Loudoun County parents used the public comment portion of Tuesday’s school board meeting to call for the resignation of the district’s superintendent over an alleged sexual assault cover-up.
Angry parents demanded Superintendent Scott Ziegler and other school board members resign over allegations that the Loudoun County School District and leadership covered up two sexual assaults on two separate school campuses, the Daily Wire originally reported.
Over 60 concerned parents spoke at the meeting, including many who carried signs encouraging Ziegler’s resignation.
“This is not China, this is the United States of America, and we will not be silenced,” one mother said, according to Fox News.
“Remove the superintendent immediately and then resign for your negligence and duplicity. End this nightmare!”
The father of the first alleged sexual assault victim was arrested at a Loudoun County school board meeting on June 22 for “unlawful assembly” after attending the meeting to oppose a transgender student policy that allowed students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with.
Smith said his ninth-grade daughter was sexually assaulted by a boy wearing a skirt who entered a girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School on May 28.
At the same board meeting where Scott was arrested, during the hearing on the transgender student policy, Beth Barts, a school board member, said “our students do not need to be protected, and they are not in danger.”
Barts continued, asking Ziegler, “do we have assaults in our bathrooms or locker rooms regularly?”
“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” Ziegler responded.
“Have we had any issues involving transgender students in our bathrooms or locker rooms?” school board Chairwoman Brenda Sheridan asked.
“I think it’s important to keep our perspective on this, we’ve heard it several times tonight from our public speakers, but the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist,” Ziegler responded.
Juvenile court prosecutors told Smith that the suspect was under house arrest at his mother’s townhouse, but on Oct. 6, a 15-year-old boy was charged with sexual battery and abduction for forcing a girl into a classroom, where he inappropriately touched her, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.
Smith’s attorney said the suspect is the same boy who attacked Smith’s daughter at a different school months earlier, the Daily Wire reported.
On Aug. 11, the school board voted on and approved Policy 8040, which requires teachers to call students by their “chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence” and allows transgender students to participate in sports and use bathrooms that correspond to their chosen gender identity.
“The 8040 policy was rushed through to a vote without consideration for the safety of all students, simply to satisfy a liberal agenda — a policy that you knew full well would allow our children to be abused inside our schools,” one mother said at the Tuesday school board meeting, Fox News reported.
“At least two young women are recent victims of sexual assaults in our high schools, one of them in a restroom.”
“What is worse than a child being raped at school? The coverup by those who are trusted with the safety and well-being of children,” another mother said.
“Today, Scott Ziegler must resign for the unconscionable act of allowing an alleged rapist back into school to rape again, and for that coverup.”
One 14-year-old LCPS student, Katie Young, said “8040 and many policies that are being proposed are not to make people more comfortable or to accept others but instead to change the way my peers and I think, so that we will become the next generation of social justice warriors.”
“I am 14 years old, the fact that I have to be here defending my rights to not have your radical agenda shoved down my throat in school is not only concerning, it’s upsetting,” she added.
“My peers and I are not tools to further your political agenda.”
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Since the 2020 presidential election, Democrats have demonized Republicans who raise concerns about election integrity. But a new report Wednesday said a staffer of one Philadelphia politician had been engaging in voter fraud as far back as 2015.
According to Philadelphia magazine, Marie Beren, 67, faces federal charges for participating in a voter fraud scheme from 2015-2019. The outlet said Beren faces four charges related to voter fraud, one of which is conspiracy.
At the time of the charges, Beren was serving as a staffer for Philadelphia City Councilmember Mark Squilla. However, she has previously served in plenty of other political roles in the city.
Prosecutors said Beren and an unidentified “consultant” were involved in the voter fraud conspiracy. The complaint alleges the consultant “exercised influence and control in Philadelphia’s 39th Ward by distributing cash payments and supporting family, friends and allies for elective office in the 39th Ward, and installing Ward Leaders, Judges of Elections, and Democratic State Committee.”
Prosecutors said that around 1984, this consultant “installed” Beren to the committee for the Democratic Party in the 39th Ward of Philadelphia. In 1988, the consultant helped Beren become the judge of elections for the second district in the 39th Ward.
According to Philadelphia, a judge of elections essentially serves as the head of a polling place for both the primary and general elections. Prosecutors said two other divisions also voted at the same polling place, making Beren a “de facto judge of elections” for all three.
After serving in that role for 27 years, Beren stepped down and became a poll watcher in 2015. At that point, prosecutors allege Beren hand-picked a replacement who would allow her to continue running the election process for the three divisions.
This setup allegedly remained the same from 2015-2019. Starting in 2015, the consultant began directing Beren to add fraudulent voters to certain candidates, some of whom were clients of the consultant.
On Election Day, the consultant would drive Beren to the polling place and tell her how to cast fraudulent votes. She then allegedly engaged in multiple illegal activities such as advising in-person voters to support a certain candidate, casting votes herself in other people’s names and encouraging voters to cast additional votes for family members who were not present.
At the end of the day, prosecutors said Beren and other unnamed workers would add names to the voting book of people who never came to the polling place. They allegedly did this to falsely match the number of fake votes cast.
While the alleged crimes occurred in the city of Philadelphia, the effects could potentially have been felt nationwide. Prosecutors said the fraud occurred “at every level of government, from municipal to state to federal,” according to Philadelphia.
As of Wednesday, the outlet said prosecutors had not specified the number of fraudulent votes, nor whether any election results may have been altered by the scheme.
“These allegations are an encouraging sign that our partners in law enforcement continue to investigate and prosecute voter fraud at polling places, as they’d done in the past in conjunction with our office,” Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt said.
This scheme certainly does not prove that widespread voter fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election, especially because these alleged crimes do not extend past 2019.
The story does prove, however, that voter fraud is eminently possible and does occur in America.
The complaint from Philadelphia was also not the only one to be filed this week. On Monday, Michigan officials announced three women were charged with voter fraud relating to the 2020 election.
Despite these occurrences, many Democrats have continued to push legislation that would make similar crimes even easier to commit. As the 2022 election approaches, election integrity will be one of the key issues on the ballot.
On Friday, President Joe Biden announced his plans to redesignate nearly two million acres of land as national monuments. Despite attempts by many to paint the move as a positive development, it is another clear example of overreach by the federal government.
According to a Thursday news release from the Department of the Interior, Biden plans to “restore protections” to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah.
Former President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears National Monument in 2016 after pressure from tribal nations, the department said. The monument originally spanned 1.35 million acres, all of which were under the supervision of the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.
Grand Staircase-Escalante was established as a national monument in 1996 by former President Bill Clinton. After three adjustments from Congress, the monument came to encompass 1.87 million acres.
In 2017, former President Donald Trump announced the significant reduction of both monuments. Bears Ears National Monument was reduced to 228,000 acres, and Grand Staircase-Escalante was cut nearly in half to about 1 million acres.
At the time, NPR reported that many Native Americans were upset by Trump’s decision.
“The Navajo Nation has made repeated requests to meet with President Trump on this issue,” Navajo Nation president Russell Begaye said in a statement. “The Bears Ears Monument is of critical importance, not only to the Navajo Nation but to many tribes in the region.”
However, Trump made clear that the move was not meant to strip land from Native Americans, but rather to put decisions about the land back in the hands of the people who live there.
“No one values the splendor of Utah more than you do … and no one knows better how to use it,” Trump told a crowd in Utah during the announcement of the reduction.
Trump did not make the decision on his own, either. He had the support of Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee, according to NPR.
By reducing the amount of land controlled by the federal government, Trump gave the people of Utah — including Native Americans — control over land that was rightfully theirs.
Nonetheless, Biden felt the need to undo Trump’s work and bring the land back under federal control. Predictably, the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition praised the move.
“By taking this action, President Biden will be recognizing the deep and enduring ancestral and cultural connections that Tribes have to this landscape and taking a step toward honoring his commitment to Indigenous People by acknowledging their original place in this country that is now our shared home,” the group said in a statement.
“The Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition looks forward to the President’s continued leadership in ensuring that a new model of collaborative management between the Tribes, state and federal land agencies is immediately put into action and that a comprehensive Land Management Plan can be developed for the greater Bears Ears landscape.”
The problem with that statement is that the federal government should not have a say in those conversations. Instead, Native Americans should be working directly with the state of Utah to develop plans for the land.
This is not the first time during the Biden administration that bureaucrats have signaled their lust for more land and power. Last month, the Interior Department announced plans to relocate the headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management to Washington, D.C.
Trump had previously moved BLM headquarters from D.C. to Grand Junction, Colorado. Its relocation back to Washington hints at its increased ties to the political elite under the Biden administration.
“There’s no doubt that the BLM should have a leadership presence in Washington, D.C. — like all the other land management agencies — to ensure that it has access to the policy-, budget-, and decision-making levers to best carry out its mission,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement.
Contrary to leftist belief, not everything needs to be federalized.
Instead of letting the state of Utah consult with Native American organizations and other groups with a vested interest to determine the best use of its land, Biden has once again turned to federal government expansion as the solution.
If recent actions are any indication, the Biden administration does not plan to stop its land-grabbing any time soon.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Merrick Garland to demand an explanation concerning his memorandum to the Federal Bureau of Investigation over “serious concerns” regarding parents at school board meetings.
The letter, first reported by the Daily Caller, was led by Lousiana Rep. Mike Johnson and joined by 18 additional GOP House members on the committee.
“This letter is to express our serious concerns about your recent decision to involve federal law enforcement entities in local school board debates and to stifle First Amendment-protected political speech. Your actions are not just inappropriate, but also appear to have been improperly influenced by politics and by your family’s interest in the matter,” the representatives wrote.
“As members of the House Committee on the Judiciary, we have a responsibility to conduct oversight of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and we trust that you will fully cooperate with our inquiry,” they added.
Part of the letter’s request included a call for Garland to submit himself to an ethics investigation.
The House members concluded with the “request you promptly consult with the designated agency ethics official to determine if your actions in this matter have resulted in an ethics violation for a breach of impartiality.”
“Judiciary Republicans trust that Mr. Garland will submit to our requested ethics inquiry, publicly release its results, and take whatever actions are necessary to protect the integrity of the office of Attorney General, including either recusing himself from this issue and/or rescinding the October 4th memorandum,” Johnson told the Daily Caller.
Part of the controversy stems from allegations that Garland’s son-in-law profits from work to promote critical race theory.
“The Justice Department usually has very broad standards for the appearance of impropriety that would trigger at least the inquiry into whether there was a conflict of interest,” former U.S. Assistant Attorney Andy McCarthy said during a recent interview with Fox News.
Garland’s son-in-law reportedly co-founded and works with the company Panorama Education. An educational workshop released by the company includes materials that promote critical race theory and fixate on overcoming “white supremacy,” according to Fox.
“The idea is that Garland’s son-in-law is profiting lucratively from peddling this stuff to the schools. And Garland, even though the Justice Department doesn’t appear to have jurisdiction to do what it’s done, is siccing the FBI on parents who are dissenting against these kinds of materials,” McCarthy added.
Garland sent the Oct. 4 memorandum to the FBI concerning “threats” against school personnel.
“In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s schools,” the attorney general wrote.
“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” Garland continued.
“In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel,” he went on. “Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts.”
The establishment media has neglected, yet again, to cover a story concerning voter fraud.
What a surprise. (Sarcasm intended.)
On Monday, it was announced that three Michigan women had been charged with crimes related to their alleged attempts to commit voter fraud in the 2020 election.
“These cases highlight the scrutiny applications and ballots undergo throughout the election process, as well as the thorough investigative process that ensues when instances of attempted fraud are suspected,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement.
“We will not hesitate to prosecute anyone who attempts to undermine our elections.”
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson added that “our election system is secure, and today’s charges demonstrate that in the rare circumstances when fraud occurs we catch it and hold the perpetrators accountable.”
“These charges also send a clear message to those who promote deceitful claims about widespread fraud: the current protocols we have in place work to protect and ensure the integrity of our elections. It’s time to share that truth and stop spreading lies to the contrary,” Benson said.
But a look at what these women were charged with tells a different story and illuminates the many potential pathways to voter fraud.
It also raises an important question: Are the American people supposed to trust government officials to catch each and every instance of fraud when mail-in voting makes it so easy to cheat the system?
The first of the women, Trenae Myesha Rainey of Macomb County, was an employee at a nursing home.
Rainey stole a stack of “roughly two dozen absentee voter applications” meant for nursing home residents, filled them out, forged the residents’ signatures and had the applications turned in.
Again, under the universal mail-in voting system Democrats so desperately want, this sort of fraud couldn’t be any easier to commit.
The second woman, Carless Clark of Wayne County, returned her grandson’s absentee ballot by mail “despite her grandson deciding to vote in person.”
The third woman, Nancy Juanita Williams of both Wayne and Oakland counties, was a caretaker for legally incapacitated people.
Williams “implemented a plan to obtain and control absentee ballots” for those individuals under her care “by fraudulently submitting 26 absentee ballot applications to nine identified city and township clerks, seeking to have absentee ballots for those individuals mailed directly to her.”
A total of 50 charges were brought against the women, including 36 felonies.
Thankfully, these alleged culprits were caught and are being held to account. If Democrats get their way with their reckless election laws, however, there’s no guarantee the next fraudsters will be apprehended.
And when more fraud does occur, the American people likely won’t know until it’s too late.
A hospital CEO said on Wednesday that he won’t yet be enforcing the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate, as doing so could create a mass exodus of health care workers.
Dr. Randy Tobler, CEO of Scotland County Hospital in Missouri, shared his concerns in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.
“If we lose more staff, we won’t be able to deliver the great care that people have become accustomed to in our area,” Tobler said.
“We’ve lost already many of our staff due to the emotional consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. And now on top of this, many have expressed their very sincere desire to resign or find another industry, do something else, other than get the vaccine,” he added.
The repercussions of the vaccine mandate could be dire, according to Tobler.
“This could be a crushing blow for our ability to deliver care to our community,” he said.
Tobler said 70 percent of his hospital’s income comes from Medicare and Medicaid. Once the vaccine mandate goes into effect, he plans to abide by the rules in order to continue receiving funds.
However, enforcing the mandate will have serious consequences.
“We are already running on fumes when it comes to staff,” Tobler said.
“If we lose a few more people due to resignations … we’ll have to turn people away because we simply won’t have the staff to deliver the care.”
Similar problems have already been encountered in New York. Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order last month to address staffing shortages.
According to a statement on her website, the order authorizes out-of-state health care workers to practice in New York, implements a 24/7 operations center to monitor and troubleshoot staffing shortages, and allows recent graduates who are not yet registered and professionals without current registrations to practice without penalty.
“The only way we can move past this pandemic is to ensure that everyone eligible is vaccinated, and that includes those who are taking care of our vulnerable family members and loved ones,” Hochul said in the statement.
The thousands of New Yorkers who work in the health care industry were threatened with termination if they did not get the vaccine by Sept. 27.
According to Business Insider, the New York Department of Labor warned that those health care workers who were fired would not be able to collect unemployment benefits unless they had a doctor-approved medical exemption from the vaccine.
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that religious exemptions to receiving the vaccine must also be upheld in the state of New York for health care workers.
CORRECTION, Oct. 13, 2021: This article previously claimed that no religious exemption existed for health care workers in New York who did not wish to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, a federal judge ruled Tuesday that religious exemptions to receiving the vaccine must be upheld in the state of New York for health care workers.
The Biden administration appears hell-bent on continuing to ignore natural immunity as the president and his team persist in pushing for stiffer and stiffer vaccine mandates.
The Brownstone Institute, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit founded in May that opposes lockdown and champions academic freedom, has compiled a list of 30 peer-reviewed studies showing that those who have recovered from the coronavirus have long-lasting and robust immunity comparable to or better than those who are vaccinated.
This fact does not seem to impact President Joe Biden’s thinking about vaccine policy.
Last month, after receiving a vaccine booster shot, Biden was asked how many Americans need to be vaccinated before life could return to normal.
He responded, “Well, I think, look — I think we get the vast majority like is going on in some industries and some schools, 97, 98 percent. I think we’ll come awful close.”
Biden then acknowledged, “But I’m not the scientist. One thing for sure, a quarter of the country can’t go unvaccinated.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that’s about where we are as a country right now, at least among those eligible to receive the shot. Approximately 77 percent of Americans 12 and older have received at least one COVID-19 dose, and about 66 percent are fully vaccinated. Overall, 217 million Americans have at least one shot.
Not included in that statistic are many millions, probably tens of millions of Americans, who have natural immunity because they have recovered from the virus.
The vaccine mandate Biden announced in September included no exception for natural immunity, leaving American businesses demanding answers, Newsweek reported.
Last month, Dr. Francis Collins, the outgoing director of the National Institutes of Health, wrote that the number of those who have recovered from COVID-19 in the U.S. has likely been vastly underestimated, citing a report that concluded that, by the end of 2020, likely 100 million Americans had already had the sickness.
So they have immunity.
Over 44 million Americans have received a positive COVID test. Why should they be forced to take the vaccine?
Among the findings contained in the Brownstone Institute’s list of studies is that natural immunity offers approximately 95 percent protection against re-infection for at least six or more months.
30 Peer reviewed journal articles confirming natural immunity after Covid infection. Will Fauci now finally apologize to the 100 million or more Americans who’ve had COVID?
Natural Immunity and Covid-19: Twenty-Nine Scientific Studies to Share https://t.co/qJlWuS6ZOP
An Israeli Health Ministry study released in July and included on the Brownstone list showed that in the country’s most recent of reported infections — beginning in May — less than 1 percent of 7,700 new cases were among those who had previously recovered from COVID.
“With a total of 835,792 Israelis known to have recovered from the virus, the 72 instances of reinfection amount to 0.0086% of people who were already infected with COVID,” the conservative news outlet Israel National News reported.
Meanwhile, roughly 40 percent of the new cases were among those who were vaccinated.
“Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with over 3,000 of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave,” according to Israel National News.
Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, has written that the strength of natural immunity from COVID has not been appropriately recognized by policy makers.
“During every month of this pandemic, I’ve had debates with other public researchers about the effectiveness and durability of natural immunity,” he wrote in a piece published by U.S. News & World Report in August.
“I’ve been told that natural immunity could fall off a cliff, rendering people susceptible to infection. But here we are now, over a year and a half into the clinical experience of observing patients who were infected, and natural immunity is effective and going strong,” he recounted.
“And that’s because with natural immunity, the body develops antibodies to the entire surface of the virus, not just a spike protein constructed from a vaccine.”
Makary argued that rather than categorizing people as being vaccinated and unvaccinated, the better designations would be “immune and the non-immune.”
If you have not had the virus, by all means get vaccinated, he exhorted.
The pandemic of the unvaccinated is a misnomer. It’s a pandemic of the non-immune. More precisely, it’s a series of regional outbreaks in select pockets of the country with low population immunity. Same take-home message though: If you’re not immune, get immune by getting vaxed.
In an August interview on “The Vince Coglianese Show,” airing on the Washington, D.C.-area WMAL-FM, the medical professor contended, “One of the great failures of our medical leadership has been ignoring the half of America with natural immunity, which is the half of non-vaccinated folks.”
Dr. Ben Carson, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration and former director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, told Fox News Monday night that the Biden administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is ignoring natural immunity.
“The fact of the matter is, many studies have demonstrated that natural immunity is just as good as immunity induced by vaccines and probably even better because it affects more of the immune system in a positive way,” Carson said.
“Dr. Fauci knows that,” he continued. “The CDC knows that and yet they’re just completely ignoring it. And I think if they would deal truthfully with these things, put the real facts out, people would do the right thing.”
Dr. Ben Carson tosses Covid truth bombs during this great convo w/@HeyTammyBruce:
“Natural immunity is just as good as immunity induced by vaccines, and probably even better.”
“A lot of people in the healthcare field know that this is foolishness …”
“People are smart, but they don’t like being manipulated, and that’s exactly what’s going on right now: Manipulation of the people,” Carson said.
He added that many in the health care field know not recognizing natural immunity is not sound policy.
“They’ve had COVID already,” Carson said. “And why would they go ahead and expose themselves to extra risk when it’s unnecessary? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.”
“It’s all about control.”
It’s long past time for the United States to truly follow the science and recognize the efficacy of natural immunity and stop trying to force Americans to get a vaccine when they do not need or want it.
Next time you see a climate change protest in the news, be aware it may be backed by the Chinese Communist Party.
Chinese Communist Party-linked foreign influence group sponsored a climate change conference seeking to mobilize youth advocates in America, the National Pulse can reveal.
The entity sponsoring the recent conference, the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), is part of Beijing’s “United Front” effort, which the U.S. government identifies as seeking to “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing.”
CUSEF’s website notes that it “sponsored” the Sino-American Youth Dialogue on Climate Change, carried out in collaboration with two schools: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Tsinghua University.
“Co-hosted by Tsinghua University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Sino-American Youth Dialogue on Climate Change (SAYD) will be held in October 8, a month prior to COP26. The aim of the event is to offer a platform for young people from China and the U.S. to put forward ideas and suggestions for the COP26 to address climate change and sustainable development,” CUSEF explains before posing the following questions to attendees:
What should governments do to confront climate emergency?
How should businesses develop sustainability strategies to achieve net zero emissions?
What are the actions that we, as individuals, could do to reduce wastage and gas emissions?
The conference explicitly seeks to mobilize youth activists, as its theme is “making carbon neutral, youth in action.”
“Through discussions and sharing among youth delegates and field experts, the forum hopes to reach consensus on the issue and form valuable policy recommendations,” the conference’s website adds.
Among the event’s speakers were CUSEF founder Tung Chee-hwa, Chinese Communist Party officials, and presidents from both MIT and Tsinghua University. Tsinghua University’s involvement in the conference also follows the school reportedly launching cyberattacks against the U.S. government and having a “clear connection” to the Chinese government on issues of technology and national security according to the U.S. State Department.
The school is the alma mater of regime leader Xi Jinping and hosts a “Marxist” journalism school, training the next generation of Chinese state-run media propagandists with the assistance of the New York Times, CNN, and others.
“We should be committed to a firm and correct political orientation. Our School has been actively exploring the theory and practices of Marxist Journalism, namely, to applying the Marxist theory in observing the world, selecting and handling news production,” the dean’s introduction letter reads.
Twitter’s recent banning of accounts critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is deplorable. But it also forces us to really start considering how Western social media and big tech companies can defend freedom of speech, instead of being used as tools against us by authoritarian states such as the Chinese regime.
The issue of tech-based freedom of speech platforms, and the damage they can do to free societies if left entirely unregulated, is not exactly a new one. In recent years, however, it has become even more troublesome, as authoritarian states have taken to using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even LinkedIn to wage disinformation campaigns, affect elections, split and divide a society, and in general, cause havoc.
When called upon to take proper action against authoritarian states that undermine free societies, the tech companies have had a rather consistent defense—namely that their platforms will ultimately bring greater freedom of speech, and therefore they should not be forced to take action. While it seems like an honorable argument, it’s a hollow and ignorant one, especially at this point in time. The prospect of making more money is what prevents the big tech companies from taking any real action. Mark Zuckerberg has tried to woo the Chinese regime by asking CCP leader Xi Jinping to name his unborn child back in 2015, or when he went jogging in a heavily polluted Beijing—these are images that no PR campaign will ever be able to counter. It showed Zuckerberg’s real allegiance to the CCP, and it certainly wasn’t freedom of speech.
Mark Zuckerberg (2nd-right) and the overseas representatives of the China Development Forum applaud the arrival of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang during a meeting in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on March 21, 2016. (Kenzaburo Fukuhara/ Pool/Getty Images)
These arguments, thoroughly debunked, are no different than when monarchists argue for keeping the monarchy because it brings undefined economic benefits, which has never actually been proven, or when business lobby groups argue against actions that counter Beijing’s economic and trade violations because they believe free trade will somehow lead to democracy, freedom of speech, and rule of law in China. We know that belief is hollow and false, but it keeps on repeating until some part of us just accepts it.
Dealing with fake news and disinformation within our societies will certainly be a long and difficult march. But when it comes to dealing with China, Russia, and other authoritarian or neo-totalitarian states that use our own tools of freedom of speech against us, the solution is actually really simple.
Take Twitter, for example. If a state blocks its people’s access to Twitter, then block the state’s access to the social media platform, including government officials. This should apply to the Chinese regime as it has officially blocked Twitter in mainland China. However, some citizens have been able to circumvent the “great firewall” and major Chinese companies can access Twitter through a government approved VPN.
Such a policy wouldn’t even have to touch upon the thorny issue of what can or cannot be said on such platforms. Instead, it would zero in on one simple question: Does the state using the platform allow its own people the same access? If not, then it’s out: access for access.
Not only would this policy add real pressure on authoritarian states to open up access to such tools for its people, but it would severely limit their abilities to use others to sow disinformation in the United States, affect outcomes in elections in the United Kingdom, or try to split and divide the European Union.
Safeguard Defenders has campaigned against China’s state broadcasters, CGTN and CCTV, and has seen them taken off the air in several countries. For China, it is a loss of prestige. But in reality, Beijing’s disinformation work is almost entirely carried out on social media, with few viewers of its stale news shows on TV. In fact, after CGTN’s license was revoked in the UK, an informant told Safeguard Defenders that the media company replaced its “social media first’ policy with a ‘social media only’ policy. It knows what really matters.
An “access for access” policy would be straightforward, fair, predictable, open, and as a bonus, rather easily applicable. No dictatorship could cry wolf, because with such an open and fair policy the outcome would be entirely on them.
Give those who block freedom for its people a simple choice, and leave that choice to them.
My greatest surprise is the fact that as an option and as a way forward, it is not even discussed. It seems, somehow, to be out of bounds, outside of people’s imaginations. Considering the resources needed in combatting bots, in seeking pedophiles and those committing cyber crimes online, implementing such a policy would be easy in comparison.
To better manage disinformation online is going to be a long and epic struggle, and at this time no one has all the answers. However, there are areas that are black and white, and while we ponder the bigger issues of disinformation, it’s a good place to start.
It’s time for our social media giants to take some actual steps to defend and promote freedom of speech, instead of merely giving us empty gestures.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Peter Dahlin
Peter Dahlin is the founder of the NGO Safeguard Defenders and the co-founder of the Beijing-based Chinese NGO China Action (2007–2016). He is the author of “Trial By Media,” and contributor to “The People’s Republic of the Disappeared.” He lived in Beijing from 2007, until detained and placed in a secret jail in 2016, subsequently deported and banned. Prior to living in China, he worked for the Swedish government with gender equality issues, and now lives in Madrid, Spain.
‘Companies relentlessly criticize the United States for social injustice,’ says Vivek Ramaswamy, author of ‘Woke Inc.’
In an interview with Jan Jekielek on “American Thought Leaders,” Vivek Ramaswamy outlined “the unholy alliance of big government, corporations, and woke dogma.” He also addressed the ongoing intrusion of communist China into the United States through its promotion of “wokeism.” Ramaswamy is the founder of several successful companies, including Roivant Sciences, a biopharmaceutical company, and author of a new book, “Woke Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam.”
Mr. Jekielek: You make a pretty interesting case, and in some ways, it’s kind of counterintuitive. You basically say that stakeholder capitalism is supposed to create accountability, but it actually does the exact opposite and empowers America’s enemies in the process. Incredible.
Vivek Ramaswamy. (Courtesy of Vivek Ramaswamy)
Mr. Ramaswamy: It’s counterintuitive because stakeholder capitalism is the philosophy that a business ought to serve not just its shareholders, by pursuing profit, but also ought to serve other societal interests, including those of not only employees, but other societal stakeholders, ranging from minority communities to the climate. Now on the face of it, that sounds pretty benign.
But the argument I make in the book is, first of all, it’s actually a violation of American democracy to concentrate in the hands of a small group of investors and executives the power to not only decide what products get voted to the top, but also what ideas get voted to the top. And that’s the role our democracy plays, where everyone’s voice and vote count equally.
Mr. Jekielek: It’s actually quite fascinating to learn some companies do have the Chinese regime as a major stakeholder, but don’t really disclose that very much and instead focus on all the much prettier-looking stakeholders here in America.
Vivek Ramaswamy. (Courtesy of Vivek Ramaswamy)
Mr. Ramaswamy: The great policy error over the last 30 years in the United States was thinking that we could use capitalism as a vector to spread democracy abroad, that we could export Big Macs and Happy Meals and think it would somehow spread democracy in places like China.
What we’ve learned over the last 30 years is that China has actually turned that model on its head. Instead of using our money to get them to be more like us, they’ve now used their money to get us to be more like them. They’ve sent back Disney movies and Nike sneakers as Trojan horses to advance their values.
I’ll tell you what I mean. Companies relentlessly criticize the United States for social injustice, as the woke brand of stakeholder capitalism or what we call woke capitalism does. Nike criticizes racial injustice. Disney criticizes injustices ranging from transphobia to states’ policy on abortions.
As these companies criticize the United States, they also don’t say a peep about actual human rights abuses in China, such as what’s happening in Xinjiang Province today, where over a million Uyghurs are enslaved in concentration camps and subjected to forced sterilization in some of the worst human rights abuses committed by a major nation since the Third Reich in Germany. These companies don’t say a peep about it.
Mr. Jekielek: Vivek, frankly, I have the same worry, deeply. There’s a famous quote: “The issue is not the issue. The issue is the revolution.” We’ve heard this a lot. In all of these Marxian systems that we’ve seen over the years, the issue is the revolution. The division is actually a major part of the purpose of the ideology, even if many of the people participating in it don’t fully realize that’s the case.
Mr. Ramaswamy: You’re spot on. I heard a really dark joke, but it reveals the way in which foreign actors have recognized that very fact, to be able to divide us from within. I talked earlier on the show about how China is using wokeism. By the way, they even have a Chinese word for wokeism—“baizuo.” They’re using that to divide us, using that as a chink in our armor to divide us from within by getting corporations to criticize injustice here without saying a peep about injustice over there and deflecting accountability for their human rights abuses.
The joke was that, let’s say that Mao Zedong suddenly wakes up from the dead and returns to China in his second coming, and he’s talking to a farmer in the countryside. He asks the farmer, “Oh, do we have a food shortage? Do we have enough food for our people?” And the farmer first tells him, “Oh, yes, the food shortage ended a long time ago. Now we have so much food. We have too much food that our people are actually starting to get sick from diabetes.”
And Mao Zedong goes, “Oh, OK, very good. Very good. But weren’t we supposed to produce more steel than Britain within a few decades?” This is something that Mao Zedong actually laid out as part of his central plan as well. And they said, “Actually, even one of our provinces today alone produces more steel than all of the United Kingdom put together.”
And he says, “OK, very good, very good. But most importantly, what about the Cultural Revolution led by the proletariat in the field? How is that going?” To that, the modern Chinese farmer says, “Oh, we don’t do that anymore. We outsourced that to America.”
There’s something dark in that joke, but that actually reflects the essence of what’s going on. Ironically, communist China has embraced our capitalist worldview, the American pursuit of excellence, and the inner American animal to be No. 1. They’ve now imported that as their own and have exported their modern wokeism, which is really the avatar of the old school Chinese communism—the Red Guard was effectively sent over here to undermine us from within.
And I’m sorry to say it’s working masterfully for them. This becomes the beginning of the end of American greatness and the American empire, unless we’re able to actually turn that around and harness and rediscover our own culture of excellence, our own culture of the unapologetic pursuit of excellence through our system of free enterprise, and through our democracy in ways that require seeing past the superficial demands of the woke movement.
Mr. Jekielek: As we finish up here, you actually have a very interesting idea about how to create a common U.S. identity again, and this is through civic engagement. You argue for mandatory civic engagement. I find that a pretty fascinating idea.
Vivek Ramaswamy. (Courtesy of Vivek Ramaswamy)
Mr. Ramaswamy: One of the ways I talk about doing that is weaving civic service into education. For example, taking the institution of summer break itself, you don’t have to change a thing about life structure. You don’t have to change a thing about infringing on the liberty of free adults, because taking children to school is already mandatory. But let’s weave into school the component of civic service, of actually serving your country.
Our civic duties ought to be shared equally. That’s something we can instill starting at a young age that builds solidarity around the idea of a shared American identity, rather than a fractious group identity, which is the woke way.
Reviving that shared Americanism and that shared American identity dilutes the woke agenda to irrelevance.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity by Jeff Minick
Of all the threats facing the United States, China and Facebook pose two of the biggest.
The United States, to some extent, is limited in its ability to address Chinese aggressions. Facebook, on the other hand, is an American company with an American founder—the United States can take appropriate action. The question, though, is what sort of action should be taken? In this short piece, I propose a somewhat novel solution to the “Facebook Problem.”
At first, Facebook and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appear to have little, if anything, in common. On closer inspection, however, they share striking similarities. The CCP has been labelled hostile and autocratic; Facebook, meanwhile, has been described as the “largest autocracy on Earth,” a “hostile foreign power” capable of destroying the United States. Both the CCP and Facebook Inc. are considered a threat to democracy; both are responsible for spreading dangerous disinformation; and both have a history of suppressing free speech. Lastly, both are run by men who appear to answer to no laws in particular. Of course, Mark Zuckerberg is not Xi Jinping. One is directly responsible for the torture occurring in Xinjiang, for example; the other is not. However, with Facebook, Zuckerberg created a Frankenstein Monster, albeit unknowingly. For this, he must be held accountable. The question, though, is how?
When we discuss Big Tech, we’re describing Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. The infamous 5, contrary to popular belief, are not created equally. People like Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are wrong to view Big Tech as some sort of amorphous blob. After all, Apple and Facebook offer completely different services.
In a recent interview with “60 minutes,” a whistleblower by the name of Frances Haugen discussed the many ways in which Facebook harms society. Haugen, a data scientist from Iowa, called Facebook “substantially worse” than any other social media platform. Before joining Facebook, Haugen worked at both Pinterest and Google. Facebook, as many readers already know, has a notorious history. Since its launch back in 2004, it has been accused of a litany of offenses, from spying on customers to giving users’ data away without their permission. In the interview, Haugen accused decision makers at Facebook of ignoring research documenting the ways in which Instagram (owned by Facebook) fuels eating disorders and depression in young women.
In truth, Haugen’s revelations simply shed more light on a well-known fact—Facebook, in its current form, is deeply problematic. Along with the Chinese regime, it poses one of the greatest threats to democracy.
Former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing titled, “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower,” on Capitol Hill in Washington on Oct. 5, 2021. (Matt McClain/Pool via Getty Images)
What Can Be Done?
Some, like the aforementioned Warren, are obsessed with the idea of breaking up Big Tech. This, however, is a fool’s game. The Big 5 are all conglomerates—they have acquired numerous other businesses, from AI research facilities to digital health startups. Facebook Inc. now owns 78 different companies. Ostensibly, it’s a social media company. In reality, though, it’s a multi-headed hydra worth $1 trillion. More importantly, breaking up Facebook Inc. would fail to address the core problem, namely its manipulation of algorithms.
Instead, the U.S. government should hone in on the regulation of algorithms. As Haugen explained in the interview, Facebook intentionally “games” the system so users are presented with the most outrageous content. This manipulation breeds anger; with anger, comes engagement; with engagement, comes greater profits.
Authors at TechCrunch made a bold suggestion: The FDA “must assert its codified right to regulate the algorithm powering the drug of Instagram.” By viewing algorithms as “a drug impacting our nation’s mental health,” the FDA would be in a strong position to rein in Big Tech.
The authors, however, failed to discuss the ubiquity of algorithms. Moreover, the vast majority of algorithms are helpful, rather than harmful. Without algorithms, Google’s search engine would be utterly useless. Need to book a taxi? Order a pizza? Book a flight? To do so, we require algorithms—lots of them. In many ways, without these computer-implementable instructions, modern society would grind to a screeching halt. Algorithms are the computational equivalent of water or air—in other words, they’re everywhere.
Instead, I suggest treating algorithms like vehicles. Just like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) regulates the safety of motor vehicles and related equipment, the United States stands to benefit from a National Algorithm Safety Administration. Perhaps an independent agency dedicated to “test driving” algorithms in the same way independent agencies test drive cars. Or, if this seems absurd, how about a National Algorithm Safety Board, like the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)? According to the NTSB’s website, this independent federal agency is “charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States and significant accidents in other modes of transportation—highway, marine, pipeline, and railroad.” A National Algorithm Safety Board could perform a similar function with thorough, expert-led investigations of cases where algorithms cause psychological injuries. All investigations would be carried out by an elected team of independent analysts.
For this piece, I reached out to Facebook for comment on the matter; no comments were offered.
In a recent interview with NY Magazine, Scott Galloway, professor of marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business, discussed the many ways in which Big Tech giants like Facebook and Amazon have learned to completely disregard specific regulation and laws. According to Galloway, tech companies are willing to do “whatever is required to scale,” including abusing employees and lying to Congress. As Galloway warned, until an “algebra of deterrence” is implemented, then Big Tech companies will continue to operate in immoral—even criminal—ways. With Facebook, an algebra of deterrence is possible—it starts with a National Algorithm Safety Board.
As I explained two-and-a-half years ago, the most salient feature of progressives’ Green New Deal is that it would transform our mixed economy (essentially capitalist, although partially warped by cronyism and massive government interventionism) into a command economy. In a command economy, the independence of ordinary citizens is diminished as they are reduced to cogs in a socialist/fascist central plan. Big Government becomes more intrusive and oppressive, morphing into Big Brother.
With Joe Biden in the White House and his progressive/socialist/fascist allies having a majority, however thin, in Congress, they are charging full-speed ahead toward central planning (see the left’s proposed $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” package). So is Big Brother breathing down our necks? Or is that being too paranoid? Consider the following:
The Proposal to Have Banks and Other Savings Institutions Report All Transactions Over $600 to the Treasury Department
Such a law would constitute a massive invasion of privacy. It would eviscerate the Fourth Amendment by stripping away our right “to be secure … against unreasonable searches.” The progressive/socialist central planners want a permanent, open-ended search warrant against millions of innocent Americans.
One irony of such grotesque overreach is that the resulting flood of information flowing to federal officials might actually impair law enforcement efforts to detect criminal activity. Recall that after 9/11 we learned that U.S. intelligence had obtained information that could have prevented those attacks, but those vital bits of information got lost in the oceans of irrelevant intelligence that had been gathered.
Question: Upon whom would the costs of administering this rule fall? Answer: On financial institutions that already bear the costs of acting as unpaid gatherers of tax-related information for the IRS. These additional costs could sink smaller banks and credit unions. Your local neighborhood bank might not survive such onerous reporting requirements, and depositors like you and I might end up having our accounts transferred to megabanks monitoring our every financial move. (This would further the Marxist goal of centralizing credit. If that seems like overstatement to you, note that Biden has nominated as the new Comptroller of the Currency a woman who graduated from “Moscow [as in Soviet Union] State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Scholarship” and who has “proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumer bank deposits,” according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board.)
Speaking of “monitoring” Americans, adding federal employees to monitor our money flows would be as economically wasteful as FDR’s decision to pay people to keep track of how much acreage farmers were planting. Hiring people who produce nothing, but simply monitor people who actually do produce wealth, is to create make-work jobs that contribute nothing to the wealth of the nation.
The Proposal to Tax Unrealized Capital Gains
Progressives have proposed a new type of tax: an annual levy on saved wealth in addition to the current tax on income. Today, if an investment (whether in stocks, businesses, or land, houses, and other forms of real property) appreciates in value, the owner owes tax on the capital gain only when he or she sells the asset. But progressives don’t want to wait for owners to sell their property. They want to tax assets every year, based on how much the property has increased in value each year.
This is highly problematical. In the case of real property or business assets or any asset that—unlike the stock market—doesn’t have an identifiable market value on a given day, the “gain” on which the asset-holder would be taxed would involve guesswork, injecting an element of arbitrariness. Worse, what would be taxed would be potential gains, not real ones. Until an owner actually sells an asset, one cannot accurately determine if there is a capital gain or loss.
Market value rises and falls. (Remember 2008?) Say a person’s retirement account has an accumulated cost basis of $600,000. Today, its market value is $1 million. Should government tax a percentage of the $400,000 paper gain? But what if the stock market subsequently crashes and the account’s market value falls to $350,000, at which point the stressed investor throws in the towel and sells? The actual loss would be $50,000; yet, under a wealth tax, the investor might have paid thousands of dollars in taxes on gains that were never realized, but existed only on paper. Would the government refund the tax revenues that it had collected from temporary paper gains that turned out to be actual losses?
Another major defect of the wealth tax is that (as proposed, at least) it does not index gains to inflation. Thus, it taxes phantom gains by using nominal prices rather than real, inflation-adjusted prices.
One other point: Proponents of a wealth tax will try to sell it to the public by saying that only the rich would pay it. Just remember: That is what they promised when the graduated income tax was introduced during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. It wasn’t long before that promise fell by the wayside. The excuse for extending the income tax to Americans of modest means was World War I. Well, if you are paying attention, the Green New Deal would be far more costly than any war we have fought. Once the camel has its nose under the tent—that is, once the principle is established in law that the government may tax holdings of wealth—it won’t be long before middle-income taxpayers are subject to it, too.
The FBI Keeping a Database on Parents Who Protest Against Obnoxious Local School Policies
Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, has directed the FBI (pdf) to investigate and prepare to prosecute parents who protest too vehemently the use of critical race theory (CRT) curriculums in public schools. Ostensibly, the objective is to police violence against school board members, public-school administrators, and teachers. Fine: no violence. The risk is that the federal government potentially may criminalize righteous anger and First Amendment-protected vehement speech.
