Who He REALLY Is by Chuck Yeager

The criticisms of Trump are amazingly missing something. They are lacking in negative stories from those who work for him or have had business dealings with him. After all the employees he’s had and all the business deals he’s made there is a void of criticism. In fact, long term employees call him a strong and merciful leader and say he is far more righteous and of high integrity than people may think.

And while it may surprise many, he’s actually humble when it comes to his generosity and kindness. A good example is a story that tells of his limo breaking down on a deserted highway outside of New York City. A middle-aged couple stopped to help him and as a thank you he paid off their mortgage, but he didn’t brag about that. Generous and good people rarely talk of charity they bestow on others. But as much as all this is interesting, the real thing that people want to know is what Donald Trump’s plan is for America. It’s funny how so many people say they don’t know what it is, or they act like Trump is hiding it. The information is readily available if people would just do a little homework. But, since most Americans won’t do their own research, here, in no particular order, is an overview of many of Trumps positions and plans:

1.) Trump believes that America should not intervene militarily in other country’s problems without being compensated for doing so. If America is going to risk the lives of our soldiers and incur the expense of going to war, then the nations we help must be willing to pay for our help. Using the Iraq War as an example, he cites the huge monetary expense to American taxpayers (over $1.5 trillion, and possibly much more depending on what sources are used to determine the cost) in addition to the cost in human life. He suggests that Iraq should have been required to give us enough of their oil to pay for the expenses we incurred. He includes in those expenses the medical costs for our military and $5 million for each family that lost a loved one in the war and $2 million for each family of soldiers who received severe injuries.

2.) Speaking of the military, Trump wants America to have a strong military again. He believes the single most important function of the federal government is national defense. He has said he wants to find the General Patton or General MacArthur that could lead our military buildup back to the strength it needs to be. While he hasn’t said it directly that I know of, Trump’s attitude about America and about winning tells me he’d most likely be quick to eliminate rules of engagement that handicap our military in battle. Clearly Trump is a “win at all costs” kind of guy, and I’m sure that would apply to our national defense and security, too.

3.) Trump wants a strong foreign policy and believes that it must include 8 core principles (which seem to support my comment in the last point):> American interests come first. Always. No apologies.> Maximum firepower and military preparedness.> Only go to war to win.

> Stay loyal to your friends and suspicious of your enemies.> Keep the technological sword razor sharp.> See the unseen.> Prepare for threats before they materialize.> Respect and support our present and past warriors.

4.) Trump believes that terrorists who are captured should be treated as military combatants, not as criminals like the Obama administration treats them.

5.) Trump makes the point that China’s manipulation of their currency has given them unfair advantage in our trade dealings with them. He says we must tax their imports to offset their currency manipulation, which will cause American companies to be competitive again and drive manufacturing back to America and create jobs here. Although he sees China as the biggest offender, he believes that America should protect itself from all foreign efforts to take our jobs and manufacturing. For example, Ford is building a plant in Mexico and Trump suggests that every part or vehicle Ford makes in Mexico be taxed 35% if they want to bring it into the U. S., which would cause companies like Ford to no longer be competitive using their Mexican operations and move manufacturing back to the U. S., once again creating jobs here.

6.) Trump wants passage of NOPEC legislation (No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act – NOPEC – S.394), which would allow the government to sue OPEC for violating antitrust laws. According to Trump, that would break up the cartel. He also wants to unleash our energy companies to drill domestically (sound like Sarah Palin’s drill baby, drill?) thereby increasing domestic production creating jobs and driving domestic costs of oil and gas down while reducing dependence on foreign oil.

7.) Trump believes a secure border is critical for both security and prosperity in America. He wants to build a wall to stop illegals from entering put controls on immigration. (And he says he’ll get Mexico to pay for the wall, which many have scoffed at, but given his business successes I wouldn’t put it past him.) He also wants to enforce our immigration laws and provide no path to citizenship for illegals.

8.) Trump wants a radical change to the tax system to not only make it better for average Americans, but also to encourage businesses to stay here and foreign businesses to move here. The resulting influx of money to our nation would do wonders for our economy. He wants to make America the place to do business. He also wants to lower the death tax and the taxes on capital gains and dividends. This would put more than $1.6 trillion back into the economy and help rebuild the 1.5 million jobs we’ve lost to the current tax system. He also wants to charge companies who outsource jobs overseas a 20% tax, but for those willing to move jobs back to America they would not be taxed. And for citizens he has a tax plan

that would allow Americans to keep more of what they earn and spark economic growth. He wants to change the personal income tax to:

Up to $30,000 taxed at 1%From $30,000 to $100,000 taxed at 5%From $100,000 to $1,000,000 taxed at 10%$1,000,000 and above taxed at 15%

9.) Trump wants Obamacare repealed. He says it’s a “job-killing, health care-destroying monstrosity” that “can’t be reformed, salvaged, or fixed.” He believes in allowing real competition in the health insurance marketplace to allow competition to drive prices down. He also believes in tort reform to get rid of defensive medicine and lower costs.

10.) Trump wants spending reforms in Washington, acknowledging that America spends far more than it receives in revenue. He has said he believes that if we don’t stop increasing the national debt once it hits $24 trillion it will be impossible to save this country. Even though he says we need to cut spending, he does not want to harm those on Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. He believes that the citizens have faithfully paid in to the system to have these services available and that the American government has an obligation to fulfill its end of the bargain and provide those benefits. Therefore, he wants to build the economy up so that we have the revenue to pay those costs without cutting the benefits to the recipients. He disagrees with Democrats who think raising taxes is the answer and says that when you do that you stifle the economy. On the other hand, when you lower taxes and create an environment to help businesses they will grow, hire more workers, and those new workers will be paying taxes that become more tax revenue for the government.

11.) Trump also wants reform of the welfare state saying that America needs “a safety net, not a hammock.” He believes in a welfare to work program that would help reduce the welfare roles and encourage people to get back to work. And he wants a crackdown on entitlement fraud.

12.) Trump believes climate change is a hoax.

13.) Trump opposes Common Core.

14.) Trump is pro-life, although he allows for an exception due to rape, incest, or the life of the mother.

15.) Trump is pro 2nd Amendment rights.

16.) Trump’s view on same-sex marriage is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but he also believes that this is a states’ rights issue, not a federal issue.

17.) Trump supports the death penalty.

