“Twitter has denied The Babylon Bee’s appeal. They wrote, ‘Our support team has determined that a violation did take place, and therefore we will not overturn our decision,’” Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon announced on Wednesday.
The Babylon Bee’s unforgivable offense was to post an article on Sunday mocking USA Today for recently declaring the biological male Rachel Levine a “woman of the year.”
“The Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year is Rachel Levine,” read the headline.
Twitter then locked the site’s account for 12 hours on the condition they delete the tweet, alleging it violates the platform’s “hateful conduct” policy.
“We’re told our account will be restored in 12 hours, but the countdown won’t begin until we delete the tweet that violates the Twitter Rules,” Dillon said at the time. “We’re not deleting anything. Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.”
Twitter also censored Fox News host Tucker Carlson for posting screenshots of tweets from the Babylon Bee calling Levine a man.
If you want to know who holds the power in a society, ask whom it is you are not allowed to criticize.
On February 25, 2021, Republican Senator Rand Paul, who is a physician by training, questioned Levine vis-à-vis her support for dangerous medical procedures for minors identifying as transgender – procedures designed to prevent the youngsters from going through what Levine called “the wrong puberty.” Specifically, Levine has advocated for allowing minors to receive hormone blockers as well as genital-mutilation surgeries whose physical effects are irreversible. After Paul pointed out that genital mutilation is viewed as “a violation of human rights” almost everywhere in the world, and that “80 to 95 percent of prepubertal children with gender dysphoria” snap out of it “by late adolescence” if left alone, he asked Levine: “Do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?” Levine replied evasively: “Well, Senator thank you for your interest in this question. Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed. And if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed as the Assistant Secretary of Health, I will look forward to working with you and your office and coming to your office and discussing the particulars of the standards of care for transgender medicine.”
Senator Paul then tried again: “Do you support the government intervening to override the parent’s consent to give a child puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or amputation surgery of breasts and genitalia?” In reply, Levine repeated the obviously rehearsed “thank you for your interest” remarks almost verbatim.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2022-03-25 04:58:182022-03-25 04:58:18Twitter Denies Babylon Bee Appeal After Account Lockdown over Rachel Levine Joke
Open letter toDean Baquet
Executive Editor of The New York Times
Good day Deano,
I hope today finds you well at your desk, as the Executive Editor of the iconic New York Times. It seems your tabloid itself has been very much in the news as of late. Those radical right wingers are at it again, questioning your tabloid’s veracity and dedication to journalistic integrity—the nerve Deano! Well let’s put together some facts and let the public judge for themselves, shall we old sport?
Hunter’s Laptop
Well is seems Joey Robinette’s prodigal son, Hunter (former energy expert, now famous artist), is back in the news again. When will these right wing lunatics stop their relentless assault on the Biden crime family, um, I mean Biden family? I thought that we had solved the issue of Hunter’s laptop during the Presidential installation of 2020.
Remember Deano—when about a month before the installation, the New York Post reported that Hunter’s laptop was discovered in a Delaware repair shop, with some very incriminating emails on it. This was verified, in part by interviewing recipients of emails, from said laptop. Some of the evidence even pointed to the angelic, morally uncompromised, Joey Robinette (aka, the Big Guy, Mr. 10%).
The New York Times to the Rescue
Thank goodness, a legitimate trustworthy news outlet such as The NY Times was able to squash this hyped-up propaganda immediately. I believe the ‘go to’ battle cry at the time was, “Russian disinformation.” Together with the aid of such other credible stalwart outlets like: CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, The Washington Post—as well as social media icons Twitter and Facebook, you were able to slam that door shut. In addition, we had unbiased celebrities and talk show hosts; and of course with credible political powerhouses like Chardonnay Pelosi and Adam Schiff, we were able to silence this vile propaganda. Of course, let’s not forget those 50 “intelligence officials,” who concurred wholeheartedly. The FBI too, who has had said laptop in their possession for years now. Calm down Conservatives, the Gestapo, I mean FBI have their hands full, you know, investigating Joey’s daughter’s diary. These investigations take time unless of course……….. it involves the “insurrection”. Then the FBI perform with lightning fast efficiency. Conservatives see it a very different way Deano, let’s look at it from their viewpoint.
“The news that is fit to print”………..Sometimes!
Conservatives point out that you, Dean Baquet, recently ran an article in The Old Gray Lady in regards to this matter. It seems now, 17 months after that original story ran, you are NOW corroborating this New York Post article. Even in this article, you waited until the 24th paragraph to mention these facts (must have been an oversight by your editing department). Have you taken leave of your senses, Deano old boy? Have you drank the proverbial right wing Kool-Aid? Why the admission of this evidence now?
Conservatives say that there is no reason to withhold the truth anymore. No reason to omit, lie, or censor factual information— the mentally addled, corrupt puppet Joey Talibiden has been installed. That it was a concerted effort by tabloids such as yours, that omitted or better yet, “fact-checked,” these incriminating emails. They refer to you and your ilk as journalistic disgraces, who long ago sold your souls and integrity to become a political arm/hack of the Democratic/Progressive Party. They add, this combined with your blatantly deceitful arrogance and hubris, has done irreparable harm to the core of honest, unbiased journalism. With your printing or omission of your vile, fictional tripe, I say bravo, Deano!
Mission Accomplished
So, I guess you ruffled a few Conservative feathers Deano. I’m with you buddy, the end justifies the means, as far as I’m concerned. The main objective of course, was to block elected President Trump from being legitimately re-elected; partly, by hiding any incriminating criminal evidence against the Houseplant-in-Chief, and his corrupt family. So what if some fraud had to be committed to secure the vote……no harm, no foul, right Deano? So what if you had to run a little interference (many say, a lot), to get the job done. It’s all good. President Trump is a racist!
Is Joey Gonna have to Take a Dive?
I understand there is another train of thought here champ. A few unnamed sources (WAPO trick I picked up), feel Joey Bidenflation has worn out his welcome with his puppet masters. You know, those behind the scenes, who are hard at work destroying this great country while using the Vegetable-in-Chief as a mouthpiece – a very bad one at that, they add. They are saying, he is in the process of being Cuomo’d.
From what I understand, these powers that be are not happy with little Joey’s, in-the-toilet poll numbers, and his never ending slew of screw-ups. Sources say, Deano, your admission to the authenticity of Hunter’s (famous artist) laptop, is proof that Joey may be being set up to step down. Of course, I know your honesty and professionalism are pure as the driven snow, but the timing does seem a bit peculiar champ, I mean 17 MONTHS?
Moral Compass Gone Astray Deano?
Unnamed source’s say Conservatives want to know how you push out this blatant partisan nonsense, day in and day out. They are curious how people like you, or the Minister of Propaganda, Jen Goebbels Psaki do this everyday and then go home to your families?
They wonder if you guys teach the golden rule at home for you children: tell the truth, be responsible for your actions, own up to your mistakes, treat others the way you would like to be treated? Do you then, turn that switch off in your heads once you get in the car and head out to work? Or do you teach your kids to lie, deflect, and connive from the time they start to talk? Do Peppermint Patti Psaki’s kids run to the door when Mom comes home and ask, “what lies did you tell today Mommy?” It takes a certain type of person to pull that off……..you should be proud! President Trump is a racist!
Andy’s Back!
I see Andy boy may be throwing his hat in the political ring again. He shouldn’t let all those nursing home deaths and sexual harassment issues get in the way. As Andy said, “what can I say, I’m Italian.” Word is he will be handing out cannoli’s at polling places. I see Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, reported that ole Andy severely under reported the number of nursing home deaths. Funny though Deano, people were screaming for these numbers for months while Andy was still governor, and Tommy D. remained silent. Then Andy starts hinting he may venture back into politics and …………voila, Tommy had those numbers likkity split. Remarkable! Who says Tommy DiNapoli isn’t on the up and up!
Will The Times, as usual be endorsing ole Romeo Cuomo?
NATO Summit
It is good to see our fearless leader Joey Talibiden, heading overseas to meet with NATO leaders. I’m sure he will be setting policy and showing who is in charge over there. In the meantime, it is nice to see the other world leaders leading Joey around by the arm—pointing in the direction of the bathroom—wiping the spittle off his chin after his juice box and mac and cheese lunch, and waiting with him until “Dr.” Jill picks him up.
Reportedly, Heels Up Harris was originally supposed to be representing us over there in Brussels. I was shocked that she was shelved, seeing as she did so well last time she was abroad. When asked to comment on this Kalamity said, “we have to go, in order to go, I will go, to go where they go, we have to make sure we go, ultimately we will go, in order to go. Thank you, no more questions.”
That’s it for today Deano. Keep up the great work at The Old Gray Lady. With all the madness going around, we can always count on The Times…….for entertainment, if nothing else. Remember this, when you get home to tell the family all the lies, I mean reporting you oversaw today as the Executive Editor of the New York Times. Well done Dean Baquet, we’ll done.
BREAKING: DOJ Spied on Journalists’ Emails Via Sealed Search Warrants & Non-Disclosure Orders
Microsoft’s Legal Docs Reveal How DOJ Repeatedly Concealed Possession of Privileged Communications from Federal Judge#BidenDiarypic.twitter.com/9N4CW75jdK
After a U.S. District Court Judge rejected the DOJ’s argument to ignore Project Veritas’ “journalistic privileges,” the DOJ went behind the judge’s back to obtain an extension on two sealed non-disclosure orders from a magistrate judge to conceal the fact they already had unsupervised and unfettered access to Project Veritas’ journalists’ privileged emails and contacts.
