MURDOCK: Is $210 Trillion for Slavery Reparations Too Much, or Not Enough?

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MURDOCK: Is $210 Trillion for Slavery Reparations Too Much, or Not Enough?

(Deroy Murdock, Headline USA) If you consider San Francisco mighty generous for proposing to pay black residents $5 million each in slavery reparations, then you are a cold-hearted, skin-flinted cheapskate.

In fact, one local leader dismisses this hefty sum as “very minuscule.”

“I don’t think you can put a figure to taking someone from their country, raping and pillaging their communities, not allowing them the chance to reproduce, not allowing them the chance to raise a family and grow wealth, making them work for free,” said Shamann Walton, a member and immediate past president of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors.

Walton told National Review’s Brittany Bernstein that “most certainly the 5 million is a very minuscule number compared to a lot of research that has been done over the past couple of decades, quite frankly.”

Shamann Walton is right: If people exist who were brought to America in chains, raped, and forced to labor without wages, they should sue their owners and make them pay until they bleed.

The bad—but incredibly good—news is that America has lacked both slaves and slave owners since the Civil War ended in April 1865.

Any child born into slavery that month would be 157 today or, more likely, dead.

Ditto any slave holder who would be older—or even deader.

Since the parties directly affected by slavery are long gone, the questions of who would collect and who would pay reparations quickly become self-entangling.

  • Who is black enough to get paid? Any black San Franciscan or only those with ancestors in the slave-owning South?
  • Should wealthy and successful San Franciscans—e.g. Vice President Kamala Harris—receive reparations? How about her ex-lover, Willie Brown, San Francisco’s former two-term mayor? Can anyone seriously argue that slavery hindered them as they occupied America’s commanding heights?
  • What about San Franciscans of mixed race? Harris is half-Jamaican and half east Indian. Do her Caribbean roots disqualify her from a program designed to address the evils of the old South? Should she still collect if, despite no ties to Dixie, she routinely bolts upright after nightmares about being oppressed on a plantation?
  • Stanford University emeritus professor Donald Harris, Kamala’s father, wrote that his family descended from Irish-born Hamilton Brown, who owned at least 121 Jamaican slaves. Should the vice-president get penalized for this, perhaps scoring only $1.25 million or half of the $2.5 million that she could earn as a half-black woman?
  • As for payment, does the great, great, great, great granddaughter of a slave-owner or Confederate general pay more than her “fair share” into the reparations fund?
  • Conversely, does a San Franciscan whose forebears fell at Antietam or Shiloh deserve a “We gave at the office” discount?
  • What about someone who fled the carnage of Ukraine and took refuge in America only last August? Must someone who reached this country six month ago pay reparations for something that ended 157 years ago?
  • Who, exactly, would make all of these excruciating and potentially explosive decisions rooted as much in genetics as justice?

Local officials are weighing other concepts including “a comprehensive debt forgiveness program” for blacks and a plan to boost poor blacks’ earnings to match the $97,000 Area Median Income—“for at least 250 years.”

Would shoveling out this kind of cash until 2273 A.D. bankrupt this town?

No way, Walton said reassuringly. “I would say that we’re a very fiscally responsible city.”

  • Finally, assume that $5 million turned out to be a fair and equitable reparations payout. What if San Francisco’s model were applied nationwide?

To give $5 million to each of America’s 42 million black citizens would cost $210 trillion. This equals 667% of the $31.5 trillion U.S. national debt. These $210 trillion could fund the Pentagon’s $740 billion FY 2022 budget until 2307 A.D.—284 years hence.

If you think egg prices are high now, just wait until Joe Biden hears about San Francisco’s big idea.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.

Trump Announces Visit to E. Palestine and FEMA Flips on Relief Aid for Ohio

Mark Pellin
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Trump Announces Visit to E. Palestine and FEMA Flips on Relief Aid for Ohio

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The Biden regime’s Federal Emergency Management Agency on Friday announced it would be sending relief resources to embattled East Palestine, Ohio, reversing course from an earlier decision, reportedly in the immediate wake of former President Donald Trump announcing he planned to visit the site of a toxic train explosion that the Biden administration has tried to downplay.

Trump announced on Friday that he would visit East Palestine, according to Rogan O’Handley, a close associate of the former president, reported Becker News.

Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine also on Friday announced that FEMA will, in a reversal from its decision the previous day, send federal resources to assist in recovery from what has been called Ohio’s Chernobyl.

