Congressional Actions and Hubris

[GURPS]

This week, the House Oversight Committee released its long-awaited report on the government’s misuse of psychological manipulation during the pandemic. It’s ugly. The House report was titled, “We Can Do This: An Assessment of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Covid-19 Public Campaign.”



The report weighs in at a very-readable 70 pages. I recommend the whole thing. If you’re time-limited, skim the table of contents on the third page and just read the sections of most interest. For a quick overview of the whole thing, read this Twitter thread summarizing the report written by Stanford Professor and real public health expert Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

In fall 2020, the bureaucratic behemoth that is HHS was well along in swinging its monstrous apparatus of government over the heads of every citizen in the country. Instead of doing its own work, the government’s vast army of overpaid health bureaucrats outsourced critical public health communications to a “full-service behavior-change research” firm.

Not a science firm. Not a health firm. A “behavior-change research” firm. The firm’s name, which should become as much a hissing and a byword as the names “Mengele” or “Benedict Arnold,” is the Fors Marsh Group. (We will figure out the names of the involved individuals at FMG. I bet there is a lot more to this story.)

As the report’s introduction explains, for its “behavior change” services, HHS ultimately paid FMG over nine hundred million dollars. Stop and think about that for a second. The U.S. government paid nearly a billion dollars to one company to manipulate citizens into becoming more compliant to the government.

But … but … it was all meant for good, right? I mean, sure, we can quibble about the ethics of psychological manipulation and “nudging” and stuff, but those decisions were made during a pandemic, amidst a public health emergency, when lives were at stake. But the important thing is their hearts were in the right place. Right?

Maybe not. Maybe it was much simpler than it looks. What advanced techniques did FMG use to make the American public more compliant? What cutting-edge science did FORS bring to the HHS table, to earn their billion-dollar fee? Was it a blend of innovative AI and pioneering psychology?

Nope. They just lied. They lied, and they exaggerated stuff, to terrify people. Their lies were so bloody awful and so preposterous that nobody would have ever listened to them — except that they put the full weight and credit of the United States government behind their lies and fearmongering to make the whole grotesque scheme work. In doing so, they consumed every drop of historic trust earned by previous generations of hard-working public servants.

But … did they really lie? Yes. They lied. They lied like rugs, or dogs, or Joe Biden reminiscing about his Uncle Bosey. They lied tons of times. Lies like promising that vaccination would stop transmission of the virus dead in its tracks. That particular lie came from the CDC itself (i.e., the pits of hell) and sailed straight into the FMG’s advertising scripts:



FMG’s plan wasn’t innovative. It wasn’t cutting edge. A child could have done it. They’re morons. They just lied, and they leaned on Americans’ trust in government to sell their simplistic lies. And the bureaucrats running the health agencies and the country’s liberal health professionals all compliantly went right along with it all, facilitating the lies at every step.

Lies are unethical and Liars are bad people. Even, or especially, public health liars. FMG’s whole stupid program was unethical to the core.

It was also overhyped nonsense. For example, FMG’s initial proposal to HHS was founded on a single “theory” they called the “Health Belief Model.” Here’s how they dressed their so-called Health Belief Model up in fancy, academic-sounding language:



That’s not innovative, creative, cutting-edge, or even smart. All that Model says is, if you scare people by saying they’ll die, and don’t give them time to think, they’re likely to do whatever you say, especially if they already trust the person telling them what to do:



Of course, afterwards, once they figure out they’ve been had, people won’t trust the “influencers, celebrities, and sports figures” anymore, but who cares? FMG will already be rich by then.

In other words, the plan was to coerce or bribe top government officials, doctors, pastors, priests, social media stars, bloggers, vloggers, Hollywood celebrities, singers, football players, and tennis stars into lying for them. The House report included the scripts FMG prepared for actors who pretended to be covid victims.

It was all completely fake and completely outrageous.

