As it turns out, the federal government is still incompetent, and Biden’s only real contribution to vaccine distribution has failed. The program is now being reconsidered.

POLITICO
@politico
The Biden administration is rethinking a costly system of government-run mass vaccination sites after data revealed the program is lagging well behind a much cheaper federal effort to distribute doses via retail pharmacies. //

Who could have possibly foreseen this? Well, except Donald Trump and every other critically thinking person on the planet. State, local, and private entities already had the infrastructure setup, whether it was an already existent state health center or a pharmacy with the current staff to give vaccines. Republicans knew that which is why they prioritized the development and initial procurement of the vaccine. They didn’t then try to set a bunch of rules and jam down a federally controlled distribution process. That has led to the United States being one of the best countries (and certainly of our size) in the world at getting the vaccine into the population.

In other words, Trump’s plan succeeded, and all the hysterical narratives about him “not doing anything” by leaving it to the states was nonsense. Further, Biden’s promise to get 100 federal sites up and going never even materialized. The last count I heard, there were under a dozen open.

Unfortunately, there rarely seems to be any accountability for FAA incompetence. Did any heads roll for its lack of responsive oversight prior to the Collings crash? If so, I haven’t heard about it. This is managerial and cultural rot. If the organization has an overarching culture of individuals not owning problems and fixing them, nothing gets done.

What to do here? First, the NTSB is right to examine this issue, but is constrained in what it can do. To push the FAA into action would probably require congressional heat. But even that sometimes doesn’t yield results, since the agency is famous for ignoring congressional mandates with little accountability. It seems to me no new regulations are required. It’s reasonable to believe that if existing procedures had been followed, the Collings maintenance issues might have been identified and corrected, with the emphasis on might. It’s a better-than-nothing kind of thing. That applies to the Dillingham skydiving crash in Hawaii, too. Maintenance issues with the airplane were egregious and surveillance was nonexistent. Even cursory FAA inspections should have caught this. The FAA needs to do the basic job, never mind an enhanced one. //

I’d rather such a thing come from AOPA, USPA or EAA rather than the FAA. //

Ultimately, Part 91 flight safety depends much more on the judgment, skill and attitude of the pilot than does Part 121 or even 135 flying. In Part 91 flying, almost all the judgments are made in the cockpit without benefit of the overwatch of professional dispatchers, meteorologists and maintenance at the other end of a satellite phone or an ACARS message. We set it up that way. We want it that way. //

I believe the informed consent doctrine applies here. As I’ve reported before, this is how the FAA decided to oversee tourist spaceflight. Potential passengers are informed in detail that the vehicle is not certified and that they’re on their own for assuming the risk. In my view, it’s long past time to disabuse the public of the notion that Part 91 flying is “safe” and/or that the FAA can make it that way. The government can and should impose requirements to reduce risk in design and manufacturing of aircraft, maintenance and operations and adherence to regulations. That includes reasonable surveillance and enforcement. Reduced risk is not the same thing as safe.

So the answer to member Homendy’s question is no, there isn’t a practical way to anoint a Part 91 operation as “safe” because even enhanced surveillance—which the FAA has proven itself incapable of performing—is unlikely to deliver the public’s idea of flight safety, which is Delta Air Lines. Thumbs up to better surveillance and inspections and the FAA doing its basic job of assuring compliance and of enforcing against the really bad operators. We often know who they are ahead of any accident happening. But we should stop misleading the public that flight on Part 91 airplanes represents the same level of safety as airline flying. It does not.

Byron York
@ByronYork
Takeaways from this NYT story: 1) Trump's leadership on vaccine was vastly better than anyone in Europe. 2) When it came to a vaccine, Britain was smart to leave the EU. 3) On 1 and 2, elite opinion was dreadfully wrong.

The New York Times
@nytimes
The U.S. and Britain have sped ahead of Europe in terms of vaccinations. What went wrong? https://nyti.ms/3vLz5w4 //

The bloc was comparatively slow to negotiate contracts with drugmakers. Its regulators were cautious and deliberative in approving some vaccines. Europe also bet on vaccines that did not pan out or, significantly, had supply disruptions. And national governments snarled local efforts in red tape. //

The United States basically went into business with the drugmakers, spending much more heavily to accelerate vaccine development, testing and production…“They assumed that simply contracting to acquire doses would be enough,” recalled Dr. Slaoui, whom President Donald J. Trump hired to speed the vaccine development. “In fact what was very important was to be a full, active partner in the development and the manufacturing of the vaccine. And to do so very early.” The result in Europe is a stumbling inoculation effort that has led to political fallout, with leaders pointing fingers over why some of the world’s richest countries, home to factories that churn out vast quantities of vaccine, cannot keep pace with other wealthy nations in injecting its people.

