The latest news from Pfizer and Moderna on how “preliminary analysis” shows their vaccines are more than 90% effective is not science, it’s public relations.
Media are reporting that people with developmental disabilities will be among those first in line to get these experimental COVID vaccines. “You don’t target the most vulnerable people, including those who can’t exercise informed consent,with experimental medical products. That’s arguably going after the weakest in the herd.”
AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine (still in the trial phase) has ingredients we know are correlated with brain injury.
Governments have signed deals with vaccine makers to buy billions of dollars worth of COVID vaccines, so they’ll want to use them — so they’re programming us with messaging about fear, altruism and patriotism.
In Denmark, people took to the streets to fight back against vaccine mandates — and won.
In France, for instance, one now “need[s] a certificate to move around,” yet in spite of long maintaining some of the continent’s most stringent lockdown and social distancing measures, total deaths per million are rapidly accelerating, to the point that France is likely to soon join other countries with harsh lockdowns in having among the worst rates of deaths per million in the world.
Lockdowns are back on in Europe and are making a quick comeback in the US as well. Spain, the UK, Belgium, and France are back in full lockdown mode, although a multitude of restrictions on movement within each country remained in place even when full lockdowns were ended over the summer.
In France, for instance, one now “need[s] a certificate to move around,” yet in spite of long maintaining some of the continent’s most stringent lockdown and social distancing measures, total deaths per million are rapidly accelerating, to the point that France is likely to soon join other countries with harsh lockdowns in having among the worst rates of deaths per million in the world. Moreover, eastern Europe, which was once lauded for locking down strictly and early, is quickly finding that lockdowns aren’t likely to suppress total deaths there, either. The Czech Republic is seeing some of the worst growth in covid deaths worldwide, while the rest of the region is seeing similar growth, albeit to a less dramatic extent (so far).
This is not what was sold to the public. Rather, politicians and their allies in the “public health” bureaucracies insisted that lockdowns would substantially reduce total deaths in countries that imposed them. Countries that failed to lock down would, on the other hand, experience runaway contagion with total Covid deaths per million orders of magnitude higher than those seen in countries that didn’t lock down.
Cumulative deaths per million on the fifteenth of each month. Source: Worldometer.
Sweden, for instance, has long been denounced by politicians and media pundits for failing to embrace the methods of the French and the Spaniards. Many of these nations (i.e., Spain and the UK) have long had total Covid death per million well in excess of the Swedes. And now, other nations are surging (i.e., France and Czechia and the Netherlands) and will all likely soon be much higher than Swedish levels. (It might also be noted that Spain, the UK, France, Czechia, and Italy are now all seeing growth in Covid deaths at rates above that reported by the United States.)
Lockdowns Save Lives?
Of course, some supporters of lockdowns are likely to continue insisting that lockdowns clearly work to suppress total deaths because a handful of small countries near Sweden (i.e., Norway, Denmark, and Finland) have reported relatively few covid deaths. While this certainly may indicate there are factors at work in these countries that help keep covid mortality numbers lower, the fact remains that experience shows countries like Norway, Denmark, and Finland are outliers when compared to most of western Europe.
This isn’t exactly shocking. As early as July, studies were already beginning to show that lockdowns didn’t actually suppress total mortality. This one in The Lancet, for example, concludes,
government actions such as border closures, full lockdowns, and a high rate of COVID-19 testing were not associated with statistically significant reductions in the number of critical cases or overall mortality.
And in 2006, an extensive study in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism reported: “There are no historical observations or scientific studies that support the confinement by quarantine of groups of possibly infected people for extended periods” to slow the spread of influenza. No evidence has been offered for why this might be true of flu, but not true of Covid. Moreover, in a recent report from JPMorgan, Marko Kolanovic concluded that “re-opening did not change the course of the pandemic” and that “While we often hear that lockdowns are driven by scientific models, and that there is an exact relationship between the level of economic activity and the spread of [the] virus—this is not supported by the data.” Overall, evidence backing the lockdown theory has simply failed to materialize.
Where’s the Evidence?
Indeed, as Swedish authorities have long claimed, the experience points toward an outcome in which most countries will end up with similar total deaths per million regardless of lockdown policy.1 This looks more likely by the day. As noted by Dr. Gilbert Berdine here at mises.org, “The data suggest that lockdowns have not prevented any deaths from covid-19. At best, lockdowns have deferred death for a short time, but they cannot possibly be continued for the long term.” This, of course, is why even the WHO does not recommend lockdowns except as a very short term and ad hoc measure. The side effects of the lockdowns themselves are too dangerous.
We already know that isolation, unemployment, and other social ills caused by lockdowns affect both physical and mental health. But we also know that lockdowns lead to deaths from untreated medical conditions. Moreover, government health experts in many cases have callously cut off the elderly from all their social and family support. The Associated Press estimates that for “every two COVID-19 victims in long-term care, there is another who died prematurely of other causes.” Many of these deaths are brought on by neglect and isolation caused by state-mandated lockdown policies.
Examining Excess Mortality
But where would we find evidence of these deaths in the aggregate? Unfortunately, regimes spend very little time counting them. Rather, regimes often only record events in ways that help the regime. While they are careful to count as many covid cases and deaths as possible in big bright numbers reported daily by government officials, deaths caused by lockdowns are generally ignored.
