PP NewsBrief: 2021-04-19

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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Australian medicines regulator reports first blood clot death 'likely' linked to AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine

"Blood clots in a woman who died after being injected with AstraZeneca's Vaxzevria vaccine were "likely" linked to the Anglo-Swedish jab, the Australian government's drugs regulator has said.

The 48-year-old's death marks Australia's first reported fatality from blood clots linked to the vaccine.

After being vaccinated in New South Wales she was hospitalized with an extensive thromboembolic event and thrombocytopenia (TTS) four days later, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) said in a statement on Friday.

The TGA's expert advisory panel, the Vaccine Safety Investigation Group (VSIG), met late on Friday and concluded that the woman's rare blood clotting condition was "likely" linked to her vaccination.

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The woman who died was vaccinated on the morning of April 8, the TGA said, ahead of the government's announcement later that day that Australians under the age of 50 should be given Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine, not AstraZeneca's."

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What Is The Difference Between The Wright And Babbitt Shootings?

"Within an hour of each other, charging decisions in two lethal police shootings were announced with strikingly different conclusions. The decisions reached in the shootings of Daunte Wright in Minnesota and Ashli Babbitt in Washington highlight concerns over the political and legal elements that can influence such decisions. The timing of the two decisions that involved two chaotic situations raises questions why charges were filed in Minnesota, but not in Washington.

In the Minnesota shooting, police were attempting to arrest Wright who, after a traffic stop, was found to have an outstanding warrant for fleeing police with an unlicensed firearm. Wright broke free of officers while he was being handcuffed and jumped back into the car to drive away. Kim Potter decided to deploy her stun gun against Wright, which would likely be viewed as a reasonable level of force in that circumstance. However, in the struggle, Potter grabbed her service weapon rather than her Taser. In the video, the officer is heard yelling “taser, taser, taser” before she swears and says, “Holy S**t I just shot him.”

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The case has tragically familiar elements as a “weapon confusion” case. There are so many such weapon-confusion cases that departments have tried a variety of solutions, from adding special training to new designs for stun guns. The problem is such training can be lost to the fog and frenzy of the violent scene.

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Unlike past cases, the prosecutors did not overcharge Potter. However, under the criminal provision, the prosecutors must show that the 26-year veteran “creat[ed] an unreasonable risk, and consciously [took] chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another.” The question is whether a possible split-second mistake legally constitutes a conscious choice of an officer.

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In Washington, the Justice Department announced that it would not charge the officer who shot Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 riot. The decision in Washington had a number of striking differences. Potter was charged within a few days. It has been months since Babbitt was shot in the Capitol. The identity of the responsible officer has not been made public. Babbitt was an unarmed Air Force veteran without a criminal record. While she was clearly trespassing and at the forefront of a riot, there is no claim that she was threatening any officer or possible person with serious bodily injury or death. Indeed, near her were other officers who could have been hit by the round....

If the officer intended to shoot Babbitt, it would not likely meet the standard for a justified shooting under governing cases like Tennessee v. Garner (1985). If the officer fired blindly or wildly, it would appear to have many of the same negligent elements as the Wright shooting.

In rejecting charges, the Justice Department statement notably does not say that the shooting was clearly justified. Instead, it noted that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’”  It stressed that this element requires a showing of “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”

Of course, “weapons confusion” cases are often caused by an officer’s acting out of “fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or poor judgment.” Yet, in one case an officer is charged and in the other the officer is cleared."

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Republicans unveil bill to block federal funding of vaccine passports

"Rep. Matt Rosendale (R) is moving to block state and local governments from implementing vaccine passports. The Montana lawmaker and 24 other Republicans introduced a bill Tuesday that would prevent the use of federal funds to pay for such systems.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration said it was not considering plans to mandate vaccine passports, but GOP lawmakers want to ensure that federal money does not go to jurisdictions that propose the idea."

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Calif. Democrats weigh options in event of election to recall Gov. Newsom, create new bill acquiring names, information of petition signers

"...California State Democrat Sen. Josh Newman created a bill that would provide targets of future recalls the access to names and information of those who signed the petition. It would also extend the length of time to remove signatures to 45 days.

Orrin Heatlie, the lead proponent of Recall Newsom, called the bill an intimidation tactic.

“I think it’s really important that we maintain this process,” Heatlie stated. “Even though this won’t affect the Newsom recall, it will affect all future recalls and this is why it is so important to stop this bill from going forward.”

California gubernatorial candidate and former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer (R) tweeted his criticism for the bill and called it a “dangerous attempt to intimidate California voters.”"

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Blood-clotting illness PVT 30x more prevalent in Moderna, Pfizer Covid-19 recipients than AstraZeneca – Oxford researchers

"A potentially fatal blood-clotting disease is 30 times more common among people who have received the Covid-19 vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer than those given the troubled AstraZeneca jab, researchers have found.