One has the right to ask if a policy that was unjustly and arbitrarily imposed upon the nation at great cost can be casually and arbitrarily changed to something else, then what was the rationale underpinning the decision in the first place? Not much, as it turns out. Here, I’d like to give a shout out to Sean Davis at the Federalist for the inspiration:

Sean Davis
@seanmdav
The New York Times told us last year in a hagiographic profile of a mid-level government bureaucrat that the idea came from a 14-year-old’s science project.

Jeffrey A Tucker
@jeffreyatucker
Wow, NYT, after a full year, admits this. https://nytimes.com/2021/03/16/health/coronavirus-schools-social-distance.html //

The origin of the six-foot distancing recommendation is something of a mystery. “It’s almost like it was pulled out of thin air,” said Linsey Marr, an expert on viral transmission at Virginia Tech University. //

We have undergone severe social and economic dislocation. The only places showing progress are those who decided to get about their lives and treat the sick as needed.

Democrats want to use stimulus money to make you into the people populating Disney's cartoon 'Wall-E.' Instead, turn it into a weapon for antifragility.
By Joy Pullmann

Mike Pompeo
@mikepompeo
On the 4th of July, we celebrate America and our many freedoms. One of those freedoms is that YOU get to decide if you want to have family and friends over in your own backyard, NOT the government.

Daily Caller
@DailyCaller
BIDEN: "If we do our part... by July 4, there's a good chance you, your families, and friends will be able to get together in your backyard or in your neighborhood and have a cookout or a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day... Small groups will be able to get together" //

Dan O'Donnell
@DanODonnellShow
Biden says by the Fourth of July, we might be able to gather in small groups again, and "that will make this Independence Day something truly special." Buddy, Independence Day is special because in 1776 we got fed up with government telling us how to live our lives. //

Daily Caller
@DailyCaller
Tucker reacts to President Biden's speech:

"How dare you tell us who we can spend the Fourth of July with."

Leaked Federal Report Concludes That Preserving Freedom of Speech Online Does NOT Cause So-Called 'Hate Crimes'
By Michael Thau | Mar 03, 2021 5:45 PM ET

(AP Photo/J. David Ake, File)
Breitbart got their hands on an unreleased report that the U.S. Department of Commerce sent to Congress in January which found zero evidence that online free speech causes so-called “hate crimes” —or, translating Orwellian newspeak to English: crimes against those in the upper echelons of the neo-liberal intersectional hierarchy committed by those belonging to lower castes.

But, whatever you want to call it, violence is violence. And one can understand why Breitbart’s sources say they “suspect that bureaucrats and establishment politicians with a vested interest in the “hate crimes” panic are trying to suppress it.” //

But the data from which the report draws this conclusion is so straightforward and compelling that it’s even crazier that no one considered it before

Apple released the first iPhone in 2007. Since then, the gradually increasing ubiquity of smartphones by itself has massively increased the amount of chatting people do online.

Factor in the general increase in internet access and prevalence of email, social media, and a host of other new ways to converse online, and there’s no question that doing so has positively exploded over the past decade.

Yet from 2009 to 2019, federal data indicates that we haven’t seen any concomitant increase in the number of “hate crimes” reported. It’s remained stable despite the vast increase in online speech.

Moreover, the report doesn‘t mention that one would expect ‘hate crime’ numbers to have increased even independently of the explosion of online communication given how much more aware of the concept we’ve become in the last decade. //

But the fact that the numbers reported remained stable during a time of expansive internet growth and markedly raised awareness is about as close to “Boom, QED, Game Over” as you’re going to get.

Finally, this report turns out to be an update of one from 1993 that also drew the very same conclusion. //

https://www.slideshare.net/AllumBokhari/ntia-hate-crimes-report-january-2021/1

Phil Kerpen
@kerpen
Wow. The BidenBucks bill pays federal employees up to 15 weeks of paid leave at $1400 per week if they have to stay home to virtual school kids.

You get $1400 once. They get it every week for 15 weeks. Swamp takes care of swamp.
Paid To Stay Home— Coronavirus Aid Bill Pays Federal Employees With Kids Out Of School Up To $21K
forbes.com

All you regular peons out there who live in school districts that are still closed are on your own. Biden isn’t going to lift a finger to push them to open because he’s scared of the teachers unions. You just have to figure things out. But if you work for Biden’s federal government, the payoff is massive. You get paid at $5600 a month for a third of a year to just chill and start up your kid’s zoom sessions. That’s well above the average income in the private sector, mind you. I’m not sure there’s been a bigger show of elitism in Washington in the past decade, and there’s been a lot of shows of elitism.

