The Wholesale Discrediting Of The American Medical Industrial Complex

nakedcapitalism |  Of so many tragedies to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the saddest to me – and probably the one with the longest-reverberating consequences – has been its wholesale discrediting of our health science institutions.

Here we are, over a year into this pandemic, and we cannot get a straight answer on whether or not this relatively cheap and safe drug (ivermectin) saves human lives from COVID-19 or not. Worse, we can’t even seem to properly investigate it. All questions bring hysterics, or hardly-believable obfuscation, or (informed?) outrage, no matter what authority we turn to. The fallout in my own life from watching all this unfold has been… dramatic.

I don’t trust what the CDC says. I don’t trust what the WHO says. I don’t trust what the FDA says. I don’t trust Pfizer and the rest of the pharmaceutical companies any farther than I can throw them. I look with suspicion on my own scientist acquaintances, wondering if they are really following the data, or if they are clinging to a chosen worldview that science in America still works, oh god it still works, oh god it hasn’t been completely discredited, no it cannot be, my life work must have meant something, it must still work, it must still work….??

None of this means that ivermectin works–or for that matter, that it doesn’t work. It means that I have realized, slowly and then all-of-a-sudden, that I cannot know. Nor can any other layperson. We are alone, our economy is collapsing in slow-motion, and our lives are at stake. Or so we think! If we doubt so much, how much more should we really be doubting? I believe, for what it’s worth, that COVID-19 is real and that these experimental vaccines probably won’t kill us. At least… not that many of us.

But I wonder now, in my darker moments, whether the claim of those who don’t believe such things that refusing the vaccination is a “Darwin’s test – pass it and survive” have grokked something that was beyond me, in my previous worldview. How could it have come to this…? And if I am feeling like this, how must people with less scientific background (I attended a science magnet school) be feeling about it all??

Will my children be safe from measles, etc in the years to come? I have vaccinated them with the whole slate, and feel fine about that choice, but will the fallout from this debacle mean the end of herd immunity in America, as trust in the ‘health experts’ collapses into dust? How can we get it back, then – at gunpoint? With all that would imply… is it even worth such a high price…?

Variants Require Restrictions And Vaccinations And More Restrictions Mein Führer!!!

WaPo |  If you live in the northeastern part of our country, you don’t put your winter jackets into storage at the first sign of spring because you know a cold snap is likely lurking around the corner. The same must be true of the pandemic.

No matter where you live, it is too early to relax restrictions that continue to have a critical role in controlling this pandemic. From California to Maine, Florida to Seattle, the covid-19 winter is not yet done, and highly infectious variants are threatening new storms.

Vaccination numbers are climbing steadily, and coronavirus cases have been declining. The end of the pandemic is in sight. But the latest national data, which show case rates have plateaued, indicate that we are not there yet. Over the past week, we have seen about 50,000 new cases reported daily. That’s not far from the height of the surge last summer.

National data also miss disturbing state and local trends: About 15 states have more cases than they did two weeks ago, and about 19 states have higher test positivity rates than two weeks ago, indicating higher rates of infection. Hospitalizations, which typically lag infections by two to three weeks, have begun to inch up in some places. Deaths from covid-19, which typically lag another two weeks behind hospitalizations, may rise again in April — all while states begin to loosen restrictions. That’s a problem.

Blame it on the variants of this virus. The B.1.1.7 variant, the most widespread of the variants identified to date, is between 43 and 90 percent more infectious than the version of the virus we have been living with for most of the past year. And this variant was estimated to make up 30 to 40 percent of U.S. infections earlier this month, meaning about 20,000 new cases each day are likely B.1.1.7 and are way more infectious. Vaccinations are in a footrace against these variants, and the variants are giving us a run for our money.

Consider what’s happening in Florida, where thousands are celebrating spring break without masks or social distancing. Right now, the rate of cases and deaths in Florida are about the same as nationally, and the number of daily infections is holding steady. But the B.1.1.7 variant now represents more than half of Florida’s cases. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is right to warn about a new surge of illness, hospitalization and death as a result.

B.1.1.7 is on a trajectory to become the dominant variant in the United States in the next couple of weeks. To understand why this matters, look to Europe, where the rise of the variant saw large increases in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Data suggest that B.1.1.7 is so much more infectious that it can shift outbreaks into overdrive, turning small upswings in cases into lethal, prolonged spikes. And there’s some data that it is more deadly, too.

