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Dailywire Article – Agencies, Congress Didn’t Even Try To Stop Fraud In $4T Coronavirus Bailout, Audit Finds

Posted by M. C. on February 2, 2023

Health is their main concern, but who’s?

https://www.dailywire.com/news/agencies-congress-didnt-even-try-to-stop-fraud-in-4t-coronavirus-bailout-audit-finds

By  Luke Rosiak

Alan Schein Photography / The Image Bank / Getty Images

Not only did the glut of coronavirus-tied bailouts likely result in billions of dollars of fraud, but it happened because government agencies in many cases did not take even basic steps to prevent it, and in other cases have declined to try to claw back improper payments, the Government Accountability Office said Wednesday.

In a searing, comprehensive report, the nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress excoriated the administration of almost every pandemic-era spending program—and Congress itself—for doling out $4.6 trillion with the prospect of fraud seemingly an afterthought.

Three years after the pandemic began, rampant fraud turned out to be very much a reality.

Unemployment fraud. Coronavirus-era programs flooded cash into a program that already has one of the government’s highest rates of improper payments: unemployment checks. Non-coronavirus unemployment checks already had an improper payment rate of nearly 19% in fiscal year 2021 and more than 22% in 2022. Coronavirus programs flooded this with even easier access to even more cash, with $873 billion in checks to people who said they were laid off or had hours reduced because of coronavirus. In the best-case scenario–that coronavirus unemployment checks were no more fraudulent than the lower 2021 non-coronavirus value–“at least $163 billion in pandemic UI benefits could have been paid improperly,” the GAO said.

And that’s likely a vastly optimistic scenario, because the coronavirus unemployment program “allowed applicants to self-certify their eligibility and did not require them to provide any documentation of self-employment or prior income.” The Department of Labor, which administers the program, also encouraged states to waive a standard 21-day waiting period—the period in which anti-fraud scrutiny often occurs.

Even as it dramatically loosened controls on a program that already had an atrocious rate of improper payments, the Department of Labor did not have a dedicated fraud unit in place, and more than two years after the GAO first warned of the problem in October 2021, DOL said it was merely “in the process” of “proceeding with implementing” the recommendations—long after the pandemic has ended, according to the GAO.

PPP loans. The most prominent coronavirus bailouts—forgivable PPP and EIDL loans for businesses—were administered by the Small Business Administration, which did not even set up an anti-fraud entity until after the program was done giving out money, GAO said.

“SBA did not designate a dedicated antifraud entity until February 2022. This new entity—the Fraud Risk Management Board—is to oversee and coordinate SBA’s fraud risk prevention, detection, and response activities. Further, in March 2021, we found that SBA had not conducted fraud risk assessments for PPP and the COVID-19 EIDL program and recommended that it do so. When SBA developed its fraud risk assessments for the programs in October 2021, PPP had already stopped accepting new applications and the COVID-19 EIDL program would stop at the end of that year,” it wrote.

EIDL. PPP and EIDL together paid out nearly $1 trillion. Yet Congress explicitly blocked SBA from using tax returns to verify a business’s eligibility for EIDL loans, even though it is a highly relevant piece of information. “As a result, SBA relied on self-certification,” GAO said.

GAO reviewed a sample of loans processed without consulting tax returns and found that “about half of them” should not have been approved.

See the rest here

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Revealed: Mass Media Complicity in “Russian Disinformation” Fraud, w/ Matt Taibbi | SYSTEM UPDATE #30

Posted by M. C. on January 31, 2023

https://rumble.com/v27doi6–system-update-30.html

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The Big Lie Revisited – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on November 22, 2022

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/11/dom-armentano/the-big-lie-revisited/

By Dom Armentano

The main-stream media has repeated almost daily that  Donald Trump and several important MAGA-friendly organizations  continue to support the so-called “big lie,”  namely,  that the 2020 election was stolen. They also repeat almost daily  that this conclusion about that election  is totally bogus  since   “no evidence” of substantial election fraud  was  ever uncovered in the  65+ lawsuits filed after the election; Trump and his supporters lost them all.  The election was stolen?  What nonsense. It’s all “delusional thinking” and irrational conspiracy theory. Case closed.

Well not quite.

