Monthly Archives: May 2022

The Impact Of The Leak

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On Saturday, NewsMax posted an article featuring Justice Clarence Thomas’ comments about the leak of the Supreme Court draft of the abortion decision. Notice that somehow the leaker has not yet been identified.

The article reports:

Justice Clarence Thomas says the Supreme Court has been changed by the shocking leak of a draft opinion earlier this month. The opinion suggests the court is poised to overturn the right to an abortion recognized nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade.

The conservative Thomas, who joined the court in 1991 and has long called for Roe v. Wade to be overturned, described the leak as an unthinkable breach of trust.

“When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it,” he said while speaking at a conference Friday evening in Dallas.

…Thomas, a nominee of President George H.W. Bush, said it was beyond “anyone’s imagination” before the May 2 leak of the opinion to Politico that even a line of a draft opinion would be released in advance, much less an entire draft that runs nearly 100 pages. Politico has also reported that in addition to Thomas, conservative justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett had voted with the draft opinion’s author, Samuel Alito, to overrule Roe v. Wade and a 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that affirmed Roe’s finding of a constitutional right to abortion.

Thomas said that previously, “if someone said that one line of one opinion” would be leaked, the response would have been: “Oh, that’s impossible. No one would ever do that.”

“Now that trust or that belief is gone forever,” Thomas said at the Old Parkland Conference, which describes itself as a conference “to discuss alternative proven approaches to tackling the challenges facing Black Americans today.”

There is a need for confidentiality in Supreme Court negotiations and drafts. Justices need to be free to offer opinions, popular or unpopular, to reach a consensus on a decision. Knowing that drafts or notes from these deliberations are subject to being leaked could seriously impact the debates needed to rule on an issue. It bothers me that no one has yet been held responsible for the leak (only a small number of people had access to the draft), and the news reports do not see to be interested in finding out who the leaker is. This leak needs to be dealt with quickly and strongly in order to prevent future leaks.

How Short Is The Average American’s Memory?

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Disinformation is something the Biden administration wants to fight against. However, they seem to be spreading it themselves. On Thursday, The Daily Caller posted an article about some recent disinformation put out by the current White House.

The article reports:

The White House tweeted COVID-19 disinformation Thursday evening to imply that President Joe Biden deserves credit for vaccinating Americans against the virus.

The official White House twitter account tweeted that when Biden took office, on Jan. 20, 2021, there were millions of Americans unemployed and no COVID-19 vaccines available. The tweet went on to tout the decrease in unemployment since then, calling it the fastest drop in unemployment at the start of a president’s term ever.

…Biden himself had already received two doses of the coronavirus vaccine before he became president. He received his first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine Dec. 21, 2020, and then his second dose on Jan. 13, 2021.

Maybe he forgot.

On Saturday, Townhall reported that the misinformation had been corrected.

Townhall reported:

On Thursday night, as Katie highlighted, the official White House Twitter account, tweeted out a falsehood about the timeline of the availability of the vaccines. Though it has since been corrected, the original tweet in question is still up. 

…Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker for The Washington Post, also weighed in, demanding to know who was manning the account and calling for them to “Delete this false tweet.”

The job growth claims in the tweet are also questionable. Adding back jobs that you killed with the shutdown of the economy does not count as economic growth–it counts as recovery. This is really not the time for the Biden administration to be praising itself for its economic achievements–inflation has wiped out the salary gains Americans achieved during the Trump administration and food shortages and other supply chain issues have become a problem. I think the Biden administration needs to spend less time bragging and more time actually finding solutions to the problems they have created.

Wisdom From The Bench

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On Tuesday (updated Wednesday), The Washington Examiner reported that U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga threw out the lawsuit against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis filed to prevent the ending of the special deal between Disney World and Florida.

The article reports:

A federal judge tossed out a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) that sought to halt the dismantling of the Walt Disney World Resort’s Reedy Creek Improvement District.

U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga determined Tuesday that the federal court lacked standing because it was a state issue, the plaintiffs’ First Amendment arguments were flawed, and the lawsuit was premised on a piece of legislation that does not go into effect until July.

“In Count I, Plaintiffs allege that Senate Bill 4-C violates Florida’s Reedy Creek Improvement Act and ‘contractual obligations’ the state owes to Floridians,” Altonaga, a Bush appointee, wrote. “The Court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over Plaintiffs’ sole remaining claim for violation of Disney’s First Amendment rights. ‘[A] party generally may assert only his or her own rights and cannot raise the claims of third parties not before the court.'”

In the 1960s, Florida established RCID as a special district under the Reedy Creek Improvement Act. RCID is run by the landowners in the district, predominantly Disney, who oversee basic local government functions such as zoning, infrastructure, and building codes.

The lawsuit was filed last week by William Sanchez, a Democratic contender for Senate. Michael and Edward Foronda and Vivian Gorsky were listed as plaintiffs. The suit challenged a bill DeSantis signed last month stripping RCID of its special district status.

The article concludes:

In response to DeSantis signing the bill, RCID released a statement arguing that the state would be on the hook for its roughly $1 billion in outstanding debt — something DeSantis has disputed.

“In light of the State of Florida’s pledge to the District’s bondholders, Reedy Creek expects to explore its options while continuing its present operations, including levying and collecting its ad valorem taxes and collecting its utility revenues, paying debt service on its ad valorem tax bonds and utility revenue bonds, complying with its bond covenants and operating and maintaining its properties,” RCID said in a statement, per CNN.

It is quite possible that after all is said and done, the taxes of the people in the counties involved may decrease instead of increase. This is something to watch.

