Paradise Within Reach - But Billions Of Y'all Gotta Go, Gotta Go, Gotta Go!!!

NYTimes |  As medical and social advances mitigate diseases of old age and prolong life, the number of exceptionally long-lived people is increasing sharply. The United Nations estimates that there were about 95,000 centenarians in 1990 and more than 450,000 in 2015. By 2100, there will be 25 million. Although the proportion of people who live beyond their 110th birthday is far smaller, this once-fabled milestone is also increasingly common in many wealthy nations. The first validated cases of such “supercentenarians” emerged in the 1960s. Since then, their global numbers have multiplied by a factor of at least 10, though no one knows precisely how many there are. In Japan alone, the population of supercentenarians grew to 146 from 22 between 2005 and 2015, a nearly sevenfold increase. 

Given these statistics, you might expect that the record for longest life span would be increasing, too. Yet nearly a quarter-century after Calment’s death, no one is known to have matched, let alone surpassed, her 122 years. The closest was an American named Sarah Knauss, who died at age 119, two years after Calment. The oldest living person is Kane Tanaka, 118, who resides in Fukuoka, Japan. Very few people make it past 115. (A few researchers have even questioned whether Calment really lived as long as she claimed, though most accept her record as legitimate based on the weight of biographical evidence.)

As the global population approaches eight billion, and science discovers increasingly promising ways to slow or reverse aging in the lab, the question of human longevity’s potential limits is more urgent than ever. When their work is examined closely, it’s clear that longevity scientists hold a wide range of nuanced perspectives on the future of humanity. Historically, however — and somewhat flippantly, according to many researchers — their outlooks have been divided into two broad camps, which some journalists and researchers call the pessimists and the optimists. Those in the first group view life span as a candle wick that can burn for only so long. They generally think that we are rapidly approaching, or have already reached, a ceiling on life span, and that we will not witness anyone older than Calment anytime soon.

In contrast, the optimists see life span as a supremely, maybe even infinitely elastic band. They anticipate considerable gains in life expectancy around the world, increasing numbers of extraordinarily long-lived people — and eventually, supercentenarians who outlive Calment, pushing the record to 125, 150, 200 and beyond. Though unresolved, the long-running debate has already inspired a much deeper understanding of what defines and constrains life span — and of the interventions that may one day significantly extend it.

The theoretical limits on the length of a human life have vexed scientists and philosophers for thousands of years, but for most of history their discussions were largely based on musings and personal observations. In 1825, however, the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz published a new mathematical model of mortality, which demonstrated that the risk of death increased exponentially with age. Were that risk to continue accelerating throughout life, people would eventually reach a point at which they had essentially no chance of surviving to the next year. In other words, they would hit an effective limit on life span.

Instead, Gompertz observed that as people entered old age, the risk of death plateaued. “The limit to the possible duration of life is a subject not likely ever to be determined,” he wrote, “even should it exist.” Since then, using new data and more sophisticated mathematics, other scientists around the world have uncovered further evidence of accelerating death rates followed by mortality plateaus not only in humans but also in numerous other species, including rats, mice, shrimp, nematodes, fruit flies and beetles.

In 2016, an especially provocative study in the prestigious research journal Nature strongly implied that the authors had found the limit to the human life span. Jan Vijg, a geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and two colleagues analyzed decades’ worth of mortality data from several countries and concluded that although the highest reported age at death in these countries increased rapidly between the 1970s and 1990s, it had failed to rise since then, stagnating at an average of 114.9 years. Human life span, it seemed, had arrived at its limit. Although some individuals, like Jeanne Calment, might reach staggering ages, they were outliers, not indicators of a continual lengthening of life.

The Hardest Choices Require The Strongest Wills

scitechdaily |  In a paper published today (January 13, 2021) in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science, the researchers cite more than 150 scientific studies and conclude, “That we are already on the path of a sixth major extinction is now scientifically undeniable.”

Among the paper’s co-authors is Daniel Blumstein, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and member of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Because too many people have underestimated the severity of the crisis and have ignored experts’ warnings, scientists must continue speaking out, said Blumstein, author of the 2020 book “The Nature of Fear: Survival Lessons from the Wild” — but they also must avoid either sugarcoating the overwhelming challenges or inducing feelings of despair.

“Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals, and catastrophe will surely follow,” he said. “What we are saying is frightening, but we must be both candid and vocal if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face in creating a sustainable future.”

The Earth has experienced five mass extinctions, each accounting for a loss of more than 70% of all species on the planet. The most recent was 66 million years ago. Now, the paper reports, projected temperature increases and other human assaults on the environment mean that approximately 1 million of the planet’s 7 million to 10 million species are threatened with extinction in the coming decades.

Blumstein said that level of damage could occur within the next several decades; an extinction affecting as many as 70% of all species — like the earlier mass extinctions cited in the paper — could potentially occur within the next few centuries.

One of the major trends discussed in the paper is the explosive growth of the planet’s human population. There are now 7.8 billion people, more than double the Earth’s population just 50 years ago. And by 2050, the figure is likely to reach 10 billion, the scientists write, which would cause or exacerbate numerous serious problems. For example, more than 700 million people are starving and more than 1 billion are malnourished already; both figures are likely to increase as the population grows.

Population growth also greatly increases the risk for pandemics, the authors write, because most new infectious diseases result from human–animal interactions, humans live closer to wild animals than ever before and wildlife trade is continuing to increase significantly. Population growth also contributes to rising unemployment and, when combined with a hotter Earth, leads to more frequent and intense flooding and fires, poorer water and air quality, and worsening human health.

 

Far Older Than Their Calibrated Dating

 

 

Indigenous Land Stewardship And Forest Gardening Across Two Continents

nationalgeographic |  For hundreds of years, Indigenous communities in what is now British Columbia cleared small patches amid dense conifer forest. They planted and tended food and medicine-bearing trees and plants—sometimes including species from hundreds of miles away—to yield a bounty of nuts, fruits, and berries. A wave of European disease devastated Indigenous communities in the late 1700s, and in the 1800s, colonizers displaced the Indigenous people and seized the land. The lush, diverse forest gardens were abandoned and forgotten.