Here are some of the highlights from today’s video:
Despite multiple opportunities to do so, the DOJ has not publicly disclosed the orders, warrants, or subpoenas to Judge Torres or Special Master Judge Barbara Jones – who was appointed by Judge Torres to protect Veritas’ “journalistic privileges” from potential DOJ overreach.
The DOJ has not sought Judge Jones’ approval to review Project Veritas’ materials seized from Microsoft. The documents uncover a sixteen-month clandestine campaign against journalists in which the DOJ obtained 7 secret orders, warrants and subpoenas from six magistrates within the Southern District of New York.
In a motion filed Tuesday, Paul Calli, an attorney for Project Veritas, fiercely opposed the actions from the DOJ which he called an act of “violence” to the First Amendment.
Based on preliminary research data, the SDNY appears to be in possession of nearly 150K documents they should not have. In addition to the emails, the SDNY obtained over one thousand contacts from journalists that they also failed to disclose to Judge Torres or to the Special Master.
Why did the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice seek voluminous amounts of journalists’ emails, including confidential sources and attorney-client privileged data from Microsoft despite vowing a year ago to protect press freedom?
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00O'Keefe Media Grouphttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngO'Keefe Media Group2022-03-24 07:27:442022-03-24 07:32:47Microsoft Corporation Legal Documents Show Biden DOJ Spying on Project Veritas Journalists
In a scandalous example of leftwing dominance in higher education, a public university in New York will hold an event next month featuring a convicted cop killer promoted by the taxpayer-funded institution as a “political prisoner.” The April 6 event at State University of New York (SUNY) at Brockport is titled “History of Black Resistance, U.S. Political Prisoners & Genocide: A Conversation with Jalil Muntaqim” and the school’s announcement conveniently omits Muntaqim’s crimes, though it mentions he “was an avid educator” in prison. Formerly known as Anthony Bottom, Muntaqim was convicted for the murder of two New York Police Department (NYPD) officers in 1971. At the time he was a member of the radical Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army.
Muntaqim and two of his Black Liberation Army comrades ambushed and killed the officers, Waverly Jones, who was black, and Joseph Piagentini in Harlem. The officers were on foot patrol in a public housing complex. As they returned to their police vehicle, the three suspects attacked them from behind and shot them. Jones was killed instantly after getting shot in the back of the head. Piagentini was shot multiple times and died on the way to the hospital. One of the cop murderers died in prison, the other was granted parole in 2018 and Muntaqim was paroled in 2020, after being denied parole 11 times and serving nearly five decades. Piagentini’s widow was rightfully outraged that her husband’s murderer was freed, saying this in a local news report: “My husband, they shot him, there were 22 bullet holes in my husband, and Bottom [Muntaqim] just kept on shooting,” she said. “My husband looked at him, turned and said ‘I have a wife, I have children,’ but he continued to shoot.”
The media has downplayed Muntaqim’s crimes, instead celebrating him as an author, activist, and local civil rights organizer who is featured in a documentary released just weeks ago. In a review of the film, titled “Conversations: The Black Radical Tradition,” one media outlet describes the film as “first-hand accounts of Black resistance in America in the 20th and 21st centuries from more than a dozen activists, scholars, politicians, writers, and others involved in resistance and community-building movements.” In the article Muntaqim says “there has been an unbroken history of resistance against white supremacy, institutional racism, and capitalist exploitation of our communities, but the engagement in activism has at times gone dormant. So it’s important for us to understand the history and resurrect that tradition of resistance.” Another newspaper article describes the cop killer fondly: “During his incarceration, Muntaqim became a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, a mentor, a scholar, a several-times-over published author and a faith leader.”
SUNY Brockport was actually going to compensate the felon to appear at the upcoming event, but public outrage forced university officials to revoke the payment. They have however, refused calls to cancel Muntaqim’s appearance, which is being billed by the school as an “intellectual conversation” about his time with the Black Panthers and as a political prisoner. In a letter published by a local news outlet in the aftermath of the public outrage, SUNY Brockport President Heidi Macpherson explains that Muntaqim was invited by a faculty member who was approved for a “Promoting Excellence in Diversity” grant. “We do not support the violence exhibited in Mr. Muntaqim’s previous crimes, and his presence on campus does not imply endorsement of his views or past actions,” Macpherson, writes, adding that his appearance will provide an opportunity to learn about his perspective and what may have contributed to his past experiences. Macpherson assures individuals will have the opportunity to ask difficult questions such as “why he chooses to identify as a former political prisoner.”
At least one New York state legislator blasted the university, issuing a statement saying that it is incredibly inappropriate and downright wrong to give Muntaqim a platform at a taxpayer-funded institution. “What type of message would we be sending to young college students to call someone who played a role in the assassination of two members of law enforcement a “political prisoner?” What message does it send to criminal justice majors on campus? What message does it send to our law enforcement?” Academic freedom and diversity are important, the lawmaker, Assemblyman Josh Jensen writes, but “granting this opportunity to a convicted cop killer is wholly misguided.” In its promotional material, the university portrays Muntaqim as a civil rights hero, stating that he was a teen activist for the NAACP and Black Panther Party at age 18. The school further describes him as a “grandfather, father, mentor to many, and loving human being.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Judicial Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJudicial Watch2022-03-24 05:52:242022-03-24 05:52:24Public College Hosts Cop Killer [‘Political Prisoner’] with Promoting Excellence in Diversity Grant
“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” ― John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962.
“In order to oppress, a group must hold institutional power in society. In this way, the group is in the position to impose their worldview on others and control the ideas (ideologies), political rules (the technical mechanisms), and social rules for communication (discourses) that we are all taught (socialized) to see as normal, natural, and required for a functioning society. This domination is historical (long-term), automatic, and normalized.“ – Sensoy, Ozlem, and Robin DiAngelo, Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education.
Senator Ted Cruz questioned Biden’s SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson (KBJ) about her seat on the Board of Directors of Georgetown Day School (GDS), a private school in Washington, D.C.
Georgetown Day School teaches its students Critical Race Theory (CRT) and has CRT not only in the school’s curriculum but multiple books in its library on CRT.
Nearly 75 years ago, Georgetown Day School was founded as the first integrated school in Washington, DC, and our School’s longstanding commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion are grounded in that history.
GDS graduates leave the School with a love of learning, an abhorrence of bigotry and intolerance, a broadly rounded fund of knowledge, the ability to enter the great conversations of life, and the willingness and capacity to bring needed change to a troubled world.
Sitting on the board of directors of GDS then KBJ must know about the purpose and philosophy of the school.
Watch Senator Cruz’s examples of CRT in the day school that KBJ oversees:
Note that KBJ says that the board of directors doesn’t approve the curriculum. However, the board of directors certainly approves GDS’ mission and philosophy statements.
Senator Marsha Blackburn also pointed out that the school teaches its children that they,
“can choose their own gender and teaches them about so-called White privilege.”
The Three Great Myths of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
“Establishes a government-wide initiative to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in all parts of the Federal workforce.
charges all Federal agencies with reviewing within 100 days whether employees who are members of underserved communities face barriers to employment, promotion, or professional development within their workforce.
Directs agencies to seek opportunities to establish or elevate Chief Diversity Officers within their organizations.
Expands diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility training throughout the Federal workforce.
Directs agencies to ensure that the Federal health benefits system equitably serves LGBTQ+ employees and their dependents by expanding access to comprehensive gender-affirming health care.”
This single action created a massive bureaucracy to push the three myths of diversity, equity and inclusion.
Surely Ketanji Brown Jackson knows about the Biden Executive Order and at some point may have to rule a case about these myths.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
What Jefferson, and the founding fathers, understood that while men are created equal by God, once born they, via nature and nurture, become different not equal. Some are stronger, have a higher IQ, are more prone to success, have families, have children and grandchildren and have hopes and dreams for the future.
It doesn’t matter what the color of ones skin is, what matters in the long run is the content of ones character. Sadly Georgetown Day School isn’t teaching this to its students.
However, Jefferson understood that the role of government was to protect and defend our individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If government fails to protect these rights then the Declaration of Independence demands:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Perhaps the three greatest and most “persistent, persuasive and unrealistic” myths are diversity, equity and inclusion. These myths have taken the idea of “equal justice under the law” and turned it on its collectivist head. These myths threaten “abuses and usurpations” and are leading America toward “absolute despotism.”
These myths are race based and by definition racist policies.
Those who promote “diversity, equity and inclusion” want these myth for some but not for all Americans.
Please watch the below presentation by James Lindsay on Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and systemic power dynamics:
These three myths have become the rallying cry for the Biden administration, the Democrat Party, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, social media, the legacy media and Hollywood. Anyone who doesn’t support any or all of these myths is labeled a right wing radical, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, white supremacist and domestic terrorist.
A recent Heritage Foundation study found strong anti-Israel bias in the social media posts of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) officials at colleges and universities throughout the United States. These officials criticize Israel far more frequently and far more severely than they do China. Their posts about Israel exceed those mentioning China by a factor of three, and almost all of their statements about Israel express condemnation, whereas nearly two-thirds of their comments on China convey praise.
These disturbing findings should surprise no one. U.S. campuses have become hotbeds of hostility toward the state of Israel as well as toward the idea of American exceptionalism, and in the radical religion of the campus, far-left professors are the priests and DEI officers are the choir.