Trump believes that there is a lack of common sense, innovative thinking in Washington (Hmmm. looks like he believes in horse sense!). He says it’s about seeing the unseen and that’s the kind of thinking we need to turn this country around. He tells a personal story to illustrate the point:

“When I opened Trump National Golf Club at Rancho Palos Verdes in Los Angeles, I was immediately told that I would need to build a new and costly ballroom. The current ballroom was gorgeous, but it only sat 200 people and we were losing business because people needed a larger space for their events. Building a new ballroom would take years to get approval and permits (since it’s on the Pacific Ocean), and cost about $5 million. I took one look at the ballroom and saw immediately what needed to be done. The problem wasn’t the size of the room, it was the size of the chairs. They were huge, heavy, and unwieldy.

We didn’t need a bigger ballroom, we needed smaller chairs! So I had them replaced with high-end, smaller chairs. I then had our people sell the old chairs and got more money for them than the cost of the new chairs. In the end, the ballroom went from seating 200 people to seating 320 people. Our visitors got the space they desired, and I spared everyone the hassle of years of construction and $5 million of expense.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a little common sense.” On top of his saving years of construction and $5 million in expenses, he also was able to keep the ballroom open for business during the time it would have been under remodeling, which allowed him to continue to make money on the space instead of losing that revenue during construction time.

Donald Trump’s entire life has been made up of success and winning. He’s been accused of bankruptcies, but that’s not true. He’s never filed personal bankruptcy. He’s bought companies and legally used bankruptcy laws to restructure their debt, just as businesses do all the time. But he’s never been bankrupt personally. He’s a fighter that clearly loves America and would fight for our nation.

Earlier I quoted Trump saying, “I love America. And when you love something, you protect it passionately – fiercely, even.” We never hear that from Democrats or even from most Republicans.

Donald Trump is saying things that desperately need to be said but no other candidate has shown the fortitude to stand up and say them.

Before we criticize someone because of what the media is saying, maybe we should consider what they have to offer. What are they bringing to the table. Researching their background independently of what the news says. What’s their bio?? What’s Obama’s bio? If you researched him prior to becoming President, would you have hired him to work for you or run your business?

The Cost of Obama in the White House

Today’s outrage of the day is apparently the fact that the total cost of   running the White House under the Obama Administration reached $1.4 billion:

Taxpayers spent $1.4 billion dollars on everything from staffing, housing, flying and entertaining President Obama and hisfamily last year, according to the author of a new book on taxpayer-funded presidential perks.

In comparison, British taxpayers spent just $57.8 million on the royal family.

Author Robert Keith Gray writes in “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” that Obama isn’t the only president to have taken advantage of the expensive trappings of his office. But the amount of money spent on the first family, he argues, has risen tremendously under the Obama administration and needs to be reined in.

Gray told The Daily Caller that the $1.4 billion spent on the Obama family last year is the “total cost of the presidency,” factoring the cost of the “biggest staff in history at the highest wages ever,” a 50 percent increase in the numbers of appointed czars and an Air Force One “running with the frequency of a scheduled air line.”

The Obamas have spent over 44 million dollars in taxpayer money on travel and vacations. Some are even calling him the “most well-trvaeled, expensive” president in our nation’s history.

As Americans head off for the long holiday weekend, let’s take a look back at some of the president’s holiday spending.

Our president vacations a lot — we’re talking $44,351,777.12 worth of “a lot,” with most expenses charged to the American taxpayer.

As of March 2014, Obama has spent more time traveling internationally than any other president, taking 31 trips since assuming office in 2009. The 119 days spent overseas have cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Other presidents travelled about the same time abroad, but Obama has spent more than all the presidents combined in taxpayer money for these vacations. Add to this the first Lady’s travel expenses, and it exceeds $47 million in taxpayer funds. Now, what was that campaign promise about extravagance being unpatriotic?

State of the Union Response

First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy?

Second, how do we make technology work for us, and not against us – especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change?

Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman?

And finally, how can we make our politics reflect what’s best in us, and not what’s worst?

The Communications Kill Switch

The justices at the U.S. Supreme Court have decided that Americans don’t need to know the circumstances under which the government will pull the plug on cell-phone networks – shutting off service to anyone in a particular area at the time, including anyone trying to reach 9-1-1 because of an emergency.

The determination came when the justices, without comment, refused to consider a request by the Electronic Privacy Information Center to review the dispute.

In a routine posting earlier this week, the court said the justices would not be looking at the EPIC vs. DHS case over the government’s cell phone shutdown policy.

EPIC had been fighting a campaign to gain access to the policy established by the federal government for shutting down cell phone networks for whatever reasons may arise.

The organization notes that the government did exactly that during a peaceful protest at a Bay Area Rapid Transit system station in 2012.

It says it got a redacted copy of the federal plan some time ago, but that essentially answered none of the significant questions.

Is the government getting bigger and more powerful? Read the prognosis in “Police State U.S.A.: How Orwell’s Nightmare is Becoming our Reality.”

It had requested that the U.S. Supreme Court review the contentious subject, but the government argued it should be allowed to keep details suppressed.

EPIC had argued, “The Federal Communications Commission … has expressed strong concerns that interruptions of cell phone service pose a threat to public safety. Such decisions by a federal agency could prevent access [to] timely medical and emergency services.

“The FCC explicitly prohibits the use of ‘jammers’ and other devices that disrupt cell phone service, and has repeatedly issued advisories to state and local government officials (including law enforcement agencies) emphasizing the importance of the prohibition.

“These techniques ‘can prevent 9/1/1 and other emergency phone calls’ from ‘getting through to first responders or interfere with’ official ‘communications that are critical to carrying out law enforcement missions,'” it said.

“It is precisely in those circumstances when the DHS contemplates a cellphone shutdown that public access to cellphone service may be most vital,” the brief explains.

It’s already happened.

One situation developed a number of years ago in New York, where service was shut down to users in a subway-system section.

But the government has been less than forthcoming about the standards it uses to decide if, when and for how long to disable services.

WND reported just a few months ago just exactly who could cut off Americans’ service and why isn’t for citizens to know, according to the government.

It was reported then that during the BART protest, officials cut off service for several hours after a BART security officer shot and killed a homeless man and protests erupted.

The shutdown order was made when a protest organizer sought to coordinate activists via cell phone.

