1,015: In the Land of Oz . . . RFK, Jr., Musk, Hegseth, and the Rest of the Sycophants

OK, so it turns out that 2 weeks is my limit for staying away from writing political blogs. Call me a fool. Actually, it’s a weakness. I guess it’s a combination of genetics and ethnicity. Madame gave me the middle named “Franklin” due to her great love of Roosevelt (which seemingly emersed me in politics from my very my first breath); ); and my Jewish ethnicity, infused me with gobs of guilt. Add them together, and I simply could not stay away from what’s been going on since November 5. Believe me, it’s been like holding my breath to stay away from commenting on ITS Cabinet selections and “non-brain trust” selections over the past several weeks and days. Most of these men and women could easily make a "least experienced, worst presidential selections of all time” list. A high percentage of them are billionaires; most have a systemic aversion to the very programs they are, at least in theory, meant to oversee; virtually all of them share a toadying loyalty that makes a reasonable person want to reach for a strong emetic.

Even before IT and his transition team began announcing the names of those being nominated for his cabinet, he seriously sidestepped the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 by refusing to abide by its requirements. In brief, this act, updated in 2019, requires the 2 major party candidates for POTUS to sign and file with the General Services Administration (GSA) 3 memorandums of understanding (MOUs) which allow an incoming administration to work with the outgoing one to begin an orderly transition process on issues such as providing IT (information technology) services and office space, and permitting the FNY to vet candidates tapped for national security positions. Theses MOUs are typically submitted by September and October before Election Day. Why they did not sign the 3 MOUs is anyone’s guess, although I presume they did not want anyone knowing precisely who was underwriting the transition. In theory - if not in fact - they could be receiving millions or even billions of dollars from the likes of Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, or Kim Jong Un and no one would be the wiser. But then again, there is a distinct downside for the transition team.

Case in point: when advisers to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reached out to the Health and Human Services Department multiple times after the President-Elect tapped him to lead the massive agency, hoping to jumpstart coordination before his takeover in late January. They were rebuffed. Kennedy’s inability to communicate with the agency he may soon manage, is just one consequence of the president-elect’s continued foot-dragging on signing the standard trio of ethics and transparency agreements with the federal government — something his team pledged to do shortly after the election. The more things change, the more they remain the same. At this time 4 years ago, then President-elect Joe Biden and his team experienced a multi-week delay in preparing for their administration due to the President IT’s refusal to concede the 2020 election, thus blocking Biden’s access to government agencies and data, and hampering their work on national security and controlling the then-raging Covid-19 pandemic.

Not being able to properly vet cabinet-level appointees is especially dangerous when it comes to defense and intelligence positions. Some of IT’s Cabinet selections, including Pete Hegseth for Sec. of Defense and from former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence could actually force Republicans to choose between their allegiance to IT and their growing concerns that some of his nominees might not be up to the job or might not be possible to confirm in a narrowly controlled Senate. Former Rep. Gabbard has faced accusations of helping spread Russian propaganda and criticism for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Late last week, Pete Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer and Fox News contributor, huddled with a handful of Republican senators in face-to-face meetings in order for them to get to know him. Earlier on the morning of those meetings, details emerged about a police report from 2017 in which a woman alleged that Hegseth blocked her from leaving a hotel room, took her phone and then sexually assaulted her even though she “remembered saying ‘no’ a lot.” Not too long ago, merely having smoked a joint while in college 20 years ago or not paying withholding taxes on a nanny would have been enough to pull a Cabinet-level appointment. I guess being an alleged sexual predator isn’t such a huge deal in the incoming administration.

Within the world of health, IT’s picks for the top posts are troubling:

Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Dave Weldon, M.D.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Dr. Mehmet Oz, M.D
Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Marty Makary, M.D. and
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, M.D.

A brief comment about the 5 is in keeping at this point. I will leave Mr. Kennedy and Dr. Oz for last, beginning with Dr. Weldon, and then Drs. Makary and Nesheiwat.

