The Disturbing Precedent behind Dangerous COVID Shots

posted by Cassandra Chambers at American Thinker

An incident from 100 years ago has a remarkable echo in the mRNA injection reality of today.

After radium's discovery by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, one of its commercial applications was in the production of radiant watches for seeing time in the dark.  The U.S. Radium Corporation (USRC) extracted radium from carnotite ore and produced luminous paints — first in Newark and later in Orange, New Jersey.  From 1917 to 1926, these paints were used to paint watch dials at the company's factory.  In her 2018 book The Radium Girls, Kate Moore goes beyond statistics and anecdotes to the original sources to bring the young women who painted these watch dials to life.

Among the hundreds of watch dial painters over the years, there were Katherine Schaub (who started working at age 14); Marguerite Carlough; Grace Fryer; Hazel Kuser; and sisters Albina Maggia Larice, Mollie Maggia, and Quinta Maggia McDonald.  These young women felt excitement and pride working with the beautiful radium paint and earning substantial wages, which some used for stylish clothes and others used simply to support their families.  The painters enjoyed genuine camaraderie in the studio, and working with the fluorescent radium was fun.  Even though the painters were brushed off after every shift to conserve every grain of the expensive radium dust, some painters had a slight glow as they walked home at night.  The painters were instructed to point their brushes before dipping them in the paint in a technique known as "lip, dip, paint."  They were told that the paint was totally harmless.

The women painted for years while the radiation slowly, steadily, and silently sickened them.  Mollie Maggia went to the dentist in 1921 with a bad tooth.  That tooth was treated, but then other teeth decayed rapidly.  She suffered not only from the pain, but also from the unique smell of the rotting teeth and gums.  Soon Mollie's jaw broke off in pieces.  Her whole face was a large abscess from ear to ear, and the pain had spread to other bones.  On September 12, 1922, the radiation that had been destroying her body ate away at her jugular vein, and Mollie bled to death.  It was claimed that her death was from syphilis, even though that was an impossibility.  Many other painters met similar gruesome deaths.  Hazel Kuser's husband Theo and Theo's father both spent their life savings and impoverished themselves in a fruitless effort to diagnose and treat Hazel.  By 1927, over 50 workers had died from radiation poisoning.

Meanwhile, in 1923, the New Jersey Department of Labor was contacted about conditions in the plant, but it took no action against the company.  In 1924, Hazel Kuser's mother wrote to USRC threatening a lawsuit.  This letter and the ongoing difficulty of hiring new staff prompted the company to call in Dr. Cecil K. Drinker of the Harvard School of Public Health to conduct a study of the plant and the workers' conditions.  USRC sent a summary of the resulting study to the Department of Labor along with one out-of-context chart, claiming that its conclusion was that all of the workers were in perfect health.  In reality, the study correctly identified radium as the source of the harm.  Radium had a "similar chemical nature" to calcium, which caused it to be deposited in bones, destroying them from the inside.  No worker's blood was entirely normal — even that of a new hire of two weeks.  Later, when Dr. Drinker was told about the false summary, he replied that he was understanding of the company's position and refused to publicly contradict it.  The company doubled down and continued operations.  Eventually, a group of the injured workers successfully sued USRC, establishing legal precedents and spurring regulations governing labor safety standards.

The parallels between the radium paint fraud against the workers and our current COVID-19 mRNA fraud are numerous.

Disease and death: The first and most significant item in common is that both novel products undeniably cause disease and death.  It appears that the shots may not be as uniformly toxic as the radium paint (I pray that this remains true), but these shots are clearly harming and killing some people in large numbers.  A comprehensive catalogue of information about the shots can be found on this excellent website Totality of Evidence.  For a succinct summary of the stark numbers and smoking guns, see former BlackRock executive Ed Dowd's website.  Studies show that adverse events in the VAERS database track closely in time to the number of administered shots.

Possibly more troubling than those deaths is the evidence that shot injury is not limited to the immediate aftermath of the injection.  The CDC website shows that excess deaths have tracked above their upper bound threshold for many months.  During this same time, the number of shots administered has dramatically gone down, making near-term vaccine effects unlikely to be the cause.  In ordinary times, it is fairly rare for the excess deaths to ever get above this threshold.  These continued excess deaths are worrisome and could be a sign that something latent from the shots is continuing to harm people, just as the radiation silently ate away at the bones of the watch dial painters.

Doubling down on the fraud: The mountain of lies by USRC and the lack of any effort to protect, warn, or help the painters is unbelievable and heartbreaking.  Just as USRC had done, our COVID masters have doubled down on the "totally safe" fraud even while the body of contrary evidence explodes.  Ed Dowd talks frequently in interviews about his experience on Wall Street and how companies continue engaging in blatant fraud long after it becomes obvious, stopping only when they are forcefully stopped.  While the shots are documented to be not effective, we still get assaulted by admonitions to get injected such as this rancid holiday health alert and this odd ad.

