Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Senior Editor at Large for The Epoch Times, Roger Simon in-studio to describe his recent visit to the Tennessee State Capitol.
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While President Joe Biden proposed $22.5 billion in coronavirus-related spending this week, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey (R) urged clarification of how the government has spent almost $6 trillion in earlier COVID relief.
Toomey joined 35 Senate colleagues in writing to Biden asking for a detailed explication of the disbursements made over the last two years which, the authors noted, amounted to the largest allotment of taxpayer money for one concern in American history.
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Twitter on Thursday suspended the account of Just the News CEO and Editor John Solomon for tweeting a story about a peer-reviewed study on COVID vaccines published in a respected medical journal by a research university that has worked with the both National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization.
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Although Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont (D) allowed the statewide school-mask mandate to end on Monday, the Hamden Board of Education (BOE) voted that evening to indefinitely extend its requirement.
The vote came down along party lines, with Republican BOE members Austin Cesare, Kevin Shea and Gary Walsh supporting the mandate’s cancellation; Board Chair Melissa A. Kaplan as well as fellow Democrats David Asbery, Siobhan Carter-David, Mariam Khan and Réuel Parks voted to keep it.
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Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Director of Coalition Relations for The Heritage Center, Tim Doescher to the newsmakers line to discuss the recently released 2022 Index of Economic Freedom.
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In the interest of a return to normalcy, we take this short break from COVID and Ukraine coverage to bring to your attention an actual conservative policy matter. The pesky trial lawyers and their junk science “experts” are at it again, providing certain justices of the Supreme Court an opportunity to show us they can still do the right thing.
I’m not pointing fingers at say, Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh, but certain esteemed members of the court who had less than smooth sailing in their confirmation battles and for whom conservatives stormed the ramparts (figuratively speaking of course), have left us wondering if they were worth the battle scars. Here’s some low hanging fruit for them to pick off and make everyone breathe a little easier. All they have to do is vote to take a certain case.
The case involves a long-running dispute brought by the inventor of a special warming blanket called the Bair Hugger (now owned by 3M) which has proven to reduce post-operative infections and other complications and has been used in over 300 million surgeries worldwide to maintain patients’ body temperatures. The inventor, Dr. Scott Augustine made a fortune on this device but lost his rights to the product and its proceeds when he pled guilty to Medicare fraud in an unrelated matter. Dr. Augustine then invented a competing device and waged a campaign to discredit the Bair Hugger claiming that it caused infections. He then hired “experts” and funded studies to back up his claim. Except one of the actual authors of the studies called those studies “marketing rather than research.” As in not based on facts. The FDA admonished Dr. Augustine to stop the false campaign. And not a single physician who uses the Bair Hugger, or a single epidemiologist or any public health officials have supported Dr. Augustine’s contention.
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According to Hans Rosling “Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.” The American Psychological Association indicates the use of fear to influence behavior is effective, especially among women. For fear to be a successful change agent, it must be viewed as a legitimate warning about what will happen if behavior does or does not occur.
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If we follow the conventional political thinking, Republicans can anticipate an electoral shift during the November midterm elections and appear likely to recapture the White House in 2024. A grassroots revolt is already showing signs that the Democrats should expect to be punished for politicizing education and mismanaging COVID policy.
If we follow the conventional thinking even further, this will spell success for a usual cast of Republican-leaning characters in leadership and consulting roles. Karl Rove is likely already updating his fee structure. Veterans of the two Bush Administrations will send their résumés east in hopes of retaining old posts so they can steer contracts and favors back to their allies and former employers.
Right, Left, Right, Left, the hypnotic rhythm drums on—briefly interrupted only by an aberrational Trump Administration or popular uprising—but it all returns to the statists’ status quo in the end. The uniparty simply shifts its weight from its left foot to its right while business proceeds as usual.
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At a Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, the panel’s GOP majority grilled the state’s chief economic-development official on the damage inflicted by COVID-related business restrictions.