A team of scientists from the University of Oxford has found that after vaccination, Vaxzevria (formerly AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine) recipients were less likely to suffer portal vein thrombosis (PVT) – blood clots in the artery from the intestines to the liver.

For recipients of the viral vector Vaxzevria vaccine, the incidence rate for splanchnic thrombosis – clotting in the portal and other abdominal veins – is 1.6 per million people, according to data from the EU drugs regulator the European Medicines Agency (EMA). By contrast, some 44.9 cases of PVT per million people were seen among those who had been injected with the mRNA vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer, the Oxford research, published on Thursday, said."

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America’s Micro State: Why Congress Should Consider Retrocession Rather Than Statehood

"The country remains sharply divided over D.C. statehood despite years of advocacy and overwhelming media support. In January, a Harris/Hill poll showed 52 percent of respondents favoring statehood while 48 percent opposed it. In March, the liberal group Democracy for All 2021 Action reported little change in that, with 54 percent support. But that still is not a high degree of support for a new state after decades of campaigning for the idea

Given such deep division, one might expect there to be a series of hearings and public debates. Yet, like much else in Congress these days, there was little debate and absolutely no alternatives were considered. That is all too familiar to some of us who have been involved with this issue for decades. When a statehood effort failed due to lack of public support, Democrats pushed to give D.C. a vote in the House of Representatives. I testified five times in the House and Senate against that earlier bill as flagrantly unconstitutional. At the time, I proposed a “modified retrocession plan” that could have occurred decades ago if not for Democrats’ opposition. Under this plan, the city would maintain unique elements in a phased retrocession back to Maryland.  Both Maryland and the District could benefit from such a plan in my view.

Retrocession refers to returning the district from whence it came: to Maryland. Originally, the district was designed to be a diamond-shaped “federal city” composed of land ceded equally from Maryland and Virginia. The Framers did not want any state to control the federal city and, thus, its citizens would be represented by the Congress as a whole. After a few years, the district’s Virginians decided they wanted to go back and were allowed to retrocede. The Marylanders decided to remain as a federal city without direct representation.

I have long maintained that the district’s non-voting status is unacceptable and should change. However, I do not view statehood as the best option, for the country or for the district. Under my proposal, the Mall and core federal buildings would remain the District of Columbia (as is the case in this legislation) but the remainder of the district would retrocede back to Maryland, as did the original district’s other half to Virginia. In this way, residents would receive full representation while receiving the benefits of various Maryland educational and other opportunities. That reduction of the federal enclave has been incorporated in the latest statehood proposal without retrocession.

Beyond the desire for state status, there are strong political reasons why Democratic leaders do not want to hear “the ‘r’ word” in these debates. Maryland Democrats are not keen on having their center of power shift from Baltimore to Washington. Baltimore (population around 575,000) is smaller than Washington (population around 712,000) and would have to contend with political rivals in the deeply blue state. Moreover, retrocession would not add two new U.S. senators and a new House seat for a Democratic majority.

While retrocession might not benefit the Democratic Party, there would be many benefits for district citizens. They would instantly become part of a larger state with greater resources and greater success in areas ranging from education to courts to infrastructure."

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Disney Television turned down ‘incredibly well-written scripts’ for not being inclusive enough, senior executive says

"A senior Disney executive has acknowledged that some projects get turned down because they are deemed inadequately diverse, reinforcing suspicions that quality content has taken a backseat to political agendas.

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"I will tell you for the first time we received some incredibly well-written scripts that did not satisfy our standards in terms of inclusion, and we passed on them," Walden said during the event last week, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Last year the channel’s parent company ABC (American Broadcasting Company) introduced new guidelines which aimed to make content “as inclusive as possible.” One of the new rules stipulated that 50% or more of regular and recurring characters in a program must come from minority groups.

It seems that the rule has been zealously enforced. Walden cited one rejected script that focused on a white family, with the ‘diversity’ coming from their neighbors. The executive said that such content was “not going to get on the air anymore” because it’s “not a reflection of our audience,” adding that she felt “good” about the direction her network was taking.

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Disney Television isn’t the only Disney operation to embrace inclusivity. Disney’s theme park division recently announced that it plans to offer more inclusive products like costumes for people in wheelchairs, and ‘LGBTQ Mickey ears’."

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Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery

"The Doctrine of Discovery, created in a series of Papal Bulls in the Fifteenth Century, has served as the basis of most of European colonialism’s destructive rampage across most regions of the world.  It was most successfully applied in the Western Hemisphere where Spanish, Portuguese, and British colonies decimated much of the indigenous population and proceeded to ‘own’ the land by way of the Crown.  In the truly British colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, the indigenous populations have suffered from ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide.

