Some thoughts on ‘running down the local government’

Please, please never trust the government at any level. Left to its own devices, the government will always stray in the wrong direction.

I had one local government official accuse me of “running PTC down” regarding my last column on a local official run amuck with bad behavior and lawlessness (see: https://thecitizen.com/2024/02/19/mayor-wants-her-way-heres-a-list-so-far/).

I challenge that position, saying exposing the problems does more to clean up the government and the city’s reputation. Looking the other way always leads to destruction.

Never condone bad behavior from the government. We do not need lame excuses from elected officials. Speak up or face the consequences.

Government gone wrong is devastating

With the power at their disposal, when the government goes bad, the results can shatter our lives.

There is not a better or more recent example of the government’s destructive force than the corruption surrounding Covid-19. While the Covid-19 example is federal, this type of activity occurs at all levels of government.

Look at just how bad it can get in such a short period of time.

I watched as local citizens berated fellow neighbors on social media for daring to question government officials related to the pandemic. The complicit national media was also quick to censor and call for punitive actions against skeptical experts and lay people.

After participating in creating the avian influenza pandemic plans for Georgia and the federal response during the George W. Bush administration, I have dwelled on such issues longer than most.

As the response to Covid-19 began to unfurl in 2020, I was shocked at how badly the situation spun out of control. The result was massive devastation to economies around the world, avoidable deaths, and a considerable distrust of government.

Ego, power, and profit

Governments at all levels suffer from bureaucratic egos and elected officials trying to consolidate power. Of course, there are also many private entities that use government influence to gain sizeable profits. We saw all of that every day during the pandemic.

Many think it was more than just a coincidence that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum (receiving Gates funding), and Johns Hopkins University (receiving Gates funding) were running high-level exercises on October 18, 2019, called “Event 201” on a future global coronavirus pandemic.

Many think it was more than just a coincidence that Bill Gates made a fortune from “pandemic investments,” (“While the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Just Gets Richer,” The Nation, Oct. 5, 2020).

There were no greater threats during the pandemic than Dr. Anthony Fauci and his fellow health bureaucrats. Fauci became the nexus of ego (“attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science,” Congressional testimony), power (“How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 21, 2021), and profit (“Did Fauci and Collins Receive Royalty Payments from Drug Companies?” National Review, Feb. 21, 2024).

Fauci intentionally circumvented a ban on gain-of-function research by routing funds through Peter Daszak’s organization EcoHealth Alliance to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The fact that Fauci thought funding dangerous research controlled by the Chinese Communist Party was a good idea is baffling and a betrayal to our nation.

It should be no surprise that funding the Wuhan research never came before the government committee responsible for screening gain-of-function proposals run by Robert Kadlec, Secretary for Preparedness and Response at HHS.

As you might expect with government corruption, Daszak orchestrated a smear campaign in The Lancet with other Fauci-funded scientists against those who claimed a lab origin for the virus. Daszak also steered committees for The Lancet and the World Health Organization on virus origin in an effort to clear Fauci and himself, the fox guarding the hen house.

Top scientists and internet programs were censored or fired for making the lab-origin claim.

Large influential corporations made billions of dollars in profits during the pandemic while small businesses died, and the national debt skyrocketed. Fauci initiated the call for the shutdowns.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has provided all of the raw details on the corruption surrounding Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, and others in his book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” chronicling the prostitution and lack of ethics in the science bureaucracy.

There might be some elected officials who whine that Kennedy is “running down the National Institutes of Health (NIH)” and other government agencies, alluding that appearances, not ethics and morality, are all that is important. They are the ones crying “trust the science” when the leaders in the NIH lie and foment schemes to ruin the careers of scientists willing to tell the truth.

Fostering public persecution and peril

When governments control the narrative and use high-ranking officials to create propaganda to unduly influence the public to rally against fellow citizens who question governmental decisions (often labeled “deniers”), society is in jeopardy.

Fauci, Center for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky, President Joe Biden, and countless media outlets declared a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” casting public and institutional rage against anyone skeptical of the experimental mRNA vaccine (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxvBM7CYj0E).

