THE BIG LIE: Beto O’Rourke slanders GOP as ‘Cult of Death’ — ‘Literally Want to Sacrifice’ Lives

In a rant on Wednesday on MSNBC’s Deadline, failed presidential candidate and gun-grabbing former Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke called the Republican Party  a “cult of death” after Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lifted the COVID-19 mask mandate.

“They literally want to sacrifice the lives of our fellow Texans, for I don’t know, for political gain? To satisfy certain powerful interests within the state? This isn’t hyperbole,” O’Rourke claimed. No, it is not hyperbole; it’s a lie. In fact, it is the coronavirus hysteria itself, not the lifting of the mask mandate, that was, and continues to be, exploited for political gain — by Democrats.

“I think to many of us it appeared to be a cult of personality, the Republican Party in the era of Trump, and it probably still holds true. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death,” O’Rourke blathered. Actually, it’s easy to escape that conclusion because it too is a lie, a demagogic demonization of O’Rourke’s political enemies.

O’Rourke rambled on falsely about “extraordinarily anti-democratic elements… literally running the government of the state of Texas” with an “indifference” that “is killing people in my community and throughout the state of Texas.”

The truth is that Texans and Americans all over the country have had enough of the leftist fear-mongering and exploitation of the coronavirus, and of the economic devastation wrought by the draconian lockdowns. The lifting of the mask mandate is the first step toward liberating Americans from this Democrat power grab.


Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke

5 Known Connections

On a variety of key political issues, O’Rourke:

  • strongly favors the expansion of Obamacare as a step toward a government-run, single-payer healthcare system;
  • favors government-enforced affirmative action policies designed to compensate nonwhites and women for the effects of past and present discrimination;
  • favors the implementation of a pathway-to-citizenship for illegal aliens, in part because “Americans don’t want to do the millions of jobs that non-native-born residents are willing to do”;
  • strongly opposes Voter ID laws as racist schemes that are designed to suppress minority voting;
  • believes that the nationalization of banks and corporations is more appropriate than government bailouts of those entities when they fail economically; and
  • calls for a significant increase in the national hourly minimum wage requirement for all workers.

To learn more about Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, click here for his profile link.

©Discover the Networks. All rights reserved.

Texas says all businesses allowed to open 100%, ends statewide mask mandate

Reason and logic prevails! Texas Governor says statewide mask mandate ends March 10th and all businesses can reopen at 100% capacity.

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1366838646310060035?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1366838646310060035%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com%2F2021%2F03%2Ftexas-says-all-businesses-allowed-to-open-100-ends-statewide-mask-mandate.html%2F

Gov. Abbott to reopen Texas at 100% capacity, end statewide mask mandate

By: Joshua Hoggardm, Texomas, Mar 2, 2021:

LUBBOCK (KFDX/KJTL) — Gov. Greg Abbott announced Tuesday during a press conference in Lubbock a new executive order allowing all businesses to open at 100% capacity and ending the statewide mask mandate, effective Wednesday, March 10.

Gov. Abbott said he will be issuing a new executive order rescinding many of his previous orders issued during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gov. Abbott said all businesses of any type will be able to open at 100% capacity beginning Wednesday, March 10.

Additionally, Gov. Abbott said the statewide mask mandate will be ending.

Gov. Abbott said hospitalizations in the state are the lowest they’ve been at in months, active COVID-19 cases are at their lowest numbers since November 2020, and the positivity rate is lower than 10%.

Gov. Abbott also announced 216,000 vaccines were administered in Texas on Tuesday alone, with over a million shots being distributed per week in the state.

Gov. Abbott also said over half of senior citizens in Texas will have received a vaccine shot by next Wednesday, and by the end of March every senior who wants a shot will be able to get one.

RELATED TWEET:

RELATED ARTICLES:

Texas and Mississippi to lift mask mandates and roll back Covid restrictions

Angry Nurse Has Had It with the Covid-19 Hoax

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permenently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadowbanned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on social and with your email contacts.

More people are DYING of COVID under Biden ☭

Democrats are the party of death. Celebrated Democrat hero Cuomo killed tens of thousands of seniors.

More people are dying of COVID under Biden

Yet the media has stopped blaming the President

By: Stephen L. Miller, The Spectator, February 24, 2021

Monday marked a solemn day for America, as the coronavirus death toll in the United States crossed the 500,000 mark. By this weekend, 100,000 will have died during Joe Biden’s short tenure as President. One hundred thousand. Think about that for just a second. Let that sink in.

We could do what all the Trump-deranged pundit class did when the 45th president was in charge. That is, compare the COVID death count ‘under this President’s watch’ to various unrelated historical atrocities. One hundred thousand deaths is the same death toll as the German Peasants’ War, a populist revolt in 1524 which lasted an entire year. Put another way, you could say that, in the month since Joe Biden has been President, COVID-19 casualties have exceeded the death tally of the crisis in Congo during the first half of the 1960s. The equivalent of 20 full-size 737 passenger planes continue to fall out of the sky every day.

The pundits have stopped doing that, funnily enough. Since the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, CNN ombudsman Brian Stelter has ceased comparing COVID deaths to 9/11. So has Vox’s Aaron Rupar, unofficially the worst person on Twitter. The public was told over and over not to look away or forget these victims. Yet as soon as Biden entered the White House, that’s exactly what the majority of the media did.

It took the United States four full months to reach the first 100,000 deaths. Under Biden, that mark will be met in just over one month, even as he demands we ‘mask up’ and the population begins to expand the vaccination process. With no end in sight, the United States is on track to surpass the entirety of casualties under the Wars of Alexander the Great.

Shouldn’t the Biden administration be held to the same account of the previous administration? Every life lost to COVID is a life that could have been saved and if Biden insists on comparing COVID deaths to horrors such as World War One, World War Two and Vietnam, then perhaps they should ask what should be done about the country from which this great attack was launched.

Or perhaps we should just stop using obnoxious historical examples of events and disasters that were not COVID, to use against this pandemic.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permenently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadowbanned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on social and with your email contacts.

PODCAST: Face-Masks Are Here To Stay

As a child of the 1950s, I have seen a lot of changes in terms of safety over the years:

  • Back then, nobody wore seat belts in automobiles. Most cars didn’t even have them. Today, they are standard equipment, along with air bags. In most states, you can be issued a ticket for not wearing them, but as a kid from a different era, I still resist using them as it doesn’t feel natural to me.
  • I loved riding my bicycle just about everywhere. I took it to school every day, rode it to my Little League games, to go fishing or visit a neighbor, etc. At that time nobody wore a helmet, and yet I didn’t know of anyone falling off their bike and hurting themselves. Today it is a requirement with some states issuing fines for not wearing them. As for me, I refuse to wear a helmet as I never wore one as a child. I still think they look stupid, but people have embraced them as the government enforces their use.
  • We rode on skate boards and went down steep driveways, all without helmets and leg or arm pads, none of which existed at the time. If you were going to crash, you simply learned to slow down and fall on grass. It was no big deal. Now it is.
  • In Little League, we wore canvass “ear muffs” to protect our heads at the plate. When we would have a pick-up game though, we just wore baseball hats, just like the major leagues. Today, Little League includes full helmets with face guards.