The American Bar Association (ABA) has published a list of the legal filings that challenged the results of the 2020 election and a summary of the court findings in each case.  It makes for very interesting reading.

The most important lesson to be drawn from  these  case summaries is that the bulk of them  have (almost) nothing to do with the  alleged evidence concerning  voter and election fraud.  And the reason for this is reasonably clear. Fraud is  itself  an extremely difficult legal matter to litigate; along with any relevant empirical evidence, the legal concepts of due diligence and “intent” would have to be fully explored.  Moreover, any  determination of election and/or voter  fraud  would have  required (at a very minimum)  a so-called “evidentiary hearing”  where the court would  take testimony under oath  from expert witnesses;  accept and evaluate  properly supported affidavits; evaluate any relevant election data analysis,  and explore the  murky issue of “intent” (by elected officials and others) at some length.  To my knowledge,  none of this process or analysis occurred in any systematic manner in any of the 65  post-2020 election challenge cases.

*

So what were these cases really about?  My reading of the summaries convinces me that the courts were concerned almost exclusively  with what are termed “procedural issues” and not with the actual substance of what would  constitute election fraud.  For example, the so-called issue of “standing” is procedural. Does a  particular plaintiff have the legal right  to bring this  action?  If the answer is “no” then the entire case is summarily dismissed.  (This happened in several  of the challenge cases). This, of course,  is a perfectly appropriate ruling but it has  nothing  whatsoever to do with the issue of substantial fraud one way or the other.

In another one of the 65 cases,  the judge actually asked why the plaintiff  could not have filed suit before the election regarding some alleged problem in the way the voting process was likely to be administered.  “Too late now” the judge said, in effect.  Case dismissed.  One judge actually asserted that any complaints about the legitimate certification of the election (in Georgia)  were all now “moot” since “the election results… had already been certified.”  But the issue of “certification legitimacy” was the very concept that the plaintiffs were challenging! Unbelievable.

See the rest here

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Your Obedience Matters, Because Your Obedience Leads to More Tyranny – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on February 13, 2021

“If you get in a discussion with them it’s always the same buzzwords and hackneyed arguments. They’re the kind of people who make a show of discomfort when you break the status quo like by breaking the normie barrier to invoke a real discussion. it’s like in a video game when you accidentally talk to somebody twice and they give you the exact lines word for word once more.”

— Anonymously Posted
“Are you an NPC?”
4chan (July 7, 2016)

In response to Navarro and others claiming that a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election took place, Molly Ball of Time magazine , shockingly, in the days before the second Trump impeachment trial began in the Senate, dedicated 6,500 words in the February 15, 2021 edition of Time to effectively saying “Yeah we stole the election, and here’s exactly how we did it, and I will publicly state this, because not a single one of you has the guts to do anything about it.”

In hubris, Ball revealed so much more about a conspiracy than anyone could ever imagine and that no one was saying publicly. Reading the piece illustrates that it wasn’t aimed at Navarro and the acolytes of his work as much as it was aimed at every single person who believes any official narrative. 

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/02/allan-stevo/your-obedience-matters-because-your-obedience-leads-to-more/

By Allan Stevo

It’s not 1959. It’s not 1979. It’s not 2019.

Your every action matters in a way that it couldn’t have during any of those times — whether you were a pauper or a billionaire, a parent at home or a celebrity on the red carpet — now, your individual actions mean so much more than they did then.

We are in that kind of moment. Some call them “fourth turnings” after the work on generational theory by William Strauss and Neil Howe. A fourth turning is when crisis brings about rebirth. It’s even more significant than that though. A new epoch is being brought into existence and an epic battle is being waged. Whether you like it or not, whether you recognize it or not, you are involved.

The results portend to be more impactful that the Revolutionary War, more impactful than the French Revolution, more impactful that the War Between the States, the Great War, World War Two, the Cold War or any other great shift in culture, for the possibilities are far more total than what humanity has ever known. An Awakening may be ahead, alternately the Dark Ages may be ahead. Liny Xin Women’s… Buy New $44.99 (as of 03:44 EST – Details)

Once tiny events now shed momentous light, carry tremendous weight, and can ripple out in ways unimaginable.

