Waxman fumes

Waxman (below) gets a nostril out of joint. He resents public exposure of the fact that the effect of a "cost saving" trick by the Democrats is actually going to be a large cost increase, as companies dump their drug benefit recipients onto Medicare Part D.

Henry is flaring with resentment over another demonstration that only a resident of Cloud Cuckoo Land could take this administration's cost projections for ObamaCare seriously. The bond markets are not so gullible, and they will pay no attention whatever to Waxman and his ilk.

We can now see the general model for how the Federalization of the health system will occur, even though the new law famously contains no "public option": Think of Medicare and Medicaid as Pac Men, growing larger and larger as they inexorably gobble everything else up. Someone might argue that it's a wash, because employee health care costs that were in the price we pay for products will now simply be paid as taxes instead. To believe that, you have to believe that Government bureaucracies are as efficient as private industry, which means we're back in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Byron


Washington Examiner:

On Capitol Hill and in the White House on Monday, Democrats were fuming over a series of announcements that started Friday from Fortune 500 firms saying their bottom lines will take huge negative hits because of changes in tax law mandated by Obamacare. That hit in turn means lower profit projections. Caterpillar estimates, for example, that Obamacare will cost it $100 million; John Deere faces expenses of $150 million; 3M, $90 million; AK Steel, $31 million; Valero, $20 million. And then there's AT&T, which is marking its balance sheet down by a whopping $1 billion. All in all, the Wall Street Journal estimated a $14 billion haircut for these corporations.

Under post-Enron accounting rules, the corporations were required to revise their projections to account for the effect of Obamacare on their bottom lines. The effect is negative because Democrats, in their zeal to raise revenues and improve Obamacare's claimed effect on the federal deficit outlook, took away a tax break these companies needed in order to supply prescription drugs to their retirees. The tax subsidy, itself a government accounting ruse crafted in 2003 by the Bush administration to dissuade corporations from dumping their retiree drug benefit programs on the then-new Medicare Part D, becomes taxable under Obamacare.

According to the American Spectator, top White House advisers reacted with angry phone calls to the corporations in question. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., issued harassing document requests and demanded that the chief executive officers appear before his committee next month to answer for their sins. These corporations, which legally owe an honest reckoning to their shareholders, are only doing their duty by restating projections. By contrast, Waxman and many of his fellow Democratic leaders in Congress have used every government accounting and budget gimmick at their disposal to deceive Americans for the last year about the true costs of Obamacare. These Washington politicians have no business lecturing CEOs on honesty in accounting.

Epic mistake

Allowing unionized access to the public purse is turning out to be a mistake of epic proportions. With no Reagans around any more with the courage to pull the plug on public employee demands, it's become a permanent open season on the taxpayers.

There seems to be a strong upward ratchet effect reflected in the numbers shown below: When times are good, public employees demand a larger "fair share" which will often include a schedule of automatic step increases in pay and benefits in future years. When times turn bad, those automatic increases remain in effect nevertheless.

It was once the case that a Government job carried lower pay and benefits as a trade-off for greater job security. Today, a unionized, wealth-consuming Government job is superior in both respects to a job in the wealth-creating private sector, and things seems likely to tend further and further in that direction. That unfortunate direction.

Byron

Below via Instapundit:

WSJ: THE GOVERNMENT PAY BOOM. “It turns out there really is growing inequality in America. It’s the 45% premium in pay and benefits that government workers receive over the poor saps who create wealth in the private economy. And the gap is growing. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), from 1998 to 2008 public employee compensation grew by 28.6%, compared with 19.3% for private workers. In the recession year of 2009, with almost no inflation and record budget deficits, more than half the states awarded pay raises to their employees. Even as deficits in state capitals widen and are forcing cuts in services, few politicians are willing to eliminate these pay inequities.”

There’s more: “What if government workers earned the average of what private workers earn? States and localities would save $339 billion a year from their more than $2.1 trillion budgets. These savings are larger than the combined estimated deficits for 2010 and 2011 of every state in America. In a separate survey, the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis compares the compensation of public versus private workers in each of the 50 states. Perhaps not coincidentally, the pay gap is widest in states that have the biggest budget deficits, such as New Jersey, Nevada and Hawaii. Of the 40 states that have a budget deficit so far this year, 28 would have a balanced budget were it not for the windfall to government workers.”