We also played hockey without face masks, including myself as a goalie; we went down winter hills on sleds without any protection; we shot BB guns and slingshots in the fields (and No, we didn’t “shoot our eyes out”); we learned to shoot bow and arrows; we lit firecrackers; went fishing and used knives to clean our catch, and; we even played lawn darts (aka, “Jarts”). Remarkably, we all survived unscathed and enjoyed ourselves immensely. In truth, it was a glorious time to be a kid. When I describe this to parents today, they look at me like I have three eyes, that I am some kind of glutton for punishment.

The same is true with surgical face-masks. In the depths of the many influenza outbreaks we have had, very few people wore face-masks. Today, thanks to COVID-19, we are told by our government to wear them everywhere. President Biden wants to send a face-mask to each American and have us wear them until at least 2022. There are also new requirements to wear face-masks on government property, including our national parks.

The question though becomes, “When can we stop wearing them?” There are some medical institutions now questioning the effectiveness of face-masks on COVID-19; others suggest we need to wear multiple layers of face-masks.

My feeling is, face-masks are here to stay. It is now the “new normal,” just like seat belts, helmets, and other safety equipment. Even if 100% of the American public was properly vaccinated, we would still be asked to wear face-masks. Why? Because government officials will claim there is a new “strain” of some kind which will likely come and go in perpetuity. So, in all likelihood, the government will never tell us to put the masks away. It is not in their best interest to do so as it represents a form of control and is deemed to be politically correct to wear, particularly among Democrats.

Even if the government declared “the coast is clear,” people will likely continue to wear face-masks in supermarkets, social gatherings, at work and school, and wherever. The government has created a new habit, which people will be reluctant to give up. Years from now, you will tell your grandchildren, “I remember when I was a kid, we never wore face-masks, not until the government mandated their use.” They will look at you and say, “Wow, you are really old, aren’t you?”

You will know face-masks are a permanent fixture of our society when you start seeing television commercials featuring designer masks. They will likely be embraced by the fashion industry who will use it as an excuse for changing our wardrobe. Over time, we’ll look like a nation of holdup artists ready to stickup gas stations and convenience stores.

As for me, like I said, I’m a child of the 1950s. I will continue to resist seat belts and helmets. Heck, I’ll even play a game of lawn darts if anyone has them. And I have no intention of wearing face-masks 24/7. I guess I like to live on the edge.

(I would like to give a tip of the hat to A.R. in Dunedin for the inspiration for this piece).

Keep the Faith!

P.S. – For a listing of my books, click HERE.

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right podcast is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

MCLAUGHLIN: The Republican Party Changed Forever — For The Better — Under President Donald Trump

In 2020, President Donald J. Trump created one of the greatest voter coalitions in American political history, bringing millions of new voters into the Republican Party and expanding the GOP’s vote among African Americans and Hispanic Americans.

The electoral votes that decided this election were determined by a mere 44,000 votes out of a record almost 160 million ballots cast. And two of the three states that decided the electoral outcome — Georgia and Wisconsin — were decided themselves by contested recounts.

These states, and the nation at large, did not see Independents and Republicans who voted for Trump in 2016 swing away from him. They came out and voted for Trump and Republicans again.

Instead, a record turnout of early, pro-Democrat Party voters was facilitated by changes to state election laws to create mail-in ballots and drop boxes funded by hundreds of millions of dollars from pro-Biden corporate non-profits like Secure Democracy.

President Trump’s record 74+ million Republican votes built a solid foundation that down-ballot Republicans benefitted from. Many of these voters solely came out for Trump, and the candidates on the Republican ticket reaped the rewards, as our poll indicated Trump voters supported down-ballot Republicans at least 90% of the time.

During his own reelection campaign, Trump campaigned extensively for the entire Republican ticket, participating in over 50 TeleRallies for congressional candidates and issuing hundreds of tweets for Republican candidates.

The results? President Trump’s popularity among folks who otherwise would not come out and vote enabled Republicans to gain 12 seats in Congress with zero losses by GOP incumbents. Every House Republican in a tossup race won. A record 35 Republican women won election to Congress. Republicans won 59 of 98 partisan state legislative chambers – a net gain of 2 state houses and 141 seats across the country.

Election Day voting has decreased from 76% in 2004 to only 36% in 2020, while early voting, mostly by mail and drop box, increased to 64% in 2020. In many cases these changes led to charges they enabled ballot harvesting, which need to be re-examined as state election reforms are considered.

According to our 2020 post-election poll, 29% of all voters voted by U.S. mail and they preferred Biden 61%-39%. Another 11% said they voted by drop box and they voted for Biden 68%-32%.

Those who voted early in person were virtually even—Biden 51% to Trump 49%, and among those who voted on Election Day Trump won big 62%-36%. It is evident by the data that if Trump had not worked around the clock to rally the GOP vote, it would have been a Biden landslide.

This is why Trump is leading the effort to preserve honest elections and ballot integrity, and Republicans solidly agree. We need changes so this doesn’t happen again.

Never before has a president in American history challenged the permanent Washington political class the way Trump has, and never before has a President been persecuted by the political establishment the way Trump has been.

But just like both phony impeachments, these attacks have backfired and made him even stronger among the American people.

Our January poll of battleground state voters, 74% said impeachment was politically motivated to stop Trump from running again, and 65% agreed by continuing to attack Trump, Biden and Pelosi were making things worse and keeping the country divided. 77% thought Congress should be expediting the Trump-created vaccine and economic aid over impeachment.

And 48% to 36%, they were less likely to vote for a member of Congress who voted for impeachment, including 80% of Trump voters and 76% among Republicans.

Rasmussen Reports found among Republicans that 72% want the Republican Party going forward to be more like Trump, while only 20% prefer to be more like the average GOP member of Congress. 73% say Trump is still the kind of leader the Republican Party needs.

Country Club Beltway Republicans need to realize the Republican Party has been changed forever — for the better — because of Trump’s leadership and they need to stop blaming him for their failings. In order to regain the House and Senate in 2022, the GOP needs to continue to broaden the Trump coalition and not discourage Trump voters from coming out again in 2022 and 2024.

Like Judge Smails found out in the classic movie Caddyshack, the caddies are now running the country club.

They need to learn to live with it.

COLUMN BY

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN

John McLaughlin is CEO and Partner at McLaughlin & Associates.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Trump Endorses Primary Opponent For Congressman Who Voted To Impeach

‘He Is The Leader Of Our Party’: Jim Jordan Dismisses ‘A Handful Of People’ In GOP Who Oppose Trump

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York Study Finds Biden-Harris ‘Equity’ Proposal Would Make Racial Inequality Worse

A recent Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that a monetary shock would raise stock prices by 5 percent, raising the annual incomes of white people by as much as 300 percent more than those of blacks.


