The People v. the Permanent Government (2)

Part 2 of the story behind the Trump administration's battle with the U.S. administrative state

[continued from part 1].

The Systematic Unraveling of the Administrative State | Brownstone Institute | Jeffrey Tucker:

July 13, 2025 - "After four years in exile, Trump and his team plotted their revenge. It was clear to everyone that this issue was fundamental. He would have to risk it all by putting the question to the Supreme Court. He did this by issuing a record number of executive orders that pertained to the executive branch, all of which would presume that he could act like a president. 

"Trump’s team had predicted a flurry of lawsuits followed by injunctions, very much like what had happened in 2019-2020. This time, however, they would lawyer up and drive the question to the top. It was a huge gamble but it has turned out well. They knew that the structure of the status quo was completely indefensible from a Constitutional point of view. 

"The most recent blow to the administrative state gets to the heart of the issue. In Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees (July 8, 2025), the Supreme Court backed the right of the president to engage in mass firings of federal employees. There was only one dissenting vote from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the judge who had reversed other Trump orders when she was a DC district judge. 

"Jackson’s dissent tries to make sense of the 4th branch of government. 'Under our Constitution, Congress has the power to establish administrative agencies and detail their functions,' she wrote. Thus, over the past century, Presidents who have attempted to reorganize the Federal Government have first obtained authorization from Congress to do so.' Lacking such authorization, she says, the Court should embrace the 'harm-reducing preservation of the status quo.'

"After all, she warns, 'This executive action promises mass employee terminations, widespread cancellation of federal programs and services, and the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it'.... There we go: the very core of the central-planning beast is at risk. At least she does understand the stakes. 

"This latest ruling – with many more likely to follow – comes on the heels of a flurry of similar decisions including: Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (June 28, 2024), which overturned Chevron deference (1986), reducing agency interpretive authority, shifting power from agencies to other branches (judiciary and executive, respectively); SEC v. Jarkesy (June 27, 2024), which limited agencies’ use of in-house adjudication, enhancing judicial oversight; Corner Post, Inc. v. Federal Reserve (July 1, 2024), which expanded opportunities to challenge old regulations; Ohio v. EPA (June 27, 2024), which enforced strict APA compliance, curbing regulatory overreach; Garland v. Cargill (June 14, 2024), involving restricted agency statutory interpretations; Trump v. CASA (June 27, 2025), which curbed nationwide injunctions, strengthening executive action; and City and County of San Francisco v. EPA (March 4, 2025), which narrowed the EPA’s regulatory scope.

"This has all happened with remarkable speed – in the course of one year. The regime of one hundred years has suddenly fundamentally changed to fit more precisely with what the Framers designed. It amounts to a counter-coup against the tyranny of experts and the convoluted systems of compulsion and control they had carefully constructed. Even if we do not yet feel the effects, the ground has shifted beneath our feet. 

"It’s a myth that courts are merely looking at the law and ruling cases on their merits. They are subject to the pressures of public opinion and have proven deferential to the ethos of the times. That ethos has changed, suddenly and dramatically, and why? 

"From 2020 to 2023, with continued fallout today, the administrative state that had long ruled out of the public eye reached deep into the private affairs of every American. It closed the schools, churches, and businesses. It issued stay-at-home orders. It kidnapped family members into medical institutions, allowing no contact with family. It then mandated the injection of multitudes with an experimental shot that achieved nothing but left many harmed and others dead. 

"It is a measure of the arrogance and perceived hegemony of this machine – which extends from agencies to corporations to academia and the nonprofit sector – that so many within its ranks believe they could get away with all these outrages without consequence. Public rage followed, expressing itself in every possible way and demanding change. That change has begun. The conditions are in place for a much more dramatic change, which could happen later or possibly sooner. 

"The intricate networks of influence, graft, and quid pro quo, and surreptitious pillaging of the people’s resources and power, believed itself to be invulnerable, somewhat like the rulers of the old Soviet empire in the months before it fell apart. Every old regime has believed itself to be secure up to the moments when its leaders seek sanctuary and its minions flee to the hills....

"We’ve wondered for many years what the revolution would look like when it came home. We got a glimpse of this last week, when iPhone cameras recorded thousands of State Department employees carrying their belongings out in bankers’ boxes out the front doors of the palace that had long been their home. Live by administrative edicts; die by them." 

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Trust in medical profession plummets in USA

In the past four years in the United States, public opinion of doctors and hospitals has changed from majority trust to majority mistrust.

Trust in Doctors and Hospitals Plummets | Brownstone Institute | Josh Stevenson:   

September 5, 2024 - "A new paper in JAMA analyzes survey respondents in the US over the period of time right after the Covid pandemic started in April 2020 and through early 2024. It reveals a significant decline in trust in physicians and hospitals, dropping from 71.5% in April 2020, to 40.1% in January 2024. Lower trust levels were strongly associated with reduced likelihood of receiving Covid-19 vaccinations and boosters.... 

"One incredibly interesting part of this study was the revealing of the open-text responses that survey respondents gave for their lack of trust. From the supplement, here are the top 4 themes why patients have lost trust. 

1. Financial Motives Over Patient Care: This theme includes perceptions of healthcare as primarily profit-driven, where financial incentives outweigh patient welfare. Respondents believe that decisions are made based on profitability rather than the best interests of patients.
2. Poor Quality of Care and Negligence: Responses that mention experiences of neglect, inadequate care, misdiagnosis, or dismissive attitudes from healthcare providers fall under this category. This also includes perceptions of healthcare professionals not listening or taking patient concerns seriously. 
3. Influence of External Entities and Agendas: Here, the focus is on the belief that decisions in healthcare are unduly influenced by pharmaceutical companies, government entities, or other external powers. This includes suspicions of dishonesty or withholding information for nonmedical reasons. 
4. Discrimination and Bias: Responses indicating experiences or beliefs that healthcare providers exhibit bias, discrimination, or lack of cultural competency. This can include racial discrimination, gender bias, or insensitivity to patient backgrounds.

"Another interesting analysis in the supplement was the inclusion of political affiliation. The tendency for Republicans and Independents to have lower trust overall than Democrats should not surprise anyone, as the polarization of vaccines, masks, and lockdowns made it clear that the left was in favor of doing anything at all in the name of combating Covid, no matter the cost.

"As we witnessed firsthand in 2020 and 2021, and even today, the condescension, overt political motivations, and outright derision directed at those who were rationally skeptical of a brand-new vaccine, masks, and the extreme and harmful lockdown policies by medical practitioners and hospital systems have finally led to an inevitable consequence: the public simply does not trust them anymore. And not by a small margin — there has been a massive swing from majority trust to majority distrust. For anyone who was paying attention, this is not shocking....

"I hope that the practitioners we truly need to rely on when we require medical care see this as a wake-up call and understand just how much damage they have done to their long-term doctor-patient relationships. Now, instead of starting from a place of trust, they are starting from a deficit. This is not just bad for their careers; it’s bad for the patients."

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Read study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2821693

Items of concern in new WHO regulations

U.S. think tank has concerns about amendments to World Health Organization (WHO) International Health Regulations adopted by the WHO's World Health Assembly on June 1.

Brownstone Institute wary of health regulations rammed through by WHO | Western Standard | Lee Harding:

August 18, 2024 - "A U.S. think tank is questioning the legitimacy of amendments to International Health Regulations made by the made by the World Health Organization on June 1. In a recent analysis [prepared by REPPARE (REevaluating the Pandemic Preparedness And REsponse agenda), a multidisciplinary team convened by the University of Leeds], the Brownstone Institute said negotiations surrounding the amendments were 'polemic, operating in a political environment that has largely stifled democratic deliberation, wider scientific and political consultation, and ultimately, legitimacy.'

"Although the legacy IHR (2005) says proposed changes must be finalized four months in advance of a vote (Art 55, Para 2), the text put to a vote was not available to the delegates of the World Health Assembly until the afternoon of the decision. 

"'This raises important questions about whether these eleventh-hour additions are based on sound evidentiary rationales and wider public health benefits, or whether they merely allow for a further concentration and potential misuse of power,' the Brownstone report explains.

"The IHRs are a set of rules for combating infectious diseases and acute health emergencies that are binding under international law, last revised in 2005. An initial compilation of reform proposals from December 2022 suggested that recommendations made by the WHO Director-General during an emergency would effectively become orders for member nations.... 

" [I]nternational backlash left the new IHR reforms significantly weakened. 'Nevertheless, they still contain some worrying points. For example, there is the introduction of a "pandemic emergency" whose definition is highly unspecific and whose consequences remain unclear, as well as new sections on increasing core competencies for public information control, capacity financing, and equitable access to vaccines," Brownstone warns.'.... 