Worse, it’s not just the billion dollars FMG got. The real cost includes Americans’ lost trust in government. And the lost trust in public health. The lost trust in vaccines (well, that one might actually be a positive). The lost trust in experts. The spiked anxiety rates from the fear campaigns. The broken brains of germaphobes and medical fetishists. The cost to the children in lost educational attainment, depression, and who knows what kinds of future psychosis.

(We could continue, adding vaccine injuries, jobs lost to mandates, closed businesses, destroyed economies, inflation, and so on.)

But the important thing is FMG’s owners got paid. And they were paid well. Very well. They are now set to retire on generational wealth earned from our tax dollars, all wielded as psychological weapons against us.

This House report was a great start toward accountability. Having documents like this is important, because they can be cited as official findings. For example, a court is much more likely to seriously consider something from a House Oversight Report than something some lawyer says. We’re getting there.

☕️ BELIEF MODELS ☙ Saturday, October 26, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Historic Rogan-Trump interview shatters records; WaPo betrays liberal readers; House report savages gov't covid psyops; RFK plain-talking campaign ad raises stakes; best legal news all year; more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[GURPS]

Rand is getting ready to expose the Covid coverups

Accountability and maybe some retribution as he takes over Senate Homeland Security Committee

Does Dr. “The Science” Fauci have a lawyer?
https://twitter.com/PhilHollowayEsq/status/1857037334803312655/photo/1

 

[GURPS]

John Kennedy Has Tom Cotton Cracking Up While Questioning Pronoun-Obsessed Judicial Nominee​

Judge Kasubhai is a real piece of work. Democrats have been trying to push through his approval to the U.S. District Court, which is a lifetime appointment, for well over a year now. Kasubhai is as radical as they come, and Republicans have pushed back hard against his nomination.

Take, for instance, this interaction between Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Kasubhai at a confirmation hearing in October of 2023:

“You included the following in your remarks: ‘DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — is the heart and soul of the court system. Can we say that? Yeah, I just did and I say it proudly.’” Lee said, quoting the nominee. “Judge, could you explain what that means?”
Kasubhai replied: “Access to justice is at the heart of the work that I do within the courtroom and ensuring that everybody is dignified and treated with dignity when they come into the courtroom and from me to preside over those cases.”

Kasubhai, the first Muslim American to be appointed to the federal bench, was back on Capitol Hill Thursday, and this time everyone's favorite southern senator, John Kennedy (R-LA), had some things to discuss with Judge Kasubhai. For instance, why does Kasubhai insist that those appearing in his court give their pronouns?

It's always entertaining to see Sen. Kennedy at work, and this was no exception.

KENNEDY: Judge Kasubhai, I'm looking at an order you issued as a magistrate judge here requiring the use of pronouns in your court. Do you require the use of pronouns? The declaration of one's pronouns in your court?

Kasubhai looked visibly uncomfortable answering the question, and stammered, "It's an invitation for people to identify their pronouns or their honorifics."

It's well worth a watch:

 

[GURPS]

House Judiciary Sends Ominous Warning to Biden-Harris​

The letters accused each agency of being inconsistent with its statutory authority and demanded a list of transparency demands before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The committee also accused FTC Chair Lina Khan of failing to cooperate with oversight efforts in the past and partook in “partisan activity.” This includes hiring a new FTC Inspector General just days after Trump’s election.

The Antitrust Division aggressively moved to escalate its regulation of American businesses shortly following the election of President Trump. Specifically, we have received allegations that the Division sent demand letters to numerous businesses indicating an intention to start enforcement actions in the final days of the Biden-Harris Administration. The failed Biden-Harris FTC should not choose the new FTC Inspector General. This decision should be left to the incoming Trump administration. The Committee is concerned that, in overstepping its statutory authority, the Commission is attempting to regulate by enforcement and restrict the contracts offered by Kalshi simply because those contracts are disfavored by the CFTC and its staff.