A few years ago, Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, an ethnobotanist at Simon Fraser University, was invited by First Nation elders to investigate why hazelnut trees were growing at abandoned village sites near the coast. The plants were far from their native habitat in the dry interior and seemingly lost among towering cedars and hemlocks. Armstrong began to suspect she was studying human-created ecosystems—and they were thriving, even with no one caring for them. She brought her suspicions to community elders, who confirmed them by sharing memories of ancestors cultivating edible and medicinal plants.

Armstrong gathered colleagues to study these ancient gardens’ ecology. In a new paper published this week in the journal Ecology and Society, the team reports a striking finding: After more than a century on their own, Indigenous-created forest gardens of the Pacific Northwest support more pollinators, more seed-eating animals and more plant species than the supposedly “natural” conifer forests surrounding them.

“When we look at forest gardens, they’re actually enhancing what nature does, making it much more resilient, much more biodiverse—and, oh yeah, they feed people too,” says Armstrong.

The paper may be the first to quantify how Indigenous land stewardship can enhance what ecologists call functional diversity—a measure of how many goods an ecosystem provides. It joins a growing scientific literature revealing that Indigenous people—both historically and today—often outperform government agencies and conservation organizations at supporting biodiversity, sequestering carbon, and generating other ecological benefits on their land. Leaving nature alone is not always the right course, scientists are finding—and the original land stewards often do it best.

This is, of course, a claim that Indigenous groups have long made. Western scientists, by contrast, have often written Native people out of forests and other ecosystems they helped create. An increasing number of scientists are now questioning this practice—and in the process, forcing ecology and conservation to undergo what some would say is a long-overdue reckoning.

“Western science for too long has embraced the idea of primordial wilderness,” says Jesse Miller, an ecologist at Stanford and Armstrong’s coauthor. “We’re seeing this paradigm shift to recognizing how much of what was thought of as primordial wilderness were actually landscapes shaped by humans.”

 

 

Rainforests Were Manmade Food Gardens

wikipedia |  First aired on Thursday 23 June 2011. The final episode looks at the Amazon rainforest - billed as the world's last great wilderness. However, the discovery of geoglyphs uncovered following deforestation in the 1970s and terra preta, provide growing evidence for ancient cities in the heart of the 'virgin forest'.^[5] Ondemar Dias is accredited with first discovering the geoglyphs in 1977 and Alceu Ranzi with furthering their discovery after flying over Acre.^[6][7]

The documentary presents evidence that Francisco de Orellana, rather than exaggerating his claims as previously thought, was correct in his observations that a complex civilization was flourishing along the Amazon in the 1540s. It is believed that the civilization was later devastated by the spread of diseases from Europe, such as smallpox. Some 5 million people may have lived in the Amazon region in 1500, divided between dense coastal settlements, such as that at Marajó, and inland dwellers.^[8] By 1900 the population had fallen to 1 million and by the early 1980s it was less than 200,000.^[8]

The documentary features interviews with Betty Meggers, William Balée, Anna Roosevelt, José Iriarte, Eduardo Góes Neves, Cristiana Barreto, Francis Mayle, Denise Schaan and Michael Heckenberger.

Ancient Permaculture Was Practiced Continent-Wide

sci-news |  The Llanos de Moxos is a savannah of approximately 126,132 km² (48,700 square miles) located in the Beni Department of Bolivia in southwestern Amazonia.

The landscape is dotted by earthworks, including raised fields, mounds, canals and forest islands.

“The Llanos de Moxos savannah area floods from December to March and is extremely dry from July to October, but the mounds remain above the water level during the rainy season allowing trees to grow on them,” said lead author Dr. Umberto Lombardo from the University of Bern and colleagues.

“The mounds promoted landscape diversity, and show that small-scale communities began to shape the Amazon 8,000 years earlier than previously thought.”

“Our research confirms this part of the Amazon is one of the earliest centers of plant domestication in the world.”

The researchers looked at the forest islands located within the vast savannah for signs of early gardening.

“We basically mapped large sections of forest islands using remote sensing. We hypothesized that the regularly shaped forest islands had anthropic origin,” said co-author Dr. José Capriles, from the Pennsylvania State University and the Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas y Arqueológicas at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés.

“However, most circular forest islands are in fact artificial and irregular ones are not. There is not a clear pattern,” Dr. Lombardo said.

In fact, there are more than 4,700 artificial forest islands in the Llanos de Moxos savannah, according to the scientists.

“Archaeological evidence for plant domestication is very poorly available, especially in Amazonia where the climate destroys most organic materials. There is no stone in this area because it is an alluvial plain (water deposited) and it is hard to find evidence of early hunter-gatherers,” Dr. Capriles said.

Using microscopic plant silica bodies called phytoliths, found well preserved in tropical forests, the team documented the cultivation of squash (Cucurbita sp.) at about 10,250 years ago, manioc (Manihot sp.) at about 10,350 years ago and maize (Zea mays) at about 6,850 years ago.

The study involved a large scale regional analysis of 61 archaeological sites, identified by remote sensing, now patches of forest surrounded by savannah.

Why Don't Police Have To Get Public Approval Before Getting Expensive New "Public Safety" Toys?

gothamist |  Thanks to FEMA cash the NYPD has a bulletproof boat, but that isn't close to the only toy in the Department's nautical arsenal. A story in today's Times takes a look at the NYPD Harbor Unit, which has become increasingly important to counterterrorism in the past few years. All of which is to say, the NYPD's six remote-controlled submarines will put those flimsy (banned) motorized model boats in Central Park to shame!

Seriously, these are some fancy and expensive toys (four of them, bought in 2007, cost $75,000 each and the other two, bought in 2008, cost $120,000 a pop!) that are crucial, along with the 34 vessels in the department's fleet, in helping the NYPD look around under boats and bridges in our expansive waterways for potential bombs (and drugs, contraband and criminals). So far the drone submarines haven't actually found a bomb, but when they do, the Harbor Unit is ready...to call in the Navy to deal with the bomb ("We mark the location, get out of the water and call them," a detective explains). 

dnainfo |   The NYPD’s International Liaison Program that posts detectives in nearly a dozen foreign cities is a waste of money that has not prevented any attacks, say sources who have dealt with the officials overseas.

