Not the AMA of yore

The New Neo Posted on by

The American Medical Association (AMA) is not just leftist, but also on the take from the American taxpayer. Here’s how it works:

The Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes clinicians use to report services to health insurers have become a linchpin in the American health care system. These codes are federally mandated, and all health care providers must pay royalties to the AMA to use them. That’s a heck of a cash cow for the AMA.

In 2023, the AMA raked in a staggering $495 million in revenue. A full 62 percent, $308 million, came from royalties tied to the use of CPT codes. And every dollar is paid for by taxpayers, via Medicare and Medicaid, or employers and employees in the private health insurance market.

Who knew? Not I. But it’s been going on for a long time. Here’s the history:

In 1983, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandated that CPT codes be used to report services under Medicare Part B. By 1986, Medicaid programs also had to adopt these codes. The 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) then solidified CPT codes as the national standard for electronic health transactions. These federal mandates essentially forced every health care provider to rely on the AMA’s CPT code system, creating a monopoly. Cha-ching!

There are other codes such as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which is free. But adopting that or something like it would eliminate much of the funding the AMA uses to pay its administrators hefty salaries and to support and lobby for policies such as trans treatment for prisoners.

The administration’s COVID lab leak page – and why there was such an initial push to deny the lab leak origins of COVID

The New Neo Posted on by

The Trump administration has a 500-page online report explaining how the COVID pandemic was from a lab leak. You can find it here.

Summary:

1. The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.

2. Data shows that all COVID-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.

3. Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels.

4. Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with COVID-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market.

5. By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t.

But for quite a while Democrats, the press, and health agencies went all in on the idea that the lab leak theory was “debunked” and not just preposterous but racist. And this was the message despite the fact that it was always a credible explanation for COVID and that points one through three were known quite early on.

And yet all talk of this was quashed, probably for the following reasons:

(a) To protect China.

(b) To protect Fauci.

(c) To protect “science.”

(d) To follow the principle of “if Trump suggests something is true, say it’s false.”

All of them are of interest, and for all of them books might be (and probably have been) written. But at the moment I’ll discuss “c” in particular: the idea that in order to save “science” we had to undermine it. The end result of that tactic has been the public’s increased distrust in science, health agencies, the government, and the press.

In the case of COVID origins, science was actually the culprit. That is, as number three at the website says, the pandemic came from conducting “gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels.” Poorly controlled and irresponsible science causing a worldwide pandemic of major proportions has long been the stuff of horror science fiction novels and films, a Frakenstein’s monster of fearful proportions. If this time it was true – and it was (at the very least; some think the release was deliberate but I don’t favor that idea), and they had to know it was true – the authorities felt that fact had to be suppressed or the public would become more anti-science than before.

Which is what happened anyway, of course, with the public’s added distrust that results from having been lied to and manipulated about such as important thing.

In addition there was the snobbery of health authorities and government officials who believed and believe that much of the public and especially the MAGA right are science-hating troglodytes. The idea of giving them any evidence for hating science even more was abhorrent, even if the evidence was true. Maybe especially if the evidence was true.

But little by little, the very inconvenient truth came out.

David Hogg plans to pull the Democrats to the left

The New Neo Posted on by

A certain segment of the Democratic Party thinks this is the wave of the future, led by the 25-year-old David Hogg, who is vice-chair of the DNC:

The move puts Hogg, the now 25-year-old who first gained national stature as an outspoken survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, on a collision course with his own party and some Democratic House members.

Leaders We Deserve, which Hogg co-founded in 2023, announced plans on Tuesday to spend $20 million in safe-blue Democratic primaries against sitting House members by supporting younger opponents. In an interview with POLITICO, Hogg said the group will not back primary challenges in battleground districts because “I want us to win the majority,” nor will it target members solely based on their age.

The Democrats don’t have a history of primarying incumbents, but that is what Hogg is proposing. He’s not destructive enough to propose this in districts that are considered at risk, however. It is a plan to pull the party as much as possible to the left and to the young (Hogg himself is exceptionally young for his position).

DNC Chair Ken Martin is said to have differing views from Hogg, so I don’t know how this will play out.

From Hogg:

“Our base is craving dramatic change,” Hogg said. “We need to show our base we’re here to fight for them. We need to show there are younger faces stepping up.”

But Hogg did name-check two exceptions: Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is 85, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who is 80. He described them as “fighters who are delivering.”

But they’ve also both drawn generational challengers — Saikat Chakrabarti, the 39-year-old former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who is running against Pelosi, and YouTube influencer Kat Abughazaleh, 26, who is running against Schakowsky. Hogg said Leaders We Deserve they would not intervene in either race.

Pelosi is running again? Indeed.

