The $2 trillion infrastructure proposal is a big one. It will probably be in the top ten most expensive spending bills to go through this year. So, we did our due diligence and read through all 17,000 pages of the proposal so we can inform you of what your government is spending your grandchildren’s hard-earned money on.
Here’s everything in the proposal:
$500 million for guillotines for Trump supporters
$50 million to build a computer that can run Crysis
$800 billion to develop a new gender
$70 billion to build an ice wall to the north to protect us from Canada
$15 million for the development of a pause button for online games
$12 million to fight odor at Comic-Con
$80 billion to dig a ditch in space and another 80 to fill it in
$27 for snap bracelets for congresspeople
$10 million for every American to receive a copy of Antiracist Baby
$140 million for those cool plastic army men with parachutes you get at Chuck E. Cheese
$79 million to ensure that Doritos are a human right.
$20 million for PSA ads reminding women they can just put on a sweater instead of touching the thermostat
$70 million to make the McRib permanent
$32 million to bring back Crystal Pepsi
$123 trillion to build a new Middle East on the moon so we can bomb it
Does that add up exactly to $1.9 trillion? We’re not sure and we’re not really good at math. If it’s off by a few hundred trillion, eh, who cares? Money has no meaning anymore anyway.
What amazes me most in 2021 is how much of its structure and strategy resembles what held sway in 1981 when I joined the Air Force as a college student in ROTC. Instead of futuristic starship troopers flying around with jetpacks and firing lasers, the U.S. military is still essentially building the same kinds of weaponry we were then. They’re newer, of course, glitzier, if often less effective, but this country still has a Navy built around aircraft carriers, an Air Force centered on fighter jets and stealth bombers, and an Army based on tanks, helicopters, and heavy brigades. Admittedly, that Army may soon spend $20 billion on “augmented reality goggles” for the troops. (Perhaps those goggles will be programmed so that “reality” always looks like we win.)
The future isn’t what it used to be. As a teenager in the 1970s, I watched a lot of TV science fiction shows, notably Space: 1999 and UFO, that imagined a near future of major moon bases and alien attacks on Earth. Movies of that era like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey envisioned colossal spaceships and space stations featuring international crews on mind-blowing missions to Jupiter and beyond. Who’d have thought that, 20 years after Kubrick’s alternate reality of 2001, we humans would effectively be marooned on a warming “sixth extinction” planet with no moon bases and, to the best of my knowledge, no alien attacks either.
Sure, there’s been progress of a sort in the heavens. Elon Musk’s Space X may keep going down in flames, but the Chinese now have their very own moon rocks. As the old-timey, unmanned Voyager probe continues to glide beyond our solar system, Mars is a subject for research by new probes hailing from the United Arab Emirates, China, and the U.S. Meanwhile, the International Space Station continues conducting research in low-earth orbit.
As with space exploration, so, too, with America’s military. What amazes me most in 2021 is how much of its structure and strategy resembles what held sway in 1981 when I joined the Air Force as a college student in ROTC. Instead of futuristic starship troopers flying around with jetpacks and firing lasers, the U.S. military is still essentially building the same kinds of weaponry we were then. They’re newer, of course, glitzier, if often less effective, but this country still has a Navy built around aircraft carriers, an Air Force centered on fighter jets and stealth bombers, and an Army based on tanks, helicopters, and heavy brigades. Admittedly, that Army may soon spend $20 billion on “augmented reality goggles” for the troops. (Perhaps those goggles will be programmed so that “reality” always looks like we win.)
As in the days of the old Cold War — and we may indeed be heading into a new cold war in 2021 — America is even witnessing a $100-billion revival of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, weapons that were vulnerable by the 1960s and obsolete by the 1980s. Consider them doubly-obsolete and no less escalatory in the 2020s. And despite having an ever larger and overly secretive military within the military, Special Operations Command, today’s forces are generally structured in a way eerily similar to those I joined two generations ago. Think of it as the Pentagon’s version of science fiction in which stasis rules instead of progress.
It’s true, of course, that, thanks to the vanity of our last president, a new Space Force has been added to the services (though without moon bases, alien interceptors, or much of anything else yet). And one sci-fi-style “advance,” drone warfare, has become increasingly automated and unbounded. Otherwise, this country’s war song of 2021 remains much the same as 2001 or even 1981. It still has a force structure designed first and foremost to deter and defeat another great power like China and Russia, the very bogeymen I first raised my right hand to defend America against 40 years ago. Indeed, the Cold War is simply being rebooted and rebranded for a new century, a century more likely to be China’s than America’s.
Nowadays, instead of speaking about the “containment” of communism and the Soviet Union, as in the Cold War, the talk is of prevailing in “near-peer” conflicts. (Note how the U.S. military may have near-peers but is ultimately peerless, since there can’t be any question that we’re number one, militarily speaking.) Who are those “near-peers” so intent on challenging America and spoiling our freedom-driven version of imperialism? China and Russia, mainly, with Iran and North Korea tossed in as minor-league risks. Again, for my 1981 junior military self, it’s déjà vu all over again. Iran as a perfidious enemy? Check. Russia and China as autocratic menaces? Check. An unpredictable North Korea? Check.
William Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, is a TomDispatch regular and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal blog is Bracing Views.
Because after every single unconscious-bias training that has ever been done, nothing’s ever improved.’ As is the custom nowadays, Michael issued a public apology before tendering his resignation. This is a shame because his comments were not that far wide of the mark. As I explore in a new report for Civitas, the anti-racism training industry does little to improve outcomes for BAME people and, worse, breathes new life back into racial thinking.
