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For Eithan Haim, operating on patients provides a welcome break from the federal criminal indictment hanging over him. Haim, who is 34 years old, works as a general surgeon at a regional hospital in Texas, dealing with ruptured appendixes, gunshot wounds, and whatever else comes through the ER. “Whenever I go into an operating room, any stress is gone,” he says. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

Haim’s alleged crime? That he violated HIPAA, a patient privacy law, when he revealed that Texas Children’s Hospital was providing gender transition treatments to minors after it announced that such services had been “paused.” The U.S. Department of Justice has charged him with four felonies, which could land Haim in prison for the next decade.

I met Haim recently at his house east of Dallas, where he lives with his wife and their newborn daughter. That afternoon he had just returned from removing someone’s gallbladder and was still dressed in his green scrubs. Haim is quick to launch into a story, whether it’s explaining how you massage a patient’s heart after it’s stopped beating, or describing his days as an aspiring musician before he decided to become a doctor.

The story of how he was indicted begins in 2022, when Haim was a surgical resident. He discovered then that Texas Children’s, the largest children’s hospital in the country, was inserting puberty blocker implants in young patients with gender dysphoria—that is, distress at one’s biological sex. After studying the medical literature on the subject, Haim came to the conclusion that delaying puberty in gender-questioning children was not only unwise, but unethical.

“Kids come into the hospital because they’re sick, and you make them better because they want to live a normal life,” he told me. “But then here’s this other situation where, in the same operating rooms, they’re taking healthy children and they’re making them sick for the rest of their life.”

He wasn’t the only one at Texas Children’s who was concerned. A small group of fellow resident doctors had whispered conversations in what Haim calls “the dark corners of the hospital.” One resident told Haim about feeling uncomfortable when asked to assist in the insertion of a puberty-blocking device in a patient’s arm, but felt that—as a mere resident—he couldn’t object. “We rely on the hospital’s good graces in order to graduate,” Haim says. “You know if you challenge that, they will destroy you.”

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Fallout from Vermont Ruling on Unauthorized Vaccinations
by John Klar at Brownstone Institute

In 2021, Leo Politella’s parents were specifically assured by their local Vermont public school officials that their 6-year-old son would not be vaccinated with a novel Covid-19 vaccine at an upcoming school clinic. Leo’s father visited the school the week before to ask whether he should keep his son home the day of the vaccination clinic but was told he had nothing to worry about. He was not told that the school was competing with other public schools for cash “awards” from the state of Vermont based on rates of vaccination.

Leo was vaccinated against his will at the school’s clinic the next week. He was given a name tag for another child (not in his grade or class), and when he vocally protested that he was not supposed to be vaccinated, he was told he had to have a shot. Workers distracted him with a toy and jabbed him. 

If the school administrators were aware of the error, they didn’t inform the family. Leo’s mother, Shujen, was told by her young son he had been vaccinated and later saw the band-aid on his arm as proof. When Shujen visited the school to inquire, she was met with a lack of accountability. No one explained how this could have happened, and the school could not even state who was in charge of the clinic and responsible for what happened to Leo. Other questions are obvious: how did he get the wrong name tag? How did the child whose name was on the tag avoid being vaccinated twice? How does such a thing happen unless it is deliberate?

Like many parents struggling to make important healthcare decisions during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Politellas felt marginalized when they decided to decline the shot for Leo. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show clearly that healthy young children are at very low risk from Covid-19, and there is no evidence to show that vaccinations of children prevent transmission. (This is more clear now than in 2021 when these events occurred.) Could it be that school officials were retaliatory toward this little boy, or were they simply grossly incompetent and then callous afterward?

Understandably, Tony and Shujen immediately took their child out of public school and enrolled him in a private school they could trust. They filed suit in Vermont state court, but the Vermont Supreme Court later ruled they had no legal legs to stand on – they are barred from suit because of federal protections not of public schools who betray parental trust, but because of product liability immunity provided to vaccine manufacturers under the federal PREP Act.

This ruling is unconscionable. The Vermont Court did not rule that teachers and school workers can do whatever they want to others’ young children, but that is the legal effect of this abhorrent decision. Much like shoplifting isn’t technically “legalized” simply because it is not prosecuted, the effect is the same – teachers and school staff can act with complete impunity when administering experimental vaccines for Big Pharma! Only if a child suffers death or serious bodily injury could they then be held responsible – under the PREP Act only, and only for harm from the shot and not the harm of having administered it against the patient’s and his parents’ specific directions. No recourse for the intentional tort (wrong) of jabbing somebody else’s kids is allowed.

The US government has a record of violating citizens’ liberties, including exposing civilians and servicemembers to radiation, toxic chemicals, nerve agents, pharmaceuticals, and pathogens. Excusing school authorities from accountability for sloppy or even malicious conduct in medical care for children creates a bureaucratic moral hazard. 

