By: Spencer Brown | Townhall March 14, 2023 12:00 PM
Following the biggest bank failure since the financial crisis of 2008, Moody’s Investor Service has downgraded its rating of the “U.S. banking system” in the latest sign that President Biden’s Monday morning attempt to assuage concerns went over like a lead balloon.
Moody’s cuts outlook on entire U.S. banking system to negative, citing ‘rapidly deteriorating operating environment’ – CNBC
Moody’s — one of three major rating entities — downgraded its outlook for the U.S. banking system from “stable” to “negative” on Tuesday morning “to reflect the rapid deterioration in the operating environment following deposit runs at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank (SNY) and the failures of SVB and SNY,” Moody’s explained.
In addition to downgrading the entire banking system, Moody’s also issued warnings for several individual banks “with substantial unrealized securities losses and with non-retail and uninsured US depositors” that “may still be more sensitive to depositor competition or ultimate flight” and end up “with adverse effects on funding, liquidity, earnings and capital.”
The unrealized losses, specifically, have become substantial:
The specific institutions being monitored by Moody’s for “potential downgrades” include INTRUST Financial, Western Alliance, Comerica, Zions Bancorp, and First Republic.
Markets, however, did not seem to move much on the news.
Moody’s just cut its outlook on U.S. banking system to negative due to ‘rapidly deteriorating operating environment’
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-15 11:51:162023-03-15 11:51:16‘Rapid Deterioration’: Moody’s Rating Service Downgrades U.S. Banking System
“Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” — Frederick Douglass
“History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.” — General Douglas MacArthur
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.” — H. L. Mencken
“The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government.” — Dr. Marty Makary
I believe the entire hospital protocols were purposely murderous. Remember, five governors put C-19 patients in nursing homes and killed off hundreds of thousands of elderly Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security residents. Governors Newsom (D-CA), Whitmer (D-MI), Cuomo (D-NY), Wolf (D-PA), and Murphy (D-NJ) all stated that hospitals were running out of room, but what were their real motives?
Those hundreds of thousands of deaths helped to plant fear, and the oldsters needlessly died alone and without their loved ones.
The public was poisoned against repurposed cheap drugs that prevented and/or cured the virus called COVID. Taking Hydroxychloroquine early in treatment for C-19 kept the virus from gaining a deadly foothold. When C-19 had progressed, Ivermectin twice a day according to weight gave quick recovery to most of those without extensive comorbidities. Adding Azithromycin and prednisone, an antibiotic and anti-inflammatory, helped to quell the cough and respiratory problems in short order.
In Argentina, Dr. Hector Carvallo’s prevention trials, with many of the repurposed-drug early treatments and prophylactic treatments, showed a 100% prevention of acquisition of Sars-coV-2 on patients who were on prophylactic ivermectin. The molecule in ivermectin doesn’t just treat parasites, it has 22 mechanisms of action against Sars-coV-2, has seven or eight anti-viral mechanisms and it has multiple immune modification mechanisms. In Dr. Carvallo’s study, two months of healthcare workers taking one ivermectin a week, zero contracted COVID. In the placebo control group of 400 people, 57% contracted COVID. This is how effective ivermectin was in prevention in a hospital setting. You cannot make the same claim for these “vaccines.”
Those inexpensive repurposed drugs would have saved a majority of the lives lost. Instead of allowing physicians the ability to save their patients by trying various treatments that would attack the symptoms the government, i.e., unelected councils…NIH, CDC, FDA, AMA, Medical Journals and mainstream media, claimed the 50- and 60-year-old drugs of IVM and HCQ were dangerous.
Why?
Because money was to be made, and massive reports of death created fear. And fear created compliance and compliance was necessary to create the goal of a cure via inoculations.
The incompetent, devious and nihilistic Lords of Healthcare laughed all the way to the bank while Americans died.
Fear porn had won.
Murder for Gain
Allowing inexpensive treatments to restore health would not fill Big Pharma’s pockets. All of the unelected entities were slobbering over the filthy lucre flowing into their pockets. The deaths didn’t matter, money was to be made. Mass murder via government protocols was collateral damage that fueled depopulation advocates’ goals and saved government funding of the elderly who were quickly dispatched. Hospitals loved the federal payouts for C-19 deaths. Why wouldn’t they? The government allocated $175 billion for hospitals and other providers in April of 2020.
Control won…first we donned the masks, then we locked down for months, closed our businesses, declared bankruptcy and when we got sick, most physicians would do nothing for us until we couldn’t breathe and then we entered the hospital to die. Most who tested positive for C-19 ended up on a ventilator…and 80% of them died. The C-19 tests were faulty, never should have been used and resulted in excessive positive results.
Ultimately, the majority of Americans willingly signed up for untested experimental injections available through Emergency Use Authorization and given “free” by the government.
If anything goes awry, Big Pharma has total immunity from legal liability under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act). The controversial Act was signed into law by George W. Bush in December of 2005. It provides immunity for the “manufacture, testing, development, distribution, administration, and use of covered countermeasures.” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declared COVID-19 an emergency and invoked the PREP Act on February 4, 2020.
On march 27, 2020, Congress quickly enacted legislation thru the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) which provided over $2 trillion in funds to address the economic impacts of the pandemic. Brookings reported unheard of massive waste, fraud and corruption.
Federal funds were disbursed to hospitals to help them cope with the C-19 emergency. The feds paid hospitals a fee for giving a C-19 test, another fee for admittance of the patient to hospital, plus the full daily Medicare with 20% added onto the hospitalization rate, no matter the insurance status. Admission nets the hospital $13K, but when they ventilate a patient, it soared to $39K.
Medicare even announced it would pay 20% more as an add-on if hospitals used the new FDA-approved drugs for C-19! In other words, hospitals can rake in even more if they give three treatments of Remdesivir at $3100. per treatment. Kidney or liver failure didn’t matter to the hospital administrators…more money in their pockets. WHO recommended against using Remdesivir, but Gilead raked in over $7 billion on the sale of their drug which cost them about $10.00 per dose to manufacture.
Early HCQ or IVM treatment for COVID would have jeopardized all the hospital payments.
As Minnesota State Senator, Scott Jensen M.D. told us in countless interviews, hospitals were incentivized to code admissions as having COVID-19 even when they didn’t have positive tests! I know of too many elderly family members who, upon autopsy, were found to have bacterial pneumonia or flu, which could have been treated and saved their lives. Oh, that every C-19 diagnosed patient who died been autopsied. And now with the poisonous injections, we even need more autopsies to document the effects of the jabs.
The CARES Act also provided immunity for guess who…healthcare workers treating C-19 patients. State governors added more immunity via executive orders.
States like New York covered civil liability for injury or death alleged to have been sustained directly as a result of an act or omission by person/persons covered.
Persons included in coverage were physicians, physicians assistants; specialist assistants; nurse practitioners; licensed registered professional nurses; licensed practical nurses.
The only conduct not covered was gross negligence.
But wait a minute…isn’t “gross negligence” exactly what we saw with the promotion of these one-size-fits-all hospital protocols and the untested, unstudied, untrialed Big Pharma medications?
Remdesivir Kills
Remdesivir, sold under the brand name Veklury, is a broad-spectrum antiviral medication developed by the biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences. It was a pre-existing drug candidate developed by Gilead Sciences as part of an antiviral development effort, with initial results against Ebola virus (EBOV) reported in 2015.
Dr. Anthony Fauci claimed Gilead’s remdesivir would aid in COVID recovery. The National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, (NIAID) headed by Fauci, asserted remdesivir studies proved it effective against COVID-19.
It actually can damage your kidneys and liver. Despite the lack of positive studies, the FDA approved Remdesivir with another Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
Remdesivir didn’t work. Results were terribly negative.
In late August 2020, a disproportionately high number of reports of liver and kidney problems in patients receiving remdesivir were reported compared with patients receiving other drugs for COVID-19. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) also announced that its safety committee had started a review to assess reports of acute kidney injuries in some patients taking remdesivir.
Patients who knew that remdesivir was not a reliable or safe drug, were told they could instead receive Veklury, which is remdesivir. One has to wonder; how many were fooled into being given the drug.
The oral C-19 medication, Paxlovid, wasn’t much better. Paxlovid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization or death in people.
And that’s not all! What about Operation Warp Speed Death Jabs?
Jabs, Jabs and More Jabs
You can’t tell me that pharmacists, physicians and nurses didn’t know that vaccines were supposed to be tested for years and that you never vax during a pandemic. And what about if you’d had and recovered from C-19? Why would you need a jab if you have natural immunity? Common medical knowledge was thrown to the wind…and the media hawked the jabs day and night…even offering incentives. Now this evil poison is to be given to our children before they enter the perverted government schools. Children don’t even get COVID, so why?
Can you believe the horrific number of injections our children must now submit to?
The documents of Pfizer and Moderna, those they wanted to keep hidden for 75 years, tell the story of betrayal. The infertility, the miscarriages, the heart damage, the blood clots, the cancers, the evil destruction of healthy young bodies and the sudden deaths, all caused by one, two or five injections of the Big Pharma poison to depopulate.
It isn’t evil enough that they’re forcing these injections on our babies when they enter school. Messenger RNA and abusive and abrasive contraptions on cattle for a fabricated non-existent problem.
Mass murder of man and animals.
If ever truth fully comes to light and the American people wake up, those culpable will stand trial.
“I was just following orders” won’t hold any more water today than it did in 1945-1946.
Those who have needlessly lost loved ones want to see justice today.
The gallows await them.
“Vengeance is mine,” sayeth the Lord.
Ivermectin Saves
How many people were able to secret Ivermectin (IVM) into sick family or friends in hospital with Sars-coV-2? I know of several, especially where the hospitals still allowed family to visit. When this life saving drug was given, the recovery was rapid. Within a couple days, the patient was feeling so much better and within a few more days was released to go home.
