Tag Archives: Hot Air

Cheating To Get A Lower Mortgage Rate

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On Wednesday, Hot Air reported that the Department of Justice was opening an investigation into Congressman Adam Schiff for potential mortgage fraud.

The article reports:

Democrats created the lawfare model. Adam Schiff enthusiastically promoted it. Now the model has turned on them, and on Schiff specifically.

According to Fox News host Laura Ingraham, the Department of Justice has opened a criminal probe into potential mortgage fraud involving Schiff. The allegations have floated for months, similar to those surrounding New York Attorney General Letitia James, that Schiff claimed primary residency in Maryland for personal gain while representing California in Congress:

The article quotes msn:

The investigation comes a month after a story broke about the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) sending a criminal referral to the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleging that Schiff, in multiple instances, falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favorable loan terms.

In a 2011 affidavit signed by the then California congressman, Schiff certified that a property in Montgomery County, Maryland is his primary residence.

Schiff also owns a condominium in Burbank, California, which he has also claimed as his primary residence as recently as 2023, during his campaign for Senate.

The article notes:

Beege wrote about this last month, so be sure to click through and read the background on the case. This doesn’t just involve potential mortgage fraud, by the way, but could also involve tax fraud in either California or Maryland. States offer lower property tax rates for primary residences (homesteads) in exchange for the benefits communities receive when owners occupy their own properties. If Schiff claimed and received homestead benefits in both states at the same time, both states could file civil or criminal claims of tax fraud. 

Neither California nor Maryland will be likely to do that — to a Democrat, anyway. But the possibility still exists.

It is quite possible that the statute of limitations has run out as Schiff changed the Maryland property to a secondary residence in 2020, but that doesn’t change the fact that he broke the law.

What Is Journalistic Responsibility?

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Just for the record, I don’t consider myself a journalist. I am a blogger. My goal is to point out stories that the mainstream media might not have carried and to shine light on shenanigans in the press and elsewhere.

Recently,  The New York Times posted a very misleading article about children starving in Gaza. Anyone who has investigated this claim understands that Hamas holds food hostage (as well as people). The humanitarian aid that comes into Gaza is sold at exorbitant prices to raise money to buy weapons. That is documented in various places. That is why Israel has taken to doing food drops–in an effort to get food directly to the people. There was a picture included in The New York Times article of a child who was obviously suffering from malnutrition. It turns out that the child shown has a genetic health problem that is causing the malnutrition.

On Monday, Hot Air reported:

The New York Times ran a photo on its front page that was a visual lie. 

The point of that lie was to back the claims made in their article that Israel was intentionally starving Gazan children, but apparently, there were no photos available that would back the claims made in their story. 

No doubt they believed the story that their reporters were feeding them, not that any reporter who was not a Hamas toady would dare set foot in Gaza–but in the circular logic of the Times they assumed that nothing printed in their paper could be false.

We know that they knew the photo was false because there are internal Times emails that show they did. In fact, the editors had rejected a different photo because they knew that printing a photo of a child suffering from a genetic disease did not back their story, and demanded it be replaced.

…Uh, maybe they would use a photo like that because there IS a dearth of photos of otherwise healthy children dying of starvation. Did they consider that?

Of course not.

We already know that The New York Times employs a reporter who openly expresses his admiration for Hitler and defends him against accusations of bias. Nazis can be fair, too, you know. His work is published in the Times, so it must be true.

As I said, I am not a journalist, but it seems to me that even if they had only put a note on the picture that said ‘file footage’ at least that would have been partially honest. When are they going to post the video of the hostage being forced to dig his own grave?

Buyers’ Remorse

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On Friday, Hot Air posted an article about the city fathers of Nantucket’s regret at allowing the developers of the Vineyard Wind project to construct a large-scale offshore wind farm 15 miles from the island town.

The article reports:

The Nantucket City Council and Nantucket residents are suffering from buyer’s remorse, like everybody who decided to buy a Yugo based on the marketing that it was a great car at an amazing price. 

We told you so. It’s as if liberals see common sense and choose to do the opposite of what it tells them. No amount of sage advice will dissuade them because some “expert” with dollar signs in their eyes can talk them into anything as long as they whisper magic words like “renewable energy.”

The article includes a quote from The Washington Free Beacon:

If they could go back in time, officials in Nantucket, Massachusetts, wouldn’t sign the legal agreement that helped bring the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm 15 miles from the island town’s picturesque shoreline.

That was the common sentiment expressed during a Nantucket select board meeting this week about the August 2020 community benefit agreement the town entered into with developers of the Vineyard Wind project, which is currently under construction. “These wind turbines are bigger, brighter, and much more impactful than we ever thought—and not to mention the environmental hazards from failures,” said Dawn Hill, the chairwoman of the select board, which serves as the town’s executive body.

The agreement represented Nantucket’s formal endorsement of the project and satisfied Vineyard Wind’s legal responsibility to consult with the town. Because Nantucket is a federally designated national historic district, regulators and developers must consult with the town on new projects that may threaten its protected status.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” added Greg Werkheiser, an attorney who represents Nantucket. “Every lawyer in the world wishes 5 or 10 years into a negotiated contract that they could take the knowledge they have, fly back in time, and renegotiate—but communities make the choices they have with the information they have at the time.”

North Carolina take note! There is a group pushing for wind farms off the North Carolina coast.

Remember this event:

Tensions between Nantucket and Vineyard Wind reached a boiling point in July 2024 after a football field-sized blade on one of its wind towers fell apart during construction, sending 50 tons of fiberglass and industrial-grade foam into the ocean, forcing the island’s beaches to close. Project developers waited until debris washed ashore three days following the failure before they informed Nantucket about the incident, sparking fury from officials, businesses, and residents.

In the 12 months since the blade failure, the developers haven’t provided the town with information about changes to the construction timeline or the progress of environmental reviews related to the blade failure. As of this week, Vineyard Wind’s leadership remains in “hiding,” according to Mohr. Alas, Vineyard Wind issued its most recent press release in October, and its only public update this year appears to have come during an earnings call held last week by one of its developers, the Spain-based energy firm Iberdrola.

“They were not uninformed. Local groups were informing them five years ago that they should not do this deal and gave them all the reasons why they now regret it,” said Dave Stevenson, the director of the Center for Energy Competitiveness at the right-leaning Caesar Rodney Institute. “The folks in the town didn’t fight, they didn’t look at all the negatives, they just didn’t listen.”