What is most surprising is that these Papal Bulls, written by Roman Catholic popes over 500 years ago, still serve as legal documents used to argue against indigenous possession of land and any rights to it.  Canada’s legal system does not use the Bulls directly, but refers to their use in the U.S. The Sparrow case in British Columbia in 1990 used the 1823 Johnson v M’Intosh decision of the U.S. Supreme Court:

“The  M’Intosh verdict held that a discovering sovereign has the exclusive right to extinguish Indians’ interest in their lands, either by purchase or by just war.”

The result in the Sparrow case “confirms that these rights [Aboriginal rights] are not absolute, and can be infringed upon providing the government can legally justify it.”

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In Unsettling Truths – The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, the authors, Mark Charles, and Soon-Chan Rah, both Christian pastors, explore the history and ramifications of the pronouncement of these Papal Bulls.  Interestingly enough the book does not provide the texts of the Bulls even though they are quite short and easy to understand.  They do however provide a precis:

“The Doctrine of Discovery is a set of legal principles that governed the European colonizing powers, particularly regarding the administration of indigenous land.  It is the “primary legal precedent that still controls native affairs and rights…an international law formulated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries..””

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“Unsettling Truths”  is a series of short essays set out in historical order describing how it has been abused for centuries and served as a major component of the establishment of the British Colonies in North America and their subsequent changes into independent states.  The authors excoriate the Puritan settlers as the prime promoters of this racist ideology, and apply the same severe criticism to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, following on with a deconstruction of Abraham Lincoln’s.

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As well as deconstructing the secular, the authors also present arguments about the lack of Christianity in the U.S.    Under the descriptions and definitions of the authors, they present the U.S. as an attempt at “Christendom” arguing that it “cannot exist with the teachings of Jesus.”  They see Christendom – the American nation, the physical entity encompassing Christianity in the U.S. – has “prostituted itself to empire….the need to address corporate sins like stolen lands, broken treaties, genocide, slavery, sexism, systematic injustice, white supremacy, and Christendom itself is ignored or outright rejected” by U.S. churches.  Confronted with the Doctrine of Discovery, “the church has no meaningful theological response….the dysfunctional narrative of American exceptionalism has no basis in Scripture.”

The author’s final argument summarizes succinctly that “the Church in America has nothing to offer.”"

It seems like the author of the piece is making the mistake of placing a modern understanding of race into the minds of people in the past. It would be fairer & more accurate, I think, to describe the Doctrine as cultural (or religious) superiority, not racism or white supremacy.

The article in general serves as a good overview of the kind of history and analysis people who claim America to be an institutionally racist & white supremacist nation are engaging in.

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Utah ABC affiliate doxes paramedic & sends crew to his house, after hack reveals he donated $10 to a Kyle Rittenhouse defense fund

"A Utah paramedic who donated $10 to a legal defense fund for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teen who shot three Wisconsin rioters, allegedly in self-defense, has been outed as some kind of villain by Salt Lake City's ABC TV affiliate.

ABC4 reporter Jason Nguyen came up with his “scoop” after the Guardian newspaper included the name of West Valley City, Utah paramedic Craig Shepherd in a Friday article about police officers and other government employees who made donations to fundraisers for “accused vigilante murderers, far-right activists and fellow officers accused of shooting black Americans.”

The Guardian dug the names out of a data breach from a Christian crowdfunding website that was used to raise funds for Rittenhouse, among other controversial defendants. Nguyen took the hacked materials a step further, essentially doxing the paramedic. His report even included a video of the reporter standing at the front door of Shepherd's house, with plenty of identifying details for those who might want to find the residence.

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A number of federal government employees, including Vice President Kamala Harris, and celebrities have openly tried to help raise money for the legal defense of protesters arrested for riot-related offenses, such as arson. The bail fund promoted by Harris has reportedly helped free defendants charged with murder, rape and other violent felonies.

For example, the fund paid $75,000 to bail out Jaleel Stallings, who allegedly shot at members of a SWAT team during a riot last May in Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd during a botched police arrest. It paid $100,000 to bail out Darnika Floyd, who was charged with murder for allegedly stabbing a friend to death. There is no federal investigation of the vice president's involvement with the bail fund; nor is she on administrative leave."

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When Hate Crimes Don’t Matter

"...This story went more or less unnoticed, in part, because the nation’s racialized gaze is fixated on the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who stands accused of killing George Floyd in the course of arresting him last May. The case hangs like the sword of Damocles over the nation’s head. Implied in the verdict is the answer to the question of whether or not Americans will suffer through another wave of riots. Some, however, are more explicit.

