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NYTimes warns readers against critical thinking lest they realize the ‘paper of record’ is feeding them lies — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on February 20, 2021

Warzel cites a professor who warns that “the goal of disinformation is to capture attention, and critical thinking is deep attention,” implying that to think critically about some forbidden morsel is to fall victim to the evil mastermind who created it. “The natural human mind-set is a liability in an attention economy,” he continues, making very sure the reader gets the point that “it allows grifters, conspiracy theorists, trolls, and savvy attention hijackers to take advantage of us and steal our focus.” You wouldn’t want that, would you? Close that browser window NOW!

Lucky for US the NYT realizes how dumb you are.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/516095-nytimes-critical-thinking-wrongthink-lockstep/

Helen Buyniski

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23 and on Telegram

Critical thinking is dangerous, according to a Times editorial urging readers to vet sources with Wikipedia lest they fall into traps set by evil conspiracy theorists and be tricked into questioning the paper’s iron-clad truths.

Charlie Warzel, a Times columnist who styles himself an expert in “online radicalization,” has implored his readers not to “go down the rabbit hole,” in a Thursday op-ed luridly depicting the dangers of evaluating new information, questing out into the internet armed with nothing but one’s own mind. Thinking critically can lead to giving away one’s precious attention to dastardly conspiracy theorists whose only apparent goal is to dupe you, he warns, as opposed to the friendly narrative managers at the New York Times, who just want to make sure your brain is quivering with the required fear quota – of viruses, Russians, your neighbors, terrorists, white people or, now, the capacity for believing wrongthink lurking within your own brain.

It’s logical that the Times should warn its readers against engaging too deeply with “wrongthink,” of course – Times readers often lack a solid grasp of the views they consider to be their deeply-held beliefs, having picked them up absent-mindedly from one ‘approved’ source or another without thinking too deeply about their implications or how they might possibly conflict with their existing values.

That is, if the average Times reader were to think too deeply about the material they ingest every day with their morning coffee, the resulting cognitive dissonance would cause their heads to explode. The paper contradicts itself on at least a weekly basis, as the narrative managers gleefully mine out society’s foundations from beneath it. Merely comparing the paper’s evolving coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic makes it clear that if they aren’t trying to keep their readers fear-stricken and off-balance with constant infusions of cognitive dissonance, they couldn’t have paid someone to do it better.

Warzel cites a professor who warns that “the goal of disinformation is to capture attention, and critical thinking is deep attention,” implying that to think critically about some forbidden morsel is to fall victim to the evil mastermind who created it. “The natural human mind-set is a liability in an attention economy,” he continues, making very sure the reader gets the point that “it allows grifters, conspiracy theorists, trolls, and savvy attention hijackers to take advantage of us and steal our focus.” You wouldn’t want that, would you? Close that browser window NOW!

The professor, one Michael Caulfield of Washington State University Vancouver, offers up a series of thought-stopping clichés to be reverted-to whenever one believes one is reading wrongthink: “1. Stop. 2. Investigate the source. 3. Find better coverage. 4. Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.” On the surface, this isn’t necessarily bad advice, though the professor’s advice to take no more than 90 seconds on a given fact-check should raise a few eyebrows – not every fact is that easy to check, especially the sort that gets smeared as “conspiracy theories.”

It’s where one “investigates” the source and finds “better” coverage that the problems lurk. While Warzel doesn’t come right out and recommend its readers seek out Wikipedia, the bathroom wall of the internet, he does quote an assistant political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who believes the supposedly crowd-sourced yet intelligence-agency-dominated “encyclopedia” known for hosting massive hoaxes and conducting reputational hit-jobs is actually great for evaluating sources.

And while Warzel pads that professor’s advice with his disclaimer –er, worry– that recommending Wikipedia is a method that “could be exploited by conspiracy theorists” (oh, the irony), he has no problem recommending searching unknown sources on Google and going with the top results. The Google contractors in charge of ranking websites for the search engine are advised to use Wikipedia as their primary source of guidance for evaluating the trustworthiness of an unfamiliar website – never mind the massive disclaimer the site carries warning that any or all content may be false. That doesn’t deter the underpaid contractors doing Google’s dirty work from swearing by it – and apparently it doesn’t bother the Paper of Record either. At least now we know where the Times’ journalists are really doing their fact-checking.

It’s no secret that establishment journalists – especially the sort who write for self-styled ‘papers of record’ – consider themselves something of a priest class, tasked with translating the divine word of politicians and ‘experts’ so that ordinary people don’t realize there’s something deeply wrong with the whole situation. And it’s no secret either that these narrative-managers realize they’re outnumbered by the alt-media commenters who’ve taken it upon themselves to report the facts left out by the establishment. So the only hope of the Warzels of the world is to hold their noses and convert ordinary folks to their doctrine, in which the once-noble discipline of “fact-checking” is perverted into an unsubtle bludgeon against ideological foes. This growing movement is reflected in Twitter’s “Birdwatch” program, in Facebook’s since-discontinued effort to crowd-source the rating of news sources, and, of course, in Wikipedia. Only by knighting the hoi polloi as the foot soldiers of orthodoxy can they be inoculated against the threat of critical thinking.

Because the real issue – with politics, with Covid-19, with the endless bloody wars, with pretty much all of the US’ problems – is a failure to think critically. The majority of Americans go through life believing that the status quo is ‘that way’ for a reason beyond inertia and graft, unwilling to imagine – let alone attempt to create – a better world. This is in large part because American children are taught in school not to think critically, but to obey – which some might deem a necessary casualty of sticking one helpless teacher with a class of 40 rowdy children, but which any honest person has to call a recipe for disaster. After all, one cannot have a functional democracy without an educated populace, and for all its newfound post-Trump enthusiasm for Our Democracy™, the US does not have a populace capable of critically evaluating information.

The narrative managers, Charlie Warzel included, want to keep it that way. Why mess with a good thing? Don’t strain your brain, just relax and let the Times rock you to sleep. Anything else is letting the bad guys win.