The resistance by hospitals for Ivermectin was incredibly difficult, even when an attorney had taken the case to court and the judge had instructed the hospital to give IVM. The court battles were unconscionably difficult with IVM witnesses being called quacks. Dying men and women were fighting for the last chance to save their lives and many were denied their “right to try” a cheap, FDA and WHO approved drug as their last and only hope since nothing but remdesivir was being offered. Hospitals retained “godlike power” over the patients, telling them they could not choose their own care. As John Leake explains in his and Dr. Peter McCullough’s book, The Courage to Face Covid-19, “for most gravely ill patients and their families, this power resulted in death.”
The patient’s families would state in writing they would indemnify the hospitals of liability for any adverse effects of IVM and that their primary care physicians would administer the drug. In many cases, if the court told the hospital to give the drug, one pill would be given, the patient would improve, but then the hospital would refuse to give additional medication.
Dr. Pierre Kory had testified before the Senate and showed the studies proving IVM was a valid treatment for Sars-coV-2. Yet, the resistance was phenomenal. After one dose, attorneys would need to return to court to order the hospital to give more than one dose of IVM. Families would beg and plead with the hospitals to no avail. Many had to fight to have the family doctor administer IVM or to be able to take the patient home. The hospitals demanded the patient’s physician come to the hospital to administer the drug.
Many had to find ways to smuggle IVM in to patients before they were put on vents, and those who were successful had a 100% recovery rate.
Every medical facility had bought into the government lies by the unelected councils, which used to be called Soviet, but now are pure American. Those unelected county health departments decided masks, lockdowns, closures, mandates etc.
Conclusion
Dr. Vernon Coleman, who refers to himself as “the old man in a chair,” has been telling us the hard facts regarding the destruction of our medical industry.
He states, “The goal of healing has been replaced by the goal of perpetual treating. The ugliest part of this new business model is that, to keep overhead cost as low as possible, when severely handicapped and older people become ill, hospital staffs increasingly are discreetly prescribing kill shots for them, much like what might be given to an old dog or cat to end their misery. This is not a conspiracy theory, not hyperbole, and not even unusual. It is now a recognized policy in every country in which the medical system has been captured by the pharmaceutical cartel – which is most of them.”
In Part Two, we’ll discuss America’s modern-day eugenics, revived again from the 1920s and expanded to parallel Hitler’s murder of the physically and mentally unfit.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-14 10:51:252023-03-14 10:51:25Therapeutic Nihilism by The Lords of Healthcare—Part One
There will be no accountability and no correction because it is Democrat malfeasance.
Barney Frank was the US Rep behind the Dodd-Frank bill put in place after the 2008 bank crash. The government arguably caused the failure and then turned around and put in a massive amount of regulations in response to the failure.
The monstrosity was the Dodd-Frank bill, named in part for Barney Frank.(TPG)
This is the same Barney Frank whose boyfriend, Stephen Gobie (whom Frank had once hired as a male prostitute) was running a male-brothel out of his home.
The US government shut down Signature Bank on Sunday.
On Friday, regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank, sparking panic among startups and VCs.
Both banks had a huge amount of customer deposits that were not insured by the FDIC. There are others.
A second bank was shut down by the US government on Sunday. This time it was Signature Bank.
What does this financial institution have in common with Silicon Valley Bank? They both had huge amounts of customer deposits that were not insured by the FDIC.
The FDIC insures US bank deposits up to $250,000 per account to prevent bank runs and failures. The demise of SVB, and now the collapse of Signature Bank, have stretched this system to a breaking point.
On Sunday, the US Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC said in a joint statement that all depositors of SVB will be made whole on Monday. The authorities are completely ignoring the $250,000 insurance limit. SVB had $173 billion in total deposits and roughly 88% of that was not covered.
That’s more than $150 billion in extra deposits that the FDIC has suddenly decided to insure.
The authorities are giving the same special exemption to Signature Bank, so all depositors will be made whole there too. Signature had $89 billion in total deposits, and 90% of those were not insured by the FDIC. That’s another $79 billion that this agency is taking on its shoulders.
“By insuring all deposits at SVB and Signature, regulators judged the risk of cascading effects to other regional banks and the broader economy to be more significant than the moral hazard of increasing FDIC limits,” said Rich Falk-Wallace, CEO of data analytics firm Arcana and a former portfolio manager at hedge fund Citadel.
In the case of SVB and Signature, the high percentage of uninsured deposits is partly a function of having a relatively small number of clients with large balances. At SVB, for example, Roku revealed it had almost $500 million in deposits at the bank, extending far beyond the $250,000 guarantee.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-14 09:51:512023-03-14 09:51:51Another Bank Shutdown: Signature Bank Closed
Make no mistake, this massive tax hike will it every single America and most of all our savings. Biden is raising capital gains tax from 20% to 40%, imposing a tax on unrealized gains, huge increases on two income families, but hit worst of all, small business.
Biden’s titanic tax hikes are only exceeded by his spending.
Even with $5 trillion in tax hikes bringing the highest sustained tax burden America has ever seen, the public-held national debt would still jump from $25 trillion to $44 trillion according to the president’s own figures.
Annual budget deficits would grow past $2 trillion even with peace and prosperity.
Simply paying the interest on the national debt would cost taxpayers $10 trillion over the decade — more than any program besides Social Security and Medicare.
Apart from crashing the stock market, it will impoverish savers, homeowners and stock-holders.
President Biden’s budget request is meant to drive headlines showcasing a claimed $3 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade.
In reality, his budget proposes the largest tax increase in modern history, plows much of the new savings into more new spending and leaves Social Security on its path to insolvency.
Start with taxes.
Inflation-adjusted federal revenues have already soared to $1 trillion above pre-pandemic levels, to their second-highest share of the economy since World War II.
Yet the president would raise taxes by an additional $5 trillion over the decade — the largest tax hike since the 1960s.
Total revenues would approach 20% of the economy, and income-tax revenues would average 10% of the economy over the decade.
Both would represent the highest sustained tax burdens in American history.
America’s businesses would bear much of the tax burden.
Total corporate taxes would jump by 56%, to their highest sustained share of the economy since the 1970s (and may exceed the 1970s levels when also accounting for small-business taxes).
Much of these revenues would come from raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%.
When including state taxes, American corporations would face the second-highest tax burden among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development nations.
In a world of global tax competition, America would again hamstring its own competitiveness.
One could defend steep tax increases if accompanied by equal spending savings as part of a balanced plan to combat Washington’s trillion-dollar deficits.
The budget proposes a 7.3 percent increase in non-defense discretionary spending – about double its increase in defense spending
It calls for $688B in non-defense discretionary spending – a $47B increase
Calls for $886 billion to be allocated to overall defense – an increase over 2023’s $858 billion
By Morgan Phillips, U.S. Political Reporter and Emily Goodin, Senior U.S. Political Reporter For Dailymail.com
President Joe Biden on Thursday released a $6.8 trillion budget that puts higher taxes on the rich, targets corporations and gives a huge injection of funding for social programs such as child care and paid family leave.
The plan includes raking in $5.5 trillion in tax revenues from the wealthiest Americans by raising the top rate for those making more than $400,000 from 39.6 percent from 37 percent and imposing a 25 percent minimum income tax on billionaires.
The president’s plan – which he says will reduce the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years – would also nearly double the capital gains tax rate for investment to 39.6 percent from 20 percent and raise income levies on corporations.
Enough for the largest peacetime budget in history has also been proposed – including $842 billion for the Pentagon, a 5.2 percent pay rise for troops, $6 billion in support for Ukraine and Europe and $37 billion on the nuclear weapons program.
There are also billions set aside for a 5.2 percent pay rise for federal workers, support for refugees, more offshore wind farms and a $25 billion investment in border security.
The huge budget is likely to be blocked in Congress, and Republicans have already called the plan ‘reckless’ and a ‘road map to fiscal ruin’.
Biden wants to Tax “Unrealized Capital Gains” this means no one will invest in the stock market. How could you buy a stock if it goes down you lose. If the stock goes up you pay taxes on it even if you don’t sell it? Ridiculous! 🤨 #Hannitypic.twitter.com/LnB9YZLrrb
Inflation was 1.4% when Biden took office. Now it’s 6.4%.
So how is President Biden going to help? By proposing a budget that calls for $6.8 trillion dollars in spending that even his tax increases can’t cover.
Biden’s New Tax Plan Would Raise Combined Top Tax Rates to Nearly 60% in Some States
“That means if you live in California, your combined state and federal would be 57.9%. And if you live in New York City, the city, state and federal would all add up to a top rate of 59.4%.” pic.twitter.com/iOnRrqe6Gq
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-11 16:53:122023-03-11 16:53:12BIDEN’S NEW TAX HELL: Proposes $5.5 TRILLION in Tax Hikes, LARGEST TAX INCREASE in History
A federal judge has struck down a Biden administration immigration policy that allows the release of illegal aliens at the border, saying it “effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand.”
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed the lawsuit in September 2021, arguing that Biden administration policies allowing the mass release of illegal aliens throughout the country—some of whom end up in Florida—violates law established by Congress that mandates detention upon entry. Judge T. Kent Wetherell ruled in favor of Florida, finding the administration’s Parole and Alternative to Detention (Parole + ATD) policy to be unlawful.
The policy, he said, turns the border into “little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country by prioritizing ‘alternatives to detention’ over actual detention and by releasing more than a million aliens into the country—on ‘parole’ or pursuant to the exercise of ‘prosecutorial discretion’ under a wholly inapplicable statute—without even initiating removal proceedings.”
Shortly after taking office, Biden took a series of actions to loosen immigration restrictions, including repealing President Trump’s Executive Order 13767 terminating the catch-and-release policy.