Eventually, the only way to guess the impact of these other deaths will be through the “excess mortality” data. Excess mortality—using a definition now generally used in the media and by government officials—occurs when total mortality during a time period exceeds the average mortality experienced over the past five years.
Some initial reports have suggested that covid deaths comprise only around 70 percent of excess deaths (see here and here). Naturally, lockdown advocates claim that this shows covid deaths are being undercounted, and that covid deaths should be assumed to account for virtually all excess deaths. This is only conjecture.
In any case, we find, not surprisingly, that excess mortality in Sweden has been lower this year compared to many other western European countries with harsh lockdowns. For example, through October the average number of deaths for 2015–19 in Sweden was 72,972. In 2020, the total deaths for the same period was 76,375. That’s an increase of 4.6 percent.
Likewise, in France, 2020’s total excess mortality is up 6.4 percent. It’s up 12.7 percent in England and Wales, up 16 percent in Italy, and up 17 percent in Spain.
How much of this excess mortality in lockdown countries is attributable to the lockdowns themselves? For now that’s still unknown. But, as Dr. Berdine writes:
It seems likely that one will not have to even compare economic deprivation with loss of life, as the final death toll following authoritarian lockdowns will most likely exceed the deaths from letting people choose how to manage their own risk. After taking the unprecedented economic depression into account, history will likely judge these lockdowns to be the greatest policy error of this generation.
1. In making comparative analysis, we should not expect exactly the same outcomes across national lines, of course. The number of covid deaths will be affected by the overall age of the population, obesity rates, and the relative health levels in each country. The impact of some factors, however, has been greatly exagerrated. For example, data has been inconclusive in regard to the effects of population density. Some have claimed that voluntary social distancing has been greater in Sweden than in mandatory-lockdown countries, thus explaining the difference in covid deaths. This contention is not supported by what measures we have of social distancing.
Four years ago, I wrote an open letter to the dismayed supporters of Hillary Clinton in the wake of her loss to Donald Trump. Before celebrating Biden’s win in this year’s election, it’s important to reflect back on the past four years. Remember your frustration, your anger, your fear of someone you believed was unhinged and dangerous being in control of all of the immense powers that are now vested with the federal government of the United States of America. Now ask yourselves this: Do you want that to happen again?
Despite the Biden victory, the Democrat Party at the time of this writing not only failed to change the makeup of the Senate, they lost ground in the House and even lost a governor to the Republicans. Further, the Biden win was not delivered by an outpouring of support by the coveted minority demographics, which Trump won in larger numbers across every ethnic category compared to the prior election, including an astounding doubling of the LGBTQ vote, but by a shift in the voting patterns of white men. Couple this with the complete lack of any real enthusiasm for the prospect of a Biden presidency, and it’s apparent that the Democrat president-elect didn’t win on the strength of the Democrat platform but because enough people were put off by President Trump’s abrasive behavior.
Because of these trends, short of something major happening over the next four years or the Republicans nominating another Donald Trump–style candidate, a Biden presidency is looking to be a one and done, with a Republican likely finding his way back to office in 2025.
But why is it I’m here, raining on your parades? Simple, it’s to give you advice on how to blunt the pain of this inevitability.
Decentralize
The best way to remove the pain of a future political opponent controlling the machine is to shut down the machine. And by this I mean radically decentralize. As it stands, very little done at the level of DC cannot be done, and done better, at the state level. As it stands, most federal spending is little more than collecting taxes from states and sending it back with instructions on how to use it. Nothing needs to be recreated since the state organs manage the day-to-day operation of all the various programs, and there would be an immediate benefit once the federal bureaucracy has been removed from the equation. All they’re doing, after all, is tumbling the money the state could collect directly itself and skimming off the expenses for all the bureaucrats.
For example, Social Security can be handled by the individual states. Despite the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) claims to the contrary, Social Security is entirely bankrupt and has no assets beyond promises to tax future workers to cover claims, either directly through the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) taxes or through the general fund via the Treasury bonds it claims as assets. Since the assets are fake IOUs, there isn’t anything to transfer back to the individual States. The only difference between the current method and a state-run method is that the tax collection is no longer funneled through a federal-level agency.
Further, by decentralizing, individual states would no longer be at the whims of an unfavored politician’s decisions in Washington. For instance, if the federal government didn’t have a Department of Fish and Wildlife and didn’t have a Bureau of Land Management owning vast tracts of land in states like Washington, the recent stress over the removal of the gray wolf from the federal endangered species listing wouldn’t exist. Certainly, the states could maintain protection of the wolf on state lands, but these laws are not applicable to federal lands. By closing the US Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Bureau of Land Management and returning all the federal lands to the states, Washington could better manage and protect the gray wolf population without having to hope for a friendly administration roughly twenty-five hundred miles away to agree with them.
From a strategic standpoint, Biden could easily do this, as he could force Republicans to accept these small-government proposals to maintain the illusion that they’re supporters of a small federal government and states’ rights. A Democrat president and Republican Senate is a perfect setup for this as Republicans will be forced to agree to maintain their position as small-government proponents (despite immediately abandoning it when in power).
Why, in other words, would you want some future administration not friendly toward your interests controlling the current government, let alone some future expansion you’ve dreamed about with a Biden presidency? Instead of asking him to push for universal healthcare or vast federal law enforcement reforms, why not demand he eliminate that interference from DC so you can easily do it yourself at home? These new agencies will just end up in the hands of a Republican president within the next decade.