‘Complete and utter crap.’ That’s how Bill Michael, until recently UK chair of global accountancy firm KPMG, described the concept of unconscious bias to his apparently stunned staff. ‘There is no such thing as unconscious bias’, he elaborated. ‘I don’t buy it. Because after every single unconscious-bias training that has ever been done, nothing’s ever improved.’ As is the custom nowadays, Michael issued a public apology before tendering his resignation. This is a shame because his comments were not that far wide of the mark. As I explore in a new report for Civitas, the anti-racism training industry does little to improve outcomes for BAME people and, worse, breathes new life back into racial thinking.
A review commissioned by the Government Equalities Office to analyse the effectiveness of unconscious-bias training found that ‘there is currently no evidence that this training changes behaviour in the long term or improves workplace equality in terms of representation of women, ethnic minorities or other minority groups’. The Harvard Business Review likewise notes that ‘even when the training is beneficial, the effects may not last after the programme ends’. Worse still, mounting evidence points to workplace diversity training actually having unintended negative consequences.
Yet increasing numbers of employers insist their staff undertake anti-racism training. A survey conducted for the Guardiansuggests that over 80 per cent of all UK-based companies run training sessions specifically on unconscious bias. Virtually all Fortune 500 companies offer some form of diversity training. The diversity industry has become a global phenomenon, extending its reach to many millions of citizens, with online courses targeting many more. In many schools, universities and workplaces, attendance at anti-racism workshops is mandatory – or effectively mandatory when non-attendance makes your position untenable.
Racism at work
This massive rollout of diversity training is not only taking place without any evidence of its effectiveness — it is also happening at a time when, by all measures, race has never been less of a barrier to advancement in the workplace. Yet the absence of both legal discrimination and explicit prejudice are no hindrance to the rise of the race experts. Binna Kandola, author of Racism at Work, explains:
‘The racism in organisations today is not characterised by hostile abuse and threatening behaviour. It is not overt nor is it obvious. Today racism is subtle and nuanced, detected mostly by the people on the receiving end, but ignored and possibly not even seen by perpetrators and bystanders. Racism today may be more refined, but it harms people’s careers and lives in hugely significant ways.’
‘Complete and utter crap.’ That’s how Bill Michael, until recently UK chair of global accountancy firm KPMG, described the concept of unconscious bias to his apparently stunned staff. ‘There is no such thing as unconscious bias’, he elaborated. ‘I don’t buy it. Because after every single unconscious-bias training that has ever been done, nothing’s ever improved.’ As is the custom nowadays, Michael issued a public apology before tendering his resignation. This is a shame because his comments were not that far wide of the mark. As I explore in a new report for Civitas, the anti-racism training industry does little to improve outcomes for BAME people and, worse, breathes new life back into racial thinking.
A review commissioned by the Government Equalities Office to analyse the effectiveness of unconscious-bias training found that ‘there is currently no evidence that this training changes behaviour in the long term or improves workplace equality in terms of representation of women, ethnic minorities or other minority groups’. The Harvard Business Review likewise notes that ‘even when the training is beneficial, the effects may not last after the programme ends’. Worse still, mounting evidence points to workplace diversity training actually having unintended negative consequences.
Yet increasing numbers of employers insist their staff undertake anti-racism training. A survey conducted for the Guardiansuggests that over 80 per cent of all UK-based companies run training sessions specifically on unconscious bias. Virtually all Fortune 500 companies offer some form of diversity training. The diversity industry has become a global phenomenon, extending its reach to many millions of citizens, with online courses targeting many more. In many schools, universities and workplaces, attendance at anti-racism workshops is mandatory – or effectively mandatory when non-attendance makes your position untenable.
Racism at work
This massive rollout of diversity training is not only taking place without any evidence of its effectiveness — it is also happening at a time when, by all measures, race has never been less of a barrier to advancement in the workplace. Yet the absence of both legal discrimination and explicit prejudice are no hindrance to the rise of the race experts. Binna Kandola, author of Racism at Work, explains:
‘The racism in organisations today is not characterised by hostile abuse and threatening behaviour. It is not overt nor is it obvious. Today racism is subtle and nuanced, detected mostly by the people on the receiving end, but ignored and possibly not even seen by perpetrators and bystanders. Racism today may be more refined, but it harms people’s careers and lives in hugely significant ways.’ Podcast ‘Lockdown is an assault on our humanity’ spiked
According to experts like Binna, racism today is so subtle people need training to perceive it, yet so devastating it does irreparable damage to people’s careers. It exists in indifference, in the things people do not say, yet it is apparently evident in every aspect of our daily lives.
The insistence that racism exists nowhere but is present everywhere, that it can be found within people who ‘do not engage in expressing negative views about minority groups’ but actually ‘believe in greater integration’, and even within individuals who ‘may consistently support policies that promote diversity’, comes directly from critical race theory. Legal equality may have been achieved. And, as Bill Michael found to his cost, expressing a thought that so much as questions contemporary anti-racist orthodoxies can see you out of a job. But the race experts insist they are needed now more than ever. They alone have the power to uncover a ‘legacy of racist ideas, actions and imagery which lives on publicly in stereotypes – and privately in our unconscious minds’ (2).
Unconscious bias
The existence of unconscious bias is a foundational principle of today’s critical race theory-inspired diversity movement. Apparently – and despite us not even being aware of it – our minds harbour all manner of prejudiced thoughts put there by society and culture; through our upbringing, education and our interactions with other people. Proof of these bad thoughts comes out in implicit-association tests (IAT) that track response times when we match certain images, words or phrases with people of different characteristics. Unsurprisingly, the idea that the content of the unconscious mind can be revealed through a rapid-fire computer test is highly contested. The American Psychological Association acknowledged over a decade ago that people’s IAT scores vary from one test to another and are often context-dependent. Yet still the testing continues.