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Joe Biden is already breaking his promise to end the US’ ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on February 20, 2021

In the case of Iraq, there had not been a single suicide bombing and no Islamic terrorist organisations, such as al-Qaeda, had operated in the country before the overthrew of Saddam Hussein.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/516096-biden-middle-east-forever-war/

By Robert Inlakesh, a political analyst, journalist, and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News and Press TV. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47 Prior to his inauguration, President Joe Biden had proclaimed that he wished to end the “forever wars” the US is fighting, just as former president Trump had claimed he would. But once you’re in office, it’s a different story.

NATO has decided to expand its footprint in Iraq, following a rocket attack in the city of Erbil that killed one American contractor and injured six more people. This, as the US State Department has threatened consequences for all those involved.

NATO announced this Thursday that it will boost its Iraq mission from 500 to 4,000 personnel, which, Pentagon spokesperson Jessica McNulty confirmed in an interview with CNN, will mean the US “will contribute its fair share to this important expanded mission” – a clear indication that Biden is ready to continue his career along the warpath. The United States currently has 2,500 troops active in Iraq, following the former Trump administration’s decision to lower troop presence – a policy the Biden administration is now poised to undo.

When in doubt, blame Iran

Despite the fact there has been no confirmation as to who exactly carried out the recent Erbil rocket attack, the US State Department has vowed a response against those involved. The group that claimed the attack, Saraya Awliya Al-Dam, has since been linked by the Western press to Iran. The likes of CNN have even called the group an “Iranian-backed militia”, for which the network provided no evidence and which is a potentially dangerous assertion, as many Americans will have been given the impression that Iran was somehow responsible. Iran has since denied any involvement in the Erbil attack and says it has never backed the Saraya Awliya Al-Dam militia group. 

Following Trump’s ‘targeted assassination’ of Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) Chairman Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis in January 2020, the Iraqi parliament had voted to expel US forces from the country. Although the expulsion never occurred, US forces did begin to close down military facilities in the east of Iraq and concentrated their troop presence further to the west, in Anbar Province. 

The United States invaded Iraq under the pretence of dispossessing former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of his non-existent “weapons of mass destruction”. Now, almost 17 years and over a million dead Iraqis later, the war is close to the age that is required for enlistment to serve in the US military.

Breeding terrorism

While the US footprint seemingly expands in Iraq, Biden is also set to make his decision on whether he will follow the previous administration’s deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan and withdraw the remaining 2,500 troops, or stay in that 20-year-long war. He has until May 1 to do the former or face the backlash of breaking the Trump-era accord. 

The common argument used for staying in Afghanistan is similar to the argument for remaining in Iraq. The US will argue, with the full complicity of its media, that there will be a bloodbath if they leave, due to militant groups gaining the upper hand. But when it comes to the US and its involvement in these wars, the problems in both Iraq and Afghanistan were created almost entirely by its presence.

In the case of Iraq, there had not been a single suicide bombing and no Islamic terrorist organisations, such as al-Qaeda, had operated in the country before the overthrew of Saddam Hussein. 

As for Iranian influence in Iraq, the reason why this was even possible was due to the US having destroyed the country and left space for foreign groups and nations to intervene. The Iranian influence in Iraq, specifically through the aforementioned PMUs (that is, the state-sponsored umbrella organisation for militias), came as a response to Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS) insurgency and occupation of Iraqi lands. Iran stepped in to help build the primary force that defeated IS on the ground inside Iraq. However, despite the fact that the PMUs are part of the Iraqi armed forces, they are portrayed simply as an Iranian proxy group akin to terrorist organisations hostile to US forces.

Twisting the nuclear deal

Along with the demonisation of Iran and its influence in Iraq being used as a partial justification for further action in the country comes the Biden administration’s continued hardball stance when it comes to re-entering the JCPOA/Iran nuclear deal.

Biden has offered to rejoin talks with Iran,on the issue of the JCPOA, dropping Trump-era restrictions such as the tight limitation of movement imposed on Iranian diplomats, but these gestures have not budged any party.

In a meeting this Thursday between US, German, French and UK diplomats, the quartet blamed Iran for the lack of progress on the restoration of the deal. The statement focuses on its reactionary enrichment of uranium, which came in the wake of US and EU non-compliance with the deal, and urged Iran to consider the “consequences of such grave action”. 

In response to the statement, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif lambasted the US and E3 partners for what he calls their placing of the onus on Iran over a deal they had violated. Zarif reaffirmed Iran’s position that it would follow action with action, meaning sanctions must first be lifted and the quartet must honour its commitments before Iran will resume honouring the deal.

One of the most effective weapons the US is using to justify its aggressive posture in the Middle East is its propaganda, which works to paint its opposition as near-irredeemable. Even if Biden is going to re-enter the Iran Deal, he has now made it abundantly clear that he is not going to end hostility towards Iran and its allied forces in the region, and has already betrayed his stated goal of favouring a diplomacy-first stance.

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The NY Times recalls an outbreak of PCR lies « Jon Rappoport’s Blog

Posted by M. C. on February 20, 2021

Is truth in 2007 still truth today?

https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/02/19/the-ny-times-recalls-an-outbreak-of-pcr-lies/

by Jon Rappoport

This article is part of a current series of pieces [1] I’m posting—with the purpose of exposing the PCR fraud.

The war against humanity relies on this test. If the test falls, the whole official COVID narrative dissolves in front of our eyes.

You can perform a valuable service by spreading this information far and wide.

NY Times, January 22, 2007, “Faith in Quick [PCR] Tests Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t.” [2] [3]

“Dr. Brooke Herndon, an internist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, could not stop coughing…By late April, other health care workers at the hospital were coughing…”

“For months, nearly everyone involved thought the medical center had had a huge whooping cough outbreak, with extensive ramifications. Nearly 1,000 health care workers at the hospital in Lebanon, N.H., were given a preliminary test and furloughed from work until their results were in; 142 people, including Dr. Herndon, were told they appeared to have the disease; and thousands were given antibiotics and a vaccine for protection. Hospital beds were taken out of commission, including some in intensive care.”

“Then, about eight months later, health care workers were dumbfounded to receive an e-mail message from the hospital administration informing them that the whole thing was a false alarm.”

“Now, as they look back on the episode, epidemiologists and infectious disease specialists say the problem was that they placed too much faith in a quick and highly sensitive molecular test [PCR] that led them astray.”