Americans desire and deserve public servants and medical providers they can trust to tell them the truth about the drugs they are prescribed – especially if experimental. Doctors and pharmacists were paid cash bonuses linked to the percentage of their patients who received Covid-19 vaccines. So did Vermont's public schools: Vermont Governor Phil Scott awarded cash payments to public schools that achieved high vaccination levels.

The seminal US Constitutional decision addressing mandatory vaccination is Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a 1905 ruling that approved compulsory smallpox vaccines. The Jacobson court foresaw the possibility that the government was not always trustworthy:

Before closing this opinion, we deem it appropriate, in order to prevent misapprehension as to our views, to observe – perhaps to repeat a thought already sufficiently expressed, namely – that the police power of a State, whether exercised by the legislature or by a local body acting under its authority, may be exerted in such circumstances or by regulations so arbitrary and oppressive in particular cases as to justify the interference of the courts to prevent wrong and oppression. Extreme cases can be readily suggested….

The Vermont Supreme Court did not interfere to prevent wrong and oppression against the Politella family – on the contrary, it interposed federal law immunizing vaccine manufacturers to instead immunize incompetent or corrupt school employees to permit wrong and oppression. How does Vermont’s ruling guard against the “extreme cases” of abuse referenced in Jacobson, and subsequently witnessed in the Tuskegee experiments and forced sterilizations of the eugenics movement?

As Associate US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor emphasized in her dissenting opinion in U.S. v Stanley:

….the standards that the Nuremberg Military Tribunals developed to judge the behavior of the defendants stated that the 'voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential….to satisfy moral, ethical, and legal concepts.' If this principle is violated, the very least that society can do is to see that the victims are compensated, as best they can be, by the perpetrators.

The Vermont public school system violated this fundamental principle, and the Vermont Supreme Court saw to it that the perpetrators escaped all accountability and that the victims were shut down. This is how all public school children can be treated if Vermont’s Politella decision is allowed to stand.

The family tells their story here.

Fallout from Vermont Ruling on Unauthorized Vaccinations
by John Klar at Brownstone Institute - Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society

Paul Homewood wrote about poorly sited weather stations in Great Britain, thus making readings and climate data rather questionable.

The European Institute for Climate And Energy (EIKE) now reports of Great Britain’s phantom weather station network: one third of all its stations don’t actually exist. 

By Maurice Forgeng. Original article: Epoch Times here.

“All climate forecasts are based on more or less long-term documented measurements from weather stations. They can be used to determine past developments as well as possible trends in future local temperatures. Meteorologists also compile national and international trends based on the data from many measuring stations.”

“But what if much of this basic data is incorrect – or even made up? This is what journalist Ray Sanders claims about the measured values in the UK. According to his research, 103 of the 302 weather measuring stations in the United Kingdom do not exist at all. Nevertheless, they provide official data that is available to everyone on the website of the national weather authority.”

Sanders investigated the weather stations listed by the British Meteorological Service and found discrepancies in the data. For example, the Dungeness weather station supposedly on a nuclear power plant doesn’t exist. In fact, four out of eight stations in Kent do not exist  Also, coordinates for many stations are inaccurate.

The alleged location of a weather station is said to be on the roof of a nuclear power plant, according to the coordinates of the British Weather Service. Photo: Google Maps

The most egregious: Sanders had made several inquiries to the weather authority to obtain more detailed information about the weather stations. He reported in the open letter: “Of the 302 locations mentioned, over a third (103) do NOT exist. The Met Office refused to tell me exactly how or where the alleged ‘data’ for these 103 non-existent sites came from.”

Consequently. Sanders questions the scientific validity of the weather data, noting similar issues with weather data collection in the USA where authorities collect measurements for weather stations that have been out of operation for years or decades and corrections are regularly made to some temperature series.

In the USA, it has been noticed that older temperature values have almost invariably been made colder and more recent measurements warmer. This gives a clearer impression of a warming of the regions.

Full report at EIKE

Original report: at Epoch Times.

Peanut the Squirrel is back . . . at least in court.

The rodent has achieved fame in the last couple of months, which few animals short of Rin Tin Tin have reached. He is certainly the most famous of his genus since Rocket “Rocky” J. Squirrel. After Mark Longo and Daniela Bittner posted cute pictures of Peanut on social media as their companion and friend, New York officials from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) raided their home on Oct. 30 and seized both Peanut and a raccoon pet named Fred. They proceeded to euthanize both animals. Now the family is lawyering up.

Peanut’s killing outraged the nation and even became part of the presidential campaign as an example of out-of-control bureaucrats and thoughtless enforcement actions. Some defended the action. Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor Jen Rubin even posted that “The Maga squirrel deserved to die.”

Many even joked that Peanut’s ghost taunted Vice President Kamala Harris at her concession speech at Howard University. To protect such families in the future, a new law called the P’Nut Law has been introduced.

Many in the public saw the state’s action as unnecessary and excessive. Longo said he had taken the squirrel in after witnessing Peanut’s mother being hit by a car. When the squirrel refused to return to the wild, they adopted him as a pet in their home in rural Pine City, near the Pennsylvania border.

Peanut then became an internet sensation. Later, an Instagram page dedicated to him gained more than one million followers.