What’s more, the notion that unconscious bias triggers prejudice and discrimination implies there is a direct link between our implicit attitudes and our actions. Yet research has shown that test scores purporting to measure implicit attitudes do not effectively predict actual discriminatory behaviour. Either the contents of our unconscious mind cannot be accurately measured, or people are able to exercise self-control and do not automatically act out the contents of their unconscious.
If unconscious-bias training is simply ineffective then it could be written off as just a harmless waste of time. But it is also making pseudo-scientific claims to be revealing the inner workings of our brain, in the workplace or an educational setting. In the context of racism being one of the biggest sins a person can commit, unconscious-bias training is therefore far more dangerous than mere time-wasting. Implicit-association testing breaches the rights of individuals to freedom of conscience. It holds people to account not for their speech, their actions or even their thoughts – but for impulses they have no control over. Ultimately, unconscious-bias training is divisive; it pushes us to see each other as members of racial groups and, in a bid to make all interactions conscious, it risks preventing the spontaneity and informality that leads to genuine friendship.
Microaggressions
Often, unconscious-bias training is followed by instruction in how to avoid microaggressions. A link is drawn between the two: it is because of our unconscious biases that we unintentionally mistreat people who are different to us. Microaggressions range from mispronouncing someone’s name or asking where they are from, to not making eye contact or not sitting facing a particular colleague in meetings. Diversity trainers teach that the cumulative impact of these slights can have a devastating psychological toll on the individuals targeted.
Training and awareness-raising around microaggressions sensitise BAME people to offence in slights they may otherwise have brushed off or not even noticed. The message is that even the tiniest miscommunication can cause serious harm. The idea that inculcating such extreme sensitivity may be unhelpful is rarely considered. While BAME people are taught to perceive offence, white people learn that not only their speech but their body language may reveal a deeply hidden racism. The only way to counteract this, they are taught, is hyper-vigilance. This further complicates and problematises spontaneous relationships. The risk is that black people come to be viewed – and to perceive of themselves – as especially vulnerable and sensitive to offence. In the workplace, this may lead colleagues to retreat from forging the informal connections that can lead to opportunities for promotion or make managers less likely to offer the feedback that may lead to better performance.
Allyship
Active-bystander or allyship training is the latest fad of the race experts. Unlike unconscious-bias training, which focuses on the unwitting perpetrators of racism, or microaggression workshops, which often focus on the feelings of the victims, active-bystander training considers the role of witnesses to racism. The starting point is that, in failing to act or speak out, witnesses compound the pain inflicted by the original act. Active-bystander training aims to give people the skills deemed necessary to challenge unacceptable behaviours. Specific skills taught include: overcoming fear and paralysis in challenging situations; using the right words and expressions when challenging behaviours; and tackling ‘micro-inequities’, including eye-rolling, sighing, constant interruptions and unconscious bias.
Again there is a huge disparity between behaviour – eye-rolling, sighing – and assumed emotional response: ‘fear and paralysis.’ Through training, people are taught that this reaction is proportionate but, far from being normal, living and working with this degree of sensitivity is itself paralysing. Allyship training is yet another intervention that racialises workplaces and reinforces the notion that everyday interactions may be acts of aggression when carried out by white people and leave people of colour suffering irreparable harm. Worse still, active-bystander training may infantilise BAME people by institutionalising an expectation that they need others to speak up on their behalf.
Counting the costs
Diversity training is a massive industry. But not only does it make little difference to either social equality or workplace relations — it may actually make things worse. Yet despite this, being an expert anti-racist is a highly lucrative business. Successful entrepreneurs like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X Kendi in the US, and Reni Eddo-Lodge and Afua Hirsch in the UK, earn vast sums of money through books and workshops. One investigation claims that DiAngelo ‘has likely made over $2million from her book’, but that ‘the speaking circuit is where she is cleaning up… [A] 60-90 minute keynote would run to $30,000, a two-hour workshop $35,000, and a half-day event $40,000.’ It goes on to note: ‘Ibram X Kendi, whose book has jockeyed with DiAngelo’s on the bestseller list, charges $150 for tickets to public events and $25,000 for a one-hour presentation… Former Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has charged between $30,000 and $40,000 for public lectures.’
Ta-Nehisi Coates and Carlos Watson talking about ‘Leadership and Legacy’ at Carnegie Hall, NYC, 29 February 2020.
Sitting below these elite hustlers come myriad academics, experts and workplace trainers who make money from race. For employers, the costs of diversity training go far beyond simply paying for a guest lecturer. They also include the wages of staff directed to spend time in workshops rather than focusing on generating revenue. So why are businesses queuing up to spend all this money? No doubt many well-meaning bosses genuinely believe diversity training will bring positive outcomes or assume that in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests they must be seen to be doing something. But the specific nature of critical race theory-inspired training, in bringing together identity politics and therapeutic practice, also holds significant benefits for employers.
Identity politics meets therapy
Critical race theory lends academic legitimacy to the race experts and provides a theoretical basis for the content of their literature and workshops. Their practice, on the other hand, draws from techniques that originate within therapy and counselling. The non-judgemental starting point of diversity training is that ‘we all have unconscious bias’ and the very fact that this bias is unconscious means we are relieved of all responsibility.