America was founded as the new Israel. Our Founding Fathers believed in the power of the God of Abraham and said so in both the Declaration of Independence and in the U.S. Constitution and in the First Amendment there to.
A private school in Rhode Island has excluded white children from an event, allowing only those who “identify as a student of color or multiracial” to attend.
The Wheeler School in Providence, Rhode Island, excluded white students from attending the guest speaker event.
“In a February 7, 2022, email to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, the school invited only non-white students to attend a ‘Students of Color affinity group’ speaking event with actress and author Karyn Parsons, who is best known for her role as Hilary Banks in NBC’s The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” reports Breitbart News.
Diversity, equity and inclusion are anti-American, un-America and anti-Semitic myths designed to separate us, make us unequal and shut some out of the political, cultural, legal and social systems.
Remember all men are created equal but after that it is up to them to do what is right, good and healthy.
During the National Prayer Breakfast of 1963, President John F. Kennedy said,
“Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.”
Finally, George Washington University associate professor Elisabeth Anker in a CBC Radio interview said,
“Freedom is a slippery concept…On the far right, [individual freedom] is often translated into somebody who refuses to be bound by norms of equality, treating all people equally or norms to remedy inequality, whether that’s trying to remedy racial discrimination or gender discrimination…Freedom is often used almost as a national entitlement, as a claim for what people have…It’s been taking a lot of people by surprise to see people in Canada, who often seem so much more accepting of social interdependence, to start pushing back against it with the language of individual freedom.
Yes, Elisabeth freedom is a national entitlement, equity is a myth. For you see,
Free people are not equal and equal people are not free.
And so ends this lesson on political mythology 2022 being taught to children who attend Georgetown Day School.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-03-24 05:31:092022-03-24 07:52:30Ketanji Brown Jackson (KBJ) on the Board of Directors of a K-12 Day School that Teaches Babies are Racists
How the COVID Vaccine Altered These People’s Lives
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
Some people who have received COVID-19 shots experience a range of debilitating symptoms or death
Healthy teenagers, athletes and doctors are among those who have died within hours or days of receiving COVID-19 shots
Others have experienced stroke-like symptoms, paralysis, tics, partial blindness and seizures following the shots
Increasing numbers of people are becoming compelled to speak out and share their stories of how COVID-19 shots altered their lives
Despite assurances of safety from health officials, it’s what the long-term effects of COVID-19 shots will be. Spike proteins from the shots can circulate in your body after injection, causing damage to cells, tissues and organs. “Spike protein is a deadly protein,” Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist, cardiologist and trained epidemiologist, said.1
Experimental and observational evidence show that the human immune response to COVID-19 shots is very different than the response induced by exposure to SARS-CoV-2, and people who’ve received COVID-19 shots may have damage to their innate immune system that’s leading to a form of vaccine acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (VAIDS), due to the impairment in interferon signaling.2
Further, likely due to monocyte activation by the spike protein from the vaccine, some people who have received COVID-19 shots experience a range of debilitating symptoms similar to those found in long haul COVID-19 syndrome, such as headaches, fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, joint pain and chest pain.3
For some, however, the shot’s adverse effects occur quickly, resulting in life-changing debilitation. You can see 10 powerful examples below, ranging from deaths to lives upended due to illogical quarantine rules that illustrate the absurdity of COVID-19 tyranny.
These are real people with real stories to share, and the more people who see them, the more awareness can grow to provide those who survived with the help and medical care they deserve — while warning others of the potentially deadly consequences of COVID-19 injections.
If you find these stories helpful and motivating then I would encourage you to visit our breaking news blog on our site as this is where the stories below were initially posted. The blog posts stay up continuously and are not removed after 48 hours.
10 People Whose Lives Changed After COVID-19 Shots
Jim Ashby — Learning to Walk Again
Ashby was forced to get a COVID-19 shot by December 3, 2021, or his employer would consider him “voluntarily resigned.” Eight days after receiving the Pfizer jab, he had a major hemorrhagic stroke.
He’s been in rehab since October 2021, suffering from complete paralysis on the left side of his body. He still has a long way to go in recovery, and still can’t feel or use his left arm or walk without assistance. His rehab is excruciatingly painful, he says, and he spends up to six hours a day learning how to walk again.
What’s worse, his employer isn’t covering the medical bills for the costs of this stroke. “My life has been totally changed, all because of the vaccine mandate … my old life is dead,” he says, “and I have started my new life as a paraplegic.”
Athletes Collapsing and Dying
Healthy athletes around the world are dying of heart attacks and strokes. The numbers are exploding, with athletes suffering neurological problems, too. What’s happened in the last six months to a year that’s different? Is there anything in common that’s changed that hooks all these athletes together? They all have had COVID-19 shots. Among them:
Abou Ali, 22-year-old football (soccer) player, who suffered from cardiac arrest in Denmark on September 11, 2021
Caddy Alberto Olguin collapsed and died from a heart attack on the golf course on October 9, 2021
30-year-old Venezuelan marathon champion Alexaida Guedez, 30, died of a heart attack during a 5,000-meter race on August 22, 2021
Andrea Astolfi, 45, sports director of Calcio Orsago in Italy, died of a heart attack on September 11, 2021 after returning from training
Ava Azzopardi, 14, collapsed on a soccer field in the U.S. on October 15, 2021, suffering from cardiac arrest; she had to be put in a medically induced coma to survive
Dr. Neil Singh Dhalla, Died From Myocarditis
Dr. Neil Singh Dhalla fell asleep four days after he got a COVID-19 booster shot — and died from a heart attack. The autopsy stated myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle that’s a recognized adverse effect of mRNA COVID-19 shots.4 A CEO of a major health clinic, he was only 48 years old and had never had heart problems in his life.
Faith Ranson, 16-Year-Old Plagued by Convulsions and Tics
A happy, healthy 16-year-old girl in Australia who got the Pfizer COVID-19 shot is now crippled with convulsions, persistent nausea and visible tics. The problems began three days after her second shot and have been ongoing for months. Health officials actually admitted “there is no question Faith has had a delayed reaction to the second Pfizer vaccination” and is suffering adverse reactions from the shot. Her story even made it to mainstream news.
Nurse With COVID Told to Go Back to Work
In this video, a “triple vaxxed” nurse from New York explains how she tested positive for COVID-19, and her employer told her to come back to work even though she hadn’t been in quarantine for five days — against CDC recommendations.
Since she was asymptomatic, she was cleared to go to back to work in a health care setting, but told she still had to quarantine in all other aspects of her life. In short, she can go to work to care for patients while actively positive for COVID-19, but she can’t go to a grocery store or a gas station. Not to mention, her kids were quarantined for 10 days, but she was expected to go back to work in less than five.
Stroke-Like Symptoms in a Healthy Woman
Complaints of neurological problems and stroke-like reactions continue to pile up. Immediately after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot, this previously healthy woman experienced headaches and dizziness and blacked out “a few times.”
Within days, she started experiencing numbness to the point that she couldn’t stand up. Eight days later, she’s in the hospital with loss of feeling in her left arm, left leg and face. She states that 19 women were brought in to her hospital ward with the same symptoms over the span of one weekend.
Two Teenage Boys Die From Myocarditis in Their Sleep
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Epidemiologists have confirmed that two teenage boys from different U.S. states died in their sleep of myocarditis days after getting the Pfizer shot. Both had received second doses of the shot, and McCullough said that in his view, the shots led to the deaths of the teenagers. In a study that examined the autopsy findings, it’s reported that the “myocarditis” described in the boys’ deaths is “not typical myocarditis pathology”:5
“The myocardial injury seen in these post-vaccine hearts is different from typical myocarditis and has an appearance most closely resembling a catecholamine-mediated stress (toxic) cardiomyopathy. Understanding that these instances are different from typical myocarditis and that cytokine storm has a known feedback loop with catecholamines may help guide screening and therapy.”
59-Year-Old Woman Dies Hours After Shot
A 59-year-old front line health care worker in the U.K. took the COVID-19 shot and died a few hours later. In the video, her acquaintance states, “Now I know it’s a given the vaccine’s going to have some casualties — but people are threatened they are going to lose their jobs if they don’t take it … You have the right to take that risk, but you should have the right to refuse it as well — without jeopardizing your job or your freedom of entry or freedom from discrimination.”
Vaccine Advocate Nearly Goes Blind
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The man in this video describes himself as a believer in “science” and a “vaccine advocate,” but this didn’t spare him from the shot’s adverse effects. Five days after his first Pfizer COVID-19 shot, he started having blurry vision in his left eye. Within three days, he had lost 60% of his vision in that eye.
After several medical examinations, doctors, optometrists and retina specialists diagnosed him with central serous retinopathy (CSR), in which a small vein ruptured, leading fluid to accumulate under the retina, causing retinal detachment and partial blindness.
Other cases of CSR have also been reported following COVID-19 shots, he says, and in a case report published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology it’s stated, “Acute CSR may be temporally associated with mRNA Covid-19 immunization.”6 The man’s doctor told him that the risk of getting additional COVID-19 shots outweighs the potential benefit for him and tried to help him get an official exemption from further shots, but it was denied. He states:
“I have been deprived of my human rights as a citizen … I try to gather all my strength so many times during the past few months to just go and receive my second dose in order to follow the laws.
But the fact that the science says there is an above-average chance that I may lose more of my sight has driven me to anxiety attacks, night terrors and disabling depression … This is a direct violation of my constitutional rights as a citizen and a human being.”