Don’t let that happen here!

Are We Willing To Go Back To The Nineteenth Century?

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about several decisions by various international courts. The combined affect of these decisions is to make fossil fuels illegal. Hang on to your gas stove!

The article reports:

It’s a piece in The New York Times–for him, it was the international version with a different headline–that argues that several decisions by various international courts amount to outlawing the extraction and use of fossil fuels.

It’s hard to argue with their conclusion because I am not an international lawyer, but let’s assume that the claim is true, as it appears to be on its face.

Rulings by the International Court of Justice, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea all suggest that the climate harms resulting from the burning of fossil fuels violate international law.

The New York Times article states:

The I.C.J.’s unanimous opinion reinforced these conclusions and broadened their reach, stating that countries must protect citizens from the “urgent and existential threat” of climate change. When a country fails to curb greenhouse gas emissions — whether by producing or consuming fossil fuels, approving new exploration to find them or subsidizing the industry — it may be held liable for “an internationally wrongful act,” the court’s 15 judges said.

This makes it much harder for any government or company to say that rules don’t apply to them or they don’t have to act. Read together, these three landmark legal rulings leave no doubt that continuing fossil fuel production and use, let alone expanding it, violates the law. It is a cease-and-desist notice to fossil fuel producers.

This isn’t the dumbest thing I have ever heard, but it’s close.

Never forget:

On March 30, 2016, I posted the following (here):

Have doubts? Then listen to the words of former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer:

“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.

So what is the goal of environmental policy?

“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.

Whenever you see someone claiming global governance and talking about climate change, consider the above quote.

Meanwhile, follow the link above to read the entire article at Hot Air.

Green Acres, Here We Come!

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You might have to be over a certain age to understand that headline.

On Friday, Hot Air posted an article detailing some changes that are coming to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). A common-sense decision has been made that will be both good and bad news for the people who work in the agency.

The article reports:

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced this morning that she is reducing the Washington D.C. area workforce by more than half, and hopefully not through a reduction in force. Sec Rollins hopes to relocate as many current employees who are willing to do so to five different hubs across the country. They’ll be landing in states and cities where agriculture happens. That puts the USDA where the farmers are and saves the government a ton of money in expenses for employee overhead at the same time.

Theoretically, this will allow those in the Department to be able to hear the concerns of farmers–not bureaucrats and lobbyists.

The article notes:

…But several USDA staffers told POLITICO that the move will further hurt morale.

“This administration [isn’t] interested in supporting staff or even really in the jobs we do,” said one employee granted anonymity in order to speak publicly without fear of repercussions. “If they cared about either of those things, if they cared about serving farmers and ranchers, they wouldn’t have taken away all the staff, tools, and resources we use to serve them.”

A second employee, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, warned that relocating staff out of the Washington area would make oversight more difficult.

“[This] is just going to create an inner circle of powerful employees with access to people in high places and send everyone else out to ‘hubs,’” they said. “They are concentrating power and want fewer witnesses to what they are doing.”

The second employee suggested that moving would be costly for employees and for USDA, and it could force some workers to make the difficult choice to quit.

Swamp creatures enjoy the swamp. What they don’t seem to understand is that their cost of living is about to drop like a rock, their commute is going to be much easier, and their surroundings much more enjoyable. There is also the fact that the employees who own a house in the Washington suburbs (if they are able to sell that house) will be able to afford a mansion in middle America.

A Statement That Makes The Deep State Tremble

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The Federal Reserve is a misnamed sketchy operation. There is a book and a YouTube video called “The Creature From Jekyll Island” that explains the dirty tricks involved in the creation of the Federal Reserve and its true purpose. The Federal Reserve is neither federal nor a reserve. Auditing the fed is a really good idea that the fed has avoided for years.

On Monday, Hot Air posted an article quoting CNBC:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday suggested a review of the Federal Reserve that would go beyond the current controversy over building renovations and look at its overall function.

“What we need to do is examine the entire Federal Reserve institution and whether they have been successful,” Bessent said during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “Has the organization succeeded in its mission? If this were the [Federal Aviation Administration] and we were having this many mistakes, we would go back and look at why has this happened.”

The article also quotes Senator Rand Paul:

Dr. Rand Paul (R-KY) has reintroduced the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, famously known as “Audit the Fed” legislation to require a full audit of the Federal Reserve’s operations and increase congressional oversight of its decision-making. In conjunction with the bill’s reintroduction, Senator Paul also released the latest edition of his Waste Report, which exposed the Federal Reserve’s $600 million cost overrun on renovations to its Washington, D.C. headquarters—now projected to cost taxpayers $2.5 billion in total. The report underscores the lack of transparency and accountability at the Fed, which remains exempt from a full audit by Congress or the Government Accountability Office.

“No institution holds more power over the future of the American economy and the value of our savings than the Federal Reserve,” said Dr. Paul. “It’s long past time for Congress to stop shirking its duty and hold the Federal Reserve accountable.”

“It is Congress’ duty to hold the Fed accountable,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). “For too long, the Federal Reserve has operated behind closed doors while making decisions that impact the American economy. Throughout my service in Congress, I have worked to audit the Fed, and this legislation is necessary to shine a light on the Fed’s operations and provide transparency to Congress and American taxpayers.”

The year 1913 was a horrible year for the Democratic Republic of America. That year gave us the federal income tax, the federal reserve, and the direct election of U.S. Senators. All three of those things need to go away.

A Definite Step In The Right Direction

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On Thursday, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about Health and Human Services using the rule-making process to prevent the federal government from directly funding sex-altering procedures on minors. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), National Review currently fund these procedures.

The article quotes The National Review:

The Department of Health and Human Services will soon begin the rule-making process to prohibit the federal government from directly funding sex-trait modifications for minors through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), National Review has learned.

The White House is in “the final stage of review for a new rule that would make it a condition of hospitals participating in Medicare or Medicaid that they not provide sex trait modifications to minors,” according to an administration official. The prohibition will apply to hospitals that provide puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender-transition surgeries to minors.

The groundbreaking decision by the White House to use the power of the executive to ban federally funded gender-transition services for minors follows an unsuccessful attempt by congressional Republicans to ban federal funding for such practices through the budget reconciliation process. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that the legislative language included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” did not clear the Byrd rule, prompting GOP lawmakers to spike the language from the final bill that passed earlier this month.

