By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone dot org.

[The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Tucker's book, Spirits of America: On the Semiquincentennial.]

"I'm not straightening ties for $4.50 an hour."

Those immortal words are still with me. They were uttered to me in private when I worked at a men's store when I was 17. It was from a coworker. The boss had just walked by and suggested that so long as there were no customers in the store, we should get busy making the products more wonderful.

My co-worker balked at the idea. It got me thinking. The store was not paying him to stand around. They were paying him to put value in order to get value out. They also have to pay the bills otherwise, which means that arguably an employee needs to add far MORE value into the company than he takes out.

The employment contract doesn't work like a vending machine. You don't stick money in and get a snack out. Employers invest in their employees, paying them far more than they are worth in the training period in hopes of subsidizing the losses on the other side. This is why anyone on the clock should be thrilled for the opportunity to work harder, become more valuable, and give back to his benefactors.

My friend did not get this. Sure enough, he was fired a few weeks later. As it should be. That kid wanted a "work/life balance." He got it but without the remunerative work. By the way, I despise that half-century-old phrase. It implies that work is not part of life, and that a good life consists mainly of sloth. What an awful ethic!

The second chapter of Eric Sloane's wonderful The Spirits of '76, as published in 1973, covers the topic of work beautifully. He says that hard work is a great American virtue that has seen much better days.

His chapter is mostly about finding love in one's work, doing it not for the money (which is a sign, a symbol, a necessity) but because you adore making value with your hands and your mind. You will never really end up doing anything truly wonderful based on a financial incentive alone. Nor does competition - beating the other guy - suffice. Great achievements are born from within, a result of a dream, a dedication, a true love of making your life worth something.

I adore this chapter because all of this is completely forgotten. It's much worse today than it was in the 1970s. For two and a half decades, the Fed has mostly been running a system of zero interest rates, which has ballooned up the corporate and financial sectors to appalling levels. For decades now, hiring has not really been about value in and value out, but the purchase of warm bodies with credentials.

Several generations now have been raised without remunerative labor in their teens, so they graduate from colleges with one, two, or three degrees without having the slightest knowledge of or experience with actual work.

During all their prime years, from 16 to 25, they have learned all the wrong habits: sleep late, stay out late, do the minimum to get by, party like crazy, always put sloth above focus, friends above obligation, and comfort above anything that would result in stress, toil, or pain.

You can't build productive economies this way. You can't build happy lives this way. Even worse, you end up with a caste system: the well-to-do who live on the Internet versus everyone else.

With that has come a routine judgment of others based on their job and status: the less you have to work and the higher your pay, the greater the status. The more you have to work for every dime, the lower your status. Some people will simply not do a "low" job because they imagine themselves better.

This is not the attitude of a free society; it is the bias of a caste system. It breeds not community but disdain.

Something has to change. It likely will. It already is. Firings in general are on the rise in every sector. People assume that is a terrible thing. Actually, it could be the best thing that ever happened to people.

Here's a story of a young woman I hired on...

By Bill Rice at Brownstone dot org.

Every significant decision comes down to a cost-benefit analysis. For almost 6 years, politicians concluded the risk of questioning the "vaccines" was greater than any benefit from going against Big Pharma and the Deep State. But this risk-benefit calculation could change faster than most might think.

As I write, the Internet is abuzz because President Trump just made one of the most eye-opening posts he's ever sent out to the world on Truth Social, a post that suggests he might have been duped by Big Pharma when he authorized Operation Warp Speed.

This story motivated me to develop a point that's increasingly been in my thoughts and made me wonder if the cost-benefit analysis for our all-important politicians might have now changed significantly.

The question I've recently been asking myself is, why do good people blindly believe what should be viewed as obvious (or at least possible) - Mega Lies?

More specifically, why would so many people believe all the Covid lies and, more importantly, comply with the mandates and dictates of "leaders" who might be speaking with a forked tongue?

The Cost-Benefit Analysis of "We the People"

THE answer is not difficult to discern. People do this because they simply think complying will benefit them.

