Political Foibles

CDC Chooses Politics Over Science

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Vinay Prasad writes at the Tablet How the CDC Abandoned Science.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and some added images. H\T Raymond

Mass youth hospitalizations, COVID-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda

The agency guiding America’s pandemic policy is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which sets widely adopted policies on masking, vaccination, distancing, and other mitigation efforts to slow the spread of COVID and ensure the virus is less morbid when it leads to infection. The CDC is, in part, a scientific agency—they use facts and principles of science to guide policy—but they are also fundamentally a political agency: The director is appointed by the president of the United States, and the CDC’s guidance often balances public health and welfare with other priorities of the executive branch.

Throughout this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance, pushing a series of scientific results that are severely deficient.

This research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and does not support the press-released conclusions that often follow. In all cases, the papers are uniquely timed to further political goals and objectives; as such, these papers appear more as propaganda than as science. The CDC’s use of this technique has severely damaged their reputation and helped lead to a growing divide in trust in science by political party. Science now risks entering a death spiral in which it will increasingly fragment into subsidiary verticals of political parties. As a society, we cannot afford to allow this to occur. Impartial, honest appraisal is needed now more than ever, but it is unclear how we can achieve it.

Masking Propaganda

In November 2020, a CDC study sought to prove that mask mandates slowed the spread of the coronavirus. The study found that counties in Kansas which implemented mask mandates saw COVID case rates start to fall (light blue below), while counties that did not saw rates continue to climb (dark blue):

The data scientist Youyang Gu immediately noted that locales with more rapid rise would be more likely to implement a mandate, and thus one would expect cases to fall more in such locations independent of masking, as people’s behavior naturally changes when risk escalates. Gu zoomed out on the same data and considered a longer horizon, and the results were enlightening: It appeared as if all counties did the same whether they masked or not:

The CDC had merely shown a tiny favorable section, depicted in the red circle above, but the subsequent pandemic waves dwarf their results. In short, the CDC’s study was not capable of proving anything and was highly misleading, but it served the policy goal of encouraging cloth mask mandates.

Child Vaccination Propaganda

Masking is not the only matter in which the CDC’s stated policy goal has coincided with very poor-quality science that was, coincidentally, published in their own journal. Consider the case of vaccination for kids between the ages of 5 and 11. COVID vaccination in this age group has stalled, which runs counter to the CDC’s goal of maximum vaccination. Interestingly, vaccinating kids between 5 and 11 is disputed globally; Sweden recently elected not to vaccinate healthy kids in this age group, and some public health experts believe that it would be preferable for kids to gain immunity from natural exposure instead. Stalling U.S. uptake therefore reflects a legitimate and open scientific debate, regardless of whether the CDC’s policy goal would like to consider it closed.

Enter the CDC’s new study. Widely covered in news outlets, the January 2022 study claims that kids below the age of 18 who get diagnosed with COVID are 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. “These findings underscore the importance of COVID-19 prevention among all age groups,” the authors write, “including vaccination for all eligible children and adolescents.” But a closer examination of the study again reveals problems.

First, it does not adjust for body mass index. Higher BMI is a risk factor for COVID, prompting hospitalization and diabetes, and yet the CDC analysis does not adjust for weight at all.

Second, the absolute risks the study finds are incredibly low. Even if the authors’ finding is true, it demonstrates an increase in diabetes of up to 6 in 10,000 COVID survivors.

Third, the CDC’s analysis uses billing record diagnoses as a surrogate for COVID cases, but many kids had and recovered from COVID without seeking medical care. Without a true denominator that conveys the actual number of COVID cases, the entire analysis might be artifact.

As the former dean of Harvard Medical School Jeffrey Flier told The New York Times, “The CDC erred in taking a preliminary and potentially erroneous association and tweeting it to specifically create alarm in parents.” Some might view it as a mistake, but after observing these matters for almost two years, I believe it was the entire point of the study: Alarm might boost flagging vaccine uptake in kids. (Already, a better study out of the United Kingdom finds no causal link between COVID and diabetes in kids.)

Teenager Vaccination Propaganda

Manufacturing alarm at the very moment an age or other demographic cohort is targeted for vaccination has become a pattern for the CDC. On May 10, 2021, the FDA granted Emergency Use Authorization for the 12- to 15-year-old cohort to receive the Pfizer vaccine. On June 11, the CDC published a study in MMWR claiming to demonstrate rising hospitalization among this age group; widespread media coverage of the study quickly followed. But the absolute rates for this age group were, in reality, amazingly low: Less than 1.5 per 100,000, which was lower than they had been in the previous December. Meanwhile, a safety signal was being investigated—myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle—which was more common after the second dose, and reported to be as frequent as 1 in 3,000-6,000, according to the Israeli Ministry of Health. Other countries became reluctant to push two doses within the standard 21- to 28-day timeline for these ages. By July, the U.K. had decided against pushing vaccines for this cohort, a decision that was walked back only slowly.

The CDC was undeterred, and in recent weeks the agency’s director has started to push for more doses at these ages. Against the advice of an FDA advisory committee, Rochelle Walensky has moved forward with recommending boosters for 12- to 15-year-olds. This view differs from WHO guidance and that of other countries, including Canada, which is not authorizing boosters for healthy adolescents aged 12-17. But when it comes to vaccination, the CDC has a single policy: All Americans should get three doses, regardless of age or medical conditions.

This is not science as such, but science as political propaganda.

Natural Immunity Unmentionable

If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider a final example: the CDC’s near-total dismissal of natural immunity. Many other countries consider recovery from prior infection as a vaccination equivalent or better, an assumption that makes both medical and intuitive sense, but the CDC has steadfastly maintained that everyone needs the same number of vaccinations whether they have recovered from a COVID infection or not. This view is countered by data showing that vaccinating people who have recovered from COVID results in more severe adverse events than vaccinating people who have not had COVID.

In order to bolster the claim that people who have recovered from COVID benefit from vaccination as much as those who never had it, the CDC published a fatally flawed Kentucky-based analysis. The August 2021 study compared people who had contracted COVID twice against those who had it just once, and concluded that those who had it once were more likely to have had vaccination. But the study could have easily missed people who had two documented cases of COVID but might have had severe underlying medical conditions—such as immunosuppression—that predisposed them to multiple bouts of infection in a short period. In addition, people who had COVID once and then got vaccinated might not have sought further testing, believing themselves invulnerable to the virus. The study did not adequately address these biases.

Months later, the CDC published a stronger, cohort study showing clearly that natural immunity was more robust than vaccine-induced immunity in preventing future COVID hospitalizations, and moreover, that people who survived infection were massively protected whether vaccinated or not.

Conclusion: Political Capture of CDC

So why does the supposedly impartial CDC push weak or flawed studies to support the administration’s pandemic policy goals? The cynical answer is that the agency is not in fact impartial (and thus not sufficiently scientific), but captured by the country’s national political system. That answer has become harder to avoid. This is a precarious situation, as it undermines trust in federal agencies and naturally leads to a trust vacuum, in which Americans feel forced to cast about in a confused search for alternative sources of information.

