Brownstone Institute
Listen to the Kids

From the Brownstone Institute
BY
People often ask me why I still care about school closures and other covid restrictions that harmed a generation of children. “Schools are open now,” they say. “It’s enough already.”
No. It’s not. The impact to this generation of children continues. And so do many of the restrictions impacting young people.
It was just this week that New York City public schools lifted the ban on unvaccinated parents entering public school buildings.
This meant a parent who was unvaccinated could not attend a parent-teacher conference in person. Or watch their child play basketball. They could, however, attend a Knicks’ game at Madison Square Garden with 20,000 other basketball fans. This rule seemed designed specifically to punish children.
Colleges are some of the last places requiring vaccination — even boosters, in some instances, like at Fordham University. These young adults are least at risk from covid, most at risk from vaccine-induced myocarditis and are some of the last Americans required to be boosted. It makes no sense.
Rather than do my own rant about why I still care about the lasting harm done to children, I’d like to let the kids and parents speak for themselves.
The teens and parents cited below are all featured in a documentary film I’m making. I want their stories told. This all needs to be documented because the narrative is already shifting:
“Yeah schools shouldn’t have been closed so long but how could we have known! It’s over now. Time to move on.”
“Let’s declare an amnesty. We need to forgive the hard calls people needed to make without enough information. Good people did the best they could!”
“The open-schoolers may have been right but for the wrong reasons so they’re still terrible people. And besides it’s not a competition! No gloating! Let’s focus on the future!”
But it’s not over. The kids are not alright. And there is insufficient focus on how to reintegrate them and help them recover. This article, from the New York Times on January 27, lays bare the harms done, the possible lifetime effects, and the lack of attention and care being paid to helping kids recover:


I will continue to advocate for them, to tell their stories, to try to get them the help they still need and deserve. And to ensure this never happens again.
It’s time we listened to the children and parents impacted.
Garrett “Bam” Morgan, Jr., high school student. Astoria Queens, NY:
“I was so upset. Why is it that someone who pays for school and has more money to throw around . . .why do they get to play football? And I don’t. What is the difference? Because we’re playing the same sport. It’s not like they’re playing something totally drastically different. It’s the same sport. We’re doing the same things, and they get to practice, they get to play. And I don’t, and for me it was just like, why? Why me? Why my teammates? Why is it that we don’t get to have fun? Why is it that we don’t get to play the sport that we love too? How am I going to get into a college if I don’t have a junior year of football?
“I was gaining weight. And I was getting in a place where I had to start thinking of alternatives to football, thinking of life without football. Then I would try and go out and play with my friends, towards 2021 when it started to become, okay, you can somewhat go out, just stay socially distanced. But by that time, the damage was done, right?”
Scarlett Nolan, high school student. Oakland, CA:
“I didn’t make any new friends. No one did. I mean, how could you, you’re just talking to literal black boxes on a computer.”
“I don’t wanna blame it all on school closures, but it’s been a really, really big thing for me. That’s changed my life so much. That’s not how it’s supposed to go in school. You’re supposed to have school. It’s supposed to be your life. School is supposed to be your life from kindergarten to senior year. And then you go to college if you want, but that’s supposed to be your life. That’s your education. You have your friends there, you find yourself there. You find how you wanna be when you grow up there. And without that, I lost who I was completely. Everything who I was. I wasn’t that person that worked to get straight A’s anymore. I didn’t care. I was just sad.”
Ellie O’Malley, Scarlett’s mom. Oakland, CA:
“She had finished her eighth grade. She had missed everything. She’d missed her graduation. She’d missed this trip to Washington. And then she started her new school [high school] on-line. [She was] very disengaged, never saw people’s faces, no one had the camera on. I mean it was school in like the thinnest most loose [sense] of the word. For the most part it was pretty dire and terrible. By January 2021, she really just no longer had the motivation to do it. She wasn’t getting out of bed. She was really depressed at that point.”
“A lot of it was just mental health, suicidal tendencies, self-harm. The first time Scarlett went to hospital, she kind of had a bit of a nervous breakdown. I’d never experienced that. She was screaming and clawing at herself. And we were like, what do we do? What do we do?”
Miki Sedivy, a mom who lost her teenaged daughter Hannah to an accidental drug overdose in 2021. Lakewood, CO:
“You’re taking children out of their natural environment of playing with each other, interacting socially and learning coping skills by interacting with other children. And when you take all of that away and all of a sudden these kids are in isolation, they mentally don’t know how to handle it. We can go [through] short times of isolation, but we’re talking a year and a half. [That’s] of a lot of isolation.”
Jennifer Dale. Her 11-year-old daughter has Down syndrome. Lake Oswego, OR.
“The school closures were devastating for her. I don’t think I realized it at first. At first I thought it was safer. Lizzie, a child with Down syndrome, was probably more susceptible to a respiratory virus. She’s had more respiratory issues than her siblings. So at first I thought it was the right thing to do As time went on, I don’t think people realized how isolated she was. She doesn’t have a means of reaching out and saying Hey, how you doing? I miss you. I wanna see you.”
“What Lizzie really needs is to look at her peers and how are they zipping up their jacket, or how are they coming in in the morning and making a food selection for lunch. That peer interaction and that peer role modeling is some of the best learning that my daughter can experience. But that role modeling is gone. When you’re online she doesn’t get to see what the other kids are doing. She wasn’t out seeing people. Nobody knew that she was struggling. It was all in our house. It was impossible for a young person with cognitive delays to understand why, why was the world suddenly closed? Why suddenly could I not see my friends? Why am I only seeing them on a screen and how do I interact?”
Am’Brianna Daniels, high school student. San Francisco, CA.
“As time moved on, like later in the year, I started to realize I really wanted to be back in school. I was 24/7 [on Zoom] and I think that’s what took a toll on me. . . I actually stayed doing Zoom in my living room that way I wasn’t tempted to fall asleep or anything. This did not help. I still did fall asleep sometimes.”
“I had like very little motivation to actually get up, get on Zoom and attend class. And then I think coming up on the year anniversary of the initial lockdown and then the lack of social interaction is kind of what took a toll on my mental health since I am such a social person. And so it really got to a point where I was just not going to class.”
“And it got really bad to the point where I was either over-eating or just not eating very much, and I was kind of dehydrated during my depressive moods. And eventually I did get in contact with the therapist. It helped a little bit, but not to the extent that I would have hoped.
Nelson Ropati, high school student. San Francisco, CA.
“I just didn’t like staring at a screen for an hour for class. I just couldn’t do it. I would fall asleep or just lose focus easily.”
“It wasn’t really mandatory to go to class. So I ain’t gonna lie. I didn’t really go to class the rest of my junior year when covid hit and they kind of just passed everyone.”