It’s not 1959. It’s not 1979. It’s not 2019. We are in the days after the Ides of March 2020. Today, February 12, 2021, is the 333rd day of the “3-week lockdown,” the 333rd day since the decades long war against you, your individuality, and your humanity was openly declared.

A Public Conversation On The Non-Existent Scientific Support For Medical Mandates In Response To Covid-19

Wednesday, February 10, 2021, I watched Oregon-based naturopath, Dr. Henele Ealy discuss PCR testing, Covid numbers, and  corona vaccines with Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the Oregon State Health Officer and State Epidemiologist. To his credit, through the use of reason and evidence, Ealy has been part of efforts to use legislative bodies to open counties in Oregon.

Over the course of the hour, Ealy asked a dozen or more insightful questions that pointed to the weak foundation of the governmental response to Covid that brought about the corona communism under which we live and continue to live. Sidelinger spoke at considerable length in response to each question, yet curiously did not answer a single one. One would be remiss to imagine this seasoned public health professional did not realize what he was doing.

Really, Ealy didn’t even scratch the surface of the nonsense of a mask mandate or a lockdown or the fact that SARS-COV-2 has yet to be isolated or that decades of half-hearted safety testing around vaccines have been thrown out the window and people are being treated exactly like the lab ferrets of decades past were treated: a low value life to experiment on. Lab ferrets cost the vaccine manufacturers more. With no liability and a blank check from government, your life really is worth less than a lab ferret to them and a healthy bonus will come their way if they can keep that in mind.

Whether Ealy realizes such things is irrelevant, he is keeping mum and working the system, just as Sidelinger is reading from his script and working the same system. Imily Bela Women&rsquo… Buy New $35.99 (as of 03:44 EST – Details)

Had Yamhill County Commissioner Mary Starrett not spoken up around 55 minutes into this 60-minute “conversation,” Sidelinger would have run down the clock reciting the same litany of official professions that every living adult on this planet with a screen knows by heart as “the science” behind the increasingly extreme and constantly shifting measures taken that have ushered in this system of corona communism.

The Oregon public health professional is paid to read a script. It may be a piece of paper in front of him, like an actor with cue cards, or something memorized. It is a script nonetheless.

The Coronavirus May Not Be Novel, But Their Behavior Certainly Is 

It is not just this one Oregon public health professional. Virtually every voice in the public health field, in politics, in corporate America, in academia, in medicine, in Hollywood, in the media, and in the Church is reading a script.

It has never been like this in the United States.

Europe has finally arrived in the United States. 

The stultifying dogma of so much of acceptable European thought has finally caught up with the New World.

The signs of that are mere symptoms. It long preceded European style bureaucracy and is institutionalized in European style bureaucracy, but it is not the fault of European style bureaucracy. The bureaucracy is but a symptom and a tool, a tool that can be used for good or ill.

Everyone with power is reading from a script. Those who don’t read from a script are being dismissed as having votes not worthy of counting (as can be seen in the sham November 3, 2020 election) supporting candidates that they aren’t permitted to support (it isn’t Trump being impeached, it’s you, you have to open your eyes if you think otherwise), political decisions they aren’t allowed to make (pay your taxes, enlist your kids, and shut up you serf, because Liz Cheney is the future whether you like it or not) investments they aren’t allowed to make (if you pay Wall Street to invest for you, that’s okay, if you act unpredictably en masse on Wall Street Bets that’s not okay: the establishment outcry over Wall Street Bets and the many extensive wars against cryptocurrency show that), and most poignantly in this moment — say the F-Word, and you’ll be deplatformed. 

FRAUD.
FRAUD!
FRAUD!!

As in: The 2020 election was a FRAUD. Biden is not the legitimate president. He is a FRAUD. Harris is not legitimate. She is a FRAUD. And who knows how much other FRAUD there is.

Is truth not treason in the empire of lies? Could the very hesitancy around the word FRAUD indicate that it’s all really just a big FRAUD, the entire narrative fed to us?

What’s certain is that Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi alike, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey alike, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates all agree: you’re not allowed to ask that question.

Yes. You’re not allowed to ask any questions about FRAUD.

The Opposition Offers Proof Of Election FRAUD 

Peter Navarro shows the November 3, 2020 rendition of that FRAUD in clear detail in the following three documents: “The Immaculate Deception: Six Key Dimensions of Election Irregularities”, “The Art Of The Steal”, “Yes, President Trump Won: The Case, Evidence, & Statistical Receipts”.