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn argues that from the emergence of sensitivity training in the 1940s, through to encounter groups in the 1960s, the ritualised practices that now epitomise the diversity industry ‘cannot be understood apart from the culture of therapy’ (3). She suggests that, in the 1960s, ‘psychotherapeutic techniques became widely accepted as appropriate for an ever broadening range of everyday issues or “life problems”’, based on ideas that had been developed in the decades beforehand. Race relations comprised one such life problem considered resolvable through therapeutic practices mediated by experts who offered enlightenment through training.
The therapeutic practice that forms the basis for most diversity training means familiar patterns are observed irrespective of the specific focus of the workshop. In order to introduce new ways of thinking and behaving towards others, people must first be made self-conscious about their existing relationships. People are taught to see themselves not as individuals, nor as friends and colleagues with interests in common, but as representatives of racial groups. Then, with spontaneity replaced by self-consciousness, attention is drawn to the differences between groups. Sometimes this process involves participants being asked to verbalise stereotypes they have encountered – even if they do not, nor ever have, accepted or reinforced those stereotypes themselves.
Next, participants are informed that there are racialised differences in the emotional responses people demonstrate when confronted with such stereotypes: black anger and white guilt. And then finally, trainers lead participants through a process of acceptance and validation of these emotional responses. Lasch-Quinn argues that black anger and white guilt are validated on the assumption that no individual is responsible for their feelings: it is society that has created stereotypes and fuels prejudice. When it is accepted that stereotypes, not individuals, are responsible for racism, then the trainer can offer instruction in approved interracial etiquette that focuses upon acknowledging and managing emotional responses in an acceptable way.
When considered in this way, expecting diversity training to reduce instances of racism may be to miss the point. The aim, it seems, is not a solution to racism but a reconciliation to its existence and a commitment to seeking it out where it remains hidden, thereby exposing yet more problems to be resolved through further rounds of training. All criticisms of this process are explained as ‘white fragility’ and serve as evidence of the need for yet more training. The sole aim of the diversity industry thus appears to be its own self-perpetuation. Each new iteration provides additional moral weight and, of course, revenue, for the professional anti-racists.
The benefits, not just for employers but for school leaders and university managers, of fuelling this industry are numerous. Diversity training breaks down any sense of solidarity between people and makes the formation of spontaneous bonds far less likely to occur. Individuals learn to be vigilant of their own behaviour, to appraise the actions of others and report indiscretions to managers far more effectively than any clipboard-wielding time and motion monitor. Through unconscious-bias training, employers gain access not just to our labour, or even our intellect, but to our emotions. They are then able to position themselves as therapeutic arbiters not just in our relationships with others but also, more significantly, in our very sense of who we are. The mandatory nature of much diversity training means schools, universities and the workplace are transformed from sites of education or labour into places for the inculcation of a particular ideological approach. Critical race theory – truly the gift that keeps on giving – means that if you take part in training you will discover you are racist; but refusal to participate is also a sign of your racism.
Employers not only have free rein to intervene in workplace relationships but they can also take the moral high ground while doing so. Whether through conviction, calculation or cowardice, the diversity-training juggernaut rolls ever onwards, to the detriment of all but a tiny elite.
According to The Detroit News, 246 “breakthrough cases” were reported between Jan. 1 and March 31. All cases occurred in people who tested positive 14 or more days after the last dose in the vaccine series, said Lynn Sutfin, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, in an email.
“Some of these individuals may ultimately be excluded from this list due to continuing to test positive from a recent infection prior to being fully vaccinated,” she said. But these “cases are undergoing further review to determine if they meet other [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] CDC criteria for determination of potential breakthrough, including the absence of a positive antigen or PCR test less than 45 days prior to the post-vaccination positive test.”
Sutfin said these persons were more likely to be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, adding that hospitalization data were available for 117 of the cases, while 129 were incomplete.
Of the 117 with hospitalization data entered, 11 were hospitalized, 103 were not hospitalized and three are reported as unknown. The three people who died were all 65 or older and two “were within three weeks of completion of vaccination,” Sutfin said.
According to Dr. Nick Gilpin, Beaumont’s medical director for infection prevention, eight patients who had been “fully vaccinated” were being treated for COVID at Beaumont Health’s hospitals on Monday.
“While the majority of the population develops full immunity within 14 days of completion of their vaccine series, a small proportion appear to take longer to mount a full antibody response,” Sutfin explained. “The CDC is actively working to better understand the risk characteristics of this group.”
As The Defender reported April 5, scientists have challenged health officials on vaccinating people who’ve already had COVID, arguing the science supporting vaccination of those primed with COVID doesn’t exist and there’s a potential risk of harm, including death, in vaccinating those who’ve already had the disease or were recently infected.
Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, surgeon and patient safety advocate, has written several letters to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration urging the agency to require pre-screening for SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins — which would be present in someone who has already been infected with COVID — in an effort to reduce COVID vaccine injuries and deaths.
According to Noorchasm, it is scientifically established that once a person is naturally infected by a virus, antigens from that virus persist in the body for a long time after viral replication has stopped and clinical signs of infection have resolved. When a vaccine reactivates an immune response in a recently infected person, the tissues harboring the persisting viral antigen are targeted, inflamed and damaged by the immune response.
“In the case of SARS-CoV-2, we know that the virus naturally infects the heart, the inner lining of blood vessels, the lungs and the brain,” explained Noorchasm. “So, these are likely to be some of the critical organs that will contain persistent viral antigens in the recently infected — and, following reactivation of the immune system by a vaccine, these tissues can be expected to be targeted and damaged.”
J. Patrick Whelan M.D., Ph.D., expressed similar concern that COVID vaccines aimed at creating immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein could have the potential to cause microvascular injury to the brain, heart, liver and kidneys in a way that does not currently appear to be assessed in safety trials of these potential drugs.