Former NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly systematically began assigning NYPD personnel in foreign port-of-calls — using money from a charity to pay for it — not long after taking office in post-9/11 New York. He was eager to get information quickly and directly from his own personnel rather than rely on the feds.

But former federal officials who served overseas told “On The Inside” the NYPD detectives are ineffective, often angering and confusing the foreign law enforcement officials they are trying to work with, and are usually relegated to the sidelines because they lack national security clearance.

nypost |  The NYPD will part ways with “Digidog,” the robotic police dog that earned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s wrath and became the subject of a City Council subpoena after images of it went viral.

The department told The Post on Wednesday that it ended a contract with Boston Dynamics to lease the four-legged robo-cop.

“The contract has been terminated and the dog will be returned,” a spokesperson said.

The sudden termination comes after a clip of the machine patrolling a Manhattan housing project went viral, sparking backlash and drawing comparisons to the dystopic TV series “Black Mirror.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio then urged the NYPD to “rethink” its use of the robot. Eventually, City Council leaders agreed and decided to subpoena the NYPD to find out its cost.

Negroes Ain't Gone Do Nothing - But This White Boy Summer Though...,

theconversation |  Any anti-police insurgency in the U.S. will likely start as an urban-based guerrilla-style movement. Attacks may be carried out on sites and symbols of law enforcement. Small arms and improvised explosive devices will likely be weapons of choice, which are relatively easy to acquire and build, respectively. The U.S. has the highest number of civilian firearms in the world with 120.5 guns per 100 persons or more than 393 million guns.

Critical infrastructure and government buildings may be targeted after business hours. The various groups will initially seek to avoid civilian casualties, and this may help to garner a level of support among the socially marginal from various backgrounds. The public would be concerned but relatively secure in understanding that only the police are being targeted. Escalation may ensue through copycat attacks.

The U.S. government will seem to have a handle on the insurgency at first but will gradually come to recognize that this is different. African American leaders will likely be helpless to stop the insurgency. Anyone who strongly denounces it in public may lose credibility among the people. Authenticity would mean developing a way to accommodate the insurgents in public rhetoric while condemning them in private.

Moving forward

I am often amazed that many people appear unaware that Nelson Mandela was co-founder of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the violent youth wing of the African National Congress, which carried out bombings in South Africa. The rationale provided in court by Mandela regarding his use of violence is instructive. Mandela told a South African court in 1963:

I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people…. We chose to defy the law. We first broke the law in a way which avoided any recourse to violence; when this form was legislated against, and then the government resorted to a show of force to crush opposition to its policies, only then did we decide to answer violence with violence.

To predict that an armed insurgency may happen in the U.S. is not the same as wishing for it to happen: It is not inevitable, and it can and should be avoided.

Police reform is a first step. A comprehensive criminal justice overhaul is overdue, including addressing the flaws inherent in trial by jury, which tends to produce mind-boggling results in cases involving police killings. Finally, the judgment in the trial of Derek Chauvin for George Floyd’s death will have an impact on the trajectory of any possible future events.

If Elites Are Shutting Down Social Media What You Think They'll Do To Mass Protests?

FAIR  |  EP: Absolutely, yeah. A common thread throughout these bills is that they use vague, sweeping language to define new criminal offenses, or redefine existing ones, related to conduct that may occur during a protest.

So we’ve seen bills targeting “taunting” police in Ohio and Kentucky. The new law in Florida that contains this new criminal offense around mob intimidation, which is sweepingly defined—you only need three people who are trying to get another person to do something, or to have a particular viewpoint, which sounds a lot like any kind of protest, where you’re trying to convince someone to do or think differently. Broad prohibitions on inciting or encouraging or aiding unlawful assemblies; obviously those cast a wide net.

And in many cases, these new bills and laws are relying on states’ existing definitions of “rioting,” which, in almost all states, are already very broadly defined in ways that can capture a completely peaceful protest. In many cases, you only need a small number of people, whereas most of us conceive of a “riot” as kind of a large group. In most instances, you don’t actually have to cause any damage or injure anyone for it to be a riot; you only need to pose a threat or a danger of something, property being damaged or someone being injured. This is one of the many ways that these sweeping definitions can cover, again, completely peaceful, nonviolent protest activity.

JJ: The problem that I think a lot of folks could see is the broad sweep of it. And yet at the same time—it’s not a “but,” it’s an “and”—and at the same time, we see that they’re actually specifically targeted. Florida’s law is about Black Lives Matter; it’s not about January 6, you know? We know that there are particular targets, and we shouldn’t pretend we don’t know.

EP: Right. And that’s something that we’ve seen, time and time again in this tracking project, that lawmakers are really introducing these anti-protest initiatives in the aftermath of distinct protest movements. And it’s often clear from the text of the bills themselves, as well as from what lawmakers say, what they’re targeting. And that’s true of, certainly, this wave of legislation.

Daniel Shaver's Widow Seeks Justice For His Murder By Mesa AZ Police...,

@thebirthingtree

When will #DanielShaver’s story finally be heard? When will cops be held accountable? Why do they get lifetime pensions for killing citizens?

♬ original sound - Laney Sweet

newsweek  |  "Can someone please help explain to me how is it possible in the United States of America that these police officers keep getting away with murder?" Sweet said. "My husband Daniel Shaver was shot and killed five years ago while crying on the ground pleading for his life saying, 'Please don't shoot me.' He was compliant. He was unarmed. He didn't even have shoes on."

In another video, Sweet referred to the spate of police killings in the U.S., such as the death of George Floyd.

"People, it's time to wake up," she said. "Even when you comply and you try and you beg for your life and you say 'please don't shoot me' and you tell them that you can't breathe and you cry and you plead and you beg... they don't care.

"Because some cops are just out looking to kill people and they get away with it. And it keeps happening. And it's going to keep happening until people wake up and demand change."

In her videos, Sweet also spoke about how Brailsford, the officer who fatally shot Shaver, would get a pension for the rest of his life, while she and her children are struggling financially.

According to reports, Brailsford signed an agreement in 2018 to be rehired by the Mesa Police Department temporarily so he could apply for accidental disability pension and medical retirement due to a PTSD diagnosis. The PTSD stemmed from the shooting of Shaver and the resulting prosecution, an attorney for the officer told ABC15 in 2018.