“Collectively, these actions were akin to posting a flashing ‘Come In, We’re Open’ sign on the southern border,” Judge T. Kent Wetherell wrote. “The unprecedented ‘surge’ of aliens that started arriving at the Southwest Border almost immediately after President Biden took office and that has continued unabated over the past two years was a predictable consequence of these actions.”
Evidence supports the fact that over 100,000 illegal aliens ended up in Florida, Wetherell said.
“Today’s ruling affirms what we have known all along, President Biden is responsible for the border crisis and his unlawful immigration policies make this country less safe,” Attorney General Moody said in a statement. “A federal judge is now ordering Biden to follow the law, and his administration should immediately begin securing the border to protect the American people.”
The Biden administration has seven days to appeal the ruling. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
https://t.co/GFFL7s2eVl BREAKING: AFL Sues DHS, Obtains Astounding Data: Barely One-Tenth of One Percent Of Illegal Minors DHS Let Into the United States Were Later Deported
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) March 9, 2023
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-09 16:52:062023-03-09 16:52:06Federal Judge Strikes Down Key Biden Border Policy: ‘Speedbump For Aliens’
Former U.S. Homeland Security Adviser Dr. Julia Nesheiwat joined ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ to discuss what the leaked climate memo indicates about the Biden administration’s priorities. NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
For at least the last 20 years, politicians in Washington, at the behest of green energy groups, have spent some $100 billion of taxpayer money to fight climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. How is that going for us so far?
A recent Associated Press story, based on the latest data on global carbon emissions, provides a pretty accurate report card: “Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reached a Record High in 2022.”
The article tells us: “Communities around the world emitted more carbon dioxide in 2022 than in any other year on records dating to 1900, a result of air travel rebounding from the pandemic and more cities turning to coal as a low-cost source of power. Emissions of the climate-warming gas that were caused by energy production grew 0.9% to reach 36.8 gigatons in 2022, the International Energy Agency reported Thursday. (The mass of one gigaton is equivalent to about 10,000 fully loaded aircraft carriers, according to NASA.)” placeholder
You’ve got to almost shriek out loud when you read this line: “Thursday’s (IEA) report was described as disconcerting by climate scientists.”
“Disconcerting”? That’s putting it lightly. We are the furthest thing from being climate change alarmists, but when you spend $100 billion of taxpayer money and achieve absolutely nothing, President Joe Biden and his green allies should be arrested for criminal fraud.
Where did all the money go? Tens of billions of dollars have lined the pockets of left-wing environmental and social justice groups that have been emitting a lot of hot air but no results. Green energy companies have milked taxpayers of tens of billions more.
Where did all the money go? Tens of billions of dollars have lined the pockets of left-wing environmental and social justice groups that have been emitting a lot of hot air but no results. Green energy companies have milked taxpayers of tens of billions more, even as wind and solar only produce about 12% of our energy.
Is this the greatest ripoff of U.S. taxpayers in history?
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-08 05:52:242023-03-08 05:52:24The Greatest Ripoff in American History: Democrats Spent $100 Billion of Your Money on Climate Hoax
Rabbi Eitan Shnerb was hiking to a spring with his son Dvir and his daughter Rina when the bomb went off. For a moment, as he described it in the hospital, everything went black. Then, badly wounded, he saw that the two teenagers were bleeding. Rabbi Shnerb was a trained paramedic. He saw that Rina, his 17-year-old daughter, had absorbed most of the blast. He kissed her on the forehead. And then he turned his Tzizit, the biblical garment that Orthodox Jewish men wear, into a tourniquet for his 19-year-old son to stop the bleeding.
Dvir told his father that he couldn’t breathe and passed out. His daughter was already dead.
“I wanted to believe it was just a dream,” Rabbi Shnerb said from his hospital bed. “I have experienced several bombs in my life and been saved, thank God, but this one got us,..I immediately called to Rina, shouting ‘Rina, Rina,’ I looked down and saw that she was not alive.”
Rabbi Shnerb had stopped a terrorist attack earlier this year by two armed attackers. This time he had not seen the explosion coming.
The terrorist group behind the 2019 terrorist attack was the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And the IRS is accused of allowing it to fundraise through a leftist nonprofit group.
One name that keeps coming up in the Freedom Center’s investigations of nonprofits is the Alliance for Global Justice. AFGJ was spun off from the Nicaragua Network which had been set up to support the Sandinista Marxist terror regime. It went on to operate the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign in support of the narcosocialist Maduro regime in that country.
While the IRS has harassed pro-Israel groups and interrogated them about their views, it has apparently never found the time to ask the AFGJ about its support for enemy nations. It currently features a commemoration of Chavez’s legacy in support of a regime whose bosses are wanted criminals for their role in a cartel smuggling cocaine into the United States.
AFGJ’s backers include George Soros, Tides, the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, and other wealthy leftists, and it has used its status as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to offer fiscal sponsorship to some of the worst of the worst close to home. The 130 groups it sponsors include several Black Lives Matter chapters, the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition in support of a cop killer, pro-illegal alien groups, as well as several brail funds whose mission is freeing rioters and criminals.
Some of these groups might not be able to obtain nonprofit status on their own, but benefit from the fiscal sponsorship of the Alliance for Global Justice.which allows them to accept tax-deductible contributions. When Refuse Fascism, a group linked by some to Antifa and which has defended Antifa violence, solicits donations, it does so using the Action Network, a platform utilized by both Antifa and the DNC, and directs tax-deductible donations through AFGJ.
The same is true of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network which asks supporters to direct checks to AFGJ. Samidoun does not bother to disguise what it is. It describes terrorists as “resistance fighters” and “martyrs”, and urges support for the “resistance”. The cheerleading for terrorists is accompanied by a call, “Make your US tax-deductible donation today, and donate safely and securely from around the world.”
The AFGJ states that, “Fiscal sponsorship services are offered to grassroots non-profits that agree with the AFGJ vision and mission statements.” Does that include terrorists?
After the murder of Rina Shnerb, Israel arrested members of a PFLP terror network embedded inside nonprofit groups. Israel designated Samidoun as a subsidiary of the PFLP terrorist organization. Multiple PFLP figures have been accused of serving leadership roles in Samidoun including its executive director, former vice chair, and multiple coordinators.
PayPal, MasterCard, Visa and other financial services have cut off access to Samidoun and the latest also cut off AFGJ. Currently, AFGJ and its various sponsorees warn donors that they can only take paper checks.
“AfGJ cannot accept credit donations—and neither can the 140 organizations that rely on AfGJ to provide them with fiscal sponsorship,” the leftist group cautions.
While AFGJ is running low on online sites willing to process donations to them, the IRS has yet to take any action. The Zachor Legal Institute, a pro-Israel group fighting BDS, filed an IRS complaint and directed a letter to the DOJ noting that the “PFLP has built a financial system supported by an infrastructure of the Seven PFLP Proxies who raise money on various humanitarian pretexts” while “directing money to the PFLP.”
And yet the odds of the IRS taking action are slim. Even though the PFLP was designated as one of the terrorist groups listed by President George W. Bush after September 11, it was less difficult for Zachor and conservative media to persuade financial services companies to stop processing donations for AFGJ than to get the IRS to enforce tax code regulations and the law.
AFGJ informed the IRS that its mission is to “achieve social change and economic justice”. In reality it has helped unleash violence at home and abroad. The beneficiaries include BLM’s Louisville Community Bail Fund which bailed out Quintez Brown, a Black Lives Matter activist, who walked into the campaign office of a Louisville political candidate and opened fire.
While payment processors have cut off the Alliance for Global Justice, the IRS has yet to act. After over two decades, the IRS has shown no interest in taking action even as the AFGJ continues to act as a fiscal sponsor for groups that would not qualify for nonprofit status. The fiscal sponsorship loophole continues to be abused to fund everything including terrorism.
The Freedom Center’s pamphlet, Internal Radical Service by David Horowitz and John Perazzo, has exposed how the IRS routinely allows leftist nonprofits to violate tax codes and the law. The fiscal sponsorship loophole is widely used by radical leftists to make illegal activity tax deductible. Tax code regulations state that “exempt purposes may generally be equated with the public good, and violations of law are the antithesis of the public good”. They warn that, “violation of constitutionally valid laws is inconsistent with exemption under IRC 501(c)(3)” and that “planned activities that violate laws are not in furtherance of a charitable purpose”.
Terrorism is one of the most blatant possible examples of behavior at odds with the public good.
While the IRS is warning waiters to report their tips, it allows terrorists to benefit from tax deductible money. Payment processors have shown that they have a higher level of compliance with the law than the IRS. When the IRS refuses to enforce the law while demanding that everyone abide by it, that is a culture of lawlessness and, in this case, it’s costing lives.
Order David Horowitz’s and John Perazzo’s new booklet: “Internal Radical Service: Abuse Of Taxpayer Dollars To Advance Leftwing Causes Illegally And Unconstitutionally”: CLICK HERE.
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-07 17:51:522023-03-07 17:51:52IRS Allows Islamic Terrorists to Fundraise Through Leftist Nonprofit
Ohio residents were ordered to shelter in place Saturday after another Norfolk Southern train ran off the tracks.
The 212-car train derailed at Ohio 41 near the Prime Ohio Business Park in Springfield around 5 p.m., the Clark County Emergency Management said.
About 20 of the train’s box cars toppled off the tracks while it was traveling through the city.
A spokesperson confirmed with The Post that Norfolk Southern — the same railway company involved in the tragic East Palestine derailment that contaminated 1.1 million gallons of water and 15,000 pounds of soil — was operating the derailed train.
“No hazardous materials are involved and there have been no reported injuries,” the company said.
