Everybody forgot…
Tag: corruption
GOP Guv Spent Millions in Tax Dollars on Governor’s Mansion Upgrades
After Republican Tate Reeves was elected governor of Mississippi in 2019, he sold his home and moved his family, naturally, into the governor’s mansion.
But that new home, a national historic landmark, was far from perfect for Reeves. And over the last three and a half years, while not having to pay personal property taxes on his new state-owned mansion, Reeves plowed more than $2.4 million in taxpayer dollars into renovations and upkeep for his temporary home, according to public records obtained by The Daily Beast.
During Reeves’ brief stay, the governor’s mansion has also seen what appears to be an additional $900,000 in renovations, restoration, and refurbishments. Those investments, however, came courtesy of anonymous donors, and appear in federal tax records filed by the Governors Mansion Foundation—a nonprofit whose board features Reeves’ campaign treasurer and a top campaign donor who runs a controversial installment loan business.
That would mean that, in the years since he stopped paying property taxes on his old home, Reeves has put a total of $3.3 million into updating the mansion. His former home, which Reeves sold in July 2020, was last listed for $629,000, according to several real estate websites. In the time since Reeves was first elected lieutenant governor—2012—Mississippi property taxes have increased by about 7.2 percent, according to state data.
American Lung Association Demands the FDA Mislead the Public About Vaping
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should abandon any efforts to inform the public that vaping is safer than smoking, says the American Lung Association (ALA).
Numerous public surveys show a consistent, widespread misperception that vaping nicotine is just as or more dangerous than smoking cigarettes. The problem is so extensive that correcting these false beliefs forms part of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) 5-year strategic plan.
Writing in the journal Addiction, Brian King, the head of CTP, stated: “Opportunities exist to educate adults who smoke cigarettes about the relative risks of tobacco products.” To that end, among the five goals listed as part of CTP’s plan is a commitment to inform the public that not all tobacco products are created equally, with cigarettes being the most dangerous and others, such as e-cigarettes, being far less harmful.
The pledge to provide accurate information about the risks of different nicotine products is long overdue and in line with the public health communications of peer countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and the U.K. (The U.K. even has vape shops in hospitals, and some smokers are offered free vapes to help them quit.)
But in their comments on CTP’s strategic plan, the ALA, which proclaims its commitment to a world free of lung disease, demands the FDA “remove language from the description for this goal that references informing adults about the relative risk of tobacco products” and that “CTP should have no part in the industry’s efforts to sustain addiction through the failed and flawed notion that adult smokers should switch to e-cigarettes.”
Despite ALA’s protestations, the idea that e-cigarettes are effective for smoking cessation is not a tobacco industry notion. According to the prestigious Cochrane Review, e-cigarettes are more effective than nicotine patches or gums in helping smokers quit. In essence, the ALA is asking the FDA to withhold accurate information from the public that could save lives. The recommendations sparked strong reactions from those who believe safer alternatives to cigarettes are a no-brainer from a public health perspective.
“This is highly ironic, given the extent to which the Lung Association and other tobacco control organizations went to punish the tobacco industry for lying to the public and hiding critical health information,” writes Michael Siegel, a visiting professor at the Tufts University School of Medicine. “It is also unethical because it violates the public health code of ethics, which calls for honesty and transparency in public health communications. We do not hide critical health information from the public.”
Biden Officials Likely Violated First Amendment On Social Media: 5th Circuit Court
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Friday that several Biden administration officials had likely breached the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to moderate or take down content they deemed problematic.
And here is Exhibit A of that First Amendment-crushing coercion and collusion… which obviously began in the Trump-era under Anthony Fauci. ZeroHedge was banned from Twitter one day after this email.
FDA Refuses to Provide COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Data to US Senator
U.S. officials are refusing to provide COVID-19 vaccine safety data to a U.S. senator.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the results of analyses on data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System in January. The request came after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said none of the safety signals it identified for the COVID-19 vaccines were “unexpected.”
The two agencies have run different types of analyses on the system’s reports, which are primarily made by health care professionals.
The first time the agency ran analyses using the method for the COVID-19 vaccines, in 2022, hundreds of signals were triggered, files obtained by The Epoch Times show.
The FDA in 2021 started a different type of analysis, called Empirical Bayesian (EB) data mining.
Prison officer Joanne Hunter who sent X-rated photos to inmate she was having affair with and smuggled cannabis and mobile phone into his cell is jailed for three years
A former prison officer has been jailed for three years for having an inappropriate relationship with an inmate.