Getting the short end of the stick here are parental rights. Too many arrogant public-school officials and progressive politicians exhibit the attitude: “Give us your kids, pay the taxes that fund the schools, then get out of the way so we can do what we want with your kids. We know what they need, and you don’t.” Such an attitude is outrageous, and Americans wouldn’t be caring parents if they did not energetically strive to protect their children from malicious indoctrination, whether into fantastical green catastrophism, CRT, Marxism, or any other dangerous ideology. An earlier generation of Americans fought a war over “taxation without representation.” The stakes were arguably lower then, because there was no threat of the minds of America’s children being poisoned by an alien, anti-American ideology, so today’s peaceful, if strongly worded, vigorous protests are entirely justified.
The fact that Attorney General Garland apparently has a conflict of interest in this issue (his son-in-law allegedly profits from peddling CRT materials) is an interesting sidelight, but not the crux of this issue. What is truly disturbing is the prospect of the FBI devoting more resources to monitoring outspoken parents than the thousands of people illegally pouring over our southern border and spreading throughout our country.
The above are three ways in which the federal government is increasing its surveillance and control over the American people. Is this Big Brother or is that too paranoid? What do you think?
Veteran journalist was involved in 2016 doc that misrepresented gun-rights activists
Katie Couric admits in her forthcoming memoir she intentionally cut out Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s criticism of NFL anthem protests from a taped interview in order to protect the Supreme Court justice’s legacy, the latest instance of the veteran journalist selectively editing interviews.
Couric reveals in Going There that a 2016 interview with Ginsburg was edited to omit the liberal icon’s statement that NFL players who kneeled for the national anthem displayed a “contempt for a government that has made it possible for their parents and grandparents to live a decent life.” The former Today Show host, who is a member of the Aspen Institute’s commission on media disinformation, wrote that she wanted to protect Ginsburg from public backlash and that she did not believe the octogenarian justice fully understood her question, according to the Daily Mail.
Couric’s admission marks a pattern for the reporter. In 2016, the makers of a documentary featuring Couric admitted that they edited her interview with a gun-rights group in order to portray it in a negative light. The documentary, Under the Gun, showed members of the Virginia Citizens Defense League sitting in an extended, awkward silence in response to a question from Couric about gun purchases. But audio of the interview provided to the Washington Free Beacon revealed that the group members promptly responded to Couric’s question. Couric and the filmmakers defended their deception in statements to the Washington Post.
Couric’s handling of the Ginsburg interview could call into question her credentials for serving on the Aspen Institute Commission on Information Disorder. The commission, for which England’s Prince Harry serves as a vice chairman, says that disinformation has caused a “modern-day crisis of faith in key institutions.”
Tech billionaire Craig Newmark funds the Aspen commission. Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, funded a New York University study published earlier this year that said without evidence that emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop were “stolen material.” The study also said that Twitter and Facebook made “reasonable” decisions to block links to articles in the New York Post about Biden’s emails.
A D.C. City Council member who claimed Jewish bankers control the weather is running for mayor, according to a Wednesday announcement.
Trayon White Sr. (D.) is the second city councilman this week to throw his hat into the mayoral race. He announced his candidacy on Instagram, in response to a post about Councilman Robert White (D.) launching his mayoral bid on Wednesday.
White’s candidacy is likely to cause a stir due to his history of espousing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. In 2018, he claimed that the Rothschilds—a historically wealthy Jewish family that is often the center of anti-Semitic assertions—manipulate the weather and control the levers of federal power.
“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” White said in a video he posted on Facebook. “And DC keep talking about, ‘We a resilient city,’ and that’s a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.” During a city council breakfast meeting, White also argued that “the Rothschilds—control the World Bank, as we all know—infusing dollars into major cities.”
“They really pretty much control the federal government, and now they have this concept called resilient cities in which they are using their money and influence into local cities,” he said.
White’s comments drew condemnations from Jewish groups and anti-Semitism watchdogs at the time. He later agreed to visit the Holocaust museum with the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington in an attempt to make amends but left without explanation halfway through the 90-minute tour.
An adviser to Trayon White on Wednesday confirmed the run in a statement to D.C. radio station WAMU, saying the councilman “has a tremendous amount of support coming his way because he is willing to speak out for and advocate for those who need the leadership the most.”
Incumbent mayor Muriel Bowser (D.) has yet to say if she will run for reelection.
An Ohio man says he was informed just five days before his scheduled kidney transplant that the operation was off because his donor has not gotten a COVID-19 vaccine.
Ganim and his wife told WKYC they were told on Oct. 8 that the Cleveland Clinic started a new policy that requires both organ donors and recipients to be fully vaccinated.
“It’s just wrong in so many ways,” Debi Ganim said. “All because of a policy that was just decided.”
“We were blindsided,” Sue George, the donor, told the outlet.
She said she’s not getting a COVID-19 vaccine due to medical, religious, and freedom reasons.
“We have one goal here and that’s to get Mike a kidney. So, it may come down to looking for another donor,” George told News 5 Cleveland.
Asked about what happened, a Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email that the clinic did recently implement a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for donors and recipients of solid organ transplants.
“Vaccination is particularly important in these patients for their safety. Living donation for organ transplantation has been a life-saving treatment, but it is not without risks to the donor. For the living donor, reducing the risk of a COVID-19 infection around the time of their surgery and recovery is crucial. We continually strive to minimize risk to our living donors, and vaccination is an important component to ensure the safest approach and optimal outcomes for donors,” she said.
“For the transplant candidate, in addition to a major operation, medications taken after an organ transplant weaken a person’s immune response. Serious complications of COVID-19 are most likely to develop in those individuals who have weakened immune systems, as their body has a reduced ability to fight and recover from infections. The FDA-authorized vaccines have been determined to be safe and effective and are the best way to prevent severe illness and death from COVID-19,” she added.
No one at the Cleveland Clinic has been removed from the transplant waiting list as of yet for not being vaccinated.
The rejection comes after Leilani Lutali, a Colorado woman, was informed a kidney transplant was no longer proceeding because neither she nor her donor were vaccinated.
The case drew nationwide attention and cast the spotlight on evolving transplant policies.
Vaccination policies are in place at facilities across the country, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nonprofit that manages the U.S. organ transplantation system. They are not required.
A study (pdf) published in July found that less than 7 percent of the 92 transplant centers who responded to a survey reported inactivating patients who were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.
“Very few centers are requiring COVID-19 vaccination prior to transplantation despite early evidence suggesting reduced immunogenicity in transplant patients on immunosuppression,” researchers said.
The University of Colorado Hospital, which was slated to perform Lutali’s transplant, told news outlets that it is requiring COVID-19 vaccination for almost all organ transplants.
Not all centers have implemented such requirements.
A spokeswoman for the University of Kentucky HealthCare, which runs a transplant center, told The Epoch Times in an email it does not.
“There is not a vaccination requirement in place but we encourage patients to obtain the vaccine both pre and post-transplant,” she said.
A Virginia father says his daughter was sexually assaulted by a male student at school earlier this year, setting off a series of events that saw his outburst at a school board meeting included in a controversial letter that compared some parents to domestic terrorists.
Scott Smith’s daughter, 15, is a freshman at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County. On May 28, Smith says, a boy raped her in a bathroom at the school.
Smith told The Daily Wire he was called and told there had been a physical altercation. When he arrived, he learned that there had actually been a sexual assault. Smith said he became furious. Loudoun County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the scene.
Smith avoided arrest and he and the family’s lawyer say a rape kit and other tests showed a sexual assault had occurred.
A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office told The Epoch Times via email she could confirm that an incident on May 28 is still being investigated. No documents can be provided because the case is pending, she said.
The same boy allegedly, after transferring to another school, was charged with sexual battery after being accused of inappropriately touching a 15-year-old in Ashburn. The sheriff’s office declined to confirm whether it’s the same male.
Juvenile records aren’t publicly available. Smith’s attorney, Elizabeth Lancaster, told the Wire that the boy was charged with multiple counts, including forcible sodomy. Lancaster didn’t return a request for comment.
Smith’s saga continued when he and his wife attended their first school board meeting on June 22, where a discussion on a proposal to protect transgender students was set to be discussed.
“My wife and I are gay- and lesbian-friendly,” Smith told the Wire. “We’re not into this children transgender stuff. The person that attacked our daughter is apparently bisexual and occasionally wears dresses because he likes them. So this kid is technically not what the school board was fighting about. The point is kids are using it as an advantage to get into the bathrooms.”
During the meeting, Beth Barts, a school board member, asked if there were assaults happening in bathrooms or locker rooms—a key concern for opponents of letting biological males in girl’s facilities.
“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” Superintendent Scott Ziegler said, adding later that “the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”
Smith said he was accosted by an activist who insisted his daughter was not assaulted. An officer came over because of the tense situation.
Scott Smith and his wife are seen in an undated photograph. (Safe Schools Legal Fund/GoFundMe)
“The next thing I know, I’m getting touched from all over the place. I didn’t know who was touching me, who was grabbing me. I turn around, the police are grabbing me and next thing I know, I’m tackled to the ground. I’m just shocked and horrified,” he said on Fox News on Tuesday.
The arrest was widely reported and was cited by the National School Boards Association in its recent letter to President Joe Biden urging him to take action to combat incidents the board likened to domestic terrorism.
Several days later, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced federal officials would be targeting people who harass, intimidate, or threaten school board members and others who work with or at public schools.
A Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email that it is aware of reports concerning the alleged sexual assaults at two high schools in the district and declined to provide details. However, the district said the sheriff’s office was contacted within minutes of the earlier assault.
“Once a matter has been reported to law enforcement, LCPS does not begin its investigation until law enforcement advises LCPS that it has completed the criminal investigation. To maintain the integrity of the criminal investigation, law enforcement requested that LCPS not interview students until their investigation is concluded,” the spokesman said.
“LCPS has cooperated and continues to cooperate with law enforcement. Furthermore, LCPS is prohibited from disciplining any student without following the Title IX grievance process, which includes investigating complaints of sexual harassment and sexual assault. LCPS does impose interim measures to protect the safety of students involved in the original incident, deter retaliation, and preserve the integrity of the investigation and resolution process. LCPS has complied and continues to comply with its obligations under Title IX,” it added.
The district also said that members of the school board were not aware of the assaults until this week.
The video streaming service has admitted to mass removing accounts that posted short interview clips from Bannon’s War Room.
Google-owned YouTube removed the account of a leading conservative pressure group on Monday, with The National Pulse learning that the zero-strike ban stemmed from the upload of three interviews from Stephen K. Bannon’s War Room podcast, also banned on the network.
In an e-mail to the American Principles Project, which saw its archive of videos removed without warning, YouTube admitted to censoring the whole account because of three historic interview clips from Bannon’s podcast, which was banned in January after a censorship campaign by far-left activists.
An e-mail from YouTube to the American Principles Project, seen by The National Pulse, states:
Your channel was originally terminated for violating our Terms of Service by uploading content from Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast channel, which was terminated in January 2021 for repeatedly violating our Community Guidelines. Our circumvention policies do not allow other channels to reupload content that has been duly removed from YouTube for policy violations. We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and per our Terms of Service, if we’re made aware of a channel that is reuploading content from a previously terminated channel, we may remove that content or terminate the channel reuploading the content.
Accepting that the American Principles Project was likely unaware that simply uploading interviews of their staff appearing on the War Room would lead to a removal of their entire containing hundreds of videos dating back to 2013, the YouTube spokesman said the company would reinstate the account:
Given that you were likely unaware of this policy, our team reviewed your appeal and reinstated your channel. In accordance with our three-strikes system, we have issued your account a one-time warning. Please note that per this system, this warning will remain on your channel, and the next time your content is found to violate our Community Guidelines, your channel will receive a strike, which may result in the loss of uploading privileges.
The videos removed were titled:
Terry Schilling Discusses APP’s Mission with Raheem Kassam on War Room: Pandemic;
Terry Schilling and Raheem Kassam cohost War Room: Pandemic with guest Jack Posobiec discuss COVID;
Jon Schweppe on War Room: Pandemic discussing Biden’s HHS nomination of Rachel Levine.
Disclosure of interest: Raheem Kassam, editor-in-chief of The National Pulse was a co-founder and co-host of the War Room: Pandemic and The American Principles Project is the parent organization of The National Pulse.
More of Fauci’s e-mails are emerging, and they don’t shower him or his wife in glory.
Previously unseen e-mail correspondence between Anthony Fauci and his wife Christine Grady show the couple celebrating how Fauci had been “immortalized” by an action figure, and reveal a callous reaction to vaccine-related deaths, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
In an e-mail sent on January 15th 2021, Fauci flagged a New York Post article highlighting 23 people who died in Norway after being administered the Pfizer vaccine.
“Yikes,” Grady simply replies after being forwarded the article with a note that simply read “fyi”.
The tone is markedly different from other e-mails between the couple who work together – an issue that has raised questions over the propriety of their roles and whether or not a conflict of interest exists. While Grady was overseeing “bioethics” for the U.S. government, Fauci was doling out cash to Wuhan Lab collaborators like Peter Daszak among others.
Another email seen by The National Pulse displays her reaction to the launch of an action figure in the image of her husband, Fauci.
“It is endless…” she writes before adding:
“You have been immortalized”
Fauci originally shared an article from The Hill –Fauci Gets His Own Action Figure – that was flagged by Greg Folkers, the Chief of Staff in the Office of the Director at Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
The back and forths shed some light into the day-to-day working relationship between Fauci and Grady, who often exchange e-mails, with Fauci even sharing some messages not meant for Grady to his wife.
It is also an insight into the pair’s priorities and their flippancy regarding vaccine-related deaths.
A federal judge on Oct. 13 held top Washington jail officials in contempt, finding that they violated a U.S. Capitol breach defendant’s civil rights by impeding his access to medical care.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, found Washington jail warden Wanda Patten and Department of Corrections Director Quincy Booth in civil contempt in a written order after expressing displeasure with them during a court hearing.
The order doesn’t include sanctions or penalties, but was being transmitted to Attorney General Merrick Garland for an inquiry into the potential civil rights violations of defendants charged in relation to the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, “as exemplified in this case.”
“It’s clear to me the civil rights of the defendant were violated by the D.C. Department of Corrections,” Lamberth said in federal court in Washington. “I don’t know if it’s because he’s a January 6 defendant or not.”
The referral concerns the treatment of Christopher Worrell, who has been charged with civil disorder and other counts.
Worrell, who has been held since being arrested in March, has been dealing with a finger fracture and cancer, according to court records. In June, an orthopedic surgeon at a nearby hospital recommended that Worrell have surgery to repair the fracture.
A surgery for the fracture is still in the process of being approved by U.S. Marshals, Worrell’s attorneys and prosecutors wrote in a joint update last week.
Lamberth said that after receiving the update, he contacted Acting U.S. Marshal Lamont Ruffin to inquire about the subject.
Ruffin said that repeated requests for medical records from the D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) didn’t yield necessary notes. The judge then ordered the D.C. jail and DOC to provide the records to the court.
Jail officials didn’t respond to the order, Lamberth said in a separate filing on Oct. 12. He ordered them to appear before him and show why they shouldn’t be held in civil contempt.
A lawyer for the jail argued that they had been working to get the records together to comply with the court’s order before the contempt hearing was set.
“He’s needed an operation. He hasn’t gotten it,” the judge said.
Defense lawyers representing a number of Capitol defendants have said their clients are being treated poorly in the Washington jail. Several defendants have said guards beat them.
“They’re being treated like third-world country political prisoners,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times.
Chris Geldart, deputy mayor for public safety and justice in Washington, told The Epoch Times in an email that the DOC “has made every effort to comply with the orders of District Court including the provision of external medical records referenced in this case.”
“The Department works to ensure the Constitutional rights of all residents and will fully cooperate with any lawful inquiries or investigation by the United States Department of Justice and/or the United States Attorney’s Office,” Geldart wrote.
Department of Justice officials didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
“Both my client and I are pleased with the outcome of the hearing and Judge Lambert’s ruling today,” Alex Stavrou, an attorney representing the defendant, told The Epoch Times in an email.
“On behalf of all January 6 defendants, we support the [judge’s] position that the Office of the Attorney General investigate into potential civil rights violations. On behalf of Christopher Worrell and all January 6 defendants, we trust and pray that the Office of the Attorney General will conduct this inquiry immediately and without prejudice,” Stavrou wrote.
A hit piece was published this morning in the Washington Post and Newsweek based on a “report” published by the ADL. The report highlights how people post Gab links on Twitter that the ADL doesn’t like.
Twitter is so low on our referral source traffic list that it doesn’t even register in our top 15 sources of traffic. Yet that’s what the ADL targeted because they have no power anywhere else. 95% of our traffic is direct, meaning we don’t depend on Google, Twitter, Facebook, or anyone else. People come directly to Gab.
The ADL is an anti-Christ, Anti-American, and Anti-White hate organization. They should be registered as a foreign agent under Foreign Agents Registration Act for their operation in the United States on behalf of foreign interests in Israel.
The ADL is a Jewish organization that serves the interests of Jews and of Israel. Stating this fact isn’t even remotely controversial nor is it “hateful.” In fact the ADL openly boasts about these facts, but because a Christian man dares to say these things out loud the ADL cries “anti-Semitism!”
Remember the time I responded to the ADL with “Jesus is King” and they called it “thinly veiled antisemitism?” If you believe Jesus is King, as I do, the ADL will call you an “anti-semite.” Who cares? Let them. Their shame words only have power if you let them. Don’t apologize for anything. Double down.
I often wonder if this repeated pattern of the ADL smearing and attacking good Christian people as “anti-semitic” is a result of their profound Christophobia or if it’s just merely an expression of their Jewish privilege.
The ADL can call me and Gab whatever shame words they want, but they can’t say I’m wrong. The real problem for them here is that I don’t answer to the ADL. I answer only to the King of Kings my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Period. They hate Him first, and therefore they hate me too as He said they would. (John 15:18)
The ADL can try and pressure Twitter to censor Gab all they want, but they will never stop the signal of the 20 million people and growing who are using Gab’s services each and every month. Gab will never bend the knee to hateful extremist organizations like the ADL.
In the United States of America people have a God-given right to speak freely, to exercise religious liberty, and to protect their bodily autonomy. Reminding people of these rights is not “misinformation.”
If the ADL doesn’t like the rights we have in America, a Christian nation, then perhaps they should move to Israel which is one of the most vaccinated countries on earth and a noted covid hot spot.
Finally, the January 6th Capitol Riot hoax has been widely debunked including by the FBI who found “scant evidence that the Jan. 6 event at the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.”
The ADL and anyone else who demands that Gab censor legally-protected political speech on the internet can go pound sand.
The gatekeepers of movie reviews want us to believe that the new documentary featuring Dr. Anthony Fauci wasn’t all that bad.
As it turns out, they’re even willing to lie about how audiences are responding to what looks like a failure among all age demographics.
According to IMDb, the movie “Fauci” is “a glimpse into infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci who has led the U.S. fight against every epidemic the country has faced from AIDS to SARS to Ebola, and the ongoing COVID-19.”
Originally, IMDb listed the score for “Fauci” as a horrendous 1.6 out of 10.
Now, the site lists the movie’s rating as a much more respectable 5.8 out of 10.
The components of the overall score, however, remain the same as before.
So, presumably, the site believes its users are so stupid that they are unable to figure out the average of the following numbers — 1.0, 1.4, 1.4 and 1.7 — somehow add up to 5.8.
In other words, IMDb appears to have artificially inflated the movie’s rating — and it didn’t do a very good job in covering up its deception.
Overall, while the documentary appears to be a hit among critics (who are overwhelmingly left-leaning), multiple sites other than IMDb confirm that it has been an absolute bomb among regular viewers.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a pitiful audience score of 2 percent.
In the review section of the website, users made it known why they despised the movie.
“Very disappointing film. I was excited to see a movie that captures one of the biggest names on the popular culture landscape over the last 2 years. Instead what I got felt like a propaganda piece or a fan tribute. Very troubling way to present a documentary/film,” one user named “Jason M” wrote.
“It should have taken a more balanced look at his life and work. Instead it felt like a marketing puff piece which is not what anyone wants from a documentary. Lets hope this was a blip and it’s not the future of documentaries.”
Another reviewer who spoke about watching the movie with an open mind was similarly let down.
“I had already known that this documentary was not well received by many, but I watched with an open mind to learn as much as I could about Fauci. If this documentary had a different purpose, or a different title, I would probably be more forgiving,” a user named “Chris E” wrote.
“What do I mean? Well, this was supposed to be a documentary about a public figure. Not a biography, but a documentary about a man’s career, no? Covering the many years of service of this man with no mention of any controversy is troubling. It did not mention the wins AND the losses, it just painted him as a dedicated, yet under appreciated man.”
“I wanted to learn as much as I could, so I could formulate an more fact based opinion on Fauci. I can’t use this documentary because it was really just a puff piece. It was very one sided. I prefer a documentary that covers all sides; the positives, the negatives, and everything in-between.”
When Scott Smith went to the Loudoun County school board meeting on June 22, he says he had one intention — to tell the story of his daughter’s rape.
One of the items to be discussed at the meeting was a proposed school district policy that would allow students to enter their bathroom of choice based on their “gender identity.”
A number of protesting parents had gathered to voice their opinions. Others supported the policy, denouncing their more conservative peers as bigots.
School superintendent Scott Ziegler assured parents that there is no reason to be concerned over the inclusion of transgender students in bathrooms and locker rooms.
When Beth Barts, a member of the school board, asked at the meeting if the school district had “assaults in our bathrooms or locker rooms regularly,” Ziegler said that wasn’t a problem.
“To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” he said, according to The Daily Wire (subscription required).
“Have we had any issues involving transgender students in our bathrooms or locker rooms?” Barts asked, according to The Daily Wire.
Ziegler was unequivocal.
“Time Magazine in 2016 called that a red herring, that the data was simply not playing out that transgender students were more likely to assault cisgender students in restrooms than were other students,” he said, according to The Daily Wire. “In fact, regardless of the gender identity of the student, if a crime or violation of the rules were committed, that would be investigated and dealt with to the full extent of the rules or the law …”
“I think it’s important to keep our perspective on this, we’ve heard it several times tonight from our public speakers, but the predator transgender student or person simply does not exist.”
But, according to The Daily Wire, Smith knew these words to be beside the point. He said his child, a ninth-grade girl, had been raped in a girls’ bathroom by a “bisexual” boy.
“The point is kids are using it as an advantage to get into the bathrooms,” he told the outlet.
As Smith was getting ready to say his piece at the meeting, he told The Daily Wire, a left-wing community activist approached and told him that she did not believe his daughter. Strange how quickly the left’s “believe all women” motto has turned into “believe only the women who further our political agenda.”
A shouting match between the two then ensued. This led to a police officer pulling on Smith’s arm. He yanked away, was then hit in the face, handcuffed and dragged out of the meeting, The Daily Wire reported.
Video of the arrest was posted to YouTube by WTTG-TV, Fox 5 in Washington:
On Aug. 11, the school board finalized its vote to approve the new transgender policy without having heard Smith’s testimony. Following his arrest, Smith had been banned from entering the school board building, according to The Daily Wire.
So, the school board never heard the following account:
On May 28, Smith maintains, a boy wearing a skirt entered a girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School, where he assaulted Smith’s daughter. Smith’s attorney, Elizabeth Lancaster, told The Daily Wire that the boy had been charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy and one county of forcible fellatio, all in regards to the incident.
When Smith was called to the school that day, he’d just been told that his daughter had been assaulted. But after he arrived, The Daily Wire reported, “he determined that what had happened was not a case of his daughter being beaten up: It was far more serious.”
However, the school told Smith it was going to handle the incident “in-house,” apparently meaning without involving law enforcement. Smith said he lost his temper.
“Deputies from the sheriff’s office ultimately responded to the school — not to investigate the alleged rape of a child, Smith said, but because school administrators called them on him for making a scene about it,” The Daily Wire reported.
Still, Smith said at least some good came of his arrest that day. Because of it, he told The Daily Wire, his daughter was taken to the hospital, where swabs were taken for a rape kit that would strengthen a prosecution in the case.
Although juvenile records are sealed, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office responded to a Daily Wire public records request by confirming that a report with “Offense: Forcible Sodomy [and] Sexual Battery” matching the date and location of Smith’s claim does, indeed, exist.
Smith said he’d been assured by prosecutors that the suspect in his daughter’s case was being held responsible and was expected to plead guilty to a lesser sexual assault charge at a hearing scheduled for Oct. 14.
However, on Oct. 6, a 15-year-old was charged with sexual battery and abduction after he allegedly forced a young girl into an empty classroom and assaulted her, according to a release from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office.
And, as it turns out, this is the same boy as the suspect in Smith’s daughter’s case, various sources confirmed to Smith’s attorney and The Daily Wire.
Smith doesn’t come off like a vengeful father — The Daily Wire reported that he was even amenable to the suspect receiving the lesser charge in his daughter’s case.
He merely attended the school board meeting on June 22 to make sure what he said happened to his daughter never happens to another girl in Loudoun County.
But after being provoked by a pro-LGBT activist who accused his daughter of being a liar, Smith faced possible jail time for disorderly conduct, even though such cases are almost universally dropped, according to Lancaster.
The lead prosecutor in Loudoun County, Buta Biberaj, took it upon herself to personally prosecute Smith’s case, The Daily Wire reported, a decision the outlet attributed to Biberaj’s close relationship with the progressive members of the Loudoun County school board.
Smith was convicted Aug. 17 of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, according to LoudounNow, a local online news outlet.
Biberaj won the office in a 2019 election, after she received $845,000 in campaign funds from billionaire George Soros, according to The Daily Wire. Her Republican opponent spent a total of $113,000, The Daily Wire reported.
Despite a soft-on-criminals philosophy, Biberaj sought jail time for Smith. He was sentenced to 10 days behind bars, but it was suspended as long as he stays out of trouble for a year, according to LoudounNow.
Given Biberaj’s radical political leanings, her push for a harsher sentence should come as no surprise.
To progressives like her, Smith is nothing more than a domestic terrorist.
Parents whose kids excel in school need to be on guard. Leftist school administrators across the country—not just in New York City—are banning gifted programs in elementary and middle school and Advanced Placement courses in high school.
Typically, without any notice to parents, an eight grader’s accelerated science class or a fifth grader’s fast-track math class is merged into the regular classroom. Top students lose out. They need accelerated programs every bit as much as children with learning challenges need special education. It’s discrimination.
The left is seizing on a newly published study of Ohio students from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute to call for banning gifted programs. The study, “Ohio’s Lost Einsteins,” looks at what became of second and third grade students who were identified as high performers. By eighth grade, only 30 percent of black students, 39 percent of Hispanic students and 34 percent of economically disadvantaged students in the group were still outstanding performers. Most had floundered.
Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews misreads the findings to argue that gifted programs are unproven and probably a waste of money. But many of the Ohio students labelled as high achievers were never placed in a “gifted” program. Fordham’s experts actually recommend more students be tracked into gifted programs.
The study also underscores the importance of helping gifted children early on overcome barriers to success. They may lack a place to study and, most importantly, an involved parent. Some parents don’t insist their children do their homework, concentrate in class and aim for AP classes. These parents need guidance on buying into the educational achievement culture.
Instead, school administrators are scapegoating gifted kids for the sake of equity. Boston suspended enrollment in its Advanced Work Classes program for fourth, fifth and six graders, citing the fact that the school district is 80 percent black and Hispanic, but AWC enrollment is 70 percent white and Asian.
The rhetoric attacking gifted programs is vicious and divisive. The Hechinger Report, based at Columbia University’s Teachers College, claims “gifted education has racism in its roots,” arguing that the scientist who popularized IQ measurement was a eugenicist.
California proposes eliminating accelerated math before eleventh grade and requiring all students to study math together. “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” the state’s math plan declares. That’s like declaring that all students can play on the varsity football team. Ridiculous.
Educators are peddling a false claim that students of mixed abilities learn better together. A website addressed to school administrators deplores tracking as “segregation” and announces, “It’s good for students to be in classrooms where there’s a robust exchange of perspectives; perspectives that are shaped by racial, ethnic and economic identities.” Maybe in homeroom or social studies, but not physics. Gifted children in slow classes grow bored and even drop out.
Leftist educators are also targeting AP high school classes. But a study by the left-leaning Center for American Progress shows that students who succeed in AP classes have higher grades in college and are more likely to graduate. Eliminating them would be a mistake.
Fewer black students enroll in AP, and those who do are less likely to pass the AP exams. Approximately 69 percent of Asians, 65 percent of whites and 46 percent of Hispanics who take AP tests pass, but only 28 percent of blacks pass. The country should be deeply concerned, but the solution is to better prepare disadvantaged kids.
The equity warriors are also attacking the nation’s 165 competitive public high schools. From Boston to Alexandria, Virginia, and San Francisco, they’re eliminating entrance exams and allocating seats by lottery or zip code.
Georgetown University’s Anthony Carnevale calls it “a direct populist rebellion.” Don’t buy it. The real populism is parents rising up to resist dumbing down their children’s education. These parents, including Asian American immigrants, know their best shot at the American dream is to have their children succeed in a highly competitive public school. No one should take that away.
Cancel culture has reared its ugly head once again, and this time in a new and unprecedented way.
A lecture by a physicist was canceled at one of America’s premier institutions of science, MIT, for reasons having nothing to do with the subject of the lecture. The lecture was canceled not because of its scientific content but because of the politically incorrect views on diversity of the scientist scheduled to give the lecture.
Dorian Abbot is a professor in the department of the geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Harvard and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from Harvard.
Abbot was scheduled to give the annual John Carlson lecture at MIT’s Lorenz Center in the department of earth, atmospheric, and planetary sciences. The topic was to be “climate and the potential for life on other planets.”
But this lecture will not take place.
In August, Abbot and Ivan Marinovic, an associate professor of accounting at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, published an opinion piece in Newsweek entitled “The Diversity Problem on Campus.”
Abbot and Marinovic argued that the politically correct regime now taking control of America’s universities, which they identify as “DEI”—diversity, equity, and inclusion—is undermining the mission of what universities are supposed to be about. That mission is, per Abbot and Marinovic, “the production and dissemination of knowledge.”
When universities no longer look for the “most talented and best trained minds” in hiring, and politically motivated criteria drive hiring practices, the university’s “core business”—the “search for truth”—is undermined.
They propose that “MFE”—merit, fairness, and equality—be adopted as the regime to define hiring practices to displace DEI. MFE is about hiring based on individual merit and qualifications alone.
Abbot is now paying the price for publicly expressing such heresy.
Twitter outrage descended on the administration at MIT, and Abbot was disinvited.
So now academic speech is not just about what is said but who is saying it.
Abbot and Marinovic were right on target in their Newsweek essay, suggesting that the DEI politically correct regime carries forward everything about racism that we supposedly have been trying to get rid of.
Racism is all about obliterating individuality and making predetermined judgments about who any individual is based on socially defined characteristics of the group to which they are assigned.
How can any black child in America not be injured when they are not taught that they are special and unique human beings but that what is most important is their color.
It doesn’t matter whether they are being rejected because of their color or accepted because of their color. Their humanity is being undermined.
Science advances when we recognize that truth is bigger than and beyond any single human mind. Truth is discovered, piece by piece, through humility and hard work, not political arrogance, pretending we already know it.
We might recall that modern science only emerged some five centuries ago. It wasn’t all that long ago that most believed that the sun moved around the Earth rather than the other way around. Scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei, through honest observations, concluded the prevailing view was wrong. This was politically incorrect then; they were attacked, and their books were banned.
One famous graduate of MIT was the great Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman.
Feynman observed, “Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”
The increasing deference of reality to public relations, meaning suppressing what is true to serve what the politically correct want to be true, is destroying our national integrity, hurting the very people that supposedly we are trying to help, and threatening the future of our nation.
Political correctness is undermining personal responsibility and personal development. Now it is threatening to undermine science and truth.
What is the greatest threat to educating children today? Is it COVID-19, or ignorance? I’m going for number two. There is growing evidence to back me up.
In August, Oregon Governor Kate Brown privately signed a bill ending a requirement that high school students prove they are proficient in writing, reading and math before graduating. The law lasts for three years. The pandemic was blamed for students falling behind, but the real motive was revealed by the governor’s spokesman, Charles Boyle, who said existing standards failed students who don’t test well and that new standards would aid the state’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.” I’m surprised he didn’t include, as President Biden often does, the LGBTQI-plus demographic.
In New York, outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered the elimination of the city’s gifted and talented program. You can probably guess the reason. Critics of the program claim it is racist because white and Asian students are overwhelmingly represented. De Blasio will let children currently enrolled to complete the program, but no new students will be accepted. Instead, reports The New York Times, “The system will be replaced by a program that offers the possibility of accelerated learning to students in the later years of elementary school.” Who will qualify for that? And who gets to say? What if it is the same racial and ethnic imbalance as now?
De Blasio ludicrously claimed, “I bet you a lot of parents are going to look at this plan and say this is a reason to stay in public schools.” Quite the opposite. Enrollment in city public schools has fallen below 890,000 students—down from more than a million kids a decade ago, according to internal Department of Education (DOE) records viewed by The New York Post. COVID-19 is only part of the reason. Home-schooling and people moving out of New York are likely bigger contributors to the exodus. Over the past five years—starting before COVID—New York City public schools shed at least 10 percent of their students, according to DOE figures.
The decline in American education is not a new trend, but it has been accelerated in recent years by certain politicians who allow their ideology and politics to replace outcomes.
I’ve written about the Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF) in the past because it has a record of success, which ought to be the primary goal, not pleasing politicians and teachers’ unions. According to CSF’s website, “In New York City, 99.4 percent of CSF alumni responding to our alumni survey graduated high school on time in 2018, compared to the most recent average NYC public school graduation rate of 77.3 percent. Of the CSF alumni who graduated, 87 percent indicated they planned to enroll in college.” The same gap between CSF students and public schools exists in other cities where they are active.
What is—or ought to be—especially pleasing is the testimonies given by the mostly minority students who have been rescued from their failing public schools and given a chance at a real education, not to mention a moral framework for how to live a good life. Read some of these stories on the site.
Since their founding, CSF has provided $885 million in scholarships for 185,000 children. In the past school year, CSF and local partners distributed $46.9 million scholarship awards. More children could be rescued if more politicians adopted school choice, which is a growing trend, along with home schooling.
Cutting a gifted and talented program and not requiring kids to read, write, or do basic math flunks the test of what education is supposed to mean and limits a child’s job and career opportunities. That is a form of child abuse.
Censorship of videos and written posts on major social media outlets about successful treatments of victims of the CCP virus—also known as the novel coronavirus—are causing people to lose their lives, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
“Everything to do with COVID has been most troubling because the internet could have been used so helpfully, so powerfully, by allowing doctors to disseminate their practices of medicine,” Johnson told reporters during a virtual news conference hosted Tuesday by the Media Research Center (MRC) and the MRC blog Free Speech America (FSA).
“I remember doctors doing videos out of New York recognizing that ventilators weren’t working. I remember a couple of doctors out of California talking about how they were treating COVID with repurposed drugs and those videos were taken down, they were censored,” Johnson said.
“As a result, the only thing we’ve done in terms of Covid is what the NIH tells us to do,” he added, noting that the NIH Guidelines have recently added information on monoclonal antibodies.
“But the guidelines throughout the 18 months of the pandemic while 700,000 Americans lost their lives without treatment, they could literally do nothing, go home, afraid, isolated, you get sick enough, go to the hospitals where they heard ‘we’ll see if we can save you at that point in time.’ That violates every principle of medicine I’ve ever heard of which is early detection means early treatment and better results.”
As an example of such censorship, Johnson said an impassioned opening statement of testimony by Dr. Pierre Kory on the treatment potential of ivermectin received 8 million views before it was censored by YouTube.
“Now we are dealing with censorship regarding the benefits of natural immunity because for whatever reason the powers that be, the COVID gods, want the vaccine in every arm,” Johnson said.
“So they are censoring the deaths [following vaccination] being reported on VAERS, over 16,000, at least 5,200 of those are within day one or two, and 750,000 adverse events, and nobody can talk about it,” he said. “This is affecting our healthcare system, it’s affecting doctors ability to save lives, we don’t know how many thousands of people lost their lives because of this censorship.”
Johnson was referring to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), co-managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration.
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) joined Johnson during the news conference and said “we have a former President of the United States, who is banned on social media platforms, while the Taliban, the Iranians and other terrorist outfits can use those same platforms freely, just to highlight the hypocrisy and the politicalization of these platforms.”
Steube is the chief sponsor of a legislative proposal in the House that would address the social media censorship issue by reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that currently protects the platforms from libel litigation.
Steube said his proposal would “surgically address this, it wouldn’t do away with Section 230,” and he noted that he disagrees with President Donald Trump, who wants an outright elimination of that provision.
“That would not be a good course of action because if we did away with it completely then your startups like Rumble and Parler, the more conservative sites, would just not be able to take advantage of that protection early on,” Steube said.
Steube said his bill provides a “market dominance test” that would only be applied “to the big actors and if they violate your First Amendment rights, it creates a private right for a cause of action that would enable you to sue, or a business, to sue those companies that right now are completely barred from any type of liability for their actions.”
Brent Bozell, MRC’s Founder and President, said “we have to ask ourselves if the democratic system can exist when only one side is allowed to have a voice in the public square. That’s where we’re headed and that’s how dangerous this is.”
Bozell said MRC’s FSA project has documented more than 2,900 examples of conservative speech being censored on social media. Among those, 59 involved “accidents” or “mistakes” against conservative political figures, while only one could be documented against a liberal Democrat.
The 2,900 examples are available for public analysis via FSA’s CensorTrack database.
Heartland Institute President James Taylor pointed out during the conference that Section 230 is primarily intended to address public concerns about sexual violence and obscenity.
“The supposed protections Big Tech has to censor material, that section, Section 230, is explicitly titled ‘To Protect Against Offensive Material.’ None of the examples cited in the law deal with political censorship,” Taylor said.
Cleta Mitchell, senior legal fellow counsel for election integrity with the Conservative Partnership Institute, said in all her years working as an election law attorney, she’s never witnessed all the abnormalities that happened last November, particularly in Fulton County, Georgia.
She also gave a report on the ongoing lawsuit to gain access to the county’s absentee ballots.
“The system that we witnessed in 2020 was not right,” Mitchell said in her newly launched podcast, “Who’s Counting With Cleta Mitchell.”
“I have been an election attorney for many, many years. I’ve done a lot of time at county election boards. I will tell you that I’ve spent many wee hours in the morning counting ballots, waiting for ballots to come in.”
“I’ve never seen what happened in 2020 happen before Nov. 3 of 2020 where the counting stopped before it was finished,” she continued. “I’ve never seen an actual halting of the counting of the ballots.”
Mitchell, who served on former President Donald Trump’s legal team challenging the Georgia election results, said the state was riddled with illegal conduct in last fall’s general election.
She recounted that the first morning after she arrived in Atlanta, a “God thing” occurred when she met Alex Kaufman, the general counsel for the Fulton County Republican Party.
Kaufman was able to give her an overview of some of the issues in the county they had been working to identify over the previous year, including an unsuccessful effort to remove a number of illegal voters from the rolls prior to the election.
That feedback focused the Trump legal team’s efforts to look to the data to see how many ineligible voters may have cast ballots.
She noted that President Joe Biden only won the entire state of Georgia by 11,779 votes, with Fulton County being one of his major bastions of support. He carried the county by approximately 244,000 more votes.
Mitchell explained that if their team could determine there were enough irregularities, including ineligible voters, in Fulton County to potentially impact the outcome, the remedy, by Georgia law, would be to conduct a new election.
Trump’s lawyers filed their suit on Dec. 4 officially contesting the results.
However, the chief judge for Fulton County never assigned a judge from another county to hear the case, as is required by law, Mitchell said.
“So that’s what happened in Georgia. We never got our day in court,” she said.
“There was never an adjudication of the actual claims made in the lawsuit.”
Instead, the Georgia attorney general, on behalf of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, threatened Trump’s legal team if they did not dismiss the case.
He claimed the state would seek damages “in the multimillions of dollars against President Trump, against David Shafer, who was one of our plaintiffs. He’s the state party chair, and he was a Trump elector. And against the lawyers who brought the lawsuit.”
Mitchell directed some of her sharpest criticism at Raffensperger, calling his handling of the election a “complete disaster.”
He made a series of bad decisions, she contended, that began with his consent decree he entered into with Georgia Democrats, including 2018 gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, which greatly impacted the signature matching requirements for mail-in ballots.
Additionally, contrary to Georgia law, Raffensperger unilaterally directed that absentee ballot applications be sent to every registered voter in the spring of 2020, Mitchell said.
The law states that voters must ask for the application and then fill it out and mail it in, she stated.
“We all know that the voter registration lists are a mess,” she said, meaning many applications likely went out to people no longer living at the address listed.
Besides requesting a ballot for the 2020 primary, applicants were also able to check a box if they also wanted their general election ballots mailed, in violation of state law, which requires voters to request an absentee ballot no more than 180 days from an election, Mitchell added.
“The point is election laws are determined by the state legislatures. That is one of the things our founding fathers wrote into the Constitution,” she said.
