Sickness Is the Health of the State!

Battle Hymn of the Gesundheitsfuhrers: Sickness Is the Health of the State!

By David Stockman

David Stockman's Contra Corner

May 30, 2020

A hundred years ago in response to the horror of WWI, the great Randolph Bourne famously pronounced the truth that “War is the Health of the State.” Said Bourne,

War is the health of the State.

It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties, the minorities are either intimidated into silence or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion which may seem to them to really converting them……

Other values such artistic creation, knowledge, reason, beauty, the enhancement of life, are instantly and almost unanimously sacrificed and the significant classes who have constituted themselves the amateur agents of the State are engaged not only in sacrificing these values for themselves but in coercing all other persons into sacrificing them.

In a nation at war, every citizen identifies himself with the whole, and feels immensely strengthened in that identification. The purpose and desire of the collective community live in each person who throws himself whole-heartedly into the cause of war. The impeding distinction between society and the individual is almost blotted out.

A century later it appears that Randolph Bourne needs an update: Apparently, Sickness is the Health of the State, as well.

During the past 10 weeks, state control of economic and social life in America has erupted like never before. The stay-at-home and lockdown orders decreed by mayors and governors intrude into every nook and cranny of daily life, essentially subjecting tens of millions of Americans to house arrest and/or entombment in six-foot cylinders of social control.

The historic quasi-regimentation and suppression of dissent that occurred domestically during both world wars, for instance, pales by comparison.

The pretext, of course, has been that the coronavirus presents a dire threat to the very life and limb of the American public, and that exigent and invasive controls on individual action and daily commerce are necessary to stop its spread.

But that’s a gargantuan lie. The risk of death to an average healthy person under 60 years of age is no greater than that entailed in commuting 50 miles per day by car to work and back.

And besides, once a highly contagious virus gets loose among the general population – which the coronavirus had done long before Lockdown Nation was launched on March 13 – its spread cannot be stopped, anyway.

In fact, it shouldn’t be stopped. When the virus is already out the barn-door and is relatively benign among 95% of the population which contracts it, the right course of action is to let freedom reign. That is, enable its natural spread among the healthy population and thereby foster the herd immunities that the human organism and social community have been deploying to combat such diseases for millennia.

Stated differently, the very high threshold of across-the-board threat to the health and life of the citizenry that would be required to suspend their liberties and pursuit of economic livelihood has not been remotely reached by the Covid. So what has and is still happening in Lockdown Nation is a case of grotesque and malign disproportion.

That’s evident enough in any random sample of the social controls and “nonessential business lockdowns” that have been hastily stood up coast to coast. But these excerpts from the lawsuit of an Illinois businessman capture the intrusive absurdity being foisted on the public as well as any:

I won’t get COVID if I get an abortion but I will get COVID if I get a colonoscopy.

Selling pot is essential but selling goods and services at a family- owned business is not. Pot wasn’t even legal and pot dispensaries didn’t even exist in this state until five months ago and, in that five months, they have become essential but a family-owned business in existence for five generations is not.

A family of six can pile in their car and drive to Carlyle Lake without contracting COVID but, if they all get in the same boat, they will.
We are told that kids rarely contract the virus and sunlight kills it, but summer youth programs, sports programs are canceled.

Four people can drive to the golf course and not get COVID but, if they play in a foursome, they will.

If I go to Walmart, I won’t get COVID but, if I go to church, I will.

Murderers are released from custody while small business owners are threatened with arrest if they have the audacity to attempt to feed their families.

These are just a few examples of rules, regulations and consequences that are arbitrary, capricious and completely devoid of anything even remotely approaching common sense. But this kind of arbitrary state invasion of economic and personal life is what happens when officialdom and politicians are green-lighted by an overpowering Big Lie.

In the case of Illinois, the state has its own bully-boy, Donald Trump wanna-be master of the universe in the state house. Governor J. B. Pritzker is the entitled scion of a brass knuckled family of Chicago business speculators who is used to getting his way, and has decided that it is his job job to quash the coronavirus – the rights of the state’s citizens and needs of the economy be damned.