The San Francisco shutdown, which is supposed to be controlled by the Department of Homeland Security’s Standard Operating Procedure 303, prevented anyone inside the transit stations “from sending or receiving phone calls, messages, emergency notifications and other transmissions,” according to the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The plan was adopted in 2006 by the National Communications System, but it never has been released to the public, even though it codifies a “shutdown and restoration process for use by commercial and private wireless networks during a national crisis.”

Is the government getting bigger and more powerful? Read the prognosis in “Police State U.S.A.: How Orwell’s Nightmare is Becoming our Reality.”

Its existence was affirmed in a 2011 report from the Obama White House that asserted the “National Security Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy have the legal authority to control private communications systems in the United States during times of war or other national emergencies.”

In fact, the White House, through executive order, granted DHS “the authority to seize private facilities, when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications,” EPIC said.

China Plans to Land on the Dark Side of the Moon

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China plans to land the first probe ever on the dark side of the moon in 2018, marking another milestone in its ambitious space program, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

China has launched a new round of work focused on lunar exploration, coming about two years after it made the first "soft landing" on the moon since 1976 with the Chang'e-3 craft and its Jade Rabbit rover.

Previous spacecraft have seen the far side of the moon, that is never visible from earth, but none has landed on it.

A new probe, the Chang'e-4, is similar to the Chang'e-3 but can carry a bigger payload, Xinhua quoted Liu Jizhong, head of the science, technology and defense industry administration's lunar exploration center, as saying late on Thursday.

The craft will study geological conditions on the far side of the moon, Liu said. Advancing China's space program has been a priority of leaders, with President Xi Jinping calling for China to establish itself as a space power. No one in China could explain how a probe, sitting in a crate on the far side of the Moon would be able to send data to Earth. A more likely purpose is to send signals through the Moon to a probe on the near side of the Moon to analyze the internal structure of the Moon for possible subsurface colonization. China insists that its space program is for peaceful purposes.

However, the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities, saying it was pursuing activities aimed at preventing its adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.

In March, the Chinese government said it would open up its lunar exploration program to companies rather than simply relying on the state-owned sector as before, hoping to boost technological breakthroughs.

Xinhua said China sent "a letter of intent of cooperation" on its latest mission to foreign countries in early 2015. It was not clear if any had signed up. It sounds like companies are wary of government suddenly saying, “Hey that’s neat, but way too advanced for anyone to know about. We’ll take it from here.”

Meanwhile in Europe

Paris (AFP) - The European Space Agency's new boss elaborated Friday on his vision for a multinational research village on the Moon -- a leading contender for a project to succeed the International Space Station.

For now, it is just an idea -- called "crazy" by some -- but one that Jan Woerner said was being widely discussed as the end of the ISS looms large.

The broad concept is a base for lunar exploration by humans and robots, potentially a stopover for spacecraft and possibly even a mining site.

"It's not to build some small houses over there and then to have a city hall and a church and whatever," said Woerner, who took over as ESA director general last July.

The Moon Village would have "multiple uses and multiple users", he told journalists in Paris.

"Maybe one country is more interested in science, another may be a private company interested in mining... and another may be interested to use the Moon as a stepping stone for further exploration," he explained.

"This is the overall scheme, and we are now discussing of course worldwide whether there is enough interest in that to go ahead with it," said Woerner.

The timing, he added, would be "post-ISS".

The orbiting science station is a joint project of Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan and Russia.

All members but the European Union have agreed to operate and finance the ISS to at least 2024.

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All members but the European Union have agreed to operate and finance the ISS to at least 2024 (AFP  …

- Liking 'crazy' -

Woerner insisted Friday the ISS "has its value" and said he hoped to convince member states that "ESA should continue" its involvement in the project.

Europe is currently committed until 2020.

As for the future, "I see the Moon Village as the ideal successor of the International Space Station for... exploration," said Woerner.

"So far, there is no competitive proposal on the table."

Unlike the ISS, he explained, a lunar village required no "formal decision" among countries.

"It is more an understanding of many nations to go together to the Moon."

What is important, however, is a discussion on the best location to settle. "Is it the far side? Is it the near side? Is it the poles?"

Once a spot is chosen, said Woerner, individual countries or space agencies will decide how they want to take part in the project.

Who would take part?

"Russia has some lunar missions planned, so why not have them as part of the Moon Village?" asked Woerner, noting also that "the Chinese are planning some lunar missions."

He also said he did not mind that some think his idea hare-brained.

"The word 'crazy' is exactly something I would like," he said. "We have to think out of the box. That means new ideas."

Woerner said he had mooted his idea at two space gatherings last year, in the United States and in Israel, and "I've had several organisations worldwide saying to me: 'How can we participate?'."

The scheme will come up in talks with the space agencies of the US, Japan, Canada and Russia in the coming weeks, on the future of the ISS.

"And we will have discussions with other countries and states worldwide," said Woerner.

"We need an idea of where to go and what to do."

X-Squared Radio Report on September 16th, 2012 is Vindicated

Clare Lopez of the Center for Security Policy, a member of the Benghazi Citizen’s Commission and former CIA intelligence officer, exposes Benghazi as a complete national security disaster resulting from the lack of leadership from President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In part one, Lopez explains in simple detail exactly how the United States,  led by Clinton, aligned itself with the Muslim Brotherhood in a way that defies common sense and basic principles of foreign policy. The United West presents this three-part series as a national security

context to better understand the blockbuster Hollywood movie, “13 Hours, the Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.“

LINK

We now have the evidence that there was a major gun running operation managed by Hillary Clinton for Mr. Obama. We know that the assassination of the president of Libya was also planned by Obama and executed by Hillary Clinton under his orders. We know why the Benghazi compound was attacked and by whom. And now we know why the Stand down order was given.

The question you have to ask yourself is whether you want this kind of deception and treachery and falsehood returned to the White House in 2017.

The much anticipated film 13 Hours debuted this weekend as #4. Not bad for a film that doesn’t include aliens or time warps. I noticed the people in the theater were around 40 to 70 years old. You could see the look of concern on their faces before the movie.

Hillary is falling at a faster rate now at this point in the election that she did on 2008 against Barack Obama. It took many more months for Obama’s speech writers to find the exact formula that would attract all Democratic voters.

But, against whom is she failing?

A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday night showed Sanders vaulted into the lead, with a slew of others show him pulling in close to a tie.

Digging deeper into the numbers shows even more good news for Sanders: nationally, he is beating Clinton by 2-1 with voters younger than 45, and by 20 points with female voters younger than 35. In New Hampshire there is not one demographic group in which Clinton is beating Sanders. He’s also made recent gains among African Americans and Hispanics – both demographics long considered Clinton strongholds.