 

[GURPS]

Republicans Seek Removal of Security Clearances for Intel Lapdogs Who Lied About Hunter Biden's Laptop​

 

[GURPS]

Bombshell Report Calls for FBI Investigation Into Liz Cheney​

Of particular interest is the report’s findings about the conduct of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who served on the Committee and used her position to attack President-elect Donald Trump. The report suggests that she exercised undue influence over the Committee’s proceedings to target the president-elect while working to promote the narrative that he incited the violence on January 6.

The report concludes by recommending an FBI investigation into Cheney’s behavior.

The Oversight Subcommittee referred to Cheney’s public statements as evidence that her only focus during her stint on the Select Committee was Trump and not the systemic security failures that occurred on January 6.

“Representative Cheney mentions President Trump eighteen separate times in her four-page Forward to the Select Committee’s Final Report—including her statements that ‘no man’ who behaved as President Trump ‘can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again,’” the report noted.

The authors pointed out that Cheney failed “to mention any of the tangible failures of that day” and “spoke of law enforcement only twice, and never mentioned the National Guard or the multi-agency intelligence failures.”

One staffer told investigators that when the J6 Committee “became a Cheney 2024 campaign, many of us became discouraged.”

“Representative Cheney’s influence on the Select Committee’s work and the conclusions it drew cannot be overstated. Before the Select Committee published its final report, fifteen current and former staffers approached the Washington Post to express deep frustration with Representative Cheney’s heavy-handed oversight of the Select Committee’s work. The article states that ‘committee staff members were floored’ when told that the final report ‘would focus almost entirely on Trump.’”

The Subcommittee brought up Cheney’s alleged effort to shape former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the Select Committee. The report alleges that Cheney “communicated directly with Cassidy Hutchinson without her attorney’s knowledge, despite Cheney knowing it was unethical.”

The report notes that Hutchinson acknowledged receiving “contact information for multiple attorneys at various firms” from the former lawmaker.

“It is unusual—and potentially unethical—for a Member of Congress conducting an investigation to contact a witness if the Member knows that the individual is represented by legal counsel. Representative Cheney is an attorney, and an attorney who circumvents an individual’s legal representation would violate well-established attorney ethics standards.”

Bombshell Report Calls for FBI Investigation Into Liz Cheney

townhall.com

 

[GURPS]

Schumer Getting Rid of Mayorkas Impeachment Could Affect Democrats in November and Beyond​

In response to Brown referring to the impeachment effort as a "distraction," Moreno reminded that "Since Joe Biden took office, nearly 10 million people have invaded our country due to the open border policies of Biden, Mayorkas and Sherrod Brown. It isn’t a 'distraction' to demand accountability for the drugs, crime, death and destruction brought into this country because of these policies." He also insisted that "Sherrod Brown should uphold his constitutional duty and hold a full trial in the Senate for Mayorkas, otherwise it's a complete dereliction of his duty as a Senator."

Democrat Sherrod Brown says US Senate departure won’t be the last Ohioans hear from him​

The Democrat blasted the Washington establishment for bowing to Wall Street’s interest over workers, with painful results for places like his hometown of Mansfield, Ohio. He said he learned from his parents — a conservative and a liberal — “that the role of government was to help the little guy. The big guys can take care of themselves.”

This fall, Brown delivered a similar message to voters without success, losing his reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland businessman and newcomer to public office, by about 3.5 percentage points. Campaigns and outside groups spent nearly $300 million in what was one of Republicans’ top targets nationally as they successfully flipped the chamber.

That’s as the onetime bellwether state has tacked hard to the right and supported Donald Trump for president three times.

Without naming Trump, Brown — a pro-union senator consistently ranked among the chamber’s most liberal members — took a swipe at the notion that the president-elect’s movement can be called “populist.”

“True populism lifts all people. True populism doesn’t tear others down. True populism doesn’t play to race and division,” he said. “True populism is essentially about the dignity of work, putting workers at the center of all we should be doing.”