Once that trust is broken, it’s not easily regained. One way out would be to reduce the CDC’s role in deciding policy, even during a pandemic. Expecting the executive agency tasked with conducting the science itself to also help formulate national policy—which must balance both scientific and political concerns and preferences—has proven a failure, because the temptation to produce flawed or misleading analysis is simply too great. In order to firewall policymaking from science, perhaps scientific agency directors shouldn’t be political appointees at all.

Ultimately, science is not a political sport. It is a method to ascertain truth in a chaotic, uncertain universe.

Science itself is transcendent, and will outlast our current challenges no matter what we choose to believe. But the more it becomes subordinate to politics—the more it becomes a slogan rather than a method of discovery and understanding—the more impoverished we all become. The next decade will be critical as we face an increasingly existential question: Is science autonomous and sacred, or a branch of politics? I hope we choose wisely, but I fear the die is already cast.

Vinay Prasad is a hematologist-oncologist, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer.

 

 

People’s Convoy Versus Baby Faced Dictator

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Update on the Canadian struggle to recover freedoms is at Daily Wire ‘These Very Powers … Are Why We Are Here’: Canadian Protesters ‘Dig Their Heels In’ Against Trudeau’s Crackdown.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Monday announcement invoking the Emergencies Act to break a weeks-long protest in Ottawa has only served to inspire more resistance, one protest organizer told The Daily Wire.

The Freedom Convoy, a loose coalition of truckers protesting vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions, rolled into Ottawa in late January and has camped downtown since. The protesters have congested parts of the city around Canada’s seat of government on Parliament Hill while demanding a loosening of COVID-19 restrictions.

So far, Trudeau has refused to meet with the truckers, instead employing increasingly hard-nosed political and legal tactics to try and break the protest.

David Paisley says he has been protesting for weeks now and, as a street captain, helps organize protesters and direct those who wish to support the cause with funds, goods, or services. Paisley told The Daily Wire that Trudeau’s announcement, which made headlines across major news organizations in the U.S. and Canada, went off barely noticed by the protesters on the ground.

“No one really cares about any new announcement. I mean the police have been breaking the law long before any emergency power. They were taking our fuel away. They were arresting people for purely having jerry cans or having empty tanks of fuel,” he said.  “They’ve already been doing these ‘emergency powers’ and all it does is make people dig their heels in more,” Paisley added.

“The irony … is that these very powers and threats are why we are here.”

Trudeau announced in a press conference Monday afternoon that he was authorizing the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act, a law passed in the late 1980s to take the place of the War Measures Act. The act strengthens Canadian law enforcements’ ability to fine and imprison violators and ensures the operation of “essential services” such as towing rigs, Trudeau said during his press conference. It also empowers banks and financial institutions to freeze the accounts of any person or business suspected of being involved with an “illegal blockade.”

Paisley said that the protest would continue despite frozen bank accounts or impounded trucks until every protester is cuffed and thrown in prison.

“[The Trudeau government] underestimated the determination and the intelligence of those here, and so everyone still here on the ground, they’re basically willing to give their lives for this – peacefully of course,” Paisley said.

“They’re prepared to drain every last dollar, even from frozen bank accounts,” he added later.

The truckers in Ottawa have received wave after wave of support in the form of cash funds, food, fuel, letters, and even a free laundry service by two ladies who walk Paisley’s street every day collecting clothes. The trucker said he received word on Monday from two men who wanted to deliver hundreds of liters of extra diesel fuel for the convoy.

“You come and sit in the driver’s seat for a few hours and you’ll be able to fill up your wallet again. It’s incredible. People are just handing you fifties, hundreds, packs of hundreds. A friend of mine received a Bible and when he opened it up it had 500 cash inside the bible,” Paisley said.

“The more the government tries to stomp this out, the more and more it causes people to rise up and say ‘this is wrong, and I side with these truckers,’” he said. “These steps from the government have simply hardened the determination of the great men and women down here, so I’m not really concerned at all.

We’ll have lots of new friends when we all get tossed in prison together.”

Footnote

GiveSendGo hacked, donors leaked amid fundraiser for Canadian trucker convoy protest

The Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo has been hacked and temporarily disabled after it facilitated the raising of nearly $9 million for the convoy of Canadian truckers who have been protesting vaccine mandates.

The Delaware-based organization, which hosted a crowdfunding effort for the Canadian truckers after crowdfunding site GoFundMe took down their initial fundraiser at the urging of the Canadian government, was disabled Sunday night. Visitors were redirected to the domain GiveSendGone[.]wtf.

The site had raised over $8.7 million in one week after the GoFundMe effort was taken down.

The [hacker’s] statement alleged that those who had contributed to the fundraiser were the same ones who had “helped fund the January 6 insurrection in the U.S.” and had “helped fund an insurrection in Ottawa.”

GiveSendGo’s list of donors, approximately 92,000 of them, was also leaked and shared online.

The site stated on Feb. 10 in response to previous Canadian court efforts to halt the funds that the Canadian government “has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here” and that all the donations “flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”

OK, maybe not so baby faced

Beware Covid Tyrants Pivot Without Apology

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Thomas Harrington advises not to be misled by officials apparently lifting some covid restrictions.  The behavior is insincere posturing, offering a temporary reprieve in order to retain emergency powers against citizens’ freedoms.  His article at The Brownstone is The Limited Hangout of the Mandaters.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Yesterday, a number of important Democratic governors lifted mask mandates in their states. Almost to a one, they cited the changes wrought by the fast moving and relatively mild omicron variant of the SARS-CV2 virus as the prime reason for the change.

What none of them did was admit what “the Science” has shown for at least two decades, and has been clear through the last two years to anyone doing a modicum of independent research on the subject: masks have never been shown to fundamentally alter the spread of respiratory viruses within the general population.

What they did say almost to a one, like their counterparts in Great Britain, Denmark and other countries now dismantling previous Covid restrictions, was that the return to normality was greatly facilitated by the uptake of vaccines in the populations they currently govern.

Nearly a half century ago, a man named Ron Ziegler held the position now occupied by Jen Psaki. Like all presidential spokespeople before and since he was a serial dissembler.

But back then there were still a few journalists at the presidential court and beyond willing to do their jobs. And when one day in the midst of the Watergate scandal he used the passive voice construction “mistakes were made” in an attempt to explain away obvious breaches of honesty and ethics committed quite actively by the Nixon Administration, he was roundly mocked by the press corps.

Sadly, however, as I have argued elsewhere, this type of non-apology apology, which caused a scandal then, has become ubiquitous across our social landscape. And that’s a shame.

Why?

Because real apologies and expressions of accountability are important. Without them, neither the apologizer nor the aggrieved party ever experiences what the ancient Greeks considered a cardinal element in human development and human relations: catharsis.

This is especially so in the case of government entities. Without admissions of guilt, the assumptions and premises undergirding failed policies remain intact, lying fallow until such time as the government entity in question feels it opportune to deploy them again in the service of another misguided crusade.

This is what is currently occurring with the Covid hawks who have violated our fundamental rights time and again over the last two years.

These enemies of human dignity and freedom now realize that many of their former supporters among the citizenry feel exhausted, and in many cases, flat out deceived.