With Covid, the simplest cost-benefit analysis the masses made was that they (or their children, or grandmothers) could die if they didn't do everything the public health and government experts told them they had to do.

The calculation that resonated in the minds of billions of global citizens: It will benefit me (and our nation) if I stay home from work, wear a mask, socially distance, and then get two (to eight) annual vaccines and boosters.

According to the early Covid narrative, about 3 percent of people who contracted this "novel" virus were going to die. Even as the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) was later reduced, the new percentage was still said to be 1 percent, meaning 1-in-100 people who contracted this virus might die. Covid, we were all assured, was at least 10 times more deadly than the regular flu.

These probabilities - which came from the experts (who should know) - were terrifying enough to produce mass compliance.

Thus, the proverbial Man and Woman on the Street said to themselves: I'll benefit, and so will my family and hometown, because if I take these steps, this mortality probability might be reduced to 1-in-100,000 or, once I get my all-important shots, even zero percent.

Significantly, very few people questioned the validity of these horrifying probabilities (as these "life-saving" interventions were issued by the experts and everyone who mattered was saying the exact same thing.)

But What if the Experts' Death Probabilities Were Wrong all Along?

First (and strangely), it's obvious that this possibility never entered the minds of 85 percent of the population.

While America may have been dubbed the "land of the free," the greatest nation in the history of the world was not necessarily a nation where many people felt confident enough (or free enough) to "challenge the experts" or their designated political "leaders."

Which brings me to the overriding point of today's dispatch.

Long ago, the masses reached the conclusion that, true or not, they would personally benefit if they went along with the majority or consensus view on any topic - especially a subject dealing with "life and death."

That is, even if all the experts were dead wrong, everyday citizens would derive a variety of benefits if they simply went along with their august leaders, even if they were spectacularly wrong.

Or, perhaps more specifically, most people concluded, I'll experience far fewer negative consequences if I simply go along with the herd.

Beginning in March 2020, the overwhelming percentage of global citizens made just one "risk-benefit" calculation. Whether they realize it or not, the question almost all citizens asked themselves was: what course of action is ...

By Maryanne Demasi at Brownstone dot org.

Last Thursday, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr entered, the Senate Finance Committee hearing knowing what to expect. Democrats had declared war before he'd even sat down.

On the eve of his testimony, they issued a "report card" cataloguing every alleged misstep during his 203 days as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

From his shake-up at the CDC to the fact that he once wore jeans on a hike in the blazing Arizona sun - supposedly defying CDC advice to "wear loose, lightweight clothing" in extreme heat - nothing was too trivial to mention.

And, if that wasn't enough, more than a thousand current and former HHS employees had signed a petition demanding his resignation.

For just under three hours, Senators from both parties shouted, interrupted, hurled insults and staged "gotcha" moments…it was an ambush.

The Opening Trap

Operation Warp Speed dominated the early exchanges. Senators pressed Kennedy on whether Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for pushing vaccines out at record speed.

"Absolutely," Kennedy said. "It was an unprecedented achievement."

Then, hoping to catch Kennedy in a contradiction, they challenged him on whether the vaccines saved "millions of lives."

Kennedy refused to put a number on it. "I don't think anybody knows that because of the data," he said, pointing out that the figures were based on modelling, not clinical trials.

The panel accused him of being evasive.

Demands without Data

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) came out swinging, alleging Kennedy had broken his promise not to "take vaccines away from anyone" by narrowing Covid booster recommendations to high-risk groups.

Kennedy held firm. "It's not recommended for healthy people."

"You are effectively denying people vaccines," Warren snapped.

"I'm not taking them away from anybody," Kennedy shot back. "You want me to indicate a product for which there is no clinical data? Is that what you want?"

Warren lost her composure. "You clearly are taking away vaccines. You're putting America's babies' health at risk, America's seniors' health at risk, all Americans' health at risk, and you should resign."