The article explains the significance of using the rules process for this item:

How do we know this will happen? Using the rules process practically ensures it. Most administrations make the mistake of skipping over these steps in haste to make their point, but courts take the Administrative Procedure Act very seriously. An executive order does not overcome the APA in matters such as these. The use of the rulemaking process will slow this down, but it will also ensure that the changes will be legally bulletproof, or as bulletproof as activist district courts allow them to be. 

The article concludes:

…If providers are defrauding Medicare and Medicaid to get paid directly for pediatric sex-change therapies, their CMS funding can stop immediately. HHS has the authority to enforce its rules by suspending or excluding providers engaged in fraud from federal repayments, and the DoJ can and often does take up those cases on a criminal basis as well. 

The best part of this will be the rethinking it will require. The UK has already cut its support for pediatric sex-change therapies after the Cass Review determined that puberty blockers did nothing to address pediatric gender dysphoria while essentially sterilizing children. Another major study on the issue here in the US got suppressed last year for allegedly coming to the same conclusion. Both HHS and the DoJ are already investigating several cases of detransitioners who claim now to have gotten pressured into life-changing surgeries and therapies by providers who also receive CMS funding.

HHS sent a warning signal in May over the lack of sound scientific or medical evidence for pediatric sex-change therapies. This is just the next shoe dropping on radicalized providers pushing fad medicine and maiming children for virtue signaling. It won’t be the last. 

This is child abuse and needs to be stopped. Cutting off the federal funding is a good first step in that direction.

Why I Would Never Retire In Rhode Island

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Rhode Island is a beautiful state. My husband was stationed there in the late 1960’s, and I fell in love with the state. However, I would never retire there. Partially because of the taxes, but more importantly because of some of the insanity of the state’ politics.

On Wednesday, David Strom at Hot Air reported:

ICE apprehended a known MS 13 gang member with a history of trafficking fentanyl, and Rhode Island politicians exploded in rage that they did so.

The perp, Ivan Rene Mendoza-Meza, had benefited from the catch-and-release policies that are so prevalent these days–after all, you wouldn’t want ICE to be able to deport dangerous criminals, right?–so ICE was forced to track him down and apprehend him.

They did, and all hell broke loose. Providence politicians insanely held a press conference vowing to track down any evidence that Providence police might be involved, and promised to get to the bottom of this potential scandal.

The last thing you want is the police helping arrest a known gang member who is selling poison to the public. It’s Nazism to do that!

Ensuring that he couldn’t get outflanked on the left, a Rhode Island State Representative (State Representative Enrique Sanchez of Providence HD-9) went on a crusade (is it racist to say “crusade?”) against ICE. They were oppressing a “neighbor” of his constituents. They “kidnapped” him! 

The article concludes:

It’s not only striking that these politicians would hop in front of the cameras to express outrage that a violent criminal who poisons children was arrested, but that they can be certain that their constituents will applaud them for doing so.

This is the power of Critical Theory brainwashing.

Rhode Island is a beautiful state in need of some serous reforming to keep its children and its citizens safe.

This Was Predictable

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On Friday, Hot Air posted an article about the rebuilding of the Pacific Palisades area in California that was destroyed by fire in January of this year. There is a strong possibility that rebuilding the areas as it was will never take place.

The article reports:

…But the process is still slow. As of midday July 1, 2025, the LA County Permitting Progress Dashboard showed 890 rebuild applications in the Eaton Fire area, but only 44 building permits have been issued, taking an average turnaround of about 10 weeks to get through the process.

And speed matters. A survey of fire victims found that the longer it takes to rebuild, the more likely it is people won’t move back.

“So even folks that fully intend to move back today, if this process, either through permitting or financing or insurance, takes more than three years, the percentage of people that want to move back drops to like 50%,” Kawahara says.

The article notes the government’s desire to change the character of the neighborhood:

Six months after the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires, California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled $101 million in funding Tuesday for “multifamily low-income housing development” that will “contribute to a more equitable and resilient Los Angeles.” The priority is for “geographic proximity to the fire perimeters of the Eaton, Hughes, and Palisades fires.” 

Earlier this year, The Center Square broke news that California state law and a local Los Angeles ordinance require fire-destroyed rent-protected housing — which includes all apartments in the city built before October 1978 — be replaced with low-income housing. Because the affordability requirements use county-level income data, not more local incomes, definitions for “low” and “very low” income housing reflect much lower incomes than the norm for the affluent Palisades community. 

“Thousands of families – from Pacific Palisades to Altadena to Malibu – are still displaced, and we owe it to them to help,” said Newsom in a statement. “The funding we’re announcing today will accelerate the development of affordable multifamily rental housing so that those rebuilding their lives after this tragedy have access to a safe, affordable place to come home to.”  

And some people wonder why Californians are moving out of the state. I believe that the property rights of the homeowners in Pacific Palisades are not being honored. That does not bode well for the economic success of the state. In 2010, I wrote an article discussing the correlation between property rights and prosperity (article here). Ignoring that relationship is not a good policy for any state or federal government.

Sore Losers Can Be Dangerous

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On Tuesday, David Strom at Hot Air posted an article detailing some of the plans of the deep state. We are now at the point where the deep state is not only admitting that it is real, it is telling us its plans.

The article reports:

The irony is thick, but these federal employees–some former, some current–have told NOTUS (News of the United States) that they are turning their color revolution skills to taking down the President of the United States.

The following is from NOTUS:

“Take it from those of us who worked in authoritarian countries: We’ve become one,” said a currently employed federal official, who spoke to NOTUS on condition of anonymity. “They were so quick to disband AID, the group that supposedly instigates color revolutions. But they’ve done a very foolish thing. You just released a bunch of well-trained individuals into your population. If you kept our offices going and had us play solitaire in the office, it might have been safer to keep your regime.”

The former officials tell NOTUS they’re holding workshops on a tactic called “noncooperation.” They’re building a network of government workers willing to engage in even minor acts of rebellion in the office. And they’re planting the seeds of what they hope could become a nationwide general strike.

Some in the informal network of Trump opponents are sharing an old CIA pamphlet with allies who still work in the government: It’s called “Simple Sabotage.”