“Is protecting this piece of trash Derek Chauvin worth spending 27 million dollar payouts, tens of BILLIONS of dollars in damage around the country, causing injury and loss of life for other cops during protests?” tweeted Black Lives Matter sympathizer Tariq Nasheed on March 29. A few days later, Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that many in Minneapolis are “on edge” about the outcome of the Chauvin trial: “We have seen justice not delivered in our community for many years.”

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The obvious difference between the Turner and Floyd incidents is that one received far more coverage than the other: the media does not like stories with black attackers. Most importantly, the Turner incident is distinct because it more closely approximates the reality of race crime in America,  whereas Floyd’s represents a fiction of racial terror.

Turner slashed a child’s neck, bit another person, kicked and punched several police officers—and yet he lives and breathes. It’s difficult to read Turner’s story and not come away thinking that everyone involved went to great pains, at great risk to themselves, to avoid killing him. That, according to the Black Lives Matter narrative, shouldn’t have happened and, indeed, never happens. But it’s actually much closer to the norm than the Floyd incident. “It isn’t average when a police officer casually kneels on someone’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds,” as Harvard professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. put it.

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It can feel like a Chomskyan cliché to blame the media for weaving a blindfold of consensus over our eyes, and doing it so often seems to dull the sting of the accusation—but it’s true. In 2017, the Journal of Interpersonal Violence published a study that found that the “perpetuation of potentially inaccurate stereotypes not only misguides future research on [mass shootings], but also shapes the social construction of mass murder.” It’s not something as simple as a lie; these social constructs have far-reaching consequences that affect the lives of millions. “Although mass murders account for less than 0.2% of all U.S. homicides annually, their impact on government policies is disproportionately large due to public concern,” the authors noted.

The implications of that study extend beyond gun violence. Professional verbalists shape and drive racial grievance narratives, downplaying, justifying, and ignoring violence against white Americans. Had the boy Turner attacked died, there would be no vigils, no marches, no riots, no wall-to-wall media coverage. Politicians would not have kneeled in Kente cloth, as congressional Democrats did, nor would there be a “Platinum Plan” for needy whites.

The underlying argument of Black Lives Matter is that America is fundamentally evil. That’s half true: America’s ruling intellectual elites are evil."

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Fauci blasted for deeming gun violence ‘public health issue,’ criticizing vaccine hesitancy while backing tough Covid restrictions

"Asked about recent polling showing nearly half of Republicans are still hesitant about receiving a Covid-19 vaccine, White House health advisor Fauci called the trend “frustrating” and “paradoxical.”

“It’s almost paradoxical that, on the one hand, they want to be relieved of the [public health] restrictions, but, on the other hand, they don’t want to get vaccinated. It just almost doesn’t make any sense,” he told CNN on Sunday.

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Fauci predicted in his interview that the pause on the vaccine would likely be lifted. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory panel will be meeting to discuss the matter on Friday.

“My estimate is that we will continue to use it in some form. I doubt very seriously they’ll just cancel it. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I do think that there will likely be some sort of warning or restriction or risk assessment,” he said."

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WATCH: Monkey hooked up to Elon Musk’s Neuralink plays MindPong with just its thoughts

"Musk’s mind-machine interface company, Neuralink, has released startling footage that purports to show a monkey playing video games using only its brain.

Pager, a nine-year-old macaque, was hooked up to a Neuralink system six weeks ago and trained to play a variety of video games in exchange for a banana smoothie delivered through a straw.

During this time, the links recorded activity from the more than 2,000 electrodes that had been implanted in Pager’s motor cortex, responsible for arm and hand movements, and wirelessly fed them to a machine-learning algorithm.

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Neuralink’s goal is to enable paralyzed people to use a PC or phone with their mind by manipulating a cursor or virtual keyboard on a computer screen or the touch controls on a smartphone. Musk tweeted that he expects later iterations of the system to allow users to interact with their phone faster than they otherwise would using their hands.

The billionaire also claimed future iterations would allow for communication between neural links in various parts of a patient’s body, potentially one day allowing “paraplegics to walk again.”"

Here's an example of a technology & research whose goals seem noble but has immense risk of misuse given our current level of spiritual development.

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Is Biden’s Supreme Court Commission Packed To Fail?

"The commission is an ominous sign that Biden may be offering up the last institution immune from our impulsive politics. Its composition also seems to confirm the worst expectations. Indeed, it is a lesson in how to pack a body. The group is technically bipartisan but is far from balanced. Only a handful of the 36 members are considered center-to-right academics. (Even that is still a better showing of intellectual diversity than most of the faculties of the represented schools, which have few if any conservative or libertarian faculty members.) Liberals make up the vast majority on the commission, and some have been outspoken critics of Republicans and the conservative Supreme Court majority.