So are we destined for a fourth surge? Not necessarily. The vaccines in use in the United States are effective against B.1.1.7, and we are much further along in our vaccine rollout than Europe, which had barely begun doling out shots when the variants were picking up steam. But we must keep vaccinating, and fast. By the end of April, every high-risk American should have at least one dose in their arms, massively reducing the risk of death from infection. Until that happens, we should keep restrictions in place. We are doing a great job on vaccinations. But on keeping public health measures in place until high-risk people are vaccinated? Not so much.

 

Tryna Set Up Political Party BLM Global Gets Rejected By Elections Commission And Grassroots BLM UK

dailymail  |  The Electoral Commission has rejected a controversial application to set up a Black Lives Matter (BLM) political party in Britain because its name would be 'likely to mislead voters'.

The independent election watchdog argued that a 'reasonable voter could assume that the party represents, or is in some way associated with' the grassroots BLM movement and its official UK affiliate.

A spokesperson told MailOnline that the party's proposed constitution and financial scheme were 'incomplete' and also rejected, as the manifesto did not determine the structure and organisation of the party. 

The application was submitted to the election watchdog by applicants whose identities remain unknown just five months after the killing of black man George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis.

His death triggered a cultural revolution in Britain that began with a wave of statue toppling by protesters and culminated in the founding of a Commission of Diversity in the Public Realm by London Mayor Sadiq Khan. 

Tory backbenchers claimed the application to set up the party proved that BLM was a partisan political project with Left-wing objectives, including 'deconstructing the concept of "family" and defunding the police'.  

However, at the time the bid was lodged the main Black Lives Matter UK (BLM UK) group insisted it had no affiliation with the applicants. 

Short Seller Hedge Funds Were The Good Guys In Gamestop Pissant Insurrection...,

WaPo  |  The particular targets of the GameStop crowd are hedge funds and short sellers. Here, a couple of definitions may be useful. Generally speaking, a hedge fund is a small-to-medium-size company that makes money by choosing smart investments. There is nothing nefarious about this. To the contrary, if you don’t like too-big-to-fail banks that get backstopped by taxpayers, small-enough-to-fail hedge funds ought to be celebrated. If you worry about complex financial conglomerates with corrupting conflicts of interest, single-purpose investment boutiques are simpler and healthier. On the online forums where the GameStoppers congregate, you read complaints about hedge funds being bailed out during the crisis of 2008. Actually, banks, brokers, insurers, mortgage providers, money market funds and even car companies got rescues. Hedge funds got nothing.

What about short sellers? These are specialists who research stocks that might go down, sometimes because bosses are illegally covering up bad news about their companies. When short sellers identify a case of fraud or similar, they borrow and sell the stock, hoping to buy it back at a lower price later. Again, there is nothing evil about this. To the contrary, it’s a way of keeping prices honest. A market without short sellers is like a political system without investigative journalists.

This, however, is not how GameStoppers see things. They have gone after a short seller named Andrew Left, hacking into his social media accounts, sharing his personal information online, ordering dozens of pizzas to be delivered to his home in the middle of the night, and texting his children with threatening and profane language, according to the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps not surprisingly, Left has announced he will stop playing the game. Irrational stock prices will be that much likelier.

The worry is that the GameStoppers will now target others. Short sellers operate in the open: You can check short-selling volumes for any given stock on Yahoo. By whipping up frenzied buying of a heavily shorted company, speculators can cost the shorts billions and maybe put them out of business. Already, GameStoppers are buying other beaten-down companies, such as cinema giant AMC. A Goldman Sachs index of heavily shorted stocks is up sharply this month because the shorts have been routed.

Hedge funders and short sellers are out to get rich: They are certainly not angels. But there is a difference between trading based on evidence and research and trading based on conspiracy theories and mob tactics. Over the past week, it’s been tempting to celebrate the colorful rebels — they represent the democratization of finance, the revenge against the fat cats. Now it is time to remember that truth matters.

At Its Heart The Gamestop Story IS FICTION - And You Pissants Have Once Again Been Deceived...,

wired |  At its heart, the GameStop story is about small-time traders—many, according to press accounts, young and inexperienced—going up against established players and winning, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a person (so far, at least). The WallStreetBets subreddit describes itself as “a gathering place of millions of unique individuals who are tired of being run over by the big guys and are each fighting back in their own way.” Its investors, who use the page to discuss strategy and timing, were exploiting the rigidity in “short” positions of hedge funds, who bet that GameStop’s stock would decline in value. Such “short” funds represent a commitment to provide a share of GameStop at a specific time, no matter the price, magnifying the profit potential if the redditors could push the stock in the other direction and send the hedge funds scrambling to meet their obligations.