"He was charged with second-degree murder, acquitted and then reinstated so he could get PTSD benefits for claiming disability for murdering my husband," she said in one video. "He's collecting a pension for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, my daughters and I are losing our housing and don't know where we're going to move next month and we don't have a working vehicle. Tell me how this is justice."

Sweet, who lives in Durango, Colorado, explained on a GoFundMe page to raise funds to support her family that she and her children will have nowhere to live from the end of May. That page has so far collected more than $75,000 in donations.

In a post on the page earlier this month, she said the city of Mesa is "interested" in settling the lawsuit and a mediation has been ordered.

Bill Gates Has Had A Lifelong Ideological Committment To Knowledge Monopolies

newrepublic |  Gates can hardly disguise his contempt for the growing interest in intellectual property barriers. In recent months, as the debate has shifted from the WHO to the WTO, reporters have drawn testy responses from Gates that harken back to his prickly performances before congressional antitrust hearings a quarter-century ago. When a Fast Company reporter raised the issue in February, she described Gates “raising his voice slightly and laughing in frustration,” before snapping, “It’s irritating that this issue comes up here. This isn’t about IP.” 

In interview after interview, Gates has dismissed his critics on the issue—who represent the poor majority of the global population—as spoiled children demanding ice cream before dinner. “It’s the classic situation in global health, where the advocates all of a sudden want [the vaccine] for zero dollars and right away,” he told Reuters in late January. Gates has larded the insults with comments that equate state-protected and publicly funded monopolies with the “free market.” “North Korea doesn’t have that many vaccines, as far as we can tell,” he told The New York Times in November. (It is curious that he chose North Korea as an example and not Cuba, a socialist country with an innovative and world-class vaccine development program with multiple Covid-19 vaccine candidates in various stages of testing.)

The closest Gates has come to conceding that vaccine monopolies inhibit production came during a January interview with South Africa’s Mail & Guardian. Asked about the growing intellectual property debate, he responded, “At this point, changing the rules wouldn’t make any additional vaccines available.”

The first implication of “at this point” is that the moment has passed when changing the rules could make a difference. This is a false but debatable claim. The same can’t be said for the second implication, which is that nobody could have possibly foreseen the current supply crisis. Not only were the obstacles posed by intellectual property easily predictable a year ago, there was no lack of people making noise about the urgency of avoiding them. They included much of the global research community, major NGOs with long experience in medicines development and access, and dozens of current and former world leaders and public health experts. In a May 2020 open letter, more than 140 political and civil society leaders called upon governments and companies to begin pooling their intellectual property. “Now is not the time … to leave this massive and moral task to market forces,” they wrote.  

Bill Gates’s position on intellectual property was consistent with a lifelong ideological commitment to knowledge monopolies, forged during a vengeful teenage crusade against the open-source programming culture of the 1970s. As it happens, a novel use of one category of intellectual property—copyright, applied to computer code—made Gates the richest man in the world for most of two decades beginning in 1995. That same year, the WTO went into effect, chaining the developing world to intellectual property rules written by a handful of executives from the U.S. pharmaceutical, entertainment, and software industries.  

I Don't Think This Will Pass Congress And We're Going To Make Real Sure It Doesn't!

ritholtz  |  Spoiler alert: Forget the 40% capital gains rate — its DOA, merely misdirection, designed to distract from the real show. My best deductive reasoning leads me to conclude the administration has decided that the 1% have amassed so much money and power, that they deserve their own (higher) tax bracket.

That is the philosophy behind the new cap gains proposal: Treat the top 1% as unique, and tax them accordingly.

Allow me to share my thinking about the proposed doubling of the capital gains tax rate to 40%. I am not going to weigh in on whether or not I support it — thats not especially relevant — but rather, how we got here, and what might be going on behind the scenes, and what is more likely to occur (if anytrhing). Contrary to some of the hyperbolic hysteria you may have seen on social media, there is a method to the madness.

But first, my priors: Following World War Two, the United States enjoyed an unprecedented expansion of the middle class. Corporate CEOs earned about 25 times what the average worker made; jobs with good benefits were plentiful, wages rose regularly. Education and healthcare was affordable.

That began to change when Stagflation took root in the 1970s; change accelerated under President Reagan as tax rates were slashed. Not long after that, audits and enforcements at the IRS began to decrease. Capital began to outpace Labor – modestly at first, and then more significantly. In the 1990s, President Clinton introduced a tax change intended to limit executive pay – but it had the exact opposite effect, shifting more of their compensation from wages to stock options. This led to the creation of vast fortunes including an increased number of millionaires and billionaires. It was the law of unintended consequences writ large. That was before President Trump cut the Corporate tax rate in 2017.

Today, Corporate CEOs earned about 200+ times what the average worker makes (or 320x or whatever); good jobs with good wages and benefits are much less plentiful, Education and healthcare are unaffordable.

Hence, that is from whence my analysis begins. I believe that strategically, the proposed 40% is a misdirection, and a brilliant one at that. It is not at all what this is truly about.

Overtaxing "Success" Is Unamerican

bloomberg  |  Charles Myers was sitting in a first-class seat on a flight from New York to Dallas when his phone started blowing up Thursday. News had just broken that the wealthiest Americans could soon face a tax rate as high as 43.4% on gains from their investments.

The chairman of Signum Global Advisors wasn’t thrilled.

“Raising capital gains taxes hurts the capital markets,” he said in a text message. “Better to raise the personal top marginal rate and estate tax. Leave capital gains and dividends alone.”

Myers has raised funds for Joe Biden, and wasn’t shocked by the White House’s plan because it was part of the president’s campaign. But the donor doesn’t think that 43.4% rate will make it into final legislation.

As the plane descended, he added: “Over-taxing success is un-American.”

Pressure has been building to raise levies on the wealthy after decades of tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the top 1%. Politicians at the national and state levels have recently proposed or passed higher rates, but the measures were largely focused on income taxes.

The plan to target investment gains strikes at the heart of what makes the wealthiest Americans ever more wealthy.

The country’s richest 1% own more than 50% of the equity in corporations and in mutual fund shares, according to Federal Reserve data. The next 9% of the wealthiest own more than a third of equity positions. Added together, the top 10% of Americans hold more than 88% of shares.