Joanne Hunter, 28, conducted the relationship with Connor Willis while working at HMP Forest Bank in Salford.
Hunter – described as ‘naive’ and ‘vulnerable’ in court – believed Willis was ‘in love’ with her and agreed to smuggle packages, including cannabis, into the prison for him. She also sent him explicit photographs, which were later found on her phone.
Manchester Crown Court heard how Hunter, who has a master’s degree in Childhood and Youth studies, began working at the prison in December 2018.
In December 2020, prison authorities received information that she was taking items inside and when she was interviewed by security managers she admitted having a relationship with Willis.
Rachel Widdicombe, prosecuting, told the court how Hunter had agreed smuggle packages into the prison for Willis, one containing a juice carton and another coating a Red Bull can.
Hunter received the packages from an unnamed woman after meeting her at a Tesco supermarket, the court heard. She then smuggled them inside the prison before passing them on to another prisoner – whom she knew as a ‘big player’ and member of crime gang – for Willis. Willis offered to pay her £200-300 for each package, but she refused to take the money.
Prominent Scientist Admits To Pushing “Preapproved” Climate Change Narrative To Get Papers Published
A climate scientist has admitted that he pushed a “preapproved” narrative on climate change in order to get papers published in leading journals.
Patrick T. Brown told The Free Press “I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.”
He continued, “editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.”
Brown, who also lectures at Johns Hopkins, added that the biases of the editors and reviewers of journals are well known among aspiring scientists who will often omit inconvenient truths to please them, a process he says “distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.”
GoFundMe freezes donations for The Grayzone, sparking free speech debate
GoFundMe froze a fundraising campaign for the far-left news outlet The Grayzone due to “external concerns”, in the latest case to highlight the contentious role of tech companies in regulating controversial speech.
The Grayzone says it was unable to access more than $90,000 that about 1,100 contributors donated to support the work of three reporters.
Max Blumenthal, the founder and editor of The Grayzone, said the California-based crowdfunding company informed him in mid-August that he would not be allowed to transfer the donations pending a review of the fundraiser related to unspecified “external concerns”.
The donations were ultimately refunded to the donors after The Grayzone moved the fundraising campaign to a rival crowding funding platform.
Blumenthal said he believes the review was undertaken for “political reasons” related to the website’s coverage of the war in Ukraine.
“They only told me due to some external concerns, and I assume that someone would have to be fairly powerful to get GoFundMe to overlook the profit motive that usually governs companies like this to cancel a fundraiser that is extremely successful,” Blumenthal told Al Jazeera on Friday.
Blumenthal added that The Grayzone’s managing editor Wyatt Reed had similar problems with payment platforms Paypal and Venmo following his reporting on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
GoFundMe said that every fundraiser on its platform is subject to review and that The Grayzone was able to continue to solicit donations until it cancelled the fundraiser.
My editor trashed my inquiry into child sexual abuse. Now I know why
One morning, a fortnight ago, I checked the BBC headlines to find my old editor, Peter Wilby, peering out. He’d been exposed as a paedophile and convicted of possessing child sexual abuse images. I still feel sick at the discovery.
It would be disturbing enough to discover anyone you knew had done something so terrible – he was convicted of possessing images of children being raped since the 1990s. But Wilby wasn’t anyone. He was a pillar of the media establishment, an editor of the Independent on Sunday and the New Statesman, and a Guardian columnist.
Journalists who had worked with Wilby were appalled at his crimes, while others raged at his “hypocrisy”, but what shocked me was the creeping realisation that he had used his position as an editor and columnist to create what the writer Beatrix Campbell has called a “hostile environment” for victims of abuse.
It dawned on me that he had applied that “hostile environment” to me at the outset of my career when I was a freelance reporter at the Independent on Sunday, and he was its news editor.
In April 1991, I learned of mental and physical abuse at Ty Mawr children’s home in Gwent, south Wales, where some residents had attempted suicide. The claims emerged in the wake of abuse claims at other children’s homes – the “Pindown” scandal in Staffordshire where staff used violent restraint on children, and sexual abuse by social worker Frank Beck at homes in Leicestershire. I thought Wilby would be excited at the prospect of a scoop, but he couldn’t have been less interested. I took it to the daily Independent, which put it on the front page and made a campaign of it.
My 2024 prediction…
Hellbound and Down 
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