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« Daily Tech News 12 June 2023 | Main | Mid-Morning Art Thread »
June 12, 2023

The Morning Report — 6/12/23

leadustaker.jpg

Good morning kids. The more I look around at the state of the nation the more I feel the weight of the supreme irony that when the Iron Curtain fell, it evidently landed on top of us. Along with the curtain rods, lath and plaster and half of the damn wall itself. Perhaps more alarmingly is coming to the realization of an even greater irony, in that if we do not stop the trajectory we are on and throw this thing into reverse, the inheritors of the freest society in history are destined to become perhaps history's worst tyrants. The events of last Friday, on top of everything we have seen for at least the past three years is proof positive. But there are other things afoot that merely bolster my assertion that are flying under the radar and are equally alarming in their implications. And I don't mean the bullshit psy-op "Squirrel!" distraction of supposed UFO coverups either (NB: the article is from the NY Post so I've taken the liberty of just pasting it virtually in its entirety without a link. I'm sure the Murdochs won't mind).

If you own a business, the leftists in Congress are coming for you. The only thing standing in their way is the US Constitution. Whether you own a mom-and-pop diner, an auto-repair shop or shares in a multinational corporation, your property is at risk. The Constitution’s “takings clause” was designed to protect us from government grabbing our property without paying fairly for it. But last year, Democrats rammed through the Inflation Reduction Act, boasting it would enable Medicare to “negotiate” lower prices for medications for seniors.

“Negotiate” is a lie. Under the new law, the feds can strong-arm companies to sell their most popular medications at a price Uncle Sam dictates or be taxed out of existence in a matter of weeks.The pharmaceutical giant Merck sued last week, claiming the law violates its constitutional rights.  Amen. This lawsuit is a red flag for everyone in America who owns anything or hopes to. The law’s actual language is breathtakingly coercive, but let’s face it, most members of Congress don’t bother to read bills before voting on them.

It says any company that refuses to sell at the government’s price will be hit with a tax that starts at 186% of the drug’s revenues on Day 1 and is hiked daily until it reaches a ruinous 1,900% of revenues — not just from government sales but all sales. That would mean hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes per day. The company has no escape. The law Merck is challenging is far more dictatorial than price controls in socialist-leaning European countries, which allow drug companies to decline to sell at the government price. 

Merck explains it “will be legally compelled to sell its most valuable products for a fraction of their value, on pain of yet more draconian penalties. This is not ‘negotiation.’ It is tantamount to extortion.” The law also gags the company from disclosing what Medicare officials say about price “negotiations” behind closed doors. Worse, it requires the company to publicly call the price rammed down its throat “fair.”  Is this even America? Congress limits free speech and requires companies to state things they don’t believe. Merck’s lawsuit objects, “Our Constitution does not countenance compelled speech in service of state propaganda. Congress needs a refresher course on the Constitution. The Fifth Amendment bars the government from taking your property without just compensation. And the First Amendment prohibits the government from forcing you to say something against your will. These are the bases of Merck’s lawsuit.

The law being challenged is exactly what you’d find in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” a novel depicting socialist despotism. The government dictates the price for your product but calls it a “negotiation.”  If you refuse, your business is taxed to death overnight. You are gagged from disclosing what is happening and forced to declare the price “fair.” If Merck’s lawsuit fails, who are the next victims?

Automakers could be forced to sell cars for the federal fleet for $10,000 a piece instead of a fair price. What about bed sheets for the Army, airplane parts for the Air Force or restaurant meals for government employees? Merck’s lawsuit raises only constitutional issues, but Americans also need to know that price controls on pharmaceuticals could be dangerous to their health. In countries that cap prices, people have reduced access to new drugs. Patients in France get only half the new treatments US patients get, according to University of Chicago economist Tomas Philipson. Last week, the American Society of Clinical Oncology announced a treatment — osimertinib — that improves survival by 51% for lung-cancer patients who have had surgery and face a recurrence. As a survivor myself, I cut out the article and put it in my desk drawer, hoping I won’t need it but glad it’s a possibility. Many politicians think vilifying drug companies is good politics. They ignore the devastating impact of price controls on the pipeline for future cures.

