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    School Administrator Tells Teachers To Offer ‘Opposing’ Viewpoints On Holocaust

    Frank Salvato
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    School Administrator Tells Teachers To Offer ‘Opposing’ Viewpoints On Holocaust

    A Texas school administrator has suggested that classrooms offer books on Holocaust denial to support “opposing” views in an attempt to strike back at Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools. 

    The orchestrator of what is being termed a “political mess,” is Gina Peddy, the Carroll Independent School District’s executive director of curriculum and instruction. The Carroll Independent School District (CISD), is located in the predominantly white Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Southlake.

    CISD had an issue after a parent complained last year because her daughter was assigned a reading assignment centered on the book, “This Book Is Anti-Racist” by Tiffany Jewell. At the time, administrators declined to discipline the teacher, but on October 4th, the school board voted to overrule the district’s decision and formally reprimand the teacher.

    The disciplinary action prompted a backlash from Leftist-leaning teachers, one of which hung yellow caution tape in front of the CRT-centered books in a classroom after Abbott signed the Texas law banning the instruction of Critical Race Theory.

    “Teachers are literally afraid that we’re going to be punished for having books in our classes,” one activist elementary school teacher told reporters. “There are no children’s books that show the ‘opposing perspective’ of the Holocaust or the ‘opposing perspective’ of slavery. Are we supposed to get rid of all of the books on those subjects?”

    Peddy’s narrative of pushing books denying the Holocaust was recorded on audio published by NBC News. In talking to teachers under her purview, Peddy was recorded saying:

    “Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979…and make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”

    When one teacher asked the obvious question of how one “opposes” the Holocaust, Peddy replied, “Believe me, that’s come up.”

    https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1449106707179884549

    Texas Sen. Bryan Hughes (R), the author of Senate Bill 3, says this book-banning controversy takes the language of the bill out of context asserting critics are incorrectly comparing the forced teaching of Holocaust denial books with the removal of anti-White literature from classrooms.

    Why This Is Important

    There is a world of difference between opposing the instruction of racist garbage like Critical Race Theory (CRT) – which, as its title points out, is simply a “theory” – and the fully documented crime against humanity that was the Holocaust.

    Where the teaching of the Holocaust is a matter of verifiable and documented history, CRT is a radical theory based on an abortion of Karl Marx’s Critical Theory, which is a recipe book for killing Capitalism through the pitting of one class against another. CRT replaces the classes with the races.

    CRT blatantly teaches children – or anyone stupid enough to sign on to the destructive theory – that their skin color dictates whether or not they are intrinsically racist. Succinctly, CRT teaches that if you are White you are inherently racist and there isn’t anything you can do about it.

    CRT teaches the same brand of hatred that the Nazis taught the Hitler youth regarding anyone who was not a part of the “master race.”

    Ms. Peddy shouldn’t be anywhere near the education of children if, in fact, she believes CRT should be taught in classrooms. To that end, no teacher who believes CRT is an appropriate curriculum to be teaching should be charged with the education of children.

    We must lay the blame for the degraded condition of our education system at the feet of the teachers’ unions, the government, and ultimately the people for not providing proper oversight to prevent the government and unions from hijacking the system for opportunistic ideological and political purposes.

    This is why the recent turn of events in which the National Association of School Boards urged the Department of Justice to consider parents objecting to this Marxist indoctrination as “domestic terrorists” is so egregious.

    First, there shouldn’t be a National Association of School Boards for anything else but facilitating communication between school boards. They should have no authoritative voice that would allow for such an idiotic statement to be issued. For that reason alone every school board across the country should disavow itself from the association.

    But more importantly, the citizenry must step up to at least support those parents and taxpayers who are protesting the brainwashing of our children.

    Schools are tasked with cultivating the core tools of gathering knowledge – reading, writing, arithmetic, and basic science – as they pursue the ultimate goal of establishing critical thinking skills in our children. Today’s education system, having undergone a hostile takeover by ideologues and activists, fails in that primary task on every level and at every turn.

    In talking with two of the parents spearheading the protest charge in Loudoun County, Virginia, it is clear that most of the classroom teachers do not sign on to the radical agenda being foisted upon them by the state and federal education apparatus but refuse to speak out for fear they will lose their jobs.

    It is time to support the brave parents who are taking a stand. It is time to remove each and every school board member who exists as an ideologue and/or activist from positions of power. And it is time to elect people to state and federal officials who will dismantle and bury the centralized education bureaucracy.

    It is time to regain control of our education system before the Fascists succeed in ending the Great American experiment.

    HART Makes Up Its Voting Rules

    Tom Yamachika
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    HART Makes Up Its Voting Rules

    If at first you don’t succeed because of the rules, do you redouble your efforts to meet the rules?  Or do you change the rules so you can meet them?

    HART, the Honolulu transportation agency, has just done the latter.

    In August, we wrote about some difficulty HART was having in mustering a quorum and gathering the necessary votes to get things passed.  The problem came up as an unintended side effect of 2017 bailout legislation that empowered the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate to each appoint two non-voting members to the HART governing board, whether or not the rest of HART wanted them there.  It turned out that a Neighborhood Board quorum and voting provision that was incorporated by reference appeared to require eight “yes” votes for anything to pass, although there were only nine voting members.

    An eight “yes” voting requirement made it tough to get anything done, especially when voting members who weren’t able to show up were deemed to be voting “no.”

    In July, when Hoyt Zia took the chair of HART, he announced that things would be changing.  Six votes would be enough, just as it was prior to the 2017 bailout.

    Why?

    A September 23, 2021 memorandum from the City & County’s Department of Corporation Counsel published by Civil Beat tells us why.