Texas produces more electricity than it consumes and maintains a buffer referred to as the “state’s reserve margin.” This margin ensures that we should never have to suffer from rolling blackouts like California.

Then why are so millions of Texans without power right now? Why are we dealing with rolling blackouts?

The answer is all-too-familiar: our relationship with the federal government.

In anticipation of this unprecedented power demand, Texas could have maxed out power generation. However, we couldn’t. Like a lowly beggar, Texas had to first ask for permission from the federal government to generate enough power to keep our people warm. Why? Because cranking up our power plants to full production might violate federal pollution limits.

There is a clear metaphor here. Texans were powerless because our elected officials ceded authority to a slow-moving, uncaring gaggle of federal bureaucrats. //

UPDATE Click here to download the actual order from the federal Department of Energy which specifies ERCOT’s reasons for asking permission including that “…ERCOT has been alerted that numerous generation units will be unable to operate at full capacity without violating federal air quality or other permit limitations.”

When you look at the 1-535 (actually, there are 533 on the list) ordering, what you see is that Democrat staff is composed mostly of graduates of elite universities. It is a safe bet that a good number of them are lawyers. Republican staff? Not so much. That is a pretty good proxy for the people Democrats believe should be running things. If you’ve seen any evidence that having a particular piece of paper makes you smart, educated, or competent, you may be the only person in the world to have experienced that. //

Wes_W
5 minutes ago
If these people with college degrees are the smartest, why do we need to forgive their student loans? //

teapartyscientist
22 minutes ago
I think William Buckley said it best when he said he would rather be ruled by the first 2000 people in the phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. I spent many years at a top university. I agree whole heartedly with him.

“I don’t believe in a stimulus check. Because if 600 dollars or 1400 dollars changes your life, you were pretty much screwed already. You’ve got other issues going on. You have a career problem, you have a debt problem, you have a relationship problem, you have a mental health problem, something else is going on if $600 changes your life.

“And that’s not talking down to folks. I’ve been bankrupt, I’ve been broke, and I work with people every day who are hurting. I love people, I want people to be lifted up.

“But this is, again, it’s just political rhetoric, and it’s just throwing dollars out there. It’s peeing on a forest fire, it’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Over and over, throughout my adult life, the GOP has treasured appearances over action and principle. The last four years were the only hiatus in this behavior since the last half of the Reagan administration. Time and again, the old-guard GOP figures throw some red-meat and platitudes but, when push comes to shove, they vote the way most likely to get them a favorable mention on the op-ed pages (and news pages in this time of a partisan and fact-free press) of the New York Times and Washington Post. The right thing to do, even the easy thing to do, in this case, was to vote to not turn American politics into Third World blood sport politics by hunting down and punishing people who lost an election…and make no mistake, that is exactly where we are headed (see Donald Trump Is Now Under Criminal Investigation in Georgia) and with predictable results.

Now that President Trump is off center stage, the porkers are free to head back to the trough. They will give lip service to the plight of working-class America, they will cluck sympathetically at the horrendous spectacle of one in every four US pregnancies ending in abortion, they will talk about securing the border, and they will do absolutely nothing about those issues. They didn’t before President Trump. They did so reluctantly while he was in office. And now that President Trump is gone, we’re back to what Cassidy’s constituents would say “laissez les bon temps rouler.”

These measures are not necessary, and they are profoundly un-American. The presence of armed troops in the nation’s capital, the perpetual announcement of threats that never materialize, fences, walls, and security checkpoints are not the outward signs of a regime that feels particularly secure or is focused on the “general Welfare.” They conjure up images of a White House staff living furtively out of suitcases, afraid to unpack, with a convoy of armored vehicles standing by to race them to Joint Base Andrews and a flight into exile. They call to mind scenes from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 (yes, yes, I saw all of them, I have two daughters) when the invincible capital of Panem is beset by enemies and there are heavily armed Peacekeepers on every corner.

Why we have a right to ask, is the Biden regime acting this way? No one is attacking them. No opposing army has blockaded Washington. They control the Congress and the Executive Branch of government is stocked with its partisans. There are, contrary to FBI wet dreams, no militias contending with the federal authorities to control the hinterlands. Do they think acting terrified of the citizenry makes them look strong? Or do they think we are intimidated by this half-assed show of force? Someone needs to start asking questions. Fast.