They wanted to simply have their offices continue even if they sat there and played solitaire all day. They doesn’t sound like any respect for sound fiscal policy in America.

If they truly believe that we have become an authoritarian country, why are they choosing to ignore the results of the last election? It seems to me that honest elections (which I believe we had) would be the actual antidote to authoritarianism and that refusing to cooperate with the results of that election would be moving toward authoritarianism. Evidently these people think that regardless of the election, they should be in charge, and they are willing to make trouble to bring that about. I think they belong in jail.

A Prelude To The End Of The War?

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On Thursday, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about the rapid changes happening in the war in Gaza. Hamas is in an awkward position now that a lot of the leadership in Iran has been removed. It is not clear how much funding Hamas continues to get from Iran. Evidently other countries in the Middle East have taken note of the recent actions against Iran.

The article reports:

Symbolic? Maybe, maybe not. If true, Hamas leaders didn’t just get a soft ultimatum from Donald Trump this week. 

Yesterday, Trump warned Hamas that the final deal for a cease-fire in Gaza was on the table, and that all other options would get “MUCH WORSE.” Qatar may have decided to raise the stakes to something more personal for Hamas’ billionaire clique in Doha:

Doha-based senior Hamas leaders have been told to lay down their arms as part of the efforts to reach a ceasefire deal with Israel, according to a Thursday morning report from The Times newspaper. …

The Times stated that those told to lay down their weapons were “the most senior Hamas leaders outside Gaza,  including the lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya and other key figures.”

One of the key figures reportedly included Hamas political ­bureau member Zaher Jabareen, “a founder of the group’s military wing in the West Bank.”

An additional bureau member told to lay down weapons was Muhammad Ismail Darwish, who had “met the leaders of Iran and Turkey this year while shuttling between Cairo and Doha for indirect negotiations with Israel,” the report said.

The Times credits this as a “symbolic reflection of Hamas’ interest in the ceasefire proposal,” but that doesn’t make much sense. If Hamas wanted to send that kind of signal, their Qatar contingent would have voluntarily and unilaterally disarmed. They wouldn’t have needed the Qataris to order them to disarm.

That makes this sound like a much different kind of signal. The Qataris are likely as tired of playing the Hamas Hokey Pokey as everyone else, for one thing, while their leadership fattens up on “aid” meant for Palestinians. However, it may mean more than that, especially after the strike on Fordow by Trump and the B-2 bombers. That didn’t just send a signal to Tehran, but to Doha as well — and the rocket fire on Qatar afterward probably didn’t help, either.

This is definitely a wait-and-see moment. It is very possible that the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities may have had a larger impact than initially realized.

A Very Good Question

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On Saturday, Legal Insurrection posted the following headline:

If Illegals Aren’t Receiving Federal Medicaid Benefits, Why Are Blue States Suing to Protect Their Data?

The article reports:

Democrats have consistently maintained that while some illegal immigrants receive state-level Medicaid benefits, they do not receive federal Medicaid benefits. If that’s true, then why are Democratic attorneys general from blue states suing the federal government to prevent Medicaid data from being used for immigration enforcement? Are they genuinely concerned about potential violations of privacy laws, or more likely, are they attempting to protect those undocumented immigrants who may, in fact, be enrolled in federal Medicaid programs?

Led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, 20 blue states have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that the Trump administration “violated federal privacy laws when it turned over Medicaid data on millions of enrollees to deportation officials last month.”

Among the plaintiffs in the case are Illinois, New York, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, along with fifteen other states. Defendants include Health and Human Services Department Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The article quotes an article at Hot Air:

HotAir’s David Strom states it plainly:

Democrats are playing a verbal shell game, pointing to federal law to say that Medicaid dollars can’t legally go to illegal aliens, so there is no money to be saved by cutting those funds off. At the same time, they are suing to hide the legal status of recipients to prevent them from facing ICE deportations–in other words, they are illegally spending Medicaid dollars for illegals and want to hide them from the feds.

The narratives don’t have to be consistent, right?

If you were to sit down and analyze what Democrats say to make their arguments on various issues, you would see narrative fails like this all the time. But because the issues are discussed in different contexts, the contradictions don’t stand out to many people.

Viewed from another perspective, if Medicaid benefits for undocumented immigrants are truly only a state issue, then why did this become a matter for the Senate Parliamentarian during consideration of a major federal spending bill? And why was it included in the Senate’s vote-a-rama on Monday, as I discussed here?

As Strom concludes, “The story is always changing to fit the desired result.”

It doesn’t have to make sense. Because they’re Democrats.

Whatever happens with this lawsuit, deportations of illegal criminals will save American taxpayers money.

As Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman once stated, “It’s just obvious you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.”

Changing The Dynamic On Vaccines

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is known to be somewhat skeptical on vaccines–very skeptical on the Covid-19 vaccine. In the end, that may be a good thing for America’s children.

On Thursday, Hot Air posted an article about one possible impact of Kennedy’s tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The article reports:

I have an unusual perspective on RFK Jr. I think that his skeptical approach to the current vaccination schedule will turn out to be a good thing, not because he will enhance skepticism about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, but because it will do the opposite–for safe and effective vaccines.

The current establishment chant is that any and all vaccines are an unalloyed good for everyone, always. To put it mildly, that simply cannot be true. It is a mantra, not a scientific conclusion, and the reason why the mantra is repeated so persistently is that public health officials are so scared that people will mistrust vaccines that they feel the need to force a unified message and brainwash people.

That was made obvious during COVID. You can even go read the transcripts of meetings within the CDC and FDA discussing the pros and cons of the mRNA vaccines, and the officials kept talking about ensuring that all messaging was simplified and unified. No nuance, no discussion, no informed consent. The belief was that keeping people UNinformed was crucial.

That’s why the FDA’s top two vaccine officials eventually bolted–right in the middle of the pandemic. The propaganda being put out was so deceptive that they couldn’t stand behind it.

The article notes:

Between birth and six years old, children are supposed to receive at least 30 different vaccinations, excluding the multiple mRNA COVID-19 shots. What is the likelihood that there are no downsides, side effects, interactions, immune system effects, or other unintended consequences? It’s an interesting question, and one that isn’t really studied in a systematic way. Many of these vaccines are barely tested before being rolled out.

My suspicion is that the safety and effectiveness vary quite a bit among the various vaccines out there, and I am absolutely certain that the vaccine schedule is unlikely to be suboptimal at the very least.

