Because Always

These ostensibly "conservative" outfits that don't really do anything but traffic in fuckery, always implode and the "leader" always gets the boot - usually because the people internal to the organization get pretty good at fucking people over, so they start to fuck each other over in what logically becomes a contest to see who can be the biggest asshole.

In the end it always reveals itself to be about money and power. There's no ideology, and since there's no honor in it, there can be no commitment to anything but doing the shittiest things they can conjure up out of the depths of their own depravity, fueled by their own self-hatred.

• Eventually, torture is always about the torture.
• Cruelty, even though you've convinced yourself it's in furtherance of some noble-sounding objective, always degrades to cruelty for the sake of being cruel.
• A willingness to do shitty things will always drag you down to where we can all see you're not reluctant to do shitty things in service to a just cause - you're eager to do them for their own sake.

James O’Keefe is out at Project Veritas after internal power struggle

A bitter management dispute pulled back the curtain on allegations of workplace misconduct and mismanagement of donor money

Project Veritas, the right-wing organization known for its undercover sting operations, has split with James O’Keefe, the group’s founder and chairman, following a bitter management dispute that pulled back the curtain on allegations of workplace misconduct and mismanagement of donor money.

The group’s executive director, Daniel Strack, informed some staff on Monday that O’Keefe had issued an ultimatum demanding that the board of directors resign as a condition for him to stay, according to people familiar with Strack’s account. R.C. Maxwell, a spokesman for Project Veritas, wrote on Twitter that O’Keefe “was removed from his position as CEO by the Project Veritas board.”

Neither Strack nor O’Keefe responded to requests for comment. O’Keefe notified employees of his exit on Monday morning at the organization’s headquarters in Mamaroneck, N.Y., and proceeded to pack up his belongings.

He hinted that he would form a rival organization, according to a video of his remarks obtained by The Washington Post, saying “the mission will perhaps take on a new name.”

“I don’t know why this is happening now,” O’Keefe said of the move against him. Dressed in suit and tie, he accused his internal adversaries of “ruining our reputation in front of supporters and donors and leaking confidential information and fabricating stories.”

O’Keefe’s exit spells an uncertain future for Project Veritas, a controversial organization closely identified with its 38-year-old founder. The group, formed in 2010, has employed deceptive tactics in attempts to expose alleged wrongdoing by journalists, liberals and labor unions. O’Keefe’s secretly recorded videos, sometimes landing their subjects in hot water, have been shown to be selectively edited, often leaving out key context. Recent stings have been aimed at Pfizer, the pharmaceutical giant behind one of the coronavirus vaccines, though the company has defended its methods.

O’Keefe’s tactics have sometimes put him in legal jeopardy. He pleaded guilty in 2010 to a misdemeanor charge of entering a federal building under false pretenses; agreed in 2013 to pay $100,000 to settle a lawsuit arising from his efforts to target a community organizing group; and in 2021 faced a court-ordered FBI search of his apartment in connection with the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden.

All the while, O’Keefe gained clout in conservative circles and found common cause with Donald Trump, which boosted fundraising. By 2020, the nonprofit’s annual revenue had broken $20 million, according to public filings. In 2021, the most recent year for which a tax filing is available, Project Veritas paid O’Keefe about $400,000.

But behind the scenes, O’Keefe struggled to manage his growing organization.

His exit follows internal conflict that pitted O’Keefe against two of the group’s executives — Barry Hinckley, the chief strategy officer, and Tom O’Hara, the chief financial officer. Earlier this month, O’Keefe sought to oust Hinckley and O’Hara after they raised concerns about his approach to fundraising and treatment of staff.

“Last night I stood up to a Bully and was fired,” Hinckley wrote to colleagues in a group chat on the messaging app Telegram. “Management by shaming and bullying is never acceptable and it doesn’t belong in the workplace.”

The board, after an emergency meeting, brought back both executives, placed O’Keefe on paid leave and indicated to Project Veritas leadership that it would deliberate over O’Keefe’s fate at the organization. In the meantime, some Project Veritas staff prepared a memo airing grievances against O’Keefe, which his allies strenuously denied.

The 11-page document, which was obtained by The Post, accused O’Keefe of demeaning his employees, mistreating donors and squandering the group’s resources. One person labeled him a “power drunk tyrant.”

