Month: January 2022
Mail-Order Abortion Pills, Now Officially Authorized by the FDA, Pose an Insoluble Problem for Legislators Who Want To Ban the Procedure
“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)..announced that it is permanently loosening restrictions on the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone, allowing women to receive it by mail after a telemedicine session. The FDA had already used its enforcement discretion to allow that practice for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. The new policy preserves the option, which will play an increasingly important role as many states impose new restrictions on abortion, especially if the Supreme Court decides that the Constitution does not protect access to the procedure after all.
The FDA first approved mifepristone, a.k.a. RU-486 and Mifeprex, in 2000. The standard protocol for a medical abortion currently involves a dose of mifepristone, which thins the lining of the uterus by blocking the effects of progesterone, followed one or two days later by a dose of misoprostol, which causes uterine contractions. The FDA has approved the use of that regimen up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy. In 2019, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 79 percent of abortions in the United States were performed at nine weeks or earlier.
The FDA originally required that mifepristone be dispensed in person by a medical provider. An FDA-approved research project launched in 2016, the TelAbortion Study, aimed to assess the safety and efficacy of prescribing the drug based on “a video evaluation over the internet.” The program expanded during the pandemic, eventually including 17 states and the District of Columbia. According to a TelAbortion report published last March, covering nearly 1,400 packages of pills mailed from May 2016 through September 2000, “this direct-to-patient telemedicine service was safe, effective, and acceptable, and supports the claim that there is no medical reason for mifepristone to be dispensed in clinics as required by the Food and Drug Administration.””
California Promised Street Vendors More Freedom. Instead They Got More Rules.
“the Los Angeles Times published an excellent editorial on Los Angeles County’s continued and outrageous mistreatment of the city’s “iconic” street-food vendors.
The editorial centers on the county’s failure to implement California’s Safe Sidewalk Vending Act. The much-touted, statewide law, which I touched on after then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed it into law in September 2018, was supposed to decriminalize and legalize street vending for the estimated 10,000 underground food vendors in Los Angeles County—and others across the state. As the Times editors detail, that hasn’t happened in Los Angeles.
“Street vending may be legal in California, but for the vendors selling sliced fruit, tacos and other food items it’s nearly impossible to get a permit to operate without fear of penalty, particularly in Los Angeles County,” reads the lede. They blame “state and county public health regulations for selling food from a street cart [that] remain so complicated, impractical and expensive that the vast majority of vendors have not—and cannot—get permitted.”
Hence, years after the law was passed, L.A. County has only issued permits to around two-percent of the underground vendors who sell there. One of the most onerous requirements to obtain a permit, the Times explains, is the rule that vendors must spend thousands of dollars to buy a needlessly fancy food cart that features “four sink compartments, multiple water tanks for washing cookware and hands, and mechanical exhaust ventilation… which is just not practical for vendors who earn $15,000 a year, on average.””
With Russian guns pointed at Ukraine, West and Moscow dive into talks
“Putin will not discuss his invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, which the West still views as a violation of international law that must be reversed. Putin also has never admitted, and won’t concede now, that active-duty Russian military personnel are operating in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, despite ample evidence to the contrary, including a recent Russian court ruling that discussed contracts for supplying food to Russian forces.
The U.S. and its NATO allies, meanwhile, have already said they will not accede to Russia’s demands that the U.S. remove troops and weapons from Eastern European countries that joined the alliance after 1997. They have already rejected a demand for the removal of all U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in Europe, and also flatly ruled out Moscow’s demand for a guarantee that Ukraine and Georgia will never join NATO.”
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“U.S. officials have identified just two areas in which they see the potential for fruitful discussions: on curtailing missile deployments and on scaling back military exercises.
Russia has long complained about existing U.S. “Aegis Ashore” missile defense capabilities based in southern Romania and has recently voiced concerns that Washington would seek to base missiles in Ukraine.
The U.S. and NATO have previously dismissed the concerns about the missile interceptors in Deveselu, Romania, saying they were installed to protect against threats from Iran or elsewhere outside the Euro-Atlantic area. A second Aegis Ashore installation in the town of Redzikowo, in northern Poland, is nearly complete and projected to be operational by the end of this year.
The Poland site, not far from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, is likely of even greater concern to the Kremlin.”
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“Given the inevitably high cost to Russia of an invasion of Ukraine — in casualties, which could run to the tens of thousands, and in economic and political sanctions imposed by the West — there is some hope in Western capitals that Putin might be willing to back off his threats in favor of negotiations that keep Russia at the center of the geopolitical stage.”
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“Blinken said he saw limited opportunity for major advancements”
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“While Moscow clearly prefers to speak directly to Washington, which it views as pulling puppet strings at NATO, in recent days, Blinken and other U.S. officials have stressed repeatedly that they will not allow Russia to use the bilateral talks in Geneva to make decisions that impact European allies or for that matter, Ukraine, which is not a NATO member.”
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“If Russia has a gun to Ukraine’s head, the West, in its way, has sought to point its own soft-power weaponry back at Moscow — reiterating repeatedly that there will be high-impact economic sanctions. These likely included measures intended to cut Russia’s access to the global financial system.