Young Woman Suffers From Seizures, Nearly Dies
Caution: This video contains language that may offend some people
Beginning her story by stressing she is NOT anti-vaccine or pro-conspiracy theory, this young woman describes what happened to her after she received a Moderna COVID-19 shot, which she decided to get so she and her husband could join some friends on a cruise.
The day after the shot she started feeling “weird,” delirious and “disassociated from herself,” she says. Soon after, she blacked out in the bathroom, and when her husband tried to revive her, she began seizing. She had three seizures between the time her husband called 911 and when the ambulance got her to the hospital.
She was intubated and suffered other severe effects, she says. She spent days in the hospital and is now taking anti-seizure medication, while living with ongoing anxiety about her near-death experience, which she believes was caused by the shot. “Go out there and do your research so you can make an informed decision,” she says. “Because you don’t want to put something in your body that could potentially harm you.”
Let Your Voice Be Heard
If you or a loved one has been injured by a COVID-19 shot, I will help you share your testimony. Vaccine mandates have led to injuries, devastation and deaths — while the brainwashing “get your vaccine now” campaign is being used to divide and conquer. One spark is all that is required to start a fire. There is a revolution building — a revolution for freedom to live your life without medical mandates or dictators calling the shots.
Please share your story with us, and encourage others you know who have a story to share theirs. It’s never been more important than now, for you and your family, to take control of your health.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-03-24 04:45:332022-03-24 04:45:33VIDEO TESTIMONIALS: Dead Within Days — 10 Vaccine Horror Stories
Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was questioned by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. Republicans disputed her answers on critical race theory and sentencing for child pornography.
Senator Ted Cruz zeroed in on critical race theory, pointing out that Judge Jackson sits on the board of a private school in Georgetown that teaches CRT. “If you look at the Georgetown Day School’s curriculum, it is filled and overflowing with critical race theory,” Cruz said, singling out a book that teaches white babies are racists. Judge Jackson fobbed off, saying she has nothing to do with the school’s curriculum. She also claimed to reject the idea, saying, “Senator, I do not believe that any child should be made to feel as though they are racist or as though they are not valued … that they are victims or they are oppressors.” So will she resign her board seat now that she knows her school teaches just the opposite? Don’t hold your breath.
So the War on Parents continues, in Georgetown and elsewhere. In Santa Barbara, teachers can access instructional materials from Black Lives Matter in a secret teacher portal online. You know, the trained Marxists who said on their website they want to destroy the family? A school district in Virginia has a secret program for elementary school students to experiment with transgenderism. A private schools association is pushing transgenderism and other explicit LGBTQ content to children as young as four years old. Disney employees walked out yesterday to protest what they consider to be the CEO’s inadequate response to Florida’s new legislation to prevent the sexualization of very young children in school – the so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill. The Biden administration wants to end a Trump effort to collect data on teachers who commit sex crimes against their students. A Michigan school district has the discretion to allow an assistant principal out on bail on child sex crimes to return to work at school pending trial.
Secret programs to sexualize very young children, failing to keep predator teachers away from kids – does all this sound right to you? It sounds outrageous to me.
But it’s all OK because they’re not your kids, anyway; they’re state property, right? York schools in Pennsylvania joined former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and several others who have recently said parents should not have any say in what is taught in school, the state takes precedence over parents. A York school board member said in January parents don’t know what is best for children and schools don’t work for the parents. A writer for New York Magazine called parents “household tyrants”.
So, you’re kids aren’t your kids, they’re OUR kids and, what’s more, they’re just playthings, fodder for our far-left sexual and racial agendas. An advocacy group which promotes the LGBTQ agenda said, “there’s no such thing as other people’s children.”
I wish I could take all this seriously, but I can’t. I see how destructive it is and how it is all derived from Marxism. Critical race theory taught in Georgetown Day School and elsewhere, as I’ve documented many times before, is derived from critical theory, which was invented by Frankfurt School cultural Marxists for the express purpose of tearing society apart. Transgender activists explicitly tell you on video their goal is to use transgenderism as a bludgeon to usher in a communist society. Communist theorist Georgi Lukacs preached a sexual revolution to bring about communism. Karl Marx himself said, “The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother’s care, shall be in state institutions.”
So it seems like all these insane ideas for sexualizing young children only came up in the last 15 minutes, but they’ve been in the works by communist planners for decades. Now that you know where this is all coming from and that Marxist revolutionaries have seized control in this area, what are you going to do about it?
Parents, the Left has pulled out all the stops to get this done. It’s a fight to the finish. But if you love your children, and don’t want to see the state corrupt them and destroy society in the process, you will stand up and fight.
Just when you thought that it couldn’t get any worse with Biden and his nominees, it does. Watch as Senator Marsha Blackburn, a woman, asks Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, a woman, to define the word “woman”:
SEN. BLACKBURN: "Can you provide a definition of the word 'woman'?"
Talk about gender confused. How can a woman, any woman, let alone a judge not define what a woman is? What would this judge do if a case came before her about two women marrying? Oh wait, that’s already happened in 2015 when Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a woman, who married two gay men just before she ruled, along with the majority, to legalize gay marriages in Obergefell v. Hodges.
But don’t worry we found a young biologist and will be sending him to visit with Jackson.
WARNING: Biden, the Democrats, the LGBTQs are all grooming your children and grandchildren to embrace sodomy and gay marriage. How do we know?
Days after the New York Post surprising report on emails retrieved from Hunter Biden’s laptop revealing exchange of emails between Joe Biden’s son and an official from the Ukrainian Burisma company, the internet is focused on another “scandalous” report related to files found on Hunter’s laptop, that include child pornography videos and pictures.
Watch as Senator Ron Johnson on Fox News suggesting that there’s child pornography on the computer that belongs to Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden.
Ron Johnson is on Fox News suggesting there's child pornography on the computer that purportedly belongs to Hunter Biden pic.twitter.com/rwvyL1UH4i
And guess what? It gets worse, if that’s possible. Jackson is soft on sex offenders, particularly child predators/pedophiles/pederasts.
I’ve been researching the record of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, reading her opinions, articles, interviews & speeches. I’ve noticed an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children
They’re all teaching and indoctrinating your children and grandchildren to become gender confused. They want to eliminate the biological fact that there are only 2 genders, male (XX) and female (XY).
But don’t worry there’s one man who isn’t gender confused. His name is Ron DeSantis and he’s the Governor of the State of Floirda. Read his letter to the NCAA on men competing in women’s sports.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed rules Monday that would force companies to publicly disclose a wide-range of climate-related information.
“I am pleased to support today’s proposal because, if adopted, it would provide investors with consistent, comparable, and decision-useful information for making their investment decisions, and it would provide consistent and clear reporting obligations for issuers,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, who President Joe Biden appointed in February 2021, said in a statement.
The SEC, the nation’s top financial regulator, would require publicly-traded companies to disclose how “severe weather events and other natural conditions” may impact their business, under the proposed rules, according to an announcement.
“Today’s action hijacks the democratic process and disrespects the limited scope of authority that Congress gave to the SEC,” Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey said in a statement. “This is a thinly-veiled effort to have unelected financial regulators set climate and energy policy for America.”
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed rules that would force companies to publicly disclose a wide-range of climate-related information.
The SEC, the nation’s top financial regulator, would require publicly-traded companies to disclose how “severe weather events and other natural conditions” may impact their business, under the proposed rules, according to the Monday announcement. Companies would also be forced to publish the greenhouse gas emissions produced from their operations.
“I am pleased to support today’s proposal because, if adopted, it would provide investors with consistent, comparable, and decision-useful information for making their investment decisions, and it would provide consistent and clear reporting obligations for issuers,” SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, who President Joe Biden appointed in February 2021, said in a statement.
“Today’s proposal would help issuers more efficiently and effectively disclose these risks and meet investor demand, as many issuers already seek to do,” he said. “Companies and investors alike would benefit from the clear rules of the road proposed in this release.”
In addition, companies would be required to share their transition plans as part of their “climate-related risk management strategy,” the proposal stated.
The commission published a complete list of a dozen requirements companies must comply with under the rule.
“The proposal will undermine the existing regulatory framework that for many decades has undergirded consistent, comparable, and reliable company disclosures,” SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, the agency’s lone Republican, said during a hearing on the proposal held Monday. “We cannot make such fundamental changes to our disclosure regime without harming investors, the economy, and this agency.”……..
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Some insightful words from one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
Alisa Rosenbaum was one of the most controversial writers in America’s history. Why, then, have few people heard of her? Because both people’s plaudits and their intemperate attacks have been aimed at the new name she adopted after leaving Russia for America—Ayn Rand.
Her influence is beyond question. She sold more than 30 million books, and decades after her 1982 death, hundreds of thousands more sell each year. Atlas Shrugged has been ranked behind only the Bible as a book that influenced readers’ lives.
Some are devoted enough that Randian has become a descriptive term. Others use her name only to disparage opponents. Still others disagree with some of her ideas (e.g., while Rand was an often-strident atheist, capitalism is clearly defensible on Christian principles, and most historical defenses of liberty employed Christian rationales which conflict with Rand’s reasoning), yet find a great deal of insight in her analysis of liberty, rights and government.
As we mark the anniversary of Rand’s February 2 birth, consider some of her most insightful words:
“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”
“The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships.”
“The moral justification of capitalism is man’s right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself.”
“Man—every man—is an end in himself.”
“No man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others.”
“The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights.”
“A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force…government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one…reverses its only moral purpose.”
