energy Alliance.

Biden’s nominee for an important regulatory role at the Treasury Department however, shows no sign of an administration easing up on Wall Street. Cornell Law Professor Saule Omarova, who was tapped to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has said she wants fossil fuel industries to “go bankrupt.”

If confirmed, Omarova would lead an agency tasked with “ensur[ing] banks and federal savings associations operate in a safe and sound manner, provide fair access to financial services, treat customers fairly, and comply with applicable laws and regulations.”

Considering the administration’s crusade against fossil fuels, it’s conceivable Omarova would weaponize the department to deter investment in an industry vilified by Democrats as single-handedly destructive to the planet.

In 2017, Omarova already urged Congress to delegate a “golden share” responsibility to federal agencies, which she defined as “a wide range of legal arrangements giving the government special, exclusive, and nontransferable corporate-governance rights in privately owned enterprises.”

State financial officers who are engaged in the tug-of-war with the Biden administration wrote in their letter last week their taxpayers would not tolerate public funds being managed by institutions that destroy economies and Americans’ health in the name of climate change.

“We have a compelling government interest when acting as participants in the financial services market on behalf of our respective states, to select financial institutions that are not engaged in tactics to harm the very people whose money they are handling,” they wrote. “Any financial institution that has adopted policies aimed at diminishing a large portion of our states’ revenue has a major conflict of interest against holding, maintaining, or managing those funds.”

*****

This article was published on November 30, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Federalist.

Judge Stops Federal COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate in Medicare, Medicaid Facilities in 10 States

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By Joe Mueller

U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp on Monday ordered a preliminary injunction against the Biden Administration, stopping mandated COVID-19 vaccinations for health care workers in Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) facilities.

“Because it is evident CMS significantly understates the burden that its mandate would impose on the ability of healthcare facilities to provide proper care, and thus, save lives, the public has an interest in maintaining the ‘status quo’ while the merits of the case are determined,” Schelp wrote in a 32-page memorandum and order in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Missouri.

Missouri Republican Attorney General Eric Schmitt led a 10-state coalition filing the lawsuit on Nov. 5 to stop the CMS vaccine mandate. On the courthouse steps in St. Louis, Schmitt, a candidate for the seat of retiring Republican U.S. Senator Roy Blunt, stated many will benefit from the ruling.

“This is a significant ruling and the first of its kind in the country,” Schmitt told reporters. “What the court said today was CMS and the Biden administration has no statutory authority to do this, none whatsoever.”

Starting in late October, Schmitt led coalitions of states in filing three lawsuits against federal vaccine mandates – for federal contractors and federally contracted employees, for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s mandate on private employers with 100 or more employees, and CMS.

The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans blocked the private-sector OSHA mandate earlier this month.

Schmitt said Monday’s ruling will help all Missourians and all served in CMS facilities.

“Our office may have led the charge on this, but it is the health care workers in Missouri and across the country, it’s the rural hospitals here and elsewhere facing certain collapse due to this mandate, and it’s the patients of those hospitals who are the real winners today,” Schmitt said.

Judge Schelp stated five times in the ruling that it’s likely Schmitt and the coalition will ultimately succeed if the ruling is appealed. The ruling only applies to the 10 states in the lawsuit – Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.

“I would expect this to be appealed and I would expect this to go all of the way to the Supreme Court,” Schmitt said. “But the fact is we won.”

The ruling stated CMS lacked clear authorization from Congress to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine. Currently, CMS doesn’t require any vaccinations for health care workers.

“CMS failed to adequately explain its contradiction to its long-standing practice of encouraging rather than forcing – by governmental mandate – vaccination,” Schelp wrote. “For years, CMS has promulgated regulations setting the conditions for Medicare and Medicaid participation; never has it required any vaccine for covered facilities’ employees – despite concerns over other illnesses and their corresponding low vaccination rates.”

Schelp also stated CMS violated its own regulations by not accepting comments on policies.

“Moreover, the failure to take and respond to comments feeds into the very vaccine hesitancy CMS acknowledges is so daunting,” Schelp wrote.

Schelp highlighted the vaccine mandate’s negative impact on staffing at rural hospitals.

“As an example, for a general hospital located in North Platte, Nebraska, implementation of the mandate would result in the loss of the only remaining anesthesiologist,” Schelp wrote. “Understandably, without an anesthesiologist, there could be no surgeries – at all. Thus, such a loss irreparably causes a cascading effect on the entire facility and a wide range of patients. Other examples show the mandate’s far-reaching implications not just on the administration of health care itself, but the functioning of the facilities in general.”

Schmitt said the virus will always be present and the federal government needs to understand citizens and their rights.

“The truth is COVID is with us and there is always going to be a variant,” Schmitt said. “But I think the people have had enough of the government locking people down. They have had enough of government instituting mask mandates and vaccine mandates. Every time there’s an overreach, we’re going to push back.”

Bureaucrats who have never driven the back roads of Missouri or visited its rural hospitals have no idea of the effects of the vaccine mandate, Schmitt said.

“Here in flyover country, we’ve had enough and we’re going to fight back every single time they try to take our freedoms away,” Schmitt said.

*****

This article was published on November 29, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Center Square.

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Rediscovering the Arizona Constitution

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By Clint Bolick

Do you support the Constitution?

I hope your answer is yes. But an even better response would be to ask: which one?

Mention the Constitution and Americans instinctively think of the United States Constitution and its magnificent Bill of Rights.

But Americans do not have one constitution. We have 51. And if we are to protect our freedoms far into the future, we need to restore our understanding of state constitutions.

Every state has its own constitution. Many constitutions pre-date the United States.

The Constitution, and indeed many of the rights embraced in the Bill of Rights were based on state constitutional provisions.

Every state constitution contains protections of individual rights and restraints on government power that are unknown to the national constitution. What’s more, in our system of federalism, state courts are free to interpret provisions in our constitutions — even when worded the same as provisions in the Bill of Rights — to protect greater freedom than the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes.