But perhaps more important than the news of Sanders’s gain is how it happened: by patiently hammering on his message of drawing attention to economic inequality, raising taxes on the rich, dramatically expanding Medicare and Social Security, making public universities free of charge and criminal justice reform.

He has been endorsed by groups such as Black Lives Matter and Americans for Reform, two very vocal and powerful socialist groups calling for massive wealth redistribution. But what is the platform that is wasting away at the queen’s coronation?

He has a 12-point plan. I won’t read you the propaganda, because it makes vomit come up in my mouth, but here are the titles and a small dose of reality for you.

1. Rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.

a. This is also called the Highway Fund. It has billions poured into in each month by gas taxes. It is by far the most corrupt slush fund in history, and works like a federal job program. It is primarily used to punish Governors who do not support the president, and reward those who do. Look around for the orange barrels, and you will see the reality of what I am talking about.

2. Reverse Climate Changea. Unless you plan on a mission to the Sun any time soon, there nothing that can be

done to reverse climate change. It will happen with or without mankind on the Earth. It has been exposed by a dozen countries as a complete and utter fraud, perpetrated by the IMF and Agenda 21 to assess a global tax on developed countries to feed money to emerging countries.

3. Creating Worker Co-opsa. This is right out of the Karl Marx handbook. People are not called team members

or citizens. They are called workers. The giant corporations need workers, not thinkers or imaginers. They believe that having a job is the right of every person, and that this will be provided by the government. When they decide they have a need for workers in a certain field, like farming or oil production or steel production, then they form workshops to train people to work at those jobs. There is no choice. There is no freedom. There is no moving to another State if you want, or seeking a “position” with a new company.

4. Growing the Trade Union Movementa. This is also straight out of the Karl Marx handbook. Unions decide what workers

are needed and what they will be paid. Their political power is through the dues they collect and feed to the Democratic Party. If they do not get what they want, the workers will strike and force the price of the product higher so that the union leaders can make more money, which allows them to make larger bribes, which allows them to increase their power. This is the heart and soul of Fascism.

5. Raising the minimum wage.a. This is nothing more than an unfunded mandate. It is a tax that is placed upon the

goods and services which the consumer pays at the time of sale. The mandate is forced upon the business world, which is pure Fascism, and then the business is often prevented by the market itself from raising the price of the finished product or service. Raising the minimum wage raises the medium level wage and the highest hourly wage as well, as those levels of skill are valuable and will not work for the same money that a person that barely knows how to find his work station each day gets paid.

6. Pay Equity for Women workersa. Utter Nonsense. If a woman could do equal work, they would get equal pay, but

they often have far less experience, due to other life choices and duties. They do not have the stamina, strength, nor the skills that man can demonstrate. However, if there is a job where a woman can match a man’s experience and skill, she should get equal pay for it. Ironically, the women inside the organization calling for equal pay, do not get paid as well as the men in that organization.

7. Trade policies that benefit American workersa. This is a direct shot at the strength of the dollar. Right now, the American dollar

is the strongest currency in the world, shored up by billions in Quantitative Easing

printed by the Fed. That makes it very hard to export products or services. In addition, exports are taxed by the IRS, making goods impossible to buy for foreign markets. In order to create “export-friendly” trade deals, the dollar must be crashed. Bernie plans to crash the American dollar, plunging every American into a single class; the working poor.

8. Making college affordable for alla. There are two ways to do this. First, lower the quality of the education that every

student gets, thus lowering the cost. Take away liberal arts, music, philosophy, political science, etc. Take away sports and professor tenure. Incorporate more central online education where people can get their degree by taking exams at home. The second is to nationalize all the universities so that there are no private or State schools. This would consolidate the curricula and lower the cost. It would also allow the completion of Bernie’s Fascist plan to control the education system. No one would be smarter than anyone else. No one would learn anything that was counter to the party in power. Government monitors would make sure there were no statements against the government or its leaders.

9. Taking on Wall Streeta. Today, six huge Wall Street financial institutions have assets equivalent to 61

percent of our gross domestic product - over $9.8 trillion. These institutions underwrite more than half the mortgages in this country and more than two-thirds of the credit cards. The greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of major Wall Street firms plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. They are too powerful to be reformed. They must be broken up. Bernie talks about the “real economy” as opposed to the banking economy. The government will become the source of all capital in America. They will decide which businesses get funding and which people will be allowed to buy homes. They will decide, based upon your needs, what size house you need. They will decide which political speech can borrow money and which will be denied for anti-government sentiments. Look around. The IRS has been doing this openly since 2009.

10. Free health care for everyonea. Despite the fact that more than 40 million Americans have no health insurance,

we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation. We need to establish a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. Of course, the single payer is the government. Don’t think for a moment that the government is taking over the insurance companies. If that was so, there would be full page ads in every major newspaper criticizing Bernie’s plan. Far from it. The Insurance companies are taking over the government. They succeeded in dumping 25 million sick people off insurance with Obamacare and forcing 16 million healthy people to pay premiums for insurance they do not need. Add to that the 59 million Americans who were forced to pay 1% extra tax as a fine for not signing up. Get a brain. This will not change health care costs one penny, but it will make billions in profits for the insurance industry with all competition being against federal law.

11. Social Security expansion plana. Millions of seniors live in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood

poverty of any major country. We must strengthen the social safety net, not

weaken it. Instead of cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs, we should be expanding these programs. This is a Fascist effort to buy an entire voting group. Actually, two voting groups. Seniors, who have seen their entire SS nest egg robbed more than once by Congress. And young parents who do not have a decent job. The fact that they have children makes them eligible now for enormous subsidies with their tax refund. A family with 3 children can see $20 thousand or more from these subsidies and as a lump sum. Accessing the social security trust fund for funds they have not had a chance to yet contribute, means that these funds must come from somewhere else. That’s right. This is massive tax increase program aimed at working Americans to pay for Americans who ARE NOT WORKING, or who do not earn enough the support their lifestyles.