At the same time, however, they do not want to permanently relinquish the powerful repressive tools they have acquired during the two-year state of exception.

The answer?

One part of it, already mentioned, is the moderated limited hangout operation now being conducted regarding the use of masks in public. By relaxing these strictures while in no way addressing the fundamental fallacies upon which the masking policies were based, they ensure that mask mandates can be brought back when and if they deem it necessary to do so.

The second part, which is far more pernicious and consequential, is the effort to push a proposition that is at best quite tenuous in light of what actual scientific studies are currently revealing about vaccine efficacy: that without widespread injection uptake the virus would have never receded, and we would have thus never have gotten into a position to recover our freedoms.

Note the underlying logic here. We are not getting our freedoms back because they intrinsically belong to us and were unjustly stolen. We are getting them back because an important plurality of us have done what the “experts” and the “authorities” coerced us into doing.

With this approach there is no catharsis or healing, and certainly no acquisition of new wisdom and knowledge. What there is, is a sly reification of the infantilizing and anti-democratic ways of thinking that have predominated in our policy-making class throughout the pandemic.

Though many people, laboring under the mortal fear of being branded with the weaponized term of “conspiracy theorist,” are reluctant to admit it, the central concern of policy-makers throughout the pandemic has not been the health of our communities, but rather gaining enhanced control over where we go and what we put into our bodies.

There is nothing more central to the idea and practice of freedom than bodily autonomy. It is the basal freedom from which all others are derived. Without it—as the history of slavery starkly reminds us—all other liberties are comparatively ornamental.

For this reason, we must vigorously oppose this organized attempt to present the vaccines, which have been delivered to millions under rather severe coercion, as a great, if not the greatest, hero of the pandemic film.

My Comments

Stark examples are playing in Canada’s federal and provincial capitals.  The Mayor of Ottawa falsely declares an emergency, and swiftly it becomes illegal to provide food or fuel to mandate protesters  and people are arrested and/or fined. The Premier of Quebec announces he will loosen restrictions in coming days, while also tabling legislation to make vaccine passports permanent.  The truckers are not fooled, as witnessed by their clarifying demands that these mandates must go away now and forever.

There is a Supreme Court case which must be decided in citizens’ favor:  Can a public official, local, provincial or federal rule out constitutional individual opinions, rights and freedoms by simply declaring an emergency?

Footnote:  Top 12 Fake Apologies from PsychCentral

I am sorry if . . .

This is a conditional apology. It falls short of a full apology by suggesting only that something might have happened.

I am sorry that you . . .

This is a blame-shifting apology. It is no apology at all. Rather, it puts the onus on you as the problem.

I am sorry but . . .

This excuse-making apology does nothing to heal the wounds caused.

I was just . . .

This is a justifying apology. It seeks to argue that hurtful behavior was okay because it was harmless or for a good cause.

I have already . . .

This deja-vu apology cheapens whatever is said by implying that there is nothing left to apologize for.

I regret . . .

This sidestepping apology equates regret with apologizing. There is no ownership.

I know I . . .

This whitewashing apology is an effort to minimize what happened without owning any hurtful effects on you or others. The whitewash may seem self-effacing but on its own it contains no apology.

You know I . . .

This nothing-to-apologize-for apology tries to talk you out of your feelings or imply that you shouldnt be upset.

I will apologize if . . .

This pay-to-play apology is not a clean, freely offered apology. Rather, you have to pay to get it.

I guess I . . .

This is a phantom apology. It hints at the need for an apology, but never gives one.

X told me to apologize . . .

This is a not-my-apology apology. The person is saying he or she is apologizing only because someone else suggested it. The implication is that it would have never happened otherwise.

Fine! I’m sorry, okay!

This is a bullying apology. Either in words or tone you are given a grudging I’m sorry but it doesn’t feel like an apology. It may even feel like a threat.

Faux apologies such as these 12 seek to avoid responsibility, make excuses, shift blame, downplay what was done, invalidate or confuse the hurt or offended person, or move on prematurely.

A true apology, by contrast, has most or all of the following characteristics:

♦ Is freely offered without conditions or minimizing what was done
♦ Conveys that the person apologizing understands and cares about the hurt persons experience and feelings
♦ Conveys remorse
♦ Offers a commitment to avoid repeating the hurtful behavior
♦ Offers to make amends or provide restitution if appropriate

An authentic apology starts with listening. If you seek to apologize, you first need to hear what happened from the other person’s point of view and how it affected them.

No Emergency in Ottawa to Blame on Truckers

Posted on by Ron Clutz

An article posted at the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms is No basis for “state of emergency” declared by Ottawa Mayor.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

OTTAWA: The Justice Centre today challenged Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson over his accusation that peacefully protesting truckers are “a danger of major proportions that could result in serious harm to persons or substantial damage to property.”

Mayor Watson has not divulged publicly what facts he might rely on to justify his assessment of truckers as posing “a danger of major proportions,” in light of their law-abiding behaviour since arriving in Ottawa more than one week ago.

The definition of “emergency” under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act is “a situation or an impending situation that constitutes a danger of major proportions that could result in serious harm to persons or substantial damage to property and that is caused by the forces of nature, a disease or other health risk, an accident or an act whether intentional or otherwise;”

“This is a truly disturbing overreach and misuse of emergency powers,” stated lawyer Nicholas Wansbutter.

According to affidavit evidence filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the Freedom Convoy has been working closely with the Ottawa Police Service, the RCMP, and the Parliamentary Protective Service. It was one of the Freedom Convoy truckers who reported to police a property damage offence and an assault, committed by individuals not affiliated with the truckers. Convoy leaders have asked all truckers to refrain from honking their horns between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.

One of the witnesses in the court action has stated under oath that truckers and their supporters “are feeding the homeless on Wellington Street and filling their backpacks with food. Truckers have taken a whole trailer full of food to the homeless shelter. Truckers are maintaining the cleanliness of city streets, including picking up discarded masks on the ground, centralized garbage collection, shoveling snow at the War Memorial and the Terry Fox statue, and decorating and providing security for the War Memorial and Terry Fox statue.”

Another witness, an Ottawa resident, swears that “the truckers I have interacted with have, at all times, been friendly, courteous, humble, considerate and peaceful. I have not observed any aggressive or inappropriate behaviours.” He says the truckers are diverse, including Sikhs, Blacks, Aboriginals and others. He has “observed truckers decorating the tomb of the unknown soldier with flowers and guarding it” and has “not seen any violent or threatening behaviour.” He notes that “the truckers do not honk their horns at night. My everyday life has not been disrupted by any noise related to the Freedom Convoy during the day.” He asserts: “My ability to park and to travel in downtown Ottawa, or to and from Parliament Hill has not been impeded by the presence of the truckers.”

Another Ottawa resident, who works for Statistics Canada, describes reality on the ground as follows: “The protesters were peaceful and respectful, I saw no violence or harassment. I was not impeded in any way, and could walk about freely and safely. I did not see any hateful symbols, in fact, I saw an abundance of Canada flags and Quebec flags as well as countless signs calling for freedom and the end of Covid related mandates. I did see some anti-Trudeau flags using harsh language. However, I would describe the scene as a peaceful, pro-freedom demonstration. My everyday life has not been disrupted by any noise related to the downtown demonstrations.”

