Throwing more tax dollars at the Pentagon won’t make us safer

 April 15th is tax day — a good day to reflect on how the federal government is spending your money. With all the wars and war talk dominating the DC discourse, from debates about supplying weapons to Ukraine and Israel to talking tough about being able to “win” a war with China, it may not surprise you to learn that the Pentagon is consuming a large and growing share of your tax dollars. If current trends continue, the Pentagon budget could hit $1 trillion or more in the next year or two.

A new analysis from the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies has determined that the average taxpayer pays over $2,900 to support the Pentagon. Over half of that sum — $1,748 — goes to weapons contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (now RTX). 

A good portion of the funds steered to the big arms makers is wasted on cost overruns and performance problems, and, in some cases, outright fraud.

Lockheed Martin’s F-35 aircraft, which was meant to usher in a revolution in air combat when it was first conceived of in the mid-1990s has been plagued with problems from the start. A recent analysis by the Pentagon’s office of independent testing has found that only about 30 percent of the F-35 fleet is mission capable at any given time, prompting the Project on Government Oversight to call it the “part-time fighter aircraft.” That’s a stunning figure for a plane that is slated to cost $1.7 trillion over its lifetime — the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken by the Pentagon.

Other major contractors have not fared much better. Boeing’s V-22 Osprey has been involved in 14 crashes since it entered the force in 2007, resulting in the deaths of 54 service members. The whole fleet was grounded after a fatal crash in Japan last November that left eight people dead. The aircraft, which can take off like a helicopter, then tilt its propellers so it flies like a plane, has had serious technical issues from the outset. A December 2023 analysis by Tara Copp of the Associated Press noted issues ranging from problems with the clutch to questions about whether key parts of the plane are strong enough to withstand the pressures generated by an Osprey in flight. The V-22 was cleared for a return to service in early March, but congressional critics like Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said that their concerns about the aircraft had yet to be answered at the time of the Osprey’s reentry into use.

Then there’s the Air Force’s new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), the Sentinel, which is now projected to cost 37 percent more than original estimates. But despite the cost problems, the administration has given the green-light to go full speed ahead on the program, which is headed by Northrop Grumman.

The real question about the new ICBM is not whether it is going to be affordable, it is whether it is needed at all. Former Defense Secretary William Perry has called it one “of the most dangerous weapons” we have because a president would only have minutes to decide to launch it upon warning of attack, increasing the risks of a nuclear war based on a false alarm. Ultimately, the only way to be safe from nuclear weapons is to eliminate them altogether, but in the meantime a U.S. arsenal composed of submarine-launched ballistic missiles and nuclear-armed bombers is more than adequate to dissuade any nation from attacking the United States.  The $264 billion or more that it would cost to build, deploy and maintain the Sentinel could definitely be put to better use.

At a time when there are urgent national needs to invest in repairing basic infrastructure, promoting public health, addressing climate change and reducing poverty and inequality, we can no longer allow the Pentagon to devour more than half of the federal government’s discretionary budget.  Cracking down on poorly performing contractors and canceling unnecessary weapons programs offers one avenue towards revising our skewed budget priorities.  

The other, larger question that the president, the Congress and the public must address is what role we want the U.S. military to play in the world. Continuing our current approach of seeking global military dominance at the expense of other tools of statecraft has imposed immense human and economic costs while failing to promote peace or stability. Until we craft a more restrained, realistic defense strategy, it will be extremely difficult to roll back the Pentagon’s bloated budget. But given the right strategy, America can be safer for far less than what we currently spend on war, weapons and preparations for war.

William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

https://thehill.com/opinion/4594190-throwing-more-tax-dollars-at-the-pentagon-wont-make-us-safer/

Ed Dowd Rages As 'Govts & Media Continue Pretending Massive Health Crisis Not Going On'

 Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Former Wall Street money manager Ed Dowd is still a skillful number cruncher.  His recently updated and wildly popular book “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023” has been correctly documenting the huge numbers of deaths and injuries caused by the CV19 bioweapon vax. 