Lorna Ropati, Nelson’s mom. San Francisco, CA.
“I felt bad for him because then that’s when he started doing nothing else, but just like eating. I said you’re not hungry. It’s just a habit. Don’t go to the fridge. He just mainly stayed home and did whatever he could through his on-line courses and just stayed home. I think he didn’t go out of the house at one point for six months. He didn’t go nowhere. He never even stepped out of the house. So that was not good. I said, you need to get out, you need to stop being in this little shell and bubble that you’re in. It’s okay. You can go out.”
Jim Kuczo, lost his son Kevin to suicide in 2021. Fairfield, CT.
“Well we were very concerned because of the grades — that was the tip off. But again, it was hard because you can’t go out with your friends. We were concerned. We asked the guidance counselor and the therapist, is he suicidal? They said no.”
“You cannot treat kids like prisoners and expect them to be okay. I think that we, our leaders, put most of the burden on children.”
“I went through lots of guilt — what did I do to cause my son to kill himself.”
Kristen Kuczo, Kevin’s mom. Fairfield, CT.
“He [Kevin] wound up not playing football and then we kind of just started noticing he just was doing less and less. His grades were starting to drop. Really the biggest red flag for me was the grades dropping.”
“The day after he took his life, I was supposed to be having a meeting with the guidance counselors and we were looking into getting him a 504, which would allow him extra time to do things and possibly on exams. We were pursuing that as a possibility to try to help support him in the school setting. Because he had spoken to us about having trouble focusing and feeling like he just couldn’t do it.”
“All these doctors, they weren’t taking anybody. They weren’t taking patients because they were full. They didn’t have any space to take on new clients. It was shocking. So I didn’t have an appointment with a psychiatrist until about a week and a half after Kevin passed.”

I’ll leave you with a few words from Garrett Morgan, Jr. He’s struggling to get his life back on track. To get his grades back up. To lose the 80 pounds he gained. To get back in shape. To play football again. To get that college scholarship.
He’s a fighter. And I have confidence he’ll succeed. But he won’t forget what he and his peers lost, what was taken from them, and how much tougher his road ahead is because of it.