Meanwhile, the bottom 90%’s equity exposure has been dropping for almost two decades. That meant last year’s stock market surge widened the nation’s wealth gap further, leaving the 10 richest Americans with more than $1 trillion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Now, Biden wants to help pay for a raft of social spending that addresses long-standing inequality by taxing investment gains more, according to people familiar with his proposal.

Billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper isn’t persuaded. He said raising federal rates to as high as 43.4% would sound the death knell for Silicon Valley and American job creation.

 

Is Income Inequality “Compatible With Values Rooted In Our Nation’s History?"

propublica  |  “Inequality is a cumulative process,” said Karen Petrou, author of “The Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America” and managing partner of the Washington-based consulting firm Federal Financial Analytics. “The richer you are, the richer you get, and the poorer you are, the poorer you get, unless something puts that engine in reverse,” she said. “That engine is driven not by fate or by untouchable phenomena such as demographics but most importantly by policy decisions.”

Under President Joe Biden, the federal government is trying to both create jobs and funnel lots of money to people like Tan with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan stimulus package. Indeed, Tan is grateful for the $4,200 in stimulus funds she recently received. “This country has really, really blessed me a lot,” said Tan, a naturalized citizen who emigrated from Indonesia in 1984.

The Biden administration is also pushing for a $2.3 trillion infrastructure bill. But even without a penny yet having been spent on that, the federal government is running up record budget deficits, with more to come.

A considerable part of current and future deficits will be indirectly financed by the Fed, which has been increasing its holdings of Treasury IOUs and mortgage-backed securities by at least $120 billion a month, and has directed its trading desk to increase purchases “as needed” to maintain smooth functioning in the financial markets.

During Donald Trump’s four years as president, the Fed added $2.25 trillion to its holdings of Treasury IOUs, which helped cover the $7.8 trillion of debt the Treasury issued to finance budget deficits during the Trump years. It’s likely the central bank will be the biggest source of finance for Biden’s deficits, just as it was for Trump’s.

Why does that matter? Because when the Fed buys securities, it does so with money that it creates out of thin air. Pumping more money into the financial system increases the money supply, and some of that cash inevitably ends up making its way into the stock market, boosting prices.

Biden is making tax increases a big part of his infrastructure pitch, which in theory would make that legislation less reliant on the Fed. But it doesn’t mean taxes will go up anywhere near as much as he’s proposing. Or that taxes and spending will rise in lockstep. After all, spending is a lot more popular than raising taxes.

Now, let’s step back a bit and see how we got to this point.

During the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Fed initiated “quantitative easing,” a policy under which the central bank buys massive amounts of Treasury IOUs and other securities to inject money into the markets and stimulate the economy. Then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke championed that approach, which complemented aggressive moves by the Treasury and helped keep giant banks and the world financial system from cratering. (Lots of people still lost their homes to foreclosure, another example of how helping the financial system might not help average people. But that story has already been told.)

Open Thread On Fred - WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?!

stlouisfed | Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US)  

Release: H.6 Money Stock Measures  

Units:  Billions of Dollars, Seasonally Adjusted

Frequency:  Monthly

Before May 2020, M1 consists of (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) demand deposits at commercial banks (excluding those amounts held by depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign banks and official institutions) less cash items in the process of collection and Federal Reserve float; and (3) other checkable deposits (OCDs), consisting of negotiable order of withdrawal, or NOW, and automatic transfer service, or ATS, accounts at depository institutions, share draft accounts at credit unions, and demand deposits at thrift institutions.

Beginning May 2020, M1 consists of (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) demand deposits at commercial banks (excluding those amounts held by depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign banks and official institutions) less cash items in the process of collection and Federal Reserve float; and (3) other liquid deposits, consisting of OCDs and savings deposits (including money market deposit accounts). Seasonally adjusted M1 is constructed by summing currency, demand deposits, and OCDs (before May 2020) or other liquid deposits (beginning May 2020), each seasonally adjusted separately.

For more information on the H.6 release changes and the regulatory amendment that led to the creation of the other liquid deposits component and its inclusion in the M1 monetary aggregate, see the H.6 announcements and Technical Q&As posted on December 17, 2020.

Suggested Citation:

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US), M1 Money Stock [M1SL], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL, April 27, 2021.

Cornpop's Administration Broadly Defines "Domestic Terrorists" And Violent "Extremists"

outsidevoices  |  Last May, several months into a global pandemic that had capsized the economy, hog farmers had a problem on their hands. With restaurants closed, demand for their product had evaporated. With outbreaks shuttering meat processing plants all over the country, they had nowhere to send their animals to be slaughtered. If kept alive, the pigs would quickly outgrow facilities designed to hold them only for highly abbreviated lives, and the costs of feeding and watering them would become astronomical.

So some major pork producers, among them Iowa’s largest, Iowa Select Farms, made a horrifying decision. They would mass exterminate their animals in one fell swoop, using a technique that promised efficiency for themselves but guaranteed incomprehensible suffering for the pigs.

The method was called “ventilation shutdown,” and it entailed, basically, roasting the pigs alive. Workers would close all of the vents into the barns, shut down the air conditioning, and pipe steam into the buildings until the animals died by asphyxiation or hyperthermia, a process that took several hours. Then a worker would walk through the piles of corpses with a captive bolt gun, shooting whatever stragglers had survived.

The company, however, was unaware that there was a whistleblower within their ranks. An ISF truck driver named Lucas Walker, who had long been appalled by the company’s treatment of its pigs, had informed an activist named Matt Johnson of the company’s plans. Johnson snuck into the barns, placed hidden cameras, and recorded video and audio of the massacre to later release to the news media.

Neither Johnson nor Walker is what most people of conscience would consider a dangerous political extremist. They had no desire to bring any physical harm to anyone; on the contrary, they were moved by the cause of putting a halt to needless suffering. But both a new state law in Iowa and a bill currently being considered in Congress could render them such in the eyes of the criminal justice system. It is just one example of the moral hazard posed by the ongoing effort in Congress and within the Biden administration to erect a new domestic security state apparatus in response to the Trump years and the Capitol Riot — an effort the CIA has joined, while animal rights groups and environmental campaigners have been explicitly listed among its targets.