“Tomorrow, FEMA will supplement federal efforts by deploying a Senior Response Official along with a Regional Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) to support ongoing operations, including incident coordination and ongoing assessments of potential long-term recovery needs,”  DeWine said in a joint statement with a FEMA regional administrator.

While the announcement didn’t specify whether the resources FEMA is now promising would include the disaster aid that was originally declined, it was a move in the right direction, which was at least in part reportedly triggered by Trump’s planned visit to East Palestine.

“But it’s amazing what a little political one-upsmanship from Donald Trump can accomplish to push a Biden administration that is apparently only interested in optics,” wrote Becker News.

The change of heart from the Biden administration might also be tied to the aged, bunker-dwelling campaigner-in-chief’s ambitions to run for another term, hoping to make headway in a battleground state that supported Trump during the 2020 tilt.

The FEMA flip, and Trump’s planned Ohio visit, come as Biden and his Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, have yet to visit East Palestine, where residents are still struggling with the environmental fallout from the toxic spill and explosion.

The disaster was exacerbated after an allegedly controlled release-and-burn of the rail cars’ toxic chemicals, in what was reported to be a move to clear the tracks in short order. 

Biden Scoffs at Question on His Family’s China Dealings, Flees Media Briefing

Mark Pellin
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Biden Scoffs at Question on His Family’s China Dealings, Flees Media Briefing

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Less than a week after being dubbed by his insurrectionist press secretary as “the best communicator that we have in the White House,” President Joe Biden fled a media briefing as reporters peppered him with basic questions.

It was Biden’s first, and long-delayed, media briefing to explain why he ordered a Chinese spy balloon shot down earlier this month, after first letting it float across the country, including over Montana’s nuclear missile silo fields

Biden also touched on the three still officially unidentified objects that the military also shot down, which likely were harmless weather balloons.

“We don’t know yet exactly what these three objects were, but nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or the they were surveillance vehicles from any other country.”

After Biden bluffed his way through prepared remarks, he went into a semi-coma of bewilderment when reporters began shouting questions at him, which is routine for White House press briefings.

When Biden was asked if his and his family’s alleged entanglements and business dealings with China had any impact on his hesitancy to shoot down the communist regime’s spy balloon, Biden responded with a huff.

“Give me a break, man,” he scoffed, and turned his partially focused attention on other reporter, NBC News’ White House correspondent Peter Alexander.

Unable to hear Alexander’s question, as other reporters were competing for his attention, Biden said, “You can come to my office and ask the question. We’ll have more polite people.”

And then Biden stiff-gaited off without taking further questions, or providing the public any clarity.

It was the same opaque act that has become standard operating procedure for what the White House likes to claim is a totally open and transparent administration, when Biden has been dodging questions since he took office.

Biden’s continued disappearing act did little but fuel more public speculation and disgruntlement over being left in the dark.

“We learned nothing from the briefing, absolutely nothing and Biden refusing to even answer questions from the press was a sign that he does not know what is going on,” tweeted one frustrated commentator. “Could there be something that is keeping him from addressing any China related questions.”

Court Filing Reveals Tucker Carlson’s Foul-Mouth Aspersions Towards Sydney Powell

Ken Silva
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Court Filing Reveals Tucker Carlson’s Foul-Mouth Aspersions Towards Sydney Powell

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A new filing in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News claims that the network’s star hosts privately doubted claims that the 2020 election was stolen, even while promoting those claims on their shows.

Dominion’s 192-page filing Thursday in the Superior Court of Delaware quotes liberally from internal Fox communications apparently obtained in discovery, including purported messages between Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.

The Dominion filing quotes excerpts, but not the entire contents of the message complaints. The full messages are attached as exhibits to the court filing, but are not publicly available online.

Nevertheless, the excerpts do look damning.

In one exchange, Carlson purportedly told his producer, “Sidney Powell is lying. Fucking bitch”—referring to Powell’s role in pushing the Dominion voter fraud allegations.

Carlson also allegedly told Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020, that “Sydney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane”—to which Ingraham replied: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy [Giuliani].”

Carlson then responded again, telling Ingraham that “It’s unbelievably offensive to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it.”

The filing lists numerous other messages from Fox news officials doubting the Dominion voter fraud story. Dominion argued that Fox continued to pursue the story, despite the private doubts, because it was worried about losing ratings to Newsmax, which was lending the story credence.