“This is something that my generation will not forget. This is also something that my generation will not forgive. The memories that we have lost, the experiences that we have lost, the skills that we have lost because of covid. And now we have to regain that and go out into the world. It is going to be something that will define us.”
Reposted from the author’s Substack
Brownstone Institute
Counting Coup: The Great Comeuppance For The Deep State

From the Brownstone Institute
By
It is, yet again, fashionable amongst the dwindling tribe of progressives to yell loudly that what is happening now in DC is a coup.
Donald Trump (and his Muskian minions) are running roughshod over the government, destroying norms and constitutional precedents and being very rude about it in the process.
Despite being elected on a platform of doing exactly that only a few months ago, the deep and/or woke state (before woke became a cool and easy way to grift graft billions, the deep state didn’t really care about things like trans whale rights, by the way) and its well-credentialed but poorly educated horde of government job dependent supporters are crying – literally – foul.
Elon Musk is unelected. You have no right. This is not a dictatorship. How dare you change anything that has worked so well for us for decades? At least slow it down. (Note – if you really thought you were being murdered you would yell “Stop!,” not “Slow down,” so maybe even progwokes get it, at least at a subconscious level.)
This is a coup, they yell.
Well, no it’s not. The nation – eyes wide open – elected Trump to do exactly what he is doing right now, whirlwinding through federal agencies to end the generational oligarchical scam.
Note – Joe Biden theoretically was elected to bring normalcy and decency to DC only to see his administration become a corrupt cavalcade of lies. In fact, unlike Trump, Biden did exactly the opposite of what he said (or mumbled or read) during the campaign that he was going to do as president.
If a coup involves false pretense, then look no further than Delaware.
Obviously, all actual coups involve change, but not all change is by definition a coup.
The concepts are not transitive.
And everything that has been done so far is well within the purview of the president – in theory, Joe Biden could have done everything Trump is doing now, if his handlers had let him or if it had ever occurred to him to do so.
What is happening is not a coup – it’s basic reform. It’s trying to sort out the absurdities of government spending and programs and to shut down the most egregious; case in point the USAID.
Vast billions slushed through the agency (one hopes the ludicrously named, cartoonishly-villainous National Endowment for Democracy is next) under the cover of political correctness and/or expediency on its way around the globe, most of which ended up in odd pockets of strongmen and politicians and “civil society” power-base builders who would then turn around and support the agency and its many many QUANGOs and foundations and such.
The money was not about helping actual real people – it was about creating an international network that could be called upon to do the bidding of the American intelligence community and the globalist socialist socialite statists, now one and the same. When you pay people they will pay you back, however they can, from writing op-eds to going on MSNBC to railing against populism – whatever you need at the moment.
That being said, there is one possible interpretation of the idea of a coup that could have more than an element of truth to it – counting coup.
Counting coup was a Plains Indian warrior tradition in that you didn’t necessarily have to kill your opponent in a battle but merely touch them – essentially bonk them on the head – and get away unscathed. That humiliated your opponent and counted – more than counted – as a moral victory (in fact, amongst the Crow – at least – it was one of four tasks that had to be completed in order to become a war chief.)
It was bravery personified.
And it can be said that Trump, Musk, and his hyper-caffeinated hackers are doing that with every move they make – counting coup.
Millions for gender-diverse Serbians?
Bonk on the head.
Paying global media types to twist the truth to benefit the interests of the deep state, including pushing to prolong the war in Ukraine and even possibly support the impeachment of Trump?
Bonk on the head.
Trying to help overthrow foreign governments?
Bonk on the head.
Government DEI programs?
Bonk on the head.
Paying for the BBC, climate change silliness, and Iraqi puppet shows?
Bonk, bonk, bonk on the head.
Not only is this not an actual coup, this is not even revenge or retribution but long and desperately needed reform.
And while counting coup was a way to humiliate an opponent it is not clear if that is the current intent, though one can be sure there is more than a little snickering glee amongst those involved in the process.
What is happening now is the tearing down – from the inside – of the ossified calcified oppressive state that has built up over the last 40 years.
The deep state is finally getting its much-deserved comeuppance and it may be happening just in time.
Bonk.
Author
Agriculture
How USAID Assisted the Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture

From the Brownstone Institute
By
A recent essay titled “The Real Purpose of Net Zero” by Jefferey Jaxon posited that Europe’s current war against farmers in the name of preventing climate change is ultimately designed to inflict famine. Jaxon is not speculating on globalist motives; he is warning humanity of a rapidly unfolding reality that is observable in the perverse lies against cows, denigration of European farmers as enemies of the Earth, and calls by the WHO, WEF, and UN for a plant-based diet dependent entirely on GMOs, synthetic fertilizers, and agrichemicals.
Revelations about the evil doings of the Orwellian-monikered “United States Agency of International Development” (USAID) reveal a roadmap to totalitarian control unwittingly funded by America’s taxpaying proles. USAID’s clandestine machinations have long focused on controlling local and global food supplies as “soft colonization” by multinational chemical, agricultural, and financial corporations. European farmers revolting against climate, wildlife, and animal rights policies are harbingers of this tightening globalist noose.
The roots of the current globalist plan to “save humanity from climate change” link directly to the infamous Kissinger Report, which called to control world food supplies and agriculture as part of a globalist collaboration between nation-states and NGOs to advance US national security interests and “save the world” from human overpopulation using “fertility reduction technologies.” Kissinger’s 1974 Report was created by USAID, the CIA, and various federal agencies, including the USDA.
Fast forward to 2003, the Iraq War justified using fear-mongering propaganda about weapons of mass destruction and neo-conservative malarky about rescuing the Iraqi people. The US-led occupation of Iraq became a rapacious profiteering smorgasbord for colonizing corporations husbanded by USAID. Iraq is heir to the birthplace of human civilization, made possible by early Mesopotamian agriculture: many of the grains, fruits, and vegetables that now feed the world were developed there. Iraq’s farmers saved back 97% of their seed stocks from their own harvests before the US invasion. Under Paul Bremer, Rule 81 (never fully implemented) sought to institute GMO cropping and patented seed varieties, as Cargill, Monsanto, and other corporations descended upon the war-ravaged nation using American tax dollars and USAID.
That playbook was more quietly implemented during the Ukraine War, once again orchestrated by USAID. Before the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe, prohibiting GMO technologies and restricting land ownership to Ukrainians. Within months of US intervention, USAID assisted in the dismantling of these protections in the name of “land reforms,” free markets, financial support, improved agricultural efficiency, and rescuing the Ukrainian people. In just two years, over half of Ukraine’s farmland became the property of foreign investors. GMO seeds and drone technology were “donated” by Bayer Corporation, and companies such as GMO seed-seller Syngenta and German chemical manufacturer BASF became the dominant agricultural “stakeholders” in war-torn Ukraine. Russia may withdraw, but Ukraine’s foreign debts, soil degradation, and soft colonization will remain.
The UN, WTO, WHO, and WEF all conspire to peddle a false narrative that cows and peasant farmers are destroying the planet, and that chemical-dependent GMO monocropping, synthetic fertilizers, and patented fake meats and bug burgers must be implemented post haste (by force if necessary) to rescue humanity. The argument that pesticides and synthetic fertilizers (manufactured from natural gas, aka methane) are salvific is patently false. They are, however, highly profitable for chemical companies like Bayer, Dow, and BASF.
Jefferey Jaxon is exactly correct. The Netherlands committed to robust agricultural development following a Nazi embargo that deliberately inflicted mass famine following their collaboration with Allied Forces in Operation Market Garden. France boasts the highest cow population in all of Europe. Ireland’s culture is tightly linked to farming as part of its trauma during the (British-assisted) Irish Potato Famine. The corporate/NGO cabal now uprooting and targeting farmers in these nations and across the EU in the name of staving off climate change and preserving wildlife is a direct outcropping of Kissinger’s grand dystopian scheme launched through USAID in 1974.
Americans watch European farmer protests from afar, largely oblivious that most all of US agriculture was absorbed by the Big Ag Borg generations ago. Currency control linked to a (political, environmental, and economic) social credit scorecard promises the fruition of Kissinger’s demonic plan: “Control the food, control the people.”
Modern humans suffer a double hubris that blinds them to the contemplation of the truth of Jaxon’s hypothesis: a cultish trust in technology, coupled with an irrational faith in their self-perceived moral superiority to past civilizations (Wendell Berry calls this “historical pride”). Yet, as long as mankind has had the capacity to harm another for personal gain, humans have devised ways to control food for power or profit. Siege warfare generally depended on starving defenders of castle walls into submission.
Even if globalist food control proposals are well-intentioned, a monolithic, monocultured, industrial-dependent worldwide food system is a lurking humanitarian disaster. Berry observed:
In a highly centralized and industrialized food-supply system there can be no small disaster. Whether it be a production “error” or a corn blight, the disaster is not foreseen until it exists; it is not recognized until it is widespread.
The current push to dominate global food production using industrial systems is the cornerstone of complete globalist dominion over all of humanity. The “Mark of the Beast” without which no American will buy or sell goods – including guns, bullets, or factory-grown hamburgers and cricket patties – is mere steps away. Mr. Jaxon is correct that these leaders “know these basic historical and current facts,” and that “[f]armers are becoming endangered because of government [climate] policy … and it’s being allowed to happen.” USAID has been actively seeding and watering this dystopia for decades.
Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates are as fully cognizant of this fundamental truth as Henry Kissinger was in 1974. USAID has aided all three. Having lost almost all of their small farms over the last century, Americans are well ahead of Europeans in their near-complete dependence on industrial food.
That’s the plan.
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