Some days are worse than others…
Tag: coronavirus
COVID Hypocrisy: Policymakers Breaking Their Own Rules
Rules for thee but not for me? The interactive map below shows the continuing hypocrisy of local, state, and federal officials who violate their own coronavirus mandates, policies, or other restrictions, with 43 reported instances to date, and counting. Some officials have violated their own rules more than once. See the full list at bottom.
To Protect ‘Children’ From E-Cigarettes, Congress Imposes New Restrictions on Everything Related to Vaping of Any Kind
Buried in the enormous spending/COVID-19 relief package that Congress approved this week is a bill that imposes new restrictions on the distribution of all vaping equipment, parts, and supplies, including a ban on mailing them. The provision illustrates not only how utterly irrelevant legislation can be slipped into unread, must-pass bills but also how Congress redefines reality through legal fictions and uses save-the-children rhetoric to justify restricting adults’ choices.
Title VI of the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act, which appears on page 5,136 of the 5,593-page bill, is called the Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act. The bill was introduced last April by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D–Calif.), joined by seven original cosponsors: six Democrats plus Sen. John Cornyn (R–Texas). It includes two changes aimed at complicating and obstructing online sales of vapes and e-liquid.
Feinstein’s bill amends the Jenkins Act of 1949, which requires that vendors who sell cigarettes to customers in other states register with the tax administrators in those states and notify them of all such sales so they can collect the taxes that the buyers are officially obligated to pay. In 2002, the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) found that online cigarette sellers routinely flouted the Jenkins Act and that the federal government had done virtually nothing to enforce it. Nine years later, Congress amended the law, beefing up its reporting requirements and extending it to cover roll-your-own tobacco.
Are you ready to rumble?
2020 exposed the teachers unions for the frauds they are
The coronavirus pandemic has brought too many failures of leadership to count. But chief among them is remote learning and teachers unions’ continued lobbying against reopening schools.
When the virus was still a novel concept and schools shut down in response, we understood why. There was too much we did not know about COVID-19, and the risk of endangering students and teachers was too great. As time went on, however, the science became overwhelmingly clear that COVID-19 posed little risk to children and that schools were not a major source of transmission. It also became clear that distance learning has been a disaster both for students and for parents, especially those with limited resources.
Over the course of the year, it has become glaringly obvious that unions insisting on long-term school closures were not concerned about their students’ health or teachers’ safety so much as they were interested in what they could gain from the shutdown.
In Los Angeles, for example, one of the largest teachers unions in the state released a reopening proposal in July that was accompanied by a list of demands. These included — we kid you not — defunding the Los Angeles Police Department, implementing “Medicare for all,” increasing taxes on the wealthy, and placing a moratorium on charter schools in the county. The purpose of this ultimatum was purely political, yet Los Angeles’s public schools remain closed to this day.
New York City’s public schools made progress this fall by gradually reintroducing students to the classroom. But teachers unions sabotaged this, too, demanding that Mayor Bill de Blasio close public schools again because coronavirus cases in the city had risen above a certain threshold. Never mind that the schools themselves were nowhere near this threshold, or that viral transmission among students had been proven nonexistent. New York’s teachers wanted to work from home, so the teachers unions flew into action.
Anyone who questions the teachers unions — health officials, other educators, even parents — is accused of recklessly endangering lives. The truth, however, is that the unions have behaved utterly selfishly while camouflaging their dishonorable conduct in the garb of social concern. The head of the country’s largest teachers union went so far as to say teachers are “being bullied into returning back to the classrooms.” The science, however, shows there is nothing unsafe about in-person education. Several studies have confirmed that infection rates among students and teachers remain extremely low, and health precautions that most schools have mandated make sure they stay that way.
Covid-19 catch-22: Regime-change policies come packed with US pandemic relief
The longest piece of legislation in United States history, containing both a coronavirus relief package and the annual omnibus spending package, quickly passed through Congress on December 22, with little opposition. While technically separate bills, the omnibus and stimulus were debated and passed together, at the same time.
The massive piece of legislation — a staggering 5,593 pages in length — lays bare the priorities of the US government, prioritizing regime change in foreign nations and the imperatives of empire over the basic needs of Americans.
In just a few hours, it passed through the House of Representatives by 359-53, and through the Senate by 92-6.
While the US public was forced to grovel for months for a $600 direct payment, the same piece of legislation pumps billions of dollars into “democracy programs” — US government code for regime-change operations via civil society NGOs — and foreign military assistance. The measly $600 survival checks pale in comparison to the massive foreign spending on regime change and titanic allocations to prop up US-friendly authoritarian militaries.
On so-called “Democracy Programs” alone, the legislation appropriates $2.417 billion, and $6.175 billion on the “Foreign Military Financing Program.” Another $112.9 million is appropriated for “International Military Education and Training.”
$6 billion more is allocated toward the domestic procurement of US Air Force missiles and US Navy weapons of war. This is in addition to the $740 billion defense bill passed earlier in December.
By contrast, the stimulus package comes at a value of $900 billion, with the largest portion devoted to business bailouts.
Rules for thee…
Congress Blocks School Choice in New Stimulus Package
Governors are prohibited from using emergency education funding to give families more education options, thanks to a new provision inserted in the 5,600-page bill that Congress passed (without having time to read it) on Monday night.
The new stimulus package includes $2.75 billion for the Governors Emergency Education Relief (GEER) fund, a program established by the earlier stimulus bill passed in March, but it comes with new restrictions on how that money can be used. Seemingly in response to the fact that several governors used the first round of GEER funding to launch or expand school choice programs, the new stimulus bill explicitly excludes “vouchers, tuition tax credit programs, education savings accounts, scholarship programs, or tuition assistance programs for elementary and secondary education.”
Researchers Warn Some Covid-19 Vaccines Could Increase Risk Of HIV Infection
Some of the Covid-19 vaccines currently in development could increase the risk of acquiring HIV, warned a group of researchers in the The Lancet medical journal Monday, potentially leading to an increase in infections as vaccines are rolled out to vulnerable populations around the world.
‘This Is Atrocious’: Congress Crams Language to Criminalize Online Streaming, Meme-Sharing Into 5,500-Page Omnibus Bill
Lawmakers in Congress are under fire from digital rights campaigners for embedding three controversial changes to online copyright and trademark laws into the must-pass $2.3 trillion legislative package—which includes a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill and a $900 billion Covid-19 relief bill—that could receive floor votes in the House and Senate as early as Monday evening.
The punitive provisions crammed into the enormous bill (pdf), warned Evan Greer of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, “threaten ordinary Internet users with up to $30,000 in fines for engaging in everyday activity such as downloading an image and re-uploading it… [or] sharing memes.”
While the citizenry had almost no time to process the actual contents of the 5,593 page legislative text, Greer said Monday afternoon that the CASE Act, Felony Streaming Act, and Trademark Modernization Act “are in fact included in the must-pass omnibus spending bill.”
As Mike Masnick explained in a piece at TechDirt on Monday:
The CASE Act will supercharge copyright trolling exactly at a time when we need to fix the law to have less trolling. And the felony streaming bill (which was only just revealed last week with no debate or discussion) includes provisions that are so confusing and vague no one is sure if it makes sites like Twitch into felons.
“The fact that these are getting added to the must-pass government funding bill is just bad government,” Masnick added. “And congressional leadership should hear about this.”
Hellbound and Down 
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