The Fight For Free Speech Continues

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On Wednesday, The Daily Wire reported that the U.S. government has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s business dealings.

The article reports:

“The Securities and Exchange Commission is probing Mr. Musk’s tardy submission of a public form that investors must file when they buy more than 5% of a company’s shares,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “The disclosure functions as an early sign to shareholders and companies that a significant investor could seek to control or influence a company.”

The report said that Musk’s April 4 disclosure filing was at least 10 days late, a move that is believed to have saved him more than $140 million because share prices could have been higher if the public knew about his ownership of 5% of the company.

“The case is easy. It’s straightforward,” Daniel Taylor, a University of Pennsylvania accounting professor, said. “But whether they’re going to pick that battle with Elon is another question.”

The report noted that a lawsuit against Musk from the SEC would likely not stop him from taking over Twitter since the company’s board of director’s unanimously approved to be acquired by Musk and the SEC may lack the power to do so. Musk’s purchase of Twitter is also reportedly being reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Elon Musk has also stated that he would reinstate the account of President Trump.

The article notes his comments on the banning of President Trump:

“I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the county, and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” Musk said, adding that the decision was “morally bad.”

“That doesn’t mean that someone gets to say whatever they want to say,” Musk said. “If they say something that is illegal or destructive to the world, then there should be perhaps a timeout, temporary suspension or that particular tweet should be made invisible or have very little traction.”

“I would reverse the permanent ban,” Musk added.

Musk indicated that action could be taken against an account if there were tweets that violated platform policy, which he said “should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension—a temporary suspension—is appropriate, but not a permanent ban.”

Musk said that permanent bans “should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts.”

President Trump has stated that he would not return to Twitter but focus on his own social media site, Truth Social.

Stay tuned.

This Needs To Be Quickly Corrected

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On Thursday, Breitbart posted an article claiming that pallets of baby formula are being sent to the border for the thousands of illegal immigrants that are entering America. Meanwhile, Americans can’t find baby formula in the stores.

The article reports:

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) says that while Americans face a worsening baby formula shortage, “They are sending pallets–pallets! of baby formula to the border.”

Who is “they?” Well, the Biden administration, of course.

…On a social media post, Cammack said she received photographic evidence of the border deliveries from a border patrol agent.

The article notes:

In a Facebook video, Cammack said this border patrol agent told her, “Kat, you would not believe the shipment [of baby formula] I just brought in.” Cammack added that this guy “has been a border patrol agent for 30 years, and he has never seen anything quite like this. He is a grandfather, and he is saying that his own children can’t get baby formula for his grandkids.”

She adds, “He, as a border patrol agent, just took in pallets, pallets of baby formula for all of the illegals that are crossing into the United States.”

If this is the case, no one, including this congresswoman, is saying that the babies of illegals should not get this formula. But why are they first in line? Good heavens, illegal immigrants in Texas are getting baby formula when we know American citizens and legal immigrants in Texas are “desperate” to find formula.

What’s more, these illegals should not even be in the country, and by extension, they and their babies should not be our responsibility. These folks should be in Mexico using Mexico’s resources, not in America illegally draining our resources, especially a resource as vital as baby formula.

If these illegals didn’t stroll into our country illegally, something Biden is openly encouraging and allowing, we wouldn’t have this problem.

If this story is true, and I have no reason to believe it is not, it is a disgrace. At what point will Americans get irate enough to demand that Congress impeach the entire Biden administration?

Something Rarely Mentioned In The Abortion Debate

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On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal posted an editorial about an aspect of abortion in America that is rarely mentioned.

The editorial notes:

Scholarly studies show that black women are far likelier to terminate their pregnancies than whites.

…Bill Clinton’s famous formulation in 1992 was that abortion ought to be “safe, legal and rare.” His goal was to coalesce liberal and moderate Democrats on the issue, but the wording also suggested that even among supporters of Roe v. Wade, abortion was properly viewed as undesirable: the fewer, the better.

In the three decades since, the U.S. abortion rate has in fact declined—in recent years it’s fallen to about half of what it was in the early 1980s—yet significant racial disparities persist. In other contexts, group differences in outcome set off alarms on the political left. The racial gap in test scores has brought calls to eliminate the SAT and other admissions tests. The racial gap in arrest and incarceration rates has brought calls to legalize drugs and reduce resources for law enforcement. Racial differences in wealth and income fuel progressive demands for slavery reparations and a larger welfare state. And so on.

When it comes to abortion, however, left-wing concern seems to stop at making the procedure safe and legal, even while black-white disparities have not only persisted but widened. A 2020 paper by public-health scholar James Studnicki and two co-authors cites data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to note that the black abortion rate is nearly four times higher than the white rate: “Between 2007-2016, the Black rate declined 29% and the White rate declined 33%—meaning that the racial disparity actually increased rather than decreased.” Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence in a 2019 abortion case observed that “there are areas of New York City in which black children are more likely to be aborted than they are to be born alive—and are up to eight times more likely to be aborted than white children in the same area.”

The editorial concludes:

You’d think that the activists and media elites who are otherwise obsessed with equity—and who have spent the better part of a decade lecturing the country about the value of black lives—might take more interest in the Roe decision’s contribution to racial inequality. The black poverty rate has been roughly a third higher than the white rate for close to 30 years. Among married blacks, however, poverty has been in the single digits over the same period. In some years, the poverty rate for black married couples has been below the rate of not only blacks as a whole but also whites as a whole. If activists believe that higher black incomes will result in fewer black abortions, why not focus on how to increase black marriage rates?