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In 2024, a smarter, more experienced, and more organized President Trump will use the same election tactics employed by the Democrats. He will will not be caught flat-footed like he did in 2020. He will be ready #Trump2024!
President Donald Trump made a vow to Americans on Truth Social on Sunday, noting that there was an ongoing effort to “steal” the next presidential election, and promising to prevent overwhelming corruption in 2024.
“Crooked Democrat Prosecutors, many of them Racists in Reverse, are trying to steal a second Presidential Election,” Trump wrote. “They did it in 2020, and we’re not going to let them do it again in 2024. MAGA!!!”
Trump lays election integrity game plan for 2024: ‘we’re going to have to fight like hell’https://t.co/aV5OglRMsU
Last November, President Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidency. However, he has routinely addressed the underlying issue of election fraud since 2020.
Per RSBN, Trump recently touched on the subject during a question and answer session at Club 47 in West Palm Beach, Florida.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-04 15:51:132023-03-04 15:51:13TRUMP: ‘We’re Not Going To Let Them’ Steal The Election in 2024
Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal is the ultimate example of a skilled novelist manipulating readers to suspend what they know is true and believe something else entirely. Yet, as with hypnotism, the human mind must be willing to permit the “suspension of disbelief.” As we shall see, this “willingness” was manipulated by unscrupulous political actors to create The Crime of the Century.
A recent example is the willingness of so many people to believe that Covid 19 came innocently from live bats sold in a local wet market rather than from a ChiCom bio-research laboratory in Wuhan, China. When President Trump opined Covid 19 came from Wuhan China, the MSM called him a xenophobic racist. Recently, President Trump was proven correct when FBI Director Wray told Congress the FBI had long known Covid 19 came from the Wuhan lab.
Although President Trump was proven correct, History is replete with tragic examples of people in power unwilling to accept the truth when indisputable facts were at hand. For example: Long after an Hungarian doctor, Ignatz Semmelweis, proved, in 1847, that childbed fever could be prevented by simply requiring hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics, it took until 1995 before the CDC recommended that healthcare providers clean their hands before and after treating patients.
In 1900, Major Walter Reed and Major William Gorgas stopped the Yellow Fever pandemic in Cuba by eradicating the female Aedes Aegypti mosquito. Still, in 1905, the U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission refused to support the efforts of, by then, Colonel William Gorgas to eradicate the female Aedes Aegypti mosquito and the female Anopheles mosquito that transmits malaria.
Outraged, President Teddy Roosevelt “reorganized” the Commission and pledged his full support for Colonel Gorgas’ mosquito eradication efforts. Without Roosevelt’s timely intervention, there would not be a Panama Canal, only the debris left behind by the French whose canal workforce was wiped out by Yellow Fever and Malaria.
Recall, in 2020, President Trump said hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) showed promise as a treatment for Covid 19. Immediately, Big Pharma and the MSM denounced HCQ as irrelevant and even harmful despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of GIs in Vietnam had, without harm, taken a stronger version of HCQ to ward off malaria. Early use of the inexpensive HCQ Cocktail against Covid 19 could have saved the lives of millions.
Instead, around the world millions died of Covid 19, a thriving U.S. economy was wrecked; riots broke out unchecked in our major cities whose “woke” mobs reviled Police and First Responders alike. Existentially worse, millions of Americans were forced to submit to injections of gene-altering vaccines that are causing serious health problems for many, even death for some, and may end up poisoning our gene pool for generations to come.
Now is the time to disbelieve the male bovine excreta of the politically biased MSM, the inept NIH/CDC, and greedy Big Pharma. Together, they subjected America to a mass Dr. Mengele-style experiment that is a crime against humanity, a crime that should be addressed by a Nuremberg-style tribunal and the perpetrators brought to Justice.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-03 14:51:202023-03-03 14:51:20Covid-19: The Crime of the Century
By: Justin Cooper, American Military news, February 28, 2023:
A memo issued Feb. 10 said it is no longer acceptable for troops to carry the U.S. flag horizontally, such as on the field at sporting events, or for the flag to land on the ground after flying behind a parachutist, Stars and Stripes reported.
The memo bars uniformed troops from directly participating in the “unfurling, holding, and/or carrying of giant horizontal U.S. flags.” It also prohibits military jump teams from using the flag in their performances if it “cannot be caught reliably and handled respectfully by ground personnel.”
“In recent years, some sporting events have asked military members to hold large, horizontal flags during events, and some military units have carried them in parades,” DoD spokesperson Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman said in a statement. “While many, including service members, find these events moving and patriotic, according to the code, the flag should never touch the ground or be carried flat or horizontally.“
Title 4 of the United States Code, also known as the Flag Code, specifies that “the flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.” That section also states that “the flag should never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground.”
The new memo was sent to military public affairs offices. Chris Meagher, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, encouraged “public affairs officers to work with sponsors of community events to develop other ways to showcase the patriotism and capabilities of our military that comply with DoD policy.”
The Pentagon also revisited flag rules in 2020, when Secretary of Defense Mark Esper issued a military-wide policy specifying which flags can be flown at military installations, buildings and vehicles. That policy was seen as prohibiting the flying of Confederate flags without specifically naming them, as reported by Stars and Stripes.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-03-01 11:51:322023-03-01 11:51:32Pentagon Asks Troops to Stop Displaying Big U.S. Flags
I hate even repeating this ignorant idea, but people should know what the left thinks we should all be doing if we want to save money. For instance, Democrats are blaming the ‘poor’ (Also known as the lower and middle class—Basically the rest of us) for inflation. According to them, Americans are only spending money on essentials and that’s driving up inflation.
Now, the Wall Street Journal suggests Americans skip a meal to save money. I want to believe this article was satirical but given the current climate, it’s poorly curated.
A joke or not WSJ said that because egg price increases were the worst, Americans should just skip that meal completely:
“Several breakfast staples saw sharp price increases due to a perfect storm of bad weather and disease outbreaks—and continued effects from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Egg prices increased 8.5% in January from a month earlier and are up 70.1% over the past year, the highest annual rate since 1973. The deadliest avian-influenza outbreak on record has devastated poultry flocks across the U.S., leading the price of eggs to rise more than any other grocery item in 2022, according to Information Resources Inc. U.S. egg inventories were 29% lower in the final week of December 2022 than at the beginning of 2022, according to the USDA.
Frozen, noncarbonated juices and drinks—a category that includes frozen orange juice—rose by 1.5% in January from a month earlier, and the 12.4% annual increase is the highest in over a decade. Florida orange growers are harvesting their smallest crop in nearly 90 years, the result of a freeze, two hurricanes and a citrus disease that is laying waste to its groves.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-02-23 16:51:172023-02-23 16:51:17Media Says Americans Should Just Skip Meals To Cut High Grocery Bills
Although the U.S. has already implemented a governmentwide plan to advance racial equity and support underserved communities under a 2021 Biden executive order, the president has issued a second directive to strong arm federal agencies into launching more initiatives that will further tax Americans. Under the recently issued mandate government agencies have 30 days to establish an “Agency Equity Team” and conduct proactive engagement with members of underserved communities through culturally and linguistically appropriate listening sessions. Biden is also creating a White House Steering Committee on Equity composed of senior officials who will coordinate the government’s sweeping efforts to promote his leftist agenda.
“By advancing equity, the Federal Government can support and empower all Americans, including the many communities in America that have been underserved, discriminated against, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality,” Biden writes in the new document, adding that “equitability” will rebuild trust in government. “This order builds upon my previous equity-related Executive Orders by extending and strengthening equity-advancing requirements for agencies, and it positions agencies to deliver better outcomes for the American people,” according to the president. As examples the commander-in-chief offers building a strong, fair, and inclusive workforce and economy, investing in communities where federal policies have historically impeded equal opportunity, mitigating economic displacement, rooting out discrimination in the housing market, advancing equity in health, environmental justice and ending “unjust disparities” in the nation’s criminal justice system.
Additionally, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will update directives to “support equitable decision-making, promote equitable deployment of financial and technical assistance, and assist agencies in advancing equity, as appropriate and wherever possible,” the new executive order says. This is important because OMB plays a pivotal role in government by developing and executing the federal budget, overseeing federal agencies and executive branch operations, and coordinating all significant federal regulations. The new order also includes a blueprint to make equity part of the official federal budget process and specifically prevent discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. “My Administration has embedded a focus on equity into the fabric of Federal policymaking and service delivery,” Biden writes, bragging that his presidency is the most diverse in our nation’s history.
This month’s executive order is part of a robust movement by the administration to incorporate racial equity across all federal agencies. The president launched the plan on his first day in office with the lengthy executive order to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities through the government. The 2021 document claims that “entrenched disparities” in laws, public policies, and private institutions have denied equal opportunity to individuals and communities and that the health and climate crises have exposed inequities while a “historic movement for justice has highlighted the unbearable human costs of systemic racism.” Therefore, the original order states, the federal government should pursue a “comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.” It further says that “by advancing equity across the Federal Government, we can create opportunities for the improvement of communities that have been historically underserved, which benefits everyone.”
Many key federal agencies have taken major steps to implement racial equity plans as per Biden’s first mandate. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has formulated a strategy to “advance equity for marginalized and underserved communities” that, among other things, directs federal prosecutors to ignore maximum sentencing under the law to “avoid unwarranted disparities.” The Department of Labor has dedicated $260 million to promote “equitable access” to government unemployment benefits by addressing disparities in the administration and delivery of money by race ethnicity and language proficiency. The Treasury Department named its first ever racial equity chief, a veteran La Raza official who spent a decade at the nation’s most influential open borders group. The Department of Defense (DOD) is using outrageous anti-bias materials that indoctrinate troops with anti-American and racially inflammatory training on diversity topics. The U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) created an equity commission to address longstanding inequities in agriculture. The nation’s medical research agency has a special minority health and health disparities division that issued a study declaring COVID-19 exacerbated preexisting resentment against racial/ethnic minorities and marginalized communities.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-02-23 04:51:132023-02-23 04:51:13Biden Issues Second Executive Order to ‘Further’ Advance Governmentwide Racial Equity
The Democrats are targeting critical thinkers, free thinkers and individuals who understand and cherish their individual rights enshrined in our beloved Constitution.