The article explains the upside of Kennedy’s skepticism:

Everybody who is worried that RFK, Jr. is undermining faith in vaccines seems to have missed the fact that people have lost trust in public health officials for very good reasons. We demand that it is the skeptics, not the pro-vaccine fanatics, who examine the evidence and tell us the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Do I assume RFK, Jr. is right about his opinions about vaccines? No. But it’s not like he has ripped all the vaccines off the market–he’s hired good scientists to delve into the evidence and report to all of us what they find. Inform us. I suspect that the answers will differ from vaccine to vaccine, and that each vaccine has different risk and benefit profiles.

I am looking forward to those answers.

Authoritarian?

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On Tuesday, Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about some of the antics of the Biden administration that have been recently exposed. It seems that there were a lot of Americans whose privacy was invaded during the four years of President Biden.

The article reports:

Gavin Newsom and leading Democrats have spent the last few days fulminating about “authoritarianism” by Donald Trump for sending National Guard and Marine units to protect federal law enforcement agents and sites. What will they have to say when they discover that the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice spied on an industrialist supporter of the opposition party?

Oh, wait, Trump didn’t do that. Joe Biden did that. For two years, according to the Wall Street Journal, Merrick Garland and Alejandro Mayorkas surveilled Elon Musk and his contacts to check out “influence.” This seems to have started around the time that Musk bought Twitter and refused to participate in the Biden administration’s Big Tech-Big Government Censorship Complex:

Several U.S. government agencies in 2022 and 2023 tracked foreign nationals coming and going to Elon Musk’s properties, according to people familiar with the matter.

The investigation included the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. It focused on people visiting the tech billionaire, from countries in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, who might have been trying to influence him. Until last week, Musk was one of President Trump’s closest advisers. …

The probe, predating the current Trump administration, highlights concerns about the number of foreign nationals in Musk’s orbit. Musk runs five companies, including SpaceX, with sensitive government contracts, and has had unprecedented access to top government officials.

Not to change the subject, but where was the surveillance (or the consequences under the Logan Act) when former President Obama visited 10 Downing Street in March 2024? (link here)

The article at Hot Air concludes:

This was nothing less than the weaponization of government against the political opponents of Biden Regency. Congress needs to issue subpoenas to everyone in that chain of command to explain the espionage directed at Musk, the timing of when it began, and what they were trying to do with it. House Oversight chair James Comer had better launch that ASAP, and demand testimony under oath from Garland, Mayorkas, and Becerra at the very least. It is an utter disgrace.

Finally, it might remind Elon Musk that while he may have differences with Trump at times, the two of them have far more in common than those differences. That includes political opponents who have no scruples at all about leveraging power to ruin those they see as enemies. 

It would be nice to see some results from these investigations. I am very tired of accusations and proof of wrongdoing followed by no action.

Free Speech Does Not Exist In Britain

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On Tuesday, Hot Air posted an article about a recent court case in Britain.

The article reports:

It’s a verdict that would make the Ayatollah smile. Today, in nominally liberal Britain, a man has been found guilty of a crime after he dared to burn a Koran in public. Hamit Coskun, a Turkish-born asylum seeker, has been convicted of a ‘religiously aggravated public-order offence’ over his – quite literally – incendiary protest outside of the Turkish consulate in London in February, against what he sees as the Islamist turn of Erdogan’s Turkey. If nothing else, Coskun’s stunt has exposed the Islamist-apologist turn of our own United Kingdom.

On paper, Coskun has been convicted of ‘disorderly behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress’, motivated by ‘hostility towards members of a religious group, namely followers of Islam’, contrary to the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Public Order Act 1986. But we all know what that word salad really means in practice, regardless of the judge’s many assurances to the contrary. Coskun has been convicted, and fined £240, for blasphemy. All by a supposedly secular court.

The article also mentions that Hamit Coskun was attacked by two people during his protest–one of whom attacked him with a knife. The article notes, “Remarkably, this is used as proof of his guilt.”

The question that comes to my mind is, “What would have been the penalty for burning a Bible?” Also, how does the logic in this conviction compare to the women who was arrested for silently praying outside an abortion clinic?

It is telling that the most popular boys’ names in the UK for 2023 were Muhammad, Noah, and Oliver. Muhammad has recently overtaken Noah as the top choice for baby boys in England and Wales. England is losing its place as a stronghold of western civilization.

The Consequences Of Being Generous With Someone Else’s Money

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On Friday, Hot Air posted an article about a new minimum wage in Los Angeles.

The article reports:

Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics. The games were awarded to the city back in 2017 and since then it is preparing for the arrival of tens of thousands of visitors. They city was already struggling a bit because of the deadly wildfires which destroyed significant portions of two neighborhoods in January. The quote below is from The New York Times:

No one is suggesting that the Games be postponed or canceled in response to the fires. But there is rising concern that an already difficult endeavor for both Los Angeles, the main host city, and LA2028, the private committee in charge of raising most of the money and running the Games, has become staggeringly complicated.

Mike Bonin, a former City Council member who voted in support of the Olympics when the effort came before the Los Angeles governing body for approval in 2017, said the wildfires posed a “nightmare scenario.”

“It calls into question the city’s ability to deliver the Olympics,” he said in an interview. “This is cause for elected officials to ask themselves the question: Is this something we can handle?”

But there is another wrench in the works concerning hotel workers and the new minimum wage.

NBC Los Angeles reports:

The Los Angeles City Council gave final approval Friday to an ordinance that will increase the minimum wage for Los Angeles hotel and airport workers…

The vote authorized updates to the city’s Living Wage and Hotel Workers Minimum Wage ordinances, which regulate the minimum wage for such workers. Hotel and airport employees would receive $22.50 an hour starting in July under the amendments, followed by an annual $2.50 increase over three years…

Workers are expected to earn $25 an hour beginning July 2026, $27.50 an hour in July 2027 and $30 an hour in July 2028, as well as receive a new $8.35 per hour healthcare payment, which will begin July 2026.

How many hotels will be able to stay in business without serious increases in the price of rooms with the new minimum wage?

The article at Hot Air notes:

And that brings us back to the 2028 Olympics. In a last ditch effort to warn the city against this, a group of hotels have threatened to pull out of an agreement to provide discounted rooms for the Olympics.

