Johns Hopkins Study: Lockdowns ‘Had No Public Heath Effects’

As we here at the Geller Report have reported for the past two years. One only has to look at countries that did not lockdown, ie Sweden, who fared better.

Still Democrats, in their relentless pursuit of American destruction, continue to threaten us with them.

Johns Hopkins Study: ‘Lockdowns Had Little to No Public Health Effects’

By Keely Sharp, Think American, April 16, 2022

According to a new study by Johns Hopkins University, the pandemic “lockdowns have had little to no public health effects,” and have “imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted.”

“While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” the authors of the study reported.

They added, “In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

Wow, you mean the “conspiracy theorists” were right?? No wonder social media giants, the media, and the government worked so hard to keep them quiet.

Breitbart reports:

The authors are Jonas Herby, special advisor at Center for Political Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark; Lars Jonung, professor emeritus in economics at Lund University, Sweden; and Steve H. Hanke, a Professor of Applied Economics and Founder & Co-Director of The Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise.

The study, the authors said, was “designed to determine whether there is empirical evidence to support the belief that ‘lockdowns’ reduce COVID-19 mortality.” The authors defined lockdowns “as the imposition of at least one compulsory, non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI).”NPIs, they explained, “are any government mandate that directly restrict peoples’ possibilities, such as policies that limit internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel.”

The authors explained that “public health experts and politicians” have “embraced compulsory lockdowns” to address the coronavirus pandemic, and their study was to answer the question of other or not that has done more harm than good.

“To answer our question, we focused on studies that examine the actual impact of lockdowns on COVID-19 mortality rates based on registered cross-sectional mortality data and a counterfactual difference in-difference approach,” the authors said.

Read the rest.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Sweden’s COVID Success: NO Lockdowns, They’re Doing SO MUCH BETTER Than Their European Nieghbors, 

Sweden Refused to Lockdown: They Were Right, New Cases Plunge, Very Ill Approach ZERO

Sweden records just 40 new coronavirus deaths: New data shows moderate social distancing slows Wuhan Virus spread to manageable levels with no lockdowns needed

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

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While Vets Die Waiting, VA Will Focus on LGBT Rights

Remember the VA waiting list scandals under Obama. They’re back under his veep. Or more accurately they never really left.

Biden decided to appoint Denis McDonough, an Obama aide, to head Veteran Affairs and things are going well.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough acknowledged that he is “frustrated” with inconsistency in how medical appointment wait time data is calculated and recorded within the department’s health care systems, and promised changes on the issue later this year.

During testimony before the House Appropriations Committee this week, McDonough said he is concerned about delivering accurate information on appointment timeliness to veterans as they seek to resume care that was deferred or canceled in recent years.

Yes, the waiting list scandal was never actually fixed. Or much of anything else.

Mike Tonkyn had to go to Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center three times to get his blood drawn.

Charlie Bourg’s cancer diagnosis was delayed several months, and now he needs surgery.

Heather Hill saw several of her patients suffer withdrawals after going weeks without medications to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

Others went months without insulin, accidentally got a double-dose of remdesivir to treat COVID-19 or went through withdrawals after going without anti-seizure medication.

More than a year after the Department of Veterans Affairs began testing a new electronic health record system at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center, veterans who rely on the Spokane hospital and the health care workers who count on the software to do their jobs say flaws in the system continue to threaten patients’ safety, even as VA last week announced plans to roll it out in Walla Walla and other cities early next year.

But don’t worry, the VA is laser-focused on its mission… of identity politics.

The Justice Department wants to help non-English speakers report crimes, and Defense Department is reviewing algorithmic bias in its Artificial Intelligence technology as part of the Biden administration’s broad effort to tackle inequality. Driving the news: More than 90 federal agencies released their Equity Action Plans on Thursday that were ordered by President Biden during his first days in office.

We could have affordable gas or 90 equity plans.

The Department of Veterans Affairs said it will work to improve the social and economic determinants of health for LGBTQI+ veterans.

It’s like Obama never left.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLES:

Military Vets Injured in Terror Attacks Say Biden Ignoring Their Sacrifices and Those of Thousands of Other Terrorism Victims

Biden’s Drilling ‘Poison Pill’ Sabotages Domestic Energy Production

Convicted Islamic State terrorist got security job at Austria Center Vienna, is on trial for raping coworker

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

SHOCKING POLL: 41% of Democrats Embrace Disney’s LGBT Agenda to Sexually Groom Children

We have written about Disney’s mission to groom underaged children to become sexual partners for pedophiles and pederasts. To understand Disney’s agenda watch this video of Disney’s Gay Diversity and Inclusion Manager Vivian Ware:

On June 30th, 2021  Michelle Mockler, Disney’s External Communications Manager, on the Disney Parks Blog reported:

We sat down with Vivian Ware, Diversity & Inclusion Manager, who reflected on her journey helping launch one of Disney’s first-ever BERGs (Business Employee Resource Groups) more than 22 years ago, our PRIDE BERG.

[ … ]

In 1998, when Vivian was asked if she would be interested in joining a team of fellow cast members organizing a Diversity Resource Group that was supportive of the LGBTQ+ community. Vivian became instrumental in founding the group, soon to be known as PRIDE (People Respecting Individual Diversities in Everyone).

[ … ]

She [Vivian Ware] recalls that at the time, she was still early in her own coming out journey. “Being able to connect with others and create a bond with people who were like me, created affirmation for me that I was not alone and that it was okay for me to be who I was.”

The launch of the PRIDE BERG coincided with the launch of our HOLA BERG, which advocates for the Hispanic and Latinx community, and PULSE BERG, which supports the Black, African-American, and Caribbean communities. Vivian fondly recalls the teams involved in all three launches coming together to serve as allies to one another as they geared up to launch the BERGs: “The launch of these first-ever BERGs at the same time showed the strength of community. When we all come together, our voices are more powerful than when we work separately.”

Read more.

Trafalgar Group’s National Issues Survey on Disney

The Trafalgar Group’s new National Issues Survey on Disney, which was sponsored by the Convention of States Action, found that more than 69 percent of respondents said they were likely to support “family-friendly alternatives” to Disney.

However, when your break down the numbers you find a shocking numbeDr.r of those who embrace Disney’s LGBT movement to groom children.