 

[stgislander]

“True populism lifts all people. True populism doesn’t tear others down. True populism doesn’t play to race and division,” he said. “True populism is essentially about the dignity of work, putting workers at the center of all we should be doing.”

I can't believe these Dems never hear themselves talking.

 

[GURPS]

I can't believe these Dems never hear themselves talking.

Myopic Disconnection - ideologues

 

[glhs837]

Democrat Sherrod Brown says US Senate departure won’t be the last Ohioans hear from him​

The Democrat blasted the Washington establishment for bowing to Wall Street’s interest over workers, with painful results for places like his hometown of Mansfield, Ohio. He said he learned from his parents — a conservative and a liberal — “that the role of government was to help the little guy. The big guys can take care of themselves.”

This fall, Brown delivered a similar message to voters without success, losing his reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland businessman and newcomer to public office, by about 3.5 percentage points. Campaigns and outside groups spent nearly $300 million in what was one of Republicans’ top targets nationally as they successfully flipped the chamber.

That’s as the onetime bellwether state has tacked hard to the right and supported Donald Trump for president three times.

Without naming Trump, Brown — a pro-union senator consistently ranked among the chamber’s most liberal members — took a swipe at the notion that the president-elect’s movement can be called “populist.”

“True populism lifts all people. True populism doesn’t tear others down. True populism doesn’t play to race and division,” he said. “True populism is essentially about the dignity of work, putting workers at the center of all we should be doing.”

 

[GURPS]

CyberScoop ran a very welcome story last week headlined, “State Department’s disinformation office to close after funding nixed in NDAA.” One of the great side stories of this month’s budget battles was the permanent closure of the State Department’s Orwellian “disinformation” office, resulting in an astounding $61 million in annual savings as the House Weaponization Committee claimed a major scalp.




The “Global Engagement Center,” or GEC, was run by the U.S. State Department, and stopped operating for good on Christmas Eve since it ran out of money. Despite its massive budget, the office included only 120 staff, with the money primarily going out in grants to various leftwing think tanks and foreign media companies, including one that labeled both NewsMax and the New York Post as “Russian disinformation.”

GEC’s supporters claim the office tirelessly protects America from foreign disinformation from Iran, Russia, and China. But nobody believes them, since the GEC actually operates more like a taxpayer-funded Democrat political action committee.

GEC is most well-known for its pandemic censorship operation, when it coordinated the major social media companies in a vast cancelation effort aimed at American users who questioned vaccines or wondered whether the virus came from a lab in China. During last week’s funding debates, Senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) correctly called the GEC “an entity that is funded to censor conservatives.”

The news was most encouraging because it showed the House Weaponization Committee finally having a real-world impact, and it was the most significant strike yet against the progressive censorship complex. In fact, the Washington Post’s version of the story was headlined, “State Dept. disinfo unit faces shutdown amid GOP’s war on censorship.”

It’s like they think a “war on censorship” is a bad thing. The progressives have raced so far down the road to totalitarianism that they lost the plot and think all the other drivers agree with them. Well done, Republicans, it was a nice surprise stuffed into the Christmas budget stocking.

Twenty-one days.

☕️ APPOMATTOX ☙ Monday, December 30, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

MAGA civil war ends with surprising concession; Carter dies producing another 2024 'coincidence'; DEI death rate accelerating; Republicans unplug main federal censorship shop; more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

 

[stgislander]

So... thoughts on if we have a smooth reelection of Mike Johnson as Speaker today or a Freedom Caucus sh!tshow like the last time?

I'm hoping for a smooth reelection. Maybe the first round as a protest vote, but everyone getting inline on the second vote. I voted for Trump, not the Freedom Caucus. Trump wants Johnson and that's good enough for me.

 

[Ken King]

Until a speaker is elected no one gets sworn in.

 

[stgislander]

Looks like it's going to a 2nd round. Trump should make it clear to the holdout Reps. that a vote against Johnson is a vote against him and the Nov election results.