Many are waking up to this crime against humanity, but many remain in the dark because the government and Lying Legacy Media (LLM) continue to cover up the worst murder and disability fraud in world history.  Dowd says:

“At this point, it’s overwhelming and has become almost comical...

This is asymmetric information.  So, we have governments and media continuing to pretend a massive health crisis with chronic illness, deaths and disabilities is not going on.  The data would suggest otherwise...

The data we have made public is free, but some people want projections and decision-making ideas. These are things we might end up starting a business from.  I would have never thought we could.  This is what asymmetric information does, and the government and the media are suppressing this information.”

A quick look at the overall casualties from the CV19 vax reveal an unparalleled medical disaster.  Dowd explains:

“I went before Senator Ron Johnson in February to talk about the ‘pandemic scorecard,’ which is abysmal. 

Ever since the CV19 vaccine came on, we have had 1.1 million Americans die excessively, 4 million permanently disabled and another 28 million injured.  It’s 33 million people who have been negatively affected now. 

The question you have to ask is why are these institutions not screaming from the rooftops?  I think the reason why is, it’s all because of the (deadly) vaccine.  It’s all circular, and I think it’s a joke at this point.”

Is the worst over? 

The short answer from Dowd is No. 

Dowd contends, “Let’s just look at the disability data..."

" We surged to a new high in June of 2023.  We have not gone to a new high since.  It kind of backfilled a little bit, but the last two months we have seen back-to-back increases.  This is a called a plateauing effect. 

If it was all clear, I would like to see that number come down.  Unfortunately, it’s not.  

It can start to go back down, or it can have another consolidation and another spurt upward. 

The bad news is it is plateauing at a new high level. 

The good news is it has not gone up to a new level, but if it does, we have problems.”

One big problem Dowd has spotted is an explosion of cancers and, yes, you cannot get the truth about this either.  Dowd says:

“The fact that people will not even say that cancers are on the rise is pretty comical to me.  Doctors were reporting it anecdotally, and now we have the data to prove it.  This is where we are...

In 2022, I said that ‘60,000 millennials died excessively between March of 2021 and February of 2022.  That was a Vietnam War.’  That tweet went viral, and Reuters and AP fact checked me and said no, our experts say that’s not true. 

Now, even the establishment is saying there is excessive all-cause mortality.  So, we are now in a stage where cancers are not rising.  They are now denying that.  The lies are just unreal.”

There is much more in the 36-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with money manager and investment expert Ed Dowd, author of the recently updated book called “Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021, 2022 and 2023”...

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/lies-are-just-unreal-ed-dowd-rages-govts-media-continue-pretending-massive-health-crisis

What Surging AI Demand Means for Electricity Markets

Microsoft’s first energy hire talks the AI boom 

For years and years, utilities in the US haven't seen much growth in electricity demand. The economy is generally mature and has been able to grow even without needing much more electrical power. 

But all that's changing now and a big contributing factor is the boom in datacenter demand. It's particularly acute for AI datacenters, which need more power than traditional datacenters, and are growing like crazy ever since ChatGPT brought generative AI to everyone's collective consciousness. 

So how will utilities handle the sudden surge in load growth? Brian Janous, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Cloverleaf Infrastructure, spent 12 years at Microsoft, where he was the company's first ever energy-focused hire, so he has seen the rise of datacenter electricity consumption first hand, and how AI is kicking it up even further. He now works alongside utilities to figure out how they'll meet this growing demand. 

Janous says there's likely to be more gas plants being built. Datacenters and utilities can also get more energy out of existing infrastructure, but the politics of AI datacenters and what this all means for the net-zero commitments of major tech companies also have to be considered. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-15/what-surging-ai-demand-means-for-electricity-markets

'AstraZeneca study warns of chronic kidney disease timebomb'

 Up to one in six people in eight industrialised nations could be suffering from chronic kidney disease (CKD) by 2032, with dire consequences for “patients, [the] planet, and economies,” says a new study.