The commission rapporteur, who is tasked with publishing the final report after 180 days of study about the Supreme Court, is University of Michigan professor Kate Andrias, one of 500 academics who called for the rejection of Brett Kavanaugh. One commission chair, Yale University professor and former Justice Department official Cristina Rodriguez, had also signed the public letter against Kavanaugh. The other commission chair is New York University professor and past White House counsel Bob Bauer.

The commission includes such individuals as Harvard University professor Laurence Tribe, who called Donald Trump a “terrorist” and has a history of personal and vulgar attacks on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and others, myself included, who maintain views that he opposes. Tribe once ridiculed former Attorney General William Barr for his Catholic faith. The only ire Tribe has drawn from the left, however, was when he referred to the possible selection of an African American like then Senator Kamala Harris to be vice president as mere “cosmetics” for the party.

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The only hope is that this commission is so lopsided that it is clearly not intended to be a credible basis for a court packing proposal. While the group has many respected and thoughtful academics, its composition is unlikely to sway many conservatives or even some moderates. Rather, it could be an effort to defuse the left while sentencing the court packing scheme to death by commission, a favorite lethal practice in Washington. Commissions are Washington’s great vast wasteland where controversies are often sent to perish with time and exposure.

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...The hope is that he does not have the courage to simply repeat his past view that court packing remains a “boneheaded” idea but that he can assemble an overwhelmingly liberal commission to effectively kill the scheme. After all, 180 days is not much time to reinvent the Supreme Court, but it is just enough time to give the pretense of an effort to do so. Unfortunately, that is the closest we get to principled government today...."

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Biden isn’t ending the Afghanistan War, he’s privatizing it: Special Forces, Pentagon contractors, intelligence operatives will remain

"Biden’s claim that he is ending the forever war is misleading. As The New York Times reported, the United States would remain after the formal departure of U.S. troops with a “shadowy combination of clandestine Special Operations Forces, Pentagon contractors and covert intelligence operatives.” Their mission will be to “find and attack the most dangerous Qaeda or Islamic state threats, current and former American officials said.”

The Times further reported that the United States maintains a constellation of air bases in the Persian Gulf region as well as in Jordan, and a major air headquarters in Qatar, which could provide a launching pad for long-range bomber or armed drone missions into Afghanistan.

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The meaninglessness of President Biden’s announcement becomes apparent when we consider that the Pentagon employs more than seven contractors for every serviceman or woman in Afghanistan, an increase from one contractor for every serviceman or woman a decade ago.

As of January, more than 18,000 contractors remained in Afghanistan, according to a Defense Department report, when official troop totals had been reduced to 2,500.

These totals reflect the U.S. government’s strategy of outsourcing war to the benefit of private mercenary corporations, and as a means of distancing the war from the public and averting dissent, since relatively few Americans are directly impacted by it.

Most of the mercenaries are ex-military veterans, though a percentage are third-country nationals who are paid meager wages to perform menial duties for the military.

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A blueprint for U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is the 1959-1975 secret war in Laos, where the CIA worked with hundreds of civilian contractors who flew spotter aircraft, ran ground bases, and operated radar stations in civilian clothes while raising its own private army among the Hmong to fight the pro-communist Pathet Lao.

The CIA and Special Forces have again attempted to recruit tribal elements in Afghanistan and, like in Laos, have become enmeshed in inter-tribal and sectarian feuds.

For years, U.S. Special Forces operatives have also been training Afghan security forces as a proxy army and running Phoenix-style snatch and grab and assassination missions, which are poised to continue — despite the formal troop withdrawal.

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...Afghanistan was never really a breeding ground for international terrorists.

The 9/11 hijackers mostly came from Saudi Arabia, and the Taliban agreed to turn over Osama Bin Laden to an international court after the 9/11 attacks, which they never supported.

The Afghan War will go on indefinitely not because of the threat of terrorism — which is accentuated by the U.S. military presence — but because the United States will not concede ground in the region.

The U.S. has announced intentions to retain at least two military bases in Afghanistan after the official troop drawdown, and set up over 1000 bases during the war.

Uncle Sam also covets Afghans’ mineral wealth. A 2007 United States Geological Service survey discovered nearly $1 trillion in mineral deposits, including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and critical industrial metals like lithium, which is used in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and cellphones.

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As a previous CovertAction Magazine article documented, the current Afghan government led by Ashraf Ghani is largely a creation of the United States. Its military is funded by the United States at a cost of around $4 billion per year. This support is going to continue — unless Congress cuts it off — alongside large-scale U.S. foreign aid programs that amount to nearly $1 billion per year.

The U.S. wants to keep Ghani in power, or replace him with another proxy that can help it win the geopolitical competition with Russia and China, which is little different from the 19th-century “great game” between Great Britain and Czarist Russia.

As long as the U.S. empire remains intact, the war as such will go on, and on — and on."