This week, the GameStop story became a national talking point, particularly on Twitter, where users of all stripes and political persuasions cheered on the financial chaos. The billionaire entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Mark Cuban defended WallStreetBets, as did the left-wing representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, each pleased to see hedge funds undone by their own greedy ways. An arcane finance story became a class-warfare parable for the general public, with regular folks acting just as clinically as the hedge fund executives they were vanquishing—that is, being upfront about treating investments as mere manipulations, as opposed to some complex matter meant to assess the genuine value of a company. As Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter: “Gotta admit it’s really something to see Wall Streeters with a long history of treating our economy as a casino complain about a message board of posters also treating the market as a casino.”

On Thursday, Robinhood blocked the kind of speculative trades of GameStop stock that were used by the redditors to drive up its share price. Though the brokerage reportedly did this to protect its own finances, the move nonetheless seemed destined to backfire in ways similar to Egypt’s drastic internet shutdown, which ultimately helped the protests spread. Suddenly, the GameStop controversy changed from a revenge fantasy against hedge funds to a matter of economic fairness: Are the same tools available to all investors, no matter their wealth? (The comparison is obviously imperfect—unless you really see the Reddit day traders as freedom fighters. More to the point, by blocking speculative trades of GameStop, Robinhood could be seen as protecting new investors who seem destined to lose money when GameStop’s share price comes back to earth.)

Next up in this cycle, one imagines, is the recognition that this revolution, whether tolerated or quashed, won’t change much at all. And like the authoritarians who found their way back to power, the hedge fund managers are likely to rein in the trading apps and their mischievous fans, ensuring their hold on the markets.

That’s the thing about the internet—time and again, it has proven better for the top dogs. At the very least, it certainly won’t threaten them. If we are foolish enough, and heartless enough, to allow a financial system that so thoroughly separates wealth creation from work and genuine improvement to society, well then the internet will make this skewed system even more lucrative for those who play. The richest will reap the wealth and the poorest, least experienced traders will end up holding the bag. An empty bag, at that.

Is Marjorie Taylor Greene A Congressional Craziness Outlier?

caitlinjohnstone |   I really hope Americans get rid of that dangerous right wing lunatic in congress, by which I mean all of the people in congress.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is not more crazy than all the DC politicians who agree the US should maintain planetary hegemony using bombs, regime change ops, starvation sanctions and nuclear threats. She’s just a less popular genre of crazy.

There is an ideological struggle to determine whether the Republican Party will be the kind of bat shit crazy that believes in QAnon and Jewish Space Lasers or just the kind of bat shit crazy that believes in carpet bombing Iran and destroying the ecosystem for money.

Stop normalizing status quo politics.

Stop normalizing ecocide.

Stop normalizing imperialism.

Stop normalizing mass murder.

Stop normalizing nuclear standoffs.

Stop normalizing starvation sanctions.

Stop normalizing exploitation.

Stop normalizing oppression.

Stop normalizing the mainstream so-called “centrists” who promote these extremist evils.

If people could really grasp how horrific our status quo is, wingnut freaks like Marjorie Taylor Greene wouldn’t stand out against the background, because everyone who helps bolster this murderous and depraved status quo is also a wingnut freak. And there would be just as urgent a push to cast out all the other freaks as there is to cast out her.

The ruling class keeps Americans as poor as possible so they can’t use their money to do naughty things like fund leftist political campaigns or sabotage hedge funds.

People are like two clicks away from burning Wall Street to the ground and setting up guillotines and mainstream analysts are still wringing their hands about how gamer trolls might be compromising the integrity of the market somewhat.

The ONLY GIBBERISH More Ridiculous Than Anti-Racist Gibberish - Is Economics...!!!

WaPo | The market gyrations involving GameStop’s 64-fold rise in price since August are certainly eye-opening. How a money-losing company whose stock previously traded less than 10 million shares a day can shoot up to trading 50 million-plus shares in a day — and cause the stock price of a completely unrelated but similarly named Australian company (GME Resources) to rise 50 percent on Thursday — is hard to reconcile with today’s uber-efficient high-frequency markets.

Media coverage routinely refers to GameStop’s price surge as a bubble. But what are financial bubbles — and what causes them? As I noted when writing about bubbles in 2008 in the Review of Financial Studies, the phenomenon had been around for centuries — in the 18th century, Scottish economist Adam Smith called it “overtrading.” But that doesn’t explain what starts a bubble in the first place. Plenty of economists, historians and others have tried.