As The Defender reported March 31, Washington, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, New York, California and Minnesota have all reported breakthrough cases of COVID, and two deaths are under investigation by the Department of Health in Washington.
Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
The state is refusing to release data. Is it because she hasn’t been programmed on what to say or just doesn’t know? One thing I think I know-that stuff you allowed to be pumped in your arm is no good (having to anti-social distance and wear masks after “vaccination” is a clue). Boxing used to go 15 rounds. How many will you go?
The Pennsylvania Department of Health is refusing to release data about where emerging and more contagious COVID-19 infections are occurring, including one that medical experts are attributing to the recent surge in new cases.
Department spokeswoman Maggi Burton acknowledged COVID-19 cases involving variants of the virus are increasing in the state, but she referred questions about counties in which the variants are circulating to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Pennsylvania is currently sending biweekly positive COVID samples to the CDC for the complex and time-consuming genome sequencing, a tool that provides the genetic code of a virus and allows scientists to detect mutations.
Several commercial and hospital labs have also started sequencing positive specimens and they have identified most of the variants in the state so far, Burton said. She added the department is working to build the infrastructure to do sequencing in-house.
See VARIANTS, Page 4A
Continued from Page 1A
As of Thursday, the CDC has detected the so-called U.K. variant in 672 Pennsylvania COVID-19 cases, more than triple the number as of March 30. Six cases of the South African variant and one case of the Brazil variant have also been detected in the state as of Thursday.
On Thursday, the CDC declared the more contagious and potentially deadly U.K. variant has become the dominant strain in the United States, but added that the three FDA-approved vaccines offer some protection against the strain.
Statewide, COVID cases have jumped 75% since mid-March, with new cases jumping from an average of 2,500 daily to more than 4,600. The U.K. variant is suspected to be primarily behind the recent jump.
The percentage of positive COVID tests in Pennsylvania has also spiked dramatically in the last three weeks, from 5.7% to 9.4% on April 1, suggesting that community spread is increasing.
Currently, 45 of the 67 Pennsylvania counties were in the substantial level of community spread, including Bucks and Montgomery counties.
The CDC has identified five COVID-19 variants – from the U.K., South Africa, Brazil and two detected first in California – which seem to spread more easily, and quickly, than other variants, which could result in a rise in new cases.
Mutations change proteins on the surface of a virus. Those proteins attach to human cells, allowing the virus to enter the body.
Those variants can cause milder, or more severe, illness; they can make available treatments and vaccines less effective, which makes it harder to prevent community spread. Current testing methods may not be able to detect a new mutation of the virus, allowing it to spread quickly and widely.
Current COVID vaccines available in the U.S. are 70% effective against symptomatic COVID from the U.K. variant, but only 28% effective in protecting against asymptomatic disease from that variant, meaning those who are vaccinated can still spread it.
Clinical trials for the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine show it’s only 57% effective in stopping symptomatic COVID from the variant that originated in South Africa.
Pfizer says its new data shows its vaccine is 100% effective against the South African variant.
The Moderna vaccine is also effective against the two California variants, B.1.429 and B.1.351, which are spreading quickly in the U.S., according Duke University researchers. Novavax, a vaccine candidate the FDA will be considering soon, also performed well against the California variant, according to the researchers. The researchers did not test the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness with the California strain but said the Moderna findings would be comparable because it used similar technology.
Both vaccines showed “significant declines” in effectiveness against the South African variant, according to the Duke researchers.
The National Institutes of Health has started testing a booster shot from Moderna against the South African variant, and it could be available by the end of this year.
Only a detached member of the ruling class whose livelihood is sustained by some of America’s most powerful corporations can have the gall to downplay the trials and tribulations untold numbers of small business owners had to endure during last summer’s mayhem. Scarborough and his coterie would have us believe that paying respect to the hallowed institutions of mass democracy is the highest virtue while trying to defend the fundamental property rights of the common man is the province of buffoons and country bumpkins.
In light of the government’s response to the January 6 storming of the Capitol, anyone with a sense of political sanity can no longer argue that the war on terror is separate from American domestic affairs.
US imperialism came full circle on January 20, 2021, when Washington, DC, was subject to military occupation during Joe Biden’s inaugural address in order to secure the Capitol from alleged domestic extremist threats. When the right-wing violence that DC talking heads were squawking about never came to pass, their focus shifted toward trying to deradicalize right-leaning individuals who hold heretical views that collide with the managerial regime’s gospel.
Former CIA director John Brennan was among the most vocal of the national security analysts who started listing off all sorts of problematic groups that potentially pose a threat to the dystopian political order crystallizing before our very eyes. The very act of a mob entering the holiest of the holy sites was enough to make the entire American political establishment have a mental breakdown.
The message the ruling class sent to those who protested against it on its own turf was quite clear: tread your muddy boots on our cathedral and you will be met with a firm response from the state.
So far, there have been over 380 people charged for participating in the January 6 incident. Rest assured, the politicians who are still shaken from January 6 are thirsting for more people to persecute. Words like coup, insurrection, riot, sedition, and treason were tossed around liberally to describe the January 6ers’ actions. Only a regime insecure of its legitimacy would throw a hysterical fit over the Capitol storming that looked more like a live-action role-play than a rebellion that threatened the sovereignty of the DC occupational regime.
Pace the gatekeepers of political opinion, launching a coup requires strong organizational capacity. Rag-tag groups of disgruntled, working-class Americans, disenchanted soccer moms, and extremely online Trump supporters aren’t going to be pulling off a coup against the most powerful government in human history. The only venues the January 6 demonstrators were capable of taking over were online chat rooms.
Government Property Is Sacred. Your Property? Not So Much.