But it is worth noting that the WITH Covid mortality rate in Illinois as of May 27 was just 40 per 100,000, which is only slightly above the US average and far below the level in hard hit states, where the apparent mortality rates are far higher.

It’s also about the same as Sweden, which hasn’t closed its schools, businesses and places of social congregation; and it is well above a variety of other US states and countries including Japan and South Korea, which have not employed anything remotely resembling the sweeping Lockdowns imposed by the state of Illinois:

WITH Covid Mortality Rates Per 100,000 (as of May 28)

• New York: 153;
• New Jersey: 128;
• Connecticut: 107;
• Massachusetts: 95;
• Rhode Island: 64;
• Sweden: 42;
• Illinois: 40;
• Georgia: 18;
• Florida: 11;
• Germany: 10;
• Texas: 6;
• Switzerland: 4;
• Russia: 3;
• Belarus: 2;
• Japan: 0.7;
• South Korea: 0.5

Indeed, the sweeping range of mortality rates among these jurisdictions tell you that intrusive lockdowns designed to stop the virus’ spread don’t have much to do at all with actual outcomes. Public health measures in Georgia, Florida, Texas, Japan, Belarus and South Korea, for example, were not a fraction as intrusive and comprehensive as those in the state of Illinois.

Even then, fully 50% of the WITH Covid deaths in Illinois have been in nursing and other long-term care facilities – places outside the reach of the general public lockdowns, anyway.

So if you set aside the long-term care deaths, the general population mortality rate in Illinois is actually about 20 Covid deaths per 100,000. That’s only slightly higher than the year-in and year-out suicide rate of 15 per 100,000 and not even 3% of Illinois’ annual mortality rate from all causes of about 875 per 100,000.

So you have the worst of both worlds: The Illinois lockdowns do not account for its moderate mortality rates because if plenary lockdowns were efficacious, the mortality figures for New York and New Jersey would be drastically lower.

At the same time, destroying an economy and personal liberties and livelihoods on account of a 3% share of the state’s normal mortality rate gives the idea of overkill and disproportion an altogether new meaning.

To take another example, the WITH Covid mortality rate of 15.7 per 100,000 in Virginia is only a tad above its annual suicide rate of 13.9 per 100,000.

But that hasn’t stopped its power-grabbing governor, Ralph Northam, from imposing a sweeping lockdown on the state’s residents, including an edict that after Friday all Virginians over 10 years of age will wear the Mask pretty much everywhere. As one acerbic critic rightly noted,

Or else! Gesundheitsfuhrers – health police – will do the enforcing, handing out misdemeanor fines and presumably Hut! Hut! Huts! to the non-compliant.

Needless to say, even as the state balloons with its puffed up health police, the private sector has literally imploded. With today’s weekly report on initial unemployment claims, we have now reached a milestone which was not attained even during the darkest moments of the Great Depression.

To wit, during the past ten weeks 40.7 million workers have filed for state unemployment benefits, a figure which is nine times greater than the worst 10 months of the Great Recession; and when you add in the 4.5 million workers newly eligible under PUA (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance), the total is close to 45 million.

The total employed work force on the eve of Lockdown Nation in February 2020, however, was just 158.7 million.

So, actually, 28.3% of employed workers in what was alleged to be the Greatest Economy Ever have now received pink slips, and in a ten-week flash of the eye.

Still, this needless calamity gets us to another avenue by which sickness have become the Health of the State.

After the Donald’s camarilla of malpracticing doctors green-lighted the Governors and Mayors to lockdown their economies in Mid-March and conducted daily coronavirus task force briefings which became the fodder for the MSM to generate hysteria among the general public, the Washington politicians experienced their own version of fear contagion. That is, they passed sight unseen a $3 trillion Everything Bailout which has literally eviscerated the public finances of the nation.