“When the framers of the American republic spoke of “the people”…they meant a sum of individuals, each of whom…retains his inviolate guarantee of individual rights.”
“Under a proper social system…a private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted…This is the American concept of ‘a government of laws and not of men.’”
“A ‘right’…means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.”
“Rights impose no obligations on [neighbors] except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.”
“The right to property…does not mean that others must provide him with property.”
“The right to property…is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it.”
“The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”
“The collective cannot decide what is to be the purpose of a man’s existence nor prescribe his choice of happiness.”
“Man holds…rights, not from the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective…man’s protection against all other men.”
“Any alleged ‘right’ of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.”
“If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights.”
“America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to ‘the common good,’ but by the productive genius of free men.”
“Since only an individual man can possess rights…’individual rights’ is a redundancy. But…“collective rights” is a contradiction in terms.”
“Since the only proper function of a government is to protect man’s rights, it cannot claim title to his life in exchange for that protection.”
“An individualist…says: ‘I will not run anyone’s life—nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave.'”
“No one’s rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.”
“The doctrine that “human rights” are superior to “property rights” simply means that some human beings have the right to make property out of others.”
“Freedom…comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?”
“Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity.”
“In a capitalist society, all human relationships are voluntary. Men are free to cooperate or not, to deal with one another or not, as their own individual judgments, convictions, and interests dictate.”
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals.”
“A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort…is…but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.”
“It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree.”
“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
“Individual rights are not subject to a public vote…the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities.”
“What is the basic, the essential, the crucial principle that differentiates freedom from slavery? It is the principle of voluntary action versus physical coercion or compulsion.”
“Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.”
“We are fast approaching the stage…where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.”
However much some adore Ayn Rand and others despise her, those who seek wisdom wherever it can be found will find serious food for thought in her words on liberty, rights and government.
When so many promote the cognitive dissonance of pursuing supposed collective or social “justice” by the unjust expedient of violating the rights of individuals who make up society, she can stimulate our thought about foundational questions. And that is crucial, because, as George Mason said, “No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by… frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”
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).
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-03-23 05:04:192022-03-23 05:11:3335 of Ayn Rand’s Most Insightful Quotes on Rights, Individualism, and Government
Bill Gates has said that when it comes to understanding energy realities “we need to bring math to the problem.” He’s right.
A week doesn’t pass without a mayor, governor, policymaker or pundit joining the rush to demand, or predict, an energy future that is entirely based on wind/solar and batteries, freed from the “burden” of the hydrocarbons that have fueled societies for centuries. Regardless of one’s opinion about whether, or why, an energy “transformation” is called for, the physics and economics of energy combined with scale realities make it clear that there is no possibility of anything resembling a radically “new energy economy” in the foreseeable future. Bill Gates has said that when it comes to understanding energy realities “we need to bring math to the problem.”
He’s right. So, in my recent Manhattan Institute report, “The New Energy Economy: An Exercise in Magical Thinking,” I did just that.
Herein, then, is a summary of some of the bottom-line realities from the underlying math. (See the full report for explanations, documentation, and citations.)
Realities About the Scale of Energy Demand
1. Hydrocarbons supply over 80 percent of world energy: If all that were in the form of oil, the barrels would line up from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, and that entire line would grow by the height of the Washington Monument every week.
2. The small two-percentage-point decline in the hydrocarbon share of world energy use entailed over $2 trillion in cumulative global spending on alternatives over that period; solar and wind today supply less than two percent of the global energy.
3. When the world’s four billion poor people increase energy use to just one-third of Europe’s per capita level, global demand rises by an amount equal to twice America’s total consumption.
4. A 100x growth in the number of electric vehicles to 400 million on the roads by 2040 would displace five percent of global oil demand.
5. Renewable energy would have to expand 90-fold to replace global hydrocarbons in two decades. It took a half-century for global petroleum production to expand “only” ten-fold.
6. Replacing U.S. hydrocarbon-based electric generation over the next 30 years would require a construction program building out the grid at a rate 14-fold greater than any time in history.
7. Eliminating hydrocarbons to make U.S. electricity (impossible soon, infeasible for decades) would leave untouched 70 percent of U.S. hydrocarbons use—America uses 16 percent of world energy.
8. Efficiency increases energy demand by making products & services cheaper: since 1990, global energy efficiency improved 33 percent, the economy grew 80 percent and global energy use is up 40 percent.
9. Efficiency increases energy demand: Since 1995, aviation fuel use/passenger-mile is down 70 percent, air traffic rose more than 10-fold, and global aviation fuel use rose over 50 percent.
10. Efficiency increases energy demand: since 1995, energy used per byte is down about 10,000-fold, but global data traffic rose about a million-fold; global electricity used for computing soared.
11. Since 1995, total world energy use rose by 50 percent, an amount equal to adding two entire United States’ worth of demand.
12. For security and reliability, an average of two months of national demand for hydrocarbons are in storage at any time. Today, barely two hours of national electricity demand can be stored in all utility-scale batteries plus all batteries in one million electric cars in America.
13. Batteries produced annually by the Tesla Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory) can store three minutes worth of annual U.S. electric demand.
14. To make enough batteries to store two day’s worth of U.S. electricity demand would require 1,000 years of production by the Gigafactory (world’s biggest battery factory).
15. Every $1 billion in aircraft produced leads to some $5 billion in aviation fuel consumed over two decades to operate them. Global spending on new jets is more than $50 billion a year—and rising.
16. Every $1 billion spent on data centers leads to $7 billion in electricity consumed over two decades. Global spending on data centers is more than $100 billion a year—and rising.
Realities about Energy Economics
17. Over a 30-year period, $1 million worth of utility-scale solar or wind produces 40 million and 55 million kWh respectively: $1 million worth of shale well produces enough natural gas to generate 300 million kWh over 30 years.
18. It costs about the same to build one shale well or two wind turbines: the latter, combined, produces 0.7 barrels of oil (equivalent energy) per hour, the shale rig averages 10 barrels of oil per hour.
19. It costs less than $0.50 to store a barrel of oil, or its equivalent in natural gas, but it costs $200 to store the equivalent energy of a barrel of oil in batteries.
20. Cost models for wind and solar assume, respectively, 41 percent and 29 percent capacity factors (i.e., how often they produce electricity). Real-world data reveal as much as ten percentage points less for both. That translates into $3 million less energy produced than assumed over a 20-year life of a 2-MW $3 million wind turbine.
21. In order to compensate for episodic wind/solar output, U.S. utilities are using oil- and gas-burning reciprocating engines (big cruise-ship-like diesels); three times as many have been added to the grid since 2000 as in the 50 years prior to that.
22. Wind-farm capacity factors have improved at about 0.7 percent per year; this small gain comes mainly from reducing the number of turbines per acre leading to a 50 percent increase in average land used to produce a wind-kilowatt-hour.
23. Over 90 percent of America’s electricity, and 99 percent of the power used in transportation, comes from sources that can easily supply energy to the economy any time the market demands it.
24. Wind and solar machines produce energy an average of 25 percent–30 percent of the time, and only when nature permits. Conventional power plants can operate nearly continuously and are available when needed.
25. The shale revolution collapsed the prices of natural gas & coal, the two fuels that produce 70 percent of U.S. electricity. But electric rates haven’t gone down, rising instead 20 percent since 2008. Direct and indirect subsidies for solar and wind consumed those savings.
Energy Physics… Inconvenient Realities
26. Politicians and pundits like to invoke “moonshot” language. But transforming the energy economy is not like putting a few people on the moon a few times. It is like putting all of humanity on the moon—permanently.
27. The common cliché: an energy tech disruption will echo the digital tech disruption. But information-producing machines and energy-producing machines involve profoundly different physics; the cliché is sillier than comparing apples to bowling balls.
28. If solar power scaled like computer-tech, a single postage-stamp-size solar array would power the Empire State Building. That only happens in comic books.
29. If batteries scaled like digital tech, a battery the size of a book, costing three cents, could power a jetliner to Asia. That only happens in comic books.
30. If combustion engines scaled like computers, a car engine would shrink to the size of an ant and produce a thousand-fold more horsepower; actual ant-sized engines produce 100,000 times less power.
31. No digital-like 10x gains exist for solar tech. Physics limit for solar cells (the Shockley-Queisser limit) is a max conversion of about 33 percent of photons into electrons; commercial cells today are at 26 percent.
32. No digital-like 10x gains exist for wind tech. Physics limit for wind turbines (the Betz limit) is a max capture of 60 percent of energy in moving air; commercial turbines achieve 45 percent.
33. No digital-like 10x gains exist for batteries: maximum theoretical energy in a pound of oil is 1,500 percent greater than max theoretical energy in the best pound of battery chemicals.
34. About 60 pounds of batteries are needed to store the energy equivalent of one pound of hydrocarbons.
35. At least 100 pounds of materials are mined, moved and processed for every pound of battery fabricated.
36. Storing the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil, which weighs 300 pounds, requires 20,000 pounds of Tesla batteries ($200,000 worth).
37. Carrying the energy equivalent of the aviation fuel used by an aircraft flying to Asia would require $60 million worth of Tesla-type batteries weighing five times more than that aircraft.
38. It takes the energy equivalent of 100 barrels of oil to fabricate a quantity of batteries that can store the energy equivalent of a single barrel of oil.
39. A battery-centric grid and car world means mining gigatons more of the earth to access lithium, copper, nickel, graphite, rare earths, cobalt, etc.—and using millions of tons of oil and coal both in mining and to fabricate metals and concrete.