    The memo relies on a passage in Article VIII, section 2 of the Hawaii Constitution.  It says:  “Charter provisions with respect to a political subdivision’s executive, legislative and administrative structure and organization shall be superior to statutory provisions, subject to the authority of the legislature to enact general laws allocating and reallocating powers and functions.”

    This “home rule” provision is generally supposed to prevent the State from messing with the internal organization of a county.  The State can enact laws specifying what all the counties can and can’t do (these are “general laws”), but it’s not supposed to single a county out and, say, change the composition of its legislative body.

    That, the memo says, is exactly what happened.  The memo concludes that the State did not have the power under the Hawaii Constitution to provide for four extra HART board members.  Thus, we can basically ignore the extra folks and conduct business as if they weren’t around.

    Reaction from the State Capitol, specifically Speaker Scott Saiki, was sharp: “The HART board needs to be careful,” he is quoted as saying.  “If they proceed with a modified quorum, it could potentially invalidate the decisions that they make.”  And further: “If the city feels that the Legislature has overstepped by appointing these four members, then the city should decline any further state funding,” Saiki said.

    Translation of these comments:  “You like beef?”  Or, for those not versed in our local pidgin English, “Put up your dukes!”

    This sure looks like it’s not going to end well unless both sides go back to their corners and work things out.  HART isn’t objecting to the four extra members and is fine with letting them attend closed sessions.  “Their participation is valuable at this time,” said HART’s current chair Colleen Hanabusa.  That would seem to dovetail with the role that the State wanted for them—to oversee and give input, not gum up the process for getting things done.

    Prosecutors Reject 5 Murder Charges In Deadly Chicago Shootout Citing ‘Mutual Combat’

    Frank Salvato
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    Prosecutors Reject 5 Murder Charges In Deadly Chicago Shootout Citing ‘Mutual Combat’

    Prosecutors in Illinois have reportedly chosen not to charge five gang-related suspects in a deadly shootout that unfolded in Chicago, despite police wanting to charge all five with murder and aggravated battery. 

    The Friday shootout was sparked by an internal dispute between two factions of the Four Corner Hustlers gang, an internal police report and a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told reporters. 

    When authorities went to serve the arrest warrants on the five men, a SWAT team response was necessary leading to police finding more than 70 shell casings. One shooter was left dead and two of the suspects wounded. 

    By the end of the weekend, however, they were released without charges.

    “‘Mutual combatants’ was cited as the reason for the rejection,” a police report of the State Attorney’s office’s decision read. The report also noted that the suspects weren’t cooperating with investigators. 

    “Mutual combat” is a legal phrase defined as a “fight into which both parties enter willingly, or in which two persons, upon a sudden quarrel, and in hot blood, mutually fight upon equal terms.”

    But while the police report was reviewed by the total of the Chicago media, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office issued a statement saying the evidence was insufficient to meet a burden of proof to approve felony charges.

    “It’s just like the Wild West,” the police source told reporters of the gun crimes on Chicago’s West Side. 

    A similar “mutual combat” incident also unfolded in a near-west Chicago suburb last week after an 18-year-old man was stabbed to death in an incident caught on film. 

    Why This Is Important

    So, evidently, in Illinois – and specifically in Chicago – when two gangbangers start shooting at each other because they both engaged in shooting, there isn’t a crime. This is a stunning abdication of prosecutorial duty on behalf of the Cook County State’s Attorney.

    This should serve as an explanation for the elevating and bloody violence that now owns the streets of Chicago. The politicians, not the police, are delinquent in their duties.

    As an aside, Chicago has among the most draconian gun laws in the United States. Why the Cook County State’s Attorney didn’t charge these five people with illegal possession of a firearm is a head-scratcher.

    By not prosecuting obvious criminals – and in the case, murderers – the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office should be considered complicit in the crimes committed. The families of the dead should sue that office to affect the State’s Attorney’s removal from office.

    But we all know the Cook County State’s Attorney. Her name is Kimberly Foxx. She is the one who looked the other way and refused to bring Jesse Smollett to trial after he faked a hate crime to opportunistically further his acting career.

    But that’s not the half of it. Foxx has a long track record of both downgrading and dropping charges against some of the most violent gang members on the streets of Chicago.

    The president of the Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, Kevin Graham – his board of directors, area police chiefs, and the president of the Sergeants Association by his side at a press conference, said:

    “We are here with one united voice to demand the resignation of Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx…We have taken a vote – both in the police chiefs associations and with the FOP – of a vote of no confidence in Kimberly Foxx…This is not just about the Jussie Smollett case, which undermined the public confidence and law enforcement faith in Cook County criminal justice system. This is about many cases in the Cook County system that have gone unprosecuted or having charges reduced.  The people standing around me can give you countless examples of how Ms. Foxx’s lack of prosecution has caused our members and police officers throughout this country an enormous amount of problems.”

    Every week on Monday news outlets from coast to coast issue the casualty numbers from Chicago for the weekend. The deaths, the shootings, the blood, just keep coming. And the reprobate politicians on Chicago – from Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who pathetically makes excuses for her inaction and ineptitude on the issue, to Foxx, to many of the go-along-to-get-along Democrat politicians who have driven a once-proud city into the ground – are to blame, one-hundred percent.

    Visiting Chicago with my girlfriend just two Christmases ago, I wanted to show her the beauty and culture that Chicago has to offer. I wanted to take her to the jazz clubs, the restaurants, and the lakefront. I wanted her to experience the Chicago Symphony and the museums. I wanted her to see the different neighborhoods and the Mag-Mile.