Dave Weldon, M.D. (CDC): is a physician who received his M.D. from the University of Buffalo in 1981. He then went on to serve in the United States Army from 1981 to 1987, and practiced general medicine in Florida for a short while. He was a member of Congress, representing Florida’s 15th District from 1995 to 2009. During his years in Congress, Weldon raised concerns about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines, as well as the safety of Gardasil, the vaccine that protects against the papillomavirus virus. He was perhaps best-known for his legislation to force the federal government to review the case of Terri Schiavo, a young woman who was in an irreversible persistent vegetative state (PVS). Despite his medical training - and the vast majority of medical ethicists (myself included) disagreeing with him, Weldon insisted that Mrs. Schiavo was not in a PVS: he believed that Schiavo was not in a vegetative state because, "She responds to verbal stimuli, she attempts to vocalize, she tracks with her eyes, she emotes, she attempts to kiss her father." A self-professed “Christian conservative,” Weldon, like several of IT’s nominees, is devoutly skeptical of vaccine safety . . . a key issue that the CDC deals with on an almost daily basis. Weldon is the first nominee for CDC director who will need to be confirmed by the Senate, due to a law passed in 2022 requiring the role to have such confirmation. In announcing Weldon as his pick for head of the C.D.C., IT said: Americans have lost trust in the CDC and in our Federal Health Authorities who have engaged in censorship, data manipulation, and misinformation. . . . Dave Weldon is a well-trained internist. He’s practiced medicine . . . He doesn’t [seem to] have traditional public health training, but we’ll learn more when he goes through Senate confirmation.” I guess that’s what happens when you don’t have access to proper vetting. Just so long as he will be on the side of Big Pharma, Christian fundamentalists and anti-vaxxers is all that seems to matter to the folks who pull ITs strings.

Marty Markary, M.D. (FDA): Marty Makary is a surgical oncologist (cancer) at Johns Hopkins University and frequent guest on Fox News. He served in the first IT administration, working on issues like surprise medical billing. He shouldn’t face much difficulty in being approved for the top job at the FDA. One issue of note: he’s recently made statements indicating support for RFK Jr’s. “Make America Healthy Again” platform. Earlier this year, Makary appeared alongside Kennedy in a congressional roundtable on health and nutrition, where he criticized federal health agencies for not prioritizing chronic diseases and said "the greatest perpetrator of misinformation has been the United States government with the food pyramid." In announcing his choice of Makary, IT pledged that as head of the FDA, the good doctor would work with Kennedy to "properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our Nation's food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our Nation's youth, so that we can finally address the Childhood Chronic Disease Epidemic." Sounds kind of strange coming from the mouth of a man who has spent a lifetime scarfing down a diet of nothing but MacDonalds faux foods . . .

Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, M.D., ( U.S. Surgeon General): It’s nominee for S.G. is a medical contributor to Fox News and author of of Beyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine, a book described on her website as "a vivid Christian memoir" that recounts her experiences during the pandemic and after. She's also medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent and virtual care centers in New York and New Jersey — experience she has drawn on in selling her own line of vitamin supplements. Unlike many Fox medical commentators, she emphasized on camera the benefits of being vaccinated against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Sec. Designate HHS): Whatever IT and his Project 2025 handlers had in mind in putting forth RFK, Jr’s name for heading up the Department of Health and Human Services is beyond any thinking person’s understanding. And no, it’s not just because he spent years addicted to both heroin (for which he was arrested in South Dakota) and sex; or that acknowledged that what was believed to have been a brain tumor was actually 'a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died'; or that he revealed that he uses testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) in order to have, at age 70, the “ripped” muscle mass of a man at least half his age; or that he suffers from atrial fibrillation (AFIB, irregular heartbeat), which can be fatal; or last but not least, that RFK, Jr. sounds like a raspy frog due to a neurological voice disorder known as spasmodic dysphonia.