Our national constitution thus provides the baseline for the protection of our rights, which all 50 states are free to surpass.

Viewed in that light, state constitutions ought to be very important. But if our civic understanding of the U.S. Constitution is dismal — and it is — our understanding of state constitutions is far worse.

That is odd because for most of our nation’s history, state constitutions were the only protection against abuses of rights by state and local governments. That began to change following the Civil War with the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protected individual rights against infringement by the states.

But it wasn’t until 1925 that the Supreme Court began slowly “incorporating” the Bill of Rights — protection by protection — against the states. Only in this century, for instance, did the Court apply the Second Amendment to the states.

As federal rights grew in importance, state constitutional rights receded. Americans came to recognize the U.S. Constitution as the source of our rights. That shift was reflected in legal education: “Constitutional Law” encompasses only the federal constitution; state constitutional law is an elective that few law students take.

The pendulum began to shift back in the 1970s and ‘80s. Justice William Brennan, a liberal icon, grew worried over the erosion of rights by a more conservative Supreme Court. He urged advocates to recourse to state courts to secure greater protection for the rights of criminal defendants and others. Many heeded the call.

More recently, conservatives and libertarians are catching up, led by groups like the Institute for Justice and Goldwater Institute, which are joining liberal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union in giving greater attention to state constitutional rights.

Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, penned an outstanding primer on state constitutionalism called 51 Imperfect Solutions.  I believe Arizona’s constitution is less imperfect than the rest, for as the 48th State, we had lots of lessons from which to draw.

Among many other provisions, Arizona’s constitution provides greater protection for speech than its federal counterpart. Its right to keep and bear arms is more explicit than the Second Amendment. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, we have an express protection of privacy, and a prohibition of gifts of public funds through subsidies and otherwise. And we have an extensive Victims’ Bill of Rights. Those provisions barely scratch the surface of its contents.

In the coming months, I plan to write about some of those provisions in greater detail.  In the meantime, take a look at the Arizona Constitution. It will surprise you!

You can pick up a free pocket copy of our state constitution at the Arizona State University’s School for Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL). Tell them Clint sent you. The protections you will find in those pages are precious — but they are meaningful only if we know what they are and take them seriously.

Clint Bolick is an Arizona Supreme Court Justice and teaches Constitutional Law at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law. You can find his opinions and articles at azjustice44.com.

*****

This article was published on November 22, 2021, in Western Tribune and is reproduced with permission from the author.

OSHA’s Big ‘Oops’

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By Carmel Richardson

The bureaucracy’s reversal on the vaccine mandate for businesses is a win for state sovereignty, not to mention the American people

After delaying two months before producing a rule pursuant to the White House’s September announcement that businesses with 100 employees or more would have to require the Covid-19 vaccine, the Department of Labor has now suspended enforcement of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private businesses.

The rule was initially challenged by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, who filed a lawsuit requesting a preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to stop the mandate from being enforced. A total of 12 states are suing to block the federal vaccine mandate for employers. After the federal appeals court temporarily halted the order, the Department of Justice requested the halt to be lifted, but the appeals court upheld the stay.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) should “take no steps to implement or enforce the mandate until further court order,” writing that the administration’s vaccine and testing mandate was “fatally flawed.” The court ordered OSHA not to enforce the requirement “pending adequate judicial review” of a motion for a permanent injunction. The court’s decision prompted OSHA to suspend the rule.

The court’s shutdown confirms what many suspected when OSHA delayed for weeks before publishing the rule: The legal grounds for enforcing a federal vaccine mandate on private businesses seems to be shaky at best. And yet, does it matter? Plenty of private businesses have already required their employees to take the shot, and are unlikely to roll that back, even in the wake of OSHA’s reversal. The Biden administration, too, is still pushing ahead, urging businesses to continue to implement an employee mandate, even if the state lacks the power to enforce it. Besides, how many people, besides those who are paid to read the news, are paying close enough attention to know the difference?

Once again, what matters seems less and less to be the actual tenets of law, and more and more to be who holds the reigns of power. Like with the eviction moratorium extension, the Biden administration has effectively said “maybe it’s illegal, but we’re going to try anyway.” Except this time, a few states rattled the cage.

The key silver lining here, thus, is a glimmer of state sovereignty. The pressure of a handful of states saying no, thank you, we’ll decide if we want to mandate a vaccine in our state, is significant, whether it weighed directly or indirectly on the decision. This was a win for localism, and it can and should be the model for governors and state legislatures going forward. Appeals to constitutionalism may fall on deaf ears, but four states—or 12—can keep the bureaucratic arm of the federal government out of local affairs if they have the courage to take serious action.

*****

This article was published on November 18, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The American Conservative.

OSHA’s Big “Oops!”

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By Carmel Richardson

The bureaucracy’s reversal on the vaccine mandate for businesses is a win for state sovereignty, not to mention the American people

After delaying two months before producing a rule pursuant to the White House’s September announcement that businesses with 100 employees or more would have to require the Covid-19 vaccine, the Department of Labor has now suspended enforcement of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private businesses.

The rule was initially challenged by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, along with the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, who filed a lawsuit requesting a preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to stop the mandate from being enforced. A total of 12 states are suing to block the federal vaccine mandate for employers. After the federal appeals court temporarily halted the order, the Department of Justice requested the halt to be lifted, but the appeals court upheld the stay.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said in its ruling that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) should “take no steps to implement or enforce the mandate until further court order,” writing that the administration’s vaccine and testing mandate was “fatally flawed.” The court ordered OSHA not to enforce the requirement “pending adequate judicial review” of a motion for a permanent injunction. The court’s decision prompted OSHA to suspend the rule.

The court’s shutdown confirms what many suspected when OSHA delayed for weeks before publishing the rule: The legal grounds for enforcing a federal vaccine mandate on private businesses seems to be shaky at best. And yet, does it matter? Plenty of private businesses have already required their employees to take the shot, and are unlikely to roll that back, even in the wake of OSHA’s reversal. The Biden administration, too, is still pushing ahead, urging businesses to continue to implement an employee mandate, even if the state lacks the power to enforce it. Besides, how many people, besides those who are paid to read the news, are paying close enough attention to know the difference?