Consider Secession
The problem with decentralization is that anything decentralized can be easily centralized again. Closing the Department of Homeland Security or the Drug Enforcement Agency could just be a mere speed bump when a future administration deigns to build them back up again. A much more permanent solution would be to secede from the Union and go it as an independent nation. This way, residents of California, with their lopsided support of Biden, aren’t going to have to hope that their preferred candidate isn’t tainted by the corruption by party members in Pennsylvania. Californians also wouldn’t have to rely on the unlikely prospect of a uniquely unlikable candidate like Donald Trump driving a large percentage of the electorate to the Dems in Wisconsin. Rather, by seceding, with the blessings of a friendly president, the states along the Pacific Coast and in the Northeast can safely insulate themselves from fickle Ohio and Arizona voters who can easily swing national elections to the other party.
The United States is already uniquely situated for a clean split as governance structures exist at the State level. As noted above, States are already handling nearly everything done at the DC level, so the institutions exist to handle this. Breaking up into ten to twelve different nations would not only be a relatively smooth process, it would lead to a happy electorate, as they’re no longer having to compete with culturally different people all over the continent for central policy. California will no longer have to hope that a friendly administration in DC will keep high-speed rail funded while losing the local funding it could have used to the federal maw.
Further, this idea is no longer a radical notion pushed by a few Texans or weird “The South Shall Rise Again” types. It’s gaining traction on all segments of the political spectrum, so it will be just that much easier to gain agreement on a mutual split.
A Golden Opportunity
Biden supporters, this is your opportunity. Instead of endeavoring to gain a short-term endorphin rush of winning, you should push for either radical decentralization or full secession. By doing so, you’ll set yourself up to never have to worry about a Donald Trump coming to power and save yourself another four to eight years of heartache and stress. Can you imagine a world where you’ll never have to worry about a Republican taking over again? That world is not possible if you insist on growing federal power and keeping the Union intact. If anything, that will only make the next Republican administration that much more unbearable for you to live under. Author:
Why is it that the National Football League takes so many steps that nudge the country toward more statism?
The NFL has announced that Super Bowl LV, to be held on February 7, 2021, will be a 100 percent digital payment event for fans throughout the stadium on game day, including parking, concessions, retail, mobile ordering, and more. No cash will be accepted.
The NFL is forcing this digital use on Super Bowl attendees in conjunction with, surprise, Visa.
“Visa is one of our key partners in helping us imagine how our fans will experience the NFL in years to come,” said Renie Anderson, Executive Vice President of Partnerships & Chief Revenue Officer for the NFL. “We’re excited to announce that for our biggest event the future is here and we thank Visa for the innovative approach to enable a more secure way to pay at Super Bowl LV. This move will not only make the game more enjoyable and efficient for our fans, but most importantly, safer for all involved.”
Note that Lichfield suggested that in order to participate in the normal economy you might need to show verification that you have been “vaccinated against the latest virus strains”. In other words, the elites expect there to be many more viral events or mutations AFTER Covid 19 has run its course, and the restrictions and controls we see today are meant to continue, possibly FOREVER.
With the presidential election highly contested and the mainstream media hyping the rising infection numbers, the public is now facing important questions regarding the future of the pandemic response. Some states have decided to unilaterally introduce “executive orders” to restrict citizen movements, business openings and public activities.
Anthony Fauci is on the news constantly, calling for families to cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas and telling Americans to just “do what we are told”. The media is generally trying to drum up fear in the minds of the populace and paint images of plague and death everywhere. If Biden does actually end up in the White House, a federalized and national high level lockdown is on the table starting in January.
Governments must use the pandemic as a rationale for “waves” of restrictive lockdowns, followed by controlled re-openings of the economy and of normal human activity. Globalists claim that this will “slow” the spread of the coronavirus and save lives. However, they also openly admit that these cycles of closures and openings have other uses.
Over time, the citizenry becomes acclimated to governmental intrusion in their everyday lives, and they get used to the idea of bureaucracy telling them what they are not allowed to do when it comes to the simplest activities. The system thus bottlenecks all human interactions to the point that we are constantly asking for permission. We become slaves to the Covid response.
“Ultimately, however, I predict that we’ll restore the ability to socialize safely by developing more sophisticated ways to identify who is a disease risk and who isn’t, and discriminating—legally—against those who are.
…one can imagine a world in which, to get on a flight, perhaps you’ll have to be signed up to a service that tracks your movements via your phone. The airline wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infected people or disease hot spots. There’d be similar requirements at the entrance to large venues, government buildings, or public transport hubs. There would be temperature scanners everywhere, and your workplace might demand you wear a monitor that tracks your temperature or other vital signs. Where nightclubs ask for proof of age, in future they might ask for proof of immunity—an identity card or some kind of digital verification via your phone, showing you’ve already recovered from or been vaccinated against the latest virus strains.”
Note that Lichfield suggested that in order to participate in the normal economy you might need to show verification that you have been “vaccinated against the latest virus strains”. In other words, the elites expect there to be many more viral events or mutations AFTER Covid 19 has run its course, and the restrictions and controls we see today are meant to continue, possibly FOREVER.