"The new ['pandemic emergency'] designation would apply to an infectious pathogen with a wide geographical risk of spread that could overload health systems of affected states, and possibly have significant socio-economic impacts. 'This gives the WHO Director-General considerable scope for interpretation and is a reminder of how extensive restrictions on fundamental human rights were justified for over two years in many countries during the COVID-19 response, ... even at times of minimal transmission,' Brownstone warns.

"A fourth criterion concerns Brownstone even more: 'The health emergency in question "requires rapid, equitable and enhanced coordinated international action, with whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches"'.... The language echoes a WHO report from Wuhan in February 2020 where Chinese authorities were praised for their 'all-of-government and all-of-society approach'.... Only future agreements and implementation will show what the agreement really means....

"The new IHR requires states to offer access to health products and services and deal with misinformation and disinformation. Benchmarks updated in December 2023 include 'infodemic management," something Brownstone says has a dubious precedent. 'Emails published by Facebook as part of a court case reveal that the platform informed White House employees that it had inhibited the spread of posts claiming that natural immunity from infection was stronger than immunity from vaccination, even though this is very much an open question.'

"Brownstone expressed concerns that empowered governments could stifle legitimate speech to promote 'ulterior political motives'.... What political or bureaucratic body would decide the truth was another question.... '[T]his ambiguity has created an ongoing condition ripe for politicization, weaponization, and the abandonment of meaningful and open scientific discourse and policy reflection,' Brownstone said."

Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/brownstone-institute-wary-of-health-regulations-rammed-through-by-who/56856

Read report: https://brownstone.org/articles/questions-about-new-amendments-to-the-2024-ihrs/

How America went corporatist

"How did American capitalism become American corporatism? A little at a time and then all at once."

How Did American Capitalism Mutate Into American Corporatism? | Brownstone Institute | Jeffrey A. Tucker:

March 15, 2024 - "In the 1990s and for years into our century, it was common to ridicule the government for being technologically backwards. We were all gaining access to fabulous things, including webs, apps, search tools, and social media. But governments at all levels were stuck in the past using IBM mainframes and large floppy disks. We had a great time poking fun at them. I recall the days of thinking government would never catch up to the glories and might of the market itself. I wrote several books on it, full of techno-optimism. 

"The new tech sector had a libertarian ethos about it. They didn’t care about the government and its bureaucrats. They didn’t have lobbyists in Washington. They were the new technologies of freedom and didn’t care much about the old analogue world of command and control. They would usher in a new age of people power. 

"Here we sit a quarter-century later with documented evidence that the opposite happened. The private sector collects the data that the government buys and uses as a tool of control. What is shared and how many people see it is a matter of algorithms agreed upon by a combination of government agencies, university centers, various nonprofits, and the companies themselves. The whole thing has become an oppressive blob.... 

"Every major company that once stayed far away from Washington now owns a similar giant palace in or around D.C., and they collect tens of billions in government revenue. Government has now become a major customer, if not the main customer, of the services provided by the large social media and tech companies. They are advertisers but also massive purchasers of the main product too. 

"Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are the biggest winners of government contracts, according to a report from Tussel. Amazon hosts the data of the National Security Agency with a $10 billion contract, and gets hundreds of millions from other governments. We do not know how much Google has received from the US government, but it is surely a substantial share of the $694 billion the federal government hands out in contracts. Microsoft also has a large share of government contracts. In 2023, the US Department of Defense awarded the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability contract to Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle. The contract is worth up to $9 billion and provides the Department of Defense with cloud services. It’s just the beginning. The Pentagon is looking for a successor plan that will be bigger. 

"Actually, we don’t even know the full extent of this but it is gargantuan. Yes, these companies provide the regular consumer services but a main and even decisive customer is government itself.... Today government is a main purchaser of tech services and is a top driver of the AI boom too. It’s one of the best-kept secrets in American public life, hardly talked about at all by mainstream media. Most people still think of tech companies as free-enterprise rebels. It’s not true. 

"The same situation of course exists for pharmaceutical companies. This relationship dates even further back in time and is even tighter to the point that there is no real distinction between the interests of the FDA/CDC and large pharmaceutical companies. They are one and the same. 

"In this framework, we might also tag the agricultural sector, which is dominated by cartels that have driven out family farms. It’s a government plan and massive subsidies that determine what is produced and in what quantity. It’s not because of consumers that your Coke is filled with a scary product called 'high fructose corn syrup,' why your candy bar and danish have the same, and why there is corn in your gas tank. This is entirely the product of government agencies and budgets. 

"In free enterprise, the old rule is that the customer is always right. That’s a wonderful system sometimes called consumer sovereignty. Its advent in history, dating perhaps from the 16th century, represented a tremendous advance over the old guild system of feudalism and certainly a major step over ancient despotisms. It’s been the rallying cry of market-based economics ever since. 

"What happens, however, when government itself becomes a main and even dominant customer? The ethos of private enterprise is thereby changed. No longer primarily interested in serving the general public, enterprise turns its attention to serving its powerful masters in the halls of the state, gradually weaving close relationships and forming a ruling class that becomes a conspiracy against the public. 

"This used to go by the name 'crony capitalism' which perhaps describes some of the problems on a small scale. This is another level of reality that needs an entirely different name. That name is corporatism, a coinage from the 1930s and a synonym for fascism back before that became a curse word due to wartime alliances. Corporatism is a specific thing, not capitalism and not socialism but a system of private property ownership with cartelized industry that primarily serves the state. 

"The old binaries of the public and private sector – widely assumed by every main ideological system – have become so blurred that they no longer make much sense. And yet we are ideologically and philosophically unprepared to deal with this new world with anything like intellectual insight. Not only that, it can be extremely difficult even to tell the good guys from the bad guys in the news stream.... That’s how mixed up everything has become. We’ve clearly traveled a long way from the 1990s! 

"Some might observe that this has been a problem far back in time. Starting with the Spanish-American War, we’ve seen a merger of public and private as involving the munitions industry. This is true. Many Gilded Age fortunes were wholly legitimate and market-based enterprises but others were gathered from the nascent military-industrial complex that began to mature in the Great War and involved a vast range of industries from industry to transportation to communications. Of course in 1913, we saw the advent of a particularly egregious public-private partnership with the Federal Reserve, in which private banks merged into a unified front and agreed to service US government debt obligations in exchange for bailout guarantees. This monetary corporatism continues to vex us to this day, as does the military industrial complex. 

"How is it different from the past? It’s different in degree and reach. The corporatist machine now manages the main products and services in our civilian life including the entire way we get information, how we work, how we bank, how we contact friends, and how we buy. It is the manager of the whole of our lives in every respect, and has become the driving force of product innovation and design. It has become a tool for surveillance in the most intimate aspects of our lives, including financial information and inclusive of listening devices we’ve willingly installed in our own homes.... 

"It has become a main curator and censor of our news and social media presence and postings. It is in a position to say which companies and products succeed and which ones fail. It can kill apps in a flash if the well-placed person does not like what it is doing. It can order other apps to add or subtract to a blacklist based on political opinions. It can tell even the smallest company to comply or face death by lawfare. It can seize on any individual and make him a public enemy based entirely on an opinion or action that runs contrary to regime priorities....  

"[T]his corporatism – in all its iterations including the regulatory state and the patent war chest that maintains and enforces monopoly – is the core source of all the current despotism. It obtained its first full trial run with the lockdowns of 2020, when tech companies and media joined in the ear-splitting propaganda campaigns to shelter in place, cancel holidays, and not visit grandma in the hospital and nursing home. It cheered as millions of small businesses were destroyed and big-box stores thrived as distributors of approved products, while vast swaths of the workforce were called nonessential and put on welfare. 

"This was the corporatist state at work, with a large corporate sector wholly acquiescent to regime priority and a government fully dedicated to rewarding its industrial partners in every sector that went along with the political priority at the moment. The trigger for the construction of the vast machinery that rules our lives was far back in time and always begins the same way: with a seemingly inauspicious government contract. 

"How well I recall those days in the 1990s when public schools first started to buy computers from Microsoft. Did alarm bells go off? Not for me. I had a typical attitude of any pro-business libertarian: whatever business wants to do, it should do. Surely it is up to the enterprise to sell to all willing buyers, even if that includes governments. In any case, how in the world would one prevent this? Government contracting with private business has been the norm from time immemorial. No harm done. 