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Public Infrastructure Is Not a ‘Progressive’ Abomination

"When trying to define the optimal role of government and the threat progressive ideology poses, conservatives tend to attack public infrastructure as the source of the problem. That’s unfair. In fact, a practical policy agenda for conservatives would be to enthusiastically support public investment in infrastructure, but at the same time, to fight inappropriate infrastructure and to fight the entire system that has developed to make infrastructure cost far more than it should.

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In 1968, in a process that took only five years from concept to completion, the San Luis Reservoir went online in Central California. Constructed at a cost in today’s dollars of $2.3 billion, this massive off-stream reservoir has a capacity of 2 million acre-feet. It is a vital storage link in the massive California Water Project, an engineering feat almost unrivaled anywhere on earth. Today, a proposed sister reservoir, of equal size and design, has been approved and in the concept stage for more than a decade, with millions already spent on “planning.” Facing additional years of litigation and bureaucratic inertia, the project is currently projected for completion sometime in the 2030s at a cost, undoubtedly underestimated, of $5.2 billion. It will probably never get built.

This transition is complete: Government used to get public works done on time and at a reasonable cost 50 years ago, while public works today are for the most part neglected. The projects that do get completed often offer little practical benefit to society, at costs that are scandalously overblown.

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Unfortunately, the group that might be most effective in that fight for badly needed new infrastructure—America’s conservatives—faces withering ridicule and “principled” objections from libertarians. Today, according to many influential libertarians, if you favor appropriate public investment in infrastructure, you are a progressive.

This is ridiculous. Obviously, there should be a vigorous debate over what sort of infrastructure justifies public investment. But, at some point, the role of government is to socialize the costs of amenities that the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide. Freeways and water projects are examples where public investment at the least needs to supplement private investment, in order to prevent imposing prohibitively high costs to the consumer.

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These concepts—public investment and eminent domain—are anathema to libertarians. But while conservatives should recognize the value of libertarian philosophy—limited government—the operative word is “limited” government, not “zero” government. America’s infrastructure has been neglected for decades, and libertarians are not helping.

Moreover, this philosophical schism isn’t just about infrastructure. It’s about finding a balance between public and private ownership, while honestly confronting the inevitable fact that finding a perfect balance is impossible.

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Once you’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s easier to assess the true threat coming from progressives....

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The priority for progressives is directed at social issues, with “solutions” that require a grossly inappropriate expansion of government. Moreover, it is the role they envision for government that is of more concern than expansion per se. Progressives are attempting to divide the nation into groups separated by race and “gender,” they are attempting to train the individuals in these groups to resent members of other groups, and they are promoting a narrative that taints America as an inherently racist and oppressive society. Their goal is to use the government to enforce equal outcomes, “equity,” across all identifiable groups, regardless of the cost.

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For the first time in history, a huge cross-section of America’s elites, using progressives as powerful pawns, are not working in the interests of the American people or the American nation. They have pledged their allegiance to international corporations and transnational institutions. The solution for conservatives who love their country is not to eliminate government. It is to take their government back, and use it to represent the interests of the American people once again."

American Greatness has been publishing some excellent pieces attacking (from the "right") the demonization of all government.

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Mich. Gov. Whitmer faces resistance to COVID-19 shutdowns

"Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has been faced with calls to keep her state open after urging residents to stay at home to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Whitmer told reporters on Sunday, she’s calling for a temporary two-week long shutdown of in-person learning, youth sports games as well as restaurants and bars.

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This came despite the Democrat governor admitting the state has some of the strictest COVID-19 measures in the country.

“We are seeing a surge in Michigan despite the fact that we have some of the strongest policies in place: mask mandates, capacity limits, working from home,” Whitmer stated. “We’ve asked our state for a two-week pause…despite all that we are seeing a surge of variance and that’s precisely why we’re really encouraging them to think about surging vaccines into the state of Michigan.”"

Say it with me Gretchen: "Lockdowns don't work."

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Tennessee teacher whose Facebook post expressed doubt over neighborhood safety is suspended, accused of racism

"In her post, which she refuses to delete in order to allow it to become “a teachable moment for everyone involved” – Carroll explained that she recounted a conversation with a fellow teacher about why she has not worn jewelry, including her diamond ring, for over a decade during her time as teacher at the Lincoln elementary.

It’s not the best neighborhood to be wearing diamonds, she remarked, although she was now considering doing that again, having recently lost her husband and then accidentally coming across her wedding ring in her home, years after she stopped wearing it for said reasons, she wrote.

Carroll shared that she saw this as a “sign” to reconsider her decision – but a post that seems to have been more about loss and memories of loved ones than anything else was quickly lambasted on Facebook, with members of this the community calling for her to be sacked by the school.