12. Real tax reforma. At a time of massive wealth and income inequality, we need a progressive tax

system in this country which is based on ability to pay. It is not acceptable that major profitable corporations have paid nothing in federal income taxes, and that corporate CEOs in this country often enjoy an effective tax rate which is lower than their secretaries. It is absurd that we lose over $100 billion a year in revenue because corporations and the wealthy stash their cash in offshore tax havens around the world. What is never considered here is the risk that is taken by the leaders of these corporation. For every CEO that is making 50 times what his company’s line worker makes, there are 1,000 CEO’s that work for no pay year after year to get their company off the ground. These are the men who take out SBA loans by putting up their homes as collateral. These men work 100 hours a week for ten years or more to make that company a success. They go broke a thousand times more than they succeed. The worker never takes this risk and feels it a burden to work for 40 hours a week. The line worker gets to watch TV at night with his family. The CEO doesn’t even own a TV, and rarely gets to eat dinner with his family. The line worker worries about his car lasting another year. The CEO worries about making payroll every Friday, competitors, government agencies, and planning a vacation for the first time in 20 years.

b. Real tax reform with the Bernie plan means to rip down the success of America and give it out to the masses as a one time fix. There won’t be a second time. No one will take that risk without the hope of a reward. That is what liberty and freedom are all about. We are free to become what we want, to earn as much as we want. Do we all? No. Why? Because many people give up or have not dreamed their dream properly for success.

13. The end of private propertya. A necessary part of Bernie’s long range plan is to eliminate private ownership of

property. This is what made the original founder so wealthy. It is the source of Trump’s wealth and GE’s wealth. The mortgage backed securities will be confiscated by the government when the banks are broken up. The millions of mortgages in there will be converted into rental agreements. You will no longer own your home. You will rent your home from the government. The added collateral to the Federal corporation will provide the security the nation needs to

offset the unfunded liabilities now held by the taxpayer. In other words, the national debt is not theirs; it is yours.

14. The New Retirement Funda. All 401k’s, IRA’s pensions, and private annuity accounts will be confiscated by

the government. You will receive an IOU, and you will be paid the same amount you would have made at the time of your retirement, but you will no longer be allowed to draw down your 401k for personal reasons. All of that money will become part of the new retirement fund to cover the costs of seniors and children who live off the social security system. No one will care. Only the rich have a 401k. The poor, who make up 99% of Bernie’s voters, want access to that money. They feel that the rich have no right to accumulate one or two million dollars for their retirement.

15. The New Department of Educationa. Education is there to make sure you can get a job. So, every student will have

their career path chosen for them in the 6th grade. They will receive training, apprentice classes, and curricula to support that career path. When they are 16, they will receive a Certificate of Initial Mastery and have the option of leaving school to go to work at one of the union shops such as a mine, a farm, or a factory. When they are 18, they will receive a Certificate of Advanced Mastery and will be incentivized to work at one of the union shops in their region.

b. If the student qualifies for the college path, then federal colleges will continue the education in fields such as medical, engineering, etc.

Fascism: What does it look like in America?

It’s past time for the media to begin asking President Obama tough questions about the IRS conservative targeting scandal.  After all he was involved, publicly, from the beginning.

Last Friday, the American Center for Law and Justice (where I serve as Chief Counsel) filed its Second Amended Complaint against the United States, the IRS, and a legion of IRS officials.  This Complaint, in which we represent 41 organizations in 22 states, presents perhaps the most complete story yet of the IRS conservative targeting scandal.

And it is an ugly story indeed.

What was sold to the American public as a low-level scandal perpetrated by a few rogue employees – a scandal stopped after senior officials became aware and asserted control – is now (to borrow a Watergate phrase) “no longer operative.”

Instead, we detail a long-running assault on the Tea Party, beginning shortly after its emergence in 2009, that is empowered, encouraged, and orchestrated not only by senior IRS officials in Washington, but also through outright targeting by the White House, Congressional Democrats, and the mainstream media.

In fact, the IRS was doing little more than focusing its attention exactly where the president of the United States told it to focus – on the groups the president himself identified as a “threat to democracy.”

Consider President Obama’s aggressive public statements – made just as we now know senior IRS officials were intentionally and aggressively scrutinizing conservative groups’ applications for tax exemption. 

On August 9, 2010 the president warned of “attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” during his weekly radio address.  The President said:  We don’t know who’s behind these ads and we don’t know who’s paying for them . . . you don’t know if it’s a foreign controlled corporation. ... The only people who don’t want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.”

On September 16, 2010, President Obama once again warned that some unidentified “foreign-controlled entity” could be providing “millions of dollars” for “attack ads.”  Less than one week later, he complained that “nobody knows” the identities of the individuals who support conservative groups.

On September 22, 2010, President Obama warned of groups opposing his policies “pos[ing] as non-for-profit social and welfare trade groups” and he claimed such groups were “guided by seasoned Republican political operatives” and potentially supported by some unidentified “foreign controlled entity.”

On October 14, 2010, President Obama called organizations with “benign sounding” names “a problem for democracy”; the next week he complained about individuals who “hide behind those front groups,” called such groups a “threat to our democracy,” and claimed such groups were engaged in “unsupervised” spending.

Next, consider the IRS’s actions following those statements.  Not only did the IRS continue its targeting, it issued broad questionnaires that made unconstitutionally-intrusive inquiries designed to get answers to exactly the questions President Obama posed.

Who are your donors?

What is the political activity of your family and associates?

What are the passwords for your websites?

After all, according to the president, you’re only afraid to answer these questions if “you’ve got something to hide.”

The demagoguery is breathtaking.  Not only does he raise the wholly-unsubstantiated possibility of shadowy “foreign” involvement in the Tea Party groups, a charge incredible on its face, but he goes the extra mile of calling such groups, a “threat to our democracy.”

When the president of the United States declares these groups a “threat to our democracy” is it any surprise that his enthusiastic supporters (and donors) within the IRS responded with an unprecedented campaign of selective targeting, intimidation, and governmental intrusion?

One grows weary of stating the obvious, but if President Bush had declared a specific category of citizen groups a “threat to democracy” potentially run by “political operatives” or “foreign-controlled,” and the IRS launched an unprecedented campaign of targeting and intrusive questioning, the mainstream media would have been relentless not only in its independent investigations but in its calls for accountability – at the highest levels.

Was the president of the United States involved in the IRS scandal?  He was the one who identified the targets – in the most public manner possible.

A president singling out citizens groups for targeting and intrusive questioning merely because he dislikes their message and fears their political influence? 

Now that is a “threat to democracy.”