“There is no factual basis to support the Mayor’s declaration of an emergency,” concludes Mr. Wansbutter.

 

Blame Canada’s Politicians for Trucker Protests

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Supporters arrive at Parliament Hill for the Freedom Truck Convoy to protest against Covid-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions in Ottawa, Canada, on January 29, 2022. – Hundreds of truckers drove their giant rigs into the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday as part of a self-titled “Freedom Convoy” to protest vaccine mandates required to cross the US border. LARS HAGBERG / AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Raheem Kassam points the finger in the right direction in his Newsweek article Canada’s Politicians Only Have Themselves to Blame for Trucker Protests.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

If the prime minister of a North African or Middle Eastern nation was forced into hiding by a protest occupying his capital city, Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton would materialize from thin air to call for U.S.-backed regime change.

“Government Loses Popular Support,” newspaper headlines would blare, amid calls for sanctions, State Department-NGO initiatives and the inevitable “nation-building” exercises.

Justin Trudeau can rest easy, however.

No such song and dance routine is in store for America’s northerly neighbor despite thousands of protesting truckers in Ottawa sending the prime minister underground. While imagining intervention in America’s northerly neighbor rightly seems risible, it does bring President George W. Bush’s “soft bigotry of low expectations” to mind. We expect Canadians can handle their own affairs. Those Arab Spring nations of yesteryear obviously needed the Western man’s help, though.

But increasingly, it appears Canadian politicians are not actually demonstrating an ability to manage their own affairs, nor to bring logic or rationality to this scenario, brought about by some of the most restrictive COVID-19 policies in the world.

Nor, until now, has it appeared they cared when anyone raised objections to those policies.

Only when thousands of truckers replete with their 18-wheel freedom-fighting machines descended on Ottawa did the Canadian government begin to acknowledge the existence of dissenters in their midst. This very fact is the political casus belli for the protesters on Parliament Hill. It is also why they shouldn’t leave until some very concrete demands are both met and kept. There should be a prolonged presence of truckers in Canada’s capital.

It appears to be the only language Trudeau’s government understands.

Were it not for a compliant national media willing to almost exclusively echo the claims of the government, the situation could have already resolved itself with a hasty Trudeau exit from office.

Canada’s broadcasters have focused their attention on the appearance of two flags—one Nazi, one Confederate—at protests over the past week. The culprits remain as elusive as the January 6th pipe bomber, though their presence has allowed the government to paint tens of thousands as extremists, racists or worse.

According to the CBC, “there’s concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as the protest grows, and perhaps even instigating it from the outset.”

[Note:  Journalists showed great imagination in making the leap linking the convoy to Putin.  No such creativity was applied to finding the identity of a person, the only one in the crowd wearing a mask, only one who waved a swastika.  I’ll do the media lackeys’ work for them:  It was someone who knew the act served the interests of the leftist media and government, so most likely Antifa or a wannabe.]

Even when acting Conservative Party leader Candice Bergen (no, not that one) tasked the government with offering an olive branch and reaching a resolution to the impasse on Parliament Hill, Trudeau’s stand-in, Chrystia Freeland, pivoted to blanket statements condemning the swastika, as if such condemnation were even necessary in the Canadian parliamentary chamber circa 2022.

Bergen rightly riposted, “That, I’m afraid, is classic gaslighting.”

It’s an appropriate characterization of the Canadian government’s approach thus far. A prime minister in hiding, a national capital in counter-lockdown, and the government’s most critical concern is the freshly unfolded flag of a defunct foreign navy that existed almost 200 years ago and 1600 miles away.

Meanwhile, the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta are bucking the national trend, announcing an end to COVID-related restrictions. It’s quick progress for an actual peaceful protest that has yet to cause billions of dollars in damages, injure or kill any cops or seek anything but constitutionally guaranteed liberties.

It is of course a back-handed compliment to right-populism that the antagonistic shrieks are less, “Oh my God, what are they doing?” and more, “Oh my God what might they secretly believe in?” It’s also a sign that there is a long road ahead, as politicians and the media attempt to ascribe ulterior motives to the protesters’ actions.

Like France’s gilets jaunes, Canada’s “freedom convoy” may find itself entrenched against its own establishment for some time, and they might just inspire American counterparts.

Yes, the old communist call of “workers of the world, unite!” may have been successfully appropriated by the political Right. The next line isn’t, “No, not like that!” but, truer to what Marx originally expressed, “You have nothing to lose but your chains.”

In other words, keep on truckin’.

For your weekend funnies see Uh Oh Canada

 

 

The Media War On Canadian Truckers

Posted on by Ron Clutz

James Bovard writes at his blog Is Freedom Public Enemy Number One? Excerpts in italics with my bolds.  H/T Tyler Durden

The denigration of the Canadian trucker protest convoy exemplifies how freedom is now the biggest villain of the Covid-19 pandemic. A Washington Post cartoonist portrayed the trucker convoy as “fascism” incarnate while another Post column derided the “toxic ‘Freedom Convoy.’” Anyone who resists any government command is apparently now a public enemy.

The trucker protest was spurred by the Canadian government’s sweeping Covid vaccine mandate. Many truckers believe the risks of the vaccine outweighs the benefit and, more importantly, that they have the right to control their own bodies. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared on Monday, “There is no place in our country for threats, violence or hatred.” Except for the hatred Trudeau whips up by denouncing vaccine mandate opponents as “racist” and “misogynistic.” And except for the “threats” and “violence” used by government enforcement agents to compel submission to any pandemic decree issued by Trudeau or other politicians.

Since the start of this pandemic, many people who boasted of their trust in “science and data” also believed that absolute power would keep them safe. According to their scorecard, anyone who objected to government commands was the equivalent of a heretic who must be condemned if not banished from everyplace except the cemetery. North of the border, Quebec epitomizes this intolerance with its new edict prohibiting unvaccinated individuals from shopping at Costco or Walmart.

The same critics who latch onto any obnoxious behavior by a few wayward Canadian truckers (MSNBC denounced them as a “cult”)’ to condemn freedom are also happy to exonerate any American politician who pointlessly destroyed freedom during the pandemic with bizarre edicts. In December 2020, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti banned all unnecessary “travel, including, without limitation, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit.” The mayor (who was caught violating California mask mandates at the NFC championship game) offered no evidence to justify placing four million residents under house arrest. Governor Ralph Northam dictated that all Virginians must stay indoors from midnight until 5 a.m, with a few narrow exceptions. Federal judge William Stickman IV condemned Pennsylvania’s restrictions:

“Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.”