But Carroll, who is also the president-elect of the local teacher association, refused to accept that her Facebook post was in any way related to race, her students, or her ability to teach. Instead, she said the post was seen through the racial prism and read into most likely because of the overall heightened social and racial state of affairs across the country."

That teacher is a fighter! She seems like exactly the kind of minds we need teaching our kids these days.

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The Hard Road

"Political actions are the people’s way of making their voices heard when couch-based slacktivisim, Twitter, and voting don’t work. Political actions run the gamut of activities, including organized protests, marches, general strikes, information operations, civil disobedience, election organizing, and more.

These are not social events where we don our red hats, hang out and party with friends, and take selfies to post on social media. Political actions should be serious, planned, and controlled events. Think of Poland’s Solidarity movement or Martin Luther King Jr.’s marches during the civil rights era, not Trump rallies or spring break, D.C.-style. When the people engage in political actions in the streets, it is an instrument of their struggle for freedom and the future of the republic. When a movement is operating in a non-permissive environment with an active threat from the nation’s security services, it needs to employ reasonable digital countermeasures, tactical maturity, and discipline.

Successful political action starts at the grassroots. Local grassroots organizing lays the foundation for the necessary recruiting, training, education, and fundraising that allows for effective and disciplined actions.

Likewise, local grassroots movements become the building blocks for larger regional- and national-level political movements—start local to go national....

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The key to victory with political actions is to employ them all together in a multi-domain effort. In almost every Chuck Norris martial arts movie, Norris bravely takes on a pack of 10-15 super bad guys . . . one at a time. Why? Why don’t the bad guys all rush him at once and give Chuck the beatdown of his life? Some questions will forever go unanswered, but here in the world of political resistance, the rule is that multi-domain actions should take place concurrently in order to create a critical bow-wave that 1) disrupts the opposition leadership’s decision cycle and 2) neutralizes his activities. Political actions need to be all the time and everywhere. They need to capture the people’s voice, their demands, and their inherent power.

Influencing the policies of state and local governments is now more vital than ever. To disrupt the Left’s march to an authoritarian oligarchy, traditional America, via their grassroots political movements, should leverage the 10th Amendment and advocate a process called nullification.

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...Through the 10th Amendment, the sovereign people explicitly grant the states the status of sovereign political entities within a federalist compact by granting them specific powers. When the federal government exceeds those powers granted to it by the sovereign people in the Constitution, or when it infringes on the sovereignty of the states through laws or executive actions that are neither necessary nor proper, the states have the right to use nullification to protect their citizens’ interests...."

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UK Government Predicts ‘Third Wave’ of COVID Deaths ‘Dominated’ by Those Who Are Vaccinated

"In official documents released by the U.K. government, models for the planned “third wave” of COVID-19 predicted that any hospitalizations and deaths would be “dominated” by people who had already been vaccinated.

On March 31, the U.K. Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O), released the latest document containing modeling predictions about the effect that the gradual easing of restrictions would have on the spread of infection, and subsequent hospitalizations and deaths. The data are taken from forecasts provided by Warwick University, Imperial College London, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

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The document attempted to explain its prediction of how “vaccinated” individuals could account for a substantial majority of predicted hospital admission and deaths, by blaming these statistics on age, and the probability of 10 percent of people being left without protection against infection after the virus: “This is because vaccine uptake has been so high in the oldest age groups (modeled here at 95 percent in the over 50-year-olds). There are therefore 5 percent of over 50-year-olds who have not been vaccinated, and 95 percent x 10 percent = 9.5 percent of over 50-year-olds who are vaccinated but, nevertheless, not protected against death.”

However, despite this, SPI-M-O did not cast any aspersions on the injections themselves: “This is not the result of vaccines being ineffective, merely uptake being so high.”

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...as data from the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) shows, 2,342 people have died after the injections in the United States by April 1. A total of 56,869 adverse reactions were reported, with 4,872 of them requiring a hospital visit.

Given that only 11,050 deaths after injections have been reported to VAERS since records began in 1990s, this means that since the rollout began December 14, deaths after COVID-19 injections have already accounted for more than 20 percent of the 21-year records.

With figures such as these, the COVID-19 injections are seemingly far more harmful and deadly than the initial polio vaccines launched in 1955. After the administration of the Cutter Polio vaccine, 51 children were paralyzed and five died, prompting the vaccine recall.

Similar prompt action was seen in 1976 in response to Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) that came following a Swine Flu vaccine.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention records that the “increased risk was approximately one additional case of GBS for every 100,000 people who got the swine flu vaccine.” Given that more than 40 million people were having the swine flu jab, “federal health officials decided that the possibility of an association of GBS with the vaccine, however small, necessitated stopping immunization until the issue could be explored.”

