Author: Redactor

Categories
Accountability too much government

[Not] Just Plain Bats

Covid, bat, gain of function, China, lab

It’s been several months since I’ve focused on Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance (EHA), which was funded by your tax dollars to “improve” upon viruses found in nature. 

The evidence for this has been out there for some time, but many avoid drawing any conclusion, finding it circumstantial. Or something.

Remember Daszak being caught organizing the open letter in The Lancet, proclaiming all talk of gain-of-function research as “conspiracy” theorizing and “dangerous”?

Well, now The Lancet is reported to be preparing to publish an article going so far as to say that “there is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, and a laboratory-related accident is plausible.”

Meanwhile, my co-podcaster, on his LocoFoco Netcast, quotes Daszak’s own public boastings (from YouTube), effectively laying out EcoHealth Alliance’s gain-of-function research, talking of insertions of the spiked protein, and referencing to his colleagues in China.

And now another revelation, via science writer Matt Ridley. Specifically, Drastic Research reveals an earlier Daszak grant proposal to inject “deadly chimeric bat coronaviruses collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology into humanised and ‘batified’ mice.”

This proposal — “named ‘DEFUSE’” — was not accepted by . . . oh, and this gets good . . . DARPA.

“In other words, a branch of the federal government had already judged aspects of EHA’s research . . . as falling under the definition of GOF [gain of function], only for [Health and Human Services] to approve similar work without P3CO review in 2018 and 2019,” the Drastic Research report summarizes.

So it was too iffy for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but hunky dory with our medical bureaucrats?

The story is more than just about bats, it’s about laboratory manipulation of existing viruses to create new viruses.

Which is, well, batty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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bat/Covid

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Thought

Ludwig von Mises

This is one of the two fundamental weaknesses of all parties aiming at privileges on behalf of special interests. On the one hand, they are obliged to rely on only a small group, because privileges cease to be privileges when they are granted to the majority; but, on the other hand, it is only in their guise as the champions and representatives of the majority that they have any prospect of realizing their demands.

Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism, first published in German as Liberalismus, 1927, and in English as The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth, 1962.

Categories
Thought

Ludwig von Mises

If one rejects laissez faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.

Ludwig von Mises, Planning for Freedom (1952), p. 44

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by Paul Jacob video

Watch: How do you know when democracy is breaking out?

Gavin Newsom, California, fires

Paul Jacob offers a good rule of thumb to answer this question.

Case in point? The California recall:

Categories
Thought

Richard Cobden

If you attempt by legislation to give any direction to trade or industry, it is a thousand to one that you are doing wrong; and if you happen to be right, it is work of supererogation, for the parties for whom you legislate would go right without you, and better than with you.

Richard Cobden, Speech in the House of Commons (February 27, 1846).

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audio podcast

Listen: Real Democracy Is Breaking Out!

Gavin Newsom may suck, and he may have improved his hold on power. But still, argues Paul Jacob, the recall process does not suck.

It is even worth the money:

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Thought

James M. Buchanan

Some physicist might believe that ultimately, we will be able to explain everything. To me, that is utterly stupid, just like saying that an atheist is equally dogmatic as a Texas Baptist. It seems to me that, if you accept evolution, you can still not expect your dog to get up and start talking German. And that’s because your dog is not genetically programmed to do that. We are human animals, and we are equally bound. There are whole realms of discourse out there that we cannot reach, by definition. There are always going to be limits beyond which we cannot go. Knowing that they are there, you can always hope to move a little closer — but that’s all.

James M. Buchanan, in Karen Ilse Horn (ed.) Roads to Wisdom, Conversations With Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics (2009).
Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall judiciary

The 6 Percent Solution

Idaho, initiative

The Idaho Supreme Court has stated the obvious.

The question was whether legislation passed by the Republican-dominated Idaho state legislature making it prohibitively difficult to run a successful initiative campaign is consistent with the state constitution.

In August, the court ruled that requiring petitioners to obtain signatures from at least 6 percent of voters in every single legislative district of the state — 35 districts — would usher in “tyranny of the minority.”

It said that the new law “conflicts with the democratic ideals that form the bedrock of the constitutional republic created by the Idaho Constitution, and seriously undermines the people’s initiative and referendum powers enshrined therein.”

As the Idaho Statesman observes, the law would have enabled voters of a single district to prevent a question from reaching the ballot.

The Statesman also smashed the silly argument that the current initiative process somehow burdens specifically rural voters in any quest to post a question.

Under current law, petitioners must obtain signatures from 6 percent of all registered voters in the state and also reach that threshold in at least 18 districts, not all 35 districts. The all-35 mandate would have made the job of running a petition drive massively harder no matter what regions petitioners happen to reside in.

Foes of citizen initiative rights also tend to ignore the fact that getting a question on the ballot hardly constitutes its enactment. Every voter, from whatever part of the state, can then decide Yes or No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

Party Like It’s Versailles

Met Gala, equality, hypocrisy

It was quite the party. All the big names were at the Met Gala, coughing up $30 thousand per ticket. Representative Alexandria “Woman of the People” Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) turned heads with her stunning dress . . . emblazoned with the big red words: “Tax the Rich.”

Other women at the event sported similar ideological markers: “Equal Rights for Women” and . . . excuse me . . . “Peg the Patriarchy.”

The most common comment? The sheer elitist effrontery. 

This was of and for the poshest of the posh: celebrity culture. And couture. 

The stars and politicians and multi-millionaires presented themselves proudly, smiling, unmasked — while waited on by staff all masked up.

It takes a certain amount of gall to parade before the plebes, maskless while they are masked — though we are told the celebs masked up once the red carpet parade was over. To pretend to be “with the people” and somehow against the rich while hobnobbing with the super-wealthy is one thing, but twirling and smiling and showing off while the lowly servants are not even allowed to show their faces . . . undermines that whole “tax the rich” theme.

Meanwhile, the president expressed pent-up anger at those who resist being vaccinated (“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin”) and the vice president tweeted that one way to “end the pandemic” is by “protecting the vaccinated.”

The vaccinated are allegedly protected — by their vaccines.

All this echoes Marie Antoinette — had she ever possessed the temerity to parade about as Jean-Paul Marat.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Richard Dolan

Do not ever doubt the ambition of crazed futurists who truly believe in remaking human civilization and the human race itself to conform to their own Frankenstein-like vision of perfection….

Richard Dolan, “We are in a Global Revolution,” The Richard Dolan Show (September 14, 2021).