Longo and his wife established the animal sanctuary, called “P’Nut’s Freedom Farm,” last year, inspired by the squirrel.

Peanut even appeared in my torts class this term, posthumously, of course. He was part of a lesson on the classification of wild versus domestic animals for the purpose of animal liability. Domesticated animals like dogs are generally subject to a negligence standard absent a known vicious propensity. Wild animals are subject to a strict liability standard for any bites or injuries.

Even though Peanut was a pet, he was still considered a wild animal in New York, both by statute and common law.

The family, however, still believes that killing Peanut and Fred was unnecessary. They have now filed a notice of claim against the state for violating the couple’s rights by taking the animals, invasion of privacy, and trespass, among other claims.

The state will have the advantage on all of these claims despite the general condemnation for its actions or methods. The state insists that Peanut was killed to test it for rabies after it bit an officer, according to the New York Post. It has also previously stated the policy against such pet ownership on the website of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation:

“Inappropriate care given to young wildlife often results in abnormal attachment to humans. After release, some return to places where people live, only to be attacked by domestic animals or to be hit by cars. Some become nuisances getting into stored food, trash cans or dwellings. And some may be thrust as unwelcome intruders into the home range of another member of their species.”

Under Section 11-0512 of New York’s Environmental Conservation Law,

1. It shall be prohibited for any person to:

a. knowingly possess, harbor, sell, barter, transfer, exchange or import any wild animal for use as a pet in New York state, except as provided in subdivision three of this section; or

Section 2 does have exceptions for zoos, research centers, and other categories, but none would fit this family. They would not qualify as a “wildlife sanctuary” under subdivision thirty-two of section 11-0103.

The family is expressing doubts over that account and accusing the government of the “fabrication of evidence.” They note that trained officers should have been able to handle such animals safely and that none of this was necessary in the first place. Nora Constance Marino told Fox

“[i]t appears as though there were multiple constitutional law violations here — or at the very least, there are many questions as to why the government chose the actions that they chose. Entering someone’s house and searching it is such an extreme violation of that person’s right to privacy, and that’s why we have a Fourth Amendment, to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Likewise, there are many questions as to why Peanut and Fred were killed. There was no reason, whatsoever, to believe that either animal had rabies, and killing the animals was outside the scope of the warrant. My clients have suffered greatly and continue to suffer, from what appears to be egregious government conduct. Government wields great power, and if left unchecked, can have disastrous results for citizens.  That’s what makes our United States Constitution so precious, and it needs to be honored.”

I appreciate the effort, but Marino has what Peanut would call a tough nut to crack legally. The state will argue that the housing of wild animals presents a threat to not just the family but any visitors of bites and even disease. The courts will be reluctant to make an exception for individual pets like Peanut.

Marino, however, is wisely focusing on more technical issues on the scope of the warrant and the means used for the seizure. Again, however, there is an ample level of discretion afforded to public officials in carrying out such tasks if the warrant is valid. One question is whether the family can make any proprietary or personal claim to ownership of the squirrel. Most states prohibit the possession of wild animals as pets absent a permit or special status.

Of course, if they can make it through a motion to dismiss, the family might be able to get discovery on what occurred behind the scenes that led up to the killing of both animals. It is not clear why Fred was also euthanized, but the state may claim that it was precautionary given the fear of rabies in Peanut. However, Peanut did not appear to have rabies, and the state law allows for quarantine and observation as an alternative to euthanasia in some circumstances.

Obviously, the cost of litigation is unlikely to be small peanuts. However, there is a GoFundMe site in the memory of Peanut and Fred.

 

We were told this "art" was going to sell for around $1.5 million.

A police raid on a pensioner for calling a Green Cabinet Minister a "moron" online has shone an overdue spotlight on Germany's repressive speech laws that ban insulting politicians, says Eugyppius.

The post Police Raid on Pensioner for Calling Green Cabinet Minister a “Moron” Shines Spotlight on Germany’s Repressive Speech Laws appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

I didn't know if we could trust them, nobody knew if we could trust them.

If true, jail is probably in order for at least one person.

Shocking evidence has emerged that points to the U.K. Met Office inventing temperature data from over 100 non-existent weather stations. One such 'ghost' station, Dungeness, closed in 1986 but still reports "observations".

The post Science Shock: U.K. Met Office is “Inventing” Temperature Data from 100 Non-Existent Stations appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

This is your government at work, people.

Canadian doctors are starting to regret euthanizing their non-terminally ill patients.

 

By James D. Agresti October 30, 2024 Credit: NYCStock/Shutterstock.com Overview Massive government-funded media outlets and other information powerbrokers are keeping Americans in the dark about the prevalence of illegal voting by non-citizens. They are doing this by betraying a core rule of honest journalism: “No story is fair if it omits facts of major importance or significance.” Such deceitful reporting is impairing the integrity of the U.S. electoral system by enabling illegal voting to go unchecked. This fraud negates the votes of U.S. citizens, thus usurping their Constitutional right to vote. Background In May 2024, Just Facts published an eye-opening study which found that roughly:

• 2 to 5 million non-citizens are illegally registered to vote in the United States.
• 1.0 to 2.7 million of them will illegally vote in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections unless better anti-fraud measures are implemented.