The Biden-Harris administration has made stamping out racial “inequities” the focus of all its policies. But the government interventions proposed to close these gaps will only “accentuate inequalities for extended periods” of time, according to a recent study.

Days before the 2020 election, Kamala Harris announced a plan to replace equality with equity in government policymaking. Rather than treating people equally, politicians committed to advancing equity would try to assure an equality of outcome between racial and ethnic groups. In one of the many executive orders Joe Biden signed on his first day in office, the president promised an “ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda” to fight “systemic racism.”

This includes the prospect of instrumentalizing the Federal Reserve’s control over monetary policy to equalize wealth across racial categories. His campaign platform, which pledges to “strengthen the Federal Reserve’s focus on racial economic gaps,” states that “the Fed should aggressively enhance its surveillance and targeting of persistent racial gaps in jobs, wages, and wealth” and then report “what actions the Fed is taking through its monetary and regulatory policies to close these gaps.”

The idea has a full slate of supporters, who want to add effecting racial equity to the Federal Reserve’s two existing mandates of “maximum employment and price stability.” Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Maxine Waters introduced the Federal Reserve Racial and Economic Equity Act last year, which instructs the Federal Open Market Committee “to minimize  and  eliminate  racial  disparities  in  employment,  wages,  wealth,  and  access  to  affordable credit.” And Rep. Ayanna Pressley raised the issue with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell during a House Financial Services Committee hearing last Tuesday.

It is, shall we say, a going concern.

These politicians would have the Fed keep interest rates artificially low and the monetary supply growing, based on the Phillips Curve. Jared Bernstein, one of Biden’s economic advisers, believes that lower interest rates and what are traditionally regarded as inflationary policies will juice the economy enough to decimate persistent pockets of poverty.

As it turns out, the policy would backfire, thanks to the law of unintended consequences.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York tested the impact of a “monetary policy shock” on the black-white racial gap. While such a “policy increases employment of black households more than white households, the overall effects are small” – a mere 0.2 percentage points.

But the “solution” creates two new problems. Low interest rates and inflation punish savers and reward investors by making more capital available and driving people to seek a higher rate of return in the stock market. The study found that a monetary shock would raise stock prices by 5 percent, raising the annual incomes of white people by 200 percent to 300 percent more than those of blacks.

The Fed also made the startling discovery that inflationary policies result in inflation. The proposed policy would raise “house prices by over 2% over a five year period.” That will only deepen the 30-point home ownership gap between whites and blacks. Home ownership accounts for approximately 60 percent of the average household’s wealth.

In the end, the equity-building policy actually “exacerbates the wealth difference between black and white households, because black households own less financial assets that appreciate in value.”

Critical theory’s single-minded focus on “equity” constitutes a four-fold error of collectivism:

  • It assumes an individual’s race, sex, ethnicity, or other self-identification category is the most important aspect of his or her identity;
  • It asserts that the individual’s well-being is controlled by membership in these discreet groups
  • It presumes the individual’s lot in life can be dictated by government intervention; and
  • It posits that the individual has been harmed when his or her income, wealth, and living standards increase if other groups benefit even more at the same time, widening the gap between population cohorts.

Measuring “wealth inequality” has its share of empirical pitfalls. But critical theory causes its true believers to advocate for policies that are self-defeating on their own terms.

This is all the more frustrating, since the United States has recent experience in how to improve the status of the poor and minorities. President Donald Trump’s administration did not rely on Fed policy to achieve record-breaking employment for blacks and Hispanics. These results came about through a combination of tax cuts and deregulation, which freed the pent-up creativity and innovation that had been lying dormant under more restrictive policies. While they were active, black and Hispanic wealth grew by 1,100% to 2,200% more than whites, according to the Federal Reserve:

Between 2016 and 2019, median wealth rose for all race and ethnicity groups … Growth rates for the 2016–19 period were faster for [b]lack and Hispanic families, rising 33 and 65 percent, respectively, compared to [w]hite families, whose wealth rose 3 percent, and other families, whose wealth rose 8 percent.

These gains came from a president whom critical theory proponents regard as indifferent or hostile to minorities’ interests. The legislation contained no special provisions to boost “equity” by increasing minority wealth. Yet these policies, which generally tended to reduce the role of government in people’s lives, succeeded because they allowed individuals greater margin to pursue their God-given talents for the service of others.

Perhaps the wisest counsel to reduce racial inequities comes from the Apostle James: “My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism” (James 2:1).

This Acton Institute article was republished with permission.

COLUMN BY

Ben Johnson

Rev. Ben Johnson is a senior editor at the Acton Institute. His work focuses on the principles necessary to create a free and virtuous society in the transatlantic sphere (the U.S., Canada, and Europe).

RELATED ARTICLES:

Cuomo’s Controversial COVID Policy Linked to Higher Nursing Home Deaths, Study Finds

Dolly Parton’s Powerful Message About the American Dream (and What Her Critics Get Wrong)

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Understanding How Much Big Tobacco Is Driving Nicotine & Marijuana Vaping

Not only does Big Tobacco continue to find ways to lure children into buying new nicotine products, it is moving in on the marijuana industry to scale pot sales up to or beyond the level of diminishing tobacco sales. Most people are unaware of the growing relationship between marijuana and tobacco companies. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

Altria (formerly Phillip Morris) owns 35 percent of Juul, has registered to lobby for pot legalization in Virginia, and is patenting two marijuana vaping devices in the US, according to Cannabis Wire. “Altria supports the federal legalization of cannabis under an appropriate regulatory framework. As a stakeholder in this industry, we intend to work with policy makers and regulators in support of a transparent, responsible, and equitable operating environment for the sale of cannabis,” Altria spokesperson George Parman told the publication. (Emphasis added.)

Big wins for Big Tobacco

The Grocer is an English magazine that caters to grocery and convenience stores in Great Britain. The Brits haven’t caught up yet with American concerns about vaping, first with the EVALI diseases and deaths we experienced last year, second with the stunning increases in vaping by adolescents who have never smoked, and third with the fact that many are vaping THC as well as nicotine.

So, the Brits are selling vape pens and e-liquids in grocery stores. Parents may want to register to access this free article to see some of the best pictures of vape-pen brands available in one place.

It turns out that Altria is not the only tobacco company in the vaping business. Vype is made by British American Tobacco. BAT also is test-marketing Vuse to enable people to vape CBD. Logic is Japan Tobacco International’s vape pen. Subscribe to Logic’s emails and JTI will sell you a starter vape pen for $1.00. Blu is made by Imperial Tobacco. In fact, the top 10-selling vape pens in the UK are all made by tobacco companies. Because the pandemic has shut down most vape shops in England, the vape brands of the tobacco giants have seen soaring sales there.

Think that will change when the pandemic is behind us? Doubtful.

Read The Grocer article here.