The Establishment Agrees There Was FRAUD And Proudly Illustrates A Massive, Previously Unknown Conspiracy   

In response to Navarro and others claiming that a conspiracy to steal the 2020 election took place, Molly Ball of Time magazine , shockingly, in the days before the second Trump impeachment trial began in the Senate, dedicated 6,500 words in the February 15, 2021 edition of Time to effectively saying “Yeah we stole the election, and here’s exactly how we did it, and I will publicly state this, because not a single one of you has the guts to do anything about it.”

In hubris, Ball revealed so much more about a conspiracy than anyone could ever imagine and that no one was saying publicly. Reading the piece illustrates that it wasn’t aimed at Navarro and the acolytes of his work as much as it was aimed at every single person who believes any official narrative. 

Molly Ball is not stupid. The most powerful establishment players are not stupid. You are being taunted. And if you don’t respond, it all becomes normalized, solidified, and institutionalized. They are pretty sure they know exactly how you will react.

We Live In A Special Time 

We live in a special time.

Never has the United States looked like this.

It didn’t happen during the Revolutionary War, during the War Between The States, during World War I, World War II, or 9/11. It’s never been like this. There’s never been this level of totality.

In a time when ultimate and total compliance is demanded, a script reader can just as effectively be replaced by a computer. He paves that path in his life.

A person who acts unpredictably cannot be. And that is one of your superpowers in a time like this, dear friend.

It’s your superpower, until the window of opportunity closes. And the more disobedient and unpredictably you behave, the harder it is for them to close that window of opportunity. Not only that, the more disobedient and unpredictably you behave, the harder it is for the narrative to hold. It really is a superpower.

Explode the “why” and you explode the “will.” Explode the narrative and you win. The war is for your mind, not for land or for a munitions depot. Explode the narrative and you win!

Self-Dehumanization 

Dr. Sidelinger, the script reader, dehumanizes himself. The leftist NPC, repeating talking points, dehumanizes himself.

Great swaths of writers would like to deny you that agency, both today and in decades past, to have you believe modernity inevitably dehumanizes man. Modernity does not dehumanize us. We, by our actions, choose to dehumanize ourselves individually.

The NPC Meme 

See the rest here

Allan Stevo [send him mail] writes about international politics and culture from a free market perspective at 52 Weeks in Slovakia (www.52inSk.com). He is the author of How to Win America, The Bitcoin Manifesto, and numerous other books.

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Watch “Vaccine Mandate! Did Bill Gates Win The Election?” on YouTube

Posted by M. C. on November 9, 2020

Fraud, Lies and Forced Medication

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Erie Times E-Edition Article – Feds: State inmates got virus jobless benefits

Posted by M. C. on August 26, 2020

Think fraud and 3$ trillion bailout.

https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=0612698ca

PITTSBURGH — About 10,000 state prison inmates in Pennsylvania fraudulently applied for unemployment benefits during the coronavirus pandemic, prosecutors said in announcing charges Tuesday against 33 people.

“These 33 defendants represent, truly, the tip of the iceberg, and we are seeing unemployment fraud on an unprecedented scale,” U.S. Attorney Scott Brady said at a news conference in Pittsburgh.

Charges were filed against inmates in the Greene, Fayette and Forest state prisons, along with inmates in the local jails in Allegheny, Butler, Lawrence, Somerset and Westmoreland counties.

Investigators recently were able to cross-check a list of state inmates against those who applied for pandemic unemployment benefits and found about 10,000 matches, Brady’s office said. Along with applications by county and federal inmates, Brady said, he believes the total cost of the fraud in Pennsylvania is approaching a quarterbillion dollars...

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SCIENCE FRAUD: Florida Gov. DeSantis calls for investigation into why people are testing “positive” for coronavirus tests they never received – NaturalNews.com

Posted by M. C. on July 25, 2020

https://www.naturalnews.com/2020-07-24-desantis-investigation-people-testing-positive-coronavirus-never-tested.html

(Natural News) After learning that waves of people who were never even tested for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) received mysterious “positive” results, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, decided to call for an investigation into the matter to get to the bottom of it.