Mitchell highlighted that all the changes were made by judges and those in the executive branch.
Despite Trump’s lawsuit not going forward, the lawyer noted there is one still ongoing, brought by election integrity advocate and Fulton County resident Garland Favorito with VoterGa — seeking a review of the actual ballots cast in the county for irregularities.
He has cited the incident at State Farm Arena on election night when party observers and the media were told counting had stopped, only for it to resume for nearly two more hours soon thereafter.
Video captured of the incident showed what appeared to be ballots being feed through counting machines multiple times, according to Mitchell.
BREAKING! 🚨🚨🚨
Fulton County, GA!: A judge has granted @VoterGA conditional approval to inspect Fulton County mail-in ballots and metadata! This includes the ballots seen in the controversial State Farm Arena video being scanned in after hours. Watch @RealAmVoice for updates! pic.twitter.com/psFUexjKle
— Heather Mullins – Real America’s Voice (RAV-TV) (@TalkMullins) March 16, 2021
There are also several affidavits from poll workers saying they witnessed “pristine” mail-in ballots with no folds that may have been filled out by machines.
“Under Georgia law to be a legal ballot, it has to be put into an envelope and returned,” Mitchell said.
Favorito’s team also gained access to the images of the ballots earlier this year and discovered, “There are 153 batches of ballots (of 100) that are listed on the custodian report that they cannot find,” according to Mitchell.
“They have no idea where the ballots are. That’s over 15,000 ballots missing. There are another 3,700 ballots that are clearly duplicates. You can tell that by just looking at the images,” she said.
An independent report contracted by the Georgia State Election Board and released on Jan. 12 determined that there were many abnormalities in Fulton County’s November election.
“There were persistent chain of custody issues throughout the entire absentee ballot processing system,” the report said.
It added that “the fact that ballots were delivered to State Farm Arena in unsecured mail carts is very concerning.”
“Protocol for securing ballots exists not only in securing the ballots themselves but also ensuring no ballot stuffing occurred,” according to the report.
The election review also concluded that “the truth about what happened on the night of November 3rd between 10:30 PM and 11:52 PM [at State Farm Arena] continues to be elusive … but if the poll watchers are correct, then there is a serious problem.”
Another former Facebook employee says she is willing to testify before Congress on the tech giant’s business practices.
Sophie Zhang is a former Facebook data scientist and whistleblower who, in September 2020, revealed “influence” operations perpetrated by “authoritarian regimes” that took place on Facebook.
Zhang told CNN in an interview Sunday that she provided information regarding “potential criminal violations” by Facebook to a U.S. law enforcement agency at the time.
Zhang also said that she is willing to testify before Congress about her allegations of criminal conduct by Facebook.
Zhang, who was fired from Facebook in August 2020 for problems with performance, published a memo first reported on by Buzzfeed News detailing how oppressive governments like Azerbaijan or Honduras used the platform to “mislead their own citizenry.”
She alleged Facebook was aware of how its platform was being used, but that “we simply didn’t care enough to stop them.”
“I have blood on my hands,” she wrote in the memo.
Zhang has not shared the “detailed documentation” she says she provided to law enforcement, nor has she said to which agency she provided any information, according to CNN.
Zhang did say, however, that she was inspired to testify before Congress after watching the fallout of Frances Haugen’s testimony last week.
Facebook has recently cracked down on influence operations carried out on its site, removing entire networks of accounts based on how they abide by its community guidelines.
The company also releases reports on inauthentic behavior that takes place on its platform, most recently removing fake accounts used by political groups in Sudan and Iran.
Facebook currently faces a lawsuit over its handling of posts from people in Myanmar that promoted violence against the Rohingya Muslim community.
The Rohingya are the victims of ongoing atrocities and human rights abuses.
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A former nurse who was reportedly fired after his religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccine requirement was rejected has shed some rather harsh light on hysterical claims that ICU beds are at capacity because of all the sick unvaccinated people.
Speaking with LifeSiteNews, Brad McDowell, who was employed as an emergency room nurse at Valley Health Systems in Winchester, Virginia, explained that the “at capacity” status has less to do with unvaccinated patients and more to do with unvaccinated staffers that are being let go for their resistance to hospital, state and federal mandates.
“They can’t open a bed that they don’t have a nurse and a tech to staff,” he explained in a video interview that was published over the weekend, after being asked by interviewer Jim Hale if the health care worker shortage supposedly caused by the pandemic is, in reality, a result of strict vaccine mandates that many health care professionals have refused to adhere to.
“I can tell you that all those beds [at Valley Health] are not open, and I know that for a fact,” McDowell charged, referring to his former place of employment.
“There are beds closed, and they’re saying they’re … at capacity, but it’s not because there’s not enough beds,” he explained.
“It’s not because of the patient load. It’s because of the workforce load,” he said.
In other words, the unvaccinated patients aren’t overwhelming the hospital; the hospital has let go so many workers who refused to comply with the vaccine mandate that it’s now short-staffed as a result.
This is all rather remarkable when you consider that it’s health care workers who not only have been the most intimately familiar with COVID-19 throughout the whole of the pandemic, but they’re the ones you’d think would be most likely to be clamoring for a vaccine.
First of all, as is the case with frontline workers like firefighters, EMTs, and police officers, most nurses and doctors have been exposed to the coronavirus. Many have contracted and survived it themselves.
Although it’s highly inconvenient to those manufacturing and mandating the vaccine, the fact remains that there is ample evidence to suggest that natural immunity can protect against the virus at least as well as the vaccine itself.
“If you think about it, you have the political elite, the media elite, the people at the highest levels of the CDC, the pharmaceutical industry, they are running, they run the whole narrative,” McDowell explained.
“They’re the ones pushing it, they’re the ones who benefit the most from everyone taking a vaccine,” he stated.
A year ago, nurses and doctors were the celebrated heroes of the pandemic — now they’re being left in the dust for refusing to get a vaccine that they, with all their professional knowledge and experience with the virus, do not feel they should be required to get.
At the start of the pandemic, they were seen as the anointed saviors of all mankind. Their plight was often touted to convince the rest of us to shut up, get in line, and disregard any and all concern for our civil liberties and unprecedented violations thereof.
And suddenly, now that so many of them have their doubts about this vaccine and are willing and ready to work with COVID-19 patients without getting the vaccine themselves, they suddenly have no more clout?
Broad-reaching mandates by health care systems, states and the Biden administration are creating a health care worker shortage right in the midst of what they continue to tell us is a horrifically deadly pandemic that is being perpetrated by those who refuse to get vaccinated. Yet clearly, according to McDowell, this is far from the case.
How much longer are we going to tolerate this manufactured pandemic — and how much damage will be done to our nation’s vital health care infrastructure in the process?
The video streaming service has admitted to mass removing accounts that posted short interview clips from Bannon’s War Room.
Google-owned YouTube removed the account of a leading conservative pressure group on Monday, with The National Pulse learning that the zero-strike ban stemmed from the upload of three interviews from Stephen K. Bannon’s War Room podcast, also banned on the network.
In an e-mail to the American Principles Project, which saw its archive of videos removed without warning, YouTube admitted to censoring the whole account because of three historic interview clips from Bannon’s podcast, which was banned in January after a censorship campaign by far-left activists.
An e-mail from YouTube to the American Principles Project, seen by The National Pulse, states:
Your channel was originally terminated for violating our Terms of Service by uploading content from Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast channel, which was terminated in January 2021 for repeatedly violating our Community Guidelines. Our circumvention policies do not allow other channels to reupload content that has been duly removed from YouTube for policy violations. We enforce our policies equally for everyone, and per our Terms of Service, if we’re made aware of a channel that is reuploading content from a previously terminated channel, we may remove that content or terminate the channel reuploading the content.
Accepting that the American Principles Project was likely unaware that simply uploading interviews of their staff appearing on the War Room would lead to a removal of their entire containing hundreds of videos dating back to 2013, the YouTube spokesman said the company would reinstate the account:
Given that you were likely unaware of this policy, our team reviewed your appeal and reinstated your channel. In accordance with our three-strikes system, we have issued your account a one-time warning. Please note that per this system, this warning will remain on your channel, and the next time your content is found to violate our Community Guidelines, your channel will receive a strike, which may result in the loss of uploading privileges.
The videos removed were titled:
Terry Schilling Discusses APP’s Mission with Raheem Kassam on War Room: Pandemic;
Terry Schilling and Raheem Kassam cohost War Room: Pandemic with guest Jack Posobiec discuss COVID;
Jon Schweppe on War Room: Pandemic discussing Biden’s HHS nomination of Rachel Levine.
Disclosure of interest: Raheem Kassam, editor-in-chief of The National Pulse was a co-founder and co-host of the War Room: Pandemic and The American Principles Project is the parent organization of The National Pulse.
Oregon state Sens. Kim Thatcher and Dennis Linthicum, both Republicans, have petitioned Acting U.S. Attorney Scott E. Asphaug to launch a grand jury investigation into the measurement of COVID-19 statistics by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Thatcher and Linthicum submitted the petition in a letter (pdf) on Aug. 16 after gathering signatures from 1,718 Oregonians and 53,032 Americans.
In the petition, the senators expressed concerns over the measurement and reporting of COVID-19 vaccine adverse reactions including fatalities and injuries.
The lawmakers stated that a whistleblower, under sworn testimony, said the data reported under the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System may have been underreported by a factor of five.
Regarding the diagnosis of COVID-19 through widely-used PCR tests, the senators said that the CDC and the FDA’s setting of one particular test parameter—the cycle threshold—generated “false positives resulting in inflated numbers of COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.”
Harvard epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina told The New York Times in August 2020 that tests with too high of a threshold may detect not just live viruses but also genetic fragments. Mina suggested setting the cut-off at 30 cycles or less.
Thatcher expressed concern over the cycle threshold of 28 when testing vaccinated individuals. According to the petition, a low cut-off is likely to “eliminate false positive results and thereby reduce the number of vaccine ‘breakthrough’ cases.”
Thatcher and Linthicum said that they consulted large groups of doctors, epidemiologists, and virologists on the subject of COVID-19 statistical reporting.
“Additionally, we are profoundly concerned that the scientific literature continues to provide empirical evidence that safe and effective treatments and management strategies for COVID infections exist but are not being made available to Americans most in need,” continued the letter.
Stand for Health Freedom (SHF), a non-profit organization that helped with the petition, said in a statement that the petition was submitted one month before public release to “protect those involved.”
SHF also cited a March 2020 study (pdf) alleging that the CDC over-emphasized COVID-19 as the cause of death in compiling its statistics while “circumvent[ing] multiple federal laws” in the process.
Democrats are quarreling over the price tag of their Build Back Better bill, but the real problem is what’s in it. The bill coerces workers to join unions, imposes racial preferences on every facet of life and redistributes money from workers to takers.
Fortunately, this bill is in limbo. Moderate Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin insist the bill has to be pared down to less than half its current price tag. The far left is screaming in outrage. But the bill can’t pass without every Senate Democrat supporting it.
Not passing it would be the best outcome. This bill is as un-American as it gets. Here are some of the bill’s details Democrats would prefer you not see. Judge for yourself.
“First-Generation Down Payment Assistance”: Most people work and save for years to buy a home; this bill makes them into suckers. It caters to low-income, first-time homebuyers with no conditions. It’s part of President Joe Biden’s scheme to bring the city to the suburbs and increase racial and economic diversity there. First-time homebuyers can get up to $25,000 and never have to pay it back, whether they stay in the home or move for virtually any personal or financial reasons. It’s free money — as long as you’re not the taxpayer footing the bill.
“Home Efficiency Rebates”: The bill also offers up to $14,000 to homeowners who lower energy use by installing new heat pumps, air-conditioning systems, insulation and energy-efficient appliances. It’s a pot of gold for homeowners who qualify, and will bring tens of billions of dollars in new business for contractors.
Here’s the catch: Only unionized electrical contractors qualify. This bill is designed to twist arms and unionize the workforce. Why? Unions bankroll the Democratic Party.
Racial and ethnic minorities also get preferential treatment. The bill promises contractors a $200 bonus for each customer served from a “community of racial or minority ethnic concentration.” Whites go to the back of the line and have to hope the money holds out.
“Direct Care Workforce”: The bill awards $1.48 billion to labor unions and community organizations to recruit and train workers to care for the elderly or disabled at home. Top priority is training workers in their rights and organizing them, according to the bill. This is your tax dollars at work creating a new army of likely Democratic voters.
The bill also includes preferential tax treatment for union dues, additional tax credits for buying union-made electric vehicles and a staggering ten-fold increase in civil penalties against employers who resist unionization.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims Build Back Better is “about the children.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman repeats the claim, saying the bill is about “securing the future” for children.
Truth is, the bill screws our children and grandchildren. It adds hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal debt, forcing the next generations to pay interest and principal on what we’ve borrowed instead of taking care of themselves.
Democrats can’t seem to tell the truth about their legislation. To break the stalemate in Congress, they’re toying with leaving the programs intact but funding them for a shorter time — only the first five years instead of all 10, in some cases. That’s a hoax. Manchin isn’t fooled. “Those programs will never go away,” he says. He’s right. Entitlements are forever.
Already the bill costs far more than $3.5 trillion because of similar gimmicks. The child care tax credit, or monthly Biden bucks, are funded for only five years.
Democrats boast about offering “universal pre-K,” but currently, the bill fully funds it for only one year — a ruse.
Same with the promise of “free” community college. The bill fully funds it only through 2024. One exception: Colleges serving minorities are funded through 2030.
Whatever the bill’s actual cost, it’s bad for America. The racial preferences and favoritism toward unions will further divide us. And the vast array of new giveaways is an insult to working people who support their own families.
Walgreens is having a rough time on the public relations front, as incidents keep arising where they are allegedly mixing up flu shots with coronavirus vaccines.
A family in Evansville, Indiana, said they were all given adult doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine instead of the flu shot on Oct. 4, WFIE-TV reported.
The family’s two children are 4 and 5 years old, and the Pfizer vaccine has not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for their age group.
Attorney Daniel Tuley, who is representing the family, said Walgreens contacted the family after their appointment to admit the mistake, and ended up issuing them all coronavirus vaccination cards.
While accidentally receiving the shot is likely not a health risk for the parents, there is cause for concern for the children that were injected with the full adult dosage.
Tuley told WFIE that both children have seen a pediatric cardiologist, and both are exhibiting symptoms of heart problems.
In addition to possible heart issues, the 4-year-old is also reportedly having a reaction to the vaccine and is sick with a fever and cough.
On Monday, the outlet obtained a statement from Walgreens about the situation.
“Due to privacy laws, we cannot comment on specific patient events. However, in general, such instances are rare and Walgreens takes these matters very seriously. In the event of any error, our first concern is always our patients’ well-being. Our multi-step vaccination procedure includes several safety checks to minimize the chance of human error and we have reviewed this process with our pharmacy staff in order to prevent such occurrences,” the company said.
Similar stories from Walgreens have emerged in recent weeks, including one incident where a 4-year-old girl in Baltimore, Maryland, dealt with the same mix-up.
Savannah Courtad, a 19-year-old from Scottsdale, Arizona, explained in a viral Instagram post that she never consented to receive the coronavirus vaccine when she went in for her flu shot.
“Nurses can’t just go around injecting people with the wrong shot,” Courtad said.
“I never gave consent for the COVID-19 vaccine to be injected into my body. Regardless of one’s position on this vaccine I would hope that we can all agree that having something injected into your body should be your CHOICE.”
Even though these situations are rare in the grand scheme of things, Walgreens needs to get its act together to ensure its process is fool-proof.
These stories will continue to fuel distrust in their company — and for good reason.
If you are nervous about a mix-up occurring while getting your flu shot this fall, the best thing you can do is to ask to read the label first.
Personally, I already received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine, so I made sure the label on my flu shot said “Influenza vaccine” before the pharmacist at my local grocery store injected it.
The pharmacist judged me for being cautious about what I was putting into my body, as he said, “There’s a lot of misinformation out there,” but that attitude should not discourage you from advocating for your own health.
It is certainly a complicated and overwhelming time for healthcare workers, which means patients need to be extra cautious as well.
The University of California Los Angeles School of Law is hiring an administrator to swat down attacks on critical race theory.
The director will oversee the creation of a database on legislation and “other formal policies suppressing antiracist education, training, or research associated with CRT,” according to the university’s job posting for the position. The administrator will also work with academics and lawyers to develop “legal theories” to contest laws that bar critical race theory from schools, and “engage in communications efforts to redefine and reframe” the debate over such measures.
Several states, including Florida and Oklahoma, have in recent months banned schools from teaching critical race theory to students. School board meetings across the country have become contentious over so-called antiracist curricula, which hold that U.S. society and institutions are inherently racist. The Justice Department announced last week it will investigate harassment and intimidation against school officials—a move seen by many education observers as a politicized attempt to suppress parents’ dissent against race-focused education.
UCLA’s project director will work in the law school’s department of Critical Race Studies, which “trains students to both analyze how the law and legal institutions erect racial hierarchies and how to dismantle those same hierarchies,” according to the school’s website.
Long seen as a conservative holdout among private schools, the St. Albans School could soon expel students for one off-color joke.
Students at one of the oldest and most prestigious boys schools in the United States could soon face expulsion for a single “misplaced” joke, according to a draft “anti-bias” policy circulating among school administrators and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
St. Albans, whose alumni include vice presidents and two current U.S. senators, is considering a crackdown on “harmful” speech that prioritizes the impact of the speech rather than the intent of the speaker.
“It is the impact of hate speech, rather than the intent of those perpetrating it, that is of utmost importance,” the draft policy states. As such, boys could be expelled “even in the case of a single expression, act, or gesture”—including “misplaced humor,” which the policy says “should be reported immediately to the student’s adviser.”
Reporting infractions would fall to students, teachers, and parents. “We also expect that anyone, whether student, faculty, staff, or family member, who witnesses, or has knowledge of an incident of hate speech, will report the incident to the appropriate individual,” the draft policy reads, clarifying that nobody will be punished for making “a good faith report.”
St. Albans did not respond to a request for comment about why it would take the “good faith” of those reporting misdeeds into consideration but not the intent of the alleged perpetrators.
It’s unclear whether the policy has formally gone into effect or is still subject to revision. But the language appears to have been more than a year in the making. In July 2020, the school publicly committed to “developing a new policy for inclusion” that “specifically addresses racial hate speech” and outlines a process for “investigating and eradicating such behavior.”
Speech codes are increasingly de rigueur at elite private schools like St. Albans, where an ever-expanding crop of diversity professionals has institutionalized an ever-expanding definition of “hate.” That definition is enforced by bias reporting systems—often created in response to diversity audits—that encourage students to flag insensitive speech for school administrators. At St. Mark’s School in Massachusetts, for example, students can report their peers anonymously via an online form, set up in 2020 as part of the school’s “antiracist action plan.”
Now, even even the most old-fashioned of these schools are becoming fluent in the language of left-wing identity politics. St. Albans—which refers to Hispanic students as “Latinx,” has replaced Columbus Day with “Indigenous People’s Day,” sponsors an “Alliance of White Antiracists,” and costs over $50,000 a year—is often seen as more conservative than its co-ed counterparts. Boys must wear formal attire and attend weekly Anglican chapels, whose liturgy one alum described as “traditional.” Lunch is served family-style in a 100-year-old dining hall called “the Refectory,” which the school rents out for private dinners.
Such trappings have proven no match for the ideological tsunami pummeling private education.
“St. Albans used to have a simple honor code: Don’t lie, cheat, or steal,” an alumnus of the school told the Free Beacon. “Everything else was adjudicated human-to-human. Now boys are being policed for humor and innocuous comments are subject to the highest form of punishment.”
That punishment will presumably be doled out by the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) committee, which enlists 21 teachers and administrators. The committee has injected “antiracism” into nearly every facet of school life: In June 2020, all faculty and staff were required to read Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist; that September, while all middle and high school students read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. St. Albans also curates an extensive list of “resources,” including Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility and an introductory textbook on critical race theory.
This transformation has been encouraged by the accreditation bureaucracy to which the elite boys school belongs. St. Albans is a member of the Association of Independent Maryland and D.C. Schools, which expects that “diversity practice” be “an organic part of every area of school life.” The Association of Independent Maryland and D.C. Schools, in turn, is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools, which expects all of its “approved accreditors” to mandate DEI programming.
Under those pressures, the best private schools in the nation’s capitol have all come to resemble each other. Even Landon, perhaps the most conservative boys school in the D.C. area, hired a diversity consultant last year to “evaluate the lived experience of the Landon program.” As part of that evaluation, students were asked to join focus groups “based on how one identifies”—including, at the all-boys school, gender identity.
For too many Americans, “civics” is either a vague mystery or akin to a dental cleaning: we know that we should do it but would avoid it if possible. Regrettably, our country has chosen in the past 50 years the path of avoidance and ignorance by demoting civic education in our schools, including higher education, which also deems civics unserious, unpleasant, or less important. The consequences of this de facto policy have been disastrous for our educational system and our civic culture. Some educators, scholars, and civic leaders have warned about it, and some serious efforts have been undertaken to redress it. Nonetheless, what retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor diagnosed over a decade ago as America’s “quiet crisis” remains a crisis, even if some progress has been made in raising awareness about the problem.
I’m grateful to have been born into a family of fairly recent immigrants who instilled in me a love of America as an exceptional country, if a work in progress, along with a love of education. I also am grateful for those teachers who sustained an educational tradition stemming from the ancient Greeks and Romans, and that thrived in America until the last century—a serious civic education, regarded as both a duty for any free person in a decent political order and an indispensable element of an examined life.
To define civics and civic education, I invoke a recent national study of which I was a coauthor—along with scholars and educators from Arizona State University, Harvard, Tufts, iCivics, and the Arizona department of education—entitled Educating for American Democracy. We gathered as a heterogeneous group by design, holding progressive and liberal-to-conservative views; yet we shared a premise that study of U.S. history must be melded with study of America’s constitutional and political principles to prepare citizens for self-government. Such a civic education is indispensable for preparing informed and engaged participants in the American experiment. It requires instruction from kindergarten through high school—and into higher education for those so fortunate—of the civic knowledge and civic virtues needed to contribute responsibly to civil society and political affairs.
In our deliberations, we noted that America had rallied against external threats in the past 75 years by re-investing in both K-12 and higher education and re-designing their priorities. This process occurred in response to the 1957 Sputnik crisis of the Cold War and the economic-competitiveness crisis of the 1980s, with the educational beneficiary largely being science, technology, and mathematical studies, or STEM. America has forgotten, however, Lincoln’s 1838 warning on the perpetuation of our political order: that if America were to fail, it would not be by foreign conquest but by suicide—due to civic ignorance about our laws and Constitution, combined with decline in the civic virtues needed to sustain civil disagreement and civic friendship amid the diverse views in our republic.
Contrary to what might be expected from a group of educators in our era, the Educating for American Democracy report forthrightly declares our love for America and defines patriotism as a fundamental element of civic education. It calls on teachers, educators, and serious citizens to endorse the twin necessities of civic knowledge and civic virtues such as civil disagreement and friendship across philosophical, religious, and partisan views. We invoke Alexis de Tocqueville’s idea, expressed in “Democracy in America” (1835), of a reflective patriotism that loves America, but through study and argument; incorporating love of people and place but elevating these sentiments given our country’s foundations in universal principles and self-government. Our current deficit of such reflective patriotism and other civic virtues is intertwined with civic ignorance.
If liberal education means free inquiry and discussion about the most fundamental questions concerning humanity, nature, and the divine, it also means awareness that “liberal” bespeaks a dual reality. Only among a free people, enjoying political liberty, and the rule of law rather than rule by sheer power, can traditions and institutions of Socratic inquiry thrive and be perpetuated.
Those devoted to genuinely higher education must be equally devoted to the study of and perpetuation of political liberty; otherwise they are free riders, self-contradictory, and living on borrowed time. Thus, the decline of civic education in American schools and universities both reflects and reinforces the decline of genuine debate and heterogeneity in higher education, and other elite American institutions. There can be no true liberal or civic education without intellectual diversity and lively debate. Most damaging, then, is the rise of a culture of conformity and orthodoxy in several crucial disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, in turn yielding an outsize effect on universities, schools, and the media. We no longer study and practice the civic virtue of civil disagreement across diverse views, or of civic friendship transcending differences, and this deficiency reinforces the perpetual academic tendency to sort into schools, and sects of thinking. Liberal education and civic education need one another, both for development of the human soul and for the health of our civic and educational cultures.
School children facing Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington at the U.S. Capitol in Washington in 1899. (F.B. Johnston/Library of Congress, Public Domain)
Lest this approach be seen as itself partisan, we should note the recent argument by Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, in his book “Higher Expectations,” that higher education is failing students, due to two grave deficiencies: the decline or absence of civic education and of ethics education. These subjects no longer are prioritized in the required curricula of most universities and colleges. Bok is no curmudgeonly conservative. Indeed it is heartening, in a time of polarization across our academic and civic lives, that he offers an insight similar to that suggested in Richard Brookhiser’s fine biography of George Washington, “Founding Father,” that the civic character and civility of this great statesman were mutually reinforcing. Here was a powerful and ambitious leader—as admirers of the musical Hamilton! might have recently rediscovered—who disciplined his soul as a boy and throughout his life by “Rules of Civility” written by Jesuits in 16th century France about ethical regard for others. This is a crucial reason why Washington could found and serve a civic republican order, and twice relinquish near-absolute power (as victorious general and as our first president) to secure that constitutional republic for posterity. The same ethical and political principles also led him to be the only slave-holding American president to emancipate all his slaves and to provide them with financial support and education. Napoleon himself later remarked, in failure and exile after giving free rein to his ambition, that the French had wanted him to be a Washington—that is, to serve a common good and embody civility. Brookhiser notes that Latin provides a common root for our English words citizen, civility, and civilization. But by design or neglect, in recent decades America has inflicted upon itself a civic ignorance that feeds an angry incivility, in turn causing civic disintegration and regular political violence—thus placing in doubt the foundations of our civilized life.
As a matter of civility, I will point the finger at my own profession first—the scholars and professors who have turned away from genuine civic education. Experience provides grounds for a new consensus to correct several unwise educational views. At one extreme are the purist and narrowly utilitarian views: that civic education necessarily is partisan, and thus either threatens the free discourse needed in liberal education or ranks beneath the higher capacities of technological, scientific, quantitative, and core communications learning. At another extreme is the postmodernist redefinition of all learning as political, subjective, and power-implicated: thus civic education should be partisan, but with social-justice ideology and activism replacing America’s hypocritical, failed legacy. Our regrettable condition is that most leaders in higher education, and in the crucial social science and humanities disciplines needed to restore a healthier middle ground on civic education, hold one of these mistaken views.
Perhaps the best foundation for warnings about America’s crises of civic ignorance and disintegration is the sober Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu. He founded a moderate approach that corrected the rationalist and modernist excesses of some famous predecessors. Many more Americans have heard of his fellow Frenchman Tocqueville, who in fact was Montesquieu’s great successor in advocating moderation or a careful balancing of principles about human liberty and its decent aims.
We should rediscover why Montesquieu was the most cited philosopher during our constitutional founding, invoked alike by advocates of the new 1787 Constitution and its opponents for providing the most balanced, comprehensive view of how to combine the rule of law, natural rights, liberty, religious belief, and modern commerce. The “hardware” of our complex constitutional order, of separation of powers and federalism, derives almost singly from this eighteenth-century philosopher and his work “The Spirit of Laws” (1748). Yet just as importantly, Montesquieu explains the “software” of civic and religious virtues indispensable for the functioning of a complex republic like America to include the moderating of tendencies toward extremes of rationalism and materialism, and of partisan or sectarian fanaticism. His balanced, complex philosophy also was a greater influence on our Declaration of Independence—with its blending of classical, medieval, and modern elements—than many recent scholars have recognized. America has always been more than a land of “Lockean” individualism.
Study of Tocqueville arguably is needed to supplement and elevate Montesquieu’s political science, and not only because Tocqueville had the advantage of encountering the American constitutional republic whereas Montesquieu could only call for such polities to be fashioned. Nonetheless Montesquieu under-girds America’s first political science, “The Federalist,” which includes an appreciation for the central role of statesmanship or high prudence in both domestic and foreign affairs. This approach helps us to appreciate such great American statesmen as Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan—and also those statesmen who never held high office, including Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
A letter regarding the U.S. constitution, written by the first president of the United States, George Washington, is seen on display at Christie’s Auction House in New York City on June 17, 2013. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
A truly educated American cannot disregard these principles, debates, achievements, and figures of the American experiment without repudiating the foundations of the liberty and prosperity permitting them to be educated at all. The wave of ideological fervor about racial justice currently sweeping our elite institutions embodies this self-contradiction and ingratitude, given America’s decisive influence in turning human history away from slavery or legal servitude. A culture of rejection or repudiation is inadequate to understanding or sustaining America. A civic education also must include study of America’s leadership during the twentieth century in establishing the first global order safe for political and economic liberty, and of how this achievement might protect rather than betray our founding principles. What citizen can be truly informed in casting a vote, leading an organization, voicing an opinion, or joining a protest without education in these matters? Yet somehow our elites tolerate a disregard for civic education. We need to do better.
America’s founders, and subsequent great leaders in our history, emphasized civic education. One reason for this is that Montesquieu’s “Spirit of Laws” was the first work of modern political philosophy to intertwine discussion of civic education with advocacy for free and complex political orders. Tocqueville deepened this vein of moderate republicanism. Both philosophers warned, in their distinctive ways, that seemingly free polities in fact could degenerate into despotism marked by fanatical republican patriotism, or by passive acceptance of elite rule amid hollow forms of democracy. Both saw the link between sound civic education and the perpetuation of constitutional liberty; both saw deficient education leading to a despotic, irrational politics of passions, appetites, and unbridled ambition. Too few of our leading minds grasp that this is largely our condition today—this oscillation between frenetic activism, at one extreme, and civic ignorance and indifference, at the other—and how it is nothing less than a recipe for disaster.
The self-educated Lincoln had the grasp of human nature, history, and politics to foresee such disaster even as a young man. He dedicated the remaining quarter-century of his life to preventing it. “If destruction be our lot,” he argued in 1838, “we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” His remedy was a civic education in the laws, constitutionalism, and fundamental principles of our country. He later would emphasize the Declaration of Independence as the cornerstone of such education. He eventually would lead the new birth of freedom to enact the full meaning in America of what the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God required—the equal liberty of all people. The study of such ideas and statesmen is as thrilling as it is necessary for a free people. It is our duty to ourselves and our posterity, and we are blessed that it also is a delight. But all those who now believe so must think clearly, deliberate with one another, and act before it is too late.
“The Wide Angle” program on EpochTV examines the misuse of COVID data in the episode, “Is COVID-Death Data Being Used for Profit? Doctor Sues University Over Mandatory Vaccine Policy.” The host, Brendon Fallon, interviews Dr. Aaron Khariaty, who is a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California and the head of their medical ethics department, gives important information on how this data is being used to justify mandatory vaccinations and the threat to privacy and freedom that it poses.
The video begins with the explanation that people who are hospitalized for different conditions are given COVID tests. If they test positive, even with no symptoms of COVID and the cause of death being another condition, the death will be counted in the COVID metric. At the University of California, the policy states that employees and students must be vaccinated right now in order to be on campus, but they may also be required to get any other vaccine shots or boosters that are offered in the future. The lawsuit that he is involved in is on behalf of COVID-recovered patients and states that those who have survived the virus have a better immunity against it than the vaccine can provide. According to the lawsuit, the university’s policy of mandating vaccines and not recognizing natural immunity is discriminatory, because it excludes students and other university workers from coming on campus even if they have immunity. The case further states that this violates equal protection rights provided by the 14th amendment.
There are financial benefits for hospitals that report more COVID deaths. Medicare pays hospitals more for COVID cases than other kinds of cases. The same is true for pediatric cases. If a child comes in with a respiratory problem, he is tested for COVID. Many tests will show positive results even if the condition is something else, so those cases are added to the COVID numbers as well.
Khariaty gives an example of a patient who was hospitalized for psychiatric problems. He tested positive for COVID and was sent to the medical ward so PPE could be used when working with him. He had no symptoms of COVID and that was not the reason for his visit, but he was considered a COVID patient.
The host then asks the doctor about the existing natural immunity data. The doctor states there is a lot of evidence to point to the fact that natural immunity is a much better level of immunity than the vaccine.
Recently, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor, was asked why people with natural immunity still needed to get the vaccine. His answer was that while there is a case for natural immunity, we still do not have enough information yet. Khariaty said that Fauci has not been keeping up with the latest scientific data, which proves that natural immunity has a much better efficacy rate than vaccinations. One major fact which supports natural immunity is that it does not lose effectiveness over time or with new variants. This is not the case with vaccinations, as we are already hearing that more shots and boosters will be needed in the future. Vaccines are good for fighting against symptomatic disease but provide less protection against infection and transmission. Vaccine efficacy has been declining over time. Natural immunity has had an efficacy rate of 96–99 percent throughout the pandemic.
The host then asks about side effects from the vaccine. Khariaty replies that information is still being gathered on that issue. He stated there is a small risk of inflammation of the heart, and it is greater for young men versus older people. Also, this “one size fits all” theory of the vaccine negates individualized care as the vaccine might not be the best treatment for everyone. He says that more needs to be done to track the safety issues surrounding the vaccine, especially since the clinical trials were stopped much earlier than other vaccines.
According to Khariaty, a lot of the protocols are not being followed. The reason being given is that we are in a state of emergency and people are dying from the disease so the vaccine must be fast tracked. While we might have short term gains, the danger in this is there might be long term consequences. Also, the emergency phase is not being identified and so when is that “state of emergency” declared over? His opinion is that it may have held true early on but officials need to set benchmarks that define “state of emergency” so that is it not used as a reason to rush into treatments that may have adverse effects later.
In the next segment of the video, the host asks Khariaty to comment on people’s concerns that more shots and boosters will be needed. The doctor states, “The vaccines were originally touted back in January as the ticket out of the pandemic and a definitive solution for COVID.” Now health officials are reluctant to admit that they spoke too soon and rather than admit that the vaccine does not work as they said it would, they are going back to lock downs and advising people to get more shots.
People are questioning why a third dose is needed and why the original dose was not measured correctly for its efficacy. The CDC will be meeting soon to discuss the efficacy of the third shots. Unfortunately, the data is being provided by Pfizer which has very little actual data on this. Only about 300 people were included in the trial and some groups of people were not represented. Khariaty voiced concern over the lack of data and said he hopes that the CDC will recognize that more data is needed in order to make an informed decision. The host then asks what a more effective way would be for handling the pandemic. The doctor advises that we need targeted interventions for those who are most at risk. Now that we know that natural immunity works better than vaccines, those who are considered immune but not vaccinated are at risk of losing personal freedom. People that fall into this category could be put into nursing facilities to monitor their health. Rather than having an incentive to rely on natural immunity, the only incentive would be in taking the vaccine.
University of California officials have refused to comment on the lawsuit.
In a 2010 essay for The American Spectator, the late, great intellectual Angelo Codevilla wrote a rare essay that was, in retrospect, so prescient as to be outright eerie. Titled “America’s Ruling Class” and deploying “class”-based phraseology historically more at home in some corners of the political left than on the postwar political right, Codevilla set his sights squarely on his eponymous target.
“Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits,” he wrote. “Whether formally in government, out of it, or halfway, America’s ruling class speaks the language and has the tastes, habits, and tools of bureaucrats.”
Even more eerily prescient was Codevilla’s description of what motivates the ruling class. “Our ruling class’s agenda is power for itself,” he wrote. “While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof.”
Is there a single sober-minded observer of our decrepit politics, in 2021, who does not read these words and immediately recognize that this is what is happening—indeed, what has been happening—in these United States?
Beginning with the 2008 bailouts, a parochial uniparty establishment—geographically and (nominally) politically diverse, but all sculpted by elite K-12 and higher education institutions to hold uniformly “correct” beliefs—deemed it necessary to toss moral hazard into the wind and lavish taxpayer money upon the failing Wall Street titans. As for elites’ message to the myriad struggling homeowners whose dreams were shattered by Fannie and Freddie, Clinton-era tropes about the relentless pursuit of “affordable housing” and simple lucre-seeking depravity: “Drop dead.”
The ruling class only tightened its grip in the ensuing years after the 2008 bailouts and the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 2009 nadir. Corporate profits soon skyrocketed, and the stock market began a prolonged, historically record-breaking ascent. But economic inequality worsened. Elites of both parties further doubled down on “free trade” and extensive economic entangling with a Chinese Communist Party regime hellbent on hollowing out the American industrial heartland and ultimately dedicated to America’s national implosion.
Republicans, who by dint of decades-long dripping academia/media disdain for their party and their voter base should have already realized they were now the party of blue-collar America, responded by nominating for the presidency a well-coiffed private equity plutocrat in Mitt Romney. The 2012 GOP presidential nominee was well-intentioned in most respects and admirably hawkish on immigration and national sovereignty matters, but that did not prevent the utterance of Romney’s infamous “47 percent gaffe”—a proverbial middle finger to the already ailing American heartland if there ever were one. President Barack Obama, ruling class talisman, cruised to reelection.
The American people, and especially the aggrieved and subjugated “deplorables,” responded in 2016 by electing to the presidency a man, in Donald Trump, who spoke their language and vowed to fight for them against the uniparty ruling class regime. The ruling class responded by launching an unprecedented, four-year-long campaign against the president, from deep state malfeasance to galling and gratuitous media coverage to coordinated Big Tech censorship (most egregiously, the quashed New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story) to ubiquitous suppression of conservative and pro-Trump viewpoints in the American academy under the risible guise of “microaggressions” and “safe spaces.” Elites to the half of America that voted for a duly elected president of the United States: “Drop dead.”
The era of COVID-19, a virus with a more than 99 percent recovery rate, has only accentuated and exacerbated this divide. Elites have latched onto Rahm Emanuel’s famous line about never letting a “serious crisis go to waste” and used it to seize previously unimagined power at all levels of governance. The purpose of this power, from elected officials such as President Joe Biden to career bureaucrats such as Dr. Anthony Fauci to lowly foot soldiers such as pro-critical race theory teachers’ unions, is exactly what Codevilla said it was 11 years ago: “power for itself”—power tout court. In the era of COVID, the “biomedical security state,” to borrow the term recently popularized anew by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is the most convenient means of scratching the ruling class’ totalitarian itch and dividing the citizenry into de facto warring tribes.
The silver lining is that on every major issue, from COVID hysteria to critical race theory indoctrination to the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, the rottenness of the American ruling class has been exposed. The ruling class senses this, and it will respond in the short term by doubling down yet again. But such a tactic is not sustainable. The inflection point, and the time for the deplorables to unite against ruling class tyranny, is right now.
REVIEW: ‘No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives’
When I was 10, my mother, a fifth grade teacher, taught a girl close to my age who would arrive at school an hour early every day with matted hair and unbrushed teeth. Her caretakers, elderly grandparents, neglected the girl’s hygiene. My mother did not. She kept a hairbrush, hair ties, a toothbrush, and toothpaste in a desk drawer, just for her.
I’m not privy to every instance when my mother contacted child-protective services for her students. But there were many, and most times, the authorities did nothing. Meanwhile, abused children who continued to come to school sat at their desks with unkempt hair at best, or a rainbow of purple, blue, and green bruises, red scrapes, and pink scars at worst.
Her story reflects the failures of a child-welfare system designed to put the needs of adults over children, as Naomi Schaefer Riley claims in her book, No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives. The stories Riley, a children’s issues expert at the American Enterprise Institute, recounts in the book are not unlike those my mother has shared over the years at our dining room table.
More than 600,000 kids were victims of abuse or neglect in 2019. Roughly 2,000 kids die each year from abuse-related fatalities. And while the official number of children classified as victims has dropped in recent years, Riley provides evidence that the result is more likely a story of shifting semantics and reclassifications rather than a decline in abuse.
Throughout the book, Riley mentions common threads in abuse cases, such as drugs and alcohol or the presence of an unrelated adult such as a mother’s boyfriend. She also dispels the common notion that while abused children often come from impoverished homes, poverty is not necessarily a cause or prerequisite for abuse and neglect cases.
Egregious cases of maltreatment that hit the mainstream media continually remind the public of the need to reform the child-welfare system, Riley says. Take the case of eight-year-old Gabriel Fernandez, who was tortured and killed by his mother and her boyfriend. Prior to the boy’s death, concerned bystanders reported the case to social workers several times.
It would seem obvious that children’s needs should be the first and foremost concern of the child-welfare system, which includes child protective services, foster care and adoption law, and family courts. This is rarely the case, Riley argues. Rather, the child-welfare system often caters to drug-addicted or deadbeat adults and prioritizes racial and social justice objectives over the best interests of millions of victimized children.
Left-wing activists have successfully made race one of the top factors in determining whether a child should stay or be removed from a home.
Advocates for racial equity are quick to admonish the foster care system with charges of injustice and systemic racism. This notion is based on statistics that show black and Native American children make up a disproportionate percentage of those in foster care. Black activists—like the popular “antiracism” advocate Ibram X. Kendi—have decried transracial adoption (white parents of black youths), likening it to neo-colonialism or neo-slavery. Further, Riley says, the perpetrators of abuse in minority families are themselves viewed as victims of lingering oppression and racism in society.