The double standards the legacy media is using to rationalize its ongoing crusade against the specter of extremism are farcical, to say the least. Over the course of a year when small business owners had their livelihoods destroyed by arbitrary lockdowns and widespread rioting, the ruling class tipped their glasses to the rioters and scoffed at those who had to put up with last summer’s mayhem. These same media mouthpieces would likely be cheering on color revolutions and lively protests in the Middle East and post-Soviet countries as the maximal expression of democracy. But when a rowdy group of Trump supporters took it upon themselves to stand up to their overlords, that was simply a bridge too far.
Any attempt to try to point out the inconsistency of the media’s hyperventilation with regard to the January 6 incident was met with instant pushback. On Morning Joe, TV host Joe Scarborough did not pull any punches:
I know there are idiots on other cable news channels that will say, “Well, this mom-and-pop store that was vandalized during the summer riots and that’s just as bad as the United States Capitol being vandalized.”
He then had some colorful language for those who hazarded to question the prevailing narrative:
No jackass it’s not. It’s the center of American democracy. No, jackass…. I’m not going to confuse a taco stand with the United States Capitol.
Only a detached member of the ruling class whose livelihood is sustained by some of America’s most powerful corporations can have the gall to downplay the trials and tribulations untold numbers of small business owners had to endure during last summer’s mayhem. Scarborough and his coterie would have us believe that paying respect to the hallowed institutions of mass democracy is the highest virtue while trying to defend the fundamental property rights of the common man is the province of buffoons and country bumpkins.
Private Property Is Critical for Civilization
For the adherents of the present political order, symbols of the state have a religious aura. Private property, on the other hand, is a sacrificial animal to be slaughtered as an offering to the state, though the whole conversation would likely change if the property of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Big Tech, or politically connected corporations were defiled. The media would instantly become situational capitalists and vigorously defend the sanctity of their fellow peers’ property.
Heck, they might just throw some radical free market defenses here and there. But this is out of pure self-interest, not because political leaders and their corporate patrons hold private property in high esteem at a holistic level. As for the rest of the rubes in Middle America, they must put up with whatever political violence befalls them and their property. Simply raising their voices in opposition will have the legacy media branding them as “reactionary,” “racist,” or “bigoted.”
On the other hand, Ludwig von Mises championed private property not just for the sake of sloganeering but to impart to others the necessity property rights as a means of fostering social harmony. As he observed in Omnipotent Government, “If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.”
Mises’s vision for a social order predicated on respect for property rights has not disappeared from the intellectual consciousness. Successors of the Misesian tradition such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe have continued making the case for the respect of private property as a civilizing force. Unlike the public sector worshippers, Hoppe understood the bigger picture of why private property, not public property, should be treated as sacred. In fact, he views the modern-day state as one of the principal drivers of the erosion of property rights throughout the West.
As Hoppe argued in Democracy, The God That Failed,
the more the state has increased its expenditures on social security and public safety, the more our private property rights have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, confiscated, destroyed, or depreciated, and the more we have been deprived of the very foundation of all protection: economic independence, financial strength, and personal wealth.
As a consequence of being accustomed to having mandarins in distant government agencies lord over them, Americans have gradually come to disrespect or at least take for granted the concept of property rights. Hence their relative indifference toward the wanton destruction of the property of many small business owners’ establishments during last summer’s riots and toward the devastation government-promoted lockdowns inflicted on these small business operations.
The sign of a healthy society is one where private property is respected, and not just the private property of social media whales or parasitic defense contractors, but that of everyday business owners. By the same token, a society with a modicum of sanity would laud acts of self-defense against criminals who wish to harm the property and persons of lawful individuals.
Many of the shibboleths that Americans have been so inured to accept are now imploding. Millions of Americans took it upon themselves to buy firearms at record levels during a time when police services could not be relied on to uphold their end of the proverbial social contract. Moreover, a number of Americans responded by forming community defense groups to protect their neighborhoods when police were standing down left and right as cities nationwide burned.
Even the idea of privatized policing is starting to gain traction in certain parts of America. Occasionally, moments of crisis force people to rethink many political premises they’ve stubbornly held. There’s something to be said about how operating outside of one’s comfort zone can compel one to look at things differently.
All things considered, the past year should all but dispel the notion that America is “exceptional.” It’s a country with a myriad of problems that have dotted empires in decay throughout world history—a corrupt ruling class, an overstretched military presence, an unstable monetary system, and declining public order.
Reassuring ourselves of empty bromides that it “can’t happen here” because America is exceptional is a pathetic cope that ignores the iron laws of politics and economics, which the US is not exempt from. The only thing exceptional is the level of befuddlement that many experts will find themselves in once the US inevitably careens into the abyss of social and economic decadence if the country’s leaders don’t get their act together. Author:
José Niño is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. Sign up for his mailing list here. Contact him via Facebook or Twitter. Get his premium newsletter here.
“Vaccine Passports”? … “War on Cash,”? … The common thread is that these authoritarian ideas are war on our freedom. Total surveillance has been sought by authoritarians for thousands of years; always with the goal of trying to control how people move, or how they spend their money. The spread of the ideas of Liberty are necessary in order to save us from encroaching tyranny.
It has become clear that these laws are a fruitful and convenient vehicle—from the policymaker’s perspective—to advancing federal control over all of private life. As time goes on, expect lawmakers to turn again and again to these laws as a means of expanding government control of private organizations of every size, shape, purpose, mission, and religion.
With the introduction of the Equality Act of 2021—and its passage in the House—the Democratic Party and its allies continue the now well-established tradition of using “antidiscrimination” and “public accommodation” laws to continue the attack on the private sector and private institutions once somewhat insulated from regime control.