According to reports, Gov. DeSantis has asked the state’s Department of Health to look into the situation further. He announced that it makes no sense whatsoever that people who were never even evaluated by a practitioner are now receiving anomalous positive test results that are being used by some to push for more lockdowns and mask-wearing.

“For that to come back positive, when there was no specimen submitted, is problematic,” DeSantis is quoted as saying. “So I’ve heard it enough to be concerned about it.”

As we recently reported, many of Florida’s testing laboratories have been submitting boatloads of false positives to the official government databases, which has majorly skewed the state’s infection statistics.

Now it appears as though people who were never even tested are being told, possibly at random, that they have the coronavirus, which further skews the official statistics and makes it seem as though “spikes” of infection are occurring when they are actually not.

“I asked the Department of Health to look at that because I heard it, too,” DeSantis added about these strange anomalies. “If you can give us, if people that have told you that are willing to provide their name, we’re interested in investigating this because it’s ridiculous.”

The official coronavirus narrative is collapsing like a house of cards

Local Florida news affiliate FOX 35 News has confirmed that many people are reporting similar occurrences in their families. People all across the Sunshine State say that they are “testing positive” for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) when they never even got tested, and now they are demanding answers.

“How does someone test positive for coronavirus if they have never been tested?” the news outlet asks. “Reports of this happening have been pouring in to FOX 35 News since we began investigating COVID-19 data.”

What appears to be happening in some instances is that people show up to get tested, fill out a form, but leave before ever getting tested because the lines are too long. Later on down the road, these same folks receive notifications by email or by phone that they tested positive, even though they never even got tested.

“If you’re somebody that this has happened to, you’re going to come forward and give us the details, because I think that that needs to be corrected,” says Gov. DeSantis.

As of this writing, Florida supposedly has some 369,834 positive cases of the coronavirus, though this number is now being called into question by these new revelations. How many people truly have the virus when some labs are reporting 100 percent positive test results, for instance, or when people who were never tested are being told that they tested positive?

The world may never know the full answer to this question, though hopefully, DeSantis’ investigation will uncover why this is all happening, and what the motive is behind it.

“We’ve seen suppressed negatives, egregious double-counting, fake positives, and conflation of dying WITH COVID as opposed to dying OF COVID,” wrote one Breitbart News commenter, highlighting the many sham elements associated with the plandemic. “Then to top it off, tortured interpretations of the data, tainted as it is, to maximize, ‘Get Trump!’”

“Lies, damned lies and statistics. Brought to you by (wait for it …) the ‘experts,’” this same commenter added.

More of the latest on the coronavirus plandemic is available at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

Breitbart.com

NaturalNews.com

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Nolte: Dr. Fauci Is Either a Liar or a Fraud

Posted by M. C. on June 8, 2020

Here we are stating the obvious. But is anyone listening?

F word warning at the end of the full post.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/07/nolte-dr-fauci-either-liar-fraud/

by John Nolte

…Was all his talk about concern for public health, his duty to tell it like it is no matter the personal or political fallout, just a big lie? Is he a fraud who still believes these mass gatherings are a nightmare scenario, but is unwilling to use his massive public platform to say so out loud because shaming protesters who hold the “approved” views among America’s hideous elite would risk Fauci feeling the disapproval of those elites?

Or is he a liar, does he in fact know the coronavirus is nowhere near as deadly as he played it up to be? Is he a liar who misled us into agreeing to destroy our amazing economy in order to undermine the Bad Orange Man’s re-election?

Either way, Fauci’s a sociopath…

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : COVID-19 Puts Spotlight on Science — but Scientists Often Lie

Posted by M. C. on May 12, 2020

“The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science,” is a 2004 expose about the true state of science, and science that’s been peer-reviewed — that is, self-checked, self-policed. It’s 480 pages long. And in a terse assessment of his findings, author Horace Freeland Judson wrote, “Their claims about science are unscientific.” He was speaking of the scientific greats — of Gregor Mendel, of Charles Darwin, of Louis Pasteur, of Sigmund Freud.

They all fudged data.

What’s more, it’s well-known they all fudged data.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/may/11/covid-19-puts-spotlight-on-science-but-scientists-often-lie/

Written by Cheryl K. Chumley

We can beat COVID-19 — just trust the science, we’re told. Trust in the scientists, we’re told. And that’s not a paraphrase.