At the speed of Juul: Measuring the Twitter conversation related to ENDS and Juul across space and time (2017–2018)

Yoonsang Kim and colleagues at the universities of Chicago and Georgia State as well as VeraCite Inc, in La Jolla, California, collected Juul-related and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) data on Twitter between 2017 and 2018. They found the amount of Juul tweets increased 67 times, from 18,849 tweets in the first quarter of 2017 to 1,287,028 tweets in the last quarter of 2018.

They also found that Juul tweets spread rapidly across the nation. By the end of the study period, people in 84 percent of US counties were posting about Juul.

Further, despite intense scrutiny by the FDA and Juul’s voluntary effort to end its social media account, Juul tweets intensified rather than abated.

Tweets about other ENDS products decreased by 25 percent as Juul tweets increased.

Read full text of this Tobacco Control article published by BMJ Journals here.


Do JUUL and e-cigarette flavors change risk perceptions of adolescents? Evidence from a national survey
Kiersten Strombotne and colleagues from the Universities of Boston, Oxford, and Yale conducted a national survey of 1,610 high school students aged 14-18 who had heard of either e-cigarettes or Juul.

They found, although no scientific evidence supports this, that youth believe certain flavors make e-juice less harmful than other flavors in both Juuls and other e-cigarette brands. The researchers say their findings support the idea that a flavor ban could reduce the appeal of both Juul and other e-cigarettes and result in protecting adolescent health.

Read full text of this Tobacco Control article published by BMJ Journals here.


E-cigarette and cigarette purchasing among young adults before and after implementation of California’s tobacco 21 policy
California raised the minimum age for tobacco purchases to 21 in 2016. Little is known about the effect this T21 law has had on reducing underage tobacco product sales.

Sara Schiff and colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles analyzed data from a population-based prospective cohort in southern California the year before and after the state passed T21. This involved 1,609 people ages 18 and 19 before and 1,502 people ages 19 and 20 after passage of the law.

Among past-month users, the researchers also examined where participants purchased tobacco products before and after the law, whether they were refused purchase based on their age after T21, as well as whether participants perceived if it were more difficult to buy cigarettes and e-cigarettes then.

They found negligible changes after the law passed. Some 64 percent of past-month users bought cigarettes from gas stations and 82 percent bought e-cigarettes from vape shops despite their underage status. About half thought it was harder to do so but were still able to. The researchers conclude that better enforcement of T21 is needed to achieve what the law intended: to reduce tobacco use by youth.

Read full text of this Tobacco Control article published by BMJ Journals here.


What parents need to know about teen vaping and what they can do about it
JAMA Pediatrics has published a Pediatrics Patient Page on Vaping for parents of school-age children.

The page summarizes:

  • what the health risks are for teens who vape,
  • how to tell if your teen is vaping,
  • what parents can do to prevent teens from vaping,
  • what parents can do if their teen is addicted to vaping, and
  • sources for more information about teen vaping.

Access this JAMA Pediatrics resource for information about adolescent vaping here.

©National Families in Action. All rights reserved.

ACTION ALERT: Mainstream Contributors to Sexual Exploitation on NCOSE 2021 Dirty Dozen List Revealed

List Includes: Amazon, Chromebook, Discord, EBSCO, Netflix, Nevada, OnlyFans, Reddit, SeekingArrangement, Twitter, Verisign, & Wish 

Washington, DC (February 23, 2021)– The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) has revealed that Amazon, Chromebook, Discord, OnlyFans, and Wish are among its 2021 Dirty Dozen List of mainstream contributors to sexual exploitation. This year’s list features several entities that have profited from the COVID-19 crisis by taking advantage of worsening social and economic vulnerabilities and harnessing the dramatic increase in online activity.

“Our list highlights institutions that are facilitating and even profiting from sexual exploitation. Most of the targets greatly benefited from the pandemic, like Google, that saw shipments of Chromebooks double in 2020, but refused to proactively turn on safeguards for the millions of devices going to schools – leaving kids at risk of exposure to pornography and even predators. Others, like OnlyFans, took advantage of the increased vulnerabilities caused by COVID-19. Another target, Wish, irresponsibly advertises on Pornhub, thereby keeping this known exploiter in business,” said Lina Nealon, director of corporate and strategic initiatives for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. 

“Corporations and popular brands shape our culture and influence the ways we communicate, what causes we support, and even how our children are learning in school. Unfortunately, many are also perpetuating harm and violence.

“These ‘Dirty Dozen’ are hereby put on notice. We encourage the public and governments to join us in holding these entities accountable, pressing on them to change exploitative policies and to prioritize human dignity over profit.

“We are also highlighting entities on our Watchlist – Snapchat, TikTok, and Visa  as they have made some improvements within the last year, but still have steps to take to fully confront and end harmful business practices with the appropriate urgency these issues demand,” Nealon added

The 2021 Dirty Dozen List includes:  