The reality is that the wave model is not a very practical plan for stopping viral spread, but it is a perfect method for conditioning people to submit to a high level of control over their personal lives that they never would have accepted otherwise. The Covid response has also been heralded by elites at the World Economic Forum as a perfect “opportunity” to initiate what they call the “Great Reset”. The reset is a plan to deconstruct what’s left of the free market capitalist system, introduce carbon controls in the name of the global warming fraud, institute a global cashless monetary system, and finally, move humanity into what they call a “shared economy” in which the average person is no longer allowed to own private property of any kind and is completely dependent on the system for their basic necessities.
Of course, such a complex system of “solutions” (dominance) over every individual would need to be managed in a highly centralized way. Meaning, global governance by the elitist establishment would be the end result. Naturally….the globalists would reluctantly take the reins of power for “the greater good”.
This is the bigger picture, the underlying threat at the core of the lockdowns and Covid laws. That said, there are also numerous arguments based on logic and evidence as to why there is no reason for people to submit to such restrictions. Let’s outline them in a simple list:
The Coronavirus Kills Less Than 1% Of The People It Infects
Medical studies in the US indicate that the coronavirus deaths rate for citizens NOT living in nursing homes has been holding well below 1% on average. The largest percentage of deaths by far in the US has been in nursing homes among elderly people with preexisting conditions. People in long term care facilities make up 8% of Covid infection cases but they are 45% of all covid deaths.
Pneumonia alone kills around 50,000 Americans each year according to the CDC, and that’s with vaccinations, yet, we are supposed to panic and hand over all our freedoms in the name of stopping a disease which affects a tiny percentage of the population? This is why the media and governments have decided to hyperfocus on infection numbers rather than deaths. The death numbers do not warrant the amount of panic the establishment is trying to foment.
Lockdowns Destroy The Economy
It’s basic math and finance; the small business sector of the US economy is dying. Small businesses make up around 50% of US employment. The Covid bailout money, handled by international banks like JP Morgan, did not get to the vast majority of small businesses that were supposed to receive it. Those businesses that did get bailouts are still on the verge of closure or bankruptcy. Any further lockdowns will be the final nail in the coffin for the US economy, except for major corporations which are enjoying the lion’s share of stimulus cash.
How many lives will be damaged or lost due to poverty and economic collapse if the current trend continues? I suspect far more than any lives lost because of Covid.
Why is no one in the mainstream talking about the most practical solution to the pandemic? The small percentage of people who are most at risk can STAY HOME and take precautions as necessary, while the rest of us get on with our lives. Why are we being ordered to do the exact opposite just to make less than 1% of the population feel safer? How is this logical, reasonable or scientific? The only answer that makes sense is that the lockdown response is about control, not saving lives.
State Governors Have No Authority To Take Away Your Civil Liberties, And Neither Does The President
Restrictions based on executive orders have no legal authority under the Constitution. They are color of law, not true law. Laws are debated and passed by state legislatures, not by state governors. Executive orders only apply to state employees and have no bearing on the citizenry.
Leftists and statists argue that during a national crisis the governor has emergency powers and states can do whatever they want. This is false. Under the constitution and the Bill of Rights, state governors do not get to proclaim a national emergency based on their personal opinion and then declare themselves dictators in response. Any “laws” exerted because of such a process are therefor null and void; they are meaningless.
If the states have the ability to do whatever they want without oversight, then they would be able to bring back Jim Crow laws (among other things). Do leftists support that idea as well? If the federal government and the president have the power to violate the Bill of Rights during a national emergency, then Donald Trump has the authority to bring in martial law across the country because of leftist riots. Do leftists agree with that outcome?
It is interesting to me that the political left in particular is so keen on defending the idea of states and governors having the power to unilaterally enforce pandemic restrictions without oversight or checks and balances. Yet, they have been aggressively opposed to state powers in the past when they had a Democratic president like Obama in office. The left has also been staunchly opposed to executive orders applied by Donald Trump, but they applaud the idea of executive orders on lockdowns being instituted by Biden.
So, leftists support unilateral state power only when it works in favor of their agenda, and they support unilateral federal and presidential power only when it works in favor of their agenda. What a surprise…
The bottom line is this: State government powers do not supersede the Bill of Rights. Federal government powers do not supersede the Bill of Rights. NO ONE has the legal power to take away your inherent liberties. Those that claim otherwise have something to gain from your enslavement.
Mask Laws Are Unscientific
The majority of masks being used by the public today are cloth masks. Not even the CDC recommends the use of cloth masks for their own employees or medical workers. They only recommend N95 masks. They also admit that cloth masks are much less effective at preventing contact with the virus. Yet, the CDC supports the enforcement of cloth masks for the public.
On top of that, some states and countries with the most stringent mask laws continue to see huge spikes in coronavirus infections. For example, New York has been one of the most tyrannical enforcers of mask laws and lockdowns in the US, but in November the state has witnessed extensive infection increases. California, Michigan and Illinois have also seen dramatic infection spikes this month despite hard enforcement of masks. So, where is the science?
It would appear that masks are a placebo; if they actually worked, then the states with the most aggressive enforcement should be seeing a dramatic downturn in cases, not exponential increases.
Furthermore, why are many states and countries trying to force citizens to wear masks outside in open air and sunlight when viruses cannot survive in such conditions? UV light from the sun is nature’s sterilizer, but no one in the mainstream or in government acknowledges this scientific fact. Again, this shows that mask laws are about control, not about science or saving lives.