“From the Editors: We Can Beat COVID-19. Just Trust Science,” Wired wrote.

Well and good. Fine and dandy. But fact is, scientists often lie. Science isn’t always the beacon toward truth. It’s not just frequently flawed; it’s frequently deceptive. And purposely so.

So tossing citizens’ civil rights into the sea and allowing medical professionals and scientists to steer the COVID-19 boat may not be the best case scenario for a free America.

“Stanford researchers uncover patterns in how scientists lie about their data,” wrote Stanford News, back in late 2015.

The story went on to report how a couple of researchers “cracked the writing patterns of scientists who attempt to pass along falsified data,” a finding that gave the science world a tool to “identify falsified research before it is published.” The discovery of the pattern is one thing; the fact that the pattern had to be pursued in the first place is entirely another thing. It says, not so subtly, that falsified scientific data is so prevalent that a tool to identify — and slow the creep of — the false data was actually an in-demand item.

In fact, books have been written about the prevalence of falsified science.

“The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science,” is a 2004 expose about the true state of science, and science that’s been peer-reviewed — that is, self-checked, self-policed. It’s 480 pages long. And in a terse assessment of his findings, author Horace Freeland Judson wrote, “Their claims about science are unscientific.” He was speaking of the scientific greats — of Gregor Mendel, of Charles Darwin, of Louis Pasteur, of Sigmund Freud.

They all fudged data.

What’s more, it’s well-known they all fudged data.

“Freud was a lousy scientist,” The New Yorker wrote, in 2017. “He fudged data; he made unsubstantiated claims; he took credit for other people’s ideas. Sometimes he lied.”

Mendel, the founder of modern genetics, “may have falsified data,” The Great Courses Daily reported in 2016. It’s been a lingering shadow. From an August 2016 abstract, “Are Mendel’s Data Reliable? The Perspective of a Pea Geneticist,” published in the Journal of Heredity: “Based on a large number of statistical analyses as well as the review of several well-known geneticists, there can be little doubt that the data Mendel presented in 1866 corresponded much more closely to the predictions of his model than could be reasonably expected by chance.”

Moving on; Darwin.

“New Book Uncovers ‘the Life and Lies of Charles Darwin,’” Evolution News wrote in 2009.

And of especial note, given the ongoing COVID-19 debate and vaccinations, this 1993 headline from The Independent: “Pasteur ‘told lies about vaccines,’” — specifically, about the public trial of an anthrax vaccine, and by using a child as a test-case for a rabies vaccine that he had claimed to use on hundreds of dogs.

The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune — these are all papers of record that have reported over the years about Pasteur’s record of scientific deceptions.

Those are hardly the only bad apples.

Science magazine, in a 2018 piece entitled, “Tide of Lies,” wrote of bone researcher Yoshihiro Sato’s fabricated data — “fraud” that was called “one of the biggest in scientific history.”

The American Council on Science and Health, in a 2017 piece entitled, “Lying Politicians Is One Thing, Lying Scientists Is Another,” wrote of “the crappy science” of researchers Peter Eklov and Oona Lonnstedt who reported in a 2016 paper that “tiny particles of plastic in the ocean were harming fish,” and that “microscopic plastic must [therefore] be harmful to fish” — findings that led them to be slapped with the peer-based “misconduct in research” label; findings that the pair subsequently retracted.

QZ, in a 2016 piece entitled, “Nearly all of our medical research is wrong,” wrote: “Something is rotten in the state of biomedical research. Everyone who works in the field knows this on some level. We applaud presentations by colleagues … but we know in our hearts that the majority or even the vast majority of our research claims are false.”

Wow.

Look: Do the research. Google some headlines. There are more, so many more examples of scientists gone wrong, scientists gone rogue, science gone deceptive.

“This scientist nearly went to jail for making up data,” The Washington Post wrote in 2016.

“Researchers Behaving Badly: Known Frauds Are ‘the Tip of the Iceberg,’” Leapsmag wrote in 2018.

“Take That Back: The Top Scientific Retractions of 2019,” Live Science wrote in 2019.

Deceptions are part of the game.