    But a childhood friend, whose family owns restaurants in the city, warned me off. “Frankie,” he said, “they are pulling people out of their cars in front of the Art Institute and shooting them in the head in broad daylight. I don’t go downtown anymore. You should take her to the city. It’s too dangerous.”

    A pox on the houses of the opportunistic Democrat politicians who are literally killing one of the world’s great cities. To them, scoring political points with the special interest crowds, i.e. the LGBTQ+ and BLM contingents, is more important than making sure children don’t get shot going to school or playing in their yards.

    Simply put, the proud Democrat Party of the Daley’s is dead. Today’s Democrats have blood on their hands.

    Tax Reform in the Cornhusker State

    Tom Yamachika
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    Tax Reform in the Cornhusker State

    What do you think of when you hear the name “Nebraska”?  Steaks?  Corn?  Warren Buffett?

    As it turns out, they have a few things in common with us.  They pride themselves on their quality of life (but for different reasons than us), and they are facing a population decline just like we are.

    And they are trying to do something about it.  “Growing the Good Life Begins Here” is the theme of Blueprint Nebraska, an undertaking with 2000 participants that seeks to make Nebraska more competitive when it comes to economics and people.  They want to reverse their “brain drain,” which we in Hawaii have been bemoaning for some time, and bring 43,000 new 18-to-34-year-old people to the state to live.  They want to grow the pie, adding 25,000 jobs and $15,000 to the annual income of every resident.

    When the Blueprint Nebraska folks looked at their tax system, they proposed a major overhaul.  Here is what they had to say about it: 

    Blueprint Nebraska’s Taxation & Incentives Industry Council took insights from surveys, public forums, and tax policy research to develop a plan that gives Nebraska a regionally-competitive tax climate that is more inviting to workforce talent.

    The headline benefits for Nebraskans include allowing taxpayers to earn up to $50,000 free of state income tax, dedicating an additional $2 billion to property tax relief over the next ten years, and an elimination of Nebraska’s inheritance tax. This is in addition to new student loan relief programs and a doubling of Research and Development investments.

    Many states we compete with for people and investment—red and blue—have no state income tax, or at least a lower income and property tax, and very few states have inheritance taxes.

    But these bold changes wouldn’t be remotely financially possible without bringing in alternate revenues. Blueprint Nebraska proposes to pay for tax modernization through a major overhaul of current sales tax exemptions, the elimination of itemized deductions for state income taxes, and by ending most corporate tax credits.

    Notably, the plan does not propose increasing the state sales tax or removing the sales tax exemption on unprepared grocery items. As well, eligibility for the tax-free bracket would phase out gradually for the highest-earning taxpayers.

    Tax reform is never easy, but the recommendations align with an essential tax policy principle—a broad tax base allows significant revenue to be collected at a lower tax rate.

    Here in Hawaii, we also need to be looking at competitiveness, as we’ve argued in this space many times before.  We need to work toward a solution that lets us grow the economic pie rather than simply saying that more slices are going to the government.

    One way to do that is by looking at the two taxes we have that bring in the most money, namely the GET and the individual income tax, and perhaps pare back the exemptions and credits either to make the code fairer or enact systems to ensure that we as a people are getting value for the credits and incentives we do give out.

    We should be learning, competing, improving.  We should be doing more to study other states, especially those with which we compete for people.  We can learn from both their successes and their failures. 

    Biden Wants To Renew Union Skimming From Payments To Home-Health Providers

    Frank Salvato
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    Biden Wants To Renew Union Skimming From Payments To Home-Health Providers

    The Biden Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), wants to reinstate an Obama-era regulation that allowed labor unions to skim an estimated $1 billion from Medicaid payments to home healthcare providers.

    The proposal “will place a federal stamp of approval on abusive state and union practices to pressure, mislead, and ultimately lock home healthcare providers into assigning portions of their Medicaid payments to union special interest groups and associated funds,” the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF) said.

    “Such assignments are generally irrevocable for a year or more, resulting in the diversion of Medicaid payments to third parties for political advocacy and other purposes over the express objections of home healthcare providers,” they continued.

    The reinstatement of this policy would rescind a 2018 Trump administration rule that upheld the intent of Congress to deny third parties, including unions, access to Medicaid payments to providers of home-based healthcare for disabled and in-home eligible persons.

    Despite a federal law that specifically prohibited assignment of payments to third parties, the Obama administration crafted a special exemption in 2014 that permitted them for labor unions. The only exceptions recognized by the law cover court orders for wage garnishments, child support orders, and judgments for debts owed to states.

    Additionally, the US Supreme Court also ruled in 2014 that compulsory union payments violate the First Amendment rights of home healthcare workers who prefer not to support union activities.

    Home healthcare providers in non-right to work states faced requirements that a portion of their payments be provided to fund union activities, the funds automatically deducted from Medicaid payments even though it was illegal to do so.

    The skimming equaled an estimated $200 million annually, according to the State Policy Network. The NRTWLDF estimated that prior to the Trump nullification of the labor carve out by the Obama administration, union officials had siphoned upwards of $1 billion from Medicaid payments.

    Why This Is Important

    Anyone who has had the need for home healthcare services – or anyone who knows someone who is or has worked in the home healthcare industry – recognizes this policy reinstatement as a hard slap to the face of those who provide this critical service.

    For those who are unfamiliar with home healthcare services, it is a healthcare service provided where a patient lives, almost exclusively by registered and licensed nursing professionals. Patients receive home healthcare services whether they live in their own homes, with or without family members, or in an assisted living facility, with the goal of promoting, maintaining, or restoring a patient’s health and also to reduce the effects of disease or disability.