Reluctance to see the truth: For some time after they and their coworkers began to experience symptoms, the watch dial painters continued painting, choosing to believe their employer's word that the paint was harmless.  They needed their wages and they were likely afraid to face the fact that they had already received a life-threatening injury.  Similarly, those who have taken the Pfizer and Moderna injections can continue living in denial that they have put themselves or their loved ones at risk as long as they ignore the truth, even though acknowledging the danger from the shots could be the first step in mitigating their effects.

Compliance of experts and government regulators: With the painters, the Department of Labor, local health authorities, and the Harvard School of Public Health (all of whom should have been protecting the workers) either sided with the company or looked the other way.  In our time, government regulators, the medical establishment, the press, the military, corporations, religious leaders, and experts worldwide speak with one voice about the safety of the jab and the need to keep taking it.

It is the worldwide nature of the power play of the forced COVID-19 shots that distinguishes it from the smaller, more contained industrial evil inflicted on the watch dial painters.  Indeed, the huge scope itself makes the fraud hard to believe and seemingly impossible to stop.

Kate Moore's book can bring one to tears over the suffering and deaths of young women from a century ago.  The radiation victims' numbers are dwarfed, however, by the huge number of innocent people in our time with names, lives, and loved ones who have been killed or disabled by the shots.  The perpetrators pushing the shots are not subject to persuasion and will not stop voluntarily.  We must use every legal means at our disposal to put the wheels of justice in motion to end this barbarous chapter of "public health."

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more- Jan 23

 

Reckless Reparations Reckoning ~ VDH

The lesson from the $22 trillion record of Great Society compensatory payouts is that massive infusions of federal money are more apt to ensure social disruption and dislocation than alleviate them. 

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

The last time racial reparations made the major news was on the eve of September 11, 2001 attacks. The loss of 3,000 Americans, which for a time fueled a new national unity, quickly dispelled the absurdities of the reparation movement, and turned our attention toward more existential issues. 

Now the idea is back in vogue again. Here are 10 reasons why the nation’s—and especially California’s—discussions of reparatory payouts are dangerous in a multiracial state, and why reparations are not viable either in an insolvent state or a bankrupt nation at large.

1) Identity Politics Absurdities

We live in an absurd woke age of retribalization. It has witnessed Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for mutual advantage, advertised as Harvard’s first Native-American law professor. 

Fellow Montecito mansion denizens Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle and multibillionaire Oprah Winfrey swap ridiculous televised stories of their own racial victimization. 

“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett initially was canonized by our top elected leaders and exempted for months by Chicago legal authorities after claiming the following absurdity: two white, MAGA-hatted racists, on their apparently routine nightly racist patrols in a liberal Chicago neighborhood and equipped both with special bleach that does not freeze in subzero temperatures and an ever-ready, just-in-case noose, assaulted Jussie. They put a rope around his neck and libeled his predominately black “Empire” soap-opera show—only to be repulsed single-footedly by a courageous Smollett, while retaining in one hand his cell phone and in the other his late night Subway sandwich. 

Note that in these nutty cases and thousands like them, there is the cynical assumption that current American society, and the government as well, reward claims of racial victimization. That is why a Ward Churchill or Rachel Dolezal constructed new racial identities to game the system for profit. 

One of the racialist universities’ current admissions challenges is their checkbox of “mixed race.” Whites and Asians often feign mixed parentages in hopes of being assumed either part black, Latino, or Native American. Any such partial lineage is seen as preferable to their own race. In our old racist society, one used to attempt to pass for white; in our new racist society, one attempts to pass for non-white. 

Current racial tribalization obsessions have descended into a nadir that makes Al Sharpton’s 1990s Tawana Brawley/Crown-Heights career start (“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”/ “We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”) look amateurish in comparison. In this context, new calls arise for ludicrous reparations simply because we have become a ludicrous society.

2) Who Is Who?

Lots of racially obsessed tribal groups, in our multiracial, intermarried, assimilated, and integrated postmodern America, for perceived advantage still claim racial purity. 

Yet to further those claims, they ultimately will rely on DNA certification (ask Elizabeth Warren how that went down). Perhaps some will resort to the sort of sick rules of past racialized societies such as the Old South (“the one-drop rule”), Hitler’s Germany (yellow stars), or apartheid South Africa (racial certificates). Stanford University recently deplored its recent past of anti-Semitic admissions—even as it has adopted an entire canon of racial classifications to return to the very categories that it now claims to regret. After all, Jews with superior transcripts in the 1950s were turned away for being Jewish and now a century of regression later are turned away for being considered white. 

Do we adopt the South’s 1/16 rule that is occasionally used by Native-American gaming casinos and perhaps, stealthily, universities? Will blacks applying for reparations have to hire genealogists to calibrate percentages of racial purity to assess corresponding reparatory remunerations? 

How will the multimillionaire Barack Obama be adjudicated? He has zero African-American parentage. He went to prep school, funded by his white grandmother, a bank president. He is half-black due to his Kenyan father. But the latter was a temporary resident of the United States with no connection to slavery or Jim Crow. 

Do we distinguish between African Americans born in the United States and African and Caribbean immigrants with no histories of ancestors who lived under Jim Crow or were American-based slaves? How white or Asian or Latino can one be and still qualify for black reparations? These are absurd questions only because our absurd system demands that they will ultimately have to be answered absurdly.