In March 17, 2020, Governor Tom Wolf (D) responded to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus by ordering the shuttering of all businesses he deemed “nonessential.” The commonwealth phased out most of the closures that summer, though capacity restrictions on restaurants and other gathering places continued into 2021. Republicans in the General Assembly attempted to end the shutdowns but did not have the two-thirds supermajority needed to override the governor.
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Pfizer and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Friday they are delaying their plan for Pfizer’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its coronavirus vaccine for children under five years old due to insufficient data on the efficacy of a third dose.
Pfizer announced February 1 FDA had asked the drug company, and its partner BioNTech, to submit data on a COVID vaccine series for babies as young as six months old and young children up until age five.
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“In critical moments,” said Star Trek’s master of logic, Mr. Spock, “men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.”
Apparently so. The truth of this statement hit me like a bolt of lightning recently when a friend relayed his experience at a medical clinic. It seems the ignorance and lack of rational thinking in our medical system is even worse than I imagined.
It all started when my friend John, a man in his mid-60s, went to the doctor to fill out forms and answer questions before undergoing an in-house surgery. After about 30 minutes of taking his history, the nurse asked him if he had taken the COVID vaccine. John replied that he had not—a fact he had already told the office secretary when he made his appointment—but that he was prepared to take tests to see if he was positive for the virus.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week released data showing that effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine booster wanes markedly in the months following that shot, though the agency still said uptake of the booster is important for fighting against the virus.
The agency said in a press release that studies showed effectiveness against COVID-19 emergency department and urgent care incidents “was 87% and 91%, respectively, during the 2 months after a third dose [of the booster],” but that it “decreased to 66% and 78% by the fourth month after a third dose.”
The CDC said that “protection against hospitalizations exceeded that against ED/UC visits” with the shot.
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Thursday morning on Outside the Beltway with John Fredericks, host Fredricks welcomed Proclaiming Justice to the Nation’s Laurie Cardoza-Moore to the program to discuss how parents can take over local school boards and her Taking Back America’s Children’s Summit this weekend in Orlando, Florida.
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Do you trust the U.S. government? I don’t recommend it.
Consider what John Kirby, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said a couple of days ago at a press briefing. “We believe,” Kirby said, that Russia is planning to stage a fake attack by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces against Russian sovereign territory, or against Russian speaking people,” in order to justify an invasion of Ukraine. Kirby had lots of details: “We believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment, at the hands of Ukraine or the West.”
Gosh. Should we be worried? Yes. But not necessarily for the reasons that Kirby and his puppet masters want you to be worried. The United States is sending troops and arms to aid Ukraine, so of course there needs to be an emergency to justify that action. John Kirby just outlined a scary scenario. But inquiring minds want to know: What’s his evidence for this dramatic claim?
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The omicron variant may be nearing its peak in some states, but across the country it’s produced a dizzying array of conflicting signals on whether the nation should remain under a COVID national emergency or move on to an endemic “new normal.”
Comedian Bill Maher’s “I don’t want to live in your mask-paranoid world anymore” monologue went viral last week, just days after the Atlantic, the standard-bearer journal for the liberal intelligentsia, ran a story headlined: “COVID Parenting Has Passed the Point of Absurdity.” Accompanying the article was a black-and-white photo of a woman frozen in a more desperate and primal state of panic than the subject of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
Omicron, for most people without co-morbidities, produces much milder symptoms than do the coronavirus’s previous variants, but it’s far more infectious, racing through schools, shutting down classrooms and forcing parents to consult their district’s ever-shifting COVID “decision trees” on a seemingly daily basis.
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About 100 Minnesota protesters filled a pedestrian bridge over a highway on Saturday, showing solidarity with Canadian truckers. Protesters held signs that said, “Thank you truckers,” “F— Joe Biden,” and “F— Trudeau.”
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According to a restaurant database called Open Table, seated dining in Minneapolis is down 76% since 2019. As of Monday, January 23, the database said dining rates were only down 67%, but it dropped another 9% on Tuesday.