Davos Elites Have Their Sights Set On Global Food Control

ipsnews  |  Producers and consumers seem helpless as food all over the world comes under fast growing corporate control. Such changes have also been worsening environmental collapse, social dislocation and the human condition. 

Longer term perspective

The recent joint report – by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the ETC Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration – is ominous, to say the least.

A Long Food Movement, principally authored by Pat Mooney with a team including IPES-Food Director Nick Jacobs, analyses how food systems are likely to evolve over the next quarter century with technological and other changes.

The report notes that ‘hi-tech’, data processing and asset management corporations have joined established agribusinesses in reshaping world food supply chains.

If current trends continue, the food system will be increasingly controlled by large transnational corporations (TNCs) at the expense of billions of farmers and consumers.

Big Ag weds Big Data
The Davos World Economic Forum’s (WEF) much touted ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (IR4.0), promoting digitisation, is transforming food systems, accelerating concentration in corporate hands.

New apps enable better tracking across supply chains, while ‘precision farming’ now includes using drones to spray pesticides on targeted crops, reducing inputs and, potentially, farming costs. Agriculture is now second only to the military in drone use.

Digital giants are working with other TNCs to extend enabling ‘cloud computing’ infrastructure. Spreading as quickly as the infrastructure allows, new ‘digital ag’ technologies have been displacing farm labour.

Meanwhile, food data have become more commercially valuable, e.g., to meet consumer demand, Big Ag profits have also grown by creating ‘new needs’. Big data are already being used to manipulate consumer preferences.

With the pandemic, e-retail and food delivery services have grown even faster. Thus, e-commerce platforms have quickly become the world’s top retailers.

New ‘digital ag’ technologies are also undermining diverse, ecologically more appropriate food agriculture in favour of unsustainable monocropping. The threat is great as family farms still feed more than two-thirds of the world’s population.

IR4.0 not benign
Meanwhile, hi-tech and asset management firms have acquired significant shareholdings in food giants. Powerful conglomerates are integrating different business lines, increasing concentration while invoking competition and ‘creative disruption’.

The IPES-ETC study highlights new threats to farming and food security as IR4.0 proponents exert increasing influence. The report warns that giving Big Ag the ‘keys of the food system’ worsens food insecurity and other existential threats.

Powerful corporations will increase control of most world food supplies. Big Ag controlled supply chains will also be more vulnerable as great power rivalry and competition continue to displace multilateral cooperation.

 

 

California Conspired With Biden Campaign And Social Media To Censor Speech And Remove Content

 judicialwatch  |  Judicial Watch announced today that it received 540 pages and a supplemental four pages of documents from the office of the Secretary of State of California revealing how state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google (YouTube)) to censor posts about the 2020 election. Included in these documents were “misinformation briefings” emails that were compiled by communications firm SKDK, that lists Biden for President as their top client of 2020. The documents show how the state agency successfully pressured YouTube to censor a Judicial Watch video concerning the vote by mail and a Judicial Watch lawsuit settlement about California voter roll clean up.

The records were obtained in response to Judicial Watch’s California Public Records Act (CPRA) requests to the Office of the California Secretary of State for records related to the Office of Election Cybersecurity’s database of social media posts; communications with social media companies; and other social media related records regarding the 2020 elections. Judicial Watch filed the requests after a December 2020 report surfaced that the state agency was surveilling, tracking, and seeking to censor the speech of Americans:

“These new documents suggest a conspiracy against the First Amendment rights of Americans by the California Secretary of State, the Biden campaign operation, and Big Tech,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents blow up the big lie that Big Tech censorship is ‘private’ – as the documents show collusion between a whole group of government officials in multiple states to suppress speech about election controversies.”

 

Contrary To Caitlin's Essay, Elites Still Control Your Narrative Addiction Mechanisms...,

caitlinjohnstone |  This year has marked the first time ever that trust in news media dropped below fifty percent in the United States, continuing a trend of decline that's been ongoing for years.

Mass media punditry is divided on where to assign the blame for the plummet in public opinion of their work, with some blaming it on Russia and others blaming it on Donald Trump. Others, like a recent Forbes article titled "Restoring Public Trust In Technology And Media Is Infrastructure Investment" blame it on the internet. Still others, like a Washington Post article earlier this month titled "Bad news for journalists: The public doesn’t share our values" blame it on the people themselves.

The one thing they all seem to agree on is that it's definitely not because the billionaire-controlled media are propaganda outlets which manipulate us constantly in conjunction with sociopathic government agencies to protect the oligarchic, imperialist status quo upon which the members of the billionaire class have built their respective kingdoms. It cannot possibly be because people sense that they are being lied to and are fed up with it.

And actually it doesn't ultimately matter what mainstream pundits and reporters believe is the cause of the public's growing disgust with them, because there's nothing they can do to fix it anyway. The mass media will never regain the public's trust.

They'll never regain the public's trust for a couple of reasons, the first of which is because they'll never be able to become trustworthy. At no point will the mass media ever begin wowing the public with its journalistic integrity and causing people to re-evaluate their opinion of mainstream news reporters. At no point will people's disdain for these outlets ever cease to be reinforced and confirmed by the manipulative and deceitful behaviors which caused that disdain in the first place.

A propaganda outlet will never be anything other than a propaganda outlet. A lot of half-awake people with one eye open and one eye closed will notice how the news media don't practice journalism and don't report the facts, and they'll assume that something went wrong at some point. "Just do your jobs and report the news!" they'll shout in frustration.

But nothing has gone wrong, and they are doing their jobs. They are doing their jobs extremely well.

 

Internet Researcher And Conspiracy Investigator Matt Gertz Took The Contract On Naomi Wolf

mediamatters |  The feminist writer Naomi Wolf garnered fame during the 1990s for her book The Beauty Myth and her work as an adviser to the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But in recent years, she’s been better known for promoting an array of unhinged conspiracy theories, most recently regarding the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. This combination has made her a perfect guest for Fox News.

Fox is far more interested in turning coronavirus into a political cudgel than in giving users accurate health information. And so the network’s hosts lean on Wolf’s liberal credentials while giving her a platform to claim that the Democratic response to the pandemic is aimed at dissolving society and enacting a totalitarian state comparable to Nazi Germany.