Preventing politicians from obliterating freedom is now the worst form of tyranny. On Thanksgiving Eve 2020, the Supreme Court struck down Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s edict that limited religious gatherings in New York to ten or fewer people while permitting far more leeway for businesses to operate. The Court declared that Cuomo’s rules were “far more restrictive than any Covid-related regulations that have previously come before the Court… and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus.” An American Civil Liberties Union official fretted that “the freedom to worship… does not include a license to harm others or endanger public health.” Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe and Cornell professor Michael Dorf warned that the Supreme Court was becoming “a place like Gilead — the theocratic and misogynist country in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”

Many progressives talk as if America faces a choice between reckless freedom and paternalism – i.e., submission to a benevolent elite. But regardless of Fauci’s boundless conceit, omniscient officials have yet to come to the rescue. Government agencies have blundered catastrophically since the start of the pandemic.

The Centers for Disease Control bollixed America’s initial response by sending out faulty, contaminated test kits to health agencies that failed to detect the rapidly spreading virus. Governors panicked and shut down schools, resulting in vast losses in learning and widening the achievement gap between affluent and low-income students. The vast majority of small businesses were locked down and thousands were bankrupted in a futile effort to prevent an airborne virus from continuing to spread. Placing scores of millions of people under house arrest led to record-breaking fatalities for drug overdoses and a tidal wave of depression and anxiety. New York City’s covid vaccine passport regime failed to prevent the Big Apple from becoming the hottest spot in the nation for the omicron variant.

President Biden portrayed the vaccines as a magic bullet and falsely promised that people who got injected would not get Covid. The C.D.C. stopped counting “breakthrough” cases of Covid among the fully vaccinated, paving the way for a resurgence of the virus that has now infected more than 70 million Americans. Or maybe 200+ million Americans since C.D.C. previously stated that only one in four cases are diagnosed and reported. Whatever. The Food and Drug Administration is seeking to delay fully disclosing Pfizer’s application for its Covid vaccine approval for 75 years. After Biden issued a mandate that forced hospitals to fire healthy unvaccinated nurses, the CDC said it was OK for hospitals to rely on Covid positive nurses to treat patients – one of the biggest absurdities of the pandemic.

Freedom is not a panacea for every challenge in life. But it is far superior to boundless submission to tinhorn dictators who know far less than they claim. Politicians like Trudeau and Biden who fuel mass rage against any group that does not kowtow to officialdom are sowing seeds of hatred that will proliferate long after the pandemic ends.

In the long run, people have more to fear from politicians than from viruses.

Media War Analysis From Winnipeg Sun

Joe Warmington’s article is Which poll on support for trucker vaccine mandates do you believe? Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Which poll do you think better reflects the mood of Canada?  The professional one with a select panel of participants or the reaction of tens of thousands on social media?

As the Freedom Convoy 2022 rolls toward Ottawa, a national poll reveals “only one-in-three Canadian’s fully support allowing unvaccinated truckers to cross the US/Canada border.”

A “national survey,” posted Thursday by Maru Public Opinion, indicates just “28%” are for truckers crossing border “without any difficulty in order to deliver food, goods, and other materials to a variety of Canadian destinations.”

Says Maru: “On the other hand, a full majority (72%) of Canadians believe that the borders should be flat out closed to truckers unless they are either fully vaccinated (36%) or, as an alternative middle-ground between the two extremes of being barred or having unfettered access, they show proof of the results of a negative COVID test taken within the previous 72-hours (36%).”

But unlike with most polls, this time there is something to compare it to. For example, while highly-respected Maru’s survey, put out by the company and not paid for by a sponsor, said it polled 1,500 people across the country, a GoFundMe page posted this month has raised more than $6.2 million from more than 80,000 donors.

And a Freedom Convoy 2022 Facebook page — Convoy to Ottawa 2022 — has more than 700,000 followers. Not exactly a “small fringe” group of people, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claimed Wednesday.

Trudeau’s harsh words toward this group, and the scrutiny the media has put it under, outweighs vetting other polls typically get.

Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre dealt with that double standard Thursday as he asked reporters “when was the last time the press gallery went through the social media posts of every single person attending a left-wing protest to find and report every crazy comment made” while saying it’s wrong to “disparage the thousands of hard-working, law-abiding and peaceful truckers, who quite frankly have kept all of you alive.”

Some professional polls may show low support for the convoy, but tens of thousands of Canadians, who put their money where their mouths are, may disagree.

Update Feb. 4: 

Canadian truckers protesting COVID-19 rules said they are lawyering up after GoFundMe suspended their fundraising page.  The page surpassed its $10 million goal, but GoFundMe pulled the plug as it investigates the effort for potential violations.

“This fundraiser is currently paused and under review to ensure it complies with our terms of service and applicable laws and regulations,” read a notice at the top of the convoy’s GoFundMe page. “Our team is working 24/7 and doing all we can to protect both organizers and donors. Thank you for your patience.”

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a Calgary-based firm, confirmed it is representing the Freedom Convoy 2022 in Ottawa and “has a team of lawyers on the ground providing legal assistance and advice.”

Background  Why the News Is Not the Truth

Peter Vanderwicken wrote:

The U.S. press, like the U.S. government, is a corrupt and troubled institution. Corrupt not so much in the sense that it accepts bribes but in a systemic sense. It fails to do what it claims to do, what it should do, and what society expects it to do.

The news media and the government are entwined in a vicious circle of mutual manipulation, mythmaking, and self-interest. Journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. Too often, the crises are not really crises but joint fabrications. The two institutions have become so ensnared in a symbiotic web of lies that the news media are unable to tell the public what is true and the government is unable to govern effectively. That is the thesis advanced by Paul H. Weaver, a former political scientist (at Harvard University), journalist (at Fortune magazine), and corporate communications executive (at Ford Motor Company), in his provocative analysis entitled News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works.

The news media and the government have created a charade that serves their own interests but misleads the public. Officials oblige the media’s need for drama by fabricating crises and stage-managing their responses, thereby enhancing their own prestige and power. Journalists dutifully report those fabrications. Both parties know the articles are self-aggrandizing manipulations and fail to inform the public about the more complex but boring issues of government policy and activity.

What has emerged, Weaver argues, is a culture of lying. “The culture of lying,” he writes, “is the discourse and behavior of officials seeking to enlist the powers of journalism in support of their goals, and of journalists seeking to co-opt public and private officials into their efforts to find and cover stories of crisis and emergency response. It is the medium through which we Americans conduct most of our public business (and a lot of our private business) these days.” The result, he says, is a distortion of the constitutional role of government into an institution that must continually resolve or appear to resolve crises; it functions in “a new and powerful permanent emergency mode of operation.”

Wary of making decisions based on opinion or belief, the U.S. public has come to rely on facts, data, surveys, and presumably scientific studies. People are increasingly reluctant to believe any assertion that is not supported by statistical research. Yet, Crossen writes, “more and more of the information we use to buy, elect, advise, acquit and heal has been created not to expand our knowledge but to sell a product or advance a cause.”

A growing industry has thus developed to create the research to legitimize policy positions or marketing objectives. Public policy debates now commonly revolve around competing estimates of cost, effectiveness, or risk, rather than around the intrinsic merits of a proposal. Much of the health care debate raged around differing estimates of the numbers of citizens without health coverage and the costs of the various proposals to cover them. When President Bill Clinton promised Congress that he would rely on the forecasts of federal spending and deficits of the Congressional Budget Office rather than on those of the executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget, the representatives and senators cheered; they consider the CBO’s forecasts to be more favorable to Congress’s spending proclivities than those of the more cautious OMB.