The U.S. government has been secretly tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, as well as those who aren’t up to date on their shots. Worse, it is recording the reason why. Now that the program has been widely adopted, know why it’s being done and how you can outsmart it.
Story at a Glance
The U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program designed by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The program was implemented on April 1, 2022, and adopted by most medical clinics and hospitals across the United States starting January 2023. Under this program, doctors at clinics and hospitals have been instructed to ask patients about their vaccination status, which is then added to their electronic medical records as a diagnostic code, known as ICD-10 code, so that they can be tracked inside and outside of the medical system. These new ICD-10 codes are part of the government’s plan to implement medical tyranny using vaccine passports and digital IDs. The government is also tracking noncompliance with all other recommended vaccines using new ICD-10 codes, and has implemented codes to describe WHY you didn’t get a recommended vaccine. It’s also added a billable ICD code for “vaccine safety counseling.”
As recently discovered and reported by Dr. Robert Malone,1 the U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program designed by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The program was implemented on April 1, 2022,2 but didn’t become universally adopted by most medical clinics and hospitals across the United States until January 2023.
Under this program, doctors at clinics and hospitals have been instructed to ask patients about their vaccination status, which is then added to their electronic medical records as a diagnostic code, known as ICD-10 code, without their knowledge or consent so that they can be tracked—not just within the health care system but outside of it as well. Secret Tracking Program Revealed
The new International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes were introduced during the Sept. 14–15, 2021, ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting. The ICD committee includes representatives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the NCHS.3
Below is a screenshot of page 194 of the agenda4 distributed during that meeting. According to the NCHS, “there is interest in being able to track people who are not immunized or only partially immunized,” and they figured out a way to do just that, by adding new ICD-10 codes.
As you can see below, ICD-10 code Z28.310 identifies those who have not received a COVID jab and Z28.311 identifies those who are not up to date on their shots.
Tracking Unjabbed Is Part of the Biosecurity Agenda
Why do they want to track the unvaccinated? For what purpose? The short answer: to facilitate the implementation of vaccine passports. As noted by Malone:5
“Code Number Z28.310 listed above is not a code for an illness or diagnosis, but rather for noncompliance of a medical procedure … Once a person’s vaccination status is coded and uploaded into [a] large data base, it can be accessed by government and private health insurers alike.
“The administrative state officers at the CDC have not made immunization status a reportable disease (yet) but immunization status is listed as one of the reasons for mandatory reporting.6 They are just one step away from being able to collect this information without your permission. Ergo: Vaccine passports made easy. In this country, not having your vaccine records ‘up to date’ might mean:
“• The government will not restrict your travel, airlines will.
“• The government will not restrict your travel, other nations will.
“• The government will not restrict your travel, auto rental companies will.
“• The government will not restrict your travel, public transport will.
“• The government will not restrict your travel, private companies will.” World Health Organization Signed Off on Tracking Codes
The ICD codes were created by the World Health Organization (WHO), and doctors—except those in private practice who don’t accept insurance—are required to use these codes to describe a patient’s condition and the care they received during their visit.
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Asked if DeSantis poses a real threat to Democrats if he ends up being the Republican presidential nominee, Whitmer replied, “I don’t really know Ron DeSantis, so it’s hard for me to say anything real substantiative, other than I’ll say this – when I took my oath of office, I took an oath to be the governor for all of the people of Michigan. I don’t wage culture wars. I fight culture wars because I’m focused on solving problems. I think it’s incredibly destructive when people just try to pit others against one another, stoke fear. I think that’s a really destructive way to lead. And so that, you know, we’ll watch and see what happens. As I said, I don’t know him.”
Host propagandist Jake Tapper said, “You just described him, in your view.”
The COVID lockdown queen Whitmer said, “I think that there are people who are out there that stoke fear and anger and misinformation to help themselves politically. And I’m not saying, you know, who I think falls into that category. I’m just saying, that’s not how I operate. Every governor takes an oath to serve all the people in their state, whether they voted for them or not. That’s what should drive every decision.”
The Democrats fear DeSantis precisely because he is effective at pushing back in the culture war that the Democrats themselves started and have been waging for half a century.
Portraying Her Critics As Racists, Neo-Nazis, & Vigilantes
On May 1, 2020, Whitmer announced that her stay-at-home order would remain in effect through May 15, and she also declared a new 28-day state of emergency for her state. When hundreds of demonstrators subsequently gathered in Lansing to protest the governor’s ongoing emergency measures, the governor characterized the demonstrators as racists, neo-Nazis, and vigilantes:
“So, unfortunately right now in Michigan we see a small number of people – it looks large on television. But when you think about this is a state of 10 million people, this is a small contingent that came out and made political statements. They carried nooses and confederate flags and swastikas. And yet, while we’re focusing on their carrying – their open carrying automatic rifles, that is legal in Michigan. It is not advisable…. [T]he fact of the matter is, that kind of rhetoric, that kind of ugly political rallying is only making it harder for us to re-engage, which is the sad irony, is that demonstrations like that create the need to continue this aggressive stance that we’ve had to take to save lives.”
A pediatric gender clinic is under criminal investigation after a whistleblower charged the center with potentially defrauding Medicaid and private insurance to prescribe transgender hormones to children as young as 11. The sworn affidavit states the St. Louis facility administered cross-sex hormones to mentally ill children, sometimes against their parents’ wishes, and ignored children’s worsening physical and mental health conditions — including at least one suicidal teenager.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) announced Thursday night that his office and two other agencies had opened an investigation into The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “We have received disturbing allegations that individuals at the Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital have been harming hundreds of children each year, including by using experimental drugs on them,” said Bailey, citing an affidavit from a former employee, who switched to another area of the hospital after becoming convinced the center is permanently hurting the people it swears to help.
The whistleblower, Jamie Reed, describes herself as “a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders.” She says she is married to a woman who identifies as a male and affirms, “I support trans rights.” Reed details in her affidavit and in an article at Bari Weiss’ website, The Free Press, that she began working as an idealistic case manager at the center in 2018. By the time she left last November, she left convinced the center’s actions are “morally and medically appalling” — and is likely a systemic problem in the nation’s 100 pediatric gender clinics. “By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm,’” she wrote.
“I was struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment,” said Reed. Yet she kept her concerns private for months, because “anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe.”
Reed states the center provides outside psychiatrists with a “template” form letter attesting that a child identifies as transgender. If the analyst will not sign it, the center uses in-house psychiatrists, Dr. Dr. Alex Maixner and Dr. Sarah Girresch-Ward, to confirm a child’s “gender dysphoria” after a one-to-two-hour consultation, rather than a full 10-12 hour assessment. They then begin children on a pipeline that results in lifelong hormones and potentially permanently disfiguring surgery before the age of 18.
She exposed potential perjury, as surgeons at the center testified before the Missouri legislature that transgender surgeries for minors are not “on the table” at their center. “This was a lie,” said Reed in the affidavit. She said the center claimed it provided minors with referrals to surgeons who are willing to remove teenagers’ healthy breasts and genitals “for educational purposes,” but they “were in fact referrals.” And Dr. Allison Snyder-Warwick performed at least one gender transition surgery in the hospital, apparently contradicting the doctors’ testimony.
Doctors at the center prescribed teenagers the prostate cancer medication Bicalutamide, which she says caused liver toxicity in a 15-year-old boy. (His mother agreed not to sue the center but warned her son’s condition “could be a huge PR problem.”) She related horrifying tales of physical and mental harm, including a graphic description of intense vaginal bleeding caused by the side effects of “gender-affirming care.”
Reed paints the picture of a center ignoring the real needs of its patients, and the real harms inflicted by the transgender regimen, in order to maximize its profits.
“[N]early all children who came to the Center here presented with very serious mental health problems,” including autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, trauma histories, OCD, and serious eating disorders, she said. Some erroneously identified as suffering from other psychosomatic maladies, such as Tourette Syndrome or blindness. “Privately,” the doctors recognized their other psychosomatic illnesses reflected “social contagion” … but not their gender dysphoria, even when groups came from the same high school. Others used pronouns identifying as a “mushroom” or a “rock”; one patient told employees she identified as a “communist, attack helicopter, human, female, maybe non-binary.” Despite these serious issues, the center “would not treat these mental health issues. Instead, children were automatically given puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.”
The center also ignored indications of parental coercion of physical abuse, Reed said. In one case, a parent was “forcing” a boy to dress as a female, but the center administered cross-sex hormones, as well. In another, a 17-year-old boy brought to the center by an unrelated male and given hormones upon turning 18. His mental health deteriorated, yet staffers continued administering hormones — even after it turned out the man who brought him to the facility “had been sexually and physically abusing” him.
The experimental nature of many of these drugs set children up for a lifetime of infertility, early menopause, bone thinning, and — contrary to their advertisements — worsened mental health. “I witnessed the Center cause permanent harm to many of the patients,” said Reed. “I doubt that any parent who’s ever consented to give their kid testosterone (a lifelong treatment) knows that they’re also possibly signing their kid up for blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, and perhaps sleep apnea and diabetes.” She added “clinics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals.”
When parents or doctors would describe worsening mental health outcomes, the center ignored them and continued the hormones, she said. One mother, in a letter revoking consent for her son to receive hormone blockers, said her child “is a shell of his former self riddled with anxiety.”