A fourth EU diplomat said the West would go further than ever before to target not just wealthy Russian figures closely connected to Putin, but also their families — in an effort to severely limit travel to Europe, where Russians often love to spend holidays and shop. While such sanctions might be difficult to defend in court, the diplomat said EU officials were prepared to make the process of fighting the levies as lengthy and difficult as possible.”
Fed’s Powell pumped trillions into the economy. Now, he may be the party killer.
“The Fed has penciled in three rate hikes this year, and the first could come as soon as March.”
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“Adam Ozimek, chief economist at freelancing platform Upwork, said the Fed misjudged how large the inflation spike would be, though he still thinks — as the Fed previously argued — that price increases will eventually start to cool on their own. He said the danger instead is that the Fed will overreact to levels of inflation that ultimately prove temporary, hurting the millions who still haven’t returned to the labor force.
“Inflation is by any measure extremely high, yet labor slack remains significant as well and we are far from full employment,” he said. “The policy challenge is far more complicated than in 2018, when Powell faced uncertainty about labor slack but without the added pressure of high inflation.”
Still, others have praised the Fed’s restraint amid the price spikes, keeping rates low and allowing the job market to heal more quickly. They argue that inflation is significantly being fed by supply chain issues that the central bank isn’t equipped to solve.
Former Fed Chair William McChesney Martin once said the central bank’s job was “to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going.” But Sahm argued that a few rate increases don’t have to ruin anything.
“Things are getting better,” she said. “We need to pour a little less punch in the punch bowl.””
Will America’s Military Reckon with the Reckless Murders Perpetuated by Its Drone Wars?
“Throughout America’s War on Terror, whistleblowers have been warning that drone strikes have frequently killed people who were neither terrorists nor insurgents, just innocent civilians trying to survive in a war zone.
Over the weekend, in a detailed, heavily reported two-part story, The New York Times documented how Washington’s “precision drone strikes” have been anything but precise. Not only did they repeatedly kill innocents, including children, but more often than not the military failed to examine adequately why these mistakes were made, failed to correct its procedures, and failed to hold anybody accountable.
When an ill-advised August drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed aid worker Zamari Ahmadi and nine of members of his family (including seven children), military officials first insisted the strike had hit terrorists plotting to attack the airport as American troops were leaving the country. Only after the media began investigating the strike did the truth came out. Yet last week, the Pentagon announced that no troops involved in the misbegotten strike would be disciplined. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, “What we saw here was a breakdown in process, and execution in procedural events, not the result of negligence, not the result of misconduct, not the result of poor leadership.”
An alternative way to read that quote, based on the massive Times report from the weekend, is that what happened to Ahmadi and his family was an example of how America’s drone program actually works. It has not, in fact, operated as a tool to surgically take out ISIS terrorist leaders and destroy individual cells, as Americans have been told again and again. The military will admit to killing at least 1,300 civilians in these strikes. That’s just the number of civilians documented in Pentagon reports the Times analyzed. The actual (uncertain) number of civilian deaths due to drone strikes is much higher—between 22,000 and 48,000.”
Against Faucism
“Last week, the CEOs of American Airlines and Southwest Airlines told Congress that they do not think mask requirements make much sense on airplanes, where the air filtration systems are superior to what is typically found in an intensive care unit.
“I think the case is very strong that masks don’t add much, if anything, in the air cabin environment,” said Gary Kelly, CEO of Southwest. “It is very safe and very high quality compared to any other indoor setting.”
Unwilling to let anyone undermine the case for keeping a government mandate in place, White House coronavirus advisor Anthony Fauci threw cold water on the idea.
“You have to be wearing a mask on a plane,” he said bluntly on television Sunday.
When ABC News’ Jon Karl asked Fauci specifically if he thought we would ever reach the point where we did not need to wear masks on planes, he responded: “I don’t think so. I think when you’re dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step when you have people—you know, you get a flight from Washington to San Francisco, it’s well over a five-hour flight. Even though you have a good filtration system, I still believe that masks are a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it.”
This is Faucism distilled down to its very essence. For the government health bureaucrats who have given themselves sole authority over vast sectors of American life—from travel to education to entertainment to housing—it doesn’t matter what the CEOs of these companies think. It doesn’t matter what their customers want. It doesn’t matter if maskless air travel is, for the most part, quite safe (especially for the vaccinated). It doesn’t matter if the mask mandate makes air travel impossible for families with young children. All that matters is the calculus of the most risk-averse people: unelected public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Like Fauci, NIH Director Frances Collins said this past weekend that air passengers should be masked—and should think twice about large gatherings, and even about going anywhere at all.”
Here Is Why the 6th Circuit Reinstated OSHA’s Vaccine Mandate—and Why One Judge Disagreed
“OSHA’s ETS, which it published on November 5, demands that companies with 100 or more employees require them to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or wear face masks and undergo weekly virus testing. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit stayed the ETS on November 6, citing “grave statutory and constitutional issues.” The 5th Circuit extended that stay a week later, when it said the mandate is “fatally flawed” because it “grossly exceeds OSHA’s statutory authority.”
