Month: April 2021

Biden Condemns “Russian Aggression” In Ukraine In First Belated Call With President Zelensky 

Biden Condemns “Russian Aggression” In Ukraine In First Belated Call With President Zelensky 

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine are at their highest in years, with NATO and the Kremlin now entering a tit-for-tat ratcheting rhetoric of bellicose “warnings” – and Joe Biden has yet to even pick up the phone and speak to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky… until today.

Axios is reporting Friday mid-morning the two leaders belatedly held their first phone call since Biden taking office: “It took more than two months for Biden to speak directly with the president of Ukraine, a key frontline partner in eastern Europe that has been pleading for more help from the West in its fight against Russian aggression.”

The White House call readout emphasized Biden expressing the United States’ “unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression in the Donbas and Crimea.”

“He emphasized his administration’s commitment to revitalize our strategic partnership in support of President Zelensky’s plan to tackle corruption and implement a reform agenda based on our shared democratic values that delivers justice, security, and prosperity to the people of Ukraine.”

The two also spoke of “Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations” — language which will no doubt smack of suggesting a future invitation to join NATO, which would certainly trigger greater conflict in the region with Russia. 

Biden’s reference to Russian “ongoing aggression” is likely to fan the flames amid increased fighting in the restive Donbass region on the same day the Kremlin put NATO on notice, warning that any NATO troop deployment would result in immediate counter-action from Russia to ensure its own security and interests, as Reuters noted earlier in the day. 

Reuters is meanwhile reporting that Zelensky told Biden that the Ukrainian Army is ready to retaliate in Donbass.

Here’s more context of where things stand, according to Axios, after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a “frightening” escalation is happing in Donetsk following the deaths of four Ukrainian soldiers last week:

Zelensky accused Russia of amassing troops at the border with the intent of creating “a threatening atmosphere” in violation of the most recent ceasefire brokered in July 2020, describing the military exercises as “traditional Russian games.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a statement on Wednesday noting that he had spoken with Ukraine’s foreign minister and condemned Russia’s aggression.

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan have also held phone calls with their Ukrainian counterparts, Politico reports.

Just prior to Friday’s belated White House phone call with Zelensky, Axios’ Jonathan Swan observed the cold shoulder toward Kiev seemed intentional and based on appeasing the Russians…

Meanwhile, there’s been more confirmation that a major Russian forces build-up is indeed underway along the border with Ukraine, also through dozens of social media videos out of the region, at a moment Zelensky has charged that Moscow is behind the bloody escalation in Donbass.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/02/2021 – 13:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3dr4UBX Tyler Durden

Did Cuomo Aides Violate Ethics Rules To Help Their Boss With His Memoir?


freeport-ny-july-30-2014andmdashnew-york-gov-andrew-cuomo-held-a-news-conference-ed38e9-1600

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, used office staff to work on his memoir, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic—which garnered a $4 million dollar book deal—in potential violation of ethics rules.

The Albany Times Union reports that when the governor had communicated plans to earn outside income from publishing a book, Judith Mogul, Cuomo’s special counsel, had advised him that no “state property, personnel or other resources may be utilized” according to New York’s long-standing ethics rules, which he had agreed to. Still, top aides like Melissa DeRosa (whose name might ring a bell if you’ve followed some of the many Cuomo scandals from earlier this year) were heavily involved in editing and pitching the book, and more junior aides were involved in typing notes for the governor and transcribing things he said, since he voice-dictated many parts of the book. The New York Times also reports that “a top aide to the governor, Stephanie Benton, twice asked assistants to print portions of the draft of the book, and deliver them to Mr. Cuomo at the Executive Mansion in Albany, where he lives.”

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi told the Times Union that the Cuomo staffers who worked on the governor’s memoir had volunteered their own time to do so, adding that there is “nothing in law or regulation that speaks to a ban on state workers volunteering for a for-profit venture — this simply is not legally a ‘thing.'” (Cuomo’s office did not respond to Reason‘s request for comment by time of publication.)

But those heading up the Cuomo impeachment investigation have decided to look into this further to discern whether state resources were improperly used for the governor to line his own pockets.