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The governor of Wisconsin has announced that he has distributed over 5 million pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) to fight COVID so far in 2022. In a press release obtained by The Wisconsin Daily Star, Governor Tony Evers said, “Keeping Wisconsinites healthy and safe continues to be my top priority as the landscape of this pandemic continues to shift and evolve.”
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A Wisconsin Representative responded to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s approach to masking school aged children. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08) said in a Twitter video, “By masking kids, you’re impairing their education, their development, and their childhood.”
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Vanderbilt University Medical Center are actively recruiting children from 5-17 years old in order to study possible allergic reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines made by Pfizer (Pfizer-BioNTech) and Moderna.
“It’s important to study children, too,” said Elizabeth Phillips, MD, the principal investigator of the study, who is a professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and the John A. Oates Chair in Clinical Research at VUMC.
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Several Minneapolis restaurants initiated a lawsuit on Thursday against the mayor of Minneapolis over the COVID vaccine mandate that took effect last week. According to the complaint, the restaurants are seeking a judgement from the court that the emergency declaration requiring restaurant and bar owners to verify COVID vaccine status from Mayor Jacob Frey be considered null and void.
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The Minnesota Democrat Farmer Labor (DFL) party has announced that they will be requiring proof of COVID vaccination during in-person precinct caucusing on February 1. They are offering a contactless caucus for the unvaccinated or others who are uncomfortable caucusing in person, while some entire districts will be utilizing the contactless caucus process.
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A bagel shop in Minneapolis made the decision to close indoor dining on Wednesday due to the COVID vaccine mandate taking effect. Rise Bagel Co., an organic artisan bagelry located in the North Loop of Minneapolis, announced in social media posts on Tuesday that they made the “tough decision” to close their indoor dining, saying that “All are welcome here.”
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Representative Bryan Steil (R-WI-01) is co-sponsoring the Open Schools Act with Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL-13), “to support students and allow parents to make the best decision for their family.” According to a press release from Davis, the Open Schools Act would provide families with up to $10,000 per student “to seek alternative forms of in-person education” if the public school that the students attend has switched to distance or online learning due to COVID.
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The school district that oversees public education in Las Vegas said it will offer teachers and other employees up to $2,000 in bonuses if they stay on amid the current COVID-19 surge and concurrent employment crisis.
Clark County School District said in a statement this week that the CCSD Board of School Trustees had “approved an agreement with all five employee bargaining units to provide eligible regular and full-time employees employed as of January 1, 2022 with a $1,000 COVID retention bonus.”
“CCSD will also pay an additional $1,000 bonus to eligible regular and full-time employees who are employed on May 25, 2022, for a total of $2,000,” the statement added.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues into its third year, William Paterson University is now laying off 100 full-time faculty over the next three years.
The university, located in Wayne, New Jersey, originally planned to let 150 professors go before union negotiations revised the number to 100, or 29% of the institution’s 340 faculty, reports Inside Higher Ed.
Thirteen tenured professors lost their job at the end of 2021, according to the outlet.
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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) responded to the recent spike in inflation, calling it a “tax on the middle class.” Johnson said in an interview with Fox News that “Biden and the Democrats have spent trillions to pay people to sit at home and not work.”
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The Department of Justice announced this week a Knoxville, Tennessee man was arrested for defrauding COVID-19 economic relief programs. James Waylon Howell pled guilty to “engaging in more than $150,000 in fraud related to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and to committing money laundering.” He was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
“This prosecution highlights the Department of Justice’s commitment to aggressively prosecute those who have defrauded these important programs enacted to provide economic relief to those who have suffered financially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said United States Attorney Francis M. Hamilton III. “Fortunately, the quick and capable work of our federal partners permitted the recovery of a substantial amount of stolen funds.”
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American corporation General Electric this week announced that it would no longer require its 56,000 employees to undergo either the COVID-19 vaccination or regular testing after the Supreme Court struck down the White House’s employer vaccine mandate.