In addition, social workers and judges, fearful of being viewed as biased, are disincentivized from separating minority families. As a result, minority kids are left in vulnerable positions.
“Children who have substantiated reports of child abuse and neglect are left in dangerous environments because the system is reluctant to be seen as breaking up black (or Hispanic or Native American) families,” Riley writes.
Instead of working to fix the system or decrease threats to children across all communities, Riley says, racial justice activists ignore varying rates of abuse and seek only to equate outcomes between various demographic groups.
Judges also use kids as prizes for inept adults. Threatening to take custody of a child could be the incentive a mother or father needs to get clean—indeed, Riley provides one positive example in the book. The author notes, however, that this treatment of children is remarkably “utilitarian.”
“Just as parents see the removal of children as the stick, now they want to see reunification as the carrot,” Riley writes. “The children in this scenario merely serve as tools to get parents to clean up their acts.”
Reunification of the family is the preferred solution in the child-welfare system for cases of childhood abuse and neglect. This is based in part, Riley says, on unsubstantiated claims that removing a child from their home inflicts some of the greatest amounts of trauma a child could ever experience. Many believe that, with proper resources and training, adults can learn to parent properly. Hence the haste to allow for parental visitation and the opposition and lack of enforcement on termination of parental rights.
Studies show, however, that a significant number of children who are returned to abusive parents will again face maltreatment or return to foster care. Studies from several states that Riley cites found the majority of children who died at the hands of their abusive parents were already known to the foster care system—sacrificed to the idea of family reunification.
“[B]ut more disturbing is that children who have been removed from their parents’ homes because of abuse or neglect are then brought back to visit or stay with those parents,” Riley says. “And they are subject to physical or sexual abuse all over again.”
Riley’s book might have benefited from a brief discussion of the collapse of institutions—namely marriage. While mentioned numerous times in the book, mainly in the form of stories about mothers and their revolving doors of abusive boyfriends, such as in the Fernandez case, Riley does not speculate on or articulate the role that the collapse of marriage might factor into the equation.
The author notes, however, that such forays into broad societal issues mean nothing to children once they are killed, tortured, abused, and neglected. Rightly, the book’s main priority is: What can the child-welfare system do now to protect children from becoming the next victim?
She offers some solutions. Group homes, where children are sent to live with trained caretakers and other foster care kids, place less pressure on children than shuffling from one unsuccessful foster arrangement to another. Bolstering the ability of middle-class Americans to take on foster care would create more opportunities for children to find loving homes as would supporting, rather than demonizing, religious foster care organizations.
Child protective services investigators need assistance as well. Often, these officials are called into dangerous situations and lack the necessary training to address a plethora of issues they could confront each day. Left-wing racial justice activists call to defund the police in order to shift funding to social services. These services, however, could benefit from police-like training and, more broadly, taking a “first-responder approach” rather than that of a social worker, Riley says.
To that point, why aren’t child-protective services deployed like police officers to homes when teachers or other mandatory reporters make allegations of abuse on behalf of a child? Lack of resources plays a role. But why don’t they then involve the police? Where are the arrests? Contacting child-protective services to address abuse cases should not result in violent and drug-addicted parents being able to evade the law. This point merits further discussion.
Introducing data analytics to the child-welfare system may also provide a way for social workers to make more clear decisions about best courses of action for children. Collecting data points and plugging them into algorithms, instead of relying on social workers’ subjective evaluations of each case, could help reduce the number of false flags and help focus resources on children who need the most help. Similarly, sharing data across law enforcement, medical services, and the child-welfare system could help adults with past records of abuse from slipping through the system.
In short, the child-welfare system must be reoriented, as Riley rightly states, to put the needs of children first. Until then, the mistreatment will continue. And teachers like my mother can only pick up so much of the slack.
No Way to Treat a Child: How the Foster Care System, Family Courts, and Racial Activists Are Wrecking Young Lives by Naomi Schaefer Riley Bombardier Books, 304 pp., $28
Lesson plans included teaching transgender hormone therapy to kids as young as 10
The Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) lied to parents when it claimed no outside activist groups helped draft controversial sex education guidelines, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
A Nebraska Board of Education official successfully lobbied to appoint Friends of Planned Parenthood board member Lisa Schulze to work on the 28-member advisory team that assisted in shaping the curriculum. Schulze is deeply connected to advocacy groups that stood to benefit from the agency’s initial statewide sex-ed curriculum, which included lesson plans on transgender hormone therapy for kids as young as 10 years old. Schulze’s job at the Women’s Fund of Omaha, which has doled out more than $8 million to Planned Parenthood and local transgender clinics, was seen as a qualification, rather than a conflict of interest, to draft education policies for the state’s nearly 360,000 students.
“I want to make sure that Lisa Schulze is selected to help write the NDE Health Standards,” Deborah Neary, a state board of education member, wrote in an email to an agency employee. The agency rejected Schulze’s bid for the writing team but attached her to a 28-member advisory board. In March, the agency released standards that would have mandated that students would be taught about gender identity in 1st grade, transgender hormone therapy in 5th grade, transgenderism and sexual orientation in 6th grade, oral and anal sex in 7th grade, and “reproductive care”—a common euphemism for abortion—in 8th grade.
Officials rejected that draft following public outcry and criticism from Gov. Pete Ricketts (R., Neb.), but NDE pushed back against the notion the standards were shaped by outsiders. In a May fact sheet, titled “Points of Clarification,” NDE insisted the curriculum “was not written by activists” and that “Planned Parenthood is not funding or helping to write the Nebraska Health Education Standards.” Internal communications, obtained by the Free Beacon from a concerned parent, paint a very different picture. Emails and text messages from elected board of education representatives, NDE employees, and advisory board members show that activists were not only closely involved but disparaged parents and froze out teachers who were supposed to write the curriculum.
NDE is now minimizing the role of the advisory board. “The individuals being identified as ‘activists’ were not members of the writing team, nor did they have an opportunity to write any of the standards,” a spokesman said in an email. “Subject matter experts had an opportunity to provide input on the proposed content as the advisory team, but that input was provided to the writing team.”
At least one member of the writing team said she had no prior knowledge of the standards that the agency later attributed to it, according to internal documents. Middle school physical education teacher Kayla Makovicka emailed the NDE to voice concerns that her team was not made aware of it, nor did she feel it was age-appropriate. “I don’t recall ever talking about these in any of our meetings or getting a clear look at what was going to be involved,” she said in a March email, noting she did not think the curriculum was “age appropriate.” Makovicka told the Free Beacon in an email she felt “blindsided” by NDE’s standards, as well as the agency’s attempt to blame the writing team for its contents.
“It is pretty clear what are my thoughts in that email, and I still stand by those today,” she said. “As for the relationship between some of the parties involved, it [led] me to feel blindsided.”
The original draft of the curriculum was nearly Identical to the 2020 National Sex Education Standards, which was written by three deep-pocketed progressive advocacy groups: the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Advocates for Youth, and Answer. Makovicka may have felt left in the dark, but Schulze and Neary—neither of whom returned requests for comment—remained in close contact throughout the process and helped arrange meetings between activists and NDE staffers. Emails show Neary scheduled a meeting between NDE members and SIECUS. Schulze also made sure to run the curriculum and NDE talking points by unnamed national activists before publication.
“I have Natl experts ready to review them,” Schulze texted Neary. “Our creative director is driving to office to finish final edits on the fact sheet and we have talking points prepared that can go to the board. High level. Will have it to you in the next few hours.”
Schulze spent 15 years working for Planned Parenthood before joining the Women’s Fund of Omaha, a nonprofit that provides millions of dollars in annual grants to feminist groups, which they claim include “transgender and gender expansive people.” The organization was founded in 1990 through a joint grant from two of the largest global charities: the Ford Foundation and MacArthur Foundation—both of which fund abortion and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups. It has given nearly $4 million to Planned Parenthood and nearly $5 million to a clinic specializing in transgender hormone therapy.
Parents and officials were shocked when NDE debuted its proposal in the spring. Ricketts led the effort to torpedo the curriculum through a series of town halls. He said the emails revealed in the FOIA only confirmed his suspicions that education bureaucrats placed special interests above those of students and parents.
“These advocacy groups definitely have an agenda they are pushing—and it is one that sexualizes children,” Ricketts told the Free Beacon. “This was never about the parents—it was about the advocates.”
Neary complained in a series of emails that parents promoted “hate speech” in their criticisms. She asked NDE members to consider ways to ensure parental feedback had less influence on the standards drafting process. “I am very disappointed that [two members of the NDE] see this as a ‘both sides’ need to be presented,” Neary emailed an employee of the Women’s Fund of Omaha. “It is irresponsible in my opinion when one of the sides is based in science and fact and the other is based in religion.”
The drafting body may have favored activist input at the outset, but it backtracked in the face of public criticism. NDE released a second draft of the health standards in July that dropped specific mentions of transgenderism, hormone therapy, reproductive care, and oral and anal sex, but retained language about gender identity. Those edits were not enough to satisfy concerned parents who flooded school board meetings throughout the summer.
In September, the board of education voted 5-1—with Neary abstaining—to suspend the health standard approval process, saying COVID-19 was to blame. Joni Albrecht, a Republican state senator in Nebraska, said parents know better than to accept that explanation.
“They, the activists on the other side, are so darn mad they cannot stop us from protecting the culture in Nebraska,” Albrecht told the Free Beacon. “We are going to protect the children. We are going to let the parents know this is happening.”
Many U.S. citizens wonder if life will ever return to normal. Are masks here to stay? On TV, news channels are busy spreading fear. Meanwhile, some of the most widely read publications in the United States are warning about the next phase of the pandemic.
To live in the United States is to live in a permanent state of fear. This, as many readers know, is by design. A more fearful nation is a more passive one—easier to manipulate and easier to control.
In the United States, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci, it’s far “too soon” to tell if Christmas gatherings will be allowed. Considering Christmas is more than two months away, one is forgiven for raising their eyebrows and asking: “What are you talking about, Dr. Fauci?” What is the point of vaccines and booster shots if we cannot be with our loved ones? Haven’t we sacrificed enough over the past 18 to 20 months?
Today, across the country, fear dominates the narrative. As someone currently completing a doctorate in psychology, I am intimately familiar with the mechanics of emotional salience. As a key attentional mechanism that contributes to our survival, fear is currently being weaponized for nefarious purposes.
When it comes to the mechanics of government-induced fear, the economist Robert Higgs is perhaps the most knowledgeable man in America.
After reading a fantastic article by City Journal’s John Tierney, I picked up a copy of “Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government,” a book written by Robert Higgs, an economic historian who has been warning about the dangers of government creep for more than 30 years. In “Crisis and Leviathan,” published back in 1987, Higgs discussed a phenomenon known as the “ratchet effect.” Just like a tradesman uses a ratchet to allow effective, one-directional motion, governments often use emergencies to “ratchet” up their responses. By introducing more programs and more oversight boards, such “ratcheting” comes with significant costs—including freedoms we once took for granted. The loss of freedom brings a loss of privacy, and with these losses comes a loss of what it means to be human.
Clearly inspired by Higgs, the U.S. government, aided by mainstream media outlets, has weaponized fear to full effect. Aided by behavioral experts and masters of spin, a number of highly influential people have exploited this deeply wired reaction to further erode human agency. Now, to be clear, fear is a highly complex emotion. Context is everything. If you find yourself being chased by a bear, fear is natural. To feel joy in that situation would likely result in your swift and all too painful demise. However, in modern society, our predisposition toward fear is largely maladaptive. Your chances of being chased by a bear are minimal. In fact, your chances of dying from unnatural causes have never been lower. The world has never been safer. With COVID-19, though, we are constantly fed the life or death narrative. The message from the government and MSM is clear: “If you enjoy living, then listen to those in power. If instead you enjoy dying, then, by all means, do your own thing.” Don Lemon, CNN’s anchor and part-time preacher, has spoken about leaving the unvaccinated behind. Again, to be clear, I am not advocating against vaccines, but every adult should be free to make their own decisions. They shouldn’t be coerced or fed false, fear-filled narratives.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 20, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/Pool/Getty Images)
A Culture of Fear
We are bombarded with news stories 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—many of these are of the tragic variety. Not surprisingly, as we are hardwired to sense danger, the human mind provides fertile ground for the planting of fears. However, fears, like plants, can also be uprooted. Sadly, our ability to uproot is being compromised by those in positions of genuine power. Because of this, to paraphrase James F. Byrnes, the now deceased politician and judge, too many people now find themselves obsessed by the idea of security. By failing to acknowledge opportunity (also known as freedom), “they seem to be more afraid of life than death.”
Fear works best when an element of truth gets exaggerated to epic proportions. With COVID-19, we know the virus exists; we also know that far too many people around the world, including at least 709,000 Americans, have died. But—and this is of vital importance—if you happen to be reasonably young and reasonably healthy, your chances of dying from the virus are minimal. One of the major reasons COVID-19 has had such a devastating impact in the United States has a lot to do with one, simple fact: 40 percent of the country’s adults are obese. Instead of fear mongering, Dr. Fauci should be advising people to get fitter. This is one of the surest ways to avoid succumbing to the illness. Why does this get excluded from the conversation, either intentionally or otherwise? Because it’s much better to keep control of the masses—including the younger, healthier citizens—if tens of millions live in a perpetual state of fear.
An individual has a far greater chance of being killed in a traffic accident or from the flu than they have of dying from COVID-19. Obviously, no one wants to get the flu or experience a traffic accident. Nevertheless, we don’t live our lives in constant fear of both. That’s because our salience biases, also known as perceptual salience, predispose us to focus on novel threats. What’s more novel than a novel coronavirus? Fear is a prison largely of our own making. Let’s free ourselves.
I will finish with a quote from Frank Herbert, author of “Dune”: “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
If you ask the Democrats, anyone who isn’t vaccinated against COVID-19 will die from the disease. No ifs or buts about it: no vaccine, you’re dead.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I support the COVID-19 vaccines.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with the decision not to get vaccinated, and I don’t begrudge anyone who makes that decision.
America is about choice, and choice means accepting risks. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, in Latin, to James Madison: “I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”
Fortunately, it seems as if unvaccinated Americans will be taking less of a risk going forward.
Remdesivir, an anti-viral drug originally designed to treat Hepatitis C, was the first drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to battle COVID-19.
Even then, initial reports seemed to indicate the drug was only marginally beneficial.
Now, Remdesivir — which is injected — appears to be more effective than anyone believed.
According to the Daily Mail, a new study has found that, when administered early, Remdesivir reduces the risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19 by 87%, and the risk of needing any formal medical visit declined by 81%.
“Antiviral medications provide maximal benefit when used early in the disease course,” Dr. Robert L. Gottlieb, cardiologist and principal investigator at Baylor University Medical Center and Baylor Scott & White Research Institute, said in a statement on Sept. 22. “Last summer, data from clinical trials demonstrated the benefit of remdesivir in patients hospitalized with COVID-19, even when not yet requiring oxygen.
“These latest data show remdesivir’s potential to help high-risk patients recover before they get sicker and stay out of the hospital altogether.
“We are seeing very high numbers of hospitalized patients as new COVID-19 infections surge, placing increased demands on already over-burdened healthcare systems. Remdesivir, also known as Veklury, is an effective antiviral for the treatment of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 and an essential tool to help reduce disease progression,” Gottlieb added.
Remdesivir isn’t the only drug showing promise. Molnupiravir, which comes in the form of a pill rather than an injection, is showing potential as well.
This could turn out to be one of the most important advances to counter Covid. Molnupiravir, a pill for 5 days (I’ll nickname “M-pack”) to markedly reduce hospitalization. Await details beyond press release, including safetyhttps://t.co/X1wR9K7vn0 by @matthewherper@statnewspic.twitter.com/hKBZC5Y71Z
Molnupiravir is a broad spectrum anti-viral that achieves “lethal mutagenesis” of #SARSCoV2. Unlike remdesivir, it’s a pill, it’s not repurposed, had solid data from a Phase 2 trial supporting potency + safety vs Covid https://t.co/TpDUE3Ty1e@nature The mechanism of action 👇 pic.twitter.com/jWET5JJKrJ
All in all, “the science” never should have tried to convince people that there was only one way out of the pandemic. Vaccines are a big one, but they are only one piece of the puzzle.
Hopefully, these new drugs will ensure that people who wish to remain unvaccinated can do so safely — and give wannabe authoritarians one less mechanism to pursue power.
Chappelle occupies a unique space in the entertainment pantheon: Not only is he a comedy legend but, at age 48, he’s still relevant and edgy. In fact, his only problem is that comedians aren’t expected to be edgy nowadays. Laughs are less important than applause. Sacred cows aren’t supposed to be slaughtered; they’re supposed to be genuflected to.
But that’s the great thing about being a comedy legend: One assumes Chappelle’s been told, and one assumes Chappelle doesn’t care. Remember, this is the guy who walked away from a massive contract for his own comedy sketch show for reasons he never fully explained — except, one presumes, he was unhappy with the material.
Thus, when calls for his cancellation began in earnest after he said “gender is a fact” in his latest standup special, he wasn’t much fazed. In fact, he’s embracing it.
“If this is what being canceled is like, I love it,” Chappelle said to a standing ovation during a performance Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“F*** Twitter. F*** NBC News, ABC News, all these stupid ass networks,” Chappelle added. “I’m not talking to them. I’m talking to you. This is real life.”
The audience included several big Hollywood names, including Sterling K. Brown, Tiffany Haddish, Chuck Lorre, Brad Pitt and Donnell Rawlings.
The controversy stemmed from remarks Chappelle made during his Netflix special “The Closer” in which he chose to acknowledge certain unpopular biological realities.
“Gender is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on Earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. That is a fact,” Chappelle said during the special.
Chappelle also joked that he was joining Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling on “team TERF.” Rowling, who has made comments critical of the transgender movement, is regarded as a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, or TERF; few other acronyms carry such a kiss of death in the progressive sphere as that one.
Also from “The Closer:” “I don’t hate gay people, I respect the s*** out of you — not all of you,” Chappelle said. “I’m not that fond of these newer gays — too sensitive, too brittle. I miss the old-school gays … the Stonewall gays. They didn’t take s*** from anybody.”
And thusly were hands wrung and pearls clutched:
🗣️Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary.
Nothing Dave Chappelle says changes the facts that trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary people are non-binary, that LGBTQ+ people should live free of harm and discrimination. He is wrong. And Netflix has empowered him to be wrong loudly.
As a trans woman, I have usually defended Dave Chappelle’s specials because I think they’re hilarious and his jokes about trans women never felt intentionally malicious.
The Closer changed my mind on that. That special felt so lazy and disingenuous and I’m really disappointed.
Can you imagine giving a standing ovation to ignorant hate speech? Thank you Dave for making us feel good about despising others. https://t.co/iGxcl0mMDX
Dave Chappelle’s brand has become synonymous with ridiculing trans people and other marginalized communities. Negative reviews and viewers loudly condemning his latest special is a message to the industry that audiences don’t support platforming anti-LGBTQ diatribes. We agree. https://t.co/yOIyT54819
Jaclyn Moore — the transgender former co-showrunner on Netflix’s “Dear White People” — expressed disappointment in Chappelle, who he called one of his “comic heroes.”
“I never loved Dave’s trans material before but this time it felt different,” Moore told Variety. “This is the first time I felt like, ‘Oh, people are laughing at this joke and they’re agreeing that it’s absurd to call me a woman.’ The fact is that’s the exact rhetoric and language that is used against us.”
“I’m really tired of my existence being a matter of debate, that this is something that we all just get to have an opinion about,” he added.
“We all get to have an opinion whether or not I am what I say I am. Look, I have no desire to cancel Dave Chappelle. He should make whatever he wants to make, but I will say to Netflix, it’s not like this was a live special. They saw this and were like, ‘Yeah this seems OK to put out there.’ The truth is, it’s not. It’s dangerous and it has real-world physical violence repercussions.”
In other words, biological truths cannot be told because they might cause danger to people who reject them. Moore has called for a boycott of Netflix and says he won’t work for them again “as long as they keep promoting and profiting from dangerous transphobic content.” He’s currently working on a “Queer as Folk” reboot for NBC streaming service Peacock, however — so, at least on the second count, Netflix being denied Moore’s services will have no practical effect in the short run.
However, there is one lie in what Moore said: He has every intention of canceling Dave Chappelle, the same as everyone who expects the comedian to do a 180 and profusely apologize for the content in “The Closer.” If he doesn’t, as far as they’re concerned, it’s consequences time.
Good luck with that, since the consequences don’t seem to have hit home. Chappelle’s special is the third most-streamed program on Netflix, according to Decider, behind “Maid” and cultural sensation “Squid Game.” Chappelle himself seems to “love” being canceled. And, what’s more, he got a standing ovation from a Hollywood crowd for telling an uncomfortable truth.
If this is what cancelation looks like, I’m loving it, too.
See “Waiting for Superman.” Not all kids in the program are white. [US Patriot]
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has announced plans to cancel the “Gifted and Talented” accelerated learning program for schoolchildren, drawing praise from those who called the scheme discriminatory and condemnation from those who say it harms hardworking students.
Starting next fall, New York City will stop testing kindergartners for entry into the gifted and talented program, which was the subject of a lawsuit (pdf) that claimed the screens were “racially discriminatory” and fueled racial segregation in the school system.
“The era of judging 4-year-olds based on a single test is over,” de Blasio said in an Oct. 8 statement. “Every New York City child deserves to reach their full potential, and this new, equitable model gives them that chance.”
The gifted program, which faced criticism for enrolling low numbers of black and Latino students, will instead be replaced with a new framework called Brilliant NYC that will leave students identified for accelerated instruction in mixed classrooms but provide them with “extra attention,” de Blasio said during an appearance on WNYC on Oct. 8 with schools Chancellor Meisha Porter.
“The kids who have those special abilities for accelerated learning will be getting a lot of attention, a lot of opportunity to do it, but there’ll be learning with all the other kids,” de Blasio said, adding that Brilliant NYC scheme would ” reach tens of thousands of more kids with accelerated learning.”
Porter said that, under the new program, teachers would be provided with additional training to identify special abilities learners and provide them with “targeted individualized instruction.”
A parent calling into the WNYC praised the move, saying the gifted program created a “two-tiered world that I think needs to go.”
Charleen Ang, a mother of a student enrolled in the gifted program on the Upper West Side, admonished de Blasio’s decision.
“It is abominable that de Blasio is, in his final months in office, dismantling one of the few successful education programs in New York City, adversely impacting a swath of children,” she told the New York Post.
De Blasio’s nearly eight-year tenure as mayor ends in less than three months. Democrat candidate Eric Adams, who is widely expected to replace de Blasio, has proposed a different framework, with Chalkbeat reporting that he plans to keep the admissions test and expand the number of gifted classrooms across the city.
Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, who has vowed to fight to preserve the gifted and talented programs, criticized de Blasio’s decision to phase out the current arrangement, citing a range of benefits and arguing it “should not be diluted, nor should it be discontinued.”
The gifted program faced criticism for enrolling low numbers of black and Latino students. According to Chalkbeat, a news organization that specializes in public education coverage, more than 70 percent of spots in the gifted program go to Asian American and white students, who make up less than a third of New York City’s student population.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro framed de Blasio’s move as pushing “mandatory mediocrity” in a bid to force equality of outcome.
“Pursuing ‘equity’ as the chief goal of policy means, in practical terms, pursuing equality of outcome through mandatory mediocrity,” Shapiro wrote in a tweet.
Some Democrats also took aim at de Blasio’s decision, with state Sen. John Liu, who chairs a panel on New York City schools, taking to Twitter to express his displeasure.
“Gifted and talented programs have been an integral option for generations of schoolkids,” Liu wrote in a tweet. “@BilldeBlasio promised intensive public engagement about it but now wants total elimination,” he added.
Asked on the WNYC program about his message for parents who might choose to leave the New York City public school system or the city entirely if the gifted program is done away with, de Blasio said, “I bet you a lot of parents are now going to look at this plan and say, this is a reason to stay.”
The gifted program would be phased out, with kids entering it between now and next year allowed to continue in it until completion, he added.
Porter said that parents still have an opportunity to provide feedback on the proposal, which may still be tweaked, calling it a “blueprint for the plan that we intend to implement” and “our vision for New York City.”
Heather Higgins, chair of the Independent Women’s Network, said in a tweet: “Bill de Blasio’s latest plan to harm hardworking students and parents—ending NYC’s accelerated Gifted & Talented program—is only viewed as a good idea by the stupid, the jealous, and the vindictive.”
Republicans won’t help Democrats raise the United States’ debt limit again, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told President Joe Biden on Friday.
McConnell and 10 other Senate Republicans on Oct. 7 joined Democrats in temporarily raising the ceiling through Dec. 3, enabling Democrats to avoid using a process called reconciliation.
That won’t happen again, McConnell warned Biden.
“Last night, Republicans filled the leadership vacuum that has troubled the Senate since January. I write to inform you that I will not provide such assistance again if your all-Democrat government drifts into another avoidable crisis,” the Republican wrote in a letter to the president.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats repeatedly refused to turn to reconciliation, a process that would let the party raise or suspend the ceiling with zero Republican votes. McConnell repeatedly urged them to use reconciliation but after they refused, he helped them pass the short-term ceiling increase.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called it “a complete capitulation.”
“We were winning that fight and Schumer was on the verge of surrender. And unfortunately, the deal that was put on the table was a lifeline for Schumer,” added Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
McConnell addressed the critics in the letter, saying “it got to the point where senators on both sides were pleading for leadership to fill the void and protect our citizens” and “I stepped up.”
Schumer took to the Senate floor after Thursday’s vote and condemned Republicans, alleging they “played a dangerous and risky partisan game, and I am glad that their brinksmanship did not work.”
He also said that Republicans must in the future work with Democrats to address the debt ceiling.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is seen in Washington on Oct. 7, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) was seen covering his face with his hands as Schumer spoke and later told reporters that it was inappropriate. “Civility is gone,” he said.
Some Republicans reportedly confronted Schumer over his remarks and McConnell hit Schumer for what he said.
“In a bizarre spectacle, Senator Schumer exploded in a rant that was so partisan, angry, and corrosive that even Democratic senators were visibly embarrassed by him and for him,” he wrote to Biden.
“I am writing to make it clear that in light of Senator Schumer’s hysterics and my grave concerns about the ways that another vast, reckless, partisan spending bill would hurt Americans and help China, I will not be a party to any future effort to mitigate the consequences of Democratic mismanagement. Your lieutenants on Capitol Hill now have the time they claimed they lacked to address the debt ceiling through standalone reconciliation, and all the tools to do it. They cannot invent another crisis and ask for my help,” he added later.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that the administration hoped Republicans would vote with Democrats again in the future to address the debt ceiling “instead of choosing default or obstruction.”
“Our view continues to be that Leader Schumer has shown great skill in navigating this process—through a challenging process. We have confidence in his ability to do that moving forward,” she added during a briefing on Friday.
“And I think it’s important to remember that the reason we were teetering on the edge of default and an economic calamity is because Republicans were refusing to join with Democrats, or even to allow Democrats to be the adults in the room and raise the debt limit themselves,” she said, referring to calls for Republicans not to filibuster a House-passed bill that would suspend the ceiling until December 2022.
Some will remember that comedy classic from 1961, “Divorce, Italian Style,” starring Marcello Mastroianni. Unfortunately, sixty years later, we seem to be moving toward, even living through, a far less funny, real life “Communism, American Style.”
What is “Communism, American Style”? As yet one would think it bears little resemblance to the Soviet kind with its Gulags and so forth.
Or does it?
On Oct. 6, the Los Angeles City Council proclaimed, nearly unanimously (11-2), COVID-19 mandates that require proof of vaccination to enter indoor restaurants, movie theaters, salons, shopping centers, and just about every other public indoor space you could think of in the entertainment capitol.
Others, with the encouragement of our federal government, will soon be following suit in varying degrees or already have.
Maybe Gulags aren’t needed when the entire society is living in one.
This occurred only a couple of days after Merrick Garland, the attorney general of our country—in what Mark Levin described as Stasi-like behavior—announced his jihad, apparently in cahoots with several other governmental education entities, against parents who deigned to criticize school boards for propagandizing their children with Critical Race Theory (son of Critical Theory, son of Marxism).
Garland called these concerned parents, who are springing up seemingly everywhere, “domestic terrorists.”
It turned out the AG’s own children were, via the “education” company Panorama, profiting mightily off purveying this same inducing of race hatred while pretending to be an anti-racist, totalitarian so-called theory.
Communism, despite its high-toned, ever-changing, moralistic rhetoric— more precisely thanks to it, when you think about it— is the most evolved system yet for preserving as much money as possible in the hands of elites (translation: communist leadership and their friends).
It’s no accident Fidel Castro died a billionaire while his people live on in squalor. Or that General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping’ inhabits the opulent imperial redoubt, partly a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Jade Spring Hill (Take a look. Mar-a-Lago may not have seemed all that impressive to him.).
Power to (some of) the People, indeed.
Nevertheless. China, Russia and, no doubt, Cuba, had he known much about it, were considered too impoverished by Marx to be fecund opportunities for communism, especially then. Pol Pot’s Cambodia would probably have baffled old Karl.
Marx assumed his system would first come to that more modern industrialized state that was prepared for the transition, Germany.
He was wrong about that (at least until East Germany came along, but that was only due to the intervention of the Soviets. Yes, Nazism had elements of Marxism too.).
Or was he? Perhaps he was just ahead of his time.
What modern industrialized state could be more fecund for communism than the United States of America, the country with the most-est of all?
And it wouldn’t even require a revolution. It could just walk in the door, especially since so many of its leaders seem ready for it.
Of course, they do not name what is happening communism, or even socialism. That would just create dissension. Often, conveniently, they do not even admit what they are doing, or calling it, to themselves.
But they are doing it. And that is what is important.
Basic to this development is a one-party system, something more like China, which is communist in rhetoric and social control, but capitalist, in greater or lesser extents, economically. Socialism, most intelligent people know, ultimately does not work as an economic system.
There’s nothing new about that. Lenin understood it when he instituted limited capitalism, the New Economic Policy (NEP), only a few years after assuming power.
But the one-party system is still attractive. It obviously can be successful when paired with capitalism of various degrees. The so-called Chinese miracle is an outgrowth of that when millions, largely in the more capitalistic era of Deng Tsiao-peng, were lifted out of poverty.
Virtually all the Democratic Party and an unfortunate portion of the Republican—the uni-party, as it is known—believe the Chinese are the way of the future and, as I have aid before, have consciously or unconsciously joined up with them in deeds, if not in words.
The premature, surprise lifting of the debt ceiling on Oct. 7 with notable Republican participation was but one example of this growing tendency toward one-party rule. Democracy, especially multi-party democracy, is just too unruly, too Eighteenth Century, too Enlightenment, for the modern high-tech era.
Helping in this transition to crypto-communism, or whatever you would call it, are many in the populace who would rather be led than to think or, more importantly, act for themselves. It’s the part of human nature that makes for good communists. In fact communism owes its existence to them.
They are the part of America that will allow, indeed are allowing, communism to walk in the door. Among them are some of our richest and most successful citizens, but that does not stop them from being fools.
They are not, moreover, the people that built this country. Those who built the country are from the folks de Tocqueville saw when he wrote “Democracy in America,” the independent, self-starting citizens that formed so many non-governmental, patriotic organizations for the betterment of all.
Those people, thankfully, and here’s the good part, have not gone away. The ideological war is not over. The Fat Lady hasn’t even begun to sing. She hasn’t opened her sheet music.
Merrick Garland and his allies made a big mistake in their frontal assault on the parents of America, many of whom were already outraged. Just think how many they are, parents fed up with an already atrocious public school system that served no one and was now being used for indoctrination.
They are forming a literal army across the country. Running for school board is turning into the number one vocation or avocation, depending on the situation, for patriotic, committed Americans.
But something even bigger is happening. And it doesn’t take Outkick’s Clay Travis to see it—although he clearly has and is talking about it daily on his radio show with Buck Sexton.
Football season is here and the country is fed up to an unprecedented degree with their pro-communist leaders for a variety reasons from the totalitarian COVID mandates to the equally unprecedented national embarrassment of Afghanistan to a mainstream media that has done nothing but lie to them.
And more and more people are showing their displeasure for this state of affairs in football and NASCAR stadiums, in concert halls, and in the streets.
It’s a movement never seen before and it’s growing at an amazing clip. Crowds of Americans are banding together and shouting:
Well, this is a family newspaper, but you know what I mean. “Let’s go Brandon!” is how a NBC reporter translated for her audience the expletive laced rejection of Joe Biden being shouted by a NASCAR audience. It’s another way of saying “Bye-bye, communism, good-bye. We love our freedom here.”
Remember that whole vaccine mandate? It seems like only yesterday President Joe Biden was trying on his Darth Vader act and trying to convince us he Really Meant Business™ this time about requiring people in the private sector to get the jab.
“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden said last month when he announced a rule change that would require anyone who worked for a company with more than 100 employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine or get tested every week.
The requisite rules to enforce this edict have tarried, however.
The rule would have to come from the Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration. As The New York Times pointed out this week, “OSHA also has the authority to quickly issue a rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, if it can show that workers are exposed to grave danger and that the rule is necessary to address it. The rule must also be feasible for employers to enforce.”
Either the agency was caught flat-footed or they haven’t been able to formulate a rule that would pass muster, but as of Saturday, the Loch Ness Monster and the federal vaccine mandate for private sector workers are equally real.
Thus, President Biden’s efforts for the moment have been focused on pressuring private sector companies to adopt vaccine mandates of their own.
That’s why he visited Clayco Inc. outside of Chicago on Thursday — to discuss COVID safety and push for work vaccine requirements among blue-collar workers in Illinois, trying to convince other companies to go along with his pronouncement.
Well, check that — that’s part of the reason why he visited Clayco Inc. on Thursday.
According to Fox Business, the head of the construction company is a major donor to the Democratic Party, with six figures in Biden’s coffers alone.
“Clayco CEO Bob Clark is a major Democratic donor who contributed more than $137,000 to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, according to records with the Federal Election Commission,” Fox News reported.
“Clark also served as a bundler, bringing in at least $100,000 to Biden’s 2020 campaign, and contributed $1.6 million to Democratic campaigns in total,” Forbes reported.
According to Forbes, Clayco is hardly a small concern, with $3.3 billion in annual revenue and 2,400 employees.
As of Friday, neither Clayco nor the White House had responded to inquiries from Forbes.
If the mega-donor and bundler was hoping for an “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” performance from Biden, his money was sadly misspent. Even by the low standards of the pro forma Biden speech, this one was particularly shaky.
For what it’s worth, Biden promised the OSHA rule that would make vaccine mandates happen was on its way.
“The Labor Department is going to shortly issue an emergency rule — which I asked for several weeks ago, and they’re going through the process — to require all [employers] with more than 100 people, whether they work for the federal government or not — this is within … the purview of the Labor Department — to ensure their workers are fully vaccinated or face testing at least once a week,” Biden said.
“In total, this Labor Department vaccination requirement will cover 100 million Americans, about two-thirds of all the people who work in America. And here’s the deal: These requirements are already proving that they work.” https://www.youtube.com/embed/NUVGD2X6gzI?start=1457&feature=oembed
Few specifics were offered, however, and keep in mind this was the good part. Here were the bad parts:
And here’s the worst part: This looks ethically appalling, as American Accountability Foundation president Tom Jones pointed out to Fox Business.
“Whether it is ambassadorships or other senior administration positions, the Biden Administration has continuously rewarded those who financially boosted their campaign,” Jones said. “Continuing the swampy practices of blatant paid-to-play should be of no surprise considering Biden has been a position for the past 40 years.”
Consider this, though: He got two first-tier viral Biden gaffes out of the visit. That’s $68,500 per gaffe.
Sure, that’s $68,492 more than I’d be willing to pay, but when you’re breathing the kind of rarefied air that allows you to donate six figures to a presidential campaign, it almost seems like a steal.
Then again, so does getting the president of the United States to visit your job site. It seems less like a coincidence and a lot more like a gift.
If the media is feeling charitable — and if there’s someone whose name is Brandon in the semi-immediate vicinity — that’s how they would have reported the chants when President Joe Biden visited a Chicago suburb to urge people to get vaccinated.
You can hear the newsman now: “And, Tom, the key takeaway from crowds lining the street is that they’re heartily in support of young Brandon Paailgrims, a Champaign/Urbana youth who’s been fighting a case of juvenile shingles. No matter what their Trump flags might say, these are people who care about sick kids in Illinois. Back to the studio.”
And yes, there was a so-called “let’s go, Brandon” chant when the president visited (if you’re unaware of what that means, we’ll get to that later), but one thing’s for sure: Even in deep-blue Illinois, plenty of people weren’t thrilled with the president.
Here’s Daniel Williams, a reporter from the Chicago area, showing what the streets looked like on the way to Elk Grove Village, where Biden was scheduled to speak on Thursday:
Just in case you missed the joke: Many of those protesting the president have taken the simple, frank and evocative chant “f*** Joe Biden” as their slogan.
I know, I know — mind my language. I would have preferred us all to paraphrase William F. Buckley and shout, “We’re standing athwart the 46th president, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it!” Alas, “f*** Joe Biden!” it is. You can also probably see why no one puts me in charge of these things.
Ah, but yes, Brandon. This chant tends to break out at sporting events, including at the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Talladega earlier this month. Brandon Brown scored his first win there and one reporter misinterpreted the crowd’s sentiments:
For reasons you may have grokked, Brandon seemed unmoved.
While the Brandon Brown saga brought the trend to wider attention, chants like these have been ongoing for quite some time — and often in places you wouldn’t expect, especially college football games. (From students who haven’t absorbed their critical race theory like good clones, apparently.) Without subjecting you to every single clip, let me assure you this isn’t an isolated phenomenon, and it’s happening in places the president should be concerned about.
No, the grandstands at the 2.66-mile oval at Talladega aren’t known for a surfeit of progressive Democrats, but Elk Grove Village, Illinois, isn’t exactly that far outside of the Democratic stronghold of Chicago. In fact, it’s adjacent to O’Hare Airport, which serves a city that would sooner elect a rabid communist otter than a Republican. And it’s not as if Biden did much to convince the area’s residents during his visit:
This is the president who’s supposed to unite us, who’s supposed to apply salve to our national wounds. His speech in Chicago wasn’t necessarily provocative, although he’s lapsed into lying-dog-faced-pony-soldier territory far too often lately.
His vaccine mandate, if it ever comes to pass (the promised Occupational Safety and Health Agency rule that the mandate is supposed to function under has yet to come forth), will multiply these protests. So will other pressures, like the slow pace of job and economic growth.
A new claim is making the rounds of the media that members of Congress and their staff members are being treated with ivermectin.
The claim was posted on Twitter through the account of Dr. Pierre Kory, whose bio says he was formerly “ Chief of the Critical Care Service and Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center at the University of Wisconsin.”
His tweet links to the website of the Front-Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance.
“Fun fact: Between 100-200 United States Congress Members (plus many of their staffers & family members) with COVID.. were treated by a colleague over the past 15 months with ivermectin & the I-MASK+ protocol at http://flccc.net. None have gone to hospital. Just sayin’,” he tweeted.
Fun fact: Between 100-200 United States Congress Members (plus many of their staffers & family members) with COVID.. were treated by a colleague over the past 15 months with ivermectin & the I-MASK+ protocol at https://t.co/OvU8SLfLJq. None have gone to hospital. Just sayin’
Kory later offered further comment to those questioning a similar comment posted through the Twitter account of the alliance.
“To all the comments asking for sources/names for the below: 1) This came from a highly credible source inside Congress who has asked to remain anonymous 2) I would never divulge the medical treatments of individual members, nor do I know them myself I fully stand by this tweet,” he posted.
To all the comments asking for sources/names for the below:
1) This came from a highly credible source inside Congress who has asked to remain anonymous 2) I would never divulge the medical treatments of individual members, nor do I know them myself
“For humans, ivermectin tablets are approved at very specific doses to treat some parasitic worms, and there are topical (on the skin) formulations for head lice and skin conditions like rosacea,” the FDA says on its website.
A doctor who was filling in at a rural Alberta hospital says he treated three COVID-19 patients with ivermectin, triggering a warning from the provincial health authority about the dangers of the controversial drug. https://t.co/Q3Fi5lB0vY
The FDA has not approved ivermectin in any form for use to treat COVID-19. The World Health Organization has said that its use should only be limited to clinical trials, because of uncertainty over the drug’s impacts on people.
However, multiple reports have emerged of individuals taking the drug. Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas has touted the use of the drug, according to Newsweek. Podcast host Joe Rogan listed ivermectin among the drugs he used when he came down with the disease.
“Thousands of physicians on the frontlines…want the option of administering ivermectin. Yet they are widely discouraged, even demonized…they face the loss of their livelihoods if they discuss it publicly.” Medicine has been perverted when MDs can’t use a safe approved drug. https://t.co/re2ztbcjfk
The internal division is apparently so strong that even Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia had enough of his party’s left wing on Thursday. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer launched into an anti-Republican Party tirade on the Senate floor.
Manchin, after roughly two minutes of it, decided he’d heard enough and left.
After Republicans helped Democrats temporarily increase the debt ceiling to avoid a calamity, Schumer attacked them.