Chris Stigall
@ChrisStigall
There it is. Even after you get the thing we’ve all been waiting on to return to normal, you’ll never be allowed to return to normal.

Daily Caller
@DailyCaller
PSAKI: "Even after you’re vaccinated, social distancing and wearing masks will be essential." //

This is stupidity of politicians as a whole. The Biden administration has no ability to grasp the unintended consequences of their statements so you get stuff like this, with the president’s press secretary giving edicts from on high and just assuming they’ll be followed. Of course, there’s also the fact that masks simply don’t work. I’m not sure how much more evidence of that we need. The correlation between spread and mask wearing simply doesn’t exist, and in fact, we see the inverse at times, furthering showing their ineffectiveness.

I’ll end by noting that some of this is simply about power as well. Politicians love to throw their weight around, especially Democrat politicians. The expansion of government authority over the last year has been massive, and it’s going to take a lot to take that back. That’s mostly going to come in the form of just ignoring them and living your life.

A few hours before the SN8 Starship test in December, while Musk was in Boca Chica securing approval for the FAA license that SpaceX ultimately violated, he was asked in a virtual interview with The Wall Street Journal what role government should play in regulating innovation. Musk replied: “A lot of the time, the best thing the government can do is just get out of the way.”

But in 2021, it is not only the pandemic and other factors that account for heightened gun sales. The Biden administration’s anti-gun agenda, which his team announced last year, is undoubtedly contributing to the empty gun shelves. //

It appears that Van Cleave sees something that the others don’t. Biden and the gun control lobby wish to see fewer Americans owning firearms, but by taking such a radical stance against the Second Amendment, they are pushing more Americans to own more guns. //

If even a few Democrats decide to break ranks, it will mean that the Biden administration could get very little of what they want. Indeed, it’s possible that they won’t be able to pass any meaningful gun control legislation at all. In the end, this whole plan could easily bring about the scenario they wish to avoid. //

Robert_A_Hahn
5 hours ago
This is how we achieve unity. As we all know, the Democrats don't care what happens so long as everybody is saying the right things and talking purty. Our guys don't care what the Democrats say so long as they don't actually do anything. This could work. //

ericl
4 hours ago
I don't know, guns seem to be a lot safer than they were years ago. This focus on gun safety might be misplaced. For instance, of all the guns at the Capitol Hill demonstration - only one of them (held by a government agent) killed someone. And an unarmed person no less. Maybe we need government safety, not gun safety.

Maybe we can start talking about common-sense government control. Perhaps a waiting period for high powered politicians to enter federal buildings. Mandatory background checks for dark-money contributors. Do politicians really need fully automatic assault-media organizations? How about a tracing program for "Saturday night special" contributions from foreign terrorist organizations? Come to think of it, does anyone really need federal governments? Because I feel threatened by them, and I was told it's my body/my choice.

Pitzer gave the AEC a backhanded slap by calling it “reasonably efficient by general governmental standards,” and stated that its monopoly in atomic energy had delayed atomic reactor development.

He described how material production reactors, with their complex chemical processing systems, had been built in less than three years during wartime. During that time of rapid progress, he said, if there was a disagreement about which of two courses of action were best, both of them were followed.

In the succeeding years, following either route needed to be preceded by an “exhaustive series of preliminary studies” that added layers of cost to the project. Salaries, overhead and other cost components always accumulate during delays.

He noted how it took six years from the end of the war to build anything that could generate electricity, and even then it was a tiny reactor that produced just 100 kilowatts of power in December, 1951.

“The slowness,” Dr. Pitzer declared, “did not arise from a lack of designs for power reactors which reputable scientists and engineers were willing to build and test. It came rather from an unwillingness of the commission to proceed with any one of these designs until all of the advisers agreed that this was the best design.”

The speaker likened the present setup, with a multitude of committees advising the Atomic Energy Commission, to an automobile equipped with a separate brake lever for every passenger. //

Stewart Peterson says
January 18, 2021 at 12:14 PM

Conversely, from the perspective of the people conducting the approval process:

Nobody ever gets fired for doing nothing. However, people get fired for exceeding their authority all the time. Lawyers are arguing over where the line is, and the line never stops moving, and all previous decisions are reviewable and the people who made them are fireable, on the basis of a legal standard that didn’t exist at the time the decision was made.