Once again, what matters seems less and less to be the actual tenets of law, and more and more to be who holds the reigns of power. Like with the eviction moratorium extension, the Biden administration has effectively said “maybe it’s illegal, but we’re going to try anyway.” Except this time, a few states rattled the cage.

The key silver lining here, thus, is a glimmer of state sovereignty. The pressure of a handful of states saying no, thank you, we’ll decide if we want to mandate a vaccine in our state, is significant, whether it weighed directly or indirectly on the decision. This was a win for localism, and it can and should be the model for governors and state legislatures going forward. Appeals to constitutionalism may fall on deaf ears, but four states—or 12—can keep the bureaucratic arm of the federal government out of local affairs if they have the courage to take serious action.

*****

This article was published on November 18, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The American Conservative.

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Phoenix City Council Could Shoot Down COVID Vaccination Mandate

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By Cole Lauterbach

Members of the Phoenix City Council are demanding a vote on a previous decision to adhere to President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate.

In response to City Manager Jeff Barton’s decision the city is considered a federal contractor and must adhere to Biden’s mandate, Councilwoman Ann O’Brien wrote Mayor Kate Gallego to demand the council has a say on the matter.

The mayor agreed with O’Brien and added the issue for consideration at a future meeting.

“I am not anti-vaccine; I am anti-mandates,” O’Brien said in her Nov. 24 announcement. “I am pro-personal choice and I believe that Phoenix employees will do the right thing and make decisions that are right for them and their families.”

A discussion will be held Dec. 7 by the city’s policy workgroup.

Barton used the significant amount of federal dollars the city received to justify the decision to implement the Jan. 18 vaccination deadline.

“Due to the number of federal contracts held by the city of Phoenix, we are considered a federal contractor,” a letter from Barton read. “As such, all city employees are subject to the provisions outlined in the Executive Order, which requires all employees, regardless of telework status or if you previously tested positive for COVID-19, to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by January 18, 2022, except in limited circumstances where an employee is legally entitled to an accommodation.”

In reaction to Barton’s edict, the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA) and the United Phoenix Firefighters Association Local 493 (UPFA) joined Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s lawsuit against Biden’s vaccination mandate. The addition of the unions expanded the legal challenge to include federal contractors.

Unless the federal contractors or employees prevail in their legal challenge to Biden’s mandate, vaccination holdouts among the city’s 13,000 workers – including police and firefighters – who do not receive an exemption face suspension and eventual termination. 

In a Nov. 22 letter to Barton, Councilman Sal DiCiccio warned the mandate would lead to a severe worker shortage that could put residents in danger.

“The decision will compromise vital city-wide services to our residents, including public safety, which this Council has been aware of the alarming crime data and how the city is struggling to hire and retain personnel,” DiCiccio wrote.

*****

This article was published on November 29, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Center Square.

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Zuckerberg’s Election Meddling Could Be Emulated by Foreign Interests

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By Parker Thayer

Facebook might be a cesspool filled with lies, vitriol, and organized disinformation campaigns, but is it more frightening than a billionaire-funded political consultant with, quite literally, the keys to an election?

Mark Zuckerberg’s invention opened U.S. elections up to manipulation by foreign powers that everyone should be aware of.

No, not Facebook. His other invention. The private funding of public election offices.

When Zuckerberg contributed roughly $400 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life to privately finance public election offices, he was the first person ever to do so. It was a strategy simply unheard of before 2020. And this second invention of the billionaire, who became famous for his serious effect on tech, had a serious effect on elections.

But, while speaking out against Facebook and the damage it’s done to democracy earns a segment on 60 Minutes, speaking out about Zuckerberg and his “zuckbucks” might find one labeled a conspiracy theorist.

The idea that Zuckerberg impacted elections in partisan ways through Facebook is almost universally accepted, but strangely the idea he did the same through the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) is somehow too farfetched. The reality is that CTCL impacted the 2020 election in ways Facebook never could, and legislators should be just as anxious to address “zuckbucks” as they are Facebook.

For proof, look no further than Wisconsin, where, in true Facebook fashion, one of CTCL’s “grant advisers” leveraged the terms and conditions of Zuckerberg’s funding to access information they had no right to see.

Reports show that Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein, CTCL’s Wisconsin “grant adviser” who once worked as a Democratic consultant in New York, became “de facto elections chief” for Wisconsin’s five largest cities despite holding no office.

Spitzer-Rubenstein re-wrote the rules for ballot curing in Milwaukee, requested to be allowed to personally cure ballots in Green Bay, helped election administrators decide how ballots would be transported, rented the room where ballots were to be stored in Green Bay, and as was given the keys to the hotel convention room where absentee ballots in Green Bay were stored “days in advance” of the election. In fact, Spitzer-Rubenstein was so intrusive and domineering that the Green Bay City Clerk resigned just before the election in disgust after her superiors ignored repeated email complaints questioning the legality and ethics of Spitzer-Rubenstein’s involvement.

Facebook might be a cesspool filled with lies, vitriol, and organized disinformation campaigns, but is it more frightening than a billionaire-funded political consultant with, quite literally, the keys to an election?

The details of how CTCL funds were used in Wisconsin are disturbing, but more disturbing is the fact that it was all legal. Most disturbing is that anybody else is now free to do the same. Anybody.

Oil tycoons, hedge fund managers, banking executives, literally anybody can fund 501(c)(3) nonprofits like the Center for Tech and Civic Life, and they can do it anonymously since 501(c)(3)’s are not legally required to disclose their donors. Worse yet, they wouldn’t even have to be a U.S. citizen because there are no rules against foreign donors either.