The Swedish economist Knut Wicksell, in an observation that resonates today, argued in 1898 that bubbles are attributable to interest rates that are too low. In 1929 — we know what happened in the markets then — the Dutch economist historian N.W. Posthumus cited the entrance of nonprofessional buyers fueled by credit. In this view, today’s Federal Reserve and the Reddit crowd would seem natural culprits.

What you need to know about GameStop’s stock price chaos

An alternative view in history is that bubbles can emerge if traders are rational but markets are irrational. The economist and historian Charles P. Kindleberger makes this argument in his classic 1978 book, “Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises.” What drives market irrationality, Kindleberger says, is the fallacy of composition: Each trader believes he can sell at a higher price, and if he can in fact do so, then it is rational for him to buy. But not everyone in the market can do that, so the market as a whole behaves irrationally.

A variant on this irrationality of the market theme underlies the “beauty contest” analogy offered in 1936 by the English economist John Maynard Keynes. He argued that individuals do not pick stocks based on what they think a firm is worth, but rather on what they think other people will think it is worth. (Has Keynes’s “beauty contest” morphed into today’s “chat room”?) In that description, each individual is acting rationally, but the market overall is not.

Short sellers in GameStop — mostly hedge funds that had been betting massively on the company’s stock to fall — had reportedly lost $23.6 billion as of Wednesday. They may find little consolation in the dictum often attributed to Keynes: “Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.”

Defense Strategic Communication Group: Free Society Or Propagandized Society - But Not Both

ottowacitizen |  The Canadian Forces wants to establish a new organization that will use propaganda and other techniques to try to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of Canadians, according to documents obtained by this newspaper.

The plan comes on the heels of the Canadian Forces spending more than $1 million to train public affairs officers on behaviour modification techniques of the same sort used by the parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, as well as a controversial and bizarre propaganda training mission in which the military forged letters from the Nova Scotia government to warn the public that wolves were wandering in the province.

The new Defence Strategic Communication group will advance “national interests by using defence activities to influence the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of audiences,” according to the document dated October 2020. Target audiences for such an initiative would be the Canadian public as well as foreign populations in countries where military forces are sent.

The document is the end result of what Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance has called the “weaponization” of the military’s public affairs branch. The document is in a draft form, but work is already underway on some aspects of the plan and some techniques have been already tested on the Canadian public.

But the office of Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said Sunday that the plan, at least for now, is not authorized to proceed. Sajjan has raised concerns about some of the activities related to such influence and propaganda operations. “No such plan has been approved, nor will it be,” Floriane Bonneville, Sajjan’s press secretary, said after being asked by this newspaper about the initiative.

But a series of town halls were already conducted last week for a number of military personnel on the strategies contained in the draft plan.

The report quotes Brig.-Gen. Jay Janzen, director general military public affairs, who stated, “The motto ‘who dares, wins’ is as applicable to strategic communication as it is to warfare.”

 

No Indictments Because Durham And His Deputy Dannehy Are Deep State PMC...,

NYMag |  On September 10, Nora Dannehy resigned as the deputy to John Durham, the federal prosecutor investigating the government’s probe into the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election. Dannehy left her post and the Justice Department in part because of Attorney General William Barr’s pressure on Durham to release a report on his investigation’s findings before Election Day, according to a person familiar with her thinking. Trump had long been hoping a report out this fall would damage Democrats, including Joe Biden, and help him win reelection. In Trump’s terminology, Durham’s report would reveal an “attempted overthrow” of his administration by Democratic insiders. But Justice Department guidelines restrict prosecutors from taking such actions within 60 days of an election because they might affect the outcome of the election. Both Durham and Dannehy believed that if they complied with Barr’s demands they would be violating this doctrine, according to two people familiar with their thinking.

Durham, who is the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, and Dannehy were also troubled that Barr had purposely misrepresented their work in numerous public comments, the two people said. According to two sources familiar with the probe, there has been no evidence found, after 18 months of investigation, to support Barr’s claims that Trump was targeted by politically biased Obama officials to prevent his election. (The probe remains ongoing.) In fact, the sources said, the Durham investigation has so far uncovered no evidence of any wrongdoing by Biden or Barack Obama, or that they were even involved with the Russia investigation. There “was no evidence … not even remotely … indicating Obama or Biden did anything wrong,” as one person put it.

