Opinion
By Jeff Childers
05-06-24
Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! Your morning roundup, replete with just the right amount of news you need to know, includes: democrats fretting about Supreme Court immunity decision; UK’s version of the PREP Act is collapsing under skyrocketing claims; Moderna announces astonishing sales figures; corporate media getting excited about a new and improved glorious Ukraine counteroffensive; and gooey karma erupts all over democrat pols in New York City.
🗞💬 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 💬🗞
🔥🔥 Time flies, when you’re having fun! The salacious Trump “mischaracterized legal expenses” trial will enter its fourth week today. Legal eagles are impatiently waiting to hear back from the Supreme Court on the critical issue of presidential immunity. Corporate media’s headlines over the last few days seem like nothing less than a pack of nervous old ladies arguing about the time the tour bus is supposed to leave or whether they missed it already. Behold the Washington Post’s latest worrisome op-ed:
And then there was the Hill’s op-ed (Saturday):
And, Rolling Stone’s ‘commentary’ (last Wednesday):
What lawyers often say about appellate cases — and the Supreme Court’s immunity case is an appellate case — is that the decisions always pop up in your inbox right when you least expect them. In my experience, that old saw is 100% true.
They’re worried because the immunity decision could possibly wreck several of the current cases against the President.
But don’t you worry, because C&C will keep you posted if anything happens in the Trump cases that you need to know about.
💉 Last week we looked at the PREP Act’s useless CICP claims process in the U.S. Yesterday, a new article described how the United Kingdom handles the same problem. While the UK Daily Mail’s story was light on the details, the few nuggets that did tumble out suggest theirs is a better program, and therefore is also a rapidly growing problem. Here’s the headline:
The particular UK program referenced in the article provides a one-time payment for only the most severe vaccine injuries. The Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS) pays victims a lump sum of £120,000 pounds sterling if they develop a permanently disabling vaccine injury reducing their ability to live independently by at least 60%.
The £120,000 payout has not increased since 2007, which is one of the issues needing reform, said the Mail. That’s not enough even to fund a lawsuit against the vaccine manufacturers, which unlike the CICP, is still allowed in Great Britain.
It’s possible to qualify for the award, but it’s not easy. Victims must submit extensive confirmatory medical records, there’s an independent review panel process, and VDPS medical experts must rule out any possible alternative cause for the victim’s injury than one of the scheduled vaccines. There’s also a very strict time limit.
As the headline said, VDPS claims are unexpectedly soaring. Surprise! The safest and most effective vaccine in the world is overwhelming not the hospitals, but the injury compensation system. Just three years ago in 2021-22, the VDPS’s budget was £600,000. In the current budget year, it has tsunamied to £16.1 million.
In 2019, the year before the pandemic, there were 27 total VDPS claims for all vaccines combined. In 2020, claims even dropped down to 26 for all vaccines. But by 2022, it spiked to 480 — twenty times the previous year’s claims. Last year in 2023, claims multiplied again, about ten times to 4,008. And so far this year — in just the first four months — the Daily Mail reported the VDPS has received over eleven thousand claims.
That astonishing figure projects to around 44,000 claims for 2024; scaled to the U.S. population, that figure is the equivalent of +220,000 thousand new claims this year, more than the population of my home town. (Great Britain’s population is around 67 million, or about a fifth of the United States.)
The claims trend is obviously going the wrong way. Not only is the trend a horrifying signal in itself, but it’s happening at a time when vaccine uptake is plunging downwards; and after all the mandates have fallen by the wayside. Sure, there could be some conceivable reason for rising claims other than increasing injuries from the covid vaccines, but we can agree that whatever is happening, it isn’t good news.
💉💉 Claims in the UK might be soaring, but sales are plunging. Last Thursday, Bloomberg ran another story signaling more problems for the jabs:
Sales of Moderna’s mRNA ‘vaccine’ fell a whopping 91% in the first quarter compared to last year. Sales to Moderna’s government customers have now fallen from $1.9 billion last year to only $167 million for the current fiscal year. And although its CEO claimed Moderna is no one-trick pony, it currently has no other shipping products; it just has a bunch of in-trial products in the regulatory pipeline.
One standout is its RSV shot, for which it expects FDA approval this Fall, the company assured its investors last week.
Oddly, Moderna’s stock shot up +12% on the news, prompting the “head-scratching” in the sub-headline. Maybe Moderna is a meme stock like Trump Media. But Moderna has a taste for easy government money now. It’s going to be much harder to go back to the old model of selling to nitpicky consumers, one jab at a time. Unlike government, consumers demand results.
If only Moderna could somehow dream up another national emergency! That would do the trick. I can’t imagine how that would work though.
🚀 Let’s bookmark yesterday’s cheerful Financial Times headline, to check and see where we are next year this time: “Jake Sullivan says US military aid will help Ukraine mount counteroffensive in 2025.”