One problem is that such a conversation requires frank talk about counterproductive attitudes toward marriage and solo parenting in low-income black communities. It requires discussing antisocial behavior and personal responsibility. The Democratic left has fashioned a politics around avoiding those subjects and accusing anyone who broaches them of racism. No issue has a bigger impact on America’s black population than legal abortion, but we’re not supposed to talk about that.

There is a reason Planned Parenthood puts their abortion clinics in poor minority neighborhoods. At some point Americans need to realize that you are not really helping people by making it easy to kill their children.

From Recovery To Shortages

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Issues & Insights posted an article today about what almost eighteen months of the Biden administration has done to the American economy.

The article reports:

It’s taken President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats all of 16 months to turn the land of plenty into one plagued by empty shelves and rationing. Well, Biden did promise to “transform” America, but how many voters knew that this is what he had in mind?

The latest in the growing list of shortages is the chronic and dangerous scarcity of baby formula that is causing new parents to scramble to find supplies and stores to ration how much customers can buy. The latest industry data show that 40% of America’s baby formula supplies are out of stock, up from 29% in March and 11% last fall.

This is a potentially deadly situation if parents can’t get the food they need for their babies or try to make their own formula. As CNN reports, “Specialized formula is even harder to locate amid the widespread shortage. Parents are driving to neighboring states to try their luck, and many are pleading for help on social media, imploring strangers to share or even barter any extra supply they may have.”

One industry observer said that “supply chain issues, product recalls and historic inflation” are driving the baby formula crisis. As it turns out, Biden is at least partially responsible for all of those.

His spending spree fueled the price spiral, his “rescue” plan exacerbated labor shortages and supply chain problems, and, as Just the News reports, “gross incompetence by federal officials on Biden’s watch … inflamed a baby formula shortage now panicking parents nationwide.”

A whistleblower had alerted the Food and Drug Administration last October about contamination problems at an Abbott Nutrition plant in Michigan. But Biden officials didn’t get around to recalling the formula until late February, when the industry was already under pressure from Biden-fueled labor shortages and price hikes.

The article also mentions other shortages:

  • “New York Hospitals Battle Supply Shortages”
  • “Over Half of Consumers Report Grocery and Food Shortages”
  • “Fertilizer shortage could cause food shortages in Michigan”
  • “Inflation, shortages could delay Georgia road projects”
  • “Cold Stone Creamery continues to deal with shortages”
  • “April auto sales fall on shortages; Honda at 3-day supply”
  • “California officials warn of summer power shortages, blackouts”
  • “Labor and Materials Shortages Prompt New Approaches to Building and Design”
  • “Worker shortages hamper U.S. private payrolls, services sector in April”
  • “Trucker shortage causing supply chain disruptions”
  • “Diesel fuel is in short supply as prices surge”

This is either gross incompetence of an intentional destruction of the fabric of
America. Either way, it needs to be slowed down by the mid-term elections. Hopefully that will happen.

Energy Policies That Make No Sense

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The Epoch Times is reporting the following today:

The Biden administration has canceled the sales of three major offshore oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska, blocking the opportunity to drill for oil in over 1 million acres amid soaring gas prices in the United States.

The article reports:

Federal law requires the Interior Department to adhere to a five-year leasing plan for auctioning offshore leases. The current five-year offshore drilling program is due to expire at the end of June; the department had until then to complete the lease sales. Although federal law requires the Biden administration to prepare a replacement plan before it can hold new oil and gas lease sales, it has yet to release any such plan.

A total of 11 lease sales had been planned under the current five-year program, of which seven have been held successfully.

In January, a federal judge in Washington blocked the sale of offshore oil and gas drilling leases across some 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico—lease 257—ruling that the environmental review that underpinned the sale was flawed. The Biden administration did not appeal the ruling. The auction of lease 257 held in November by the Interior Department was the largest offshore oil and gas lease auction in U.S. history.

The Biden administration’s latest move to cancel offshore oil leases comes as gas prices in the United States hit another record high of $4.404 on May 11, according to AAA, just a day after hitting an earlier high of $4.374, while crude oil continues to remain above $100 per barrel.

The Biden administration’s war on fossil fuels is seriously impacting the spending power of Americans. Gasoline at the pump is almost $2 a gallon higher than it was during the Trump administration. Elections have consequences, and even though we could debate whether President Biden’s win was legitimate, his becoming President has completely wrecked a growing American economy in less than two years. The mid-term elections may be able to correct some of the Biden administration’s destructive policies, but only if the elections are honest and Americans vote their pocketbooks.

Everybody But Me..

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President Biden has consistently blamed everyone and everything other than himself for the current high inflation. I guess he is not familiar with the phrase, “The buck stops here,” although his fellow Democrats were very familiar with that concept when President Trump was in office.

On Wednesday, The New York Post posted an article about President Biden’s recent statement about who is responsible for the current inflation.

The article reports:

President Biden admitted Wednesday that inflation was stuck at “unacceptably high” levels after the annual rate fell slightly in April to 8.3% — but then blamed the COVID-19 pandemic and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for the price increases rather than government spending.

“While it is heartening to see that annual inflation moderated in April, the fact remains that inflation is unacceptably high,” Biden said in a statement.

Inflation hit a 40-year annual high of 8.5% in March. Although the annual inflation rate ticked lower in April, prices actually increased 0.3% on a month-to-month basis.

Biden had attempted to preempt the latest inflation data with a Tuesday speech in which he sought to shift the blame for the politically dicey issue.

In his Wednesday statement, Biden hailed a new federal initiative funded by his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill to provide free internet service to about 40% of homes — and claimed Republicans would increase costs if they regain control of Congress.

