Volume 77, no. 7 July 2021
More than 100 residents were sleeping comfortably in their $600,000 apartments in the 12-story Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida, when the building suddenly collapsed, burying the residents in the rubble. There had been indications of problems for a time—such as exposed rebar in concrete columns, or a balcony that looked slanted (https://tinyurl.com/xxcjptd6). The town is built on a barrier island, which is made of a loose mixture of sand and mud. Geologists have long warned that these islands cannot be developed responsibly (tinyurl.com/5yfvxjf2). The building was sinking at a rate of about 2 millimeters a year in the 1990s (https://tinyurl.com/32h74hvx). We don’t know exactly why the collapse occurred when it did—or the risk to the other $3 trillion worth of similar developments.
Is this a metaphor for the U.S., whose moral foundations, industry, and currency have been eroding and sinking for decades?
As the Fed is creating trillions of dollars out of nothing, and people are beginning to notice rising prices and a declining standard of living, the specter of Weimar hyperinflation looms. But there was much more to Weimar—and we must not forget that it was Weimar that led to the rise of Hitler.
Past Is Prologue
The American musical Cabaret portrays a highly sanitized version of Weimar craziness and debauchery. The German public became fed up with filth under the pretext of “sexual freedom” and voted for a party that promised a return to moral sanity.
In the opinion of a German immigrant who has extensively read the history of the era, most Americans never learned the truth about Weimar because the American historians who wrote about it were the refugees of the Weimar Regime or their descendants. Arguably, Cultural Marxism, which has become the ruling ideology in academia and other institutions, is Weimar’s toxic gift.
Weimar was not an enlightened pure democracy that was destroyed by fascists. Paul Bookbinder is one of the few American historians to acknowledge the bad choices made by Weimar politicians and elites (https://tinyurl.com/234ufrh8).
Although he was publishing in liberal post-war Germany, Karl Dietrich Bracher (Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik: eine Studie zum Problem des Machtverfalls in der Demokratie) was able to point out the inconvenient truth that the German people were simply appalled by Weimar politicians who pushed fringe liberal ideas (like degenerate arts and the normalization of perversions) while promoting big liberal government as “solutions” to the many economic and cultural crises. For instance, archetypal Weimar leader Heinrich Bruning responded to increasing poverty by increasing taxes, freeing violent offenders from prisons, and calling for legal protection of pedophilia and transvestitism. These things had no mass support but pleased the German liberal elites. One can argue that by enacting so many fringe policies Bruning was an unwilling helper of Hitler’s rise to power.
Historian Fritz Fischer gained popularity in early West Germany with a theory that provided an excuse for Nazism as an “inevitable event caused by fate” (Sonderweg). Even he presented the Weimar Republic as an asylum run by the inmates.
Hans-Ulrich Wehler, one of the founders of the Bielefeld School of Historical Analysis, aggressively promoted the Sonderweg theory, but uniquely noted that Weimar was a Potemkin Village or façade from behind which the Elites were ruling the “peasantry” mercilessly, while pretending to embrace “modern ideas.”
Hans Mommsen and Fritz Stern, although Cultural Marxists, are good sources of facts about the Weimar establishment. Both confirm the existence of the movement within the Weimar penitentiary system to literally coddle sexual predators, since they were considered to be “true victims of society.”
Does any of this sound familiar?
If the American Republic collapses, will there be a Sonderweg theory to excuse those passive, well-off, open-minded persons who could have done something, but didn’t?
Phony War of the Elites
American “peasants” may be in the streets or at rallies, but are they truly represented by either political party?
It appears that Democrats want to change decorations (get new flag and new anthem, destroy old monuments and possibly replace them with St. George Floyd, etc.); change ideology (replace the American Way with Critical Race Theory and LGBTQ cult); change religion (from Christianity—when Islam didn’t work out, replace it with Wokeism); expand entitlements but not work opportunities; and defund police. Republicans would keep the decorations and possibly add trendy new ones; replace ideology with hypocrisy (outwardly keep American Way but block industry and upward mobility); maintain pseudoreligion (keep some outward forms but abandon the faith and tolerate the intolerable, such as seduction of children); cut entitlements without allowing work opportunities to desperate people; and militarize the police.
The left-wing upper middle class, mostly the professional managerial class, and the right-wing upper middle class both expect to preserve the economic status quo for themselves. Those not in the commanding heights are deeply divided: those who revere the old Republic vs. those who oppose or are uninterested in its restoration. Angelo Codevilla asks, “Is it possible to rescue and re-found our Republic?” (https://tinyurl.com/yy9ye2mp).