  1. Amazon – Amazon, the world’s titan of e-commerce, logistics, data storage, and media, also peddles endless amounts of sexual exploitation. As a social platform, Amazon’s Twitch is rife with sexual harassment, predatory grooming, and child sexual abuse. As an online retailer, Amazon is in the business of selling incest-themed porn, sex dolls, photography books with eroticized child nudity, and more. As a media creator, Amazon Prime Video inserts unnecessary, gratuitous nudity and simulated sex scenes into many of its original programming, while providing faulty parental controls. As a web host, AWS is host to many hardcore violent pornography and prostitution websites. Learn more and take action: EndSexualExploitation.org/Amazon
  2. Chromebooks – Google’s refusal to turn on safety features for Chromebooks distributed to schools has resulted in countless students being left exposed to sexually explicit material and sexual predators on their school-assigned devices. More than 40 million students and teachers worldwide were using these popular devices prior to the pandemic. Millions more received Chromebooks for virtual schooling after COVID-19 hit. Instead of helping, this trillion-dollar tech giant chooses to place the burden on overwhelmed schools and parents while leaving children at risk. Demand digital safety in schools: EndSexualExploitation.org/Chromebooks 
  3. Discord– The popular platform Discord allows users to connect and chat with each other in real time and it boasts over 100 million active monthly users. Discord has inadequate age verification procedures in place and relies on user reports to moderate much of its content. Hundreds of private and public channels are rife with sexually graphic, violent, and exploitative content, and children are at risk of exposure, grooming, and other predatory behavior. Discord must do more to protect kids: EndSexualExploitation.org/Discord  
  4. EBSCO – EBSCO Information Services is the leading provider of online learning resources for schools and libraries. Though they market their products as “age and curriculum-appropriate,” graphic sexual content and live links to prostitution and pornography websites are easily accessible to K-12 students. EBSCO recklessly hosts material harmful for kids under the guise of education. EBSCO must make its products safe for minors: EndSexualExploitation.org/EBSCO  
  5. Netflix – Netflix is a staple of at-home entertainment for over 150 million subscribers who stream their content. Mixed in with the hours of entertainment, though, is sexually graphic and degrading content. Netflix has improved its parental control system and added content warnings, but many Netflix Originals still contain gratuitous amounts of nudity or graphic sexual violence which are triggering for survivors and which normalize sexploitation without addressing the very real harms. Encourage Netflix to stop producing voyeuristic content: EndSexualExploitation.org/Netflix 
  6. Nevada - Legalized brothels in Nevada have proven to be a failed experiment. They also violate the U.S. Constitution’s  Thirteenth Amendment which bans involuntary servitude and slavery because of the trafficking associated with them. Evidence shows that a legalized sex trade increases demand from sex buyers and therefore increases sex trafficking as exploiters try to satisfy the market. Survivors are exposing the ugly truth about life behind brothel doors. By legalizing brothels, Nevada is profiting from sexual exploitation and abuse—just like any other pimp. Nevada is Not Safe for Women: EndSexualExploitation.org/Nevada
  7. OnlyFans - OnlyFans makes money off of vulnerable people’s bodies – especially the bodies of women and minors. Exploiting financial insecurities deepened by the COVID-19 crisis, OnlyFans promises fast cash, empowerment, and even fame. While “Fans” may pay fees for nude images, videos, and livestreams, it is the “creators” who pay the high price of psychological, emotional, and physical harm that the sex industry imparts. Expose OnlyFans for enabling sexual exploitation: EndSexualExploitation.org/OnlyFans
  8. Reddit– Reddit, known as the “front page of the Internet,” has become a hub of exploitation where sex buyers and other sexual predators meet to exchange non-consensually shared intimate images, hardcore pornography, and to give advice to each other about how to use and abuse. Prostitution, sex trafficking, and child sexual abuse material is also easily found on the site because Reddit refuses to institute strong policies and, despite being worth $3 billion, refuses to spend money on moderators and technology solutions to reduce sexual abuse and exploitation material surfacing on their site. It’s time Reddit was made accountable. Take action at EndSexualExploitation.org/Reddit 
  9. SeekingArrangement – SeekingArrangement is a “sugar dating” platform, “sugar dating” being just another term for prostitution. This company targets college students and people suffering from the economic uncertainty of COVID-19 in order to groom them to be sexually used by wealthier, older men. While the Apple App Store does not carry this prostitution app, Google Play does. #TimesUp for SeekingArrangementEndSexualExploitation.org/SeekingArrangement
  10. Twitter – Sexual exploitation is rampant on Twitter. Twitter allows countless posts and accounts that function as advertisements for the trading of child sexual abuse materials (i.e. “child pornography”), sex trafficking, prostitution, and pornography. Twitter also fails to adequately respond to child abuse and sex trafficking victims when they are being exploited on the platform. Twitter must be held legally accountable: EndSexualExploitation.org/Twitter 
  11. Verisign – Seventy percent of all webpages identified as containing child sexual abuse images were found on .com and .net domains according to the 2019 report from The Internet Watch Foundation. Verisign, a publicly traded U.S. company with annual revenues exceeding $1.23 billion, has exclusive management over the .com and .net generic top-level domains. While some other registries and registrars are working to disrupt domains associated with child sexual abuse material, Verisign refuses to take meaningful action and instead inhibits attempts to protect children. Congress must act. Take action at: EndSexualExploitation.org/Verisign 
  12. Wish – Wish, a top ten retail shopping website and app used by over 500 million people, is one of the few mainstream corporations still working with the world’s biggest sexual abusers—MindGeek and Pornhub—even though child sexual abuse material, depictions of actual rape and sex trafficking, and non-consensually shared intimate videos abound on the websites. Not only that, but Wish’s profits rest on the marketing of child-like sex dolls, spycams advertised as useful for filming women nude without permission, and misogynistic apparel. Wish is shopping made exploitative. Call on them to stop prioritizing profits over people!EndSexualExploitation.org/Wish

The Watchlist includes:  

Snapchat – A third of US teens named Snapchat as their favorite social networking app. Unfortunately, this popular platform has been used by sex traffickers and predators to groom, abuse, and sell people, including kids.  Children as young as 13 have also been exposed to graphic sexual content through Snapchat’s Discover stories as sexual abuse, pornography, and prostitution accounts proliferate on the site. Snapchat’s made improvement recently, but it can still do much more to protect minors. Insist Snapchat make its space safer for teens. EndSexualExploitation.org/Snapchat 

TikTok - TikTok has close to a billion monthly users – and many of them are minors. This incredibly popular app was considered a predator’s playground, as the platform enabled easy access to children by strangers. We applaud several major changes TikTok made in 2020 which include enhanced safety features for teens and extensive Community Guidelines. It is encouraging progress, but it is still too early to tell how well these changes will be implemented and we remain concerned about the extent of harmful content accessible by young users. Tell TikTok to keep up the trend of protecting kids. EndSexualExploitation.org/TikTok 

Visa – Visa rightly cut ties with Pornhub in 2020 after public outcry regarding the rampant sex trafficking and abuse videos on the porn website. However, Visa intentionally re-initiated a relationship with MindGeek (owner of Pornhub) and other pornography websites so long as they only published studio-produced videos. This action legitimizes an inherently abusive and exploitive industry. Further, Visa processes payments for brothels and prostitution websites. Call on Visa to reject profits from sexual abuse: EndSexualExploitation.org/Visa

The Dirty Dozen List is an annual campaign highlighting 12 mainstream entities for facilitating, normalizing, and even profiting from sexual abuse and exploitation. Since 2013, the Dirty Dozen List has led to major victories in stemming sexual exploitation: catalyzing significant improvements at Google, Netflix, TikTok, Hilton Worldwide, Verizon, Walmart, the U.S. Department of Defense, and many more mainstream players. 

©National Center for Sexual Exploitation. ©All rights reserved.

Are lockdowns one of the most catastrophic policy errors of the century?

In many countries, there has been a systematic and mandatory paralysis of schooling, work, leisure, and mobility.


When respected scientific experts sitting on prestigious governmental advisory committees warned citizens early last year that the only way to protect themselves against Covid-19 was to shut down their businesses and stay at home until public health officials deemed it safe to come out again, most complied, even at great personal and economic cost.

The result has been one of the most far-reaching and unprecedented social experiments of modern times: the systematic and mandatory paralysis of a large swathe of normal social activity, including schooling, work, leisure, and mobility. If this giant experiment had been run on a one-off basis for a few weeks, the impact might have been moderate; but as it morphed into “rolling” lockdowns, the cure became far worse than the disease.

China got the ball rolling, by imposing a dramatic lockdown upon its citizens in January 2020. A host of Western governments soon followed suit, and lockdowns were imposed in relatively quick succession in Italy, France, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Greece, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and large parts of North America.

A “lockdown” could be technically defined as one or more non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) which heavily restrict the movements and activities of the general population in order to contain the spread of an infectious disease. Voluntary reductions in socialising are not considered as lockdown measures; involuntary, police-enforced restrictions such as stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions, partial or complete border closures, and mandatory school and business closures, are.

The use of these sorts of highly intrusive population-wide measures to mitigate a pandemic represent a revolutionary break with conventional wisdom and best practice surrounding infectious disease control.