“Congressional Republicans talk about inflation, but their only plan is to raise taxes on working families, taking even more money out of their pockets,” Biden said, referring to a plan proposed by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) that would require all Americans to pay at least some taxes, though the proposal is not widely embraced by other Republicans.

…“Today, I am traveling to Illinois to speak with farmers about more we can do to lower their costs and help them produce more, lowering the price of food for Americans and around the world,” Biden said. “All of this is progress, but the fight against global supply chain issues related to the pandemic and Putin’s price hike will continue every day.”

Biden also touted a declining federal deficit, despite the fact that Democrats passed a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill last year without revenue offsets or Republican support. Months later, Congress approved a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, of which about $256 billion wasn’t paid for, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

I don’t think most Americans are naive enough to buy into the concept of ‘Putin’s price hike,’ particularly when the price hikes began before Putin invaded Ukraine. If he really wants to help the farmers, the President might consider opening up drilling to reduce their fossil fuel costs and their fertilizer costs.

Not Everyone Wants Roe v. Wade To Stay In Place

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One of the things that seems to be getting lost in the debate over Roe v. Wade is what the consequences of overturning the law would be. Overturning Roe v. Wade will not make abortion illegal in America. Overturning Roe v. Wade will allow every state to set its own abortion guidelines. It may be that abortion may be illegal in some states, but American women will still have access to abortion. It may not be as convenient, and possibly that will cause women to rethink their options. Also, overturning Roe v. Wade will have a negative impact on the campaign coffers of most Democrats. That may be the reason this fight has gotten so nasty. Some of the Democrats in Congress want abortion up until birth to be legal in every state. Attempting to get a law passed to codify that did not go well.

On Wednesday, Townhall reported the following:

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has repeatedly shown his ineptitude when it comes to leading Democrats in the upper chamber, and he did so again in spectacular fashion on Wednesday afternoon. In what he seems to think was a grand gesture to prove his party’s commitment to a woman’s (birthing person’s?) right to kill her unborn child only put Democrats on the record supporting a bill that’s more radical than Roe ever was.

After the unprecedented leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion signaling that Roe v. Wade would be overturned, Schumer jumped into action and called for the passage of a bill to supposedly “codify” Roe in federal law. But he once again failed to do the math among his own caucus or the Senate as a whole before holding what became nothing but a failed show vote to prove Democrats support radical abortion rights that go beyond what even most pro-abortion Americans support.

The vote to break a Republican filibuster and move to the final vote on the “Women’s Health Protection Act” came down 51-49, with every Democrat but one voting to move ahead — Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia joined all the Republicans to block the legislation from moving forward.

The article details the Senate bill:

In summary, the Democratic bill would make elective abortions legal across the entire country for all nine months of pregnancy (with “mental health” loopholes eliminating any real limitations), eliminating virtually all existing state-level restrictions (including lopsidedly popular ones), gutting conscience protections for healthcare workers who don’t want to participate in abortions, allowing non-doctors to facilitate the abortions, and likely forcing taxpayers to finance all of it.  Short of endorsing post-birth infanticide or instituting CCP-style compulsory abortions, it’s hard to imagine a more extreme piece of legislation on this issue.  Dressing this up as “codifying Roe” is astoundingly dishonest, yet it’s mindlessly — or perhaps not so mindlessly — repeated by journalists, ad nauseam.

I suspect Senator Schumer knew that the bill would fail. What the bill probably did was energize that small fringe of the Democrat party that supports unlimited abortion. I will admit that I have a hard time understanding why some people are fighting so hard for the right to kill a baby.

The Biden Economy

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“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a statement generally attributed to T. Bert (Thomas Bertram) Lance, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget in Jimmy Carter’s 1977 administration. It is a statement that the Biden administration would have done well to listen to when they took office.

On Wednesday, Breitbart posted an article about the latest inflation numbers.

The article reports:

The Department of Labor said Wednesday that the Consumer Price Index rose 8.3 percent compared with a year ago. Prices were up 0.3 percent compared with the prior month.

This is the eleventh straight month of inflation above 5 percent. Prices rose at an annual rate of 8.5 percent in March. This was the month since September 2021 that the year-over-year inflation figure was not higher than the month earlier.

Economists had forecast CPI to rise by 0.2 percent for the month and 8.1 percent compared with a year ago.

Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.6 percent, well above the 0.4 percent estimate. Compared with a year ago, core prices were up 6.2 percent, above the 6.0 percent expected.

After inflation average hourly earnings for all employees fell 0.1 percent from March to April, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said. Real average hourly earnings decreased 2.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, from April 2021 to April 2022.

One of the main causes of the increased inflation is runaway government spending. Meanwhile on Tuesday night, The House of Representatives passed a $39.8 billion bill to aid Ukraine. Where do they think this money is going to come from?

 

 

Let’s Worry About The Solution Rather Than Who Is To Blame

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On Tuesday, Townhall posted an article about the inflation we are currently dealing with.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s approval rating is deeper underwater than Ted Kennedy’s car on Chappaquiddick, the midterms are less than six months away, baby formula is running out across the country, and fuel prices just notched a new all-time high for both diesel and unleaded. 

Scrambling to stem the hemorrhaging for his administration and party, Biden spoke Tuesday afternoon in remarks that were intended to head off Wednesday’s release of the latest consumer inflation data that’s remained at four-decade highs in recent months as a result of Biden’s economic policies. 

As usual, Biden refused to accept responsibility for the effects of his spending binge and regulatory regime that’s made the U.S. dependent on foreign energy and strained supply chains to the point of breaking.