The Cruz Apology

I am sure you watched at least part of the presidential debates this week. If not, you missed perhaps the best debate in political history. Never before have there been so many talented and capable people in one room arguing their platform for the highest office in the world. In the course of this debate, a reference that Ted Cruz had made earlier in the month to New York Values, as though to coin a new phrase, was given by Ted Cruz. He backed it up when asked during the debate. It gave an opportunity for Donald Trump to respond in a most profound and respectful way, but in the end called Cruz’s statement insulting.

And, so Friday night on the Sean Hannity program, Ted Cruz offered his apology. Word for word, it went like this.:

“ Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio have all demanded an apology. I’m happy to apologize:

I apologize to the millions of New Yorkers who have been let down by liberal politicians in that state.

I apologize to the hard working men and women of the state of New York who have been denied jobs because Governor Cuomo won’t allow fracking. Even though there had been many high paying jobs just south in Pennsylvania, New Yorkers are denied the ability to provide for their families.

I apologize to all the pro-life and pro-marriage and pro-second amendment New Yorkers who were told by Governor Cuomo that they have no place in New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.

I apologize to all the small businesses who have been driven out of New York city by crushing taxes and regulations.

I apologize to the millions of unborn children, many African-American and Hispanic, whose lives have been taken by politicians who relentlessly promote abortion on demand with no limitations.

I apologize to all of the African-American children who Mayor de Blasio tried to throw out of their charter schools that were providing a lifeline to the American Dream.

I apologize to the people of New York who are offended when the New York Daily News lambastes anyone who prays for victims of violence.

I apologize to the people of faith who are ridiculed and insulted by the New York media.

And I apologize to all the cops and the firefighters and 9/11 heroes who had no choice but to stand and turn their backs on Mayor de Blasio, because Mayor de Blasio over and over again stands with the looters and criminals rather than the brave men and women of the law.

And to the millions of conservatives–working men and women in New York, with common sense values, trapped by the failures of your political leaders–I am glad to tell you, help us on the way. 2016, like 1980, will bring America back.”

I agree with Ted Cruz. I have been to New York. I have been shocked my entire life at the behavior and the voting record of New York. The Crime syndicates that have come out of New York make the Europeans look like choir boys. The corruption in politics is so deep and so wide that it staggers the mind.

I watched in horror as Loretta Lynch took a pass on indicting a highly documented $2 billion criminal operation inside HSBC Bank in her own Suffolk county when she was a US attorney, and then gaping at the CSPAN broadcast when the Senate approved her as the new Attorney General. No sensible person would believe she did this on her own, or without being compensated in some way. Sure. Let the money go free, and I will make you Attorney General.

She is owned by whoever gave her that order. We the people are owned by whoever gave her that order. Our liberty and justice are owned by whoever gave her that order. The very check and balance that would keep evil out of the People’s House has been rolled over and raped by the crime boss at the head of the Washington DC crime syndicate. We can call the sheriff, but he is a zombie too.

Ted Cruz was right. He sees the values of the city of New York for what they are. He coined it, and we the people understand what he means. We see it every day, or a type and a shadow of it

in our own State houses across the country. The example of treachery and graft has been followed in every city in America. Behind the lights there is a special darkness. Once you have been blinded and dazzled by the glitz and the color, you cannot see the strangle hold about to overtake you. Just as you are ready to clap your hands or blow your party horn, your breath is taken from you, just because you were weak and unsuspecting. New York is a special place with a special street life that requires a special persona. A New York persona. A New York value.

Gun Control: A Call to Arms

One of a growing number of rural and big-city law enforcement officials who openly encourages responsible gun ownership, Judd believes guns allow citizens to defend themselves when police cannot.

“If you are foolish enough to break into someone’s home, you can expect to be shot in Polk County,” Judd said in a statement after a homeowner shot a would-be home invader earlier this month. “It’s more important to have a gun in your hand than a cop on the phone."

Such full-throated embrace of the Second Amendment as a crime-fighting tool isn't confined to red states like Florida.

“I want as many law-abiding citizens to arm themselves in this county as we can get."

- Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke

One California police chief is backing teachers in his district packing heat. Detroit Police Chief James Craig has been a leader in urging his community to arm itself. A Maryland sheriff is working with the state’s general assembly to try to make it easier for citizens to obtain handgun permits.

In the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence’s most recent ranking of states with the strongest gun laws, California (1), Maryland (4) and Michigan (15) ranked near the top of the pack.

Some gun rights advocates say terror attacks at home and abroad have contributed to a change in attitudes about gun ownership among community members and authorities, even in locales historically hostile towards the Second Amendment.

“That has helped play into it, and there’s no doubt the active shooter scenario has, too,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. “You’re seeing people say, ‘How do you respond?’”

The answer varies based on where you live, and how your law enforcement leaders are selected.

Police chiefs are typically appointed by mayors, and their politics tend to line up with whoever chose them. Sheriffs, in contrast, are voted into office and in some cases espouse values of a constituency that is growing ever-more pro-gun.

“Historically, sheriffs have been very pro-gun rights,” Gottlieb told FoxNews.com. “But they’ve stepped out of the box and they’re now publicly making it known that firearms are good for self-defense.”

In Oklahoma, Garvin County Sheriff Larry Rhodes and Creek County Sheriff John Davis have each recently reduced costs associated with getting a gun license. Davis is also keeping administrative offices open longer on weekends to allow more people to apply.

“As a result of the ever-increasing violence being committed upon the American citizen and the current state of our country, I encourage each citizen of Creek County who is legally able to fully utilize their Second Amendment right ‘to keep and bear arms,’ as legally prescribed by the Oklahoma Defense Act,” Davis said in a statement.

Rhodes said his plan made simple fiscal sense.

Marion County Sheriff Chris Blair, who has said, “If you are certified to carry a gun, I would like to encourage you to do so.” (Marion County Sheriff’s Office)

“The benefits of people getting their license, carrying lawfully, certainly outweigh the money I would lose,” he told KFOR.

In Florida, several sheriffs are playing the role of pitchman for an armed populace.

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey has told citizens they must be “that first line of defense,” according to Florida Today. Marion County Sheriff Chris Blair told the Tampa Tribune, “If you are certified to carry a gun, I would like to encourage you to do so.”

In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke is one of the more visible pro-gun faces.

“I want as many law-abiding citizens to arm themselves in this county as we can get so that I have the partner that I need to beat back this sort of violence,” Clarke said during an interview on “Hannity” last week.

The attitude of sheriffs like Clarke and Judd is, at least in-part, a response to the attitudes of the people they serve.