“There are no national data on pseudo-epidemics caused by an overreliance on such molecular tests, said Dr. Trish M. Perl, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins and past president of the Society of Health Care Epidemiologists of America. But, she said, pseudo-epidemics happen all the time. The Dartmouth case may have been one the largest, but it was by no means an exception, she said.”

“Many of the new molecular [PCR] tests are quick but technically demanding, and each laboratory may do them in its own way. These tests, called ‘home brews,’ are not commercially available, and there are no good estimates of their error rates. But their very sensitivity makes false positives likely, and when hundreds or thousands of people are tested, as occurred at Dartmouth, false positives can make it seem like there is an epidemic.”

“’You’re in a little bit of no man’s land,’ with the new molecular [PCR] tests, said Dr. Mark Perkins, an infectious disease specialist and chief scientific officer at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, a nonprofit foundation supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. ‘All bets are off on exact performance’.”

“With pertussis, she [Dr. Kretsinger, CDC] said, ‘there are probably 100 different P.C.R. protocols and methods being used throughout the country,’ and it is unclear how often any of them are accurate. ‘We have had a number of outbreaks where we believe that despite the presence of P.C.R.-positive results, the disease was not pertussis,’ Dr. Kretsinger added.”

“Dr. Cathy A. Petti, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Utah, said the story had one clear lesson.”

“’The big message is that every lab is vulnerable to having false positives,’ Dr. Petti said. ‘No single test result is absolute and that is even more important with a test result based on P.C.R’.”

TAKEAWAY FROM THE TIMES: No large study validating the uniformity of PCR results, from lab to lab, has ever been done. At least a dozen very large studies should have checked for uniform results, before unleashing the PCR on the public; but no, this was not the case. It is still not the case. Also, the extreme sensitivity of the test causes MANY false-positives.

Now imagine the scandalous information in this NY Times article appearing everywhere—on social media, blogs, websites, etc. It would be terrible for Bill Gates, Fauci, and other great leaders in the Holy Church of Biological Mysticism.

Political leaders and public health experts would have, on their hands, a major refutation of their whole narrative about the “deadly pandemic.”

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The High Cost of Using the Minimum Wage as a Form of Welfare | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on February 20, 2021

Another important finding is that employers often respond to higher mandated wages by replacing low wage workers with those who have more education, skills and experience which make them more productive. This adjustment may have little effect on the observable employment numbers, but the effect is devastating for those who are replaced. Employers can be forced to pay higher wages, but they can’t be forced to hire or retain employees whose contributions don’t match the higher wage.

https://mises.org/wire/high-cost-using-minimum-wage-form-welfare

Martin Jones

In recent years a number of economic studies have concluded that small to moderate increases in the minimum wage do not necessarily cause a discernible decline in employment. Social activists have seized on these findings to argue that there are no job losses and that it is possible to increase mandated wages by almost any amount without ill effects. The result has been a rush to raise the minimum wage to $15 in a number of states and cities and now at the national level.

The reality is that there is little consensus among economists about the effects of the minimum wage on aggregate employment. In their 2014 book What Does the Minimum Wage Do? Dale Belman and Paul Wolfson survey over two hundred minimum wage studies and conclude that moderate increases can raise the wages of low-income workers without significant employment effects. A 2019 paper by economist Jeffery Clemens is a shorter survey of many of the same studies. It concludes that the case for large increases (an increase from $7.25 to $15 would qualify) “is either mistaken or overstated” and adds that “[i]n contrast to the research emphasized by advocates, the broader body of work regularly finds that increases in minimum wages cause job losses for individuals with low skills.”

In a January 2021 study, economists David Neumark and Peter Shirley assembled “the entire set of published studies in this literature” and conclude that “there is a clear preponderance of negative estimates“ and that the evidence is particularly strong for teens, young adults, and the less educated—exactly the results economic theory would predict.

In the face of competing complex statistical analyses that may reach contradictory conclusions, voters and legislators should be aware that findings about the effects of wage increases on the unemployment rate often ignore or obscure other significant consequences. For example, small increases don’t always have a discernible effect on employment, because employers try to make other adjustments before laying off workers they are happy with and need. One of the first adjustments is to raise prices, the success of which depends on the competitive environment and the flexibility of demand for their products or services.

Along with price increases, employers may reduce hours, and Belman and Wolfson note that “[i]t has long been suggested that employers may respond to minimum wage increases by reducing spending on training, fringe benefits and working conditions valued by employees.”

Another important finding is that employers often respond to higher mandated wages by replacing low wage workers with those who have more education, skills and experience which make them more productive. This adjustment may have little effect on the observable employment numbers, but the effect is devastating for those who are replaced. Employers can be forced to pay higher wages, but they can’t be forced to hire or retain employees whose contributions don’t match the higher wage.

Some studies (see Clemens 2019) suggest that the pace of job creation slows when mandated wages rise. The increases also accelerate automation, which reduces the number of entry-level jobs and further penalizes those whom the increases are meant to help. In coming years, the combined effect of substitution, slower job creation, and accelerated automation is likely to be a growing core of workers, many of whom are young and poorly educated, who are unemployed and unemployable.

Social activists and progressive editorial boards now regard the minimum wage as another welfare program that can reduce the costs of programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and can reduce inequality. But the minimum wage is very poorly targeted for these purposes. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that “roughly 40 percent of workers directly affected by the $15 option in 2025 would be members of families with incomes more than three times the federal poverty level.” If the goal is to aid low-wage households, rather than teenagers and other part-time workers in middle-income and affluent families, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit would be far more effective, because it is designed to aid the working poor.

The national minimum wage was established in 1938, and along with periodic increases has become widely accepted as desirable public policy. But it has also become a textbook example of the failure to think separately and equally about ends and means. If there is a public consensus that low-income families should receive additional aid, that policy should be paid for by the public, not by private businesses, many of which will try to offset the higher costs by raising prices to consumers and cutting employee hours and benefits, and some of which won’t survive with higher mandated costs that they can’t adequately offset.

The notion that third parties can pick the right starting wage for every employee, in every job, in every business, in every industry is folly. Those who support increases in the minimum wage do so with the best of intentions, but they should be aware of the substantial hidden costs and negative consequences which are often ignored in the public debate and should be aware that there are much better alternatives for helping those in need. Author:

Martin Jones

Martin Jones is a financial analyst and investment manager, and a former Senior Managing Director in the investment division of US Bank.