Violent Tea Party Folk

What nonsense. I'll believe it when I see it on the video tape. All those national network and local news crews poised to capture anything bad, yet nobody managed to capture any of this supposed onslaught of threatening words and behavior on video?

This trumped-up media hysteria over threatening behavior from the right is so predictable and laughable it doesn't even deserve comment. Instead, take a look below at what the real thing looks like. It comes, of course, from the Left. Then try to recall how much media time was spent in hand-wringing over it on the national news. In fact, this kind of stuff was covered up by the media, even though, or precisely because, some of it occurred at Obama campaign rallies.

Byron

via Instapundit: http://www.binscorner.com/pages/d/death-threats-against-bush-at-protests-i.html

Code Pink

Why is the media obsessed with smearing the Tea Party activists, yet show zero interest in the vicious antics of Code Pink? The answer is simple, and it goes back to Leon Trotsky and the roots of the left. Trotsky provided the rationale for decades of Soviet terror by arguing that ends can sanctify means, no matter what those means are. If the goals are deemed righteous, then any means to achieve them are thereby ennobled. The left and its supporters deem their goals as morally right and superior, not relatively but absolutely, and therefore they can be pursued By Any Means Necessary. Thus does Obama pose proudly for photos with Code Pink founders and leaders, thus do Democrats maintain their ties with the group, and thus does the media look the other way. If a tree falls in the forest and the media doesn't cover it, then it makes no sound? Before the internet, maybe.

http://biggovernment.com/taylorking/2010/03/26/code-pink-democrats-aid-and-abet-terrorists-obama-and-the-democrat-party/#more-96118

Byron

Control the People

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) defending ObamaCare on WJR (Detroit) talk radio, March 23:

Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.

I'm sure they'll do their best, however long it takes.

Will "Obama's U.S." work?

I take "Obama's U.S." to be a reformulated United States that operates on something close to the European model of social democracy, with huge outlays for a comprehensive package of Government-provided and -guaranteed social programs.

Question is, can this work? If not at current levels of U.S. productivity, can it work at some lower, but still satisfactory level? After all, when you travel to various European countries, you see what seem to be functional, affluent societies with a generally satisfied citizenry. Would that also describe "Obama's U.S."?

Maybe, but two things seem to me to converge in the United States' case to make that highly unlikely:

(1) Those European societies have accomplished what they have by running up enormous national debts that now overhang their economies and are unlikely to be paid off, ever. In other words, (a) social welfare spending has grown at a faster rate than national income, and (b) social welfare programs have become absolute entitlements, so no government can reduce, or even freeze, social welfare spending. That mentality has already become common, if not prevalent, in the U.S. as well.

(2) European societies have, so far, been able to avoid financial collapse by off-loading to the U.S. the large expenditures they would otherwise be making for what should be Europe's regional/global military responsibilities, including the defense of their own countries. Europe has prospered under a defense umbrella provided by two generations of American taxpayers. That the U.S. has, for various reasons of our own, encouraged and enabled this dependency does not change the resulting numbers. The European social welfare state could not have developed, and it could not be maintained at anything like its present level, if Europe had to pay for its own military needs, and for what should be its proper international military responsibilities.

In other words, Europe cannot afford to do both things, and they're smart enough not to try. But, in fact, it's far from clear that European countries can even afford the social democratic welfare state, all by itself.

The U.S. cannot afford to do both things any more than Europe can, so the obvious question about "Obama's U.S." is this one: "In order to free up the funds to create and maintain a European-style social welfare state, to whom does the U.S. off-load the costs of its enormous military commitments?"