CovidVaccination Is Unnecessary And Potentially Dangerous
Why should people get vaccinated for a virus that over 99% of them will easily survive anyway? Why not simply attain “herd immunity” through natural infection spread and antibodies? The mainstream will continue to ignore these questions because they are inconvenient to the wider agenda.
Also, why should anyone trust a vaccine that was rushed out in less than a year’s time? China and the rest of the world spent over a decade trying to develop a vaccine for SARS unsuccessfully, but we are supposed to believe that they created a vaccine for SARS related Covid 19 within months?
The last time the government rushed out a vaccine for a viral epidemic was the 1976 swine flu scare, and that ended with numerous permanently damaged or dead individuals due to faulty vaccines.
Again, it’s simply not worth the risk over a virus that over 99% of people will survive. The idea of such risk being forced on the public is completely unacceptable, but many government officials have supported the idea over the past six months. It is important for the public to make it clear now that they will NOT be allowing state or federal governments to make vaccination mandatory.
Rebellion Is Needed To Put A Stop To The Fear Machine
In closing, there are endless reasons why we must end the pandemic lockdown agenda once and for all. Most importantly, the lockdowns, mask orders and vaccine plans are a stepping stone to something much worse – Medical tyranny and centralization on an unprecedented scale. I will not personally follow such rules because they are not scientifically or morally sound. They are nonsense designed to frighten the public into complacency and consent.
A rebellion against such measures would be very easy to win. All we have to do is refuse to follow their mandates. What are they going to do? Lock up millions of people? Shoot us? That would sort of defeat the supposed purpose of the very measures they demand we follow. And, if it comes to violence, so be it. I have no problem fighting to defend my freedoms and the freedoms of future generations. Perhaps it is time for conservatives and moderates that stand against the lockdowns to organize for this possible future.
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James D. Agresti, the president and co-founder of Just Facts has just published an article titled “Social Ills That Plague African Americans Coincide with Leftism, Not Racism.”
You present to a physician with severe abdominal pain. He examines you and concludes that your ingrown toenails are the cause of your abdominal distress. He prescribes that you soak your feet in warm water but that does not bring relief to your abdominal pain. Then he suggests that you apply antibiotics to your feet. Still no relief. Then the physician suggests that you wear sandals instead of shoes. Still no relief. The point of this story is that your toenails can be treated until the cows come home, but if there is improper diagnosis, then you are still going to have your abdominal pain.
The former superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, Meria Carstarphen, last year said, “White students are nearly 4.5 grade levels ahead of their black peers within Atlanta Public Schools.” In San Francisco, 70% of white students are proficient in math; for black students, it is 12% — a gap of 58%. In Washington, D.C., 83% of white students scored proficient in reading, as did only 23% of black students — a gap of 60%. In Philadelphia, 47% of black students scored below basic in math and 42% scored below basic in reading. In Baltimore, 59% of black students scored below basic in math and 49% in reading. In Detroit, 73% of black students scored below basic in math and 56% in reading.
“Below basic” is the score a student receives when he is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and grade level skills. How much can racism explain this? To do well in school, someone must make a kid do his homework, get a good night’s rest, have breakfast and mind the teacher. If these basic family functions are not performed, it makes little difference how much money is put into education the result will be disappointing.
In 2019, the racial breakdown of high school seniors who took the ACT college entrance exam and met its readiness benchmarks was 62% of Asians, 47% of whites, 23% of Hispanics and 11% of blacks. That helps explain a 2016 study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce “African Americans: College Majors and Earnings.” It found that black college students were highly concentrated in lower-paying and less academically demanding majors like administrative services and social work. They are much less likely than other students to major in science, technology, engineering and math, even though blacks in these fields earned as much as 50% more than blacks who earned a bachelor’s degree in art or psychology and social work.
James D. Agresti, the president and co-founder of Just Facts has just published an article titled “Social Ills That Plague African Americans Coincide with Leftism, Not Racism.” Agresti writes: “Among all of the afflictions that disproportionately impact people of color, violence may be the worst. In 2018, blacks comprised 13% of the U.S. population but roughly 53% of the 16,000 murder victims.” The clearance rate for murders, where a suspect was identified and charged, declined from 92% in 1960 to 62% in 2018. For example, in Chicago, the clearance rate fell from 96% in 1964 to 45% in 2018. In Baltimore, the 2019 clearance rate was 32%. In 2015, when Baltimore experienced the highest per-capita murder rate in its history, the average homicide suspect had been previously arrested more than nine times. When crimes remain unsolved, it gives criminals free range and black people are their primary victims. By the way, most law enforcement occurs at the local level. The governments at these local levels are typically dominated by Democrats.
According to statistics about fatherless homes, 90% of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes; 71% of pregnant teenagers lack a father figure; 63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes; 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes; and 70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions have no father. Furthermore, fatherless boys and girls are twice as likely to drop out of high school and twice as likely to end up in jail. Dr. Thomas Sowell has argued, “The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life.”
The bottom line is that while every vestige of racial discrimination has not been eliminated, today’s discrimination cannot go very far in explaining the problems faced by a large segment of the black community.
The Best of Walter E. Williams Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page.
It isn’t pretty, but that’s precisely where California is now. Other states should be concerned. As Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds observes, some tax refugees from California and other “migrants from high tax states might bring their political attitudes with them, moving to new, low-tax states for the economic opportunity but then supporting the same policies that ruined the states they left.”