Some objected to the use of donor money on highly produced videos featuring O’Keefe. “All the theatre stuff and how that is handled makes me very uneasy,” wrote this person, who went unnamed. “I understand it is rationalized as ‘raising awareness of our brand,’ but the cost of that both in a financial sense as well as personnel and resources, becomes priority over why donors actually give us money, which is to conduct undercover investigations which expose waste fraud and abuse.”

The memo paints a picture of fear and paranoia within the organization. One person recounted an episode in which employees were required to travel to headquarters for questioning by two private investigators over concerns about a “mole” in the office. Another person wrote, “Everyone is operating in fear because James is erratic.”

The alleged instability extended to interactions with donors, according to the memo. O’Keefe is said to have rudely demanded money from benefactors, rebuffed a donor when she asked for a photo with him and arrived late to donor meetings.

The criticism of O’Keefe prompted a backlash among some of his employees and outside allies, who heaped blame on the group’s executives and some of its board members. They singled out Matthew Tyrmand, a right-wing commentator described by O’Keefe’s defenders as the “ringleader” of a “coup” against him. Tyrmand has told associates that people weighing in on internal developments “don’t have a clue” about what’s going on, according to messages reviewed by The Post. He did not respond to requests for comment.

The suggestion of disquietude among donors met a vehement response from a lawyer who claimed to be representing a “large group of significant donors to Project Veritas.” The lawyer, Stephen C. Piepgrass, sent a cease-and-desist letter to the group’s board of directors expressing “grave concerns” about any effort to remove O’Keefe and warning that the board “may already be acting in violation” of charity law.

In addition to Tyrmand, the letter was addressed to four other board members, not including O’Keefe.

O’Keefe asked allies who reached out to him to promote the cease-and-desist letter, according to people in touch with him.

In his speech on Monday morning, O’Keefe said the board rebuffed his offer to apologize to staff for his brusque manner. He read aloud from what he said were board minutes recording that he had been “indefinitely suspended from this organization,” even though Project Veritas publicly maintained that he was on vacation.

O’Keefe also described the terms of what Strack, the group’s executive director, referred to as an ultimatum. O’Keefe said he wrote a letter to the board on Feb. 16 proposing that its members resign by the end of last week “or I’ll be forced to walk away.”

“I was asked to be gone until the 20th; it is now the 20th,” he said. “I asked the board to resign for their conduct, and they did not. So currently I have no job at Project Veritas. I have no position here based on what the board has done.”

Toward the end of his remarks to staff, O’Keefe choked up as he thanked his parents, recalling how he founded Project Veritas, 13 years ago, from his father’s carriage house.

Because it is set up as a nonprofit, Project Veritas is not required to disclose its donors. Details of its financing, however, can be glimpsed in separate disclosures by its benefactors. More than a quarter of its revenue in 2020 came from the Bradley Impact Fund, a donor-advised conservative philanthropy based in Milwaukee, according to a tax filing by that group. Project Veritas sought unsuccessfully in 2017 to plant a false story in The Post about failed Senate candidate Roy Moore. In 2020, it aimed to furnish evidence for Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.

Predators

In 1977, the guy borrowed $5,250 to get him some college learnin'. For that money, he could've bought a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlas Supreme Brougham with all the trimmings ...

Instead, he bought himself a nightmare - a problem that's followed him his whole adult life.

And it's still causing him trouble.

He took out a student loan in ’77. Today, he’s barely cracked the principal.
The struggles of some borrowers to clear their debts expose flaws in the system

When C.W. Hamilton took out his first student loan in 1977, the Education Department wasn’t even a federal agency. The $5,250 he borrowed to complete an associate’s degree at Cochise College in Arizona was supposed to be an investment in his future, not a lifelong burden. Yet after more than 40 years of payments and bouts of default, Hamilton still owes almost as much as he first borrowed.

“It’s like an anchor around my neck,” said Hamilton, a 72-year-old Army veteran in Reno, Nev. “I live on peanuts. ... I can never get from underneath this debt.”

There are nearly 47,000 people like Hamilton who have been in repayment on their federal student loans for at least 40 years, according to data obtained from the Education Department through a Freedom of Information Act request. About 82 percent of them are in default on their loans, meaning they haven’t made a voluntary payment in at least 270 days.

