Day: December 18, 2021

Kentucky Congressman Massie: Comirnaty Not Available in United States

Peter D'Abrosca

A Kentucky congressman Saturday said that Pfizer’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved COVID-19 vaccine is not available in the United States after The Ohio Star spent a week reporting on that subject. 

“Your first sentence, ‘Comirnaty is available in the US,’ is false. Show us one location it’s available to prove otherwise. The FDA requires Pfizer to disclose to other countries BioNTech is ‘subject to an EUA and is not approved or licensed by the FDA,'” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY-04) said on Twitter. 

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Tennessee Nurse Practitioner Charged with Unlawfully Prescribing Opioids

Cooper Moran

A Tennessee nurse practitioner could face decades in prison after being arrested for illegally prescribing opioids at the Convenient Care Clinic in West Tennessee, which she owned and operated.

Kelly McCallum, a Dyersburg resident, allegedly dished out millions of opioid pills to patients of the clinic, even those with whom she shared a personal connection with.

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Tennessee Approves of New Vanderbilt Hospital in Rutherford County

Morgan Nicole Veysey

Vanderbilt Health announced Thursday that Rutherford county officials have approved plans for new hospital. The medical center will hold 42 beds, and be located at the intersection of Veterans Parkway and state route 840 in Murfreesboro.

“We are pleased with the outcome and want to thank members of the Health Services and Development Agency for the approval to build this new hospital. Our goal continues to be to serve the needs of the many citizens of Murfreesboro and Rutherford County who choose Vanderbilt for their care, and we can now do that with Vanderbilt Rutherford Hospital,” C. Wright Pinson, MBA, MD, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Health System Officer for Vanderbilt University Medical Center said in a statement.

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Nashville Metro Water Services Opens First ‘Net Zero Energy’ Building

Morgan Nicole Veysey

Councilman Freddie O’Connell tweeted this week that Nashville Metro Water Services had officially opened its first net-zero energy building. O’Connell said the location was in Salemtown, where the Metro Water Service is also planning a new multiuse path. 

“The electric meter literally runs backward on a sunny day!” O’Connell tweeted. He added the price of solar for residential properties had decreased 80 percent in the past decade. 

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Commentary: Democrats Promised an Insurrection but All They Got Was a Lousy Obstruction Case

Admin

History, it appears, is repeating itself—at least when it comes to the latest crusade to destroy Donald Trump and everyone around him.

For nearly three years, the American people were warned that Donald Trump had been in cahoots with the Kremlin to rig the 2016 presidential election. Trump-Russia election collusion, the original “stop the steal” campaign—that is, until questioning the outcome of American elections was designated a criminal conspiracy after November 2020—dominated the attention of the ruling class and the entirety of the national news media.

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Biden’s Air Force Opens Strategic Tanker Contract to Airbus Less Than a Year After $4B DOJ Sanction for Hiding China Ties

Neil W. McCabe

President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration opened up a significant chunk of a new Air Force tanker contract to the Leiden, Netherlands, based Airbus less than a year after the company paid a nearly $4 billion fine for corruption and despite its history of technology transfers to China.

“Airbus engaged in a multi-year and massive scheme to corruptly enhance its business interests by paying bribes in China and other countries and concealing those bribes,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in a statement released at the end of January.

“This coordinated resolution was possible thanks to the dedicated efforts of our foreign partners at the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom and the PNF in France,” Benczkowski said.

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Founder of Zuckerberg’s Election Group Took China-Funded Fellowship at Harvard Think Tank

Admin

The founder of the controversial, Mark Zuckerberg-backed election group Center for Tech and Civic Life was a fellow at a Harvard University think tank which receives funding from Chinese Communist Party-linked firms.

The CTCL was founded in 2012 by Tiana Epps-Johnson, a 2015-16 Technology and Democracy Fellow at Kennedy School of Government’s Ash Center, which is partly funded by several Chinese Communist Party-affiliated enterprises, according to the National Pulse.