“There’s no doubt at this point it’s consumer-driven to a large extent,” Gottlieb said. “Because they’re elected, they have to make their constituents happy. We’ve seen a record number of firearms sold. And people come in to get permits to carry, and you want to be customer-service friendly, and you want to make it easier – or you might not get re-elected.”

The number of concealed handgun permits soared from 4.6 million in 2007 to 12.8 million in 2015, according to the Crime Prevention Research Center. Those numbers match an evolution in the general public’s attitude toward guns. Just 35 percent of respondents in an August 2000 Gallup poll said they felt safer with a gun in the house. That rose to 42 percent in 2004, 47 percent in 2006 and 63 percent in 2014.

“There is momentum in the country for expanding the right to carry,” New York University Law Professor James Jacobs told FoxNews.com. “But the people who are leading the charge on gun control, they say momentum is changing in their direction. There seems to be a real disconnect here in terms of peoples’ perceptions of what the trends are.”

That uncertainty of the public’s attitude could be the reason for the mixed messages emanating from some police chiefs in big cities.

Washington D.C. Chief of Police Cathy Lanier made a seemingly pro-Second Amendment statement when she was interviewed by “60 Minutes” in November on the topic of what citizens can do during mass shootings.

“If you’re in a position to try and take the gunman down, to take the gunman out, it’s the best option for saving lives before police can get there,” she said.

Still, at the time of the interview Lanier had approved just 48 concealed carry licenses during a year’s span and had rejected about 80 percent of all applicants.

But Fordham law professor Nicholas Johnson views Lanier’s changing rhetoric as potentially significant.

“This is a policy question that has lots of other players involved,” Johnson told FoxNews.com. “You would suspect that what police chiefs say has to some degree been vetted by their political superiors.

"I don’t think this is a signal of an immediate sea change among big city politicos," Johnson added, "but I think it’s promising in terms of the recognition of the realities people are now coming to terms with.”

Why Cancer Screening Costs Lives

An extremely important new study published in the British Medical Journal titled, “Why cancer screening has never been shown to “save lives”—and what we can do about it , ” confirms something we have been reporting upon at GreenMedInfo.com since our inception, namely, cancer screening has not lived up to its long held promise of “saving lives” because disease-specific reductions in mortality do not equate to reductions in overall mortality. Worse, in some cases overall mortality actually increased because of screening. 

In the new study, Vinay Prasad and colleagues, argue that the real benchmark for the success of any cancer screening program is if the “early stage” cancers being diagnosed and treated actually result in a reduction in the overall mortality.

For instance, we have reported extensively on the widespread misclassification of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) as a bono fide malignant cancer, as well as its epidemic level   overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Tens of fhousands of women are diagnosed each year with these so-called “early stage breast cancers,” even though the National Cancer Institute itself acknowledges it should be classified as a benign or indolent lesions of epithelial origin. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study in 2012 shows that approximately 1.3 million women were diagnosed with DCIS in the past 30 years, with most receiving either mastectomy, lumpectomy, radiation, chemotherapy, or some combination thereof. Ironically, many of these women ardently believe that their lives were “saved” by the screening and treatment, succumbing to the biomedical equivalent of Stockholm syndrome where identifying with the ‘aggressor’ becomes palliative. In reality, most suffered irreparable harm not from the “cancer,” but from both the psychological and physical effects of being wrongly diagnosed and treated. If the end point were not breast cancer specific mortality (‘invasive’ breast cancer has not declined but increased with screening, indicating overdiagnosis), but overall mortality, it is likely that these DCIS diagnosed women’s lives were significantly truncated because of screening programs; at the very least, the quality of their lives would have been significantly negatively impacted.

Much of the damage, pain, and suffering associated with over-medicalization could have been avoided if public health advocates and private industry promoters of screening programs had realized that reducing the risk of cancer in one bodily location — the breast, the colon, the lung, the thyroid — does not necessarily translate into a reduction in mortality risk everywhere else. It is this meme-plex of medically-reinforced ignorance which drives the many disease-specific, multi-billion dollar, cause-marketing campaigns, like the heavily pinkwashed “Breast Cancer Awareness” campaign, which increasingly the public is acknowledging to be a highly unethical money-making scheme.

The article summarizes the problem associated with confusing disease specific with overall mortality reduction, succinctly:

Despite growing appreciation of the harms of cancer screening,1 2 3 advocates still claim that it “saves lives.”4 This assertion rests, however, on reductions in disease specific mortality rather than overall mortality.

Using disease specific mortality as a proxy for overall mortality deprives people of information about their chief concern: reducing their risk of dying.5 6 Although some people may have personal reasons for wanting to avoid a specific diagnosis, the burden falls on providers to provide clear information about both disease specific and overall mortality and to ensure that the overall goal of healthcare—to improve quantity and quality of life—is not undermined.7

In this article we argue that overall mortality should be the benchmark against which screening is judged and discuss how to improve the evidence upon which screening rests.”

And so, without the proper benchmark or end point, all the educational and fund-raising efforts going towards “reducing deaths” or “saving lives” from breast, prostate, lung, skin, brain, [insert body part], become misleading, if not overtly propagandist in nature.

Indeed, the extant scientific evidence itself reveals that at best the present disease specific agenda for “cancer prevention” is pseudo-scientific. In the section of the study subtitled, “Why cancer screening might not reduce overall mortality,” the authors summarize what the literature reveals on the topic:

Discrepancies between disease specific and overall mortality were found in direction or magnitude in seven of 12 randomised trials of cancer screening.8 Despite reductions in disease specific mortality in the majority of studies, overall mortality was unchanged or increased. In cases where both mortality rates were reduced the improvement was larger in overall mortality than in disease specific mortality. This suggests an imbalance in non-disease specific deaths, which warrants examination and explanation. A systematic review of meta-analyses of cancer screening trials found that three of 10 (33%) showed reductions in disease specific mortality and that none showed reductions in overall mortality.9

The implications of this are profound.

As we reported previously with Anjelina Jolie’s decision to have her breasts and ovaries prophylactically removed, ostensibly to “reduce her risk of dying,” removing healthy body parts to prevent disease-specific mortality is unlikely to reduce the overall risk of dying. And yet, the “Jolie effect” is a well established phenomena. Her decision was lauded the world over as courageous and  an “evidence-based” precautionary step, with tens of thousands of women (and some men) following suit. We hope the new BMJ study raises a flag of true caution for those who may habitually and uncritically follow the celebrity-centric herd mentality.