The study went viral with influential people, organizations, news outlets, and websites citing it. This includes U.S. Senator Mike Lee, Heritage Foundation legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky, the Daily Wire, True the Vote, the Republican National Committee, the New York Post, Leading Report, Maria Bartiromo, and a post on X with more than 24 million views due to a repost by Elon Musk. Underscoring the study’s reach and import, it was attacked by the New York Times, Snopes, the Cato Institute, and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. In June, Just Facts published an article that systematically debunked their arguments. Now, a new gamut of organizations are assailing the study, including:

• NPR and the BBC, two of the world’s largest taxpayer-funded media outlets.
• the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, a non-profit liberal legal powerhouse that had $109 million in revenues during 2023.
• NewsGuard, an organization that partners with government agencies like the State Department, Department of Defense, and World Health Organization to allegedly “counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies.”

Despite the massive resources of these organizations, their attacks on the study consisted of discredited arguments that have already been refuted by documented facts. Furthermore, these facts are unavoidable to anyone who simply reads the study and an article linked at the bottom of it in a note that says, “Just Facts has published a thorough rebuttal to critiques of this study.” The Cato Institute Among the most naive of their arguments, Allison Anderman, an attorney who writes for the Brennan Center, claims that Just Facts’ study is wrong because “the conservative Cato Institute” says so. Likewise, Meta’s Chief AI Scientist, an NYU professor named Yann LeCun, argues that “even the conservative Cato Institute knows that the numbers of non-citizens who vote are so infinitesimally small as to be completely inconsequential.” Above and beyond the fact that Just Facts has already debunked Cato’s arguments, the Cato Institute is not conservative. Rather, it is libertarian, and it is so far left on the issue of immigration that it lobbies for open borders. Those facts are hard to miss given that the second paragraph of the “About Us” page on Cato’s website states that it “promotes libertarian ideas,” and a commentary on the website by Cato’s VP of research is titled, “Forget the Wall Already, It’s Time for the U.S. to Have Open Borders.” In other words, these scholars—one of whom leads the creation of artificial intelligence for the world’s largest social media company—failed to conduct even basic research or are deliberately misleading their readers. “Selected the Wrong Box” A common thread among the attacks on Just Facts’ study is the allegation that certain scholars previously debunked it. In the words of NPR reporter Jude Joffe-Block, Just Facts’ study is based on “discredited estimates” from a “widely contested 2014 paper” that was rejected by 200 political scientists in “an open letter.” More specifically, Joffe-Block claims that the 2014 study “was methodologically unsound because” it was based on a large survey in which “a small subset of people who reported being noncitizen voters could easily have been citizens who had simply selected the wrong box.” In reality, that claim has always been questionable and is irrelevant to Just Facts’ study, which uses data from 2022. Here are the pivotal facts that NPR, the BBC, the Brennan Center, and NewsGuard kept from their audiences:

• The authors of the 2014 paper, published by the academic journal Electoral Studies, foresaw and refuted that argument in an appendix of the study.
• Critics attacked the 2014 paper without acknowledging—much less addressing—the facts that appeared in its appendix and five other publications that rebutted their argument.
• Their argument is inapplicable to Just Facts’ study, which is based on data from a 2022 survey in which “multiple citizenship questions” were asked to “limit the possibility of honest mistakes by survey respondents.”

All of those facts are readily available and documented with links to primary sources in Just Facts’ study and its rebuttal to critics. Yet, Joffe-Block, who claims to be a journalist “specializing in deeply reported stories,” simply ignores these facts. Even more misleading, NewsGuard’s article falsely claims that Just Facts’ study “heavily relied” on survey data from “2008 and 2010” that was used in the “2014 study.” A simple read of Just Facts’ study shows that isn’t true. Moreover, the study provides a spreadsheet that proves:

• 100% of the data on non-citizen voter registration is from a 2022 survey.
• one of the study’s formulas uses data from the 2014 study to calculate a denominator, and if this figure were affected by the error that critics imagine, it would actually decrease the non-citizen voter registration rate.