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Proposed Math Textbook in Paradise Valley Schools Contains Graph Showing Conservatives Are Allegedly More Racist

Rachel Alexander

The Paradise Valley Unified School District is in the process of approving a new precalculus textbook for students, and one of the textbooks the school district is considering contains a survey showing that conservatives are allegedly more racist than liberals.The textbook, titled “Precalculus 6th Edition,” by Robert F. Blitzer, includes a graph labeled “Measuring Racial Prejudice, by Political Identification,” which claims that “very conservative” people score 39 when it comes to being racist, whereas “very liberal” people score only 26. There are several in between groups that generally progress to becoming less racist as they become more liberal.

Kerwin Franklin, a mother of five boys in the district, discovered the chart when she was told parents could come inspect the book in the school district’s lobby. She told the Arizona Sun Times, “Kids read these things and they think they’re fact, they don’t know that they’re planted there.” She said the author of the book and the people approving it have an agenda. “It’s racial justice, diversity, trying to let kids know we’re the most racist society around.” 

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Report: Democrats Strike Offshore Drilling Ban After Manchin Opposition

Admin

Democratic lawmakers reportedly eliminated a proposed measure to ban offshore oil and gas drilling along the U.S. coastline from their sweeping spending package after Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin announced his opposition.

The provision was absent from an early draft of the roughly $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act that was circulated on Capitol Hill by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee which Manchin chairs, congressional aides toldThe New York Times and The Washington Post. The restriction would have applied to all drilling rigs located in the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean as well as the Gulf of Mexico.

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War Room Pandemic: Steve Bannon Talks to The Star News Network CEO and Editor in Chief, Michael Patrick Leahy About OhioHealth’s Distribution of Not Fully Approved COVID-19 Vaccine

Julie Carr

  Stephen K. Bannon welcomed The Star News Network’s CEO and Editor in Chief Michael Patrick Leahy on Thursday’s War Room: Pandemic to discuss The Ohio Star’s breaking story by Peter D’Abrasco regarding the unapproved COVID-19 vaccines being distributed by OhioHealth. Bannon: Michael Patrick Leahy from The Ohio Star, you’ve got a blockbuster story. Tell us about what’s on The Ohio Star right now. Leahy: Good afternoon Steve. How’s our connection here this afternoon? Bannon: It’s perfect. Go ahead. Let her rip. Leahy: This is a story we broke. Peter D’Abrosca wrote the story. A large Ohio hospital system has confirmed they are still distributing the Pfizer COVID-9 vaccine that is not fully approved by the FDA. It’s surprising because the version approved by the FDA in August is a brand of a label called Comirnaty. That was approved in August. It’s slightly different. We don’t know how much different from the version that was used under the emergency use label. That’s called the Pfizer BioNTech COVID vaccine. They are apparently legally distinct products. Now, this is relevant to Ohio specifically because in July the Ohio State Legislature passed a law, HB-244 that was signed into law by Governor DeWine.…

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Biden White House Offers Bonuses for Doctors Who Mandate ‘Anti-Racism Plans’

Admin

The Biden Administration is planning to offer bonuses to any doctors who “create and implement an anti-racism plan” in their medical facilities, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The directive was issued under new rules from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which aim to update Medicare in order to “reflect changes in medical practice.” As of January 1st, doctors involved in Medicare can increase reimbursement rates by holding “clinic-wide reviews” of their facilities’ “commitment to anti-racism.” HHS notes that, in such surveys, race must be defined as “a political and social construct, not a physiological one.”

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Appeals Court Reinstates Biden Vaccine Mandate for Businesses

Admin

A federal appeals court on Friday night reinstated President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private companies with more than 100 workers, reversing lower court rulings and setting up a likely showdown before the U.S. Supreme Court.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration had the authority to Impose the mandate due to take effect Jan. 4.

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Fentanyl Overdoses Leading Cause of Deaths in America in 2020

Admin

The government has reported that, since the year 2020, fentanyl overdoses have become the new leading cause of death for American adults between the ages of 18 and 45, as reported by Fox News.

The analysis from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) shows that nearly 79,000 Americans died from the drug between 2020 and 2021. Of those, just over 37,000 died in 2020 while almost 42,000 died in 2021. Fentanyl is an opioid that is sometimes laced with other drugs such as meth and heroin when used by addicts, but can also be deadly on its own in even small doses. The primary foreign sources for imports of the drug are China and Mexico.