This is a legitimate policy debate. But obeying the US Constitution is not optional. Congress members swear an oath to it. Merck’s lawsuit is headed to the Supreme Court.

To the junta, Takings Clause means they use their claws to take whatever the hell they want, and crush you like a bug if you object.

After 17 years of back-and-forth with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the Sandy Hook Water Association’s “public” water system went offline this year. Mounting costs due to DEP regulations and legal headaches led the members to vote to disband, with many forced to instead dig wells or build cisterns to have access to clean water.

The three-letter agency succeeded in snuffing out a lifetime of work for Wingert and the dozens of others who helped provide a small community with clean, natural drinking water for more than half a century.

The Sandy Hook Water Association was established in 1965 by residents in rural southern Pennsylvania, ten or so miles outside the small borough of Chambersburg. The inhabitants discovered a natural spring in the mountainous terrain perched above their community and took it upon themselves to construct a system of pipes and plumbing to carry the spring water down the mountain to their homes below.

The system was 100% natural — no electricity nor pumps, just elevation producing natural water pressure flowing down the mountain. “God put that water there, they have nothing to do with that, that’s not their water,” Wingert said while giving the Daily Caller a tour of the community, referring to the DEP. . .

. . . It wasn’t until 2006 that trouble began for the community. An anonymous tip was sent to the DEP alleging the unregulated spring water system could be a health hazard. To this day, the members of Sandy Hook don’t know for sure who sent in that tip — perhaps it was a genuinely concerned citizen, a vindictive neighbor who wasn’t allowed to join the water system or maybe someone else.

Regardless, that tip led the DEP to sink its claws in and never let go.

“When you’re dealing with DEP there, any way you do it, is their way. And you got to remember with DEP, common sense and what it costs are not in their equation,” Wingert said. “Anytime you take common sense out of an equation, you’re gonna have — you’re gonna have to add a multiplication table for what’s going to cost you. It’s just that simple. We’re talking simple crap here; we’re not talking anything high pitch.”

Meanwhile, in a not unrelated story, while wildfires have set huge tracts of Canadian wilderness on fire and sending smoke blanketing over much of the eastern seaboard, and as news of perhaps the proto-enviro-terrorist Ted "Unabomber" Kaczynski snuffed himself in prison, you have to wonder about the cause of the fires.

Google Earth satellite video is making the rounds on twitter. it shows the moment an arc of fires began in northern Quebec, the smoke rising. It looks like people calculated the prevailing winds so that the smoke would blow south. Then connected via sat phone, they lit them. It’s another psy-op from our gracious overlords. We aren’t afraid enough, despite every nasty limiting idiotic play they have visited upon us in the last four years. Monkey Pox failed, more plague warnings were greeted by a shrug. But this one, the world bursting into flame? Be very very afraid.

Justin Trudeau lost no time in announcing that the fires were from “climate change” and the carbon tax, which is impoverishing everyone not in government or on lush pensions, is just the beginning of the restrictions he must institute or we are all gonna die.

The stupidity and cruelty of this is almost unimaginable. But fires have worked over and over again to terrify people into quiescence. The rumours that they were deliberate were the stuff of fantasy until people started getting arrested. Alberta shows that almost 60 percent of fires in that province are human caused. And in Canada, as of today, we have arrested dozens. They will be released, their bails paid by a high-priced lawyer because most of them act as agents of the hyper-rich, paid through a cascade of environmental NGOs.  The richest people among us are burning the forests in order to force compliance. . .

. . . When I moved back to the country 20 years ago, the movement adopted me because I was writing for the Globe and Mail and Harper’s Magazine. I interviewed hundreds of local activists, the ones who, with the inspiration of RFK, Jr. had shut down the biggest industrial forest in the world in an action called “The War of the Woods.” They were mostly ordinary people, socialists and scientists of one stripe or another and deeply profoundly committed to saving the earth. The fact that they had eliminated the principal source of funding for health care and education -- forestry --  their own in fact, went right over their heads. It didn’t matter. "Climate Change" was an existential threat and those trees must stand to suck up “carbon,” or CO2, as it used to be known. . .