James Carville had a few choice words for Hogg:

… [Carville] blasted Hogg’s actions to Chris Cuomo on News Nation: “I don’t know if I have standing, but I might give the DNC $10 to sue him. He’s a contemptible little twerp if you ask me.”

NOTE: And Nate Silver predicts that AOC will be the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2028. She recently turned 35 – my how time flies! – so she’ll be old enough.

The left’s scare tactics on Social Security

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “fullmoon” asks a question (the first part of the comment is a quote from a post I wrote):

“[Biden] hammered on the idea that Social Security is threatened, something Trump and other Republicans have denied over and over again. But this is a message that Democrats have been pushing from even before the election with some success; I personally know people who believe Trump is intent on taking away their Social Security, and who have been in a panic about it ever since November.”

This really is amazing to me. When I was too young to know what social security, or a republican was, my grandma worried about republicans taking it away.

How in the world can anybody old enough to be collecting still believe that? Boomers have been hearing that lie their entire lives, and many still believe it.

It’s a good question. I think the answer has to do with the fact that so many Democrats long ago swallowed certain ideas about the right that are at this point so deeply held that they are unquestioned. The first is that Republicans, or anyone on the right, are bigots. The second is that Republicans are always trying to take benefits away, either through frugality and/or through sheer cussed meanness. There are other ideas about Republicans – such as that they are stupid “bitter clingers” and science-deniers. But it’s the second one that’s functioning in the Social Security story being told.

It’s not as though there is zero evidence for it, either. For example, especially around the year 2000 but at other times as well, the GOP has expressed concern about the Ponzi scheme nature of Social Security and how long it can go on, saying something must be done. That “something” would of course be a proposal for a solution that would preserve it as best as possible, but it would involve change.

Some Republicans have at times talked about the possibility of raising the retirement age, for example, as a cost-saving device which would reduce total payments but not affect anyone currently getting Social Security. That makes a lot of people nervous. And although DOGE’s efforts to reduce waste and fraud should be the sort of thing everyone can get behind, the left stirs up distrust in a group already extremely distrustful of Trump and the right, characterizing the whole thing as having nefarious intent.

Here’s a typical press release from the Democrats. It starts this way:

As Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress attempt to advance legislation to give massive tax breaks to billionaires and undermine Social Security …

I would wager that if I were to poll most of my Democrat friends, the majority – and perhaps all – would believe that Republicans would like to take away their Social Security.

NOTE: See also this.

The DEI school lawsuits in New Hampshire and elsewhere

The New Neo Posted on by

I was surprised to see this news today:

Arguments begin Thursday in a New Hampshire court case involving President Donald Trump’s demand that schools end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public schools or risk losing federal funding.

The New Hampshire case is one of several lawsuits contesting the administration’s demands and seeking to determine if the federal government can withhold billions of federal dollars for schools to educate low-income students.

The National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union are suing the administration, accusing it of violating congressional regulations that say federal agencies cannot dictate matters of local instruction, The New York Times reported.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not the least bit surprised that Trump’s directive is being challenged in court. After all, everything Trump does is being challenged in court. The courtroom is a tried-and-true way for the left to get its way when it can’t pass a law in Congress and/or when the presidency is held by the other party. Just find a leftist judge and hope that either SCOTUS refuses to hear it, or SCOTUS agrees. And DEI in grade schools is one of the main ways the left hopes to continue to indoctrinate the youth of the US in the preferred type of racism.

But why New Hampshire? That isn’t the usual venue for these cases; it’s basically a purple state. Perhaps it’s merely the lawsuit occurring today, because the article also says the case is one of “several” similar ones, and I have little doubt that in a blue state (or if the judge is leftist, even in New Hampshire) the court will rule against Trump’s order and the case will be appealed. And indeed, later in the article it says the states suing on this issue are “mostly blue.”

I see also that one New Hampshire district that appears to be involved is Hanover, home to Dartmouth and one of the most blue areas of the state. You can see from this chart that the county in which Hanover is located, Grafton, was the part of New Hampshire in which Kamala Harris got the highest percentage of the vote in 2024, 59%.

Here’s the statement on the case from the Hanover official:

“The U.S. Department of Education’s unclear ban on DEI undercuts our ability to adequately meet the needs of our students and overrides our communities’ decision to uphold these values in our public schools,” said Jay Badams, superintendent for New Hampshire’s Hanover and Dresden schools, NHPR reported.

But are there no limits to what local communities can teach and what values it decides to “uphold”? The original civil rights cases that involved the schools established that the federal government had a say in the matter when localities were practicing anti-black racism. Now that anti-white racism may be involved, the shoe is apparently on the other foot.

