A WIN FOR THE NEW CIVIL LIBERTIES ALLIANCE: SEC Surrenders to NCLA Client Michelle Cochran in Wake of Her Unanimous Supreme Court Win.
Reminder/Disclosure: I’m on the NCLA’s advisory board.
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OUT: FOLLOW THE SCIENCE. IN: FOLLOW THE MONEY AND INFLUENCE. Cochrane Review the latest scientific institution ruined by COVID ideology.
A few months back a controversy burst onto the scene with the now infamous Cochrane Review analysis that demonstrated that masking is useless as a population-level non-pharmaceutical intervention to address the COVID pandemic. There simply is no evidence that masking reduces the burden of disease and plenty of evidence that they don’t in large populations.
When the review dropped it caused quite a stir for the most obvious of reasons: it popped a bubble that should never have been allowed to inflate. It has been well known for a century that whatever their virtues, masks simply do not work to stop the spread of respiratory viruses in large groups over any extended period of time. This was a consensus position–one that Anthony Fauci himself endorsed before COVID changed the messaging suddenly.
Cochrane Review is widely held as a gold standard for medical information, and its findings are based upon meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials done by researchers across the world. These reviews do not rely on one study but on tens or hundreds using different methods in different places, with the goal of sorting out the signal from the noise that will always be found in any particular study.
When the analysis dropped the world seemed to explode. To have Cochrane Review debunk the mask narrative was unacceptable, and like a ton of bricks, the criticism poured in.
The editor apparently panicked. A quick addendum was attached to the analysis suggesting that it was not dispositive–and that addendum has been used ever since to claim that the review was flawed or even retracted. That is not and never was the case, and it is clear that the editor simply buckled to criticism.
Paul Thacker has done a deep dive into what happened and why, and the story is dispiriting. A study that was based upon extensive analysis, peer-reviewed, and based on the best evidence available was undermined by an editor with no relevant experience in a matter of hours, for the simple reason that she was scared by criticism from news organizations such as the New York Times.
Cochrane’s bending the knee to the mask mob has created a crisis of confidence in the research world. Not only do medical professionals rely on Cochrane to be utterly dedicated to the evidence above all else, but the scientists involved in producing the research can’t have a politically-motivated editor simply wiping out their research based on a hasty political decision driven by an inquiry from a newspaper.
Many people have been led to believe that the Cochrane study has been “debunked” or “retracted,” but neither is the case. The sole purpose of the note attached to the study is to create the impression that it has been retracted while it has not. The research stands; the political impression is the opposite, as intended.
To give you an idea how slapdash the editor’s response was, consider this: Soares-Weiser got an email from the New York Times and hastily responded, undermining the scientists–without even making an attempt to speak with them. She implied that the study was wrong without even seeking comment from the people who did the study, on a subject with which she was utterly unfamiliar.
This is science in the modern world.
Fire her and blacken her name as an enemy of science.
TODAY, THE SUPREME COURT WILL HEAR ARGUMENT IN THE NCLA’S CASE, Michelle Cochran v. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A reminder that I’m on the advisory board of NCLA.
ON MONDAY, THE SUPREME COURT WILL HEAR ARGUMENT IN THE NCLA’S CASE, Michelle Cochran v. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. A reminder that I’m on the advisory board of NCLA.
FIGHT THE POWER: NCLA Responds in SEC v. Cochran.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance today filed an early response to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s March 11 petition for a writ of certiorari in SEC v. Michelle Cochran. NCLA argues that the U.S. Supreme Court should reject the government’s request to hold the Cochran case pending a decision in Axon Enterprise, Inc. v. FTC; instead, it should grant plenary review in Cochran and consolidate the case with Axon for argument next fall.
NCLA’s December 2021 victory in Cochran at the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit created a circuit split as to whether the scheme of administrative and judicial review in the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 implicitly strips federal district courts of jurisdiction to hear structural constitutional claims challenging SEC administrative proceedings. The Fifth Circuit correctly held that Congress did not “implicitly strip[] district courts of jurisdiction to hear structural constructional claims.”