“Senate Republicans finally recognized that their obstruction was not going to work,” Schumer said. “I thank, very much thank, my Democratic colleagues for showing our unity in solving this Republican-manufactured crisis.”
“Despite immense opposition from [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell] and members of his conference, our caucus held together, and we have pulled our country back from the cliff’s edge that Republicans tried to push us over,” the New York Democrat declared.
The comment was made a day after McConnell caved and offered Schumer and Democrats a lifeline on increasing the debt limit temporarily until December. Schumer rewarded him by attacking the entire Republican Party.
But Schumer’s dramatic performance pushed one of his Democratic colleagues to his limit. Manchin was seen seated behind Schumer, burying his head in his hands as Schumer rambled on like a madman.
Manchin at one point stood and shook his head. After just a couple of minutes listening to Schumer’s pontificating, Manchin finally walked off the floor. He muttered something at someone just before the exit.
Images of the senator running out of patience with the leader of his caucus went viral online:
VIRAL MOMENT: Last night after the debt ceiling was extended, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) slammed Republicans on the Senate floor, and behind him, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) looked visibly upset. pic.twitter.com/AmUUiZ53Gn
The New York Post reported Manchin spoke about the moment later in a brief conversation with reporters.
“I didn’t think it was appropriate at this time,” Manchin said. “We have to de-weaponize. You can’t be playing politics. None of us can — on both sides.”
“Civility is gone,” the senator concluded.
Manchin and Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema right now stand as the only obstacles to the Democratic Party’s broader agenda.
Manchin, a red-state Democrat who is up for re-election in 2024, is no doubt thinking ahead.
Despite his comments about “both sides” needing to cool down, he appeared awfully peeved with his party Thursday.
If Manchin can’t handle one of the people currently running the country from his side of the aisle, then how are the rest of us supposed to tolerate him?
President Joe Biden has become the first U.S. president not to acknowledge Columbus Day, announcing Friday that the White House will celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead.
Biden issued a proclamation which stated that Monday, Oct. 11, will be designated to honor “American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians.”
According to The Associated Press, Indigenous Peoples’ Day will be observed in the United States alongside Columbus Day, which is established by Congress.
The White House on Friday repeated its claim that the country has not lived up to its “promise.”
“Since time immemorial, American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians have built vibrant and diverse cultures — safeguarding land, language, spirit, knowledge, and tradition across the generations,” Biden said in the proclamation. “On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, our Nation celebrates the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples, recognizes their inherent sovereignty, and commits to honoring the Federal Government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations.”
The White House continued the statement by smearing the founding of the country.
“Our country was conceived on a promise of equality and opportunity for all people — a promise that, despite the extraordinary progress we have made through the years, we have never fully lived up to,” Biden stated. “That is especially true when it comes to upholding the rights and dignity of the Indigenous people who were here long before colonization of the Americas began.”
Biden accused federal policies of attempting to “eradicate Native cultures.”
“Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society. We also recommit to supporting a new, brighter future of promise and equity for Tribal Nations — a future grounded in Tribal sovereignty and respect for the human rights of Indigenous people in the Americas and around the world,” the proclamation stated.
The left has equated the day that has celebrated European discovery of the Americas to white supremacy.
Biden, in his memorandum, sided with those who want to replace the federal holiday that acknowledges the mapping of America by Christopher Columbus with one that strictly celebrates Native Americans.
“The Federal Government has a solemn obligation to lift up and invest in the future of Indigenous people and empower Tribal Nations to govern their own communities and make their own decisions,” Biden’s memo said. “We must never forget the centuries-long campaign of violence, displacement, assimilation, and terror wrought upon Native communities and Tribal Nations throughout our country.”
“Today, we acknowledge the significant sacrifices made by Native peoples to this country — and recognize their many ongoing contributions to our Nation.
“On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we honor America’s first inhabitants and the Tribal Nations that continue to thrive today. I encourage everyone to celebrate and recognize the many Indigenous communities and cultures that make up our great country.”
Biden signed the memorandum by making no mention of Columbus, who has been written off as a brutal tyrant.
Instead, Biden asked the country only to honor Native Americans in what appears to be an effort to appease the woke mob.
“(I) do hereby proclaim October 11, 2021, as Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” Biden concluded in his proclamation. “I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities. I also direct that the flag of the United States be displayed on all public buildings on the appointed day in honor of our diverse history and the Indigenous peoples who contribute to shaping this Nation. “
Columbus Day has become a day of contention for the left for several years.
Former President Donald Trump last year used the second week in October to honor Columbus.
“Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’s legacy,” Trump wrote, according to USA Today. “These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities and his achievements with transgressions.”
As I mentioned in this space last July, the politicization of the United States’ armed forces, already underway under President Barack Obama, has been kicked into a higher gear by the Biden administration and its tame general, Mark Milley, by using the Capitol incursion of last Jan. 6 as pretext.
By repeatedly and consistently mischaracterizing it as an “insurrection,” the media have turned a protest that got out of hand into the bombardment of Fort Sumter, which launched the American Civil War in 1861.
That the Biden administration was complicit with the media in transforming a rag-tag bunch of protesters into a supposed proto-army of rebellion became apparent in President Biden’s address to Congress last April 28.
There, clearly with the Jan. 6 protesters in mind, he spoke of “what our intelligence agency has determined to be the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today: white supremacy’s terrorism.”
The logic of “our” intelligence agency which is said to have produced such a bizarre and improbable point of view seems to have been as follows: Donald Trump is a white supremacist; his Jan. 6 supporters were terrorists; therefore, all 74 million Trump voters in 2020 (there are probably more by now) are at least potential white supremacist terrorists.
That’s quite a threat all right. Or it would be if any of it had an iota of truth in it.
Such paranoia obviously had a political motivation and must have been adopted for cynical reasons, as a stick with which to beat any opposition to the radical Biden agenda from the right.
But now, not quite six months later, it appears to have become a habit with this administration to confuse any opposition to any part of its agenda with “terrorism.”
In response to a letter from the National School Boards Association to President Biden complaining of an “imminent threat” from parents who are allegedly sending “threatening letters and cyberbullying” said to amount to “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” Attorney General Merrick Garland has sent a memo to the FBI—the extent of whose corruption is even now being revealed by John Durham—expressing his concern over an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.”
He provides not a single example of such harassment, intimidation or threats of violence, nor any constitutional warrant for such Federal interference in state and local education matters and public order-keeping, even if there were any of either.
“While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution,” he writes, “that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.”
Andrew McCarthy at National Review, who calls this “dangerous nonsense,” reminds us that “the First Amendment protects speech unless it unambiguously calls for the use of force that the speaker clearly intends, under circumstances in which the likelihood of violence is real and imminent. Even actual ‘threats of violence’ are not actionable unless they meet this high threshold.”
And this is not to mention the fact that, as more than one commentator has pointed out, we have in the last year and a half seen numerous left-wing examples of “threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views,” which have been perfectly OK with the Justice department and the FBI.
What, in fact, is Garland himself doing with such a memo as this if not warning of the FBI’s coming “efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views”?
This looks a lot like a recurrence to President Nixon’s famous formulation: “When the President does it, it’s not illegal.” As in so many other ways throughout the Obama-Biden years, there is one rule for the ruling class, another for everybody else.
This politicization of the Justice Department continues a process which seems to have begun under President Obama and then continued on unabated, though surreptitiously, under President Trump, whose administration it sought, as we now know, continuously to undermine.
Interestingly, another case of an effort to intimidate an individual based on her views had taken place only days earlier, when protestors pursued Senator Kyrsten Sinema into a ladies’ room at Arizona State University, objecting to her view that the government headed by Biden and her fellow Democrats’ shouldn’t be spending $3.5 trillion that it doesn’t have.
In that case, however, neither the president nor Attorney General Garland nor anyone else in the administration seemed to mind, and “the big guy” himself dismissed the incident as nothing but a “part of the process.”
I thought of this remark when I read the opinion of “a lawyer friend” of the excellent Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine blog that the Garland letter was just “huffing and puffing done to scratch a political itch” with no real legal force behind it. Mirengoff himself opines that “anyone prosecuted by the DOJ for non- violent conduct as a result of this memo will very likely find pro bono legal representation and beat the rap.”
This is true—at least until the entire judiciary has been Bidenized. But in the meantime, such a person may only “beat the rap” the way General Michael Flynn did: after years of expensive litigation that all but ruined him and his family financially.
As he knows only too well, under the politicized Obama-Biden Justice Department, the punishment reserved for dissenters is, precisely, “the process.”
The damage has been done. We are on the cusp of vaccinating kindergartners. [US Patrtiot]
The New York Times issued a correction Thursday saying it severely misreported the number of child COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States by over 800,000 cases.
The NY Times report, “A New Vaccine Strategy for Children: Just One Dose, for Now,” first reported that about “900,000 children have been hospitalized” with the virus since the start of the pandemic in early 2020. However, the article has since been corrected to say that “more than 63,000 children were hospitalized with COVID-19 from August 2020 to October 2021.”
A note from the editor was added to the article.
“An earlier version of this article incorrectly described actions taken by regulators in Sweden and Denmark,” the correction also said. “They have halted use of the Moderna vaccine in children; they have not begun offering single doses.”
The article, the editor added, “also misstated the number of COVID hospitalizations in U.S. children. It is more than 63,000 from August 2020 to October 2021, not 900,000 since the beginning of the pandemic. In addition, the article misstated the timing of an [Food and Drug Administration] meeting on authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children. It is later this month, not next week.”
The correction drew significant criticism on Twitter, where journalist and media critic Glenn Greenwald noted that the NY Times recently fired several senior staff members, including COVID-19 reporter Donald McNeil Jr.
“Now we have an incompetent in his place constantly doing this, or saying it’s racist to investigate COVID origins,” Greenwald wrote.
The correction comes after a recent poll from Gallup found that Americans, by in large, significantly overstate the COVID-19 hospitalization rate.
The survey, published late last month, found that 41 percent of registered Democrats believe that there’s a 50 percent chance that an unvaccinated individual will go the hospital for COVID-19, while 21 percent of Republicans and 26 percent of independents believe the same.
Gallup, citing federal health data, said that under different circumstances, the COVID-19 hospitalization rate for both unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals is fewer than 1 percent.
“Democrats are more likely to overstate hospitalization risks for unvaccinated people, which may fuel efforts, often led by Democratic Party leaders, to enforce both mask and vaccine mandates,” the pollster wrote in a writeup on the survey’s findings.
Meanwhile, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released Friday that the seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases has dipped below 100,000 this week.
The Environmental Protection Agency failed to follow federal law when it purged industry representatives from two advisory panels, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges.
Michael Regan, a President Joe Biden nominee, was sworn in as the administrator of the agency, known as the EPA, on March 11. Twenty days later, he removed every member of two panels, totaling 54 people.
“Resetting these two scientific advisory committees will ensure the agency receives the best possible scientific insight to support our work to protect human health and the environment,” Regan said at the time. An internal 2017 directive prohibited scientists who received EPA research grants from serving on the panels. That prevented qualified officials from serving on the panels and thus restricted eligibility for membership, Regan alleged, pointing in part to a watchdog review (pdf) of the process that uncovered irregularities to the nominations.
Regan himself, though, violated the law when conducting the purge, Stanley Young, one of the members, asserted in the new filing through lawyers.
None of the 54 members are affiliated with industries the EPA regulates. That means the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee and the Science Advisory Board are not “fairly balanced,” which is required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), attorneys Brett Shumate and Joseph Falvey of Jones Day wrote.
The EPA regulates industries including manufacturing, mining, and healthcare.
“This ‘purge’ and the subsequent reconstitution of the board and the committee violated FACA and its implementing regulations. The committees are now unfairly balanced—both in terms of points of view and the functions the committees are required to perform—because they lack a single member affiliated with regulated industries,” the suit says.
“EPA also failed to adopt appropriate measures to ensure that the committees are protected from inappropriate influence. The new committees are subject to inappropriate influence because they are stacked with academics who are financially beholden to EPA through multi-million dollar research grants,” it states.
The suit was filed in federal court in Washington.
It asks the court to hold that EPA and Regan violated federal law and to halt panel proceedings until the memberships are constituted lawfully.
The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Arkansas lawmakers on Thursday advanced a measure that would ban businesses from requiring workers to disclose their COVID-19 vaccination status.
In a 22–11 vote, the majority-Republican Senate advanced the legislation that would grant employees and contractors a “right of privacy,” meaning that businesses would not be allowed to demand them to disclose whether they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
A House panel later endorsed the bill, sending it to the full House for a final vote.
The proposal is among several measures limiting or prohibiting vaccine requirements that have dominated a session that was intended to focus on congressional redistricting. A day earlier, lawmakers sent Gov. Asa Hutchinson a proposal allowing workers to opt out of their employer’s COVID-19 vaccine requirements.
The measures are primarily in response to President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which he announced last month, that requires businesses with 100 employees or more to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations or ensure weekly testing.
“We’ve got to push back, and this is where it starts,” Republican state Rep. Mary Bentley, a member of the House Public Health Committee, said before the panel endorsed the measure.
If enacted, the proposal would only take effect early next year, as it failed to secure two-thirds of support in the Senate, which is needed for the legislation to be enforced immediately. Without that backing, it would take effect 90 days after the legislature adjourns.
It isn’t clear whether the Republican governor will sign the measure into law if it reaches his desk, however he has previously expressed concern about other attempts by the legislature to prevent businesses from requiring employees to be vaccinated.
The Epoch Times has contacted Hutchinson’s office for comment.
Early on Wednesday, the governor told reporters at a news briefing that he doesn’t “believe in a federal mandate on vaccination,” referring to the president’s recent mandate on companies with 100 workers or more.
“But I also don’t believe in state mandates as well on employers and defining the employer-employee relationship,” he added.
The president said last week that 96 to 98 percent of Americans need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 before the nation can “go back to normal.”
“But one thing is for certain: A quarter of the country can’t go unvaccinated and us not continue to have a problem,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Sept. 27.
Google is banning advertisements featuring content that contradict what it called “inaccurate” content on climate change, and will no longer allow ad revenue to be made from them, the company announced in a blog post on Oct. 7.
The tech giant said the new policy will go into effect in November and will help “strengthen the integrity” of Google’s advertising ecosystem, and also align with their past work to promote sustainability and “confront climate change.”
“In recent years, we’ve heard directly from a growing number of our advertising and publisher partners who have expressed concerns about ads that run alongside or promote inaccurate claims about climate change,” the company said in Thursday’s blog post announcing the updates.
“Advertisers simply don’t want their ads to appear next to this content. And publishers and creators don’t want ads promoting these claims to appear on their pages or videos.”
Google said that those concerns are what led them to create the new monetization policy, which applies to commercials Google places online, as well as the websites and YouTube videos that run Google ads.
The updated policy prohibits advertising for and monetization of content that contradicts what Google calls the “well-established scientific consensus” on the existence and causes of climate change.
It includes any content that denies human contributions to global warming or treats “climate change as a hoax or a scam,” such as “denying that long-term trends show the global climate is warming, and claims denying that greenhouse gas emissions or human activity contribute to climate change,” Google said.
Going forward, Google will be analyzing content and considering whether it presents accurate or false claims about climate change, or whether it is simply discussing or reporting such a claim.
“We will also continue to allow ads and monetization on other climate-related topics, including public debates on climate policy, the varying impacts of climate change, new research and more,” the company said.
Google added that it consulted with “authoritative sources” on climate science—including those who have contributed to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports—when creating the new policy.
The new policy will be enforced through employees reading or watching the content as well as through “automated tools,” although the company did not state specifically what these are.
Google’s new policy comes as President Joe Biden’s administration aims to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Google had previously in late 2019 announced its support for the Paris Agreement and touted multiple ways it was taking to support renewable energy markets and ensuring sustainability in its products.
This week, the big tech giant rolled out several products aimed at increasing climate awareness, including a routing model in Google Maps that shows users the most eco-friendly route to their destination.
Last month, Facebook announced several new measures to expand community engagement with “climate topics” and said it was seeking to make sure people “have access to reliable information while reducing misinformation.” It added that it was going to invest $1 million in a new climate grant program to fact check any climate content it deems “misinformation.”
President Joe Biden visited Michigan this week, but Michigan didn’t seem to be all too happy to have him there.
Biden was in the city of Howell stumping for his hotly contested infrastructure bill currently being negotiated by Congress back in Washington, D.C., and footage of the vehement protesters who lined up to greet him upon his arrival with “f*** Joe Biden” signs have been spreading around the internet like wildfire.
However, according to one viral clip, it appears that he got the same message before he even stepped onto Michigan soil.
One Twitter user shared a clip of a massive sign that someone had made and displayed on their lawn which read in huge white letters, “F*** JOE BIDEN,” and seems to have been placed right in plain view as Marine One flew overhead.
WARNING: The following images and videos contain vulgar language that some viewers will find offensive.
The man topped his message off by flipping the bird at the presidential helicopter overhead.
“The most popular President when flying over Michigan yesterday got a warm Let’s go Brandon welcome,” the Twitter user who shared the clip wrote with several laughing emojis.
“F*** Joe Biden” chants have become almost commonplace at sporting events as of late, and when a reporter at a NASCAR event mistook the crowd to be innocently chanting “Let’s Go Brandon” after driver Brandon Brown had a successful race, an instant euphemism for the explicative trend was born.
It was certainly nice for conservative Christians who dislike our president to have a euphemism for “f*** Joe Biden,” I have to say, because while I don’t condone the vulgarity, I certainly understand the sentiment of the chant, and this massive Biden “welcome” sign all the same.
Here was a bit of a taste of what else Biden had in store for him on the ground in Howell:
Now, if you are a former President Donald Trump supporter, as relatable as it is to hear the, ahem, “Let’s Go Brandon” chants and see the enthusiastic anti-Biden protesters line the streets of Howell, it’s important to bear in mind that being hated doesn’t necessarily make a president a bad president, and four years of Trump most certainly proved that to be true.
We can even generously pretend for a moment that the pro-Trump Michiganders who lined the streets ahead of the president’s visit to their community are doing the exact same thing as the balaclava-sporting, black-clad anarchists who enjoy terrorizing random members of the public to express their distaste for current leaders (which is really, really generous).
Here’s the thing: the fact that “f*** Joe Biden” chants have become routine at sporting events and that vitriol against him is getting just this pronounced completely destroys whatever semblance was left of the vision Biden has portrayed of himself as a “unifying” president.
Trump was many things, but a man who promised to bring an end to the fierce cultural division, he simply was not. He was divisive, and he kind of owned that. Biden, on the other hand, was touted as the guy to end the raging culture wars.
For years, we were told that sure, Trump is great for the economy, he’s standing up to our enemies, and he’s, well, making America great again, but he’s just so divisive!
The ideological terrorists who opposed his presidency managed to traumatize a lot of voters into believing that, with Trump out of office, we could at the very least, end a period of history in which it seemed like everyone was at one another’s throats, and he was always the perceived catalyst.
Clearly, this has simply not been the case — far from it. Say whatever you will about Trump. Biden is hated.
Passionately.
And, unlike Trump, he’s simply not hated by the people who would burn the entire system down if they had a chance.
He’s hated by regular, everyday Americans who watched our disgraceful withdrawal from Afghanistan in disgust; who are feeling the pain as they watch their grocery bills and the number at the gas pump climb every month; who are being told they’re domestic terrorists for not wanting pornographic material in their kids’ health class; and who are facing ostracization from society and even unemployment for deciding to stand up for their freedom and bodily autonomy.
Trump was hated by the radicals who hate our country; Biden is hated by the normies who simply want their country back. So yeah, there’s a pretty big difference.
For all the starry-eyed, rose-colored spin that his supporters desperately try to put on the Biden presidency, you simply can’t deny the prevalence of his vehement opponents.
Biden is, undeniably, incredibly divisive, and the nation that is being torn apart by his policies is most certainly not going to heal with him in the White House.
So yeah. This is why they’re chanting, “Let’s Go Brandon.”
September’s underwhelming jobs report showed minuscule gains that fell over 300,000 short of predictions. But if you listened to President Joe Biden on Friday, you would have thought the report was a great win for the country.
“The monthly totals bounce around, but if you take a look at the trend, it’s solid,” Biden said. “In total, the job creation in the first eight months of my administration is nearly five million jobs. Jobs up, wages up, unemployment down. That’s progress.”
As usual with the Biden administration, those numbers are taken completely out of context. With all of the necessary context taken into account, the jobs report looks a lot more like a regression than progress.
According to CNBC, America lost over 22 million jobs in March and April of 2020. That was, of course, due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns.
Since then, CNBC’s data shows about 17.3 million jobs gained, about five million of which have come during the Biden administration. This means the U.S. is still regaining jobs from before the pandemic. Nearly five million lost jobs have yet to be “re-created.”
The term “job creation” is, in this case, misleading. The gains under Biden have largely been thanks to the return of jobs created before he took office, not new jobs he actually created himself.
No matter who was in office after the lockdowns, America was going to see job gains amid a recovery from an artificial downturn. However, Biden’s senseless economic policies have actually made that recovery much more sluggish than expected.
Dow Jones estimated 500,000 jobs would be created in the month of September. Instead, non-farm payrolls rose by a measly 194,000.
Kyle Martinsen of the Republican National Committee noted on Twitter that despite Biden’s dishonest characterization, his jobs plan has been disastrous.
As for the unemployment rate, it dropped to 4.8 percent in September, down from 5.2 percent the month prior. According to CNBC, that rate was “the lowest since February 2020.”
The outlet failed to mention that unemployment in February 2020 was just 3.5 percent under former President Donald Trump. Before the pandemic, unemployment had stayed at or below four percent since January 2018.
While unemployment is down from previous months, it is still over a percentage point higher than it was in pre-pandemic America under Trump. That is hardly a win for the Biden administration.
Biden’s claim that increased wages are a sign of “progress” is dishonest, as well. Companies have been forced to offer outrageously high wages because they can’t find workers.
For example, WGN-TV reported in July that a McDonald’s restaurant in Belmont, North Carolina, was offering up to $20 an hour for new employees. That’s in a state where the minimum wage is $7.25.
Some leftists — who want the minimum wage raised anyway — see this as a good thing.
What these people don’t understand is that McDonald’s is one of the few businesses that can afford to pay people $20 an hour to flip burgers. The local mom-and-pop restaurant that is already struggling to recover from unnecessary lockdowns does not have the same luxury.
If this trend continues, only huge franchises will survive. Small businesses will be forced to close.
Furthermore, the reason McDonald’s has to offer $20 an hour is at least partly because of the Biden administration’s propensity to throw money at everyone. With the increased unemployment handouts in Biden’s stimulus plans, businesses were forced to compete for workers not just among themselves, but also against the government.
Most of those expanded benefits finally expired in September, CBS News reported. But their effects are still being seen across the country.
The bottom line is that Biden painted a deceptive picture of the job market on Friday. Many Americans will take his comments at face value without understanding the context around them.
The Biden administration has set the country on a dark path in many ways, and that includes the economy. It’s time for the president to start addressing the issue instead of pretending it’s not there.
The Biden administration’s refusal to acknowledge the relevance of natural immunity in the fight against COVID-19 has become glaring.
The administration that constantly insists they are following the science is actually engaging in willful blindness.
Hell-bent on enforcing their COVID vaccine mandate, they deliberately ignore every scientific study that finds natural immunity to be superior to vaccine immunity.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine professor Dr. Marty Makary appeared as a guest on Thursday’s edition of “Morning Wire,” a podcast hosted by The Daily Wire.
“The data on natural immunity are now overwhelming,” Makary told the Morning Wire. “It turns out the hypothesis that our public health leaders had that vaccinated immunity is better and stronger than natural immunity was wrong. They got it backwards. And now we’ve got data from Israel showing that natural immunity is 27 times more effective than vaccinated immunity. And that supports 15 other studies.”
Despised by the left for his criticism of the vaccine mandate, Makary finds it bizarre that natural immunity is not seen as legitimate in the eyes of the U.S. government.
“It’s ruining the lives of people who are getting fired,” he said. “Nurses, who are heroes, are now getting laid off. Soldiers are getting dishonorably discharged. They’ve got immunity. It’s just not the type that our public health officials have sanctioned.”
“This is a failure of government, not a failure of science,” he declared. “But how about some flexibility? How about recognizing natural immunity and allowing those who have circulating antibodies to get credit? That’s how they do it in parts of Europe, and that’s how they do it in Israel.”
Makary said the recent drop-off in COVID cases can be attributed to both the tens of millions of Americans who have already had the virus and those who have been vaccinated.
The government refuses to acknowledge that the natural immunity acquired from having had COVID has played any role at all in moving us closer and faster to the desired goal of herd immunity. Makary is essentially saying natural immunity has played an enormous role.
This point is compelling and has been underreported.
“That decline [in new cases of COVID] is really natural immunity kicking in,” Makary explained. “What we’re seeing is that when a very few people in a population are susceptible, that is almost everybody has either had COVID or the vaccine. You do see this rapid decline. It’s basically a part of herd immunity kicking in.”
He believes “we’re done with the surges. What we may see is bumping cases, seasonally, depending on pockets of the country where there’s low immunity rates. And remember: breakthrough infections are real. They will happen, but they have downgraded COVID from a major public health threat to a mild, common, cold-like illness.”
Makary feels that the vaccines are safe and that complications are “exceedingly rare.” I know a few people who might disagree with that assessment.
At any rate, Makary told the Morning Wire, “When I talked to doctors nationwide, it’s pretty clear that the vaccine-related complications are exceedingly rare and the vaccines we have are safer than any other vaccine we’ve ever had in the past. And I think if you if you’re on the fence about getting vaccinated, you want to do it right now, like today, because we are getting to a point where it’s so contagious, it’s ripping through the population pretty quickly.”
The consequences of the government’s rejection of natural immunity as a valid reason to skip the vaccine have become apparent throughout the country, particularly in the health care industry and at all levels of law enforcement.
Democrats pushing Biden’s misguided blanket vaccine mandate all parrot the same old tired line: “We follow the science.” That’s nonsense. It has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics — the politics of power and control.
In a September Op-Ed published in The Washington Post, Makary wrote, “It’s okay to have an incorrect scientific hypothesis. But when new data proves it wrong, you have to adapt. Unfortunately, many elected leaders and public health officials have held on far too long to the hypothesis that natural immunity offers unreliable protection against COVID-19 — a contention that is being rapidly debunked by science.”
Makary argued that over 15 studies have confirmed the power of natural immunity.
He cited the recent 700,000-person Israeli study which found that those who had recovered from COVID “were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic COVID infection than those who were vaccinated.”
The results of the Israeli study, Makary wrote, confirmed the findings of a Cleveland Clinic study released in June. None of the health care workers who had previously contracted the virus were reinfected. The research team concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination.”
And the Cleveland Clinic’s results, he noted, affirmed the conclusions of a Washington University study conducted in May, which “found that even a mild COVID infection resulted in long-lasting immunity.”
Maybe it’s time for the Biden administration to take politics out of it and actually look at the science.
In the most recent episode of “Crossroads” on EpochTV, Joshua Philipp addresses the factual inaccuracies of the 1619 Project, a new form of revisionist education being taught in some schools across America. The 1619 Project is rooted in a report written by the New York Times that has gained national attention in recent months. What is less known about the report is the falsified history it contains. Mary Grabar, author of “Debunking the 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America,” joins host Joshua Philipp to discuss this important topic.
What Is the 1619 Project?
“The 1619 Project” is the title of an essay printed in a special issue of the New York Times Magazine on Aug. 18, 2019, commemorating the anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans to Jamestown, Virginia. The essay reframes American history, saying that the country was not founded in 1776, but rather was founded in 1619. Furthermore, it states that America was not founded as a “democracy,” but arguably as a “slavocracy,” based upon some of the founders being slaveholders.
How Did the 1619 Project Enter the Classroom?
In the interview, Grabar notes that it normally takes around seven years for a textbook to go through the necessary review process to be admitted into schools. However, the 1619 Project went through no such process, being simply slipped into schools nearly immediately, circumventing the public vetting system and the academic approval process.
Do Historians Agree With the 1619 Project Claims?
The main claim that the 1619 Project makes is that the United States declared independence from Britain in order to defend the institution of slavery, because the colonists were afraid that their right to own slaves would be taken away. Grabar explains how this claim goes against historical fact, showing that the abolitionist movement in England did not arise until a couple decades after it started in the colonies.
She also explains how the historians hired to review and fact check the 1619 Project were completely ignored, and how various groups of historians and scholars have come together to object to this essay on historical, factual grounds.
What Actually Happened in Jamestown, 1619?
Grabar puts forth the true historical events of 1619, explaining that the people who landed in Jamestown were in fact slaves who had been captured by a warrior tribe and put on a Portuguese slave ship. The ship was attacked, and the people were transferred to a British ship, which eventually landed in Jamestown. Upon arrival, their status was blurry because slavery had not yet been established in the colonies. After landing in Jamestown, the slaves were exchanged for food and provisions and set to work side by side with the indentured servants from England.
The first court case that established the right to own African slaves was established by Anthony Johnson, a man of color who was either a former slave or former indentured servant himself. His servant was being held by two white men, and the servant was suing for his freedom saying his indenture had been completed. Johnson argued that the man was his slave and belonged to him, and he won the case in 1654. This was the first established court case for slavery.
Slavery went on to evolve in the 1660s when further laws were established such as stating any child born to a slave woman was automatically a slave, creating restrictions on African movements, and laws that whites could not be enslaved. Slavery did not become solidified until the very late 17th century, showing the factual inaccuracies of the 1619 Project. Europeans at the time could not go into Africa and capture African slaves—they were slaughtered if they tried. Grabar says that the Africans were first brought to the colonies by fellow African warring tribes or by muslims.
Mary Grabar: The New York Times Falsified History With Its ‘1619 Project’ | Crossroads [Full Episode]Play Video
Reframing the Reason for the Founding of the United States
The 1619 Project claims the reason Thomas Jefferson signed and helped draft the Declaration of Independence was to protect slave ownership, when in fact, Jefferson had included a passage in his draft of the Declaration of Independence that condemned King George for imposing slavery on the colonies. This passage was eliminated from the final draft by slave supporting colonies. Although Jefferson was born into a slave-holding family, Grabar says that he hated the institution. Although he did own slaves, he had inherited them upon his father’s death. At that time, there were very restrictive laws regarding the freeing of slaves. He would have many obstacles to get through before simply freeing slaves, and he knew any measures he took nationally to end the slave trade needed to be done carefully. Grabar notes that from a historical perspective, Jefferson did what he could.
Many Americans Wanted to Free the Slaves
Abolitionist movements began in the colonies, primarily among Quakers in the 1680s. There were divided opinions, but the abolitionist movement was brewing, and one of the inspirations for this was the Declaration of Independence. Americans saw the disconnect between the principles the country was founded on and what was happening in practice. The movement in America inspired abolitionist events and movements in Great Britain.
Grabar says that it is important to note that almost the entire world was practicing slavery at the time. “You can’t make the blanket statement that all white people wanted more slavery and supported the institution. Some did, but very many did not. In terms of what was happening in the world, when you look at other governments and slavery in other areas, we were ahead,” says Grabar, noting that slavery has always existed throughout history, and at the time of America’s founding, slavery was being practiced all throughout the world. She recognizes that the practices of slavery in the colonies were cruel, however, at the same time in Africa, many of the tribes practiced cruel human sacrifice and torture. These methods weren’t stopped until the colonial powers put a stop to it, and these historical realities are not acknowledged whatsoever in the 1619 Project.
Grabar says that factual history must paint slavery in the context of a multicultural world history and not pretend that it is exclusively limited to North America and the United States.
Was Abraham Lincoln An Oppressor?
Despite Abraham Lincoln being the president who freed the slaves, the 1619 Project claims that Lincoln is part of the system of oppression. Grabar says this is due to a lack of acknowledgement of what he as a person was able to do. Lincoln adhered to the Constitution first and foremost, saying that he wanted to keep the union together. This belief is taken by the 1619 Project to mean that he didn’t want to free the slaves. Grabar notes that Lincoln couldn’t simply free the slaves, constitutionally, he could only make strides in that direction as commander in chief during wartime, which he did through the Emancipation Proclamation. Again, Grabar shows that the 1619 Project ignored the complexities and the political realities of Lincoln’s time.
Conclusion
The 1619 Project minimizes history by not looking at reality in its historical context. Grabar says that it is historically false to claim that one group of people can project centuries into the future and be exclusively progressive in their views, and that if they don’t do this, they must be condemned. She calls this idea presentism—putting our present standards onto things that happened in the past. Grabar also notes this is uniquely done to the United States. “You’ll notice that these people hardly ever, if ever, say anything bad about communist regimes or other slave holding countries. Their attention is focused on the United States and it magnifies out of proportion what was practiced here. It is false. If you’re going to study slavery, you need to do it in a multicultural way because it is a multicultural institution.”
Grabar says she wrote her book because people know the 1619 Project is wrong and that it is not what America is about. Many are going to their school boards and representatives objecting to it being taught in schools, and she wants to give them one book that they can use to point to exactly where the essay is factually wrong and prove it has no place in the classroom. “I hope it’s a good resource and a good weapon for people.”
Listen to the full episode on EpochTV, and share this article so others can be educated on the historical inaccuracies of the 1619 Project.
If someone tells you he or she would rather walk into oncoming traffic than do something, chances are they’re being hyperbolic. For New York state Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, not so much.
Hermelyn is the chairwoman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party in New York City, which is currently beset by a patronage and nepotism scandal regarding the city’s Board of Elections.
While the BOE in NYC is never a particularly functional organ of city government — witness the ranked-choice voting debacle in this year’s mayoral primary — it’s now engulfed in a controversy regarding who’s being appointed to plum positions in the BOE hierarchy.
This is hitting both parties considering that county leaders for the Democrats and GOP are the ones who have sway over the patronage and how elections are run.
Sources who talked to New York City cable news outlet NY1 said “the top positions are divided up among party leadership. So, behind the scenes, the top-level jobs with the highest pay are doled out to certain county leaders and organizations to appoint.”
That makes Hermelyn one of the key figures at the center of this scandal, given her position.
According to NY1’s Courtney Gross, Hermelyn initially agreed to give an interview but backed out. Gross decided to pressure the assemblywoman on the matter and followed her to a fundraiser.
I’m guessing she didn’t leave because they overcooked the yolk on the poached eggs. (Also, nice mask, assemblywoman.)
According to a Tuesday article by Gross at NY1, Hermelyn crossed Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. For the uninitiated, Flatbush is one of the major north/south arteries in the borough; darting into the middle of it to avoid an interview isn’t just a bad look, it’s dangerous. She’d apparently rather risk getting hit by a car than answering a reporter’s questions.
Hermelyn, in a statement, cited “unprofessional behavior and reportorial tactics” regarding her decision to flee the interview and insinuated Gross’ allegations of patronage were tinged with racism.
“Courtney Gross questioned if I was related to a black Board of Elections Commissioner with a similar name based on an unfounded tip,” she said, according to the Daily Mail, claiming a “simple fact-check would have confirmed that we are not related.”
“Still, she continued her pursuit of the false story. This agitating behavior perturbed me, and when I refused to engage in an interview at the breakfast event for that reason, she continued to follow and question me, then filmed me leaving.”
And then came the racism allegation: “Although Courtney may not have been aware of it, black people still experience the ‘you all look alike to me’ portrayal, often with harrowing consequences. I advise that Courtney take cultural competency training classes.”
Twenty bucks says the person teaching the cultural competency training classes is a patronage hire.
NY1 wasn’t buying Hermelyn’s explanation, either, saying on Twitter that “Courtney is a respected journalist with a long history of covering issues important to New Yorkers” and that “NY1 rejects any implication that Courtney’s reporting was motivated by anything other than the facts.”
NY1 stands behind Courtney Gross and her exclusive reporting of the NYC BOE. Courtney is a respected journalist with a long history of covering issues important to New Yorkers. NY1 rejects any implication that Courtney’s reporting was motivated by anything other than the facts.
This kind of nepotism isn’t a small matter, by the way, when you’re dealing with a system as dysfunctional as New York City’s.
According to Gross’ piece, “each borough has a chair for the Republican and Democratic parties. Those leaders typically recommend who gets nominated to the 10-member Board of Elections. The City Council usually approves (some say rubber stamps) those appointments, essentially meaning each county leader and organization has a seat on the board.
“That system trickles down to the staff as well. Sources at the board tell NY1 the top positions are divided up among party leadership. So, behind the scenes, the top-level jobs with the highest pay are doled out to certain county leaders and organizations to appoint.”
Douglas Kellner, the co-chairman of the state Board of Elections, told NY1, “It can be very frustrating for the executive director and the co-executive director who find that the staff who theoretically report to them often have greater loyalty to the party county leader who sponsored their appointment at the board.”
“That directly relates to the competence and the capacity of the agency to fulfill its mission.”
Of course, the mission of the Board of Elections might actually have as much to do with granting patronage as it does with, you know, running elections.
If that were the case, at least the BOE could brag that it’s good at one of those things. It’s not the whole elections-conducting business, however.
In 2020, some of the city’s vote-by-mail Democratic primaries weren’t decided until August, a full two months after the primary was held. At the time, Frederic M. Umane, secretary of New York City’s Board of Elections, said that his “staff was decimated by Covid.”
Fair enough. But explain 2021’s ranked-choice voting debacle, in which the mayoral primary was thrown into chaos after 135,000 test ballots were accidentally counted as actual votes during the first round.
That mistake led to plenty of theories, none of which reflected well on New York City or the Board of Elections.
It’s tempting to answer those theories with an adage known as Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” In other words, there was no conspiracy or malevolent intent, the BOE is just stocked with people who aren’t the best for the job, they just know the folks in power.
Then again, if the BOE is stocked with people who are there because of patronage, perhaps this qualifies as malice of a different sort.
A popular Facebook group called Reopen California Schools was mysteriously shut down yesterday afternoon.
“We’re not going to be deterred. We’re not going to be beaten down. We will continue forward,” group founder Jonathan Zachreson told The Epoch Times.
Many parents have relied heavily on Reopen California Schools for information to help them navigate their way throughout the pandemic, and “they’re devastated to see it taken down,” he said.
“I’ve gotten a lot of support. A lot of them are angry and are going to do whatever they need to do to help get it back.”
The shutdown comes in the wake of a call from Facebook “whistleblower” Frances Haugen for increased censorship, a complaint (pdf) from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) linking parents protesting at local school board meetings with “domestic terrorism,” and a sympathetic response from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
In recent months, parents have attended school board meetings to voice their concerns over neo-Marxist critical race theory (CRT) being taught in California classrooms under the guise of ethnic studies, as well to protest masks and COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
“I wouldn’t say my group specifically was targeted in this whole thing, but I do believe that recent events with the Attorney General, the [National] School Boards Association and this fake whistleblower testimony calling for more voices on Facebook to be censored … opened the door for people at Facebook to start shutting down groups,” Zachreson said.
“I have no communication from Facebook. Zero. There was no warning … so I’m really surprised this happened,” he said.
Zachreson said he hasn’t received any recent warnings on any posts or comments, and that he prides himself in closely moderating posts on the site to make sure they’re “being factual.”
Because his group hasn’t violated any Facebook rules, Zachreson said, “I’m left to speculate … so really it makes me believe that it has something to do with them trying to suppress parents’ voices.”
At last count, Reopen California Schools had more than 18,400 members.
“I’ve submitted two requests to Facebook Help for what it’s worth,” he said. “When you report a problem, there’s not really an easy way to do it. You can’t appeal if the group is gone. I can’t even see the group. It’s like it’s gone.”
Since his group was shut down, there has been some chatter on social media of Facebook banning other parent groups, he said.
“I did hear that there was a New York mom’s group that was against mask mandates. They got shut down on the same day that my group got shut down, so I do believe there’s probably going to be more to come. Maybe there are smaller groups that haven’t been reported yet,” Zachreson said.
“I find it really surprising that we were targeted. I believe, part of it might be that we’ve e been so effective at bringing stories to light on a lot of controversial issues that have come up,” he said.
“We have been one of the more effective groups at getting change in California,” Zachreson said.
Reopen California Schools has joined forces with Let Them Breathe to sue California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) over the mask mandate in schools.
“We’re suing Gov. Newsom’s CDPH and a few others … over their state reopening guidance in California, specifically the mask mandates, quarantine protocols and testing protocols,” he said.
The groups believe masks should be optional.
“There should be mask choice for students and teachers,” Zachreson said.
Reopen California Schools also plans to help organize and fight to get school choice initiatives on the ballot in 2022.
He suspects the site might have been targeted because it supported the gubernatorial recall election, the results of which have still not been certified, and “maybe the fact that we’re suing Gov. Newsom.”
Zachreson said for now he is waiting to hear back from Facebook.
“I’m hoping that they reverse it and fix whatever issue is causing this, and they offer an explanation and apology,” he said.
In the meantime, Zachreson is directing parents to his website: ReopenCaliforniaSchools.com and other social media sites.
Two parents have expressed their dismay about the Reopen California Schools shutdown on the group’s Twitter site, @ReopenCASchools.
MamaEsq tweeted: “Honestly, this is very upsetting. Your group provided a wealth of information and knowledge from lawsuits to different school options and so on. Many of us would have been completely lost without it.”
MG wrote: “Wow, just checked and it’s gone. This group helped so many parents navigate the last 18 months, helped with alternative school options, [and] navigating differences between counties/districts, etc.”