40. China dominates global battery production with its grid 70 percent coal-fueled: EVs using Chinese batteries will create more carbon-dioxide than saved by replacing oil-burning engines.
41. One would no more use helicopters for regular trans-Atlantic travel—doable with elaborately expensive logistics—than employ a nuclear reactor to power a train or photovoltaic systems to power a nation.
Mark P. Mills is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a McCormick School of Engineering Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University, and author of Work in the Age of Robots, published by Encounter Books.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-03-22 06:43:142022-03-22 06:47:1141 Inconvenient Truths on the ‘New Energy Economy’
“This is real life.” To Babylon Bee creator Adam Ford, it was important to make that distinction, since even the world’s greatest satirists couldn’t imagine a scenario like this one. Twitter, king of conservative censorship, wielder of the all-powerful on/off switch, had done it again. In the growing genre of it-sounds-like-fake-news-but-isn’t, Big Tech’s thought police locked the Bee’s account for recognizing something all of us have been tested on since high school: biology.
The offending post was meant to be a mockery of USA Today, which last week decided to name a female-identifying man, HHS’s Rachel Levine, as one of the newspaper’s “Women of the Year.” The announcement, which was second in absurdity only to Joe Biden appointing him in the first place, showed what kind of outrageous, science-defying dogma is being pushed on unwilling Americans. The Bee, seizing the moment to make a point as only it can, declared Levine its first-ever “Man of the Year,” writing: “Levine is the U.S. assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services… He often wears a dress, which some people think is weird — but he doesn’t care one bit. Come on! Men in India wear dress-type garments, don’t they?”
Apparently, the sarcasm hit a nerve at Twitter, and the Silicon Valley titan — who has a reputation for pulling the plug on uncomfortable truths — let Bee CEO Seth Dillon know that its post violated the company’s “hateful content” policy. In a message to fans, Dillon confirmed, “We’re told our account will be restored in 12 hours, but the countdown won’t begin until we delete the truth that violates the Twitter rules.” But, he vowed, “We’re not deleting anything. Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.”
Of course, the irony of this whole uproar is that USA Today is the one “harassing other people on the basis of… gender.” What does it say to billions of real women — that they’re completely indistinguishable from men? That the sum total of being a woman is throwing on a dress and some make-up? The so-called “party of women” is now a party of make-believe. It’s one reason feminists, who stood outside the NCAA swim meet this weekend, now say they’re “politically homeless.” “I was historically liberal,” one woman vented outside of the girls’ collegiate championship where Lia Thomas was racing. Now? “I don’t think the Democrats care about women and girls. They [want] to put men in [women’s] prisons and men on [girls’] sports teams… I think that we’re going to have a lot of people walking away, really.”
The same Left who preaches that we shouldn’t judge people by their appearance in the race debate suddenly wants to define an entire gender by it. Forget the 6,500 genetic differences between the two sexes. Change your name and you can race as women, compete for jobs as women, win awards for women — erase women. And Babylon Bee doesn’t want any part of it. That would be “ideological surrender,” Dillon told NRO. Twitter could easily take down the tweet themselves, he pointed out, but instead, they want you to “bend the knee and admit wrongdoing by deleting the tweet yourself.”
“It’s not just that expressing these views is not allowed, you have to deny that you meant it. They want you to concede something. They’re forcing you to grovel and adopt an ideological position that you don’t actually hold,” Dillon shook his head. In this case, it’s not even an ideological position that Twitter demands submission to — it’s an outright lie. “We stated the fact that a man is a man and got [punished] for it,” Editor-in-Chief Kyle Mann tweeted. “We are living in a clown world.”
And from college pools to classrooms, Americans are refusing to play along. They feel confident confronting this culture of delusion because teams like the Babylon Bee are brave enough to do it too. Deep down, Twitter feels incredibly threatened by the growing number of people willing to challenge the woke agenda. If they can shut down the ring leaders — the Christians with the biggest microphones — they think they’ll have a much better chance of forcing the rest of us in line.
At FRC’s ProLifeCon earlier this year, Mann was frank about the hurdle of censorship. Big Tech, Big Government, the mainstream media, the fact-checkers, “They all kind of work together to silence us… And that’s obviously really scary for us,” he admitted, because that’s how they can “deplatform us.”
At the end of the day, though, the more cowardly we are as a movement, the more likely it is that the cancel culture will take over the marketplace of ideas. “And we don’t want that to happen. So I think we need to be more bold… and more open about [our] beliefs…” The best way you can help, Dillon agrees, is “never censor yourself. Insist that 2 and 2 make 4 even if Twitter tries to compel you to say otherwise…. Continue to say what’s true even if it has consequences. Make them ban tens of millions of us.”
Suzanne Bowdey returned to FRC in 2006 after a three-year absence. In her role as Senior Writer, she drafts commentary on topics such as life, religious freedom, media and entertainment, sexuality, education, and other issues that affect the institutions of marriage and family. Her op-eds have been featured in publications ranging from the Washington Times to the Christian Post. As part of the team that plans FRC Action’s Pray Vote Stand Summit (formerly the Values Voter Summit), she oversees the event’s schedule, speakers, and select publications. Since 2020, she has also produced FRC’s weekly broadcast, “Pray Vote Stand.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2022-03-22 06:07:112022-03-22 06:12:07Twitter’s Plan Bee: Censorship
“I knew there was a variety of treatments that we could use [yet] we were using nothing. Doctors were even told to not use anticoagulants, even though blood clotting was ‘through the roof’ in many patients. You could draw blood and actually see the blood clotting very quickly in the tubes.” – Dr. Pierre Kory
“We didn’t have a single academic institution come up with a single protocol,” said Dr. McCullough. “They didn’t even try. Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Duke, you name it. Not a single medical center set up even a tent to try to treat patients and prevent hospitalization and death. There wasn’t an ounce of original research coming out of America available to fight COVID—other than vaccines.” – Dr. Peter McCullough
“Even with corrupt data collection, it became harder and harder to find enough dead people to fuel the ongoing fear pandemic, so the media pivoted and replaced daily death and hospitalization trackers with a new statistical category: ‘Case Numbers’.” – Mark McDonald, United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis
“It is no longer controversial to acknowledge that drug makers rigorously control medical publishing and that The Lancet, NEJM, and JAMA are utterly corrupted instruments of Pharma.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The body pushing The Great Reset happens to be the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its charismatic lizard-like German leader Klaus Schwab who is calling for a return to Marxist principles, claiming that capitalism has empirically failed. Schwab claims that, “The COVID-19 crisis has shown us that our old systems are not fit anymore for the 21st century.”
The Marxist principles Schwab endorses are stained with blood. Yet WEF says that capitalism as we know it needs to be reformed. Or did Schwab mean destroyed? We already have a good start…forty-six percent of middleclass businesses died when $3.8 trillion dollars were shifted from small businesses to the very rich via lockdowns. And Schwab spews his Marxist propaganda on YouTube, where truth is censored.
Not only does Marxism demand a slave mentality of the unwashed masses ruled by the elite, but the bourgeoisie desire a smaller number of proletariats to dominate and rule. Mass annihilation of the elderly occurred in our hospitals and nursing homes with the hellish protocols for C-19. Oxygen, expensive Remdesivir, ventilators and ultimately death, but never any repurposed drugs which would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
What does the WEF have to do with COVID care and vaccines? Everything! And now we’re being distracted by the Ukrainian money-laundering hub of the New World Order and the drums of war, with fools like Lindsey Graham calling for the insane and unconstitutional assassination of another country’s leader.
In March, 2022, Ukraine’s Zelensky silently implemented the WEF’s ‘Great Reset’ by setting up a social credit application combining universal basic income (UBI), a digital identity and a vaccine passport all within their Diia app. And journalist Daniel Greenfield exposed Zelensky’s Holocaust denial and abuse of Israel, which should be a warning for our Jewish brethren. Neo-Nazis are now joining the fight with Ukraine as an opportunity to kill Jews. And it should be of no surprise that before Schwab’s family migrated from Germany to become neutral Swiss, young Klaus was a member of the Nazi youth. Birds of a feather…
Puppet Joseph Biden and his administration are moving toward the same Great Reset goals, but our medical industry must first be fully government controlled.
America’s Medical System
By 1906, the American Medical Association (AMA) was inspecting medical schools and classifying them as acceptable, doubtful, or unacceptable, based on conformity to the AMA’s beliefs and teachings. In 1910, a report funded by the Carnegie Foundation (a progressive and abhorrent demonic mutation) and supported by the AMA, outlined new uniform standards for medical schools, thus giving the medical industry the same familiar “one size fits all” feature common to everything else being “standardized” by industrialists in the U.S.
The stated goals of the Socialists and Communists as recorded in the minutes of some of their meetings held in and around New York City during the early 1900s have included abolishing all U.S. conspiracy laws that stand in the way of their desired monopolies, destroying the Constitution, creating an unconstitutional and historically illegal income tax on Americans’ labor, gaining control of the government and media from the inside and establishing a compulsory public school system through which children will be indoctrinated to communist propaganda. They even established barbaric eugenics programs in the U.S., the likes of which the rest of the world has yet to duplicate, although Hitler tried.
Today we are forced to turn our hard-earned wages over to gigantic insurance companies who will decide (without medical experience) just what you are allowed to have and how much the physician/surgeon shall receive. We’ve paid into Social Security and Medicare all the years of employment, but we are not allowed to receive Social Security benefits unless we also take government healthcare via Medicare.