Fox News reportedly responded to Dominion’s filing on the same day, saying that it was covering the story because it was being promoted by the sitting U.S. President at the time.

“In its coverage, Fox News fulfilled its commitment to inform fully and comment fairly,” Fox’s brief reportedly said. “Some hosts viewed the president’s claims skeptically; others viewed them hopefully; all recognized them as profoundly newsworthy.”

A Fox News spokeswoman also released a statement on the matter.

“Dominion has mischaracterized the record, cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context and spilled considerable ink on facts that are irrelevant under black-letter principles of defamation law,” the spokeswoman reportedly said.

Conservative commentators also jumped in on the issue, pointing out that Carlson, far from promoting the Dominion story, criticized it for a lack of evidence.

While Dominion—and apparently Fox News—are treating the 2020 voter fraud claims as an open-and-shut case, litigation over the issue continues in other jurisdictions.

For instance, the Fulton County Board of Elections in Pennsylvania sued Dominion Voting Systems several months ago for “breach of contract” after finding “severe anomalies” in its voting machines during the 2020 general election.

Two Fulton County commissioners also joined in the lawsuit, which seeks to have Dominion pay “all fees, expenditures and costs” resulting from its faulty election equipment.

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

San Fran. Admits Red State Boycott Is Ineffective, Costly

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San Fran. Admits Red State Boycott Is Ineffective, Costly

(Headline USA) San Francisco officials admitted this week that a law preventing the city from doing business with red states was ineffective and costly.

The city passed an ordinance in 2016 that bars San Francisco from contracting with companies based in states that restrict abortion or are insufficiently protective of LGBT rights. It also prevents city employees from traveling to the banned states on the city’s dimes.

A Feb. 10 report from the City Administrator’s Office found that the ban hiked San Francisco’s annual contracting costs by up to 20%. The boycott also did nothing to force red states to change their laws. In fact, the number of states that have passed similar laws went from 8 in 2017 to 30 today.

“This increase suggests that the city’s threat of boycott may not serve as a compelling deterrent to states considering restrictive policies,” the report said.

Following the report, a San Francisco Board of Supervisors committee voted to repeal the ordinance. The full board now has to vote on it.

“It creates a burden for San Francisco,” Supervisor Ahsha Safaí said of the boycott at a committee hearing Monday. 

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman agreed and said he is prepared to introduce his own legislation that would fully repeal the boycott. 

“It’s an ineffective policy that complicates the business of San Francisco government and makes it very likely that we pay more than we should for goods and services,” Mandelman said.

Mayor London Breed said she would support repealing or at least reforming the boycott. Her office said in a statement that while she “recognizes the well-intentioned effort behind” the boycott, she also “acknowledges the many difficulties that affect contracting in the city” and would support changes to the ordinance.

Even the Democrat who proposed the bocyott in the first place said he now has “mixed views on the approach.”

“I’ll be honest, over time I have come to have mixed views on the approach,” Scott Wiener, now a state senator, said. “It is fundamentally not as straightforward an issue as I once believed.”

Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Admits J6 Narrative is Leftist Propaganda

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Admits J6 Narrative is Leftist Propaganda

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, was filmed behind closed doors where she admitted that the whole Jan. 6 narrative is a scam.

However, after leaving the room, Alexandra, just like her mother, decided to lie to the American public. One of her biggest lies is an HBO “documentary” about “what happened” on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the Gateway Pundit.

Last October, CNN released never-before-seen footage of Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell inside the US Capitol on Jan. 6 that was filmed by Alexandra with her husband filming the so-called “insurrection” outside of the Capitol.

Now, the Gateway Pundit released a video of Alexandra admitting to a Jan. 6 defendant whom she wanted to appear in her “documentary” that the insurrection narrative was nonsensical and that the Swamp is too biased to hold fair trials for Donald Trump supporters.

“I did a lot of due diligence making sure that the defendant who shot this video had permission to do so. I spoke with his attorney who provided me documentation that Alexandra agreed to be filmed if they met,” the Gateway Pundit’s source who filmed the video said.

“I wanted to bring this to you before anybody else if you’re interested in featuring it. Nancy Pelosi has contributed to destroying countless lives with her ‘insurrection’ narrative and sham committee. And here is her daughter on camera saying it’s all a crock.”