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Are There Any Limits to Natural Rights? | Mises Institute

Posted by M. C. on February 20, 2021

Natural rights of the sort that Rothbard favors are prepolitical. In other words, these rights aren’t dependent on the state for their existence. Each person is a self-owner and may acquire property in the “state of nature,” before there are states and state-created legal systems. Indeed, in Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism, there aren’t any states: people hire private defense agencies to protect their rights.

https://mises.org/library/are-there-any-limits-natural-rights

David Gordon

I’d like to discuss today an argument that is popular among some contemporary political philosophers. If this argument is correct, it undermines the sort of natural rights found in Murray Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty. I hope that I am not spoiling the surprise by telling you immediately that I think the argument is wrong.

Natural rights of the sort that Rothbard favors are prepolitical. In other words, these rights aren’t dependent on the state for their existence. Each person is a self-owner and may acquire property in the “state of nature,” before there are states and state-created legal systems. Indeed, in Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism, there aren’t any states: people hire private defense agencies to protect their rights.

According to the argument I wish to examine, prepolitical rights make no sense because there are no ways to define the boundaries of these rights. If each person is a self-owner, when does self-ownership begin? Are children self-owners? What about abortion—is a woman, as the owner of her body, entitled to abort a baby she doesn’t want? What are the permissible limits of self-defense? Is your right to life entirely negative, i.e., other people must not use force against you, or threaten you with force, unless you have aggressed against them, or do you in some cases have the right to the aid of other people to preserve your life? If you are accused of a crime, what (if any) rights do you have to be tried by fair procedures? The questions multiply when we reach property rights. What is the correct principle of initial acquisition? What about intellectual property?

Given the lack of clear boundaries to natural rights, it is argued, the notion is useless in practice. Instead, we must start with the notion of autonomous persons who in particular societies decide what legal rights people have, being guided in so doing by local practices. As an example, the notion of property is in this view entirely a social construct. The government in taxing you is not taking away what you rightfully have acquired, because it is the government (backed by democratic decision) that has decided what you own in the first place.

There’s an obvious objection to this argument, but the defenders of the argument have a reply to it. The objection is that proponents of natural rights don’t set clear boundaries for these rights. But if you read Ethics of Liberty, you will quickly discover that Rothbard does answer the questions about boundaries posed above. You may accept or reject what he says, but how can it be reasonably maintained that his natural rights are useless because they lack clear boundaries?

The reply that the opponents of natural rights would offer is that other supporters of natural rights often disagree with Rothbard’s answers. Rothbard, e.g., is critical of patents, but Objectivists regard intellectual property as an essential right. Given such disagreements, don’t even supporters of natural rights have to rely on social convention to decide what the proper natural rights are? If so isn’t it the agreement of people within a society that is doing the work rather than the natural rights?

This reply is very weak. People may disagree, but that doesn’t show that one opinion can’t be correct and the others wrong. That is something that needs to be settled by argument. If you think Rothbard is wrong about strict liability, for instance, it won’t do just to point out that some people accept the “reasonable man” standard at odds with it. You need to show that Rothbard’s arguments don’t settle the issue if you want to push the claim that social convention must play the primary role in settling disputed questions about rights. It’s an interesting point, I think, that showing Rothbard is mistaken doesn’t help the social conventionalist. If you did that, you would be merely eliminating one option, Rothbard’s, from consideration, not showing that the remaining options require a convention-based resolution. For the conventionalist position to remain intact, you would need to show that Rothbard’s arguments for his position aren’t dispositive and also that other arguments don’t show that he is wrong. Then, strict liability would still be in the running but not a clear winner.

But suppose that it can’t be shown that there is a correct theory of natural rights that settles all important issues and that people in a particular society must rely in part on convention to fix the boundaries of these rights. It hardly follows from this that natural rights are useless and everything important rests on the social practices of a particular society. Suppose that we don’t know the exact boundaries of the correct principle of initial acquisition. We do know, though, that people have a natural right to acquire property, so that social conventions that altogether deny people the right to own property are ruled out.

Supporters of the conventionalist view usually don’t like private property rights very much, but they support the right to free speech. The same sort of problems they raise for property rights arise also for free speech. Does free speech cover libel and slander? False advertising? Disclosure of trade secrets? The fact, if it is one, that the concept of “free speech” leaves these questions unsettled does not throw everything open to social decision. A law that prohibited political speech would violate people’s free speech rights, even granting the conventionalist point. Why are property rights subject to different treatment? Further, as Rothbard has pointed out, once property rights are settled, that resolves controversies about free speech rights. People do not have a vague and unlimited right to free speech but rather the right to set regulations for speech on their own property. If you are on someone else’s property, you must follow his rules about speech.

There is another problem with the social conventionalist view, and it is a glaring one. Even if people in a society need in part to rely on social practices to settle disputed issues, how does the state, democratic or otherwise, enter the picture? Why couldn’t those in a stateless society settle such problems through negotiation? People in the grip of the view I’m criticizing tend to assume without argument that we must accept the framework of the modern national state. Murray Rothbard shows us a different way to proceed, and that is a principal element in his greatness as a political philosopher.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

Author:

Contact David Gordon

David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and editor of the Mises Review.

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Talking About Stoicism 110 You’re a Fig Seed

Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2021

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End Subway Socialism in New York City – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2021

But most of this extra money, as the sad subway history repeats, will not be spent on better trains, but on servicing the huge amount of debt of the government agency running the system.

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/end-subway-socialism-in-new-york-city/

by Gregory Bresiger

The misery will continue for New York subway riders, who don’t understand how previous subway reforms have failed. State and city officials concede things will worsen.Privatization is the only road back to the days when the subways were considered an engineering marvel. The subway system could and should be handed back over the private sector.
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“There is no question our subways are in crisis after decades of underinvestment and inaction,” wrote New York City Comptroller Scott Stinger in a recent report.

“The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA),” writes New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a report last year, “is facing its greatest challenge in decades.” Riders, he warned “are abandoning the system for other transportation alternatives.”

And the problems will continue for years.