The governor has had waves of scandal washing over him in quick succession for the last few months; most recently, Cuomo got roundly lambasted when news surfaced that he had secured special treatment for his own family members and other well-connected VIPs during the early days of the pandemic. There’s the most famous scandal—the March 25, 2020, directive which required nursing homes to admit or re-admit COVID-19 patients regardless of whether they’d tested negative for the virus—and the way the administration subsequently hid the true nursing home death count, which was about 40 percent higher than they had claimed. There’s the much more underground scandal, that the governor issued an April 10 directive, in parallel to the March 25 one, which similarly prohibited residential facilities for adults with intellectual disabilities from turning away COVID-positive patients. There are the sexual harassment scandals that have emerged in recent weeks as nine women have come forward with allegations of inappropriate behavior, ranging from unwanted sexual comments all the way to groping and kissing. And, of course, the vaccine scandal where medical providers in the state were forced to throw away precious vaccine doses due to the threat of $1 million fines being levied if providers allowed anyone to hop the state-mandated vaccination line.

This guy is unsinkable. But then again, we’re talking about someone who had both the extraordinary gall and terrifyingly large ego to write a book on just how great of a pandemic leader he was and make a fat advance off of it, while his state-employee “volunteers” scurried around to do his book bidding.

Maybe the real American Crisis is the fact that, though we tally up the manifold transgressions (maybe even crimes) of Andrew Cuomo, corrupt and inept leaders like him get to remain in office—and sell some books while they’re at it.

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Ninth Circuit Lets #TheyLied Suit Against Lawyer Lisa Bloom Go Forward

An interesting decision from last week, Wynn v. Bloom, decided by a Ninth Circuit panel (Richard Clifton, Jacqueline Nguyen, and Mark Bennett):

Defendants-Appellants Lisa Bloom and the Bloom Firm … appeal from the district court’s denial of their [anti-SLAPP] Special Motion to Dismiss ….

Wynn has demonstrated a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Bloom Defendants acted with actual malice [i.e., knowledge or reckless disregard as to falsehood] in publishing the Press Release…. To constitute reckless disregard, the defendant must have published a false statement with a “high degree of awareness of [its] probable falsity,” or “entertained serious doubts as to the truth of [the] publication.”.

The Press Release suggests that Wynn instructed—personally or through a third party—female ShowStoppers performers “to strip down to bras and panties, put on heels, and apply extra makeup so as to be sexually appealing” to him and that Wynn directly or indirectly retaliated against Angelina Mullins when she refused to comply.

However, neither Mullins nor Samuel Cahn-Temes told Bloom Defendants that they heard Wynn give the instructions or had knowledge that the instructions came from Wynn. In fact, at her deposition, Mullins testified that although she assumed the instructions came from Wynn, she “made it clear” to Bloom Defendants that she had no personal knowledge that they did.

Furthermore, Mullins and Cahn-Temes gave Bloom Defendants reason to doubt that Wynn was responsible. Both Mullins’s and Cahn-Temes’s depositions highlighted the differences between New York Broadway and Los Angeles Commercial styles of performance and how performers’ styles and professional experiences may have shaped their understandings of appropriate attire and behavior. While Mullins’s style was New York Broadway, choreographer Marguerite Derricks’s style was Los Angeles Commercial.

Mullins testified that she told the Bloom Firm, before the Press Release was issued, that other dancers that worked for Derricks in the past thought that it “seemed very normal … to be asked to wear what they were wearing for [Derricks] in this context” and that those performers’ understanding of “what is acceptable for Broadway style show rehearsals and … go-go or burlesque dancing was sort of blurred.” Cahn-Temes testified that he told Bloom Defendants that Mullins and Derricks had a “clash” of personalities and style—New York versus Los Angeles—and that Mullins was pushed to the back or removed from numbers, at least in part, due to that clash. {Jordan Oslin, a Bloom Firm attorney, testified that he recalled Cahn-Temes telling him about the clash between the New York Broadway and Los Angeles Commercial styles but asserted that Cahn-Temes made it clear to him that the retaliation was a result of Mullins’s refusal to sexualize herself for Wynn. Cahn-Temes’s testimony contradicts Oslin’s.}

Bloom Defendants chose to publish the Press Release inculpating Wynn after learning that none of the witnesses could confirm that Wynn played any role in giving the instructions and without considering alternative explanations or investigating further. Under these circumstances, though the result may not be certain or perhaps even likely, a reasonable jury could find that Bloom Defendants acted with actual malice in publishing the Press Release….

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Peak Woke? The Rabid Left Comes For “Oppressor” Obama

Peak Woke? The Rabid Left Comes For “Oppressor” Obama

Authored by Monica Showalter via AmericanThinker.com,

Is the revolution finally devouring its children?