The company suspended its enforcement of that policy on Friday, one day after the court said the Biden administration could not force large U.S. companies to require vaccinations for their employees.
President Joe Biden has urged companies to continue with their own personal mandates after his administration’s own efforts were stymied by the Supreme Court.
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State Representative Jeremy Munson (R-Lake Crystal) responded to Minnesota’s new COVID vaccine incentives for kids, calling it bribery and coercion. The State of Minnesota and Gov. Tim Walz (D) announced that they will be giving every family of 5 to 11 year old children $200 for getting fully vaccinated in the months of January and February.
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Wisconsin Representative Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI-05) introduced a motion to protect veteran G.I. Bill benefits from the Biden Administration’s COVID vaccine mandate. Fitzgerald shared his concerns on the floor, saying, “the Secretary of Defense issued a directive requiring mandatory COVID vaccination for all service members, including those in the Ready Reserve, and the National Guard. Despite the challenges this vaccine mandate currently faces in court, the Defense Department has proceeded to discharge those who refuse the vaccine.”
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Timothy Chmielewski, the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Deputies Association Union President, announced a COVID vaccine mandate for his union’s employees on an internal email with a subject line that read, “You will be terminated.”
John Gilmore posted a screenshot of the email on Twitter, which was from Chmielewski. It is unclear if the mandate applies only to those within the sheriff’s office or if it is a county-wide requirement.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper held a live-streamed press conference on Monday to outline Metro’s latest COVID response. Cooper, Dr. Alex Jahangir, chair of Metro’s COVID taskforce; Dr. Gill Wright, who directs Nashville’s public health department; and Director and Chief William Swann, of Emergency Management and Nashville Fire Department, all spoke during the conference.
“Cases here are rising quickly, and we know the Omnicron variant spreads easily. Even more easily than previous variants,” the mayor said.
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The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is now studying COVID within the deer population. Tami Ryan, the chief of the DNR’s wildlife health section told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that “Wisconsin officials recently received guidance, funding and supplies from USDA to look for the virus in deer in the Badger State.”
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The majority of Americans support Congressional efforts to block President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates for large businesses ahead of a U.S. Supreme Court hearing on that very issue, according to a new poll.
Convention of States Action, along with the Trafalgar Group, released the poll, which found that 51.1% of surveyed voters support a bill in Congress to stop Biden’s vaccine mandates for large businesses. The poll reports that 40.6% of voters do not support the bill while 8.3% of voters are unsure.
The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan measure in December to block Biden’s mandate, which requires employers with at least 100 workers to ensure they are vaccinated or undergo weekly testing. Businesses that do not comply face hefty fines. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would enforce the mandate.
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Wisconsin Representative Thomas Tiffany (R-WI-07) and Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08) joined Representative Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08) in demanding answers from the Biden administration regarding the use of COVID funds to house illegal immigrants.
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The Lebanon Special School District announced this week that they would be suspending in-person classes for the week due to the surge of Omnicron cases. The announcement includes Byars Dowdy Elementary, Castle Heights Elementary, Coles Ferry Elementary, Jones Brummett Elementary, Sam Houston Elementary, Walter J. Baird Middle, and Winfree Bryant Middle.
The announcement said due to an overwhelming number of positive COVID cases, the school “reached a level which makes us unable to staff our classrooms and buildings.” Based on information gathered, the school district decided that there would be too many teachers absent from school to be able to conduct class in a normal manner.
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Clarice Schillinger, who last year helped to elect school directors across the state to get kids back into the classroom, announced this week she is running as a Republican for Pennsylvania lieutenant governor.
For the Franklin County native who now lives in Montgomery County with her husband and children, Schillinger and her family felt firsthand the impact of schools closing in her own Hatboro-Horsham School District in reaction to COVID-19. She started the Keeping Kids in School PAC to endorse school-board candidates and formed Back to School PA PAC to provide financial support to school-director campaigns across Pennsylvania.