“This is sort of a monumental failure,” said Abby Shafroth, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. “There are so many relief programs in the student loan system to address some sort of financial distress. But it’s this real patchwork, and borrowers struggle to navigate it. The department itself and its servicers often can’t navigate it either.”

While these borrowers represent a sliver of the 43.5 million people with federal student debt, their existence is an indictment of policies meant to help people manage their loans. Years of administrative failures and poorly designed programs have denied many borrowers an off-ramp from a perpetual cycle of debt. Even as the Biden administration tries to remedy these problems — including fighting legal challenges to its plan to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for many — the fixes could still leave vulnerable borrowers like Hamilton on the sidelines.

The road to repayment

To understand how tens of thousands of people could be in debt for decades, consider the options for repaying federal student loans. When borrowers leave school, they are automatically assigned to a standard 10-year repayment plan. Others extend the period by enrolling in graduated plans that increase payments over time or income-driven repayment plans that tie their monthly bill to earnings and family size.

People can also temporarily pause their payments through deferment or forbearance, which can lengthen the timeline. From the time student loan borrowers’ first loans enter repayment, the median length of time it takes to pay in full is 15½ years, according to the Education Department. How much you borrow, how much you earn and whether you get your degree can all play a role in how quickly you pay off the debt.

Those last two factors played a starring role in Hamilton’s struggle to repay his student loans. After a dispute with an instructor, he left Cochise before completing his aviation studies. That led to a series of low-wage jobs and relocations for work. School loans were low on the list of priorities for the father of five. Hamilton doesn’t recall receiving any notice to make payments for the first decade after leaving school, which he suspects is because he moved around so much.

“The job market was really tight at the time, so I was taking different jobs for a while and didn’t have a locked-down address,” Hamilton recalls. “We didn’t have cellphones at that time, so they couldn’t call and say, ‘Hey, you’re behind on your loans.’”

But the debt caught up with him soon after he began receiving Social Security disability benefits. Injuries from stints fighting wildfires and fixing airplanes left Hamilton unable to work, and his federal benefits became fair game for collection. Through the Treasury Offset Program, the federal government has been garnishing his disability benefits on and off since 2002.

Before the Education Department paused payments and collection in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, he’d involuntarily paid more than $13,000. Treasury last deducted $175.05 from his $1,165 monthly Social Security check to service fees and interest on his loans — leaving Hamilton still owing $4,963.

“It’s tough because they’re taking all of this money, for all of these years, and nothing is going to the principal,” Hamilton said. “I’m getting nowhere. I was climbing up, but my debt kept going up.”

He had tried to shake free from the offset. Given his disability, Hamilton applied for a discharge of his loans through a program for totally and permanently disabled borrowers but was denied. He opted for student loan rehabilitation, a one-time process that brings a borrower back into good standing after nine consecutive payments. But Hamilton fell back into default. He said he was then advised to consolidate, another way to exit default by taking out a new loan to repay the past-due debt, but felt uneasy about another loan.

A fresh start

An analysis of federal data from July 2003 to April 2016 found 70 percent of borrowers in default were able to bring their student loans back into good standing within 10 years, but the rest remained in default. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that up to a third of borrowers who exit through loan rehabilitation default again within two years. It’s a problem that reflects the limitations of the system, said Brian Denten, an officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts’ project on student borrower success.

“You only get one shot at each of these options,” Denten said. “After that, if you default again, you can either pay off your entire loan in full or essentially sit there and have your wages, Social Security or tax refund garnished until your obligation is resolved.”

The Biden administration is temporarily waiving the rules governing default, offering 7.5 million people like Hamilton a “fresh start” by placing their loans in good standing when the payment pause ends even if they’ve defaulted multiple times in the past.

The initiative will eliminate borrowers’ record of default before the repayment pause and reinstate their eligibility for federal Pell grants, work-study and additional student loans to help those who may have dropped out before completing their degrees. It will also spare people from the seizure of wages, tax refunds and Social Security benefits.

Rich Williams, senior adviser in the Office of the Undersecretary at the department, said the Biden administration is working to understand the administrative, regulatory and statutory changes needed to realign the existing delinquency and default consequences.

