By Jacob Greer, reasonJune 17, 2024.
excerpt:
Since last March, the Australian state of Victoria has been rocked by a series of arson attacks and bombings targeting extortion victims and those caught in an escalating turf war between rival gangs. Two men with links to organised crime have been arrested. Publicly Murderedmidday photograph At a shopping mall in suburban Melbourne, violent clashes are not uncommon in organised crime, but the drug at the centre of this one – nicotine – is unusual.
DRH says: The Australian government could have responded by removing the regulations that created the problem in the first place, but instead decided to take the Saudi Arabian approach.
The new bill, expected to pass the Australian Senate, More drastic measures“The government has warned that anyone caught importing, manufacturing or supplying e-cigarette products without a licence, or possessing commercial quantities of such products, will face prison sentences,” Health Minister Mark Butler said. explanation Penalties include up to seven years in prison and fines of up to $2.2 million. “We are committed to eliminating the public health threat of recreational vaping,” Butler said. The bill includes an exemption for personal use, but as currently written, possession of even non-commercial amounts of vaping products could result in up to a year in prison.
By Jeffrey H. Anderson Thomas D. KlingensteinJune 20, 2024.
HHS is now bold Assert PEPFAR has saved “more than 25 million lives.” The only basis for this dubious claim seems to be that more than 25 million people (including unborn children) received antiviral drugs. HHS is apparently making two assumptions: that all of these people would have died without the drugs, and that all of them subsequently survived because of the drugs. This passes for HHS scientific rigor.
In both the AIDS and COVID-19 crises, Fauci and his allies opposed the use of cheap, repurposed drugs to help people’s immune systems fight off the threats. Kennedy argues that they were motivated by a desire to get medicines, both antivirals and vaccines, to market without facing cheaper competition, because some of Big Pharma’s profits go into the pockets of public health officials. Indeed, NBC News Reports NIH researchers personally receive $150,000 a year in royalties on drugs they help develop at taxpayer expense. In 2004, NIH researchers pocketed a combined $8.9 million, according to NBC. This is separate from their taxpayer-paid salaries. More recently, COVID-19 vaccine royalties appear to have benefited the NIH quite a bit, with institution-wide royalties (not just the portion paid to employees) reaching $150,000 in 2022 and 2023. It soared This is a nine-fold increase compared to the pre-COVID year of 2019.
Instead of debating Duesberg and presenting compelling evidence to refute him, public health officials simply banished him. Kennedy, along with Larry King, Good morning, America He had planned a joint appearance with Fauci and Duesberg, but he canceled Duesberg’s appearance at the last minute, giving the stage to Fauci (presumably at Fauci’s insistence). When Reagan wanted to have the two of them have a “friendly debate” before him, he wrote, the idea was scrapped after Fauci, in the words of a member of the Reagan administration, “threw a bit of a temper tantrum…and questioned why the White House was meddling in a scientific matter.” (Imagine the audacity of a president wanting an executive branch official to defend his theory on one of the most pressing issues of the day!)
DRH Note: Quoting from this review does not mean that I endorse everything RFK Jr. says. I think he and the reviewer have great insight.
By Emma Camp reasonJune 21, 2014.
excerpt:
The federal budget deficit is projected to reach nearly $2 trillion by 2024. prediction The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced this week. In February, the office Predicted The deficit had been expected to stay at just $1.58 trillion, but increased spending has caused the projected deficit to rise by $400 billion, a staggering 27% increase.
According to the CBO, 80% of the jump in budget deficits comes from four sources of government spending.
The largest source of the increase, $145 billion, is changes to the federal student loan program that will result in a large number of federal student loan forgivenesses and increasing amounts of forgiveness in the future.
By Sharon Lerner ProPublicaMay 20, 2024.
excerpt:
Chris Hansen had been working as a chemist at 3M for about a year when he was given a strange assignment by his boss, an affable senior scientist named Jim Johnson. 3M invented Scotch tape and Post-it notes, and sold everything from sandpaper to kitchen sponges. But on this day in 1997, Johnson asked Hansen to test human blood for chemical contamination.
Some of 3M’s most successful products contained man-made compounds called fluorides. In a spray called Scotchgard, fluorides protected leather and fabrics from stains. In a coating known as Scotchban, they kept food packaging from getting wet. In soap foam used by firefighters, they helped put out jet fuel fires. Johnson explained to Hansen that one of the company’s fluoride compounds, PFOS (short for perfluorooctane sulfonate), was frequently finding its way into the bodies of 3M factory workers. They were unscathed, he said, but he had recently hired an outside lab to measure the levels in their blood. But the lab had just reported something strange. For comparison, he tested blood samples from the American Red Cross, which were collected from the general public and should not have contained fluoride. But the contaminants kept turning up in their blood.
DRH Note: This is the first time I’ve linked to a ProPublica article without critical comment. I found the article compelling, despite my own shoddy tax disclosure ethics and poor analytical skills.
As for the last two items above, as Arnold Kling would say, “Have a nice day.”