What are the possible answers? On any reasonable accounting Europe can't step up in any significant respect, and it never will be able to, given its combination of economic and demographic problems. The beleaguered Euro, and perhaps the EU itself, will be lucky to survive the worsening financial crises in its four PIGS, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain. No European government can survive any attempt to divert social welfare spending to military purposes; opposition parties would call for immediate elections, and that government would be quickly driven from office. Direct financial support of the U.S. military by Europeans is the non-starter of non-starters. Doing anything effective to improve their own forces would require the diversion of huge sums. European militaries are small and lack the transport capability necessary to project force over any distance, so European troops have to be ferried by U.S. aircraft. Only France has even one aircraft carrier, and it's never in working order. The vicious war/slaughter in the Balkans, in Europe's own territory, had to be quelled by the U.S., with the Europeans standing by in the role of coat-holders. British Royal Marines allowed themselves to be captured by Iranians, who put them on TV where they smiled for the cameras. Put to a referendum, a majority of Europeans would probably vote to restrict their militaries to domestic police operations or to eliminate their militaries altogether.

Japan's problems mirror those of Europe, with even less of a military, and a demographic collapse that can only be described as catastrophic, and which for cultural reasons will not be mitigated by immigration. China is also not a possibility for a host of reasons. And that leaves exactly nobody. The U.S. itself could shift large amounts of military spending to domestic social programs, but nobody with even a minimally realist view of the world could think that's a good idea, the Europeans and Japanese least of all. (Clinton used the military as a cash cow; we are still trying to dig out from that abominable experiment.)

If all that's more or less true, and I think it is, then I don't see how the European social welfare state can be replicated in the U.S. It seems to me that Obama is attempting the impossible, and the attempt will (a) bankrupt the country as we try to vastly increase social welfare spending and also maintain our military capabilities; or (b) greatly down-size our military, creating a vacuum in Eastern and Southern Asia, in the Mid-East and North Africa, and in Eastern and Southern Europe; or (c) both a and b. The U.S. keeps the lid on in those regions of the globe, at great expense, and our absence will quickly result in regional arms races, local wars, much-expanded Russian, Chinese, and Radical Islamist spheres of influence, and an array of unforeseeable genies that can't be put back in the bottle, because there will be no U.S. military around to put them back.

If that's true, and I think it is, then how can Obama's domestic policies be explained? Three possibilities come to mind: (1) Obama does not understand much of anything about international relations, especially about the role the U.S. military plays in those. He came into office expressing the view that the job of the Commander-in-Chief is to reason and cajole adversaries out of being adversaries. That has turned out to be a fiasco, of course, but Obama appears to maintain the illusory hope that military commitments can be replaced by a cost-free era of international good feeling, which will release all those funds for his social welfare agenda. (2) Obama does not understand much of anything about economics, especially about the role of markets as opposed to Government command. So he views the U.S. economy as a black-box, an mysterious engine of unlimited horsepower, a system so unconditionally productive that cannot be seriously or permanently impaired no matter how it is abused. This view is very common on the left, going back at least to Lenin. It's a strange, backhanded naive faith in capitalism that far surpasses anything found among capitalists themselves, who are very aware of how sensitive and reactive the system of market incentives is. (3) Both 1 and 2.

I think it's (3): Obama thinks he can establish a European-style social welfare state in the U.S. because he understands neither the military component of international relations nor the economics of wealth creation. Add Obama's ability to make impressive speeches and his control of Congress, and we have a president who is The Perfect Storm.

Byron

Will they?

Instapundit:

RASMUSSEN: 44% “Strongly Disapprove” of Obama; only 43% approve of Obama at all.

23% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -21. That matches the lowest Approval Index rating yet recorded for this President (see trends). . . . Overall, 43% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That also matches the lowest level yet recorded for this President. Fifty-six percent (56%) disapprove.

Will the press start talking about “the increasingly unpopular President Obama” any time soon?

No, they won't. Like Obama, John Edwards was mostly a media creation, and the media covered for him to the bitter end, leaving the actual journalism to the National Enquirer, which should put to rest any lingering illusions about what the liberal media amounts to. The media establishment, which knows little and cares less about foreign policy, will never turn on Obama unless he veers to the right on domestic policy matters. Job One (and Two, and Three) for the media now is to give Obama sufficient cover to avoid him having to make any such move.

Isn't it all numbingly predictable?