The AstraZeneca analysis, called Impact CKD, predicts that between 11.7% and 16.5% of people across the US, Brazil, the UK, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, China, and Australia will have CKD in that year, according to a presentation at the World Congress of Nephrology (WCN) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

CKD is becoming an emerging global health crisis that is on course to become the fifth leading cause of death by 2040, placing an enormous strain on health systems. Estimates are that it could account for around 7% of total healthcare budgets, and more than a quarter (25.7%) in some countries.

Impact CKD suggests that the CKD population will reach 125 million across the eight countries by 2032, a 25% increase, with advanced CKD cases rising even more quickly, at a rate of around 59%. A key problem is that up to 90% of people living with CKD don’t know they have it, missing out on early treatment that could prevent progression to dialysis and kidney failure.

AZ says the study is the first to model CKD at this level of detail and aims to provide insights and recommendations to limit the clinical, economic, societal, and environmental burdens associated with the disease. It uses patient-level simulation, creating one million individual patients based on country population size, covering the entire CKD pathway from primary care to end-of-life care.

The economic toll of renal replacement therapy, including dialysis and transplant, is anticipated to reach approximately $186 billion by 2032, driven by the rising need for dialysis equipment and services, which are expected to shoot up by over 75%, over that period. Lower productivity will also hit GDP as patients miss 2.85 billion days and caregivers miss 327 million work days, according to the analysis.

CKD will also contribute significantly to healthcare’s carbon footprint, estimated to be equivalent to adding approximately 17.3 million cars’ worth of CO2 emissions, according to AZ.

The pharma group – whose SGLT2 inhibitor Farxiga/Forxiga (dapagliflozin) was the first in the class to be approved for use in people with CKD in 2021 – recently launched the Accelerating Change Together (ACT) for CKD, encompassing a series of studies and initiatives designed to improve understanding and outcomes of CKD worldwide.

Other elements of the programme include the Reveal-CKD study, looking at the extent of underdiagnosis and the clinical impact of an early diagnosis, and the Inside-CKD analysis modelling future prevalence, disease burden, and healthcare use and costs, and the benefits of screening.

“Our modelling emphasises the enormous impact CKD could have on patients, economies, and the environment,” commented Ruud Dobber, head of the biopharma business unit at AZ.

“But this future is not inevitable,” he added. “We are committed to working with global policy makers to reduce the worldwide impact of end-stage CKD and drive earlier diagnosis and treatment to slow or halt progression of the disease.”

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/study-warns-chronic-kidney-disease-timebomb

Regeneron launches $500m venture capital arm

 Regeneron has formed a corporate venture capital unit with $100 million a year to invest over the next five years in “biopharmaceutical, healthcare, and health technology” start-ups.

The size of the earmarked investment immediately elevates the company into the top tier of biopharma corporate VC investors, a growing group of drugmakers that invest their own funds in emerging companies for a financial return and to get closer to organisations that may provide pipeline-building opportunities.

Regeneron’s fund will be independently managed by former Regeneron executives Jay Markowitz and Michael Aberman, said the company, which said the primary interest of the new fund is in “biotechnology, devices, tools, and enabling technologies”, but will look at investments more broadly across healthcare.

Michael Aberman

Aberman was at Regeneron for seven years, rising to the role of senior vice president of investor relations and strategy, having previously worked as a biotech analyst at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley and as director of business development at Antigenics.

Most recently he was chief executive and co-founder of XenImmune Therapeutics, a start-up aiming to treat cancer by marking tumour cells as foreign to the immune system – and before that was CEO of Quentis Therapeutics.

“Our goal is to cultivate an ecosystem where the next generation of biotech companies can thrive, drawing on the lessons learned and successes achieved at Regeneron and throughout our careers,” said Aberman. “Together, we will strive to identify and support groundbreaking advancements that push the boundaries of what’s possible in science and medicine.”