…The city obviously can’t expect hotels to stick to rates negotiated when labor costs were half of what they will now be by 2028. If Bass approves this, she’s effectively asking the hotels to lose money on one of the biggest events in the city’s recent history.

…Presumably other hotels are now doing the math and could decide to back out of the deal. Will this lead to new negotiations for higher room rates? That seems like the most likely outcome but you never really know what might happen in LA.

That is not a reasonable minimum wage if you want hotels to stay in business.

Questioning The Timing

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One of the major news stories today is the announcement that former President Biden has prostate cancer. The fact that the cancer has spread to his bones has caused many in the medical profession to state that he has probably had prostate cancer for some time. Below is the 2022 video of President Biden stating that he has cancer. The comment is included in a Denver, Colorado, News 9 article of July 2022. My sympathies go out to the Biden family–everyone reading this probably has a friend or family member who has battled cancer. That said, the timing of this announcement is very odd.

The article reports:

During a speech on the effects of climate change Wednesday, President Joe Biden seemingly indicated that he has cancer, but the White House quickly clarified the president was referring to a previous diagnosis before his presidency.

The comment came during a speech in Somerset, Mass., when the president was discussing the health effects caused by emissions from oil refineries near his hometown in Delaware.

“That’s why I — and so damn many other people I grew up with — have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation,” Biden said.

RNC Research, a Twitter account run by the Republican National Committee, quickly posted a video clip, tweeting, “Did Joe Biden just announce he has cancer?” The claim quickly gained traction among conservative figures on Twitter.

Andrew Bates, a White House deputy press secretary, responded by pointing to a tweet from Glenn Kessler, the editor and chief writer for the Washington Post’s Fact Checker. Kessler debunked the claim, pointing out Biden had minor skin cancers removed prior to his presidency, which was noted in a health report released last year. 

Oil refineries don’t cause skin cancer.

On May 19, Hot Air reported:

How do we know–and how does a doctor confidently assert–that this cancer diagnosis almost certainly can’t be recent? Simple: if you are a male and live long enough, the chances of getting prostate cancer are asymptotically close to 100%, so any competent doctor would test for this, and a White House doctor absolutely would test for this. Joe Biden was old when he entered the White House, and quite old when he left.

He was tested for cancer. And since prostate cancer–even “aggressive” prostate cancer–does not metastasize into the bones in months–it’s unlikely that the disease could be missed for so long.

Everybody is rightly focused on the cover-up because it is part of a pattern of lies. The White House certainly knew about Biden’s mental decline and lied. They knew about his spinal degeneration–it was so bad that they planned to put him in a wheelchair after the election, yet told everybody he was so fit he ran circles around his aides. And it is difficult to believe that they–at least Biden and the family–didn’t know and lie about his cancer.

Again, my sympathies to the Biden family. But not my respect.

The End Of Nationwide Injunctions?

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On Monday, Hot Air posted an article about a case the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing on Thursday.

The article notes how the political opponents of President Trump have repeatedly used the courts to try to prevent him from implementing his agenda:

Since President Trump took office, federal district courts have issued 37 nationwide injunctions against the Executive Branch.  That’s more than one a month.  By comparison, during President Obama’s first two years, district courts issued two nationwide injunctions against the Executive Branch, both of which were vacated by the Ninth Circuit.  And according to the Department’s best estimates, courts issued only 27 nationwide injunctions­ in all of the 20th century.

Some say this proves that the Trump Administration is lawless.  Not surprisingly, I disagree.  And I would point out that the only case litigated on the merits in the Supreme Court—the so-called “travel ban” challenge—ended with President’s policy being upheld…

The Constitution empowers Congress to create lower federal courts, and in designing a system of 93 judicial districts and 12 regional circuits, Congress set clear geographic limits on lower-court jurisdiction. In our system, district-court rulings do not bind other judges, even other judges in the same district…

Nationwide injunctions not only allow district courts to wield unprecedented power, they also allow district courts to wield it asymmetrically. When a court denies a nationwide injunction, the decision does not affect other cases. But when a court grants a nationwide injunction, it renders all other litigation on the issue largely irrelevant. Think about what that means for the Government. When Congress passes a statute or the President implements a policy that is challenged in multiple courts, the Government has to run the table—we must win every case. The challengers, however, must find only one district judge—out of an available 600—willing to enter a nationwide injunction. One judge can, in effect, cancel the policy with the stroke of the pen.

The article reports:

And the era of nationwide injunctions could come to an end later this week when the Supreme Court hears a case on birthright citizenship. The case probably won’t decide whether birthright citizenship is legal under the 14th Amendment. What the case is really about is the nationwide injunctions different courts have used to block Trump’s executive order on the topic.

I firmly believe that one of the things President Trump is trying to do is to bring America back to the country our Founding Fathers created. We have wandered so far from our Constitution that the road back is going to be bumpy and clogged by people who are making too much money the way things currently are. It would be wonderful if President Trump could bring us closer to the system of government our Constitution created.

I’m Skeptical, But I Would Love To See This Work

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On Tuesday, Hot Air reported:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is going to meet with the Syrian Foreign Minister on Thursday in Turkey.

President Trump will greet Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Riyadh tomorrow. 

My favorite quote from the article:

Trump will talk to anyone who sincerely wants to talk to him. It’s like his magic power.

Ahmed Al Sharaa has been serving as President of Syria since January of this year. He is from a Sunni Muslim family.

The article notes that he has not been an exemplary leader so far:

By the beginning of March, it was pretty clear a jihadi leader now using his given name – Ahmed Al Sharaa – in a $4000 suit was still a jihadi at heart. Al-Sharaa’s boys were having themselves the rampaging adventures of a lifetime, systematically exterminating Druze and Alawite communities all over northern Syria with impunity. Oh – and trying to find the five or six Jews left in the country.

We haven’t heard much out of the area since, except for reports that detail American and Israeli strikes on targets in the area. Most associated with the ongoing cat and mouse game the Houthis had been playing and the assorted Iranian militias supporting them, who operate freely all through the southern portion of Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, as President Trump noted during his speech in Saudi Arabia today.

I applaud President Trump providing an avenue for Al-Sharaa to reform, but I am skepticall. Any time you are dealing with an Islamist, you need to consider the Islamic concept of taqiyya. This is a concept in Islamic law that translates as “deceit or dissimulation,” particularly toward infidels. It is generally described as lying for the sake of Islam.