Here are the numbers of those embracing the grooming of children by Disney:

  • Democrats – 41%
  • Republicans – 14.7%
  • No Party Affiliation – 27.5%

NOTE: The Trafalgar Group’s new National Issues Survey on Disney poll was conducted between April 4-8th of 1,079 likely general election voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.99 percent.

The Bottom Line

The Disney Corporation has been queering kids since 1999. This movement to queer children is designed to create a new generation that embraces fully the LGBTQ agenda. And they are succeeding.

Recently Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the “Parental Rights in Education” (Anti-Grooming) bill into law on April 11th, 2022, prohibiting classroom discussion or instruction on sexual orientation and identity in kindergarten to third grade or in older grades in “a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate.”

When the bill was passed by the Florida legislature Disney’s CEO came out against the bill as did multiple senior staff members. Disney want to groom children to be used and abused sexually.

It is astounding that so many still want this to continue by supporting Disney. As the saying goes, “What you allow is what will continue.” It appears there are many who want this kid grooming to continue.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Labor Unions [Quietly] Admit the Jones Act Is Contributing to America’s Supply Chain Problems

The AFL-CIO appears to recognize that the Jones Act is part of the US supply chain problem.


As reported by Politico earlier this week, the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trade Department has authored a new statement on US maritime policy that features predictable enthusiasm for protectionist policies such as the Jones Act and cargo preference laws. More interesting, however, is the statement’s inclusion of language calling for a fleet of feeder vessels to transport cargo through the country’s coastal waters:

Creating a fleet of U.S.-built, U.S.-flag and crewed feeder vessels to carry a portion of America’s trade along our coasts to be offloaded in underutilized ports for transportation by truck and rail to their ultimate inland destination will not only strengthen the maritime industry and create jobs aboard ship and in our ports but will help mitigate against future shipping supply chain disruptions.

This passage is significant for at least two reasons. First, it acknowledges that the United States currently lacks such vessels connecting smaller ports to larger ports as part of a hub and spoke system. Second, it states that such a transportation option would help relieve supply chain disruptions by alleviating demands on overburdened truck and rail networks.

Thus, US policies that stand in the way of developing a network of coastal shipping—also known as short sea shipping or marine highways—contribute to the supply chain crisis.

As I’ve written before, one of those policies is the Jones Act. Simply put, requiring the use of vessels that are far most costly to build and operate than foreign ships is a significant disincentive to utilizing this method of transporting goods. The capital costs alone of acquiring such vessels—which must be constructed by US shipyards much less efficient than their foreign counterparts—were perceived by ocean carriers as the single largest obstacle to the implementation of short sea shipping in the United States according to a 2006 study.

As my colleague Scott Lincicome pointed out last September, this lack of coastal shipping has “worsened the current shipping situation by (1) putting additional pressure on inland transit (i.e., trucks and trains are used instead of ships that could travel between US ports); and (2) causing companies to avoid the Jones Act by “port hopping” up and down US coasts using larger, foreign‐​flagged ships that take longer to offload and are prohibited from picking up additional cargo while they’re in port.”

Fortunately, the AFL-CIO may be catching on. Noting the lackluster state of US shipbuilding, the head of the organization’s Metal Trades Department stated in a December interview that foreign‐​built ships may have to be purchased to help jumpstart marine highways. For that to happen, however, Congress would have to pass legislation waiving the Jones Act’s US-built requirement.

This legislative change wouldn’t solve all of the Jones Act’s problems but would mark an excellent first step in reducing the law’s burdens. Allowing an influx of new, less expensive ships would generate jobs for US mariners, business for smaller US ports, and even potential repair and maintenance work for US shipyards while reducing American highway and rail congestion and transportation costs.

Such change would be good for the environment too: reduced traffic means fewer emissions while ships are a more carbon‐​friendly means of transporting goods than trucks or rail. Once realized, such benefits could spark an appetite for further liberalization and a paring back of maritime protectionism.

The article was republished with permission from the Cato Institute.

AUTHOR

Colin Grabow

Colin Grabow is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies.

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

VIDEO: Skyrocketing Food Price Mystery Exposed

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Food shortages and skyrocketing food prices now appear inevitable. The global food price index hit its highest recorded level in March 2022, rising 12.6% in a single month. On average, food prices were one-third higher than in March 2021. In the U.S., food prices rose 9% in 2021, and are predicted to rise another 4.5% to 5% in the next 12 months
  • Inflation was already ramping up well before Russia went into Ukraine, thanks to the uncontrolled printing of fiat currencies that occurred in response to the COVID pandemic. Governments’ COVID responses have also wreaked havoc with global supply chains, causing disruptions that continue to this day
  • Ukraine has ceased exports of wheat, oats, millet, buckwheat and cattle, and Russia has banned exports of fertilizer
  • Together, Russia and Belarus provide nearly 40% of the global exports of potash, a key fertilizer ingredient. Russia also exports 48% of the global ammonium nitrate, and combined with Ukraine, they export 28% of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium fertilizers. Experts are now predicting fertilizer prices may double as a result of Russia’s ban on fertilizer exports
  • The long-term answer lies in regenerative biodynamic farming, which does not use any chemical inputs

In the featured video, “Breaking Points” cohosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti discuss one of the greatest threats currently facing the people of the world, namely food shortages and skyrocketing food prices.

According to a recent NPR report,1 the global food price index hit its highest recorded level in March 2022, rising 12.6% in a single month.2 On average, food prices were one-third higher than in March 2021. In the U.S., food prices rose 9% in 2021, and are predicted to rise another 4.5% to 5% in the next 12 months.3

But while the Ukraine conflict is cited as the primary cause, it’s not the sole reason. Price inflation was already ramping up well before Russia went into Ukraine, thanks to the uncontrolled printing of fiat currencies that occurred in response to the COVID pandemic. Governments’ COVID response have also wreaked havoc with global supply chains, causing disruptions that continue to this day.