The exchange exposed the mindset in the room…Senators spoke of vaccines with a kind of zealotry and religiosity that was deeply unnerving.

They were openly demanding that people be injected with a product lacking safety data, and calling it "science."

Further, framing it as a matter of "denying access" to Covid vaccines was not only misleading but conniving. The vaccines remain available off-label to anyone who wants them.

Kennedy refused to yield. Recommending products without evidence, he said, is politics, not science.

Across Europe and Australia, governments have already pulled back, limiting use of the shots in under-18s without controversy. In the US, unfortunately, alarmism continues to drown out reason.

The Insults Fly

As tempers escalated, so did the insults. Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO) flatly accused Kennedy of spreading "lies."

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) sneered, calling him a "charlatan" after cancelling $500 million in mRNA contracts.

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) branded Kennedy "a hazard to the health of the American people," demanding his resignation.

And Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) warned that Kennedy was "dead set on making it harder for children to get vaccines and that kids are going to die because of it."

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) thundered that professional associations like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, all agreed that vaccines were "safe and effective." How dare Kennedy doubt them.

Kennedy shot back, "There's a big difference, Senator, between established science and the scientific establishment, which has been co-opted by the pharmaceutical industry."

He reminded Sanders that his advisers included Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, Jay Bhattacharya and Dr Oz - scientists willing to challenge orthodoxy.

But Sanders scoffed at his "few advisers," in...

By Jennifer Smith at Brownstone dot org.

I respectfully disagree with the Save HHS letter calling for Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s resignation. While concerns have been raised about recent developments at the Department of Health and Human Services, these must be balanced against the urgent need for bold reform and restoration of public trust in health institutions.

For decades, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has stood at the intersection of health and environment. His legal victories against some of the country's most powerful polluters have directly protected communities from toxic exposures that cause cancer, respiratory disease, and other chronic conditions. He understands, perhaps better than anyone, that true public health begins with clean air, clean water, safe food, and an environment that sustains human life.

He has demonstrated not just passion, but results. His track record shows that he is willing to stand up to industries and government agencies alike when they put profits over people.

Kennedy pledged to restore integrity and transparency to the government. He speaks openly about the "corporate capture" of federal agencies, and he has concrete plans to ensure that institutions like the EPA, USDA, and FDA serve the people - not lobbyists or special interests. At a moment when trust in government is at historic lows, this kind of honesty and reform-minded leadership is exactly what America needs.

Dismissals and appointments, though disruptive, are often necessary to ensure alignment with a coherent vision. Secretary Kennedy aims to refocus CDC priorities - specifically on infectious disease - and reconfigure vaccine advisory bodies. These actions, while unsettling to some, are part of a broader modernization strategy.

Reforms Are Necessary and Long Overdue

Kennedy has shown a willingness to shake up a CDC long plagued by bureaucratic inertia and declining credibility. His swift action - even if controversial - signals a break from the status quo and a clear refusal to let entrenched interests dictate health policy. As his team noted:

"From his first day in office, he pledged to check his assumptions at the door…that commitment to evidence-based science is why…he and the HHS team have accomplished more than any health secretary in history in the fight to end the chronic disease epidemic."

RFK Jr. launched the MAHA agenda to shift HHS from a disease-management system to one focused on prevention, wellness, and lifestyle. It centers on addressing chronic illness through better diet, environmental awareness, and reducing pharmaceutical dependence.

Leadership Means Making Tough Decisions

Dismissals and appointments, though disruptive, are often necessary to ensure alignment with a coherent vision. Secretary Kennedy aims to refocus CDC priorities - specifically on infectious disease - and reconfigure vaccine advisory bodies. These actions, while unsettling to some, are part of a broader modernization strategy.

The CDC under RFK Jr. is being redirected to prioritize infectious disease response, with chronic disease responsibilities shifting to the AHA.

RFK Jr. has driven sweeping restructuring, cutting around 10,000 to 20,000 jobs, and merging overlapping offices across HHS. He claims this will save billions and reduce inefficiencies.