Alexandra acknowledged that the Jan. 6 narrative only works only when Democrats have power.

“After Democrats lose the House, then they get rid of the committee. People may lose, I think, interest… no one is going to care after Democrats are out of power. And when you take Biden out of office, then who cares?!”

She then said that the Swamp is not sympathetic toward conservatives who entered the Capitol while laughing about it.

“D.C. has a lot of people who work for the government. I don’t think they’re sympathetic. If you got it moved (changed trial jurisdiction from DC) you’d totally get off”

After that, Alexandra said that what happened on Jan. 6 simply could not be an insurrection because an insurrection is supposed to be planned.

“If there was an insurrection… you were supposed to have a plan!” she said.

“It was the sorriest insurrection in history.”

N.J. Spent $521K of COVID Funds on SUVs for Top Officials

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N.J. Spent $521K of COVID Funds on SUVs for Top Officials

(Adam Andrzejewsk, RealClear Wire) New Jersey found a creative way to use leftover COVID-19 relief money, spending over half a million dollars on a fleet of eight new SUVs to ferry the state’s top executives, according to Politico.

The funds were left over from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, when the federal government sent $200 million to the State of New Jersey to help combat COVID-19. Initially, the idea was to help states and municipalities cover expenses for things like masks, hand sanitizer and enhanced cleanings.

A Treasury Department memo says the state could use the funds for “costs to improve the design and execution of programs responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and to administer or improve the efficacy of programs addressing the public health emergency or its negative economic impacts,” Politico reported.

The New Jersey State Police bought the vehicles for its Executive Protection Unit, which transports the governor, lieutenant governor and other top administration officials.

N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy’s office provided a memo to the state legislature’s Joint Budget Oversight Committee on how his office intended to use its portion of the funds. This included the eight SUVs, which were justified in the memo by stating, “As part of their many responsibilities, these officials provide leadership and lend support to the state’s COVID-19 recovery efforts at vaccination sites, hospitals, nursing homes, long-term care facilities and other affected sites.”

Also included in the governor’s memo about COVID spending was $4 million to recruit new state police officers, $10 million for license plate readers and $8.5 million for school social and emotional learning programs.

Reasonable people can disagree over the amount of stimulus money the government gave out over multiple rounds from 2020 to 2021. But leftover money no longer needed to fight COVID should be returned to the federal government, not wasted on local pet projects.

Congress Must Probe Biden Regime’s Rationale for Vaccine Mandates

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Congress Must Probe Biden Regime’s Rationale for Vaccine Mandates

(Robert E. Moffit, RealClear Wire) Piece by piece, Biden’s vaccine mandate policy is being taken apart. Congress abolished the vaccine mandate on military personnel as part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.More recently, the House of Representatives bills passed bills to end the Covid-19 national emergency and drop the Administration’s vaccination requirement on foreign travelers entering the United.

Though the Supreme Court upheld the mandate on health workers, it struck down the mandate on 80 million private sector workers. And while the mandate for federal contractors is tied up in litigation, House Republicans are taking aim at the mandate on federal workers.

But killing these mandates is not enough. The new House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, chaired by Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, should determine why, exactly, President Biden and his administration imposed this unprecedented set of vaccination mandates, accompanied by penalties, fines, and threats of job losses, on tens of millions of Americans.

Congress needs clarity on the policy rationale. In December 2020 then President-elect Joe Biden promised that he would “crush” the deadly coronavirus but would not impose a vaccination mandate. Likewise, Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to both Presidents Trump and Biden, in August of 2020 observed, “If someone refuses the vaccine in the general public, then there’s nothing you can do about that. You cannot force someone to take a vaccine.”

On Sept. 9, 2021, Biden reversed course and announced his intention to impose multiple vaccine mandates, affecting private sector employees, health care workers, federal employees, federal contractors, and military personnel.