Concocted or inaccurate surveys and studies taint our perceptions of what is true, and they distort public policy debates. Crossen concurs with Weaver that the media’s desire for drama encourages the distortion and corruption of public decision making. “The media are willing victims of bad information, and increasingly they are producers of it. They take information from self-interested parties and add to it another layer of self-interest—the desire to sell information.”

A press driven by drama and crises creates a government driven by response to crises. Such an “emergency government can’t govern,” Weaver concludes. “Not only does public support for emergency policies evaporate the minute they’re in place and the crisis passes, but officials acting in the emergency mode can’t make meaningful public policies. According to the classic textbook definition, government is the authoritative allocation of values, and emergency government doesn’t authoritatively allocate values.”

Footnote:

If you read the excerpts or followed the link, you will have realized this knowledge was published in the Harvard Business Review May-June 1995.

Wisconsin’s Long List of Election Infractions

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A resolution has been submitted to the rules committee of the Wisconsin State Assembly listing the many violations rendering the 2020 election results untrustworthy as they concern the US President and Vice-President. The full document is:

Resolution Relating to Wisconsin election reform and reclaiming the electoral ballots for President and Vice President that were certified under fraudulent intent and purpose.

This synopsis provides the bullet points detailed in the document, in italics with my bolds.

♦ the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) enabled the illegal use of over 500 voter drop boxes in Wisconsin

♦ Dane and Milwaukee County Clerks issued guidance on Facebook suggesting all voters could declare themselves indefinitely confined because of the pandemic

♦ certification of the 2020 election was rushed before time for filing an appeal of the recount had passed

♦ 3,000 documents and e-mails show connection to election manipulations by the CTCL in five of Wisconsin’s largest cities

♦ data expert studies of historical voter trends reveal a statistical impossibility

♦ WisVote database reflects 7.1 million registered voters in a state with a population of 5.8 million and a voting age population of 4.5 million

♦ grassroots canvassing efforts reveal 200 addresses in 31 counties in Wisconsin that have 200 to 400 registered voters at a single address,

♦ upgrades on Dominion voting machines were allowed on September 9, 2021, with no reassurances of protecting the data of the 2020 election

♦ the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau identified 44,272 voters who did not provide proper voter identification in the 2020 general election

♦ 50 of the 69 county GOP parties released letters of support or resolutions asking for further investigation into the elections process

♦ Elections Commission prevented the deployment of special voting deputies to care facilities

♦ a multitude of irregularities in Wisconsin voter rolls, including that 93.7 percent of active voters participated in the 2020 general election, 205,355 voter registration applications were dated November 3, 2020

♦ Wisconsin voter rolls were inflated to the maximum possible number of voters according to census population data for every presidential election in Wisconsin since 2008 and then the voter rolls were purged shortly after each such election

♦ money provided by the CTCL and Mark Zuckerberg to local governments in Wisconsin relating to the 2020 general election violated Wis. Stat. § 12.11, which prohibits election bribery

♦ CEIR also received funding from Mark Zuckerberg, along with the CTCL, and the CEIR is seeking to provide pro bono defense attorneys to election officials who used the CTCL money in the 2020 general election

♦ ballot harvesting and returning absentee ballots to drop boxes are not legal methods to cast absentee ballots in Wisconsin

♦ the U.S. Supreme Court has found that fraud vitiates and nullifies any contract

Whereas,
the November 2020 Wisconsin general election, as regulated and directed by the Elections Commission, was one of the most haphazard, controversial, and poorly managed elections in state history, shaking citizens’ confidence in fair elections across Wisconsin, and with the culmination of these evidences, prove the results of the commission’s certification of the 2020 election are considered fraudulent; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the assembly, the senate concurring, That the accumulated evidence proves the actions taken by the Elections Commission to certify the 2020 presidential election shall be considered contrary to law and fraudulent under Wis. Stat. §§ 6.84, 6.87 (6), 6.875, 12.11, and 12.13 (2) (b) 7

Resolved, That the Wisconsin Legislature, pursuant to its authority under Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution and 3 U.S.C. § 2, and consistent with guidance provided by the Constitutional Counsel Group in a memorandum dated December 30, 2021, acknowledges that illegality took place in conducting the 2020 general election and reclaims Wisconsin’s 10 fraudulent electoral ballots cast for Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris; and, be it further

Resolved, That the Wisconsin Legislature shall pass legislation with the intention to clean up the WisVote database and create separate servers for active and inactive voters; and be it further

Resolved, That the Wisconsin Legislature supports a full forensic physical and cyber audit of the 2020 general election, that this full forensic physical and cyber audit should be conducted by an independent and nonpartisan auditing firm with a scope statement approved by the Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beware Leftist Social Tampering

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Disney’s portrayal of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in over his head.

Our time is marked by progressives seeking to transform societies with magical words and rituals.  The damages from these mistaken projects is becoming more evident and likely to worsen unless they are stopped and reversed.  Anthony Matoria explains in his American Thinker article The Infrastructure of Progress.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds, headers and added images.

A Parable from the Soviet Era

At the end of World War II, stories circulated of returning Soviet soldiers, many from undeveloped towns and farms, who were impressed by the modern amenities that they observed in defeated Nazi Germany. They were especially impressed with electrical lighting and indoor plumbing and, consequently pilfered light bulbs and plumbing fixtures to take back to their more primitive homes in the hopes that they too could have electrical lighting and indoor lavatories.

The stories have something of the nature of a parable. It is tempting to mock the backwardness and naivete of thinking that one can have electric lighting without an electrical distribution system, or indoor running water without external supply and sewer lines. The stories highlight the apparent folly of thinking that one can experience the benefits of technological progress by acquiring only the most visible aspects of that progress, e.g., light bulbs and commodes, without regard to the more extensive and hidden elements that make the whole thing work. It is also tempting to ridicule someone who is so unsophisticated and backward that they do not recognize that folly.

Yet, this same folly is apparent in the agenda of the political left in Western societies.

To the extent that the stories of the simple Soviet soldiers is a parable, the lesson that is illustrated is that progress has preconditions. It requires a type of infrastructure that is congenial to the changes that are intended by reformers. The modern Left often misses this point. There are multiple examples of this.

Political Authority Fallacy

The most obvious fallacy is that a President can fundamentally transform a Republic without a clear popular mandate to do so. Mistaking a transient and tenuous legislative majority for such a mandate is as fallacious as thinking that having a light bulb is all that is necessary to have electric lighting. Similarly, imposing unpopular and capricious mandates is futile if there is insufficient public willingness to abide by them. Public acceptance and consent beyond simple majorities is a form of political infrastructure that is necessary to properly functioning government, and overwhelming acceptance and consent is necessary for “fundamental change.”