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Commentary: Robbing America of Her Core Values

Admin

Portland anarchists crowned a season of monument destruction in October 2020 when they pulled down the city’s Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln statues and attacked the nearby Oregon Historical Society—despite its having been so woke and feminist for years it could be called the Oregon Hysterical Society. This occurred on what Antifa organizers billed as an “Indigenous Day of Rage” (something that was about as genuinely “indigenous” as the Boston Tea Party) and coincided with Portland’s official (anti-) holiday refuting Columbus Day—Indigenous People’s Day—which promises to grow more strident and violent, if no more indigenous, annually.

Last October, the nation and the city weren’t as far gone as they are now. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler felt compelled to stand with the police chief and denounce the rioters’ actions. But in doing so, he followed the same pattern he and the city used to acquiesce to anarchist and Black Lives Matter political terror over the summer of 2020: denouncing the violence, affirming the anarchists’ right to speech, even sympathizing with the goals of anti-police rioters, and conspicuously not defending their targets—then it was the police, in this instance, it was our history.

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Gun Manufacturers Sue New York over Law Allowing Gun Stores to Be Held Liable for Armed Crimes

Admin

On Thursday, a lawsuit was filed against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D-N.Y.) over the state’s “public nuisance law,” which allows private citizens to sue gun stores and gun manufacturers if their weapons are used in an unrelated crime, CNN reports.

The law, signed into law in July, is the first of its kind in the nation, making gun stores and manufacturers liable in any civil suits that may result from firearms being used to commit crimes, even if the distributors had no role in the crime itself. It was deliberately signed as an attempt to circumvent the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a federal law which specifically granted immunity to arms manufacturers and distributors in such cases.

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Commentary: The Russia-Ukraine Crisis, the History Our Media Got Wrong

Admin

Russia’s looming invasion of Ukraine presents a clear and present danger to the safety of the European Union and a direct challenge to the NATO alliance, but only now are our major media waking up to this dire threat to Western security. We must now confront urgent questions: Did the United States strengthen Russia, did it weaken Ukraine, and did it do so under the nose of these media?

First, a quick run-through of American actions that strengthened Russia. In his 2009 inaugural address, Barack Obama promised to approach adversaries with an open hand, not a closed fist. For this, he won a Nobel Peace Prize, an oxymoronic name, equivalent to the Affordable Care Act.

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Majority in Pennsylvania House Disapprove of Gov. Wolf’s Efforts to Enroll in Climate Initiative

The Center Square

The Pennsylvania General Assembly has sent a disapproval resolution to Gov. Tom Wolf, rejecting his efforts to enroll the state in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, but vote totals show there aren’t enough opposing lawmakers to override a veto.

The House approved Senate Concurrent Regulatory Review Resolution 1, 130-70, on Wednesday. The vote total is just short of two-thirds of the chamber’s 203 members necessary to override a veto.

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Virginia General Assembly Systems Restored, Undergoing Testing Following Ransomware Attack

Eric Burk

Virginia’s General Assembly staff is starting to restore systems after a ransomware attack hit internal servers, bill drafting systems, and the General Assembly voicemail servers.

“We got an email about an hour or so I guess, saying that they had gotten it back up last night, and they’re now in the process of testing to make sure that everything is functioning, and they hope to finish that sometime tonight,” Senator Frank Ruff (R-Clarksville) said on Friday afternoon.

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Michigan Legislature Passes Bill Banning Closed-Door Redistricting Meetings

The Center Square

In a marathon overnight session this week, the Michigan House voted 100-2 on a bill aiming to ban the Independent Citizen’s Redistricting Committee (MICRC) from meeting in a closed session for any purpose.

On Dec. 2, the Senate unanimously approved Senate Bill 728. The bill moves to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk, whose office hasn’t responded to a request for comment about the legislation. 