The climate has also been uncooperative, causing poor harvests around the world. China, for example, has reported it expects the lowest harvest yields in history this year, thanks to serious flooding of its farmland in the fall of 2021.4

Compounding Crises Threaten Global Food Productivity

That said, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is certainly making a bad problem worse. Ukraine is known as “the bread basket” of Europe, responsible for producing and exporting 12% of all food calories traded on the international market. Russia is also a major exporter of food, and together with Ukraine, the two countries account for nearly 30% of global wheat exports, nearly 20% of the world’s corn and more than 80% of the sunflower oil.5

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s projections, wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine will be reduced by more than 7 million metric tons in 2022. At the same time, the Ukrainian government has decided to ban all export of wheat, oats, millet, buckwheat and cattle, to ensure food safety for its own people, while Russia has banned exports of fertilizer.6

As reported by Wired, the current food crisis in Ukraine is made up of several components, and the effects will have a worldwide rippling effect, thanks to our dependency on global trade:7

“Goods that have already been harvested — last autumn’s corn, for instance — can’t be transported out of the country; ports and shipping routes are closed down, and international trading companies have ceased operations for safety. (Plus, while those crops sit in bins, destruction of the country’s power grid takes out the temperature controls and ventilation that keep them from spoiling.)

This year’s wheat, which will be ready in July, can’t be harvested if there’s no fuel for combines and no labor to run them. Farmers are struggling over whether to plant for next season — if they can even obtain seeds and fertilizer, for which supplies look uncertain [ … ]

Analysts worry that the countries that buy the most wheat from Ukraine — predominantly in Africa and the Middle East — will have the hardest time paying as prices rise.”

Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist and professor in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois told Wired magazine:8

“This crisis is beyond the normal ability to shuffle supplies around. We’ve exploded that system, and the cost is going to be extreme economic pain.”

Serious Fertilizer Shortage Looms

Together, Russia and Belarus provide nearly 40% of the global exports of potash, a key fertilizer ingredient. Russia also exports 48% of the global ammonium nitrate, and combined with Ukraine, they export 28% of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium fertilizers.9

Experts are now predicting fertilizer prices may double as a result of Russia’s ban on fertilizer exports. For some farmers, that will be a death knell that causes them to go out of business. The rest will be forced to charge more for their commodities, resulting in skyrocketing food prices.

Biodynamic Solutions

Are there any solutions to this pressing dilemma? I would argue that there are, but it’ll require rapid response and adaptation from farmers everywhere. As explained in “Kiss the Ground,” a documentary about biodynamic farming, a beautiful harmony exists within nature, and we can benefit by tapping into that natural system with biodynamic practices rather than working against it.

As noted in the film, a preview of which is included above, “Biodynamic farming is simply farming in service of life.” While it requires a leap of faith to make the transition, the results speak for themselves. Biodiversity improves rapidly on farms that make the transition, and the quality of the food (and the quality of life of the farmer) is greatly augmented.

Biodynamic agriculture builds upon the foundation of organic farming. That means zero pesticides and synthetic fertilizers are used. But biodynamic then goes a step further. The goal is to make the land better than it was before. It doesn’t just stop the destruction of soil, but actually regenerates it.

The farm as a whole is basically viewed as one organism, where each part of the farm supports the rest. Livestock have their role, as do microorganisms and beneficial insects. Rather than working against you, they’re now working for you to improve the fertility of the soil and the quality of the food grown in it.

Biodynamic farming is really about being a part of nature and working with it rather than trying to conquer nature through unnatural and ultimately destructive means.

Biodynamic farming can also, over time, help stabilize the climate. Not only do biodynamic farmers not pollute the air, water or soil in the first place, but the plants also pull carbon from the air, depositing it back into the soil where it does the most good, and requires far less watering. Regenerative practices also prevent the loss of topsoil and increase rainfall.

For example, regenerative ranchers in Northern Mexico, in the Chihuahuan Desert, who have added 1 million acres of rotational grazing, report getting 15% to 20% more rainfall than their neighbors who haven’t regenerated their land.

Support Biodynamic Farming

Many of the food products we sell under the Mercola brand are produced by Demeter certified biodynamic farmers in eight countries. Demeter is the oldest ecological certification in the world. Most recently, we’ve initiated the first-ever standards for Demeter Certified Biodynamic supplements as well.10

We also fund the Billion Agave Project, initiated by Regeneration International on a regenerative farm in Mexico run by the Organic Consumers Association. It’s a fantastic solution that solves several problems at once.

This project is a game-changing ecosystem-regeneration and reforestation strategy that uses a combination of agave plants and mesquite (a nitrogen-fixing companion tree), to salvage and regenerate degraded semi-arid lands that aren’t suitable for other crops.

Forty percent of the world is arid or semi-arid and in danger of becoming desert where nothing will grow. But we can reverse this process using native plants and permaculture techniques such as this one.

By taking a limb from a healthy mesquite tree, adding some natural hormones and wrapping the branch with a bag filled with compost, you will, after three to four months, have a small tree ready for planting as new roots grow into the compost-filled bag. At that point, you can either plant it into a container or directly into the soil.

This process is known as “air layering.” A 1-year-old mesquite tree grown in this way will be as big as a 7-year-old mesquite tree grown from seed, significantly speeding up the reforestation effort. The roots of the mesquite tree can burrow hundreds of feet down in search of water, and they in turn provide nutrition for other plants, as they exchange liquid carbon from the tree for the nutrients from the soil.

In this way, the mesquite supports the growth of the agave without need for chemical fertilizers, and the agave can then be used to produce a fermented nutrition-rich biomass that supports grazing livestock that otherwise might not have enough to eat.

A Way to Support Grazing Cattle on Semi-Arid Lands

Agave is best known for producing tequila, but a local farmer in Mexico discovered he could use the massive leaves, which are typically discarded as junk, to produce a nutrient-rich livestock feed. Cows, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and even sheepdogs enjoy it.

The feed is produced by finely chopping up the leaves, each of which can weigh 40 to 80 pounds, and then fermenting them in a closed container. To this fermented mash, you can then add mesquite pods at a ratio of 80% to 90% agave leaf and 10% to 20% mesquite pods. This mix is superior to alfalfa in terms of nutrition, but costs only a third or a quarter of the price.

A big part of the cost-savings is from the reduced water consumption. Alfalfa needs about 26 times more water than agave and mesquite. Most of the animals on the farm eat the natural vegetation and get the agave mash as a supplement.

However, by adding garbanzo beans — another low-water crop — you could produce a feed that the animals could live on exclusively. Considering some areas are now considering culling their livestock herds due to a shortage in cattle feed,11 this could be a novel solution in some instances.

New Market Opportunities

Changing the farming subsidies to prioritize regenerative farming would go a long way to changing the status quo, but private investing is another route to success that is now coming to the fore.