Shortly after the resignation of his prized deputy and with the election looming on the horizon, Durham phoned Barr. He forcefully told the attorney general that his office would not be releasing a report or taking any other significant public actions before Election Day, according to a person with knowledge of the phone call. Dannehy’s resignation constituted an implied but unspoken threat to Barr that Durham or others on his team might resign if the attorney general attempted to force the issue, according to a person familiar with Durham’s thinking.

After hearing from Durham in September, Barr informed the president and allies that there would be no October surprise, causing Trump to lash out. “Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes — the greatest political crimes in the history of our country — then we’re going to get little satisfaction unless I win,” he told Fox Business last month. “[These] people should be indicted, this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that includes Obama and it includes Biden.”

 

Represent Constituents?!?!?! Silly Tlaib - We Have A Mandate From Paying Donors!!!

dailycaller |  “Despite an obvious preference by Democratic leadership to focus on the suburbs and former Republican voters rather than working-class communities of color, progressives like Stacey Abrams, Rep. Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib are showing us – through turnout results in their states and cities – where Democrats must invest to build the party,” the memo says.

“We’re not going to be successful if we’re silencing districts like mine,” Tlaib said, according to Politico. “Me not being able to speak on behalf of many of my neighbors right now, many of which are black neighbors, means me being silenced. I can’t be silent.” 

“We are not interested in unity that asks people to sacrifice their freedom and their rights any longer,” Tlaib continued. “And if we truly want to unify our country, we have to really respect every single voice. We say that so willingly when we talk about Trump supporters, but we don’t say that willingly for my Black and brown neighbors and from LGBTQ neighbors or marginalized people.”

Progressives are pushing for power in the Joe Biden administration, despite the criticism from moderate Democrats. Tlaib reportedly wants to see a public educator and labor advocates in top positions. Progressives and left-wing strategists don’t want Biden to work across the aisle with Republicans, although Biden has expressed his desire to create a sense of unity by doing so.

“If [voters] can walk past blighted homes and school closures and pollution to vote for Biden-Harris, when they feel like they don’t have anything else, they deserve to be heard,” Tlaib said, choking up as she expressed frustration near the end of an interview this week. “I can’t believe that people are asking them to be quiet.”

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for an “unapologetic agenda” that is distinct from the GOP “instead of trying to play to notions of civility,” Politico reported. Specifically, Ocasio-Cortez wants the Democratic Party to establish a cohesive message on racism because “Democrats don’t want to talk about race.”

 

Huntergate: What Comes Next?

revolver  |  What is the most incriminating thing on the hard drive? Rudy has suggested illegal things, and as Revolver reported, the FBI person tasked with the hard drive is associated with the child pornography division. Could you give more insight into how bad it is we’re talking about?

Mr. Bannon: Joe Biden is a liar, a fraud, and compromised by Chinese cash. In short, he is a national security crisis. The hard drive combines emails and text messages that show a massive involvement with companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Also, there are 25,000 images that show a drug-addled, depraved lifestyle — one that decent hardworking Americans will not want near the White House.

Revolver: The FBI has been holding onto the hard drive for almost a year? Any sense of why? Was there any indication that they were seriously interested in a criminal case, assuming that there is, in fact, illegal material on there? If not, why would the FBI simply hold onto information like that?

Mr. Bannon: The President must confront the director of the FBI on why the information housed on this hard drive was not moved on immediately. If the content of the hard drive had been released when received in November 2019, there would have been no impeachment of Trump, and Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic Party nominee. This confrontation should take place this weekend in the Oval Office. If Wray doesn’t have a bulletproof reason he should be fired in the room.

Revolver: What are your best estimates on how many foreign entities may have obtained possession of the hard drive? Chinese intel?

Mr. Bannon: It’s the actions represented on the hard drive that the American people must understand our enemies know about. The cash and equity given for access to Biden, the favors done for that cash, the drugs, the depravity. The CCP, Russian Intel, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Intel Services — they know the Bidens are for sale.

Did The FBI Conceal Huntergate In Order To Control Preznit Joe Biden?

americanthinker  |  It didn’t surprise the informed, and understandably a bit cynical, to hear that the FBI sat on Hunter Biden’s laptop instead of seeking justice. The bureau was previously involved in an illegal plot to take down Donald Trump, after all, and its Deep State elements would assuredly love to see Joe Biden succeed him in January. So why would they reveal damning information on their establishment hope? Yet suppressing Huntergate perhaps provided a secondary benefit:

The information could be used against Biden once he was in office.