A Russian oil-oligarch looking to cripple his U.S. competitors could create a charitable front-group to disproportionately fund election offices of more environmentally conscious counties in hopes they would shut down drilling. A foreign dictator hoping to lift economic sanctions could use a nonprofit cultural center to pay for an election office’s voter outreach campaign but provide much more money to counties where a senator or presidential candidate sympathetic to their plight is winning.

This may sound like modern day McCarthyism, but there are numerous examples of foreign actors influencing U.S. elections in both 2016 and 2020.

Hansjörg Wyss, for example, is a little-known Swiss billionaire who illegally gave thousands to PACs (which non-citizens are not allowed to do) more than 30 times over several years before the FEC caught on. In 2021, the New York Times called Wyss an “influential force among Democrats,” despite the fact that he can’t contribute to candidates or political parties, because he uses his private foundation to funnel tens-of-millions of dollars into “nonpartisan” political advocacy groups each year, many of them 501(c)(3)’s just like CTCL.

Just this year, accusations surfaced that Wyss once again broke election law due to his involvement with the Arabella Advisors network, along with reports that he attempted to purchase numerous U.S. newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, and the Daily News. Furthermore, leaked internal memos show that the Wyss Foundation developed a  $100 million “Democracy Strategy” that included funding get-out-the-vote drives and lobbying to change election laws, and shared it directly with John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, just before the 2016 election.

Wyss has no qualms about intervening in U.S. elections, and now that Zuckerberg has paved the way, Wyss might attempt to use his dark money network to follow suit. The same goes for the Russian government who famously tried to influence elections using targeted misinformation campaigns on Facebook in 2016, and the Iranian and Chinese governments who reportedly attempted to do the same in 2020.

It’s far from a conspiracy theory to say that “zuckbucks” gave Mark Zuckerberg a concerning level of influence over the 2020 election, and it’s just as reasonable to be worried that foreign interests will attempt to mimic Zuckerberg in the future. Luckily, dozens of states have put forward legislation to ban further private funding of election offices, but dozens more have yet to act. With 2022 fast approaching, time is running out for state legislatures to act, and if they don’t, our elections could be open to more interference and manipulation than ever before.

*****

This article was published on November 23, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from Capital Research Center.

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Taking the Booster

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By Paul Gottfried

I dutifully took the Moderna COVID vaccine booster on Nov. 5 at the advice of my younger brother, who practices medicine. Two hours after this ordeal, I began to feel chills and suffer from a very upset stomach. These symptoms vanished two days later, and I resumed my normal routine, which includes jogging.

However, a week ago the unpleasant symptoms that I thought I was rid of returned, and I have been dealing with them ever since.

Some family members insist that it’s all in my imagination and I am not really feeling sick. If I am, the symptoms are from a low-grade flu that I picked up somewhere—perhaps while walking out of the pharmacy where I received the booster shot. There is no way, I have been assured, that the booster could have occasioned this degree of discomfort because that’s not supposed to happen. If I listened to National Public Radio, I would know that the booster has only minor side effects and that dwelling on them is characteristic of right-wing extremists, who are probably fascists and support the Jan. 6 “insurrection.” But of course, a million illegals crossing our Southern borders, Black Lives Matter protests in densely populated urban centers, and planeloads of unidentified Afghan “refugees” can do nothing to raise our infection totals because President Biden is okay with these developments.

I can no longer abide by the craziness unleashed by the nonstop politicization of the COVID epidemic. On one side I receive messages from agitated correspondents who tell me that the vaccine is being used to exterminate white people since blacks are mostly reluctant to receive the jab. I’m also told that the vaccine is causing the rapid spread of COVID, and so we should daily gorge ourselves on towering heaps of vitamins to protect ourselves from the disease-bearing recipients of the vaccines, who are making everyone else sick before dropping dead.

On the other side we have the leftist true believers who sound equally insane. From the moment the present salvific administration took over in Washington, taking the vaccine became a sacrament, like having a late-term abortion, teaching Critical Race Theory, or undergoing sex-change treatment. Although Joe and Kamala were vaccine-skeptics until they took office, the entire world must now be vaccinated, even those who have already had COVID and consequently built-up natural immunity.

I have heard leftist true believers insist that those who have not received the Biden—no longer Trump—vaccine should not be treated if these miscreants take sick. They should be allowed to waste away in the hovels inhabited by Deplorables, although those who rail against them would not have demanded this course of action when Biden and Harris were wary of the vaccine last year.

Allow me to make my own position on this matter unmistakably clear. Despite all the unpleasantness that came out of my decision to take the booster, I would do it again because of the limited degree of immunity that it affords senior citizens like me. I ascribe the after affects entirely to the jab and find ample confirmation daily for my assumption. I know of many others who are complaining about the same symptoms after having received the booster, and those who have communicated this information to me are entirely reliable sources, not anti-vaccine zealots.

That said, I am utterly exasperated by those who push the leftist party line about the vaccine. They blithely go on denying that a procedure Joe, Kamala, the media magnates, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky stand behind cannot have the unpleasant consequences from which I am obviously suffering. I am supposed to believe that there is no causal relation between two temporally contiguous happenings that I have experienced, receiving the booster, and then coming down with symptoms that I’m still trying to shake. It is insisted that the two are not related, because if they are, then that would contradict an ideologically determined narrative.

Meanwhile, I continue to receive messages from the other extreme, suggesting that I have taken a catastrophic step by being injected with a fake vaccine serum that could kill me. But I may have a chance of surviving if I start swallowing loads of dietary supplements. Is there any way to make both hysterical sides disappear?

*****

This article was published on November 17, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from Chronicles.

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Pushing Back Against The Big Banks

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By Todd Woodard

According to Bloomberg.com, three of Wall Street’s biggest municipal-bond underwriters have seen business grind to a halt in Texas after the state enacted a law that blocks governments from working with banks that have curtailed ties to the gun industry. Since the law took effect on September 1, 2021, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have not managed a single municipal-bond sale in the state, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Is your state doing enough to fight for your gun rights? This is how it gets done.