That, my friends, is communism.
Although the price for “healthcare” has skyrocketed, the actual “health” of Americans has continued to plummet as a result of the entire nation being first seated at the table of Big Pharma, and then sent to Big Pharma to be treated for the anticipated resulting symptoms. Link
In a December 2021 article, I urged everyone to read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci. Kennedy stated, “When Dr. Fauci took office in 1984, America was still ranked among the world’s healthiest populations. An August 2021 study by the Commonwealth Fund ranked America’s health care system dead last among industrialized nations, with the highest infant mortality and the lowest life expectancy. ‘If health care were an Olympic sport, the US might not qualify in a competition with other high-income nations,’ laments the study’s lead author, Eric Schneider, who serves as Senior Vice President for Policy and Research at the Commonwealth Fund.”
The commies and fascists are winning.
Yes, we’re now dead last, our hospitals are not trustworthy, and Big Pharma is shooting DNA changing vaxes into the arms of our dumbed down and propagandized American citizens. Former Blackrock portfolio manager and Pfizer and Moderna whistleblower, Edward Dowd, tells us that per CDC data, “The Millennial age group, 25-44, experienced an 84% increase in excess mortality. It’s the worst-ever excess mortality, I think, in history.” Dowd believes Pfizer and Moderna are the new Enron.
Communist Infiltration
Although some folks still don’t believe it, there is documented evidence that European communists immigrated to the U.S. in 1848; they’re called the 48ers. Thirteen of them were high ranking officers in the Union Army during the Northern War of Aggression and the Southern War for Secession. By the 1950s they were heavily ensconced in every faction of federal and state governments. Hollywood and America’s higher education was also infiltrated. Today, communism is in every facet of our society.
In 1963, 45 of the communist goals were read into the Congressional Record, and most have been accomplished.
In a previous article about our medical system, I mentioned Dr. Richard Day, Professor of Pediatrics at Mt. Sinai Medical School in New York who in March 1969 gave a chilling lecture about the “New World System.” Previously he had served as Medical Director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. He told of future plans, whether as a forewarning or to unburden himself. He spoke as though he had colluded with the blueprint designers.
His warnings for the future were uncannily accurate. He lectured on over 50 topics, but here are the eight medical topics, most already accomplished.
Euthanasia and the “Demise Pill”
Limiting Access to Affordable Medical
Planning the Control over Medicine
Elimination of Private Doctors
New Difficult to Diagnose and Untreatable Diseases
Suppressing Cancer Cures as a Means of Population Control
Tax Funded Abortion as Population Control
What did Marx say about healthcare? The Health System ensures a healthy workforce which in turn ensures more profit for the ruling classes as workers don’t take time off sick! Marxists believe that doctors hide the real social causes of illness (poverty, class inequality etc.) by focusing on the individual and their physical symptoms albeit personal individual care is becoming a thing of the past. But physicians are no longer taught to think of the individual patient or “outside of the box.”
There you have it…a healthy workforce must ensure a healthy proletariat to serve the bourgeoisie. Unhealthy humanity is eliminated as they don’t support the elite.
Planned and Executed
The COVID crisis was planned, executed, propagandized and utilized to kill, not only with deadly hospital protocols and antiviral medications like Remdesivir that destroyed the kidneys, but with money making COVID jabs, now on their fourth booster. Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla, claims the fourth Covid jab is “necessary.”
The elderly, referred to by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and others as “useless eaters,” were the main targets; for them, our hospitals became homicidal medical centers.
The slow-motion collapse of the American healthcare system is a complexity that is killing thousands on a daily basis for The Great Reset, or as George H.W. Bush called it numerous times, the New World Order.
All of this was accelerated with the improper FDA, CDC and NIH protocols given to hospitals and physician groups for COVID-19 and daily spewed via our propaganda media by Dr. Anthony Fauci. Millions died needlessly and alone. VP Pence and the people he hired…Fauci, Birx and Redfield, ran the Deep State show. Had Trump listened to Dr. Scott Atlas and Peter Navarro, perhaps the outcome would have been different.
Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” inoculations have put far too many in their graves, more probably than COVID, but it was the unelected councils of these government organizations, who never treated COVID patients and intentionally disallowed any repurposed drugs to be used.
Repurposed Drugs
Repurposed drugs were demolished by three once highly respected journals, Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of American Medical Association. Despite Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin being decades old and on the World Health Organizations’ list of safest drugs, the journals claimed the drugs were dangerous.
Even Pfizer documented in their clinical trials that Ivermectin was listed as a current COVID therapy and an excellent prophylactic, but there was no money to be made there. Repurposed drugs saved lives, but Pfizer was more interested in their bottom line and cared nothing about the needless loss of life.
There’s even more… Dr. Andrew Hill was called on to perform an evaluation of Ivermectin and no one would call his competence into question. But, as we have seen throughout the COVID pandemic, competence is no substitute for character. Or for courage.
Hill seemed eminently qualified for his assigned task. A senior visiting Research Fellow in the Pharmacology Department at Liverpool University, he had been researching viruses and their treatments for 30 years. He was also, not incidentally, an advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the Clinton Foundation. That alone should give a big “uh-oh” to everyone…who could guess the outcome.
As Hill assembled his data, he was more and more impressed by what he found. He made a presentation to the NIH with other advocates of Ivermectin and spoke in favor of its use. On December 29, 2020, he wrote on Twitter that “Ivermectin is showing effects on viral clearance, hospitalization and survival across a wide range of randomized trials in different countries.” He even admitted that if his 58-year-old brother got COVID, he would give him Ivermectin. He told NIH and America’s Frontline Doctors and then he dropped the ball and backed off.
Hill knew as everyone else did that Ivermectin was the drug for COVID, but he punted and said it needed randomized trials. There had to be a threat or a payoff.
Ivermectin is even being studied in cancer treatments and with reported success, but the drug is cheap and Big Pharma and their buddies wouldn’t make a dime.
The Jabs
The COVID jabs have been proven to alter DNA. Dr. Peter McCullough has discussed this numerous times via interviews. In a process called reverse transcription, a hepatic (related to the liver) cell line calls for the DNA code of at least part of the spike protein found inside the human nucleus and changes it in as fast as six hours after the “vaccine” injection.
We all know the numerous COVID jabs made beaucoup bucks for Big Pharma and the NIH, CDC and FDA, whereas the repurposed drugs that would have saved countless lives are inexpensive, were purposely discarded and saving lives be damned.
American lives mean nothing to Big Pharma and government entities.
Conclusion
Ukraine has replaced COVID. It is a country of corruption.
Vladimir Putin is no Zelensky. Before Alexandre Solzhenitsyn died, Putin met with him and Solzhenitsyn told Putin what needed to be changed. The Russian leader listened. Solzhenitsyn died on August 3, 2008; a few months short of his 90th birthday. Only two weeks later, it was announced that Moscow’s Great Communist Street (ulitsa Bolshaya Kommunisticheskaya) was to be re-named “Alexander Solzhenitsyn Street,” an honour bestowed by a personal decree from President Putin.
In October 2010, it was announced that The Gulag Archipelago would become required reading for all Russian high school students. In a meeting with Solzhenitsyn’s widow, Putin described The Gulag Archipelago as “essential reading.” “Without the knowledge of that book, we would lack a full understanding of our country and it would be difficult for us to think about the future.”
What more need be said? In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the greatest classic of anti-communist literature is now compulsory reading in all the high schools of the nation. If the same could be said of the high schools of the United States, we would not have the endemic historical and political ignorance that has led to the widespread sympathy for communism among young Americans. In the light of this, and in the light of Putin’s evident admiration for Solzhenitsyn, let’s not try to pretend that Russia is a communist nation. We don’t need to like Vladimir Putin. We don’t need to admire him. But we do need to acknowledge that Russia has moved on from the evils of socialism, even as we are in danger of embracing those very same evils.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Kelleigh Nelsonhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngKelleigh Nelson2022-03-22 05:56:002022-03-22 06:00:05The Homicidal Killing Fields of America’s Medical System
“Health equity has to be part of everything we do,” Becerra said. “You will see health equity pervades everything we do.”
You will recall that “equity” is not the same as “equality.” Equality is by definition anti-discrimination. Equity is discrimination — present discrimination against the white power structure in retaliation for past discrimination. Health equity operates under the assumption that the medical profession has been historically racist, and that health care needs to be “relearned” in order to “center on” black lives.
The American Medical Association (AMA) issued a 54-page manifesto called “Advancing Health Equity” which teaches medical professionals how to agitate toward critical race theory-centric policies and practices.
“A rich tradition of work in health equity and related fields, including critical race theory (defined in the glossary), gender studies, disability studies, as well as scholarship from social medicine, gives us a foundation for an alternative narrative,” it says, citing a Guide to Counter-Narrating the Attacks on Critical Race Theory, “one that challenges the status quo, one that moves health care towards justice.”
Prioritizing the radical aims of Progressive “social justice” in what should be the science-based, non-discriminatory field of medicine is going to lead to a whole new level of death and misery for countless patients. Yet that is the “top priority” of our Health and Human Services chief.
In October 2002 Becerra supported the Chicano Coalition for Peace and Social Justice, a group that had been infiltrated by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In 2005 he joined Raul Grijalva and Luis Gutierrez in backing the efforts of Latinos for Peace, an anti-Iraq War front group for the CPUSA.[1] That same year, Becerra co-sponsored Rep. John Conyers‘s HR 676, a bill calling for the creation of a government-run, “single-payer” healthcare system.