3) Whose Culpability?

California is at the forefront of the reparation lobbying effort. Yet it was neither a slave nor a Jim-Crow state. On the eve of the Civil War, the federal census recorded only about 4,000 free black citizens residing in the free state of California, or about 1 percent of the nearly 400,000 residents in 1860. 

The relatively new state remained part of the Union, in which no major battles of the war over slavery were waged. The pathology did not exist anywhere in California and the population was overwhelmingly loyal to the Union. 

In other words, reparations based on slavery is not a cohesive argument for the current-day 40 millions of California, in which over one-quarter of the residents were not even born in the United States. 

Are whites with Confederate ancestors more culpable than Michiganders or Ohioans, whose great-great-great grandfathers marched through Georgia, freeing slaves or who died fighting side-by-side with black soldiers at Fort Pillow against General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederates? 

Will the ancestors of blacks who fought with the Confederacy, or were descended from slave traders in Africa, qualify for reparations? Will whites whose ancestors died fighting the racist Third Reich or the racist Imperial Japanese be given tax exemptions from paying the cost of reparations? 

If prior violent felony convictions disqualify one from voting, will the same be true of reparations? Will convicted murders, rapists, and assaulters be issued government reparatory checks?

4) Comparative Grievances

Will Armenian- and Jewish-Americans have equal or more compelling claims as well? Both groups arrived following the genocides of their own people. Many had relatives who perished due to discriminatory immigration laws that denied them entry into the United States. Nearly 8 million Jews and Armenians were murdered in the Nazi and Turkish genocides. Those totals are 23,000 times greater than the 3,500 blacks believed to have been lynched from 1882-1968 (a period during which 1,300 whites were also lynched). 

Arguably these two groups suffered more killed in their 20th-century histories than all other American racial and ethnic groups combined. And such genocide, in our current ways of thinking, was imprinted on their collective psyches in a way few other oppressed groups could imagine. 

Both were subject to zoning restrictions on home purchases and Jews were overtly discriminated against in Ivy League admissions for a half-century. 

Stanford University was founded in part on the profits of exploiting cheap Chinese railroad labor, often in racist fashion. For a time, 19th-century racialist discussions centered around whether starving Irish immigrants were fully human. The recorded hot-mic outbursts from various Latino Los Angeles City Council and union members reminds us that racism is not a black/white binary. Instead, it has become a circular firing squad, with ammunition that will be radically increased by discriminatory reparations. 

5) Plus and Minus Ledgers

If we are to envision individuals only as racial collectives, and then assess their grievances on the basis of distant claims of ill-treatment, and if we are also to assess contemporary black claims as of greater immediacy than say those of Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, poor whites, gays, the disabled, and the transgendered, then if we are no longer individuals, are we to calibrate both relative pluses and minuses that help calculate oppressors versus the oppressed? 

Therefore, should we also ascertain each racial group’s federal crime statistics? That way we could calibrate whether any one tribe has been collectively disproportionality guilty of hate crimes or violent rape, murder, and assault, committed against other groups, who have been percentagewise inordinately the victims of hate and violent crimes? 

Then in our sick game of racial arithmetic, through such a complex calculus, should we assess which particular group falls on the plus or minus side of the reparations ledger? Will groups who have been denied college admissions and job opportunities on the basis of their race since 1965, likewise lodge claims against the state, calculating how institutionalized race-based discrimination has harmed them financially? 

In this context, would Asians who proportionately are least likely as a collective to commit crimes, but suffer disproportionately as victims of hate crimes and reverse discrimination in college admissions, and who have weathered a history of anti-Asian discrimination, perhaps have the best claim on reparatory compensations? 

Or are reparations really not about the past, but solely the present and thus fueled by one reality: blacks believe they collectively are not doing as well economically as Latinos or Asians and therefore attribute the lack of parity to the past, in order to find equity in the present that so far has not been attained?

6) Reparations Upon Reparations

The Heritage Foundation not long ago pegged the cost of Great Society redistributionist entitlement programs at $22 trillion. For a half-century the courts have engaged in multibillion dollar reparatory settlements. To take one example, under the so-called Pigford I and II payouts, black farmers received $5 billion dollars in payouts. Are we to total up thousands of such court settlements or other compensatory federal entitlements that were race-based to subtract from the current racialized reparatory obligations? Can a half-century of affirmative action be monetized, calibrated, and deducted from reparatory obligations? 

Again, ridiculous questions like that arise because ridiculous people are ridiculously attempting to monetize purported reparations. 

7) Class claims?

Over one-fifth of the California population currently lives below the poverty line. One third of the nation’s welfare recipients live in California. Will reparations in the state with the largest number of absolute poor and homeless people ignore class considerations—in an age when class and racial statuses are no longer synonymous? 

Are some of the grandchildren of the Oklahoma diaspora, who work minimum-wage jobs and have no college-educated relatives in their families, to pay increased taxes to ensure reparations to third-generation, college educated, diversity, equity, and inclusion, six-figure salaried campus administrators?