Currently before the U.S. Supreme Court. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen will, perhaps, decide whether the Second Amendment allows the government to prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense. On its face, this is simple. New York has had a handgun licensing system for more than 100 years. New York prohibits its citizens from carrying a handgun outside of their home without a license, and it requires permit applicants to convince a licensing officer they have “proper cause” to carry a concealed firearm. Petitioners Robert Nash and Brendan Koch argued that the New York law violates their constitutional right to bear arms. They lost at the district court level, wherein that court said: “Nash and Koch do not satisfy the ‘proper cause’ requirement because they do not ‘face any special or unique danger to [their] life.’” Eight other states have similar “show cause” laws: California, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. All of their laws will be affected by the decision — hopefully, negatively. The U.S. Supreme Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments on Nov. 3.

Hit back twice as hard. A federal judge has found the Washington, D.C. city government liable for wrongfully arresting six people between 2012 and 2014 who were accused of violating its ban on carrying handguns in public. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth’s decision could clear the way for claims for damages by as many as 4,500 people similarly arrested under the law the courts overturned in 2014, according to court filings. The Supreme Court struck down the District’s long-standing ban on handguns in a landmark 2008 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller, which found that the Second Amendment protected individuals’ right to own a gun in the home. “The District violated the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights by arresting them, detaining them, prosecuting them, and seizing their guns based on an unconstitutional set of D.C. laws,” Lamberth wrote.

Yes, yes D.C. did that, plain as day. We’ll see if Lamberth’s well-thought-out legal reasoning can stand scrutiny by judges above him who hate the Second Amendment.

*****

This article was published in the November issues of Gun Tests, and is reproduced with permission of the author.

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A Different Perspective: How Threat-Free Are Americans from Covid-19?

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By Jon Sanders

At present, based on the most recent government data, only about three Americans in a thousand could conceivably transmit Covid-19 to someone. In other words, nearly 99.7 percent of people in the United States are currently no threat to anyone of spreading the virus. And despite the large case count, 24 out of every 25 cases are recovered, meaning not only that those people are no longer threats, but also that they now have the strongest form of immunity against Covid-19.

Those numbers may sound counterintuitive — or at least counter to the usual presentation of official Covid numbers. From the outset, media reports on Covid-19 have been calculated to stoke fear. Whether out of sensationalism for clicks, desire to shape political outcomes or panic in the pressrooms, media have offered an unrelenting diet of terror about the pandemic with little to no context. Experts spoke with impressive unanimity; anyone who dissented, regardless of impressive credentials, was quickly canceled. Economists who could discuss tradeoffs in policy choices were made especially scarce. For the 24-hour, round-the-clock news consumer (an incredibly self-defeating habit for anyone concerned about health), it would be impossible to escape the conclusion that death stalked us at every corner, let alone every restaurant table and school desk.

Adding to the panic is the problem of big numbers. Very big numbers sound daunting, but at some point, numbers get so big that people can no longer conceptualize them. For example, we are upset at now having to pay twice as much for a gallon of gasoline, and we worry the price could triple. But it’s difficult to wrap our heads around how many trillions of dollars are involved in congressional debates for President Joe Biden’s hazy plans.

Early on, international number-crunching outfits gobsmacked us all with enormous numbers of projected deaths. In turn, public health officials everywhere laid it on thick with talk of field hospitals soon to be set up everywhere, bandying about huge projections of people who would need hospitalization and warning that, at the very least, we would run out of ventilators and have to choose which of our neighbors deserved saving. Fear compounded upon fear as we consented to lockdowns and tried to figure out which Hollywood pandemic movie we were in for.

We were conditioned for the worst, and when the projections proved to be buncombe, our relief never progressed into righteous anger at having been played. Anyone who pointed out the massive disparity between the projections and reality was absurdly accused of not taking the virus seriously and trying to get people killed. In the meantime, the steady doom-drums of daily updated, ever-rising case and death counts constantly reinforced the perception of imminent threat.

The idea that nearly everyone recovers from this virus, as from other illnesses, rarely entered the news stories, let alone the minds of the terrified populace. As the total case numbers rose, quietly so did the number of those who had recovered and now were immune. Case numbers were also never placed in the context of an even much larger number: the population.

In short, people were vastly overexaggerating the number of their fellow citizens who had the virus as well as their own risk of contracting it and dying. People’s faces showed this terror when they ventured out, from wearing masks alone in their cars, dodging and staring at each other at grocery stores, even avoiding family and friends and forbidding their children from play. I’ll never forget the mountain hikers hastily pulling up masks whenever another human bounded into view, as if the old expression “fresh mountain air” had lost all meaning.

This over inflamed fear is itself unhealthy. People need a dispassionate assessment of risk in order to weigh their choices correctly. To listen to media and public-health bureaucrats, one would think that the threat of death and severe life impacts from Covid-19 is the only threat worth avoiding, but that was never true. Nevertheless, we have seen — and too many people have allowed — unprecedented government interventions aimed at managing the Covid threat to the exclusion of all others.

Those other threats had expanded, meanwhile, to include the deadly unintended consequences of lockdowns and other extreme government orders. They also included withheld but necessary medical treatments, either from non-Covid treatments being suspended or people being too afraid to seek treatment, which has been especially bad for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, but also bad for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, high blood pressure, and stroke. These other threats, furthermore, included increases in substance abuse, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and deaths of despair. Job loss, as well as school closings and isolation of young children, contributed to them, and all these carry long-term health implications, too.

For all those reasons, back in the summer of 2020 I started producing contextualized looks at Covid case numbers in my home state that I later started calling the “NC Threat-Free Index.” The idea was simply to offer context to the big, raw numbers and tamp down people’s fears to a healthy, warranted respect for the virus rather than unhealthy, unwarranted abject terror. Normally such a service would have been performed by media and government officials trying to stave off a panic.