Re-founding a Nation
If a large enough proportion of a people is alienated, the body politic loses the capacity to act as a whole. Resetting the country on its original principles—or outright resuscitation—amounts to re-founding a nation, and as Machiavelli wrote that is much more difficult than founding one in the first place. Codevilla (ibid.) notes the enormity of the problem:
“The changes that have taken place in the bipartisan ruling class that controls nearly all our institutions have explicitly denied and denigrated what had made America itself. Today’s ruling class leads and even forces Americans to act, speak, and think as if all that they had thought good were bad, and vice versa. Almost as if a vengeful power had conquered the country.”
There are historical examples of nations rescued and re-founded, most of which involve overthrowing the dominion of foreigners rather than of mutated ruling classes. [Americans might recognize an external threat even if the current Administration has deep ties to it. China, for example, is apparently building 100 new ICBM silos (https://tinyurl.com/2k6w7xm5).]
But “rescuing disrespected constitutions has always required …undoing any number of enemies.” And “lost civic virtue is almost as unrecoverable as lost virginity.”
Silent secession by alienated individuals, the tacit hemorrhage of legitimacy, dooms regimes—but does not by itself re-found.
“Federalism as never before” is key to successful restoration.
The Fed’s ‘Doom Loop’
America is in the throes of virulent underlying inflation, writes David Stockman (tinyurl.com/5adpma3w). In financial markets, it has already fostered huge asset bubbles and a massive shift of wealth to the tippy-top of the economic ladder. Now, soaring prices for everyday goods and services threaten main street jobs, incomes, and hard-earned savings. With unbridled furious money printing, the Fed’s balance sheet has ballooned from the historic 3-5% of GDP and post-dotcom crash of 6.5% to 37%. There is roaring inflation in stocks, bonds, housing prices, baseball cards, and other collectibles. Through financial fraud, the Fed is the most profitable private company in the world. Over three decades, the financial assets of the top 1% increased 9.5 times, while that of the bottom 50% only 4.3 times, with most of the paper gains trapped in their homes.
Fed chairman Jerome Powell insists that the Fed’s money-pumping madness has nothing to do with America’s rapidly metastasizing wealth disparities, but that is blatant sophistry, Stockman says. The coming inflation will hurt the poor far more.
“The Fed’s perverse redistribution of wealth to the top will also elicit a populist revulsion against the rich, which, in turn, threatens punitive taxation of the very producers and risk-takers who make capitalist prosperity possible. Indeed, Washington is threatening the golden goose like rarely before.”
“For several decades political arrests were distinguished in our country precisely by the fact that people were guilty of nothing and were therefore unprepared to put up any resistance whatsoever…. A person who is not inwardly prepared for the use of violence against him is always weaker than the person committing the violence.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago, tinyurl.com/55mujy8n
Nominating Committee Report
The Nominating Committee submits the following slate:
President-elect: Sheila Page, D.O., Aledo, TX
Secretary: Lawrence Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Lake View, NY
Treasurer: Tamzin Rosenwasser, M.D., Venice, FL
Directors: Richard Dolinar, M.D., Phoenix, AZ; Chandrasekhar Doniparthi, M.D., Yuma, AZ; Martin Dubravec, M.D., Cadillac, MI; Kristin Held, M.D., San Antonio, TX; Erika LeBaron, D.O., Manassas, VA; and George Smith, III, M.D., Covington, GA.
Resolutions
To be considered at the annual meeting, resolutions must be received in writing by July 31. Send to [email protected]. Prior resolutions are found at: https://tinyurl.com/25a99fw2.
‘Even North Korea Was Not This Nuts’
Yeonmi Park, who fled North Korea at age 13, says that she found the anti-Western sentiment, collective guilt, and suffocating political correctness at Columbia University deeply disturbing. She points to the lack of critical thinking and the erosion of the rule of law and morality. She thinks that America’s progressive influencers want “to destroy every single thing and rebuild into a communist paradise.” If we continue on the current path, our future is “as bleak as North Korea” (tinyurl.com/2hcweu6b).
AMA’s Population Health Priorities
Gender Affirmation: Physicians need to create a welcoming environment for LGBTQ patients. One suggestion is to incorporate asking about pronouns as part of your greeting (https://tinyurl.com/ydss84fu).
Remove Sex from Public Part of Birth Certificates: Board Report 15 recommends removing sex as a legal designation lest it lead to “discrimination or unnecessary burden on individuals whose current gender identity does not align with their designation at birth” (tinyurl.com/f4njrbwb).
Prioritizing “Health Equity.” AMA launched its Center for Health Equity in April. It will embed equity throughout its processes and actions. It celebrates “diversity” in its leadership, including its first openly gay chair of the AMA Board of Trustees. Initiatives will “shine a light on structural racism” and highlight national efforts “using equity lens to curb the COVID-19 epidemic” (tinyurl.com/4sx7e5ad). AMA urges “appropriate placement of transgender prisoners” (tinyurl.com/2d5zcezx).