Becerra was one of 15 congressional co-sponsors of the America Votes Act of 2012, which sought—on the twin premises that Voter ID laws are racist and voter fraud is exceedingly rare—to allow voters to sign an affidavit attesting to their identity if they lacked the identification documents required at their polling place.
In early 2013, Becerra was one of a number of prominent leftists who urged President Obama to award, posthumously, the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the late Fred Ross Sr., a Saul Alinsky-trained radical who mentored both Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2022-03-22 05:27:182022-03-22 05:27:18HHS Secretary Becerra Promotes Critical Race Theory-Based ‘Health Equity’ as Top Priority
Delta Air Lines charges a $200 monthly surcharge to employees on the company health plan who do not get a COVID-19 shot
The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) announced that public employees in Nevada, along with their adult dependents, would be charged a surcharge on their state health insurance plan if they don’t get a COVID-19 shot by July 2022
Mercyhealth, which runs hospitals and health clinics in Wisconsin and Illinois, deducts $60 per month from employees’ wages if they choose not to get the shot
By making COVID-19 injections a requirement of a wellness program, companies may be able to skirt legal issues, as they’re “rewarding” members who participate in the program by letting them avoid the premium surcharge hoisted on the unvaccinated
While health insurance companies have long charged higher premiums based on factors like smoking, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requires that penalties not be so large as to be coercive
Those who choose not to get a COVID-19 shot may face higher costs for health care related to COVID-19. For the first 1.5 years of the pandemic, health insurance companies routinely paid for all costs related to COVID-19, waiving deductibles and copays across the board.1 Policies have since changed, with many private insurers no longer picking up the tab for hospitalizations and other costs related to COVID-19.
However, those who haven’t received COVID-19 shots could end up paying the most. While health insurance companies cannot deny health insurance to someone because they don’t get a COVID-19 shot, it’s possible that they could face increased costs — similar to smokers, who also pay a premium for health insurance coverage.
Delta Airlines Paved the Way for Increased Costs
August 25, 2021, Delta Air Lines announced that employees who are on the company health plan who do not get a COVID-19 shot will have a $200 monthly surcharge added. In the two weeks after Delta made the announcement, 20% of Delta’s unvaccinated employees got the injection, raising the company’s injection rate from 74% to 78%.2
The surcharge took effect on November 1, 2021, and by October 29, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian stated that more than 90% of employees had received the shot.3 In an employee memo, Bastian defended the significant premium hike for unvaccinated employees, stating, “The average hospital stay for COVID-19 has cost Delta $50,000 per person. This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision to not vaccinate is creating for our company.”4
Other companies have since followed suit. In January 2022, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) announced that public employees in Nevada, along with their adult dependents, would be assessed a surcharge on their state health insurance plan if they don’t get a COVID-19 shot by July 2022.5
A September 2021 survey by SHRM found that close to 20% of corporations were considering raising health insurance premiums for employees who don’t get the injection. Among organizations, 13% were considering such a move while less than 1% had actually raised premiums for unvaccinated employees at that time.6
In another example, Mercyhealth, which runs hospitals and health clinics in Wisconsin and Illinois, started deducting $60 per month from employees’ wages if they choose not to get the shot. While Alen Brcic, Mercyhealth vice president of people and culture, called the so-called “risk pool fee” a nominal amount, it drove the health system’s vaccination rate among employees up to 91%, from its previous 70%.7
“A ‘couple of handfuls’ of people quit over the policy and roughly 9% of employees are now contributing to the risk pool. Mercyhealth did provide a very small number of medical exemptions, but no religious exemptions,” NPR reported.8
Wellness Program Loophole Allows Increased Costs for Some
A number of federal statutes — including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) — prohibit group health plans and insurers from discriminating against individuals based on health factors.
While short-term health plans, which aren’t subject to ACA regulations, can deny coverage to someone because they didn’t get a COVID-19 vaccine, private health insurers cannot. Further, insurers that are part of the individual marketplace cannot charge penalties to those who are not vaccinated.9
However, wellness programs provide a work-around. By making COVID-19 injections a requirement of the company’s wellness program,10 Delta, for instance, may be able to skirt legal issues,11 as they’re “rewarding” members who participate in the wellness program by letting them avoid the premium surcharge hoisted on the unvaccinated.
JPMorgan Chase and Harmons have also used wellness program guidelines as a tool to raise health care premiums for workers who don’t get a COVID-19 shot. “According to federal law, companies are allowed to charge employees different amounts for health care as long as they do it through a program designed to promote healthy behaviors and prevent disease,” NPR reported.12
A wellness program can include virtually anything, from reaching a set number of steps daily to quitting smoking or staying within a certain BMI range. Sabrina Corlette, founder and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, told NPR, “Your wellness program could simply be: I’m going to encourage all of my employees to get vaccinated, full stop.
Most employers are doing this to try to have a healthier and more productive workforce … and to spend less on overall health care costs.”13
There are a few caveats. For instance, ACA regulations state that surcharges in employer wellness programs for things such as COVID-19 vaccination status are allowed, as long as they don’t discriminate against people with disabilities.14 NPR broke down wellness program waivers this way:15
“Under federal law, the wellness program must be ‘reasonably designed,’ meaning there’s a reasonable chance the program will improve the health of or prevent disease in the participants. To ensure that wellness programs do not violate discrimination laws, companies must provide waivers for individuals who have medical reasons for not meeting the stated targets or alternative ways for them to satisfy the requirements.
As part of its policy, the Utah grocer Harmons says its insurance premium surcharge of up to $200 per month applies to ‘unvaccinated associates who don’t qualify for an exemption or who chose not to complete a vaccine education series.’”
Rewards and penalties of wellness programs may not exceed 30% of the cost of employees’ health care plans, “calculated as the amount paid by the employee and the employer combined,” except in cases that involve tobacco use — then the penalty may reach 50% of costs.16
Fines for Vaccination Status a Slippery Slope
Governments around the globe have also rolled out fines for refusal of COVID-19 shots. Greece announced it would fine anyone aged 60 years and over who doesn’t get the injection, at a rate of approximately $114 a month.17 The Canadian province of Quebec also announced plans to fine the unvaccinated a “significant” amount.18
“There comes a point where these incentives [are getting] higher and higher and higher until people just can’t afford to not get the vaccine,” Julie Downs, Ph.D., a social psychologist and associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told AAMC. “It does work, but it comes at a cost … [and it’s] very hard in this political environment.”19
Dr. Mark Fendrick, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Value-Based Insurance Design, described penalties for not getting vaccinated “legally murky,”20 while others have described it as coercion. While health insurance companies have long charged higher premiums based on factors like smoking, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requires that penalties not be so large as to be coercive.21
One of the principles of the Nuremberg Code is that humans must give voluntary consent when participating in medical experiments, and that consent must be given, among other things, “without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion.”22
Give the emergency use authorization, not approval, the mass jab administration constituted a research trial. While the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 jab received FDA approval August 23, 2021, the injection’s approval represents the fastest approval in history,23 granted less than four months after Pfizer filed for licensing May 7, 2021.24 So for all intents and purposes, it’s still in the research phase.
Daniel Polsky, Ph.D., economist with the Johns Hopkins Blomberg School of Public Health and Carey Business School, further noted that penalties based on vaccination status should not dictate health care coverage, which also should not impose fines that suggest a person is at fault for getting sick. He told AAMC:25
“[For example,] we have this obesity crisis and some people would say, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t pay for care, it’s the person’s fault for being obese or for being an addict. If someone got sick from COVID — we should withhold paying for care.’… That is a slippery slope and not somewhere we should go.”
Natural Immunity Is Ignored
If you’ve had COVID-19, the research is strong that you’re well protected against reinfection. New data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention even show that prior COVID-19 infection, i.e., natural immunity, is more protective than COVID-19 injections.26
Despite this, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) recently upheld a vaccine mandate at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The mandate affects 10.4 million health care workers employed at 76,000 medical facilities,27 making no exceptions for those who have natural immunity to COVID-19 due to prior infection.
“You can think about a mandate as the strongest form of incentive,” Dr. Kevin Volpp, director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, told AAMC. “What we’ve seen so far in employer settings where there is a mandate related to keeping your job is that very few employees have not complied.”28
Yet, when researchers reviewed studies published in PubMed, they found that the risk of reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 decreased by 80.5% to 100% among people who had previously had COVID-19.29 Additional research cited in their review found:30
Among 9,119 people who had previously had COVID-19, only 0.7% became reinfected.
At Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, the incidence rate of COVID-19 among those who had not previously been infected was 4.3 per 100 people; the COVID-19 incidence rate among those who had previously been infected was zero per 100 people.
The frequency of hospitalization due to a repeated COVID-19 infection was five per 14,840 people, or .03%, according to an Austrian study; the frequency of death due to a repeated infection was one per 14,840 people, or .01%.
In short, if you’ve had COVID-19, you’re largely protected from reinfection, and a COVID-19 shot is not only unnecessary but, according to some experts, especially dangerous.31 Penalizing people who refuse a COVID-19 shot they don’t want or need becomes particularly atrocious in such cases. Unvaccinated individuals must have the freedom to remain so, if that’s what they choose, and not be forced into this medical decision by financial threats and coercion.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-03-22 05:06:552022-03-22 05:12:50No Insurance Payments: The Next COVID Shot ‘Mandate’?