Historically these laws, acts, and court rulings—found initially in the Civil Rights Act of 1964—focused largely on regulating hiring and the provision of services at private institutions. These legislative and judicial acts regulate how private owners of restaurants and hotels—and a wide variety of other private establishments—enter into verbal or written contracts with potential employees, clients, and customers.
Initially, these mandates focused on regulating how business provide services to religious minorities and what the Canadians call “visible minorities”—i.e., non-whites. The laws began with just regulating private for-profit “public carriers” and organizations known to provide “public accommodation” of basic necessities. The Equality Act, however, greatly expands these federal powers. First, the Act continues to expand the groups that are considered “protected” groups, most notably LGBT groups. Second, while older provisions tended to target run-of-the-mill businesses, the Act now expands federal power in order to regulate religious institutions, as well. The Act moves to ensure that fewer and fewer Americans will be able to exercise the free exercise of religion as a means of avoiding federal mandates. The Act also expands federal control over medical institutions and employees.
It has become clear that these laws are a fruitful and convenient vehicle—from the policymaker’s perspective—to advancing federal control over all of private life. As time goes on, expect lawmakers to turn again and again to these laws as a means of expanding government control of private organizations of every size, shape, purpose, mission, and religion.
What Is the Equality Act?
How exactly does the Equality Act expand regime control over the private sector? It redefines which organizations are subject to “public accommodation” laws, and it adds new interest groups that private sector institutions will be forced to service in a manner to the regime’s liking. For instance, the act would make it discriminatory to deny certain medical procedures to transgender persons:
[t]he Equality Act would force hospitals and insurers to provide and pay for [sexual transition] therapies against any moral or medical objections [raised by medical personnel]. It would politicize medicine by forcing professionals to act against their best medical judgment and provide transition-affirming therapies.
The text of the bill explicitly includes … “any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency, or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting, or legal services.”
Notable among these is the expansion to “shelters” which include domestic violence shelters. Under the Equality Act, these organizations would be required to house males self-identifying as women in shelters alongside abused women.
The inclusion of salons is also notable, since—as was exhibited by the notorious Jessica Yaniv case in Canada—public accommodation mandates would likely erase the ability of salons to limit waxing services to women only. Naturally, as in the Yaniv case, the employees at these institutions could potentially be forced into waxing men’s genitals provided those men identify as women.
The Equality Act bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition,” and courts and the federal government have interpreted “related medical condition” to mean “abortion.” It is, therefore, quite conceivable that courts could soon interpret the Equality Act as requiring private insurance and government health-care programs to fund abortion.
The Abolition of Religious Exemptions
But perhaps most central to the Act are its provisions to reduce exemptions for religious persons and institutions. Historically, federal law and federal court decisions have in many cases noted that religious institutions—if the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights is to mean anything—must be able to behave in ways that are compatible with religious belief. Thus, in some cases, a church or other religious organization can refuse to hire persons who espouse ideology or behavior that stands contrary to a religious group’s beliefs. Similarly, in some cases, a religious doctor or nurse could have found some protections under these provisions for refusing to perform religiously objectionable medical procedures such as sex reassignment surgery or abortions.
This has always been rather weak tea in terms of limiting federal powers, since it restricts private discretion to only those acts that are religiously motivated. Moreover, government agents themselves—i.e., government judges—have also often arrogated to themselves the power to determine if a discriminatory decision fits under any known religious category. In other words, the government will tell you if your legal defense can be defined as a religious defense. Moreover, as the Masterpiece Cake Shop case and similar cases have shown, even religious objections fail to provide much in the way of protection from these legal mandates.
Nevertheless, even these few and weak loopholes are too much for backers of the Equality Act which is designed to further restrict religious freedom:
University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock has warned that the Equality Act would “crush” religious dissenters. “It goes very far to stamp out religious exemptions…. It regulates religious non-profits. And then it says that [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] does not apply to any claim under the Equality Act. This would be the first time Congress has limited the reach of RFRA. This is not a good-faith attempt to reconcile competing interests. It is an attempt by one side to grab all the disputed territory and to crush the other side.”
If the Act passes, we should expect an avalanche of lawsuits against religious schools and similar institutions that attempt to hire only employees who reflect the organizations’ missions.
A Doorway to Widespread Regulation of Private Life
This was to be expected. The public accommodation provisions have long served as a doorway for federal regulators to enter and manage the daily minutiae of private life and the private sector. The expansion of these powers under the Equality Act is only the next logical step. After all, this body of law has always constituted a direct assault on the private sector and the institution of private property, bringing more and more of private life under the watchful eye of government bureaucrats. It has provided an excuse for government regulators to investigate, fine, sue, and otherwise harass and destroy business owners in a wide variety of ways. For those business owners who cannot afford a legal defense, there is no recourse.
Naturally, this is all to the benefit of the regime itself. As Ludwig von Mises has noted, private property is an institution that is absolutely central and essential in limiting government power and in providing some small realm of freedom beyond the reach of the regime’s coercion. Like market institutions and the family, religious institutions are themselves within the private sector and a key part of what the early laissez-faire liberals called “society.” Society represents those noncoercive institutions that are to be contrasted with the state and its mandates, imposed under threat of fines and imprisonment. All else being equal, it’s a good thing that religious organizations have been able to exercise discretion in “discrimination” even if these same freedoms were denied to others. Some freedom—what some might call loopholes—is preferable to no freedom.
But that was never enough for the advocates of the Equality Act, and they’re now moving faster in the wrong direction. The small bit of freedom carved out for religious institutions is being reduced further and religious institutions are likely to soon be considered more or less indistinguishable from long-beleaguered commercial organizations.