Here I offer a threat-free index for the nation as a whole. There are several components, all easily derived from official government data. They include:

Presumed recovered: the number of convalescent people who have had a lab-confirmed case of Covid-19 and are no longer sick and infectious. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) considers recovery to be generally 10 days post infection. For my index I have been rounding that to two weeks (14 days). The number of presumed recovered is generated, then, by taking the total number of cases from two weeks prior and subtracting out all deaths from or with Covid-19.

Active cases: the number of people currently with lab-confirmed cases of Covid-19. These are the people who could conceivably transmit the virus to others. The number of active cases is generated by taking the total number of cases and subtracting out presumed recoveries and deaths.

Deaths: the number of people who have died either from or with Covid-19.

Population: the daily U.S. population estimate provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. The index states the above numbers also as proportions of the U.S. population.

Here are the threat-free index estimates as of November 15:

  • Presumed recovered: 45,265,569
  • Active cases: 1,118,866
  • Percent of total cases presumed recovered: 96.0%
  • Percent of total cases that are active: 2.4%
  • Percent of the total U.S. population with active cases of Covid: over 0.3%
  • Percent of the U.S. population to have died with or from Covid-19: over 0.2%
  • Percent of the U.S. population posing no threat of passing along COVID-19: nearly 99.7%

    • These are estimates, of course, and the data are incomplete. Also, the estimates will vary regionally, though not by much. Nevertheless, they give a close approximation of the current risk to a hypothetical person going out in public somewhere in the United States of encountering someone with a transmissible Covid infection.

    It’s a risk decidedly lower than what people have been made to believe. This belief, unhealthy in and of itself, has given way to tolerating dangerous government edicts while forestalling a grounded approach to individual risk assessment and management.

    Media-fed mass hysterias should remain the province of Orson Welles, which is to say, history.

    *****

    This article was published on November 26, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from AIER, American Institute for Economic Research.

    Fatal Drug Overdoses Are on the Rise in Arizona

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    By Samual Stebbins

    More Americans are dying from drug overdoses than ever before, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were an estimated 100,306 fatal overdoses over the 12 months through April 2021 — the most ever reported in a 12-month period and double the annual number of car accidents and firearm deaths combined.

    The record number of deadly overdoses marks a 29% increase from the same period a year earlier and is more than double the number reported as recently as 2014. Public health experts attribute the surge to the proliferation of fentanyl — a synthetic opioid reported to be 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine — as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has isolated many Americans struggling with addiction while reducing their treatment options and care resources.

    In Arizona, drug overdose deaths are on the rise at close to the same pace as the national average. There were an estimated 2,768 fatal overdoses in Arizona over the 12 months ending in April 2021, compared to 2,154 over the same period the year prior. The 28.5% increase ranks as the 22nd smallest of all 46 states that reported an increase in deadly overdoses.

    Of all drug classifications identified by the CDC, including synthetic and semi-synthetic opioids, cocaine, heroin, psychostimulants like methamphetamine, and methadone (a drug used to treat heroin and opioid addiction), synthetic opioids had the largest increase in fatalities in the state, up 59.8% from a year earlier.

    The fatal drug overdose rate in Arizona now stands at 38.7 deaths for every 100,000 people, the 12th highest among all states. Nationwide, the per capita fatality rate stands at 30.3 per 100,000.

    All overdose data used in this story are from the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the CDC. To account for pending investigations and incomplete counts, the numbers reported are estimates calculated by the NCHS. Population-adjusted fatality rates were calculated using population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Decennial Census.

    Rank State 1-yr change in fatal overdoses Drug OD deaths, 12 mos. ending April 2021 Deaths per 100,000 people, 2021 Drug OD deaths, 12 mos. ending April 2020 Deaths per 100,000 people 2020
    1 Vermont 69.9% 209 32.5 123 19.1
    2 West Virginia 62.2% 1,607 89.6 991 55.2
    3 Kentucky 54.5% 2,319 51.5 1,501 33.3
    4 Louisiana 51.6% 2,218 47.6 1,463 31.4
    5 Tennessee 50.1% 3,581 51.8 2,385 34.5
    6 Mississippi 49.9% 637 21.5 425 14.4
    7 California 47.8% 10,585 26.8 7,162 18.1
    8 Alaska 46.7% 176 24.0 120 16.4
    9 Kansas 45.7% 558 19.0 383 13.0
    10 South Carolina 45.4% 1,907 37.3 1,312 25.6
    11 Oregon 45.1% 940 22.2 648 15.3
    12 Minnesota 38.5% 1,188 20.8 858 15.0
    13 New Mexico 37.0% 893 42.2 652 30.8
    14 North Carolina 36.9% 3,526 33.8 2,576 24.7
    15 Texas 36.4% 4,687 16.1 3,437 11.8
    16 Georgia 36.3% 2,086 19.5 1,530 14.3
    17 Washington 35.7% 1,892 24.6 1,394 18.1
    18 Nevada 35.7% 992 32.0 731 23.5
    19 Virginia 35.5% 2,262 26.2 1,669 19.3
    20 Colorado 34.6% 1,655 28.7 1,230 21.3
    21 Arkansas 33.0% 536 17.8 403 13.4
    22 Indiana 32.4% 2,487 36.7 1,878 27.7
    23 Alabama 31.4% 1,110 22.1 845 16.8
    24 New York 29.3% 5,496 27.2 4,252 21.0
    25 Arizona 28.5% 2,768 38.7 2,154 30.1
    26 Nebraska 27.9% 211 10.8 165 8.4
    27 Ohio 26.6% 5,585 47.3 4,410 37.4
    28 Florida 26.2% 7,892 36.6 6,256 29.0
    29 Maine 24.2% 528 38.8 425 31.2
    30 Wisconsin 21.8% 1,599 27.1 1,313 22.3
    31 Maryland 21.0% 2,876 46.6 2,376 38.5
    32 Oklahoma 20.2% 798 20.2 664 16.8
    33 Michigan 19.3% 2,952 29.3 2,474 24.6
    34 Idaho 18.8% 297 16.1 250 13.6
    35 Utah 18.5% 674 20.6 569 17.4
    36 Rhode Island 17.5% 409 37.3 348 31.7
    37 Wyoming 16.9% 97 16.8 83 14.4
    38 Missouri 14.6% 2,004 32.6 1,749 28.4
    39 Pennsylvania 13.1% 5,410 41.6 4,784 36.8
    40 Illinois 12.6% 3,601 28.1 3,197 25.0
    41 North Dakota 11.9% 122 15.7 109 14.0
    42 Iowa 9.5% 426 13.4 389 12.2
    43 Montana 6.6% 161 14.8 151 13.9
    44 Hawaii 6.3% 268 18.4 252 17.3
    45 Massachusetts 5.8% 2,419 34.4 2,286 32.5
    46 Connecticut 4.4% 1,409 39.1 1,350 37.4
    47 New Jersey -1.0% 2,918 31.4 2,948 31.7
    48 Delaware -1.7% 459 46.4 467 47.2
    49 New Hampshire -7.2% 372 27.0 401 29.1
    50 South Dakota -19.8% 77 8.7 96 10.8