Rebuilding Trust through Transparency

Kennedy's critics argue his rhetoric contributes to public distrust; Kennedy counters that real trust must be restored through structural clarity and openness, not by perpetuating traditional mistrust. His reforms and appointments reflect a commitment to resetting public health messaging, even if it means challenging conventional wisdom.

His platform includes rigorous advocacy for vaccine safety and efficacy based on scientific evidence. He highlights the need for independent research funding at agencies like the CDC and promotes informed consent by ensuring patients have accurate information regarding vaccination choices and their risks/benefits.

Mispl...

By Peter C. Gøtzsche at Brownstone dot org.

I am a specialist in internal medicine and have a keen interest in statistics and research methodology. My general approach to science has led to publications in many different areas because people came to me when they suspected something fishy in their specialty.

In 2007, midwife Margrethe Nielsen from the Danish Consumer Council wanted to find out if history was repeating itself. I offered her a PhD student scholarship and we found out that the withdrawal symptoms are very similar for depression drugs and benzodiazepines, but they were described as dependence only for the latter.

This started my interest in psychiatry and I quickly realised that a lot else was also misrepresented in this specialty. The lies psychiatrists convey to the public are so common and so harmful for their patients that I published my own textbook of psychiatry where I document what is wrong in the official textbooks used by medical students and psychiatrists in training.

Much of what is claimed in the textbooks is scientifically dishonest, and frequently cited research is often totally unreliable because the data were tortured till they confessed.

Psychiatry is the only specialty I know of that causes more harm than good; in fact, vastly more harm than good. This disaster can only survive because psychiatrists constantly lie to the public about what they can achieve with their drugs. Psychiatrists also routinely violate elementary human rights about informed consent and use forced treatment even though it is harmful.

The title of my most recent psychiatry book summarises the issues: "Is psychiatry a crime against humanity?" As you shall see, I am not exaggerating.

In January 2014, I published the article, "Psychiatry gone astray," in a major Danish newspaper, which also came out in English. I described ten myths in psychiatry that are harmful for the patients:

Myth 1: Your disease is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Myth 2: It's no problem to stop treatment with antidepressants.

Myth 3: Psychotropic drugs for mental illness are like insulin for diabetes.

Myth 4: Psychotropic drugs reduce the number of chronically ill patients.

Myth 5: Happy pills do not cause suicide in children and adolescents.

Myth 6: Happy pills have no side effects.

Myth 7: Happy pills are not addictive.

Myth 8: The prevalence of depression has increased a lot.

Myth 9: The main problem is not overtreatment, but undertreatment.

Myth 10: Antipsychotics prevent brain damage.

I explained why "Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market, as doctors are unable to handle them. It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good. Psychiatrists should therefore do everything they can to treat as little as possible, in as short a time as possible, or not at all, with psychotropic drugs."

I hit some sore toes. There was an outcry, spearheaded by the drug industry and their paid allies among doctors and the media, but also the biggest debate in Denmark ever about psychiatric drugs. For more than a month, there wasn't a single day without discussion of these issues on radio, TV, in newspapers, and at psychiatric departments. But sadly, the harmful business continued as usual.

The Facts

Psychiatric drugs do not have any specific effects, directed against a specific disease. Psychiatric disorders are merely a constellation of symptoms and psychiatric drugs have mainly two effects: They either sedate and numb people, or they stimulate them.

Brain-active drugs have such effects, e.g., also alcohol, opioids, cannabis, other psychedelics, and cocaine, but we don't call such drugs antidepressants or antipsychotics. And the effect of antidepressants and antipsychotics is far below the minimally relevant effect, as established by the psychiatrists themselves in their research. It is therefore reasonable to say that they don't work.

The most important effects of psychiatric dru...

By Maryanne Demasi at Brownstone dot org.

Across the world, thousands of pregnant women are being prescribed antidepressants. Yet few are warned about the potential harms to their unborn babies.

That concern came to the forefront at a 2-hour expert panel convened last month by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), moderated by Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, the agency's senior adviser for clinical sciences.