Consequently, and unlike even the worst period of the Great Recession, lockdown starved US Treasury receipts of $3 trillion in FY 2020 will amount to only 40% of Bailout bloated outlays, which will exceed $7 trillion. That’s not even worthy of banana republic style finance.

Needless to say, the Covid-fighters on Capitol Hill held no hearings, took no expert testimony, had the benefit of no professional analysis or even a cursory reading of the bills.

So they apparently didn’t bother to find out, for instance, that there were 71 million American workers last year whose paychecks averaged less than the new combined Federal/state benefit of $1,000 per week; and that there were 17 million workers in the hospitality and leisure sector as of February 2020, who averaged less than 25 hours per week on the clock and got paychecks of less than $350.

So now the state’s Virus Patrols are confronted with a new variety of ailment that may be afflicting millions of workers. To wit, the discovery that it pays big time to get furloughed.

As one widely circulated commentary on the social media put it: Thank Heavens for the Covid!

Before COVID I was miserable.

I had a job working $14.75/hr and hated waking up most days. I’ve since been laid off (obviously) but am one of those who is making much more by NOT working.

I used to make $550-600 per week depending on my hours but since COVID began, I’m clearing just over $1000/week. My gf is in the same situation and she’s also clearing just over $1000.

Today we plan to do some hiking since it’s going to be so nice out and I’ll be using my new grill to cook up some steak tonight. The gf is kind of a wine snob so she likes to splurge on really nice reds (which I’ll definitely be having later as well).

I really don’t understand people who say they’re more stressed or are fighting with their gf/wife more than before. It makes absolutely no sense to me. These have been the best 2 months I’ve had in a while. I can’t imagine going back to my old life and way of doing things. NOT HAPPENING!

The only thing that isn’t ideal right now is not being able to travel normally but I only vacationed once or twice a year before due to work/money issues. Now I’m able to save $800-1000/month with COVID stimulus and bonus so we’ll definitely be taking a nice vacation at some point this summer.

So the question recurs: Why the Lockdowns?

House arrest and the 6-foot cylinder of social control that have been stood up to thwart the spread of the virus are inherently unmatched to the task, which is illicit in the first place. But they will inherently clobber the economy and the livelihoods of millions – notwithstanding a lot of brave talk about the “new normal”.

As the Wall Street Journal detailed in a story about the travails of the restaurant industry, the so-called reopening will only be a short bridge to oblivion for large segments of the industry:

Across the U.S., dining rooms are reopening and some customers are returning, industry data shows. But restaurants say they expect months of sales losses ahead due to capacity constraints imposed to contain the new coronavirus. They are also buying plexiglass walls to separate tables, hiring cleaning staff and turning fewer tables to give booths deeper scrub downs between customers, expenses that draw on a shallower pool of revenue.

Of the 30 states that have allowed restaurants statewide to resume serving customers indoors, 15 have limited capacity to 25% or 50%, according to market-research firm Gordon Haskett. The rest are mandating social distancing that have the effect of reducing capacity, or have yet to release guidance. Restaurant executives expect the limits to last at least through the summer.

Independent restaurants face even greater challenges than sit-down chains because they tend to have less room to cordon off customers and fewer seats to remove. A survey of 250 Colorado restaurant operators earlier this month found that nearly half expected to permanently close in less than three months at the 50% capacity cap that the state set on Wednesday. A study of 483 New York City venues found that 61% couldn’t make it with occupancy limits below 70%.

For a typical 75-seat sit-down restaurant in New York, an occupancy cap of 50% would allow for just 20 diners after accounting for employees, said James Mallios, a New York City restaurateur and attorney.

He said the number drops to around five diners at a 25% capacity limit. New York City hasn’t yet eased stay-at-home orders or set final capacity guidelines for restaurants.

Then again, there are 275 million Americans 64 years and under who face virtually no risk of death or serious illness. As of May 16, the CDC’s own data show that the WITH-Covid mortality rate for this massive share of the population was just 4.9 per 100,000 – about in line with the annual toll of traffic and other accidents.