Three weeks after the Fifth Circuit’s momentous decision—the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Axon, which presents the same jurisdiction-stripping question in the context of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act. The Court’s resolution of that question, however, would not necessarily resolve the circuit split, which has arisen in the context of SEC’s distinct statutory scheme. Aside from granting a summary affirmance in Cochran, granting plenary review and hearing the case alongside Axon is the only way to ensure that the Court can fully resolve the circuit split that has closed federal courthouse doors to the constitutional claims of SEC defendants for far too long. Plenary review will also forestall otherwise inevitable spin-off litigation that would accompany an FTC-specific decision in Axon. Such ancillary litigation would add insult to injury for a litigant like Michelle Cochran, who already has been fighting for years for her day in court to present her structural constitutional claims.
By filing a petition for certiorari in this case, the government conceded that this question merits Supreme Court review. The fact that so many circuits—including those hearing the lion’s share of securities enforcement actions—have already weighed in on this issue underscores its national significance. The issue will not subside until the Court addresses the SEC statutory scheme directly.
Judicial issues should be resolved by courts, not by bureaucrats sitting as courts.
JOHN COCHRANE: Low Interest Rates and Government Debt. “Default is not impossible, just because the US and eurozone print our own currencies. Imagine my scenario and add policy chaos. The US is just getting going on political chaos. Bond markets are demanding 5% or 10%. Are the US Congress and Administration, really going to put interest payments to the Chinese central bank, ‘the rich,’ and ‘Wall Street’ ahead of writing checks to needy Americans? Don’t bet on it. It won’t be a simple default. It will be a complex restructuring, as it always is. T bills may get forcibly rolled over to low-coupon long term debt for example.”
Related: My thoughts: “Right now, yearly deficits are going up, but the debt — essentially the sum of all previous deficits — is skyrocketing. It has done that for a decade, except for a couple of years when it briefly leveled off due to the influence of the Tea Party movement. I’m sorry to say I’ve kind of given up talking about it because nobody seems to care, and I’m afraid the politicians in both parties will kick the can down the road until something really drastic happens. I’m guessing that might happen in the next decade, but although the rule is something that can’t go on forever, won’t, there’s no guarantee as to when it will stop. I feel safe in predicting, though, that it won’t stop due to a sudden infusion of virtue and self-control into our political class.”
NEW FROM PETER GRANT: The Pride of the Damned (Cochrane’s Company Book 3).
The shadow war started as a simple contract to defend a system against asteroid thieves. The harder Andrew Cochrane and Hawkwood Security fought, the worse things became. Now they find themselves embroiled in an interstellar war with an entire mafia!
Worse yet, the proceedings are so profitable – not to mention bloody – that they’ve attracted the attention of some of the worst criminal organizations in the galaxy. If Hawkwood is to survive, it’ll need all the wits, cunning and ingenuity it can muster – and the unwavering courage and dedication of its people.
The galaxy’s not big enough for both sides. One or the other will go to the wall.
PETER GRANT HAS A NEW BOOK! An Airless Storm: Cochrane’s Company: Book Two.
Andrew Cochrane and his mercenaries have warded off a deadly onslaught by asteroid thieves. Now they’re riding high, buying more ships and looking for more contracts.
However, the criminal Brotherhood isn’t about to accept defeat – not after Cochrane’s Company killed their Patriarch. They’re out to rebuild, rearm, and get revenge.
What started as a simple patrol job in a deserted binary star system explodes into a multi-planetary arms race, with survival on the line!
IN THE EMAIL FROM PETER GRANT: The Stones of Silence: Cochrane’s Company: Book One.
The secret is out – the Mycenae system is the hottest new mineral find in the spiral arm. Now it’s about to become ground zero in a gold rush by every crooked company and asteroid thief in the galaxy.
Andrew Cochrane, with his crew of the finest veterans and cunning rogues, have an even better scheme. They’ve conned the owner into hiring them as a mercenary security company to defend the system. With no oversight but their own, Cochrane’s Company plans to seize the richest pickings for themselves.
But nothing ever comes easy. If they want to keep their loot, they’re going to have to outwit and outfight every smuggler, bandit and renegade after the same prize – and their boss, too!
JOHN COCHRANE: Sclerotic growth is the overriding economic issue of our time.
From 1950 to 2000 the US economy grew at an average rate of 3.5% per year. Since 2000, it has grown at half that rate, 1.7%. From the bottom of the great recession in 2009, usually a time of super-fast catch-up growth, it has only grown at two percent per year. Two percent, or less, is starting to look like the new normal.