“The principles that we are following as we’re exploring policies like the new income-based repayment plan ... [are] that borrowers shouldn’t be in repayment for more than 25 years,” Williams said. “We’re going through that exploration phase, and Fresh Start is the first step.”

The one-time initiative isn’t exactly seamless. Rather than being automatically enrolled, people in default must contact the department’s Default Resolution Group or their loan holders to take full advantage of the program. They will have one year from the end of the student loan payment pause — set to expire later this year — to make payment arrangements. Failure to act will throw borrowers back into default.

“A big part of it will be getting the word out,” Denten said. “We know from speaking with servicers and borrowers that it can be hard to establish a regular line of communication.”

Even if people take advantage of the program, they could end up defaulting again. Denten said connecting distressed borrowers to an income-driven repayment plan will be critical. Depending on their income, people enrolled in such plans can pay as little as $0 a month and it would count as credit toward loan cancellation. It is a lifeline, however, that doesn’t always reach the people most in need.

Promise and failure

With the advent of income-driven repayment nearly 30 years ago, borrowers could avoid being saddled with education loans in old age: If you keep up with payments, the federal government will forgive your remaining balance after 20 years for undergrad loans or after 25 years for graduate school debt. The plans also let people struggling with their debt avoid delinquency and default, as the less you earn, the less you pay each month.

But in the early days, the Education Department and its student loan servicers did little to publicize the plans.

Rosalie Lynch, 72, said she learned about them only in 2015 after doing her own research. By then, she had twice defaulted on the $25,000 in student loans she amassed in the early 1980s for a bachelor’s degree in social work from Bethel College and master’s degree in counseling from Kansas State University. Lynch had tried to stay ahead of her payments but stumbled in the wake of a “toxic” marriage, she said.

“He wouldn’t help me and expected me to take on all of the financial responsibilities,” said Lynch, who works as a mental health counselor in Idaho. “There were times I just couldn’t afford [my student loans]. They had to be a low priority. The kids needed food, they needed clothes. I don’t make that much money.”

On the advice of her loan servicer, Lynch said she often postponed her payments through forbearance. It paused the bill, but not the interest. Between the periods of forbearance and default, Lynch accumulated enough interest and fees to more than double her debt to $65,000. Because of her wages, Lynch qualified to make a $0 monthly payment under the IDR plan. Still, she worries she will die in debt. Federal student loans are discharged upon death.

Like Lynch, Patricia C. Vener-Saavedra, 70, spent years in forbearance before enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan a decade ago. Working as an adjunct instructor for years left her stretching to cover basic living expenses, which didn’t include student loans. Vener-Saavedra said she learned about income-driven repayment after her loans were transferred to a new servicer.

“I kept asking my different servicers if there was anything I can do besides forbearance. And all I heard was ‘No, no,’” Vener-Saavedra said. “Finally, it changed to someone who said, ‘Oh, yeah, you can get an income-based plan.’ And I’m like, ‘How long has this existed?’”

With a $0 monthly payment, the IDR plan provided a path to clearing the debt Vener-Saavedra acquired for a master’s degree in astrophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. But the $35,000 in student loans she graduated with in 1991 has since ballooned to $88,141.

“I’ll be 85 when the loans are forgiven,” Vener-Saavedra said. “If I knew about these income plans earlier, I might not be in this position.”

Shafroth at the National Consumer Law Center said that with the existence of income-driven plans, no one in the federal student loan system should be in repayment for more than 25 years. The Education Department has previously disclosed that 4.4 million borrowers have been repaying their debt for at least 20 years, with half of them in default.

Yet a 2022 Government Accountability Office report found that the department had erased the balances of only 132 people as of June 2021 under the IDR plans. It said the agency failed to ensure that payments were accurately tracked until a decade after the first income-driven plan was implemented. As a result, some people with older loans are at high risk of spending more time in repayment than necessary.

Researchers at the GAO said the department never provided borrowers regular updates on their progress toward debt cancellation or readily available information about forgiveness requirements. Without that guidance, researchers said, people who believed they were making progress may not have known that postponing payments doesn’t count.

The blistering report arrived a day after the Biden administration announced in April that it would temporarily allow any month in which borrowers made payments to retroactively count toward forgiveness, even if they were not enrolled in an income-driven plan. The one-time revision meant at least 40,000 people would now receive automatic loan cancellation.