The center even ignored pleas that their actions might contribute to a potential suicide. In one case, “a psychiatrist called the Center’s endocrinologist and explained that a child, who had already tried to commit suicide by threatening to jump off a roof, should not be given cross-sex hormones because the child was struggling with serious mental health issues,” Reed attested. “I witnessed the endocrinologist yell at the psychiatrist on the phone and speak down to this provider.”
“The Center never discontinues cross-sex hormones, no matter the outcome,” she said.
The center’s actions often lead to lifelong regret, Reed noted. A black teenager from a troubled family began receiving hormones at the facility at age 16 and had a double mastectomy at age 18. Three months later, she told the surgeon she would return to her birth gender, adding, “I want my breasts back” and asked a surgeon to have them “put back on.” Reed wrote, “The last I heard, she was pregnant. Of course, she’ll never be able to breastfeed her child.”
These are the same concerns that motivated Chloe Cole, the teenage detransitioner who now embraces her biological identity, as nearly nine out of 10 children with dysphoria eventually do. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully carry a child,” she told Florida legislators last July. “And because I do not have my breasts … I am not able to breastfeed whatever future children I have. That realization actually was one of the biggest things that lead to me realizing that this was not the path that I should have taken.” She’s now suing the Permanente Medical Group and the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan for breaching appropriate standards of care.
Even removing parental consent was not enough to stop the ideologically motivated doctors at the center according to Reed, who testified, “On several occasions, the doctors have continued prescribing medical transition even when a parent stated that they were revoking consent.”
The center also fudged the billing codes for many of these prescriptions, Reed said, sending erroneous invoices to private insurance and sometimes state or federal programs. Employees falsely claimed that one child who received puberty blockers was experiencing precocious puberty, Reed wrote.
The whistleblower’s comments have triggered a statewide investigation from the Missouri attorney general, the Missouri Department of Social Services, and the Division of Professional Registration. Sheila Solon, the director of the Division of Professional Registration, promised her agency will “take any necessary action against the licenses” of Missouri doctors involved in the center’s work that violates the “health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of Missouri.”
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-02-13 22:51:252023-02-13 22:51:25St. Louis Transgender Clinic Under Investigation for Using Experimental Drugs on Kids, Medicaid Fraud
By: Shaee Prejo, Big League Politics, February 1, 2023:
DeSantis is making the capitulation even as he and RINO Republican leaders in the state claim that they are punishing Disney – the exact opposite of what is happening.
“The bill maintains the current tax-exempt status of property of the district and bonds issued by the district,” the analysis of DeSantis’ measure states.
DeSantis is using sleight of hand to claim he is cracking down on Disney when he is really giving them what they want and enabling Disney’s campaign contributions to fill Republican coffers in the years to come.
DeSantis’ Disney punishment bill advances.
Proponents say it’ll “even the playing field” for other companies.
I asked the House bill sponsor what would change in what Disney’s special district is currently doing.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-02-13 22:51:242023-02-13 22:51:24DECEIT: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Caves to Woke Disney, Pushes Bill to Quietly Restore Special Tax Breaks
The Cost of Ignorant ‘Expert’ Policy Makers During COVID.
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
The Cochrane Library recently updated its 2020 systematic review of physical interventions to reduce respiratory illnesses. The update included an additional 11 randomized controlled trials, bringing the total number of RCTs included to 78
As in its 2020 review, they found no evidence to support the use of surgical face masks or N95 respirators to prevent influenza or COVID-19 infection
The relative risk reduction of using surgical masks in the general population (within hospitals and communities at large) to reduce symptoms of flu-like/COVID-like illness (not lab confirmed) was a statistically insignificant 0.95
The same goes for reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza and COVID. Here, the relative risk reduction was 1.01 with a confidence interval of 0.72 to 1.42. In other words, it’s a wash. On average, it raises your risk of lab-confirmed infection by 1%. Range-wise, it may lower your risk by 28% or raise it by as much as 42%
The review also found “no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators”
The question of whether we should wear face masks or not to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been a hotly contested issue ever since our so-called health authorities came out with the recommendation in early 2020. Some of us were quick to point out the obvious, namely that masks cannot filter out viruses due to the virus being far smaller than the holes in the fabric.
Surgical masks have only ever been used to prevent droplets of saliva to drip into open wounds during surgery, potentially causing an infection. That’s all they were ever designed to do.
Numerous studies looking at mask-wearing during cold and flu season in years past came up empty, showing masks are not a viable prevention method. Yet the narrative we were fed was that masks will somehow prevent respiratory infection, and not wearing one meant you had no regard for the health and safety of others.
Never mind the fact that a healthy person cannot transmit disease in the first place. The asymptomatic spread fallacy was still used to reinforce the idea that everyone had to wear a mask, regardless of whether they were ill or not. You couldn’t even debate the issue. The propaganda angle was the only viewpoint allowed to circulate.
Today, three years later, mask policies are cropping up yet again, especially in schools,1 and health care facilities. In December 2022, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) submitted a final rule to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and Office of Management and Budget for review which, if approved and implemented, would make universal masking in health care facilities a PERMANENT rule.
The largest nursing union in the U.S., National Nurses United, is also pushing to include permanent rules for “screening and testing of patients, visitors and staff, measures ensuring optimal PPE, exposure notifications for healthcare workers and paid leave for those exposed or infected with COVID-19,” according to Health Care Dive.2 All of this despite the fact that the scientific underpinnings are now even shakier than they were in 2020.
The AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) is even going so far as to claim mask wearing can help prevent heart attacks!3 Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo had the following to say about the AARP’s attempt to invent benefits for mask wearers:4
Gold-Standard Scientific Review Published
The latest of these studies is a meta-analysis and systematic review by the Cochrane Library,5,6,7,8,9 an independent research organization that has been reviewing the use of physical interventions to reduce respiratory illnesses since 2010.10
Cochrane reviews have long been recognized as the gold standard in evidence-based health care as their analyses look at the whole body of published science, and every few years, reviews are updated to include the latest research findings.
For example, reports on “Physical Interventions to Interrupt or Reduce the Spread of Respiratory Viruses” were published in 2010, 2011, 2020 and January 30, 2023.
In the video above, Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist, health researcher and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, reviews11 the latest Cochrane review, which added 11 new randomized controlled trials (RTCs) and cluster-RCTs to their previous 2020 analysis.
That brings the total number of RCTs included in the systematic review to 78. Six of the 11 new RCTs were conducted during the COVID pandemic and looked at the spread of COVID-19 specifically.
Still No Evidence to Back Surgical Mask Recommendations
The Cochrane investigators concluded that, while there’s “uncertainty about the effects of face masks” due to trial bias and low adherence by participants, the pooled results of randomized controlled trials (RTCs) “did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks.” Here’s an excerpt from the review:12
“Medical or surgical masks — Ten studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers.
Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu‐like illness/COVID‐like illness (9 studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 13,919 people).”
The relative risk reduction of using surgical masks in the general population (within hospitals and communities at large) to reduce symptoms of flu-like/COVID-like illness (not lab confirmed) was 0.95.
A value below 1 indicates the intervention improved outcomes, whereas a value above 1 shows it made it worse. So, here, surgical masks was associated with a relative risk reduction of 5%.
However, it’s not statistically significant, as the confidence interval ranges from 0.84 to 1.09.13 So, it may lower your risk by as much as 16% or raise it by 9%. As noted by Prasad, the most accurate way to describe this finding is that “we have not proven there is an effect.”
This is conclusive … This is the reality … You just don’t have credible evidence [for masking], and the science didn’t change … This is what the science has always shown. ~ Dr. Vinay Prasad
The same goes for reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza and COVID. Here, the relative risk reduction was 1.01 with a confidence interval of 0.72 to 1.42. In other words, it’s a complete wash. On average, it raises your risk of lab-confirmed infection by 1%. Range-wise, it may lower your risk by 28% or raise it by as much as 42%.
So, masking really has no effect on confirmed infection rates (which, by the way, is more important than reports of perceived symptoms). As noted by the authors, the analysis “suggests that wearing a medical/surgical mask probably makes little or no difference compared to not wearing a mask for this outcome.”
“This is conclusive,” Prasad says. “This is the reality … You just don’t have credible evidence [for masking], and I want to tell you this: The science didn’t change … This is what the science has always shown.”
The review also found “no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators.” As detailed by the authors:14
“N95/P2 respirators — Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu‐like illness (5 studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people).”
Public Health Experts Simply Lied
So, in conclusion, none of the new studies that were added made one iota of difference. Masks were unable to prevent influenza transmission before the pandemic, and they still fail to prevent respiratory infections, be it the flu or COVID.
But, if there was no evidence to back masking in the first place, how did we end up with mask mandates? In short, our public health authorities started lying. As noted by Prasad: “Anthony Fauci told the truth on ’60 Minutes’ — the first time. The second time when he said you have to wear a cloth mask … he was lying.”
Yet somehow, they managed to convince everyone that the truth was the lie and the lie was the truth.
A clip from Fauci’s “60 Minutes” appearance is featured in “The Jimmy Dore Show” video above, as are some of his later public announcements where he suddenly promotes mask wearing and defends mask mandates.
Population-Wide Mask Mandates ‘Never Made Sense’
In a February 3, 2023, article in The Spectator,15 lead author Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan, director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and former editor-in-chief of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, explained why the 2020 Cochrane review was unable to influence public health policy on masking:
“This is the second update of the review since the start of the pandemic. The first update was delayed by seven months due to unexplained editorial decisions. It was too late when it came out in November 2020 to make a difference to national COVID policy; by then, activism, low-quality observational evidence and government policy had set the agenda for mask mandates, and the damage had been done.
Often these government policies relied on observational studies on mask usage and the spread of COVID. But there are lots of flaws in observational evidence.