“Citing the MTA’s low debt service coverage in the near term and its challenging funding issues, Standard & Poor’s recently downgraded the MTA’s credit rating, which could lead to higher borrowing costs. Debt service is already projected to increase by 26 percent over the next four years, reaching nearly $3.3 billion by 2022,” according to the DiNapoli report.

“Debt service,” DiNapoli wrote, “has been growing rapidly since the early 2000s.” Yet the red-ink woes of the government trains had been going on for many years before that.

Stringer, who is critical of the subways but against any privatization, says bad subway service hurts the area’s economy. Losses range “from $170 million to $389 million” a year.

And that was before the coronavirus crisis. Yet no state or city official says anything about bringing the private sector back into the subways. Its first lines were built by private companies, made lots of money, and helped clear slums in lower Manhattan as people were able to move to better neighborhoods.

Yet the government-run subways, again on the verge of disaster, will follow the same solution even though it repeatedly failed over decades: More taxpayer money.

Here’s what one subway historian wrote of the previous “give the subway more taxpayer money” plans: “If anything has emerged as a timeless and universal characterization of the New York Subway,” writes historian Brian Cudahy, “it is the endless search for some future salvation, some not realized resolution of its difficulties and cure for its ills. Plans are made, programs developed, goals established. But they never quite live up to their initial expectations, and a new cycle must begin.”

Cudahy, who was also a former federal transit official, is against privatization.

The MTA recently approved the biggest capital plan, in the agency’s history; some $51 billion. MTA Managing Director Ronnie Hakim, promised that “enhancements” to the system would “improve the riders’ daily experience.”

Dear riders, has your experience improved? 

But most of this extra money, as the sad subway history repeats, will not be spent on better trains, but on servicing the huge amount of debt of the government agency running the system.

For instance, how many people know that three separate Second Avenue Subway bond issues were approved over some 60 years — in the 1950s, 1960s, and recently under Gov. George Pataki — yet, in the case of the first two the money had to be spent on closing the subway deficit? As for the third bond issue, very little of the new line has been completed and who knows when this infamous Line — which was designed to replace the Second and Third Ave. els, which were taken down in the 1950s and 1960s — will ever be finished?

Yet again the state agency that runs the subways, which in the 1960s replaced the city agency that made a mess of running them, says it is deep in the hole even with more money coming.

The MTA, which already in the midst of a new cash infusion, wants the federal government to provide billions more on top of that $51 billion, with service deteriorating and MTA officials saying the red ink could possibly lead to something I can’t recall ever threatened before in previous crises: Lines discontinued!

Yet our political and media elites today have the same answer as 70 years ago: Give more money to this flawed system and ban the private sector.

Actually, I would argue that, as with so many other failing government services in so much trouble, it is no longer a philosophical debate. Privatization is inevitable, given the messes created by decades of a government-run enterprise.

Yet any privatization is verboten in New York’s increasingly socialist economy. Our leaders push various price controls. They are hostile to the privatization of anything.

Impossibilities

In the subways their opposition is based on a historical myth: “Private subways, private transportation companies, can never make money.”

I have been told this many times.

Is the private-transportation argument valid?

No.

The IRT was a private management company that had a subway-franchise contract with the city. It built the first subways, which were considered “an engineering marvel” by Robert Caro in his biography of the controversial New York bureaucrat Robert Moses.

“So superbly engineered and maintained had the system previously been that it took years for the systematic neglect to take its toll,” Caro wrote.

But in the last decade or so of the IRT, the company that built the first subways did lose money and wanted to sell to the city.

Why?

The IRT, in its nearly 37 years of existence, was never permitted to raise the fare above a nickel. That fare was quickly and frequently raised once the city, and later the state, took over the subways.

The use of price controls, along with punishing regulation, is the classic case of how socialism comes in the back door without anyone’s mentioning the word “Marx.”

However, the journalists and political elites in our city either don’t know or want to hide some painful history about the subways. In the first 25 years or so of the IRT it made money — a lot of money. (By contrast, a government-run competing system, the IND, always lost money.)

Indeed, in the IRT’s 1917 annual report, the transportation company reported net income of $23.2 million. That was an increase of about $1.5 million over the previous year. The IRT was also a good investment. It paid about some $7 million in dividends, according to the annual financial report dated June 30, 1917.

Profits and dividends through subway operations? Yes. 

And even into the 1920s, when price controls and rising costs as a result of World War I squeezed profits, when the private operators sued to raise fares, the subways still made money.

But the IRT could see problems coming. World War I had driven up costs and the nickel fare was insufficient.

In a U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1929, Gilchrist v. IRT, a decision that affirmed that the five-cent fare couldn’t be raised to seven cents, court papers documented that the IRT was doing something that the government would never do: The IRT made money.

“For the current fiscal year ended June 30, 1928, the figures for the first six months are available, and show a net surplus amounting to $3,687,000, which exceeds the surplus for the corresponding six months of the fiscal year before by $1,609,000.”

However, after the IRT was repeatedly blocked from raising fares, the price-controlled subways lost money in the 1930s. Soon, we were on the track of a perpetual government-run system: It meant then what it means today and will always mean: Lose a lot and provide rotten service.

But what if we continue down this same road of throwing more taxpayer geld down the sewer?

More cutbacks and fare and tax increases will come in the current system as riders continue to suffer.

Privatization is the only road back to the days when the subways were considered an engineering marvel. The subway system could and should be handed back over the private sector.

It doesn’t have to be this way, a way in which people despair of having to ride this state-run nightmare. In fact, there was a time when the subways were great under a private management company. The people who run the city don’t want people to ever know that. They don’t want them to ever learn the true history of markets, which consistently provide better services than the government. They will then want — perhaps even demand — a privately owned, privately run subway system.

This article was originally published in the January 2021 edition of Future of Freedom.

This post was written by: Gregory Bresiger

Gregory Bresiger, an independent business journalist who works for the Sunday New York Post business section and Financial Advisor Magazine, is the author of the book Personal Finance for People Who Hate Personal Finance.

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I Could Pay Off My $50k Student Loan in a Few Years—if Government Stopped Taking My Money – Foundation for Economic Education

Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2021

Because of the increased taxation in the US economy, the average American now works approximately 4 months out of the year to pay all of their taxes. That means 4 months out of the year I work for the federal government instead of working to pay off my student loans.