When people publicly protested the coronavirus lockdown, many public health experts quickly condemned the protesters, citing the spreading of the virus. However, when the massive Black Lives Matter protests in Houston and other major cities after George Floyd’s death occurred, some of the same experts embraced the protests, saying they posed no risk.

It turned out that people who are vaccinated are as just capable of spreading Covid-19 as the unvaccinated. Likewise, Fauci admitted the six-foot distancing had no scientific basis. Many people brought the government lies.

A January 2023 meta-analysis from Cochrane Library stated, “Wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to the outcome of laboratory-confirmed influenza/SARS-CoV-2 compared to not wearing masks.” The national news media (receiving grants from Bill Gates) went crazy on Cochrane.

The editor-in-chief of Cochrane was forced to bow to the pressure and backtrack, but one of the authors of the review stood firm and told CNN, “I can only tell you what the science is… I can’t tell you whether they work or don’t work. But it’s more likely than not that they don’t work.”

The government initiated bogus mandates and forced ostracization ruined millions of people’s lives.

Ivermectin outrage

Government officials acting on behalf of special interest groups can be deadly. In this case, the pharmaceutical industry plays a gargantuan role in subsidizing the Food and Drug Administration, issuing large research grants, and funding major media outlets through advertising.

It’s not difficult to believe that Big Pharma might get a little upset if cheap readily available drugs with good track records subverted their attempts at profiting off of new drugs they had in the works for Covid-19. It’s also in the realm of possibility that they could use their influence to leverage opposition to any competitive treatments.

Experts in France were stating they were having success using hydroxychloroquine on the original strain of Covid-19. Once President Donald Trump mentioned the drug, opposition poured in from every angle.

Quickly, a study appeared in The Lancet with the claim that patients receiving hydroxychloroquine or a variant of the drug were about twice as likely to die as those who did not. Of course, the study results went viral and physicians were browbeaten and sometimes fired for using the drug to treat Covid-19.

Experts challenged the findings of the hydroxychloroquine study and The Lancet was forced to retract it once three of the four authors issued a statement saying they “can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources.” By that time, it was too late. Government science agencies were already rabidly destroying the use of hydroxychloroquine in the public forum and were not backing down.

Ivermectin has been used for treating people around the world for decades, prescribed over a billion times. The discovery and success of Ivermectin landed the researchers a Nobel Prize in 2015. The drug is inexpensive and has few side effects.

When using Ivermectin in combination with other drugs, physicians announced having success in treating Covid-19. Immediately, Big Pharma and the US Food and Drug Administration jumped on a campaign declaring the drug a veterinary medicine, insinuating it was not for use in humans.

The federal government and some blue state governments supported the uproar over Ivermectin, causing pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions and experienced physicians using the drug to lose their licenses to practice medicine.

Two years later, a group of physicians sued the federal government and an embarrassed Food and Drug Administration backed down with the Department of Justice attorney representing the FDA announcing, “FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe Ivermectin to treat Covid.” It was too late. The damage had already been done.

No disclosure of the dangers

The experimental mRNA vaccine was never accompanied by a list of side effects as governments and corporations mandated the shots under emergency use authorization.

Now, Big Pharma must list side effects appearing in those being vaccinated by what was formerly touted as perfectly safe and almost 100 percent effective (keeping in mind these are the same people who dumped Vioxx, Oxycontin, and others on the market).

Based on headlines that came out last week, the “misinformation” that myocarditis, pericarditis, blood clots, etc. could be increased by vaccines now seems to be relevant information.

The Daily Mail revealed the shots made by Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are linked to significantly higher risk of five medical conditions — including a nerve-wasting condition that leaves people struggling to walk or think (see: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13100755/Largest-Covid-vaccine-study-finds-shots-linked-small-increased-risk-neurological-blood-heart-disorders-extremely-rare.html).

Here are some of the findings:

• 400% increased risk of swelling of the brain and spinal cord. That’s just from the first dose of Moderna

• AstraZeneca has a 320% risk increase of blood clots with Guillain-Barre syndrome which could lead to paralysis

• From the second shot of Moderna, 6 times the risk of myocarditis in your child that had nearly zero risk from dying of Covid but six times the risk of swelling their heart which could permanently damage them forever

• AstraZeneca almost seven times the risk of pericarditis if you got the third dose

The “sudden adult death syndrome” diagnosis is a product of the Covid-19 pandemic era.