    Most often, those who provide these services spend long hours traveling from location to location – usually in the more poverty-stricken and, therefore, more dangerous areas – executing their duties as lone practitioners employed with large private-sector home healthcare companies. They are responsible for not only providing the service with great care but for documenting every interaction, all treatment data, the use of materials, and their travels.

    The average annual salary for a home healthcare nurse runs $27,844. To contrast that, the US federal poverty level for a single individual is $12,880.

    There are over 400,000 home healthcare providers in the United States.

    According to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the chief recipient of this labor union graft would be the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

    “Union officials, especially at the Service Employees International Union, have long used deceptive and even unconstitutional tactics to divert taxpayer-funded Medicaid payments into union coffers,” the NRTWLDF said in a statement.

    To put this into perspective, in 2014 the SEIU took in $262,596,932 in membership dues alone. Their total revenue for that year came in at $280,911,171. In that same year, they spent $24,091,908 for political activities including contributions to political candidates, leadership Political Action Committees (PACs), 527 Groups, satellite spending to Super PACs, and organization parties.

    The fact they the SEIU has exclusively promoted and supported the most radical ideologues of the Democrat Party in elections and championed the most Marxist initiatives before Congress and the State Houses consistently over the years mandates that any funds extracted involuntarily are an ipso facto donation to the Democrat Party.

    This incredibly jaded and transparently political move to further line the pockets of labor unions by the Biden administration through the pillaging of Medicaid payments to home healthcare workers is outrageous.

    Both the Obama and Biden administrations – along with the total of the congressional Democrats and their propagandistic hacks – routinely talk about how they care about the health of the American people. Specifically in their financial power-grabs of Obamacare and through the governmental contortions surrounding the suspect COVID event.

    But the facts always point to the same truth. They couldn’t care less about your health or the health of your loved ones. All they care about is money and power. The fleecing of America’s home healthcare workers should prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

    Tax Planning with the Rich and Famous

    Tom Yamachika
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    Tax Planning with the Rich and Famous

    Occasionally, all of us wonder what it’s like to be rich and famous, or at least act like it.  “Those people,” you might think, “have at their disposal so many ways to flummox the tax authorities if they want to.  Panamanian bearer shares corporations.  Dutch sandwiches.  Entities from the Isle of Man, the Caymans, or Bermuda perhaps.”

    It turns out, however, that there are some very potent tax planning devices easily and legally available to Americans.  They’re called Individual Retirement Accounts, or IRAs.

    IRAs come in two basic flavors.  The first, the conventional IRA, is an account that you fund with pre-tax money.  You take an income tax deduction when you put money into it, meaning that money escapes tax for the time being.  That money stays in the account and grows, assuming it’s invested wisely.  The tax needs to be paid whenever that money comes out of the account.  It can come out when you are quite a bit older, perhaps when you are retired and aren’t making tons of other money so the tax bite won’t be bad as it would have been if you paid the tax on it when you earned the money back in the days when you were working. 

    For most people, there is a limit of $6,000, varying by year, that can go into an IRA of either flavor.  But there are exceptions.  If you are self-employed, for example, the annual limit can be quite a bit higher.

    The second flavor is the Roth IRA.  This account is funded with money you already have paid tax on.  But it gives you tax-free growth and tax-free distributions for the rest of your years.  And then, when you die, your heirs get to live off a Roth IRA’s tax-free money for up to ten years.  Again, there are annual limits on how much you can throw into this kind of account.

              Finally, if you have a conventional IRA but you really want the benefits of a Roth, it’s possible to convert.  The price, however, is that tax needs to be paid on the money that goes from the conventional to the Roth IRA, the same as if the money simply had come out of the conventional IRA as a distribution.  If you are in a situation where your business has operating losses and the losses are just sitting on your income tax return gathering dust (which is not a terribly uncommon situation given the COVID-19 pandemic and the related lockdowns and restrictions in 2020) then converting your conventional IRA to Roth might simply result in absorbing the losses and not payment of lots more tax.  The interesting thing is that there isn’t a limit on conversion, as long as the tax gets paid.

              Perhaps the most extreme example is tech investor Peter Thiel.  According to an article from ProPublica, Thiel parlayed a modest investment in a Roth IRA by having the IRA buy some shares in startup companies, one of which was PayPal.  PayPal exploded in value, some of the PayPal shares were sold to invest in other startup companies, like Facebook Inc., and the cycle continued.  That Roth IRA is now worth $5 billion.  Not a penny of tax will be charged when the money comes out, as long as he doesn’t touch the account until he is aged 59-1/2. 

              Sure, he was one lucky (or brilliant, or both) fellow to be able to pick the winners successfully.  But the point is that IRAs are available to ordinary people as well, and can yield decent tax benefits for ordinary people as well.

              Tax is an extremely complicated beast, but it does have occasional features that can help many of us. It’s up to us to learn what they are and use them for our own advantage if appropriate.

    The REAL Reason for “Breakthrough” Infections of COVID-19

    Sydney Ross Singer
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    The REAL Reason for “Breakthrough” Infections of COVID-19

    Many people are recognizing that there are apparent contradictions in the official narrative about COVID-19 and vaccinations. If the vaccine is supposed to prevent infection, then:

    Why are so many vaccinated people getting sick with COVID (breakthrough infections)?
    Why are the unvaccinated a risk to the vaccinated?
    Why is immunity short-lived and boosters needed?
    Why vaccinate those who already have had COVID and have natural immunity?

    Why do these vaccines leave the vaccinated so vulnerable to infection?

    The answer is that these vaccines are not preventative vaccines; they are therapeutic vaccines.