There’s a new type of asset being developed on the stock exchange called Natural Asset Stocks, or Natural Asset Corporations. The government of Costa Rica, for example, is putting all government-owned forests and farmlands into a Natural Asset Corporation.

This is a type of stock different from anything we’ve seen so far. Basically, these stocks will allow fund managers, private investors and corporations to invest in natural assets. The part you end up owning is the ecosystem services of that land.

So, for example, you could own the environmental services resulting from the Billion Agave Project, which include carbon sequestration amounts and water savings. Over time, as the whole system matures and the soils are regenerated, your asset rises in value.

This new asset system will allow Wall Street to divert financial assets into ecosystem assets that benefit the planet in a multitude of ways, and still get a return on their money.

The Organic Consumers Association has also developed a system of verification to go along with this new asset system. Using modern technology, it will be able to accurately measure things like the number and size of plants and the health of the soil.

Had heed been taken sooner, we wouldn’t be in such a precarious position right now. But hindsight is 20/20, and I believe many farmers will now be forced to make the tough choice to make the conversion to biodynamic if they want to survive in the long term.

They’re also using a blockchain accounting system to verify the calculations and make it very difficult to cheat. So, anyone who invests in a natural asset will be able to verify, several years down the road, at a very low cost, whether the asset has improved or degenerated.

Regenerative Farming Could Save the World

A number of people have pushed regenerative farming for decades, warning that the current chemical-dependent monoculture is unsustainable in the long run, and subject to geopolitical disruptions. We’re seeing the reality of those warnings right now.

Had heed been taken sooner, we wouldn’t be in such a precarious position right now. But hindsight is 20/20, and I believe many farmers will now be forced to make the tough choice to make the conversion to biodynamic if they want to survive in the long term.

Their transition is not going to bring immediate help to the global population, as it takes a number of years to turn depleted soils into soils that can support food production without chemical inputs. But we have to start thinking in the longer term if any of us are to survive.

As a nonfarmer, you can support this effort by buying food from regenerative and biodynamic farmers. Regenerative International, incorporated in 2014, has built a global network of regenerative farmers and ranchers, with some 400 affiliates in 60 countries.

You can find a map of these regenerative farms on RegenerationInternational.org. Of course, you can also implement regenerative strategies in your own garden, even if it’s a small one. The future does look bleak at the moment, with food shortages and skyrocketing prices appearing inevitable, but doing nothing is not the answer. We must all start thinking ahead and make wiser choices.

The globalization of food production has led us to the brink of disaster. The answer is to return to locally grown foods. Similarly, our reliance on chemical-dependent monocultures has just been proven to be a weak link that needs to be replaced by regenerative methods that don’t need chemicals to thrive. We have the answers to the problem. We just need to implement them, as rapidly as possible.

Sources and References

RELATED ARTICLE: Labor Unions (Quietly) Admit the Jones Act Is Contributing to America’s Supply Chain Problems

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

INFANTICIDE USA: Nearly Full Term Baby Boy’s Body Found in Abortion Clinic in Washington, D.C.

The story coming out of a late-term abortion clinic in Washington, D.C. shows you everything that’s wrong with abortion and the people who promote it.

Here is a picture of Baby Boy 1, one of five babies killed at the clinic recently whose remains were reportedly obtained by a pro-life advocate who has since been arrested.

I defy anyone to look at this picture and tell me this is not a human being: Click here to see Baby Boy 1 Picture (warning graphic image).

This boy was a nearly full term baby, viable outside the womb.  The photo shows that “that he remained largely intact, raising questions about how his life ended. He also has what appears to be a fully formed face, fingers, toes, and all the primary features normally visible in a newborn.”

Abortion supporters want legal cover to be able to kill babies like this up to birth.  If you support this, I will tell you right to your face you are a monster.

But the abortion-industrial complex has circled the wagons.  D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser refuses to investigate, even though the five babies might have been killed in illegal partial birth abortions, killed after birth, or left to die after being born alive.

Gone are the days when abortion rights supporters would tell you they wanted abortions to be ‘safe, legal, and rare.’  Now we get hysterical attempts to push the envelope precisely at the moment public support for abortion is dwindling and the Supreme Court is poised to pull back on abortion rights.  The demands are getting more shrill and outrageous.  Now, abortionistas claim the right to an ‘effective abortion’, meaning, they want to kill the baby if it’s born alive.  An abortionist at that D.C. clinic admitted some years ago, that he “probably wouldn’t” help a baby who survived an abortion even though “legally we would be obligated to help.”  So much for the law.  One of his staff said at the time a baby born alive after a botched abortion should just be flushed down the toilet.  So much for humanity.

A Democrat-controlled committee in the California Assembly recently reported out a bill critics say would allow infanticide, letting babies die up to 6 weeks after birth.  As originally written, the bill would have allowed the murder of newborns for any reason.  The language was revised, but it still allows the killing of infants and discourages law enforcement from investigating the circumstances.

California isn’t the only place pushing the envelope.  Democrat-controlled Colorado and New Jersey now have laws allowing abortion up to birth.  The Democrats who control the U.S. Senate wanted to federalize a right to abortion up to birth and shred all state pro-life laws in the process.  The bill failed, but by only one vote.

Take a look at the picture of Baby Boy 1 again. Look long and hard. If you support his killing, or the Democrats’ insane drive for abortion up to birth and beyond, I don’t mind telling you to your face you are a monster. The only question is, what kind of monster are you?

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

©Fred Brownbill. All rights reserved.

Schools Are Outdated. It’s Time For Reform

By continuing along with this standardized type of schooling, we are putting millions at a disadvantage.


The public education system we currently know has been around for more than 150 years. However, the basic schooling model remains the same. Roughly 20 to 30 kids of the same age are stuffed into a classroom and taught by one teacher.

Even though the curricula have developed, the essence has stayed the same. Children are still taught in a standardized and industrialized way. As with anything that comes from centralized control, it is highly inefficient, bureaucratic, and wasteful.

Yes, the overall educational system has changed in many regards. However, the way we are taught has not. A teacher at the front and the children seated is the optimal way to learn for some students, but others struggle in this environment.

Children learn best in different ways. Some children are best suited to learn through visual stimulation. Others may learn best through hands-on education. The reality is that the current educational system doesn’t really accommodate any learning style, nor does it aim for anything other than high test scores.