"And yet it turns out that vast harm was done. This was just the beginning of what became one of the world’s largest industries, far more powerful and decisive over industrial organization than old-fashioned producer-to-consumer markets. Adam Smith’s “butcher, baker, and brewery” have been crowded out by the very business conspiracies against which he gravely warned. These gigantic for-profit and public trading corporations became the operational foundation of the surveillance-driven corporatist complex. 

"We are nowhere near coming to terms with the implications of this. It goes way beyond and fully transcends the old debates between capitalism and socialism. Indeed that is not what this is about. The focus on that might be theoretically interesting but it has little or no relevance to the current reality in which public and private have fully merged and intruded into every aspect of our lives, and with fully predictable results: economic decline for the many and riches for the few. 

"This is also why neither the left nor the right, nor Democrats or Republicans, nor capitalists or socialists, seem to be speaking clearly to the moment in which we live. The dominating force on both the national and global scene today is techno-corporatism that intrudes itself into our food, our medicine, our media, our information flows, our homes, and all the way down to the hundreds of surveillance tools that we carry around in our pockets. I truly wish these companies were genuinely private, but they are not. They are de facto state actors. More precisely, they all work hand-in-glove and which is the hand and which is the glove is no longer clear. 

"Coming to terms with this intellectually is the major challenge of our times. Dealing with it juridically and politically seems like a much more daunting task, to say the least. The problem is complicated by the drive to purge serious dissent at all levels of society. How did American capitalism become American corporatism? A little at a time and then all at once." 

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/how-did-american-capitalism-mutate-into-american-corporatism/

The Rise of Corporate Fascism | Michael Rectenwald | Hillsdale College | November 13, 2022:

Virtue People versus Freedom People

Freedom and Virtue: Friends or Enemies? | Brownstone Institute | Bruce Pardy:

November 26, 2023 - "There’s an elephant in the room, the speaker declared. He was right. I was at a gathering, as I often am, of people who aspire to rescue their countries from descending into woke, collectivist hell. But the attendees were not of one mind. Instead, there were two kinds of people in attendance. The elephant in the room was the tension between them.

"Across the West, Virtue People and Freedom People have been working together. At conferences, in think tanks, at school boards, on email lists, in living rooms, on X, and sometimes marching in the streets, they coalesce. These two groups constitute the rebel alliance against authoritarian woke globalism. But their political philosophies conflict.

"Virtue People believe that virtue is the most important thing. Tradition, faith, family, responsibility, dignity, patriotism, community, and spiritual or religious conviction are the pillars upon which the West must be built. Virtue People are often, but not always, people of faith, especially of the Christian variety. Laws, governments, and society, they believe, should promote the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.  

"Freedom People don’t share this view. They believe that freedom is the most important thing. Virtues, they believe, are for individuals to work out for themselves. The primary accomplishment of the West, they would say, is individual autonomy. The purpose of government is to secure individual rights to liberty. Freedom means the absence of coercion. You may decide your values, actions, and groups for yourself. Freedom means 'freedom from.' 

"Virtue People believe in freedom too, especially in this era of illiberal progressivism. But freedom means a different thing to them. Freedom is essential, they would say, but the decline of the West is due to an excessive emphasis on individuality. (If that makes perfect sense to you, you may be a Virtue Person. If it sounds like a contradiction, you are probably a Freedom Person.)

"Freedom, they would say, means the disciplining of desire, which requires limits. Freedom is the liberation to act responsibly, to be transcendent, and to flourish virtuously. We become free, they would say, to the extent that our will becomes coherent with objective Good. Freedom means 'freedom to.'  

"In the political sphere, these two kinds of freedom are incompatible. Freedom People expect their governments to keep the peace and protect the individual – and otherwise to not interfere. Virtue People expect their governments to promote the Good with laws and policies. Virtue People support laws that prohibit behavior that is, in their view, immoral, damaging to human flourishing, or inconsistent with common good. Assisted suicide, prostitution, divorce, pornography, even heresy, just to start, shall not be permitted. 

"To achieve their ends, Virtue People rely on force. At least, that’s what Freedom People would say. Virtue People use laws to achieve their ends, and laws depend on force. Every legal rule identifies a circumstance in which the state will bend the will of its citizens. Without the monopolistic violence of the state, laws cannot be enforced. Virtue People are willing to use that force to achieve their virtuous ends. Therefore, allege the Freedom People, they are willing to use force to have their way.  

"Freedom People are decadent. At least, that’s what Virtue People would say. If morality crimes do not exist and individuals are free to decide their own values, depravity ensues. Libertarians and libertines are cousins, Virtue People would declare. Excessive individualism causes indulgence, narcissism, and social decay.  

"But Freedom People can be virtuous too. They can embrace faith, family, and community. They can disapprove of behavior, such as prostitution, that Virtue People would ban. However, Freedom People make a distinction that Virtue People are unable or unwilling to make. Freedom People see two different questions where Virtue People see only one. How should people behave? How must they behave? For Freedom People, the first is philosophical and personal. The second is legal and coercive. The answer to the first does not answer the second. Freedom People do not impose their moral judgments on others. They will not have others impose upon them. 

|Paradoxically, Freedom People have faith that Virtue People lack. They have faith in spontaneous order. If we leave people alone, they say, things will turn out fine. Individual decisions will coalesce into peace and prosperity. Virtue People do not believe in spontaneous order. They want their hands on the wheel, so that they can manage people to virtuous ends. 

"Freedom People will not be managed. They believe that the West’s problem is too little liberty. Virtue People believe that the problem is too much. Freedom People oppose the administrative state. Virtue People embrace it if it directs people to proper ends. Neither will sign on to the other’s project. Although they cooperate to resist the tyranny of the woke, they are not likely to succeed unless they reconcile. 

"At the gathering, most people were Virtue People. The few Freedom People present slowly realized that they had attended a kind of church to which they did not belong. The Virtue People who filled the room, steadfast in their conviction that they knew best what is Right and Good, did not seem to be aware of them. Or for that matter, that they existed at all.

"Near the end, I spoke with an earnest, soft-spoken gentleman in horn-rimmed glasses. In his ideal world, the law would prohibit behavior that conflicted with the Good, as he perceived it. When I pointed out that some people in the room would oppose that enterprise with all their might, his mouth fell open and his eyes grew wide behind his thick lenses. That possibility had not occurred to him. Not everyone sees the elephant in the room."

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2024 Rand Debate | Virtue vs. Freedom (David Haskell & Bruce Pardy) | Augustine College | April 24, 2024:

Ontario MD faces ruin for lockdown opposition

Brampton Ontario doctor Kulvinder Kaur Gill faces financial ruin after a libel suit against those who defamed her on social media for her opposition to Covid lockdowns was dismissed without trial and she was ordered to pay their legal fees. 

The Crucifixion of Kulvinder Kaur | Brownstone Institute | Clayton J. Baker, MD:

March 21, 2024 - "As a physician, I see the best of my generation being destroyed.... There is a great purge occurring in the medical establishment, a purge that runs along strict ideological and ethical lines. The issue of Covid-era 'misinformation' is the main pretext for this purge, but there is no reason to believe it will stop there. And although the American medical system is the most Pharma-captured and Deep State-riddled medical system in the world, this purge is by no means limited to the United States.

"The list of honest, courageous, and self-sacrificing physicians and scientists who have been fired, censored, de-licensed, defamed, subjected to lawfare, or otherwise persecuted in the name of Covid conformity is far too long to list. Just a very few of the names include Peter McCullough, Meryl Nass, and Martin Kulldorff in the USA, David Cartland and Ahmad Malik in the UK, and Kulvinder Kaur in Canada. 

"Dr. Kaur faces imminent financial ruin at the hands of the Canadian court system, which has imposed a punitive $300,000 ‘cost order’ upon her, due by the end of March 2024. This is in addition to other legal expenses she has incurred since the beginning of the Covid lockdowns. Dr. Kaur’s cardinal sin was speaking out against the harsh lockdowns imposed upon citizens of Ontario, where she practices medicine, treating mostly immigrant families and other poor members of the population.

"Stanford epidemiologist and Great Barrington Declaration co-author Jay Bhattacharya recently interviewed Dr. Kaur on his Illusion of Consensus podcast. I encourage readers to watch this interview. It is compelling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is this: Kulvinder Kaur comes across as the most modest, sincere, and likable person imaginable – quite literally the last person who would invoke the ire of any honest organization, and quite possibly the first person you would want as your personal physician.... Her combination of earnestness and modesty shines through her descriptions of both her first class education and scientific training and her clinical practice, devoted as it is to poor immigrants, in large part because she herself is an immigrant. 