 

[Hijinx]

Rep. Ralph Norman and Keith Self switched their votes to Johnson, giving him the 218 votes he needs.

 

[GURPS]

Sen. Josh Hawley Makes a Judge Look Stupid​

 

[GURPS]

This year began in tragedy, as a man drove his truck, one with an ISIS flag, into those celebrating on Bourbon Street. He also got out and began firing. Police killed the suspect, Shamsud Din Jabbar, but not before he killed 14 people. There's been plenty of concerns about how law enforcement, including the FBI, handled the terrorist attack, making it even more necessary for Kash Patel to be confirmed as President-elect Donald Trump's FBI director. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), in a recent episode of "Unmuted with Marsha" weighed in on all of this, with a sneak peak exclusive shared with Townhall.

For such an episode, the first of this year, Blackburn spoke with Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker.

The senator began by asking Swecker about the security barriers on Bourbon Street being down, broken, and in the process of being replaced. Blackburn had some pretty pertinent questions, "why was there no backup plan for this? How in the world could a law enforcement entity look at this and not have a proper backup plan to keep the public safe?" To add more embarrassment for the city, the police chief didn't even know about the barriers.

Swecker offered that the issue was "complacency and incompetence," adding, "I mean, there's no other way to explain it." He also spoke to the exact role that the FBI played in investigating the terrorist attack, and why they have not done such a great job.

"The city of New Orleans, and all law enforcement and the FBI, the agencies that are responsible for managing this type of event. Now the FBI is not primary, but they have an intelligence role to play. Nothing bad had happened in a long time, so they got complacent," he offered. Swecker also reminded that having such barriers "is not an alien concept to them," given that they have the Sugar Bowl every year, have had the Super Bowl, and Mardi Gras is a big annual celebration. New Orleans gets a multi-million dollar grant for security because of such events.

Marsha Blackburn Demands Answers About the FBI and Their DEI Priorities

townhall.com

 

[GURPS]

House Republicans Target Federal Unions After 11th-Hour Deals Tie Trump’s Hands On Remote Work​

The committee said that Biden never set a government-wide policy on telework. In March 2023, then-OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said she didn’t even know what portion of the workforce was teleworking.

Agencies claim telework is necessary to retain employees, but the committee said that the government has a higher retention rate than the private sector, and that when people leave, it is usually for another government agency — meaning a government-wide policy would stop agencies from trying to poach each other’s employees by giving ever more lenient telework.

Congress also asked agencies how they were measuring whether employees were more or less efficient when working at home, and they did not have substantive answers. The Department of Justice, for example, simply said that “upervisors are responsible for monitoring employee performance to ensure telework and remote work policies are being used effectively and efficiently.”

Admissions that the Biden administration was not actually tracking how telework impacted productivity undermined the White House’s contention that it was delivering “effective and efficient telework,” the report said.

Agency heads have themselves had previously blamed telework when asked to explain poor performance. NASA’s Associate Administrator for Mission Support, Robert Gibbs, said of an asteroid mission, “One of the contributing factors to poor performance on Psyche was telework.”

Social Security Administration Executive Counselor Oren “Hank” McKnelly said that due to telework, “Our front office workers, specifically the trainees that you are talking about, they did not feel connected to the mission, and they did not feel connected to the teams that they were working with.”

At the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, stakeholders complained that they showed up for meetings to find no one was there.

Other agencies attributed negative changes to factors other than telework — only to admit that they had never examined whether telework was to blame, citing the “complexity” of studying it.

When the committee asked agencies for information about how union contracts affected their ability to bring employees back, most agencies did not respond, even as some privately found unions to be damaging to their efforts. The Department of Housing and Urban Development failed to respond to Congress, even though its union filed a grievance against it for merely asking its workers to come in once a week. The Department of Education also didn’t respond to Congress, but acknowledged to the White House that union contracts were its biggest obstacle.