Google and YouTube announced Thursday that they will no longer allow content creators and advertisers to profit off content that contradicts mainstream views on climate change.
Beginning next month, Google and its subsidiary YouTube will no longer monetize ads or videos that go against “well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change,” according to a memo from the company’s ad team. Under the new policy, video creators will not receive a cut of revenue from views of those videos.
The move is one of the most sweeping policy changes from a big tech company regarding what content is allowed or encouraged on the platform. Google says the change was driven by advertisers and video creators who “simply don’t want” their content to appear next to ads or videos that contain “climate change denial.”
But Google also said the policy is a bid “to better protect users from unreliable claims.” The company said the new policy will “strengthen the integrity of our advertising ecosystem.” Google said it would use both human reviewers and artificial intelligence to enforce the policy.
YouTube banned anti-vaccine content over the course of the pandemic. The platform blamed employee shortages for its removal of a video by an Israeli scholar explaining military strikes in Gaza. At the time, YouTube said, “We are temporarily relying more on technology to help with some of the work normally done by reviewers.”
With the emergence of U.S. Constitution focus groups in North Carolina comes their different strategies on reasserting what they say are breached liberties.
The WNCFreedom2020 group in Asheville, North Carolina, has convened a Grand Jury of the People, according to its founders, pursuant to the 1215 Magna Carta and the North Carolina State Constitution, to question the authority of the Buncombe County Commissioners and Board of Education’s COVID-19 policies.
According to the documents, a people’s civil grand jury is recognized as the authority on correcting, admonishing, and reining in “tyrannical actions” of government.
Kay Olsen, WNCFreedom2020’s secretary, told The Epoch Times, “There are four branches of government: the judicial, legislative, and executive branch. Then there’s ‘We the People.’ Somehow, the other three branches have forgotten that we put them there.”
Olsen referred to a quote from the late Antonin Scalia, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1986 until 2016.
The quote comes from his opinion in the case of United States vs. Williams, a 1992 ruling during which the purpose of the grand jury was debated surrounding a hearing in which exculpatory evidence had been withheld from the grand jury, a decision that might not have led to indictment based on that evidence, according to the defendant.
Scalia says that the grand jury is alluded to in the Bill of Rights, but not in the U.S. Constitution, and has not been “textually assigned” to any of the branches in the first three Articles.
“In fact, the whole theory of its function is that it belongs to no branch of the institutional government, serving as a kind of buffer or referee between the government and the people,” Scalia says.
Thus, the citizens have an “unbridled right” to create their own grand juries, Scalia says, and present “true bills of indictment” to a court that can lead to criminal proceedings.
“Our Founding Fathers presciently thereby created a ‘buffer’ the people may rely upon for justice, when public officials, including judges, criminally violate the law,” Scalia says.
Findings of the Grand Jury
The group published three findings in its civil grand jury specifically directed at the Buncombe County State Government in Asheville, North Carolina.
The jury said that the state has no authority to mandate masks or vaccinations in its school system and demanded that its schools eradicate Critical Race Theory (CRT) from its curriculum.
CRT is a Marxist philosophy that describes society as a class struggle between oppressors and the oppressed; it labels white people as the oppressors, and all other races as the oppressed.
The Grand Jury of the People served its findings to the Buncombe County School Board, County Commissioners, and the Sheriff’s Department in August.
In its second meeting in September, Olsen said the grand jury awarded financial restitution to parents of children who had been what the grand jury alleged as abused by restrictive COVID-19 masking and medical discrimination policies.
“This past week, the grand jury—after hearing sworn testimony by several parents, the distressful, and in many cases, unlawful conduct of teachers, principals, and other school employees—unanimously determined the following offenses and have determined damages be rewarded,” the findings reported.
This restitution, according to Olsen, is to be paid by the board of education to five parents: $60,000 to one, and $55,000 to the four others.
“The board has 30 days to respond,” Olsen said.
The grand jury sent notices of its actions to Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper, Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, Democrat Attorney General Joshua Stein, Republican Chief Justice Paul Newby, Republican House Speaker Tim Moore, and Republican state Sen. Phil Berger.
“We have sent them the findings of the first grand jury and the second grand jury, with a letter stating that Buncombe County has not responded to our first grand jury, and that it’s the governor’s responsibility to remedy this,” Olsen said.
Grand Jury of the People’s Structure
The Grand Jury of the People is comprised of 24 people or more who aren’t required to be named.
The meetings are held in secret, and no one is allowed to discuss what took place in the meeting.
The foreperson, assistant foreperson, the secretary, and the grand jury sign an oath, and hear testimony from people who choose to come before the grand jury.
The oath is specifically to uphold the U.S. Constitution of 1787 and the NC Constitution of 1776, Olsen said.
Later, findings are made based on the testimonies given.
Those findings are then delivered to what the grand jury decides are the transgressing entities, such as the school board and the commissioners that have mandated masks and enacted what the jury has deemed as medical discriminatory policies.
The grand jury alleged that county officials have not done their due diligence in researching the science that contradicts the effectiveness of the policies and their harmful outcomes, nor does the county have the authority to prescribe medical accommodations, therefore they must terminate the policies, according to its findings.
Right to Assemble
According to one of the advisors of the grand jury, Mike Flannigan, the word “assemble” must be viewed from a 1776 perspective.
“It’s not people sitting on the street corner with signs saying, ‘Hell no,’” Flannigan told The Epoch Times. “An assembly is an assembly of the people called together to correct their government, and the grand jury is the ultimate form of that. It’s a grand jury because it has a larger number of people than a petit jury, which is used during the trial.”
The people have the right to assemble to instruct their representatives, Flannigan said.
“And if they ignore the instructions of the people, they are creating a constitutional crisis, and should be removed from office,” Flannigan said. “The people don’t ask for permission. If you go to the government and ask for permission, who is really ruling the roost?”
Buncombe County Response
Though the Buncombe County Board of Education did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for a statement on its reply to the Grand Jury of the People, the Buncombe County Commission Chair, Brownie Newman, told The Epoch Times that he’s aware of the group.
“My response to these groups is that if they really believe that ‘the people’ agree with their views, they should file to run for elective office just as the people serving on the county commission and county school board have done,” Newman said. “Elections are how we decide who will represent the community. For a small group of self-selected people who have never been elected by anyone in our community to decide they have the authority to impose their agenda on everyone else goes against everything our Constitution stands for, in my opinion.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland has a conflict of interest in his order to federal officials to target parents who are suspected of intimidating, harassing, or being violent toward school staffers, activists say.
Garland in an Oct. 4 memorandum directed FBI agents and U.S. attorneys to address what he described as “a disturbing spike” in such behavior in recent months. He said a series of measures will be announced soon “to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”
Parents have increasingly protested against the rise of critical race theory teachings in schools, but few incidents have turned violent.
Some activists say Garland’s order constitutes a conflict of interest, pointing to contracts that his son-in-law’s company, Panorama Education, has signed with school districts across the country.
In one case, Asra Nomani of Parents Defending Education said, the company signed a $1.8 million contract with Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia that will see Panorama collect information on students with surveys including questions about whether they feel “gender fluid.” There are also portions allocated for “equity” professional development, a word often used by critical race theorists.
“Panorama Education staff gets status as ‘school officials’ so they have the right to private student data under federal law, according to an email just sent by a Fairfax County school district official. This is federal law that Garland would have to enforce and Big Tech is now circumventing,” Nomani wrote in a blog post.
“The Attorney General is instructing the FBI to investigate parents who might pose a financial threat to the business of his daughter’s husband,” she wrote in another blog, under the moniker Sundance.
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) said he’s been reviewing notes on Garland’s connections.
“The allegations that Attorney General Garland’s family is potentially profiting off his recent decision to use federal law enforcement to shut down debate at school board meetings is deeply troubling. If this turns out to be true, Congress must hold oversight hearings now to investigate potential corruption,” he told The Epoch Times via email.
Panorama and the Department of Justice (DOJ) didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment by The Epoch Times.
A Panorama spokesperson told news outlets that the company “only uses student data for the purpose of helping schools and districts better serve their students.”
The company isn’t linked with “any particular academic philosophy, including critical race theory,” the spokesperson said. “The only relationship between Panorama Education and Attorney General Merrick Garland is that Panorama’s co-founder Xan Tanner is AG Garland’s son-in-law.”
Lisa Monaco, a top DOJ official, defended the order before Congress this week, arguing that “spirited debate” was welcome at school board meetings but that “violence is not appropriate.”
Most of the incidents were merely parents growing “rowdy or disruptive,” writer Zaid Jilani said.
The National School Boards Association urged the Biden administration to deal with “angry mobs” of parents just days before the order was issued, listing a number of incidents it deemed over the line. “The classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” the association wrote.
The association welcomed the new order, saying it sent “a strong message to individuals with violent intent who are focused on causing chaos, disrupting our public schools, and driving wedges between school boards and the parents, students, and communities they serve.”
Parents opposed to critical race theory (CRT) in California classrooms are outraged over accusations from school boards that criticism of ethnic studies curriculums based on CRT and other neo-Marxist ideologies is linked to domestic terrorism.
The National School Boards Association (NSBA), which denies CRT is being taught in K-12 schools, in a Sept. 29 letter (pdf) said parents at local school board meetings opposed to CRT and mask mandates are contributing to a “growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation” and asked President Joe Biden’s administration to address the issue.
The NSBA letter states: “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
Celeste Fiehler, a member of ParentsUnion.org, told The Epoch Times the NSBA comparison of parents to “domestic terrorism” is ludicrous and wrong.
“It’s ridiculous. It’s an intimidation tactic,” she said. “I’m not afraid of the FBI knocking on my door because I stood up for my kid as a parent.”
She opposes CRT, which she calls “hate-based” education that divides students into oppressed and oppressors based on race and privilege.
“When you take power away from parents, or their ability to raise their children, you’re going to get angry parents—parents who love their children,” said Fiehler, whose children attend the Desert Sands Unified School District (DSUSD) in Riverside County.
“We’re not knocking down podiums. We’re not burning down school buildings. We’re asking for fair education for our children, and what we oppose is the curriculum,” Fiehler said.
A Desert Sands Unified School District school board meeting on Oct. 5, 2021. (Screenshot via DUHSD)
AG and DOJ Respond
Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland responded with a memorandum and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a press release announcing a concerted effort to target threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment by parents directed toward school board members, teachers, and other personnel.
“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” wrote Attorney General Garland. “Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”
Garland has directed his office and the FBI “to meet in the next 30 days with federal, state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement leaders to discuss strategies for addressing this disturbing trend. These sessions will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment and response by law enforcement,” according to the press release.
The DOJ will create a task force consisting of representatives from the department’s Criminal Division, National Security Division, Civil Rights Division, the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the FBI, the Community Relations Service and the Office of Justice Programs “to determine how federal enforcement tools can be used to prosecute these crimes, and ways to assist state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement where threats of violence may not constitute federal crimes.”
The DOJ will also create specialized training and guidance for local school boards and administrators to “help school board members and other potential victims understand the type of behavior that constitutes threats, how to report threatening conduct to the appropriate law enforcement agencies, and how to capture and preserve evidence of threatening conduct to aid in the investigation and prosecution of these crimes.”
Riverside County
Fiehler blasted the “domestic terrorist” label at a DSUSD meeting on Tuesday.
“If you think for one second, that parents who love their children and are here to protect them … are domestic terrorists, then consider every single one of us just that,” Fiehler said.
“Being a domestic terrorist, you’ll see me in the pickup line and the drop-off lines of three different schools, rushing three kids to sports, and at the high school football games because I love my children,” she told the board.
“What you won’t see is this tired terrorist mom doing is burning down buildings, destroying property, physically assaulting people throwing Molotov cocktails out my car window, or murdering anyone,” she said, referring to incidents during the 2020 summer riots. “I’m a law-abiding citizen who wants a fair and healthy education for my children.”
“So, don’t mess with parents protecting their children because you will lose,” she concluded.
Fiehler said Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris downplayed the violence that occurred during protests following the death of George Floyd last year.
“Thousands of people were injured, hundreds of lives were changed forever, and a lot of people died because of them,” she said.
Rather than policing parents, she said “the activists should be investigated.”
Fiehler said some school boards have taken steps to disrupt the conversation on CRT and other important topics, including censoring videos of public meetings on YouTube to remove parents’ comments and removing chairs to limit the seating capacity at meetings.
Monterey County
Kelly Schenkoske, a Monterey County parent who homeschools her children, has opposed the ethnic studies curriculum and CRT at Salinas Union High School District (SUHSD) meetings.
The NSBA’s comparison of parents protesting CRT to domestic terrorism, suggesting there is some kind of moral equivalency, is simply false, she said.
“They want to shut down any dissenting voices. They want conformity,” Schenkoske said. “While they’re attempting to silence the civic engagement of parents and taxpayers, they’re ramping up efforts to push civic engagement on youth.”
Many teachers in public schools are actively recruiting unsuspecting “young foot soldiers” to promote their own political ideologies, she said.
The book, “Rethinking Ethnic Studies,” by R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, encourages student activism and talks about the youth voice as imperative, Schenkoske said.
“It showcases their agenda for all,” she said.
SUHSD has recently used a new tactic, allowing students to comment first at school board meetings, Schenkoske said. Though there hasn’t been a change in official board policy, she said it’s another strategy the board has used to silence dissenting opinions and block criticism.
At the last board meeting, parents who requested their three minutes to speak were denied the opportunity because of the new policy.
“None of them were ever allowed to speak. Students were given the entire allotted time,” she said.
SUHSD teacher Peter Williams has mentioned several times at recent school board meetings that parents opposed to CRT should not be allowed to speak.
Orange County
Irvine parent David Whitley told The Epoch Times many parents in Orange County are fed up with what public schools are teaching, and many parents have chosen CRT as “a hill to die on.”
“We’re either going to get this nonsense tampered down, or people like me are going to leave the state. There’s no reason to stay in a place that is completely anti-American and growing to be anti-white under the guise of anti-racism. It just defies logic and reason,” he said.
Comparing irate parents to domestic terrorists is “completely absurd,” he said. “If there’s one thing parents should be doing, it’s being extremely angry at what the public schools are teaching their kids … so I am ecstatic that more and more parents are going to the school board meetings and speaking up.”
Though “it’s a little bit late in the day” to try to fix public schools in the state, Whitley said parents can no longer sit back and watch what’s happening.
Whitley said it’s not surprising that the recent backlash from parents has left local school boards and other government officials feeling threatened.
“They should,” he said, “because the country is run by families and by parents. The public schools are there to educate their kids so that they’re informed and good citizens, and what they’re doing in the public schools is literally dividing the nation and destroying the country.”
Whitley urged more parents to stand up against the school boards.
Children are being taught to have “different moral views, different views on sexuality, different views on American history, different views on the nuclear family and their place in life itself,” he said. “It’s just absurd.”
While he’s glad to see so many mothers at school board meetings, Whitley said more fathers are now showing up.
“That may be why they’re intimidated, because it’s not just a bunch of soccer moms that are talking at the school board meetings now,” he said.
“And, they want to intimidate us with the power of the FBI? Well, I know people in law enforcement, and they don’t like what’s going on either,” Whitley said. “So, it’s going to come to a head at some point because what I know is the parents that are upset by this aren’t going away until they’re either in handcuffs or they stop indoctrinating their children.”
Californians for Equal Rights
Meanwhile, the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CFER) on Oct. 1, joined forces with 20 organizations in response (pdf) to NSBA’s “fear-mongering” letter,” the organization stated in a media release.
“Going forward, CFER will stand with our parent and community supporters in the unifying and broad-based movement against toxic racial divisions and political indoctrination in our public education system,” according to the media release.
“CFER is particularly alarmed by DOJ’s categorical allegation of grassroots activities at the school district level as ‘criminal conduct,’ and how this call for federal investigations can gravely discourage civic participation,” the media release stated.
“In response to community demands for more transparency and parental access to controversial educational activities, CFER has engaged in local organizing and awareness building on issues such as ethnic studies, critical race theory and racial preferences,” said Frank Xu, CFER president.
“Contrary to the victim narrative promoted by DOJ to coddle school board personnel, lack of responsiveness and accountability on the part of many public-school authorities has prompted a growing number of parents speaking at open meetings and seeking legitimate channels to express their concerns,” the release stated.
A racist social media post advertising a fraternity party sparked outrage at a North Carolina university and death threats against the white student supposedly behind it.
Now, it appears the post was a hoax carried out by a black student from another fraternity.
The message first appeared on the anonymous social media site Yik Yak and promoted a Theta Chi party with one ugly stipulation: “no blacks.”
According to WITN-TV, the name and number of Theta Chi member Austin Hunter were included in the post.
“To be accused of something that I didn’t do, that really sucks,” Hunter told WITN. “My name and number were posted in the college newspaper, and I was being harassed with calls and texts and I even received death threats.”
Kristen Hunter, a spokeswoman for the Greenville Police Department, had a message for anyone looking to use an anonymous app for similar ends.
“If you have any kind of social media app, there is a digital footprint,” Hunter told WITN.
“There is a way to track this kind of activity and behavior. So I would certainly caution anybody who’s looking to utilize anonymous apps that we can find you.”
While the student and fraternity implicated in the hoax post have now been cleared, fake hate incidents like this are becoming all too common in a progressive society that places victims — real and imagined — on a pedestal.
One recent hate hoax endangered the lives of sleeping college students.
Victoria Unanka, a black student at Wisconsin’s Viterbo University, hinted that a fire that had threatened her dorm in April was the result of a hate crime because it was next to her room.
Upon review of video evidence, her story changed to reflect the fact that she had actually set the fire intentionally.
Perhaps the most famous fake hate incident involved actor Jussie Smollett, who allegedly staged a racially motivated attack against himself in 2019.
While Smollett claimed he was targeted by rope-wielding racists roaming the streets of Chicago, evidence suggests two men were paid by the actor to carry out the fake attack.
According to those on the far left, our country is full of racists just waiting for the opportunity to kill or otherwise harm minorities.
Unfortunately for this radical element, the victims of headline-ready “hate crimes” often seem to be the ones committing them.
The 1989 film “When Harry Met Sally,” starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, was a box office smash and remains a modern-day icon in the romantic comedy cinematic genre.
In 2019, “When Harry Became Sally,” an exposé of the transgender movement by Ryan T. Anderson, was published. And in February of this year, Amazon, the world’s largest retailer, decided to ban that book.
Accordingly, 2021 became the year when Jeff (Bezos, Amazon’s founder and executive chairman) censored Ryan (Anderson).
In 2016, less than 1 percent of the American population identified as transgender, which essentially means self-identifying as a different gender than the one biologically classified at birth.
In the grand scheme of things, I don’t particularly care very much about what gender my neighbor chooses to proclaim himself/herself/itself/theirself.
Granted, I’m concerned with some of the consequences, such as the disastrous notion of constructing multi-stall gender-neutral bathrooms in elementary, middle and high schools, but if my coworker, my cousin or a person next to me on the bus chooses to identify as a man, woman or aardvark, I really have more important things to complain about.
Some of these are our perpetual keeping our eye off the ball as the world’s foremost superpower and instead allowing bush-league nations to give us a run for our money; our pathetically porous borders under the current administration; an outright mockery of fiscal responsibility; political overcorrectness run amok; and the deterioration of American journalism to the point that far too many media outlets have devolved into feeding troughs doling out comfort food to their ideological bases.
In light of all of that, if my longtime mailman Bob has a sex-change operation, trades in his beard and mustache for eyeliner and lipstick and now goes by Roberta, as long as the mail gets delivered on time, I really don’t care.
Accordingly, under normal circumstances, I never would have purchased and read “When Harry Became Sally.” My schedule is quite busy, and I have to be judicious in what I read given my limited time. No offense, but the transgender movement simply doesn’t make it into my top 20 issues that pique my interest.
All of that changed when Jeff censored Ryan. Nothing will get me to purchase a book — even if it’s about staring at a piece of Scotch tape dangling from a ceiling fan — more than learning that it’s been banned here in the beacon of liberty founded by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin and preserved by, most notably, Lincoln, then two Roosevelts, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan and Trump.
Anderson’s book focuses a great deal on “detransitioners”: those who spent time physically and emotionally transitioning to the opposite gender only to realize it was a terrible mistake — not what they really wanted, after all — and are currently in, or have completed, the process of transitioning back to their original classified gender.
In February, U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Mike Braun of Indiana, Mike Lee of Utah and Josh Hawley of Missouri wrote a letter to Bezos describing “When Harry Became Sally” as “one of the most rigorously researched and compassionately argued books” on transgenderism and concluding that by banning it, “Amazon has unabashedly wielded its outsized market share to silence an important voice merely for the crime of violating woke groupthink.”
The senators also underscored that “Amazon’s shortsighted censorship of this well-researched and thoughtful contribution to modern American discourse is not just a decision made in poor taste, but an assault on free speech that carries weighty implications for the future of open discourse in the digital age.”
In response, Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president for public policy, wrote that while the company strives to provide its customers with “access to the widest and most diverse cross-section of written and spoken word in retail today,” Amazon reserves the right not to sell certain content and in exercising that right chose “not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”
Anderson, in turn, tweeted that “Amazon appears to have never read my book, but relied on hit pieces. As I pointed out before: ‘Please quote the passage where I “call them mentally ill.” You can’t quote that passage because it doesn’t exist.’”
I agree with the four senators that “When Harry Became Sally” is a rigorously researched, compassionately argued, important book on transgenderism, but most of all, I’m happy I was able to access a copy. I bought mine from Barnes & Noble, a bookseller that’s been in business 108 years longer than Amazon, and it shows.
Clearly, Barnes & Noble understands far better than Amazon that selling books means providing the world with a marketplace full of diverse ideas and vigorous debate.
The great green transition from fossil fuels is collapsing as the world enters an energy crisis of its own making.
India and China are scouring the world for coal stocks to burn, while Germany is offering its citizens tutorials on how to cook without electricity in anticipation of power failures. Prices for natural gas, crude oil, and coal are skyrocketing.
The term “energy poverty” was once reserved for the poor in underdeveloped nations. Today, citizens in some of the wealthiest nations on earth are applying the term to themselves.
It’s not even winter yet.
Meanwhile, Canada continues to shut in vast reserves of the resources that the world so desperately wants.
Alberta has shut down all new coal mining developments. BC has regulated every proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal out of existence aside from one which has faced chronic delays. Quebec has rejected an LNG terminal that had been in the works for nearly a decade and is considering banning all oil and gas development in their province forever.
Meanwhile, the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is moving at a snail’s pace and remains years from completion.
While Canada has some of the most abundant petrochemical reserves on the planet, we won’t be able to make a dent in this spike in global demand for energy products. We have handicapped our production and export abilities so badly, it will take years to respond to today’s surge in demand.
Leaders must drop the ideology to face reality
How did the world get into this mess?
As with pretty much everything these days, the COVID-19 pandemic has a lot to do with it. The lockdowns of 2020 led to depressed demand for energy products. With travel and commerce ramping up again in 2021, energy producers weren’t able to increase production quickly enough to meet demand.
The pandemic has wreaked havoc on world supply chains and fossil fuel delivery is no exception.
Demand shocks induced by the pandemic have exposed just how fragile the world’s energy supply chain has become. Decades of naive, ideological energy policies around the world have led to energy security challenges. Nations set unreasonable emissions reduction targets for themselves in a zeal to battle climate change, while conventional energy generation facilities have been shut down in anticipation of renewable energy breakthroughs that never materialized.
As the cost of oil shot up, U.S. President Joe Biden went cap in hand to OPEC to beg them to increase production. It apparently never occurred to the president to consider allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to finish in order to bolster stable, domestic supplies.
Meanwhile, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer remains adamant in her bid to shut down Enbridge’s Line 5 though it will cost thousands of jobs and cause local energy shortages.
Canada is little better as proposed pipelines from Alberta to the East are rejected while foreign tankers deliver oil to Quebec. Absurd virtue signaling through rejecting domestic fuel supplies while purchasing foreign stock has caught up with us. Despite being blessed with an abundance of energy sources, Canada may face a similar crunch to Europe soon as the crisis spreads.
The “greenest” nations of yesterday are the most vulnerable to energy shortages of today as evidenced by Germany’s plight. Germany was celebrated as an energy transition champion only a year ago. They are expected to increase their coal imports this year if they can get it.
Despite facing a world energy crisis like we haven’t seen since the 1970s, it doesn’t appear that world leaders are getting the message yet. The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference is scheduled to be held in Glasgow, Scotland at the end of October, and the goal is still to reduce the use of fossil fuels at all costs. Those costs are going to be terribly high very soon.
The world is going to have an energy reality check in the next year. Let’s all hope for a mild winter because European windmills and solar farms will not be able to meet energy demands during a cold snap, and they no longer have the gas and coal-generating abilities to fill the gap.
Blackouts aside, the prices for consumer goods will be rising fast. Greenhouses in the Netherlands are already shutting down due to a lack of affordable natural gas. They are the main supplier of winter produce for much of Europe. Fertilizer is rising in cost as its production is reliant on natural gas. Food prices are set to explode while every other product that needs shipment will experience inflated prices.
This year’s energy crisis is unavoidable. It is already in motion.
We can only hope that the world can learn from this and limit this crisis to a single year. Leaders need to drop the ideology and face reality. One day we may indeed transition fully away from fossil fuel use and into renewable means of energy generation, but it’s crystal clear that we aren’t there yet. There is still time to bring our fossil fuel production back up to speed. We can stabilize our energy supplies and retain the high standard of living that we have become accustomed to.
We are entering a crisis of our own making while turning a blind eye to the obvious solutions.
Canada could be well placed to fill world energy needs but will we let ourselves? I fear not.
“The rich put cream on their berries; the rich drive shiny black cars.”—(from the Broadway musical “Carnival!”)
The Pandora Papers, “an exposé of the financial secrets and offshore dealings of dozens of heads of state, public officials and politicians,” writes CNN, could not have come at a better time for congressional “progressives” who are seeking to win over enough Democrats to pass the massive Biden-Pelosi $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill, which is loaded with enough pork to infect the nation with financial trichinosis.
The Pandora Papers, released by The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on Sunday, is not equivalent to the Pentagon Papers, which revealed how the U.S. government lied to the public about the Vietnam War, but it might serve the political ends of the Left.
The papers reveal—wait for it—that rich people have managed to avoid paying taxes by hiding their wealth in foreign countries, such as the Cayman Islands. Who knew?
What I like best about this “revelation” is the double standard it again reveals about wealthy politicians who have been critics of tax avoiders, while avoiding taxes themselves.
One of many examples is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a critic of tax avoiders. The Pandora Papers journalists found that Blair and his wife, Cherie, who is a lawyer, avoided paying tax on a high-priced London office they purchased. Cherie Blair was quoted in the UK Daily Mail as saying the transaction and avoidance of tax was perfectly legal.
To paraphrase the writer Michael Kinsley, the real scandal is not what’s illegal, but what’s legal.
“The Rich go here, the rich go there It’s close to the truth but far from fair”
In that lyric lies the basic argument by the Left when it comes to fairness. Politicians have a vested interest in demonizing the rich because envy of the successful helps solidify their careers in Washington, where they also can become rich. Ask yourself how many Members of Congress arrive as “thousand-aires” with annual salaries of $174,000 (leadership gets slightly more) and leave as millionaires. It isn’t because they know how to play the stock market.
By focusing on “fairness” and other buzzwords like “equity” and “equality,” these same politicians manage to distract the public from the real problem. To put it succinctly, as Ronald Reagan often did, we have a debt, not because the American people are taxed too little, but because their government spends too much.
“The rich stay cozy all winter Stay cold the month of July”
How does what others make and how they choose to live affect your life? If you favor punishing the wealthy with higher taxes, how does that improve your financial situation? It might make you feel better, but envy produces no positive outcome.
The best way to retrieve offshore money from tax avoiders would be for the United States and Britain to lower taxes. That’s what Donald Trump did for American companies that had moved overseas to escape a higher tax burden. A few companies returned and began paying taxes at a lower rate to the U.S. Treasury, most did not.
There remains the issue of revenue verses spending. The U.S. government receives plenty of money. The problem is it refuses to live within the means taxpayers provide it.
As for the rich, there are several ways to define the word. For some, true wealth comes in the form of a loving spouse, successful children, good health, and a feeling that one’s life has purpose.
As the puppets and main character Lili in “Carnival!” assess their own happiness in modest circumstances, they sing:
“But for all of the world, we wouldn’t switch, we’re glad we’re rich.”
A culture of fear during the COVID-19 pandemic led to a massive infringements of the rights of the American people, according to Jeremy “Spike” Cohen, former vice presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party.
In an appearance on EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program, Cohen, who won the Libertarian Party vice presidential nomination in May 2020, argued that a culture of fear during the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic led to a historical violation of personal rights, referring in part to the nationwide mask mandates and lockdowns implemented as part of measures to curb the transmission of the virus.
“We just saw it last year, that largely a culture that allowed itself to be guided by its fear led to the largest infringement on our lives and our rights and our livelihoods, and the largest transfer of wealth from those with the least to those with the most in human history, or at least in American history. And as a result of that, we’re now still suffering from that,” said Cohen.
In the first two months of the pandemic, and as lockdowns were implemented to curb the transmission of COVID-19 in the United States and across the globe, the nation shed some 22.4 million jobs. While economic output has fully bounced back to its pre-pandemic levels, the labor market recovery has a long way to go.
“We’re still having arguments with people as to whether or not that was justified, even though increasing amounts of data show that it … didn’t do anything to help slow the spread of the virus. And instead, what it did was caused a measurable harm to people’s lives and livelihoods.”
“That’s a direct result of people who were willing to accept that there is nothing that government can do to us or for us, that we are not willing to accept at large,” Cohen added.
And now, many critics argue that President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates for federal and health care workers infringe upon the personal liberties of Americans. Nearly all Republican-led states have voiced opposition to the vaccine mandate announced by Biden last month, with many vowing to challenge the measures in court.
The president has said that 96 to 98 percent of Americans need to be vaccinated before the nation can “go back to normal.”
“But one thing is for certain: A quarter of the country can’t go unvaccinated and us not continue to have a problem,” the president told reporters at the White House on Sept. 27.
Cohen told “Crossroads” that he believes the United States does “best” when “we are most free,” saying that the nation can return to a “voluntary society… to what the founders originally intended.”
“We didn’t need the pandemic to show us that government management of health care and how it’s provided is a uniquely terrible way to do it. And we didn’t need the lockdowns to tell us that government has absolutely no business telling you whether or not you are essential,” Cohen said.
“We can live in a society that is freer and as a result more prosperous and as a result safer and fairer and more equitable, in which good actors are rewarded, bad actors are punished, and we create a better future for our children than we can ever even imagine now,” he added.
The swarm of busybodies and prissy reformers has been with us a long time. And in the name of progress they’ve always pushed, always hectored, always demanded that we join them on the winning side of history.
What seems to elude them is the irony that it’s only the winning side if we actually do join up. With a steady-enough resistance, the self-proclaimed progress of progressivism can be halted.
Take, for example, the metric system. It’s a small case, I know, but it’s also an example of success. We haven’t reached the end of the metric system, but here in 2021 we can see the end of the insistence on the metric system—the end of the notion that the metric system alone is correct. The end of the claim that the swarm of metric-measurers stand on the right side of history. The end of the sneer that the metric system represents true progress, and resistance is futile.
Those too young to remember the 1970s—fortunately, if it means they don’t have to recall the days of disco, Trimline phones with long curly cords on the kitchen wall, and the presidency of Jimmy Carter—won’t understand how constant was the pressure to adopt the metric system and how complete was the denunciation of those who kept to the old measurements.
In those days, if a newspaper humanized a science story by mentioning that that the moon is almost 239,000 miles from Earth, or the width of a human hair is around a thousandth of an inch, the editors would be flooded with letters raging against the unscientific, even anti-scientific, use of customary American measures. How dare the publication pander to the troglodytes whom true progress is leaving behind? Only the metric system is modern. Only the metric system is correct.
These days, one rarely hears that kind of self-righteous dismissal of rulers and yardsticks. It’s a sign of changed times when NASA, for example, tells children that the moon is “238,855 miles” away. It’s a sign of changed times when the Wall Street Journal casually publishes a piece, as it did on Sept. 15, noting that Canadians often ignore the metric system. Canada imposed metrification in 1975, and four decades later, the process is still incomplete.
America got its own, lighter version of new government-directed measurements in 1975 when Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act, directing businesses to begin to transition to liters, grams, and meters. A public counter-movement soon emerged. Tom Wolfe helped plan a much-publicized “Foot Ball” in New York, while the widely syndicated Chicago newspaper columnist Bob Greene helped push a WAM (“We Ain’t Metric”) campaign. Winning the White House in 1980, the Reagan Administration soon proved uninterested in the Carter-era project, and a major victory came with the Federal Highway Administration’s decision not to demand metric speed-limit signs.
Meanwhile, European regulators insisted on the metric system. Throughout the 2000s, the European Union tried to ban even the mention of any non-metric measures. They didn’t want pubs to offer “a pint (473 milliliters).” They wanted to prohibit the word pint—along with mile and pound.
The British took this as a swipe at them, which it was, since the U.K. was the only EU country whose citizens hadn’t fully adapted to the metric system. And the perception of over-regulation was a small but real cause of the unhappiness that led to Brexit, the U.K.’s 2016 vote to withdraw from the EU.
That’s why Boris Johnson, who became prime minister in 2019, pledged that post-Brexit Britain would have “tolerance towards traditional measurements.” Politicians’ promises aren’t always kept, of course, but this one was. On Sept. 16 this year, Brexit minister David Frost officially announced that shops could sell items in the old imperial units.
As it happens, feet are a useful measure, easily divisible into quarters and thirds. The smaller Fahrenheit degrees feel more human than the large Celsius degrees. Still, the metric system may be, in truth, a better measuring system in many contexts. I like to see old words in circulation: furlongs, leagues, bushels, and pecks. But love of language isn’t what kept the old customary system around long enough to survive the push for the metric system from the 1970s through the 2010s. People just decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, and in the end, the attempt to change them petered out.
Maybe some of that is due to the fact that the metric system was part an Enlightenment-era demand for rationalizing everything, and “universal Enlightenment reason” has become the great bugbear of the postmodern Left. Computers probably had more to do with it, as moving from one system to another became easy and fast.
But the real lesson we should take from metrification is social. The progressives always say they represent inevitable progress. They always claim that only the stupid and the evil could oppose them. They always tell us that resistance is futile, for they will inevitably win.
The fading of their old metric sneer is proof that they don’t always succeed. It demonstrates that their claims of historical inevitability are true only if we believe them. And it confirms that resistance can
When asked in Europe in 2009 whether he believed in American exceptionalism, then-President Barack Obama said he did—in the same way that “the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism.” In other words, “No.”
Obama’s response wasn’t just off-putting to the American people; it was also plain wrong.
Today, well over 40 million people living in the United States were born elsewhere—far more than any other country in the world. There’s a reason why millions of people try to get into the U.S. illegally even as we accept a significant number of legal immigrants each year. I don’t notice anyone queuing up to get into China or Russia. It seems the immigrants of the world know something Obama doesn’t.
America is a unique experiment in self-government. As Ronald Reagan said, the idea that government “is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.”
This idea allows the American people to enjoy a level of individual freedom unprecedented in human history. With genuine freedom comes equal opportunity, which is available to all Americans, allowing anyone among us to achieve his or her goals. There’s a reason why you don’t hear about a French dream in France but the American dream has become a national ethos.
Consider the Wright brothers, who taught humanity to fly by inventing the world’s first successful motor-powered airplane.
As David McCullough writes in his biography of them, they “had no college education, no formal technical training, no experience working with anyone other than themselves, no friends in high places, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own.”
Yet, the Wright brothers became the first men to fly, changing the world forever and immortalizing themselves in history. How? They didn’t have money, status, or connections, but they were raised to have a great intellectual curiosity. Add hard work and innovation, and they had all the ingredients they needed.
The Wright brothers, two bicycle salesmen who spent just $1,000 to construct their plane, could only be possible in America. The lesson here is simple: There’s no reason for anyone to give up if you’re an American.
Tragically, we are losing this sense of ourselves as a truly special country unlike any other—in large part because we’re not studying or teaching history. At least not well. We must learn from history to be better in the future, not erase the past and arrogantly believe we have all the answers.
This is a problem of our education system, which worries me more than any other issue in this country. We have entire high schools where not one student tests proficient in math and English. This is a real crisis. If we don’t fix education, we can’t sustain a free society. Kids won’t be able to have decent lives, and the United States won’t be able to compete with China.
One of the worst failures of America’s education system is not teaching students about American exceptionalism and how far hard work, innovation, and self-reliance can take someone. They are taught to despair, not to aspire. Look what the Wright Brothers achieved through a love of reading, an insatiable curiosity, and a strong work ethic. Nowhere else in the world is the individual so free to make his or her own way.
Yes, the American project has been messy and at times ugly. No one can or ever should erase the stains of slavery, Jim Crow, and the past treatment of Native Americans. But because of the American system and the character of the American people, we have shown a remarkable ability to self-correct with time. When it comes to our past, people need to answer a simple question: Do you want to erase history or learn from it?
The American experiment is genuinely exceptional, a true aberration in the history of humanity. Americans must recognize this fact so we can maintain a government of, by, and for the people. The alternative is to lose something truly special that may never come about again.
Two founders of Moderna and one of the top investors in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company have made it onto Forbes’s list of the wealthiest people in the United States after developing a COVID-19 vaccine that has been used throughout the globe.
While the rest of the world struggled over the past year with a crumbling economy, job losses, and financial hardship, the 400 wealthiest Americans saw their collective fortune increase more than 40 percent, to $4.5 trillion, according to Forbes.
Among them were three prominent members of Moderna, whose COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Dec. 18, 2020. Since then, 152 million doses of the Moderna vaccine have been administered, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Co-founder and current chairman Noubar Afeyan, co-founder and board member Robert Langer, and investor Timothy Springer all made the Forbes 400 list for 2021, which requires a minimum net worth of $2.9 billion.
Springer was placed at 176th on the list, with a net worth of $5.9 billion. Afeyan landed in the 212th spot with $5 billion, while Langer ranked just 10 places behind at 222nd, with a net worth of $4.9 billion.
Springer, 72, is an immunologist and professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, and he initially invested $5 million in Moderna in 2010. He now owns 3.5 percent of the firm’s shares and also has shares in three smaller publicly traded biotech firms: Selecta Biosciences, Scholar Rock, and Morphic Therapeutic.
Afeyan, 59, is the founder and CEO of life sciences innovation firm Flagship Pioneering, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The engineer was born in Beirut to Armenian parents, but fled with his family to Montreal during Lebanon’s civil war in 1975. In addition to his stake in Moderna, he owns shares in more than a dozen publicly traded biotech companies in the United States.
Langer, 73, is a scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he leads the eponymous Langer Lab. He holds a 3 percent stake in Moderna, as well as shares in SQZ Biotechnologies, Seer, and Sigilon Therapeutics, which he founded along with postdoc students from his lab.
Moderna, along with competing vaccine manufacturer Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, have amassed billions of dollars in vaccine sales since the global pandemic began and have seen their share prices skyrocket.
Johnson & Johnson and Europe’s AstraZeneca have repeatedly said they don’t intend to profit from their COVID-19 vaccines.
Elsewhere, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos secured top spot on this year’s Forbes list with an estimated $201 billion net worth, followed closely by Tesla’s Elon Musk with a $190.5 billion fortune.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg—who this week defended his company’s internal research into the harmful effects its platform has on children—arrived in third place with $134.5 billion.
Despite the year-on-year wealth increasing for nearly all of those featured on the list, their generosity hasn’t increased, according to Forbes.
The number of those on the list who gave away more than 20 percent of their net worth since last year’s list declined from 10 to eight, while those who gave away less than 1 percent of their wealth rose from 127 to 156.
Democrats are quarreling over the price tag of their Build Back Better bill, but the real problem is what’s in it. The bill coerces workers to join unions, imposes racial preferences on every facet of life and redistributes money from workers to takers.
Fortunately, this bill is in limbo. Moderate Democrats such as Sen. Joe Manchin insist the bill has to be pared down to less than half its current price tag. The far left is screaming in outrage. But the bill can’t pass without every Senate Democrat supporting it.
Not passing it would be the best outcome. This bill is as un-American as it gets. Here are some of the bill’s details Democrats would prefer you not see. Judge for yourself.
“First-Generation Down Payment Assistance”: Most people work and save for years to buy a home; this bill makes them into suckers. It caters to low-income, first-time homebuyers with no conditions. It’s part of President Joe Biden’s scheme to bring the city to the suburbs and increase racial and economic diversity there. First-time homebuyers can get up to $25,000 and never have to pay it back, whether they stay in the home or move for virtually any personal or financial reasons. It’s free money—as long as you’re not the taxpayer footing the bill.
“Home Efficiency Rebates”: The bill also offers up to $14,000 to homeowners who lower energy use by installing new heat pumps, air-conditioning systems, insulation and energy-efficient appliances. It’s a pot of gold for homeowners who qualify, and will bring tens of billions of dollars in new business for contractors.
Here’s the catch: Only unionized electrical contractors qualify. This bill is designed to twist arms and unionize the workforce. Why? Unions bankroll the Democratic Party.