So far, there have been 90 instances of GBS reported in the U.K. after COVID-19 injections, meaning that there is one reported case of GBS in every 6,185 reactions."

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Fauci says Covid vaccine booster trials 'ongoing already' for original coronavirus and South Africa variant

"Clinical trials are already being conducted into Covid-19 booster jabs for people who have already been vaccinated against the disease, America's Covid czar and infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has said.

The ongoing trials are looking at booster shots of vaccines against the original "wild type" coronavirus, as well as a variant-specific version for the South Africa B1.351 strain, Fauci said during a White House press briefing on Friday.

He said the trials are focused on the "safety" of boosters and whether the extra jabs can increase the "ability of the antisera to ultimately neutralize both the wild type and the variant."

This week, Fauci and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla both said it is likely people will need a booster dose within 12 months of completing their original Covid vaccination schedule."

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Trump’s Surprise Witness: Rep. Waters Becomes A Possible Witness Against Her Own Lawsuit

"With rioting continuing in Brooklyn Center, Minn. and around the country, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, went to Minnesota and told the protesters that they “gotta stay on the street” and “get more confrontational.”  The statement is ironic since Waters is one of the House members currently suing former President Donald Trump and others for inciting violence on January 6th with his words on the Mall.  Waters insists that Trump telling his supporters to go to the Capitol to make their voice heard and “fight” for their votes was actual criminal incitement. Conversely, Waters was speaking after multiple nights of rioting and looting and telling protesters to stay on the streets and get even more confrontational. There was violence after the remarks, including a shooting incident where two National Guard members were injured. Waters has now guaranteed that she could be called as a witness by Trump in his own defense against her own lawsuit.

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Waters, Swalwell, and others are rushing in where wiser Democrats fear to tread. These civil lawsuits actually raise claims like the infliction of emotional distress that were directly and unequivocally rejected by the Supreme Court. In 2011, the court ruled 8-1 in favor of Westboro Baptist Church, an infamous group of zealots who engaged in homophobic protests at the funerals of slain American troops. In rejecting a suit against the church on constitutional grounds, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.”

Yet, Waters is not more deterred by the actual case law in this area than the legal experts on CNN and MSNBC. Indeed, Waters has gone further and insisted that Trump should not only be charged with criminal incitement but actual “premeditated murder.” She stated, “For the President of the United States to sit and watch the invasion and the insurrection and not say a word because he knew he had absolutely initiated it – and as some of them said, ‘he invited us to come.”

That bring us back to Brooklyn Center this weekend. Violence and looting have been unfolding around the country, including the near the area where Waters was speaking. Yet, she called on people to stay in the streets and get more “confrontational.”  She added that there would be no acceptance of court decisions to the contrary in the Chauvin case: “We’re looking for a guilty verdict. If we don’t, we cannot go away.”  Protesters have not only been camped around the courthouse but the home of a witness in the Chauvin case was targeted. (It turned out to be his former home). Critics could charge that Waters’ statement and these protests are meant to intimidate witnesses or influence the trial — just as critics charged that Trump was attempting to intimidate or influence Congress."

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Carl Jung once said that “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves”. That certainly seems to be the case with Waters and Trump. It is also why Waters could prove the only witness that Trump needs to call to defeat her own lawsuit."

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Michigan Gov. Whitmer, who sought ‘grace’ when aide vacationed in Florida, blames returning ‘snowbirds’ for Covid-19 case surge

"Governor Gretchen Whitmer is blaming “snowbirds” returning from winter Florida trips for Michigan's spike in Covid-19 infections, just days after calling for “grace” when a top staffer was caught escaping to the Sunshine State.

“At the end of the day, this is going to come down to whether or not everyone does their part,” Whitmer said Sunday on NBC's ‘Meet the Press’ program, adding that Michigan ranks behind only Florida in the B117 Covid variant.

Whitmer seemed to take a different view in an interview last Monday, when she responded to criticism that Tricia Foster, the governor's chief operating officer, had vacationed in Siesta Key, Florida, just a few days after Michigan warned against travel amid the state's Covid surge. Also after Whitmer's travel warning, the governor's new health director, Elizabeth Hertel, went to the beach town of Gulf Shores, Alabama.

“We've never had any travel restrictions in Michigan, and I've just encouraged people that if they travel to be safe, mask up, get vaccinated,” Whitmer said of the Foster controversy.

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The staff travel controversy isn't the first time the governor has been accused of setting Covid “rules for thee but not for me.” Last May, she urged Michigan residents not to jam the state's waterfront attractions on Memorial Day weekend, after lockdown rules were eased, but her husband reportedly tried to arrange a trip to a popular area on Traverse Bay. He also asked if his boat could be put in the water sooner at the local marina because of his wife's position. Whitmer dismissed the request as “a failed attempt at humor.”"