For example, in the absence of a study protocol setting out methods before the study is done, it is possible to shift the dates of an observational analysis to suit the rise and fall in infections. So if you time your analysis near the peak of infections, the results will favor mask interventions as the infection rate quickly decreases.
But when we pointed out in November 202016 the troubling lack of robust evidence on face masks and the problems with observational studies, we were shouted down, removed from Facebook and put on the government’s secret watchlist …
Mandates that affected the whole population never made sense … even in high adherence populations such as Japan, they have not stemmed an inevitable rise in infections. Part of the problem may be that during the pandemic the government had to be seen to be doing something. Interventions like handwashing and vaccines are invisible, but masks acted as a visible sign of compliance.
What we have witnessed in this pandemic are strong beliefs about what works and what doesn’t … Several policies such as mask mandates, restrictions, and unproven interventions now seem absurd in hindsight. And as the culture of fear has lifted, the population has become all too aware of their detrimental effects.
We failed to follow an evidence-based approach during the pandemic. We are now left with the human, social and economic aftermath of evidence-free policies.”
Public Health Agencies ‘Steeped in Failure’
As noted by Prasad in an accompanying Substack post:17
“Who should we be angry with? Obviously there is a class of twitter expert that doesn’t understand how to read evidence. Some of them have even been promoted to be deans for public health schools. So much for public health.
But the real failure is NIAID [National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] and CDC [U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. It is Tony Fauci.
Fauci controlled NIAID budget. He could have run 10 RCTs of masking — different masks, different ages, different settings. He chose to run zero. Instead he went on TV 1,000 times and lied about effectiveness of cloth masks …
CDC and AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] are also steeped in failure. These agency forced 2 year olds to mask. Against the advice of the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
The Cochrane review fails to identify any data that pertains to 2 year olds. The CDC should be ashamed of themselves. Tens of thousands of people working from home, and no one inside the organization with the ability to stop this policy.”
Scientists Censored by Propagandists
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this masking debacle has been the massive censorship and shutting down of healthy scientific debate, not just among laypeople but among scientists themselves.
Only the yes-men were ever given room to air their perfectly scripted views, while those who had concerns were silenced, regardless of their credentials. YouTube even censored a roundtable discussion with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and several medical experts. Why? Because in multiple instances, the doctors said children didn’t need to wear masks, and this position violated YouTube’s “COVID-19 medical misinformation” policy.
In a February 6 Substack article, Jefferson describes the propaganda effort to twist the findings of the 2023 Cochrane review on masking and other physical interventions against COVID-19:18
“We, the co-authors of the Cochrane review … have received several … ‘can I please check the main facts and, by the way, tell me what your review says because I cannot be bothered to do my job’ type of messages. However, we recently got another query … This request comes from a very powerful press syndicate:
‘I’m reaching out because I’ve been seeing some posts [links redacted by TJ] spreading widely on social media that seem to be misrepresenting the conclusions of your recently published study on physical interventions and respiratory viruses.
Do you think it is a misrepresentation to claim (as the tweets I link to above do) that your study definitively proves that masks don’t work in preventing the spread of viruses such as COVID-19 and the flu? If so, I’d be interested in debunking these claims to set the record straight and would love to speak with you more about the study.’
The disturbing aspect of this request is as follows: the stringer is making contact with one of us. After exchanging pleasantries, he/she will ask a few superfluous questions.
We have an abstract, a plain language summary, TTE [Trust the Evidence] posts and a podcast, and Carl and I have written a Spectator piece covering the review. If you are a real masochist, you can read all the 300-plus pages of the review …
So there is nothing to explain or fact-check. But the stringer is not really interested in checking facts. What they want to do is to write truthfully that they have spoken to one of us and then put the spin required in the release to ensure the ‘misinterpretation’ of twitterati is set straight. ‘Debunking’ is the term used, and it will be actioned if the stringer thinks the Twitterati have ‘misinterpreted’ our findings …
What disturbs me … is the idea of ‘debunking’ or ‘normalization’ of the information flow. We have done the tough work over two decades, reporting results separately from our interpretation, as in all Cochrane reviews. The studies’ results are the results reported by the authors of the single studies included in the reviews.
Our interpretation is one you can — and should if you want — challenge. However, successfully challenging our interpretation requires hard work, elbow grease, graft, focus, and application. So picking up the phone and speaking to someone, then deciding how to ‘debunk’ or normalize the message, is so much easier.
The reach of this particular press syndicate is global and powerful. I wonder why the stringer wanted to ‘debunk’ the interpretation of the twitterati mentioned in the text. To ensure ‘truth’ triumphed? Or to ensure no more waves in the official narratives were made by a bunch of academics or Twitter dwellers?”
While Jefferson now avoids interactions with the mainstream media, he did agree to an interview with investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi, which you can read here.19 He also granted an interview with Paul D. Thacker, which you can read on Thacker’s Substack.
Pro-Maskers Guilty of Creating Massive Pollution Problem
In addition to the many health problems associated with prolonged mask wearing, which I’ve addressed previously, mask policies have also created a massive pollution problem. Ironically, many pro-mask activists also claim to be environmentalists, yet they completely ignore the environmental effects of mask mandates.
According to UNICEF, the world used and discarded an estimated 2.4 billion masks in 2020.20 Another estimate, calculated by the University of Southern Denmark,21 put that number at 129 billion face masks EACH MONTH. As reported by Business Insider:22
“Since the very first lockdowns of 2020, these plastic-based coverings have … been an environmental disaster in the making … [The] rapid adoption of face masks … means their waste can now be found everywhere …
Discarded masks have seeped into every corner of our lives, from city sidewalks to solemn niches of the internet.23 They’ve washed up on the shores of Hong Kong’s deserted Soko Islands and cloaked octopi off the coast of France.
Scientists and environmental advocates expressed alarm24 about this tsunami of waste … They foresaw the dire ecological ramifications of our mask waste — especially once those masks made their inevitable way into the earth’s waterways.
Elastic loops pose entanglement hazards for turtles, birds, and other animals. Fish could eat the plastic-fiber ribbons that unfurl from a discarded mask’s body. Then, there is the untold menace to human health that would likely present, at the microscopic level, once masks began to disintegrate.”
The global consumption of other single-use plastics also increased by a whopping 300% in the last three years, further adding to the problem of plastic pollution. You’d think governments that claim to be so concerned about “saving the planet” would address the issue, but no. As noted by Business Insider:25
“[W]orld leaders have ignored the problem. And once the immediate public-health emergency superseded ecological concerns — the heads of Big Plastic made sure it stayed that way.”
Medical Masks Are Hazardous Waste
Research26 from Swansea University in Wales reveals single-use masks readily disintegrate when submerged in water, releasing both micro- and nanoplastic particles, even after relatively brief periods of submersion.27
As if that’s not bad enough, the masks also release nanoparticles of heavy metals like lead, cadmium, copper and arsenic. Not only can this mask litter result in contaminated drinking water, but the particles can also disrupt entire marine food chains.
Nanoparticles are particularly troublesome as they can penetrate cell walls and damage DNA, and this is true not just in animals and humans but also in plants. As reported by Business Insider:28
“Recent research29 on silicon nanoparticles, in particular, has shown that if a particle is very small in nano scale, it can act almost as a tiny, carcinogenic bomb. Multiply that by a minimum of several hundred per mask, at a rate of 50,000 masks disposed per second, and the scope of the dilemma grows vivid.”
According to research30 published in Science of the Total Environment in September 2021, the polypropylene in medical face masks could be recycled either by mechanical or thermal means, and biodegradable mask options are also available. Yet no one in a position of power is advocating for these solutions.
High Time to Discard False Mask Narratives
It’s time to put an end to the false narratives that mask wearing lowers infection rates and/or that it “protects others.” They protect no one. Not the wearer and not those around the wearer.
And, as noted by Prasad in the featured video, the burden of proof lays on the proponent of a given intervention. In this case, those claiming we should mask up to protect others are the ones who have the responsibility to prove they’re correct. The burden of proof is not on those who object, based on logical and existing evidence.
Universal mask wearing is also resulting in environmental pollution that is completely unnecessary and avoidable. So, please, just stop wearing disposable masks. It’s time. The record has been set straight. There are no benefits, and plenty of risks and negative impacts.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) last Tuesday rolled out a new education agenda designed to comprehensively recapture the state’s higher education system from woke ideologues. Instead, he set forth a conservative vision for a higher education system: “to focus on promoting academic excellence, the pursuit of truth, and to give students the foundation so they can think for themselves.” The proposals affect curriculum, faculty, funding, and more.
Proposed Reforms
DeSantis proposed reforms to Florida curriculum so that “everybody who goes through a Florida university has to take certain core course requirements that’s really focused on giving them the foundation so that they can think for themselves.” There is that phrase again — “think for themselves.” This is the essence of DeSantis’ proposals, and leftists work hard to smear it because they understand how popular that objective is.
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DeSantis offered specifics. “The core curriculum must be grounded in the actual history, the actual philosophy that has shaped Western civilization. Our institutions are going to be graduating students with degrees that are going to be meaningful. We don’t want students to go through, at taxpayer expense, and graduate with a degree in Zombie Studies.” Florida is already practicing this at the high school level. Earlier this year, Florida rejected a proposed high school curriculum for AP African-American studies because it was riddled with CRT-related concepts. Days later, The College Board (which produces the curriculum) released “a serious rewrite,” in the words of The Wall Street Journal editorial board.
DeSantis also proposed reforms to hiring and firing of higher education faculty. He identified two problems with the hiring process: a political process and a lack of control by those supposedly in charge. A lot of hiring decisions are “done by faculty committees,” he explained. “And if they have a certain worldview that they want to promote, those are the kinds of candidates they’re going to bring in. And, if you don’t toe that line, you’re not going to get hired.”