A lineup of doctors, scientists, and former regulators gathered to examine a thorny question: do selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) cause more harm than good when used during pregnancy?

Their opinions were not unanimous, but all agreed on one striking fact - there are no "gold-standard" randomised trials that have addressed the issue.

Instead of sparking serious debate, the panel was savaged by the media. The ferocity of the reaction only highlighted how difficult it has become to speak honestly when the message challenges psychiatric drugs.

A Long Overdue Discussion

FDA Commissioner Dr Marty Makary opened the session with a stark warning. "We're losing the broader battle of addressing mental health in the United States," he said. "The more antidepressants we prescribe, the more depression there is."

He cautioned that serotonin plays a crucial role in foetal development and warned that SSRIs have been "implicated in postpartum haemorrhage, pulmonary hypertension, cognitive downstream effects in the baby, as well as cardiac birth defects."

Dr Anick Bérard, an epidemiologist at the University of Montreal, said "depression and anxiety in pregnancy is extremely prevalent" and warned the problem surged during Covid-19.

"Since the pandemic started, the prevalence of depression and anxiety in pregnancy more than doubled. It was close to 25 to 30% at the peak of the pandemic," she said.

"Six percent of pregnant women will take an SSRI at one point in time in their pregnancy," she added.

Bérard cautioned that "using SSRIs is not the miracle solution in the sense that 12% of women that are using SSRIs remain depressed in pregnancy."

Birth Defects

Maternal-foetal medicine specialist Dr Adam Urato was unequivocal. "Never before in human history have we chemically altered developing babies like this…and this is happening without any real public warning," he said.

Urato told the panel that patients are routinely misled.

"The only counselling they received is that SSRIs don't affect the baby or cause complications. This is simply not accurate or adequate," he said, adding that FDA labels fail to warn about harms such as preterm birth, pre-eclampsia, or the fact that SSRIs alter foetal brain development.

Published research has raised similar concerns.

A BMJ study found birth defects occurred 2 to 3.5 times more frequently in babies exposed to paroxetine or fluoxetine early in pregnancy. A JAMA Psychiatry study found venlafaxine was associated with the highest number of defects. And a 2018 meta-analysis covering more than nine million births found a modestly increased risk (11%) of congenital malformations linked to early SSRI use.

"SSRIs cross the placenta and enter the foetal brain," Urato explained. "These drugs alter the mom's brain. Why wouldn't they affect the babies?"

He pointed to ultrasound studies showing SSRI-exposed foetuses with "different movement and behaviour patterns," and noted that newborns can present with "jitteriness, breathing difficulties, and higher rates of admission to the neonatal intensive care unit."

By his count, "a dozen consecutive MRI studies" now demonstrate that prenatal SSRI exposure alters the developing brain.

Tapering Hardly Discussed with Pregnant Women

Dr Josef Witt-Doerring, a psychiatrist and former FDA official, said women often come to him unaware of the risks. "They've never heard of these things," he said. "And they feel incredibly betrayed."

He helps patients taper off psychiatric drugs, but warned, "There's a black hole of knowledge on how to taper these medications."

He suggest...

By Bill Rice at Brownstone dot org.

Author's note:

While I might be considered Substack's "early spread" author, for some inexplicable reason (until today) I've neglected to present powerful evidence that might further confirm that this "theory" should actually be considered as a "fact."

Four years ago, the San Jose Mercury News published a blockbuster exclusive story, documenting that six Americans apparently died from Covid in January 2020. All six deaths, recorded on death certificates, happened weeks before the first "official Covid death" in America and, some even before the first reported Covid death in Wuhan, China.

Furthermore, an official from the CDC's National Center for Health statistics considers these deaths to almost-certainly be caused by Covid.

Reading about "early" Covid deaths did not surprise me as I've long suspected that many people must have died from Covid in the winter of 2019-2020, pre-"official" Covid.