The significant harms of screening overdiagnosis and overtreatment extend to men as well. For instance, aggressive prostate screening programs over the past few decades have resulted in the

removal and/or irradiation of millions of men’s prostates. A 2004 study found that an astounding 200,000 men are being diagnosed annually with prostate cancer.1 Tragically, the 2013 National Cancer Institute report referenced above also found that so-called “early stage prostate cancer,” high grade intraepithelial prostatic neoplasia (HGPIN), is also essentially a benign lesion within prostatic epithelial tissue, not unlike DCIS in women’s breasts. In other words, millions of men were diagnosed with a potentially lethal “pre-cancer” or “early stage cancer” they never had.

As an aside, it should be noted that even in the case of lesions of true concern for malignancy, there is always hope. Cancer is not an inexorably lethal, genetic mutation-driven process that happens in an environmental, nutritional, and psycho-spiritual/emotional vacuum. Instead of viewing it as the biological equivalent of a terrorist, and cutting, burning, and poisoning the target tissue (and, collaterally, the entire body of the host), we need to abandon the warfare model of allopathic medicine and adopt one that focuses on targeting cancer stem cells in non-toxic ways, looking at carcinogenesis through the lens of the informational dysregulation of genetic and epigenetic pathways in the cell; informational “disease” in contradistinction to physiochemically-based disease is, of course, more prone to being reversed. Cancer, in this view, can be halted in its tracks, and even regressed, assuming that, along with informational corrections (e.g. “nanopharmacological” approaches like homeopathy, “energy healing,” high quality food (which is also information-containing)), the tumor microenvironment can be adjusted back to healthier conditions through detoxification, lifestyle modifications, mind-body interventions, and targeted, “high dose” nutritional support.

The new study explained how prostate screening programs have created “off target” deaths, primarily through the high rate of false positives, overdiagnosis of non-harmful cancers (e.g. HGPIN), and detection of incidental findings (i.e. unintentionally discovered conditions):

For example, prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing yields numerous false positive results, which contribute to over one million prostate biopsies a year.12Prostate biopsies are associated with serious harms, including admission to hospital and death.12 13 Moreover, men diagnosed with prostate cancer are more likely to have a heart attack or commit suicide in the year after diagnosis or to die of complications of treatment for cancers that may never have caused symptoms.12 13

Shockingly, PSA-based prostate screening has been found to have a false positive rate of about 75%.2 Obviously, given this finding, there is nothing specific at all about the prostate “specific” antigen test, which is why the United States Preventive Services Task Force now strongly recommends against it.

How the Public Is Misled Into Believing “Screening Saves Lives”

As we have explored in previous writings, such as “The Dark Side of Breast Cancer Awareness Month” and “A DIRE WARNING: The Cancer Industry Owns The Media And

Your Mind,” the public is intentionally misled into believing a priori cancer screening saves lives even when no real, independent scientific evidence exists to support it.

The new study reveals just how truly inflated the public’s expectations have become:

A systematic review has shown that the public has an inflated sense of the benefits and discounted sense of the harms of mammography screening, the cervical smear test, and PSA screening.  In one study 68% of women thought that mammography would lower their risk of getting breast cancer, 62% thought that screening at least halved the rate of breast cancer, and 75% thought that 10 years of screening would prevent 10 breast cancer deaths per 1000 women. Even the most optimistic estimates of screening do not approach these numbers. The most recent Cochrane review of randomised controlled trials of PSA screening failed to show a reduction in disease specific death. The Cochrane review of mammography did not show reduced breast cancer deaths when adequately randomised trials were analysed. 

Advocates of screening have emphasised its benefits, sometimes verging on fear mongering.  Others, including us, think that shared decision making should be the focus. But as long as we are unsure of the mortality benefits of screening we cannot provide people with the information they need to make an informed choice. We must be honest about this uncertainty.

A summary of the Swiss medical board’s decision not to recommend mammography shows that for every 1000 women who undergo screening one breast cancer death is averted (from five to four), while non-breast cancer deaths either remain at 39 or may increase to 40.  If non-breast cancer deaths remain the same, a woman must weigh net benefit against harms. If screening increases non-breast cancer deaths to 40, women would simply be trading one type of death for another, at the cost of serious morbidity, anxiety, and expense. Women should be told that to date, with over 600 000 women studied, there is no clear evidence of a reduction in overall mortality with mammography screening.”

The public’s uncritical trust in screening programs help keep hidden the significant harm they produce; harms that are further obfuscated by industry-sponsored research. The study cites the fact that, “of 57 studies [reviewed] only 7% quantified overdiagnosis and just 4% reported the rate of false positive results.” They also found that, “When researchers do examine the harms of screening the results are typically sobering”:

False positive results on breast cancer screening have been associated with psychosocial distress as great as a breast cancer diagnosis 6 months after the event. False positive results affect over 60% of women undergoing screening mammography for a decade or more, and 12-13% of all men who have undergone three or four screening rounds with PSA. In the NLST [National Lung Screening Trial] 39.1% of people had at least one positive test result, of which 96.4% were false positives.

Overdiagnosis affected 18% of people diagnosed with lung cancer on low dose CT in the NLST, and researchers have found that as many as one in three diagnoses of invasive breast cancer (or one in two for invasive cancer and carcinoma in situ) by mammography constitute overdiagnosis. These numbers are broadly equivalent to those found with most major screening tests.”

There are also well-known, though rarely acknowledged, harms associated with the screening technologies themselves. For instance, x-ray mammography uses a particular type of gamma radiation that has been found to have as much as a six fold increased carcinogenicity. Another example is CT scans. It has been estimated that .4% of all cancers in the U.S. are caused by them. Clearly cancer screening programs that rely on intrinsically carcinogenic diagnostic technologies (as well as carcinogenic treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy) must be halted if they can not actually be proven to “save lives,” which, I believe, the study clearly demonstrates.

The study concludes, powerfully:

We encourage healthcare providers to be frank about the limitations of screening—the harms of screening are certain, but the benefits in overall mortality are not. Declining screening may be a reasonable and prudent choice for many people. Providers should also encourage participation in open studies.

We call for higher standards of evidence, not to satisfy an esoteric standard, but to enable rational, shared decision making between doctors and patients. As Otis Brawley, chief scientific and medical officer of the American Cancer

Society, often states: “We must be honest about what we know, what we don’t know, and what we simply believe.”