The definition of slavery.

https://fee.org/articles/i-could-pay-off-my-50k-student-loan-in-a-few-years-if-government-stopped-taking-my-money/

Holly Jean Soto
Holly Jean Soto

Twelve-thousand dollars.

That’s how much the government will take out of my income this tax season. As a college graduate, I would have used this money to start tackling my over $50,000 of student debt.

But instead of using this money to pay off two of my student loans this year, the government gets to keep this tidy sum of my hard-earned money.

This is the sad truth for many college graduates, like myself, working full-time jobs and still finding it hard to manage basic daily needs like rent, food, gas, car insurance, health insurance, and the like. Many of us are left feeling like Rachel Green from Friends when we get our paychecks, saying: “who’s FICA? And why is he getting all my money?”

For student loan borrowers, an average of $12,000 a year saved would be transformative.

But instead, we are facing a true debt crisis for borrowers across all demographics and age groups making student debt the second highest consumer debt category in the US behind mortgage debt, according to Forbes. Total student loan debt amounted to $1.56 trillion last year alone.

Research also shows that “college graduates aged 35 and under with student loans now are spending nearly one-fifth (18 percent) of their current salaries on student loan payments and that 60 percent now expect to be paying off student loans into their 40s,” according to Citizens Bank.

As college debt becomes larger, it’s no wonder that more and more politicians are advocating student loan forgiveness programs.

But this tax season, I’m not asking for student loan forgiveness or a special government program to bail me out. I’m just asking to keep more of my hard-earned money.

I urge fellow student loan borrowers to imagine a world where you can keep all of your income and decide how to best spend your money. I would venture to guess that the majority of student borrowers would use this money to pay off their loans as fast as they can. Why? Because borrowers have an incentive to get out of debt.

Being debt free would be transformative for me! I would finally be able to move to my dream state, buy a house that I could design from scratch, help my parents pay off their mortgage, save for my future kids, donate more to my church, and accomplish the list of things I’ve written down for when I am debt free.

You see, when borrowers become debt free, their financial power changes drastically. They are more inclined to make major financial purchases like the ones I’ve shared.

Our rational self-interest to get out of debt frees up our ability to make major financial purchases which promote economic activity, benefiting the economy as a whole.

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, discusses this idea of rational self-interest in his book, The Wealth of Nations, where he explains that the best economic benefit for all can be accomplished when individuals act on their self-interest.

Most of the economic activity we see around us is the result of self-interested behavior. The realtor selling my dream house acts on her own self-interest to build a salary to perhaps go on vacation. The workers cutting tile to fit in my new bathroom act on their own self-interest to build up savings and put a roof over their heads, the construction workers putting the house together act on their own self-interest to buy food for their families, and so on.

The beauty of rational self-interest is that it takes many self-interested people to work on one house, but as we all act on our self-interest, we inevitably serve one another and even more—produce economic activity that serves one another.

While using your income taxes to pay off your debt may be a rational and commendable spending decision, government’s spending decisions are oftentimes inefficient and ineffective.

Government’s track record of spending your taxpayer dollars is, well, horrid. GoBankingRates reports taxpayer dollars being used for things like studying monkey drool, examining how the world’s religions might react if humans make contact with aliens, having computers binge-watch hundreds of hours of television, proving that frat brothers like to party, putting fish on treadmills, and so much more. Governments’ poor spending habits have gotten so out of control that it’s put our nation in over $27 trillion dollars of debt.

So why do governments spending habits vary dramatically from individual spending habits?

Because incentives change when money comes out of your own pocket, versus the pockets of others. My favorite economics professor put it this way—“progress, efficiency and effectiveness don’t begin with someone else’s money.”

If we understand that individuals know better how to spend their own money than the government and that our spending decisions will help promote economic activity, why have we come to accept income taxes as normal?

Because of the increased taxation in the US economy, the average American now works approximately 4 months out of the year to pay all of their taxes. That means 4 months out of the year I work for the federal government instead of working to pay off my student loans.

If more college graduates were allowed to keep the dollars they earn, they would ultimately have the liberty to spend their money how they want —and get out of debt a whole lot faster.

But we need to keep more of our income to do this.

As we file our taxes this year, I encourage you to look at the amount of your money the government is claiming and ask yourself these two questions: what would you have done with this money? And does the government actually spend this money better than you can?

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Biden ‘COVID’ Stimulus Legislation Contains $300 Billion in Unrelated Spending – Foundation for Economic Education

Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2021

Even some of the money that is ostensibly related to COVID-19, like billions intended to help schools reopen, is highly misleading. For example, as CRFB senior policy director Marc Goldwein notes, much of this money for “school reopening” is actually allocated for 2023 and 2024, long past when all schools will have reopened.

More broadly, the committee reports that at least $300 billion of the bill’s spending, 15 percent, is allocated toward long-standing policy priorities that have no direct relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://fee.org/articles/new-covid-legislation-contains-300-billion-in-unrelated-spending-budget-watchdog-warns/

Brad Polumbo

President Biden has not backed down from his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending proposal, and House Democrats are pushing full steam ahead on making his vision a legislative reality. But a top budget watchdog just warned that the budget-busting legislation, which costs roughly $13,260 per federal taxpayer, is full of spending that has nothing to do with the pandemic.

“Only about 1 percent of the entire package goes toward COVID vaccines, and 5 percent is truly focused on public health needs surrounding the pandemic,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) warned on Wednesday.

“Meanwhile, nearly half of the package will be spent on poorly targeted rebate checks and state and local government aid, including to households and governments that have experienced little or no financial loss during this crisis,” the report continues.

Even some of the money that is ostensibly related to COVID-19, like billions intended to help schools reopen, is highly misleading. For example, as CRFB senior policy director Marc Goldwein notes, much of this money for “school reopening” is actually allocated for 2023 and 2024, long past when all schools will have reopened.

More broadly, the committee reports that at least $300 billion of the bill’s spending, 15 percent, is allocated toward long-standing policy priorities that have no direct relation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The bill includes a number of other long-standing priorities, such as expanding the child tax credit and earned income tax credit, increasing Affordable Care Act subsidies, and boosting the minimum wage,” CRFB president Maya MacGuineas says. “These policies don’t belong in a COVID relief package, and should be fully offset if retained.”