Lies, skews, half-truths, selectively chosen data, biased conclusions, flawed interpretations, outright wildly inaccurate information — these are all part and parcel of scientists’ lives. And why? Because scientists are human, too.

Scientists have deadlines. They have pressures. They have funding goals. They have peer competition. They have personal agendas, political leanings, partisan purposes — spiritual blindnesses. In short: they are not perfect.

Scientists are not perfect; the science they present is not perfect.

And in this COVID-19 atmosphere, where scientists and researchers and medical professionals and scholars have taken over much of the control of US politics and government and how American citizens are supposed to now behave and function — it’s more important than ever to remember this: Scientists can be wrong, very wrong.

Moreover, scientists can lie. And very often, as history shows, they do.

from WashingtonTimes.com

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oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: The Outlines of a Better World

Posted by M. C. on May 11, 2020

Once the government’s ability to sustain its enforcement with money created
out of thin air vanishes, the entire order vanishes along with it. The
destruction of the value of central bank-created “money” is already
ordained, for there is no limit on human greed and the desire to
maintain control, and so governments will create their “money” in
ever-increasing amounts until the value has been completely leached from
the phantom digital entries.

https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-outlines-of-better-world-are.html

The era of waste, greed, fraud and living on borrowed money is dying, and those who’ve known no other way of living are mourning its passing. Its passing was inevitable, for any society that squanders its resources is unsustainable. Any society that makes private greed the primary motivator and priority is unsustainable. Any society that rewards fraud above all else is unsustainable. Any society which lives on money borrowed from the future and other forms of phantom capital is unsustainable.
We know this in our bones, but we fear the future because we know no other arrangement other than the unsustainable present. And so we hear the faint echo of the cries of alarm filling the streets of ancient Rome when the Bread and Circuses stopped: what do we do now?
When the free bread and entertainments disappeared, people found new arrangements. They left Rome.
The greatest private fortunes in history vanished as Rome unraveled. All the land, the palaces, the gold and all the other treasures were no protection against the collapse of the system that institutionalized corruption as the ultimate protector of concentrated wealth.
The most zealously guarded power of government is the creation of money, for without money the government cannot pay the soldiers, police, courts and administrators needed to enforce its rule. Western Rome created money by controlling silver mines; in the current era, governments create money (currency) out of thin air.
Once the government’s money loses purchasing power, the system collapses. And so in the final stages of Rome’s decline, Imperial orders still flowed to distant legions, but the legions no longer existed; they were only phantom entries on Imperial ledgers.
Our “money” is also nothing but phantom entries on digital ledgers, and so its complete loss of purchasing power is inevitable.
Without “money,” the government can no longer enforce the will of its self-serving elites: orders will still flow in a furious flood to every corner of the land, but the legions to enforce the institutional corruption will be nothing but phantom entries on Imperial ledgers.
Once the government’s ability to sustain its enforcement with money created out of thin air vanishes, the entire order vanishes along with it. The destruction of the value of central bank-created “money” is already ordained, for there is no limit on human greed and the desire to maintain control, and so governments will create their “money” in ever-increasing amounts until the value has been completely leached from the phantom digital entries.
The outlines of a better world are emerging, an arrangement that prioritizes something more than maximizing private gain and institutionalizing the corruption needed to protect those gains. We will relearn to live within our means, and relearn how to institutionalize opportunity rather than corruption designed to protect elites.
We will come to a new understanding of the teleology of centralized power, that centralized power only knows how to extend its power and so the only possible outcome is collapse. (I explain these dynamics in my book Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change.)
We will come to understand technology need not serve only monopolies, cartels and the state, that it could serve a sustainable, decentralized economy that does more with less, i.e. a DeGrowth economy.
The Federal Reserve will fail, just as the Roman gods failed to sustain the corrupt and bankrupt Roman elites. A host of decentralized, transparently priced non-state currencies will compete on the open market, just like goods, services and commodities. The Fed’s essential role– serving the few at the expense of the many, under the cover of creating currency out of thin air–will be repudiated by the implosion of the economy as all the Fed’s phantom “wealth” evaporates.
The outlines of a better world are emerging. Do you discern them through the smoke as the last frantic phantoms of an unsustainable system issue orders to reverse the tides of history as they dissipate into thin air?
Be seeing you

 

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