So what do you do? If there is anything at all novel about what the applicant wants to do, you insist to the applicant that you have no authority to act on their application. This only changes once you have a directive, in writing, from someone above you. That person is unlikely to make such a directive unless they’re such a short-timer that they won’t get fired when the rules are reinterpreted. This is how political appointees get exasperated with minor and obvious decisions being kicked up to them instead of being resolved three levels below, where by any logic they should have been.

What it looks like to the applicant is that old political cartoon of the officials standing in a circle and pointing to the next guy. (You go to the Department of X. They say, “X doesn’t have authority to do that. Y does. Ask them.” You go to the Department of Y. You go there and they say, “Y doesn’t have authority to do that. X does. Ask them.”) Meanwhile, the organization as a whole drops the ball. No individual person in it has any incentive to act in the group’s interest.

I call this the “organizational infield fly rule.”

Much of the anti-nuclear activism in the courts is effective precisely by creating this type of doubt in the minds of the NRC staff – not by changing policy. All they have to do is create that question in the back of a junior manager’s mind: “will I be fired if I sign this?”

The path of least resistance? Appoint another committee to write another report.

When we look at COVID-19 death stats from the U.S. or anywhere else, the immediate object of awareness — the sense-datum, as we called it back in my days as a philosophy professor — is just some very disturbing bookkeeping. And it’s an open question whether that bookkeeping reflects an equally disturbing reality or, instead, is merely an artifact of CDC accounting practices that created the illusion of something momentously awful.

Why would the CDC engage in such deception? //

As RedState reader and statistician, Kurt Schulzke notes in a soon-to-be-released bombshell report of his own:

The CDC’s original 2020 budget of ~$8 billion grew six-fold, to ~$46 billion in 2020, all in response to perceived Covid-19 mortality. //

Back in 1994, AIDS cases actually declined. But any effect this might have had on the CDC’s bottom line was averted by a timely expansion of “the surveillance case definition” of AIDS, which the CDC itself admitted would result in at least a completely bogus 75% increase in cases and others have claimed the CDC’s own data shows wound up, in the event, more than doubling them. //

As an outfit called Children’s Health Defense noted way back in July,

On March 24th, the CDC decided to ignore universal data collection and reporting guidelines for fatalities in favor of adopting new guidelines unique to COVID-19. The guidelines the CDC decided against using have been used successfully since 2003.

According to David Marcus at The Federalist, during a recent interview with the New York Times, Fauci admitted that he fudged the numbers on how many people would need to take the vaccine in order to achieve herd immunity:

This quote, which has been rightfully making the rounds, really tells the whole tale. Asked why he changed his mind about how much vaccination would result in herd immunity, Fauci said, “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent … Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85. We need to have some humility here …. We really don’t know what the real number is. I think the real range is somewhere between 70 to 90 percent. But, I’m not going to say 90 percent.”

This is a problem. Fauci is clearly admitting that he was not simply telling the American people what he believed to be true, he was instead trying to manipulate us into behaving how he wants. And it’s not the first time. Back in March, Fauci told Americans not to wear masks. He now claims he did so largely because he feared a shortage. So, once again, instead of just giving us the unvarnished scientific truth, as he understood it, he told us only what he thought it was good for us to know.

Marcus’s point about Fauci’s willingness to lie in order to cause Americans to alter their behavior is the most important.

Clearly, Fauci doesn’t mind hiding truths from us or giving us more accurate data in order for the American people to make well-informed decisions. Fauci clearly believes that we should be acting a certain way and, as a result, decided to use his platform to feed Americans information for the purposes of manipulation.

Fauci has proven that he can’t be trusted to deliver facts.

The new proposal will first be increasing the state’s already record high income tax rate on top earners, from the galling 13.3% levels to now become the offensive 16.8%.

But as well there will be a new wealth tax on those holding assets with a value of $30 million and above. This is regardless of where those assets are located; the tax would include any and all holdings outside the state. Properties owned in other states, as one example, would be calculated towards your net worth and taxed — in California.

Then it becomes truly offensive. More than including part-time citizens and those with a dual residency in another state, this new surcharge on the wealthy would take effect on anyone who spends only 60 days within the state’s borders. Those who visit family a couple of times a year could become at risk. //

The new proposal will first be increasing the state’s already record high income tax rate on top earners, from the galling 13.3% levels to now become the offensive 16.8%.

But as well there will be a new wealth tax on those holding assets with a value of $30 million and above. This is regardless of where those assets are located; the tax would include any and all holdings outside the state. Properties owned in other states, as one example, would be calculated towards your net worth and taxed — in California.