AAPS Calendar
Sep 30. Board meeting; welcome reception
Oct 1-Oct 2. 78th Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA – https://aapsonline.org/2021am
‘Surprise’ Billing Rules Published
Interim final rules for the bipartisan No Surprises Act have requirements for opting out of the balance billing ban, which is only allowed in certain non-emergency situations, beginning at the bottom of page 124 of 411 (tinyurl.com/m3j7kdkd). The rules go into effect in 2022.
HHS claims that it is “important that these consumer protections do not present a barrier to obtaining out-of-network care, when an individual knowingly seeks out such care.” However, the requirements are quite detailed and must be presented at least three hours before a service is rendered. Consumers must be made aware that “payment made by the individual might not accrue toward meeting any limitation that the plan or coverage places on cost sharing, including an explanation that the payment might not apply to an in-network deductible or out-of-pocket
maximum under the plan or coverage.”
Providers and facilities will need to translate the standard notice-and-consent documents into the 15 languages most common in the area. If the patient prefers oral communication, a qualified interpreter must be provided.
As an article in the Buffalo News points out, the required form tells patients, “If you sign this form, you may pay more because you are giving up your protections under federal law.”
Dr. Lawrence Huntoon writes: “Regardless of the exact process that will be used to determine a ‘fair’ price for services, fees will undoubtedly be pegged to the Medicare Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS) system via some percentage, as HMOs do now. RBRVS, of course, is based on Marxist labor theory.
“Insurers already discriminate against out-of-network physicians by covering substantially less of the bill. Now that insurers will essentially have complete control over all fees, this discrimination will likely be enhanced.
“I strongly suspect that HHS will judge all patients who presents to an ED as ‘emergencies’ so that the waiver will not apply. But its use will cause undue delay in treatment or put the physician at high risk of termination of privileges if he abides by the required delay of three hours before treating the patient.
“This new law was absolutely designed to eliminate independent practice by out-of-network physicians.”
‘By Any Means Necessary’
The Florida law, SB 2006, which prevents companies and organizations operating there from requiring “vaccine passports” also contains this provision: “If the individual poses a danger to the public health, the State Health Officer may subject the individual to isolation or quarantine. If there is no practical method to isolate or quarantine the individual, the State Health Officer may use any means necessary to vaccinate or treat the individual.”
“Any order of the State Health Official given to effectuate this paragraph is immediately enforceable by a law enforcement officer under s. 381.0012” (https://tinyurl.com/ypkvtv77).
Canadian Physicians Persecuted
Physicians insisting on informed consent for giving COVID jabs to children and adolescents are having their ability to work terminated by organized medicine—despite the World Health Organization’s statement that children under 18 should not get the shot. Five physicians are interviewed by Dr. Sam Dubé (https://tinyurl.com/upnr5cf8). Of special interest at the end of the video is a secret audio recording of the inquisition of Dr. Francis Christian, who is being urged to take advantage of “physician health” resources to cope with the distress he must be feeling as his professional life is being destroyed. Remember the history of Soviet psychiatric “hospitals.”
Tip of the Month: Granting multiple medical exemptions from the COVID vaccine can result in unfair harassment by medical boards, and the medical exemptions may not be accepted by employers and universities. One state medical board is already harassing a good physician about this, and demanding medical records about the patients. This retaliation occurs despite reports that the second dose of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s products has caused heart inflammation in college-aged students. The religious exemption is more difficult for an employer or college to reject.
Largest Healthcare Union Fights Mandatory Jab
The president of 1199SEIU, which represents hundreds of thousands, announced that the organization would fight mandates for COVID-19 injections, whether by a legal or a purely organizational challenge. New York-Presbyterian Hospital is mandating employee jabs. The New York State Nurses Association also issued a statement opposing mandates (tinyurl.com/3vfrhdzp).
French, UK Groups Call for Stopping Jabs
A regional independent drug assessment center, the CTIAP (Centre territorial d’Information indépendante et d’Avis pharmaceutiques), has stated that COVID jabs were submitted to insufficient clinical testing, and that the quality of the active substances, their excipients, and the manufacturing processes are problematic.
“Prudence would even dictate that, in all countries where these vaccines against COVID-19 have been marketed, all the batches thus ‘released’ should be withdrawn immediately; and that these [marketing authorizations] that have been granted should be suspended, or even canceled, …until further notice.”
All are “subject to further studies that reach as far as 2024 and even beyond, and these will be almost impossible to be completed because of the way the vaccines are now being distributed,” said the CTIAP report. Releasing these products is like launching a car manufacturing line without testing quality of the parts, such as the brakes (https://tinyurl.com/32s2tyys).
The Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy based in the UK, in a report to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), states the MHRA now has more than enough evidence from the Yellow Card system “to declare the COVID-19 vaccines unsafe for use in humans” (tinyurl.com/wdn25nt2).
Are Colleges, Employers Liable?
