Deadly Musk-Trump Administration Policy Starts

Without a new flu vaccine the Grim Reaper will be busy next winter

More Americans will die next winter unless the Musk-Trump administration backs off an action it took to deny people a flu vaccine targeting the deadliest mutations of that ever-evolving virus.

A scheduled March meeting at which medical experts were to decide on which influenza strain to target was abruptly cancelled by the FDA on Thursday, February 27. This came just days after a CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting was abruptly postponed.

This is a perfect example of the Musk-Trump political cult’s disregard for human life, driven by its wicked love of money.

This is part of the anti-vaccine nonsense by the utterly unqualified secretary of Health and Human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy, who had his own six children vaccinated, doesn’t want the same for you or your children despite his promises to the contrary. In November Kennedy told NPR that vaccines were “not going to be taken away from anybody.”

If you believed RFK Jr’s promises you should be asking yourself how you could be so naive, so gullible. It should surprise no one that once confirmed by Senate Republicans that RFK Jr. began pursuing his warped beliefs rather than honor his testimony. or follow the science

Grim Numbers

More than 5,600 Americans died from the flu in 2023, Centers for Disease Control data show. Add cases where the flu turned into pneumonia and the Grim Reaper took more than 47,000 Americans. When the 2024 figures come in, they are expected to show more deaths than in 2023.

Those grave figures are virtually certain to rise even more next winter unless new vaccines to address the continually evolving flu strains are approved and soon.

Parents with small children, older Americans like me, and people with compromised immunity systems are most likely to get sick and die without a flu shot in late summer or fall.

This is a perfect example of the Musk-Trump cult’s disregard for human life, driven by its wicked love of money.

Taking Food from Children

With Trump’s solid backing, if not worship,  the richest person in the world is taking food away from hungry people at home and abroad, denying medicines that have kept deadly viruses corralled overseas and opening up new and unlimited opportunities for these microscopic killers to migrate.

Once pernicious viruses start hopscotching around the planet on jetliners Americans will start dying. Some of the viruses that AID had corralled until now are so lethal that one in three of those infected die.

Musk, and the old man he has thoroughly in his grip, are spreading hunger, sickness and death in blatant violation of law and of the American Constitution. Our Constitution and Supreme Court decision after the Nixon era scandals establish that the president is to faithfully execute instructions from Congress and must, with limited minor exceptions spend money as allocated by Congress. If, as the high court held a half century ago, cannot impound funds then surely he cannot shut down agencies created by Congress, but that is exactly what Musk-Trump did.

As a “special government employee,” Musk is only supposed to advise, not order. Yeah, like that rule will ever be enforced under our dictator who claims nothing he does can violate the law because, he says, he is doing it to “save” our country.

American Quislings

Had Biden, Obama, or Clinton let one of their many special government employees shutter agencies and fire federal employees willy nilly the Republicans would have been in high dudgeon. But that was before they became Trumpublicans, bowing to dictator Trump, choosing become quislings whose fear of being primaried matters more  than their oaths of office.

As cover, these quislings say we spend too much on our own poor, damaging our economy. That’s nonsense, a distraction from the awful truth that Musk, Trump and many others among America’s superrich pay little to no income taxes.

Profiting Off Income Taxes

Some of America’s super-wealthy convert their income tax burden into the boon of added profits, as I revealed a quarter century ago in The New York Times. How? Through modern alchemy which turns the red ink of tax bills into the bold black ink of financial gain by blending subtle accounting rules with favors bought from Congress through  campaign donations.

Contrast this with the plight of our poor where an estimate one in seven children faces food insecurity — not enough to eat every day and certainly not enough healthy and nutritious food for every meal.

SNAP, America’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, actually improves our economy in both the short and long term as children grew up healthier and more productive.

Each dollar spent on SNAP benefits generates about $1.80 in total economic activity, child advocates have shown. 

The average SNAP benefit is only $6 per day, not enough for the poorest or most budget constrained families to feed their kids for the entire month.

Food banks, the wholesale nonprofits that supply local food pantries, face growing demand, driven in part by the food inflation that Trump promised he would vanquish even before he took office. Now Trump says lowering prices is hard, hoping no one will notice he has no idea and no plan to bring down inflation, as Biden did quite handily.

Demand for food bank services will grow as Trumps baseless economic beliefs damage our economy. Already inflation is ticking up and consumer confidence is falling. A new pandemic would make that demand explode.

Connecting The Dots

Canceling the flu vaccine targeting meeting, shutting down humanitarian assistance provided through USAID, and proposing huge cuts in SNAP (and Medicaid) are all connected. They’re part of a scheme to give $4.5 trillion in additional tax cuts for billionaires, centimillionaires, and the corporations they control, over the next ten years.

Musk-Trump and congressional Republicans are moving fast to finance this largesse for those with literally no need for relief by taking from children, the disabled, the elderly, and the sick, that is from those who can’t fight back.

There is a word that comes to mind to describe this immorality, but it’s simply too mild: obscene.

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