Remarkably, NewsGuard’s article was written by seven authors, none of whom detected this blatant falsehood. This includes Senior Staff Analyst Chiara Vercellone, Politics Editor Sam Howard, Editor McKenzie Sadeghi, Staff Analyst Coalter Palmer, Staff Analyst Sofia Rubinson, Senior Analyst Becca Schimmel, and News Verification Reporter Sarah Komar. “One Percent” Among those who downplay illegal voting by non-citizens, another common claim is that the lead author of the 2014 paper has dramatically reduced his estimate of non-citizen voter registration from 25% to 1%. In the 2014 paper, Dr. Jesse Richman and two of his colleagues at Old Dominion University and George Mason University found that “roughly one quarter of non-citizens” in the U.S. “were likely registered to vote.” In contrast, Richman estimated in a 2023 report that “approximately one percent of non-citizens” are registered to vote. According to BBC reporter Mike Wendling, who is the “co-founder of the BBC’s disinformation unit,” Richman used “more recent” data to “conclude in 2023 that 1% of non-citizens were registered to vote.” In reality, Richman’s figure of 1% is based on measures that lowball the rate of non-citizen voter registration. This is proven by:

• a statement from Richman in which he admitted that he tried to “minimize the risk that the estimate could be biased upwards” for a “court case,” thus creating “an increased risk that the estimate could be biased downwards.”
• an extensive appendix by Just Facts that details how the 1% figure is based on narrow or distorted measures that underestimate the rate of non-citizen voter registration.

Even though these facts are plainly stated and thoroughly documented in Just Facts’ study, Wendling chose to ignore them even after Just Facts President Jim Agresti reiterated them to Wendling in a recorded interview and an email. Instead of presenting these facts, Wendling wrote that “Agresti said that his own calculations produced a number that was at the very least ten times” the 1% figure. When Wendling did this, he stripped out the hyperlinks that Agresti provided to him. This created the illusion that Agresti made a totally unsupported claim, when in reality, he presented a thoroughly documented fact. This kind of link-purging is a common ploy of “fact checkers” and journalists. More Falsehoods and Half-Truths Other fact-deficient canards used by NPR, the BBC, NewsGuard, and/or the Brennan Center include the following:

• It’s “not possible to draw statistical conclusions from a relatively small number of survey participants”—when in fact—the survey in Just Facts’ study is large enough to measure statistically significant nationwide results with at least 95% confidence.
• The survey “does not constitute a representative sample of the population” —when in fact—the evidence suggests it does.
• Just Facts is merely a “website”—when in fact—it is a research and educational institute that has been cited, complimented, and commended by a diverse array of scholars, peer-reviewed journals, major media outlets, government entities, and think tanks.
• Just Facts is a “pro-Trump” organization—when in fact—it recently published an article that refutes Trump’s false claims about violent crime, a post that critiques his plan for “tax cuts,” and a video documenting that he contributed to inflation.
• “Investigations into voter rolls show very few immigrants registered to vote and even fewer voting”—when in fact—the ability to vet the rolls is severely limited by lax voter registration laws, rampant identity fraud among illegal immigrants, and the refusal of certain states and the Biden administration to release data on the citizenship status of voters.

Conclusion In a recent interview on CBS News, Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, claimed there are “no facts underlying” the assertion that “non-citizens are going to vote.” Although Mayorkas’ claim is belied by numerous facts, he can slip this falsehood past all Americans who trust the information powerbrokers that hide vital facts about this issue from their audiences.

What’s the most radical part of Kamala Harris’ agenda?

I’m tempted to say it’s what she has said about wanting the Marxist notion of “equality of outcomes.”

But I suspect (or hope!) that’s just empty campaign rhetoric.

If we look at the specific ideas she has proposed, she was definitely radical when she rain in 2020, embracing crazy ideas like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All.

For the most part, she has been more cautious this year. She has a leftist agenda, but it’s mostly focused on incremental statism, such as partial price controls, more redistribution, and higher corporate tax rates.

But she has one idea that is breathtakingly bad. She wants the IRS to tax unrealized capital gains, which means that if you own an asset that increases in value from one year to the next, the government would tax that difference.

I opined about the Harris proposal for the U.K.-based Telegraph newspaper. I started by warning that both presidential candidates have been furiously trying to buy votes (last month, I wrote that this is America’s “Santa Claus election”).

Election years can be dangerous because politicians have extra incentive to push bad policies. Donald Trump has floated all sorts of gimmicky tax cuts, such as ending taxes on tips, Social Security, and overtime pay. …Needless to say, Trump has not proposed a single penny of savings on the spending side of the budget. To the contrary, he actually wants to further expand the burden of government. …What about Kamala Harris? She’s also playing Santa Claus, having proposed several trillion dollars of additional redistribution spending. She intends to finance some of that new spending with various class-warfare taxes such as higher personal tax rates and higher business tax rates.

I then explain that one of her tax increases is the radical scheme to tax gains that exist only on paper.

…Harris is also proposing to impose a 25 per cent tax on unrealised capital gains. If an affected taxpayer owns an asset that increases in value from Year 1 to Year 2, that “gain” would be subject to the 25 per cent tax even though nothing has been sold and the taxpayer doesn’t have any additional money.

I give five reasons why her proposal is absurd.

First, it will reduce investment, which will reduce productivity, which will reduce wages.

…it is bad for workers to impose higher taxes on investment and entrepreneurship. The Veep’s proposed tax on unrealised gains would exacerbate the US tax code’s bias against saving and investment… This means less money being set aside to finance productivity-enhancing inventions, innovations, and industry.

Second, the plan would dramatically increase the complexity of a tax code that already is a convoluted nightmare:

…the tax would be an administrative nightmare. Taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service would have to squabble every year over the value of a taxpayer’s assets. …Tax lawyers and accountants are probably salivating at the thought of this plan becoming law.