    *****

    Horrific Waukesha Deaths Preventable Result of Ill-Considered Bail Policies thumbnail

    Horrific Waukesha Deaths Preventable Result of Ill-Considered Bail Policies

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    By Amy Swearer

    After a summer of wildly destructive civil unrest followed by the looming shadow of the high-profile trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, residents of Wisconsin suffered another blow in the form of unspeakable tragedy.

    Five people were killed and more than 40 injured when a driver plowed through participants of an annual holiday parade, appearing to intentionally speed up and swerve into lines of marchers, before speeding off.

    Hours later, police arrested 39-year-old Darrell Brooks as the suspected driver of the vehicle. He is charged with five counts of homicide.

    Investigators are still looking into possible motives, including, according to some reports, the possibility that Brooks did not necessarily target the parade but was instead attempting to flee from a knife fight.

    Whether the act was intentional or merely reckless and without regard to others, one thing is already clear—what happened in Waukesha was entirely preventable.

    Darrell Brooks should have been in jail several times over. The devastation he wrought happened only because grossly reckless bail policies touted by local officials enabled the release of an unrepentantly violent man whose actions routinely placed members of the community in serious danger.

    Brooks is a career criminal with a long rap sheet. His history of violence—including violence toward women—is well documented, and wide-ranging.

    In 1999, Brooks pled guilty to felony battery with intent to cause bodily harm, and was sentenced to six months in jail and three years’ probation. Over the next seven years, Brooks had a series of short stints in jail for various drug and obstruction charges.

    In 2006, he was convicted of felony statutory sexual seduction for impregnating a 15-year-old girl. Brooks was 24 years old at the time. He was sentenced to probation and required to register as a sex offender.

    In 2010, Brooks pled no contest to felony strangulation and suffocation charges, as well as to violating the terms of his probation. He was sentenced to 11 months in jail and three more years of probation.

    Brooks spent much of 2011 and 2012 in jail, serving two separate 180-day sentences for charges of drug possession and bail jumping, and a 37-day sentence for misdemeanor resisting arrest.

    In 2016, Brooks was arrested and charged with failing to obey Nevada’s sex offender registration laws. He posted bail, then fled the state and never returned to court. He still has an active warrant out for his arrest in Nevada.

    In July 2020, Brooks was again arrested after allegedly getting into a fist fight with his nephew over a cellphone and then firing a gun at the nephew’s car as the nephew drove away. Arresting officers found Brooks still in possession of the firearm as well as a small amount of meth. He was charged with a slew of serious felonies, including possession of a firearm as a firearm and two counts of second-degree recklessly endangering public safety with the use of a firearm.

    Brooks’ bond was initially set at $10,000 but was quickly lowered to $7,500. He remained in custody until his Feb. 9 trial was postponed. His attorney then successfully argued for Brooks’ bail to be dropped even lower, and on Feb. 21, Brooks posted $500 bond and was released.

    On Nov. 5, with his 2020 charges still pending, Brooks was again arrested and charged with several serious felony offenses after a woman—reportedly the mother of Brooks’ children—told police that he purposefully ran her over with a vehicle after an argument. According to reports, the vehicular assault left tire marks on the woman’s pants and injured her so severely that she was hospitalized.

    Incredibly, despite two decades of violent behavior, an open felony warrant in Nevada, routine failures to abide by his probation or bond conditions, and an active case involving the violent use of a weapon, Brooks was allowed to post $1,000 cash bail. By Nov. 11, he was back in the community.

    When all relevant information comes to light about possible motive or premeditation, it seems incredible that no one could have reasonably foreseen that Brooks would commit this specific type of violence and leave this amount of carnage in his wake.

    Brooks’ propensity for violence and his lifetime spent disregarding the safety of others made a violent tragedy anything but unforeseeable.

    It also could have been foreseen that this kind of tragedy would inevitably occur as a result of the well-intentioned but ill-thought-out and poorly executed bail reform policies that progressives are putting into effect across the country.

    In fact, John Chisholm, the rogue George Soros-backed prosecutor in Milwaukee County who released Brooks when he should have sought no bail, issued a prophetic statement in 2007. He said: “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into [a] treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody? … You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen.” He went on to argue, though, that “does not invalidate the overall approach.”

    We disagree. And now that the dire consequences of these rogue prosecutors’ policies are sparking public backlash, Chisholm has called for an investigation into Brooks’ “inappropriately low” bond.

    Unfortunately, this is emblematic of the rogue prosecutor movement more generally. They take a criminal-first, victim-last, passing-the-blame approach.

    And while the consequences here were undoubtedly tragic, it’s far from the only example of rogue prosecutors’ lax bond policies wreaking havoc on their communities.

    In Philadelphia, for example, rogue District Attorney Larry Krasner’s policies led to the murder of Philadelphia Police Cpl. James O’Connor by an individual whom Krasner released through his lenient policies. Former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain said, “The murder was the direct result of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s pro-violent defendant policies.”