This wouldn’t be anything new. It’s believed that longtime, legendary FBI director J. Edgar Hoover used “dirt files” on politicians for leverage; for one thing, it’s said, this enabled him to remain bureau head for as long as he wished. William Sullivan, once the number three official under Hoover, put it this way: From the moment the director got damning information on a senator, the man would be “right in his pocket.”

So not only could suppressing Huntergate get Biden in office, but then maybe it’s, “Nice presidency you’ve got there, Mr. Biden — I’d hate to see anything happen to it.”

Since the criminality in question could, apparently, put Hunter in prison along with destroying China Joe, the leverage is profound. It could not only be used to control Biden but also his wife, Jill, in the unlikely event she for a time is able to pull off an Edith Wilson (who supposedly ran the show when Woodrow Wilson became incapacitated). She wouldn’t want to see her stepson in the hoosegow and her family’s reputation ruined, after all.

The DNC Is A Hoe'lie Owned Proxy For K-Street - AT ALL LEVELS!!!

realsludge  |  Democrats are looking ahead to the second nominating ballot at the July Democratic National Convention, when superdelegates will be allowed to cast votes if no presidential candidate receives a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot.

Superdelegates include 75 at-large DNC members, often prominent party figures who are put forward as a slate by DNC Chair Tom Perez and do not directly represent a state or other region. Among the 447 total voting DNC members, who make up the majority of 771 superdelegates, there are scores of corporate lobbyists and consultants—including many of the 75 at-large DNC members, who were not individually elected.

These corporate lobbyists will be allowed to vote on the second ballot under the compromise that emerged from the Unity Reform Commission meeting in 2017. The Unity Reform Commission’s proposed package of reforms was later passed by the Rules and Bylaws Committee and adopted as the 2020 convention rules in a rushed voice vote of full DNC members at the summer 2018 national party meeting.

In October 2017, Perez purged DNC committees of several members who had supported either his rival candidate for chair, then-Rep. Keith Ellison, or Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid. In their place, Perez appointed several handpicked corporate lobbyists to the committees that govern the party’s operating rules, budget, convention delegates, and other matters.

Sludge reviewed a DNC committee membership list from September 2019 and found that nearly two-thirds of the members of the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee have backgrounds in corporate influence and legal defense that present possible conflicts of interest for their work on the party rules. Some individuals may not currently hold the same committee assignments, but all are current DNC members. Committee membership details are not made publicly available by the DNC.

The 32-member DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee contains the following 20 individuals: a health insurance board member co-chair, three surrogates for presidential campaigns (two for Bloomberg, one for Biden), four current corporate lobbyists, two former corporate lobbyists, six corporate consultants, and four corporate lawyers.

This article, the second in a series on DNC committees, looks at the Rules and Bylaws Committee, which is responsible for the Charter of the Democratic Party, for which it “shall receive and consider all recommendations for adoption and amendments.”

Here are the rules-making DNC members—many of them unelected—whose voting power raises ethics questions, as the Rules and Bylaws Committee continues to block proposed changes for stronger conflict of interest policies.

How Sausage Gets Made In A Fundamentally Corrupt Governance Operating System

CTH  |   With 30-days left before the election perhaps it’s worthwhile remembering what all of this opposition is about…. Something 99% of American voters do not quite understand.

Congress doesn’t actually write legislation. The last item of legislation written by congress was sometime around the mid 1990’s. Modern legislation is sub-contracted to a segment of DC operations known as K-Street. That’s where the lobbyists reside.

Lobbyists write the laws; congress sells the laws; lobbyists then pay congress lucrative commissions for passing their laws. That’s the modern legislative business in DC.

When we talk about paying-off politicians in third-world countries we call it bribery. However, when we undertake the same process in the U.S. we call it “lobbying”.

CTH often describes the system with the phrase: “There are Trillions at Stake.” The process of creating legislation is behind that phrase. DC politics is not quite based on the ideas that frame most voter’s reference points.

With people taking notice of DC politics for the first time; and with people not as familiar with the purpose of DC politics; perhaps it is valuable to provide clarity.

Most people think when they vote for a federal politician -a House or Senate representative- they are voting for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact legislation. This is the old-fashioned “schoolhouse rock” perspective based on decades past. There is not a single person in congress writing legislation or laws.

In modern politics not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law, or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct. This simply doesn’t happen.

Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body. Here’s how it works right now.

Outside groups, often called “special interest groups”, are entities that represent their interests in legislative constructs. These groups are often representing foreign governments, Wall Street multinational corporations, banks, financial groups or businesses; or smaller groups of people with a similar connection who come together and form a larger group under an umbrella of interest specific to their affiliation.