While I've long argued that Covid is not a "deadly" virus, I've never meant this literally. What I meant is that the huge number of deaths attributed to Covid must be vastly exaggerated. Just like with the flu, the vast majority of people who contract this virus will survive any illness it may cause.

However, I do know this respiratory virus can and no doubt has caused many deaths (even if these fatalities probably wouldn't produce a noticeable spike in "all-cause deaths.")

I'd remind readers that I began my "early spread" research by writing an in-depth feature story on Tim McCain of Sylacauga, Alabama.

Tim, 39 at the time, first exhibited definite Covid symptoms the day after Christmas 2019. By January 3rd, Tim's wife took him to the emergency room where he was then rushed in critical condition to a hospital in Birmingham.

Tim spent almost a month in the ICU and, per his wife, nearly died several times, including on January 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2020. While Tim was fortunate to survive, it's always occurred to me that other people suffering the same symptoms and clinical markers must not have survived.

Tim and his wife both later tested positive for Covid antibodies and the director of ICU nursing later told Brandie McCain her husband "definitely" had Covid. If Tim had died in the first few days of January 2020 and if public health agencies had done their jobs, a resident of a small, rural Alabama town could have been considered the first Covid fatality in the world.

However, I have no doubt many Americans passed away from severe cases of this virus much earlier than Tim. Since nobody had heard of Covid-19 in November, December 2019, and early January 2020 - and there was no testing at the time - these deaths were simply attributed to pneumonia, the flu or any number of other causes.

I've re-printed the Mercury News article and also added excerpts from several other articles on a story that did NOT produce the national buzz one might have expected. I added a few editorial comments to highlight how the significance of early spread has been almost completely ignored.

Boldfaced text was added by me for emphasis.

Mercury News Exclusive from August 2021 - Covid Deaths Began Much Earlier Than Americans Thought

By EMILY DERUY

Aug. 22, 2021 - In a significant twist that could reshape our understanding of the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, death records now indicate the first COVID-related deaths in California and across the country occurred in January 2020, weeks earlier than originally thought and before officials knew the virus was circulating here.

A half dozen death certificates from that month in six different states - California, Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Oklahoma and Wisconsin - have been quietly amended to list COVID-19 as a contributing factor, suggesting the virus's deadly path quickly reached far beyond coastal regions that were the country's early known hotspots.

Up until now, the Feb. 6, 2020, death of San Jose's Patricia Dowd had been considered the country's first coronavirus fatalit...

By Toby Rogers at Brownstone dot org.

Last week, the New York Times published a bizarre "Guest Essay" on autism by Jessica Steier, a Pharma mercenary who has at least ten financial conflicts of interest and no background in autism research. I submitted a reply to the article to correct her disinformation, and the New York Times refused to publish it.

Here are the facts for anyone who wants to read them:

Jessica Steier runs a science-for-hire company, "Unbiased Science." She uses a number of pass-through organizations to launder contributions from large pharmaceutical and chemical companies. However, one can still figure out a lot of her funders (see article on "Unbiased Science Podcast" in SourceWatch). Steier advises an infant formula company and is an affiliate for a company that makes monosodium glutamate (MSG).

Her podcast has taken money from 3M, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Moderna, and CSL Seqirus (a flu vaccine manufacturer).

Steier is cartoonishly evil. From SourceWatch:

Steier's Unbiased Science Podcast:

• Described the herbicide glyphosate as "safe for use"

• Declared polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) in Teflon to be "non-toxic to humans"

• Called the Environmental Working Group Dirty Dozen list of produce with the most and least pesticide residues "a fear-based marketing ploy"

• Claimed GMOs are "safe," "nutritious," and "beneficial to consumers, producers, and the environment" and

• Called hydrogenated oil "a safe dietary fat."

The Unbiased Science Podcast recorded two episodes on organic food and farming in December 2022 and January 2023 in which they argued that organic pesticides are more harmful than synthetic pesticides used in chemical farming…

Andrea C. Love [Steier's co-host] defended the artificial sweetener aspartame as "safe," said in an interview that she has "at least one diet soda a day," and the Podcast posted on Instagram that "aspartame does not pose a health risk to humans, cancer or otherwise, especially at levels we would consume."