    In Chicago, police have pointed to the “skyrocketing use of electronic monitoring as a key factor in the city’s shocking 50% rise in killings” last year.

    And no wonder. In Kim Foxx’s Chicago, there are apparently no consequences for violating bail terms. According to the Chicago Tribune, “About 400 people are charged every year with felony escape. During [her predecessor’s] last three years in office, she dropped a total of 55 such cases, compared with 420 for Foxx.”

    And then there’s San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin. As two of us (Cully and Zack) have previously written, “Since taking office, Boudin has also been criticized for releasing suspects with long criminal records who have gone on—surprise, surprise—to commit other crimes.”

    The events in Wisconsin were tragic. But the nightmare was a completely avoidable consequence of a criminal justice system run by Soros’ rogue prosecutors.

    *****

    This article was published on November 23, 2021, and is reproduced with permission from The Daily Signal.

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    Medicare Ads And Other Inane Policies

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    By Thomas C. Patterson

    We’ve all seen them, the Medicare TV ads exhorting seniors to apply for enhanced benefits. The government appears to be coaxing often reluctant retirees into greater dependence.

    But this is a colossally bad idea, even for those of us who support helping citizens in their sunset years. It stimulates greed (it’s freeeee!) and entitlement in the demographic which government programs have already made into the most wealthy. It expands the reach of government into our lives.

    But it’s worse than that. The ads are pitching benefits in a program already teetering on bankruptcy.  Americans were told that their mandatory payroll contributions were put in a fund to finance payouts in retirement, but that was a lie. Politicians raided the trust long ago and today’s retirees are dependent on the (inadequate) contributions of today’s payers – yes, like any other welfare program.

    The rational response would be reforms that include reducing expenses where possible. Instead, we spend untold millions to pump up program outlays. Not smart. Consequences to follow.

    But screeching Medicare ads aren’t the only government initiative which, partisan disagreements aside, simply don’t make sense. Take electric cars. They’re touted as a big key to a carbon-free future. We’re pouring public funds into subsidies, charging stations and other enticements for owners.

    We may disagree over the feasibility of carbon reduction strategies to ultimately reduce climate change, but it doesn’t matter. Electric cars aren’t the answer. They still require energy that must be produced somehow.

    The pollutants may come from an electricity generating plant instead of a car’s exhaust, but the damage done isn’t greatly different. The environmental costs of battery production and disposal as well as the extra power sources needed to service a national fleet of autos make EVs an environmental loser.

    But politicians use them anyway to bolster green credentials. Buyers like the subsidies, the perks, and driving a cool car. Manufacturers are joining the ranks of the uber-rich. So the beat goes on.

    EVs could have some environmental benefit if nuclear generation sourced their electricity. Once again, stupidity intervenes.

    The environmental Left decreed long ago that nuclear was off-limits. Nuclear power plants would henceforth be discouraged by excessive regulation and harassment. The strategy has basically worked, but it’s a shame.

    It’s still true that nuclear is by far the most environmentally friendly, non-emitting energy source available. Nuclear-producing France pays 50% less for energy with 10% the amount of pollution experienced by Germany, which sanctimoniously exited the nuclear market years ago.

    Here’s more lunacy. A year ago, America had finally achieved energy independence, after decades of kowtowing to Arab sheiks and oil-rich autocrats. Within days, the Biden administration returned us to supplicant status. Pipeline permits were canceled, offshore drilling cut back and even the remote ANWR oil deposits were shut down.

    Meanwhile, with our consent, Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline was approved, which will dominate Western Europe’s natural gas supplies. Biden unsuccessfully begged OPEC to increase oil production, so US gas prices have predictably skyrocketed and a cold winter looms.

    Again, the environmental benefits of our foolishness are nil. Pipelines are the most environmentally safe way of transporting natural gas. The fuels from Russia and the Middle East are no cleaner than ours.

    We have more inane policies. Children too young to vote, drink, smoke, or drive are now permitted to change their socially constructed gender by irreversibly altering their bodies-without parental consent.

    $450,000 payouts are seriously proposed for illegal immigrants who were separated from their children in a humane effort to avoid mixing children with adults during detention. In spite of causing no known harm, GMO bans limit the amount of food available to starving Africans.

    The driving force for these nutty, harmful policies is the relentless pursuit of electoral success by pandering to special interest groups. We’ve come a long way from Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a “wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another…“.

    Listen to political analysts uncritically predicting the fate of multi-trillion-dollar spending bills based solely on how the vote would affect legislators’ prospects for remaining in office another term.

    It’s disgraceful, but we expect no more, so that’s what we get.

    ****

    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

    Comrade Down: Senate Forces Biden to Dump OCC Nominee, Lenin Scholar thumbnail

    Comrade Down: Senate Forces Biden to Dump OCC Nominee, Lenin Scholar

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    By Chuck Ross

    Five Senate Democrats tell Biden they won’t back Lenin scholarship winner Saule Omarova

    Five Senate Democrats told the White House late Wednesday they will not support Lenin scholarship recipient Saule Omarova to serve as Comptroller of the Currency, nuking her chances to serve as the country’s bank regulator.

    The Democrats—Sens. Jon Tester (D., Mont.), Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), Mark Warner (D., Va.), and John Hickenlooper (D., Colo.)—join all Senate Republicans in opposition to Omarova, who came under scrutiny over her proposals to use the banking system to “bankrupt” the oil and gas industry and her education in the Soviet Union. Axios reported Wednesday that the Democrats informed the White House they will not support Biden’s nominee.

    The failed nomination marks a major setback for progressives, who championed Omarova over her criticism of big banks and fossil fuel companies. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) hailed Omarova’s nomination as “tremendous news.” The left-wing Sierra Club touted Omarova as a bulwark against “climate chaos” and hoped she would set up “guardrails against Wall Street’s risky fossil fuel investments.”

    *****

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