Racial and ethnic minorities also get preferential treatment. The bill promises contractors a $200 bonus for each customer served from a “community of racial or minority ethnic concentration.” Whites go to the back of the line and have to hope the money holds out.
“Direct Care Workforce”: The bill awards $1.48 billion to labor unions and community organizations to recruit and train workers to care for the elderly or disabled at home. Top priority is training workers in their rights and organizing them, according to the bill. This is your tax dollars at work creating a new army of likely Democratic voters.
The bill also includes preferential tax treatment for union dues, additional tax credits for buying union-made electric vehicles, and a staggering ten-fold increase in civil penalties against employers who resist unionization.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims Build Back Better is “about the children.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman repeats the claim, saying the bill is about “securing the future” for children.
Truth is, the bill screws our children and grandchildren. It adds hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal debt, forcing the next generations to pay interest and principal on what we’ve borrowed instead of taking care of themselves.
Democrats can’t seem to tell the truth about their legislation. To break the stalemate in Congress, they’re toying with leaving the programs intact but funding them for a shorter time—only the first five years instead of all 10, in some cases. That’s a hoax. Manchin isn’t fooled. “Those programs will never go away,” he says. He’s right. Entitlements are forever.
Already the bill costs far more than $3.5 trillion because of similar gimmicks. The child care tax credit, or monthly Biden bucks, are funded for only five years.
Democrats boast about offering “universal pre-K,” but currently, the bill fully funds it for only one year—a ruse.
Same with the promise of “free” community college. The bill fully funds it only through 2024. One exception: Colleges serving minorities are funded through 2030.
Whatever the bill’s actual cost, it’s bad for America. The racial preferences and favoritism toward unions will further divide us. And the vast array of new giveaways is an insult to working people who support their own families.
Victor Davis Hanson’s latest book, “The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization are Destroying the Idea of America,” is a prescient account of how the American conceptualization of citizenship has been eroded by progressive ideologues and those who wish to undermine the original intent of the Framers. He focuses on the categories of pre-citizens and post-citizens.
Hanson defines pre-citizenry as a concept that “reflects ancient economic, political, and ethnic ideas and customs that were once thought antithetical to the modern democratic state.” The pre-citizen category is subdivided into three different concepts: peasants, residents, and tribes. These concepts are separate and mutually exclusive because they reflect differing realities of how citizenship is viewed.
Hanson defines the post-citizens as elites who hold a unifying philosophy “that human nature has evolved since 1788, and the Constitution must catch up. In other words, it is now time to move beyond classical citizenship to accommodate a much different American and a new global community.”
The people in this group are subdivided into three categories: the unelected, the evolutionaries, and the globalists. Each of these groups works to undermine the traditional understanding of citizenship handed down through the political thought that predated the Founding and is the cornerstone of our country’s identity.
Cover of “The Dying Citizen” by Victor Davis Hanson. (Basic Books)
The overall tenor of the book argues that the cadre of leftists who are trying to subvert the tradition of American constitutional republicanism holds a philosophy that is alienated from American values. The history that Hanson presents is a critical outline of how these factions grew to dominate a competing majority of the American polity. In a word, the problem that America faces, according to Hanson, is existential. We are in a time of choosing:
Socialistic pseudoscience versus an industrial heartland.
Race-based political identification versus a common colorblind country and its values.
A globalist foreign policy versus adhering to America first.
These questions may present a no-brainer for many conservative and libertarian political activists, but the jury is still out for the apolitical rest of the country. The answer lies in how immigration has become such a pivotal issue.
If the progressive cadre can subvert the vote by allowing in more people, they can dilute the authentic voice of American citizens who are already here and were born here. One shudders to think that this book’s premonitions will not come to pass, but a cursory look at the border shows that the heel of globalism is already at America’s southern door.
Another factor contributing to how America will decide her fate is whether its people will learn its authentic history. Hanson looks at the ahistorical revisionism that has gripped the classrooms. It is no surprise to think that a country that does not know itself can preserve itself. Yet, Hanson warns that if his compatriots do nothing to combat the radicalization of the next generation, the likelihood of the “decolonization” of America coming to pass will be imminent.
A sympathetic yet cynical reader of American politics may see Hanson’s book and this review as nothing new under the sun. However, how long must the fire bell go off in the night, and how many rings must its cadences bring to rouse him from an apathetic stupor?
To the left, the American dream defined by the Founders and our forefathers’ generations before us is a delirium that we ought to break away from entirely. They may very well get their wish if traditionally-minded Americans continue to sit on the sidelines or become further detached. Citizenship is an honor and privilege of being born in a great nation, which revolutionaries want to dismantle entirely.
It is almost no surprise that the liberal progressives and globalists are using replacement migration to displace (or, in their words, marginalize) the American-born voting population. The result of replacement migration will use the benefits of being a citizen (such as welfare, unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) as a political bribe to register the influx of voters as Democrats. These elites, therefore, will not have to win over independents or moderates to enact the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, or any other liberal public policy.
In all, Hanson’s book provides the reader with a historical-political choice that is up for each of us to choose and to persuade our fellow citizens likewise to adopt.
For many, the option will not be a difficult one to make, but the daunting challenge of battling institutionalized leftist globalism is a war that requires tact and cunning. With the decolonizers and revolutionaries having captured the forts of the West (academia, government, and enterprise), it is a purely uphill fight to reclaim these grounds for the America of the Framers rooted in the Western historical tradition.
The canceling of students and professors alike makes the process all the more challenging in the ivory tower; the minority status in the House and Senate makes it challenging to stymie the Biden Administration’s plans; and the surge at the southern border lowers the statistical odds that Americans will be able to beat the advocates of replacement migration.
A question to ponder is whether we have already crossed the Rubicon on our march toward the globalist-progressive revolution. Without giving away the book, the reader must use the facts presented by Hanson to do the work that the community organizers and change agents of the Left have been doing for nearly half a century. If there have genuinely been multiple revolutions in American politics, how many more can a country withstand without crumbling?
In summation of Hanson’s book, the main takeaway every reader will get is a profound sense of urgency, a need to civilly participate and engage with their neighbors, and prepare for the final chapters of the culture war.
As Hanson thoroughly notes, the issues, ideas, and people involved are not new phenomena in American politics. They have come in waves, eroding the rocky shores of the American identity for over a century. This book is much like the textbook one uses as a map when charting where you go in a challenging class, except that politics is in the real world.
This book, however, is more than just a neat reference guide; it’s an urgent call meant to explain the intricacies of our intellectual/political history in one concise volume. It is required reading for all those who seriously want to engage in the fieriest issues of our days at their most thoughtful levels of depth.
Threats to the national security of the United States are higher than they have been in 20 years, thanks to a new “Axis of Evil” comprising of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Islamic terrorism, according to Lt. Col. Allen West.
Speaking to NTD at the Conservative Minority Conference at Dallas in September, West, who is a combat veteran and a former member of Congress, said the Taliban terror group’s takeover of Afghanistan puts America at risk of higher levels of terrorism, noting that Texas has a “1,254 mile border that is completely unsecured.”
West said that border patrol agents have already apprehended five individuals in El Paso that were on the terrorist watchlist from Yemen and Syria, and said cartels are already working with terror organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, while he expects that the Taliban, ISIS, and al-Qaeda will do the same.
“If you don’t think that the Taliban, ISIS, and al-Qaeda are going to work with those cartels, who will take money from anybody and get people into the United States of America through Texas, then you’re delusional,” West said.
“We are at a greater national security threat than we were 20 years ago because now we have taken the Taliban, the exact same people that we removed from power, that [former President] Barack Obama released from Gitmo, and now they’re back in power.”
“And by the way, they have the 30th largest Air Force in the world. They have more Blackhawk helicopters than Australia. They have 6,000 night vision devices and all the other equipment that we left there. We made them a more powerful military force in 20 years,” he added.
An H-6 bomber of Chinese PLA Air Force flies near a Taiwan F-16 in this Feb. 10, 2020 handout photo provided by the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense. (Taiwan Ministry of National Defense/Reuters)A Taliban terrorist stands guard along a street near Zanbaq Square in Kabul on Sept. 23, 2021. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images)
The former combat veteran also pointed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which he called a “huge threat” to the nation and the United States’ “number one geopolitical foe.”
West noted that the CCP has “injected” and “implanted” itself into the global economy by means of cheap manufacturing and goods, among other things, making the United States more dependent on it while simultaneously allowing the CCP to maintain their “communist, dictatorial, authoritarian manner.”
“And sadly, we have people in Western economies who want the cheap goods. They want things that are easy, and they have allowed China to come in and become like a tick. It has, you know, implanted itself in and is now gorging itself and getting bigger and bigger. And somehow we’ve got to extract that tick out,” West said.
The former Congress member said President Joe Biden and his family are “compromised” when it comes to communist China, particularly in regards to Status of Forces Agreement talks, and pointed towards China’s interests in Afghanistan’s raw materials, which could give them a further competitive advantage.
“I have to say I think that Joe Biden and his family is compromised when it comes to communist China, especially when we see what just happened in Afghanistan, where now the Taliban is developing the Status of Forces Agreement with China so they can come in and take Bigram Airbase,” West said.
“And what else do the Chinese want? The CCP, what do they want? They want the raw materials and the minerals that are there in Afghanistan, especially lithium, which is so important in electric vehicles, batteries, and things of that nature.”
“It is the whole thing. It is a new Axis of Evil, which will be China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Islamic terrorism. And so what you have now actually created is an incredible land bridge of Islamic terrorism that extends from Afghanistan, through Iran, through Iraq, to Syria, to Lebanon. And so it goes all the way over to the Mediterranean. And so if you are Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, you need to be very nervous,” he said.
The lieutenant colonel also noted that the “clock is ticking” on the Taiwan Strait, where China has been accused of using “provocative” military behavior towards Taiwan after Beijing has sent large numbers of fighter jets into its air defense zone in a sustained military harassment campaign against the self-ruled island.
“I don’t think that this administration is going to go into a strong Status of Forces Agreement with Taiwan and that’s why you see all of the saber-rattling coming out of China right now. This is a very dangerous situation for the world,” West said. “I think that the clock is ticking. The Biden administration, we’re only eight months into it. And that’s a four-year term.”
Sees increasing division, authoritarianism in society
Australian basketball legend and former NBA player Andrew Bogut says athletes and celebrities have told him secretly that while they disagree with government-mandated health restrictions, they are essentially muzzled from speaking out.
In an interview with The Epoch Times on Oct. 5, Bogut said after he publicly spoke out against lockdowns and called on influential Australians not to be silent, he received an outpouring of support from athletes and celebrities telling him, “I’d love to speak out, but our league, my boss, my movie set … We just can’t. We would get shut down if we did from the government.”
Bogut, who is a former National Basketball Association player (2005 to 2019) with teams like the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, and Los Angeles Lakers, released a video in August on Instagram saying he had been propositioned to make a public service announcement to encourage Australians to comply with government-mandated lockdowns.
But he was uninterested, and was in fact, frustrated at the financial hardship that lockdowns were causing.
Andrew Bogut, former #12 of the Golden State Warriors, attempts a shot against the Toronto Raptors during Game Two of the 2019 NBA Finals at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Canada, on June 02, 2019. (Kyle Terada – Pool/Getty Images)
“My father would not have been able to survive in this current climate, period. Who pays the mortgage? Who would have paid the loan on the car?” he said in the video, which has garnered over 500,000 views.
“I’m a pretty outspoken guy on most issues,” Bogut said. “When I’m asked a question—even if I’m not an expert—I’ll give an honest answer of what I think. And I guess this is the same thing, but I’ve doubled down because I see the effects.”
He said he was not trying to diminish the effects of the virus. Instead, what was “most sickening” to him was the increasing divisions in society because of people’s stance on the lockdowns and vaccines.
“If you’re hesitant about getting the vaccine, you’re called an ‘anti-vax Nazi,’ and it goes the other way as well, where people who have had the vax are labelled ‘pro-vaxxers’ or government shills,” he added. “It’s just dividing the community, and that’s a win for the government.”
Bogut questioned why highly restrictive lockdowns were still being used when residents were also forced to comply with a bevy of restrictions, including social distancing, capacity limits in venues, and mandatory mask-wearing.
A masked pedestrian walks past a poster for the film “Cruella” in downtown Melbourne, Australia, on Aug. 6, 2021, amid a sixth lockdown for the city. (Con Chronis/AFP via Getty Images)
“You know you’re in an airport, for instance, and you’re standing on those social distancing stickers to check into your flight, and then you go on the plane, and you’re literally jammed like a pretzel with other people. So, there’s a lot of hypocrisy, and these restrictions and mandates are not working, and I think a lot of it is theatrics,” he said.
“I think the governments have gone so hardcore with COVID-zero, and they can’t turn back now because politically, a lot of these politicians are in too deep,” he noted. He called on political leaders to be upfront on mistakes in handling the pandemic and be prepared to switch gears.
“You know I haven’t heard one politician worldwide say, ‘You know what, we messed up the way we handled this, and we’re going to change the way we’re doing this,’” he said. “But in Australia, its lockdown—lockdown—lockdown—closed border—closed border—take away rights—take away rights.”
He was also disappointed in the number of Australians who continued supporting heavy government intervention in society.
“That’s probably the most heart-wrenching thing for me, coming from a family that fled communism. The most heart-wrenching thing is the people cheering this on.”
Bogut lives in Melbourne, which has just broken the world record for the longest locked-down city in the world, as of Oct. 4,—at 246 days—eclipsing the record set by Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires.
A man crosses the normally busy intersection of Flinders Street and Swanston Street in Melbourne, Australia, on May 28, 2021. (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)
Australia has enjoyed some of the lowest infection and death rates from COVID-19 by global standards. This, in turn, has spurred state and territory leaders to readily lock down entire cities and close domestic borders at any sign of infections in the country—which has proven politically popular.
The Victorian government under Premier Dan Andrews has deployed a strict suppression strategy over the past 18-months to combat the virus, including imposing immediate “Stage Four” restrictions such as curfews, limits on movement within a 5km radius, and closing non-essential retail outlets.
In contrast, the neighbouring state of New South Wales (NSW) has largely steered away from using wide-ranging restrictions for the past year until the July outbreak of the Delta variant in Greater Sydney, which forced a policy change—NSW, however, is now the first state to set an official “Freedom Day” on Dec. 1.
Meanwhile, extended lockdowns and tough restrictions in Victoria have taken their toll, with protests breaking out in Melbourne with increasing regularity. Tensions have boiled over across the public service, with footage emerging of police officers using questionable tactics to apprehend protestors.
Bogut, whose family migrated from communist Yugoslavia, warned Australians of the need to be vigilant regarding the expanding powers of government.
Police arrest construction workers and demonstrators with tear gas on the steps of the Shrine of Remembrance during a protest against COVID-19 regulations in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 22, 2021. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
“When you speak to an average Australian, who’ve never experienced conflict on their soil or have been sheltered from real world problems. They’ll tell you you’re crazy. How can you compare this to communism?” he said.
“I’d advise those people to go and speak to someone from the USSR or go speak to someone from the former Yugoslavia or Cuba,” he added. “They’ll all have the same mindset that they’ve seen these small grabs for power by governments in increments, and then all of a sudden, a lot of your rights are taken away to the point where your next-door neighbours are dobbing [snitching] on you for having your grandparents visit, and that’s what we’re seeing today.”
“These people (political leaders) that are really heavy on the political side of this and taking away people’s rights because they won’t take the vaccine—they’re the same people that we’ve had to listen to about equality and protecting minorities for the last decade,” he said.
“So, there’s a bit of hypocrisy when you’ve been spruiking that for the last 10 years and now because you are pro-vaccine—and some people are not even anti-vaccine, they’re just wary—you begin labelling them.”
Families in states carried by President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election would receive significantly higher savings under his proposed child tax credit than those in states won by former President Donald Trump, according to data provided by the House Education and Labor Committee and analyzed by The Epoch Times.
The committee issued an analysis on Oct. 6 that calculated the average child care savings that would be received by the average family of four with one infant in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, based on State Median Income for such a family.
The benefit is intended primarily to help families with child care costs and provides about $300 per month for qualifying families. The credit was first approved in the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” stimulus package Biden proposed and Congress approved with only Democrat support. Biden’s $3.5 trillion Build Back Better reconciliation spending plan now before Congress would make the tax credit permanent.
A spokesman for Rep. Robert Scott (D-Va.), the committee’s chairman, didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time. In a statement released with the data for each state, however, the committee’s Democratic majority claimed that significant assistance would be provided.
“Under the plan advanced by the Committee on Education and Labor, the typical … family of four using center-based child care could save thousands of dollars every year. The Build Back Better Act’s child care investment would give families greater financial security, allow more parents [to] rejoin [the] workforce, and help grow the economy,” the statement reads.
“Under the Build Back Better Act, families making 100 percent of the State Median Income would pay no more than two percent of their income on child care. Savings are projected by calculating the difference between the current average child care costs and two percent of income for families making the State Median Income.”
The analysis noted that “average child care costs are from Child Care Aware of America’s January 2020 survey of Child Care Resource and Referral State Networks.”
“Child care cost estimates were not available for Montana. Instead, we use Child Care Aware of America’s national averages to approximate child care costs in this state,” the statement reads.
Liberals generally favor the benefit, with Valerie Jarrett, former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, writing recently in Roll Call that Congress should move to “ensure that every eligible family is able to access this life-changing benefit. An estimated 5 million households need to take further action to claim their monthly payments.
“The majority of these families do not earn enough money to file taxes, making less than $12,000 per year as individuals or $24,000 per year as a couple. We can only deliver on the full promise of the CTC if everyone who is eligible—particularly these very low-income families—can access their benefits.”
Nationwide, the average child care savings that would be received under the Biden proposal by a typical family of four with one infant child would be $10,056 annually, according to The Epoch Times’s calculation using the committee’s data.
But the savings wouldn’t be spread equally across the country, with the 25 states that Biden carried in the 2020 presidential election and Washington, which Biden also carried, receiving substantially more on average than those living in the 25 states carried by Trump.
The red-state average is $7,914, compared to $12,033 for the blue states, a 52 percent advantage for families residing in the latter jurisdictions. Critics of the proposal said it’s consistent with other Biden initiatives that favor some groups over others.
“Once again, we are reminded that Biden’s economic agenda picks winners and losers,” Heritage Action for America Executive Director Jessica Anderson told The Epoch Times. Her group is associated with the Heritage Foundation conservative think tank.
“With this $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, Biden wants to subsidize the lives of coastal elites while forcing working- and middle-class Americans to foot the bill. From cradle to grave, Democrats are attempting to remake America and use our taxpayer dollars to do it,” she said.
Similarly, the Family Research Council’s (FRC) Connor Semelsberger, told The Epoch Times that the committee’s data demonstrate “just how much Biden’s Bankrupt Busy Families Plan benefits elite families in progressive states at the expense of middle class American families and the working poor.”
“The proposed child care entitlement program seeks to institutionalize care for infants—practically from birth—taking children out of the care of parents at the most formative stages in life, even if those parents would prefer to keep their children at home,” Semelsberger said. “It is a clear effort to force both parents to work outside the home and at the expense of parents who decide to stay home to raise their children.
“It is now clear that the Democrats’ plan is to place new tax burdens on families with one breadwinner, making Idahoan and Iowan stay-at-home parents subsidize child care outside the home for wealthier two income families in places like California and New York.”
Semelsberger is director of FRC’s Federal Affairs for Life and Human Dignity.
Public support for making the tax credit permanent is weak, according to the latest Politico/Morning Consult national survey, with only 17 percent of the respondents “definitely” favoring it and 18 percent “probably” backing it.
By contrast, 34 percent of the respondents said they definitely don’t favor making the credit permanent and 18 percent said they probably oppose it. Thirteen percent said they don’t know if the credit should be made permanent.
The survey interviewed 1,998 registered voters, with a plus-or-minus 2 percent margin of error.
Over the weekend, a stunning video began making the rounds on social media that appeared to be filmed by a teacher who was teaching her students a cute little song about wearing their masks to school.
Sung to the tune of “The Farmer in the Dell,” the kids were taught the lyrics:
I wear a mask to school, I wear a mask to school, Hi-ho, the derry-o, I wear a mask to school.
It keeps my friends safe, it keeps my friends safe, Hi-ho, the derry-o, It keeps my friends safe.
Every one of the children had a cloth mask securely tied to their bewildered little faces.
It is unclear where the was filmed or by whom, but it was uploaded to Twitter by the “Libs of TikTok” account that not long ago shared a video of a California teacher giggling about how she told her students they could pledge allegiance to the LGBT flag.
The sad sight of the wee ones being taught the COVID-era nursery rhyme ignited outrage and captured the attention of conservative commentator Steven Crowder who, as you can imagine, had quite a lot to say about it.
Although you can’t see their full faces, of course, the kids in the video look about as enthusiastic about their the little ditty as you might feel watching them learn it. Their lackluster “hooray” at the end of the video is particularly painful.
Poor little dears.
I have to say, as the mother of two young children, it’s difficult to get children at this age to wear pants, let alone face coverings, so I’m impressed they’re all sporting both with little apparent resistance.
These sweet little ones are at the age where it takes cute, snappy songs to teach them the fundamentals of how to properly relieve themselves, and so this zealous teacher is employing this same method to get them to go along with a public health practice that is being rejected by millions of adults who have the capacity to think more critically about what is being asked of them when they are requested to cover their faces in public.
What’s more, it absolutely pains me to consider how poorly these kids’ language skills are developing as they’re not only being taught catchy, indoctrinating nursery rhymes, but they can’t see their teacher’s mouth moving through her own mask in the most formative years of auditory and verbal development.
Yes, it’s all rather infuriating, but as Crowder pointed out, it may have also been illegal for this teacher to film the children singing (if you can call it that) her happy little masking song, depending on the state she was in and school policy.
Illegal or not, however, it’s still incredibly inappropriate to film young children in school and post it on social media to virtue-signal what a great job you’re doing indoctrinating young children to wear masks.
And even if most people have more basic decency than this, there are most likely many, many more children across the country who are being subjected to this nonsense. A quick Google search yields a plethora of YouTube videos and Pinterest links of pro-mask songs for kids that parents or teachers can use to try to drum up enthusiasm for the face coverings.
Sigh.
Kids have undoubtedly become political weapons in the battle over pandemic restrictions, and it’s both disgusting and devastating to witness considering it has been routinely demonstrated that children face a markedly reduced risk of harm from COVID-19 and simply do not need to wear masks.
My children are homeschooled, yet in the time that they and their peers have launched their elementary school careers, I’ve seen American schoolchildren become test subjects in a dangerous progressive-led sex ed project that has brought pornographic subject matter to our nation’s schools; be racially alienated from each other and told the condition of their heart is inextricably linked to the color of their skin; be used as pawns by unions battling to extract personal advantages in school reopening plans; and become subject to dehumanizing COVID-19 protocols that could serve to severely stunt their social, linguistic and even spiritual development.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration just overtly suggested you’re basically a domestic terrorist if you show up to school board meetings to yell at its members about all this insanity.
Are we really OK with what is happening to America’s schoolchildren? Are we really going to continue to subject them to the twisted game they’ve been caught up in?
As one of the sad anthems of my own youth declared, the kids aren’t all right.
While his father was vice president, Hunter Biden was helping a Biden clan in-law with business dealings in China, according to a new report.
John Owens, who is married to President Joe Biden’s sister, Valerie, sought Hunter Biden’s help in expanding his business in China, according to a May 9, 2014, email obtained by Fox News.
Owens, who was identified by The Washington Post as a former college classmate of the president’s, operates the telemedicine companies MediGuide America and MediGuide Insurance Services International.
In his emails to Hunter Biden, he said he wanted help to “seal this deal,” the report Thursday said.
“Time pressures are very tight, plus the fact that we do not yet have one has caused a slight credibility bump in the company’s mind. This all translates into a need for a Business License, and one secured very quickly,” Owens wrote.
“While this might seem to be a mundane task, I have come to understand that matters such as a Business License can end up taking an inordinate amount of time…..time we just do not have.”
Fox News reported Hunter Biden forwarded the email to Thornton Group Chairman James Bulger, whom the report identified as the nephew of Whitey Bulger, an organized crime figure.
Michael Lin was also copied in. Fox News identified Lin as “a member of the Committee of 100, a New York-based advocacy group that has ties to the United Front, an influence operation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Committee of 100 has also had multiple conferences sponsored by China Daily, a media outlet controlled by the CCP.”
“See email below. It’s from my Uncle Jack. Is there a way we can help him expedite this? Time is of the essence here,” Hunter Biden wrote.
Bulger later indicated that a response was in progress in an email that read, “Me and Michael had a call with Jack this morning I think we have a solution for hi[s] China problem.”
“Michael and Ran are researching the regs and laws right now but our Thornton WOFE will likely be ok for Jacks company to use,” Bulger wrote. The acronym means a “wholly foreign-owned enterprise.”
The emails Fox obtained did not disclose a resolution, but on its website, MediGuide touts “an agreement with AnyHealth Shanghai” to do business in China.
In September 2015, Biden’s office reached out to Owens to invite him to a State Department luncheon honoring Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Fox said it asked the Biden White House “whether Biden introduced Owens to Xi during the luncheon or whether Mediguide came up in discussion between Owens and Biden before, during or after the luncheon.”
It said it also asked whether there had been senior-level contacts between executive branch staff and the company since Joe Biden took office in January.
Fox said it was given the answer of “no” to its questions.
In 2017, the former vice president was the main speaker at a MediGuide event, the report said.
Hunter Biden’s dealings with China have been the subject of a Senate investigation. Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said in December that the report showed “Hunter Biden and his associates and family members were connected to Chinese nationals and Chinese companies linked with the communist party and People’s Liberation Army.”
It’s now apparent that President Joe Biden is using a fake set to conduct business — but why?
Social media was abuzz last week after eagle-eyed observers noticed that Biden received his COVID-19 booster shot on something resembling a Hollywood soundstage version of the White House.
As if getting a third dose of the vaccine while wearing a mask wasn’t performative enough already, the setting led many to point out that Biden has a peculiar penchant for political theater.
In an apparent effort to downplay the oddity of it all, PolitiFact noted that the set was not constructed just for him to receive his booster shot but was made for a virtual summit with world leaders held days before. It was built in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the broader White House campus.
Still, it’s strange that it continues to be Biden’s preferred venue. Another virtual meeting was held there Wednesday, this time to discuss raising the debt ceiling with business leaders.
The set became a topic of discussion on social media once again as one glaring detail made it look even more absurdly fake.
“The digital projection window of Biden’s White House set shows flowers in bloom in the Rose Garden,” Breitbart’s Charlie Spiering said. Of course, a blooming flower garden is something of a rarity in Washington, D.C., in autumn.
“The set was constructed across the street from the actual WH in the Executive Office Building,” Spiering noted.
The digital projection window of Biden’s White House set shows flowers in bloom in the Rose Garden.
The set was constructed across the street from the actual WH in the Executive Office Building pic.twitter.com/nBjUaSMhLU
Political commentator Kambree Kawahine Koa even used the charade to underscore a point about Frances Haugen, the Democratic operative turned Facebook whistleblower whose timely revelations many believe don’t pass the smell test.
“The [Facebook] whistleblower is definitely a Democrat. This feels as staged as Biden’s fake White House backdrop he uses for photo ops,” Koa quipped.
The facebook whistleblower is definitely a Democrat. This feels as staged as Biden’s fake White House backdrop he uses for photo ops.
Even if there’s sound reasoning behind the set — more room, better acoustics, convenience, technological advantages — the optics of speaking from a fake White House just across the street from the real thing lends credence to the feeling that everything about this administration has been carefully manufactured.
He rarely emerged from his basement during his campaign and seldom goes off-script now that he’s in office, a feat only achievable with masterful behind-the-scenes orchestration.
Biden’s movements are tightly controlled by handlers who want to keep opportunities for him to mess up to an absolute minimum.
Everything about his presidency seems like a big fat lie.
But holding events on a soundstage takes this literal political theater to a surreal new level, putting the finishing touches on an administration built on media magic and little else.
The Memphis Police Association is outraged after activists changed two billboards in the Tennessee city to read “defund the police,” including one near the location of a police officer’s death last week.
The altered billboard read “Defund the Police: See all the lives you could save.”
“It’s very frustrating. Officers are already suffering the loss of a co-worker,” Memphis Police Association President Lt. Essica Cage-Rosario said during a Fox News “Fox & Friends First” interview on Thursday.
“This is the third officer we’ve lost in just as many months. So officers are already feeling a sense of remorse,” she said.
The Memphis Police Association is furious after guerrilla activists altered Memphis billboards to read ‘defund the police’ near the site of an officer’s death last weekend.https://t.co/MtHbdEz8Vr
“They’re very saddened about the loss of their co-worker, and to see someone put up a billboard in the same area saying ‘defund the police,’ it’s a slap in the face,” Cage-Rosario said.
She denounced whoever defaced the billboard.
“This group, they clearly took over someone else’s billboard and committed an act of vandalism, very brazen and very unnecessary if you ask me,” the police lieutenant said.
10/6/21: These billboards were put up in Memphis where a police officer was killed. I’m amazed that anyone is saying to defund the police. pic.twitter.com/sWh9JZDTT1
Asked about the changes in law enforcement, Cage-Rosario also noted a shift that has taken place in the culture.
“Policing definitely has changed,” she said. “It used to be a career where little kids wanted to be the police when they grew up. And over the years that has changed.”
Memphis police Officer Darrell Adams was working the scene of a traffic accident last weekend when he was struck by a semi-truck and tragically lost his life.
A fundraiser has been launched in support of his family on Facebook.
“Today, my heart aches again for the loss of another dedicated servant of our city. I am in deep prayer for our officer’s family and the men and women of the Memphis Police Department,” Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said in a statement.
“Today, my heart aches again for the loss of another dedicated servant of our city. I am in deep prayer for our officer’s family and the men and women of the Memphis Police Department.” – Chief Cerelyn Davis pic.twitter.com/l4FfX15G4I
A group reportedly claimed credit for defacing the billboards.
“In an email sent to WREG, the group refers to itself as guerrilla activists art collective INDECLINE. It says it took to the highways of Memphis to alter the message of two Geico insurance billboards with a call to defund police,” WREG-TV reported.
Two billboards in Memphis were vandalized with ‘Defund Police’ message. Group takes responsibility https://t.co/4prqBTOp2y
City Council members Patrice Robinson and Frank Colvett said that’s the wrong message, according to the report.
“Defunding the police is not what we mean, and we don’t want people to think that’s what we mean. What we really mean is we want to invest more in our young people and people who need support,” Robinson said.
“When the sad tragedy happened in Collierville, they raced into the building to try to solve the problem, when the shooting at [Cummings School] K-12 happened and recent home invasion of a Rhodes student, it’s the Memphis Police Department that needs our support,” Colvett said.
“Not only fund the needs they [police] have, but also recruit and be able to recruit and get the numbers we all know the experts have said to get us to a more safe city,” he said..
President Joe Biden’s nominee for comptroller is facing opposition because of works she’s penned, including a thesis on Marxism.
Biden announced last month he was choosing Saule Omarova for the post of currency comptroller at the Treasury Department.
The White House described Omarova as “one of the country’s leading academic experts on issues related to regulation of systemic risk and structural trends in financial markets.”
But the Cornell University law professor is facing renewed opposition from Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who called on Wednesday for Omarova to provide a copy of her Russian-language thesis.
The paper, titled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,” was written while Omarova was studying at Moscow State University.
Toomey, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said the paper recently disappeared from her resume.
“While it appears that you have deleted any reference to your thesis in the version of your curriculum vitae (CV) that is currently available on the Cornell Law School website, the paper appeared on your CV as recently as April 2017,” Ranking Member Toomey wrote in a letter to the nominee requesting the thesis, noting that nominees are required to submit all published writings, articles, and papers.
Expanding on his opposition on the Senate floor, Toomey said Omarova “has been celebrated on the far left for promoting ideas that she herself has described as ‘radical.’”
In a paper (pdf) she penned last year, for instance, Omarova said she was offering “a blueprint for radically reshaping the basic architecture and dynamics of modern finance.” In it, she said her proposal would “effectively ‘end banking’ as we know it.”
“What she was arguing for in this paper from just last year was really promoting the naturalization of an entire industry, retail banking, basically bring to an end the ability of banks to compete for customers’ services and instead nationalize that. A clear socialist idea—that we shouldn’t have free enterprise system competing for people’s business, but rather have the government own it and provide that,” Toomey said.
Socialism is often described as the precursor to communism or Marxism.
Toomey said it did not surprise him that some people in the United States would compare the Soviet Union to America but he didn’t think that a person who thought that way would be nominated to such a powerful post.
The White House and Omarova did not respond to a request for comment.
Some Democrats have said they support the nomination.
“Saule Omarova has spent her career working with both Republicans and Democrats on systemic financial stability issues and is well-versed in new financial technologies. Her experience as a policymaker, in the private sector, and in academia will allow her to work with stakeholders across our financial system to ensure the economy works for everyone, and to protect our economic recovery from the risky activities of Wall Street and other bad actors,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said last month. “I call on my colleagues on the Banking and Housing Committee to support this historic nominee to this position critical to our economy.”
Kelley Paul, the wife of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said she’s “exhausted and angry” that mobs harassing the couple last year were not charged, but parents at school board meetings are being targeted as domestic terrorists.
“A mob held us hostage for ten minutes, spitting on and threatening to kill us. No charges! Fake anthrax and death threats sent to our home. No charges! Now just learned the person who called Rand’s Senate office threatening to shoot us will not be charged,” Kelley Paul wrote on Twitter Tuesday. “I’m exhausted and angry.”
Last August, after attending a White House event when former President Donald Trump officially accepted the Republican presidential nomination, the couple and other attendees were accosted by a group of people, some of them were holding Black Lives Matter signs. Video shows that protesters shouted toward the couple, and one protester abruptly pushed a police officer and his bike backward, sending the officer into Paul’s shoulder.
Black Lives Matter demonstrators surround Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and several women in Washington, on Aug. 28, 2020. (Leah Millis/Reuters)
Kelley Paul also noted that in May, a woman called Paul’s office threatening to “shoot you all” and she wasn’t charged either.
“Yet if you dare express indignation at a school board meeting about CRT [critical race theory] or forced masks, the Biden DOJ and FBI say you’re a criminal,” Kelley Paul added.
On Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he directed the FBI and U.S. attorneys to target any threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment made by parents toward school board members, teachers, and others.
Garland’s move drew instant backlash from parent groups and Republicans. His announcement was criticized as a double standard targeting conservative parents, who have ramped up pressure on school boards over the teaching of critical race theory and the imposition of mask or vaccine mandates.
“When Kelley learned today that a person who threatened to shoot us would not be prosecuted, she felt that it was another example of how violence is excused for the left and a mom who raises her voice at a school board meeting is to be treated as a domestic terrorist by the Biden administration,” Paul said in a statement to Fox News.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for District of Columbia didn’t immediately respond to a request from The Epoch Times for comment.
A record from the prosecutor’s office shows a Florida man, Brennen Sermon, was charged for punching a police officer last year when the officer was protecting the Pauls and others walking from the Whiter House to a hotel. But he was released on his personal recognizance, the record shows.
“The punk who assaulted the policeman defending my wife and I in DC went free but the Biden Admin. labels concerned parents as ‘domestic terrorists?’” Paul wrote on Twitter Wednesday.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco defended the new directive during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday.
“I want to be very clear in the memorandum that’s publicly available, the Attorney General issued, talks about the importance of bringing federal, state, local law enforcement together to make sure that there is awareness of how to report threats that may occur, and to ensure that there’s an open line of communication to address threats, to address violence, and to address law enforcement issues in that context, which is the job of the Justice Department, nothing more,” Monaco said.
And COVID was an “accident,” right- not a way to attack Trump? [US Patriot]
One of the more repugnant ways the establishment media covered the emergence of COVID-19 globally last year was to act as if former President Donald Trump were personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Deaths from COVID were no longer blamed on the White House beginning earlier this year, when President Joe Biden was inaugurated. That’s good news for Biden, because as of this week, more people have reportedly died from the coronavirus in the U.S. this year than did in all of 2020.
As of Wednesday, 705,194 Americans had died after contracting COVID since the early months of 2020, according to Johns Hopkins University.
According to the university, 352,000 Americans died from January to December of last year in the U.S. during Trump’s term. As of Wednesday, 353,000 had died since the beginning of the year, when Biden and Democrats took over in Washington.
And how is the establishment media covering the news? Forbes, USA Today and The New York Times all ran stories without even mentioning Biden’s name. And ABC News referenced Biden only in the context of his administration purchasing more rapid tests.
It’s a good time to revisit Biden’s campaign website, because the guy said he had a plan to fix all of this.
“Today, the trajectory of COVID-19 in America is headed in the wrong direction. In some parts of the country, the test positivity rate is climbing, hospitalizations are sky-rocketing, and testing sites are overwhelmed,” Biden’s website told voters. “Donald Trump’s catastrophic failures of governance have led to tens of thousands of needless deaths and economic pain for tens of millions of Americans.”
“It is impossible to know what the state of the COVID-19 pandemic will be on the day Biden takes office, but if elected, Biden won’t wait to take action. Minutes after he is declared the winner of the election, Biden will make one of his first calls to Dr. Tony Fauci and ask him to extend his unprecedented record of service to six Presidents by serving one more,” the pledge said.
“Dr. Fauci will have full access to the Oval Office and an uncensored platform to speak directly to the American people — whether delivering good news or bad,” whoever put together Biden’s website vowed.
Biden repeated the claim that Trump was killing people while on the campaign trail. He and Trump even shared a heated moment during the first presidential debate last September about COVID deaths as 200,000 Americans had been reported dead.
“It is what it is because you are who you are,” Biden said, addressing Trump. “The president has no plan. … He knew all the way back in February how serious this crisis was. He knew it was a deadly disease. … He panicked.”
“If we would have listened to you, the country would have been left wide open,” Trump responded.
Trump sure got that last part right. The country is wide open. It’s open for everyone but American citizens. Biden has had every opportunity and then some to apply the changes he thought were necessary to end the pandemic.
Instead of saving lives, he’s got Democrats in Congress arguing among themselves about what term they should use when referring to nursing mothers and others scheming about minting trillion-dollar coins.
Nine months into the most inept White House administration in modern history, and we’ve seen how his plan for ending the pandemic turned out. Like everything else, it’s been a disaster. Biden will be known as the first president to have overseen more than 352,000 COVID deaths during his term in office.
In all fairness, no response would have prevented those deaths from being counted. Going forward, COVID is going to be part of life.
But if we’re going to use the same metrics that were applied to Trump, Biden sure has gotten a lot of people killed. The establishment media is quiet about that, and about the fact that Biden has also driven up the prices of fuel, food and other basic goods while denying the country an essential element: hope that things will get better.
Biden will have managed to have killed more Americans than his predecessor, per standards set by partisan reporters. But only he will have the distinction of also being the executioner of the Bill of Rights.
To this writer, Sunday felt a little bit like Groundhog Day in autumn.
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Dr. Anthony Fauci — the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, America’s COVID guru and arguably the most powerful unelected, unconfirmed bureaucrat in recent U.S. history — informed Americans it was “just too soon to tell” whether we’d be able to have Christmas gatherings.
This answer to a question posed by host Margaret Brennan was vaguely reminiscent of one Fauci gave last November when he was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether Christmas gatherings would be out of the question.
“Yes, I’m — well, I think that, if we get most of the country vaccinated in the second, third quarter of the year, and the vaccine continues to prove its efficacy, and people adhere to those fundamental measures, I think we can start approaching the degree — it’s not going to be a light switch, Jake.”
REPORTER: “But we can gather for Christmas or it’s just too soon to tell?”
A year has passed, vast strides have been made against the coronavirus — both in vaccinations and treatment therapies. Deaths are way down. But Fauci’s fundamental position, and that of other lockdown-and-social distancing czars, doesn’t seem to have changed: Keeping Americans locked down, masked and socially distanced is still the only option.
To the Fauci crowd, the end of this all is somewhere in the middle distance. Next January. Maybe May. When 70 percent of adults are vaccinated. Make that 85. Or 98 percent, if you’re President Joe Biden. We can all get our lives back if we do what they say for just a little longer. Just a little while longer.
According to the author of one paper, however, all the lockdowns have potentially been for naught.
In a peer-reviewed study published Sept. 29 by the International Journal of the Economics of Business, Douglas W. Allen, an economics professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, argued that: “It is possible that lockdown will go down as one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in modern history.’
“An examination of over 100 Covid-19 studies reveals that many relied on false assumptions that over-estimated the benefits and under-estimated the costs of lockdown,” Allen wrote in the paper (which he originally published in April). “The most recent research has shown that lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid-19 deaths. Generally speaking, the ineffectiveness stemmed from individual changes in behavior: either non-compliance or behavior that mimicked lockdowns.”
It didn’t matter how stringent the lockdown was, either. Why? Allen noted that much of the decision-making was based on the so-called Imperial College model or models like it. The Imperial model concluded “that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time. The social and economic effects of the measures which are needed to achieve this policy goal will be profound.”
However, there were multiple problems with the model, Allen wrote.
It assumed a viral reproduction number and fatality rate that were too high — as well as not being age-dependent. It was also based on the assumptions that “hospital capacity was assumed fixed and unchangeable” and “individuals in the model were assumed to not change behavior in the face of a new virus.” None of these panned out.