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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) responded after backlash regarding his view on COVID vaccines. Johnson said, “I won’t apologize for being in awe of creation or for the assumption that immunity from COVID infection might outperform immunity created in a lab.”
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St. Paul and Minneapolis mayors announced on Wednesday morning that they are reinstating mask mandates for city buildings and licensed businesses when social distancing cannot be maintained.
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Wisconsin Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08) criticized distance learning, saying that it’s “not a substitute” for in-person learning. Gallaher made the comments about distance learning following the announcement that Milwaukee and Madison schools reverted to online schooling for the first several days back after Christmas break.
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Pennsylvania already exempts many medical supplies from its sales tax, but not COVID tests, a discrepancy legislation by Sen. Mario Scavello (R-East Stroudsburg) would eliminate.
Scavello’s bill would except rapid at-home COVID-19 antigen tests from the state’s six-percent sales levy. Healthcare devices, services and substances all generally don’t get taxed in the Keystone State.
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Twitter late Thursday acknowledged that Just the News founder and Editor-in-Chief John Solomon’s account was “suspended in error” this week over a post about a COVID-19 vaccine.
The respond follows an appeal earlier in the day by Solomon after his account was suspended Tuesday for his tweet linking to the article “Pfizer to continue distributing version of COVID-19 vaccine not fully approved by FDA.”
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Three Wisconsin urgent care clinics within the Advocate Aurora Health network were closed down temporarily due to staffing shortages. A spokesperson for the clinics told The Minnesota Sun that the closures are due to “managing the COVID surge combined with staffing shortages.”
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A letter, dated December 21, from the St. Croix County Public Health Department threatens legal action against residents who do not quarantine properly after testing positive for COVID. The letter goes on to detail all the recommended “voluntary” actions the person should take following a positive COVID test.
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The Minnesota Democrat Farmer Laborer (DFL) released a statement following a letter signed by over 30 Minnesota Republican (GOP) House lawmakers condemning a COVID vaccine mandate implemented by Mayo Clinic, calling the letter “deeply disturbing.”
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced a new incentive for residents to get their COVID vaccine and flu shot. Cooper tweeted this week that anyone needing their annual flu shot or COVID vaccination could meet NFL alumni on December 14, from 3 – 6 pm at the Nissan Stadium.
He said he was grateful to the NFL health alumni, the Tennessee Titans, the Tennessee Department of Health, and Nashville Health for organizing the event.
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Last week in this space, I included a few words about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s remarkable new book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. I also included a link to Kennedy’s appearance on “Tucker Carlson Today.”
It was a remarkable exchange and I commend both the book and the interview to your attention. I disagree with Kennedy about various things, including the efficacy of vaccines in general, but his assessment of the highest-paid employee of the federal government, Anthony Fauci, is worth the price of admission.
As I remarked a couple of weeks ago, I thought I had done writing about COVID. Surely, I thought, the hysteria is on the wane. Most people are rational. They know that the flimsy porous masks you see everywhere are useless tokens of conformity. They understand that the disease is serious for only a tiny part of the population. They also know staying home and practicing “social distancing” has its own liabilities, not least of which is a diminution in the potency of one’s immune response.
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The owner of the Interchange Wine and Coffee Bistro began her 90-day jail sentence Thursday after a jury found her guilty of violating COVID-19 emergency orders from Democrat Gov. Timothy J. “Tim” Walz at her Freeborn County District Court trial.
Melissa “Lisa” Hanson represented herself sui juris, while she was prosecuted by Albert Lea’s City Attorney Kelly Martinez on six of the nine misdemeanors charges against her.
All six of the counts were for willfully violating the governor’s November 2020 executive orders, which prohibited serving alcohol indoors.
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ALBERT LEA, Minnesota – The jury selection finished in the criminal trial of Melissa “Lisa” Hanson on Tuesday evening, after a full day of interviews. Hanson and the City Attorney Kelly Martinez chose six jurors to serve and two back up jurors.
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