Seems like it now that the wokester mob has decided to come for President Obama.

According to Fox News, reporting from Obama’s own political hometown Chicago:

Immigration activists are objecting to renaming a Chicago school after Barack Obama. 

“I will not be part of renaming a school after someone who did not and does not represent the undocumented community,” said District 60 school board member Edgar Castellanos, who says he came to the U.S. as an undocumented child, according to ABC 7 Chicago. 

Waukegan’s Board of Education met Tuesday evening to debate renaming Thomas Jefferson Middle School and Daniel Webster Middle School, after it was decided the historical figures either owned slaves or supported slavery.

One of the top contenders for Thomas Jefferson Middle School’s new name is that of the first Black president, Barack Obama, and former First Lady Michelle. But that name is drawing the ire of immigration activists and some in the Latino community. Activists staged a protest outside the board meeting Tuesday. 

“From the time Barack Obama became President until 2017 when he left, he today is still the highest-ranking president with deportations in our nation,” said Julie Contreras, who runs shelters for immigrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border. She said Obama failed to deliver on his promises on immigration. 

“We feel that Barack Obama did disservice to us. He denied us, and he didn’t stop the deportations, the way he promised,” Contreras continued. 

“If you’re removing the name of Thomas Jefferson, one oppressor, the name of Obama is another oppressor, and our families do not want to see that name,” she added.

The ridiculousness of the whole thing is pretty obvious. Radical-left Obama, who ushered in the era of Black Lives Matter by stoking the Ferguson riots, as well as university snowflake wokesters, suddenly finds himself the bad guy, the latest Judas goat for the left. No more first black president, he’s now no different from a Confederate general. Which rather tells you they’ve run out of historic figures to cancel. As French Revolution-era figure Jacques Mallet du Pan famously wrote: “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.” 

And what again, is it that Obama did that was oh so bad? That cancels out all the left-wing outrages that he did? I think it was partially enforce the border, to keep the television cameras off. The foreigners involved, otherwise known as illegal aliens, are upset they couldn’t break into the U.S. as they pleased, and for that, Obama, and all those racists who elected him, must be cancelled, erased from history. They write the history now. Fancy that, foreigners cancelling an American president and in the wokester era, quite possibly getting away with it.

Obama, of course, was a lot like the current Joe Biden. Like Joe, he both encouraged waves of illegal immigration, and I guess allowing the Border Patrol to do some of its lawfully committed duty, he wasn’t able to stop them entirely. He also built the kids-in-cages cages, not President Trump, though the left tried to pin those on Trump. During his presidency, leftists yelled that he was the ‘deporter in chief’ based on the fact that he encouraged illegal immigration yet didn’t completely open the border. The logical outcome of that is obvious — human waves plus kids in cages. Joe Biden, who was placed in charge of the matter at the time, is now making his same old mistakes, senile and unable to learn.

So now we have people who shouldn’t be here, and their advocates, demanding that Obama be cancelled. They’ve already done their worst on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, now they’ve moved on to Obama. The funny thing here is that if it were anyone but Obama, Obama would support the move. Now that it’s Obama’s turn in the barrel, it will be interesting to see whether and how he reacts, now that there’s no Trump to kick around.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/02/2021 – 13:20

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Ninth Circuit Lets #TheyLied Suit Against Lawyer Lisa Bloom Go Forward

An interesting decision from last week, Wynn v. Bloom, decided by a Ninth Circuit panel (Richard Clifton, Jacqueline Nguyen, and Mark Bennett):

Defendants-Appellants Lisa Bloom and the Bloom Firm … appeal from the district court’s denial of their [anti-SLAPP] Special Motion to Dismiss ….

Wynn has demonstrated a genuine dispute of material fact as to whether Bloom Defendants acted with actual malice [i.e., knowledge or reckless disregard as to falsehood] in publishing the Press Release…. To constitute reckless disregard, the defendant must have published a false statement with a “high degree of awareness of [its] probable falsity,” or “entertained serious doubts as to the truth of [the] publication.”.

The Press Release suggests that Wynn instructed—personally or through a third party—female ShowStoppers performers “to strip down to bras and panties, put on heels, and apply extra makeup so as to be sexually appealing” to him and that Wynn directly or indirectly retaliated against Angelina Mullins when she refused to comply.