Referring to Biden Administration optimistic plans about the war next year, Sullivan said Ukraine intends to “to move forward to recapture the territory that the Russians have taken from them.” Recapture the territory? Does he mean all the parts of Ukraine colored in red on the map below? I can’t wait.
Sure! It could happen. Jake Sullivan said so. I mean, since the last glorious counteroffensive went so well and everything.
Compared to last year’s Glorious Ukraine Counteroffensive, Russia now has even more troops, who are more experienced, more and better weapons, holds more territory, more fortified positions, and has more strategic options. And has a stronger war economy. Meanwhile Ukraine has fewer troops, who are less experienced, fewer and worse weapons, fewer fortifications, and fewer options.
Ukraine has no economy. So it’s not precisely clear how the New Glorious Counteroffensive could possibly improve on the previous one.
Later down the article, the Financial Times accidentally let slip the mask of official deceit:
Any new offensive in 2025 by Ukraine would be dependent on more funding from Congress, and approval by the White House. Zelenskyy said there is a plan for another counteroffensive but that it is contingent on more weapons, including from the US.
Whose war is it again? Ukraine’s? I’m sure the Financial Times meant that “approval by the White House” would modify “more funding,” but unfortunately the sentence reads just as grammatically correct if “approval by the White House” qualifies “any new offensive.”
Anyway, we can all see what’s going on here. Zelensky hasn’t even gotten the current $61 billion in aid and he’s already mounting a rhetorical counteroffensive on next year’s glorious appropriations request.
🔥 The New York Post ran a delightfully karmic story yesterday headlined, “NYC pol says law allowing rape suit against him was unconstitutional — despite voting for the legislation.” But the story was so much better than the headline promised.
The Best and Brightest Little Head in New York!
You may recall some of last year’s anti-Trump lawfare, where bizarre cat lady E. Jean Carroll suddenly claimed twenty-five years later that Trump had sexually assaulted her in a Bergdorf Goodman changing room. Despite holes in her story Elon Musk could launch a Dragon Heavy rocket through, the Manhattan jury awarded her $5 million, although it also found that Trump had not raped the colorful Carroll, but had sexually assaulted her instead.
At least in part, Carroll’s antique case was resurrected by a brand-new, automatically-expiring New York law, as fancy a piece of progressive lawfare as ever high-stepped down Broadway. The “Adult Survivors Act” revived ancient sexual assault claims, making them viable — but only during a two-year period — although the statutes of limitation had long since passed.
Carroll filed her lawsuit against Trump right after the new law became effective.
The genius behind the Adult Survivors Act was state senator Kevin Parker, who at the time of passage bragged about his terrific new law, saying “I voted in favor of the Act to ensure all New Yorkers can seek justice and be heard.”
All New Yorkers. All.
Just like E. Jean Carroll, rape survivor Olga Jean-Baptiste also filed a claim — against Senator Parker — right before the Act expired late last year. According to her lawsuit, Olga was working with Parker on Haitian relief efforts twenty years ago in 2004, when Parker grabbed her by the wrists and forcibly raped her at her own home. Governor Kathy Hochul has called Olga’s allegations “deeply disturbing.”
But in a deliciously ironic motion to dismiss the case filed last week, Senator Parker now claims his Adult Survivors Act was unconstitutional. But Senator Parker, remember: no one is above the law.
It’s not just Parker, either. Lorna Beach-Mathura also filed an Adult Survivors claim right under the wire, against New York Mayor Eric Adams, who happens to be running for re-election this year. Also ironically, in Adams’ most recent motion, his lawyers complained the case is taking too long: “any longer a wait will start interfering with New Yorkers’ ability to fairly make a decision in the upcoming mayoral primary.”
Election interference!
Two months ago in mid-March, Lorna filed a ‘bombshell complaint’ accusing Adams of demanding oral sex as consideration for helping her with her budding career while the two worked in the Transit Police Department — all the way back in 1993! According to the lawsuit, when she refused his ungenerous offer, Adams — then leader of the Transit Bureau Association — allegedly whipped out and forced her to touch the little mayor, which promptly and prematurely delivered a seminal address right on her while she was struggling to secede from the salacious encounter.
What’s gooey for the goose, is gooey for the little mayor, too.
Democrats seem have a recurring ‘little mayor’ problem. See, e.g., Mario Cuomo and Jeffrey Toobin. Maybe lawfare like the Adult Survivors Act wasn’t the best idea their sticky little heads ever came up with. I’m just saying. Don’t cancel me.
Have a magnificent Monday! And get yourselves back here tomorrow for another adventure in Coffee & Covid, where you get just the right, satisfying amount of news to bring you all the way up to date.
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© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