President Biden acknowledged Tuesday that Americans were frustrated with rising costs, an upward climb that has only accelerated as Biden’s time in office drags on. “I can taste it,” Biden said, bizarrely, of Americans’ discontent. 

…President Biden also claimed that Republicans want to raise taxes on Americans while lowering their incomes, something that President Biden has…already done.

With the latest inflation data showing a red-hot 8.5 percent increase outpacing wage growth, Americans are paying more for everyday goods and services while their real wages are down three percent thanks to Biden’s policies. Biden has both inflicted a tax on all Americans in the form of record-high gas prices and four-decade-high inflation while lowering their real wages.

The current inflation has three major causes–the Biden administration’s war on energy, the Biden administration’s runaway spending, and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Of the three, the last is the least important. A good business man could turn this economy around quickly–cut spending, open up drilling, and put full sanctions on Russia to end the invasion of Ukraine. However, none of these moves are likely from the Biden administration.

 

Pulling Back The Curtain On An Unhealthy Alliance

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On Monday, The Epoch Times reported that a watchdog group called “Open the Books” had discovered that an estimated $350 million in undisclosed royalties were paid to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and hundreds of its scientists, including the agency’s recently departed director, Dr. Francis Collins, and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The article reports:

The first five years, from 2010 to 2014, constitute 40 percent of the total, he said.

“We now know that there are 1,675 scientists that received payments during that period, at least one payment. In fiscal year 2014, for instance, $36 million was paid out and that is on average $21,100 per scientist,” Andrzejewski said.

“We also find that during this period, leadership at NIH was involved in receiving third-party payments. For instance, Francis Collins, the immediate past director of NIH, received 14 payments. Dr. Anthony Fauci received 23 payments and his deputy, Clifford Lane, received eight payments.”

Collins resigned as NIH director in December 2021 after 12 years of leading the world’s largest public health agency. Fauci is the longtime head of NIH’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden. Lane is the deputy director of NIAID, under Fauci.

The top five NIH employees measured in terms of the number of royalty payments that they received while on the government payroll, according to a fact sheet published by Open the Books, include Robert Gallo, National Cancer Institute, 271 payments; Ira Pastan, National Cancer Institute, 250 payments; Mikulas Popovic, National Cancer Institute, 191 payments; Flossie Wong-Staal, National Cancer Institute, 190 payments; and Mangalasseril Sarngadharan, National Cancer Institute, 188 payments.

Only Pastan continues to be employed by NIH, according to Open the Books.

The article concludes:

Open the Books is a Chicago-based nonprofit government watchdog that uses the federal and state freedom of information laws to obtain and then post on the internet trillions of dollars in spending at all levels of government.

The nonprofit filed a federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit seeking documentation of all payments by outside firms to NIH and/or current and former NIH employees.

NIH declined to respond to the FOIA, so Open the Books is taking the agency to court, suing it for noncompliance with the FOIA. Open the Books is represented in federal court in the case by another nonprofit government watchdog, Judicial Watch.

It is not news to anyone that many of the Covid guidelines coming from the National Institute of Health had a very tenuous relationship to science. It would be a good idea to follow the money and see if that money can be cut off as a means of influence.

Putting Legislative Action Back In Congress Where It Belongs

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On Tuesday, Hot Air reported that a federal judge in New Orleans will hear the case regarding Joe Biden’s executive order imposing a moratorium on the sale of new drilling leases to oil and gas companies.

The article quotes the Associated Press:

A federal appeals court in New Orleans hears arguments Tuesday about whether President Joe Biden legally suspended new oil and gas lease sales shortly after taking office because of climate change worries.

The case has not been tried but a federal judge blocked the order, saying only Congress could suspend the sales.

Federal lawyers say the government has broad power to hold, cancel or defer lease sales.

The article reports:

The plaintiffs appear to have a fairly well-developed argument here. The President and the Department of the Interior only have the ability to offer drilling leases because Congress granted them that authority long ago. There is no provision in the existing federal law allowing for the process to be “paused.” In fact, the opposite is true. In a 1987 update to the law, it specifically states that such leases “shall be made available four times per year” in states with eligible federal lands.

In other words, Biden’s executive order not only gummed up the normal process established by Congress, but it may have been a violation of federal law. It’s not as if he has to worry about his own Justice Department trying to prosecute him for this, but the contrast between the claims of the White House and the laws passed by Congress is glaring.

The article concludes:

The only opposition to the new lease sales these days is actually coming from the oil and gas companies themselves. Industry executives are hesitant to expand their current operations for a variety of reasons. For one thing, there is a shortage of workers available to staff up new operations at the moment. Also, inflation impacts the oil and gas industry as much as anyone else. All of the costs associated with putting up a rig and starting to drill have risen. If the price of oil suddenly starts to crater again when production increases, they could wind up losing money on new drilling sites.

In any event, this entire mess began when Joe Biden took office and decided to keep a campaign promise by shutting down drilling on federal land. The predictable results have been damaging across the board and the President is very late to the party in terms of making a course correction now.

We were energy independent when President Biden took office. We need to be there again.

The Unmentioned Cost Of Green Energy

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On April 25th, a website called phys.org posted an article titled, “Analyzing bird population declines due to renewable power sources in California.”

The article notes:

A team of researchers affiliated with a large number of institutions in the U.S. has attempted to determine the vulnerability of bird populations to alternative energy production. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes studying the impact on bird populations in California.