In addition, a study of European lockdown policies found no reduction in mortality in countries with more stringent lockdowns and a study in the United States found only a “modest” reduction in transmission in locales that locked down.
There were also costs beyond lost GDP, Allen wrote, including lost educational opportunities, increased mortality from unemployment and deaths “due to despair” (suicides, drug overdoses), an increase in domestic violence and medical treatments and examinations that were postponed.
Allen then proposed a different way of looking at the costs and benefits of COVID lockdowns, courtesy of a thought experiment from professor Bryan Caplan of George Mason University: “Suppose you could either live a year of life in the COVID era with lockdowns (e.g. like what happened in the U.K.), or 12-X months with the virus but no lockdowns (e.g. like what happened in Sweden or Florida). What value of X would make the AVERAGE person indifferent?”
“For any random individual, X could take on a wide range of values. For some this past year has been horrific, and perhaps they would have preferred it never happened. Perhaps they suffered violence or abuse that was fueled by frustration and alcohol while locked down during a long stay-at-home order. Or perhaps they lost a business, a major career opportunity, or struggled over a long period of unemployment and induced depression,” Allen wrote.
“For these people, X equals 12 — they would have paid 12 months of their life to have avoided this past year. Others might have been willing to pay even more. For the vast majority of populations, Covid-19 was not a serious health risk. Lockdowns provided no benefits and only costs. Thus, for the vast majority, X likely takes on a value in the order of a few months.”
Caplan posited that X = two months would be “a conservative estimate. That is, on average, two months would be sacrificed to have avoided lockdown.”
Allen used the model on Canada and found “the costs were at least thirty-five times higher than the benefits. The reasonable conservative case is that the cost/benefit ratio is around 141, which means that by any cost/benefit standard, lockdown has been a public policy disaster.”
“Furthermore, if the fall of 2021 results in many cases resulting from the more transmissible delta variant among a shrinking number of unvaccinated people, then the expected benefits of lockdown policies become even smaller. Lockdowns are not just an inefficient policy, they must rank as one of the greatest peacetime policy disasters of all time.”
Few individuals, of course, are so associated with the lockdowns as Dr. Fauci. Not that he has that power, mind you, but the Napoleon of the novel coronavirus pronounces his social distancing recommendations as ex cathedra statements, and the mainstream media treat them likewise. If you ask questions, you’re a science denier.
No, Fauci may not have been the actual authority imposing the lockdowns, but it’s undeniable that his recommendations have been treated as gospel by blue-state public health officials. His hands are all over this — and he’s not letting go, as Sunday proved.
The lockdowns are finally being re-evaluated — and not just by Allen or Caplan — but you’re going to keep seeing some minor-key variation on them pop up for quite some time.
If the COVID bogeyman goes away, so does a lever of arbitrary power. It doesn’t matter how destructive that power is when it’s exercised. For some, just being able to exercise it is enough.
The signs of trouble for President Joe Biden keep on building.
But he won’t accept what they mean.
The 46th president proved as much on his trip Tuesday to Howell, Michigan, where his barnstorming for his party’s hideous monstrosity of a spending bill was the target of hundreds of demonstrators who turned out to greet him — and were promptly dismissed by a man who’s clearly convinced of his own popularity.
Biden’s motorcade was greeted by protesters lining both sides of a highway, carrying Donald Trump signs from the 2020 election, Trump signs for the 2024 election, and signs with the obscenity-punctuated message that’s become a virtual staple of large sporting events lately.
But the unifying president — the one whose party holds only a paper-thin majority in the House of Representatives and power in the Senate by virtue of a tie-breaking vote from the vice president — still bragged about his support in the November election.
“I took this agenda to the country,” he said, according to a White House transcript. “They said it was time to build an economy that looks out from Scranton, Pennsylvania — where I grew up as a kid — instead of looking down from Wall Street. An economy that looks out from Howell, Michigan, and towns like it all over America, that brings people from every race, background, religion into the game.
“That’s what — and notwithstanding some of the signs that I saw com- — that’s why 81 million Americans voted for me. The largest number of votes in American history. A clear majority who supported when they supported me.”
The round of applause that greeted that line wouldn’t have compared to the noise after a decent drive off the tee at Augusta, but for a Democrat who spent the 2020 election speaking to crowds that numbered in the handfuls — compared to throngs that turned out for his opponent — it probably came off as a roar.
Social media users saw it differently.
Yet like 6 people clapped for you when you said this …. With a total attendance of 11
For Biden, there’s nothing like the power of belief — or pretending to believe.
Despite an agenda that’s in serious trouble from members of his own party at home, despite humiliating his country with a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, despite inflation that’s already hitting American workers in their wallets, Biden either believes he has a mandate, or is just comfortable playing on the pretense.
That’s why he can dismiss hundreds of furious protesters with a condescending “notwithstanding some of the signs” comment.
Of course, Trump faced huge crowds of protesters too, but he was also facing a monolithic mainstream media that was attacking his every move.
He was facing a celebrity and entertainment field bent on poisoning the culture against him — not to mention an opposing political party manufacturing hoaxes in an attempt to remove him from office.
Biden has none of these. Even with slavish support from supposed journalists, the backing of leftists in New York and Hollywood, and a political party in control of both houses of Congress, he’s still facing headwind from an American public that, polling shows, is getting increasingly uneasy with where he and his party are taking the country.
Biden saw the signs on Tuesday. Maybe one of his team members will explain them to him.
If not, the results on Nov. 8, 2022, will be unmistakable.
Republicans and Democrats alike are now working for the Big Pharma lobby.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent vaccine rollout, pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer and Moderna have substantially increased their lobbying efforts, a National Pulse investigation has revealed.
The lobbying apparatuses at both vaccine-reliant companies – in terms of the number of lobbyists hired and the overall budget deployed to influence government officials – have seen dramatic increases since 2019.
Many of the new Big Pharma hires have come from consulting firms with deep and historical links to the current White House, and President Joe Biden himself.
In October alone Pfizer tapped Sudafi Henry, Joe Biden’s former legislative affairs director from his days as Vice President.
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT ARE: VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN; BRUCE REED, CHIEF OF STAFF TO THE VICE PRESIDENT; SUDAFI HENRY, ASSISTANT TO THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS; AND ROB NABORS, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR LEGISLATIVE AFFAIRS. (OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY DAVID LIENEMANN)
Another recent hire is Kwabena Nsiah, a former staffer for Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra and top aide to director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
Nsiah also worked in Congress for over eight years, most recently as Policy Director for the Congressional Black Caucus and on the Joint Economic Committee as a Senior Policy Advisor.
RINOs Turn Vax Lobbyists, Too.
Among Pfizer’s robust lobbying team are alumni of Republican presidential administrations and Congressional offices.
Justin McCarthy, who served under George W. Bush as a Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, and Ben Howard, who served as a Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs under Donald Trump, both lobby for the pharmaceutical giant.
David Schiappa, a longtime Republican staff member of the Senate holding the role of Secretary for Leader Mitch McConnell, is also lobbying for Pfizer.
Pfizer, which recently received approval for a third booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine, has substantially increased its lobbying budget. In 2019, the company spent $11,000,000 on lobbying efforts before increasing the total to $13,150,000 – the highest total since 2010.
In 2019, the company retained 77 lobbyists before the total grew to a team of 102 lobbyists in 2020. So far in 2021, Pfizer has declared 92 lobbyists.
PFIZER LOBBYING.
While Moderna retained just one lobbyist throughout all of 2019 and added one lobbyist the following year, in 2021, the company has already hired an additional twelve lobbyists, representing a 600 percent increase in the company’s total lobbying force.
In 2019, Moderna spent $40,000 on lobbying and $280,000 in 2020, and just halfway into 2021, the company has already spent $290,000.
MODERNA LOBBYING.
The real scandal, however, is represented in the sheer number of political operatives who have recently gone on to work for Big Pharma, from both Democrat and Republican offices.
The National Pulse has assembled a list of those declared by Pfizer and Moderna alone, below. The list includes their previous jobs or affiliations. Of the 83 listed below, many come from high level backgrounds such as the White House, presidential candidates, the Speaker of the House’s office, and a number of congressional offices.
History is not clean. We like its lines well defined and its stories in 20-second soundbites, but history is never that way. It’s messy. When it doesn’t fit the woke agenda, the prevaricators and provocateurs take license to just make things up, often swaying great numbers of people.
Such is the case with the recent attempt to recast the Alamo story as an Anglo narrative driven by “white supremacy” and the desire to maintain slavery. There are several holes in this argument, the first being that the Texas Revolution was hardly an Anglo narrative; the second involves the Texas leaders who actually tried to avoid war with Mexico, and the third is in casting all of the Anglos as “white supremacists.”
Mexican President-General Antonio López de Santa Anna campaigned as a states’ rights candidate but once elected abolished the Constitution of 1824 and took full power for himself, declaring himself a dictator. When Zacatecas rebelled, Santa Anna ransacked the city, and 5,000 Mexican citizens were killed or executed. It was a warning to anyone who opposed him. As a result, civil war broke out in four other Mexican states: Yucatán, Tabasco, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas, none of which were slave-holding states.
The Tejano population (Mexican citizens born in Texas) was also alarmed. Santa Anna disbanded the local state legislatures and the elected governors were replaced with political appointees. Advocates of peace in Texas led by Stephen F. Austin tried to avoid war, but on a diplomatic mission to Mexico City, Austin was arrested and thrown into prison. He had a year and a half to rethink his position.
The Texians (the Anglo settlers who came to Texas) had generous land grants, very low taxes, substantial autonomy, and wanted to continue living under the Constitution of 1824. The vast majority of them never owned slaves. It was simply not in their interest to start a conflict with Mexico. If the Texas Revolution was all about slavery, why would non-slaveholders be willing to die for something they had no part in? (Incidentally, the first soldier to take a bullet fighting for the Texas cause, on Oct. 9, 1835, was Sam McCulloch, Jr., a free black man.)
It became clear that war was unavoidable. Tejano delegates José Antonio Navarro and Francisco Ruiz both signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Of the six general and 14 specific reasons the Declaration argues for independence, slavery did not make the list.
As the convention progressed, Tejanos chose to barricade themselves inside the Alamo and give their lives with the Texians. In a foreshadowing of the American Civil War 25 years later, Alamo defender Gregorio Esparza had a brother in Santa Anna’s army. After the smoke cleared from the battle, Fernando Esparza was given permission to retrieve his brother’s body, and thus Gregorio Esparza became the only Alamo defender to receive a Christian burial. The others were thrown onto a pyre and burned.
But the Tejano involvement hardly ends there. Juan Seguín and his men fought valiantly at San Jacinto, and Lorenzo de Zavala went on to help write the Texas Constitution. The argument that the Texas Revolution was an Anglo conflict about slavery is simply false.
Finally, David Crockett had a famous falling out with Andrew Jackson over Indian policy. That’s why he was in Texas in the first place. Sam Houston, alone in political circles, argued for the rights of indigenous people and tried to get them title to their lands. He even lived with the Cherokee for six years and was adopted by the tribe as a full Cherokee citizen. He married a Cherokee woman in today’s Oklahoma. Jim Bowie also adopted another culture when he married Maria Ursula de Veramendi, the daughter of the Mexican vice governor of Coahuila y Tejas. These men had many close friends from other cultures. Dismissing them as “white supremacists” is a simplistic, woke fantasy.
Did people in the 1800s have different views on race than we do today? Yes. All of them did. Even the abolitionists wrote things that could never be printed in a modern newspaper. But to judge them by a moral standard that has advanced 185 years beyond their time is grossly unfair, amateurish, and irresponsible. Instead of judging previous generations, we should be asking ourselves what people 185 years from now will look back and condemn us for. That’s a more difficult and uncomfortable question. History is always more complicated than we want to make it. It’s always messy, and frequently inconvenient to woke fairy tales.
A teacher who quit her job in California and moved to Florida over what she saw as the political indoctrination of students and staff has helped produce a guide to help educators spot critical race theory (CRT) in the classroom.
The Blexit Foundation rolled out the new guide, developed by Kali Fontanilla, to its 35 chapters across the United States on Oct. 4.
“It’s Blexit’s answer to CRT,” the organization’s national director Pierre Wilson told The Epoch Times.
Liberal cities, especially those with large minority populations, are aggressively advocating for CRT, which is based on Marxist themes, to be taught in American classroom, Wilson said.
“This is an attack on all of America,” he said. “They’re pushing it extremely hard right now, so we felt it was something that we had to respond to right way,” by offering an alternative, he said.
A graphic promoting the guide shows the foundation’s co-founder Candace Owens surrounded by a crowd of supporters, carrying the banner “Blexit’s Stand Against CRT.” It states: “As part of our ongoing education initiative, the Blexit Foundation has launched a new tool kit outlining how parents and teachers can identify and fight back against the creeping influence of CRT in America’s classrooms.”
(Courtesy Blexit Foundation)
Blexit’s mission is to lead a “black exit” from the decades-long grip of the Democratic Party.
The digital guide will be made available in print this month, Wilson said.
Fontanilla is known for her strong background in teaching, and she has done “a fantastic job” on the guide, he said.
Though others reached out to help write the guide, Blexit ultimately chose Fontanilla “because of our experience with her and the work that she’s done in her community,” Wilson said. “She is a social media influencer now and has made quite a few videos also expressing her passion and belief that CRT is wrong for this country.”
Fontanilla’s guide is designed for teachers across the nation to help students see alternative views to the CRT’s narrow “hyper race-focused lens,” she said. “It’s not just in ethnic studies in California.”
“It’s a guide for parents and teachers on how to spot it, what to do if they’re forced to teach it, what it is because a lot of people don’t know what critical race theory is, and all the key terms that are in it,” she said.
“In the public schools right now, it’s almost a given, especially in California or in any blue state, that your curriculum is going to be left-leaning. That is just the default,” she said.
For example, health classes usually have a pro-abortion message and history classes tend to paint white people in a bad light, she said.
The Blexit guide includes lessons to counter CRT, including Equity vs. Equality and learning about the Quakers and their fight to abolish slavery. It shows teachers how to instruct students in a way that helps them to critically think about CRT “rather than just brainwashing them into going along with these narratives that America is super racist, and every institution is either oppressing them or benefiting their oppressor,” Fontanilla said.
Though the California School Boards Association has claimed the words “critical race theory” appear only once in the curriculum, references to CRT ideology are prevalent throughout the state’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.
“It’s just silly to me that they deny it because it’s just everywhere right now,” Fontanilla said.
“This is why it’s important to be able to spot the concept of CRT being inserted in lessons for our students that may not explicitly be labeled as CRT,” she said.
Terms such as privilege, intersectionality, hegemony, dominant ideologies, and decolonization, even diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the four Is of oppression (ideological, institutional, interpersonal and internal) are “just CRT rebranded,” she said.
Fontanilla is an advocate for school choice and has encouraged everyone to speak out at school board meetings.
“School board meetings are public forums in which all members of the community should be welcome to comment even if they don’t have a child in the school. Do not be afraid to speak up. We need every voice in this fight,” she writes in the guide.
Fontanilla taught for about 15 years in California and told The Epoch Times in June she decided to leave her teaching position at Rancho San Juan High School in Salinas, California, after being threatened and bullied on social media for opposing CRT components in the ethnic studies program and denouncing the group Black Lives Matter (BLM).
Since then, Salinas Union High School District (SUHSD) has resisted reading aloud a letter she wrote criticizing school board president Phillip Tabera, who attacked opponents of CRT as “anti people of color” on social media following a June 22 board meeting.
Tabera has not responded to multiple inquiries since the incident, and the school board has not heeded the concerns of parents who spoke out against the SUHSD’s ethnic studies curriculum, seen by some as anti-American and anti-Christian.
“I am disgusted and insulted that he would say such derogatory words about those that were brave enough to speak up about this indoctrination happening in the classroom,” Fontanilla wrote. “Some of those that spoke up were people of color, including myself. To be told that we are ‘anti people of color’ because we are against the district forcing all of our students to receive lessons that are racist and divisive is disgraceful.”
‘A Real Blexit Story’
Though California’s political leaders are known for trying “their hardest to be the most progressive state in the country,” Wilson said no matter what their agenda is called, he believes it’s the same old story of victimhood.
“They’re trying to change America’s history. They want the story to be told only from certain points of view, and they want us always thinking about the past. They want minorities, such as myself and others, to feel like victims,” he said.
“I’m actually a real Blexit story. I was a hardcore Democrat for a very long time,” Wilson said.
Like others who joined the organization, he says he got tired of blaming others and decided to exit the party. Wilson now believes in Blexit’s message that change begins on the inside, not looking outside for someone or something to blame.
But CRT teaches the “total opposite,” he said. “It’s pointing your finger at everyone else and it’s being a victim. …Who did you wrong? Who can you blame? That’s not how we operate.”
Those who claim CRT is uplifting and sheds light on the truth are mistaken, Wilson suggested.
“It’s not true. It’s a political stance that’s now being pushed into our schools,” he said. “I’m black, and I don’t feel oppressed. I don’t feel like there is systemic racism in this country. I feel like the day that I decided to change my life, my life changed.”
Though perhaps well-intentioned, constantly telling black teachers they are appreciated, special, or that black educators matter, as Fontanilla was told at her California teaching job, singles them out for how they look rather than their accomplishments, he said.
“We want to be celebrated because we worked hard. We want to be celebrated because we gave our all, not because we received a handout, or we were treated like victims. That’s what Blexit is all about. We’re all about victors not victims,” he said.
“What about the kids who are growing up, who really don’t see race, like black and white girls who are playing together who are having a great time who don’t see anything negative?” he asked. “But now, they’re in school, and now they’re being forced to look at each other a little bit differently, because one side or family has oppressed the other?”
“We’re teaching them anger, hatred, division, and we’re saying we’re doing this in the name of love, but we’re not,” he said. “It’s sickening when you really think about it. They’re saying that they’re doing this out of love, and they’re doing this because they just want everyone to understand history.”
If CRT proponents really wanted everyone to understand history, “they would understand that white people weren’t the only ones who owned slaves, not to mention that it was white people who helped free the slaves,” Wilson said.
Comedian Dave Chappelle has once again enraged supporters of the LGBT agenda, this time by proclaiming “gender is a fact” in his newly released standup special.
Chappelle, the former host of Comedy Central’s hit sketch show “Chappelle’s Show,” hasn’t shied away from taking it to establishment ideologues.
Despite criticism, he has never backed down from making the transgender agenda fodder for comedy.
In past standup sets, Chappelle has unapologetically made jokes at the expense of those who claim that gender is a social construct — and that one’s gender can be changed through surgical procedures and hormone treatments.
In his latest special, which is called “The Closer” and dropped on Tuesday, Chapelle again fired up his progressive opponents.
“Gender is a fact,” he said, according to the Daily Beast.
“Every human being in this room, every human being on earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on earth. That is a fact.
“Now, I am not saying that to say trans women aren’t women. I am just saying that those pu****s that they got — you know what I mean? I’m not saying it’s not p***y, but it’s ‘beyond p***y’ or ‘impossible p***y,’” he said in reference to popular substitutes for real meat.
Earlier in the special, Chappelle defended author J.K. Rowling, who has been attacked for taking on the transgender agenda, and referred to himself as a “TERF” — a trans-exclusionary radical feminist.
Chappelle added that he was done telling jokes about LGBT people “until we are both sure that we are laughing together.”
But immediately after the standup set hit Netflix, Chappelle took a beating from leftists online.
Just to let ya know, I have ZERO space for this loser anywhere on my timeline, in my home or anywhere else.
Dave Chappelle is a transphobic POS. Always has been, always will be.
As a trans woman, I have usually defended Dave Chappelle’s specials because I think they’re hilarious and his jokes about trans women never felt intentionally malicious.
The Closer changed my mind on that. That special felt so lazy and disingenuous and I’m really disappointed.
Nothing Dave Chappelle says changes the facts that trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary people are non-binary, that LGBTQ+ people should live free of harm and discrimination. He is wrong. And Netflix has empowered him to be wrong loudly.
In his review of the special, NPR’s Eric Deggans noted that Chappelle at one point joked, “In our country, you can shoot and kill a n****r. … But you better not hurt a gay person’s feelings.”
Deggans opined, “Too often in ‘The Closer,’ it just sounds like Chappelle is using white privilege to excuse his own homophobia and transphobia.”
We’ve all heard the pitch: President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better™ plan won’t cost a cent.
It’s paid for. Just tax the rich. The money will magically roll in — painlessly, effortlessly. Ol’ Lunchpail Joe will hold our nation’s plutocrats by their ankles, give them a good shake, and — by Jove — $3.5 trillion will end up falling out of their pockets.
That’s how you get tweets like this one Monday from the presidential Twitter account, evincing someone who’s not living in reality: “The fact of the matter is my Build Back Better Agenda costs $0 — and it won’t raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year. We’re going to pay for it by ensuring those at the top and big corporations pay their fair share.”
The fact of the matter is my Build Back Better Agenda costs $0 — and it won’t raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 a year. We’re going to pay for it by ensuring those at the top and big corporations pay their fair share.
That’s deluded enough — but passing it off as an actual tax cut is some next-level economic gaslighting.
On Tuesday, Biden was in Howell, Michigan, pitching the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion spending bill as a necessary step for an America that’s lagging behind the rest of the world in infrastructure development.
“This is a blue-collar blueprint for how we restore America’s pride,” Biden said, according to the Detroit Free Press.
“Other countries are speeding up and we’re falling behind. We have to speed up the pace.”
We’ve seen Biden’s you’ve-gotta-spend-money-to-make-money pitch since March, when he introduced the first round of exorbitant spending on infrastructure. We’ve been hearing for weeks that this latest round of spending isn’t going to cost a cent and the only people who’ll feel the pinch will be the rich, who need to step up and pay their fair share. That’s nothing new.
This line is, however: “My friends on the other team have no problem giving billionaires and millionaires gigantic tax breaks. This is a tax cut!”
“You know, what it does is — now and it’s in place, and people in your state are understanding it now — instead of — it provides, it upped the ante for how much you could get for a child under 7,” Biden said. “You get $3,600 bucks, tax cut, on a yearly basis. And you get $3,000 for a child under 17.”
Biden’s argument here centers on incentives given to families under the proposed plan. This is all wonderful, but Biden continues to insist that the $3.5 trillion he’s about to spend won’t cost a cent.
Therefore, logic dictates that revenue would need to be increased by at least $3.5 trillion by the plan for it to pay for itself. That money isn’t going to come from growth, so it’s going to need to come, by and large, from taxes, both on individuals and corporations — categorically the opposite of a tax cut.
Fine, a liberal might say, but this is just splitting hairs using Biden’s verbal infelicity. What he meant to say is that, if you’re not a corporation or someone making over $400,000 a year, you’ll end up paying less. You’re getting the breaks and the monocle-wearers are getting soaked. Why complain?
This is wrong, too. An analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation — a non-partisan congressional tax scorekeeper — found the vast majority of Americans, almost every income level below the threshold the Biden administration said would be immune, would take a hit.
The JCT also found that 66.3 percent of the burden of a corporate tax hike would end up being shouldered by lower- and middle-class Americans and that 98.4 percent of taxpayers who paid for it would have incomes under $500,000. That’s not even counting inflation — that nasty, unseen form of taxation that robs families that can’t hedge against it.
We’ve already seen plenty of inflation during the first 10 months of the Biden administration, and we’re going to see a whole lot more of it after trillions upon trillions of dollars are pumped into the economy, diluting the power of the dollar.
That, to Joe Biden, isn’t just a net-zero proposition that allows Democrats to pay for a massive spending bill that doesn’t so much build infrastructure as it does funnel money to a long list of Democrat priorities and constituencies. It’s a tax cut, Biden claims.
It’s one thing to promise us that we can get all sorts of government largesse that we don’t have to pay a dime for. This is how Democrats get elected, after all — by telling us they’ll be providing every American with a free unicorn that eats plastic waste and excretes clean water, and all we have to do is tax billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates to afford it.
It’s quite another thing, however, to insult our intelligence by insisting we’ll be so good at taxing the rich that the government will pay us to take the unicorn, if only we can just give Joe Biden a chance to have his way.
One parenting leader is speaking out after Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a memorandum from the Department of Justice to the FBI to address supposed “threats of violence” from parents.
Asra Nomani joined Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning wearing a T-shirt with the words, “I’m a mom, not a ‘domestic terrorist.’”
“It’s outrageous what the federal government is doing now,” said Nomani, who is vice president for strategy and investigations for Parents Defining Education.
“We have parents right now waking up from sea to shining sea to bring their children to school, to urge them into the day, and what has happened now is that the federal government and the National School Board Association has declared a war on parents,” she said.
Nomani responded that the only goal of parents is to speak up for their children.
“All we have done over the past year is stand up and speak up for children. It’s unconscionable that the Federal Bureau of Investigations should even spend a minute thinking about us,” she said.
“We all reject violence and all we want to do is protect our kids,” Nomani added.
The government needs to stop demonizing us as parents: Parents Defining Education member @AsraNomani rips the DOJ’s ‘overreaching’ probe into potential threat against school boards. pic.twitter.com/XD4NbgzQUF
Her efforts on social media also have caught the attention of Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul.
“The punk who assaulted the policeman defending my wife and I in DC went free but the Biden Admin. labels concerned parents as ‘domestic terrorists?’” Paul tweeted alongside a post from Nomani urging parents to contact the National School Board Association in response to its letter.
The punk who assaulted the policeman defending my wife and I in DC went free but the Biden Admin. labels concerned parents as “domestic terrorists?” https://t.co/dSsqm6TNQQ
“In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence among school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s schools,” the attorney general wrote.
“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” Garland said.
“In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel,” he continued. “Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts.”
BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing “threats.”
The letter follows the National School Board Association’s request to classify protests as “domestic terrorism.” pic.twitter.com/NhPU03YOYq
The NSBA letter said, “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton revealed U.S. Border Patrol has experienced a major spike in criminal alien crossings of the border as the crisis continues to escalate.
Paxton shared the concerns during an interview on “Fox & Friends First” Wednesday morning. When asked, “How many are getting in?” he responded with concern.
“I don’t even think we know. I think my state isn’t told much about what’s actually happening. We’re not given the statistics. We’re given broad statistics, but we don’t know exactly how many people are escaping,” the attorney general said.
As Republican governors head to the southern border, Texas Attorney General @KenPaxtonTX sounds the alarm as the border patrol nabs gang members and sex offenders coming into the United States.https://t.co/pY61XYHeBz
He said the number of criminal alien crossings is reportedly up “about 400 percent” from last year.
“We do know that the numbers are up supposedly about 400 percent from just a year ago for criminal aliens coming into our country. So it’s a significant increase. The Biden administration knows it and they support it,” Paxton added.
Paxton also responded to the question, “How much worse could this get before something is done about it?”
The attorney general’s words offered little hope for a response from the Biden administration.
“I don’t think they have any intention, the Biden administration has no intention of stopping it even if it gets worse. The numbers are so significantly more than they’ve ever been, yet there’s no effort on their part to follow federal law or to even follow court orders,” said Paxton, a Republican and outspoken critic of the Biden administration.
“They’re allowing it. They’re inviting it. They’re wanting it,” he added.
The news comes as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott plans to join 10 additional GOP governors for a news conference at the U.S.-Mexico border on Wednesday to address the growing crisis.
The media briefing will be held in Mission, Texas, and will also include the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety and the president of the National Border Patrol Council, according to WOLF-TV.
The announcement comes after 26 Republican governors sent a letter last month to President Joe Biden to request a meeting to address the crisis.
“As chief executives of our states, we request a meeting with you at The White House to bring an end to the national security crisis created by eight months of unenforced borders,” the governors requested in the letter.
“The months-long surge in illegal crossings has instigated an international humanitarian crisis, spurred a spike in international criminal activity, and opened the floodgates to human traffickers and drug smugglers endangering public health and safety in our states.
“A crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens,” the letter added.
NEW 🚨 26 GOP Governors Demand Biden End The Border Crisis
No meeting with Biden has yet been announced. Abbott and his fellow governors are now taking matters into their own hands.
The governors expected to visit on Wednesday are Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, according to Border Report.
Arizona’s Krysten Sinema is the first openly bi-sexual senator and the first (I think) to be a female triathlete competitor. She also shows up in Congress in green hair.
These things would normally set the New York Times aflutter as “too cool for school,” but not these days. Ms. Sinema, with Joe Manchin, is blocking what they deem all-important legislation or, as the NYT’s erstwhile arbiter of cool herself (on the oped page since 1995), Maureen Dowd, put it:
“Sinema and Manchin are now directing what Joe Biden gets to do and deciding how his presidency will be defined.”
Are they though? Some of us might think he has already done a pretty decent job of defining his presidency by himself—in the Afghanistan debacle and on our porous Southern border, not to mention a murder epidemic unseen in decades, almost exclusively in our minority communities, after the man occupying the White House for the better part of a year now played “first you say you do and then you don’t” about defunding the police as the sociopaths of Antifa tried to burn our cities down.
Oh, and I forgot, he and his pal Fauci were going to rid us of the dreaded COVID. (Are we or are we not allowed to get together for Christmas? I forget.)
And then there’s that little matter of inflation—due, in great part, to Biden’s non-stop spending spree—that many economists are predicting will be devastating to poor and middle-class Americans. In fact, it already is.
But no matter. Dowd knows what the real danger is and who’s to blame:
“Some Democrats even worry that the recalcitrant pair could be helping Donald Trump vault back into the White House.”
Even? I think they’re terrified of it and they should be, assuming they have read the latest polls—and, since they’re politicians, no doubt they have.
But back to Sinema and her alleged sins. To Dowd—and I think it’s safe to assume this is basically the NYT party line—she’s the scalawag of scalawags, an apostate who must be discredited at all costs.
“Even as Biden traipsed up to Capitol Hill to try to rescue his F.D.R. dreams, Sinema flew back to Phoenix in the middle of nail-biting negotiations on the scope of Biden’s social policy bill.
“Her spokesman said that she had a doctor’s appointment for a foot injury, but The Times reported that she was also slated to play footsie with donors at her political action committee’s dinner at a fancy resort.”
OMG—or should I be more upscale and say “Mon Dieu”—Ms. Sinema meets with her donors!
As opposed to whom, exactly?
Evidently to “legitimate” statesmen with authentic “F.D.R. dreams” who only accept donations from impoverished social workers in Sandusky, Ohio like Sen. Bernie Sanders… Oh, wait.
The above link goes to OpenSecrets where you can find the contributions to all senators. Only the ultra-naive will be surprised, if you look at the various categories, that Bernie’s contributions are more than a hundredfold those of Sinema’s and come from such “impoverished social workers” as Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Apple, and so on.
Nevertheless, the New York Times reporter cited by Dowd, Jonathan Weisman, would have us believe that a senator meeting with backers on the same weekend she is having her foot examined is actually information that disqualifies her. It’s not even “dog bites man” when it comes to being news.
This is no surprise considering the level to which the NYT trucks in propaganda. We have yet to have a serious apology, other than some perfunctory uttering from Dean Baquet, for their two years of outright lies on Trump-Russia collusion, all based on anonymous sources, for which they gained multiple Pulitzers for the writers.
And they haven’t even had the basic morals to give the prizes back.
But returning again to Sinema, I have a suggestion for the NYT, and anyone else interested, for that matter, on just why the Arizona senator is balking on Biden’s multi-trillion dollar social policy bill.
Call it good old Occam’s Razor. Maybe she—like the majority of Americans, as it happens—thinks the three trillion plus price tag (no one’s really sure of how much it will ultimately cost. Three trillion… five trillion… eight trillion… pretty soon, as the jokes goes, you’re talking about real money) is anywhere near the benefit that could accrue from it or the damage that could come from escalating inflation that we have already seen at the gas stations and supermarkets of this country. (Welcome to Weimar.)
She may also think—I’d bet on it, in fact—that Joe Biden is full of it when he claims this spending is revenue neutral. It’s anything but. Joe doesn’t exactly have, to be kind as possible, a great reputation for probity.
Finally, she probably thinks she was elected by her constituents to represent what they believe. It’s a safe bet endlessly printing money for no sensible reason ranks pretty low among them.
For Dowd and other media-Beltway types, loyalty to the team, their team, almost always trumps loyalty to the people that elected them.
Whether they acknowledge it or not, they are the spiritual and intellectual mothers and fathers of the creeps that pursued Sinema into a bathroom at Arizona State University in Phoenix Sunday.
So is the President who calls being followed into bathrooms “part of the process.”
Law enforcement have accused Steve Descano of undermining their credibility with victims, vulnerable communities
A Virginia prosecutor backed by progressive billionaire George Soros tried to use his status as an elected official to avoid a courthouse security checkpoint, leading to a vulgar confrontation between Steve Descano and the security guards stationed on site.
The tense back-and-forth ensued when the Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney and a colleague asked private security officers if they could bypass a standard screening station when they entered the county courthouse on the morning of Sept. 28. They became agitated and vulgar when their request was denied, according to a Fairfax County sheriff’s office incident report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
“Both attorneys demonstrated behavior unsuited for an officer of the court. Allied Security Officers experienced disrespect and unprofessionalism,” a sheriff’s office supervisor wrote in the report.
Descano is one of several Soros-backed prosecutors whose defendant-focused enforcement practices are causing tension with local law enforcement and elected officials. In neighboring Loudoun County, Soros-backed commonwealth’s attorney Buta Biberaj is facing heat from fellow Democrats over her lenient approach to domestic abuse cases. In September, a Loudoun defendant out on a $5,000 bond for domestic assault was charged with murdering his wife with a hammer. Both Descano and Biberaj are facing recall efforts.
As relayed in the sheriff’s office report, Descano and his chief deputy Kyle Manikas arrived at the county courthouse just after 9:30 a.m. They asked two private security officers if they could skip the screening checkpoint. The officers replied the screening was mandatory for all attorneys, prompting Descano to throw his umbrella directly into the X-ray machine.
“Do I really need to go through security?” he asked according to the report.
A moment later, uniformed law enforcement passed through the checkpoint without screening. Descano asked why they were allowed to bypass the process, and an officer replied that uniformed law enforcement was exempt under a directive from the courthouse security committee.
“That’s bullshit. Don’t you know who I am?” Descano replied, according to the report.
Descano’s colleague Manikas was “visibly upset about being screened” and became particularly incensed when one of the screeners searched his bag because the X-ray machine indicated a knife was inside. The item in question was a butter knife inside a lunch bag.
“This is fucking bullshit,” Manikas said repeatedly, according to the report.
A security camera video the courthouse shared with the sheriff’s office and which the Free Beacon reviewed corroborates the officers’ telling of events. Descano can be seen flaunting an identification badge and gesturing toward the officers at close range in an animated manner. The video does not depict the entirety of the encounter.
The private security officers acted in accordance with a courthouse policy that required screenings for all comers, save law enforcement in uniform. No exemption was available for elected officials.
“An order from the Courthouse Security Screening Committee requested 100 percent random screenings. All non-uniformed law enforcement officers, attorneys, and employees will be screened upon entering the courthouse,” the incident report reads.
Fairfax County Circuit Court chief judge Penney Azcarate was notified of the matter.
Apart from the Sept. 28 incident, law enforcement personnel have accused Descano of undermining their credibility with victims and vulnerable communities.
Those concerns arise from a string of sexual assault cases involving minor victims, in which Descano’s office sought shorter jail terms for defendants than were available under state law. One involved a migrant from El Salvador who repeatedly raped his stepdaughter. Though eligible for a life sentence, the commonwealth’s attorney agreed to a 12-year prison term, which could run as short as 8 years under parole rules.
A second case similarly featured a life-eligible sex predator who molested a relative on a weekly basis for years when she was between the ages of 5 and 10. The commonwealth’s attorney agreed to a 17-year plea deal for the defendant, who is 53 years old. The victim’s family tried unsuccessfully to obtain a harsher sentence.
In another case, the commonwealth’s attorney agreed to a three-year prison sentence for a defendant pleading guilty to raping a middle school girl four times. The presiding judge rejected the proposed plea deal, saying it did not “remotely reflect the magnitude of the defendant’s misconduct,” according to the Washington Post. Prosecutors said the light sentence was a function of procedural issues that undermined the integrity of their case.
“His efforts have been counterproductive to law enforcement maintaining legitimacy and trust in our most challenging communities,” said county police officer Seena Ali Soheilian, a representative of the local police union. “His abhorrent policies have had an adverse effect on our victims, often leaving them unprotected and emboldening their offenders.”
The Fairfax County commonwealth’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
The United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday silenced the executive director of a U.N. watchdog after he drew attention to anti-Semitic comments made by teachers for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
The council cut off U.N. Watch director Hillel Neuer as he was testifying about his watchdog’s report on anti-Semitic social media posts from teachers hired by UNRWA, a refugee agency tasked with educating Palestinian children. The report revealed that a teacher in the Gaza Strip had shared a video of Adolf Hitler “to enrich and enlighten your thoughts and minds.” Another teacher had shared anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that blamed the Jewish people for the coronavirus pandemic and claimed they want to control the world and destroy Islam. The president of the Human Rights Council said Neuer was cut off because he made “derogatory, insulting, and inflammatory remarks” that amounted to “personal attacks” and were “not acceptable.”
No joke: The U.N. Human Rights Council just cut me off for testifying about UNRWA teachers who glorify Hitler. Chair says I made “derogatory, insulting & inflammatory remarks”—by quoting their own Facebook posts. “This amounts to personal attacks. This statement is out of order.” pic.twitter.com/qPXohSdOfW
The Biden administration rejoined the Human Rights Council in February after the Trump administration had boycotted the agency since 2018 over its anti-Israel agenda and its inclusion of human rights abusers such as China, Russia, and Cuba. The UNRWA uses curriculum provided by the Palestinian Authority, and undercover videos taken at the agency’s facilities have shown children calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Neuer called on Human Rights Council president Nazhat Shameem Khan to apologize to him and rescind her ruling, saying she “read out a prepared statement” against him. He also threatened to press U.N. secretary general António Guterres to proclaim that his remarks were incorrectly characterized and that the body was sending “a dangerous message” by silencing him and denying his right to freedom of speech.
“The highest human rights body of the United Nations has just sent a dangerous message to the world when, without any basis, you summarily and arbitrarily blocked me from presenting a report about systemic anti-Semitism incited daily by the teachers of UNRWA,” Neuer tweeted.
U.N. Watch’s report contains more than 20 examples of UNRWA teachers making anti-Semitic comments on social media.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco defended a new directive by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to stop a rise in what school officials call “threats and harassment” by parents who have been attending public school board meetings.
“I want to be very clear in the memorandum that’s publicly available, the Attorney General issued talks about the importance of bringing federal, state, local law enforcement together to make sure that there is awareness of how to report threats that may occur, and to ensure that there’s an open line of communication to address threats, to address violence, and to address law enforcement issues in that context, which is the job of the Justice Department, nothing more,” Monaco said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday.
In 2021, there has been a rise in parents attending school board meetings and voicing their concerns about their child’s school curriculum and in many videos, parents are seen vehemently opposing the teaching of critical race theory and school mask mandates.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Monaco about Garland’s recent memorandum which seeks to investigate any threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment by parents toward school personnel.
In the document, the AG directs the FBI and U.S. attorneys to convene meetings with federal, state, and local leaders within 30 days to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” according to a letter (pdf) the attorney general sent on Monday to all U.S. attorneys, the FBI director, the director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, and the assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s criminal division.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) speaks during a hearing to examine the United States Special Operations Command and United States Cyber Command in the review of the Defense Authorization Request for the fiscal year 2022 and the Future Years Defense Program, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on March 25, 2021. (Andrew Harnik-Pool/Getty Images)
Merrick’s letter comes only days after a national association of school boards (NSBA) asked the Biden administration to take “extraordinary measures” to prevent alleged threats against school staff that the association said were coming from parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory.
“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crime,” the NSBA argued in the letter, encouraging the federal agencies to use laws designed to target domestic terrorism, such as the PATRIOT Act, to address the issue.
“Is it domestic extremism for a parent to advocate for their child’s best interests?” Cotton asked the Deputy AG.
“I think what you have described no I would not describe as domestic extremism,” replied Monaco.
Cotton linked the NSBA letter as a possible motivation for issuing the DOJ memorandum.
“It’s a fact that the school board association just sent this letter to President Biden and then conveniently the Attorney General released his letter yesterday, describing his series of measures to confront this grave and the growing threat of parents protesting their kids being indoctrinated and the school board having to call a recess. [Is there] a connection between those two things?” asked Cotton.
When questioned by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on the legitimacy of the new directive, Monaco again defended Merrick, saying “spirited debate” is welcome at board meetings but added that “the Attorney General’s memorandum made quite clear that violence is not appropriate.”
Hawley implied that the DOJ’s new directive could take away parents’ rights because the document does not make clear what is encompassed by the terms “harassment or intimidation.”
“I don’t think so, Miss Monaco. With all due respect, it didn’t make it quite clear, it doesn’t define those terms, nor does it define harassment or intimidation. It talks about violence, I think we can agree that violence shouldn’t be condoned or looked aside from in any way, swept under the rug at all. But harassment and intimidation. What do those terms mean in the context of a local school board meeting?” asked Hawley.
The DOJ did not immediately return a request to comment.