(1) While Bush was "stubborn" in the face of declining poll numbers, Obama will be "steadfast." Where Bush ignored "critics," Obama will stand up to "attackers."

(2) Every new economic disappointment under Obama will continue to be described as "unexpected," and as a Bush legacy, often in the form of GOP obstructionists who for purely partisan reasons insist on saying "No" to every one of the Obama Team's economic fixes.

(3) Public challenges to Obama will be attributed to mobs of ignorant, angry, white rustics, or, at best, basically decent but unsophisticated flyover white folks goaded and manipulated by special interests into a haze of uncomprehending, incoherent, and potentially dangerous anger. Obama supporters will be portrayed as a wonderfully diverse group of thoughtful, clear-eyed believers in social justice who, despite their many differences, correctly understand the play of forces in American society, and wish only to move forward into a new day of light, reason, and fairness.

And so on, and on, and on.

Byron

A simple fact

Wall Street Journal:

"Medicare's unfunded liabilities are roughly two and a half times larger than the entire U.S. economy in 2008."

Not one further thing needs to be said about where we are headed.

Byron

ObamaCare

Good column by Samuelson: Obama's illusions of cost-control. He's right, but I'm not sure it matters. This scam is being pushed for reasons that have little to do with improving health care. It's actually about re-making America on the European social-democratic model, at any cost. This has always been the liberal dream, and who can put a price tag on a dream? Government-guaranteed health care gets the social-democratic camel's nose into the tent, and the neck, and the hump.

That's why all the arguments about costs, performance, incremental reform, etc., make no dent at all in liberals' determination to pass it into law. For the left, socialized medicine has always been the Holy Grail, and it remains the Holy Grail no matter how many leaks and dents it has, or whether the American people want to drink out of it or not. To liberals, if people reject the idea it can only be because they are too stupid and duped to see their own best interests.

That's the Marxian doctrine of False Consciousness. Overcoming False Consciousness requires, of course, concerted action by a determined guiding elite, a group with the discipline to ignore the preferences that ordinary people express. The arrogance of that position is apparent, as is its deeply anti-democratic essence. But left-liberals have never been comfortable with the disorder of democracy, much preferring that society be guided by an administrative elite. Plato's Republic with its Philosopher Kings comes to mind; I do suspect that Obama see himself as a Philosopher King. That Plato's Republic would be fascist to its core, as it certainly was, should come as no surprise.

Byron

Theater of the Absurd

WSJ Best of the Web:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi turned up yesterday at the Washington conference of the National Association of Counties, and she engaged in a little cheerleading for ObamaCare:
You've heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don't know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention--it's about diet, not diabetes. It's going to be very, very exciting.

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

Yes, reader, she really said, "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." If you don't believe us, ask YouTube.

But why should she care what's in it? She's a member of Congress, and members of Congress have exempted themselves from ObamaCare, no matter what's in it. Their job is just to impose it on the rest of us.

Our ruling elite. What a bunch.

Why the HELL is nobody putting these people on the spot, demanding to know why it is that they have exempted themselves from Obama's wonderful health care system? I want to hear the answer to that.

Our media is more interested in Michelle Obama's arms, or the latest rumor about Michael Jackson coming back to life.

Byron

Obama loses another one

The Source of Obama’s Trouble

As they say at Hotair.com, when you've lost a disciple like Bob Herbert at the NYT, you are deep in the doo-doo.

The comments from readers are mostly even worse.

This administration is a sinking ship, scuttled by its captain, who before taking over the helm of the SS America had never sailed so much a bathtub cork boat.

Byron

Our ruling class

ObamaCare Means a Two-Tier Health Care System

The most important amendment Republicans must propose for Obama’s Medi-Grab bill is a very easy one:

Resolved: that all federal and state employees [and elected officials!] must enroll in ObamaCare, without exception.

“All federal and state employees” includes every member of Congress and the executive branch — those who currently have the finest medical insurance available in the country today (courtesy of you and me).

ObamaCare is just for the little people, and it will be forced down their throats, if necessary. It's for their own good. But It isn't good enough for our privileged ruling elites, who want nothing to do with it.

This point needs to be hammered at every opportunity, and it's most odd and puzzling why that's not happening.