That’s not just a “blue state” problem. A WSJ op-ed from this week began, “At Texas Tech University, a candidate for a faculty job in the department of biological sciences was flagged by the department’s search committee for not knowing the difference between ‘equality’ and ‘equity.’ Another was flagged for his repeated use of the pronoun ‘he’ when referring to professors.”
Under DeSantis’ proposed changes, university presidents may “go out and recruit directly. Boards of Trustees will be able to do a lot of this approving directly. And that’s going to make a huge difference in terms of making sure, not only do we have high quality faculty, but we’re not applying some type of ideological litmus test to be able to be hired in the first place.”
Another problem DeSantis identified is the irresponsible behavior encouraged by life tenure. He said “the most deadweight cost” to universities comes from “unproductive tenured faculty.” Under his new proposals, tenured faculty must undergo a performance review every five years, and they would be liable to an impromptu performance review at any time.
DeSantis also announced his intention to defund all DEI and CRT programs at Florida universities, particularly DEI bureaucracies. “We are also going to eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida. No funding, and that will wither on the vine,” he said.
In a December 28 memo, the governor’s office required public universities to itemize all woke programs and expenditures and report them by January 13.
“They reported that, and it’s a lot of money. And it’s not the best use of your money,” said DeSantis. “Those bureaucracies are not representative of what the people of this state and the taxpayers of this state want.” DEI “bureaucracies are hostile to academic freedom,” he continued. “And really, they constitute a drain on resources and end up — certainly around the country — contributing to higher costs as these bureaucracies metastasize.”
DeSantis justified scrubbing DEI bureaucracies for two closely intertwined reasons, one ideological and one pragmatic. First, their purpose runs counter to the academic freedom most Americans expect from public universities; they are, essentially, wrong. Second, they’re just too expensive. They capture resources that can be better spent elsewhere — and more so as they continue to grow. Pairing these reasons is both accurate and politically astute. Together, they outflank any counterargument (such as suggesting DEI bureaucracies might possibly provide a marginal benefit) except the most radically left endorsement of critical theory — which voters rightly see as crazy.
By purifying the hiring process and distilling out DEI bureaucracies, DeSantis hopes to transform public higher education into a potable experience. Under Florida’s proposed system, FRC senior fellow for Education Studies Meg Kilgannon told The Washington Stand, “Professors and students will be able to learn in an environment freed from politically correct groupthink.”
DeSantis rounded out his policy proposals with targeted initiatives aimed at certain professions and institutions. He proposed that Florida research universities increase their research grants for STEM programs up to $50 million annually (thus draining resources that might be used for less serious, woke “research”). He endorsed his administration’s efforts to expand the training of Floridians to serve in critical, under-staffed occupations, such as nurses, truck drivers, and mechanics. He promoted the establishment of two constitution-focused centers at Florida State University in Tallahassee and Florida International University in Miami.
DeSantis also expressed concern over the plight of New College of Florida, an autonomous public institution since 2001. “In Florida statute, it’s supposed to be our premier liberal arts college,” he lamented. “Its mission has been more into the DEI, CRT ideology, rather than what a liberal arts education should be.” DeSantis chief of staff James Uthmeier said last month, “It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college, more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”
In early January, DeSantis appointed six new members to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees, creating a conservative majority. Some of the appointees are widely known, such as Manhattan Institute fellow and CRT-exposer extraordinaire Christopher Rufo, Hillsdale College Professor Dr. Matthew Spalding, and former 1776 Commission member Charles Kesler.
It turns out that appointing conservatives to higher education boards — thus puncturing academia’s typical, boring, progressive sameness — excites potential applicants. “When we announced the trustees,” DeSantis said, “you had people asking, ‘How do I apply?’ You had professors asking, ‘How do I join?’” The national media may scoff, but introducing real diversity — intellectual diversity — to university systems generates widespread enthusiasm.
Political Context
DeSantis’s new round of education policy proposals builds on his popular but unfairly criticized efforts undertaken during his first term as governor. For instance, the national media widely lampooned the Parental Rights in Education Act as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill for prohibiting teachers from discussing inappropriate sexual content in K-3 classrooms.
But what the national media sees as a problem, the average Floridian — and average American, for that matter — views as popular. Governor DeSantis and other Florida Republicans cruised to huge victories throughout the former swing state in November, even as Republicans generally underperformed expectations in most of the country. After winning reelection by 20 points, Governor DeSantis announced, “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
Conservative Education Manifesto
DeSantis’ proposals for higher education reform were no haphazard assortment of disjointed, incoherent positions working at cross-purposes. Rather, each is a well-thought-out piece of a comprehensive vision for a higher education system free of woke nonsense. And DeSantis accompanied his proposals with a 20-minute speech which is probably best described as a conservative education manifesto.
“There’s really a debate going on about, what is the purpose of higher education, particularly publicly-funded higher education systems?” said DeSantis, “The dominant view is, the use of higher education under this view is to impose ideological conformity, to try to provoke political activism, and that’s what a university should be. That’s not what we believe is appropriate in the state of Florida.” Instead, he proposed “centering higher education on the academics, excellence, pursuit of truth, teaching kids to think for themselves, [and] not try[ing] to impose an orthodoxy.”
Not only will slicing up the woke monster restore academic freedom, but it will also free up resources to promote real education. “And so, you’re not spending the money on DEI bureaucracies,” said DeSantis. “You’re spending the money on bringing really good people in. … That makes much more sense from a financial perspective, and it’s much more mission-oriented.”
DeSantis suggested his vision for higher education is actually quite popular. The more we implement this vision, he said, the more “you are going to see people flooding into these institutions because there’s a desire for it.” He underlined the basic motivation for this desire, “people want to be in a situation where they can send their kids to a university or college and not have to worry about, ‘what is going on?’”
He used New College of Florida as a prime example. Its DEI bureaucracy “really serves as an ideological filter, a political filter,” he said. “New College has really embraced that, and I think that’s part of the reason it hasn’t been successful and the enrollment’s down so much. Because I think people want to see true academics, and they want to get rid of some of the political window dressing that seems to accompany all this.”
Higher education reform benefits not only college-bound students and their parents, but every taxpaying Floridian as well, added DeSantis. “It’s important that your tax dollars are funding institutions that you can be proud of, with a mission you can be confident in.”
More Than Just Slogans
With slogans like “education not indoctrination” and “bring more accountability to the higher education system,” the new round of changes to higher education in Florida may seem like all talk and no action — a politician specialty. After all, things that sound too good to be true usually are. But when you pierce the surface, Florida’s new education plan brings the substance, too.
“This move by Governor DeSantis to really direct and guide higher education officials in his state is a great development,” said Kilgannon. “For too long, conservative leaders have not prioritized reforming higher education in ways that impact the moral and cultural life of students and faculty.” But the DeSantis plan emphasizes what others have neglected.
Nor are DeSantis proposals pie-in-the-sky fairy tales. “By reining in diversity, equity, and inclusion infrastructures that often act as Marxist politburos on college campuses, Governor DeSantis is offering not just an ideological critique but an actionable path toward reform,” said Kilgannon.
This path to reform already has the buy-in of every Florida college president. All 28 of them signed a letter pledging to “ensure that all initiatives, instruction, and activities do not promote any ideology that suppresses intellectual and academic freedom, freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and the pursuit of truth in teaching and learning. As such, our institutions will not fund or support any institutional practice, policy, or academic requirement that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality, or the idea that systems of oppression should be the primary lens through which teaching and learning are analyzed and/or improved upon.”
Here is a conservative education solution that doesn’t content itself with condemning leftist dominance in higher education; it actually proposes a workable alternative. DeSantis’ team has clearly thought long and hard, at every level, about what is required to take back the wheel of a public education system and redirect it to serve all the citizens and taxpayers of Florida.
Two qualities are rare among politicians: a brain and a spine. With these comprehensive education proposals, DeSantis demonstrates both.
Florida’s education plan is making news because it hasn’t been attempted before. No other conservative state has set forth a plan this comprehensive or this pragmatic to recapture higher education. “I don’t think there’s any state in the country that’s been leading on the issue like Florida,” said DeSantis. “We’ll be the first state that’s actually leading by example.”
“This is a great example for others on how to tackle the problem of taxpayer funded Marxist education at the higher-ed level,” said Kilgannon. “And since this is where teachers are formed for service in K-12, it’s a reform that will benefit younger children too.”
“We have more work to do,” said DeSantis. But he added, “I think you’re going to see some positive results really quickly.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-02-10 19:51:412023-02-10 19:51:41‘Zombie Studies’: DeSantis Declares All-Out War on University DEI, CRT in Education Manifesto
A ridiculous plan to reduce anesthesia to combat climate change disappeared online after CFACT’s Marc Morano exposed it at our Climate Depot news and information service.
The ridiculous justification for limiting anesthesia is that inhaled anesthesia accounts for up to 0.1% of the world’s carbon emissions, and that an hour of surgery using an inhaled anesthetic is equivalent to driving as many as 470 miles, according to a 2010 study.
The notion that people should risk pain and suffering during surgical procedures to “save” the planet is a perfect example of the crazy cult climate change has become. Human sacrifice is demanded. The fact that your future pain will not alter the temperature of the globe to a degree anyone can perceive in any meaningful way is entirely beside the point.
Marc further reports that the Harvard Medical School faculty is discussing intertwining climate into its entire medical teaching curriculum.
Subordinating our medical care to the climate regime seems a surefire way to violate a doctor’s basic Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm.”
RELATED TWEET:
Sebastian talks to @ClimateDepot founder Marc Morano about the Left’s new crusade of “climate justice,” and Anthony Fauci’s latest grift of charging $100,000 for each speaking engagement.