    Preventative Versus Therapeutic Vaccines

    There are two different categories of vaccines. Most people think of disease prevention when they think of vaccines. The purpose of these vaccines is to prevent a disease by exposing your immune system to a weakened or killed disease-causing organism, or pathogen, which educates your immune system about the pathogen and prepares your body for potential future attack. Once people are vaccinated against a disease, they have this vaccine-induced immunity and should stay well when exposed to the disease.

    The other category of vaccines is treatment or therapeutic vaccines. This is a new field of medicine which tries to treat disease, rather than prevent it, using vaccines. Unlike traditional preventative vaccines, these therapeutic vaccines try to use your own immune system to fight a current diseased condition. As WebMD puts it, “While traditional vaccines are designed to prevent disease, researchers are working on something new: therapeutic vaccines, vaccinations that treat an illness after you have it.” (Treating Disease With Vaccines https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/features/treating-disease-with-vaccines (Retreived 9/20/21))

    For example, cancer vaccines involve taking cancer cells from someone, treating the cells in a way to make them more reactive with your immune system, and re-injecting the modified cancer cells back into that person to make the immune system attack the cancer. While these vaccines are still having problems, there is hope for this technology and its application to lots of diseased conditions. (Saxena, M., van der Burg, S.H., Melief, C.J.M. et al. Therapeutic cancer vaccines. Nat Rev Cancer 21, 360–378 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41568-021-00346-0)

    The COVID-19 vaccines use this type of technology. The mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna take a part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the spike protein genetic material) and introduce it into the body to elicit antibodies to the spike protein. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine uses similar technology but with a different delivery system to create an immune response to the spike protein.

    The purpose of these therapeutic vaccines is to boost the body’s immune response to an already existing infection. These vaccines don’t prevent disease, but may help you fight it. This means that these COVID vaccines are not meant to be preventative, but are treatments that assume you have the virus.

    Why Vaccinated People Still Get COVID

    This explains why people who have been vaccinated can still get sick with COVID. The antibody response these vaccines create against the spike protein may be enough to reduce hospitalizations and deaths from COVID, but it is not robust enough to prevent infection in the first place. This is to be expected from a therapeutic vaccine as opposed to a preventative vaccine.

    Why the Vaccinated and Unvaccinated are a Risk to the Vaccinated

    This also explains why the unvaccinated are a risk to the vaccinated. The vaccinated are not protected from getting COVID. They can catch COVID from the unvaccinated — or from the vaccinated. In fact, the vaccine can make infections asymptomatic, but still infectious.

    Why Boosters are Needed

    Preventative vaccines are given to prevent a disease, typically presenting the body with a weakened or killed pathogen, creating a strong immune response that lasts and prevents future disease. Preventative vaccines are meant to prevent infection and pre-empt the need for natural immunity.

    Therapeutic vaccines are given to stimulate the immune system to attack a pathogen that is currently causing infection, but which the immune system has been weak in managing. It is meant to help fight an existing infection, and assumes that there are already antibodies from natural immunity that are needing some help in the fight.

    Therapeutic vaccine antibodies are more limited in their recognition of the virus than antibodies created by preventative vaccines that react to the entire virus. Most therapeutic COVID vaccines produce antibodies to the spike protein of the virus, and this is hoped to assist natural immunity in fighting the virus. However, since the therapeutic vaccines create antibodies to only part of the virus, they create a limited immune response that is not enough to prevent infection.

    This is the difference between prevention and treatment. Prevention precludes the need for treatment; and treatment means failed prevention. You can’t prevent with a treatment; and you can’t treat with a preventative. Giving a preventative vaccine after being sick is as useless as giving a treatment vaccine before getting sick.

    This means that the people who received a therapeutic vaccine for COVID and who do not get exposed to the virus afterwards will need boosters since their immune response to the vaccine wanes quickly with no infection. Ideally, then, assuming the vaccine is helpful and not causing immune problems, it would be best to take a therapeutic vaccine once you get exposed to the virus. That’s when you might need help with a treatment.

    Therapeutic Vaccines for Long COVID

    This suggests an answer to the dilemma about so-called Long Covid, where symptoms of COVID-19 exist long after infection, and often appear months after apparent recovery. It seems that the virus gets a foothold in the body and becomes difficult to eradicate. Once the body fights back the virus to the point of near recovery, the immune system calms down and antibody levels drop. Meanwhile, the virus retreats and hides in the body, staying dormant until months later when it re-emerges to create the long list of Long COVID symptoms.

    This is the type of infection that therapeutic vaccines are meant to handle. Instead of allowing the immune system to lower its guard, at which time the virus re-emerges, the booster vaccine is meant to stimulate and assist the immune response, keeping the virus at bay.

    This means that the vaccines being promoted for COVID-19 prevention are actually designed for COVID-19 therapy. They are for treatment, not prevention.

    Why Are the Vaccines Therapeutic and Not Preventative?

    Why would the CDC, FDA, and other authorities use a therapeutic vaccine instead of a typical preventative vaccine? There are probably numerous reasons, including financial. Bill Gates, for example, is heavily involved in therapeutic vaccines, and he certainly has clout.

    However, my guess is that the people in charge knew from the beginning that coronaviruses are notorious for defying vaccines. These viruses mutate quickly, so vaccines to any one variant may not work for another. This is why there was trouble developing a vaccine to SARS-CoV-1, and why there are no preventative vaccines for the common cold, which is caused by another species of coronavirus. I can imagine the decision-makers concluding that a preventative vaccine is problematic, but a therapeutic vaccine might be helpful to treat the unpreventable infections.

