"Last night brought news that the US Food & Drug Agency (FDA) has refused to review Moderna’s application for their new mRNA influenza vaccine ...  Right off, let’s just make clear that an outright refusal-to-review rejection like this is quite unusual ... especially unusual for a vaccine. If there is a prior example like this with the FDA, I am unaware of it. ...

"[T]his application is being denied personally by Vinay Prasad [an anti-vaxxer appointed by RFK Jr to be the agency's top vaccine regulator] and against the recommendation of the FDA’s remaining experts, because he and the rest of the Trump administration are hostile to vaccines in general and to mRNA technology in particular. I don’t see how anyone can look at the statements and actions of the political appointees (from RFK Jr. on down) and come away with any other impression. We are deliberately walking away from the most advanced form of one of the most effective public health measures available to the human race, and instead we are investigated older technologies that happen to involve the administration’s friends. Meanwhile, mRNA therapies are under investigation - in more advanced parts of the world - for far more than vaccines, including various types of cancer. But we, on the other hand, seem to be plowing money into ivermectin (of all things) for that purpose.

"Like so many of the Trump administration’s actions, this is simultaneously weird, dangerous, and profoundly stupid. And we are all going to pay the price for it."

~ Derek Lowe from his post 'An mRNA Refusal to File' [hat tip Duncan B.]

"Their study was based on a population of children aged 0-14 years 'informed by a cohort analysis of individuals ... who can be observed through to age 21 .'... One of four risk factors for poor outcomes later in life [is b]eing 'mostly supported by welfare benefits since birth'...

"[In other words,] children raised on welfare [tend to] become adults who are less educated, have poorer mental health, are more likely to become single parents, to rely on welfare and fall foul of the law.

"If being born onto welfare and staying there long-term is a risky business for children, why would any government want to encourage this? In other walks of life we are bombarded with health and safety regulation. And in an environment where 'sustainability' is a constant clamour, how does growing costly dependency stack up?

"Those who advocate limitless number and duration of child benefit payments — the situation that currently exists in New Zealand and the UK is returning to — are ignoring the evidence.

"Those saying we need more welfare in order to produce more children are pushing a remedy fraught with risk, cost and irresponsibility."

~ Lindsay Mitchell from her post 'Boosting birth rates with benefit payments is a very bad idea'

Federal funding inevitably brings federal control

The post Universities Facing Pressure Should Challenge Federal Funding appeared first on New Ideal - Reason | Individualism | Capitalism.

"[I]n light of how the past year has unfolded, consider cutting your friendly neighbourhood libertarian some slack. After all, we did try to warn you.

"On immigration, speech and trade, Americans are living in a libertarian’s nightmare. ... a terrifying pattern and an undeniable vindication of the long-held libertarian view that the steady growth in the size of the federal government and executive power would lead to precisely this kind of runaway authoritarianism.

"Libertarians have argued that the only way to prevent such abuses is to reduce the power of the federal government itself — abolishing unaccountable federal agencies, scaling back the administrative state, cutting spending — and to restore the balance of powers by reining in the executive. This path has generally been treated as hopelessly naïve at best, and morally suspect at worst. ... Yet it has never been more obvious that the grab-and-grow approach to power is a destructive and self-defeating way to conduct politics.

"To see why, consider how we got here.

"The Department of Homeland Security arose with very little opposition in the wake of Sept. 11 ... As the years went on, Homeland Security — and especially Immigration and Customs Enforcement, within it — got comfortable operating under a series of exceptions to the Constitution ... So it can be no surprise that ICE officers are roaming the streets of American cities today with an unclear mandate, overpowered military-style gear and a dire misunderstanding of the constitutional limits on their behaviour.  ...

"Trump 2.0 has made the libertarian case more obvious ... But it would be a mistake to treat President Trump as the origin of the ultra-powerful presidency. He is merely picking up the weapons that previous administrations left lying around and waltzing through the loopholes they opened.

"Mr. Trump has a record of threatening media and platforms under various statutory and emergency authorities. He recently mused that when '97 percent' of media coverage is negative, it ceases to be 'free speech.'  ...

"But the project of growing executive power has been bipartisan. On speech, officials in the Biden administration leaned on social-media platforms to take down what they deemed Covid and election misinformation without explicit action from the F.C.C. The Supreme Court disposed of a case, Murthy v. Missouri, challenging this “jawboning” ...

"And Mr. Trump’s tariffs — levelled and removed at will and without the participation of Congress, where the Constitution places the primary power — have disrupted and destabilised the global economy and undermined America’s role in it. ...

"Mr. Trump’s tariffs depend on a legally dubious claim that trade deficits and ordinary commerce constitute a national emergency, allowing him to bypass Congress under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. (Jimmy Carter once invoked it to freeze Iranian assets.) Mr. Trump’s tariffs are not an aberration so much as the latest example of how emergency powers, once normalized, become a standing invitation to rule by fiat.

"One thing immigration, speech and trade have in common is that in recent American history, the power to control each of them has settled into the hands of the executive. ... The Supreme Court is reviewing the limits of the president’s control over tariffs and executive agencies. ... The libertarian prescription, now and always, is to scale back the size and scope of the federal government. Devolve power to states and individuals. Cut spending. And rebalance power away from the executive branch. ...

"The good news is that Americans are increasingly waking up to the dark reality of [an] overbearing federal government. ... Similarly, Americans of all stripes have turned dramatically against Mr. Trump’s ICE enforcement actions. There could be — a libertarian can still dream — a grass-roots movement to shrink government that doesn’t end up co-opted by one of the major parties, as the Tea Party was. ...

"But this glimmer of hope is faint. ...

"Instead of a winner takes all approach to power, it’s time to consider working toward a system where there is much less power for the winner to take. No one wished events would prove libertarians wrong more than libertarians themselves. There’s nothing more annoying than an 'I told you so.' But if more Americans are now ready to limit power before it is abused again, they are welcome to join us."

~ Katherine Mangu-Ward from her New York Times free-access op-ed 'Libertarians: We Told You So'

"Sovereign citizen belief is linguistic magic.

"They believe: 

Legal power comes from words
If you refuse the words, the power disappears
Jurisdiction is a speech act you can decline
Law is a contract you never signed

"It’s almost medieval in structure: the right incantation breaks the spell.

"That’s why they obsess over:

Capital letters
Punctuation
Specific phrases
'I do not consent'
'Under duress'

"They treat law as performative language gone wrong. ...

"They are not anarchists.
"They are not libertarians.
"They are not anti-democracy.

"They are people who believe the legal system is a linguistic scam."

~ Tim Harding from his post 'What sovereign citizens believe'