That Congress would co-opt the COVID-19 crisis to push partisan priorities and hand out wasteful slush-funds will understandably appall many Americans. But it shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Washington’s propensity for waste, cronyism, and profligacy is no secret at this point.

Senator Rand Paul’s annual “Waste Report” documents examples of profligate government waste every year. Of the countless billions in total waste documented by the senator’s office, memorable examples include subsidizing frog mating, taxpayer support for the Pakistani film industry, studying nicotine-addicted fish, funding for Sri Lankan think tanks, and taxpayer money spent to combat truancy… in the Philippines.

Waste is a feature, not a bug, of how Congress routinely handles our money. And it’s also, sadly, par for the course that legislators slip unrelated provisions into bills seen as “must-pass” to quietly force through changes they know would never become law as stand-alone legislation.

For example, Congress passed a massive “omnibus” spending bill paired with COVID-19 relief legislation in December. The legislation was 5,500+ pages long and given to most members of Congress hours before the vote was scheduled. It was full of bizarre expenditures—like more than $40 million for the Kennedy Center and seemingly random foreign aid funding.

In reality, none of it is random. The money for “school reopening” long after schools are reopened is really a generic handout for teachers’ unions—which donate heavily to many members of Congress—masquerading as emergency COVID relief. Similarly, each odd pet project or earmark can usually be tracked to a particular interest group or individual with sway over a given politician. This is, unfortunately, simply the status quo of how the federal government operates.

So, it’s utterly unsurprising that policymakers are taking this same pork-filled approach with the latest legislation. But the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s warning suggests it could be even worse this time than in past bills.

We already knew that Biden’s budget-busting COVID-19 “stimulus” proposal wasn’t actually going to stimulate the economy and itself contains job-killing provisions. Now we know that much of it isn’t even related to COVID-19 at all.

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The World Is Suffering From Mass Delusional Psychosis – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 19, 2021

“It’s not normal for children to grow up thinking that everyone is a danger to everyone else,” Cheah says, and rightly so. It’s not normal at all, and hysterical adults are mindlessly inflicting severe emotional trauma on an entire generation.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/02/joseph-mercola/the-world-is-suffering-from-mass-delusional-psychosis/

By Joseph Mercola

Mercola.com

A number of mental health experts have expressed concern over the blatant fear and panic mongering during the COVID-19 pandemic, warning about potential — and let’s face it, likely — psychiatric effects. In a December 22, 2020, article1 in Evie Magazine, S.G. Cheah discusses what may in fact be the real problem at hand: mass insanity caused by “delusional fear of COVID-19.”

Cheah refers to lectures and articles by psychiatrist and medical legal expert Dr. Mark McDonald,2 who believes “the true public health crisis lies in the widespread fear which morphed and evolved into a form of mass delusional psychosis.”

“Even when the statistics point to the extremely low fatality rate among children and young adults (measuring 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at 25), the young and the healthy are still terrorized by the chokehold of irrational fear when faced with the coronavirus,” Cheah writes.

Infectious Hysteria

Cheah goes on to review a number of irrational behaviors that have become all too commonplace, such as parents being kicked off planes because their young children refuse to wear a mask during the flight, or people having hysterical meltdowns when they see a person not wearing a mask.

The science3 is quite clear about the risk posed by asymptomatic individuals, meaning anyone who feels perfectly healthy yet may have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 with a PCR test set to an excessively high cycle threshold. They pose an exceptionally low risk to others, if any risk at all. Science is even clearer on healthy individuals who test negative for SARS-CoV-2. You simply cannot spread a virus you do not have.

The bulk of published science4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 also shows that masks do not prevent the spread of viral infections, and this is particularly true if you’re wearing cloth masks,12 surgical masks or masks with vents.

Despite all of that, many still enter a state of hysteria when they see an unmasked person, even if they look perfectly healthy and clearly are not suffering from any kind of respiratory issue. This is a highly irrational state that has no basis in reality.

Indeed, according to McDonald, these people are suffering from delusional psychosis,13 and there are a lot of them. He goes so far as to refer to the outside of his home or office as the “outdoor insane asylum,” where he must assume “that any person that I run into is insane” unless they prove otherwise.14 As explained by Cheah:15

“Instead of facing reality, the delusional person would rather live in their world of make-believe. But in order to keep faking reality, they’ll have to make sure that everyone else around them also pretends to live in their imaginary world.

In simpler words, the delusional person rejects reality. And in this rejection of reality, others have to play along with how they view the world, otherwise, their world will not make sense to them. It’s why the delusional person will get angry when they face someone who doesn’t conform to their world view …

It’s one of the reasons why you’re seeing so many people who’d happily approve the silencing of any medical experts whose views contradict the WHO or CDC guidelines. ‘Obey the rules!’ becomes more important than questioning if the rules were legitimate to begin with.”

In his interview with Jesse Lee Peterson (video above), McDonald explains his diagnosis this way:

“There was never a medical crisis. There were always enough resources to deal with the people who were sick … Many resources were in fact turned away … The question then, for me, became, ‘What’s the real crisis? What are people really suffering from?’

It became clear to me, very quickly, within the first two or three weeks in March [2020], that it was fear. Since then … the fear … has morphed and evolved, not just into a ‘I’m worried, I’m scared so I need to stay home,’ but an actual belief that is against reality — because the definition of delusion is something you believe that doesn’t conform with reality.

They believe that they are going to die — no matter what age, no matter what state of health they’re in — if they don’t leave their house with a mask and gloves on every day and run from [other] human beings. That’s delusional psychosis. It’s false, it’s wrong, it’s not backed up by evidence. And many, many Americans are living that and believing that.”

While there’s no data to back this up, McDonald says it appears women tend to be more prone to delusional psychosis than men. Part of it, he suggests, may be because when women get scared, they tend to become more hyperprotective than men do under the same circumstances, likely because women — speaking in pure generalizing terms, of course — tend to be more emotionally driven.

Mass Delusional Psychosis Traumatizes Children

McDonald is particularly concerned with the lasting effects this widespread insanity will have on children as they grow up. As a psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of children and adolescents, he should know. Since the lockdowns began in the first quarter of 2020, he’s seen a massive increase in patients, and their mental states are far worse than what he’s used to seeing in these age groups.