What changed? Leading up to this 180-degree course reversal, neither the president nor his officials offered compelling justifications for the mandate policy. Indeed, they made contradictory and confusing declarations that undercut the case for a mandate. For example:

  • On March 29, 2021 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky declaredthat the Covid vaccines would prevent transmission: “We’re vaccinating so very fast, our data from the CDC today suggests, you know, that vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick, and that it’s not just in the clinical trials but it’s also in the real-world data.”
  • On April 1, 2021, CDC officials “walked back” Walensky’s declaration. A CDC spokesman told The New York Times, “Dr. Walensky spoke broadly during this interview. It’s possible that some people who are fully vaccinated could get Covid-19. The evidence isn’t clear whether they can spread the virus to others. We are continuing to evaluate the evidence.”
  • Yet, on July 21, 2021,  Biden told a CNN audience that vaccinated Americans could not get infected and should not wear a mask. “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” he said. At that time, however, the Delta variant had emerged, and vaccinated persons were indeed getting infected.
  • On Aug. 18, 2021, with the Delta variant spreading rapidly, Walensky expressed concern that the “current strong protection against severe infection, hospitalization and death could decrease in the months ahead.”Curiously, as Dr. Walensky and other federal officials were concedingthat Covid vaccine effectiveness was waning and that vaccinated people could contract the disease and spread it to others, the administration was getting ready to force people to get vaccinated.

On Sept. 9, 2021, President Bien announced his vaccine mandate program, saying: “The bottom line: We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers.”That’s a puzzling defense of a vaccine mandate.Later that month, he called Covid-19 “a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

The basic premise of the 2021 policy — that vaccination would protect the public from infection and transmission of the coronavirus — was flawed. And Administration officials should have known it. Rapid viral mutations—the emergence of multiple variants and subvariants — was undercutting the effectiveness of the vaccines. In fact, the accumulating data proved that the 2021 Delta and later Omicron caseload surge, which accounted for 73 percent of new Covid cases by December 2021, was not a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

Note that in December 2020, when FDA career officials granted the emergency use authorization for the Pfizer mRNA vaccine, the agency clearly stated that the clinical trials had not provided “evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person.”

Referring to the Pfizer vaccine in February 2022, the FDA website stated: “Most vaccines that protect from viral illnesses also reduce transmission of the virus that causes the disease by those who are vaccinated. While it is hoped this will be the case, the scientific community does not yet know if the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine will reduce such transmission.”

On the key point of infection prevention, Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the Coronavirus Task Force under President Trump, was forthright: “I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection. And I think we overplayed the vaccines, and it made people then worry that it’s not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization.”

Dr. Birx was right on both counts. In February 2022, a Heritage Foundation statistical analysis of the mounting data showed that vaccination was not a protection against infection, and that the surge in Covid cases was not a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” In fact, in July 2022, after getting fullyvaccinated and twice boosted, President Biden himself contracted the coronavirus. Though Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data had shown that vaccination protected Covid patients from severe hospitalization and death compared to unvaccinated patients, vaccination per se was never a guarantee.

By August of 2022, The Washington Post reported, 58% of deaths related to Covid-19 were among vaccinated or boosted persons.

Congress, therefore, has an obligation to probe the rationale for these comprehensive vaccine mandates. Because Biden’s repeated high-profile declarations were wrong, it is fair to ask: Did the president’s advisers provide him with a scientific justification for the breadth and scope of these unprecedented mandates? When Biden was preparing to impose the mandates, what did his advisors know, or not know, concerning the effectiveness of the vaccines to prevent infection and transmission ?Why did the Biden administration insist on the mandates without considering the risk/benefit calculation for different cohorts of the population?

From the onset of the pandemic, the data showed that older persons — particularly those over age 65 with comorbidities such as cardiac and pulmonary conditions, diabetes and obesity — were at most risk from severe illness, hospitalization, and death with Covid-19. Obviously, they were prime candidates for vaccination.

Persons under age 50 had a much lower risk, and healthy children under the age of 18 faced hardly any risk at all. For example, CDC reported that, through Oct. 12, 2022, out of more than one million deaths associated with COVID-19, only 1,310 were under age 18.

The Covid vaccines carry serious risks, such as myocarditis (heart inflammation). The benefits and the risks of the Covid vaccines relative to the risks of the coronavirus vary significantly according to age, health status, the acquisition of natural immunity from previous infection, and the presence of underlying health conditions. Writing in the December 2021 edition of The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers concluded, “Among patients in a large Israeli health system who had received at least one dose of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine, the estimated incidence of myocarditis was 2.2 cases per 100,000 persons; the highest incidence was among male patients between the ages of 16 and 29 years.”

