by Jacob Grier, The reasonJune 17, 2024.
An excerpt:
Since March last year, the Australian state of Victoria has been rocked by a series of arson and bombings. Other targets are victims of fraud; others are caught up in a fierce battle between rival gangs. Two men linked to organized crime have been publicly killed, one in a midday shooting at a Melbourne shopping centre. Violent conflict is not expected in organized crime, but what is unusual is the drug at the heart of this conflict: nicotine.
DRH Comment: The Australian government could respond by removing the laws that led to the crisis in the first place, but instead decides to go the Saudi route:
A new bill expected to pass the Australian Senate will take drastic measures, threatening arrest for importing, producing, supplying, or possessing commercial quantities of hot items without a permit. Health Minister Mark Butler explained that penalties would include up to seven years in prison and fines of up to $2.2 million. “We are determined to end this public health scourge of resort exits,” Butler said. The bill also includes an exemption for personal use, but as it is currently written even a non-commercial quantity of vaping products could be punished with up to one year in prison.
Written by Jeffrey H. Anderson, Thomas D. KlingensteinJune 20, 2024.
HHS now boldly claims that PEPFAR has saved “more than 25 million lives.” The only basis for this dubious accusation seems to be that more than 25 million people (including children in the womb) have been given antibiotics. The double assumption of HHS is that every one of those people would have died without the drugs, and every one of them has survived because of the drugs. This is beyond scientific rigor at HHS.
Both during AIDS and during Covid-19, Fauci and company fought the use of inexpensive, repurposed drugs to help people’s immune systems fight off threats. Kennedy argues that they are motivated by the desire to bring pharmaceutical products to market—both antivirals and vaccines—without facing cheaper competition, as part of Big Pharma’s profits will go into the pockets of government health officials. Indeed, NBC News reports that NIH researchers have personally collected up to $150,000 a year in royalties for the drugs they helped develop at taxpayer expense. NBC says that in 2004 NIH researchers invested $8.9 million. That’s more than their taxpayer-funded salaries. More recently, the money from Covid vaccines seems to be a boon for the NIH, as by 2022 the agency’s total revenue (not just the part paid to employees) has increased to nine times what it was in the pre-Covid year of 2019.
Instead of contradicting Duesberg or providing convincing evidence to refute him, the medical establishment simply ostracized him. Kennedy writes that both Larry King and Good Morning America a planned joint appearance with Fauci and Duesberg that Duesberg canceled at the last minute and gave Fauci the stage to him (probably at Fauci’s insistence). He writes that, when Reagan wanted the two to have a “friendly debate” in front of him, the idea was dropped because, in the words of a member of the Reagan administration, Fauci “threw a ‘bit’… to know why the White House is meddling in scientific matters.” (Think of the gall of a president who wants a senior branch official to defend his theory on one of the most pressing issues of the day!)
DRH note: My quoting in this review does NOT mean I endorse everything RFK Jr. said. I think he and the reviewer have a good understanding.
by Emma Camp, The reasonJune 21, 2014.
Quote:
By 2024, the federal budget deficit is projected to reach nearly $2 trillion, according to new estimates released this week by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In February, the agency predicted that the deficit would be only $1.58 trillion. However, the increase in spending caused the deficit to increase by $400 billion, a staggering 27 percent increase.
According to the CBO, 80 percent of the deficit spike can be blamed on four sources of government spending.
The largest source, responsible for $145 billion, is changes to the federal student loan program that have resulted in large waves of student loan forgiveness and increased forgiveness going forward.
by Sharon Lerner, ProPublicaMay 20, 2024.
Quote:
Kris Hansen had been working as a chemist at the 3M Corporation for about a year when his boss, a benevolent senior scientist named Jim Johnson, offered him an unusual job. 3M had invented Scotch Tape and Post-it notes; it sold everything from sandpaper to kitchen sponges. But on this day, in 1997, Johnson wanted Hansen to test a person’s blood for chemicals.
Several of 3M’s most successful products contained man-made compounds called fluorochemicals. In a spray called Scotchgard, fluorochemicals protect skin and fabric from stains. In a coating known as Scotchban, they prevent food packaging from becoming watertight. In the soapy foam used by firefighters, they help put out jet fuel fires. Johnson explained to Hansen that one of the company’s fluorochemicals, PFOS – short for perfluorooctanesulfonic acid – often enters the bodies of 3M factory workers. Although he said they were not injured, he had recently hired an outside lab to measure their blood levels. The lab had just reported something strange, however. For comparison, it tested blood samples from the American Red Cross, which were from the general population and should have been free of fluorochemicals. Instead, it kept getting impurities in the blood.
DRH’s Note: This is the first time I’ve linked to a ProPublica story without making critical comments. Although I think the ethics of presenting people’s taxes was useless, as well as their analytical skills, I found this piece to be persuasive.
Regarding the last 2 items above, as Arnold Kling would say, “Have a nice day.”
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