Sometimes the groups are social interest groups; activists, climate groups, environmental interests etc. The social interest groups are usually non-profit constructs who depend on the expenditures of government to sustain their cause or need.

The for-profit groups (mostly business) have a purpose in Washington DC to shape policy, legislation and laws favorable to their interests. They have fully staffed offices just like any business would – only their ‘business‘ is getting legislation for their unique interests.

These groups are filled with highly-paid lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write laws and legislation briefs.

Obama Destroyed Black American Wealth While

peoplespolicyproject |  The People’s Policy Project is proud to release its first formal paper. Co-authored by Ryan Cooper and Matt Bruenig and designed by Jon White, it uses data from the Survey of Consumer Finances to track the evolution of African-American wealth during the Obama presidency, and how that wealth was affected by housing policy choices made by the administration.

The paper finds that while President Obama had wide discretion and appropriated funds to relieve homeowners caught in the economic crisis, the policy design his administration chose for his housing program was a disaster. Instead of helping homeowners, at every turn the administration was obsessed with protecting the financial system — and so homeowners were left to drown.

As a result, the percentage of black homeowners who were underwater on their mortgage exploded 20-fold from 2007 to 2013.

Most middle-class wealth is housing wealth. Obama’s failure meant that while the top 10 percent of white households saw large increases in wealth due to the bank bailout restoring stock market values, almost everyone else in the country suffered serious losses.

For the rest of the paper, click here.

Media Coverage Jacobin: How Obama Destroyed Black Wealth

The Dig: The Destruction of Black Wealth with Ryan Cooper

Newsweek: Racism in Boston: African-Americans Have a Median Net Worth of $8, New Report Shows

Splinter News: How the Obama Administration Failed Black Homeowners

Chapo Trap House

California Covid Numbers All Wrong...,

justthenews |  Dr. Sonia Angell, California's director of the Department of Public Health, abruptly resigned on Sunday. Angell, who had been in the position for less than a year, reportedly resigned via an email sent to the California Health and Human Services Agency. 

Angell has, among others, been leading the state's battle against the novel coronavirus. More than 10,000 Californians have died of the illness, and most of the state remains on shutdown following a brief reopening period in early summer. 

"Our department has been front and center in what has become an all-of-government response of unprecedented proportions to COVID-19. In the final calculation, all of our work, in aggregate, makes the difference," Angell reportedly wrote in her resignation letter.

Angell's departure comes as the state government reckons with a data glitch that failed to log nearly 300,000 infectious disease testing records, resulting in hindered decision-making at the highest levels of the California government. 

The secretary of California Health and Human Services, Mark Ghaly, recently apologized to state residents for the error. "Bottom line, our data system failed," said Ghaly. With more than half a million reported cases of the virus, California tops the nation for positive diagnoses. The data blunder, however, has impeded state authorities' ability to determine policies moving forward, specifically the decision on whether to reopen schools for in-person learning as the new school year is set to begin.

U.K. Covid Numbers All Wrong....,

dailymail |  Thousands of coronavirus deaths are set to be wiped from the government's official count, it was claimed today.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock last month ordered an urgent review into how daily death counts are calculated in England because of a 'statistical flaw'.

Academics found Public Health England's methods meant ministers count victims as anyone who died after ever testing positive for Covid-19 — even if they were hit by a bus after beating the disease months later.

It would've meant that, technically, no-one could ever recover from the virus and all 265,000 of England's confirmed patients would eventually have had their deaths attributed to the disease. 

The blunder could see up to 4,000 deaths removed from England's official toll of 41,749, according to reports. One of the leading experts who uncovered the flaw told MailOnline his 'best guess' was that more than 1,000 people have had their deaths wrongly recorded as caused by Covid-19.

It would've meant that, technically, no-one could ever recover from the virus and all 265,000 of England's confirmed patients would eventually have had their deaths attributed to the disease.

The blunder could see up to 4,000 deaths removed from England's official toll of 41,749, according to reports. One of the leading experts who uncovered the flaw told MailOnline his 'best guess' was that more than 1,000 people have had their deaths wrongly recorded as caused by Covid-19.