This column is not telling you to accept or avoid the mRNA vaccines, but to be skeptical when experts in their fields are being censored or worse for offering their opinions. When ego, power, and profit are involved, especially within the government bureaucracy, they will determine your risk, not you.

Musk blew Twitter open

The extensive censorship of anyone, including science experts, who defied the federal bureaucrats and Big Pharma on social media platforms was deemed acceptable because the First Amendment only protects speech from government tyranny, not private enterprise.

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter wrecked the notion that the social media platforms were acting on their own. Musk opened a vault of email demands from the federal government to Twitter insisting they remove and restrict speech on those who opposed government positions on important issues. Many of those demands came from federal law enforcement agencies.

Members of Congress favoring censorship of opposing views also threatened to alter the laws governing social media platforms that provided liability protections if the CEOs did not comply.

The federal government and many blue state governors used their power to suppress speech they claimed was “misinformation” to protect their own government-generated misinformation.

Likewise, know that the major media outlets are controlled by a few entities, mainly BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street who also have major stakes in Big Pharma.

We now know that many of the experts targeted by the government were, in fact, correct in their assessments.

Government incompetence and fraud

The government creates problems. Never look to the government for solutions because they relish spending other people’s money above all else. A politically motivated solution is generally just another problem.

The nation suffered the double-whammy of being shut down and an incompetent Congress printing money like never before and tossing it into the air with little or no accountability.

NBC News described it this way: “Even if the highest estimates are inflated, the total fraud in all Covid relief funds amounts to a mind-boggling sum of taxpayer money that could rival the $579 billion in federal funds included in President Joe Biden’s massive 10-year infrastructure spending plan, according to prosecutors, government watchdogs and private experts who are trying to plug the leaks.”

The cumulative impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been significant. Students in low-income areas lost the most ground. Many urban areas are not back to pre-pandemic learning levels and chronic absenteeism is still a factor in some areas.

Any lessons learned?

The sheer magnitude of the pandemic calamity caused by way of government officials and corporate agents in just a couple of years is staggering, including nearly $3 trillion in new debt since the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

I am amazed at how many people still defend the censorship and retaliation against anyone who presented an opposing view to the government or Big Pharma related to the pandemic. Likewise, the apathetic among us who recognized the dangers but refused to speak out are no better.

An informed and engaged constituency is the only way to keep a government heading in the right direction.

We witnessed attempts at censorship locally in 2019. The city council in Peachtree City tried to approve the use of taxpayer funds to sue citizens who spoke out on the council’s poor performance (see: https://thecitizen.com/2019/04/23/governments-stop-silencing-your-citizens/). Fortunately, the citizens crammed the meeting room and forced the city council to reject the proposal.

The city council has been adamant about restricting public comment in the public forum (see: https://thecitizen.com/2022/08/03/the-peachtree-city-council-wants-to-hear-from-you-for-52-seconds/). The council members have responded to the criticism with minor adjustments.

We are seeing other Western nations fine and imprison their citizens for speech the government does not approve.

Banks and other financial institutions are “de-banking” or dropping people and companies because of their political views expressed or products produced. Political retaliation in the private sector could cause a massive crisis in future years.

The largest lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic is that we must fight for our First Amendment freedom of speech and stubbornly resist all efforts to engage in mob rule. Recognize that the government as it currently exists is causing significant problems for future generations.

The government is satisfied when the constituency marches in line like mindless zombies. They convinced the public that flimsy masks made in China and purchased from the drug store would keep you safe. They made up the six feet of separation rule from thin air and told you it works against the spread of airborne viruses. But, please, just “trust the science” and trust the government.

Always beware of government officials who function behind the scenes and promote lobbying interests over the constituents. We have seen this locally from political action committees set up to squelch opposing speech and promote measures antithetical to our quality of life.

Government officials who promote these lobbying groups are usually removed by the voters, but often not until real damage has been done.

Remember, government officials who cannot offer a principled reason for their decisions probably have no principles. Also, remember, it’s your apathy that fuels government corruption and ruins your community.

[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners. You can read all his columns by clicking on his photo below.]