Love and Steier were critical of the International Agency for Research on Cancer's ranking of the chemicals considered possibly carcinogenic to humans in 2023.

SourceWatch provides even more evidence of Steier's toxic sophistry here.

For those who are new to these topics, mountains of evidence from The Defender, Beyond Pesticides, and Moms Across America, among others, show why all of Steier's claims listed above are junk science.

Nearly everything Steier writes in her "Guest Essay" on autism is demonstrably false. For example, Steier:

Thinks mercury and aluminum in vaccines are fine even though they are known neurotoxicants (see Grandjean and Landrigan, 2014, Supplementary appendix).

Omits the fact that Mark, Anne, and David Geier sued the Maryland Board of Physicians and won (and then a higher court retroactively granted "absolute immunity" to this private board even though the Maryland legislature never gave it that right).

Has apparently not read any of the 55 autism prevalence studies in the US since 1970, so she is oblivious to the fact that autism rates have increased 32,158% over that time period.

Seems unaware that a Danish study she cited favorably recently issued a correction after they discovered, post-publication, 136% more neurodevelopmental events, including autism and ADHD, that changed their research findings.

Has never read, or just plain ignores, the six vaccinated vs. unvaccinated studies that show that vaccines significantly increase autism risk (see summaries in Rogers, 2025).

Science-for-hire companies will say or do anything for money. Steier's company, "Unbiased Science," is relatively new. However, it uses the same playbook developed by other notorious science-for-hire firms, including Gradient, Exponent, and Ramboll. They are often referred to as "rented white coats" (see discussion in Rogers, 2019). Anyone citing Steier as a "public health expert" has no idea what they are talking about.

The NY Times devoted consi...

By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone dot org.

[The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey Tucker's book, Spirits of America: On the Semiquincentennial.]

Did you ever hang out at the local dump and rummage through the stuff? I certainly did. My father took me there all the time. He loved digging through things and marveling at what people threw away. I swear he saw this trash as treasure. We never took any home, but he always explained his thinking at every step.

I never told my friends about this because I thought it was too weird. My father was actually a historian of the old school. He loved a good story with evidence to back it. He found millions of them in the city dump. That's why we went. It wasn't research as such; it was just a passion, a deep curiosity about what others found to be worthless enough to throw out.

He was looking for the opposite: evidence that people have no clue what is valuable and what is not. Too often people simply do not know, which is why so many thrift stores are packed with treasures. I could go from one thrift store to another all day, all weekend, every week. They thrill me to the same extent they disgust others.

America specializes in making trash and throwing things away. We see that as a symbol of how prosperous we are. Our ancestors did not think this way. They saw prosperity as linked with how much they could save and how little they spent unnecessarily.

Economics teaches that savings requires deferred consumption. That means thinking about the future more than the present. Savings is also the foundation of investment. Investment is the basis of prosperity. Add it all up and you get this: sacrificing the comforts of today is the key to a better tomorrow.

Hardly anyone would argue with the above. It is stated very plainly in ways that make it entirely logical and unobjectionable.

And yet let's add in one word: macroeconomics, especially as interpreted by John Maynard Keynes. He posited such a thing as the "paradox of thrift." This happens when people save too much and don't spend. Aggregate demand goes down and crushes producer hopes.

Business dries up, so we fall into depression, in Keynes's view, which requires the central bank to print money and Congress to spend even to the point of national indebtedness. That's the real key to prosperity, said Keynes: running up big debts and printing your way out. Also, government should take over investment.

I'm not going to explain the above further because it is wholly wrong. It is entirely based on fallacies punctuated by complicated language. That was Keynes's specialty. He somehow managed to bamboozle generations of academics and lawmakers into setting their common sense on the shelf.

A casualty of Keynesianism was the gradual deprecation of frugality in American culture. This is the theme of the third chapter of Eric Sloane's book. He too begins with reflections on thrift stores as symbols of frugality and its abandonment.