8) Financial Insolvency

California is currently facing a mounting budget deficit of between $25 and $40 billion. The nation itself heads into a likely recessionary or stagflationary economy in 2023. Billions of dollars in capital and more than 300,000 residents a year are fleeing California, due to the highest combined basket of income, sales, property, and gas taxes in the nation. About half the state’s resident households do not pay income taxes, while the one percent often pays nearly 50 percent of all state income tax revenues. 

So how does an insolvent state facing a huge budget deficit, and over $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities, in a nation with a $31 trillion national debt and a $1.5 trillion annual deficit, borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to pay 12 percent of the population for the purported sins of nearly 160 years ago, when most of those who enslaved and were enslaved have been dead for over a century? Upon which culpable group are the taxes necessary to redistribute such vast amounts to be leveled?

9) No Statutes of Limitations?

There has not been slavery in the United States in some 158 years since the end of the Civil War. If a generation can be defined as 25 years, there has not been a living American with personal experience of slavery in generations. Few of any Americans even know the names of, or much of anything about, their great-great-great-great grandparents. 

In that context, what was the collective price that all of white America of 1861 was properly to pay for the contemporary slave-holding society of the Old South? Since we are going back 16 decades to ensure fairness in the present, were 500,000, 600,000, or 700,000 dead between 1861 and 1865 in battle or due to disease and illness on campaign, sufficient wages for the sins of slavery? Should the United States assess West-African nations reparatory fines for their active participation in the Atlantic slave trade, given the enslavement of black Africans by black Africans was essential for ensuring the slave trade’s trajectory to the New World? 

The evil institution of slavery itself did not enrich generations of subsequent Americans. Reactionary slavery instead explains why the 11 Confederate states were, in aggregate, far poorer in almost every category of economic development than their Northern Union adversaries. After the war, almost all the riches of the plantation class and its prewar profits from slavery vanished during the fighting and reconstruction, and most antebellum slave-based wealth was not inheritable by the vast majority of the postbellum South.

10) Salutary Effect?

In 2020 nearly 10,000 blacks, mostly young males, were murdered, the vast majority by other blacks. 

Blacks, who make up about 12 percent of the population account each year for about 50-55 percent of all homicide victims and murderers taken together. But beyond that, there is an epidemic of disproportionately black violent crimes (over 50 percent of all firearm assaults and juvenile violent crime). In the black community, over 72 percent of births are out of wedlock, one-parent households account for about 64 percent of all black families, and a third of blacks have felony convictions. These current challenges might deserve more focus and federal action than simple cash payouts for the sins of the pre-Civil-Rights era.       

If there has been any lesson from the $22 trillion record of Great Society compensatory payouts, it is that massive infusions of federal money are more apt to ensure social disruption and dislocation than alleviate them. 

In sum, it would be hard to imagine a more volatile idea than racial reparations in our current multiracial society. But if the goal of the architects of reparations is to accelerate our rendezvous with the former Yugoslavia or Rwanda, then it certainly may get us there far sooner than we think.

Kamala Harris Starts Yelling ‘How Dare They’ in Wild Pro-Abortion Rant

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

I regret to inform you that Kamala Harris is doing Kamala Harris things again. The comically uncharismatic vice president appeared in Florida over the weekend to hold a pro-abortion rally. Harris originally wanted to do the event at the Florida State Capitol building but her request was rejected, likely with some input from Gov. Ron DeSantis.

So why does the second most powerful person in the country need to go to the Sunshine State to stump for abortion? I’m glad you asked, and we’ll get to that, but first, let’s just marvel at the raw political talent that Harris possesses.

During her fiery speech, she decided to channel Greta Thunberg, albeit with a slight variation, shouting “how dare they” multiple times at the prospect of Republicans not killing children. She’s just so darn good at this.

If you went into a lab and tried to come up with the worst politician imaginable, you’d still end up with something better than Harris. She has all the dynamism of an inebriated sloth, reading off her lines while attempting to muster up some sense of emotion and conviction. It always just comes across as inauthentic and contrived, which happens to be the perfect description of Harris as a whole.

But forget her horrible presentation for a moment. How morally depraved does someone have to be to stand up behind the bully pulpit afforded to the vice president and shout “how dare they” about people who don’t want to kill babies in the womb? How dare they? Really? Is Harris confused about what happens during an abortion? Because I can enlighten her if it’d help matters.

Of all the topics in politics, it’s the abortion debate that gets me the most, and not just because the stakes are so high. In a world that’s been turned upside down, there is no more of a perversion of basic logic than the idea that it’s a moral failing to be anti-abortion. Harris would never describe it in such detail because the pro-abortion movement lives on euphemisms, but when she stands up there and shouts “how dare they,” she’s asking how anyone could possibly be opposed to a procedure that kills a child by scrambling them and sucking their body parts out of the womb with a vacuum.

Even if one is pro-abortion, that shouldn’t be hard to understand. The basis of the pro-life movement is the protection of unborn life. Harris may not care what happens to unwanted children, but many people do. That’s what motivates them, not this ridiculous idea that they want to “control” other people. And no, they aren’t required to support a socialistic utopia in order to be able to think taking the life of a child is wrong.