Data should guide policy. Young adults should be free to weigh the demonstrably low risk of serious illness from Covid-19 against the small benefit and unknown risk of the Covid vaccines. Examining the impact of university mandates on young adults 18 to 29 years of age in 2022, researchers writing in the Journal of Medical Ethics, concluded, “Based on public data provided by the CDC, we estimate that in the fall of 2022 at least 31,207-42,836 young adults aged 18-29 years must be boosted with an mRNA vaccine to prevent one Omicron-related COVID-19 hospitalization over 6 months.”

They further concluded, “Mandates are also associated with wider social harms. The fact that such policies were implemented despite controversy among experts and without updating the sole publicly available risk–benefit analysis to the current Omicron variants nor submitting the methods to public scrutiny suggests a profound lack of transparency in scientific and regulatory policy making. These findings have implications for mandates in other settings such as schools, corporations, healthcare systems and the military.” Exactly.

One more thing: When any medical intervention entails any personal risk, personal consent — not government coercion — is the ethical imperative.

New Health Prices Rule Shocks Businesses that Could Face $100 a Day Fines

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New Health Prices Rule Shocks Businesses that Could Face $100 a Day Fines

(TJ Martinell, The Center Square) A new federal regulation on healthcare price transparency could cost employers in Washington state and around the nation $100 a day if they don’t comply. Yet many Washington industry groups say they aren’t even aware the rule exists.

That includes the Association of Washington Business, or AWB. Communications Director Jason Hagey told The Center Square the group is “more heavily focused on the state level (regulations) than the federal level.” AWB has 7,000 members that employ 700,000 workers.

Also unaware of the new rule was the Washington Food Industry Association, according to President and CEO Tammie Hendrick. The association’s members employ more than 23,000 workers.

Washington Retail Association Senior Vice President of Policy & Government Affairs Mark Johnson told The Center Square that his group was also unaware of the rule.

The new requirement is the product of Trump administration efforts to make health care prices more transparent. It was encouraged to do so by Talon President and CEO Mark Galvin, who told The Center Square that the cost of medical services can range widely depending on the provider and whether they’re in-network or out-of-network for a specific plan.

Founded nine years ago, Galvin’s Talon provides users with a variety of software services, including a smartphone app allowing users to compare health insurance plans.

After a 2018 meeting between Galvin and President Donald Trump’s Domestic Policy Council, a new rule was enacted through the Affordable Care Act and was later codified and expanded upon in the 2020 No Surprises Act.

Galvin told The Center Square that he saw the Trump administration’s effort as a “rare opportunity to try and solve this problem.” He was also surprised to see that the Biden administration didn’t move to scrap the rule in progress.

The main reason for the lack of transparency on medical bills is that healthcare costs aren’t disclosed typically until the patient is billed for services, Galvin argued. Legally, health providers don’t have to disclose them prior to treatment.

Under the new regulation, health insurance carriers have to have publicly disclose their in-network negotiated rates or the actual price versus “official” or retail price, along with other information via an online tool.

The switch, Galvin said, brought the industry from “zero transparency to 100% transparency and allowed consumers that care to be able to find the prices. We got a huge success here. Federal government did something really worthwhile for consumers can get the information they need. Industry was effectively screwing over consumers.”

“100% transparency” in theory.

The catch: The rule places the burden of enforcement on employers who offer health insurance to their employees and face a fine if they don’t provide transparency. Aside from successfully getting their health insurance carrier to comply, the only other available option is to switch carriers.

Fines of $100 a day per business for noncompliance, or $36,500 a year, may provide a financial spur for businesses to insist on this from their insurance providers in the long term.

“We have no way to force carriers to publish their negotiated rates, because it’s a private business,” Galvin explained. “They have a First Amendment right to keep it secret,” though perhaps a financial incentive to open up.

The rule took effect in January. All covered healthcare items like prescription drugs must be part of the carrier’s online transparency tool for plan years that begin on or after January 2024.

It may take a while for the fines to start being imposed, however, as it’s not clear which federal bureaucracy gets to issue the fines.

The rule involves three agencies: the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, and the Department of the Treasury. It has yet to be decided which one will ask businesses to pay up.

More Than 200 People Arrested in Human Sex Trafficking Ring in Fla.

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More Than 200 People Arrested in Human Sex Trafficking Ring in Fla.

(Bethany Blankley, The Center Square) A multiagency operation led to the arrest of more than 200 people allegedly engaging in human trafficking in Polk County, Florida. More than half of the victims were smuggled into the U.S. illegally through the southern border, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.