"Prior to Covid, she says, she was a very conventional practitioner, observant of the standard vaccine schedules, and never in trouble with the authorities. But when the lockdowns began, she felt compelled by conscience to speak out against the collateral harms these repressive measures caused her patients. She cited sources such as the Great Barrington Declaration. She took to Twitter. She refused to shut up. And so, the Canadian establishment set out to destroy her.

"In her interview with Jay, Kulvinder Kaur appears to me to be very idealistic, sometimes almost to the point of naivete. At one point she states, 'I never thought that this would be the cost of speaking truth to power.' She seems genuinely surprised that even now, when her predictions from early in the pandemic have all been proven correct, she is still being persecuted. 

"The ideologues are hell-bent on destroying the idealist, and the idealist cannot understand why. But persecuted she is. The Canadian government, media, and medical establishment long ago determined that it would publicly crucify (and financially ruin) this highly intelligent, deeply moral, and utterly sincere young woman. They intend to make an example of her, just in case some other idealistic young physician is thinking of following in her footsteps.

"A GiveSendGo fund for Dr. Kaur’s financial crisis has been started, and I encourage readers to donate to it as soon as possible if they are able. She needs to raise $300,000 by the end of March. Hopefully the goal will be reached, and Dr. Kaur will be saved from financial ruin.

"But the ruin of medicine in the so-called Western democracies will continue apace. The best of my generation of physicians will be destroyed by the madness of their corrupt, captured, and deteriorating profession. And then where will patients turn for care?.... The outstanding, outspoken, and independent physicians will be run out of the profession. The remaining rank-and-file, already more submissive than their persecuted betters, will quietly comply with orders from above, knowing what will happen to them if they don’t. The newly minted doctors, freshly indoctrinated in today’s Pharma-driven curricula, and pre-selected for compliance via mandatory vaccinations and other human resource department litmus tests, will goose-step through their practice directives and clinical protocols, no questions asked."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/the-crucifixion-of-kulvinder-kaur/

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Anti-lockdown Advocate Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill Speaks Out For First Time | Dr. Jay Bhattacharya | March 16, 2024:

Legal Fund for Kulvinder on GiveSendGo.

Little known about second virology lab in Wuhan

The scientists who did the most in 2020 to have the lab origin of Covid dismissed as a "conspiracy theory," says journalist Robert Kogon, form a group connected with a little-known German-Chinese virology lab, based in Wuhan and partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which also may have been conducting the same gain-of-function research.   

Germany's Role in What Happened | Brownstone Institute | Robert Kogon:

March 15, 2024 - "The ‘story of the decade,’ ‘smoking gun,’ ‘case closed.’ The story of US-funded – or, as the case may be, even not funded – gain-of-function research on coronaviruses has been widely presented in recent weeks as the solution to the riddle of Covid: not only the nearly definitive proof that SARS-CoV-2 was created in a laboratory, after all, but also the nearly definitive demonstration of whodunnit. The Americans did it, of course.... Anthony Fauci, the funder of the research; Ralph Baric, the ‘designer’ of the virus; and Peter Daszak, the albeit British head of US-based EcoHealth Alliance, who directed the research. They merely needed a little help from one hired-gun Dutch virologist in the person of Vincent Munster, who made Baric’s virus transmissible at Fauci’s Rocky Mountain Lab in Montana before it was shipped to Wuhan. And the rest is history.

"But what about all the German connections to virus research in Wuhan which I have documented ... and which involve not just German funding for virus research in Wuhan, but indeed a full-fledged German-Chinese virology lab in Wuhan, which – unlike the Wuhan Institute of Virology – is located right in the area of the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in the city?

"It is all the more remarkable that these German connections are being ignored given that the supposedly ‘American’ story of the creation and release of Covid-19 points right back to them: namely, to a German or, more exactly, German-Dutch coronavirus research nexus, which has played a key role in the Covid-19 response and at whose centre we find none other than Christian Drosten ... the German creator of the notoriously hypersensitive and unreliable Covid-19 PCR test which was the very basis of the declaration of a pandemic. 

"Let us start with what is invariably described as Anthony Fauci’s Rocky Mountain Lab, where Vincent Muster is supposed to have made Baric’s virus design transmissible. The headline of a Daily Mail article even describes it as a 'Fauci-run' lab. Well, although indeed a NIAID research facility and to that extent connected to the former NIAID director Fauci, the actual director of the facility itself is the German virologist Heinz Feldmann. 'So what?' – you might say. There are 80 million Germans. True enough. But there are not 80 million Germans who have conducted virus research with Christian Drosten.... 

"[I]n addition to Feldmann and Drosten, there are two other notable authors of the above-cited 2011 Ebola virus paper: Vincent Munster, Feldmann’s employee at the Rocky Mountain Lab ... and Stefan Pöhlmann, a virologist based at the German Primate Centre in Göttingen. Like Drosten, Pöhlmann took part in the famous February 1st 2020 conference call with Anthony Fauci on a possible lab leak of SARS-CoV-2. As will be seen momentarily, it was precisely what might be called the ‘EU crew’ around Drosten, and including Pöhlmann, which would attempt to beat back the lab-leak hypothesis in the discussions with their Anglosphere counterparts, both on the call and in emails which followed.... 

"It should be recalled from the FOIA’d ‘Fauci emails‘ that after the spectre of a laboratory origin of SARS-CoV-2 was first raised with Fauci by Kristian Andersen, Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust would arrange for the famous February 1st conference call, bringing in a German-Dutch team of coronavirus experts to discuss the matter with their dismayed Anglosphere colleagues. The concerned Anglosphere scientists were Robert Garry, Andrew Rambaut, Edward Holmes, and the Danish virologist Andersen, who is, however, based at Scripps Research in California. All of them suspected that the virus had a lab origin or were even convinced that it did. Even Farrar, who has been dismissive about lab leak in his public statements, said he was '50-50' between lab leak and natural origin behind the scenes. 

"But it was members precisely of the German-Dutch ‘EU team’ who are reported to have lambasted Andersen and his Anglosphere colleagues on the conference call and who would continue to urge, in subsequent correspondence, that the matter be, in Drosten’s words, 'dropped.' We have already noted Heinz Feldmann’s connections to the two German members of the EU team, Christian Drosten and Stefan Pöhlmann. The other two members of the team were the Dutch virologists Marion Koopmans and Ron Fouchier. Koopmans is head of the Erasmus University Medical Centre’s department of Viroscience and co-author of Drosten’s controversial PCR-protocol paper [which]had been published by the EU-funded journal Eurosurveillance just one week before the conference call. Fouchier is ... Koopman’s deputy at the Department of Viroscience of the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam. He is also co-author of the 2003 SARS-CoV-1 paper.... 

"[W]hat does that have to do with Vincent Munster’s alleged concoction of SAR-CoV-2 at Feldmann’s (not Fauci’s) Rocky Mountain Lab? Well, Munster is Fouchier’s student! Fouchier was the co-director of Munster’s PhD thesis (as can be seen here), along with Ab Osterhaus, who is perhaps the key historical figure in the formation of the German-Dutch virology nexus. Osterhaus was the head of the Viroscience Department at the Erasmus Medical Centre Rotterdam until 2014, when he was succeeded by Koopmans. The 75-year-old Dutchman presently leads a ‘One Health’ working group at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover....

"Neither Koopmans nor Pöhlmann appear to have played an active role in the conference call. As the FOIA’d emails and the related Slack messages make clear, 'Christian' and 'Ron' led the charge. They would keep the pressure on in the subsequent email exchanges, ultimately getting Andersen and his Anglosphere colleagues to recant their original theory and to endorse precisely the opposite theory, i.e., that of a zoonotic origin of SARS-CoV-2, in their now infamous 'Proximal Origin' paper....

"Now, if you were a detective investigating a crime – for instance, the creation of a supposedly deadly virus (whether it was in fact so deadly is, of course, another matter) – whose behaviour would you find suspicious? The behaviour of those who themselves expressed concern about a lab leak and were keen on investigating the matter – including, nota bene, none other than Anthony Fauci, who even suggested contacting the FBI! – or the behaviour of those who were dismissive and defensive and tried to shut the conversation down?

"'Didn’t we congregate to challenge a certain theory and, if we could, drop it?” Christian Drosten asked with notable irritation in a terse February 9th 2020 email to the other members of the group: 'Who came up with this story in the beginning? Are we working on debunking our own conspiracy theory?' Do these sound like the words of an innocent man? Not much, especially if we consider that before this email emerged thanks to an American FOIA request, Drosten had insisted in a sworn statement to a German court that he 'had no interest in steering the suspicion about the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a certain direction. In particular, I had and I have no personal interest in ruling out the so-called laboratory thesis.' No interest in steering the suspicion in a certain direction?! How is that consistent with 'Didn’t we congregate to challenge a certain theory, and if we could, drop it'?