Hearing witness Rachel Greszler, a visiting fellow at the Economic Policy Innovation Center, said that private companies may be able to use telework effectively, but the same unions that are demanding telework also make disciplining poor performers difficult — a necessity to deal with people who aren’t independent enough to work from home.

“Telework can be very useful if it is flexible, responsive, and employees are held responsible, but that can be hard to accomplish with civil service protections and practices that make it extremely difficult, costly and time-consuming to effectively discipline or dismiss federal employees,” she said.

She said it’s so difficult to deal with low performers in government that most managers don’t even bother. In a survey, less than a third of federal employees said steps were taken to deal with poor performers who can’t or won’t improve. “Even just not giving them a performance-based bonus requires setting up a performance improvement plan,” she said.

She also targeted the policy known as “official time,” where federal employees get paid for hours spent working on union business, and the government also provides space and other resources for union use.

“That includes things like nurses at the VA spending 100% of their time working for the union instead of treating veterans, and a VA hospital allocating half of its hospital wing primarily for the union’s use,” she said. “The irony of all this official time is federal unions can’t bargain for pay or benefits, so they’re often left negotiating for things like the height of cubicle space, the right to smoke on a smoke-free campus, or the right to wear spandex to work.”

 

[GURPS]

It Turns Out There's Another January 6 Committee​

Teri Christoph, writing for our sister site of RedState, highlighted comments from Johnson's announcement.

"This new committee replaces the Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight, and will once again be chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA)," Christoph wrote. We covered Loudermilk's findings in a report last year. Any criticisms drew the ire of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the vice chair of that committee, who continued to throw tantrums about her authority being questioned.

The select committee faced even more credibility issues after it was revealed that the Secret Service tried to offer testimony for months to rebut star witness Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony about then President Donald Trump during his first term, but that they were "rebuffed" until the day before the 2022 midterm elections.

"Here's the interesting twist: it will now fall under the purview of the House Judiciary Committee and its chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)," Christoph continued. "It seems a significant shift to move the J6 subcommittee from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform to the House Judiciary Committee, and is likely a direct result of Biden pardoning all those involved with the nefarious J6 Committee. There are a lot of Americans who would like to see true justice exacted here, using all judicial means possible, and this could be a significant step in making that happen," she also later wrote. It is indeed an "interesting twist," considering that then Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) tried to name Jordan to the select committee, but was blocked from doing so by then Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

 

[GURPS]

J6 Investigation To Move To Judiciary Committee To Help Republicans Uncover FBI Abuses​

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced the work would continue and be fully funded in a Jan. 2 social media post after President Biden awarded Liz Cheney the Presidential Citizens Medal for leading a controversial committee that shaped the left’s understanding of the Jan. 6 protest.

“The Jan 6 Select Committee manipulated AND destroyed evidence — created a fake, phony narrative all to try and hurt Trump. They even hired a TV producer from the legacy media in a desperate attempt to legitimize what Americans knew was a total hoax and complete waste of time,” Johnson said on X. “Be assured of this: House Republicans WILL continue our investigation into this corrupt committee and it will be FULLY FUNDED so it can continue next Congress.”

As noted earlier, Loudermilk and his staff uncovered transcribed interviews Cheney’s committee had suppressed because they were at odds with the narrative she was creating. For instance, Cheney suppressed evidence that President Donald Trump pushed for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the nation’s capital, falsely claiming she had “no evidence” to support Trump officials’ claims the White House had communicated its desire for 10,000 National Guard troops.

[clip]

Hutchinson’s televised testimony included claims Donald Trump had lunged at the steering wheel in order to commandeer a vehicle to the Capitol. The driver of the vehicle testified that Trump did not grab or reach for the steering wheel. “I didn’t see him, you know, lunge to try to get into the front seat at all,” the driver, a Secret Service agent, testified. Cheney hid the full testimony, Loudermilk revealed.