“There are student debts that should have been canceled, but no one bothered to do that,” Williams of the Education Department said. “So we’re automatically correcting those errors and discharging those loans.”

Under the initiative, the department will also grant a one-time account adjustment to count the months borrowers postponed their payments through forbearance if they remained in that status for years. Still, other features of the IDR adjustment will shut out many distressed borrowers.

Months in which borrowers are delinquent or in default do not count toward the forgiveness threshold. What’s more, the department is only counting payments as far back as 1994. Both of those stipulations will probably leave Hamilton and Lynch out in the cold.

“There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for this,” Shaforth said of the exclusions.

In January, the advocacy group Student Borrower Protection Center sent a letter urging the Education Department to reconsider excluding time in default from the account adjustment, saying “failure to fully remedy these harms would be an unforced error.”

The Education Department declined to comment on the matter.

Advocates have long questioned the rationale behind the federal government’s relentless pursuit of student loan payments from distressed borrowers.

Unlike the Education Department, banks and lenders in the private market routinely write off the debt they can’t collect, and there is a statute of limitations on collection, Shaforth said. While the federal student loan program is not as flexible, she said, the department does have the power to settle, compromise and terminate the collection of debts. She said the agency could use other regulations that give the government an out when it can’t collect a debt within a reasonable time.

“I would think that 40 years should be a reasonable time,” Shaforth said.

See also:

The Biden-Harris Administration’s Student Debt Relief Plan Explained

Today's Tweet

Last night I went to bed disgusted after reading @mattgaetz & 10 of his @gop colleagues submitted a “Ukraine Fatigue” bill.

This morning I woke up ebullient to @potus being in Kyiv.

That’s the difference between performance art & leadership. pic.twitter.com/iRcch3MIjt

— MarkHertling (@MarkHertling) February 20, 2023

The Frankenstein Effect

We're never without some weird shit floating around way down deep in our brains that makes us feel uneasy about what's going on in the world because we think someone we may not like, or trust - or even know about - is doing something that threatens our security, or upsets our sense of how things should be.

Call it a variation on Type 1 / Type 2 Logic Errors which have been programmed into our firmware over 3 million years of homonin evolution.

1. We hear a rustling in the bushes, we conclude it's a predator, and we run away. It turns out to be the wind, but we've survived long enough to have a shot at getting our DNA into subsequent generations.
2. We hear a rustling in the bushes, we conclude it's nothing, and we just keep going on our merry little ape-like way. It turns out to be predator, and we're lunch, which means our DNA is left in a pile of leopard shit on the plains of Africa.

That paranoia regarding the unknown has been selected for us by a seemingly random, but very efficient process of evolution.

We're hard-wired to be cautious, which is a good thing, but it can be exploited by cynical manipulators to keep us frightened enough to knee-jerk our way into full-blown authoritarian rule if we're not really careful.

Enter COVID-19, and take a close look at how Rand Paul plays on that paranoia by pimping the bullshit about "gain of function" and "vaccination hysteria" etc, until he's whipped the wingnuts into a rich creamy lather, and has enough people doubting every aspect of science that they just fall in line and follow along with whatever The Daddy State tells them.

Anyway, back to Rational World, where we know there are real threats regarding the use of scientific discovery, and where we hopefully can get a better handle on the pluses and minuses by calmly and un-politically assessing situations as they arise, and before assholes like Rand Paul can exploit them so he can drum up a good old-fashioned torch-n-pitchfork mob just to score a few points with the rubes.

Biology Is Dangerously Outpacing Policy

The original source of the coronavirus pandemic remains unconfirmed. While it was likely the result of a spillover from animals to humans, a lab origin cannot be ruled out. Given the uncertainty, additional scrutiny on research with pathogens that are engineered to be more transmissible or dangerous is warranted to prevent any future devastating pandemics.

In response to that risk, the United States recently took an important step toward strengthening the government’s oversight of research with viruses and other pathogens. An expert panel known as the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity voted unanimously in January to recommend a major overhaul of how the United States supervises what’s called dual-use research. Research is considered dual use if the intended use of the work is for peaceful purposes but there is concern it could result in a more dangerous pathogen or information that could be used maliciously.