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Norquist: Perdue’s Promise to End Georgia’s Income Tax Part of Trend in Red States

Neil W. McCabe

  WASHINGTON, D.C.-The founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) praised David A Perdue Jr.‘s pledge to eliminate the state’s income tax in an exclusive interview with The Georgia Star. “His coming out and saying: ‘Let’s phase down to zero,’ is helpful because we’re seeing this in other states,” said Grover Norquist, who started ATR in 1985 at the personal request of President Ronald W. Reagan. “Where either the preferred candidate or the incumbent candidate says: ‘I’m going to take this out,’ or somebody else does,” he said. “In fact, I did not know Perdue was introducing himself with that issue, but that is a huge advantage because he’s not relitigating 2020,” said the Massachusetts native. “He’s looking forward–phasing out the income tax is a forward-looking thing.” “I would project that all red states will, over the next five years, have Republican governors who will say it is our goal to get to zero,” he said. “Doesn’t mean tomorrow, but our goal is to get to zero, which means every year there’s a budget.” When Perdue announced his challenge to Gov. Brian P. Kemp this month for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in the May 24 primary, the former…

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Attorneys File Lawsuit Against University of Cincinnati over Vaccine Mandates

Peter D'Abrosca

Attorneys at Mendenhall Law Group in Akron have filed a lawsuit against the University of Cincinnati over the school’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. 

“School officials are overriding students’ civil rights to bodily autonomy under the United States and Ohio constitutions.  Young people do not experience this as a grave illness.  It is unprecedented for a university to require students to participate in experimental medical procedures such as injections or masking,” Warner Mendenhall told The Ohio Star Friday.

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Sec. Finance Flores: Virginia’s Conservative Fiscal Approach That Powered 2021 Revenue Growth Should Continue in Future Years

Eric Burk

Virginia had historic revenue growth in 2021 and finished $2.6 billion above forecasts, thanks to a conservative approach, Secretary of Finance Joe Flores told the General Assembly money committees on Thursday. Flores’ presentation said that conservative approach should continue, with forecasts suggesting that Virginia’s income and job growth will continue in coming years, but will lag behind the nation.

“It’s also important to remember, to look back, because a year ago, you guys had just finished a session where you had taken down revenues to the tune of $2.7 billion, basically five percent of our biennial General Fund revenues,” Flores said.

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Florida Gov. DeSantis Announces New Preventative Monoclonal Treatment for Immunocompromised

Grant Holcomb

Yesterday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) announced a new preventative monoclonal treatment will be available for immunocompromised Floridians like cancer patients and transplant recipients. DeSantis said the new product from AstraZeneca, a pre-exposure prophylactic called Evusheld, is the newest development in Florida’s fight against COVID.

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Truck Driver Shortage Leads to Instant Hires for Truckers Graduating from Waukesha County Technical College

Hayley Feland

The nationwide truck driver shortage is leading to instant hires for some truckers graduating from Waukesha County Technical College (WCTC). “We have 50 to 75 employers that hire our students the day after graduation,” said Douglass Clarks-Pritchard, a trucking instructor at WCTC. “Several students in my last class, they were hired before they even completed the class.”

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Former Officer Kimberly Potter Breaks Down on Stand in Trial over Daunte Wright Killing

Peter D'Abrosca

Ex-Brooklyn Heights Police officer Kimberly Potter broke down in tears on the witness stand twice Friday, as she testified about her fatal shooting of Daunte Wright more than eight months ago.

“Officer Lucky started to say something about ‘don’t do that, don’t tense up, stop doing that'” Potter said, describing the moments leading up to the shooting. “And then it just went chaotic.”

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Florida TaxWatch Report Indicates State Not Receiving Fair Share of Federal Funding

Grant Holcomb

Florida TaxWatch, an independent think tank, released a report indicating Florida is set to receive shy of $20 billion from the President Joe Biden-signed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). However, TaxWatch suggests Florida is not receiving near its fair share of funding, based on population and contribution to the national economy.

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Michigan State University to Require COVID Vaccine Booster Shot for All Students and Faculty

Cooper Moran

Michigan State University (MSU) announced on Friday that all students and faculty will be required to receive the coronavirus vaccine booster shot.

Beginning in the upcoming spring semester, all individuals must have the additional shot to remain in compliance with the university’s policies, according to an email from MSU President Samuel L. Stanley.

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Georgia Department of Health Reveals Policy on Shipping in and Distributing FDA-Approved COVID-19 Vaccine Comirnaty

Chris Butler

A Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH) official said Friday that her agency currently does not offer the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) fully approved COVID-19 vaccine, which the manufacturer, Pfizer, calls Comirnaty “Comirnaty has only recently become available, and DPH and its enrolled vaccine providers currently are using on-hand inventory of Pfizer COVID vaccine,” said DPH spokeswoman Nancy Nydam via email.

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