For all the arguments we have over politicians and their failings, they all seem quaint in comparison to the abortion debate. These days, you can hardly find a mainstream Democrat who doesn’t support abortion until birth. Heck, you can’t even get the Democratic Party to guarantee medical treatment to babies who survive botched abortions. That’s how far we’ve regressed as a nation.

Democrats Propose Overturning The First Amendment

Happy Birthday, Citizens United!

David Harsanyi reporting for The Federalist

Adam Schiff and a group of Democrats introduced a proposed constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision, one of the greatest free-speech victories in history.

It’s just a political stunt, of course, as Schiff doesn’t have the votes. But it does reflect the authoritarian outlook of the contemporary left on free expression. From the day the decision came down, 13 years ago this week, Citizens United was a rallying cry for those threatened by unregulated discourse. President Barack Obama infamously, and inaccurately, rebuked the justices during his State of the Union for upholding the First Amendment. Since then, Democrats have regularly blamed the decision for the alleged corrosion of “democracy.”

Recall, however, that Citizens United decision revolved around the federal government’s banning of a documentary critical of 2008 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton before the Democratic primary elections. At the time, McCain-Feingold made it illegal for corporations (groups of freely associating citizens) and unions (ditto) to engage in “electioneering” a month before a primary or two months before a general election. It was outright censorship. In oral arguments, then-Solicitor General of the United States, now-Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan initially contended that the federal government had the right to censor books that “express advocacy.”

Also recall that “campaign finance” laws — speech codes, in reality — were written by politicians and defended by a media encumbered by any limitations on their own free expression. These detestable laws prohibited groups of citizens from assembling and pooling their resources to engage more effectively in what is the most important kind of political expression at the most vital time, right before an election.

Schiff’s amendment would overturn Citizens United, and thus the First Amendment, and empower state and federal governments to enact “reasonable, viewpoint-neutral” limitations on speech that “influences” elections.

For one thing, even if wholly neutral restrictions of political speech were possible, they would still be restrictions on expression. It doesn’t matter one whit if you find those restrictions “reasonable” or “neutral.” The right of free speech isn’t contingent on fairness or outcomes or your good faith limitations. It is a free-standing, inherent right protected by the Constitution, not prescribed to us by the state in portions. It’s amazing that this has to be said.

Moreover, do Democrats trust Kevin McCarthy’s conception of “reasonable”? Because I don’t. Nor do I trust Hakeem Jeffries or that weasel Schiff, who has already personally engaged in censoring dissent. As Lois Lerner could tell you, any law empowering bureaucrats to define political speech will be arbitrarily enforced and, inevitably, abused. The only “viewpoint-neutral” position on speech is that it’s none of the state’s business.

Then again, not even the amendment is neutral. Section 4 of Schiff’s proposal offers an exemption to the “press.” Who are the press? Bureaucrats, no doubt, will make that determination. Schiff knows that most large communication companies already work for Democrats. The big studios produce movies and documentaries with one ideological viewpoint; and major news outlets give one side billions in in-kind contributions.

The amendment would strip one group of its power to compete in the marketplace of ideas. “By taking the right to speak from some and giving it to others,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority in Citizens United, “the Government deprives the disadvantaged person or class of the right to use speech to strive to establish worth, standing, and respect for the speaker’s voice.”

Schiff’s amendment could also be used to strip people of anonymity. “Dark money” has been a bogeyman of the left for years, treated as one of the most corrosive elements in contemporary politics — even though leftists are more reliant on anonymous big-dollar money than conservatives. Of course, the expectation that private citizens have any responsibility to publicly attach their names to political speech — as Publius might tell you — is destructive nonsense.

“Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority,” the 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission famously noted. It “exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation … at the hand of an intolerant society.” There are entire genres of mainstream “reporting” that exist to dox heretics and punish dissent and engage in struggle sessions. Leftists want to create as many Brendan Eichs as possible to chill speech.

Schiff claims he wants to “return power to people” by allowing the state to prescribe the way they can participate in political debate. Schiff’s amendment includes restricting corporations from spending “unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.” Corporations have been banned from donating directly to candidates since 1907. But why shouldn’t private entities, groups of people, be allowed to “influence” politics? Anyway, you can already imagine the malleability of the word “influence.” Will California ban corporations from influencing green policy? Or only from influencing cultural policy? Boy, I wonder.

A decade ago, politicians would give us some perfunctory words about the importance of free expression. Those days are gone. The bogus panic over “disinformation” — with free will, you guys are far too susceptible to bad ideas — has given them the excuse to wring their hands over the dangerous excesses of the First Amendment.

These days a person can contribute as much money as he pleases to any independent group that shares his values. The notion that there should be restrictions stopping you from airing those views, whether you’re a billionaire or a poor student, is fundamentally un-American and authoritarian.

Joe Manchin Doing that Purple Thing Again – Admits No Federal Budget in Last 12 Years

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin appears with his good friend Chuck Todd for an interview about ongoing political events to include the debt ceiling.