By contrasts, the serious illnesses and deaths are occurring mainly where the Lockdowns aren’t. Persons 65 and older account for 16% of the population but 81% of the WITH-Covid deaths; and 32% of deaths have been among those 85 and older, which account for just 2.0% of the population – most of whom are in long-term care homes, and do not frequent restaurants.

The reason for high mortality and low public socializing, of course, is that the 22,543 persons 85 and older who died WITH Covid were pretty sick already. To wit, among them were –

• 8,267 cases of influenza and pneumonia;
• 11,250 cases of chronic lower respiratory and other pulmonary illnesses;
• 4,075 cases of high blood pressure;
• 4,000 cases of cardiac arrest and arterial arrhythmia;
• 5,800 cases of other circulatory diseases;
• 1,870 cases of diabetes and obesity;
• 3,650 cases of dementia;
• 1,700 cases of sepis and cancer;
• 1,025 cases of Alzheimer;
• 1,175 cases of renal failure; and
• 8,000 cases of other serious ailments including accidents and poisonings.

In all, the deceased over the age of 84 years had 50,800 of cases of classifiable diseases, most of them life-threatening. That’s an average of 2.25 each.

Needless to day, sickness is a condition of life – especially of advanced age; and it needs to be fought with medical care and personal health practices, not society-wide social engineering.

But when it becomes the Health of the State, as during the current Covid Hysteria, it is now apparent that the State becomes a greater mortal threat to liberty and prosperity than even during times of military war.

And we are quite sure that Randolph Bourne would heartily agree.

PEAK TRUMP, IMPENDING CRISES, ESSENTIAL INFO & ACTION

Reprinted with permission from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

The Best of David Stockman

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/david-stockman/battle-hymn-of-the-gesundheitsfuhrers-sickness-is-the-health-of-the-state/

Coronavirus Propaganda Mimics War Propaganda

Coronavirus Propaganda Mimics War Propaganda

By Jeff Deist

Mises.org

May 30, 2020

In the period leading up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration and its media accomplices waged a relentless propaganda campaign to win political support for what turned out to be one of the most disastrous foreign policy mistakes in American history.

Nearly two decades later, with perhaps a million dead Iraqis and thousands of dead American soldiers, we are still paying for that mistake.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were key players behind the propaganda—which we can define as purposeful use of information and misinformation to manipulate public opinion in favor of state action. Iraq and its president Saddam Hussein were the ostensible focus, but their greater goal was to make the case for a broader and open-ended “War on Terror.”  ​The Invisible EnemyGarrett, Mr. Gregory L...Buy New $26.94(as of 05:21 EDT - Details)

So they created a narrative using a mélange of half-truths, faintly plausible fabrications, and outright lies:

• Iraq and the nefarious Saddam Hussein were “behind,” i.e., backing, the Saudi terrorists responsible for 9-11 attacks on the US;
• Hussein and his government were stockpiling yellowcake uranium in an effort to develop nuclear capability;
• Hussein was connected with al-Qaeda
• Iran was lurking in the background as a state sponsor of terrorism, coordinating and facilitating attacks against the US in coordination with Hamas;
• Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and other terror groups were working against the US across the Middle East in some kind of murky but coordinated effort;
• We have to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”;
• The Iraqis would welcome our troops as liberators.

And so forth.

But the propaganda “worked” in the most meaningful sense: Congress voted nearly 3–1 in favor of military action against Iraq, and Gallup showed 72 percent of Americans supporting the invasion as it commenced in 2003. Media outlets across the spectrum such as the Washington Post cheered the war. National Review dutifully did its part, labeling Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Justin Raimondo, Lew Rockwell, and other outspoken opponents of the invasion as “unpatriotic conservatives.”Manufacturing Consent:...Chomsky, NoamBest Price: $10.99Buy New $13.53(as of 11:05 EST - Details)

Tragically, the American people never placed the burden of proof squarely with the war cheerleaders to justify their absolutely crazed effort to remake the Middle East. In hindsight, this is obvious, but at the time propaganda did its job. Disinformation is part and parcel of the fog of war.