Small percentages hide a large reality. The average American is more than three times better off than his or her counterpart in 1950. Real GDP per person has risen from $16,000 in 1952 to over $50,000 today, both measured in 2009 dollars. Many pundits seem to remember the 1950s fondly, but $16,000 per person is a lot less than $50,000!
If the US economy had grown at 2% rather than 3.5% since 1950, income per person by 2000 would have been $23,000 not $50,000. That’s a huge difference. Nowhere in economic policy are we even talking about events that will double, or halve, the average American’s living standards in the next generation.
Even these large numbers understate reality. GDP per capita does not capture the increase in lifespan—nearly 10 years—in health, in environmental quality, security and quality of life that we have experienced. The average American today lives far better than a 1950s American would if he or she had three rather than one 1950s cars, TVs, telephones, encyclopedias (in place of internet), or three annual visits to a 1950s doctor.
But even these less quantified benefits flow from economic growth. Only wealthy countries can afford environmental protection and advanced healthcare.
Yes, but policies that produce strong economic growth produce insufficient opportunities for graft, and our political class — which controls the policies — values opportunities for graft above all else.
REMEMBER, THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TALKED THIS GUY INTO RUNNING AGAIN: Thad Cochran Gets Lost In Capitol. “Cochran didn’t seem to realize he was in the wrong place until someone in the room asked him if he was planning to join the Democrats for lunch.”
Reminder: If I recall correctly, Mark Foley, whose text-message scandal was the tipping point for the GOP in 2006, didn’t want to run for another term and was talked into it by Karl Rove.
PRIMARIES: Thad Cochran upsets Chris McDaniel in Mississippi stunner. An incumbent who pays attention to the home folks is hard to beat.
IN MISSISSIPPI, race-baiting on behalf of Thad Cochran. I’m not surprised to see Dems engage in this, of course, but it’s pathetic that Republicans are, as I’ve noted before.
MISSISSIPPI: Eliana Johnson: Tea Party Forces A Runoff. Given that Cochran didn’t really want to run this time, and that a runoff just helps the Dems, stepping down would probably be the noble thing to do. Will he do it?
DOWN TO THE WIRE: The Cochran/McDaniel race in Mississippi.
MISSISSIPPI: Poll Shows McDaniel Leads Cochran By 2 Points. This is why I thought it was a mistake for the NRSC to be going after McDaniel so hard: He could easily be the nominee.
POLITICAL HACKS VOTE AGAINST BAN ON HACKDOM: “Republican Sens. Bob Bennett (UT), Thad Cochran (MS), Susan Collins (ME), Jim Inhofe (OK), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Richard Shelby (AL), and George Voinovich (OH) all just voted against an amendment in the Senate that would have banned Congressional earmarks.”
UPDATE: “It’s all rigged.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader James Hicks writes that Richard Lugar voted against the earmark ban, too: “I’ll certainly donate to his opponent. His no vote is an act of contempt for the voters. Time for him to go.”
IN THE MAIL: From John Ringo and Julie Cochrane, Honor of the Clan. The latest in Ringo’s Posleen series.
OVER AT THE COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG, Andrew Cochran writes on the New York Times’ reporting of leaked excerpts from the National Intelligence Estimate:
The American people deserve to know, to the maximum extent possible, the actual findings and conclusions in this NIE and not depend on partial reports and leaks, which could be driven by all sorts of hidden agendas. The White House and DNI Negroponte should ask the members of the 9/11 Commission to independently review the NIE and release an unclassified version or summary of the report as soon as possible.
Hidden agendas? Surely not.
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran appears to have named a building after himself.
STEPHEN MILLER: O.J. Simpson was Patient Zero for our media culture.
If you lived through it, and I did, “spectacle” is the most generous term you could use to describe the media environment around the trial. It was the moment the entire media, seeing the ratings and attention tabloid shows were garnering, went all-in on the trash-exploitation and racial tropes that dominate news media today. Lead Simpson attorney Johnnie Cochran shamelessly made the trial about the LAPD versus another poor black man — and upon Simpson’s acquittal, was covered by television shows on Court TV and was an invited guest to Bill Clinton’s inauguration.