The Answer Lies in Private Property
But what we can we do about the problem of private sector discrimination that’s truly designed to disadvantage some specific minority group? Ironically, the answer lies in protecting private property.
For those of us who are concerned about increasing access to goods and services for minority groups—ethnic and otherwise—it is most effective to combat the regime’s restrictions on private sector activities and lower barriers to entry in the marketplace. The legal public accommodation edifice is largely built on the idea that firms headed by bigots will be able to establish partial or total monopolies that can dictate to consumers who can buy what. In a reasonably free economy, however, this is extremely unlikely. As I have shown in the past, we can find many examples of much-discriminated-against Japanese Americans and Latinos—and in other groups that have built up ethnic economic enclaves—rushing to provide a responsive economic foundation of goods and services built around the needs of their group. If our goal is to broaden and expand services—and those who can count on them—the last thing we need is an ever more repressive legal regime built on the constant threat of lawsuits and fines for organizations that run afoul of the regime’s ideological preferences.
On the other hand, it is unlikely that the backers of the Equality Act are actually motivated by securing economic prosperity for constituents. Rather, this is about settling political scores—carving out privileges for certain interest groups at the expense of other interest groups. In other words, it’s a culture war. And that means maximizing the regime’s ability to dole out favors and punishments. Author:
Turning suburbs into more government dependent inner cities. Making it easier to corral and control you.
Turning suburbs into more government dependent inner cities. Making it easier to corral and control you.”It’s the perfect place to play. However, when your neighbors move out, a developer buys his property, razes it, and builds a Section 8 multifamily unit on it. When this happens a few more times, you just overpaid for a large home on a busy street, complete with Section 8 housing — and the drugs and crime that inevitably follow when Section 8 comes to your neighborhood.”
How, exactly, does Biden plan to end single-family zoning? According to the fact sheet released by the White House, “Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate [‘exclusionary zoning’].” In other words, Biden wants to use a big pot of federal grant money as bait. If a county or municipality agrees to weaken or eliminate its single-family zoning, it gets the federal bucks.
Stanley Kurtz noted that part of Biden’s alleged “infrastructure” bill continues the left’s war on the suburbs. Even though affluent suburbs are increasingly filled with Democrat voters (college grads who passed through the propaganda mill), the administration wants to make them more densely urban because that ensures reliable Dem voting. However, if Republicans can get the word out about this feature in the bill, they might get an unexpected ally: soccer moms.
First, let me share some of Kurtz’s analysis with you, although I urge you to read the whole thing:
How, exactly, does Biden plan to end single-family zoning? According to the fact sheet released by the White House, “Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate [‘exclusionary zoning’].” In other words, Biden wants to use a big pot of federal grant money as bait. If a county or municipality agrees to weaken or eliminate its single-family zoning, it gets the federal bucks.
The wildly overreaching Obama-Biden era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation — which Biden has pledged to revive — works in a similar fashion. The difference is that by adding another gigantic pot of federal money to the Community Development Block Grants that are the lure of AFFH, Biden makes it that much harder for suburbs to resist applying — and that much more punishing to jurisdictions that forgo a share of the federal taxes they’ve already paid so as to protect their right to self-rule.
The practical effect of ending single-family zoning means that you just bought a lovely three-bedroom, two-bathroom home for your growing family, on a quiet street with large lots, each boasting a big garden. It’s the perfect place to play. However, when your neighbors move out, a developer buys his property, razes it, and builds a Section 8 multifamily unit on it. When this happens a few more times, you just overpaid for a large home on a busy street, complete with Section 8 housing — and the drugs and crime that inevitably follow when Section 8 comes to your neighborhood.
What Biden’s handlers might not realize is that suburban moms, the ones who worked hard and delayed childbearing so that they could raise their children in a safe, healthy environment, don’t like plans to turn their green retreats into copies of the same busy cities they left. And it’s not just Republican suburban moms who don’t like this idea; it’s Democrat suburban moms, too.
I raised my children in a lovely suburban enclave. All my neighbors, and all the people I met through schools, were couples who had met as young urban professionals working in cities. They got married, had children, and discovered that the city was a mixed blessing as a parent.
Sure, the city offered wonderful cultural opportunities, but kids under five aren’t fans of ballet, fine art, and opera, and you can’t take them to woke, edgy shows. What you really want to do with the young set is take them to a safe park and let them run. And when they’re older, you want them to bike or walk to their nice, clean new schools that have big playgrounds and good academic ratings.
My particular city was already bad when my older child was born. Small apartments were expensive, traffic was awful, parking was minimal, public transportation was dirty and unreliable, and public schools were appalling. By moving just 15 miles away from the city, we got a large house with a big garden, no traffic, easy access by car to every amenity from groceries to pediatricians, and top-rated public schools. The last were still lousy because of the state curriculum, but that’s another story.
Since then, all those urban woes have gotten worse. Even before COVID, homelessness had turned my old city into a filthy dystopian nightmare.
When the Democrats’ plan to urbanize came to my suburb a decade ago, Democrat moms — all of whom had followed the same trajectory as I did — were up in arms. Having slaved and saved to move into the suburbs, they became instant NIMBYs. Compassion for the poor, downtrodden, and differently colored did not extend to multifamily homes in their neighborhoods. Nor were they in favor of a massive decline in property value after spending a fortune on their homes.
Conservatives must get the word out about what the AFFH plan means — and that taking any money from HUD means that the federal government owns their neighborhoods forever. If they can be brought to understand this fact, they will object — loudly and with passion.