However, neither Mullins nor Samuel Cahn-Temes told Bloom Defendants that they heard Wynn give the instructions or had knowledge that the instructions came from Wynn. In fact, at her deposition, Mullins testified that although she assumed the instructions came from Wynn, she “made it clear” to Bloom Defendants that she had no personal knowledge that they did.

Furthermore, Mullins and Cahn-Temes gave Bloom Defendants reason to doubt that Wynn was responsible. Both Mullins’s and Cahn-Temes’s depositions highlighted the differences between New York Broadway and Los Angeles Commercial styles of performance and how performers’ styles and professional experiences may have shaped their understandings of appropriate attire and behavior. While Mullins’s style was New York Broadway, choreographer Marguerite Derricks’s style was Los Angeles Commercial.

Mullins testified that she told the Bloom Firm, before the Press Release was issued, that other dancers that worked for Derricks in the past thought that it “seemed very normal … to be asked to wear what they were wearing for [Derricks] in this context” and that those performers’ understanding of “what is acceptable for Broadway style show rehearsals and … go-go or burlesque dancing was sort of blurred.” Cahn-Temes testified that he told Bloom Defendants that Mullins and Derricks had a “clash” of personalities and style—New York versus Los Angeles—and that Mullins was pushed to the back or removed from numbers, at least in part, due to that clash. {Jordan Oslin, a Bloom Firm attorney, testified that he recalled Cahn-Temes telling him about the clash between the New York Broadway and Los Angeles Commercial styles but asserted that Cahn-Temes made it clear to him that the retaliation was a result of Mullins’s refusal to sexualize herself for Wynn. Cahn-Temes’s testimony contradicts Oslin’s.}

Bloom Defendants chose to publish the Press Release inculpating Wynn after learning that none of the witnesses could confirm that Wynn played any role in giving the instructions and without considering alternative explanations or investigating further. Under these circumstances, though the result may not be certain or perhaps even likely, a reasonable jury could find that Bloom Defendants acted with actual malice in publishing the Press Release….

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Vermont Is Prioritizing ‘BIPOC’ Households for Vaccines. That’s Almost Certainly Unconstitutional.


reason-vaccine3

Vermont is prioritizing people of color for vaccine eligibility over the state’s white residents, provoking no small amount of controversy and constitutional concerns.

On Thursday, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) announced on Twitter that anyone aged 16 or older who identities as black, indigenous, or a person of color (BIPOC), or lives in a household with someone who does, can get a COVID-19 vaccine.

That would seem to disadvantage the state residents who are white and don’t live with anyone identifying as BIPOC. The state currently restricts vaccine eligibility for those people to those 50 years and older, unless they qualify for a vaccine by virtue of being a health care worker, employed in public safety, having a high-risk health condition, or being a parent or caregiver of someone with a high-risk health condition.

Mark Levine, the state’s health commissioner, told VTDigger that people of color are being prioritized for the vaccine because of their higher rates of COVID-19 and lower rates of vaccination.

All Vermonters 16 or older, white or not, should be able to register for a vaccine appointment by April 19, said Levine.

Some 34 percent of Vermont’s population has received at least one vaccine dose, making it the ninth most vaccinated state in the country. It ranks middle of the pack in how many of its allocated vaccines it’s actually administered.

The prioritization of vaccine eligibility along explicitly racial lines is unconstitutional, argues Cato Institute legal expert Walter Olson in a December 2020 op-ed for The Detriot News written in response to the Department of Veterans Affairs opening up vaccines to black, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic veterans.

“This runs into the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says citizens of all races are entitled to the equal protection of the laws. The Supreme Court has long interpreted this to mean that the government may ordinarily not dole out valuable benefits, or impose harms, based on a citizen’s race,” writes Olson.

It’s true that people of color are more likely to be frontline workers or have health conditions that make them more at risk of COVID-19 complications and death. However, directing vaccines to those higher-risk people can, and should, still be done through race-neutral categorization, says Olson.

“Many sensible priority rules do incidentally protect relatively more minority persons — and that’s fine, so long as the decision is based on the neutral grounds rather than being a pretext aimed at getting results based on race,” he writes.

All these problems identified with the V.A.’s policy would also apply to Vermont’s vaccination racial preferences.

In November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to prioritize essential workers over the elderly for vaccine distribution, in part, on the grounds that the elderly skew white, reports The Washington Free Beacon.

