RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/is_america_s_doctor_a_good_choice_to_head_the_centers_for_medicare_and_medicaid.html

Mountebanks peddling miracle cures in the Old West would often pretend to be qualified doctors. 

It is rare to come across mountebanks now, rarer still for qualified doctors to peddle miracle cures.  But Dr. Mehmet Oz – a former cardiothoracic surgeon, famed purveyor of ‘medutainment’ on his T.V. show, and the man President-elect Donald Trump has nominated to administer Medicaid and Medicare – has been doing so unchecked.

On his show (that ran from 2009 to 2022) and on numerous other occasions, Dr. Oz has hyped dubious medical “miracles” and recommended cures that range from the anodyne, to the bizarre and dangerous. 

Here’s a partial list: a bar of lavender soap in bed to relieve restless leg syndrome; green coffee bean extract and raspberry ketones for weight loss; red onions, endives, and sea bass to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer; a poop primer for self-assessing overall health; 200 orgasms annually to extend life expectancy by six years; selenium supplements to prevent cancer; colloidal silver for the common cold; and a supplement containing human chorionic gonadotropin (a placental hormone) for weight loss.

In fact, the AMA Journal of Ethics has called Dr. Oz “a dangerous rogue unfit for the office of America’s doctor,” earned by virtue of his show.  In 2014, a Senate hearing on weight-loss scams chided him and told him to use his immense influence responsibly.

Yet, his dubious recommendations are not the only reason Dr. Oz is a questionable choice to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency that spends $2.6 trillion annually. 

The following are of greater concern:

·    Potential conflicts of interest will likely bias Dr. Oz’s decisions, for he has significant investments in healthcare and pharma companies, including the UnitedHealth Group, a critical CMS partner; in Amazon, which runs a Medicare-linked online pharmacy; and in Domino’s Pizzas, Pepsi, and U.S. Foods, makers of products linked to lifestyle diseases.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-coming-fight-to-abolish-dei

There is a great clanging and clamoring around the offices in Washington, D.C. and Mar-a-Lago in Florida. Political operatives, policy wonks, and opposition figures are all planning for the arrival of the second Donald Trump administration.

I’ve spoken with many of the people in the president-elect’s orbit who are planning how to staff Cabinet departments and set a new tone on the administration’s first day. Much of our discussion has focused on the approach to DEI, or “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

While the officials in Trump world are all committed to abolishing DEI in theory, they have yet to settle on a practical approach for doing so. With this in mind, I’m writing this open letter to Trump’s incoming Cabinet, outlining how to shut down DEI and win the fight for public opinion.

The first step is to understand how DEI bureaucracies became embedded in the federal government. That is the result of actions by two presidents: Barack Obama, who issued Executive Order 13583, which laid the groundwork for many national “diversity” initiatives; and Joseph Biden, who signed Executive Orders 13985 and 14035, which entrenched DEI principles into every federal department and routed billions of dollars toward advancing this ideology throughout American society.

Having understood this history, Cabinet officials must work with President Trump to rescind President Obama and President Biden’s executive orders.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/11/californias-next-crime-wave-fuel-theft/

Editor’s note: This has been excerpted with permission from the Pacific Research Institute. To read the entire report, click here.

Here are a few examples:

On Sept. 27, an Inland Empire resident drove away from her job at an area hospital when her pickup truck puttered to a stop. An investigation showed her tank had been drilled and emptied.
A Valero Station in Fremont lost tens of thousands of gallons of diesel to thieves using a device to bypass pump security and transfer fuel into a specially configured pickup truck on July 10.
On July 2, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office charged two men with an alleged fuel theft scheme involving $90,000.00 in diesel fuel thefts.
On March 1, East Bay law enforcement reported a “rash of destructive gas thefts by drilling gas tanks.”
Most recently, on Nov. 21, thieves in Otay Mesa near San Diego pumped 3,000 gallons of stolen fuel from a Circle K station. This was a loss of $16,000 for the station.

Gasoline prices in California are one area where the rules of supply and demand don’t apply to price. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, since 2005 per capita use of gasoline has dropped by 2 billion gallons per year – a net drop of 15% over nearly 20 years. They attribute this decline to improved fuel economy and the increasing use of electric vehicles. For advocates of the idea that commercial and personal vehicle use is one of the primary contributors to climate change, this is welcome news. It certainly has improved local air quality in California’s most smog prone regions.

Yet, for California’s tax collectors, this is very bad news indeed as projected 202-/2025 fuel tax revenues are just north of $7 billion and should, according to basic economic laws, drop along with consumption. The California Air Resources Board recently adopted an updated Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which is estimated to increase gas prices by 47 cents per gallon or more.