As Manchin and Todd finish each other’s sentences, the discussion hits on the upcoming debt ceiling battle.  Manchin surprisingly pulls out the purple card and states the super-secret thing that no one in DC will admit.  The last federal budget was signed into law September 2008, for fiscal year 2009.  From that moment forward, there has been nothing except continuing resolutions and omnibus spending bills [SIDENOTE: this approach was by design by Obama/Pelosi].

This 12-year timeline includes the entire tenure of House Speaker Paul Ryan, former Budget Committee Chair, who now uses the absence of the budget as a tool to advance his outside impression that DC is fiscally reckless, insert pearl clutching here. I digress.  Manchin is positioning himself as the ‘purple’ option for 2024. WATCH (or read):

[Transcript] – CHUCK TODD: And joining me now is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Senator Manchin, welcome back to Meet the Press.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Chuck, it’s always good to be with you.

CHUCK TODD: Look, I want to get into the debt ceiling. I want to get into all this stuff. But I — we got some developments overnight with those classified documents, an FBI search — the White House said it was coordinated with the FBI. But we’ve now had an FBI search of former President Trump. Now we have an FBI search into President Biden’s residence. What’s your assessment of how the president has handled the situation?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Well, I mean, it’s just hard to believe that in the United States of America, we have a former president and a current president that are basically in the same situation. How does this happen? You know, only thing I can tell you, Chuck, is when I go into the SCIF with the secure documents, they always ask, “Are you clean?” when you walk out. They want to make sure you’re not carrying anything out. You know, and it might be a mistake. You might just put it in your other papers, but you double-check right there. To be held accountable and responsible is what we all are. And to put those in unsecured spaces is irresponsible.

CHUCK TODD: Do you see similarities, or do you see more differences in how President Trump versus how President Biden —

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: I’m not going to make —

CHUCK TODD: — has handled this?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: — that decision, but I think that Merrick Garland did the right thing by putting the special counsel.

CHUCK TODD: You do?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: And I think that we should wait until the special counsel, rather than making this a political circus. Let them find out the facts. What — was one more damaging? Are they both about the same, did not cause any problem, or is one more reckless and irresponsible than the other? I can’t answer that question, but I think the special counsel will do a better job than the politicians and the political circus that is going to follow.

CHUCK TODD: President Biden said he had no regrets in how he handled this. Do you have any advice for him on how he should handle this going forward?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Oh, I think he should have a lot of regrets. Yeah. I would —

CHUCK TODD: What are those —

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: I would think that. I said, “Whoever’s responsible.” I mean, if I hold people accountable, and I use — whether my chief of staff or, you know, my staff, who, that were doing this, that I’m looking at, then I’m going to hold someone accountable. But basically, the buck stops with me.

CHUCK TODD: So you think he should be out there, “Look, I mess — I messed up –”

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: That’s all. Just say —

CHUCK TODD: “Maybe I didn’t do it.” Just say it —

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: — “I made a mistake.”

CHUCK TODD: Just fall on your sword here?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: We’re all human.

CHUCK TODD: Yeah.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: We make mistakes. I can tell you I don’t think anyone intended, he sure didn’t intend for it to fall in wrong hands and use it against our country. I know they didn’t intend that to happen. Could it have happened? I don’t know. And yeah, you just might as well say, “Listen, it’s irresponsible. It was something we should’ve had a better check and balance on.”

CHUCK TODD: Now, former President Trump defied a subpoena. So in that sense, the, the way each has handled it is different.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Yes.

CHUCK TODD: Do you acknowledge that?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Absolutely. Much different than the other. One’s saying, “Okay, I hope I didn’t make any mistakes.

CHUCK TODD: Right.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: — I hope no one’s compromised. I hope we didn’t hurt our country.” And the other one says, “Ugh, no. I know it didn’t. Believe me.” Well, you know what? What they said, verify? You have to verify.

CHUCK TODD: Trust but verify?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Trust but verify. Let’s find out. And that’s what the special counsel’s —

CHUCK TODD: And that’s what you want here? Both special counsels to sort of resolve this?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: First of all, every one of us, in our life, have to be held accountable and responsible for our actions because people want accountability. And they want basically when you’re held accountable, are you responsible or not? If you are, would you — can you fix that? Did you make a mistake? Fine. You’re, you know —

CHUCK TODD: And that’s what you think – the president needs to get out there and just get in front of this?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Cicero, Cicero said, “To err is human.” You’re a human being. You’re going to make mistakes. Did you intend to make it? Did you intend to harm somebody? Did you intend to basically do an irresponsible thing? I don’t think — hopefully, neither one of them did.

CHUCK TODD: Right.

SEN. JOE MANCHIIN: But it sure turned out to be irresponsible.

CHUCK TODD: Let’s talk about the debt ceiling. You’re — as always, you’re trying to find a compromise, middle ground.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Yeah.

CHUCK TODD: I know your instinct here. But why should Republicans get the benefit of the doubt on the debt ceiling here, considering that it’s a — that they’re sort of manufacturing a crisis that’s a bit unnecessary right now?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Well, first of all, if one side thinks that the other one’s more responsible for the debt at $31.4 trillion, that’s, that is totally not accurate and it’s deceptive. We’re all responsible. We’ve got a $31.4 trillion debt. It’s a runaway debt, and no one’s holding themselves accountable. And basically, I think you said it, use the budget process. I’ve been here 12 years. We haven’t had a budget yet.