The fact that we have COVID-19 vaccines that are both safe and effective is a true miracle of modern medicine. Getting them in as many arms as possible should be public policy goal number one. That is only undermined when public health officials at any level of government start creating arbitrary, likely unconstitutional categories for who can get a vaccine next.

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Archegos’ Bill Hwang Is A “Backer” Of Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest

Archegos’ Bill Hwang Is A “Backer” Of Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest

How surprised would you be if we told you that Bill Hwang, recently best known for being at the helm of a ship called Archegos that ran head first into an $80 billion margin call, also happens to be a mentor to ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood?

Now, how surprised would you be if we told you that both Hwang and Wood hold Bible study meetings as part of a “faith in finance” movement – and that this is apparently just one of the ties that binds them, according to Bloomberg?

We weren’t that surprised either.

But this is apparently the case, according to a new report profiling Hwang. The report profiles Hwang as a devout Christian, who would gather in his family office’s boardroom at 7AM in order to undertake Bible study before the work day. “First might come the Old Testament, perhaps Isaiah or Lamentations,” Bloomberg writes. “Then came the New, the Gospels, which called out to the listeners drawn from a path known more for its earthly greed than its godly faith: Wall Street.”

The report details that despite his fortune – he is estimated to have been worth $20 billion at one point – Hwang still “rides the bus, flies commercial and lives in what is, by billionaire standards, humble surroundings in suburban New Jersey.” To put that in perspective, that would mean that Hwang was worth more than names like Ray Dalio and Steve Cohen.

Then, the bombshell. Hwang is “also a backer” of Cathie Wood of ARK Investments, the report says. Wood, like Hwang, also holds Bible study meetings in her office. 

All of Wall Street knows how the story has ended for Hwang: he lost it all at “breakneck speed” after his fund employed leverage with numerous banks, who were eager to take on his “lucrative trading business”. His blowup is taking place in the midst of what can only be described as wide-scale mass adoption of Cathie Wood as one of the “smartest” new investors on Wall Street.

It calls into question numerous analogues but begs the larger question of whether or not Wood – who we have profiled extensively and who also appears to be employing riskier tactics of late (buying her own ETFs with other ETFs, rotating out of big tech and into speculative small caps) – could wind up being the next Bill Hwang. Could these two investors be cut from the same cloth in more ways than one?

Also lost in the shuffle about Hwang over the last couple days was the fact that he also blew up while being short Volkswagen in 2008, according to the WSJ. In 2008, Hwang’s Tiger Asia “was one of a swath of funds that suffered losses related to the soaring share price of Germany’s Volkswagen AG.”

When Hwang bounced back from the VW sting, subsequently renaming Tiger Asia to Archegos and turning it into a family office, he sought out help from the big man upstairs.

Hwang said in 2017: “My journey really began when I was having a lot of problems in our business about five or six years ago. And I knew one thing, that this was a situation where money and connections couldn’t really help. But somehow I was reminded I had to go to the words of the God.”

Hopefully, Wood is more in favor with the man upstairs than Hwang was this year.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/02/2021 – 13:00

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Peter Schiff: Biden Infrastructure Plan Will Weaken The Economy And Destroy Opportunity

Peter Schiff: Biden Infrastructure Plan Will Weaken The Economy And Destroy Opportunity

Via SchiffGold.com,

Joe Biden unveiled details of his $2 trillion-plus infrastructure plan complete with tax hikes. The claim is that this is going to strengthen the economy and create opportunity. Peter broke down the spending plan in his podcast and said it will do the exact opposite. It’s going to weaken the economy and destroy opportunity.

The tax hikes primarily target corporations, along with people who earn over $400,000 per year, but Biden said they weren’t meant to punish people. They are intended to create opportunities for others.

In other words, he thinks the only way to create opportunities is to take money away from the entrepreneurs who earned it and have the government spending it ‘creating opportunity for other people, which basically is taking a stake to the very heart of capitalism.”

But people ignore the fact that the money in the private sector that the government wants to take away also provides opportunities for other people. When you tax corporations and “the rich,” you’re not targeting consumption. This is money that would have been invested. It would have funded new plants and equipment, research and development, expanding staff, and other investments. Biden wants to take this money out of the private sector and have the government spend it.

So the opportunities that government is going to create and provide to the public are going to be at the expense of the opportunities that the private sector would have created and provided if it had the resources to do it.”

That raises a question: what is a better way to create opportunities and economic growth? Free markets or government bureaucrats and central planners? Peter said we know the answer.