Since mid-February, she appeared at least seven times on Fox to discuss her views on the pandemic: twice apiece on Tucker Carlson Tonight and The Revolution with Steve Hilton, and three times on Fox News Primetime, the most recent of which came Monday night. Wolf cited the notorious anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during that interview to argue that Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill and Melinda Gates, the state of Israel, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were engaged in some sort of nebulous but sinister vaccine conspiracy.

It is irresponsible for a news outlet to give Wolf that sort of credulous attention. Her social media channels are littered with absurd claims about the virus and its vaccines. Between her first and second Fox appearances alone, she tweeted that a new technology allowed the delivery of “vaccines w nanopatticles that let you travel back in time”; that the Moderna vaccine is a “software platform” that allows “uploads”; and that due to face masks, children now lack “the human reflex that they when you smile at them they smile back” and have “dark circles under [their] eyes from low oxygen.” 

On Sunday night, Wolf cited purported reports of women who “bleed oddly [from] being AROUND vaccinated women,” pointing her followers to a Facebook group which at one point had been titled “All Vaccines are Fake.”

Public Health Celebrity Lil'Fauci Says "Guns A Public Health Emergency"

aier |  For decades, Anthony Fauci was an unrecognizable government bureaucrat to anyone who lived outside of the D.C. Beltway. He would pop up out of obscurity and into the conversation every few years in the event of a niche issue involving infectious diseases. That all changed with the COVID-19 pandemic, which elevated the once-irrelevant mandarin to stardom. Today, he is a media mainstay. The celebrity doctor, who has become best known for his routine peddling of quackery related to the coronavirus, has developed a cult following thanks to his consistent political activism and regular appearances across a plethora of media platforms.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — where Fauci has held the top post for 38 years — now accommodates their celebrity doctor by maintaining a dedicated list of his media appearances. Scroll through the “Fauci In The News” tab on the NIAID website and you will find page after page of Dr. Fauci’s seemingly endless schedule of media hits. By my count, he has accumulated well over 300 media appearances over the past year alone. On Sunday, Fauci got a high dose of his television fix, racking up 4 separate TV appearances on ABC, CNN, CBS, and NBC.

The partial list, which was last updated on April 19, shows that Fauci has collected 309 media appearances over the past year alone. By comparison, in 2019, Fauci made about 1 media appearance per week. Additionally, the “Fauci In The News” list does not account for many of Fauci’s appearances on random celebrity YouTube channels, podcast hits, radio interviews, livestreamed conferences and the like, which easily send his average media hits over the past year to well over one appearance per day. 

When Anthony Fauci isn’t in front of a camera, he’s said to be on the front lines battling the pandemic as the nation’s “foremost infectious diseases expert,” a label that is somehow justified by his track record of being a government bureaucrat for half a century. However, other than working his way up the ranks of a government bureaucracy, and using crafty political maneuvers to build his personal status in Washington, D.C. and around the world, it’s unclear what exactly Fauci has accomplished to deserve this label.

With all of that time in front of a camera, it might make some wonder if the celebrity bureaucrat has time to actually follow the latest data and statistics on the pandemic. Given his routine blunders, his lack of transparency, and his advocacy for continued shutdowns (there are now over 50 published scientific studies that show lockdowns don’t work), it’s safe to say that the NIAID director is either ignorant and clueless and/or purposely advocating for measures that do not work to “stop the spread.” 

NYTimes Defends Lil'Fauci - America's Highest Paid Public Health Celebrity

Conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf on FOX News Primetime: "[Anthony Fauci] doesn't work for us... He got a million dollars from the state of Israel..." (h/t @kampeas) pic.twitter.com/Z6KECpc2tf

— John-Paul Pagano (@johnpaulpagano) April 20, 2021

NYTimes |   “Fauci” was a dirty word uttered from the stage of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida in February. “Fauci” is a dirty word prevalent in conservative publications. In Breitbart News several days ago, Fauci was dismissively referred to as America’s top “public health celebrity.” “Fauci Fallacies at All-Time High” was a recent headline in The Washington Free Beacon. In the span of one week this month, National Review published articles titled “Anthony Fauci Has Worn Out His Welcome,” “Anthony Fauci’s Misadventures in Fortune-Telling” and “Another Dismal Sunday-Show Circuit for Dr. Fauci.”

Just a few days ago in The Washington Post, Dan Diamond mentioned Fauci antipathy in the opening paragraph of a report about people who refuse to get vaccinations against the coronavirus. The message from one focus group of such people, he noted, was that “if you’re trying to win over skeptics, show us anyone besides Dr. Fauci.”

Philip Bump, one of Diamond’s colleagues at The Post, correctly observed that “Fauci has become what Trump always wanted him to be: the scapegoat for unpopular government recommendations.”

But it’s even bigger and weirder than that. “He doesn’t work for us,” the writer Naomi Wolf said on Fox News on Monday, referring to Fauci and reacting to a $1 million prize given to him by a philanthropy in Israel as a recognition of his, yes, public service. She cast the money as evidence that he was “so conflicted” and not sufficiently guided by concern for the “public health of the American people.”

 

 

Cyber Pandemic: Davos Reptilians Now Signaling Their Aims On Electronic Funds And Power Grids

weforum  |   The World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity has created a community of security and technology leaders to identify future global risks from next-generation technology in order to avert a cyber pandemic.

What policies, practices and partnerships are needed to prevent such a cyber pandemic? This question was raised in sessions on Thursday 28 and Friday 29 January at the Davos Agenda 2021, featuring commentary from Check Point Software Technologies, Cloudflare, Fortinet, INTERPOL, Cyber Security Agency of Singapore and AustCyber.

The Forum has created Future Series: Cybercrime 2025, a joint program of work with the University of Oxford - Oxford Martin School, enabling organizations to share and develop research, insights and responses to future risks as a community.

The initiative convenes over 150 global experts from the world’s leading companies, research institutions and public-policy departments. Major collaborators include Palo Alto Networks, Mastercard and KPMG, and support from such institutions as Europol, ENISA and NIST.

The first findings and recommendations of the community’s work were recently published in the Cybersecurity emerging technology and systemic risk report.

The critical technology transformations on which future prosperity relies – ubiquitous connectivity, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and next-generation approaches to identity and access management – will not just be incremental challenges for the security community.