CHUCK TODD: Yeah. I — that’s what I don’t get here.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: We haven’t had a budget yet.

CHUCK TODD: And that’s what I question —

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Yeah, you should.

CHUCK TODD: — you want to do this special committee here.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: I’m —

CHUCK TODD: And I’m sitting here going, “Why add more “bureaucracy?” We have a budget committee. We have two budget committees. We have a Joint Committee on Taxation. We have all these different committees that have already been created to deal with this process. Why can’t we use the congressional bureaucracy that exists?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: We have 12 appropriations committees —

CHUCK TODD: They’re —

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: They’re supposed to do their job. Why don’t you basically put a time certain on —

CHUCK TODD: Right.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: — what you can do and what you can’t and when you do it? I can’t speak for that. I was a former governor of the state of West Virginia.

CHUCK TODD: Right.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: I was responsible for a balanced budget amendment and basically staying within the realms of my Constitution. So, you know, I met every week. Every week like clockwork they walked in my office on a Tuesday or Wednesday and sit down and go over it. You’re either going to be — have to make some cuts now, make some adjustments now, so we end the year with a balanced budget or a surplus. There’s nothing that holds us accountable. Nothing at all. We can say, “Oh, we’re going to do it.” As I’ve said before, 12 years, haven’t had a budget. That’s ridiculous.

CHUCK TODD: So, let me — you want to do this sort of, that you and Senator Romney, to have committee that deals with the trust fund issues. But right now, neither party wants to touch – I mean, in that sense, Donald Trump came out, and certainly Democrats, nobody wants to touch Social Security or Medicare.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Well, first of all —

CHUCK TODD: So how do you separate those two out and deal with our fiscal problems?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Why would you scare the bejesus out of people that are basically going to say — in West Virginia, I’ve got 60% of my population that that’s all they have is Medicare and Social Security. You think I’m going to go down that path and put them in jeopardy? No. But there are so much other things, the basically wasteful spending, that can be corralled in without scaring the bejesus, depending on what political side you’re on.

CHUCK TODD: Let me ask you about wasteful spending, because one of the three most hypocritical words I hear are “waste, fraud and abuse.” Right. Everybody says, “Oh, waste, fraud, and abuse.”

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: And it’s all there. It’s all there.

CHUCK TODD: Okay, but waste, fraud, and abuse aren’t going to balance the budget, ok? At the end of the day, there are going to have to be choices that have to be made. What is something that ought to be on, on, in the decision of, “You know, maybe we’re spending too much”?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Well, we know we’re spending too much because we’re not balancing our budget and —

CHUCK TODD: But on what?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: — we have more debt. The bottom line is, it’s in the eyes of the beholder. That’s the problem that we have. Five-hundred-and-thirty-five people said, “Well, yeah. What you’re doing is wasteful, Chuck. I think you ought to cut that.” And you’re going to say, “Okay, Joe. How about yours?”

CHUCK TODD: But your, your spending that you think is mandatory, another person thinks is wasteful or abuse.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Yeah. Just think, for every dollar, just get it down, break it down to the dollar. Is there any savings within that dollar you think that is wasteful or abuse that we could at least have a target to set? Is it a penny? Is it five pennies? Is it a nickel? Where is it?

CHUCK TODD: But here’s what gets lost here, is nobody will put anything on the table. Everybody says, “We’ve got to cut spending.” Well, what? And nobody wants to articulate —

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Well, the process —

CHUCK TODD:– the what.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Chuck, you hit it dead on the head. The process isn’t working. How come we’re not held accountable to have – to have the appropriation bills done at a certain time before the end of the fiscal year?

CHUCK TODD: You tell me.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Well, that’s what I —

CHUCK TODD: I mean –

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: You know –

CHUCK TODD: – what does Chuck Schumer say? What does Mitch McConnell

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: You know what happens? It rolls over into an omnibus bill at the end and everything’s thrown into it. “Okay. Here we got it, guys. That’s it.” It makes no sense.

CHUCK TODD: So what should – it sounds like you actually think the debt ceiling is a moment we should use to focus on —

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Well, if you’re going to use the debt ceiling for anything except for theatrics, okay, which is what probably might happen for a while, we’re going to pass the debt ceiling. You are exactly correct.

CHUCK TODD: Right.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: It has to pass. You know, we have the currency of it, you know – the good faith of the United States dollar and the currency of the world. You just can’t let it default and basically hold us in jeopardy from where we stand in the world, world order. With that being said, is how do you get to it? Do you use this moment? Do you come to a reason – responsibility? What are we paying for interest now? For ten years, it was zero. It was funny money. Were not – you know, it doesn’t put any burden. We’re just raising debt, but we’re not basically harming how we have to meet that debt through our interest payments. Now we’re talking real money on an interest basis. We’re almost, up to what our defense budget is, paying in interest.