After that ruling, the many lawsuits challenging the mandate were consolidated and assigned by lottery to the 6th Circuit, which the Biden administration asked to lift the 5th Circuit’s stay. In doing so, the 6th Circuit majority criticized the other appeals court for reaching hasty conclusions unsupported by precedent and for failing to properly consider the evidence that OSHA presented in favor of its mandate.
An emergency standard allows OSHA to circumvent the usual rule making process by publishing regulations that take effect immediately. But to avoid the public notice, comment, and hearing requirements that ordinarily apply to OSHA rules, the agency has to identify a “grave danger” to employees “from exposure to substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards.” It also has to show the emergency standard is “necessary to protect employees from such danger.”
In her 6th Circuit majority opinion, Stranch has little trouble concluding that COVID-19 qualifies as an “agent” that is “physically harmful.” Citing the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, she says “an ‘agent’ is ‘a chemically, physically, or biologically active principle,'” while “a virus is defined, in part, as ‘any [of a] large group of submicroscopic infectious agents.'””
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“Larsen opens her dissent by chiding Stranch for misrepresenting reality. “The majority opinion describes the emergency rule at issue here as permitting employers ‘to determine for themselves how best to minimize the risk of contracting COVID-19 in their workplaces,'” she writes. “With respect, that was the state of federal law before the rule, not after.”
Larsen also suggests that Stranch has pulled a bait and switch. “The majority opinion initially agrees…that an emergency standard must be more than ‘reasonably necessary’; it must be ‘essential,'” she writes. “But then that word, and the concept, disappear from the analysis. What starts as a demand for an ‘essential’ solution quickly turns into acceptance of any ‘effective’ or ‘meaningful’ remedy; and later, acquiescence to a solution with a mere ‘reasonable’ ‘relationship’ to the problem. The majority opinion never explains why ‘necessary’ undergoes such a metamorphosis.”
As Larsen sees it, OSHA “has not made the appropriate finding of necessity.” She notes that “OSHA’s mandate applies, in undifferentiated fashion, to a vast swath of Americans: 84 million workers, 26 million unvaccinated, with varying levels of exposure and risk.” OSHA has the burden of explaining “why the rule should apply to a large and diverse class,” she says, but the agency “does not do so.””
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“In some respects, Larsen thinks, OSHA’s judgments are inconsistent with the numbers it cites. “OSHA has determined that no vaccinated worker is in ‘grave danger,’ whereas all unvaccinated workers are,” Larsen writes. “But the government’s own data reveal that the death rate for unvaccinated people between the ages of 18 and 29 is roughly equivalent to that of vaccinated persons between 50 and 64. So an unvaccinated 18-year-old bears the same risk as a vaccinated 50-year-old. And yet, the 18-year-old is in grave danger, while the 50-year-old is not. One of these conclusions must be wrong; either way is a problem for OSHA’s rule.””
The Jan. 6 puzzle piece that’s going largely ignored
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/16/jan-6-gohmert-lawsuit-pence-524839
‘A lot of money on the table’: Fight brews over surprise medical bills
“The law, which takes effect Jan. 1, protects patients from receiving expensive bills for unexpected out-of-network care but doctors, hospitals and insurers are still at odds over which factors an independent arbitrator should rely on to decide who picks up the tab.
The outcome could swing billions of dollars in payments, significantly influence how doctors and hospitals negotiate prices with insurers and possibly affect premiums for millions of Americans.
“This is probably one of the most significant overhauls in the health system since the [Affordable Care Act] ACA,” said a spokesperson for the Coalition Against Surprise Medical Billing, which represents insurers, employer and union groups, and works with patient groups. “We certainly don’t see any end in sight in terms of the battle in making sure that these regs are implemented.”
The coalition supports the Biden administration’s interim final rule that instructs arbitrators to rely primarily on a single factor — the median in-network rate in a geographic area — when settling disputes between providers and payers. It has sponsored multiple six-figure digital ad-buys, including one that runs through Christmas, urging regulators to stay the course.”
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“Hospitals and doctors allege the Biden administration’s decision to emphasize the median in-network rate, a figure the insurance companies calculate, gives large insurers a huge advantage when negotiating how much a service should cost.
Insurers would have an incentive to keep the in-network rates lower to avoid paying more to out-of-network doctors. And they say payers would know doctors and hospitals have little recourse if they choose to remain outside an insurer’s network.
“Being out of network is really the physicians’ only control over how their contracts look,” said Randall Clark, the president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. “If the insurance companies can treat us the same whether we’re in network or out of network, there is no impetus on the part of the insurance companies to negotiate fair contracts.”
Trade groups representing providers say the law lists several other factors that should be equally weighted when calculating how much a service costs, such as the doctor’s experience and the complexity of the procedure. While these metrics can still be introduced during the dispute resolution process, the Biden administration’s rules don’t give them as much weight as the median in-network rate metric, which providers say puts them at a disadvantage before the process even begins.”