While touted as , are not always Earth friendly. Production of solar panels, for example, results in pollution emitted into the environment. More widely known are the adverse impacts of wind and solar farms on animals, particularly birds. Birds can be killed when they try to fly through the rotating blades of wind turbines and they can die from overheating when they fly over large solar farms. They can also die due to displacement from their natural environment. In this new effort, the researchers veered from simply counting the number of birds that are killed by alternative power sources and looked instead to gauge the impact of the combined toll that alternative power plants are taking on populations of vulnerable bird species in California.

The article concludes:

The researchers found that of the 23 species they studied, 11 experienced declines of at least 20% due to exposure to alternative plants. They also found evidence of dangers to several populations due to harm done to migration networks, threats that go far beyond the location of plants.

As I have said many times before, more research is needed before we totally buy into the concept of green energy. It would also be helpful if the government got uninvolved in the quest for green energy and let the free market run free. In a sense, we are in a search for the perpetual motion machine. It may actually exist if fueled by wind or sunlight, but we haven’t found it yet, and the government should not push us into unproven technology.

When Medicine Became About Money

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On April 29th, The Wall Street Journal reported that Pfizer’s Covid-19 pill has failed its latest test.

The article reports:

The Covid-19 pill from Pfizer Inc. failed to prevent symptomatic infections in adults who had been exposed to the pandemic virus, a late-stage study found.

Pfizer said Friday that the drug, named Paxlovid, failed the study’s main objective of meaningfully reducing the risk of confirmed and symptomatic Covid-19 infections in adults who were exposed to the virus by someone in their household.

Paxlovid was cleared for use in December by U.S. health regulators to treat people 12 years and older early in the course of their disease who are at high risk of developing severe Covid-19.

A website called uncoverdc.com reported the following:

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a bill on Apr. 22, 2022, allowing Ivermectin to be dispensed without a prescription. The new law states, “a pharmacist, in good faith, may provide Ivermectin to a patient who is eighteen (18) years of age or older pursuant to a valid collaborative pharmacy practice agreement containing a non-patient-specific prescriptive order and standardized procedures developed and executed by one (1) or more authorized prescribers.” 

Introduced by Sen. Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains) on Jan. 31, Senate Bill 2188 was co-sponsored by Sen. Rusty Crowe (R-Johnson City). The amended version of the bill signed by Gov. Lee will create a standard procedure for pharmacists to easily dispense Ivermectin to patients while protecting a pharmacist or doctor from being held liable for doing so. 

The article includes the following chart:

Ivermectin can cost up to $4 a day. As of April 2022, the cost of the Paxlovid  treatment costs $530. I think it’s time to take a really good look at big pharma and its relationship to the FDA and related organizations. American medicine has prioritized profit over patient treatment and that needs to change.

The Real Numbers On How Americans Are Doing Economically

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On Saturday, The Conservative Review reported that wage growth for Americans is falling behind the rate of inflation.

The article reports:

The average hourly earnings for fall employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by only 0.3% in April. This is lower than what was expected by economists, and according to data released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this past Friday, nominal earnings have increased 5.5% on an annual basis.

This earnings growth rate is far below the rate of inflation. Although April’s inflation numbers are not yet available, the Consumer Price Index grew by 8.5% in the year ending in March.

Real earnings appear to be falling by multiple percentage points.

The article notes:

Furman’s (Jason Furman, the chairman of former President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers) analysis presented an estimate of wage growth that adjusted for the fact that recently released hourly earnings figures released Friday are affected by hiring practices in the current workforce. For instance, wages might be artificially lowered if more low-income workers are hired back within a given month.

Essentially what this means is that pay rates are not growing fast enough to keep up with the rising costs of daily essentials and other expenses like gas, groceries, and rent.

Falling real wages help explain why voters continue to give President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris poor ratings on their handling of the economy.

The middle class is being negatively impacted under the Biden administration. During the Trump administration the middle class saw increases in wages and upward mobility. Under the Biden administration, the middle class is struggling to hold its own.

In April, the Workforce Participation Rate dropped to 62.2 from 62.4 in March. That indicates that few Americans are in the work force. The highest Workforce Participation Rate in recent history was in February 2020, when it hit 63.4.

Some Democrats Support American Energy

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On Thursday, The Daily Caller posted an article about some House of Representatives Democrats who are supporting a move back to American energy independence.

The article reports:

A group of House Democrats wrote to President Joe Biden Wednesday urging him to boost energy production by unveiling an offshore drilling plan.

The four Democrats — Texas Reps. Vicente Gonzalez, Sylvia Garcia, Henry Cuellar and Lizzie Fletcher — said the Ukraine crisis has proven the need for domestic oil and gas production to ensure the U.S. isn’t reliant on hostile foreign powers, according to the letter. They urged Biden to make progress on a new five-year offshore leasing plan to replace the current one that is set to expire in late June.

“The energy crisis in Europe demonstrates the vital national security benefits of robust domestic production and the consequences of relying on foreign nations to satisfy our energy needs,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “One important action your administration can take to ensure American energy independence is to publish a new Five-Year Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Plan.”

The Biden administration has dragged its feet on the replacement plan which the Department of the Interior (DOI) is mandated to issue under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act of 1953. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said there is still a “significant amount of work” to do before the administration can publish the plan and begin the lengthy public feedback process, during an April 28 hearing with the House Appropriations Committee.

Actually, I think it would be better just to open up drilling on land and continue construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, but this is at least a step in the right direction. Offshore drilling does occasionally have accidents, but is generally safe. On land drilling seems to be less risky. The one thing to remember as the Biden administration increases our dependence on foreign oil is that oil from America is generally obtained in a manner more environmentally friendly than the oil from some of the countries we are importing oil from. We were energy independent under President Trump. It would be nice to return there.