"Drosten, as discussed in my ‘Why Fauci, not Drosten?‘, has links to the German-Chinese virology lab in Wuhan and its German Co-Director Ulf Dittmer. As seen in the below photo, a 2015 German-Government-sponsored virology symposium in Berlin brought together not only Drosten and the bat coronavirus specialist Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV], but also both the German and the Chinese Co-Directors of the German-Chinese lab, Ulf Dittmer and Dongliang Yang, and both the then- and apparently even the current Directors of the WIV to boot! 

a) Wang Yanyi? b) Shi Zhengli c) Christian Drosten d) Ulf Dittmer e) Dongliang Yang f) Chen Xinwen. 

"The [WIV] Director at the time, Chen Xinwen, is the small, buck-toothed man with the blue tie in the photo. The young woman with the long black hair in the lower left-hand corner appears to be current WIV director Wang Yanyi, although Wang is not listed as a participant in the event programme. 

"In January 2020, moreover, Drosten told the Germany daily Die Berliner Zeitung that he had learned about the supposedly novel virus in Wuhan from virologist colleagues in the city before any infections had even been officially reported!

"If a virus engineered in Montana is supposed to have somehow gotten to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, even though the WIV was not even a part of the US-funded CREID project which is alleged to have made the connection, why could it not have gotten to the German-Chinese virology laboratory on the other side of the Yangtze? (Moreover, the CREID project – which is in fact more a network than a project – was not even launched until 2020: several months after the official start of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan.)

"As the below map from Science magazine makes clear, the campuses of the Wuhan Institute of Virology are in fact nowhere near the area of the initial cluster of Covid-19 cases in Wuhan. The German-Chinese lab, by contrast, is right in the cluster. It is located at Union Hospital, designated by number 6 in the map. The Chinese co-sponsor of the lab, Tongji Medical College, is located virtually at the very epicentre of the outbreak: roughly one kilometre to the north of Tongji Hospital, which is designated by number 5 in the map.... 

[W]hat do we know about the research which was being conducted at the German-Chinese virology lab in Wuhan itself? Not much. In September 2021, one Reinhard G. used a website dedicated to posing questions to German parliamentarians in order to ask the German member of the European Parliament Christian Ehler whether gain-of-function research was being conducted at the German-Chinese lab. Ehler is chair of the EU Parliament’s Panel on the Future of Science and Technology (STOA). Reinhard G. did not receive an answer. Ehler’s team merely noted that they did not know.

"But why are no German journalists or commentators, many of whom have shown great interest in DEFUSE and CREID, demanding to know? 

"The DEFUSE proposal was not funded. The CREID network is funded by the US Government, but the Wuhan Institute of Virology is not part of it and it only got underway well after the initial outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan. The German-Chinese lab was launched in 2017 and it is funded by the German Government. It grew out of a German-Chinese joint virology project, TRR60, which was publicly-funded for a full decade from 2009 to 2018 and which, as I have shown here, proudly featured the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a partner.

"Why should the world not know as much about the German-Chinese lab and TRR60 as it knows about DEFUSE and CREID? Where are the Freedom of Information requests? Why is the German Government being spared them? If anyone asked, at least it could say no, which would be revealing in its own right. We know that the German Government funds gain-of-function experiments, because none other than Christian Drosten was coordinator of a multi-part publicly-funded RAPID project which includes them.... Stefan Pöhlmann was, incidentally, Director of one of the RAPID sub-projects.

"Of course, if one only has US information, one will end up telling a US story. But if a foreign power really did have a hand in the escape or release of an engineered virus in Wuhan, then prima facie Germany is the far likelier suspect."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/germanys-role-in-what-happened/

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A very scary story for Halloween

 I am happy to be able to bring my blog readers this very scary story for Halloween. 
NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS A WORK OF FICTION. ANY SIMILARITIES TO REAL PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

The Depopulation Bomb: A Halloween Sci-Fi Tale | Brownstone Institute | Clayton J. Baker, 

October 31, 2023 - "Imagine, if you will, that you are a first-generation high tech gazillionaire. In fact, at one time you were said to be the richest man on earth, although that is no longer the case. Nevertheless, you remain unimaginably wealthy, with all the responsibilities and burdens that such wealth brings. (Given the extremely unusual circumstances of this tale, to make it more relatable, we will assign you a fictional name.) Your birth certificate reads Gilbert Harvey Bates III, but the world knows you as Gil Bates.

"Gil Bates’s erstwhile net-worth preeminence ... is not the only important loss he has suffered. Also in the rearview mirror is his youth, his marriage, and his position as CEO of the behemoth tech company he created, MacroHardTM. After Gil Bates stepped down as CEO of MacroHardTM, he focused on his philanthropic work. The centerpiece of this work is the immensely well-funded (and therefore immensely influential) Bates Foundation. The Foundation’s scope may be mind-bogglingly broad, but one problem especially consumed Bates: there are far too many people on the planet.

"In his youth, Gil Bates read a controversial book called The Overpopulation Bomb, written by a visionary scientist named Saul Derelicht. That alarming book, a huge bestseller in its day, described a neo-Malthusian hell on earth resulting from human overpopulation, and proposed mass sterilization and other aggressive population reduction techniques as the solution. Gil Bates became convinced, and remains convinced – especially as the worldwide human population has soared beyond 8 billion units – that Homo sapiens have obscenely overpopulated the planet. Once Bates had sold software packages to the great majority of them, he vowed that this existential threat to the planet must be addressed. But what was to be done?... 

"Fortunately for the future of Earth, Bates knew a host of like-minded, enlightened elites, pre-eminent individuals of great wealth, power, and worldwide influence. Among the most important:

• A dour Teutonic economist named Kraut Schlob. The son of an ambitious industrialist who built flamethrowers for the Third Reich, Schlob is the founder and chairman of the World Enslavement Forum. The Forum has become the premier worldwide gathering of hyper-elites who wish to discuss globalist policies, and enjoy the company of high-end prostitutes, free from the prying eyes of commoners.
• An immensely powerful – if embarrassingly vertically challenged – American health bureaucrat named Dr. Fantoni Auci. For decades, Dr. Auci controlled the overwhelming majority of US Government medical research funding. As such, no one in the vast American network of hospitals, research institutes, or universities dares to cross Dr. Auci, and he wields similar influence internationally. In fact, he oversees funding for multiple secret virology research laboratories, as far away as China.
• A mysterious veterinarian named Adalbert Ghoula. Ghoula is the CEO of Kaiser, Inc., the world’s largest and most rapacious pharmaceutical company, which Ghoula has grown into a veritable modern day IG Farben. In his earlier days, Ghoula oversaw the development of a vaccine that successfully induces the chemical castration and sterilization of swine.

"The consensus, reached after lengthy consultations with these men and other luminaries, was that the worldwide human population must be reduced from 8 billion to 500 million units. But how? Several possible avenues were proposed.

"War has been used for millennia to reduce populations, and while highly effective locally or regionally, it would be entirely ineffective at removing the necessary fifteen-sixteenths of people on Earth. After all, the deadliest war in history, World War II, resulted in a mere 80 million deaths, just 3 percent of the world’s population at the time. The use of a bomb was considered ... reminiscent of the “neutron bomb” of yore ... but ultimately it was determined that setting off bombs would be both impractical and far too obvious....

"A plague, a pestilence, a pandemic seemed more promising. Past naturally occurring pandemics had reduced human populations much more successfully than wars. The Black Death of 1346-53 may have reduced the world population by as much as 25 percent, a much more encouraging number.... As an added economic bonus, the Black Death served as a very effective concentrator of wealth for the survivors, as it caused minimal collateral property loss. However, a more detailed review of historical worldwide population estimates demonstrated that a pandemic alone could only serve as a temporizing measure at best. Most estimates show that by 1400, the worldwide population had unfortunately returned to its pre-plague total. 

"Clearly, the necessary 94 percent reduction in population could not be achieved by culling the herd alone. Sterilization would be needed as well. But how to achieve such mass sterilization? Many H. sapiens possess an intense desire to procreate – that’s the source of the problem, after all. Unfortunately, prior historical initiatives for mandatory sterilization – even those of limited scale and scope, such as those targeting the mentally deficient – have met great opposition, at least in the so-called 'free' nations.

"However, a vaccine could be used for mass sterilization. Ghoula’s earlier work at Kaiser was proof of this. But a fundamental problem remained: how to get the unsuspecting population – specifically, its children and young adults – to take the stealth-sterilizing inoculation? 