Children rarely are allowed to be children. Play is stifled. Students are crammed into a classroom and taught in a standardized way. Creativity is restricted. They aren’t allowed to harness their inquisitive minds. Questioning things is part of the analytic mind and a key to societal development, but this takes a backseat to examinations.

The very nature of tests relies on memorization, repetition, and regurgitation: Tests infrequently harness the analytical mind. They train students to know the answers. However, they don’t train them on how to find the answers.

Faculty aspire to develop students’ thinking skills, but research shows that in practice, we tend to aim at facts and concepts in the disciplines, at the lowest cognitive levels, rather than the development of intellect or values.

Critical thinking is key to creating free and individual minds. It is also increasingly important in today’s age, where the line between information and facts is so fine. In fact, 95 percent of statistics are made up. A critical mind will question where this actually came from. Where did this statistic come from? Is it actually reliable?

The issue we have today is that students are taught to test. Whether the information makes sense or not is irrelevant as long as it is correct. This comes at a cost. Schools teach students what to think as opposed to how to think. There are important critical skills that aren’t taught. Do students truly question whatever they read or accept any claim blindly? Or, perhaps, do they accept it as long as it confirms their biases? The current system is failing because it is offering the wrong type of education. We must develop individual minds, not mindless zombies.

Each child is unique in their own right. Each has a different personality and preferred way of learning. Under the current system, each child is bundled under one standardized umbrella. When considering the different types of learners, it is easy to see why some get left behind.

The four learning styles include: visual learners, auditory learners, reading/writing learners, and kinesthetic learners. However, the idea of learning styles is not definitive. That is to say that you are not exclusively one type of learner or another.

Research from Pashler et al. disputes the evidence of specific learning styles.

Rather, these learning styles are preferences rather than “hard-coded.” This is to say that these preferred learning styles can change over time. When a specific learning style is preferred, it is easier for students to take in that information. For example, some students may prefer visual stimulation to emphasize a point, so graphs and charts may be useful. If this engages the students, they take more in. This inevitably affects educational outcomes.

Kinaesthetic learners are probably the biggest anomaly in the classroom. For students who learn best by being active, the classroom is the last place to be. It is no wonder why there are always a few individuals who are consistently disengaged. These individuals are often sporty and have high levels of energy. The traditional football captain who struggles to maintain his place on course may spring to mind. By continuing along with this standardized type of schooling, we are putting millions at a disadvantage.

Whether you buy into learning styles or not, it is evident that the current classroom system is outdated. Literacy rates have stagnated since 1971, while there has been no progress in math since 1990. So what are the causes of this stagnation?

The New York Times would have you believe the issue is underfunding. Throwing more money at something is a classic proposal used by modern-day liberals.

This problem cannot be solved with money alone, however. Kansas City, Missouri, provides us with a perfect example. It currently spends roughly 63 percent of its entire budget on schooling. Benefiting from the best-funded school facilities in the country, student performance has failed to improve. Furthermore, the US spends more on education than any other OECD country besides Norway.

At the same time, it is receiving little value for the money. Outcomes are average, but mathematic results are particularly poor. Countries such as Vietnam, Hungary, and Slovakia score higher.

So why is testing such a bad thing? It teaches children how to absorb information. Children “learn for a test.” However, once the test is taken, is the information truly absorbed? How long does it stay present in the mind? Research by neurobiologists Blake Richards and Paul Frankland suggests it isn’t very long.

According to the neurobiologists, the brain quickly disregards information that is no longer required. Forgetting is an evolutionary strategy to promote the survival of the species. Richards and Frankland state:

From this perspective, forgetting is not necessarily a failure of memory. Rather, it may represent an investment in a more optimal mnemonic strategy.

It is true that repetition can help with memory retention. However, if that specific memory is not recalled, it is eventually forgotten. Further research from Bacon and Stewart studied individual students for up to two years following course completion. They concluded that most of the knowledge gained during the course was lost within two years.

It is clear that the current system is generally based upon memory—who can memorize the most information to prepare for the test. Is this really arming kids with the tools they need for adulthood?

One potential solution for education would be to start “formal” schooling at age seven. Research from the University of Cambridge concludes that there are benefits of later starts to formal education. This evidence relates to the contribution of playful experiences to children’s development as learners and the consequences of starting formal learning at the age of four to five years of age.

There also needs to be a reduction in the level of testing. We have developed a system whereby teachers have a strong incentive to “teach to test.” It’s about memorizing as much information as possible rather than learning how to think.

Furthermore, the testing culture is putting a strain on both teachers’ and students’ mental health. Test results are the be-all and end-all. It is for that reason that many teachers are already leaving the profession. Reforming this testing culture would not only reduce teacher and student stress but also relieve teacher turnover rates.

Thirdly, school vouchers are a viable option. There are already a number of states that have experimented with this. Mostly, there has been large success across the board. The benefits of school choice are widely documented. The vast majority of existing studies find positive effects. Not only are test scores improved, but graduation rates and civic engagement are also enhanced.

AUTHOR

Paul Boyce

Paul is a Business Economics graduate from the UK and currently an editor at http://boycewire.com.

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

How Mask Mandates Make a Mess of Things—Literally

Government-driven litter can quickly become pollution.


The mask mandate for all airplanes and public transit in the US was set to expire on April 18. But on Wednesday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention extended it for 15 days, citing an uptick in cases, especially of the “BA.2 omicron subvariant.”

“In order to assess the potential impact the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and health care system capacity, the CDC order will remain in place at this time,” the agency announced in a statement.

The government wants another 15 days to assess the spread. Sounds familiar.

The expiration of the order would have been a milestone in the protracted winding down of the government-driven mask culture that has reigned supreme throughout the world since early in the pandemic. The reign of the mask has had mixed results at best, most of which were unintended adverse consequences.

The most visible of these consequences has been mask litter, which sharply increased during the pandemic, according to a research study published December 2021 in the journal Nature Sustainability.

“The proportion of masks in litter increased by >80-fold as a result of COVID-19 legislation, from <0.01% to >0.8%,” the study found.

We’ve all seen it: the baby blue masks on the sidewalk and in the gutter, sometimes soaked with rainwater and caked with muck. It’s a disgusting eyesore: “visual pollution” is the technical term.