Of the 24 victims identified as being trafficked, “14 of these females are illegally in this country,” Judd said. “Did you hear that? Did you hear clearly what I said?

“Fourteen of them are here illegally in the country. To me the bombshell is 13 of them are Cuban, one is Mexican, all of them came to us through the southern border.”

Judd also took issue with politicians arguing about border security, saying, “We hear the political 30-second bites about ‘oh, the border’s porous… ‘no it’s not.’ ‘The border is secure,’ ‘no it’s not.’ ‘There’s really not a crisis at the border.”

In response, he said, “Yes, there’s a crisis at the border. Wake up. Somebody in Washington with more than five brain cells needs to listen to this. Maybe asking them to have five brains cells is too many. Let’s shoot for three brain cells.”

He said the female victims “all arrived within the last two years: the majority within the last six months, some of them in the last two weeks.

“They were paying off their transportation debt, being smuggled into the United States to have sex,” he said. “Their family was being threatened if they didn’t come here and do what they were supposed to, to pay off the debts.”

The Florida sheriff also expressed frustration over lack of border security, saying, “it’s not enough that we’ve got illegal entries… what everyone’s ignoring is the traffickers and the fentanyl that’s killing thousands upon thousands of our people every day. The traffickers of methamphetamine, they’re all coming across that border with the traffickers of fentanyl.”

“Human traffickers are forcing ladies across this border to commit sex so they can indenture them, and yet we don’t do what we need to do,” he said, comparing the Biden administration’s actions to a home flooding from a leaking pipe. The federal government claims to be mopping the floor, he said, but “at the same time the pipe’s still pumping more water” onto it, he said. “The first thing you do” to stop a leaking pipe from flooding a home, he said, is to “find the source and turn the valve off. And then you mop up and fix the problem.” The federal government isn’t doing that, he said.

“The Cubans said they came here through Nicaragua,” Judd said, through Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico to enter the U.S. illegally. “Coyotes,” human smugglers, moved them into the U.S., he said, according to interviews with victims.

Investigators were still looking into who orchestrated their smuggling, by what means, when and where, he said.

“We have caught the buyer and the seller,” Judd added. “That’s what we’ve done today. But we know the buyer and the seller is only the beginning of the chain. It’s not the end of the chain.”

Officers uncovered the human trafficking ring during a seven-day undercover operation, “Operation Traffic Stop,” from February 6-12. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office Vice Unit, working with multiple agencies, arrested 213 suspects.

Officers were looking for “the victims of human trafficking, those that are forced to participate, those that are made to participate, those that are treated inhumanely,” Judd said. “Not only did we arrest more suspects during this single operation than we have ever arrested before, we identified 24 human trafficking victims – the highest number of victims we’ve ever rescued during one of these investigations.”

They arrested 111 prostitutes; among them 24 were identified as possible human trafficking victims.

Another 89 suspects were arrested for soliciting a prostitute “who traveled to a designated undercover location to negotiate having sex in exchange for money.” Another 13 were arrested, 10 of whom were either “deriving proceeds from prostitution or aiding and abetting prostitutes,” according to the sheriff’s office.

Several of those arrested already have criminal histories, including violent felonies ranging from kidnapping, robbery, aggravated assault, and sex offenses. Five were previously arrested by PCSO during an undercover operation last September, the sheriff said.

One individual arrested was an elected San Diego area Del Mar Union School District board member. Dr. Scott Wooden, a molecular biologist who used to own a massage parlor, was in town visiting his elderly parents when he was arrested after allegedly soliciting a sex worker for $200, Judd said.

The school district issued a statement, saying Wooden had “resigned from the District’s Governing Board of Trustees effective immediately” and the board is “currently exploring options to fill the vacancy.”

Officers involved in the operation also seized fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana, as well as firearms.

Those arrested were between the ages of 19 and 68. In total, those arrested were charged with 68 total felony and 308 misdemeanor counts.

Participating in the operation were detectives from the Okeechobee County Sheriff’s Office, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the police departments of Auburndale, Winter Haven, Haines City, Lake Wales, Lakeland, Davenport and Bartow. The Office of the State Attorney 10th Judicial Circuit, State Attorney Brian Haas, and the Florida Department of Children and Families were also involved. Several organizations provided assistance to victims, including One More Child, Heartland for Children, My Name My Voice, Selah Freedom, and the Children’s Home Society Child Advocacy Center.

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