Every single country that has tried to centrally plan its way to prosperity has been a complete and utter failure. The way to have opportunity and economic growth is to have more resources in the hands of the private sector and to limit as best as you can the resources that are consumed by government.”

Ultimately, opportunities get smaller as government gets bigger.

That is the Biden plan.

And this plan isn’t going to be good for the economy. It is going to be a burden on the economy.

Even if the money is well-spent – and it almost certainly won’t, given the government’s track record – the payoff is in the future. The economy today will have to bear the cost.

That doesn’t help the economy. It hurts the economy. Because now we have to divert resources out of current consumption to free them up to enable the building of all the infrastructure that isn’t going to pay off until years into the future. So yes, infrastructure can be important, and it could make you more productive in the long run. But in the short run, you’ve got to be able to pay for it. You have to be able to afford it. So, you don’t make the economy stronger in the short run by needing to spend money on infrastructure.”

And it will almost certainly cost more than it should. Biden said all of the materials will be made in America even if they can be obtained more cheaply overseas. On top of that, you will almost certainly have the cronyism inherent in any government project. Peter said the whole thing will be a “gigantic cesspool.”

Everything is going to cost way more than it should. So, I’m sure none of this spending is actually going to be economically viable, even if we could afford it, which we can’t. So, it’s going to be a drain on the economy in the short run, and that drain is not going to be made up for by improved efficiencies in the long run.”

Of course, Biden claims this plan will create millions of “good jobs.”

Right, probably because the government is going to overpay.”

In the private sector, you have to make sure you don’t overpay because you have to be able to sell the goods and services you produce. If you pay your workers too much, the prices of your goods and services will be too high to compete. But when the government hires people, it doesn’t have to worry about it. It doesn’t matter what it pays.

It can pay whatever it wants, especially since it can print the money. So, the government doesn’t give a damn if it’s overpaying its workers. And of course, if the government starts overpaying a lot of workers, what does that do to the wages the private sector has to pay? It puts a lot of upward pressure on those wages.”

That may sound good. But eventually, the value of that money is going to collapse because, despite the tax increases, much of it will ultimately be printed by the Federal Reserve.

So yes, people are going to get these high-paying jobs, but they’re not going to be productive jobs. They may be good for the workers, but they’re not going to be good for the economy. And they won’t be good for the workers very long because pretty soon the value of those paychecks is going to collapse because they’re going to be paid in money that doesn’t buy very much.”

Peter goes on to break down and critique some of the specifics in the spending plan.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/02/2021 – 12:40

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Vermont Is Prioritizing ‘BIPOC’ Households for Vaccines. That’s Almost Certainly Unconstitutional.


reason-vaccine3

Vermont is prioritizing people of color for vaccine eligibility over the state’s white residents, provoking no small amount of controversy and constitutional concerns.

On Thursday, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) announced on Twitter that anyone aged 16 or older who identities as black, indigenous, or a person of color (BIPOC), or lives in a household with someone who does, can get a COVID-19 vaccine.

That would seem to disadvantage the state residents who are white and don’t live with anyone identifying as BIPOC. The state currently restricts vaccine eligibility for those people to those 50 years and older, unless they qualify for a vaccine by virtue of being a health care worker, employed in public safety, having a high-risk health condition, or being a parent or caregiver of someone with a high-risk health condition.

Mark Levine, the state’s health commissioner, told VTDigger that people of color are being prioritized for the vaccine because of their higher rates of COVID-19 and lower rates of vaccination.

All Vermonters 16 or older, white or not, should be able to register for a vaccine appointment by April 19, said Levine.

Some 34 percent of Vermont’s population has received at least one vaccine dose, making it the ninth most vaccinated state in the country. It ranks middle of the pack in how many of its allocated vaccines it’s actually administered.

The prioritization of vaccine eligibility along explicitly racial lines is unconstitutional, argues Cato Institute legal expert Walter Olson in a December 2020 blog post written in response to the Department of Veterans Affairs opening up vaccines to black, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic veterans.

“This runs into the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says citizens of all races are entitled to the equal protection of the laws. The Supreme Court has long interpreted this to mean that the government may ordinarily not dole out valuable benefits, or impose harms, based on a citizen’s race,” writes Olson.

It’s true that people of color are more likely to be frontline workers or have health conditions that make them more at risk of COVID-19 complications and death. However, directing vaccines to those higher-risk people can, and should, still be done through race-neutral categorization, says Olson.