And it’s not only mask litter. The study also discussed gloves and wipes. And Singapore is dealing with another visual pollutant resulting from COVID mandates: sticker litter.

In August 2021, The Straits Times reported that, to comply with government rules prohibiting unvaccinated people from dining in, food courts were checking vaccination status at the entrance and marking the vaxxed with little stickers.

This method spread throughout the island nation. But now Singapore is dealing with an unintended consequence of its vaccine rules, as The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday:

“Outside, scores of discarded badges ended up stuck to railings, walls, signs, traffic-light posts—practically any surface within arm’s reach, even plants. Some of the rules were eased recently, but the unwanted pandemic souvenirs remain.

Beyond the visual blight, the stickers leave behind a gummy, hard-to-clean residue.”

As the Journal hinted, it is ironic that Singapore is dealing with gummy gunk in public spaces resulting from a draconian order, given that decades ago it famously issued another draconian order banning chewing gum… to prevent gummy gunk in public spaces.

Some may dismiss litter as a mere annoyance. But its visual pollution injects ugliness and chaos into our lives, mars the beauty and order humans naturally strive to create, and degrades our quality of life.

And litter can escalate into pollution that more directly impacts health. This is especially true for litter that accumulates on a massive scale due to sweeping government policies that impact human behavior en masse.

As the Nature Sustainability study warned:

“Littered items can be transported by weather conditions into drains and sewerage systems, creating potential blockages where they entangle with other solids (for example, leaf litter).”

Like I said, mask litter can be disgusting. And our natural disgust response is often a warning sign for unhygienic threats to our health. So it is no surprise that the study warned that litter can become “vectors for other pathogens and pollutants.”

The study lists several other negative environmental impacts, rounding out the list with microplastics:

“Chemical, physical and biological weathering will break the littered items down from macro-plastics (>5 mm) into micro-plastics (<0.5 mm) and nano-plastics (<100 nm) that have the potential to enter the lower food chain and have toxicological effects including the leaching of metals.”

Every soiled mask on the sidewalk should be a reminder that all government dictates have unintended consequences. Like debris, the adverse impacts of the COVID regime have accumulated, adding up to a mind-bogglingly immense total cost for society: in material security and prosperity, health (both physical and mental), and quality of life. It is long past time to clean up.

AUTHOR

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in chief of FEE.org.

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

Suing, Buying, and Competing the Delusional Left Out of Existence

“If Elon Musk successfully purchases Twitter, it could result in World War 3 and the destruction of our planet.”  That’s what some crazy leftist said on Twitter yesterday.  World War 3?  The destruction of the planet?  What’s interesting to me is that these crazy leftists are so far down the rabbit hole, they could believe such things.  They are delusional and should seek professional help.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, reality is delivering some stunning rebukes to these crazy leftists and their crazy beliefs.

A public university in Ohio agreed to pay $400,000 to settle a lawsuit by a philosophy professor who refused to use students’ preferred pronouns.  It also agreed to cease and desist in its attempts to force him to use preferred pronouns in the future.  It’s crazy for the authoritarian Left to compel speech in violation of the First Amendment and, furthermore, to compel all of society to tell lies.  Boys are not girls and girls are not boys.  To compel everyone to believe and speak otherwise is straight out of Soviet thought control.  To think you have the power to compel everyone on earth to labor under your delusions is really crazy.

If you think $400,000 is a lot, just wait until you hear this.  An Ohio appeals court panel just upheld a $44 million judgment against Oberlin College in Ohio for libeling a bakery when the College actively backed a student protest against the bakery.  The owner’s son chased down a black student for shoplifting.  The student later pled guilty, but protesters accused the bakery of racial profiling and discrimination.  The Dean of Students circulated a flyer and the student body passed a resolution, both containing defamatory statements about the bakery – ‘racists’, blah, blah, blah.  Defamatory statements were postedin the student union, and the school refused to take them down.  The flyer with the false information encouraged students to boycott the bakery.  The verdict included $33 million in punitive damages.  So, to all you smug crazy leftists out there, who trip over your own virtue signaling and let yourselves get carried away despite the facts of the case, just remember you, too, might one day be staring down the barrel of a $33 million punitive damage award.   To persist when the facts show you to be dead wrong, that’s really crazy.

And it’s really crazy to think you can force your beliefs on others.  A woman in Tennessee just won a $10,000 settlement from her union that tried to force her to pay union dues to support the union’s pro-abortion stance.  She had requested a religious exemption, but the union refused.  The union also agreed to write a letter of apology to settle the case.  It’s really crazy to think you can force everyone in the world to put their money behind your leftist beliefs.

Back to the Big Lie of transgenderism for a moment, a women’s group has filed a formal civil rights complaintagainst the University of Pennsylvania for allowing that biological male Lia Thomas to compete on the women’s swim team.  You probably heard about the unfair competition and destruction of women’s sports, but the complaint also alleges the university created a hostile environment for women by allowing Thomas into the same locker room where he proudly displayed his male genitalia to the women’s team.  Team members requested the school make Thomas use a different locker room, but the coaches refused.  You leftists are really crazy if you think you’re going to get away with this kind of stuff.

You’re also crazy to think you’ll never suffer any consequences from your outrageous behavior.  Students at Yale protested an event hosted by a conservative legal society featuring a speaker who had defended the Colorado baker in the gay wedding cake case in the Supreme Court.  After the protest, a federal judge took the unprecedented step of sendingan email to all federal judges in the country encouraging them not to hire any Yale law students who took part in the protest.  If the students are not committed to free speech, they shouldn’t be getting prestigious clerkships from federal judges.

So, you put that together with multimillion dollar punitive damage awards, conservatives starting competing companieswhen authoritarian leftists mess with their free speech, and Elon Musk mounting a hostile takeover of Twitter for doing the same, and you’ve got cold hard facts on the ground that should give even the most insane committed leftists pause.  Careful what you wish for, careful what you do, because we’re not going to sit still for your nonsense.  We can’t wait to return the favor and sue you, buy you, or compete you out of existence.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Elon Musk Offers To Buy Twitter For More Than $40 Billion

Elon Musk wants to own 100% of Twitter.

The tech visionary and billionaire recently set off a firestorm when he purchased a large chunk of Twitter’s stock, and he’s now coming for the whole thing for the price of  $43.4 billion, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Musk wrote the following in part in a message to Twitter board chair Bret Taylor, according to the same report:

However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.