CHUCK TODD: I guess I come back to, and I don’t think you have the answer either, which is what is the moment to force this conversation?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: This is a moment if, if Kevin McCarthy coming in – coming in new says, “Okay, this is – it’s serious,” and he takes it from the standpoint. And he knows —

CHUCK TODD: What does he need to do that you would take him seriously in this?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Well, you know, Chuck —

CHUCK TODD: Do you know what I mean by that? Like, how do you know when he’s being serious, and how do you when he’s paying politics?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Well, the bottom line is he has a hell of a – heck of a political hand that’s not, not very good right now. He’s not holding a lot, if you will. And he has ten or 12 that’s pretty much out there. He has to make a decision how he wants to govern and how he ought to these next two years in this 118th Congress. You know – I just – it was amazing. I just saw that the Ohio legislature, I don’t know if you paid any attention to that —

CHUCK TODD: I did. Yeah.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: The Ohio legislature, which is Republican-controlled –

CHUCK TODD: Yeah.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: – basically chose their new speaker, a Republican, with as many, if not more votes, from the Democrats because they wanted someone they can work with. That’s a coalition. Why can’t we put coalitions together here?

CHUCK TODD: Well, that’s —

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: The moderate, centrist Democrats coming over and working, whoever’s the majority, and saying, “You don’t have to bow and cow-tail to the extremes.”

CHUCK TODD: Yeah. You don’t have to worry about primaries. A lot of your colleagues have to worry about primaries. Isn’t that why this —

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Let me tell you —

CHUCK TODD – doesn’t happen?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: – one more thing. I’ve got to be honest with you, Chuck. If it’s all about the election, the next election, you know, that’s the worst thing that could happen to us.

CHUCK TODD: You just came from Davos.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Yeah.

CHUCK TODD: There’s a moment, I don’t know if you realized, that went viral between you and Senator Sinema. I want to show the moment here. I want to ask you about it. You guys are high-fiving. I think we’ll show it again here. It was right after she was talking about the filibuster.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Yeah.

CHUCK TODD: Is that what you were high-fiving about?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Yeah, that was – I think, you know, after that. I saw her hand go up and I said, “Sure” because here, the two of us are committed to protecting the filibuster, which I think protects checks and balances on the executive branch. So if you have a Democrat, Democrat, Democrat – president, House and Senate – and you have a strong president, basically leader of the party, then you don’t have a check and balance because I can guarantee you the House and Senate will roll wherever the president wants. I – and I’ve said this before. I appreciate the Republican senators and the leadership of the minority leader at that time, McConnell, majority leader at that time – with Donald Trump every day beating on him, “Get rid of the filibuster.” You’ve got 53, 54 Republicans, and he would not. And I appreciate that. And I told Harry Reid we should not have done it when we did it in 2013. But to come back now, the checks and balances aren’t there. It makes and forces them to work together. Think what we’ve accomplished in the 117th, the most divided Congress we’ve ever had, and we did more substantial bills, I think that’s going to be transformational.

CHUCK TODD: You think those first two years of Biden and this Democratic Congress is going to be historic?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: I think it’s going to be transformational and historical, yes, because here you had a bipartisan infrastructure bill we haven’t done for years.

CHUCK TODD: Yeah.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: You had then on top of that the CHIPS Act, which will bring manufacturing back so we don’t have supply chains that we’re depending on that aren’t loyal and trustworthy. And then we have the Inflation Reduction Act, which is going to give us – it’s been misaligned because this administration basically said it’s environmental, environmental, environmental. That bill is designed to be energy security, Chuck. And energy security is exactly what we need.

CHUCK TODD: And you’re frustrated that the White House won’t say the phrase “energy security”?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: They will not use the word, and they haven’t. I’m begging you all, please. Energy security. We have to have fossil. We do it better and cleaner than anywhere in the world. And we can be energy secured for ten years, and also be able to invest in technology of the future.

CHUCK TODD: Is this an agenda you can run for reelection on in West Virginia?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Oh, most certainly because we’re seeing right now, I’ve got a battery plant coming in. I’ve got basically hydrogen coming in that direction. We’ve got expansion. And we’re raising our coal with carbon capture sequestration. We’ve got basically methane capturing using gas. We have people that are fighting continuously. And you have to have the pipeline to move this product. And it’s going to be needed. If not, you’re going to end up like Europe. And that’s where I didn’t want to rub it into them, but Europe took an approach that they’re going to say, “We’re going to have cap-and-trade.” And we’re going to be basically charging you a carbon tax.” I’ve said, “I’m not going to support that and vote for it because I think it doesn’t work.” So I took the approach, and basically we wrote this bill with incentives. And it was working. And that’s why they were all upset. That’s why the chancellor and that’s why presidents of other countries were very upset on this bill and concerned about it.

CHUCK TODD: If you run for office in 2024, are you going to run as a Democrat?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Chuck, I haven’t made a decision what I’m going to do in 2024. I’ve got two years ahead of me now to do the best I can for the state and for my country.

CHUCK TODD: What are – what’s on the table? Is reelection on the table?

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: Everything’s on the table.

[End Transcript]