"The solution, when it came, was a thing of beauty, sublimely subtle and symmetrical. The answer was a two-step process: a pandemic and a vaccine. One population reduction device would be released, presented as a worldwide plague. It would be followed by a second population reduction device, presented as the cure. And the technology was already in place to make it happen. It merely had to be perfected, then enacted.

"Employing the Black Magic of gain-of-function virology research, an animal respiratory virus, previously never infecting humans, was genetically engineered to readily infect and spread amongst humans. At a key moment in political history, when a particularly bothersome populist American President named T. Ronald Dump was running for reelection, the virus was released from a Chinese laboratory into the human population. 

"As the new virus spread, reports of the death and devastation it wrought were spread as well. In actuality, the virus had been engineered so that it was deadly only to the frail, chronically ill, and very old. It was cleverly propagandized, however, as a threat to persons of all ages, a modern day Black Death of sorts. The US deep state, desperate to disrupt the Dump presidency and remove him from office, were willing partners to manage the control and manipulation of the population through propaganda, and to enforce unprecedented, prolonged lockdowns of society. Remarkably, they even convinced President Dump to sanction the lockdowns, and to fund the development of the vaccine. Most other countries followed suit. 

"The new virus rapidly killed off many of the oldest and sickest members of society, as would be expected of a novel respiratory virus. However, the locked-down and isolated populations were barraged with media messages that stirred up mass terror of the virus. Businesses were closed, save for those deemed “essential.” Schools were closed, though children were already known to be at statistically zero risk of death. Dissenters were harassed, scapegoated, and punished.

Then, a solution to the pandemic was presented: the vaccine. The vaccine was the savior, the only way out of this crisis. A few irritating, contrarian dissenters fought back. They protested for civil rights. They stressed the near impossibility of producing an effective vaccine against a rapidly mutating respiratory virus. They identified numerous 'safety signals'” found in the vaccine trials, and tried to expose these as best they could. But the mainstream media drowned them out, the social media companies (controlled by the deep state) censored them ruthlessly, and after all, once the vaccines were mandated, most people took at least a couple of doses....

"Early in the vaccine 'rollout,' young women reported abnormal vaginal bleeding and other menstrual problems after receiving the vaccines, raising concerns about potential unintended consequences to female reproduction. Pathologists found ovaries infiltrated with multiple toxins from the vaccines, both the dreaded 'spoke' protein of the virus and 'lucid nanoparticles' from the vaccine’s delivery system. Even occluded Fallopian tubes were identified.

"Soon thereafter, reports appeared in the alternative media of dramatically increased numbers of sudden deaths, primarily in young men, after receiving the vaccine. It often visibly occurred in athletes while on the playing field. This caused considerable alarm, impossible as it was to hide.... [O]fficials acknowledged the sudden death phenomenon, but would not even allow mention of the vaccine as a possible cause within the mainstream medical community. Instead, protocols and clinics for this sudden epidemic of heart disease in the young were established, but strangely without any official curiosity as to the cause. All they knew for sure was that it couldn’t be the vaccine.

"Of course, the infamous 'spoke' protein, the same viral antigen chosen by the vaccine’s designers to induce the vaccinated patient’s body to produce in quantity, just happens to be the most toxic part of the virus. The 'spoke' protein deposits itself in tissues throughout the body.... It has a particular affinity for the heart muscle, causing the inflammatory process known as myocarditis that leads to cardiac arrests.

"'Spoke' doesn’t stop with the heart, however. It is a remarkably versatile toxin, a sort of Swiss Army monkey wrench in the human body. It causes gigantic, gruesome, rubbery blood clots in the vasculature, seizures in the central nervous system, the aforementioned deposits in ovaries and Fallopian tubes (and testes, for that matter), etcetera, etcetera. What a stroke of genius to choose “spoke” as the antigen the vaccines induce replication of!

"The vaccines held another nasty little secret, which even the pathetic, naïve resistance only recognized much later. The vaccines were “contaminated” with plasmids containing MV-40 and MV-40-like DNA sequences. Yes, that MV-40, the monkey virus known to cause cancer in multiple animal species....

"Excess death rates rose dramatically after the vaccine rollout. Birth rates plummeted. To the do-gooders, refuseniks, and dissidents, this was a scandal. But what did they know? To use a phrase all-too-familiar to the seasoned software developer, these toxicities were not bugs, but features. The vaccines were working exactly as they were supposed to work....

"The general population is lazy, uneducated, and easily terrified. (Some say they are being done a favor by being culled.) They are accustomed to the precedents set by other vaccines. Their reluctance will be worn down with time. Of course respiratory viruses are imperfect targets for vaccines. Once again, that’s not a bug, it’s a feature! It only means that a new booster of the vaccine will be needed every year – at least. 

"With each new round of boosters, a new population of girls and young women will be rendered infertile. A new group of boys and young men will suffer cardiac arrest – a very quick and painless way to die, really. Countless others will contract cancers – turbo cancer, to use the current term for these rapidly progressing and deadly malignancies, often of unusual types – bone cancers, muscle cancers, and other former rarities. Not an easy way to die, admittedly. But these tumors mercifully progress to end stage very swiftly, and their value as a population reduction device is undeniable.

"Have no fear. It is only a matter of time; only a matter of lather, rinse, repeat. As long as the herd allows itself to be sent through the sheep dip whenever and however often the shepherds proclaim is necessary, H. sapiens will get to 500 million. All courtesy of a type of bomb after all, but in this case a microscopic bomb that is released in each person via a tiny little injection: The Depopulation Bomb.

"Have a Happy Halloween!"

Read more:  https://brownstone.org/articles/the-depopulation-bomb-a-halloween-sci-fi-tale/

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Iowa governor tries to rewrite her lockdown record

Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, says that her government "respects the people it serves and fights to protect their rights" which is why she "rejected the mandates and lockdowns of 2020."  Her record indicates otherwise.

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds Scrubs Her Lockdown Record | Brownstone Institute | Kathleen Sheridan: 

September 2, 2023 - "It seems that everyone is running from the lockdowns they once supported, and that includes former presidents and governors, and probably mayors too. Apologies would be better so we can at least have an honest accounting rather than an attempt to rewrite the history that everyone knows. 

"Jack Phillips of Epoch Times alerts readers in his article of August 31, 2023, of Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds’ recent statement on the subject of lockdowns. The Iowa State Government’s website says the following:

“Since news broke of COVID-19 restrictions being reinstated at some colleges and businesses across the U.S., concerned Iowans have been calling my office asking whether the same could happen here. My answer—not on my watch. In Iowa, government respects the people it serves and fights to protect their rights. I rejected the mandates and lockdowns of 2020, and my position has not changed.” 

"Governor Reynolds 'rejected' the mandates and lockdowns of 2020?... Could it be the Governor has forgotten her 'orders?' On March 17, 2020, Governor Reynolds issued her first “Public Health Disaster Emergency” ... [which] ordered the following:

• Restaurants and bars: Closed to the 'general public'
• Fitness centers/health clubs, spas, aquatic centers: Closed
• Theaters/performance centers: Closed
• Casinos/gaming facilities: Closed
• Churches: Closed
• Social, community, spiritual, religious, recreational, leisure, and sporting gatherings and events of more than 10 people, including but not limited to parades, festivals, conventions, and fundraisers: Prohibited. 
• Senior citizen and adult daycare centers: Closed
• Salons/barber shops: Closed

"A few weeks later on April 6, 2020, she doubled down. In this second proclamation, the Governor extended the timeline and expanded what she now says she 'rejected'....  To add insult, she also formally called on law enforcement to 'assist in the enforcement of these "mitigation efforts".' To wit: 

To encourage further social distancing and mitigation efforts, the proclamation orders additional closures effective at 8:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April 7th until Thursday, April 30th”: (Highlight and underline added)

• Malls 
• Tobacco or vaping stores
• Toy, gaming, music, instrument, movie, or adult entertainment stores
• Social and fraternal clubs, including those at golf courses
• Bingo halls, bowling alleys, pool halls, arcades, and amusement parks
• Museums, libraries, aquariums, and zoos
• Race tracks and speedway.
• Roller or ice skating rinks and skate parks
• Outdoor or indoor playgrounds or children’s play centers
• Campgrounds....

"Should we resist the impulse to accrue to the Governor a little bit of gaslighting in her August 30, 2023 statement? Will she insist that businesses she ordered closed and the behaviors she prohibited – to be enforced by law enforcement – weren’t 'mandated' 'lockdowns?' That they were instead 'mitigation efforts' as spelled out in her 'orders?'...