As experts with four decades of combined experience studying biosecurity and the risks of dual-use research, we think the board’s proposals pave the way for welcome and needed changes. We hope the Biden administration will codify many of these recommendations into policy and work with Congress to secure the funding and legislation needed to implement the more far-reaching reforms.

Historically, the United States has taken a reactive and haphazard approach to preventing lab accidents and the misuse of high-risk science. A patchwork of regulations, guidance and policies exists based on the specific pathogen being researched, the type of research being conducted and the source of funding. But some research doesn’t fall under any agency, leaving an oversight vacuum.

This fragmented system has not kept pace with the evolving risk landscape. There are now more powerful tools for genetic engineering, and these tools are easier to use and more widely available than ever before. There are also more researchers interested in conducting research with engineered pathogens for scientific and medical purposes. According to the Global Biolabs Initiative, of which Dr. Koblentz is a co-director, there are more than 100 high and maximum containment labs around the world conducting high-risk research, with more planned. The United States has more such labs than any other country. Failure to update bio-risk-management policies is too great a concern.

When will the pandemic end? We asked three experts — two immunologists and an epidemiologist — to weigh in on this and some of the hundreds of other questions we’ve gathered from readers recently, including how to make sense of booster and test timing, recommendations for children, whether getting covid is just inevitable and other pressing queries.

How concerning are things like long covid and reinfections? That’s a difficult question to answer definitely, writes the Opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci, because of the lack of adequate research and support for sufferers, as well as confusion about what the condition even is. She has suggestions for how to approach the problem. Regarding another ongoing Covid danger, that of reinfections, a virologist sets the record straight: “There has yet to be a variant that negates the benefits of vaccines.”

How will the virus continue to change?

As a group of scientists who study viruses explains, “There’s no reason, at least biologically, that the virus won’t continue to evolve.” From a different angle, the science writer David Quammen surveys some of the highly effective tools and techniques that are now available for studying Covid and other viruses, but notes that such knowledge alone won’t blunt the danger.

What could endemic Covid look like?

David Wallace Wells writes that by one estimate, 100,000 Americans could die each year from the coronavirus. Stopping that will require a creative effort to increase and sustain high levels of vaccination. The immunobiologist Akiko Iwasaki writes that new vaccines, particular those delivered through the nose, may be part of the answer.

The board has recommended far-reaching changes that would greatly extend oversight of research that could be misused to cause harm. The proposal would expand the range of pathogens subject to oversight to include those currently considered less dangerous, and include privately funded research as well. It would also lower the threshold for genetic engineering experiments that could trigger extra scrutiny. The board also recommended this strengthened oversight system be administered by a government office that can provide guidance to researchers and transparency to the public.

The Biden administration has the authority to implement many of these recommendations, such as expanding current oversight over more pathogens and providing more transparent guidance to researchers and the public. These reforms are consistent with the administration’s biodefense strategy and should be implemented immediately. The administration has already requested $1.8 billion to strengthen biosafety and biosecurity, some of which could be used for this purpose.

But funding and implementing some of the board’s more far-reaching recommendations will likely require congressional action. Pathogens don’t care about politics, and efforts to strengthen biosafety and biosecurity should receive bipartisan support.

Currently, only a small number of private labs need to seek approval for dual-use research with a short list of pathogens. This creates a loophole that allows scientists with private funding — from a foundation, a corporation or even a crowdfunding site — to conduct unsupervised research with potential pandemic pathogens that are not on this list. For example, scientists at Boston University were able to create a chimera version of the coronavirus with enhanced properties without seeking government review because they did not use government funding to conduct the experiment. Given the potential consequences of a misstep, any institutions or researchers who work with such pathogens, regardless of their source of funding, should have their research reviewed to make sure it is being conducted safely, securely and responsibly.

The United States also needs to establish an independent government agency that has the authority and resources to regulate this research. This agency would serve a similar purpose as the National Transportation Safety Board or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and be dedicated to understanding the cause of accidents and mitigating risk anywhere in the United States. This would provide a central place for scientists to receive guidance about their work or to raise concerns. Such an agency could develop and promote policies so that all institutions doing this work would be held to the same standards.