Unless action is taken now, by 2025 next-generation technology, on which the world will increasingly rely, has the potential to overwhelm the defences of the global security community.

Next-generation technologies have the potential to generate new risks for the world, and at this stage, their full impact is not well understood. There is an urgent need for collective action, policy intervention and improved accountability for government and business.

Without these interventions, it will be difficult to maintain integrity and trust in the emerging technology on which future global growth depends.

A Very Strange Thing Happened On The Internet

kentik  |  Last month, astute contributors to the NANOG listserv highlighted the oddity of massive amounts of DoD address space being announced by what appeared to be a shell company. While a BGP hijack was ruled out, the exact purpose was still unclear. Until yesterday when the Department of Defense provided an explanation to reporters from the Washington Post about this unusual internet development. Their statement said:

Defense Digital Service (DDS) authorized a pilot effort advertising DoD Internet Protocol (IP) space using Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). This pilot will assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space. Additionally, this pilot may identify potential vulnerabilities. This is one of DoD’s many efforts focused on continually improving our cyber posture and defense in response to advanced persistent threats. We are partnering throughout DoD to ensure potential vulnerabilities are mitigated.

I interpret this to mean that the objectives of this effort are twofold. First, to announce this address space to scare off any would-be squatters, and secondly, to collect a massive amount of background internet traffic for threat intelligence.

On the first point, there is a vast world of fraudulent BGP routing out there. As I’ve documented over the years, various types of bad actors use unrouted address space to bypass blocklists in order to send spam and other types of malicious traffic.

On the second, there is a lot of background noise that can be scooped up when announcing large ranges of IPv4 address space. A recent example is Cloudflare’s announcement of 1.1.1.0/24 and 1.0.0.0/24 in 2018.

For decades, internet routing operated with a widespread assumption that ASes didn’t route these prefixes on the internet (perhaps because they were canonical examples from networking textbooks). According to their blog post soon after the launch, Cloudflare received “~10Gbps of unsolicited background traffic” on their interfaces.

And that was just for 512 IPv4 addresses! Of course, those addresses were very special, but it stands to reason that 175 million IPv4 addresses will attract orders of magnitude more traffic. More misconfigured devices and networks that mistakenly assumed that all of this DoD address space would never see the light of day.

Conclusion

While today’s statement from the DoD answers some questions, much remains a mystery. Why did the DoD not just announce this address space themselves instead of directing an outside entity to use the AS of a long dormant email marketing firm? Why did it come to life in the final moments of the previous administration?

We likely won’t get all of the answers anytime soon, but we can certainly hope that the DoD uses the threat intel gleaned from the large amounts of background traffic for the benefit of everyone. Maybe they could come to a NANOG conference and present about the troves of erroneous traffic being sent their way.

mRNA Jab Wreaking Hell On Women's More Complicated Immuno-Endocrine Systems

I think it is critical to note the huge number of nursing home workers that are young women under 40 – both nursing and support staff. I do not have exact numbers but just from experience over 3 decades – I would say that demographic is 50-75% of the employees in nursing homes and rehab centers.

An unvaccinated health care worker at a Kentucky nursing home set off a Covid-19 outbreak among many staff and residents who were already vaccinated, according to a new study. https://t.co/P4cpVzkIHR

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 21, 2021

The NYTimes tweet above places the blame of the outbreak of COVID among vaccinated patients and staff at the doorstep of a young unvaccinated female worker. Of course – it is all the fault of the young rube making a disastrous decision. No one ever talks about the actual reasons why she is making that decision.

I have heard all these stories of the menstrual problems after the vaccine for weeks. Because I am an internist, that topic does not come up very often. However, I had my first patient encounter this week with a custodial staff member in a local nursing home. She has had a Mirena IUD in place for the past 12 months. She had minimal but appropriate menstrual flow with the device until late February. She had her 2nd Pfizer shot in late Feb – and then 1 day later began to have profound and severe menstrual flow. Way way worse than ever in her life. She has Obamacare – so she has a $10000 deductible – so she avoids doctor visits like the plague. Her husband finally dragged her in, tired of paying for literally boxes of pads every 2-3 days. She had bled her hemoglobin down to 6. My initial impression was the IUD had become somehow dislodged and damaged her. NOPE – No evidence of that found on exam by OBGYN. Perfect working order. No infections. No nothing – just a very profoundly hypertrophied endometrium. She is going to be fine and getting taken care of. Interestingly, I have NEVER not once seen this kind of thing with an IUD. I have no explanation why this or any other menstrual issues are happening with these vaccines.

BUT she has shared this finding with all the other women at work – and informed me yesterday a not so small number of them had very strange menstrual issues after their shot. Including a 60 something who had her first period in 20 years starting 2 days after her Pfizer 2nd dose.

I would make this point – there were enough women in the vaccine trials – to have noted this problem during the trials. And yet nothing was said. Was it noticed? Was it documented? I have learned from my OB GYN colleagues this week that indeed they have been seeing this issue – not in huge numbers – but definitely a phenomenon.

So you have young women with a problem like this going on at enough frequency that the rumor mill is engaged in a big way. Many know personally women who have stories.

And as usual – crickets chirping – from our federal officials. And they wonder why there is no trust.

You see – as a PCP – I deal with human nature – the human condition. One of the fundamental issues of young people is having children – especially women. You start having this issue occur and no one in authority is even making an attempt to address it – and what do you think is going to happen?

The older I get – the more I am beginning to believe that these elites are really not humans – they may be lizards in disguise after all.

And even more importantly – these young women are critical in the vaccination effort because of their jobs – as documented in the tweet above.

And unfortunately – one has not far to look to see how far the medical elites have their heads up their asses.

Dr. Gawande – I know you live in an ivory tower – and love to make proclamations from on high. Those of us who work with real patients and real people know that if you keep talking like that – the staffs of the nursing homes are just going to walk. Indeed, it has already started – talk to the HR folks in any of them across this country. You pay them so well – that they could just as easily be working at Burger King.

Keep it up – and we will have an even bigger problem than you can even possibly imagine.

My God – a little bit of trust and credibility goes along way. My profession has learned this over decades – and the medical elite in charge have just shat all over that decades of hard work in no time.