Never mind that the party for his buddy, himself a lobbyist, also included a bunch of medical industry lobbyists. The photos show not only more people in attendance than allowed under state guidelines, neither the governor nor his wife were wearing masks.
Newsom called it a “bad mistake.” A better term might be rank hypocrisy, as Newsom himself admitted: “I should have stood up and … drove back to my house … the spirit of what I’m preaching all the time was contradicted,” he said. “ I need to preach and practice, not just preach.”
Nice words, but Newsom isn’t alone in his two-faced behavior. This week, a handful of California legislators are enjoying an expenses-paid five-day vacation in Hawaii, where they’re attending the annual Independent Voter Project conference at a high-end resort.
California was once a shining exemplar of everything a state should be — inventive, creative, energetic, freewheeling, fast-growing and conservative. No more. Today, it’s a giant welfare economy run by far-left kleptocrats and union shills who can’t even keep the lights on. As hundreds of thousands of Californians flee the once-Golden State, the rest of America should ask itself: Will they bring their politics with them?
Put another way, will California’s broken model be adopted by much of the rest of the country, turning reliably red states blue and seeding the nation with high taxes, more rules, corrupt politicians, and slow growth?
We hope not, but given the 2020 election, it’s not an idle question. California’s political class is widely regarded as among the most corrupt, irresponsible, hypocritical, hard left and incompetent of any comparable group of state politicians in the country, which is saying a lot.
The troubles have been on full display this week.
A week after imposing sweeping new restaurant closures across much of the state and telling Californians not to gather in groups for Thanksgiving, California Gov. Gavin Newsom admitted on Monday that he attended a birthday party for an old friend at an ultra-swank Napa Valley restaurant, The French Laundry.
Never mind that the party for his buddy, himself a lobbyist, also included a bunch of medical industry lobbyists. The photos show not only more people in attendance than allowed under state guidelines, neither the governor nor his wife were wearing masks.
Newsom called it a “bad mistake.” A better term might be rank hypocrisy, as Newsom himself admitted: “I should have stood up and … drove back to my house … the spirit of what I’m preaching all the time was contradicted,” he said. “ I need to preach and practice, not just preach.”
Nice words, but Newsom isn’t alone in his two-faced behavior. This week, a handful of California legislators are enjoying an expenses-paid five-day vacation in Hawaii, where they’re attending the annual Independent Voter Project conference at a high-end resort.
“Organizers booked about 50 rooms and have about 120 people staying at the Fairmont Kea Lani on Maui’s southwest shore,” the AP reported.
In short: One set of rules for average Californians, who have just had a new, strict lockdown imposed, and another for the state’s political elite.
These are just the most recent examples of the misrule and mismanagement of California, which has become a de facto one-party state under the Democrats, who were way ahead of the national curve in turning the state’s elections into fraudulent farces that encourage cheating which systematically benefits their party.
Faced with such poor governance, many Californians have said, “Enough!”
With taxes soaring, quality of life plunging as violent crime and homelessness surge, home prices out of reach, nonsensical government regulations spreading, an increasingly heavy-handed government and a slumping job market, California now ranks 47th out of 50 states on the widely followed Economic Freedom Index issued annually by Canada’s Fraser Institute.
As their future prospects dim, many longtime and even native Californians are leaving for better times in neighboring states such as Nevada, Arizona, Idaho, Utah and New Mexico.
More recently, the departing have moved even farther away, relocating in Texas, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. It’s a “reverse Beverly Hillbillies” migration.
From 2007 to 2016, some 7 million Californians (gross total) left the state, most of them middle-class or upper-class in income. In 2018 alone, the number of economic and quality-of-life refugees surged by nearly 700,000, and the flood appears to be continuing today.
Here’s the problem. It’s one thing to move from a state because it’s going in the wrong direction. It’s quite another to move and not understand that you had something to do with it.
Looking at California’s surrounding states, once bright red in their political hue, there’s an increasing amount of purple and even blue. Former Californians who didn’t like what happened in their state have held on to their foolish leftist voting habits and beliefs, and repeated the pattern elsewhere.
In short, Cali, not to mention New York and other high-tax, high-regulation states that punish businesses and citizens alike, are hemorrhaging citizens to more-friendly states around the country.
The trends in California are especially ominous. As City Journal’s Steve Malanga pointed out in a piece earlier this year dubbed “Calculating the Californication,” a Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, found that 52% of those living in California were considering moving elsewhere.
Among those, more than 71% blamed soaring housing costs and 58% cited high taxes, while almost half pointed to the state’s increasingly radical left, toxic political environment — everything from the “cancel culture” and rampant political correctness, to a reliance on green energy, a crackdown on religion, the release of violent felons, and a decaying, union-run education system that teaches kids to hate America but not basic skills.
“Conservatives and moderates are the most unhappy with the state and most anxious to leave,” says Malanga. “Liberals, by contrast, are mostly staying put, and some think life in California is just great. Only 38% of Democrats said that they were considering leaving, compared with 55% of independents and 71% of Republicans.”
In barely one generation … California was … transformed into a left-liberal one-party state, the most economically unequal and socially divided in the country, ostensibly run by a cadre of would-be Solons in Sacramento and in the courts, but really by oligarchic power concentrated in a handful of industries, above all Big Tech and Big Hollywood.