What will hindsight make clear about our reaction to COVID-19 propaganda? Will we regret shutting down the economy as much as we ought to regret invading Iraq?

The cast of characters is different, of course: Trump, desperately seeking “wartime president” status; Dr. Anthony Fauci; epidemiologist Neil Ferguson; state governors such as Cuomo, Whitmer, and Newsom; and a host of media acolytes just itching to force a new normal down our throats. Like the Iraq War architects, they use COVID-19 as justification to advance a preexisting agenda, namely, greater state control over our lives and our economy. Yet because too many Americans remain stubbornly attached to the old normal, a propaganda campaign is required.

So we are faced with a blizzard of new “facts” almost every day, most of which turn out to be only mildly true, extremely dubious, or plainly false:

• The virus aerosolizes and floats around, so we all need to be six feet apart (But why not twenty feet? Why not one mile?);
• The virus lives on surfaces everywhere, for days;
• Asymptomatic people can spread it unknowingly;
• Antibodies may or may not develop naturally;
• People may become infected more than once;
• Young healthy people are at great risk not only themselves, but also pose a risk to their elderly family members;PropagandaEdward BernaysBest Price: $6.42Buy New $9.66(as of 07:40 EST - Details)
• Thin, permeable paper masks somehow prevent microscopic viral spores from being inhaled or exhaled toward others;
• People are safer inside;
• The rate of new infected “cases” in the first few weeks of the virus reaching America would continue or even grow exponentially;
• Social distancing and quarantines do indeed “save” lives;
• Testing is key (But what if an individual visits a crowded grocery an hour after testing negative?);
• A second wave of infections is nigh; and
• Our personal and work lives cannot continue without a vaccine, which, by the way, may be two years away.

Again, much of this is not true and not even intended to be true—but rather to influence public behavior and opinions. And again, the overwhelming burden of proof should lie squarely with those advocating a lockdown of society, who would risk a modern Great Depression in response to a simple virus.

How much damage will the lockdown cause? Economics aside, the sheer toll of this self-inflicted wound will be a matter for historians to document. That toll includes all the things Americans would have done without the shutdown in their personal and professional lives, representing a diminution of life itself. Can that be measured, or distilled into numerical terms? Probably not, but this group of researchers and academics argues that we have already suffered more than one million “lost years of life” due to the ravages of unemployment, missed healthcare, and general malaise.KOMALC Genuine Buffalo...Best Price: $34.31Buy New $39.99(as of 05:07 EDT - Details)

By the same token, how do we measure the blood and treasure lost in Iraq? How much PTSD will soldiers suffer? How many billions of dollars in future VA medical care will be required? How many children will grow up without fathers? And how many millions of lives are forever shattered in that cobbled-together political artifice in the Middle East?

Propaganda kills, but it also works. Politicians of all stripes will benefit from the coronavirus; the American people will suffer. Perversely, one of the worst COVID propagandists—the aforementioned  Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York—yesterday rang the bell as the New York Stock Exchange reopened to floor trading. He now admits that the models were wrong and that his lockdown did nothing to prevent the Empire State from suffering the highest per capita deaths from COVID. Like the architects of the Iraq War, he belongs on a criminal docket. But thanks to propaganda, he is hailed as presidential.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

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https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/05/jeff-deist/coronavirus-propaganda-mimics-war-propaganda/

BILL GATES’ WEB OF DARK MONEY

BILL GATES’ WEB OF DARK MONEY AND INFLUENCE – PART 1: PHILANTHROPIC NARRATIVE SHAPING

 23 MAY 2020   POSTED BY DERRICK BROZE

In the first few months of 2020, business tycoon and billionaire Bill Gates saw his popularity soar through the roof. According to YouGov, 58 percent of Americans polled about Gates had a positive opinion of him, he is equally liked by men and women, and both Boomers and Millennials adore him. Gates’ popularity might have increased due to a viral Netflix documentary about his life being released in late 2019. Combine that positive press with a wave of media interviews seeking the guidance of the man who “predicted” the next major pandemic, and voila – Bill Gates is a superhero here to save the planet from impending doom. 