"At best ... this PR stunt strains credulity. Especially when simple searches can recall those pesky things called facts. On the record.... At worst, why, some might suggest it describes a woman whose actual status rhymes with 'fire'.... 

"In the meantime, some of us who rejected all the unlawful nonsense, who were never fooled by any of these fools, who never cooperated and gave up all – remain unfooled – even when the likes of a Kim Reynolds attempts to rewrite history.' 

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/iowa-governor-kim-reynolds-scrubs-her-lockdown-record/

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Gov. Kim Reynolds says it's "not sustainable" for Iowa to stay on lockdown during pandemic | We Are Iowa Local 5 News | "3 years ago":

This Bud's for Who? What the Bud Light marketing fiasco says about class divisions in America

Mike Mozart, Bud Light Truck at Stew Leonard's, 2014 (detail). CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

What the Bud Light Fiasco Reveals about the Ruling Class | Brownstone Institute - Jeffrey A. Tucker:

April 13, 2023 - "How did someone believe that making 'trans woman' Dylan Mulvaney the icon of a Bud Light ad campaign, complete with a beer can with Mulvaney’s image on it, would be good for sales?.... Dylan, who had previously been interviewed on trans issues by President Biden himself, was celebrating '365 Days of Girlhood' with a grotesquely misogynistic caricature that would disgust just about the whole market for this beer. Indeed, this person’s cosplay might as well be designed to discredit the entire political agenda of gender dysphoriacs. 

"Sure enough, because we don’t have mandates on what beers you must buy, sales of the beer plummeted. The parent company Anheuser-Busch’s stock lost $5 billion or 4 percent in value since the ad campaign rollout. Sales have fallen 50-70 percent. Now there is worry within the company of a widening boycott to all their brands. A local Missouri distributor of the product canceled an appearance by Budweiser Clydesdale horses due to public anger....

"The person who made the miscalculation is Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, Vice President in charge of marketing for Bud Light. She explained that her intention was to make the beer King of ‘Woke’ Beers. She wanted to shift away from the 'out of touch' frat party image to one of 'inclusivity.' By all accounts, she actually believed this. More likely, she was rationalizing actions that would earn her bragging rights within her social circle. 

"Digging through her personal biography, we find all the predictable signs of tremendous detachment from regular life: elite boarding school (Groton, $65K a year), Harvard, Wharton School, coveted internship at General Foods, and straight to top VP at the biggest beverage company in the world. Somehow through all that, nothing entered her brain apart from elite opinion on how the world should work with theories never actually tested by real-world marketing demands....  

"She is a perfect symbol of a problem that afflicts high-end corporate and government culture: a shocking blindness toward the mainstream of American life, including working classes and other people less privileged. They are invisible to this crowd. And her type is pervasive in corporate America with its huge layers of management developed over 20 years of loose credit and push for token representation at the highest levels. 

"We’ve seen this manifest over three years [as] ruling-class types imposed lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates on the whole population without regard to the consequences and with full expectation that the food will continue to be delivered to their doorsteps no matter how many days, months, or years they stay at home and stay safe. The working classes, meanwhile, were shoved out in front of the pathogen to make their assigned contribution to herd immunity so that the rich and privileged could preserve their clean state of being, making TikTok videos and issuing edicts from their safe spaces for two or even three years. 

"In the late 19th century, the blindness of class detachment was a problem that so consumed Karl Marx that he became possessed with the desire to overthrow class distinctions between labor and capital.... In every country where his dreams became a reality, however, a protected elite took over and secured themselves from the consequences of their deluded dreams.  The people who in recent decades have drunk so deeply from the well of the Marxian tradition seem to be repeating that experience with complete disinterest in the lower classes, while pushing a deepening chasm that only became worse in the lockdown years in which they have controlled the levers of power. 

"It was startling to watch, and I could hardly believe what was happening. Then one day the incredibly obvious dawned on me. All official opinion in this country and even the whole world – government, media, corporations, technology – emanated from the same upper echelons of the class structure. It was people with elite educations and who had the time to shape public opinion. They are the ones on Twitter, in the newsrooms, fussing with the codes, and enjoying the laptop life of a permanent bureaucrat. 

"Their social circles were the same. They knew no one who cut trees, butchered cows, drove trucks, fixed cars, and met payroll in a small restaurant. The “workers and peasants” are people the elites so otherized that they became nothing more than non-playing characters who make stuff work but are not worthy of their attention or time. 

"The result was a massive transfer of wealth upwards in the social ladder as digital brands, technology, and Peloton thrived, while everyone else faced a barrage of ill health, debt, and inflation. As classes have grown more stratified – and, yes, there is a reason to worry about the gap between the rich and the poor when malleability is restricted – the intellectual producers of policy and opinion have constructed their own bubble to protect themselves from by being soiled by contrary points of view. 

They want the whole world to be their own safe space regardless of the victims. Would lockdowns have happened in any other kind of world? Not likely. And it would not have happened if the overlords did not have the technology to carry on their lives as normal while pretending that no one was really suffering from their scheme. 

"The Bud Light case is especially startling because the advent of commercial society in the high Middle Ages and through the Industrial Revolution was supposed to mitigate against this sort of myopic stratification. And this has always been the most compelling critique of Marx: he was raging against a system that was gradually winnowing away the very demarcations in classes that he decried....  Joseph Schumpeter in 1919 wrote an essay on this topic in his book Imperialism and Social Classes. He highlighted how the commercial ethos dramatically changed the class system. 'The warlord was automatically the leader of his people in virtually every respect,' he wrote. 'The modern industrialist is anything but such a leader'.... 

"But what happens when the corporate elites, working together with government, themselves become the warlords? The foundations of market capitalism begin to erode. The workers become ever more alienated from final consumption of the product they have made possible. 

"It’s been typical of people like me – pro-market libertarians – to ignore the issue of class and its impact on social and political structures. We inherited the view of Frederic Bastiat that the good society is about cooperation between everyone and not class conflict, much less class war. We’ve been suspicious of people who rage against wealth inequality and social stratification. And yet we do not live in such market conditions. The social and economic systems of the West are increasingly bureaucratized, hobbled by credentialism, and regulated, and this has severely impacted class mobility. Indeed, for many of these structures, exclusion of the unwashed is the whole point. 

"And the ruling class themselves have ever more the mindset as described by Thorstein Veblen: only the ignorable do actual work while the truly successful indulge in leisure and conspicuous consumption as much as their means allow. One supposes that this doesn’t hurt anyone…until it does. And this certainly happened in very recent history as the conspicuous consumers harnessed the power of states all over the world to serve their interests exclusively. The result was calamity for rights and liberties won over a thousand years of struggle. 

"The emergent fissures between the classes – and the diffusions of our ruling class into many sectors public and private – suggest an urgency for a new consciousness of the real meaning of the common good, which is inseparable from liberty. The marketing director of Bud Light talked a good line about 'inclusivity' but she plotted to impose everything but that. Her plan was designed for the one percent and to the exclusion of all the people who actually consume the product, to say nothing for the workers who actually make and deliver the product she was charged with promoting.

"That the markets have so brutally punished the brand and company for this profound error points the way to the future. People should have the right to their own choices about the kind of life they want to live and the products and services they want to consume. The dystopia of lockdowns and woke hegemony of public opinion – complete with censorship – have become the policy to overturn if the workers are ever to throw off the chains that bind them. The boycotts of Bud Light are but a beginning."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/what-bud-light-fiasco-reveals-about-ruling-class/

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Covid origins debate distracts from main issue

The debate over the origins of COVID19 distracts from the more important debate, over whether pandemics can or should be "used by the political, expert and medical classes as a pretext for taking our #freedom," argues author John Tamny.

Regardless of Virus Origins, Freedom Is the Answer | Brownstone Institute - John Tamny:

 March 10, 2023 - "As seemingly everyone who’s been following the political tragedy that was and is the coronavirus well knows, the Department of Energy now confirms with a low level of confidence that the virus was inadvertently leaked from a lab in China [see video below - gd]. Unsurprisingly, and perhaps understandably, this conclusion has many gloating.... At the same time, this focus on the origins of the virus is a total distraction that politicians, scientists and doctors (including Fauci) have to be loving....

""[T]he virus’s origins really don’t matter. Lest the crowd that has long been properly anti-lockdown forgets, pathogens are as old as mankind is. Since they are, the accenting of where they come from is to completely miss the point. Instead, the always and everywhere expressed view should be that [this] reality should not be used by the political, expert and medical classes as a pretext for taking our freedom. Freedom is precious, and authoritarians can’t have it regardless of a pathogen’s origin or its presumed lethality.