    So these authorities may have decided on a treatment approach using experimental therapeutic vaccines, instead of using problematic preventative vaccines. This is not a preventative approach, since therapeutic vaccines do not create complete protection, but merely assist the immune system in fighting existing infections.

    Therapeutic Vaccines versus Other Treatments

    This also explains why there has been resistance to other forms of treatment by the medical establishment. In fact, very little is ever discussed about treatment of COVID-19 apart from attacks on those who recommend them. If other treatments, such as Ivermectin, worked in preventing and/or treating COVID-19, these treatments would confuse the results of the experiment with the novel therapeutic vaccines. It would also get some people to avoid the vaccine, preferring a known drug treatment to an experimental vaccine treatment.

    Why Vaccinate People Who Have Natural Immunity?

    People who have had COVID-19 and have developed natural immunity are being told to still get the vaccine. The vaccine is not to prevent COVID, but to augment the body’s immune response to COVID-19. If it was for prevention and not therapy, then it would make no sense to give it to the naturally immune.

    The implication is that COVID may still lurk inside the body, opportunistically waiting to reappear. The vaccine and the boosters are meant to keep your body vigilant to prevent these re-emergences of the virus.

    Perhaps this makes sense of the way Israel is dealing with the vaccine and promoting boosters. They know that this is a therapeutic vaccine, and want to help people as much as possible to fight the infection. However, once lifestyles returned to pre-pandemic normal for the vaccinated, the infection rates skyrocketed because vaccinated people thought themselves immune, but they weren’t.

    The emerging fact that the vaccine does not prevent infection has become so apparent that the government now says that the vaccine will reduce hospitalizations and deaths, while admitting the vaccine may not prevent infection.

    Yet, the vaccine was sold to the public as a prevention against getting COVID-19. The FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine as a preventative vaccine. “The vaccine has been known as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, and will now be marketed as Comirnaty (koe-mir’-na-tee), for the prevention of COVID-19 disease in individuals 16 years of age and older.” (FDA News Release: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-covid-19-vaccine (Retreived 9/20/21))

    The vaccine was approved and promoted to prevent COVID disease, but now we are told it will not prevent infection but will lower risk of hospitalization and death. This is admitting it is a therapeutic vaccine, not a preventative one.

    Why the Lie?

    Why would the authorities lie to the public about this? I suppose the alternative would have been to tell everyone the truth up front, but people would probably panic. They could have told the public that there is no way to get around this virus, which mutates and becomes difficult to eradicate from the environment or from your body. They could have mentioned that everyone will eventually get exposed to this virus, and while most people recover with no problem, some will suffer and die. So instead of prevention, which is a lost cause with a rapidly mutating coronavirus, we are going for treatment with a novel therapeutic vaccine.

    Testing Opportunity for Therapeutic Vaccines

    For investors and those in the medical industry who see the potential for therapeutic vaccines, the pandemic offered an unparalleled opportunity to get billions of dollars, and millions of people, to test and develop this technology. But to get people to willingly participate, the vaccine needed to be presented as a preventative vaccine, and not as a treatment vaccine, which means you will get sick but maybe not as much.

    People want prevention over treatment, and most people think of vaccines as preventative and have no idea they are now being developed as a therapy/treatment. My guess is that many vaccinated people might not have gotten vaccinated had they known it would not prevent disease. Why assume the risk of an new vaccine technology if it won’t keep you from getting sick in the first place?

    Of course, I am guessing about the thoughts of the authorities deciding the US policy towards the pandemic. But the above scenario does make sense out of the contradictions of COVID-19 pandemic policy.

    Of course, this is a gross abuse of patient rights and the public trust. While drug companies invested in therapeutic vaccines are making billions testing their technology on the unsuspecting public, people have been lied to in order to get participation in this vaccine treatment study.

    Why the Push and Mandates to Get Vaccinated?

    Why the mandates to force everyone to get vaccinated, especially if it does not prevent disease? Again, I must guess, but it seems likely that the medical authorities want the public to accept using vaccines to treat disease. It’s a new paradigm in disease treatment, and people need to accept vaccines for this new modality to take hold.

    Also, if everyone is vaccinated, there is no control group to compare for impacts of the vaccine. Side effects from the vaccinations, including autoimmune disease and Antibody Dependent Enhancement (where the vaccines paradoxically make it easier to get infected) can happen with vaccines, including therapeutic vaccines. It would be difficult to link side effects to the vaccines if there were no unvaccinated people with whom to compare outcomes. (Ricke, Darrell. Two Different Antibody-Dependent Enhancement (ADE) Risks for SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies Front Immunol. 2021; 12: 640093. Published online 2021 Feb 24. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.640093)

    Finally, there’s lots of money in therapeutic vaccines, especially since they only provide temporary protection and need ongoing boosters. Of course, they don’t yet know with this new technology if the boosters will enhance immunity, or cause autoimmunity. If you use the body to make antigens, as this technology does, then what stops the body from attacking itself as the enemy? The answer is that this is why we haven’t had these types of vaccines. They are problematic, and the bugs are still needing to be worked out.

    Are Vaccine Mandates Appropriate for Therapeutic Vaccines that Don’t Prevent Disease?

    Vaccine mandates are being justified on the basis that the vaccines are essential to prevent the transmission of disease. However, if these are a treatment of COVID and not a preventative, this mandate justification does not hold. Public health mandates vaccines to prevent spread of disease; the treatment of disease is a personal decision and is usually left to the physician and patient to decide. Personal treatment options are not a public health emergency. This means therapeutic vaccines, like other therapies, should not be mandated as a public health measure.