“Many sensible priority rules do incidentally protect relatively more minority persons — and that’s fine, so long as the decision is based on the neutral grounds rather than being a pretext aimed at getting results based on race,” he writes.

All these problems identified with the V.A.’s policy would also apply to Vermont’s vaccination racial preferences.

In November, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to prioritize essential workers over the elderly for vaccine distribution, in part, on the grounds that the elderly skew white, reports The Washington Free Beacon.

The fact that we have COVID-19 vaccines that are both safe and effective is a true miracle of modern medicine. Getting them in as many arms as possible should be public policy goal number one. That is only undermined when public health officials at any level of government start creating arbitrary, likely unconstitutional categories for who can get a vaccine next.

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Russia Warns NATO Against Sending Any Troops To Ukraine As “Frightening” Escalation Looms

Russia Warns NATO Against Sending Any Troops To Ukraine As “Frightening” Escalation Looms

The Kremlin’s latest statements out Friday amid the potential new Ukraine crisis which has seen a serious flare-up in fighting in the Donbass region, along with what appears to be far bigger-than-usual troop movements on Russia’s side of the border, has raised the stakes further. 

Russia has vowed it will take “extra measures to ensure its own security” should it observe any deployment of NATO troops inside Ukraine, the Kremlin statement said Friday according to Reuters.

It firmly warned against any potential looming NATO troop movements following Brussels voicing concern the day prior over the widespread reports and videos purporting to show a significant Russian build-up of forces along Ukraine’s eastern border. 

Archive image of NATO exercises in Europe, via Allied Joint Force Command Naples

Reuters reports Russia’s Friday statement and “warning” as follows:

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the situation at the contact line in eastern Ukraine between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatist forces was quite frightening and that multiple “provocations” were taking place there.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrii Taran, and “condemned recent escalations of Russian aggressive and provocative actions in eastern Ukraine,” the Pentagon said.

“Our rhetoric [over Donbass] is absolutely constructive,” Peskov said in response to journalists’ questions. “We do not indulge in wishful thinking. Regrettably, the realities along the engagement line are rather frightening. Provocations by the Ukrainian armed forces do take place. They are not casual. There have been many of them.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the Russian troop movements across the border, calling the situation “muscle-flexing” likely to lead to “provocations” for which Ukraine’s army is “ready”…

It was exactly a week ago that fighting in Donetsk grabbed international headlines once again when four Ukrainian national troops were killed, which Kiev promptly blamed on Russia-backed separatists. However, the Donetsk People’s Republic claimed it wasn’t the result of a direct exchange of fire, but due to inspecting a minefield.

Ukraine’s parliament followed by announcing a sharp “escalation” in the east – a contested region which has seen 14,000 deaths going back to 2014, and the country’s military leadership put the armed forces on high alert.

This also as Russian troops and armor were spotted headed into the Crimea and Ukraine’s east border region, however, Moscow brushed off the concerns while saying it’s routine to transfer forces within one’s own borders and sovereign territory.

Days later on Wednesday the US European Command (EUCOM) issued a notification of a raised ‘threat level’ in Europe. The designation is currently officially raised to one of “potential imminent crisis” due to concerns over Eastern Ukraine. 

Meanwhile intense shelling on the ground in Donetsk has continued this week, with all signs pointing to further escalation and intensity in fighting…

And on Thursday an unnamed EU diplomat was cited in Reuters as speculating the perceived build-up in Russian forces is ultimately about Russia’s posturing to gain leverage with the new Biden administration – which so far hasn’t had much of a big geopolitical challenge.

“Partly, it is the usual tactics, turning up and down the conflict to create instability, to show that Russia is a key player,” the EU diplomat said. “We cannot exclude that Biden’s presidency is part of the Russian calculus, that it’s time for Moscow to show a bit of muscle.”

But Russia has pointed out that in no way is it in its interest to see a ‘hot conflict’ in Donbass:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that most of Ukraine’s military appeared to understand the danger of a “hot conflict” in Donbass.

“I very much hope that they will not be ‘incited’ by politicians, who in turn will be ‘incited’ by the West, led by the United States,” said Lavrov.

Lavrov further issued an ominous warning: “Russian President Putin said (this) not long ago, but this statement is still relevant today, that those who would try to start a new war in Donbass – will destroy Ukraine.”

Tyler Durden
Fri, 04/02/2021 – 12:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31DphX8 Tyler Durden