Social Engineering Fallacy

The folly of the leftist enterprise is more extensive than merely mistaking a majority for a mandate. The fallacies do not stop with superficial legislative and bureaucratic pronouncements, but involve deeper misjudgments regarding the lives of average, decent people. One such fallacy is that which is often cited by Glenn Reynolds: that governmental schemes to create the benefits of good character and diligence, e.g., home ownership, a college degree, and productive employment, without requiring good character and diligence is not only futile, but ultimately detrimental. Good character, i.e., honesty, responsibility, resilience, respect for others, etc., are a type of infrastructure necessary to personal success and societal flourishing, and thinking that they can be replaced by government subsidy or intruding regulation is every bit as ridiculous as shoving a shower head into a mud wall and expecting it to produce hot water.

Institutional Power Fallacy

Progressives are confident that they do not need popular assent to policy, or civic virtues beyond those that are useful to their agenda as long as they have “the institutions.” This is another fallacy. It is certainly true that usurpation of institutions such as the educational system, corporate boards, the media, and local prosecutors’ offices can produce change, but the change is uniformly destructive. One can certainly change the quality of society by refusing to enforce criminal laws, pandering to identity group grievances, and expanding government at the expense of personal liberty. Such change will not be improvement. Crime, grievance and loss of liberty are inherently destructive and incapable of producing any sort of tangible benefit beyond the abstractions and indulgences of self-assured ideologues.

Behavioral Training Fallacy

The progressive “march through the institutions” makes some assumptions that are unsupported by common experience. The most prominent of these is that people can be taught to want certain things, and that all behaviors are essentially learned behaviors. The progressive enterprise presumes that personality traits, moral character, the lessons of personal experience, and individual affections and aversions can be overcome by pedagogy and propaganda. What the progressive overlooks in his zeal for control of modern society is that individual personality traits, moral character, personal experience and individual affections and aversions are the infrastructure necessary to a healthy society. The progressive may take some encouragement from the experience of totalitarian regimes and religious cults that there is a measure of efficacy in indoctrination and programming, but only with the condition that such does not produce healthy societies or, in fact, produce anything that endures. There is a particularly blinkered and anti-human notion that the nuclear family is undesirable, when it is the infrastructure of every enduring civilization throughout history. Families are vital because they are unique, just as people are unavoidably unique. The progressive notion that there is virtue in uniformity is an idea best suited to anthills and beehives, and is unworthy of the dignity of human beings.

It is unsuited to a population that finds happiness and joy in a vast variety of different experiences and ambitions, and is a prescription for stagnation and decay.

Information Control Fallacy

Free expression and the competition of ideas is another form of infrastructure that is necessary to flourishing and enduring societies. The progressive idea that thoughts and facts can be suppressed as “misinformation,” so that ideas that are friendly to progressive ideologies will prevail, is naïve to the point of delusion. Such a scheme assumes a level of credulity and lack of curiosity and creativity on the part of the citizenry that is hopelessly unrealistic. Facts are stubborn things, and people tend to believe their own experience over the harangues of the self-interested elite. Ideas that cannot survive competition with other ideas will not survive human nature or the unsentimental realities of the world. Truths do not become less so because Twitter and Facebook do not like them.

The ability to recognize and evaluate facts and infer truth from them is essential infrastructure without which no society or civilization can flourish.

Fairness Fallacy

Justice also has an infrastructure. It does not arise from grievances that are pursued to the point of fanaticism, nor from bigoted theories that all humans are defined as either oppressed or oppressors. The infrastructure of justice is not fairness or empathy, desirable as those things are in a just system. The infrastructure of justice is recognition of the dignity and worth with which all humans are born. This requires respect for the persons and property of others, and understanding that individual choices have natural consequences, which denial of responsibility cannot negate.

Disdain of History Fallacy

The progressive disdain for the institutions and traditions that have produced the modern world is, at base, an ignorance of the conditions and structures that are necessary to civil society. They arise from an arrogance that believes that ideologies are facts and that policies can command nature. Societies and states may improve the imperfect levels of justice, opportunity and well-being of their citizens, but they cannot do so while ignoring and attacking the very truths, traditions and institutions that have provided the highest degree of justice, opportunity, and progress that the world has ever known.

 

The Forever Health “Emergency”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Ryan McMaken writes at Mises Institute Why They Want to Keep the “Health Emergency” Going Forever. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Last month, Colorado governor Jared Polis ended statewide mask mandates and social-distancing provisions, stating that “the emergency is over.“ This, of course, does not mean Colorado is now laissez-faire in terms of covid. Public higher education institutions—thanks to Polis’ tacit approval—still have free rein in terms of imposing vaccine and mask mandates, and in forcing classes to “go online” whenever the college bureaucrats grow sufficiently alarmed about covid. Moreover, local officials were quick to react to the governor’s nonemergency by imposing a variety of mandates of their own.

More than 80 percent of the state’s population still lives in counties with mask mandates.

For even this extremely mild and timid move in the direction of personal freedom, Polis was raked over the coals by the state’s left-of-center activists. Within days, The Sentinel, a newspaper out of Aurora, Colorado, issued an unsigned editorial declaring “No, Gov. Polis, the pandemic emergency is not over.” The column excoriated the governor for daring to end mask mandates and for categorically refusing the idea of future lockdowns.

Polis was also forced to walk back comments he made about how it’s not the job of health officials to “tell people what to wear“ in an apparent reference to mask mandates. Polis rather unconvincingly “clarified” that what he really meant was this was not the proper role of state health officials; it’s fine for local officials to tell people what to wear.

The fact that Polis himself had earlier claimed this was, in fact, the role of health officials is now beside the point. Incoherence and inconsistency from politicians is a given. The point now is that when a governor—even a Democratic one—tries to slightly scale back covid mandates, he or she is likely to meet furious opposition from the Left.

The lesson here is that no matter what the policy is, there will be no shortage of covid-obsessed college professors, politicians, and activists who will vehemently demand that more draconian policies be imposed immediately and everywhere.

No moderation of any kind is to be tolerated.

Indeed, so many bureaucrats, politicians, and technocrats have doubled down on covid mandate maximalism, it’s difficult to see them ever letting go. We should expect them to search out new ways to extend current “health emergencies“ indefinitely into the future by forever moving the goal posts and finding new diseases that justify continued mask mandates and social distancing rules.

Moving the Goal Posts

Back in January of 2021, Karol Markowicz at the New York Post warned that there are many out there who want the covid emergency state “to go on forever.“ Nearly a year after the initial covid panic, when it was clear covid was not a civilization-ending disease and hardly “the plague of the century,“ these technocrats were pushing for more masks and more isolation for children.

Much of this strategy has long been pushed through constant movement of the goal posts. While vaccines were initially being sold to the public as a cure-all that would allow everything to go back to “normal“ this soon evolved into a series of explanations as to why vaccines actually changed nothing. Rather, vaccines might do some good, but the public should nonetheless be prepared to wear masks forever. Then they decided their “uniquely effective” vaccines were so effective that it was necessary to “protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.” Even lockdowns were still on the table into late 2021. The story was then changed to a narrative in which so long as every single child is not vaccinated, schools must remain closed, and everyone must remain masked.

These mandates might also come in handy whenever some new bird flu or swine flu crops up. Yes, earlier flu-based “emergencies” had failed to command widespread hysteria as with the swine flu scares of 1976 and 2009. But now the health bureaucrats finally had seized the authority they always wanted: keep emergency “pandemic powers” in place forever so that if the CDC or the World Health Organization identifies a new “threat,” lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine passports can be forced upon the population until the “danger” is past.