As Cochran stoked racial fires only a few short years after the Rodney King riots, Christopher Darden, a prosecutor during the trial, and a black man, was labeled a race traitor and an Uncle Tom.
Simpson’s legal team was dubbed “the Dream Team,” a label also attached to the 1992 Men’s Olympic basketball team. Sports and politics merged in a way that would later be seen in a way similar to Colin Kaepernick kneeling on the NFL sidelines. Jay Leno’s Tonight Show featured several dancing Asian men in black robes in a comedy segment he labeled “The Dancing Itos,” a reference to the judge of the trial.
Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian’s family later became national celebrities in their own right, with his wife Kris Jenner and her daughters cashing in millions on sex tapes and television shows, music albums, merchandise, perfumes and clothing lines.
In the middle of the trial, National Enquirer published leaked nude photos of lead prosecutor Marcia Clark, sold to them by an ex-husband. Everyone became a punchline, and a character, and a celebrity, due to and because of the guiding hand of the national media. Lost in all of it was the fact that two people had been brutally murdered.
Which brings us to the very alleged murderer himself. “Good Riddance, O. J. Simpson,” Jim Geraghty writes:
On the menu today: It almost always feels like the scourge of cancer targets those who deserve it the least. I say almost, because yesterday, cancer ended the life of O. J. Simpson. You can make a strong argument that Simpson turned into one of the most terribly influential Americans of the last quarter of the 20th century — terrible both in the scale of his influence and in the moral dimension of his influence.
The Myth of the ‘Juice’
O. J. Simpson passed away from cancer Thursday. The instant meme was an image of the late Norm McDonald declaring, “Finally, O.J. can rest, knowing that his wife’s killer is dead.”
Kids, you may not believe this, but in 1994, it seemed absurd that somebody who was rich and famous would be the kind of person capable of murdering two people. There was just this blanket assumption that anyone living a lifestyle of “champagne wishes and caviar dreams,” as Robin Leach described it, would be happy.
This was before Phil Spector, before Robert Blake, before Oscar Pistorius, before Aaron Hernandez.
This was before TMZ, before cell-phone cameras showcased every celebrity meltdown, tantrum, and other outburst. The rich and famous people in Hollywood, and their handlers and agents and consultants, exercised a lot more control over their images. This was also before #MeToo, and it was a few years before the country realized it had elected men who saw the White House interns as their own personal sex kittens — not just in 1992, but also in 1960.
You could say it was a more innocent time, but it is likely more accurate to say it was a more naïve time.
When O. J. Simpson was mentioned “as the focus of the investigation” on June 14, 1994, the initial overwhelming attitude among the public, white and black, was that it was unthinkable that the famous face could have committed such a bloody and heinous crime.
A large part of what made O.J. “unthinkable” as a murderer was the byproduct of being an NFL superstar. Pete Rozelle became commissioner of the league in 1960, and with the help of NFL Films, its omnipresent in-house propaganda machine, created a myth of hard-hitting warriors on the gridiron who were unassailable gentlemen off of it. Even after the O.J. trial, even after Rozelle stepped down from his perch in 1989, this myth soldiered on remarkably well until Colin Kaepernick and Rozelle’s successor finished it off for good in 2016: Roger Goodell Killed the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.
In the 1960s, American culture was fracturing along a fault line, with the common man on one side and scorn against his mores and values on the other. The league’s commissioner at the time, Pete Rozelle, chose to take the side of ordinary Americans in the raging culture war, because they were his natural audience. The league sent star players to visit troops in Vietnam and issued rules requiring players to stand upright during the playing of the National Anthem.
In 1967, the NFL produced a film that combined sideline and game footage titled, “They Call It Pro Football.” The film was unapologetically hokey. It was crew cuts and high tops and lots of chain smoking into sideline telephones. With a non-rock, non-folk, non-“what’s happening now” soundtrack, heavy on trumpets and kettle drums. John Facenda, who would come to be called “The Voice of God” for his work with NFL Films, provided the vaulting narration. The production began with the words, “It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun.” There was nothing Radical Chic about it.
The NFL surpassed baseball as America’s pastime with careful branding that conformed to the tastes and sensibilities of middle-class Americans – Nixon’s silent majority. A half century later, Roger Goodell would kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
In August 2016, America was experiencing a polarizing presidential election. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the playing of the national anthem, to protest injustice. It was a politically divisive act directed at fans who regard the national anthem as something sacred. The league did not lift a finger to stop him.