Prior to 2020, national and international public health authorities generally accepted that infectious diseases should be mitigated through relatively non-intrusive measures like improved hand hygiene, the development of more effective medical treatments and vaccines, and isolation of specific individuals or groups known to have been exposed to an infectious disease.

For example, the report on “Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza” issued by the World Health Organisation in 2019 did not endorse the general efficacy of border closures as tools of disease control, nor did it contemplate the possibility of confining healthy populations to their homes.

So much for the prevailing philosophies of disease control. What of prevailing practices of disease control? To my knowledge, neither mandatory school and business closures, nor stay-at-home orders, have ever been employed in a systematic and centrally coordinated way to mitigate disease – that is, until January 2020. Therefore, centrally coordinated lockdowns of the sort that we have seen in 2020 must be considered as unorthodox, untested, and highly experimental interventions.

The question is, what have been the fruits of this giant public policy experiment? Have lockdowns actually been vindicated by their net benefits?

In order to adequately address this question, we must be clear on one thing: the appropriate benchmark for assessing the merits of lockdown policies is not just their capacity to reduce Covid infections or deaths, but their capacity to advance the overall health and well-being of affected populations.

For example, even if we eliminated Covid from the face of the earth, that would hardly be desirable if it drove a large section of the population into poverty and increased overall excess mortality.

Nobody in their right mind would deny that Covid-19 illnesses and deaths are a serious harm that we should mitigate in any reasonable way we can. Nonetheless, given the massive collateral damages that severe and prolonged lockdowns are known to inflict on society, they should never be undertaken in the absence of a careful cost-benefit analysis.

Yet to this day, I have not seen reports of any serious or sustained effort by pro-lockdown governments to show that the enormous harms of lockdown are justified by their likely net benefits. The fact that lockdowns have been employed without this sort of justification in hand is reason enough to consider them as reckless, inhumane and morally abhorrent.

The predictable harms of lockdowns, which will have to be carefully documented and tallied over the coming months and years, are extensive.

They include the worst global recession, according to World Bank analysts, since World War II, and dramatic increases in poverty and unemployment (currently at 25% in Ireland, including recipients of Covid payments according to the Central Office of Statistics), which are known to bring in their train declines in mental and physical health. This is also resulting in reduced public funding for healthcare due to a depressed economy; and an increase in social inequality, as day labourers and contract workers are uniquely vulnerable to the economic shock of lockdowns.

We’ve also seen an unprecedented transfer of wealth from small and medium businesses to multinational companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Google (given that small and medium traders are hit much harder by lockdowns than online traders).

Other tragic consequences of lockdown include spikes in loneliness, depression, and domestic abuse as people are deprived of social outlets beyond their homes. A generation of children are being set back in their education and life prospects by prolonged school closures (according to UNESCO, the impact of school closures “is particularly severe for the most vulnerable and marginalized (children)”.

A spike in untreated illnesses in expected, including cancer and heart disease, due to the cancellation of routine medical services and the generalised fear and panic generated by lockdowns. The WHO reported this month that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic was “stark” and “profound” with “50 per cent of governments (having) cancer services partially or completely disrupted because of the pandemic.” One study in The Lancet Oncology journal estimates an increase of 8-9% in breast cancer deaths up to 5 years after diagnosis due to reductions or suspensions in cancer services.

On top of these obvious harms, we should not underestimate the impact of lockdown policies on civil rights and the rule of law. Legislators across Europe and North America have empowered the police to interrogate citizens just because they step into their cars, pay a visit to a friend or relative, or take a walk on the beach.

This level of State interference with basic civil liberties puts in jeopardy something very precious about the Western way of life: the idea that law-abiding citizens are free and responsible for their own actions, and not prisoners or wards of State.

Lockdowns are morally questionable on civil liberty grounds alone. But even if one believes it is legitimate to imprison citizens in their homes and strip them of a livelihood for the greater good, lockdowns remain a dangerous social experiment which should never be attempted in the absence of a compelling case that they do more good than harm.

Any government that does not provide a transparent and rigorous assessment of the likely costs and benefits of lockdowns before implementing them is guilty of gross negligence, and must answer to its citizens for its reckless and misguided interventions.

This article has been republished from Gript, with the permission of the author.

COLUMN BY

David Thunder

David Thunder is the Ramón y Cajal Researcher at the Institute for Culture & Society, (Religion & Civil Society Project) Biblioteca de Humanidades, University of Navarra, Spain. His publications… More by David Thunder

RELATED ARTICLE: How should we argue about what matters most?

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

SICK: Wuhan Lab Eligible To Receive U.S. Taxpayer Funding Through 2024

Rewarding the CCP for the overthrow of “We the People” using Chinese bio-weaponry developed in Wuhan.

Wuhan Lab Eligible To Receive US Taxpayer Funding Through 2024

  • The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) is authorized to receive taxpayer funding for animal research through January 2024, according to the National Institute of Health.
  • The WIV received $600,000 in taxpayer funds between 2014 and 2019 through the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance to study bat-based coronaviruses. 
  • The president of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, was the sole U.S. member in the World Health Organization delegation that investigated the origins of COVID-19 in China.
  • Daszak said the White House should blindly accept the WHO’s determination that it’s highly unlikely that COVID-19 could have unintentionally leaked from the WIV.

By: Daily Caller Foundation, February 21, 2021:

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is authorized to receive taxpayer funding for animal research until January 2024, the National Institute of Health told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The WIV is at the center of widespread speculation that COVID-19 could have entered the human population in China due to an accidental lab leak. Researchers at the lab were studying bat-based coronaviruses prior to the outbreak, a project partially backed by $600,000 in U.S. taxpayer funds routed to the lab through the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance.

The president of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak, was the sole U.S. member of the World Health Organization delegation that investigated the origins of the pandemic on the ground in China in January and February. While the WHO delegation has yet to release a report on their findings, Daszak said the White House should blindly accept their conclusion that it’s highly unlikely the virus could have leaked from the WIV.

Daszak also said American intelligence, which indicates researchers at the WIV became infected with COVID-like symptoms before the first known cases in December 2019, shouldn’t be trusted.

EcoHealth Alliance’s work researching bat-based coronaviruses in China was funded by a $3.7 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 2014, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The grant was terminated by the National Institutes of Health in April amid criticism over EcoHealth Alliance’s relationship with the WIV. The NIH said in a letter the nonprofit’s work in China did not align with “program goals and agency priorities.”

The NIH told EcoHealth Alliance in July it would restore the grant if it met certain conditions, one of which was to arrange for an independent team to investigate the WIV to determine if it had possession of the SARS-COV-2 virus prior to the first known cases in December 2019.

Daszak told NPR that the NIH’s conditions were “preposterous.”

“I’m not trained as a private detective,” Daszak said. “It’s not really my job to do that.” (RELATED: US Scientist With Close Ties To Wuhan Lab Discussed Manipulating Bat-Based Coronaviruses Just Weeks Before Outbreak)

However, the WIV still has an active Foreign Assurance on file with the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, which enables it to continue receiving taxpayer funds to engage in animal research, according to the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare.