One of the worst traumas children suffer as a result of all this fearmongering is the idea that they may kill their parents or grandparents simply by being around them. As noted by Cheah, they’re also being taught to feel guilty about behaviors that would normally be completely, well, normal.

As just one example, hysterical adults calling a toddler who refuses to wear a mask a “brat,” when in fact resisting having a restrictive mask put across your face is perfectly normal at that age.

“It’s not normal for children to grow up thinking that everyone is a danger to everyone else,” Cheah says, and rightly so. It’s not normal at all, and hysterical adults are mindlessly inflicting severe emotional trauma on an entire generation.

As noted by McDonald in his interview with Peterson above, a primary cause of depression, especially among youngsters, is disconnection from others. We need face-to-face contact, we need physical contact as well as emotional intimacy. We need these things to feel safe around others and within our own selves. Digital interactions simply cannot replace these most basic human needs, and are inherently separating rather than connective.

McDonald cites recent CDC statistics showing there’s been a 400% increase in adolescent depression compared to one year ago, and in 25% of cases, they’ve contemplated suicide. These are unheard of statistics, he says. Never before have so many teenagers considered committing suicide.

“This is a mass-casualty event,” McDonald says, and parents — adults — are to blame, because they are the ones scaring them to the point they don’t feel life is worth living anymore.

This is also why just treating the children is not going to be effective enough. We have to address the psychosis of the adult population. “It’s up to us adults to fix this,” McDonald says, “because children are not going to be able to fix this themselves.”

Delusional People Ultimately Require Controlled Environments

We must also address the mass delusion for another reason, and that is because it’s driving us all, sane and insane alike, toward a society devoid of all previous freedoms and civil liberties, and the corrupt individuals in charge will not voluntarily relinquish power once we’ve given it to them.

A totalitarian society, McDonald believes, is the ultimate end of this societal psychosis unless we do something about it and realize that “we’re fine, we’re perfectly safe.” Indeed, we’re in no more danger now than we were pre-COVID. We must not allow our freedoms to be taken from us due to delusional fears. As noted by Cheah in her article:16

“It’s not unthinkable that the final outcome would be total societal control on every aspect of your life. Consider this — the endpoint of a mentally ill person is for them to be put under a controlled environment (institutionalized like an asylum) where all freedoms are restricted. And it’s looking more and more like that’s the endpoint of where this mass psychosis is heading.”

A December 18, 2020, Tweet by political commentator Candace Owens also sums up how irrational fear and panic have figuratively lobotomized a significant portion of the public:

McDonald points out that many of our leaders obviously do not suffer these same delusional fears. They issue stay-at-home orders from their vacation homes in the Caribbean and repeatedly break their own mask and lockdown mandates. They ride their bikes, stroll through the park, have family gatherings and dine out without a care. They know COVID-19 isn’t the deadly plague it’s been made out to be, but they’re playing the game because it benefits them.

Fear Is Never Virtuous

https://www.bitchute.com/embed/TWu7D6Vx3qan/

The video above features a short lecture McDonald gave during America’s Frontline Doctors’ White Coat Summit 217 in mid-October 2020, titled “The Way Forward: Overcoming Fear.”

In it, he points out that not only has fear morphed into a delusional belief that masks, gloves and physical separation is required to stay alive, but fear has also been turned into a virtue, which is doubly tragic and wrong.

Wearing a mask has become a way to demonstrate that you’re a “good person,” someone who obviously cares about others, whereas not wearing a mask brands you as an inconsiderate lout, if not a prospective mass murderer, simply by breathing. Healthy people should never wear masks, social distance or self-isolate. Not only are these strategies unhealthy from a physical standpoint, they also perpetuate the delusional psychosis gripping the nation and therefore must end.

By encouraging us to remain in fear, to burrow and settle into it and allow it to control and constrain our lives, the fear has become so entrenched that anyone who says we need to be fearless and fight for our freedoms is attacked for being not only stupid but also dangerous. “I would argue that it’s the opposite,” McDonald says.

The problem we now face is that the delusion has taken such hold that even if the mask mandates ended nationwide today, many would refuse to give up their masks, and they would not stop chastising those who don’t wear them, either. What’s more, we now have private companies pushing these freedom-robbing edicts, refusing services to those who don’t wear masks.

Soon, you won’t be allowed into certain venues if you don’t have the COVID-19 vaccine as well, and private corporations are the ones instigating those unconstitutional rules. If you understand the technocratic agenda, then you know why that is. It’s because many private companies are part of the global technocratic alliance that is trying to eliminate our freedoms in order to enrich themselves.

“We started out with fear and hysteria. We moved to delusional psychosis, and now we have group control,” McDonald says. “Now we don’t have police officers and government coming after us. What we have more of is our fellow citizens now castigating us, legally limiting us from getting into vehicles [such as Uber or plane], going into businesses [and] getting jobs.”

Restoring Sanity as We Move Forward

Essentially, citizens are now acting as a de facto “police force” to suppress other people’s freedom, and this has a terribly harmful effect on society. So, how do we get out of the proverbial insane asylum? How do we restore sanity to our society while still helping those who are at greatest risk for complications and death from COVID-19? McDonald offers the following suggestions in his lecture and the featured interview:

•We must firmly reject masks as a virtue signal; the idea that action taken out of fear — such as donning a mask — is virtuous. Fear is not helpful and never virtuous.

•We should protect those at greatest risk — meaning elderly, frail individuals with comorbidities and those who are in poor health — using simple, inexpensive and readily available prophylactics, including vitamin D, hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin and zinc.

•Healthy people should never wear masks, social distance or self-isolate. Not only are these strategies unhealthy from a physical standpoint, they also perpetuate the delusional psychosis gripping the nation and therefore must end.

•We must embrace courage, truth, honesty and freedom, not just in our thoughts and words but also in our actions. As noted by McDonald in the featured interview, people cannot think logically when in a state of delusional psychosis, hence sharing information, facts, data and evidence tends to be ineffective except in cases where the person was acting out of peer pressure rather than a delusional belief.

Typically, the best you can do is stand firm and act in alignment with truth and objective reality, much like you would if you were a first responder faced with an accident victim who is responding hysterically to what you know is only a minor injury.

Sources and References

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