Byron

EU a Happy Family

Not.

Europe had a stable currency, backed by consistent, responsible, disciplined economic policies. It was called the Deutschmark. As part of the European Union fantasy, that was replaced by the Euro, which created a system of international socialist finance. Whenever the terms 'socialist' and 'finance' appear together, prepare yourself for the host of additional non sequiturs that are sure to follow.

Today's EU can be divided into two camps, the disciplined and responsible (France, Germany, Benelux countries) and the profligate and irresponsible (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain -- abbreviated as PIIGS). All are yoked together at the common trough by the Euro. What could possibly go wrong?

Surely, the PIIGS didn't think that the EU magically would make them just as rich as, say, Germany, but without any need to become as financially responsible and economically productive as the Germans? It appears that they did think that.

Ireland has run up the largest per capita debt in the world. Greece's government debt is now 125% of GDP and climbing. The chances of that debt ever being paid are, of course, zero. Currency devaluation is not an option, because it's the Euro. Meanwhile, Greek unions are rioting against any plan to cut their benefits. German and French financial institutions now hold large amounts of Greek debt, so default is also not an option. Everybody's stuck, while the PIIGGS continue to run the tab and hit the beaches. Obama thinks the US has much to learn from Europe. He's right.

German voters were strongly against the abandonment of the Deutschmark. But the EU is run by bureaucratic mandarins in Brussels, with voters back in the home country counting for very little. Now the Germans are discovering that they may "have to retire at 69 rather than 67 to pay for Greek workers striking against proposals to increase their retirement age from 61 to 63." Sweet!

For a good summary of the situation see: http://weeklystandard.com/articles/do-mention-war

Byron

Good Grief Dept.

The historically shameful New Orleans public school system is said to be vastly better now, following it's total reorganization after Hurricane Katrina blew it to pieces. N.O. has emerged with the largest proportion of charter schools of any city, which suggests that the pernicious power of the former "education" establishment has, at last, been broken. Suddenly, there is hope. Katrina was not an entirely ill wind, it seems.

Here's an idea: Maybe our disgraced climate scientists could gain some redemption for their global warming sins by arranging a massively destructive weather event for Detroit. OK, OK. But all kidding aside, does anyone seriously believe that substantial reform of perennially-failing union-dominated inner city school systems in Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington D.C., etc., will ever happen without first blowing them to smithereens? Eggs, omelets!

The individual who wrote these emails, Otis Mathis, himself a product of the Detroit Public Schools, is president of the Detroit school board, which clearly is one finely-tuned meritocracy. Reading his work product, you instantly get a strong sense of why the DPS are doing the kind of job they are doing, and will continue to do, year after year after year...

Byron

Obama at the helm

Mourning in America continues. Unless, of course, you're a unionized Government employee.

9.7%... 36,000 JOBS LOST IN FEB...

Unemployment Rate Including Discouraged Workers Rose To 16.8%...

Federal pay ahead of private industry...

Is there a single member of the Obama team of economic advisors who has significant experience in starting and running a business?

Is there someone there who can explain to Obysmal that Government does not produce wealth, that it only spends it? That the entire edifice of Government, all of it, rests on the back of the private sector?

Byron

Miracle

Iraq's Political Miracle

Iraqi democracy, let us not forget, is entering only its fifth year. It is patently imperfect to Western eyes, but it is, on its own terms, a miracle. Contrast Iraq—as the peerless Fouad Ajami did Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal—with Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak has ruled undemocratically for 29 years! For all the violence in their land, Iraqis have something that Egyptians crave: the vote. It is no wonder that Mubarak pours scorn on Iraq: Had Egyptians had a free vote at any time during his heavy-handed time as pharaoh, they would have sent him packing from Cairo seated on the back of an ass.

Voting day in Iraq is a miracle only if you don't know what it's taken, especially given the constant hail of defeatism from the partisan Left, and the sheer bad faith of professional fools like Joe Biden and Harry Reid, aided and abetted throughout by their sycophants in the media. These were shameful performances on every count, including that they occurred with US troops in the field.