A NIH spokeswoman told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the WIV’s Foreign Assurance was approved on Jan. 9, 2019, and is currently set to expire on Jan. 31, 2024.

The spokeswoman did not confirm whether the WIV is currently receiving direct or indirect taxpayer funding for research activities involving animals. EcoHealth Alliance’s last known subgrant to the WIV was in May 2019, according to USASpending.Gov.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permenently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadowbanned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on social and with your email contacts.

Harvard Study: An Epidemic of Loneliness Is Spreading Across America

The lockdowns sure haven’t helped.


Loneliness among Americans has been growing in recent years, but the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically exacerbated the problem. A new report by Harvard University researchers finds that 36 percent of Americans are experiencing “serious loneliness,” and some groups, such as young adults and mothers with small children, are especially isolated.

Researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s “Making Caring Common” project analyzed data from an October 2020 online survey of 950 Americans. “Alarming numbers of Americans are lonely,” they conclude in their paper, and those surveyed “reported substantial increases in loneliness since the outbreak of the pandemic.”

Young adults are the loneliest group. According to the research findings, 61 percent of young people ages 18 to 25 reported feeling lonely “frequently” or “almost all the time or all the time” during the four weeks preceding the fall survey. Forty-three percent of these young adults indicated that their loneliness had increased since the pandemic and related lockdowns began. These results echo similar findings of other Harvard researchers who found that nearly half of young adults were showing signs of depression amid the pandemic response. And in August, the CDC reported that one in four young adults in this age range had contemplated suicide during the month of June.

Mothers with small children were another group experiencing high rates of loneliness according to the recent survey analysis, with more than half of mothers reporting serious loneliness. Forty-seven percent of these mothers said that their loneliness increased during the pandemic response.

While everyone has been forcibly cut off from normal social interaction as a result of government lockdown measures, social distancing mandates, and other public health orders, young people and mothers with small children may be particularly harmed by these policies. In many cases, older teenagers and young adults have been unable to meaningfully connect with their peers during school closures and remote learning plans. Additionally, social distancing requirements on many college campuses have halted normal social interaction and can contribute to loneliness and depression among this cohort. As a fall semester article in BU Today, a publication of Boston University, explained: “BU’s aggressive coronavirus safety protocols—no large groups, fewer in-person classes and meetings, and restrictions on the amount of people allowed in an elevator, laundry room, and even around a dining hall table—can equal loneliness.”

For mothers with small children, being disconnected from other mothers, as well as lacking in-person support from family members and friends, can take its toll and make days with little ones seem even longer and more intense. Additionally, as the Harvard researchers found, periodic daycare and school closures have made the last year particularly challenging for mothers.

In their paper, the researchers cite developmental psychologist, Niobe Way, who says: “We are in danger of alleviating one public health problem—the transmission of disease—while exacerbating another.” Indeed, economists have been pointing out these tradeoffs of the pandemic response since last spring. As FEE’s Antony Davies and James Harrigan wrote in April: “Regardless of whether we acknowledge them, tradeoffs exist. And acknowledging tradeoffs is an important part of constructing sound policy.”

Loneliness in America has been a mounting concern for decades. In his groundbreaking 2000 book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam documented the growing alienation of Americans, as previously robust aspects of civil society that fostered connection, such as bowling leagues, faded away.

More recent research showed that loneliness was worsening prior to the pandemic. In 2018, a joint Kaiser Family Foundation and Economist survey found that one in five Americans “often” or “almost always” felt lonely or socially isolated, and results from a large-scale Cigna report released in January 2020 found that three out of five Americans reported being lonely.

Lockdowns and related pandemic response measures amplified feelings of loneliness and isolation, as local businesses and organizations were shut down or forced to reduce capacity and change operating procedures. Restaurants, bars, coffee shops—even playgrounds—have been closed in many areas, limiting opportunities for social connection. Several states continue to restrict the number of people allowed in one’s own home, including Vermont where residents have been prohibited from interacting with anyone outside of their immediate household since November.

Not surprisingly, loneliness has deepened as a result of these lockdowns and restrictions that sever individuals from their communities, and mental health continues to deteriorate. Youth suicide and depression rates are increasing, and drug overdose deaths are climbing. The tradeoffs of these strict pandemic response policies are becoming increasingly clear.

The most obvious solution to the accelerating loneliness epidemic during the pandemic response is to lift the lockdowns and related public health policies that keep people cruelly separated from one another.

In their new paper, the Harvard researchers acknowledge the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on increasing rates of loneliness but continue to endorse the current policy response, including indicating that we “may need to enter another lockdown phase as new variants spread.” They argue for sweeping efforts to combat the loneliness epidemic both during and after the pandemic response.

While the Harvard researchers acknowledge that individuals can take some action to ameliorate loneliness by identifying and reversing their own negative feedback loops, they focus most of their attention on a “collective” response to loneliness in America.

Specifically, they criticize what they call “this age of hyper-individualism,” saying that we must “restore our commitment to each other and the common good.” To achieve this, the researchers recommend “national, state, and local public education campaigns” that highlight the loneliness epidemic. They recommend that schools, colleges, and workplaces provide more resources to combat loneliness, and they urge a much larger role of government in this process. “The federal government should greatly expand its commitment to national service for young people, and state and local governments can do much more to promote many forms of organized service that bring people together to work on common problems,” the researchers state.

More pressingly, the study authors explain that we must shift from “Americans’ focus on the self” toward “the common good.” The undermining of the individual in favor of the collective, or “common good,” typically means empowering government with more authority to try to fix social problems. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said: “I think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is a simple one. If there’s something wrong, pass a law and do something about it… On the other hand, the individualistic or libertarian argument is a sophisticated and subtle one. If there’s something wrong with society, if there’s a real social evil, maybe you will make better progress by letting people voluntarily try to eliminate the evil.”

Still, the Harvard researchers are right to point out that the loneliness epidemic is a result of disconnection from community. Encouraging this community connection is a goal that can be best achieved through a robust civil society, or the non-governmental, voluntary institutions of our lives—such as extended family, church, clubs, sports leagues, and benefit societies—that have been tragically eroded at the same time that government has grown and taken on roles that were previously reserved for families and communities. An expanded role of government in trying to combat the loneliness epidemic, or any other social problem, will only make matters worse.

In his 1835 book, Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville reflected on the vitality of American civil society. He wrote:

“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; Americans use associations to give fêtes, to found seminaries, to build inns, to raise churches, to distribute books, to send missionaries to the antipodes…”

Tocqueville warned that as these voluntary institutions and associations become usurped by government power, individuals slowly lose their free will. He wrote: “Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

The steady rise of government influence in areas that were previously the domain of civil society has been documented most recently by Howard Husock in his book, Who Killed Civil Society? The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms. Husock explains how non-governmental organizations and community nonprofits increasingly rely on government funding that can dilute their local impact. He writes: “Thousands of organizations, which were once independent of the government and funded by their communities, are instead government contractors now. Today, the U.S. government enters into some 350,000 contracts with 56,000 nonprofit organizations. In doing so, our federal government has changed not only the source of funding — it has changed the character of civil society and its ability to serve local communities best.”