"Indeed, while even the New York Times reported with great consistency in 2020 that the virus in a death sense was most associated with very sick, very old people in nursing homes, the accent on the previous truth by the anti-lockdown crowd similarly missed the point. And it missed the point dangerously. That is so because a focus on statistics or anecdote as a reason for not locking us down is to suggest that if the coronavirus or some future pathogen were truly lethal, politicians would have the right to lock us down.

"No thanks, which is once again why this focus on what the New York Times acknowledged way back when, what the CDC routinely acknowledged about those dying with the virus (remember 'comorbidities'?) since 2020, and what the DoE softly concludes right now is such a mistaken way to fight the battle. It is because it puts such a low price tag on freedom. Almost as bad, it hands the argument to those who have a need to trample on the rights of others. Think about it. As I argued in my 2021 book When Politicians Panicked, the more lethal any virus is the more that political action is wholly superfluous. If a virus is killing indiscriminately who among us seriously needs to be forced to be careful?

"Ok, but what if we don’t know the lethality of a spreading virus? Freedom is the answer once again. It’s precisely when fear is greatest and knowledge is least evident that freedom becomes most crucial. Indeed, free people do more than produce the economic resources that scientists and doctors require to come up with cures for what might be harmful or lethal. Equally important, free people produce information. By making different choices amid a spreading virus, free people teach us what behavior is most associated with sickness, death, or neither. In other words, lockdowns don’t protect us; rather they threaten our health by concealing essential information. 

"Please think about this with what happened in 2020 top of mind. By locking us down, politicians and experts didn’t just wreck businesses, jobs, and living as we knew it up until then; they also blinded us to how to best deal with a spreading virus that they claimed was a huge threat to us. In that case, thank goodness the virus wasn’t remotely lethal for the vast majority of us.

"Still, the lockdowns were tragic. That they correlated with increased depression, alcoholism, job loss, business failure, and reduced classroom learning is a known and horrid quantity. Worse, and as logic would dictate, all this force logically didn’t improve our well-being or save lives. The taking of freedom never does.

"In which case, let’s not compound the errors of the past by focusing on the origin of the virus leak. Once again, viruses are a part of life, thus making origin irrelevant. Much worse, this focus on what’s irrelevant is exactly what the politicians and experts want us to do. If we waste time worrying about the where, we forget what the political and expert class did to us not too long ago.

"In short, the lockdowns were the true tragedy of 2020 and beyond, not something that is old as mankind. Let’s please not change the subject from what really mattered then, and matters now."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/freedom-is-the-answer/

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The story of the Crimson Contagion

One of the mysteries of the Covid-19 pandemic is why so many governments quickly discarded their existing pandemic plans and opted to lock down instead. The story of the Crimson Contation may shed some light on how that

What Is Crimson Contagion? | Brownstone Institute - Jeffrey A. Tucker:

December 22, 2022 - "The lockdowns of March 2020 shocked the American people and most public health agencies, not to mention infectious disease doctors. The idea of school shutdowns, business closures, plus mandatory remote work and other restrictions have previously seemed inconceivable. It was especially remarkable to have such an 'all-of-government' response to a virus that we already knew posed a threat mainly to the elderly and infirm. Issues like public-health precedent, American legal tradition, and medical knowledge about dealing with respiratory viruses, not to mention natural immunity and collateral damage of lockdowns, were all thrown out the window. 

"Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s book The Real Anthony Fauci mentions a tabletop exercise called Crimson Contagion that ran from January through August, 2019. I had not previously heard of it and I found the mention remarkable, simply because it proves that not everyone was shocked by lockdowns. They were not part of official planning documents of either the CDC or WHO but they were clearly in the plans of someone. 

"I’ve only followed up on this report in light of growing focus on the person who coordinated Crimson Contagion: Robert Kadlec, who served in the Trump administration as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, Preparedness and Response. It was he who also ran the Covid response between HHS and the Department of Homeland Security. Kadec’s lifetime government service (and, yes, he is said to be CIA) extends all the way back to the G.W. Bush administration when in 2007 he took the position of Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Biodefense Policy on the Homeland Security Council from 2007 to 2009. The very notion of lockdowns originated in that administration. 

"The 2019 tabletop exercise involved a huge number of public-sector agencies across all states plus many private-sector associations. It postulated a disease scenario in which a respiratory virus begins in China and spreads around the world by air travelers. It is first detected in Chicago. The World Health Organization declares a pandemic 47 days later. But then it was too late: 110 million Americans became sick, with 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 dead.

"The conclusion of the exercise was that government was not well prepared for a pandemic and urged more planning and fast acting to implement what we now call lockdowns as we await a vaccine. Presumably, the vaccine then fixes everything. 

"The public knew nothing of this exercise until March 19, 2020, when the New York Times reported on it for the first time. This was one day following the detailed release of stay-at-home orders by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The next day, National Public Radio also ran a report on Crimson Contagion. The Times reported:

> The Crimson Contagion planning exercise run last year by the Department of Health and Human Services involved officials from 12 states and at least a dozen federal agencies. They included the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Security Council. Groups like the American Red Cross and American Nurses Association were invited to join, as were health insurance companies and major hospitals like the Mayo Clinic.

The war game-like exercise was overseen by Robert P. Kadlec, a former Air Force physician who has spent decades focused on biodefense issues. After stints on the Bush administration’s Homeland Security Council and the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was appointed assistant secretary of Health and Human Services for Preparedness and Response. 

"Also participating were former Trump administration officials Rex Tillerson (Secretary of State, 2017-2018) and John F. Kelly, who was White House chief of staff from 2017 to 2019. The NYT even ran a picture of the two of them at the event. 

"Here are some direct quotes from the October 2019 report of Crimson Contagion:

 The exercise revealed several workforce protection challenges under conditions where medical countermeasures, such as the pandemic vaccine, antiviral medications, and personal protective equipment, are limited. To protect the public prior to vaccine distribution, public health officials issued guidance on the implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions intended to slow the spread of the virus. 

In keeping with non-pharmaceutical intervention recommendations, employers – including government entities – sought to practice social distancing by having a significant portion of their employees work remotely. Employers encountered cascading impacts associated with making, communicating, and implementing such work-distancing decisions. 

At multiple levels of government, officials wrestled with identifying employees who are essential and those who are nonessential in the context of an incident forecasted to span many months. In addition, officials faced challenges in determining which employees could perform their duties remotely and hierarchical organizations, such as state and federal departments and agencies, were uncertain as to the process for determining and implementing remote-workforce decisions.

Also:

During the exercise, CDC recommended that states delay school openings for six weeks, a follow-up to the initial (pre-exercise) recommendation that states delay the opening of schools for two weeks if the disease is present in the area. Many local jurisdictions and school districts have the authority to decide to close schools (or keep schools open). This distributed approach to school closure decisions caused confusion centered on discrepancies between schools that remained open and those that closed. In addition, while school delays and dismissals may be necessary over the course of the pandemic response, state participants identified any continued school delays and dismissals as having serious cascading impacts that require a concerted public messaging campaign and government coordination. Multiple states realized that dismissing schools is much more complex than they previously appreciated....

"This exercise took place entirely out of the public eye but had strangely prescient foretelling of events only 5 months later. Kadlec, who had organized the entire tabletop exercise, was also later the author of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions report: An Analysis of the Origins of the COVID-19 Pandemic, which came out earlier this year. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., reports: 'second only to his longtime crony and comrade in arms Anthony Fauci, Robert Kadlec played a historic leadership role in fomenting the contagious logic that infectious disease posed a national security threat requiring a militarized response.' He is the signer of the report to HHS, in a letter dated December 9, 2019....:

"By the time of this letter, US intelligence already knew of the Wuhan virus. Four months later, US lockdowns began, starting with the March 8th cancellation of South-by-Southwest by the Austin, Texas mayor, and extending to the March 12th imposition of travel restrictions, the March 13 takeover by FEMA, and the March 16th press conference by Trump, Fauci, and Deborah Birx, which announced nationwide lockdowns.... 

"The lockdowns – to which Trump agreed only reluctantly and were extended far past the point in which he believed they would control the virus – were the most ruinous of the administration. Trump’s pollsters for 2020 all agreed that these lockdowns created the conditions that drove him from office. 

"What does it all mean? Perhaps it is all just a series of coincidental data points, that what is called the worst pandemic in 100 years came only a few months after an elaborate multi-agency trial run of the same in which former high officials of the Trump administration participated. And perhaps the best person to run the Covid response also happened to be the very person who organized and managed the trial run in the previous season. 

"Many people will surely say there is nothing to see here. There is so much not to see these days."

Read more: https://brownstone.org/articles/what-is-crimson-contagion/ 

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