As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.

Twitter has extraordinary potential.  I will unlock it.

I can’t begin to tell you how much I hope this happens. It’s not just that I want Elon Musk to take over Twitter. It’s that we need Elon Musk to take over Twitter.

AUTHOR

David Hookstead

Sports and entertainment editor.

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

ALL TIME HIGH: Producer prices soar 11.2% from a year ago in March, the biggest gain on record

And the ruling party’s number one concern is sexualizing your children.

Producer prices rose 11.2% from a year ago in March, the biggest gain on record

  • The producer price index, which measures prices paid by wholesalers, rose 1.4% in March and 11.2% from a year ago, both records for data going back to 2010.
  • Prices for final demand goods led with a 2.3% monthly rise, while services prices gained 0.9%.
  • Wednesday’s release comes the day after the BLS reported the consumer price index for March surged 8.5% over the past year.

The producer price index, which measures prices paid by wholesalers, rose 1.4% in March and 11.2% from a year ago, both records for data going back to 2010.
Prices for final demand goods led with a 2.3% monthly rise, while services prices gained 0.9%.

Wednesday’s release comes the day after the BLS reported the consumer price index for March surged 8.5% over the past year.

Producer prices soar 11.2% from a year ago in March, hit new all-time high

The prices that goods and services producers receive rose in March at the fastest pace since records have been kept, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The producer price index, which measures the prices paid by wholesalers, increased 11.2% from a year ago, the most in a data series going back to November 2010. On a monthly basis, the gauge climbed 1.4%, above the 1.1% Dow Jones estimate and also a record.

Stripping out food, energy and trade services, so-called core PPI rose 0.9% on a monthly basis, nearly double the 0.5% estimate and the biggest monthly gain since January 2021. Core PPI increased 7% on a year-over-year basis.

PPI is considered a forward-looking inflation measure as it tracks prices in the pipeline for goods and services that eventually reach consumers.

Wednesday’s release comes the day after the BLS reported that the consumer price index for March surged 8.5% over the past year, above expectations and the highest reading since December 1981.

On the producer side, prices for final demand goods led with a 2.3% monthly rise, while services prices gained 0.9%, up sharply from the 0.3% February increase. Goods inflation has outstripped services during the Covid pandemic, but March’s numbers indicate that services are now catching up as consumer demand shifts.

Energy prices were the biggest gainer for the month, rising 5.7%, while food costs increased 2.4%.

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

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The Left’s War on Childhood


From Greta Thunberg to children put on puberty blockers, the victims of the war on childhood are everywhere. They show up at environmental or gun control rallies holding up giant signs in their little hands, they’re indoctrinated at school to enlist as child soldiers for the latest cause.

Adults tell them that unless they save the world, they won’t even live long enough to grow up.

At the heart of the exchange of political buzzwords of the culture war is a simple question about whether childhood should exist. Leftists believe that no one may evade political commitments, and that therefore the idea that childhood should be a space apart from adult causes and concerns is a privilege that it is the job of teachers and popular culture to shatter into pieces.

And that is the war on childhood that we see all around us waged from Disney to kindergarten.

What this is really about is the leftist conviction that children cannot be allowed to be children, occupying a separate world of imagination and wonder, but must be indoctrinated into the fight as soon as possible with The Anti-Racist Baby Book and Baby Loves Green Energy. The only way to save the world is by politicizing childhood and turning children into little adults worrying about microaggressions, experimenting with sexuality, and fearing that the world will end.

Utopia, the fantasy land of progressive adults who act like children, has no room for children.

It is the job of adults to save the planet, assuming it needs saving, to debate political causes, to explore whatever sexuality needs exploring, and to build or wreck their lives how they please.

And it is their primary job to protect children from living in that threatening adult world.

Play is the business of childhood. From the Victorian era onward, civilized societies worked to create safe spaces for children to grow and learn before that became a term for whiny adults. Reformers and muckrakers took children out of factories. Growing prosperity enabled the rise of a children’s culture in which a multitude of toys and books meant for children filled shops.

Adults protected children, preserving their innocence while they developed into unique people.

Baby Boomers, a generation whose name is of an era of progeny, may have enjoyed the last golden childhood in American history. And many never grew up. The generations that followed came of age during the breaking of the American family and now the very idea of family. The indirect damage done to children is now being eclipsed by the direct assault on childhood.

The radical leftists who demand safe spaces for themselves are taking them away from children. Children are being put to work again, not in factories, which would be kinder by comparison, but in radical causes, they are being told that they are on the verge of death, that their country is evil, and the world is about to be destroyed if they don’t do something at once.

That’s where the traumatized children screaming angrily at rallies come from.

Children, especially young children, implicitly trust adults and their parents. If they’re told that the world is about to end, that they’re racists, or have to experiment with gender, they believe it.

The adults who deprive them of their innocence and their childhood are the monsters.

Instead of growing up feeling safe and protected, leftist children are traumatized at an early age by being forced to think of the world as a dangerous and evil place their parents can’t protect them from, but that they must take on the responsibility to change or else everyone will die.

The “parentification” of children began as Baby Boomer despair in the wake of the end of “Camelot”, the death of leftist culture heroes, and the collapse of the counterculture, followed by the conviction that the next generation had to take over and fix things. Adults who acted like children insisted that children had to become adults. And these days the precocious children and the immature adults are all around us. They’re also two halves of the same tarnished coin.

Adults who lacked a safe childhood assert the privileges of childhood as soon as they’re economically secure enough to supply themselves with one. They surround themselves with toys, exclusively pursue the most direct pleasures, and clamor for safe spaces and trigger warnings, for the emotional security they lacked as children. But they deny that emotional security to actual children and selfishly traumatize them for their own actualization.

Teachers on TikTok freely assert that their feelings matter more than the safety of children.

The aggressive push to embed sexual politics into elementary schools is how dysfunctional adults, including some teachers, prioritize their own sexual identity over the welfare of children.

It’s also on a par with pushing politics in general on children at the youngest possible age.

The transgender war on children is only the latest in a series of assaults on childhood by politicising everything. When African warlords enlist 8-year-olds to fight for their causes, we think that’s monstrous, but when leftists turn Greta Thunberg, an unstable teenage girl, into a heroine and encourage even preschoolers to protest over global warming, that’s activism.