Some researchers argue that these recommendations are too far-reaching and will inhibit science. But many of these measures would align the regulatory environment of the United States with those of its peers, such as Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Germany. Fears that more oversight will have a chilling effect on research are belied by the robust research programs found in each of these countries. Still, the implementation of these recommendations will require a careful balancing act: fostering innovation in the life sciences while minimizing the safety and security risks.

As longtime participants in the debate about how to achieve this balance between science and security, we have been frustrated by the lack of progress for so long. Notably, the recommendations put forward by the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity are not substantively different from those offered by the same board in 2007. We sincerely hope it doesn’t take another 16 years, or another pandemic, to seize this opportunity for reducing the risks posed by dual-use research with viruses and other pathogens.

Today's Reddit

Here at USAmerica, we're never short on ideas - especially when it comes to fucking things up.

Sometimes we fuck something up because we need to unfuck it in order for somebody's brother-in-law to get out from under a debt that he couldn't fucking handle in the first fucking place and everybody fucking knew it, but it didn't fucking matter because he was married to the sister of some random Defense Department Undersecretary, so he was always going to land on his feet, and he always fucking knew that.

Sometimes we fuck something up because "Gee, it seemed like a good idea a the time ..."

Anyway. Poppy Bush and His Merry Adventures in Panama because Monroe Doctrine, bitch.

Creeping Liberalism

Oh-oh. MAGA brains everywhere must be struggling with some heavy cognitive dissonance.

They have to contend with the realization that one of the last bastions of white supremacy is "going woke" - and has been for a while now.

ie: "My god, man, NACAR has a diversity thing going on?! NASCAR!?!"

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — When Josh Sims reports on NASCAR this season, the stock car series these days — from the garage to the grandstands to top brass — looks more like him.

Yes, Sims takes pride in the fact that he will become the first Black pit reporter for the Daytona 500 and that his rapid rise at Fox has made him one of the primary faces of the network’s NASCAR coverage.

More than that, Sims sees that NASCAR may finally be running out of unconquered firsts for people of color. For women. For any minority who perhaps has experienced an uneasy relationship with a series founded in the South 75 years ago, a generation before the civil rights era.

Sims’ journey from NASCAR novice through a sports anchor gig in Charlotte, North Carolina, that sparked his passion in the sport had led to his biggest assignment yet: pit reporting as a Black man from one of auto racing’s signature events.

“I never set out to be a first,” the 35-year-old Sims said. “I never set out to make history. I just wanted to be the best at what I was doing, whether it was hosting or reporting. At the same time, I kind of understand the platform and what it means for me to be doing this.”

And this season, he wants to share the stories on what he sees at the track beyond the in-race reports and fantastic finishes. Minorities may not necessarily become the dominant demographic for the series, but they can certainly grab a larger share of the marketplace.

“I think if more people out there saw it, saw people that looked them, instead of just driver, crew chief, you might be more inclined to feel like, hey, I feel a little more comfortable going to the track,” Sims said. “Getting that out there might help in terms of more people coming to the track and getting more different faces to the stands. It’s not necessarily about getting more people in, it’s showing what you already have.”

It was, of course, a very low bar but the garage and grid and fans certainly appears to be more diverse now than before 2020 when NASCAR banned the Confederate flag from its tracks and properties. NASCAR is still overwhelmingly white, but NASCAR President Steve Phelps isn’t exaggerating when he says you notice the change when walking through the garage.

Among the notable achievements: Jusan Hamilton, who last year became the first Black race director in Daytona 500 history, will do it again this season. Amanda Oliver, a Black woman, negotiates high-profile deals as NASCAR’s senior vice president. John Ferguson, a Black man, is the chief human resources officer.

Owners now include Pitbull and Michael Jordan, whose team features Bubba Wallace, the Black driver who prompted the flag ban. Rising stars in the developmental series include Rajah Caruth, a 20-year-old graduate of the “Drive for Diversity” program.

Phelps said NASCAR was committed to strengthening ties to various programs that can attract a broader fan base, from Boys & Girls Clubs to “some of the other areas we have from a partnership standpoint that really speak to what’s happening in the African American community, what’s happening in the Hispanic, Latino community (to) what’s happening in the LGBTQ community.”

“I never necessarily felt uncomfortable,” he said. “You get stuff here and there in terms of messages that’s emailed to you or sent to you but that’s par for the course if you’re a minority in the sport, a woman in the sport, even white drivers get stuff like that. But for every one or two of those, I get a lot more stuff from people excited that I’m here. You know, focus on the good.”