If he is confirmed by the Senate, RFK Jr. will will be in charge of a massive portfolio overseeing Americans’ insurance, drugs, medical supplies and food. Once a pioneering environmental activist, RFK, Jr. has, for more than 20 years, been best known for a disproven set of medical conspiracy beliefs, such as:

Linking the childhood vaccine schedule to autism — a claim that has been debunked by scientists all over the world. Kennedy has falsely blamed autism on thimerosal, a compound safely used as a preservative in vaccines, and decried the number of shots on the childhood vaccination schedule.
Falsely calling the corona virus vaccine the “deadliest vaccine ever made.” The vast majority of public health officials and infectious disease specialists have referred to this as “the intentional spread of health disinformation.”
His promoting of raw (e.g. non-pasteurized) milk. In a recent posting on “X” (formerly known as Twitter), he wrote “FDA’s war on public health is about to end. This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can't be patented by Pharma.” There is a reason why milk is pasteurized. Raw milk is unsafe to consume, and both the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC have strongly advised against consuming, it because it can contain dangerous bacteria, such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria. It can also contain viruses, including the H5N1 bird flu virus that is causing an outbreak in dairy cattle and, many predict, could form the basis of the world’s next pandemic.
Taking a page out of the 1950s-era John Birch Society’s playbook, RFK, Jr. urges the removal of fluoride from the nation’s various drinking water systems. (No federal law mandates fluoridation of water supplies. The decision to fluoridate water is typically made by municipal governments, city councils or local water authorities.) But RFK, Jr., Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo (who had a history of controversial public health stances during the COVID-19 pandemic) and other conspiratorialists, have been recommending against adding fluoride to community water supplies, citing inconclusive studies that suggest the practice poses a risk to children’s brains. People of a certain age will recall the Bircher’s contention that putting fluoride in drinking water was part and parcel of the Communist conspiracy to ruin the health of Americans. (n.b. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called fluoridation of drinking water one of the nation's top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century, noting that it effectively prevents tooth decay regardless of a person's socioeconomic status or access to care.)

Mehmet Oz, M.D. (CMS): Founded in 1965, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is a federal agency within the Dept. of Health and Human Services that administers the Medicare program works in partnership with state governments to administer Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and health insurance portability standards. If approved by the United States Senate, Dr. Oz will become the 17th - and by far best-known - administrator of the Center. Dr. Oz is a trained cardiothoracic surgeon (Univ. of Penn.) who first came to public prominence in 1996 when Dr. Oz, along with colleague Dr. Eric Rose received extensive media publicity following their work on a successful heart transplant for Frank Torre, brother of then-New York Yankees manager Joe Torre, during the 1996 World Series, which the Yankees won. Oz loved the publicity. Not too many years passed before he began hosting a television show called Second Opinion With Dr. Oz. Although the show only ran 5 episodes, he came into contact with Oprah Winfrey, who began having him on her nationally syndicated program. Eventually, he became “America’s Doctor.” Over the years, Dr. Oz has made a fortune recommending and selling various herbal, homeopathic and holistic medicines and procedures.

In 2022, Dr. Oz ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, losing the race to John Futterman. During that campaign, Oz was a vocal supporter of privatizing Medicare. According to financial disclosure forms during that race, Oz and his wife own up to $650,000 in stock in UnitedHealth Group and CVS Health, both of which make substantial revenue from Medicare Advantage Plans. If he is to be confirmed, he will likely have to divest himself of these and other stocks or face “conflict of interest” problems.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST:

Recently, the President-elect tapped entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head up an advisory panel called the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, that’s tasked with identifying trillions of dollars in government waste. While IT has not detailed how the entity will operate, or from whence its funding will come, he said in a statement that it would “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies” and “provide advice and guidance from outside of government . . . A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement. “I am confident they will succeed!”

Conventionally, what outsiders can do in the government has been pretty limited. But with IT and Musk both known for pushing boundaries, it’s not clear what “DOGE” will look like, who will fund it and what it may legally do.

The federal code’s primary conflict-of-interest law is a big deterrent to adopting government authority. It bans government employees from participating in government matters where they have a financial stake. But it doesn’t apply to outside contractors or advisers, which could be important to Musk, whose businesses interact with many federal agencies and who would most likely be required to make divestments if he became a federal employee.

If this sounds like something straight out of the mind of Barn Von Munchausen, consider that House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) announced this past Tuesday that there will be a brand new caucus to be called “Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency”, and a new subcommittee called “Delivering on Government Efficiency.” The acronym “DOGE” refers to a once-popular image macro featuring a Shiba Inu dog. The topper is the member of Congress Comer named as the new subcommittee’s Chair . . . . are you ready?

REP. MAJORIE TAYLOR GREENE!

Ciao for now . . .