Third, it is disturbingly close to a punitive wealth tax:

…a tax on unrealised capital gains could be viewed as a backdoor wealth tax. …The only difference is that it would be a tax on changes in wealth rather than a tax on the stock of wealth.

Fourth, it is so radical that no other country has made this mistake:

…no nation in the world has ever tried to impose a tax on unrealised gains. Even hard-core Leftist governments such as Venezuela have never contemplated such an intrusive and destructive levy.

Fifth, Harris says only rich taxpayers will be affected, but experience teaches us that it will merely be a matter of time before others are hit as well.

…supporters of the tax claim that it would only apply to…less than 1 per cent of the population. That may sound reassuring to ordinary voters … until they realise that the first income tax back in 1913 also applied to less than 1 per cent of households. Yet that “tax on the rich” eventually morphed into the monstrous internal revenue code.

The bottom line is that there should not be any capital gains tax. It’s a very destructive form of double taxation. As such, the Harris plan to expand this destructive levy is a “nutty idea.”

P.S. A lot of my lefty friends are upset that the Washington Post is not endorsing Harris. My personal theory is that the owner, Jeff Bezos, is very aware that the Vice President’s plan would be very bad for his personal finances and (since we already know he seeks to protect his money) he has rationally responded.

P.P.S. One of the worst features of the capital gains tax is that there’s no protection against inflation, so politicians win from bad monetary policy. That unfair policy will be exacerbated by the Harris proposal.

The Biden-Harris Administration Wasted Nearly $1 Billion on Misinformation
by Ian Miller at Brownstone Institute

The party of "Science" apparently misled hundreds of millions of people on the actual science surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. Stop the presses.

Starting in early 2020, the combined efforts of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and their partners in the media caused an untold amount of damage to society and public health and might have even created conditions for increased Covid spread. How? By repeatedly, profoundly, and often purposefully communicating inaccurate information while spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get their preferred messages across.

Now, a new, massive 113-page report from the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee has detailed the remarkable abuses from the Biden-Harris administration and the manner in which they communicated during Covid. 

Biden, CDC Partners Literally Wasted a Fortune to Lie to the American People

The report details a number of unbelievable inaccuracies in 2021 coming from the Biden administration's communications team and the CDC's messaging apparatus. Fauci and Francis Collins' National Institutes of Health were also responsible, creating guidance using taxpayer money, nearly $1 billion per the report, that misled millions of people and caused unimaginable harm in the process.

While the Biden-Harris administration’s public health guidance led to prolonged closures of schools and businesses, the NIH was spending nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money trying to manipulate Americans with advertisements—sometimes containing erroneous or unproven information. By overpromising what the Covid-19 vaccines could do—in direct contradiction of the FDA’s authorizations—and over emphasizing the virus’s risk to children and young adults, the Biden-Harris administration caused Americans to lose trust in the public health system," Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said after the report's release. "Our investigation also uncovered the extent to which public funding went to Big Tech companies to track and monitor Americans, underscoring the need for stronger online data privacy protections."

One of the most damaging, and woefully incorrect messaging campaigns centered on vaccine efficacy against infection. As the report details, Biden's "Stop the Spread" campaign was a pervasive marketing effort in conjunction with the CDC that claimed vaccines would end the pandemic by reducing infections. That had enormous knock-on effects, including decreasing trust in all vaccinations and ultimately harming public health.

"The entire premise of the Biden-Harris ‘Stop the Spread’ campaign was that if you got vaccinated for COVID-19, you could resume daily activities because they said vaccinated people would not spread the disease," said Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA). "Despite lacking scientific basis, the administration bought into this CDC claim and misled the American public. As a result, vaccination coverage with other vaccines appears to have declined, I believe because of a growing distrust of information coming from our public health institutions."

This campaign was even more disingenuous and purposefully misleading than previously realized. The "Stop the Spread" publicity blitz hid in plain sight a message from the CDC that even they didn't know whether the vaccines actually stopped infection or transmission. The report shared a screenshot of a page from the Biden administration's marketing that specifically said "science" wasn't sure how well the vaccines worked against infection. 

Yet the Biden administration made life-altering policy decisions such as vaccine mandates, discriminatory entry processes, and military vaccination requirements regardless. And that was in addition to the less quantifiable impacts like nudging millions of people to follow their preferred course of action.

CDC Guidance Exacerbated Existing Problems

The report also explains how the Biden administration relied heavily on guidance from the CDC, an organization that thoroughly disgraced itself during the pandemic. There were several examples highlighted, chief among them that CDC “experts” went far beyond what even the FDA claimed Covid vaccines could do.

Without evidence, the report says Biden's marketing claimed that “COVID vaccines were highly effective against transmission.” Within just a few months, it was clear that all the available evidence pointed towards the exact opposite direction. Per the report, this had a “negative impact on vaccine confidence and the CDC’s credibility when proven untrue.” 