Quite often, he says, people will be in these stores and yell at the high prices.

"My father had one of those and threw it away. Why should this be so expensive?"

This misses the point entirely. It is precisely because his father threw that away that the surviving ones that are obtainable catch such a high price. Our ancestors worked much harder to keep what was valuable and threw away only what was useless or simply had to go. They tried never to acquire what they did not need.

Of course they did without, sometimes by necessity but also because they believed it was right.

My grandmother had a huge stack of quilts that I loved, but they were strange. They seemed all to be made of scraps of things. I asked her once. She said that her mother had sewn them from the tattered dresses worn by her 10 sisters. After hand-me-downs had run their course, they became blankets.

I kept one until it literally fell apart. I always treasured that blanket as embedding deep history but also a profound ethic of frugality.

Several generations h...

By Gigi Foster at Brownstone dot org.

The natural business model of an army is to fight enemies, so any large army will find enemies to justify its existence. Similarly, the natural business model of a government bureaucracy is to solve problems of the population it "serves," so a large bureaucracy should be expected to find or invent problems to justify its existence.

In similar manners will a religion find or invent threats to our spirit or soul for which it is the solution, and government-subsidised scientists find or invent threats to humanity for which they are the solution.

Promoting behaviours and mindsets that serve to justify and perpetuate the industry is simply inherent to the way each of these industries operates. Those within an industry who do not play along quickly find themselves poor and ignored.

What is the business model of the medical profession? How does it naturally make its money, and what will that mean for the behaviour and worldview promoted by its members? Does the answer vary depending on what kind of 'medic' we are talking about, whether it be a pharmaceutical manufacturer, clinician, surgeon, pathologist, faith healer, or Ayurvedic?

The Mindset of the "Medicine" Business

From Hippocrates onwards, the simplest type of 'medic' has been an individual-to-individual supplier of healing services. This person supposedly has been guided by an ethical obligation to 'do no harm.' Arguably, the most revealing saying of Hippocrates is not the famous Oath, but rather the following: "It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has."

This saying advises the healer to take a holistic view of an individual patient, which may sound good on the surface but is implicitly somewhat paternalistic. Hippocrates invites the medic to consider himself akin to a god or a Jesus-like figure, doing no harm and aspiring to high-level wisdom to sort out the deep problems of each individual patient he comes across.

In terms of mindset and marketing, medics have an economic incentive to see disease everywhere and to pretend to be able to fight it. An especially strong incentive exists to see chronic illness everywhere, since anything chronic enables a medic to find lifelong patients. Like any parasitical entity, the medic's business is optimised when the host is not killed quickly but can be drained over time.

The weakened host/patient is bled for as long as possible until the end is inevitable, at which point the bleeding ramps up to the maximum output level (essentially, what remains of the host is eaten). In biological terms, the most economically successful medic is a lifelong symbiont-parasite who becomes a detritivore at the end of a patient's life.

Those in the medical profession may do some good early in the life of their hosts and at moments of acute injury or major illness during adulthood, as these actions promote survival of the host, which enables future parasitism. Beyond this, medics have a natural incentive to tell people that they are ill and in need of constant checkups and treatments, and to turn the final year of a patient's life into a miserable enslavement to expensive 'healing.'

Turning Disease into Dollars

In the US, the medical industry now accounts for 18% of GDP, meaning almost one in five dollars generated ends up in the pocket of a medic of some sort. In fairness, the US is the global outlier: it delivers a similar life expectancy (about 78) as both China and Cuba deliver to their people at about 20 times the per-capita cost spent by China, and 10 times that spent by Cuba. In China, only one in 20 dollars of GDP is spent on "medics," broadly defined.

From these comparisons, we might deduce that only 1/10 of the health budget in the US buys actual health. So what is the other 90% spent on?

Consider the graph below, showing total medical costs by age category in the Netherlands, a country with many similar health-sector features as the US, an...