However, there may be some possible rewards for making nice to Syria.

To quote Shaun Maguire on X:

The article at Hot Air notes:

This also helps keep Turkey on the spot because, should Al-Sharaa start to see the fruits of cooperation with the US pay off and Syria begins to rise from the dead, he becomes a hero, and there’s nothing more these egotists love than being loved. He won’t let Erdogan interfere with that, whatever he owes him.

The other is the pressure from Saudi Arabia on Syria now. They facilitated this come to Trump moment. The crown prince would take it ill if the jihadi reappeared after making a public spectacle of the Saudis’ belief that he was worth cultivating and his country worth saving.

The Saudis do not take embarrassment lightly.

This is going to be interesting to watch. It would be wonderful to see the Middle East break out in peace.

Undermining Property Rights Leads To Poverty

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In 2010, I wrote an article about the relationship between private property rights and the wealth of a country. The conclusion of the article was that enforcing property rights and the rule of law breeds prosperity. We need to remember that as a country.

On Monday, Hot Air posted an article about a recent series of events in California.

The article reports:

A pair of vacant properties in Hollywood, CA started making news 10 days ago after residents complained a large group of squatters had taken over the homes and were creating a nuisance in the neighborhood.

…The drugs, noise, nudity and criminal behavior were a nuisance but when the police were called out, nothing seemed to change. The squatters would just disappear and then come back when the police were gone. The source of all this activity was another house next door which was receiving money from the city to house the homeless. Some of the homeless would hang out all day on the porch of their free housing and then jump the fence into the abandoned properties at night. But beyond all the nuisance this created, the real danger was the fires.

…Finally, there was enough media attention that L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto Martinez issued a statement saying he was working to have the site declared a nuisance.

…So sometime later this month, the city would have held a vote and then eventually taken action to tear the building down. But as it turned out, the homeless squatters beat them to it. Last Thursday the building caught fire again and this time was heavily damaged.

…I can’t prove it but my guess is the city was happy to plod along at its usual pace when this was just a big nuisance for neighbors, but once the building was a danger to the homeless, who might have gone back in after the fire, they acted immediately to tear it down.

The councilman who had promised to have the site declared a nuisance got an earful when he showed up at the site after the fire.

…Meanwhile in Sacramento, just a day after the fire in Hollywood, Democrats voted down a bill which would have made it easier to evict squatters.

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the story. California is going bankrupt. Unfortunately, I suspect the rest of the nation may be forced to bail her out. The inability or unwillingness to protect the property of homeowners who live there is one of many reasons people are leaving the state. As the people who have the money to leave move to other places, there won’t be enough people who are fiscally stable to pay off the taxes and massive state government expenses. The State of California will collapse financially.

Creating Efficiency By Tossing Out The Trash

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On Saturday, Hot Air posted an article that explains why a lot of the Washington deep state would really like to get rid of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. He has begun to drain the swamp. Of course when you drain the swamp, you expose some pretty unsavory animals.

The article reports:

Everyone who has been serving on Department of Defense advisory committees is to be thanked for their service and told that said service ‘is concluded‘ aka ‘out of a cushy post.’

The article includes a screenshot of the letter sent to the committee members.

The article continues:

Of course, there’s going to be all sorts of caterwauling about the move. But just like the programs that Biden initiated that now it seems Trump cannot undo, there is precedent for this as well.

While press releases call it a ‘tit-for-tat,’ they also acknowledge that lumpy Lloyd Austin removed every Trump appointee and then some serving on a committee from their chairs. 

We need to remember that last sentence when the media starts caterwauling.

The article notes:

…The Pentagon’s bloated advisory panels have ballooned to 41 groups—many duplicative or focused on political pet projects rather than warfighting readiness. Since 2021, these committees cost taxpayers over $220M annually while producing bureaucratic inertia. The Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services alone burned $8.7M last fiscal year debating gender initiatives instead of lethality. 

Realigning resources means cutting dead weight—like Susan Rice’s seat pushing DEI dogma—to prioritize missile defense modernization and countering China’s naval expansion. The Department of Government Efficiency’s $160B savings blueprint proves real reform starts with axing non-essential programs. 

Advisory boards shouldn’t be retirement perks for political allies—they should deliver battlefield advantage.

…The Defense Policy Board (DPB) has always been packed with long-term D.C. establishment insiders and power brokers and was targeted by recently fired adviser Dan Caldwell, who accused it of being the source of the leaks for which he took the blame. Caldwell claimed that the board is chock to the brim with anti-Trump members who are resistant to any changes the president, and by extension his SecDef, wants made.

Maybe when this is all over, we can go back to winning wars. We haven’t won a war since World War II (with the exception of the invasion of Grenada).

Sometimes Criminals Are The Best Detectives In A Fraud Case

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I spent my teenage years living in central New Jersey. I remember the “Crazy Eddie” commercials. Crazy Eddie was a consumer electronics chain in the metropolitan New York City area. The company was owned by Eddie and Sam M. Antar. Eventually the company went public. Eddie and Sam began cooking the company’s books in order to increase the value of the stock. Eventually they got caught. Eddie was charged with securities fraud and insider trading; he fled the country. Sam agreed to testify if he was granted immunity.

An article posted at Hot Air on Tuesday reports:

Since 2009, Sam Antar has been a forensic accountant, working with federal and local law enforcement agencies, teaching them what to look for in paperwork – and where to look for paperwork – as well as digging on his own time into waste, fraud, and abuse, always on the hunt for white collar crime.

He is a man on a mission.

And way back in February, while going through the records from Letitia James’ ‘luxury campaign spending,‘ as he calls it, Sam came across some wonky-looking personal finance filings. Things weren’t adding up to the eagle-eyed Antar.

In February, the White Collar Fraud website reported:

After our recent investigations exposed New York Attorney General Letitia James’ pattern of luxury campaign spending and creative accounting, a deeper examination of her personal financial disclosures reveals troubling new questions about her property holdings and financial reporting.

The same pattern of obscured luxury that characterized her campaign spending now emerges in her personal financial statements, starting with a Virginia investment property that seems to defy financial logic. Purchased in August 2020, James values the single-family home at “$100,000 to under $150,000” in her 2023 financial disclosure. Yet somehow, this same property carries mortgages totaling up to $400,000 – potentially more than twice its declared value.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

Now, Antar’s work has everyone swarming James’ life in the files, and what they’re uncovering is astonishing in its blatant gaming of the system.