Florida Covid Numbers All Wrong...,

turcopelier |  Florida is home to 21,933,000 people (see here). How many have succumbed to Covid since March 6, when Florida's Government started keeping tabs on the disease? 7,084.  That means 0.032% of the population have died from Covid in the last six months. To put this into perspective, the CDC reports for 2017 that 46,044 Floridians died from heart disease. I do not recall nightly news broadcasts wailing hysterically about fat Floridians eating double cheeseburgers and clogging their arteries. But less than 8,000 deaths in six months and we are supposed to put on masks and hide in our closets? Nonsense.

Let's take a closer look at Sarasota County over the last 30 days. According to the US Census, Sarasota County was inhabited by 433,742 souls as of July 1, 2019.  Here are the numbers according to the Florida Covid 19 "Dashboard." Just follow this link and click on Sarasota County. Five thousand nine hundred seventy four Sarasotans tested positive since the first of July (July 7 to be precise). That is 1.3% of the total county population. Hospitalized? 360, which represents 0.08%. How about deaths? 160. That is roughly consistent with the number of deaths recorded state-wide--0.036%.

What about neighboring Manatee County (seat of the city of Bradenton and winter home of the Pittsburgh Pirates)? Manatee has a slightly smaller population than Sarsota, weighing in with 413,655 happy inhabitants. Eight thousand nine hundred fifty six Manatee maniacs tested positive for Covid--i.e., 2.1%. More have been hospitalized--589, which represents 0.14%. The death count is 189 or 0.045%. Ever hear of the concept of "perspective?"  I am sure that the families of those whose kith and kin perished from Covid and/or co-morbidities exacerbated by Covid don't care a whit about the stats. But the truth is the disease is not spreading like wildfire. People are not flooding the hospitals.

Quivering, Age-Spotted Old Poodle ALL-IN On The Great Reset

cnbc |  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday said that a federal mandate on wearing masks is “long overdue,” as state governors call for a consistent national message on the issue amid a surge in coronavirus cases across the nation.  

Pelosi said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the use of masks to reduce the spread of the virus but never mandated it as to “not offend” President Donald Trump.

The president has repeatedly flouted public health guidelines by refusing to wear a mask in public since the start of the outbreak. 

“The president should be an example. Real men wear masks, be an example to the country, wear a mask,” Pelosi said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “It’s not about protecting yourself, it’s about protecting others.” 

Mask wearing has become a point of contention across the U.S., despite research showing that face coverings prevent coronavirus transmission.

U.S. coronavirus cases surged by more than 45,000 in one day on Friday, a record breaking spike that brought the nation’s total to more than 2.5 million cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday deflected a question about a federal mandate requiring Americans to wear masks, and said people should listen to what state and local officials are saying about wearing masks in public. 

The vice president said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that “every state has a unique situation” and “we believe people should wear masks wherever social distancing is not possible.”

Mayor Q. Gillum NOT ABOUT To Upset The Local Criminal Public Safety Union...,

kcur |  Kansas City currently has a highly unusual setup for its police department. The department gets its funding largely from the city of Kansas City, but it is not directly controlled by the mayor or city council as other departments are.

Instead, since the late 1930s, it has been under state control and the governor appoints a five-member board to oversee it. Mayor Quinton Lucas is part of that board. The police chief reports to the board, not to the city council or to the city manager.

Read KCUR's "FAQ: Why Kansas City Doesn't Have Local Control Over Its Police Department And How That Could Change" 

Over the years there have been periodic calls to return the department to local control, in line with the way most big-city police departments are governed.

Supporters say local control would be one way to hold the police department accountable and more directly address the city’s serious violent crime and homicide problem.

Emanuel Cleaver III, who was among several local Black leaders who stood behind Lucas as he spoke, said he hadn't seen a movement like this in his lifetime. 

"I'm extremely hopeful and believe that we're going to see significant change," Cleaver said.

Cleaver said local control could open the door to other reforms — particularly the establishment of an independent police review board that would handle police complaints. 

Pastor Ronald Lindsay of Concord Fortress of Hope Church in south Kansas City said it's time for Kansas City residents to have a voice in the debate.

"I think that this is a transformative moment to rethink what community is and what being engaged in a health community and culture really looks like," Lindsay said. "It's hard work, it's ugly, but it's absolutely necessary."

Still, local control remains a controversial proposal. 

Opponents fear that it would make the police department vulnerable to political interference. And local control has often been opposed by the Fraternal Order of Police in Kansas City.

Lucas said while Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith was informed of Thursday's announcement, they had yet to sit down and talk about it. 

On Thursday, several groups applauded the mayor’s announcement. The Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, or MORE², said it was pleased with Lucas’ support of a ballot measure this year to garner voter support.