Most employers don’t let their workers make controversial political statements to their customers. It is why you do not know your UPS driver’s views on the expansion of NATO. The Constitution does not prohibit private businesses from regulating speech during work.
A savvier commissioner would have reminded Kaepernick that he is being paid millions to wear the logo of the NFL, and the league does not permit players to use its brand to flaunt their personal politics. Instead, Roger Goodell permitted the pregame ceremonies to become the focus of intense political scrutiny, as the media lined up to catalog whether players stood, sat or knelt during the national anthem.
In retrospect, as somebody who had bought into Rozelle’s myth wholeheartedly, I’m glad that Kaepernick and Goodell finally buried it. That it could survive someone as heinous as O.J. Simpson is a testament to its strength, the gullibility of pro football’s most rabid fans — and whatever was going on this week in offices of the legacy media:
This is why The Free Press NPR piece is so important. Not a single person, journalist, editor, lawyer at THE FUCKING ASSOCIATED PRESS thought… "let's maybe not run this one?" https://t.co/O3UBixrkV8
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) April 12, 2024
BREAKING NEWS: O.J. Simpson has reportedly died after his battle with cancer. He was 76 years old.https://t.co/HlddXD3NDb#OJSimpson #CelebrityDeaths pic.twitter.com/It78IrYA0L
— KPRC 2 Houston (@KPRC2) April 11, 2024
O.J. Simpson, Athlete Whose Trial Riveted the Nation, Dies at 76 – @NYTimes
"…struggled to remake his life, raise his children and stay out of trouble."
"struggled to… stay out of trouble"
😐 https://t.co/vRlGdeNV9m pic.twitter.com/S9PANtxibg
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) April 11, 2024
Even those formerly countercultural hippies at Rolling Stone bought into Pete Rozelle’s myth, based on the framing of this headline on Thursday: Norm Macdonald Was the Hater O.J. Simpson Could Never Outrun.
But then, some things never change at Rolling Stone:
As the 1960s kept ending, the next installment was the arrest of Charles Manson and four of his followers for the horrific murder of five people, including actress Sharon Tate, wife of Roman Polanski, at a luxury mansion north of Beverly Hills. When Manson’s trial began in 1970, Wenner [who would then have been about age 24–Ed] leaped at the story with an idea for the headline: “Charles Manson Is Innocent!”
Wenner’s headline was less insane than it sounds to modern ears. Manson was already an object of media obsession, a former Haight-Ashbury denizen who drifted to L.A. and collected hippie acolytes for LSD orgies and quasi-biblical prophecies. While the straight world viewed him as a monster, much of Wenner’s audience saw him, at least hypothetically, as one of their own. The underground press of Los Angeles, including the Free Press, cast him as the victim of a hippie-hating media. Manson was a rock-and-roll hanger-on. Wenner was convinced of Manson’s innocence by his own writer David Dalton, who had lived for a time with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, a Manson believer. “I’d go out driving in the desert with Dennis, and he’d say things to me like ‘Charlie’s really cosmic, man.’ ”
* * * * * * * *
Meanwhile, a lawyer in the DA’s office, believing he was doing a favor for a friend of [David] Felton’s at the Los Angeles Times and that this hippie rag from San Francisco was a benign nonentity, brought Felton [then-recently hired away from the L.A. Times by Wenner] and Dalton into the office to show them the crime scene photos of the butchered bodies of Manson victims — including a man with the word war etched in his stomach with a fork. Dalton blanched when he saw the words “Healter [sic] Skelter” painted in blood on a refrigerator, instantly recalling what Dennis Wilson told him about the coded instructions Manson heard in the Beatles songs. “It must have been the most horrifying moment of my life,” said Dalton. “It was the end of the whole hippie culture.” Jann Wenner changed the headline.
Which brings us back to where we started. While Rolling Stone remains stuck in radical chic 1969, what explains the rest of the legacy media?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN):
WTF: CNN Contributor suggests black people identified with OJ because he k*lled white people.
“[OJ] represented something for the black community in that moment, in that trial, particularly because there were two white people who had been k*lled.”
These remarks are insane.… pic.twitter.com/zJHNDJ0I7t
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 12, 2024