Of course, this rather cartoonish view ignores several incontrovertible facts, and a few strong theories regarding Gates’ true intentions. First, the facts. Bill Gates has used his immense wealth to garner influence and media time, spreading his message of fixing global health issues while he continues to make billions. Using the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to dole out grants and donations, Gates has created a web of organizations who owe their budget to the foundation or answer directly to Gates. By tracing the Foundation’s investments and Gates’ relationships we can see that nearly every person involved in the fight against COVID-19 is tied to Gates or his foundation by two degrees or less. This gives Bill Gates and his foundation an unchallenged influence over the response to the pandemic. Equally worrisome is Gates’ call for global lock down until the entire world has been vaccinated and given a digital certificate to prove immunity.

Now, the theories: when taking a careful listen to several speeches and statements made by Gates, it becomes clear that he has a penchant for discussing reducing population growth. Despite “fact checkers” claiming Gates’ words have been taken out of context, his words speak for themselves. He believes the population should be reduced or prevented from growing, and he believes this can be done with vaccines and healthcare.

As we attempt to peel back the layers of PR stunts and puff pieces fawning over Bill Gates, we hope to illustrate that the man being propped up on the global stage and sold to the people as their savior, is anything but. Despite the apparent growth in support for Bill Gates, there is also evidence on social media that people are beginning to question him and challenge the savior narrative. This is the first step in unraveling Bill Gates’ Web of Dark Money and Manipulation. 

THE GLOBAL INFLUENCE OF THE BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION 

In 1994, the story goes, Bill Gates asked his father, William Gates Sr., to help him “improve reproductive and child health” by founding and leading the William H. Gates Foundation. Gates Sr. agreed and by 2000, the Foundation was merged with the Gates Learning Foundation to become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. According to the Foundation, Bill Gates has donated $36 billion of his personal wealth to the foundation. The Foundation is estimated to be valued at $46.8 billion.

For the last two decades the Foundation has invested in a range of controversial companies and projects while pursuing their goal of improving global health and access to vaccines and reproductive care. This has all been done as part of Gates’ plan to reshape his public image as that of a friendly and kind billionaire whose only aim is to help the world. The reality is much more suspect. 

Let’s take, for example, the Netflix documentary mentioned above, Inside Bill’s Brain: Decoding Bill Gates. Rather than being a genuine look at the life and personality of Gates, the documentary failed to acknowledge conflicts of interest which might portray the film – and Bill Gates – in a different light. In a recent explosive investigation examining the reach of Gates’ money, The Nation noted that, “in the first episode, director Davis Guggenheim underlines Gates’s expansive intellect by interviewing Bernie Noe, described as a friend of Gates.” Noe goes on to tell of Gates reading 150 pages an hour with 90 percent retention. However, The Nation reported, “Guggenheim doesn’t tell audiences that Noe is the principal of Lakeside School, a private institution to which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given $80 million.” Coincidentally, this is the same school that the Gates’ children attend.

Of course, using the foundations wealth to influence media coverage is not new for Bill Gates. Although The Guardian claims editorial independence, their Global Development section is funded in part by The Gates Foundation. The foundation has also given more than $9 million to The Guardian, over $3 millionto NBC Universal, over $4 million to French newspaper Le Monde, over $4.5 million to NPR, $1 millionto Al-Jazeera, and $49 million to the BBC’s Media Action program. In light of these investments it’s easy to understand how Gates could quickly organize a speaking tour of his favorite media outlets.

Corporate media outlets are not the only beneficiaries of the Gates foundation. They have also invested in controversial technologies and companies, including Monsanto, geoengineering, 5G technology, and vaccines.