And as Antar says, James didn’t do this by herself – she had to have help.

Who is going to squeal to save themselves?

The tenants who live in the Brooklyn building that isn’t supposed to have tenants are speaking up, and that is really looking awkward all around for James.

…When a guy’s already done time for legendary crazy, there’s not much he’s going to worry about when he’s on the right trail of wrongdoing.

This is gonna be sumpthin’ to see.

This is not the first time someone convicted of a white-collar crime has wound up doing investigative work for the government, and based on the many times that has been successful, I suspect it won’t be the last.

Pay Attention To The People Who Are Opposing The DOGE Cuts

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On Saturday, Stephen Moore posted an article at Hot Air about the opposition to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts.

The article reports:

If you haven’t watched the Bret Baier interviews on Fox News with Elon Musk and the other executives who have given their time and expertise to exposing the rampant fraud and inefficiency of our federal government, I urge you to do so.

It will infuriate you — and that’s what we need right now.

These Department of Government Efficiency volunteers are on a patriotic mission to repair our ship of state. They are hunting down the rats and scoundrels who have played us (we the taxpayers) for fools for so many years. It’s the greatest robbery — more than $1 trillion of fraud and corruption — in world history.

Yet too many Democrats are reacting as though Musk himself is the scoundrel.

The “Musk-ateers” have marked nearly 10 million Social Security recipients over the age of 120 as deceased. (How many monthly checks were sent out?) How about $10 billion in rent for empty office buildings? Hundreds of millions of dollars for foreign aid programs that went to “nongovernmental government organizations” and then disappeared down a rabbit hole? Billions of dollars in fraudulent Medicaid spending? A federal workforce that has been MIA for three years?

In the wake of this epic failure of governance, nearly every leading Democrat in Washington has protested: “Elon Musk is going too far.”

The article cites an example of why the Democrats oppose the budget cuts:

Or maybe the real answer is that THEY ARE IN ON THE SWINDLE. This could explain how so many politicians spent their careers in Congress and retired as multimillionaires.

In other words, what is most revealing about the Washington slime that we are waking up to in real time thanks to DOGE is that the waste and fraud is the currency of Washington. It pays the bills, and everyone in the swamp gets their cut. Remember: One third of $7 trillion is the stuff of fortunes.

How else does one explain the $2.7 million that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse allegedly directed/laundered to his wife via a nonprofit environmental group she worked for? This would clearly be graft, but it has gone unpunished.

We are living through the harrowing last scene in a Hollywood murder mystery in which you discover that the chief of police was in on it all along.

The article concludes:

In reality, perhaps the greatest public service of the Musk-ateers is that they have taught voters that Washington should never get another penny of our tax dollars until the sewer is completely drained and the tens of thousands of fraudsters inside and outside of government are put out of business and hopefully behind bars.

I agree.

A Very Logical Argument

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On Sunday, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article about the Continuing Resolution (CR) now working its way through Congress.

The article reports:

What’s the argument for opposing the new CR being introduced by Speaker Mike Johnson this week? Other than being a continuing resolution, of course, which stink on ice. Congress has gotten into a bad habit over the past 20 years of failing to budget normally and properly. This year is no different, but in that same sense, this CR is both a necessity and better than all of the alternatives. This has been dysfunctional all along, but this isn’t a time to amplify it.

First off, we’re stuck with the CR process. That ship sailed last year, when Democrats controlled the Senate, Joe Biden was president (ostensibly), and House Republicans spent the year forming circular firing squads. Yes, we could write an entirely new budget instead of a CR for FY2024-25, but we’re nearly halfway through that fiscal year already. We’d have to start that process nearly from scratch too, which means we’d still need a CR to get enough time to work on it. That would take another couple of months at least under regular order — meaning the proper committee process, etc — by which time the rest of the fiscal year would be closer to a fiscal quarter. 

What would we gain from that process? We’d be unlikely to move the needle much at all on spending, and create even more time for splits to emerge in the House Republican caucus with less time to resolve them. That effort is better applied to the FY2025-26 budget, where real opportunities exist for capturing significant spending cuts through DOGE. 

He makes a very good point. Let’s get past the CR and get on with the work of finding fraud and waste in government spending. Let’s end the foreign campaign contributions funded through ActBlue, and let’s end the campaign donations and other donations made to Congressmen (and women) from companies who have legislation before Congress. Let’s look at how much the pharmaceutical industry has donated to Congress in recent years and see how that relates to legislation passed.

Let’s be done with the CR and move on to better things.

When Environmentalism Pollutes The Environment

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On Monday, Hot Air posted an article about the fire at Vistra Corp.’s Moss Landing battery storage facility in Moss Landing, California. The fire began on January 16th and is still burning.

The article reports:

Not only were residents affected, but the batteries that went up in flames inside were a critical component of CA’s ludicrous dependency on renewables. They had just been awarded a major 15-year contract with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) to store and deliver up to four hours’ worth of that stored excess capacity to the grid when shortages occur. 

The article cites a few environmental problems with this continuing fire:

Residents in the Moss Landing area are furious. The anger they expressed in interviews just a few days after being trapped in their homes, sealed up as best they could for days after the fire due to the fumes and ash, was palpable.

They want the facility gone.

…”It is a charred, stinking mess. And it is just, and it’s poison now. Okay? We’ve been poisoned,” said Patricia Yeargin, who has a clear view of the Moss Landing towers from her front porch.

“They’re telling us to wear masks. They’re telling us to go inside our house and not come out. They’re telling us they have to, uproot us from our, neighborhoods,” Yeargin said. “And we need to be taken someplace till this thing gets less toxic, for people. So we know what it’s doing to our water down there. We know what it’s doing to our animals.”…

The article notes problems with the environment:

 …San José State University has been monitoring the local ecologically rich but environmentally sensitive Elkhorn Slough estuary by Moss Landing for years, and when they came back for routine testing after the fire, the team found alarming results.

Research scientists at San José State University’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories said they have detected “unusually high concentrations of heavy-metal nanoparticles in marsh soils at Elkhorn Slough Reserve” after the Moss Landing battery facility fire on Jan. 16.

We have a long way to go to create a safe, environmentally clean fossil fuel alternative.