From the Times article:

The Trump administration has set out its case in a series of executive orders and memos. It believes that when schools allow transgender students to play on the sports teams or use the bathrooms of their choice, they are violating the rights of girls under Title IX. And it believes that D.E.I. programs violate the Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination based on race, color or national origin.

The administration has not offered a detailed definition of D.E.I. But it has argued that programs that separate students by race in order to provide targeted support are a form of illegal segregation. …

The Trump administration has also argued that teaching about concepts like white privilege is discriminatory toward white students.

That seem quite obvious to me.

Some good news on the education front from Christopher Rufo

The New Neo Posted on by

Rufo observes:

After mounting a successful fight against DEI, the political Right has come to accept that if there must be a civil-rights regime, it should be one of its own making. Rather than continue to defer to left-wing interpretations of civil-rights law, the Right can now advance a framework grounded in colorblind equality, not racialist ideology.

The first field of battle is higher education. The Trump administration has set its sights on the Ivy League universities, which have not only advanced the ideologies of left-wing racialism but made them administrative policy.

Many Ivy League presidents see themselves as heirs to the civil-rights movement. In fact, they are among the most active practitioners of racial discrimination, stereotyping, and segregation in America today. Shielded by a virtuous public image, elite universities have institutionalized discrimination against disfavored racial groups, implemented DEI policies based on racial rewards and penalties, hired and promoted faculty according to skin color rather than merit, and overseen racially segregated student programs, dormitories, and graduation ceremonies.

The Trump administration has ruptured this illusion. In a series of letters to Ivy League presidents, it has threatened to withhold billions in federal funding, citing violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other non-discrimination policies.

The argument is straightforward: racial discrimination is wrong whether it targets whites, Asians, and Jews or blacks and Hispanics. Any institution that continues to discriminate based on race is ineligible for federal support.

I think Rufo is somewhat too optimistic. But I think the general thrust is true: more people are aware of the extent of the problem, and Trump is using the tool of withdrawing federal funding – or the threat of withdrawing federal funding – to deal with it.

In the larger sense and not just limited to universities, the idea that discrimination against some ethnic groups is in the service of non-discrimination has been going on for many many decades and is a deeply flawed premise and needs to stop. The right has long been saying that we need to go back to equality of opportunity rather than a false and unattainable goal of equality of outcome. We’re taking steps in that direction.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) The man arrested for firebombing Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro’s residence is a pro-Palestinian socialist. Fancy that. We won’t be hearing too much about those things from the MSM.

(2) Joe Biden – remember him? – gives a speech that reminds us of what he does best: lie. Does he think he can run again for president? Actually, he can – after all, he only served one term. He hammered on the idea that Social Security is threatened, something Trump and other Republicans have denied over and over again. But this is a message that Democrats have been pushing from even before the election with some success; I personally know people who believe Trump is intent on taking away their Social Security, and who have been in a panic about it ever since November. The GOP wants to cut fat and fraud in the system, but not benefits.

(3) Chinese companies’ move in the trade war:

China is taking the trade war to a new battleground: America’s TikTok feeds.

Chinese suppliers have been flooding American social media this week, urging users to outflank President Donald Trump’s 145% tariffs on Beijing by buying directly from their factories.

One TikTok user, who goes by Wang Sen, claims that he is the original equipment manufacturer for most luxury brands, while standing in front of a wall of what appear to be ultra-spendy Birkin bags. OEMs work behind the scenes to make the products that another company then sells under its own brand.

“Why don’t you just contact us and buy from us? You won’t believe the prices we (will) give you,” he said in one clip.

This doesn’t seem so very new to me, although mention of the tariffs might be. But I’ve noticed for years many many companies based in China (although there is sometimes an attempt to disguise that fact) that sell goods that look like one thing in the online photos and text and actually end up being very shoddy when delivered. People complain all the time about such companies and their products, and there are tons of them.

(4) The UK Supreme Court rules on the definition of men and women, and finds the traditional point of view sufficient.

(5) The wife of deported El Salvadorian (and alleged MS-13 member) illegal alien Kilmar Abrego Garcia had twice alleged that he was guilty of domestic violence.

(6) A full half of Democrats would like the party to move further to the left:

The poll, which took place April 2-6 with 859 Republicans and 885 Democrats, found that among Democrats, 50% wanted the party to “become more progressive,” while only 24% said “stay the same” and 18% said “become more moderate.”

Letitia James: justice and poetic justice

The New Neo Posted on by

Letitia James campaigned for her New York AG job by vowing to get Trump – for what, she didn’t yet know. But like Beria, she would find the offense, charge him with it, and convict him.