Jay Markowitz

Markowitz, meanwhile, has joined Regeneron Ventures after a three-year stint at ARCH Venture Partners, where he was a senior partner and founded three companies, also serving as a board member and advisor for two others.

He was a senior vice president at Regeneron between 2017 and 2020, and formerly a transplant surgeon and assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

According to Markowitz, the new fund “will invest for the long-term, agnostic to therapeutic area, technology, and stage of development.”

Regeneron’s move into the corporate VC area comes as it is still reaping the benefits of impressive sales growth from drugs like immunology therapy Dupixent (dupilumab) and cancer therapy Libtayo (cemiplimab), and facing the onset of biosimilar competition to ophthalmology blockbuster Eylea (aflibercept), which is seeing sales start to fade.

The launch of the fund comes amid signs biotech financings are rebounding after a slowdown in 2022 and 2023.

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/regeneron-launches-500m-venture-capital-arm

Activist hedge fund seeks big shake-up at Novavax

 Shah Capital has fired a broadside at the management team of Novavax, seeking a change in leadership at the vaccine company and the appointment of two handpicked directors to the board.

In an open letter, the hedge fund accuses Novavax’s leadership of squandering its “many significant competitive advantages and sizeable market opportunity” due to “self-inflicted problems” under the current team led by chief executive John Jacobs.

The bid by Shah Capital – which owns 6.7% of Novavax and is one of its top five shareholders – comes as the company has seen its share price come under massive pressure since the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic when its shares were trading above $290 and it had a valuation of more than $40 billion.

Now, its shares are trading a little over $4 with a valuation of $600 million, and Shah Capital says that is a consequence of “reactive leadership and outdated and old-fashioned marketing,” particularly with regard to its COVID-19 vaccine Nuvaxovid/Covovax.

The hedge fund says Novavax should be targeting its vaccine at the over-60s age bracket using a direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy that highlights it is based on traditional protein-based vaccination technology, tapping into a group that may be nervous about getting vaccinated with mRNA jabs from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.

Novavax’s sales of only around 200,000 vaccines in the autumn 2023 season was not due to a lack of demand, but a result of poor marketing, along with rollout issues and delays, it contends, claiming that Novavax could capture 50% of the US market this year with different approach.

The company is not making enough of its Matrix-M vaccine adjuvant technology, which has inactive programmes in areas including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that should be restarted with the help of external funding, calling its partnership strategy “non-existent,” according to the letter.

Shah Capital’s nominations for the board are Suresh Katta, founder of clinical analytics company Saama, and Venkat Peri, chief executive of artificial intelligence and computational sciences specialist Quantiva Health.

“We are confident that the appointment of these two highly experienced individuals to the board will be a crucial first step to moving beyond what has been an ineffective and old-fashioned strategic approach in favour of one that can finally begin maximising value for Novavax’s shareholders,” says Shah Capital.

Novavax achieved revenues of $1 billion last year, including $291 million in the fourth quarter, and is looking ahead to phase 3 results for a combination COVID-19/flu combination vaccine in the second half of this year with a launch slated for 2026. It is expecting revenues of $800 million to $1 billion this year.

The company offered this statement to pharmaphorum: “The board of directors and management team of Novavax are committed to creating long-term value for stakeholders and improving global public health by advancing protein-based vaccines with our Matrix-M adjuvant. We are confident that the actions we are taking are the right ones to drive long-term sustainable growth and create value for all our stakeholders. We welcome the perspectives of our shareholders and value their input on our strategy.”

https://pharmaphorum.com/news/activist-hedge-fund-seeks-big-shake-novavax

Epic fail of Biden’s doctrine vs. Iran — no consequences

 President Biden needs to face reality: His policies of appeasing Iran while waging political warfare against Israel led Tehran to conclude it could launch a massive attack on Israel and face no consequences.

As Biden again tries to hold Israel back from defending itself while maintaining both United States and United Nations sanctions relief for Iran, he risks confirming the ayatollah’s calculation — and guaranteeing a more dangerous future for America and our democratic allies.