Biden's Bright Idea on Iraq, you will recall, was that the country should be partitioned into three religio-ethnic states, a idea so blindingly wrong-headed and stupid that only a clown like Joe Biden could come up with it. If Joe thinks that balkanization -- creating weak mini-states that will exist in an endless condition of mutual antagonism and war, and become pawns of the powerful neighbors that surround them -- is a good idea, then he needs to read a description of the tragic history of the Balkans, and how that tragedy has repeatedly spread outward beyond the region itself. He might be interested in how WWI started, for example. Only a 25-watt intellect like Biden's could possibly imagine that creating three new Lebanons in the heart of the Mid-East would be anything but a prescription for never-ending disaster.

That Joe Biden should now be talking about success in Iraq as if he and his liberal cohorts in the Congress made anything but a negative contribution to that success makes me want to puke in his and their general direction. Ditto for those who blithely talk about Iraq as a "big mistake," a "disastrous policy," etc., as it those are self-evident truths. They aren't truths of any kind. Bush's policy of attempting to create the conditions for the fundamental reform of that society in the heart of Islam was the correct policy from the start. It was the only avenue that could promise a decent long-term future for the people of that region and an eventual demise of the culture of jihad aimed at the West. To this day, no serious alternative to that policy has ever been offered.

The US effort in religiously and ethnically riven Iraq, an ancient and distant society crippled and debased by the long rule of a monstrous dictator, and crawling with terrorist insurgents, was/is the most complex and difficult foreign project ever attempted, in history, by any nation. The democratization of Imperial Japan after WWII, which observers of every political stripe look back on with pride, was child's play compared with this.

Byron

Ancient wisdom

From Ch. 57 of the Tao Te Ching, which dates back 2,500 years:

When there are many restrictions in the world,
The people become impoverished.

The more laws are posted,
The more robbers and thieves there are.

I take minimal action, and the people transform themselves.
I prefer quiet, and the people right themselves.
I do not interfere, and the people enrich themselves.

-- Lao Tzu

Massive failure

By the American media, which instead of doing its job would rather play liberal lap dog. Not only did our press not break these stories, it has been like pulling teeth to even get them to acknowledge and publish or report the work of others. For our mainstream media, this is not news fit to print; instead, they have generally have taken it as their job to cover it up.

Their symbol should be those three monkeys, with hand over their eyes, ears, and mouth.

Byron

Ed Morrissey at Hotair.com:

The Australian and British press have eaten the American media’s lunch on the collapse of credibility at the IPCC and in the anthropogenic global-warming (AGW) movement. In the past four months, media outlets like the Times of London, the Telegraph, the Australian Herald-Sun, and even the Left-leaning paper The Guardian have broken important stories (along with bloggers) exposing the fraud, mismanagement, and unscientific behavior of the core group of AGW advocates, such as:

* University of East Anglia e-mails that exposed data destruction, attempts to hide contradictory data, and conspiracies to sabotage the work of skeptical scientists
* The East Anglia CRU threw out their raw data, undermining any effort to check their work
* NOAA/GHCN “homogenization” falsified climate declines into increases
* East Anglia CRU’s below-standard computer modeling
* No rise in atmospheric carbon fraction over the last 150 years: University of Bristol
* IPCC withdraws claim that AGW will wipe out Himalayan glaciers by 2035
* IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri knew Himalayan claim was bogus for months before exposure
* Amazonian rainforest conclusions not based on scientific research but on advocacy group claims
* Mountain glacier claims based on unsubstantiated student theses and anecdotes from climber magazine
* Search of IPCC report footnotes exposes ten more student dissertations presented as peer-reviewed research
* Medieval Warming Period temperatures may have been global, undermining entire AGW case
* Measurements used for AGW case were influenced by urbanization, poor location, bad data sets
* African-crop claims exposed as false
* IPCC researchers excluded Southern Hemisphere data to exaggerate effects of warming on hurricanes
* Hurricane claims further exposed as false by actual peer-reviewed research — including by some AGW researchers
* Major scientific group concludes IPCC-linked researchers “complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices“

***None of these — none — were exposed by a major American media outlet.