Questionable Characters Involved In January 6th

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On Friday, The Epoch Times posted an article about a suspected entrapment operation against the Oath Keepers on January 6th. Please follow the link to read the entire article. I will post a few highlights.

The article reports:

Defense attorneys are seeking to identify and investigate 80 suspicious actors and material witnesses, some of whom allegedly ran an entrapment operation against the Oath Keepers on January 6, 2021, and committed crimes including the removal of security fencing, breaching police lines, attacking officers, and inciting crowds to storm into the Capitol.

In a motion (pdf) and supplement (pdf) filed after 11 p.m. on May 5 in federal court in Washington, attorney Brad Geyer listed 80 people, some of whom he said could be government agents or provocateurs. The people are seen on video operating in a coordinated fashion across the Capitol grounds on January 6, the attorney alleged.

Geyer’s suggestion of an entrapment scheme will resonate with dozens of January 6 defense attorneys, coming shortly after two men were acquitted of an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). There was a hung jury on charges against two other defendants. The jury in that case was allowed to consider FBI entrapment as a defense.

Geyer, who represents Oath Keepers defendant Kenneth Harrelson, is seeking a court order from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta compelling federal prosecutors to help identify the individuals and disclose whether they were working for law enforcement or any government agency on January 6. Geyer wrote that the information is exculpatory, which compels the government to produce it. Other Oath Keepers defendants are expected to join in the motion.

…The towering Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda on the east side of the U.S. Capitol are secured by magnetic locks that can only be opened from the inside by using a security code controlled by Capitol Police, Moseley wrote in an eight-page memo in January.

The two inner doors are secured by magnetic locks and cannot be opened from the outside. Twice within an hour on January 6, suspicious actors opened the inner doors from inside the Rotunda, surveillance video shows.

According to Geyer’s filing, a large number of suspicious actors controlled the scene directly in front of the Columbus Doors after the giant doors were opened. They chased away regular protesters with pepper spray and moved other actors into place. The Oath Keepers, each of whom was shadowed by at least one suspicious actor, were positioned and coaxed toward the entrance.

Six to eight suspicious actors attacked police with mace in preparation to breach the entrance, Geyer wrote.

“The dynamic of the crowd makes this almost invisible or fleeting to almost all publicly available camera angles, so most people in the crowd could not have known these chemical assaults occurred and certainly no one could have known who was standing on the steps which is where the Oath Keepers were positioned at exactly this moment.”

The net effect is that the Oath Keepers, who had come up the east stairs, were swept into the Capitol with the group of suspicious actors, the document alleged. The actors attacked police, breached the doors, and led a crowd inside the Rotunda.

The article concludes:

The court filing will bring fresh attention to the issue of provocateurs at the U.S. Capitol. Epps, a former Oath Keepers member from Arizona, denies he was working as a government informant on Jan. 5 and 6.

Federal prosecutors announced earlier this year they would disclose more information about Epps, whose photo was removed from the FBI’s Jan. 6 most-wanted list. He has not been arrested or charged, despite urging crowds to enter the Capitol and being present when police lines were breached by protesters.

Some of the suspicious actors on Geyer’s list were also seen in the hallway outside the Speaker’s Lobby where Ashli Babbitt was shot at 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 6. There are a number of other unidentified individuals who stood near Babbitt before she tried to climb out of the hallway and was shot and killed by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.

Three witnesses to the Babbitt shooting were removed from the FBI’s most-wanted list in April 2021 without explanation. Those men have not been identified or charged.

After looking at the available video and realizing how much of the video was kept back for so long, I can’t help but wonder if this was an undercover government operation to change a peaceful protest into something that would begin to break political opposition to what was to come. The unpeaceful protest did prevent those who questioned that integrity of the 2020 election from being heard, and I believe that was its purpose.

A New Level Of Insanity

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On Saturday, WattsUpWithThat posted an article explaining how cancer treatments contribute to global warming.

The article notes:

Operating rooms are a massive source of greenhouse gas production for hospitals, representing 70% of their waste and generating three to six times as much carbon as the rest of health systems.

Cancer care is an obvious target for greener efforts within surgery, Berlin notes, because it often involves intense levels of care over a short period of time.

Plus, minimally invasive surgeries that require a lot of energy, including robotic-assisted operations, have become common treatments for cancers ranging from colorectal and uterine cancer to head and neck cancer. A robotic-assisted hysterectomy, for example, produces as much carbon as driving more than 2,200 miles in a car — the equivalent of a road trip from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Los Angeles.

“If we can lower our greenhouse gas output, we have a chance to extend the lifespan of our patients and expand access to timely care,” Agbafe said. “And we think it’s really important that the surgical community is proactive at being at that table.”

…Some sustainability shifts may come even sooner at Michigan Medicine.

For instance, the Department of Anesthesiology recently launched the Green Anesthesia Initiative, or GAIA for short. Its mission: become more environmentally conscious about the types and rates of anesthesia its providers use, another area Agbafe and Berlin say is ripe for improvement.

“This is a topic of fairly intense discussion right now in the field, and I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” said George Mashour, M.D., Ph.D., the chair of the Department of Anesthesiology and the Robert B. Sweet Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Michigan Medical School. “Unlike other industries, I don’t think that we require massive disruption in order to make progress because, fortunately, we have options.”

Several inhaled gases regularly used for anesthesia are A-list offenders when it comes to greenhouse gas production. Nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, is a greenhouse gas, a direct ozone depleter and does not dissipate from the atmosphere for more than a century after it’s produced.