The CDC also had “inconsistent and flawed messaging about the effectiveness of masks,” which created seemingly endless mandates and, again, overconfidence in an ineffective policy. Some of those mandates even continue to this day.

That's just the tip of their misinformation. A wealth of data and public embarrassments for the CDC confirmed that the organization “consistently overstated the risk of COVID-19 to children," the report states. That fear-mongering had disastrous consequences, from unnecessarily terrifying parents to prolonged school closures and lack of socialization—setting an entire generation of children back in the process.

Still, after being repeatedly and profoundly proven wrong, the CDC has demonstrated they've yet to learn their lesson. In late 2024, the CDC continues to recommend Covid-19 vaccines for babies starting at six months old. That makes the US a global outlier compared to European nations that have maintained at least some level of intellectual honesty.

How Do We Fix CDC Abuses?

The report detailed several recommendations to fix these organizations after their disastrous work during the pandemic. Even implementing just a select few, listed below, would do wonders for fixing the institutional rot that influenced these mistakes. 

• Congress should consider clarifying responsibility for evaluating the safety of vaccines and streamlining existing reporting systems for capturing vaccine injuries and adverse reactions.
• HHS and its agencies should embrace a culture of transparency and accountability.
• The CDC and federal public health officials should not attempt to silence dissenting scientific opinions.

Also highlighted in the report is how the CDC and NIH used their weight in their attempts to censor scientists who dissented from their preferred narratives. Beyond their mistakes, profound inaccuracies, and nearly unlimited spending, their censorship efforts are equally concerning.

As we learned during Covid, if there's one thing “experts” hate, it's being told that they were proven wrong. Instead of learning, adjusting, and apologizing, they move to censor, criticize and mislead. This new report is the latest confirmation of these unacceptable “mistakes." And reaffirms the importance of ensuring they never happen again.

Republished from the author's Substack

The Biden-Harris Administration Wasted Nearly $1 Billion on Misinformation
by Ian Miller at Brownstone Institute - Daily Economics, Policy, Public Health, Society

Just 11% of 'flu' cases are caused by the influenza virus – no wonder the vaccines don't work, say Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan. But it's convenient for politicians and pharma companies to convince us they do.

The post Just 11% of ‘Flu’ Cases Are Caused by Influenza. No Wonder the Vaccines Don’t Work appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

On Tuesday, November 5, Americans will go to the polls and choose their next president. We can only hope there will be no allegations of vote-rigging.

There is, however, one group of U.S. citizens who already knows their vote will be rigged. I’m referring to the 3.2 million residents of Puerto Rico. (My maternal grandparents migrated from Puerto Rico in the 1950s.) Because Puerto Rico is a “commonwealth” of the United States, rather than a state, Puerto Ricans cannot vote in federal elections. But they do get to vote in local elections, which this year includes a nonbinding referendum on the island’s political status—the seventh such referendum in its history. 

When they walk into the polling booth on Election Day, Puerto Ricans will be offered three possibilities: (1) statehood, (2) complete independence from the U.S., and (3) sovereignty that includes an ongoing association with the United States. What they will not see is the option of maintaining the status quo. 

In previous referendums, the status quo—remaining a commonwealth—has been among the most popular options. So why would the latest referendum suddenly exclude this option? Because the Democratic Party, in concert with Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood party, have designed it that way. There is no other way to describe it: They have rigged the vote to give the statehood option a decisive advantage—and they have done it in plain sight. 

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(a) I overheads an interview (by Caroline Glick) with a Jewish online Arabic and English teacher who recounts his discussions in Arabic with Muslims online.

One thing really stuck out: a girl from [East-]Jerusalem who told him the first Temple was actually the first Al-Aqsa Mosque [!], built by Suleiman, who was actually a Muslim after all! [Yeah, and was reincarnated as Neil Peart ;)]

He goes on to explain that Islamic theology makes a distinction between the Banu Izrail, who were the chosen people as long as they were [proto-]Muslims (!) — and the Yahud who were those of the B”I who strayed from the true path and corrupted the Tawrat/Torah. This is how you can find Muslims named after Jewish prophets who nevertheless hate Jews.

[And yes, there are exceptions: some of his Muslim online buddies did not make this distinctions, and I know of a handful of Islamic clerics who do not either, such as “the Zionist Imam” Ahmed al-Adwan in Jordan, Sheikh Abdulhazi Palazzi in Italy, and the “Reform Imam” Tawhidi in Australia. Wikipedia, caveat lector as always, has an entry on “Muslim Zionism“.]

But the “mainstream” position is really a “version on steroids” of the early Christian (originally Catholic) concept of supercessionism (a.k.a. “replacement theology”): the Jews of the Old Testament (a.k.a. Tanakh) were the Old Israel, and the One Holy Catholic [=literally: universal] and Apostolic Church was the New Israel, and the old Covenant is superceded by the New Covenant.

Starting with the 2nd Vatican Council, and especially under Pope John-Paul II, the Catholic Church has turned away from this towards a kind of dual-covenant theology (i.e., for Jews and Jews only, the Old Covenant is still in force).