The middle class — what’s left of them — continue to flee high taxes, higher costs, cratering standards of living, declining services, deteriorating infrastructure, worsening quality of life, and an elite that openly despises them and pushes policies to despoil and dispossess them.
It isn’t pretty, but that’s precisely where California is now. Other states should be concerned. As Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds observes, some tax refugees from California and other “migrants from high tax states might bring their political attitudes with them, moving to new, low-tax states for the economic opportunity but then supporting the same policies that ruined the states they left.”
American states, beware. Take in as many Californians as you wish. But don’t accept California’s far-left, utterly broken governance and cultural model. It’s not “progressive” in any true meaning of the word. And once adopted, it will ruin your own state.
Liberal Hawks and Idiot Imperialists, with Doug Bandow
Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute The American Empire is completely detached from the will of the American people. This has been made evident most recently as the U.S. military has stopped obeying its civilian leadership. For example: Jim Jeffrey, an American diplomat, lied to the President about troop numbers to keep America at war Defense Secretary Mark Esper bragged in the “Military Times” about how he would ignore the President’s policies, and found out he could get away with it Horton used to think that those in power were conspiring to destroy America by overextending the U.S. dollar and the U.S. military. But the truth is that the American Empire is run by idiots. Heroic reporters like Michael Hastings have revealed the inner-world of the fools who rule us. Samantha Power, for example, got tired of “doing rinky-dink do-gooder stuff,” like protecting Christians in Iraq, so she plotted the overthrow of Libya so she could add an extra bullet point to her resume. “They make enough of a living building this crumbling empire that it’s worth it for them to not object and to continue to go along with this.” —Scott Horton To get into the minds of the next group of psychopaths who will be advising President Biden, like those who think we need to go back to supporting Al Qaeda in Syria, listen to the interview by clicking below. Listen to Interview Innoculate others against war propaganda. Share this email.
After the foundation of UNESCO in 1945, the English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and declared globalist Julian Huxley (the brother of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World) became its first director.
At the launch of the organization, Huxley called for a “scientific world humanism, global in extent” (p. 8) and asked to manipulate human evolution to a “desirable” end. Referring to dialectical materialism as “the first radical attempt at an evolutionary philosophy” (p. 11), the director of UNESCO laments that the Marxist approach to changing society was bound to fail because of its lack of an indispensable “biological component.”
Keynes was not alone. The list of advocates of breeding the human race for its own betterment is quite large and impressive. These “illiberal reformers” include, among many other well-known names, the writers H.G. Wells and G.B. Shaw, US president Theodore Roosevelt, and British prime minister Winston Churchill as well as the economist Irving Fisher and the family-planning pioneers Margaret Sanger and Bill Gates Sr., the father of Bill Gates, Microsoft cofounder and head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
About twenty-four hundred years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato came up with the idea constructing the state and society according to an elaborate plan. Plato wanted “wise men” (philosophers) at the helm of the government, but he made it also clear that his kind of state would need a transformation of the humans. In modern times, the promoters of the omnipotent state want to substitute Plato’s philosopher with the expert and create the new man through eugenics, which is now called transhumanism. The United Nations and its various suborganizations play a pivotal role in this project which has reached its present stage in the project of the Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset.
The Struggle for a World Government
The Great Reset did not come from nowhere. The first modern attempts to create a global institution with a governmental function was launched by the government of Woodrow Wilson who acted as US president from 1913 to 1921. Under the inspiration of Colonel Mandell House, the president’s prime advisor and best friend, Wilson wanted to establish a world forum for the period after World War I. Yet the plan of American participation in the League of Nations failed and the drive toward internationalism and establishing a new world order receded during the Roaring Twenties.
A new move toward managing a society like an organization, however, came during the Great Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not let the crisis go by without driving the agenda forward with his “New Deal.” FDR was especially interested in the special executive privileges that came with the Second World War. Resistance was almost nil when he moved forward to lay the groundwork for a new League of Nations, which was now to be named the United Nations.
Under the leadership of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, twenty-six nations agreed in January 1942 to the initiative of establishing a United Nations Organization (UNO), which came into existence on October 24, 1945. Since its inception, the United Nations and its branches, such as the World Bank Group and the World Health Organization (WHO), have prepared the countries of the world to comply with the goals that were announced at its foundation.
Yet the unctuous pronouncements of promoting “international peace and security,” “developing friendly relations among nations,” and working for “social progress, better living standards, and human rights” hides the agenda of establishing a world government with executive powers whose task would not be promoting liberty and free markets but greater interventionism and control through cultural and scientific organizations. This became clear with the creation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1945.
Eugenics
After the foundation of UNESCO in 1945, the English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and declared globalist Julian Huxley (the brother of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World) became its first director.
At the launch of the organization, Huxley called for a “scientific world humanism, global in extent” (p. 8) and asked to manipulate human evolution to a “desirable” end. Referring to dialectical materialism as “the first radical attempt at an evolutionary philosophy” (p. 11), the director of UNESCO laments that the Marxist approach to changing society was bound to fail because of its lack of an indispensable “biological component.”
With these ideas, Julian Huxley was in respectable company. Since the late nineteenth century, the call for the genetic betterment of the human race through eugenics has been gaining many prominent followers. John Maynard Keynes, for example, held the promotion of eugenics and population control as one the most important social questions and a crucial area of research.