However, the inhaled anesthetic sevoflurane has much less of an environmental impact than nitrous oxide and other common inhaled agents, so Mashour says it would be a good alternative.

“The overall goal is to shift away from some of these egregious culprits and start making better choices about which drug we use and then also how we use it,” Mashour said.

Do we really want the climate police controlling the medical profession? This could be very bad very quickly.

When Justice Depends On Your Political Views

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On Wednesday, comedian Dave Chappelle was attacked on stage during his Hollywood Bowl concert. Obviously there were thousands of witnesses. The attacker used a knife hidden inside a gun.

On Thursday, The U. K. Daily Mail reported the following:

LA’s woke DA George Gascon will not pursue felony charges against the attacker who stormed Dave Chappelle’s Hollywood Bowl concert with a bayonet, reducing the charges to misdemeanor instead. 

Isaiah Lee, 23, ran on stage at the show on Wednesday yielding the knife that was hidden inside a gun.  Chappelle, 48, was able to sidestep him and was unharmed. The attacker was then arrested at the scene, and taken to hospital with a broken arm. 

There were immediate questions over security at the event and how the man could have smuggled in the weapon. 

If the attack had been successful and the comedian killed, would it still be a misdemeanor?

The article notes:

But Gascon’s office – which is famously in favor of low-or-no-cash-bonds – is not pursuing the most serious line of punishment. 

Instead, they have referred the case to the LA City Attorney Mike Feuer,  recommending a misdemeanor charge because ‘the evidence as presented did not constitute felony conduct,’ according to ABC.

It means Lee, who is currently being held on a $30,000 bond for felony assault with a deadly weapon, may soon walk free. It’s unclear when he is next due in court. 

The article also includes a chart showing the impact of the changes District Attorney Gascon’s criminal policies have had on crime this year:

Maybe it’s time to rethink the District Attorney’s policies.

Losing Civility Courtesy Of The White House

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On Thursday, The Daily Wire reported the following:

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that there was no “official U.S. Government position” on where protesters chose to gather, even if that meant they were publishing the home addresses of sitting Supreme Court justices.

After congratulating Psaki’s incoming replacement Karine Jean-Pierre on being named President Joe Biden’s next press secretary, Fox News’ Peter Doocy turned to the topic of planned protests over the recently leaked early opinion draft indicating that the Supreme Court could be poised to overturn landmark abortion cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The article reports the following dialog:

“Not about yesterday, just about moving forward — these activists posted a map with the home addresses of the Supreme Court justices,” Doocy said. “Is that the kind of thing this president wants to help your side make their point?”

“Look, I think the president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document,” Psaki replied, saying again that the White House supported peaceful protest.

“He doesn’t care if they’re protesting outside the Supreme Court or outside someone’s private residence?” Doocy asked.

“I don’t have an official U.S. Government position on where people protest,” Psaki replied. “I want it — we want it of course to be peaceful … I think we shouldn’t lose the point here, the reason people are protesting is because women across the country are worried about their fundamental rights that have been law for 50 years. Their rights to make choices about their own bodies and their own health care are at risk. That’s why people are protesting — they’re unhappy, they’re scared.”

When does protesting become harassment? How much violence is the political left willing to tolerate to move their agenda forward (think riots of the summer of 2020)? When the political left disrupted the Senate during the Kavanaugh hearings, how is that different from January 6th? Is anyone protecting the rights of American citizens simply trying to do their jobs?

Remote Learning Is An Oxymoron

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On Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the impact the closing down of our schools during Covid had on our children.

The article reports:

Remote learning had an even worse effect on U.S. students’ education than was previously known, new research shows.

K-12 students who attended school from home in the 2020-2021 school year lost 50 percent of their typical math curriculum learning, according to a Harvard study first reported by the New York Times. Even students who went back to school in fall 2020 lost 20 percent of their typical math curriculum learning due to pandemic disruptions in the spring. The learning disparities were the worst for poor, black, and Latino students, a gap that one of the study’s authors called “the largest increase in educational inequity in a generation.”

The schools were closed by the Teachers’ Unions. Many teachers were afraid of catching Covid from their students (a largely unfounded fear, but understandable at the beginning of the Covid crisis), and many teachers simply enjoyed teaching remotely from wherever they chose to be.  After scientists realized that children were neither major spreaders of the virus and generally not at high risk from complications from the virus, the schools should have reopened, but not all of them did.

The article notes:

“It’s pretty clear that remote school was not good for learning,” Emily Oster, a Brown University economist and the coauthor of a similar study, told the Times. Oster was one of the first to sound the alarm about the danger of school closures. In October 2020, she wrote a piece for the Atlantic, “Schools Aren’t Superspreaders,” which argued the risk of COVID spread in schools was overblown.

Children are at low risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19. In-school transmission is also “extremely rare,” according to a 2021 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“In places where schools reopened that summer and fall, the spread of COVID was not noticeably worse than in places where schools remained closed,” the Times‘s David Leonhardt wrote on Thursday. “Schools also reopened in parts of Europe without seeming to spark outbreaks.”

The article concludes:

Students who suffered the greatest learning losses were often in districts that succumbed to powerful teachers’ unions and Democratic officials who fought to keep schools closed. Schools in the poorest areas on average stayed remote five weeks longer than affluent areas.

As late as March this year, Chicago Public Schools, in coordination with its teachers’ union, was implementing at-home learning periods for classes after COVID exposures. Additionally, any school could flip to remote learning provided at least 30 percent of teachers were absent for at least two days or at least 40 percent of students were told to quarantine by the city’s health department.

Let’s hope that the damage done to the ‘children of Covid’ can be undone by the time they reach high school.