    Do the Vaccinated Pose a Risk to the Unvaccinated?

    Since the vaccinated can become infected, there is the potential for the natural selection of resistant virus variants. Vaccinated people have anti-spike protein antibodies, and any infection they get will select for viruses with mutations that are resistant to these antibodies. This is the same reason why taking low doses of antibiotics can create antibiotic-resistant bacteria. If the therapy does not kill the pathogen, but merely helps fight it, then resistant mutated strains can develop.

    This means the vaccinated are more of a threat to public health than the unvaccinated; both can spread disease but the vaccinated are more likely to create new variants that escape immune response.

    Herd Immunity Requires Natural Immunity, Not Therapeutic Vaccine Induced Immunity

    It is clear that you cannot end a pandemic with a therapeutic vaccine. Herd immunity will depend, not on the vaccine, but on natural immunity. We are being told that we need vaccinations to end the pandemic. But treatment vaccines assume you already have the virus and need help getting rid of it. This is not prevention of disease. We need enough people to develop natural immunity to get to herd immunity.

    Conclusion

    The authorities have been misleading the public about the nature of the COVID vaccines, portraying them as preventative vaccines when they are really for treatment.

    We are all going to get COVID, sooner or later, regardless of vaccine status.

    Public health measures should apply equally to the vaccinated and unvaccinated, since both have the potential of spreading infection.

    Vaccine mandates don’t make sense for a therapeutic vaccine, since these do not prevent the spread of disease, and may even create resistant virus variants.

    If you feel you need help fighting Long COVID, you may want to try a therapeutic vaccine to boost your immune response. But other treatments may work as well or better, and have different cost/benefit profiles.

    If you are wanting to hide in your home and wait out the pandemic, keep in mind that you will eventually need to come out of hiding, at which time you could get infected regardless of vaccine status.

    The push to vaccinate is an attempt to enroll people into this therapeutic vaccine study, and exploits public misunderstanding of the difference between traditional, preventative vaccines and new, therapeutic vaccines, fooling many people into getting vaccinated to prevent COVID when the vaccine does not prevent disease.

    Competition for People

    Tom Yamachika
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    Competition for People

    Over the past 10 or so years that I have been in the seat, I have seen legislature after legislature consider many, many bills to increase taxes. Every year. Without fail.  At the Foundation, we keep a list of the tax bills that are introduced and that get at least one hearing. The list is usually six or seven pages long. During the legislative process, most of these are weeded out, like most other bills, but there still is a two- or three-page list of tax and public finance bills that is sent up to the governor. Income tax. General excise tax. Transient accommodations tax.  Death tax. Conveyance tax.  “Sin taxes” on fuel, liquor, cigarettes. The list goes on.

    And when it comes to the level of tax, Hawaii is up there. We are tied for the top estate tax rate. We have the second highest income tax rate (and we would’ve beaten California if one of this session’s bills became law).  Our general excise tax is applied to far more things than any other comparable tax in any other state. 

    When these facts are brought up to lawmakers, they don’t seem to care. Why?  Probably because they don’t realize, or don’t want to realize, that Hawaii needs to be competitive. For people.

    Hawaii used to be an island kingdom, a world unto itself.  That is no longer true. We are part of a much bigger country, and that country is a part of a much bigger world.  Throughout the years, improved forms of transportation and technology have been obliterating the barriers between one state and the next, or one country and the next.

    Our government, like most in this world, relies upon tax revenue to stay afloat. Those taxes aren’t paid by government, they’re paid by people.  If you don’t have the people, you don’t have the tax.  This COVID-19 emergency showed us what that meant in no uncertain terms.

    We recently wrote about an economic study that showed that people, specifically the rich people who pay most of our taxes, had their limits.  If taxes went too high, people would pack up and leave, taking with them money they would otherwise have spent on sales and income taxes.

    This is not a possible problem.  It’s a current problem.  As we wrote in an earlier article, we are losing people now and we have been losing people for some time.  Even the University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization (UHERO) recently told our lawmakers that “our models are generating big outflows of population bigger than we have seen, certainly in my lifetime.”

    What does that mean?  People who are packing up and moving out are moving to somewhere else, because that somewhere else looks better to those people.  We can’t delude ourselves into thinking that people who are born here or live here will love our islands so much that they’ll never leave.  Instead, we need to see ourselves as competing with other states or countries.  For people.

    Certainly, states don’t compete for people simply on economic terms like tax rates.  We do have a relatively clean and healthy place to live, and that is worth something.  But it’s folly to assume that everyone who is “lucky to live Hawaii” will be able to pay the price of paradise, especially if that price keeps going up without corresponding improvement in the quality of services that our government offers its residents.

    Overall, our lawmakers absolutely need to realize that, whether we like it or not, we are competing for people.  We need to plan our government functions and services, and how our residents and visitors pay for them, with that in mind.  The status quo, with our people packing up and leaving, is telling us we are losing the competition and we need to do better to survive.

    Vacant Homes Tax?

    Tom Yamachika
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    Vacant Homes Tax?

    Recently, the Honolulu City Council has taken up the idea of imposing a different tax rate for residences that are vacant.

    The idea is contained in Bill 76 (2020), a bill that started off last year, was referred to the Council Budget Committee, and was postponed by the committee in November 2020 after a couple of public hearings with only a couple of members of the public weighing in. 

    Now, KHON2 is reporting that there is new momentum for the bill following some discussion by the city’s Real Property Tax Advisory Commission.  “The idea is to get folks who have vacant homes to rent them out, or the sell them, hopefully to other local people,” Honolulu City Council chair Tommy Waters is quoted as saying.