Iran’s weekend attack against Israel was not symbolic or performative — it was an unprecedented and unacceptable act of war.

There’s no other way to characterize the launch of 120 ballistic missiles, alongside 30 cruise missiles and 170 suicide drones, against a country the size of New Jersey — especially when the attack was committed by the state sponsor of terrorism already waging a multifront proxy war against that country.

Two questions now loom largest: Why did this happen and what is to be done?

Wasted diplomacy 

Over the past six months, Washington has pressured Jerusalem not to escalate against Iran’s terror proxy in southern Lebanon, despite the daily launch of missiles, rockets and drones that has forced towns across northern Israel to evacuate.

Hezbollah’s war on Israel has been normalized due to the lack of severe consequences imposed on the group and its sponsor.

The same can be said for the near-daily missile and drone attacks on the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, where the US won’t even put the group on an official terror list let alone impose true military costs on its leaders.

All the while, the White House has been showering Tehran with access to cash in hopes of incentivizing better behavior — a policy more commonly known as appeasement.

America today does not enforce its oil sanctions on Iran, allowing Iranian crude to freely flow to China and other Asian destinations.

Just last month, Biden renewed a sanctions waiver giving Iran access to upwards of $10 billion to be used as budget support.

Biden’s desperation for a renewed nuclear deal was never clearer than in October, just days after the Hamas massacre, when he allowed the UN’s missile embargo on Iran to expire rather than work with European allies to trigger the “snapback” of UN sanctions — a mechanism to restore all multilateral restrictions on Iran without a Russian or Chinese veto.

Oct. 7 accountability

Iran has faced no consequences from the US for Oct. 7, despite years of funding, training and arming Hamas.

Nor has Iran faced consequences for directing missile attacks against Israel from Lebanon, missile attacks against the US Navy from Yemen and missile and drone attacks on both Israel and US forces from Iraq and Syria — even after the murder of three American soldiers.

Instead, the president’s public wrath in recent weeks has been aimed at Israel: pressuring Israel to halt its campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza, threatening a cutoff of US support, doing nothing to stop Canada from halting arms sales and emboldening Democrats in Congress to call for conditioning American aid.

It’s quite logical for the mullahs to examine the record and conclude a strategic-level strike on Israel would end in two results: zero consequences for Tehran and pressure on Israel not to respond. As of this moment, they are being proven right.

Israel, however, has no choice but to respond forcefully to this attack — imposing costs high enough on Tehran to turn the ayatollah’s calculation into a miscalculation.

Normalizing ballistic and cruise missile strikes from Iranian territory — whether they succeed in breaking through Israeli missile defenses or not — will establish a new and outrageously high baseline for future escalation. It may also inform the regime’s calculus on whether and when to pursue a nuclear breakout, doubting there is any level of misbehavior that could break Western appeasement policies.

Stop Tehran cash flow 

The president reportedly wants Israel to hold off on a military retaliation so he can pursue diplomatic options instead.

But if those options exclude economic and political costs for the regime, Biden will simply be putting lipstick on a policy of accommodation.

The president should immediately freeze the $10 billion made available to Iran through his own sanctions waiver — money that’s accessible right now in bank accounts in Iraq, Oman and Europe.

He should order a crackdown on Chinese imports of Iranian crude, too. If he refuses, the Senate should finally vote on two House-passed bills that would force his hand on both matters.

On the multilateral stage, the White House should join with the United Kingdom, France and Germany in triggering the snapback of UN sanctions and press Britain, Canada and the European Union to finally designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. Canada should be pressured to lift its arms embargo on Israel, too.

Both the US and Israel must recognize Iran carried out its attack despite a week of warnings from both countries. That is not a “win” — that’s a national-security failure, which should compel an immediate change in strategy.

Richard Goldberg, a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is a former National Security Council official and senior US Senate aide.

https://nypost.com/2024/04/14/opinion/the-epic-fail-of-bidens-doctrine-vs-iran-no-consequences/