. . . Fires have been used in my region to dissuade development. If you are, for instance, trying to open a resort for the middle class, expect fires. If you are a forester with a section of land, and you are mouthy, expect a fire. Fire serves to shut people up. I am sporadically loud-mouthed in my town, because I know my dog, my house, my trees and my well make me vulnerable if I make too many enviros angry.

Five years ago, Fort McMurray, the home of the oil sands, a titanic achievement, the cleanest oil extraction infrastructure on the planet, burned to the ground in a fire called The Beast. There were reports of fires being set in an arc around the town. Investigations are on-going. During the last election in Alberta, fire patterns were shown to peak at election time, in order to scare people into believing that oil extraction, the engine of their economy, must be shut down.

Further south, the chronicle of eco-terrorism is thick with crime but few suffer prison. Usually it’s slap on the wrist, a "Go with God, noble soul" kind of thing. So, if you’re not caught, why not go big?

Even if no one took a match to all that kindling, the banning of controlled burning by the Canadian government – and it's still banned in California and other parts of the American west IIRC – accomplished the same end, just via different means.

When Molly Ball wrote that frightening report in Time magazine, basically chronicling how elements of government, media and parts of the private sector banded together to actively sabotage the 2020 election and steal it, the self-righteous, elitist attitude of preserving their position as overlords over us peons who dared defy them and vote for a man who sought to strip them of their power and return it to the people, we now see a very similar attitude and acceleration of their masterplan, vis a vis this whole "climate change" hoax as more and more of us around the world recognize it as a "smoke screen," pun definitely intended, to basically enslave much if not all of the 7+ billion inhabitants.

Rising recognition and acceptance of these limitations, along with the success by Western governments in enforcing authoritarian edicts on their populations during the COVID-19 pandemic, is now leading to a rapid evolution in the overarching narrative and talking points related to the energy transition. The former energy transition narrative of “we will scale up renewables and EVs and you won’t even notice the difference in your daily lives” has been transformed to “we will scale everything down and you will just have to live with it” with stunning speed during 2023.

A report titled “The Urban Mobility Scorecard Tool: Benchmarking the Transition to Sustainable Urban Mobility” issued by the World Economic Forum in May is another great example. Based largely upon a 2017 UC Davis report titled “3 Revolutions in Urban Transportation,” the WEF report advocates for authoritarian governments to force the reduction of the numbers of vehicles on the road from the current global estimate of 1.45 billion to just 500 million. The UC Davis report went largely unnoticed in 2017 because the climate alarmist lobby had not been sufficiently emboldened at that time to publicly discuss its real goals. But that mask is now coming off. . .

. . . The real world simply does not conform itself to fantasies like this plan, and everyone at the WEF is fully aware of that reality. Thus, what this plan really amounts to is a scheme to enable the speeding-up of implementation of socialist/authoritarian governments in the West to enforce the new restrictions on the lives of common citizens, an effort that began to accelerate during the COVID pandemic. Authoritarian governments always endeavor to restrict the free flow of information outside of approved propaganda, and restricting mobility is a key means of achieving that goal.

Funny how everyone is in a tizzy about New Yorkers suffering because of "climate change" smoke over the city while when the ideologically-driven incompetence of rodentine assholes like Mayor Peter-Puffer Buttocks and diversity hire EPA honcho Michael Regan made a derailment of chemical tank cars in East Palestine, OH an ecological disaster area by intentionally setting the spilled contents on fire, their propagandists declared, meh, "it's hardcore Trump country." Translation, FOAD.

But first you will hand over your freedom and your money.


NOTE: The opinions expressed in the links may or may not reflect my own. I include them because of their relevance to the discussion of a particular issue.

ALSO: The Morning Report is cross-posted at CutJibNewsletter.com if you want to continue the conversation all day.

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