Raised in East Brunswick, New Jersey, Sims is a Villanova graduate who followed the Wildcats in NCAA Tournament games in 2009 and remained a fan of most Philly teams.

“I grew up in Jersey, so not exactly NASCAR country,” Sims said. “Growing up, you know the Jimmies and the Dale Seniors and the Tony Stewarts and everybody but it wasn’t something I followed week in and week out.”

“I was like, I am all in,” Sims said.

Charlotte can feel like a small town for a city and Sims kept bumping into friends and contacts in NASCAR. Fox Sports executives hired Sims in 2021 as a reporter for their slate of NASCAR shows. He also became the first Black pit reporter in any NASCAR series, for Trucks races.

“I kind of hope that young people that look like me, can see me doing it and now recognize that it’s possible,” Sims said. “I hope I can kind of blaze a trail for them to one day say, hey, because Josh Sims did it, I can do it, too. And that’s what’s important.”

Today's Goofiness

A few silly GIFs that I don't know what else to do with.

Another Peter Pan Story

Russian defense official dies after falling from St. Petersburg tower window

A top Russian defence official has been found dead after apparently falling from the 16th floor of a high-rise apartment in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Russian media outlets reported.

At around 8 a.m., the body of a woman was found by police on the sidewalk in front of a tower block in the Kalininsky district. The woman was identified as Marina Yankina, 58, head of finance and procurement for the Russian Defence Ministry’s Western Military District, one of five arms of the Russian armed forces.

Located in western Russia, the Western Military District has suffered some of the heaviest losses in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Yankina’s death has been preliminarily ruled a suicide by Russia’s Investigative Committee, according to Fontanka, a local paper in St. Petersburg.

East Palestine Ohio

On a cold night earlier this month, the sound of a train speeding through the center of town — typical background noise in the Ohio village near the Pennsylvania border — was replaced by a screeching and thundering halt, and roaring flames. The derailment of a Norfolk Southern train has upended lives, prompted recriminations from Republican and Democratic politicians and exposed some of the risks posed by transporting hazardous chemicals across the country. Here is what is known about what led to that moment, and what came after:

Feb. 3: Minutes before derailment

A security camera captured the Norfolk Southern train near Salem, Ohio, 20 miles east of the site where it later derailed. What appears to be sparks and flames can be seen underneath one of the cars. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has since said that the derailment appears to have been caused by a mechanical problem on one car, saying a wheel bearing on that car appeared to have overheated.

Feb. 3: The accident

Feb. 6: The controlled release

Two days after the crash, officials monitoring the situation said there was serious concern one of the cars would explode in a “catastrophic” blast, according to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), as the temperature in the car rose.

Authorities ordered the evacuation of about 1,500 residents and initiated a controlled release of vinyl chloride from five train cars to avert an explosion, sending a toxic plume into the air.

Measuring the impact

In the following days, fears about a broader environmental disaster in East Palestine and neighboring areas began to mount.

Ohio Department of Natural Resources Director Mary Mertz said that about 3,500 fish died as local waterways including the Ohio River became contaminated. State officials said they had not collected any evidence of animals other than fish suffering from the spill, though residents have shared suspicions about chickens, rabbits, foxes and other animals falling ill.

Low levels of a chemical called butyl acrylate have been detected at multiple sampling sites along the Ohio River. State EPA officials have said that the concentrations detected pose no risk for drinking water supplies in the area.

Meanwhile, a pungent odor remains in the air in East Palestine, and some residents have complained of rashes, runny eyes and other symptoms.

Once cleanup of the derailment site is completed, state and federal environmental officials said a wider effort will begin to uncover and address any contamination that may have spread into soil and groundwater. Anne Vogel, director of the Ohio EPA, said that process will take “as long as it takes.”

There are concerns the pollution could be pervasive, and questions about how widely contamination may have spread through the plume of smoke during the controlled chemical release. For now, authorities say the air is safe to breathe and the municipal water supply safe to drink.

Today's Tone Deaf Mogul

"Gimme 8 bucks a month or I'll make it easier

for the bad guys to steal your shit."

-- Elon Musk