Islam, of course, sees itself as superceding both Judaism and Christianity.

(b) Who’s actually running the USA, wonders John Richardson. An unaccountable bureaucracy?

Now who actually came up with this term, “bureaucracy”? Turns out, it goes back to the same Frenchman who coined the term “laissez-faire” economics, Jacques Vincent de Gournay. (1712-1759).

Gournay was appointed an intendant du commerce in 1751. One of the main themes of his term in office was his opposition to government regulations because of what he saw as the way they stunted commerce. He coined the term bureaucratie (literally “government by desks”) to describe the situation.^[4] Gournay’s disdain for government regulation of commerce influenced his disciple Turgot.^[5]

Emma has strong feelings about abortion: She wears T-shirts that say things like “Pro-life and Proud.” A devout Catholic, she is a trustee of a pro-life activism group and regularly holds planning meetings at her flat in Edinburgh, Scotland. On her way to work at an office in the center of town, the 24-year-old passes the abortion facility at nearby Chalmers Hospital. Sometimes, she prays with rosary beads as she walks by.

But now she’s worried she could get arrested in her neighborhood—for wearing that T-shirt, for holding those meetings, or even for praying in her head.

On October 4, Emma, who asked not to be named, got a letter from the Scottish government. Addressed “Dear Resident,” its purpose was to alert her that her home, due to its proximity to the hospital, is now in an abortion censorship zone.  

This is due to the UK’s brand-new “Safe Access” law, which came into effect September 24 and made it a criminal offense to do anything within 200 meters of an abortion facility that could “influence” someone’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate an abortion. In the Scottish government’s letter, Emma read that even “activities in a private place (such as a house) within the area could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the Zone and are done intentionally or recklessly.”

“You can report a group or an individual that you think is breaking the law,” the letter added, before providing instructions on how to do so.

Emma couldn’t believe her eyes. The law carries a maximum fine of £10,000 (over $13,000). In June, it passed in The Scottish Parliament by 118 votes to one, following in the footsteps of Northern Ireland, which became the first country in the UK to enforce abortion censorship legislation last year. The rest of the UK is doing the same: On October 31, a similar law will come into effect in England and Wales; it was passed by Parliament in 2023. In these countries, the fine will be unlimited. 

All of this legislation codifies—on a national level—a trend that has been creeping across the UK for a decade. Ten years ago, in 2014, Parliament empowered local councils to create and police their own antisocial behavior laws. The intention was to enhance “the professional capabilities and integrity of the police.” But since 2018, five UK districts have used these powers to aggressively limit what people can do, say, and even think, near abortion clinics. I spoke to four people who have fallen afoul of these restrictions, and a disturbing pattern emerged.

In November 2022, Adam Smith-Connor, now 51, a physiotherapist and veteran, was interrogated by local authorities in Bournemouth, on the south coast of England, which had recently introduced an abortion censorship zone. His alleged crime was silently praying for three minutes while 50 meters from an abortion clinic. When council officers asked, “What is the nature of your prayer?” he replied: “I am praying for my son who is deceased,” referring to his unborn child that he and his then-girlfriend decided to abort two decades ago. 

Smith-Connor was charged with breaching the censorship zone. Earlier this month, on October 16, he was convicted and ordered to pay £9,000 (roughly $11,700) toward the prosecution’s legal fees. He set up a page on a crowdfunding website, which raised the fee within hours. He and the lawyer supporting him are considering an appeal. 

The same day, also in Bournemouth, the trial of Livia Tossici-Bolt was due to begin. The retired scientist, who’s 64, faces the same charges as Smith-Connor, but her alleged offense is standing outside an abortion clinic in March 2023 with a sign that simply read: “Here to talk, if you want.” (Her trial was postponed to March 2025, to give both legal teams time to consider the implications of Smith-Connor’s verdict.)

Around the same time, in Birmingham—the UK’s second-largest city—Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, 47, was arrested for silently praying outside an abortion clinic. (More about her case later.)

Watch Vaughan-Spruce tell her story below:

Meanwhile Father Sean Gough, 34, was charged with two counts of silent prayer in the same city, as well as parking near an abortion clinic with an “Unborn lives matter” bumper sticker, and holding a sign that read: “Praying for free speech.”

And just over a year ago, in October 2023, a pro-life volunteer named Patrick Parkes, 57, was praying silently outside an abortion clinic in Birmingham when police threatened him with a fine.

Their instruction to him? “Kindly move elsewhere outside the exclusion zone where you’ve got your human rights.” 

Read more

Studies that reach politically inconvenient conclusions are sometimes buried. A researcher found that giving transgender kids puberty blockers doesn’t improve their mental health, but she hasn’t published the results, because they undermine the case for transitioning kids from one gender to another. She’s keeping the results hidden even though she received $9.7 million from the […]

The post Study finding no benefits from puberty blockers is left unpublished for political reasons, after receiving $9.7 million in federal funds appeared first on Liberty Unyielding.