Keynes was not alone. The list of advocates of breeding the human race for its own betterment is quite large and impressive. These “illiberal reformers” include, among many other well-known names, the writers H.G. Wells and G.B. Shaw, US president Theodore Roosevelt, and British prime minister Winston Churchill as well as the economist Irving Fisher and the family-planning pioneers Margaret Sanger and Bill Gates Sr., the father of Bill Gates, Microsoft cofounder and head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In his discourse at the foundation of the UNESCO, Julian Huxley was quite specific about the goals and methods of this institution. To achieve the desired “evolutionary progress” of mankind, the first step must be to stress “the ultimate need for world political unity and familiarize all peoples with the implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world organization.”
Furthermore, the institution must consider the tradeoff between the “importance of quality as against quantity” (p. 14), which means it must take into account that there is, “an optimum range of size for every human organization as for every type of organism” (p. 15). The educational, scientific, and cultural organization of the UN should give special attention to “unity-in-variety of the world’s art and culture as well as the promotion of one single pool of scientific knowledge” (p 17).
Huxley makes it clear that human diversity is not for all. Variety for “weaklings, fools, and moral deficients…cannot but be bad,” and because a “considerable percentage of the population is not capable of profiting from higher education” and also a “considerable percentage of young men” suffer from “physical weakness or mental instability” and “these grounds are often genetic in origin” (p. 20), these groups must be excluded from the efforts of advancing human progress.
In his discourse, Huxley diagnosed that at the time of his writing the “indirect effect of civilization” is rather “dysgenic instead of eugenic” and that “in any case, it seems likely that the deadweight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability, and disease-proneness, which already exist in the human species, will prove too great a burden for real progress to be achieved” (p. 21). After all, it is “essential that eugenics should be brought entirely within the borders of science, for as already indicated, in the not very remote future the problem of improving the average quality of human beings is likely to become urgent; and this can only be accomplished by applying the findings of a truly scientific eugenics” (pp. 37–38).
Use of the Climate Threat
The next decisive step toward the global economic transformation was taken with the first report of the Club of Rome. In 1968, the Club of Rome was initiated at the Rockefeller estate Bellagio in Italy. Its first report was published in 1972 under the title “The Limits to Growth.”
The president emeritus of the Club of Rome, Alexander King, and the secretary of the club, General Bertrand Schneider, inform in their Report of the Council of the Club of Rome that when the members of the club were in search of identifying a new enemy, they listed pollution, global warming, water shortages, and famines as the most opportune items to be blamed on humanity with the implication that humanity itself must be reduced to keep these threats in check.
Since the 1990s, several comprehensive initiatives toward a global system of control have been undertaken by the United Nations with Agenda 2021 and Agenda 2030. The 2030 Agenda was adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015. It launched its blueprint for global change with the call to achieve seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs). The key concept is “sustainable development” that includes population control as a crucial instrument.
Saving the earth has become the slogan of green policy warriors. Since the 1970s, the horror scenario of global warming has been a useful tool in their hands to gain political influence and finally rule over public discourse. In the meanwhile, these anticapitalist groups have obtained a dominant influence in the media, the educational and judicial systems, and have become major players in the political arena.
In many countries, particularly in Europe, the so-called green parties have become a pivotal factor in the political system. Many of the representatives are quite open in their demands to make society and the economy compatible with high ecological standards that require a profound reset of the present system.
In 1945, Huxley (p. 21) noted that it is too early to propose outright a eugenic depopulation program but advised that it will be important for the organization “to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
Huxley’s caution is no longer necessary. In the meantime, the branches of the United Nations have gained such a level of power that even originally minor UN suborganizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) have been enabled to command individual governments around the world to obey their orders. The WHO and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—whose conditionality for loans has changed from fiscal restraint to the degree to which a country follows the rules set by the WHO—have become the supreme tandem to work toward establishing the new world order.
As Julian Huxley pointed out in his discourse in 1945, it is the task of the United Nations to do away with economic freedom, because “laisser-faire and capitalist economic systems” have “created a great deal of ugliness” (p. 38). The time has come to work toward the emergence “of a single world culture” (p. 61). This must be done with the explicit help of the mass media and the educational systems.
Conclusion
With the foundation of the United Nations and its suborganizations, the drive to advance the programs of eugenics and transhumanism took a big step forward. Together with the activities of the Club of Rome, they have stage to initiate the great reset that is going on currently. With the pronouncement of a pandemic, the goal of comprehensive government control of the economy and society has taken another leap toward transforming the economy and society. Freedom faces a new enemy. The tyranny comes under the disguise of expert rule and benevolent dictatorship. The new rulers do not justify their right to dominance because of divine providence but now claim the right to rule the people in the name of universal health and safety based on presumed scientific evidence. Author:
Did you know that the United States makes a lot of money selling weapons to the Middle East? A lot of money is exchanged, and U.S. weapons are used to fuel Middle East wars. But all the best con artists make the dupe feel like a winner.
“Just by understanding the scam that is the QME, you can also better understand the scam that exists on a much broader level.” —Grant F. Smith
What is the scam? And how do we protect ourselves from being ripped off?
Grant F. Smith describes the QME scam in detail, involving the United States selling F-35 fighter jets to both sides of an arms race. Listen to the discussion by clicking the link below.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license