    The concept of a vacant homes tax is not new.  State lawmakers tried to attach the idea to the conveyance tax, but the bill to do that, SB 2216 (2020), passed  the Senate but ran into a brick wall in the House.

    The devil, of course, is likely to be in the details. How does some bureaucrat sitting in the real property tax office have any idea whether a property is vacant?  Maybe the official can pull down some data from the water or electric utilities and send a proposed assessment when the numbers are low.  Maybe the official can take an idea from TV shows by sticking a business card in the front door and returning after a few days to see if the card is still there.

    And, once the tax office has concluded that the property was vacant and is subject to the new tax, how is a property owner who in fact lived in the property to prove that fact?  Let’s listen to a conversation with a typical (?) property owner.

    Watch Doggie:  I was living in that house.

    Tax Official:  Prove it.

    W:  I barked at the neighbors.

    T:  Where’s your documentation of that?

    W:  The neighbors called the police so there must be a police report.

    T:  Do you have a copy of it?

    W:  No…

    T:  Pfft.  What other “proof” do you have?

    W:  Here’s my electric bill.  Isn’t it high for a vacant property?

    T:  So you forgot to turn off the fridge.  Doesn’t show anything.  Next!

    W:  Here’s my state ID card listing my address.

    T:  You got that ID six years ago.  But even if you got it yesterday, it doesn’t show that you actually live there. Next!

    W:  I have receipts from my neighborhood grocery store.

    T:  But you still could have been living somewhere else. Next!

    W:  Grrr!  I’m going to bite you on the schnozz!

    T:  You do that, you’ll be in the hoosegow, and there’ll be no doubt that you aren’t living in the property we’ve assessed!

    Another interesting problem is that the rates for the vacant home classification are subject to be determined. That’s nothing new because usually rates are set in the annual budget ordinance. But until then, we won’t know how high they are thinking of raising the rates.  KHON2 reported that they were thinking about a tax between 1% and 7% … which translates into a bump from the current residential rate of $3.50 per $1000 of value to anywhere between $13.50 and $73.50 per $1000.  Which translates to an increase of between a 286% and 2000% from the current rate. Yeow!

    This is an issue certainly worth watching in the months ahead.

    Biden Administration Sends Opposing Signals On Islamofascist Terror Threat

    Frank Salvato
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    Biden Administration Sends Opposing Signals On Islamofascist Terror Threat

    In an exhibition of a disturbing level of confusion and incoordination – and widely divergent determinations, two of the chief authorities on the security of our nation in combatting Islamofascist terrorism took diametrically opposed positions on the matter.

    On the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States – attacks that took 2,996 lives that day and many more since FBI Director Christopher Wray and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had very different belief systems as to the security of our nation and the threat posed by the budding reconstitution of Islamofascist terror organizations in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

    Answering a question from reporters as he made his way to the anniversary remembrance, Mayorkas said, “There is no specific credible threat to the homeland at this time,” He issued the standard fare rhetoric about being “ever vigilant.”

    But on a recent podcast episode of Inside the FBI, Wray said something completely opposite. “[T]he first thing I would say about the terrorist threat today versus 9/11 is that it’s just as much of a threat today as it was on 9/11,” Wray said. 

    Wray went on to say that the threat, while it continues to metastasize in the form of sleeper cells – like the cells that executed the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93’s target, now includes those who are dedicated to the Islamofascist cause and acting independently of any terror groups.

    “What we see today is not just that threat, but a more diverse threat,” Wray said.

    Why This Is Important

    This serves as a fantastic example of how disjointed and unorganized the Biden administration exists. On a topic as deadly serious as Islamofascist terrorism, and in light of the Biden administration’s facilitation of the reconstitution of an array of terrorist organizations in their ceding of Afghanistan, we must necessarily demand better execution of duties.

    Whether you enjoy the bizarre approach to President Trump that came from former-President George W. Bush or not, Mr. Bush reacted in an appropriate manner in the aftermath of the attacks. The attacks interrupted an education-rich presidential agenda, transforming his presidency into one that would address the Islamofascist threat to our nation as its number one priority. He pivoted to address an unforeseen issue.

    In stark contrast, the Biden administration has run from a required pivot in agenda priorities in a manner that can only be described as opportunistically political and cowardly. In fact, his refusal to pivot to address an even more potent threat to the homeland than we experienced on September 10, 2001, places every American in clear and present danger.

    Mr. Biden and his team pathetically attempted to pivot away from the crisis in Afghanistan to return to the contrived narrative that race and gender-identity politics, and a vanquished virus, are the biggest problems facing our nation. Only fools would believe this to be true. And only deceivers would try to shop this ridiculous premise to the people of the United States.

    In the face of this very real threat emanating from the Islamofascist Middle East – and on the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, shouldn’t our government cease with transformative politics? Shouldn’t a pivot in agenda be executed to preserve the safety of the American people?

    The answer for any honest and true public servant would be yes to both questions. Sadly we have but a handful of honest and true politicians in elected federal office. Even sadder yet is the fact that the bureaucracy runs roughshod over those elected officials assuming the station of the actual government here in the United States.

    We, the citizens of the United States, have no representative government. Those in control today are subservient to special interest groups, global oligarchs, and the activist multinational corporations that bully the governments of the world to their whim.

    Unless We the People exercise a great amount of intestinal fortitude and re-empower the states to claw back power from the federal government, and then immediately convene a Constitutional Convention to expunge the current apparatus – as is our right per our Charters of Freedom, our Republic is lost and true freedom and liberty are but words in history books.

    The Declaration of Independence reads, in part:

    “…governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security…”

    #ThowOffTheChains

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