Activism is how the educational war on childhood began. Now the war is not just about how children see the world, but against their bodies. Child soldiers are expected to be willing to die. The sexual identity political movement expects children to have their minds damaged and their bodies mutilated, taking away their ability to have their own children, as a political commitment.

Even African warlords would find that unfathomably barbaric.

The ancients sacrificed children to the fires of Moloch while progressives sacrifice them to their passion for wokeness. Either one is a symbolic assertion that the obsessions of the adult are more important than the safety of the child. Civilized adults don’t act this way. Barbarians, which is another way of saying children who inhabit the bodies of adults without the disciplined ethics of adulthood, do things like this because they live in a Lord of the Flies world of emotional turmoil, fearful insecurity, and angry selfishness. They see every encounter as a threat to their fragile identities, their insecurities surround them with humiliating microaggressions, and they retreat from their conviction that the world is a threatening place by escaping into fantasies.

Fantasies are supposed to be the business of children, but in the post-modern age, fantasies, supernatural, conspiratorial, political, and utopian, are all around us. And adults sacrifice children to utopian ideologies that promise that a better world is just around the corner.

All it will take is destroying childhood and then children.

AUTHOR

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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

The Personal Tragedy of Transgenderism

I told you a year ago about personal stories of unhappiness coming from transgenders who end up regretting the choices they made.  [Daily Skirmish – 4//6/21].  Another such story has just been told.  This one is remarkable because it appeared where you would least expect it, in the ultra-liberal Washington Post.

A middle-age transgender who had sex change surgery at 19 wrote,

“I know now that I wasn’t old enough to make that decision.”

This person now regrets not being able to have children and being condemned to a lifetime of powerful drugs:

Surgery unshackled me from my body’s urges, but the destruction of my gonads introduced a different type of bondage. From the day of my surgery, I became a medical patient and will remain one for the rest of my life. I must choose between the risks of taking exogenous estrogen, which include venous thromboembolism and stroke, or the risks of taking nothing, which includes degeneration of bone health. In either case, my risk of dementia is higher, a side effect of eschewing testosterone.

The writer is today,

“alarmed by how readily authority figures facilitate transition. I had to persuade two therapists, an endocrinologist and a surgeon to give me what I wanted. None of them were under crushing professional pressure, as they now would be, to ‘affirm’ my choice.”

The writer advises young people give your body and your sexuality a chance before making irreversible changes:

Most of all, slow down. You may yet decide to make the change. But if you explore the world by inhabiting your body as it is, perhaps you’ll find that you love it more than you thought possible.

Another 19-year-old transgender, this one in California, committed suicide.  She started transitioning to a boy secretly at her school a couple years earlier, but it never made her happy.  Her mother lost custody when the mother wouldn’t get with the program.

A former transgender says kids are often misdiagnosed with ‘gender dysphoria’ and set on a path toward sex change, when what they really need is treatment of their underlying unhappiness.  Trauma from adverse childhood experiences like sexual abuse, or physical or emotional abuse, can manifest as gender dysphoria but, once identified and treated, can dissipate without going down the gender transitioning road.

Draft guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommend mental health screenings for adolescents before transitioning starts.  This is common sense but, unfortunately, too many professionals skip that step and go right to gender transitioning as the first resort.

A year ago, I wrote about the hundreds of transgenders who regret their choices and seek to detransition, about how hormone blockers are linked to over six thousand deaths, and about individual transgenders lamenting their sex change was a bad idea, and it ruined their life.

Reason is what sets us apart from animals.  Humans can think about the consequences before making choices.  People who don’t think about the consequences end up having a bad life, it’s that simple.  Transgenders with regrets later in life are Exhibit A.

There will always be transgender people, and nobody should hate them or wish them harm.  But it’s an adult choice, only to be taken after years of calm reflection, not a choice to be foisted on unsuspecting youth by financially self-interested professionals or ideologically motivated left-wing activists.  Think about the consequences – unhappiness, suicide, a lifetime of powerful drugs, among them – before the current bout of transgendermania ruins your life or the life of someone you love.

So ask the professionals trying to make a buck, the activists pursuing a political agenda, and school officials who want to keep it all secret from parents: where’s the fire?  Have you made full disclosure of all the risks to me, including not being able to have children and dementia in old age?  And are you going to be around to help me if it all goes horribly wrong?  See what kind of answers you get.  “Most of all, slow down.”

The secret is, there is no fire.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Nunes: If Musk wants to save free speech, he’s welcome to join Trump’s Truth Social

TMTG CEO Devin Nunes joins Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business to discuss the fallout of Elon Musk’s decision to decline a seat on Twitter’s board of directors and more on April 13, 2022.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

20 Thomas Jefferson Quotes for His 275th Birthday

The pillars of our prosperity are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.”


April 13 is Thomas Jefferson’s 275th Birthday. Since I share his birthday, I have long been a fan. But that is mainly because the drafter of the Declaration of Independence was the most prolific of our founders, especially on the topics of liberty and the rights that America was created to preserve and protect. It is worth celebrating his bicenterquasiquigenary (according to the only website I found providing a latin name) by remembering his profound words.

“A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”

“The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.”

“It is to secure these rights that we resort to government at all.”

“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our own will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”

“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.”

“What more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

“Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their power: that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties and to take none of them from us.”

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”

“The minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.”

“The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.”

“It [is] ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than…his neighbors …This would be slavery, and not that liberty…for the preservation of which our government has been charged.”

“The pillars of our prosperity are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.”

“The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.”

“To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

“Our wish is that…[there may be] maintained that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of this fathers.”

“The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.”

“We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious…it might be much simplified to the relief of those who maintain it.”

“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned…is the sum of good government.”

“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.”

Jefferson once asked a seminal question:

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?”

Our founding documents were designed, partly by his hand, to answer that question. America’s federal government was given power restricted to a few enumerated tasks deemed necessary to maintain our rights and sustain our liberty, to minimize the extent to which some would govern others rather than letting them govern themselves. On his 275th birthday, we should reconsider how far America has departed from our founding principles and the importance of reclaiming the liberty we have allowed to be so severely compromised.

AUTHOR

Gary M. Galles

Gary M. Galles is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University and a member of the Foundation for Economic Education faculty network.

In addition to his new book, Pathways to Policy Failures (2020), his books include Lines of Liberty (2016), Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014), and Apostle of Peace (2013).

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