She succeeded in all those things. She was elected. She found a supposed offense, although Trump’s record was so relatively clean that she had to apply a law to a real estate valuation situation that hadn’t hurt anyone, and to a practice that was actually standard in the business. The law had never been applied to anyone in the way she applied it to Trump, but in the very anti-Trump venue in which the case was tried, she won.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 2024 election: Trump became president-elect. Oops! And then the MSM began to bleat about how bent on “revenge” he would be.

One might expect that during this whole escapade Letitia James would have made sure her own personal behavior was squeaky-clean. But then, one would have expected the same of Fani Willis under similar circumstances. But one would have been wrong.

Now we see that that James has been referred to the DOJ to possibly be charged with, of all things, real estate fraud and in particular mortgage fraud. And this appears to be a much more straightforward case of actual fraud:

Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William Pulte sent the missive to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche, alleging that James had “falsified records” to get home loans for a property in Virginia that she claimed was her “principal residence” in 2023 — while still serving as a New York state prosecutor.

That occurred in late August 2023, weeks before James began her civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization for overinflating the values of many of its properties, which ended in a $454 million judgment.

“Ms. James was the sitting Attorney General of New York and is required by law to have her primary residence in the state of New York — even though her mortgage applications list her intent to have the Norfolk, VA, property as her primary home,” the letter stated.

“It appears Ms. James’ property and mortgage-related misrepresentations may have continued to her recent 2023 Norfolk, VA property purchase in order to secure a lower interest rate and more favorable loan terms.” …

In February 2001, James also purchased a five-family dwelling in Brooklyn — but has “consistently misrepresented the same property as only having four units in both building permit applications and numerous mortgage documents and applications,” the letter noted.

That last bit would have gotten her more favorable loan terms as well. There’s also an application on which she lists her father as her husband – yes, which would have gotten more favorable terms as well (James is single). These certainly are credible evidence of straight-up mortgage fraud, no law-twisting needed.

As Jonathan Turley says:

There could be statute of limitations issues, though James herself showed such such statutory periods can be stretched. James has issued a statement of defiance and suggests that this is lawfare or bullying by the Trump Administration. …

Notably, the Justice Department has prosecuted those who have committed this common fraud.

For example, in 2017, it charged a man in Puerto Rico with false statements on a reverse mortgage loan application in which he falsely claimed the property as his principal residence.

It emphasized that “mortgage lenders provide capital so people can purchase homes, not enrich themselves illegally.”

There are other such cases under 18 U.S.C. 1014 and related laws.

James could claim that these representations were made by a third party acting on her behalf.

However, that is precisely the argument that she repeatedly rejected in the Trump case, insisting that he was legally obligated to review all filings made in his name or that of his companies.

This potential prosecution seems to me to be both justice and also poetic justice. And yes, it also serves as revenge, but it doesn’t consist of cooked-up lawfare with ridiculous claims. Let’s see how it plays out, which depends in large part on the federal venue chosen.

Wny was James so careless or reckless, despite knowing she was about to try to bring down the leading GOP candidate? My guess is that she was accustomed to being untouchable legally, and certainly never thought Trump would end up as president. “When you strike at a king, you must kill him” is a famous quote attributed (perhaps falsely) to Emerson. James thought she had killed the king, but it turned out it wasn’t checkmate.

Who let the dogs out? say climate activists

The New Neo Posted on by

It was probably only a matter of time before we heard this:

Dogs have “extensive and multifarious” environmental impacts, disturbing wildlife, polluting waterways and contributing to carbon emissions, new research has found.

An Australian review of existing studies has argued that “the environmental impact of owned dogs is far greater, more insidious, and more concerning than is generally recognised”.

While the environmental impact of cats is well known, the comparative effect of pet dogs has been poorly acknowledged, the researchers said. …

In the US, studies have found that deer, foxes and bobcats were less active in or avoid wilderness areas where dogs were allowed, while other research shows that insecticides from flea and tick medications kill aquatic invertebrates when they wash off into waterways. Dog faeces can also leave scent traces and affect soil chemistry and plant growth.

The carbon footprint of pets is also significant. A 2020 study found the dry pet food industry had an environmental footprint of around twice the land area of the UK, with greenhouse gas emissions – 56 to 151 Mt CO2 – equivalent to the 60th highest-emitting country.

The researchers were careful to state that they’re not anti-dog and that dog ownership has important pluses.

“A lot of what we’re talking about can be ameliorated by owners’ behaviour,” Bateman said, pointing out that low compliance with leash laws was a problem.

“Maybe, in some parts of the world, we actually need to consider some slightly more robust laws.”

He suggested that dog exclusion zones might be more suitable in some areas. …

“If nothing else, pick up your own dog shit,” he said.

I can’t disagree with that last sentiment – although I object to calling it “your own” dog shit. It’s really your dog’s, isn’t it?