The loneliness that many Americans currently feel is heartbreaking. Big government’s ascent prior to the pandemic, and the role of government in responding to the pandemic with coercive measures, have contributed to and exacerbated the loneliness epidemic. Relying less on government and more on the voluntary fabric of civil society can make us all happier, healthier, and more connected to each other and to our communities.

COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly newsletter on parenting and education here.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: A Utopian Anal Swab for Covid? You have got to be kidding me.

No, this is not political satire, it is happening in the CCP. Covid has a 99+% recovery rate but is being used to strike fear in the hearts of we the people. Is this just another way for tyrants to show how to make us submit to them? As government power grows the rights of we the people shrink.

In a WebMD article titled China Using Anal Swabs for COVID Testing Ralph Ellis reported:

Jan. 28, 2021 — China is not giving up on nasal or throat testing, but the country has adopted a new method for detecting the coronavirus: anal swabs.

Anal testing is being used so far only on select groups, mainly high-risk cases and people in quarantine. Some people who have been subjected to anal testing include passengers arriving in Beijing and a group of more than 1,000 schoolchildren and teachers who were thought to have been exposed to the virus, Forbes reported.

The use of anal swabs is limited because it’s invasive and inconvenient. If a stool sample cannot be obtained, a saline-soaked cotton swab about 1-2 inches long is inserted into the anus, with the sample tested for active traces of the virus.

Read more.

From face masks to social distancing to nose swabs to shutting downs businesses to anal swabs. When will this madness ever end? Government control of we the people is both using Covid as the cause in order for government to take control of every aspect of our lives.

It is time to say enough is enough.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Drive-Thru Anal Swab for Covid-19? The Deep State’s ‘Great Reset’ takes its next logical step.

VIDEO: White House coronavirus adviser stumbles, struggles to explain similar virus numbers despite differing lockdown approaches

Sweden was right.

But the failed, despotic Democrats have dug in and now want to make multiple masks mandatory.

White House coronavirus adviser struggles to explain similar virus numbers despite differing lockdown approaches

White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt appeared not to be able to explain why some states that don’t have strict responses to the pandemic, such as Florida, seemingly fare no worse than largely locked-down states like California.

By: Michael Lee, Washington Examiner, February 18, 2021:

“There’s so much of this virus that we think we understand, and we think we can predict, that’s just a little beyond our explanation,” Slavitt said when asked by MSNBC why Florida and California have similar COVID-19 numbers despite differences in policy responses. “What we do know is the more careful people are, the more they mask and social distance, and the quicker we vaccinate, the quicker it goes away and the less it spreads.”

Slavitt noted that variants make the virus hard to predict and warned that the country needs to remain vigilant.

“We’ve got to get better visibility into variants. We don’t know what role they play,” Slavitt said. “As we all have learned by this time, this is a virus that continues to surprise us. It’s very hard to predict, and, all around the country, we’ve got to continue to do a better job, and I think we are, but we’re not done yet.”

California has implemented the strictest lockdown policies in the country, according to a Wallet Hub analysis, while Florida remains one of the least restrictive states.

Despite frequent criticism of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s approach, the governor has shown little sign he plans on backing down. In a fiery speech Monday, DeSantis slammed updated CDC guidance that called for some schools to remain closed to in-person instruction and vowed to keep the doors to Florida’s schools open.

“What the CDC put out, 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, I wonder why they would do it then, was quite frankly a disgrace. It would require, if you actually follow that, closing 90% of schools in the United States,” DeSantis said. “We are open, we remain open, and we are not turning back.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permanently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadowbanned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on social and with your email contacts.

VIDEO: Kamala Harris Stammers Incoherently When Confronted About Biden ☭ Admin’s Failure to Reopen Schools

Super spreader at a loss for words…..

There is no threat to children from the China virus. But the Democrats have taken them hostage and forced them to fear the outside world and even human faces. A generation of serial killers ……

TRAINWRECK: Kamala Harris Stammers Incoherently When Confronted About Biden Admin’s Failure to Reopen Schools (VIDEO)

By Cristina Laila, Gateway Pundit, February 17, 2021:

This was hard to watch.

Kamala Harris is the most unwanted and unpopular VP in modern history.

Harris fell apart Wednesday when confronted about the Biden Administration’s failure to reopen schools during an interview with Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s “TODAY.”

The CDC Director has already stated that there is data to suggest schools can reopen safely

But the Biden Administration is not listening to the CDC and is not ‘following the science’ because they are bowing down to toxic teachers unions.

The Biden Admin got major backlash after admitting their goal is to have “more than 50%” of K-8 schools open “one day a week” by April 30.

Kamala Harris had no answer for this and stammered incoherently.

This incompetent woman is taking head of state calls for dementia Joe.

We have no real leadership right now.

WATCH:

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1362054333215494145?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1362054333215494145%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2021%2F02%2Ftrainwreck-kamala-harris-stammers-incoherently-confronted-biden-admins-failure-reopen-schools-video%2F

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permanently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadowbanned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on social and with your email contacts.

DeSantis Blasts CDC School Reopening Guidelines calling it a “DISGRACE”

Boom. Watch Governor DeSantis blast the CDC and the Democrat Party for its lockdown policies. If President Trump doesn’t run in 2024, then Governor DeSantis is our candidate.

“If you actually follow them [it would require] closing 90% of schools in the United States. We are open, we remain open, and we are not turning back.”

Florida reported the lowest single day China COVID-19 cases in months.

DeSantis Blasts CDC School Reopening Guidelines, as FIU Brings Staff Back to Campus

By NBC, February 6, 2021

On the same day employees of Florida International University were asked to come back to campus, the governor of Florida took aim at the health and safety protocols the university is consulting as the basis for bringing its staff back.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidelines for reopening K-12 schools last week. In Florida, public schools have been open since October, with parents given the option of sending their kids to school or keeping them home for remote learning during this pandemic.

“What the CDC put out, 5:00 on a Friday afternoon — I wonder why they would do it then — was quite frankly a disgrace. It would require, if you actually follow that, closing 90% of schools in the United States. We are open, we remain open, and we are not turning back,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis, without explaining or detailing which part of the guidelines were objectionable.

The superintendents of Miami-Dade and Broward County Public Schools have each announced their support for the CDC guidelines, which are only recommendations.

In a phone call this afternoon, Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the guidelines are there to make it easier for schools to open, not to shut down schools that are already open. He and Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie have said their district schools are already following almost all of the CDC guidelines.

In a text message exchange Monday afternoon, Runcie said the only recommendation which causes some concern is the six-foot social distancing standard for children. He and Carvalho each agreed that keeping kids that far apart is nearly impossible, which is why their districts use the American Academy of Pediatrics standard of three feet of distance as long as everyone is wearing a mask.

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permanently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadowbanned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on social and with your email contacts.