Institute a Warning System

Another key challenge will be to keep the public always on the edge of alarm. On this, the mandate enthusiasts could take a page from the War on Terror propaganda employed in the wake of 9/11. In March 2002, the Bush administration instituted a color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale designed to indicate the terrorism “threat level.” This presumably allowed the public to gauge just how much they should be living in fear of terrorism at any given time. As propaganda it was helpful as a means of constantly reminding the public that the government keeps them safe, and that an all-powerful national security state is a necessity.

A similar scheme could easily be used to address health “threats.” Naturally, the scale would never be moved to “low” because if some actual epidemic did break out, that would make the “experts” look like they were asleep at the switch. So, naturally, the scale would always be at “guarded”—perhaps in the summertime—but would reliably be raised to “elevated” in the wintertime as hospital beds filled up with flu and pneumonia sufferers. Then, if any muttering of some new bird flu out of Asia hit the headlines, the technocrats could raise the threat level to “high.” This could then be used to justify the imposition of new mask mandates, vaccine requirements, or even lockdowns.

Then when summer weather returned and the hospital beds emptied, the experts would insist they had prevented disaster by imposing new mandates.

The only way these health experts will stop with their perpetual emergency is if they’re forced to. Health bureaucrats must be stripped of their far-too-expansive “emergency powers” and their agencies reined in. Their “scientific” opinions should be treated as the thinly veiled political statements they so frequently are. As I wrote in 2020, the pandemic only ends when the public decides it is over.

Some politicians have figured out that it’s dangerous to keep pushing the same old covid mandates into election season this fall. This is surely why Polis now appears uninterested in haranguing the public about covid on a daily basis as he was doing back in 2020.

But the academics and technocrats who can afford to live in their echo chamber—thanks to taxpayer money—are unlikely to relent. They’ll be singing the same tune twenty years from now and calling for new mandates—for the disease du jour—every year. Let’s just hope that the world will have finally stopped listening.

 

 

Net Zero Makes Zero Sense

Posted on by Ron Clutz

A pumpjack works just south of Cutbank Lake, near Wembley, Alta. Canada should withdraw from all international agreements on global warming, writes Rex Murphy. PHOTO BY RANDY VANDERVEEN/POSTMEDIA NEWS

Rex Murphy writes at National Post: Why is it Canada’s ‘duty’ to destroy its economy and Confederation in the pursuit of net zero? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Liberals’ obsession with global warming is the most absurd fixation of any government since Sir John A. set us up as a country

Sometimes the best questions are the ones not being asked.  In the Canadian political arena there are a couple or more in that category.

I’ll go to the biggest one right off the bat: Why and how has the “goal” of getting to net-zero emissions become such a doctrine?

Another way of phrasing the same question is: What’s so wrong, what’s so defective in our current energy system that the Liberal government has pledged, as its absolute priority, to replace it?

Having a secure and tested energy system is a very big deal for any nation, but having a secure and tested energy supply is the quintessential necessity for a vast northern country — really vast — that is also the home of a wealthy, modern economy.

A subsidiary question is: Does the government of a Confederation have the right, the legislative competence to declare the central industry of one of the provinces within that Confederation outmoded? And on that premise make it a national policy to destroy the economic well-being of that province?

And on that question, if one steps back just a minute, is it not amazing, incredible even, that shutting down the industrial base of an entire province is declared as the Number one priority, one laden with moral as well as political content by those in Ottawa who have elevated it to national policy — and this is accepted as normal or acceptable or yes, even noble in the context of “our fight against global warming?”

Is it really acceptable in our Confederation to single out one province to bear the majority weight and economic devastation of this “fight?”

The real and overriding question, however, is why does Canada, or more accurately, why does the government of Canada profess we have a “duty” to the world to work towards eradicating the energy supply and system that we already have, that has mostly served us well, that has brought fortune and security to the nation?

Why is the energy future of Canada under the ethos and edicts of the United Nations’ IPCC?

What is this world we have a “duty” towards? Should we ransack our current energy platform because we have a duty to — say, Russia? Or, more tellingly, does Canada have a moral obligation to shut down the oilsands, antagonize all of Alberta (and jeopardize the national economy with its futuristic visions of a “great transition”), because we have a “duty” towards China? Were we to ask the leaders of the great country of India, who are very much not on side with this same IPCC, whether Canada has an obligation, a “duty” to Delhi to shut down Fort McMurray, they would probably throw up their hands in astonishment that the question is even being put to them.

This “duty” that I insist on keeping in quotation marks, as far as I can tell is one self-declared and self-imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and flows from his obsessive conviction that he — along with previous adviser Gerry Butts, climate crusader/previous environment minister Catherine McKenna, and previous Greenpeace activist/current environment minister Steven Guilbeault — must be a “leader” in the holy war against global warming.

On substance, Canada can do nothing substantial about global warming. Cancelling the economy of Calgary will not stop the disappearance of the glaciers, lower the sea levels off the Maldives, or rescue one skinny polar bear off a well-photographed ice-floe.

You may have noticed Canada has stalled its economy for over two years and has likely seen the immiseration of thousands of small businesses, restaurants and services. We have also piled on gargantuan deficits and debt — they are both at historic levels. We are seeing wealth-destroying inflation at levels unseen since the early ’90s.

We’re still in this mismanaged and liberty-choking COVID crisis playing havoc with the economy.

So there is another not-much-asked question: Is the current state of Canada one in which the government, by fiat, with the assent of every political party, should conduct the greatest re-engineering of the fundamentals of the nation’s most essential and fundamental industry?

The summary question is: Why are we on this useless, damaging crusade?

I know it’s very much in opposition to the current liturgy to put the question, but why does Canada have any special or even routine obligation to the “world” — or more precisely the mandarins who gather in Paris and Rio and Glasgow — to wreck our working economy in pursuit of some wild notion that this country can function on a forest of windmills (parts from China) and glazed hectares of solar panels?

The global-warming obsession of this current government is the most absurd and senseless fixation of any government since Sir John A. set us up as a country.

The greatest part of that absurdity is how easily all bend to it, all speak the pious words of “net zero” as if they were summoning a genie, as our deluded leaders prate in foreign capitals about the brave new world they are about to call into being.

The same leaders who can’t manage a payroll system, dig a few wells and provide clean water, who shut down Parliament but party abroad with maskless faces laughing at jokes — of which I suspect we are the butt.

They do not have the intellectual competence to engineer this “transition.” As a minority government they do not have the mandate either.

Yet witness the ease with which the press, academia and all who might be regarded as “thought leaders” — a dubious category at the best of times, but dismal at the present — are all abundantly, fervidly on board.

Canada has no “duty” to the world in this farcical pursuit of “net zero” and we will gravely injure our county if we don’t desist. And, once again I caution, we will drive a wedge in Confederation if a policy that treats Alberta as a scapegoat and forces it to carry the burden of an Ottawa obsession, is not abandoned.

Conclusion: Canada should take itself out of all international agreements on global warming.