MintPress News recently reported on how the Gates Foundation helped highly controversialpharmaceutical and chemical giant Monsanto Corporation “gain a stronger foothold in Africa.” MPN also notes that the foundation funded a, “flawed clinical trial of the HPV vaccine in India in 2009, where 23,000 impoverished girls aged 9-15 were exposed to potentially lethal drugs without even their parents’ consent, leading to seven deaths.”

In 2010, it was also reported that since 2007, Gates had given $4.5 million to study geoengineering methods for altering the stratosphere to reflect solar energy, techniques to filter carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, and brightening ocean clouds. Geoengineering is the deliberate mass scale manipulation of the weather for the stated purpose of reducing heating on the planet. The Guardianpreviously noted that Gates gives “an undisclosed sum” to geoengineering proponent and Harvard professor David Keith. Gates also owns majority stake in Keith’s geoengineering company, Carbon Engineering. Prominent geoengineering researcher Ken Caldeira says he receives $375,000 a year from Gates and works for Intellectual Ventures, a private geoengineering research company part-owned by Gates and run by Nathan Myhrvold, former head of technology at Microsoft. 

The Foundation has also invested $10 million towards developing antennas which will accelerate the roll out of controversial 5th generation cellular technology, otherwise known as 5G. 

The concerns around Bill Gates fortune and his use of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to influence pet projects is not the only worry expressed by critics of the foundation. The larger – and more immediate – is that unelected billionaires like Gates are using their fortunes to shape public policy using their philanthropic foundations. This method of investing billions of dollars in the form of tax-deductible charity donations to private companies is allowing Gates to shape policy and profit by holding stock in the same companies supported by the Gates Foundation. 

A recent investigation by The Nation uncovered more than 19,000 charitable grants from the Gates Foundation in the last two decades. They also found $2 billion in these tax-deductible charitable donations to private companies. Companies receiving these donations include GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, IBM, and NBC Universal Media. The Nation noted that the Gates Foundation has given $250 million to media companies and “other groups to influence the news.”

The Nation found close to $250 million in charitable grants from the Gates Foundation to companies in which the foundation holds corporate stocks and bonds: Merck, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone, Sanofi, Ericsson, LG, Medtronic, Teva, and numerous start-ups.

You might see the previous statement and ask, “how can this be legal? Is it not a conflict of interest to hold stock in a company which you also give tax-free donations?” The simple fact is there are not rules or laws against doing exactly what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are doing. While some might argue that Bill Gates’ scheme is brilliant – donate your fortune by forming a foundation which can give tax-deductible donations to companies you partly own and reap profits while avoiding taxes – it is allowing him to hide his money in a myriad of ways. It has almost become impossible to track every donation, investment, or other partnership. 

The Nation concluded, “it is difficult to ignore the occasions where their charitable activities seem to serve mainly private interests, including theirs—supporting the schools their children attend, the companies their foundation partly owns, and the special interest groups that defend wealthy Americans—while generating billions of dollars in tax savings.”

Other notable facts from the investigation include that the Gates Foundation’s “$50 billion endowment has generated $28.5 billion in investment income over the last five years” while only giving away $23.5 billion in charitable grants. Additionally, a 2007 LA Times investigation found that the organization was involved in subprime mortgage loans and for-profit hospitals which reportedly performed unneeded surgeries. The Gates Foundation is also reportedly invested in chocolate companies that use child labor.

It would be a mistake to see the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as merely a vessel for a rich man to hide his money and reap immeasurable profits. No, the Foundation is “more than a collection of grants and projects” says Dr David McCoy, a public health doctor and researcher at University College London and an advisor to the People’s Health Movement. McCoy says the Foundation “operates through an interconnected network of organizations and individuals across academia and the NGO and business sectors” which allows Bill Gates to “leverage” influence” in a kind of “group think.”

In part 2 of this investigation we will sift through the myriad of connections between Bill Gates, his foundation, and the many players involved in the COVID-19 response. We will also attempt to answer the essential question: Is Bill Gates a force for good or a force for harm?

READ PART II HERE

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