The William J. Olson law firm requests colleges to commit to assume financial liability for death, disability, or illness of students being required to take the COVID jab. While manufacturers are immune from product liability, those who coerce students or employees to receive it may not be (tinyurl.com/2jmjpefm).
Correspondence
Vaccine Pass. Originally supposed to be “optional and voluntary,” to cost $2.4 million, and to become obsolete, New York’s Excelsior Pass has already been used to restrict access to sporting events. The highly secretive “Phase 2” has shocked even the left-biased Buffalo News. Apparently, it will include “health records, proof of age and driver’s licenses” and create a “new, inescapable web of geolocation tracking, building out a map of our most intimate moments.” The state’s 3-year contract with IBM requires IBM to develop a road map to expand the pass to all 20 million New Yorkers. The total cost could end up being $17 million.
Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D., Lake View, NY
Crit Theory and the Hate America Left. Reflecting on the Frankfurt School, postmodernism, and crit theory, Michael Walsh writes: “Wielding their pseudo-intellectual doctrine of Critical Theory,” men who at first seemed like “a bunch of nutty professors with Dr. Strangelove accents” undertook to “undermine every legal and social American institution, from the family, to traditional sexuality, to academe, pop culture, government, and even the military.” Everything is seen as a “construct,” a plot by the “privileged” against the “oppressed” (https://tinyurl.com/ddwtep9r). Whenever you hear words like “systemic,” “struggle,” “structural,” “change,” “fundamental transformation,” etc., you know you’re dealing with Marxists.
John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D., Brownwood, TX
A Foreign Enemy? According to a 2015 dossier produced by the People’s Liberation Army, uncovered by the U.S. State Dept., China was preparing for a Third World War with biological weapons, including coronavirus, 6 years ago. Notably, China was the only G20 member whose GDP showed growth in 2020, expanding by 2.3% (https://tinyurl.com/55jwm7d5).
Willie Soon, Ph.D., Salem, MA
Domestic Enemies. Branded and sold as Democratic Socialism, American Marxism is the fight between corporate technocrats and Americans who love their country. The former are aided by corrupt congressmen and bureaucrats and the woke military, police, teachers, professors, administrators, and media. At the bottom rung are activists and useful idiots. Half of America bought the lie and empty promises of “free stuff,” while the rest get lawlessness, protests, burning, and looting. History shows that law and order disappear prior to the complete societal takeover by tyrants, who present it as a necessity to quell the lawlessness.
Ileana Johnson, Ed.D., https://tinyurl.com/aretufwx
Government Buys ‘Fresh’ Flesh. The Food and Drug Administration has been caught buying tissue from aborted babies who could have survived as preemies. Recent emails uncovered by Judicial Watch between FDA employees and Advanced Bioscience Resources (ABR) prove the agency spent tens of thousands of dollars between 2012 and 2018 buying aborted babies up to 24 weeks gestation. Body parts were used to “humanize” mice and test biologic drugs (https://tinyurl.com/2yzkz858).
Joseph Scherzer, M.D., Paradise Valley, AZ
Dr. Fauci’s Agency Spends $61 Million on Baby Parts. Experiments funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) include implanting fetal scalps onto mice at the Univ. of Pittsburgh (https://tinyurl.com/5bp5xdxd).
Dianne Irving, Ph.D.
‘Mild’ Myocarditis. Give the risk of terrible outcomes, we should have a low threshold to evaluate any young person after COVID injections, with ECG and troponin values. See these narratives (tinyurl.com/hzy296ww, tinyurl.com/5pvc46mb) from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Peter A. McCullough, M.D., Dallas, TX
Remdesivir v. HCQ. FDA has warned that concurrent use of hydroxychloroquine might reduce the effectiveness of remdesivir (RDV). In a study published by NEJM, 27% of the patients received HCQ, and had lower mortality than those who did not. (Table S-3, https://tinyurl.com/46brebv7). FDA officials and Gilead colluded to prevent the use of HCQ for COVID-19 in order to sell RDV (https://tinyurl.com/sttt7u7n).
Leo Goldstein
Open Letter to AMA. How dare you join the…camouflaged communists who furtively…conflat[e] equity with equality? Ours is a nation built on the premise of equal standing under the law and only that…. Equity, on the other hand, is achieved by fiat, by taking from some and giving it to others at the point of a gun. Few better ruses exist for the state control of the means of production than through the illusory promise of achieving equity.
Julio Gonzalez, M.D., J.D., Venice, FL, tinyurl.com/3tkw4hb2
Insolvency. Medicare Part A will be insolvent by 2024—2 years sooner than trustees predicted. To make up the shortfall, $750 billion is needed. Suggestions include cutting Medicare Advantage payments or increasing taxes on high earners (JAMA 1/26/21). By January, nearly $3 trillion had already been spent on COVID.
Albert L. Fisher, M.D., Oshkosh, WI
